S&S Travel the Long Way Round

The World by Numbers

2011-06-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

Hello from Hong Kong airport! We are en route home (via Rome and Istanbul and then the Bay Area for a wedding and family visit and theeeeen back to Vancouver) and thought we'd share some fun trip stats with you readers. This was a fun list to compile as is sparked many wonderful memories (and some not so wonderful ones as well). I hope you enjoy gawking at some of the numbers as we have...

In no particular order, over the course of our 5 month trip, here are the number of...
Planes flown: 27
Train rides: 11
Bus rides: 11
Boat rides: 17
Beds slept in: 38
Nights spent not sleeping in a bed: 13
Countries visited: 12
Languages we learned to say "thank you" in: 10
Broken electronics: 1
Photos/videos taken: 10,000+ (sorry, took too long to figure out the exact number)
Books read: 48
Blog posts: 52
Babies born to loved ones: 5
Loved ones seen while on the road: 20
Number of Vancouver friends who moved while we were away: 10
Jobs obtained: 2
New leases: 1
Fields peed in: 1
Clothing items bought: 12
Lowest elevation: 423m/1388ft (Dead Sea, Israel)
Highest elevation: 2195m/7201ft (Nagargot, Nepal)
Mishaps with wildlife: 3
Food poisoning episodes: 8
Use of emergency antibiotics: 2
Highest fever: 103.5F
Hospital visits: 1
Plagues: 10
Continents visited: 5
Cities/towns visited: 67

And so many more stats, we could add to this list until our next trip... Again, thanks for reading, there may be a few more blog post stragglers as we re-enter our Vancouver world, remember more stories, and recount details to anyone who will listen, but until then, only one more 13 hour plane ride before we're back on North American soil!

Signing off for now... S&S

When (not) in Rome

2011-05-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

Please pardon the lack of photos in this blog post. We're unable to put our latest camera shots on the computer to then be posted to the blog. (sigh) Technology...

Here's a first for our trip: a blog post written in a leather-bound, handmade Indian paper journal and transcribed onto a computer at a local gelato and coffee bar. I diidn't want to risk the internet crapping out on me (though, already, the internet service in the little hilltop twn of Trevi, Umbria far surpasses the scattered wifi of Venice), so I thought I'd draft the blog post agead of time rather than feeling I needed to speed through my thoughts while sitting at the cafe. As we've found ovet the course of our 5 months, blogging an be a wonderful and time consuming activity if you factor in the photo viewing, linking and time spent thinking about what to write rather than just letting the muddy thoughts run out of your fingers and into cyberspace. Some people can blog that quickly, but I like trying to craft my thoughts (something I was about to do when the computer sailed on the wind).

Anyway, it didn't seem right to end our travelthelongwayround experience with the sad news of a dead computer. You, fearless readers, have travelled everywhere else on this 'round the world journey, so I invite you to join us at our last stop before returning home. Welcome to the quiet, sunny town of Trevi, Umbria, a gem of a find (thanks to aunt Laura and uncle Pete's introduction) nestled amongst the olive groves. Our original plan was to rest, read, write, knit, and sunbathe in the Umbrian countryside for one week and then have a last huzzah in Rome, but after having many conversations with weary traveler about the wild and craze of the city, we decided to throw in the proverbial towel and save Rome for antoher day. We have not been disappointed...

With the exception of one flying computer, our days in Trevi have been thoroughly stress- and carefree. A 10-minute straight up (or so it feels) walk takes us to the tiny town with its two piazzas where, at any given moment, a dozen or so locals can be found sitting around with their 17th espresso or spritz of the day at one of the two cafes in town. One grocery store provides us with half of our needs (olive oil, granola, milk), whereas the other half is provided by the farmers/antique market (truffle cheese, vegetables, an 18th century cherry wardrobe). When not in or circumnavigating the small town (choking on our handful of Italian words or ogling the glitzy Italian diva wobbling on the cobblestones in their stilettos), we've been spending the majority of our days either on our patio overlooking the valley and town or wandering through the olive groves that surround the town.

Without a computer to provide iTunes and/or the latest baseball stats, we've returned to the vacation basics of the pre-technology days gone by: writing on paper (!), playing cards, listening to the birds, reading thousand-page novels, losing track of time, taking hours to eat each meal and so on. Maybe the Umbrian wind was trying to give us that final push we needed to relax before heading home to our North American loved ones, 2 new jobs, and a move? Maybe 5 monhts of intense travel experiences of hundred os musuems, monuments, temples, churches, shrines, UNESCO world heritage sites, maps, public transport, hostels, hotels, overnight bus rides, new languages, food poisoning, yogurt, not showering for days, monkeys, strangers, bottled water, and mosquitoes deserves 10 days of doing nothing at the end of it? The Umbrian wind seemed to tell us all of this....so we listened.

Tonight, we will return to one of the few town restaurants fo a 1/2 litre of their house red an some pasta and asparagus, and tomorrow, we may just decide to do the same. Then, who knows, we may take an after-dinner stroll along an old Roman viaduct before returning home for a game of gin rummy with an incomplete deck of cards before hitting the hay at 9:30pm. So rarely so we slow down just to soak up the sun and warm wind for days on end - never mind slowing down long enough to do that for an hour.

So, to all of our loyal, new, and passing-by readers - thanks for reading. We may have another postor two for you courtesy of the Hong Kong airport wifi, but I think I can safely say, from the last stop on our roung the world journey, this has been the most fascinating 5 months we've ever had...and thanks for being part of that.

Ciao!

Every Trip Needs a Mishap, Part Deux

2011-05-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

Disaster strikes! The Umbrian wind rose up in gale force and swept the computer right off the window sill where it was preparing for its next blog post and made its final swan dive onto the beautiful Italin tile floor. Fortunately the hard drive is alive and well (with the pics, etc) but the monitor looks like a spiderweb of zeros and ones.

Having decided to forego Rome for the beautiful hilltop town of Trevi, Umbria until we fly out on June 1st, we will have to reside the rest of our days in and amongst the olive groves, taking a long break from digital communication (with an occasional cappucino in the cafe with a computer in town). We have planned a few more blog posts and may find some way to post them before we arrive home in the beautiful Northwest, but if not, we are thinking of our loyal readers while soaking up the Italian sunshine, reading our books, playing cards, and drinking the bubbly local prosecco.

Thankfully, there could have been much worse disasters :)

Cant wait to see you all soon,

Digitally yours,

S & S

Standing in David's Shadow

2011-05-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

I've never been much of an art history buff (this is Steve speaking, Sarah is definitely up on the art), and I would generally summarize my reactions to the art we've seen in our recent Florence museum marathon in one of two ways - either, "hey there's some art" or "Wow." Fortunately Florence is full of alot of Wow.

For instance, take the experience of walking into the city. We arrived by train, shouldered our large packs, and began the twenty minute or so journey to the center of town where our hostel is. After the incredible narrow warren of streets of Venice, Florence's broad streets felt quite navigable, especially with a map we picked up from a vendor on the street. After a number of twists and turns, we thought we might be off on the wrong track when we turned a corner and found ourselves faced with Michelangelo's David in the middle of a courtyard of other unbelievable Renaissance sculptures. We were nearly bowled over, which would have been awkward with our packs on. As it turned out, while the other statues were originals, this David was a replica of the original which is in L'Accademia. The one in the picture above is actually on a ridge overlooking the city. The point is - Florence wears the beauty of its art as a badge of honor, as it should be.

After that introduction to Florence, I've had a number of other Wow experiences. There were a few at the Duomo Museum, including one of the last of Michelangelo's works, where he has envisioned himself as one of those helping Christ off of the cross.

There was also Dante's The Beheading of John the Baptist.

And Donatello's extremely creepy but moving Mary Magdalene.

There is something very powerful in seeing these works of art in a museum of other works from the time and realizing by contrast how exceptional they were and continue to be. Sarah will have to fill you in on the full art history analysis of the pieces, but for me, they just registered as Wow.

And Florence has definitely kept up its reputation as a city made of art. We've seen many modern pieces around the city that show how Florence is keeping up its crop of aspiring artists as well as its counterculture air.

After the past four day musuem marathon, I'm fairly convinced that there are more museums per capita here than anywhere else in the world and I very much appreciated the night we took off to go check out Pirates of the Caribbean (what number are we on now? 17?) at a restored theatre in town.

On a final note, it absolutely amazing to us that we only have two weeks left before we board a big ol jetplane and head back to Vancouver (via Istanbul, Hong Kong, and SF). We've officially began planning our reentry into society and are getting very very excited to reconnect with family, friends, and the lovely West Coast.

You say Burano, I say Murano...

2011-05-14T02:43:00.000-07:00

Pardon the delayed posting, blogger.com has been having some troubles as of late due to some sort of hacking issue, but everything seems to be running smoothly now.

In Venice, there are two modes of transportation: you walk or you float. Sometimes, the two shall meet when one wanders the labyrinth of calli (lanes), mouth agape, staring up up up at the crumbling facades and the leaning towers, thus bringing on a float-like method of walking amongst the tourists. One cannot get anywhere in a hurry, oh no, one must float through the crowds, thus being happily forced to browse the windows for Carnevale masks, marbled handmade paper goods, and glass shops proudly boasting that their goods were not made in China, but on the neighbouring island of Murano. Ah, Murano…

But before I wax poetic and even share some in-the-moment poetry composed about Murano (by neither of us, but a guest blogger who gave me permission to share his words with our readers), I must recap a bit of the last several days on this sinking island. As you’ve seen happen in the past, the moment Sarah and Steve come into contact with loved ones, frequent and punctual blogging goes out the window (and, in this case, bouncing off of the bridge and directly into the canal outside our studio apartment).

Day #1 in Venice – well, actually in the ancient town of Bassano del Grappa

We are lucky to have an international group of friends in Vancouver (hi friends in Vancouver, we miss you!) who have connected us with many of their international friends and family around the world (remember Oz?). One such connection was the ever-growing family of Shanaray, Roberto, and Thomas who welcomed us into their town of Bassano del Grappa 1.5 hours outside of Venice for an afternoon of sight-seeing, dining the Italian way, and catch up on the years since we saw them last in Canada. Not only were they so lovely to give us their Saturday, but they walked us around for hours, just 3 weeks away from the due date of their second son. When the amazing parents weren’t telling us the history of Napolean’s conquest in the area, or ordering an amazing meal for us (note to travelers: ask a local to order your meal sometime, you won’t regret it), their first son, Thomas, taught us how to eat cherries while sucking on a pacifier and say grazie the proper way (GRA-tzee-ay). It was a lovely day out of the city with a lovely family – what better way to spend a first full day in Italy than with an Italian family?

Day #2 in Venice

We had an early treat happen 1 month before our official return to Vancouver – Vancouver friends came to us! Well, actually, they were on their own amazing Ireland/Italy/Holland vacation, but through the mighty power of the interwebs, we managed to coordinate schedules and meet up for an evening in Venice, satisfying our growing craving for loved ones and making for a fantastic evening out on the town. Our meet up time was a little thrown off by none other than Mr. Pope who was making a 5 million euro visit to Venice (security’s tight with papal people, apparently), but we managed to not only tell the Pope “ciao,” and we found our friends, Trish and Derek, amongst the thousands of people in the San Marco Piazza crowd! An evening of prosecco, stories, toasts, memories, squid ink, and lots of self-pinching (i.e., “I can’t believe we’re seeing you in Venice!!”) enfolded, and we left happy travelers, excited for our imminent return to Vancouver at the end of the month.

The days since then…

We had one day to ourselves in the city, in which we performed our usual act of sitting at a café for hours, reading, writing, knitting, sharing our lunch with the birds, and people-watching.

Two days ago, we met up with my stepmom and her fiancé with whom we will spend the next several days exploring the city. We’ve had a ball so far on the mainland (if you can call it a mainland), but managed to get away for the day to the island of Murano known for its glass art. Just a 35 minute ferry ride away, Murano (and its neighbouring island of Burano, known for its lace-making) is a welcomed escape from the city, providing a quiet few streets filled will shops selling every type of glass art imaginable: vases, jewellery, sculpture, hair clips, chandeliers, wine stoppers, and endless delicate tchotchkes. I’ve always been a fan of separating art mediums into different towns/streets/etc., so that one can compare and contrast without being overstimulated by a painting, or a carving, or something else to offset the beauty of the craft itself. Murano provided such a separation. The island seems to gather its mood from the medium – one has to be careful and gentle when walking around glass studios as violent sneezes or wayward backpacks can cost you thousands. I received a well-deserved eye roll from Steve, the carrier of the backpack, when I cautioned him one or two times, “careful, hon…glass houses.” But Murano is not just for the tourist with an eye on a beautiful (or tacky, in many cases) piece of art almost impossible to transport. I was astonished by the number of elementary-aged kiddos on a school trip who seemed to be relatively successful in controlling their pre-adolescent limbs. With the glass-blowing demonstrations and gelatorias, I can imagine the small town being a great place for the kids to get a sense for a different art medium. If I were the teacher, however, I’d suggest on leaving the oversized school bags behind and sticking to the window-shopping.

In preparation for our trip to Venice, Steve and I have been toting around The City of Fallen Angels by John Berendt (same author as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). In the nonfiction book, he details a dramatic story of one master glass blower whose son copyrighted his name in order to preserve his designs and open up a separate store to sell his father without asking. Scandal! There was quite a blow out between the family and the son and when the book was written in 2005, the family had not spoken for years. We managed to locate the son’s store, but not the father’s – the work, however scandalous, was stunning and worth the hunt.

Unfortunately for us, the majority of the studios asked for no photos to be taken, but we managed to capture a few of the day’s outing and the island itself…

We each walked away with some glass goodies and a fun adventure, though sadly, not enough time to head to the sister island of Burano, known for her lace-making. As mentioned earlier, one of our traveling companions was able to put the day’s events into lovelier words than I could for which I am grateful and happy to share here:

Murano Island

Arched bridges of ochre punctuate the ancient canals

Where shoppers wander this island mall

In search of what’s hidden within fine glass.

What do we find to take home?

Family.

-Lama Surya Das

We’ve still 3 more days to go in this lovely city, staring out of our two-way mirrored studio apartment over breakfast at the self-examining passers-by (examples below of our daily spectacle), wandering for hours with family in and out of the streets and churches and museums and shops and cafés, and shaking our heads in disbelief that we have less than 3 weeks now before we touch down again in North America. Fortunately, Venice has its fair share of North American tourists, so we’re being eased back into recognizing the accents (some may not find that a great thing, but I’m sure enjoying practicing my Southern, Midwestern, Tri-state area, and Canadian accents again – much to Steve’s chagrin). This has been quite the trip of a lifetime, Venice being no exception to that feeling. We’re not leaving yet, though, so more to come presto (soon) as we travel south through the delicious and exotic Italian countryside and cities – being careful of and intrigued, of course, by the glass houses along the way.

The wine, the cheese, the dress?

2011-05-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

As Laura's eloquent post described, the south west of France is a place known for its earthy wines, its very strong cheeses, and its local armagnac (thanks for the tasting, uncle Peter!). But what did we spend a long morning doing last week in this land of culinary delights? Searching out a place where we could finally find out the answer to that age old question - what was Kate's dress going to look like? Enter Bassoues, a tiny (tiny) town about 30 mins away with a very nice cable package. Mission accomplished.

After a few discussions with the locals about 1) how much weight Kate lost, 2) how William needs to sit up straight, 3) how pretty Kate's dress was, we decided to stick around for lunch. In many small towns in this area, there will be one or two places that cater to the local lunch crowd. And the French do not mess about with their lunch. There are many courses, there is always wine, and in fact, most businesses shut down between noon and two or three to make sure no one is deprived of this particularly civilized repast.

We ordered the traditional menu du jour, which comes with a potage (soup with veggies and whatever else gets thrown in), a little salad with some type of meat on the side, a steak and fries, and ice cream for dessert. Oh, and the wine is included.

The restaraunt.

The wine.

After the wine.

This is the face of a man very pleased with his prune Armangac vanilla ice cream. (can't fix the orientation on this photo for some reason...)

All in all, we probably spent 3 hours over lunch, chatting with the woman and her two sons who own and run the restaraunt and watching life in this small town go by. Being in the countryside, spending time in our local town, Tillac, and Bassoues has reminded me of the summer than Sarah and I spent living on Hornby Island, which is about 5 hours, three ferries, and a world away from life in Vancouver. There are some universally wonderful things about living in small towns and it has rekindled the off again/on again thought that living on Bowen Island (just outside of Vancouver) sounds like a pretty wonderful thing. Here is the list that Sarah and I came up with about our favorite things about small towns. Please feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.

1) Becoming a local on your second visit. We enjoyed our lunch so much that we ended up going back five days later to do it all again. We got a royal welcome (pardon the pun) from the mother and sons who run the restaurant, and spent another three hours visiting and watching the locals pour in and out of the little town square for lunch. A similar thing happened this morning when we stopped in to get eggs in the tiny shop in town only to discover we'd forgotten money. "Pas un probleme" the shopkeeper said, letting us know we could come back the next day to pay when we got our bread and croissants.

2) The sounds. Here's what I can hear right now - Sarah winding a ball of yarn, a frog croaking in the patch of woods, the murmor of the pipes above my head. The lack of cars, horns, and general busyness makes all of these sounds that are usually in the background of city life come popping out like the pages of a 3D picture book.

3) Having the choice made for you. We need to go to the Post Office - well there's only one in town so I guess we'll be stopping there. Shopping? Well it's Thursday and the only market on today is in Mielan. For dinner? There's only two places open in town, so that should be easy. Entertainment? On Hornby we used to wait all week for Saturday pizza night at the bakery and the movie being shown in the town hall. Having limited options sometimes has the opposite effect of what you would expect. It doesn't feel limiting, it makes you appreciate and revel in the options available to you.

Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, exciting things about living in a big city and as the calendar flips to May we've found ourselves yearning more and more for home. But here's hoping a long visit to Bassoues, Tillac, or Hornby Island is never too far around the corner.

When in le Sud-Ouest...

2011-04-28T02:55:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! Thanks for your patience between blog posts. My aunt Laura agreed to be our guest blogger, so here are some of her thoughts on the past week we've had in France. What a week it's been!

Having spent the last few months experiencing much of the world through the eyes of Sarah and Steve, it was great to have the opportunity to welcome them into our little corner of France and share this European stop. Actually, what was even nicer was to arrive after a 14 hour trip from London to find that Sarah and Steve were already there - flowers already in a vase on the table and provisions in the fridge. This is truly the way to have house guests!

In fact they had arrived a couple of days earlier and already had the lay of the land. Bread from the local shop, cheese on the board, sun loungers on the terrace, wine in the fridge, olives in bowls, and a sense of calm that comes with this part of the world - the essentials of life in France.

Just to help to locate you, we are in the Gers, known to many as the "sud-ouest" or midi-Pyrenees. That very beautiful part of France famous for sunflowers, foie gras, rolling countryside and the tour de France. And our escape from the real world. It was interesting to have the chance to share this with Sarah & Steve.

This week was meant to be the vacation in the middle of the trip, a rest from travel, familiarity amongst new experiences, and long days of sunshine and family time. So we did our best. We being, myself, Peter (my husband - the uncle), Rachel (our daughter - the cousin) and Rowan (the adoptive daughter - and adoptive cousin who often comes as part of the family deal). Our plan was to do very little but enjoy each other, hear stories of S & S's travels and relax. And we did all that in great measure. We did try to take in a few sights - markets, walled medieval villages, the odd cafe (or 2 or 3 or 4), and an art gallery or two. But mostly, we just enjoyed time with each other, sitting for hours over lunch on the terrace, laughing at very bad jokes, and sharing long dinners that lasted long into the evening.

We were so pleased to be able to introduce Sarah and Steve to this part of the world, or more to the point, the way of life here in this part of the world. A way of life that includes the daily walk to the village shop for the morning's croissant and baguette and many hours in cafes in local villages. Sarah took to this quite naturally as it seems to parallel life in Vancouver - but in French, a language in which she seems quite adept. Steve, though always game to try, specialises in nodding amiably and hoping that no one actually asks him any questions, having said that, his "un oragena s'il vous plait" has been captivating locals across the region.

Sarah practiced her communication skills at the local market. Vic en Bigorre has a wonderful market and as planning and choosing menus is key to life here, we enjoyed choosing and bargaining for everything from oysters to olives and kilo upon kilo of cheese. Of course we managed to make new friends at the market and the fish seller took a particular liking to Sarah and suggested that she meet his son, the IT manager currently living in Montreal (and apparently doing very well). Sadly Sarah refused his email address, but made off with free samples of prawns and extra shellfish thrown in for good measure. I think she enjoyed the market.

A local rugby match was the highlight of the week: Marciac (our team) v. Rabestens. We arrived just as the match began and took our place in the stands, beers in hand, already joining our compatriots singing allez, allez, allez. Sadly, they didn't do too much allez-ing as our team was dreadfully out-classed. Though keen, the skills of our slightly oversized farmboys didn't quite equal our enthusiasm. A fight on the pitch added to the excitement, but sadly, there was no denying our defeat at 39 to 3. Though tempted, we decided to pass up the 'celebration' paella in the village as the defeat was just a bit too much to bear.

As anyone who has ever visited us in France can attest, a bit of work in the house or garden is always part of the deal, and this time was no exception. I am not sure why this happens and we were really hoping that this time would be an exception and we might be able to just relax the whole time we were here. But no, the prior removal of a 40ft x 40ft laurel tree gave us a chance for a fabulous bonfire and we were so pleased to have the extra hands to move tons of laurel and to help fan the fire - a fire that smoldered for 2 days and left us all smelling of smoke. A bounce on the trampoline seemed to be the only thing that would remove the smell - or so Sarah and Steve thought.

We did manage a day's outing to Bordeaux, one of our favourite cities in France. It is a bit of a drive from the house, but we managed it, in convoy, possibly breaking the speed record for a Berlingo van (our somewhat silly local car). A great day though as Bordeaux, a world heritage site, is simply stunning and we did our best to see much of the city's beautifully restored architecture, as well as new playful fountains and the fantastic contemporary art gallery. We were lucky to happen upon a massive flea market and I practically had to be restrained from purchasing massive sofas, chandeliers and garden benches. Rachel and Rowan took quite a shine to a stuffed and mounted Rhino, though we really didn't think that it would quite fit with the decor of our house. The evening ended with a magnificent dinner in a converted chapel where Steve sampled his first foie gras and seemed completely overwhelmed by the lamb. Rachel and I opted for the vegetarian menu (quite a rarety in France) which was delicious. Though we were a bit surprised by the amuse bouche - strawberry and asparagus mousse and even more surprised by the dessert - strawberry and asparagus mousse. Hmmm. But we all ate well. Perhaps too well, so Sarah and I decided that a long hike through the countryside was definitely needed the next morning.

We are sorry to be leaving tomorrow morning, but we have a wedding to go to back in London and Kate and Will might miss us if we don't get back. Sarah and Steve are remaining a few more days and will hopefully continue to enjoy the sud-ouest.

Thanks, Laura, for the great post! Back to our regularly scheduled program and adventures soon.

Wait, wait, wait!

2011-04-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

So sorry for our blog tardiness again - we're finding that when we get with family, we tend to have such a lovely time that the idea of on-time blogging assignments goes out the window. We do have a surprise guest blogger for you, though, so stay tuned. In the mean time, here are a couple sneak peaks at some of the wonderful sights of Tillac, France and the surrounding areas.

We promise - à bientôt!

Deja Mi Gente Ir*

2011-04-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Steve would usually be the next author of the blog post (we tend to switch off), but I won this game of rock-paper-scissors.

Last night, we attended a 400+ person Passover Seder in Barcelona (read: PaTHover THeder in BarTHelona) courtesy of Jabad Lubuvitch de Barcelona. This was a unique experience as it was the first Passover I have ever spent away from my family, but also, we passed a Gaudi building or two en route to the Seder.

We dressed (read: wrinkled shirt and tired dress) and gussied up (read: flossed and wiped the dust off my sandals) the best that two travelers could and arrived in plenty of time for the 8:30 start of the Seder. We've found time to be somewhat relative here, or maybe it's just the world outside of S & S's fanaticism with timeliness - so the seder didn't get rolling until about 9:30 when the rabbi finally invited us (in Catalan) to pour the wine. We were seated at the "kids" table, which essentially consisted of a lot of undergrads on semesters abroad and us (the old folks).

It was an emotionally-charged evening as I realized how apprehensive I was going into the Seder. Pangs of homesickness had been hitting me throughout the day, but nothing a little kosher wine (ahem), matzoh, and raucous singing en masse couldn't help. My family has its traditions (new and old) that I've come to cherish as givens every year of my life. Chabad seders are hardly like those that unfold annually in the Wolfman household (for instance, our use of brightly-coloured and party store "props" for the 10 Plagues didn't appear at the Seder last night - I wonder why), but it was all the more reason to enter open-minded and ready for a new experience rather than staunchly insisting on the same thing year after year. Make no mistake, I did send a list home of some reminders just in case someone in the family happened to forget one thing that we've been doing for 30+ years.

The rabbi was impressive in his ability to maintain his microphone-less projection throughout the evening (I repeat: nothing a little kosher wine couldn't help) and our table of commentators and strangers helped to make the evening a joy. Aside from the somewhat familiar tunes and food, we didn't understand a word. Steve's understanding of the language helped to make the evening a light-hearted adventure, stringly together translations such as "the matzoh represents the unleavened bread that the Jews in Egypt took with them and then the giraffe ate the pinapple while going for a swim."

In between courses, glasses of wine, and songs, it was a treat to chat with young Americans and Canadians, hearing about their experiences abroad, university majors, and life across the Atlantic Sea. Though we were clearly the oldest (and, uh, squarest) of the bunch, we even got an invitation for an absynthe crawl after wrapping up the Seder (which we politely declined opting for a late bedtime in our twin beds).

All told, it was nice to realize firsthand that Jews around the world have been holding seders for thousands of years, and whether you're in Barcelona, Vancouver, or Kathmandu, the sentiments are the same.

Though the rabbi didn't lead the room in a 400-person rendition of "Go down, Moses," Steve and I were singing it aloud, arm-in-arm on the Passeig de Gracia at 1:00am when the Seder finally let out...trying to hail a cab because we'd stayed out after the metro closed:

*When Israel was in Egypt's land, deja mi gente ir (let my people go)!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand, deja mi gente ir (let my people go)!
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land,
Tell ol' Pharoah,
Deja mi gente ir!

Passion and Pretty Windows

2011-04-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

You can imagine the disorientation we felt after taking a cab to a plane to a subway to a bus to arrive in Seville, Spain at 6:00am bleary-eyed and hung over from travel. We’d slipped back into our comfort with travel in developing countries while in Morocco, so with the clean early morning streets and set prices (and churros for breakfast!), there was the additional shock of readjusting to the western world.

Seville, Spain is a town of passion. From gorgeously-dressed Spanish couples cuddling on the streets to the sensual smell of jasmine and orange trees – one is surrounded by sense-tweaking images, feelings, and tastes that it’s hard not to be swept up by it all. For instance:

1. The preserved architecture: Seville has preserved and commemorated its rocky history (ahem…the Inquisition, Muslim and Christian battles over the ruling of the city, etc.) in ways that many cities are not able to. Seville has maintained its beautiful white-washed rambling streets, 11^th century palaces, and gardens to the point that one is amazed by the age of some of the buildings - often 1000 years old and not the assumed 100. The Jewish Quarter (or juderia) and Alcazar grounds are just some of the older areas we wandered through with our mouths open wondering how it was possible to soak it all up in only a few days. Sadly, only recently have monuments and plagues started to go up in honour of the cultures that have disappeared, but at least they are going up – and being honoured with Unesco World Heritage labels to boot.

2. The smells: As Steve said, “This is the best smelling city I’ve ever visited.” Seville is known for its 1500 orange trees, and in early April, we were fortunate to experience orange blossom time. I’d be lying if we didn’t have a conversation or two about capturing the smell a la Willy Wonka’s factory somehow, but we had no luck. The least we can do is show some photos and if you’re inclined to scratch your monitor and take a whiff, I won’t be the one to stop you.

3. The tastes: I admit, I was tiring of one too many veggie couscous dishes in Morocco and was ready for something new. We couldn’t have picked a better spot than the land of tapas. Mmmmm, tapas. Why decide on one dish when you can have 5 little ones? And even better – they’re sharable, which are the best kind of meals! Every day (when not eating our home-made organic meals – another bonus of entering back into the western world - boutique organic food stores), we’d have our meal of tapas, whether it be lunch (at 3pm) or dinner (at 10pm). The Sevillians (and we’re finding, the Spanish in general) have a shifted day that seems to welcome the most sunlight and puzzle the early-to-rise-early-to-bedders such as ourselves. But, we did it. We shifted, and we even woke up past 8am one morning. :)

4. The religious passions: We are fast approaching Easter week here in the Catholic country of Spain, but my guess is that the city is passionate in this way regardless of the holiday. The largest cathedral in the world lives in Seville and it’s known as “The Home of God: Built by the Hands of Lunatics” because in 1401, when an (already huge) mosque was going to be converted into a church, the authorities said something along the lines of, “Let us create such a building that future generations will take us for lunatics.” So, yes. They’re crazy about their religious passion, and they’ve got a Museo de Belles Artes that is 80% gorgeous religious art to prove it.

5. The windows: These deserve a section of their own. The way with which Sevillians decorate and let flowers, vines, and other amazing foliage spill over their sills and into their foyers is infectious. Now if only we didn’t have a cat who thought plants = snacks, I’d want to do the same thing.

6. The flamenco: The pain, the suffering, the wailing – the passion all started in Seville. We attended a flamenco show in which we were shushed by a woman closely resembling the Venus of Willendorf who proceeded to dance the flamenco taps, jumps, hops, claps, and hard glares for 45 minutes straight. Upon her final pose there was a moment of utter silence amongst the crowd before a roar went up to an eardrum-bursting decibel. Her wailing singer and guitar player only added to the mood. Well worth the $1.20 glass of delicious Spanish wine. Have a (slightly obstructed) look...

Ah, yes. Aye, dios mio, si. As I mentioned, we wandered the streets for 4 days with our mouths agape and inhaling the smells of the blossoms. It was mágica. It was delicious and passion-filled. It was pure Seville.

Djemaa el-Fna: Freshly Squeezed

2011-04-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

A little factoid I read somewhere epitomized the experience of Marrakesh for me, "For a while, Marrakesh acted as the capital city in the area, but during the shakeup at the beginning of the century the capital seat moved to Rabat and Marrakesh went back to its original persona - a carnivalesque madhouse." In some ways, Marrakesh is the New Orleans of Morocco, except that the city has been putting on the same outdoor, chaotic, brilliant streetshow in Dejemaa el-Fna square every night for over 1000 years. (1000 years!) We got drawn into the wild ride while we were there and I thought it would be fun to relate the experience to you. So, I'll give it a shot, even though you can bet it was crazier than I'll be able to capture in words and images.

So, to begin: during the day Djemaa el-Fna (or just el-Fna to locals) is an oddly shaped square in the middle of a big city. There are the occasional motorbikes racing through, crowds milling around shopping and eating at the vendors in the stores around the perimenter, etc. Vendors are selling fresh squeezed OJ that they squeeze when you order it. The normal stuff for a big city square. The only real hint that things are about to get nutty is a little plaque on the edge of the square that says that UNESCO has declared the streetshow and life of the square to be part of the "Oral and Cultural Heritage of the World."

As the sun lowers in the sky, it becomes nearly impossible to work your way through the crowds on the side streets leading up to the square. Tourists and locals vie for deals at the shops, for good tables at rooftop restaraunts from which to watch the action, and the noise and energy of the crowd ramps up noticably.

All of the sudden it begins, street performers are everywhere, gathering circles of onlookers three or four people deep. There are snake charmers wailing on flutes to coax hooded cobras out of baskets (and mothers snatching their children's fingers away). There are cross-dressing belly dancers who will run right through the crowd to demand money from you if they catch sight of a camera (see video for proof of that one). There are henna artists, fortune tellers, carnival games, and people, people, people.

The ones who generally steal the show though are the Gnaoua musicians with fez tassels swinging around their heads and castenettes clanging in their fingers. If you are lucky (and willing to slip them a few durham) you might get to take part in their act.

This is one of my favorite pictures from our times in Djemaa el-Fna. We approached a big circle to see what was going on. There was a clown comedian in the middle, who saw our white foreheads over the crowd and called out to us in French. "Where are you from? England" No. "France? Australia? USA? Germany? Canada?" Yes. Canada. "CANADA" he replied. "ME TOO!" Big applause and laugher from the audience. From then on we became part of his act, the straight guys to his belligerance, the willingly participating butt of the jokes. (All fairly clean and remarkably respectful thankfully). At one point he pulled Sarah out into the middle of the huge circle of locals for pictures and jokes. Check out the sea of faces watching Sarah and the guy in this picture.(Sarah was extremely brave and accomodating as I admittedly quivered behind the camera)

Ah, and did I forget to mention the food? As the street show begins about a hundred food vendors roll out tables, grills, food, etc and set up temporary restaraunts in the middle of the square where they'll cook your food right in front of you as you sit squished next to a mishmash of tourists and locals as they eat their evening meal. Snails, cow brain, rabbit, eel, it's all available. Our waiter came around and asked if we wanted some traditional Moroccain salads? Yes please. Flatbread? Indeed. Mixed kebabs. You betcha. Mixed fish fry. Please, like that wasn't a given. In the end we worked our way through a mountain of freshly cooked food, rubbing elbows with a couple from DC on one side and an extended Moroccain family on the other, the children of whom had to sit on the parent's laps to make them all fit. (Thanks to Paul for the recommendation on Stall #22.)

So that's the briefest of recap on our nights out in Djemaa el-Fna square in Marrakesh. As I said before, Marrakesh is a bit carnivalesque - the square, the souqs (markets), the winding mysterious streets - and in some ways this is all a big show, but it is certainly a brillant one and it's also a big part of the life of those that live here, and has been for a 1000 years, so there's a wonderful authenticity about it as well.

Seville Spain next on the agenda!

Guess what we are about to take a ride on...

2011-04-10T01:58:00.000-07:00

Because Jimi Said So

2011-04-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

The wind of Essaouira generally blows in off the water, resting on the small island of the mainland devoted to the preservation of the area’s falcon population, but on the first windy day, we recalled the guidebook’s suggestion that “it is the type of wind that reputedly drives people crazy.” In the morning, it breezed through the marketplace as we strolled, around the feral cats selling rugs, endless cups of thé du menthe, seagulls the size of castles, and fish vendors whose price rose or lowered depending on the buyer’s skin colour.

Not to be defeated by the weather, we went to the beach, attempting to film the effects of the wind’s strength through physical representations and photographs of the sand. This was not a day at the beach meant for collecting shells and freckles, but rather for playing with the weather. But with no place to be and no specific time to be there, why not play on the beach? We were in Essaouira, after all, the town known for its laid back attitude.

Essaouira is sleepy beach town we stumbled on while making our way through the “Atlantic Coast” chapter of our Lonely Planet Morocco guide. Known for its prominence in the 18^th century as a trading post on the Asia/Africa/Europe routes, Essaouira remains a great stop off to this day (as we read, however, Jimi Hendrix and his hippie cohorts saw it in a different light than the place to buy gold, salt, or ostrich feathers.) The guide book told us it was the “kind of place where people come and hang out rather than go sightseeing.” We did just that. Within hours of arriving at our riad (multi-storey townhouse set around a central garden) after a long bus ride from El Jadida, we extended our stay with the gut feeling that we’d like it there. The day we arrived was the 3 month mark that we’d been on the road, and the thought of being somewhere known for its laissez-faire state of being sounded perfect.

As I detailed in our blog post about our daily goings-on, we’ve worked hard to maintain our usual interests and ways in which we pass the time, but in different locations. Essaouira was the perfect place to relax and just be. The joy of being on the road for so long is having the time to do some things that the usual grind often prohibits and/or we pass off as being something to do later. People watching, chasing the wind, reading an entire book in two days, wandering down the same street several times in one day, eating a long lunch on a park bench, playing with the camera settings, pausing to look at every street cat, gallery browsing, writing, observing children playing, and imitating the local wildlife are just some ways we’ve been spending our days in towns known for “hanging out.”

As I write, I’m listening to the street sounds of Marrakech outside our window, already missing Essaouira and its calming effects. It’s been important for us to not only hit the big cities on this trip. When one generally thinks of Morocco, street markets, bustling cities, and Rick’s American Café come to mind, but the little places, too, make up this lovely country. As travelers, some of our favourite times have been spent hanging out in smaller towns. We’ve still got many cities on our agenda, but if we’ve learned anything from Essaouira, it’s to not overlook the little places – and to go with your gut feeling to extend your stay in the small towns. It’s usually worth it. And maybe with your free time in the small town, whiling away the hours, you could even build a castle made of sand before the wind takes it away….we know Jimi tried:

Talking Human in El Jadida Morocco

2011-04-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

As you can imagine, over a three plus month period of time, Sarah and I have developed a number of ongoing strands of dialogue and observation that get picked up from time to time as we have little observations or reflections to add. One of the big ones is language. We’ve both been amazed at how easy it has been to navigate our way through the various countries we’ve been in using almost nothing but English. We study up in the guide book on “thank you” or “good morning” and “hello,” but generally, there have been few situations where we’ve had to resort to sign language to get our message across. This is mainly happening I think, because we are on a fairly standard backpackers/traveller circuit, where it pays to be able to communicate with the tourists. But there is a downside to this universality of English as well – it’s become a language of commerce. Some common phrases – “For you, big discount.” “Please look at my menu,” “Massage? Taxi? Maybe next time?”

It’s therefore been a real pleasure to step into Morrocco, where Sarah’s French has been put to the real test. (I’ve been blown away by how much she can speak) Communicating in someone else’s native tongue flips around the power dynamic in an interesting way. All of the sudden we are not speaking and being met with the blank pause where someone is trying to decode our words, we are the ones with the blank look as those around us wait patiently for us to catch up. I think this is partially why we’ve had a few more human, “connecting with other people” experiences here than we have in other places. Because we’ve moved beyond a language of commerce and into the language of the country.

An illustrative anecdote – Our first stop has been in El Jadida, a mid-sized coastal town on the Atlantic coast where we spent one day wandering around the old walled city that was built by the Portuguese in the early 1500s. There is one street with some vendors, one of whose shop we wandered into and Sarah began to chat with him about his life. Turns out he’s from a small village in the Sahara, where he travels back to frequently with money from selling things in the shop. The pieces are all handmade in the Saharan village with a very specific style, blocky figures, geometric designs, lots of metal and intricate handwork. We got a chance to see pictures of his village, his family, and the desert. This is not the type of experience you can have with someone whose learned mainly the words to communicate about buying and selling.

And another – The second day went took a “petite taxi” to the taxi stand to get on a “grand taxi” which took us the couple of miles down to the local beach, a long beautiful strip of white-tan sand with soccer games, wind-surfing, and endless teenagers milling around. The beach got more and more crowded as we lay there reading and watching the crowd until this pack of little boys (7 year olds maybe?) ran up to me and said something akin to “Monsieur, blah blah blah,” and pointing to the sand next to me. I tried out “Je…nous…parle….vous…Frances” in my terrible, terrible accent to which they grinned and repeated their requests. Sarah leaned over and said “They want to know if it’s ok if you’ll watch their clothes while they play.” Brilliant. Absolutely.

This is the pile of clothes they managed to get out of in three seconds flat before they sprinted towards the water.

This is mid sprint to the water as they briefly got involved with a pickup soccer game before making it to the waves.

And finally, an obligatory roll in the sand before heading back out to the waves to do it all over again.

And one final moment of neat human connection. As I’m sure “everyone” knows, April 1^st was the opening day game for the Red Sox. I found myself in the smoky bar of our hotel at 11:30pm watching the sad ending of the game when the two young guys next to me leaned over and asked it the game was live (in English). Turns out they are from Tunisia and love American basketball and soccer but sadly not baseball. But they were interested in hearing the rules, so I walked them through innings, outs, pitchers, positions, the whole works. I’m not sure if they got it all, but it was great to just hang out, chat, and talk baseball even if it was to a couple of guys who had never heard of ARod.

The next morning, I was in the lobby checking email and the two guys showed up. They wanted to check their lotto scores because they were sure they’d become millionaires overnight (though they were not shocked to find out they were not). One lingered afterwards and said something about Facebook. I thought he wanted to check his account or something so I went to the website, where my account was open. He leaned over, typed in his name, found himself and clicked Friend Request. “Aziz?” I asked, reading it off the screen. He nodded and said “Aziz.” I touched my chest and said “Steve.” He grinned, shook my hand, and took off. First time I’ve ever made a friend digitally and in person at the same time.

Look closely, you can see me in the reflection.

And what’s a blog post without a dancing camel?

From Face to Face

2011-03-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite restaurants in New York is in my old neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen. On 9^th Avenue around 45^th street (it’s been 5 years since we lived in NY, so my exact cross street knowledge is a little hazy), there is an aptly-named haunt called Turkish Cuisine. Several birthday parties and subsequent visits back to the city have taken place there. Usually, I insisted on the entire table (ranging from 2 diners up to 17) order “a lot of everything to be shared.” Communal dining is a must in certain establishments and this is one of those places. The restaurant is decorated with hundreds (potentially thousands) of Turkish lucky eyes, or "nazar boncuğu," on the walls, embedded in the tables, on the drapes, etc. The cuisine is deliciously (well…) Turkish with some embellishments thrown in there to please the tourists who have stumbled west off of the Times Square drag (tiramisu, American coffee, spaghetti) and on a warm night, there’s even a back patio to lounge away the hours, eating sigara böreği and drinking apple tea.

Admittedly, one of my favourite parts of the restaurant was one server who worked there during my tenure in New York. She was a striking woman whose formality, as a regular, puzzled me – I enjoy being a regular customer at local cafes, stores, post offices, bodegas, etc. and pride myself on being able to connect with the employees again and again, alas, she stumped me and never broke her formality during the 5 years I frequented the restaurant. I joked some and every time said something like, “Lovely to see you again,” but she stoically, yet pleasantly took our order and never cracked. She wasn’t rude, but rather untouchable. I never took offense to her mannerisms, rather, she became a fascination. She was, as I mentioned, stunning, so one was naturally drawn to her, but also efficient in such a way that even when one or more of us tripped over the pronunciation of a Turkish goodie or spilled a drink she never broke character and operated in such a way that suggested she’d anticipated our foible. As we approached our visit to Turkey, I couldn’t help by wonder if, by association, the faces of Istanbul would have the same effect as my mysterious server.

One of my favourite sports, as some have called it, is people-watching. Every place we’ve visited on this trip has included some degree of daily people-watching. I try not to stare. I try to be subtle. I usually succeed, but there has been the rare occasion when I look too long (i.e., sitting opposite someone one a train) or in an inappropriate location (i.e., a woman praying at a mosque). Wanting to write a blog about this travel pastime, I asked Steve to be my master photographer of this curiosity, especially since I had been so thoroughly enjoying the faces I’d seen so far in Istanbul: men selling street food next to the people fishing in the Bospherus, young modern women with elaborately decorated head scarves, sharply dressed businessmen in custom-tailored suits, children too young yet for traditional Islamic dress, older gents sitting around drinking Turkish coffee and playing backgammon, highly-made up vixens running to catch the street car, three generations of spice vendors in the bazaar, Istanbul hipsters drinking tea and smoking at the hidden café outlook, etc. Steve became my undercover cameraman and perfected the art of both drive-by photos as well as the “upside down shot.” Holding my hand on one side and swinging the upside down camera in his other hand, he raced me through crowds to get in front of people whose images I wanted to capture and then blindly snapped the photo behind him. Later, we needed to flip the photos on the computer (and zoom and crop and resize), but all told, we were unobtrusively able to capture images of some amazing people on the street.

I wish we’d discovered this (sneaky) method of photography before Istanbul, since so much of our exposure to the many countries we’ve visited has been about watching the people. Not only do you learn a lot about the culture, dress, eating habits, colour codes, family dynamics, public affection customs, average sizes, builds, hair styles, usual speed of walking, interaction with others of the same sex, opposite sex, youth, elderly, foreigners (remember India?), but also you come to realize that each face is fascinating and quite beautiful in its own way. I’ve ogled so many eyes, brows, smiles, wrinkles, hair styles, piercings, noses, that I have no concept of beauty anymore since everyone seems, in their own way, uniquely gorgeous. Strip away the clothes and hair and each face in the world is incredible to look at. Also, many faces are the same – and I’m not talking about the typical Balinesian eye shape or the average Israeli’s colouring – I mean we’ve seen so many of our friends and loved ones in the faces of the people in the world that I’ve realized there are really only so many shapes and contours that the human face can take on before you find yourself face to face your childhood friend’s doppleganger in a back alley café in Nepal!

For your additional viewing pleasure, I invite you to pour yourself a cup of coffee/tea and join us at a café on Refik Saydam Cad (street) in Istanbul for some people watching. The real thing couldn’t be beat – people of all colours, shapes, attitudes, and gaits wandering by and even, on occasion, glancing in at us – but in the meantime, it’s nice to share some video footage with you of the people who inhabit this city of antiquity, elegance, and mystery.

Steve and I recommend Istanbul highly to anyone in the mood for an exotic, yet comfortable week away in a city that spans two continents (Europe and Asia), and we hope to return again sometime…with the camera flipped both right side up and upside down.

Post-thought: I realized as I was writing this and trying to describe some of the faces we’ve seen (not such an easy thing to do, thus relying on photographs to help), that I’ve been watching our faces change over the course of this trip as well. When you’re with a great travel buddy for 5 months, you see all sorts of changes occur in each other’s and your own faces. It’s an exciting and wacky realization! I’ve watched our faces change due to: sun exposure, fatigue, weight loss, mood related to current degree of homesickness, lighting, allergies, agreement or disagreement with the taste of food, lack of make-up (for me, people), skin dryness, presentation of information, and more. What does your face look like today and how is it different from yesterday or an hour ago? How will it look different tomorrow? How about tonight in relation to this morning? Have a look…

Impressions of Jerusalem

2011-03-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem - the heart of Christinity, the spiritual center of Judaism, and a focal point for Islamic prayer as the place from which Mohammed ascended to heaven. I knew intellectually that these three religions intersected, co-existed and conflicted over the 1 square mile of Jerusalem, but it really does take walking the streets to make the reality of the situation sink in. I thought I would write about a few experiences that Sarah and I had that brough this reality home for us.

While the ownership of the land that is central to one’s religion is the issue over which wars have been fought for thousands of years, it was moving and fascinating to see what that actually means to the people on the ground. Not the locals, but those that come on pilgramiges from all over the world to connect with the spiritual center of their religion. They come to lay their hands on the Western Wall, which is the last remaining wall of the Second Temple, they come to pray at the Temple of the Mount or the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or they come to lay their hands on the stone on which Jesus was lain after his cruxification.

The first of these sites on our list was the Western Wall. The current site is only a tiny portion of the original wall, but we were lucky enough to be able to take a tour along the excavation that runs between the current houses of Jerusalem and the original stones that King Herod’s workers laid thousands of years ago. The tour comes to a spot only a hundred yards or so from the Holy of Holies, the geographical center of the Jewish religion. Here, there were a few people sitting in chairs, lost in deep prayer.

The second of the sites for us was the Church of the Holy Selphurcure, which contains a number of relics holy to the Christian faith. Upon entering the church you come across the stone where Jesus was laid to be anointed with oils after his cruxification. People come thousands of miles to lay their hands on this rock (or in some cases bags full of scarves to take back home). There is also part of the pillar that Jesus leaned up against when he fell and the rock that supposedly was where Jesus’s cross was erected.

And finally the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, both of which we had to view from a distance. In each of these cases, people are performing a similar ritual. In their own way, they are paying their respects to a power higher than their own, whether it be through prayer, kneeling, or prostration on the ground. The similarlity between these actions stuck me as saying something profound about what we as humans find in our religious customs. They are humbling, they connect us with a force larger and more profound that we can even conceptualize, large enough that it can symbolize an entire ethos or the ideal way to comport one’s self in the world.

There is also a tremendous overlapping of the faiths within Jerusalem.

For instance, upon leaving the Western Wall tunnel, we emerged in the Muslim quarter of the Old City, on the length of the Via Dolorosa where Jesus was sentenced to death. On that corner, at the edge of the Western Wall, we stood with our tour guide Ami amid the Muslim shops and contemplated that critical moment for Christianity. Then Ami brought us to a Muslim restaurant a few doors down where he spoke a few friendly words in Arabic with the owner and had a feast brought out.

This overlap sadly is fraught with issues. There are constant reminders of the threat of violence that clouds over life in Jerusalem. Each Israeli boy and girl is required to do two years in the military upon graduating from high school, which results in a bunch of kids that look like they are on spring break but are in uniform, which includes a massive rifle. They are a constant presence by numbers all over the city. I can’t imagine someone trusting me with a huge gun and lots of responsibility when I was 18, I found working in a sandwich shop challenging enough, but here these kids are, learning a lesson about protecting their country at a very early age.

And finally, like any city, Jerusalem is a living breathing entity with as many funny quirks as they are sobering or scary moments.

A coke can for example, tells a lot about the area of town where you are having lunch.

Tchotchke dealers are the same the world over. Always ready to turn a sporting fervour into a profitable business. (Go Sox!)

Purim, the Jewish version of Halloween, really brings out the best of a city.

And it stoned me to my soul

2011-03-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it's the time between posts that we've let pass without blogging, or maybe it's sharing our journey with other people - but I'm going to break our cardinal rule of blogging and do some highlights rather than focusing on one piece. I'll leave the specific history lesson up to Steve (for instance, the black line shown below at Masada that designates orginal ruins versus reconstructions...but I digress).

We've now been in (and around and under and through) Israel for over a week - we've seen the token must-sees and have experienced some highlights outside of the the usual agenda of "visiting the homeland," so here's hoping you enjoy reading (and seeing) a little bit of both.

Note: Those two extra special folks you see in the photos with us are my parents, Jude and Pete, who trekked out to Israel to meet up with us. We feel so lucky to have spent this time with them exploring and loving every minute of it.

1.) Standing on 2000 year old stone: no matter what your knowledge of Israel is prior to the trip, your spiritual practice, or your footwear, standing on 2000 year old stone is an amazing experience (see photo at right). Just being surrounded by such antiquity stunts you in time, making every ancient story come to life: controversial archeological digs (as described by our guide, "You dig down one level and you find something amazing from one century and one culture, you dig down another, you find more, but you must destroy the first level to get to the second...pretty contraversial situation you've got on your hands"), stones cut to King Herod's specifications from over 1500 years ago, posing and/or wading in thigh-deep water through tunnels actually mentioned in the Old Testament, and of course, the Western Wall. Without launching too far into how moving it is to stand in front of the Western Wall for the first time after having seen pictures of and heard stories about it your entire life, I can comment on the amazing feeling present all around the Old City of so many people, cultures, and religions coming together to experience what they have heard about their entire lives in one single place. What better place to experience history than with so many others feeling the historical significance with you?

2.) Blending in with the culture: Steve and I have loved this aspect of the trip which hasn't been about becoming part of the culture by pretending we are part of the culture, but rather getting mixed up in it just by sitting at a cafe and people watching and/or doing our thing, while glancing up on occasion to observe life as it goes by. (However, I must note that even though Israel is part of the Middle East - between the metropolitan feel and, yes, my curly hair, we sure do fit in better here than in other places we've visited - like here.) Below are some shots of our observations as well as us becoming part of the blended Israeli smoothie....or hummous....or (oh, never mind, I'll stop trying to take this "blending" analogy too far).

3.) Doing our part to bring peace in the Middle East - for instance, by patronizing the many different quarters of the Old City...(note the before and after barber shots):

4.) Dreaming about our contribution to Israeli society in ways that most visitors do not: for instance, by composing in our minds, a story about all of the cats that lurk around every Jerusalem corner. I'm talking every corner. We've been told that cats are to Jerusalem as squirrels are to New York - well, that analogy was all we needed to get us talking about a story line, main characters, illustration style, publishing house, etc. Don't be surprised when we hit the best seller list with a book lovingly dedicated to our cats at home. Below are some of our main characters, though they were a bit too skittish for us to catch their names (with the exception of the first one who we named Jessie because we couldn't figure out its sex).

5.) Floating 423 meters below sea level: no trip to Israel is complete without covering thyself with mud and floating thy butt in the Dead Sea. We partook in both commandments.

6.) Finally, one of the highlights of our trip was having the honor to be a part of the reenactment of a significant historical discovery. The high fortress and town of Masada was built by King Herod (well, we can assume that he sat idly by while his [ahem] workers built it for him) between 37 and 31 BCE. About 75 years after his death, a group of Jewish "rebels" and zealots fled Jerusalem after the destruction of the first templei n 70 CE and settled high up on the Masada plateau. The story goes that this group of Jews fended off the Romans who were trying to seige the town by way of an earth ramp for two years! As detailed by the Jewish Virtual Library, "the defenders – almost one thousand men, women and children – led by Eleazar ben Ya’ir, decided to burn the fortress and end their own lives, rather than be taken alive. [Josephus Flavius describes] 'And so met (the Romans) with the multitude of the slain, but could take no pleasure in the fact, though it were done to their enemies. Nor could they do other than wonder at the courage of their resolution, and at the immovable contempt of death which so great a number of them had shown, when they went through with such an action as that was.” As pacifists, rather than reenact the breaching of the walls of Masada by the Romans and the death of the Jews, we decided to demonstrate some unsung heros in the history of Masada: Herod's pigeons. Thousands of these pigeons lived in a coop that can now be found relatively in tact amongst the Masada ruins. They provided meat for the residents and guests of Masada (ew) and probably fertilizer for the crops (ew again). Below, please find photographs of some of our tableaux in honor of the birds (notice Sarah's wings and Peter's "cooing") as well as a live video in which I do an interpretive dance entitled "Herod's Coop." The Art Director and Editor were none other than Steve P(igeon) Chasey:

And there you have it - some highlights from our amazing time in Israel thus far. We've still a couple of days to go and, by our travel books, this country is a wifi hotspot, so I have a feeling you'll be hearing a little more from Steve than his last post (now that he's recovered by taking daily supplements of shawarma). Signing off from near the Sea of Galilee - good night!

Coming soon....

2011-03-18T00:19:00.000-07:00

Hello blog readers! Thanks for your notes, concerns, and excitement over the blog. Never fear, a more extensive post will be coming soon - alas, we've been such happy and busy bees touring around Israel with my parents that between the underground tunnels, quality fam time, and mud baths we haven't had a free moment to blog!

FYI - Steve is feeling absolutely fine - in fact, he insists on eating shawarma at every meal. Nothing like some time with family and some hummous to cure all travel-tummy ailments.

More photos and adventure stories coming soon...

Beautiful Boudhna

2011-03-09T21:01:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, Steve here. Been pretty under the weather the last couple days, so I'm just going to do a little photo essay in lieu of a big post. We've been in Boudhna, home to one of the largest stupas in Nepal. We're staying in the guesthouse attached to the Shechen monastary, watching the monks go about their daily business. It's a beautiful place, full of immigrants, religion, and iconography. Hope you enjoy.

Hotel at the End of the Universe

2011-03-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

Maybe in reading the title of this blog post, you thought it was a pathetic attempt at a witty quip about our accommodations in the Himalayas…

Or maybe your mind immediately fastened onto Douglas Adams’ book Restaurant at the End of the Universe in which the main characters go to “meet the meat” before dining…

Or maybe (like me) you recalled the Family Guy episode when Peter tumbles into the great beyond…

Lois: …I just bought use some new sheets at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
Peter: Oh boy, I hope you stayed away from that "beyond" section.
(Cuts to scene where Peter is pushing a shopping cart into a door labeled BEYOND.)
Peter: (Swirling through vortex) Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh-- Oh, here are the coffee mugs...

But I request that you stop those thoughts before they continue much further, for Steve and I did in fact spend a night at the Hotel at the End of the Universe. I kid you not.

And, to boot, the view looked something like this…

What a magical place we stumbled upon, thanks to our trusty Lonely Planet guide’s recommendation. For one evening we opted to leave the hustle and bustle of the lower Kathmandu valley to drive 2 hours up into the hills for the view and some relaxation. The further we ascended, the more Steve gawked at the similarity between these hills and the Sierra Nevadas – an area of the world Steve is intimately familiar with having grown up hiking around the Lake Tahoe and Yosemite areas of California. We trekked 3 hours up a paved road, past large weekend gatherings (which we later found out are a regular thing on government holidays), to a look-out tower that provided us with a 360° view of the valley and the Himalayas in the distance. The photos below detail parts of our hike and token tourist shots atop the tower.

Back at our celestial hotel (who can resist such descriptions? Apparently the locals can’t, as en route to our hotel we passed “Galaxy Hotel” and “Hotel Space Mountain” – too much of a good thing is….oh, never mind), we removed our tourist caps and recouped after days in the fast pace of Kathmandu and its surrounding towns. The lack of ongoing electricity encouraged us to read and play cards by candlelight, enjoy some Nepalese beer and veggie pakoras, and eavesdrop on the young 20-something crowd that had gathered at the hotel for a reunion. For hours, we just rested – recalling the many activities and sights we’d seen over the past week – but even moreso, reflecting on our experiences of the past 2 months.

For 1.5 months now, we’ve been traveling around developing counties (Australia excluded of course, hence it only being 1.5 months despite our 2+ months on the road). It has been wonderful to have the time to reflect at the “end of the universe” and now, at the Buddhist monastery in the town of Boudha, Nepal, where we’re living for 4 nights before departing this amazing country. Supplementing our ongoing dialogues about what we’ve seen, experienced, will leave with, and are still amazed by, having 5 days before the big switch back into the western world has proven quite interesting. In Thailand, we struggled with the idea of pushing ourselves out the door into the unknown, encountering the intricacies of a southeast Asian country for the first time, and were amazed by our ability to adjust to the pace of life; in Bali, we addressed the idea of being tourists, consumers, and brief members of a society in which we found no amount of time on a “world trip” could suffice getting to know the place unless we moved there permanently for a tme (we have kicked ourselves a few times for not taking advantage of being freelancers for years and moving to a place like Ubud for a year+ while working from home….don’t worry, AU folks – we’re coming home); in India, the most challenging country of all, we struggled with and ultimately came to terms with being constantly observed by others, and as our friend Gloria put it so eloquently, “you can’t get away from the fact that you are Westerners,” not to mention being intimately involved with the “slum” life of India at Vidyanikethan, by far, one of the highlights of our entire trip; now, here, in Nepal, we’ve encountered some of that same “otherness” we found in other places, but we’ve approached it with a different set of eyes, and, in a way, an acceptance that we didn’t have prior to our trip.

We’ve had the time to reflect on how we’ve grown accustomed to seeing impoverished children in dirty street clothes ask any passer-by for a rupee, and how, each time feels like a kick to the stomach – yet, still, we’ve gotten used to seeing that scene play out before us quite often. We’re unphased by the number of animals (cows, goats, chickens, monkeys, dogs, hogs, etc.) that block the crazy city traffic of each country we’ve visited (and have often joked about how boring driving in Vancouver will be compared to, say, Mumbai). We’re quite used to the lack of sanitation in developing countries that results in rivers filled with garbage, lack of public toilets, and thus, the use of sidewalks for bathroom purposes, and constant need to purchase clean water for 1.5 months for fear of contamination. We’ve even, strangely, reaped the benefits of losing some added pounds while traveling due to non-Western food that doesn’t settle well with our uber-Western stomachs (don’t worry, we’re healthy and take all the necessary precautions to remain so, but why not look on the positive side and enjoy looking so shvelt?).

All of the above realities of travel in the developing world are important to acknowledge and to give oneself permission to learn from. And I can’t stress enough how much we’ve enjoyed these exposures to life on the other side and how much we’ll take away from them. Steve and I are both fortunate to be in fields that (big quote unquote) “help others.” In fact, we couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, since we feel it is our duty as members of a healthy and safe society to do as much as one can, in whatever way you can, to contribute to that society. When we return to Vancouver, I’m happily diving back into my job at an arts education non-profit that not only provides after-school and weekend programs in the arts, but works extensively in outreach programs to bring arts education to children who would otherwise not receive it. Steve, I am so proud to say (and will take this moment to gush about), will be starting law school in the fall, with the hopes of focusing on systemic and policy changes within BC and, perhaps, Canada. All of this, I must stress, is not to toot our horns, but to share with our readers how traveling of this kind can open your eyes, and reinforce everything you believe in – if not change your views for the better. But, one doesn’t have to travel to the other side of the world to be challenged to make change, it can happen locally…

Okay…

Enough soliloquizing for now. Funny how a night at the end of the universe and then a stay within the grounds of a monastery can make you break out the soap box. I can conclude by saying, we’ve had an inspiring couple of months, and like every step of this trip, we’re so excited about the next one (that will be all the more enriched because we’ll be bringing every previous experience with us along the way).

This afternoon, Steve and I plan to visit the local Buddhist stupa to do laps for an hour under the prayer flags, while reflecting even more about our trip and anticipating the next move. We’ve been doing a lot of walking these days – around cities, around stupas, and up in the clouds with a little guide (see photo below) – walking provides a great chance to see lots of things, but also to embark on a moving meditation perfect for reflection (or for planning where you’re going to have your next Nepalese meal). I think walking to the end of the universe proved to be a great activity for us, even if it does warrant a few eye rolls at the mention of it.

Next stop, the land of milk and hummus – Israel (unless you hear from Steve first)!

Can You Take Me to Crayola Town

2011-03-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

We've spent nearly a week exploring Kathmandu and the surrounding vicinity, enough time for me to know this is a place I'd love to come back to and spend a lot more time. The preservation of architecture and history, the gentle nature of the people we've been lucky to meet, and the ancient, on-going cultural traditions are just a few of the aspects that make exploration here so fascinating. As we've said we're going to make this blog about specific things though, I'm going to pick the color of Kathmandu. Nepali society is bursting with color wherever you look - the clothes, the prayer flags, the temples, etc - so allow me to wax poetic about this piece of Nepali culture.

The streets of Kathmandu are packed with people, partially because as in Bangkok, so much of life occurs on the street level. As you walk along, it's impossible not to get drawn into the shops, each of which has arraigned their colorful wares to catch the eye. "Shops" is a relative term in Kathmandu, sometimes they are physical shops, sometimes just a stretch of wall to hang your massive copper pots on, or sometimes just a tarp on the ground with fabrics of every color available. As Sarah mentioned, the sales approach is pretty laid back, so we spent quite a while in some of the shops, rummaging through dust covered treasures (and worthless tchotchkes, of course).

The chowks (or squares) in town take what is happening on the streets and amplify it. On a busy day (like yesterday, during the Shivarati festival - more on this later) there is hardly space for motorcycles to wedge through. The rest is a kaleidoscope of the greens of fresh produce, the yellow, red, and black of lentils and beans in baskets, and the rainbow of saris. In some major squares, religious ceremonies are taking place as well. The above two pictures are of a ceremony called the ihi marriage ceremony, where young girls are married to a divine husband. This is done so that they can never experience the stigma of widowhood in orthodox Hindu tradition. The girls are dressed in brilliant red - the color of married women - with gold necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Their foreheads are painted and some wear a white card as well with symbols on it.

Interspersed within the markets and streets are remarkably brightly colored stupas (Buddhist temples), which are both a part of the ancient history of Nepal, a living center of religion, and large tourist attractions. A typical stupa has a brilliant white dome, which is topped with a golden structure at the top, heavily engraved with symbols and figures from the Buddhist pantheon. Most are also adorned with the multi-colored prayer flags that flap in the typically strong wind off of the Himalayas. The stupa in the bottom shot is Swayambhunath, which is on a towering ridge over Kathmandu. We hiked up the steep staircase to the temple, watched a Nepali film crew taping a dance movie, and took in the sunset over the valley below.

(A little side note - on the way back we walked by one of the countless cattle in the road, and a big bull, in this case, got a little perturbed that Sarah was so close. He grunted, swung his head around and gave her a pretty good headbutt to the hip. It happened so fast that there was almost no time to be scared, and immediately afterwards Sarah had a huge surprised (and thankfully) unhurt grin on her face, as did the crowd of Nepali villagers who were around. They had a look that said, "Welcome to Nepal.")

The colors of Nepali society are by no means confined to markets, the stores, and the temples. The buildings themselves are a riot of color. The sky blue color in the top picture is quite popular (even in buildings so old they have begun to sag like knock-kneed drunks), and you can see it used again in for some detail work in the bottom shot. Some buildings, though, have gone all out and are mustard yellow, brick red, or adorned with intricate black woodwork.

The bright colors of Nepali life certainly work well with Sarah's color scheme. She's found herself a crimson red yak's wool sweater, a cerulean blue blanket, and an pumpkin orange pashmina. She looks just like a local...except for the bright red hair.

A post about the colors of Nepal would be sadly lacking without a few pictures of the people. From the Buddhists monks in their traditional robes on an alms round, to a woman going about her daily business in a typical Nepali outfit, to a young boy in a bright red robe playing amongst the stupas, to finally a very old women, supported by her family, who looked to have come to Kathmandu on a pilgrimage from a mountain town, dressed in what is likely her best apron of pink, purple, and blue.

The Shivaratri Festival that I mentioned earlier was another opportunity for us to see a traditional celebration for Nepalis that has been going on for generations but has incorporated modern bits and pieces (much like Halloween or Easter in the States or Canada). According to one local custom, kids can run around the back alleys with ropes stretched across the road

And finally, what do the Westerners wear amidst this brightly colored background? Black and grey... (this shot is pre-sweater of course).

Valley of the Dolls

2011-02-26T23:18:00.000-08:00

You all remember this image from the movie E.T., right? E.T. is hiding amongst Drew Barrymore’s dolls, trying to blend in. Steve and I have been experiencing many moments on this trip that we’ve named “E.T. moments.” The kind of moments that remind us of “Home….home….” with outstretched glowing fingers, dusty voices, and feelings of familiarity that surprise us when we’re 13h45m from our home time zone.

The city of Kathmandu, in the stunning Kathmandu valley (hence the blog title), has been a remarkable change from the feelings, smells, colours, and pace we found during our three weeks in India. It’s a welcome change – even the temp difference which forces us to exchange the thin layers of shorts and tees in exchange for long johns, gloves, and space heaters – that has struck me as being more familiar than other places we’ve been. The world is huge, we’ve proven that over the last 2 months, but there are similarities that stretch from one side of it to the other. Especially, I’ve found, in the bustling city of Kathmandu…

For starters, the colour of the sky as a result of the weather. At first, I couldn’t quite place the feeling of leave-less trees and murky sky that we flew into two days ago. The brown and brick-coloured buildings with their intricate wood carvings took on a more solid and frosty appearance than anything we’d experienced. The weather was on the verge of allowing one to see her breath as we walked through the Garden of Dreams, a mid-city garden mecca located amidst the narrow alleyways and temples. The neo-classical architecture dates back to the 1920s, commissioned by a Nepalese field marshal partial to the Edwardian style and in need of a respite in the city. Now visitors can fork up 130 rupees (slightly less than US$2.00) to stroll through the private garden or have high tea on the veranda. As a first stop in Kathmandu, this was a puzzling one – but not because of the European-influenced garden (which is kinda familiar), but because of the manner in which the dormant flora reflected the sky. I finally pinpointed the feeling: it was the silent moment in New England right before the first big snow, after the leaves have fallen off the trees. We’ve been told there are 6 seasons in Nepal, I have yet to identify the unfamiliar outstanding two (does anyone know?), but having reached the end of their wintertime, I feel at home in a way that I can only recall while strolling in winter coats along Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, or crunching over recently-frosted undergrowth in the east coast woods (much like our time at Shana and Bryan’s wedding in Poughkeepsie).

In addition to the weather, which has followed us around the city, just before leaving the Garden of Dreams, we also stumbled upon a plaque with a quotation from one of my Zaydie’s favourite books of poetry by Edward Fitzgerald, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. So nice to have a little reminder of him, while at the same time a reminder of home and sitting across many-a-tables hearing him recite poetry.

Another familiar aspect of this city is the people. Unlike our experience of being both the observer and the observed in India, which lasted the entire 3 weeks, the Nepalese folk we’ve found in Kathmandu have had more of a tendency to continue doing their thing with only quick glances in our direction. Perhaps I’m feeling the sense of familiarity because our experience in India was like no other and but moreso because there is an obvious efficiency in their work ethic that just continue despite the pale people wandering by that is reminiscent of some of my Western experiences. From the vendors who approach us with mandala necklaces and mini chess boards to the receptionist at our hotel, there is an outward gentility toward others that gives me a real feeling of respect and willingness to help, but also leaving me with no doubt that they’ll get it done. A salesman saw us looking at his yak wool blankets and asked if we would like to have a closer look inside his store – Steve and I, ever-prepped for a bargaining game and not in the market to make a purchase at that point, quickly shouted, “No thanks!” The man sensed our apprehension and said, “Not to worry, looking is free, take your time” and backed away. This could have been his sales pitch (that certainly worked), but we later experienced a similar “okay, not to worry” attitude coming from the vendors. This feeling of being allowed the time and space to look at something is certainly more familiar than some of the expert salespeople we’ve encountered in Thailand, Bali, and India. And we’ve many tchotchkes to prove it.

The receptionist at our hotel, who I mentioned earlier, is a no-nonsense gal. She’s sweet and respectful when we asked to stay a few more days, inquired about laundry services, etc., and then when we turned away, her voice rang out above the sound of the guitar being strummed by a fellow foreigner staying at the hotel as she instructed the doorman, server, and travel agent all at the same time about various jobs they should be getting on! You might be thinking, “Sarah, how is that an E.T. moment if the woman was just doing her job?” I can honestly attribute that feeling to my tickled egalitarian heartstrings which get plucked when a woman exerts herself in a culture where women’s rights are not equal to men’s (interesting blog post about that HERE.)

Aside from those obvious similarities that have made Kathmandu an instantly-comfortable home for 12 days, there are smaller ones as well: the smell of the fire pit at the café we visited last night bringing out memories of numerous Westfalia-based camping trips with our Vancouver peeps; hearing the attempt of an American accent when the musician sings at the bar; the almond shape of my cousin Sophie’s beautiful eyes reflected on some of the locals’; the feeling of a thick duvet on a cold winter night in Massachusetts; the taste of the local Nepalese dumpling dish (momo) that Steve has cooked as a late night stack in many of our kitchens; etc. We’ve been collecting these moments ever since we embarked on our journey 2 months ago, but for some reason, in Kathmandu Valley (of all places), I’m sensing home even more than usual.

Have you had any “E.T. moments” while abroad that you can remember?

Oh Mondovi, River of My Dreams

2011-02-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

Before I begin, I’m going to preface this blog post with a note about my mental state, which is in turn prefaced by this disclaimer – I’m very fastidious about sunscreen. At least 30 SPF, spending time in the shade, the works. But apparently Goa is only a few yards from the surface of the sun and has thwarted my careful efforts. Sarah has now taken to referring to me as “Cranky Lobsterboy” and I’m writing this blog post standing up letting five layers of aloe dry into a thick husk on my skin. (No, no picture, I just told you I was cranky.) So, disclaimer written, here we go.

Goa only became an Indian state in the mid-1980s, before that it was run by the militia who in turn took it from the Portuguese who had been running the show for 450 years (which still doesn’t explain why there are so many signs in Russian around, but I digress). We stayed in the capital city of Panjim, which akin to Bangalore, is not a particularly tourist-oriented place. But unlike Bangalore, Panjim looks like it has been plucked from Portugal, shaken out of any Portuguese people, dropped into India, and fallen somewhat into disrepair. It’s enough to almost trick the mind into thinking you should be looking for a boulangerie (or at least a place that sells aloe lotion. When you ask, shopkeepers generally smile knowingly at your lobster-esque appearance and shake their head).

One of the days in Panjim we took a long cruise up the Mondovi River to check out Old Goa from the river and poke around a spice plantation (the blog title is a little shout out to Rollaway, the band Sarah sings with who released their new album recently). Old Goa, just up the road from Panjim, used to be the capital city and was known as the “Rome of the East,” during which time it had a larger population than London. It was a huge trading hub and is dotted with massive churches left over from this era (1600-1800s). The city eventually lost its influence as a trading hub to other larger ports and in the mid-1800s was hit so hard with malaria and cholera that it was completely abandoned in 1835. Completely abandoned! I kept thinking of what London would have been like if it had been completely abandoned during the Black Plague.

Even now, Old Goa is only a shell of its former self (the guidebook recommends not staying the night here) and only the massive churches built long ago remain, though most are crumbling and some are in ruins. It’s a bit haunting to see them jutting out through the jungle as we cruised by on the river. Along the edge of the water, there is a bustle of fishing activities amidst the ancient stone walls and entranceways that remain.

Ok enough of the boring history lesson, onto the real reason we’re here: describing how a pair of pale travelers with weak tongues did tasting the wares at the spice plantation. Fortunately I had not yet acquired my current *ahem* rosy hue, though by the end of our time at the Tropical Spice Plantation, I’m sure my cheeks were just as red. They seem to grow a little of everything at this massive place including pepper, basil, beetil, cardamom, vanilla, and many others. We got to touch and taste the spices on the trees, bushes and roots on which they grow, then sample the finished product in a traditional Goan clay pot lunch. Delicious and spicy.

With enough rice and water to soothe the palate, we did quite well.

On the ride back along the river we passed many of these fishing boats with the long bamboo poles sticking out. We, very naively, assumed the poles were spears and we very impressed that they could see the fish much less skewer them in the turbulent water. But as we watched, we realized that nets are attached to the poles and are thrown out and brought in by hand as the boat skirts the current. I assume we didn’t catch on because our picture of a fishing boat is à la The Perfect Storm, with big nets hanging from metal arms manned by guys in Irish wool sweaters speaking with nearly unintelligible accents.

Watching the Indian fishermen work the nets by hand seemed so labour- and time-intensive, but thinking about it, I realized I’d seen lots of examples of labour-intensive work and I think this might be indicative of a larger truth about the Indian economy and workforce. India has the largest gap between the rich and the poor of any country in the world, and combined with an extraordinarily low minimum wage, I’m wondering if this leads to enough cheap labour that buying the machines to do the work has, in many cases, become uneconomical.

I can think of lots of examples where this may be true. Fishing is done by hand, laundry is done by hand (often in the river and dried on the rocks), even moving dirt and rocks is done by hand where, in our minds, a simple wheelbarrow would have done the job faster and easier. If that is the case, it creates a situation of pretty extreme exploitation. The cheap, back-breaking labour is fuelling the massive wealth of the privileged Indian class. But then again there is so much poverty that paying the paltry amount for someone to carry your rocks around all day instead of buying a machine means those labourors can afford to feed their kids at night. It would be better to give them a decent wage, but when it’s the difference between feeding the kids and not, the lines of right and wrong start to get blurred.

But who knows, it’s only been a few weeks in India and I might just be a cranky lobsterboy westerner who’s realizing that the harder he looks at Indian society, the more complex the picture gets. Has anyone else whose travelled around India noticed this or had other conclusions?

L'Entr'acte

2011-02-19T02:31:00.000-08:00

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post to give you a blog in two parts – the first announcing the winner(s) of our “Guess how much we paid for Valentine’s Day Dinner” contest and the second is related, but a slight detour from our usual travel posts.

Part One: And the winners are…

India is a remarkable place to travel not only because the culture is like none other we’ve ever experienced, but for two frugal travellers, it’s extremely easy to stay within, if not well under your budget! So, many of you were close…the ballpark 200-250 rupee guesses (thanks, Joel and Noah) were a bit low (that’s about US$ 5.00), but indeed a good guess as we’ve had many meals that were close and/or under that. The free guess (thanks, Paul) would have been nice, alas, ain’tnothing free in India. Taking photos (such as the one below) can cost you up to US$2.00. But the TWO ladies, very near and dear to our hearts, who guessed the same price at $9.00 are:

TIANNA HUSTON and KELLY MCCARTHY! Indian goodies will be in the mail soon…

We, in fact, paid $9.50 for our splurge of a V-Day dinner. We shared a delicious Special Veggie Thali (a platter of squash and veggie korma, rice, chapatti, and some other delicious mouth-burning side dishes – US$2.50), a PalakPaneir dish (spinach and potato) + chapatti (US$2.50), one mango and one papaya lassi (US$2.00), and a yummy dessert of nutella, banana, and coconut crepe (US$1.50), plus tax and tip, bringing us up to $9.50. We probably won’t ever have a V-Day meal that cheap again.

Congrats, ladies. We think you two and your respective hubs and fams (yay, Kent, Jake, and Jimmy Mac!) should visit India sometime to try out your price-guessing skills first hand.

Part Two: A Day in the Life…

Whether it is through the occasional query on family Skype calls or in the emails from friends that read “I know you’re busy…,” I’ve been sensing a curiosity as to how we spend our days on the road. I would like to take a short break from our usual site-specific post to give you a glimpse into a day in the life of Steve and Sarah. Of course, every day is new and different with each passing country, city, and cuisine, but there are several daily occurrences that have become as familiar and predictable as…say...a hot shower used to be.

If you’re curious – read on, if not – Steve will be telling you all about our travels in the Indian state of Goa shortly.

(Please note: Times are relative depending on jet lag, bleating goat noise outside our bedroom, or the frequent need to just go with the flow.)

6:30-7:30ish Wake up: Sarah is usually cradling her Mona Lisa pillow and Steve is cocooned inside his sleep sack (photos below). Mona has come in handy, acting as a.) a stuffed animal-surrogate, b.) apillow for airport sleeps, or c.) a meditation pillow for the brief attempts at the end of our yoga sessions. The sleeps sacks have also come in handy when we’re a.) too cheap/frugal to rent a room with sheets or b.) tooweirded out by the sheets provided.

7:30-7:45ish Yoga (yes, Geraldine, yoga). Happily, yoga has started most of our days. Our sessions usually last about 30-45 minutes and hardly have us doing no-hand headstands in Hampi, but making (and having) the time for a little stretching in the morning has made our long-walking days and sore backs from harder-than-we’re-used-to mattresses all the more bearable.That, and our arms are looking buff. :)

8:30ish Post- (and sometimes during) yoga music. Out trusty iTunes has come in handy by reminding us of home with some familiar tunes. Paul Simon, Gillian Welch, Ray LaMontagne, and The Great Lake Swimmers have set some nice, homey tones for the days.

During this time, we also embark on some shower and washing up journeys – most of which have consisted of conserving water via Navy showers (turning off the water when soaping up) or bathing in buckets left in the bathrooms. About 30% of our showers have been sans hot water, but then again, over 80% of our weather has been tee-shirt weather. It’s an easy trade off. We’ve both gotten quite good at the bucket baths and brushing our teeth with bottled water. And, it’s also worth mentioning, I have a new and immense appreciation the western toilet. I’ll leave it at that.

9:00ish Breakfast – sometimes included in our accommodations, sometimes not. We tend to cling to western favourites (eggs, fruit salad, muesli, yogurt) and also, we’ve tended to stick to one place once we find a place we like. The servers are often sad to see us go when we (mainly Sarah) share that “it’s our last morning here!”It’s nice to feel like regulars on the other side of the world.

9:45ish Packing the bag for the day – Sunscreen, check! Camera, check! Bug spray, check! Kleenex, check! Digestion-aiding enzymes, check! Books, check! Water, check! Money, check! “Okay, come on, Sarah….let’s go….” (Yeah, I tend to take a little while to pack up where as Steve could fall out of bed and go.) Sometimes the bag-packing feels a bit like Mom sending me off to the first day of school with all new my pencils, erasers, folders, lunch boxes, gym clothes, locker combinations, etc., but on the rare occasion that Steve’s gotten a sunburned neck or Sarah’s had the sniffles, it’s nice to have all the supplies readily available.

10:00-1:00ish A fun local activity! This can be anything from visiting Buddhas in Bangkok, to touring ruins in Hampi, to roaming through neighbourhoods in Ubud, to browsing for pieces of local art in Sydney. We find we’re usually good for a solid 3+ hours before the hottest part of the day sets in.

1:00ish Lunch – this can be anything from a local cheap eat to a picnic on the grass with the Tupperware we bought in Melbourne (one of our best purchases by far). Our picnics tend to consist of hard-boiled eggs, fresh veggies, cheese, and (in India) some “just open and serve” lentil dishes.

2:00-4:00ish Another fun local activity! If we were hard-core tourists in the morning, we’ll make our afternoons more low key, or vice versa. Of course, we always allow ourselves the downtime needed to not run ourselves into the ground during these five months.

4:00ish Cold or hot drink and a read – we’ve naturally fallen into the habit of having an afternoon drink (iced tea, lassi, chai, etc.) coupled with either reading, writing, journaling, knitting, catching up on emails, or just people-watching for a few hours before evening time. Steve’s been a superstar with his writing (book, blog, etc), meanwhile, Sarah alternates between knitting a baby blanket for her childhood friend and hub’s (yay, Kelly and Jake!) baby due this summer, reading, or journaling. This downtime has been such a lovely part of the trip. The act of disappearing into a book and/or world-escaping activity has made the exploratory parts of the trip that much more doable.

6:30-7:00ish Dinner – like lunch, we’ll either sample the local cuisine or have a picnic at home. Often this is a great chance to reflect on the day, or to just enjoy each other’s company with a glass of wine and silence.

Evening time – During this time, we end up doing any number of activities: catch a local dance performance, slowly stroll home the long way, look through our photos, write on the blog, pop in for dessert somewhere, or, really, anything we’re up for.

So there you have it: a day in the life of Steve and Sarah. Our days have been so filled with many wonderful things that it’s important to be flexible at any given time during the day to allow for more wonderful things to happen. But as creatures of habit, the above-mentioned schedule tends to be a fairly regular one. That is, of course, unless we must take a 12-hour sleeper bus across Indian states, succumb to spending the day in bed due to an unhappy tummy, or are just feeling like lounging on the beach/in a park/at a café from 9:00am-4:00pm. Part of getting to know the places we’ve visited has been about just being ourselves in different locales. It’ll be fun to see how new places and additional people (yippee Mom and Pete!) throughout the rest of our trip will alter our daily goings-on.

In the meantime, the journey continues…

Mining the Centuries in Hampi

2011-02-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

There seem to be two kinds of tourist attractions in the world – the first, like the dinosaur park in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, that leave you more than a little underwhelmed, and the second, like Hampi, where you put up with the loads of tourists, the endless offers for rickshaws and trinkets, and the occasional scam because when you visit the actual sites, your jaw drops.

Hampi (pronounced Haum-pee) is a town built on top of, inside of, and around a massive medieval city that during the 1500s was the one of the major seats of power in India. It’s situated along a river, amidst mountains of building-sized boulders left over from the retreat of the glaciers during the last Ice Age. At one point over 500,000 people lived here, including traders from Asia, the Middle East and farther abroad. In 1565 a massive attack by the Deccans completely destroyed the seat of power, but many of the sites have remained.

Sarah and I began by wandering through the Hampi Bazaar towards the ruins you can glimpse behind the little girl in the picture. (The photos roughly follow the course of our adventures). We climbed up the steps and through the temple, leaving the tourists, shops and noise behind and as we reached the summit of the hills (which strangely resemble the landscape and foliage of Joshua Tree National Park, CA), we looked down upon the Sule Bazaar, one of the less visited and haunting sites around. We were the only visitors in the nearly kilometer long set of ruins, in which nearly all of the stone pillars and temples remain. Intricate carvings of the Hindu gods remain (Hanuman, Krishna, Shiva, etc.) and the stone stalls feel like the vendors that used them 500+ years ago have only just left for the afternoon.

The second ancient site we visited was the Vitthala Temple, which is the best preserved out of all of the sites. It is an extensive complex of temples and public areas, including a stone chariot that used to run and a majestic tree growing right out of the stone courtyard. It was early morning when we arrived so we had the place to ourselves, but as we sat and watched, the tourists began to roll in. Most of the tourists to this site are Indian, with a good dash of Westerners mixed in as well, making it a fascinating place to people watch. In my head, I was busy imagining life here in the 1500s, traveling for months with caravans packed with goods for the marketplaces to arrive at this spot, but watching the women and men in brightly-colored saris and wraps wander through the site, I began to think about the ways in which contemporary culture in India intertwines with the very present artefacts from the past.

I can only offer the most cursory observations as an outside observer for a short period of time, but some things seem to stick out. For instance, the physical way in which the ancient sites are both revered and put to use. There are ruins nearly everywhere you look, and as you can see in some of the pictures, many local houses are built using them as a frame. This is not just a juxtaposition, but also an intermixing of the ancient and new. There are, of course, no examples of sites this old in the States or Canada, but what does remain from the distant past seems to be venerated and put behind glass as opposed to be lived in and used in this way. Which is not to say that Hampi is not respected for its antiquity – the entire village that exists here now has banned alcohol and meat (arg) out of respect for the holiness of the sites. It is just a different relationship to the past than we are used to.

I’ve also noticed that the revered position of the Hindu gods demonstrated by the intricate carvings and temples in the sites is reflected in the culture today. There is a huge number of gods in the Hindu pantheon and you see small, modern temples and shrines throughout the village of Hampi. What you also see is an amazing respect for the temples built in the 1300-1400s. Flowers and offerings dot the sights and I would imagine this is a large part of the reason that many Indian families visit these sites in their travels.

The broad range of Hindu gods also creates a situation where the popularity of certain gods fluctuates dramatically through the centuries. The big ones seem to remain constant, but we’ve seen stone depictions of many gods that have since fallen out of broad public attention (for instance, Naga, a god with a human torso and a snake lower half). The monuments remain though, dotting the ancient sites, and I can only imagine that many more hundreds of years will pass and perhaps these neglected gods will come back into favour, their dusty statues from the 1400s will be dusted off, and flowers will be laid at their feet again.

We will sadly be leaving Hampi tomorrow, and due to some rejigging of our schedule, will be taking the overnight “sleeper” bus to Goa. We’ve heard from many fellow travelers (thanks Anna!) that it’s a beautiful place with a mix of beaches and history and we are excited to arrive.

P.S. It’s blog contest time! Hampi is filled with many local and national artists selling beautiful sculptures, textiles, and jewellery. Write a comment on the blog with your guess at how much our delicious Valentine’s Day dinner in Hampi cost. The commenter who guesses the closest will receive a little prize package from India in the mail. :)

Vidyanikethan

2011-02-12T22:06:00.000-08:00

Vidyanikethan website

A few months ago, I read this Whole Living Magazine blog post about a non-profit organization called Vidyanikethan in Bangalore, Karnataka that worked on many projects in the poor communities in and around the city, focusing primarily on supporting children from destitute situations (ex-child labourers, children of sex workers, children outside of the proximity of government-funded schools, etc.). One of our main reasons for volunteering was to feel more grounded in a country where, for numerous stretching-outside-of-our-comfort-zone reasons (as detailed earlier our first post about India) we were both quite nervous about visiting. Of course, we are both firm believers in “doing good” – it drives who we are – but we also wanted a place to call home in India, complete with a family and a raison d’etre, so we could wake up every morning in this strange new world with a purpose. We soon found out that we needed something exactly like Vidyanikethan, and happily, they needed us too.

My search for Vidyanikethan began by connecting with several people who eventually led me to one of Vidyanikethan’s board members – Anand – who is one of a special breed of entrepreneur, the Bangalore entrepreneur. Bangalore is a boom town, in the new concept of the term in that they have recently discovered gold in the international need for cheap IT help. If you have troubles with your Verizon Wireless service, the 800 number you are calling will most likely be forwarded to a Bangalore native whose work hours are 10pm-7am to align with the North American’s working hours. The pay rate in Bangalore is remarkably lower than that in North America, thus there being a real market for entrepreneurs to run supporting businesses around the town – driving services, project managers, international/ go-betweens, etc. Anand, in addition to a good head and business model, has a good heart. His connection with Vidyanikethan is purely selfless, and for that, he was a great connection to make in our venture into the Indian world.

The three of us met for tea at a local hang out (I told him he’d be able to find us because we’d be the “white faces in the crowd,” sure enough, we stuck out like two pale thumbs). We instantly warmed to him as we learned about his connection to the organization. They help women and children in need, and he believes in what they do, therefore he’s offered to help them gather volunteers who also believe in what they do. Point blank. We were sold – and we were scheduled to arrive for a full day of tours around the area to see their projects the next day. Our meeting was brief, as Anand was in between meetings with a Swedish film school delegation (part of a new film school he’s helping start in Bangalore), but he sent us off with a wish to enjoy our time with Vidyanikethan, a hand-drawn map to where the school was located, and some great restaurant recommendations for the area.

That evening and during hour-long commute the next morning, Steve and I chatted about what we’d gotten ourselves into, not necessarily committing to jumping ship if the feeling wasn’t right, but permitting ourselves to critically look at the organization’s motives and our services for them. The bottom line is we were nervous and playing it safe. That feeling couldn’t have melted away faster the moment we arrived at the school.

Time is a relative thing in India. Suggesting the cab come to pick us up at 9:30 doesn’t mean a thing – if the cab arrives ½ hour early, we should take it, and if it’s an hour late, we shouldn’t bat an eye – and then, we should take it. Our cab arrived at the school 45 minutes later than Steve and I said we’d be there (sacrilege in our OCD world) but we got the sense that the school and organization administrators were waiting at the school entrance from early that morning for our arrival. Upon walking into the school, close to 15 stunning women in saris, shuffled about us, hanging malas (garlands) around our necks, serving us masala chai, offering blessings, and making us feel like members of the royal family come to pay a visit. Our hands were grasped, signs had been hung, and a meeting commenced in our honour when silence filled the main office and all 15 pairs of eyes looked at us expectantly. I stumbled a bit and offered our gratitude for the amazing welcome, casually mentioning that we’d be more than happy to help in any way over the week. The head of the entire entourage, a woman who started the school in the late 1980s, spoke up then welcoming us in sparse English. A colleague of hers quickly took over the conversation and guided us through a brief, yet detailed account of several organizational projects. To our surprise, they’d read our résumés closely and had expected and planned for Steve to help them with their grant applications and for me to offer workshops to not only all of the teachers in the school, but also throughout the week, to teach a class to every grade (the school runs from Kindergarten to Grade 7 – approximately 220 students). But before any of that happened, they’d planned the day for us to take the school vehicle around to the various projects in (and far away from) the area. Though, we had no other plans ourselves, we were assured we’d return to the school around 4:00ish (but remember, time is relative in India, so we walked in our door closer to 9:00pm that evening).

The ride(s) were amazing and we feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to not only visit the field projects, but to experience the countryside and alternative-to-city-living of the two states, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. For the first hour+, we trekked over unpaved terrain to get to the first project, through sericulture (silk-producing) villages where cows, goats, and barefoot children roamed in the streets, gawking at the white people in the car. The landscape was dry and very beautiful, occasionally dotted with trees, but for the most part, barren and stretching far into the distance. The people we drove by were beautiful, the women in their vibrant saris of every colour, balancing large baskets of vegetables, sticks, etc. on their heads, and the men wandered arm-in-arm (a phenomenon we’ve found very fascinating here in India) through the streets.

The first project we saw was the one that quickly became our focus for grant applications and funding opportunities, but also the most dear to our hearts. In the village of Sarjapur, we visited a two-room building that was home to 16 girls who were ex-child labourers, rescued 4 years prior by a UNICEF and Department of Sericulture initiative to abolish child labour in the silk industry. Vidyanikethan had committed to housing and providing for these girls, but after the Department of Sericulture declared there to be no more children in the work force, the funding was cut. We’d learned that many of these girls’ families were untraceable, thus making them orphans in Vidyanikethan’s care.

We nervously arrived to the project at the tail end of the children’s lunch hour, preparing ourselves to find a group of children who carried the weight of the harsh world, but rather we were greeted with smiles (several missing age-appropriate teeth), a playful run around the lawn, and a sense of pride in their simple home that melted our hearts. We thanked them for sharing their home with us, handed out shiny stickers (you can imagine the response to those), and sensed the urgency for our help in finding funding for these girls, in the form of either large or simple seed grants, as well as corporate and individual funding. During the week, Steve and I later wrote requests for help to provide these girls with the basic needs:

“Through Vidyanikethan’s support, the sixteen rescued girls from the Sanjapur area have continued to live in the government-provided hostel, but with only the bare necessities. The building where the girls live consists of two bare rooms which are used for all of the girls’ daily activities: sleeping, eating, playing, and more. The girls, ages 6-16, are a playful, energetic, and hopeful group who, despite their dire situation, support each other as a family. It is Vidyanikethan’s wish to enrich their lives by implementing existing plans to harvest rain water, grow a kitchen garden, paint the living quarters, and bring in extra-curricular teachers, but none of this can move forward without your help.”