Elegance for a Day

Now that we are finally unpacked, cleaned, and organized (and I've adequately played with my little hamster), I can spend some more time telling you about the beautiful Biltmore Manor in Asheville, North Carolina. For the few hours that we were inside touring the house, I nearly forgot that we were in America, because the architecture and mere size of the place reminded me of palaces I've visited in Europe. Let's just say I was greatly pleased to discover a place of this magnitude and beauty right here in my country. I was also glad that we visited this place after one of our few showers. I don't think the "country-club" crowd that frequented Biltmore would've been as forgiving of our smell as our usual camping crowd.

First, some history: George Washington Vanderbilt inherited his immense wealth from his father (who was in the railroad business, I believe). When he built the mansion, which was completed in 1898, he was still a bachelor, but, naturally, once he had that epic house, he quickly became the bachelor of the year. He did marry a fashionable young woman named Edith, and despite what you may think, they were madly in love. In one of their lounges hangs this striking portrait of her. We learned that in the course of a day, she would have changed outfits six to eight times, depending on how many meals and teas she attended and how many times she wished to wander her gardens or ride her horse. I can't even imagine owning that many outfits. I'm indecisive enough about my clothes!

George and Edith had one daughter, Cornelia, who was the one who eventually opened the house to the public (partly to earn money during the Depression and partly as a way to preserve her father's greatest work). These three were the people who owned the house, but there were about fifty other people who lived with them, mostly servants and their families. If I had to be a servant for anyone, I think I would choose this family. They seemed very understanding and down-to-earth. Each Christmas, the Vanderbilt's gave all the servants' children presents. Those same children were Cornelia's main playmates. They obviously did not segregate themselves.

Tragically, after fifteen years of happy marriage, George died from a failed appendectomy. Edith was crushed. She was now left to run this huge home all by herself, and money was becoming tight (relatively so, I suppose). Because she didn't want to see any of her servants lose their jobs and be without homes, she sold off a huge portion of her 8,000-acre land. This land became part of a National Forest.

Anyway, enough of the people. Here are some of my favorite places:

- Conservatory. This room was located near the front entrance and ensured that the family always had greenery and life, even during the winter months. The ceiling in this room was remarkable.

This image is from a postcard

- Library. George Vanderbilt was a very well-read man, as evidenced by his collection of 23,000 books. This library houses 10,000 of them; the others are scattered throughout the house in elegant bookshelves. There are so many features in this room that make me smile: the massive fireplace (a full-grown person can stand up inside it), the books, the intricate rod-iron banisters, the two floors, the spiral staircase. But the best feature is actually hidden behind that tapestry. The walkway continues behind the artwork, so that people can get to the other side of the room, which has more books. Also behind the tapestry is a "secret" stairway that goes directly to George's bedroom. That way, he could get to the library quickly and without bothering anyone. Even if I never get a library like this, I think I'd still like to have a secret way to access it ;)

-The bowling alley in the basement. On the other side of the back wall is the chef's bedroom. If guests stayed up late to bowl, their constant noise would keep the chef awake. The next morning, they could expect a poor breakfast.

- The expansive gardens. The man who designed all the landscaping was Frederick Law Olmsted, the same man who designed Central Park in New York City. Doesn't this peaceful place call for a spot of tea? Perhaps chai?

Well, I hope I intrigued you rather than bored you. These are but a few of the things we saw at Biltmore, and I really would encourage you to visit yourself. And if you go, be sure to get the cashew chicken salad sandwich on a croissant roll and the "special recipe" vanilla ice cream. Sometimes I wish I could keep tastes on my taste buds forever :)

How to Make Your One-Bedroom Flat Feel Like a Mansion

Sleep in a two-person tent for two weeks and live out of your Corolla.

Yes, we have finally returned from our journey down south. It was so great to get away from everything and have uninterrupted time together. I also enjoyed the fact that we weren't connected to anyone via internet or phone (service in the mountains is pretty much non-existent). Yes, the quiet, alone time was good for us :) And now, for some of the highlights:

- The Southern accent. I forgot how much I missed it.
- Having s'mores every night!
- Civil War Days, complete with a battle re-enactment and cannon fire. So cool.

- Two cave tours at Mammoth Cave National Park. Growing up, my family rarely went into caves, because my mom is claustrophobic. It's been really fun to explore them now with Josh. And speaking of people being claustrophobic, as we were heading through Fat Man's Misery and Tall Man's Agony (very skinny, low-ceiled places), one poor elderly lady started having a panic attack. It didn't help that she had vision issues, so the dimly-lit passageways were doing nothing for her nerves. The rest of us were stuck in the cave behind her as the ranger helped her crawl through. Emergency services had to come, but it still took over three hours to get her out of the cave!

Part of the Drapery Room

The Historic Entrance

- Eating at Chick-fil-a whenever we saw one on the side of the road. I am adequately stuffed with the goodness for a little while, but I will still miss that Chick-fil-a sauce!

- Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Can I say "BEAUTIFUL"? Don't worry, I'll dedicate a whole post to this monster :)

Biltmore Estate, the largest home in the United States

- Our beautiful campsite at Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It was right on the Little River. It was so great listening to the water (and all the bug/frog noises) as we fell asleep.

Josh taking a dip in the river, a chilly substitute for a bath.

- The four-inch long (and half-inch wide) centipede that greeted us when we first got to our campsite. Surprisingly, it didn't faze me. But then again, it wasn't inside the tent.

- All the historic cabins, gristmills, churches, and schoolhouses. I absolutely love learning about the people who first lived on the frontier, about their struggles and their joys. Seeing their houses and the way they lived, is a great way to get a glimpse into early American life. 

One of the many cabins we found in the woods.

- Having friends come up and join us for the weekend for even more hiking and exploration.

At Clingman's Dome, the highest point in TN. Not only was the view spectacular, so was the temperature!

- Accomplishing my longest mountain hike--five miles roundtrip--to Abrams Falls, which was gorgeous. We stopped there to have some lunch and dangle our sore feet in the freezing cold water. I can't even express to you how refreshing that was! And, for those of you who care to know, I gave in and peed in the woods. But that's not the worst of it. I think we showered a grand total of three times in those two weeks. Oh yes, that's how primitive we were. ;) But washing your hair in bathroom sinks can do wonders for your soul!

Abrams Falls.

The Inner Feminist

Have you ever watched a movie and gotten really worked up about its plot? I've been feeling this way a lot recently. Last night, I saw The Duchess (I love Kiera Knightley), and it was a beautifully portrayed story of yearning love and the entrapments of Old English society. What made it worse for me was the fact that this--the terrible treatment she endured from her husband and her hopeless search for happiness--was a true story. I wanted to step into that dining hall and smack the husband around a little bit, scream in his face. How dare you cheat on your wife! How dare you blame her for not giving you a male child! How dare you view her as merely your sex toy!


Which would've promptly placed me in prison. Or an asylum. Or in the case of The Tudors (a fantastic show about the life and wives of King Henry VIII), I would've been beheaded. Maybe I should stop watching things that accurately portray the time periods I fantasize about. Being a woman back then would've sucked, royally. I don't know what kept them from killing themselves.

So, thank you, God, that I was born in a time period where the rights and views of women are heard and respected. Let me use my freedom to its fullest, and maybe, somehow, make up for the injustices done to all those trapped and miserable women of the old days.

Darwin

As many of you know, my brother's name is Darwin. Having a brother with that name oftentimes causes confusion among my Christian friends. "Did your parents believe in evolution when they named him?" And they sound appalled and slightly intrigued when they ask me. No, they did not, and as my brother would say, "Wouldn't they have named me Charles, then?"

My dad's best friend and barrack-mate in Vietnam was a certain Private Darwin. One afternoon, they were driving their truck back to the base when Darwin shot down two Vietcong snipers in the trees. Their guns had been pointed at my dad. It was just a few weeks before they'd be going home.

Dad has a pretty sizable collection of pictures from his time overseas, and recently, Josh and I started transferring the slides to the computer. In one little box, we found a slide labeled "Darwin." Below is the only picture (that I'm aware of) of this wonderful man. At first I was disappointed that his face was blurred, but the more I looked at it, the more I loved it. I fear that if there was a definite face to this man, it would be hard to imagine him, to see him as a hero and not just a twenty-year-old boy far from home.

Ninety-eight years ago...

April 14th, 1912. The death of the Titanic. And I know this because I'm obsessed, and because I'm obsessed, we'll will be going to this fine tourist attraction. When I discovered this, I nearly peed my pants (Josh can attest to it; he was there calming me down and resigning to the fact that he cannot escape this place). But it works out perfectly, because we were planning on going to the Smokey Mountains this fall anyway! Of course, most of the vacation will be spent in the National Park, in the campground, and on the hiking trails, but as long as this beauty of a tourist trap exists, I have got to check it out!

p.s. If this had been open before our wedding, I would have seriously considered getting married there. On the Grand Staircase! And I would've had a Rose-like dress and had a string quartet and it would've been marvelous. But since Josh is not as big a nerd about such things, I'm sure he would've convinced me otherwise ;)

Hungry

How do you know when you’ve been out of school too long? When you go to the library and return with six volumes on World War II. Yes, I’m hungry for learning. But this is the really fun kind of learning. The kind where I get to choose the topic and go as in-depth with it as I please.

So far, my eyes are really opening up to the War. In school, I merely learned the reasons for it and the battles and the tragedies, but now I’m seeing the war through the eyes of the soldiers and the nurses and even the children. Seeing it through the eyes of children is especially powerful (from Through the Eyes of Innocents). They don’t necessarily understand the big picture. They just know that they hide in the shelter until the bombs stop dropping, and then they can run outside and fight for the biggest piece of shrapnel. It became a game, a way of life.

But what I find most interesting is when children in German-occupied countries talk of the German soldiers who are now living with them. After a bombing, a little boy ventured into the streets and saw a church completely destroyed, except for the organ. A German soldier sat at the keys and played a beautiful song that echoed down the war-torn streets. “Surely this man couldn’t be all bad,” the boy reasoned. Another child talked of how a German soldier came to have tea and dinner with her family on a regular basis. He’d joke and talk of his home and show pictures of his wife and family. It’s so strange to be reminded that the Germans were human too, that they loved and laughed, and that they truly believed they were doing the right thing.

I am also a bit humbled by these accounts, because I am so quick to condemn the whole country for what they did to the Jews. How could they not have known? I ask myself. But then, when I learn that their news broadcasts were severely censored and that if they were caught listening to other news sources, like BBC, they would be sent to labor and concentration camps, I feel more compassion for the people. They were ruled by fear, and I shouldn’t judge them for it. And when I learn that 12% of their population was killed during this war, most of them soldiers but many of them civilians, I understand the true meaning of tragedy.

Titanica

"Women and children first," they said, and I knew that was my only way of

safety and also the way towards my biggest loss - the life of my husband.

- 1st class passenger

Oh my. Something about having a husband yourself makes you feel differently about the Titanic disaster. Josh and I went to the exhibit at the Science Museum on Thursday, and it was quite the intriguing and sobering experience. We were there about two hours, but I probably could've stayed longer. Let me list some highlights of the day:

1. As we entered the exhibit, we each received a "boarding pass" with a name of an actual passenger and a bit of his/her history. At the end of the exhibit, you found out if your person survived. I was Margaret Brown (a bit anticlimactic since she's the "unsinkable Molly Brown"), and Josh was a Frenchman traveling with his family to Haiti (he was the only colored man on the Titanic. Kinda cool). Of the two of us, I wonder who died? ;)

2. One of the artifacts retrieved from the bottom of the ocean was a steward's jacket. After being underwater for close to eighty years, it was still in tact! The steward, named Broome, had written his name on the inside of the collar, and you could still read it. Remarkable.

3. They had some role-play people wandering the exhibit giving tidbits of info in British accents. That's how I learned that the Titanic was one of the first and only ships to offer meals to the third class passengers. On other ships, those passengers were required to bring their own food to last the duration of the trip. That would lead to some interesting smells, I imagine. And the steerage passengers had real mattresses rather than sacks stuffed with straw. The ship was glamorous even in steerage!

4. We touched a huge block of ice that represented the coldness of the ocean on the night of the sinking. *shiver* I'm surprised people didn't die instantly.

5. I discovered this fantastic website that has biographies of all the Titanic passengers. I can't wait until I have more free time!

6. And lastly, we watched the omni-theater presentation, which was incredibly interesting, and I didn't get motion sickness! :)

Love,

Heidi