Running while traveling

I write a silly running blog, so when Lindsey asked me to guest-post on her blog, my immediate thought was, "I have to make this work as a cross-post!." However, I then suffered from a bout of blogger's block, so I have to give a nod to my fellow guest blogger, Ursina, for coming up with this subject and Runners World for sending out a timely "Running while Traveling" email.

Some of my best travel experiences have come at times when I've combined physical activity, be it running, hiking or biking, with discovering a new place. But as I'll be traveling a little bit at the end of the summer while training for a marathon (admittedly domestically, I'm not a jet-setter like my dear blog-host), I will focus on running and leave hiking and biking for another day. 

Lindsey's friend Kate has done a great job of covering Lyon, the city in France where I studied abroad. Part of what made my experience in Lyon special was getting to know the city through long runs to the Parc Tete d'Or or along the Rhone river. While running in a new city isn't without its downsides (older French ladies who quite ostentatiously turn their noses up at women wearing shorts come to mind), it is a great way to get to know parts of the city a bit further than walking distance.

The other advantage of running in a new place is that you get the chance to discover parts of the city like a native. I live in NYC and still discover parts of Central Park or the running paths along the city's rivers that I hadn't previously known about. However, there are risks to just setting off on a run in one random direction in an unfamiliar city - the key to running in someplace unfamiliar is to plan ahead.

Runners World has a tool called "RouteFinder" in which one can plug in a city and find running routes that other runners have loaded into the system. While the international routes are a bit thin (I looked at Paris and Dublin), they still offer a decent range of distances and the ability to map. http://www.runnersworld.com/route/routefinder.html

MapMyRun has tools to track running distance and has a community feature where you can see runs that other runners post. http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/

RunThePlanet has tons of routes, including places to run in Antartica, if you're into that. http://www.runtheplanet.com/runningroutes/

My next bout of travel running will occur in Newport Beach, CA, where I've already discovered a few great runs (pictured).

Peace,

Julie

thanks so much to Julie for the post... and be sure to check out her running blog, Feet Don't Fail Me Now at http://feetdontfail.tumblr.com/

The other Swiss mountains

A guest post from a fellow citizen of the world. (Thanks so much to Ursina for writing about her native Switzerland while I'm away on vacation!)

Many images come to mind when thinking of Switzerland. For me they include my family and childhood memories. You might be thinking about cheeses and chocolates, watches and army knives, even tax havens and banks, and of course the Alps. The Alps do cover about 60% of the country and are the geographical aspect most important in our history, culture, and tourism. But when I think of Swiss mountains, I also think of the Jura Mountains, which cover about a tenth of the country stretching from Geneva in the Southwest to Basel in the North.  If you are thinking Jurassic Park right now, you are spot on. The Jurassic time period’s name is derived from the mountains. Lindsey would probably explain the etymology of the word right about now… so Wikipedia tells me "The name 'Jura' is derived from the Celtic root 'jor' which was latinized into 'juria,' meaning forest," thus forest mountains.

To me the name “Jura” means much more, it is also the name my family uses for the house from 1667 that my Mamama and grandfather bought over 40 years ago.  My parents recently renovated the house and it is frequently full of cousins, aunts, and assorted family dogs.  In fact, my parents are up there right now with Clemens (our German pointer). To further complicate these matters, there is also a Swiss canton (similar to a state) in the Jura Mountains region! The area has a very interesting history; it is here that Swiss watch making was born (the Watch Museum in Chaux-de-Fonds is a must), because the high altitude made farming in the area inefficient. This also makes it one of the poorest areas of Switzerland. This forms the backdrop to the creation of Switzerland’s youngest canton, Jura. After what my mom calls “an almost civil war” (which was just some uncivilized protests), the inhabitants of the area who speak French and are predominantly Catholic decided to secede from the predominantly German-speaking Protestant canton of Bern, the largest Swiss canton, and like anything in Switzerland, the entire country voted on it and approved the decision.  Interestingly, the southern part of the area decided to remain Bernese, and that’s where my family’s “Jura” house lies.

Beyond the history and fascinating geology, the area is a haven for any outdoor enthusiast (except the type looking for sharks). Hiking and biking, swimming and horseback riding, cross country skiing and even scooter rentals; there’s a trail, map, and place for everything. One of my favorite hikes is around the Étang de Gruère, a bog lake that you can swim in during the summertime. It’s refreshing, but if you kick up the bog bottom you come out covered in black stuff. Another favorite is climbing up the ladders and steep path through the Combe Grède chine to the top of Mount Chasseral; from the top you can see Mont Blanc in the Alps on a clear day. The scenery in the area is made even more beautiful by the many cows and horses that often graze together on the same meadows. Hiking paths routinely lead through the meadows and cows might even come up to you and give you a cow’s lick.

 Mount Chasseral, via

So next time you’re in Switzerland, consider a trip to the Jura, the other mountains, and stop by for a beer and some local cheese at our “Jura” and maybe you’ll even spot these twenty donkeys I encountered nearby last year.

Rocks for Jocks and Critical Film Studies in Lyon

So let me just start by saying that between Blogger shutting down at the end of last week and my own internet failing for several days this week, I have been a very bad blogger. So bad, in fact, that I failed to notice that the internet/Blogger swallowed entire posts whole last week, including another excellent escape to France with our friend, Kate. So suspend all disbelief, ignore time, and forget that K has just wrapped her second week of a brand spanking new dream job in the Big Apple- we are going back to Lyon.
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As is my gracious host Lindsey, I am an unimaginable archaeology geek. It's what I did in college. It's what I did after college. I've written stories about it, I might even someday write a book about it. It's my hands-down favorite thing to think about. Lyon: got it. Here are some pics from my first stop upon arriving in town, the Gallo-Roman ruins. I spent all day here Tuesday, and loved every second of it. I even tolerated French children on field trips. And less than full sun. But it was magical. The walk itself to get there was epic, not unlike urban hiking, but I think I might go back tomorrow.

So I love rocks. But my second love (which happens to encompass my so-called day-job) is film and television. So another pilgrimage here was to the Lumiere Museum, the house and collection where the Lumiere Brothers lived. They are the inventors of cinema and the house was filled with the first cinematography cameras and photographs and even screenings of the first-ever films. A very cool, very nerdy mecca. On the way over there I was listening to one of my podcasts about some atrocious movie out today and it was really wonderful, to think how "far" exactly storytelling has come.

only Lyon

Lyon is 100% the undiscovered gem of France. The city surrounds two rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, that create a little middle piece of the city. My friend lives just a few blocks from the Rhone and it's super easy to get everywhere on foot. It's much smaller and more manageable than Paris, and not quite as in-your-face charming, but feels like a city where people actually live. The river banks and parks along the water make it absolutely gorgeous. Great shopping, farmer's markets aplenty on the banks of the Rhone, and their "central park" is to die for. More to come!

 

 (this post brought to you by my friend & guest blogger Kate. For more of Kate's travels in France, check out her posts from Paris, Fountainebleau, and Avallon!)

in which our protagonist arrives in Paris

My lovely Guest-blogger, headband enthusiast, fellow-Quaker Kate has checked in from Paris...

"Bonjour! I made it alive to Paris after pulling an all-nighter for a friend's birthday in New York Saturday. God knows what time it is in my head by now but I spent the entire day walking the city. It is outrageously, outlandishly beautiful and infinitely walkable.

Coming from Manhattan, iPhone Google map in hand, I thought navigating would be a piece of cake. But then I remembered that Manhattan is on a numerical grid, it's a city for geographical dweebs or dummies. I got capital S Super lost yesterday, walking in big and small circles all the time, but who cares. I saw a thousand things in the stretch of a few hours.

Ate not one, not two, but three pain au chocolats. They're 1 Euro. Maybe tomorrow I'll go for a jog? Maybe.

Went to Shakespeare & Company, best stop of the day, which sounds lame since it's an English bookstore but it was around 6 after 7 or so hours on foot and in French and on no sleep. And it was Hemingway's hangout. I bought a book and they stamped it, tres cool.

Oh, and I said both "Gracias" and "Por favor" to my waiter last night at the creperie. Here's to a good night's sleep. On a Parisian couch."

The question is, Kate, what book did you purchase?

And oh the pre-several-time-zones-travel-all-nighter. I know that one all too well.

Closing thoughts:
Pain au chocolat! Be the death of me...

jet-setting to France (life is rough): meet guest blogger Kate

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend--or a fantastic Easter weekend if that's your thing.  Mine was dotted with a mix of gluttony, hot yoga, unpredictable weather, retail therapy, and visits from far-away friends-- all in all a superb spring weekend.  I have a lot to accomplish over the next few days, and I'm starting to realize that time is going to start flying by with an abundance of good company and exciting events on the horizon.

Without further adieu, I would like to introduce you to Kate, a friend of mine who will be contributing a bit to my little project over the coming weeks.  With wishes of bon voyage over the weekend, she has already taken off and touched down in France.  I'd like to imagine that she is drinking vin rouge and practicing bad French at this very moment.  That's my girl!
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(not kidding about the hole)

"Bonjour! I'm Kate and I'll be guest-posting for Lindsey while I'm jet-setting. By jet-setting I mean one trip from New York to Paris to Lyon to New York for a total of two weeks. Lindsey and I met here (see photo), in a hole in the ground in Greece while on an archaeological dig. We wore headbands, sweat a lot, and unearthed all kinds of interesting things, including arrow heads, boar skulls, and a shared love of travel.

the one time we didn't wear headbands

I'm also doing some travel writing while I'm over there, and can meanwhile give some tips on how to "become" a travel writer. I don't by any stretch fancy myself that, but it's more along the lines of how to finagle your way into doing travel writing. It is the dream job, right? I'll be writing a pieces for both Elle Magazine and Fodor's, so wish me luck.

I'll be wearing a fanny pack. And comfortable shoes and a t-shirt. What have I learned from living in Manhattan all these years? New York seems like a fashionable place with fashionable people wearing fashionable things, but in truth, unless you're dying on the sidewalk no one cares about what you look like. I imagine an enormous city like Paris is the same. I have packed some dresses, but we'll save those for nighttime.

   I'm staying with friends from college - Go Quakers! - in both Paris and Lyon. In between the 2 cities I'm going to pop by a few vineyards (my piece for Elle is a super cheesy bit about how a gal with a boxed-wine-and-two-buck-Chuck palate navigates the wineries of fancy old France) and as of now I'm not 100% sure where I'm staying while in the countryside. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. AKA, I will panic and maybe use AirBnB. 

That's all for now! Nice to meet you. Thanks, Lydia, I mean, Lindsey."
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I, for one, am tres excited about Kate's upcoming contributions to Litterulae Mundano, and I plan on using all kinds of bad Franglais to celebrate.

K doesn't know (yet) that I used this. She really wasn't kidding about the headbands. Or the sweat.  (Sweat bands?)  If this doesn't pique your interest, there's probably something very wrong with you.

I want to be queen of the internets!

If you happen to be one of my "regulars" on Litterulae, you might notice some changes.  (Or you might have noticed some more subtle changes after big changes were scrapped.  Change is sometimes good- like a change in location through traveling!  But sometimes change is bad)  Bear with me, as I'm still trying to navigate my way through templates and html and will certainly be working out some kinks over the next few days while I really should instead be focusing my energy on big picture life things.  Isn't the internet just the best/worst thing to join forces with procrastination ever?

If you are one of my few precious regulars, thank you, spank you.  If you happen to follow along with Google Reader or a similar RSS feed, but aren't a public "follower," why don't you show some support (help a sista out?) and click the button, take the ride?  If bloglovin is more your style, you can now follow through there, as well.  But you should probably show me you love me and go both ways (insert really pathetic bisexuality joke here).

In an attempt to conquer social media/catch up with my peers/compensate for not having a smart phone, I also took the plunge and opened a tumblr account.  For all you tumblr folks out there, citizenmundi.tumblr.com is where it's at.  Think short and sweet version of insane wanderlust meets more random stuff about turtles with a heaping spoonful of the daily things that make my life awkward.  Oh, alright, heaping spoonful squared- who am I kidding?

What to look forward to...

Ireland.  And lots of it.  Now is as good a time as any to announce that I'll be spending half the month of June in Ireland traveling around by myself for a bit as well as staying with friends.  In a castle.  A castle?  A castle.  I'll be doing plenty of daydreaming and rough planning in the coming weeks, so help me out with that, OK?  In preparation, I will also be undertaking a bit of a literary challenge.  What better time than now to become better versed in Irish literature, culture, and history?

Guest Posts.  A lovely friend of mine leaves for Lyon soon and has kindly offered to contribute her talents to Litterulae (I said yes, of course).  With all the time I will be away in June, I will be looking for some guests to step in and keep this little exercise in narcissism up and running.  If you have an idea for a guest post that fits in with the general theme of this blog, send an email to citizenmundi{at}gmail{dot}com.  Think travel guides (could be just an insider's look at your city), amusing stories from the road, travel photography, a story behind a souvenir, your dream vacation...

More travels, more photography, more ridiculous stories.  I've barely scratched the surface of several years of traveling, and I'm still adventuring (and making an ass out of myself/learning valuable life lessons) whenever possible.  If there is anything in particular that you'd like to hear more about (or less about), leave some feedback in a comment or an email.  Seriously.

So there you have it.  Follow me, leave some feedback, help make me queen of the internets. 

Dylan the turtle endorses this blog.

sex and the Arab world

Those of you who know a bit about me might be cognizant of the fact that over the past couple years I've become quite interested in the issues of sex and gender as they relate to women's health and empowerment-- so much so that it has begun to shape my academic pursuits and career pathway.  Sex has become so intrinsically tied with power throughout the world, yet so few people dare to scrutinize this pivotal linkage.  It really should come as no surprise that places with a greater taboo on sex have much greater injustices against women-- not just in more public realms like political and economic freedoms and opportunities, but in more private spheres as well, where such oppression can be debilitating and deadly (think significantly higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, HIV, intimate partner violence- the list goes on and on).  I applaud those brave enough to tackle the issue of sex, which is such a fundamental part of everyday life, yet has been relegated to the "shameful" and "taboo," only to be touched upon in the bedroom and, far too often, only to be decided upon by the male.

Last weekend, The New York Times Magazine blog published a story about Joumana Haddad, a Lebanese woman who is daring to pose vital questions about sexual taboo to the Arab world.  I applaud Haddad for asking the questions that others are not bold enough to ask and challenging the power game of sex that is pervasive in the Arab world (though certainly not limited to it).

As I have a standardized test coming up that I should at least pretend to be prepping for, I will let someone else speak for me today-- and in more revealing and poignant words than I could ever speak on the subject.  A Lebanese-American friend of mine, Diana, recently wrote a piece for her blog in which she shares her thoughts on Joumana Haddad's work as it relates to her own experience as the child of a broken American-Arab partnership.  Diana has graciously allowed me to share her words here:

Beating The Arab Patriarchy Over The Head With Sex Toys

                   

I’m a mutt of sorts. My native Californian mother, a nurse, met my immigrant Arab father, a surgeon, in one of those stereotypical cross-cultural hospital love affairs of the early 1980’s. You know the ones: foreign-intellectual-seeks-loophole-to-prevent-deportation-to-war-torn-homeland. There was more to the story, but I’m now cognizant of the fact that this was the driving force of the narrative of my parents’ ill-fated romance.
My father wined and dined my mother according to the contemporary American dating rituals; she believed him to be someone he wasn’t. In direct opposition to my father’s sociocultural values, they cohabited before marriage. My mother became pregnant and gave birth to my father’s saving grace — an anchor baby. With the help of a hot shot D.C. immigration attorney and his natural born American son, my father received his coveted free pass to the United States of America.

The West-Meets-East fairy tale quickly unraveled.

Women are objects under the patriarchal Arab gaze. They are pawns, vessels, and prizes. They should be pleasant, passionate and amiable, but never assertive, outspoken, or defiant. Sexual only at the behest of the male proprietor, whether father, husband, or brother.

My father used my mother in precisely this fashion. He used her to escape the gruesome squalor of Beirut in the 1980’s. He duped a liberated, idealistic American to gain the freedom to practice his misogyny in peace.

Sex is the weapon of choice for the Arab patriarchal assault on womankind. In The New York Times blog post Sex and the Souk, Joumana Haddad bluntly states:

“People tell me, ‘There are so many things wrong with the Arab world, why do you just talk about sex?’ And I say, ‘This is the main link.’ Who decides what’s haram — what’s allowed and not allowed? The religious figures. They are linked with the political powers, and together they work to control the society through this medium, the sex drive. If you break the power over sex, you can start undermining and questioning the religious and political powers. You cannot do it the other way around.”

I love this. So obvious, yet so taboo, and so intricately defines the Arab world. The chains that bound a woman’s sexuality in the Arab world also place a gag order on sexual discussions from the female perspective.  Viewing sexuality through the male gaze perpetuates female oppression. By dismantling the power structure of sexuality, we create spiderweb fractures in the glass ceiling.

                    

Ms. Haddad, dubbed the “Carrie Bradshaw of Beirut,” is the publisher of Jasad — body in Arabic — an erotic literary magazine that explores the spectrum of sexuality. According to The New York Times post, it boasts “articles by intellectuals and poets about masturbation, homosexuality, fetishism and polygamy alongside antique photos of nude Arab boys luxuriating in voluptuous Ottoman settings and close-ups of female genitalia.” Racing to get my hands on a copy — William & Mary’s own literary erotica group, Lips, would do well to sneak a peek.

    

While her reactionary opponents outnumber the bullet holes freckling Beirut’s downtown, Haddad’s feminist critics question her authenticity and efficacy. While I understand their hesitancy to embrace a celebrity as a bona fide political activist, I find their cautionary attitude premature. The Arab woman’s world is in crisis. Who are we to deny any effort on her behalf? Ms. Haddad’s fresh and unyielding take on sexual politics is uncharted territory that young activists like myself would do well to embody.

The lone daughter of an ill-fated American-Arab partnership, I am acutely aware of the sexual conflict inherent in the Arab world. Forced to patronize my father’s fellow Arab doctors, I had no privacy in my personal medical affairs. In college, my brother was lauded as his fraternity’s Vice President, pretty American girlfriend at his side, chaste as they come in my father’s eyes. This veneer left my father free to revel in blissful ignorance of my fortunate brother’s extracurricular activities. In contrast, my father responded to my responsible use of birth control with shame and outrage, and told me that I should “try to keep my legs shut” when I contracted a UTI.

And so, Joumana, mabrouk. Mabrouk, and please continue to write for us.

Her latest work, I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman is for sale on Amazon. It will be published in the United States in late 2011.

Thank you, Diana, for your insightful words on a personally painful topic that has such far-reaching significance.  (Diana's blog can be found here)