Dani dropped onto a black couch while I walked to the desk.
The woman behind the counter typed into her computer. A moment later, she had found our reservation.
“Tomorrow.”
I sighed.
“Yes. We’re here a day early, but do you have room tonight?”…
Category Archives: Themes
Closing Time
The museum attendant picked up the phone and dialed the restaurant.
He handed it to me.
I listened for a moment, then explained where we were and asked about dinner.
“Reservations for two. Six o’clock. Okay. See you soon.”
When I hung up, I handed the phone back and reached for my wallet.…
Milk Money
I walked through León, looking for the tallest thing in town.
The cathedral rose above the buildings. It pulled inside.
Yellow walls. White trim. Marble statues stood against the pillars. High above, the ceiling curved into murals and domes.
I walked through the pews and down the nave.…
Ninety Days
A few weeks after classes began, our student advisor led us on foot through downtown Heredia.
We stopped outside a photography studio.
“What are we doing here?”
“New portraits. For your student visas.”
I thought about the stacks of paperwork I had already brought with me.…
Cotton Gloves
We sat in the waiting room with our bags between our feet. Rows of yellow seats were bolted to the floor, facing a giant window that looked straight toward the mountain.
From here, the five peaks of Huashan looked like a lotus flower.…
The Warriors
The government bus left Xi’an behind and wandered through apartment blocks and warehouses before stopping in a parking lot lined with shuttered souvenir stalls and women selling cups of pomegranate juice.
I looked at my wife.
“This can’t be it.”
The other passengers stepped off, turned right, and disappeared into a line of shrubs.…
The Internship
The hiring manager took me for an extended interview over burgers and beers.
The bar had televisions on every wall. A game was on. He hadn’t looked at it once.
“I know your type,” he said after a long pause. Then, “What’s your grade point anyway?…
The Booklet
I arrived at the Vatican before it opened.
The line for Saint Peter’s already wrapped around the square, so I skipped it and went straight for the Vatican Museum.
Somewhere between the marble statues and ceiling frescoes, I stopped looking carefully.…
The Quietest Room in the Castle
The line for tickets began at the bottom of Wawel Hill. Tourists wrapped around a kiosk halfway up the slope, waiting beneath the castle walls.
Dani looked uphill.
“Let’s keep going. There’s probably another.”
So, we kept walking.
She was right.…
Ready to Go
After four buses and a taxi, the driver let us out on the side of a mountain road and pointed uphill.
The air felt cooler here than it had in San José.
The road was rough and patched, edged with grass and fences.…
Another Bowl
Dani stopped outside a candy shop.
Wooden barrels filled the store from floor to ceiling. Each overflowed with brightly wrapped sweets in every color imaginable. Along one wall, glossy candied ducks stretched across souvenir boxes like oversized gummy bears.
We grabbed a plastic bag.…
Payday
The caller ID looked familiar. The man on the other side offered me a job. I’d been unemployed for months.
“Sixteen dollars an hour. Out-of-town work. Electrical. Ten hours a day, seven days a week, for six weeks.”
“You interested?”
I did the math.…
The Wrong Way to Qutb
Qutb Minar lay only a few kilometers away. We’d decided to walk.
Rickshaws continued pulling alongside us every few hundred meters, each insisting they would take us there for free. By now we understood enough about India to know that nothing was free.…
The Coronation
Eighteen months later, Dani found it—buried in the lower floors of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. Russia of all places.
The museum stretched endlessly, room after room of imperial accumulation, but the basements held the strangest pieces.
Serbian coffins carved from logs, still smelling of resin.…
Seventeen
I booked the hotel because it was within walking distance of the Louvre. It was raining on the walk over, but the clouds were just breaking as I opened the glass doors.
“Oui?”
The receptionist looked up from her desk as I walked across the marble floor, leaving a trail wet footprints behind me.…
Track 7B
Dani’s eyes flicked across the board.
A single train to Mainz was listed for the rest of the day.
It left in four minutes.
“Track two.”
The shock lasted about a second.
Then we ran.
Bags bounced against our sides. The kids’ backpacks shifted on our shoulders.…
From the Balcony
The crowd thickened as showtime approached.
We’d claimed a spot on the lawn early, but each new arrival stole another inch of our view until all we could see were the backs of winter coats.
Dani looked around.
“The Restaurant. There.”…
Thirty-three
In my hand I held a wadded ball of socks. It was the size of a softball—almost as dense.
Across it in black marker, I’d written a name.
BIG BERTHA
Beneath the words, thirty-two tally marks disappeared into the fabric.
~
For a week our campus had belonged to Humans vs.…
Blue Stained-glass
A family friend once told me about a church in Mainz with blue stained-glass windows so strange they frightened her son.
I’d been looking for them ever since we’d landed.
~
Mainz cathedral looked like several buildings pressed into one. Romanesque walls rose beside Gothic ribs and later Baroque additions.…
That’s the King
“The king could spy on his guests through the eyes of portraits,” our guide said.
I stepped closer to the painting.
Tiny holes pierced the canvas where the pupils should have been.
Davis leaned toward me and whispered.
“That’s creepy.”
Our guide continued.…
A more Convincing Picture
The minibus dropped us at Catherine Palace. It stretched away in both directions.
Three stories of blue, white, and gold.
A line ran along the side of it.
We joined the end.
~
Snow blew down from the roofline.
The schoolchildren built a snowman in the grass.…
Twenty-seven Minutes
We were standing atop the Bell Tower—Xi’an unfolding in the distance.
Above us, the sun hung higher than expected.
Dani checked the time and gasped.
“Our train leaves in twenty-seven minutes!”
~
Five minutes later, Dani was waiting in the hotel lobby while I ran upstairs to grab our bags.…
Mainz Will Be Kinder
The hotel sat a mile away, but the distance felt longer.
Our duffel, overstuffed with both backpacks and extra gear, balanced precariously on the stroller frame. The weight bowed the frame. The wheels squeaked. We stopped at nearly every curb to readjust it.…
The Dragon Kept Turning
Through the windshield, Xi’an’s Bell Tower rose ahead of us, illuminated against the night.
Horns and engines competed in the streets below as drivers fought through traffic.
Months of planning had gone into this trip. Weeks of adventure lay ahead.
Yet it wasn’t the Bell Tower I found myself looking at.…
No Sleeper Tonight
Our sleeper train to Budapest left Munich at midnight.
We’d arrived at the train station well before and waited at the tracks.
An hour passed. The train never came. The tracks stayed empty.
We kept waiting, and a half hour later, our train disappeared from the station’s departures board.…