Come Join Us for the Women in Travel Summit!
December 6, 2014 by Kristin Winet 2 Comments
What could possibly be better than spending a weekend in a gorgeous city with 300 smart, influential, incredible women? (I’ll wait while you think about it).
Probably not much. So, then, I’m super excited–and humbled, and nervous, and all the good stuff that comes with the anticipation of an upcoming trip–to announce that I’ve been invited to do a nonfiction writing workshop at the second annual Women in Travel Summit this year!
The summit will be held on March 27-29, 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts at the Revere Hotel Boston Common. Tix (which you can buy here) are $159 for bloggers/writers and $199 for general admission. Oh! And every attendee gets one of these beauties, too.
Filed Under: Women Writers Tagged With: Boston, culture, encounters, GoGirl, place-based writing, travel writing, WITS, women
Oh, Switzerland: A Night with Cheese Fondue
The first question that goes around the table as the seven of us sit down to eat is whether or not I am lactose-intolerant. This is a question that the Swiss always ask their foreign friends when they come to try fondue, they tell me, because we’re about to collectively consume and then digest two very large ceramic bowls of thick, creamy cheese and four loaves of freshly baked French bread. Basically, the question is a challenge: Can I handle it?
For someone like me, who probably could not live without her weekly dose of gooey four-cheese quesadillas back home in Tucson, I accept the challenge with pleasure. “Let’s do this,” I say, picking up my thin long-stemmed, two-prong fork.
My friend Valentine, who has generously welcomed us into her adorable downtown Neuchatel apartment, agrees. “Good,” she says, “because fondue doesn’t wait for anybody.”
Now, before we get started, I need to set the record straight: there is only one kind of Swiss cheese that actually has holes in it, and none of the cheese in the concoction in front of us has any. Most of the 450 kinds of cheese specialties here are decidedly hole-less, creamy-colored, and regional. In our pot tonight, my friends have mixed shredded piles of Gruyére, Emmental, and Fribourg cheeses, all white, pungent, hole-less cheeses from in and around the Neuchatel region where they live. (Neuchatel is about an hour from Geneva in the French-speaking part of Switzerland). To the cheese, they’ve added nearly a whole bottle of white wine, garlic, and cornstarch (which helps prevent separation).
As a culinary concept, fondue was first promoted as a Swiss national dish by the Swiss Cheese Union (yes, there really is an entire union devoted exclusively to Swiss cheese) in the 1930s and then popularized in North America in the 1960s. Since then, the notion of fondue has broadened to include plenty of other dishes in which a food is dipped into a communal pot of some kind of hot liquid. Two popular forms, my friends tell me, are, of course, chocolate fondue with fruit (which, by the way, sounds absolutely divine and which I will not leave Switzerland without trying) and fondue chinoise, which is essentially a nod to the Chinese hot pot, where eaters dip raw meat into hot bouillon broth, let it cook until the desired consistency is reached, and then pull it out and eat it with sauce.
We’re starting tonight, they tell me, with the original.
My friend Johanne, who I’ve known for ten years and with whom I’ve traveled now to four different countries—pours small glasses of black bergamot tea into several small tea cups and passes them around the table. “We normally like to eat our fondue with Earl Grey tea,” she says, “although we will have wine, too.” They have bought several bottles of local Swiss wine, something that—as I would learn—is very difficult to get abroad since most Swiss wine is not exported but typically only sold locally. The wine we’re having tonight is a dry, crisp sauvignon blanc, perfect for sipping with piping hot cheese and freshly baked bread from the market.
Jo’s friend Olivier, a French teacher who teaches recently arrived immigrants and refugees at the university, pipes up. “Not just tea and wine!” he says. “You forgot about the kirsch.” He passes me a shot glass filled with a clear liquid that smells distinctly like cherries and tells me to dunk an entire hunk of bread into the liquor, dip the dripping wet bread into the caquelon of steaming cheese, swirl it around, pull it out and place it back on my plate, let it cool for a few seconds, and then eat the entire thing in one bite. I’m wondering why anyone would want to dunk a soggy piece of liquor-drenched bread into this delicately prepared cheese, but, well, I’m here and this is what everyone is doing, so I go ahead and saturate the piece of bread on my fork into the liquor, swirl it around in the cheese, and stuff it in my mouth. It tastes, unsurprisingly, like I just dunked my meal into my beverage and ate the entire thing all at once.
It’s strong, cheese mixed with the scent of cherries and clear liquor, but I love it.
We spend the next hour and a half eating fondue and talking about politics, language, literature, history, architecture, and art—all of the topics I come to Europe to talk about and all of the topics I yearn for when I’m at home in a world where not all of these subjects are privileged, at least not in ways so effortless like this around the dinner table. While we’re sitting at the table and talking, a huge summer storm gathers outside in the streets. Rain starts pummeling the roof and blowing windy, rainy air through the open windows—and the warm tea and fondue become even more of a comfort food.
And even though I’ve never been here before, and even though I’ve never had fondue like this before, and even though I’ve never met five of the seven people sitting around the table, and even though I miss Ryan and our life together, I feel like I’ve come home.
Articles and photographs by Kristin Winet.
Filed Under: Europe, Travel Writing Tagged With: cooking, culture, encounters, Fondue, food, Neuchatel, Switzerland
June 18, 2013 by Kristin Winet 13 Comments
I’ve noticed that a lot of travel bloggers lately are writing and sharing posts specifically dedicated to “why they travel.” Check out any travel blog–you’ll see what I mean. Not surprisingly, a lot of them offer anecdotes of heartbreak, boredom, apathy, curiosity, and a desire to see the world (the usual suspects). And it makes sense–readers want to know how and why the people they read got into this whole messy business in the first place. And it certainly helps put many bloggers into context.
In these posts, though, there’s usually more than just a brief story about how they contracted the travel bug. These posts often follow up with a disclaimer about how they’ve been able to do it: some talk about jobs that allow them the freedom to travel, some admit a lack of interest in material possessions, some talk about how they sold their house, their car, cashed in their IRAs, and headed out unabashedly into the horizon, and some have a really big savings account from a well-paying job they no longer have. Many emphasize that anyone can travel if they want to, given a restructuring of priorities and an understanding that living or traveling abroad can be all the more cheaper than staying at home. There are stories of redemption, of change, of enlightenment, and of being an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. And I’m certainly not immune to this: I’m one of these travel bloggers, too! Even on my own About Me page, I made sure to make the important rhetorical move of alerting people that I don’t have a financial backer and I haven’t inherited a fortune, because of course I don’t want people to get the impression that I’m a privileged girl from the West.
Because, quite frankly, that’s exactly, 100%, without-a-doubt, what I am.
I was born straight into middle-class America to two incredibly loving and supportive parents who’ve never let me down and who’ve always made sure I had what I needed. I had a tough time finding my direction early in life, and I faltered a lot in college about what I wanted to do with my life. So, boyfriendless and armed with the luxurious college degree of Spanish literature (which was possible due to my first trip abroad, a fantastically liberating and inspiring summer session in Valencia, Spain, the trip to which I owe a lifetime of wanderlust), I decided to do what I’ve always had the privilege of doing: I went again the grain and moved myself to Colombia for a while. By that time in my young life, I had met so many other travelers, and not only ones from the United States–I met travelers from across the Americas, from Europe, from Africa, and from all over Asia. We were all–and still are–searching for something, for the kind of awareness that comes from a grappling with the self and the self’s cultural identity. (And I mention these places to suggest that my privilege is not uniquely American, but it is also not universal.) I made the decision–because I was able to make the decision–to devote my life to trying to make it as a writer, as a storyteller, and now, as an amateur photographer. And so far, it’s been no piece of cake, but I’ve got a lot of gumption and a lot of words up my sleeves. And I can’t wait to see where life takes me next.
I’ve met many people in my travels who respond to this decision in two ways. The first reaction is one of incredulity: “You get paid to travel?” (Um, not exactly, but that’s for another post). The second reaction, typically from those people whose reality is not one of leisure, they are often surprised and confused. For instance, I remember one moment in particular that has never left me: during an exercise at La Fundacion Esperanza in Cartagena, a place for teenage boys to come and learn life skills, a place where I was volunteering on Saturdays, we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted out of life. When we shared our pictures, many of the boys showed images of themselves as proud fathers surrounded by a wife and children and standing in front of a two-story house with a driveway. My picture, on the other hand, was a picture of me sitting at a desk, writing, with a bookshelf behind me, my name scrawled onto the spines of some of the books. When I shared mine, there could have been crickets echoing throughout the room. One boy raised his hand. “But what,” he asked me, “is the profession?” Another looked at me. “Don’t you have children?” At that ripe age of 22, I realized that my notion of being a writer–being a travel writer, at that–was absolutely impossible for anyone else in that room to understand. Where were the rest of the my dreams, the ones these boys had dreamt about every day since they decided to leave the slums and dedicate themselves to something better? I had left those dreams out of the picture, and I was suddenly very aware of this privilege. I could work at becoming anything I wanted, I really could; that is not everyone’s universal.
And that is exactly why I travel.
Lots of us also talk about a need for a “nomadic lifestyle.” What this means, usually, is a restlessness, an inability to stay put for any length of time. It evokes a kind of necessary “traveling ethos,” a reputation built not on sitting still and smelling the roses but rather a reputation built on ephemera, a fleeting moment, a kind of being identified through refusing any other identity. While this is a kind of willful nomadism, it doesn’t quite capture the word’s original intentions, which, according to Etymonline.com, are: from Latin Nomas (genitive Nomadis) “wandering groups in Arabia,” from Greek nomas (genitive nomados, plural nomades) “roaming, roving, wandering” (to find pastures for flocks or herds), related to nomos “pasture, pasturage, grazing,” literally “land allotted,” and to nemein “put to pasture,” originally “deal out,” from PIE root *nem- “to divide, distribute, allot.” The kind of wandering associated with the “nomadic lifestyle” promoted by many of us travel bloggers is quite different from the notion of communities who had no permanent housing and who moved with the flock. (Mind you, my very first travel blog was sponsored by the domain nomadlife.org – but what did I know then? And, actually, it’s kind of a beautiful and romantic notion, so….) I don’t disparage the notion of nomadism; in fact, it’s a very important of travel blogging and marketing. What I seem to take issue with, though, is the idea that this nomadism reflects the idea of a perfect global village, a harmonious place where the writer just flits around in, untethered, unmoored to anything or anyone. For many people around the globe, this is hardly the case.
Some people (myself included) like to allude to this definition in some ways, claiming that we appreciate the kind of “slow travel” associated with getting to know local people, engaging in sustainable practices, shopping and eating locally, avoiding tourist traps, refusing the negatively-connoted word of “tourist” at all. And yet, a lot of the travel I’ve done lately is basically the antithesis to this kind of “pasturing” or “grazing;” instead, I’ve been whirled around countries by local experts, furiously taking notes and coming home with a head basically whizzing with images, conversations, ideas, and questions. I’m expected to write about and hopefully convince others to engage in similar practices and follow similar itineraries. I’m encouraged to spread the word, to be a new kind of marketeer, to engage in a kind of travel that is intimately related to tourism. I’ve done this for three reasons: 1) because I’ve been invited and the costs have been graciously covered, 2) because I am building relationships with people and organizations in the industry 3) because I adore traveling. It’s in my blood, it’s who I’ve become, it’s what I dream about when I think about my future. (The whole house/kids/retirement narrative has never been the first thing that comes to my mind–instead, my dreams are of sailing in the Andamon Sea, meeting a camel in India, dancing tango in Argentina, having the chance to physically see the places that continually fascinate my imagination and play in my dreams. That kind of thing). And it’s not that I don’t want those other things (I do!), but for the people who have the privilege of choosing, some people are homebodies, and some, well, are not.
I am not one of the homebodies. While I love a night on the couch in Tucson with my fiance Ryan, a ball of crochet in one hand and a cup of green tea in the other, these nights provide the necessary diversion from that other life–the life of living out of a suitcase, of packing and unpacking, of living with my camera slung around my neck, eyes and ears perked for the beauty and intrigue of this world. This is why I worked and wrote blog articles for 3 years before receiving a single piece of monetary compensation for it (looking back, I might not have done that, but, well, such is life). I travel because, yes, I’m selfish, curious, able-bodied, and just so happen to be a liberated woman from a democratic society that doesn’t demand a whole lot from me. I travel because my fiancee doesn’t mind (though, of course, I’d like to make my solo travels a duo at some point here). I travel because I do believe–as naively as it might be–that my ability to move my feet, speak English, and have long and interesting conversations with other people has been my life’s ultimate and random gift from the universe. I travel because I ended up being exceptionally lucky and pretty good on my feet in unfamiliar places. I travel because the world’s economy is distorted, because technology allowed us to invent airplanes, and because I didn’t necessarily want what life initially expected of me. We should always remember that not everyone has the ability to, as Mark Twain so elegantly put it, “throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” But because I could sail away, I did just that, and I consider myself very fortunate.
I think that’s where this post is taking me–encouraging me to consider all the “why’s” behind why I travel. Of course, I travel for those other delicious reasons, too: the thrill of adrenaline in an airport, the body-numbing exhaustion after an unbelievable day, the taste of a new spice, the feeling of spilling a new word from a new language off the lips, the taking of unusual photographs, the meeting of new people, the questioning of my beliefs, the sharing of culture, the finding of a really awesome souvenir in a mom-and-pop shop, the smell of a food I’ve never tasted, the awkward moments that make me wonder how I ever got around anywhere, the joy, the fear, the uncertainty, the lust, the love, the hate, and the total and unforgettable engagement with this world we all inhabit. I travel because I have an adventurous spirit, am good-spirited, and whimsical. I’m spectacularly unable to sit still and I have a very short attention span. And I’m in love with interesting narratives.
Maybe that’s what this blog is all about–sharing this stuff while keeping aware of the other stuff, that important I’m-still-one-person-in-a-big-world stuff.
I’m not exactly sure yet.
This is why I am writing my own “why I travel” post.
Filed Under: RCTE, Uncategorized Tagged With: culture, place-based writing, travel writing, Travel Writing 2.0
Photo Essay: Colours of 1 Malaysia Festival
The Colours of 1 Malaysia festival, which was held on May 25th, 2013 at Dataran Mederka, Kuala Lumpur, is hard to describe in words. Founded in 1999 to reflect and celebrate the cultural, racial, sexual, and economic diversity of Malaysia, the event has become an enormous parade, complete with thousands of dancers, costumes, floats, props, and waving hand-clappers for the audience members. This year, I–along with the rest of the international group I’m traveling with–had the enormous honor of attending this event, and while I tend to fall asleep at most parades, I didn’t find myself fidgeting until the ninth segment about three hours in (which was, by the way, a segment highlighting Malaysia’s shopping–complete with dancers dressed as price tags waving signs with discount stickers on them). To their credit, though, I’d definitely never seen shopping done so artistically before.
So, to truly honor this bonanza of international proportions, I thought I’d let my photos do the work for me. Enjoy the colorful brightness that is Malaysia.
Filed Under: Asia, Photography, Uncategorized Tagged With: AEROMEET 2013, art, Colours of 1Malaysia, culture, Tourism Malaysia