Sunday, June 26, 2011

Adventures du la toilette




Remember the book, “Everyone Poops,” from potty training days? Well, here is the European version: Everyone Pees. In all kinds of places. My favorite new-and-different European bathroom element is the happily ubiquitous dual flush toilet, commonly found in restaurants and hotels (including ours). There is one button to press if you want to flush after #1, and another button to flush after #2, which flushes more water, for that heavier load. When is the U.S. going to catch up with Europeans and make these simple water-saving devices a part of the common lexicon?

I also liked the highway bathroom stop we made in Switzerland. This ESSO gas station was situated in the bottom of a bowl of mountains somewhere south of Altdorf, with views worthy of a highway overlook. In the bathrooms, there was a gizmo to clean the toilet seat before you used it, plenty of toilet paper, soap and those hand driers that involve inserting your hands in a sort of envelope, where hot air blows on them and you slowly extract them to see that, voila! They are dry!

We did have to pay one euro for the privilege of using this uber-clean toilette, but the view outside was free: plus, just off the parking lot was a small pathway to a fast-running river, with a straight-up wall of mountain across the water. Photo-worthy.

Less appealing was the beside-the-highway stop, I think we were still in Germany at that point. This was a scenic overlook-type pull-over, but without the scene, just a bit of woods and a big group of white-haired tourists in the parking lot holding small wine bottles and posing for a photo. There was no bathroom—just a path in the woods with telltale squares of toilet paper here and there along the edges. So much for the legendary German sense of propriety and perfection. I picked my way down the path, hoping that German poison ivy would look the same as American poison ivy, so I’d recognize it before choosing the wrong spot for my toilette, so to speak. And I took care to bury my own toilet paper under a bit of moss.

More interesting – though I’m not sure it was much better – were the toilets in Bellinzona. Typical of Italian toilets (according to my more well-traveled bathroom buddy, Nikita), these involved two foot pads with treadmarks (what, in case you start to slide into the toilet below?) on either side of a hole in the ground. Well, it’s a porcelained hole in the ground, but still, it is on the floor, and you are straddling it and squatting. Okay. So I gamely hang my bag on the hook on the back of the door and squat. But somehow, in the middle of this process, my eyeglasses fall from where I’d hooked them on my shirt, and fall right into the hole.

I now know that hand sanitizer is actually a very good thing to carry along. And that it works on eyeglasses, just fine.


Perhaps the best way to avoid a dirty bathroom is the sign we saw in a Locarno, Switzerland cafe, on the men's room only -- shown at the top of this post. How not to pee.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Bella Bellinzona



We pulled into town around 19:00, aka 7 p.m. (Europe seems to prefer what I think of as Navy time) looking for Tsui Fok Chinese restaurant. We’d read they have rooms to rent and this was confirmed by a friend who grew up in the area. But never having spoken to anyone who’d stayed there (and not knowing the friend’s taste in accommodations) we were unsure what to expect. The price was low, for Bellinzona (and for Switzerland), but more than the youth hostel (which was full). Would it be a find? Or would we find dark, narrow hallways permeated with the smell of fried egg rolls?

From the road, the building looked clean-lined, an ochre-colored stucco two-story with plenty of windows and balconies overlooking the quiet street just a block or so from the old town center. We walked into an airy foyer with a statue of a Happy Buddha grinning merrily at the entrance, and a brisk but smiling, round-faced, middle-aged Chinese woman showed us down the (well lit) hallway to our room.

Big sigh of relief.

Four beds, a sink and a wardrobe, whiter than white sheets and colorful comforters. Then, a big wow when we stepped onto the balcony: breathtaking views of the mountains and castles that embrace this little Swiss village.

This was a happy introduction to a short but very full stay in Bellinzona. That night we found the Corona, a restaurant recommended by our friends (thank you, Franca!). Aptly named—“Corona” means “crown,” and the town boasts three castles replete with kingly history—this spot also gave us a proper introduction to the distinctly Italian flavor of Ticino, this southern region of Switzerland.

Everyone here speaks Italian, including a staff of those young, good-looking waiters not only brimming with a mix of bravado and joie de vivre, but also with an infectious and inclusive spirit that makes you feel as though they’re about to let you in on all their inside jokes.

Our tables on the breezeway outside the restaurant was situated so that, just over Joseph’s shoulder, we could see the pizza man rolling, then throwing disks of dough and sliding them into the wood-burning oven built into the wall. Our pizza had eggplant and white asparagus, an unlikely combination that worked beautifully. There was also a carafe of the local merlot and insalata mista, something we’ve found at several places since but never quit as good: a selection of mixed lettuces, grated carrots, beets, corn and tomatoes. It all came together for that perfect European café experience you hope for: historic plaza, friendly restaurant, great food.

After dinner we wandered around town and walked along the lighted ramparts of the Castelgrande, carefully avoiding young couples smooching in dark corners and clusters of teenagers hanging out on the steps and in grassy courtyards. This castle and the associated city walls are so much a part of the town it seems their stones are as likely to pop up beside clothing stores and gelato shops as beside the castle gates, they are so integrated into the daily landscape.

The next day we took history for a walk through modern Bellinzona, renting audio tour phones from the tourist office and walking through the very much living streets of the villages founded around 900, steeped in centuries of long-aspt tradition, and still loyal to much of it. For example: the medieval market described by the tour echoes the present-day Saturday market in the square. And the fountain where we refilled our water bottles was the gathering place for villagers filling their vessels with the same mountain water back in Bellinzona’s earliest days.

Our audio tour took us up the white tower of the castle for sweeping views further up the mountain, where two similar castles guard the town. Then it was time to move on down the mountain to our next adventure: Locarno and Lake Maggiore.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Small Town Detour




One of the great things about this holiday is that we pretty much make our own schedule, and can get off the autobahn at will for a two-hour lunch in a cute town so charming it merits a return visit. Freiburg, Germany is a place we read about, as a center for solar energy use, and since Germany just declared it will lead the world and go nuclear-power-free, I thought it particularly appropriate to visit.

Alas, in our lunchtime stopover we saw nary a solar panel but we did see a city heavily reliant on the bicycle, and walking. Bikes were everywhere: a dozen parked in an alley, big clusters of them (think hundreds) in plazas and people pedaling everywhere. I especially like the various sorts of carrying baskets, mostly rigid and wire-based, others like milk crates, some soft-sided panniers. Two young women pedal by companionably riding side by side, one in hot pink tights, a short brown skirt and boots. A young mama is walking her bike, with one small daughter in the back of the bike child seat, and the other perched on the seat, though I don’t think she could reach the pedals.

I was able to buy a pair of reading glasses in Freiburg (triumph! Purchasing in German! With help from my mini-German dictionary!). We saw remarkable paving stones – tiny, one-inch ovals all fit together like mosaic, and bigger brick-size stones laid in intricate circular patterns along a plaza – plus a small work crew, including a father and young son, tap-tap-tapping each small stone into place, repairing a disrupted patch of street.

We also found a great vegetarian restaurant, with fresh salad, lentil/apricot/pepper soup and to finish, schokofondant (a tiny cake-like-pudding-like, soft-centered chocolate cake in a glass, Betsy, think pudd-ake) and espresso. Best. Lunch. Stop. Ever.




The bikes in the photo are actually in Heidelberg, Germany -- but we easily saw this many in Freiburg.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Castles on the Rhein



The second full day of our Germany/Switzerland holiday, we took a boat tour on the Rhein River. This meant boarding a tour bus with 31 other people and trundling up the mountains to a spot where we boarded a big vessel that took us all—kids, old folks, middle aged folks, everybody—up the River together.

I have never been a tour bus traveler, but it was lovely to just sit back and let our German driver, George, navigate the highway along the Rhein and listen to him tell our American guide about fishing the river, which has recently improved enough to support salmon. (Really? I think of salmon in Alaska and Washington, big roaring rivers, not wide, docile ones like this section of the Rhein. I’ll have to look it up).

Anyway, before we boarded our river boat, a.k.a. floating restaurant with phenomenal river views, we toured Castle Rheinstein. Our hostess: the owner of the castle. No, she did not wear a princess gown—she was a middle aged, pleasant, sharply dressed German woman who spoke accented English and told us the history of the castle, which she and her family acquired in 1975.

How does one acquire a castle? It must have been one big estate sale. Turns out the former opera singer, Hermann Hecher, bought the place from the Duchess of Mecklenburg, and our lovely hostess married into the Hecher family, who has worked hard to restore the property. It is now open for tours, events and romantic outings.

The place looks as though it was carved out of the rock on which it perches over the river. It has a couple of lovely courtyard gardens, a knight’s hall with a suit of armor, and a princess floor with a music room and a bedroom including a short bed we were told accommodated a lady who slept sitting up, to preserve her hair do (Clara, aren’t you glad your hair is so short you actually CAN’T do a ‘do like that?!?!). Above her quarters are the prince’s rooms. No kings and queens here, apparently –the prince and princess had a son though, another prince. Both prince papa and princess mama had a tiny room in the tower (one stacked above the other) for writing. Cozy. Though, I imagine, cold. I wonder if they had some sort of portable fireplace/radiator arrangement? Coals in a bucket, maybe? Something more to research.

My favorite part of this castle is what our guide called the “time out bucket.” This looks like a gigantic planter basket made of iron in a woven pattern, and hung from an outer tower over the steep embankment – i.e. over nothing but air. If someone misbehaved, they were put in the basket, and left there indefinitely. Worse than Tiger Mom, I would say.

This castle, built in 900 (imagine, a year so long ago it has only three digits!) is just one of many along the Rhein. One around every bend, it seems—we saw them once we got on the boat cruise, unbelievably—and I meant that literally. It was hard to believe the scenery was real: actual castles, neat lines of brightly colored houses with window boxes overflowing with flowers, and vineyards everywhere, striping the steep hillsides like corduroy and sprouting out of backyards so frequently that I realized the true meaning "house wine"--wine from grapes one grows outside one's house. It all seemed as if it were all right out of a picture book.

We imagined what it would have been like to live here back in the day—would castle kids have play dates with the kids from the castle across the hill? How did they cross the river? Did they paddle or row? Was there a ferry? Did they just hang out in the castle smelling roses and growing grapes and making wine (there were even vines dripping from an arbor over our heads, while our hostess described the castle’s history—the tiny, bead-sized grapes on them would be ripe in September, she said).



I think if I returned in September, I might bike along the river, rather than take the bus. But for a whirlwind tour, this was a great option.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

When in Rome




Okay, I’ll admit it.
I am feeling superior, with my bag of nuts and seeds, surrounded on this flight (to Dallas) by passengers eating Auntie Anne’s soft pretzels and the Dunkin’ Donuts #1 special: coffee and two donuts (though I did think, as I stood in line a bottle of water, that if I bought a donut, it would be one of those hot pink ones with sprinkles. Might as well go all out if you’re doing donuts).

Beyond the issue of healthy vs. unhealthy food, bringing my own snacks also has something to do with controlling my own micro-environment, even traveling, when the environment, by definition, is changing all around me.

Why do we travel?

To experience different environments. To let go of our known world and dive into something new.
But I wonder if part of travel is about the triumph of maintaining our own comfort zones (however shrunken they become) in the midst of a world of unfamiliar newness. Of encountering a never-considered-before food, but having the Pepto to counter its affects. It reminds me of a guy I met in the Hiking and Outing Club at Appalachian State University – Dick—who was a gear geek. He went winter camping in the snowy Blue Ridge mountains and had so much gear insulating him from the cold weather, I thought of him out there in his own personal bubble of comfort, warmth, food, soft sleeping surface. At the time I thought this distancing from the actual environment really defeated the purpose of the hike.

Despite my bag of nuts and seeds, I will remember Dick, and strive to leave the bubble behind. The flight to Dallas connects to another to Frankfurt, then I’ll be traveling in Germany and Switzerland, immersing myself in the countries and cultures I am visiting.

By the time I get there, I will give it up for weiner schnitzel and cheese. Skipping the Dunkin’ Donuts at the airport is a forgivable omission.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Mulberry Street


You would think that a commute into the city would be a mundane sort of thing. Metro riders buried in their newspapers, or nodding off on their way home. Suits swinging briefcases, heels clicking along sidewalks to get to their various climate-controlled offices, and back again.

But there is much more to see if, as the sage Dr. Seuss advises, if you keep your eyelids up.

One day, it is a woman with hair so long she lays it across her lap on the train, brush-brush-brushing it as if it were not actually a part of her but as if it were a particularly beloved pet. Another day it is a procession of a dozen white-robed priests walking down 2nd Street, singing so quietly I am immediately uplifted, even though I have no idea what sect they follow.

These snapshots are everywhere: a pair of young men walking in lockstep down the sidewalk, matched so perfectly it is as if some illustrator has drawn them there: dark pants, dark shoes, pin striped shirts, computer bags slung just so, the only difference is the length of their shirt sleeves. A middle-aged African American woman wearing her hair in a blond Mohawk. An animated business man chatting on his cell phone while pedaling his bike, fast, down F Street. A young mother nursing her newborn at a sidewalk café. A fast-walking young man placing an icy cold soda in the outstretched hand of the homeless guy at North Capitol and First as he passes, no words exchanged, just a small gift on a hot day. A drunk careening into traffic, saved by less-drunk friends unsteadily pulling him back to the sidewalk.

“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” follows Seuss’s young boy as he imagines his way home from school past elephants and Eskimos, a magician, a brass band. ”Say! That makes a story that no one can beat,” he said, “When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.”

I wonder what he would see here?

Friday, June 3, 2011

Finding inspiration: Busboys and Poets



On the menu at Busboys and Poets, interwoven between the lists of tea (chamomile or chai?) and sides (collard greens or sweet potato fries?), are philosophical bits from writers and philosophers and poets, including Camus— “Peace is the only battle worth waging”—and Benito Juarez—“El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.” On the walls, sketches of the Apollo Theatre and Lenox Avenue recall the Harlem Renaissance, and quotes inspire—“Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly”—and provoke—“Art is dangerous.”

The place is full of conversation, even during a weekday lunch, and people are encouraged to sit at community tables to meet and discuss art and politics. But it is not only this atmosphere of open exchange and progressive thinking that draws me here: it is the menu – which, actually, is an extension of its philosophy. It includes free-range, locally-raised, grass-fed beef from Grayson Farm (the burger is great), and local greens from a place called Community Offshoots Farm Network (how can a place with a name like that be anything but good), and there are loads of vegan selections and gluten free beer and sustainable seafood and fair trade, organic coffees and teas. Even the cleaning products here are eco-friendly, and the restaurant uses 100 percent renewable wind energy, recycles its cooking oil for biofuel, and turns all the profits at the attached Busboys book store back to Teaching for Change, which runs that portion of the enterprise. On the entertainment side, there are open mic sessions, films, book signings and poetry readings.

Sitting in the midst of all this intellectual activity reminds me of my younger self, passionate about justice and art and ideas. That sort of open, full-throttle and, yes, youthful embrace of the world tends to fade in the workaday life of the middle aged. A trip to Busboys and Poets is just the thing to goose me back into awareness.

One of the reasons it works, I believe, is that it is not force-fed to me, like a prophet on the street corner. All of these ideas and poems and artworks are folded into the fabric of an everyday activity: eating.

My favorite example: this poem, printed in the menu between a notice about Free WiFi and the list of other Busboys and Poets locations: It is from the restaurant’s namesake, Langston Hughes, who placed a handful of poems on the table of poet Nicholas Vachel Lindsay one night at the Wardman Park Hotel where he bused tables in the early 1920s and thus earned the moniker, “a Negro busboy poet.” It hits me like a prayer:

Let America be America again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain,
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(American never was America to me)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed –
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me) …