Real Surreal Moments
 

Have you ever had any kind of a bizarre, surreal experience in your travels? A moment that may seem too strange to be really happening. Time, place, and circumstances come toghether in an all too perfect way? A couple of glasses of red wine, a ride on the carosel, and the lights of the Eiffel tower formed an incredible moment for me. It couldn't have been a real experience. Until the carosel stopped.

Great question!! What comes to mind is the standing at the Urquhart Castle Tower overlooking Loch Ness. I'm telling you, there is something very surrreal about the place...

In front of the lighted Coliseum in Rome after dark for the first time - I couldn't believe I was really there. <BR> <BR>In Seville, Spain, 3:30 in the morning, after a night out being instructed in flamenco by the locals (who didn't speak English), I walked outside the pub for a breath of fresh air. I found a tiny little park with an arbor and sat by myself. It was so quiet and so surreal - I felt like I was in a movie scene. <BR>

Topper is a good boy.

Many, many years ago when I first got to Paris. As I was riding across the Place de la Concord, I looked out the window and there in the distance was the Arch de Triumph. "I'm really here" was all I could say!

I clicked off the above message too soon. <BR>Last November--many, many years later, as my wife and I stepped out of the Venice stazzione and saw the Grand Canal spread out in front of us,and once again, all I could say was "I'm really here!"

This spring somewhere in Paris, a little garden\green space in the middle of the city "hubbub" that looked almost like a forest w\a stream and a wooden bridge. Very quiet and beautiful. Just wonderful.

Back in the days of the deep Cold War, 1965, my language institute group moved from Leningrad (now of course back to being called St. Petersburg) to Moscow by chartered bus. <BR>It is a long ride. I awoke about nine o'clock at night to look out my bus window to see the towers of the Kremlin, each huge one topped by a gleaming, lit up red star. Surreal, you bet. <BR>I loved it! I date my love of foreign travel from that very moment.

When I stood in the Forbidden City when we went to China. It was soooooo old and I was standing there not believing I was there.....Really ancient thing going on.

Being the only passengers, puttering gently along the Regents Park canal in London in a narrowboat waterbus,from Little Venice to Camden Lock. A glorious day, and perfect peace in the centre of a great city. Magic.

I grew up in Saudi Arabia, where the schools only went up to the 7th grade. All the kids went to boarding school for junior-high and high school, and my sister and I went to Montreux, Switzerland in 1968. I never knew how profoundly Montreux affected me, though, until I went back in 1994. I was walking along a road from Territet to Glion when I vividly remembered being in the exact same spot as a 13-year-old girl. I remember that, in 1968, that spot felt exactly like home. Even as a girl, somehow I knew that Arabia, for all its grandeur and childhood memories, could not be *home*, and that spot along the road felt just right. The neat little apartment houses, the tiny cars, the tidy streets, the crisp November air, the blowing leaves along the road . . . that spot had been sealed as my own homeland and only unlocked when I returned. I got shivers and goose bumps. And yes, I continue to return to Montreux, and it always feels just right. <BR> <BR>s

Piazza del Duomo in Siracuse (island of Ortygia) on a drizzly October evening. The glistening,empty piazza surrounded by the lamp lit Baroque cathedral and palaces really made us speechless - it was so beautiful and totally unexpected.

I remember my visit to East and West Berlin in 1987. I went to the Berlin Wall and visited the museum there at Checkpoint Charlie. Even though I knew all about the events associated with the Wall, learning about it in more detail was special, and I was moved by the stories of people who died trying to leave. Then I went out and found myself someplace along the Wall. It was a dreary, cold day, no one else was there, and I just stood there thinking about how I could cross over and cross back whenever I wanted to, but the people on the other side could not. I was quite struck by how lucky I really was to have that freedom.

My surreal travel moment happened just a couple of weeks ago while in Paris. My friend and I had talked about having a picnic in Paris. So many times you imagine what the picnic would be like, and a lot of times reality doesn't match up to your imagination. Well, in this case, reality surpassed imagination. After leaving the Picasso museum we stopped off at a cheese shop and in my best French I asked the lady to recommend a good cheese and a good pate. The next shop we picked up bread, and then stopped for picnic supplies (napkins, etc.) Well, we had the makings for a picnic, but now the only question that remained was where were we going? We looked at our map and saw an area of green space. Next thing you know were were sitting in a small park near Les Halles. We ended up staying for over an hour just enjoying the scenery of the a gothic cathedral and the park. It wasn't necessarily the best meal we had in Paris, but it was definitely the most memorable. All other picnics I will ever go on will pale in comparison to this one. And this was only our 2nd full day in Paris!

Venice. It was very late at night, we had walked for hours and were exhausted. <BR>The month was November, we sat practically alone in Piazza San Marco holding hands while listening to the water, watching the gondalas rise and fall on the waves softly lite by the fading moon. We finally had to return to the hotel. A vaporetto was near and we jumped on, worked our way to the very front and sailed down the Grand Canal under the lights of the city. It was a magical moment just for us !

March 1999, 3 AM, standing on the reviewing platform of Lenin's Tomb in Moscow, overlooking Red Square from the same spot as Stalin, Brezhnev, et al.

Two moments from my 1st trip overseas stand out, both in Spain: <BR>The moment we saw el Greco's "El Enterramiento del Conde de Orgaz" in Toldeo - it just took my breath away; the second was looking out my 5th floor hotel room in Sevilla and seeing the floodlit Giralda.

Last February we were walking in the Piazza San Marco about 11:30 PM. The piazza was fairly empty, and a business man (briefcase and all) was coming across the piazza singing "Santa Lucia". He had a great voice and since there were so few people, it was almost like a private concert - or as someone mentioned above, a movie scene! <BR>

That reminds me of a wonderful surreal moment in St. Marks Square in the late evening. The dueling orchestras were playing and a man was dancing across the piazza with a small child on his shoulders. I think he must have been a professional ballerina because he was extremely graceful and sure footed and did many leaps and swirls.

My 'surreal moment' is not unlike Me's. <BR> <BR>I had taken a half-day coach trip out from Amsterdam to see Keukenhof; it was a beautiful early-May day and the gardens were lovely. After about two hours of walking aroung amongst the throngs of visitors I was starting to feel a little pooped-out and decided to try and find a quiet, shady and secluded spot to relax before it was time to head back to my bus for departure. To my surprise I found the perfect spot under some big old trees on a little knoll which had a bench and a small gazebo-like structure. I surveyed the surrounding fields from the gazebo then sat on the bench just admiring how beautiful it all was and hoping that a future spring day would find me in the same place. Just then a group of about forty adults were walking by along the footpath at the bottom of the knoll and stopped directly below me in the shade of a big tree. They milled about for a few moments then assembled into a tiered formation on the slope -- backs toward me, conductor facing me. Next came forth the most moving and beautiful <BR>a cappella rendition of Ave Maria that <BR>one could imagine; I felt major tears welling-up but held them back (why I don't really know - no one else was around). They finished and I exploded into applause, at which they turned around and gave kind nods and smiles and some QEII-like waves. I don't think the choir knew until then that there had been an audience of one on that little hill. About as fast as they had assembled they headed toward the nearby exit and presumably back to their bus. I speculated they were on a concert tour and had stopped at Keukenhof for some R&R, inspiration and stretching before continuing enroute to the next engagement. I'm so glad they decided to stretch their vocal cords too! That was certainly a case of being in the right place at the right time.