La Dolce Vita

Tuscany, August 2011

For two blissful weeks we have the good fortune of staying at a villa in the Tuscan countryside, just outside of Florence, enjoying the food, wine and history so plentiful in this corner of Italy. This is the part of our trip dedicated to visiting with our families, who join us for the duration from both Switzerland and Czech Republic. Our meal times are filled with a wild mix of English, Czech and Swiss German with neither language common to all of us.

At times I get confused and start speaking to Kuno in Czech wondering why he has a blank expression. Our villa is set among olive trees and just downhill from a 13th century castle. While this is very romantic and initially feels unique, we soon discover that there is a 13th or so century castle on pretty much every hill in Tuscany. Kuno and I rent bikes and try to compensate (unsuccessfully) for the copious amounts of amazing food we eat here by (almost) daily early morning bike rides through the countryside around our villa. This allows us to see a different “view” of Tuscany, meandering through little villages, vineyards and olive groves. As we don’t have a detailed map, we never know exactly where each bike ride will take us, adding to the sense of discovery. Of course most of our rides consist of 2 hours of steep uphill and only 20 minutes of a lovely downhill time, but there is so much to look at that one forgets the pain of the uphill or the heat. Biking seems to be very popular in this part of Italy and we see a lot of older men (no women) riding race bikes dressed in loud pink, yellow, turquoise etc bike outfits one would only expect for Tour de France. Next thing I know, Kuno wants to check out a store for a fancier pair of bike shorts.

With the rest of the family (there are at times nine of us) we explore the major sights of Tuscany in a minivan. Driving itself is an adventure, but Kuno seems to get quickly accustomed to tailgating, overtaking in a curve and putting the right half of the minivan in the ditch to fit with oncoming traffic – simply driving Italian style. We visit the well known sights in Tuscany: Florence with its Michelangelos,Botticellis, great gelato and leather markets, the 17 tall towers of the hill town of San Gimignano, Lucca with its oval shaped piazza, tiny old town of Montecatini perched on the top of a steep hill, and the town of Vinci where Leonardo da Vinci was born. The exhibit of his inventions is mind boggling. The imagination and astuteness of his thinking for the time is incredible. And that on top of his painting and medical science skilss! Although many of his inventions didn’t really quite work, most of them formed the basis of designs that today are part of our lives. Kuno’s favourite place is a little town called San Miniato that we discover while biking. It lies on the ancient trading route Via Francigena and is full of churches and monasteries. My two favourite trips are to Carrara and Siena. In Carrara we drive into the mountains and join a tour of the marble quarries. This is the source of the pure white marble that Michelangelo used for his statues. We drive deep into a mountain (600m in, exactly the middle of the mountain) and there, in a giant cavern, we get an explanation of how the slabs of marble continue to be cut. The effort going into it gives me a new appreciation for the stone and I will never look at a kitchen countertop the same way.

And then there is our trip to the Siena Palio, an annual horse race of the Siena neighbourhoods that has been going on for centuries. For the days of the race the piazza in Siena is covered by sand and bleachers are built around the outside.

Balcony seats on the houses bordering the piazza sell out months ahead for hundreds of Euros. Celebrations are carried out for days before the race. This is serious stuff - on the morning of the race, the horses are led into the Duomo (the main cathedral) and the archbishop himself blesses each horse. During the race, 10 riders representing the various neighbourhoods race, without a saddle, two laps around the piazza. The corners are sharp and accidents happen. However, it is the horse running to the finish that counts in the race, with or without a rider. We don’t make it to the actual day of the Palio, figuring that the mayhem would be too much and choose to come two days early to watch the trial races. The celebrations are in full swing already. Hundreds
of tables line the middle of the streets of the various neighbourhoods for open air dinner in the evening. Giant flags decorate houses and we often have to jump out of the way to let yet another procession of singing and chanting people go by. We barely make it into the middle of the piazza to see the race. It is jammed with thousands of people, but because the piazza is on a slant, everyone can see at least a portion of the race. It is enthralling, just to be part of the hoopla, even though the actual race only last a minute. What an unusual experience, one that can only be seen in Siena and on a few specific days of the year. How lucky for us.

Unfortunately everything comes to an end and we have to leave for Switzerland, the last portion of our European trip. As a heat wave sets in over Europe, we hop on a train to Luzern. Tatiana is counting the days to get back and see her friends after two months. Kuno and I feel that we have had a great fill of exploring and are relaxed enough to happily come back home too.

The Tale of Two Cities

Dubrovnik and Venice, August 2011

We visit Dubrovnik and Venice in short succession and are struck by the similarities and differences between the two cities. Both are strikingly beautiful, have a strategic location on the Adriatic Sea and an incredibly colorful history, especially from the time of being powerful sea merchants in the 14th – 16th century. But the cities feel to us different, as if one is coming alive and the other one dying.

Dubrovnik is small, clean and happy.  Despite being destroyed during the war in the mid nineties, the city is rebuilt without a trace and clearly proud, basking in being rediscovered by the world. Once the heat becomes bearable, it comes alive with music, street restaurants and cafes late into the night. We are fortunate to arrive during the summer festival and are welcomed with fireworks and live band performances on the first night. Who knew that Croatian rock could be so good. We stay in a shoebox of a room on a small street right above a pizza restaurant and quickly learn that going to bed before midnight is futile – the smell of pizza baking and the racket from a row of restaurant tables right under our window makes it impossible. So we switch our time and spend the mornings exploring, early afternoons in a siesta (ie nap) and like the town, come alive in the evening. One night we go dancing to a night club, discovering that the next oldest person is roughly 30 years younger than us, but having fun anyway. There is a freedom in being our age – “fitting in” doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore.

We are, however, grateful to Tatiana for persistently listening to Beat 94.5 at home, realizing that we actually know all the songs that are being played. Surprisingly, they are pretty good for dancing. But the age catches up to us and Kuno’s ears start to hurt from the loud music, so we leave. This is when we discover why the city is so incredibly clean - it gets completely hosed down in the middle of the night!

Venice is a fairytale, but we can’t help feeling that every time we visit, the fairytale is a little bit closer to a sad ending. There is a bittersweet feel to Venice, like a beautiful doomed queen of a city. The riches in art and architecture are beyond description, it has to be seen, or perhaps, more appropriately in Venice, felt. The palaces show past glory, but are being eaten away by the constant presence of tide and boat wake. For every one that gets renovated, ten fall further behind in needing work. To avoid regular tidal flooding, the city built movable tidal gates in the lagoon, reinforced some of the quays to higher elevations and is rebuilding the drainage under San Marco. Yet the work remaining is endless. Other signs of decay are present.

The water and the streets are dirty. Restaurants on San Marco insist on charging outrageous fees for listening to live music while having a coffee and as a result the seats are empty. We check into a four star hotel and are ushered into a room right off the main reception hall which we quickly rename the “cupboard under the stairs”, our window just 2 feet above the side canal, walls showing signs of past flooding and our floor sloping in alignment with the sinking corner of the building. But the patio faces the Grand Canal, and grand it is.

We spend a lot of time observing the comings and goings on the water – from all sorts of trade boats zooming around (how would you like your electrician to arrive with all his tools and equipment in a boat slightly bigger than a gondola), boats delivering food, water busses, beautiful old style water taxi boats (that are beyond our reasonable means so we walk) and of course the gondolas. I just finished reading a book called the Midwife of Venice and am imagining what the city looked like centuries ago.

We admire the glass from nearby island of Murano and the famous Venice masks - I wonder what it would be like to be here in February during the Carnival. One can’t help but be transfixed by Venice, sense of wonder and melancholy mixed together. Its pure magic will always draw us back and perhaps, one day, we will sail in, just like the merchants so many years ago.

Sailing Through Croatian History

Croatia, Dalmatian Coast, July 2011

So here I am on the bow, left holding the handle of the boat hook, while the boat hook chose to separate from the handle just as I was picking up the buoy mooring line and is now floating away past the boat. What is one to do?

Oh, I know, I jump in the engineless dinghy, rescue the boat hook, paddle back to the boat now circling the windy anchorage… windy being the meaningful word, as I and the dinghy are swept downwind, hanging for dear life on the mooring line of a neighbouring catamaran. As I wonder what my next step should be, I notice the boat hook gingerly floating by within my reach and Kuno with the boat just positioned downwind between me and the town quay doing his best not to run aground. I let go, landing on the boat, the boat engine spewing cooling water into the dinghy and all over me, but victoriously holding the errant boat hook. Welcome to the land of crazy mooring ways, furious unexpected winds and lightning storms, regular VHF radio marine weather forecasts that may or may not happen and may or may not be accurate, deep blue water, history that reaches thousands of years back and the most picturesque villages and towns that I have seen in my travels. Croatia.
 

Croatia is a land of memories for me, and Kuno and I visit many places where I used to go on vacation with my family as a kid. I don’t remember the particular places other than by names, but I vividly remember the smells and sounds – the warm wind on the ocean smelling of pine needles even half a mile off land, the cicadas that create a racket in anchorages, the smell of lavender and grilled fish as we walk along the town quays. We pick up our 37ft sailboat in Dubrovnik and wind our way through the central Dalmatian coast, visiting the islands of Mljet, Korcula, Hvar and towns like Trogir and Split on the mainland. Our friends Peter and Serap hop over from Turkey and join us for the first week. Having three weeks is a luxury with distances between anchorages being relatively short. We spend most of the time exploring the incredibly beautiful villages and hiking the trails (or sometimes lack of) up the mountains for the next best view. Geocaching keeps us honest (if there is one in the neighbourhood, we have to find it) and we generally have to climb at least one hill a day. Kuno insists on taking shortcuts and our legs are full of scratches as we bushwack our way through the islands. I am beginning to understand why our daughter chose to go to school instead. Occasionally we rent a car, moped or bikes and buzz around to see more of the area. The countryside here is full of abandoned forts and palaces, remainders of bygone era, now overgrown by wild vegetation. Grape and olive groves planted in endless amount of perfect ancient stone walls (we are trying to decide if Croatia has more than Ireland) neglected, growing wild, but still producing. We also find sad reminders of the wars of not so distant past; second world war and the independence war of the nineties.  The history of Croatia is rich, with remnants of Illyrian and later Greek and Roman presence evident everywhere, and most impressively related to the time of the marine merchant Republic of Dubrovnik, one of the most powerful republics on the Adriatic, competing only with Venice. Within our short trip, we visit three Unesco heritage sites – Dubrovnik, Trogir old town and the Diocletian Palace in Split. We leisurely sip an espresso while sitting on Roman steps, investigate the precise construction of stone church towers that belies their age, try to figure out the timing sequence of a church being built from a Roman mausoleum that was built on top of an Illyrian temple, admire the streets of white stones so polished by centuries of use that one has to take care not to slip. I have a fleeting comparative thought to the Haida Gwaii culture and history that we explored just a few weeks ago, separated by so much more than miles from the history here. Just like in all places around the world that we like, we hypothesize about having a property here. Perhaps getting into a bed and breakfast business, or olive oil and wine production, having a little mechanical repair shop, restoring an old mansion…?

Our evenings are my most favourite time. On the heels of the afternoon siesta, the heat of the day subsides and the towns come alive. Every little seaside town is full of konobas (restaurants) set up along the water, in abandoned gardens or within the walled perimeter of what used to be, a long time ago, a house. Tables are set up in every nook and crany and sometimes it is not obvious where the actual restaurant kitchen is. When we sit down it is not clear where the waiter will appear from and sometimes we see them walk from around the corner or for a block or two to bring us our drinks. That makes it challenging when trying to figure out where the washroom could possibly be. But everyone is very nice here and their English is impressive. I can read and understand much of the Croatian language, being of Slavic origin as my own language, Czech.

Markets and grocery stores stay open late into the night and we often can’t resist and return to our boat loaded with goodies. Kuno, true to his boating motto “You don’t want to run low on diesel and chocolate” investigates as many kinds of chocolate as possible, while I can’t get enough of the fresh bread. The vegetables here taste much more real than at home – all much firmer and tastier (tomatoes and carrots are to die for here) but some also more bitter (cucumbers).

Sailing here is interesting by the variability of the wind. We are surprised by the fierce nature of sudden winds that can arrive at any time – they even have names: bura, tramontana, jugo, mistral and sirocco, depending on the direction they come from. We try to listen to weather forecasts but they are unreliable or inconclusive. We try to find the safest anchorages for all possibilities, limiting our options. In some way, we expected to find more secluded, safe harbours. We encounter clouds so

sudden and dark that we call them Dementors (as in Harry Potter…), rain squalls so fierce that we don’t see the boats anchored next to us and lightning is so frequent that after a while it is almost a non-event. Anchoring and mooring is an adventure in itself and I have yet to execute a mooring job without some calamity or other. Kuno seems to take it in stride; by now he is used to me tying the line to the cleat on the wrong side of the stanchions, throwing a line to the person on the quay too early so that it lands in the water instead, and, of course, the infamous boat hook episode (that was only partially my fault). Most anchorages are too tight to swing around, so it

 is either a stern tie, picking up a lazy line from a restaurant or town quay, or tying between two buoys in the middle of the bay. Or, if you are on the island of Lastovo, tying up inside an abandoned submarine tunnel – I am not kidding, very James Bondish. Initially we are puzzled by people hanging their fenders when on anchor, but after some time it becomes obvious that this is not a bad practice, as anchorages are packed really tight and many boaters don’t seem to have a clue about anchoring properly. And so we too, on occasions, put out our fenders at night. Our sailing dignity, however, does not allow us to sail with fenders out, although even that seems to be a common practice here.

We are on our last few days in Croatia before picking Tatiana up from Oxford and continuing to Italy. We have saved the candy for last – the walled city of Dubrovnik, which we will explore in the next 3 days. Tatiana is having a great time in her school, making lots of friends and loving her school work. So great in fact, that she frequently forgets to text us and if she texts, it is very cryptic. That is a good sign, although we do feel a bit neglected. On the other hand, it is wonderful to just hang out together as a couple. We remind ourselves how in sync we can be and how easy and relaxing life is when one gets out of the crazy routine. What a happy time for all three of us, in our own way.

London in a week

1 - 9 July 2011

“Please turn off all your electronic devices, as they can interfere with the plane’s communication systems during landing” announces the captain. I think about the logic of my little e-reader causing an aborted landing, but acknowledge that perhaps this is not the time to debate the ridiculousness of this statement. I obey the request and we safely land in the amazing, fantastic, incredible city of London. While we wait the four long hours before we can check into our apartment, we take a hop on-off bus tour of the city. Tatiana snoozes through much of it, as it now is 4 am for us, but I take in the sights that I only vaguely remember from almost thirty years ago when I was here last. Not much has changed – Lord Nelson still stands on Trafalgar Square and the changing of the guard in front of Buckingham Palace still attracts gazillions of people. The Tower Bridge guards the city as it has for centuries, but a new bridge is of interest to us, die hard Harry Potter fans. After all, every decent Harry Potter fan would recognize the Millenium Bridge in their sleep, expecting the Dementors to swoop in any minute. Our week long visit in fact ends up revolving around the Harry Potter theme. Not only do we get to visit all the London sites where the movies were filmed, the timing of our visit could not have been better, as the red carpet premiere of the last movie in the series is happening this week. Fans start staking good viewing spots in Trafalgar Square on Monday - for a

premiere that is happening on Thursday! It is cold and drizzling but the fans are obviously dedicated. By 6 pm on the day of the premiere, walking through Trafalgar Square is almost impossible. Tatiana is besides herself with excitement and gets a lift on Kuno’s shoulders. She can just make out Emma Watson on the red carpet via a giant screen in the middle of the square. I wonder what Lord Nelson thinks about all of this, watching from high above.

Tatiana is somewhat dismayed with us, calling us “tourists”, as we immerse ourselves into the hoopla of summer London and visit all the possible attractions a typical tourist would. She calls herself a “world traveler” and obviously visiting attractions is beneath the world traveler class. However, that doesn’t stop her to immensely enjoy Madame Tussauds wax museum, taking pictures with, who else, Daniel Radcliffe aka Harry Potter, Lady Gaga, Enstein, and, OMG, Justin Bieber. She likes the visit to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and loves the giant 3 storey M&M store on Leicester Square. Her favourite restaurant ends up being the (original) Hard Rock Cafe. Who is the tourist now? We make a trip to Greenwich and spend some time investigating the intricacies of solving the challenge of determining the longitude (I suspect that Tatiana grasps the concept way better than I do), take an evening ride on the London Eye, have fun transporting ourselves through the history of British music in the Music Museum (wow, it makes you realize how much good music originated from British bands and also how old we are, clearly enjoying the memories of the eighties, seventies, sixties … , you get the drift, music, while Tatiana can only relate to the last section of the exhibit), attempt to shop on Oxford Street and Covent Garden (with neither one of us being a very good shopper, we come out empty handed and exhausted). Tatiana and I have a great time exploring Harrods, noting that they have a big sale on. We visit the shoe department and try on numerous shoes off the sale rack – with prices down to 1,000 pounds from original 3,000+. A girl just loves a bargain! For the first time in my life I put a Loboutin shoe on my foot, expecting nirvana, but to be honest, it is not much more comfortable than my regular shoes. The three inch heel doesn’t help. We wonder if the elephants that Harrods sells are currently on sale too? The performance of Wicked one evening is outstanding.

Time flies by and soon it is time to take Tatiana to Oxford and part our ways for the next few weeks. While Tatiana is ecstatic about ditching her parents and hanging out with her age group for a change, we are getting more nervous as time passes. On a rainy Friday we take Tatiana and her enormous bag on the train to Oxford and check her into the Oxbridge Prep program. For the next three and half weeks Tatiana will be roaming the ancient Corpus Christi College at Oxford University, taking Creative Writing as major and Speech and Debate as minor (do we really need a child that debates even better in the future?), and do who knows what in her free time. We spend our last two hours together shopping for posters to decorate Tatiana’s bare dorm room and by the time we are finished we can

tell that she now wants us gone. Reluctantly we leave, but not before extorting a few hugs and kisses and leaving a plethora of rules, surely to be broken. Before leaving Oxford altogether, Kuno and I visit the Bodleian Library, site of yet another Harry Potter movie scene, but more importantly one of the largest university libraries in the world, with documents dating back to Gutenberg and beyond. The rule is that a copy of anything printed in Britain, book or magazine, is given to the Bodleian library and so every day the collection grows. We return back to London in the evening, feeling strangely unsettled, a part of us missing, left in Oxford.

On our last day in London we recover and take advantage of being able to do
the things that a teenager would not enjoy (well, at least not our teenager). We visit the Cabinet War Rooms and Winston Churchill museum and in the late afternoon, attend the crowning glory of our visit – an Evensong service at the Westminster Abbey. We sit in the nave under Shakespeare’s memorial, our feet resting on Lawrence Olivier’s stone, memories of other famous people surrounding us. The music is beautiful and as I sit here, I let the words slip past me, not trying to understand; I feel the awe that comes with being present in a place like this, the organ and choir creating the backdrop for a strange feeling of elation and happiness, sense of being light and peaceful. My eyes are drawn along the columns to the high arches and stained glass windows. I notice that lifting up is the natural thing to do, but as I try to run my eyes down the columns, I feel resistance. How strange… On our way out, we light a candle with a wish to keep Tatiana safe and happy. Tomorrow we leave for Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Fishing 101

Strange things happen when one attends charitable auctions.  Items that one had no idea were a necessity just the day before, make their way into our homes and activities that under normal circumstances we would never contemplate become a do or die.  Take Kuno and I for example.  Those of you who have read our Caribbean blog know that fishing is definitely not our thing.  Yet here we are, compliments of an overactive paddle in a school auction, fishing in the ultimate fishing paradise – at the Langara Lodge in Haida Gwaii Islands.  We did have a reasonable excuse bidding on this trip, after all, going to Haida Gwaii was on our bucket list (well, we don’t actually have a formal bucket list, because if we did, it would be too long to be practical) and fishing on a trip like that would be optional, we thought, right?  Wrong.

We arrive at the lodge midday via a helicopter from Masset and are greeted by an endless amount of staff, food and drinks.  So far so good, fishing trip in style, I am thinking.  As we walk up to the dining room, a brand new big screen tv is pointed out to us; just arrived a few days ago.  Great, I assume, just like everyone else, the lodge is gearing up for the 7th Stanley Cup game.  Unfortunately I am promptly informed that no, the big new tv is to display the fishing results of each guest in a friendly competition.  In fact, our names are already displayed with empty fields just waiting to be filled with our daily catch.  Oh…  As I am contemplating a lovely afternoon filled with reading, hot tub, nap, perhaps a short walk, the lodge manager announces that our boat and fishing guide will be ready, waiting for us, in half an hour on the dock.  The peer pressure kicks in.  Everyone else is going fishing, in fact nobody else comes here to contemplate anything but fishing, and what would our poor guide think if we didn’t show?  And so we quickly down the superb food, fortify ourselves with good wine, dress into the supplied (and pre-warmed, I am not kidding) suits and boots that make me feel like a Michelin Man, and off we go fishing.  Our guide seems a bit perplexed that we do not know what to do with the fishing rods and asks what we mean when we say that we have never fished before.  The concept of fishing as an optional activity is too foreign.  Our guide is a Haida from these ex-Queen Charlotte Islands and we spend a good amount of time talking about Haida history in addition to fish.  We retire 3 hours later without any luck (on the fishing side).  When we ask how the fishing has been over the past few weeks, we are told that it was great – until today.  That must be a standard answer to anyone who hasn’t caught anything.  As it starts to drizzle, we get the same answer about the weather.

In the evening, following a delicious meal, the manager asks everyone what time they would like their wake up call and fishing start.  We hear indecent numbers such as 5:45 and 6 am, but don’t cave to the pressure and ask for 9:30.  The whole group goes quiet and looks at us in astonishment.  Oops.  Next day we reluctantly ask for 7am. By day 3, everyone seems to get it that we are here not just to fish, and an attitude of amusement about these outsiders who do a 1000 piece puzzle in the evening instead of going to bed to have an early start, sets in.  We, on the other hand, are learning patience; the main attribute of anyone who wants to fish. Bobbing on the water, watching 4 rods for a sign of a hooked fish – 4 hours in the morning, 4 hours in the afternoon.  We develop a technique of touching the line with our finger to avoid having to endlessly rotate our head from rod to rod.  Two days of bobbing with not a single fish.  Kuno breaks the stalemate and catches the first fish, a respectable 13lb chinook. 

One afternoon we take a break from fishing and our guide takes us to Kiusta, a Haida village abandoned about 130 years ago.  We see remnants of long houses, burial posts and totem poles, all now overgrown.  We get a great account of what life in a village like that would have looked like, the devastating effects of meeting the first Europeans (and eventually being decimated by small pox), and band politics today.  We talk about Haida society and art.  It is obvious to our guide that this is of more interest to us than fishing.  This pleases him for the time being, but we notice that the guides take pride in their guests’ catch and coming out empty is not a good reflection on them.  So we plunge back into the fishing.  We even extend our hours.  The fields on the board next to our names start finally filling in with mostly Chinook, but also a sockeye, coho and halibut.  One day we go fishing to the “west side” of the island where the big halibut roam – it is not uncommon for people to catch 100+lb halibut there.  This concerns me.  Our guide changes the rods – no more slacking off, now we have to stand and hold onto the rod.  The fishing gear seems quite expensive and with the bait and weight dangling somewhere 200ft below, I find it quite difficult to hang on as it is.  All I can think of is that if a halibut of any size gets hooked, it is much more likely for me to go overboard than for the halibut to be pulled on board.  Alas, after an hour of bobbing in the big swell, hanging onto the rod for dear life, I only manage to pull up an inedible rock fish. To my (and everyone else’s) amusement, on the last morning before departure, I end up catching the biggest fish of our whole group, a 31lb Chinook, and am now formally a member of the Tyee Club (never heard of that before).  And I have the pin to prove it.  Not to mention an overflowing freezer.  Beginner’s luck.

As our fishing adventure ends, it is just a few days to end of school and our departure for the European installment of Blue Moon Travels. Stay tuned for our next adventure.