The Best $20 (or less) I Ever Spent While Traveling

Upon finishing a 500-mile trek across Spain along the Camino de Santiago, I returned home to face the task of closing my office at the NGO I founded, completing a divorce that my husband initiated, and dealing with a depression that I couldn’t shake. What better way to handle the stress than to run away…again.

One week later I began the European Peace Walk, a 350-mile trek from Vienna to Venice along the western border of Hungry. For seven days I soldiered on in 98-degree heat, accommodations that rivaled a Soviet-era gulag, and soul aching pain. I finally snapped when my cherished morning ritual piddled into a plastic cup. I dropped my one-euro coin into an ancient machine that dripped mud down a disgusting tube and called it coffee.

Each morning a taxi would arrive to carry our backpacks to the next location. To this day, I’m not sure why we weren’t ferrying our backpacks ourselves. After a quarter of a mile into that day’s 14-mile route, I stopped in my tracks, did an about-face and returned to the decrepit gym where we slept the night on blue plastic mats still sticky with sweat from Olympic training in the 1950s. The cabbie was loading the last backpack into the taxi. I had four seconds to decide, and at second number three, I requested a ride to the nearest train station. His perplexed look did not bode well. He was scheduled for another pick up shortly. My backpack lay at the bottom of the heap in his car. There was only train within driving distance, and its final stop was one town away. Fine, I said. At least it wouldn’t be here.

I stood firm as he sensed my need to flee. The $8 I spent for his services turned out to be the best investment for the next stage of my life. His gruffness turned fatherly as he sauntered to the ticket counter in Koseg, requested a ticket for Szombathely, and bid me good-bye. From Szombathely, I found my way to Sopron. In Sopron, I headed towards Zagreb via Vienna where I met two women en route to a small yoga retreat in Croatia.  After a bus to Split and a ferry to Hvar, I landed in the town of Stari Grad holding a reservation for the last available spot at the very same retreat as the women from Vienna. I was Home.

I hit rock bottom in Hvar, but I found a safe space to start clawing my way back up. I used the next ten days to slow down and face the future. Each day included three hours of yoga and four hours journaling by the Adriatic at a seaside café serving the most glorious, steaming, milky coffee.

My story has a happily ever after ending. After my summer of running, I returned to southern California, packed everything I owned into my jeep and drove 1000 miles to Portland, Oregon,  met the love my life eight days later, and began a new career.

My newfound happiness commenced with those $8 and the cabbie in Koseg. Next summer I plan to return to Hungary and search for this knight in shining armor. I want to spend another $8 on a beer and dinner to thank him for arriving at that pivotal point in my life. It commenced a path that turned turmoil into triumph. Wherever you are, my friend, I can’t wait to see you again.

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Filming a Shoot

Ok, I'm not going to be a film star in Africa. It's not as if I was hoping that this week would be my breakthrough moment, but it appears that my too white skin doesn't bode well for a Tanzanian casting call. 

The class Barry is leading involves making two short films a day. After creating a storyboard (as well as a title, tagline, and poster) everyone takes off to shoot. Today I was invited to join one of the groups. Each team member will either act or film. My team looked at me (being the wrong color) and said I could be the director. At last, I'm in charge of something! I was really good at saying 4-3-2-1-action. Nothing makes you bond with people more than having a deadline and a common project.  Our movie, Beautiful Liar, involved a lady with multiple boyfriends who each found out about the other in the closing scene of our 60-second academy contender.  In fact, the class chose it as is the basis for the final feature our class will show at the closing night festivities at ZIFF (Zanzibar International Film Festival). Now I'll be able to say I am a filmmaker who has a film that was played at a film festival....just don't ask me for too much detail or you'll know I'm a fraud :)

There are many immigrant stories in the films at ZIFF. Another touching film called Boi (It means fight) involved two young boys who collect scrap metal to help their family survive in Belgium. At the end of the film, the older brother asked his young sibling to punch him. He wanted to tell their dad they were robbed of their daily earnings. Now his younger brother could attend the little summer camp he so wanted to attend. I'm keeping up with my daily dose of a tear.

Every which way

I have a terrible sense of direction. If you've ever traveled with me, you know to turn left whenever I  say we need to go right. The tiny alleyways of Zanzibar twist and turn every which way....I know because I've walked them all trying to get a very short distance from my hotel to the movie houses.  Many of the items for sale in the stales are familiar from my ten years of travel to Kenya. But I was quite surprised when I spotted a bright yellow bikini standing out in a land of head scarves

Each morning begins with an exotic plate of fruit. I've never eaten zaituni or custard fruit. Barry (the boyfriend) was biting into a thick layer of white and said, "you can't eat this.. I can't get my teeth through it." The jet lag had set in.  He forgot he had eaten the grapefruit and was trying to eat the rind.

Actually, the rind was a step up from the food we experienced during our 48 hour journey here. Unbeknownst to us, the stop in Addis Ababa included a sleep over in a hotel in the slums of the city. It is all an adventure. But scrambled eggs tough enough to cut with a knife and French toast that can be bounced off the floor do leave you a little hungry upon arrival.  

My hotel is a refurbished mansion of the sultan's finance minister from a hundred years ago. Our room has a rooftop patio (with a swing) that overlooks Stone Town, evening sunsets and morning sunrises. The roosters begin at 4:45am  just before the loudspeakers sound their morning calls to prayer. I'm swimming in a sea of senses. 

One of today's films broke my heart. Under the Tide showcased the women of Zanzibar who farm seaweed to make an exotic brand of soap. Things changed for this cooperative of women when an investment banker from Denmark arrived to stream line the business. She cut the workforce from thirty-five to seven to increase the bottom line, gave them each one share of stock and told them they were still owners of the company. I imagine that as the company succeeds on the world market their one share may double in value. Seven total shares of stock for seven women. Twenty-eight women out of work. You gotta love western influence.

A beautiful film from Kenya, Ugali, had a universal message. A loving Mom cooked her teenage son's car key into the family meal. It was a loving way to forestall his rushed journey to his next drug fix. The silence during the scene when he understood her motive spoke volumes. Another tear down my cheek

Another side of Africa

A Different Side of Africa

Sophisticated, warm, exotic.  After ten years of being ensconced in the poverty of Kenya I am seeing another side to this wonderful continent. I arrived at the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ziff.or.tz) to gentle breezes, gorgeous sand and an exotic location. The film festival is the largest in East Africa. After a day of films in multiple locations we journeyed to an ancient amphitheater with stars screaming down upon us. The stage morphed into a catwalk of a couture line from a local fashionista before the commencement of Kalusha, a South African film premiering in Zanzibar.

The energy is electric. The films come from all over the world with a running theme on social justice....something near and dear to my heart. 

So what am I doing here? I have a (*flash*) boyfriend of nine months (more on that later) who is a cinematographer and is giving a five day workshop for twelve aspiring filmmakers. I get to be the assistant. This is a new role for me and I'm trying my hardest not to step in and run the workshop myself :)

Yesterday I attended six films. There was a gem of a film called My Bicycle from Bangladesh. I am cycling four to five days a week in Portland and I was anxious to see a new perspective of my beloved sport. The bicycle in this film was an entrepreneurial tool that allowed a desperately poor migrant to eek out a living for his family. Of course, there was a twist with the arrival of the town bullies. It was one of those films that, oh so subtlety, brings a tear to your eye.


Film has a wonderful way of allowing you to step into the shoes of others. It is a dreamy world I'm experiencing right now. And there are ten days ahead of learning and absorbing everything possible in this wonderfully rich culture.

Yoga Drama

Yoga drama.  Yes, I know, it's an oxymoron. But i caused it during my yoga retreat in Hvar this past week.  I got expelled. Yep, kicked out.  Told to leave and that my money would be returned.  Of course, it worked out that I got to stay as I begged forgiveness the next morning. I pleaded and groveled. The women who runs the retreat is so sweet that she didn't have the heart to follow through with her after midnight frustration.  I knew I had done wrong.  I had promised to be home at 1030pm so that she wouldn't lose sleep waiting up for me. But the stars in Hvar were so bright that night, and the Grand Marnier at the seaside cafe was begging for another round, and I had a key to the house and thought I could silently sneak in and everything would be okay.  The real reason I couldn't leave the cafe is my new friend, Helena from Sweden,  said something that I knew meant we'd be friends for life. The conversation was intense (maybe the Grand Marnier was talking) and we were heavy into a political discussion on either American or European affairs and we both had many opinions of the topic. Helena has a calm, quiet strength about her and I like how she would not back down on an issue if she felt she was right.  Her quintessential line to me was, "Jene, if you let me finish, you'll understand what I'm trying to say."  I sat back and smiled. I can always tell a true friend when they oh, so politely tell me to shut up. They get my passion but they also get that I need a little coaching in order to listen. I got it. And she got me. And she did have a very good point once I 'was given' the opportunity to hear it.  The next morning when I was apologizing for my tardiness I made it quite clear that it wasn't really my fault that I was late. It was Helena's because she kept me out.  Not taking responsibility was not looked on with favor.  I was moved to a new bedroom at the house next door, far from the ears of our lovely leader.

How did I get here?

So how did I get here?

In a very circuitous way, actually. It began on my seventh day hiking through Hungary along the Iron Curtain Trail. I had begun the European Peace Walk in Vienna. For the next seven days i hiked 25km a day along the Hungarian boarder. On day number seven  I stopped dead in my tracks and did a 180 degree turn. Nope, I wasn't going to walk another foot (meter here) of the 28km hike of the day on the flat, blazing hot, mosquito infected path only to spend the night at another soviet era gymnasium with showers and plumbing also from the soviet era. Nope, that was it.  I backtracked and found the taxi guy who was ferrying backpacks for the ten others in my group who didn't want to carry 20lbs for 28km in 95degree heat.

I asked him to take me to the nearest train station.

I'd go anywhere.

The train in Koseg only went to Szombathely. Fine, I said.  I caught a train from there to Sopron. In Sopron I decided on Ljubljana, Slovenia (I'd heard it was beautiful). But thirty minutes later the lady from the information desk found me in the waiting area and said for a euro more i could go to Zagreb and then I wouldn't have an eight hour layover in another town I couldn't pronounce.  Okay, I said, Zagreb it is. Croatia has always felt like a second home to me. It would be my fourth visit to this lovely country. In a way I was still making up for the one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my life when I bagged out of a semester abroad on the Yugoslavian study group in college.

Two interesting women sat in the compartment I chose for my eight hour train ride.  As the ticket guy was shooing me out of first class seven minutes later the women mentioned over their split of champagne that they were on their way to a yoga retreat on the Croatian island of Hvar.  I typed the name of it into my iphone and bid farewell to first class.

There was one room left at the retreat when I emailed them the next morning from my bunk bed at the hostel in Zagreb. I'm on my way, I wrote. An eight hour bus to Split and twenty minutes to make the connection to the ferry to Hvar (I think it was meant to be) and by 8pm I arrived with the thunder and lightening that was as excited as i was to be in Hvar....one of the ten most beautiful islands in the world according to some magazine.

And so here i am. George Ezra has joined me.  I listened to his cd somewhere between one and two thousand times on the Camino in May and June.  And as i sit at my cafe by the water late into the night he is serenading me from the speakers above. It's good to be back with an old friend.

Day 32 & 33 - Camino Camaraderie

If you are on the camino you are either over 50 or under 30. The younger set has inspired me by their wanderlust and the breath of ideas they have for adventure. They also crack me up. Timo and I met days earlier when he rediscovered me in an aubergue napping after a long day’s hike.
After greeting me he got back to his conversation with Carrie…

Carrie: A bunch of us are renting a house when we get to Santiago and having a toga party.
Timo: What’s a toga party?
Carrie: It is from some movie. You dress in togas.
Timo: What’s toga?
Carrie: I’m not sure but it is like the Greeks use to wear. You wear sheets.
Timo: (scratching his head)

I was burying my head in my pillow to refrain from laughing out loud. Was I that old that Animal House had slipped by an entire generation?

I’ve loved my conversations with Drennan, a fifteen year old traveling with his mom. He had girlfriend issues, and after days of hearing the stories I came up with a mantra for him which I repeat whenever I run into him: “DTC” is my subtle way of telling him to ditch the chick.

Hernandez walked pass me in one town and laughed at something he overheard me saying. I then challenged him to cancel his planned 24 mile hike that day and hang with us and he’d laugh for 24 hours. He did and he did. We had to change his name to Hernandez because he was worried he might do something that would end up in my blog and it would ruin his opportunity to become a priest which he is contemplating on the Camino.

I could write an entire essay on Dorothy and the traveling underpants. She lost them and her Lululemon bag after racing from an aubergue that was infested with bed bugs. But they were found by Timo who kept them and the bag safely in his backpack until he tracked her down again. Oh, the things we do for others on the Camino.

There is a camaraderie throughout the Camino. I’ve learned a lot from thoughtful and impressive kids. I’ve taught them too..like how to make fish faces for pictures. But I’m still an adult… I wasn’t invited to the toga party (although I bet I could have taught them some great dance moves in those sheets.