Walks
Finding Bach
Bobby tells me Bach is the best.
This idea for this trip came about during our winter break in 2023, which we spent mostly in Austria. By coincidence, the cities we went to were places the composer Mozart had spent time in so we went along with it and went to every Mozart house and museum that were around. Even our day trip to a small village called St. Gilgen, by mere coincidence, had some connection to Mozart. Though he never visited, his mother was born there and his sister moved there as well. We liked this accidental theme that we ended up with, so we decided, what if we did the same next year?
Johann Sebastian Bach was an obvious choice. I knew absolutely nothing about classical music before I met Bobby, and even now, I probably know 5% of all there is to know about it. Bobby tells me Bach is the best. And I’m inclined to believe him because he knows his shit. He would want to explain why and he’s very good at it (he’s a great and engaging teacher, in general), but as I’ve established, I don’t know nearly as much as he does so I’m not going to try. You probably know more than I do!
As we started planning this Bach pilgrimage, we asked Bridget, Bobby’s mom, to come with us. As the last childless couple in the family, we’ve traveled and hung out with Bridget a lot in the last few years and we enjoy the hell out of it. She’s kind of a “down for whatever” type of gal. She’s also really active and in fact LOVES to get physical and active in trips. So she’s kind of a perfect travel companion for us. So once our trio had settled on our dates, I got down to researching. I shamelessly looked up all the existing and expensive Bach tours, of which there are many. I started mapping it out in our shared travel note:
We gave ourselves almost two weeks to get through this itinerary, which began by flying right before Christmas eve to Frankfurt. This was not a good move and I highly discourage this. The initial logic behind this was to catch the last of the Christmas markets. But I failed to learn in my research that they close on Christmas eve and Christmas day. Not only that, almost every shop, restaurant, and cafe were also closed. So that first night at Frankfurt was pretty uneventful, except for that excellent cup of coffee at at The Espresso Bar, a no nonsense little shop where people come in, put in their order, sip their coffee, and then get on with their day.
We continued on to Eisenach, a medieval town in central Germany where Bach was born. It was a little over two hours of driving from the center of Frankfurt, right on the autobahn, for which we had built up some anxiety/fear due to the myth around it. But it was actually perfectly fine. Just a fine example of German efficiency, in fact. It made us wish drivers back home were as good.
We drove by the town sign and had to circle back. That typeface!
Reaching the gorgeous town sign really set the mood of this stop for us. We stayed at a beautiful hotel on the top of the hill called Berghotel Eisenach. In pictures, this property looks so green and magical. In the wintertime, it's perfectly misty, dark, and wet. We walked down the hill to the town center a couple times, which was a nice workout for all of us with all the hills and steps. But for dinner and an evening show at the Bachhaus, we opted to do the short drive down the hill instead.
Most things in the town square has some sort of nod to Bach, from the Bach Restaurant to the Bach graffiti. The main attraction, however, is the Bachhaus. Johann Sebastian Bach was born here on March 21, 1685. This is the house where he spent the first ten years of his life and learned about music. Presently, it serves as a museum that also hosts concerts with musicians playing Baroque-era keyboard instruments. We were lucky to attend a concert the day after Christmas.
It's really fun to explore a town that has preserved its history so well, from the architecture to the typefaces used. It feels like what theme parks aim to give its visitors—a truly immersive experience where you can almost imagine what it was like back in the day when Bach's family roamed those streets. Or maybe I'm being too dramatic about this. I just love old medieval towns.
I didn't have luck finding coffee I like here, but that's not Eisenach's fault. However, during our stop at Arnstadt on the way to Weimar, I got an incredible cup of coffee from Bohnenstolz, as well as a bag of light roast beans that I enjoyed very much at home. This little town is where Bachkirche is located. The Protestant church is where Bach first got hired as an organist at the age of 18.
Bohnenstolz is a must-visit in Arnstadt for high quality specialty coffee.
After that little stop where Bobby got to practice his German, we continued on to Weimar, which is now one of my favorite cities in Europe. Bach lived here for a long time, but the main reason we stayed here for three days is because of the Bauhaus Museum. If I were to rank my favorite design movements, I would rank Bauhaus as number one, followed by Impressionism and Arts and Crafts. (Memphis is an honorable mention, but honestly Corporate Memphis really tired me of it.) Bobby and I have spent the last couple years decorating our home in a very Bauhaus-inspired manner, and I was excited to see some of the original furniture in person, especially the cradle by Peter Keler.
Snippets of Weimar.
Our final Bach stop of this long trip was Leipzig, where Bach spent the last years of his life as the musical director of the Thomanerchor or St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig. St. Thomas Church is also where Bach is buried and if there's no mass or concert going on, you can walk in, pay three euros (if I'm remembering this correctly), and see it for yourself. There's also a small exhibit of Bach-related things like sheet music and manuscripts.
St. Thomas Church, Bach's final resting place
We very fortunately got to attend the Thomanerchor's new year's eve concert, which we all agreed was a once in a lifetime experience. If angels were real, they would sound like those boys. It's hard to fathom what it must've been like back in Bach's day, attending mass in this church and hearing all this beautiful music for the first time. Once the concert was over, the boys' choir went outside to Bach's monument and performed a few songs for the crowd who weren't able to come inside.
The concert was such a nice way to end our Bach pilgrimage. It got me thinking about all the other people we're inspired by that we want to plan trips around. Bobby suggested Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. He also has a few Russian composers he loves like Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. But... y'know. I mentioned Henri Matisse and maybe a deeper dive into Claude Monet's life.
I'd personally love to do a trip centered around Greek mythology next.
Anyway, after all this talk, we just looked at each other and acknowledged just how insanely privileged we both are to be able to see the world in this way. To be able to travel at all. And I really feel fortunate to be with someone who would walk around a medieval town for hours with me.
The Vatican
I was here.
On the last day of vacation, Bobby, Greg, and I walked a total of 10 miles. We started the day quite early, leaving our Airbnb at Piazza Navona at around 7:10AM to start a half hour walk to the Vatican. We had an 8AM ticket to see the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel, which was scheduled to close at 10AM according to an email I received. This prompted an annoying sense of urgency, but it did give us an opportunity to see a beautiful sunrise.
We got there just in time to line up along with what seemed like hundreds of people ushered by guides with different colored flags filling up the waiting area. Meanwhile, busses unloaded even more people on the sidewalks. It was chaotic. But the process of entering the Vatican was surprisingly simple and unfussy. Quick ID and ticket check, then a quick security check of our possessions, then one last ticket check. And soon, we were standing in front of statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
Completely by coincidence, I’ve been consuming so much Greek mythology literature in the last few months (I highly recommend “Mythos” by Stephen Fry if you haven’t read it), so these first couple museums at the Vatican were right up my alley. I would even go as far as to say I was a little bit starstruck by some of them. At one point, my overly eager self pointed at a statue and obnoxiously proclaimed to Bobby, “It’s Apollo! Look! I just read about him!” (See said Apollo statue below)
But aside from the awe of staring at such old things and statues of characters we've all read about, I felt mostly nothing. I had that surface level admiration for the sheer beauty and scale of all the art, of course. SO MUCH ART. But it didn't feel like a lifechanging event in any way. Normally I would’ve been very excited about seeing pieces by Van Gogh or Matisse, but it felt odd in this context. I didn’t know how to process The Matisse Room in a religious setting.
I think a big reason is my complicated relationship with the church and Catholicism. At one point in my life, I'm sure I identified as an atheist. These days, I say I'm agnostic. But is it terribly cliche of me, now that I'm in my mid-30s, to simply just say I'm spiritual?
Growing up in the Philippines meant being born into participating in all the rituals of being Catholic without really knowing why. Going to mass, getting confirmed, attending so many baptisms, receiving my first communion, listening to so many sermons, even attending a Jesuit university. No one can say Filipinos aren't devoted to the Catholic church. They practically run the Philippines. So much poverty exists in the country and yet people would give the change in their pockets during mass anyway. I grew up in a rural town where I witnessed this time and time again. And yet. Anyway, I digress.
The one real moment of wonder for me during this visit was seeing the unphotographable (literally because we weren't allowed) Michelangelo fresco on the Sistine Chapel. It's just so goddamn beautiful, and detailed, and unfathomable. I can see how people saw this back in the day and felt compelled to believe in God.
I really would’ve stared up at the ceiling much longer than I did had my neck not started hurting. Frankly, I was also tired of people coughing in my face in such a small, crowded room. Have people really forgotten what happened in 2020 already? As I desperately tried to make my way out of that virus-filled enclosure, I made eye contact with a woman holding hands with a man telling her about how the disciples spread the gospel. She said, “Uh huh” with a faint expression of boredom. It almost made me laugh.
There was so much art we saw that day. And of course I took way too many photos for no reason at all. It’s almost like a tic sometimes. I think I have this desperate need to prove I saw the world. I was here. I existed in this space at one point in time and I saw all of these. In real life. Here are my own pictures that I took with my own camera to prove it. I’d like to imagine I’ll have children and grandchildren who would care about these memories one day. I also know it's my own judgement I'm trying to satisfy. For a time, I thought I was stuck. Once I became unstuck, the need to "catch up" overwhelmed my entire being.
Soon, we left the ominous confines of the Vatican Museums to enter the ominous confines of St. Peter’s Basilica, the world’s largest church. When we entered through the front entrance, they had a soundtrack fit for "Dune" playing on loop and we were appropriately terrified. Mostly from lack of deeper interest, I didn’t really research much on what we would see, but there’s a fair amount of dead bodies on display here. Pretty disarming. I did not take pictures.
The opulence was astounding. Everything was gilded, shiny, and rich. A mass was being held in one part of the church while we were strolling around. Tourists ogled from a distance behind ropes not unlike teens watching Harry Styles from afar. I know I'm writing about this whole experience in a way that some may deem inappropriate because the Vatican is considered sacred after all, but to write about this in a more serious way would feel so disingenuous. Ultimately, I’m so fucking weirded out by religion, the many rituals within, and the depth of devotion a lot of people have to institutions that are created by and run by people. Sometimes very bad people!
For a Jubilee year, January ended up being a pretty good time to come here. The crowds were manageable, which is probably not going to be the case this summer, and the weather was more than pleasant. For the true devout, you might want to opt for a guided tour. Oh, and if you find yourself wanting coffee after all this, you can walk to an excellent cafe called Love that is walking distance from the Vatican Museum gates.
Oxie, Sweden
A quiet, sleepy town just outside of Malmö.
One of my favorite things about living in Oxie was the one mile walk to the grocery store from my house. We were outside of Malmö, surrounded by rural landscapes, and this walk during the summer and fall was absolutely gorgeous. Colors changed rapidly, depending on how the light was hitting. I felt like I was in a Hayao Miyazaki movie.
Southern Sweden had plenty of beautiful nature reserves that offered miles and miles of walking trails. We would spend the weekends looking on Google Maps and picking a random nature reserve to go to. This became an essential activity for us during our time there. As it got colder and darker, we sank deeper into depression (both of us, unknowingly, at the same time). We missed our friends and family back home, and we missed the comfort of going to places where there was a possibility of walking into people we knew.
Living in Scandinavia had been a dream for both of us, but we severely underestimated the toll of doing such a huge move in your 30’s. We both had established lives back in California and we didn’t really leave because we hated living there. We were hungry for something different, after living in Los Angeles for over a decade and then not quite finding our footing immediately in Northern California. We were also disillusioned by our lives in the US after the pandemic and political turmoil of the last few years. We were exhausted and needed a break.
Our long walks in nature reserves became a practice of gratitude. We spent this time reassuring each other that our decisions weren’t permanent. That we can go back if we really wanted to, that our friends are still our friends, that our family will welcome us back warmly, and that we were extremely privileged for all of it. We had these talks so often, almost every weekend as we tried to process the difficult week we had just faced.
We were plagued by different things. He had accepted a position as a teacher in an international school (where the children held more power than the adults and knew it), and I had quit my very stable job for the last almost six years. He was dealing with an intense and demanding job, and I was unemployed and idle for the first time in more than a decade.
During the week, we found it hard to articulate to the other the many different feelings of uncertainty we were dealing with. But on weekends, during these long walks in Swedish forests, we found our words. We comforted each other and helped each other recharge for another difficult week ahead.