3/27 Bucharest Airport 11 am. One hour to departure. Romanian customs just confiscated a beautiful bottle of slivovitz (plum brandy) I’d picked up for a friend back home. Insisted it exceeded allowable limit by a few ml. They threw it in the trash! I suspect somebody(s) in Bucharest got a treat that evening. Grey skies.ContinueContinue reading “Lyndie’s Journal, Part 13: Homecoming”
Category Archives: Cities
Lyndie’s Journal, Part 3: In Budapest
Our hotel room is modern and very comfortable, adapters for devices, lots of towels! As with so many large chain hotels, it features lots of wasted space and not much personality. And it most surely beats sleeping on a bench in the park. (Spoken as one grateful for plain creature comforts!) Source: P. Wittkopp OnContinueContinue reading “Lyndie’s Journal, Part 3: In Budapest”
Lyndie’s Journal, Part 2: Pushers and Helpers
Before I forget, a couple of memorable airport wheelchair “pushers”: One a 30-ish very chatty, very friendly man from Thailand, who cheerfully proclaimed all the possibilities of fraternal love between strangers in airports and in the street and between nations. No more wars! He kept it up quite tirelessly, clear to the other side (itContinueContinue reading “Lyndie’s Journal, Part 2: Pushers and Helpers”
Lyndie’s Journal, Part 1: Departure and Arrival
March 17, 2025 Budapest HungaryA day of wonders, preceded by the usual long night of flight, cramped like pretzels, (with pleasant seatmates) across half a planet in basic economy class, and a tiny, magical airplane inching across the screen in front of me, to encourage and tantalize … Ah , we’ve floated past Iceland! TheContinueContinue reading “Lyndie’s Journal, Part 1: Departure and Arrival”
Lyndie in Budapest: A Glorious Awakening
As an American abroad, she had worried about finding hostility. But she was “warmed, blessed” by her encounters.
8. Troubled Vision, Past and Future
“Guess what?” Lyndie wrote in an email on January 28, barely six weeks before her departure on the Danube cruise. “I have macular degeneration now, like a regular old person!! … Trying not to get depressed. Love, Outrageous Average Older Woman #7659496854602” Macular degeneration is one of the main causes of vision loss in older people.ContinueContinue reading “8. Troubled Vision, Past and Future”
6. The Tenement Year
A few years later, newly married to her high school sweetheart and with an infant in tow, Lyndie took off on her next great road trip. They were “escaping” from Stanford University, where her husband had learned that college was not for him, and from what she calls an “over-controlling family.” Carroll (“Cal”) Duff wasContinueContinue reading “6. The Tenement Year”
5. Skylights and Bombs, Nudes and Murders
Bit by bit, in emails, Lyndie shares fragments of the “every-which-way jumble of recollection” that suddenly floods in unbidden, “in full Technicolor,” after I have asked about something else. “Do you know I can draw or describe every detail of the rental house on 26th St. we lived in till 1945? The upstairs bath had green walls,ContinueContinue reading “5. Skylights and Bombs, Nudes and Murders”