Tag Archives: Europe

I’m Going to Tuscany This Fall And This Freaks Me Out

Italy, I’m coming back. No one is more surprised by this than me. Last month, I had my first piece published in Panorama where I talk about Italy as if I’d never see it again because I didn’t expect to see it again. It’s a gorgeous country, worth seeing repeatedly, but we’ve got this overpriced suburban-blue-ribbon-school-district lifestyle to pay for as well as an old house that eats up most of my husband’s paycheck, so I have to be choosy about where I go and when I go. Like many families in America, we live paycheck to paycheck, though we have equity and retirement savings (his, not mine; my meager IRAs went into buying this house and paying off debt), so we are fortunate. Writing is not my hobby, it’s my job, and it doesn’t pay well. In fact, it pays worse than when I started out 21 years ago. No one could have predicted this when I was earning my English degree, but here we are. I don’t praise the freedoms of the gig economy like I used to a few years ago, but I’m not eating ramen noodles three times a day either.

Walking-in-Tuscany-large

Then I got accepted to this, and you just don’t say no to those kinds of opportunities when you’re trying to get your own book off the ground. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Hannah Tinti before, and I’m a huge fan of her latest book, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, which I gulped down in four days (that Alaska chapter–wow!) and still occasionally reread, like I do with Naomi Williams’ Landfalls. Both books are about large, geographical journeys (and, yes, there are emotional journeys, too). Take them to the beach and go read.

My own book is a road trip story that I’ve been chipping away at since July 2013, the day after my daughter started sleep-away camp, and as a parent of only one, I suddenly had an empty nest and decided to pursue a lifelong dream. Four years in, I can report that lifelong dreams are expensive. Thrilling, sometimes fulfilling, a shit ton of fun, but very, very expensive.

This is why I’m freaked out about going to Tuscany. Because this writer’s life is one big gamble. We cashed out some old stock so I could go. Meanwhile, we have a teenager with a $6,000 smile who has her own dreams of becoming an artist, so she goes to art school and art camp, and there are medical bills, car insurance bills, our front sidewalk is so crumbled it looks like we have been blitzed; the neighborhood dogs give it the stink eye when they’re being walked. My husband brings home the bacon, writes science fiction on the side, and is trying to pursue his own dream of being a sci-fi author. He attends conferences, does his own marketing, and promoting his own books costs money. We keep our CPA busy with tax deductions and many, many receipts.

We are a household of three, each with our own dreams and ambitions, and this costs money. We feel lucky to even consider pursuing what makes us happy. Some people—no, many people—don’t or can’t. I grew up with those people. I now live in a McMansion community where everyone seems to be able to afford everything; last month, my daughter came home complaining about a classmate who complained how her housekeeper wasn’t bringing up the clean laundry to her bedroom—a room that has a chandelier, a skylight, and a flatscreen TV. This drives me nuts.

Unlike many of our neighbors in our McMansion community, we value travel over stuff but our stuff is falling apart and we have to prioritize. Our sofa is ripped up. My glasses need to be replaced because they are quite old and scratched up, and I have put off this purchase for years. One of our garage windows is broken because a neighbor sent a golf ball through it. Kitchen cupboards are peeling or becoming unhinged (and who isn’t with the current US administration?). One small pleasure I always delight in is going out to the chicken coop in the morning and collecting whatever eggs the hens dropped. Our credit card debt may be high, but dammit, I do enjoy an organic, extremely freshly-laid egg, usually paired with some diced cherry tomatoes and doused with a little olive oil and black lava salt. I eat it on my front porch with all the windows opened. It’s my morning treat.

But yeah, dreams cost money. A lot of money.

No one tells you this when you begin chasing your dream.

It would be easier if writers I’ve met over the years who read my stuff said things like “Look, Woz, this is nice and all, but focus on your family,” which is something said more often to women than men (it was said to me once by a female HR rep at a publishing company), or “Hey, Katrina, great effort, but have you considered basket weaving instead? Baskets make great gifts, you know.”

Instead, the feedback to my novel manuscript has been, “Wow, this is really promising shit. Keep going. I can’t wait to read your book.” These compliments make me feel compelled to see things through, to not let others down, to not let myself down, to not let all that’s been invested be for nothing.

What is the cost of chasing a dream, the price of seeing your name on a bookshelf? Maybe think about this the next time you browse the shelves of your local bookstore. If I added things up for myself, including this upcoming Tuscany trip, I would likely have a panic attack, and I can’t afford ER visits right now or any additional prescriptions (trying to ease off the Klonopin now that it’s summer and my seasonal affective disorder is temporarily shelved). When I voice my panic about finances and risk and “Oh my God, all of this for a book???” I get responses about keeping the bigger picture in mind, keeping an eye on the finish line, that anything worth doing is a slog, and the usual cheerleading axioms. People want happy endings. I want a happy ending. I want to be successful. I don’t like carrying debt.

This September, if you peruse my Instagram feed, you’ll see hopefully sumptuous, well-composed, eye-catching photos of Tuscany. And it would be easy looking at my Instagram feed to assume I live this glamorous life with endless sources of income because that’s what Instagram does—it carefully curates those most beautiful moments. And beautiful moments are worth curating; we all need more beauty in our lives. But don’t let beauty skew reality; I am thankful to live an amazing life, but it’s not glamorous. The large dust bunnies congregating under our dining room table or the orange mildew blooming in the cracks of our white ceramic shower tiles or the spiders of varying sizes that love the cracks and crevices of old houses tell a different story, as do our bank statements. Tuscany will be every positive adjective that you can think of. I’ll celebrate every minute I’m there. I’ll bring my donut floatie to the pool that awaits me. I’ll want every sunrise over the olive groves to last forever. And then I’ll fly back across the Atlantic biting my nails, praying to the old gods and the new that my efforts will lead somewhere.

The Power of One

Today’s news from Brussels has me thinking about Antonio, the thirty-something hotel employee at UNA Hotel Naples who seemed to know how to do everything. He didn’t dress like a traditional bellhop, but he carried my bags, figured out the adapter problems I was having after the guy behind the front desk tried a few different adapters with no luck, and—most importantly—he found my passport on the street in front of the hotel entrance. There it was on cold, wet, dirty stone, people walking by it, over it, around it, a critical document carelessly dropped in Naples—the city with all the pickpocket warning signs everywhere. Naples, the city where Americans raise an eyebrow and say “Watch your wallet.”

Brussels’ airport has been bombed, and I’m thinking of Antonio because I’m thinking of the power of one person. Good or bad, there’s more power we wield as individuals than most of us probably know. I’m sure we don’t even feel this power; it would likely overwhelm most of us. I just sat on trains and planes going all over Europe that could’ve been blown up at any time. I can’t imagine what goes through the mind of an individual standing in a crowded wing of an airport who is about to detonate bombs strapped to his body. There were so many little choices made up until that point, fragments of thoughts we will never know about.

I arrived to UNA Hotel Naples after a long train ride that took me from Zürich through the Swiss Alps into the Italian countryside to Milan to Naples. I spent much of the trip sitting next to an adorable Corgi named Liza, the celebrity pooch of Coach 5 that day. The hotel was right across from the train station, which is why I chose it. It stood behind a noisy intersection filled with construction work, traffic, and not enough lighting. It was night time. I dragged two heavy suitcases across very uneven cobblestone, and, since this was Italy, I dodged traffic filled with Formula 1 wannabes. I had to get to the other side of the street and walkways just suddenly ended, like a Shel Silverstein story. It was dark, cold, I was tired and extremely hungry, and my smartphone was going to run out of battery power soon. When I arrived nearly out of breath at the front desk, I reached into my backpack pocket to present my passport. It was gone. The zipper on the pocket was slightly open. I emptied my backpack in front of the bespectacled guy patiently willing to let me sort this out in front of him; dumping my EpiPen, lorazepam, lipsticks, wads of old receipts, dirty tissues, my wallet, my journal, my checkbook. “Dude, here’s my life,” is what my backpack said. I have traveled to 14 countries and have never lost my passport. I blurted out “I think my passport has been stolen!” and I said this with both exasperation and vehemence because it’s much easier to blame a city known for pickpocketing than to admit I was an overtired idiot who may have dropped it on her walk from the train station. That’s right—I did not hesitate for a second to throw Naples under a bus.

Liza

The guy at the front desk called a taxi and wrote down the address to the police station. The taxi was there immediately and we began this rushed, nauseating zigzag through Saturday night traffic in Naples while I quietly seethed, preparing myself for a long night of explaining my situation to Italian police and trying to negotiate an emergency passport. I was scheduled to be in Positano the next day for the start of a conference. “It could be worse,” I kept telling myself. “Documents can be replaced.” Though I knew no hotel in Italy would allow me past the front door without a passport. I wondered if I would spend the night curled up on some chair in a police station. I wondered how long I would be stuck there.

Less than five minutes into our ride, the taxi driver got a phone call. He then tried to frantically explain to me—his hands alternating between gesticulating wildly and gripping the steering wheel—that the hotel found my passport. He tried typing translation into his iPad, and it kept coming up as “Want to go to passport hotel?” I was trying not to get mad at him. I just kept saying “Please, just take me to the police station.” He threw his hands up, turned the cab around, and we were back at the front of the hotel. We were in the car less than 10 minutes, and I was completely confused. The driver told me I owed him nine Euros. He motioned to me to go inside, and there, in the lobby, stood a tall, handsome fellow wearing a UNA Hotels uniform and holding my passport. It’s as if I had written my own screenplay. Good-looking, honest, and in possession of the exact piece of paper I needed to keep going. He looked at my photo in the passport, then at me, and then handed it to me, like he had picked some pretty spring blossom. I threw my arms around him.

I don’t know who Antonio is or how he was raised, but I hope there are Antonios everywhere. That Saturday night in Naples could’ve gone in so many different directions for me, it could’ve been much, much more than this weird, very stressful half-hour of picturing some thug taking off with my passport, imagining all the different ways he could have leveraged and profited from my identity. We are raised to fear. We are taught to distrust—and that to think differently is at your own expense.

Once settled in my room, I ordered a glass of red wine with my room service, and when it arrived, I toasted Antonio. I played salsa music and reveled in the joyous surprises that find us, which are all the more special when we are lost and don’t know the language. I sipped red wine and wished Antonio all the good health and prosperity the world had to offer while he was five flights down somewhere doing his job. I wished him a gorgeous girlfriend or boyfriend or both, financial comfort, and a long life filled with his favorite things. Perhaps, bending down and finding a lost passport felt like nothing to him. Maybe he never entertained the idea of pocketing it and telling no one. Maybe what to do was just simply clear. Apparently, as soon as he found it, he informed the front desk, which called the taxi driver. This all happened in minutes.

How quickly things can change, good or bad. And I think of this as I read the news out of Brussels while sipping coffee from my sofa, feeling so far removed from all this after having been in Europe just the day before. Yesterday morning, I was in Zürich’s airport; we all know the banality of making our way through airport queues to get to our gate, the anticipation of going somewhere, perhaps home, perhaps a conference, perhaps a vacation. No one really likes being at an airport; it sometimes feels like going to a doctor’s appointment, lots of sitting and waiting for things to happen. During my 12 days in Europe, I pushed myself through waves of people at all these different hubs: crowded bars, hotel lobbies, train stations, security checkpoints, airports. In 2008, we spent Christmas in Belgium, a place I never visualized becoming anyone’s target, but I admit to only knowing a postcard version of Europe and its cities. I spent time living in London, but that was 1993, and it’s a very different world now. We parachute in to beautiful places for vacations or meetings while the nuances of Islamophobia and ethnic and religious tension play out in the neighborhoods. What happens at street-level affects the world, choices on the front steps of apartment buildings, in cramped living rooms, around kitchen tables, that can affect any of us at any time—are happening all the time. I was extremely fortunate Antonio made the choice he did.

Naples 2016

I saw very little of Naples. I was there only 15 hours, and left early the next morning. I will now always associate that city with Antonio. Naples, the pickpocket capital of Europe, was generous to me. What I did see of the city occurred from the hotel terrace at breakfast: sounds of construction everywhere, laundry crisscrossing other people’s terraces, the clanking of dishware coming from kitchen windows. The city was waking up. Cappuccino machines were whipping up morning rituals as quickly as possible. Maybe Antonio only works night shifts, for he was gone when I checked out. I wanted to say “thank you” one more time. I didn’t see him, so I boarded a van headed to Positano, a stunning coastal community that feels like an ancient place with Wi-Fi, as far removed from bombings and terrorism and geopolitical discontent as you can get. It’s a place Italians fled to during World War II—including the owners of our hotel there. It’s a place where we’d all like to flee to when things get ugly.

Positano 1

Christmas Somewhere Else

I’m not very traditional and have the honor of being the change agent in our household, which means I’m usually the one saying “Why don’t we try this?” or “We’ve never done that before…” or “Let’s see what this is about!” Sometimes it’s met with tepid enthusiasm. Other times it’s met with cautious silence. This happened in 2007 when I suggested to my husband we spend Christmas in Brugges because Brugges looked like a gingerbread house village where Eurocentric Christmas traditions took root. Mike agreed, understandably wondering what spending a holiday so deeply intertwined with his childhood would look like in a foreign place. Turned out, he loved it. Christmas in Belgium was filled with charcuterie, world-class beer, everything dipped in chocolate, twinkling lights and ice skating.

Brugges

We liked it so much we flew to London the following Christmas and spent a week there, again eating too much meat, cheese and chocolate, ice skating, hiding from the cold rain in awesome museums and—my favorite—the Prêt-à-Portea at the Berkeley Hotel with its chocolate-colored walls and gold ornaments.

A few years went by and then in 2013, I got it in my head that we should spend Christmas in Taos, New Mexico, and partake in the Christmas Eve bonfires at Taos Pueblo. This experience is unmatched. There’s still time, so if you’re anywhere near Taos on the night of December 24th, whatever your religious or cultural affiliations, go and see. Taos Pueblo is the only inhabited World Heritage Site in North America and during Christmas Eve, Santa Claus is nowhere to be found, which is refreshing. We attended mass at St. Jerome’s where we actually got there early enough to grab a spot on a pew. After the service, we followed the procession out into the hundreds of luminarias and three large bonfires taller than some houses. And then the procession proceeded without us because we got swept up in the crowds. That’s okay because we still felt like we were part of something quite old and very large. Christmas Eve at Taos Pueblo is about light, a message to the sky. No Santa. No Elf on a Shelf. No glowing reindeer. “Magical” sounds trite and doesn’t even begin to describe how special this event is. Just go.

34482813-SS_best_places_christmas_taos

Lately, we’ve been staycationing at Christmas; flying during the hectic holiday season is sometimes just too much trouble and after 12 years of living in the New York metropolitan area, we’ve all grown hypersensitive to traffic. Even the word “traffic” makes us want to stay home, lock the doors and find something good on TV. We’re a small family so the holidays are just about us and whatever we feel like doing. Christmas Eve, we attend an evening church candlelight service (plus our church has a kick-ass choir) and our neighborhood puts on its own luminarias display. Christmas Day, we uncork champagne, open gifts, and watch vintage movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But if I were to spend Christmas somewhere else again, I’d love to do so in the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America, places where I think there might be a bit more Jesus and sunshine and a bit less Santa and cold. While the commercialism of Christmas bothers me every year, I do love all the lights and Christmas trees (the origami tree at New York’s American Museum of Natural History remains my all-time favorite and is worth braving the crowds) and I’m genuinely moved by the Nativity. I’ve never been very religious and although I was baptized Catholic, I never made Communion. But a story about a down-and-out couple wandering the desert and a baby and angels and people feeling hopeful is pretty cool. It’s not too different from what the Red Willow People at Taos Pueblo do every year—create light in darkness and tell the heavens “We’re still here, doing our best.”

We Are All Tourists

I don’t normally use this blog to weigh in on world news or politics. Those things are big and my soapbox here is very, very small. But what happened in Paris last night sent me into a raw, shaking crying spell. I felt a vulnerability I hadn’t felt since living in Washington, D.C. during the 9/11 attacks. Living and working in New York City, we’re used to warnings about terrorist threats, to seeing more police patrol the streets and subway stations and the bridges. It’s not that you forget that you live in a world capital and people would love to make a mess of it, but you do become a bit numb to the red and orange and yellow coding of terrorist threats. If you didn’t, how would you go about doing anything? I was just at a restaurant near SoHo yesterday having lunch with a friend, and if some terrorist wanted to interrupt that, to blow us all up to make a public statement, he or she easily could have because when we’re out and about connecting with others, in restaurants, in concert halls, at sports stadiums, we’re all vulnerable no matter where we live.

Paris 1993

My first visit to Paris was in October 1993 when I was a student spending a semester in London, back when this kind of coordinated, soft-target terrorism we’re seeing now wasn’t yet a sophisticated modality for political expression. The Chunnel had not yet been built. I took a midnight ferry across the English Channel, got tossed about, became incredibly seasick, and arrived to France’s northern coast completely thrilled to be in the country that gave the world brie, champagne and a gorgeous language I was still trying to master. My first sighting of the Eiffel Tower happened during the day. We were looking for it, couldn’t find it, had our noses in maps, then turned around and there it was. For a 20-year-old studying abroad, there was absolutely nothing more exciting. My friend nearly jumped on to me, which is why I’m holding her leg in this photo. We were genuinely beyond giddy to have found Paris. No one was thinking about getting caught in anyone’s crossfire; we were too focused on figuring out how to go up the Eiffel Tower with our luggage because we didn’t want to spend money renting lockers.

I have visited Paris two times since; in 1996, I stayed with a friend who spent a year there teaching and then we returned in 2011 for a whirlwind family weekend of art, cheese and croissants, my daughter’s first introduction to the City of Lights. If I could afford it, I would go there once a year just to replenish my Francophilia.

Traveling can make us forget that the world is not a 24/7 buffet bar, that we can just parachute in and sample whatever we please before moving on. I’m guilty of this. The fact is we’re all tourists, even if we think we’d like to experience a place like a local. If you’re just visiting, there’s no way to fully grasp the socioeconomic and political complexities of a place. And that’s ok. How could anyone come to know such things in such a short amount of time? Yes, most countries depend on tourism to keep their economies afloat, and most countries are happy to welcome you into their homes, serve you their best food, show you the best spots in town, and send you home smiling. Yet, behind the stops to art galleries and towers and river boat tours and cafes, there are tensions, some as old as the stones in the streets. Cities, like people, are layered and complex and difficult to ever truly know. Any trip we take anywhere is just a glossy snapshot.

When I visited my friend in 1996, there were news headlines then about challenges facing Muslims living in Paris. Violence tends to have a history. Tragically, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of racism grip Europe hard. The fear of “Other” is palpable, and the horror and carnage in Paris last night will affect us all for years to come, perhaps even a generation or more. When we visit other countries and see their sites, we should remember the challenges that forged them. We’ll never experience any place like a local no matter how well we speak the language, but we can be more mindful, respectful tourists.

Skyr Hunting in Lopapeysa Country

I hate flying and I’ve been feeling sun-deprived after a harsh winter in the Northeastern United States, so why am I spending spring break in Reykjavik, Iceland? There are two groups to thank: the Iceland Writers Retreat led by the indefatigable Eliza Reid, and HBO’s Game of Thrones (that’s right, I’m a big fan of Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, and Daenerys Targaryen). Both groups put me in that warm writerly mood, the one that feels like expensive wine slipping down the back of your throat softening your organs and bones. Yeah, that’s the one. Or some might call it inspiration. Either way, here I am eager to hear wisdom from writers Andrew Evans, Susan Orlean, Joseph Boyden and Randy Boyagoda. Along the way, I’ll be eating puffin, watching puffin, perhaps buying my daughter a stuffed puffin, and breathing in Iceland’s lava fields and waterfalls, its flirtatious coast and salty winds.

reykjavik-viking-boat

So far, during my first 18 hours here, all I’ve seen, from the windows of our plane, our bus and our taxi, is that Reykjavik is a city of contrasts. It feels like a sleepy New England fishing village crawling with urban hipsters. There’s compelling, bright-colored graffiti next to stores selling gray wool clothing and sweaters knitted by someone’s industrious grandmother (the traditional Icelandic lopapeysa seems to be worn by everyone, young and old, local and tourist). Reykjavik feels like North America and Europe. Rain and sun cover the city at the same time. We’ve already seen two rainbows; not subtle suggestions of color in the clouds, but bright, Biblical, Noah’s-ark-happy-ending kind of rainbows. Reykjavik is surrounded by exquisite landscape yet the houses are colored corrugated iron plates that look like old shipping cargo containers. We’re enveloped by snowy mountains and geothermal pools warmed by hot volcanic rock. It *is* the land of fire and ice. And since fusion is in the air, our first meal during our first night here was a cultural, culinary mix of traditional Icelandic cuisine prepared with Spanish flair at a funky, cozy place unimaginatively called Tapas Barrin. I ate roasted puffin served on blueberry sauce, cod croquettes, Serrano ham with figs and skyr mousse that was so delicious I don’t care who in that restaurant saw me licking my spoon far too slowly. I’m doing the skyr trail while here, so there will be a lot of spoon-licking all over Reykjavik this week. Mike enjoyed minke whale and all kinds of other succulent fruits des mer. Our daughter did what she does wherever we go—she ate grilled chicken. The food was fantastic. I might eat there again before my week here is up.

Flying here from New York took less than five hours and didn’t cost very much as far as trans-Atlantic flights go, but hanging out in Iceland isn’t cheap. Quite a bit is imported, and even for what’s home-grown, there’s some sticker shock at restaurants, souvenir shops and gas stations. Lopapeysas run about $300 USD. If you want to imbibe as Iceland’s founding fathers once did by sipping booze from a viking horn, that will run you about $80 USD. Our Icelandic tapas dinner cost about $180 USD and I sipped water through the whole meal.

Hopefully this writers’ retreat will be awesome (I know it will be otherwise I wouldn’t have boarded a midnight flight in the rain to get here), inspiration will flow like lava, and by the end of this year, perhaps the first draft of my own novel manuscript will be finished or close to finished (I write VERY slowly compared to the tireless, prolific Michael J. Martinez, author of The Daedalus Incident series). Back home, when thirsty again for this kind of artistic motivation, I’ll rely on Game of Thrones reruns to remind me of this trip, of the cool moodiness circling above this hot rock 300,000 people call home.