A bit old, only by two weeks.

I am leaving Europe in less than a week. Five days to be exact. One hand’s worth of fingers. My blog fell by the wayside as access to the internet dwindled and the desire to be on my computer seemed more and more counterintuitive to the context of my daily life. Right now, as I type this, I am sitting in a train winding its way down out of the foothills of the Alps from Austria, through Slovenia, and then back into  Zagreb. Only this morning did I wake up in East Berlin to find a bag full of freshly baked rolls and a business card with the words “Les Humphries…singers/Kansas City” written on the back. Germany. Italy. Austria. Slovenia. Croatia. Need a timeline? After leaving Zagreb in early June I headed to Istria to work/live on an organic-mostly-self-sustaining organic farm. The lovely Sarah Stites and I spent one month hoeing, watering, stacking hay like building blocks, giving the grape vines constant trimming or thinning, and feeding the cows. Istria is a part of Croatia that has three kinds of soil: red soil, white soil, and brown soil. It’s like Tuscany but with a coast. Most people there speak a hybrid of Croatian and Italian and my ears weren’t tuned into Istrian Croatian which switches back and forth so smoothly you never quite sure if you just don’t understand or if they are speaking a third language altogether. Cao punctuated the end of every conversation and old Italian bake (grandmothers) sat in front of their doorways hunched over in below-the-knee length floral dresses, gray hair pulled back, keeping an eye on the neighborhood dogs and the children who still populate the tiny villages snuggled in valleys or perched on mountain tops.

The farm was an oasis of sorts, but not one I’d necessarily seek out as a long-term lifestyle choice. The matriarch of farm life in Sverki is Helga, German born, married a Slovanian, at some point they decided (well 29 years ago to be exact) to buy some land in what at the time was Yugoslavia and begin an organic farm. I asked Helga if she had a background in farming and she just shook her head
“oh no, horrible” She went on to say how the first two years or so were really hard, but if you watched Helga chop away at wicked weeds with a lightening pace you would think she came out of the womb hoeing her way right into organic bliss. Sarah and even adopted a new name for ourselves, “team one Helga” If we really put our best into it the two of us could keep up with Helga, but never with such ease. Somehow at the end of the day we’d be covered in bug bites, red soil staining our toes and hay accessories in our up-dos. Helga on the other hand would simply change her shirt, run a comb through her hair and you’d think the dirtiest thing she’d done all day was bake bread. With an apron on.

The first time I stepped out in the fields it was afternoon and the sun peeking through the trees and it smelled like warm earth. All you could see any direction were fields and it was quiet and peaceful. The field itself look alive and flowering, little did I know it was my task as plant killer to-over the course of the month-eradicate the wilderness, the blooms, the variable heights creating a skyline of sorts that popped up between the zucchini and pumpkins and watermelons. By the time we left, I have to be honest, the field maybe had more edibles but appeared more desolate, tamed, and dry than that first afternoon.

So, it wasn’t all romantic sunsets and working on the land. There were some funny things about farm life too. Take Herr Meyer for example. Herr Meyer and I are buddies. I like to think were the best kind of buddies, were the relationship is always constant, the friend you know you can always call to bitch to and they will ALWAYS say, ya, I know, ain’t life a bitch? Herr Meyer is a handsome goose, a little old and frazzled these days but I can imagine him in his prime…feathers glistening never ruffled, feet and beak as orange as a peeled carrot, and that god forsaken tumor that now plagues his left foot mysteriously absent. Herr Meyer apparently moved to the farm some 18 years ago (I probably need a fact checker, but this is grapevine reporting here in Croatia). Herr Meyer arrived from Germany shiny and new with wife in tow. The two struggled with children for awhile, eventually having two who each in their own turn paid their dues to the circle of life and ended up on the dinner table. Maybe this is all well and good for farm life until Herr Meyers long-time lady friend got goosed and Herr Meyer was left alone in a foreign land without another goose-ly friend in sight. As a result (as I am sure not one of us could fault Herr Meyer!) Herr Meyer is the grumpiest old rag of a goose I’ve ever meet in all my live long farming days. Hiisss swawk, deep breathing exhaled in your direction…this is what kind of welcome he gave you every morning as you hiss and swaked and blew back as you tried to maneuver around Herr Meyer’s surprisingly large body to get to the grain in order to feed the chickens who are so busy pooping from the barn rafters you have the irrational fear that at any moment, splat, time to shower even though I haven’t been to the fields yet… Herr Meyer was constant though, reliable, a good old buddy who you could let some steam off at and he would always treat the same, the resounding sound of disgruntledness of a meaningless life on a farm-oh Herr Meyer? Why are you here? Go wander to the sea! Stop sleeping near the cows they never loved you anyway.  As much as I portray Herr Meyer as a crotchy old man, he has his moments of grace still. In effort to maintain his nimbleness and good health into his old age, Herr Meyer can be spotted doing his daily yoga routine. Not only does this help with his sore joints and achy back but also helps him come to peace with his anger at losing the only family he ever had and being exiled to friendship with the cows that only care about dirt and hay. He reaches his neck tall and proud and draws one leg up into a piquet and gracefully extends his leg out into an arabesque chest pushed forward, wing extending out. Its goose lake frozen for a moment in time till he tucks his down into his body and folds like origami into the grass under the trampoline resting his mind and body in the shade.

Like Herr Meyer, we all napped on the farm. At least an hour a day I passed out after lunch either from the weight of the heat or the tightness of my hamstrings only dissipating when total REM kicked into full gear. Post nap we did a few more hours of work at a small dinner and either played cards, headed into town to watch folk dancing, or simply showered and read then bed time. It was rhythmic. It felt like cycling with the moon. One afternoon with the cool evening air Helga told me about why we had to pick onions that day-it was a good harvesting day according to the moon. Luckily the onions slipped out of the ground like a hand of a well fitted glove, sometimes needing an extra twist or turn. But then pop, and into your hand ball covered in thin flakey onion peel. Mmm.

While the farm was great. Is great. And I have only a bajillion more stories and details to describe and savor over and over again Sarah and I also needed a break from the loss of control and schedule that happens when you enter into someone else’s life as an interloper. We spent a weekend in Venice devouring art and dreaming of our own canal side homes, eating the best eggplant lasagna ever even imagined and drinking aperol spritz as if we were old retired women with nothing to do but circulate the town gossip. We rented a car and cured our unwelcome-accidental hangovers in a cool dark cave in Slovenia and then ate dinner in the house of the man who invented valium, which, is now a pizza joint in Opatija. Opatija is a town on the coast in Istria built solely as a vacation resort during the Austro Hungarian Empire and all the buildings look like some sort of cake in a pastel color and they all face the sea. It is like a toy town sitting on the coast. They have beach bars and swimming pools built into the sea and small Italian, Croatian, and Slovenia children run around naked pulling little plants out of the sea and jumping off rock ledges.

(a side note: Now were in Ljubljana and I can’t help but think back 8 months ago when I had spent the day here alone to work around some Visa issue. It was just what I needed, a day when I wasn’t trying to learn Croatian or figure out how to have a life in Zagreb. It seems very distant and I remember feeling like I was really struggling with getting things moving here. Now, as the train pulls away I have that same pang of regret that must happen constantly as you age, if only I had known how to do it the first time-how ask the right questions, how to get interviews… In some ways its nice because you see the progression and feel the learning curve. In other ways, when time is bookended like this, you reluctantly wonder if it really is possible to waste time and if that is a forgivable offense? An unavoidable mistake?)

Sigh back to the serious matters at hand, post farm life, post the building of a hay mountain, the cleaning of literally hundreds of nectarines, the baking of many of loaves of bread and a handful of pleasant swims in the sea—Sarah and I decided to head to a more urban setting: Berlin. To be perfectly honest I don’t know much about Berlin and had to do some basic fact searching just to come to terms with the littler knowledge that had somehow been rattling around in my brain. Berlin felt strange to me, I didn’t have a context for it, a map or a timeline or a grasp of the cultural norms, meaning I missed out on the ah-ha moments of clarity that sometime accompany traveling to places you’ve only known before in intangible ways. Berlin was unknown to me and surprised me with its broad avenues and quiet bars and decentralized sprawl.

farms are no places for computers.

the stars here, they seem heavy in the sky, drenching the sky, dripping in layers of gilt and sparkle. The curvature of the earth is felt in the distance noted between the tip of my nose and the gaping distance to the specks straight above to the stars seemingly at my finger tips when i only turn to the left.

the grass here, it smells like plant and heat and summer sun. It smells clean in the opposite way of bleach. It smells clean as in its the dirt and grass we came from, it doesnt seem so forgein as it coats your skin and even finds its way into nooks and crannys.

the potatoes here, they taste like butter and the dirt washes off easily.

the eggs. the chickens and ducks must be healthy because the shells are thick and take more than one wack on the side of a bowl. The ducks are ugly, looking mean in the red lumpy masks, their helpless hidden in ugliness, as if the scar and crocked nose of a pro boxer was enough to scare an opponent. The chickens wobble around the yard, Sarah randomly commenting " But why dont they have arms?! Dont they look like dinosaurs?" I am disturbed by the way the roosters take what they want from the lady chickens. The two roosters often fight and crow at each other, today they paced 20 paces apart, turned, and as if in a true western charged at each other colliding just barely before the young rooster hobbled back out of the way, all without arms.

The cows here, are big. But maybe they are big everywhere and my experience with cows is simply limited.

its late and i feel good, and clean, and at peace. the house is wafting with the scent of lavender oil, every few days overwhelmed by fresh baked bread and ocassionally tinted with the stench of earth and cow shit, which in its own way seems okay, every once in a while.

sometimes i wonder if the rooster will eat one of the kittens or if the goose is lonely or if the cows are really afraid of the sticks we use to keep them walking in line, slap of the wrist of a concerned parent.

some thoughts over the past few days:

oh-pa. Its evening here and the stars are out. I am waiting for the shower, stinky and itchy, straw sturn through my hair. today was a fun day, there was a lot of laughing and gimst-wine and sparkling water-drank in between tractor driving and hay piling. I imagine today sort of like a children's tv show. The tractor is red. 1-2-3-4 hay bales go in the tractor! Can you arrange the hay bales? It was more fun fun then it sounds, a puzzle, adult size building blocks

sure, my body is falling a part a bit, my pointer finger on my left hand stings with every tap of a key, my knee is mildly swollen and I am using all my self control not to itch my bug bites, oh and my hair is so dry from dust it feels strangely similar to the straw we feed the cows, but the farm, the farm is great. For those of you who don't know I am wwoofing, which means I am working on an organic farm in exchange for a (lovely) room and (delicious) meals. Its a romantic and dusty as a Stienbeck novel (although sarah says more like Hemmingway). Sarah and I arrived in Umag, the town near by at 6 am via overnight bus-lost in translation was this morning/evening 24 hour/12 hour time thing that is not so international. Umag's bus station is like any small town bus station in croatia, of course there is a cafe open most hours people are awake and unsurprisingly a group of young men are drunk, drinking more,  and singing at 6 am. We sit for coffee, all very croatian so far, so normal to me, unremarkable in most aspects.

Summer slipped in while i was away. The sun is always shinning, the heat begins somewhere after noon and people are wearing shorts, riding bikes, milling about the main square. Its not the feverours consumption of outdoor cafes as it was in the spring, but rather more a cool indulgence in the realization there is no rush to engulf the warm sun or beat the evening chill home in the early hours of morning. It is slower now, with the sun relaxing your shoulders, the days seeming longer, there is time, summer always seem say, time to linger outside and close your eyes, the sun penetrating even that darkness.

For a while now, since I was here two years ago, returning to Zagreb always feels like returning to a home of sorts. Biking through streets you know well, the bustle of the square, the ability to make small talk with a shop keeper. Having loose ends, having conversations pick up where they ended, contemplating the hours spent in one particular cafe, unable to count they days because they only continue to pile onto each other. There is something so comforting in that, that I am afraid to leave. But as is the case with most things in my current life, once i leave zagreb I know it will never be again the Zagreb I have known.  But we continue to build these networks, and blankets, to wrap ourselves in, creating something so there is always a place to run, or at least a story to savor when there are no good stories being created in the mean time. Lately everyone has been asking me, will you move back, do you think you'd come back. I really believe we move in circles, hardly ever do we pass through, never to return. It is impossible to bring everything with us, and so we are always looking for the things we left behind, maybe wondering how to find them again, or how to forget them for good.

today is warm and sunny. I think something about Jakob's one room, open apartment makes me wish to write again. maybe it is simply having the time to think about writing, instead of the constant motion of sightseeing. I've made a mess of the corner with my bag in it, the 7 days worth of clothes spilling out on to the floor, half clean but not dry. The sun is out and children can be heard stomping around on designer sidewalks (even though we aren't in a hip part of town). Everything in Amsterdam is cute and quaint and seems to function quite smoothly. The comfort of Cargo shorts and comfy sandals speak of a different kind of a relaxed atmosphere different than the coffee-drinking culture of Croatia. There is nothing to prove via sparkly earrings or designer clothes, or at least that is my guess. I should have more to say, but I don't. The pleasantness of Amsterdam is relatively uninspiring, and nothing is challenging except my own acceptance of the quantity of cute designer stores, bikes with babies napping in front, and the deliciousness of a warm apple pie.

Amsterdam is gray and overcast and the air feels a bit damp. I feel the pressure in the air it makes me feel a bit somber, quite. There is nothing harsh about amsterdam, it feels compressed. In the past couple of weeks I've looked at heaps of art, famous art, things you look at intro to art history, art even children would recognize as culturally relevant. I sat on the floor of the sistine chapel, and witnessed the huge hand of David. I also feel that if I kept traveling, one foot in front of the other,one mode of transportation, another mindless bus rid,e another roadside stop. More tickets, security, random encounters with other travelers, an older couple from albanian with whom I can only say "thank you" and "good" and not explain why I know two words in Albanian. The Albanian couple was dressed in what I imagine were traveling clothes in the 1950s. He was dressed in a creamy linen suit, dress shoes and a hat. She was tucked into a skirted suit, short-stumpy heals and vintage sunglasses which kept here eyes a bit hidden from me. They were flying to Madrid and I have no idea why. On my flight to Amsterdam i sat next to a women applying for an architecture grant and she had fancy earrings and wore blue corduroys. The man next to her was reading a book titled "Why we want you to get rich". None of us spoke to each other, but I imagined where they were from and where they were going. The women, young and speaking Italian but owning a bag from an Amsterdam boutique store took notes in french and english as she read philosophy on art. As I arrived in Amsterdam the sleek designs seemed out of place in my reality, and the grocery stores gleaming with prepackaged food, organic treats and shelves of nicely packaged juices contrasted to the Croatian Konzumes (the main grocery store chain) I've grown accustomed to over the past seven months.

The backdrop to this shift in pace and place is a strange cascade of coincidences-my last night in rome i started telling my brother about the weird "ghostly" encounters I've had over the years with my  grandmother who passed away years ago, which is a whole another story, but then I start reading for this conference I am going to and its all about these strange encounters with family members who have passed away. Before that, we went to a restaurant at rome and sat at a table, a small restaurant tucked in a corner of the Jewish ghetto, and a business card was taped to the wall, the only business card which read "Arch Papers, St. Louis Missouri". I arrive in Amsterdam and Jakob tells me about this project where he uses an image of the last known point in space and I start a new book, which starts with the first time we sent an object into space. None of this is mind blowing, but it seems like the universe is hinting at something, some strange space, time, and intangible occurrence thats supposed bring something to light.

This blog died along with my computer. Blogging without one while travelling means building in computer/internet time. Phew. I havent had a second of that. I think I may have totally drained my family on this whirlwind tour. We started in zagreb drinking coffees with milk and meeting friends, families, and the joys of pelinkovac...croatias version of jagger. then we flew down to dubrovnik where we encountered tourist crowds for the first time. doudging the cruise boat bunches, we dined on buckets full of fish, climbed ancient walls, and sipped velebitsko beer while watching old men rowing their boats out into the endlessly blue adriatic sea. Next we wiggled our way through some mountains along the sea/side, passing red roofed beach houses all with balaconies and gardens full of olive trees, at points the sea encroaching up towards the highway. Arriving at Split only slightly before the departure of ferry number 1 meant hopping on for a bit a bumpy ride over to the island of hvar, where we stayed in a luxerious/revamped/yugoslavian era hotel. we watched a parade of priests, ate prawns and tried our sea legs sailing out towards the isalnd vis. Another pitursque bus ride brought us to Zadar, where we were ready for our day of dosing off to the sounds of the sea organ, admiring old churches built out of even older roman ruins, wheels and columns alike, and licking up ice cream in flavors like limun, blueberry, rum and all the classics. From there it is was an overnight ferry, including bunk beds, deck chairs for moon bathing, lifeboats, and a strange dining room of sorts. we woke up in italy took a train to florence, spent a good 36 hours looking back in time via gold gilted art, plenty of iconography of baby jesus, the birth of vensus, and the, yes ill admit, impressive David. Dotted with breaks for delicious sandwiches with goat cheese and prusuttio, gelato to die for, and of course one delicious classy meal *steaks cooked on open stones and dripping with magic red.wine and baslmic sauce* and one home style cheap eats tuscuny style joint, including half liters of house wine, rabbit sauce, and raviolis. After day dreaming of what it would be like to be rich in florence splurging on gucci, designer glasses, and handmade leather shoes we are finally taking a break before hoping on our train to Rome. Breathe. Only three days left, in the busiest of cities of course.

I suppose the correct sign off for this brief update is.... Ciao!

Traveling Umbrella

It saw Germany, Italy and France,
there not the same,
they dont make big diffrence.

The seven seas is what
he sailed,
he headed north,
he hasnt failed.

When he enjoyed the golden
sunlight,
the colors on him dazzled,
became more bright.

But after his traveling,
when he got home,
he said: This is my Golden dome!"

By Mare!