Category Archives: Europe

Adventures in Campania Part II, Amalfi Coast: Sun, steps and seafood!

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[Did you miss Part I? Click here]

On the other side of the hills, through some tunnels and around some hairpin turns, one pops out on the Amalfi coast. Coming from Napoli, it looks as though you’ve disembarked in another land, even though it’s not 60km away. The greenery contrasts against an azure Mediterranean Sea. The cliffs drop off to reveal a rugged coastline dotted with castle-like lookout towers used by locals nearly a thousand years ago to defend themselves from pirates.

We booked a B&B in Positano for a couple of nights. Actually, above Positano in a small village called Montepertuso. It seems to consist of about 137 houses, a church, two restaurants and a bus stop. It’s perfect. These towns were built vertically from the sea up the hillsides. But what we hadn’t considered was the fact that there are approximately 1500 steps from Positano up to our perch.

Montepertuso from our B&B balcony. Bonus points for spotting the surprise in the photo.

We decided to explore somewhat horizontally that first day… traversing over to the trailhead for the Path of the Gods, or Il Sentiero degli Dei, we managed to hike the path all the way from Montepertuso to Bomerano and back. For the record, “horizontal” is relative in these parts.

Words cannot do justice to panoramas we encountered along the way: the jagged rock formations, caves, terraced gardens, carefully-placed villas, and the sheer cliff faces that seemingly melted into the sea below. We did the hike backwards, so had to wander about a little village to find sustenance, and were rewarded with some great eggplant parm to help fuel the 2nd half of the hike. The decision to hike back rather than wimp out and take the bus proved to be a good one: the views from the “high path” were even grander, walking through the long grasses that lined the trail was meditative, and the late afternoon light contrasting with the fog off the water was surreal. Truth be told, my legs grumbled a bit when we missed a bus from Nocelle and walked the last 3km or so. But all in all, I think this hike falls on my list of favourites. Total distance 22+/- km round-trip. Definite accumulation of adventure points on the day!

1 / 13

These coastal towns are connected by a local bus route, so the next day we were off to Amalfi proper, and from there the town of Ravello for its terraced gardens and medieval estates. Castles and breathtaking views? Yes, please. Bright blue skies and more spectacular views greeted us as we marched through the impeccable Villa Cimbrone (a fancy-shmancy hotel that opens its gardens to tourists)…worth every penny of the entrance fee. Between the architecture of the villa, cloister and crypt (replete with grand piano), the views, and the serenity of the place, this won our hearts more-so than the tourist-thronged streets of Amalfi.

But even an accidental tourist has to get one of Campania’s giant lemons topped with local lemon sorbet! (when in Amalfi…)

2 / 13

Once back in Positano, we were faced with the dreaded steps! There is a local bus that takes one from the bottom to the top, but that schedule is haphazard and it seemed silly to wait around for a bus that may or may not come… so up we climbed, and I lost count somewhere in the neighbourhood of 11 gajillion. The reward came at dinner, where we stumbled into the family-run Donna Rosa, a surprising little restaurant with charm spilling out from the kitchen onto our table! A nice way to round out the day.

Positano, from high on the hill

The following day, we planned to hike the Sentiero Panoramico, a loop high above Montepertuso. Essentially, mostly UP… But the weather gods had other plans. A shift in the skies was upon us, and the looming clouds promised a treacherous journey on a hike already deemed hard by the guidebook. So we opted to do a short climb up to Il Buco, a hole in the mountain with very cool views from this weird geology. What goes up must come down, so we hiked down the same steps we had climbed up the day before, and wandered around the streets where Kardashian sightings aren’t uncommon (no paparazzi to be seen this day). At no more than 17C, there were still several bikini-clad people on the beach, selfie-ing it up as if the season were in full swing. I cannot even imagine what this place is like in the middle of summer!

3 / 7

With dark clouds looming, we managed to grab our bags, grab a bus, and grab cover under a car park before the storm raged for real: Jupiter ushering us out of Positano with a bang. And so the days of the Amalfi coast come to a close with bonus points for bright blue skies, breathtaking views and challenging-but-worth-it hikes. Also fennel liqueur (where does one find some?!)

We stayed in a different section of Napoli on the last night, in a nice B&B run by a zealous host (whose mother made the most fantastic Italian pastries for us for Easter breakfast!). We were bowled over by her hospitality, which proved a wealth of excellent suggestions for the evening, including the best seafood experience of the trip: ‘a Figlia d’o Marenaro. The local favourite being the zuppa di cozze, a pile of steamed seafood over bread, with a zesty fra diavolo drizzled over the lobster. It did not disappoint!

Homemade sfogliatelle, courtesy of our host’s mother

So I left Naples with a better spirit than I entered. Maybe it was the last supper. Perhaps the Mediterranean air seeped into my pores. The eggplant parm and the homemade sfogliatelle and the hiking and the company surely didn’t hurt. They say you need at least 10 days of vacation for it to really feel like a holiday. I was on Day 9 and headed for a couple of nights in Istanbul to finish off my adventure.

I’ve written a lot about Istanbul, so I’ll not go into explicit detail here. Suffice to say it was a nice couple of days wandering about this weird and wonderful city. I’d intended to visit the Rumeli Fortress, a castle situated on the banks of the Bosporus, but it was closed (until next time!). I still managed to eat a traditional herring sandwich at a fish boat on the Golden Horn. I wandered through Gülhane Park and stumbled across a gray heron rookery. I explored Taksim Square, and later the Egyptian spice market. I even watched the Iftar unfold in the park between the Blue Mosque and Ayasofya. And my B&B, the lovely Hotel Empress Zoe where I’ve stayed each time I’ve visited, was a warm comfort. The city has gone through major renovations in the year and a half since I’ve been here, and seeing the old city walls and newly-restored ancient monuments was a treat.

4 / 10

So, no, it wasn’t the warm and sun-soaked holiday I had envisioned. But all the same I’m grateful for the ability to travel. I’m grateful for a world full of food and culture and historical ruins and relics and museums and landmarks and sweeping vistas to explore, and a team back at the office holding down the fort while I took this much-needed break (but not so much for the Lyft driver who got lost at the airport on his way to shuttle my jet-lagged body home).

Until next time, world… the wheels are already spinning.

Adventures in Campania Part 1, Napoli: Rabid football fans and teeming tourists

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I’ve been mostly strapped to a computer for much of the past 6 months. Longing for sun and nature and quiet, I had my sights on the Maldives or somewhere equally blue and green. I’d intended on travelling solo to just recharge, but when my tried-and-true travelling companion said he had a week off around Easter, I slotted some PTO on my calendar before things got even hairier or before I melted down completely. Either was in the realm of possibility.

The negotiation on where to go began: We ruled out the C places due to logistics (Crete, Canaries, Cyprus…) and many of the M ones too since he’d been there before (Malta, Madeira, Mallorca…). This left a host of other letters, but with caveats: an easy hop from Central Europe, doable in a week, spring or better weather, and a place by the sea. So a quick check of the extended forecast (20-ish seemed decent enough at the time) and not enough time for me to dig and discover led us to agreeing to disagree but settling upon Naples. I knew nothing about the place, save Vesuvius and Pompeii. With visions of pastel-stuccoed villas and terraced cliffside villages in my head and no time to do more research than buying a guide book the night before leaving, I embarked on my latest escapade thoroughly unprepared.

The itinerary was roughly formed: I’d arrive on Saturday, spend a couple days acclimating, then C would join me for adventures: Vesuvius, Pompeii, a jaunt to the Amalfi coast, and I’d top off the trip with a couple of days in one of my favourite cities on the planet: Istanbul. I don’t know why but the crossroads of the Silk Road call and the uniqueness of the place balances me. Onward.

Part I: Napoli. The trip began with a couple of surprises.

Surprise #1: To my exhausted horror, Naples on a Saturday night when you are expecting a seaside Italian escape is like wandering into someone’s bad joke. The cars, the grime, the NOISE, the tourists! It was essentially the opposite of what I needed. I cried and contemplated leaving. Really.

Surprise #2: Napoli is on track to win its first all-Italy football championship in 30 years. Buildings and stairways are painted in the team colours. Roads and alleyways are draped with flags and team jerseys and banners and streamers and photos of the players. The streets are lined with vendors selling every possible permutation of fan memorabilia: shirts and hats and knick-knacks…even Napoli underwear! Din aside, it was charming to see a city rally around its team as much as this one. Even Boston (where I live), one of the most sports-happy cities on the planet, could learn a trick or two from the Neapolitans.

Instead of leaving immediately, I plotted a minor escape: The next morning I boarded a ferry to a small island called Procida. It is Ischia’s little cousin, and perhaps Capri’s bastard stepchild. In other words, off the tourist map and a perfect outlet from the blue-and-white cacophony of Napoli proper. I spent the afternoon wandering the hills and climbing old fortresses. It’s said that you can reach anywhere on Procida within 6000 steps. So I did a good deal of marching around, ate a rather disappointing seafood plate for lunch, and breathed in the sunny spring seaside air. Mediocre food aside, this helped my mood immensely.

When I got back to Naples, a shower and a good night’s sleep prepped me for a walkabout. Since they have managed to pave everything from the sea to the foot of Mt. Vesuvius, save some teeny lots for lemon trees, it struck me that the correct direction to go was up to get a proper lay of the land, as it were.

Mt Vesuvius and the bay of Naples as seen from Napoli

So up I climbed, and found a little neighbourhood with a nice bakery from which I purchased some local Taralli, and a cheese shop where I got an assortment of local cheeses. These would come in handy as snacks for the week ahead. Once C joined me in the afternoon, we climbed even higher: up the umpteen bazillion steps (read: 416) to the top of Vomero Hill by Castel Sant’Elmo and took in the views. Even from here, Vesuvius looms large and slightly sinister in the background, as if it’s biding time until its next go.

Campania trivia #1: While Mt. Vesuvius left its mark in AD 79, and several times thereafter, the entire Bay of Naples is an extension of the Phlegraean Fields just to the west. Essentially this means the bay and its surrounding area is a supervolcano. Tick-tock.

With the requisite views and city walks out of the way (and an excellent seafood dinner in our bellies), the following morning we boarded a train to Pompeii to see the ruins. A front was coming in, replacing the blue skies with cooler temps and strong winds… gusts which kept many of the houses closed in Pompeii, so the experience there was more about dodging tourist traffic and less actual enjoyment of the site. Cold and bothered, I was not as impressed as I anticipated being. (Note: throngs photoshopped out of some of the photos.)

We had heard “all the stuff is at the museum” enough times to plan a half-day at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN) to see the stuff that used to be in the houses and squares, the statues and the artifacts. Turns out that the mummies were actually in a different corner of the Pompeii site and we never got to see them.

Campania trivia #2: There were at least two major towns buried by Vesuvius. Pompeii gets all the hype because it was large and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the structures there were mostly destroyed and much of the wood and organic matter has decayed over the centuries. Its wealthier suburb, Herculaneum, caught the brunt of the pyroclastic cloud, then was encased in ash and rock which preserved its structures much better than Pompeii.

So after the museum, we boarded another train to Ercolano (the modern-day commune built atop the buried city of Herculaneum) to see the ruins there.

Hercules does not disappoint. And so, wandering the more intimate (and way less crowded) ancient city of Herculaneum, we were able to see some intact homes and shops and even a bakery with millstones and a huge pizza oven, if pizza were a thing at the turn of the 1st century AD! Vesuvius looms large here, like a ticking clock.

Enter pizza. Napoli is said to be the birthplace of pizza. Or the motherland of the thin crust Neapolitan in any case. So, erm, when in Rome… We set out to find what is deemed to be the best pizza in Naples. I’m from New York originally, so it’s fair to call me a pizza snob. The verdict? Sorbillo’s is undoubtedly the best pizza I’ve had in years! Is it worth a trip to Naples just for the pizza? I’ll leave that entirely up to the reader.

The highlights? The Toledo metro station is a work of art. The food: pretty good (the pizza, excellent!). The lemons: immense. Steps per day: more than double. Day trips to the islands: a must!

Exit Naples. With pizza and ruins in the rear view, I was glad to see the skies brightening (along with my mood) as we departed Naples for the Amalfi coast.

Stay tuned for Campania Part II: Positano (and ponder what comes to mind when you hear the words Amalfi Coast).

On the first day of Weihnachts…

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I’m sitting in a Belgian café near my flat, drinking chai and pondering the season. I returned a few days ago from a couple of weeks in Aachen which was thankfully slightly more play than work, albeit fraught with logistical calisthenics. But we’re in these times, so it’s par for the course, I guess. Life as a rollercoaster.

I decided to do this trip last-minute, to visit friends, see the Aachen Weihnachtsmarkt, and mostly to get away from the Novemberness here. Having spent nearly 3 months there last year, it was something of a homecoming. Aachen is a warm, charming cobblestoned city surrounded by Nadelwälder (piney forests) and fairytale villages. I probably romanticize it too much but castles and old stone architecture do that to me.

Somehow, the garbage weather kept itself at bay while I had time off, thankfully raining the heaviest buckets whilst I was working, giving me ample time for traipsing the city under gray, but mostly not-downpouring skies. Then, the snow…

It was a whirlwind trip with no real agendas, save mid-week days filled with work and meetings. So I balanced those hours by enjoying cosy dinners at friends’ homes, exploring museums, wandering the cobblestoned streets, savoring hot cups of tea – and glühwein, sampling Weihnachts delicacies (and declaring Reibekuchen the winner!), all the while breathing in the mineral spring-tinged air. For me there’s something healing about being in this city built atop a network of ancient hot springs and rich mineral deposits.

So in the spirit of the holiday, here’s a synopsis of my world for a couple of weeks in early December…During my lightning trip to Germany, Aachen gave to me:

Eins taste of Eierpunsch. This German version of eggnog is served warm and topped with sahne (cream). Sipping Eierpunsch amongst the throngs and din at the Weinachtsmarkt at the Aachen Dom, surrounded by buildings commissioned by Charlemagne and alongside a dear companion I hadn’t seen in too long, marked the end to a perfect day exploring Aachen’s neighbourhoods.

Zwei different kinds of Glühwein: This warm and wonderful mulled wine is served by myriad vendors across the city in fanciful mugs, each commemorative of that year’s Weinachtsmarkt. Glühwein comes in white and red. Jury is still out on which I liked more!

Drei (maybe more) different Christstollen. Each bakery has its own secret recipe, and every Aachenite has their own favourite. Whichever you choose, the marzipan in the center is like finding hidden treasure!

Vier Weihnachtsmarkt. I landed in Düsseldorf, took a train to Aachen, checked into my hotel and promptly crashed for a much-needed nap. Mid-afternoon, I was pulled out of sleep by a friend calling to invite me to a neighbourhood Christmas market in nearby Würselen. Over the course of my trip, I went to Weihnachtsmarkt in Burtscheid, Stolberg and of course the star of the show at the center of Aachen.

Fünf Reibekuchen… That first night, at the Würselen Christmas market, we were about to get something to eat and I noticed a man carrying a steaming plate of a potato pancake-looking thing. They looked simply lecker (loosely translated: YUMMY!) Turns out it was a Christmas favourite called Reibekuchen, made from grated potatoes and onions, fried and served right out of the pan with applesauce. We managed to sample them at each of the Christmarkets… More, please!

Sechs kilos of Aachener Printen that came back to the States with me (Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little bit). Printen is one of the delights for which Aachen is famous. Think gingerbread, heavy on the ginger and crunch, add some kraüter (herbs; each Printenbäckerei has its own proprietary blend), and top with almonds, hazelnuts or chocolate, then serve with tea. The challenge, of course, is to be frugal with the ones I don’t give away and conserve until I can get to Aachen again. Everyone has theirs, but my favourite is the Klein Printenbäckerei.

Printen display in a Printenbäckerei

Sieben(hundert) visions of a king…it was late in the 8th Century when Charlemagne began wintering in Aachen. Once he was coronated King of the Frankish Empire, he built a stunning palace (now the Rathaus) and the Aachen Cathedral (Dom) here. One cannot go more than a block without seeing Charlemagne’s influence on the city (or a likeness of him, for that matter!).

Acht (or more) Aachener Thermalquellen, or mineral springs. There is a network of mineral springs weaving its way beneath the streets of Aachen. With the largest hotspots (as it were) in the Elisenbrunnen and Burtscheid areas, there are public fountains where you can wash in the stinky-but-purifying waters.

Neun (or so) cobbled and enchanting streets, leading to and from the center of town, winding their way around the main attraction: the Dom. Each of these streets looks like it was pulled straight out of a storybook, the old buildings, ironwork, Gothic architecture, fountains, shops and cafés lining the pedestrian streets. Annastraße, Jacobstraße… the Rommelsgasse and nearbly Hühnemarkt, with its Römischer Portikus, a Roman arch looking like it was dropped there from another world until you remember that Aachen was a Roman spa town in the 1st Century AD.

Zehn (probably more) weird relics housed in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury. This museum houses the significant treasures of Charlemagne’s church and was added, with the Dom, as the first German UNESCO World Heritage site. Per the website of the Domschatz, According to legend, the reliquary treasure in Aachen goes back to a gift from the Byzantine Emperor to Charlemagne. Among the relics are Jesus’ swaddling clothes and the loincloth he wore on the cross. It’s no surprise, then, that Pilgrims flock to Aachen to see these treasures in particular, and it is apparently quite the pilgrimage event when they are placed on display. While I did not get the opportunity to see those relics, I was able to view some just as morbidly fascinating: called the “three small relics”, these reliquaries are purported to house a piece of clothing from the Virgin Mary, a loincloth from Christ, and a garment worn during his scourge. In addition, there were oodles of oddities here, crowns, jewels, and other gold carvings including another reliquary in the shape of a large golden arm, housing the bones of Charlemagne’s forearm. Full disclosure: I’m not Catholic, nor do I understand how relics are certified and attributed to their original owners. Fact or legend, these treasures are fascinating nonetheless.

Elf Tore. Not to be confused with the seasonal toy- and mischief-makers, there once were elf, eleven, gates (Tore) along the old city’s wall. Today, only two city gates remain, impressive and substantial, and two of the reasons I adore this city: Ponttor (to the North) and Marschiertor (to the South). Both of which I visited several times during my trip to get my medieval castle-y fix.

Ponttor
Ponttor
Marschiertor

Zwölf (and more) new memories. Am zwölften weihnachtstag (on the twelfth day of Christmas) I won’t have received birds or maids or gold rings or lords or pipers… But I came back feeling grateful and hopeful, enough to tide me through the season and ‘til the next escapade.

The trip was both too quick and just right, leaving me sated with cobblestones and monuments, gothic spires and bronze fountains, medieval gates and 19th Century façades, printen and stollen, food, friends, their dogs and their families…just what the holiday spirit calls for, in any country, in every language.

Frohe Weihnachten. May your holidays bring joy and light, food and warmth, family and friends, peace and simplicity, and may all the wishes on your list come true.

Ode to a mackerel (sandwich)

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It’s no secret that I have a (not-so-secret) long-distance crush on the city of Istanbul. Recently, I ran across the passenger list for my grandmother’s passage to the US on the SS Themistokles on 27 Jan 1915.

My World History is splotchy at best, so my best assumption is that they fled the wrong part of the world at the right time… Gallipoli was mere months away, WWI was still raging in Europe. The US was opening its arms to immigrants who brought innovators and craftsmen and laborers to its shores. They travelled from Jaffa, through Piraeus (and through Cleveland apparently), to eventually settle in Brooklyn. Country of origin at the time (though technically Palestine): Turkey.

So maybe it’s in my blood.

Fast-forward 100+ years and I’m making a hodge-podge breakfast sandwich with what I’ve found in my fridge and pantry shelves: Persian cucumbers, pita bread, some red pepper spread from a jar I picked up in a market somewhere, avocado, smoked herring… I have a momentary and wistful flashback to a fish sandwich under a pop-up tent by the banks of the Golden Horn, in the Eminönü neighbourhood, across from the spice market, this side of the Galata Bridge.

More than New York City, more than Boston, this place calls me.

Balık Ekmek is common street food here, it’s fresh grilled fish served on a hunk of fresh bread with lettuce and onions and lemon juice if you want it as a sauce. It’s not fancy, but it is a simple kind of wonderful. The vendors walk around touting cups of pickles with fermented cabbage and pickle juice that’s meant for drinking. Even for one who likes pickles, it’s an acquired taste.

Eminönü, by the Galata Bridge, across from the Spice Bazaar

As much as the taste and freshness of the mackerel is the destination, what completes the experience and makes one’s senses come alive are the contrasts and interminglings here: the sounds and the bustle of the waterfront, the smells of the roasting corn and chestnuts mixed with the salty-ish city air, the colours and textures of the fabrics, the redness of the Turkish flag.

I’m daydreaming this morning: an ode to a mackerel sandwich, perhaps. The spring is trying to bust through here. And as a fairly dull and dreary winter comes to a close, I feel that familiar tug to the east, a restlessness in my legs to go adventuring, a void in my spirit where spice markets and lutes and zithers and magic carpets seep into my dreams.

Read more about my most recent adventures in Turkey here.

3 months of limbo: an experiment in working, remotely.

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This summer, I finally made good on a thing I’ve been considering for much of the past decade. I schemed with my widely-distributed network of friends, examined my pandemic-induced sense of falling and failing and detachedness and isolation, considered my untethered lifestyle, consulted my supportive and completely remote team at work, and was encouraged by some enthusiastic (and possibly slightly envious) friends at home… I spent 3 months travelling (and working) elsewhere. The emphasis on elsewhere meant that the where needed to be as far away from here as possible given the circumstances.

I set out to see some places in Europe I hadn’t been, and at the same time visit the friends I hadn’t seen in ages. The trip culminated with a stay at a friend’s house and morphed into some subsequent weeks of working remotely from there. Since a large part of my immediate team is in India, the fact that I was in a much closer time zone meant we could have more meaningful meetings and collaborate earlier in their day. Since I was working a different shift, it meant I had time in the mornings to explore Aachen and its surrounds before beginning my day (on India time) and continuing as the US started theirs.

I started the adventure with two weeks off. I visited a friend in Amsterdam and explored a wee bit of Holland in a haze of pandemic-fueled anxiety. I went to Belgium, again visiting a long-time dear friend/co-adventurer to see different aspects of life and leisure there. When my time off was ending, I travelled to Berlin with the intent of meeting a friend there, and again seeing the city through her eyes. We used our yoga to minimise the disappointment that bubbled up when that visit didn’t turn out at all as expected.

As I travelled and saw those I hadn’t seen in eons, I was feeling more welcome away than I was at home, which was part of the impetus to get out of Dodge in the first place. To dodge Dodge, as it were.

From Berlin I went to Aachen, where my experiment in working remotely began in earnest; it’s here where the unintended extension of my trip unfolded. It went something like this: I simply wasn’t ready to go home yet.

A friend who was watching my flat back home told me that it looked as though I had been kidnapped, time stopped, a used coffee mug forgotten in the sink (I wouldn’t discover this until I returned home and the seasons had turned). And maybe I had been, in a way; kidnapped that is: the thought of returning was more paralysing than the thought of staying, even without adequate outerwear, shoes, pants or (especially) a place to spend the next 8 weeks.

Scenes from a soggy sojourn in Monschau

And so I undertook the task of finding temporary lodgings that wouldn’t a) break the bank or b) be too far from the immediate surrounds which were growing on me. I was stressed out and my options were waning as my impending departure date grew closer. My stabs in the dark of finding a place to stay somehow corroborated my poor aim and kicked me in the gut for good measure. Yet against all odds, and as I ran out of options, a personal philosophy reared its head: things work out, just not the way you expected. 48 hours before I was scheduled to fly, it was a near-stranger that came to my rescue. A friend of a friend with a house to lend, asking very little but kindness in return for his generosity. I am still beyond grateful.

These weeks, turned months, abroad meant I lived out of a suitcase and slept on a borrowed bed, cooked in a borrowed kitchen, foraged salad and berries and herbs in a borrowed garden, and woke each day on borrowed time.

I started writing this post weeks ago from the terrace of that borrowed house…in a country where I had only a smattering of friends, a handful of useful words and phrases in the local language, and a suitcase full of chocolate and other consumables that I’d intended to bring home with me weeks prior when my return ticket was supposed to return me to the States. Staying, ironically, felt a bit like I was running away.

To me, Corona-time has felt like a swirling mass of social anxiety, where the rules change by the day and any social awkwardness is put under an electron microscope: my every cell felt on-edge these past months, on the verge of Something Very Bad about to happen. Heeding that, I’d been cautious to exceedingly careful with interpersonal contact. Still, the weeks of travelling and staying with friends were more “peopling” than I’d had in nearly 2 years. I’d been awkward and amateurish with friends, near-terrified of public spaces (especially in Holland, where I’m still not convinced they think COVID is even a thing), and more reclusive than one normally would be on a semi-extended holiday abroad. All the while, I was thankful that Germany seemed much more organised against this mad bug.

And so, on the terrace as I was writing, a silly quote from my college freshman roommate swam into my mind: wherever you go, there you are. Me, in a borrowed house a few blocks from the Aachen Tierpark, where the he-wolf lost his mate and now howls at night trying to find her. Indeed. Here I am.

There’s the Tierpark and also a Bauernhof nearby, giving the air a certain je ne sais quoi when the wind shifts, and the greenery makes one feel like the heart of the city is several kilometres, not blocks, away. I’m working remotely with a laptop and a portable monitor and headset so the neighbours don’t think I’m completely mad. But dodging reality while creating something of a parallel reality is a little weird. Because at the end of the day, regardless of time zone, it’s still me at the end of the Teams meeting or email thread or WhatsApp call, avoiding dealing with the Bathroom Project and the batshit crazies where I’m from, and the local news cycles and the Physical Therapist and the Dentist and the Gynecologist and probably more ists than I’m aware exist.

Wherever you go, there you are. On a terrace, near the zoo, 1000-year-old churchbells ringing out periodically. It’s not bad, here, except that the mad ramblings in my brain are along for the ride as well.

These borrowed or stolen weeks of working and wandering were wonderful, if I’m honest: mornings before work there was time for a walk to the farmers market and chai from the coffee truck, all manner of local goods on offer: cheese and ridiculously fresh produce and local baked goods and regional specialties. Other days I’d walk in the nearby Nadelwäld, following the Eselsweig into the trees, watching the fog lift off the fields, horses grazing in their paddocks without a care.

I met additional friends of friends, coffee friends and friend-friends, the latter with whom I’d go hiking and apple picking and farmers marketing and walking in the days and weeks to come. I think I romanticized the simple-ness of it all, because much of my existence for those weeks was really just about walking and going to the market and the forest and working and making supper and crashing so I could do it all over again the net day. It didn’t suck.

And as the weeks unfolded, I revelled in the quality of life, the simplicity and wholeness: I didn’t drive, I barely even rode a bicycle. Rather, walking the cobbled streets daily, I passed centuries-old city walls and the even-older cathedral. I rinsed my hands in the city’s warm and sulfuric mineral spring fountains, bought yogurt in glass jars and Eier by the half-dozen from a guy with a cart at the farmers market. I picked lettuce and herbs from the garden, made applesauce from the apples we picked on the weekend, and brewed tea with the sage and rosemary and mint.

One morning, a few days before I was to fly out, I was walking through the pine forest with a heavy heart. The morning was also heavy with what felt like change in the air. In an instant, a low fog materialised and weaved its way through the pines, momentarily grabbing my ankles and stopping me in my tracks. The birdsong, the horses whinnying in the distance, the needle-muffled footsteps… it occurred to me not for the first time in recent days, that these small moments are precious. These Nadelwälder would never be the same as in this precise moment. Me either.

Being a guest in others’ lives made me think deep about the long-lost art of hosting. In French, the verb accueillir (to host) also means to receive or greet or welcome. In German, it might be Gastfreundschaft zeigen…the word freund rings clear. Of all the things I learnt on this trip, the strongest lesson was how to receive and be humbled by an outpouring of graciousness by so many who really didn’t have to do a thing. It was a profound contrast to the 18 months of compounded inquiet and trepidation I had escaped, no idea if traces of that would remain when I returned.

So that was the middle part of the story. I took one more sojourn at the end of my stay: I went back to Turkey, unexpectedly solo, and experienced more warmth (human and atmospheric) than I could ever imagine. With that, I left Europe with a renewed faith in the goodness of strangers, realising at the same time how much I needed the independence of that last adventure…Aachen’s hot springs somehow still pulsing in my veins.

My yoga practice has taught me about balance, and the eternal tug-of-war with the concept of enough. This trip taught me lessons in receiving rather than always giving, in letting the Universe set a trajectory rather than charting a course, in seeing what transpires rather than injecting will into an outcome…

Lessons learnt from 3 months in limbo:

  • Bring the warm coat…it will come in handy!
  • Friends come out of the woodwork and surprise you when you least expect it (and need it most)
  • Don’t get attached to an expectation; we are part of a machine that is in continuous motion
  • Make the most of, and work with, what you’ve got…
  • …You can make do with much less than you think you need
  • Friendship is neither transactional nor always balanced, but it is reciprocal
  • Being an introvert in a pandemic comes with its own echelons of social anxiety that the rest of the world doesn’t quite get (and you’re not required to explain)
  • There are more strangers with warm hearts than with ill intentions
  • Show up: physically and intentionally
  • Be deliberate: with words, integrity, intention, respect, vulnerability, action, generosity
  • Accept acts of kindness and pay it forward

Thank you, Germany (and Holland and Belgium and Turkey)… I will be back.