Today I checked out my first book on my new library card from a tiny library that serves its main clientele with a section of Large Print books that spans an entire wall. There is a computer search available, as well as a computer check-out, but the library clerk stamped the old-fashioned card under the front cover with my book’s due date. I’m the first person to borrow this particular Christopher Morley title since 2008. Before that it was marked four times from July 2005 to November 2005.

Local libraries, after the visitor bureaus, were my first stops in the United Kingdom. Sometimes the uniqueness of a library reflects the character of a place. For instance, the library in Weymouth hosted the obnoxious racket of sea gulls and pigeons on its skylight. Not unexpected with the English Channel a street away from the library. The staff, though, welcomed visitors with a hometown attitude, ready to help with Internet access or information on Weymouth. And the WWI exhibit, standard among libraries eager to promote the war’s centenary, was put together by genealogists with cut and paste displays using unprotected and unpreserved primary source materials. Poster board displays featured original newspaper clippings pulled from scrapbooks and pasted to the cardboard.

http://www.cmrs.org.uk

Much of my time in Oxford was spent in the local history section of the Oxford Central Library, located in the heart of the main shopping district, next to an inside shopping mall. I didn’t have any academic credentials to get into the Bodleian. No problem, because I did get to tour the Bodleian and see a WWI exhibit there. The main Oxford public library kept me busy enough with stories of riots, murders, and ghosts. (It made for some fearful evening walks back to Summertown). Most people I met in the library were locals, or students from the local schools or from Brookes (the other university). I suspect the mall was the reason that even in a downpour, the library was a last resort. The computer stations, always in demand, caused many altercations between retirees and interlopers looking for internet access. I made it a point not to carry my computer into Oxford, so I do not know anything about the wi-fi there. It was all about the books for me.

The Cambridge public library, however, seemed (and I say this not to make blanket generalizations) a hoity-toity place with no regard to the needs of a visitor. To be fair, it is housed inside the big covered shopping mall, a place transformed during a rainstorm from a mall, somewhat neglected by shoppers, to a terrarium, air thick with humidity, and a floor made treacherous by dripping umbrellas and wet feet. All I needed was to print out my boarding pass for the Eurostar train from London to Paris. I had a tight connection with a change in train stations in London. No problem in Norwich. No problem in Weymouth. But Cambridge? The woman insisted I must get a library card before I could use the internet. No exceptions. No help for a visitor. I asked if there was someone who might get on and print it for me and I was basically told to shove off. It is possible that I’d have encountered the same lack of hospitality in Oxford on a July day with half the world visiting. After all, I left Oxford in May right before the serious tour buses entered the city. (This being fair stuff – it’s to show how sensitive and open-minded I am. Oxford is the clear winner.)

The Norwich Public Library is home to the Second Air Division Memorial Library. It was there I found my father’s picture with his flight crew and information about his WWII airbase, Halesworth. I’d seen this book and photo before in the Library of Congress, but somehow it meant more to look at it in Norwich, where he’d visited as a nineteen-year-old airman and again as an eighty-year-old veteran. The staff there loved Americans and some told me of their own experience with the Americans or repeated stories told to them by parents and grandparents. I found Norwich to be especially open and friendly to Americans and I guess it has to do with the war. The librarians in the main library helped me through some printer and internet problems with great smiles, helpful hints, and always premised with “Don’t worry, we’ll get it sorted.” Outside the library was a display honoring the Norwich residents who lost their lives during WWI. Nothing fancy, but along with the displays, they offered help for those looking for records of WWI or WWII soldiers for family histories.

Besides the WWI exhibits and the focus on local history, there is one thing these libraries had in common. None of them had a public loo. In the U.S., we get accustomed to knowing there will be a pretty decent bathroom we can use without having to leave the library. I learned that finding public bathrooms was the most important part of my first day anywhere in the UK, Italy, and France. Once I figured out I was on the right train, my next task was to determine which way I’d have to go for the lavatory. As soon as I was off the train, I located the bathroom in the station, because most times, I’d be back in that station for my departure. Once I was settled in my room, I always searched for the tourist information center and bought a map where I circled all the restrooms within a 2 mile radius of the main town center. I took my mother’s parting advice that when traveling “always use a bathroom when one is available.”

In the UK, I located the local Debenhems or Marks and Spencer department stores. They had well-cleaned and well-stocked facilities. Both of those stores also became a go-to place for food, if I wasn’t feeling adventurous. The downside to this strategy is that now half my current wardrobe was purchased in Debenhems or Marks and Spencer. The Covered Market in Oxford had a very convenient restroom, if there wasn’t a tour bus full of women waiting in line for the four stalls, one of which was usually out of order. One time I managed to use the staff’s bathroom in the Oxford library, because I asked a new employee who didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to have a key to the loo. One thing I learned in England is that the women’s bathrooms are often attended to by men. So just saying, you might want to watch how you come out of the stall.

That brings up another point about foreign bathrooms, whether in Europe or here. It is important to understand the mechanisms of the plumbing, but also the door. Sometimes a locked door isn’t really locked. So, just as an example here, you might find yourself in a Star Trek-like pod on a crowded train, thinking the door is locked, only literally to be caught with your pants down by five or so other passengers, the first being a man who pressed the blinking OPEN button.

In Italy, I learned the easiest way to get to a bathroom is to plunk down a Euro for an espresso and there is immediate access to the café’s W.C. It usually costs more to sit at a table in a café there. Since my only interest was a toilet seat, I drank my espresso at the bar. It’s a bit of a catch-22, because the more espresso I consumed, the more often I needed to buy one.

I don’t even want to think about the Paris situation. Pay any museum entrance fee or find an accommodating Starbucks. It’s your best chance. And only use the bathrooms in the park near Notre Dame if you are desperate.

I’m happy to report that my local library has a restroom available. It’s best to be prepared…

There is a problem with relying on the Last In First Out process to select the first KITCHEN boxes from my storage unit for my move to Oregon. I assumed that the boxes in front contained the essentials needed for a rudimentary beginning in my new apartment. So I ended up with a pasta wheel and no table knives. I have a shortbread mold, but no mixing bowls. And when my son and his girlfriend came to visit and wanted to make dinner, we realized there was no can opener in the three drawers filled with kitchen utensils. A minor problem, for sure, solved with a beer can opener, but I wanted my can opener. Opening those boxes was like peering into a time capsule. What did that previous person think was important for her future?

There are many factors in deciding where to live when the world opens up without issues like a job offer or a spouse. In theory, this seems like an ideal situation. Yet, having too many choices and a mind content to weigh every possibility marred my thinking. My list of where I would not live grew and my list of preferred places changed daily. I realized that two things hampered my decision. First, I had to allow myself to make a mistake. If it doesn’t work here, I’ll move on. The second, and most stalling problem, was the storage unit in Utah. How I would move my possessions stymied my decision. It is expensive to move furniture and it is expensive and silly to keep up a storage unit. It is time to Feng Shui my life, because my stuff is in the way. There aren’t many things I want from my old life. Much of it makes me sad and keeps me from beginning again. Anything of emotional value to me will fit in my car. Living out of a suitcase for a year prepared me for this moment of downsizing. The year of traveling also prepared me for making the intuitive decision to settle on the coast with the Columbia River in my backyard and the ocean beaches just down the road on Highway 101.

My backyard is where the California sea lions come to do whatever sea lions do for a few months of the year. Hundreds of them. Sometimes around 1600 plus. Their barking is constant and much louder than the highway noise near my apartment building. Every night I go to sleep to the roar of sea lions and I love it. I guess it’s my version of katydids or crickets on a summer night. Sea lions are new to me. Anything maritime, from the Coast Guard base nearby to the weird array of beards I encounter daily, is exotic and as foreign to me as anywhere I visited in Europe. The cable guy told me he used to be a rougher. What exactly is a rougher? I now live in an earthquake zone, but also a known tsunami area. Salt Lake City, Utah has an annual rainfall of 13 inches a year. Rain comes down in feet here. Sometimes it can rain for a month straight. This is Lewis and Clark territory. It will take years for me to learn the history of the area. I don’t have to calculate sales tax anymore. I’m going to have to exchange my snow boots for rain boots and my winter coat for a good rain slicker. Luckily sweaters have always been a summer staple for me, so no problems there!

Every walk I take introduces me to something worth studying. But how long before it becomes mundane? Will I cease shopping local and head for Portland every week to visit Whole Foods or Powell’s Books? At what point will I begin to complain about the ten thousand summer tourists and the congestion on the highways? How long will it take for me to wake up one morning and say, “I wish those (fill in expletive here) sea lions would shut up!”?

How long before I look at my new can opener and decide it is too worn or useless to keep anymore?