Visiting the Capital

Today I went to Salem, Oregon, to get a few documents notarized. This journey started out by us taking the MAX Light Rail to the Greyhound station downtown and waiting in a long line of tired people, before they let us know that there were no reservations under either of our names even though my boyfriend had booked the ticket the previous night.

So we then walked to Powell’s Books and sat in the cafe and managed to luckily find a rideshare off craigslist. It was fortunate that I brought my laptop! We sat there for a while and read and zoned out a bit and drank some Jasmine tea. All the while I was trying to figure out my way of getting to Arcata, CA, next week, and possibly extending my flight back here from New York, neither of which I’ve successfully completed yet.

The ride was not bad. The rest of the people were going to Eugene. I’m familiarizing myself a little more each time with I-5 South, passing places like Tigard and Lake Oswego, which were in the past a bunch of unassociated names. The driver was nice, she passed the exit of her town, Canby, and told us how she grew up on a farm there, and how Canby is just a bunch of churches, fast food places and a few gas stations. We drove through the plains of farmlands and passed random exit signs.

When we finally got to the outskirts of Salem, we talked about how it resembled so many outskirts of American cities we have seen in the past and will see in the future. The men in the car talked about their hiking trips in the woods of Montana or North Carolina, and having shock after entrance upon these anywhere locations in the USA.

It was raining heavily when we were dropped off by Capital Street. We walked by the buildings labeled by their respective bureaucracies, whether they were transportation, taxes, and finally to human services or whatever it was called. We had a productive time of walking down the dim, marble halls, finding the office and finally getting our documents stamped and signed and sealed with a gold Oregon state sticker. We then got to wait at a bus stop outside this building and stare at the Oregon state capital building, which I’ve passed on the Greyhound bus before. A bunch of school children who were on a field trip there were exiting the capital and boarding the yellow school buses, and they did not seem too interested.

We took an express bus from Salem to the Wilsonville Transit Center, where we got on a WES commuter train. I had never even seen one of these trains before, let alone ride one. We passed through some rural areas which were either green and vast or recently developed with ugly suburban houses that all looked the same. On we rode to the Beaverton Transit Center, where we hopped on the MAX, and rode it to downtown Portland, over the bridge, past the Rose Quarter Convention Center and finally to the 6 bus. This whole ride was about 2.5 hours.

It was reassuring to come back to Portland with our documents finally officialized. I hope I will not ever return to Salem again.

Wintery Times in Poland

When I think of my trip to Krakow and Lesser Poland, the main emotion I retain from that short time is being freezing.

I remember taking an overnight bus from Prague with my class/dorm mates, being woken up by the border patrol authorities, and then getting there at some ungodly hour in the morning, driving around half awake and less than half conscious, circling through some never-ending plains with distant dark vines scattered around, all caked up and encrusted in snow, with white, indistinguishable clouds on top, all while white flurries were occasionally coming down from the sky to really rub this in.

Auschwitz

To make things even darker in this midst of cold weather, the first destination on our trip was Auschwitz, the old concentration camp.

Our male tourguide spoke very slowly with a thick accent, and told us of treacherous death facts and statistics while showing us off to these awful cellar areas where humans were crammed in like mistreated cattle. He also showed us a room completely full of cut-off human hair displayed behind glass. As we were shivering in our thick coats and lined boots and knit hats and mittens and Turkish scarves, we were shown to the clothes of these prisoners, which consisted of flat wooden clogs and shoddy pajamas full of holes. A lot can be said about this, but I will just describe it as creepy, and even though I was amongst some of my closet friends, no one talked or made eye contact with one another. We all just stared at the ground and observed the footsteps making grey patterns in the white snow.

Out of this strange universe, we were driven to Krakow. A female guide showed us to the old Jewish neighborhood, which was somewhat sad that there were no Jews living there any more, but not quite as sad as our previous spot. The buildings were all toned in shades of grey, whether a bit brown or green, and the old menorahs and stars of David were now blanketed in snow that would gradually drop off and be replaced with more snow.

We were shown to the Royal Castle on Wawel Hill, where we got to look down upon the rest of the city and see the precipitation being residually placed on all of the rooftops.

Further down the walk, we bundled up more and more, buttoned the topmost buttons on our inner and outer layers, and were led to Jag University, one of the oldest schools in Europe, and then to many many sites of churches, seeing pictures and statues of the pope and Jesus all over the place, standing strong in a static state against the elements.

I was the most excited to head to the shopping square in Old Town, where I was finally able to buy some thick, itchy wool socks that could hike up to my knees, as my feet were frozen solid. I would also think about some of my imagined ancestors in this land I actually liked in a weird way.

Radio

I got interviewed for WERS 88.9 the other day, they are a station through Emerson College in Boston.

Click here to listen to the show, which is called You Are Here.

You can hear my part if you fast forward about three quarters the way through. The show was regarding the new immigration laws in Arizona. I basically talked about how Americans move out of the country and some of the anecdotes I’ve personally dealt with when I lived abroad and when friends of mine have lived abroad in other places.

It’s a totally different relation of people immigrating into the United States versus Americans going to other countries for reasons like travel, retirement, teaching English, study abroad etc. This is a really complicated issue of course, that I could think about and go into for hours, but they give a couple minutes of the answers I gave to their inquiries. The rest of the show is interesting and gives several different perspectives on this issue.

Trip to Seattle

This weekend I did a mini-excursion up to Seattle. We found a ride off craigslist and drove up through the cloudy greenery from the Oregon border of the Columbia River up through Washington State.

I’m getting to know this three-hour drive a little better each time I go through it. I know we pass through a suburban sprawl area around and north of Vancouver, WA, and then enter an area of vast greenery with lots of RV truck lots on the sides. There is also some redneck sign that’s always standing strong half of the ride through, with a giant cartoon of Uncle Sam dressed in red, white and blue, which always displays some right-wing banter like “Guns, Glory and God: You Keep the Change!” I’m always excited to see what they have to say next. Then down the freeway is the long journey through Tacoma, with the domes and big box stores and malls all glorifying their own development with huge, colorful signs.

Getting to Seattle was fun. Upon entrance in the automobile, I always see the vaguely distinguished skyline with the Space Needle off to the left in the distance, with the beautiful water and hills; also the vast industrial lot of cranes, warehouses and cargo to the immediate left of I-5. The traffic always slows down upon entrance to Seattle’s outskirts, with people changing lanes and getting off and on and around the cluster of connecting roads.

Unfortunately the rainy weather followed us, but despite the clouds and precipitation, it was fun. I enjoy the walk from the Capitol Hill district downhill to the downtown area, past the skyscrapers and to the convention center. I like the faster-paced urban experience and passing some landmarks that I vaguely remember from times before, be it a bleak Greyhound station or a funny pink elephant car wash, to the back and forth journeys of the monorails.

Folklife, the festival I went to, was interesting. Got to walk in and out and above and around examples from lots of different places, seeing little kids kicking off traditional Cossack dances to people playing strange Asian instruments I’ve never seen before but vaguely recognized in some background music I’ve certainly heard at some point in my life.

Folklife had lots of crust punk bands playing washboards and walking their dogs, and some older people strumming guitars and patting wooden boxes to bluegrass beats on benches.

We checked out the urban scene too of course, shopped around at bookstores and record stores, ate at the fine eateries that had pescatarian and ovo-lacto vegetarian versions of Pad Thai, and even a place that prided itself on its New York style pizza, full of illustrations and photographs of good ol’ New York. Rode the city buses and observed the different looks and accents and attitude of different people.

The ride back was nice and sunny. These three hippie girls picked us up in Seattle, who were doing some farm training workshop up at Orcas Island. Back we journeyed to Portland, and everything looked so much different with the golden touch from above. Back down south through the little bridges over the regional rivers to the large bridge over the Columbia River, back to Portland yet again.

Waiting for Summer

It has been very rainy lately. I’m looking forward to summer but this constant rainfall and teasing so-called “sunbreaks” really make it seem like a distant imaginary thing rather than something that will be spur of the moment. Someone told me before that the real summer of the Northwest really starts after the Fourth of July weekend, but I was in denial because it was so nice around this time last year.

I have a few summer plans I’d like to turn into reality. I’m supposed to head up to Seattle for the Northwest Folklife Festival this Saturday. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it happen, and hopefully the clouds will finally give us a break. I went last year and it was an eventful time of marching around a new city and seeing a variety of musical acts and dancers I would never expect in the same place, all conglomerated under the Space Needle.

I’m also trying to decide what to do for my birthday in mid-June. There’s a concert I want to see in the Bay Area, plus I have a lot more friends there than I do here, but there are supposed to be some fun things going on around Portland as well. I suppose that is a good problem to have!

I talked to a couple friends recently and also may have some visitors crashing at my place this summer, which is always fun. It gives you an excuse to step out of your routine and actually check out the city you live in but take for granted.

I’ll also be going to New York from June 30-July 13. New York City is a wonderful place in the summer, maybe crowded and full of car fumes and hot concrete, but definitely also full of enhanced delight from the millions of people who wait so long all year to have the sun.

I want to try to make it up to Binghamton, NY, where I went to school. I spend most of my time in NYC whenever I’m back on the East Coast, but I’m most nostalgic for my past summer drives up Route 17, where you finally get out of greater suburban New York and into upstate, from Bear Mountain, then past Orange County, along the Catskill Mountain borders, cutting through the little fishing villages on the bridges over the gushing river. I’d like to test what I actually remember from that drive, from the strange names of towns like Downsville and Fishs Eddy, the Beaver-something Log Cabins all beautifully situated on a grassy incline, the bleak-looking factory town of Deposit, and then an entrance into Broome County, under a highway overpass, where the surrounding hills would magically get shorter, the skies darker and cloudier and the air more humid, until you voyage into its post-industrial decaying city of Binghamton, a strange place of so many of my memories for better or worse.

Well, the sun just came out…

Chiapas

I think everyone who has traveled through Chiapas has definitely left with an impression. I went to San Cristobal de Las Casas when I was in Mexico, which is an old colonial city high up in the mountains. The city is well-lined with short, colorful buildings and cobblestone streets, and this structure makes its way up several tall hills at which you can get a crazy view of the roads and structures and beyond.

San Cristobal is populated mostly by Mayans who speak their native language instead of Spanish. Many of the women make money by walking around town and carrying about 20 scarves on their shoulders, 50 necklaces wrapped around one hand, and hand-crafted skirts stacked on top of the other, all while carrying an infant in a sling on their backs. The other major demographic of this town was clusters of foreign hippies, sporting their rainbow hemp wear and dreadlocks, who looked like they were likely of American or European origin.

We took a shared minibus out to some interesting church a few miles outside of San Cristobal to a little city. On the drive there, we would pick up people off the side of the streets who were flagging down the vans, and then drop other people off at their respective rural residencies while they would take live chickens out of the van’s trunk during their departure. We went to the little town and saw the famous strange church from the outside. We entered the hyped- up madness, and there were pine branches and needles scattered all over the floor, along with a few people crouched down on the ground either lighting small, white several candles or drinking Coca Cola and going into some inverted prayer trance. All the while, some plastic children’s toys were playing single-key Christmas songs and there were even some electric Christmas lights lit up. Apparently they sacrifice chickens at this church, but fortunately we missed that.

While I was staying around Palenque, another part of Chiapas, we also had a shared bus excursion to some waterfalls. On the way, the locals stop you and little children press their faces up against the glass and try to sell you their bananas. The waterfalls represented what I’ve seen in the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, except in hot and humid jungle settings rather than cloudy temperate rainforest settings.

Riding Around Town

Portland can be a very pleasant city to ride around on bicycle. One of the reasons I decided to move here was because I would not have to buy a car. Sure there is public transport, but the city is set up especially nice for biking, and you do not have to squish against some unpleasant people.

Riding is especially fun when it is actually nice out and you are not being massacred by the thunderless rain, trying to keep your plastic hood shelled over your head by working against the force of the wind.

I think my favorite ride in Portland is from my house to the St Johns neighborhood via Willamette Boulevard. This is a long street that goes along the carved out road on the cliffs viewing the Willamette River down below. On part of this ride, you get an opportunity to see the hills of Forest Park on the West Side of the river. When you look at Forest Park from this perspective, you get a greater view on how the short trees change according to the season, whether light green in spring or deep green in summer, or red and brown in fall or naked in winter, against the pines that firmly stand forever tall and deeply green. You also get a wonderful view of downtown Portland, in a way that is always distantly hazy, and you can see the small and vague skyline, the fields of industrial, white warehouses, the Union Pacific tracks and the assortment of notable bridges.

Once you pass the university of Portland part, you are then in a largely residential area full of gridded small houses that usually have assorted yard sales in the warmer months. Further down, you begin to see the top of the minty green St John’s Bridge in the air from the distance, knowing you are approaching your destination.

The St John’s Bridge is especially scenic to ride under and look at the symmetry. It is situated above Cathedral Park, which is a manicured grassy field with loopy paths that take one straight downhill into the Willamette River shore. Though I would not recommend swimming in this river, some people do in fact enjoy it.

The St Johns neighborhood is a satisfying place to finally lock up your bike, full of friendly small businesses and casual strollers during the daytime hours. I’m fortunate that I live close enough to but far enough from St John’s to enjoy my journey and destination at a somewhat short reach.

Cannon Beach

I think Cannon Beach, Oregon is one of the most gorgeous places on the Pacific Coast. Maybe it isn’t all Beach Boys surfer ecstasy or beefy men working out on Venice Beach, but it definitely has its own thing going on. The rock formations are certainly one of the best parts of Cannon Beach, I’ve never seen anything like these on the Atlantic Ocean.

I love how in Oregon the forest goes up until the coast, where it ends right before the sand. Really tall, old pine trees make the best compliment to the yellow sandy shores and the clear blue water’s incoming waves. I feel like anywhere you go around here is some crazy pristine nature experience where you realize human architecture and city lights can never quite top the aesthetic potential the earth has.

I went to Cannon Beach last week, and though I had to bundle up a little, it was really enjoyable. I went there last summer for a few hours, and though it was incredibly beautiful, it was quite cloudy, hazy and humid. This time, it was clear and crisp and of course breezy, but not crowded because it was not high season, and the ocean was a lovely stark blue contrast below the sky’s subtle blue tone.

On the actual beach part, the windy, salty cool air was another appropriate contrast to the soft and hot sand on the ground.

Puppet Land

When I visited Cesky Krumlov, I went to a place called the Fairy Tale House, which is a what most would call a puppet museum. To me, it is a separate universe that one can ascend into, away from the grey cobble stone street exiting the realm of the Medieval paradise of the cloudy, touristy Czech town. It felt like some Tom Waits carnival song coming across some awkward childhood memory that you cannot be sure if it was a dream or reality.

It may have been the creepiest place I’ve seen, and it blew haunted houses out of the water. There were displays through glass windows of evil bloated puppets making sacrifices to gaunt reddish puppets, all suspended in the air by strings.

There were shelves of little children representations, and strange creations of seemingly Oriental stereotypes next to some campy European folkware maidens.

I was surprised by the juxtaposition of the proper pirates standing above the tumorous-nosed elderly puppets, all in some warped fairy tale universe you could only experience from the opposite side of the glass.

The weirdest part was climbing up the final stairs into the attic to the ultimate Satanic lair, and being encountered by an oversized, matte-colored infant hanging by its strings, a product of arrested development of such a dim environment.

Barcelona

Barcelona really is a beautiful city. It is definitely a place where you can get off the bus somewhere downtown and instantly feel calm and happy just absorbing what is going on around you. (That was a definite contrast to life in Prague.) My favorite part about being in Barcelona was walking through the narrow, winding stony pedestrian streets, and looking up to the sky and seeing the tiny balconies of the apartments drying out clothes out in the breeze.

I went to a bunch of tourist sites as well that really blew my mind, as they were all new to me, and I had never seen anything quite like them. But what became strange to me later is that whenever I looked at other peoples’ pictures of Barcelona, they take all the same pictures of the same parts, the same statues, the same churches, likely at the same points I was standing in holding my camera. It is like some shared surreal cliche experience of recycled perspective. I went to the Picasso museum while I was there, and though his artwork seems unique, you definitely feel like a being in a herded mass being in the museum, that is very crowded and arranged by numbered rooms where you can not stray from the given path.

I was with a group of friends when I came across this building, led blindly until I was met by the pleasantly warped architectural surprise:

Of course I’ve then seen others’ versions of my seemingly unique photography. But at least I got the sailors!

And I was so impressed by the mosaics at park Guell (above), and impressed at others’ capabilities to take such similar pictures to mine.

And of course I did the typical things one is to do in Barcelona: listen to live Flamenco, eat tapas, drink Sangria, stare off into the Mediterranean.

But the best times I had I couldn’t share when I was there. I’d often leave my group of friends to find my own adventures before everyone would wake up or after everyone would turn in for the night. I walked alone, to see colors either affected by the morning light or the nighttime city lights, find new streets of new structures and layouts, find the hidden home of stray cat colonies behind shrubs, get lost, try to ask people in Spanish how to get back, realize repeatedly that I hardly speak Spanish and that people in Barcelona speak Catalan and not Spanish, but then eventually find my way back to the hostel.