Lilith’s Winter Travelogue: New Perfume Blends
In winter of 2017, we used our savings, blew our collective airline miles, and maxed out our credit cards on a trip to Paris, Salzburg, and Berlin so that we could attend a Krampuslauf, visit the Christmas markets, and help Lilith practice her French in realtime.
I’m pretty sure that we’ll be paying off that trip for the next decade, but it’s all worth it. We travel with our daughter Lilith as much as we can; we take her to conventions and business trips and trade shows, we take her on road trips and weekenders, we have taken her to as many cities, states, and countries as we could manage.
I want her to meet people who are not like her. I want her to hear voices that are not like her own. I want her to see history alive and vibrant surrounding her. I want her to see, hear, touch, and understand. I think she could stop here and do miracles.
The following collection is a perfume scrapbook of these warm family memories, which we set aside to share during the coldest winter months. Lilith and Brian (our Doc Constantine!) have contributed scents and stories to this series. You can find Ted’s scrapbook of the trip there, too!
++ LILITH’S WINTER TRAVELOGUE
These three are far braver than I am. It was snowing buckets and the wind was whipping across the Fuschlsee, but these maniacs still went into the outdoor hot tub.
A wintry spa scent: green tea, aloe, eucalyptus, icy lemon, and French sage.
ARC DE TRIOMPHE CARROUSEL
Once the site of a guillotine that rolled the heads of thirty-five people during the Terror, now the site of a triumphal arch dedicated to Napoleon’s military victories of 1805.
Also: my family is ridiculous.
A sharpened blade, a pinch of snuff, a blast of gunpowder, and a pop of strawberry bubblegum.
I know I’ve talked about Lilith’s experiences with Krampus for years, so I hesitate to reiterate them here. She loves Krampus. Her love for Krampus easily equals her love for Santa, so in 2017, we took her to the Gnigl Krampuslauf in Salzburg (which we memorialized in our 12 Lashes From Krampus and Perchtenläufe series). She was enraptured. She was charmed by the wee little kid Krampuses, the Perchten, the switches, and the chains. She loved the snow and icicles, the roadside cider vendors and the bitterly cold air. I love this photo; it really seems to encapsulate her joy that night: the sparkle in her eyes and her bursts of laughter.
Ice, leather, and snow warmed by a steaming stein of children’s glühwein.
Even in utero, Lilith had a full head of hair. She looked like a Monchhichi when she was born, and from the moment I first saw her, I called her Bear. She’s my Baby Bear, Bunnybear, Bearington, Beanie Bear. I made up bear bedtime stories for her – we still tell each other bear jokes all the time. Every time I see a bear video or meme, I save it for her, my little Princess Bear.
While we were in Berlin, we made a point of taking photos with as many Buddy Bears as possible. They’re intended to symbolize peace, tolerance, and understanding between religions, nations, and cultures worldwide, and Lilith knows how important that is – especially now.
Sweet buttered rum, brown musk, wildflower honey, tonka bean, labdanum, and clove.
Brian: “Lilith is always up for staging a hammy, fun photo. Here, I’ve found a Distracted American Child at Weihnachtsmarkt am Alexanderplatz and am very subtly and skillfully picking her pocket.”
Lilith: “We saw a sign on the ground that said Pickpockets! – and me and Unkie decided to pose like what the picture looked like. He let me pickpocket him for real after we took the picture and he let me keep the money.”
Neon pink grapefruit, lemon peel, petitgrain, and peppermint, all crunchy with sugar crystals.
Lilith: “Nooooo! I don’t want to leave Salzburg!!!! I loved how it snowed, and I loved the food. I piled up on bread, mostly, but the bread was really good. And honeycomb. And bacon and sausage and eggs. I loved the outdoor hot tub thingymajigger. Being in a spa when it’s so cold outside is fun. I love the Christmas markets and I got unicorn and bat stuffy heat packs which is so cool.”
Brian: “I agree with Lilith’s sentiment on this. All the cities we visited were great, but Salzburg was the most charming. I loved the Christmas markets in Berlin, but Salzburg was… – quainter? I loved the gruff and distant replies we got to questions we posed to locals. I LOVED THE KRAMPUSLAUF. You can’t beat a Krampuslauf. Plus, I got a fancy hat. A legit fancy Tyrolean hat. I love that hat.”
C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT
Our trip to the Catacombs was bittersweet. Lilith was touched by the beauty and poignancy of the experience, but also horrified by the stories of people getting lost underground.
Lilith surrounded by the ghosts of six million Parisians: damp black moss, grey sandalwood chips of bone, and winding sheets of balsam, ambergris, nagarmotha, and frankincense.
CATHEDRALE NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
Lilith meets the Gargoyles of Paris: stone and ancient incense, beeswax and lavender smoke.
Lilith’s first genuine Parisian crêpe!
Strawberries, whipped cream, confectioners sugar, vanilla bean, and orange zest.
Brian: “She’s my Mini Me.”
Lilith: “This was me and Unkie posing for a picture with a play thing going on in the background at the ice rink in Alexanderplatz. I didn’t understand it because it was all happening in German, but it was fun!! I love my Unkie so much. He’s like my older twin. We have the same birthday and we are both year of the Rat. Mom is a stinky ol’ Tiger. Anyway, I just love him so much.”
Virgo’s sacred lavender and mosses with thyme, chamomile, lemon balm, and fig.
It was pouring rain and bitterly cold, but this smile kept me warm.
Wrought iron lattice and sparkling amber lights.
We were exhausted, hungry, and batty from travel, but Lilith made herself right at home. She’s a born traveler, and takes just about everything that happens on a trip in stride; she’s as comfortable in a hotel, hostel, or airport floor as she is at home. Just before dawn on our first morning in Paris, I tried to talk Lilith into putting on a coat and watching the sun rise with me, but she’s didn’t bite.
Burgundy oudh and crushed velvet musk with a misting of lavender.
Lilith in the Hall of Mirrors: marble and gilded bronze, Venetian mirrors and a drop of poison.
Brian: “It’s something we always do when we’re on a trip, ever since she was really little. She complains constantly about how Beth brushes her hair, and I honestly enjoy the challenge of brushing her mop. It’s like that knot Alexander had to undo, except on my niece’s head, and I don’t have the option to cut it. Plus, her hair looks really nice when it’s done right.”
Lilith: “Every time we’re on a trip together, Unkie brushes my hair for me. I hate brushing my hair. Also cuz mom says I don’t do it thoroughly and I miss parts in the middle. I think there are pictures of him brushing my hair in every city we’ve ever been together. He brushes my hair way better than mom does.”
A warm scent, mahogany-dark: spiced teakwood, coffee bean, bourbon vetiver, styrax, tobacco, and oakmoss.
Inspired by the deep purple hues of the night we arrived in Austria: icy air, plum musk, and blackberry with a beam of amber light.
An absolutely stunning view of the Baroque historical district from high atop the Festungsberg.
A shiver of iced chocolate and white amber.
LA BASILIQUE DU SACRE COEUR DE MONTMARTE
Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has been continuing uninterrupted since 1885, and I wanted Lilith to see the monstrance where the Blessed Sacrament is held.
An incense for the Maid of Orléans: red rose beads, frankincense, lily of the valley, iris petals, red labdanum, and steel.
There is nothing mysterious or enigmatic about my kiddo’s smile. Her joy, laughter, and good cheer radiate delight and are impossible to eclipse, even when she’s jetlagged and exhausted.
Bright Italian bergamot, pink grapefruit, sweet California sage, and glittery white musk.
LE CARROUSEL DE MONTMARTRE
Spinning merrily at the foot of Sacré-Cœur, this is one of twenty permanent carousels scattered around Paris. Just down the road, Lilith watched street hustlers play Three-Card Monte and ply the old gold ring scam.
A swirl of color against a rainy backdrop: golden amber and blackberry oudh with pineapple, tobacco absolute, cinnamon leaf, bay, sweet vetiver, and red apple pulp.
A lesser-known work of art in vibrant 21st century polychrome: vanilla cream, coconut, fossilized amber, and white sandalwood.
The only icicles we get at home happen when we have a fridge malfunction.
Plucked from the walls of Hohensalzburg Fortress: a glassy frozen snowdrop with whipped cream and glacial musk.
Lilith learning the art of spycraft at Deutsches Spionagemuseum.
A pre-teen superspy’s secret identity: white pear, apple pulp, golden musk, and fossilized amber.
Salzburg is so goddamn beautiful.
Chilled white tea, freesia, and bergamot blanketing skeletal branches. Winter wind brushing across still waters.
Brian: “No one else would come out onto the rink. It was just Lilith and me skating, and Beth and Ted were trying to get pictures. I was trying to teach Lilith to skate while dodging penguins and other tourists. There’s a pretty funny photo of Lilith falling and me lunging to catch her, and the funny part is that it’s angled in a way that almost looks like I’m pushing her down. We skated together a ton that night, and she insisted that we go back again the next night.”
Lilith: “I’ve ice skated before when I was littler with a thingy, but this is the first time I really learned how to ice skate. Unkie helped me when I wasn’t using the penguin and he skated me with a lot and helped me learn how to do it. I fell down a lot, but that’s fine.”
Sugared chestnut and powidltascherl.
OU SONT LES JOUETS S’IL VOUS PLAIT
Lilith’s French teacher is a lovely, kind, radiant human being, and always so generous with her time. Before Lilith left for Paris, she helped Lilith put together a cheat sheet of phrases that Lil knew she’d need for the trip.
Où sont les jouets, s’il vous plaît? French vanilla, strawberries, and raspberries.
While we were at Versailles, there was a bomb threat on the premises, and we were unable to see the garden due to the evacuation. It’s difficult to convey how challenging and heartbreaking it has been to explain things like this to Lilith, from shooter drills at school to bomb threats in palaces. We live in difficult times.
A perfume of hope for a brighter tomorrow: sun-dappled amber, yesterday’s rain, and fresh-cut grass.
All right, so we only saw the Panthéon for a moment because Lilith wanted to hurry the hell up and get some crêpes, but I can’t with this smile. It’s THE BEST.
An incense for Sainte Geneviève, patroness of Paris: iris root, frankincense, and violet leaf.
Lilith’s guide at the Louvre was attempting to explain the difference in perspective between Medieval and Renaissance art by utilizing paintings of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Shepherds from both periods, and it fell a little flat when he assumed that she knew what the paintings depicted and she hadn’t a clue beyond the fact that they were paintings of a lady holding some baby.
The scent of failing to pass on a Catholic education to the next generation: spilled sacramental wine, a splatter of vermillion paint, Bible leather, and a puzzled cherry chypre.
Brian: “Now this shit was fun. When we arrived in Berlin, we stopped by the Potsdamer Platz market for a few minutes on our way to the hotel, but we didn’t stay for long because we were all exhausted. We check into the hotel, and I open the curtains in my room and Lilith and I see the lights of the market… and this ride, this alpine slide, that we must have walked right by in the dark. Lilith and I knew we had to do it first thing in the morning.”
Lilith: “There was a humongous slidey thing where you sit in a pool thingamajiggy and slide down it. And you have to carry your pool thing up the stairs. Ok, so DAD had to drag it back up the stairs for me. Anyway, I went on it a bunch with my Unkie and my dad, and mostly mom took photos. AS USUAL. This was one of my favorite things in Berlin!”
A tube of black rubber sliding wildly down a whoosh of white musk and white oudh.
SCHEITERHAUFEN VOM BOSKOP APFEL
Okay, this isn’t a photo of Lilith, but it IS a photo of a dessert I had on the first night in Salzburg. It was delicious and amazing and perfect, and it gets its own scent.
Baked apples in cinnamon cream, with a blueberry and raspberry garnish.
Lilith put on my boots to run out into the snow this morning in her pajamas. Ich wünsche dir einen guten morgen!
Pink cotton candy snow, tuberose, plumeria, melon blossom, green tea, lavender, and a shiver of white musk.
SNOW OF THE GRAVESTONES AT PETERSFRIEDHOF
Lilith at Petersfriedhof, the oldest cemetery in Salzburg. As the bells of Stift Sankt Peter tolled around us, we wandered through the graves and the catacombs that date back to Late Antiquity.
Benedictine incense drifting on a frost-chilled December breeze.
SNOWFLAKE-SHAPED SNOWFLAKES
We’re such ridiculous LA rubes. We were standing outside our hotel laughing, oohing and ahhhing, and taking photos of snowflake-shaped snowflakes, when an Austrian fellow walks up to us and says, “Snow.” I told him that we’re from Los Angeles, so snow is super exotic to us.
He nodded and walked away.
The awe and wonder of a couple of Angelinos marveling at the snowy snowness of the snowflakiest of snowflakes: golden amber, California sage, white tea, and sunny Matilija poppy speckled with snow.
My two favorite spectres, haunting the apartments of Paris: white musk, graceful lavender, blackcurrant, teakwood, and cacao.
Brian: “I’m not afraid of heights, but I am reasonably afraid of landing, and I have what I feel is a legitimate concern about rickety old carnival rides. I kinda hate carnival rides, but I’ll do it for Lilith.”
Lilith: “Mom says this ride is called a Swing Carousel, but she also calls it a Barf Ride. She wouldn’t go on it, but my dad and my Unkie did. We went on it, and it’s pretty much where you’re sitting in a flying seat. When we were stopped, I couldn’t reach the ground with my feet. I love this ride. The swing is kinda like one of those baby things you have at the park, with the bar for the babies. It’s like those swings, but crazy and way up high. We ate cheesy hot dogs and got hot chocolate right next to the ride, too.”
Bright orange peel and osmanthus with polished cedar, rings of burnished amber, sweet incense, and gingerbread.
Beneath the Berlin Cathedral lies the Hohenzollern family crypt. It is the final resting place of many of those who shaped the history of Berlin, and is one of the most important dynastic burial sites in Europe, with roots reaching back through centuries.
The memory of an 18th-century perfume from the royal houses of the Holy Roman Empire drifting through marble-white walls: white bergamot, clementine, lime peel, grapefruit, blood orange, neroli, lavender, thyme, and tobacco.
Travel brings educational experiences that you just can’t predict. We visited the German Spy Museum in Berlin on a whim, and Lilith learned all about the history of espionage, data encryption, cryptography, and cypher machines, poisons and truth serums, and the strange and clever artifacts of Cold War spycraft. For me, the most interesting part was the Stasi’s collection of scent samples of German dissidents. For Lilith, the best part of the museum was dodging beams in the laserparcours, full Mission Impossible-style.
Here, Lilith is inspecting the poisons exhibit after watching a reel about the Bulgarian umbrella.
Leather shoe phones, the gleaming metal of a M-125-3 Fialka cipher machine, a femme fatale’s heady, dark perfume, and a breath of castor bean accord.
While we were at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, I desperately wanted to see the Nefertiti bust and share the moment with Lilith. There’s a story behind why the bust is so important to me, but that’s for another time. Suffice to say, I was overwhelmed with awe and joy, and a kind docent told me that we could take a photograph from the doorway as long as we didn’t use flash. This blurry mess is my best attempt!
Myrrh steeped with cardamom, cinnamon, and sweet wine, streaked with lines of labdanum kohl, and gilded with crushed ambrette seed, a copper oxide musk, and accords of lime spar and iron oxide.
Brian: “Here, we’re en route to Frankfurt Flughafen and then off to Berlin. It’s always fun to travel with Lilith. We’ve been on a lot of trips together, going all the way back to her first trip out of LA when she was 1. We went to New Orleans that time. We’ve traveled for work and we’ve traveled for fun, and everything is a little bit more interesting when I’m with this kid.”
Lilith: “I remember being in a t-shirt in the freezing cold here because I took my jacket off in the airport because it was so hot. I love travelling with my Unkie.”
A reinvigorating travel survival oil containing essential oils of frankincense, lemon, eucalyptus, peppermint and rosemary. Leave it to the Virgos to have a practical oil here.
Lilith once told me that home is wherever her loved ones are. My sweet girl, may you always be surrounded by those who love and support you.
White musk and lavender, frankincense and amber incense, sugar cookies, rose petals, and Florida Water.
Brian: “Our first morning in Salzburg, I wake up to the sound of something thudding against the window. I look outside, and Lilith is out in the snow throwing snowballs at our door. So, I put on all my snow gear – mittens, hat, boots, overcoat, the whole pile of stuff – as fast as I can, and I go outside and I realize this kid is in her just in her long johns and her mom’s snow boots, standing in the snow laughing. Beth comes out yelling for her to put her snow clothes on and to get out of Beth’s boots because she was getting snow in them. She gets changed, and we run around snowball fighting.
“There’s another story – an inside joke – that if my feet get cold wherever we are, we have to go home. But I’ll save that for another time.”
Lilith: “You can’t tell in the picture, but I’m in my jammies here under my coat and stuff. Me and Unkie had a snowball fight. We tried to build a snowman, but it very much failed. Unkie got me a lot with the snow, but I got him back!”
A scent the color of the sun rising over Lake Fuschl: a joyful lemon ginger cologne with a touch of bay leaf and white tea.
The first Christmas market that we visited in Berlin was at Potsdamer Platz. We were completely wiped from the day of travel from Salzburg, but we were stubbornly determined to at least step into the market before collapsing into bed.
The scent of brightly frosted lebkuchen, warm mutzenmandeln, and chocolate-drizzled, marzipan filled schneeballen.
Honestly, there are a lot of smells in any given airport that I probably shouldn’t translate into a perfume, but this particular scent was inspired by this radiant ribbon tree at Heathrow and the joyful little girl standing in front of it.
Sparks of snow-white musk dotted with shining bulbs of blackcurrant, plum, and lavender.
Even the most intrepid adventurers get sleepy.
Coffee, coffee, and more coffee for the grownups, and vanilla ice cream to en’sugar the kiddo out from her stupor.
