First impressions

We left Amsterdam Sunday afternoon, under the bluest skies I’d seen in a week, walking past the centuries-old houses along the canal on our way to the train that would bring us to the airport. It occurred to me that although I didn’t miss the rain, grey skies seemed to suit the city better. The dark-red-brick buildings look more stately in diffused light; the water in the canals is darker, as unwelcoming as the bartenders. I was sorry to leave it behind, but as I plan to learn Dutch (hands down, one of the most fun languages I’ve ever tried to speak, especially while drinking), I’m certain I’ll be back.

Six hours and, amazingly, only one time zone after leaving the Netherlands, our plane touched down in Accra. We had flown directly south, and the air was warm, dark and dusty as we walked across the tarmac to the terminal. Having been awake all night the night before (thanks to a cup of espresso during and after our bike ride, for motivational reasons), we had both slept through nearly the entire flight, effectively confusing the hell out of our bodies once again. It was 8 p.m., and I was craving breakfast.

Entering Ghana was not as much of a hassle as I’d anticipated, aside from the kind of long lines one comes to expect at any airport. An Israeli businessman in the queue in front of us was agitated by the wait. He said he had traveled in other African countries for work before, and seemed unimpressed by the laid back way in which most locals conduct business. “Time is not money, for them,” he grumbled, to which I wanted to reply, “Especially not at 9 p.m.,” but chose to refrain. I gave him a vaguely committal nod instead, the way one does when having a conversation while waiting in line. It’s the nod that says, “We are in this together, and although I feel your pain, I would rather not talk about it.”

We breezed through customs with no trouble and walked outside the airport into a crowd of people, where we were instantly swarmed by pleasant young men who wanted to help us with our bags and perhaps take some of that heavy money off our hands. Having just come from a country where tipping is considered unnecessary at best and mildly insulting at worst, we were unprepared to start handing out bills to every person who touched our bags unsolicited. Aside from that, we had no small change, having just arrived in the country and gone to an ATM a few minutes before. The man whose sole contribution was to lift a bag into the trunk of our cab, asked for a tip, and, frustrated at his insistence when we said we had no change, I told Erik to give the man one of the promotional HBR CDs that he always carries in his bag. The man was very agreeable to that until he realized that the “CD” I was referring to was not the same as a “Cedi,” the national currency in Ghana (one Cedi equals roughly US$1.45, depending on where you get your money changed). I was amused by the mistake, and although he wasn’t, his confusion at being handed a compact disc instead of a bill lasted long enough for us to get into our cab and escape the whole crazy scene.

Ghana Registered Nurses Association Hostel looks more like a small hotel or a large motel – a modest, three-story building with large rooms wrapped in a square around an open-air center. The rooms are clean and comfortable, with two full beds, two wall lockers, a desk and a chair. We share a bathroom with the room next to us, which seems to be unoccupied, and a ceiling fan keeps everything fairly cool, although it seems ready to fly off its base at any given moment once turned up past the lowest setting. Still, it’s cozy – besides, it’s not like we came here for the amenities.

Nat (who, as you may recall, coordinated this trip) booked rooms for all the members of our group at the GRNA for the next few days, and when we checked is, he was there to meet us and hand us a couple of liter bottles of water. Tap water here is unwaveringly non-potable, and I plan to have a bottle attached to my hand at all times. One member of our group, Bonnie, arrived this morning with a small portable water purifier, the hi-tech variety with a thin, clear cylinder that you stir in your water to purify it. It looks not unlike an item I’d seen for sale just the day before in the Red Light district, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and Bonnie admitted she was embarrassed to bring it out in public. I don’t blame her, but of course, clean water is worth a few raised eyebrows. At least it doesn’t vibrate.

The primary language spoken in Accra, other than English, is Twi, a nasally dialect that thankfully has not much use for verb conjugation and leaves a great deal of meaning up to context. Erik obtained some instructional CDs a few weeks ago, so before we left the States we had already learned enough to exchange pleasantries with people. Beyond that, though, we don’t really have the vocabulary to proceed, and most Ghanaians speak English anyway. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to learn what Twi I can while we’re here, if only to entertain the locals. I met a young man named Seidu in the hostel yesterday morning who has agreed to be my Twi tutor for the next few days. The first lesson he taught me was how to react to men who approach me on the street:

“So, when you walk around, men may call to you, ‘Obruni, obruni!’ [literally meaning "white person"] and tell you that you are attractive. It is common that they will say they want to marry you. You will then say, ‘Bebeni, bebeni, meda se!’”

Bebeni is the word for “black person” and “meda se” means “thank you” – together, they communicate a firm “Ha ha, you are very funny; thanks but no thanks.” This, I imagine, will be useful.

While Bonnie was sleeping off her jet lag yesterday afternoon, the other four of us who are here (six more will arrive today) took a walk up the road to the Accra Mall, a massive monument to Western-style consumerism located just across a busy, divided four-lane road near our hostel. The Mall is large and air-conditioned, and has every appearance of an American mall. It contains clothing boutiques, cell phone and electronics stores, a sizable food court, a cinema, a large, Walmart-esque store (apparently owned by Walmart, as the logos and slogans on the wall are the same), an arcade, two Internet centers (one located in a thriving Apple store) and a huge store called simply “GAME,” which sells … stuff. We didn’t venture into GAME, although we did note that a couple members of our group could possibly use some extra GAME, and isn’t it nice that now their problems are solved, ha ha? Ha? Ha … yeah okay.

There is an enormous monstrosity of a hotel located directly across from our digs. It’s called the G.S. Plaza Hotel (“G.S.” being as yet undefined), and it was built five months ago by Chinese investors. It looks like it belongs on Las Vegas Boulevard, perhaps next to the Hard Rock Cafe. Its design is ostentatious at best and garishly obnoxious at worst (I lean toward the latter), towering far above all other buildings at night, the whole place lit up in a bright, glowing green. Its existence is a well-lit sign that the times have been rapidly a-changin’.

Nat, who spent a considerable amount of time in Ghana as a student about ten years ago, told us that this place is vastly different from the one he remembers. The area where we’re staying, next to Legon University, used to be rural, he said, with the nearest stores and major roads much closer to the city proper. Now it has become what I can only describe as a suburb, close enough to downtown Accra to attract businesses, but far enough away that we’d need a cab to get downtown. It’s clear that this wasn’t what Nat was envisioning when he brought us here, but there’s no more use pining over the past here as there is anywhere else. There are still fruit stands, tea stalls and other food and wares for sale on the side of the road, but now the side of the road sits in the shadow of the Mall. And so the story goes.

The rest of our group will be here by the end of the day, and we’ll begin our itinerary, which is centered around music primarily and also includes a lecture at the university, a community service project at an elementary school, some beach time and a day trip to Kakum National Park. Our time will be split between our current location in Accra, and a beach town called Cape Coast. Adventures await!

 

Our schweet little digs at the Ghana Registered Nurses Association Hostel

Erik, Nat and Eli rocking some twang

Cheap coconuts for sale ...

... to go, even!

They mean it.

Eli Jebidiah needs some game.

Ghanaian made-for-TV movies? Awww yeah.

Seriously. It almost gave me an aneurism.

Of bikes, beer and pain

To say I’m exhausted would be a vast understatement, akin to calling a grizzly bear “somewhat excitable.” Each and every one of my muscles is on the verge of collapse, something I haven’t been able to say with confidence since my Army days, back when I was regularly compelled to participate in the portion of physical training called, entirely unironically, “Muscle Failure.” For real, my limbs are Jello-esque, and I’m sure that tomorrow (also known as “later today” here in the land of 4 a.m.) I will able to move my arms and legs, but I certainly will not want to.

Why do I suffer so, you ask? Well, like most of the instances in which I find myself in intense physical pain, it was fully my own fault. I was the one who got on the bike, and I was the one who rode it from Amsterdam to Volendam and back – roughly twenty-six miles – and I was the one who did this with the full knowledge that my legs were Not Prepared for this. Feel free to slap my wrist; you’ll find it dangling helplessly at the end of my useless arm.

The reason for the self-torture was, as usual, because it was fun. Erik and I met up with our Dutch friend Luc this morning, and as it seemed to be slightly less rainy than the past few days, we decided it would be an excellent idea to leave the big city and go for a bike ride through the countryside. Luc suggested we head to Volendam, an old, quaintly-preserved Dutch village about twenty kilometers northeast of Amsterdam. Luc told us the town is normally filled with tourists (as it was when he was there as a child with his family), but mid-January is the off-season, so we agreed to give it a go. Twenty-K would be a breeze: there are bike paths the whole way there, all the roads here are flat as boards, and the wind was at our backs. Perhaps you can see where this is going.

Our destination was every bit as lovely as Luc had promised. The ninety-minute ride was pleasant and dry, the roadside sprinkled with windmills, sheep and swans. The canal, at our side for most of the way, was lined with charming houseboats and houses with aggressively slanting red tile roofs. The whole scene was idyllic, to the point that I half-expected to see it featured in a Stephen King novel, in which it would ultimately be destroyed by space monsters who survive solely on high-quality cheeses. Volendam itself is a beautiful little village, and all of its charms are expertly capitalized upon by its residents, as is usually the case in beautiful little villages the world over. We hopped off our bikes in front of a cart selling fish sandwiches beside the Markermeer, a 270 square-mile lake in the central Netherlands that used to be part of a saltwater inlet of the North Sea, but was dammed off in 1932. The fish that come out of it are truly delectable, (as we discovered by promptly eating the hell out of them), especially so when smothered in sauce, following a 20K bike ride.

The next logical stop was a cafe for some much-anticipated local beer. The rain started just as we sat down, and within minutes the already-busy bar was packed (mostly with loud men, but also a few women, all of whom were busy cooing over the bartender’s baby). Luc bought the first round of beers (the tasty hefeweizen that was brewed on-site), and four rounds later, we realized that a) it had stopped raining, b) it was also getting dark, and c) we still had to bike back to Amsterdam. Stumbling out of the cafe, we came to the further realization that the wind, which was blowing with a gusty vengeance, would no longer be at our backs. Instead, it would be at our faces. Normally, the obvious course of action would be to take a bus or taxi back, rather than attempting a ride that would almost certainly require at least three hours of our evening, but none were to be found, so we buttoned our coats and started the ride.

It quickly became clear that the wind was, as they say, not effing around. Not in the slightest. We struggled toward the next town, a few kilometers away, hoping to find a bus that would allow us and our bikes to board. It took all of our strength to keep pedaling forward without veering off the path and into the canal. The bus driver would simply have to let us on – right?

Except, not. Apparently, even though Holland is one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world (there are bike paths and lanes along most major and minor roads), we are emphatically not allowed to carry one on any bus, ever. The driver was immutable in his decision in spite of Luc’s polite yet plaintive pleas, so we continued on our way, resolving to stop at the next bar and call a taxi.

Six kilometers later, the bartender looked at us with amusement when we told him our story and our plan. “There are no taxis around here that will fit you and three bikes,” he said, in the tone one might use to respond to someone who has just announced that he plans to go on a hike to Japan. “You will have to keep riding.”

After bolstering our strength with another round of local beers and a glass of sweet, multi-flavored wine called Licor 43, we hit the bike trail once again. The wind had somehow gotten even more forceful, and we had resorted to leaning over our granny-style handlebars as though they were attached to a racing bike, simply to keep from being knocked on our sides. We couldn’t stop laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the situation, but we persevered, and an hour or so later, we reached another bar. Again we related our story to the bartender, and again, he laughed. We were only a few kilometers away from the ferry back to Amsterdam, and as we drained our beers, he wished us good luck.

Conditions hadn’t changed. By the time we reached the ferry, my thigh muscles were masses of quivering leg jelly, and none of us had the strength to complain about the state of our aching glutei maximi. We expended our last burst of energy on the final push into Amsterdam, barely making it to Balthazar’s Keuken for our 9:15 dinner reservation. It had been four hours since we’d left Volendam, and after a truly life-changing meal (the pre-ordained menu included artichoke hearts covered in parmesan, warm, honey-drizzled chevre sprinkled with nuts, and an entree of pork cheek, among other gastronomical delights), I fell asleep at the table. After a dessert of caramelized pear in some kind of heaven-sent custard, followed by an espresso, I rallied long enough for us to bike to a local club, where a Dutch funk band was ripping it up to a packed house. By the time we got back to the hotel and discovered that I’d misplaced our room key (a depressing fifty-Euro fine), I was so in need of a shower that I didn’t even hesitate for a moment to take the necessary measure of scaling the roof to break into our room through the open window.

I sit here writing this entry in a haze of depleted strength, fueled only by my late-night espresso and the need to share my pain. Now, I will do one last stretch – in eight hours, our aching bodies will be on a flight to Accra. So long, Holland, and thanks for all the fish!

But, um, you can keep the bike.

All of them masters of shadow and light

The rain persists, and although neither Erik nor I mind strolling through drizzle, we’ve taken shelter the past two days in museums, gawking at the works of the world’s great painters. We started with the Rijksmuseum, and although a large part of the building was under construction, the exhibits we did see managed to blow our collective mind. Two massive floors filled with centuries of Dutch art – complete with a witty audio guide – were enough to keep us captivated for close to three hours. The sculptures and artifacts were impressive alone, not least because they’ve survived this long, but the paintings, o, the paintings! Rembrandt, Gabriel Metsu, Jan Steen – “all of them masters of shadow and light,” Jonathan Richman has sung, “but no one was like Vermeer.” Up close, I had to agree. There were only a few works of Vermeer’s on display, but the warm light and rich colors in his paintings were even more vibrant from ten inches away, and I had to revisit each one a few times just to happily remind myself that they were real. We left the building still in a daze, the colors of the real world seeming to have faded in comparison.

The Van Gogh museum was the icing on our fine art cake, every wall lined with stunning works of crushing Impressionist genius. The largest collection of Vincent van Gogh paintings in the world is on jaw-dropping display, alongside pieces by Gauguin, Monet, Redon, Pissarro, Manet, Rodin, Daubigny and a dozen others. All the reproductions and photos I’ve seen of these images couldn’t compare to the real thing any more than seeing a picture of a sumptuous steak can compare to tasting it as the juices drip down your chin.  The texture of Van Gogh’s thickly spread oils gave his landscapes a three-dimensional presence; colors seemed to move around on the canvases of their own accord. The museum was open until ten tonight, so we stayed late, until our aching feet reminded us that we had left our bikes at the hotel and would have to walk the two kilometers back to our room. The rain had finally stopped. I used my umbrella as a walking stick and we made our way through the city, dodging rogue bicycles whose red and white lights blurred past us, melting away into the distance.

This cat sat next to us at breakfast yesterday. Its name, we were told, is Mouse.

Biking to the Rijksmuseum

This is Gary Rasberry (his real name!), a Canadian singer/songwriter with whom we made friends at the bar last night.

 

Erik playing a bazouki in a music store

Tulips at the flower market

Mmmm, free samples ...

Loophole

A minute or two of research will tell prospective visitors to Amsterdam that magic mushrooms are no longer legal here, period, and that they are especially not available in the “smartshops” – no way, not since 2008. And then a minute or two conversing with a clerk in a smartshop will tell you that it’s true, magic mushrooms are illegal – but magic truffles, on the other hand, are a different story. You can buy as many magic truffles as you like, because they are not technically mushrooms, according to the government. After explaining this to us with a wink, the clerk went through the options available, showing us how best to customize our psychedelic experience.

“This one will help your body relax,” he said, pointing, “and this one with make you laugh, with some hallucinations. This one will make colors brighter and make ears more sensitive to sound.” He pointed at the last, called Philosopher’s Stone (presumably named after the legendary alchemical substance rather than the Van Morrison album). “This one here is very strong; you won’t be moving very much.” We weren’t feeling that ambitious.

“What if we just want to wander around museums and ride bikes?” I asked. “We aren’t nineteen years old anymore, and would like to remain somewhat in control of our bodies.”

“Ah, this is what you want, then,” he said, pointing out a variety called Forbidden Fruit. “I suggest you take 20 grams and split it between you.”

We each ate a tiny portion of the recommended allowance last night before hitting the town, figuring we’d take the fungus on a test drive before venturing into less forgiving public places. It’s been raining steadily for the past two days, and after riding our rented bikes through the drizzle yesterday evening, we’d holed up in our room for a while, drinking Heineken (domestic!) and researched our entertainment options, hoping to find some live music. There weren’t many bands playing on Wednesday night, but we had napped for six hours and didn’t see much of a point in staying in. So we nibbled on some Forbidden Fruit, grabbed our umbrellas, and went for a walk.

Everything is in walking distance from our hotel – restaurants, cafes, shops, bakeries, coffeeshops, etc. – so it didn’t take long before we were seated comfortably at a bar, sampling local brews. The place was not dead, but definitely not at capacity. A few different groups of four or five each cycled through the round table nearest us, mostly loud men with waxed hair and fratboy mentalities, although I suppose they could have been debating the key points of Plato’s Republic for all I know, since I don’t speak Dutch. Either way, they were entertaining to watch, especially as the truffle began to kick in. The small dose had given both of us the giggles, for sure, although not the uncontrollable type. Erik and I had had only one drink each (a beer and an overpriced shot of questionable tequila, respectively), but didn’t feel inclined to stay there, and stepped outside to see if there were any other bars around. It was somewhere around 1 a.m., but nothing else appeared to be open, so we went for a mosey around town, wide awake and still feeling slightly altered. The streets were nearly deserted yet again, much like they were during our morning stroll, except that every now and then we’d be passed by a group of drunk twentysomethings walking home from the bars. Amsterdam really rolls itself up at night, and we wandered through the courtyards of dark brick apartments, pausing now and then to have an umbrella sword fight and dissolve into fits of laughter. The night was dark, still and spooky, warmed only by a settling cloud cover. The rain had stopped, and the streets glistened under evenly-spaced lamps.

By the time we returned to our hotel, three or four hours after setting out, the effects of the truffles had faded, leaving me with a warm glow and barely-discernible buzz. Sleep came fast, like the darkness, and I had no dreams.

The wee, small hours

Three-thirty in the morning. My body thinks it’s 6 p.m. – dinner time, and my belly is audibly confused. We wandered around Rembrandtsplein yesterday until we were too exhausted to walk anymore, intending to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and wake up ready to face a new day. Well, I’m awake, and it’s technically a new day, but even going to sleep at 9 p.m. wasn’t enough to fool my body into thinking it’s still in California and everything is totally normal.

The plane descended through a thick cloud cover that dissipated into grey skies over Amsterdam. “Are we still in San Francisco?” I blearily thought, my eyes still cloudy themselves after a restless plane sleep. We stumbled out of the gate and through the Schiphol terminal in a blur of colorful signs and people rushing by having conversations in indeterminable languages. I like to think of the Netherlands as sort of a gateway foreign country, in that people here speak many different languages, but one of those is English – so Americans can be brand new here, and still get along all right without looking like too much of an idiot, especially if you’ve been working on your Canadian accent. Anyway, if it wasn’t for that, we may have taken a few hours longer to reach our hotel.

Our room is on the second floor of a 350-year-old building called Hotel Amstelzicht. It’s located in Rembrandtsplein, or Rembrandt Square, a tourist-oriented area that must get suffocatingly crowded during the summer, but in mid-January, it’s gray, bleak and beautiful. Locals ride their bikes with perfect posture, maneuvering around us with a cheery yet insistent ring of their bell. We’ll have bikes for the rest of this week, but for the moment we were on foot, searching for food like zombies for brains. We quickly made the distinction between a cafe restaurant and a cafe – a latter is actually a bar, turns out, and food is only available in beer form – and then made our way to a coffee shop to relax.

We managed to keep moving around town, window-shopping and coffeeshop-hopping, until about six p.m., when the exhaustion began to kick in. We returned to our room and finally collapsed in a heap of sleep-deprived satisfaction.

:::

Up this morning before 4 a.m. and out the door by 6 (thank you jet lag), after inadvertently blowing the power out in half the hotel after trying to plug in a surge protector. We walked to Centraal Station, intending to catch a bus to the Alsmeer Flower Auction (that is what early-rising tourists do, apparently), but were too hazy on the details of our directions. We ended up skipping the trip and moseying back to our neighborhood by way of every bakery we saw. There’s just something about fresh croissants and oliebollen (a traditional Dutch doughnut filled with raisins, apples and heaven, and sprinkled with powdered sugar) that tend to make one forget one’s botched plans for the day.

Although a few bakeries were open this morning, nothing else was. Until nearly 8 a.m., both the sky and the windows of most businesses were still dark. The streets were dead but for the locals biking to work and school – very few were in cars – and we realized that this was probably because January is the off-season, tourism-wise, and very few tourists are up before eight unless they’ve stayed up from the night before. Everything is brick here, and in the early morning, the streetlights cast a warm, yellow glow on the dark red streets.

The bikes lining every available inch of sidewalk space are mostly locked up, but often just leaning against the side of a building, trash can or tree. They remain unmolested. Many are equipped with bells, cheery jingles that get the attention of slow, spacey, gawking tourists, reminding us to get out of the way before someone else gets us out. I’d resent the attitude, but as it reminds me of New York, I find it endearing.

Returning to the hotel, we made big plans to go to museums today, but instead took a six-hour nap. At 3 p.m., we are now refreshed and ready to walk back toward Centraal Station to pick up the bikes that our friend Luc rented for us. Van Gogh’s paintings will still be there tomorrow. Life is beautiful.

Non-stop

We’re flying over the Sierra, settling into ten hours of seats 14A and 14B. The first part of a flight is usually reserved for rapid-fire remembrance of the items I meant to bring with me, but foolishly left at home. This trip is no different – my seatbelt closes with a click and it’s like in old movies, when an amnesia victim suddenly can recall everything about himself. Click. Ziploc baggies! iPod! Conditioner! Damn damn damn!

The next few moments are always dedicated to reassuring myself that those items? I don’t need them. Never did. Especially not that iPod. Who needs an iPod on a ten-hour flight? Not me. I’m above material things, even if those things do happen to have eleventy hundred hours of music loaded carefully onto them and organized by artist name. Etcetera.

Once I’m satisfied with my efforts at self-deception, I’m finally able to relax. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do so all day, what with the car breaking down exactly forty-five minutes before we were supposed to be getting on BART and heading to SFO. We were recently given a terminal prognosis on the car, the ’95 Subaru I named Jimothy in 2008. My brother made the point that “Tim” is short for “Timothy,” so “Jim” ought to be short for “Jimothy,” so in an effort to right this grievous error of lexicography, I christened my car with soapy water and declared it Jim. Just like a litter of puppies, it’s hard to remain unattached anything after you’ve named it, and although I know Jimothy is just a car – a broken car – I’m not anxious to see him go. I especially wasn’t ready to see him go this morning, with the clock ticking on our international flight and a half-hour wait for a tow truck in the cards. A fix is possible, but for the time being, all we could do was watch the tow-truck driver back Jimothy into our driveway, then hop into our housemate’s truck and burn rubber toward the airport. I felt a bit like a negligent parent, leaving my unwalked dog and broken-down car behind in my hurry to leave the country. I can’t even send them postcards filled with promises of future hikes and regular trips through the automatic car wash.

But now is not the time to mourn my faithful Jimothy, after two and a half years and something like eighty thousand miles of chugging back and forth across America. Now is the time to sip this refreshing complimentary ginger ale, unbuckle my seatbelt and lean back, closing my eyes to the fluorescent cabin lights and my poor, lanky husband, folded awkwardly into 14B – now is the time for the next thing, and the next thing, and the next.

We go back to the beginning

In the spirit of keeping up momentum, I’ll explain the background of this particular jaunt across the pond – my first, voluntarily. The destinations seem, to the uninformed eye, to be entirely unrelated to one another, but we’ve managed to make them related, Kevin-Bacon-style. Ahem.

Last summer, Erik and I began to discuss possible honeymoon destinations for this month, when his touring schedule wasn’t too heavy. I submitted Italy as my first choice and he agreed that it would certainly not suck to vacation in the Mediterranean. I have roots there (as evidenced by, let’s see, everything about me), and we both love to eat pasta, drink wine and say, “Ciao!” Not to mention that as an accordion player, Erik fits right in. The decision was made. We set up a Honeyfund (probably TM) as part of our wedding registry, in hopes of having our trip at least partially paid for by our friends and family members – and all I can say is, thank you, The Internet, for begetting Honeyfund. Our ever-accommodating loved ones threw down for us, contributing enough to the ‘fund to pay for a large portion of our trip.

The wedding date grew closer, and we put off thinking about a honeymoon. We chose, instead, to finish planning the wedding itself. It didn’t seem rational to book a hotel in Rome while more pressing details – the completion of our vows, for example – were being left unattended. It wasn’t until early September that Erik got the e-mail from his bandmate, Nat:

MUSIC TRIP TO GHANA

The third week of January 2011 I am hosting a week-long music retreat & workshop in Ghana.  I am inviting a few music friends and colleagues to meet me there for a week of workshops & lessons, recording, and collaboration with Ghanaian musicians. You are invited!

We were invited! A trip to Ghana sounded pretty delightful to us, and we were easily swayed – because we can go to Italy any time, but it’s really best to explore a foreign equatorial climate when one is young and relatively hardy. So we decided that we’d divert our plans and head to Accra, where Erik would play lots of music and I would take majillions of photos and also get an amazing winter tan, plus possibly malaria. Exciting!

Wanting to make the most out of our flight across the world, we did some research. A short phone call to a travel agent (yes, they still exist) enlightened us to the fact that flights to Ghana route through Amsterdam, and that an extended layover would not actually cost more. That decision more or less made itself. Then we had to think about the return trip. Because I wasn’t going to be starting my spring semester right away, it seemed that rather than heading straight home, the logical thing to do would be to go gallivanting around some other country for a while. Hearkening back to square one, we chose Italy. Bada-bing.

The adventure begins in a day and a half. Perhaps I ought to start packing.