Lisbeth & Dresden: 22 & 23

The wedding took place in a rural town outside of Dresden called Lisbeth. The weather smiled on us, and I grabbed some sad bitter water at the train station, on the way to the old-timey bus. A green and white bus that had a massive stick-shift system specially chartered for the occasion. Cows passed us as we rode into the countryside 

The wedding was sweet. I am finding it a bit hard to write about it though: I think weddings are so thoroughly planned, both meticulously orchestrated and intimate affairs, that it's hard to know what to write. There were multiple parts. First we mingled. Instead of alcohol to smooth over the fact that most of us are strangers, were given bingo cards with facts like "has hiked a glacier" (my brother) or "has run a marathon" as a kind of get-to-know each other icebreaker. Then the ceremony itself, 49 people in attendance including the bride and groom, all of us sitting near a grove of birches. Bianca's sister officiated the wedding, and the groom's vows were blown away by the wind so we couldn't hear them. Afterward, he said it's because he spoke from the heart rather than doing a performance. More mingling, this time with sushi, and photos with the hired photographer. Then cakes! About 9 cakes. Yosef and I took half slices and then split those to maximize the experience. 

I slipped away at some point and Bianca's aunt made me a cup of tea while we chatted. She is a live wire that left an impression on a lot of the younger crowd, thinking about what it means to keep up that kind of vitality into later years. This was the first moment I went off script: unplanned tea with the aunt, with allusions to history and politics. Then we funneled back to the dinner buffet (honestly maybe the best meal we had while traveling?) - food, wine, more chatter, a photobooth and dancing. When we rode back on the train back to Dresden, very tired, and me and two other women discussed predicaments of the heart. The second off-script conversation, after all the planned events, and a more intimate moment there too. 

The next day Yosef and I, again, struggled to wake up. We had our breakfast at home, got Vietnamese food at Codo - Yosef got beer, I got dark liquid poured over ice and sweetened condensed milk. Then we met the rest of the wedding attendees for a historic scavenger hunt arrange by Bianca's sister. I managed to eek in a few exchanges with Bianca - the bride and groom are always so busy on their wedding day, all of us vying for their attention.

We reconvened at Eiscafe Venezia for dessert, then some of us broke off. Beer, Little India (food was good here, the owner seemed very committed to making us happy, too) in an artsier part of Dresden. And thus concluded our final full day in Dresden. 

Sundowner 07/21

Jetlag into Europe from the US is always so much harder than on the way back. Yosef and I struggled to get up before noon, and then went to the Aldi across the street to grab yogurt, as well as the bag of muesli and box of tea mentioned in a previous post. I also accidentally bought fresh yeast thinking it was butter with honey in it. In my defense, it was yeast that was made with honey, so, I had read part of it correctly. And it was in the butter section. Misdirection via context clues.

We then made our way to the Old Masters Picture Gallery which frankly is a great museum. I noted many artists with whom I was not familiar to look up later and got postcards, which is my standard museum procedure while traveling. We then doubled back to a touristy stretch of restaurants and ate a decent meal at Wilma Wunder, though again with disappointing frothy milky drink. 

So I haven’t mentioned yet my impetus for traveling to Europe. It is this: my friend from college Bianca, with whom I have maintained a connection across the Atlantic for nine years, was getting married. Or having a ceremony: logistically they had to get married for her husband to enter Ireland where she had found a job. I actually have a post which gives me the last time I saw her before she went to get her Masters in London. Nine years! Crazy. This was later followed by a PhD in Cape Town, South Africa, where she met her now-husband. She has family in Germany ergo the German destination. I offered Yosef to make a sibling trip of it, since he was musing about travel already, and so he became my plus-one.

To start off the celebratory festivities they arranged for a Sundowner gathering by the river. Sundowner is the South African tradition of having drinks at sunset. It was also an opportunity to meet her husband for the first time before the actual wedding ceremony. I was the only person from our college to attend the wedding, and so everyone else there was a stranger to me. Yosef struck it up with an urban designer from Amsterdam, I chatted with an art teacher at a high-needs school in NYC. Then, just around the planned end time, it started to pour rain: one of the grooms’ friends from Cape Town lent me his sweater and Yosef and I trotted away to the Sbahn.

My mother told me the last post was too long but perhaps reflected the first day of long travel. Lucky for her I had already written this one out before she told me this and it turned out shorter! Hurrah! 

Misha and Nastya

Misha got married to Nastya, and Nastya got married to Misha.

In a magical house filled with handmade decorations, and a backyard filled with people I've mostly met before but whose names I can never remember and good food and plenty to drink and vases filled with flowers.

To my American (and some other non-Russian?) readers: There was a "vikup": a traditional ransoming of the bride before she is given to the groom. In this case, the three friends of the bride came up with questions and challenges, and kept the bride hidden away in a room on the second floor. Each question the groom answered correctly, he gained a step. He could ask for help from the team he assembled, but if they could not answer the question, or complete the task, they had to pay up. What is her grandmothers full name (including the patroym), what is her favorite store, what animal does she think you are most like?

Eventually he got her.

marriage

Soon after my twentieth birthday, my thoughts started turning towards what it means to get married.

It is traditional in the US (and probably other places) that little girls think about their weddings. They play brides and bridesmaids, are chosen to be flower girls, think color schemes and flower arrangements, and deliberate about whom to invite before a groom comes into view. It's entrenched enough in culture that 30 Rock had an episode where the main female character at first doesn't want a big wedding and then realizes that, damn it, she wants to be a princess for a day. She dresses up as princess Leia from Star Wars for and they re-do her wedding. And it was funny: that yes, even the women on T.V. that are successful, funny, clumsy, and not stereotypically feminine want to follow through on at least some aspects of having an opulent ceremony; the dress or the venue or something. 

Somehow that fantasy did not weasel its way into my head. The most thought I'd gotten to was "I hate large parties and being the center of attention" and "white doesn't suit me" and "shiny diamond rings are not my style, and why do women get branded twice". Only after watching Gilmore Girls did I even really find out what the hell people meant when they talked about planning a wedding. Centerpieces, food, venue, seating arrangements...

When I say"my thoughts started turning towards what it means to get married" I do not mean I started thinking about weddings. I did, however, feel myself staring at the reality that almost all the adults I know where married in their twenties, and most had a child or two before they hit their 30th birthday. Some had gotten married and stayed together from age 18. Others had decided to get married and stayed together on their first date. My mother had me at age 25. This is not early, but it seems very soon relative to my current age of 22. More recently, a couple of my friends have married, in two very different ceremonies, one involved a campfire, the other was more traditional. I did not grow up in the type of town where my peers from highschool are already married with kids, but some of my friends in college did. The world around me has followed tradition.

When the boy from Tula asked me when I thought the appropriate age to get married is, I said that there are things I have more control over: my education, my career, even having kids. But that marriage depends on when I meet this person, if he even wants the ceremony, if he's ready etc. and I have don't have enough control over all this to set a time frame. Of course, some people get married when they feel ready, and it has more to do with their place in life than whom they are with. Either way, the question stands: why do people get married? What is the purpose of the ceremony?

I'm not speaking about this on a historical scale. I know that the wedding ceremony across the globe has meant different things, and was by and large influenced by politics and reproduction. Even today, the upper class seems to breed themselves in a manner that reminds me more of dogs than humans (we want to stay poodles, down with the mutts!). However, what I am talking about is marriage for love and stability. For most people, this means monogamy and/or children.

Obligation: A couple of people I asked said simply: it's a social obligation. People expect you to get married. The government gives couples incentive to get married.
Stability: One said; helps you get through tougher patches in a relationship that otherwise would result in the end. You made your vows, you have to work harder at making the partnership work. It made me think about divorcées: they tend to get married again. They must believe in the power of it, even if it fell through once.
Flexibility: Another woman said that very few people are naturally monogamous. She added that if I ever meet such a couple of truly monogamous people, I will see that they are not the reason monogamy is so etched into our culture. And that generally, with good communication, this expectation can be worked around with my future partner.

photo by Brandon Stanton

Comfort: A woman in a Humans of New York photo said “I was engaged eight years ago, but my fiancee died in Iraq. After that, I promised myself that I'd never be that dependent on someone again. So after I met my husband, I fought marriage for the longest time. But we got married in September. And even though I was rebelling against it, and I always saw it as a meaningless formality, I've been surprised. There's a comfort in knowing that you're sworn to someone else."

Last Friday I went to Brookline to see Yulka and her new apartment. We had coffee and raspberry oatmeal bars over chess and hunted for a day planner. She had recently been at a wedding in Chicago, and she told me over sushi how she had asked about why people have the ceremony. The person she had asked said that some people are just so in love and want to share it, show it, announce it. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

***

Three Epithalamia
Georges Perec

On this beautiful Saturday in May
Sophie has married Michel
and Michel has married Sophie
They have married
and they are now together
like Aucassin and Nicolette
and like nut cake and honey
like hand and piano
      table and chair
      soup and ladle
      tench and hook
      science and doubt
      pen and drawing
      dove and millet
      hospital and silence
      candle and bed warmer
      camomile tea and madeleine
and even couscous and chick peas
It’s a delectable morning
the sun lights up the countryside
bees are gathering honey
a butterfly delicately alights by a mimosa
sheep are bleating
in the distance bells are ringing
everything is calm and peaceful
At the very end of the little wood the vast planet begins
its lakes its oceans its steppes
its hills its plains its oases
its sand dunes
its palaces its museums its islands its ports of call
its lovely automobiles glistening in the rain
its white-bonneted Salvationists singing carols on Christmas Eve
its bowlered worthies in conference at the tabac on Place Saint
    Sulpice
its mustachio’d sea captains exuding patchouli and lilac
its tennis champions hugging at the end of a match
its Indians with their calumet seated by a sandalwood totem pole
its mountain climbers attacking Popocatapetl
its eager canoeists paddling down the Mississippi
its Anabaptists mischievously nodding their heads as they discuss
    the Bible
its little Balinese women dancing on cocoa plantations
its philosophers in peaked caps arguing about Condillac’s ideas
    in outmoded tea rooms
its pin-up girls in bathing suits astride docile elephants
its impassive Londoners bidding a no-trump little slam
But here the sky is blue
Let’s forget the weight of the world
a bird is singing at the very top of the house
cats and dogs drowse by the fireplace
where a huge log is slowly burning up
You hear the ticking of the clock
This little poem
where only simple words have been used
      words like daisy and broomstick
      like lady-bird and cream sauce
      like croissant and nonchalance
and not words like palimpsest, pitchblende, cumulonimbus,
      decalcomania, stethoscope, machicolation, or
      anticonstitutionally
has been specially composed
on the occasion of these nuptials
Let us wish Sophie and Michel
years and years of rejoicing
like the thousand years gone by
      in which Philemon and Baucis
each May are born into the world
      she as linden, he as oak

assorted squash

я: у нас постоянно гниет чеснок.
мама: не постоянно, постоянно значит он не переставая гниет
я: ну, почти
мама: я тебя все ровно люблю, не смотря на то что ты такая ворчливая

eng --
me: our garlic is constantly rotting.
mama: not constantly, for that it would have to rot nonstop
me: well, basically
mama: I love you anyway, even though you are so grumbly

***

Yesterday we went to a birthday party for s&b, so many people came that the table was in an L shape from the dinning room into the living room, chairs set tightly all around, food a plenty. Guests from here, NYC, LA, Toronto, Tula, St. Petersburg. A boy a year younger than me from Tula asked "What do you think is a good age to get married?"
What a strange question, I thought. 

***

Саша и Эвелина

on the 7th Kirill picked me up from Redhook at 5:30pm instead of 12 so we missed the wedding ceremony.
but
I heard that, when they kissed, someone let out butterflies that quickly spiraled up into the air.

Later, we released Chinese lanterns mimicking their flight.
The bonfire, the candles, the sparklers, the younger sister spinning wild a fire hoola hoop.

The chatter, the pastel dresses and freely flowing wine, the tables laden with food and the grass stamped out from late and later-night dancing, the glow of song in the air melding with the hum of sparks and smoke.
The smiles and fretful caring of the happy couple.

The morning after we cleaned up and left "joy to them, joy to them".