Portland to Sveti Jose
09/12/2009 at 23:31 from (37.357332, -121.902409)
After a good long sleep, we said goodbye to Gramma and Grampa Watts and headed off to Aunt Shelly's place. Once we had settled in, Marijana unpacked and re-packed her bag, shedding 8 lbs of unnecessary stuff in the process.
That night, we had a party thrown in our honor. I got to say hello and goodbye to lots of aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. We discussed routes and collected advice, all over a great barbecue dinner lovingly prepared by Uncle Greg. As if that wasn't enough fun for one night, at the end of the party, Uncle Mike took us to his house to load us down with books, maps, advice, and love.
(NOTE: We were too involved in the party to actually take photos. Imagine fun and smiles and happy faces. Instead of party pics, I've decided to randomly insert some pictures we took of Uncle Rick while he stopped by to send us off.)
The next morning saw Aunt Shelly make us a grand breakfast, a fitting tribute to the breakfast we could have gotten if Gramma and Grampa wouldn't have been forced to leave for Seattle. Following breakfast, we carefully packed everything up and caught a ride to Portland's grand old train station. The inside was even more gorgeous than the outside, with a towering marble interior reflecting cool neon signs, all softly lit by the sun filtering through windows along the boarding wing.
We rested awhile on the long wooden benches before lining up and taking our seats aboard. After a couple of mix-ups due to a frazzled conductor, we took our actual seats and settled in for a 20 hour ride. Within the first few hours, we came to know our neighbors really, really well.
Behind us sat a girl and her father. She attends EWU in Cheney, WA (my birthplace) and was on her way to Los Angeles to visit family and have an adventure. To our right was a young father with a broad smile filled with a set of ramshackle teeth and a full complement of piercings and tattoos. He had a quick wit and fully enjoyed showing us how he was smuggling snakes (note to Samuel L. Jackson: "Snakes on a Train" sounds like a perfectly fitting sequel to your last summer blockbuster) home to his son.
But by far our longest-lasting meeting was with a retired German language school teacher named Karyn. She sat behind the snake smuggler and, when she heard Marijana mention that she's Croatian, immediately demanded we all talk. Karyn was a short, intense woman who was full of stories and whose eyebrows rose and fell with the cadence of the tale. She explained that she had Croatian friends and had devoted a fair bit of her life to traveling the world. We talked for hours about travel, wine, language, and life, until we were all too exhausted to talk any more.
We passed out at some early hour of the morning and slept like logs. I woke up early and looked out the window to the dust and waving wheat of Sacramento. I walked quietly to the observation car and watched the sun rise over the Central Valley, then went back to my seat to see if Marijana was awake yet. She slept another couple of hours while we continued to roll through the heart of California.
As Marijana roused herself, we passed a beautiful wind farm across the lake just north of Martinez, CA. By the time she was fully awake, we were greeted by a less pleasant sight (and smell): the factories and refineries of Martinez itself. Miles of pipes snaked alongside the tracks, swerving and looping at gentle right angles, seemingly without logic. Dozens of smoke stacks clotted the skyline, spewing a foul odor, like burning plastic.
After the train made a brief stop between an immaculately-kept golf course and a Hot Dog Depot, we continued on to San Jose. Ksenija met us at the station and took us back to the apartment she shares with Sanda and another Croatian named Karlo. We dropped off our bags at the apartment, said our hellos, then left with Ksenija and Sanda to search for a new, cheaper apartment, closer to their work.
Apartment hunting is tough when the budget is tight and location matters. After a fruitless day spent comparing prices, haggling over vacancy, and nit-picking floor plans, we all headed home dejected and exhausted. As the girls prepared for a long night of work at their restaurant gig, Marijana and I caught up on emails and drifted off to sleep.