RhineFahrt’n Is My Super Power

December 6, 2018August 15, 2021 / Chris White / 1 Comment

What exactly is a RhineFahrt anyway? Well, Rhine refers to the name of a river in Europe and the German word/conjunction Fahrt is used in that language predominantly to refer to travel or traveling. If you’ve ever driven the autobahn then you’ve surely noticed the signage at the exit ramps – Ausfahrt. Emily and I recently visited Europe once again for a Rhine River cruise and my juvenile mind couldn’t resist but to pay more attention to the silly-looking signage than to the abundance of castles littering the picturesque landscapes along the river.

Despite all of the translation incompatibilities, it’s still lots of fun to make up humorous new phrases using the most vulnerable German words. This one was lowing-hanging-fruit as they say, and it’s healthy to keep people snickering just a lil’ bit. I can’t help it; new languages always bring out the 9th grader in me.

I have to throw out a few kudos to Gate One Travel who arranged and guided us to safely fahrt along the Rhine from Amsterdam to Boppar then by coach to Lucerne. I’m always surprised and delighted to trust them with our travel itinerary as their attention to detail, accommodations, and problem solving efforts have repeatedly convinced me that they’re absolutely the best deal in international travel.

We had a rather surprising event on our trip this year. Mother Nature and her annoying friend Murphy called upon us and suddenly our wet fahrt up the Rhine suddenly turned to shit. The Rhine had record low water levels due to a summer drought and we were eventually forced to abandon our comfortable river barge in exchange for a series of motor coach rides and hotel stays. Thankfully, we were at least able to fahrt more than half-way up river before holding our noses and abandoning our comfortable ship.

I must say, however, that although this wasn’t necessarily the vacation we were hoping for, Gate One Travel did an amazing job of catering to our every whim and desire. They worked very hard to help turn a bad situation into a positive experience. Now, if we could only talk them into booking future vacations without Chinese guests, life while abroad would be especially nice.

“There are only two things I hate in this world: People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.” – GoldMember

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no bigoted, belittling, bastard traveler. It’s just that my experiences with foreign travel and the accompaniment of Chinese tourists has made me realize the Chinese people have no real sense of personal space – at least not like the typical rural residing American. It could be likely due to many of them living in extremely densely populated cities. Pushing and shoving their way through crowds and jockeying to always be first in line. It could be that their seemingly general disregard for group decorum may be a sort of Nuevo-Confucianism – it gets the job done in a very efficient way. Heck, what do I know – I’m just a dumb redneck.

I guess I’m probably being way too judgmental; Big city folks in every country are probably just like that…uhhh, nope I take that back. My New York and Boston traveling companions are nothing like that. That cements it, it’s just the Chinese.

To the guy like me who has a two-hundred acre back yard – the pushing and posturing just seems plain ole rude. If I happen to make it to a door first, all I’m going to do is to hold it open for a lady or two anyway. Trust me, I’m no threat to you going in the door first. Other than their fahrting style, Chinese people are great in every other way. We’ve met some terrific Chinese people in our travels and on an individual level they’ve been especially great conversationalists and overall decent people; I just think their way of fahrting really stinks.

Now, who fahrted anyway? Oh yea, it was me. And boy did I! Actually, Emily and I were fahrting together but who cares about the semantics of a blog? No one reads blogs anyway and I just lost all 5 of my Chinese subscribers. Now I’m down to my mom, my two sisters, and the 3 Dutch bicyclists who are planning my death after the last blog I wrote.

Who’s counting anyway? Despite the travel challenges we sometimes face, Emily and I have grown to really love all this tag-team fahrting we’ve been doing lately. To be honest, her profession has made her quite the expert on the subject. No one fahrts quite like my wife and I’m so fortunate to be able to relax and trust that her frequent fahrting will always put us miles ahead. Hmm, maybe that’s why the Chinese don’t like being behind us … haven’t thought of it that way before.

Oh well, our vacation actually began in Amsterdam which was beautiful in its own unique way but quite different than I expected. If you love 17th century architecture and the odor of people smoking weed in public then it’s a must see. The feel of this city is very much enhanced by all the canals and arch bridges in a quasi-Venice sort of way. Don’t be mistaken, however, it’s not Venice. Think about it, they did invent the Dutch Oven here. Other than that, you get really hungry walking around in Amsterdam.

I think what makes the city fun is the overall feeling of acceptable debauchery. The red-light district contributes to that “anything goes” expectation. But in reality, people suck down their mini-bong fumes all about town like it’s the newest bestest oxygen out there. No one ever quite feels like they’re not in some sort of red light district anyway – which is fun in its own way I guess. It’s a bit like a college panty-raid. It ain’t exactly illegal but it makes you feel dirty and excited all at the same time. The biggest difference being, you can’t take the bong home as a souvenir.

I can’t help but to mention, because I’ve seen this time after time, the McDonalds restaurants in Europe are nothing like we know in America. They are actually extremely nice, well-appointed with beautiful Chandelier lighting, super clean restrooms, and warm, friendly, professional employees. I don’t know what they pay McDonalds employees in Europe but it must be pretty good. Sometimes you pay to use the super awesome restrooms and sometimes you just get a code on your receipt and use the code to enter the vault like bathroom door. Either way, when you’re fahrting like crazy, and need a good place to rest your legs, you can never go wrong with a European McDonalds.

The first leg of the Rhine River from Amsterdam, Holland to Cologne, Germany is quite industrial, flat and featureless. It leaves you ample opportunity to unwind a while to enjoy a good long relaxing fahrt. You’ll need to blow off some steam for Cologne as it is a busy place indeed.

As Emily and I fahrted along the quaint and ancient streets, hand-in-hand, experiencing the quaint old town of Cologne, we noticed several decent antique shops – a passion we both share. Maybe even equal to that of a great fahrt. As with most other European cities which were originally Roman outposts, there are unique sites both old and new to discover around every corner.

Cologne has a fantastic museum in the center of their old town. The story told to us was that Hitler was building a museum there and discovered a fantastic Roman villa about 30 feet below ground during the excavation. He decided to construct the museum entirely around the ancient site. Gee, and here I was thinking Hitler was an asshole.

The museum is located adjacent to the cathedral, a magnificent Gothic styled cathedral having as its architectural triumph, some of the tallest spires of any other Gothic cathedral in the world. The inside of the magnificent building is perhaps not as elaborate as many we’ve visited but it is said to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men inside its sequestered catacombs.

We were not able to access or figure out where the Wise Men may have been located as none of the signage offered an English translation, a rare thing in Europe and also ironic due to having the most famous wise men in the history of our world being cloistered in a place that denies its wisdom to non-German speakers.

Afterward, I noticed that Germany is pretty much like that everywhere. Few English translations anywhere. They have English signage in Slovenia and Croatia and Hungary and Czechia and Slovakia and Montenegro and Austria and Italy and France and Turkey and Ecuador and Spain and Greece and Bosnia and Japan, China, Egypt, and Colombia but not in Germany. This particular fahrt doesn’t pass the smell test.

Enough of my rant; aside from all that stuff, Cologne is amazingly home to what Emily and I would describe as some of the best pizza in the entire world. Forget Naples Italy, visit Cologne. Rob and Rachel would also agree. In fact, the four of us fahrted happily all the way back to the ship afterward – talking about the fantastic German pizza we enjoyed together.

Leaving Cologne, we sailed to Koblenz. The Rhine was becoming more scenic after leaving the big city of Cologne so the fahrting was much more intensified. Koblenz is a small city which was once a very important place. It has both Roman and later royal German ancestry with an amazing Romanesque cathedral. It is also an important wine region of Alsace so if you are a wine connoisseur, Koblenz is a great place to visit for their annual wine festival. It’s also important to mention that the drought was very serious in this region (2018) so the wine produced here (Alsatian Riesling’s) are expected to be fantastic for this year.

Next, we traveled to the village cities of Spay and Boppar, then took a tour of the 12th century castle called Marksburg. It is the only hilltop castle along the Rhine that is completely original, never damaged by war or time. All of the other 40’ish or so hilltop castles along the Rhine have been destroyed and rebuilt over time. The castle is an amazing time-capsule of the medieval life of sovereigns.

Boppar was as far as our ship could travel before being forced to dock. As a result, the travel company decided to book a smaller boat to take us a couple hours further upstream to see another dozen or so hilltop castles along the Rhine – knowing we’d entirely miss them otherwise. Later we dined in the town and slept aboard our ship for the last time then in the morning boarded our new coach – the SMY Zardine Kan, and took a lengthy fahrt to the city of Koblenz, Germany.

The most memorable thing that happened in Boppar was our dinner conversation at a fine Italian restaurant. The tables were topped with fine white linens, the flatware was decent and the ambiance was sophisticated German/Italian with its dozen or so sophisticated patrons conversing quietly among themselves. Suddenly, when our group conversation inadvertently steered in the direction of Adolph Hitler, albeit humorous (to us), Rachel blurted out in an absurdly loud manner, “Did ya’ll know that Hitler is a very common name…blah, blah, blah……” (Rob silenced Rachel just quick enough that it triggered one of those “it would be really rude to laugh out loud right now so I can’t help but to laugh out loud for ten minutes” kind of situation).

The otherwise quiet room turned cold and sterile almost immediately. Then, after a long laugh, we had to gently explain to Rachel that German people don’t really like for people to talk openly about that terribly convincing and manipulative Austrian. It really makes them Fuhrer-ious (sorry).

On to the city of Darmstadt, Germany and our hotel the Maritim – not the greatest in the world but very good considering they had to find a decent place for 150 guests on extremely short notice. Oh well, what’s to complain about – I’m in Germany touring castles and wineries instead of reviewing subdivision plats and writing zoning ordinances.

We left Darmstadt in the morning enroute to the city of Speyer which is one of the oldest cities in Germany with a Roman military camp established in 10 BC. In 150 AD the town first appears on the world map by Greek geographer Ptolemy as the city of Noviomagus. In the 7^th century AD, a Frankish tribe called the Nemetes settled here and named it Spira. The impressive Speyer Cathedral, drenched in history itself, holds the tombs of eight (8) Holy Roman Emperors and German Kings. Leaving Speyer, we fahrted the entire way to Strasbourg, France.

Strasbourg is an absolutely gorgeous city. The combination of French and German culture/language/architecture/cuisine is a very fun thing to experience. We took a long group-fahrt through the old town until reaching the impressive Notre Dame cathedral. She is absolutely fantastic – the most impressive thing inside (to me) being the 16th century astronomical clock – reminiscent of the Prague astronomical clock (Prague Orloj). Also of note, the American monument men (see movie) were able to discover and rescue the original medieval stained glass windows of this cathedral after WWII, returning them back to their original positions. It’s definitely a must-see city along the Rhine.

While there, we enjoyed this typical Alsatian pizza thingee (not really a pizza) called “tarte flambée” or flammekueche in Alsatian. It’s an Alsatian flatbread topped with a layer of cheese (fromage blanc), onions and bacon and maybe some sour crème, baked in a brick oven. It looks like pizza so we were all jonesing for another Cologne type pizza experience and just ordered it like pros. We all ate it, and…liked it for the most part. But, it is definitely an unusual taste for our redneck palates. Oh well.

We crossed back over into Germany to the beautiful city of Baden-Baden to spend the night at the Radison Blue hotel. Baden-Baden is a quaint but elegant, albeit redundant ( I crack myself up), German village with a very ritzy casino. The name basically translates to Spa-town, named by the Roman’s, but it really must have been a crazy terrific spa town because someone named it twice. I theorized that perhaps the Roman Governor spoke with a stutter and his subordinates were too afraid to correct him. It’s a good story anyway. We were pretty tired so fortunately there was no fahrting in the spa. Just some sushi for dinner and on to bed.

It was at this point of our trip where everyone was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Two-week trips are great because you’re not turning around and flying home a few days after arrival but it can also be stressful if you load your itinerary up with excursions and side trips like we’re accustomed to do. The theory being, “I’m only here once in my life – maybe, so why not see as much as I can in one trip?”

First by ship, then by bus, we continued on our course by parting whatever waves and breaking glorious wind to take us to lands we’d scarcely, if at all, heard about. And just like that, we were in just such a place, Colmar, France by way of Brisach, Germany. Brisach is a 4000 year old city that is pronounced in English as Brysa. It’s very quaint, only having a couple thousand people. The ancient part of the once walled city sits atop a tall round hill with a large cathedral sitting atop – reminiscent of our visit to the Croatian city of Rovinj.

It was lunch time and we were not going to stop again until 3 PM so it was important that we grabbed some lunch in Brisach. We found a cutsie café on the old town called the Café Conditorei Bachtel and ordered some sandwiches. We discovered that the place is run by people who hate life, hurt babies and horde food. I say this because a few minutes after we sat and ordered sandwiches, Rachel returns red-faced from the inside of the café, mad as a wet hen, claiming the café staff were extremely rude to her. She had to walk it off while we awaited our orders – food that never arrived.

We think the staff were ticked off at Rachel so they stitched us on having lunch that day. Certainly not wanting to be impolite to the French, we left enough money on our table to pay for our full lunch, demonstrating to them a real example of sophistication and class, and just left hungry. The waitress confronted me for leaving, saying “you should have told us you were in a hurry”. My response, 45 minutes after having ordered a sandwich, “if you had ever returned to our table, even once, perhaps I could have.” I think we all just needed a good fahrt, not wanting to make a stink of things – so on we went.

Crossing back into France to the picturesque city of Colmar was a pleasant retreat from the stench of tour-bus fahrting. It is a mostly medieval city with cobblestone streets lined by half-timbered early Renaissance homes and buildings with a Gothic 13^th century church. Great shopping was to be had in this place, along with lots of interesting little food vendors and shops. Emily loaded up on her favorite French cooking salt Flour de Sel at the local grocer and I found a hot dog stand. After a quick snack, we loaded up the bus and fahrted all the way to Switzerland.

Basel, Switzerland is yet another medieval city on the borders of Swizerland, France and Germany. In fact, the International airport there, although extremely poorly rated by its frequent flyers, offers the ability to exit the airport facility in either France or Switzerland. We again stayed at the Radisson Blu hotel, great in every one we’ve stayed in thus far, which was just around the corner from the 12^th century Gothic cathedral that dominates the marketplatz and old town.

We didn’t really have an opportunity to spend any real time in Basel as we arrived late and left early the next morning headed for Lucerne, Switzerland. The hotel, however, was terrific. I may add that the fahrting toward Lucerne was extraordinary, in that it was beautiful. As one can imagine, the alpine vista’s and mostly agricultural scenery was quite picturesque.

Lucerne itself is amazing. The crown jewel, my opinion, of this entire flatulent affair. I asked Emily to pull-my-finger just to see if I might be dreaming. The significant old town is mostly intact with 16^th century half-timbered homes and buildings and the Chapel Bridge, built in 1333, still spans the Reuss River as it flows from the gorgeous Lucerne Lake.

The Rosengart Art Museum was located across the street from our fantastic hotel, the Astoria Hotel, which boasts the largest private collection of Picasso artwork in the world. Emily and I were stunned by Mrs. Rosengart’s art collection which consisted of dozens of the famous Masters we all know as well as more than 150 pieces from Picasso. Our hotel boasted a Michelin Star Italian restaurant on premises, in which we indulged ourselves quite wonderfully.

To completely sum up two weeks’ worth of fahrting in one paragraph, I would say that we spent considerably more money on this trip than any other European trip we’d thus far taken yet we enjoyed it less. The places were cool and quaint and charming but by-and-large not worthy of entire days of travel. The Danube River was our favorite river cruise so far and second to the Danube would be the Rhone, both of which were picturesque the entire way and took us to far more interesting cities and villages. Switzerland was the most amazing place we visited on this trip by far.

Overall, France rarely disappoints, when it comes to clean, well-planned and preserved old towns but during this trip France fell short in Brisach with the not-so-nice waitress. Germany, however, disappointed me from a town planner’s point of view. Historic sections of old villages are latticed with patchwork railway infrastructure and hilltop vistas are absolutely littered by gigantic steel windmills that ironically were designed to preserve nature. I guess if one gigantic mass of metal that captures clean, renewable wind-energy is good then 500 more must be great! Maybe we should put a few on the lawn of the Eifel Tower to help us light up all those flashing lights?

Aside from all my juvenile remarks, I love visiting Europe but I’m ready to go back home; all this fahrting is numbing my legs anyway.

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Killer Bikes in Amsterdam

October 16, 2018August 31, 2021 / Chris White / 16 Comments

As Emily and I continue our life stories, pursuing adventures and widening our perspectives through the blessings of travel, it becomes inevitable that we will occasionally experience the “down-side” of otherwise great experiences. It’s kinda like having a great big bowl of Southern pinto-beans with some good ole chow-chow and some hot buttered cornbread – Newton’s third law (every action has an equal-opposite reaction) will forever be relevant.

When you think of Amsterdam, your mind can’t help but to conjure up certain well-known images. Usually, it’s the canals lined by 17th century row houses or perhaps it’s the colorful tulip fields, big chunky windmills, unruly Vikings with tangled hair, or maybe its of famous artists such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt. Of late, we might be more interested in what they do or smoke in the “red light district”.

What about your first instincts of Amsterdam? Have warm and fuzzy thoughts of millions and millions of bicycles ever been your first instinct? If so, you’re an asshole and you really need to grow the hell up and buy a car. Uhm, just kidding…ok, well, no I’m not.

Do you remember being a kid and laughing your guts out when your best friend wrecked his bicycle in the most insane way? I’m no longer ashamed to admit it because I now know that I’m not the only insensitive bastard out there who laughs out loud at other people’s crashes. The Germans, imagine this, actually invented a special word for the act of deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others – schadenfreude! The gal or guy who invented that word probably spent time vacationing in Amsterdam.

Pretty much everyone in the whole world hates bicyclists. If, however, you’re reading this blog from a distant planet who’s government already sterilized all of your fellow beings who were into bicycle riding a millennia ago, and you cannot comprehend the emotions shared by beings on your sister planet, just imagine on Christmas Day giving your precocious 6 year old son a real police badge, an assault rifle, three loaded magazines, a police car and a full tank of gasoline. The child you once thought you loved would do some pretty awful things right? Well that same child, after leaving prison, now has exactly what it takes to be a great cyclist. Just sayin.

A typical daily conversation in Amsterdam:

Tourist in Amsterdam: “Jesus freakin Christ! This 25 foot wide sidewalk is super nice but these asshole cycling sadists run me down every time I try to walk on it!“

Cyclist in Amsterdam: “Euupid Tseuurist! Stey uun yor tinee 2 feet svidevalk you dum dum, dis red painted zuper highvay is only for uun cyclists!”

Tourist in Amsterdam: “Screw you, Dutch asshole, I’m a f***ing American. We invented oxygen and you’re using way more of it than I’m comfortable with at the moment; plus, the word is actually TOURIST, not TSEUURIST! We probably invented that too.

Cyclist in Amsterdam: CRASH, OWW, OH F**K! “Euupid American, oh vell, more red paints for uun bicycle zuper highvay. Um de hur de hur de hur”.

It all makes complete sense when you factor in the enormous amount of marijuana being smoked in this city. Hell, even if you don’t smoke weed, you can get completely stoned out of your mind just by walking around town…any part of the city, not just the red light district. And if you’re riding a bike at 15 mph, it’s much like a continuous “shotgun”. But, trust me, those evil-doers on two wheels are definitely doing some shady stuff.

No shit, bicycles in Amsterdam are killing people and the world is asleep! Where’s Pol Pot when you really need him? Dutch sources report that in 2017, fatalities from bicycles exceeded those from cars. Yet the Dutch government seems to be doing everything they can to make things worse. They’ve built more than 500 kilometers of bike paths in the city – the most in the world.

What else? The city charges cars 5 Euros per hour to park a car while bikes litter up every bridge, canal bank, tree row, and front porch at no cost. They’re not using fuel so who’s paying for those miles and miles of red colored bicycle super highways – yeup, you guessed it. The car drivers are paying almost $7 bucks a gallon for gas, I’m guessing the sole source of funding for yet more and more miles of those fancy paved red carpets for this entitled group of serial killers on wheels.

Who do they think is gonna keep up those systems when they finally exterminate the last car driver and frighten off the last pedestrian? Seriously, this place literally has these things called “parking flats” which are essentially parking garages for bicycles which can hold between 2500 and 6000 bicycles. Used by commuters who might take the train into the city for work then grab their two-wheeled death machine from the “bike flat” then ride the extra distance to work. Bikes are a big deal in this place.

If you run a traffic signal, by car, in Amsterdam, the ticket cost is $240 euros. That’s a lotta jack. Are there traffic signals for the dreaded bicycles? Nope! How much sense does it make to replace hundreds of thousands of law-abiding car owners with an equal number of outlaw bicycle villains whom, as a group, have no intention to share those fancy red carpets with anyone else and who’re not contributing a single red cent financially to the machine that makes the whole damn thing work?

This place is so crazy over bicycles, they actually created a “bicycle Mayor” specifically to liaise with cycle groups. Yes, they actually have professional “bicycling” groups. The Nazis were looking for something to do after the big war so it seemed a natural fit. They just changed their names to fit in – Hans Hess could instantly become known as Venom Dingersloot and suddenly he can rule the entire world – only this time people are taking him seriously.

The “Mayor of Mayhem”, I’ll call her, decided that Amsterdam needed even more bike lanes and paths and that they should all be covered with roofs so riders outfits don’t get wet while cycling in the rain. Blood is fine; it’s the rain that sucks. Yeup!

Also reported was the fact that cars get 44% of available public parking space while bikes, used for more than 60% of local journeys, get only 11% of the available parking space. Seems horrific doesn’t it? I wonder how much larger in size, percentage wise, a car is over a bicycle? Would it matter?

We’re told that bicycles outnumber people in Amsterdam by 1.2 million. Literally, you stand at the edge of the red bike-lane for 10 minutes waiting for a quick opportunity to cross; the bikes number in the dozens coming from both directions – never stopping, seamlessly never ending, and certainly never slowing down or attempting anything mimicking courteousness.

Last year the city of Amsterdam recovered over 5000 bicycles from just one canal they were dredging. After cleaning them up and reconditioning them, the city of Amsterdam donated them to a 3rd world country. I’m trying hard to find out which country got them so I can avoid it in our future travels.

Amsterdam is often held up by public transport advocates as a modern, progressive city that accommodates cars, trams, canal boats, cyclists and pedestrians with ease but the image is at odds with reality. What is obvious from all this? When you allow one particular public interest group to dominate anything…anything at all, it will feed and grow itself at the expense of every other group. Schadenfreude…I’m really liking this word!

Genesis 2.0

July 3, 2018August 15, 2021 / Chris White / 1 Comment

Everyone benefits from an obsession with family history. Maybe too bold a statement…? I can only speak from my own experiences but if you will allow me to explain my reasoning I think you will agree.

Had I, like many others, not followed my genealogical paths backward, I could never have better understood the whole of who I am in the way that I do now. Knowing what I know about all of the astonishing things that had to occur and all of the remarkable people who were able to survive along the way – all contributing their own DNA along the way, it has helped me to realize just how unique we all are but also amazingly true is how similar we are.

Genealogical research has a way of reverse-engineering our souls. It breaks us down piece by piece, and reveals an honesty about our pasts which is sometimes flattering and newsworthy and just as often ugly or immoral. For some, it can reveal a surprising or hidden truth, blurred by time, exaggerations, or even lies. For the majority of us, what little information we do learn from our ancestors only represents a tiny fraction of the story of us.

I vividly remember my paternal grandfather, Papaw White, telling me that we were Scotch-Irish and that I was named after Capt. John White of early American colonist fame – Roanoke/Croatoan story. I never doubted the Scotch-Irish ancestry but somehow I never really bought the Capt. John Smith story. A couple things just didn’t add up; the Captain was English and, most importantly, after returning from England to discover that his colony was lost, he returned to England and never returned to American soil.

My grandmother, however, shared her family history with me which has turned out to be pretty accurate, albeit scant in detail. She told me her family immigrated to the United States from Germany. What I later discovered was that they immigrated from a tiny hamlet called Mitschdorf, Alsace which is actually in France. Situated on the Rhine River bordering France, Switzerland and Germany, Alsace has a complicated history as it sits just below the traditional French customs border of the Vosages Mountains although the French territories stopped at the Rhine River – just beyond the tiny town of Mitschdorf. The people who inhabited that region were principally of German descent.

The German language and customs of the inhabitants of these French outskirts continued for centuries through the 17^th and 18^th centuries – including the time when my Neese family immigrated to the United States. Thirty year old Hans Michael Nehs, infant son Michael and his twenty seven year old wife Dorothea along with 266 other Palatines arrived in the port of Philadelphia, PA on 21 September, 1731, sailing on the ship Britannia having sailed across the Atlantic from Rotterdam, Holland. Soon after immigration the Nehs family, either through ignorance of the language or by choice, Americanized the surname to Neese and/or Neece and other similar variations which have since scattered themselves to and fro across the entire country.

So, my grandmother was actually pretty close right? You could say that but only if her story began or stopped right there – but it doesnt. Michael’s father and mother Mathias and Maria had just been living in Rusovce, Bratislava, Slovakia prior to moving to the Alsace region of France.

Cognizant to most of us family tree-climbers is that just four generations up the tree gives me no less than sixteen great grandparents. Another generation beyond that gives me thirty-two grandparents – another gives me sixty-four… each grandparent having his or her own distinct ancestry, some of it quite fascinating. Unfortunately, some is also lost forever to time and insignificance. Perhaps we should expend more energy while we’re alive with the goal of not being so insignificant.

Most of us associate our general lineage and ancestry by our last names. The truth is that you have hundreds of last names, some you’ve never heard about. If I push my ancestry out just ten generations beyond myself, I can personally verify 128 different surnames. This does not include incidences where the same last name repeats from other ancestors marrying cousins which occurs nearly a dozen times in that same ten-generation time span. There are also familial lines where I can’t YET go back ten generations.

I have found a wealth of new names, belonging to me, I’d never even heard before. Some of the oddest names in my lineage: Cazeneuve, Coggeshall and Erchtebrech. The Beaufort, Ragland, Marcell and Simpson are surname lines that I’ve researched heavily while the Pfeiffer, Koch, Emot and Lisbet lines are among the many still lying in wait for me to catch an interest. The gist of everything I’m writing here is that we are all so much more than the sum of two parts, even if you’ve not been formally introduced to the other parts.

While I grew up thinking I was just an average white guy with Scotch-Irish/German ancestry on my paternal side and maternal Welsh/English ancestry, I’ve since learned that I hail from Scandinavia, Spain, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, the Middle East, Hungary, Slovakia, Israel, and Belarus. My ancestors were Vikings, Jews, Knights Templar, Spanish conquistadors, American colonists, Native Americans, Revolutionary War soldiers and early American statesmen. They were Frankish kings and Welsh nobles and they were poor farmers, merchants, tin smiths and shoe cobblers.

What my ancestors have most in common with your ancestors is that they were all survivors. They are the survivors of numerous plagues, copious wars, inquisitions, witch trials, battlefield forays, and voyages across unknown and uncharted waters. They survived attacks from neighboring warlords, tribes, and villages. They fought off zealous religious groups, parried political unrest, returned from great world wars, defeated the Nazis, found something to eat under communist regimes, lived through indentured servitude and found freedom after generations of slavery. Our ancestors avoided the horns of Jericho and the plagues of Egypt. Had they not, you and I would not be having this conversation.

All of us are extremely lucky to even be here. There were far more opportunities for us to have never been born at all than for us to have ascended from whatever heaven and hell our people endured. If you look far enough and broad enough backward, sideways, and crossways, you’ll find a bit of both.

Since I know that I’m a Gaul, a Latin, an Etruscan, a Greek, a Celtic, a Briton, a Silurian, a Native American, a Jew, an Arab, a Spaniard, a Frank and a Viking, I can safely assume that other people living among me who are firm in their belief that I’m either a deplorable, infidel, heathen, left-winger or right-winger might also themselves be a great many things they never knew about.

Despite our differing features, sizes and shades of skin, we’re very much a homogeneous community of very blessed people of common origin and descent. Not the kind of homogeneity like Hitler envisioned but in the way that if you look deep enough, what you find is me. Hitler didn’t have the ability to know that he himself was a Jew – we, however, do. If we all choose to use our extremist obsessions to peel back the layers of our own ancestry instead of the flaws and faults of others who disagree with us, perhaps we could all realize that we are all many different things…things which would not qualify us to be the judge of all others. Said differently, if I’m an infidel, we’re all infidels; because I am you.

You Say Baath; I Say Bath.

April 2, 2018August 7, 2021 / Chris White / 32 Comments

ex·pec·ta·tion: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future; a belief that someone will or should achieve something.

A persons expectations can be the key to enjoyment or the riposte to disappointment. If you project your ideas too low then no one gets interested; if you tout too high, no one ever feels quite appeased. It could be said then that managing people’s expectations is one of the principle secrets to success.

You might surmise then that McDonalds has done a great job of it. They’ve demonstrated expertise at branding their burger chain as being the best deal in town, not necessarily the best burger. This despite the fact that their entire identity is built around hamburgers.

What does all this have to do with traveling to Bath, England you say? For starters, I’m writing to you about my personal observations of Bath; Bath through the eyes of Chris. I’m hoping to help you discover things about Bath that go well beyond the scope of what you might expect to find in Bath. So, while others may focus on its most obvious attributes such as the Roman Baths, I wanted to better illuminate Bath’s more obscure but interesting facts, history and architectural features.

The Roman baths are indeed amazingly well-preserved and definitely worthy of explanation; so, I will do my best to describe them for you in as descriptively visual terms as I’m capable. But, when I drove away from that uniquely singular place, my first thoughts were of how challenging it may be, given my limited writing skills, to convince vacationing travelers to look more deeply at Bath, to peel back the layers, and to venture outside the city center to discover its other gems.

A gem in and of itself is the scenic drive into Bath. Bath sits at the southern edge of the Cotswolds, a range of limestone hills and valleys designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The limestone quarried from there is particularly unique and has this creamy honey golden color.

The stone is known world-wide as Bath Stone. Every house, cottage, mansion or castle in the vicinity is constructed from this beautifully rich and distinctive stone. While there, I learned that one of the zoning restrictions for all new construction inside the city of Bath requires builders to use this same stone on the façade to ensure that modern buildings pay homage to the city’s 18^th century heritage.

Bath has long been an ancient borough with high status. First, with its close proximity to Stonehenge and its Neolithic/early Celtic Briton inhabitants. Afterwards, its Roman occupants constructed spa’s and baths around the first century AD where it became a well-known Roman vacation destination.

After the fall of the Roman Empire it remained as a rare gem for the Kingdom of Mercia until the year 878 when it became a royal borough of Alfred the Great when it was then ceded to the Kingdom of Wessex. If you’re a King Arthur fan, it is believed that Bath may have been the site of the Battle of Badon (c 500 AD) in which King Arthur is said to have defeated the Anglo-Saxons.

Despite the city name and its historical changing of landlords, Bath continued to be an important place. The Roman baths and impressive stone infrastructures continued to serve whomever claimed it. By the 18^th century, Bath evolved into a posh village for Britain’s elite. Its hot mineral baths were advertised as having curative properties so people migrated from far away to find respite for whatever ailments they suffered.

If you had any sort of illness from leprosy to acne, and also had money, you were definitely moving to Bath. It all sounds great until you find yourself in a hot bath tub with a leper. But despite my negative thinking, Bath is now one of the best preserved 18^th century cities in the world; designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

In fact, the famous 18^th century author/novelist Jane Austen lived in Bath for many years. You might have read a few of her famous novels such as Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility. If you read them deeply, you will find traces of Bath scattered throughout her writings.

An example would be Bath’s Holburne Museum of Art – The impressive creamy gold Bath Stone façade mansion housing today’s museum. The manor and its grounds were a favorite walk for Jane Austen while she lived in Bath, she thus set part of her novel “Northanger Abbey” across from the Holburne Mansion.

Today, the impressive manor home houses the late Sir William Holburne’s collection of fine and decorative arts. Some of the artists represented inside will include Gainsborough, Guardi, Stubbs, Ramsay and Zoffany.

The manor home has also been used for filming numerous movies such as Persuasion (1994), The Duchess (2008) staring Keira Knightley, Vanity Fair (2004) with Reese Witherspoon, as well as numerous other foreign films.

By far, one of the most impressive things I visited in Bath was the Royal Crescent. The Crescent is a 500-foot-long row of Georgian styled terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent.

Designed by the famed architect John Wood-the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774, the Royal Crescent is among the finest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom. It boasts over one hundred Ionic columns on its first floors with an entablature in a Palladian style above.

Architect John Wood-the Elder, father of the Crescent’s architect, had earlier designed the Bath Circus in 1754 which is also regarded as a preeminent example of Georgian architecture. The name comes from the Latin word ‘circus’ which means a ring, oval or circle.

The Circus is essentially an incredibly fancy roundabout divided into three segments of equal length with a lawn in the center and Georgian styled buildings at its perimeters. Each of the three building segments faces one of the three entrances to the roundabout, ensuring a classical façade is always presented straight ahead. After my left-handed, standard shift, two-day drive in Wales, I decided that I don’t particularly like roundabouts anymore, but this one is very special.

The senior Wood, as its architect, was convinced that Bath was historically the principle center of Druid activity in Britain so he studied nearby Stonehenge to ensure that his Circus design would pay homage to what most people believed to be an ancient Druid ceremonial ground (There are some different ideas about Stonehenge today). Three classical orders (Doric, Roman/Composite, and Corinthian) are used, one above the other, in the elegant curved facades.

The frieze of the Doric entablature is decorated with altering triglyphs and pictorial emblems. One very interesting fact is that when viewed from the air, the Circus, along with Queens Square and the adjoining Gay Street, form a key shape, which is a masonic symbol found frequently in many of Wood’s other building designs.

My wife and I particularly enjoy visiting impressive cathedrals and abbey’s when traveling and Bath Abbey was one of those sites on my bucket list. Particularly because of its unique vaulted ceiling. Founded in the 7^th century, reorganized in the 10^th century and rebuilt in the 12^th and 16^th centuries, Bath Abbey is one of the largest examples of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in the West.

It’s most unique feature, in my opinion, is its notable fan vaulting. We actually know that brothers Robert and William Vertue, architects and stone masons for King Henry VII, were the designers and builders of this particular fan vault. They not only built Bath Abbey’s fan vault, they also built the vaulted ceilings inside the Tower of London, King’s College Chapel in Cambridge and Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster.

Our hotel in Bath, the Hilton Bath City, was located just a block from the extraordinary Pulteney Bridge. This interesting bridge crossing the river Avon, is reminiscent of the Ponte Vecchio Bridge we saw while traveling in Florence, Italy. I say this essentially because it is a bridge with shops built across its full span on both sides.

The bridge was built in 1774 in the Palladian style by Robert Adam. My wife, my sister and I not only walked along the bridge visiting the shops but we also found a stone path and stairway that led us to the river’s edge so that we could snap a few glamor shots of the bridge from below.

Something I hadn’t mentioned before is that I had accidently forgotten my razor when packing for the trip. That led to the obvious annoyances to both Emily and I, but alas, my stroll to the Pulteney Bridge allowed me to discover a cool little barber shop along the way called New Saville Row.

I made the proper arrangements with the gentleman who told me that although they were about to close, that I could return in 30 minutes and he’d give me a shave. Thirty minutes later I was comfortably laid back in an old style barber chair with a hot towel on my face about to embark on my very first professional straight razor shave.

I had no idea what I’d been missing all these years. These guys were unbelievably courteous to stay open for me and it was an experience I won’t soon forget.

Jane Austen wrote, in her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility, “I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be yours.” Bath is certainly much more than it was when Jane Austen lived there.

Although it is now a very modern city with both a professional Rugby team and Football club, two universities and nearly one hundred-thousand people, it is still very much still trapped in the wrinkled skin of its 18^th century past. In my book, its a hard act to follow, even for a very cool and mostly intact two-thousand year old Roman bath.

I can’t say for sure what my expectations actually were when I arrived in Bath but what I can say without any pause is that Bath exceeded, no a better word might be trounced, any notion of what I had first imagined it to be. The name is Bath and of course there are Roman baths there so I guess that was where my mind was initially.

But Bath is far more than just its namesake. If you decide to be one of the three million annual visitors of Bath in the near future, and I hope you are, don’t just tour the baths and the abbey and leave. Bath is far more than that. If you stay long enough, you might even start pronouncing it Baath.

Penny Lane On A Budget

March 16, 2018August 25, 2021 / Chris White / 5 Comments

For some curious reason, of which I am completely ignorant, I have always thought of Liverpool, England as being this quaint little working-class English village. As you will soon learn, it is anything but quaint.

If you’re like me and over fifty, you’ll instantly recognize the name Liverpool and with whom the city-name is most famously associated. That would of course be an obscure little four piece British ensemble called the Beatles.

I personally found Liverpool to be an amazingly vibrant city with an incredible night life where people speak, straight face, with an incomprehensible pirate-like, half English/half Irish brogue. I, of course, say this in full self-realization that my own southern (a la redneck) accent is likely as equally incomprehensible to the typical Liverpudlian/Scouse as their’s may be to me.

But without any exaggeration whatsoever, and despite the fact that you cannot understand what people are saying (except of course the occasional “Arrhh”), I say that Liverpool is an architectural gem, worthy of your vacation dollars, completely independent of any Beatles connection.

In Liverpool’s core are fantastic 19th century Greek and Romanesque public buildings that tell all who first arrive of an important and strategic historical presence. Its outer perimeter boasts a number of quaint and quiet villages; exactly reminiscent of the sort of place I’d almost imagined. It was one of these working-class villages where the well known fab-four incubated and forged what was to become as legendary an influence to modern music as any other.

Driving into the outskirts of Liverpool from its southeastern side through a quiet little borough called Woolton, the very first thing we consciously encountered was the famous Penny Lane. This literally happened like twenty-seconds after I mentally penned the cutesy title of this blog.

Yes, the street name is real along with the bank (no-mac banker now missing), the barber shop (photographs still ever present on its walls), and the curious bus transfer station in the center of the roundabout – all mentioned in the famous lyrics to which we’ve all sang along.

Now, as fate and a love for travel would have it, Penny Lane has become equally real to me. It is indelibly imprinted “in my ears and in my eyes”, just as vividly as it was for young Paul as he reminisced about taking the bus to the Penny Lane roundabout to attend St. Barnabas Church as a young choir altar boy.

While in discovery mode, we drove up Menlove Street passing John Lennon’s boyhood home along the way to Beaconsfield Road where the gates to “Strawberry Fields” still lie in a state of hopelessness. Meanwhile,
I’m looking up at Liverpool’s “blue suburban skies” not yet knowing what other treasures await me and my traveling companions.

To my surprise and delight, Liverpool is infinitely more. A person can learn a great deal about a population by observing its churches. In that light, Liverpool has one of the largest Protestant churches in the entire world – too large in fact to fit the entire thing in my camera lens from 2500 feet away. Liverpool also has one of the most unique Catholic Churches in the world. The striking architecture and multi-spire tower was designed in-the-round so that the congregation can completely surround the pulpit.

What might also be of anecdotal interest to my American friends living in the South, is that when the war of Northern Aggression broke out, Liverpool became a genuine hotbed of international political intrigue.

Cotton was an enormous import to Liverpool, its shipping industry was entirely propped up on the African slave trade, and the shipbuilding industry (prevalent in Liverpool) was mutually important to all parties. In the words of the famous historian Sven Beckert, Liverpool was “the most pro-Confederate place in the world outside the Confederacy itself.”

In fact, the Confederate Navy ship, CSS Alabama, was built at Birkenhead (across the river) on the Mersey River in Liverpool. And in an odd twist I’d never before heard about, the CSS Shenandoah actually surrendered at the Liverpool Salt House Docks (being the final surrender and official end of the Civil War) a full three months after the whole Appomattox affair – being the last holdout of the American war of northern aggression.

In a related and controversial side-note, you may find it interesting that Penny Lane itself has been under attack by local social re-constructionists who’d very much like to change its iconic name. It seems that the famous roadway took its name from George Penny who made his fortune in the sugar and slave trade back during the height of that awful period.

The sugar industry was quite dependent upon slave labor. As a result, and fully reminiscent of similar movements back home in America, there’s a powerfully convincing movement in Liverpool to eliminate all remnants of bigotry and racism brought about by humming the street names of people known to have contributed to that horrible past. I can’t say that I agree with whitewashing any history, good or bad, but I can fully empathize with their motives. I’m just thankful that Lennon and McCartney didn’t write ditties about Jefferson or Washington.

Did you know that both companies Cunard and White Star, ship builders of insignificant little boats such as the Titanic and Queen Elizabeth II, once had their corporate headquarters located in Liverpool? The docks area along the Mersey is conspicuously littered with impressive Victorian skyscrapers including the buildings that once served these two famous companies. Liverpool has done a fabulous job of re-purposing some of these older buildings and the area around those docks is quite impressive for dining or shopping and for just walking around snapping interesting architectural photographs.

This port suburban city of nearly one half-million people is not only known for its architecture but also for its abundant green space. There are loads of parks throughout the city. One interesting thing I’ve noticed in Liverpool, as well as in other places scattered throughout Greater Britain, are the public green spaces used as free gardening spots.

While some of our more urban cities in the United States have been starting similar projects, I found that these in particular all suffer from the same sort of conundrum – acceptable blight. I do like the idea as a whole but what I don’t like is the thought that we should be promoting irresponsibility of the environment at the expense of simultaneous generosity to our less fortunate. Not when we penalize others for the same thing. It’s kind of like a prosecutor trying a case against Joe Schmo for gambling after he stops at a convenient store to buy his weekly budgeted lotto ticket.

What I’m referring to are green spaces that are no longer green; loaded up with hundreds of miniature home-made shanties for gardening tools with tiny plots of gardens inside little squares – collectively inside bigger squares. The little crude shelters are built by people with no tools, no skill, and no otherwise acceptable building materials. Each square of dirt is fenced uniquely using whatever can be found in someone else’s trash. They’re designed using the theory that “necessity breeds ingenuity” except that “ingenuity” generally means desperation and “desperation” generally translates to “old shower curtain”.

Enough about blighted gardens or inappropriate comic relief as I’m so famous for perfecting. I think I’ve made my case that Liverpool is much more interesting than my rants about greenspaces gone wrong. I do sincerely hope that you find the right opportunity to explore this amazing city for yourself. Perhaps you can walk the dark-steps downward into the famous Cavern Club where the Beatles played their first big gigs and buy a tee shirt like I did or explore the narrow streets of the city proper looking for the perfect “four of fish” or even a “finger pie” if you’re single and adventurous.

What happened to the CSS Shenandoah you ask? Well, its battle flag eventually made its way back home and now rests peacefully in a museum in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The ship itself was sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar where it later sunk off the East African coast during a Hurricane. How can you not believe in Karma when a former confederate states ship ends up being owned by an African country (Tanzania) where so many of its people lost their entire and future identities in the lands represented by the ships namesake?

What happened to poor Eleanor Rigby? Well, her bronze twin sits quietly on a bench on Stanley Street in Liverpool, not far from her burial place, where it was appropriately dedicated to “all the lonely people”.

What will happen to our beloved Penny Lane, I don’t exactly know. Maybe you should weigh in on the matter electronically if you feel a powerful urge to voice your support for either side.

What about Strawberry Field? If you’re at all curious as to what Lennon was writing about it, or how you can be a part of his story too, visit the website http://www.strawberryfieldliverpool.com. Maybe you could even start a GoFundMe campaign to support it. McCartney and Lennon have brought pieces of Liverpool to your ears, now it’s up to you to hop on a plane and let your own eyes share in the experience.

Traveling Ecuador

November 4, 2015September 13, 2021 / Chris White / 14 Comments

Lying in bed, in a state of anxiety over a lack of restful sleep, and realizing that I’m about to spend a second sweaty night in little more than a screened-in porch without air conditioning, I’m thinking – this is vacation? Sweltering humidity and intense sun-exposure has caused me to be a slightly less-fun-self, and a lot more damp than normal.

I begin to reflect on our day at Anaconda Island, the balsa wood raft ride through the white-capping Napo river, and the hairy saucer-sized Tarantula that attempted to take a swim in the pool with me just before dinner. The details of my health-coverage being sketchy, I’m thinking yeah, Ecuador is to die for – literally. If it weren’t for the wild pack of jungle chickens moving through the hacienda eating ticks every evening, I’d think this might all be a dream.

Of course I’m just kidding, although there are probably many ways to die in this place, of which might possibly be the river Cayman, Piranha, Anaconda, the mysterious Tatura flower’s “sweet dreams” tea, and possibly choking on the fried “Iron Palm” pork served at this hokey little restaurant at the Center of the Earth Lat’ 000 marker. Truthfully, all I’ve accomplished thus far is to prove to everyone just how entitled I may be. I say this because mostly, the Ecuador I’ve been traveling through has been immensely beautiful. Yet, I’m still here whining about two, out of fourteen, uncomfortably hot nights.

The temperatures throughout much of Ecuador are actually surprisingly perfect. I’d venture to say, mostly due to its high elevations. Unfortunately for you, you’ve royally screwed up and found the blog of a spoiled rotten and highly sarcastic traveler. Please forgive me.

Honestly, if bucket lists are something you often think about checking off, traversing through the Amazon jungle has to be somewhere on most everyone’s list. It was for me. And now I have the wounds and bug bites to prove it.

I’m kinda hoping I end up with at least a few permanent scars from all of the bug bites so I end up with some great conversation starters for my unborn grandchildren. The jungle, while it can be quite dangerous, it can also be uniquely entertaining.

On one outing, a grey-winged trumpeter sort of maternally imprinted on Emily while touring a jungle animal rescue center. This was located deep in the jungle, seemingly unserved by public roads. The personable big-bird proceeded to follow her everywhere she went, in the way a puppy follows it’s new mother. It was kinda like having a great big chicken for a buddy. Emily especially liked having it around cuz she was told that they kill snakes.

Rita, our new friend from Hong Kong, was wearing some sort of bug patch she purchased back home in China. She never got a single bug bite. I, on the other hand, took a sponge-bath in a mosquito and tick repellent.

This was a repellent advertised to be so strong, the warning label warned against applying it directly to the skin. The resilient Amazonian jungle vermin simply laughed at me and my silly Yankee bug potion.

Who says the Chinese are always borrowing American technology – I say “bug-bite mitigation technology” is clearly an area where we need to start stealing secrets from the Chinese. Who gives a shit about 3 stage rockets and advanced cell-phone technology when you can repel every annoying bug known to mankind?

I’ll admit that Ecuador surprised even me; half of a globe-trotting duo, hell-bent on visiting less-traveled vacation destinations. To answer everyone who intimated that we might be crazy for traveling here; I’ve herein provided you with a list of great reasons to travel lovely Ecuador.

Y’all know that “facetious is as facetious does” so please be patient and try to humor my Southern redneck sarcasm, because there really are a few valuable lessons strewn all about this blog. The real trick is to find them, so sit back, nibble on some barbecue guinea pig, and I’ll do my best to educate. While you’re doing that, I’ll hang out in the pool until bedtime, to lower my core body temperature.

One of my very first observations was that traveling Ecuador just may be the polar opposite of traveling around Europe. In Europe, you travel over mostly uninteresting landscapes – forgeries of which you could find somewhere in the vastness of the U.S. – in order to find magnificent “old towns” and walk along 2000 year old cobblestone streets built by Roman armies, among fantastic examples of ancient art and architecture. Many of these places are so inundated with the tourist trade that much of the intrinsic beauty of the culture, language, and the natural state of the site is lost.

In Ecuador, the traveling between the destination places is through and among a continuity of spectacular landscapes and ecological masterpieces. What you find at the end are cities and villages that will mostly underwhelm the typical European traveler but are instead wrapped in an endearing naïveté. The tourist trade is so new that the destinations are mostly unspoiled and the people are unwitting subjects of all our curiosities.

Of course there are architectural masterpieces to be found in Ecuador such as the Jesuit built Church of the Society of Jesus in Quito, but for the most part the masterpieces of interest for travelers to Ecuador are going to be the natural-wonders created by God. There are 84 volcanos in this tiny country, 24 of which are active. It seems that everywhere you travel is within a telephoto lens distance of one of these magnificent geological features.

There are also a number of fantastic Haciendas scattered throughout the country. One of which we visited was built in 1680 and included its own beautifully appointed chapel of the same age. Another fantastic hacienda we stayed in was sitting atop a steep mountain in full view of an active snow-capped volcano. It was 200 years old and once boasted 200,000 acres of land.

Driving through the country of Ecuador can, at one moment mesmerize you with its deep river canyons, cascading waterfalls, or the patchwork-quilt of agricultural art that canvas’ the mountainsides in unpredictable patterns at unexplainable elevations. At other times, it can be dizzying by an uninterrupted sea of unfinished or collapsing concrete homes, storefronts and brick walls that secure the perimeter of every palace and pig pen.

It’s not what we’re used to but it is the utter simplicity of life that draws us in and says, without words, that these are hard-working and decent people with a unique story to tell, worth every moment of our allotted fourteen days to better discover and explore.

Regardless of whether you’re visiting tribal villages and sitting cross-leg in straw and bamboo homes on stilts or in a modern concrete structure accented by clay tile roofs, the homes and villages of Ecuador are almost always resting in the shadows of magnificent volcanoes or foreboding mountain vistas. There’s never a dull moment. Except for the occasional road-side pee-pee bandito – which, it seems, is fairly common.

The city of Baños, for instance, sits at the base of an active volcano with a lovely cascading waterfall in full view of its public square, completely nestled inside a circumference of steep mountainous terrain.

Every city seems to have its own specialties of locally-produced products; theres a city for roses, and another one for jeans. A town for leather products, a place to buy alpaca wool products. There’s a chocolate city, a tobacco town, a Panama hat (see explanation below) village, you name it.

Ecuador also boasts several fruits, vegetables, plants and flowers that one can only find here. Whether you’re in the high elevations where the sweet tree-tomato grows or in the jungles of the Amazon eating lemon flavored ants, you’re always surprised by something new to try.

Ecuadorians are a complex homogeneous tribe of haves and have-nots, just like the snobs we love at home. They’re a tall, short, skinny, chubby & lovable, dark or light skinned group of hard-working and honorable people who want all the same things we want. They just ask for them in a completely unintelligible language called Spanish. In case you’ve never heard of it, I can report that when spoken by a local it has a romantic sounding cadence (pun intended).

One thing I couldn’t help but notice along our way is that there is seemingly an endless strand of aluminum clothesline wire stretching all the way from Quito to the Amazon Jungle. These clotheslines are always dressed in the most intimate of feminine Ecuadorian couture – framed between every porch post and elaborate perimeter wall. The walls, yet another interesting feature, are embellished atop by shards of colorful broken glass and broken Dr. Pepper bottles.

Rainbow’s of cotton and alpaca fabric are like a woven fanfare that welcomes visitors to every village and community. I’ve begun to believe that the common Ecuadorian architecture doesn’t include clothes storage and that everyone just uses these perpetual clotheslines as permanent open-air storage for their entire wardrobe. The Spanish totally got it wrong, El-Dorado lies at the end of the clothesline rainbow, not on the shores of Lake Parime.

I promise, it doesn’t take long to grow a real appreciation for some of the local rituals as the people here are so genuinely kind and accepting of tourists. Especially our own little tourist proclivities such as taking photographs of them in the marketplace like they’re circus animals.

You soon grow to love the Ecuadorian people and all of their quirky roadside displays. One trip through the backroads of West Virginia will remind us that the “other” America isn’t all that shiny on all its surfaces.

Be prepared, however, many of the public restrooms require a “tipping fee” in order to partake of the convenience of a porcelain solution to your biological travel-needs…but the “fee” only provides for three or four tiny little squares of toilet tissue, perhaps enough to remove only the coarsest of organics made from unfamiliar diets.

Perhaps an unintentional consequence of hoarding all that precious paper is that many locals can be found with their “plantains” in-hand urinating in public places or on the side of roadways as a way of national protest. It’s OK though, it helps you to feel like part of the family.

If ornamental iron is your thing, Ecuadorians have lots and lots of it. That said, most of it is carefully shaped and sculpted from rebar. If you have lots of leftover rebar from a building project and have absolutely no idea of what you’re going to do with it, come to Ecuador for inspiration. You won’t be disappointed.

The Panama hat? You’ve heard of it? It’s really from Ecuador only there was a mix-up at the hospital and it went home with the wrong parents. It’s a very old story that ends in the collaboration of an indigenous Ecuadorian hat and a Spanish hat which resulted in the famous head cover known the world over by its alias because the hat was exported to Europe and North America through the port of Panama before the canal was built. Now, you know, the rest – of the story.

I cannot fail to mention that Ecuador is very travel-friendly for Americans. In fact, the U.S. Dollar is their official currency. They have a representative democracy, national healthcare and education, good roads, and all the colada morada you can drink.

If exotic birds and animals get your blood boiling, they have way too many to mention individually. Individually speaking though, just for reference purposes – the Ecuadorian camel-toe can be found in vivid abundance – just sayin.

If you’ve dreamed of visiting an indigenous Quichua village; trading for shrunken heads; climbing an active volcano; eating BBQ Guinea Pig; floating on a balsa raft down an Amazon basin river; seeing the Galápagos Islands; or watching a monkey ride a chicken through a town square, Ecuador is definitely your next top destination.

When you make up your mind and decide to book your trip, there’s no doubt that some of your friends might say, “Why Ecuador”! There are many reasons for you to visit here, no doubt, but seriously…a monkey riding a chicken? Where else can you see that?

I have to give kudos to our travel partner, Gate One Travel. This was our 4th Gate One trip and each one continues to surpass the former – as well as our expectations. Its just so easy. Also, our wonderful 13 fellow travel companions. We loved our entire gang and I know we will stay in touch with many of them. FYI, Duncan, someone found some damp underwear in your room, they’re waiting for you at the reception desk at Casa del Suizo.

Last but not least, our local tour guide Javier Estrella was fantastic. He’s a wealth of knowledge, kind, with a mother-hen commitment to his flock of inquisitive, sensitive, and spoiled-rotten followers. You’ll never find a better person to spend 14 days without air conditioning. He also free-lances as a private guide, so if anyone is convinced that Ecuador might be perfect for their next adventure, his contact information is as follows: 59-398-007-5760.

Traveling In Style

November 7, 2014November 10, 2014 / Chris White / 2 Comments

I’ve put off blogging about traveling intentionally. Mainly because most people who write about their travels seem to always come-off sounding pretentious or like they’re bragging about going here or there. I certainly don’t want to reinvent new passive-aggressive ways to brag about the same ole things but there are a few observations I’d like to make and a few experiences I’d love to share with others about traveling.

I especially want to recommend others to visit some of our favorite places and introduce the special people we’ve met along he way. I won’t even try to discuss food because we all have so many personal likes and dislikes that it’s far too subjective a topic to even attempt. Being used to a southern diet, I’d be the last person in the world to offer a fair assessment of international cuisine.

I hope by the end of this blog I can both achieve my goal of sharing and entertaining without losing what few subscribers I actually do have…so; here I go.

I turned 50 this week and some of you know that I’ve been traveling with two bulging discs and spinal stenosis. The last several trips we’ve gone on were during some pretty painful times as well…suffering with plantar fasciitis of both feet – so it has become painfully obvious to me and Emily that we should do his sort of thing while we are young instead of waiting till we can actually afford it. At least that’s how we’ve been justifying it anyway.

First, let’s talk about the people…the ones you travel with (I.e., friends or motor-coach-mates) and the ones you meet along the way (I.e., hosts and locals). People – the good, bad, and obnoxious – factor very high among what makes for special or particularly memorable trips. Emily and I have been incredibly fortunate to have traveled to some amazing places but also to have met and traveled with some pretty incredible folks.

We’ve also fanned the stench of a few turds along the way too. Being from the South, I have a tendency to placate offensive behavior under normal circumstances as a way to just be nice and get along but I’ve learned that when you’re spending money and trying your best to enjoy yourself and the amazing things you’re getting to see, you just have to speak up and quickly neutralize any negativity wherever it pops up or you’ll end up having more bad memories than good ones.

Believe it or not, on one trip we actually met a guy who thought that America should formally adopt French inspired economic and tax policies but also told me that he was appalled that southern white people indiscriminately kill black people whenever they want. Wow! What are they drinking in Cleveland these days? For the rest of the blue-necks out there, NO we don’t, nor would anyone want to. It’s amazing what dramatic television and a little news bias can conjure up in people’s minds. We have the same sets of demographics as everyone else in America, we just talk funny and eat better food.

When a mandatory seat rotation forced us to sit next to each other, I just politely told him that political conversations just piss people off and magically he became a decent conversationalist. Imagine me telling someone to stop talking politics…you know it had to be bad. But it was a lesson learned. It’s your vacation too so set some boundaries and let loose – after all, you may only be going to visit ancient Roman toilets once in your life!

We were fortunate, however, to sit next to a retired 76 year old Catholic Nun this trip too. Darlene and her traveling companion Ruth were terrific to travel with. There are a few pictures of them scattered on my Facebook pics…the best one is Darlene holding up a small plastic water bottle with an alcoholic beverage inside on our hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia. Darlene and Ruth were excited to see the ancient cave churches by air but also a little apprehensive of what the balloon ride might be like. I asked her what was inside the bottle and she pricelessly responded, “holy spirits”. We loved them so much.

Eileen and Don were from Boston and we had such a great time traveling with them. Eileen was so sweet, like the mom in your neighborhood that all the other kids wanted, always checking on us and making sure we were comfortable. With a perpetual smile on her face she livened up the crowd no matter how tired we were. Her husband Don has a wonderful Boston accent and we cracked up all day long listening to Angel, from Mt. Airy, North Carolina, trying to banter with him using a Mayberry – Boston brogue.

Speaking of Angel, her and her companion Gary turned out to be the most awesome traveling partners ever. Gary is from Wytheville, Virginia and owns “Old Fort” with his cousins, a western store that Emily sells Wrangler products to. If you’re in the area, look him up and buy some Wrangler jeans. We’ve had so much fun traveling with them and have laughed incessantly for two thousand miles. You never really know someone until you’ve spent two weeks with them eating questionable meat products that defy the rules of pronunciation. Gary and Angel are two of those people you’d want to be with if you’re suddenly trapped in a place that’s government has banned the use of toilet paper.

Last but not least, I have to give honorable mention to our Asian friends. Let’s get one thing straight…I love Asian people. Having been to Japan, I can say that it was one of my more awesome traveling experiences. BUT, hum, how do I say this politely? Ok, I’ll just let it out; as nice as Asian people usually are, as a rule they absolutely cannot wrap their minds around the concept of an orderly line. One minute you’re thinking, “oh, that Asian couple is so sweet, let’s invite them over for the weekend”, and the next minute they’ve jumped ahead of you in a line that you’ve been patiently waiting your turn in for 20 minutes. Oh well, we all have a different set of norms don’t we?

What about the facilities? You know what I’m talking about don’t ya? Yes, I’m talking about the good ole porcelain throne…well, in some cases it’s more like a “porcelain stone” with a hole in it. If you haven’t seen one, they’re actually pretty common in public restrooms in the Near and Far East. It’s like a flat or “flush” (pun intended) porcelain contraption with a hole in it that you must be an professional athlete to use. I avoided it as long as I could but eventually “stuff” happens and one must “doo” in Rome as the Romans “doo”. Be forewarned that decent upper body strength, the ability to ignore the occasional shoe faux-pas and having anatomically forgiving body-parts may be required.

Now let’s talk about places. Every place has its focal point or its special attributes. Germany has its Castles, quaint walled riverside villages and great beer. France has its wine, beautiful language and art. Italy has two-thirds of the worlds ancient treasures, overly expressive hand gestures, and great food. Hawaii has beautiful beaches, volcanos and beautiful people doing the hula and other ethnic or war dances. If you’ve been to these places then you know what I’m talking about.

But Emily and I have made a conscious decision to go to some places that most Americans seldom visit. Last year it was the Dalmatian Coast of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro. This year it was a two-week / two-thousand mile cultural saturation of Turkey. We’d been to Turkey once before with another couple, Keith and Sheri, who were very generous to include us in their family vacation 5 years ago but we’d only seen a small portion of Turkey in the two days we were there which sort of percolated an interest for us to see even more.

Little did we know at the time that Turkey held so many historical treasures, especially for Christians. As you may know, Christianity was not allowed to be practiced legally until he 4th century. The Roman Emperor Theodosius I, who’s mother was Greek, finally authorized the religion to be openly practiced in the 380 A.D. as the Greek Orthodox Church, in tribute to his beloved mom. Well, despite the risk of death, Christianity was secretly being taught in tiny cave churches in Cappadocia, Turkey, in the first century A.D..

These were the first Christian churches known to have existed. The villages in that region lie squarely between two now extinct volcanoes which formed some pretty amazing and unusual conical shaped stone formations that the early Christians carved caves inside. The locals call them fairy chimneys. Think dakota badlands meet hobbit villages and you’ll have a general idea of how they look. You could also Google it if you want to see what they look like but that would just be boring, go see it because it’s amazing. People still actually live in some of these caves.

Most of Christ’s Apostles taught, preached, and lived for periods of time in many of these now Turkish cities which were part of the Roman Empire at the time. The seven churches of Revelation are all in Turkey – we visited 4 of them. Two of the 7 wonders of the ancient world were in Turkey – we visited one. Mount Ararat is also in Turkey. The first known use of he word “Christian” was in ancient Antioch in southeast Turkey. Having the privilege to stand where the Apostles would have stood to preach is truly an amazing thing.

If I had to pick my choice of my top 3 places I’ve visited in terms of beauty or just the plain cool factor, I’d say my choices would be:
Hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia;
Prague (old city); and,
The Bay of Kotor in Montenegro.

If you’re thinking of traveling to see early Christianity sites and you’re terrified to travel to Israel, try Turkey. The people love Americans, can speak decent English (for the most part) and the country is undergoing an infrastructure transformation in an attempt to be accepted to the EU so their roads are improving and their accommodations for tourists are very good. Plus, they have this cool meat called Doner…whatever in the heck that is.

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