On our way to a wedding in Connecticut this past weekend we stopped in Princeton. The center of town looked little changed from the '70s, when I worked down the road at The Trenton Times. The bright Tudor building still lorded over the intersection of Witherspoon and Nassau streets, and serious-looking young people walked purposefully down the sidewalks.
There were more gourmet stores than I remember, including one selling Lindt chocolates. But Lahiere's, the elegant French restaurant on Witherspoon Street, for years the place for romantic and celebratory meals (especially when the parents paid), was gone (though the name had not yet been erased). I accosted a woman coming out of a nearby clothing store, and she said it had closed about 6 months ago. "It was all of a sudden," she explained. "We couldn't even make final reservations. It's a terrible loss. It's left a huge hole in the community."
I continued down Witherspoon, walked across the new plaza (new to me at least) in front of the public library. Just inside the library doors was a used book store, and on top of a shelf in front of the window four coffee table books were prominently displayed. One of them was New Jersey: Unexpected Pleasures, which I co-authored in 1980.
Unlike tourists, travel writers often prefer the ends of their trips (especially good ones) to the beginnings (fraught with stress). We come home, in the best circumstances, with a sense of accomplishment that replaces doubt and overrides regret. While I'm usually quiet on the flight out, I'm often voluble on the flight back.
Yesterday, for instance, on the shuttle bus at Heathrow, I heard a man I recognized from my Warsaw flight talking to a woman in a Carolina accent. I asked what he had been doing in Poland, and he told me that he was a professor of history and had been visiting the country since 1965. He was, he said, the author of a book on Roman Dmowski.
Standing in the security line at Terminal 3, I fell into conversation with two young women from Iowa who were coming back from studying Thai massage in Chang Mai. They added to my delight at the world's richness.
I had just enough time before the flight to Miami to pop into a newsstand and buy The Spectator. Scrunched into seat 59H, I heard from the young woman across the aisle - a Miamian born in Brazil - about her month working in a Delhi orphanage.
A few hours later I opened my magazine and read Colin Thubron on the scintillating life of Patrick Leigh Fermor.
I'm leaving tonight for Poland, coming back on June 19. On the early birthday card Joanne and Don gave me on Sunday was written this passage by Sir Richard Burton:
"I believe the gladdest moment in human life is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands, shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares, and the slavery of home.
"Man once more is happy,
"the blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood, and the morning of life dawns afresh."
Friday evening drove down to Hollywood for another meal at Taco Beach Shack. We ordered the same thing as last time - Korean short rib tacos - forgetting to specify the type of tortillas. A different waiter from last time, a grumpy man, brought them on whole wheat tortillas. Hania had to order an extra one on a corn tortilla.
"He should have asked us which type of tortilla we wanted," I said. Hania agreed, but said that, having failed to do that, he had used good judgment. "We look like whole wheat tortilla people," she said.
Saturday morning watched the French Open and then wrote a story about the first week. In the afternoon drove back to Hollywood, to Ryszard and Magda's, to watch the Barcelona-Manchester United match. A cookout followed: sausage, steak, mustard, cwikla (horseradish mixed with grated beets).
In the evening took a stroll on Las Olas, where we ran into a former colleague, walking her chocolate Lab, and avoided running into an ex-boss. Gave a $2 bill to the man playing his guitar outside The Cheesecake Factory, which seemed to make his day. Another man played tangos on a keyboard set up outside Gran Forno.
Sunday morning watched more tennis and sent my story to World Tennis Magazine. In the afternoon walked four laps around the island, then went to the pool, carrying Gosposia prawie do wszystkiego by Monika Szwaja and a Polish-English dictionary.
Around 7 we drove to Boca for a premature birthday dinner at Anatolia, whose fresh-baked bread must be among the best of any restaurant in South Florida. The rest of the meal was pretty good too. Then over to see our friends Don and Joanne, who served us champagne followed by gelato.
Monday morning watched more tennis and read my story online. Went to the gym, then drove down to Hollywood again, this time to the Russian market - called World Market (and people say Americans are egocentric) - where I bought a plastic container of half sour pickles (forest green) and another of cold borscht (flamingo pink).
In the afternoon went down to the pool, though this time with the much easier to read Sunday New York Times. For supper had the borscht, which was delicious, the sign that summer has arrived (at least in the Baltics).
Before bed read an interview online with Paul Theroux. The interviewer said to him: "You don't seem to trust accounts by travelers who haven't stayed in a place for a long time." It was an odd thing to say to a man who has made a career out of riding trains around the world. The obvious follow-up wasn't asked.
Speaking of travel, why is it that in the days before a trip time accelerates, then slows while you sit at the departure gate, before virtually coming to a stop after you board the plane?
On my flight to Baltimore the young woman sitting next to me was reading the Economist and The New York Times.
"Would you like me to take the paper?" the flight attendant asked as we began our descent.
"No, I'm still reading it," she replied.
"Poor newspapers," I said. "Everybody wants to get rid of them."
It was that point in the flight when it was safe to talk to seatmates because even if you bored them they knew it wouldn't be for long.
The woman had been visiting family: mother in Coral Gables, sister in Aventura. In her short life she had seen quite a bit, working in Zanzibar and living in Santa Monica. She had returned to Baltimore late last year. I asked her what had brought her back.
"It's a real place," she said.
Unlike Washington, I thought. And definitely South Florida.
In Washington last week I had lunch with a magazine editor who had moved to the city several years earlier from New York. On his arrival a friend had told him that life in DC, after life in Manhattan, was a bit like life on lithium. There are no great highs, his friend had told him, but no terrible lows.
On the street, people looked responsible, respectable, intelligent. It was not unusual to see young men in khakis and button-down shirts. The most attractive women wore glasses. Occasionally an older gentleman would appear in a bow tie. Clothing that would get you stares in South Florida seemed perfectly acceptable in Washington. It seemed a place where it was hip to be unhip. Or a place that had dispensed with the whole idea of hip.
One day I walked into a bar near Dupont Circle. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and the bar was its opposite: dark and musty. One woman sat alone in a booth, writing in a notebook. Behind her, another young woman typed on her laptop. At the bar, a third young woman sat with her head buried in a book.
This for me constituted a great high.