Here, I am!

22 December, 2013

Well. Here I am in the clouds.  I'm not sure where. I feel like I've lived so many different lives in the last three months, especially after the last couple of weeks without my mother. It's much different when one can say "I," rather than "we." I'm not a different person, but it is much easier to sort of forget who I am when I'm traveling alone. I feel detached, in a good way, calm, and happy. I guess that's why I say I'm in the clouds (and because I'm in an airplane).

Not sure what the significance of that is, so I'll move onto a new subject. I just spent a fantastic ten days in Riga, Latvia with my cousins. 

No wait... First there was France! After our three beautiful days in Rome with Bamby, the rake and Hoeh parted ways and I took a seventeen-euro flight to Marseilles. Eva, 5, and Simmy, greeted me at the airport and I spent the next five days Simmy and Sabine's lovely new (self-built, some finishing touches still in progress) home in Aix-en-Provence, practicing my French with Eva and Hugo, 3, wrestling with them on their parents' bed, playing cache-cache, or dragging them across the floor by their feet as they shrieked with laughter. 

Having lunch outside on a particularly nice sunday.

We also did some exploring of the beautiful countryside (check out the roman aqueduct), and picked out and decorated the perfect Christmas tree. 

Overall it was a great experience getting to meet my two new second cousins and also getting to know Simmy a little better, who was always that "so friendly but also intimidatingly cool and funny older first-cousin-once-removed that I get to see once every few years" throughout my childhood. Sorry about my insuppressible urge to be precise about the relationship. It's wordy but that's what it is.

Me and Hugo

Ok, now onto Riga! What a fantastic end to my trip. For the first week I was alone with one of my other long-time favorite first-cousins-once-removed, Nicholas, and another one of my new favorite second cousins, Paula, 4, whom I had never met before. The combination of Paula's sometimes frustrating, but mostly hilarious antics and Nicholas's engaging and comfortable company, along with the fact that I had no stresses or responsibilities of my own, put me in a state of plain old constant happiness. It felt like a true vacation. I laughed often and ate well, exploring the city and baby-sitting some by day, sitting up late talking by night. 

Paula: "Yes, tate a pitchure"

The only thing that could have improved the situation would have been the arrival of more people that I loved, and sure enough, exactly a week after I landed, we went back to the airport, flowers in hand, to welcome my beloved cousins, Eloise and Adelaide. I'm not going to explain what we did for the next 4 days, partly because I don't remember, but mostly because it's not important. Summary: We talked and ate, planned family vacations, laughed and did not cry, and Eloise knitted (in addition to participating in the above activities). 

The only thing that could have made things better would have been one more person. And so we went to the airport again and came back with Nicholas's wife/ Paula's mother, Zuzanna, who has been studying dance and music in a program in Barcelona for the last few months. Another charming and beautiful human being, whom I immediately liked and wanted to get to know better, but I was leaving in less than 48 hours! So, after she arrived and we were all having such a good time together, I saw that the only thing that could improve things at that point would be to change my plane ticket so I could stay for just a few more days. . . Sooo. . . Surprise! Just kidding, I'm coming home tomorrow :) I'm spending tonight in Milan at Owen's (the anchor and unsung hero of our trip) with him and Mila and then to boston in the morning.

Goodbye Riga 

Overall reflections on the trip? Well, sort of a bust on goal number one; I didn't really figure out what i want to do when I get home, you know with my life and career etc. But the world seems much bigger now. Traveling's fun, but seeing friends and family was the most important part, with meeting new random people in a close second, and although traveling alone is more relaxing, the trip wouldn't have worked without my mother the Hoeh. As far as I can tell, the most once-in-a-lifetime element of my voyage was getting to do it with her.

Three months is a long time to summarize. I mean that amount of time can easily be a trip without going anywhere. I would say I just had more interesting scenery. 

Now, from a philosophical standpoint, what I might take away is, now is always now and tomorrow never arrives, but somehow what used to be tomorrow is now getting farther and farther behind me. 

Good luck to everyone else in your life journeys. May you always search, but never find yourself. Maybe we'll see you back here!

Inch by inch, row by row, time for Rake and Hoeh to go.

iThis morning we said goodbye as the Rake dropped the Hoeh off at Rome Terminale.

It's been a journey that defies simple answers to "How was it?" So instead, may as well just finish the highlights since Thanksgiving.  

At the hostel we met hilarious and fun people, and ended up at Pompeii with them, on a frantic search for the corpses one sees in the textbooks.  The guy with the white glasses asked every workman we saw, "where are the bodies? The dead people? The corpses?" 

We only found "the 2," not "the 11" we'd hoped for, but our friends all had to catch planes and we had to get the bus to Amalfi.

We returned to our awesome Hostel of the Sun in Naples, which we recommend without hesitation.

 Next day we were tourists again, which was a bit disorienting after our weeks and weeks of rural and isolated living.  But Napoli is a really cool place that we enjoyed wandering around.

Finally got enough bones to satisfy us at the Cemeterio de Fontinelle, a huge cave that was filled for centuries with the bones of miscellaneous unfortunates, whose remains were later adopted by locals who formed a cultish system of honoring them, giving them names which came to the caretakers in dreams.

Our final destination together was Rome, to visit Aunt Bamby ( she prefers Nadia but it is hard to drop the family diminutive!), who must have the most central and impressive apartment one can imagine.  For example, the Vatican and the Pantheon and several other things are all a few blocks away.

Elisabeth and Bamby, who is almost 80 but still taking watercolor classes and turning out incredible botanical paintings, writing a novel, addressing the problem of the publisher releasing a second edition of her book Maria Callas Remembered without involving or paying her, looking for a publisher for her two childrens' books, and writing a novel.

Photo from a book on the 1962 sculpture "invasion" of Spoleto, which went on to become the Spoleto festival, all of which Aunt Bamby was involved in and helped design, then worked on the festival for many years.

definitely one of the weirdest and most effective illusions ever.

So that's it.  If I ever find WIFI in Milan, this post will end our trip on the day it ended, Dec. 5, 2013.  It started Sept. 26.  We've had an incredible journey, with so many good people and so few bad ones, so many interesting experiences and not too many boring ones, and just enough difficult ones to give us a few stories to tell! I think we are both really glad we got to spend so much time together, and neither of us would have wanted to do exactly this trip alone - no way! But together, what a team!

Elisabeth's journey goes on, but without an iPad so you'll have to follow her facebook I suppose. Ciao everyone.