Wisps of Times and Places

Brief moments, sounds, textures, smells, of the places I’ve been to, back when I used to travel.

Heidelberg, March 2014

Passing by, down the busy Hauptstrasse: A young couple, both very beautiful, looking uneasy, as if they were dating only because they were expected to date someone beautiful. A middle-aged woman, short and stubby, trying half-heartedly to look dressed-up. A girl with glasses, probably overweight according to the fashion industry standards, stunningly beautiful and completely unaware of it. A couple, each with a husky on a leash, looking very strictly at their dogs. A lagre group of Japanese tourists, looking alien with their group badges, and winter jackets, and an occasional face mask. Two women, one pushing a trolley with a toddler with Downs, looking calm and confident. A woman with huge white-rimmed sunglasses, a thin white shawl around her head looking as if she was caught in a desert storm. A Japanese tourist, alone, with a green badge, looking terribly lost. A French couple walking by, both elegant and beautiful, seemingly without even trying.

A guy carrying a huge box from Amazon, whistling and looking happy.

I finish up my beer, it’s been a pleasure, Heidelberg, I’ll miss you so much.

Oslo, March 2017

Morning metro, across the aisle a German girl and an Indian guy (the accents are unmistakable!) in such an early stage of flirting, that it’s aching to behold. I’m finding myself a tad too curious, so I put the headphones on, and listen to my audio book, but I can’t really close my eyes as well, and they’re right in front of me, and the body language, oh, the body language! So tensed and awkward, I can almost feel them cringe every time they say anything, or make any kind of move, I can hear them thinking “Well, I was just looking over at his phone because he was about to show me this … or … wasn’t he? … I don’t know, now he’ll think me nosy, I hope he didn’t notice when I slowly shifted my gaze and looked away (He did!), oh god, I hope I don’t look like a fool (You do!)” and I can hear him “I’m touching her overarm with mine, should I be? I should move a bit, so she doesn’t notice (She did! “Why is he moving away?!?”), I don’t know how to sit, maybe I’ll look more relaxed if I put my ankle on my knee, oh god it feels so uncomfortable, I hope it doesn’t show (It does!), and now she’s leaning towards me, what do I do, what do I do?” and I just couldn’t take my eyes off of them, they were so sweet!
And then they got up and went towards the door, he dark, and elegant, and handsome, she tall, and gawky in that particular German way, and I notice she’s taller than him, and, oh, man, that too, but that amount of awkwardness can only mean a lot of feelings to be unbottled when the time comes, and I feel like giving them a hug and whispering “You’re doing great, just give it a six or so weeks of utter awkwardness, you’ll be fine, just fine, and do invite me to the wedding!”

Belgrade, July 2017

Now, Serbian is a really rich language. To be frank, I don’t know if it really, objectively, is, or if it’s rather that no matter how trilingual I may claim to be, I still know Serbian best, with all its funny words. So, there’s this word smoren: there’s a proper word, umoran, which means plainly tired, but smoren is a new word, one that we invented not that long ago, which kind of means ‘tired of Life, Universe and Everything’, more a state of mind than a bodily sensation. So, I go with a friend to this place called Polet, and polet means something like élan. Actually, polet is such an enthusiastic word, that élan doesn’t even start covering it, think Nike of Samothrace, that’s how poletan polet is, but now I’d have to explain poletan too, so, let’s just say élan. And so, we’ve just found a table in the garden, and had a look around, there was some kind of artsy stuff on the walls, and under it the most smoren waiter ever. And it was such a contrast to the name of the place, that I just couldn’t stop laughing.

Turned out this was this really sweet guy, and a great waiter, who clarified he was not smoren, just umoran, having spent the day the on the beach, and it has been a really hot day, but still he posed for this picture as a #smorenwaiter.

Boston, March 2018

So, he says, “Let me show you the Old Boston! I’ll take you to the Acorn Street,” and my Norwegian self goes, “Aw, how cute!” because ekkorn is squirrel in Norwegian, and so we walk around astoundingly old streets, astoundingly old for the New World that is, but very sweet in all possible worlds, and we walk up the street, and I see small acorn ornaments all along, and I think, “Oh, look, a žir! And another one!” and žir is Serbian for acorn, because there are barely any oak trees in Norway, and oak is a kind of a holy tree for Serbs, so žir is a highly activated word in my mind, but so is ekkorn, because I live by the woods (utterly oak-less!) in Oslo, and I see squirrels all the time. But I’m neither in Norway nor in Serbia, I’m in New England, and I speak English, or at least I’m supposed to, but I’m jetlagged and a bit overwhelmed, and the languages in my head are having a field day.

And then we climb to the top of the street, and he says “Behold, the Nr. 1 Acorn Street”, and I look at the door, and go “Oh, how sweet, but why would they put a žir on the Ekkorn Street, is it because the squirrels really like — oh, Gordana, you’re a moron.”

Fortunately, most of this exchange went inside my mind. Or, at least, I hope it did.

Leiden, September 2018

“When you feel the wind on both your ears”, the honorary miller said, “that’s the direction of the wind.” So, I tried to catch the wind with my ears, it did after all sound like a much better method than licking your index finger and holding it stiffly in front of your face, I’ve never gotten hold on that one.

I was doing several other things simultaneously: Firstly, I had just discovered that I indeed did have issue with heights, or at least my legs did. I was standing on a wooden platform raised around the middle of a quite tall windmill, it was made of planks, which did not fit perfectly together, and you could glimpse the ground betweeen them, way too far down. While my head and heart and wherever one may feel one’s mind and soul may reside, were perfecly ok with that, my legs didn’t like it at all, you wouldn’t think that a center of fear could be located in your thighs, but there it was. So, from my knees to my groin, I was terrified. Besides that, I was also intensly trying to block out the thought that in the dialect of Leiden, they’d drop the final n, so you’d, kind of, drink Heineke in Leide, which I found inexplicably hilarious, so I was trying not to giggle each time the miller said Leide, which he did quite often. And I also thought how great it was to be a Dutch windmill enthusiast, and to be allowed to spend hours upon hours on your beloved mills, and show the tourists the special chests where your miller predecessors hid the flour from the tax authorities, and explain to them the concept of buying the wind, and sometimes they’d even let you grind real wheat!

And then I caught it, the wind, with both my ears, and showed the direction, and the miller nodded approvingly, and turned the platform to face it, with us on it, and the mill’s great wings above us, and I felt the wind on my face, and a fine whiff of flour in my nostrils, and above us the sky was blue, and Leiden spread down under our feet.