A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article about a couple who stepped out of the rat race and now live a simple, happier life in a 400-square-foot apartment with 100 possessions (each, I think!). The article mentions the research of Thomas DeLeire at the University of Wisconsin. He recently discovered that of nine categories of consumption, the only one positively related to happiness was leisure spending on vacations, fishing poles and the like. I don’t know about fishing poles, but you wouldn’t have to sit too long on our living room couch to know where we stand in this debate. We take great vacations — and our rumpled, well-loved house tells the tale.

We’re in Greensboro, North Carolina, this weekend, and are about to explore it. One thing I’ve noticed so far is the preponderance of friend chicken and biscuit chains. I’ll admit: My salad-weary mouth is watering. My southern roots are calling. There are times when only fried chicken will do.

Mass at the old church on the hill. A large lunch with a brass band. Strolling in the plaza in native dress. Visiting with friends. A typical Sunday for the residents of Hallstatt.

We partook of as many of these customs as we could, minus the dirndls and lederhosen! But I went to church, we heard the band at lunch, and we took a lovely walk through sun and rain and wind to the banks of a roaring stream.

To passersby we said “Gruss Gott,” literally “Greet God,” which is how most Austrians greet each other — rather than “Guten Tag” or “Good Day.” I find this endearingly old-fashioned, and hearing this all Sunday seemed to make the day even more of a celebration. Stores are closed on Sundays in Austria, so you’re forced to take a day off from your normal chores. Life moves more slowly in Europe.

How do you know you’re addicted to posting on your blog? When you find yourself sitting in an outdoor Internet cafe in the drizzle typing on your familiar laptop. The rain taps on the large umbrella that covers the circular bar, and the owner smokes and greets everyone who passes by. I look out over the lake, and thank my lucky stars that we have come to such a beautiful place.

Hallstatt is the oldest town in Austria, and yesterday we toured an ancient salt mine. Afterward we had a snack on top of the mountain and for about an hour the sun came out, the blessed sun, and I snapped some pictures of the meadow flowers. I kept a picture of this town on my computer screen at work. Every day it greeted me, motivated me. Now I’m actually here. I’ve walked its backstreets and alleyways (almost all its streets are alleyways), I’ve looked long and longingly at its lake.

I’ve also thought about the wonders of travel, of dropping briefly into another way of life. Here they serve bread in little cloth baskets, they carry walking sticks, they fight an expansion of their UNESCO World Heritage designation, one that would make it impossible for the residents to even paint an interior wall without approval from an international organization. Almost every quaint house in this town is plastered with a sign that reads “Nein, Danke!” or some other expression of their dissatisfaction with this proposed change. And as we start to think about leaving Europe in a few days, I want to take this sentiment with me. “Nein, Danke.” No, thank you. We’d like to keep our old ways. The little fights the large. Let’s hope the little wins!

I went for a walk early this morning. Small trucks rumbled along the cobblestones, early tourists snapped photos, purposeful citizens strode to their offices. A clock chimed the hour: eight bells.

So this is what it would be like to live amidst beauty. Beauty not just in one direction or a second, but beauty everywhere you turn.

This town has not changed much since the 1500s. The modern world squeezes itself in here as best it can, but some parts just don’t fit. Large cars and trucks, traffic jams, neon lights, air conditioning. Instead there is the sound of the Vltava River as it runs across the weir and curves around the town. There are stone streets and alleyways, frescoes on walls and the castle sitting atop it all. I have only one question this morning: Why do we have to leave?

This is a picture of Prague’s famous astronomical clock. It’s ancient and beautiful and one the city’s greatest attractions.

Every hour a crowd gathers in front of it to watch the saints and skeleton strike the hours. Several times I’ve come running up just in time to watch the last figure disappear into his little door. One time we waited for fifteen minutes only to learn that the clock show doesn’t happen at 10 p.m. So I’ve still never seen the clock do its thing.

But every time I’ve missed, I’ve looked up high, at the buildings around us, the crowds, the masterpiece that is the old town square. Running late. On tourist time.

Today we go to Wenceslas Square and to the Jewish Quarter and, if we’re lucky a few unexpected places, some back alleys and hidden squares. The minute I saw this city I knew I would have to come back. It’s full of tourists, but some places you must brave the hordes to see. Last night, as we walked across the Charles Bridge in a light rain, we suddenly realized we were almost the only ones on the span. This doesn’t happen often here, so we snapped a few shots of the castle and I imagined for a moment what it must have been like here before the West arrived.

We arrived in Prague yesterday, a shiny May Sunday that just happened to be Beer Fest and the Czech/Russia ice-hockey final. The city was alive with every sort of pedestrian one can imagine. And we — we were in a rental car. We had gotten lost in the Bohemian countryside on the way up, and now we were at risk of driving through a pedestrian zone. But after much clever driving by Tom and jockeying with trams (which share lanes with cars here), we were able to find a temporary parking space, our hostel and, eventually, a parking spot in a garage which I sincerely hope we will find again.

And then we learned about the big game, which was beamed into the huge town square, which is in shouting distance from where we were trying to sleep. But never mind. This is traveling, in which the unexpected is supposed to happen. Like our road from Vienna to Prague, which inexplicably ended about 20 miles past the Czech border. Had we not gotten lost, we wouldn’t have seen this castle on a hill, which appeared out of nowhere. Not as grand as the Prague Castle we saw today, but because it rose from the landscape like a vision, all the sweeter.