The last day of August, 2007, was the day I slipped thick plastic bags onto my queen sized mattress and box spring, taped them shut, and leaned them against my Wembley Court garage wall for storage.  For the first time in fifteen months and a few days, this pair, rests prostrate, one on top of the other, 700 miles away on Birch Falls Road, ready to do what they were made for — lull me to sleep.

More than 15 years ago, just after my freshman year of high school, I boarded a school bus to participate in a summer-long earth science class that would take me and 29 other students camping across thousands of miles, traversing the West and Canada.  The students and instructors were from other schools, and I knew not a soul.  (To understate, I was shy.  If I were to talk to a stranger my face would flush and I’d look for the first opportunity to get out of the conversation; I have no idea how I came to sign up for such an expedition.)  I remember the first night very clearly.  We drove most of the day from southeastern Wisconsin, arriving in a Minnesota field with enough daylight to pitch tents, cook dinner over our Coleman stoves, and have some free time.  I remember standing on a grassy hill, watching the approach of dusk, surrounded by 15 navy blue pup tents with the sounds of other high schoolers yelling and laughing familiarly with each other as I stared at the horizon.  In a quiet moment to myself, I panicked.  What.  The hell.  Am I doing.

I can’t help but think tonight I should feel the same way as I did those many years ago.  I committed to renting my Folsom house for a year, and I moved all my stuff into a room above a garage in someone else’s house — in western Idaho.  I know not a soul with 300 miles.  I don’t have even a prospect of a job or much of a plan.  Just the drive to finally do something that has been until now, simply put, an unattainable pipe dream: fly helicopters.  Though the clear panic is absent I wonder, What have I gotten myself into.  The panic subsided all those years ago when I realized that there is no going back, there’s only forward.  That same thought comforts me and keeps me facing into the wind.

But for the moment I am distracted by my bed.  It’s comfortable and it’s missed me.  Many an adventure I had while it leaned against the garage wall.  I’ve hop-scotched half the world and slept (or attempted sleep) on who knows how many beds, floors, couches, airplanes, air mattresses, camping mattresses, chairs, and grounds.  My upright Sealy moved not an inch.  And now, in its new home and I in mine, I revel in its comfort.

Having disembarked from the 7B bus at the 5th stop from the hostel, I crossed the street.  With the morning sun beating down, I began to make my way up to the church where the rest of the group was, and I was stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk.  A stumpy old man with leathered and wrinkly skin, capped in a fedora and toting a thick brown cane, approached me.  What then?  He stopped, stabbed his cane into the sidewalk, lifted his free arm, and began proclaiming things in my direction that I only wish I understood.  It was like the little guy in front of me was channeling Gandalf at his most confident – spewing the incantation that prevents the fire-breathing dragon from devouring the little hobbits.  Was I just hexed?  Did he think I was a dragon?  I continued to walk past, only for a split second betraying my shock.

Last week, again waiting at a bus stop, a little old lady (notice the old people theme) in a houndstooth skirt, matching hat, sunglasses from 1982, and a billowy fuchsia blouse, approached the stop to wait for a bus.  Of all the free real estate on the sidewalk, I was a little discomforted by the proximity to me of the spot she chose.  (She was so close; one might say her parking spot was still in my “dance space” and therefore, not free real estate.)  Even more discomforting than her proximity was the direction she was facing (right at me), and her posture (akimbo – with a fist on each hip, and scowling).  It wasn’t long before she said something.  I looked over, and from her sub-five-foot frame, looking at up me, she pulled a fist from her hip, tapped her head, threw her hand in the air, and parked it back on her hip.  I explained I didn’t speak Romanian; she ignored that and repeated the gesture.  Thankfully her bus arrived soon after.

If the fascination with my bald head in parts of Africa is more amusement and entertainment (let’s-be-shocked-and-have-a-good-laugh sort of attitude), my baldness here is much more aggressively responded to.  It’s almost as if the condition inspires anger and outrage, and fascinating.

Anyway…

A couple mornings ago, I found myself walking up to the store from the small church we’ve been parked at a lot of everyday.  My mission: yogurt.  After days of bad Royal Servants food, I decided a splurge of yogurt and granola for breakfast was in order.

Royal Servants teams pack their non-perishable food in a couple dozen boxes and pack them with them as they travel.  The food is bad.  It’s not even exotically bad, or interesting-but-disgusting – like nshima with a side of goat brains or toasted caterpillars, kapenta, or chicken hearts – it’s the boring kind of bad.  With the exotically bad, there’s a bit of a thrill getting the awfuls of a goat past your taste buds and down your gullet.  The same kind of thrill-horror combination cannot be induced from starting at a plate of “noodle boodle,” a horribly proportioned mixture of mayonnaise (“satan’s pus”), noodles, and smelly chicken from a giant can that makes a wet “thwock” sound when you out it.  It cannot be induced from consuming faux-chili, the generic kind in a giant can.  (Which by the way, tasted even more disgusting that imaginable the last time it was served, because all of the spices and seasonings ended up in a large, sketchy, slimy mass on one of the student’s plates.)

Anyway, on my walk up to the little hole in the wall store, I passed the small funeral service place across the street.  Just as I was strolling past, two men got out of a grey van and struggled to carry the heavy cargo out right in front of me: a coffin.  A bit morbid, but it seemed that they approached their job with enthusiasm.  As I walked passed the van, I read all the writing on the side of it; obviously it was in Romanian.  It said something that might’ve been translated, “Non-stop Funeral Service.”  Next to that was something that looked like “Parasite Restaurant.  3 Stars.”

Hmmm…  It was all I could do to keep walking and try not to think about it.  One thing I will try to avoid to the best of my ability: entering a restaurant with this name.  That and Royal Servants food.

Take their National Museum, por ehemplo.  A minute, but well stocked treasure trove of information (and you eventually get to the swords) about Romania’s environment and history.

As part of an extended mission trip in a foreign country, a leader or host of said mission team would of course want to culture the team.  What better way than to wedge a visit to the National Museum in between racing from the church to a park performance?  After all, the museum is small, and it can’t take too long to get through, especially because everything is in Romanian.

The group of 15 students (high school and college ages), 3 leaders (Steph, Travis, and Erin), 1 official group add-on (moi), 2 hostesses (Dutzi (rhymes with “Oopsi” – as in oopsi daisies) and Elena – young Romanian leaders from the church), and a baby in a stroller (Steph & Travis’ Jovie), all enter.  Lights are off; all is quiet.  In the foyer (“foy-yeazs”), a quiet waif of a woman accepts our 2 lei-each entry fee (about 90 cents) and we enter the first exhibit room, which is 5 feet away after hanging a Louis from the foyer.  Students disburse, and begin drinking in the knowledge that is Romania.  We are off on our own, as in most museum experiences.

But a slight commotion ensues.  A rotund, humorless man holding a stick enters the room and loudly begins proclaiming things in his native tongue.  It seems this man intends to give us a tour.  This apparently deeply surprises Dutzi and Elena. Stunned, they attempt to stifle their shock and amusement at this man as he pivots in the center of the room, speaking authoritatively, his long stick – which we’ve deduced by now is meant to point at the various beefs and cheeses displayed on the walls – traveling in circles around the room’s circumference.  The man isn’t budging from his self-imposed post as tour-guide, continues to talk, and waits for one of them to translate.  Silence.  He says something in Romanian, eyes widened, pokes his head at them, then opens his hands at his side as if to say, ‘Well, go on then.’  (Again, here is a series of surrepetitiously-taken photographs.)

The way his right hand effortlessly controls the stick at this point is important to note, and I think I’ve captured it in this photograph.  It hangs, ever so gingerly, between his pointer and middle finger right at the first knuckle, and he gently swings it.  It betrays his long relationship with said stick, and perhaps his comfort with it, almost like his baby blanket.  One wonders if he takes it home with him, if it’s at his side in the church pew, if he buckles it in its own seat belt, if he has named it, or even if his wife feels like the stick is competition for real estate in her bed.

Dutzi struggles to try and translate.  And also keep a straight face.  When he turns to face another direction, Elena giggles and her eyes widen.  She also makes a face as if to apologize.  Travis looks over and whispers, “This is RIPE.  I’m going to love this.”

Dutzi didn’t know she was going to translate for us today in the Pitesht National Museum.  What does our tour begin with – uh, plate tectonics?  Photosynthesis?  Wha?  I’ve accidentally entered a time-warp and traveled to 6th grade science class with Mrs. Warner and her super-bendy right pointer finger.  I am no longer in a museum about Romania, and I am annoyed.  I did not pay one whole dollar to get a 6th grade science review, especially while taking a very sloooow walk, carrying a 43-pound backpack, in a dusty, stuffy 87 degree building with smelly teenagers.  (No offense, if one of you smellies happen to wander onto my blog.)  I digress.

Students do their best to behave well.  Oopsi does her best with the translation, but she didn’t know she was giving a Biology tour in English today, so there’s a LOT of the the roundish man chattering away and pointing, then silence, and then in English, a brief, generic explanation that I might’ve come up with by looking at the picture on the wall.  The difference in the time it takes the rotund man to talk and Oops to translate is astonishing, and wildly entertaining.  It’s almost like watching an English-dubbed Japanese kung-fu movie: the lips keep moving, but not much is said.  Rotund Man notices, and appears visibly annoyed.  He apparently mildly insults her.

We move on from photosynthesis and enter the room with stuffed animals.  We have in front of us a sample Food Chain.

Rotund Man: Romanian blah blah blah blah blah blah.  Dutzi: “Here are some birds.”  More Romanian sentences…  “And some more birds.”  Two Romanian words.  Silence.  The man quietly looks and does the head poke-hand gesture to Dutzi.  Having apparently first waited for more to translate, but maintaining eye contact with him, she now responds, dead-pan: “A bear.”

At this point, I nearly die. I can’t look at Stephenie, Travis, or anyone else for that matter.  I sneak back it to the next room and weep quietly while struggling to breathe.

Shortly after this, I finally discover what the eyeball is I keep seeing peering around doors and corners. I noticed The Eyeball a ways back, but I now know it’s attached to a woman’s head. There is apparently a middle-aged woman secretly following us.  She goes ahead one room (from a secret passageway maybe?) and turns on the light switch, then makes her way back to turn off the light switch of the room we are exiting (but in some cases, are still in).  She doesn’t speak.  She only very nearly exists, what with her one eyeball and light-switching finger.

The tour goes on, into narrower, hotter rooms.  The tour won’t end.  Everyone is tired.  Maybe we’re so tired from having to stifle the laughter?  We are winding down but he is still going strong.

Completely worth it.

By the way, anyone interested in an entertaining flight should fly Tarom Airlines, and pay close attention to the rough computer graphics of the safety demonstration.  At the point of the place-the-oxygen-mask-on-your-children, the ‘actor’ playing the role of passenger, who had grown a 5 o’clock shadow by that point in the safety explanation, reached over to his son.  His son, who was quite a bit smaller in size, looked every bit as old as the adult passenger, including 5 o’clock shadow.  In fact, he was identical, which is funny enough, but he was wearing a woolen, tweed-ish driving cap.  Wha?!?  I laughed out loud before I could contain myself, and to my embarrassment.  I got the Turn-and-Burn, as Romanians in adjacent seats turned their heads in my direction and burned disapproving holes into me with their eyes.

Romania is a very foreign place to me.  I’ve never had the privilege of being here, and I don’t know much about it.  I remember being a young teenager and watching and reading about the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe; I specifically remember the revolution and coup in Bucharest, and the arrest, brief trial, and execution of Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu.  The country has been trying to get back on its feet and thrive ever since.  I entered the customs point at the airport with this in mind, not at all certain of what to expect, and hoping not to encounter any problems (a la Sao Paulo this spring) at the checkpoint.  After a tense minute of waiting while the agent scanned my passport and my face, the crack and thump of the entry stamp immediately evaporated my fears.  Walking away, I looked at the stamp to confirm its existence, and blew on it to make sure it dried in place.

Bucharest is a fascinating city — a clash of old and modern, most readily visible in its architecture.  I am told that people are feeling more and more happy since the chains of Communism broke, but I was hard-pressed to see anyone smile despite my efforts otherwise.

I was wandering around one morning and a very excited man who noticed I had a camera, made me follow him a couple blocks.  He made me take a picture of this, which I understood him to say was a broken aqueduct (which doesn’t readily make sense to me).  Then he quickly disappeared.  And so did I.

Not all the buildings are worn down like this, but I found these interesting.

I’ve met up with my very good friends Stephenie and Travis Carr.  For those unaware, I used to work with Steph (I’m still not used to the past tense nature of that statement) at Oak Hills.  Steph and Travis and one other person are co-leading a team of about 15 youths on a summer-long, leadership-building mission experience, through an organization called Royal Servants.  I am privileged to be able to tag along with them for a few weeks while in Pitesti, and I’m already impressed by them.

They are partnering with a local church and helping put on a four-day kids festival, then an English language course, and lots in between.

Below is one of the students with the pastor’s son, who is every bit the two year old that the twinkle in his eyes betray.

Pitesti has unbelievable parks that everyone enjoys strolling through in the evenings.

Isn’t he cute?

A pickup game of soccer with some of the locals.

Below is Slieve League on the western shore of the island; reportedly the tallest cliffs in Europe.  It was a wonderfully drizzly and foggy afternoon, and very few souls were out “enjoying” the weather.  I hiked up as far as I could without getting lost in the fog, and could rarely and barely see the ocean far below.  The wind whipped up the cliffs so much so that when I peered over in places, I was forced to squint so my contacts didn’t blow out, and conscious of the potential of my earrings getting ripped out of my fleshy lobes.

I’ve been in Romania for nearly a week and a half, and have been on the ground running since arriving.  It is my first time here, and it really is a fascinating place and culture… more to come…

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Ireland’s landscape has a mix of many places: the rocky, cliffed grandeur of Big Sur and the California Coast, with a little small-town Iowa and farm country mixed in; a bit of Michigan’s upper peninsula, and some Pacific Northwest or even Hawaii’s jungley-rain forest feel.  Yet it is a place all its own, and ultimately, it’s impossible to fully compare to anything else.

The other night, the weather broke (it’s been mostly windy, cold, rainy for the last week or two), just for the evening, and Sara Cook and I drove a portion of the Inishowen Peninsula, County Donegal in Ireland.  One thing I love about being so far north in the summer is the long sunsets, and we happened to be out on the summer Solstice.  

That night, I stood on the cusp of something.  Literally, I stood on the side of a small mountain.  But as I drank it all in, I was tempted to become a bit emotional.  I felt like I heard the earth breathing.  The fogginess of reality seemed to fade.  I didn’t want to move.  

I almost want to cry because my pictures don’t capture it, not even close.  Not that I am a technical or artistic photographic failure.  It’s not that the quality of the pictures that’s lacking, but a quality of this place that refused to be captured. 

Below is a selection of photos from my last couple weeks.  The ones closest to the top are from the summer Solstice.

At Kylemore Abbey:

Dingle Peninsula:

Standard self-portrait at Giant’s Causeway:

Also along the Inishowen 100: Sara Cook at Grianan of Aileach, and me below.  Finally a picture of myself in a cool place, without my feet in it.

By the way, Sara Cook is a friend from University who has been doing some good work in Northern Ireland for many years.  If I had to write a post just about her (and don’t worry, Sara, I won’t), it would most definitely center on hospitality — and how she’s miserable at it.  Just kidding.  I have never felt so at home, so far away from home, that I actually felt like I was home.  Thanks Sara!

Here we go… a steady stream of Wi-Fi pumping into this folding piece of magic machinery on my lap.  I have internet access again for a couple weeks.

Venice seemed to be the busiest of the cities.  Perhaps it’s where we stayed: relatively close to the tourist mecca of St. Mark’s square. And essentially that’s who’s in Venice — the tourism population greatly outweighs the resident population.

Venice is not sinking, but during high tide, water from the sea bubbles up from stone grates around the piazza and in short time, it appears the entire square is under water.  This picture is from sitting in front of St. Mark’s Church looking in the opposite direction.  The awning on the extreme right in the middle is perched in front of one of many restaurants, where a band usually plays; there are several all around the square, which draws quite a crowd.

This below is my favorite I think.  I was so excited about how this turned out.  I think it’s about a 6- to 10-second exposure.  The stripes of light in the reflection were created by people moving through the water.  I think it reminds me of music somehow, perhaps the stripes of light implying a pipe organ; it looks like what sound is, at least to me.

From the Rialto Market, close to the most famous of Venice bridges.  Cool bridge, but way cooler market.  Fresh everything: all kinds of fish and sea creatures, and any vegetable or fruit imaginable.  Below we have fresh sardines; odd how one person can find something so delectably inviting (John), and the next can find it’s all they can do to temporarily shut down their senses and move on before they die from being so revolted (me).  

Fascination in the slowly searching legs of some crabs who will soon be cleaner, hotter, then all chewed up.

Always beautiful colors everywhere.  It’s enough to inspire bolder color choices.

The next in my series of illegal pictures.  Shooting from the hip, the aim isn’t always right.  

Our last day, we took a vaporetto to Murano, “where they make all the glass.”  Everyone got off on the first stop, so we stayed on for a few more, and got off in a quiet little area and had the streets nearly to ourselves.  The following two photos are from sculptures in a couple piazzas.  So peaceful.  (Maybe so, since I failed to properly plan a trip to the island on a day when the museum would actually be open.)

Okay, so John enters Venice and becomes St. Francis.  He quickly adopts a plastic bag as his friend and proceeds, for the next few days, to fill it with any bread that comes to our lunch or dinner table.  Then, during any lull — strolling through a piazza, waiting for a vaporetto, waiting for the check (STILL IN THE RESTAURANT) — out comes the bread and tamed pigeons flock.

Chatting it up with someone waiting to stuff their scrawny beak:

This took some begging.  And some quickly (and surreptitiously placed) bread crumbs.  But do you see the delight in Vicki’s eyes?  She’s thoroughly enjoying it.  And didn’t even get crapped on.

Love these colors…

]]> http://katieslens.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/a-quick-overview-venice/feed/ 0 kalbfly http://katieslens.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/a-quick-overview-florence/ http://katieslens.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/a-quick-overview-florence/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:12:54 +0000 kalbfly http://katieslens.wordpress.com/?p=151 ]]> I was thrilled to return to such a lovely city.  Small enough to manage almost everything on foot, buildings short enough that it feels like a small town, it is a city peppered with history and beauty.

Boboli Gardens, just across the Arno River, is a really old garden that sprawls behind a palace that once housed …some really important people.  (I don’t want to guess and be wrong and I’m not feeling like looking it up right now.)  John, Vicki and I strolled the grounds in relative peace.

Vicki laying a smooch on a statue in the Gardens, which is about 15 feet behind her.  I wanted her to climb up and put some more effort into it, but she got yelled at when she finally started to scale the thing.

One of the great things about Florence is the Uffizi Gallery, the northeast corner of which is shown below.  I didn’t wander it’s corridors, but it is built in such a way that the acoustics are perfect.  To the left is Palazzo Vecchio (if you saw Hannibal, this is where the guy is hanging outside the building from his own entrails–see the pic below), the the right is the U-shaped Uffizi, and plunk in the middle are some musicians, with a little amp, a guitar and a couple voices.  They grew quite a crowd — their sounds floated blocks beckoning people.

The picture above faces opposite several statues in an enclave.  The one below is called “The Rape of …[So and So]“.  In Piazza Signoria, there are about 10-15 or so large statues, many of them depicting violent events.  We have one decapitation, several attempted beheadings, several beatings, and a rape or two.  Would this fly in the US of A?  Oh, Renaissance art.

Interesting note.  While I was taking this picture, some random guy was standing about two feet away from me.  Which breaks my personal space rule by miles, especially when there are 300 usable feet stretching behind him.  Anyway, creepy guy, saying something in some non-Italian foreign language.  Staring.  

John and Vicki in front of Palazzo Vecchio (“old palace”) in Piazza Signoria.

Vicki, John and Katie at Piazza della Michaelangelo, a large square overlooking Florence.  The Duomo (church) over my shoulder is quite near where we stayed; the Ponte Vecchio (“old bridge”), which is quite famous, is visible over Vicki’s shoulder.

Following a delightful lunch, we strolled back to our hotel to discover quite a crowd.  Of people wearing tennies and numbered shirts.  What’s this?  A 100 km race?  Yikes.  I hope this old guy didn’t die along the way:

The crowd dispersing following the start of the race…

Random picture: