Rock-in’ out

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Sara Lieberman

Whatdayaknow? I went to Brighton and it brighton-ed up my week. I was totally having one of those left-my-umbrella-on-the-tube, spent-three-hours-in-Apple, missed-my-yoga-class-by-10-minutes weeks. Oh, and it’s been raining and cloudy and cold. You know, it’s been London. (See? I’m totally starting to fit in now.)

I needed a pick-me-up. I needed some sunlight. I needed the sea.

Upon arriving in Brighton, I went straight for it. “You can’t miss it,” said Clare, as I left the flat early in the morning. She was right. You could see it from the station. Oh, how I love to be by the seaside! I practically skipped down to it. (Thankfully, the sun was on my side. Skies were blue and bountiful with white fluffy, but not gloomy, clouds.)

On my way, I stopped at this cute market of food stalls and picked up a Scotch quail egg breaded in apple and onions for breakie. There were other yummy delights, but I was saving room for my main sustenance: the salty air, the squawking seagulls and the glistening turquoise sea. Oh and how it delivered in satisfaction! I honestly couldn’t believe how beautiful and tranquil it was. THIS was so close to London?! Just an hour by train?!

As I approached the shore, I was also surprised by the “beach” itself. Rocks! Big ones, too. I think us New Yorkers don’t realize how spoiled we are to live by soft, sandy shores. (Say that five times fast!)

But I didn’t mind the rocks. Aside from the fact that it was still a bit chilly to take off my shoes and dig down deep as I love to do back home, I liked the sound of them: a click-clack-swish. The sound of Rock.

Little did I know the rest of the day, I’d hear more Rock. Not by the seaside, though. Rather inside many of Brighton’s “toilet venues,” a.k.a. dingy, but awesomely authentic houses of R&R.

It just so happened that it was the first day of The Great Escape, Europe’s largest independent music festival. Their SXSW, if you will.

I’ve written about my love of music, and I how I had planned to see several live shows while here in London. But what I loved most about this was how I didn’t plan any of it. That’s something I’m not used to. At all. Me and spontaneity? Yeah, not so much. But the more we get to know each other… the more I see the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Now, I will admit, it felt a little odd to be so clueless about what was going on around me — and there was A LOT going on around me. But it was also super fun to just pop into a venue, listen to a few songs, charge up my phone while having a lager shandy (that’s fizzy lemonade and lager, for those who don’t know — delish!) and then be on my merry way to another (free) gig.

Not all gigs were free, though. Actually, for most you needed a pre-paid wristband. But there were plenty smaller, alternative venues offering gratis shows. I think I saw about 5 in total, including one I’d actually seen before two years ago in New York: VV Brown, and another I know I’ll see again cause they were epically awesome: We Were Evergreen. I know it’s a band’s worst nightmare for people to say they “sound like someone else,” but I swear as I walked toward them playing outside at dusk, I thought they were Vampire Weekend. They’re catchy, instrumentally experimental and totally head-bop inducing. Sandweaver was another band I happened upon and immediately fell into. The lead singer was pregnant and sharp in sound and sassy in boddy with her burgeoning belly and feather earrings.

Preggers singer of Sandweaver = totally rock ‘n’ roll.

The crowds at The Mesmerist’s “Day Escape”

We Were Evergreen playing outside at fest headquarters but inside an airstream trailer.

After bouncing from one gig to another, back to the beach, and then back to another, I considered being as rock ‘n’ roll as one could be by booking a hostel and staying over in my same clothes, without even a contact lens case or a toothbrush. But I also didn’t have a wristband, and it was becoming clear that my access to some of the larger evening shows was about to become limited.

But wow! What a full day. A day of sunlight, the sea and the click-clack-swish of Rock.

Forward thinking

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Sara Lieberman

I am going backwards. My seat on the Eurostar is facing Paris, not London. I hate sitting backwards on a train. Aside from the fact that it makes me a bit queasy, there’s something metaphorically unsettling about it, too. It’s like I can’t move forward. And I need to be able to move forward.

It actually makes sense that I’m sitting this way today, though. Leaving Paris is hard. I’m feeling a bit like Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood: Someone’s taken a bite outta me, left a mark and now I’m conflicted about where to go and what to do next. Luckily, it wasn’t a bloodthirsty vampire (though, there was a lovely French man…) but rather Paris itself.

I travel a lot, but only a few cities have left such marks: There was Ubud in Bali, a small city in Indonesia surrounded by rice paddies and wide, dewy Banyan trees; Antigua, Guatemala, a colonial town with cobblestone streets and crayon-colored stucco buildings; and finally, Buenos Aires, a large cosmopolis steeped in history, yet gentrified in chic-ness by way of its Palermo parillas and milongas.

So what about these cities make them qualify to leave such a mark?

I recently professed my love for Paris in detail, but there is a more general reason, too: See, each of these cities provoked a sense of bewilderment upon first arriving; a Where-Do-I-Go?/How-Does-This-Work?/Oh-Look-At-That! sense of newness and innocence. Everything was just so… extraordinary: The way the alarms sounded on an ambulance roaring through the unfamiliar streets; the way the crosswalk signs lit up, the way the water ran from the faucet, the way the windows opened. But then, within days, each of these things suddenly became… ordinary. They lost the “extra.” Not in a bad way or else the mark wouldn’t be left. But rather in a way that was settling; that was comfortable. It’s because I had learned them. I now knew where to go, how to work things and have “looked at that” already. Suddenly it was no longer a fleeting place, but a place stopped in time. A place I could stay and call home. A place other people call home and think is no more “extra” than you think wherever you come from is.

Surely, any city can do this, and often does the longer one stays. But whether it leaves a mark is unique to the individual and what they experience, I suppose. Paris and Ubud and Antigua and BsAs. They’ve marked me. I suspect there will be others.

Remember a few weeks ago when I declared my I Am-ness? I said, I Am a Writer. That’s still true (and, in fact, even more so then when I first put it out there). But I am also a Wanderer. Sometimes I think I’m just not meant to stay in any one place. Yes, my “home” will always be New York because that’s what it says on my passport; that’s where my family lives and all my handbags and shoes and books are shmushed into a studio apartment in the West Village (and a storage space in Chelsea).

But I love showing up somewhere, delighting in its differences and foreign frivolity, then “fitting in” so easily that tourists start asking me for directions in their language and I sheepishly have to admit Je ne parle pas Francais. But oh, how good that feels!

Like Sookie who can’t choose between daylight and humans and night time and vamps, these cities present a conflict and beg the question that The Clash once asked: “Should I stay or should I go?”

If I stay, I can find a local wine bar like Gottino on Greenwich Avenue in NYC or a coffee shop like White Mulberries at St. Catherine Dock in London where they’ll know my name and drink of choice. I can find a Happy Place to sit and read my book like Jefferson Market Garden in NYC or Jardin Villemin in the 10th. I can allow myself to go on a bender and sleep the whole next day without feeling The FOMO like in, er, all of the above.

If I go, I get to roll around in the novelty of wherever I am again and again and again.

As I’m writing this, I’m looking outside the window at fields upon fields of bright yellow flowers. There’s so many of them. It’s like the field of poppies in Oz, but in my favorite bright, joyful color. I can’t help but think somewhere there’s a wizard waiting for me to arrive so he can declare, ‘Oh, you already have a brain and heart and courage!’

I want to tap the person next to me and say, ‘Look how pretty!’ But there is no one next to me. And so there’s the rub. That’s why I choose freedom and I choose to Go, rather than to Stay. There is no one to share that gasp of air with.

I know what you’re thinking: If I Stay (anywhere; somewhere), I’ll have a better chance of meeting someone to Go with. You could be right.

But then I’m waiting and hoping and wondering as I’ve been doing in NYC for so many years (ahem, still single), rather than looking and meeting and wandering along the way. To where, I do not know. It changes daily. But between the start of this blog post and the end, I switched seats to face forward. And that’s about all I can count on for sure.

J’adore Paris!

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Sara Lieberman

OK, I’m about to get all cliche up in here. But I really really really love Paris. Like, really. (Just in case you didn’t get that.) Since it’s 3:30a.m. and I’m tres exhausted, here’s un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq…. reasons why J’adore Paris.

Un: You can walk this town. All of it. Yes, you’d be tired and it may take you longer. But it’s feasible. You know how in a rearview car mirror it says, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”? Well, it’s sorta like that in Paris. You look at a map and think, “I have to walk to the 10th and the 7th by way of the 3rd? (I’m talking arrondissements, here.) But it just happens. Those little blue and white street signs suddenly change and you’ve made your way around the clock, you rockin’ robin you!

Deux: That said, the metro rocks. It’s not as clean as the tube, but it’s damn near as efficient. Trains run often and on time (stations even have the countdown timers telling you when one’s coming!) In just 20 minutes, I went from the Marais to the Eiffel Tower, which would be the equivalent to going from East London to Balham or the West Village to the UES, the latter two of which would take at least double that time. I also love that in one station there was a fruit stand (take that, er, Subway!) and in another there was what seemed like an art installation.

Trois: The Light. There’s the cliche. But it’s true. I get why it gets its nickname. And it’s not the artificial twinkling of that famous tower lit up at night; or the iconic red signs touting a tabac or brasserie, but it’s how the natural sunshine — or even lackthereof — hits a graffiti wall or a historic monument or a budding tree in such a way that makes the scene so unique, so stunning and so timeless.

Quatre: They smoke without abandon here. Don’t get me wrong: I am not a fan of The Smoking. But somehow, Parisians not only make it tolerable, but they also make it seem appealing. The way they light one cigarette before even finishing their last; the way they hold it so effortlessly between their pointer and middle finger, pursing their lips with such ease to inhale and then exhale, blowing the smoke away as if it were the most pleasurable bother in the world. Paris wouldn’t be Paris without fumeur.

Cinq: It can feel so foreign, and so familiar at the same time. One minute you’ll be walking around going, “This is not my city, not my language, not my clean air being polluted by cigarette smoke that manages to smell sexy” and then BOOM, you see something that reminds you of home and makes you go, “Oh wait, but it can be.” Case in point: This brasserie called Sarah Bernhardt brought me back to standing on top of the mustard-yellow carpeted steps of my grandparents’ house crying while my grandpa yelled, “Stop your whining! You know who you’re acting like? Sarah Bernhardt.” (I had no idea who that was, but I eventually found out he was calling me a drama queen.)

Who, me? Couldn’t be!

C’est finis. Bon soir!*

*There was no Google Translate used in the making of this blog. Holla high school French!

Scrambly legs

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Sara Lieberman

I learned the appropriate usage for a relatively rarely spoken word this weekend while attempting to climb Snowdonia, a mountain so fierce that the first hikers to master Everest hiked it during training:

Scrambly (adj): Irregular, haphazard. Aka, the presence of loose rocks, steep elevation and uneven terrain, which may cause one to quickly hustle using any means necessary.

i.e. “Oh, it’s not too bad, but there are a few scrambly bits.”

Until I came upon them, I didn’t really understand the severity of said scrambly bits; didn’t understand that I’d be on my hands and knees, holding onto sharp slabs of slate with mossy patches (slush on the side), wondering whether I’d ever see my friends and family again.

As I grit my teeth for photos, forcing a smile, all I could think was: “This is going to be the photo they print in the papers with the headline: AMERICAN GIRL QUITS JOB TO TRAVEL & WRITE, THEN BITES IT ON FIRST ADVENTURE.”

Before we even started, resting from the 1-mile huff from the car.

Dramatically morbid, I know. But for several parts of the ascent I was seriously scared. Going up was tough, but I knew going down would be worse. I’d inevitably be on my bum the entire time, causing a backlog of climbers to roll their eyes and laugh at the American chick who couldn’t stand upright lest her wobbly knees give out causing a domino effect of hikers to somersault down the summit. It didn’t help that the three friends I was climbing with had completed marathons and hiked other “scrambly” mountains before, including Ben Nevis in Scotland.

(From left) Me (holding on), Felicity, Sally and Rachel.

Rachel, the leader of the pack.

While I was fairly physically fit to partake in such a feat (“fairly” being the operative word here, since I’d been hanging out with Scotch eggs and Victoria sponge cakes for the past three months), it was the mental fear I was worried about, as this was the first time I ever attempted to scale a summit.

At least, I thought it was…?

See, I kept saying aloud, “I’ve never done anything like this before” as a sorta-disclaimer to my climbing partners lest they take it somewhat easy on me and understand my hesitation and anxiety. (They did, by the way. Amazingly.) But as I was making my way up the Miner’s Track – an 8.5 mile trail of varied terrain that our hostel owners said was “relatively easy” – I started to recall all the other feats I’d partaken in over the years, many of which caused a similar sense of fear.

It’s funny how you can forget something that seemed so traumatic at the time. Like when you stub your toe or walk into the edge of your bed and think to yourself, “Damn that’s going to leave a mark” and then days later you have no idea how that bruise got there.

But as we rounded the edges of the clear, mineral-filled green lakes at the start of the trail, I remembered climbing through King’s Canyon in the outback of Australia back in 2001. It was well over 110-degrees and the red rocks and boulders were smooth, leaving very little to grip onto. We had a limited (and unquenchingly warm) supply of water, which was only drinkable after adding lemon-powder supplements. And yet we managed to escape dehydration and scorpions, take a dip in natural swimming holes and even catch a glimpse of the “other,” more popular big rock – Uluru – as the sun set behind it.

Snowdonia lakes #Nofilter

As I ascended up the wide Welsh stone steps, I remembered having to get off my bike to push it up a New Jersey hill during the 50-mile MS bike ride that I decided to do on a whim two years ago, with little more than a Kind Bar in my basket. And yet I managed to make it through the Lincoln Tunnel and over the GW Bridge, all the way back to the finish line with enough time to have some stranger rub ice-y hot onto my thighs.

The only way is up…

As I peeled off layers, I recalled all the sweat dripping from my forehead while trekking through Cinque Terre in Italy this summer, the clear blue waters thousands of feet below the cliff to my left, crushed figs in the rocky ground at my feet, bits of stones slipping off the edge like checker pieces shuffling squares. Just as I thought the half-bottle of wine I had during my “rest stop” in Corniglia might cause me to check mate off the edge, I rounded the corner to see Vernazza, my destination. Upon reaching its shore, I immediately dropped trou and waded into the water for a dip more refreshing than the lemonia gelato I’d had the night before. (It was heaven in a cone, I tell you.)

As we descended the other side of Snowdonia on a slush-free, less steep trail (which we discovered thanks to my “being all American” and asking three older guys for a better option than the Death Descent of the trail we came up), I saw dozens of sheep, which reminded me of skydiving from 12,000-feet in New Zealand on that same backpacking trip in 2001. As the wind jellied my cheeks and I pulled for the ‘chute, I remained focused on the little white fluffy things dotting the rolling green pastures below, with the snowy tip of Franz Josef glacier in the background. All of that after hiking up said glacier, losing my grip and scraping my shin with the talons I was strapped into. (Still have the scar to prove it!)

Baaaaaah. Whatchoolookin’ at?

Miraculously, there were other outdoorsy feats, too. While they didn’t necessarily feature too much “scrambling,” as I huffed and puffed up this magic dragon of a mountain, the ways in which my senses were affected by these other natural wonders got me through:

The touch of cool mist from the waterfalls in Iguazu, Argentina…

The taste of actual Alaskan salmon, which had been caught just hours earlier by my brother…

The scent of sulfur up at the top of Volcano Pacaya in Guatemala…

The sound of Howler monkey’s in the trees from atop the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal in Mexico…

The sight of all those Joshua trees while driving through their namesake national park in Cali…

And so maybe I hadn’t reached a “summit” before, but I have peaked among nature and lived to tell the tale. Thankfully, having made it up and down alive, I’m now able to add this scary feat to the dare-if-you-will-again list of strenuous activities I will inevitably scramble to conquer and attempt to remember while doing so.

The four musketeers at Pen-Y-Gywrd pub where the Everest climbers came for a pint.

The four musketeers, post-climb, at Pen-Y-Gywrd pub where the Everest climbers came for a pint.

Live from New York and London…it's Ellie and Sara.

Category Archives: Travel

Rock-in’ out

Forward thinking

J’adore Paris!

Scrambly legs

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: