In Your Eyes

I’m an Army Brat, meaning I have been traveling to Europe since I was 18 months old. The first time I saw Paris I was nine. The first time I traveled to England I was ten. Weekend trips to Austria, Switzerland and around Germany were part of our normal routine. Later, as an adult for both work and pleasure I’ve added much of the rest of Western Europe to that list of places that are often dreamt about as once-in-a-lifetime. I and my family are going back in 2011 and while there I want to explore a different part of Europe never before seen by this pair of eyes.

Before “Braveheart” few people outside of Scotland had heard of or remembered William Wallace. Somehow his story was discovered and turned in to a major film release, for a while sparking international interest in travel to Stirling at the center of the land between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I’d like to discover something like that; something few outside the local village have heard about; something National Geographic might cover if even they have caught wind of the story. And I’d like you to tell me where to go!

In Europe, that is.

Here are the options:
Norway Sweden Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania
Portugal Hungary Romania Bulgaria Moldova Croatia
Slovenia Slovakia Macedonia Albania Malta Serbia
Bosnia Herzegovina Montenegro Belarus Ukraine Luxembourg

Having been to Europe so many times including having lived there I believe in the power of wonder and discovery through a fresh set of eyes. I don't mind the major highlights, like the fjords of Norway but the little known (by American standards) is what I'm after. How many Americans have enjoyed a Finnish sauna above the Arctic Circle, reindeer steaks and all for after? Patton is buried in Luxembourg but most Americans, if they go at all, might stop in at Normandy instead. So far the most appealing thing I've found are the Plitvice Lakes in central Croatia, terraced reservoirs of blue water laced together by waterfalls and surrounded by mountains.

At this writing the trip will take place over two weeks in June, 2011 so please consider the following when helping me choose a destination. Essentially, it cannot take too long to get to or require a lot of red tape to pass through. I’m looking for something compelling in terms of the human or personal experience as well, from an ancestral birthplace to the location of the Yalta Conference.

Here are the conditions:
1. Does not require a visa for entry
2. Can be reasonably explored within one week
3. Offers reasonable travel logistics (easy to get to/from and around)
4. Offers compelling well-known as well as long-forgotten history
5. Includes unique art, architecture, geography and gastronomy (food!)
6. Is not under a travel advisory issued by the Department of State


The survey will run until April 30, 2011. That will allow time for planning (and saving) along with one other thing I’d like to propose.

Join me! In the meantime, starting with the next post spend a month with me in Greece.

Gotta go.

Hello, Baltimore

I used to live in Baltimore. Heck, I used to live in a lot of places but those are other stories. Three times over the course of my life have I called this city and surrounding area "home." As a toddler in the late 60s I watched my older sister delight in frogging the stream that ran through our backyard. During high school I went through platform shoes, afros and silk shirts in the late 70s and early 80s. Finally, as a full grown adult in the aftermath of a major national crisis, I struggled to survive and redefine myself as a professional and human being in the early 2000s. Good or bad, Baltimore, affectionately off-kilter "Balmer," has always been there.

Founded in 1729 by Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore of the Irish House of Lords, for three months from 1776 to 1777 it was the capital of the United States! Most Americans will recall that the Star Spangled Banner were written here by Francis Scott Key after witnessing the failed British attack on Ft. McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in 1814. The city has seen a few facelifts since then, including the Great Fire of 1906 and some notable riots spanning 1861 during the Civil War to 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Though we lived just south of the city on Ft. Meade at the time my mother would not let her children out of the house for a few days that week. In almost lock step with blood and blight, however, there always seems to have been one savior after another coming over the horizon to reinvent the city, repaint the landscape and, most especially, revitalize the Inner Harbor.

Before moving to Chicago Oprah Winfrey anchored the evening news on WJZ-TV but the city's art scene has always been way left of center. Fells Point has long been a neighborhood of activism going back to Frederick Douglass. Tallulah Bankhead held court at select watering holes in town while Jada Pinkett-Smith ("The Nutty Professor"), John Waters ("Hairspray") and Barry Levinson ("Diner" and "Rainman") hail from the city. Hollywood got in to the act once via "Hot L Baltimore," a sitcom around a flophouse hotel starring James Cromwell, Conchata Ferrell, Richard Masur and Charlotte Rae.

Former Mayor William Donald Shaeffer is revered still as the contemporary equivalent of Lord Baltimore himself over 20 years after his last year in office.

Among too many achievements to list here, he presided over the creation of Harbor Place, which included the innovative National Aquarium and the new Ballpark at Camden Yards for the woebegone yet beloved Orioles. Most notably for the people of the city, he and City Commissioner Robert Embry offered what I call "The Dollar Deal" where anybody could buy any abandoned row house in select parts of the city for one dollar. The stipulation was to personally invest a minimum of $100,000 in renovations as a way to jumpstart the decayed inner city.

It reversed the population decline, beautified the city and gave a much needed boost to personal equity and city coffers in one fell swoop. Key note here: not a single city backed loan defaulted!

I am not from Baltimore but it is the closest thing to a family home that I have. Thanks to "The Wire" it doesn't always look its best and is indeed facing major challenges today but it is essentially the same city most people would recognize and that I remember from years ago. It is at once a little touchy in the underdog kind of way when mentioned in the same conversation as nearby Washington D.C. or Philadelphia; a little quirky in its love of Old Bay Seasoning on everything from its world famous blue crabs to ice cream and is justifiably proud of its place in American national and sports history - Pimlico hosts the Preakness the first Monday of every May, a part of the Triple Crown.

A lot of heavy industry is gone but the Bromo Tower, those famous marble steps and the people are still there, dancing to their own rhythm on the west side of the Chesapeake. Go for crabs, ballgames, fresh produce at one of six neighborhood markets or any of over 100 bars and pubs in Fells Point but don't expect to see too many beehive hair-dos!

Gotta go!

Globe Trotting Around the World

I had to go to Hong Kong on business one day and then from there on to India for an exploratory session with the new service team my company had installed at Delhi. Was I up for it, they asked? I kept telling them they didn't need to ask twice much less the first time. And I even sweetened the pot by offering to schedule a longish layover in London on the way back to do a drop-in on our offices there. I was going around the world, from Chicago to Chicago, for the first time in my life. This time the journey itself was the destination.

It would be 747s all the way as the first great bird lifted off the runway for Tokyo. Changing from there to Hong Kong we came down over southern Japan where I noticed a very large and active volcano softly belching white steam in to the atmosphere, a major city built up in every direction around it. The AirMap informed me that this was Kagoshima at the very southern tip of Kyushu Island and a "Sister City" to Miami. Mt. Sakurajima pops off with almost boring regularity, apparently, as evidenced by the densely packed villages all around the island on which it sits in the middle of the bay.

Leaving out of Hong Kong was disappointing in that the service operated in the evening with an arrival in to Delhi along the order of Midnight. Still, I hoped for a moonlit sky that might offer a unique view of Mt. Everest directly on our flight path in to the Indian capital city. No such luck. It fogged up around the mountains to the point that I was hoping the instruments would keep us well abeam the mountain and not heading directly for it. We landed safely in Delhi without further adieu.

Mosquitoes in baggage claim, mosquitoes at the check-in counter a few days later, mosquitoes in the boarding lounge and one or two brave ones actually on the plane sums up the experience at Indira Ghandi International Airport. We closed the door, the flight attendants hit the aisles with bug spray and we launched in to the night sky for London at around 3AM. The captain informed us of our flying route that would deliberately avoid Iraqi airspace, news we all accepted with relief. He went on to explain we would be flying over the heart of Iran instead.

I hoped to sleep all the way to London considering the hour of the night and the eight hours of flying time. I woke some three hours out right over downtown Tehran, noticed how brown absolutely everything was and dozed off for the hop over Turkey and across the Black Sea in to Bulgarian air space and central Europe on a beeline to London Heathrow.

Seven hours on the ground in London and back in the air again I was, now headed home for Chicago on the fifth 747 of the journey. This time there was something spectacular to capture the moment following the view of Mt. Sakurajima in southern Japan. I wish pilots would call out traffic in the area even if it is a competitor's airplane. If I hadn't been seated on the left side of my plane I would have missed this. We were bigger, higher and faster but that just made it perfect to capture the ice floes and bergs all around this magnificent moment in time.

Pan Am used to fly a Round the World Service offering the same flight number in each direction though sometimes there might have been a change of aircraft for scheduling reasons. After Pan Am folded United Airlines tried it a couple of times only to discontinue the service for the last time shortly after September 11, 2001. I was able to make the trip twice, once in each direction before it was all over.

I'd do it all over again tomorrow.

Gotta go.