My 2024 Winter Break

Every year after a long fall semester I try to get out to warmer places or places I have my people in. I love traveling with my son, and in previous years when he was a high school student and just started college we went to Brazil, Peru, Paris and last year - to Italy, where we had the most wonderful time together.

This year, however, he is a senior in college with resident assistant duties and a committed girlfriend, so we were not able to travel together for 3-4 weeks. So I have decided to travel to Germany where I have a lot of relatives and hopefully visit some friends in France and Switzerland while I am there. My son will join me for the last week of my travels.

Right before I set out on my journey, my dear friends who I wrote about in my Farewell, Reggie! story experienced a house fire. Between grading my students' final works and running their GoFundMe campaign (a separate story to come on that), I was an extremely busy bee (hence my lighter presence here).

And just when I thought I had everything under control and could breathe a little after I submitted all final grades, it turned out that I'd have to drive to Toronto again, to pick up the gifts my sister (who is my son's godmother) had sent with a friend. The Canadian post service was on strike and the gifts were meant for Christmas, so I decided to get them on my drive to New York where a friend graciously allowed me to park my car before I flew out of JFK to Germany. I know, my life is overly complicated.

Here's my account of those three days of travel.

Day 1, Monday, Dec.16: leaving my home in north-western PA at noon, I stopped in Erie to see my friends in their temporary hotel lodgings after the fire. Then I drove to Toronto to pick up a package from my sister, which took me surprisingly only about five hours, with a breeze passing of the border but the last 25 km at a crawling speed. Toronto in peak hours is not better than Atlanta, which is notorious for its heavy traffic in all directions. I had dinner with my friends there, waited for the traffic to ease and drove back to spend the night at a hotel in Niagara Falls. It was pouring all the way.

As I age, I find driving at night, especially in the rain, more and more challenging. Mostly because of far-sightedness. Thankfully, I have special night-driving glasses that somewhat diffuse the bright headlights of incoming cars and street red lights. They make driving easier. However, I struggled to see Canadian roads’ white dash lane markers that would virtually disappear under the rain puddles as they are not florescent like in the US. So, only the drivers behind me would know how many times I veered off between the lanes.

When I finally got to the hotel at the US Niagara Falls, I just crashed for the night.

Day 2, Tuesday: I have never had a chance on our previous trips to Niagara to walk the Rainbow Bridge. My son and I were there at least a dozen of times. But we either didn’t bring our passports (yes, you do need your passport even if you don’t cross to Canada) or the weather was bad. So today I made sure I walked to the middle of the bridge. Glad I put my winter coat on: it was very windy, but at least not raining.

Here's the video of the Falls from the middle point of the Rainbow Bridge:

It took me about 7.5 hours to get to my NYC friend to park my car and catch up a little with her. She also treated me for a wonderful dinner.

Then I got to Manhattan and the Holiday Inn hotel that cost me $260/night. I was looking forward to just putting up my feet after a long drive, but the room’s bathroom was leaking water from the ceiling. It took the maintenance 45 min to verify that they couldn’t fix it in my presence, so I got a new room. Luckily my son, who was coming up to NYC for a couple of days, hadn’t arrived yet, so he'd be happy to see they gave us a better room for inconvenience.

I went out for a nightly walk around Manhattan. I love this city so much I could walk around it on my own, just strolling the streets and smiling at people! My son arrived around midnight and we both just crashed again.

Day 3, Wednesday: My son and I had a nice visit to Guggenheim where they had an Orphism exhibit from the early 1900s Paris artists. It was interesting only to the point when you get tired of so many Robert and Sonia Delaunays’. The impressionists’ permanent collection was great, and we both spent a little more time with several Marc Chagalls (one is here for the cover pic).

We then had a nice lunch together and my son put me on the LIRR to JFK. It took me about 30 minutes to get to the airport, too early for the flight. I spent time reading some stories here on Vocal (a lot to catch up with) and drafting a couple of stories. I must have angered some airline gods as they gave me the last seat on the plane, near the toilet. The odors gave me a headache but once we took off it was a little better.

I arrived in the morning on Thursday, into a warm embrace of my two cousins I hadn't seen since 2018 (damn the pandemic!). Then we had a great reunion with three families that live around Koblenz.

Today is Sunday and I am still horribly jet lagged (it's 2 am as I'm writing and 8 pm on Saturday back home) and I can't sleep. But spending time with all my relatives here is priceless.