Lori Hein: Ribbons of Highway

Paris, zen and now

2009-07-07T11:07:00.002-05:00

Dana and I are off to Paris tomorrow. I can't wait to see our apartment at the Maison Zen. (Click on France in the right sidebar for previous posts on our unique accommodation choice. I've decided I will definitely partake in some of the meditation sessions while at our Om Away From Home.)

I won't be blogging from Paris. Time spent blogging is time spent not seeing Paris.

I will, however, be seeking out free WiFi hotspots so I can check out the capabilities of the tiny new netbook I just bought. I bought an Asus, about the size of a paperback. Fits in my purse and weighs almost nothing, so I can tote it around all day and check my email or jump online anywhere in the city with an open connection. Even has a webcam. Two hundred and fifty bucks.

An editor I'm working with sent me a restaurant suggestion that sounds intriguing. She wrote in an email, "Have a great time, Lori. Do you know the restaurant Chartier? ( 7 rue du Faubourg in Montmartre). We spent a lot of time in France when my boys were small and before coming home we always had a week in Paris. We all came to love this old-fashioned place, which still has the wooden napkin boxes lining the walls. It’s not fancy...a big boisterous joint with great French waiters. Good poulet and very basic bistro stuff. It’s very popular even with the natives and there can be long lines. We learned to go on the early side (6:30 ish) to beat the crowds. The street is funky... we discovered some terrific costume stores. Bought a few masks that we still treasure. "

(How's your French? Visit Chartier via YouTube here. At least you'll understand "l'atmosphere historique," non?)

I've put Chartier on the list.

A bientot, mes amis. Jusqu' a la semaine prochaine.

www.LoriHein.com

Bulgaria on my mind

2009-06-30T18:28:00.007-05:00

There's a town in Bulgaria that took up residence in a tiny corner of my mind some 20 years ago and still lives there. Over the past two decades I've thought of it hundreds of times, the fairy tale town I looked down on but never entered.

I was in a speeding bus on a high, smooth highway, enroute from Sofia, Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. I looked out the window and saw a magical, red-roofed town nestled between and climbing up hills covered in deep forest. I snapped one photo.

The sight of the town made me hold my breath, hoping that the highway we were riding on would curve down and to the left and that we would enter this beautiful place, if only to ride through it without stopping. That would be enough. To enter it and roll through some piece of it, so I could take it in up close.

But the bus kept speeding along the elevated highway, and the town was gone from my sight within a minute.

"What was that place?" I asked my busmates. Someone said, "Veliko Tarnovo."

Veliko Tarnovo, ancient town, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, bursting with history and superb architecture and one of the foremost tourist destinations in Bulgaria.

I have never forgotten its name. I did not go there. But I know it's beautiful.

www.LoriHein.com

Latacunga Apothecary

2009-06-18T19:49:00.012-05:00

Dana's friend is leaving soon for Ecuador, where she'll spend most of the summer traveling through the Andes with an educational tour outfit that brings teens and chaperones to small villages in need of free labor. The travelers roll up their sleeves and participate in building and cleanup projects.

Hopefully the group will stay healthy. If they get sick, they'll likely be bussed to Quito for a dose of modern medicine, but villagers might suggest a trip to the local shaman for some traditional healing.

In Latacunga, an Andean town near magnificent Cotopaxi volcano (which has twice wiped out Latacunga), I was fascinated by the block-long selection of traditional remedies spread out by vendors at the outdoor market in the town's main square.

Like many Central and South American countries, Ecuador takes traditional healing seriously. Indeed, within the country's health ministry there's a Bureau of Indigenous Health that respects the place of traditional healing in the lives of populations like the Quechua while providing access to and education about modern medical resources.

In Latacunga I ate guinea pig -- cuys -- which, of course, tasted like chicken. I later learned that cuys is also used in traditional medicine. A healer passes guinea pig innards over a sick person, then examines the innards for nasty or unhealthy-looking spots. The corresponding spots in the person are then treated. Herbs, amulets, cinnamon, dried banana peels and chocolate are used as remedies.

In Ecuador, over 900 plants are used in traditional medicine, mainly to treat psychological ailments, respiratory disorders, urinary tract problems, fever, malaria, rheumatism and conditions of the nervous system. Indigenous Ecuadorans believe that illness is primarily a social phenomenon brought on by poor relations with friends, family, one's community -- and with nature. Not properly honoring Pacha Mama, Mother Earth, can make you ill.

Your shaman might prescribe a trip to the local healing vendors for a pinch of this and a pinch of that. While you're perusing the aisles of bright-colored bags stuffed with plants and herbs, be careful not to trip over the 12-foot-long dried snake skin or the jaguar pelts.

I was saddened to see the pelts. There are only some 50,000 big cats of the species Panthera Onca left in the Americas, and I was standing in the Latacunga market staring down at the remnants of at least a dozen of them.

Made me feel sick.

www.LoriHein.com

Alpena: Dairy Queen and mini-golf

2009-06-10T12:31:00.009-05:00

In this excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, the kids and I make ourselves at home at a funky hotel in friendly Alpena, Michigan:

"You are an intrepid woman!” said Susan, as she pushed her chair back from the desk in the small office of her Water’s Edge Motel to get a better look at me and the kids. We liked each other instantly. She was a 50-something pistol with firecracker-red hair. She talked fast when she wanted to, slow when she wanted to, and she looked you right in the eye. Her drapy cotton clothes- loose trousers and shirt in a turquoise print more Maui than Michigan – were the sartorial equivalent of downtown Alpena’s crayon-colored homes and businesses.

Susan sized us up and rented us a room, the $60 end unit closest to Lake Huron, with a bench outside. She wanted to know where we’d been, what we’d seen. She asked the kids what they thought of it all and smiled knowingly at the “It’s okay,” and “I like it. It’s good.” She looked back up at me and nodded. As I signed the credit card slip, she pushed her chair back again, and looked at the three of us. Then she looked Adam and Dana in the eye. “These are times you’ll never get back with these kids,” words aimed at all of us.

The Water’s Edge sat at the water’s edge, on its own stretch of sand, and right next to the public beach at Mich-E-Ke-Wis Park. We saw Susan all the time, as she lived in a green cinderblock bunker-like structure to whose rear was attached the straight line of modest motel units, of which ours sat closest to Susan’s personal space, closest to the lake. Susan’s house, which looked homemade, was a beautiful thing to me. The funky bunker sat right on the beach and had a killer view of Thunder Bay, and Susan had a big rectangular window from which she could watch the moods of Lake Huron at all hours, in all seasons. I imagined a conversation between Susan and her husband 10, 20, or however many years ago, after they’d tapped the last cinderblock into place and nailed down the roof. Susan would probably have started the conversation.

“We should paint it.”

“What color?”

“Green.”

“Dark green?”

“No, something wild and sea-foamy, like Huron all whipped up. I’ll go find something.”

And then, I imagined her in the paint store, passing the quiet greens, and emerging with gallons of something called, maybe, Tropical Great Lakes Green, like the color of the Maui-Michigan pantsuit that worked so well with her blaze of orange hair.

We made the Water’s Edge and the spaces and places near it our little universe. The kids were free to roam around, up to but not including stepping into Huron unless I was with them. There was plenty to keep them busy while I brought my journal up to date and did laundry. The park, the beach, a Dairy Queen, and, the mini-golf that I could see from our room’s bathroom window.

Every half hour or so, Adam, Dana or both would burst into the room (made into a commodious accommodation by the keep-door-open-park-New-Paint- right-outside method) and ask for more money for golf and video games. Adam spent a fortune in quarters in the arcade, trying to win a free round of golf. When they were all golfed out, we went to the beach, just as the lifeguards were calling it a day and packing up the rescue surfboard. At 7 p.m., it was still over 70 degrees, and a big ball of orange sun the color of Susan’s hair still lit the calm, indigo water. “You can wade out there for quite awhile,” she’d told me, “before you have to make any decisions.” Dana, who’d been our official Great Lakes water temperature tester, pronounced Huron, “this part of it, anyway,” the warmest of any she’d sampled.

Susan’s big, logy dog had pooped all over the little patch of grass that separated the motel parking lot from the beach, grass which served as a parking lot for her motorboat, the Susan. We picked our way carefully around the boat and the dog droppings as we came and went. Susan took note of our comings and goings.

“You have great kids.”

“I do. Thanks for saying so. They are pretty cool. The kind of kids you can live in a minivan with for a whole summer. We’ve made it to Michigan, and we still like each other.”

“I wish they’d gotten to see the turkey vultures we’ve had lately. Or the deer. I get deer on my lawn sometimes. And a great blue heron my husband calls Mister Blue. And, I hoped you’d be lucky enough to see a freighter. They call regularly, and it’s quite impressive as they come into the bay.”

I wished we’d seen all those things, too, and said so, but added, “The Dairy Queen, the mini-golf and the beach were enough for the kids. Just what the doctor ordered at this point in the trip. They had a lot of fun.”

“The mini-golf is a good neighbor. Nice and quiet.”

I told Susan I loved Alpena and felt lucky we’d come upon this fine place as we came into the homestretch of our American journey. It was a perfect near-ending, an ideal finishing touch. (Had we invoked the interstate escape clause when we’d reached the mitten, we would have missed it.) “I’ll always remember Alpena. It’s the kind of place I could live in.”

Susan smiled and looked out at Huron. “People say kids from Alpena spend their first twenty years thinkin’ about how to get out, and the next twenty years thinkin’ about how to get back in.”

Other people think about getting in, too. “We get lots of retirees movin’ in, because it’s cheap. They’re all snowbirds. Drive their RVs to Arizona in the winter.” She shook her head. “I can’t see sittin’ around in a lawn chair.” No, Susan’s ideal winter is spent right there in Alpena, watching out her big rectangular window for the Great Lakes freighters that anchor close to Thunder Bay to wait out the freeze in Superior. An ice cutter could make Alpena’s Huron port accessible, but they don’t bother, because “the water starts to flow again in February.”

In the morning, I sat on the bench outside the room and laced up my sneakers in the still-dark, and, by the time I’d stretched, a glorious red-orange sun had started to ascend from the watery horizon. I ran to the orb’s rising and watched it gain height, degree by degree, splashing magnificent shafts of colored light across Huron’s surface as it climbed, slowly turning dawn to day. I watched it detach itself from the horizon and become a full and colossal tangerine, a blood orange hanging great and ripe over the gentle swells of the vast lake.

After the run, Susan caught me leaning against New Paint, stretching. “My, what a fit specimen.” That made an old chick feel good. I’d loved her when she’d called me intrepid. Now, I wanted to take her home. She asked if we’d slept well.

“Slept well, and rose well. I just watched a magnificent sunrise.”She turned to the lake. “That’s why we could never leave.”

Buy Ribbons via the PayPal button in the right sidebar and get free shipping in the U.S.

www.LoriHein.com

Tiananmen: Don't sit down

2009-06-04T10:26:00.010-05:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Chinese government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, a crackdown that killed hundreds.

June 4, 1989 was a bad day in Tiananmen, but the vast space, the largest city square in the world, is strange and unwelcoming even on its best.

If the builders' intent was to create a space that glorifies government power and makes people feel small, insignificant and even intimidated, they succeeded.

You can't get comfortable in Tiananmen Square. Its endless, nearly-benchless concrete screams, You can't relax here. It's forbidden. Keep moving! Don't gather. Don't congregate. Don't stop to chat. The folks in the photo at left had nabbed the only bench I saw in the square's entire sterile 440,000 square meters.

The only places in Tiananmen where I saw people congregating were in the long queues outside Mao's tomb.

I'd planned to picnic in Tiananmen but found no comfortable place to sit, so I squatted on a concrete curb near the mausoleum and ate my can of sardines while watching uniformed attendants with megaphones shout orders to the waiting tomb-goers to keep them in straight lines.

www.LoriHein.com

Kids'-eye view of Europe

2009-06-02T17:13:00.001-05:00

Dana and her friends enjoy camaraderie and a view of Venice.

Click here to read a story I wrote for the local paper about some of the high points of the kids' recent European adventure: cute gondoliers; rest areas with fresh fruit and pastry; never giving up on using Spanish with Austrians and Italians; and listening to "sick" chamber music in Mozart's hometown.

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Jacket potatoes

2009-06-01T11:44:00.021-05:00

The cupboard was pretty bare yesterday when I set about making my lunch, but I rummaged around and found a fat Russet and a small can of lima beans. I nuked the potato, split it open, poured the limas on top and was culinarily transported to England.

Foodwise, I find England a challenge. It's hard to maintain a healthy diet in a deep-fried kingdom of pub grub. I don't eat meat, so bacon and bangers and burgers are out, and I run away from anything batter-dipped and/or boiled in oil, so most everything else English is out, too.

In England, people start eating chips -- french fries -- at breakfast. Chips are paired with everything: eggs and chips; fish and chips; chicken and chips; sausage and chips; mussels and chips; pizza and chips... You can eat your chips sitting down or you can order "chips to take away," dripping grease and wrapped in a cone made from yesterday's newspaper.

In Polperro, a gem of a fishing village tucked into a secret corner of the Cornwall coast, I discovered the meal that would carry me through England: the jacket potato, so-named because the potato -- the meal's foundation -- is left unpeeled, then baked and served in its skin, topped with a filling of your choice.

As we made our way through southern England, Mike and the kids ate chips and whatever gross, greasy things the chips accompanied while I spent a grease-free week eating big baked potatoes topped with lovely stuff like cottage cheese, baked beans, peas and tomato sauce.

Yesterday, as I sat on my deck eating my lima-smothered potato, I imagined I could hear the seagulls and smell the brine of tiny Polperro and its beautiful harbor.

www.LoriHein.com

The Luddite goes digital

2009-05-23T16:13:00.004-05:00

I've done it. I've gone digital. I've been building up to this decision for a few years now (really), and I've made the move. I just invested in a Canon EOS Rebel XSi and have spent the past few days getting used to the new machine. I'm hoping to fall in love with it.

Today I took my two gorgeous, circa-1974, steel-body Nikon Nikkormats -- cameras that have circumnavigated the globe with me many times, steadfastly delivering quality images of the planet's most wondrous places -- and mothballed them. It was a hard thing to do, which is why I've been putting it off for years. Those trustworthy friends, my tough little workhorses, have accompanied me to the tops of mountains and bottoms of canyons, through big cities and across endless open spaces, at latitidues and longitudes the world over, capably chronicling for me every amazing mile. They've earned their rest, I guess, but that doesn't make it easy to say goodbye.

So, Canon Rebel, you've got some big shoes to fill. Your first travel test will be in Paris in July, and I'm expecting great things from you.

While I'm nostalgic for my hefty, indestructible Nikons with their film that turns into prints and slides that you can hold in your hand and keep forever in boxes and closets, I have already found that the no-film-required technology has me shooting more pictures. I turn the camera on and shoot and shoot and shoot. I spent yesterday shooting buildings in the historic district in my hometown. For the 20 years I've lived in this town I've been promising to load up the cameras and photograph the district, but I never got around to it.

Until I went digital.

Argentina: The arcane and the arbitrary

2009-05-18T08:25:00.005-05:00

When our tour group's plane from Buenos Aires landed in Bariloche, in Argentine Patagonia (photos), we were met by our local guide, Roberto, and welcomed aboard a minibus waiting to take us to our hotel.

As we neared a police checkpoint Roberto tensed up and remarked that he hoped the police didn't need any money that day.

"When the police need money," he explained, "they stop the bus and check everyone and give out fines."

For what? we wondered.

"There is a law on the books requiring motorists to carry at all times a kerosene lamp, wax and some matches. Chances are you'll be missing one, two or all of these, so you can get a fine. They can always put you some fines if they need some money."

Because Roberto seemed worried, I assumed we were missing at least one of the required items, and I hoped it was the kerosene lamp. Paying a fine seemed preferable to driving around Patagonia in a little bus filled with flammables.

www.LoriHein.com

The Dalai Lama's laugh

2009-05-07T20:44:00.008-05:00

Turns out I could have taken pictures of the Dalai Lama at Gillette Stadium. Everyone had cameras. Everyone except me.

And what did I miss? I missed capturing His Holiness delivering his talk on "The Path to Peace and Happiness" while wearing a bright red New England Patriots cap. I'll have to content myself with memories of the Jumbotron images.

The Dalai Lama has a very endearing chuckle, a slow, deliberate "heh-heh-heh-heh-heh." Whenever he made a funny remark -- and he made quite a few -- we were treated to the "heh-heh-heh-heh-heh" over the stadium speakers.

In explaining the fine points of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, for example, he said, "All of our problems are humanmade. They are manmade. And some problems are womanmade! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh."

The college student beside me said, "He's so cute! Like a teddy bear. I just want to wrap him up and take him home to be my grandfather."

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Dalai Lama, rock star: No photos, please

2009-04-29T10:00:00.005-05:00

I don't save ticket stubs, but I'm saving this one.

On Saturday I'm going to Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, to see His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

In a venue that hosts Super Bowl champs and rock legends like U2, Springsteen and the Stones, the Dalai Lama will speak on Buddhism and paths to peace and happiness. I'll be there, rapt in row 34, for both the morning and afternoon sessions. There will, I imagine, be no fighting over parking spaces. I predict that we attendees will conduct ourselves in a zen-like manner and with a spirit of major brotherly love so as not to risk sticking out like a selfish meanie among the gathered community of gentle people.

I'm so excited about this. I am going to lay eyes on the Dalai Lama and hear him speak. This is big. I'm going to wear my bright red "Free Tibet" t-shirt, emblazoned with an embroidered Tibetan flag. (A free Tibet isn't going to happen. Click on Tibet in the right sidebar for previous posts about the slow but steady erosion of a culture that is a world treasure.)

No cameras are allowed at the Gillette Stadium event, which is a bummer, as the only photo I have of the Dalai Lama is a photo of a photo of the Dalai Lama.

In the picture at left, our American guide and a monk at a monastery in Tibet -- I won't say which one, and I've cropped the faces so neither man can be identified -- hold a Dalai Lama picture that our guide presented to the monk. I can tell you that in the uncropped version, the monk is wearing a smile four miles wide. Everywhere we went in Tibet people would whisper, "Dalai Lama pic? Dalai Lama pic?"

When I consider this photo -- and especially the uncropped version showing the recognizable participants standing in a crowded courtyard openly beaming at the image -- I shudder. How could our guide have been so stupid? Tibetan monasteries contain monks (rather, some Tibetan monasteries contain monks...), and they also contain people charged with keeping an eye on the monks and their activities. To say that our guide put this monk at risk is an understatement. Before we left the States, our tour company warned us repeatedly not to pack or bring any pictures of or items relating to the Dalai Lama. We might be detained for possessing such items, and we'd put anyone to whom we offered them in harm's way.

I want so much to take a picture of the Dalai Lama on Saturday. But I'll content myself with sitting in row 34, eyes and ears transfixed on the live man and his message. It will be amazing, uplifting. Perhaps life-changing.

www.LoriHein.com

Prague in color

2009-04-27T07:55:00.005-05:00

Dana's home. She bought gifts in Prague.

Mike got a gorgeous ceramic beer stein, Adam got a black t-shirt with giant white letters reading, "MY SISTER WAS IN PRAGUE AND ONLY THING SHE BROUGHT ME IS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT," and I got this brilliant pen and ink drawing of the city's domes, roofs and signature powder towers.

Dana picked it because of the colors, and she knew exactly where I'd hang it: on the mustard-colored wall in the family room in a grouping of travel mementos with the same color scheme.

The Prague skyline has joined two beaded Masai wedding necklaces, a cobalt and yellow watercolor of the Brooklyn Bridge and Twin Towers lit by a full moon, and a flyer advertising a bullfight that I picked off a sidewalk in Guarda, Portgual and had framed.

A look at that wall takes me around the world in one quick, colorful eyeful.

www.LoriHein.com

Ecstasy in Vienna

2009-04-21T13:26:00.014-05:00

Dana's been borrowing friends' cell phones to check in from Europe. (Generous friends. Their parents will probably kill them.) The day she landed, I got this email: "Hey its me on Marcis BlackBerry venice is amazing I'm good. Love you guys. Dana"

Well, she just called from Vienna: "Hey mom, guess what I just did? I went to the Spanish Riding School and saw the Lippizaners."

Seeing the world's most famous dressage horses in the world's most famous riding school was the primary goal of her European trip, so I'm delighted she pulled it off. She and a friend toured the barn, then got to hang out in the performance area for a bit. She was ecstatic.

We couldn't talk long, the conversation being conducted as it was on telephony that someone else was paying for, but as she was about to hang up, she said, "Wait! I have to tell you a funny story! We went to this amusement park (that would be the Prater...), and we all went on this ride called Ecstasy, and when we got off, we found out it's illegal in the United States! It was horrible! Everybody was throwing up all over the place!"

It's late in their trip, but I hope the kids still had some clean clothes left...

www.LoriHein.com

Nice job

2009-04-20T19:19:00.002-05:00

A quick shout-out to the runners I know who ran Boston today. You guys rock. You powered through that headwind and delivered beautiful performances. I hope you had fun.

Where I'm not traveling to tomorrow...

2009-04-19T18:58:00.002-05:00

Just a quick fyi for anyone who was planning to check my Boston Mararthon progress tomorrow. It ain't happenin' for me. I will not be in Hopkinton in the morning.

About four weeks ago my right leg kinda caved in, and I haven't run since. Am awaiting MRI results. Could be something called a hip labrum tear, which would require arthroscopic surgery to repair. I'm hoping for a plain vanilla stress fracture, which would heal on its own.

So much for my lucky coins -- and I did find 26. Just wasn't in the stars this time around.

The good news is I was able to defer my qualifying time to next year, so, if I can keep this old body together, I'll be running next year's Boston.

To everyone toeing the line tomorrow in Hopkinton, I wish you Godspeed. Have a marvelous day and a safe and satisfying race.

www.LoriHein.com

Kids on the loose on the Lido

2009-04-15T15:26:00.021-05:00

Dana left today for her school's April vacation trip to Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic. Sixty-five kids, 10 adult chaperones. First stop, Venice.
Dana's been to Venice before, but most of the kids have never been to Italy. Indeed, for many this is their first trip out of the country. I envy them their first ride down the glorious Grand Canal. It's an experience that stays with you forever.

The group is staying at the Hotel Riviera on the Venice Lido, across the lagoon from the city's ancient historic core. The hotel looks like a wonderful value for the money, and some of the rooms have views of the sea.

While Venice proper is where the guidebook and postcard sights are, Lido is, essentially, a beach resort. A playground.

Hmmm.... A beach resort playground for 65 American teenagers in Europe without their parents.
I'll be writing a story about the trip for the local newspaper. This headline idea springs to mind: "Lido: The Chaperones' Challenge."

(These photos? Non-Lido Venice.)
www.LoriHein.com

Natchez: A Fish Tale

2009-04-09T13:29:00.002-05:00

I have a Mississippi story in the current issue of Country Roads Magazine.

Click here to read Natchez: A Fish Tale.

I've had the pleasure, lately, of dealing with some wonderful editors, and Country Roads' James Fox-Smith is one of them. Delightful and gracious.

LoriHein.com

Liechtenstein: Rent Me

2009-04-04T13:36:00.007-05:00

Once upon a time, when corporations had things like employees, customers, fat expense accounts and black bottom lines, and taking everybody and their spouses (or not -- up to you) on extravagant, self-celebratory bonding trips was the law of the land, a prince looked out from his hilltop castle and decreed that his little country should get in on some of that action.

And so it came to pass that Liechtenstein put itself up for rent. And so it remains.

If you have at least 450 people to entertain and $500 per head per day to entertain them with, you can rent this 16-mile-long, 4-mile wide principality wedged between Austria and Switzerland.

The go-to guys, if you're interested, are event marketers Xnet, whose Rent a Village program (they offer nine hamlets in Austria, Switzerland and Germany that you can temporarily overtake) becomes, in the case of Liechtenstein, "Rent a whole country."

Once you pay the rent, Xnet will take care of the details of your group's Alpine adventure and will also see to it that you can, if you're inclined and, presumably, pay extra, "rename streets and squares using names that have a connection with your company. Have your logo carved into the white snow of a mountain slope or introduce your own currency for the duration of your stay."

If you rent Liechtenstein, you do not get to move into Prince Hans-Adam II's castle (photo). You will be in regular hotels, and you'll only see the prince if he happens to drive by in his (I'm guessing) chauffered car.

Nor do the 35,000 permanent residents of Liechtenstein vacate to other nations when you arrive. They stay and go about their business, and you, whose flags, banners and logos flap from the lampposts that line their lanes, do your frolicing, skiing, hiking, biking, team-building, skydiving and bacchanaling around them. I do not know whether your company currency can be used in all establishments, or just those paid to play along for the length of your invasion.

Sound fun? I've been to Liechtenstein, for less than an hour, and it was all I could take.

We were in Switzerland, close to Liechtenstein's border, so we drove in one end and out the other, back into Switzerland.

Liechtenstein, despite its jaw-dropping natural beauty, gave me a mild case of the heebie-jeebies. It smothered me with its perfectness, and I couldn't wait to get back to the less-perfect-perfectness of Switzerland, a wild and crazy place by comparison.

The walls of mountains that surround Liechtenstein were, at first, awe-inspiring, but then they started to move in on our car, inducing claustrophia. We drove right under the royal castle, and I imagined the prince staring down at us, watching us move through his little country. I drove fast, looking for the exit.

There was nothing out of place in Liechtenstein, neither rock nor piece of paper nor shirttail nor blade of grass. The place was impeccable, pristine and unbearably plastic-feeling. The well-put together women strolling the sidewalks looked Stepford Wife-ish. I got the same feeling from Liechtenstein as I get from Angelina Jolie: I was creeped out.

I did like one thing about the perfect little principality: the pronunciation of its capital, Vaduz. It's va - DOOTS.

Go ahead, say it out loud, it's fun: "va - DOOTS, va - DOOTS, va - DOOTS." If you go to Forvo.com ("All the words in the world. Pronounced"), you can listen to Wolfgang Hofmeier ("male from Germany") say it .

Over and over and over, if you like.

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Sankt Gallen: Sliding through the library

2009-03-27T10:36:00.008-05:00

In a magazine that solicits "readers' tips for simplifying your life," I just read this pearl of domestic wisdom from reader Kristen:

"Asking adults and children to wear covers over their shoes in the house will prevent dirtying your floors and rugs -- and less cleaning sure simplifies your life. Purchase clear shower caps at a drug or discount store. Make them skid-resistant by sticking on a few strips of ordinary masking tape. Place a few at your front door. It's a snap to pull them on over shoes or boots, and the expandable size should fit all."

Wow. I see Kristen's family -- maybe even the dog -- padding around her antiseptic house with shower caps on their feet and watching reality TV from plastic-covered couches. I'm glad I don't know Kristen because there's no risk of my ever being invited to a dinner party at her house. Hand Kristen your hostess gift, and she hands you a pair of disposable booties that you are required to wear as you make small talk and sip chablis. Very hard to look hip, elegant or anything other than goofy when you've got what are basically Baggies wrapped around your ankles.

Kristen's paragraph peeved me a bit because it got magazine space (albeit unpaid, being a "reader's tip"), and no one knows better than a freelance writer how tough it is to get some of that.

But I do have to thank Kristen, because her shoes-in-shower-caps nonsense reminded me of a travel story.

We were in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, in the city's historic center (photo) . We'd come to see the Stiftsbibliothek, or Abbey Library, one of the country's finest baroque buildings. With the Convent of St. Gall, to which it belongs, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its importance to the cultural history of mankind. The library, with magnificent wooden bookshelves, exquisite balconied gallery, ceiling frescoes, and plaster and gilt ornamentation galore, houses a priceless collection of religious literature amassed by monks beginning in the 8th century. Besides the thousands of volumes that line the walls, there are cases of handwritten and illuminated bibles, medieval music and hymn books, and a stunning jewel-and ivory-encrusted bible case.

But there's more wonder underfoot. The library floor is a vast masterpiece of inlaid wood, and you're given a map of the floor's design elements so you know what you're walking over. Or, rather, sliding over.

Along with your map, you get a pair of giant felt slippers that you're required to wear over your shoes. It was amusing -- though not, I venture, as amusing as the plastic scene at Kristen's house -- to see scholars and travelers thoughtfully ponder the literary treasures while standing in oversized elf shoes. For Dana and Adam, among the library's youngest guests at the time of our visit, the foot-long felt slippers were the Stiftsbibliothek's main event. They ignored the treasures and jewels and the riot of baroque excess in favor of skating around and across the polished floor. They were aware enough of the import of the setting to refrain from actually racing each other, and, knowing you're supposed to be quiet in a library, they swallowed most of their giggles.

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There shall be no ... in the Jokhang square

2009-03-19T13:06:00.008-05:00

"Even today," said the Dalai Lama recently, "Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear." The Tibetans' spiritual leader was describing conditions in his homeland 50 years after the 1959 Tibetan rebellion against Chinese occupation, which began with the 1950-1951 Chinese army invasion of Tibet. (Please click on "Tibet" in the "Where Do You Want to Go?" sidebar for posts about the situation in Tibet and links to sites with a wealth of information about the occupation, the Tibetan government-in-exile and the bleak prospects for the survival of Tibetan culture.)

I had a flashing moment of fear when I took this photo of a sign posted in front of Lhasa's Jokhang temple, Tibetan Buddhism's most sacred place of worship. Had a Chinese police officer seen me raise my camera to this announcement, he likely would have marched over to have a chat with me. Perhaps I would have been "punished with education."
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Free Rice: Play games, feed people

2009-03-11T14:15:00.002-05:00

When you're sitting at the computer or canoodling your smartphone or PDA, there are plenty of ways to kill time, but here's one that feeds hungry people: Free Rice.

Free Rice is an online quiz game that rewards correct answers with rice donations to the world's hungry. You answer questions and, for each correct answer, Free Rice donates 10 grams of rice to the UN World Food Programme. Choose questions about art, chemistry, English, geography (my fave), languages (my second fave) and math (I avoid, as no one gets fed when I hang out in that category).

Free Rice, in partnership with the UN food program and Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has donated some 60 billion rice grains to date. Yesterday alone, game players' efforts yielded nearly 70 million grains.

Bookmark www.freerice.com, and check in for some occasional mind-stimulating fun that makes you feel smart and socially responsible at the same time. Beats playing solitaire.

www.LoriHein.com

Boston Marathon: Tour de course

2009-03-06T13:11:00.009-05:00

If that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I should be happy that this has been such a brutal winter for marathon training here in New England. Having battled snow, ice, bitter cold, biting wind, unplowed sidewalks, snowbank-sided roads and drivers eating, drinking, phoning and texting as they peer through dirty windshields and veer toward me despite my being decked out in numerous flourescent green and orange clothing articles, I will surely find the marathon itself easier to survive than all this, at least on some level.

Tomorrow, though, there will be no battling. Tomorrow will be a supreme, sunny joy. The weather report promises clear skies and 60 degrees, so I'm heading to the Boston Marathon course to run some of its more interesting segments. There will, no doubt, be hundreds of us out there, many running the Newton Hills, which include Heartbreak, the last in the series and the one that crests at Mile 21 opposite Boston College. (The next landmark you pass is a cemetery...)

It should be great fun out there tomorrow, with lots of bare flesh that hasn't seen sun in many moons. I just dug my sunblock out of the bathroom closet and put it in my gear bag. Yahoo!

I found a few sites that offer good virtual tours of the Boston Marathon course, including some YouTube tours of the route.

For a good Google Map-based course tour, try this site, which lets you zoom in on each Mile Marker and learn a bit about the communities on the route. If you set the map on hybrid and zoom way in, you can get a great feel for the whole 26-mile shebang from Hopkinton to Boston, helpful whether you're running, spectating, or just curious.

www.LoriHein.com

Paris: Off the postcard track

2009-02-27T11:00:00.005-05:00

I will show Dana all of the essential tourist sights of Paris. We'll see the Louvre, the d'Orsay, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, bateaux mouches plying the green Seine, the Latin Quarter, the Tuileries, Montmartre, the Champs Elysees, Versailles and all the other must-sees.

But I also want to explore some unique and lesser known sides of Paris and have come up with this list of off-the-beaten-postcard-track sights and activities:

Velib bike rentals -- Paris is one of the growing number of cities to offer low-cost bicycle rentals. Velib -- a meshing of velo, meaning bike, and liberte -- lets you rent a bike from one of many kiosks around the city for one euro for a full day. Cheap, fun, healthy (if you don't get hit by a Citroen). Says the Velib website, "La ville est plus belle a velo."

Covered passages and galleries -- More than a score of centuries-old covered arcades, passages and shopping galleries sit tucked away in a dozen Paris neighborhoods. Some of those I'll be on the lookout for include the passages Dauphine, Grand Cerf, Colbert, Brady, Verdeau, Jouffroy, Vero-Dodat and des Panoramas, and the galleries Vivienne and Lafayette.

Metro art -- Besides the Paris metro's 88 remaining Hector Guimard-designed Art Nouveau entrance signs and entrances, which you can admire from street level, many metro stations offer underground eye-candy worth seeking out even if you don't take a subway ride. Art, sculpture, treasured walls of graffiti, whimsy, sleek industrial design elements, even portholes Jules Verne would love -- it's all there underground.

Les Arenes de Lutece -- on the Left Bank, off the Rue Monge, sit the ruins of 1st century A.D. Roman amphitheatres, used now as a public park and often hosting groups of boys playing pick-up soccer games. One of the few places left to remind you (the Musee de Cluny is another) that Paris was once the epicenter of Roman Gaul.

Saint-Ouen Flea Market - I once lived in Paris for six months and never made it to Porte de Clignacourt for Paris's biggest and most famous marche aux puces, or flea market. This visit, I'm packing an empty collapsible tote bag to carry home the exciting used treasures I plan to unearth as I comb through Saint-Ouen's acres of stalls.

Montorgueil -- A Right Bank neighborhood north of Chatelet-Les Halles with vibrant street life and pedestrian-only sections that invite window-shopping, cafe-sitting and people-watching (although what part of Paris doesn't...).

Sundials -- In parks, gardens and courtyards, set into cobbles and affixed to the facades of buildings, Paris is full of cadrans solaires, many that have been casting their delicate gnomonic shadows for hundreds of years. Sundial spotting in the City of Light.

Promenade Plantee -- One of the reasons I chose the Maison Zen as our accommodation (see previous post) is its proximity to this three-mile long elevated pedestrian trail that runs from the Bastille almost all the way to the Bois de Vincennes. Dana and I need a good place to run while we're in Paris, and this is a great spot. The paved trail, complete with trees and plantings and benches, occupies the top of an abandoned railroad viaduct. Cyclists, joggers and walkers take to its elevated length while browsers and diners check out the Viaduc des Arts, a stretch of shops and cafes tucked between the viaduct's arches at street level.

Canal Saint Martin -- Our Om Away From Home is also not far from the Canal Saint Martin neighborhood, and I'm looking forward to taking a boat ride on the canal, which empties into the Seine to the south. For some part of its length, the Canal Saint Martin runs underground. Sitting in an open boat on a thin waterway in the middle of Paris and disappearing into a narrow black tunnel eliminates the need to even contemplate a visit to Disneyland Paris. Thank you, Canal Saint Martin.

Piscine Pontoise -- Paris is peppered with indoor swimming pools, but the one I want to splash in is this 1930s Latin Quarter art deco gem with a high glass ceiling. I have to remember to pack a bathing cap.

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Paris: Om Sweet Home

2009-02-21T09:00:00.003-05:00

I just cashed in a wad of American Express points and scored two free tickets to Paris for me and Dana. We're going in July.

I'm excited to spend a quality week with Dana before she throws herself full tilt into the college application process, which will consume a big part of her summer.

I know Paris well, and I spent several weeks hunting online for accommodations with the perfect mix of location, quiet, affordability, character and safety.

In an upcoming post I'll share the search techniques I used. The Internet offers such a wealth of tools and information that there's no excuse anymore for checking blindly into a hotel or apartment; indeed the Web lets you virtually visit before you book. I had a blast exploring buildings, streets and neighborhoods before settling on what promises to be a unique and peaceful haven in the center of the City of Light: The Maison Zen.

We'll have to leave our shoes at the door -- and we can't host any loud parties -- but for less than $650 for a week, we have a studio apartment with a kitchenette on the top floor of the Paris Zen Center. The elegant building is in a gated location off the busy street, and the apartment windows give on to a quiet courtyard. We're a block from the Place de la Bastille.

Owned and run by Jakob Perl and his wife, artist Grazyna Perl, the Paris Zen Center is the European hub of the Kwan Um School of Zen, founded by a Korean Zen master. Both Jakob and his wife are Zen masters; Jakob is known as WuBong, and Grazyna is Bon Yo.

Kwan Um Zen employs meditation, sitting, chanting and sharing living space and meals to help followers attain a "clear and compassionate mind" that is able to "help all beings." As guests of Maison Zen, Dana and I are welcome to participate in the Center's activities but are not compelled to do so.

I'm not big on meditation; sitting still doing nothing tends to make me crazy, and yoga is about as far along the spectrum of zenishness as I've been able to get. But I'm thinking a little om at the end of a day of sightseeing might be refreshing.

www.LoriHein.com

Ten Commandments of Travel

2009-02-14T19:00:00.001-05:00

In April Dana's heading to Europe with a group from her high school. About 40 kids (who, according to Dana, are all "getting wicked excited") and a half-dozen adult chaperones will take in Venice, Vienna, Prague and points in between.

I was talking to a few girls who are going on the trip and I said, "What an itinerary -- Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic."

One of them squinted her eyes at me and asked, "Czech Republic? Who's going to the Czech Republic?"

"You are, Sharone, you are! You're going to Prague, where some of the buildings wear funny hats. Prague's the capital of the Czech Republic."

"Wow! I'm going to the Czech Republic..."

The teacher who organizes these annual spring trips -- and who teaches advanced placement history -- will no doubt be glad that Sharone knows the name of the country she's in when she's in Prague. The trip, which requires that the kids do research on their destinations before they travel, is actually a mini-course that nets the travelers two credits on their high school transcripts.

In addition to learning geography, history and culture, the teacher hopes the students will learn something about and from the travel itself, and at a recent trip planning meeting she offered these "Ten Commandments of Travel:"

1. Thou shalt not expect to find things as thou hast them at home for thou hast left home to find things different.

2. Thou shalt not take anything too seriously, for a carefree mind is the beginning of fine traveling.

3. Thou shalt not let others get on thy nerves, for thou art paying good money to enjoy thyself. (I think this commandment should be amended to read, "... for thine parents art paying good money -- which they now have a lot less of than they did when thou signed up for this trip -- to let thee enjoy thyself.")

4. Remember to take only half the clothes thou thinks thou needs, and twice the money.

5. Know at all times where thy passport is, for a person without a passport is a person without a country.

6. Remember that if we had been expected to stay in one place we would have been created with roots.

7. Thou shalt not worry, for he that worrieth hath no pleasure, and few things are truly fatal.

8. When in Rome, be prepared to do somewhat as the Romans do -- same goes for Venice, Vienna and Prague.

9. Thou shalt not judge the people of a country by the one person who hast given thou trouble.

10. Remember thou art a guest in other lands, and he that treateth his host with respect will be honored.

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