Open-Road Trip

I write this at the beginning of a road trip around the country to visit family -and soak in the landscapes between. We're lucky to have family living in so many interesting places: the rural shores of the Upper Great Lakes in Northern Michigan, the Open Range/High Plains of Western Wyoming, up against the Rocky Mountains of Colorado's Front Range, the rolling prairies of Eastern Kansas, and the musty old river town at the boundary of the East and the West, St. Louis, Missouri.

Every time I mention a drive across the plains someone groans with sympathy, but it's always been one of my favorite regions in the world to explore! The geography there is so rich; and made all the more so because it is so overlooked. I have goose bumps for the big sky ahead...

aerogramme outlook

Although these past several months that the blog was asleep have seen Jen and I make a transition back to the United States, I refuse to take my foot out of the doorway! For now we're living in a beautiful old house in an interesting part of Poughkeepsie, New York. The neighborhood, the city, and the Hudson Valley offer a lot of rich opportunities for geographic exploration. We're back on familiar territory, but now there's an opportunity to see it and describe it all as a traveller.

As I collected a lot of details and photos those last few months in Budapest while this blog drifted off, I still have a few things to share. Over the months ahead I'll look for ways of incorporating those things into whatever's going on at present. I hope to sprinkle the blog with little items picked up this Spring in New York, Texas, and Michigan as well. Since arriving in New York in March I've learned a little about contrasting priorities regarding quality of life. We loved Budapest and our own lives there so much that I have little doubt the eight months we lived there wont be our last.

As Jen and I plan our future and continue to look for ways to break travel out of its two-weeks-a-year confinement -blending it permanently into our everyday lives- I hope to continue sharing it all here.

Wake Up...

sarajevo pastiche #3

  

  

  

Sarajevo pastiche #2

  

  

  

Sarajevo pastiche #1

    

   

   

Warm welcome to Sarajevo

Bewildered in our arrival to a new city with new smells, sights and sounds all around, we took the first and easiest opportunity to get a room to drop our bags and catch our bearings. Owned by a hostel service, it was a room with six beds, but we'd have it to ourselves for the price of a regular private double. Immediately we were following a man up the steep cobbled residential streets surrounding the old city center. Passing a mixture of tumble-down shacks and fixed-up Ottoman-style buildings, we finally turned left at a particularly rugged former house, and to our surprise, entered it.

Finally alone in the shade and quiet of the room we turned the light on (a single dim overhead bulb) to locate the outlet to recharge our electronics (none), tried the beds (saggy as hammocks), and waded through the stagnant water on the bathroom floor to use the toilet. We've always prided ourselves in being good budget travelers, and we realized this is a relatively poor country, but the price here didn't seem fair at 25 Euros. Nevertheless we decided to spend one night, which allowed us more leisure that day in locating a better place for the remainder of our stay in town. 

We returned that night well after dark and when I flicked on the light Jen looked startled and said "Oh my god." I followed the dotted lines coming out of her eyes over to a bed across the room. There, squinting in the light, was a curled up young cat. She stretched and got up to greet us as I realized I'd opened the window earlier to air the room out. She demonstrated his ability to win a room for the night as she intensely mauled us with affection for over an hour. After spending the night curled up in my neck, she left in time for us to grab our bags and go. Outside in the yard we saw that she was the smart one of several identical siblings.

    
    
    

Here's to a fresh start...

Happy New Year (albeit 11 days in)... So, I've let myself get quite behind on the blog, and the sights and impressions that I'd like share from Budapest have piled up, but I do want to start the new year with a well-wish. I always used to think that while any given year may be good or bad for any given person, that on balance there aren’t really any differences in years for the world as a whole. An individual looks at their year through from their own perspective, but given the amount of individual perspectives there are out there, the quality of a year lived collectively by the world balances out, or neutralizes. To the extent I'm questioning this notion in light of an accumulation of destructive current events in the world, I wish everyone reading this a better year ahead.

Before I share the scraps recently gathered in Budapest, I’m going to return to where I left off on the blog before Christmas, and attempt to give an impression of Sarajevo. Honestly, I think I've been intimidated about how to approach descriptions of that place because we were so touched by it, and I've been concerned about adequately conveying what a special place it is using its own merits and without glorifying anything. Beginning with my next post I'll give it a try.

Before I go back to that trip from November, however, here’s an impression of the New Year's celebration in our part of Budapest. Andrássy út, closed to traffic and filled with people in party hats and carrying champagne bottles were kissing, hollering and dodging firecrackers. The fireworks were being launched from all directions and, as some of them landed among openings in the crowds, red and blue sparkles bounced in all directions causing thrilled shrieks all around. 

Scenes from Budapest at Christmas

Budapest has emerged from an ideally quiet Christmas. Almost all of the shops were closed and the streets were mostly deserted. After a month of crowded Christmas fairs, hot spiced wine and stores filled with beigli and candy, everyone seemed to go home for a few days. 

This contrast with the gaudy sales-pitch I've been getting used to in recent years highlighted for me how distorted the holiday is becoming from the sentimentality everyone has for it in their imaginations. Some of my favorite parts of the holiday were always in the brief silent moments when I'd be outside walking in the boring grey afternoons before dinner, or after the feast when everyone is full, tired, satisfied and together.

We spent the few quiet days here walking through the overcast city with our hands shoved into our coat pockets and scarves pulled up around our faces, seeing only an occasional family carrying packages down the street. Even our neighborhood homeless man was gone from his usual door vestibule Christmas night.