When the semester ends at San Francisco State University, and summer starts, I tend to get into a lot of airplanes. This is clearly not good for the planet. So far, I have been to Sweden, Germany, Lithuania, and Poland.  Soon I will be in Greece, Cameroon and Kenya. Here are some of the highlights so far:

Following Bach’s footsteps in Thuringia

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Leipzig is the city of music, and Bach had his home here while he was organist at the St. Thomas Church.  After arriving in this sunny Leipzig, my friends and I found a large bus tour entirely to ourselves. For 90 minutes we saw the main attractions of this reinvigorated city. The former East German influence is still here, and it is unlike Munich or Cologne in that there are far fewer tourists, and less English. My German has become Swedified, and when people speak to me in Hochdeutsch, I respond in Swedish, which leads to some confusing conversations.  Next, we explored Weimar, and the new Bauhaus museum, plus the home of Liszt and various palatial homes.  Beautiful gardens, and long walks. There is history everywhere, from Goethe and Schiller, to the Weimar Republic and Walter Gropius.  There are also cute cafes, and plazas among the solid buildings. Next on the agenda was Erfurt and Eisenach, with more cathedrals, another Bach Museum, and the fantastic Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther lay in hiding during the reformation.  This part of Germany was entirely new to me. When I lived in Salzburg years ago, this was the DDR, and since then, most of my travels have been to the bigger cities of the West.  I wouldn’t say that the food was particularly interesting, or the remaining eastern bloc buildings, but somehow the culture remains intact and there is a revival of well-deserved pride for this multi-century Germanity. 

Norrland-Hälsingland och Sundsvall

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A quick 3.5-hour X2000 train ride from Stockholm, in comfortable chairs, like a living room, and I am in Sundsvall. In the summer, the days never end, and the air is clean and blue. The forests are fresh and fun, except for the mosquitoes, which found my 52-year-old-hair-thinning scalp. Itchy. The houses are mostly standard Swedish red. We have a discussion about this. Why don’t Swedes choose to express their individuality, and paint rainbow houses, or create modern glass structures like they would in the USA or so many other places?  We think it is simply that here, people don’t want to stand out, and actually, it looks nicer when the houses are all similar. It gives order and a consistency of beauty associated with conformity. I love the red barns of Hälsingland, and the lakes and historical farm houses that are a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Rolling hills and simple churches populate the horizon in this modern Sweden that faced so much hardship not that long ago.  Farmers were poor, and the religion was strong. Now, life is comfortable, lagom, and the history is more of an unassuming adventure for the few tourists that make it up here. I am surprised how comfortable I am here, and I think about how buying land here on a lake would make a great investment, especially since it seems to be getting warmer. 

My farm in Višakio Rūda, Lithuania

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About 200 people live in this little village in the middle of Lithuania. My farm is here. We grow buckwheat. It is beautiful.  My caretaker friend, who lives at the farm has made it livable, although for now he has no water. This has been a very dry year, and he showers at the IKEA factory where he works 12-hour shifts, with no holidays.  The well has gone dry.  He uses his metal detector in the forests, one of the largest forests in Lithuania. This is where the partisans fought for years against the Soviets, hoping that someday the Americans would come back and free Lithuania.  They never did, and only in 1990-91 did Lithuania regain independence.  He found coins dating back to the Napoleonic times, plus German Nazi helmets and a rusted revolver. A little museum with these items, and a picture of Lenin is now in one of the small sheds.  Dogs and cats and a little pond with water lilies make the farm perfect. Run down and dilapidated, but quaint and charming.  This could be my escape from the constant distractions that we all face in the modern cities.  Poland is not far from my farm; only about an hour by car. And now there are no borders in this Schengen EU. The wonderful high bridges at Stanczyki round out the day, with a little architectural wonder, among the only Polish tourists.  Am I the only Litho-Indian-Swedish-San Franciscan that has ever been here? Who knows? It is an out-of-the-way wonder of the world.

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