Saturday we went to see Kedi, the beautiful movie about the cats of Istanbul which is also a movie about the residents of Istanbul. What's impressive is not just how they look after the cats, but the noble attitudes that inspire them to do so. They are everyday people but their thoughts sometimes transcend the mundane and touch the spiritual; their sentences are often quietly poetic. The movie makes you want to visit (or return to) Istanbul not just to see its cats but to meet its citizens.
PBS's The Durrells in Corfu appeared two Sundays ago out of the blue and has quickly become my favorite show on television. Not surprisingly, since it involves travel (eccentric family uproots from England to go live on a beautiful Greek island) and has as its main characters not one but two nascent writers: the novelist-and-travel-writer-to-be Larry and the zookeeper-and-memoirist-to-be Gerry (on whose trilogy the show is loosely based). While clearly taking advantage of the popularity of more recent expat-in-paradise books (A Year in Provence, Under the Tuscan Sun), The Durrells in Corfu has a different feel. Here it's not just the locals but the family members who are odd and colorful. (The first and most famous book in the trilogy is titled My Family and Other Animals.) When I lived in Greece, in the winter of 1979, I met a woman, an expat, who told me that people generally preferred Gerry to Larry, who came across as a bit of a prig. When you watch the show, this sounds about right. But I should add that the woman shared a house with six dogs.
We were telling our French friend about our visit to Sweden, remarking on the attractiveness of the people, and he said: "That's because the Vikings, when they went to Normandy, picked all the pretty girls and took them home."
Our second night in Lund happened to be Culture Night, a once-a-year celebration of music throughout the university town. Walking through the campus we passed students heading to a dance, the men in dark suits, the women in long dresses, their blond hair lit by the late-summer sun.
After dinner with friends, Polish doctors working in Lund, we walked to the Romanesque cathedral that dominates downtown. We found five seats near the back and listened as a black-robed choir sang liturgical music. Touring the empty cathedral the day before I had thought how wonderful it would be to hear a choir in this great sanctuary, and now I was hearing one, surrounded by a hushed, multi-generational crowd. Before this moment, I had only heard Swedish choirs on classical music stations at Christmas. Or on A Prairie Home Companion.
After the concert we found a courtyard where a band was playing blues. Jacek said that some of his colleagues were singing in the building behind us so we headed inside. (Blues I can get at home.) A group of about thirty people, the majority of them middle-aged women, belted out "A Hard Day's Night." Then they sang a Swedish song.
They all worked at the local hospital. "Seven hundred thousand Swedes," Jacek told me, "sing in choirs."
They sang "When I'm Sixty-Four" like all the other numbers, with a contagiously delighted gusto. During one of the last songs, a man in a bright red sportcoat detached himself from the group and spoke very rapidly into the microphone. "He says that singing is good for you," Jacek translated. In all my travels, Lund was the first city where I thought it wouldn't be so bad to be hospitalized.
On our first morning in Copenhagen we walked to the hotel that we had booked for our last night. (We had arrived on the train from Sweden, where we were staying with a friend in Lund.) The receptionist, checking on the computer, assured is that our online reservation had been made, and then, as we were leaving, said, “You’re from Fort Lauderdale.”
“Yes,” we said.
“I lived there for 13 years,” the woman said. “Near Pier 66.”
Hania asked if she could make sure that we got a good room.
“With a view of the city,” I added.
Out on the street, it took us a while to get our bearings. There was a lot of construction, and occasional screaming. (Our hotel was not far from Tivoli.) We eventually found some busy pedestrian streets – pinpointed by a large fountain of storks – and followed one of them to a grand, desolate square. From there we walked to a boarded up square. The amount of construction made the city look as if it were getting ready for the Olympics.
We eventually found the street with the colorfully painted houses, and tourists, and sat down next to a young Chinese couple at an outdoor cafe, where I ate an open-faced sandwich piled with smoked salmon.
The next day we took the train in from Sweden and then got another to Louisiana, the museum of modern art, where we were introduced to the impressive and often troubling work of Daniel Richter. Walking back to catch the train, we stopped in a store that advertised salt and caramel chocolate-covered licorice. This too sounded troubling until the saleswoman gave me a sample. The small ball of dusty chocolate eventually melted away to reveal a subtly salty caramel gloss that surrounded a saltier nub of intense Danish licorice. It was like a confectioner’s version of Churchill’s definition of the Soviet Union: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I bought a jar of the stuff.
The following morning we took the train in from Sweden, this time with our luggage, and walked to the Mercur Hotel. The Fort Lauderdale receptionist had been replaced by another, who was telling a man “Nie ma problemu.”
“Nie ma problemu, Pani?” Hania asked her, smiling. The new receptionist was from a small town outside Poznan. Hania told her, in Polish, that we’d been promised a good room and, checking on the computer, the woman informed us that we were on the top floor, with a balcony overlooking the city. I would have offered her one of my candies but I knew that Poland is an anise-averse nation. It seemed a good advertisement for Copenhagen that it could attract even immigrants who don’t like licorice.
American Airlines says that a good flyer asks before pushing the window shade up. My problem is with people who pull it down, especially for takeoffs and landings. We'll see what happens tonight when we fly to Copenhagen, and then connect to Warsaw. Though for the second flight I'm going to try to get a window seat, even though I now see it puts me in a delicate position. Sitting on the aisle, one is less burdened with ethical dilemmas.
I'll be back here on the 23rd.