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.

I Heart Prague

Everyone says that Prague is beautiful. And in this case Everyone is right.



We got into Prague two days ago and after five minutes of wandering narrow streets, gazing at the river and the copper spires turned green with age, we stumbled upon an open air performance.

It was modern dance, performed in full suits to harsh repetitive electronic music and with a dozen or so desks as props. Chelsea and I stood entranced for the whole thing. They managed to work in people dropping pages out of phone books from the five story buildings surrounding us and a naked man in a window with a cell phone.



This is the first city where the tacky “I heart 'insert city here'” t-shirts has been tempting. We love Prague.

Also – 1 USD works out to nearly 20 kroner here. And as opposed to Denmark where a similar phenomenon meant nothing, here we got Indian food for two people for less than 10 dollars. As stated: We love Prague.

We spent most of the day, roughly 9ish hours, walking around today.



This though I blame on Paris. A result of our stay in Paris is that we got used to small spaces on city maps taking us a long time to traverse on foot. Paris is huge, so an inch or so on my Paris map is roughly 15-20 minutes walking. But now, in smaller cities, and especially old city centers, we tend to cross whole blocks of the map without noticing – hence we missed Amsterdam’s red light district the first time we walked through it.

So in Prague, when we look at a map with our hostel and the zoo literally on opposite sides and then gauge from our walking the day before that it really wouldn’t be that bad of a trek we shrug our shoulders and head out.



And as we are heading back, it is less of a bother to walk than to try to figure out the bus.

We are safely in the hostel now – tomorrow we take off for Vienna. Our feet hurt and we could stand to do laundry. Soon. But we love Prague. Ciao!

Ocean (Sans Ponies)

Most of you know that three years ago I did the Semester at Sea program – studied on a cruise ship while it sailed places and wandered those places when we got there and there were no diamond ponies in the ocean.

*brief skirmish*

(and I got my computer back from Chelsea…)

I blather about it often, so I beg your indulgence if I go back to it briefly.

Before Semester at Sea I was hugely excited about spending so much time close to the ocean. I’ve been relatively close to Lake Erie most of my life, but it isn’t quite the same thing. The oceans, the seven seas, have inspired so much. Poets and explorers alike have been captivated by the sea for thousands of years. And I admit, I was looking to be impressed.

And I wasn’t, really. It was vast, incomprehensibly so – I remember realizing that it would take me an hour or so walking straight down to reach the earth beneath my feet – but not what I was looking for. It also gave me horrific motion sickness.

I found the ocean fascinating in the way a screensaver can be, or the DVD symbol bouncing ever closer to the corners of a TV. While diverting, it was not the stuff of poetry.

And thus it remained for the first week or so. Then we hit rough water between Hawaii and Japan. The waves were double my height, and the forbidding storm grey, steel gray that is the province of poets. The sun set on this ocean, unobstructed save for the horizon and I leaned out on the slick rail. Sea spray hit my face and I tasted salt. And I have loved the ocean since.

And I have missed her for three years.

So getting to spend time in places near the various oceans and seas has been important, like running into an old friend. Who still makes me queasy if I’m not careful.

We’ve skimmed over our ocean voyages so far on the blog – mostly because the first few we slept through, and our last was governed by incredibly rough water and our gloom at having departed the Englands and England.

I would like to put in a good word for the Irish Sea, as providing a gorgeous backdrop for Wicklow and a sunrise I had not intended to see over it. The residents insisted that it was possible to swim, but Chelsea and I declined.

In Barcelona and Nice we actually went and fluttered about in the ocean. In Nice especially the waves had a kick to them, enough to knock the knees from under you if you weren’t paying attention. And I find it strangely comforting to be so very small and to play, carefully, with something so very big.

In Nice too we got to see jellyfish. Chelsea noticed them first – small black leaf-like critters – and decided it was best to evacuate the area.

She did not tell me what led to her haste. I chilled in the water for another moment and upon perceiving that Chelsea was done with the water I too climbed out. Then she explained why she retreated to dry land. To her credit, she was not sure they were jellyfish, they might just as easily have been leaves and paranoia.

A minute later an older man came towards us, holding out a Pringles can. As Chelsea and I tried to politely decline his offer of chips he showed us a tiny captive jellyfish. He had mistaken it for a condom until he noticed there were lots of them.

We have since learned that these were velella velella and they are Chelsea’s new favorite jellyfish. We have also learned that they are harmless to humans, although one should wash ones hands before touching ones eyes and face after handling them. And nudibranchs eat them.

Now we are on the way to Geneva, and away from the ocean. For now.

(ps. the ponies will make sense next time. Promise)