vacation

Baltic Souvenir

Evelyn Herwitz · September 12, 2023 · 6 Comments

Last Wednesday, at midnight, Al and I returned from a two-and-a-half week trip to the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. I’m still processing all that we saw and heard and learned. It was a powerful journey that exceeded all our expectations. I planned a complex itinerary: fly to Helsinki, Finland, stay a couple of nights to recover from jet lag, then fly to Vilnius, explore for five days, go on to Riga for four days, then to Tallinn for another four days, catch the ferry back to Helsinki, and fly home the next day. And that is what we did.

We promised ourselves, in making this trip, to honor the memories of family who had perished in the Holocaust. Al was especially committed to commemorating his maternal grandmother’s brother, Avram Itzek, whom he believes was his namesake, and who chose not to leave his home town about an hour from Vilnius, in what is now Belarus, because it was where he felt he belonged. He was killed in the Holocaust. I hoped to uncover traces of my maternal grandfather’s Berlin cousins, who were deported to Riga in 1941 and perished there, though details of their fates are not known. We also hoped to learn more about the vibrant Jewish communities that once flourished in these countries and about what it meant to break free of the Soviet Union three decades ago—a historic moment made all the more poignant and relevant in light of the war in Ukraine.

Geopolitics made it impossible to visit Avram Itzek’s home town of Ashmyany—the day we landed in Helsinki, our embassy in Minsk told all Americans to leave Belarus because activity there by the Wagner Group, which has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, made it too dangerous. The day we landed in Vilnius, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane fell out of the sky, undoubtedly retribution by Putin for his short-lived revolt against the Russian military back in June.

So, even a trip to the border for a glimpse in Ashmyany’s direction was out of the question. But as Al read more of the family history he’d brought along, he realized that before his grandmother’s family moved to Ashmyany, they had lived in the small village of Dieveniškes, located in the far southeast corner of Lithuania. With help from a friend, we traveled there on our last day in the country and found the Jewish cemetery where Al’s ancestors were laid to rest.

In Riga, we took a Jewish heritage tour with a private guide, and at the Museum of the Riga Ghetto and Holocaust in Latvia stood a long Wall of Remembrance with thousands of names. On the wall for Jews deported from Berlin in 1941, I found the name of my maternal grandfather’s first cousin, though not her husband, young son, or mother, who had all come with her. The Museum’s executive director, who sat with me to take all the family information that I had about these lost relatives, gave me a much needed hug and promised to research archives to find out what became of them all.

Not everything on our travels was heavy. A few fun facts: People in this part of the world are TALL. I thought it was my imagination, or a stereotype, but it’s true. In fact, in our Air BnB flat in Riga, I at first wondered why the closet hooks and hanger rod were up so high—then I realized, for tall people it was just right, especially because their longer clothes need more room to hang. Also, although ice hockey is the national sport of Latvia, both Latvians and Lithuanians are crazy about basketball. That, and chess. Everywhere we went, we saw chessboards, in libraries, in courtyards, in parks. And, everywhere we went, the food was outstanding.

The Old Town in Tallinn was the most beautiful of the three we stayed in, one of the best preserved medieval towns in Europe, still with its walls in tact. Much work is ongoing to preserve and restore buildings, many of which, here as in Riga and Vilnius, were destroyed in wars. One of the buildings in Old Town is painted a sugary pink. It is surrounded by metal crowd-control fencing, which is covered with posters protesting the war in Ukraine, as well as occupied lands in Georgia. This is the Russian Embassy in Estonia.

Throughout our travels, we saw Ukrainian flags flying in solidarity, Ukrainian blue and gold everywhere—from the Town Hall in Vilnius on our first night, illuminated as a rippling blue and gold flag on the eve of Ukraine’s Day of Independence anniversary, to an exhibit of new Ukrainian medals for bravery in battle at a museum of knighthood in Tallinn. These Baltic states, all about thirty years old as independent democracies, understand what it means to be conquered by Russia. Stories, of exile to Siberia under Stalin, of authoritarian rule, of always being under surveillance by the KGB, have not faded. And history is tragically repeating in neighboring Ukraine.

Whenever I travel abroad, to countries with much longer histories than these United States, I am reminded that world dominance ebbs and flows like the oceans that separate our continents. Authoritarian forces threaten democracies around the world and here at home. If history is any guide, we cannot take our own democracy’s survival for granted. I came home convinced, more than ever, that we must do all we can, especially this year, to preserve and protect free and independent, inclusive elections, so that the fate of our nation rests in the hands of the many, not of the few who would remake it in their own image.

So, that is what I’ve been thinking about as we traveled through the Baltics, and what I continue to wrestle with now that we’re back home. It was a journey that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. Here are just a few images from our trip . . .

Helsinki, Finland

In and Around Vilnius, Lithuania

In and Around Riga, Latvia

Tallinn, Estonia

Ferry to Helsinki

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com. Please view Privacy Policy here.

A Big Apple Birthday

Evelyn Herwitz · April 25, 2023 · 4 Comments

Last Tuesday was my 69th birthday, so what better way to celebrate than to spend it in New York City, one of my favorite places in the world. I hadn’t been to New York since before the pandemic, which was rather stunning to realize as I planned our overnight jaunt. So, we made the most of it.

On Monday afternoon, we left our car in New Haven and took the train (seniors get a 50 percent discount—a definite advantage of aging) to Grand Central, then walked to our hotel, called (how could I resist?) The Evelyn, just north of Madison Square Park in so-called NoMad. Not only was the hotel’s name appealing, but also the decor—Art Deco and themed to nearby Tin Pan Alley, the birthplace of popular American music at the turn of the 20th century. The row of buildings on West 28th Street where songs like Give My Regards to Broadway by George M. Cohan and Take Me Out to the Ball Game by Albert Von Tilzer were composed and published have been preserved, although, true to New York’s evolving neighborhoods, they now house a group of wholesale hat and scarf importers.

On Monday night, we had dinner in the East Village at Caravan of Dreams, which serves creative and delicious vegan organic dishes, quite a treat. After a restful sleep, we spent much of Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art. There is currently a fantastic, curated retrospective of the museum’s collection, including works by German expressionists and some Bauhaus pieces that I wanted to see. But there is always so much to savor at MoMA, and it was great to be back.

We had lunch at the museum’s Terrace Cafe, and when I ordered a slice of chocolate cake with raspberry sauce (one of my favorite flavor combinations) to split with Al, he informed our waiter that it was my birthday. Soon the waiter returned with the cake and a candle and a song, and when he finished, the whole place applauded. I felt very celebrated and grateful. And the delicious cake was on the house.

All in all, a wonderful way to mark #69. Here are some photos of favorites. Enjoy.

“Storm Clouds Above Manhattan” by Louis Lozowick (1935)

“Modjesko, Soprano Singer” by Kees van Dongen (1908)

Decorative dividers, including Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass and woven hanging by Annie Albers

“Wind Tunnel Construction, Fort Peck Dam, Montana” by Margaret Bourke-White (1936)

“Broadway Boogie Woogie” by Piet Mondrian (1942-43)

Auf Wiedersehen

Evelyn Herwitz · March 28, 2023 · 8 Comments

And so, I made the trip to Germany. On my own, abroad, for the first time in my life. It was an extraordinary, transformative experience, not only for all that I saw and learned, and all the people I met along the way, but also for rediscovering that fearless explorer within, who has been hiding for decades since I first heard the word scleroderma.

As I’ve written here in recent months, the past couple of years with this disease have been more complicated. Finding myself suddenly short of breath when physically or emotionally stressed led to a battery of diagnostic exams, and ultimately a diagnosis of Type 2 Pulmonary Hypertension. Thanks to my wonderful cardiologist, I found a calcium channel blocker that works for me and mitigates the worst of the symptoms. I’ve also learned some new breathing techniques that help to avoid the problem when I start feeling stressed.

With all that, as I began to feel better again and moved past the worst of the pandemic, I felt a great need to get out—get out of my head, get out of my routine, and get out of the country to travel once more. I needed to prove to myself that I could do this on my own. Working on a novel about Germany during the Weimar Era and rise of the Third Reich, I had to see what I’d only been able to read about, and I needed to focus. I have family roots in Germany, as well. My mother and her parents immigrated to the U.S. in 1936 to escape the Nazis. So the visit was multi-layered.

As is always the case with travel, not everything went as planned. On both ends of my trip, I had to make last minute changes in my transatlantic flight—pushing back my departure from Boston by two days to avoid a Nor’easter that was threatening to wreak havoc with snow and high winds, and leaving a day early at the end when my flight home from Munich was cancelled due to a planned airport strike. (Yes, they plan strikes there, so you can work around it.) There were also two instances when the S-Bahn (commuter rail) in Berlin was running late or disfunctional, and I had to figure out how to grab a taxi to get to a tour on time. But it all worked out. And, to my amazement, I just rolled with it and problem-solved along the way.

For the most part, however, the trip was a wonderful journey, beginning with my seat mate on the way over, who was from Munich and gave me excellent suggestions for my two-night layover there. From Munich I flew to Berlin, where I stayed five nights in the very funky Hotel-Pension Funk, the former home of a silent film star that is decorated in period Art Nouveau style. I immersed in history, art, design, and architecture, including a visit to the Museum der Dinge (Museum of Things), where I learned about design standards as the country shifted from handcrafts to industrial manufacturing, and an outstanding private tour of sites and stories about Weimer Berlin. I also had dinner one evening with good friends and spent a day touring with them, as well.

From Berlin I traveled by train to Dessau, just under two hours southwest of Berlin, to stay at the Bauhaus, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Bauhaus School was in existence from 1919-1933, first in Weimar, then in Dessau, and finally for a brief period in Berlin before it closed under Nazi pressure. Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus melded art and technology to rethink how people could live and work humanely and cooperatively in post WWI society. I stayed two nights in what had been student housing, and toured the building as well as the outstanding Bauhaus Museum in the city.

From Dessau, I took a high speed train back to Munich, where I stayed at a small, very comfortable modern hotel in the Altstadt (Old City). My time in Munich at the beginning and end of the trip focused on why and how the Nazis formed there and gained power under Hitler. In both Berlin and Munich, I also visited concentration camp memorials—Sachsenhausen outside of Berlin and Dachau outside of Munich. Both tours were powerful experiences, sobering, profoundly thought-provoking. There is much dark history in Germany, but also a deep public reckoning with the past.

In Berlin, on Shabbat, I went to a synagogue that was a short walk from my hotel. The Pestalozzi synagogue was burned on November 9, 1938, on what has been called Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, but is now referred to in Germany as the Reichspogrom—a more accurate description of the two nights when Nazis directed the destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses in pogroms throughout the country. Pestalozzi was not totally destroyed (burning it risked a neighborhood that the Nazis wanted to save) and was restored and rededicated after the war in 1947. It is a beautiful building, and the service felt much like ours at home.

Later, I realized that I was the first member of my family to set foot in a Jewish house of worship in Berlin in a century. It was one of the most important moments of the trip. I am still processing all that I experienced, and will be for some time. I am glad to be home, but I was also sad to leave. Most of all, I’m grateful to my dear Al, our wonderful daughters, many friends, and my entire medical team, who fully supported me on this adventure, and for the fact that I was able to thrive on my own.

Here are just a few images from my travels.

Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, where I walked the grounds to stay awake after my transatlantic flight.

Hotel Laimer Hof, my accommodations in Munich at the beginning of the trip

The breakfast room at the Hotel-Pension Funk in Berlin

Dishes and utensils at the Museum der Dinge, which reminded me of my grandmother’s china and flatware

Starving Sachsenhausen prisoners drew this on the walls of the camp kitchen’s potato peeling cellar.

Berliner Ensemble, formerly the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, where Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera debuted.

Inside Friedrichstadtpassagen shopping center, former site of two famous clubs, the Weisse Maus and Cabaret of the Nameless

Theater des Westens. The basement housed the Tingel-Tangel Cabaret, which performed biting satire of the Nazis even for a few months after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933.

At the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, waiting for my train to Dessau

The Bauhaus in Dessau, view of the Studio Building where I stayed

Costumes for a Bauhaus dance performance, at the Bauhaus Museum in Dessau

Weaving at the Bauhaus Museum by Gunta Stöltz (1928), rewoven/restored by Katharina Jebson (2022)

Student notes from a Bauhaus class with Paul Klee, Bauhaus Museum

Bike rack on the high speed ICE train to Munich

The Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) in Munich

Memorial to prisoners at Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

By the Sea

Evelyn Herwitz · December 13, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Last Friday marked our 38th wedding anniversary, and instead of the usual dinner out (often a challenge around the holidays) or maybe a concert or a show, we decided to escape for the weekend. I love discovering new places to visit, and we both love the ocean, so this time we ventured to the Connecticut shore, to Niantic, a coastal village within the town of East Lyme.

There we discovered a lovely boardwalk (actually, it’s made of concrete) along the shoreline, a park on a bluff overlooking Niantic Bay, and some great restaurants. Niantic Bay links the Niantic River to Long Island Sound, which (I never realized) is an estuary, an essential ecosystem where fresh water mingles with salt water and tides, providing a significant habitat for a bounty of marine creatures and birds. Along the beach we found many scallop shells, native to the bay, and even some sea glass.

Our inn overlooked a marina, which was a plus for Al, who always loves to check out harbors when we’re by the sea. The view was particularly beautiful at night, under a huge full moon. And a big local attraction was the Book Barn, which houses thousands of used books in many, many nooks and crannies. In fact, when I read about Niantic while researching options, that store was the clincher for me. We spent several hours there browsing and, of course, left with more books to read. (Next time, we’ll remember to clear some shelves and bring books to sell to the store, another benefit.)

On Saturday night, we walked a few blocks from the inn to see the annual Niantic Light Parade, a hometown holiday festival of festooned fire engines, local dance troupes in twinkling costumes, the high school marching band, and more. Pure Americana. See the photo of Kermit the Frog, below, along with some other favorite views.

Here’s to more adventures with my dear Al, and many more happy anniversaries to come!

Reunion

Evelyn Herwitz · October 11, 2022 · 2 Comments

This past Saturday evening I found myself at an old-time, family-run Italian restaurant not far from where I grew up. Along with several dozen former high school classmates, we were celebrating that milestone event, our 50th reunion. But for the name tags with our senior class photos, most of us would never have recognized each other, now grayer, heavier or thin with wrinkles, stooped. Hellos were immediately followed by squinting at the name tags and an, “Oh, I remember you!” Or not.

None of my high school friends made it, unfortunately, but the evening was pleasant and the conversations up-beat. Everyone I sat with was wise enough to stay away from politics. It was a good reminder that, despite our national discourse feeling like a high school hellscape, most people are considerate adults. We all grew up a long time ago.

The real highlight of my short visit back home, however, was the ever-stunning beauty of the Hudson River Valley. Someone somewhere (I keep thinking it’s Edith Wharton, but can’t find the quote) said that the landscapes of our childhood remain deeply imprinted in our hearts and minds.

So it is for me, growing up near Peekskill, N.Y. I don’t know if I fully appreciated it when I was young, but I was thrilled by the view outside my room at the old motel where our grandparents used to stay when they’d come from Cincinnati to visit—a wide expanse of the Hudson, glittering in the late day sun. Trains that run alongside the river hooted long and low, and even though we lived far from the river itself, that sound was wonderfully evocative of my childhood, beloved music that drifted across hills and woods to my ears, especially at night, especially in summertime when the windows were open.

I sent a picture of the view to my daughters, and my eldest texted back that I should go to Bear Mountain, which had always been a favorite spot when we’d come down to New York for Thanksgiving weekend. On Sunday morning, I checked out of the motel and took her advice, as the state park was only a short drive across the river. The route along the Hudson is winding and narrow, along a rock cliff, and I am no fan of heights, but I just focused on the road ahead as I crossed the iconic Bear Mountain Bridge, with its fieldstone toll house, no longer in operation. It was either that or another fieldstone shelter at Bear Mountain that makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

Up the squiggly road to the overlook at the mountain’s top, I was followed by a couple of guys on motorcycles, but they were in no rush to overtake me on such a winding route with only large jagged rocks between us and the sharp dropoff. I passed a few intrepid cyclists on the way. At the top, the view did not disappoint, though enough other folks had decided to get there ahead of the weekend holiday crowd that there was no space to linger. I got a better view of the Hudson on my way back down, at a scenic overlook, alongside several tourists with real cameras equipped with telephoto lenses.

From Bear Mountain I drove through Peekskill, which, to my amazement, has barely changed since I was last there, at least 20 years ago. Some of the same mom and pop businesses still remain. The downtown, such as it is, remains dominated by red brick storefronts and the odd, curved, windowless, painted brick building that once housed Genung’s, the local department store where my mom bought me my first bra.

With a little help from my GPS to drive in the right direction out of town, I found my way to the familiar route to our old home. There were a few notable changes: the nunnery is now a condo complex; the community hospital where our mother was treated for the cancer that took her life in 1999 is now owned by New York Presbyterian Hospital.

I turned off the GPS and continued on, past houses that look much as they did when the school bus drove us by, past the decaying one room school house that’s now barely recognizable, past the gas station and general store where we’d walk sometimes to get Bazooka Bubblegum, past what was once a dude ranch for city folks that became a yeshivah while my dad was still living here, to the familiar left-hand turn onto our old road.

The house is barely visible now, hidden behind overgrown shrubbery, its yellow siding that my parents had installed decades ago now dark with mold. There were several cars in the drive and parked in the turnaround out front, so I quickly took a few photos, then drove down to the lake where I’d learned to swim and skate. It was clogged with algae and lily pads, no longer a place that anyone would dip a toe. Boaters were warned to proceed at their own risk. All that’s left of the large weeping willow that was planted when I was a kid is a ragged stump that looks like the remains of a lightening strike. There are weathered picnic tables and a playscape to one side, and the tennis court that used to be reserved for men only after they came home from their New York City train commutes, but the only signs of life, other than the aquatic, was a lot of Canada geese poop. Down the road from the path to the lake was a home with huge blue flags declaring the election victory of the former guy. It was time leave.

On my way out of town, I stopped at an roadside diner that used to be a favorite place for occasional dinners out. There are no longer any jukeboxes at the booths, and the restaurant has expanded well beyond its original blue diner car footprint, but the inside is authentic retro from back in the day, my hearty brunch was great, and it only cost twelve bucks.

Three-plus hours later, I walked in the door and found my husband decorating our pine-bough-covered sukkah, in preparation for the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Later that evening, after we’d finished eating out in the sukkah, I leaned back in my chair and studied the gourds that Al had hung from the lattice roof and smelled the pine boughs and was just grateful to be back home.

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