We are back on the grid (for the moment), safe and healing. Details to follow in the forthcoming short narrative titled 6 Days on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
PCT: fire update
We are aware of the fire near ollalie lake. Pct website had an update with diversion yesterday pm and we are following that. That route turns off the pct near russel lake and reconnects at red something. We have it saved here on the iPad. Conserving juice so keeping this short. If you want to help us out, please feel free to look at pcta.org website for any trail closure info later that yesterday afternoon and send it to me on my cell via text message. No idea if we will get it but could be helpful if we do. Will update again when able!
Friday, August 10, 2012
Russia Trip: Moscow
I haven't really blogged about Russia, which was a highlight of this whole trip. It was interesting from the very start as we realized that, despite the significant hurdles the Russian government puts American travelers through to get a visa, once you've got your visa it's actually quite easy to get around. We were prepared, for example, for the airport checkin logistics to be kind of a nightmare with inspectors from every possible border related department scrutinizing our travel preparation. Not so. All we got was hello, here's your boarding pass, have a nice flight. I didn't even have time to ask for a window seat.
Once we were on the plane, we were happily surprised to find that our TransAero Kiev-Moscow commuter flight, all of 80 minutes takeoff to touch down, included meal service, complete with hot towels to freshen up with. So civilized! We were hungry so we ate gratefully while mapping out our strategy for getting from the airport to our hotel. Turns out there is a very efficient train service, AeroExpress I think it was called, that took us very comfortably from the airport to the city center, and from there it was a quick introduction to the workings of the Moscow metro lines and - boom! there we were, two Amerikanskies bursting out of the subway right into Red Square.
In our few moments of logistical confusion over how to buy tickets, an angel always seemed to pop up just when we needed one. "Do you need help?" our Moscow airport angel asked as we stared blankly at the first question on the automated ticket machine.
"Yes, please!" I said, and she walked us through a translation screen by screen until out popped our tickets. Two minutes later we were sprinting down the platform and jumping into the next train just moments before the doors closed. This turned out to be the very best way to beat the traffic into town, aside from the fact that it was also the most economical way to go.
Our angels were in full force as we approached the front door of the Hotel National on Red Square. Location was everything for us when we booked this room since we knew we would only have two nights in Moscow. By paying in advance, Trish got a good deal on a room at this gem of a five-star hotel right on the ploshad that leads to both Red Square and the Kremlin. A "good deal" was still $275 a night, but we decided early on that we were willing to pay for proximity. As we walked up the steps, the door magically opened for us at just the right time. This turned out to be the doing of the white-gloved hand of an ancient doorman. His warm welcome to Moscow was only outdone by the front desk manager, who must have seen something in us... whether it was empathy for her fellow females looking a bit tired and wrinkled, or a suspicion that inside our shabby looking bags were several bright, shiny high tech devices with which we would certainly use to post reviews of her hotel - whatever it was, we were pleasantly surprised when she informed her stoic faced underling that we were to receive a room upgrade. "You will have a jacuzzi in your room just for your own use," she informed us. Exactly what we wanted to hear!
Moscow wasn't all perfect. While Red Square and the Kremlin buildings were each awesome in their own way, with a great energy in the square, especially at night ("night" being sometime after 11:00 pm by the way, at this time of year), we mis-planned the timing for seeing Lenin's well-preserved body, which we both wanted to see. Turns out that Lenin takes a day off on Mondays. We also never did make a river tour (also a timing issue). We did, however, spend some time in GUM department store, which is an experience in itself. This was a very different GUM from the one I visited in Minsk... I think the Minsk GUM is probably a more authentic holdover from the Soviet days, while the Red Square GUM is more like shopping on Union Square in San Francisco.
Our final Moscow angel was the concierge at our hotel, who gave us very careful and compassionate instructions for finding our way to the train station that would take us to St. Petersburg. I think her name was Marina. Her face stern and serious, she spoke slowly and emphasized certain details that we will probably never forget. "When you get on the metro, you must get on the last car," she said. "The very last car... it is the one that will take you to the train station."
"The last car," we repeated.
"Give yourself..." she lifted her head and looked at us. How smart are these two, she must have been thinking. "Your train leaves at 1:30... so you should arrive at the station at 1:00. The train will be there at 1:00." She took off her thick reading glasses and made direct eye contact with us one at a time to make sure we were paying attention. "Now if it were me, I would take 15 minutes to get there. I would leave here at a quarter to one. But you..." starting us hard in the eyes now, "you must give yourselves time to think... time to look around. You should leave here at twelve. Twelve o'clock so you have time to look around, time to wonder..."
"OK" we said, "time to wonder."
"Maybe," I added, "to go in the wrong direction and then turn around and go the right direction?"
"Yes," she said, and seemed comforted by the fact that we did not argue with her assessment of our ability to negotiate the metro system.
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Once we were on the plane, we were happily surprised to find that our TransAero Kiev-Moscow commuter flight, all of 80 minutes takeoff to touch down, included meal service, complete with hot towels to freshen up with. So civilized! We were hungry so we ate gratefully while mapping out our strategy for getting from the airport to our hotel. Turns out there is a very efficient train service, AeroExpress I think it was called, that took us very comfortably from the airport to the city center, and from there it was a quick introduction to the workings of the Moscow metro lines and - boom! there we were, two Amerikanskies bursting out of the subway right into Red Square.
In our few moments of logistical confusion over how to buy tickets, an angel always seemed to pop up just when we needed one. "Do you need help?" our Moscow airport angel asked as we stared blankly at the first question on the automated ticket machine.
"Yes, please!" I said, and she walked us through a translation screen by screen until out popped our tickets. Two minutes later we were sprinting down the platform and jumping into the next train just moments before the doors closed. This turned out to be the very best way to beat the traffic into town, aside from the fact that it was also the most economical way to go.
Our angels were in full force as we approached the front door of the Hotel National on Red Square. Location was everything for us when we booked this room since we knew we would only have two nights in Moscow. By paying in advance, Trish got a good deal on a room at this gem of a five-star hotel right on the ploshad that leads to both Red Square and the Kremlin. A "good deal" was still $275 a night, but we decided early on that we were willing to pay for proximity. As we walked up the steps, the door magically opened for us at just the right time. This turned out to be the doing of the white-gloved hand of an ancient doorman. His warm welcome to Moscow was only outdone by the front desk manager, who must have seen something in us... whether it was empathy for her fellow females looking a bit tired and wrinkled, or a suspicion that inside our shabby looking bags were several bright, shiny high tech devices with which we would certainly use to post reviews of her hotel - whatever it was, we were pleasantly surprised when she informed her stoic faced underling that we were to receive a room upgrade. "You will have a jacuzzi in your room just for your own use," she informed us. Exactly what we wanted to hear!
Moscow wasn't all perfect. While Red Square and the Kremlin buildings were each awesome in their own way, with a great energy in the square, especially at night ("night" being sometime after 11:00 pm by the way, at this time of year), we mis-planned the timing for seeing Lenin's well-preserved body, which we both wanted to see. Turns out that Lenin takes a day off on Mondays. We also never did make a river tour (also a timing issue). We did, however, spend some time in GUM department store, which is an experience in itself. This was a very different GUM from the one I visited in Minsk... I think the Minsk GUM is probably a more authentic holdover from the Soviet days, while the Red Square GUM is more like shopping on Union Square in San Francisco.
Our final Moscow angel was the concierge at our hotel, who gave us very careful and compassionate instructions for finding our way to the train station that would take us to St. Petersburg. I think her name was Marina. Her face stern and serious, she spoke slowly and emphasized certain details that we will probably never forget. "When you get on the metro, you must get on the last car," she said. "The very last car... it is the one that will take you to the train station."
"The last car," we repeated.
"Give yourself..." she lifted her head and looked at us. How smart are these two, she must have been thinking. "Your train leaves at 1:30... so you should arrive at the station at 1:00. The train will be there at 1:00." She took off her thick reading glasses and made direct eye contact with us one at a time to make sure we were paying attention. "Now if it were me, I would take 15 minutes to get there. I would leave here at a quarter to one. But you..." starting us hard in the eyes now, "you must give yourselves time to think... time to look around. You should leave here at twelve. Twelve o'clock so you have time to look around, time to wonder..."
"OK" we said, "time to wonder."
"Maybe," I added, "to go in the wrong direction and then turn around and go the right direction?"
"Yes," she said, and seemed comforted by the fact that we did not argue with her assessment of our ability to negotiate the metro system.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Russian Olympic Coverage
Russian coverage of the Olympics beats the hell out of what we get in the US. At any time there are at least three or four stations broadcasting live coverage of the events. No personal snapshot dramas, no commercial breaks longer than 30 seconds, just the events themselves. Just watched Michael Phelps win, what is it his 20th gold?!?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Russia Trip: Neolithic Siberian boat
At the Hermitage, St. Petersburg
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Russia Trip: Lunch
Ukrainian sturgeon with birch sap and vegetables. Delicious!
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Russia Trip: St. Andrews church
Having a night in tonight while the rain falls outside. Dark Kozel beer, nonstop Olympic coverage and time to post some photos. This was the St. Andrews cathedral in Kiev, at the top of Kiev's version of Montmartre
, a 5 minute walk from our hotel.
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, a 5 minute walk from our hotel.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Russia Trip: Enigmatic Encounters
Actually, this story began back in the Bay Area before I even left. A Russian friend told me she was sorry for all the trouble "back there." I wasn't sure what she meant. We'd done something together a short while before that and it hadn't gone exactly as planned, but it was nothing to apologize for. Did she mean that, I asked. "No," she said. "I mean for all the trouble you're going to have when you're in Russia."
"Oh," I said. I wasn't expecting Russia to be an easy place to travel, not after all the effort it took just to get a visa, but a pre-apology? That sounded ominous. She didn't look like she was joking, though. "I see. You're apologizing on behalf of your people for all the bad things that are going to happen to us when we're there?"
"Yes, you're going to have to deal with a lot of inconveniences," she clarified.
"Well thanks - I'll remember that. Maybe it will ease the moment a bit when we're starting to get frustrated about something." And in fact, I did have occasion to remind Trish, when we were on the train to Kiev, that we had already been apologized to for the inconvenience of booking a first class sleeper and receiving an ordinary, aging car with bedcushions held in place by duct tape. The closest the car attendants had come to apologizing was when we tried to figure out how to turn the seat into a lower bunk bed, which seemed to us must involve ripping off the duct tape and reconfiguring the cushion somehow. That led us to a dead end so we called Handsome over and asked him to please show us what to do... he went off to his own cabin for a moment and came back with - more duct tape. Which he used to tape the cushion back into place. As he did this he was cursing all the while "stary vagon," which means "old wagon," and that's about as close as we got to "I'm sorry your cabin isn't what you expected."
I should also say that once we got our beds made and had a few glasses of wine in us, our car was just fine. I love traveling by train rather than airplane for a number of reasons. First, there's a sense of continuity to traveling from A to B without leaving the ground. As fascinating as I find the city of Kiev, I am equally fascinated by what lies along the way to Kiev... kilometers and kilometers of wheat fields and sunflowers, tiny villages resistant to change compared to the big cities where the rise and fall of past regimes is more apparent.
I also prefer train travel, especially overnight, for the rhythmic cla-cla-clunk of the wheels that lulls me off to sleep now just as effectively as it did when I was a teenager exploring Western Europe on my own for the first time. And the third reason I like the train is a pragmatic one... now that I am a flight instructor, while I find airplanes interesting, of course, it's also nice to get a break from them.
But I digress. I included the word "enigmas" in the title for this post because we've had more than a few enigmatic encounters on this trip so far. The first was a young Kazakh woman who picked us up on our way to the Cave Monastery in Kiev. Somehow, one minute to the next, she was just there, walking along with us on our way to the caves. OK, she seemed nice enough. I won't give her name because she said she was playing hooky from work. I know... what are the chances that her boss back at her IT firm in Kazakhstan will somehow find himself reading my blog? Pretty much zilch. Just in case, though, I'll just call her our Kazakh friend.
We learned a lot about Kazakhstan in the two or three hours we all spent together. We also had a Russian translator during that time, since she spoke English, Kazakh and Russian. This was fortunate, because the Cave Monastery turned out to be an important pilgrimage site for Ukrainians. Signage was minimal in English and limited to information about where to buy tickets for a tour. We didn't want a tour. We just wanted to see the caves. Our Kazakh friend was able to figure out how to see the caves themselves, along with the pilgrims. She also had the foresight to purchase three candles before we went in. I had only read a little about the "cave monastery" and had in my mind an image of a wide mouthed cave dug deep into the mountainside along the banks of the Dnieper River, but that's not what this "cave" was all about.
The Cave Monastery of Kiev is a long, descending labyrinth full of dead saints. Once inside, you're in there for a good 30 minutes or longer, depending on how many coffins you stop to kiss. The tradition in Orthodox Christianity is to kiss relics and icons during prayer. People come to this cave from all over Ukraine to pay respect to the many, many monks whose bodies were preserved and displayed, covered with beautiful church robes and ornamental jewels, in small glass coffins placed in niches along the walk. The only sources of light are the small stained glass oil lamps that hang over every body, mosaic, fresco... and the candles that pilgrims with foresight bring with them to light their way. There is little to no room for passing. I was grateful to my Kazakh friend for bringing the extra candles, which of course tuned out to be for me and Trish. Trish, however, discovered early on that she is claustrophobic and backtracked her way out - when I later realized that the labyrinthine tunnel was full of dead bodies I was glad that she'd gotten out while she still could... assuming that claustrophobia gets worse when dead bodies are introduced into the situation.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed walking through the dimly lit row of saints with the Kazakh waif, as well as our brief stop at the memorial for victims of famine on our way back. Ukrainians of the past have suffered more than their share of politically induced famines and the Ukrainians of today have not forgotten. We all stopped to take in a very moving statue of a starving young girl holding a stalk of wheat in her hands - wheat destined for central allocation under a system that starved to death the very people who toiled in the Ukrainian "breadbasket" of the Soviet Union.
We felt guilty about wanting to stop for lunch after that but we did anyway, and then our Kazakh friend disappeared as quickly as she had appeared, now on her way to find a hotel and get ready for the Red Hot Chile Pepper concert that had lured her to Kiev for a super short sanity break from her job.
Our next enigmatic encounter was with a very odd man who never spoke to us in a word of English but held a 20 minute conversation with us nonetheless, during which he offered us apples to take back to America and, when we declined those, upped the offer to a half smoked joint. "No, no!" we emphasized. I caught the eye of a policeman walking by. Great, this guy's going to get arrested for pulling out a joint in a public square and we're going to go down with him. We were lucky to waive over a young translator who found the whole situation fairly amusing and gave us a probably unwarranted sense of security. "Is he homeless?" Trish asked. "Are you homeless"? the guy translated. "No, no" we said, "you don't need to translate that question." But it was too late. The reply was already on its way back to us. "No."
He lived somewhere, this strange man, and was in town for something. We couldn't tell what but by this time we were ready to move on. "One last thing," he said. Our translator gave us the final message carefully, sentence by sentence. "We are all Ukrainian." Listening. "We speak Ukrainian." Listening. "We are all Ukrainian brothers." Listening. "Goodbye."
And then they just disappeared. Both of them. I turned my head to glance over at the other side of the square and when I turned around again the strange Ukrainian nationalist was gone, nowhere to be seen, and the translator was gone as well. "That was weird" I said, and we decided to go hang out in the next square instead.
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"Oh," I said. I wasn't expecting Russia to be an easy place to travel, not after all the effort it took just to get a visa, but a pre-apology? That sounded ominous. She didn't look like she was joking, though. "I see. You're apologizing on behalf of your people for all the bad things that are going to happen to us when we're there?"
"Yes, you're going to have to deal with a lot of inconveniences," she clarified.
"Well thanks - I'll remember that. Maybe it will ease the moment a bit when we're starting to get frustrated about something." And in fact, I did have occasion to remind Trish, when we were on the train to Kiev, that we had already been apologized to for the inconvenience of booking a first class sleeper and receiving an ordinary, aging car with bedcushions held in place by duct tape. The closest the car attendants had come to apologizing was when we tried to figure out how to turn the seat into a lower bunk bed, which seemed to us must involve ripping off the duct tape and reconfiguring the cushion somehow. That led us to a dead end so we called Handsome over and asked him to please show us what to do... he went off to his own cabin for a moment and came back with - more duct tape. Which he used to tape the cushion back into place. As he did this he was cursing all the while "stary vagon," which means "old wagon," and that's about as close as we got to "I'm sorry your cabin isn't what you expected."
I should also say that once we got our beds made and had a few glasses of wine in us, our car was just fine. I love traveling by train rather than airplane for a number of reasons. First, there's a sense of continuity to traveling from A to B without leaving the ground. As fascinating as I find the city of Kiev, I am equally fascinated by what lies along the way to Kiev... kilometers and kilometers of wheat fields and sunflowers, tiny villages resistant to change compared to the big cities where the rise and fall of past regimes is more apparent.
I also prefer train travel, especially overnight, for the rhythmic cla-cla-clunk of the wheels that lulls me off to sleep now just as effectively as it did when I was a teenager exploring Western Europe on my own for the first time. And the third reason I like the train is a pragmatic one... now that I am a flight instructor, while I find airplanes interesting, of course, it's also nice to get a break from them.
But I digress. I included the word "enigmas" in the title for this post because we've had more than a few enigmatic encounters on this trip so far. The first was a young Kazakh woman who picked us up on our way to the Cave Monastery in Kiev. Somehow, one minute to the next, she was just there, walking along with us on our way to the caves. OK, she seemed nice enough. I won't give her name because she said she was playing hooky from work. I know... what are the chances that her boss back at her IT firm in Kazakhstan will somehow find himself reading my blog? Pretty much zilch. Just in case, though, I'll just call her our Kazakh friend.
We learned a lot about Kazakhstan in the two or three hours we all spent together. We also had a Russian translator during that time, since she spoke English, Kazakh and Russian. This was fortunate, because the Cave Monastery turned out to be an important pilgrimage site for Ukrainians. Signage was minimal in English and limited to information about where to buy tickets for a tour. We didn't want a tour. We just wanted to see the caves. Our Kazakh friend was able to figure out how to see the caves themselves, along with the pilgrims. She also had the foresight to purchase three candles before we went in. I had only read a little about the "cave monastery" and had in my mind an image of a wide mouthed cave dug deep into the mountainside along the banks of the Dnieper River, but that's not what this "cave" was all about.
The Cave Monastery of Kiev is a long, descending labyrinth full of dead saints. Once inside, you're in there for a good 30 minutes or longer, depending on how many coffins you stop to kiss. The tradition in Orthodox Christianity is to kiss relics and icons during prayer. People come to this cave from all over Ukraine to pay respect to the many, many monks whose bodies were preserved and displayed, covered with beautiful church robes and ornamental jewels, in small glass coffins placed in niches along the walk. The only sources of light are the small stained glass oil lamps that hang over every body, mosaic, fresco... and the candles that pilgrims with foresight bring with them to light their way. There is little to no room for passing. I was grateful to my Kazakh friend for bringing the extra candles, which of course tuned out to be for me and Trish. Trish, however, discovered early on that she is claustrophobic and backtracked her way out - when I later realized that the labyrinthine tunnel was full of dead bodies I was glad that she'd gotten out while she still could... assuming that claustrophobia gets worse when dead bodies are introduced into the situation.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed walking through the dimly lit row of saints with the Kazakh waif, as well as our brief stop at the memorial for victims of famine on our way back. Ukrainians of the past have suffered more than their share of politically induced famines and the Ukrainians of today have not forgotten. We all stopped to take in a very moving statue of a starving young girl holding a stalk of wheat in her hands - wheat destined for central allocation under a system that starved to death the very people who toiled in the Ukrainian "breadbasket" of the Soviet Union.
We felt guilty about wanting to stop for lunch after that but we did anyway, and then our Kazakh friend disappeared as quickly as she had appeared, now on her way to find a hotel and get ready for the Red Hot Chile Pepper concert that had lured her to Kiev for a super short sanity break from her job.
Our next enigmatic encounter was with a very odd man who never spoke to us in a word of English but held a 20 minute conversation with us nonetheless, during which he offered us apples to take back to America and, when we declined those, upped the offer to a half smoked joint. "No, no!" we emphasized. I caught the eye of a policeman walking by. Great, this guy's going to get arrested for pulling out a joint in a public square and we're going to go down with him. We were lucky to waive over a young translator who found the whole situation fairly amusing and gave us a probably unwarranted sense of security. "Is he homeless?" Trish asked. "Are you homeless"? the guy translated. "No, no" we said, "you don't need to translate that question." But it was too late. The reply was already on its way back to us. "No."
He lived somewhere, this strange man, and was in town for something. We couldn't tell what but by this time we were ready to move on. "One last thing," he said. Our translator gave us the final message carefully, sentence by sentence. "We are all Ukrainian." Listening. "We speak Ukrainian." Listening. "We are all Ukrainian brothers." Listening. "Goodbye."
And then they just disappeared. Both of them. I turned my head to glance over at the other side of the square and when I turned around again the strange Ukrainian nationalist was gone, nowhere to be seen, and the translator was gone as well. "That was weird" I said, and we decided to go hang out in the next square instead.
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Thursday, July 26, 2012
Russia Trip: Slow Train to Kiev
I wrote about my first sleeper-train-to-Ukraine experience, in Spring of 2009, back a few entries in this blog. On that trip, when I finally succeeded in finding my car - the sole car on that entire train that was in fact going to Ukraine at all - it was an elegant, first class affair, decked out in heavy curtains and lace doilies worthy of the oldest fashioned Eastern European coffee house. Since this was not only Trish's first sleeper-train-to-Ukraine experience but her first sleeper-train-to-anywhere experience, I was hoping our first-class cabin, booked weeks ago back in the States, would be just as comfortable as that lovely home away from home I enjoyed on my way to Lviv.
It was not to be.
A rounded mound of flesh poked horizontally from the entryway, a tentatively displayed hillock sprouted with wiry Russian manhair. As suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. Gone inside, as it turned out, to cover itself with a proper railway company shirt and make a more dignified appearance. Although the cabin attendant attached to this particular mound of flesh was off-duty, his younger, fresher, and infinitely handsomer on-duty co-worker seemed determined that public shirtlessness was not to be tolerated while he was in charge. Or maybe just not in Budapest. In any case, there did seem to be a rule. As Handsome checked our tickets, the Stomach reappeared on the platform in a button-down shirt. Not a particularly clean shirt, mind you, but it was a step in the right direction.
We stepped onto our car. No plush red curtains met us in the corridor. No plastic flowers to brighten our journey. Indeed, there was not a doily in sight. As we opened the door to our cabin - our home for the next 26 hours remember - a look of horror appeared on Trish's face. "This is not what I bought." Trish had ordered the train tickets after careful study of the various web offerings. "We paid for first class. They had pictures." I gave her a moment.
"It's not so bad," I finally offered.
"It's a dump."
I poked around a bit. "Look, there's a basin." I opened up a cabinet behind which a small sink was hiding. "We can wash up here." Trish glared at the crumpled strips of duct tape holding up the rear cushion of our seats.
"This is not what we paid for," she said again, and I was a bit worried that she was going to get off right then and there and find another way to Kiev. "Just think," I said, "it's probably a historic car. These very cushions were probably used by Soviet diplomats cutting deals in Budapest during the Cold War."
That didn't seem to help and I concluded that she just needed a moment to herself. To process her own thoughts. It certainly was not a luxurious cabin. It was, however, a "first-class" ticket, Handsome explained, in the sense that it could have been set up to sleep three people and instead it was configured to sleep two. He followed that explanation with a slightly embarrassed it's-the-best-we've-got look and we left it at that. The train pulled out of the station with Trish still on it, and we were on our way to Kiev.
Once we had our beds made, later that evening, it looked a lot less dreary. Almost homey. And you really haven't lived if you haven't experienced border patrol officers making their rounds at 2:00 am to take your passport and search your belongings for illicit narcotics. Or your train being hoisted ten feet in the air to have its wheels replaced. Or the mesmerizing lull of wheel on track as the Ukrainian countryside pours on by, kilometer after kilometer, full of wheat and sunflowers and low misty clouds dotting the hills. Or the smile on Stomach's ultimately kindly face when you stumbled through a "
spaseba" first thing in the morning.
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It was not to be.
A rounded mound of flesh poked horizontally from the entryway, a tentatively displayed hillock sprouted with wiry Russian manhair. As suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. Gone inside, as it turned out, to cover itself with a proper railway company shirt and make a more dignified appearance. Although the cabin attendant attached to this particular mound of flesh was off-duty, his younger, fresher, and infinitely handsomer on-duty co-worker seemed determined that public shirtlessness was not to be tolerated while he was in charge. Or maybe just not in Budapest. In any case, there did seem to be a rule. As Handsome checked our tickets, the Stomach reappeared on the platform in a button-down shirt. Not a particularly clean shirt, mind you, but it was a step in the right direction.
We stepped onto our car. No plush red curtains met us in the corridor. No plastic flowers to brighten our journey. Indeed, there was not a doily in sight. As we opened the door to our cabin - our home for the next 26 hours remember - a look of horror appeared on Trish's face. "This is not what I bought." Trish had ordered the train tickets after careful study of the various web offerings. "We paid for first class. They had pictures." I gave her a moment.
"It's not so bad," I finally offered.
"It's a dump."
I poked around a bit. "Look, there's a basin." I opened up a cabinet behind which a small sink was hiding. "We can wash up here." Trish glared at the crumpled strips of duct tape holding up the rear cushion of our seats.
"This is not what we paid for," she said again, and I was a bit worried that she was going to get off right then and there and find another way to Kiev. "Just think," I said, "it's probably a historic car. These very cushions were probably used by Soviet diplomats cutting deals in Budapest during the Cold War."
That didn't seem to help and I concluded that she just needed a moment to herself. To process her own thoughts. It certainly was not a luxurious cabin. It was, however, a "first-class" ticket, Handsome explained, in the sense that it could have been set up to sleep three people and instead it was configured to sleep two. He followed that explanation with a slightly embarrassed it's-the-best-we've-got look and we left it at that. The train pulled out of the station with Trish still on it, and we were on our way to Kiev.
Once we had our beds made, later that evening, it looked a lot less dreary. Almost homey. And you really haven't lived if you haven't experienced border patrol officers making their rounds at 2:00 am to take your passport and search your belongings for illicit narcotics. Or your train being hoisted ten feet in the air to have its wheels replaced. Or the mesmerizing lull of wheel on track as the Ukrainian countryside pours on by, kilometer after kilometer, full of wheat and sunflowers and low misty clouds dotting the hills. Or the smile on Stomach's ultimately kindly face when you stumbled through a "
spaseba" first thing in the morning.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Russia Trip: She Said, She Said
Ah, Budapest. Before we left, Trish and I talked about writing a joint travel blog we would title She Said, She Said, one "She" being me with my heterosexual female perceptions of Eastern Europe, and the other being Trish with her lesbian perceptions. We had our first opportunity to explore that theme yesterday while walking along the Danube on our way to the Pest side of the city.
First, though, let me say how awesome it is to travel with someone who values a good natural thermal pool as much as I do. We arrived Thursday late afternoon with just enough energy left in us to scope out a place to eat dinner, down a few glasses of the complimentary wine we found in our excellent hotel room at the St. George Residence in the castle district, test out the internet connection, then fall into a deep, travel-tired sleep. We promised each other we would write a fabulous review of this place on tripadvisor, but for the moment suffice it to say that the beds in Room 3 are hands down some of the most comfortable beds either of us have ever slept in.
We only had 2 full days in Budapest. Under the circumstances, it could be a lot to ask to dedicate almost the entire first day to soaking at the bath house. But Trish was up for that. In fact, I think it was her suggestion. We found our way to Szechenyi Furdo, purportedly the largest spa facility in Europe, and there we found a veritable spa smorgasbord. I was in heaven. Indoor thermal pools, outdoor thermal pools, swimming pools, weight class pools, steam rooms infused with a variety of aromatic essential oils, saunas, even a corner where old men congregate to play pool chess. It was awesome!
Trish's neck was out of whack because the person next to her on the plane couldn't quite fit into his own seat and had flowed over into hers, forcing her to sit a bit cock-eyed for 10 hours. She got her first ever Thai massage at Szechenyi Furdo and got herself stretched and pounded back into alignment. After that, we found the covered food market, figuring we would buy a few things for a simple dinner back at the room. Through no fault of our own, we broke the rule about not shopping while hungry and soon enough the forints were flying left and right, not stopping until both of us was burdened with heavy bags full of fruit, cheese, bread, sliced meats, Hungarian yogurt and, especially for Trish, 4 prize fresh chicken eggs. She had to do a lot of negotiating to get someone to throw in an egg carton to carry them home in, which, of course, made them taste that much better.
The morning of our second full day, after our leisurely breakfast of yummy market foods, we set out along the river to see what Budapest had to offer other than thermal spas and fresh local foods. That's when we had our first She Said, She Said moment. We'd both vaguely noticed the day before that people were staring at me. Mostly women as far as I could tell. Trish thought it was both women and men. I had attributed the stares, which seemed to me to focus on my shoulder area, to the fact that I was wearing a gray tank top. "Maybe it's kind of masculine," I said. "I think it looks like a men's undershirt to them."
"Patti, you don't look masculine," Trish said.
"No really... you don't see women wearing this sort of thing here. I think I must look really butch. They see this and they think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever or some gang member from West Side Story."
"You have no idea what butch looks like." She proceeded to explain it to me... something involving short buzz cut hair among other features. "They're staring at you because you have long hair and you're showing a lot of skin."
"I am?"
"Relatively speaking." We looked around. Sure enough, most women did have hair above the shoulder line, and very few were wearing shorts.
"So you don't think they're trying to figure out if I'm a guy or a woman?"
"I think they know you're a woman."
"You think they're looking at me because I'm dressed like a slut."
"I think they're noticing that you have skin and hair and they're giving you the stay-away-from-my-boyfriend stare."
"I can deal with that. I prefer that to slut." We stared at the river for a moment. "Still, maybe I'll ditch this tank top when it's all sweaty rather than washing it out in the sink."
Trish sighed and we changed the subject, remembering something about the museum we had stumbled upon earlier that morning. We meant to find our way to the metro station at the bottom of the Buda hill where we're staying, but we'd taken a wrong turn and instead ended up walking near a garden strangely decorated with metal statues. We only had to pause for the briefest of moments to get the attention of the curator, who was outside trimming bushes. He waved us in so vigorously that we could not resist his pull, and found ourselves inside the museum of non-ferrous metallurgy eating cookies with the curator and learning about Hungarian technology of the Industrial Revolution. This was a fascinating place and highly worth visiting, and if I can figure out how to use my new blog-posting app I'll upload a photo of Trish with our suspender-clad new best friend.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
First, though, let me say how awesome it is to travel with someone who values a good natural thermal pool as much as I do. We arrived Thursday late afternoon with just enough energy left in us to scope out a place to eat dinner, down a few glasses of the complimentary wine we found in our excellent hotel room at the St. George Residence in the castle district, test out the internet connection, then fall into a deep, travel-tired sleep. We promised each other we would write a fabulous review of this place on tripadvisor, but for the moment suffice it to say that the beds in Room 3 are hands down some of the most comfortable beds either of us have ever slept in.
We only had 2 full days in Budapest. Under the circumstances, it could be a lot to ask to dedicate almost the entire first day to soaking at the bath house. But Trish was up for that. In fact, I think it was her suggestion. We found our way to Szechenyi Furdo, purportedly the largest spa facility in Europe, and there we found a veritable spa smorgasbord. I was in heaven. Indoor thermal pools, outdoor thermal pools, swimming pools, weight class pools, steam rooms infused with a variety of aromatic essential oils, saunas, even a corner where old men congregate to play pool chess. It was awesome!
Trish's neck was out of whack because the person next to her on the plane couldn't quite fit into his own seat and had flowed over into hers, forcing her to sit a bit cock-eyed for 10 hours. She got her first ever Thai massage at Szechenyi Furdo and got herself stretched and pounded back into alignment. After that, we found the covered food market, figuring we would buy a few things for a simple dinner back at the room. Through no fault of our own, we broke the rule about not shopping while hungry and soon enough the forints were flying left and right, not stopping until both of us was burdened with heavy bags full of fruit, cheese, bread, sliced meats, Hungarian yogurt and, especially for Trish, 4 prize fresh chicken eggs. She had to do a lot of negotiating to get someone to throw in an egg carton to carry them home in, which, of course, made them taste that much better.
The morning of our second full day, after our leisurely breakfast of yummy market foods, we set out along the river to see what Budapest had to offer other than thermal spas and fresh local foods. That's when we had our first She Said, She Said moment. We'd both vaguely noticed the day before that people were staring at me. Mostly women as far as I could tell. Trish thought it was both women and men. I had attributed the stares, which seemed to me to focus on my shoulder area, to the fact that I was wearing a gray tank top. "Maybe it's kind of masculine," I said. "I think it looks like a men's undershirt to them."
"Patti, you don't look masculine," Trish said.
"No really... you don't see women wearing this sort of thing here. I think I must look really butch. They see this and they think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever or some gang member from West Side Story."
"You have no idea what butch looks like." She proceeded to explain it to me... something involving short buzz cut hair among other features. "They're staring at you because you have long hair and you're showing a lot of skin."
"I am?"
"Relatively speaking." We looked around. Sure enough, most women did have hair above the shoulder line, and very few were wearing shorts.
"So you don't think they're trying to figure out if I'm a guy or a woman?"
"I think they know you're a woman."
"You think they're looking at me because I'm dressed like a slut."
"I think they're noticing that you have skin and hair and they're giving you the stay-away-from-my-boyfriend stare."
"I can deal with that. I prefer that to slut." We stared at the river for a moment. "Still, maybe I'll ditch this tank top when it's all sweaty rather than washing it out in the sink."
Trish sighed and we changed the subject, remembering something about the museum we had stumbled upon earlier that morning. We meant to find our way to the metro station at the bottom of the Buda hill where we're staying, but we'd taken a wrong turn and instead ended up walking near a garden strangely decorated with metal statues. We only had to pause for the briefest of moments to get the attention of the curator, who was outside trimming bushes. He waved us in so vigorously that we could not resist his pull, and found ourselves inside the museum of non-ferrous metallurgy eating cookies with the curator and learning about Hungarian technology of the Industrial Revolution. This was a fascinating place and highly worth visiting, and if I can figure out how to use my new blog-posting app I'll upload a photo of Trish with our suspender-clad new best friend.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Birmingham
By the time we made it to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, we had seen a lot of small and fascinating museums exploring specific people or aspects of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. The Birmingham museum was huge in comparison, also very interesting, but I think by that point we had become a bit museum-weary. We enjoyed a walking tour afterwards given by a random guy in the park who was able to explain in detail the meaning of the park's various artistic creations. We also came across some Occupiers, a small enclave but dedicated, and we stopped to talk to them about their movement.
After that, we were done with touring and ready for lunch. Someone recommended to me a place that sounded like the Birmingham Pie Company. OK, I thought, pie or something... they probably have sandwiches too. We followed her directions and found ourselves at the Birmingham Power Company. That's where people eat lunch in Alabama - the power company, an enclosed business park, places like that. It's almost like eating in the food court at a shopping mall, except that there aren't any stores, just offices. We never quite got used to that, but it seemed like a very common thing to do... so on our last day we had lunch in the lunch room of the Birmingham Power Company. It seemed appropriate. Birmingham, after all, was one of the places where young people took part in lunch counter sit-ins in order to force desegregation. After all the visiting and exploring and learning we'd done, after all the people we'd met, all the conversations about race, I couldn't help it... I had to count. I took an informal survey to see how many mixed race groups of diners were in that lunch room. Over the course of our 30-minute lunch, I counted nine. Nine groups of people who had skin of different pigmentation from one another and who appeared to be voluntarily eating together. We were in good company.
After that, we were done with touring and ready for lunch. Someone recommended to me a place that sounded like the Birmingham Pie Company. OK, I thought, pie or something... they probably have sandwiches too. We followed her directions and found ourselves at the Birmingham Power Company. That's where people eat lunch in Alabama - the power company, an enclosed business park, places like that. It's almost like eating in the food court at a shopping mall, except that there aren't any stores, just offices. We never quite got used to that, but it seemed like a very common thing to do... so on our last day we had lunch in the lunch room of the Birmingham Power Company. It seemed appropriate. Birmingham, after all, was one of the places where young people took part in lunch counter sit-ins in order to force desegregation. After all the visiting and exploring and learning we'd done, after all the people we'd met, all the conversations about race, I couldn't help it... I had to count. I took an informal survey to see how many mixed race groups of diners were in that lunch room. Over the course of our 30-minute lunch, I counted nine. Nine groups of people who had skin of different pigmentation from one another and who appeared to be voluntarily eating together. We were in good company.
Glendora, Mississippi
The smoke at Red's gave my mom and I both scratchy throats that lasted more than a week, but it was worth it. The following morning it was bright and early out of Clarksdale and on our way to Birmingham. A part of this route has recently been named the Emmett Till Memorial Highway. Emmett Till was one of the martyrs of the Civil Rights movement, a 14-year-old from Chicago who went to Mississippi to visit relatives in 1955 and, not knowing the local rules of engagement, made the mistake of looking at a white woman. Some say he made a flirtatious gesture or possibly spoke to her. Whatever it was, there was a perception that an incident of some kind had taken place. By the following morning, Till had been brutally lynched. The murderers, who eventually confessed to the crime, were acquitted by the local court. To ensure that all Americans came face to face with the reality of Southern racial dynamics, Till's mother insisted on an open casket. By bringing broader public awareness to the realty of lynching, Till's open casket funeral increased the pressure for reform. Here are the before and after photos of Emmett Till.
A small sign along the highway guided us to the raw and powerful Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, which became my other favorite tiny museum of this trip.
A small sign along the highway guided us to the raw and powerful Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, which became my other favorite tiny museum of this trip.
Clarksdale
We took the Mississippi Blues Trail ( http://www.msbluestrail.org/ ) from Natchez to Clarksdale. This turned out to be a fun little hunt for markers in various towns and roadside locations along our way. Most of them were quite humble, none was spectacular in and of itself, but altogether they made for an enjoyable scavenger hunt and drew us into some out-of-the-way towns we otherwise would have just driven by. This was the tiny home of blues legend Muddy Waters, for example, complete with a bottle tree.
The bottle tree thing is something we don't see much of in California. Turns out there's quite a history behind bottle trees. Although I know nothing about him as an authoritative source, I liked Felder Rushing's "Bottle Tree History" which you can find at http://www.felderrushing.net/HistoryofBottleTrees.htm
Night found us in Clarksdale, munching on Wendy's lovely bacon-free salads and eagerly awaiting a show at Red's Lounge, a divy juke joint that's about as authentic as it gets. See if you can find the blues club in this photo!
The bottle tree thing is something we don't see much of in California. Turns out there's quite a history behind bottle trees. Although I know nothing about him as an authoritative source, I liked Felder Rushing's "Bottle Tree History" which you can find at http://www.felderrushing.net/HistoryofBottleTrees.htm
Night found us in Clarksdale, munching on Wendy's lovely bacon-free salads and eagerly awaiting a show at Red's Lounge, a divy juke joint that's about as authentic as it gets. See if you can find the blues club in this photo!
ISO Alligators
After a couple of days in New Orleans, complete with a riverboat tour, a Bourbon Street jazz club, a couple of Frenchmen Street jazz clubs, a little art shopping and some good (though bacony) food, we were on our way again, destination Natchez, Mississippi. I wanted to drive the River Road trail which, I assumed, passed closer to the river and also went by several plantations. Admiring plantation architecture was way down on the list of our priorities for this trip, but I figured if they were more or less on the way we should stop and check out at least one of them.
What we didn't expect until we were already enroute was that we might have an opportunity to take a swamp tour. It hadn't really occurred to me, but yes, we were driving through the bayou and they really do have alligators in this part of the country. We saw a small, curious sign along the highway, at least, that implied as much. A fruit vendor along the highway (we were sooo happy to find some fresh fruit and vegetables, all unadulterated by bacon) informed us that Munson's Swamp Tours ( http://www.munsonswamptours.com/ )might be difficult to find. He had tried it himself one time, just out of curiosity, and only found it through extreme perseverance and because he had nothing else to do that day. We might not be so lucky. I whipped out my iPad and asked if he could show us the way, pointing out the pulsing blue dot that was us. "Oh," he said, "maybe with that thing you'll be able to find it."
It was quite a detour, but we did find the swamp tour shack. Alas, the next tour wasn't for another two hours and we didn't have that much time to wait. In any case, said a French tourist just arriving from the morning ride, the alligators seemed to be mostly hibernating. I didn't know that alligators hibernate. It didn't really seem cold enough for hibernation. Maybe the tour guide just said that because they didn't find any alligators and he didn't want his French visitors to be too disappointed. Whatever the reason, we skipped the swamp tour and continued on with our drive. If you're ever in the area during the non-hibernation season, however, and you want to get up close and personal with an alligator, it's probably worth a try.
We also visited the Rosedown Plantation House ( http://www.rosedownplantationhome.com/ ). My mom and I make good travel partners when it comes to things like walking through plantation houses and touring gardens. We were both quite interested in going to one and Rosedown turned out to be a perfect stop along our day's route, but neither of us was interested in going to more than one. It's nice little synchronicities like that which make for compatible travel partners.
Our long drive that day ended at the Natchez Eola Hotel, and that's where, for me, the nightmare began.
One thing I've learned about myself from traveling with other people is that I'm a much lighter sleeper than I had realized. I thought it was normal for the human brain to take an hour or more to wind down and fall asleep. I thought it was normal for people to wake up in the middle of the night if there was a ruckus outside. When I'm traveling, I always like to get a room on the street with an operable window so I can stick my head out and listen to the street noise of whatever place I'm in. That street noise rarely prevents me from sleeping. I like street noise. But I guess I don't like all street noise.
When I traveled in Morocco with my French friend Caroline, I discovered that she takes all of about two minutes to fall asleep. Literally, we would wrap up a lively conversation and say goodnight, and within two minutes she'd be snoring away. My friend Trish was even faster... on our trip through Portugal and Spain she consistently nodded off in a minute or less. Amazing! I can't do that under normal circumstances, let alone when I'm traveling. Add to that a noisy party outside and the night starts to get very, very long. Our lovely street-side room at the Eola was quiet enough when we went to bed, but right at midnight someone enjoying a rigorous night of partying at the club next door must have walked outside for a cigarette and left its door open. Suddenly, it was as though the party was right there on our balcony, and essentially, that's where it was. Several floors down, but facing right towards our room. Our room with the lovely, historic balcony doors that don't quite close all the way, allowing every decibel of sound direct entry. It couldn't go on, I thought. Someone will say something. But minutes went by and on it went. Boom! Boom! Boom! Ta ta boom! How could my mom possibly be sleeping through this?
After the eternity of five minutes, I decided to call the guy at the front desk to see if he could do anything. But I didn't want to wake my mom by picking up the phone. Lucky her that she can sleep through it, I thought, envious. Instead of picking up the phone, I pulled on some flip flops and took the elevator downstairs. The guy at the front desk knew exactly what club I was talking about. "How long do they stay open?" I asked.
"Two, three, four o'clock," he said. "Depends."
I had a long drive the next day and the last thing I wanted was to listen to somebody else's party for the next four hours. "I can put you in a different room," he suggested.
"Can I go in one and leave my mom sleeping where she is?"
"Mmmm, no. Sorry. Either you both go or you both stay." I felt bad about it, but I had no choice. "Do you want me to send up a porter with a cart?"
"Yes, please," I said.
That was only one part of the fiasco of the Eola, but I won't go into the rest. All was more or less fixed by the time we checked out, and I more or less managed to get enough sleep to be a safe driver the following day. I still got a ticket on our way to Clarksdale, but I don't suppose I can blame that on loud music or poor-fitting doors. Call that my $295.50 user's fee for the privilege of using the lovely, long, straight and well-policed roads of the State of Mississippi. In the grand scheme of things, that was money well spent.
What we didn't expect until we were already enroute was that we might have an opportunity to take a swamp tour. It hadn't really occurred to me, but yes, we were driving through the bayou and they really do have alligators in this part of the country. We saw a small, curious sign along the highway, at least, that implied as much. A fruit vendor along the highway (we were sooo happy to find some fresh fruit and vegetables, all unadulterated by bacon) informed us that Munson's Swamp Tours ( http://www.munsonswamptours.com/ )might be difficult to find. He had tried it himself one time, just out of curiosity, and only found it through extreme perseverance and because he had nothing else to do that day. We might not be so lucky. I whipped out my iPad and asked if he could show us the way, pointing out the pulsing blue dot that was us. "Oh," he said, "maybe with that thing you'll be able to find it."
It was quite a detour, but we did find the swamp tour shack. Alas, the next tour wasn't for another two hours and we didn't have that much time to wait. In any case, said a French tourist just arriving from the morning ride, the alligators seemed to be mostly hibernating. I didn't know that alligators hibernate. It didn't really seem cold enough for hibernation. Maybe the tour guide just said that because they didn't find any alligators and he didn't want his French visitors to be too disappointed. Whatever the reason, we skipped the swamp tour and continued on with our drive. If you're ever in the area during the non-hibernation season, however, and you want to get up close and personal with an alligator, it's probably worth a try.
We also visited the Rosedown Plantation House ( http://www.rosedownplantationhome.com/ ). My mom and I make good travel partners when it comes to things like walking through plantation houses and touring gardens. We were both quite interested in going to one and Rosedown turned out to be a perfect stop along our day's route, but neither of us was interested in going to more than one. It's nice little synchronicities like that which make for compatible travel partners.
Our long drive that day ended at the Natchez Eola Hotel, and that's where, for me, the nightmare began.
One thing I've learned about myself from traveling with other people is that I'm a much lighter sleeper than I had realized. I thought it was normal for the human brain to take an hour or more to wind down and fall asleep. I thought it was normal for people to wake up in the middle of the night if there was a ruckus outside. When I'm traveling, I always like to get a room on the street with an operable window so I can stick my head out and listen to the street noise of whatever place I'm in. That street noise rarely prevents me from sleeping. I like street noise. But I guess I don't like all street noise.
When I traveled in Morocco with my French friend Caroline, I discovered that she takes all of about two minutes to fall asleep. Literally, we would wrap up a lively conversation and say goodnight, and within two minutes she'd be snoring away. My friend Trish was even faster... on our trip through Portugal and Spain she consistently nodded off in a minute or less. Amazing! I can't do that under normal circumstances, let alone when I'm traveling. Add to that a noisy party outside and the night starts to get very, very long. Our lovely street-side room at the Eola was quiet enough when we went to bed, but right at midnight someone enjoying a rigorous night of partying at the club next door must have walked outside for a cigarette and left its door open. Suddenly, it was as though the party was right there on our balcony, and essentially, that's where it was. Several floors down, but facing right towards our room. Our room with the lovely, historic balcony doors that don't quite close all the way, allowing every decibel of sound direct entry. It couldn't go on, I thought. Someone will say something. But minutes went by and on it went. Boom! Boom! Boom! Ta ta boom! How could my mom possibly be sleeping through this?
After the eternity of five minutes, I decided to call the guy at the front desk to see if he could do anything. But I didn't want to wake my mom by picking up the phone. Lucky her that she can sleep through it, I thought, envious. Instead of picking up the phone, I pulled on some flip flops and took the elevator downstairs. The guy at the front desk knew exactly what club I was talking about. "How long do they stay open?" I asked.
"Two, three, four o'clock," he said. "Depends."
I had a long drive the next day and the last thing I wanted was to listen to somebody else's party for the next four hours. "I can put you in a different room," he suggested.
"Can I go in one and leave my mom sleeping where she is?"
"Mmmm, no. Sorry. Either you both go or you both stay." I felt bad about it, but I had no choice. "Do you want me to send up a porter with a cart?"
"Yes, please," I said.
That was only one part of the fiasco of the Eola, but I won't go into the rest. All was more or less fixed by the time we checked out, and I more or less managed to get enough sleep to be a safe driver the following day. I still got a ticket on our way to Clarksdale, but I don't suppose I can blame that on loud music or poor-fitting doors. Call that my $295.50 user's fee for the privilege of using the lovely, long, straight and well-policed roads of the State of Mississippi. In the grand scheme of things, that was money well spent.
Selma
One of the highlights of the trip for me was our visit to Selma.
The route from Selma to Montgomery is now a National Historic Trail. The Park Service brochure sums it up nicely:
Anyone interested in this era in American history, or in the evolution of rights in the modern world, would do well to take a pilgrimage along this route. Beginning with the Brown Chapel AME Church (closed when we tried to see it) and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute ( http://nvrmi.com/ )in Selma and ending at the state building, one could hike, bike or drive the 54-mile route over the course of several days without running out of things to see. I found the Voting Rights Museum to be one of the most interesting of the whole trip. It continues to keep the issue of voting rights alive with an annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee event featuring three days of activities, including a film festival, youth leadership conference, re-enactments and more. The museum's exhibits include a series of plaster cast footprints of the Foot Soldiers who participated in the march. By the time we arrived at the museum it had closed for the day. Fortunately, the staff on duty saw us out there and let us in anyway or else we would have missed this moving collection of exhibits.
We stayed one night at the historic St. James Hotel in Selma and were on our way again bright and early the next day. Next stop: New Orleans!
The route from Selma to Montgomery is now a National Historic Trail. The Park Service brochure sums it up nicely:
"The 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery in 1965 culminated a journey of a hundred years by African Americans to gain one of the most fundamental of American freedoms: the right to vote. The peaceful march was possible because in the preceding days courageous citizens, local leaders, and civil rights groups had, at the cost of harassment, bloodshed, and innocent lives, come together to demand that right. The final march was a celebration of their achievement, a processional for fallen comrades, and the climactic event of the modern civil rights movement."
Anyone interested in this era in American history, or in the evolution of rights in the modern world, would do well to take a pilgrimage along this route. Beginning with the Brown Chapel AME Church (closed when we tried to see it) and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute ( http://nvrmi.com/ )in Selma and ending at the state building, one could hike, bike or drive the 54-mile route over the course of several days without running out of things to see. I found the Voting Rights Museum to be one of the most interesting of the whole trip. It continues to keep the issue of voting rights alive with an annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee event featuring three days of activities, including a film festival, youth leadership conference, re-enactments and more. The museum's exhibits include a series of plaster cast footprints of the Foot Soldiers who participated in the march. By the time we arrived at the museum it had closed for the day. Fortunately, the staff on duty saw us out there and let us in anyway or else we would have missed this moving collection of exhibits.
We stayed one night at the historic St. James Hotel in Selma and were on our way again bright and early the next day. Next stop: New Orleans!
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Hugs
The hugs we got from Shirley Cherry at the Dexter Parsonage Museum were not the first nor the last hugs of our trip. Almost everywhere we went, people were chatty and huggy. Maybe it was the time of year - December is not the busiest tourist season to be sure, so there's time to chat. Or maybe the post-chemo fuzz starting to fill in on my mom's head inclined them to an extra level of friendliness. Maybe people in Alabama just find strangers interesting, like people in Vietnam do. Whatever it was, we embraced the embraces we received from the locals and thoroughly enjoyed the long conversations and intimate farewells whenever they were offered.
The friendly welcome was evident on the road as well. The first gas station we stopped at was full serve with a smile... at no extra cost. And often while driving along rural roads, the pedestrians we passed would wave at us. "Maybe I'm driving too fast," I said to myself. "Is one of my lights out? Is there a dead animal stuck on my bumper?"
At one point, driving from Selma to Gee's Bend, I finally said it out loud. "You know, I think they're just saying hello."
My mom knew exactly what I was referring to. "People do seem to wave a lot, don't they?"
"I'm not driving too fast, right?"
"No," she said, "I think they're just being friendly."
"Maybe because we're strangers?"
"I was thinking that," she said, "but how would the know we're strangers if we're in the car? It's one thing at the museums where they know we're visiting, but here we're just driving by."
"True," I said. "I guess people in Alabama are just really friendly."
I started giving them a little wave back from the car. And when we arrived at the Gee's Bend Nutrition Center, home of the Gee's Bend Quilters' Collective, the little old lady whose lunch we interrupted gave us each a hug hello as if we were part of the family.
The friendly welcome was evident on the road as well. The first gas station we stopped at was full serve with a smile... at no extra cost. And often while driving along rural roads, the pedestrians we passed would wave at us. "Maybe I'm driving too fast," I said to myself. "Is one of my lights out? Is there a dead animal stuck on my bumper?"
At one point, driving from Selma to Gee's Bend, I finally said it out loud. "You know, I think they're just saying hello."
My mom knew exactly what I was referring to. "People do seem to wave a lot, don't they?"
"I'm not driving too fast, right?"
"No," she said, "I think they're just being friendly."
"Maybe because we're strangers?"
"I was thinking that," she said, "but how would the know we're strangers if we're in the car? It's one thing at the museums where they know we're visiting, but here we're just driving by."
"True," I said. "I guess people in Alabama are just really friendly."
I started giving them a little wave back from the car. And when we arrived at the Gee's Bend Nutrition Center, home of the Gee's Bend Quilters' Collective, the little old lady whose lunch we interrupted gave us each a hug hello as if we were part of the family.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Montgomery, Alabama
By the time we were done with breakfast, the ghost town had transformed into a reasonably populated civic center. I wouldn't quite call it bustling, but we did pass other people on the sidewalk from time to time. The desk clerk had warned us that Dexter Avenue, up toward the capitol building, was in disrepair. Dilapidated. Apparently the last part of the center to benefit from the city's downtown revitalization campaign. "He's obviously never been to San Francisco," I said to my mom as we walked along it looking for the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. "No," my mom said, "you wouldn't call this dilapidated in San Francisco. This seems like a normal, slightly run down city street."
We followed it until we found the church, which was closed on Mondays. Our luck. We went on instead to the Civil Rights Memorial Center around the corner. The Memorial Center is part of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a major player in the ongoing struggle for equality in the US. Lawyers, activists and administrators of the SPLC have been threatened with violence over the years, and the facility itself has been bombed by people who are unhappy about its work. We noticed an armed guard standing patrol across the street.
The Memorial Center was a perfect first stop on our Civil Rights pilgrimage and road trip. The visit provided an overview of the places we would visit over the next ten days and many of the individuals we would hear about. Most of the other museums and interpretive centers we visited presented the movement from the perspective of a specific incident or individual. Many of them were absolute gems, highly experiential interpretive centers created to memorialize things that happened where they happened, and often by people who were there. The curators of these small labors of love have put together powerful, focused displays, each one unique right down to the items in the gift shop. Every one we went to was fascinating, but it was also good to get an overview at the start to put it all into perspective.
On our second day in Montgomery we were able to explore Martin Luther King Jr.'s small church on Dexter Avenue, the tiny office where he wrote and thought with a view of the capitol building right out the window, the hall downstairs where members of the Montgomery Improvement Association met to plan the bus boycott of 1955. The lady who gave us our tour was nice enough to let us linger alone in the church for a while afterwards. Standing at the pulpit where King spoke some of his most passionate words, I tried to imagine the thoughts that must have come to his mind in that very place as he began to realize the magnitude of what was at stake and his own role in history.
After the church, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the Parsonage a few blocks away, first for a tour of the home where King and his family lived from 1954 to 1960, then for a long, informal chat with tour director Shirley Cherry. By the time we left it was hugs all around. We were running late but still managed to squeak into the Rosa Parks Museum before it closed, followed by a much-needed rest back at the hotel.
This was our second full night in Montgomery. The first night we'd gone to a holiday concert at the Montgomery Symphony, which was conveniently located across the street from our hotel. The second night I wanted to go to a Sing-Along Messiah I'd seen advertised on Dexter Avenue. My mom, not being much of a vocalist, decided to stay in. I left her at dinner having just ordered what we thought was a personal size pizza...
We followed it until we found the church, which was closed on Mondays. Our luck. We went on instead to the Civil Rights Memorial Center around the corner. The Memorial Center is part of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a major player in the ongoing struggle for equality in the US. Lawyers, activists and administrators of the SPLC have been threatened with violence over the years, and the facility itself has been bombed by people who are unhappy about its work. We noticed an armed guard standing patrol across the street.
The Memorial Center was a perfect first stop on our Civil Rights pilgrimage and road trip. The visit provided an overview of the places we would visit over the next ten days and many of the individuals we would hear about. Most of the other museums and interpretive centers we visited presented the movement from the perspective of a specific incident or individual. Many of them were absolute gems, highly experiential interpretive centers created to memorialize things that happened where they happened, and often by people who were there. The curators of these small labors of love have put together powerful, focused displays, each one unique right down to the items in the gift shop. Every one we went to was fascinating, but it was also good to get an overview at the start to put it all into perspective.
On our second day in Montgomery we were able to explore Martin Luther King Jr.'s small church on Dexter Avenue, the tiny office where he wrote and thought with a view of the capitol building right out the window, the hall downstairs where members of the Montgomery Improvement Association met to plan the bus boycott of 1955. The lady who gave us our tour was nice enough to let us linger alone in the church for a while afterwards. Standing at the pulpit where King spoke some of his most passionate words, I tried to imagine the thoughts that must have come to his mind in that very place as he began to realize the magnitude of what was at stake and his own role in history.
After the church, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the Parsonage a few blocks away, first for a tour of the home where King and his family lived from 1954 to 1960, then for a long, informal chat with tour director Shirley Cherry. By the time we left it was hugs all around. We were running late but still managed to squeak into the Rosa Parks Museum before it closed, followed by a much-needed rest back at the hotel.
This was our second full night in Montgomery. The first night we'd gone to a holiday concert at the Montgomery Symphony, which was conveniently located across the street from our hotel. The second night I wanted to go to a Sing-Along Messiah I'd seen advertised on Dexter Avenue. My mom, not being much of a vocalist, decided to stay in. I left her at dinner having just ordered what we thought was a personal size pizza...
A Foreign Land
People would ask me where I was going over the winter break. The last few years it's been warm places like Cambodia and Vietnam, or thick snowy places like Poland and Ukraine. They know I'm a sucker for places with intriguing names like Moldova (still on the list), Bolivia (also still on the list), Luang Prabang, and Nuuk. Also, being from California, I naturally have certain prejudices when it comes to the Southern states. We all do.
So I got some confused looks when I told people I would be traveling this winter to... Alabama. That's right - and Mississippi, too. That backward and confused region of the United States we call the South, land of bigotry, economically depressed, a blot on the respectability of the nation, an embarassment really, like the third cousin twice removed who always drinks too much at weddings... you kind of wish you could say, "he's not with me... no really, the relation is quite distant."
To a native born Californian, the South is a foreign land. Strange customs. Funny accents. Everyone y'all-ing and ma'am-ing all the time. Nobody from California goes to the South for vacation.
And yet, the South was the heart of the Civil Rights movement. It was where our race problems were greatest. It was where our solutions were most difficult, and therefore most interesting. That's what my mom and I wanted to see when we proposed to do a road trip through Alabama and Mississippi, and we did. What we didn't expect was to find people so consciously continuing to engage in that same problem solving today. Race seemed to be on people's minds all the time, everywhere, openly talked about, and everyone had an opnion about it they wanted to share.
We knew we were indeed in another world before we even parked our rental car at our hotel in the Montgomery civic center. We arrived at night and the place was like a ghost town... not a person to be seen, not a shop with its lights on, not a restaurant, bar or place of business. With some hesitation, we asked the hotel desk clerk if he knew where we could get a bit to eat. "Y'all won't find anything open round here this time of night," he said. It was 11:00 pm.
"Not even a shop where we can get some crackers?" I asked.
"I might be able to find you a Lean Cuisine back in the fridge." He was a talkative guy, and very helpful. Quite generous with the Southern hospitality we'd heard about. We suspected the Lean Cuisine was probably from his own personal stash and we set out for a walk. We did eventually find some crackers in a hotel gift shop down the street. We slept well that night, stuffed with Cheez-Its and orange juice, and wondering what Montgomery would have in store for us in the morning. First on our list: the Rosa Parks bus stop.
So I got some confused looks when I told people I would be traveling this winter to... Alabama. That's right - and Mississippi, too. That backward and confused region of the United States we call the South, land of bigotry, economically depressed, a blot on the respectability of the nation, an embarassment really, like the third cousin twice removed who always drinks too much at weddings... you kind of wish you could say, "he's not with me... no really, the relation is quite distant."
To a native born Californian, the South is a foreign land. Strange customs. Funny accents. Everyone y'all-ing and ma'am-ing all the time. Nobody from California goes to the South for vacation.
And yet, the South was the heart of the Civil Rights movement. It was where our race problems were greatest. It was where our solutions were most difficult, and therefore most interesting. That's what my mom and I wanted to see when we proposed to do a road trip through Alabama and Mississippi, and we did. What we didn't expect was to find people so consciously continuing to engage in that same problem solving today. Race seemed to be on people's minds all the time, everywhere, openly talked about, and everyone had an opnion about it they wanted to share.
We knew we were indeed in another world before we even parked our rental car at our hotel in the Montgomery civic center. We arrived at night and the place was like a ghost town... not a person to be seen, not a shop with its lights on, not a restaurant, bar or place of business. With some hesitation, we asked the hotel desk clerk if he knew where we could get a bit to eat. "Y'all won't find anything open round here this time of night," he said. It was 11:00 pm.
"Not even a shop where we can get some crackers?" I asked.
"I might be able to find you a Lean Cuisine back in the fridge." He was a talkative guy, and very helpful. Quite generous with the Southern hospitality we'd heard about. We suspected the Lean Cuisine was probably from his own personal stash and we set out for a walk. We did eventually find some crackers in a hotel gift shop down the street. We slept well that night, stuffed with Cheez-Its and orange juice, and wondering what Montgomery would have in store for us in the morning. First on our list: the Rosa Parks bus stop.
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