Termoli, San Giacomo, Venice and Padua!

 From Rome to Termoli with its view of the Adriatic,

we drove “just over the hill” to San Giacomo degli Schiavoni, the town with the long name and only three streets. The town with a population (today) of less than 1500, where my father lived between the ages of three and eighteen. We went to find the house he built in the Sixties.

Afterward, we drove to Venice. 

I didn't like Venice. I didn't like the canal. It was just a body of water, and I'd seen better bodies of water in Paris six years earlier, and in Switzerland as we drove passed the mountain lakes near Luzerne. 

But then we went to the old part of the city, to that part of the city that had no water and no tourists either. To that part of Venice (called Mestre) where I ate smoked salmon and (would you believe) Philadelphia cream cheese on a croissant, and where I bought a blue dress I fell (quite literally, but didn't get hurt!) in love with.

Then we went to Padua because I wanted to pray in the church dedicated to my patron, Saint Anthony. 

And finally, we started the long drive back to Darmstadt!

   

Arrivederci Roma!

 We have spent our five days in Rome and have just arrived at a seaside city close to the town my father grew up in. It is heavenly here, much nicer than it was in Rome.

Oh, Rome has all the sights, all of what Irving Stone once called “the agony and the ecstasy.” It has the Vatican:

The Trevi Fountain: 

a view from the top of the Spanish Steps:

 And, of course, the Colosseum:

But Rome was hot,  hot, hot - which is why all my photos were taken at night- and this little city, called Termoli, has little more than a beautiful view of the Adriatic, and a delicious sea breeze!     

Florence!

My pictures say it all! 

Basilica di Santa Croce
(Basilica of the Holy Cross)

 

Michelangelo's Tomb
(inside the Basilica)

The River Arno at night

a typical street

The River Arno again

the view from our front door

a wider street

Dante!

In Darmstadt

Even though I have written about the three and a half weeks I spent in Germany, it was impossible for me to tell you everything I learned and enjoyed there.   

First of all, I want to acknowledge our host and hostess in Celle, Wilhelm and Karin, whose generosity and hospitality were - and I don't use this word lightly - overwhelming. Because they live in a secluded part of downtown Celle, we were able to walk to the heart of the town and see everything there was to see there, including the inside and outside of the castle pictured below.
 
But most of our time in Germany was spent in Darmstadt, the city of poets, thinkers, and students of three universities. It is also the city where my son lives. As in Celle, Darmstadt has a rich and varied history as well as some beautiful and charming old buildings like the Rathaus and the Mathilde chapel, which was built by the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, for his wife who was born in Darmstadt.

But when it comes to hospitality, Darmstadt is a place that cannot be beaten since it is also the site where, in September of last year, a party was thrown by its residents to welcome, with open arms, refugees from the Middle East and from Africa. 

 Also, while in Germany my son and I watched Iron Sky, a movie in which an African-America astronaut travels to the moon in 2018 and discovers a colony of Nazis (the Fourth Reich) who have been living there since the end of World War II. Although Iron Sky is a low budget film whose humor can sometimes be so subtle it can be missed, (there are scenes in which there is a poster with the words "Black to the Moon" on it, the movie successfully and playfully pokes fun at both America's future and Germany's past.

But what I enjoyed most about Germany is learning that it is a country with a lot of history, hospitality, humility, humanity and humor.

In Celle

I am in Germany. This is probably my fifth or sixth trip to Germany and I am happy to say that for me it has lost all of its “foreignness.” I love it here. I am, after all, both visiting my son (who lives here) and on vacation.

Today we are in Celle, a tiny town north of Hanover. At this moment I am sitting on a park bench outside the castle where King George I of England (from the House of Hanover) exiled his beautiful wife, Sophie Dorothea, because she was having an affair with (a really good looking) count named von Konigsmarck. In reality however, Sophie Dorothea did not initiate her affair until after her husband abandoned her.

Celle is such a beautiful old town. Much of its history and many of its half-timbered architectural style buildings date back more than 700 years. PS. That's me standing in the middle of the picture.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

The Place Poem

When I was given an assignment to write a “place poem” in November, I thought it would be an easy poem to write.  It turned out to be the most difficult.  I thought about all the places I’ve visited: Rome, Berlin, Paris (sort of – which is yet another story). 

I thought too, of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont and of one of my very favorite places on earth – the Blue Ridge Mountains from where I looked down through the clouds at the breathtakingly beautiful Shenandoah Valley.  But no place seemed quite right for this assignment until I thought of the place I return to year after year.  Close to home, it is somewhere along the

Jersey Shore 

 

I’ve come here every summer

since I was a child

to take  in a breath of salty air
at the base of the Ninth Street bridge.

I’ve come here every summer

to salute the Ferris wheels
that stand like sentinels
against the rising tide of my life. 

I’ve come to remember the hootenannies
I sang to in ‘63, the boy I met
and might have married,
the Frisbees I tossed but never caught.

I come to soak up the sun,
to walk the boards,
eat lunch at Chatterbox
and for yet another ornament to decorate my tree.

I come here as often as possible
to gaze upon the sea
until, at last, it diminishes me 
and all the things I’ve come here to forget.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE