The art of flânering…

Here is a paradox – I love traveling, but I hate being a tourist. I mean a typical tourist with a map, walking boots, a backpack, and a camera, looking bedazzled, lost and confused. Instead of chasing the sights, I much prefer to blend in, feel the city, walk around and just experience what it has to offer. I flâner as French would say (and perhaps on purpose use a sensual concept that cannot really be directly translated into English). In high heels, of course.

Even though my French equals my baking skills (i.e. it is pretty much non-existent), somehow I feel I conquered the concept of flânering in Paris, when for the first time traveling alone I realised I cannot really read maps. So I just walked around aimlessly, without an intention or objective, without hurrying myself. By being indirectly and unintentionally affected by phenomena experienced only in passing, I discovered so much more than I would have otherwise. Because flânering is not about a destination, but rather a pleasure of a walk, discovering details, which in the rush of everyday life too often go unnoticed.

It was during my recent trip to Hamburg that I indulged in flânering again on one of those typical autumn evenings, when the sky is heavy and grey, yet the palette of bright colours enlightens the earth, creating the atmosphere, which sets you in a bitter, yet somewhat sweet melancholy.

 

As I was walking aimlessly, experiencing the charms of ducks swimming in the lake, clouds floating in the sky, little cafes giving life to the city and glittering shops overshadowing architectural masterpieces, I realised that the funny thing about flânering is that - before you know it - your mind starts doing exactly the same thing. Thoughts start strolling around your head with no sense or purpose, taking you to new directions and discoveries, which you rarely stumble upon. You simply get lost in your own world, letting thoughts be, letting them go.

In their expedition, they inevitably venture into the matters of the heart. Revisiting memories of people we loved and lost, uncovering voids, some of them so extraordinarily deep that there is not enough sand on this planet to fill them. They are as grey and heavy as the sky I was starring at. Yet they are surrounded by brightness of colours on the ground, painted by the people who stayed. Or found their way back into our lives. The more you think about the reasons why things turned out the way they did or did not, the less sense it makes. Until you realise that matters of the heart are not logical or ever possible to truly understand. They just are. And they are what they are.

While flânering through the city that will never be mine, opening Pandora’s boxes that should have perhaps better remained closed, all of the sudden I stopped and asked myself: how did I get here? Am I meant to be here or have I completely lost track? Was it me who chose this path or was it just a series of happy accidents?   

This is where it becomes evident that there is more to flânering than letting your feet and thoughts go. It is a complete philosophical way of living and thinking, as Charles Baudelaire interpreted the concept of a flâneur. It is about what appears to be small and insignificant making all the difference in your life. It is about taking left instead of right when you are not even thinking about it. And still, somehow, this random decision leads you to become what you should have been in the first place. 

I don not know whether it is destiny that brings us there, but I could not agree more with Steve Jobs (not just because of the recent tragic loss, but because his Stanford commencement speech is one of the best speeches I have ever heard): “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

My dots of Hamburg flânering connected in a coffee shop with my favourite combination of caramel macchiato and a blueberry muffin. When I looked around me, there were no voids left, just yellow leaves on the floor, brought in by the autumn breeze. Like me, they probably should not have been there. But it was pointless trying to understand why we were all there, because only time will tell how all those small dots, painted by flânering on an October evening, will one day, eventually fit into a bigger picture.  

The secret meaning of an Indian summer

It happens every now and again that a sight of a weather forecast is so unbelievable that I cannot help but capture it. Temperatures well above 20s are something that you rarely get to see in the UK, let alone at this time of the year. This Indian summer was simply too good to be true. And if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. 

Just like other extraordinary things in our lives, the Indian summer comes when we at least expect it. It is impossible to predict it and even if it was, we would find it hard to believe and very likely laugh it away. As we do every time somebody says that our lives are about to take an unforeseen, virtually impossible, ‘more than we ever dared to wish for’ direction. Seriously, who would believe that crisp morning air, cold autumn breeze and grey drizzle, which quite rightly started announcing the winter, will be replaced by warm sunny days, so pleasantly overwhelming that they are hard to describe?

This beauty with no compare confuses us. When we already put our summer wardrobe at the back of the closet and drag out all the warm clothes and extra blankets, when we change the mind-set from summer brightness to autumn blues, life turns upside down and proves us wrong. Or right in case you are (as I am) not the most organised creature on the planet and keep on procrastinating reorganising your wardrobe. Either way, we tend to go into a self-preservation mode, striving to ignore the nice days fully aware that they are not here for long. 


Eventually and inevitably, we all fall into a carpe diem mood. This is when the indulgence phase starts. Enjoying every minute of this amazing phenomenon, putting everything else aside and losing sleep just so we would not miss a single sunshine or a starry night that we know will be gone any minute now. But as one sunny day rolls into the next one, we forget about the greyness of everyday life. Something that should not be there in the first place becomes more real and genuine than anything else.

Yet there are very clear signs, which indicate that the Indian summer is, in fact, just an illusion. The days, for example, are not as long as they should be and leaves began to change, some of them already falling off the trees. Subtly, yet persistently they remind us that the reality should be different, that it soon will be different. 

If the Indian summers should not be there in the first place and do not last long enough to have any profound impact, why do they happen? Due to their shortness, they rarely teach us a lesson. They also cannot be viewed as a cruel game, showing us how perfect life could be, but it is not, because they rarely make us sad. And they are completely out of our control, so there is nothing we can do about them, but to take them as they are. There is one thing, however, that they do do. They set memorable milestones, occasionally break records and more often than not leave unforgettable memories. Something to think and smile about over a cup of tea on a cold winter night.

The Indian summer is goodbyeing and we have no other choice, but to move on. And where exactly do we go? This reminds me of a famous and for this occasion more than appropriate J.D. Salinger’s question asked in The Catcher in the Rye: "Where do the ducks go when the pond freezes over?" The answer, even though it might seem complicated at first, is simple: they fly south. The option that I seriously entertained when I realised that everything about this Indian summer was perfect for me. So perfect, indeed, that I would wish to turn it into a rule rather than it being an exception. But then again, that would no longer be an Indian summer.