The Quiet Days of Christmas

Romanians know how to do it right. We celebrate three days for Easter and Christmas and about 6 of them for New Year’s. If it were up to us, we would spend 364 days in parties, drinking and carousing, and maybe one day in repentance. And no work at all. If it were up to us. 

I have now lived in America for 27 years, but in my heart, I celebrate every holiday with the same spirit I grew up celebrating. So, regardless of what the American tradition calls for, Christmas is 3 days in my world. And isn’t it better to be able to say that you get not one but three days of doing nothing?! 

I have always looked back to Christmases past when I have this “down time” and in some fashion I want to recreate, even if it’s just in my mind, the old days. Call it old-age melancholy, or missing those that are not around anymore, call it facing your mortality, whatever you want to call it, I have thought more about Christmases past, especially those we grew up in, my sister and I, than ever before this year. 

And our Christmases were so randomly different during my 23 years growing up in Romania, that there is so much remembrance to draw from. We were lucky (I felt lucky when other kids might have felt cursed) to spend Christmases with different families. My mom’s parents did Christmas one way, and my parents a different way, and our relatives in the mountains celebrated in such an essentially different way than us city people that it made you wonder if we were celebrating the same holiday at all. 

When we were little-little (think about before I went to school), we lived with mom’s parents. Grandma would take us to this park close to downtown to see the huge, 20+ ft wooden Santa put together by the city and surrounded by all sorts of kiddy rides. Nothing too dangerous because those machines would not be able to be erected just ad-hoc for a week or so around the holidays. They were small carousel-y type things. We were never allowed to be in the machines, as we could God forbid catch a cold. But it was good to walk in the cold of the evening (you had to go after nightfall, to see all the pretty lights glowing), and see all the people excited about their kids riding the rides, cheeks aflame with the winter chill. Then, we would go home and sometimes, would find our presents already under the tree, if this were Christmas Eve. In Romania we open the presents (and make the tree) on Christmas Eve. 

We would then sit down to have Christmas Eve dinner - a lesser affair than the Christmas Day meal the following day, but still loaded with plenty of delicious, traditional foods. On Christmas Day, the close family members who also included my parents at that time, would get together and eat. Outside us kids, I don’t remember gift exchanges between adults being a thing in my childhood at all. It was all about the food and being together under one roof. 

Christmas was a culmination of many weeks of work back then. For weeks before Christmas, all that people would talk about was where to get the best meat for sausages, the best flour for cozonac, the Romanian traditional holiday loaf, where to find the walnut for the loaf, where to buy a new table cloth or napkins. Back in Communist times, the stores were empty, and the main food groups (meat, flour, sugar, oil, even bread) were rationed, so people started stocking up early. That fever of preparedness was all part of “the season”, part of the tradition. 

Cooking for Christmas would start about a week before Christmas Eve, with grandma kneading and raising the dough for the cozonac. This was by far the most laborious affair of the event. She would make enough loaves to give to everyone in the family which always puzzled me because everyone I knew made their own. But she was ever so proud of hers. You can look this up - anyone who has ever attempted making this beast of a loaf would tell you that it is really hard to master and have it come out right. Whenever grandma failed (by her standards, because by mine, her cozonac was always the absolute best), she blamed the flour. Grandma would clear out a whole day to cook nothing but the cozonac. She would hardly feed us on cozonac day. We had to scramble up a meal on our own with leftovers we would find in the fridge, which was not much because the fridge had to be empty for the Christmas cooking to come. 

In the following days, she’d make all the other foods - the sarmale (cabbage and grape-leaf rolls), several kinds of roasted meats, appetizers of all sorts and of course, she would fry the pork sausages in the pan. One of the days before Christmas was also dedicated to a major house cleaning. That was the one day grandpa would ever get involved, because he had to take all the rugs out to shake them and “winterize” them, as grandma said - meaning rubbing them with fresh snow and ice to clean them out and give them a fresh look. This was back in the day when Romania actually did get white Decembers. Not anymore. 

On Christmas Day - we all got together, kids, parents and mom’s parents, to eat for most of the day. It was an all-day affair, we would get together at grandma’s house (where we  kids lived) and the parents would come from out of town (where they lived) in the morning. We’d set the table up and start the feast around 12 and eat on till the evening. My grandparents only had my parents to visit and then on the second and third day of Christmas my grandma would take us kids to see her sisters. Grandpa always stayed home. 

Later on, when I was in middle school now, we moved in with my parents who also had moved back in town. The rituals were very similar: dad was in charge of buying all the food and coming up with the drinks and also the presents. Again, I don’t remember much along the lines of an adult gift-giving tradition. Kids got presents but I can’t even remember if they were wrapped. 

I remember I was the first one in my family that came up with gifts for everyone for Christmas and I was in college and making my own money. I got one thing for each person and there was no such thing as gift wrap paper, so I wrapped the presents in newspaper. And there was no tape either, so you’d have to wrap them tight without it. But that was way later. 

My favorite part of my parents’ Christmas preparation was the sausage making night. This was about a week before Christmas, because you’d need time to leave the sausages hung outside in the cold air to dry them out before cooking them on Christmas. I always helped mom and dad, usually very late at night, after everyone else was in bed. After the parents had finished that day’s chores, they’d make the sausages: dad would grind up the meats and add the seasoning, mom would clean out the intestines for the casings, and I would help dad form the sausages - he used a manual-crank  meat grinder with the blade taken out to push the meat out into this funnel-shaped contraption that fitted the grinder and through which the intestines could be filled. My job was to twist the sausages at equal intervals, to make them all the same. It was a messy business and you smelled like pork fat and garlic for a week after that. But the best hand lotion I’ve ever used, too. Mom always wanted this to be the last chore of the day because it was so messy she had to spend several hours cleaning out the kitchen for the next day’s cooking. 

In the many days after this, both my parents spent hours on end in the kitchen cooking all sorts of goodies. While grandma’s cooking stuck to a few dishes that were traditional, my parents made a lot of “modern” dishes in addition to those passed on from their parents. Dad was the chef in charge of the menu list and the drinks and mom was the sous chef with us kids mostly helping and in charge of cleaning the house. We also made the tree every Christmas Eve. 

Dad and I both started Christmas prep the same way: with a list of what's on the menu. Here is the beginning of the last list he ever got to make (right) in early November 2022, as he was thinking ahead for the season. I can tell the signs of his stroke in his hand-writing. It is shaky. By the time he was done with it, closer to Christmas, it looked more like mine (left). Never-ending. 

But after the running around, preparations, cleaning, stocking up was over and Christmas Eve would ring midnight, an eerie, peaceful, almost ominous peace would envelop everything - the house, the world around us, everything ... It was time to enjoy everything we worked so hard for and let the miracle of the holiday leave us in wonder. 

Carolers came to the door on Christmas Eve and in the city, they would get money. 

Like everyone else, my parents also celebrated all three days of Christmas which were all mirror images of each other at different homes. On Christmas Eve we would have our first “preview” meal of Christmas. Then, on Christmas Day my mom’s mom and dad’s sister would come over and we’d all be together as a family. On the second day of Christmas, we’d go to dad’s parents’ house. My dad’s sister was sometimes there again too and we’d eat the same foods only cooked by dad’s mom. On the third day we would go to one of my aunt’s homes or to a friend of my parents’ house for a repeat of the same goodies. The get-togethers were always the same: a very elaborate sit-down brunch-lunch-dinner lasting most of the day, with many courses spread out over 5-7 hours. We sat around the table and talked about the events of the year, school, new jobs, other family members, and very rarely about politics. 

Back home, in-between the many feedings, my sister and I disappeared for hours into books. They were quiet and lazy days. Back then, most of the energy was spent figuring out where the next meal will come from and what it would be (the foods were always the same but we mixed them up during the three-day feasting season). Around Christmas, we had food for days, so no more need to cook; so, instead, we turned off and were couch potatoes. 

We had no fireplace, no yard, so we spent the time in our condos, being together, listening to stories, taking in teachings from those older than us ... It was the time to put on the brakes of a(n) (always) crazy, busy, insecure year and actually enjoy each other. 

It was Christmas in another dimension when we were much older (highschool and college for me) and we were old enough to go to the mountains by ourselves and live with our relatives there. Our mountain people have always had a family farm where everything you eat you grow, harvest and kill yourself. The oldest of their children, a boy, always went up the mountain and cut his own tree which is a totally different kind of tree than the one (still a natural one) that my family would buy in the city. The two don’t compare. They almost are not the same thing. We didn’t have lots of decorations in the mountains, like we did in the city, but I remember us putting pine cones and apples on the branches. 

They also killed their own pig - an event worthy of its own book. We helped with the “cleaning of the pig”, by singing off the hairs on the pig’s skin with the flame from a candle, and cutting it off the fat back with a super sharp knife, for fresh pork rinds which they would use to flavor all the foods at Christmas and beyond.

I remember how the whole Christmas pretty much revolved around this pig killing and prepping and making foods for Christmas (mostly smoked meats) from it. We ate every single thing from the animal, even the blood, and whatever we could not consume would go into the freezer for the rest of the year. The whole family was involved. The parents, the three kids, the grandparents, and my sister and I. Everything happened outside, in the yard, except for the actual cooking, in the mountain air which was always as cold as a mountain stream on ice. 

We spent most of the time during the day outside, in our winter coats, barely moving from too many layers, with the hands red and the skin chapped and bleeding from the wind burn and the coarse salts we used to prepare and cure the meat. 

Inside, the stove always had a roaring fire, ready for the mom, the grandma, and the daughter to start cooking some of the many dishes, all of them pork based. The dad and the boys were busy making the fire outside, in the smoker, where most of the cured meats would go for a couple of days. One of the two sons would take turns during the night to go out back and ensure the fire was not out in the smoker. 

The dishes we made were simple and not as numerous for the mountain Christmas - just some cozonac, sarmale, mamaliga (which is a type of Romanian polenta) and lots and lots of smoked meats - everything was fresh and so fatty! We would eat in the late morning for a couple of hours, on Christmas Day. Although we still had sit-down meals, they were not as lengthy as the ones in the city. In the mountains, you constantly had something to do, you could not linger about - mostly, many animals to feed, or wood to split for heating up every room and heating up the food. We did take naps sometimes, and when we were older we kids would go “in the village” to a club or someone’s house for a dance. 

On the second and third day of Christmas, my friends’ parents would load us all up in their SUV and we’d go deep in the woods, bracing the cold and the unplowed dirt roads to see my friend’s father’s family. They lived completely off the grid, in the middle of nowhere. One year, we got stuck in the snow on one of these roads, and one of the sons had to walk through the deep-deep snow to the next village several miles to ask for help. It took hours for a tow truck to appear (on the second day of Christmas when everyone is off!) and pull us from the snowy ditch. As we waited, it got dark and the sky was filled with stars. There was no light around us outside the moon. We started hearing wolves howling in the distance and just about wet ourselves! We had pictures in our head of how we’re going to surely die - either from frost bite, or eaten alive by wolves on the second day of Christmas! The stories are plenty and I hope to God they will make their way into a book one day, if not for anyone, they might be helpful or amusing for my nephews. They were good and real times. 

In addition to money, the mountain carolers got colaci (Romanian braided bagel-shaped pastries), apples and walnuts. To this day, there is no holiday for me if we don’t have some kind of fresh, hearty dough in the house, although I don’t bake myself. Everything was either home-made or hand-picked by all of us. The care, the attention, the ahead-of-time-ness made it so special for some much longer than just the one day. 

I truly believe this rushed, modern world we live in nowadays abbreviated the holiday to a one-day affair. The Christmas I remember and that I am stubborn enough to still celebrate deserves to be lingered upon ... 

If you've been paying attention, the one thing all of these traditions had in common was the food. When I came to America, everyone warned me about Thanksgiving having lots of foods. But to me, it was an embarrassment to call it “a lot of food”. Our feasts were, like a daily Thanksgiving times 3. And then multiply that by 3 days, not just one puny dinner! 

Today, when we don’t travel for Christmas, even if it’s just the two of us, I cook. A lot. I cook so much in fact, that I end up throwing some away at the end because it’s impossible to consume it, even in 3 days, being that it’s just the two of us for meals. Nowadays, I make some Romanian staples: sarmale, my husband makes the cozonac because I am not a baker, sausages, some sort of a ground meat product like meatballs or meatloaf, a couple of other appetizer dishes. Without these, I cannot say it’s Christmas. I also give a nod to my new adoptive country and I do incorporate some American foods, as well - like ham, mashed potatoes, something green (like collards or green beans) ... And we stock up on drinks! At my parents’ house, the drink of choice was wine during these times. Especially the one dad made himself, first on farms he worked on, then in his own house. In the mountains, the drinks revolved around moonshine - the cold asked for something to warm you up. If they had wine, it was always hot, boiled, with some sorts of herbs and woodsy berries in it.  

Nowadays, my husband and I do sit down for our Christmas meals (as opposed to eating in the living room on the couch)  during all the three days (because yes, we do celebrate three days of Christmas in my house), but we mostly graze ... We don’t have set hours for set meals, but we eat when we wake up and when we feel nibbly during the day. We open presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We talk to family online, because everyone is far away. We seldom get together with friends, because everyone is busy with their own families. 

Another thing that I relive this time of the year is the quiet around these days - just sitting around with absolutely no plans, other than letting your hard-labored-over goodies digest. It feels decadent and wasteful but so delicious, too! I know lots of people probably pity us for just “being alone” but I welcome it. Life is noisy. Worries abound. Work is busy. So much of life eats at our time, that this time of the year, staring down at days with no plans is a gift in itself.

Life, and especially our Western world, needs so much more quietness and reflection - and Christmas is a great excuse for this. We all become bears during this time of the year: gorge on food, then hibernate. 

Technology did help with the writing and the publishing of this piece, but outside of this, I am so glad we inject our lives with so much more human, touchable, organically real and un-messed with things - no AI and no apps needed to be in touch with your humanity and human-ness. 

These few days when we’re forced by the calendar to think differently are still so important to me, to pause, reflect, and enjoy the simple things that are never too far away: like feeling the raw meat of an animal that sacrificed for your nurturing  in your hands when you knead it into a meatloaf, like cleaning a raw shrimp, and spending many hours cleaning mushrooms under the cold running water, wondering what kind of muck those little hats had to push through to come to being, like waiting with bated breath for the oven to be done with its things only to be able to judge whether what comes of it is edible or just passable ... 

Around Christmas, I feel like I am consciously jumping off the mouse wheel and meaningfully taking a break. And my body feels better (albeit more sore and at times uncomfortably full, but decidedly more alive), and my mind thinks more clearly, and my thoughts are clearer and able to plan for what’s ahead - as far as we can see what is ahead. 

But the here and now, the proximity of each other and the real-ness of what’s on the table, the memories that I am still lucky to hold in my head quite vividly, this is what makes up the lazy days of Christmas for me and towards which my gratitude goes. 

Whether you celebrate the birth of Jesus, or the Rededication of the Sacred Temple, or renewal and rebirth, or ancestor remembrance, or just the end of a year ... I hope you take the time to reflect, turn inwards, find yourself truely, think back before you leap ahead. If you’re lucky like me, maybe you remember your childhood memories. And if you are really lucky, maybe you get to recreate them ... 

Happy Holidays, everyone! 

A Southern Journey

I knew I missed The South when we moved back a year or so ago, but I just didn’t know how much. Most days, I miss The West and I don’t even realize how lucky I am to be able to live back here. But there are weekend trips now and again that we take that remind me of precisely this blessing.

If this month would have a nickname, it would be “Food”. Seriously, all we did was spend exorbitant amounts of money on foods pretty much every other day. I am always of the belief that food is not only good or worth exploring only because you pay hundreds of dollars for a bit of it – on the contrary. The most delicious food, I think, is the most primitive, the simplest, cooked in small corners of the world, in the most unexpected, least equipped kitchens. We didn’t seek the extra expensive food. It kind of found us, through chance and some little planning. It is a big month of celebration for personal reasons for us, so I guess it kind of went with the times.

Food is a great excuse to travel. And although food takes us places, we never stop just at that. We try to take the entire place in and experience the most that it has to offer.

A Short Trip to Kinston, NC

First, we spent a day and a night in Kinston, NC. I wrote before that I love taking trips to places that people would ask “Why in the world would you go there?!” about. Kinston might be such a place. I am sure many people have never heard of it, even if they lived in North Carolina for a while. It is in the Eastern part of the state, where rivers run wide and the barbecue sauce has no tomato in it, like God intended!

Some of our friends put together a pilgrimage trip to the Chef and the Farmer restaurant which is featured on a PBS show of some fame, A Chef’s Life. The owner of the restaurant, Vivian Howard, is also the star of that show, giving people a peek into Southern cooking, Eastern Carolina style.

We first stopped at our hotel, a former bank nowadays called The O’Neil, across the street from the restaurant. The hotel is a turn of the (20^th) century former bank. The lobby has antique details, an amazingly ornate plaster ceiling, an enormous vault turned into a bar and luxurious seating behind former teller windows. The hotel only has seven rooms, and each room has a unique personality. We had another couple of friends staying at the hotel who were in a Chinese-motived room, while ours had an English hunting cottage feel.

The Farmers & Merchants Bank in Kinston, NC, now The O'Neil (hotel)

This is how you know this is a small town: we asked the front desk lady if it’s OK to park on the street, on the side of the hotel because we could see no signs for parking. She said, in the most endearing Southern drawl: “Oh, mah goodnesshyeah! You surely can park just about anywear … You see some signs in the street clearly sayin’ ‘No Parking’, but don’t pay them no mind!” She peeked through the window behind her desk and pointed at the cars parked across the street: “You see them cars over there? It saiz ‘No parking’ right there, but they’re parked right under the sign. No one will tow you. Kinston police don’t care. They have bigger fish to fry, I reckon!” – she ended with a shrug. We were wondering about them big fish and what they were. Hmm …

The lobby at The O'Neil - with the ornate plaster ceiling and the giant vault

The place was brimming with hospitality. The front desk lady was nice and helpful, and if you can tell from my retelling the parking story, very welcoming. The vault, like I mentioned, is turned into a giant beer and wine cooler, with a self-serve bar where they invite you to partake of snacks, cookies, fruit, water, beer, wine, or coffee at any hour of the day and night. The cleaning ladies wished us a good weekend when we left, and asked us how our stay had been as if we were old friends. The hotel, like the whole town, really, was quiet. We did feel like maybe we and our friends might have been the only guests that day.

To wait for the rest of our friends to get to town for our planned dinner, we went to Mother Earth Brewing – a brewery, as you might have guessed which was about a block and a half away from our hotel. You really cannot get lost in this downtown. Everything you need to see or do is right there, in a 200 yard square, just about. Some of our friends who had checked into the hotel earlier than us noticed that the lead singer in the band at the brewery was also the front desk person who welcomed them at The O’Neil earlier. It’s all in the family, you see.

After our refreshments at the brewery, we headed towards our destination – Chef and the Farmer.  We were seated in a private room, because of the size of our group – about 16. Between all of us we ordered just about every appetizer on the menu. Because of my weird diet, they had to mash two of their entrees into one – I got the grilled red snapper on top of the sweet potato skins and everything was delicious. The portion sizes were decent, unlike some of the really “fancy” restaurants that skimp on the quantity on the account of presentation and flavor. In this place, each dish had everything: presentation, flavor, uniqueness, and size to please you. The cocktails and the desserts were unique and delicious as well.

The red snapper and sweet potato skins with mushrooms at Chef and The Farmer

The following morning, we headed for brunch at Boiler Room Oyster Bar, a restaurant owned by the same people as Chef and the Farmer. Again – all in the family here. I guess this is not as famous as the fancy restaurant we had dinner in, nor nearly as expensive, but like I said before: it’s not all on the price tag. In fact, the lunch I had at The Boiler Room was in some ways more surprising and more delicious than Chef and the Farmer, especially in its simplicity. I believe half of our group had the butter bean burger, me included. Just as plain as simple as it sounds: a patty made of butter beans and I am not sure what else. But I am sure it had a mix of love, and mystery, a Southern blessing, and a splash of good luck to make it extra special. It was deep fried instead of grilled, and my goodness, was that the best veggie burger my mouth has ever tasted?! It was tasty and as soft as butter melting in your mouth. They did ensure me there won’t be any butter nor mayo, nor eggs, either, in it – and still, it was amazingly delicious: the right measure of savory, salty, crunchy, buttery, melty... You would think people went there for the oysters, but think again – like I said: about 8 people out of our 16 got that burger, vegetarians, vegans, and meat eaters alike and we all loved it.

I hope I’ll travel many a places in my life, but that butter bean burger, I tell you what – won’t leave my memory any time soon.

We strolled the city after our brunch and visited The CSS Neusse – a real-life replica of a Civil War boat -, the local coffee shop, and just walked the streets of downtown Kinston. It’s a sleepy town, with stores open but quiet, and not much foot traffic. One of our friends said “there is nothing in this town but drunk foodies.” We chuckled because we surely recognized all of us in that description.

The CSS Neusse
Click the picture to browse through the Kinston, NC album from this trip

 

Continuing the Journey Through Charleston, SC

Following our weekend in Kinston, NC, we had a weekend planned for Charleston, SC. Now, I won't repeat every truism that was ever said about Charleston. I am sure those of you who visited it know all about why it’s amazing, and those of you who have not have read about it too: the gem of The South, the beauty, the Civil War-era historic hub, the home of Rhett Butler, the “civilization gone with the wind” are just some of those things mentioned about it.  

I usually go to Charleston to slow down and sip the past just like you would a hot cup of mint tea. The aroma of the place seeps into your pores and takes over the body and the mind like a mist. There are many the things you can do in Charleston. So many, there is never a good plan for it, because there is no human way to pack everything there is to do in one weekend!

We settled for strolling Meeting and Market Streets downtown, and looking at the street artists in the City Market while hunting for pralines and a place to eat really good seafood. This was the first night.

The next day, because we had a whole day, we drove to Magnolia plantation, a place that has belonged to the same family since 1600’s (started with The Drayton Family). The plantation home has been rebuilt several times since the first foundation was laid down, and today it’s more like three or four houses and multiple additions put together rather than one cohesive building, although it surely does look like one. The grounds of the former plantation were the star of this show, however. After losing all the money they had in the Civil War, like most landowners in The South, the owner of the plantation decided to open the grounds as a garden, and they remain opened this way today.

The home at the Magnolia Plantation

What's a Southern home without a peacock on the front lawn?! 

The gardens are a scrapbook of forests, pastures, marshes, lakes, all along the Ashley River. They are only very subtly human-touched; they are mostly left to the devices of the subtropical Southern vegetation to shape it in the most wild fashion. The trails are graveled, but crooked and winding through overgrown areas. Azaleas, camelias and Spanish moss brush your face as you squeeze yourself through the many narrow pathways and trails. While admiring the beauty of the trees, bushes, and flowers (all in bloom, it seemed just for us, as this was April, one of the most flora-rich times of the year in The South), we were watchfully crossing bridges over ponds and estuaries of the Ashley river on the lookout for alligators. I was watching the trees for snakes, too, but I figured with that many vines, it would be impossible to tell which one was a snake and which was a vine. The alligators did not let themselves waited for for too long. They were shamelessly swimming around, undisturbed, it seemed, by the sizable crowds of visitors.

I love visiting old Southern homes, because you see America’s history rolling right in front of your very eyes in the stories they amount inside those walls, in the pictures, décor, books. All its glories, and shadows, all the ghosts, and belles of the past, all carefully and elegantly tucked inside the grand staircased foyers and plantation shutters …

Alligator at the Magnolia Plantation

For dinner, we found a treat of a place called Hanks, close to our hotel not far from The City Market. The food here was a little too overpriced for what it was, but the cocktail I had (it was a locally inspired one), called Colonial Daiquiri (rum based) was divine! I also loved their special salad which had the most enormous shrimp (sized more like lobster than shrimp), arugula, and roasted potatoes (I kid you not!) in a roasted tomatillo vinaigrette. Holy salad gods! I still don’t think it was worth the almost $20 it cost, but it was memorable. Maybe not quite as amazing as that butter bean burger in Kinston – but still something to definitely remember.

Walking the streets of Charleston is really my favorite thing to do down there: shooting the beautiful doorways, people watching around the Waterfront Park and the Pineapple Fountain, hearing the giggles of college girls taking selfies at The Rainbow Row, watching people line up for food at Blossom, Magnolia’s, or Hyman’s – all color the Charleston experience in its own unique way. This is a town encapsulating so much history within its brick walls and cobblestone streets like a snow globe: you shake it and another memory forms – all real, all old, and yet right in front of your eyes.

Charleston entry way

There is a smell about Charleston that stays with you: it’s a mix of sea and mold, a mixture of uncured antiques and jasmine or some other bloom.

The Pineapple Fountain at Waterfront Park

We picked funky-named places, with hippie or Southern names to have breakfast in both days we were there. We figured how could we go wrong with such choice deliberation?! On the first morning we were there, we went to Another Broken Egg (their crab cakes are so fresh you’d think they reached out into the waterfront for the crabs right then and there), and Page’s Okra Grill in Mount Pleasant, the second day. That place is a zoo. Not sure how the wait staff doesn’t turn postal on people – there is not one revolving door of many people queued up to get in but two of them – one through the front of the store and one through the back patio. With all this apparent commotion, the staff never misses a beat: good ol’ Southern hospitality is at home here. Their breakfast potatoes are to kill for!

Rainbow Row

The last day, we drove across the many bridges around Charleston in look for an islandscape we could shoot. We ended up on Sullivan’s Island for a short hike and a peek at the ocean. Again, we were mindful of alligators and snakes, but luckily found neither one that day. Crossing over the dunes onto the beach was like seeing one of those multi-commercialized prints all the hotels down the beach hang in their bedrooms: water brush swinging in the wind, sand blowing at an angle, with seagulls diving in the horizon, where it meets the water … Idyllic and peaceful comes to mind, if you think the beach is peaceful.

The beach at Sullivan's Island

While we chased all these treasures, and all the history and the tastes of The South, during both trips we got lost on ancient (for America) streets lined with magnolias, live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. There was not even a hint of a breeze in the branches. The trees and the houses with old fences and gates were silent, sleepy, immersed in a slumber of centuries. The thing I missed the most about The South is just The South … The old homes, with wrap-around porches and the big columns in front, the pineapple details on the front staircases, the narrow streets with even narrower, uneven sidewalks. The awkward, cluttered layout of an old city that ran out of room for new homes. The smell of mold and dampness, the humidity in the air that makes my hair feel like it was dipped in molasses. I missed all that, down to the sweaty skin I get when walking around the honey-like air … The buttery taste of food from people who know how to use butter and a fryer. I must have been born in The South at some point in the past. If not that, then I am not sure what ghost lives inside my chest, because for sure it does, as it always understands this song …

Whether food called us out to the road, or  whether we just found it looking for some other treasures is irrelevant. Dipping ourselves into the past and into our surrounds for a spell is always a treasure, no matter the pretense. This weekend, I found out that The South is still here and has waited for me, patiently, unchanged, for the nine years I have been gone. There is something to be said for timelessness and eternity – and The South surely knows a thing or three about those …  

  

Timeless Charleston, SC
Click the picture to browse the entire album from this trip

Finding Appalachia

If you drive North from where we are on I-77 and then some other such direction on another interstate or highway you find yourself crossing three states (North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia) and ending up in Ohio.

Athens, OH is an old college town, a hippy town, an artsy town, just to name a couple of things. All this, and much more I cannot even think to enumerate. Our friend who invited us up has referred to it as a town “nestled at the foot of Appalachia” for years now. I always found this space poetic, sort of unreal, like this might be a mythical place in a fictional book, but not in real life. But Appalachia is real.

I have heard before that this region is usually associated with extreme poverty, but also hardworking and resourceful people, outlaws as much as talented artists. I guess as a passer-by, it is hard to see all of these in just a couple of days. There is certainly a sense of poverty in the poor roads of West Virginia (which we crossed on our way up), and in the leaning, one-pump gas stations of West Virginia and Ohio. But Athens is an old Southern town (I know, Southern!), with lots of charm, and lots of personality.

Street art in Athens, OH

Ohio University sits at its center and it sort of defines its vibe: students, youth, quirky professors, bespectacled and rosy cheeked, mixing with students on a Friday night at the local pubs.

Ohio University campus entry

Our friends took us on a tour and we found some treasures, like fine local beers (pretty much anywhere – this town is made of beer, really), great, very diverse food (my favorites were Thai Paradise, as well as Salaam, both downtown), Artifacts Gallery is a quirky little gift store, where you can buy your patchouli incense, as well as your cheeky gifts for that crazy aunt who is a tad too hard to shop for, otherwise. The homemade chips and the blackening seasoning on the tilapia at Eclipse Company Store were out of this world! The setting of this place was amazing, as well – just an old, tall farmhouse turned into a brewpub, in the heart of an old neighborhood, with hiking trails and forests all around …

The blackened tilapia sandwich at Eclipse Company Store

We strolled the university grounds, and we visited some of the areas of the art and visual design schools. The staff at West End Cider House is bar none the best staff we have experienced in a while: they are friendly without being overbearing, knowledgeable, and very open-minded in trying mixed drinks their drunk customers want to experiment with but which are not on the menu. And drunk people (we) can come up with some cocktail doozies. Like Imperial Stout aged in whiskey barrels mixed with Grand Marnier, or Baileys. They did not even blink and made them for us. Or rather, provided the ingredients for us to mix.

The cucumber ale at West End Cider House is by far much more delicious than it sounds. Perfect for a hot summer evening! 

We were there during Ohio Brew Week, so every bar had a special beer menu to honor that. I have not seen this many craft beer options in my entire life: every bar had many (20 – 40 - 100 - lost count) options for craft beers, and most of them were different from one bar to another. I left thinking that for sure this town is made of beer. Do you remember that song that goes something like this: “And the little streams of alcohol/ Come a-trickling down the rocks.../ And a lake of stew/ And of whiskey, too/ You can paddle all around in a big canoe ...” - well, you might as well paraphrase that song and make it about Athens, OH: “And the little streams of beer/ Come a-trickling down the rocks/ And a lake of stew/ And of beer, too/ You can paddle all around in a big canoe ... ...”. I believe that original song might have been written somewhere in or about the Appalachia, too.

Reminder on our friend's refrigerator

The bars we hopped had pretty much everything else (wine, liquor, cider), but everyone seemed to be enjoying the beer: the festival and the sweltering, humid summer weather probably called for this.

If you want to experience a hippy vibe in one place, have breakfast or lunch at Village Bakery. Our friend kept telling us this is “quintessential Athens”. They lost our order, and after waiting for more than hour and finally asking about it, they admitted to that and started from scratch without much blinking, really … Easy going, and unfrilled is how I would describe that experience. There was no point letting your blood pressure raise at that moment. The kids took care of it in their due time. Like many other mountain towns, time is trickling here, and not flowing nor rushing like in the big cities.

Local woodworking and homemade goods for sale at Village Bakery

We visited the Kennedy Museum of Art which is housed in a former lunatic asylum. I am sure this is not PC anymore, but this is what they told us in there. Today's museum is not very good, but the grounds are beautiful, albeit haunting. I wished they would have done something with just sharing the grounds, the history of the place itself, the stories, the history of medicine through a place like that with the visitors. But maybe some other day …

The Kennedy Museum of Art

Athens is a happening city which comes alive at night. Even during the day, the pubs are not empty. The town is small and comfortable, with one way streets, brick roads, and historic buildings bordering the sidewalks. The mountains are right there, behind every hotel, home, store … you can almost touch them.

Old wooden floors and brick walls that could tell a story, in a beer store in Athens, OH

I would love to go back in the fall when hopefully the heat might let up and I could take in some trails for a hike or twelve. The leaves would be gorgeous, I bet.

If I were to pick just one word to describe Athens, it would be artistic. The craft beer, and craft pretty much anything, the banjo playing, the homemade brewing, the people experimenting with canning and commercializing little known fruits, like paw-paw, the art school, the old buildings left untouched, the old brick walls and streets tell an artful story of pure Americana. I think in the middle of all this I might have found that that mythical Appalachia is alive, well, and surprisingly real, after all.

More street art in Athens, OH. Click the image to see the full album from this trip.