Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Frankfurt
It seems I have not been blogging frequently enough, because it is already an effort to remember what happened yesterday. It seems much further in the past.
I was going to say, for example, that yesterday morning I woke up exceedingly early to catch my flight, but I did not. In fact, I went to bed very early - shortly before ten - and woke up after only an hour, and for the rest of the night I could not sleep. This meant I had time to do some yoga and also take my first (and, so far, only) run of the trip along a bike path by the water at 3 in the morning. Reykjavik is a very strange and very cool city.
Bright and early - at 4:35 a.m. - the bus arrived to take me and a few others to the airport. Actually, to the bus station, for a half-hour staging period, and then to the airport. Everyone in Reykjavik seems to be very relaxed; I had lied about my departure time when I booked the bus in (making it half an hour earlier) and still by the time I got to the airport I was slightly uncomfortable with the lateness. But I checked in without incident (there are two airlines there, apparently, and most of their work seems to be shuffling passengers through on their way from the US to mainland Europe... on the way home, I will be one of those).
The flight passed without incident. I had had the foresight to book a window seat, so I was able to sleep a bit, and I ate a ham and cheese croissant that was not only better than any plane food I've ever had but also better than most such sandwiches I have eaten in the US. In Frankfurt, there was no security whatsoever - nobody looked at or stamped my passport as they had in Iceland, and (unlike in Iceland) I didn't even have to walk through a lane saying "nothing to declare"; there was a sign that said customs, with an arrow, and it led to the exit.
Immediately I found Frankfurt more difficult to navigate than I remember other cities in Germany being. I spent about a week in Germany during my post-college Europe trip; however, on that occasion I had a travel companion, and I think we must have had a guidebook. On this trip, I had difficulty right away just figuring out which bus to take to get from the terminal to the train station and whether I needed a ticket. Signs were only in German, which I don't speak at all, and I was operating on very little sleep, and it was 85 degrees and I was lugging a month's worth of luggage.
Eventually I found the ATM, the train station, the ticket machine. The trip to the city was short. My hotel was not too difficult to locate once I bought a map. After settling in I went out to explore the city. I walked in a big circle around the uptown portion of the city, seeing architecture and museums, and stopped in a grocery store to pick up ridiculously inexpensive food for dinner. After eating, I went out for another walk, but discovered that stores start to close at six and that everything except a few bars is shut down by eight. (The red-light district I accidentally happened upon was not closed-down, however).
Today's major activity was a tour I had booked before coming here. It was a walking tour that was supposed to last 2.5 hours but ended up lasting four, and it was very good. We saw historic areas, archeological remains, modern shopping districts, and even a farmer's market; I took many picture which I will post just as soon as the very-slow hotel wifi finishes uploading them (it's taking about a minute per picture).
After the tour, I went to the Goethe house and saw a great deal of Rococo furniture. Then I went across the river, noted that there were museums that I was not interested in walking past, and sat in the grass for a while. Finally, I walked around a mall and some kind of purse-and-cosmetics-and-groceries superstore, where, thirsty and figuring I could use with a second bottle on my train ride tomorrow, I bought a bottle of water that advertised some kind of special cap (I thought it would be a sport cap, but it turned out to be just a funny-looking cap that cost more) and involved a 25 cent surcharge (for the bottle, I guess? which is just the kind of plastic bottle all water comes in?). I decided for that amount of money I should get a bag too, even though I obviously didn't need it - yesterday I had been stuck carrying my groceries in my hand, which was not convenient, because the store would neither give nor sell me a bag (perhaps the cashier didn't understand me, but she said they had none), and of course I do have a few plastic bags and a drawstring bag with me, but I figured I could use another).
So, that is Frankfurt. Tomorrow I go to Paris. It's an interesting city, although much of its interestingness comes from it's being in another country. If Paris is the New York of Europe (well, isn't it?) and Reykjavik is the Telluride, then Frankfurt is the Columbus, Ohio. There are a few sights to see, but mostly it's just Germans, going about their business, riding their bikes to work and smoking and eating ice cream (and, apparently, going to strip joints). There is interesting architecture but a lot of traffic, and although the food and weather are good, the atmosphere is chaotic and grim. I'm glad I came here and saw it, but I won't be sad to leave. Especially because the next and terminal stop on my trip is exciting, un-grim, highly romanticized Paris.
I was going to say, for example, that yesterday morning I woke up exceedingly early to catch my flight, but I did not. In fact, I went to bed very early - shortly before ten - and woke up after only an hour, and for the rest of the night I could not sleep. This meant I had time to do some yoga and also take my first (and, so far, only) run of the trip along a bike path by the water at 3 in the morning. Reykjavik is a very strange and very cool city.
Bright and early - at 4:35 a.m. - the bus arrived to take me and a few others to the airport. Actually, to the bus station, for a half-hour staging period, and then to the airport. Everyone in Reykjavik seems to be very relaxed; I had lied about my departure time when I booked the bus in (making it half an hour earlier) and still by the time I got to the airport I was slightly uncomfortable with the lateness. But I checked in without incident (there are two airlines there, apparently, and most of their work seems to be shuffling passengers through on their way from the US to mainland Europe... on the way home, I will be one of those).
The flight passed without incident. I had had the foresight to book a window seat, so I was able to sleep a bit, and I ate a ham and cheese croissant that was not only better than any plane food I've ever had but also better than most such sandwiches I have eaten in the US. In Frankfurt, there was no security whatsoever - nobody looked at or stamped my passport as they had in Iceland, and (unlike in Iceland) I didn't even have to walk through a lane saying "nothing to declare"; there was a sign that said customs, with an arrow, and it led to the exit.
Immediately I found Frankfurt more difficult to navigate than I remember other cities in Germany being. I spent about a week in Germany during my post-college Europe trip; however, on that occasion I had a travel companion, and I think we must have had a guidebook. On this trip, I had difficulty right away just figuring out which bus to take to get from the terminal to the train station and whether I needed a ticket. Signs were only in German, which I don't speak at all, and I was operating on very little sleep, and it was 85 degrees and I was lugging a month's worth of luggage.
Eventually I found the ATM, the train station, the ticket machine. The trip to the city was short. My hotel was not too difficult to locate once I bought a map. After settling in I went out to explore the city. I walked in a big circle around the uptown portion of the city, seeing architecture and museums, and stopped in a grocery store to pick up ridiculously inexpensive food for dinner. After eating, I went out for another walk, but discovered that stores start to close at six and that everything except a few bars is shut down by eight. (The red-light district I accidentally happened upon was not closed-down, however).
Today's major activity was a tour I had booked before coming here. It was a walking tour that was supposed to last 2.5 hours but ended up lasting four, and it was very good. We saw historic areas, archeological remains, modern shopping districts, and even a farmer's market; I took many picture which I will post just as soon as the very-slow hotel wifi finishes uploading them (it's taking about a minute per picture).
After the tour, I went to the Goethe house and saw a great deal of Rococo furniture. Then I went across the river, noted that there were museums that I was not interested in walking past, and sat in the grass for a while. Finally, I walked around a mall and some kind of purse-and-cosmetics-and-groceries superstore, where, thirsty and figuring I could use with a second bottle on my train ride tomorrow, I bought a bottle of water that advertised some kind of special cap (I thought it would be a sport cap, but it turned out to be just a funny-looking cap that cost more) and involved a 25 cent surcharge (for the bottle, I guess? which is just the kind of plastic bottle all water comes in?). I decided for that amount of money I should get a bag too, even though I obviously didn't need it - yesterday I had been stuck carrying my groceries in my hand, which was not convenient, because the store would neither give nor sell me a bag (perhaps the cashier didn't understand me, but she said they had none), and of course I do have a few plastic bags and a drawstring bag with me, but I figured I could use another).
So, that is Frankfurt. Tomorrow I go to Paris. It's an interesting city, although much of its interestingness comes from it's being in another country. If Paris is the New York of Europe (well, isn't it?) and Reykjavik is the Telluride, then Frankfurt is the Columbus, Ohio. There are a few sights to see, but mostly it's just Germans, going about their business, riding their bikes to work and smoking and eating ice cream (and, apparently, going to strip joints). There is interesting architecture but a lot of traffic, and although the food and weather are good, the atmosphere is chaotic and grim. I'm glad I came here and saw it, but I won't be sad to leave. Especially because the next and terminal stop on my trip is exciting, un-grim, highly romanticized Paris.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Iceland
So I have had a bit of a hiccup here, namely that due to inadequate planning, lack of energy, and the peculiarities of solo travel, I have run out of things to do in Reykjavik. Fortunately, there is a bookstore near my hotel with a cafe, so I am having Iceland Bookstore Cafe Experience, which turns out to be different from New York City Cafe Experience in the following (rather revealing, I think) ways:
Anyway, that is enough snide commentary about America, which after all I do belong to.
So yesterday, my first day in Reykjavik, I availed myself of the breakfast at the hotel and then began to explore the city. Since it was a Sunday, everything was completely closed-up at first. But I saw lots of interesting architecture (and took pictures of most of it) and looked in the windows of galleries and shops. I went to an art museum and took a long walk to the other side of the city to visit the botanical gardens. Then, after a short rest, I embarked on the Golden Circle Evening Tour, a 5-hour bus tour of the basic natural wonders in the vicinity of Reykjavik. Unfortunately, I was very tired on this tour, and could not buy any coffee before we set out because of the absence of takeaway cups in this city and also the fact that I had been unable to obtain the local currency - ATMs were behind the locked doors or screens of banks, and money-changing places were either closed or uninterested in my sad American dollars.
Since I was out and about for about thirteen hours yesterday (from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 a.m. with a two-hour break) it is unsurprising that when the extremely bright light and various noises woke me up this morning shortly after 8, I was not exactly raring to go explore. There are many museums I still had not and have not seen, i.e. the National Museum, etc., but it seemed like too much work to (a) plan how to get to them, and (b) sustain interest in them. Also, the art gallery I went to yesterday was supposed to be among the biggest and best in the city and, while interesting, it was neither large nor impressive, so I was feeling like museums were not a strength of the city.
So, I wandered around. I went to the wharf, which I missed yesterday, and shopped a bit. I concluded that there is no "real downtown"; the half-mile strip of bars and souvenir shops and galleries (which is the word they use for upscale souvenir shops selling wool clothes, art, and jewelry at prices that would be high in New York) with a block of banks at one end is basically it. This wasn't too surprising once I figured it out since it's a city of only 200,000 and tourism is one of its primary industries. I went into the public library, in which the books were in unexpectedly good condition. I stumbled upon the museum I had been most interested in, the Settlement Museum, which is an archeological excavation of a longhouse. It was very well done; I'm also partial to excavation museums because unlike other history museums they have something you find in a book.
I went into a few bookstores and other shops. I saw a couple that had come in on the same flight as me and who I also saw yesterday, and the mother and daughter of an American family from the trip last night (they are also going to Paris, judging from the fact that the mother was reading a Paris guidebook - one of the admittedly many I have brought along but not read - on the tour, so maybe I will see them there as well... maybe I will also run into the two French women, who seemed more like the type of people I would want to run into). I was cold - I'd been cold the entire time I was here, especially on the bus trip, because I was trying to pack light and planning mostly for the weather in Paris - but didn't want to spend $100 on a beautiful but stiff wool scarf. I went into a store called Tiger, which turned out to be a Danish discount store, and walked out with a pretty lavendar scarf, dead sea foot lotion, Danish hand lotion (although I have infinite sunscreen, I brought only hotel-size moisturizing lotions due to not having travel-appropriate bottles and figuring I'd find something interesting on the trip, which I now have), and hard candies with coffee on the inside for a total of $16.
Feeling tired, I went back to the hotel, where I had a short nap and finished the book I'd been reading. I found Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name on the discount table at Barnes & Noble; it's a fast, good read although not a terribly likeable protagonist. I chose it because it takes place in Lapland in winter, which I thought was a nice counterpoint to Iceland in summer. I had wanted to finish it today because (a) it is the end of my stay in Iceland, and (b) I had seen a couple of used-book stores and figured one of them would take it off my hands. In fact, the first store I went into was literally overflowing with books; they were stacked to shoulder height on every available surface, including the floor, in both English and Icelandic (and possibly some other languages), and without any apparent organizing principle. The second store was a little more sedate; after some confusion, the owner took my book and gave me a new one for half price, which turned out to be 100 kroners.
Money is weird here. Judging from my ATM withdrawal, 100 kroners is almost exactly 75 cents, which means the full price for a used trade paperback is $1.50. The cup of coffee I just bought, on the other hand, was the equivalent of around $2.70. Groceries are cheap, at least in comparison to New York (fruits and vegetables on the other hand, seem to be basically nonexistent), the discount store was cheap, but postcards are 70 kroners each and other touristy merchandise is even more inflated. Perhaps it is cheap to live here and expensive to be a tourist.
After trading in my book, I wondered around a bit more. There wasn't really time to go to another museum before they all closed. I want back to the Hallgrimskirkja, the modern church I took pictures of yesterday. Since it wasn't Sunday, I was able to go inside; I also heard the organist practicing. I walked beyond the church, into the residential area. It seemed deserted. I bought a hot dog - supposedly a local delicacy, it contains lamb and has at least three different sauces and two different kinds of onions. I watched people at an outdoor cafe. I had already done everything I could remember reading about in Reykjavik. So I went back to the hotel, got my netbook, and here I am.
It would perhaps have been better to have booked a second bus trip for today, or to have slept more yesterday so I would have been more alert for the first trip, but I didn't really realize that the point of coming to Reykjavik was to take excursions, because coming here at all was an afterthought. A really lucky afterthought, actually, and although I don't know that I would come back here again - I've seen the most accessible things already - I now realize how super-cool this part of the world is, and perhaps someday I will take a properly planned trip to somewhere else in Northern Europe.
Addendum: The other thing I did not do was go to the Blue Lagoon (basically, because I decided it was only interesting enough to do if I ran out of other stuff, and then when I ran out of other stuff I forgot about the Blue Lagoon until just now, which shows you how enthusiastic I was), which as far as I can tell is a massively overhyped and overpriced tourist attraction catering to old people and rich people and large groups and very bad for someone like me, although the concept of a hot spring does sound nice. Oh, well.
Second addendum: The other thing couple seem to like to do in coffee shops here - I've seen it several times - is just sit over a cup of coffee. Just sit, without talking. Smoking, maybe, if they're outside. But mostly staring off into space. Thinking their own private thoughts, I guess, and being European.
- The cafe has better, or at least more attractive, food, and people are eating more of it. The food is very expensive, like at a restaurant. I totally fail to understand how Americans are supposedly the fattest people on planet when we have far and away the worst food on the planet.
- It is basically silent. There are six other people here, filling about 40% of the tables. Each of them is alone, reading a book or books and sipping a beverage or nibbling a dessert. There was a pair of women, but they left. A couple has just arrived; they are reading together, which you never see in American bookstore cafes, probably because so few Americans read that the likelihood of two of them mating is basically zero. There are no children (I have seen very few children in Reykjavik). There is no line for tables. I have no idea what time this place closes, but I can probably sit here until then without anybody disturbing me.
- I was given a cup and saucer. I was not asked if I want my coffee to go. I do not think they have "to go" here.
- The bookstore in general is different. Like all the bookstores that are not used-bookstores here, it is more of a college-style bookstore, meaning the basement (it is typically the basement) has non-literary items - things you'd find in a Barnes & Noble like stationary, but also a few souvenirs, postcards, toys, a few housewares.
- Perhaps the sharpest contrast with American cafes is the barrista seemed totally without resentment at having to serve coffee to an American.
Anyway, that is enough snide commentary about America, which after all I do belong to.
So yesterday, my first day in Reykjavik, I availed myself of the breakfast at the hotel and then began to explore the city. Since it was a Sunday, everything was completely closed-up at first. But I saw lots of interesting architecture (and took pictures of most of it) and looked in the windows of galleries and shops. I went to an art museum and took a long walk to the other side of the city to visit the botanical gardens. Then, after a short rest, I embarked on the Golden Circle Evening Tour, a 5-hour bus tour of the basic natural wonders in the vicinity of Reykjavik. Unfortunately, I was very tired on this tour, and could not buy any coffee before we set out because of the absence of takeaway cups in this city and also the fact that I had been unable to obtain the local currency - ATMs were behind the locked doors or screens of banks, and money-changing places were either closed or uninterested in my sad American dollars.
Since I was out and about for about thirteen hours yesterday (from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 a.m. with a two-hour break) it is unsurprising that when the extremely bright light and various noises woke me up this morning shortly after 8, I was not exactly raring to go explore. There are many museums I still had not and have not seen, i.e. the National Museum, etc., but it seemed like too much work to (a) plan how to get to them, and (b) sustain interest in them. Also, the art gallery I went to yesterday was supposed to be among the biggest and best in the city and, while interesting, it was neither large nor impressive, so I was feeling like museums were not a strength of the city.
So, I wandered around. I went to the wharf, which I missed yesterday, and shopped a bit. I concluded that there is no "real downtown"; the half-mile strip of bars and souvenir shops and galleries (which is the word they use for upscale souvenir shops selling wool clothes, art, and jewelry at prices that would be high in New York) with a block of banks at one end is basically it. This wasn't too surprising once I figured it out since it's a city of only 200,000 and tourism is one of its primary industries. I went into the public library, in which the books were in unexpectedly good condition. I stumbled upon the museum I had been most interested in, the Settlement Museum, which is an archeological excavation of a longhouse. It was very well done; I'm also partial to excavation museums because unlike other history museums they have something you find in a book.
I went into a few bookstores and other shops. I saw a couple that had come in on the same flight as me and who I also saw yesterday, and the mother and daughter of an American family from the trip last night (they are also going to Paris, judging from the fact that the mother was reading a Paris guidebook - one of the admittedly many I have brought along but not read - on the tour, so maybe I will see them there as well... maybe I will also run into the two French women, who seemed more like the type of people I would want to run into). I was cold - I'd been cold the entire time I was here, especially on the bus trip, because I was trying to pack light and planning mostly for the weather in Paris - but didn't want to spend $100 on a beautiful but stiff wool scarf. I went into a store called Tiger, which turned out to be a Danish discount store, and walked out with a pretty lavendar scarf, dead sea foot lotion, Danish hand lotion (although I have infinite sunscreen, I brought only hotel-size moisturizing lotions due to not having travel-appropriate bottles and figuring I'd find something interesting on the trip, which I now have), and hard candies with coffee on the inside for a total of $16.
Feeling tired, I went back to the hotel, where I had a short nap and finished the book I'd been reading. I found Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name on the discount table at Barnes & Noble; it's a fast, good read although not a terribly likeable protagonist. I chose it because it takes place in Lapland in winter, which I thought was a nice counterpoint to Iceland in summer. I had wanted to finish it today because (a) it is the end of my stay in Iceland, and (b) I had seen a couple of used-book stores and figured one of them would take it off my hands. In fact, the first store I went into was literally overflowing with books; they were stacked to shoulder height on every available surface, including the floor, in both English and Icelandic (and possibly some other languages), and without any apparent organizing principle. The second store was a little more sedate; after some confusion, the owner took my book and gave me a new one for half price, which turned out to be 100 kroners.
Money is weird here. Judging from my ATM withdrawal, 100 kroners is almost exactly 75 cents, which means the full price for a used trade paperback is $1.50. The cup of coffee I just bought, on the other hand, was the equivalent of around $2.70. Groceries are cheap, at least in comparison to New York (fruits and vegetables on the other hand, seem to be basically nonexistent), the discount store was cheap, but postcards are 70 kroners each and other touristy merchandise is even more inflated. Perhaps it is cheap to live here and expensive to be a tourist.
After trading in my book, I wondered around a bit more. There wasn't really time to go to another museum before they all closed. I want back to the Hallgrimskirkja, the modern church I took pictures of yesterday. Since it wasn't Sunday, I was able to go inside; I also heard the organist practicing. I walked beyond the church, into the residential area. It seemed deserted. I bought a hot dog - supposedly a local delicacy, it contains lamb and has at least three different sauces and two different kinds of onions. I watched people at an outdoor cafe. I had already done everything I could remember reading about in Reykjavik. So I went back to the hotel, got my netbook, and here I am.
It would perhaps have been better to have booked a second bus trip for today, or to have slept more yesterday so I would have been more alert for the first trip, but I didn't really realize that the point of coming to Reykjavik was to take excursions, because coming here at all was an afterthought. A really lucky afterthought, actually, and although I don't know that I would come back here again - I've seen the most accessible things already - I now realize how super-cool this part of the world is, and perhaps someday I will take a properly planned trip to somewhere else in Northern Europe.
Addendum: The other thing I did not do was go to the Blue Lagoon (basically, because I decided it was only interesting enough to do if I ran out of other stuff, and then when I ran out of other stuff I forgot about the Blue Lagoon until just now, which shows you how enthusiastic I was), which as far as I can tell is a massively overhyped and overpriced tourist attraction catering to old people and rich people and large groups and very bad for someone like me, although the concept of a hot spring does sound nice. Oh, well.
Second addendum: The other thing couple seem to like to do in coffee shops here - I've seen it several times - is just sit over a cup of coffee. Just sit, without talking. Smoking, maybe, if they're outside. But mostly staring off into space. Thinking their own private thoughts, I guess, and being European.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Day One
You will notice I just posted a test post. That was me testing whether Picasa and Blogger can be friends, and it turns out they can. So I have now posted an album of pictures I took on the way from the airport to my hotel in Reykjavik. I may add captions to them, but they are mostly pretty boring. This is not the fault of the landscape, and it is not really the fault of me either; it is the fault of poor lighting conditions (although, quite good lighting for 1 in the morning) and a moving vehicle. However I figure if I set a precedent of only posting interesting photos, I will (1) lose the backing-up benefit, and (2) spend so much time editing my albums that they don't get posted. I am trying to keep a trip journal here, and if I waste too much time making it polished I will just fall asleep and not do it.
So here I am in Reykjavik. Comments:
Random shrieks. Good to know the drunken-idiot gene transcends continents.
Oh, postscript: I'm sure I'll have much more to say about the architecture later, but so far I have noticed several distinct styles. There's the sort of European-apartment style (flatter and more terracey than the equivalently rundown American version), the steeply-pitched roof style that looks like it could been in the Alps, the long-and-low style that looks like, well, longhouses, and then the sort of modern Scandinavian style. Obviously it is normal to see multiple styles of architecture in the same city, but it catches the attention when they are multiple styles one isn't used to.
Oh, also, another postscript - I have already met a couple of interesting people. On the plane I sat next to a couple who looked like brother and sister but were actually married; she is Scandinavian and he is American. They were on their way to Stockholm. Perhaps she is hard of hearing, because they seemed to do a significant amount of communication in what looked like sign language. They were hipster bohemian vegetarians who carried reusable grocery bags from Whole Foods instead of luggage, and the man used his iphone to send emails - in flagrant violation of many, may rules - throughout the flight. Also, another passenger on the plane was an American from California; he told me a good chunk of his life story while we were waiting to go through security after landing (they confiscated our liquids, but didn't even require us to go through customs or ask any questions at passport control). He dropped out of med school to study theater and has since then spent much of his life travelling. In the 1980's he hitchhiked around the West Coast (he volunteered his age as 51); he made references to the Grateful Dead, LSD, and friends dying of AIDS. Now he is on his way to Amsterdam, where he will rent a bike and travel until his money runs out. It seems like there is a class of perpetual travelers that I tend to meet wherever I go.
So here I am in Reykjavik. Comments:
- Of course I got to the airport hours and hours too early. This is better than getting to the airport late, which seems to be the only other option.
- I bought jerky, which I had never had before. This turns out to be mighty filling and takes forever to eat, which is good since it is all I had for lunch and dinner aside from a couple granola bars.
- There were movies on the plane. Yay.
- From my (extremely cursory) observations of people from Iceland, i.e. the stewardesses, people in the airport, and people on the bus from the airport, they tend to be highly assertive. Not aggressive like New Yorkers are. They do not cut in front of you in line because they think their time is more valuable than yours; they do it because you are more than 1.5 inches away from the person in front of you and less than six and a half feet tall, so they either don't see you or don't notice you are in line (at least this is my impression). This is also the motive for them leaving you behind at a mostly-deserted bus station in the middle of the night. Fortunately, it seems like they are all very nice.
- Also loud. Reykjavik is apparently a big party city, and my hotel, which is in the middle of the historic sightseeing district, is also in the middle of the party district. It is nearly 3 a.m. here and they are still at it. They wear a lot of metallics here; it looks odd, perhaps because it's both cold and semi-light. It's also weird to see the party scene and the narrow-European-street scene juxtaposed, but that's because I'm not used to Europe.
- The quality of the light is very weird. I am guessing it will be quite bright during the day. When I got here at midnight it was dreary, like a winter afternoon at 4:30 p.m. Now it seems to be getting light again. I think the sun will come up soon.
- I took lots of pictures on the bus; most of them don't look like much. The landscape was quite variable even over the 30 or so miles covered on the trip. No trees that I can recall; different varieties of grass and scrubs. A couple of villages and towns; a couple of factories. One... well, settlement. We were near the water the whole time, which I guess is where the civilization is in this country. It was hard to get a sense of scale; I'd think I was looking at a grassy pond and then see a house, tiny, and realize I was looking at a whole landscape and multiple lakes. Landmarks in the distance approached closer than I expected. I wonder if that's because I'm not used to seeing so little in the way of trees or, well, anything, or if it's a trick of the light. Also, there were these weird stone things, towers a bit away from the road or just lies of stones near the road (although maybe my perspective was off again and they were lines of towers). I don't know if they were naturally occurring or artificial, and if the latter how old they were.
Random shrieks. Good to know the drunken-idiot gene transcends continents.
Oh, postscript: I'm sure I'll have much more to say about the architecture later, but so far I have noticed several distinct styles. There's the sort of European-apartment style (flatter and more terracey than the equivalently rundown American version), the steeply-pitched roof style that looks like it could been in the Alps, the long-and-low style that looks like, well, longhouses, and then the sort of modern Scandinavian style. Obviously it is normal to see multiple styles of architecture in the same city, but it catches the attention when they are multiple styles one isn't used to.
Oh, also, another postscript - I have already met a couple of interesting people. On the plane I sat next to a couple who looked like brother and sister but were actually married; she is Scandinavian and he is American. They were on their way to Stockholm. Perhaps she is hard of hearing, because they seemed to do a significant amount of communication in what looked like sign language. They were hipster bohemian vegetarians who carried reusable grocery bags from Whole Foods instead of luggage, and the man used his iphone to send emails - in flagrant violation of many, may rules - throughout the flight. Also, another passenger on the plane was an American from California; he told me a good chunk of his life story while we were waiting to go through security after landing (they confiscated our liquids, but didn't even require us to go through customs or ask any questions at passport control). He dropped out of med school to study theater and has since then spent much of his life travelling. In the 1980's he hitchhiked around the West Coast (he volunteered his age as 51); he made references to the Grateful Dead, LSD, and friends dying of AIDS. Now he is on his way to Amsterdam, where he will rent a bike and travel until his money runs out. It seems like there is a class of perpetual travelers that I tend to meet wherever I go.
Friday, June 25, 2010
all packed up...
nothing to do now but wake up in the morning and get on the plane!
I have, as usual, grossly overpacked, to the point of having to bring an entire extra bag. On the other hand, I am going away for five weeks and all I'm bringing are one largish (but not huge) suitcase, one backpack (the size a studious college student would carry) and one large tote bag (roughly as big as the backpack; there are new yorkers who carry bigger bags on a daily basis). I don't think this is unreasonable. Hopefully it is not excess-baggage-fee-incurring.
Bon voyage, everyone!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
the sunscreen spiral
Today I accidentally went shopping for sunscreen. It started out as a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond (the least-horrifically-overpriced toiletries in the city) for travel-size products. The idea was to pack a few travel-sized toiletries to use the first several days, in Iceland and Germany, and then when I get settled in Paris I can buy more. But there are certain things that don't work that way - some things don't really come in travel sizes, and there are products I'm picky about. Actually, it turns out most of the products I use - or at least, that I care about - are things I'm picky about.
Like sunscreen. Sunscreen is tricky because (a) it's expensive, (b) I'm likely to use a large volume of it, and (c) as it turns out, sunscreen is really hard. It's not like you can just go into the store and there is one sunscreen. No, there is a whole aisle and a half of sunscreens. And there are many parameters. Just to measure efficacy, there is SPF, physical sunscreen content, photostability, and water-resistance. Then there is the question of how it will feel going on (i.e. gross? many high-spf sunscreens feel gross) and what it will do to my skin (is it moisturizing yet oil-free? hypoallergenic? non-comedogenic?). Finally there are the ergonomic issues: How much does the container hold, and how unwieldy is it? How does it dispense? I don't like sprays (inefficient and messy; only useful on the actual beach). I have a complicated relationship with sticks (I feel like they don't really work but I like to have one with me, because it's so easy to put on in the train. Other people put on lip gloss in the train; I put on sunscreen.) Also, it is essential to have a sunscreen that says it is for my face, but it has to be actually for my face, not the Coppertone ripoff that says it's for the face but has the exact same ingredients as the not-face sunblock.
After much, much deliberation, I ended up with three products: Coppertone SPF 90, Aveeno face SPF 110 (supposedly higher SPF really does help, even for numbers that high. It is not crazy. you only get one skin.), and Coppertone waterbabies SPF 55 stick. All of this stuff is water-resistant, but none of it is sport sunblock, which I'm a bit worried about. I suppose it is not like I'll be taking long runs in the middle of the day. And this is three sunscreens more than I intended to purchase (again, other people impulse-buy lip gloss; I impulse-buy sunscreen). Still, it would be nice to have all possible bases covered.
Friday, June 18, 2010
My schedule is filling up!
... well, not really. But there is so much to do in Paris!
- There are many, many sights to see. I bought the Fodor's Paris guidebook. I chose this because it has decent maps, doesn't waste too many pages on photos, and I like the organization. Instead of prioritizing food and lodgings, it prioritizes sightseeing, and it organizes by neighborhood, which generally leads to more thoroughness than organizing by type. It also has "focus sections", i.e. several pages devoted to a single major attraction, which is good for geeks like me.
- I have been poking through other guidebooks in the bookstore, which has led to a few pages of notes about less-famous attractions; in addition, other people have recommended things to me. I have a list of lists. You know things are getting out of hand when you have a list of lists.
- There appear to be lots of Americans in Paris, and one of the things they like to do is hold salons. These seems to be most commonly on Sunday nights. There are also philosophy debates, mostly in French, but a few in English.
- Tours! There are guided tours, of the city itself and of particular neighborhoods and attractions therein. I like walking tours, although there is such a thing as too much - they cost adds up and they and often slowly-paced. But in New York I find they are good for learning about very specific subject matter or for doing things that I would not do on my own. It might be good, in Paris, to take a generic walking tour to introduce myself to the city. There is a nighttime biking tour that might be a fun way to spend an evening, less for learning than for seeing. There is a bike tour to Versailles (you don't bike to Versailles, but you bike while you are there), which serves the purpose of allowing you to see more of the gardens than you would on foot, and also one to Monet's gardens. I have the (perhaps totally incorrect) idea that a bike tour will be more likely to attract a younger clientele and therefore be brisker in pace; also biking is fun. There is a chocolate tour as well, which seems not-ridiculously priced for something involving a chocolate tasting. And there is a tour where a local person takes you around their neighborhood and talks to you about life in Paris.
- I have a list of bookstores.
- And a list of crêperies.
- Related to biking, there is exercise. It is very important that I am able to get exercise in France, so that (a) I do not go crazy with idleness, and (b) I do not have to buy an entirely new wardrobe post-crêperies. So I have been amassing information associated with running - running groups, running routes, running courses. Also yoga. Also I have gotten my trainer (I have been going to a trainer during my period of unemployment. It is great: I pay a lot of money, and in return I cannot move any part of my body without pain for the following three days. I love it, really.) to help me figure out a whole bunch of strength-building (or strength-maintaining) exercises that I can do without equipment. Sadly, they are all of the extremely-painful variety, i.e. pushups.
Monday, June 14, 2010
It's coming together!
A friend volunteered to send my her books from the Paris trip she took a few weeks ago, and they just arrived i the mail. I am very pleased. There is a French/German/Italian phrasebook, which will be good - I have a French/English dictionary, but (a) phrasebook is better, and (b) French will do me little good in Frankfurt. There is also the Rick Steve's Paris guide. I had previously noticed that the Rick Steve guidebooks are very good for, sort of, orientational information and cultural knowledge and stuff. Which is important, as I will be in France a whole month and do not want to spend all of it squinting at monuments. But I am also a type-A tourist (actually, um, a type AAA... international trips that I have taken with other people have tended to involve a lot of arguing (me: "we are in ____ and we are not going to waste time sleeping/eating/watching TV/having fun"; them: "i'm tired/hungry/feet are falling off"), a lot of me leaving them in hotels to sleep while I tromped about or them leaving me in the middle of foreign cities to tromp about, and in one case, my rising early and going to an entirely different country while my travel companion slept) and I am certainly not going all the way to Paris without a guidebook that will tell me in minute detail about every single historical whatsit in the city. So, now I can take this lovely vague Rick Steve book for local color, and also buy a proper guidebook to use in my self-guided death marches around the city. (this is in addition to my walks book. the walks book is just for fun.)
Also, my netbook came, so now I can type my novel in little Parisian cafes, and my camera (I figure taking my iPhone to France is a bad idea), which is very tiny and has many functions, but two of them are "take picture" and "zoom", and that is all that matters. I have downloaded Picasa onto the netbook so that I can share my pictures (as well as backing them up in the google cloud), although I assure you they will all be very boring to people who aren't me (I have been known to take up to 100 pictures on a single cab ride). I also have a netbook case and a camera case (which, basically, is the size of a small purse, and I may end up using it that way from time to time) and even a part-time subletter for my apartment.
The only thing I do not have is a lease for my Parisian apartment. I really wish that would arrive.
Also, my netbook came, so now I can type my novel in little Parisian cafes, and my camera (I figure taking my iPhone to France is a bad idea), which is very tiny and has many functions, but two of them are "take picture" and "zoom", and that is all that matters. I have downloaded Picasa onto the netbook so that I can share my pictures (as well as backing them up in the google cloud), although I assure you they will all be very boring to people who aren't me (I have been known to take up to 100 pictures on a single cab ride). I also have a netbook case and a camera case (which, basically, is the size of a small purse, and I may end up using it that way from time to time) and even a part-time subletter for my apartment.
The only thing I do not have is a lease for my Parisian apartment. I really wish that would arrive.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Query for queries
I know some people who know about Paris. Some family friends met in Paris; he is from there and she lived there for years. Of the friends and acquaintances to whom I've mentioned my trip, a significant minority - maybe 15% - have been to Paris either recently or for a substantial period of time, and many have volunteered the wisdom of their experience.
But what do I need to know? Tourist information is most efficiently gleaned from a guidebook. Random travel pointers are nice but it is hard to ask for them; people either think of things to tell you or they don't. I'm not interested in restaurant recommendations - a very common Paris query, I think - because given my tastes and budget, as well as the fact that I'll have a kitchen, I am likely to eat most of my meals in small cafes or at home. One person did tell me about her very favorite crepe vendor, which was pretty cool, and I asked another friend for a recommendation of anglophilic yoga classes, and of course I'm happy to hear about off-the-beaten-path museums, bookstores, and coffee shops. But what other information should I be asking for?
This question is actually a question of what I want my trip to be. For example, if I wanted my trip to be an exploration of the art and architecture of Paris, then I would ask about any museums I may not have heard of, particularly good tour companies, and the best books for describing and explaining the relevant sights, where to find them, and how to appreciate them. This is all well and good to ask, but it is also information that is probably most easily and reliably collected from bookstores and the internet. If I want my trip to be all about writing, then I should ask for information on English-language bookstores and reading series and if anyone knows of English-language writing groups or workshops. This is information that is harder to collect from the internet (I've tried), and also harder to collect from people, since nearly everyone who goes to Paris has some interest in seeing the art and architecture, while a smaller set go there to write.
The information I really want is information I do not know how to ask for, by definition. If I know that I want to know something, I can probably learn it just as easily - and perhaps more completely or reliably - from the internet. Sure, people I know can tell me about their favorite crepe vendors - but I can also do a google search of "best crepes paris" and get a great deal of expert and non-expert advice. Similarly I can learn about museums, tour companies, bookstores, neighborhoods - anything I know that I want to know - very easily, at any time of the day or night, and I can store all that information in my bookmarks for future reference. But what if I didn't know that I liked crepes, or even that crepes existed?
And I'm not going on this trip just to eat crepes, or just to go to the Louvre, or just to walk the banks of the Seine, or just to do any of the things I'm currently thinking of doing. I'm going on this trip to become the person that a trip to Paris would help me become. To broaden myself, I guess. To see and do and learn things that I wouldn't think to see or do or learn if I were in New York.
So - what are the questions I should be asking that will help me with that? What are the sides of a trip to Paris that I'm not thinking of, that maybe I should be?
But what do I need to know? Tourist information is most efficiently gleaned from a guidebook. Random travel pointers are nice but it is hard to ask for them; people either think of things to tell you or they don't. I'm not interested in restaurant recommendations - a very common Paris query, I think - because given my tastes and budget, as well as the fact that I'll have a kitchen, I am likely to eat most of my meals in small cafes or at home. One person did tell me about her very favorite crepe vendor, which was pretty cool, and I asked another friend for a recommendation of anglophilic yoga classes, and of course I'm happy to hear about off-the-beaten-path museums, bookstores, and coffee shops. But what other information should I be asking for?
This question is actually a question of what I want my trip to be. For example, if I wanted my trip to be an exploration of the art and architecture of Paris, then I would ask about any museums I may not have heard of, particularly good tour companies, and the best books for describing and explaining the relevant sights, where to find them, and how to appreciate them. This is all well and good to ask, but it is also information that is probably most easily and reliably collected from bookstores and the internet. If I want my trip to be all about writing, then I should ask for information on English-language bookstores and reading series and if anyone knows of English-language writing groups or workshops. This is information that is harder to collect from the internet (I've tried), and also harder to collect from people, since nearly everyone who goes to Paris has some interest in seeing the art and architecture, while a smaller set go there to write.
The information I really want is information I do not know how to ask for, by definition. If I know that I want to know something, I can probably learn it just as easily - and perhaps more completely or reliably - from the internet. Sure, people I know can tell me about their favorite crepe vendors - but I can also do a google search of "best crepes paris" and get a great deal of expert and non-expert advice. Similarly I can learn about museums, tour companies, bookstores, neighborhoods - anything I know that I want to know - very easily, at any time of the day or night, and I can store all that information in my bookmarks for future reference. But what if I didn't know that I liked crepes, or even that crepes existed?
And I'm not going on this trip just to eat crepes, or just to go to the Louvre, or just to walk the banks of the Seine, or just to do any of the things I'm currently thinking of doing. I'm going on this trip to become the person that a trip to Paris would help me become. To broaden myself, I guess. To see and do and learn things that I wouldn't think to see or do or learn if I were in New York.
So - what are the questions I should be asking that will help me with that? What are the sides of a trip to Paris that I'm not thinking of, that maybe I should be?
Reading material (yes, I have this much to say about books)
As my departure looms ever closer, I am increasingly preoccupied with one very urgent question: What will I read on my trip?
This is an important issue, for several reasons. First, I cannot adopt my preferred method of packing reading material, i.e. inclusiveness. If I were to do this - considering that I will be traveling for five weeks, but that cities in European countries are known to contain English-language bookstores (I actually have a whole list of such bookstores in Paris, although I am of course eager to add to it if you know of any) - I would bring perhaps half a dozen novels that I haven't read (two fluffy, two long and engaging, and two serious), a couple of magazines, two to four books on writing (recall that I will be attempting to do a lot of that in Paris), two nonfiction books (for example I have a less-ancient-than-GEB Hofstadter book I've been meaning to read), and perhaps half a dozen favorite novels for inspiration. Plus my Paris walks book, two Paris guidebooks (one is not really sufficient as it often has a bias), possibly a more general France guidebook, a phrase book, and perhaps small guidebooks for my time in Iceland and Germany.
Sadly, I do not think the airline would let me on the plane with such a cache. I'm not sure exactly what my baggage restrictions are - the airline's website does not seem to agree with itself on that, even, so I will have to call them - but I'm pretty sure two dozen or so books (plus other things I might need during my month away, such as several pairs of shoes and possibly a change of clothes) is crossing the line.
So I will need to pare back. I will bring the Paris walks book, one or possibly two additional guidebooks, and a phrasebook. Aside from that, I will limit myself, although I am not going to commit to any firm numbers at this time. It will be necessary to be efficient, considering both what I am most likely to read (the Hofstadter, which survived two cross-country flights and a week at my grandmother's without much progress, is perhaps a better project for a rainyday month in New York), what is hardest to buy en route, and what I would be least sorry to have to jettison. It will be important to start with at least two novels, because the first thing I will do is spend six hours on a plane, and it would be unfortunate to endure that experience with only one book unless it is a long one that I very much like.
Aside from the issue of space, there is also the issue of appropriateness. I like to read the right kinds of books when I'm traveling, especially if I'm traveling alone, because I feel that the book sets the tone for my trip. Often, reading the book is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night; when I'm in transit, I may spend hours reading at a time, and even when I'm not in transit reading often forms the backdrop of my time as I take periodic breaks from walking or sightseeing. Of course the internet - which I did not have frequent access to on previous journeys of this magnitude - may change that, but in some ways I don't want it to do so. The internet is the same everywhere; a book can take me somewhere new.
My first instinct is to read books set in the place I am at, but I find this is usually a bad idea; often these are period pieces, which I find dull in most cases. It's not so much that I don't like historical fiction or books set in foreign locales; I think it's more that for such books to have penetrated my awareness (and to be available in the bookstores where I browse) they have to be quite serious, which makes them hard to read in snippets while traveling and often depressing. It's important, I think, to read books that are not too depressing - especially while travelling, when one sometimes needs cheering up, and when a pleasant respite or lighter book may not be available. Also, sometimes one needs a break from one's scenery, which is the whole point of reading.
Another option is to read books about traveling. I really like doing this, although it can be hard to find books in this category that meet my other criteria (small size and weight so I can carry it, modest price so I can jettison it, not set in Tuscany because these books really annoy me). There seems to be a not-insubstantial subgenre of books about American women visiting or living in Paris; I can't decide if such a book is perfect for my situation or totally wrong. Of course selecting among the genre is complicated; most such books are memoirs in form, and the most important thing about a memoir is not whether the plot is good or the writing is good or anything else you can learn from a review; it's whether you like the narrator (I think this is why Tuscany books annoy me; I don't think I have much patience for the sort of women who go to Tuscany after their divorces). (And, yes, I have read the Diane Johnson books; I was lukewarm on them.)
Here are my current thoughts:
This is an important issue, for several reasons. First, I cannot adopt my preferred method of packing reading material, i.e. inclusiveness. If I were to do this - considering that I will be traveling for five weeks, but that cities in European countries are known to contain English-language bookstores (I actually have a whole list of such bookstores in Paris, although I am of course eager to add to it if you know of any) - I would bring perhaps half a dozen novels that I haven't read (two fluffy, two long and engaging, and two serious), a couple of magazines, two to four books on writing (recall that I will be attempting to do a lot of that in Paris), two nonfiction books (for example I have a less-ancient-than-GEB Hofstadter book I've been meaning to read), and perhaps half a dozen favorite novels for inspiration. Plus my Paris walks book, two Paris guidebooks (one is not really sufficient as it often has a bias), possibly a more general France guidebook, a phrase book, and perhaps small guidebooks for my time in Iceland and Germany.
Sadly, I do not think the airline would let me on the plane with such a cache. I'm not sure exactly what my baggage restrictions are - the airline's website does not seem to agree with itself on that, even, so I will have to call them - but I'm pretty sure two dozen or so books (plus other things I might need during my month away, such as several pairs of shoes and possibly a change of clothes) is crossing the line.
So I will need to pare back. I will bring the Paris walks book, one or possibly two additional guidebooks, and a phrasebook. Aside from that, I will limit myself, although I am not going to commit to any firm numbers at this time. It will be necessary to be efficient, considering both what I am most likely to read (the Hofstadter, which survived two cross-country flights and a week at my grandmother's without much progress, is perhaps a better project for a rainy
Aside from the issue of space, there is also the issue of appropriateness. I like to read the right kinds of books when I'm traveling, especially if I'm traveling alone, because I feel that the book sets the tone for my trip. Often, reading the book is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night; when I'm in transit, I may spend hours reading at a time, and even when I'm not in transit reading often forms the backdrop of my time as I take periodic breaks from walking or sightseeing. Of course the internet - which I did not have frequent access to on previous journeys of this magnitude - may change that, but in some ways I don't want it to do so. The internet is the same everywhere; a book can take me somewhere new.
My first instinct is to read books set in the place I am at, but I find this is usually a bad idea; often these are period pieces, which I find dull in most cases. It's not so much that I don't like historical fiction or books set in foreign locales; I think it's more that for such books to have penetrated my awareness (and to be available in the bookstores where I browse) they have to be quite serious, which makes them hard to read in snippets while traveling and often depressing. It's important, I think, to read books that are not too depressing - especially while travelling, when one sometimes needs cheering up, and when a pleasant respite or lighter book may not be available. Also, sometimes one needs a break from one's scenery, which is the whole point of reading.
Another option is to read books about traveling. I really like doing this, although it can be hard to find books in this category that meet my other criteria (small size and weight so I can carry it, modest price so I can jettison it, not set in Tuscany because these books really annoy me). There seems to be a not-insubstantial subgenre of books about American women visiting or living in Paris; I can't decide if such a book is perfect for my situation or totally wrong. Of course selecting among the genre is complicated; most such books are memoirs in form, and the most important thing about a memoir is not whether the plot is good or the writing is good or anything else you can learn from a review; it's whether you like the narrator (I think this is why Tuscany books annoy me; I don't think I have much patience for the sort of women who go to Tuscany after their divorces). (And, yes, I have read the Diane Johnson books; I was lukewarm on them.)
Here are my current thoughts:
- I have found early novels of Elliot Perlman and Lionel Shriver on the markdown shelves at my local bookstore. Both are serious authors; I have read one of each of their later works and enjoyed them both. Marked-down trade paperbacks are ideal since they are more comfortable to read than mass-market paperbacks and inexpensive enough to trade or give away with too much regret. However, these books could be a lot of work to read; if I am only going to bring two or three novels to start with then at least one of them should be much easier than this.
- Also on the markdown shelves are any number of books of varying degrees of seriousness with one of two basic plots, Single Girl Finds Love and Self and Married Woman Loses Husband and Finds Self, with occasional wrinkles involving friends, bridesmaid's dresses, and offspring. Some of these books are quite good, and some are quite awful, and sometimes I can tell which is which by reading the first two pages (although the really good ones I usually get to before they are marked down). It seems inevitable that one of these books will find its way into my suitcase.
- I own many books, of which a couple seem like viable candidates: Fire, by Katherine Neville (I loved an earlier novel of hers, although this attachment was formed as a child and so may not be reliable) Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (it seems very meta, to start off a trip that will involve a good deal of reading and writing by reading about reading and writing; on the other hand I would not like to jettison this book; on the third hand it might make a good reference)
- Children's books. There are some very good books written for older children and young adults (for example, most of Madeleine L'Engle's oeuvre as well as the Harry Potter series). The advantage of these books is they tend to be highly readable; the disadvantage is the difficulty in finding good books without having already read them (I would hate to be stuck on a plane with New Blood or whatever the latest drooling-over-vampires novel is).
- The easiest choice is personal classics, i.e. books I have already read that I know I will likely enjoy rereading. Many of these are actual classics and even appropriate to the tone of my trip, i.e. The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, Emma (to keep my bag company), but this seems like not a good way to expand my horizons.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Meet Emma
This is Emma. I bought her last week.
No, I did not buy a special suitcase just for my trip; I have been needing a new suitcase for a while due to the fact that my two existing suitcases, dating from 1992 and 1995 respectively, have completely fallen apart. Also, they are awkward sizes. The older and less falling-apart of the two is too gigantic to be useful; its massive size combined with its outdated configuration (it rolls horizontally on four small wheels, dragged by a leash, in contrast to modern suitcases, which stand upright and tilt to roll on two less-small wheels, dragged by a rigid handle) made it difficult to maneuver in airports and almost impossible to deal with in the subway. It has no internal structure, making packing difficult, and it is so big that it can hold two people's possessions for a week-long trip - even when one of those people is me* - with room to spare. My smaller and newer-but-still-ancient suitcase was bought as a carry-on bag, although I'm pretty sure that with recent standard-tightening it no longer qualifies (it definitely doesn't fit wheels-out in an overhead compartment). It's too large to be unobtrusive, too large (and heavy - the thing must weigh 15 pounds empty) to lift comfortably over my head when fully packed, but too small to fit everything I need for more than a couple nights.
So for the past couple years, I've been taking my smaller bag on almost every trip, usually (for any trip longer than about two nights) checking it and taking both a backpack and laptop case as carryon. The larger bag, meanwhile, was used predominantly as a particularly ugly storage bin. So as the smaller bag become increasingly useless (most recently, the collapsible handle has stopped collapsing), I decided to replace my two old, wrong-sized, broken bags with two new, slightly smaller bags - a carry-on small enough to actually carry on, and a larger but still-manageable suitcase.
Emma is the latter. At 28 inches tall and 14 inches square, she is decidedly not a carryon, but with her light construction and compact footprint she's not too unwieldy to haul around the airports and train stations of Europe (as for carrying her up to my 6eme-floor apartment in Paris - that would be the 7th floor in American numbering - that is another issue, which I will deal with at another time, probably very slowly and with much cursing), but she can lie on her side for easy access. I was originally going to name her Lydia because of her festive colouring, but that seemed like a bad omen for my trip - I certainly don't want my suitcase running off with any British soldiers, no matter how handsome - and Emma seems an appropriate and optimistic namesake: cheerful, overinvolved, and overwhelmingly ept.
* I am not a bad packer! I am a very good packer. I always have everything I need on a given trip, and also anything my travel companions need but forgot to pack, and also many things that I might under some conceivable circumstances need, and usually several more books than is possible to read (I have been known to pack one book per day of the trip, with perhaps a couple of extras thrown in just in case). Obviously I am going to have to pack with unusual lightness and bravado for this trip, since it is simply not possible to fit everything I might need for a month into Emma, or even - if I had such a set of luggage - all five Bennet sisters.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
initial conditions
Welcome to my new blog! Introductions are always awkward, but I've started this blog to chronicle my trip to Paris, which will begin at the end of this month. I settled on the name partly because (unreconstructed geek that I am) I love physics puns, and also because I thought it was a good description of the trip and how it came about.
How it came about was this: I got a job. A proper one. But it won't start until mid-August. At the same time, I'm pretty much done with the work I've been doing at my current job. I'd been planning to spend most of the summer searching for jobs, but now that isn't necessary, so I was left figuring out how best to employ my time. Of course there's plenty to do here in New York - but, I've done a good deal of it, or it's unavailable or tourist-clogged in the summer, or it's the kind of thing you can't really occupy all your time with, or I really have to leave something interesting for myself to do for the next however many years I live here. It was suggested to me that I travel - "take a real summer vacation" was how one friend put it - and of course I thought that was a fabulous idea. There aren't many things I prefer to travelling, and finding the time for a major trip is difficult when one has a job and/or life, so an interstitial period between jobs would offer the perfect opportunity.
But where would I go? I did the hosteling-in-Europe thing right after college, and while it was terrific, I wouldn't do it again - for one thing, I'm simply too old and crotchety to sleep in a top bunk in a room with two dozen other people and take cold showers in a public bathroom. I haven't been to the landmark cities of southern Europe - Rome, Athens, Cypress - so that was a possibility. There are many other places I'd like to go to as well - Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Alaska, India, Madagascar - but those places all have a few problems. First and most inarguably, I was planning the trip with less than a month's lead time, so I couldn't go anywhere that required a lot of vaccinations or super-serious research or that would be best experienced through a pre-arranged guided trip (which I'm not big on anyway). Second, while I'm not on a shoestring budget, I don't have unlimited resources, so in order to maximize my trip I wanted to go somewhere that could be experienced reasonably well on a modest budget - meaning, no round-the-world flights and nowhere that I'd have to search for imported-just-for-Americans food/water/tourist attractions. Third, I'd be travelling alone, so it had to be somewhere that would be safe for a solo female American without much grounding in the local language.
The more I thought about it (over a time period of about a day) the clearer it became that the chief feature of this trip would be time. I could take a solid month to travel, but I couldn't afford to fly to a new continent every week of that month, to stay at fancy hotels for 30 nights, or to spend half a year researching my destination. I also knew that in order to enjoy such a long trip by myself, I needed to be doing something that I really wanted to do, not something to check off a box on Important Travels or to follow someone else's suggestion of a great place to go. It seemed clear that what this trip would be good for, that would be hard to do at any time in the foreseeable future, was going to a foreign city to live, at least for a month. And as soon as I thought of that, I knew the place that I wanted to live for a month was Paris.
Yes, I'm a cliché. But my entire life, from my first French class at age six, I'd thought of Paris as a place of romance and sophistication, where adults and artists lived in a rarefied sphere of rapid speech and Brie cheese. I've been there once, actually, at the very end of my hosteling-through-Europe experience, and I was devastated not to be able to enjoy the city. I was exhausted, filthy, short of gear (most of my possessions were stolen in Germany), and flat broke. I'd split up with my travel companion three countries previously and couldn't get hostel reservations. I barely had money to eat, no map on which to find things, and whenever I got lost local men would come out of the woodwork to ask if I needed a boyfriend. I just wanted to go home.
So I'm trying Paris again. I'll be there for the entire month of July, and this time I won't have to worry about hostels because I've rented an apartment. Although I do plan to do many touristy things - with an emphasis on architecture and art - I also plan to do other things. I'll walk a lot; I have a book of 24 walks in Paris (okay, this is semi-touristy) and I plan to do one every day. I'll shop in markets and possibly, since I'll have a kitchen, I'll cook (okay, realistically, I'll store fruit and cheese overnight and possibly make coffee or toast or, if I'm feeling ambitious, an egg). I've found a couple yoga studios with English-language classes, an English-language bookstore that holds readings, and a woman who runs an old-fashioned salon. The plan is to also write the Great American Novel, or anyway an amateurish American novella, which is not as ridiculous as it sounds because I've done such things before. I'm very excited about the trip - but I do have to admit the whole thing is sort of hastily assembled and, well, random.
To add to the confusion, the least-ridiculously-expensive flight available on the short notice with which I've planned this trip was through Iceland Air. Never one to do things simply when a more complicated option was available, I decided this meant I should visit Iceland on my way to Paris - after all, if you're flying to Europe through Reykjavik, the airfare isn't affected by whether you stay in Iceland a couple nights. But then I realized that, given my arrival and departure dates in Paris were determined by my lease, the minimum airfare required me to spend four days in Iceland. This seemed a bit much considering I'd done no planning whatsoever for an Iceland trip, and most of the attractions seem to require either renting a car (a bit too much complication even for me) or joining some sort of guided tour, about which I knew nothing. Two days really seemed like enough time; after all, Iceland isn't cheap, and this was really supposed to be a small detour on the way to Paris. But staying in Iceland only two days meant I'd either have to pay $500 more for my airfare or arrive on the Continent two days early.
That was when I realized that Iceland Air does not make many of the silly rules that American airlines do about flights always having to be roundtrip. Namely, my flight from Iceland didn't have to be to Paris in order to have a reasonable fare. I could fly to any one of a dozen cities in Europe, spend two days there, and then take the train to Paris. From there, I narrowed the list down by eliminating cities I'd already been to and those that were an inconvenient distance from Paris and arrived at... Frankfurt. I knew (still know, really) nothing about this city except that (a) it is located in Germany, and (b) it has a major financial center. However, I trust I can entertain myself there for a day and a half.
So, that's my trip. Liftoff is June 26, and I'm more or less prepared, meaning I'm not prepared but I do have a passport and a suitcase and plans to buy a guidebook for Paris and possibly print out a map of Frankfurt. I plan to use this blog as my travel journal, so it will contain all sorts of very boring details of the food I eat and the walks I take, but there will probably also be some excitement, or at least tales of zany Parisians. Please leave any suggestions of things I should do / see / eat in Paris in the comments. Au revoir!
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