Around the World War Two
Jun 24, 2006, 10:08 am
#46
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
The Nazis would have killed her. They wouldn’t have let a glimmer of regret flicker across their minds. If it was the Leader’s will, they would have extracted every bit of useful work from her for the greater good of the Reich and then they would have marched her into the gas chambers and cremated the empty husk.
Dear, sweet, earnest, beautiful Elhamisabel, the Nazis would have called you hateful names and shut those soft dark eyes forever. They would have called you a subhuman and gotten rid of you for the sake of the master race, the Herrenvolk.
The saddest thought of all is that for so many innocents, so many whose only fault lay in not being big and blonde, this was not a matter of “would” but “did”.
There were millions killed during the Nazi years. And millions more treated with appalling cruelty who somehow managed to survive.
I have been in the Holocaust Museum in Washington and it is the children who are the wisest there. Their messages of peace and love and understanding shine out above the dark and hate-filled slogans of the Nazis, their twisted nightmare dreams cloaked in a spurious science. A child could see through it. A child could tell who owned the moral high ground.
I have read Mein Kampf. Or rather, tried to read it. It is the most tawdry turgid drivel imaginable. Yet it was the bible of a generation. Hitler became rich on the royalties. His paranoid rantings were treated as holy gospel.
I can only wonder at how a country full of rational beings found themselves slaves to such twaddle. For some mindless ideal their cities were destroyed and so much suffering visited upon them. Barely a family left untouched by the most terrible losses.
It is Good Friday, a day for remembering sacrifices. For a reason I won’t go into, I am extremely grateful to be aboard this particular flight into Frankfurt. My little commuter craft is barely bigger than a fighter jet and we swoop through the sky, retracing the paths of warplanes going about their deadly business sixty years back.
But we don’t drop our bombs on a blazing city. Instead we slide down over a green and peaceful landscape and thump thump our wheels onto a wide runway, rolling past dozens of huge airliners to a parking bay.
A bus, long corridors, a short queue to a uniformed fellow in short hair and unsmiling eyes who stamps my documents, baggage collection where I once again bless the bright BookCrossing yellow of my bags, Customs counters unmanned, and here I am at the arrivals gate.
Where a small, intense, dark-haired young woman is returning my smile. How happy I am to see her! There is nothing better than being a vast distance away from home and having a warm welcome. Again I bless BookCrossing for giving me a community of friends across the world; an instant crystallisation of names into smiling faces and close embraces.
Elhamisabel is a local BookCrosser. We’ve been reading each other’s blogs, swapping messages, and even chatting to each other for months now, but there is only so much one can get out of long distance communication, and having a living breathing Elhamisabel within the span of my arms is a precious moment.
I let her go after several heartbeats, and we begin chattering away to each other like long friends. Which of course we are, even if we have never met until now.
She steers me through the vast terminal, across to a monorail to an even larger building where we are to catch the S-bahn into the city. Somewhere along the way I am forced to leave the luggage trolley, and she helps by carrying one of my lighter bags. Full of books, within a few paces it is too heavy for her, and when she takes it in two arms I ignore her protests and retrieve it. Over the past dozen flights I’ve somehow grown muscles and arms enough to handle four bags at once.
And bless whoever invented the rolling bag. My biggest bag is the easiest to manage so long as I have a smooth surface. It turns into a pig on stairs, of course, but these are few enough that I can put up with them. I might rethink my transport strategy next time I visit Paris and its Metro system, however…
As we move from monorail to S-bahn to bus, it emerges that my guide spent the previous day researching the route. She has not only copied the timetables and route numbers, but actually taken the bus to my hostel and scouted out the stops I must use coming and going. I have found a treasure!
I’m not much chop with languages, but there’s something inside me that takes a nerdish interest in uncovering the way words are put together. I took French in school so I have only a few words of German to fall back on and I begin to remedy my lack by picking Elhamisalbel’s brain.
“Left?” I ask, pointing that way.
She follows my finger. “Ah! Hauptbahnhof!”
Hmmm. I try again. “Left is…”
She’s smart as well as beautiful. A light goes on. “Linkes!”
“…and?’ I point the other way.
“Recht.” There’s an extra sibilance in there that I try several times to match, but I can tell by her smile that I’m not going to fool a native.
Up unter, heisse kald wärmen. While waiting for the bus we get into translating transport systems, and when I point at a tram, she says “Tram!” making it sound like “Tremm”.
German is half English. English with a twist. Some words jump out at you, and some others can be put together with a bit of logic, Germans are good at logical systems.
“Tram is also strassebahn”, she tells me, and that makes sense, even if the two esses are run together to make a kind of squiggly B.
“Der Groβe Straβe!” I point towards a nearby avenue.
“Nein. Kaiserstraβe! Sex shops one end, high class shops the other.”
I wonder what’s in the middle, but we won’t go there to see if German logic and town planning has placed the high-class sex shops there. Luckily our bus arrives and we follow a different path instead, translating the names of the streets. I am a little concerned to find out that my hostel is located in the Frankensteiner Platz, and I try Mel Brooks.
“Fronkensteener?”
But I don’t think she’s seen that movie. I’m sure there’s a twinkle in her eyes, but she is so endearingly serious. And proper, refusing to cross the threshold of my bunkroom. Even though there are two other occupants in residence already, one of them young and blonde and female, who I presume is just visiting.
I unpack my belongings, by the simple process of dumping stuff all over my bunk, and fill my big tote bag with a jumper in case it gets kald, a few books in case I find BookCrossers, a camera and Tim-Tams.
She shows me my bus stop for tomorrow’s journey back to the Flughafen, explains the timetable, and then we walk into town. It’s a pleasant walk along the riverbank and I point excitedly at a group of birds.
“Look! Recht there in der Main! Weiβe schwans!”
She looks puzzled, bless her heart, and when I explain that in Australia the swans are schwartze, she doesn’t believe me. I’m not averse to pulling legs, but when I’m recht and not believed, well!
“And the crows flug backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes.” I echo her earnestness.
We pass another couple strolling along the river walk and in that peripheral way one has of picking up important words, we both stop and turn at the clear utterance of “BookCrossing convention”.
The other couple are several metres away and like us they have faced about. We look at each other uncertainly, and then close the distance.
It emerges that one of the two speaks English and has lived in New Zealand. She has caught sight of the Dunedin BookCrossing Convention t-shirt I am wearing and is wondering whether I am a Kiwi.
As it happens, Elhamisabel has several books concealed about her person, and in a few precise moves she has explained the concept – “Like banding swans to see where they migrate,” I chip in – and loaded down the new converts with books. The perfect BookCrossing ambassador.
Soon we’ve crossed a bridge and have entered the old town. I gaze with admiration at the architecture. I don’t know if these are original or reconstructed after the bombing, but we don’t have anything like them in Australia. One thing about Europe – I will never go hungry so long as I have old buildings to feast my eyes upon. Some of these kircher are just amazing.
“What’s that one?” I ask my local guide.
“It is the... the… let’s look at the plaque.”
“Entrance other side.”
Who says Germans have no sense of humour? We both giggle delightedly.
And now we encounter strolling groups of BookCrossers, making for our gathering in an authentic German keller restaurant. Here is Allysther, with her husband and sweet little four year old son, all wide eyes and smiles, guaranteed to melt the sternest heart.
The Nazis would have destroyed two-thirds of Ally’s family but here in modern Germany nobody turns a hair. Or nobody I can see, anyway. I suspect that there are a few dinosaurs still about, believing that they are the pinnacle of evolution.
Everybody is welcomed at our BookCrossing gathering. I embrace the women, explaining that I have a license to hug beautiful women.
“He just likes to hug women,” someone says. Cripes, am I that transparent?
A pile of books grows in the middle of the long table. In the miracle of all BookCrossing meetings, the pile grows into a hill, a mountain, a range of mountains, and then disappears by the end of the meal, everybody saying they already have a mountain of books at home, and they can’t possibly take any, but still the books vanish.
I chuck a few in, take some of the thinner ones, and promise that if I don’t read them myself, at least I will give them a good long trip. This time tomorrow they will be in the New World.
Beside me is GirlFromIpanema, looking very much like her namesake, and she is as enraptured as I am with the works of Patrick O’Brian. She pulls out a copy of The Surgeon’s Mate, one of his best books, and tells me that some of the names he gives to Baltic people are quite wrong.
By sheer chance I turn to one of my favorite passages, one about the best way to prepare honey-buzzards for eating, and here on the same page is one of the names she disputes.
“Pellworm. It is the name of an island, not a person!”
She explains that the island itself is a relatively recent creation, being created by a flood. It seems that O’Brian may have nodded, but we both agree that his books are extremely good.
And both the beer and tucker are jolly good. I am interested in the kaise mit musik, but when I see the looks on the faces around the table, I put it aside. instead I have some rare beef mit green sauce, which is totally top notch. And I demonstrate how to suck up coffee through a Tim Tam, but there are some squeals from around the table as disasters occur when the timing is misjudged!
Books, journals, photographs and good company. Sorry if I don't mention everybody, but I'm going to have to cut this one short, as my flight is almost ready.
However, I am extremely pleased to report that in modern Germany it doesn't seem to matter what you look like. I just wish that Hitler had got the message in 1936 when Jesse Owens beat everyone with white skin in the Olympic sprint. Perhaps if he'd worked out what a child could see, such a great deal of misery, hatred, death and destruction could have been avoided.
For my part, I don't care what people look like on the outside. The people I like best are those with a good and true heart. People who like people. People like BookCrossers. People like Elhamisabel, who has totally won my heart.
Dear, sweet, earnest, beautiful Elhamisabel, the Nazis would have called you hateful names and shut those soft dark eyes forever. They would have called you a subhuman and gotten rid of you for the sake of the master race, the Herrenvolk.
The saddest thought of all is that for so many innocents, so many whose only fault lay in not being big and blonde, this was not a matter of “would” but “did”.
There were millions killed during the Nazi years. And millions more treated with appalling cruelty who somehow managed to survive.
I have been in the Holocaust Museum in Washington and it is the children who are the wisest there. Their messages of peace and love and understanding shine out above the dark and hate-filled slogans of the Nazis, their twisted nightmare dreams cloaked in a spurious science. A child could see through it. A child could tell who owned the moral high ground.
I have read Mein Kampf. Or rather, tried to read it. It is the most tawdry turgid drivel imaginable. Yet it was the bible of a generation. Hitler became rich on the royalties. His paranoid rantings were treated as holy gospel.
I can only wonder at how a country full of rational beings found themselves slaves to such twaddle. For some mindless ideal their cities were destroyed and so much suffering visited upon them. Barely a family left untouched by the most terrible losses.
It is Good Friday, a day for remembering sacrifices. For a reason I won’t go into, I am extremely grateful to be aboard this particular flight into Frankfurt. My little commuter craft is barely bigger than a fighter jet and we swoop through the sky, retracing the paths of warplanes going about their deadly business sixty years back.
But we don’t drop our bombs on a blazing city. Instead we slide down over a green and peaceful landscape and thump thump our wheels onto a wide runway, rolling past dozens of huge airliners to a parking bay.
A bus, long corridors, a short queue to a uniformed fellow in short hair and unsmiling eyes who stamps my documents, baggage collection where I once again bless the bright BookCrossing yellow of my bags, Customs counters unmanned, and here I am at the arrivals gate.
Where a small, intense, dark-haired young woman is returning my smile. How happy I am to see her! There is nothing better than being a vast distance away from home and having a warm welcome. Again I bless BookCrossing for giving me a community of friends across the world; an instant crystallisation of names into smiling faces and close embraces.
Elhamisabel is a local BookCrosser. We’ve been reading each other’s blogs, swapping messages, and even chatting to each other for months now, but there is only so much one can get out of long distance communication, and having a living breathing Elhamisabel within the span of my arms is a precious moment.
I let her go after several heartbeats, and we begin chattering away to each other like long friends. Which of course we are, even if we have never met until now.
She steers me through the vast terminal, across to a monorail to an even larger building where we are to catch the S-bahn into the city. Somewhere along the way I am forced to leave the luggage trolley, and she helps by carrying one of my lighter bags. Full of books, within a few paces it is too heavy for her, and when she takes it in two arms I ignore her protests and retrieve it. Over the past dozen flights I’ve somehow grown muscles and arms enough to handle four bags at once.
And bless whoever invented the rolling bag. My biggest bag is the easiest to manage so long as I have a smooth surface. It turns into a pig on stairs, of course, but these are few enough that I can put up with them. I might rethink my transport strategy next time I visit Paris and its Metro system, however…
As we move from monorail to S-bahn to bus, it emerges that my guide spent the previous day researching the route. She has not only copied the timetables and route numbers, but actually taken the bus to my hostel and scouted out the stops I must use coming and going. I have found a treasure!
I’m not much chop with languages, but there’s something inside me that takes a nerdish interest in uncovering the way words are put together. I took French in school so I have only a few words of German to fall back on and I begin to remedy my lack by picking Elhamisalbel’s brain.
“Left?” I ask, pointing that way.
She follows my finger. “Ah! Hauptbahnhof!”
Hmmm. I try again. “Left is…”
She’s smart as well as beautiful. A light goes on. “Linkes!”
“…and?’ I point the other way.
“Recht.” There’s an extra sibilance in there that I try several times to match, but I can tell by her smile that I’m not going to fool a native.
Up unter, heisse kald wärmen. While waiting for the bus we get into translating transport systems, and when I point at a tram, she says “Tram!” making it sound like “Tremm”.
German is half English. English with a twist. Some words jump out at you, and some others can be put together with a bit of logic, Germans are good at logical systems.
“Tram is also strassebahn”, she tells me, and that makes sense, even if the two esses are run together to make a kind of squiggly B.
“Der Groβe Straβe!” I point towards a nearby avenue.
“Nein. Kaiserstraβe! Sex shops one end, high class shops the other.”
I wonder what’s in the middle, but we won’t go there to see if German logic and town planning has placed the high-class sex shops there. Luckily our bus arrives and we follow a different path instead, translating the names of the streets. I am a little concerned to find out that my hostel is located in the Frankensteiner Platz, and I try Mel Brooks.
“Fronkensteener?”
But I don’t think she’s seen that movie. I’m sure there’s a twinkle in her eyes, but she is so endearingly serious. And proper, refusing to cross the threshold of my bunkroom. Even though there are two other occupants in residence already, one of them young and blonde and female, who I presume is just visiting.
I unpack my belongings, by the simple process of dumping stuff all over my bunk, and fill my big tote bag with a jumper in case it gets kald, a few books in case I find BookCrossers, a camera and Tim-Tams.
She shows me my bus stop for tomorrow’s journey back to the Flughafen, explains the timetable, and then we walk into town. It’s a pleasant walk along the riverbank and I point excitedly at a group of birds.
“Look! Recht there in der Main! Weiβe schwans!”
She looks puzzled, bless her heart, and when I explain that in Australia the swans are schwartze, she doesn’t believe me. I’m not averse to pulling legs, but when I’m recht and not believed, well!
“And the crows flug backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes.” I echo her earnestness.
We pass another couple strolling along the river walk and in that peripheral way one has of picking up important words, we both stop and turn at the clear utterance of “BookCrossing convention”.
The other couple are several metres away and like us they have faced about. We look at each other uncertainly, and then close the distance.
It emerges that one of the two speaks English and has lived in New Zealand. She has caught sight of the Dunedin BookCrossing Convention t-shirt I am wearing and is wondering whether I am a Kiwi.
As it happens, Elhamisabel has several books concealed about her person, and in a few precise moves she has explained the concept – “Like banding swans to see where they migrate,” I chip in – and loaded down the new converts with books. The perfect BookCrossing ambassador.
Soon we’ve crossed a bridge and have entered the old town. I gaze with admiration at the architecture. I don’t know if these are original or reconstructed after the bombing, but we don’t have anything like them in Australia. One thing about Europe – I will never go hungry so long as I have old buildings to feast my eyes upon. Some of these kircher are just amazing.
“What’s that one?” I ask my local guide.
“It is the... the… let’s look at the plaque.”
“Entrance other side.”
Who says Germans have no sense of humour? We both giggle delightedly.
And now we encounter strolling groups of BookCrossers, making for our gathering in an authentic German keller restaurant. Here is Allysther, with her husband and sweet little four year old son, all wide eyes and smiles, guaranteed to melt the sternest heart.
The Nazis would have destroyed two-thirds of Ally’s family but here in modern Germany nobody turns a hair. Or nobody I can see, anyway. I suspect that there are a few dinosaurs still about, believing that they are the pinnacle of evolution.
Everybody is welcomed at our BookCrossing gathering. I embrace the women, explaining that I have a license to hug beautiful women.
“He just likes to hug women,” someone says. Cripes, am I that transparent?
A pile of books grows in the middle of the long table. In the miracle of all BookCrossing meetings, the pile grows into a hill, a mountain, a range of mountains, and then disappears by the end of the meal, everybody saying they already have a mountain of books at home, and they can’t possibly take any, but still the books vanish.
I chuck a few in, take some of the thinner ones, and promise that if I don’t read them myself, at least I will give them a good long trip. This time tomorrow they will be in the New World.
Beside me is GirlFromIpanema, looking very much like her namesake, and she is as enraptured as I am with the works of Patrick O’Brian. She pulls out a copy of The Surgeon’s Mate, one of his best books, and tells me that some of the names he gives to Baltic people are quite wrong.
By sheer chance I turn to one of my favorite passages, one about the best way to prepare honey-buzzards for eating, and here on the same page is one of the names she disputes.
“Pellworm. It is the name of an island, not a person!”
She explains that the island itself is a relatively recent creation, being created by a flood. It seems that O’Brian may have nodded, but we both agree that his books are extremely good.
And both the beer and tucker are jolly good. I am interested in the kaise mit musik, but when I see the looks on the faces around the table, I put it aside. instead I have some rare beef mit green sauce, which is totally top notch. And I demonstrate how to suck up coffee through a Tim Tam, but there are some squeals from around the table as disasters occur when the timing is misjudged!
Books, journals, photographs and good company. Sorry if I don't mention everybody, but I'm going to have to cut this one short, as my flight is almost ready.
However, I am extremely pleased to report that in modern Germany it doesn't seem to matter what you look like. I just wish that Hitler had got the message in 1936 when Jesse Owens beat everyone with white skin in the Olympic sprint. Perhaps if he'd worked out what a child could see, such a great deal of misery, hatred, death and destruction could have been avoided.
For my part, I don't care what people look like on the outside. The people I like best are those with a good and true heart. People who like people. People like BookCrossers. People like Elhamisabel, who has totally won my heart.
Jun 24, 2006, 10:12 am
#47
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
I'm in heaven. And South Carolina.
And I'll leave my World War Two kick aside for a while, because when they talk about the war here, they aren't talking about anything that happened in the last hundred years. Not by a long chalk!
Speaking of chalk, I felt like there were chalk marks on the Frankfurt pavement. Go here. Follow this path. Stand here. Mindful of my appalling error in Shrewsbury the previous day, when I had gotten on the wrong train and almost missed my flight, I was glad of Elhamisabel's careful research and directions in how to get from my hostel to Frankfurt International, and after the debacle in Welshpool, I made sure of my movements.
Everything went well, and before I knew it I was on my way to Texas on a plane with more than a scattering of US service folk. Clouds for the first few hours and it wasn't until we were over Iceland that they vanished astern. Iceland is well named, I'm here to say, and Greenland, an hour later, is not. But both are beautiful in their white blankets.
After Greenland, the land vanshed and the icebergs began. First they were small, sparse lines across the ocean, and then larger and more numerous, flocking and herding together into huge floating carpets. It was a weird landscape. Home to polar bears and whales, but nothing visible from this height, of course. My imagination was good enough to conjure up what I might see and feel if I were down there in my BookCrossing t-shirt.
Land and civilisation appeared under us, in that order. This time around I had brought along a swag of maps, pulled out of an old National Geographic road atlas I'd snapped up in a thrift shop. The Great Lakes came and went, Sault Sainte Marie somewhere off in the distance, Chicago out of sight and Peopia below us. And then my heart lifted, as I traced our path. We would cut the Mississippi a little further south and west, and the name of the town was Hannibal.
To those who have read Tom Sawyer, this small town is known as St Petersburg, and as we came closer, I stuck my head out of the window as far as it would go and went floating off down the river with Huck and Jim. I could see the town, the wide river, the islands on the Illinois shore, and my minds eye provided the boys, the girls, the schoolteacher, the adventures, the riverboats and the whitewashed fence.
I was in heaven. Literally, I suppose, as I looked down from eight miles up.
They had to nudge me to bring me back into this century. "A drink, sir?"
"Mmmm, yes please! Are Mr and Mrs T aboard?"
It turned out that they, or at least their spiced tomato juice, were a comforting presence aboard, and I spent the rest of the flight depleting the stocks as the midwest unrolled beneath us and Texas appeared, green and wide and friendly.
Dallas/Fort Worth is immense, but I felt very much at home as I stepped back onto US territory. Immigration was all high-tech, electronic fingerprints and look into the camera, please sir. An hour in the lounge with freebie internet, and then I set off in search of my plane - the gate number had changed two or three times over, and the airport was absolutely littered with the small commuter jets, one of which was to be my aerial chariot to Charleston.
I found my gate, walked across the tarmac to my plane, and in due course we leapt off the runway, rolled right and aimed for the edge of America and the heart of the South. Not a great deal to see in the darkening haze beneath, but the sunset was spectacular, and our arrival into Charleston took place in the mellow warm of a perfect spring evening.
And here was a genuine Southern belle waiting for me. MartiP, tall and blonde and a smile that lit up the terminal. I hurled my carry on luggage into a corner and my body into her arms. When I surfaced for breath a long while later, Marti introduced me to her husband, standing a little way apart, and perhaps a little bemused at my behaviour woith his wife.
But he surprised me with a hug, and then I stood back and looked at the two of them. When the good looks were being handed out, MartiP and MrP must have gone back for seconds. And thirds. Marti is heart-stoppingly beautiful and MrP is the perfect image of a pirate captain, complete with gold ring and flowing dark locks. Tom Sawyer would have stood in awe of his dashing presence.
And they were both here for me - was there ever a pudgy, balding middle-aged Aussie so lucky to be greeted by such delightful BookCrossers?
This being the South, our vehicle was a pick-up truck, and I was grateful for the room to stow all my baggage. But my eyes were outside the vehicle, taking in the sights of Saturday night in downtown Charleston.
This is a downtown where the skyscrapers have steeples. The highest buildings in town are the churches, and they are delights to look at, from collonaded portico to slender spire. I love looking at old buildings, and Charleston is crampacked full of architecture to make the heart sing. One intersection, MrP informed me, was known as the "Four Corners of Law". Here, one on each corner, were city hall, State courts, and a Federal building. I looked at the fourth corner, occupied by yet another church.
"God's Law."
In between the churches and grand public buildings, out on the sidewalks and street corners, Charleston had come out to party. Everywhere were happy people in bright clothes, walking through the evening, lined up outside nightclubs, listening to the music that leaked out onto the streets.
We walked among the throng, down to the old slave market. A narrow brick building, obviously ancient, cutting along several blocks. Inside were stalls selling trinkets and souvenirs. We looked at a table full of baskets, woven from local fibres and, according to my guides, patterned from old African designs. My thoughts poked their heads up, chasing each other around Charleston's corners. What sort of society had people owning other human beings? Here in this long, red brick building people had been auctioned off to the highest bidder, men and women stripped down for the inspection of buyers, families broken up, lives changed in an instant.
The labour of slaves had built many of these grand old buildings. These churches had been founded on the unpaid efforts of people shipped across the sea against their will, their lives a misery. How did slavery square with the words of Thomas Jefferson. Or Jesus?
I couldn't take as much pleasure in these wonderful old buildings as I might. There was a sad taste in my mouth. Sure, slavery was long gone, but even after the Civil War supposedly freed the slaves, bitter discrimination, hatred and violence remained. Even into World War Two segregation was a fact of life in many military units.
Forgive me, but I set these thoughts to the back corners of my mind. Nobody else seemed to be fussing over such things. The old market was just a tourist institution, the carriages and limousines part of the industry that kept people like me coming into Charleston. The smiles around me were genuine, and the cheerful commentary of MartiP and MrP, lifted my spirits as I learnt about the history and culture of this bastion of the old South. MartiP seemed to navigate by the restaurants, and every such place earnt a few words about the house specialities and history. I couldn't reconcile her reed thin figure with a love of fine dining, but she spoke with authority and even passion. And no denying the savoury fragrances percolating out onto the street.
Restaurants and bookshops - MartiP's landmark map of Charleston. Her husband filled in the blankls, and for a few minutes he told me about the uniform of the "South of Broad" set as we studied the window display of a menswear shop. Seersucker suits in pastel colours, stripes and even checks. I looked at one particular garment, the rainbow plaid searing my eyeballs. In a range of sizes.
"Back home if they caught me wearing that, they'd stand me up against a wall and shoot me. This is fair dinkum clobber, hey?"
I was assured, after we untangled my Australianisms, that yes indeed, this was bonafide clothing, and the locals indeed paid the hefty asking price for the privilege of wearing a seersucker suit in cream and pink. In public.
MrP reckoned that my "G'day" greeting wasn't working here. "You'll just confuse people. Say 'Hey' instead!"
He won't get me into a seersucker suit, but he might get me saying Hey. Charleston's that kind of place.
After we'd done walking a while, and let me say this, friends, this wasn't for a considerable time. I was the perfect tourist, eyes everywhere and if I bumped into someone while I was examining the details of a church steeple, I just looked at them and said "Hey!"
But in due course it was midnight, we were done, and here we were at BookCzuk's cathedral church, where the Easter vigil had just finished. I'd been waiting for a long time to meet BookCzuk.
"Hey," I said "G'day!"
Oh I gave her such a hug! Everyone loves BookCzuk.
I also got to meet MrCzuk, who is tall, elegant, dignified. And can reduce me to a helpless mass of laughter on the floor with a couple of well-chosen words and a lift of an eyebrow. He had been singing in the service, was wearing a tuxedo, and all the women were flocking around him. He doesn't need my fictional "BookCrossing licence to hug beautiful women". He's got it built in!
BoyCzuk, a tall teenager with curly hair and a lazy grin. He's going to break as many hearts as his father. Starting right now. He reminds me a bit of my own teenage son, except maybe a bit more articulate. Hard to tell with teenagers. For every word that escapes, there's usually a million thoughts whizzing around inside.
And sometimes it's the other way around, but you have to be fifteen going on fifty, like me.
The czuks picked me up after a round of introductions and supper ("Hey, this is my Aussie friend I brought along to eat shrimp and crab sandwiches.") and took me home. They also did the same with my luggage, a somewhat more difficult operation. No matter how you stack 'em, a bag full of books is still going to be heavy.
And then they noticed how I'd kind of stop working in the middle of sentences, pointed me into the guest bedroom and said "Sleep. We've got a lot of sightseeing for the morning."
And on that note, I'll save the sightseeing for the next report. Let me just say that even though I spent four days in Charleston, that wasn't enough and I'll be back for next year's BookCrossing Convention!
And I'll leave my World War Two kick aside for a while, because when they talk about the war here, they aren't talking about anything that happened in the last hundred years. Not by a long chalk!
Speaking of chalk, I felt like there were chalk marks on the Frankfurt pavement. Go here. Follow this path. Stand here. Mindful of my appalling error in Shrewsbury the previous day, when I had gotten on the wrong train and almost missed my flight, I was glad of Elhamisabel's careful research and directions in how to get from my hostel to Frankfurt International, and after the debacle in Welshpool, I made sure of my movements.
Everything went well, and before I knew it I was on my way to Texas on a plane with more than a scattering of US service folk. Clouds for the first few hours and it wasn't until we were over Iceland that they vanished astern. Iceland is well named, I'm here to say, and Greenland, an hour later, is not. But both are beautiful in their white blankets.
After Greenland, the land vanshed and the icebergs began. First they were small, sparse lines across the ocean, and then larger and more numerous, flocking and herding together into huge floating carpets. It was a weird landscape. Home to polar bears and whales, but nothing visible from this height, of course. My imagination was good enough to conjure up what I might see and feel if I were down there in my BookCrossing t-shirt.
Land and civilisation appeared under us, in that order. This time around I had brought along a swag of maps, pulled out of an old National Geographic road atlas I'd snapped up in a thrift shop. The Great Lakes came and went, Sault Sainte Marie somewhere off in the distance, Chicago out of sight and Peopia below us. And then my heart lifted, as I traced our path. We would cut the Mississippi a little further south and west, and the name of the town was Hannibal.
To those who have read Tom Sawyer, this small town is known as St Petersburg, and as we came closer, I stuck my head out of the window as far as it would go and went floating off down the river with Huck and Jim. I could see the town, the wide river, the islands on the Illinois shore, and my minds eye provided the boys, the girls, the schoolteacher, the adventures, the riverboats and the whitewashed fence.
I was in heaven. Literally, I suppose, as I looked down from eight miles up.
They had to nudge me to bring me back into this century. "A drink, sir?"
"Mmmm, yes please! Are Mr and Mrs T aboard?"
It turned out that they, or at least their spiced tomato juice, were a comforting presence aboard, and I spent the rest of the flight depleting the stocks as the midwest unrolled beneath us and Texas appeared, green and wide and friendly.
Dallas/Fort Worth is immense, but I felt very much at home as I stepped back onto US territory. Immigration was all high-tech, electronic fingerprints and look into the camera, please sir. An hour in the lounge with freebie internet, and then I set off in search of my plane - the gate number had changed two or three times over, and the airport was absolutely littered with the small commuter jets, one of which was to be my aerial chariot to Charleston.
I found my gate, walked across the tarmac to my plane, and in due course we leapt off the runway, rolled right and aimed for the edge of America and the heart of the South. Not a great deal to see in the darkening haze beneath, but the sunset was spectacular, and our arrival into Charleston took place in the mellow warm of a perfect spring evening.
And here was a genuine Southern belle waiting for me. MartiP, tall and blonde and a smile that lit up the terminal. I hurled my carry on luggage into a corner and my body into her arms. When I surfaced for breath a long while later, Marti introduced me to her husband, standing a little way apart, and perhaps a little bemused at my behaviour woith his wife.
But he surprised me with a hug, and then I stood back and looked at the two of them. When the good looks were being handed out, MartiP and MrP must have gone back for seconds. And thirds. Marti is heart-stoppingly beautiful and MrP is the perfect image of a pirate captain, complete with gold ring and flowing dark locks. Tom Sawyer would have stood in awe of his dashing presence.
And they were both here for me - was there ever a pudgy, balding middle-aged Aussie so lucky to be greeted by such delightful BookCrossers?
This being the South, our vehicle was a pick-up truck, and I was grateful for the room to stow all my baggage. But my eyes were outside the vehicle, taking in the sights of Saturday night in downtown Charleston.
This is a downtown where the skyscrapers have steeples. The highest buildings in town are the churches, and they are delights to look at, from collonaded portico to slender spire. I love looking at old buildings, and Charleston is crampacked full of architecture to make the heart sing. One intersection, MrP informed me, was known as the "Four Corners of Law". Here, one on each corner, were city hall, State courts, and a Federal building. I looked at the fourth corner, occupied by yet another church.
"God's Law."
In between the churches and grand public buildings, out on the sidewalks and street corners, Charleston had come out to party. Everywhere were happy people in bright clothes, walking through the evening, lined up outside nightclubs, listening to the music that leaked out onto the streets.
We walked among the throng, down to the old slave market. A narrow brick building, obviously ancient, cutting along several blocks. Inside were stalls selling trinkets and souvenirs. We looked at a table full of baskets, woven from local fibres and, according to my guides, patterned from old African designs. My thoughts poked their heads up, chasing each other around Charleston's corners. What sort of society had people owning other human beings? Here in this long, red brick building people had been auctioned off to the highest bidder, men and women stripped down for the inspection of buyers, families broken up, lives changed in an instant.
The labour of slaves had built many of these grand old buildings. These churches had been founded on the unpaid efforts of people shipped across the sea against their will, their lives a misery. How did slavery square with the words of Thomas Jefferson. Or Jesus?
I couldn't take as much pleasure in these wonderful old buildings as I might. There was a sad taste in my mouth. Sure, slavery was long gone, but even after the Civil War supposedly freed the slaves, bitter discrimination, hatred and violence remained. Even into World War Two segregation was a fact of life in many military units.
Forgive me, but I set these thoughts to the back corners of my mind. Nobody else seemed to be fussing over such things. The old market was just a tourist institution, the carriages and limousines part of the industry that kept people like me coming into Charleston. The smiles around me were genuine, and the cheerful commentary of MartiP and MrP, lifted my spirits as I learnt about the history and culture of this bastion of the old South. MartiP seemed to navigate by the restaurants, and every such place earnt a few words about the house specialities and history. I couldn't reconcile her reed thin figure with a love of fine dining, but she spoke with authority and even passion. And no denying the savoury fragrances percolating out onto the street.
Restaurants and bookshops - MartiP's landmark map of Charleston. Her husband filled in the blankls, and for a few minutes he told me about the uniform of the "South of Broad" set as we studied the window display of a menswear shop. Seersucker suits in pastel colours, stripes and even checks. I looked at one particular garment, the rainbow plaid searing my eyeballs. In a range of sizes.
"Back home if they caught me wearing that, they'd stand me up against a wall and shoot me. This is fair dinkum clobber, hey?"
I was assured, after we untangled my Australianisms, that yes indeed, this was bonafide clothing, and the locals indeed paid the hefty asking price for the privilege of wearing a seersucker suit in cream and pink. In public.
MrP reckoned that my "G'day" greeting wasn't working here. "You'll just confuse people. Say 'Hey' instead!"
He won't get me into a seersucker suit, but he might get me saying Hey. Charleston's that kind of place.
After we'd done walking a while, and let me say this, friends, this wasn't for a considerable time. I was the perfect tourist, eyes everywhere and if I bumped into someone while I was examining the details of a church steeple, I just looked at them and said "Hey!"
But in due course it was midnight, we were done, and here we were at BookCzuk's cathedral church, where the Easter vigil had just finished. I'd been waiting for a long time to meet BookCzuk.
"Hey," I said "G'day!"
Oh I gave her such a hug! Everyone loves BookCzuk.
I also got to meet MrCzuk, who is tall, elegant, dignified. And can reduce me to a helpless mass of laughter on the floor with a couple of well-chosen words and a lift of an eyebrow. He had been singing in the service, was wearing a tuxedo, and all the women were flocking around him. He doesn't need my fictional "BookCrossing licence to hug beautiful women". He's got it built in!
BoyCzuk, a tall teenager with curly hair and a lazy grin. He's going to break as many hearts as his father. Starting right now. He reminds me a bit of my own teenage son, except maybe a bit more articulate. Hard to tell with teenagers. For every word that escapes, there's usually a million thoughts whizzing around inside.
And sometimes it's the other way around, but you have to be fifteen going on fifty, like me.
The czuks picked me up after a round of introductions and supper ("Hey, this is my Aussie friend I brought along to eat shrimp and crab sandwiches.") and took me home. They also did the same with my luggage, a somewhat more difficult operation. No matter how you stack 'em, a bag full of books is still going to be heavy.
And then they noticed how I'd kind of stop working in the middle of sentences, pointed me into the guest bedroom and said "Sleep. We've got a lot of sightseeing for the morning."
And on that note, I'll save the sightseeing for the next report. Let me just say that even though I spent four days in Charleston, that wasn't enough and I'll be back for next year's BookCrossing Convention!
Jun 24, 2006, 10:15 am
#48
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
The Tides of History
You have to know the language here. It's English when it isn't Gullah, but it is still not entirely what it seems. South of Broad is not just an area of the city, it's a social and cultural description. And an abbreviation.
Broad Street runs across the Peninsula that makes up the old city of Charleston. Outlying areas over the Ashley and Cooper Rivers are called West Ashley and East Cooper respectively. As a tip, that name Cooper is pronounced "Cupper", but don't think that by pronouncing it this way anyone is going to mistake you for a resident. Even if you speak with a genuine Southern accent rather than my wildly out of place Aussie accent, you're still not going to fit in. You've got to know the language.
South of Broad is where the older, richer, more culturally significant Charleston families live. It's a roughly triangular shape defined on the north by Broad Street, on the east by the Cooper and on the west by the Ashley. South of Broad has the views out across the water. And the breezes. And the b igger, older houses. And a certain something that you can't get even if you have the money to buy a property here. The collective memory goes back centuries here, and if you spent a hundred years, you'd still be a newcomer.
My guides led me to the less refined side of Broad Street. A sign advertised a restaurant - "Slightly North of Broad". It's a statement, I was told. And another abbreviation.
Broad Street separates one segment of Charleston from another, though to be honest, I couldn't pick any visible difference. King Street is another important thoroughfare, not because it divides the city, but because it is the city's main shopping street, and a walk along it is an education in what the fashionable Charlestonian is wearing, eating and drinking. Other major streets are Greeting Street, Coming Street ("is there a Going Street?" I asked, my logical mind kicking in. No, replied my beautiful female guide, and I kept my logical mouth shut for a while afterwards). And Market Street, where the old city markets run block after block, tourists gawking alongside, and topped at one end by the Daughters of the Confederacy meeting hall.
Go far enough south on King and you get to South Battery, which is where an area of parkland on the very tip of the Charleston peninsula. Here South Carolina's cannons fired on Fort Sumter and the anger of the Civil war began. The citizens sat on the balconies and rooftops of the elegant mansions lining the park, watching the show. There are still guns and mortars along the waterfront, but they are for the tourists, and lines of historical markers mark the places where the soldiers paraded.
Fort Sumter itself is still there, a small blocky shape on the horizon, well out in the harbour. Tour boats go back and forth and I esolve to catch one next time I'm in town.
For the moment, my guide, a genuine Southern belle, leads me up and down the old streets. Some of the grandest houses were built for the sea captains who brought in the cargoes that made Charleston rich. Their houses remain, each one slightly different in colour, shape or texture from its neighbours so that the captains could look through their sea telescopes and pick out their own dwelling as they came sailing home.
Some of the streets have a curious stone bases. Somewhere between cobbles and flagstones, these streets were once the ballast in ship's holds. I look at them and wonder what stories they could tell.
We talk a short cut through a graveyard. Here in the middle of the city Charleston's citizens take their eternal slumber in a semi-overgrown garden, all lush green foliage and bright spring flowers. Magnolias bloom above the old grey gravestones, and birds flutter in the branches overhead, while above all another tall spire points the way to heaven.
We break for lunch in a deliciously over the top French restaurant, sitting in a tiny alcove at the rear of the crowded room. Each time the chef in the adjacent kitchen swings around with his ladle we have to duck, but the food is excellent, and the atmosphere unparalleled.
We rise and take a swing through other districts. Here is a park where egrets nest in the trees each May. One year the city, in a sad miscalculation, held an art show beneath, and the contributions of the birds added an extra dimension to the paintings. Another park is dedicated to Marion, the famous Swamp Fox, and I chuckle to see that the memorial fountain honouring this guerrilla leader of the Revolutionary War has a central segment containing swamp plants. Naturally I have to wrap up a book in two plastic baggies and release it into the fountain..
We leave the city and return home. My guide is also my hostess, and we take our cups of coffee down to the small lake behind her house, where we sit on a wooden dock on the edge of the water and just sit back and watch the world go by. Ducks splash down in pairs, creaming wakes along the green water. Egrets and herons flap lazily past, and a turtle pokes his head up to take a look at us. Fish jump out of the water here and there, and I am told about the alligator living at the far end.
"You can tell when he's nearby," I was informed "because the ducks get out of the water and stand nervously on the bank."
That described my posture very well indeed a few minutes later when I noticed a small creature swimming across the surface of the lake. Little white face, dark back wriggling through the water, it could only be a...
"A snake. A cottonmouth. Poisonous, you know. You're very liucky to see one."
Even luckier to be bitten by one, I thought, and when two more appeared in the next few minutes, I began to think that this might well be my day!
Which of course it was. Charleston may be a city of a thousand stories, but the pace of life in this mellow Southern town is slow and relaxing nowadays, and even if I'm not a local, and I miss some of the unspoken language of the place, I'm at ease here, and I cherish these days before I have to climb back aboard a jetliner and hurry off to another destination.
I make a promise to myself to come back and spend a week next time. Here in Charleston, that's probably worth at least a month of rest.
Broad Street runs across the Peninsula that makes up the old city of Charleston. Outlying areas over the Ashley and Cooper Rivers are called West Ashley and East Cooper respectively. As a tip, that name Cooper is pronounced "Cupper", but don't think that by pronouncing it this way anyone is going to mistake you for a resident. Even if you speak with a genuine Southern accent rather than my wildly out of place Aussie accent, you're still not going to fit in. You've got to know the language.
South of Broad is where the older, richer, more culturally significant Charleston families live. It's a roughly triangular shape defined on the north by Broad Street, on the east by the Cooper and on the west by the Ashley. South of Broad has the views out across the water. And the breezes. And the b igger, older houses. And a certain something that you can't get even if you have the money to buy a property here. The collective memory goes back centuries here, and if you spent a hundred years, you'd still be a newcomer.
My guides led me to the less refined side of Broad Street. A sign advertised a restaurant - "Slightly North of Broad". It's a statement, I was told. And another abbreviation.
Broad Street separates one segment of Charleston from another, though to be honest, I couldn't pick any visible difference. King Street is another important thoroughfare, not because it divides the city, but because it is the city's main shopping street, and a walk along it is an education in what the fashionable Charlestonian is wearing, eating and drinking. Other major streets are Greeting Street, Coming Street ("is there a Going Street?" I asked, my logical mind kicking in. No, replied my beautiful female guide, and I kept my logical mouth shut for a while afterwards). And Market Street, where the old city markets run block after block, tourists gawking alongside, and topped at one end by the Daughters of the Confederacy meeting hall.
Go far enough south on King and you get to South Battery, which is where an area of parkland on the very tip of the Charleston peninsula. Here South Carolina's cannons fired on Fort Sumter and the anger of the Civil war began. The citizens sat on the balconies and rooftops of the elegant mansions lining the park, watching the show. There are still guns and mortars along the waterfront, but they are for the tourists, and lines of historical markers mark the places where the soldiers paraded.
Fort Sumter itself is still there, a small blocky shape on the horizon, well out in the harbour. Tour boats go back and forth and I esolve to catch one next time I'm in town.
For the moment, my guide, a genuine Southern belle, leads me up and down the old streets. Some of the grandest houses were built for the sea captains who brought in the cargoes that made Charleston rich. Their houses remain, each one slightly different in colour, shape or texture from its neighbours so that the captains could look through their sea telescopes and pick out their own dwelling as they came sailing home.
Some of the streets have a curious stone bases. Somewhere between cobbles and flagstones, these streets were once the ballast in ship's holds. I look at them and wonder what stories they could tell.
We talk a short cut through a graveyard. Here in the middle of the city Charleston's citizens take their eternal slumber in a semi-overgrown garden, all lush green foliage and bright spring flowers. Magnolias bloom above the old grey gravestones, and birds flutter in the branches overhead, while above all another tall spire points the way to heaven.
We break for lunch in a deliciously over the top French restaurant, sitting in a tiny alcove at the rear of the crowded room. Each time the chef in the adjacent kitchen swings around with his ladle we have to duck, but the food is excellent, and the atmosphere unparalleled.
We rise and take a swing through other districts. Here is a park where egrets nest in the trees each May. One year the city, in a sad miscalculation, held an art show beneath, and the contributions of the birds added an extra dimension to the paintings. Another park is dedicated to Marion, the famous Swamp Fox, and I chuckle to see that the memorial fountain honouring this guerrilla leader of the Revolutionary War has a central segment containing swamp plants. Naturally I have to wrap up a book in two plastic baggies and release it into the fountain..
We leave the city and return home. My guide is also my hostess, and we take our cups of coffee down to the small lake behind her house, where we sit on a wooden dock on the edge of the water and just sit back and watch the world go by. Ducks splash down in pairs, creaming wakes along the green water. Egrets and herons flap lazily past, and a turtle pokes his head up to take a look at us. Fish jump out of the water here and there, and I am told about the alligator living at the far end.
"You can tell when he's nearby," I was informed "because the ducks get out of the water and stand nervously on the bank."
That described my posture very well indeed a few minutes later when I noticed a small creature swimming across the surface of the lake. Little white face, dark back wriggling through the water, it could only be a...
"A snake. A cottonmouth. Poisonous, you know. You're very liucky to see one."
Even luckier to be bitten by one, I thought, and when two more appeared in the next few minutes, I began to think that this might well be my day!
Which of course it was. Charleston may be a city of a thousand stories, but the pace of life in this mellow Southern town is slow and relaxing nowadays, and even if I'm not a local, and I miss some of the unspoken language of the place, I'm at ease here, and I cherish these days before I have to climb back aboard a jetliner and hurry off to another destination.
I make a promise to myself to come back and spend a week next time. Here in Charleston, that's probably worth at least a month of rest.
Last edited by Skyring; Jun 24, 2006 at 10:28 am
Jun 24, 2006, 10:26 am
#51
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
Books on the tables, books on the floor, books in the foyer, books in the goodie bags!
Oh, but I was hurting. So many great books, but I was in mind of my baggage allowance. NoNoNoNo screamed the little bit of brain responsible for packing all my gear up and loading it onto a plane and fronting up at the checkin counter.
YesYesYesyes! said the rest of me. Maybe I can read one of the books before I leave. Hah! Fat chance - I'll be too busy with convention activities.
Convention? Yes, I'm at the 2006 Anniversary Convention here in Toronto. There are books and BookCrossers from all over the world, and they are all here in one merry room.
I wend my way through piles of books and it's all I can do not to wrap an embrace around everyone in sight. Did I ever mention how much I love BookCrossing? And BookCrossers.
There are some awesome BookCrossers here. The first person I spotted was PJLareau, who is a legend, with over twenty thousand books registered. He's probably responsible for a great number of the books on the table, but over the next hour or so as the official Meet'n'Greet progresses BookCrossers arrive with suitcases and boxes and proceed to establish a vast prairie of books along the tables.
This is the theme for the proceedings. At any given time there will be several people sort of browsing, grazing their way along the banquet of books.
People like me. I finally found a copy of Alexander McCall Smith's wonderful book "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", which I've been searching for over the past few months, ever since I first read another book in the series.
There's several dozen BookCrossers here. And several hundred books. Hard to get an exact count of either, because they move and merge and shift locations.
I dropped off a dozen books, books from my travels through as many OBCZs and picked up a dozen more. Maybe more, despite all the internal carping about weight and baggage allowances.
And I got to hug a lot of wonderful women. There's something about BookCrossers - they tend to be well-read, quirky, generous. And female. 90% of BookCrossers are female, and I'm not complaining at all. I'm privileged to be part of this very social, considerate, well-behaved organisation, and I reckon that if more women had positions of power, we'd all be better off.
At some point I was given my goodie bag, laden down with maps, bookmarks, books, sweets, pens, badges and all sorts of interesting things. I got a nametag that had both my real name and my screen name printed on the front, along with a little Australian flag. And on the back was a timetable showing the convention agenda.
Eventually, after sharing time with dozens of friends, a group of us got together and walked out in the Toronto evening for dinner. Something about a BookCrossing meal. There's lots of talk, lots of laughing, lots of food. We found a Mediterranean cafe - Toronto is a remarkably multicultural city - called "The Greek Islands" and tucked into all manner of spicy fare. I called my wife back home, telling her "I'm in the Greek Islands!"
She's a gem, letting me travel around the world by myself. It's been three weeks I've been gone, with a week to go before I'm back in Canberra. Much as I love BookCrossing and BookCrossers and books, it's home and family that really matters in my life.
"The Greek Islands?" she said "I thought you were supposed to be in Toronto. Did you get the wrong plane again?"
I explain the joke, and describe the food, and talk about my companions, and eventually hang up with words of love when we both become conscious of the cost of overseas cell phone calls.
And then we walk back to the hotel, say our goodnights and disappear off to our rooms. Me, I open the door and before I can find the light switch, I trip over the pile of books just inside. Oh Lord, but this pile is bigger than my bag. I am in serious trouble!
Oh, but I was hurting. So many great books, but I was in mind of my baggage allowance. NoNoNoNo screamed the little bit of brain responsible for packing all my gear up and loading it onto a plane and fronting up at the checkin counter.
YesYesYesyes! said the rest of me. Maybe I can read one of the books before I leave. Hah! Fat chance - I'll be too busy with convention activities.
Convention? Yes, I'm at the 2006 Anniversary Convention here in Toronto. There are books and BookCrossers from all over the world, and they are all here in one merry room.
I wend my way through piles of books and it's all I can do not to wrap an embrace around everyone in sight. Did I ever mention how much I love BookCrossing? And BookCrossers.
There are some awesome BookCrossers here. The first person I spotted was PJLareau, who is a legend, with over twenty thousand books registered. He's probably responsible for a great number of the books on the table, but over the next hour or so as the official Meet'n'Greet progresses BookCrossers arrive with suitcases and boxes and proceed to establish a vast prairie of books along the tables.
This is the theme for the proceedings. At any given time there will be several people sort of browsing, grazing their way along the banquet of books.
People like me. I finally found a copy of Alexander McCall Smith's wonderful book "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", which I've been searching for over the past few months, ever since I first read another book in the series.
There's several dozen BookCrossers here. And several hundred books. Hard to get an exact count of either, because they move and merge and shift locations.
I dropped off a dozen books, books from my travels through as many OBCZs and picked up a dozen more. Maybe more, despite all the internal carping about weight and baggage allowances.
And I got to hug a lot of wonderful women. There's something about BookCrossers - they tend to be well-read, quirky, generous. And female. 90% of BookCrossers are female, and I'm not complaining at all. I'm privileged to be part of this very social, considerate, well-behaved organisation, and I reckon that if more women had positions of power, we'd all be better off.
At some point I was given my goodie bag, laden down with maps, bookmarks, books, sweets, pens, badges and all sorts of interesting things. I got a nametag that had both my real name and my screen name printed on the front, along with a little Australian flag. And on the back was a timetable showing the convention agenda.
Eventually, after sharing time with dozens of friends, a group of us got together and walked out in the Toronto evening for dinner. Something about a BookCrossing meal. There's lots of talk, lots of laughing, lots of food. We found a Mediterranean cafe - Toronto is a remarkably multicultural city - called "The Greek Islands" and tucked into all manner of spicy fare. I called my wife back home, telling her "I'm in the Greek Islands!"
She's a gem, letting me travel around the world by myself. It's been three weeks I've been gone, with a week to go before I'm back in Canberra. Much as I love BookCrossing and BookCrossers and books, it's home and family that really matters in my life.
"The Greek Islands?" she said "I thought you were supposed to be in Toronto. Did you get the wrong plane again?"
I explain the joke, and describe the food, and talk about my companions, and eventually hang up with words of love when we both become conscious of the cost of overseas cell phone calls.
And then we walk back to the hotel, say our goodnights and disappear off to our rooms. Me, I open the door and before I can find the light switch, I trip over the pile of books just inside. Oh Lord, but this pile is bigger than my bag. I am in serious trouble!
Jun 24, 2006, 10:32 am
#53
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
Thanks, Jim, Zelda and Bill (in alphabetical order) for a wonderful meal. My spirits were high and my heart was light and I was singing to myself as I skipped all the way home to Fort Mason. At least until I realised that I'd left my camera back at the restaurant and had to skip all the way back.
But I found it in the shadows under our table where they were still clearing away the rubble from our feast and the waiter was muttering phrases under his breath. "Jolly good tucker" and "stone the cows".
"Crows, mate!" I corrected him, "Crikey yer dozey galah clear the wax outter yer flamin' ears."
He smiled fondly at me and I think I heard him whisper something to himself. It might have been "bloody drongo", but my ears aren't what they used to be.
But my heart is still beating hard, for I have seen the fair Zelda, the Klein manoeuvre, the Nyden moustache and at last I understand why they call San Francisco the city by the bay. It's the bay windows they are talking about.
Jolly good tucker, and I'll put it down as another of the fantastic meals I've had in my life.
Mind you, one of the very best meals I've ever had was nothing more than fish and chips, shared with a seagull or two, but that was in a seafood shack at Fishermans Wharf, and I gazed lustfully out at the stunning view.
San Francisco is a city very close to my heart. I think I love dour old Dunedin in New Zealand just a fraction more, but not by much.
I walked back home again through the warm San Francisco night, and this time I took the scenic route beside the humming cable tracks with the occasional car full of tourists hanging on by their smiles. I looked to my right, and here was Lombard Street, zigzagging its way down through the photographers, and an amazing panorama of lights beyond, Coit Tower topping Telegraph Hill and the lights of the Bay Bridge beyond.
Pure magic.
But I found it in the shadows under our table where they were still clearing away the rubble from our feast and the waiter was muttering phrases under his breath. "Jolly good tucker" and "stone the cows".
"Crows, mate!" I corrected him, "Crikey yer dozey galah clear the wax outter yer flamin' ears."
He smiled fondly at me and I think I heard him whisper something to himself. It might have been "bloody drongo", but my ears aren't what they used to be.
But my heart is still beating hard, for I have seen the fair Zelda, the Klein manoeuvre, the Nyden moustache and at last I understand why they call San Francisco the city by the bay. It's the bay windows they are talking about.
Jolly good tucker, and I'll put it down as another of the fantastic meals I've had in my life.
Mind you, one of the very best meals I've ever had was nothing more than fish and chips, shared with a seagull or two, but that was in a seafood shack at Fishermans Wharf, and I gazed lustfully out at the stunning view.
San Francisco is a city very close to my heart. I think I love dour old Dunedin in New Zealand just a fraction more, but not by much.
I walked back home again through the warm San Francisco night, and this time I took the scenic route beside the humming cable tracks with the occasional car full of tourists hanging on by their smiles. I looked to my right, and here was Lombard Street, zigzagging its way down through the photographers, and an amazing panorama of lights beyond, Coit Tower topping Telegraph Hill and the lights of the Bay Bridge beyond.
Pure magic.
Jun 24, 2006, 10:42 am
#54
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
You can follow me by the trail of articles I leave behind. No, not these things I'm writing, but the little objects that seem to get left behind in transit lounges and predawn departures. I'm pretty sure I've lost my second BookCrossing cap in as many months, possibly in Niagara on the Lake. There's a small compass and two small padlocks.
These last are the TSA approved models that can be opened with a special tool. Not sure how much security that means as I reckon the first thing any light-fingered baggage handler would steal wuld be one of these tools, but I made the effort. I needn't have bothered. TSA just cuts 'em off.
By and large I'm doing well for a twenty-one flight trip. But I'll be glad to get home and be able to stay in the same spot for a week at a time.
But the welcome I receive everywhere I go helps to make up for the disruption. in fact it's probably what I like best about travelling. I got a hug and a home-cooked meal from [info]absbookcrosser last night after I braved the BART system to go over the bay (or rather under it). Mmmm! Both delicious, and the time just slipped past. Good food, good music, good fellowship. Thanks, Abs!
BART is a great train system (and I've been on a few over the past few weeks), but the cable car system is pure San Francisco. Quirky, colourful and fun! Almost like a roller-coaster ride up and down those incredible hills.
These last are the TSA approved models that can be opened with a special tool. Not sure how much security that means as I reckon the first thing any light-fingered baggage handler would steal wuld be one of these tools, but I made the effort. I needn't have bothered. TSA just cuts 'em off.
By and large I'm doing well for a twenty-one flight trip. But I'll be glad to get home and be able to stay in the same spot for a week at a time.
But the welcome I receive everywhere I go helps to make up for the disruption. in fact it's probably what I like best about travelling. I got a hug and a home-cooked meal from [info]absbookcrosser last night after I braved the BART system to go over the bay (or rather under it). Mmmm! Both delicious, and the time just slipped past. Good food, good music, good fellowship. Thanks, Abs!
BART is a great train system (and I've been on a few over the past few weeks), but the cable car system is pure San Francisco. Quirky, colourful and fun! Almost like a roller-coaster ride up and down those incredible hills.
Jun 24, 2006, 10:44 am
#55
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
t was clouds most of the way across. The overcast stopped me looking down on the deep blue Pacific, but they couldn't stop my thoughts. Far down below my airconditioned jet where I sat spearing slices of melon, the Liberty ships had made their slow progress from Fort Mason's piers carrying men and war stores. Battleships, carriers, submarines and all the others had sailed the exact same route. A far slower pace than mine, but possibly more pleasant in the perception of men given a break between the intensity of training and the stress of combat.
I also felt for those who had flown the route in the unpressurised, propeller-driven aircraft of World War Two. The posters of those days portray space and comfort, where white-coated stewards bend attentively over the smiling passenger, but in reality the trip would have noisy, turbulent, cramped and uncomfortable, down amongst the clouds and the weather, the feeble padding of the straight seats a torture after the first few hours.
Here and there were glimpses of ocean, and as we got closer to Hawaii, my thoughts turned to danger, rather than discomfort. Japanese submarines would have prowled here during the war. Men looked out for them, binoculars searching for a feather of periscope wake in all that blue immensity. Or worse than submarines. Japanese carrer forces had visited the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands twice during the war, each time leaving death and disaster in their wake. The lookouts aboard those grey American ships would have been quartering the sky for enemy scout planes, searching the thin line of horizon for the pagoda masts of a Jap battlewagon.
I looked out the window as we turned and lined up for landing. I got a glimpse through a window on the other side of the aircraft, and it electrified me. Just for a second there was that black and white aerial view of Pearl Harbour, dark Ford Island surrounded by light water. I couldn't see the burning battleships, the spreading ripples from explosions, the wheeling attack planes, but I didn't need to see the details. I was here.
I got a better view as we settled onto final approach. Here were satellite domes and nuclear submarines, tranquility and sunshine. But Battleship Row held two items that caught my eye. One was the gret grey shape of a battleship. A real, honest to God battleship. I'd last seen USS Missouri twenty years earlier when she had visited Sydney for a naval review and now here she was, decommissioned again, moored where she had been during the war. And just ahead was a small white, boxy structure, one that was familiar to me from a hundred photographs: the memorial to USS Arizona, sunk here in nine minutes one bright Sunday morning. The ship still lies on the harbour floor, along with a thousand of her men, trapped below decks when a bomb set off the forward magazine.
Aloha, the signs read as I walked along to baggage claim. A colorful, smiling, friendly world, and to my surprise it was a familiar one. The first plane flight of my life dropped a wide-eyed seven year old on the Gold Coast, and I'd grown up on the beach, tumbling through the surf, walking wide golden beaches, and snacking down junk food amongst the holiday skyscrapers.
Change the flag and everything is the same. That same mix of glitzy and tacky, luxury and seedy that I knew and tolerated.
I can't say that I love the relentlessly commercialised world of Waikiki and Surfers Paradise. Exciting and colorful, sure, but give me fewer crowds and more people, if you know what I mean.
My hostel was glorious in its tackiness. Stuck down a side street half a block from the water, it had been a medium sized motel forty years ago and had seen several changes since. The walls had two coats of paint too many, the fittings didn't fit, and the brown painted chipboard kitchen cupboards matched the squeaky metal bunk beds in nothing but ugliness. But it was home for three nights and I settled in, wondering who would occupy the other three beds.
I was just thinking about heading out to buy some groceries - coffee, breakfast cereal and so on - when the door opened and a young man bounded in. Before I knew it, he'd dumped his gear and dragged me off down the beachfront to Duke's where he plonked me down, ordered me a local beer and watched as I settled into the warm glow of beachwatching.
Turns out this chap had just flown in from San Francisco (on a slightly later flight than I) and spent a week here every three months scubadiving, taking photographs and having a great time. For three months he'd been dreaming of sitting down and tasting that first mouthful of cold beer at Duke's, and I could see why. Diamond Head in the background, golden sand beach strewn with tanned bodies, waves crashing onto the shore, pretty waitresses to keep the beer flowing...
He just wanted someone to share the experience with, and I was happy to be there for him.
I also felt for those who had flown the route in the unpressurised, propeller-driven aircraft of World War Two. The posters of those days portray space and comfort, where white-coated stewards bend attentively over the smiling passenger, but in reality the trip would have noisy, turbulent, cramped and uncomfortable, down amongst the clouds and the weather, the feeble padding of the straight seats a torture after the first few hours.
Here and there were glimpses of ocean, and as we got closer to Hawaii, my thoughts turned to danger, rather than discomfort. Japanese submarines would have prowled here during the war. Men looked out for them, binoculars searching for a feather of periscope wake in all that blue immensity. Or worse than submarines. Japanese carrer forces had visited the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands twice during the war, each time leaving death and disaster in their wake. The lookouts aboard those grey American ships would have been quartering the sky for enemy scout planes, searching the thin line of horizon for the pagoda masts of a Jap battlewagon.
I looked out the window as we turned and lined up for landing. I got a glimpse through a window on the other side of the aircraft, and it electrified me. Just for a second there was that black and white aerial view of Pearl Harbour, dark Ford Island surrounded by light water. I couldn't see the burning battleships, the spreading ripples from explosions, the wheeling attack planes, but I didn't need to see the details. I was here.
I got a better view as we settled onto final approach. Here were satellite domes and nuclear submarines, tranquility and sunshine. But Battleship Row held two items that caught my eye. One was the gret grey shape of a battleship. A real, honest to God battleship. I'd last seen USS Missouri twenty years earlier when she had visited Sydney for a naval review and now here she was, decommissioned again, moored where she had been during the war. And just ahead was a small white, boxy structure, one that was familiar to me from a hundred photographs: the memorial to USS Arizona, sunk here in nine minutes one bright Sunday morning. The ship still lies on the harbour floor, along with a thousand of her men, trapped below decks when a bomb set off the forward magazine.
Aloha, the signs read as I walked along to baggage claim. A colorful, smiling, friendly world, and to my surprise it was a familiar one. The first plane flight of my life dropped a wide-eyed seven year old on the Gold Coast, and I'd grown up on the beach, tumbling through the surf, walking wide golden beaches, and snacking down junk food amongst the holiday skyscrapers.
Change the flag and everything is the same. That same mix of glitzy and tacky, luxury and seedy that I knew and tolerated.
I can't say that I love the relentlessly commercialised world of Waikiki and Surfers Paradise. Exciting and colorful, sure, but give me fewer crowds and more people, if you know what I mean.
My hostel was glorious in its tackiness. Stuck down a side street half a block from the water, it had been a medium sized motel forty years ago and had seen several changes since. The walls had two coats of paint too many, the fittings didn't fit, and the brown painted chipboard kitchen cupboards matched the squeaky metal bunk beds in nothing but ugliness. But it was home for three nights and I settled in, wondering who would occupy the other three beds.
I was just thinking about heading out to buy some groceries - coffee, breakfast cereal and so on - when the door opened and a young man bounded in. Before I knew it, he'd dumped his gear and dragged me off down the beachfront to Duke's where he plonked me down, ordered me a local beer and watched as I settled into the warm glow of beachwatching.
Turns out this chap had just flown in from San Francisco (on a slightly later flight than I) and spent a week here every three months scubadiving, taking photographs and having a great time. For three months he'd been dreaming of sitting down and tasting that first mouthful of cold beer at Duke's, and I could see why. Diamond Head in the background, golden sand beach strewn with tanned bodies, waves crashing onto the shore, pretty waitresses to keep the beer flowing...
He just wanted someone to share the experience with, and I was happy to be there for him.
Jun 24, 2006, 10:50 am
#57
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Canberra
Programs: Qantas FF Gold, Qantas Club
Posts: 91
I got in late last night after a short flight from Sydney. The cabin staff managed to serve a light meal with wine and coffee on crisp white napkins in the short time between climbing and descending. In fact they had barely served coffee when the captain ordered them to prepare the cabin for landing. I remarked to one of the crew that it was the "Cabin Service Olympics" and she replied that sometimes it was a case of "Here's your indigestion, hope you enjoy it!"
Home again and good to be back. Handed over the box of lollies/sweets/candies to the kids and hit the sack.
Computer troubles in the morning. This thing has got some sort of bug and is tremendously slow and unresponsive. I've been able to improve it a bit but it's still bloody awful. DD dropped her laptop while I was away and judging by the sounds coming out of the hard disk there's no data left to recover. I went in and got a new hard disk, now have to reload all the software.
Went through the mail that accumulated. The Columbia shirts and vest I was hoping would arrive in time for my trip had turned up, and it seems that I bought women's shirts in womens Large size. All very nice but they don't fit me! Kerri snaffled the vest and I'll send off the shirts to my mum. That'll teach me to read eBay ads all the way through.
Did some washing. Got a tonne of stuff to wash and wouldn't you know it, it's all drizzly today.
Put my head down for a quick nap after lunch and next thing I know it's four o'clock. I suddenly woke up and couldn't work out where I was. Starting to panic because I didn't know when my next flight was, and then it sank in that I was home and I relaxed. And went back to sleep.
Home again and good to be back. Handed over the box of lollies/sweets/candies to the kids and hit the sack.
Computer troubles in the morning. This thing has got some sort of bug and is tremendously slow and unresponsive. I've been able to improve it a bit but it's still bloody awful. DD dropped her laptop while I was away and judging by the sounds coming out of the hard disk there's no data left to recover. I went in and got a new hard disk, now have to reload all the software.
Went through the mail that accumulated. The Columbia shirts and vest I was hoping would arrive in time for my trip had turned up, and it seems that I bought women's shirts in womens Large size. All very nice but they don't fit me! Kerri snaffled the vest and I'll send off the shirts to my mum. That'll teach me to read eBay ads all the way through.
Did some washing. Got a tonne of stuff to wash and wouldn't you know it, it's all drizzly today.
Put my head down for a quick nap after lunch and next thing I know it's four o'clock. I suddenly woke up and couldn't work out where I was. Starting to panic because I didn't know when my next flight was, and then it sank in that I was home and I relaxed. And went back to sleep.