The World of Chocolates

Life has a list of little pleasures and each one may have a different list. Mine would definitely include chocolates.

I would take chocolates over flowers, would devour it over ice cream and between doing yoga and eating chocolates, I’d rely on even just a small bite to lift my spirits.

And so between shopping in a foreign country and visiting a chocolate museum, my choice is obvious.

One cold November afternoon a few years ago, I did just that. I visited the chocolate museum in Cologne, Germany and had such a treat. I was for a few hours a wide-eyed little girl, smiling from ear to ear, enjoying the experience.

Our Sunset Cruise on the Rhine

Germany is a memory of the crimson sun slowly fading beneath the pale blue horizon as the hulking white catamaran gently crawls on the Rhine.

It is a crisp June afternoon in Bonn and Jes and I are standing on the deck of the boat, savoring this part of Europe.

Age-old castles line both sides of the river. And fancy restaurants, too. There are young boys and little girls in pig tails racing by the shore.

There is a broken bridge from a forgotten war; Medieval churches nestled on green-covered hilltops; Birds flocking from one branch to another; there are other boats, too and million-dollar yachts with lovers locked in each other's arms.

We sip on our champagne to fight off the biting breeze but we are already in a stupor from the boat ride alone, enthralled in this bearable lightness of being.

Traveling is about discovering the foreign and the unfamiliar; of getting lost and taking everything in; of freezing the time and passing it; of painting with light and weaving stories; and of dreaming of Einstein's dreams.

Cruising the Rhine is all these and more.

It is a plate of flying hors d'oeuvres; of fresh green lettuce, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese; of bottles of ice cold Becks beer and the froth on our pursed lips. 

It is the warmth of the brown spring coat while holding hands. It is high-heeled shoes and brown boots; of hundreds of sweaty bodies dancing on stage. It is jam-packed, drenched-in-booze all-night partying.

It is about strangers dropping by tables; fake backdrops of photographs; of endless giggling.

It is about sharing Winston lights on the deck while freezing in the cold. It is waiting for the sun to set at 10 in the evening and waiting for the yellow moon from years ago.

Germany is a memory of a cruise one afternoon of June on a river called Rhine, with the love, dreams and the warm embrace backlighted by the setting sun. 

The Essential Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux

1. Leave home

2. Go alone

3. Travel light

4. Bring a map

5. Go by land

6. Walk across a national frontier

7. Keep a journal

8. Read a novel that has no relation to the place you're in

9. If you must bring a cell phone, avoid using it

10. Make a friend

Photos by me and Jes Aznar taken in Germany, Portugal, Palawan, Quezon City

To Berlin and Back

One of the greatest rewards of travel is the return home to the reassurance of family and old friends, familiar sights and homely comforts and your own bed - Paul Theroux

The Laughing Lizard -- one glass to put me to sleep amid my jet lagged state -- tells me I'm home. And so does the familiar smell of the faded sheets that cover my bed, more comfortable than any duvet in a foreign land or the luxury I enjoyed in Business Class. I am home on a moon-lit night, to a quiet evening of sweet silence. There is nothing but the rhythmic sound of rain tapping the rusty roof of the rented shack I live in.

I am home after a week-long journey with Jes. The ride started in Frankfurt and ended in Berlin. And in between the two cities, there were lots of photographs and words, fights and laughter, warmth and cold. Good food, too. Steaks, salads, bread, chocolates, the finest brie and blue-cheese and a variety of ice-cold German beer which we drank up to the very last drop, represented by the very last euro we had in our possession.


There was a lot to take in, starting from the wildness of Frankfurt, a portrait of 'the morning after'; the intellectual possibilities offered by the conference in Bonn; the breathtaking view of the sunset cruise on the scenic Rhine River; the terrains of art and imagination in Documenta 13 in Kassel; Salvador Dali's surrealism to the historic barbed wired past of Berlin's Brandenburger Tor which Jes and I searched for hours just walking the city's cobbled stone streets.

In the end, the reward is bringing home the best of times, the most memorable of the many journeys. It is, at best, yet another stop in between the heart of an enigmatic young boy and a paradise of a beach called Puka.

Photos by me. Photos of me, by Jes.