Andrea Mulder-Slater

by Andrea Mulder-Slater “I have a reservation.” I was at the front desk of the Fairfield Inn in Smithfield North Carolina – a welcome position after the day’s drive, which had taken us through states crippled by an early ice storm. “You are in room 106” , said the angelic young man behind the counter – who was most certainly fresh out of finishing school – courteous, well mannered and highly manicured. Sigh. The lobby was lovely, with soft colors and an accent wall behind the counter depicting tree limbs. Or a spider web. Or maybe capillaries. Photo: Fairfield Inn Either way, it was stylish and also hypnotic. I felt instantly in harmony with my guest services agent who - in the time it took to write down my license plate number - walked me through three of my past lives. Twice. Then the phone rang. Opposite to the check-in zone, was a seating area, plucked straight out of an episode of Mad Men, season 5. Very modish with a long low table, orange lounger, an...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater My television is state of the art. Circa 2001. It weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds and has a built in DVD player and a VCR. That’s V ideo C assette R ecorder for those of you born after Charles in Charge was taken off the air. I miss you Buddy. Needless to say, not a lot of TV is watched in our house. It wasn’t always this way, but a few years ago we terminated what had been a long and arduous relationship with our satellite TV provider. It had become a costly alliance and once we discovered that we were spending as much per month on the goggle-box, as it costs to import a unicorn from France, we made the decision to pull the plug on the liaison. The breakup with our entertainment pusher was messy and involved a lot of late-night, long-distance phone calls, tears and heavy breathing. They were upset too. We’ve since filled the gap with three semi-local channels. Also, a Netflix account. As a result, the 5-year old is so u...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Traveling is exhausting, partly because ( as you already know ) I am unskilled in the art of packing light and so - much like an Asian Weaver Ant - I inevitably end up hauling 100 times my body weight. Only instead of dead flies, I carry luggage. Most of the time. Also, keeping a 747 in the air by using sheer mind power alone is exceptionally draining for me, especially around hour seven. As is watching each and every passenger. Did that guy ever come back from the restroom? Why is that woman pacing back and forth? Is that the pilot? Why is he back here? Where did Geoff get that croquette? Is that a child drinking whisky or is that just a remarkably petite man? Why does that flight attendant look worried? Is that man watching porn on his iPad? Did he just notice me staring at his lap? Grueling. Still, the holiday happened without a hitch ( except for the obvious ) and so we topped off our 4 weeks overseas with an additional multi day jetlag-fueled fa...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater We were visiting Volendam - a town of around 23,000 - where wooden shoe makers and cheese factories abound. It’s pretty touristy with a good amount of shops selling typical cookie-cutter Dutch knick-knacks like miniature wooden shoes, tiny windmills, carved tulips and ceramic cows that spit koffie melk through their open mouths. As we sat in the back of an open-air café/bar, eating kibbling and drinking koffie, we watched as several tour boats emptied out on the waterfront, delivering eager bodies into the tiny maze-like streets. Later on, our food finished, Geoff wandered and Jan shopped while I stood with the 4 year old admiring the big brown boats. That’s when I noticed a Japanese couple taking turns snapping photographs of one another standing in front of the picturesque harbour. Because I’m a nice girl with poor instincts, I offered to take a picture of the two of them together, using their camera. They looked at me, confused. If not slightl...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater I have a pretty terrific imagination, and by that I mean I can be a wee bit paranoid. It is this innate bent towards suspicion that recently drove me to convince my entire family that we were being followed while visiting a small town in The Netherlands. It all began when, while exiting a shoe store, I passed two smartly dressed men wandering through the narrow streets. I’m a visual person. I notice things. No more than 10 minutes later, I walked into a clothing shop to look at jackets. There again, were the men. The cheese shop, the bakery, the electronics store. The men. At first, I chalked it up to coincidence. But later, when I spotted them right beside my mother, my 4-year-old and I in the supermarket, I began to feel nervous. No, that’s not true. I FREAKED THE F*#K OUT. Me : Psssst . My mother (intrigued): What?! Me :  Don’t look now but I think those men are following us. Mom (believing me immediately): Okay, where are they? Me...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Geoff, Jan, the 4 year old and I are visiting Holland. It’s the birthplace of both of my parents… a country where everything feels familiar, and most every face I see, is like looking in a mirror. It’s a country where my possibly abnormal devotion to all things black and brown makes perfect sense. Also, you can buy croquettes from vending machines. Croquettes! The shopkeepers address me in Dutch. I nod for a while before realizing I only understand half of what they say, and can only reply in English. I smile and tell them so. They say,   “But you look so Dutch!” It’s a compliment, I think. Which was not so much the case when a boy named Dave used to call me “Dutchie” in high school. Of course, he also called me “Inga, from Sweden”. And sometimes: “that cute but dopey girl”. On second thought, maybe he was flirting with me. I was never very good at picking up on signals, mostly because I was usually too tired to think straight. The thing is...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater There was a major crisis at our house this morning. We’re all okay, but are still reeling from the impact. I’ve since had a chance to regroup and am now able to talk openly about the ordeal. Here’s what happened… I couldn’t find my carry-on luggage. My bag was missing. Gone. For an entire hour and a half. I accused everyone in the house of stealing it. And then, I found it. The thing is, we’re about to embark on a trip that we’ve been planning for almost a year. And as a result, I’ve been impossible to live with. You know, more than usual. Full disclosure. I’m a terrible traveler. Mostly because I’m a wee teensy bit anxious. Case is point: This is me, in the car, at the beginning of a journey… “Did we lock the door?”  “Do I have my wallet?”  “Is there a roll of paper towels in the car?”  “Who has the house keys?”  “Did someone grab that red container I set by the door?”  “Is it sitting upright in the back?”...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Geoff and I were in Paris. It was getting late and we were hungry so we decided to venture one street over from our hotel to the Champs - Élysées because someone told us that the Champs - Élysées is where everything happens in Paris. Also, it is the street where vacationing pedestrians provide motorists with comic relief. I've heard. It was early November – slightly cool but mild enough for lightweight jackets. Still, we walked quickly so as not to catch a chill. The street was busy and in spite of the late hour, there were people all over the place and every shop and restaurant was open. As we walked along the sidewalk, we came upon a particularly large crowd. Because I am paranoid cautious, my first instinct was to run as thoughts of murders, robberies and rumbles (yes, rumbles) entered my brain.  The Champs - Élysées - but not on that night because on that night we had no camera. Or common sense. Geoff explained to me that ...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater My husband and I were in London, waiting to board the Eurostar train to Paris. We were happy to sit - after making it through customs - and with the pause had a chance to scan our travel mates. Some were sleeping. Others were reading newspapers. A few were deep in conversation with imaginary cats. One gentleman in particular was doing all three at once. My husband offered to get me a snack in an effort to help ease my fears of traveling deep beneath the English Channel with potentially delusional companions. He returned within seconds. "Show me our tickets," he hissed. " Why?" I questioned, " Are we at the wrong station? Did we come on the wrong day? Are we going to train jail?" " Just show them to me, will ya?" I did, and from there, our trip took an exciting turn. We had First Class tickets, which meant we would be fed during our journey and possibly secluded from the masses. Wh...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater It was the first time Geoff and I had ever stayed in such luxurious surroundings. Ornate furnishings, a marble sink and endless lengths of cascading fabric filled our Paris hotel suite. Of particular note were the plush velvet curtains that reached clear up to the 14-foot ceilings. After our first full day of sightseeing, we were eager to get some sleep. We tucked ourselves under the blankets and turned off the bedside lamps only to find the room still flooded with light. We must have missed a switch, I thought while getting up to find it. Then I realized… the light was coming from outside our room. As it turned out, we were positioned at the precise location of the hotel sign, which was awash with intense, white light. It was so bright; we could have performed open-heart surgery (had we the tools, knowledge or patient). “It is the city of lights,” Geoff joked. I was not amused. Because he knows me well, Geoff pro...

By: Andrea Mulder-Slater The Junior Suite in the Hotel Napoleon was like nothing either of us had ever seen before. Well, not in real life anyway. The bed was piled high with pillows, the heavy velvet curtains reached clear up to the 14-foot ceilings, and the marble bathroom was large enough to house three small families. It was twenty minutes before we were able to locate the toilet, which was tucked neatly away between the gold plated shower and the walk-in closest, which, we later discovered, was just off the sitting room. How my husband Geoff and I (artists accustomed to sleeping in budget motels with the numbers 6 or 8 in their name) ended up in a luxury suite in the hotel Errol Flynn once referred to as, “The Place,” was thanks, in part, to nicotine. We were on a European art vacation, involving visits to four thousand museums, in three countries, over a period of ten days. After a memorable train ride from London to Paris, we checked into our main floor, standard, non-...