Travel, an interlude, more travel, blogging reflections

Last night, Saturday, we got back to Paderno after having been in Budapest and Prague for a week. We had a really good time in each of the places, took tons of pictures, walked our poor feet to the nubs, and now are relieved to be 'home.'

One of our favorite walks in Budapest, the Saint Steven Utca (street) up to the same named cathedral.

A night scene in Prague from the Charles Bridge back toward the old town. Buildings are bristling with statues. Saints, heros, such like.

This morning we slept in, got going very late, and emerged from our quiet little place to find that we could not get fresh fruits or vegetables anywhere. The weekend market was over, the stores are all closed for Sunday, all day, and there is not so much as a lemon to be purchased in any establishment to which we have ready access. Ooops!

Already I am preparing for my next travel on Tuesday afternoon - Mike will drive me to the Venice airport and I'll fly to London for the night. Wed am I fly to Delhi, and on Thursday I take a train to the Punjab to the community of Dera, Beas. There I'll spend slightly more than two weeks in an environment built for support of meditation. Several other folks I know plan to be there this fall as well, so there will also be a social aspect to the time. I'm looking forward to it!

Two days after my return from India, we head to Spain, spending a week there with my brother and sister-in-law, Herb and Judy. We will all return to Italy, and while Mike resumes work (somebody apparently has to do some of that!), I'll show them around this area. They leave on Nov 19th, and the Thanksgiving break starts on the 24th. We hope to spend that holiday in Rome with Bill Smyth and Rita Brown, friends from Corvallis who are living in Germany for nine (!!) months.

I do not know if I'll have time to do much blog writing in this interlude, a down-side to "too much travel." Is one even allowed to talk about such a concept? Such a thing as being too blessed? Yipes!

At any rate, the topics are accumulating, and I hope to get to them all, but who knows: Asolo, a lovely little town 5 kilometers from here; a day up on Monte Grappa; Padova (Padua) as a day-trip; our time in Budapest and Prague; the formal dinners with the students here; local markets; and really small cars. All are worthy of some reflection and sharing, right? I'm open to feedback on preferences, by the way.

Here we are at the formal dinner. Atypical apparel was required for this event. Mike says to write that he's actually wearing shorts.

I am learning that a serious hazard of this blogging business is the sin of omission.  There are so many things that occur in life, all of them precious, that I have to pick and choose in order not to spend entire days at the computer recording it all. And thus, visits with many dear folks have gone unmentioned so far - seeing the Stryker family in Sun River, spending an afternoon with Ann and Badger in London, connecting with Richard and Sue, our house-sitters, and the daily interactions with the heros of our life here. Likewise many conversations and reflections on the value of quiet, on cultural variety and vowel deprivation, on social behaviors and values, and on the use of body parts in English idioms. The good part of all this is that we are in no shortage of topics to turn over with you all on our return. The fun conversations will continue!

OMG! (Oh-so Many Guitars!)

When we left home, Mike left his guitar there rather than subject it to the vagaries of travel. However, he planned from day 1 to see if he could find a cheap guitar here, then leave it for future generations of college kids to abuse during their stays in subsequent years. After all, one hardly wants to lose those hard-won finger calluses.

Early on he asked about second-hand stores or flea-markets, or whatever might be a source for this kind of a cheap beater, and the RAs at the school handed him one from the corner. But it was too beaten a beater. The upper bridge was so severely broken that the high E string either dangled or was slipped onto the bridge next to the B - pretty difficult playing conditions if one wants all 6 strings. Someone mentioned Esse Music in Montebelluno, and someone else said, "Oh, yeah!"

So we took the beater to see if it could be repaired, and  headed to Esse Music. After one blown attempt to find the place - it looks like a large abandoned factory, so we thought it was just a large, abandoned factory - we followed the stream of arriving customers into a back building that looks like an airplane hangar. In through a hall, turn the corner and:

 If we were Italian, the appropriate utterance would have been, "Mamma mia!" (they really do say that), but not having the proper reflexes or training, we just stopped in our tracks and went slack-jawed. Both of us, simultaneously. I think they should have a video camera there to record folks' initial reactions, because the place is truly astonishing. There are thousands of guitars there! In every configuration, every style, new, used, cheap, outlandishly expensive, and every point in between.

One of the guys there speaks some English, lucky for us, and he directed us to everything we needed. The beater is in getting fixed, and Mike has a new, cheap guitar! It's a new Yamaha and has surprisingly good sound for its cheaphood.

There are a couple of repercussions, so to speak, of this action. One is that there are several students who play guitar and were in the market for a similar kind of travel instrument, so Mike took 4 of them back to Esse Music this Wed and three of the four got themselves new axes. Happy students.

The other bit of fall-out is that a couple of those students are pretty dang good. One young woman, Sarah Parker (I'm dropping her name so I can say, "I knew her when she played a cheap guitar in Italy" someday when she's famous), plays well enough, but also writes some very good songs and has a truly lovely voice and style. She had actually managed to play the beater -pre-repair - sufficiently well out in the courtyard of the dorms that kids would hang out the windows and applaud her. She said, "I'm wondering if this might be dangerous to do - I've had three proposals of marriage so far." Being really pretty probably helped on that count. At any rate, she is one of the proud new guitar owners, and she and other students - and Mike! - are now being recruited for a talent show. It'll be in late November, just before the Thanksgiving break. Thus is the way of life with Mike: things happen. I bet you'll hear more on this one in time.

Mike with his new guitar in our apartment. He's happily rebuilding his calluses and practicing regularly. Yay! It's so nice to have music in our home again.