Mix one part Lindsey with 9 hours of airplane time, and it usually equals a gold medal in the vomit Olympics. However, the goods stayed in the basket! Flight to Amsterdam was smooth, popped some dramamine like they were altoids and slept using the travel pillow air mailed to me overnight from a dear friend in New Mexico who promised it would make all the difference. It did.
Met my friend's brother Rodney and his girlfriend Aya in Frankfurt, stayed in their lovely, eclectic apartment, and wandered around the city. Went and saw 2 Seattle friends, Ben and Rachel, perform in a cabaret circus show called Tigerpalast Variete, and they were as profoundly talented and gracious as ever.
Took the train up North to Bad Oeynhausen, to see another circus show called G.O.P Variete, and my close friends Mick and Marie-Eve, who are performing in it. Circus! Bring it on! We braved the rain on their two days off, ate lots of delicious pastries in nearby Bielefeld, trudged up castle towers and went home and cooked up a great dinner of sausage and kraut, and a plateful of cheese and bread. Today we took our bikes on the train and went for a (rainy) 13 km bike ride through the German countryside, where we communed with some cows and ducks and horses, meandered through green valleys, and finally arrived in Detmold after falling off our bikes a few times. Mick bought a nose flute. We ate sandwiches and had tea. I almost bought a baby Taylor travel guitar. I still might. We wandered through old alleys and daydreamed about living in an apartment in an old alley so they we could drink our espresso in the morning surrounded by tall stone walls and windows framed by shutters and overflowing planter boxes.
And that's the trip thus far! I will leave for Berlin in a few days, where I will be for about a week, seeing museums, finding artists squats to buy weird postcards at, and staying at my friend Matteo's flat. Not too homesick, but I certainly feel blessed thinking about my friends and family in Seattle, and appreciating my bikes rides to Ballard, my pizza nights with the roommates, front porch guitar playing, Kate's Pub happy hour, and all the other daily moments of HOME that occur there. It is a good place in this world. A very good place. Well dear reader, the wine bottles whistles a fine tune, and I must reply. Wishing you well, and more later . . .
