UK|European Summer Tour - Part 1
- Ami Ji Schmid
- 1 hour ago
- 10 min read
If spring is when southeastern Vermonters begin to open their sleepy hibernating eyes...
...summer is when southeastern Vermonters fully wake up. By June, you will definitley catch the vibe that It is time to play!
For me, summers in Brattleboro are about...
...walking to Saturday Farmer’s Market to meet up with friends, eat a Dosa, and buy black garlic and foraged lion's mane mushrooms.
...hiking the Retreat trails behind my house, past the cemetary and ice house up to the tower, across Cedar Street to the Retreat Farm, and to the ice pond behind the ski jump.
...climbing Mount Wantastiquet for the best view of downtown Brattleboro's church steeples and the surrounding farmland pastures.
...fanning away thirsty mosquitos on Pisgah paths (remembering I will soon be jumping into the quiet, clean, boat-free pond in the middle of this hidden gem of a NH state park).
...beating the heat at Vermont lakes and local swimming holes.
...picking up interesting rocks at the West River and adding them to Michelle’s memorial garden and screaming while sliding down smoothed boulders in the icy cold rolling waterfalls of Stickney Brook.
...dancing with carefree abandon under a setting sun at the Thursday Food Truck Roundup, Bandwagon Series concerts, and first-Friday Gallery Walk.
For me, summer in southeastern Vermont is glorious. I would not usually plan to travel in summer. This summer, though, I flew away.
The pull to leave came from a teaching gig at the “Where the Wild Things Are” Summer School program organized by the European Psychosynthesis Association (EPA). The program was only for five days, though I would need to jump the pond to get there because the 2026 EPA Summer School would be in the Utrecht area in the Netherlands.
It was an honor to be selected by the EPA Summer School committee as one of four seminar leaders. It would be a grand opportunity for me to show more of the psychosynthesis community my work around the Dark Night of the Soul. It would be deeply satisfying to be immersed in psychosynthesis with like-minded peers. There were many reasons to say “Yes” to leaving my beloved Brattleboro this summer.
I had first connected with one of the other seminar leaders, Petra, last summer at the Psychosynthesis Summit. She had attended my intensive 90-minute workshop. Her reaction: "That was powerful." I attended every talk she gave. My reaction: "Rock star!"
We had further contact with each other because of our mutual love for Walter Polt, who, directly after the Summit ended, passed out of his body. Petra had written praise for Walter's book "The Anger Makeover." I had helped him turn the book into an online class called "Plusside of Anger" that he and I taught together. I emailed Petra about the possibility of writing Walter's next book from material he'd been gathering, and putting it out into the world for him.
Petra-possibilities brewed on a low simmer. I was hopeful our aquantance would deepen into friendship during the EPA Summer school and that might lead to visiting her in Switzerland after it finished.
It seemed a good idea (while so far from home) to visit people from the UK and Europe I'm developing friendships with and maybe explore new places with them. For me, the UK and northern Europe feel as uncomfortably cold in the winter as Vermont does. So, for these last few years of traveling to escape winter, I've avoided these areas. I hadn’t seen my Meditation Family friends, Andy (in England) and Bianca (in Germany), since we’d first met in person March of 2024. I also wanted to see Paulina again, who I’d stayed with a couple of times in Delft, Netherlands. Another woman I’ve been getting friendly with (in online psychosynthesis circles) asked me to visit her. Sabine would not be at the Summer School though lived close enough to the venue to pick me up after it finished and adventure on.
A six-week plan took shape. Andy took the two weeks off before I would head to the Netherlands. He planned a whirlwind tour for us of London, his area in the north of England, and Edinburgh, Scotland. I would figure out how to get to Boston on June 13 to fly overnight on Jet Blue to London where I'd meet Andy. I'd fly from Manchester, England to Amsterdam and take a train to Utrecht a day or two before the EPA Summer School program would begin. After summer school, Sabine planned a stay for us in the Utrecht area to explore a couple of towns she’d read about. Bianca invited me to stay with her at her parents’ house in the Black Forest area of Germany just after my travels with Sabine, and go together on a lake vacation at Bodensee (Lake Constance as we call it in English). I left a ten-day window open for spontaneous adventure (following my visit with Bianca), before visiting Paulina and flying from Amsterdam back home to the States.
The whole trip started when Dina picked me up in Brattleboro and we drove to her second home near Boston, then flew on the same plane to London. Let me back up a bit.
Dina and I met two summers ago. I invited the Brattleboro community to creatively paint on my house. Dina and her family, recent residents to southeastern Vermont, showed up. Dina’s husband painted jumping fish in the pond on the back of the house. Their six-year-old painted a sparkly fairy house, flowers, and mushrooms beneath the pond. Their son joined me painting background green on the west side of the house. Dina wandered to a private nook in the front by the garden door and painted mushrooms near the ground. I saw her work, exclaiming “You’re an artist,” and asked, “Wanna paint more?” She very exuberantly said “Yes!”
We got together, chose pictures and a layout, and at various times that summer, Dina painted two huge sunflowers on the front of the house.
The following summer, though I texted a few times, Dina was MIA. This spring, out of the blue, she texted me saying “My birthday is next Friday, and I want to paint more.”
There are now three giant sunflowers on my house.
I learned that Dina's life had blown up the summer before. That explained why I hadn't heard from her. She said that painting felt joyful and she needed that now. “Come paint anytime,” I said. “I’d love to,” she said, “though I’ll be traveling to London for some work (filmmaking)." "When," I asked. "June 13th," she said.” “Are you flying from Boston,” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “On Jet Blue,” I asked. “Yes,” she said. "At night," I asked. "Yes," she said, rather slowly.
And there you have it. Dina picked me up at my house in Brattleboro, Vermont the morning of June 13, drove me to her second home near Boston where she packed, and, that night, after catching an Uber to Logan Airport, we flew, on the same plane, to London.
I took the train (aka the “tube”) from Gatwick Airport to Victoria Station in the center of London to meet up with Andy. Andy had taken a long train from the north of England the day before so he'd be fresh and ready to greet me. My gentle friend Andy proudly announced that, that night, he would be having an alcohol-free Guinness at the Jack the Ripper pub.
By the time I arrived to Victoria Station, I had jet lag on top of having a combined 3 hours of sleep over the previous two nights. I don't usually sleep well the night before a trip and did not sleep at all on the six-hour flight. I was exhausted.
Andy and I decided to drop off my luggage at our Travel Lodge and take it easy. We took the tube out of London central toward our temporary home, got off the train, walked around the corner, checked in, unloaded, and contemplated what taking it easy could look like.
Andy didn't get to London often. I had never been. Taking it easy would have to wait. We took the tube back to London Central.
On the tube we passed Battersea Power Station, where, in 1977, a 12-metre (40 ft), helium-filled balloon pig named Algie had been photographed for the Pink Floyd album cover for Animals.
Over the course of less than three full days, Andy and I walked the streets and parks of London, taking pictures of statues, buildings, and carvings in buildings that caught the eye. I wanted to capture iconic places such as Big Ben, Parliament Square, Westsminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. In a moment, I'll tell you how you can watch a little video of pictures we took. Three of my favorite pictures were: (1) Andy catching me looking at something in the distance with the London Eye behind me, (2) me catching sight of a pigeon settled on a man's bronze head in the park by Parliament Square, and (3) Andy and I doing Lion's Pose by the Victoria Fountain. Can you find all three in this little video: https://youtu.be/_g3xkgTh_JY ?
We wandered through the art at London’s National Gallery. There were more than 2,400 pieces spanning centuries of Western European painting from the Renaissance through the early twentieth century. Some art moved me to awe, some to joy, some to grief. Some repelled me, some pulled me in and held me captive.
I recognized names and later looked up the periods in which these artists painted (so I could share them with you in a somewhat orderly fashion). We saw original art by Renaissance masters Giovanni Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian... and Baroque masters Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Johannes Vermeer. Moving into Romanticism, we saw the deliciously soft landscapes of J. M. W. Turner. We saw paintings by some of my favorite Impressionists - Degas, Renoir, and Monet... Post-Impressionists - Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Georges Seurat... and modernists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. These, my friends, are only the names of artists I recognized.
There were artists named "So-and-so the Elder" and "So-and-so the Younger." There were paintings where the artist was simply listed as "French," "Italian," or "Flemish."
Regarding the above statement, isn't it kind of normalizing to know I'm not the only one who doesn't know all the artists' names ?!
Honestly, speaking for myself, I know so very little about art. I don't know what makes one piece of art "great" or an artist a "master." I only know that art moves me.
There was one painting, Lake Keitele by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, that hit me like a stungun. The water... the reflections... I felt a full body neurochemical reaction. And then there was The Tailor ('Il Tagliapanni') by Giovanni Battista Moroni, that swallowed me whole. I felt an impressive love for the tailor in the picture and for the man who painted him.
There was one artist, Canaletto, that became my new favorite. I stood glued to the floor in front of each of his paintings, dumb-struck, only able to say, "There's so much going on." After that temporary episode of communication malfunction, throughout our two-week adventure, in response to me commenting on some busy or vastly large scene, Andy would say, "There's so much going on, Ami."
Just now, while looking through the online archive of 2,400 paintings, it struck me how few female artists there were. I had learned that women were not allowed to study painting, not reckognized when they did paint, and they often used a man's name to get their art into the public eye. I slipped into rabbit hole mode on the National Gallery website to find a page dedicated to this discrepancy. One of the paragraphs on the page reads: "Telling the stories of artists and the representation of women in art history more widely reveals the significance of their contribution. We want to recognise their achievements and celebrate them as role models now and for the future." It's a significant and worthwhile page. I highly recommend you spend some time falling down that rabbit hole. To begin your elevating descent, click HERE.
If you'd like to watch a short video of Andy's and Ami Ji's time at the National Gallery of London, click on this link: https://youtu.be/LIjrdL_IqxY. Look for the pictures of the big horse. You'll notice Andy was not afraid. I, however, was terrified.
We took a hop-on-hop-off bus and hopped off when Andy pointed out the sign for the Psychosynthesis Trust - established in 1965 by no other than Roberto Assagioli.
Andy took a picture of me standing in the front doorway that has an Egg Diagram shaped window in it. My feet were planted on the ground, though honestly, I was flying inside.
To save money, Andy and I booked one room at the Travel Lodge. Our room had one bed. I learned the next morning (after our first of two nights together) that I snored. That first night, I imagine Andy both respectfully giving me space and distancing himself from my snoring, hugging the edge of his side of the bed... and rolling off. I woke from the thump of his body hitting the floor, eyes opening to Andy sleepily clambering back onto the bed. At the time I felt concerned. "I'm ok," he had said. We may have chuckled. Right now, I'm busting a gut laughing.
After our London adventure, we rode the train north toward Lancashire to where Andy lives in Lango. Andy helps to care for his mum, so our excursions were planned around his very sweet family obligations.
Each day, Andy took me on an adventure. I remembered much of the magic of the Shire from my first visit. Many towns in that area look like Harry Potter’s world, with cobblestone streets and buildings made from bricks and stones and farmland dotted with sheep. We hiked wooded paths and park trails around Blackburn, climbed to Clitheroe Castle, wandered the grounds of Whalley Abbey, and stood before Stonyhurst College, an internationally famous Roman Catholic private school, where Frank Foley (the"British Schindler") graduated, and where JRR Tolkien wrote large parts of The Lord of the Rings while visiting his (student) son.
In the next blog (UK|European Summer Tour - Part 2), I'll share a short video of more pictures from the Shire, and then, we'll drive to Scotland!
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