Final Travel Blog

I know that some of you probably wonder if Donald and I fell off the face of the earth. We have been home for 2 and a half weeks, but have been, of course, pretty busy. We left Orebro, where it turns out that we did our Centigrade- Fahrenheit math wrong: when it is -25 Centigrade, it is about minus 10, Fahrenheit. So THAT is how cold it was, and must have gotten up to just above about 0 Fahrenheit during the day. So when I last wrote, it was NOT 19 F; it was probably about 3 or 4 degrees, F. Since then, they have only had MORE snow and cold, with trains once again shutting down due to frozen switches, etc. Since so many people travel by train in Europe, this creates huge problems for everyone. The predictions by climatologists that global climate change was going to cause increased temperature extremes and variance, with temperatures both much warmer and much colder (depending on where you are), along with more intense storms, are being confirmed last winter and this winter. Since we arrived home 3 weeks ago, Europe has been hit by at least two more big snow storms that I know of, shutting down airports, trapping motorists on the Swiss and Italian autobahns, and causing the Italian trains to bypass Florence, where the train station was snowed in!

After Orebro, we flew to Dublin, where we encountered 3 inches of solid ice on most sidewalks and some roads. It was treacherous all over Ireland to drive, as places that LOOKED clear often had black ice, and there were many accidents. It was even worse for walking, and hospitals were filled with people who had fallen on the ice. The newspapers and television stations were warning older people to not go outside at all, and younger people to check on older people to make sure they were okay. This meant that it was difficult to be tourists, as, for example, Trinity College was closed due to the weather and cold, over the weekend, and no one could see the Book of Kells. It took a while to get anywhere, as we minced steps and tried not to fall. Flying over the North Sea, which was loaded with icebergs and almost solid ice in some places, Scotland and northern England, which were covered with snow, including the roads (I read newspaper articles about people in Yorkshire getting snowed in, with 16-foot snowdrifts against their homes, cars buried under 9 feet of snow, etc; last winter was similar in these same places, with hard freezes in southern Ireland, snow, etc), and then the northern Irish coast being snowbound, was a shocking experience, especially for early December. What will the North Sea look like by January? Meanwhile, the glaciers in Greenland are melting at an even faster pace, dumping all that icy water into the sea, and changing the Gulf Stream flow which has kept northern Europe warmer than it ought to be for centuries. Additionally, there is a massive Low Pressure system stuck over Iceland, keeping normally warm air from flowing to Europe, and also keeping OUR east coast winter storms from reaching us here inland in Western Massachusetts (our storms, just like last winter's, are sticking to the coast and going out to sea. Cape Cod got over a half foot of snow the other day, while we got none!)

But the worst part of our Dublin experience was the cold. We were dressed fine for it, but the many beggars—drunken older men and the many, many Roma and the Eastern European teenagers—were not. They huddled, shivering, on the ice, perched as best as they could on top of a blanket or a bag, and held out a paper cup for coins. I know that there are begging scams, with organized groups putting out the most pitiful members to collect money, but it’s still an awfully hard way to make a living. And it is still heart-breaking to see really OLD women, and younger women with babies (I SAW the babies; they are real), huddled on the sidewalks, up against a phone booth or on a step, begging and clearly cold. I was once told by a priest that it doesn’t matter who the person is who receives the money, or what they are going to in fact do with it; the central thing going on when I see a beggar is in my own soul. Do I see a person who needs my help and turn away, cynically believing in what may be their own cynicism, or do I help, regardless of who they are or what they MIGHT do with the money (give it to a boss, buy a drink or drugs)? The thing is, I can’t live with myself if I don’t help, and I sure can’t eat supper if I know that someone is shivering and hungry outside the window. Again, those old women and women with babies may be out there because some criminal boss decided they would earn the most money from suckers like me, but regardless, it is awfully cold, and it’s horrible to be out there, an old person or a baby, shivering on the ice, with the wind blowing on you, no matter who you are. And if my giving them money means that an old woman or a baby can get out of the cold sooner, then it is MY sin if I don’t give them that money, if I have any in my pocket.

So our 24 hours in Dublin became a process of us shivering as we picked our way on the ice, from beggar to beggar, digging into our pockets over and over, and buying hot food for some. Ireland is experiencing an ever-worsening economic crisis, with increasing numbers of impoverished and homeless. It was worse than sad to walk down Grafton Street, with glitzy shops and a consumerist-Christmas being marketed, and to encounter dozens of beggars in front of those shops. As we ended our European trip, it was the worst experience of the human costs of capitalism that we had encountered. And yet the World Bank asks for more austerity from them, when they’ve already launched severe austerity measures that have only further scared away the international banks, rather than attracting them. It’s clear that more austerity won’t work; probably only unhitching from the Euro and letting their own currency crash would help (Iceland has survived its own severe crisis by letting its currency sink, which made its exports and labor more attractive again), but obviously that is not going to happen. With the Euro as its currency, the Irish now have nothing to lure international business with.

In Dublin we had one very good meal, and then some absolutely TERRIBLE food (Donald insisted we eat supper in a pub that also advertised live Irish music, which was also terrible. Note to travelers: if in Dublin, eat somewhere else first, THEN go out for the music). Thankfully the Book of Kells exhibition was open the morning before we had to leave, and it was wonderful, and worth the treacherous sidewalks to get there. We then flew home, meeting—what else?—very cold temperatures here in Western Massachusetts! We began unpacking and grocery shopping, and drove to NY, where we visited both sets of parents. Unfortunately, we forgot both our laptops behind my mother’s front door! So then we had to wait another week, during which I went to a half-dozen doctor appointments, until Donald could once again make the drive to NY and pick up the computers (don’t feel TOO sorry for him: while there, he also attended his brother Pete’s infamous annual Christmas party). He—and the laptops—arrived home and then we hosted a belated Thanksgiving dinner for some of Anna’s friends.

One thing that has been on my mind since coming home is the bombing in Stockholm two weekends ago, near a major pedestrian shopping street that I visited a couple of times per week on my daily walks. While no one died other than the bomber himself, thank God, it has shaken up that normally peaceful country. I feel for my Swedish friends and wish them all well.

I miss Sweden (though not the frighteningly high prices), and especially loved our short time in Orebro, with its town hall turned into an enormous Advent calendar and with its gorgeous Christmas lights shining through the falling snow and cold dark. I imagine that my Swedish friends are still riding their bikes despite the minus-zero F temperatures and snow (they are hardy souls; during the summer and autumn, after all, we saw VERY old people biking a few kilometers in order to go to the grocery store, out in the countryside). In Orebro, people were still bicycling even though it was below 0 F and ALL of the roads were covered in packed-down snow. Are you still bicycling, Anna? I miss my new friends in Sweden and Ireland and Italy. I miss the beauty of Bellagio and being able, in Italy and Stockholm, to walk anywhere I needed to be. I miss the amazing European pastries and whipped cream, but am already losing weight rapidly, despite it being the Christmas season and having made--and eaten--tons of tasty cookies! And I miss waking each morning with the knowledge that I could work on my OWN work that day, all day, and not have to grade papers, prepare quizzes or lectures, or answer emails for 2 hours each day. It turns out that I am a very disciplined worker even when it’s my own work, and I really enjoyed the freedom to read, take notes, and write each day. I know that I would not have gotten as much done if I had stayed home; being away from my normal comfort zone, routines, and responsibilities was an enormous gift that few people are privileged to experience in their lifetimes. While it may be too much to ask for, I hope I get to do it again!

I will post some final photos on this blog soon, but this is the last real travel blog I will write for this trip. I have enjoyed writing it (mostly at 10 or 11:00 at night!), and have loved sharing with all of you. I wish all of you some slice of the joy of traveling and experiencing new places and people, and I hope you all have or receive the gift of finding beauty in small things (I also wish you the joy of finding history fascinating, but that might be too much to ask for!). And in this seemingly dark time of year, I wish all of you the blessings of both the darkness and the light, the joy of knowing that, one way or another, God-is-With-Us, and the inner peace that comes with living in harmony with those around you. Good Yule, Happy Chanukah, and, to paraphrase one of my favorite Immortal Beings, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a Goodbye.”

Weather, weather everywhere...........

Oh the weather outside is frightful…

Currently the temperature is 19 F today's high. Today's low was 11, better than when we arrived, when we longed for 10.

In Bellagio, the weather almost every day was very foggy and rainy, with some days the wind blowing so hard we lost our internet connections and hats. The local olive harvest was delayed due to the wet weather.

When it was sunny, it was so gorgeous it was breathtaking. The snow pack on the mountains around us grew bigger every day, inching down the sides of the mountains, and the temperatures on the lake very quickly became quite cold. On one of our last days there, we went across the lake to try to walk--as much as we could--to San Martino, a gorgeously-situated old church perched on a mountainside. The way is a pilgrimage of sorts. However, it was rainy and cold, and the little stones that form the path are EXTREMELY slippery when wet, so it was exhausting. We gave up and ended in an local bar for lunch!

Once in the beautiful walled small city of Lucca, about 2-3 hours south of Bellagio, we encountered the same cold, wet, rainy weather, with snow pack on the local mountains! Lucca was just dressing up for Christmas, and the Christmas lights got turned on during our second evening. Local people were out in a shopping frenzy; one would never guess that Italy is experiencing a severe economic crisis. The narrow medieval streets were crowded with people, though perhaps most of them were doing what we were doing: window shopping. The restaurants were mostly empty, although they were serving terrific Tuscan peasant dishes and local red wines. Our bed and breakfast was in a 13^th century merchant’s tower-home, a type of Tuscan housing that was surprisingly common in that period: a bottom floor that was a shop, a floor above to house the work-shop, another one above that to provide general living space for the family, with the upper floors for sleeping chambers, and wooden stairways or ladders on the outside in order to reach them all. The roofs held gardens for the family, including vegetables and small fruit trees! And when the merchants (including whoever owned “ours”) got more prosperous, they built villas onto the towers. Some of these towers still rise above the other buildings. Ours no longer was visible from the outside as a tower, but had long ago blended into the main room of the villa (part of the B&B) and other buildings around it.

We went to Florence on the train, from Lucca, one day, in order to see a wonderful art exhibit (Bronzino), and thank heavens it was terrific, because it poured so hard that we could not see anything else of Florence due to our umbrellas in front of our faces. It is good we had seen Florence before. We discovered the holes in our shoes that day.

And then we took to train north again to Milan and a bus, in the cold rain, out to the airport. By the time we got there, it was snowing, and we realized that Europe as a whole had turned into a frigid, snowy land where few planes or trains were moving. Our plane got off the next morning, despite the local snow and the dire predictions of the desk clerk. We arrived at Munich Airport, to a snowstorm that was paralyzing much of Germany. After an hour’s delay in boarding, we sat on the runway for 3 hours (they fed and “watered” us a number of times), while one runway after another closed, we got de-iced 3 times, and our pilot kept telling us that we were “first in line’ on one or the other runway when it reopened (we went to the head of the line quickly as many other flights were simply canceled). He also informed us that he had to rev the engines before flight to get the ice out of them. I kept wondering if there was something crazy about taking off in that kind of weather (by the way, the UK and the rest of Northern Europe have also had remarkable amounts of snow recently).

We arrived in a Sweden that is experiencing the coldest October, November, and early December months in 100 years. It was below 0 F the night we arrived, and had to catch a 2-hour train to Orebro (where the conference I am attending is being held). We kept being warned that the trains might be delayed as the switches kept freezing and entire lines kept having to be shut down. We made it and found Orebro, a lovely university town in central Sweden, to be covered in snow and ice, with more falling. Snow has not stopped falling since we arrived two nights ago. Don says that maybe there is some sort of re-circulation system, like a fountain, where the snow hits the ground, evaporates in the extreme dryness, and goes back up in the sky, from where it is recycled as snow again. Amazingly, Swedes of all ages continue to bicycle in this weather and, of course, many are walking.

We have also learned what the winter darkness means. Only in the far north does the sun not rise at all in winter; here in the first week of December it begins to grow light at about 7:30 am, but the sun does not actually rise above the horizon until about 10:00 or 10:30 am. It then does not make it above a two-story building, on the horizon, until it sets again, fully, by 3:30 (but of course dusk is earlier). Don has not seen the sun since we got here, as he is in the downtown, and the low buildings block the horizon. I have glimpsed it from the café in the campus center, at about noon, as it is dark when I go to and from the campus.

The day after tomorrow, we go to Dublin on our way home, just for one day. After a month of mostly wet, cold weather, I have chosen my warmest sweater, socks, and pants to wear there, as it is undoubtedly cold and wet there, but hopefully not as cold as here. As one walks along the street here, it is easy to imagine that one’s cheeks are cracking with the cold. And yet, the candle-culture we had loved so much in October is still in full swing, the Yule decorations are everywhere, our B&B served us hot glog tonight, and the town has set up, outside the big church at the top of the town square, an outdoor stage for the Yule concert and sing-along that will take place Sunday night (after we have left).

Varenna

These are of Varenna, a beautiful little town across the lake, which takes about 20 minutes by ferry. It is a very small village, clinging to the little bit of land available at the bottom of a mountain, like many of the villages and towns around the lake, or so we hear (Varenna is the only place we've been besides Como, outside of Bellagio). We went there on a rare sunny day last week.
This is the village from the ferry, with the steeple of San Giorgio rising above. This church has, on an outer wall facing the lake, a wonderful frescoe of St. Christopher carrying the Christ child across the river. He is patron saint of all who travel on water, as these townspeople have had to do for centuries.

Above the village on a "small" hill are the ruins of a tower that was part of a castle/fort, reputed to be the stronghold of a Lombard queen, making it something like 1300 years old.


View of Villa Monastero, an ancient convent that was closed because the nuns were too licentious. Knowing what a lot of medieval convents were like, this one must have been pretty darn bad to be closed!
One of the main "streets" in Varenna, via XX Settembre. It lies parallel to the lake, high above it, with very steep stairway "streets" going up and down. They are even steeper than those in Bellagio.

Looking at a house that lies on one of those steep stairways going down towards the water. This was just lovely, another one of those moments that make me stop and marvel at the beauty. Every time I see something like this, I can't believe how lucky I am to be here.

Nature Scenes

House in the hamlet of Pescallo (the fishing port at the bottom of the hill), covered with grape vines.


One of the persimmon trees on the grounds. We are hoping to get to eat one or two before we leave.


A lovely example of the many houses and apartments that have flowers growing for passersby to enjoy. This one is just down the hill, in the hamlet of the Borgo, which is the central and oldest part of town, and is the port for the many ferries that offer fast transportation on the lake.


Grape leaves and fruit in autumn. This and the next photos make me wish I were an artist. When I come upon a scene like this, I just stop for a few minutes, exclaiming over the stunning beauty of the shapes and colors. These are moments of prayer for me.

House with grape vines. The shapes of the vines are exquisite. Another prayerful moment.

Images from Como

Tower on the original city wall, some of which still exists.


Beautiful palace on square behind cathedral.

Frescoe (I believe it is St. Anne and baby Mary) in small 10th century church.


Como Cathedral seemed cold and bleak to me, but this image of the Madonna was breathtaking.

Men of the Italian Alpine Regiment (wearing feathers in their Tyrolean hats) on their way to begin guarding the corpse of Blessed Carlo Gnocchi (a priest with the name of a very tasty food), which is now on display in the cathedral in Como until mid January. I'm not sure what they are going to do with it after that. For now, it was a good fit for the grim cathedral.

Street in Bellagio

Stone outbuildings of Villa Gulia in Bellagio

Pathway of Olive trees from outbuildings to Villa Gulia

Pretty house in Borgo hamlet of Bellagio

Pretty house in Pescallo hamlet of Bellagio

Daily Life

Lake Como is stunning. It rained for a few days, and was STILL beautiful---but at least one could work and not feel guilty for not being outdoors. When the sun is shining, I walk. My calf muscles are screaming from the steep hills, but I walk.
We are staying in this amazing palace built in the mid 1500s, but the steep promontory we are on was important both for military purposes and "holiday" purposes for at least a thousand years before that (and people lived here, in caves above the lake, 30,000-40,000 years ago). Remember how the Goths and Visigoths, etc, came into Italy from the north and destroyed a weak and frivolous Roman civilization? Well, it turns out that this lake was one of the "super-highways" they used, coming down from Germany and the rest of central Europe, through the mountains, across what is now Switzerland, and then right through here, using the lake as a direct and fast path onto the very fertile plains south of here (where Milan is). So this place, from the arrival of the Celts in about 500 BC, and Roman invaders (legions of soldiers began attacking the area around 200 BC), through Teutons, Vandals, Visigoths, Goths, Lombards, and, much later, the Spaniards and French and Austrians, saw many many land and water battles. It became a "last-ditch effort" kind of place to try to hold back the "barbarian hordes" streaming down into Italy, as well as a rich, fertile area that various feudal families and ruling houses fought over. As peaceful as it is now, it was a battleground, off and on, for 2000 years. Fortunately, it often had very intelligent and forward-thinking leaders, who, for instance, saved this town from plague multiple times by simply quarantining it: no one was allowed in, and this was enforced with guns and cannons. The Capuchin friars nursed the sick from around the lake in their hospital in the 1600s, but no one, even the seemingly not-ill, was allowed into the town. The local lord of this palace, during this particular plague, followed the practice of earlier Bellagio lords: he fed his people--so no one would have any reason to leave the village for food-- by placing sacks of grain on a rock out in the water, and if they could leave coins in payment, they did so by placing the coins in a jar filled with vinegar, to kill germs. Remember, this is before the germ theory of illness, and before anyone understood how illness was spread. But a similar practice had worked a couple of hundred years before, so once again the town of Bellagio was saved, with not a single person being infected.
Lots of famous and historically important people actually stayed here, on this estate, back when it was a Roman villa, then a medieval villa and stronghold, and then a Renaissance palace (including, no kidding, Pliny the Younger, a couple of Holy Roman Emperors, and Leonardo Da Vinci).

Our co-guests right now include a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist (her first book was "Carry Me Home," about Alabama and local Klan activity during the Civil rights movement, a mixture of investigative journalism and family memoir, which I am very much looking forward to reading); a famous Mexican environmental activist (the kind who has gotten death threats for years) and poet/novelist, who has personally known Alan Ginsberg, Carlos Castaneda, etc, and who was Mexico's ambassador to UNESCO; his wife, who translates his writings into English; an important Arab-language poet from Lebanon, who for what will likely be his final project (he is quite old) is translating 20th century American poems by people of color, especially women, into Arabic, and whose poetry reading two nights ago brought me to tears (clearly the best way to appreciate poetry is to have someone who truly understands the poem read it aloud); a housing activist who works on Capitol Hill; a woman who runs a NY City non-profit organization that borrows money from banks and then loans it to out to non-profits; a German physicist who is working with anti-proton beams and anti-matter and their feasibility in treating cancer; a Polish artist, who spent a year in prison under the Communists, and whose work is difficult (some quite jarring, some upsetting, some entertaining) but important. One of his most famous works is in the Jewish Museum in NY City.

And then, most of them brought a partner with them, each of whom is interesting in their own right (e.g. the Polish artist's Polish artist wife is a very good, and important-in-Eastern-Europe artist, and the Lebanese poet's wife is an artist, ...
At first I thought we would not be able to "gel" as a group, and would find nothing to talk about, but then we went out drinking together....and that did the trick.

Both Don and I are each getting a LOT of work done, despite the distraction of the scenery. The group is served breakfast early, we work all morning, eat lunch with the group, take a long walk (some days I walk alone, some days with Don, and we often meet other members of the group while out walking), and then usually either have a cappuccino as we work in the afternoon, or take late afternoon "tea" with whoever is around, or have a cappuccino in town before coming back for a couple more hours of work before obligatory cocktails at 7:00. If it rains, we work all day. So it IS in fact conducive to getting work done, while at the same time being so relaxing that even the caffeine doesn't make me jittery! This is the first time in my life I have been able to drink caffeine coffee and tea every day and still be relaxed. Some of us have talked about hiding in the closets when they close the place down for the winter months after we leave.

Bellagio Views

Looking up to the "Frati," a Capuchin monastary built in the 1500s, which is now a conference center on the grounds of the Bellagio Center (The Villa Serbelloni). The current conference is on the impacts of climate change on the the world's people.
The quickest way down to the village: the two hundred or so steps from the villa. The villagers would run up them when pirates or invaders came. I can walk up them, but running???

Bellagio village, on the southern finger of Lake Como, with the bell tower of the 11th century church, St. Giacomo (James) in the foreground.
Bellagio village.

The Sfondrata (explained in earlier post), with its 16th century tower and boat house, on the right hand side. The Sfondrata and its tower are another conference center on the estate. Right now there is a conference going on there on casava, an important food source for 800 million or the world's people.

Photos, Lake Como

The Villa Serbelloni, in the town of Bellagio, on Lakes Como and Lecco (on a promontory that divides the large Lake Como into three long fingers: Como to the north and also to the south west, and Lecco to the south east. Our room is on the upper corner facing the viewer, with the small balcony coming off the front of the building. The rose gardens are immediately below, with the top of the olive groves below. In the background to the west is the southern finger of Lake Como, looking south. The villa was built, in its present iteration, in 1540.

Looking out from our balcony to the southern finger of Lake Como.
The view from our balcony looking east, over rose gardens, to Lake Lecco (the western finger of the large Lake Como). The building below houses the small gym.
Looking south over Lake Lecco, with the buildings of "The Sfrondrata", built for the owner's brother, a cardinal, in the 1500s, on the waterfront. Also, to the far right of the photo, on the water, is the small harbor built by Sfondrati, with the tiny, gorgeous neighborhood of Pescalli.
From the very top of the promontory, about 300-400 feet above the lake, looking north over the northern finger of Lake Como, toward Switzerland (not far away) and the Alps. I believe these 7-8000 foot mountains are called the "pre-Alps." They are only about 10 or 15 miles away, I think.

Lake Como, Italy

A.M. Post: We are now in what surely has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth (photos to follow), and I have no idea if I will be able to get any work done. Maybe it will rain; perhaps I will become jaded. One can only hope.

P.M. Aahh: now I see how it works. One walks ones calves off, first climbing to the top of the hill, then going down to the village and climbing all the way back up. THEN one is so tired of walking and of beauty (for the day) that one can sit down at a desk and work. Perhaps this will work, after all.

Plus, the limitless supply of cappucino helps, too (especially after the obligatory --tough, I know--wine at lunch. Cocktails at 7:00, dinner at 7:30, apertifs after. Dear me, what a life.

(Sorry for the lack of an apostrophe in the above possessive "ones." The blog site is being temperamental again.)

Season of Dark, Season of Light

Season of Dark, Season of Light

It is getting colder and darker here in Sweden, and in Stockholm at night, the city is lit by fire. Small fires, in the form of candles, torches and 12-18 inch fire pits (we have no English vocabulary for them), but fire none the less. As soon as it gets dark, any small shop or any restaurant that is open has fire outside, in one form or another, to let people know. On sidewalks everywhere, there are lanterns with candles, open candles, or, for the larger tourist places, the larger fire pits or torches. In small restaurants, they turn off (or dim) the electric lights and simply light the place with candles, in chandeliers, on tables, on the stairs, on the counter, in wall sconces. In homes, too, according to our Swedish friends, it is time to light candles at night, all around one’s home. Since few apartments have curtains or shades, as one walks the streets, one’s way is lit by streetlights and lamplights from people’s windows, but it is also comforting to know that indoors, many people have their candles lit.

The most lovely form that this takes are the candles that are lit on sidewalks, in order to let one’s guests know, first, how to get to one’s apartment from the nearest subway stop, (so the spacing of candles every 15 feet or so along the sidewalk), second, that one has arrived at the correct building, and third, to follow the steps in the building until wherever one’s apartment is. I guess that since the king who decided to knock down all those wooden buildings all over Stockholm in the 1880s-1920s had them replaced with stone, people aren’t worried about fires destroying the city. Certainly for such a large city, one rarely hears sirens.

The other night a local social institution (Masons?) had a large party, and there were candles guiding the way from the T-stop above our street, down our street, around the corner, across the street (not actually ON the street, of course), and then up the 40-50 steps that lead from the sidewalk up to the little hilltop that the building is on. Each of those steps had a large lit candle smack in the center of the step, and it was breath-takingly lovely.

All of this helps me to understand something about the Swedish soul. Yul (Yule) is coming, and there are the beginnings of Yul decorations in shops: red-painted candelabras, the winter-gnomes (tomtar, the same name as for Santa, who IS one of these gnomes) who live in the north with the reindeer-herding Sami (usually these sometimes helpful, sometimes trouble-making house-gnomes live under the floor boards of nice people, but some live in the north, with the reindeer). In early December, Swedes will celebrate St. Lucia Day, when the family will be awakened by the daughter of the house, carrying a tray of food, and wearing a crown of LIT candles. If she has brothers, they may dress as star-boys and follow her with lit lanterns. Gamla Stan, the Old Town, will be lit with beauty. The shallow fountain-pools in parks will be filled with water to freeze for ice-skating. And Swedes will celebrate their Mid-Winter Festival of Light; not a religious Christmas, in this profoundly secular society, and not an orgy of consumerism, as in our supposedly religious society, but a festival both celebrating the winter, the cold and the dark (by late December, tnhere will be a scant 6 hours of light in Stockholm; it will be full dark by 3:00 pm here, and of course, even earlier north of here. Where the Sami live, it will be dark all day), and fighting it, with their light. Sweden, that nation of 8 million do-gooders, which took in half a million refugees from our war in Iraq, plus thousands of refugees from other wars in Africa, Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, Kosovo, which gives a higher percentage of their national income to international relief than any other nation, and which generously shares its national wealth among its own people, IS a light among nations, the city on a hill that we Americans aspire to be, but can never be as long as our central defining identity is individualism, each person for themselves. I say, in this season of growing darkness and cold, let there be light.

Friday our first snow

The last blog was about beautiful fall weather in Stockholm. Well, that was Sunday; today is Friday. Still beautiful, but the seasons are moving fast! The really cold weather moved in after the mid-week rain, and the puddles have a skin of ice on them. It's 9:00 am, and this is what our street looks like. Shiver. Our friend, Dustin, just arrived from Atlanta, and the first thing he said when we started walking to dinner last night was, "I have to buy a hat." Don replied, "I have to WEAR my hat." Being the female in the group, I had my hat on.

Sunday in Autumn, Stockholm

Donald on an enormous tree "stump" outside the American Embassy.

This past Sunday we wanted to go to the one large museum we haven’t gone to yet (well, actually, there are a number of large museums we haven’t gone to yet in Stockholm, but this was one we really, really wanted to go to): the Nordisk (Norse) Museum, out on Djurgarden. The Nordisk Museum is basically 5 floors of Scandinavian history and culture, and is much too large to actually do in any real way, but we wanted to see some of it, at least. However, there was a Chocolate Festival happening at the museum, and the line to get in was HOURS long. So we instead took a couple-of-hours walk around Djurgarten and into the large park across the water, joining the literally thousands of Stockholmers out enjoying the cold, dry, sunny weather. The water was sparkly, the many embassies located in the park were gorgeous (and often unidentifiable), (THIS IS THE AMERICAN EMBASSY), the walk was long and exhausting and wonderful. So once again we ended the day completely whipped, as if we had been out all day in winter.

Stockholm in the fall is beautiful. It may usually be beautiful in summer, too, but our summer was so rainy that it was hard to really enjoy it fully. The weather turned gorgeous while we were in Eastern Europe, with a polar front descending on Scandinavia and turning the weather cold and dry. It is raining today, but the sun and cold weather (highs in the 30s to about 40 F) return tomorrow or the day after. I think this is my favorite city: clean and open, full of water and sky and air and beautiful architecture (yes, there is also modern “functional” architecture, but I tend to avoid those streets so I don’t have to see those buildings) and parks and cafes. Most cities I have been to are noisy, dirty, and crowded feeling. I imagine that maybe Seattle is like this? Brisbane is, but on a much smaller scale. New York,Chicago, Paris, San Francisco, Prague, Krakow, Florence, London, Dublin, Atlanta, ....: none of them have the same sort of open-air feel that Stockholm does, at the same time that it offers everything a city needs to. I have heard that the Australian cities in general share this outdoorsy feel. I'd be happy to find out for myself!

This is actually why I chose to NOT go to Venice or Rome for our one free vacation week in late November: after reading online about those cities, for all their glories, I am just not up for a week of dirty, loud, crowded, smelly city. Some other time.