Little Things

Sometimes the differences in culture are glaring and sometimes it's weird to imagine the massive geographical space between where we are and what we are used to. And sometimes one finds delight in the small changes from home.

We are in Chiang Mai, getting ready to head back to Bangkok and then on to Hong Kong tomorrow. We are past the half way point for this trip - damn is it going fast - and Michael has safely joined us. 

As it is our halfway point we have treated ourselves to a nice hotel, which bears a lot of resemblance to a nice hotel in the states. It's the little things that remind  you how far from home you are. Here's a few:

No durians allowed in the room. 

The books in the bedside table.

Okay, this isn't so country specific, it's just a fun way to let the staff know you want your bed remade.

This one isn't country specific either. But heck, it's fun too.

Each room on the ground floor has it's own koi.

I like the little things.

Balinese Demons and My Inner Pyro

    As I was planning our week in Bali, I discovered that we would be around for the Balinese New Year, Nyepi. I immediately googled the celebration, wondering if we would be in for a crazy party or a super formal ritual. Turns out that on Nyepi, the Day of Silence, everyone stays inside and mostly sleeps. No lights on outside, few inside and no excessive noise. If you leave your hotel, you will be asked firmly by the police to return immediately. And everything shuts down except emergency services and police. The airport is closed.

    I ended up changing one of our flights to accommodate our having one less day to explore Bali and read in passing that there might be a little parade on the night before.

    But when we got here and saw the Ogoh-Ogoh, I realized more research was required. I returned to the internet.

Ogoh-Ogoh at the parade - we first saw them getting them getting their last coats of paint inside the temples.

    The reasoning behind the Day of Silence is that, if we are all very careful, the demons will think that no one lives on Bali and they will leave the island in peace. The parade and party the night before is partially about confusing the hell out of the demons.

    The Ogoh-Ogoh are giant models of Balinese Hindu demons, ten foot tall monsters with overgrown fingernails, and clear anger issues. I'm guessing they were made out of paper mache, but cannot swear to it. They are carried on crosshatched bamboo platforms by teams of men and boys through the street. The more coordinated teams dipped their demons towards the crowd, and kept up a bouncing breath while standing still. They were effectively intimidating.

    Now to the confusing them part - The Ogoh-Ogoh are carried from one end of the village to the other and spun in circles at every crossroad. Fireworks were set off near them (and the crowd incidentally) and finally they were taken back to the area in front of the temple and burnt. If that doesn't disorient a demon, what will?

    The bonfire was huge - like no one within ten feet of the blistering heat huge. 

Bonfire just getting started.

    And along with the traditional Ogoh-Ogoh, was this guy:

Hello, Mr. Reaper sir...

     I've been thinking a lot about whether him being around is a scary sign of cultural imperialism, proof that living religions are awesome, or somewhere between the two. He ended up in the fire, consumed with the other Ogoh-Ogoh, and it was a satisfying bit of ritual to watch 'em burn.

   

Once More with Feeling (or Asia Begins)

In high school, Chelsea and I plotted to embark on an epic Euro trek after undergrad. We had just the right combination of stubbornness and luck and wanderlust to make it happen. We spent three months finding trains and hostels, exploring cathedrals and coffeeshops and chronicling it below. 

And mountains. We climbed a mountain. 

And at the end of the trip, when we had spent 3 months traveling together - I mean, literally in the same room most of the time - we decided we were going to do it again. (May I get an 'amen' when I say 'BFF'? )

In three to five years, we were going to Asia. For two months. We could do it. 

Damn did the last four years go fast.

So here we are, 2014, and we're leaving for Bali on Tuesday to spend two months making our way to Japan. The blog is back up, my backpack is airing out and I have a more precise itinerary than we ever had for Europe.

I don't know what to expect from this trip. Whenever I leave the country, I get anxious. Not from anything particular, I'm just a huge fan of my lovely and familiar comfort zone. Part of why I do travel in the first place.

Right. My dear friends and family. Here we go. 

Bring me that horizon.

^_^

Coda

(I wrote this a few months ago and never got around to posting it because it felt too sentimental. Rereading it today it didn't sound so bad. Here is a last post for Videza. For now.)

So this blog needs a coda. We made it back in one piece, twelve hours on a plane not withstanding.

This is hard to write because I do not have anything revelatory to offer. I don’t actually travel with the purpose of reworking my perspective on life, or finding deeper truths.

I travel because I love it. Because waking up somewhere new, learning a new set of streets, new words for “entrance” and “exit” are exciting. Travel makes time for other things, for thinking and brainstorming without the intrusion of routine, for breathing space.

It’s almost three weeks since I got back to Ohio. Life is different and the same. The strangest part is realizing that most people, everyone except Chelsea, can’t really understand the anomaly of the last three months. It was three months for most people – they worked, they read, they studied and lived.

And for me, looking at the pictures, at this blog. Remembering everything that happened and was said off the camera, it feels intangible. It would not take much to convince me that I never left. That it was a dream.

Which is why it is best to travel with someone you trust, because they will remind you that you were awake. Of the moments when you put your foot in your mouth and the pictures you deleted. And of the occasional dumb wonder that struck at unexpected times, when we realized that first a week, and then a month and then three had passed.

Well, I know you all believed in us, and knew we’d make it safely home. But now we are, and the fact is perhaps better comfort than your confidence. Thanks for reading and traveling with us.

Cheers.

Here and Now

As you gaze across the bobbing sea of heads and cameras, meeting Mona Lisa’s eyes across the room, as the echoes of the constant murmur of “no photo” from Italian polizia fills the Sistine Chapel, as the man next to you exclaims, “It’s a unicorn,” and laughs at the absurdity of the Crown Jewels, one begins to ponder the nature of tourism.

On this trip we have spent not an inconsiderable amount of time in what I would term “dead” monuments. The Tower holds no more executions, no kings live in Neuscwanstein, and the last battle in the coliseum, well, you get the idea.



It’s part of why I enjoy visiting places of worship. Because most of them are still alive.

Now, I will not pretend to be the most reverent of visitors to these embalmed places. I quite enjoy the imagined consternation of the Hapsburg ghosts as they see their venerated grounds invaded by the masses. But why do we go? Where is the line between overprotective snobbery and appreciation, between good humor and a loss of wonder?

When we were wandering the Louvre Chelsea and I were passed by a gentleman with a camera. He walked directly to each case in the room, snapped a photo and walked on. Without looking at what was there. This baffled us then, and still does. Where is the worth in that? What was the point of your admission? To say that you were there?

(And again, I am not above doing some things for the mere purpose of making a factual statement. We took a train ride to Malmo and back, and proudly count Sweden on our itinerary. Yes, yes, laugh at us.)



All of this makes Venice an interesting case. Venice, we were told, is a city of tourists. The old town, the part everyone thinks of when we think of Venice, gave us no evidence to the contrary. We heard a lot of languages, and very little Italian. There were street hawkers and cheap masks, gaudy gondolas and plenty of “I heart Venice” shirts.

And yet.

Some mask shops boast finer ware: fragile metal butterflies and swirls of stiff fabric, glittering crystal and delicate flourishes of gold. Some canals are still a breathtaking aqua, and some streets are deserted, left for the dreamers who wish they were wearing cloaks and lace and had important business about in the floating city.



And then it is back to the irreverent noise of cameras coming on and gelato running down your fingers. And the ice cream is marvelous, and you’ll be glad you got that shot later, when you are trying to convince yourself that you ever traveled halfway around the world.



If any of this seems to contradict itself, then I suppose that’s my point. I don’t know if there is a solution. I don’t know if there is a problem. I’d be sad if these treasures were locked from sight, I am sad that our dead have so little weight.

God's House

Nothing is quite like walking into a cathedral. One immediately looks up, to the dark vaulted ceiling, then ahead, along the row of pillars that disappear into a chapel for Mary or a saint. The weight of that great open space pushes a breath from you, and maybe you forget the camera in your hand and the couple muttering in English next to you.



The first time I walked into a cathedral I was twelve. And it taught me more about religion in a moment then I had learned in all more short life before. It made more sense.

We’ve seen a lot of churches on this trip, and a few spectacular cathedrals – Notre Dame and the York Minister, San Marco and the Sagrada Familia. But in Bavaria we got to see a new kind of church.

Klaus, my mother’s cousin, says that they were built as a catholic reaction to the success of the Lutherans in Germany.



They are perhaps more spectacular because the outsides are so modest – simple pink or white stucco with a copper cap on the bell tower. You do not walk in under a scene of the last judgment, no damned souls.



Where the cathedrals make you gulp, these churches make you want to laugh for joy. They have over-gilded altars, angels and trumpets bursting from the walls, and pink and gold filigree circling clear windows that let the sunshine in. They make you full of wonder rather than the awe of a cathedral.



When you walk in, you still look up. Instead of the imposing stone and shadowed corners are huge rainbow bright murals: more angels and Mary, the infant Christ and various miracles and saints. Even in the small ones. The ceilings are high, and there is still that sense of space, but free rather than enclosed.



On top of that we caught them at harvest time, so in front of every church is a pile of food – cabbages and rice, a round loaf of bread and squash, tomatoes, apples, and zucchini. The expression of bounty is an ancient one: look we have enough food for winter, so we can offer some to God.



On the wall of one of these were small amateur paintings, done by supplicants in thanks to Mary for her help. Klaus deciphered a few, reading the cramped old scripts. And he found one from a family dated 400 years ago. He chuckled because he had taught students from that family.

When we were planning this trip I saved Bavaria as the last place we would stay with family before going south and east to Istanbul. We're very glad we did.

The Mad King

Ludwig the Second of Bavaria might well be my favorite monarch. He’s certainly my favorite crazy one. Where many of the most famous nutters to sit on their thrones got the reputation by the occasional witch burning, random slaughter or horse senator, Ludwig built castles.

And they weren’t just your regular, dime a dozen keeps or citadels, this man dreamed big. Epic. The most famous is unfinished Neuschwanstein, recognizable the world over as the basis for the Disney castle, but he built two others – Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof – which were completed.



Neuschwanstein was dedicated to Wagner and his operas. One room – on the third floor – is a fake cave, stalagmites and stalactites and all, from Tannhauser, and the royal bedroom is decorated with paintings from Tristan and Isolde, along with years’ worth of master carpentry.

I’m sure that as a politician he was a problem. He had a habit of leaving one castle and fleeing to another whenever someone important wanted to talk to him. He did not like to see people. One of his dining rooms has a table that can be cranked down into the kitchen below so he would not have to see the servants.

He drowned mysteriously, along with a psychiatrist who was supposed to testify that he was mad and unfit to rule. He was the last king of Bavaria. Six weeks after his death Neuschwanstein was opened to the public, less than half finished.

The opulence and extravagance of this man, the arrogance and wealth are all apparent in his palace – in the individually painted stones, the gold sculpture of Sigfried slaying the dragon, in the beautiful little fake cave with a window and gilded reading chair looking out on the courtyard.

He doesn’t seem like someone to pity. And we felt so bad for him. Because he never saw the castle finished – because no one tried to finish it for him. Because there is a painting of what would have been his fourth castle on the wall of a throne room without a throne. A tiny silhouette of his next dream.

I don’t know whether he was aware that his eccentricities would make him into a modern fairytale. He certainly had the sense of drama for something like that. I doubt though, that he expected the end. The tragedy. But perhaps he did. He did love Wagner after all.