"Exploring Freud's World" with Chris Downing

Saturday May 18 to Sunday May 19. From London to Penrith (by train) to Keswick (by bus) to High Portinscale (by taxi) Saturday. Walk around Derwentwater (9.5 miles) Sunday.  Dear Trail Friends, I’m not really ready to stop writing about the Freud tour. I think when a tour group bonds it’s a little like falling in love. Although I didn’t connect with every individual tour mate, I felt the warmth of the connections all around me and felt appreciation for every single person on the tour - and felt appreciated by them. That’s a rare experience. There was a culture of generosity and kindness - I picture Ben and Chris and Kevin so eagerly helping to  unload luggage from the bus - everyone really on the lookout for how they could help and support others and clearly finding joy in being of service. The same kind of culture of kindness I so fell in love with on the trail between hikers and from trail angels. This was a group full of trail angels in that sense - people who get joy from ...

Wednesday May 15 through Friday May 17 and Saturday morning May 18. London and the end of the Freud tour.  Dear Trail Friends I am sitting in our cabin in the Lake District keenly aware that I have dropped the blogging ball. This makes me think of Lynne Downing (widow of George Downing, who was Chris’s husband and father of her five children. Lynne has been a dear friend and family member to us and came along with her daughter Jennifer on the Freud trip). When I asked Lynne about her younger daughter Susan, she described Susan as having “bounce.” That’s what I need right now: bounce. (Its a much more visceral word than resilience. I love it.) Not too surprisingly, after my nightlong blogging binge I fell into a bit of a black hole. I wouldn’t usually diagnose myself as bipolar, but my mood (and probably brain chemistry) sure followed that pattern. A great manic night followed by a major funk.  Judy suggests that I don’t want to write this blog because I don’t want to face the ...

Monday May 13. Bad Gastein and Tuesday May 14. Vienna.  Dear Trail Friends The bus ride from Salzburg to Bad Gastein was short and very beautiful. The mountains reminded me of Switzerland. I was very impressed by the bus driver negotiating the narrow roads with hairpin turns as we climbed the steep mountain above the village of Bad Gastein (which is in a valley). I was also impressed when we unloaded and walked the last distance (5 or 10 minutes) on even narrower roads, and welcomed by the young owner of the Villa Excelsior who energetically hoisted and tightly packed our luggage into the Villa van (which bragged in large letters on the side that Freud had been a guest there but of which alas I failed to get a photo.) I realized this was not the kind of hotel that typically hosts group tours and I felt grateful to the hotel for welcoming us and our travel agency for working with our eccentric vision of a tour.  After we arrived and had lunch at a nearby cafe, Chris and I hiked...

Saturday and Sunday, May 11 and 12. Salzburg.  Dear Trail Friends, I am writing Sunday night, our second night at the Hotel Bristol in Salzburg. Photo 1 shows the hotel (yellow building just right of center, slightky to the left of the three domes, one black and two green).  This hotel is very special. Every room has a different theme and is decorated accordingly - ours is the carnival room with colorful geometric upholstery and paintings with carnival themes. Judy is in the “Mush Room” with botanical art depicting mushrooms. Pam is in the Asian room next door with decor that looks Japanese. The rooms are whimsically and lavishly  decorated. The staff are warm and attentive.  But the real magic is knowing that we are in the very place where the first international scientific psychoanalytic conference took place. It is exciting to imagine Jung and Freud and others who were part of that early gathering in this very building, walking up and down these same stairs, some ...

Thursday and Friday May 9-10. Walking Tour of Freud’s Vienna and Leopold Museum.  Dear Trail Friends, These two days in Vienna were so rich that I cannot begin to do them justice. But if I can give you even a small glimpse of them I will be delighted. I think I will start with an painting of a woman in front of a mirror from the Wien 1900 exhibit at the Leopold Museum. (Photo 1).  I was struck by the difference in skin color - the greenish tint of the skin in the reflection makes me think of a corpse and of death. I was also struck by the mask in the reflection. To my eye, the woman in front of the mirror was not wearing a mask. I was fascinated by the possibility that the painting was about life and death: the living self looking the dead self in the eye, yet the dead self masked and mysterious. (I’m sorry, I don’t remember the artist’s name).  There seemed to be a lot about life and death in the Leopold exhibit. Here is “life and death” by Klimt (Photo 2).  This wa...

Tuesday and Wednesday, May 7-8. From Prague to Pribor (Freud’s birthplace) to Hotel Troyer (in Pribor area) to Vienna.  Dear Trail Friends, I am beginning this blog Wednesday morning on the bus to Vienna. We are driving through green and open spaces, rolling hills, green and yellow fields, large wooded areas. It was striking yesterday to leave Prague and drive into the fresh, green and open expanses of the countryside. (My lungs and throat are very thankful to have had this respite from the diesel fumes from urban traffic.) I love this opportunity to contemplate Freud’s move at age 3 from the village/rural world (imagined at least retrospectively as a kind of paradise) of Pribor to the urban world of Vienna, and to think of this transition as archetypal in the human story both in individual lives and in the life of the species. It is interesting to reflect on this in my personal story and to consider its role in shaping Freud’s psyche and his discoveries and ideas about the human p...