Europe in the Morning

Helsinki

Is it not always dawn in Helsinki in the wintertime? The pale, transparent sky and the slanting sunlight give it that luster of morning at most hours. The city responds in kind with its pale, white buildings that catch the stray beams of light at odd corners. The mighty cathedral floats above the city like the New Jerusalem about to descend from the frozen firmament, dazzling and all flush with the red light of the distant sun. But this is a description of noon in Helsinki. In the morning it is dark and cold. So cold that you can feel your bones creak and the air freezes the edges of your eyelids and the inside of your nostrils. The dark hours have their own ethereal luminescence. The snow - crunchy, dry - reflects the streetlamps in a million brilliant mirrors. Before dawn, I walked a long ways (a recurring theme in my travels) to the ferry. The city was cold, perhaps dead. Occasionally a car would slide past. Or one of the trams would snake through the white street with effortless silence. My feet meeting the crisp snow was the only sound in the whole harbor.

Tallinn

I reached Tallinn later in the morning. The ferry cut quickly and quietly through the foggy Gulf of Finland. For the duration of my hours on board, I could not see for more than a half a mile before the world was enveloped in gray monochrome - a sea of battered steel giving way to ghostly strands of orphaned clouds. But then the spiky, Teutonic citadel of the Estonian capital pierced through the mist like a knight slaying the monsters of gloom. Rosy light lingered on the frozen rooftops. Dawn, happy light, glinted off the snow. Smoke billowed from chimneys as the Sunday bells tolled calling the Lutherans and the Orthodox to their turreted temples on the rocky hill.

Riga

No rosy light of happy morning touched Riga. Riga was continuously and thoroughly gray. Even the people seemed gray. My lodgings were but a two-block walk from the grim bus station - itself situated on the ominously named Road to Moscow. My predawn walk to meet the bus out of town (I, inexplicably, traveled mostly by bus through the Baltics) was a panorama of grayness. Charcoal-colored puddles of salted slush clung to the edges of the tunnel that led under the main road and connected the station with the city. The station itself was more transparent gray. Dingy glass showcased people in large black overcoats aimlessly awaiting their ride. But perhaps it is all just a facade. Awaiting my bus, near a dirty pile of snow, I thought back to the deep, majestic blues and golds of the Orthodox Cathedral with its amber candles and rosy-cheeked old ladies crossing themselves. The inside of my nearly empty hostel was blue and lime green. The delicious beer and salmon were brown and pink and flavorful and rich. Perhaps in the morning, by contrast, everything feels a bit gray?

Vilnius

On my way out of Vilnius, I walked through the snow again. The snow was more brown than in Riga or Tallinn. It was not luminous like in Helsinki. It was a dull snow - wet, heavy. It was dark again, as always. The early bus tickets are the cheapest and most time-efficient. My backpack seemed heavier by the time I was leaving Vilnius. Perhaps it was because the wet snow weighing down my feet made the uphill walk to the station seem longer. I think words like "trudged" get bandied about a bit too nonchalantly. But, I must say, Vilnius was a place of trudgery. I trudged to the city gate. But then I stood up straight. Someone was watching me. Her eyes that have seen so many centuries (some would say eternity) caught mine. Through the many clear prisms of the old window I saw her, clothed with the sun, supported by the moon, crowned with the radiance of the stars. A young man near me saw her too. I imagine he sees her often. He bowed, made the sign of the cross, looked up at her, and walked through the gate. I followed him.  

Winter wanderings

My thesis is reaching that crucial time when decisions must be quickly made, committed to, and expanded upon. From now until dim days of December, it shall be one headlong, maddening plunge toward graduation. Architecture students, much like architects proper, are often to be found talking about ourselves and our work - and all of its invariable complexity, and difficulty, and depth, and philosophy, and, oh, you should be both pitying us and marveling at our tenacity at this point! We, as a profession, share a bit of character with the Irish - the greater the number and intensity of your struggles and misfortunes, the higher your rank in a room. Needless to say, a bit of exaggeration goes on. Yet, I shall indeed be very busy for the next two months.

When it is all over, I will be heading out on another journey. It is perhaps a bit of the "millennial goes traipsing before growing up" genre, but there you have it. The prospect of two weeks vacation for the next ten years means that I shan't be heading to Europe again for awhile. So, I'm going now. In the wintry depths of January, I'm going to go to Helsinki in Finland for a few days. From there, I'll make a quick tour of the pint-sized Baltic countries before continuing into Poland. I'll be making a point to visit the famed Jasna Gora monastery, home of the holy icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa -- the spiritual heart of Poland. After a stay in Krakow, I'll hop over the Carpathians and across Slovakia to Vienna. The Austrian capital is another place that has always held my fascination. I think it will merit the better part of a week. I may make a trek up into the Wiener Wald to the Cistercian monastery at Heiligenkreuz, where there are relics of the True Cross and a growing community of monks. After Vienna, things are hazy at the moment and are dependent on friends and the ability of their couches. The goal is to end in Paris for a few days before coming home.

As of now, I am planning this as a solo trip. I have traveled by myself only sparingly. I think there is a lot to learn about oneself in solitude, especially in unfamiliar circumstances. The practical side of things is that I can spend my time exactly as I would like - indulging my idiosyncrasies at will. It is weird not to talk to people though. I went to Caen in Normandy last October and didn't speak the whole day apart from ordering lunch. It was liberating in an odd way. Sometimes I talk too much (see first paragraph) to no profitable end. Silence and solitude are valuable teachers.

Geographic extremities

The rather unwieldy and fanciful motto of the State of Michigan is "Si quæris peninsulam amœnam circumspice" which means, "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you." One of the reasons I like Michigan is that is has lots of geographical extremities. The land is always wandering off aimlessly into one of the big lakes. Roads end in Michigan. They terminate in a shifting sand dune or in a tangle of blueberry bushes clinging to the exposed rock. There's often to be found the sensation of reaching as far as you can go. The azure water arrives abruptly and announces -- like God to the primordial seas -- "Thus far shall you come and no further."

A few weeks ago, I happened to be traveling with my family in the Keweenaw Peninsula, a stunningly beautiful region in Upper Michigan. I had never been. It was always too far from wherever we happened to be. It's too far from Marquette. It's too far from the camp. It's just too far. But, the further a place is, the more mysterious and fantastic it becomes. I drank in the mystique of this little hidden kingdom at the top of the state. We drove several wooded roads to their end, where entrancing localities awaited further on foot. We climbed the bald, granite head of Bare Bluff to watch sheets of light rain shimmer across the unperturbed cerulean surface of Lake Superior. At Horseshoe Harbor, past the end of US-41 (which ends its 2,000 mile journey from Miami as a gravel cul-de-sac), the winds blew with ferocity out of the west, sending surges of whitecapped water crashing into the ancient lava formations. The inscrutable pine forest stood erect, sighing softly.

The end of the Keweenaw Peninsula and Bete de Gris Bay from the summit of Bare Bluff

Michigan is a bypassed state. It's peninsular, after all. It doesn't go anywhere. One has to make an effort to go there. The Keweenaw and all of the other sub-peninsulas await exploration all the same. One is schooled in enjoying the journey, because there's usually nothing at the end of it all. The Leelenau Peninsula comprises unparalleled wine country, but it terminates without ceremony at a lighthouse and a stony, cramped beach. The Old Mission Peninsula is perhaps marginally more exciting, as its terminus lies at the 45th Parallel. Why drive to Whitefish Point? It ends in shipwrecks and wind and blown sand. Truth be told, you can't even get to the end of the Keweenaw. The roads get too disorderly, overgrown and rutted. The Garden Peninsula, which separates Lake Michigan from the amusingly-named Big Bay De Noc, is inhabited by ghosts, who have their capital at Fayette, an abandoned town. But each is worth the drive, as I and any other Michigander will tell you. We're the experts in seeking pleasant peninsulas, after all.

Eastern shore

This past weekend I went camping with some friends out on Assateague, a barrier island off the coast of Maryland. It's a beautiful place with a unique ecosystem - the centerpiece of which is the herd of feral ponies that roam the island. It was a beautiful, sunny weekend (as my sunburned shoulders and feet (of all places!) will readily attest).

Sunset colors over Sinepuxent Bay

The beach illuminated by the very bright Blue Moon

Some of the ponies roaming the beach

Sandcastle time

The marsh on the bay side of the Island

Sunset on night two

Storms over the bay on the second night

The See of Baltimore

Last Sunday, I took the train up to Baltimore for the afternoon. My thesis at Catholic University involves developing a design for a museum of American Catholicism. My site is currently in rural St. Mary's City, Maryland, the first place in the Colonies where Catholics were free to settle. It's beautiful, but it is far from DC and is quite remote. It was suggested to me during my final review for the semester that I consider a more urban site, given the largely urban nature of American Catholicism as a whole.

To that end, a visit to Baltimore was in order. Baltimore is the oldest diocese in the United States. Its first bishop, John Carroll, was a cousin to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. During the 19th Century, Baltimore - like many American cities - swelled with Catholic immigrants from Europe, lending various layers of character to its many unique neighborhoods. In all, I am growing more convinced that an urban site for this museum makes more sense.

Below are a few photos of the magnificent old Cathedral of the Assumption, the first Cathedral in the United States. I thought it interesting that it was built in the Neoclassical style that was so often used for government buildings and Protestant churches. It was quite beautiful.

Purple mountain majesties

Two weekends ago I went hiking with two friends in the mountains of Virginia. Our itinerary of three days brought us to the peaks of several mountains, along a portion of the Appalachian Trail, and many fine views of the mountains of the George Washington National Forest. A few photos follow, in no particular order:

Though I've had a backpacking pack for a year and a half, this was the first time I've used it for anything apart from a carry-on. REI separated me from a good chunk of my first paycheck, but I'm happy to now have the rudiments for future backpacking trips. My friend who planned the trip is very experienced in backpacking, so it was good to learn from her as well. Hopefully there will be more adventures of this type ahead!

To stroll is Parisian

I was going through some photos yesterday. This one is from my second day in Paris, which I remember vividly. On my first day, I rushed right down to Notre Dame, but on day two I had no real itinerary. I wandered down to the Place de République and then zig-zagged through the Third Arrondissement. I stuck my head into Saint-Elizabeth, the Parisian parish of the Order of Malta. At a cafe across the street from the church, a car backed into a pole, causing a commotion. From there, I got all turned around and ended up in the neighborhood of Charlie Hebdo. After a stop in the Place des Vosges, the sky turned turbulent, and I took refuge from the rain in the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in the Marais. There was a clearing and I continued on to the Seine and crossed over to the Ile Saint-Louis. It was from the bridge that this shot was taken.

My favorite part about Paris, which has become clearer in retrospect, is the delight it gives to walkers. The texture of the city is so uniformly interesting, that one can just keep going from place to place without noticing. There is such a strong continuity of experience. "To err is human, to stroll is Parisian," as Victor Hugo said. I think Washington is a good walking city as well, though it is not as uniform as Paris.

Home for Holy Week

I am at home for a few days for Easter. This is the first time I've been home for Easter with my family for many, many years. At Ball State, we had no time off for Easter (indeed, many of our studio deadlines seemed to fall on Good Friday) so my family would come down to Muncie for the weekend.

Yesterday, I arrived home and spent much of the afternoon napping. Last night after dinner, I went with my parents for a drive out to the lake. It was the first time in a few years that I'd been to Grand Haven. We parked and walked along the riverfront out to the pier. It was sunny and mild, but as we reached the lake, it got windier and colder. There was still a lot of ice on the pier and on the beach side of the pier. The wind blowing across the ice made it pretty chilly. Still, it was nice to walk around and enjoy the sunlight and the beautiful sunset. We met an old man on the pier who appeared to be a local photographer. He was eager to tell us how much ice has melted in the past week (and how it compares to last year at this time, and sundry other factoids). Later, we joked that that would be my dad in retirement because he likes to strike up random conversations with strangers. We drove back to Grand Rapids and got ice cream with my little sister from the ice cream stand where I used to work. It was in the 60s even that late in the evening.

Grand Haven beach

Along the pier

"crazy people"

The snow fences are still up

Sunset

Pier

Today the rain was torrential. I went to the bank and paid off a loan I had taken to go to Paris. It was a nice feeling to have that taken care of. The teller was surprised when I asked for my balance to pay in its entirety. She said, "Like, the whole thing? We don't get too many people wanting to pay off the whole thing! Good for you!" I don't like the idea of being in debt. I read Independent People by Halldór Laxness last fall, and the plot centers on a character who has worked for eighteen years to be free of debt and has been overtaken with an extreme aversion to being indebted to anyone - even to the point of refusing charity. His quest for "independence" is exaggerated to point out its faults. But that was in rural Iceland in the early 20th Century. One was in debt to one's neighbors, not to vast banking conglomerates.

Nothin' to see

Travel has always been a predominantly visually-focused endeavor. We have always wanted to see the sights, or if there were any sights worth seeing. In our Age of Instagram, the visual is even more paramount to the experience of travel. As an aspiring design professional, I am of course biased toward the visual both naturally and as a consequence of my education. In terms of our popular culture, I suppose that means that I could probably get more Instagrams-per-square-inch out of more places than the average non-designer.

But, what happens when there's "nothin' to see." In Louisiana, apart from New Orleans, I was told there was "nothin' to see." On the face of it, that's fairly accurate: "the sights" are few and far between. But, it's often a separate joy finding the poetry in the mundane and the routine - even if it's not visually arresting. You can't photograph the chewiness of a piece of crawfish, described by a friend as "a little dirty shrimp." One can take a photo of the magnificent live oaks that shade the campus of LSU, but you can't depict the joy that they bring to the eyes of a winter-bound Northerner who is amazed that such great green things are such an ordinary part of daily life in some places in the world. And, since I attempted it, you can't really photograph the sense of benevolent enclosure those magnificent trees provide. I'd almost consider moving South just for the trees. And what about the rain? In five days I encountered several species of that multifarious creature. There was the light rain that was largely intercepted by the live oaks, leaving the pathways damp but puddle-free; there were clouds that simply stooped to eye-level and deposited their moisture radiantly; and then there were downpours worthy of Noah, soaking, flooding, washing dirt where it shouldn't be and then washing it clean. Then there were the various sociologist's delights. There was the fraternity house of Delta Chi where I was lodging (my friend - a student affairs Masters student - took a job as their house director) which gave me a few fleeting glances beneath the surface of Greek life. The campus provided further people-watching opportunities. I was amazed at how easy I found it to pick out people who were of French descent - the long Norman faces and often long wavy hair I saw everywhere made it seem like I was looking through my grandmother's old family album. The Cajuns were Canadian before they were Louisianian after all.

Sometimes when there's nothin' to see, I think I come home with a better sense of the place and its people.

Concrete hills

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, I-10 runs its path and neither swamp nor lake nor width of bayou can stay its course. A good portion of the road is a causeway built above the bizarre merging of land and water at the west end of Lake Pontchartrain. Other parts of the same lake are prone to various acts of apparent hubris: a highway bisects it from north to south, power lines stand a mile out in the midst of the flat waters, laughing at anyone who thought that electricity and moisture couldn't be friends. But here lonesome trees claw their way out of the swamp, only to be assailed by Spanish moss. The earth undulates between wet and dry with baffling rapidity. The only hills are concrete - the road will occasionally lift itself over a particularly wide channel of murky water, or it will reach even more remote altitudes launching itself across other roadways. From the summit of these concrete hills, one gets an almost unsettling view of the landscape. One is not supposed to see from up here. This is the privileged domain of the pelicans and the egrets and the cranes. But then you're back to the pancake flatness of the marsh and the traffic, crawling along like an alligator.

Driving in Iceland

In August (and again in December, under much different circumstances) I was in Iceland. I rented a car with my friend Brian who was traveling with me, and with it we were able to see a fair bit of the country. Iceland is a bit in vogue as the darling of the tourist industry at the moment, but I can certainly see why after traveling there: it is unlike any other earthly place I can think of. One of the great pleasures of traveling through the country is the vast expanses of nothingness one encounters for much of the ride.

Toward Fjallsárlón glacier

Wide expanse of volcanic rock covered in lichens in southern Iceland

Driving toward Grundarfjorður on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Between Seltún and Reykjavík

North of Akranes

Also north of Akranes

On the Snæfellsnes Peninsula

The north face of Snæfellsjökull, one of Iceland's largest volcanoes

The road across Snæfellsjökull

Negotiating right-of-way

Our Nissan Note on Mars or Snæfellsjökull

We thought it imprudent to go too much further up this road

Heading toward Skaftafell in southeast Iceland

Southern Iceland in the afternoon mists

It is all the more astonishing in my view to think that this land has been inhabited by people continuously since the 900s AD. Our American minds tend to associate pristine scenery with our own myth of the wild west - an uncivilized uninhabited region awaiting our Manifest Destiny. Though Iceland was a cultural backwater for most of its history, it was still inhabited. I just finished reading Iceland's Bell by Icelandic author and Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness (his Independent People was arguably my favorite book of 2014, perhaps narrowly edging out Les Mis and Kristin Lavransdatter). In events of the novel take place during the 17th Century, when the Danes had a political and economic death grip on Iceland. It was a challenge in reading the book to imagine these descendants of Vikings struggling mightily against the Danish Crown for some scrap of honor against the backdrop of such noble wonders of creation.

The floating red house

The other day, I finished reading The Skin by the Italian author/political chameleon Curzio Malaparte. The book is chilling, bizarre, and basically a-moral, but, more than any other book I've read it captures well the absurdity of war and its aftermath - in this case Naples under American "liberation". I would have never encountered the work of Malaparte had I not visited his home in Capri in September as part of a three-day architecture workshop. Below is an excerpt from my journal:

For the better part of this afternoon, Maria and I sat in the wood-paneled dining room at a heavy wooden table next to a little window that faced the sea. In the corner was a German stove - the kind you might find in a Munich bierhalle. On it were stacks of Malaparte's literary oeuvre in all of the languages of Babel. From where I sat, in the corner, I could see into the small foyer and out onto the front patio that blazed red in the afternoon sun. There was no relief in the typically azure sea beyond - the sun was at its zenith and the crests of the undulating waves were stark white. The sky was pale and dehydrated. The two became one flesh where the horizon should've been. The cat, Luna, had given up her pestering and was guarding the open front door. Outside of the window at my right, shady pine trees of the peculiar Mediterranean variety screened the view out toward the towering cliffs - cathedrals of a type that soar out of the water and continue to the heavens. But, like the mighty Cathedral of Rouen commanding the end of the narrow street, the cliffs stopped my view abruptly with a jumbled jaggedness of dry earth.

I had begun to feel more and more unsettled the longer I sat on that dark wooden bench. I got up several times to have a glass of water from the adjacent sparkling silver kitchen. But, every time I sat down, the twirling of my stomach would return. Looking out the window at the otherwise magnificent scenery was akin to looking at a flat, foreshortened tableau, not unlike a painting from the early Renaissance or a Chinese mountain print. The psychological problem, I later decided, was that I could not see the horizon nor the sky but was able to see very far laterally. It was as if I was constantly looking through binoculars at the cliffs. The only other time I've had this experience was when I was once on a cruise ship - as we sailed past that variety of mountain that plunges itself into the sea. That's what my body and mind were expecting. They thought - I thought - that I should be sailing along the coast of Capri, sitting in a German cabin enclosed in a floating red cloud. When the afternoon of work was done and it was time to go upstairs for espresso and orange cake, I stared at the horizon from the main room. The sky was purple and the sea was gray. I had missed that dear boundary between boundless expanses.

I have not had this experience since. It was visceral, physical, and extremely odd. It is one of the many reasons that extraordinary house will stay burned in my memories.

Here, you can see the house perched on its promontory, with the cliffs beyond. The dining room is on the other side.

Here, you can see the narrowness of the house on its little sliver of rock.