S5, E17: Feel-Good Fridays | A New Series for Brighter Weekends

Every Friday from now through the end of June, Unpacked is popping into your feed with a brand-new series designed to carry you into the weekend a little lighter. Each episode, host Aislyn Greene and producer Nikki Galteland are joined by a different Afar staffer to share three travel stories that made them smile, tear up (in a good way), or rethink what’s possible. Funny, inspiring, heartwarming—the only rule is no downers.

For our debut episode, we’re joined by Afar’s Michelle Baran, who brings her own dose of feel-good to the mic. Together, the three of them share:

– A celebrated food writer’s reintroduction to her own hometown, and what travel can teach us about grief, grace, and seeing familiar streets with new eyes
– A long-awaited transit milestone in a famously car-bound American city—and what it could mean for one of the world’s biggest upcoming sporting events
– A Vienna café where the pastries come with a side of intergenerational wisdom (and the bakers might just remind you of your own grandmother)

Plus: a childhood alter ego involving wigs, doorbells, and a traveling comedy duo we did not see coming.

Tune in every Friday through June for a fresh trio of stories from Afar’s favorite travel writers and editors. We’ll see you next week.

Transcript

Aislyn: Hi everyone. I’m Aislyn, your Unpacked host.

Nikki: And I’m Nikki, your trusty producer.

Aislyn: And we are here today with something that’s new and I think a little special. We’re calling it Feel Good Friday, and it’s just a chance for us to welcome us all to the weekend with a few stories that are making us feel really happy, that are making us smile right now.

Nikki: Yeah. And they might be funny or inspiring or just heartwarming or good news from the world, but the goal is no downers.

Aislyn: Or at least to balance the bitter with the sweet.

Nikki: Exactly, exactly. So to help us kick off our very special first episode, we are joined by none other than Michelle Baran. Welcome, Michelle.

Michelle: Hey guys, I’m so happy to be here. Welcome.

Aislyn: We’re so happy to have you here. Are you feeling good, Michelle?

Michelle: I am feeling good. Yes. Amazing.

Aislyn: Well, because this week on the show, we have a food writer who’s exploring her hometown from a new perspective.

Nikki: We have the payoff from years of construction in Los Angeles.

Michelle: And of course, a very sweet story about grandmas. Yay!

Aislyn: We love our grannies! The crowd goes wild.

Nikki: That’s all coming up after the break.

All right, we’re back. Ready for some feel good stories. Let’s start with you, Aislyn.

Aislyn: Okay, well, I’m just going to start with a disclosure that this story is a difficult one. It’s painful, but I do think it falls into the category of uplifting. And it highlights the way that travel can be a vehicle for change. So it’s the story of Yewande Komolafe and I followed Yewande’s food for years. She’s this amazing recipe developer and journalist for The New York Times, for sure check out all her food. She also has sickle cell disease, and in 2023, She had this sickle cell crisis that was totally mishandled by the hospital. So she wound up in a coma, and she lost both of her legs and most of her fingers. So obviously this was life changing and devastating. And over the last few years, she’s had to rediscover everything like how to cook, how to relate to her body, and how to navigate New York City now that she has a wheelchair.

Nikki: I saw her story about that. It was really beautifully written.

Aislyn: Yeah, it really was. And I think that’s where we get to the more uplifting part because she wrote this, like you said, beautiful travel story about feeling like a tourist in her own city. She’s lived there for, you know, 20 years. But instead of letting that feeling alienate her and keep her from leaving the house, she leaned into it. And she and her husband intentionally became tourists for three days. So they stayed at a hotel in Midtown and went to museums. And the whole goal was to discover new places and to explore how her relationship with New York City has changed because it has.

Michelle: Okay. I love this part of it. So did they actually do kind of like touristy things?

Aislyn: Yeah. You know, kind of like they had to look at what was accessible to her now. But, you know, they stayed in Midtown like they had dinner at a French restaurant in Rockefeller Center. They went to the Museum of Modern Art. And but I think what I really loved about this story is that she toggles between grief and the reality of her life and discovery, and how travel can, you know, help you move past grief. So some of her old New York haunts aren’t accessible anymore, but she found so many new places. Like they went to a comedy club and they did this really interesting, um, went to this really interesting art exhibit that involved like popping silver balloons. I don’t know, we’ll link out to it in the show notes. But she, you know, found grace and self-acceptance along this journey. And I just was so moved by it, like full on crying.

Nikki: I’m getting teary already.

Aislyn: Right. And I just love it when we get to see different stories from different points of view, quite literally. Right? And it did remind me of this time that I guided Ryan Knighton around New York City. He’s one of our contributing writers and he is blind. and he came to New York for an Afar event, and I had the great honor of hanging out with him for the day. And that also meant that I was his eyes for the day, which was like, everyone should have to travel in that way. Like every taxi, every bump, every person was both like this terrifying obstacle and a beautiful opportunity to learn something new. And Ryan was so patient with me. So it was really, really interesting. Just gave me insight into how he navigates his day to day.

Nikki: That’s so cool.

Aislyn: So that was my bittersweet choice. Nikki, I’m going to hand the mic to you. Are there? Are you going to make us cry? That’s what I want to know.

Nikki: I don’t think so.

Michelle: No, I don’t know. This is about the this is about the LA Metro. I’m from Southern California. Like I might actually start crying. So we’ll see. Yeah.

Nikki: It can make you cry in multiple ways. But this week is very exciting because it just. So the LA Metro just opened up three new stations on the D line, which is super exciting. It’s been under construction for years and years and years.

Michelle: I just assume it was a unicorn. I just assume it was like not just never, ever gonna happen. Yeah. No no no. I don’t even believe you right now. Like, I don’t believe that these stops are open.

Nikki: It’s official. I mean.

Aislyn: Tell us more.

Nikki: So it’s opening May 8, which is the day this episode airs. So I haven’t been able to write it yet, but I believe them this time. It’s close enough that I think it’s really gonna open. So it runs from Union Station downtown, and it used to go out basically to Koreatown, and now they’re extending it west. So eventually it’s going to go all the way out to like Beverly Hills and Westwood. But the stations that they open today are all along Wilshire, which is where a lot of the the like, biggest tourist attractions in LA are. You’ve got the La Brea Tar Pits, you’ve got All Season that I feel like I’m always at because it’s just like a big mixer meeting kind of spot. So I can take the train there now, which is very exciting. And it also runs to the LA County Museum of Art.

Michelle: Um, okay. But seriously, like, are you not going to get in your car? Like, I mean, this is the thing, this is the thing about LA.

Nikki: It is still a driving town. I’m not under any sort of false impression that now no one’s ever gonna drive in LA anymore. But I live in Hollywood, and now this means I can just take, like, one short little trip with one short little transfer and get to all of this cool stuff.

Aislyn: Amazing. And didn’t LACMA just open a new wing?

Nikki: They did. And it’s wild to me because I do not think that they coordinated. Both of these projects have been like going on for gazillions of years with all of their speed bumps, but they’re opening the same week. So LACMA just opened up their David Geffen Galleries, which is this like huge expansion of the art museum. It goes all the way across Wilshire Boulevard. It’s like architecturally looking very cool, and it’s going to house the permanent exhibits. So now you can take the train there.

Michelle: And maybe I’ll ride LA next time I visit. Maybe when the Olympics come to town in a couple of years. And also I feel like there’s supposed to be a train from LAX, which has been in the works. Yes, another unicorn I’ve heard about.

Aislyn: Do we really think it’s gonna happen? Sorry. Okay, Okay.

Nikki: Part of it’s already up. The part they’re gonna eventually. The plan is to extend it, like all the way up to Hollywood, which would be amazing for me, but that’s. I don’t think like it’s scheduled for like 2041 or something like that.

Aislyn: Oh my gosh.

Nikki: But there’s a little bit of it connected. LAX is totally under construction. And this D Line extension, like all the way out through Beverly Hills up to the like the far west side, um, is supposed to be open by 2027 in time for the Olympics. So you can go, go all the way across, which is a huge, I don’t know, a whole new world of accessibility.

Michelle: I mean, if they pull up all these updates in time for the Olympics so that people could actually get around the city without a car like that will be my feel good. Like that’s my Feel Good Friday right there. Like if they pull this off and people are able to go the Olympics and not have to rent a car or drive a car around, I’ll be like, okay, you know, I’ll give it to you guys. I doubt it.

Nikki: That’s I know that’s the goal is no car Olympics. So we’ll we’ll see. It would be amazing.

Aislyn: That is so cool. Michelle, what is making you feel good this week?

Michelle: So here at Afar we love we love a granny story. Like we just we love grannies. I don’t know they’re just the best. And I recently like a few weeks ago heard about Granny Bakery based in Vienna. I heard about it on NPR. It’s not brand new, but it was new to me. It’s called Vollpension. So the concept is a coffee house and a bakery, and it’s supposed to promote that sort of nostalgic comfort of grandma’s baking. But here’s the thing. Grandma is actually doing the baking. Or rather, grandma’s like grandma and her squad. I just love it. I feel like it’s just so I just love the whole idea of like, it’s not just grandma’s baking. It’s like she is actually baking.

Nikki: That is so sweet. Do you know how they like got started or where that came from?

Michelle: The concept is known as like a social business. It kind of reminds me of The Great British Bake Off. So these sort of home bakers, um, they have a passion for baking so they can showcase their talents, but also so that they can earn a little bit of extra income and then also create connections between generations. And this is the part where that really warms my heart, because this idea of not just baking for others and selling your baked goods, but also promoting, creating a space where grandmas and I don’t even know if they’re like, actually technically grandmas, they are just retired women.

Nikki: Older women.

Michelle: Yeah, they might not actually even have grandchildren, but that people can come in and create these connections because I also think, you know, there’s loneliness. There’s a lot of things both and every generation. So just fostering these connections between the generations so that there can be an exchange of information, of stories and that can go both ways. So I just love that through these baked goods, these connections can be made.

Aislyn: Yeah, I love that. And kind of elevating these elders, right? Like these women who can pass down their knowledge and their experience. I think that’s so beautiful. And it just feels like, like grannies are having a moment in general. They’re kind of everywhere.

Nikki: We need our grandmas.

Michelle: Yeah, totally. I mean, I love the idea of grandmas relaying their stories. I mean, it’s kind of cliche of like back in my day, but like, I do, like, I want to hear about back in your day now at least. I mean, I guess now that I’m like halfway.

Aislyn: You’re 50 percent granny.

Nikki: Yeah.

Michelle: Now that I’m like, yeah, 50 percent granny, I feel like I have greater appreciation for that sort of storytelling and bestowing knowledge, especially in this technology age. I don’t know, I feel like I love when my parents tell their grandchildren about life before technology. And I mean, again, I know it’s, it’s so cliche, but I think that there is something to be said about that handing down of like, knowledge and information that might otherwise be kind of lost. So yeah, I don’t know. That’s what I think we love about grandmas, but.

Aislyn: I know there’s maybe that nostalgia aspect. And I don’t know, I when you were talking about that, it was reminding me of just like out of nowhere, I remembered this thing that my best friend Hillary and I, when we were maybe eight years old, we had this thing that we called dancing grannies.

Michelle: Oh my God! Stop!

Aislyn: Where we would dress up as grannies and go to people’s houses and knock on their door and introduce ourselves as the dancing grannies and perform. And we had this whole idea that, like, no one would know that it was us and that we would just be, we were like this traveling, dancing comedy duo that.

Michelle: I love that like you were in full disguise. Like nobody would know that you were children.

Aislyn: And people would pretend, you know, that they didn’t know. They were like, oh, yes. But clearly I’ve had a long standing love of grace.

Michelle: Please tell me that there are some like photos or videos of this somewhere.

Nikki: We need to see the evidence.

Aislyn: I know. Oh my God. I will try to dig up those photos because. And maybe try to remember our names because I think we even had like, granny names.

Nikki: Oh, I love a good granny name. And they’re all coming back into fashion, right? Yes, exactly. That’s true.

Aislyn: We were just really ahead of our times.

Michelle: And actually my it’s funny because my mom is Polish and in Poland, the word for grandma is babcia. And I’m like, oh, that’s so cute, like babcia. But she feels like that makes her sound old. Like. In her native language. So she likes to just be called granny.

Aislyn: Oh, sweet. Well, that was an amazing note to end on. Thank you, Michelle, for bringing us the true feel good Friday.

Nikki: This was a feel Good Friday episode of Unpacked by Afar.

Michelle: Make sure to tune in every week for a dose of good news from Afar’s favorite travel writers.

Aislyn: You can subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and of course, follow Afar Media on social.

Nikki: And don’t forget to subscribe to our Behind the Mic newsletter at Afar.com.

Michelle: This show is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network music from Chris Colin and Epidemic Sound.

Aislyn: See you next Friday.