I love the tech-y stuff that allows me to write my words to you and then to pack my suitcase and take off for a few weeks. At the end of this month and the beginning of next, we’ll be traveling to Europe to visit Christmas markets in various cities. A couple of years before COVID, I was privileged to travel to Vienna in the weeks before Christmas, where I took part in a winter retreat led by Christine Valters-Paintner (abbeyofthearts.com), a retreat leader, Benedictine Oblate, and prolific poet and writer. There, I met other travelers from all over the United States who gathered to retreat together and to enjoy Vienna by day and night.
One of the best Christmas Markets in all of Europe – the taxi driver who had delivered me to the retreat house from the airport told me so – materialized in the square right outside the window of my room in an old monastery, whose monks now have day jobs and who returned to the retreat center every evening. Several new friends and I walked all over Vienna to see the other markets in our free time, and daily we walked a few blocks away to a cafe that had been frequented by Sigmund Freud before he and his family fled to London during World War II – we were told.
After dinner, I would walk from a restaurant where all retreat members had had dinner, back to the retreat center, and I’d go to my own room where I prepared for the night. As the darkness fell, the shutters of the portable stalls in the square below my windows opened to reveal hidden treasures – clothes, food, and drink – winter drinks. I’d hear the voices of the shop keepers and the folks who shopped for Christmas delights, and the sound of folks in revelry, enjoying the dark evening with the lights and music filling the night. The smell of alcohol rose from the street below and filled my room.
At ten o-clock PM, something happened. All at once, the street was silent. When I looked out the window, I saw the booths that had been alive with people and activity were shuttered, the street dark and quiet. “I’m definitely not in the U.S.,” I thought.
After I returned home from the retreat in Vienna, I told Jeff often about the beauty of the place. That telling ignited a longing in him, too, to see the Christmas markets in Europe. I expect that as you read this, he and I will be enjoying new friends, fellow travelers, as we visit several cities of Europe, as we see the Christmas Markets. This year, we’ll leave on the trip after Thanksgiving, so we’ve been preparing by making sure we have enough warm clothes for the chilly days and longer nights there. We’ve even packed wool hats and long underwear – a memorial to our days growing up in Wisconsin.
For us, the Christmas Markets, full of laughter and wonder and crowds enjoying the colder nights, will mark the holiday time this year.
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When I travel, as I prepare to travel, and when I return home and mention without thinking much about it where I’ve been, I remember. I remember the way I grew up, the life in my family. I remember that my mother and father wanted something more for me: “you will be a teacher,” my father said, more than once. I’m surprised by the life of privilege I have had, a life so distant from my people that they could not have envisioned it. “I have not forgotten you,” – I say to the ancestors. I remember where I come from. As I navigate the world – the world of privilege – I am always grateful, and I am astounded when I reflect on my life. The dreams of the ancestors come with me to these places, they walk with me, they see and they listen, they smell the fragrance of hot mulled cider drifting to my window.
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As I travel, I’ll be thinking of home, where the trees are preparing for winter, too. – Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/2024
