Rethinking my Attitude (09-27-10)

Now that I am back from a soul-recharging and inspiring trip back to Europe (Amsterdam, and specifically Budapest and Prague), I am going to pick up the pieces of my blogs and start posting again.

It's been said many times, things in Europe are different. Things look old from natural age, not out of artifice. No need for Disney-esque fairy tale-style quaintness, or for grand-looking ephemeral buildings on movie sets to be soon torn down... It's a difference in attitude. The saddest photo exhibit I've ever seen was, if I remember correctly, an exhibit of Minor White's early photos of Portland: it was a great city with great architecture, and it is no more, because it's all been torn down.

It was refreshing to see elegant old buildings in the cities, some gloriously restored, some still showing the heavy scars of wars and time. Give me that any time over the cheap strip malls and box-style stuff passed off as buildings here. We saw more buses and trams running throughout the day in the cities than we would in a month in Portland, and they were heavily used by commuters, no less, appreciated as a necessary element of the infrastructure of a city.

It was refreshing to visit Skanzen, the open-air ethnography museum near Szentendre in Hungary, and to see old farmhouses relocated on-site, decorated and furnished with authentic folk-style furnishing, things that fit the setting they were intended for. Most interesting, it was amazing to see how people lived in these ancestral houses, how some had airy courtyard proving summer shade, or a central room with a wall oven, or how the variations in styles based on the regional setting.

In Cesky Krumlov, we had the amazing opportunity to stay in a hotel built in 1459, and this reset my perspective. The lovely and picturesque buildings in Cesky Krumlov were all of the same vintage; none were straight and plumb according to today's standards, and yet, they were still standing, and still occupied and clearly well-cared for and valued.

An old house like mine, despite the local reaction to its so-called ancient age, construction methods and materials, is in fact a window into the history of its setting (although, a very young history, since the oldest buildings in the area are probably in Canemah and Oregon City and date back to ca. 1861). What is wrong is the approach to this history. My experience has been that on the West Coast, there is a tendency to consider anything over 20 years old to be decrepit, in need of updates or replacement, and, ultimately, worthless. So sad.

This trip was particularly valuable to me in the sense that it allowed me to rethink my reaction to getting bad news about the house (and have I gotten bad news in the six months we've lived here!). Consequently, so what, if the house has settled over the years? So what, if the roof over our house is not straight? So what, if the oak trees drop leaves inside the gutters?

Older Post: Trip to Europe (09-18-07)

Our trip to Europe in a nutshell: it was super-expensive (but fun). We were limited by time and very strapped for money; it was stressful at times (I ran out of cash after one week, and had to use my credit card for the rest of the trip). I did much window shopping, since I couldn't afford to buy anything, but I still bought a few good books and some food treats (which have all been eaten...) We enjoyed the best summer, sunny weather. We went to see the Grand-Place in Bruxelles. It's still as gloriously luminous as ever. We went up to the top of the cathedral in Köln (Cologne). I wrote my name in tiny letters over someone else's graffito way up at the top of the tower. We saw a comic play by Molière in a medieval castle. We ate well, but got bored at my godmother's. We had fun at my brother's and sister-in-law's. We drove to a lot of places at breakneck speeds. We had a family reunion at my aunt's and uncle's. We forgot to take a photo with everyone. We went to my grand-parents' village, and Valérie saw her great-great-great-grand-parents' tombstone. Once again, I saw the little staircase my grand-father and I climbed on when we went for a walk to the forest when I was five years old. I looked in through the windows of the big, gloomy house where I lived when I was eight. It still had the same wallpaper in the entryway as it did back then. We ate the best french fries in the world, and Valérie rappelled down a cable from the top of the cathedral in Malmédy, Belgium. We went four days/three nights to Paris, and it wasn't long enough. I love Paris. Every time I go, there is something new about it. We walked all over Paris, looking for lavender ice cream, but didn't find any. But we found some pretty good places for gelato. We went up the towers of Notre-Dame and touched the gargoyles. Valérie wanted to see the catacombs and the sewers, so we did. It was sad and smelly, in that order. We went to see Monet's garden in Giverny. Much adventures ensued, including an arduous 45 minute-long walk along a busy highway, in the Normandy countryside under a hot blazing sun... We almost missed our train out of Paris, because we went to the wrong train station (Gare du Nord), and had to run with our bags all the way to the right station (Gare de l'Est), and barely made it. We went on the TGV from Paris to Luxembourg. On the way back, we experienced long, unexplained delays at airports, poor service from rude Continental airlines employees, etc. We waited in endless lines for hours, got stranded in Newark for one night, and had to drag our luggage from airport to hotel and back again. (What a drag to get home under these circumstances...)