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What No Moving Box Can Hold: Saying Goodbye to Our French Mountain Home

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Selling a house should be regarded as just a transaction.  That, at least, is what one of our more unsentimental friends told us. Yet, as we packed up our now-sold townhouse in the mountain village of Antraigues-Sur-Volane in Southern France, we found that the cardboard boxes stacked in our living room represented more than mere containers for transporting objects. They were, in fact, inadequate vessels for what we were truly attempting to pack: Almost twenty years of lived experience. The real estate listing described our house as a "charming two-bedroom property with traditional features," but it failed to capture what this place actually represents.  This has not just been our vacation house. During the last many years it became truly our home away from home as the seasonal rhythms of our visits created a peculiar form of belonging.  Though we were never full-time residents, the village baker would greet us warmly upon our arrival each year, and the neighbors woul...
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Crawling Through Time: Reflections from Lisbon's secret Roman Galleries

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Yesterday, I crawled through muddy, dark Roman-era tunnels below Lisbon, which are normally filled with groundwater and only accessible to a few visitors each year. The tunnels were carved during the reign of Emperor Augustus, and for centuries, they directed underground rainwater while the empires above rose and fell. Eventually, they were completely sealed off and forgotten,  only to be rediscovered by chance during the rebuilding after the 1755 earthquake, which had turned most of Lisbon into rubble. Today, the crypts are pumped dry on a couple of days each year, and the only entry to the below is through a narrow shaft in the middle of the busy Rua da Conceição, right between the rails of the 28 tram line. The stairs  leading down are steep and risky, and when you finally reach the galleries, a few lights illuminate the void that had stood in complete darkness for more than a Millenium  Some of the tunnels are so low and narrow that you have to climb through t...
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Crumbling Warehouses and Crispy Sardines: Contrasts Along the Tagus

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Yesterday, our journey along Lisbon's shores took us from decay to delight.  We began the day by walking along the crumbling warehouses and abandoned factories at the Cais do Ginjal, and we ended with golden sardines and moist monkfish at the Ponto Finale restaurant, experiencing some of the curious contrasts this city has to offer.  Cais do Ginjal - the waterfront across the river from the city proper - were once thrumming with activity, but  now they stand empty as a relic from Portugal's industrial past while slowly succumbing to rust and decay.   Wandering past the locked warehouses with their peeling paint and cracked windows, one could almost hear the ghosts of ships being loaded years ago.  Wildflowers sprouted from brickwork worn by salt air and time. Graffiti swirled vibrantly across deteriorating walls in attempts to reclaim these forgotten structures. In one warehouse, an entire wall had collapsed, exposing rusty pipes and machinery t...
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On Fleeing Nordic Gloom and Finding a Portuguese Storm

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Many modern Danes have  developed a peculiar relationship with harsh weather - we don't adapt, we flee, and when Nordic winter darkness descends, we book flights.  Rita and I succumbed to this impulse last week, boarding a plane to Lisbon, where winter just about now should be yielding to blissful spring.  How perfectly ironic that we arrived just as the historically wild storm named Martinho hammered upon the Portuguese coastline. As we huddled up in our apartment, watching the rain lashing horizontally against Alfama's ancient buildings, we considered how Martinho had conspired against our escape plan; how the brutal winds now seemed to mock the notion that we could outrun nature's rhythms. Yesterday, I sat in a tiny cafe, completely drenched after yet another massive downpour. I scrolled through weather forecasts on my mobile (as if digital certainty might alter physical reality!), when an old man approached my table.  "You came for the sun?" he asked wi...
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The pursuit of a winter escape

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It is February, and the Scandinavian winter has once again tightened its cool grip. The days are short, the nights are long, and the sun—what little we see of it—seems to be about to give up on us entirely.  It is during these dark months that the collective Nordic psyche begins to entertain a peculiar fantasy: escape. Not the kind of escape that involves a permanent relocation or a dramatic life change, but the kind that involves booking a flight to somewhere warmer, sunnier, and altogether more forgiving.  For us, this winter, that somewhere will be  Lisbon . Lisbon , with its pastel-colored buildings, cobblestone streets, and seemingly perpetual sunlight, is the antithesis of the Scandinavian winter.  And yet, as we sit here in our Copenhagen apartment, bundled in layers of wool and existential dread, we can’t help but wonder: is this annual pilgrimage to the south really the solution to our winter woes? Or is it just another form of modern esca...
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Stumbling into serenity: The secret garden of Saint-Serge

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The other day I walked the streets of the edgy, regenerated Villette area of Paris, and here, on one of its busy streets, I stumbled upon what seemed like a portal opening into another time. Entering through an unassuming gate, and going down a narrow,  semi-private alley, I was transported from the frenetic present into a hidden,  quiet garden that turned out to be the garden of the  Saint-Serge de Radonège Russian Orthodox Church.    Photo: SortirAParis Before me unfolded a scene that could have been plucked from a 19th-century Russian novel: Long-bearded orthodox priests wearing flowing black robes and cylindrical kamilávka hats, moved unhurriedly among the flowerbeds, and a group of elderly parishioners sat in the garden, on rickety chairs, chatting in a melodic blend of Russian and  French. The abrupt transition from bustling street to  tranquil sanctuary was so jarring that I half-expected to find my smartphone transfor...
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Night under the full moon: A unique Parisian gathering

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  The other night I was invited to a so-called Full Moon Party in the center of Paris. The host was a guy Rita and I met, when we, a couple of years ago, stayed on his houseboat a bit up the Seine. He arranges these casual parties at the middle of the Pont des Arts and he has done so, come rain or come moonshine, every month for the last many years. As I approached the iconic bridge, now mercifully devoid of its plague of "love locks," I was greeted by a cacophony of excited chatter in a United Nations potpourri of accents.  French people as well as expats from many corners of the globe mingled freely, their laughter and chatter forming a symphony of human connection that was actually quite infectious. As I accepted a glass of wine from a beaming Spanish astrophysics student, I pondered the curious phenomenon before me.  Here we were, a motley crew of strangers, united by nothing more than our shared presence in this city and our willingness to gaze skyward toge...
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The Peculiar Paradox of Parisian Property Procurement

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For a long time, Rita and I have dreamed of finding a romantic, small, affordable Parisian pied-à-terre - and this September I am in Paris, chasing our dream!  As I wander the streets, I see the abundance of real estate agencies dotting many corners. Their windows, plastered with images of quaint apartments seem to beckon passersby with promises of "le rêve parisien." One might assume that in a city teeming with "agents immobiliers," securing a modest little place would be as simple as ordering un pain au chocolat.  In actuality, you have to prepare to have your assumptions challenged and your patience tested! When I approached my first agency, I did it with the optimism of a sugar craving tourist eyeing a Parisian pâtisserie. The window was filled with advertisements, but the door, marked "Ouvert", remained stubbornly locked.  At the second agency, I was greeted by a bored-looking receptionist who informed me that all agents were ...
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Olympic Mirage: A bit of a Parisian Disappointment

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Why go to Paris during the Olympics, when you have almost zero interest in sports? Well, we  imagined ourselves being at the epicenter of a global phenomenon, but upon arrival, we find the streets remarkably... ordinary.  We knew of course that  the roving  bands of athletes,  the spontaneous outbursts of national anthems and the fever of competition were within the concrete confines of various stadiums, but we actually  thought the excitement would spill out into the streets. But no. Except for a few fan zones scattered around the city, the much-vaunted Olympic spirit is safely contained inside a labyrinth of barriers and checkpoints. When we arrived, Paris did look like we had never seen it before with some forty thousand barriers dotting the cityscape, like some absurdist art installation gone awry. The river Seine was  off-limits to the unwashed masses, and only those blessed with a personal QR code might grac...
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Entering the Boros bunker - A mind-altering artistic journey

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Walking into the massive Boros bunker in Berlin's Mitte is like walking into an ancient, alien tomb. This forbidding concrete monolith, built by the Nazis in 1942,  is now the home of an eccentric private art collection.  Inside the building's almost anthill-like network of  underground corridors and crypts, numerous swirling shapes and colors spark the walls into lurid illuminations.   A flood of phantasmagoric images washes over the senses - kinetic sculptures twisting with reptilian menace, multimedia installations flickering with layered meanings. Each new room opens like a portal into a new creative artistic mind - and the story about the building is as exciting as the art which is  displayed inside it. During the war, the bunker sheltered several thousand  civilians from the massive, nightly bombings that hit Berlin. In 1945 the Red Army repurposed the building for prisoners of war and it later became an East German warehouse. After the wall tumble...
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