A Long, Lonely, Adventurous Road

my traveling companion,
Katherine Elizabeth

Cześć!

One wild sojourn later, I write from Poznań, Poland where I just arrived a few hours ago after traveling across the continent. But I’m not here to see the Europe Cup matches, I’m afraid. I’m visiting a dear friend of mine, Zuzia, whom I have not seen in almost five years now. We met at the World Scout Jamboree 2007 in England, which in itself brings back a lot of really cool memories. That – of course – is another story altogether.

For the past three days, I have been taking the scenic and adventurous route from Naples to Poznań, traveling by bus, train, and foot across Europe with only my pack on my back. My mission has been to arrive in a way that spends the least amount of money, and I largely succeeded. I can also say that I had a few really nice stops along the way. It’s not as fast as it might have been hitchhiking, but it was certainly safer, more legal, and just as fun. I do think I’ll have to try hitchhiking some other time. I hear there are hitchhiking races in Europe, but that’s something for another time.

afternoon in Venice

early morning in Switzerland

Zurich

Now, when I was first talking about the possibility of coming, I did not understand why, but Zuzia told me to try to make an appointment to be in Poznań by June 21^st, the summer solstice. I agreed. Since I was leaving on the afternoon of the 18^th, I thought it might just be possible.

The first night, I had to pull off in Bologna, and I walked until I was far outside the city and in the countryside of western Emilia-Romania (not the part that was so devastated by the earthquakes recently). There, I lay down my tarp and stayed the night under the stars that had been guiding me north up to that point. The next morning, I awoke to the sunrise and a nice breakfast of cookies, cheese, and honey before setting off again. By that afternoon – with a few interesting local train stops and a lot more walking along the way – I was in Venice by 4:00 and then back in Milan by 8:40. I went north from there and was in Switzerland by that night.

The next day was a nice, long tour of eastern Switzerland by local train and bus, winding my way over the lovely mountains that I would someday rather hike than pass. For this trip, however, I could not take the slow path, because my deadline was already approaching fast. After losing a day between Naples and Milan, I would need to arrive in Poland within only a little over 30 hours. So all morning I did this until I arrived in Zürich after spending my lunchtime walking about Lucerne.

That was when I frighteningly discovered that I was suddenly out of money.

I put all my bills on a timed auto-pay system while I was out of the country, so everything lined up at just the moment I was arriving, and this was a fact had previously slipped my mind. I had made it as far as I had with only the money left over from Naples, and I had planned to get more at an ATM when I needed it. This was when I, while trying to get money for the next train, found that I didn’t have enough funds, and I realized what had happened. In conclusion, I was stuck in Zürich with only 20 Swiss franc cents.

It was at this point that I doubted just about everything. Poznań, where I needed to be the very next day, was over 800km (500 miles) away, and I wasn’t even sure if I could get that far by train in the time that I had left. Well, you know what strong men do when they need help. They pray. I had never in my life seen a chapel in a train station before, but this time it was quite a blessing.

The chaplain, after hearing my story, let me use the internet and I was able to get in touch with my father who saved the day. I will have to repay him when school starts again, but that, at least, is a time when I can afford to do so. I had some more wonderful talk with the chaplain, and spent some of my time there just in being thankful. With Dad’s help, I was in the Black Forest in Germany in no time at all, and that is where I finally spent the night.

The next morning, after a lovely (and early) sunrise tour of the little towns of the Scharzwald, I was on the ICE train to Berlin with new groceries and plenty of time to rest off the last two days. When I arrived in Berlin, I was able to get a very cheap and very lucky (in the middle of the EuroCup!) ticket to Poznań. After a three hour train ride, I made it on 21 June, 8:25pm. Just in time!

Zuzia and me, after I just arrived

Over the past five years, Zuzia and I have communicated over letters, email, Facebook, and the occasional Gmail chat, but we have never Skyped, so I have neither heard her voice nor seen her face for five years. Meeting a friend again after a time like that is quite a thing indeed. I was fifteen and she seventeen when we met, so although I know her well, I was meeting a brand new person for the first time in my life.

They have been telling me about various plans and ideas for activities over the course of my stay, so I think they intend to keep me in Poland until it’s time for me to go back home. But first, they took me out to the reason that they wanted me in Poznań so quickly…

There is a festival of lanterns on the summer solstice, a celebration of the longest day, shortest night, and the beginning of the summer. People gather near the river in the city in a big field and everyone gets a lamp. At around eleven o’clock at night (by agreement with the airport) everyone lights a lantern, makes a wish, and sends it off into the sky.

me, lighting my own lantern

the girls sending their wish off into the sky

It was so beautiful. All the lanterns fill the night air like a thousand flying stars. I felt like a little kid with wonder.

It was the perfect way to celebrate summer, and a perfect way to arrive. I’m so glad that I was able to make it in time. Afterward, they took me out to taste some of the city of Poznań and we made it back home very late. We will sleep late tomorrow, but I am glad to have finally made it to Poland.

Ania, me, and Zuzia

I’m Jonathon, and this is my life.

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A Nice Stay in Naples

Hello Again!

I write you now from Naples, Italy: the Bel Paese’s very own Posto al Sole.

For those of you who don’t know, I lived here as a foreign exchange student for about nine months one year ago (which explains why I speak Italian). I stayed in Naples with two different host families over the course of my program, and I met a huge amount of people between school and activities. Above all, I had a wonderful time. To me, Naples is my own true Italian home.

Beyond normal things such as being so very very glad to be eating wonderful food, to be seeing the sea, and to be diving and dodging through the tiny streets again, I’m very happy to be able to come back and visit everyone. I’m staying with another family that was very good to me and I’ve been up to a lot in the meantime.

The first and most important thing that I’ve been out and about doing is revisiting all of the friends that I made while I was here. The first day back, I went by on the last day of school to try to terrorize all of the classes of students that I knew in my time there, as well as run into some of my old teachers and visit the principal. Let’s just say that Operation Invasion was a huge success. I passed by the principal’s office without thinking about it too much at first and she thought that she saw a vision. Next thing I knew, I was wrapped in her arms. Over the course of the rest of the hour, she and I had an immense amount of fun calling all of the teachers to the office individually over the intercom and saying that they needed to coming with “massima urgenza.” It was so funny to see their faces when they realized what the “big problem” was. I had a great day full of lots of surprised faces and warm regreetings.

Halfway through my week and a half stay down here, my mom and siblings made the long 5-hour train ride down to the city to see the place that I called home for so long. I picked them up at the station and took them to their hotel straight away just to get everything square, and then we set off immediately on a travel program that I wrote just for them…

Our first stop was a lunch break at Trattoria Nennella.

Here, I was able to get them to have a satisfyingly close representation of a real, home-cooked Italian meal. They had a delicious potato and cheese pasta dish (the special of Nennella) and spaghetti Carbonara, and they loved both. And at last, they also got to try real buffalo mozzarella and absolutely adored it.

Next I took them up to Vomero (the neighborhood where I lived) and showed them where I used to do everything. They saw the school, the church, my houses, places where we hung out, places where we went walking, the stores where I used to get food and books, everything. They even got to see the view from the Castle St. Elmo over the whole city. That evening, I got together a big dinner with my exchange coordinator, all the families hosting me, and a few friends from school. It went so well. My family got to finally eat the real Neapolitan pizza (the best!) and meet everyone who took care of me over the course of the year. My siblings had a good time talking to some of the people I went to school with, even though they had to work hard to cross the language barrier. At the end of the night, the family hosting me now took me and them on a scenic car ride to see Naples by night – one of my favorite views in the world. Mom said it was like something out of her dreams.

The next morning, they took a bike ride on the street that runs along the sea, appropriately called Lungomare. Now (and this is new even for me) it’s closed to street traffic, and people ride bikes, go skating, and just walk there. It’s so beautiful. I admit that I really hope it stays that way, because it makes the seaside even nicer. All my little siblings enjoyed the ride, and I took them to have some typical Neapolitan and Italian sweets afterward.

After lunch, we made our last pass down Spaccanapoli, the famous street that cuts the old city in half and has some of the neatest and most iconic shops in the city: the ones that sell the Presepi. Mom, who loves art, almost never left. And, of course, my sisters got their taste of shopping. They all had a wonderful visit to Naples and went back home very content later that day.

Friday some friends and I went to the beach at Gaiola and I had my “primo mare” of the year. I caught some sun, went exploring and cliff jumping, chatted in Italian and in English, and had a good day at the sea. Thanks to the rocks where we went exploring, my fingers and toes were pretty cut up by the end of the day (so I’m a little worried about violin practice now) but it was a great sojourn.

Then, that night, I got a crash course lesson in being a lead singer.

Gabriele, who is the guy I’m staying with (the oldest son in the family) is a bassist in a sort of band, and he wanted me to come with them for their latest show to sing “Cough Syrup” by Young the Giant. They are above all a hard rock music group and occasionally do covers of Italian and other rock songs. Here is a video of them actually playing normally.

Anyway, Gabbò was quite excited to have a someone whose mother language was English to sing a song; so much so that he insisted all the other players learn “Cough Syrup” and play it that night without ever having practiced it together before (granted, the song is not exactly that hard to learn, but there may have been a misjudgment on (Gabbò) someone’s part)…

After getting everything from the microphone (which was having issues) to the (awful) acoustics of the room figured out, the guys played. I still hadn’t heard anyone play anything that sounded like “Cough Syrup” (not even during the first practices or the sound check) so at that point I had actually decided I wouldn’t have to worry about it. But in the end they called me on stage after all, so I gave the camera to Livia (Gabriele’s sister) so she could record everything.

I’ll put on the video without telling you about the surprise that the guys made me by accident. I’ll just say that they were always a hard rock group and it was my first time ever to sing on stage with a band.

Ah wow. At least in the end it turned out alright.

Over the last few days, I’ve been in Ischia with my first host family. We went to the beach twice yesterday (including at The Abasciatore Hotel that Uncle Pietro owns and maintains) and I even got to try small boat sailing and retake up windsurfing. I hope to return to Ischia again to stay longer someday, but until then I’ll just have to salute everyone dear to me there and sling my pack back on my shoulders.

Over the next two weeks, I’m not sure where I’ll be. I suppose I’ll just be – as the Italians would say – in giro. I’m doing well and continuing to enjoy my adventure. Now, if I could just find a way to see this straight, I’ll run away to some fortune that I should have found by now. Until then, I’m waiting for this cough syrup to go down.

I’m Jonathon, and this is my life.










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Returning to Switzerland after Four Generations

Dear Followers,

I have a fantastic adventure to tell you about... =]

Some of you might or might not know, but I am part Swiss, fourth generation. Here's just a little family history for you: My great grandfather Robert D. Brackett was by all accounts a very cool person. He and my great grandmother Tonia used to travel all over on vacation and bring back things from his journeys. He had massive (and beautiful) collections of rocks, geological samples, shells, and all manner of cool things from around the world that have been passed down through the family. My other siblings and I are slowly inheriting some of them (courtesy of my grandma Mary Jean) and I have a small fortune of memories and articles, including my great grandpa's old hunting and fishing knife (apparently it was also either his father's or his grandfather's, so it has been in the family for ages).

The story as I know it is that great grandpa Brackett was in Europe as a military driver. After the war, while he was on leave in Switzerland, he met great grandma Tonia, a Swiss girl who was working in a resort on Lake Lucerne. I wish I could tell you guys all the things that I've learned about them, because there are so many cute stories. I'll just tell you that their story is currently among my favorite, and they really really loved one another. She returned to the United States with him to Michigan and never went back to Switzerland. They kept up decent contact with the Swiss family over the years and my grandma has several photo albums and a couple of 40-30 year old addresses from friends and relatives that she had never met.

As you know, I am in Italy with my family, so my grandparents made the big trip to come stay with up for a few days. On a whim, we thought that since we were so close (and since it was the first time that they have ever left the country) it would be a fun little adventure to take them north to Switzerland to see the place where my great grandmother, my grandma's mother, grew up. So, after dragging them to Siena and Rome last weekend, we got back to Milan and we rented a car and set off for Switzerland.

Lake Lucerne, where my Great Grandma Tonia worked

We left early and had the most beautiful drive. The GPS we rented (we called her Karen) guided us into and over some of the most beautiful countryside in the Alps.

Dad at the Wheel

my grandma was so excited the whole time...

We passed by the beautiful (and big) lake where Robert and Tonia met, crossed over the Italian region of the country and into the German, and went through the third longest road tunnel in the world and the longest in Switzerland. Tonia Keller lived about an hour away in a little village nearby Sursee called Winikon. On the way, my grandma was showing me photos of the town as it was in the 1940's. She had little pieces of paper marking the location of the school, the house where she lived, and giving a few other little data tidbits. I found that with the little German that I have learned so far, I could read the letter that Robert Brackett had written to Tonia's family to let them know that she had passed away (he called her his "everything in the world").

When we got over the crest of the hill, we passed through Triengen (the bigger city that Winikon branches off of) and at that point the excitement started pouring over as we began already pointing out things from the photos.

We spotted the old church immediately and drove our way through the little town and up the hill that it was sitting on.

It is a strange, enthralling feeling to be in such a situation - to be in a town that you have never seen before but are so connected to. It's like coming home after a very long journey. You feel like you should recognize it, be a part of it in some way, as if somehow you belong to it and it you. And yet, it feels strange and foreign.

We spent an entire half hour at the church, looking at everything. The inside is beyond beautiful (and surprisingly so, because the out is so plain), and it is surrounded by a little garden cemetery. Because flat space is so limited in the ("whole country!") cemetery, plots are only available to a loved one for about twenty years, then they are transferred to the church's collection, so although we had a photo of Tonia's mother's (my great great grandma!) stone, it was long since gone. We did, however, find the stone of grandma's late uncle, Ruedi Keller, who only died very recently.

After we spent a very...overwhelming...time at the church house marveling over the beauty of everything, over the closeness to such a long lost relative, over everything really, we began to make our way down the little stone path onto the road below toward the house.

It was on this way, the same little path that Tonia walked back home when she was a little girl, that we passed a lady standing outside of a doorway having a smoke. We almost walked by her without saying a word, but I sucked up the courage to try talking to her and mentioned the house and who we were. My German failed me a little bit at a certain point because we came to a block in our conversation and tried to find other methods. I asked if she spoke English, then she asked if I spoke French, to which I asked if she spoke Italian, to which she nervously and apologetically replied "Emmmm...!" However, she wanted to help and so she took the packet of index cards with names and numbers and hurried inside, saying she was going to do…something. It took a while for her to come back out again and we were getting anxious and extremely restless by the time she came back out with the cards.

She pointed up the road and explained in Denglisch that she had been on the phone calling about and that Berty Keller, the wife of Ruedi Keller, the aunt of Mary Jean, and my great great aunt, was up Dorfstraße by the school and on the left, working in her front garden.

…What?

We thanked her in a rush and went up the side of the hill as fast as we could. With little to no contact over the past several decades, it was impossible to imagine finding someone, but here we were about to meet for the first time a woman my grandmother had only ever written a letter to (to inform her that Tonia had died) and whom my father probably never even knew existed. Sure enough, there she was – just ahead and digging about amongst her flowers. We waved to her and she waved back, coming down to meet us.

Left to Right: Isabella (our translator),
Herr Keller, and my Grandma, Mary

She only spoke a very heavy German and was already calling her neighbor over for help translating. It was clear she was both very excited and confused, but as soon as Grandma showed her the photos and addresses that she had, Frau Keller recognized her niece immediately and was a flow of speech. In the next breath, I’m convinced she explained in depth the history she knew about Mary Jean, said three Hail Marys, and recited the Magna Carta, but closer investigation and some help from her neighbor confirmed that we were invited to have coffee inside and she had a whole house of things to show us.

We must have spent the next hour or so with her, raving over old photo albums and telling stories about the family members, communicating through the combined efforts of Frau Berty’s neighbor Isabella and me. It was way beyond cool. I was in the house of my great great aunt whom I had never met, along with my dad (her great nephew), and my grandma (her niece). It was a one-of-a-kind family reunion. She had pictures of so many people I’m related to (in one way or another) and stories and…

It was just so so cool.

Isabella, Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad at the table

See? We managed to communicate pretty well!

Isn't she just beautiful?? ^^

Pictures of Great Grandma Tonia and Great Grandpa Robert; The one on the right is Tonia leaving for America

Herr Berty is an artist; she painted this herself and my grandma
has a few of her pieces as well; even I recognized the style immediately

Isabella did a fantastic job translating into English. She hadn’t spoken it since the fourth grade and was only fresh because she was helping her kids (now that age) to learn. Wherever she struggled, we helped her through, but she was simply brilliant and so good to take the trouble to come help.

And Great Great Aunt Berty (I get to call her that! ^^) is just the most wonderful, warm, and sweet old lady. She showed us her paintings (grandma has a few of her pieces), jewelry and sea shells that were sent to her, and a number of other things. She wouldn’t let Dad leave without accepting a box of Swiss chocolates and she and grandma talked about flowers and gardens, because they both love them so much. With their addresses and Isabella’s email, we hope to keep up correspondence and send them pictures of grandma’s flower gardens as well. I will be sending all of the photos we took as soon as possible and I'll send a link to this blog post.

When we finally left, she kissed us all good bye and invited us to stay with her any time we want.

all four generations together

this is when she explained to us that in Switzerland, the salutation is done
with three kisses instead of two

And we had to absolutely salute Isabella, who did a wonderful job

Great Great Aunt Berty made the visit unforgettable for everyone, I think

 We went back downtown, had a nice German-Swiss dinner (Lecker lecker!), and gave ourselves one last look at the house, the town, and the hill.

Tonia's old house

We took the scenic route back home through the pass in the Alps. It had been a day more than amazing, and all that was left to do was take our time going back to Italy.

I’m Jonathon, and this is my life.

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Allora...

Dear Everyone,

Sorry, but it's late and I'm currently too tired to write in English. You can forgive me later!

Volevo prima chiedere scusa, perché veramente ragazzi non mi sono nemanco fatto vivo da maggio - anzi, da mesi, perché quel postone e poi postuccio a maggio quasi non valgono la pena di essere letti. Ma be'. Comunque, volevo chiedere scusa ancora una volta per un'altro fatto: cioè mi vi sono quasi arreso.

No, niente di un grand che, niente suicidio, ma mi schociava blogare per il fatto che mi sono perso un attimo la vista del perché io scrivo questi racconti delle mie avventure. A volte, mi fa freddo che sembrano di fregarsene di me tutti (che non  è  neanche vero, e lo so), perciò viene difficile raccontare cose belle tipo le avventure. Ma non e per questo che si scrive, secondo me. Voglio dire, l'artista non dipinge per intrattenere la gente. È una vecchia storia.

È stata una mia amica che me l'ha fatto ricordare che c'è un bel mondo di cose da raccontare e da far sapere a chicchessia oppure da tenere per sempre perché non vada via. Forse a me - chi viva la mia vita - non c'entra se lo scrivo o se lo lascio perdere, ma vale la pena ricordare almeno.
Vi continuerò a scrivere. Perché? Perché sì. E poi, mi piace. Quest'è la mia vita.

Basta parlare, però!

Continuerò a scrivere se come scrivessi una lettera. A me piace questa forma, quindi lo lascerò cosi. Poi cambierò quella schema - fa male agli occhi! Domani, cercherò di mettere un nuovo post, ma dai, vediamo.

Io sono Jonathon e quest'è la mia vita.




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