storms, gunpowder and scampi

I had forgotten what it was like to be stuck on the roads. I live in a north-Midwestern town where winters are long and so often miserable, yet they rarely affect my comings and goings. If I look outside and see snow, I think: warmer scarf needed, and I head out.

The goal yesterday was to drive early from D.C. to Wilmington, Delaware (some 110 miles), do some work at the Hagley library on the DuPont estate, see a little of the countryside up and down the Chesapeake Bay and head back to D.C. in time for a late dinner.

Oh, I read all about the heavy rains and snows that were to pound the east coast. Still, I am not typically deterred by weather. Some have remarked that I should have been a long haul truck driver – I am that calm and resolute when I hit the roads. (I could not be a long haul truck driver. America’s superhighways put me to sleep.)

But I95, linking DC with Baltimore, Wilmington (and then Philadelphia or New York) is something else. It must be the east coast version of L.A. highways. Cars move and at a rapid pace, but in a tight configuration of traffic. You jump in, stay in and hope that you find a spot to jump out at the right exit.

Still, we are on the road in good time, the rains are powerful, but the visibility is decent. We persevere.

A little dicy by the time we hit the DuPont estate, but still, we’re good, we’re calm. We even pause for a latte before settling in.


a quick stop at the Brew Ha Ha

The DuPonts. The early American industrialists who made their wealth in manufacturing gunpowder. Right here in Wilmington. I resisted the 3.5 hour tour of their estate, and so I cannot give you much in terms of photos, but it is a wonder: a real display of industrial growth, wealth and labor. I did sneak up on the DuPont mansion – the first of the many they were to build in the area. Here it is, splendidly peaking at you from amidst old trees:



By early afternoon, I was ready to leave the compound and poke around the Maryland area (sorry, Delaware, there’s not much to you and so the goal quickly became to drive down to the Maryland coast.)

Rainswept coast, fishing boats and towns, clam shacks, farmhouses and villages with diners and old barber shops. Those were the images I had going into it.

I saw a barber shop.



And then, lots and lots of slow moving traffic, trying desperately to stay on the road as sheets of ice and wet slush pound the east coast. Cars on the road, cars off the road, cars in places they should not be, cars trying to get places, slowly, very slowly.



Such slow going. A mile over an eternity. By the time I reach Elkton, at the northern tip of the bay, it is clear that I will not see much of the coast, of towns, of villages, of boats or water. Except the frozen stuff, pouring out of the skies.

On this day, the northern Maryland landscape looks like something straight out of… Wisconsin.




My cell phone is ringing. My daughter, stuck in the Hagley library is calling for a rescue. They’re closing early because of the weather. I’m miles away from the DuPonts, from Wilmington, stuck in crawling traffic. Crawling in the wrong direction.

I turn around and head back. Sometimes the pace on the I95 slows to a standstill. I got a ride to a coffee shop, but now that is closing as well. Hang in there, I should be back within… Hours. It took hours to navigate back to Wilmington. And then many more hours to turn around and drive back to D.C.

For all the hassle and headache of driving during possibly the only freak storm to hit the wider DC area this entire year, I have to say this: it was an adventure. And with a cake at the end of the Baltimore tunnel. Because driving in late into D.C., you have the reward of a great dinner ahead. D.C. has what Madison does not: a huge number of excellent, medium priced eating establishments. Oh, the lingering memory of the steaming dish of gnocchi with scampi, a glass (or two…) of chilled white wine and a plateful of hot ligurian cookies! With an espresso.



DC has another virtue over Madison, making it a supremely good place to visit now: freak March storms may ice up the roads one day, but the next morning it will all be gone. Spring will return. And stay there.

and so...

...how was the drive to Wilmington from D.C.,? Short, wasn't it?

No, it was not.

I had studied the weather charts. I knew I was in for some heavy storms. But navigating hours upon hours of this?



Allow me to recover first. Until tomorrow.

forecast

After I am done with today’s chores and obligations, I’m hopping on a plane and heading out east. It is certain that I will not get to my final destination until after midnight and so posting wont be possible until well into tomorrow.

And where will posting be from? Tomorrow I’m in Wilmington, Delaware. Saturday – back to D.C.. Sunday – back in Madison. Surely all three will get due recognition here, though periods of work and expected east coast episodes of snow and rain will make it seem like I am one foot in the Midwest all along.

Actually, over-nighting with daughters and eating up a storm while I’m there places this right smack in the realm of an extremely wonderful little trip. So, expect plenty of happy tunes here on Ocean the next few days, weather and work notwithstanding.

More tomorrow.

buying things

How you shop says mountains about your past, about your relationship to your parents, about your failures in life and the degree of faith you have in a better future.

I am a terrible shopper. I hate mulling over things that need to be acquired. If I find something suitable, I want it and that’s that. The idea of looking around for an alternative – something that perhaps is a better value or even functions better, holds no appeal to me. I found it and I never want to look again. Shopping done.

It has been pointed out to me that I am truly a product of postwar Poland. I lived in a country where acquiring things was not a part of each day. There was nothing to acquire. Store shelves were bare. A few old cans of herring, loaves of bread and even those disappeared in the course of the day so that you had to buy at a certain hour when you knew delivery would be made. You wait too long and you’ll have missed your chance at bread.

We hoarded back then. Toilet paper. Never enough toilet paper in the stores. Sometimes months would pass and toilet paper would not be there. I wondered what happened to stall the production of toilet paper so often. Mostly though, I did not wonder about any of it. I accepted shortages, just as I accept bad weather in March.

And so sit me down with a construction crew, where I am negotiating how to keep the price down on the interior of the condo that I am about to purchase and you got yourself a nightmare of a situation.

No, I don’t want to change the refrigerator. I like the one I picked. I don’t want to look for another. And I like the stove that is meant for professional cooks even though I rarely cook these days. Everything. I like everything as decided in one fleeting second a few days back. No, I do not want to consider alternatives. I found it , I like it, I want to spend no more time on this. Lower the price so that I can afford it and let’s move on.

It’s not a strategy that makes you rich in life, but a life spent on obsessing about acquisition, on finding the cheapest, the best, the most practical, most suitable thing out there seems like a terrible waste of time. Besides, the item you have settled on wont be there past four o’clock and who knows when the next shipment will come in, or when the factory will close down for good and so it’s best to buy it now while it’s there or else you’ll have neither bread nor toilet paper in your cupboard.

In transit, at the Paris airport: reflecting about croissants after a tall glass of free champagne

It really doesn’t matter if the quality of my croissant this morning was mediocre or sublime (it was the former). Ocean writing was never meant to be a progress report on the improved conditions of croissants as I eat my way through Europe or the States.

On the other hand, behind every croissant there is a story. About chance encounters, about work, pleasure, fulfillment. And so croissants can indeed matter in the same way that madeleines mattered for Proust.

This morning, in Geneva, I paused no more than two minutes over breakfast. A return trip is never any more about time off. My work comes out, to do lists materialize and they are long and they include things like “purchase condo” and “write two lectures” and “grade midterm exams” as well as the more trite details of daily life. All to be accomplished in the next two days. The coming week-end puts me in Wilmington, Delaware and then D.C. I say this as a warning that writing here will suffer (for a couple of days) as I move from one mode of being to another.

A cartoon in last week’s New Yorker depicted a guy standing on the corner, marketing his opinion about every boring thing that happened to him (he was labeled a blogger). And here, on Ocean, a commenter to the skiing post (below) aptly labeled skiers who crash into people on the slopes as having poor skiing skills at the same time that they are holding onto delusions of adequacy. I noted both these, especially when I have before me days when I will write, even though I can’t or shouldn’t. I’m holding tightly to the idea that behind every croissant there is a story, however briefly or inadequately presented here.

Though I have to say, this morning in Geneva, in the hotel across the street from the train station, the croissant was flavorless.


breakfast, with station view

At the end of this month I’ll be looking into the matter of improving on the croissant prospects. It will be spring break. I’ll again be closer the places where cows appear happier and butter is sweeter.

from Geneva, Switzerland: going home

There was a time, decades ago, when Swissair was my favorite Europe-bound airline (!) and Geneva was, therefore, a typical connecting city for me.

The remarkable thing about this is that I never much cared for Geneva as a place to visit. It’s a personal reaction, I admit. It seemed (and still seems now) a place of high etiquette and propriety. Everything is expensive and older women look very well kempt. Perhaps I sensed that I didn’t exactly blend well here.

For complicated work reasons, Geneva was a good stopping point now on my way back to Madison. I came early, took care of my assignments quickly and found myself with a long afternoon where I could call the shots and do as I pleased. I chose to walk.

For hours and hours, up through the old town and along the lake, I walked. A few photos, to show that I am happy to give Geneva another chance, even as I still feel that its warmth is more weather related than because it is inherently a welcoming place. Here’s evidence of its charm though. Because Geneva, on an early spring day can appear charming:










hot chocolate, naturally







drawing lessons














I ask the desk clerk for food recommendations and I am given a name of a place that is minutes from the train station, with a cuisine that aims to please: Swiss fondue and Chinese dishes as an extra bonus. No, that wont do.

At a beautiful old bookstore I ask for something on Geneva’s food scene. I am told that there is one great book on the new bistros here except the gentleman over in the corner is reading the last copy.

The gentleman over in the corner is willing to part with it but I ask if he could, instead, simply recommend a nice place to eat. Seafood, he tells me. I should try the Café Central for its fresh seafood.

I am in one of the few land-locked countries in Europe and so I hesitate. If at least Switzerland aligned itself with the European Union, so that Scottish salmon and Greenland pink shrimp were all really Union food… But no. Switzerland is in its own neutral world and so I say no to the seafood place and ask for another choice.

Brasserie Lipp. Go eat there – the food is quite good. Fresh and honest. (Alright, the honest is my addition.)

Now that’s just plain funny. Brasserie Lipp is a favorite for any number of Parisians and visitors to Paris. It is an institution there and I have never gone to it because Paris has enough other choices, so that I have not felt the need to seek out this solid, old world brasserie, with very traditional cuisine.

But here, in Geneva, I have no other ideas and so I do go there and I happily acquiesce to Greenland shrimp (because I actually think little pink shrimp make a lovely appetizer), but then go with the Swiss beef and the ever magnificent Swiss scalloped potatoes and Swiss wine and all in all, I am prepared to be satisfied.

Except that a gentleman at the table next to mine is an older Frenchman who travels to Geneva occasionally and eats at the Brasserie when he is here and he rolls his eyes at this Swiss rendition of the venerable old place, so that even here, I am told not to be completely won over.

It’s not nearly as good as the French version, he tells me. And, it is expensive for what it is.

Is it? I am here so briefly that I have not bothered to study conversion rates and so I have no idea what any of the prices around me stand for. I assume everything is expensive because it is Geneva after all, but the Brasserie Lipp in Paris is your middle of the road place so why should it be different here?

Why indeed. Ah well, you can’t go wrong with Greenland pink shrimp and Swiss beef. And really, there is not a restaurant in the world that cannot be criticized, just like there is no city in the world that hasn’t its failings. It’s all in the mindset. I am prepared this time around to find Geneva an acceptable stopping point and the Brasserie Lipp to be a fine old dining establishment and so it shall be thus.











I return late to my room, the one where someone has smoked and smoked all its living days, the one right next to the train station, so that I should not even bother to look out the window because the view cannot be anything at all. The one I will happily leave tomorrow to return back home.

Let’s hope for a good croissant in the morning. The Swiss bake ever so well. And who can beat an airport that is a six minute train ride from city center. There, you see? It’s all in the mindset.

Now let me drift back in my thoughts to the fresh, gusty mountain air, and to the view out my window this morning. Now that was something else…


Cervinia morning: view from the Hotel Hermitage

from Cervinia, Italy, one last time

In the morning, the sun is brilliant. The rich blue color of the sky alone is a thrill. Sure, I am biased, but the Italian Alps in my mind are the place to go to if you need a hit of sunlight. I know, it’s not rational on my part. The snow does not fall from blue skies, but when I am here, the sun never fails to make an appearance. It’s one of those charmed places for me. (I don’t really believe in charmed places, but if I keep up the pretence, maybe it will continue never to disappoint me.)

Still, my goal is to ski over to Switzerland today and I am told that this morning, Switzerland is closed.

How can a country be closed? It is what happens when the winds continue to speed across the mountaintops in some kind of a race that only nature can understand.

[One of the reasons to ski in Cervinia is that you can make your way to the top of the mountain range and ski down into Swiss Zermatt. Not that Zermatt deserves a day of your time – being far more crowded than Cervinia ever could be, but it’s a fun thing to do and the trails there are different – through woods and past huts with steaming hot chocolate inside. Swiss chocolate. Exactly.]

So, it's closed. Never mind Switzerland then. Tomorrow I have to travel back via Geneva (work reasons). That’s plenty Swiss, if in a French sort of way. Today, my heart stays in Italy.

But fate has a different agenda for me.

Signora, they have opened Switzerland. The desk clerk says this tentatively. And by now, I'm reluctant as well. My memories of Zermatt are less sumptuous. The trail over the mountain summit is rarely without weather issues. Skiing the top of a range is a windy experience even in calm days. Today, the winds are down to only 60 kilometers an hour. They may grow worse and I will have to ski back, no matter what the weather (there is no road connection between Cervinia and Zermatt).

Still, a hot chocolate in the woods…

I’m off. One gondola, then another, then a third and I am on the top.

It’s freaky windy up here! Do people get blown away ever? And the sun, what’s happening to it? Clouds, just as I approach the Swiss side. Figures.

Okay, I can’t dally. A photo of the Italian side,



…a photo of the Swiss side,



…a tightening of the scarf around my face, a tightening of everyone’s scarves…



…and I am off.

Every exposed part of my face is suffering. The wind is blowing pellets of ice straight at me. My face tells me that one layer of cream was not enough. I am getting wind burn and ice burn. The only thing missing is a sunburn.

I navigate the trail slowly. I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to wait with a broken limb for the rescue team. I will die a slow death waiting for the Swiss ski patrol to bundle me up in a blanket and scoot me over to some clinic or other. No thanks.

At my elbow, the Matterhorn peak stands tall, sharp. You wimp, it seems to say. Famous climbers have climbed my steep sides and you groan at ice pellets.



I am close to the first base (one third down!). I am thinking wow, not even a fall! I am so on top of this. In good form! I have been whipped and buffeted and I am still in one piece.

In this very moment of self-congratulatory reflection, I am suddenly hit hard, right in the rib cage. An out of control skier flies right into me. I stagger, topple, can’t get up. He slides down further, but seems unhurt. I am dazed. A woman skis over and tries to figure out if I am alright. I try to figure this out as well. I ache, I throb, but I can move. The skiing maniac comes over for a minute but he appears to know no language that I am familiar with. And so he skis away.

The woman asks if I want the ski patrol. No, no! I do not want to be carted away on one of those sleds they use for people who have bones crushed in two and three pieces. I can move, I am whole.

Yes, I can move, but it is a slow move. My trip down to Zermatt is painful. My ribs ache. My energy is zapped.

The Matterhorn hides behind a cloud and refuses to show its peak. Okay, I like you just fine, Matterhorn on the Swiss side, but please, show me something of the good in this run because right now I just wish I were in Italy.

I pass the restaurant in the woods where I was to have my hot chocolate. Forget it. I don’t want your chocolate, I want to finish this run down so that I can take the lifts up to the summit again where I can face Cervinia.

Alright, I am being unfair. I am in Switzerland now. A nice Swiss skier showed concern and helped me to my feet. Switzerland. My children’s pediatrician comes from Switzerland.

I slow down and take out my camera. I have crossed one mountain range and the world has changed. I may as well take note of it.


Swiss place of rest and refreshment



Swiss men, waiting for refreshment



other Swiss men, feeling refreshed


Just before entering Zermatt, I give in to the unbelievably strong urge to sit down and massage my ribs. I take off my skis and find a table at a restaurant just by the trail. Spinach soup. Okay and hot chocolate. I’ll have a mug. Swiss hot chocolate.

But the waitress bring the hot chocolate before the soup and it comes in the form of a little packet which I am to pour into the hot milk she places before me. I have seen these packets in the grocery aisles of the stores back home.

I forgive her. The soup is good and I needed to rest.




I am nearly in Zermatt. The snow is wet here and there are bare spots off the trail.




I don’t want to ski into the town center. Sure, there are good people here doing good things,


(in all honesty, I do not think they are Swiss)

...but I want to return south. I ski down toward the large, ever so technically proper gondola and head back up to the summit.

Finally, sore but standing, I face the Italian valley, with a smile.




It’s a long run down and my ribs still feel too big for my rib cage, but the sky is blue, the view is splendid, love is in the air and on the ground...



...and I know that toward the bottom, I can stretch out with the rest of ‘em, turn my face to the sun and exhale.

And at the end of the long afternoon, I'll reach for my just desserts,



... to be followed by a long, long spell at the sauna.

UPDATE: Check the comments for the latest on helmets and princes.

from Cervinia, Italy

I wake up at night and I spin, countless thoughts, tripping over each other. My crazy work schedule this semester, the bid for a new condo, I’ll be moving, everyone’s moving, I’m in Cervinia but the Law School is just emails away. I need to write more, I need to moonlight, I need to sleep.

I pull back the curtain and stare at the dark mountains, waiting for them to be light again.

And eventually, they oblige.



Oh-oh. Looks sort of partly cloudy up there. Sill, there are patches of blue...

I ask at the desk -- What time do the lifts open?
The lifts? They are all closed today.
What? I have crossed oceans and continents to be here! I want to ski. Why? Why is everything closed? A strike? (I’m in Italy after all)

It’s the wind. Very strong. 90 kilometers an hour. It’s not safe.
Wont they open just a wee little lift so that I can try my bright yellow rented skis maybe just once? I only have these two days to ski!

I get the Italian shrug.

I hover by the hotel desk and give my very best rendition of being very anxious.
Might conditions improve?

The shrug.

I consider my options. I have no options. I pace.

And, I am rewarded:
Signora, they are opening three lifts! The bottom half of the mountain, you can ski there. But it will be windy.


The understatement of the year. An hour later I exit the little gondola and I look ahead of me. Snow, clouds, drifting, blowing. A few hardy types assess the run down. I will follow them!


the bold


I can’t follow them. I have to find my skiing groove again. My groove is suffering from disuse. I hit an ice patch and I lose control. Down I go. Wrist hurts. I get up and continue.


blowing, drifting

I make it down once. Dizzy from the speed, the challenge. I get back on the gondola, more confident now. Wind? Pffft! What’s the big deal?




But at the end of the second run I am tired. I should have had the eggs and the oatmeal and the cakes and the cheeses for breakfast… I did not think I would be skiing. I did not think to store the nutrients.

I do one more run and then I stop. It is 12:30 and I am spent. I walk back to the hotel and make plans to sit in front of the fireplace for the rest of my life.

No, wait. Food first.

Cervinia isn’t a happenin’ town. There is no nightlife, no glamour. European royalty do not flock here. But Cervinia is Italian to the core and there is great food to be had up and down its one skinny street.

My lunch is richly nourishing. Reviving. Invigorating. Steaming hot.


hot and honest

I am satiated. I want to go back to the slopes. At the base, I see green lights flashing on several more open lifts. We are permitted almost to the top of the mountain! I ride the gondolas, finding a spot in cabins filled with jovial Italians. I have to ask this: how is it that an entire nation is so good at having fun?

The views mesmerize me. Moreover, I have found my groove, so that I can actually imitate a person who knows how to ski. I’m not on the top of the mountain, but I feel like I am.


nearing the summits


The run is long and I am tempted to call it a day, joining those who choose to enjoy other aspects of skiing here.


sun and laughter



...and a cigarette

But I go at it again. For the sheer torture. The challenge. The speed.

Afterwards, I can hardly walk. Thank you, hotel of mine, for having a sauna. Few have ever enjoyed a dry hot room as much as I did this late afternoon.

from Cervinia, Italy

Looking back:

I am nineteen and I have moved to the States. I am an au pair, a “mother’s helper.” I tend to a rich person’s child’s needs. In my spare time, I finish college.

Back in Poland, just before my move to the States, my friends and I develop a passion for skiing. That is, skiing in the Polish style, circa 1970: you go find a room in a farmhouse somewhere in the Polish mountains and each morning, you go out and put on your leather lace-up shoes (quaint, isn’t it…) and your carefully waxed boards. You take tiny side-steps all the way up a hill (30 minutes maybe) and then you ski down (1 minute, if you are a speed demon; we were all speed demons). And then you do it all over again.

So it is no surprise that, when I start earning au pair money in the States, I immediately think of upping my skiing experience. I purchase a subscription to Ski magazine (look at all this equipment! Choices, people here have so many choices!) and I acquire skis and real boots that snap instead of lace and I look around for an interesting place to ski.

I do not remember how I found Cervinia in Italy, but I did. At the age of 19, I take my first solo vacation, away from the little girl I am minding, away from the fascinating but so very strange liberal arts college I am attending (very American, but so un-Polish). To Italy, I go to the Italian mountains and feel that I have made it in life (I measured success differently then).

And in the morning, I look out from my bed & breakfast window onto a mountain that stands at the border of Italy and Switzerland: the Matterhorn, from the less familiar Italian angle. I stare at it for a goodly amount of minutes. I am an impressionable young thing and that mountain represents everything that is right and beautiful in my life.

In the afternoon, I ski, really ski! With lifts and my fancy skis with cute little roosters painted on the tips.

Ahhhh…..


I return to the Matterhorn again, a year later (I’m twenty now!), this time from the Swiss side. I am with a group of American college students and I want not to be a part of that particular group because, frankly, they seemed so…foreign.

Transitional years. I do not know where I will live, I do not know where I fit.

And when I graduate from college in February and say good bye to au pairing for good, I rent a room in the Italian Alps and take out my skis one more time, just me, alone, zipping down to the village, then riding the gondola up again.


That was then. This winter, I am invited to join a small group who want to do some sailing off the coast of Florida. And I think – do I really want to be on a boat, with choppy waters around me, or do I want to head back to the mountains? I haven’t skied the Alps since those college years when earnings went in one pocket and out the other (in some ways I have not changed). I need a week-end off, if only to interrupt the mad pace of this semester. Airfares are cheap, the snow is melting, melting, but still there.

I’m on my way.



One bus, two flights, one more bus, a train and a taxi ride later, it is almost dusk. I open the door to my hotel balcony and I look up at Mount Cervino, the Italian side of the Matterhorn. Where 35 years ago I woke up each morning to its splendid sun-drenched face and thought, well now, this is one pretty view and isn’t life promising?





In the early evening I walk down to the village and have my sensual moment with food, first in the cheese and salami store...




bursting with ripeness

...then in a pastry shop. Tomorrow I'll be on the slopes. Today, there's nothing left to do but eat.


easy choice for me



not for him...


...and you know what gets to me everytime I go out to dinner in these regions? The cheeses. I cannot say no to them, even if the portions here are meant for athletes and not for people who had spent the day sitting in various mechanical moving devices. Oh, but these are the things I love to complain about.



This, and the the presence of a large scale in the bathroom of my hotel room. The nerve.

would you fly for hours, take long bus and train rides, give up a night of sleep to spend the better part of two days being cold on a mountaintop?

I would.

I am off this afternoon. Where? Check in tomorrow. They promised WiFi.

Hint: the wintry meteorological conditions notwithstanding, I plan to eat very well.

Meltdown

Look at him. Tucked into an alleyway. Forgotten. Melt away, disappear. This week, we’re into daylight savings time, no time nor space for you anymore.



You don’t want to get to that place in life where you are melting away with a bunch of carrots stuck in your face, or worse.

That’s thought number one. Thought number two? No time nor space for that. This afternoon I bid on an empty shell of a box (my pursuit of the condo) and I worked. Endlessly. So that tomorrow I can take off late at night and get to the spot where I took my first solo foreign vacation. I’m sure it’s changed, but still, I want to be there and remember what it was like when I did not even know which country would be my promised land.