We were taking a long walk through the park, chatting like sisters do, about high school popularity – and the problem of the lack thereof. Except this particular pair of sisters is separated by about seventeen years in age.

It started with an innocuous question. My sister-in-law, who is in her first year of high school, asked me if I had noticed that the popular kids seem to offer the less popular ones opportunities to become more popular – but that usually one has to jump over some ridiculous hurdle to prove one’s worth. And that it can be the kids you’d think were least concerned with popularity who do so, while someone you thought might be the first to line up, who ends up surprising you.

And somehow, over the course of the conversation, I told a story about a friend I had, Helen. She was a very sweet and smart girl and I enjoyed her friendship…but she was definitely on the lower end of the popularity spectrum. One day, in an attempt to be helpful, I suggested we could have a little fun with hair and makeup and such. I had hoped to help her fit in a little better, in a way that was flattering for her face and figure. But that conversation didn’t go so well, and soon after, I lost her as a friend. In retrospect, I realized that she – better than me – had understood that I, in my teenage immaturity, had not valued her very well as her own person. And I felt endlessly guilty about that and sad that I had done so.

And my young sister-in-law told me it was a mark of how wholesome I was as a person that I felt badly about it; many others would do far worse, with malicious intent, and not feel a shred of guilt. And she said, wisely, that more may have happened to Helen where others had tricked, deceived, or bullied her, and perhaps part of the reason for her reaction had more to do with how others had treated her in the past than with what I was suggesting in the moment.

And in that conversation, I felt a burden of guilt ease off my shoulders: the release of a weight I hadn’t realized I carried. I don’t share this to curry more assurances, but to mention how startled I was to find what little packages of self-chastisement I carry, and for how many years I can carry it. There are things that stick with us, hidden in the nooks and crannies of our character. And sometimes all it takes is understanding, even from an unlikely source, to shed light on these things and set them free.

Do you have a packet of guilt you’ve been carrying with you for too long?

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What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

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So I haven’t taken a single photo since we got back to Berlin. I guess, sometimes, you live life by capturing it, moment by moment, like butterflies in a net. And sometimes, you live it by participating – the greatest gesture of affection is to simply be.

Since our return a week ago, we’ve gone on long walks through the park, got our Asian food fix at Monsieur Vuong’s, went on a 4-hour hunt for Thai food hunt to make coconut soup, curry & yum nuea at home (with a rhubarb crumble for dessert!), went clubbing in Kreuzberg, ziplining, had a writing date, joined in the party at Karnivale de Kulture, saw Men in Black 3, took a boat tour, made friends with a prominent Iranian, and…today, we’re doing laundry.

Photo by hubby, Toby Keller

One thing, I definitely have to hand it to Berlin, for the variety of bars & clubs they have. On Friday night, we went to one situated in and around some abandoned buildings right on the waterfront. It was such an eclectic mix of graffiti art and comfy couches, party lighting and river views. We got there early (and by early, I mean we arrived a little after midnight). Most people didn’t show up until about 1 or 2 a.m. (when bars would normally close in CA), and the party really began to heat up around 3:30. We started to tire out soon after that, such old married fogies as we are, so we left a little before 4 a.m., just as the sun began to light the sky. There was still a long line of people to get into the club as we were leaving. We had to catch the subway back home so it was nearly 5 and the sun was actually up by the time we stumbled in.

Sunday was the Karnivale de Kulture, a parade of sorts celebrating different nations and other cultural things, like swing dancing and hula hooping. The part of the parade we saw wasn’t totally exciting. It was clear that the Karnivale was basically an excuse for a party in the streets.

Photo by T.

Lucky for us, Toby’s cousin Susi lives in Kreuzberg, right near the parade and she and her flatmates were having a party that day. They invited us over and we could sip mojitos and beer while watching the party from above.

Photo by T.

And tonight we have tickets to see the Blue Man Group. I’m very excited. Toby has seen them before, performing in New York, but this will be my first time. Other than that, we’ll try to keep things a little more low key through the rest of the week and enjoy our remaining days here.

We fly back to Thailand on Saturday night…and it’s going to be evil. Pure evil. Our flight leaves just after midnight on Sat. night/Sun. morning and arrives in Moscow at 5:30 a.m., where we will then have a FOURTEEN HOUR layover. I don’t even remember what time we’re supposed to get to Bangkok, but then we will still have to hop on another flight to get back to Chiang Mai.

(Today, I shall be downloading plenty of books for my Kindle and make sure my iPod is fully charged.)

But then we will see Dot!!!! God, I miss that mutt.

Anyway, that’s what’s up from over here. If we were really meeting for coffee, this is probably the moment where I’d realize I’d been talking way too much and my cappuccino has grown cold, and then I’d turn the floor over to you. Tell me, what’s going on in your part of the world? I am, as they say, all ears.

Also linking up with:

Ae Lin shoved herself up from the bed and went to fill up a glass of water from a bottle in the fridge. She sipped the cup, looking out the window, curling her toes against the cool, tiled apartment floor. The sun wasn’t up yet, though the sky started to lighten. The buildings were low, but thick, tangled power cables obscured the view. She looked down to the floor below. Stray dogs sniffed in crevices, searching for scents on moldering walls. Every day, the matron of the apartment below her emerged at dawn to sweep the streets clean. She swept the street daily and with great energy, but it never occurred to her to do something about the mold growing in the crevices. But that’s the whole city, Ae Lin reflected. Everyone sweeps at the fine, delicate dust, priding themselves on their cleanliness, taking care to preserve their marks of beauty, all the while blind to the thick layer of mold hiding in plain view. The mold was a natural, if filthy, consequence of the confluence of the tropical Thai rain and heat, its inevitability its defense.

Whatever people believed to be inescapable eventually became invisible. Though she found the mold both repulsive and unsightly, it got so that, most times, even she stopped seeing it too.

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Write on Edge is a community for writers. This week, they’ve provided a prompt to focus on the use of setting to deepen a reader’s connection to the story by revealing something about the character or conflict, or to evoke a mood. And do it in 250 words or less.

Three weeks away, and I am homesick.

I miss fresh vegetables. I miss raw herbs and colorful fruit.

I miss people who speak volumes with silence and a significant look.

I miss warm rain and the golden hour, motorcyclists zipping alongside rice paddies, and mountains in the distance.

I miss Dot.

I’ve lived in Thailand for only a year and a half, but it’s the home I feel homesick for. And it took coming to Europe, where everything felt comfortable and familiar, to find out that it’s actually Thailand that has become my home.

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

It’s hard to believe it’s only been a week since our last cup of coffee together! I keep thinking I must have missed something…but really it’s been just a week. Has your week been such a whirlwind too?

So the last time we chatted, Toby and I were in Krakow. Since then, we drove down through the Czech countryside to Prague. The countryside? Is gorgeous, with gentle, rolling hills, blankets of yellow flax flowers, a little towns dotting the landscape. The roads? Horrible. Basically, we should just see the Czech Republic and Poland as “under construction.” At least the parts we drove through.

But we made it in one piece (minus the part where we didn’t realize we were driving on toll roads as there weren’t any toll booths or signs in English about it and the way you’re supposed to pay it is to pull off the highway at the little gas station shops and purchase a little permit thing…so we may or may not have incurred a bunch of tickets). We found our friends’ place easily, and were excited to be in the land where good beer flows in rivers, and that the weather had turned significantly warmer.

We spent a couple of days in Prague, but by this point I was kind of over the touristy things – there are only so many museums and churches and castles I can see before I just stop caring – so really, the nice part was just to see the city, walk amongst the people, and get a sense for what it’s like to be there. The funny thing about Prague is, since the country was surrendered quite quickly to the Germans in WWII, it wasn’t bombed like the rest of many important European cities, so it still has a lot of the old Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance, and Medieval architecture.

And interesting statuary.

Ok, to be fair, this one is in Lednice, not Prague.

My impression seeing it? One knows immediately where Disney got his influence. And because the buildings aren’t war-torn and reconstructed…it looks like Disneyland. The one Medieval thing I made sure to see was a church where, in the 1400s a thief tried to steal an altarpiece and was caught. They lopped off his arm and strung it up by the doorway as a warning against future thievery….where you can still see it today. A 600-year-old desiccated arm. Too bad they don’t allow photos or I’d totally show it to you.

The other fun part of last week was our friends managed to get some time off work and we went wine tasting in the Czech countryside, only a kilometer away from the Austrian border. (I was so tempted to just pop over real quick…) I haven’t heard much about Czech wines, but it turns out they have some really nice whites. And the best part was the wine tasting was set up in the cellar of an old castle. You pay 12 euros to get in, and you go into this huge cellar with nearly a hundred different wines set up with description and tasting tables…and you get to drink whatever and as much as you want. You’re totally left alone with a glass and a basket of bread, to have at it to your heart’s content. We had a GOOD afternoon.

And bought a case of whites to take home.

(I also found a pair of shoes that were both super cute AND super comfortable. I went to the store four different times to hem and haw over it before I capitulated and bought them. And when I did get them…it was pretty much a highlight of the trip because finding shoes that I can wear with nice clothes and NOT get blisters is pretty much like hunting unicorns as far as I’m concerned.)

Now, after a brief stop in Dresden – which is an interesting city because it was totally decimated at the end of the war, as in NOTHING was left…and historians argue the attack was pointless because the war was already won at that point and Dresden was not a strategic point of attack so we basically were just terrorizing citizens like we did with Hiroshima – we’re back in Berlin.

After nearly three weeks of meat, potatoes, and dumplings, my body is starved for fruits & vegetables. I’m missing Thailand for all the fresh food right now. So this morning I woke up, went for a run in the gorgeous spring-summer weather, and stopped by a roadside stand selling fresh strawberries and asparagus, and bought a bunch of both. I made a breakfast of strawberries, vanilla yogurt, and muesli…and now I’m thinking longingly and lovingly towards asparagus lightly sauteed, with a slice of dark rye, cheese, and an egg for lunch. Care to join me?

Speaking of…I’m getting hungry, and work (that I’ve totally ignored until now) is calling, so I’d better head out. I hope you all have had a great week. Please tell me what’s going on in your world, and if there is a post you’d like me to see, link it up in the comments! Thanks for stopping by for the coffee and chat. Smooches!

Also linking up with:

Children's Barracks, Auschwitz-Birkenau

Sunday, May 13.
Oświęcim, Poland.

Excerpt from my journal:

I pulled my cold fingers out of my coat pocket to touch the outlines of children’s names and the etchings of their imaginations that lined the stone walls and wooden bedboards. I traced my fingertips and felt the jolt of their cries, their fright, their hope and despair. I touched it again and again, and it was as if I touched their fingertips to mine.

My fingers, still useless to help them, these children who could not be saved.

 What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

Did you all have a nice Mother’s Day? I was afraid we wouldn’t get a chance to say hello to our mothers, but thankfully we wrangled a quick bit of wi-fi on the iPhone, and with the help of Skype, managed to say a quick hello to our mothers…from Poland!

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. A bit of a recap: After I last posted, we got to see Toby’s cousins, a couple of whom I’d never met before, and they showed us Berlin’s youth culture. We went bar hopping and indulged in thick, tasty beers and great cocktails – including an accidental stop in what we soon realized was a lesbian bar, as evidenced by the signs that read: Ich liebe meine vagina, and You are leaving the hetero-normative sektor, and the cocktail special “pussylove”: gin, lemon juice, and blackberry liqueur. What can I say? It was yummy.

We have since moved on, however, and now we are in the former capitol of Poland.

Krakow is a gorgeous city. We drove here from Berlin on Saturday, admiring the wide spring countryside dotted with flowers, while cursing the torn up roads, most of the whole way. But we’ve been nothing but enchanted since we got to Krakow. There are still horse-drawn carriages…and the odd bottle of beer (costumed person) strolling down the street. And there is a large market square, much like the piazzas in Italy, where we go in the evenings to drink some beer and indulge in pierogis, or a fresh-grilled sausage, or pork cutlets in a honey-wine sauce as we listen to live music. So far, we’ve been most drawn to the live jazz and the lone trumpet player, but I’ve seen some advertisements for Chopin in the evenings. I couldn’t think of a better place to listen to a Nocturne or Polonaise, so that’s our plan for tonight.

It is pretty freaking cold though, here. For transplants from Thailand, the 50*F (or less) weather and rain in May is a bit of a shock. We go out in layers, tucked up in our thickest coats and caps.

But we still haven’t had much chance to wander the city in the daytime. We spent all day Sunday at an altogether different place. We drove an hour and a half out of the city, to Oświęcim – otherwise known as Auschwitz-Birkenau.

(If you want to skip over this portion of the coffee chat, I wouldn’t blame you.)

We went to two sites. First, Auschwitz I, which was originally a prison before the Nazis took it over. It’s smaller and houses most of the museum information, pictures, and memorabilia. Then we went to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which is vast and immense. It’s the concentration camp the Nazis created. It’s the one in all the pictures you see, and it’s the one that truly gives you the sense of scale of what happened there.

I thought I would be sad to go there, that it would be depressing and make me tearful. But truthfully, the primary emotion I felt when I was there was: revolted. It was sickening to hear again and anew what people can do to each other, the evil ways the Nazis tricked and lied to people, and the sick ways they took from people and redistributed to others.

There was one point we walked into a large room, and a glass case lined one side of the room, wall to wall, from floor to ceiling. Inside the glass case was the lopped off bunches of women’s hair. I couldn’t look. I spent that portion staring at my sneakers because I couldn’t handle the sight as I listened to how the Nazis took these women’s hair and sent it to Germany to use a stuffing in mattresses, or to weave into fabric for blankets and soldiers’ uniforms, and redistribute to the (unknowing, I’m sure) German public.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Germany, and the sense I’ve gotten there is the remaining weight of guilt of the nation, from it’s history, even among those who were not alive at the time and could not bear responsibility for it.

On the Polish side, it’s easy to sense the weight of blame: for invading, for doing what they did to so many people. The blame is directed at the Nazis, but there is an undercurrent towards the Germans who profited (however, unknowingly) from the loss of others.

The history there is complicated. It’s more than war, it reaches to the depths of humanity and evil alike. You still feel it, and it’s nothing that movies and history books can ever really convey.

Anyway, we spent a day there, and as awful as it was to see, I think it was important that we made the effort. And thankfully, we’ll move on to more pleasurable aspects of our trip. We’re certainly lucky to have that choice.

Today, we both need to get some work done, but then we’ll grab some food and wander around the city some more, and catch our evening concert before we leave for Prague.

Thanks for the coffee and the chat! Tell me, what’s going on in your pocket of the world?

also linking up with:

We see America differently from having lived abroad, now appreciating some things we used to take for granted, yet also taking taking advantage of other things we previously could not access.

This trip to Germany is not my first, but I’m getting the sense it will be a first. It’s my first time coming here after living in Asia. Where once, from the perspective of a flight from LAX to Tegelhof, stepping on German soil felt exotic and foreign, now it feels comfortingly familiar – so much so I’m often caught by surprise by the fact that I don’t speak the language and that I have to re-learn basic things like how much to tip and to stop smiling so much at strangers.

And this trip to Europe will actually be my longest stay in Europe yet. Instead of just popping by, I’m getting an opportunity to truly immerse. You orient yourself differently when you know you will be in a place for just a few days versus several weeks. It’s a different way of traveling; a different way to be.

Henry Miller once said, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

I wonder whether and how a month in Eastern Europe will change my way of seeing. Already I begin to sense the addition of more cultural milieus into my thoughts, awareness, and orientation. I begin to sense that the more you’ve been everywhere, the less you begin to fit in anywhere.

But that’s okay. If the world is a book, I’d prefer to read the whole story, not just one page.

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

Is it true that travel vacations are kind of like dreams in the sense that we are never so interested in other people’s as we are in our own? Well I’ll try to make this interesting anyway. That photo up there was taken as we were flying over Kabul. As soon as I saw it on the flight monitor that we were flying over the capitol of Afghanistan, I whipped out my phone camera, because hey…we were over Afghanistan. How often does one get a chance to say they’re flying over a freakin’ war zone – and, you know, not be dodging bullets?

Most of the country looked like an endless sea of brown, but right there? It was gorgeous with the Hindu Kush mountain range (a subrange of the Himalayas) extending out into the horizon, dotted by white clouds.

Now, I say it’s the Hindu Kush mountain range as if I know what I’m talking about, but I totally had to wikipedia that. My knowledge of world geography is shameful and humiliating. There were two whole countries (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) between Afghanistan and Russia that I could not recall the names of – other than to say they were a couple of “Stans.” And as we flew over Khazakstan, I thought it was Mongolia.

But, after a 10-hour flight, we landed in Moscow, which incidentally is remarkably swampy and flat (who knew?)…

…and, desperate for drinks, we grabbed some sodas and a beer at…TGI Friday’s.

The world is strange. But thankfully they took credit because we didn’t pack any rubles.

Anyway, after a 4-hour layover and another 2-hour jaunt, we made it to Berlin – another home away from home. Berlin is just so comfortably western and familiar to me that sometimes I totally forget I’m in a foreign country until I remember that I can’t speak the language and there’s that awkward moment where a salesclerk is looking at me expecting me to say something to them and I give them a feeble smile and they wonder who this dope is that’s just staring and smiling at them. Yeah, that happens often.

Lucky for me, Toby can do the talking.

So far, it’s been a busy vacation though, because every day we’ve gotten up, grabbed some coffee and croissants (with prosciutto and gruyere, or liverwurst, or fresh jam) and hit up at least two museums in one portion of the day, took a break for lunch (asparagus soup is my favorite), and then taken long walks around lakes, or in vast, cultivated castle gardens.

There was one day though, where Toby and his younger sister wanted to go to the computer game history museum. I took the opportunity to go shopping instead.

And oh, the fashion in Berlin is awesome. I could easily spend all my money there.

(I discovered a new photo filter, so please pardon my excitement as I overuse it.)

I’ve been very glad for the long walks, though, because it gives me a chance to work off the prosciutto and gruyere (and marzipan). And yesterday, we went to one castle garden modeled after English gardens, so I spend the afternoon pretending quite convincingly that I was in a Jane Austen novel.

But Toby can always be counted upon to bring things closer to home.

All right, I’m sure I’ve long abused my visit by now. Thanks for stopping by for coffee and a chat. There’s a cappuccino with my name on it. What are you drinking? Tell me what’s going on in your part of the world!

Also linking up with:

By all that was well-advised, I shouldn’t have gone there. I should have just walked across the street to our friendly neighborhood restaurant for lunch, so I could be in and out and back home tackling my to-do list in less than 45 minutes.

But instead, I followed craving and curiosity, and drove twenty minutes towards the busy end of town, through lunch traffic, hunted for parking, and walked the extra blocks to get to the ramen restaurant I’ve been meaning to try.

And by the time I parked, a hot day and turned into a rainy day, and just as I pulled my key from the ignition and opened my door, torrential rain began to pour.

{Lucky for me, I keep no less than 4 umbrellas in my car.}

{That’s a sign of experience.}

It was a good lunch, even if my sandle-clad feet were a bit dirty and wet. But, if I hadn’t have gone all the way there, to that restaurant, and sat in that table, and got the bright idea to try to catch the above photo out the window behind me…

…I also wouldn’t have caught this photo, one of my favorite reminders that I live in Thailand.

Yes, that is a truck bed full of passengers bearing umbrellas in an optimistic, if futile attempt to stay dry. Second only to the passengers bearing umbrellas on motorcycles in the rain.

Such a simple thing really. A tiny, insignificant moment. But it makes me smile.

What moments stole your breath away this week? 

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us!