Road Trip

Road Trips. How I love them.

I still don't have a licence, but I totally and completely buy into the dream of the American open road. Manifest Destiny! Capital F Freedom! I used to be surprised at the sameness of the views from the highways- long wide stretches, plains and hills, shades of green and gold and brown, occasional livestock...- but when you spend hours, really hours, looking out the windows you realize that it's not a sameness, but a slow creeping change. It's the middle. The in-between. Not quite all-the-way change, but a range of shades. I think that this is what makes it different from driving for hours on end in France or Spain or England or Germany. Eventually, in Europe, you hit a border. Here, our interstate misses the distinction that different countries can lend. I mean, when you cross the border into Switzerland, you know it. There are places you have to stop and talk to people in official-looking hats and suddenly all the houses look different. On US highways, difference is couched in similarity. Maybe what I like isn't the idea of discovering a new world, but some secret inside expanse of an existing one. One with rest stops.

Granziella's

I love rest stops. I love the weird non-space you find in the square-mile indoors of Granziella's and the freeway-side taco stands. I love the people at rest stops who linger because they want to be where they're going but they really want an excuse to stand and roam freely through olive bars and plastic-molded picnic tables and surprise regional specialties. 

I got the opportunity to go North with the band I've been singing with. Hernandez Hideaway took two cars for its six members, and we headed from El Cerrito to Eugene early morningish after a Tuesday night rehearsal. Hit the road around 9 and rolled at least a good 20 minutes before stopping for gas. It was, of course, only the beginning.

One thing I dig about road trips is that the non-space gets filled by all this frivolous and sometimes sneakily important stuff. You get to consume things you wouldn't touch otherwise. It's like everywhere you stop is that island Pinnochio goes to where everything is deliciously sinful and you know you have to leave before you get too drawn in. Our violin player bought at least two bags of  Pork Skins. A liter of Huckleberry milkshake did it for our bassist, whose temple-bodied organic farmer hands gripped that styrofoam monolith so smoothly, so lovingly. Fritos and Original flavor Corn Nuts for our trombonist. Egg-cheese-sausage biscuits for our saxophonist and accordionist. I don't remember where we were when I saw the Pop Tarts Ice Cream Sandwich. Washington? I only regret that it was breakfast time. Taste America.

We hit the Dairy Queen, Subway, a roadside taco stand, a diner with a picture of Not The Biggest Dog but Close on the register and an EAT sign out on the road, and a decent handful of truckstops equipped with showers and car-maintenance aisles and, inexplicably, display cases of blown-glass collectibles. These were not the highlights of the trip. Of course. We made a fire in the dark in Oregon and drank beer and roasted marshmallows. We dipped our wiggling toes in the river and our naked bodies in the boiled-egg smelling hot springs. We greeted people in Portland and Seattle and a lovely spot called Gig Harbor and played music in bars and danced and celebrated a wedding and ran amuck in new venues and with old friends. That was great, lovely, the REAL point of the trip. But for me, it was during those shared moments in the cars and booths and gas pumps that I felt like we were growing together. Girl talk in the gear-stuffed but so much more comfy 4x4. Conversations in the front seat of the sedan about family and music and choices and directions and bug corpses on the windshield. Pillow organization in the backseat, the naming and slow consuming of Mister Cabbagehead, who rode all the way up but only  part of the way back down.

Mister Cabbagehead. In memoriam.

And all that bonding between important moments gets stored like so much LSD in the fat cells generously provided by the wonderfully nutritionless stuff we put in our bellies. She may forget the conversation about surprise adulthood and life changes, but it will live on in the 5 pounds she gained on the six day trip. Just like you can build memory into muscle, I think road trips whip up a special kind of padding that shapes the way you see things, or at least the way you will hold yourself for a little while. Like some physical memory. A souvenir. I wonder if, when we burn off these calories, we'll tap into the same feeling of scenery flying by and similarity morphing into difference while the faces and profiles of our companions stay the same. 

Le grand bleu

Well, here I am. In a tin can hurtling at 575 miles per hour 35,000 feet in the air. My cat is at my feet, enclosed in a tiny carrying case and swaddled in comforting-smell clothes (though I have a hard time believing that my unwashed T-shirt could be that much of a calming aid). She is doing surprisingly well. When we were delayed in Frankfort I tried to coax her out to share a pretzel and beer with me, but she was uninterested. Perhaps she just doesn't like Germany. Or pilsner.

8.5 years, 3.5 bags.

All my bags were overweight. I managed to look sad enough to get some of the fees ignored, but it still cost me 230 euros to get my two monolith suitcases, the cat, and the computer on the plane. No big surprise. 

les dernières

The night before I left Paris I flipped out. My good friends, coming by to wish me well, found me in a whirlwind of Unprepared. Boxes everywhere. Poorly packed. Hysterical. After preparing me a bowl of pasta and opening bottles of champagne, they proceeded to repack my bags, like my own personal transcontinental elves, whilst I wandered around collecting hugs and jokes and being invited outside for cigarettes. They then kissed me on the cheek and floated off one by one into the night and early morning, laden down with gifts and bags to store, in order almost exactly opposite to my meeting them. How's that for Poetry and Meaning?

When I unpack in California, it's going to be a treasure hunt. I have no idea what made it  in there. Don't tell customs. 

I was able to delay my trip back a week, but it wasn't enough. So many things to do, so many things left undone. Museums and long walks, contracts to break and medical care to take advantage of (why didn't I find time to get new glasses? WHY?). I suppose you are never ready to leave behind a decade of your life. But still, I think I may have truly excelled at underestimating the task at hand. I shudder to think of the boxes I have left behind.

lapinou

small-time treachery

What I was able to do, though, was probably the most important. A great big 12-hour goodbye picnic at La Villette with cheese and wine and badminton and hugs and photos and barefoot grass-walking. Beers with my music kids from the American Cathedral, ending in rounds of bunny-eared singing in the Irish pub down the canal from my apartment. A last board meeting or the Paris Choral Society, where I, the dome of the Invalides clearly visible through the 6th floor window, fell under the influence of fabulous wine, good food, and great company to accept responsibility for a swath of things I probably won't get around to for months. A lunch at Chez Paul entirely composed of escargot and escarole. Another at the Patache, bookended by oysters and tarte tatin. A last-minute recording session with the boys. A tagine dinner and reckless dance party out in the banlieue, pushing furniture around and wiggling into the night. Evenings and picnics with my dear dear friends, on the banks of the Seine, listening to jazz at the Parc Floral, at the Jardin de Reuilly by the sparkling-water fountain, on the edge of the canal trying to out-hipster the hipsters... Oh my Parisiens, I will miss you so.

It's difficult to believe now, now that there's no turning back. Now that I am sandwiched between the curved wall of the 747 and a Buddhist monk who I feel compelled to share my vegetarian meals with, trying to crane my neck to watch John Carter on the screen in the middle of the aircraft, while my feet twist around the cat carrier at my feet. Now that I have no more control even through lack of control (some part of me hoped that I would fail to leave, that the incapacity to let go would make it impossible to do anything but stay in Paris, in Europe, at least a little longer). I guess sometimes you've just got to let go. Especially when the airplane map shows us inching further across the Atlantic, and I left my inflatable raft in a box somewhere in Ile de France. California here I come...

I love you, Paris, I'll see you soon.

En train de...

Right now I am in a train on my (I guess) last excursion outside of town. I took the cheaper non-TGV line to Toulouse, and now have about 3 hours left of Limoges and Brive La Gaillard and other places I have never stopped. But it is nine o’clock in May and the sun is setting and the train moves slowly enough for the towns to be visible in the sunset and it is charming. I have only vague ideas about when trains went out of style in the US (ripped apart by the automotive and oil industries is my favorite story) but in any case it was a truly sad thing for romanticism. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would take a plane within France.

About six years ago I went on an Eastern European trip with a girlfriend and we took a train from Riga to Moscow whose dark exhaust hinted at coal. We were packed in with a hundred Russians who kept getting up and thudding to the back of the train with glass mugs and teabags to access a water tap heated by the engines. I rented a glass that looked something like the brilliant rendering below and tried to follow suit. Julia made a friend in the smoker’s compartment and they bonded over linguistically incompatible conversation. Their absurdist repartee was so pleasingly fluid that the woman dropped by regularly, unlit cigarette in hand, to pick up my friend on her way back to nicotineland and continue their chat. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen on planes.

brilliant rendering of russian tea glasses

On planes I end up trying to sleep folded onto the tray table or wedged up against the wall while some seatmate probes: “gee, it must be so neat to live in PARis”. I stand in line for the restroom and hover above the metallic seat while trying not to wonder where the speeding vortex goes. On this Latvia-Russia train it was obvious. You could see the tracks through the hole in the ground. Mystery solved, thankfully in sensible shoes.

When we got to the border between the two countries, we caused a half hour delay. We were interrogated in two languages we didn’t speak about our luggage (I think). We looked at each other and tried to neither laugh nor cry, waving our red passports and pointing to our tickets while the other passengers watched. Stone-faced does not do their gaze justice. I was especially paranoid, as my friend had insisted on hiding a piece of clandestine hash in a tampon applicator in her toiletries bag. All the ads I’ve ever seen for those movies where people are kept in sketchy prisons for crimes they didn’t commit raced through my head until the customs people just gave up and the train got moving again.

It was awesome.

On the way back from Amsterdam a couple of years ago, a trip taken with a group of my closest friends from Paris and one from California in part to celebrate the defense of my Masters thesis, we spent the entire time in the bar car. It was one of the best parts of the trip. We cleaned them out, and laughed so hard we cleared out the car itself. Although, not completely it would seem the next day when I received a text message from some guy I didn’t remember, asking to hang out with Dre before she went back to the US. Needless to say, it went unanswered.

I remember my first train trip in France, when I was fourteen going with my grandmother from Nice to Toulouse. She knitted, and kept pestering me to stop reading and look out the window. I didn’t want to look out the window. I wanted everyone to think I was refined and European and not with this high-pitched dyed-hair old lady who kept trying to lovingly feed me fabulous egg and salad sandwiches. I was, obviously, totally wrong to not take advantage of the images of cows and sunflower fields rolling past, but what are you going to do. There would be time to catch up on the pastoral eye-candy. Roughly six hours per, if you are counting from Paris to Toulouse.

The last time my mother visited, she and her boyfriend took a train from Paris to Rome. There was some bizarre condition with her US reservation that meant they had to (surprise!) stand in line and confirm their travel before boarding the train. In the end, they arrived, running, just as the train was leaving. I had a heated argument with the guy on the quai and he shrugged his shoulders. “Désolé.” But as we were turning around to go home and drink more wine to forget, he called to me. The train had stopped. Something about a door being jammed open. He helped them onto the train and they made it to Rome, reservations intact and (I’d like to think) souls invigorated by their near-miss.

With planes there are no near-misses. When you have an early flight you have to sleep at the frickin airport. JFK, Athens, Stockholm. I have done it MANY MANY TIMES. AND IT SUCKS. There are no last-minute door delays. You have to sit in the plane for hours on the runway, waiting for them to figure it out. Not drinking water. Not walking around.  Just sitting, waiting so that you can sit some more a thousand more feet up. The plane is not the friend of those of us who sometimes (always) arrive a teensy bit (half hour) late.

sleep-train goody bag

In a few days I will take the night train back to Paris, and slip into my mid-level compartment, complete with blanket-satchel and plastic-wrapped hygienic and surprisingly comfortable pillow, as well as a goody-bag sleep assortment and bottle of water, all provided by the train company. I will arrive back in town probably an hour behind schedule and have the option of paying too much for a café allongé or taking a two euro shower in surprisingly clean facilities provided for the night-trainers. Then I will calmly take the metro to my teaching gig. No ridiculously long trip into town, no waiting forever for the spinny baggage cart to spit out my mangled bag. No annoying standing in line while tourists try to figure out the ticket-into-town system. All hail rail.

I love trains so much that when the SNCF (train people) bought up teaser ad space in the metro I fell for their ruse immediately. “Coming soon, direct tunnel from Paris to New York!” I was gleeful, imagining the ease of slipping into Gare Du Nord 30m before departure, rolly-bag in hand, going through security measures where I wouldn’t have to take off my shoes. I didn’t care about the physics of the 5851 km underwater tunnel. My fantasy was finally coming true. I felt cheated when the follow-up ad told me I was dreaming, it would never happen, but that you can now reserve flights through their website. Jerks.

I am considering wearing a conductor’s hat on my flight back to San Francisco in mourning and silent protest for my dreams of continued rail travel. 

Gare d'Austerlitz at 815 (i took the coffee, thank you)

Voyage, voyage...

Parisians are, famously and incontestably, snobs, and they will tell any adorer of the city of lights that the best part of living in Paris is leaving Paris.

  

If you are an expat, this becomes true after about a year and a half. Though am not convinced that this is any different from living anywhere else. We’re like toddlers testing the world. We wander away from Mommy only to run back to make sure she’s still there before heading further out. It is helpful, of course, when Mommy is somewhere close to other places we want to see.

view from Chrystal Palace Park, Porto, awesome napping spot

I have recently been bingeing on travel. Last week I went to Porto with friends, eleven of us wandering groggily through the sloping, cobblestone streets, eating grilled seafood and drinking vinho verde and Superbock (one of my favorite beer names ever). Created instant parties in empty dance clubs, ate at absurdly long tables, took group naps in parks and crowded photographs in front of supposedly famous buildings...

I had known absolutely nothing about Porto before going, and was surprised at how lovely it is. But even more interesting was the fact that we were there together, two couples and seven singles, before the advent of children and prohibitive financial responsibility, spending five full days of in-between in some random foreign city, together. A shared vacation in blissful limbo.

Pretty places are nice, but I have always been fascinated by those with visible layers of history. Russia, where I was about 6 years ago, is this way. Stalinist apartment buildings rising in front of Orthodox onion-dome churches with Cyrillic-lettered MacDonalds signs in between them. Crazy.

Berliners, lounging between flea market and amphitheater karaoke

Berlin, where I was two weeks before Porto, is the same. Not with the Cyrillic symbols of global capitalism, but with the history, and for some reason I didn’t expect it as much. We went to a flea market on former killing fields and a complex of bars and studios and clubs in what used to be an industrial park, just about everywhere we went seemed to be a converted something else. My friends live next to what up to two years ago was the Tegel airport, and I went jogging on the runways. The overgrown spaces between airplane-sized lanes are now marked off as bird sanctuaries, and people were rollerblading and kite-boarding and lounging and sitting around having tea in a makeshift furniture swap-meet.

There is a feeling in the air of Berlin that I hadn’t experienced before, not just because I went on the first hot weekend of the year in a country that gets COLD, and the entire city descended into the streets to party. I think that there is something to the idea that chaos leads to potential. Thirteen years since the Wall went down, and the graffiti has only gotten better.

It is tempting to make this post interminable with anecdotes from neat adventures. Drinking Guinness to a Celtic jam session with the presiding priest from St Patrick’s Cathedral, who rode to and from the Dublin pub on his bicycle. In Malta, being told during a tour of the capital city that they stopped building opera houses because they were just easy targets for bombings. Getting stuck in Naples on a quiet Christmas eve because the Italians can’t handle snow on their train tracks- the only time I saw the city not vibrating with vespas and language and gestures and clotheslines. I spent one New Year’s swimming in Hyde Park in London, cheered on by old ladies and chased by swans, and another stuffing twelve grapes in my mouth at midnight in Barcelona, laughing in four languages. Memories, doobedoobedoobedoo.

Gellert mineral baths, Budapest

Many of these ventures have been with people who were cruising through Europe, the nice part of the double-edged sword that is living in a desirable destination. I crashed part of Pete’s honeymoon a year or so ago, slept on the floor of the bridal suite and bonded with his wifey in the topless women’s area of the tiled mineral baths in Budapest. For Renzo’s thirtieth birthday, I was invited to the family village near Sorrento. We wandered through town with his brothers and people popped out of windows and doorways, storagerooms and alcoves, to say:  “You’re a Staiano? Ima Staiano! He’s a Staiano, She’s a Staiano.” It was like a Disney movie.

Amalfi Coast, Italy. Or theatrical backdrop. Not sure. 

For me, a lot of Europe seems like a Disney movie. It’s surprising how much things can live up to your expectations, but in a more surround-sound way. It’s A Small World in Virtual Reality. Fondue in Switzerland, herring in Sweden, waffles in Belgium, joints in the Netherlands, and metal bands in Latvia. Can a place be real if it is an exact manifestation of your expectations?

Maybe this is why I so like sticking around in one spot for so long. I feel pulled to the exciting new places, but it’s the living in them that is really interesting. The difference in mundanity. It’s exciting to be alien and yet entirely comfortable, where returning from a trip is still going somewhere kind of new. If the best thing about living in Paris is leaving Paris, the second best is quite possibly coming back.