Five Favourite Places

Doing the Friday Five a bit late...

My five favourite places, in no particular order:

1) GilChrist Retreat Center, Three Rivers, MI
I have had several retreats here, and they have been healing and grace-filled. GilChrist is arranged like an ancient Celtic monastery, with retreat cabins (more comfortable than the monk's stone cells!) set around a meadow, with a stone chapel built into the hillside. Another meadow holds a labyrinth, with the main building, Windhill, overlooking it. There's a library, a meditation loft, and a light-filled chapel in Windhill. To one side of the Lea (the larger meadow with the chapel) there is a medicine wheel, and the Path of Many Faiths--mini-gardens reflecting many faiths: Christianity, Judaism, First Nations, Islam, Buddism, etc. In the summer, they keep an organic garden, and retreatants are welcome to help themselves from the garden.
Part of the value of GilChrist for me is this arrangement--I am alone, and yet not far from others; I can attend yoga or meditation sessions at Windhill or not; I can tramp over the trail to one of the other retreat centers nearby for Vespers or Matins, or not. I like to being my retreats there by walking the labyrinth; a meditative exercise that prepares me for the time apart from the world; and I close it by walking the labyrinth, in preparation for returning to the world and a farewell.  (All photos mine)

Jeremiah, my cabin for most of my retreats

Windhill

The labyrinth, with Windhill in the distance on the right.

2.) Munich, Germany
Pretty much the whole city! Like others of my favourite cities, it is on a river and that river remains a vital part of the city life. Samuel Johnson once said of London (another city centered on a river), "One who is tired of London is tired of life;" that is equally true of Munich. It's far more than the Hofbrauhous and the Glockenspiel at the City Hall. The architecture is beautiful--much of the Nazi-era stuff has been removed--and especially in the downtown pedestrian zone, the feel is almost medieval. Culture--the Deutches Museum collects all kinds of technology, from clocks to musical instruments to electrical stuff. There\s music to die for--the Bavarian State Opera and the Orchestra are world-class, there are concerts of medieval music in the medieval Altes Rathaus (Old City Hall), local bands in the bars in Schwabing (around the university), and--one of my favourite places in a favourite city--a biergarten with a jazz band, sited on the banks of the river Isar in a leafy suburb (but easy bicycling from where I lived). Don't even get me started on the food and beer...

3) Windsor, ON
Windsor often gets a bad rap--called the armpit of Ontario (from its location on a map of the province), and Detroit's Canadian suburb, it's much more than that. One of the first settlements in Upper Canada (so-called because it was up the St. Lawrence from the Atlantic) was Sandwich, which is now an area of Windsor. Sandwich was the British post during the Battle for Detroit of the War of 1812. During Prohibition, a lot of Canadian booze crossed to the US surreptitiously! And it was an easy trip to Chicago with that contraband, so Windsor/Detroit was the center of a lot of smuggling. Windsor was also the center of a lot of immigration, even at the turn of the last cnetury, before the growth of the car industry. The immigration continues today--we are the most diverse small city in Canada. I also look to the restaurants as an index of diversity, and Windsor has just about anything you could want. There's a whole street of Italian restaurants, and no shortage of Greek, Indian, Thai, Korean, Chinese, Lebanese, and Caribbean--even a Hungarian place and a Ukrainian restaurant as well, with a food festival (Carrousel of Nations) celebrating that diversity every year.  The city's festival plaza, down by the river (there's that river again!), has a festival every weekend from June through September. There are several farmer's markets, some gorgeous architecture, a company town in the Walkerville section (from Hiram Walker's distillery, see above for booze and prohibition). Art in the Park is a juried art show and sale on the grounds of Willistead Manor. And if you want big city stuff, Detroit is next door, with all kinds of shows and shopping and such.
But most of all, I like the ambiance of Windsor--small town enough that it is easy to make a lot of linkages and actually know city leaders, but large enough to have all those wonderful amenities (I haven't even mentioned the theatre scene, the music scene, or all the activities around the University, or the casino, or...). I think it is telling that many young people leave Windsor for Toronto or New York or Vancouver, but end up returning after a while, missing Windsor.

4) London, GB
Well, what's to say that hasn't been said before? Historic, vibrant, handsome, a living city. Would go there anytime for almost any reason!

5) Washington, DC
Again, very much a living city. once you get away from the tourist spots, although some of them are worthwhile in their own right, like the many museums of the Smithsonian, the Folger Shakespeare Library (which hosts plays of the period in their replica of the Globe, as well as a huge blowout party every April for the Bard's birthday), Kennedy Center, the monuments, etc. The architecture, again, is varied and interesting--just touring the churches of DC is facinating! There are so many parks and green spaces, not least Rock Creek Park, running down from Maryland into the heart of DC. Again, the river, and the history.

Looking at these as a whole, apart from GilChrist, of course, what draws me to these cities is not so much how much there is to do, but how the doing of things in each of those cities is tied up with wonderful memories. Bicycling to the Jazz Biergarten (as we called it; I have forgotten its real name), listening to great jazz, munching on wurstsalat and roast chicken, washing it down with a RadlerMass, laughter and conversation with friends under the blooming chestnut trees... Or having coffee in my favourite hipster cafe with a friend when two more friends happen by and we add chairs to the table... Sitting at dusk on a friend's porch in the heights above the National Zoo and hearing the wolves howling... Visiting the Deutches Museum with my mother the civil engineer and watching her fascination with the various displays... Taking a driving tour of DC in the spring to see the blooming azealas, cherry trees, magnolias and other beauties... Taking my son to the Air and Space Museum to see the Star Wars exhibit... Standing in front of the Rosetta Stone, peering into the British Museum Library, seeing the MS for Pride and Prejudice...

It is not the places themselves, really, but the experiences attached to and inseparable from them. I am sure there are others who find GilChrist pleasant but not exceptional. who have visited DC but have no desire to go back (as I feel about New York City), who would be just as glad to stay home as travel to Munich.   It is the memories and the experiences attached to them that make these places special to us.

Friday Five...places I've lived!

Funny Singing Owl should use this meme...I've had to think about all the places I've lived since I was 18 for some immigration paperwork. Let's just say 18 was a long time ago and in another galaxy far far away!

I didn't count them up, but there are probably 16 places I've lived in my life...some just across town from each other, and some moves were transAtlantic.

1. Charlottesville, VA

Military Guy and I lived in a teeny-tiny duplex half that looked like it had been built out of war surplus (World War II, that is...). No insulation in the walls, and even in Virginia, you need it! That was the year I got adult-sized footie PJs for Christmas... Charlottesville was just beginning its comeback then--the regentrification of the downtown, the rebuilding of stores and homes and movie theatres. We really only lived there for about 10 months, but it was a favourite place to revisit on weekends, once we moved to the big city, AKA...

2. Washington DC

I love, love, love DC. Yes, the crime rate is higher than it ought to be in the capitol city of the US, and yes, it's expensive, and absolutely it's a pain to drive it...but I love the sense of things happening, and the museums, and all the universities with all their plays and art shows and movie groups, and the vibrancy of Dupont Circle, and the parks, and.... We lived several places in the area--Northern Virginia twice, but mostly suburban Maryland (I prefer the latter). It's also where I went to seminary, as well as my OTHER graduate degree (in library science). My son was born here too, and many of my friends still live in the area. Of course, it's also where I was told I wasn't welcome in my denomination of origin, and many of my former friends (those who haven't spoken to me since I came out) also live here. So I love DC, but I'm not sure I'd want to live here again. But never say never! From DC, the military moved us to...

3. Munich, Germany

We lived in Munich twice. It is a lovely city, as close to a village as a big city can get--in terms of atmosphere and attitude. At least, that was how I felt the first time I lived there. It was still a wonderful place. Military Guy and I lived there for three years, back to DC, then back to Munich for two years, and we visited again several years later. I don't know. Maybe my memory had misted things, but Munich in the 80's seemed a quieter, gentler place. The architecture and food and friends and cultural events were still there; but something had changed. Maybe we had built it up too much in our minds; maybe the less-favourable exchange rate had something to do with it; maybe it was because we were older, or because we were parents with a toddler in tow. But somehow it wasn't as magical. Still a wonderful, wonderful place--highly recommended!

4. Baltimore, MD

Charm City! Man do I miss the seafood! Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are the real thing. Here in River City they try to give me crab legs from the Pacific...NOT the same! Those sweet meaty crabs, cracked on a picnic table in the back yard, washed down with a pale ale...Mmmm. Balto is a bit rough-and-tumble, but a neat place nonetheless. I'd live there again. Note: the original Washington Monument is in Baltimore. Oh, and they have the best baseball stadium in the US, right across the street from the best seafood restaurant in the world.

5. River City

But of course, there's no place like home! River City has so much to offer. I love it here. We get some abuse from the rest of Ontario (we are sometimes called the "armpit of Ontario," due to our image and geographical location), and we do seem to have a higher cancer rate, but overall, I wouldn't trade it. I like that I can be pretty sure of running into friends when I take a walk downtown; and that half the people I know are connected through family, or work, or school, or a sports team, or community work, or... The other day I met a friend for tea, and as we were getting ready to leave the cafe, two friends of ours showed up purely by chance--so we sat back down and talked for another hour! I just love that! And there's a ton of good music here, and the river, and Sister City is a nice view, and so many ethnic restaurants (what you want? Thai, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese--several varieties, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, BBQ.... I'm sure we have one, whatever it might be). Yeah, I'm a booster. Oh and did I mention the health care system? Of course, you'd get that anywhere in Canada, but still.

Five great places to live!