Thirty years ago today (the Feast of the Assumption) I wandered about the monastery of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa. The day before I had arrived in the city with thousands of other pilgrims from all over Poland. The majority of us had walked from Warsaw, covering 150 miles over nine days, and we had been greeted on arrival like a liberating army. Poland was under martial law in 1982, and the annual religious rite took on a strong political significance.
High atop the fortress walls I came upon a young man who told me that things would have to change now; the government could not last when almost the entire population was against it. I thought he was being overly optimistic; the government had already survived nearly 40 years of unpopular rule, who was to say it couldn't double that?
But the young man was right. By 1990 the government was gone.
One of the lines carpeting the stage for the closing ceremonies last night, and requiring a degree in English literature to decipher, was Samuel Johnson’s, “When a man tires of London he tires of life.”
I grew a little weary watching, though, and wondered why John Lennon’s Imagine (“Imagine there’s no countries…”) was sung at the end of an Olympics where virtually all of the winners, in a now almost obligatory act, draped themselves in their national flags. Much more appropriate would have been Ralph McTell’s Streets of London, dedicated to all the athletes who failed to win a medal.
Though the long ceremony allowed me to reflect on some of the fortnight’s highlights. I thought of Ashton Eaton (did you just say “Who?”) and of how the decathlon is the Olympic equivalent of travel writing in that you have to excel at a number of disciplines. And of how decathletes get overshadowed, just like travel writers, by the flashy specialists. (The last page of the Miami Herald's sports section today features pictures of nine American gold medalists, including a tennis player and two beach volleyball players, but not the world’s greatest athlete.)
One of my lasting memories of the games will be seeing Matt Lauer sitting with his colleagues atop a sightseeing bus and looking abashed, as if he were Wilfred Thesiger joining a tour group.
And I was disappointed that Jim Cantore, visiting London’s oldest pub, gave us the name of the barmaid who poured him a beer (Hanna), but never told us where she was from. I have a good idea – having met my own Hanna across the bar of a London pub – and suspect that a Polish immigrant didn’t fit NBC’s idea of merry old England. But aren’t the Olympics about international understanding? Imagine there’s no editors.
Yesterday I received an e-mail from the Tourism Council of Bhutan. I have long been intrigued by the Himalayan country. Sometimes called The Hidden Kingdom, it limited, for years, the number of tourists it allowed in. It wasn't until 1999 that it permitted its citizens to own television sets. The government famously measures what it calls Gross National Happiness.
So I was surprised yesterday when I opened the e-mail and read: "World-Renowned Chef Eric Ripert to Visit and Cook in Kingdom of Bhutan." In a little over 10 years, the country has moved from banning television to inviting celebrity chefs.
My level of interest in the place immediately dropped.
On the subject of "bad trips, good stories," a friend writes:
It is 1985, on our first trip to Europe. Daniel and I looping through the back roads of the Swiss Alps in our rental car en route to Paris. At a remote border crossing in pouring rain, a surly guard orders Daniel to his hut and says we can't come into France because we have no visas. (What we don't yet know is there has been a bombing at the Tati department store in Paris during our week in Switzerland.) Daniel, in a panic, motions me to come to the hut and we manage to convince the guard we aren't terrorists.
Back at car - keys locked inside. Now, il pleut comme une vache qui pisse. As guard laughs his ass off, we break the passenger window with a big rock. A kind Canadian couple gives us a piece of dry cleaner plastic and we wend our way down to the only Ford dealership in SE France in an ugly village we come to call "The Town Without Women." The owner of the only auberge scowls at me like I am the source of all her unhappiness. We go to sleep on lumpy beds under a leaky roof, visions of a huge repair bill in our heads because you know how the French are...
Morning breaks with sun and a smile from the patronesse when I work up the courage to compliment her coffee in bad French. At the dealership, we find they have vacuumed up our baquette crumbs, cleaned out the wine bottles and washed the car. The bill is ridiculously small. The garage owner sends us on our way with a hearty "bonne journee" and fresh croissants.
A friend writes about her daughter, who is:
"... fourteen now and on her first big trip without parents. It's been quite an adventure, from having to get a new bike two days before leaving (due to a wreck that smashed her old one) and having Amtrak completely lose her only duffel.
"I've tried to be a thinking sort of parent. One of my goals was to raise a good traveler, a flexible person who likes adventure and who accepts the fact that things sometimes don't work. I just talked to her on the phone. She's as happy as I've heard her, in upstate New York with no pajamas and no parents and no tent and no sleeping pad. 'You're right, Mom,' she said. 'When things go wrong, it makes great stories.'"
I had my first chlodnik (cold borscht) of the season the other night (courtesy of the Russian supermarket in Hollywood) and the first sip instantly transported me to summer in Poland. The mix of sour cream and red beets, radishes and dill, invariably tricks my body into believing it's back in Warsaw, sitting on a stool at a table in an un-airconditioned kitchen on Dobosza Street.
As I savored the soup, it occurred to me that, for all their benefits, ethnic restaurants have ruined the transporting power of taste. Often now, we eat the food - pad Thai, bibimbap, ceviche - before we visit the country, so there is no gustatory revelation on arrival (other than of how much better it is when made with locally-grown ingredients) and thus no Proustian memory flood when we dine out back home. Risotto Milanese doesn't fill you with Milan if you first ate it in Brooklyn, which is a good argument for visiting countries that are off the culinary map.