Home

We are home from Budapest.  We left a week ago, about two weeks before our scheduled departure, and, against a number of odds, we made it back in one day.  I just wanted everyone who has been following our travels to know.  Also I have several Budapest posts in draft, which I will finish up and publish.  (Because there's not going to be a lot interesting going on here.)  And if you don't like reading about the travails of travel, just skip the next part.

About three weeks ago, we started hearing news about the spread of the virus in Europe, the ban (except for American nationals) for inhabitants of the Schengen zone (a group of European countries that have open borders, Hungary being one of them) to enter the US, and the cut-back on flights from Europe to the US.  On Saturday 3/14, we read that Delta was soon suspending all flights from Europe to the US.  I tried to contact Delta--by phone, twitter, and the website--about changing our tickets.  The phone immediately put me on-hold, and I waited and waited until the call dropped.  No one answered my tweets until about 10 days later, and the modify reservation option on the website didn't work (still doesn't).  So when I read that American would be flying from Europe to the US until March 18 to help Americans get home, I made a reservation and figured I would deal with Delta when I got back to the US.

The day before we left Hungary put a ban all restaurants, etc, and closed its borders.  That night the man who was taking us to the airport the next morning called and asked if we still wanted a pickup because another US client had just gotten an email that his flight was cancelled. I frantically searched the internet but couldn't find anything.  I called and back said we would take the 5:00 am pickup.

We got just a few hours of sleep before getting up at 4:00 and starting our trek.  We got to Budapest, then to Heathrow, where we had a six hour layover.  While at Heathrow, we saw flight after flight being cancelled.  Nevertheless, we took off on time and arrived at O'Hare.  We had seen pictures of the massive crowds at ORD the days before and read tales of people being crammed up together and standing on line for 7+hours. We only had a 90 minute layover in Chicago that we were so sure we would not make that I had booked us a non-refundable room at the ORD airport.

When we arrived in Chicago there were virtually no lines at all.  We got through immigration, through the mandatory health check and temperature taking, collected our bags and delivered them to the transfer point, went through security, caught a bus to take us around the airport to another terminal, found our gate, and boarded our flight.  I was astonished; 90 minutes is a tight connection at the best of times.

So we are home.  We are in a loose quarantine for two weeks (stay home, but can go to grocery store, pharmacy of walk outside, which is pretty much what all of Louisville is doing right now.).  Like everyone else we are scared: how quickly everything changed, how dire the prospects are, how terrifying it is to have a president who doesn't believe in science.

We are also worried for our friends in Budapest and are wondering what we will find if we go back next year.

Delta for all its vaunted no worries about changing or cancelling flights, will only refund us the return trip in miles, which we must use before October.  Fat chance of that happening.  And I will probably have to swallow the nonrefundable hotel.  But we are SO lucky.  We are safe, we have a safe place to live, we are vigilant about our health, we wash our hands a lot.

Home: A Narrative of Retirement Blog Post

We got home two weeks ago today.  Being at home in retirement presents very different challenges than travelling in retirement.  I will return to this statement  later in the post.

Two weeks ago we flew back from Budapest.  We were--wait for it--exhausted.  We had to get up early, make two connections (in Munich and Washington).  Everything went fine til we got to Washington and had to wait about five hours for a late connection to Louisville.  For me, flying west is always harder than flying east.  Going east, you can arrive in the afternoon, take a nap, have dinner, stay up til a reasonable  time and reset your body schedule.  Flying west, it is daytime all along and when you finally get home you crash into bed and get uup way too early.  And alongside jet lag comes the whole kit and kaboodle involved in returning home.

My retirement year is divided into three parts.  One part is travel.  Last year it was Budapest and Spain; this year Budapest and we hope the Baltic states.  Travel is exhilirating, if exhausting, and there's not much question of how  to spend your days.  You're travelling!  The second  part is the lake.  No problems there either.  The days have a rhythm:  walk with Cindy and the dogs, swim once it gets warm enough, work on my book, read, spend  time with friends, etc.  But Louisville is still a problem.  I just don't know how to shape my days here.  I do walk  and spend  time  (coffee, lunch ) with friends (but not regularly).  I do read and I WILL resume work on my book.  But my life feels kind of shapeless.  For example, here are my first two weeks in Louisville.

Susan and I went for a "looking for signs of spring" nature  walk in Bernheim Forest, a beautiful arboretum outside Louisville.  We have had a fairly cold  March, so there were precious few harbingers of spring.  Some interesting items, like a tree fungus, water drops on a spider web, and some geese.

Still it was a lot of fun to go out with Susan on a nature walk.  

Tony and  I saw two movies, neither of which we liked.   The Shape of Water.  Yes, we hated  it.  Pretentious, slow, basically boring.  (We are obviously in the minority here, as it won  the Oscar for best picture.)  Then yesterday Red Sparrow, which we  knew wouldn't be good (reviews stank) but it was filmed entirely in Budapaest, so we thought it would be fun to see the city on the screen.  Looking out for places we recognized was the best (actually only good) part of the movie.  This is how stupid.  English speaking actors spoke English with Russian accents even when  speaking with each other (presumably in Russian).  Logically, they should have spoken Russian with subtitles or spoken regular English.  It made no sense (as did the plot as well).  Also the whole movie was shot in Budapest, even the parts that were meant to be in Russia.  So if you have ever been to Budapest and visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Hero Square (a very recognizable site) you will know  this is not the theater (it's not even a theater) for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow.  Similarly, if you have ever been inside the Budapest Opera House you will know you are not in Russia.

Okay, moving along.  Other notable highlights. 

We bought a new mattress.  

We finished watching A French Village, the 7 season French TV series about a fictional village in Vichy France between 1940 and 1945 (with glimpses into the further future).  By the way, this is a great series: morally complex in so many ways and utterly compelling.  

I reconnected via email with my college roommate with whom  I had lost touch many years ago.  Writing and back and forth to her has been one of the real pleasures of returning home.  

I read the last chapter of my last graduate student's dissertation and will in May hood my last doctoral student.  This is especialy bittersweet.  

The above paragraphs offer a list of things  I am doing. (And it doesn't even  include the vast amounts of time I spend reading magazines and  watching MSNBC)  But that list doesn't really cohere into  a  story--a narrative. In truth, I  still  haven't figured out how to be retired in Louisville.  That's not to say that  I don't like living in Louisville.  I enjoy our condo, the movies, going out to eat, seeing more of Susan and other friends.  But I don't wake up each day with any real sense of what I want to get done.  Louisville is still the filler between travelling and the lake.  

Still, the trees are starting to bud.  Spring is on its way.  We're having Passover with Doug and  Susan.   Next month Tony's sister Mags and her husband Ken are coming to Louisville.  Flowers will be blooming.  And we're only about two and a half months from leaving for Michigan!

#Home
#Louisville
#NarrativeofRetirement
#Retirement

In the Middle of Too Many Stories

Life seem very unsettled right now. We are in the middle (maybe nearing the end) of too many stories.

Number One of course is the election--about which I cannot stop obsessing. (MSNBC is always on somewhere in my house)  I know that story will soon be over, and if I could pray, I would pray for a happy ending. But even on Election Eve, it's clear that the story of discord, acrimony, and numbing gridlock will surely contine after tomorrow's finale.  I always thought that Nixon would be the worst president of my lifetime; I never imagined someone could be so much worse. But, really, who could have ever imagined Trump?

Second unfinished story is my damned hamstring.  Short version:  I hurt something in the back of my leg while we were moving.  It got much worse after 3 days in the car driving to the UP.  The doctor I consulted in Houghton thought it was piriformis syndrome and sent me to Physical Therapy.  I had a wonderful PT doctor, but the stretches she recommended hurt too much.  Eventually I could tolerate them but I just didn't get much better. I had an MRI of my lower back, but nothing showed up.  By the end of the summer, I couldn't walk up hills or sit for any length of time without pain.  (And really sitting is one of my most important positions; right now I am typing this standing up.)

As soon as I got home I went to my own wonderful doctor, Sal Ciliberti.  He immediately ordered an MRI of my hip and leg and set up an appointment with an orthopedist.  MRI shows I have hamstring tear,  So not piriformis, not lower back. I spent a whole summer trying to feel better, and now I realize I wasn't even in the right story.  So I am waiting to find out what's next.

I am also settling into a new home.  And although I am so happy to have all that downsizing, and renovating and selling the house behind me, I still don't feel quite settled yet.

The bottom line, is that I haven't yet found the rhythm of my day.  I had hoped to walk the loop in Cherokee Park in the mornings (but I can't walk up hills), work on my architecture book in the afternoon (but I can't sit for long period).  All this, plus my intravenous connection to political TV, has meant days that tend to drift rather than go somewhere.

This seems way too gloomy (and self-obsessed) for a blog post, but it is part of the reality of retirement--a stage of life in which there are, for good or ill, lengthy stretches of time which are primarily comprised of waiting.

But trying for optimism, eventually waiting will be over and then there will be Thanksgiving and Hamilton, Budapest and Prague (if the orthopedist gives good news), and progress on my book.  And in the meantime of course--friends, movies, dinners out and a new home to settle into.

We are Home!

We got home on Thursday about 3:30 and the first thing we did was go to the movies!  At 4:15 we were sitting in the Baxter getting ready to watch Trumbo. Besides our friends, can you guess what we missed most about Louisville?

Basically, we were too tired to do anything else, I guess, because the next day and today we pretty much slept and slowly unpacked.

But on Monday life begins: dentist and doctors appointments,  lunches with friends, hair-cut [!], dinners, parties, clearing out the house in the hopes that soon we will buy a condo and it will be on the market.  

It is nice to be home.

#Louisville

#home

Home

We left Budapest at 3:45 AM on Thursday April 30 and arrived in Louisville at 6:00 PM April 30. (Don't forget to factor in the six hour time difference.) In a word: exhausting.  Obviously I was being extremely optimistic when I said blogging would return over the weekend.

Everything went well on the trip back, re connections, etc. (Though getting a cab from the Louisville airport, usually a simple task, was wretched on the afternoon of the Thursday before Derby.) Note for the future:  a 6:10 AM flight is just too early.  Basically no sleep at all the night before.  Results: more jet-lagged than anticipated. Everything is harder as you get older; how nice to be retired!

We will be in Louisville for 3 weeks until we leave for the lake.  We are now proceding through a series of (regular) doctor, dentist, financial, etc. checkups, that should--we hope--get us through the next six months.  These, however, are far too boring to blog about.  So this blog will, for the next couple of weeks, be going back to Budapest--until we leave for the lake.

I am behind on blogging and behind on commenting to friends' blogs.  But I am back and look forward to being blog-active again!