Part II: An Alpine New Year's in Bormio

As I was saying earlier, I was lucky to escape the post-blizzard wasteland that was New York in the days following Christmas. When I got to the airport, the place was a z-o-o; it was packed with grumpy, irritated people who had been there for who knows how long, and of course the thermostat was set at 10 000 degrees (why places set the heat so high in the winter I have no idea, seeing as how everyone is wearing a big puffy winter coat and by setting the heat so high you are making people derobe and carry these extra items of clothing). Anyway, after waiting in line for 2 hours to get checked in and through security, it was a relief to get to my gate…and wait for 6 hours. Really, considering that people were stranded at JFK for a week after Christmas, I was happy to be able to leave at all.

Now if I had left at the scheduled time, I don’t think I would have been as jet lagged as I was when I first arrived in Italy. But because we didn’t end up leaving until 11 pm, I was quite tired when I got to Milan the following afternoon, and my internal clock was a bit muddled (I was lucky to have slept a little on the plane, because I usually have trouble sleeping in an upright position). Poor Anna had to wait 7 hours at the airport because my flight was so delayed! But I got one of the warmest welcomes I’ve ever had, and a savory espresso to boot upon my arrival.

My arrival in Milan was followed by a flurry of train rides and car trips, but finally in the early evening we arrived in Bormio, a quiet alpine ski town (not a village) in the far north of Italy (near Switzerland north). I know this makes me sound like a gawking loser, but when I came into town for the first time that evening, I couldn’t help but notice the patches of white high up in the sky:

“Are those clouds, or mountains?” I asked.

“Those are mountains,” Anna told me. Wow. That’s a really big fucking mountain I thought.

“I’ve never seen mountains so big,” I said, slack-jawed. What a tourist, Anna probably thought.

From the bedroom window....

Kind of feel the urge to yodel....

But waking up the next morning, I could see in broad daylight that these were mountains. Being the silly lifelong seaside dweller that I am, when I had previously thought about mountains, the Pennsylvanian Appalachians came to mind. But now I could see that those were just lame hills in comparison with these craggy, snow-covered behemoths. I mean, these mountains were big. Big enough to have to crane your neck to see their peaks. Big enough that if you wanted to climb to the top, you’d probably have to hire a guide and it would take you all day to go up and come back down. Ok, in reality they’re probably not that big, but for a wussy flatlander like myself they were pretty damn big (apparently I drove through the Austrian alps a few years ago, but these were much bigger by far). So anyway, Bormio is situated in a valley between three or four of these giant peaks, one of which happens to be 3000 meters of skiing heaven, so the town gets invaded in the winter time by thousands of the rich, sickeningly stylish Milanese (Milan is only 3 hours by car), peaking around New Year’s and a few days after. So the town was pretty hopping when I arrived for my weeklong vacation.

So even though as I am writing this and Anna is reading it and thinking, “What an idiot,” because she probably disagrees, her hometown is totally and charmingly adorable. She says it’s boring, and she’s probably right, but it sure is lovely. The neat thing is that there are lots of centuries-old frescoes adorning many of the houses (including Anna’s – “Yeah, it’s pretty old,”), and the juxtaposition of these fresco – adorned houses and churches with the snowy alpine peaks of the surrounding mountains makes a postcard-worthy dream landscape (at least for this lame American). It was nice to spend a day or two in Bormio wandering around and taking in the town and visiting the cute cafes.

Anna's house, complete with medieval fresco

Bormio

It's the Alps, alright

We celebrated New Year’s without much pomp and circumstance in a small pub called Oliver with Anna’s sister, her husband, a few of their friends and some other locals. There was champagne and a delicious variety of appetizers, followed by some (salty) risotto. I had a nice time, and I was proud of myself that I could (kind of) count backwards from ten in Italian (it’s a work in progress).

Happy New Year!

Salute!

...Cheers to you, too!

Now because of the excess holiday booze and food intake, I had suggested that we do some kind of physical activity in the hope of fitting into my brown pants again, and Anna mentioned snowshoeing, which seemed pretty cool, so we planned to go snowshoeing one day. However, for whatever reason we ended up going cross country skiing instead in the neighboring village of Santa Caterina. Now I had never been cross country skiing before, but I feel that I did alright for my first time, seeing that I only fell over three times and finished 10 kilometers. The cross country track in Santa Caterina had wonderful scenery and it was nice to get outside doing something. But I have to admit, I felt those 10 kilometers for a few days afterward.

Santa Caterina

Amateur, skiing in jeans

She lied to me...she's really good at this!

From the trail

Achy and sore, we decided to go to the thermal baths the next day to alleviate our limp limbs. Since Roman times, Bormio has been famous for its natural hot springs which supply the ancient baths with hot mineral water, and Anna’s sister was kind enough to give us two passes to the baths as a Christmas gift. There are three thermal centers in Bormio: Bormio Terme, which is more of a hot swimming pool; Bagni Vecchi which we tried unsuccessfully to visit (“We can put you on the list for this evening,”); and Bagni Nuovi, which we were able to get into after waiting outside for half an hour (seems like a few hundred other people had the same idea as us). The bagni were very nice, and there was a variety of things to do – huge outdoor tubs of hot water, steam rooms, saunas, Jacuzzis, a “Scottish shower” (where you pull a rope and a huge bucket of cold water gets dumped on you), pools lined with river stones that massage your feet as you walk over them, and many other soothing methods of aquatic relaxation.

Bagni Nuovi

View from the bagni

Ciao!

I didn’t enjoy the bagni as much as I could have because the next day, I fell ill with a cold of a sort. I attributed it to a combination of my skin being opened up after the bagni, and the cold, dry mountain air that laced into my throat like a knife whenever I breathed (I’m used to thick, humid air, being from by the sea and everything). So unfortunately I had to lie in bed for a day to recover, cancelling a trip to St. Moritz in Switzerland that we had planned for that day, but I’m thankful to have only been out of commission for one day. Because of this, for the remainder of the trip we didn’t get to do everything we had planned, and we stayed in Bormio visiting Anna’s family and friends, and enjoying aperitivi every afternoon.

What’s that, you say? Well, aperitivo is one of the most awesome things about Italy. Every evening, it is customary to go out to a café or bar at about 6 o’clock-ish for aperitivo. When you go for aperitivo, you have a refreshing bitter alcoholic drink and a tasty variety of appetizers, like gherkins, olives, focaccia, prosciutto slices, chips, bits of pizza and so forth, and you chat with your friends. It is a lovely preclude to dinner, and it is one of the most awesome things about Italy.

Well, those who have been know how awesome the food and wine are, and since I’m no culinary professional nor food critic, and in the end such things must be tasted rather than talked about, I can’t say much, except that my week in Bormio was enhanced by a delightful mélange of various wines and liqueurs, savory cured meats, tasty pizzas, and scrumptious cheeses (and ham – lots of it…I had to pork out before returning to the swine-less Muslim void that is Turkey).

Only in Italy can you find an 11 pound bag of pasta

In the end, I was sad to leave Bormio, and Italy, and it was difficult to keep my baggage under weight in spite of all the goodies I had bought to bring back to Istanbul with me. But I’m sure it won’t be long before I’ll be back again – it’s hard to stay away from places when they are so picturesque and have wonderful people and food to boot.

Ecstatically enthusiastic about going back to Istanbul

Oh, I nearly forgot...every trip must always have photos of funny signs; here are two signs comical in English but normal in Bormino and Italian, respectively:

"Stone of the House", in Bormino

Funny name for an insurance company...

New Photos!!

Hey all! I've added some new photos to my photo page from my holiday. Stay tuned, that's not all of them - more to come!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/khelke/ in case you forgot....

Part I: A Quiet Christmas in New York

I know I keep rambling boringly about anticlimaxes in this blog, but when it comes to the holidays, although New Year’s is always the biggest anticlimax, something must be said about Christmas, because the way it get hyped up everywhere (not just in the States anymore), you’d think that Jesus was coming back to celebrate his birthday every year and the refreshments are on him.

I’m always dumbfounded by the extravagant lengths people go to to prepare for and decorate for Christmas. Now I must confess (to the shock of many) that this Scrooge does like some Christmas decorations. For example, artfully hung white lights and a festive arrangement of holly and pine foliage are a traditionally tasteful and aesthetically pleasing way of showing zeal for the upcoming holiday.

However, I could never understand those who cover their houses with a vast 10000 kilowatt arsenal of colored, blinking LED lights and, even more ghastly, those giant inflatable Christmas cartoons that people like to put on their front lawns, along with a variety of plastic figures and candy canes here and there along the property. I never foresaw myself saying this, but it’s a pity that not many people set up that Nativity set on the lawn anymore, only churches and the pious.

Well, anyway, as I putzed around the Village of Patchogue this holiday season in various stolen vehicles gawking at these shameless displays of heady holiday spirit, I thought to myself how all of this would look to an outsider who knew nothing of this grand holiday spectacle that Christmas has become (for the record, while Kursad was here he was fascinated by the whole concept, especially Christmas trees). I thought, “Well, if I didn’t know any better I’d say that there was a week long party coming up that might, if one is lucky, culminate in an ecstatic apocalypse.”

But, riding my wonky bicycle back to Mom’s house on Christmas morning (had to give up the guest room for Thomas and stay at Paula’s), the opposite couldn’t be more true. I suppose I was way too early waking up and 8 on Christmas morning and heading out, and when I did could see that things were anything but that end-of-the-world party. No one was stirring, not even the wind (no mice with all those wild cats in the Village). In fact, the bay looked like glass in the pale morning light shining through the clouds, serenely beautiful. I had forgotten that most people sleep in on Christmas (I never could, ever since I was a kid), and then lay about the house all day doing nothing (not up my alley either). People don’t have coffee and eat breakfast until 10 o’clock. So because I only like to be lazy all day under certain circumstances, I always feel antsy on Christmas. And I still can’t figure out why people spend so much time and money gussying up their property if on Christmas nothing at all happens.

Christmas - a most exciting holiday

So of course, this Christmas I didn’t stay inside all day doing nothing. I can’t. I suppose those at Laurel St. have an informal Christmas tradition of heading over to Fire Island for Christmas if the weather is decent, so this year my cousin Evan and I joined the tradition and headed over to the beach with my mother, JR, and Andrew.

Bros

Bayside

No one for miles...

Ben was happy to go to the beach too

Dune bushwhacking

Hello!

The air was frightfully cold, but this became irrelevant in the face of the monochrome beauty of the pale sand, leaden sea, and absolute isolation that met us once we crossed the dune to the ocean side. I prefer being at the beach in the fall, but I can totally understand those who say it is at its most beautiful in the winter. Being out there and losing yourself the raw, unadulterated beauty of nature moves you in a way, and gently, humbly reminds you that you are just like all those grains of sand, flotsam, and jetsam that wash up on the faraway shores.

Merry Christmas, baby.

Back on the mainland after our adventure, it was time to go to dinner (“It’s at 3?!?”), at Paula’s of course. It was nice to see people I hadn’t seen and answer the same questions about Turkey over and over again (because I love to repeat myself). There was the usual roast that could feed an army, and although I don’t want to bore you with the droll details of what we ate, I have to say that it was one of the best Christmas dinners I’ve ever had (compliments to the chef, as always!!). Nothing beats Christmas like fireplaces and great food.

There's a lovely tree

An American Christmas for the Kiwi

Ho ho ho??

Hats off to the Yorkshire Pudding

The scrumptious spread

Well, we didn’t quite get a white Christmas this year, but we sure did get a lot of snow in the days afterwards. I know that most already know that the Northeast was castrated by a killer blizzard in the days after Christmas, it’s old news at this point, but it was something else to see all that snow and be literally hemmed in for two days by the massive amounts of the stuff that we got. Joe got me helping him shovel us out (again and again, me shoveling and he working the blower), and after two days things returned slightly to normal.

Making up for the space it takes up in the garage

Not digging that out...

The paintjob really shines in the snow

In the midst of the blizzard...

Well, I not really normal – I have to say that I was really quite lucky to have gotten out of JFK on the 29^th considering how many flights were cancelled and people left stranded from the storm. My flight out in the end was delayed by 4.5 hours, but I was just thankful to leave safely and be on my way to something new, something routine, and, of course, il mio amore.

Get one more peanut butter snack before I leave, buddy

Next: Part II: An Alpine New Year’s in Bormio

City-ots

YES, I still do have best friends in the States. The city is always refreshing in more ways than one.

I took the train to the city yesterday to visit some of my best friends: Grace, who was always my best friend at Delaware, and Deborah, my roommate from Brooklyn last year. Damn, if there is one thing that I really miss about being home, it is taking the train to the city. I know it is a daily commuting hell for many people on Long Island, but for me, a train buff, it will never get old.

What up again, LIRR

I met Grace in the city at about 1 o'clock, and we walked up to Rockefeller Center to see the tree. Maybe it's because I haven't seen the tree there since I was twelve, but it sure wasn't as big as I anticipated it to be:
"Dude, look how small it is."
"Yeah dude, I thought it would have more decorations on it," Grace said. Yeah, it was a bit anticlimactic. Well, you be the judge.

I suppose it would be better seen by night

After being unimpressed by the tree, we returned to Korea Town to enjoy some delicious Korean food (squid never gets old!) with souju. After lunch, we made our way down to NYU for a few half pints and some good catch-up talk. It was so nice to spend time with her again, and it was like nothing had changed at all. I had such a nice time with her, and I hope we get to see each other again before I make my way back across the pond. (You rock, had so much fun!!)

Still looking great!

Some friendships never die.

Unfortunately Grace had to split back to Jersey early, so I had some time to kill before meeting Deb, who postponed on me (again). I took the train up to frozen Central Park and walked though the dark paths illuminated by the city glow, stopping along the way to play with my camera to figure out how to get some good night shots (it's a learning process). I got a few good ones, but here is a nice one looking south to 59th St.


A bit later I made my way down to Cooper Union, but because Deb was so busy with rescheduled classes and me with a train I had to catch at 10.30, I only got to see her for an hour. We went for Japanese and I had a good time busting on her with Bobby, her boyfriend, who is a really great guy. I'm only sorry we couldn't spend some more time together (make some time next time for Chernobyl Ghost Hunters next time chica!!).

I had a great time ladies; thanks for reminding me who my best friends are here. Miss you girls...

Dela....where??

Last week I made a trip down to my old country home, Delaware. When I used to drive down in the past few years from New York, I would always be surprised to see a new batch of environmentally-wrecking, newly-hatched condominiums along the way, or a new strip mall or some other giant store with a hideous facade that wrecked the bucolic coastal landscape. But on the cold ride down this time, there was none of that. It was almost bizarre that there had been nothing new built, like something was wrong; the empty streets of planned neighborhoods still sat desolately by the highway as they had a year or two ago. Seeing this, I was glad to see that the housing bubble's bursting had finally stopped the runaway development of plastic mansions, yet it also reinforced my recent revelation that nothing changes at home.

First and foremost, I need to make an apology. I'm sorry to those in Sussex County who may read this and get offended, but by no means should you take this personally, as this is based on my own perceptions, and while it may solidify my pretension, this is not an attack on all my good friends and family who still reside there.

As I said about lukewarm receptions in a previous posting, I didn't expect anything ostentatious returning to Delaware. Save my visit to my father and three friends of mine, Delaware's receptions were cold...McMansionless neighborhoods, snow that no one cared about removing from the roads, and shuns from old school friends.

Probably still unplowed as you read this

First let me say that it was absolutely great to see my father and Jeanne again after so long. It was too soon to leave them, and I must say that such hospitality is unmatched even by Turkish standards. We ate some great food, went shopping, made Pfeffernuss together, slid the truck around in the snow, joked, shot pool...all of it was great. Home, no different than when I had left, but this time, the lack of change was good. I had a fantastic week with them, so if you're reading this Dad, thanks so very very much for the great time.

Snowy boardwalk

Wintry Atlantic


Merry Christmas, Kyle

So I went to my new old high school while I was back home. Wow, what a mistake that was. I thought it would be nice to see some of my old classmates and teachers and the "progress" they had been making with their lives. But when I got there it was clear that the people who I knew and used to be friends with hadn't gone far beyond Indian River HS, if at all. Nor were they even polite upon seeing me, let alone interested in making conversation with me. The biggest culprit of all was my old band teacher, Mark Marvel, whose inability to have a focused conversation with someone is worthy of a gold medal and who, unremarkably, still can't see past the perimeter of his ulcer-ridden paunch. As I left I was embarrassed to think that I used to look up to him, and that I had imagined that anyone would have reciprocated my interest in seeing old classmates.

But I can't speak for all of my old friends. Both my friends Woody and Nathan were happy to see me and spend time with me, so I am grateful to still have good friends in my old neck of the woods. And I was also pleasantly surprised to see Christina, a friend of mine from high school and university (seriously, Latin? That's way cool!). So all in all it was redeeming to see that I still had some friends back in Delaware and that they were doing well for themselves. I hope to see them again soon.

Ironically, this was a warm, friendly reception

I left with the feeling that every time I come back, I know that place less and less. The joke "Dela-where?" has new meaning.....where is my old home, and all those who I used to know? But it still is a home to me thanks to my family and handful of friends. Thanks everyone, for making my holiday week in Delaware a pleasant one.