Wind and Roses

Tavern Books

The second part of the BA Plus fellowship has begun and it has brought me to the Pacific Northwest! I managed to land an editorial internship with the Portland-based publisher, Tavern Books, a poetry press dedicated to promoting literary voices that have either gone out of print in the US or would be unheard of because they come from all over the world. Among them are Nobel Laureates Nelly Sachs and Tomas Tranströmer, Pulitzer Prize-winners Charles Simic and Franz Wright, as well as need-no-introduction Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke. Can you imagine anything cooler than being part of such a mission? Well, maybe being part of it in Portland, Oregon.

Chicago Cloud Gate

 Before all of this started though, let me rewind: I had some nice last days planned full of relaxed packing, saying goodbye to OU, my friends, and Athens. But that did not happen. Instead, I spontaneously decided on Saturday after exam week that I would follow Theresa the next day for a short trip to Chicago and fly out to Portland from there. In short, I had to arrange bus tickets, hostels, flights, and packing in no time. Surprisingly, all went quite smoothly and Theresa and I spent some nice days in the Windy City.

Chicago is great: It’s industrial, rough and a little dirty but people seem to like it that way—and that’s what I liked about it. We did some touristy things (Millennium Park, including the Cloud Gate, of course) but we abstained from going to the criminally over-priced Art Institute or the Sears (now Willis) Tower Skydeck. Instead we went to the much smaller, but interesting and slightly disturbing Museum of Contemporary Art (one of the artists, Doris Salcedo, had sewed together the halves of two chairs with human hair), and we ate sushi at a charming little restaurant where we had to bring our own wine.

Millennium Park 

However, my perfect little trip took a turn when I accidentally got my phone wet, realizing that I was dependent on it in order to find my way around—and more importantly to find a place to stay—in the new city I was about to move to. I was in a bit of a panic. Theresa, being supportive, took me to the closest apple store, where an employee explained to me that there was no such thing as a tiny little vacuum cleaner that sucks water out of phones (anybody want to get into that?) and that he couldn’t do anything for me but replace the phone for $300. But then he said, “wait, I think I’ve met you two before.” Frustrated about my phone, and wanting to leave, I told him I didn’t think so. “Yeah, we took a class together in Germany, at Leipzig University, maybe a year ago,” he said. Disbelieving, Theresa and I looked at him and realized that he was right. We had taken Society, History and Politics together. He asked about the instructor, Tobias Schlobach or “Schlobi” and we chatted about University and Leipzig and our studies in Athens. I wasn’t able to get my phone fixed, but it’s always nice to run across a familiar face in a strange city of millions.

The next day, I left for the City of Roses. More… in two weeks!