Tingling Over Tivoli

When the customs officer wishes me a happy 48 hours in Copenhagen, neither of us realise what lies ahead. The  friend I am visiting has laid some plans but surprises are in store.

My stay launches with a sunset boat cruise with the gang – convivial bubbles and snacks, a swim for them, then a delicious meal with some of the acres of chanterelles on sale in the local store.

Dabbling in the Dead Sea

As a teenager in the 1980s, inspired by an older cousin’s example, I dreamed of spending time as a ‘work-for-hire’ in a kibbutz. (It didn’t seem too far, workwise, from growing up on a farm but it offered novelty in other aspects.) I had forgotten that, until the BB and I arrived at our accommodation near the Dead Sea.

Fortunately, this was not our accommodation.

Jaffa: Dishevelled Delight

The Holy Land is baking and laid over with haze. Brown smudges the horizon as if a painter has worked it with her thumb. The buildings are chunks of dirty brown-grey or cream. From the aeroplane, they seem to hug the ground. Even the taller blocks hunker down. Soon, the reason becomes clear: flat roofs. They cut off and create a no-nonsense appearance rather than the illusion of  uplift. Occasionally I spot a cluster of dull red roofs with low gradients; insufficient to alter the perception.

Tonight we stay in Jaffa (or Yafo) – the port from which Jonah set sail. Not only that, it was here that Perseus rescued Andromeda from the sea monster, Cetus. They have the rocks to prove it.

Waves break on Andromeda’s Rocks near The Sea Mosque.

Now I Understand Autumn

I grew up in Western Australia. We may have had a deciduous tree with changing leaf colour on my home farm or local town but I don’t recall it. Once I found a few red leaves beneath a eucalyptus. Such excitement! I did see autumnal colour before adulthood but never more than a few trees together.

I moved to England several years ago and began to see what all the northern hemisphere books of my childhood were on about: pale yellow leaves en masse; the occasional – and, hence, for me, sought after – red-leafed tree; a dash of orange perhaps. It’s a pleasurable way to mark the transition to colder months but, at least where I live, leaves are brown and crunchy by the time they fall to the ground – or become so very quickly. The real beauty lies in the dark intricacies of bare winter trees. Autumn is a passage more than a destination.

In Norrkoping, Sweden, I finally got autumn.

This, as I alighted from the train:

I Saw It First in Norrkoping

Three cheers for responsible pet ownership. There’ll be no native bird, mammal or reptile deaths while this Swedish owner/companion is in charge.

Flying to be Me

Forget the mountains! (Just for a while. I’ll get back to them.) Look what I did.

The Meaning of Mountains – Part 2

When I heard of human traffic jams on Everest, the juxtaposition of mundaneness and magnificence struck me, not least because of the lurking presence of death.

I experienced a moderated version of this in the Sexten Dolomites.