Rodin – A Guilty Pleasure

One of Frances’ self-confessed guilty pleasures is chocolate; one of mine is the work of Rodin.

Why guilty? Well, for one thing, biographies of A. Rodin reveal him to have been a fairly self-absorbed, manipulative, egotistical human being – in other words, a lot like many, including myself.

So, for me, his sculptures act as a kind of mirror, reflecting my own faults. In this way they are healthy reminders of the way I can treat others, especially those with whom I interact most closely; this includes family and friends, and colleagues I see daily.

There is another, not so healthy, reason that Rodin is a guilty pleasure. This relates to my culture’s (southern, religious, conservative, American) obsession with ‘stop it or you will go blind.’ I hasten to add that I am unapologetic in my belief that sex should be limited to the confines of marital vows. I also hasten to add that such sex should, and can, be mind-blowingly fantastic. I realize that Rodin’s depictions of women were likely often of subjects who were not his spouse, and possibly more often than not, mistresses. I am sorry for this, but they still remind me of the beauty of sexual interactions between husband and wife.

 

Now, for the ‘pleasure’ part. The fact that I want to write ‘Get your minds out of the gutter’ reflects again the tension between my guilty and pleasing feelings associated with Rodin’s art. But, a portion of my pleasure in looking at his sculptures is indeed because it brings to mind very good times. Enough revealed (as it is, my children will be once again insisting that I ‘Get a room!’). But, his art (and of course that of any master) goes so much further than this. Look at the detail, the way in which agony, ecstasy, peacefulness, contemplation are revealed not just by the poses captured, but also by the manner in which the muscles and tendons are arranged; in the texture of the skin; in the way in which multiple figures, rather than having been sculpted out of a rock, seem to have been separately created and then melted into one another.

Amazing, just amazing. I think I will continue to hold onto this particular guilty pleasure.

Eating Like a Local – Unexpected ‘Delights’

As I have written before, one of the keys to enjoying myself on trips, especially in the food department, is to go with what the locals suggest. This nearly always works out extremely well, with the food being much more interesting, and on average (because local and thus fresh products are involved), tastier than what I get when traveling in the U.S. Also, the food that is ingested outside the borders of the States would rarely seem strange to anyone from the U.S. with even a minimal amount of imagination. There have, however, been some notable exceptions to this rule.

“Are you certain you want to know?” This was the response Frances and I received when we asked someone at a banquet held in a hut/restaurant in rural China what a particularly tasty dish was that came wrapped in a banana leaf. The consistency was soft without being mushy and the flavor a wonderful mixture of herbs with a solid spicy after-burn. “Yes, we really would like to know”, was our answer, followed quickly by his reply – "pig’s brains." So much for my resolve to never eat the nervous system of any animal, thereby eliminating the possibility of prion infection that would eventually lead to some variant of ‘mad-cow disease’.

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“Oh man, we are feeding off an endangered species!” This was said as we continued to ravenously devour the curried meat dish handed to us by the villager who had been so kind to notice that we looked like we were starving to death. We had been in the tropical forest area, less than a degree of latitude from the equator, in the South American country of Suriname for nearly a week. We had been living off of cheap freeze dried food and rice, as we sweated and swore through long days and nights trapping mammals for the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The revelation that we were contributing somewhat to the demise of a rare life form came when we asked Leo our guide to enquire with the bearer of this wonderful gift what the meat was. She answered in the local dialect – that none of us understood – and then Leo turned to us and said “It’s armadillo.” We knew enough of the local fauna to realize that the only form of armadillo in this region was very rare, and therefore listed as endangered, apparently at least partially because of hungry scientists.

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“I wonder if you would like to try a local delicacy?” Wen said this with what seemed to me to be a bit of a sly smile, but then all us round-eyes know that all Chinese are inscrutable so who can tell? Our answer, of “Why not?” was met with a torrent of Mandarin between Wen and the waiter. As an after thought we asked what the delicacy was – “Insects” was his answer. O.K. inscrutable or not, maybe we should have enquired before the ordering began. When asked what kind of insects (like we were going to be able to compare these insects to the insects we usually had at home) we were told that they would be fried bamboo larvae and wasp pupae. Great, at least we would have a choice. The amazing thing, Frances and I loved these fried morsels, though I was more partial to the larvae and Frances to the pupae. Go figure, men and women differ in their preferred bug cuisines.

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The final (at least for now) adventure in culinary oddities occurred in far western Papua New Guinea, only 30 kms (about 20 miles) from Irian Jaya. Once again, it involved famished scientists and a gracious villager with food. But, unlike the armadillo incident, this was one of the worst food-related episodes of my life. As we walked into the remote village, marked by houses on stilts and naked children, we were greeted by a host of smiling faces and the offer, communicated through our local guide, to sit down in the shade of a tree. We had been walking for hours so we gratefully collapsed on the ground, pulled out our water bottles and gulped the lukewarm liquid. As we did this we noticed a set of women ladling some off-white substance into plates. They approached us, bowed slightly and handed us the dish. We asked our guide what we were holding and he said ‘boiled yams.’ Our first bite revealed the serious situation in which we found ourselves. The yams had the consistency and flavor of wood glue (the flavor by the way recalled from childhood experiments). I swallowed the mouthful whole, and it slowly slid down my gullet and landed in my stomach like a bag of nickels. Evidently my body and brain were convinced that they were being poisoned because on the way down the mass caused my gag-reflex to kick in. I glanced at my companion and saw by the grimace on his face that he was suffering from the same bodily reaction. I grabbed my water bottle and took another gulp. Looking up, I smiled wanly at the ladies hovering around us, and performed what I consider to be one of the bravest acts ever accomplished by humankind, I took another large spoonful and shoved it in my mouth. This time I did not wait for my reflexes to try and reject the mush, and immediately took another slug of water. Miraculously the water in my bottle held out until the plate was clean. With grey faces, sweating foreheads and painfully distended stomachs, we limped out of the village hoping to make it out of sight before we were violently ill.

Size Matters

For me, when it comes to enjoying museums, public buildings, art galleries, etc., size really matters, with my mantra being “the smaller the better.”

So, give me Dickens' home (London), Rodin’s home (Paris),

The Alamo (San Antonio), The Scottish Parliament House (Edinburgh), Jervaulx Abbey (Yorkshire, England), Peneda Monastery (near Porto, Portugal), Kesava Temple (Somnathpur, India), Pantheon (Rome)

and you can keep The Vatican, St. Peter’s, The Louvre, or the inside of any of the large buildings in Florence, Italy. I know the latter are celebrated by all and sundry as being the best-of-the-best, but I just find them repetitious and, dare I say, boring. I am not passing judgment on those who enjoy these sites, they’re just not for me.

But, even more than the small museums etc, I am captivated by those special events and places that surprise us – that we just happen upon. These include the silkworm processing building in which Indian women in their beautiful saris sat cross-legged while sorting and cleaning the cocoons to be sent to the silk factories.

Or the small, private museum near Chiang Mai, Thailand, that we found accidentally while looking for the toilet; this museum was not normally open to the public, but the owner of the coffee/tea shop at which we stopped was gracious enough to show the white guys his pride and joy.

And of course the elderly musician and his small friend that we discovered unexpectedly as we rounded a backstreet corner in Kunming, China.

And, finally, the wedding-photo shoot on the island of Ischia, Italy – with the members of the party and the photographers all taking turns to arrange the bride’s and groom’s clothes, posture and attitude.

In other words, I love most of all witnessing slices of real life, involving real people.

I should finish by saying that even when I find myself in one of the huge ‘sites’, I poke around to see if I can locate one of those, nearly-always-there, hidden and wonderful nooks and crannies. For example, I was pretty underwhelmed by the St. Francis cathedral in Assisi (just another overblown church to me). But, by descending into the lower levels I found myself watching, and listening to, a wonderful, intimate mass being given for young people. The singing and the low-keyed attitude, along with the small size of this inner chapel stopped me in my tracks. I could not understand the Italian lyrics, but the ‘feel’ was both peaceful and comforting – even though I was surrounded by the completely overstated grandeur of the rest of the church.

A Trip to the ‘Top of Europe’

I have found that one of the keys to quickly adjusting to new time zones – whether I am arriving in Europe, South Asia or Australia – is to keep moving the first day until night has fallen. Most importantly, I have found that I need to stay outside, stay vertical and if at all possible do something that involves physical and mental activity. I avoid like the plague opportunities to retire to a hotel room, a conference room, a movie theatre, etc. A perfect opportunity to apply my rule came recently when my friend, Ole Seehausen, told me that he would like to take me to see the highest train station in all of Europe, located in the small village at Jungfraujoch (billed as the ‘Top of Europe’). But to catch the last train to Jungfraujoch, we would have to leave almost as soon as I arrived in the village of Brienz where my chalet was located. He asked whether I would instead rather prefer to take a shower and have a nap. I told him that I really needed to stay active this first day, and besides I did not want to miss seeing the highest train station (and according to the Jungfraujoch PR department, the highest post office) in Europe. By making this choice, I unwittingly put myself in the position of experiencing a dream trip – one involving seeing, walking on, and photographing some of the most famous mountaineering peaks in the Alps, including the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.

Ole, his 4-year-old daughter Maisha, and I slowly traveled by multiple trains from an elevation of 1000 feet to a final altitude of around 11,000 feet at Jungfraujoch. As we climbed, I watched more and more alpine skiers board the trains. I took nearly 200 photos of the rugged grey/black and white peaks that penetrated the crystal clear, azure-colored sky. The various trains took us through tunnels cut through the bowels of the Eiger and Mönch mountains. We stopped to look out of enormous glass viewing ports cut into the sides of both peaks, ports located near doors used as escape routes for climbers who find themselves in emergency situations and also as the starting point for missions by alpine rescue teams.

We finally arrived in the underground station at Jungfraujoch below the saddle between the Mönch and Jungfrau. I refused the option of taking the elevator and so, as we climbed the several flights of stairs, I came to realize that the signs scattered around the walls warning of the possibility of effects from the extreme altitude should be taken seriously. Though I never felt really ill, I was definitely experiencing something like the effect of three glasses (or so) of wine. However, the biggest shock to my physical being occurred when we emerged from the underground cavern into the subzero air temperature and strong wind on the “plateau”. The air temperature, with the accompanying windchill, left my hands and face numb in seconds. Ole and Maisha were definitely constructed of sturdier stuff than I as evidenced by their trudging up to the topmost lookout where they proceeded to romp and take photos. I, on the other hand, raised my camera only a few times, instead choosing to spend most of my time cowering near the entrance to the cavern.

Hardy souls that they were, when Ole and Maisha finally made their way back inside the tunnel, they suggested that we explore the “Ice Palace”. The name indicated exactly what this was, and thus the Ice Palace was not an extension of the blissfully warm tunnel in which I had been taking refuge from the wind. Instead, said Palace, was a series of rooms and corridors cut directly through the glacier that had its origin at Jungfraujoch. Surprisingly, though my feet were cold from standing on the glass-like ice floor, and even though I was always in danger of having both feet fly out from under me, this ice cavern was a place that I would have hated to miss. Filled full of ice sculptures of bears and igloos and mother seals floating on their backs with their babies reclining on their stomachs, it was a winter wonderland that beat any of the cheesy, “Santa’s workshop” displays that I had ever encountered in the States. But then, as far as I know, Santa doesn’t work inside a glacier.

How to Feed an Elephant

I can’t count the number of times that I have been at a party, at church, at a football game, or even in my office at work, when someone has approached me with the question of how you go about feeding an elephant. Now, I know what you are thinking: “Anyway the elephant wants.” But, actually it is not that simple. This fact was illustrated on a recent trip to India. Frances and I had traveled to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to observe some ecological research being carried out by scientists from the Indian Institute of Science. We were spending time in the forested areas in and around the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary, a region containing all manner of wonderful animals and plants, including wild and domesticated elephants. But, I digress. So how do you feed an elephant?

Step 1: Find an elephant. From what we observed, this is not really very difficult given their size and their ability to identify people who want to provide them food.

Step 2: Prepare food. This is likely going to be the most complicated portion of the exercise given that you need to know about elephant likes and dislikes. I assume that it will be catastrophic for the human if they give the elephant something particularly unpalatable. The food preparation therefore needs to be a careful, even painstaking, process involving cooking, mixing and finally constructing what might best be described as elephant balls.

Step 3: Proceed to feeding area holding the elephant’s balls. Wait for the elephant to approach (hopefully stopping before standing on top of you). Once elephant is in position, insert ball. Quickly withdraw hand being careful to not drop the ball.

Step 4: Repeat procedure until the elephant is satisfied. Like the food preparation, I assume that the accurate diagnosis of when an elephant is full will be learnt by painful experience, with premature termination resulting in extremely negative feedback.

There you have it. Now go find and feed an elephant.

Eating Like a Local – Portugal

My motto in traveling is “Though you are a foreigner, always eat like a local.”  So, if I am with friends who are natives of the country in which I am traveling, I ask them to order for me what they like to eat.  If I am alone, I ask the waiter what they, or the chef, suggest.  I end up eating many items that I would never be likely to try in the States, thus adding a delightful richness of experience to my overseas dining.  This might seem like an obvious strategy for a traveler, but I think many times we want familiarity in our food and in the process miss out on the delights of a particular country’s food and culture. As an example, I travel regularly to Portugal for work, spending most of my time in the north in the vicinity of the city of Porto.  On a recent visit, I went to dinner with several colleagues.  I applied my motto resulting in a wonderful food experience.  Our meal began with a codfish ovary/egg paste on bread and a fish soup (tomato/cream-based), accompanied by white Vino Verde (‘green wine’ – the designation of ‘green’ indicates that this type of wine is meant to be drunk immediately upon bottling, rather than letting it age, and that it is to be served very “fresca”, i.e. cold).  The wine was very nice, though the red version we had next was not so enjoyable.  This highlights one basic fact, you will not like all the food that residents do (then again, do you like all American cuisines?), but enjoying this act of discovery can also add a zest to your travel!

The main course consisted of whole squid that had been breaded lightly, fried and then doused with a tomato sauce.  I expected this to be tough and rubbery given that the squid were close to 10 inches in length, but they were very tender with a mild and wonderful flavor.  The side dish with the squid was fritas (fried potatoes) and rice.  After enough starch to plug a horse, I wanted to sit still and not face any more food.  That was when the whole bream fish (complete with head and accompanied by more potatoes) arrived.  I stated flatly to my hosts that I had no intention of putting anymore food into my engorged abdomen.

I then proceeded to eat the entire side of one fish, plus some of the potatoes.  The meal was capped off with a silky port that I could have drunk all night, but since I had to work the next day, I chose moderation.  As I waddled back to my friend’s car, I marveled again at how food helps me to experience the depth of a culture.  All through this meal the intimate connections of the Portuguese with the land and the sea reverberated through the food and drink.

How to Cross the Street in Naples

As my fingernails dug further into the vinyl seat on Paulo’s motorcycle, I wondered not for the last time why I had eagerly agreed to this “sightseeing trip” around Naples, Italy.  Not that I did not want to sightsee in the immediate neighborhood of Pompeii and the Italian mafia.  It was just that when I said “Yes, absolutely!” to Paulo’s invitation to drive around Naples with him, I thought he meant in a car.  On the upside, I was getting to see the depth of the scratches present on the side and back panels of the automobiles that surrounded us.  I had to wonder which scratches represented the last motorcyclist that had gotten too close.

Most impressively, however, was that while we came within inches of brushing our shoulders against the sides of the automobiles with which we zigged and zagged, we seemed in most danger of being decapitated by the side mirrors on the buses.  But, it was Naples for heavens sake, so throwing caution to the wind – and shoving aside the phrases “serious head injury” and “feeding tube” – I opened my eyes again and started surveying the buildings, the people, and yes, even the traffic.

It really wasn’t so bad, once I realized that Paulo had done this before, and that the other drivers were also well versed in the weird dance in which they were participating.  As we zoomed along the harbor side of the city, Vesuvius was clearly visible in the distance, like one of those zits that sometimes appear, as if by magic, overnight.  But this zit was thousands of feet tall.  It was troubling to think about the people who had woken up one morning so many years ago, not realizing that the rumbling to which they had likely become accustomed was signaling their last day on earth.

As we continued along our route I recognized the stall to which Paulo and I had strolled earlier in the morning, the one from which I sampled my first Italian espresso, and my first Italian breakfast pastry.  In fact, I did a particularly un-Italian thing by ordering a second espresso.  I know that Anthony Bourdain is known for slamming American fast-food fare, and in contrast rhapsodizing sweetly about the quality of “foreign” fast-food – some of which by the way looks and tastes like sewage – but I really have to agree with him that so much of the food eaten on the run in non-American settings is wonderful.  My Italian breakfast was just one example.  And it did not hurt that I was staring out at the sights afforded by the Neapolitan coastline.  How could food not taste great in such a setting?

As we zipped past the pedestrians I also thought more about my thesis that Italians regardless of age, weight or gender were incapable of not looking good in their clothing.  I have an Italian friend who lives with his American wife in a villa in the hills outside of Florence.  Piero is in his 70’s and when he put on a suit for a function that we both attended, he looked like a prince. I can’t determine how Italians universally pull this off.  Is it the way the clothes fit?  The way they walk?  Is it the way they value the good things in life?  Or is it just simply that most of them are olive-skinned rather than pasty white?  Whatever it is, if I could bottle and sell it to pasty white American males like me, I would be able to spend a lot more time in Italy.

Another fact of Italian life that I came to realize I had no psychic/emotional connection with, was the way in which Italy and her people are steeped in religion.  I come from the southern U.S., a region notorious for its Christianity, if not its Christian charity, but the Italians have us Americans beaten to a pulp in regard to their piety.

But like the American religious, and indeed the religious anywhere, Italian religiosity is best seen when they are caught off-guard in a moment of stress.  An experience later in the day in central Naples provided such a moment of inadvertent transparency.  Paulo and I were walking through a back section of the “Old Town”.  As we approached a street crossing, we drew up close behind a pair of young women walking arm-in-arm.  They were engrossed in conversation, talking animatedly to one another.  They were simultaneously stepping into the street when a loud, harsh horn blast caused them to jump back onto the curb.  One of the women began to shout and gesticulate in rapid fire Italian in the direction of the now stationary car.  Just then she looked into the car – as did I – and saw that both of the young occupants in the front seat were clearly wearing the white collar of Catholic priests.  The woman’s shrieks ceased as her hand first flew to her mouth and then rapidly made the sign of the Cross; presumably to indicate that she took back every descriptor she had just applied to the priests.  It was very gratifying (at least to me) to see that both of the young priests began laughing.  Maybe God too was laughing!

Another aspect of Italy, and for that matter all of Europe, that continually confronts an American is the wonderful antiquity of the place.  Apartments, local shops, walls, monuments and even toilets are generally older, often by thousands of years, than any of the analogous structures in North America.

And sometimes this antiquity is encountered in the most surprising places.  That evening, as Paulo and I strolled through the parking area toward the restaurant where we had reservations, I was surprised to see a hole some 10 feet in depth covering most of the area in front of the entrance.  We had to divert around this hole, and as we did I looked down expecting to see a severed sewage line, or maybe some electrical connections.  Instead, I saw what appeared to be an archeological dig.  Confused, I asked Paulo what they were trying to repair.  He said, “Well, originally the owners were planning to expand the parking area, but when they began the work they ran into ancient Neapolitan artifacts.  So now it has turned into an archeological excavation.”  I told him that I would guess that in the States we would turn this into another money making venture, selling tickets, constructing a parking garage and making up a nice tale about what was in the hole – while all the time trying to prevent some overweight, and physically unstable, person from foolishly tumbling into said hole, resulting in the favorite American pastime of suing people for allowing you the opportunity to be stupid.

How were the Italians dealing with this ‘dig’?  They were choosing to sit and sip their wine at tables positioned precariously close to the crumbling walls of the gaping fissure.  Maybe when you live next to a volcano as the residents of Naples have done for millennia you become a bit blasé about a trifling little hole.  And maybe that’s the attitude you also need to make a motorcycle foray into the bowels of Naples traffic…and come out alive again.

Choosing to be a Flâneur

I am always prepared to be a flâneur when visiting foreign places. In his book A
Writer’s Paris – a guided journey for the creative soul, Eric Maisel defines the
[French-invented] flâneur as “an observer who wanders the streets of a great city on a mission to
notice with childlike enjoyment the smallest events and the obscurest sights”. I think this
is a difficult art form for most Americans. Often taught to be ethnocentric, and even if
interested in non-American places, taught to rush through as many sights as quickly as
possible, we find it nearly impossible to give value to such ‘trivial’ experiences as
watching a small child playing in a Parisian sandbox, or enjoying the endlessly circling
flight of pigeons around an Italian church’s bell tower, or marveling at the changing hues
as the sun sets over the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. So, get into shape for walking, but
when you arrive force yourself to slow down and really look at the things that are
surrounding you. So what if you return to the States without photos of everything your
friends think you should have seen? Isn’t it enough that you can say to yourself “I saw
life in Paris, or Florence, or Rome, or Yorkshire”? Just such an encounter with life,
catalyzed by a flâneur stroll, happened to me on a recent trip to Switzerland.

As I walked slowly back from turning in my ski equipment at the rental shop
towards my chalet in the Swiss village of Axalp, I was captivated by the grandeur of the
mountains. The snow-covered peaks reminded me of the many mountaineering stories I
had encountered as an adolescent and still loved. I had dreamed of climbing some of
these peaks – the Eiger and the Matterhorn to name just two. I had never managed to
generate enough passion and courage to do this, yet my stroll was allowing me to revisit
those dreams.

But the mountains were not the whole, or even the main part of this flâneur experience.
I paused to watch and photograph the children being taught to ski on the gentle slope
where I, a few hours earlier, had been trying to remain vertical on my skis. I walked
a few more steps and paused to gaze across a velvety snow-covered valley
to a hillside that was crisscrossed with the geometric patterns left by hundreds of skiers.
Both the unbroken and ski-etched surfaces possessed grandeur. The one from the
smoothness that made you want to lay gently into its embrace, and the other from the
appearance of a giant finger having traced lines into the white expanse.

Less than 100 meters further on, I again stopped to stare at and photograph the scene, this time the
chalets that looked as if they had been picked up and pushed down until they were half
submerged in soft, white cake frosting.

After a 45-minute stroll that could have taken only 5 without my repeated stops, I arrived at our chalet. I hesitated at the door and turned to look behind me. For the first time, I noticed the tree that stood just across the road and not more than 50 feet away. The colors and shapes possessed by the trunk and branches
of this large hardwood made a beautiful contrast to the white blanket surrounding its base and laying along some of its thick horizontal branches. Again I gazed for several minutes, and snapped numerous photographic records of what I was seeing. The world would not have ended if I had hurried back from the rental shop to our chalet. But, I would have been [unknowingly] poorer if I had not chosen to apply the discipline of the flâneur.

Being a flâneur, however, does not always mean that you experience life separate
from human contact. In fact, I believe that some of the best opportunities come when you
throw yourself into the breach so to speak. For example, I love European coffee bars.
The language is always foreign to me and the coffees are almost always wonderful. But
the main reason I am so fond of these places is because of the nearly universal reaction I
elicit from the servers behind the bar. They always demonstrate body language and
verbiage that indicates their belief that I have ordered the wrong product. Like one
morning, when I moved to the front of the line at the Zurich airport espresso counter and
said “Espresso dopio, please” the young woman looked at me with raised eyebrows and
said in her best English with a Swiss German accent, “Do you want strong coffee?” I
laughed and replied, “Yes, I would like very strong coffee.” They are even more
perplexed when I leave the long thin sugar packets unopened and the milk untouched – I
like very strong, black coffee.

I also love flâneur-esque interactions involving European ticket agents. They are
almost always helpful, but also almost always slightly harried – as I would be if I had to
answer, in a multitude of languages, the same questions of “When did you say this train
leaves?”, “What platform do I need?” and “How do I get to that platform?” So, when I
brandished the printout of the train information sent to me by my host who lives with his
family in Brienz, Switzerland – a printout clearly containing platform and time for my
train – while asking the above questions the woman behind the glass responded with “Sir,
it is written on the sheet that you are holding.” Ticket agents 1 : stupid American 0.
As I boarded this train I reflected on the fact that my wife Frances and I have had
some of our very richest flâneur experiences while riding in trains, buses and taxis in
foreign countries. I think some of the enjoyment comes from the novelty of mass transit
for two Americans who use their cars to go everywhere. But the main reason this mode
of travel has generated so much fun for us is the very presence of the masses, and the
opportunity to listen and watch them do life. A prime example was the train trip from
Zurich to Brienz via Lucerne that followed my interaction with the weary ticket agent.
Even if I had not looked outside at the snow covered landscape, it would have been
obvious from the water proof pants worn by many of my fellow travelers, along with the
bags filled with skis and snowboards, that I was traveling in winter time.

When I did happen to glance up from my book to give a soft whistle of amazement at one of the
many houses with a cap of 4-5 feet of snow perched on its roof, the young woman across
from me laughed and said “A lot of snow!” A conversation evolved during which we
exchanged information about where we were from, to whom we were married and how
many children we were responsible for. Finally we got around to why I was in
Switzerland. When I explained that I was here to lecture, serve on a PhD committee and
to visit with friends, she gave the usual and accurate assessment that I was extremely
fortunate to have a job that paid me to travel and see the world. However, when I then
told her that the next day, in the Swiss Alps, would mark the very first time I would ski
she looked even more alarmed than the woman who served me at the espresso bar. Her
query of “Do you have good insurance?” was eerily similar to my wife Frances’ “Well, I
guess it is ok for you to go skiing, since we have enough life insurance.” It’s sometimes
hard to be a flâneur when all around you are those predicting your sudden and imminent
demise.