secret 5 - honeymoon(s)

i've been on three honeymoons. two were my own and one was a friend's. (and i'm going to present them out of order.) EDITED: i'm highlighting the friend's honeymoon. because it's really unusual for someone to go on their friend's honeymoon (there have been misunderstandings on this point so i felt i had to explain, tho' one would have thought that was rather obvious).

honeymoon #1: the starter husband and i went to vancouver for our honeymoon. that trip is when i had the only good white asparagus i've ever had--in a restaurant called the hermitage, where the chef was the former chef of the king of belgium. other than that, all i really remember is a trip to a japanese garden that was so peaceful and beautiful the memory of the atmosphere stays with me very clearly even today.

honeymoon #3: what i think of as my real honeymoon, when husband and i went to london for a quick weekend getaway after we got married on his birthday in 1999. he was at the military academy and could only take one day off, so we got married in a very small, very private ceremony then shared a glass of champagne with his solder friends who had shown up to make an arch of swords for us and ran off to the airport. we had a wonderful weekend wandering around london and being madly in love.

honeymoon #2: my friend gabi's honeymoon. in truth, i wrote about this a long time ago before anyone was reading my blog, but it's such a good secret, i had to use it anyway. i also previously told the story of getting my visa for the trip in this post if you're interested.

it sounds a bit strange to say i went on someone else's honeymoon, but in all fairness, gabi and i had planned the trip to visit our friends in kazan together and then she suddenly decided to marry her longtime boyfriend. since she already had the trip planned and the friends were expecting us, they turned it into their honeymoon. however, i already had tickets and my visa, so i went along too.

it was a wonderful trip. we flew to moscow and took the 13-hour train ride to kazan. you can see us drinking tea on the train above. i completely adore russian trains and some of my fondest memories are from journeys on trains in russia. i can highly recommend them.

we met up with our friends in kazan and i went off with my pals and left the honeymooners to themselves. i vaguely recall that we bought some vodka in a kiosk (big mistake) and proceeded to have an evening full of toasts and laughter. the next day, some other friends came to pick me up and take me to their dacha, but i couldn't really stop throwing up after all that really bad vodka. i meekly took some truly awful black substance that i think contained a lot of coal which was handed to me to try to help me stop throwing up (i was weak and defenseless) and then spent the rest of the day recovering at the dacha, which was beautiful and idyllic.

a few days later, i rejoined gabi and her husband and we boarded a beautiful old 1950s steamer for a cruise up the volga river to moscow. that was a truly wonderful trip. long, beautiful summer days, interesting stops along the way. i still have a handmade basket that i bought from an elderly woman all clad in black who was selling baskets and mushrooms she had found in the forest.

we were the only foreigners onboard the cruise and i remember a long conversation with an elderly gentleman who informed me that all americans are black, tall and played basketball, because that was the impression he'd gotten from the NBA. he was surprised and a little disappointed that i was none of those things and i think he may not really have believed me that i was american. he kept asking if i wasn't from the baltic states.  that probably had more to do with him not expecting an american to speak russian and my strange accent, which was always being called prebaltika by various russians. i don't know why i'd have a baltic accent in russian, but apparently i do.

time slowed down there on the volga. it stretched out in a very good way. there was time for writing in my journal, sketching, reading, exploring long-abandoned old manor houses and churches along the banks of the volga. lots of time for talking to people, hearing their stories. drinking countless cups of tea and the occasional glass of vodka. the locks were fascinating, as were beaches where people swam next to signs saying "danger zone." all of the contrasts and beauty and vastness of russia were there. i loved every minute of it.

in some ways, it was actually my friend's honeymoon that was the best of the three i've been on. that's a little bit funny, isn't it? maybe because there were far less expectations attached to it than to the "real" ones. and maybe there's a lesson for all of us in that. tag along on your friend's honeymoon. you'll have a great time.

catching up

so, i'm back home from wonderful oslo (i know, that's copenhagen's phrase--wonderful copenhagen, but i'm appropriating it for oslo). it's friday night. sabin and i just played a fun drawing game and now she's watching friday night t.v. and since i'm not that keen on it, i'm looking at all the blogs i've missed out on over the past nearly two weeks--one without internet and this week where i was working.

my german friend gabi, who i met while studying in kazan in 1994, has a blog and i just discovered that during my offline time, she actually wrote about MY blog on hers! thank you gabi!! how cool is that!?!

we met while we were both studying russian at kazan university (she was much better than i was). she lived with aida and diljara, two young girls who were lucky enough to have their own apartment. i lived with an ancient old soviet apparatchik who would wax philosophical about stalin with tears in her eyes after a couple of shots of vodka every evening. so, you can imagine that i spent a lot of time with gabi and aida and diljara, drinking endless cups of tea from the samovar and talking and going for walks arm in arm. those were truly wonderful days. it was winter when we arrived in kazan and we saw spring come and begin to be summer. it couldn't have been more wonderful...to see the world thaw and turn green around you, together with great friends who you laughed and made music together with.

gabi and i have managed to keep in touch...at times sporatically, over the years. but, it has always been a friendship that was instantly back to the same level of closeness as soon as we were together, no matter how long we'd been apart. i have to give her a lot of credit--she's been the one keeping up our contact over all these 14 years--writing wonderful REAL letters that came in the mail. she was a bridesmaid at my first wedding in the US and sang at both the wedding and reception. i can still picture my uncle who had been in germany during WWII, standing there with tears in his eyes, as she sang marlene dietrich songs at the reception.

and these days we're talking a lot more online after i left my job (and remembered what was important) and after she and her son, benjamin, visited last fall.

as she says on her blog, i went on her honeymoon. that sounds like a totally weird thing to say and an even weirder thing to do...but to defend myself, gabi and i had planned the trip together first, had gone through the whole invitation/visa process and THEN she decided to get married and bring along her husband. so actually, he came along on OUR trip, as i remember it. and, she and i are still together, but she's not with him anymore....so that speaks for itself. wouldn't you say? :-) and it was a wonderful trip...sailing on the volga on an old river cruise vessel from the 1950s...on "local" tickets, purchased for us by our friends in kazan. to this day, when i catch a whiff of esteé lauder's white linen breeze, the perfume i happened to have along on the trip, it transports me back there instantly, to those leisurely summer days along the volga.

what's wonderful about gabi's blog is her level of raw honesty...she shares her innermost thoughts and revelations. it's sometimes shocking, but mostly it's very revealing and you're left breathless at how brave she is to share herself in that way. go and read her, i guarantee you'll want to keep going back. and, on top of it, she's a professional musician and makes podcasts of her music available on her site!