TUSCANY TIME

           

I now understand why there are a million books about Tuscany:  its history, its art, its natural beauty, its food.  How many places are there where you can be brought to the edge of tears by your dinner entre on the same day you were moist-eyed at the sight of a sun-warmed medieval stone building?  “Not enough” is the answer, not bloody enough.  The savoring of the moment extends to the food and drink, the angle of the sun on a hillside, the curve of a white marble column carved by an artist seven hundred years dead. 

            We hadn’t planned on spending time in Tuscany.  It evolved during the first few weeks of this trip.  One of the challenges of traveling for four months is figuring out how to pace yourself.  You can’t go, go, go every day or you risk physical collapse, or one of those hideous, “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium” travel experiences where it all becomes an endless blur of strange restaurants and towns glimpsed through windows while the touristic heavy hitters are ticked off one by one.  Did you “do” Rome yet; seen the David in Florence; had a pint in a gen-you-ine English bar them folks over there call a pub?  You betcha, ain’t it old and furreign??

            On the other hand, the mantle of “TRIP OF A LIFETIME” is draped above this journey and so there’s a certain urgency about not wasting time.  I don’t want to miss Stonehenge because I spent a day hanging out in the garden of the cottage, watching the sun glinting off the top of the trees and drinking coffee and reading.  On the other hand . . . .  what’s a vacation for if not having time in the garden? 

The formula for achieving a good trip is further complicated when the travelers are different ages, different genders and in very different places in their lives.  While visiting Admiral Nelson’s ship in Portsmouth may make Max swoon with delight, it’s not something I can do for more than an hour or so; and while Jeff could spend a day inside the Duomo of Siena, contemplating the frescoes and marble columns and blue-painted ceiling, it’s not something Max can do for more than an hour, and I find myself getting cross-eyed from pious Madonnas and crucified Christs after a while.

A few weeks into our trip when we were still in London, I looked at the itinerary for the next few months and blanched.  Here is what I saw for just the first month-and-a-half of travel:  A fortnight in London, followed by two weeks traveling around England bopping from place to place; then the cross-continental rail journey and a week in Slovenia; then Venice; and then, hiking the five towns of Cinque Terre.  I started to feel overwhelmed by the details of it all.  Pray tell, what would we do with our enormous backpacks while hiking from village to village in Cinque Terre, how would we handle the logistics of leaving them in one town and hiking to another, then returning to get them . . . .  it sounded Sisyphisian.  I looked at that part of our trip and thought, this feels like work.  Then we got an email from a potential house exchange partner asking if we’d like their apartment in Bonn for a week at the same time we were scheduled to be in Cinque Terre.  My eyes lit up:  I hadn’t been able to finangle a trip to Germany and I wanted to go there badly, so I looked up train times and airfares and figured we could do it if we absolutely busted our butts and made seven hundred close connections and maybe, for good measure, made burnt offerings to the gods.  So then I thought:  how about instead of schlepping our packs along the Italian coast or dragging ourselves to Germany we found a nice place for a week with a pool?  Yes, a pool, because nothing makes Max happier than a pool.  And a place with history for Jeff and me?  But where could that be?  And the answer was Tuscany.  A little apartment in a clutch of 18^th century farm buildings tucked into a valley about a mile outside of Castellini in Chianti, which is a medieval walled town between Florence and Siena.  It will be nice, I reasoned, we can swim, visit Siena, drive around to a bunch of hill towns, see art, see history, maybe drive up to Florence, too, and maybe find some hiking tours and  . . . . and there I was, go go go again, the same thing just with a pool added.

            But then this lovely area took hold.  Our apartment is built from local stone and enormous old beams, and from its terrace you look out onto rolling, tree-covered hills.  There’s a big lawn with soccer goals, a badminton net and a ping pong table, and a lovely pool surrounded by a stone patio and edged with folding chairs.  The spring flowers are in bloom, and along the terrace and lining the steps down to the pool are pots of blossoms, dotted with white butterflies.  Little green-jeweled lizards sun themselves on the wall, appropriately named Italian Wall Lizards.  Nothin’ fancy in the nomenclature department, ma’am, just the facts.

            Sitting on the terrace our first morning, I heard a bird call I’ve never heard before.  Yet I knew instantly what it was.  I’d like to claim some sort of Audubon expertise but the simple fact was that the bird’s call, repeated again and again, was “cuckoo, cuckoo.”  It was an instance of life imitating art, or in this case, life imitating schmaltzy German clocks that in turn imitate life.  Cuckoo, cuckoo it calls and I realize why all those German woodcarvers chose this sweet call to mark time:  it’s a lovely way to chart the passage of the hours.

            Periodically, we hear the clanging of cowbells or actually, goat bells.  A small herd of eight or nine tan goats, overseen by a very bossy billy goat, graze up and down the hill.  They will be working their way over a particularly juicy patch of grass when all of a sudden, billy goat (who does, in fact, look quite gruff) barks a command, and they immediately form a single file and march to their little wooden shed.  There they’ll linger until billy issues another curt command, and they’ll sprint up the hill, or sprint down the hill, up and down they go, several times a day, evidently the Jack LaLanes of goat land.  I half expect to see them get down and give ol’ billy five or ten good push-ups before they race, single file, back up the incline.  Maybe they’re very smart goats and this is their way of avoiding the butcher block by staying lean and sinewy.

            Between the birds and the bell-ringing goats and the warm sun and cool pool, my go-see-do agenda fades away.  We go out for dinner and have the best cannelloni I’ve ever had, so good that I wanted to fly home, train to become a restaurant critic, get a job reviewing restaurants and then fly back so I could give this place the bazillion gold dining-out stars it so deserves.  When we don’t eat out, we cook simple meals and have them on the terrace.  Everything tastes divine. Is it because it’s inherently better, or the ingredients are fresher, or we buy the food from local shops, or we are just so damn relaxed that we could chew gravel and be happy about it?  I don’t know.  I buy fresh baked bread in DC; I shop at Eastern Market and get imported cheese and free range chicken, but I do it all with the sound of a thudding clock -- and not one where time’s passage is warbled by a cuckoo but one where time is marked by quick glances at my watch, and school schedules and work assignments and squeezing in a trip to the gym.  The food I buy in DC could be as good as Tuscan fare but tension and tight schedules and to-do lists flavors it, not goat bells and the feel of sun-warmed medieval stones beneath my feet.

            So I am reveling in this.  We play badminton after dinner with rackets whose mesh heads are worn thin, requiring Jeff to play with a fistful of rackets in order to cover the various holes, whacking at the birdie to the great amusement of Max and me.  I mix an Italian cocktail in the afternoon made with Aperol and white wine and seltzer water, a delightful refreshing drink, and we have bread and cheese on the terrace and drink strong Italian coffee.  And at night, I lay in bed and listen to the silence, the silence of no cars, no sidewalk conversations, no people.  In the morning the cuckoo calls.  We will go to a lovely medieval town perched on a nearby hilltop, overlooking vineyards and olive groves, and wander sun-warmed streets but leave early so that we can return to this place, which has reminded me that traveling includes being still as well as moving.

VENICE THROUGH NEW EYES

           

Sometimes you need another person’s eyes in order to see clearly.  When Max saw Venice, it was love at first sight.  I’ve been to Venice twice before, and maybe those times my vision was jaded, or too tired, or distracted, for I failed to see the wondrous beauty that Max immediately recognized.  Once before I was in Venice with friends whose marriage was dissolving, like those flavored tablets you drop into a glass of water and watch fizz and sputter until the water is stained with the tablet’s dissolution.  I remember almost nothing from that visit, my memories of it having dissolved along with my friend’s union.

Another time I was in Venice with Jeff, and I remember snippets from that:  a wonderful rainy day lunch, a hotel room so small you had to crawl across the bed to get to the bathroom, a cruise down the Grand Canal.  But Venice never grabbed my heart the way other places have, and when I was planning this four-month journey I considered skipping it altogether.  But Max really wanted to see Venice, and it is a place that should be seen soon since sea level rise may well swallow it, making it a latter-day Atlantis, a once-there-was-a-city kind of place that will one day exist only in stories and paintings and old movies.

            So I dutifully added Venice to the itinerary, figuring it would have an almost Disneylandish appeal to Max with its canals and boats, and lack of cars.  But Max saw the Venice not of Disney but of the Doges.  He saw its grandeur and immense beauty, not only along the Grand Canal but along Venice’s myriad back street canals.  He insisted we get off the main street and dive instead into the little back walkways and neighborhood piazzas, with their small footbridges over narrow canals. As a consequence, the Venice I saw this time displayed its many small, glittering gems along with its crown jewels.

            In fact, “glitter” could be a word that describes much of Venice, both outside and within its palaces and cathedrals.  The brilliant May sunshine sparkled off the water of the Grand Canal.  Every conceivable make and model of boat zipped in frothy patterns up and down the Canal, leaving behind whitecaps like ivory eruptions on the water’s blue surface.  The sun glittered off the water, and off the sides of the long narrow vaporetta boats that chugged like city buses from one stop to the next.  The boat would slow as it approached the next pick-up point, and the sinewy young boatman would casually toss a loop of rope the thickness of my arm over the tie-up at the station, reining the boat to a halt like a restive horse brought to a standstill with a final jerk.  The boat would hug the dock, the boatman would slide back the gate along the boat’s edge, and people would step from the floating dock onto the floating boat, as casually as walking down the steps of the number 42 bus in DuPont Circle.  Then the vaporetta would nose back out into the Canal, making its way past four and five and six story mansions that clustered, knee-deep in water, along its edge.  Coming back from dinner at night we’d peek through the windows of the mansions illuminated from within by chandeliers, revealing salon-style living rooms painted in bright colors.

            Venice’s back streets were like turning over a beautiful painting and discovering on its back side another beautiful image.  The streets were narrow and sometimes dark, a crevice between towering stone walls of houses and other buildings.  Sometimes only wide enough for one, the streets were paved paths twisting between structures.  Down a straight short path you’d go, around a curvy corner and, surprisingly, into a small back-alley neighborhood piazza.  The blue sky would reappear from between the buildings, the square would have a tree or two and there would be a few mothers with baby carriages sitting on a bench, next to a few old men, passing the time.  Each piazza had a stone cistern in the middle, which were built centuries ago to capture rainwater that would be filtered through sand and purified for this city, built in the midst of seawater, to drink.  The little street paths would go past a restaurant or a wood-panelled bar selling espressos and short glasses of wine; past house doors or long blank walls.  Fifteen steps away from the promenade along the Grand Canal, crawling with gobs of tourists, the back streets were quiet, empty except for groups of people walking in twos and threes, on their way from one space to another.

            The promenade along the Grand Canal was another matter.  The cruise ships have claimed Venice as their own private playground, turning it into an insufferable mob scene from 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning until the late afternoon when the ships move onto the next town to despoil.  Some of the cruise ships anchor just offshore and send their thousands of passengers into Venice on boats that are still three and four times the size of the vaporetta.  The boats pull in and a couple of hundred passengers are disgorged as a group, coughed up onto the sidewalk where they stand in a huddle, waiting for their tour guide to take them to the Piazza of San Marco and whisk them into the Cathedral and the Palace of the Doges.  They move in big clumps, and I found myself wishing for a couple dozen good border collies to run circles around them, nipping at their heels and keeping them moving in an orderly fashion.  The groups of people overwhelm everyone else.  They are all nationalities, joined in a fraternity of obnoxious behavior:  French, German, American, Japanese, Indian.  Their tour guides lead the pack, holding aloft umbrellas or a stick from which ribbons flutter so that the herd can follow the leader.  If you enter the Piazza of San Marco any time after 10:00 in the morning, you’re screwed.  You will confront thousands of clumped tourists, lined up to shuffle through the sites before they are vacuumed back onto the cruise ships and carted off to the next venue.

            The size of the cruise ships is mythic, almost unbelievable.  I was sitting in the lounge of our hotel, up on the second floor, relaxing for a moment and looking out the window, when my view was blocked by a cruise ship floating by.  It dwarfed the hotel, it dwarfed the Campanile of San Marcos; it was 10 stories high and lined with people, like a Titanic gluttenously engorged to obscene proportions.  Below it the vaporetti slowed, fighting the waves; the gondoliers headed to the banks of the canals; and the water taxis zoomed across the ship’s wake, slamming their passengers up and down from the force of it.  Then the ship passed like a water-borne Hindenberg, and all was calm again.

            While you have to fight the baaing herds of tourists to get into the major sites, once you’re inside and up a flight of stairs or down a hall, the numbers quickly dwindle or even disappear.  Inside the Palace of the Doges, and the Basilica of San Marcos, the glitter of Venice reappears: this time not sunlight glinting off of water, but sunlight shining through windows and glinting off gold mosaics, gold leaf, gilt-edged paintings, gold frames, gold, gold everywhere.  The Palace of the Doges was ostentation of an epic degree; the Trump Towers of its age.  Each room was covered with paintings and frescoes, walls and ceilings alike.  The staircases were ceilinged in gold leaf, scenes from the Bible intermingled with scenes featuring the Doge, Christ-like, being blessed by the Virgin Mary, by God, by fat angels trumpeting his divine right to rule.  And what a job being a Doge was: we should all be so lucky.  He had no real power, no duties other than turning up at the occasional public ceremony or church service, he served for life and had an enormously opulent home to live in.  In return for his entirely titular leadership, the Council of Ten and the Council of Twenty and the other lords and aristocrats of Venice ran the city.  The Doge was a lot like the Queen, without the color-coordinated handbags.

            In contrast to the Basilica of San Marco and the Doge’s Digs, the Santa Maria ­­­­­­­­­­­della Salute is lovely but not overwhelming.  Built in the early 1600s in thanks to the Virgin Mary for ending the plague that had wiped out one-third of Venice’s population, the octagonal church sits across the Grand Canal from San Marco.  The altar is flanked by statues by Titian, and rising above the altar is a statue of Mary, above whose head hangs a colossal crown.  Standing outside of the church, looking onto the Grand Canal, I could imagine the terror that the plague must have brought, the level of infestation this city would experience between ships discharging their cargoes laced with vermin, and the pestilential canals in summer’s simmering heat.  Small wonder they built a monumental church to praise their deliverance.

            So we wandered Venice, praising it and its deliverance through the ages.  And this time, for me, seeing it with wide-open, revitalized eyes.

SLOVENIA ON MY MIND

           

A few observations on Slovenia as we bid it a sad farewell.

·        There is nothing quite so amusing as watching a re-run of the Bill Cosby Show in Slovenian.  Cosby dubbed in Slovenian is like a Bill Cosby routine in and of itself, a sort of MC Escher winding staircase of humor:  Cosby doing Cosby in Slovenian, doing Cosby in Slovenian . . . on and on it goes.  Cosby’s dubbed voice was nothing like his real voice, either; it was a fake hearty voice, the kind where the man strains to make it deeper than it really is.  The Slovenian language sounds like Russian-Polish-Czech, making it impossible to even remotely decipher any of the jokes.  Until the conversation turned to “jumbalya,” which jumped out at me both because it was a word I recognized and because it was so deeply incongruous to hear it uttered in the midst of RussPolCzech.

·        Slovenian is also the best language to hear drunks talk in.  To the untutored ear, Slovenian sounds as if the speaker is already slurring his words a little.  When the speaker is three sheets to the wind, as was the case with a table of men next to us at dinner one night, the result is what sounds like one endlessly slurred single word, a sort of schigelblizelsnarzelflutz.  We were having dinner in Izola at an outdoor restaurant and a group of about 5-6 men plopped down at the table beside us.  It looked like they had spent the day out at sea, perhaps sailing or fishing.  One guy’s pants kept falling down, to his great amusement, revealing a navy blue underpanted butt.  Another guy waxed eloquent while his friends made obvious fun of him, which he stoically ignored.  I realized that it is much easier to be by a table of drunks who are speaking in a foreign language than speaking in one you understand – you can tune them out much easier, while enjoying the additional bonus of snickering at their slurred words.

·        The group of boozy buddies aside, I noticed many small groups of men just hanging out, drinking coffee or a glass of beer, deep in conversation.  It wasn’t the typical male fraternity you see in Washington:  business lunches or overgrown frat boys getting self-consciously drunk.  These were simply friends, enjoying a good conversation.  No one was texting on his phone, ignoring everything around him; there were few cell phones and only one or two people on laptops.  Mostly it was men, and some pairs of women, spending time together, talking. 

·        It seems that much of Slovenian society is built around coffee bars and sidewalk cafes.  We got to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and barely made it out of cafes long enough to even walk around the city.  On a sunny Sunday morning, families with children, couples, singles, groups of friends – everyone was out at cafes, enjoying a coffee, chatting and lingering.  You could spend a week in Ljubljana not because there is a lot of historical interest to see there, but because the pace is so damn relaxing.  My Mother’s Day morning was spent over cappacinos and a lovely fruit salad in a café that overlooked the Ljubljianca River, a clutch of churches and the castle walls crowning the hilltop.  One of the nicest afternoons we’ve had on this trip was spent in Izola, in a waterside café, watching the sail boats, drinking coffee (Jeff and me) or eating gelato (Max), chatting and playing cards.  This is something we never do at home: just wile away a pleasant afternoon by the water, doing absolutely nothing.  There are always house chores or homework; obligations real or imagined, that keep us from the simple, luxurious pleasure of just spending time together in a lovely setting.  Will I resolve to do that more often when we return home?  I’ve already done so.  Will I keep my resolution?  In a city like DC that prides itself on the fact that everybody has a blackberry making him or her accessible day or night, at work or at home, with their families or by themselves, where you can see parents texting on their cell phones while they are out trick-or-treating with their kids, or see a couple out on a date absorbed in texting other people, who may also be out on dates, texting other people . . . . the concept of true leisure time, of dawdling (there’s a word you never hear any more) has been swallowed up by the prioritization of accessibility.  Accessibility uber alles.  You don’t love the one you’re with anymore, to paraphrase Crosby, Stills, and Young – you love whoever is texting or calling or emailing you.

·        The Slovenian coast is a challenge to a sun-loving beach goer because it is all rocks.  As in gravel, pebbles, boulders.  Rocks and also cement since they’ve hardened the shore, to use the parlance of the coastal land-use planners, by cementing right up to the edge of the water and in some cases, down into it.  We bicycled from Izola to Koper, a town with the remnants of a medieval core that’s about 3-4 miles from Izola, and the bike path ran along the sea.  The water was edged in rocks and rip-rap (chunks of boulders intentionally placed along the water to prevent erosion), yet people were awkwardly sprawled on the boulders, soaking up the sun, or gingerly walking, bare-footed, among the pebbles.  Koper has taken it a step further and done away with the shore altogether, building a cement terrace to the water’s edge and then curving it downward into the water a foot or two.  They’ve attached steel pool ladders at short intervals along the curving cement edge.  Koper has managed to transform the wild Adriatic Sea into, literally, a swimming pool.  It is the ultimate transformation of a living, biodiverse coastal ecosystem into a Holiday Inn pool.  Izola and Piran haven’t taken it that far but you won’t find a sandy beach on the Slovenian coast, which doesn’t seem to deter people from bringing their babies and picnics down to the water’s edge and walking tender-footed amongst the rocks.

·        Slovenia feels far from everything, but when you stand by the water in Izola and look out over the sea, you see Italy in the distance.  You can even see the sprawling rooftops of Trieste, the closest Italian city to the Slovenian coast.  Trieste is giant in comparison to Izola, yet it’s only an hour’s bus ride away.  Izola is quiet.  The houses cluster together on the narrow streets, sharing walls and roofs, little back yards cheek by jowl with each other, and yet at night when we sat out on the deck of our house exchange apartment, you wouldn’t hear a sound:  no canned TV laugher drifting out, no music blaring, no cars revving by.  Quiet.  In a place of crammed proximity to one another, privacy.  And peace.

I FEEL sLOVEnia

          

 Slovenia’s new national slogan, which it is using to promote itself to tourists, is “I FEEL sLOVEnia.”  You see it everywhere:  on the official Slovenian website, on pamphlets and brochures in the tourist information offices, even on promotional tee shirts.  Feel the “love” in S-love-nia, baby.  And whoever came up with that catchy wordplay deserves a gold star.  You’d have to be pretty hard-hearted not to love this beautiful country in general, and its small coastal towns in particular.

            Slovenia shares a border with Italy to the west, Austria to the north, and Croatia to the east and south.  It’s a microcosm of Europe in a country the size of New Jersey.  It has the Julian Alps, gray jagged mountains topped with snow, even in May.  There are farm fields and forests alike, huge national parks where bears and lynxes still roam, and a capital city with a relaxed, coffee-bar vibe.  Then there’s the little 29 mile long coast along the Adriatic.  We are staying in Izola, a town on the coast that barely gets a mention in many of the guide books.   

            Izola feels very Italian, but with a twist.  It’s a fishing village that is also turning to tourism, and so far it has balanced the two.   When tourists come – which evidently they do in the summer – the town can be filled with Italians and other Slovenians.   Now, in May, the only people in town are the locals – and us.  The harbor is filled with boats.  The streets curve and wind their way, emerging along the water’s edge and then disappearing back again into the town.   The buildings are made of stone and bricks, and are stuccoed and painted in beautiful pastels:  lemon yellow, peach, lime green, pale blue.  Every building has wooden shutters, some a plain brown, others painted to match or complement the hues.

            Our house exchange apartment is located right off the little main street of town, in the old section.  It couldn’t be better located.  The street is lined with trees and flowers, and along it is a continual row of coffee shops, gelato vendors, and restaurants.  Our apartment is gorgeous: wooden floors, lots of windows, a big deck off the kitchen, interesting artwork, and two comfortable bedrooms perfect for us.  There is another apartment upstairs, and the outside of the building is freshly painted a deep peach.

            At dinner one night, at an outdoors restaurant along the marina, we heard the sound of men singing nearby.  There was a concert in a church just a few steps away from where we were eating, celebrating the end of WWII, and we could hear the all-male chorus singing marches and ballads.  As we left the restaurant, the concert ended and the singers came out, still high from the performance, and clumps of them strolled away.  One group in front of us started singing again, reprising a favorite ballad.  The men were all in their 50s, 60s or 70s, and were dressed as working men dress for a special occasion.  Their deep voices drifted down the dark street, and they piled into a streetside café, laughing and singing snippets of songs, to have a celebratory drink.  We walked slowly, enjoying their harmonies, the acapella beauty of men’s voices joined together.

            We took a long walk outside of town the next day, along the edge of the Adriatic and up into the hills above Izola.  Olive groves, vineyards and little farms cover the hillside.  Izola has excellent vineyards, we’ve discovered much to our pleasure!  A warm, blue-skied day brings out the colors of Izola, with its orange tile roofs and clustered houses running down to the marina and the sea, which is clear enough to see to the bottom, shifting in colors from radiant blue to deep purple to aquamarine.  In the distance we could see Italy, the overbearing neighbor that claimed Izola and the Istrian coast for its own for nearly 800 years.

            The other gem of the Slovenian coast is Piran, which we explored on a day trip yesterday, taking the city bus from Izola.  Piran claims the attention of tourbooks, and although we are now firmly Izola-boosters, we can see why.  Piran juts out on a promontory into the sea, the thumb of land covered with houses jumbled together along narrow streets.  It was a walled city, and portions of the wall, which was built in the 1450s, still remain.  Piran is dominated by a huge piazza in the middle, and overlooking it from a hill is the Cathedral and Bell Tower of St. George, dedicated to that dragon-slaying saint.  The narrow streets spin off the piazza in all directions.  We wandered the town all afternoon, stopping for lunch at a tiny back-street restaurant with a few tables lined up outside.  Then back into the streets, the buildings 4 or 5 stories high, painted in bright colors or with stucco peeling, revealing the brick and stones within.  Laundry hung from the windows along double-decker clothes lines.  The town was quiet.  We emerged from one twisting street, overhung with the houses and laundry and emerged, blinking from the glare, onto a big cement terrace abutting the sea.  Time for coffee by the Adriatic, then back into the warren of streets we plunged, this time headed for the cathedral.

            The cathedral sits above the city on a hill, resting on a stone wall that is at least 7 stories high that runs from hilltop to the sea.  From it we spy the medieval wall, zig-zagging up another hill to the remains of the fortifications that once guarded Piran from the Ottoman hordes.  We hiked up to the fortifications, following the wall, along a vertical incline.  From the top of the turrets you can look down onto the entire town of Piran and the cathedral, the uniform orange tiled roofs glinting, the blue Adriatic hugging the curves of the town.  I have found myself saying, “This is like Dubrovnik; this reminds me of Venice; this looks like an Italian street” but in truth, Piran and Izola are themselves:  part Italian, part Dalmatian coast, part eastern Europe, part just themselves.

            Back in Izola we listen to the Slovenians talking around us.  Children at the elementary school that is just behind the apartment yell at each other as they play outside.  We buy coffees and nod hello.  And we feel the sLOVE-nia.

RIDIN' THE RAILS FROM ENGLAND TO SLOVENIA

           

 We have officially entered Europe for Month 2 of our grand travels.  It took us one-and-a-half days to get to Slovenia from England – days filled with constant train travel.  We left York on Thursday morning for what was supposed to be a relatively easy trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon for an afternoon spent wandering the streets of The Bard and an evening spent at the newly renovated and recently re-opened Royal Shakespeare Theatre.  The train out of York was delayed for nearly an hour, causing us to miss our connection in Birmingham and catch a later train, which finally got us into Stratford around 5:15 PM – and our tickets to see “MacBeth” were for 7:15.  So much for a relaxed stroll around the town.  We got to our B&B, found out that we were (of course) in the room at the top of the building, humped the 500 pound backpacks up the three flights of stairs, threw on a change of clothes, and were at the theater by 6:15 for a quick bite at the café.  While noshing at a little table by the Avon River, my plastic cup caught a breeze and sailed off, swirling lazily for a moment in the spring air, until falling – kerplunk – into the river, the river on which lovely swans were making their graceful way, on which people were rowing, in which fish and other aquatic animals were living.  Splash went my plastic cup and there I was, Ms. Environmentalist, a person who has spent the past 26 years of her professional life working to protect water bodies from pollution, particularly pernicious plastic pollution, splash went my never-to-biodegrade cup, landing right by a regal swan, the emblem of Stratford, as boaters, theatergoers and God Himself looked on askance.  I have sinned, I moaned, I have just emptied my karma bank with one bigass bad karma withdrawal.  All that was needed was for the swan to swallow the cup and then go into a paroxysm of choking and gagging and expire, right there.  But it didn’t, and I managed to slink into the theater without being pelted with other plastic cups from enraged onlookers.

            However, the play was fantastic, and as we returned to our B&B we bumped into a group of 4 senior British women, also fresh from the play.  How did you like it? we asked.  Two liked it, one demurred and the other “wasn’t sure about having a colored man play a Scotsman.”  Banqo was played by a tall, absolutely beautiful, British man of African descent; in other words, if the words were being uttered in 1950, a “colored man.”  Max stared literally open-mouthed at the woman.  The moment we got into our room he said, “I’ve never heard someone use that word, I’ve only read it, like in To Kill A Mockingbird.”  There we all were, nominally sharing the same year of 2011, with one end of the generational span using a word that the other end of the generational span had never heard uttered and would never consider saying.  It was the span of progress achieved over decades, compacted into a living room in a B&B in a town in England in the course of a polite exchange about a play.

            We arose the next morning and made our way to the Stratford rail station.  We were off to the continent!  The train pulled out of Stratford at 9:30 in the morning, and thus began our day-and-a-half of nonstop choo-chooing.  We pulled into London around noon, did a few errands, got the tube to the gigantic St. Pancras Rail Station, went through security which consisted of a bored customs agent glancing at our passports and stamping them, and then onto our fast train through the Chunnel.  It was unnerving to think that we were below the full weight of the English Channel, all that water above us, as we zipped along in the dark.  So much for making sure we had window seats: we got to see a whole lotta dark!

            Then we arrived in Paris, and there’s nothing that screams “SEXY!” louder than wearing a fifteen thousand pound backpack, a plastic carrier bag dangling from your hand, as you make your way through the streets of romance and love. Yes, men stared at me with raw animal desire as I clumped by, my backpack-Quasimodo look accessorized by my lovely bright white new tennis shoes, which I had to wear in order to keep my ankle bones from shattering from the weight of the pack.  I was the Brigitte Bardot of Backpackers, an angel in adidas. 

            And then it was onto our overnight train for our trip from Paris to Ljubljana.  I had booked us a sleeper car with visions of Rosemary Clooney and that other woman from “White Christmas” dancing through my head, how cute they looked in their crisp little pressed jammies, peeking out from their snug bunks as they chatted with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.  There we’d be, too, cute as buttons, rolling along the rails.  We found the sleeper car and opened the door to our compartment, filled with excited anticipation, only to see approximately 14 inches of space inside.  For the three of us, our three elephantine-sized backpacks, various carrier bags, and daypacks.  It was like trying to squeeze a traveling circus into a matchbox.  We tried to enter all at once and got jammed in the doorway, which necessitated complex maneuvering (“OK,  on the count of three I’ll turn sideways, Max will lie on the floor, Jeff you grab the top railing and pull yourself up, and everyone do a 45 degree turn to the left, now GO.”)  We took off our backpacks and stacked them against the wall inside the tiny compartment.  It was like a show-down from an old Western movie:  us eyeing our backpacks and drawling in a menacing twang:  “There ain’t room enough in this here compartment for all of us, pardner.”  If I’d had a gun, I’d have shot either the backpacks or myself.

But then we took a closer look.  The compartment was essentially one half of a regular six-seater train compartment.  Instead of having two bench seats facing each other, each capable of seating 3 people, it had one of those bench seats.  Then above it was another bench seat, and above that was the third. The porter had already made up the seats with clean white sheets and pillows, and had laid clean white duvets across each of them, along with a big, old-fashioned wooden hanger (for hanging your fur coat on, no doubt) and a complimentary bottle of water.  Peering beneath the lowest bunk we saw a large storage area, into which we promptly shoved two of the packs.  Then opposite the top bunk was another storage space, and we hoisted the third pack into that.  Hanging from a railing from two strong hooks was a ladder, which Max promptly climbed to claim the top bunk, with its own reading light and a shelf.  Jeff and I settled onto the bottom bunk after folding the middle bunk up against the wall, and wa la – space galore!  The only other thing in the compartment was a cupboard with twin doors that upon opening, revealed a teeny sink with a faucet.  On the inside of one door were three little towel racks from which hung three little face towels, and on the inside of the other door were three hoops into which three glasses had been set, filled with drinking water and covered with paper tops – for brushing our teeth, I learned from the German porter (“Vas ist das?” I asked, my high school German once again coming in handy.  His answer was something along the lines of, “Das ist der thingy fur da brushing of das teethers.”  “Yah,” I answered sagely, smug in my bilingual splendor.)

By the time we’d organized the compartment into a useable space, our next door neighbors, a middle aged German couple, had already eaten the food they’d brought on board, made their way to the toilet, changed into sleeping gear and shut the door of their compartment for the night.  The French couple on the other side of us had brought with them what appeared to be a mobile toaster oven, and they were busy working their way through a bottle of wine while toasting pancetta bread and cheese.  We were the obvious slackards, failing to be either snoozing or eating within five minutes of entering the sleeper car.

But we soon got into the spirit of things, breaking out the sandwiches and wine we’d brought with us, passing food up to Max ensconced in his eyrie, chatting as we rocketed along the rails.  I was a little disappointed that our neighbors had sequestered themselves away so quickly, as I’d been hoping for some train drama to help wile away the miles.  Our trip from Bath to York had been greatly enhanced by the Blind Man Missing His Stop floor show, an exceptional bit of train drama.  We’d watched the blind man enter the carriage, gripping an old suitcase in one hand and the leash to his very reluctant guide dog in the other. The man seated himself at a table and attempted to squish the dog under it. The dog refused.  The dog had evidently been squished under enough railway tables in his life to know it was no damn picnic, and since he was a German Shepherd, there was a significant amount of him to be squeezed under the little table.  The man shoved the dog, the dog shoved back, each of them getting progressively more irritated with the other.  Finally the dog allowed his hindquarters to be consigned to the space under the table, but kept his front paws and nose out in the aisle.  The man thought the dog was completely tucked away, but the dog figured what the man couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt him (ba-dum-dum.)

Within seconds of getting the reluctant canine settled part-way under the table, an elderly couple slowly made their way down the center aisle:  a very old man – as in ancient old, as in can-you-believe-this-guy-is-still-alive old -- and his wife, who you would think was very old until you saw her husband, which made her appear not-all-that-old-in-comparison.  The woman was clutching her train tickets and peering at them with the kind of serious attention usually reserved for X-Rays or pregnancy test results.  The duo made their way down the row until they came to the blind man and the guide dog.  Then they stopped.  The woman peered at her ticket for what you instinctively knew was the four hundredth time, then peered at the seat number, then peered back at her ticket and everyone in the carriage reached the same conclusion at the exact same moment:  shit,  we all thought, the blind guy is sitting in Methusalah and his wife’s seat.   And so he was.  Mrs. M’s face tightened into a peevish grimace.  Oh no, we all thought, she’s actually going to make a scene about it.  Because the irony was that there were a bazillion empty seats around where the blind guy and dog were sitting.  It wasn’t like they’d occupied the last place in the carriage; there were loads of seats to choose from.  Still Mrs. M had booked Seats 48 and 49 and BY GOD, she and Mr. Older Than The Hills were going to sit there and it didn’t matter if Luis Braille himself, along with Helen Keller, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, were there.  She cleared her throat, preparatory to launching into a peevish whine, and a scrappy British woman threw herself onto the etiquette grenade and took one for the blind guy.   “There’s room here,” she said, pointing at the empty seats across from her, “Why don’t you sit here?”  The old woman paused.  Then she acquiesced, pointing at The Oldest Man On Earth to sit his ancient tushie down.  “What’s happening?”  he shouted, cupping an ear that already bore a hearing aid the size of a tennis ball.  “Sit here!” she shouted, and he did.

We all relaxed, glad the tense moment had passed.  The train soon came to a town and stopped, people leaving or getting on.  As the train started up again, just picking up speed, the blind man asked, “Was that Little Wooten-In-The-Wold?”  The scrappy British woman said, a little too loudly, “yes, yes it was.”  “Oh no,” said the blind guy, “I’m meant to get out there.  You have to stop the train.  Stop the train!”  Everyone froze, newspapers and magazines clutched in mid-air.  Stop the train?  An excited young woman jumped to her feet and said, “I will!” and sped down the aisle.  Within moments a British Rail official came blustering up.  The blind guy proceeded to tell him off, pissed as hell – or bloody irritated, more correctly – that he was supposed to be met by an escort, he was always met by an escort, and the escort always came and got him off the train, and now he’d missed his stop, so now what?  I watched this exchange, thinking that if this were Amtrak:

·        The blind guy and dog would have been prevented from getting on the train because of some obscure Amtrak rule and they’d basically be conscribed to a life of immobility; or,

·        The blind guy and dog would have made it onto Amtrak, but if they missed their stop, tough shit, they’d go to Connecticut before Amtrak would stop and let them out, and the notion of someone meeting them and helping them off the train would make the Amtrak official laugh so hard he’d herniate something.

But this was England, not ‘Murika, so the British Rail official not only apologized for the fact that the escort failed to locate the blind man and lead him off the train, but he then radio’d ahead to set up another escort at the next station, who would put the guy on a train back to his original destination, and British Rail would refund him the entire cost of his ticket as an apology for their error.

Needless to say, I had to fight the urge to stand and applaud.

So as Jeff and Max and I turned in for the night on our bunk beds, rumbling and shaking our way down the tracks, the train whistle blaring periodically, I was a little sad that we hadn’t witnessed another episode of Excellent Train Drama.  I can only hope that our European journeys will present another edition featuring an entirely new cast of characters.

HIKING HADRIAN'S WALL

         

We have just spent the last few days immersed in the year 132.  A year with only 3 digits: such an anomaly for us four-digit, two-thousand-years-plus time residents.  One-thirty-two was the time, and the place was the outermost reaches of the vast and mighty Roman Empire.  Encompassing all of Europe and stretching as far east as modern-day Iraq, the Empire’s northernmost limit was the wild and beautiful island of Brittania.  And the seam along the edge of the Empire’s massive cloak, flung over islands and continents alike, was Hadrian’s Wall, a 73-mile long border stitched into the fabric of steep hills and rolling green fields that demarcated the end of the known world.  On one side of this ragged seam were the barbarian lands; on the other the Roman Empire.  Maintaining the line between the two were 20,000 soldiers of the Empire, some from Rome and modern-day Italy, but many others from what is now Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, France and even Africa.  To control the movement of the barbarians and also mark the edge of his domain, Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a massive wall. It took ten years and thousands of men to do it, but by the year 132 the job was done:  a solid stone wall, backed by forts and dotted with gates and observation towers, stretching from one side of the island to the other.  

 

Hadrian’s Wall connects the North Sea and the city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the east with the city of Carlisle and the mighty Atlantic in the west.  We hiked along the mid-section of the Wall and to get there, we hopped a train from York to Newcastle and another from Newcastle to a tiny village with the best imaginable town-along-a-rail-line name:  Haltwhistle.  We traveled light, almost deliriously light.  We stowed our 40-pound backpacks in a storage closet in our hotel in York and threw a change of underwear, a book, toothbrushes and a few coats and sweaters into our daypacks and walked, feeling as light as air, to the York train station where we caught one of the fast commuter trains to Newcastle that departs from York every 10 minutes in the morning.  An hour later, we were in the Newcastle station with just enough time to grab a coffee before we climbed onto an old 2-car train that chugged along the length of the Wall, parallel to it but miles away from it.  An hour later we pulled into Haltwhistle. 

 

We had reservations at a B&B that we’d made just a few days before.  The towns of Hexam and Haltwhistle, located at about the mid-point of the Wall, feature inns that cater to people visiting it or hiking its length.  I hadn’t thought it would be hard to find a place to stay since we were arriving on a Tuesday but place after place I called was booked, and one finally explained that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are their busiest days since hikers leave Newcastle on a Saturday and generally arrive in the towns in mid-week.  But we finally found an inn in Haltwhistle that had a room for 3 and we grabbed it.  

 

But we had other places to see before we headed to our inn, and with the help of the tiny tourist information office in Haltwhistle, we got the timetable for the bus that goes up and down the Wall.  Its number?  The AD132, of course.  Off we went to the Once Brewed National Park office which oversees the Northumberland National Park that weaves above, below and around the wall.  Once Brewed?  What’s with the name?  No idea. 

 

We walked up a narrow little road to the top of a hill, the road bordered on either side by glistening green fields inhabited by scores of ewes and their utterly adorable lambs.  Black faced and black legged lambs; lambs with big sticky-out ears; lambs that stared at us, big-eyed and wary, and then scuttled to the safety of mother.  The ewes had long knotty wool coats that hung down like dreadlocks over their sides.  Rasta Ewes.  Given the long, vacant gazes they were prone to, standing stock still in the field and staring off into the distance, they may have gotten into some very good grass. 

 

Stretching along the spine of the hills like a stone backbone was Hadrian’s Wall.  Running down from it and criss-crossing the endless fields that were peopled – or should I say, sheepled – with ewes and lambs were other stone walls built, in part, from rocks quarried from the Wall.  It is taller in some parts than others, but in the mid-section it stands six to seven feet high and a foot or two wide.  Grey stones carefully laid, one on top of the other, by hands from an ancient time.  There’s no fencing around it; no “Do Not Touch” signs or security guards keeping an eye on it.  It follows the ridge tops of the surprisingly steep hills, appearing at times like a spinal column, and at other times like a lichen-covered snake sinuously winding down the sides and up the inclines of the hills.  The fields slide down on other side of the Wall, stretching out for miles and miles to a line of distant mountains. 

 

We followed the Wall, climbing from valleys up the side of hills, the incline almost vertical, leaning on the Wall for support at times.  From the crest of the hill was an amazing 360 degree panoramic view of the valleys and farms.  It was sunny and blue-skied with a nice breeze, chilly enough to make a couple of layers welcome.  Up and down we climbed, passing occasional hiking groups, but otherwise alone with the Wall and the fields and the distant echo through time of the men who were garrisoned along it, who stood duty in its watchtowers which we hiked past, a square of stones marking the spot where an observatory had been, manned with soldiers who were bored and cold and edgy, watching for invaders who occasionally made forays against the occupying force. 

 

We came down off the Wall in time to catch the last AD132 bus into Haltwhistle, and we located our inn a few steps off the High Street.  We had hiked the Wall with our daypacks on and we were looking forward to dropping them, and ourselves, onto something softer and more comfortable than a dirt path.  The inn was surrounded with meticulously manicured gardens and the woman who greeted us was efficient and welcoming, showing us up a sweeping staircase that led to our suite.  After nights of a cramped hotel room in York where you could hardly walk without stumbling over a bed, the suite was the size of a small island nation.  The bed could have comfortably held the entire Von Trapp family, and off the bedroom was another separate room with two twin beds and its own TV, which Max claimed.  Walking into the bathroom was a near religious experience.  God knows I like a clean bathroom, and I have prided myself on creating a sparkling loo, but this bathroom glittered, as if it had just been built, just painted, just polished, by a group of fairy cleaners or some skilled toi-toi magicians.  Everything glittered:  not just the sink and shower, but the fixtures above them.  I swear the insides of the fixtures glowed.  The entire suite looked as if the painters had just left, along with the carpet-layers, the designers and the team of wizarding cleaners.  I wanted to just stand and admire this level of perfection; the Mona Lisa of bathrooms adjoining the Sistine Chapels of bedrooms.  But we tore ourselves out of our happy surroundings and trotted to the local pub to have pints of bitter and dinner, and then back to Xanadu for a good sleep. 

 

The next morning we went downstairs for a breakfast that would have qualified as an official UN food drop into a cyclone-ravaged country or a complete AID shipment to a starving village.  Every breakfast food imaginable was offered by a waitress who actually asked me if I’d like my toast “in a pretty arrangement” around my eggs or not.  Who would say no to this?  What hard-hearted diner would choose their toast in a tossed heap over a pretty arrangement? 

 

Filled to the gills with breakfast, we donned our daypacks and caught the AD132 to Vindolanda, an amazing archaeological dig and museum a mile off the Wall.  Excavations have been ongoing for years, revealing the outline of a Roman fort named Vindolanda, which had baths, graneries, houses and shops, and a village that clustered outside of the fort’s impressive walls.  We walked among the homes of the long-gone residents, and then bussed to another museum dedicated to the Roman soldier, which almost caused Max’s mind to utterly melt and run in tiny rivulets out of his ears, it was so cool. 

 

Then back onto the Wall for a “short” hike that a kindly museum lady recommended.  The hike was “lovely and easy to find, a lovely trail, can’t miss it” and so off we went.  And proceeded to walk our little legs off.  Up vertical hills to reach the summit and lean, gasping, against the Wall, down into valleys pursued, at one point, by an angry ewe, only to climb another  vertical incline, on and on we hiked, with nary a single signpost in sight.  The newer walls that demarcated farmer’s fields were topped by old wooden styls that we clambered over, and there would be the symbol of an acorn painted onto the styl to show that we were still on the Wall trail, which curved in and out of a national park, and off and on farms and farmer fields.  We hiked and hiked, the wall taller than us at times and then shorter; hiked until Max and Jeff were harboring very unkind thoughts about me and my insistence that we do this hike.  On through the sunny glorious afternoon and cool breezes, the trail a faint path at times, until finally we came to a farm where the farmer pointed down the valley to a building glistening in the gloaming, pronouncing it the “Mile Castle Inn” where we could catch the AD132 into town and the train station. 

 

Off we staggered to the mythical building in the distance, humming marching songs, trying to remember what it felt like to sit, quietly, in a soft chair, on and on we hiked, at times trying to hitch rides with passing motorists (who ignored us, the cold-hearted sods) until we reached the Inn only to discover . . .  we’d missed the stupid, hateful, crappy AD132 bus by 10 hateful minutes and – oh joy – it was the last bus of the day.  But not to be downhearted – it was a mere 2 ½ miles into Haltwhistle and “most of it” declared the beaming man drinking a big pint of beer with his cheery friends outside of the inn, “most of it is downhill.”  Fine, I said between clenched teeth, fine, we said, hobbling up yet another bloody hill, our bloody feet leaving bloody prints behind us on the bloody pavement, FINE, as we dodged oncoming vehicles, watching the sun sink and wondering when, exactly, the last train left Haltwhistle, FFF—IIII—NNNN—EEE we hissed, literally running down the hills into town, intent now on getting to the train station in time for the last train or an aneuryism, whichever came first.  Until finally, we got to the train station and saw that yes, YES, we’d made it in time for the 7:08 PM train, which conveniently arrived a mere 15 minutes late, and into Newcastle we went, where we caught another train to York, staggering back to our hotel at 11:00, our feet numb but our spirits unbroken.  We’d put in a 10-mile day along the Wall like the good Roman soldiers of yore.  

 

We went to sleep murmuring, Hail Hadrian, Emperor of Rome and all of her territories.  Hail my feet, which didn’t fail me.  Hail British Rail, which got me there and back again.  Hail travel, hail adventures . . . .  oh what the hail!

 

ENGLAND IN SPRING

  The English countryside in the spring is like a trip to the local paint store.  In the paint store are racks and racks of cards with samples of various colors on them.   If you’re looking for a blue paint, you have a million gradations of blue to choose from:  sea foam mist, azure, rainy day blues, robin shell, one square sample after another displayed on slips of paper for you to take home and try out against your walls.   

The English countryside in this unbelievably warm and gorgeous spring is the green section of the paint store.  No matter how many slips of paper, no matter how many samples of green, there aren’t enough to describe or catalogue the dazzling displays of green in all of its gradations and strata.  I feel like I’ve fallen head first into an artist’s palette of green: it’s everywhere, in the buoyant grass, the giant chestnut trees, the hedgerows dividing blazing emerald fields into farmed squares.  The air itself is tinged green with reflections from exuberant vegetation.
 

But a monochromatic world, even an emerald one, would lose its appeal at some point.  That’s where the flowers come in. There is wisteria everywhere, all of it artfully arranged into cascading swirls of purple hanging along the edges of roofs, stretching across stone and brick walls, tumbling over fences.  Lilacs are in huge exuberant bunches, purple and white and violet colored.  The wisteria cascades down in garlands of purple, the lilacs promenade down sidewalks and in gardens, the grass shimmers with spring-green spreen, and I find myself waiting for Jemima Puddleduck and Peter Cottontail to come out from under the bushes and serve me tea and speak in little British quacks and grunts.  Beatrice Potter may not have made up talking bunnies and duckies; they may be here, living in this fairy tale greenery of spring.
 

Max and I tried to avert Jeff’s eyes from the wisteria for the first few days we were in London.  Our wisteria at home produces enough leaves to carpet the planet in an inch of duff but nary a single fragrant blossom.  Every spring Jeff threatens to torture it into blossoming because that’s what you have to do, according to a gardening book I once read:  you’ve got to chop at the roots and feed it lye or some fertilizer/poison product to distress it into producing blossoms (this Earthday, why not try the ecologically sound alternative to saturating the ground with lye/fertilizer/poison?  Simply play recordings of Sarah Palin saying “You betcha” and Donald Trump blathering on about Obama’s birthplace and that should do the trick. In no time, you’ll be hip deep in wisteria blooms.)  As we walked by cascading waterfalls of purple wisteria blossoms, Max and I would make choking sounds and muffled screams to show how the plant was being tortured into producing beauty.  “Each flowering branch is a howl of pain!” we told Jeff.  It didn’t work.  For several days he tried to puzzle out why the wisteria is so prolific but now he’s concluded that it’s English wisteria and therefore works off of some complicated British gardening rule that he couldn’t hope to replicate with our ‘Murikan plant.   
 

Wisteria is not the only blossom in town. The train from London to southern England took us through fields punctuated with acres of molten yellow flowers, great swathes of yellow blasting out of the greenery.  Every blossom is the exact same height.  Did every single seed sprout in not only the same week but the same day and perhaps the same moment?  There are no stragglers who are shorter than the others, and no giants towering above the rest.  They are uniform and perfect, acres and acres of blazing yellow that look less like flower patches and more like the earth and air just happen to be gold.  I had to squint to look at them, they were so bright.

As the train rumbled through the countryside from  Portsmouth to Bath, we went past little villages with the stone church steeple and a few houses.  Zip into view they came, zip out they went again, bookended on either side by the verdant expanses of fields and the shimmering blocks of gold.  The lambs were joined by calves; it became a clash of the cuties.  Then out the window I see, etched in chalk on the hillside, a giant figure of a white horse.  Oh that¸ it’s just a prehistoric chalk drawing, etched onto the side of a blindingly green hill, made for unknown reasons, by people who lived centuries ago.  Prehistoric graffiti.  LeRoy Wuz Here.  
 

Arriving at the Bath train station we hailed a cab and headed out into the countryside that I’ve been observing from the trains.  Down we went on winding narrow roads lined with tall leafy hedges, bordered by patches of glittering golden flowers, until we come to Farmborough, the village where we’ve rented a cottage for a few days.  School Cottage, to be exact.  Address?  The Street.  I can imagine an Abbott and Costello routine: 
 

“So where’s this cottage we’re lookin’ for? 

 The Street. 

Well of course it’s on a street, I know that much, but what’s the name of the street?

The Street. 

Now just wait a minute, smart alek, what’s the name of the cotton pickin street? 

The Street . . .”  and on and on. 
 

At first we drove right past School Cottage on The Street and mistakenly pulled into The Cottage on The Street.  Opps, wrong cottage.  Back out we went and further down to The Ivy Cottage on The Street but that was wrong too.  At this point I began to wonder if every dwelling had not only a name, but a name with an article before it:  The this, and The that.  What would our house be?  The House of the Mean Cat. 
 

But finally we found School Cottage on The Street in Farmborough, which was one of the English villages mentioned in the Domesday Book that William the Conqueror had his boys write to keep a record of towns, villages, properties and general goods in 11^th century England.  We make our way back through Farmborough and find School Cottage which has, of course, luxuriant plumes of wisteria cascading down its stone sides and for an added bonus, pale pink clematis flowering around the eaves of its wee little roof.  There’s a blindingly green yard filled with all manner of flowering bushes, and in the back of the garden are happy chickens clucking around and pygmy goats with their babies, who immediately wrest the title of Cutest Baby Animal from the lamb-calf tie.  A duck couple pads around, and there’s a little fishpond with goldfish.  Left for us in the cottage by the owner are a half-dozen eggs from the happy free range chickens and some home-made jam for the morning. 

England in spring.  Pass the color samples, please.