The Grumps don't win

The Venetians built a church specially-designed for Vivaldi. A pair of 14 year old twins can increase my hope for the future. And the reason cows wear bells is because their horns don’t work. Three of the many things I learned during this year of guiding tours of Europe for Rick Steves.

Not Vivaldi's church. This one's in Paris.

When I look back at the year I feel an overarching gratitude and admiration for the people I got to meet and share a trip with. The feeling glows and warms. And then snags. Because this year had something else too. For the first time in my (admittedly less-than-ancient) guide career, I had a tour member who...I don’t even know how to say it. I would not want them on another of my tours.

Rick Steves offers a tour experience far above the sort of shambling boredom I see on other buses and in clusters of clueless curmudgeons blocking the sidewalks and galleries of Europe. Largely, we just draw a fantastic clientele (thank you, PBS!) but part of the magic is our “No Grumps Policy.” The logic of it always made sense to me; negativity is contagious, and if someone’s not happy, they don’t need to be there bringing everyone else down.

In the Forum you can focus on the sun, or that you're standing in history. Your choice.

But it wasn’t until this year that I witnessed how subtle it can be. No overt tirades, nothing tangible enough to justify removal from the group, but as time went by nothing was ever good enough or worth appreciating, and I never once saw a smile. Several local guides recognized it immediately, but I just chalked it up to botox. But when the evaluations came in, I realized it was much worse than that. People who I know had a fantastic time were complaining about the size of the showers etc. It feels clear to me that if this person hadn’t been in there radiating negativity, those people would have brought home another positive memory instead of gripes about shower stalls.

Negative energy is problematically powerful. I sat with the person for one meal and was considering quitting my job by the time dessert came. At the very least, I was ready to sign off the tour as a loss.

Sure the view, whatever. Ugh, do there have to be so many people?

Then something happened. Perhaps inevitable and undoubtedly wonderful. I talked to other tour members. And was restored. I remember one lady in particular that night, enjoying the unexpected fireworks display the town put on, taking unmitigated pleasure in the light and sound and moment shared with the small beach community. The words are forgotten but I remember the healing power in hearing how much fun she was having, what the tour meant to her, and how grateful she was to be on it. I walked away from that chat ready to sign up for 100 tours on the spot.

It's all about how you....frame it.

Her positivity is reflected in the hundreds of tour members I’ve had, with just the one who bummed me out. That’s magnificent. And beyond that, it’s important. Because in a moment where the worst of us is degrading the Oval Office and contaminating the headlines, it’s good to remember that the vast majority of us are beautiful people. I can expand out to all the innumerable niches of Europe, rock climbing walls of San Francisco, classrooms of the IRC, streets of New Delhi and prayer-soaked hallways of Dharamshala, I can expand to embrace all the environments and moments I found this year and in the cast of thousands I see an incredible panoply of human goodness.

So, though the grumps are out there, the lovers and delighters outnumber them by a degree of magnitude that gives me hope. And I didn’t even tell you about the twins. Humanity is beautiful. And I can’t wait to go back to work.

I think that guy's going to need his own post...

Living the dream

I had a dream when I was a kid. A literal, “I’m asleep” kind of dream, that is. This isn’t an inspirational post. In it, I’m swimming along the bottom of the pool, my favorite place in all of Childhood’s Kingdom, when I realize I can breathe down there. Not fully, not well, but if I calm down and do it just right, modestly, I can breathe. I remember an infusion of calm and an understanding that everything could be fantastic. Could be better than I’d known to hope for. (It wasn’t until later that I suspected I’d just rolled over and was breathing through my pillow.)

Amsterdam welcomed me my first day

This morning I’m coming up for air. After 21 days of Best of Europe tour-guiding, I’m waking up to a day without appointments, no reservations to confirm or information to convey. Not even a city to depart.

The street is polite vespas and well-dressed Parisians, nothing on my plate but baguette crumbs and the promise of more good food to come, perhaps after a stroll by the Seine? And I remember that dream. Its epiphany that I can do something I really enjoy and get the air I need while doing it. And I realize that’s what I’ve been doing for 21 days.

Swiss Alpine calm

I’ve been swimming, diving into Amsterdam’s historic harbor before turning up the Rhine to reach Austrian Alpine passes, waterfalling down Roman roads to muse about Venetian canals before making my way through old Florence to reach older Rome, just to smile and drift up into Swiss glaciers, a liquid core of calm that persists when I slide down through the vineyards of Burgundy to wash up fully rational on Seine shores.

And I’ve been breathing.

Water was an element of my boyhood joy, and travel is essential for my adult satisfaction. Sharks and me, stop moving and we suffocate. But it’s not a compulsion, not addiction, neither distraction nor delusion. It’s adoration. Adulation. Celebration of our worldwide nation and the strokes that pull us all together.

Islam is supposed to be scary? Me and
the little girl don't buy it. You?

For years I traveled. Helpless before my vagabond urges. It was right for a time, but wrong in the end. Insufficient for the long term, serving nothing but my whims. Now there’s a purpose to my travel. In a world of multimedia capitalists who profit from our fear, who compete for the spectacles that widen our eyes and shrink our horizons, I find something more worthy than mere movement when I take others with me, show them these faces of beauty left here by centuries of human struggle and millennia of natural process.

For twenty one days spread across half a dozen countries we delight in the reality of the places, rooms in our global house, and I watch the tension of the first day dissolve into the ease of the last. Day One I see apprehension when I show them the train track that will reliably bring them home, Day Twenty I drop them off in Paris’s elegant metro maze and say “See you tomorrow” and they’re off without a pause.

And in the calm, when they don’t need me at all, I can imagine them going home, feeling merely tired, to be greeted by the anxious homebound with their pinched brows who desperately inquire “You were in Europe? But weren’t you worried? Didn’t you feel unsafe?”

And in my daydream I see their calm smile, perhaps wearing the appropriate regret for the incidents of the moment, but underneath is the deep understanding that the world is something other than the misconception made up by those make-up talking heads. And my traveling companions ease back to a full library of happy moments, warm welcomes, beautiful humanity and they can shrug off the constipated clench of petty terror. Stories they know better than to buy, now.

Think they wish they'd spent more time fearful and divided?

No, they didn’t feel unsafe. They felt free. If I did my job right. And the memory of every one of their smiles resonates within me, and I feel that dream’s sense of delighted astonishment, astonished delight, and can pull in deep lungfuls of fresh air.

Maybe it’s an inspiration post after all. For me, anyway.

Europe's normalcy and hospitality are waiting, on every boulevard and back street.

Feeling fine and Florentine

“The Tuscan Frying Pan,” Florence was earning its title that day, certified in sweat dripping down the backs and sides of tourists squinting in the Piazza della Signoria, and my hair felt, again, like one of those Russian fur hats. Time for a haircut. And wouldn’t you know it, Florence is the home of my favorite barber.

I went straight for the small shop, undistracted by the Basilica di San Lorenzo where one of my favorite Italians holds wishes on his tomb, not stopping at the old friend of a hotel (taken by a different Rick Steves group, the lucky buggers), and swerving around the periodic bulges of visitors whose shoulders relaxed bit by bit with every lick of their slowly melting gelato. Visciola e fragola? Va bene.

Old Town Florence is a tourism city for sure, and the crowds used to irritate me, but working as a guide has helped me see the ways they’re doing it right (improved traffic laws, cleaning the duomo, and coordinating the many marvelous sites) and given me an increased appreciation of the place and its importance in our collective past. So now they’re not the addled brains of people in my way, they’re international minds growing in appreciation and understanding of the birthplace of the Renaissance rebirth.

But yes, at the moment, I wanted them to move. I needed that haircut. Kindly get the inferno out of my way, signore. Before I get Borgia on your ass.

I made it. The slightly cooler confines of a barbieri who’s been cutting hair here since the 1970s and his colleague with a coif like Grace Jones on an ambitious day. They greeted me with their usual dignified and affable buon giorno.

Scissors snipped, buzzer buzzed, and when the razor had scraped the edges clean I felt like a renewed man, renaissance of the scalp. ready to stand on a pedestal if I must, sling in hand, and face the future with concentration and confidence and just a hint of gel.

Back into that Tuscan sun of fame and infamy, punishing and beautiful, try to escape it but don’t forget you traveled here to see it. Down the canyons of Medici streets, past Strozzi home and Brunelleschi dome, a little slower now, a bit more strut, something lyrical in between the paces. Feeling a tad more Italian.

Florence is a pilgrimage, and I wanted to pay homage to the great ones. Architects, poets, and the family of men who led nations, and they’re just the audience for the names we know. Galileo, Ghiberti, Machiavelli, and Dante, men whose deeds echo and dance and scheme and enlighten down through the centuries.

Then over to stand in front of the tomb of perhaps the greatest artist in human history. It was just me, the cooler air, dust motes painted by stained glass light slanting down through basilica space, and the tomb of Michelangelo Buonarotti.

He looked good. I looked good. Florence looked good. Travel, now that is good. Buon viaggio a tutti.

Tam Coc Bich Dong is even better than it sounds

The swarm of tourists, cameras around necks, visors against the sun, umbrellas against the rain, and socks up to the knees beat me to the entrance. Crud. But they milled a moment, waiting for someone to tell them what to do, so I smiled and slid through them like unfamiliar street food to get in line for a ticket.

I wanted to see Tam Coc-Bích Đông and its flooded caves, but preferably without 70 gawking foreigners. Granted they’d been born closer to this place than I had, but their mass seemed inauthentic, obstructive to the sort of Vietnamese experiences I was seeking. As with all other bajillion tourists, I wanted to be the only one.

The blob of them started oozing towards the boats, but in the unfocused way of passive participants. More of that time-proven tourism technique, aggressive-with-a-smile, and I cut through their shuffling tsunami to the line of waiting skiffs.

“Xxxxzzzz” I have no idea what she said, but the efficient woman pointed me towards the first boat, followed by the two women behind me. Our rower arrived, one of the women in conical hats who’d been chatting in the shade.

In my weeks in Vietnam I’d noticed a trend. Most of the people I saw working were women. The motorbike taxis and barbers were men, but women staffed the shops, hawked in the market, poured the tea, cooked the food, and now, rowed the boats. Most afternoons I’d take a low plastic stool by the side of the street with the men. They’d smoke and play a board game, we’d all drink a beer and share smiling motions before settling in for silent camaraderie. But the work? Women did most of that.

I’m not inclined to tell anyone how to run their culture, but having this lady do all the physical labor while I sat back and relaxed? Just not how I was raised. I accompanied my words of “Can I help you row?” with more useful gestures, and a big smile erupted under the conical hat. She passed forward an oar made from a section of a bucket strapped it to a piece of PVC pipe, and I dug in.

We passed through cave after cave, sometimes leaning low under the sharp karst stalactites and jagged cave mouths. We three visitors got out to explore temples and pathways, then rejoined our hostess in boat 11.

My companions were a mother and daughter from Hanoi, but that’s as far as our gestures could take us. They found it uproarious every time I thanked them in Vietnamese. “Cảm ợn!” they’d cry after I said it, and we’d all grin at each other. (I don’t think it’s supposed to have that dot under the o, but I’m lost in Fontlandia.)

As we moved from place to place, something else became apparent. We were the jet boat superstars of Tam Coc. I don’t really know what I’m doing with an oar, but it’s not hard to fly past everyone else when they’re not helping. Boat after boat of fit young men, doing nothing. It was weird.

My mother and daughter friends loved it. “Oh yeah!” the daughter would laugh and pump her fist every time we passed another boat, especially when they’d take up oars and try to race us, splashing ineffectually before falling behind. I admit it was a bit of an ego stroke for me, but more importantly, it was just fun. My Vietnamese ladies and I, out for a cruise on the cool green waters of Tam Coc, our laughter bumping around the karst canyons.

That set the tone for my time in Ninh Binh, smiles and Vietnamese encounters. A day-trip from Hanoi, it had its tourist enclaves, but if I avoided those I’d go days without seeing another white face. (It was a great place for local kids wanting to practice English.)

Yes, Ninh Binh was my semi-secret town, discovered enough to have good, cheap hotels, but not railroaded by tourism. Just as long as Hollywood didn’t come along and film a major blockbuster action movie in its gorgeous scenery.

Dang.

I want your life

“I wish I had your life.” I get that a lot. “Must be tough!” they say with a smile. And I can’t disagree. I have it incredibly good. Incomprehensibly good. Sometimes I can feel the weight of the billions of lives lived and living that would give anything for a fraction of the ease, privilege, and pleasure my life has. I don’t know how to give adequate thanks.

I can’t complain.

Today was another good day. Of friends, interest, safety and ease. And rain, musical on the windowpanes, while out in it it’s something harder, gusting to feel like stabs, only softening to water to run down inside your clothes.

A friend and I walked around San Francisco tonight, from Market Street up to Grace Cathedral, down for a meandering burble about Chinatown before finding ourselves in Long Beach and going with it, until we stood on Coit Tower’s promontory with the storm blown in off the Pacific. Back through the Financial District to drip on Bart trains, he went south, I came east.

Then a bike ride through streets like faucets open to any nook of me that was merely soggy not soaked, changing that.

For a moment, the unadulterated wind behind me, I was sailing with the vapor snakes that gave form to every vagary of wind. Grey writhing things that slid on the wet black pavement and made me feel like an windborn seaborn waterborne god.

The road curved out of that harmony, wind rocking my frame and tugging my handlebars, sticks invisible in the undertree rubble kicking my wheel out at sudden angles, tire lost in a mush of sodden leaves that my mind registered would make braking impossible under the bobbing red stoplights.

But I made it home, equally soaked and in love with the world. Moved a snail off my doorstep. And felt something unexpected and familiar.

Because I have it good. Really good. I love my life, my freedom, the fact that today I bought two plane tickets touching three continents. I don’t want to give this up. But standing in the stoop under a single yellow bulb

I realized that if I’d done things differently. Lived a little bit otherhow. There would be someone here when I got home. Someone to laugh at my soaked state, help me inside, take care of my clothes and set an old towel under my bicycle while I climb in the shower.

Instead I’ll do it for myself. And it’s fine. Really is. But here in these quiet moments after midnight, when it feels like everyone else is in bed with their paired each-others, I find myself looking over and “I wish I had your life.”

A Tahoe reminder

No signal. I love when it says that. In fact, seeking that elusive status was one of my reasons for going up to Tahoe in the first place. To spend two days in the white opulence of this year’s record snowfall on the branches of ponderosa pines that will carry three centuries of memory while they grow on slopes that slough off the passing of millennia. Puts these plastic pocket addictions into perspective.

It's not Tahoe without Emerald Bay

The absence of cell signal is getting harder to find. The previous day a millennial had told me his wild travel story “When I was in Morocco, I just, like, didn’t buy a sim-card for my phone? I just didn’t get one! I was there for three weeks, without a phone!” I waited to hear how this setup contributed to an adventure before realizing that being disconnected is itself an experience worth relating now.

Now up in the Sierras, the temptation of the phone tickled me. “I suppose I could post an instagram of this…” I thought, guilty maintenance of my sadly inactive account. But there it was: no signal. I smiled in the clear air and put the phone away.

A buddy and I snowshoed around Spooner Lake that first afternoon, trying out the clompy plastic flippers we’d rented. Walked a while before we realized the big snowy meadow WAS the lake, no indication of its watery underlayer except a small pool where winter-frozen fish floated belly-up in their silvery thousand, distracting from the darker wiggles of their still-living kin below.

“Maybe they’re just...hibernating.” One of us offered. “You know, that winter stasis thing.”

We watched the sluggish stirs of the living among the immobile remainders of their kin, inert and inverted. “No, probably not.” Snap a picture out of curiosity, then go check out those aspens…

The next day Fallen Leaf Lake was waiting for us, politely holding onto a layer of ice until we stood gaping at its side, then letting it dissolve in the crackled collisions of cold succumbing to an unseasonably warm sun.

Somebody benevolent left a canoe on the shore, so now we were paddling, jiggling in the wavelets kicked up by a wind that came to greet us when we left the stony shore behind.

Hot tubs were invented for cold nights beside snow embankments while stars monitor your relaxation below. Granted the electric lights killed them away years ago, but I could put them solidly in my mind’s moonroof anyway.

Hard to see the ski tracks down the western slope, and
trust me that that thing is even steeper than it looks.

Four lakes in two days has a certain symmetry, so we trudged out to Eagle Lake before joining the Sunday return. Snowballs rolling down the slopes to the snowmelt creek that earned its fame in the waterfall of name, and paid homage to the local lunatics who laid the sinuous tracks down sheer slopes when no one was there to see. What that must feel like, I can only envy.

Travel has driven home that America’s greatest treasure is its wild spaces. (Sorry Hollywood.) So it was nice to get out there and light a memory votive on the altar of one of California’s great ones. You can always count on a mountain to show things in perspective, and the signal was coming in loud and clear.

New ancient beauty in Phong Nha, Vietnam

“Sure, Myanmar’s great now, but you should have seen it five years ago!” Budapest ten years ago. Prague twenty years ago. Kathmandu in the 60’s, man, that’s where it was at!

8 Lady Cave. They say it used to be better

You hear this sort of thing a lot in the travel world. Mostly fond affection and glowing nostalgia, but a handful of pessimism thrown in as rank spice (my least favorite of the Spice Girls). The idea persists that everything is gradually getting worse, paved over, trampled and bleached by an overexposure of crowds, marketing, and facebook blahblah.

I get it. I really do. But I don’t believe it. If the primary goal of travel is to widen your perspective and encounter variations of life beyond your domestic norm, then that is eternally available. And the purely physical, singularly esthetic? Is that all going down the drain? McDonald's in the Vatican, spray paint in Yosemite, and garbage everywhere else?

Yes. I mean no! Sorry, pessimism is sneaky. But the world has new beauty to show us. That’s why I rented a motorbike in Vietnam.

Phong Nha Ke-Bang National Park was added to the UNESCO list in 2003, with more of its remarkable caves found since then, particularly Thiên Ðường (Paradise) Cave in 2005 and Son Doong Cave not well-known outside the area until 2009.

I puttered on down to Eight Lady Cave first (can you blame me?) and while respecting the history and sanctity of a place where people died, as a cave it was underwhelming. More of a shallow grotto, now.

But I was happy as an albatross on my two-wheeled partner, so buzzed and swooped over to Paradise Cave. The guy at the hotel estimated I’d need an hour or so in there.

Paradise Cave entry stairs

I don’t wear a watch when I’m not working, but I doubt I was out in under three. A raised boardwalk extends a full kilometer into the cave, modest by Phong Nha standards, but it may have been the slowest, most awe-filled kilometer of my life.

So beautiful. Such an earth church. Walking in the body of the great mother, feeling hippy whether I liked it or not. Still and sacred, undisturbable, equanimity no matter how many jabbering tourists shook the walkway. Some checked their email in there, and still I felt love for all beings.

My eyes readjusted when I birthed myself out of that cave, and found it raining. A benedictory blessing of Earth by Sky, Water falling through leafy Life to land on Soil and me.

Sure, Prague was different 20 years ago, probably better. But Phong Nha wasn’t even on the map yet. So I’m excited to see what’s still in store for the open heart and grateful eyes of the traveler to come.

The Dutch woman in Macedonia who helps me with Trump

The Dutch lady was barely paying attention to our conversation. “It’s Bitola, not Bitola” she said, putting the stress on the first syllable instead of the second. BEET-ola. Grateful for the correction, I couldn’t fault her for her distraction. Greek bus stations are a lot to process, even without your 15 year old son getting on a bus to Macedonia by himself (previous post about him here). But eventually even the peregrinations and perturbations of buses grow dull, so we talked about her family’s relocation to Macedonia.

Waiting for a captain on Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

“We’ve lived there a little over a year now, it’s a remarkable place. We like the people, though they’re a little hard to get to know at first.” I took that with a grain of salt. After all, she was Dutch, perennial co-champions with the Canadians for World’s Friendliest People. “But it’s funny, they don’t know how good they have it.”

She trailed off, watching her son wander in search of a WC. But you can’t just say something that interesting and stop! “What do you mean?” I prompted.

Macedonians haven't figured out the cure for this either

“Well, sure the economy is shit, which they all complain about, but it just means they don’t work very long hours. So they have a lot of time to spend with family and friends, eating on the street and singing and things. The wages are enough, or not quite enough, same as everywhere. They just earn their Not-Enough faster than everyone else.”

I remembered my Macedonian colleague back in my immigrant-job days in a Belgian call center. “A lot of Macedonians go west into Europe for work though, right?”

“Oh yes, many of them do. They almost all want to. We’ve already lost some great neighbors. I’m constantly wondering that they don’t write back and tell their family to stay. Tell them that when they move, they’ll just work more and relax less. The country is beautiful! And safe. They should stay, appreciate what they have, savor the food, be grateful for their loved ones! Relax and enjoy life every day, as they have it!”

This guy knew how to enjoy the fountains in Skopje

That made sense to me then and it makes sense to me now. Here I sit, ignoring the scrolling list of Trump’s latest outrages, feeling like It’s All Over but the burning…

But then that Dutch mother’s voice comes back. Appreciate...be grateful...relax and enjoy. Yes TrumpCo is a disaster. We know that. And we know that we’ll do whatever we can to oppose his horrors, every step of the way. The worst harm will come to the most vulnerable, and that is fundamentally not okay, is soul crushing for those who care, but one can care...and not be dragged under. We can still smile. We can enjoy the food. We can appreciate what we have.

Thank you, Dutch mother. You’re helping me with a problem we never would have believed, those six months ago.

Photopost, 3 from Europe

It's a week I look forward to all year: tour guide summit week in Washington State. So many wonderful people, sharing this lucky career, and an employer I believe in.

I had a delicious meal in this sidewalk cafe in Brussels.
The rain only added to it all.

So I'll be learning and sharing and laughing a lot these next 9 days. But not much sleep. And nearly no free time. So the next few posts will be photos that have been lingering on my computer, unused, but in which I find some version of beauty, and a post link for each place.

A friend my lady and I made in Greece.
A time that feels both near and unbearably far away

How wonderful to live in a world with so many facets of beauty!

So much beauty in Istanbul, it was difficult
to pick just a few for a post about the city.

Happy January!

Hue welcomes you

Hue's Dong Ba market

So much rain. Beaded on dragon fruit, dripping off those iconic conical caps, and blending in with the wet scales of freshly caught fish waiting in baskets for today’s buyers. Markets are one of my favorite places to people-watch, and Hue was a pristine example of their beauty, stink, and chaos. I barely had to step outside my hotel to find the first of the street food stalls boiling savory soup over wood fires, around the corner to the kinesthesia of a meat market, and across the river to the biggest sprawl of traditional commerce in Hue (pronounced hwe, sorta hway).

But behind and between those market stalls were the shattered remnants of another city. Hue wasn’t treated as well as Hoi An during the Vietnam War. It’s importance in heavily disputed central Vietnam (just 43 miles from the Demilitarized Zone) ensured that both sides fought obstinately to hold the city. And when the violence of men is involved, the “hold” something is to destroy it.

The centerpiece of Hue is the Imperial City, where the Nguyen Dynasty ruled on the banks of the Perfume River. Massive rampart walls reflected in a moat where flagrant red and orange koi drifted around, waiting for food, a painter, the next dynasty, all of it with equal ichthyal patience.

Ngo Môn, the Noon Gate of Hue's Imperial Citadel

Outside bustled everyday streets with a little extra dignity, but inside the walls meditated the Imperial Citadel where the business of empire flowed down red lacquer hallways and under the upturned eaves of temples. Ponds dappled with typhoon drops, intricate carvings below ornate balustrades, and dragons guarding the rooftops. And in the center, the Forbidden Purple City, where only the emperor, his concubines, and chosen few were allowed, trespass on penalty of death.

This lady made me lunch, going under the
old arch to get me tea, smiling beautifully
(despite the blood-red stain of paan

American bombing destroyed most of those buildings. And mass graves from the Massacre of Hue by the occupying then retreating Viet Cong defiled large areas around the rest. The Tet Offensive. “Offensive” is on the right track, for all war.

But those memories have taken their place in the horde, all of it washed by the typhoon drops that fall like years to wash under the feet of Nowadays. And nowadays in Hue are good. Kids playing soccer on fields where troops once massed. Smiling women under remnant archways cooking banh canh and the various dishes perfected by the palates of emperors. And a grinning boy too shy to take a picture but too interested to look away.

The sights of Hue were beautiful. Its food clearly made an impression. But it was the people who made me love Hue the most. Violence comes through, but smiles come back. And Hue is smiling.