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…and Bratislava

I always assumed that if I made it to Vienna, I would have to add a day for Bratislava. Fun fact: Vienna and Bratislava are two closest European capitals in terms of distance, so I understand that it is a common side trip, but that was never my reasoning. I generally do not like to “gallop through Europe”, as the saying goes. I learned to not overplan from experience (although my consequential plunge into underplanning has resulted in some unintended and occasionally hilarious jams—but that is another story for another time). I like to take in the sights and go at my own pace, and I dislike leaving a place without exploring it fully. So short story long, if I am going somewhere, I am not also going somewhere else. However, what led me to Bratislava was not its proximity to Vienna, but that Trip That Never Happened 42 years ago.

To be fair, Bratislava was never going to be more than a train connection on our original journey. We always knew that we were not going to see the town. It was an almost unimaginably different world back then. Europe was still divided into East and West, and getting from East to West was complicated even with a passport. A moot point, in any case, because we had no passports. We no longer had passports because we no longer had citizenship of any country, none at all. We were put on a train heading out of the USSR, and the first stop was Bratislava. Czechoslovakia was still united, and Bratislava was not a national capital of anything.

We disembarked in Bratislava and waited for the train to take us into the *real* West, to Vienna. On that cold and lonely platform in December of 1980, I do not remember any other passengers. It was just the four of us, my mom and grandparents and I, and we stood there with our two suitcases per person for what seemed like hours. This might be an invented memory, but I remember going into the train station itself and seeing chewing gum for sale (if you ever heard how prized it was in the Soviet Union—it’s all true!). Could we have just walked into the city? Were there any guards who would have stopped us? It is impossible to know now, because the only tangible goal was to get on that train heading to Vienna. These days, the hour-long trip between the two cities is almost akin to a suburban commuter ride. Back then, one travelled from the Eastern Block to the Capitalist West in a fancy sleeper compartment, and I remember it taking hours—probably because of border control. My mother remembers red velvet upholstery; I do not.

But there IS a vending machine selling dairy products

And so Bratislava remained something I never even pictured, just a footnote to a trip to Vienna. The only part of a this visit I could envision was arriving at that train station and walking past that kiosk selling gum and sundries out into an unimaginable town. Medieval? Baroque? Modern? The important part was the station, the kiosk, the sunlit town square. None of them turned out to be real in 2022.

My persistence in going to Bratislava in the face of my mother’s mild opposition; my brisk realization that in this century, trains to and from Vienna connect to Bratislava via a suburban station and not the main one, preventing the recreation of that long ago voyage; brief panic about having to also get on a bus to get to city center—none of these are worth recounting. Well, maybe the briefest of mentions—repeatedly seeing the words “Bratislava Petrzalka” instead of “Bratislava Central” or “Bratislava Hlavna” led this sophisticated traveler and polyglot to feverishly search the interwebs for a route into the city (get on the bus in this area, alarmingly advised the web, never take the taxi). Otherwise, we would be walking out of the train station into a somewhat grim peripheral disappointment and then right back to Vienna, as per tradition.

Ultimately, I feel like I gave Bratislava a short shrift. We walked around a bit, enjoyed the most lavish meat feast I could ever imagine (allegedly for two people, but there were six meat servings), encountered another Christmas market (again, mostly meat), saw some charming medieval sites, and hightailed it back to Vienna before dark. But I think Bratislava deserves more than just a couple of hours. It seemed like a lovely town I would like to get to know better. I would have liked to visit its castle high above the city, its churches and museums, taste the local wine at a very cool cellar by which I walked, and learn more about the effect the decoupling from Czechia had on Slovakia. I could have researched and planned prior to going, but I think the existence of this town was simply too fantastic to contemplate. Now that I know that it is real, we need to be properly introduced.

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Thank You for Being a Friend

According to my recently unearthed diary (it was not missing or anything, I just do not like to refer to it too often because of the cringe factor), my teen years were full of seemingly perpetual anguish related to various betrayals which I would never recollect but for this traumatizing written record. I was, at times, surrounded by The Mean Girls—but who wasn’t in their teen years? But in a period of just three days recently, I interacted with a variety of people who, in various ways, reminded me how incredibly blessed I have been by friendships in this lifetime.

I auditioned for several parts in a show at the local community theater. I did not get cast for several reasons.
- First, for one of the characters, my Russian accent is no longer convincing. Yes, and I feel slightly stupid even writing this, but I am only identified as vaguely Eastern European to someone with a very good ear. There were literally women on that stage who sounded authentically foreign-born (and weren’t), while I was doing a desperate impression of Crazy Russian Hacker. And I am terrible enough with accents that I cannot just summon it.
- Second, the director decided that the part of a “wanna be lawyer” should be played by a man, because, well, lawyers are men. Triggering, and certainly nothing I have not heard from every corner over the past three decades, but for reasons passing understanding I always expect more parity from community theater. What an unlikely source of optimism! This actually reminds me of a time when I was not cast in another show. It was a dual part—Eastern European mother in her youth in Act I, and then her daughter, a lawyer, a couple of decades later, in Act II. The director called me and told me that I was believable as one but not as the other, and for the life of me I cannot remember which one was which. There is great irony somewhere here, but ultimately, I guess I would prefer to think that I am an implausible lawyer. Frankly, I usually feel that way anyway…
- But, my point in all of this is that I ran into two women I know at the audition. The camaraderie, the emotional support, the cheering each other on and complimenting each other even though we were up for the same couple of parts was absolutely lovely. I have not known either of these fine humans in my youth, so cannot tell with certainty if we are all improving with age or if I am meeting a better class of people. Perhaps a little bit of both, which is both sensible and hopeful.

Not to make it sound like my American youth was misspent in the friendship department, the following day I drove to Hell (a real town; I am not this inventive) for a “Still 50” party of a high school classmate I have never met before. Well, we met during a series of Zoom calls that were held on the regular during the darkest days of the pandemic, and encompassed a group of pals who all graduated within three years of each and now live all over not just the continental U.S., but as far as Hawaii. I count myself more than a little lucky to enjoy the company of almost a dozen folks who knew me at my utmost awkward, clueless, and, in my mother’s characterization, gloomy, and who still willingly interact with me going on forty years later.

The following day I had a lunch lasting several hours with a college friend. We have not seen each other in about a decade, which is a ridiculous and inexplicable gap, but there it is. The old saying of picking up where you leave off without missing a beat is always true with this friend, and has been for over thirty years. I often see people question if there can be genuine, non-romantic friendship between men and women, and this long-standing unshakeable bond between an introverted engineer/scientist and a [seemingly] extroverted lawyer/amateur thespian is a testament to the fact that friendship, like love, is a gift that you take where you find it.
And finally, there is my childhood BFF. She is the one whom I met on my first day of school, and who is the closest I have come to having a sister in this world (I have known my actual sister for a fraction of the time, both in quality and quantity—but that is another story for another time). We have lived world apart for over forty years, and have averaged one in-person meeting per decade during this time. Right now, she is on a road trip to the Russian Near North. From each scenic stop, she has been sending me daily videos, narrating the town histories, telling fun local facts, showing scenic views. They visited Novgorod the Great, Petrozavodsk the capital of Karelia, Murmansk above the Arctic Circle, stopped on the shores of the Barents Sea. I have felt included in this wonderful adventure. In return, I send videos of my foster dog. And beer. And my office. And I feel unbelievably fortunate that my first school friend is still my best friend. She is, and always will be, family.

The wisdom of the years taught me that not all friendships are for always. Some relationships are for a season, and every season has its ups and downs. Looking back, there have certainly been some downs. But, as the song goes, thank you for having been a friend (this is the Russian/Georgian version—not to be confused with the theme to “The Golden Girls”). The ups have, and continue to, fill this life with meaning, warmth, and laughter.

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Always Nordic, Never Alpine

Pandemic winter is both harder, because there is no place to go, and easier, because there is no compulsion to go places. I briefly interrupted my hibernation on a Saturday afternoon to engage in some cross-country skiing. It was more like “cross-yard”—in fact, it was exactly that, because I literally skied out of my backyard and around the subdivision where I live. Very Old Country. Driving to a specified and possibly paid location just to ski around seems entirely too bourgeois, unless one is on a holiday.

This is me, starting out in my actual back yard.

I would not say I was skiing before I was walking, but I certainly do not remember learning to ski. It was just something children did all winter long, along with sliding down every snow drift and every patch of ice in our path. All my skis in childhood were the kind that did not require special boots, but the type where you just slide your foot into a rubber band, and another rubber band goes around the heel (and sometimes not even that). You put your “valenki” onto the rubber piece, because “valenki”, being just felted wool, are very slippery (Although I was always made to wear galoshes over mine. I come by my indifference to fashionable footwear honestly). In Russia, I never graduated to the adult skis which came with special boots that attached to the skis with the metal cage-like fastenings that looked complicated and somehow final, leaving no possibility of escape.

Not my actual skis, but a pretty accurate representation.

In my childhood, my main ski route was in the front yard of our house (so that my grandmother could watch me out of our kitchen window). It was an easy and pleasant morning before going to school during the second shift, until it became less attractive when big garbage bins were installed in my direct path. Occasionally, I was allowed to ski in the big field behind our house, a site of soccer matches in the summer. Both of these have since been sacrificed to progress: the field is now home to an auto dealership, and an extremely shocking high rise is getting built right across from the old two- and three-story apartment buildings. At least the trash bins have disappeared.

These are way fancier than anything we had back in the USSR

Skiing was the gym activity during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the school year. As a gym activity, it was terrible for many reasons. First, the school-provided skis were awful and literally went nowhere, because they were never properly waxed and got stuck in the snow. Choosing skis in the gym was a predictable pandemonium. If you were not appropriately aggressive, you could end up with two left skis. I usually brought my own skis, like some of the children of Soviet privilege, and because my grandmother was convinced that the school skis were unsanitary disease-bearers. This involved hauling a pair of skis on the crowded trolley #4, an experience similar to riding the NYC subway during rush hour, but with worse smell (some of which was contributed by me, because at one point I had a winter coat with goat fur collar. Let me tell you, nothing, nothing at all smells worse than goat fur, even after it was aired out AND sprayed with Red Moscow perfume. This might explain why I have never found goats even remotely adorable). Guarding my skis against breakage was a nerve-wracking experience for several winters.

When I was very young, we were not allowed to use poles in school—the temptations of wielding them as swords or trying to poke someone in the eye was too great. I am ashamed to confess I was not always able to resist either once the pole ban was lifted.

Second, although gym during the ski season was a double lesson to allow us time to change, returning to regular classroom after being outside for an hour and a half, sweaty and soaked, covered in snow, was entirely uninspiring. In my later school years, I have taken to not returning. Along with a few pals, we would ski away from the pack on the field where we raced in a long loop, right across the roundabout at October Square (luckily, there were not that many cars in my hometown in those days), grab our backpacks from the school vestibule, and keep going. Who knows what kind of a delinquent I might have become had we stayed in Russia? American schools sure scared me straight…

Third, we had to learn downhill skiing. Now, there are no mountains where I come from. In my entire life, I have never lived anywhere near a mountain range of any kind. To me, anything taller than me is a mountain. If I see an incline, it’s a mountain. There was not so much as a hill in either our front yard or our back yard. However, my hometown, like any medieval fortress, is built along a river. The dramatic and terrifying hill, “Friday Descent” (probably referring to Good Friday, otherwise it is a pretty random name) was the location of our Alpine exercises.

Trust me, this is significantly more terrifying in winter.

Although I am not particularly afraid of heights, I am strangely afraid of speed—or, more precisely, of my inability to control myself on runaways skis. Thus, most my training on Friday Descent ended with practicing safe falling, which is the skill that serves me well to this day whenever I am confronted by any elevation while skiing. I either fall immediately, or sit on my skis like they are a sled. Occasionally, tired of rolling over into a snow bank, I would just find an opportune moment while the gym teacher was focused on observing students at the bottom of the hill and ski away on the hilltop, across the roundabout, and you know the rest.

Since I have not attended a gym class since I managed to get an exemption from my last one in the mid-80s, skiing, strictly of the Nordic kind, has been a pleasurable activity. And so, if you see a middle-aged woman gliding across your front yard—or your back yard—one sunny winter afternoon, it just might be #oldladyskiing.

The Old Country. Front yard: behind the fence on the right is where I used to ski.

The Old Country. Back yard: the big wide open field is no more.

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The Road Not Taken

I used to think that nothing of interest happened in 1987. No, really, when I look back on my life, it seems like the year that was boringly sandwiched between 1986 (graduated from high school, mother moved away never to live anywhere near me again, started college) and 1988 (that exciting summer in Europe, which changed my life and my personality for the better). But 1987? In the spirit of reflection, I have occasionally struggled to recall what it offered, and ultimately had to refer to my long-forgotten diary. And so, here is what 1987 contributed for the good of the order (after removal of 99% of content consisting of petty interactions with frenemies, quasi-romantic interests, and neverending purchases of Monkees paraphenalia; no names changed due to expiration of statute of limitations):

“Strange: exams are getting closer, but vacation is not. The most disgusting thing is that now I have Friday classes—studying lions, birds, dinosaurs, and French playwrights”.

“Darlene [dorm roommate] moved out and will never return again. And she took the rug with her! (but reimbursed me)”.

Don’t let the ivy fool you. A dorm in the ’80s was a miserable place to be.

“Kerri and Susan are planning to pose nude at the art school. They will get paid $6 per hour for this, which does not seem like great compensation to me. I might have decided to join them if I weighed 60 pounds less”.

“After poli sci I went by the bookstore, looking for some textbooks (didn’t find any)”.

“I am applying for citizenship, by myself. To this end, I had to get fingerprints and photos. I went to the police and took the bus to AAA, because I was too tired to walk.” [I find it ironic that a very shy and relatively busy 18 year old college freshman bravely handled a task for which her adult version gets paid as her day job.]

[Hanging out with dorm neighbors]: “I drank a bottle of wine cooler. Robin drank three.” (Thus is destroyed the myth that I never drank in college)

“Today nothing happened, if you do not count that I sang in the choir for almost three hours, and now have a slightly sore throat”.

“Today I signed a rental agreement for next [school] year. It is a studio apartment with a window facing a brick wall”. [How I loved that apartment! I lived there for three years]

Apartment building on the right. Brick wall of the neighboring building one the left.

“I was kicked out of class. Five minutes before the end, zoology professor told me to go out into the hallway because I was talking throughout the entire lecture. Class was incredibly boring, I have a cold, so perhaps I was talking louder than usual.” [This is still in the top three of the most embarrassing things that have happened to me in my lifetime]

“I have been wearing contact lenses for five days now. Good thing I do not have three eyes!”

“I think that when I will finish my paper about the League of Nations, life will immediately become better”.

[Five days later] “Although I already finished my paper about the League of Nations, life did not become immediately better”.

“Today I was registering for next term. I wanted to take American politics, something about “person and the law”. Of course, everyone is attracted to the magical word “law” like bees to honey. Some of us want to become lawyers… Class was closed and I ended up 31^st on the waitlist. So I registered for 20^th century Russian literature, just in case. If we will study Bulgakov, that’s OK, but what if it’s Pasternak, Nabokov, or even Solzhenitzyn?!” [There was neither, or maybe I just forgot]

“Life is flashing, like in a silent movie. Should I sum up the year? I got Davy Jones’ autograph, became an American citizen, started working. A lot happened this year, but overall I am happy that it’s over”.

But not so fast! Buried in the middle of that year, on July 20 to be precise, is an innocuous paragraph about my grandmother calling, overwhelmed after hearing Sergei Dovlatov on Russian language radio program. He was reviewing the edition of the almanac of the Russian writers abroad, in which two of my stories were published: “Supposedly he said that he was utterly stunned by the stories of an 18 year old who not only did not forget her native language but instead perfected it. To top it all off, he compared my writing to early work of Paustovsky [a particular favorite of mine, a writer of great lyricism and sensitivity, and a Nobel prize nominee, no less]. Funny enough, just the previous year I was lamenting how unlike Paustovsky is my prose. And then I wrote a story that raised me to these heights, if Dovlatov is to be believed. And I believe him, because he gains nothing by flattering me. He does not know me, unlike relatives, who are impressed by my writings simply because it’s me. Overall, I am awfully pleased.”

Konstantin Paustovsky – Wikipedia

How did it come to pass that this highly complementary review of my work by Dovlatov, one of the most prominent Soviet émigré writers, a friend of Joseph Brodsky, only the second Russian (after Nabokov) to have been published in The New Yorker, was not just the most significant event of that year, but not the turning point in my life? Why did I not think to contact him, make a connection, ask for advice? I have always maintained that I am most assuredly not a writer—why was this not the validation I remember desperately needing?

Sergei Dovlatov – Wikipedia

Dovlatov died in New York City in 1990, right around the time I arrived there to start law school. I have not written any fiction since then, and I stopped writing in Russian. This is merely a coincidence. But now, from the distance of three decades, the poetic injustice just seems so staggering. I don’t want to make too much out of it, this road not taken, but today I need to take some time to grieve for the person I might have been.

Sergei Dovlatov – Russiapedia Literature Prominent Russians (rt.com)

Anticipation of happy days is sometimes much better than those days. (K. Paustovsky)

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Pont du Gard and the Plague

In my adult life, I developed a fear of the plague. I blame two fictional sources for this:

The film “Horseman on the Roof”. Apparently it is based on a novel, which I have not read, and is set during the 1832 cholera epidemic in Provence. Something must have gotten lost in translation and/or in my memory, as the latter is absolutely convinced that the story is about The Plague. In all fairness, cholera is pretty nasty, too. The film was made in 1995, and I would have seen it on video some few years later, so I have been frightened for 20+ years now.
The book “Year of Wonders” by Geraldine Brooks. I read it in 2004, and have been *legitimately* frightened for almost 16 years. It actually is about the plague, though the one from the 1600s, not the Black Death of the 14^th century. Which just goes to show that whatever century or whatever contagion, they are all awful[1].

Until literally three days ago, I assumed that the fear of the plague was the same as some of my other phobias, such as the irrational dread of large statues. (Yes, the Statue of Liberty is pretty much my worst nightmare. I choose not to read too much into that…) Turns out, the plague is back.

Actual toilet paper purchased by me in France for no other reason that it was needed at the time. ‘What an auspicious purchase!

I am not making light of it. Like everyone else, I am trying to adjust to the ever-changing environment in which the toilet paper is scarce like it was back in the USSR, borders are closing (like they were back in the USSR), and no one trusts the government as a source of correct information (I think I see a pattern…) Unlike many other folks, I spent the last week in France, and gained some unexpected perspective. Spoiler alert: I think that cancer or work-stress-induced-heart-attack are still my more realistic foes in this lifetime.

I had three modest goals for this past week in the South of France:

To see the newest D’Artagnan statues. Until the last decade, there were three in the world; now there are five. If I had to drive for several hours to a couple of French villages to complete this quest, well, I did. Of course I did.
To see the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, and hopefully locate the mural of Gerard Philippe nearby. Done.
To stop by my old stomping grounds in Nîmes. This did not happen. We woke up on the day for which we scheduled this visit to the announcement that the US borders were closing the next day. Supposedly US citizens would still be allowed to enter the country, but tell this to someone with a different family history. This refugee rallied, got on a train from Perpignan to Paris, and flew out of Paris as soon as Delta would let her on a plane. Home is where the dogs are. And a paycheck.

The last official day of vacation, on the way back from Avignon to our timeshare, we stopped at Pont du Gard. I did not intend to stop there, because I had the most vivid memory of my previous visit there. Yes, it was during “that summer that I spent studying in France” https://oldladywriting.com/2019/06/09/when-did-the-arc-de-triomphe-start-leaning/. It was such a good day! I mean, I acutely remember it as a *Good Day*. It was June of ’88[2], the sun was shining, and I was surrounded by friends. Our summer program included an art class, so some were drawing the bridge. I took two photos, which in the day of pre-digital cameras was the rough equivalent of the 19 I took this second time.

We went to Pont du Gard this past week because it was on the way, and we had time. We waffled a little, because it costs $10+ per person to get into the surrounding area. But if I have learned anything in this life it is that you cannot put a price on regret. So we paid and started walking. And there it was, standing since shortly after the death of Christ, towering through millennia over The Plague, my friends and me, my spouse and me, impassively watching people come and go, sun shining, river flowing, and the aqueduct still standing.

It has been almost 32 years. I have lost touch with all but three of the people in that group. Yet on the last day of my “Feast During the Plague”, I felt surrounded by their ghosts. I have never missed KIES Group ’88[3] as much as I did during that time and in that place!

So, the ghosts of my friends from 1988. The majestic mass of that huge ancient Roman aqueduct from the first century A.D. Spouse and I, having a *Good Day*. And I kept thinking, I’ve had an interesting life. I was fortunate enough to see and be seen at this site twice in the past two centuries. And I am still in touch with three of the people who shared that incredible summer with me, and share the memories of that day. If the plague gets me, I have lived[4]. If the plague gets me, the bridge still stands. Lalalalala….life goes on! And that is how Pont du Gard helped me to deal with my fear of the plague.

[1] Unrelated to this topic, I love Geraldine Brooks’ books except one. I cannot recommend “The Secret Chord”. It is shockingly violent. I would rather read about the plague of any kind. As of this writing, she has five novels out. Read four of them in this order: “Year of Wonders”, “People of the Book”, “Caleb’s Crossing”, “March”.

[2] June 28, 1988, to be precise. I know this, because I had to keep a diary in French for class. Apparently I did not swim, because I felt fat in a bathing suit. But it was still a great day!

[3] KIES—Kentucky Institute for European Studies. Now it’s the Kentucky Institute for International Studies or KIIS (pronounced like “keys”), a consortium of public and private Kentucky colleges and universities which administers a variety of international studies programs in Central America, Europe, South America, and China. It was founded by Murray State University in 1975. Back then, it was just Europe. And it was incredible. That summer changed my life, and unlike many other life-changing events, it changed it for the *better*!

[4] But I am still betting on cancer or death-by-stressful-job. Not morbid, just realistic.

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Sorrow Floats

My former business partner used to say this—“August is a heavy month”. His father died in August, and he was not able to make it to the funeral. August also used to be a slow month in our practice, during which we usually made less money than we wanted (and often needed), so it was logically explained away by this “heaviness”.

Other than those five crazy years with him, during which we had a saying, if not an actual solution, for every eventuality, I am not sure I noticed a particular problem with August. I got married in August—not because of any particular significance, but simply because a hall was available, and friends who introduced me to my husband also got married in August, in the early part of the month, and returned from their honeymoon in the later part of it. And so there is something to celebrate during this heavy month—as of this writing, I am still married to my first husband.

Translated from the original Russian, though, the word can mean anything from the physical or emotional heaviness to heaviness of sorrow, pain, grief. August is a sorrowful month. I am not sure if there are any statistics on what month is the deadliest. I am not sure I want to know. If I just search my memory, the only person I can think of who died in August is Joe Dassin, the beautiful French singer of my childhood. He was 41 in the August of 1980. Fun fact: when I was in labor with my second child, I, for reasons passing understanding, needed to listen to Joe Dassin’s song “À toi”.[1] We brought the CD to the hospital, and my husband had to continuously replay it. Joe’s voice—and that specific song, no other, not “Les Champs-Élysées”, not “Siffler sur la colline”, not “Et si tu n’existais pas”—soothed labor pains. True story![2]

But this past August has been a tough one. I am glad to see the backside of it. I suffered three losses, two actual deaths and an emptying of my nest—neither of which I have been able to process yet; a couple of physical injuries—I am going to lose that nail after all ( the real one), plus a fall that can only be called good because there is only a flesh wound, but still, I missed a couple of weeks of running at the height of training season; and of course, there is that ever present, ever looming, ever unendurable—work stress.

Another phrase difficult to translate from Russian is one my mother used to describe this state of being. It is literally translated as “loss of strength”. I used Google translate, and it came up as “prostration”. Prostration? We do that in church! “Collapse” seems slightly more accurate, but way too dramatic. I would say there is a certain loss of strength, to be sure, but more of a loss of the mind-heart-body connection. The mind is going through the motions (especially during the work day). The heart is hurting. The body is parked on the couch. The body is fairly useless when not motivated by the heart.

But finally, as we also say back in the Old Country, “hope dies last”. I hear it in the voice of one of our dearly departed from this August. I heard him say it at a family gathering quite some many years ago, and whenever I say it to myself, I hear him and see him in my mind’s eye. And that memory-to-mind-to-heart connection is something, is it not? Yes, Sorrow floats[3] and is a short distance away; and wisdom comes in unexpected ways…

[1] It came out in 1976. My son was born 25 years later.

[2] You should have heard me humming Joe’s “Il faut naître à Monaco” when I visited Monaco almost two years ago. The reference was lost on everyone around me, especially all the poor unfortunate souls that heard me sing, but I enjoyed it! Ah, Joe, you left your mark on this world…

[3] John Irving, “Hotel New Hampshire”