Swimming in Memories of Europe

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Europe jumped out of the wee bag that holds my swim access card today.  My first time in the local pool since before my summer, 2016 trip to Europe, I found in my wee bag a receipt for cookies,  from the Tesco grocery store in Hove, beside Brighton.  I also found a one-cent Euro coin, from Germany.

I remember paying 40 British cents for those cookies on the sunny early-September day I walked through Hove, where we house sat for two weeks, to a Medieval church, in whose by-donation book box I found a 2009 English translation of Celestina, Rojas' 1499 picaresque novel, a century before Cervantes' Don Quixote.  I read and gave away Cervantes' decades ago, and Rojas this fall, before I gave it to the local recreation centre for the person who teaches conversational Spanish.

The recreation centre, two rinks, a concert hall, and the pool, is halfway through a  two-year expansion which will result in two pools and a water slide.  The wading pool, hot tub, steam room, and sauna are gone; in their place the lane pool goes up, across a temporary wall from the current lane pool.  When the new lane pool's done, the current lane pool will close, for the building of the leisure pool and water slide in its site.

England, the mother of parliaments, votes, as did Williams Lake in the October, 2015 municipal election referendum to approve the borrowing of ten million dollars for the recreation upgrade.

While I upgraded my own recreation this morning, I thought of Hamburg, Luneburg, Cuxhaven, Berlin, and Rostok, the German cities I saw this summer, courtesy of my generous sister.  I know not where the one-cent coin came from, but I am glad I kept a few European and British coins as souvenirs.

"Was I in Europe this summer?"  I marveled.  "Did I spend four weeks at a Hamburg house-sit?  Three nights in Berlin, the farthest east I ever was?   Day train trips to Cuxhaven and Luneberg, on the North and Baltic Seas, respectively?"  My generous younger sister was why.

"Did we walk the Brighton beach many times during our two-week house sit in adjacent Hove?  Did we eat great fish and chips in a London restaurant, after a day in renown art galleries?  Did we house sit for two weeks in Manchester, ride its funky street cars, and see the canals still plied in this Industrial Revolution epicentre?  Did I watch 75 000 pour out of the Manchester United stadium after a soccer game? 

As I swam along, back crawl, this morning, I thought, "My, what a generous younger sister I have!  She bought me a plane ticket from Edmonton to Hamburg, and another from London to Edmonton.  She fed, sheltered, and entertained me.  She translated for me in Germany.  We spent eight weeks together, our longest time together in more than 25 years."

We flew together to Canada, her first time out of Europe in more than two years.  She plans to return to Europe in early 2017.  Why not, eh?  I'm glad she got me there, this time, and two times before:  2015 to Britain and Ireland, 2011 to France.

The Tesco receipt and European one-cent coin, sitting on the desk beside this laptop, remind me that I was in Europe this summer.  What memories!