Preface

When we moved from the kitchen to the adjoining room the conversation changed entirely. We walked on white carpet past the Waterford crystal vase, the marble-tiled mantle, my grandmother’s china cabinet, the family portrait hanging on the wall, and assumed our seats on stiff and unfamiliar couches. This was the room we never entered. This was the room that symbolized my father’s career success, the room visitors would compliment from the top step, the room only the occasional housekeeper would venture into with a feather duster. My sister and I were forbidden from horseplay in this room as kids—it housed far too many ornaments and family treasures. We referred to it as the living room. Rather ironically, no part of my existence had been spent living inside its walls. And yet, here I was, a happy-go-lucky college senior, face to face with my dad, about to engage in a conversation that would change the entire course of my life.

Of the countless lessons I learned from him, one of the most poignant is the practice of letting your opponent speak first. I sat back on the couch, allowing him to offer the first words, and studied his face. It was a face I admired intensely. It showed his intelligence, his tenacity, his grace. It reflected merciful patience and intimidating power all at once. From my earliest memories it had been covered in a thick beard, a beard that recently had become tinged with gray around his mouth and chin. I realized then for the first time how much it showed his wisdom. His big forehead was marked with the wrinkles of his notorious scowl, the furrowed brow that could send even the most steadfast adversary into submission. But two inches higher, just beyond his curly hairline, hid the scar that reminded me of his vulnerability. I noticed it, and thought of the day years ago when I painfully realized he wasn’t invincible.

He was all things to me. He wouldn’t know it then, in the obstinate attitude he was about to encounter, but I had always wanted to emulate his life.

My dad must have realized I was applying his own lesson to this tense moment. He looked directly into my eyes, and as only he could, uttered four words that brilliantly put the onus back on my shoulders.

“What is your plan?”

I wasn’t ready for the question. I fidgeted with my pant leg. I rubbed the back of my head. I scratched my ear where there was no itch. I filled the air with incoherent sounds, searching for the words I could not articulate. He watched me squirm with a hidden smile. He was in the power position. He could have ended the conversation right there by expressing his desire, but instead he left the question open, and forced me to put into words what had been bouncing around my insides for the last year.

“I want to go on a trip,” I stammered.

“A trip.” He did not form the words as a question, but rather returned them in the same tone I had used. Hearing the words repeated revealed how outlandish my statement had been.

I was five months away from completing my undergraduate degree at a small private university in San Diego—an undertaking that had depleted a small fortune. My dad subsidized my education and sponsored the college experience that was to ready me for the real world. He provided me the tools to start a career and build an independent life. He had given me an oyster, and within it were all the opportunities a young man could ever need. And what did I intend to do with it? Go on a trip.

The wrinkles on his forehead contracted to their infamous pose.

Confronted with the question, I spoke out about the truest feeling in my heart. I wasn’t ready for a career, probably because I didn’t know what it really meant to have one. What I did know was that I had within me a burgeoning desire to explore the unknown. When I allowed myself to daydream, my thoughts were always filled with images of distant places. I had an ache in my soul to cast off the ropes of my everyday surroundings and take to the road. Nothing excited me more than the thought of walking the streets of a city I had only read about in books. The sound of a language I had never heard, the smell of food I had never tasted, the sun setting over an ocean I had never seen—I would fantasize about these things and wake up to find the hair on my arm standing on end. Travel and passion became the same thing in my being. It was there in the living room my passion came violently crashing against my reality.

My father’s genius was manifested in his ability to let me speak in circles until I uttered the seemingly unprompted words he wanted to hear. He sat back, offering a gentle nod here and a reassuring gesture there, as I exorcised the fantasies from my mind and replaced them with the pragmatic statements of a promising college graduate. By the time we got up from the couch I had resolved to initiate an aggressive job hunt, and had established a thirty day plan for reporting results back to my benefactor.

I had seen the light of logic. It became clear how crucial it was to prove to my dad that his investment had been worthwhile. I was a walking dividend. I was determined to begin the next stage of my life with purpose. Graduating from college was an accomplishment, but the full reward of the achievement would not be realized until I was gainfully employed. I converted my passion into a quest to become self-sustained.

This new passion made me happy, and ultimately the possessor of a respectable W2, but it never made my hair stand up. What I didn’t understand was that in all of my effort to bury my need to explore and embrace the practical goals of adulthood, I had actually been loading a small fire with piece after piece of parched kindling. It would only be a matter of time before that small fire exploded into a wild inferno.

*A note to the followers of The Distant Adventure:

A respected friend, aware of my return to the United States, recently asked me to bring closure to the blog, to post a final word about the adventure, or at a minimum, assure those who care that I did not tumble over one of those perilous cliffs on the Tizi-n-Tichka Pass. Well, to the vast relief of two doting mothers, Jeannie and I did survive the trip and have returned to a somewhat familiar life at home. While cleaning out my pack, laundering my five t-shirt wardrobe, and sleeping in one bed have been natural aspects of my homeland transition, the emotional adjustments have taken more time. In fact, I am still, one month after my final passport stamp, still constantly reflecting on the adventure and how it has changed my life. I have come to accept that the answers to the mysteries I sought before the trip still elude me in many ways. The optimist in me yearns to be believe that this can only mean one thing: the quest must continue! I will write and publish posts as inspiration strikes. In the meantime, please know that if you are reading this, you have brightened my world. Thank you for sharing in our dream.

Mountain Chameleons

I couldn’t seem to shake them from my mind. Not the ear-piercing flute of the snake charmer, hypnotizing cobras and onlookers alike; not the spice vendor slanging kaleidoscopes of powder, stacked and packed in meter-high pyramids and coded with signs like Camel Dust and Moroccan Viagra; not the twisted alleyways, no wider than a donkey’s back, inspired by the design of a spider’s web, and packed with someone selling something for everyone—none of these things could distract me from the call of the mountains. Beyond every corner, behind every minaret, beside every smoking food stall, there they were, beckoning with their heaven-high peaks, luring me with their purple glint. I had no choice but to answer their call.

This summons led me to a man named Mustapha, a company called Rabib Cars, and a five-speed Peugeot 206. With a bag for the night, a be-safe kiss from Jeannie (who felt equally compelled to stay and explore the world class market of Marrakech), and a tattered road map of Northern Africa, I set off on the only road out of town—a sand-blown, cactus-lined strip of cracked pavement buried under the mirage of sweltering dust.

There are no foothills to the Atlas Mountains. The tallest range in the northern half of the continent interrupts the terrain like a wall. It tells the ancient story of an epic battle between two formidable pieces of the Earth’s crust. It is unclear who won, but the scars of the fight are haunting. Sheer cliffs, sharp and serrated, look like they’ve been carved with razors. Massive gorges sink so deep it is impossible to see the snowmelt carving tracks in their basins. Depending on the position of the sun, and the ever-changing flow of clouds in the sky, the mountains are red in one glance and black in the next.

The road that cuts over the top of the range, called the Tizi-n-Tichka Pass, is as goofy as its name, so composed of switchbacks and hairpins it seems to spiral in circles. From the hawk’s view it must look like a Dr. Seuss illustration. Climbing over the top (wearing out the sole of my shoe on the clutch) was as dizzying as it was harrowing. Hugging the two inches of road between the oncoming six-wheeler carrying goat cargo and the cliff that plunges back to Egypt, I was moved to curse the infrastructure of the Moroccan interior—a simple guard rail would have brought some color back to my knuckles.

Boggled that sheep can exist in such a place (flocks dot nearly all of the open pastures across the range) you can imagine my amazement at the discovery of human beings. I had been climbing the mountain for nearly two hours. I had traversed well over a mile into the sky, having long ago left behind the settlements of accessible life. In and out of clouds, I continued to putter up the hill, stealing glances at the summit around the bend and the free range stock on the mountainside, when suddenly a two-legged animal leapt into the road. Big eyes stared at me through the windshield. Bow-legged and crouched at the knees he looked ready to pounce on the hood of the Peugeot. His hands were gripped to the sides of a rock the size of a softball. I was so startled I nearly spun the steering wheel right into the gorge. When I steadied the tires my options flashed across my mind like a movie reel. I wasn’t leaving the road, I knew that much. This man had deliberately jumped in front of the car. Above all this, he was armed and appeared rather dangerous, wielding a stone of just the right dimension to eternally deter a visitor from crossing his pass. I followed my mortal reflex and continued steaming up the lane, directly at the man in the road.

His eyes got bigger as the engine revved. I took one hand off the wheel and laid it forcefully on the horn. I jammed the accelerator and the rear wheels kicked gravel like bullets. At the last second, the very last second, he skirted the side of the car like a matador dodging a bull. I let out a visceral growl, mostly fueled by immense relief, and looked at the man in my rearview mirror. In the vibrating reflection I saw him spin around toward my fleeing car, his hands still wrapped around the stone. He opened his palms and the rock came apart in two pieces. He held them open for me to see, revealing brilliantly dyed quartz, glimmering like red diamonds. As I made the next turn and he fell out of view, I heard him shouting in the distance, his voice trailing away in the mountain air. “Fifty, fifty dirham! Only fifty!”

Never having been confronted with such a direct sales technique, I shook my head in wonder and vowed to greet future road vendors with less hostility. I had heard tales of the Berber people of the mountains, read about them in a guidebook or two, but witnessing their lives, and their mysterious ways, was an entirely different learning experience. They are chameleons in the truest sense of the metaphor. Their villages, known as Kasbahs, are constructed in the very quarry used for the building material. The result is a settlement that is literally one with the Earth. There is no interruption between the hillside and the home, no difference in the cliff and the kitchen. It is entirely possible to drive by the dwelling of one hundred people and never see it at all. And I think that is exactly how they would prefer to have it.

Cairo to Casablanca to Marrakech to Madness

As it turns out, the African continent is much wider than one might easily believe. Weaving through the sky, one moment above the Mediterranean, the next over the dunes and barren rock outcroppings of the Sahara, the flight from Cairo to Casablanca takes every bit of six hours. Looking down from 32,000 feet on Libya and Algeria (my mind drifting to thoughts of closed borders and the “Even More Distant Adventure” of the future), I was overcome with thoughts of the value added to the journey by Egypt. Egypt is so much more than pyramids. Sure, the famous icons must be taken in (they are the last standing memory of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), but they are not the reason to travel to this fascinating place. Egypt is the birthplace of one of the world’s earliest civilizations, but it is the Egypt of today that makes for the most enriching exploration. It is the winding alley between Africa and the Middle East, it is desert and sea, it is a faded memory of lavish times, it is poor and crumbled and corrupt, it is smiles and heartache, it is sobering and intoxicating—it is a must hit for anyone with a sense of adventure, or even just a burgeoning desire to witness the unexpected.

We arrived in Morocco, the smell of sweat and butchered animals from Khalili market still clinging to our luggage, to a sparkling airport, French language directories, porters shining marble floors, and hallways of boutiques and patisseries—all antithetical to the developing world. We looked at each other with smiles that reflected disbelief, and hidden relief in the calm and order of the place. The air-conditioned, European-made train that transported us to Marrakech was clean and comfortable. We detrained to welcoming and honest faces, were given a fare price for the cab ride to our hotel, and were escorted down wide, open boulevards of swaying poplar trees and elegant fountains spurting in grand roundabouts. Our three-star booking for the night was brand new, boasting the cookie-cutter-meets-chic feel of somewhere like suburban Orange County. It was all too much to take. Our first impressions of Morocco were analogous to the feelings we had upon arrival in Kathmandu, but from the opposite end of the expectation spectrum. It wasn’t until the next day, when we ventured into the labyrinthine souqs (covered market streets) of the old medina, that we discovered the true face of Morocco—a face that would slowly reveal itself to us, one mysterious feature at a time.

Two Sounds

It finally happened. In the legendary El Fishawy coffee house— a Cairo institution for 242 years, a framed mirror of the same age, pocked and rippled, reflecting the numberless faces of Egyptian society, cigarette and flavored shisha smoke hanging in the air like velvet drapes, a prize winning cockroach, well fed and confident, scuttling unfazed along the frame of the doorway, camel leather bean bag cushions threaded with opulent beads, a turnstile of toothless hagglers and touts slanging swords, snake skin wallets, King Tut masks, braided anklets, golden Aladdin lamps, lotus extract perfumes, henna tattoos, and the most destitute, Kleenex, a team of demonstrative servers barking at the constant rotation of sludge-sipping locals and starry-eyed visitors, trying to keep their wits in a place that effortlessly strips them away—an Arabic speaking woman looked me over then spoke to the man beside her, who after releasing a hearty laugh, smacked me on the knee and shouted through a smile, “She said you look like Jesus!”

The woman turned out to be the only Christian we met in eight days, so I assume she would know.

I will be the very first to admit the beard is not handsome. It is unkempt and unbecoming. Aside from my moustache, which insists weekly on falling over my upper lip, I have only trimmed my facial hair once in nearly four months (sixty days ago in an Indian barbershop called Habib’s). It protrudes from my cheeks in puffy tufts. When I swim it holds water for almost half an hour. When I wake up in the morning it is matted and flat, but by the time I sit down to breakfast it has already spread its wings. Sometimes it itches and chafes. It requires a vigorous shampooing at least biweekly. I am not proud of it. To be honest, there are times when I am mildly ashamed. Between my recycled clothes and the beard, most people I meet probably think I am on some type of spiritual pilgrimage, wandering the Earth, exploring the world and my place within it…wait a minute.

I suppose, more than anything, the beard has become a symbol. It is a barometer. It tells the story of how far we’ve come. It reminds me of the freedom, so sweet and special, that has filled our hearts. It is the physical realization of the absence of rules. It is a silent protest to the regulations that govern our normal lives. It stands for the temporary casting away of responsibility. It embodies the spirit of the vagabond that has taken hold of us and transported us to places we never imagined we would see. It is the symbol of happiness and discovery and wanderlust. It reminds me of the beginning of my marriage and the living out of a dream.

There will be two sounds the moment it comes off: my tears landing in the bathroom sink, and Jeannie’s lips hitting the cheek she hasn’t kissed in two months.

Fasting and Feasting

At the moment, Cairo is a city completely drenched in religious commitment. Every breath, every bow, every waking moment is spent in observation. The very ticking of the clock represents the transmission of God’s time. Their religion is in their clothes, in their speech, in the air they breathe. It is on the face of every man, woman, and child—deep reverence and faith, so palpable it pours from their eyes when they see me, from their mouths when they address me. Their religion echoes off the walls of the vaulted bazaar, bounces down the blind alleys littered with shiny streamers, rises from the footsteps of elders in gallabiyas and burqas. They emit the kind of passion and exuberance that is powerful enough to grab you by the neck. Uniformed policemen stop in the middle of the street to read the Qur’an in a full and bold voice. When the ear piercing call of the muezzin rings down from the minaret on every city block, shopkeepers take to their knees in the middle of the crowded market, prostrated in prayer, removed from the scene by some higher audience. They close their eyes and bow their brows to the earth, oblivious to the sale they so zealously pursued just moments before.

We have called upon this Arab country of nearly 75 million Muslims during the most holy period of the Islamic calendar. Ramadan is in full tilt, and the ferocity that occupies daily life the whole year round has been elevated to a fever pitch. This holiday lasts one month, and brings with it each year a particular set of traditions and rituals, the most paramount of which is the requirement to fast, a giving up of four particular pillars of daily life. From sun up to sun down Muslims are not permitted to eat. They are not permitted to drink either, even water. Smoking is forbidden during this time, as is the company of your husband or wife, meaning no touching of any sort. It is a time to endure daily life without distraction, to reflect on the importance and power of God. And the Egyptian people are steadfast. A large meal is consumed before four o’clock in the morning, and then believers commit to zero intake of food and water until the sun has set at six o’clock in the evening—a fourteen hour fast, everyday for a month.

After four days of drinking Turkish coffees with sugar in the morning, eating large kebab lunches at midday, and guzzling waters in the afternoon heat, I decided I couldn’t bear the burden of asking one more fasting Egyptian to serve me a meal. My effort to assimilate needed to take on new meaning. I made the decision to fast. Not for the remainder of Ramadan (let’s be realistic), but for one day. I would eat no food and drink no water and not touch Jeannie from dawn to dusk. I recruited her brother, Russell, and his girlfriend, Amelia, for moral support. I realized doing it alone in a group of four might be too tall an order—my will is strong, but so is the force of peer pressure. So the three of us formed an alliance, and set a plan for a midnight meal that would have to provide sustenance for one entire cotton-mouthed day.

Before our day of fasting I spoke with several Egyptians about our plan. I was met by all of them with the same reaction—a deep belly laugh, followed by a battering of questions that always concluded with a resounding, “Why?!” I would respond with pleads for advice, hoping for a tip or two from a fasting expert. The wisest words I received were these: “Eat yogurt before sunrise, and then rely on the strength of Allah throughout the day!”

The day of the fast was predictably hotter than the other seven we spent in Egypt. The desert sun was scorching the second it showed itself. I was hungry when I woke up. By noon my taste buds were completely shriveled. My tongue was sandpaper. Bottled waters came to life and screamed at me, raining down on me with cartoony taunts. My lips smacked together at the site of apples and bananas on the nightstand. By late afternoon my anguish had reached its peak. I smelled a morsel of food in the hotel lounge and almost crumbled. But as the clock ticked past four, like a marathon runner visualizing the final mile, I refocused myself on the goal, and rather than being bothered by the thought of food, I let my mind dream of the feast that waited just beyond the setting sun.

And what a feast it was.

Plump and pickled green chilies stuffed with jalapeno cheese, cubes of feta over ripened tomato slices, potent salad of chopped basil and white onions in olive oil, softened grape leaves stuffed with salted vegetables and cumin, smoked ham and aged beef, wood oven fired bread (crisp and soft in the same bite), a dozen different spreads and sauces in hues of lavender, olive (green and black), crimson, and speckled yellow, lentil soup so thick and rich a fork might be a better tool than a spoon, saffron rice with veal heads, cow stomach loaded with spiced rice and partitioned to bite-size chunks, grilled salmon with rosemary potatoes, gravy-drenched prime rib, kebabs of every shape and texture (skewered and spun over endlessly fanned coals), baklava by the pan load, powdered donut balls, coconut bars drenched in honey, and finally, three or four bubbly puffs of cantaloupe flavored shisha.

After our traditional meal it became quite clear to me why Ramadan is such a treasured time in Egypt. The nightly Iftar feast that follows the fast is one of the most wonderful eating experiences imaginable. We sat amidst Egyptian families, with the sound of ouds and other Arabic instruments harmonizing in the background, and witnessed them throw off the shackles of the day, breaking bread with one another and rejoicing in the blessings of life, thanking God for the gift of food, drink, and surely after the final embers of the shisha pipe have been extinguished, the pleasures of the fourth pillar of the fast.

The Bendel's Are Coming!

There might be light at the end of this unbelievable travel tunnel, but I can rest peacefully about this fact knowing that I’ve witnessed two particular events: Grandpa Bendel backpacking in Italy, and his son (my father-in-law) on the back of a camel in Egypt. These are images, which while naturally have been captured for eternity on film, are undoubtedly burned permanently in my mind’s eye. It is my wish, and duty, to share these images with the readers of the blog, and at the same time give thanks and pay my gratitude to the Bendel family, a clan of incredible people that not only made the Distant Adventure possible with their overly generous support, but with their emotional backing and love. To Gramps and Carla Fischera and Joy, to Russ and Judy and Russell (and Amelia!)—this adventure couldn’t have happened without you, either from home or from the entrance of the Coliseum or from the alleys of Khan al-Khalili!

His Holiness

I knew she meant business. The alarm was ringing at the same the sun was freeing itself from the clutch of the Roman horizon. She was out of bed, showered and primped, before I had time to clear the creases of the pillow from my face. She had even, to my dismay, bedded down in a damp and dark motel room, turning a blind eye to the ring of dirt around the mattress, solely because of its proximity to the Vatican. Donning a long dress, a shawl, and a glimmering crucifix around her neck, Jeannie looked down at me in bed and asked me if I was coming, knowing full well such an invitation was irresistible. The Pope was in town. He was to address a group of pilgrims in the auditorium behind St. Peter’s Basilica. The Swiss Guard would be checking for tickets, the kind of tickets that required half a year of correspondence with the Church. This fact did not bother Jeannie in the least.

The sacrifice of the damp pillow proved worthwhile when we looked up at the walls of the Vatican City just steps from the motel. Dressed in my Sunday best (gelato-spotted khakis and a thrice-worn shirt), I nearly tripped over myself trying to keep up with Jeannie. As she motored across the square, domes glinting overhead in the morning light, I could see that she was suddenly overcome with fervor. The symmetrical columns of the Basilica, the copper ornaments and bells, the realer-than-life statues on its roofline, the vaulted archways like passages to centuries past; these are the designs of heaven’s architects, and when beholding them amidst the company of visibly giddy nuns, balding robed monks, and five thousand joyous fanatics, it is hard not to be inspired. But there was no time to stop and marvel. Jeannie was on the move, dipping and plunging through the throng, searching (the way only she can) for just the right opportunity to free someone from their two extra tickets.

Sometimes I wonder if as a child she was installed was some kind of computer chip, a visual aid that allows her to scan a crowd, target an individual and immediately calculate the perfect approach. What looks to me like one more bobbing head in the crowd must be a glowing red arrow in Jeannie’s eye. When she located her arrow she absconded in its direction, leaving me behind in a precarious tip-toe between the tiny feet of a hundred elderly nuns. When I finally caught up to her, having moved more than one sister to mutter a sin under her breath, she was accepting (with a radiant smile) two golden tickets from a young priest. She held them in her right hand while holding the shoulder of the suited man in her left. Her eye twinkled for the clergyman in such a way, bold yet demure. I think he was ready to leave the priesthood there and then.

She turned to me, her body tense with energy, and mouthed a silent scream. I’m not sure what excited her more, the thrill of success, or the fact that we were five minutes away from seeing the highest agent of the Catholic faith.

When he appeared, to the uproarious clamor of the crowd, he seemed to glide like an apparition above the marble steps of the stage. His long garments swayed in slow motion around his concealed feet. He was a vision of white; his robe, his sash, his hair, all glowing like they he had been lit from the inside. He appeared like an animated spotlight, raising his arms in triumph and tossing rays of light over the enchanted crowd. He was encircled in a halo-shaped aura, a force field of power and reverence. He was met like a rock star about to perform a famous guitar solo, the crowd swooning at his every subtle move. The pilgrims around us waived their national flags, Poles, Portuguese, Germans, Czechs, Spaniards, Scots, Brazilians, Chileans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, all competing for a just a papal nod. When he would acknowledge their presence, they would erupt into song, singing words of praise in their native tongue, swaying arm in arm, then embracing each other with complete abandon. The rapture of the crowd contrasted with the stoicism of the Swiss Guard and the papal entourage was startling. And there we were, somewhere in between, reveling in the experience and the mystery of the glow of His Holiness.

Green Shutters

It’s hard not to love a place whose pastime is to stand in a third floor window, the shutters tossed open, languidly gazing at the hustle of the daily happenings below. You never know what you might see from such a perch. A fisherman turned salesman, his rod traded for a calculator, hawks the catch of the day, sardines and scampi from ice buckets. Old women haggle over the just the right weight on his scale. A shopkeeper unlatches his doors and slides a postcard turnstile out to the street. A chef peruses wicker baskets of fresh produce; peppers, red onions, tomatoes, garlic, and eggplant, displayed in a kaleidoscope of bountiful heaps on the sidewalk. A uniformed busboy eases a hand truck down a flight of stairs, carrying two cases of Chianti to a restaurant cellar. A tourist attempts to frame the perfect photograph, adjusting the lens over the shadows of bed sheets and boxer shorts drying in the breeze, pinned to balconies and clotheslines with wooden clips. One smitten couple departs just as another arrives, steeling a final glance at the diamonds dancing over the sapphire ripples of the Mediterranean. This is Cinque Terre. To resist its charm is a futile exercise.

I instead surrendered myself fully, and discovered a piece of remote and rustic Italy that will linger in my mind for many years. This twenty kilometer strip of the sundrenched Italian Riviera, five hours by train from Rome, is linked together by a set of small coastal villages. The communities are carved into granite cliffs that pour down to the sea. Were they not painted in brilliant yellow, pink, and red, the dwellings would probably disappear right into the rock. Homes are stacked on each other like coins, as if there were a race to be closest to the water. Each tiny village has an even smaller marina where row boats and orange buoys bob in the waves. Weathered grape vines cling to hillside terraces that look like the stairways of giants, climbing all the way to the peaks of the surrounding mountains. A salty haze hovers over cruise ships on the horizon.

Being in Cinque Terre is like walking through the pages of a magazine. It’s like you swear you’ve been there before but never dreamt you would be able to go back. It’s new and nostalgic all at once. It’s the kind of place people go to visit and wake up five years later with bronze skin and an Italian accent.

The Proudest Scharetg

Being a Scharetg, Part 3

When the village castle, now converted to a fifteen room historic hotel, was inconceivably full (it’s hard to imagine a No Vacancy sign in such a place), our intention to stay in town was somehow commuted to an invitation to sleep in Judith’s home. Once I got around the imposition of the matter, I was beside myself with excitement. A real life Swiss home stay? With foreign Scharetg’s? I filled my head with these jubilant thoughts for the entire two hour drive from Lucerne. When we left Paspels last summer, we told Judith and Lisbeth we couldn’t resist being away, that we would return within a year. The calendar had implausibly completed one full cycle, and he we were, once again preparing to knock on their door. This time however, they were prepared for our visit, and were even armed with what they called a “surprise.”

Having been on the road for three months, “home” has become a term with very loose definition. I have learned to own my identity as a vagabond. With this comes the acceptance that sometimes home is a train terminal, an airplane seat, a hotel room, a beach or a jungle hut. Jeannie has become my common denominator. Home is the place where Jeannie is. But arriving in Paspels activated some heightened sense of my notion of home. Returning to this place I had only been once before, for only a few hours, I was overcome with a strange sensation I can only describe as belonging. The mountains looked like home. The cow bells sounded like home. The billowing chimney smelled like home. The air tasted like home. Judith and Lisbeth felt like home.

When Lisbeth, waiting for us in the driveway, came charging for Jeannie with open arms, a beaming smile, and a kiss for each cheek, I knew something had changed in the last year. The woman who had treated us with some caution, who had not fully accepted the potential of our familial connection, who had guarded a corner of herself, was holding a new look in her eye. She looked at me with a recognizable twinkle, with certain warmth in the creases of her smile. She looked at me like she knew me, not like she remembered me, but really knew me. She wrapped her arms around me and it was impossible not to reflect the same emotion. We had spent one hour together in our lifetime, but when we embraced I knew something between us was bigger than time.

This feeling became real with the revelation of their “surprise.” Lisbeth had been very busy since our last meeting. She had visited the church and taken the historical records out on loan. She had met with village elders and written notes on their memories. She had studied birth documents and death records. Our door knock last summer had inspired her to engage in a personal quest to discover her own history, a search that eventually led her to the musty cellar of her aunt’s home. It was there that she discovered a piece of art that changed her understanding of who she was, and at the same time illuminated a branch of her family tree that extended across the vast Atlantic.

Faded by almost two centuries of existence, Lisbeth held the dusty portrait in her hands while her aunt described the man on the canvas. His name was Johan George Scharetg. He was a citizen of clout in 19th century Paspels. He owned three homes and a large plot of land in the village. He had a wife and young son. He was a mountaineer. But equal to his love of the Alps was his affinity for the bottle. When his drinking habit took priority to his responsibilities, his land ownership came into jeopardy. He eventually lost all three of his homes, his entire fortune, and presumably a large majority of his dignity. Desperate times forced him to make a desperate decision. With little means in Switzerland to provide for his family, he packed provisions and set out in the direction of hope and rumored prosperity. He went west to a foreign land, a place a world away, a dream known as America. He left behind a massive debt, a promise to return with money, and a five year-old boy named Luzi, a miniature namesake who would never see his father again.

My head was spinning as Judith and Lisbeth unfurled this tale. As the details came out, one layer at a time, their carefully translated words began to deliver an incredible truth. This was the man who came to America and completed the registry at Ellis Island. This was the Swiss citizen, lured by adventure and desperation, who immigrated permanently to the United States. This was the man who fathered Otto and subsequently four generations of silent-G-offspring. I had to say it aloud for it to be real: “The man in the portrait is my Great Great Grandfather.”

But an even bigger truth still hung in the air. What about the child he left behind? What came of Luzi, the fatherless five year-old? These questions didn’t need to be posed. The clues lied now in Lisbeth’s warm embrace. The answer was in the way she looked at us, the way she held us with those familiar and knowing eyes. Luzi is her Grandfather. Our family tree, though decorated with extensive branches, shares but one trunk. Johan George is our patriarch, and the source of a common blood line that took almost two hundred years and thousands of miles to discover.

The paint is faded. A layer of dried dust sits over his face. Decades in an underground cellar have imparted some unintended creases. But through the decay of time shine two blue eyes that enlighten an undeniable fact. I look like the man on the canvas. So vivid is the resemblance, Lisbeth demanded the portrait now belong to me. Like the man himself, the art will make the journey to America. It will symbolize adventure, learning, and the trials of life. It will stand for the importance of family. It will hang on my wall until the day it belongs to my son. It will silently remind us what it means to be a Scharetg.

Being a Scharetg, Part 2

After visiting the garden in Luxembourg last summer, we motored south across the Alsatian countryside and through (literally by immense tunnels) the Alps to Switzerland. My mom and sister had an important place to show me. It was a location they had traveled to some years earlier with my dad, a spot remote enough that it can only be reached by car. Together we recreated the journey to a town represented cartographically as a microscopic dot—you have to hold the map at just the right angle for it to appear. They took me to a place called Paspels, a place that by equal parts rumor, legend, and historical fact is home to the elusive, mysterious, and scarcely seen species known as the Scharetg’s.

They warned me that when we arrived in Paspels I needed to be alert. One heavy blink could shade the village from view, they cautioned me. Driving on the single road that meanders through the village, you pass the last home in town as quickly as the first. There is one post office, one store, one school, one firehouse, one chapel, one castle, and one crumbly watchtower. It is after brunch before any of these structures feel the sunlight of morning—the Alps are so close and so impossibly large they cast a shadow over the village until nearly midday. But when the sun does summit the peak, it flashes a warm sheet over a place so perfect and pristine that it can’t possibly be alive. You’ve read of it in story books and you’ve seen it in films, but never imagined it was a living, breathing place. Just having your feet on the ground is a spiritual experience. The sound of cow bells rising from emerald hills and echoing through mountain air is a sound that acquaints you to the wisdom of the creator that made beauty possible.

Perplexed (yet eternally grateful) that any person could leave this place for another life, we set out to learn if anyone still in Paspels could pronounce our name. An Ellis Island registry that had surfaced in the nineties listed Paspels as my Great Great Grandfather’s place of origin. We knew that if there were any hope for uncovering the mystery of our family history, this was the place. Hoping our enthusiasm would compensate for our lack of German speaking skills, we built the courage to go knocking on doors. We thought the post office would be a good place to start. My always clever sister had scribbled eight big letters on scratch paper—SCHARETG. When a woman opened the locked door of the post office, I thrust the paper into her hand. All three of us watched in shock when she gave one quick glance to the letters on the note and our name rolled flawlessly off her tongue. Her eyes got big, she pointed to a cluster of homes over our shoulder, and unloaded a story in German that for all we knew was the answer to our lifelong questions.

We thanked her in our best accents and practically ran down the road to the homes at which she had waved her finger. It was with only one more knock that we found two women with the same name. Judith and Lisbeth, two Swiss Scharetg’s, live in the flesh. The only thing that made this dream more exciting was that the younger of the two spoke wonderful English. We spent one blissful hour with this daughter and mother duo, explaining in great detail who we were and what had brought us to their village. We told them what we knew of my Great Great Grandfather, that he had gone to America to give birth to Otto, who fathered Edward, who raised Kevin, who brought my sister and me to existence. Judith, a beautiful young woman with eyes bluer than the alpine sky, listened to our tale with childlike glee. She furiously translated our words to her mother, who more reserved and guarding of her wisdom, listened carefully and slowly nodded her head. She was visibly wary of these foreigners that had knocked on her door. She seemed to know something that she wasn’t prepared to share. A quiet truth lied behind her slightly furrowed brow. We left Paspels that day with hugs and kisses, but it would take one more year and another pilgrimage to the village to fully realize the circumstances that allowed this chance meeting between oddly familiar strangers.

Being a Scharetg, Part 1

I’ve spent my entire life watching people go cross-eyed when they see my last name. During roll call on the first day of school, when the teacher rattled off name after name, I was the kid that waited for the awkward silence. I would raise my hand while the teacher rolled her tongue, smacked her lips, and stuttered blindly over the letters on the class sheet. When I was the kicker on my high school football team, my name would be in the box score in the Saturday paper for every extra point I had kicked on Friday night. The editor, completely baffled by such an arrangement of letters, would simply try a new variation every time my name was written, hoping that at least one would be correct—it never was. I added it to the dictionary of the spell check feature on my computer, but there’s still a squiggly red line beneath it every time it’s typed. I have heard every possible pronunciation. The only people that can get it right the first time are other Scharetg’s, and they are my cousins. “The G is silent,” is something you learn to say in your sleep. I’ve even watched my best friends pause contemplatively when they write it down. I think half the emails that have ever been sent to me are sitting in some sad forgotten box in cyber space.

Growing up as a Scharetg, you face two possible options. You grow tired of being butchered and you reject the name, or you find solidarity in the oddness of who you are and become hopelessly proud to be a Scharetg. I remember when I was first confronted with the choice. It was in one of those early day class rooms with the tiny chairs and the tiny desks. The teacher said, “Richards, Rooney, Ryan, Sanders...oh, ah…” I stood up and thrust my tiny hand into the sky. “Scharetg!” I belted out with an emphatic smile. It would take thirty more attempts with that teacher, but at least I tried.

I have a special admiration for those who take the name by choice. My mom is perhaps the greatest ambassador of all. She was a Gray before she was married. She didn’t understand the struggles that lied ahead. I have such vivid memories of standing behind her at the video store, at least once a week, listening to her spell our name to the same clerk behind the counter. “S-C-H…A-R…E-T-G.” I could time his sigh and then the scribbling of his pen. “One more time,” he would say. My mom is so proud of her name. Maybe she likes being different, maybe she is a glutton for punishment, but mostly I think she just loves my dad. I see the same passion in Jeannie.

My name has taken on new meaning in the last year. My identity as a Scharetg has evolved greatly through new discoveries. Nestled in the remote Domleschg Valley of the Swiss Alps, in a village of four hundred people, is a house with a cellar that contained secrets of the very meaning of being a Scharetg.

Legacy

My father was a creative man. He was an artist with many mediums. Brick and mortar, lumber and drywall, steel and rebar, people—he skillfully composed his masterpieces through the application of all these elements. His gift was his vision, an ability to see a finished creation. He could start with an object in Form A and transform it to Form Z, touching every consonant and vowel along the way, using every letter as a building block. He could produce a goal from less than a whispered idea. Contorting a list of simple criteria, he was able to dream of an end product that astonishingly exceeded expectations. He did the impossible, and he did it all the time.

Many contend his greatest work was his final project. When he was given the assignment I remember hearing about the challenge he had been charged. He told me it was a unique mission, one that would impact the lives of many employees. He was tasked with developing the Amazon.com corporate headquarters in Europe. The company had chosen Luxembourg as the location of the building. Though the city-state is centrally located in the continent, sharing borders with France, Germany and Belgium, he understood the new building would require the relocation of dozens of employees and their families. The very decision to consolidate the division and centralize the European team was met with great resistance. He knew the building would have to be special. He set out to create a workplace that would excite the expats moving to an unknown land. They would be far from the comforts of home, but my father was determined to create an office that inspired the same appeal.

Luxembourg is a place with two identities. As a major financial and business capital, the population of the city triples during work hours. With so many companies moving to Luxembourg, the need for building space is accommodated through the development of new land. Modern business parks and massive office complexes dot the peripheral areas of the city. Wide-laned roads and cement parking garages connect characterless blocks of cubicles and desks. This is the new Luxembourg. But at the physical center of all this newness is an old town with a history centuries old. Cut into a deep forested valley called the Grund, old town Luxembourg is a set of narrow cobbled streets connecting 14th century neighborhoods. Ancient churches and watchtowers cast afternoon shadows over public squares and monuments. People meet for lunch in Italian restaurants carved out of crumbling brick. The air is filled with the din of coffee shop conversation at cafes on every corner. Mature trees shed their leaves and show the seasons. It is a place so full of culture and life it seems to be oozing from the cracks in the sidewalk. This is where people want to be. This is the identity of the city everyone wants to know.

But the practical business person knows that creating an office in such a location is impossible. It is too small, too dense, and far too exclusive. And of course exclusivity comes with a price, surely one that would be too large for a pragmatic company allowance. There were many compelling reasons to believe that opening an office in 21st century Luxembourg meant renting space in the sprawling complexes outside of town. My father didn’t believe any of them.

The Grund became his goal. He combed its cobbled streets looking for the perfect place. It took him months. His vision was uncompromising, and although he uncovered many possibilities, the faultless building was elusive. He ultimately found it in the form of a four story structure, so deep in the Grund it actually abutted the canal flowing in the valley floor. It was originally built as the Bofferding brewery in 1764. He knew it when he saw it—the same walls that created Luxembourg’s national beer would house the activities of the Amazon.com European division. This was a realization that would take months of negotiation. The building was in a dream location and it came with a dream price.

My father’s favorite part of the building was the garden situated between its rear wall and the canal. The garden was a stunning real estate quality, an unbelievable find. With land being so expensive in this district of the city, space for a garden (if it even existed) was simply out of the question in terms of budget. But my father became enamored with the garden. He saw it as retreat for people during the workday, a peaceful place for lunch, a flowered visiting spot for family. It became his fixation and the crux of his negotiations. He worked on a deal over the building for nearly half a year, and when agents couldn’t settle on the appropriation of the garden he nearly walked away from the whole thing.

Last summer, along with my mom and sister, I visited the garden behind the building that is now the European headquarters for Amazon.com. In the center of the garden is a maple tree. It seems to glow even when the sky is gray. It has been planted there in honor of my dad.

I needed to make the pilgrimage again this summer, to check on its growth, to touch its leaves and hold its trunk. It still glows. It was important for me to share the garden with Jeannie, for her to witness the symbols of my father’s life. She knew him in person only for a short time, but she knows his spirit through seeing his work. His legacy lives in the garden in Luxembourg.

Monster in the Metro

Hayley looked at me through squinted eyes with a half smile that told me instantly she was trying to tell a lie. She is entirely incapable of such an act, so when she uttered the words, “do you have our tickets?” what she really said was, “we never bought any.” I adore her transparency, it is one of her greatest traits, but in this instance it exposed our delinquency and confirmed our guilt instantaneously. The brute standing behind her (a terrifying mutation of Cruella de Vil, Janet Reno, and my disciplinarian 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Gagnon) came forward and barked at me in Czech. I stared back at her with starry eyes, preparing to play dumb. She flipped to English and foiled that plan.

“Tickets, you must have tickets! Metro not free! Now you pay big fine!” She mentally fiddled with some numbers and then declared our crime was punishable by 700 krown a head—a sum that would cost our group over 220 US dollars, or as I saw it through a more palpable conversion, seven pans of roasted pork knee and duck breast. In any currency this was outrageous, and all five of us agreed. Her request for payment was met with a collective, “No way!” In a steady, sure-handed motion that revealed anticipation of our resistance, she reached for her cell phone and dialed 1-5-8, the three digit number for the Policie.

We found ourselves entrapped in a matter of moments. One second we were blissfully returning to the city center from a peaceful picnic on a cliff above the Vltava River, in the next we were being held captive by a formidable underground officer who took her job way too seriously. To be fair, we were without tickets. And to be entirely honest, we had discussed the topic of our ticketlessness, and acknowledged that the city’s services were certainly not gratis. But in our defense, there was nary a ticket machine in the underground, there were no regulating turnstiles to the escalators, and every other passenger around us seemed to be passing through with complete liberty. We had simply followed the crowd—until, of course, we were plucked from it by the money-hungry-metro-monster. In this moment of moderate desperation, as we stood in the grips of authority with a sizeable amount of money on the line and the Policie in pursuit, everyone’s true nature suddenly came to center stage.

Jeannie flew directly into protection mode. The officer bit and Jeannie bit back. In not so many flattering words she told the officer that her imposed fine was preposterous and that her position in the city’s law enforcement hierarchy was underwhelming. The relentless officer was a bitter and cruel woman and Jeannie did her best to mirror her personality. By contrast, Hayley put on a meek grin, shyly glanced down at her hands, innocently twirled her thumbs, and batted her eyes in a heart-melting look of remorse. She looked far too sweet to be penalized. The officer, impenetrable by Hayley’s girlish charms, continued to press us for money. This is when Joe, the doctor, appealed to her rational side with scientific demonstrations. “Look at this gentleman here,” he said pointing to a man walking freely through the subway. “I just watched him walk down these steps and on to a train without showing a ticket. Why aren’t you stopping him?” She was not wooed by Joe’s application of the Socratic Method. I stood by and watched these three thwarted attempts, amazed by the way each appeal was a perfect representation of their individual character.

And then it was my mom’s turn. She looked at me, wide-eyed and rearing to go, and silently mouthed the words, “Should we run?”

Here I was, staring in the face of authority, contemplating our next move, mentally weighing thoughts of defiance and obedience. My inner rebel was arguing with my conscience. It was a moment, like many others in my life, when I wished I could ask for my mother’s advice. And here she was, right in front of me, suggesting we turn and run. My own moral compass, live in the flesh, proposing we evade the law.

In a bizarre moment of eerie role reversal, I shook my head at my mom’s mutinous idea. The Policie arrived in the subway seconds later. When they deferred jurisdiction and all the power to the metro-monster, I knew we wouldn’t see daylight until some paper was produced. I discreetly reached for my wallet and produced 700 krown—a fine for one person seemed more reasonable than full penance for five. I extended the bills in my hand for a long time before she took them. She scribbled something in a notebook and then handed me a ticket in exchange for the cash. Before she was able to say another word we were swiveling on our heels and heading for the stairs. We never looked back.

We avoided the monster’s dungeon for the remainder of our time in Prague, favoring sunlit streets and our own feet for transportation. We vowed not to let the subway saga sour our experience in the Czech Republic. The capital city is one of staggering beauty. The wonder of its architecture seems endless; layers upon layers of rich hotels, restaurants, churches, castles, and clock towers. The food is some of the best we’ve eaten on this journey. But what made Prague the most enjoyable is clearly the people we were able to explore it beside. My mom is here now and I somehow feel at home, thousands of miles from California. She gives me a certain type of happiness that no one else can. Hayley and Joe are incredible. They have each enhanced the adventure with their easy and infectious laughs. It would be hard to find a more willing couple. Before I can finish the question, “would you guys like to…?” they have already answered affirmatively.

Still Bigger Than Us

“I’m going to the dining car to get some brek,” she said. She zipped my oversized jacket over her tank top, grabbed ten euro from my wallet, and pulled open the sliding door that partitioned our private seats. I shouted behind her for a cup of coffee as the door latched shut and she disappeared down the hallway of our second class car. Pausing for a moment to study the Czech countryside passing outside the window, I shifted back to my computer and returned to thoughts of Krakow. We had left the southern Polish town just two hours before, on the first Vienna-bound train of the day. The early departure had required an alarm at dawn, motivating Jeannie to pass the first third of the trip in a horizontal, three-seat nap. I had passed the time quietly; writing, following the horizon, and watching her sleep. Now that she was gone I became engrossed in my journal. I totally lost myself.

When I came to my senses I was startled to still be alone. I blinked hard at my watch, trying to make sense of the time. An hour had passed. Jeannie had not returned from the dining car. She must have decided to eat there. That would be out of character, but you act out of character in places like this. She wanted my coffee to be hot, so she waited to order it after she was done eating. The dining car was packed. The server was busy. They were out of coffee so she was waiting for tea. They wanted zloty and she only had euro. It took time to negotiate the currency. No. None of these stories were working in my head. Something was wrong.

With a consciously controlled sense of urgency I rose from my seat and opened the door to the hallway. The image of her walking away was vivid in my mind. I turned in the direction she had gone and walked toward the dining car at the back of the train. Approaching the end of our car, the rear windows came into view. I stared through the smudged oval panes in complete disbelief. My knees knocked. The windows at the end of the car gave way to open track. Where there should have been three connecting coaches and the dining car, there was nothing but railway and Czech farmland, rapidly disappearing into the distance as we sped to the south. Jeannie was gone.

I stood there looking through those windows for what felt like eternity. Each passing tree, a blur of green and brown, suddenly symbolized our widening gap. The train seemed to mock me with its rattling, its vibrations, the blowing of its horn. I was fleeing the scene, racing away from a solution, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was being held hostage by the train and by the unbelievable circumstances.

Ten dizzying minutes passed before we approached a station and came to a stop at the platform. I leapt from the opening doors in search of an English speaking conductor. My search ended abruptly when the only conductor on the platform waived his hands and shook his head at my questions. He cut me off in a guttural language I couldn’t make any sense of. He pointed down the track to a set of cars about a kilometer away and then ushered me back onto the train. I surmised from his hustled rant that the cars down the track would be reconnecting with our train. This was something I could hold on to. Surely Jeannie was sitting in that dining car a kilometer away, about to be reconnected to our coach. I stood at the rear windows for thirty minutes until finally the wheels in the distance started to turn. Moments later, an engineer was fastening the clamps between the coaches. I loomed over his shoulder while he finished and then nearly bowled him over as I ran past him on my way to the dining car.

A server, two Austrian men, and fifteen open tables. Impossible. How could this be? I jolted one of the men from his eggs and toast and rattled twenty questions off his forehead. Trying to ignore the bead of sweat rolling down my cheek, he informed me he had not seen a blonde woman, and had in fact boarded the train in Warsaw, not Krakow. Like me, he was headed to Vienna. The server, overhearing the anxiety in my voice, chimed in from behind the kitchen counter. “The dining car from Krakow is on its way to Prague,” she said. Finally someone had put into words what I already knew to be true. Jeannie was on her way to another country altogether.

I needed to be alone to think. Racing back to my seat, our seats, I took a quick inventory in my head. What did she have? My jacket, ten euro, maybe less, her rail pass, flip flops. That was it. I couldn’t imagine how she must be feeling. Where was she right now? When had she realized we were disconnected? I sat down and buried my head in my hands. I tried to be rational. Getting off the train would only complicate the situation. Backtracking would allow for more error. We both knew where the hotel was located in Vienna. I would go there and wait for her to arrive. Would it be tonight? Tomorrow? Where would she sleep? I asked these questions while the train pressed on, steaming its way to Austria.

I fought with myself to stay positive as my trail of hope sputtered behind the caboose. I barely noticed when we slowed to a stop. I lifted my head from my hands and looked out the window. There she was, standing on the platform, my jacket zipped all the way up to her quivering chin. Our eyes met and hers filled with tears. It was obvious that she was shocked to see me. I was physically consumed with relief. It started in my legs, passed through my stomach on its way to my shoulders, and left my body through a smile so big it hurt my face. We laughed and held each other. We spent the rest of the passage to Austria discussing every angle of our separation, and the aimless train hopping Jeannie had enacted to get herself to the platform where we reunited. We stayed joined at the hip for the remainder of the journey—not even a trip to the water closet was done without each other’s company.

Having traveled unscathed through Southeast Asia, China, and even India, I think Jeannie and I can both agree that we might have dropped our guard upon arrival to Europe. At dinner that night, having acquired the time to let the day’s events simmer, we found an odd pleasure in the notion that travel in the Western World does not come without challenges. The world hasn’t become too small after all.

80,000 Shoes

We had heard stories of the shoes from traveling acquaintances. We had seen images of them in the documentary aired on the bus ride to the camp. Our guide even warned us just moments before we entered the wing of the museum. But nothing can prepare you for the sight of 80,000 shoes. More than the massive rooms filled with pots and pans, more than the piles of twisted reading glasses, even more than the tons of human hair—there is something about the shoes that is completely shattering. I think it is the personality that is contained in a shoe. There is something even more human about a shoe than hair. The mountain of shoes is the story of 40,000 people—each pair the reflection of who they were in life, and in death. The size, the shape, the color, leather, or rubber, or cloth—each characteristic is a memory of the person who walked in that shoe. The thick boots of working men, the fashionable heels of urban women, the tiny booties of babies; thrown together in heaps of hatred.

We traveled from Krakow to the Auschwitz and Birkenau German Death Camps to bear witness to one of the greatest human tragedies in history. The camp itself has been converted to a museum, allowing the visitor to walk the same gravel roads as the one million people who died there. We entered the barracks, we stood in the suffocation cells, we touched the execution wall, we walked inside the gas chambers. The hours we spent at Auschwitz and Birkenau are some of the most solemn hours of our lives.

Jeannie and I were partnered with a brilliant guide. He provided all of the objective facts you expect in a historical tour: the timeline of the concentration camp, the names of political figures, the events that led to the Holocaust, the methods of industrialized death. But as a descendent of those persecuted in the Second World War, he told the story through the eyes of the victims. We were made to feel their plight. Through his words we were able to comprehend the madness of their fate. Somehow, for a moment, he was able to put us into a pair of the 80,000 shoes.

There is a quote inscribed on one of the brick walls as you enter the gate to the camp. It says, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As our guide walked with us through the past, never once even hinting a smile, I held this quote in my mind and eagerly anticipated a close to the tour cloaked in hope for the future. I followed our guide, his hands clasped behind his back, thinking that surely the pain and the sadness he endures every day, the horror he relives for dozens of visitors every week, is made tolerable by a hopeful belief that mankind has learned from the atrocities of the Holocaust, that we are not condemned to repeat it. In his closing thoughts, through a thick Polish accent, he instead asked us to dwell on war in Africa, on the crimes against human rights in China. He then thanked us for coming, and left us staring out over the train track that transported one million innocent people to their end.

Home Field Advantage

It might be the perfect square. The sun seems to fall on its cobblestones in just the right way. At its center is a bewildering mermaid statue—bare-breasted, clutching a shield in one hand, an unsheathed sword in the other. She sits on a squat base, spurting water spontaneously at untamed children. Young parents hopelessly corral the juveniles, taking hidden delight in their recklessness, in their willingness to soak their clothes without care. A small flock of pigeons, wings iridescent in the afternoon light, hop and flutter around an old woman and her bread crumbs, always keeping one eye on swinging boots. A new couple strolls by with ice cream cones, working furiously to keep the melting treat off their fingers. A working artist has a dozen easels opened up, displaying years of dedication. His art reflects the square itself; rich oil on cloth canvas, so dense it looks three dimensional. He paints the tenements that form the public space, the buildings that surround the mermaid in imperfect ninety degree angles, massive structures of shared walls, shared lives. He paints the orange tiled roofs, oval balconies, undraped windows like eyes into private worlds. Outdoor cafes line the apartments, wood tables and chairs (nary a vacant one) under the shade of beer-branded umbrellas. They serve pork chops, pierogi, eggs in sour rye soup. They serve the dish of the day. Church bells chime a song in the distance. Then three thoughtful bongs.

I think I smell him before I see him. The smell isn’t offensive, or foul, just distinctive. He smells musky like the communal cologne on the bathroom counter of a country club. Looking up from my book, I see his shoes first, toed off directly with mine. They are tattered around the edge, cheap leather coming unglued from the sole. A bit of his wool sock peaks through untied laces. His pants reflect the same mileage. He is wearing a shirt with two dozen unnecessary buttons, most of them unclasped anyway. A bulge in his breast pocket reveals a pack of cigarettes. His sleeves are rolled up and his shirttails are tucked in, showing loops with no belt to hold. He is stooped in a posture that admits his age. His six-toothed smile is as big as the square.

“In-ter-na-shee-nal game,” he says to me in practiced syllabic cadence. He thrusts out his hand. Clutched in his arthritic fingers is what looks like a leather journal, bound shut with a braided latch. Stolen from what I’ve been reading, I am without words. He takes the moment of silence as an opportunity to nestle between Jeannie and I on the bench. Cautiously moving my bag to the side, he sets his journal on the bench, unlatches the braid, and opens the cover, revealing a black and white board and a collection of chipped checkers.

Jeannie and I exchange an amused glance as the old man begins to banter in Polish. He slowly sets the board, deeply concentrating to center each circle within each square, his fingers moving with the slightest perceptible tremble. When the board is finally set, and he has recited an entire Polish speech, he produces ten zloty from behind his pack of cigarettes and tucks the bill neatly beneath the corner of the board. Jeannie and I share a chuckle, and I reach into my pocket to produce the price of admission. I only have a twenty zloty note. Jeannie uses it to replace his ten. I pocket his ante, and the game is on.

Having not played checkers for a combined twenty years, Jeannie and I stumble into some elementary mistakes early in the match. The old man hops and skips over our pieces with childlike glee, laughing and smacking his bony knee at our expense. But as the match progresses, and tactics of the game are refreshed in our minds, the momentum slowly turns. He stops to contemplate his moves. He doesn’t laugh as freely. He rubs his chin and scratches his head. Suddenly his back row is all exposed. We descend fiercely on his end of the board. The worn purple corner of the zloty stares up at him from under the game. Now he is stammering, making excuses in Polish, waving his finger at our move. Without a tremble, he swiftly reverses our previous attack, and uses his last checker to creatively triple-hop over our final three pieces. In one hurried motion, the board is closed, the latch is shut, and the cash is in his pocket. He manages a mumbled thank you as he shuffles away, leaving us alone on the bench, ten zloty poorer.

Getting Extra Credit

His memory is easy to see in my mind. Freckled and red-haired, eager and quick with a proud smile, a cheerful kid prepared to submit the crowning achievement of his 7th grade body of work—his country report, complete with poster boards, essays, illustrations, and dioramas. He knows how many lakes are in the northern territory, he knows about the people’s culinary love of herring, he is familiar with their general obsession with reindeer. He learned the weather is frigid in the winter, but mild and surprisingly pleasant in the summer. He is ready to talk about aurora borealis, equipped with pictures of purple stripes in the night sky. He loves that the national sport is ice hockey. He is prepared with a few words in the native tongue, like hei and kiitos. He is even armed with the national flag—a snow white fabric decorated with a slightly off-centered blue cross.

For almost fifteen years, Chris Simmons has been filled with the dream of one day visiting this place he got to know so well. So when the itinerary of the Distant Adventure was finalized, and Finland was on the tour, Simmons did what had been waiting in the wings since he was thirteen—he bought a ticket to Helsinki. And using those fifteen years of wisdom, he brought along his better half, Sara. On second thought, maybe she brought him.

What Simmons probably left out of his report is that the bicycle should be the Finnish national icon, or at least the symbol of the capital city. Helsinki is built for bicycles. It is the only city I have ever visited with separate bicycle signals (red—yellow—green…go), and a bike lane as wide as the road itself. In our best effort to assimilate, we hired two bikes, borrowed two more from our hotel, and took to the streets for two days of exploration. (I learned quickly that Jeannie is as daunting for fellow road travelers behind handlebars as she is behind a steering wheel. She actually sent a Finn over the top of his front wheel when she made a sudden right turn—it was his fault.)

To know Simmons is to know wanderlust. Seeing Finland through his curious eyes was the instant remedy to even the slightest hint of traveler’s fatigue. His passion for the nuances of foreign life was energizing. He questioned everything, took delight in everything. Plus, I had someone to share in the oddities of Finnish cuisine—fried whole whitefish and reindeer sausage. (My travel mate wasn’t up for the latter—her love for Christmas runs too deep.) Simmons has an unmatched excitement for things that exist in only one place. He found the planet’s only pub tram—a city cable car converted to a bar, transporting cider drinking tourists from one end of Helsinki to the other. At our farewell dinner we ordered “snaps” from the appetizer menu, thinking we were getting some Finnish style peas. Moments later, our waiter produced a shot glass filled with a toxic potion. Simmons will try anything once. He hasn’t lost touch with his inner 7th grader. I love him for that.

Time Traveling

I think the very name of the track is what imparts so much mystery. The Trans-Siberian Railway; named after a place in the most remote reach of the world; a geographic location that seems never to be visited by people, but for those zooming one meter over the earth in a steel car; a place that seems only to exist in fables, foreign films, and Paul Theroux passages. A land that lives in dreams; images and pictures passing by in a blur of white and muted green outside double-paned glass; a nocturnal world of lunar reflections, a secret lake the looking glass of a crater-pocked moon.

The deep reverberation of steel on steel, the jarring click-clack of bindings, the creaking of the top-heavy hypnotic sway—these are the echoes of old days, frozen winters of clearing ice and laying track. The infiniteness of travel, the possibility of exploration and innovation, the curiosity of man is embedded in each crossbar of the railway. The spirit of expired adventurers, hopeful beginnings and painful endings, the souls of risk-takers and dreamers live on the Trans-Siberian. How many eyes have gazed upon these hills, these trees? How many bags have been toted over this stripe of rocks, how many farewells whispered through these windows?