part 1 :: long weekend in berlin :: gracious hosts

i went to berlin with a friend. she wanted to visit some old friends who she hadn't seen in nearly 20 years, so we hopped on the train (at 5:30 a.m.!) and headed down for a long weekend. on the first afternoon, we happened upon a super cute little bar called misirlou and had a cocktail. it was so nice, we made it our "regular" and went back every day of our trip. emmy hadn't tried aperol spritz before, but she was hooked. i had the mezcal sour. yummy!

her friend, gertraude pohl, is an artist. she and her husband were famous artists in the old east germany and in fact, the last time emmy was there was for his funeral. gertraude is still a working artist and her two daughters are carrying on their father's woodworking legacy in a studio at the back of their home.

they live in the loveliest home - half of a huge, three story house on the line between lichtenberg and pankow. they were the most gracious hosts and we enjoyed a beautiful lunch when we arrived - a delicious balsamic potato and tomato tart and elderflower lemonade.

 

the home was filled with objects collected over a long lifetime and it was so comfortable and inspiring. there was something interesting to see and be curious about, no matter where you looked.

shelves filled with interesting books, big windows with plenty of natural light pouring in. 

art - made by gertraude and norbert and others on the walls and shelves. there's even a candlestick by my favorite danish ceramicist in the middle of the shelf. 

a mix of furniture collected over a lifetime, which somehow just all worked together.

small collections and gatherings of mementos that invite you to have a closer look and ask to hear their stories.

gertraude's work on the wall in the living room.

norbert's woodwork on the top shelf, photos, books, and just a warm, cozy, inviting feeling. it was really inspiring to be there. gertraude didn't speak english, but her daughter, who lives with her, did and so we muddled through in a mix of english, german and danish. we had a lot of interesting conversations and i learned so much about east germany and how life was in east berlin. 

out of travel practice

after two and a half years of pandemic, i was out of practice traveling when i went to valencia the other week. lies. actually, i had done another trip to amsterdam a few weeks before. but still, i felt out of practice. when i went to amsterdam, i flew from billund, which seems like it doesn't count, since it's kind of not a real airport. anyway, i digress. this time, the trip started in copenhagen, which is still my favorite airport. 

since we were filming and recording a podcast, i had a lot of gear, so i had to have tickets where i could check two bags, despite flying shorter distances within europe. that meant that my ticket was business class. on air france. the very first time i ever flew business class was on air france, so i had good associations (that one was from atlanta to paris in about 2000, so a little different), but being out of practice, i didn't really know what to expect. and one hears so much negativity about air travel after the pandemic. 

and i have to say that air france has done nothing but up their game. the flight attendants were amazing, as was the smoked salmon croissant, the yogurt and the champagne. they were friendly, not snooty, very service-minded (topping off the bubbles, yes please!). it is amazing what great service and the feeling of being seen does for your stress levels. i was so relaxed when we arrived.

it was so fun looking out the window and being ahead of the engine. that's the mediterranean down there, as this was on the trip home, as we left valencia. i'll admit i feel a little shallow when i think about how much i enjoy being in business class. it's the same plane. we all get there at the same time. but the extra smiles and topping off your bubbles make a difference, they really do. plus, all the bags made all the flights and came off the belt close to the beginning. it just felt like luxury. and air france rocked it. i would never have expected that, but it seems they've really stepped up their game after the pandemic. too bad none of the other airlines seem to have done the same (i'm looking at you air canada and lufthansa).

the business class tickets even entitled us to the air france business lounge at charles de gaul during our four hour layover on the way home. what luxury! it was a great trip. and even if it's a little bit shallow of me, i really did enjoy flying business class. it had been too long. 

watching the sunrise from a plane

i had the privilege of watching the sun rise over europe as i headed from copenhagen to paris (and on to valencia) last week. it went from purple to pink to purple again and pink again and finally, as we were coming in to land at CDG, i could even see the eiffel tower. and i felt consciously aware of the profound privilege of getting to travel again. the world is a wondrous place if we pay attention. and i'll admit it also helped my appreciation that i was in business class, even if it was a short flight.

valencia stole my heart

 

after two long pandemic years, it was so nice to travel again. and even better, i got to travel somewhere new! i went to valencia in spain. it was for work, but happily it coincided with spain's national day (they also celebrate columbus, apparently), so i had one day off in the midst of it. or actually, not really, since i sat at the hotel and worked for most of that day. which wasn't really that bad, because it's quite energizing to work from a different location. and at least i got to experience the festive atmosphere of everyone having a day off mid-week. and i ate some truly delicious food.

it was perfect weather - warm, balmy evenings, where a dress and sandals were enough and no jacket was needed. the food in valencia is incredible everywhere we tried. they have so much local produce, so it hasn't traveled to get there, which also makes it surprisingly affordable. the tomatoes were probably the best i've had since those from my dad's garden at the height of summer during my childhood. 

it also struck me that all this talk of inflation and a recession was really not in evidence in valencia. there weren't empty stores and restaurants and bars were full and stores were buzzing. it made me wonder how much that story is over-blown by the media. i do know that inflation is real (every time i go to buy butter and milk), but i'm not sure that people are holding back all that much. unemployment is at historic lows and it seemed like the economy was buzzing along in spain. i wonder what storylines we are being sold and to what purpose.

i wish i'd had more time in valencia. i'd love to have explored a whole lot more. the cathedral there claims to house the real holy grail and i didn't get a chance to see it. since it was work, we had some long days, but they were also great and on the whole, i felt that old feeling that i used to feel - that my batteries are recharged by travel and new experiences. i will definitely be returning to valencia, hopefully with husband and the child (who is actually a young woman these days) in tow. although i will never get to experience it for the first time again, seeing it through their eyes for the first time might be a close second. it's such a chill, laid-back, secure-in-itself city, that it's definitely worth another visit.

in the liminal space

in a little over 24 hours, this will be the view! despite all of the traveling i've done over the years, i still get the good kind of butterflies when on the verge of a trip - i love the energy of an airport, filled with people who are going somewhere. people are generally in a good mood, either happy to be heading off on a trip or happy to be home again. there's an excitement in the air. sabin and i are headed for the US tomorrow afternoon. first, we have the sad occasion of my mother's funeral and then we have a long road trip to phoenix with a couple of stops to see friends along the way. although the funeral is somber event, i am looking forward to the closure i'm sure it will bring. we are planning music that mom would love and going to give her a good send-off. our bags are packed and we're ready to go. husband is taking us to the airport tomorrow, but before that, he's going to a job interview for an exciting position he really wants. i just did a video interview for a position that i'd really like to have. so, here on the verge of all this travel, it feels like so many great possibilities are opening up. it really feels like the beginning of a new chapter, even as we close the chapter on my mother's life. it's that liminal space - where everything feels fairly quivering with possibility - and the feeling is heightened by impending travel. it's been too long since i felt this way. it's nice.

making my way through the fog

we have the most beautiful, long, strangely warmish autumn this year. since my dear bloggy and real life friend, cyndy, died, i've found myself consciously paying more attention to the beauty of the world around me and stopping to appreciate it. i've been pulling the car over and carrying a real camera with me again, rather than only relying on my iPhone (tho' that camera is pretty good these days).  the other day, the camera actually had a hard time finding focus in the fog, but i liked the shot anyway. it kind of conveys my life of late - the path ahead is a bit foggy and uncertain. things are a bit in turmoil at work, with multiple reorgs over the past year that have bounced our department all over the organisation, landing it finally in a strange place where it doesn't really fit. it's draining. i'm a person who can tolerate a high level of uncertainty, but being tossed all over the organization and not really feeling as if all the work you do is particularly appreciated takes its toll after more than a year. so, i've been feeling a bit like i'm not sure what's next. do you wait for things to get better or do you seize other opportunities? i'm doing a little bit of both at the moment. the actual work i do is wonderful and engaging and i get to work with some amazing photographers and filmmakers and tell great stories and that's been keeping me going. i've also been seizing every opportunity i can of late to travel and it helps to be away from the cramped, dark space we've been been banished to in another building since just after the summer holiday. i've really come to realize how important your workspace is to your satisfaction at work. and how important it is to have enough space around you and not feel like the desks are all crammed together. we've very crowded now and when people are on the phone, it's completely impossible to get any work done. i find myself dreading going to the office these days and i never felt that way before. your surroundings just matter so much. and so, i travel all i can. this week, it's berlin and istanbul. and i can't wait!

venice for the first time

sparkles in the water. sunshine. a winding maze of streets. earthy tones, laundry on lines hanging overhead. gondolas. glass. coffee. pasta. buffalo mozzarella. bacalao. art, architecture. canals. dead ends. did i mention the sunshine?

venice is spellbinding in its beauty. it's been there so long, you feel it resting in itself, rather oblivious to the hordes of tourists. and yet still overrun by them. there's no escape really. i myself was acutely aware of the excess noise my suitcase made as i wheeled through the ancient pavement towards my hotel. i wanted to be quieter, more gentle than that. to step lightly, and i did, after stowing my bag at the hotel.

once again, i had that sense of awe in the face of the first time. this was it - my one and only first time visiting venice. i may go back, but that will be with this experience under my belt. i'll never see it again as a venice virgin. i'll never feel the duality of the weight and the lightness of that experience again in exactly the same way. and i did my best to be conscious of it. to look around, observe, enjoy, savor, bask. there is so much beauty, so much history, so much awesome coffee. i tried to just take it all in and just BE in it, no filtering, and no processing, just enjoying. i think that for a change, i was able to do that.

and on that cloudless autumn day, venice must have been at her very best and it made me feel that i was too.  what an amazing experience it was.

road trip :: brobergs take the south 2018 :: part 1

we had a family road trip in the southern united states this summer. we visited 6 states none of us had ever been in before - tennessee, alabama, mississippi, louisiana, florida and south carolina.  the others hadn't been in georgia before, but i had. and technically, i flew through miami in 1988, but that doesn't really count as being in the state. this time, we visited beaches and the state capital, so it must count. i expected to have heavy exposure to trumpanzees, but we didn't actually speak to a single one. that surprised me quite a bit, but then i saw this piece in the nytimes - it seems we followed that blue route through the south, perhaps guided by some subliminal survival instinct. or maybe we just didn't really talk to enough people along the gulf coast. but we also ran into a surprising amount who vocally volunteered their embarrassment at the mangled apricot hellbeast.

a quick list of impressions/lessons/thoughts:

~ two weeks was just the right amount of time, even tho' we did have our occasional flagging moments. at the end, i was both longing to go home and wishing we still had a few more days and that's exactly how it should be.

~ cheesecake for lunch is awesome in the moment, but come late afternoon, proves not to be such a good idea.

~ way-finding and map-reading were the biggest challenges, even in this day and age of ubiquitous gps. we didn't have a phone plan where we could roam, so we were constantly looking for wifi to help us do our route planning. in the morning, we would plan our route in google maps while on wifi and then the gps does actually follow where you are, but if you deviate from the route you planned while on wifi, the google maps app doesn't handle it well. also, husband was horrible at being the navigator if i was driving, which is weird, because he spent 18 years in the military and is otherwise good at maps. everyone stayed happier if i did the map-reading and husband did the driving. tho' even then there were a couple of kerfluffles. lesson was that maybe we should just know where we are in a general sorta way. and we did buy a big atlas of the united states. it helped out on the highways and byways, but not as much within cities.

~ several of the best things we found were quite random -  a cooling creek/waterfall (mardis mill falls) on a hot alabama day, windsor ruins off the natchez trace, which we found by talking to an older couple at another point of interest along the way, and the space museum just over the louisiana-mississippi border on the way towards biloxi.

~ we actually stuck to our budget and we didn't really deny ourselves much to do so.

~ since we were five more or less adults, we needed two hotel rooms, so we were looking for rooms on the budget end, since we were mostly looking for a good night's sleep and not a place to hang out. plus, we wanted to save our money for great coffee, fun experiences and shopping in goodwill! after a few days of disappointment in the mid-range ($65-$80/night) hotels, we looked to airbnb, and we felt much, much happier. there, we found quirky places with personality, a bit more luxury and charming hardwood floors, still in our price range. if you haven't tried it, i'd be very grateful if you used this link when you do.

~ you should stay off the interstates and get onto smaller highways and byways. we did some of this, but undoubtedly not enough. when you do hit the small highways and byways, make sure you have a full tank of gas, as gas stations can be surprisingly few and far between. we stopped at one in a small town in mississippi where it was clear we were the only white people who had passed through in a long time. that made for some amusing conversations while we waited to use the bathroom.

~ shopping at goodwill is awesome and our child is a wizard at finding the best stuff there, no matter the location. probably the best one we visited (and we tried to visit as many as we could) was the first one, south of atlanta. maybe our eyes were freshest, but i think it also had the best selection. i got an awesome t-shirt that says, "sorry i'm late, i didn't want to come." that makes me laugh.

~ there seems to be a disturbing trend in the states - one of which i was previously only peripherally aware - from barbara ehrenreichs' amazing nickle and dimed book, but never imagined i would actually encounter (which sounds more arrogant than i mean it to). when we were staying at the lower-priced hotels, it seemed like many of the other patrons were folks who seemed to be living with what they euphemistically call housing insecurity. it appeared that the hotels were full of people who probably had work, but not enough money for the deposit on an apartment, so they were forced to live on a weekly or even day-to-day basis in these hotels. i was waiting to ask for a wifi sign-in and i witnessed two young women paying their rent, peeling the fee off a roll of one dollar bills (perhaps from waitressing tips). initially, they gave the clerk, who was behind thick bullet-proof glass, since it was nearly dark, less and he said, "no, it's $63." the second girl reached down her cleavage and got a roll of her own bills out and peeled off the remainder, saying, "there goes my fun money," and rolling her eyes. i felt a little bit shocked. others stood in their doorways, smoking or chatting on the phone, obviously very at home in the hotel. it made me aware of a stark reality in my home country. and also acutely aware of my own privilege.

and on that note, i'll sign off for now. more about the trip, with actual photos, tomorrow. i'm still sorting through all of them.

vilnius :: a hidden gem

if you hang out with me on instagram, you know that we spent last week in lithuania and we loved it. there are a few shots of sights that i actually managed to take with the real camera and not share on instagram. i'll admit most of my shots were taken with my iPhone 7+ - that camera is the shit and hey, it's right there in my pocket. but lithuania was really great. it's lovely, with cobblestone streets and beautiful buildings, vilnius is totally walkable and full of cafés where you can a seriously excellent latte for €2. i highly recommend it. it's like prague without all of the awful tourists. shh, it's a hidden gem. and i don't want everyone to know about it and spoil it. because i'm definitely going back.

there's only one first time

when i was in paris a few weeks ago, i was thinking about how you only get one first time experience of anything. it was quite remarkable, as i walked down a wide boulevard in montparnasse, to look up and see the eiffel tower glowing ahead of me (this photo above is when i got a bit closer). i had a little moment of thrill, thinking consciously, "this is my very first look at the eiffel tower." despite being late in november, it was a balmy, autumnal evening and i just kept walking towards the tower as it shone brightly above the city. finally, my feet were tired and i was hungry, so i popped into a restaurant for oysters and foie gras and a glass of sancerre. it felt suitably parisian and worthy of a first paris experience.

i had a similar moment of conscious thrill as i looked out over the cranes of what's now called remontova shipyard in gdansk, but which were surely once the cranes that the members of the solidarity movement operated as they helped bring down the iron curtain. the peaceful morning, the dusting of snow, and the cold, crisp air, filled with the musical clangs of a busy shipyard.

and at that same shipyard in poland, i stood underneath a ship for the first time. i'd been at yards before, but never down in the dock, underneath the ship itself. it happened again later in the summer in bremerhaven, but it didn't quite match the awe of that first time, standing underneath pearl in gdansk.

i'm not sure if i even know why or how the white cliffs of dover have the mystique they have, but they do. the town of dover isn't much, but the cliffs are spectacular. i saw them twice this year and they were a bit more glorious in august sunshine than they were in april, but there is still only one first time.

i went to brussels about a month after the bombing of brussels airport. the square was still filled with these tributes and i was quite overwhelming, standing there, looking at all that evidence of love and sorrow both. not a moment i will likely repeat.

so many first visits this year. gothenburg in sweden was new for me. i strolled around the port area on the gorgeous summer evening when i arrived, eventually going back to the hotel for dinner, which isn't something i normally like to do, but this was an exceptional meal. i think it was not only the delicate light flavor of perfectly cooked, lemony sole, but it was also the midsummer light. they combined to make it a memorable first experience.

i spent quite a lot of time at a shipyard in bremerhaven. we ate ate at every restaurant along the old riverfront, eventually concluding that they all shared the same kitchen. but balmy summer nights and the beauty of all those cranes, made for an experience that undoubtedly will not be duplicated.

i'd been in klaipeda before, but it felt very changed. and i'd never seen vilnius or kaunas. the weather was spectacular. i would love to go back, restore this old waterfront warehouse, opening something wonderful...restaurant, b&b, creative workspace for artists. we'd just have to leave those braces in place, because i'm fairly certain they're holding it all together.

the lovely, winding streets of tallinn old town were a first. i want to paint something that color blue. i fear a bit that my first impression of tallinn was tainted by all that i'd heard of it before i went (funny how that hadn't happened with paris), and i somehow felt a little let down. i think it's because all of the shops felt like they were filled with the same things and i had thought it would be this magical place, full of unique artisanal items. but alas, the same linen and wrought iron and knitted woolens filled every shop. the food was great and the winding streets charming.

a sunset on board a ship in the north sea. that was a first. and the best night's sleep i had all year. that's an experience i'd very much like to try again. but alas, you can only have one first time.

* * *

i forgot to tell you about totally lost. 

check out my albanian bunkers, but do stay and poke around a bit.