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.

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.

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.

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?

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) …

Bike to Work

I feel like a hero. Dressed in bike shorts and helmet, rolling right through the carpeted Capitol Hilton past all the suits and heels, I am the girl walking down the city street, turning heads.

This is Bike to Work Day, last Friday. I almost didn’t ride, as I had to attend a conference here, two miles further from home than my usual office—a conference with all the usual expectations (like, wear something other than shorts and a t-shirt, and arrive relatively un-sweaty). Plus, thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon. But Tyler, who commuted to Dupont Circle all last summer, pointed out I could always metro home if it poured, the morning was clear and sunny, and really, who can resist a good bike ride?

So I decided to make a statement and join thousands of others who participated in the annual celebration of the bicycle commute.

Two years ago on Bike to Work Day, I rode to NIH in Bethesda, researching an article about the thriving bicycle commuter club there (Bethesda Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2009). That trip was an eye-opener. After years of commuting just up the stairs to my office, I was surprised at the intensity of a ride I thought would be a pleasant pedal through the park. Instead, drivers on the two-lane road squeezed me onto a tiny shoulder full of gravel and uneven pavement; I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I heard a vehicle approaching from behind, and was relieved to finally roll onto the NIH campus.

Oddly enough, now that I commute to the more urban Union Station neighborhood, I enjoy the ride more. It’s not canopied in trees, like the Beach Drive/Rock Creek Park route to Bethesda; it’s industrial, along beat up back roads with auto repair shops and abandoned buildings, then beside the railroad track and a gravel processing plant. But I have found unexpected beauty along the way: the funneled shape of enormous gravel bins, neatly numbered one through six; the brick arches filled in with more brick, lined up along the outside wall of on an empty building; the pyramid-like hill of black, tar-smelling substance piled up beside the metro tracks. There are the vibrant colors of street murals meant to dress up a transitional neighborhood, the irreverent stencils and scrawled tags graffiti’ed on warehouse walls, the curious establishments I pass (compressor rentals, charter schools, community gardens) and the occasional surprise, like the ripe mulberries, first of the season, fallen onto the sidewalk along the highway.

On Bike to Work Day, it was no different. I pulled my old red Nishiki out of the shed and carried it down the 27 steps from my yard to the street, pedaled up and down the hilly neighborhood roads of Takoma Park, up the sidewalk along New Hampshire Avenue, on to Ft. Totten Drive and then the Metropolitan Branch Trail. At 2nd and M Streets Northeast, I pulled off the trail to hit the Bike Day pit stop set up in the NOMA (North Of Massachusetts Ave.) neighborhood. Since I’d registered for the event, I got to pick up a purple Bike to Work Day t-shirt and a re-usable shopping bag with various promotional brochures plus a water bottle, a bike commuter map, and a tire patch kit. There were also muffins and bananas and friendly faces asking about my ride in to work.

Then I finished the ride, winding my way through downtown D.C. (on hyper-alert for unexpectedly opening car-doors, swerving cabs and turning buses). At the Hilton, the door man tells me the most secure place for my bike is inside, so I follow him through the lobby to the luggage check. The attendant gives me a tag, as if the bike were a suitcase I could pick up later; then I find the nearest bathroom to change into work clothes.

After dipping my toe into bike commuting about a month ago, riding only occasionally, I can now say I am fully immersed and committed to making the bike trail my primary commuter route. I want to tell everyone how, as one of the NIH bikers said, it feels as though I get to play before work. I want to tell them how liberating it is to leave the office building at the end of the day and feel the wind on my face as I pedal home. I want to describe how virtuous I feel for having reduced my carbon footprint, and how pleased I am to save the $6 round trip metro fare to work. And I want to urge everyone to try this for themselves: imagine what a difference it would make if just one in five of the drivers during morning rush hour were on two wheels instead of four.

Of course, I won’t lecture folks into commuting by bike. But I do hope that, striding through the Hilton lobby, I made people think: some people ride their bikes, even on conference days. Maybe I could do that, too.

Sweet on honey

Everywhere I turn this week, there have been sweets. Good sweets.

Not the tired pastries languishing on trays beside vats of big-hotel coffee, or the generic boxed cookies put out at low-rent art openings. These sorts of token treats are easy to pass up. Which is good, since I gave up refined sugar and cane sugar (white sugar in disguise, IMHO) for May.

Harder to resist are the gooey, delicious sweets I conjure up when I’m craving the best sorts of desserts. And, now that I’ve given up sugar, it’s those mouth-watering temptations that keep appearing before me.

Like the cake that called to me from the sideboard at Cayo’s house last week. Cayo is one of the best cooks I know. She once ran a restaurant in Adams Morgan, but more importantly, she cooks and bakes with intention. Though we’ve never discussed this, I am sure that, as she cooks, she thinks of the people she will be feeding, and because of that mindfulness the dishes she puts together become lovely gifts to share with family and friends.

It’s the same thing as putting something of yourself into whatever it is you’re doing. When Tyler was maybe four years old, and we were making cookies or some such kitchen project together, we oooohed and aaahed about how delicious they were, and talked about how they had the “special Tyler touch.”Okay, how corny is that? But it sounds great to a four-year-old, who thinks that he has some sort of magic to create something so good. And then, he does.

Just like Cayo.

Which is why the chocolate cake sitting on her sideboard was so hard to resist. Not only was it beautiful to look at, a deep, dark chocolate stack of at least two layers (I couldn’t look too closely), studded with chocolate kisses and oozing with chocolate frosting. It was also a birthday cake for her daughter (18!!), which makes it that much more alluring.

But I said no, thank you. I’m off sugar for just a month. I figure, I’ve got the rest of my life for chocolate cake, and if I can’t resist for one month, any discipline I thought I had is completely shot.

The other major temptation this week appeared on a plate at book club, from our generous hostess, Ellen. Cupcakes. These were not grocery store dreck, obligatory snacks served because it was her turn to host. They were from Curbside Cupcakes, one of the portable food trucks that travel around D.C., park, and create an exodus of hungry people escaping the city’s office buildings for something good to eat, served out of (surprise!) a truck. Like the Good Humor Ice Cream truck, but for grownups, Curbside attracts long lines of people who order up classic vanilla and chocolate cupcakes or more unusual combinations like vanilla with raspberry icing, carrot cake and peanut butter cup. They are decadent; the mocha at Ellen’s looked especially good.

Again, I resisted.

But I do have a confession. All this resistance is made easier due to the pretty phenomenal substitutes I’ve found for the usual white sugar treats. Starting with Mother’s Day, when Clara inspired me with miniature, sugar-free muffins, I poked around ‘til I found a honey-sweetened recipe for berry muffins that was quite good. There are plenty of other, easier sugarless-but-sweet options, too: fruit with yogurt and honey or agave, maple syrup on pancakes with berries or bananas, fruit-only jam on toast. When you allow for all those other sweeteners, life, is still pretty sweet.

Another favorite: a big schmear of Really Raw Honey on bread and butter. The Baltimore-produced honey, a thick, opaque spread, is so good that, the first time I bought it, the cashier at the food co-op warned me that it’s so addictive she eats it by the spoonful. I feel good about this indulgence, though, because it has bee pollen in it: energizing and healthy.

More unusual is the trail mix I’ve come up with: sweet raisins with whatever nuts are around (walnuts or pecans, usually) and bitter cacao nibs, the little flakes of ground up cacao shells. Yum. And, it’ll give you a kick when the afternoon slump is setting in.

But the best sugar-free sweet treat thus far is so good it really shouldn’t be allowed and does make me question whether eating all these yummy snacks is legit. The secret to this one? Powdered cocoa. Which has no sugar if you buy it in the can for baking. I wound up with Ghirardelli brand, since the day I bought it I happened to be in Whole Foods, and they had no (much cheaper) Hershey’s.

So here’s the recipe, if you want to call it that: Put raisins & walnuts into a favorite bowl, sprinkle a teaspoon or two of cocoa on top, drizzle on some honey, and add a couple teaspoons of cream. Stir it up for a while – at first the cocoa will be powdery but eventually it all incorporates into something that is awfully close to a candy bar you can eat with a spoon.

Suddenly a month with no refined sugar seems delicious.