When a group with whom I was traveling entered the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara , Turkey, they headed for the Mother Goddess exhibit. Even hearing the word “mother” makes me tense; mine was good at making apple pie but never learned the recipe for loving and nurturing, associated in most people’s minds with the way a mother ought to be.
All in travel essay
Drop me down in a coffeehouse somewhere in the world, and if I have ever visited that country the native rituals will tell me where I am before I’ve heard a single “sucre”, “glyko”, “milchcafe”, or “café negro.”
flickr photo by uteart via flickr (common license)In Europe and the Americas, coffee is the upstart, edging out the earlier communal drinks of hot chocolate and hot tea. I have learned from impeccable sources that coffee was first discovered by goats. That legend somehow makes me feel better about the fact that although I love coffee houses and their ritual, I really can’t stand coffee. With a few slight exceptions, I drink tea—or hot chocolate.
In Greece, my husband and I acquired a taste for Greek coffee, in defense against the alternative to American coffee. The waiter inevitably served a small shiny packet of powdery brown stuff, which would perhaps dissolve if the water in the cup were hot enough. From the prevalence of this powdery stuff throughout southern Europe, we figured that some Swiss Nescafé guy was one heck of a salesman.
To ease into drinking Greek coffee, served in a small cup that holds strong black liquid on top of a spoonful of black sludge, and makes you grateful it comes in a tiny cup, we took it sweet. This coffee, we decided, explains the hairy chests on Greek fishermen. It helps to drink it down after a glass (or between glasses) of ouzo, the licorice-flavored, clear firewater of Greece. While ouzo is getting you drunk, the strong coffee is sobering you up. I could keep that routine going for quite a while.
I had first discovered that trick in Switzerland, where I found I could indeed tolerate a cup of coffee livened with a lot of plumkirsche or orange or pear-flavored liquer, or best of all, cheri-suise. Yum!
Why is it that the image of colorful clothes hanging on a line and fluttering in the breeze in a foreign country is so appealing and picturesque? I often grab my camera to snap a photo when I see it, but, somehow, when I have to do my own laundry in the same country, I consider it a chore. Dirty laundry. They say you shouldn’t air your dirty laundry, but when you’re traveling for more than a week or so, you have to get it clean somehow.
Maybe the ideal trip is 7-10 days. It’s possible to bring enough clothes for that amount of time. You come back with a suitcase full of dirty laundry and toss it in the washing machine. That’s the ideal trip length for some folks, perhaps, but it’s way too short for me! I prefer packing enough clothes for a few days in a small suitcase and taking my chances about getting them clean while on the road.
I’m always willing to have someone else do my laundry if the price is right. Laundry by the kilo at a lavanderia in the Galapagos was so easy! Drop off in the morning; pick up the same night. It comes back all neatly folded and wrinkle-free. It worked in the rest of Ecuador too. When we stayed in a place for a couple of days, we managed to find a lavanderia in the neighborhood. It was always much cheaper to schlep our clothes to the lavanderia instead of handing them over to the hotel desk. So, for about $10 or $12, we had clean clothes for our travels.
Ghosts of Soldiers at Anzio
My father told me about Anzio. He showed me a yellowed newspaper with heavy, black 64-point headlines from World War II. “A-N-Z-I-O. What does it mean?” I asked.
“It’s a beach in Italy,” he said. “My best friend died there in the war.”
That snippet of memory surfaced recently when my husband, Richard, and I visited Ostia, the seaside town south of Rome.
Photo by bdinphoenix via Flickr (Creative Commons)I stepped out of the flat, gray day and into the black depths of the tunnel that led to the Female Dungeon beneath the Cape Coast Castle. Sensing my way along the stone floor, I followed the footsteps of other visitors ahead as my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. Cool air in the tunnel provided no lasting respite from the thick humidity outside; any sense of relief was overshadowed by the heavy weight of souls in this place. We fell silent, immediately sensing the terrible truths housed within.
The castle guide led us down, down underground to the dungeon used to hold female slaves before they were taken from Africa’s Gold Coast (now Ghana) to be sold in the Americas at the height of the slave trade in the 1800’s. He ushered our small group into a stone chamber and closed the heavy door behind us. A single bare light bulb illuminated the room for just a moment before he flipped the switch, pitching us into blackness. No one spoke.
Fear and Longing in Scotlan
When I was twenty I got on a plane and went to Edinburgh, Scotland, to live for a year. It was 1978 and I had just graduated from college and was headed to Scotland because I had won a fellowship from a foundation that wrote me a check for $6,000 and said have a good time. I had to do a project outside the United States and I chose one in Scotland because it seemed more exotic than England and yet they still spoke English. Kind of.
by Jess Smith
The ginger-haired boy positioned his freckled face above the school gate, “Hey you, white nigger.”
I gulped a lungful of air and screamed back defiantly, “Go roll with your pigs, farm yard scum.”
He slammed the gate shut, and screeched back, “Rather live in a dung heap than a filthy tent! Tinky vermin, your mother can’t knit, your father kicked a policeman and is lying in the nick (jail).”
I flew at him with fanned fingers and grabbed bunches of red hair. Like tail tied wildcats we scratched, punched and rolled in the dirt and chuck gravel. I knitted my legs around his heaving chest and hissed, “My daddy says your father spends more time on the hillside with the sheep than he does with your ugly mother!”
Teeth clenched, he retorted, “Your mother’s a witch; you’re a goblin, so there!’
Fueled temper blotted all memory of the battle, except for the teacher shouting as he cast me aside like a rag doll, “Bloody uncivilised tinker, go home. You too, boy.”
I limped home from school that day sporting two bruised shins; he was such a big boy with hard capped boots. Layers of pink flesh under my nails and red hair between my swollen fingers proved I managed to hold my own.
“Mammy,” I cried, “why does every school have a nasty boy who hates us and what’s a nigger and when did we live in tents?”
The previous month, my beautiful raven-haired mother had given birth to her eighth daughter. Her back was still weak and painfully sore as she bent over a metal bath scrubbing nappies (diapers). Rising slowly, she straitened her spine, inhaled and rested two soapy fists on slender hips. I rushed over and circled her thighs. “Oh mammy. Why is life so awful?”
“Oh dear, not another fight.” She blew onto my tear-sodden eyes and kissed my knuckles.
“Empty headed boy, he’ll never live as rich a life as you. All that waits for him is moaning about the price of cattle food.”
She lifted my chin and smiled. “You share the world with all God’s creatures and strong, powerful warriors from Africa are called niggers but only by ignorant people who don’t know better. Now remember I told you about grandma and grandpa living in tents most of their lives. Tree bark peeling, hazelnut gathering, snaring rabbits and selling the skins put food in our bellies just like you going berry picking in summer and potato lifting in the autumn. I was raised walking behind the horses’ hooves, as was your father. If the tent was erected properly, it was cozy and kept out the worst snow and gales.”
What does one wear to an Orthodox Jewish wedding in Jerusalem? In August?
This became my preoccupation from the moment I heard over the telephone wire—which ran like an umbilical cord all the way to the Pacific Northwest from my son who was calling from Israel—the announcement that he was engaged. As a bagel-and-cream-cheese Jew, I knew there were various body parts that could be shown in any U.S. city but would have to be hidden from sight in the Middle East. Having never stepped into an Orthodox temple, and certainly not into one built on sand, I was instantly horrified to think my elbows or knees might cause an international incident.
My son and my soon-to-be daughter-in-law reassured me.
“Just wear whatever makes you comfortable.”
Liars. I was perfectly comfortable in tube tops and sweats, but I knew that wouldn’t be kosher.
“Ummmm, you probably don’t want to wear red,” my daughter-in-law-to-be added.
Red? Who knew red was a problem? Clearly I had to become educated about the Jewish laws regarding modesty. When my research revealed several hot zones on the female form—no elbows, knees, toes, or décolletage—I walked into my closet and stood there, horrified. All my summer clothes reveled in showcasing at least two pieces of offending flesh.
My long, black never-wrinkles ankle length TravelSmith skirt made me look frumpy. Turtlenecks were out as the Promised Land promised over one-hundred degrees in the summer.
I wasn’t surprised when my plane landed at DFW airport in a blinding fog, so thick that I couldn’t even see across the street as I waited curbside for the rental car shuttle. I had just arrived in Texas to begin work on an assignment that I wasn’t sure would be a slam dunk with a new client that I wasn’t sure would be a good fit. It seemed somehow fitting that the weather would chime in with its opinion about this experiment: outlook unclear.
I agreed with the forecast but had chosen to trust my instincts, which were telling me to step outside my comfort zone where life was safe and predictable and…well, boring, really. New territory beckoned, and I was willing to be surprised. And fogged in.
Undaunted by the heavy mist, I congratulated myself for the keen intuitive sense that had prompted me to request a "Mr. NeverLost" when making my Hertz reservation two weeks earlier - something I had never before done in years of renting cars. Truth be told, it was also due to my spotty track record on Fort Worth's spaghetti freeways and one-way streets and the Texan tendency to use landmarks to give directions, but I wanted to chalk this one up to ESP, just for fun.
Anyway, I had no worries: "If you've ever been lost or worried about finding your way to an unfamiliar destination, let the remarkable Hertz NeverLost® system be your guide,” suggested the Hertz website. A little fog wouldn’t faze me, not with their GPS! Seventeen miles to my hotel should take twenty-five minutes, tops. I could be tucked in bed by midnight.
My celebratory jig was cut short upon arrival at the Rental Car Center, where I discovered my name was not on the board and there was no car waiting curbside (grrr). And stretched before me at the kiosk in the parking lot was a long line of disgruntled travelers shivering in the murky dampness whose cars were also MIA (GRRrrr). Another sign of a bumpy ride ahead? Instincts disagreed: perhaps it’s a perfect opportunity to channel my Sufi teacher and practice breathing mantras. And patience.
by Ibrahim Akyunus
I was born in Turkey in simpler times. I grew up, had fun, went to school, ate great Turkish food, graduated and went into business for myself.
One day a witty Indian friend of mine told me: "Success without happiness is failure."
He was witty and wise.
Being a graduate of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Istanbul, my primary goal in life at that time was to start a pharmacy. What disappointment I felt, soon after I opened the doors when I learned it wasn't the challenge I expected.
"Give me an aspirin.
"OK, here..75 cents."
"What is your suggestion for a cough syrup?"
"Start immediately by taking 3 of these laxative pills. I can assure you, you will stop coughing, within the next half hour."
I don't want to remember the next 3 years I spent trying get rid of the pharmacy for a reasonably decent price. Financially I was doing pretty well but I was miserable. I hated what I was doing. My family, my friends could never understand why I felt so bad at a time when I was running a reasonably popular pharmacy.
Then I joined a leading multi-national pharmaceutical manufacturer in Istanbul as a Product Manager of Psychotropic Drugs. Soon I was feeling much, much better, and it wasn't because I was ingesting the drugs. My decisions had impact. The more ideas I created, the more they were turning into solid sales which in turn gave me a sense of satisfaction. I started loving my job and, sure enough, it paid off. I, quickly became Director of the Scientific Bureau, then Production Manager and finally the "Responsible Pharmacist" at a very young age.
Then I moved to Los Angeles. I started working in a research facility as a R&D Chemist. We were doing R&D work for the " biggies" in the cosmetic industry. I loved that job, too. I was making formulas that nobody ever had before me: the first sprayable body lotion, the first incorporation of waxes into clear microemulsions, the first usage of suspended materials in pump hair sprays. What a feeling of accomplishment I had after the successful launch of my own formulas. People say they feel like they are walking on the clouds; well, I felt I was walking above the clouds. Of course, success brought promotions, money and recognition. I became Research and Development Vice President to 3 midsize manufacturing companies. What a blast. I was soaring. I was at the top of my game.
Confessions of a Cemetery Junkie
I had a close encounter with Marilyn Monroe recently. I was in L.A. and decided to pay my respects to the iconic movie star, who rests in a cemetery tucked away near Westwood Village. My brother, who lives in the neighborhood, told me Marilyn has been in the news recently - the widow of the man buried in the wall vault above Marilyn (supposedly upside down) wanted to raise some money by auctioning off the vault and moving her husband. My brother also said the empty vault to the left of Marilyn is reserved for Hugh Hefner...it seems Marilyn is forever desirable.
While checking out the small, quiet memorial garden and the resting sites of Dean Martin, Farrah Fawcett, Natalie Wood and other Hollywood elite, I met a young man from Ohio who asked me to take his photo next to the tombs of Marilyn and Truman Capote. I told him I’ve been to other celebrity gravesites.
It all started with Isadora Duncan. I lived for many years on Nob Hill in San Francisco and once passed a building with a plaque announcing that it was the birth site of Isadora, the mother of modern dance. I was thrilled that fascinating Isadora was born not far from where I was living. Some years later, I was in Paris and made a pilgrimage to her final resting place in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. I also got a map and toured the graves of other notables buried there, like Edith Piaf (grave covered deep in flowers by current fans), Oscar Wilde (a winged white marble art deco monument covered in lipstick kisses), Sarah Bernhart, Jim Morrison (attended by young fans burning candles and playing guitars), Chopin, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (buried in the same grave), Moliere and legendary lovers Heloise and Abelard.
On other trips to Paris, at the small Passy cemetery across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, I found the grave of Debussy; went to the cemetery in Montmartre to honor Nijinsky and see the sculpture of him dancing that was on his marker; and stopped by the cemetery in Montparnasse to seek out the sites of Jean Seberg (a fellow Iowa girl) and Jean Paul Sartre.
words + slideshow by Paul Ross
I’ve seen most of the oceans of the world from boats big and small, craft commercial and military. I’ve been in a submarine, dove the wall of a 2-mile deep sea trench in the mid-Pacific, watched whales in the Arctic and sunsets on islands, atolls and from shores distant and domestic. But not until recently did I stand at the edge of the ocean and notice that waves have personalities. Some are feminine and lap at or teasingly tickle the beach while others impatiently charge the shore in an alpha male display. There are lofty and proud rollers, menacingly dark gatherers who build and build, creating discomforting uncertainty with their indefinable limit and unfathomable purpose. Some are mere sighs of the sea; indifferently swelling and quelling as if to shrug or just take a momentary look around. Sibling rivalry waves, born of the same mother roll, will playfully clash into each other and collapse into sparkling foam. Stolid workman waves dutifully pound away at rocks in destruction zones even more permanent than those of the streets of New York. Still others are real sports: faking one way, breaking another and nimbly dodging surfers as if they were opposing football players. And there are golf waves with their long impressive drives decelerating to a controlled stop. How ‘bout those NBA ones? Taking their time moving down court, coolly surveying and assessing the scene before exploding in a sudden move.
Health-wise, there are asthmatic waves with long, labored and drawn- out aspirations. Neurotic waves indecisively fall apart in pieces, attempting a regroup even as other sections are curling inward.
Egocentric waves applaud their own performance.
Some are shy, don’t want to be noticed, and aren’t.
The Two Walls of Israel
words + photos by Laurie Gilberg Vander Velde
This is a story about two walls. They are both in Israel. One is holy; the other I found to be horrible. In the short span of 24 hours I had an intimate experience with each of these walls.
The horrible wall is grey, massive and foreboding. It snakes over the hills and valleys, reminiscent of many photos I’ve seen of the Great Wall of China. But this is not a “great” wall. Its purpose is the same, however: to keep others out, to make a separation barrier between us and them. To enter Bethlehem we had to pass through the wall by first entering a large concrete building. A colorful sign outside said “Peace Be With You” in English, Hebrew and Arabic and was signed by the Israel Ministry of Tourism. I didn’t really feel like a welcomed tourist as we wound our way through chutes, past large turnstiles with lights that said “green” for “go” and “red” for “stop.” A flash of our American passports and we were waved on. We exited through a simple doorway to the other side of the wall, to a different world.
The wall towered above us, probably 20 feet. No longer just grey, the wall was covered with graffiti. The graffiti wasn’t just words, but artful angry pictures, one of a lion devouring what appeared to be a white dove with the English words “Stop the Wall” and “hypocrisy.” Instead of the field of ancient olive trees we’d seen on the other side of the wall, we were right in the midst of a neighborhood. A woman, her head covered, called to her daughter below from the balcony of her house just 40 feet or so from the wall. Children played in the street. We spent time with friends of our son Josh, Palestinians who work for peace but who are trapped on the island that is Bethlehem. We had coffee in Josh’s friend’s home where his mother served us cookies and proudly picked mint and lemon balm from her rooftop garden so we could savor the scent.
by Katya Miller
The Hamsa caught my eye early in my formative years as a jeweler, symbolist, and amulet maker. It was much more exotic than the Star of David that represented Judaism. It evoked a middle eastern world of colorful clothing, sacred architecture and the three faiths of Jerusalem, but I didn’t understand how it related to my own beliefs. I knew it was an abstract hand shape, inverted with thumb and pinky pointing outward and similar to the many such indigeneous hand designs in cultures worldwide.
The Khamsa, (in Arabic: Khamsa means “five”) is an icon in amulets, charms, and jewelry, to protect against bad eyes. The Islamic name for the charm is the Hand of Fatima or Eye of Fatima, referring to Fatima Al-Zahra'a, Prophet Muhammad’s small and most beloved daughter. She married Ali, the son of Abu Taleb who was especially loved by Mohammad as the first one who accepted him. Only from her Mohammed had grandchildren and all of her sons were important leaders. She is very important in the Shiite Islam and there only her descendants can be Khalifs. Many girls are named Fatima, meaning a rose, considered holy. She must have had healing hands.
An alternative Jewish name is the Hand of Miriam, in reference to Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. It is a kind of "protecting hand" or "hand of God". The Jewish silversmiths who lived and worked in Morocco and other Arab countries before settling in Israel, adapted it as their own symbol over the years and sometimes put a six pointed star in the palm for religious identity. With an eye in the palm, they say it protects against “the evil eye.” Some associate the significance of the five fingers to the five books of the Torah for Jews, the Five Pillars of Islam for Sunnis, or the five People of the Cloak for Shi'ites. It can be seen all over the Arab nations, and is popular as charms and decorations in Israel’s markets as wall plaques, mobiles, keychains and necklaces. Among Jews, many hamsas are also decorated with fish images, considered to be a symbol of good luck and sometimes they are inscribed with Hebrew prayers, such as the Sh'ma, the Birkat HaBayit (Blessing for the Home), or the Tefilat HaDerech (Traveler's Prayer).
by Judith Fein
Some people I know, when they are really stressed out, take an afternoon, evening or full day off. The next day, they are back to work. Others kick it for a weekend, and then dive back into the daily routine on Monday morning. I’m flipping through my mental rolodex of friends, associates and family and, to my horror, I realize that I don’t know anyone who really takes vacations.
“What?” you say. “I take vacations. I went white water rafting on the Snake River in Idaho for five days. And last year I spent six in Kauai, hiking and snorkeling.”
I am sorry, amigos, but five or six days are a break, an experience, a change of scene and pace, but not a real vacation.
A real vacation is at least two weeks. And even better is a month. This is a startling idea in the U.S.A., where most people are afraid to take off more than a long weekend because they may lose their jobs. This means we are certifiably nuts in the U.S.A. Are we born to work, stress, eat, shop, have sex and then croak? Will we actually take our cell phones and laptops with us to the grave, so we can check the headlines on After Life News or shoot off one last post-mortem tweet?
Talk to people from Europe (they will call it “holidays” and not “vacation” in Britain, but I swear it means the same thing). Ask folks from South America. They get time off from work. Off from work. Not a few days here and there where their nervous systems hardly have a chance for a good yawn, and certainly not a real rest.
words + photos by Rachel Dickinson
In September I took a trip to Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec. And although I was really looking forward to seeing where the St. Lawrence River leaves the confines of its banks and flows into the ocean, one of the biggest draws for me was the night train from Montreal to Gaspe. Trains have always held a fascination for me, drawing on some part deep inside that really wants to live in the 19th century (although I’m not so much of a sentimentalist that I don’t know that 19th century train travel also involved lots of soot and hard seats).
Palm trees swayed in the breeze, the sound of waves were crashing on the beach, and beautiful Hawaiian girls danced as they dispensed colorful leis. All eyes that had the ability to focus were looking at the giant TV screen and the delightful scene as they enjoyed their armchair travel to Honolulu. Shirley was dressed for the occasion in her coconut bra. She wheeled around in her wheelchair as she modeled her vacation wear.
words + photos by Roger A Ward
We were firmly into summer, which is a sweet time here in the Pacific Northwest. I don't travel much outside the region during this short season because not too many places can call me away from the relaxing warmth of the sunny days and the stimulation of the cool evening breezes. I love hiking and walking in summer, and the Pacific Northwest is scenic poetry. Just a few blocks from my home there is a short trail through Titlow Park where I can escape for an hour or two when longer hikes are not practical. The walk leads down to the waterfront of Puget Sound through a small patch of old-growth forest and a larger area of secondary growth. It ends up at a good fish and chips place with a great view of the waterfront, of the twin suspension bridges across the Tacoma Narrows, and of the hills and trees of the Kitsap Peninsula across the Sound.
This is the only time of year when sun and shade have much temperature relevance. The shade of the forest provides relief from the bright sunlight and reflected heat of the surrounding neighborhood like a cool, wet cloth does in a dry sauna. The meandering trail evolved from a gravel logging road, active from the late 1800's until the 1930's. The weathered foot hills and cliffs bordering this part of Puget Sound consist of huge deposits of gravel left by retreating glaciers. Loggers only had to scrape away the accumulated detritus of the forest cover to build a road. The evolved path I walked is more spongy now than crisp and crunchy. Leaf litter, tree needles and tree bark from the better part of a century have reclaimed the top foot or so. Incursions of shrubs and trees have narrowed the road into a trail that is only a little wider than one originally built for hiking.
Now Playing in Paris
by Dorty Nowak
Several years ago my husband and I moved to Paris. Although I was an avid student of French culture and cuisine, my knowledge of the French language was minimal. Freshman year in college I dropped out of French 101 because partying was much more fun than memorizing vocabulary, a decision I’ve regretted ever since. Over the years I had accumulated several “French for Travelers” texts, some Berlitz tapes, and enough rudimentary vocabulary to get by on my occasional vacations in France.
Fresh Eyes
by Jules Older
When you live in a place, after a while, you lose your fresh eyes.
It doesn't mean you're dumb or insensitive or unaware of your surroundings. Unless you work hard to correct it, sure as fog, sooner or later you're gonna misplace your awareness of what you see and smell, hear and taste on your way to work or walking home from school or going out for the Sunday paper.
Sometimes it’s actually a relief. As one travel-writer friend sighed about her blissful oblivion to her hometown surroundings, “Ah, the luxury of not seeing!”