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November 01, 2007
Old Hallow's Eve
I've just now realized I didn't make a post summarizing the trip Matty and I took to Paris and Amsterdam. So here goes:
It was awesome. Eight days that felt like a month-long weekend.
Paris has to be seen to be believed...especially at night. It's moniker as 'The City of Lights' is very apt and never has any locale I've ever been in looked so beautiful at night. Amsterdam is an amazing city to go relax in. It's small and very intimate -- kind of like the tiny side streets of the back-bay -- so you can see all of it in a day. After that you are free to explore the smaller parts in greater detail and, within a couple of days, you feel as though you really know the place and can proper enjoy it.
Paris was too big to be enjoyed; often I felt as though I was racing from one destination to the next. Along the way all one had to do is turn their head to be presented with yet another beautiful site, demanding to be acknowledged in full within a scant handful of seconds.
Needless to say, both are places I want to visit again soon.
I took a bunch of pictures and am currently in the process of processing them. Hey, I was an art major...I can't just put up pictures without maniacally fretting over every details.
So yesterday was Halloween and there was a neighborhood party here at 'Zur Gempenfluh 90210'. The celebration of Old Hallow's Eve just recently made it to Switzerland and the population at large is going through the teething stage of it's observance. It's funny to see kids go Trick-or-Treating and only getting candy at 5-10% of the houses they visit. Most people answer the door, surprised to discover a group of spookily dressed kids and wondering why in the hell they're demanding candy on a school night.
Kayla made the astute observation that everyone here thinks they have to dress up as something 'scary'. We didn't see one hobo, princess (Disney or otherwise), Spiderman or Lightning McQueen. Only ghosts, ghouls, zombies, and the like. I don't have a problem with this at all -- in my opinion the spookier the better -- it's just funny to see a celebration that was such an entrenched part of my childhood begin in its infancy elsewhere.
Kayla and I brought Lenny up to the party, bearing a peace-offering of muffins and spent the dusk-hours in conversation as daylight began to fade. There was a mother applying make-up to a queue of little girls and a father showing a group of eager kids how to carve pumpkins. The air was brisk in the comfortable way but carried with it enough of a bite to remind you that winter is almost here. As the jack-o-lanterns lit up a cadre of crows flew overhead and I had a moment of complete connectedness with everything around me.
Life is so beautiful sometimes I can't hardly stand it -- especially when there are birds around. This flock of crows just continued circling overhead, not in a menacing way but in a soaring way; lazily riding the breezes and barely flapping their wings, content to go where the wind would take them. I had never seen this type of behavior before so I did a quick Google search and read that they do this to meet up before going to a nesting site where they sleep in numbers up into the thousands as protection from predators. To me it just looked like a great way to end the day; what better way than to fly with your friends?
I thought to myself, 'If I was a bird, that's the way I'd be.' It sounds silly now in retrospect but at the time it's exactly how I felt.
Posted by Jon at November 1, 2007 05:01 AM