Come summertime, Portland turns into a new place. The sun shines, and people breeze by on their bikes, showing off their cherished cut-off clothing that they have had in storage all year, looking forward to the magic day they do not have to suffer from constant dampness.
I was sitting on the bench the other day and a woman noticed how smiley everyone had become, as they had certainly earned it. I absolutely agree with that, as I’ve visited places where it is nice all year round, and no one appreciates it. I remember when I was in school in upstate New York, the first day of sun was so cherished, and everyone was out on their picnic blankets or playing volleyball or chess in the communal dorm yards. When the sun was nearing sunset, and the shadows would encompass our space, we would always move our blanket down a few feet over and over to catch the continuous rays.
I’ve been trying to watch the sunset every night that it’s clear. I’m skipping tonight because it is cloudy. However, I did watch it from my roof three days in a row, which was quite a treat. I get a spectacular view of the sun setting over the hills of pine-infested trees on the west side of the Willamette to the West, and then an interesting shadowed view of Mount Saint Helens to the North. This volcano looks white from its snow during the day, but during sunset, it gets shades of mystical purple.
I went to the bluffs off of Skidmore Street a couple nights ago, and that was quite a scene. People had picnics already set up, and were sipping wine and eating cheese and waiting for the magic colors to appear upon the solar descent.
Tomorrow, I shall leave. Though enjoyable in this weather, I’ve been here pretty much all alone, with no one to share my experience with, unless you count my cats. I’m looking forward to my flight to New York tomorrow night. Although it’s supposed to be hot and sticky and mosquito infested, I’m excited to see new old faces. I’m excited to see the trees have turned into summer, with their full leaves in stock and on display, because I was there last in Spring when everything was just budding. I have about a dozen potential plans I’d love to turn into reality, and I hope I have more to do than I expect.
For this year’s birthday, I took a trip down to Northern California, amongst new frontiers. I’ve seen the entrance into this part of the country driving south via I-5, through excessively trashy Redding, California, to extremely impressive Mount Shasta. This time, we took a new route that will always stand out to me.
My friend in Humboldt told my boyfriend and I of a girl who was driving down from Portland to Arcata, California. We found out that she bought a car, and was driving her old Rodeo truck and her new 1983 Honda Accord southward and westward, to where we wanted to be. We at first went along the familiar way down the greenery and mountainous territory of Oregon, from the clustered traffic jams on suspended freeway ramps, to get out of Portland during rush hour, through boring Salem and then through youthful Eugene. We stopped in Eugene, and then got back on the road and enjoyed the steep inclines and declines that this sprawl-less little city exhibits when it goes straight from the compact college town to lush rural and forested areas.
Strange rest areas came about southward, with little pregnant, mewing cats and passing-through people going to relieve themselves or stretch, checking you out to guess your story while you observe them to think of why they are in such a strange place on this freeway in the middle of nowhere. Driving down through exits I hardly recognized and hill formations I vaguely knew that I became impressed by in the past; it was so interesting to travel by car again. Trapped in the city I usually am, bound by my bicycle and Trimet transit services, put off by flat tires or expired transfers. My boyfriend and I switched off driving sessions, accelerating and decelerating, hitting the brakes and the gas, and changing CDs.
Pass on through California through new territory, and get that friendly inter-state inspection of police officers asking if you have any fruits, vegetables or produce in your vehicle.
Magically, once you cross the Oregon-California border, all of the clouds go away and the sun starts shining!
Through new mountains, new pine trees and new rock formations that resemble Oregon but are highlighted differently by the obvious sunshine. Trying to decide if this territory actually looks different from back home or if my perspective has become tainted by the drab, constant overcast. Forward through the Redwood Forests, not sure if I’ve ever seen a Redwood in the past, but now sure that I do see them passing by on the left and right of my vision out of the simple white station wagon.
Down to the coast, through Crescent City, meet the 101 Pacific Highway and continue on. See the sunny and sandy and windy ocean beaches full of humans and leashless dogs that no one really tells you about, or what a foreigner would initially think of California to be like. Keep the window cracked a little, keep the CD selection diverse, follow the girl in the Rodeo truck in front of us to finish our temporary western odyssey.
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.
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.
I think Prague was my favorite place I’ve traveled. I feel very fortunate that I was able to live there a few months, my perspective definitely would not have been the same had I just passed there on a greater trip.
Of course my home, New York, will always have a special place in my heart, and I will probably always think of other places in reference to it. But going to Prague really puts things into perspective of why I’ve had a wanderer’s syndrome, and why I have the desire to depart from a standardized lifestyle. I really like Portland, where I currently live, and the nature of Oregon is really special. But not a day passes where I do not reflect upon my references on the Czech Republic.
I’ll always remember my flight to Prague from JFK, through Czech Airlines, a surreal airline with planes and stuartists that seemed stuck in a time capsule from the 1970s. I remember sitting next to an elderly Slovakian woman who took full advantage of her complimentary Becherovka shots (which I later learned the most popular Czech liquor) and going through some non-lingual conversations about the reasons for our shared flight experience, despite her lack of English and my lack of Slovak. Though it seems an expensive journey back, I’ll hopefully one day find a cheap flight to Prague again.
The food there was not my favorite, and the weather was not great, but once you can get over little discomforts, this city really has a lot to offer.
I do not know exactly what it was about Prague, I think it was just the little things, as cliche as that sounds. For instance, I loved living in some old Yugoslavian dormitory with walls that would brush white dust all over all of our belongings and clothing. We would get breakfast in the basement, prepared by these decrepit old ladies who were certainly a product of harder times. They would feed us things like chocolate Santas around Christmas time, and daily juice that tasted like really watered down gatorade. And yogurts that were flavored like liqueur or like aloe vera, or sometimes pomegranates, which none of us really knew how to gracefully disect and would often stain ourselves and the tables red.
Riding the tram was also one of my favorite parts. I lived in a buffer zone between Prague Castle, a really touristy part, and then Prague 6, a residential area, so it was a pleasant balance. I’d get on the 22 tram from the Pohojelec stop to head down the hill into Old Town every day. The tram would stop at Prague Castle, and then continue to swirl down the hill into the city center, moving from the tired Socialist architecture, downhill towards the picturesque gothic and medieval area, before dropping us off right before the river. The late-night trams were also a trip, full of drunk people and other interesting characters yelling or dancing or bouncing around, or just passing out on the chairs.
Prague was also a fabulous place to go on random walks. It is a small enough city to always have an idea of where you are, but a big enough city to run into unknown little neighborhoods that all have something to display without trying to. It was nice to finally learn enough Czech to order a tea or a glass or wine at some small cafe I would stumble upon, and then sit in the background to observe the people and the surroundings.
I also was fortunate to teach English at a local high school. The students there taught me so much more about Prague and Czech culture than I would get out of reading some ethnographical book.
I think I liked Prague for the overall feeling I had there. Of course the standard things were great; beautiful architecture, happening nightlife, good museums, interesting history. But just the way I felt, whether walking around the streets alone or passing through a daily commute, when none of these standard topics were distracting me and absorbing all my attention, was my favorite part.
The voyage began in a midst, a void time-space miraculously inhabited by armed guards, taxi drivers and few tourists. In juxtaposition to the Red Sea: Eilat, the Southernmost part of Israel, the Holy Land, going into Egypt, into the Sinai Penninsula. The strange political threshold, my other American companion as the only familiar factor I knew.
My passport was stamped, handled, examined, scanned, judged, questioned by many hands, eyes and computers until I finally regained existence in a materialized country, out of the virtual teleport. But I didn’t know whether it was part of Africa or the Middle East-and it had been Egypt’s, then Israel’s, and now Egypt’s. No one who lives there calls themselves Egyptians, but Bedouins, how interesting, not knowing really where I was or what part of the world I was in, even if I saw it represented on a map in a legitimately published book earlier that day.
Egypt-or Sinai-or Bedouin Land-wherever I was. Approached by four mysterious men, dressed in full-length pressed button up robe suits to guard themselves from the intense sun beaming heat as they competed for our attention to ride their taxis. This form of communication meant haggle, haggle, your price is too high! No, Happy Hour! Special Price just for YOU! Made a deal still unsure of the real currency exchange but scrambled into the designated vehicle with that feeling of being cheated in my stomach.
Off we went, pull into yet another checkpoint, more guards to examine us, as we’re not even twenty yards away…
What country? America. America?! Disapproving facial expression with raised eyebrows from the armed roadway authority figure, prejudiced against us for our nationality yet handling the essential documents that were our only real tickets out of his land.
Fee handed to him, passed through, in this rumbling stick shift van, strange driver I’d never trust, static-infested Arabic radio music sometimes made way into our bubble of civilization, this car, an engineered and manufactured modern product, traveling against seemingly uncivilized territories.
Up we zoomed, gear shift down, loop we went, gear shift up, desert sun was setting but there still was a clearly defined contrast of the ruby or terra cotta earth of sharp hills and rocks against the striking blue splashes of the Red Sea of to the left of our visual consciousness. Driver tried to exchange our Israeli shekels for Egyptian pounds, aggressively holding the wad of cash back over his shoulder. Obviously a horrible deal, a rip off, haggle time, no escape from him. We didn’t know where we were, even less sure of where we were going, even that he tried to argue with us and take us to a different place! Just knew that we were in an internal combustion engine, a trap yet a shelter from whatever is out there.
Ragged rocky mountains’ abyss soon bypassed villages on the right, huts made of collected metal sheets and tents made of weathered tarps held up and down by rocks. A single camel per village or villa, tied by a shoddy rope, moving its mouth in a circular motion but otherwise still and bored out of its mind, tired of its lifestyle of storing its own personal water in this desert, this salt water territory.
The salty sea to the left, lots of resorts, some Marriots or Hiltons, I familiarized myself with before-seen corporate logos for pseudo comfort. But many resorts were unfinished. Many were half built, just lonesome frames or foundations, almost civilization based wide-open caves of giant windows, where doors had never been put up.
A camel, the sea, the rocks, the hills, the villas, the resorts, the abandoned resort or the half finished resort, barely any traffic, barely any people out in the open. I didn’t believe our driver was obeying the traffic laws, but how should I have known, all of the signs were in metric or Arabic, and I was just so not adapted as a secluded wanderer in a car in the Sinai Peninsula.
Finally arrived at our campground destination as the sun set, having whirled and twirled in any way imaginable. Stepped outside of the unforgettable white van on to the ruby and terra cotta clustered or sandy earth, where I finally dictated my own movement the first time in this land, no guards, no border patrol, no cab drivers.
Camp was a simple resort of huts and carpets in between two other abandoned hut camps, same structure, yet eerily unkempt. Sun disappeared downward over the red, dry hills of Saudi Arabia across the water, which could have possibly supplied the oil of a recently finished eccentric automobile journey.
