If I had more time, I could travel by boat, which would solve my problem. You can bring an almost endless number of cases onboard, making you look like you just stepped out of a Fred Astaire movie as you fidget on the buffet line. In fact, Cunard offers a White Star shipping service that will fly your luggage from home to the ship—as many pieces as you like!—so long as they will fit in your stateroom. Appealing as this notion may be, it is alas of limited usefulness: I usually have to be somewhere in eight hours, not eight days. And anyway, wouldn’t I be consumed with worry that my cases, torn from my hands and flying on their own to some distant dock, would lose their way?
Annoyed friends and colleagues, stuck waiting for me on the other side of security, have gently suggested I modify my personal style just a little. But despite the inconvenience, I stick to my guns (perhaps not the most felicitous turn of phrase when it comes to air travel). And just when I think I am the only lonely pilgrim dolled up in layers of tulle while my fellow travelers cavort happily in Juicy Couture, another underappreciated, overdressed stalwart will sail into view. En route to the Life Ball, in Vienna, one year, I spied the fabulously louche New York nightlife legend Amanda Lepore, poured into a curvaceous satin frock and teetering on vertiginous stilettos while twirling an enormous hatbox. And what a delightful sight she was! Though she was channeling Jayne Mansfield and my costume was closer to Minnie Mouse, we shared a complicit glance—sisters under the skin. If you listened closely over the din of the loudspeakers, you could almost hear the spirit of Mrs. Cardeza, resplendent in a lace-trimmed tea gown, cheering us on.
PETER JON LINDBERG
Summerland
FROM Travel + Leisure
THE PIPER CUB buzzes back into view, flying just 200 feet over the waves, its red-lettered banner unfurled behind. All afternoon it’s been crisscrossing the cloudless sky. Every day, the same plane, same offer: KEN’S MAINE CLAMBAKE—$19.95. When I first started coming here, the price was $8.99. Back then I could read it without my glasses.
Each time the plane passes, the kids on the beach look up from their pails and shovels and cheer. (Today, our friends’ son Silas is building a sand replica of Fenway Park.) Soon there will be Popsicles, a game of foursquare. And later, as the tide comes in, we’ll round up our blankets and shuffle over the dunes to the house, to start the evening ritual: fixing Maine Route 1 cocktails, shucking corn, steaming lobsters, plucking basil from the window box, making sea-urchin pasta. After dinner we’ll have a round of Bananagrams while the Sox game plays on AM radio. If it’s chilly there might be a fire—though we’re as likely to doze off before 10, sun-drenched and surf-pummeled as we are. In the morning the gurgle of coffee will coax us from bed at dawn, and the whole routine will begin again.
I’m not sure how it started, and I can’t say when it might end, but we’ve been making this trip together for more than a decade, my wife, Nilou, and I and this group of friends. It’s become, unexpectedly yet unchangingly, What We Do. Every August, we stuff our cars with iceboxes and inflatable rafts, sharp knives and good wine, and point our caravan northward for the annual migration to Pine Point.
There may be prettier beaches, with quainter towns beyond, some on this very Maine coast. Yet this is the one I daydream about, through drizzly Aprils and slate-gray Decembers. I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen this place, given my pick of a thousand others, but years ago this place chose me, and it’s lured me back every summer since, so I guess it’s settled. We’re together for the foreseeable future.
My friend Mark and I have known Pine Point since we were teenagers; his parents, the McAdams, own a summer cottage just upshore from our rental. It was my idea to bring the group. Until their first visit in 2001, Nilou and the rest had never been north of Boston—couldn’t crack a lobster, couldn’t name a single Red Sox. In the years since they’ve become localized, loyalized: converts to the cult of Maine.
Constancy is the most underrated of virtues, in people but also in places. You can revisit London or Tokyo every six months and find an entirely new city in place of the one you remembered, such that even your 18th trip feels like a first date. Returning to Pine Point, we find everything as we left it—as if we’d merely stepped out for a Dr Pepper in the middle of a game of paddleball, then returned, 358 days later, to resume it.
Set on a peninsula south of Portland, Pine Point is a cluster of rustic cottages and slightly grander Victorians set along a series of cul-de-sacs jutting off the main road toward the sea. At the end of each cul-de-sac is a sandy footpath that cuts through a deep ribbon of dune grass that hums with dragonflies and ripples in the breeze. And at the end of the path, where the tallgrass falls away, lies a seven-mile crescent of flat, smooth, sand-colored sand.
Our first walk of the season down that path—a barefoot trudge weighed down by sloshing coolers and salt-scarred beach chairs—may be the happiest moment of my year. That it requires a bit of effort and patience only adds to the drama. The tallgrass feels like some magical green barrier that must be breached, while the slight incline of the dune means you can hear and smell the ocean before you actually see it.
The house we rent isn’t much to look at from the outside, and entirely too much to look at on the inside, what with the owners’ ever-expanding collection of beach kitsch. But it’s our place, and through the years that’s come to mean a lot. Were I a first-time renter arriving today, I might take issue with the abundance of crab figurines, the rather lumpy beds, the rusty taps and hinges on the outdoor shower. But the shower itself? No marble-clad bathroom could compete.
Our routine is quite simple: Swim. Nap. Eat. Rinse. Repeat. The start of the week is customarily filled with discussions of all the activities we might finally get to this year: a sailboat charter in Kennebunkport; a hike up Mount Agamenticus; perhaps a jaunt up to Rockland—but really, who are we kidding? We’re not going to do any of it. And when the end of the week comes, we won’t regret a thing.
Instead we find more modest diversions. Long beach-blanket grocery lists are made, elaborate meal plans hatched. There is the occasional detour to Portland’s Standard Baking Co. for their unspeakably good brioche. At some point we’ll paddle kayaks into the nearby Scarborough Marsh, slipping through reed-walled channels while herons and ibis eye us from the banks. And should we ever tire of the quiet—or crave penny candy—we can always ride down shore to Old Orchard Beach.
On summer weekends, when 100,000 revelers descend on the place, Old Orchard officially becomes the largest community in Maine. It is also, semiofficially, the tackiest place in all of New England: a honky-tonk playground of flip-flop shops, fried-dough stands, temporary-tattoo parlors, and carnival rides that makes Ocean City, Maryland, look like the Henley Royal Regatta. Needless to say, we love it. The Grand Trunk Railroad used to run here direct from Montreal, and Old Orchard remains catnip for vacationing Québecois. The fried-dough stands also sell poutine; signs at the amusement park are in English and French. This provides a semblance of cultural displacement: batting cages become cages des frappeurs; Jet Skis become scooters des mers; while Skee-Ball becomes, charmingly, le skee-ball.
As a younger man I was flummoxed by people who returned to the same place every year. What were they afraid of? Didn’t they know there was more to see? Travel, I insisted, was about the unfamiliar, the undiscovered, the passport full of stamps. I still believe that last part, if less adamantly now. What I’ve awoken to since is the soul-affirming joy of returning. Going back, it turns out, does not mean retreat. A ritual is not a rut.
I’ve also learned the difference between traveling and vacationing, two words that are often used interchangeably but mean different things. A vacation typically involves travel, but travel is not always a vacation. Sometimes it’s quite the opposite—fraught with uncertainty over where to go, where to stay, what to see. Vacations are a respite from all that. For us, Maine is sweet relief.
Over time, and through the McAdams, we’ve come to know our neighbors. Each morning the resi
dents of Pine Point gather on the otherwise empty beach, with their dogs and their coffee mugs, to discuss last night’s humidity or Ellsbury’s stand-up triple. Although we’re still technically “from away”—I suppose you could call us one fifty-second local—they welcome us into their klatches, in part because we, too, are holding ceramic coffee mugs. We’ve also become enthusiastic patrons of the neighbors’ kids’ lemonade stand, a smart little dune-side palapa that they’ve festooned with homemade thatch. And we are on a first-name basis—we don’t know their last names—with the staff at Bayley’s Lobster Pound, where we have a standing order each evening for a half dozen females.
Now and then we’ll spot the shambling figure we call the Clam Man, a grumbly chap with a spongy beard, leering fish eyes, a coral-like complexion, and the bearing of an insane Poseidon. He appears only at low tide, loping down the beach with a bucketful of just-harvested surf clams, their long oily tongues protruding from shells the size of Nerf footballs. The local children watch him from a distance. I spoke to him once—he answered in French, then grumbled off down the beach.
And so it goes, the same characters making their exits and entrances, the scenery and plotline seldom changing. Nilou once likened our Maine trips to rereading a favorite novel: she already knows how it will end, but getting there is still as satisfying, if not more so, since she’s always picking up new shades and nuances along the way. (The Clam Man is Québecois!) And, as with a cherished book, there’s no risk of disappointment—unless it rains all week, which some years it has. In that case we play a lot more Bananagrams.
Of course, things do change in Pine Point. Against a familiar backdrop one notices all sorts of quotidian adjustments, like when the snack bar gets a new sign, or the pier is painted a slightly deeper green, or coconut water makes its debut at the local grocery. These subtle shifts of the light keep us on our sandy toes, while reminding us how lucky we are to have found a place that’s stayed, in most respects, pretty much the same. Our friend Michael put it best last summer: “There are few things you can rely on in this world, and thank God Maine is one of them.” Every visit is a sort of homecoming.
Anyway. I’m off to pack the cooler. Maybe I’ll see you on the beach.
BERND BRUNNER
The Wild Dogs of Istanbul
FROM The Smart Set
NO, YOU’D RATHER not cuddle with them. They seem a little too unpredictable and unkempt for that. And it’s not tempting to project human characteristics on them either. But it is easy to feel sorry for some of them, who bear traces of injuries, disease, and accidents. Most resemble one another: large, with a light brown, sometimes darker coat. Some have short legs paired with unusually large bodies. Despite their scars, the wild dogs of Istanbul seem self-sufficient and untroubled, as if no one could mean them any harm. You can find them everywhere: between parked cars or, early in the morning, under the chairs in front of the Starbucks on Taksim Square. Often they just lie there and doze. Are they recovering from last night’s activities? Most people don’t seem bothered by them, but it’s obvious that some, a little uncertain, take pains to avoid them. But they are not to be made fun of because of that.
The dogs’ presence in this metropolis is not entirely without problems. Some of the animals are said to be so smart they understand traffic lights, but more often they cross streets in front of terrified drivers, keep residents awake with their barking, or even attack someone. In fact, I have myself observed an incident in my neighborhood, Tarlabaş1, where a young man was literally chased by two dogs. He fell to the ground and dragged himself into a barbershop. It was painful to watch, but it all happened so quickly that one couldn’t really intervene; besides, how would one disperse the dogs without any adequate stick or tool? I don’t know what exactly preceded the incident, why the dogs had attacked the man in the first place. These attacks, however, happen far less often than one might expect, considering the dogs’ constant presence. No reliable count exists, but according to estimates, the dogs number about a hundred thousand. When you come to Istanbul, you will see that this doesn’t sound like an exaggeration.
The dogs’ position is a strange one: they are used to having people around, and even depend on them, but they don’t live directly together with humans. Behavioral scientist Konrad Lorenz, who once wrote about Istanbul’s stray dogs, observed that they carefully avoid loose small hens and newborn sheep—a lesson they learned in order to survive. Instead, they feed themselves in two ways. First, residents in the poorer sections of the city often put their trash bags out in front of their houses, where dogs and cats plunder them before trash trucks cart off the remaining piles in the early morning. But more and more metal trash cans are popping up, and their content is inaccessible, at least for dogs. Second, many people follow a custom (unfamiliar to Western observers) of more or less adopting a dog and regularly feeding it, without bringing it into their homes. Some people even make beds out of cardboard that become a dog’s regular spot in front of the house. Animals in these relationships are not full-fledged pets, but they are not complete strays either. In any case, their uncommitted “owners” never take them for walks. This reluctance to take in the animals can’t really be due to the size of the apartments; in a society where the single lifestyle is practically unknown, almost all residences are designed for families, and rarely measure less than 80 square meters. So what is the reason?
In Turkey, relationships to dogs are complex. In his novel My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk enters the mind of a dog and asks himself about the origins of mankind’s enmity:
Why do you believe that those who touch us spoil their ablutions? If your caftan brushes against our damp fur, why do you insist on washing that caftan seven times like a frenzied woman? Only tinsmiths could be responsible for the slander that a pot licked by a dog must be thrown away or retinned. Or perhaps, yes, cats . . .
Although there is no clear basis for this belief in the Quran, strict Muslims consider dogs—especially their drool—to be unclean. People don’t let the animals into their homes because they could dirty the prayer rug and because, even today, little tradition exists of keeping dogs as pets. Furthermore, a common belief holds that köpekler, as dogs are called, prevent angels from visiting. Not all Turks share these views. In parts of Istanbul influenced by the West, all sorts of purebred dogs can be found, including traditional fighting breeds. In these cases, dogs are highly desirable status symbols, and many stores sell pet supplies. However, problems with religious neighbors disturbed by the presence of dogs can arise. “Many people want a dog, but don’t know how to go about it,” says Bilge Okay of the dog protection society SHKD, which works toward better treatment of the animals.
Although keeping pets in this way is a very recent development, the breeding of dogs has a long tradition in the region. One of the oldest pieces of evidence for the domestication of dogs at all comes from Çayönü—in eastern Turkey, near the border with Syria—from approximately 12,000 years ago. Well-known breeds like the Kangal, a very large shorthair, come to mind as well. Kangals were herd dogs used by Anatolian shepherds even before Islam spread throughout the region; they were associated with one of the 12 months of the year. But back to the wild dogs of Istanbul. Their presence in the city stretches far back, but their origins are the matter of legend: Do they hail from Turkmenistan? Did they arrive with the troops of the conqueror Mehmed II in the 15th century? Wherever their roots may lie, they have been an established part of the city for centuries, skulking in the shadows of the buildings.
Accounts of travelers—sometimes baffled, sometimes disconcerted or frightened—rarely fail to mention the dogs. In the 17th century, Jean de Thévenot noted that rich citizens of Istanbul bequeathed their fortunes to the city’s dogs to ensure their continued presence. And his contemporary Joseph Pitton de Tournefort heard from butchers who sold meat specially intended for feeding the dogs. He also saw how the city’s residents treated the animals’ wounds and prepared straw mats and even small doghouses for
their canine neighbors. No less an establishment than the legendary Pera Palas, the best hotel, cared for the dogs and fed them regularly. Edmondo De Amicis, an Italian traveler whose book Constantinople records his impressions of the city in the mid-19th century, went so far as to describe Istanbul as a “giant kennel.” And Grigor Yakob Basmajean, an Orientalist born in Edirne, claimed in 1890 that no other city in the world had as many dogs as the metropolis on the Bosporus. The dogs were so omnipresent that streetcar employees had to drive them from the tracks with long sticks so the horse-drawn wagons could pass through. Passersby could often stop to watch them fighting with one another. Their howling could be heard all night; there were so many dogs that their voices blended into a constant sound “like the quaking of frogs in the distance,” as one observer vividly described. It sounds like the dogs, not the authorities, set the tone. In popular shadow-puppet plays, dogs were compared to the poor.
Dealings with canines were always marked by ambivalence. Although dogs formed part of a romantic cityscape, caricatures from the Ottoman period depict them as threats to be stopped, along with cholera, crime, and women in European clothing. Again and again, attempts were made to catch them and remove them from the city. In the late 19th century, Sultan Abdülaziz decreed that the dogs should be rounded up and deported to Hayirsiz, an island of barren, steep cliffs in the Sea of Marmara. Sivriada, a tiny island to which Byzantine rulers once banished criminals, made headlines in 1911 when the governor of Istanbul released tens of thousands of dogs there. A yellowed postcard shows hundreds of dogs on the beach; their voices could be heard even at great distances. However, an earthquake that occurred shortly thereafter was taken as a sign of God’s displeasure, and the dogs were brought back.
The Best American Travel Writing 2013 Page 12
