We arrived by plane in Cusco in the dark so we could not get a look at the mountains but the ride was bumpy. We are close to the central plaza and out hotel ” El Mercado” is an old market place with a center courtyard. Charming rooms and plenty of room for the girls to run around.

I feel like I never left Bhutan or Tibet, I can’t breathe , I  have a headache and I now know how people with COP ,or whatever it is called , feel. The elephant is sitting on my chest going up hill. I have been drinking copious amounts of coca tea but it is not helping much.

I did not know that Peru is known for a huge variety of corn and potatoes and actually serves ver healthy meals..I have been eating lightly as I am sure a full stomach does not add to the altitude problem. Meanwhile the four little girls are racing around like pixies with no hint of feeling the stress.

Cusco is an amazing city with beautiful old buildings, Inca ruins and Catholic churches galore. We got a tour of many of the ruins, but the highlight was the natural slides in the rock that all of the grandkids had to try. Thank God we had the older ones to take the little ones. What a joy to see them all playing together young and old with adults mixed in.

I love the baby llamas and alpacas that are being dressed up and roam the streets with women all dressed in their traditional garb. I don’t care that they want money for a picture because I explained that this is the way they made a living and one should not shun them and say they don’t want to pay them for their picture. We took one with all the little girls, the Peruvian women and baby llamas,, all of them loved it including the women.

I can’t express what a joy it is for me to be on this trip with my family. I look at them all interacting and feel so blessed that I have been able to provide a venue like this and see them all so happy, laughing together and enjoying everything. I know that each of them will take back memories that will sustain them in their lives ahead, but what they will really know is each one of them has the other’s back and they get to truly understand and feel the bond of our family. No one cares that it is a blended family, as far as they are concerned we are all related. And as I have said many times, you don’t have to be blood to be each others brother and sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, parents or grandparents.

We are all up and had a reunion with the Seattle family. All 4 girls running through the hallway knocking on the wrong doors waking strangers up. Here is a great picture of cousin love Gunnar and Tallulah asleep in the plane

And our @comfort” llama came along with us

We are off with the entire family to Peru, all 18 of us. The range in age is 2 1/2 to 73. The Vermont contngency left at 6:00 AM and we are now sitting around the Newark airport waiting for our 2 PM flight. We got an incredible deal for business class, thanks to Maggie, I believe we will be taking over the business class section.

We have brought along a llama for our trip as we want to do as the Peruvian’s do. However, our llama is very spoiled because he insisted on business class. We had to make him promise he would not spit green globs all over the airplane. Right now he is sitting in the United Club enjoying the Internet.

We arrive around 10 pm tonight and will join the Seattle four tomorrow morning. They will have arrived at 3:15 in the afternoon in Lima. Tomorrow begins with a tour of Lima and a promise to the kids that we will see mummy’s in the catacombs (maybe).

 

Is there a city that could be cooler than Stockholm? Probably, but of all the cities that I have visited in the last six weeks, this one is my favorite. With ferries buzzing here and there, public transportation and a host of rental bikes positioned everywhere in the city, it is easy to get around. The long evenings with museums open until late add to your days agenda. The Old Town sports a town square that could not be more charming where one can enjoy the sounds of a guitar. His notes soar to the heights of the old stone building and descend to your delight, soothing your weary body and calming your soul. The town square was full of tourists, but this music was so melodious that the crowd seemed to have come under its spell and all was quiet.

It was a holiday our first day here. Shap and I have now experienced three national holidays and two or three religious holidays. I can no longer keep them straight. We were treated to marching bands, and the King’s horse brigade. Swedish flags flew everywhere and people lined the banks of the many canals, lakes and the Baltic Sea. A particularly sunny day and warm the Swedes were rejoicing and taking advantage of it in a climate that hosts a lot of cloudy, raining days.

The ferry system is great; your bus card also allows you to get on the ferry. From our hotel we can grab the ferry and zip over to Old Town or the Amusement Park where many interesting museums reside. The Vasa museum, which holds the largest sailboat ever made in 1628, was built around the boat. It sunk almost immediately upon launching due to a squall and the weight of the cannons. The King and all the townspeople were there watching as it slipped into the harbor in full sail and within minutes keeled over and sank, killing 50 people. Imagine the reaction to that debacle? It was raised between 1958 and 1961 and eventually this museum was built.

A storybook museum was also part of our agenda, or at least a few of us. This proved to be as charming as you would imagine, complete with a troll hanging out observing everyone that passed by.

The Nordic museum housed a collection of Swedish history through the folk art and traditions. Replicas of rooms through the ages, folk art, textiles, jewelry, all of it was fascinating. Since it was raining most of the day we did spend our time in the museums gathering a lot of visual information. There are many more that we can visit and we look forward to exploring the city for one more day before we take off.

Traveling for six weeks has been a wonderful experience for us. The combination of traveling alone as a couple for four of the weeks and then as a group of seven for the remaining two weeks has been a great time for us. We accommodate each other very well, allowing for individual preferences. Most interesting for me is to see the influence of art and architecture transcending from one country to another. Also the indigenous tribes of many country seem to have experienced the same profiling against them as the American Indians. But they have not only survived due to their ability to keep the stories alive, but also because the younger generations demonstrated their power to take back the culture and let it become alive again. The Sami’s of Norway, Sweden and Finland have their own parliament and elections, although they are still under the rule of their country. We think that the U.S. is the only country to have treated our indigenous people poorly, but we are not alone.

Oh My God, I just looked out the window of our hotel and there is a party on the front lawn with a silver duvet covered bed accented with pink cushions, and a “woman” (not sure about that) in 4 inch heels, a lace body suit with just a corset over it and enough make up to convince me that she is a he. Meanwhile everyone else is walking around kind of frumpy looking. Can’t figure out what is going on but it sure is interesting.

Tomorrow we are back to Vermont, to my Green Mountains and my family. It has been a great experience but I will be happy to settle down, to no longer live out of my suitcase and enjoy the summer to come. Thanks for following the Smith’s.

 

I thought I would not be writing another blog until we got to Sweden but I could not resist the temptation of sharing the “Midnight Sun” with you. After being out on the water yesterday experiencing the malstrüms swirling by our Zodiac, I thought this area could not get any better. That is until, I experienced our trip into the Fjords guided by the midnight sun.

At 11:30 we turned into a fjord in the Lyofoten Islands, cruising at a gentle speed with the hillsides almost touching our ship. This is exciting to have the mountains so close, but it was nothing compared to the spectacular color radiating through the clouds which are creating the most enchanting colors of oranges, magenta, yellow, purple, blue and white. The sun did not shine into the fjord, but danced along the tips of the snow-covered mountains, and played hide and seek behind large bilious clouds. As if a spotlight was turned on behind the clouds, the sun would burn a blazing hole through them, or in the next minute create a dramatic effect by illuminating the edges of the cloud.

It was hard to know which side of the boat to be on, as the light show changed from orange, blue, and yellow, to pink, baby blue and white. In the first case, the view created a symphony of brass instruments, while the other side was a quiet melody of violins.

Until 1:00 in the morning the sky erupted into one scene after another. Just as you thought you had the perfect picture, another cloud formation would show its beauty. Slowly the light on the mountain tops began to disappear but dusk never came, the sun stuck it out all night while we gave up and went to bed.

Arriving in Bergen feels like coming home. I have been here enough times with Shap that the city is familiar. After all of the traveling, I feel like it is a homecoming. I rented an Air BnB for the seven of us with ONLY ONE bathroom. We all remembered our dorm days and it worked out fine. The “we” consisted of five friends from Stowe: Alan and Ellen Thorndike, Cindy and Jeff McKechnie and Louise Reed. All five of us have traveled together on various trips; although our personalities are quite different we seem to blend well and have a great time.

 Lysøen, Shap’s family’s Home belonging to Ole Bull and now a museum

What is meaningful for this trip is the beginning of a new chapter in many of our lives. Louise, with a year gone by since we lost our wonderful Paul, Allen, with a year of recovery from two long years battling depression, Ellen, with a year of retirement under her belt, Jeff and Cindy, coming out of two weddings and the joyous occasion of a new grandson, Then there is Shap and me,we have arrived into our seventies, are blessed with eight grandchildren, four out of five children living close by and our health is good. Decisions have to be made soon for our next number of years, what form this will take we are not sure.

But right now we are on a ship, cruising up the coast of Norway, stopping at incredibly beautiful ports of call. We passed the Arctic circle at 7:15 this morning. The scenery has changed to high snow capped mountains and small picturesque villages and cottages. I thought we would see more marine life but have been disappointed. I am sure the Gulf Stream has something to do with it.

As we cruise along in this pristine area, we hear that Trump is taking us out of the Paris agreement, has turned his back on Germany, and continues to assume a dictators role. Germany is now lining up with China, everyone is distancing themselves from us, and Rufus Wainwright sang “ I am so tired of America” at the Bergen Music Festival while people were clapping in the audience. Try hearing that? We were all so sad that this is the way that we are perceived. We are losing our standing in Europe, everywhere we go people are making jokes about Trump and the U.S. We have become the laughing stock of Europe, of Russia and the world. Even we laugh at the situation we find ourselves in, while being horrified that our senators and legislators sit by and watch the United States falling from grace. We all ask how much damage Trump can do? Just come to Europe and you will find out, he has done too much already.

Enjoy the photos of an amazing place in the world and remember you can help to make a change so get involved so we can keep this beautiful world.

We are all on a Kodiak going going to look at a malstrüm.

                    The malstürm

After experiencing the Border arrest in Russia, Shap and I ended up in an insane asylum in Berlin. Before you ask, how can they get into this much trouble, let me explain. I set up a photo shoot with a photographer before I left the U.S. His specialty is abandon buildings. About forty minutes outside Berlin, is an abandon insane asylum that was built in the late nineteen- twentieth century by the Germans. When the Russians took over East Germany, they used them for offices, and a small section for the insane. Now they sit completely abandoned with no fence around them, areas of access with deer and wild hogs roaming around.

Nathan Wright, a Brit who came to Berlin for a 5-day visit and is still here after 8 years, specializes in photographing abandon buildings. He has been exploring these buildings all over the world. He definitely has an eye for creating the scene. Besides this, he is great at helping you with your camera settings.

We parked on the side of a road, headed off into a field, and then onto an overgrown pathway surrounded by a jungle of trees that must have been beautiful lawns at one time. The first place was easy to get into, as we went through a door and up a set of staircases. Most of the rooms have peeling sick-colored yellow paint that I figured was full of lead and was definitely painted during the Russian period.

Under the yuck-yellow paint, was a blue color left over from the Germans. I seriously think that there must have been some morbid person that sat in a factory and looked at paint chips that would drive people even more insane. Every wall and window sash was peeling double layers of paint. At one point I took a picture of a wall that looked like a waterfall of peeling paint.

The eerie atmosphere of the rooms, the dirt on the floors, the old bathtubs, and toilets, the rusted out washers and old belt dryers, abandoned pipes, broken chairs and old operating tables added to the ghostly empty feeling. Hallways extending the length of the building with old shoes, newspaper, and receipt books scattered here and there created incredible pictures. Five different buildings with low light was a challenge, but the light created some amazing pictures.

Typical of me, I arrive on the scene and my battery ran out. I was in Cuba with a wide-angle lens when I should have had a portrait lens; I am now at the beginning of the day without a battery. I was able to get a couple of great pictures before it completely died and then some with the iPhone; of course I had to borrow Shap’s because I left mine in the hotel. You can see how this day went. I did borrow Shap’s fixed 100-lens camera, which gave me some pause for a bit, but then the lens and I came to an understanding, and I enjoyed the rest of the day.

We troop around the various buildings going through some pretty iffy rooms,but the next shocker was from Nathan who says: “ Do you want to go down in this hole to the basement or climb in this first story window?” I look at the window and it looks like an accident waiting to happen for me. I can just envision my head on one side of the window and my ass hanging out the other. Since my knees don’t work that well anymore I figure there was no way I could rely on them to help. So off to the hole in the basement, where Shap hops down to the first level right into a cloud of bugs. At this point I decide that the best thing that I could do is stay outside. But Shap would not hear of it and so I dove into basement through the bugs and onto the floor. Then we had to duck down through basement pipes that were wrapped with asbestos and continued up a set of stairs that were shaky at best. Nathan kept saying not go anywhere unless he told us, as half the building was burned out and the floor was falling through. However, we did get some of the best photos at this location.

At some point our age came up with Nathan and his statement was “You are the oldest couple I have taken down through that hole in the basement.” Great, does that make us stupid or cool?

 

 

Just so you don’t think we were done with border guards and police on trains, I want you to know that on our way home on the S bahn, we got kicked off the train. The ticket Nazi came by and asked in German why we did not have out ticket punched. I understood what he said, but just kept saying in English, we don’t understand. Best line of defense is to act dumb and pretend you have no idea what is going on. Finally, he says “Get Off, get ticket punched. “ In all my great wisdom I advise Shap to ignore him and stay on the train, as it was slowing down. The ticket Nazi starts yelling at us from halfway down the car to get off. So we finally got off the train and he yelled for us to get out ticket punched. I kept saying where, where? He motioned to a small red box where we punched our ticket. How ridiculous was this? We had obviously bought the tickets, we had not scammed the system, so why we had to get off to punch our ticket, I have no idea, just another autocrat pulling his weight around. Shap and I survived another incident on the train, once again.

 

Last day in Berlin, on to Norway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have been in Berlin since Sunday, what an amazing city. I have not been here since 1965 and there is no question that this city has had a transformation. When I was here most of the buildings were bombed out facades and the streets were a wreck, all broken up. It was worth your life to walk around and not sprain an ankle there were so many holes in the sidewalk.

Checkpoint Charlie is now preserved exactly where it stood. It brought back memories of going over to the East Side and being warned to stay in our group and not to say anything, just go to the museum, and do not take pictures. This is where I saw Queen Nephrite’s statue and was completely in awe of it. It is still here today.

What I saw then on the East side was a lot of Soviet style grey apartments and buildings ,also bombed out, but everything was in worse shape. Today it is hard to tell the difference or where the wall was. There are remnants and cobblestone placed along the street to remind us of this. We visited Bernauer Street where the apartments were right on the wall. People were jumping from the windows until the East German police bricked up all the windows and put barbwire on the roof. They evacuated the apartment houses and eventually put up a wall behind the apartments. Then they demolished the apartments and between the new wall and on the site of the apartments they built a higher wall, creating a no man’s land between. Having lived through this era, seeing the pictures on TV, and reading the descriptions and pictures at the wall with the guard tower, it all brought back many memories.

Looking through the wall to the East Side today

According to someone we talked to, you can still see the influence and feel the difference in the East side of Berlin from the West even today. He also said that each sector (the American, French and British) that was developed after the war has a distinct flavor.To me, Berlin looks completely modern with small reminders and government buildings that remain the same.

Apparently, Berlin has the least amount of cars as any city and I would say this is true. They have the most amazing bike lanes, which protect you from the traffic. It seems that everyone is on a bike. There are bikes with carriers in the front for small babies and groceries. There people going to work, riding in the Tiergarten but the hardest thing was staying out of the bike lane, as a pedestrian you share the sidewalk with the bikers.

We had the most moving experience at the Jewish Museum. There is one tribute near the Brandenburg Gate that you will see below. These rectangular stones form a maze that you walk in and out of, no names just a silent walk through them. Below them is a museum dedicated to the Holocaust where some of the displays hang in corresponding shape to the stones above as if they came through the roof. There are stories of families with some surviving relatives who gave photographs. Everyone walked in silence and reverence.

Thinking that there could not be a more moving experience, we still went to the actual Jewish Museum and we were both completely in awe of this entire experience. I want to quote the architect because I cannot describe in anyway what he puts into words:

For Libeskind, “The new design, which was created a year before the Berlin Wall came down, was based on three conceptions that formed the museum’s foundation: first, the impossibility of understanding the history of Berlin without understanding the enormous intellectual, economic and cultural contribution made by the Jewish citizens of Berlin, second, the necessity to integrate physically and spiritually the meaning of the Holocaust into the consciousness and memory of the city of Berlin. Third, that only through the acknowledgement and incorporation of this erasure and void of Jewish life in Berlin, can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.”^[13] A line of “Voids,” empty spaces about 66 feet (20 m) tall, slices linearly through the entire building. Such voids represent “That which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: Humanity reduced to ashes.

Most of the exhibit is underground and brings you from an existing building to a steel and concrete modern building with a few windows. Most of the time you are underground until you climb stairs leading to an exhibit of the Jewish history through time.

Garden of Exile

The floors are slanted giving you a sense of imbalance while you stand in the “Void,” the intersecting empty spaces. But even more disconcerting is the “Garden of Exile.”I took this picture this way so that you would have the feeling of what it is like to walk in this Garden.

To demonstrate the feeling the Jews felt when arriving in new countries, having gotten out of Germany in the 1930’s, the garden is built with an upward slant from where you enter and a tilt to the right. Again there are large concrete pillars with trees planted on top for you to walk through. Only this time you are never on sure footing, you always feel like you will topple over. So you not only experience this exile emotionally, but physically.

Garden of Exile

The “ Holocaust Tower” was even more poignant. I thought I was going into a tower to climb up, but instead entered a completely dark triangular room with a sky light built into the ceiling creating a slice of light directed downward to illuminate only a bit of the room. You could hear the traffic and sounds from outside, but you were standing in a black void with a bit of grey from the light. To me, it created a feeling of what the gas chambers must have felt like. To Shap, it was very spiritual. The walls leading to the light at the top was enlightening for him, that there was hope. So you see, how we interrupt our experiences different. Some people peeked in and left, I think feeling nothing. Shap and I stayed there for a long time. I am glad he saw hope, I saw the void of nothingness, of despair.

Holocaust Tower

There were three exhibits that left Shap and I with indelible memories, the two I just mentioned and the third was called “Fallen Leaves” but I think it should be called “10,000 Faces.” Here is the description:

Installation Shalekhet – Fallen leaves[

10 000 faces punched out of steel are distributed on the ground of the Memory Void, the only “voided” space of the Libeskind Building that can be entered. Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman dedicated his artwork not only to Jews killed during the Shoah, but to all victims of violence and war. Visitors are invited to walk on the faces and listen to the sounds created by the metal sheets, as they clang and rattle against one another.

You have no concept of what this does to you emotionally. You can see the picture below and then perhaps it will hit you as it did us. These metal faces are in a triangular room, again with a shaft of light, and they are all piled up on each other. It reminds you of all the pictures that you have seen of the murdered Jews laying on top of each other. One face on top of another, on top of another, scattered throughout the room, 10,000 of them. And as you walk on them the noise of the metal sounds like screams, you think to yourself, I am walking on the dead, I am hearing them screaming for us to remember them. Shap thought that the sound was of breaking glass, that it was spiritual and the contrast of walking from the light into the dark corner affected him. But this installation did not just remind one of the Holocaust, but of the thousands of people being killed by terrorists, by dictators, by ISIS. It is horrifying how genocide continues through the ages.

This says it all, I think.

We left the museum after three hours completely in awe of the architect and the artist that could create such an emotional experience by steel, concrete, and metal. The other exhibits are amazing but Libeskind created a masterpiece. If you never go to another museum, this one should never be missed.

I have been thinking that the blog is getting boring and so I am looking at a different way of approaching it. Although we have studied Russian history and wars, our memory is probably not the best. I have enough problems remembering our own history. Still there are just so many times I can tell you about wars and the Romanov’s. So today you do not get a history lesson.

Walking, driving and boating along this city’s streets, canals and walkways your senses are bombarded with the pure wealth of the eighteenth to the early nineteenth century in St. Petersburg. You imagine what it would be like if you were not part of this aristocracy or an accomplished general having worked your way through the ranks.

Take St. Isaac’s Church, which has 112 marble columns holding up the church and the dome. You were probably a peasant or serf brought in from the country to work on it. And if you were one of the peasants that applied the mercury filled gold paint to the top of the dome, you got to die of mercury poisoning. Workers were expendable and died by the hundreds building these buildings. No wonder there was a revolt.

 

What strikes me in this city more than any other is GOLD. Every building and room seems to be covered in gold accents, and I am not talking about tiny accents. Elaborate carved moldings and frames around mirrors and wall paintings everywhere. Gold chairs with brocade cloths, gold clocks, gold statues, gold candelabras’, gold, gold, gold inside and out.

Peterhof, a summer “suburban” residence about a half hour away from the city by hydrofoil is the ultimate statement of GOLD. So today, I am dedicating this blog to pictures instead of words so you can fully appreciate the meaning of GOLD.

And now for a few pictures of the inside of Catherine the Great’s summer palace! This palace was completely burned out and destroyed by the Nazi’s who lived in it and took everything including the famous Amber Room. However, before the siege the Russians were able to bury  a lot of the sculptures and move most of the pictures to the Ural’s. In 1954 they began restoring the palace from pictures and by piecing together fragments scattered around the grounds. All the gold today is gold paint with ground gold in it, but originally it was all gold leaf. Think about how accomplished all those peasant craftsmen were and never got recognized. The outside of the palace on the right was all in gold in the time of Elizabeth the ruler before Catherine the Great.