It is the fifth day on the road, and my energy is depleted!  We had a wonderful and filled couple of days in Amsterdam, and two days full of just travel, lugging our stuff around.  Now we are here, have gotten some groceries and odds and ends for the apartment, and I am taking this afternoon to rest a bit.  Writing is restful, so I am curled up on the sofa in the center with the laptop.

The Big Things . . . 

Much of travel seems to be about scale. The Big things force their way to your attention when you travel. The size of the airport, the number of people in line to get on with you, the monitor showing the speed, altitude, distance covered, the map showing the plane’s progress: all of these are about Big things—numbers, size, distance, speed.  Either you look at it and think about it and are amazed at the scale.  Or you look at it, try to ignore the fact that you are seven miles above the North Atlantic speeding along at 600 mph, thousands of miles from where you started, with several hundred people in a steel tube.  Either way, in a while, you become oblivious to it, though.  The mind can take only so much Big.

When you arrive in a city, like Amsterdam, you get a map and try to figure out distances, and end up again having Big thrust upon you: the size of hotels, public buildings and monuments, museums and galleries, open public plazas.  These things demand attention, and like all Big things, they eventually can tend to make you feel small.  Or unimportant.  “Big affairs of state, here,” or “Many people to move, here, you are just one, just a number,” or “Get in line, form a cue; you will be processed when it is your turn.”  Processed like cheese, I suppose.

. . . and the small things!

It is the small things that I notice and am most affected by in traveling.  Both for pleasure and irritation.  The daily things taken for granted, that suddenly you can’t take for granted anymore.  The light switch to the bathroom located outside the bathroom itself.  The water faucet, not with Hot & Cold, but with Temperature & Force—unmarked, of course, so when you try to use it it takes a while to figure out what is going on.  And then you must resist the temptation that comes naturally when you stagger out of bed in the morning half-awake and try to get a shower.  The food that is not quite what you think it is: a slice of “sandwich bread” in Austria is just a little bit larger than a playing card.  Prices marked in Euros with a comma for a decimal, as in 13,99 instead of 13.99.  You look and wonder if your eyes are slightly unfocused, probably because the shower was a struggle and you maybe you are not really awake.  And then you translate the 13,99 into $14, think “This is a good deal!” only to remember that the exchange rate is such that 13,99 is really $18.16.  (And no, I cannot do that math in my head, I just looked it up on my computer—and it was more than I thought it was when I bought it this morning!)

Small things: Different sounds in the night.  Different electric plugs (and a real scarcity of them).  We live upstairs here, so there is always a long climb up and down.  And no car, so walking everywhere.  And remembering at the grocery that you must carry everything back, so we go every couple of days and get a few things rather than once a week.  Having yogurt and granola for breakfast instead of cereal, or eggs.  Water is not freely available everywhere.  The nine hour time difference between Austria and the Pacific coast.  Sleeping in a different bed.

But not everything is an irritation.  There are many wonderful little things.

Looking out the window and seeing red tiled roofs on white or yellow walled buildings, with green trees and the Alps above the buildings.  Having a wonderful cup of coffee or hot chocolate and a roll or bread pretzel with salt.  Stiegel beer.  The old cobbled stone street and walkways, and much of the city off limits to cars.  Having a relaxing afternoon with my (sore) feet up on the couch and some birds singing outside the window.