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the modern Swedish metrosexual…

During my mini tour of my Swedish roots and a few centuries of Viking history, I learned that the Sweden of my grandfather and the Sweden of the 21st century are very different places.  He was one of the many who emigrated at that time.  Sweden was poor and ruled by a class structure that favoured the nobility over the peasants so lots of Swedes emigrated to the new world for what they hoped would be a better life.

Somehow my grandfather ended up in small town Manitoba.  How he got there is not very clear.  That he was an adventurer and a maverick is part of the family folklore.  I’m not sure what the Swedish men of the poor late nineteenth century would have to say to the Swedish men of the prosperous early twenty first.

One of the cool new tourist attractions in Stockholm is the Fotografiska.  I am a big fan of photography but have only recently started going to photography museums when I head to cities.  The Fotografiska is popular with both locals and tourists and got me to Södermalm and a more “real” part of Stockholm.  Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to explore the neighborhood but the museum is definitely worth a visit.

http://en.fotografiska.eu/f

There doesn’t seem to be a permanent collection, just a series of rotating exhibitions.  All were worth viewing – and made me feel bad about my tourist shots 🙂  But the one that intrigued me the most was Maria Friberg.

Apparently in 1995 she had met with a businessman in conjunction with selling some of her art work and they got into a philosophical conversation about the role of men in modern Swedish society.  She grew up on a collective in rural Sweden that was a matriarchal haven where the women worked and the men tended to domestic duties.  So the businessman was a novelty to her 🙂

There were two series of paintings – Almost There and The Painting Series.  There was also a video showing how she shot the photos for The Painting Series.  The commentary noted how her photography had been influenced by the working styles of Jackson Pollock and Yves Klein (my Alexander McQueen pumps in Yves Klein blue are one of my most prized possessions 🙂

Both the process used to create the photographs and their conceptual content really impressed me.

per the info at the museum….

Maria Friberg’s oeuvre is an investigation of male identity in today’s period of gender transition, as visualized in her signature series Almost There from 2000 and The Painting Series from 2011. In Almost There, we see a group of men, white men in suits, floating in a pool. Their homogeneous appearance is suggestive of the Western patriarchy. A patriarchy is formed when men are at the top of a societal structure. Clustered together, the pack of men appears to be in their mid-thirties, at the peak of their careers. They do not interact, but gaze instead into the distance. The image implies that they are rivals thereby reflecting the competitive nature of business. This is also suggested by the title, Almost There. Yet Friberg manages to disclose their vulnerability, by depicting the men straining to hold their heads above water. Accordingly, theseries coincided with the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000 – 2001. The male dominated IT industry sustained devastating losses after its stocks were grossly overvalued. In its aftermath countless men were stripped of their financial status. They found themselves in a vulnerable position, much like the men depicted in Almost There.

In both series the figures float within a pool; however, in The Painting Seriesthe liquid is comprised of water mixed with various colored inks. In fact, the method for creating The Painting Series is based on a performance that can be likened to “action painting.” 

A short while later I stopped in a tourist shop and bought some gorgeous glass by Mats Jonasson.  The work was beautiful and as creative as Maria’s photography so it seemed the perfect souvenir for my trip.  And the shop owner told me the story of the glass factory and how Mats had saved it in the 1980’s and kept alive the glass traditions in the town, which had begun when my grandfather was still living in Sweden.  The past and the present perfectly conjoined.

http://www.matsjonasson.com/

We also had a conversation about Maria’s work and role of Swedish men in 21st century Sweden.  I didn’t talk to enough Swedish men in four days to draw any definitive conclusions but my non-scientific sample suggested that Swedish men are very articulate and very cool.  I don’t know much about my grandfather but my father apparently inherited a lot of his genes and my father possessed those same qualities.  So, the clothes and hairstyles may have changed, but the charming Swedish metrosexual seems to have been with us long before the word was coined to describe him 😉

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artsy stuff, social commentary, travel stories

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the original swedish metrosexual?

Both my dad and my grandmother are dead now.  They were the reticent type unwilling to part with morsels of personal information easily.  So, even if I had spent more time attempting to extract the facts, it’s highly uncertain I would have learned anything more about my Swedish grandfather.

I didn’t even know what he looked like until I was in my teens.  My grandmother considered family the most important thing in the entire world so her tiny house was crammed with collages of photos of miscellaneous people only some of whom I’d actually met.  Martha Stewart would have been horrified 🙂

Normally the collages were updated for new grandchildren or more recent school pics of the ones already featured.  But one day when I was inspecting the walls for new updates (my grandmother kind of invented the concept of facebook photos before Mark Zuckerberg was even born 🙂 I was intrigued by one of the new photos.

As they would say on Sesame Street, this one was not like the others.  The photo had been taken in an entirely different era.  When having your photo taken was a ceremonial occasion, not a drunken iphone click.  The gentleman in the photo looked like a gentleman!

He is dressed to the nines.  He is holding a cigar and about to take a sip of some manly intoxicant.  He looks like a movie star.  Or some dude promoting a celebrity fragrance.

In small town Canada this was the most fascinating photo I had ever seen.  I asked my grandmother “who is that?”  To which she casually replied, “oh, that’s your grandfather.”  Hot damn!  That is NOT what grandfathers looked like where I lived…

I now regret I didn’t ask more.  But my grandmother didn’t drink and back in those days people actually thought it was polite to not blab personal details – even to family, let alone post them on facebook.

So I came to Sweden to at least see where he came from.  And maybe get some essence of what he might have been like.  And looking around at the gorgeous, perfectly groomed, fashionably dressed men in Stockholm, I did feel I was channeling him.

I think style normally flows through the maternal lineage.  But in my family, it’s the dudes who seem to have those genes in spades.  I like to think I have a little bit of style.  And a long time ago I became my mother’s stylist because apparently my father really liked everything I made her buy 🙂

My dad spent his entire life in small towns.  But he had real style.  He understood fabric.  He cared about cut.  He had expensive taste.  Maybe it’s in the genes… He looked a lot like his dad.

And his dad…  Check him out 😉  He doesn’t look much like a grandfather.  But the original metrosexual?  Your call…

It looks to me that Swedish men have been pretty boys for over a century now.  If the sketchy facts I have been told are correct, my grandfather was born in 1886…

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life philosophy, social commentary, travel stories

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building a national identity

The Nordic people are noted for being a bit frosty.  Especially by their southern neighbours.  They are my people.  Apparently in high school I intimidated people.  It wasn’t intentional.  I just didn’t have much sense of play.  So I am grateful to my country’s celebrated multiculturalism that I met people from other ethnic backgrounds who taught me how to lighten up 😉  For any of you reading this regularly, you will already know my love for the Dutch who somehow seem to manage to combine warmth, efficiency and dry wit.  And, while I still love Paris and New York, I have the most fun in Amsterdam so it may have beat them out as my favourite city.

But today we are talking about the Swedes.  Since my grandfather died when my dad was ten, the first Swedish man I met was some random Björn or Mattias.  He was cute and blond, sure, but that is not why he was memorable.  At the time I was about 20 and back in those days, people didn’t talk about sex in public in North America.  They didn’t have ads for tampons on TV.  We were repressed and uptight about all that stuff.  And lots of young women were very conservative in their social mores.

But we were also brought up well so people could say whatever and we just smiled politely and didn’t express any shock outwardly.  Hey, we started as a British colony 😉  So I was chatting with random Swedish guy and another girl in the lounge at the university residence where we were staying during our summer jobs.  And random Swedish guy casually mentioned how his grandmother had been cool with him bringing his girlfriend to her house and having sleepovers with the girlfriend when he was 15.  And not just sleeping 🙂

(According to my guidebook, at 15 you become byxmyndig, loosely translated as “in charge of your pants” – the things you learn from travel :))

Random Swedish guy seemed very comfortable with the concept of sex.  Apparently in Sweden it wasn’t the big deal it was in North America (and in many quarters, still is).  It was likely the first time I heard anyone talk about sex without twittering.  Talking about it as though it was the same as talking about the weather.  It was definitely a revelation.  And obviously random Swedish guy had an impact on my perceptions of the world.

But what I remember most was talking to the other girl later when random Swedish guy wasn’t around.  She had been shocked!  I hadn’t even realized because we had been taught to not act shocked so you would never know from the way the person acted in the situation.  I believe that’s called “good manners.”  It was fun to giggle about it since we didn’t have to act cool in front of the Swedish dude right then.  But I was less shocked.  And thought the Swedes might be on to something.  WHY WERE North Americans SO uptight about sex – but so casual about violence…

I met a couple more Swedish guys over the years.  That was part of the reason for my trip to Stockholm.  To see if they were representative.  My conclusion…  I think so…  It was only a short visit so not exactly a scientific study…

I went to at least one historical or cultural spot every day to learn more about the Swedes.  I had only had a few minutes to leaf through my guidebook before I arrived but I had read enough to be intrigued.  Another reason for the choice of Stockholm was a conversation I had recently at a networking event with a banker who had worked in Stockholm for a number of years.  He was the one that alerted me to the impressive nature of Sweden.

And it is an impressive place.  It’s clean.  It’s green.  It’s pretty equal by world standards.  There is a strong social safety net.  There is very little crime.  People are articulate.  For a small country, they really make their mark on the world via business, sport, design…

There are flags everywhere.  And people seem to have a strong sense of identity.  As a Canadian, I was fascinated.  We are famous – at least within our own borders – for being on an eternal quest for our sense of identity.  Something a little more than, “we are not Americans.” 🙂

My father was one of the few Canadians I’ve known who really believed in the country and had the kind of patriotic attitude I saw in Sweden.  Could it have come from his Swedish father?

Now that I know a little Swedish history, I would think likely not.  But maybe…  There is no question the Swedes have an identity.  But the museums and my conversations with Swedes suggested that it is a fairly new thing.

And – like everything in history, especially in Europe – it’s complicated.  Apparently Sweden was pretty poor and agrarian until the Second World War.  Most Swedes didn’t seem to want to acknowledge the role Germany – and their “neutral” position during the war – played in their prosperity.  But without the Nazis, there might not have been IKEA…

I was more interested in the sociology of Sweden than in ancient politics.  What was fascinating is that there were some famous Swedes who decided they needed a national identity and strove to define and promote it.  Part of this was establishing the Nordiska Museet – a place to showcase Swedish culture and identity.  For tourists.  But, more interestingly, for locals.

Apparently part of its mandate was to provide people with information about what it meant to be Swedish – to build a national identity.  Because, as I learned in the fabulous 1,000 years of Swedish history in under an hour at the Historiska Museet, the Sweden of today is a really recent invention.  There were the Vikings, some evil (and more benevolent) kings, a pampered nobility, alliances with the other Nordic countries (why Nordiska, not Swedish), invasions and bloody fights with neighboring countries, an interesting positioning during the Second World War…

What I loved the most about the Swedish museums is that they didn’t just toss random facts at you.  They clearly stated that culture and history are complicated and perspective is key.  They actually asked questions in the exhibits and encouraged you to think about any “facts” presented.

That was the thing that I liked the most about Sweden.  The culture encouraged thinking and planning (very Nordic of them ;).  Once the dust settled and prosperity kicked in, they decided to define who they were – and wanted to be.  And communicate that message to the nation.  I think all the recent immigration has made that message more complicated to reconcile but what impressed me the most about my visit to Sweden was the sense that intelligent thought and debate was encouraged – and part of the national identity.

I think that’s why Sweden has likely been so successful in the complicated modern world.  So, save your pennies and go check it out.  And chat up some Swedes.  They like to talk about ice hockey.  Vikings.  Or sex 😉

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shining examples, social commentary, travel stories

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waiting for godot…

We’ll finish the adventures in the land of ice and snow and then we will come back to London… my actual travel route…

The first time I saw Waiting for Godot I was bored and wondering what all the fuss was about.  The second time I saw it I was older and the cast was much better so I enjoyed it more.  But the concept is more or less alien to my nature.

I am a girl who lives in the moment, does a lot of research and, while that may sound contradictory, generally aligning the two means that I am rarely bored.   And frequently enchanted by serendipity or surprises… I do the homework to make sure the moments happen as I live them 😉

But right now I am bored 🙂  It’s rare.  It’s cold outside.  Tonight it’s also raining.  And I made the dumb mistake of thinking I could get by in Stockholm in late September without a coat.  And the Berns Hotel is supposed to be hip and happening.  And it’s not completely empty.  Just more an overpriced pan-Asian restaurant than a hip nightclub at the moment.

Stockholm is gorgeous – the landscape, the light, the architecture, the people.  As a day tourist I have no complaints.  But I was expecting more of the nightlife.  And I haven’t given up hope yet 😉

This is one of the most expensive places I have ever been.  It really encourages you to nurse a drink.  In my reading it suggests people stay at home and only show up in public venues really late.

You have to learn the local culture.  I’ve got to know the bartender in Amsterdam because I was the only fool willing to show up at the dance club at midnight.  I told him I didn’t care 🙂  And drinking Heineken – extra cold or not – is cheap and by 12:30am the place was almost full.

I don’t know the norms yet in Stockholm.  So I came fairly early to try the well-regarded Pan-Asian restaurant.  I’ve had better food in Vancouver.  Especially for the price.  But it was pretty good.  The salmon was cooked really well (almost rare) and eating salmon and watching people with umbrellas scurry around in the rain made me feel at home.

The bar is getting a tiny bit more lively as I write this.  Maybe Godot will show up in the end?  If not, I’ll have to brave the chill and find a new venue for tomorrow night 😉

Apparently 10pm is the magic hour.  It’s SO expensive to drink in Sweden you can’t blame the Swedes for staying home til they can get their kronors worth of fun.  In the end, it was an entertaining – if somewhat strange – night.

I managed to snap some photos of the Berns Salonger before I left so I will get them into this post so you can see it for yourself.  It’s a heritage building so they couldn’t change a lot of stuff, which means you feel more like you are in the early 20th century instead of a modern nightclub.  The place is huge.  There are several bars, a sushi station and a couple of different eating areas.

As noted above, the night starts kind of slow.  It’s really just a packed restaurant.  So there is a buzz.  But solo it’s pretty dull.  But as the night wears on, the music starts to rise in volume and people start to fill the bar areas.  Eventually you can barely move and it’s become a very sophisticated looking nightclub.

Once it got a bit more crowded, I went upstairs (a crazy winding staircase that you should be descending from in a ball gown, not trying to navigate both ways with an increasing drunken mob.  But no one fell!)  I just figured I could watch the crowd from above and it would supply some entertainment while I waited for Godot…

But Erik wanted to find out more about me.  So I got into a conversation with him and his friend about ice hockey, European football and what it meant to be a Viking… and if there is a “Swedish look”.  The consensus seemed to be “more or less, but not just the blond, blue-eyed stereotype.  Those Vikings got around 😉

For those of you who have not spent time in Sweden, Swedish men are almost uniformly gorgeous!  And well-groomed.  I expect they are mostly metrosexual but when a couple of the men I met seemed more concerned about their male friends than me, I wondered if they were too cute to be straight 🙂

Andreas did get me down to the basement club, which completed my Berns cultural experience.  I wasn’t really sure about the music though and – like Erik, he seemed more interested in the male friend he came with than me so I eventually just wandered off…

Part of the problem was that the friends spoke Swedish and I did not.  Swedes are wildly impressive on many fronts and almost everyone speaks some English but not everyone is super fluent so in a noisy bar setting communication can seem like a lot of work.  So I was happy the third guy to talk to me was a Kiwi!

I did enjoy talking to the locals and learning more about Sweden but by then I was getting a bit exhausted and being able to just speak normal English was a treat.  Dennis did live in Sweden and had had a Swedish wife so he knew something about the place – but we mostly talked about the similarities between New Zealand and Canada.

So… no Godot… but lots of miscellaneous others.  Some of whom had been drinking at home I think… it’s the first time I have had enough drinks spilled on me that I ended up with alcohol stinging in both eyes before the night was through.

But it was fun.  I was back again the next night.  Later this time.  And had more conversations about Swedes and Swedish history with a young Swede whose father had arrived in Sweden from the Sudan to study.  He was very articulate and it was one of my most memorable conversations in Sweden.

I think the highlight of the night though was the colorful half Swedish-half Norwegian lady who caused a stir in the bathroom knocking on doors and trying to get girls to hurry up.  I am not sure what was going on but 2 woman came out of each stall… Travel is always interesting…

The Swedish men had confirmed Swedish women were very self-confident.  It’s likely the place with the most equal rights between the sexes I’ve ever encountered.  Lots of beautiful women… but no pushovers apparently… just as it should be 😉

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eating & drinking - well, social commentary, travel stories

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memories of IKEA instructions ;)

I am discovering I DO create the travel stories – but actually getting them on-line while I am travelling – a lot more complicated…  when I retire… for now… you will just have to be patient… lots of posts partly written or in my head, photos on my camera… so the stories will appear over the next week or two… tonight it is my last night in Stockholm but we are exploring the first…

I have arrived in one of my ancestral homelands.  It’s just a few days in Stockholm so not sure how much I will learn about my roots but there is a different sensibility arriving in the country from which your surname originated.

The Stockholm experience begins at the airport.  It is well organized, ultra clean and full of minimalist Scandinavian design.  It’s the airport of the Jetsons…

Until I tried to get some kronor.  The Swedes are a bit suspicious of the continent so the EU is OK but the jury is still out on the euro.  My personal life and the euro have followed an intimate and bizarre trajectory but for this post, suffice to say, I think the Swedes are right 😉

Even though it’s a hassle for tourists.  But I’ve used bank machines all over the world.  How hard can it be?

Well, this bank machine had obviously been designed by the dude who writes the IKEA instructions.  First I had to insert my card in a totally abnormal way.  When I finally figured out how to get my card in the machine, I’d missed the nanosecond when you could punch an obscure key to get the instructions in English.  I suppose I should have guessed it was asking for my pin number in Swedish but seeing a bunch of stuff in an incomprehensible foreign language throws you.  I finally secured my measly 2,000 kronors – which will buy nothing I am discovering… and I have built a LOT of IKEA furniture in my iterant life so the haunting memories exploded into my brain…

But then I looked at the perfect sky – full of Nordic light and marshmallow clouds – as my wildly expensive taxi traversed the motorways toward my hotel.

<no question Stockholm requires a fat bankroll – but is full of small treasures… I am in the Berns bar where the cute bartender knows my room number typing this… and some woman who sounds like Adele has just starting singing… so my overpriced Chenin Blanc is tasting better ;)>

And speaking of the Berns Hotel… I am a fan!  Check-in was fantastic.  It would appear Swedish women could turn anyone into a lesbian 😉  They had my name wrong on the reservation – a common mistake.  But she really appreciated the significance of a letter.  It’s a totally DIFFERENT name!  I think her name is Danielle.  She is gorgeous – but that seems to be the norm around here.  What was unique about Danielle is that she just sparkled.  Her personality.  Her smile.  Her attitude.  You could fall in love with her in under five minutes 🙂

She was an example of the person we could all be.  Why not be friendly?  Why not be great at your job?  Why not be engaging?  Why not twinkle?  I know it will improve your life because strangers will enjoy interacting with you.  And people that you actually know?  They will fall in love with you – hard 😉

But as I write this (originally, in my notebook) I have decamped to the Gold Bar at the Nobis Hotel… because I wasn’t sure if I should stay there instead of the Berns.  (Now, with all my experience, I think it depends on your purpose in Stockholm.  For aspiring party animals, the Berns is perfection ;).

http://www.berns.se/

http://www.nobishotel.se/

Back at the Gold Bar I ordered an Orchid Royalty.  Apparently it won some accolades at a cocktail contest in London.  Aged Guatemalan rum, sweet vermouth, Pedro Ximinez and gold dust!  It was sublime.  Bartenders in Stockholm are good at their jobs and friendly enough but a bit stiff by world standards.  No one is going to blow you kisses if you leave them a tip like the charming dudes in Amsterdam 😉

Dutch guys and Sweden women… that might be quite the combo!  I’ve had fun with both.  I never managed to confirm Danielle’s name but we chatted over the past few days – and she lit up every time I said “hi”.  I won’t forget her.  I like to think I light up around other people.  Being on the receiving end of it has convinced me it’s really worth paying attention to – and working on.  It’s common knowledge I love glitter and sequins…  let’s see if I can mirror that in my personality as well…

p.s.  I have been snapping Stockholm… in the various weathers… so pictures will be forthcoming!  Stay tuned!

p.p.s. subsequent to writing this I had a chat with the cute bartender who has been my favourite during my stay at Berns.  His name is Daniel.  He confirmed Danielle is the correct name for the girl at the front desk.  I told him he was really great at his job.  Watching him in action is very impressive.  You can only chat on Sunday.  On the weekend you just have to watch in amazement as he participates in the show that is Berns 🙂

 

Category:

eating & drinking - well, travel stories

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places to bring your mistress ;)

Sorry about the time travelling but the travel stories end up this way cause there are too many stories 😉  imagine it is Sat, Sep 15th…

I am sitting somewhere in East London, slightly disorientated – but having a wonderful time.  I was waiting for my server to bring my Manhattan so was just checking out the venue.  I looked up at the ceiling and it’s spectacular – and unique.  It’s vaulted and filled with white beams intersecting with glass panels.  Two ceiling fans are whirling away beneath octopus shaped hammered silver chandeliers.  The cuisine is French and Malay and each ceiling fixture evokes a sense  of one of those locales.

What caught my attention though was the sparkling blue light that shines through the glass ceiling.  I’m not sure what it is.  It shines like a supernatural celestial being.

When you get old, your brain synapses with all kinds of strange connections 😉  The sparkly blue light sent me back to the 80’s and a place called – I think – The Stardust Café.

I am enamored of food – and architecture, art… I don’t eat at McDonald’s 🙂  As a result, I have now been to so many memorable restaurants a lot of the memories have blurred together and only the truly unique experiences are easy to channel in the current day.

My friend Karen was the one who introduced me to the Stardust Café.  Back in those days I didn’t have a lot of cash for restaurants so a night out was an event.  And we were always on the lookout for a value proposition.

That was the attraction.  Karen had been there before so suggested it for our catchup session.  I was young then so maybe it wouldn’t impress me so much today.

The food was good – but it was the atmosphere that made it stand out.  The lighting was very subdued.  You walked up a staircase covered in black carpeting and lots of glitter.  The fairy dust of my Brownie years 🙂  Maybe that’s where my love for glitter began…

Because it was a great value proposition, it became our meeting spot at that point in time.  Because it was in the part of town “across the tracks”, it was hard to find, you had to walk up a staircase to get to the dining room and it was filled with low lighting, mirrors and glitter, we decided on one of our visits it was the ultimate place to take your mistress 😉

The place I found in London because I got lost on my way home from Waterloo station because they were doing the constant upgrades on the Underground and the Jubilee line was down fits the same sort of bill.

But it was also a great discovery.  The food was excellent, the cocktails were first rate and the staff were lovely.  Apparently it is a family who used to manage Ronnie Scott’s.  Everyone is really friendly and the jazz is shockingly good for 5 pounds!  The plan is to do it every Friday.  It is a tiny room and you can chat with the musicians in the break.

They have only been open for a month or two so right now you can bring your mistress – but if it catches on, it might be trickier 😉

For those with no mistresses in tow, here are the details…

 www.nolias11.com

p.s. London has been amazing and there are fresh stories as usual – bear with me as it might take some time to get them on line!

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artsy stuff, eating & drinking - well, travel stories

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grizzly bears, geox and her majesty’s secret service…

OK, this is a little stale-dated now… but too much has been happening… so pretend it’s Thu, Sep 13th…  I am mostly over jet-lag so will see if I can start catching up with the storyline…

I have arrived in London!  Because I was travelling on airline points I had to arrive at Heathrow via Frankfurt.  Marcel suggested had I prepared better I could have just jumped out of the plane when we flew over London and saved a lot of time.  I suppose I could have even skipped the gigantic customs and immigration line 🙂

But sadly I am not on the same terms with 007 as the Queen and I told Marcel I would only feel comfortable in a parachute if we were doing a tandem jump (James Bond et moi :))

I’m not sure if Marcel has jumped from a plane.  But I doubt it would phase him.  It’s the first time I’ve even seen someone’s scar from a personal encounter with a grizzly bear (and it has claw marks so pretty authentic!)

I grew up with the bears so heard myriad advice in my childhood about what to do if you get too close to a bear.  Apparently you are supposed to “play dead” because grizzly bears are the connoisseurs of the bush and they won’t eat road kill.  If it’s not organic free-roaming prey they know is as fresh as sushi, they will go in search of alternative fresh meat.  If it’s running away, they know it will be fresh 🙂

You may not have had a children’s game where you pretend to “play dead” just in case you need to steel yourself for that tete-tete with the bear but, no matter how convincing we could be in an empty field, we all secretly knew we would likely just run if we actually SAW a bear.

So I had to ask… apparently Marcel passed out.  And the bear didn’t devour him.  So perhaps your body will just “play dead” without your consent.  Likely the best possible outcome.

I am a big fan of the “pod” and most of my recent business class treats on airline points have provided me with my private cocoon to drink champagne and catch up on movies.

But I love to travel.  And there is a higher probability you will meet an interesting person who likes to travel on an airplane.

We bonded when they took our champagne away before take-off because we weren’t drinking fast enough.  Conversations with strangers on airplanes are always mysterious encounters.  You can’t escape for ten hours.  But you aren’t required to converse at all.  So there is always this mutual dance between being friendly and making sure you aren’t crowding the other person’s space.

Marcel is Swiss.  He has travelled a lot.  He has lots of opinions.  And he wrestles grizzly bears for sport.  I didn’t catch up on any movies but we seemed to arrive in Frankfurt in no time.

Frankfurt airport is kind of like a second home for me but those stories are for another time.  The next few days will be all about London 2012.  I have this strange habit of arriving in cities just after the Olympics have ended.  The same thing happened in Beijing in 2008.  It’s a little like arriving at a party after all the guests have gone home.  But maybe I’ll hear some stories about the party while they are fresh.  It won’t really matter.

Beijing needed the Olympics to get the world’s attention.  London did not.  As I write this I am sitting in a Mediterranean restaurant being filled to bursting with Persian food.  It was just a random pick near the hotel but it is bringing back fond memories of Istanbul and Egypt from earlier this year.

I’m pretty thrifty so I took the Tube from Heathrow.  I’m staying in a new neighbourhood for me – at the cool CitizenM Bankside.

www.citizenm.com

Because I don’t know my way around yet, I went the wrong way out of Southwark station so I got to tour the streets of London with my suitcase.  This isn’t a tourist neighbourhood so it was more striking.  And made me think of the commentary during the Olympics about how many different cultures and languages there are in the city of London.  That will happen when you  decide to create an Empire to rule the entire world…

Paris is more romantic.  Amsterdam is more freewheeling.  Istanbul is more entertaining.  But London feels like a city of the future – where the past and the future fuse.  Where, imperfectly, but with a very low level of violence by world standards, almost the entire world lives together.  I think they said 250 different countries are represented in the city of London.  It certainly looks that way is you walk in the non-tourist zones or ride the Tube all the way from Heathrow to the center of London.

I’ve been to London so many times I had an Oyster card when not all locals had one yet!  (My London friends explained it was the way to travel the Tube for those of us with thrifty Scottish genes).

In a couple of years it will be 25 years since my very first trip to London.  Many of my visits to London have been lost in the shuffle of memories and the exact details are blurry but I still have many memories of that very first trip.

At the time I had an Australian boyfriend and he was returning to Sydney and I was going with him.  But – in the interim – he was travelling through Europe as Australians are prone to do.  But I had just received my professional designation so had been living hand-to-mouth and had no funds to gallivant around Europe.

So we made a deal.  He would start on his own and I would save money like mad and join him for the last three months.

I know it’s likely hard to believe, kids, but back then there was no internet, no Skype, no mobile phones even, let alone smart phones.  So every week he would go to a European post office to make a short, wildly expensive transatlantic call.  I would wait by the land line and jump when it rang.  Not so functional but far more romantic 🙂

And I think that was part of it.   He wanted me to come for a quick, interim visit before I joined him later.  He was staying with friends in Earl’s Court so I just needed the plane fare – and a passport.  My first!

Having no experience with international travel, I thought it would be impossible.  But Toronto-London was a popular route and there was lots of competition.  So I quickly found myself on a Wardair flight to London with a tiny backpack, some travellers’cheques and a spirit of adventure.

In those days they didn’t mark the streets and it took some time to always look the wrong way for traffic – because everyone was driving on the left – but I didn’t sustain any injury.  The food was absolute crap.  But the people were lovely (yet again today some stranger helped me with my suitcase on the stairs and another gave me detailed directions without me even asking – I was just standing with my suitcase and a map looking confused :))

And then you start seeing the stuff.  St Paul’s.  The Tower of London.  The British Museum.  That is only the tip of the iceberg.  I still haven’t done everything there is to do in London as a tourist, let alone a local.  But that just gives you a reason to come back…

And so it begins!  We’ll do some tourist stuff.  And we’ll weave together pieces from my enormous memory bank of the City of London – one of the world’s most spectacular and important urban settings.  Just imagine you’ve pulled the ripcord on your parachute and you and James are about to head to the bar for a martini.  Claridges, maybe? 🙂

p.s. you may be wondering why Geox?  It’s in honour of my new travel shoes.  Because I am famous for my eye-catching collection of stilettos, it would come as a surprise to many that I am equally obsessed with loafers.  Some time ago, loafers fell out of fashion and finding a pair that were non-orthopedic was like searching for pork in Israel.  So when they opened a Geox store in Vancouver I bought four pairs!  I have discovered the ballerina flat is even more versatile, possibly the perfect travel shoe.  I road tested my new Geox leopard  print ballet flats for this trip – and they are winners!  I have now been wearing them for two days straight.  With pants on the plane.  With tights and a leather miniskirt as I type this.

http://www.geox.com/collection/catalogo.asp##p

leopard print ballerinas part of Piuma collection

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