selenak

likeadeuce wanted to hear about exciting travel plans for 2014. Alas, there was one, but it just got postponed. To wit, when I was asked whether I was willing to go to Usbekistan in 2014, I said YES PLEASE, but then other people turned out to have hired my potential arch nemesis instead before I was asked. Cue embarrasment and question of "would you be willing to go in 2015 instead?" Well, naturally.

(I'm kidding about the potential arch nemesis. There are no hard feelings, considering I still get to go to Usbekistan. Otherwise I would now plot revenge, complete with sinister chuckles.)

Anyway, that means no exciting travelling plans for 2014 yet. I'll do my normal criss cross country travelling within Germany, of course, and maybe manage a weekend trip to London, which is always a thrill and lovely. In 2015, Usbekistan prospects aside, I will also go to Los Angeles for the International Lion Feuchtwanger Conference (which took place this year in Berlin), and the mixture of academia and catching up with old friends surrounded by fragments of tv and cinematic realities are just what I associate with Los Angeles, where I once lived for three months in the mid 90s on a scholarship. It's not a city that aesthetically appeals to me, but emotionally it does, both because of the connections I've formed there and because of all the pop culture history. Los Angeles memories: watching The Exorcist projected on a big tomb in the Hollywood Cemetary with Iamsab, visiting location sights like the Fisher house (from Six Feet Under) or Buffy's high school with Kate, having an incredibly brief phone call with Billy Wilder (I asked for an interview, he was already too fragile - this was in what turned out to be the year of his death), talking to two of Thomas Mann's secretaries... I do love coming back to LA.

About travelling in general: I'm really fond of it and have no problems with the mechanics, i.e. staying in a different hotel every night (or, this year when I was in Mongolia, in different yurts), different types of food, and, depending on where you, linguistic difficulties. There is always so much to learn and be swept away by. (Or be shaken to the core by. That, too. Visiting Poland, for example, didn't just mean admiring Krakow, from the churches to the salt mines. It also meant visiting Auschwitz.) And I'm lucky in that often I can combine the useful with the leisurely via travel. It's an aspect of my life I truly treasure, and would miss terribly if I had to do without it.