So wouldn't you know that after driving without incident in every single major snowstorm in Michigan last winter, I would get in my first ever car accident during a light snow in Germany? It's so bizarre that I'm going to go ahead and give you the blow-by-blow.
To set the stage: Brianne and I had gone to visit our friend Verena in Neustadt for her birthday. After a nice afternoon in Strasbourg, a party with a bunch of Germans where we confirmed cultural stereotypes by being the only dancers on the floor for about an hour and a half (until German songs about big red horses turning around and swishing flies with their tails came on, at which point everyone except us got Saturday Night Fever), and a lovely day with Verena's family, Verena was driving us from her parents' house to her place in the Black Forest. We had literally just finished telling her about how many of our friends have had crazy accidents in the past year, when all the sudden a huge station wagon flies around the corner in front of us turned completely sideways. I think my irrational thought was "Man...that was really close" right as the car actually hit us. The air bags fly out, and I crack my way too long legs on the dashboard.
Almost before we had come to a stop, Brianne snaps into action: "Is everyone o.k. the car is smoking GET OUT OF THE CAR!" Of course it was actually only the fibers flying out of the air bags, which were flopping about rather ineffectually, but since Brianne has had two cars spontaneously light on fire while she was driving them, I suppose I can understand her reaction. In any case, Brianne jumps out of the car and into the snow with no shoes on, runs to the passenger side door where I'm sitting and flings it open, ready to drag me bodily from the car if necessary. Meanwhile my thoughts are running approximately thus: "Ouch. Shit. If my kneecaps are broken, I don't know if I have insurance in Germany." And unbeknownst to me, Brianne is thinking: "Don't die, because our French insurance doesn't cover the repatriation of remains!"
So we get out of the car, Brianne throws her coat on the ground and makes me sit down, tons of German people show up from everywhere and start asking me if I haben schlecht, and the driver of the car who hit us has lit up a cigarette and is staring into space while Verena cries and yells at him. I ask Brianne to get my bag from the car, which was really important to me at the time, and since she was pretty sure the car was going to explode at any moment, it was an act of considerable bravery to comply.
And the best moment of all: when I started pulling up the leg of my jeans to see how my knees looked, Brianne asked me, in what seemed like a decent suggestion at the time: "Should we cut your pants off?" But since I was wearing the only pair of jeans I own that fit me, I declined.
Anyway, all that to say that even though poor Verena's car is totalled, all three of us are fine, apart from some whiplash and bruising. Brianne's coming down with a cold after running around with no shoes, and I've experienced an increase in the crazy nightmares I always have anyway. And we're both very glad that we didn't have to learn the limits of our insurance coverage.
11.26.2008
11.19.2008
Well you're rather posh, aren't you?
Highlights of a Weekend in London
1. Seeing the ever-articulate Kenneth Brannagh in Chekhov's Ivanov. Brianne and I waited in line for two hours in the early morning to get tickets and ended up sitting in "Box A": which sounds like luxury but in reality more closely resembles a literal box, except with Victorian wallpaper, our own private toilet, and a box attendant with whom none of us knew how to properly interact. But it was all worth it to see in person Brannagh's acrobatic voice when he's giving a monologue, especially during the particularly impressive gem in which he ran through almost two pages of text in about thirty seconds of a nervous trance.
2. Eating. I'll admit that food is pretty much always half my reason for traveling, but that's especially true in a vegetarian-friendly city like London, where even the fast food places have veggie options. (Real veggie options too, not like in France where they offer you a plate of cheese.) In one day I had a chocolate croissant for breakfast, lunch at Hummus Brothers, a pumpkin-pea burger with basil mayo and fruit relish for dinner, and a passion fruit creme caramel with ginger bisquit for dessert, or for "pudding," as I now say (see point 3).
3. Learning that the technical name for my speaking disability is WAS: wandering accent syndrome. I swear: you put me in a room for five minutes with a Londoner and I'm throwing around words like "rubbish" and "brilliant," saying the phrase "when I was at uni," and generally making a linguistic ass out of myself.
4. Feeling that wonderfully relaxed feeling you get when you go back to a city that you know really well. Going back to London felt less like a vacation and more like going home: no pressure to see everything as quickly as possible, no nervousness about figuring out the transportation system, no looks of vacant, smiling confusion when someone asks you a question in German (although there were maybe a few looks of vacant, smiling Anglo-philia when someone spoke to me in a Scottish accent). I just felt quietly happy the whole time, and was perfectly content to spend hours in Battersea Park watching dogs running around.
Enjoying the view from Box A
11.06.2008
Two-week vacations from 12-hour work weeks, and other European experiences
So as my title suggests, I certainly have no excuse for tardiness in updating this blog. You have my apologies. I'm going to make serious efforts to reform, though, and write more steadily, so that you won't be forced to read many oversized, bloated entries like this one. I've let far too much pile up to say all at once.
But the main point is...Brianne and I have just returned from a week and a half in Switzerland for our first big vacation of the year. We made a tour of Geneva, Lausanne, Interlaken, Luzern, St. Gallen, Liechtenstein, and Zurich and for the most part we used a network called CouchSurfing to stay for free with people who live in the country. You sign up and create a profile and then you can contact people in cities you want to visit to see if they'd like to host you for a few days. In Interlaken we stayed with a group of 40-something adventure guides from all over the world who help people jump out of planes and down canyons in the summer, ski in the winter, and take off to Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, and New Zealand during the off seasons to learn to kite surf or to teach surfing workshops. And in Liechtenstein we stayed with a heavy metal rocker who took us to a bar filled with fake dinosaurs and Kiss music and who spent a half an hour showing us videos on YouTube of European "heavy metal folk" bands who scream into microphones while playing bagpipes and hurdy gurdies.
But the best experiences we had were in Luzern and St. Gallen, where our generous hosts helped us combat the foggy weather by driving us up into the mountains for sunny hikes above the clouds. They walked and explored with us, showed us their favorite spots, and overall made me feel like I was getting spoiled silly by strangers. But the wonderful thing is that it gives you this huge urge to pay it forward: I would love to host someone here in Nantes, or better yet in Michigan, where I could show them around and make them feel at home. It gives you the feeling that everywhere in the world there are people who are open, warm, generous, hopeful.
Just one more thought before the photo montage (much-anticipated, I'm sure): being around mountains and mountain-loving people this past week has made me feel like I'm really only one small step away from throwing grad school in the maybe-later closet and taking off to live in a Vanagon with a friend and two dogs, hiking, rafting, and farming across the seven continents, stopping in one place for a couple of months at a time to meet new people and lay down new roots. It's not a lifestyle that I could live for ages, but it's got a strong pull for me now. The me that I imagine living in the back of her car, walking her dog down the beach in Thailand or rafting down a river in Nepal: she's a pretty happy person. But that just goes to show you how many shapes your life could have/would have/might still take(n) depending on what little influences come along to push you in one direction or another.
O.K. enough existential pondering for one post. On to the photos! You may think I've put up quite a few of them, but you have no idea from what a horror of vacation-slideshow-induced stupor I have actually spared you. I could create an entire photo album titled "Leaves, Berries, and Swiss Farm Animals." You're only seeing the highlights. You're also not seeing any of the nice photos of me and Brianne together, since those are all on Brianne's camera and we're having technical difficulties at the moment. Click to enlarge, if you so desire.
Feeding one of Switzerland's countless swans in Geneva
Lake Geneva: a partly cloudy day and our first rain
Lausanne: a very beautiful city, which we saw almost entirely in the rain, and of which consequently I have almost no photos. But we had a great day nonetheless visiting the Olympics Museum (I tear up every time someone shows footage of people winning medals set to triumphant music) and a museum of "Art Brut," or art done by people with no artistic training, which was simply incredible.
I had to put up at least one wildlife picture. Hanging out with goats on a rainy day in Interlaken. After three cloudy days, we were about to give up hope of actually seeing mountains, but never fear...
The next day we woke up to two feet of snow! We went up the mountain a little ways to Lauterbrunnen, where we trekked through the drifts alongside a river and made a couple snowmen.
After our morning walk, we took the cable cars up to Murren to try to see some mountains over the clouds: great success!
And our last day in Interlaken, we even got to see the mountains around town.
Next stop was Luzern, of which I've chosen a night photo, because the view was actually nicer than during the cloudy daytime.
But luckily our host Remo drove us up into the mountains, where we had an awesome view of the Alps in snow.
After that we stayed outside St. Gallen in a renovated farm house with Sebastian and family. This was my attempt to capture the joy we felt when we woke up to a huge Swiss breakfast, sunshine, and cows out the window.
Sebastian took us on a walk through the hills of Appenzell
Alpen cat
And then we had a layover in Buchs, where we managed to take about 80 pictures in two hours.
Case in point #1
Case in point #2
And then...drum roll...we spent a day in Liechtenstein! 160 km2, 30,000 inhabitants...just about the size of University of Michigan.
Fun with reflections
And just before leaving we got to spend one night in Zurich, where we wandered about admiring the beautiful food/kitchen stores, taking pictures of the lights in the river, and eating at an amazing vegetarian cafe.
But the main point is...Brianne and I have just returned from a week and a half in Switzerland for our first big vacation of the year. We made a tour of Geneva, Lausanne, Interlaken, Luzern, St. Gallen, Liechtenstein, and Zurich and for the most part we used a network called CouchSurfing to stay for free with people who live in the country. You sign up and create a profile and then you can contact people in cities you want to visit to see if they'd like to host you for a few days. In Interlaken we stayed with a group of 40-something adventure guides from all over the world who help people jump out of planes and down canyons in the summer, ski in the winter, and take off to Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, and New Zealand during the off seasons to learn to kite surf or to teach surfing workshops. And in Liechtenstein we stayed with a heavy metal rocker who took us to a bar filled with fake dinosaurs and Kiss music and who spent a half an hour showing us videos on YouTube of European "heavy metal folk" bands who scream into microphones while playing bagpipes and hurdy gurdies.
But the best experiences we had were in Luzern and St. Gallen, where our generous hosts helped us combat the foggy weather by driving us up into the mountains for sunny hikes above the clouds. They walked and explored with us, showed us their favorite spots, and overall made me feel like I was getting spoiled silly by strangers. But the wonderful thing is that it gives you this huge urge to pay it forward: I would love to host someone here in Nantes, or better yet in Michigan, where I could show them around and make them feel at home. It gives you the feeling that everywhere in the world there are people who are open, warm, generous, hopeful.
Just one more thought before the photo montage (much-anticipated, I'm sure): being around mountains and mountain-loving people this past week has made me feel like I'm really only one small step away from throwing grad school in the maybe-later closet and taking off to live in a Vanagon with a friend and two dogs, hiking, rafting, and farming across the seven continents, stopping in one place for a couple of months at a time to meet new people and lay down new roots. It's not a lifestyle that I could live for ages, but it's got a strong pull for me now. The me that I imagine living in the back of her car, walking her dog down the beach in Thailand or rafting down a river in Nepal: she's a pretty happy person. But that just goes to show you how many shapes your life could have/would have/might still take(n) depending on what little influences come along to push you in one direction or another.
O.K. enough existential pondering for one post. On to the photos! You may think I've put up quite a few of them, but you have no idea from what a horror of vacation-slideshow-induced stupor I have actually spared you. I could create an entire photo album titled "Leaves, Berries, and Swiss Farm Animals." You're only seeing the highlights. You're also not seeing any of the nice photos of me and Brianne together, since those are all on Brianne's camera and we're having technical difficulties at the moment. Click to enlarge, if you so desire.
Feeding one of Switzerland's countless swans in Geneva
Lake Geneva: a partly cloudy day and our first rain
Lausanne: a very beautiful city, which we saw almost entirely in the rain, and of which consequently I have almost no photos. But we had a great day nonetheless visiting the Olympics Museum (I tear up every time someone shows footage of people winning medals set to triumphant music) and a museum of "Art Brut," or art done by people with no artistic training, which was simply incredible.
I had to put up at least one wildlife picture. Hanging out with goats on a rainy day in Interlaken. After three cloudy days, we were about to give up hope of actually seeing mountains, but never fear...
The next day we woke up to two feet of snow! We went up the mountain a little ways to Lauterbrunnen, where we trekked through the drifts alongside a river and made a couple snowmen.
After our morning walk, we took the cable cars up to Murren to try to see some mountains over the clouds: great success!
And our last day in Interlaken, we even got to see the mountains around town.
Next stop was Luzern, of which I've chosen a night photo, because the view was actually nicer than during the cloudy daytime.
But luckily our host Remo drove us up into the mountains, where we had an awesome view of the Alps in snow.
After that we stayed outside St. Gallen in a renovated farm house with Sebastian and family. This was my attempt to capture the joy we felt when we woke up to a huge Swiss breakfast, sunshine, and cows out the window.
Sebastian took us on a walk through the hills of Appenzell
Alpen cat
And then we had a layover in Buchs, where we managed to take about 80 pictures in two hours.
Case in point #1
Case in point #2
And then...drum roll...we spent a day in Liechtenstein! 160 km2, 30,000 inhabitants...just about the size of University of Michigan.
Fun with reflections
And just before leaving we got to spend one night in Zurich, where we wandered about admiring the beautiful food/kitchen stores, taking pictures of the lights in the river, and eating at an amazing vegetarian cafe.Thanks for reading, folks. You have my word that the next entry will not be so long.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)