Things i did not do in the Former Yugoslavia

I will have some more serious material tomorrow, but for now i hope you enjoy this...

By virtue of my computer being very near to its imanent death, i can no longer use Microsoft Word. Thus, i have resorted to using notepad, that has no gramatical or spelling aids (i also have never read over anything that i write, this applies to school papers and the like (i am always dissatisfied with my work, so i do not submit myself to that stimilus by avoiding it altogether)). So please forgive the sloppy nature of this short story.

This short story is about a kid, who is traveling the world on a cruise ship. He takes classes when he is on the great sea, and wanders aimlessly around several ports all around the world. The chapter where we will pick up with this FICTIONAL story will be when the kid visited Croatia. This story is entirely based on fiction, and no parts of it are true. The characters names and identities are also not real so as to not create a false sense of truth.

Tommy (the main character) got off the ship in Dubrovnik with no plans whatsoever. He went into the old town with a few of his friends to have some pizza. Tommy enjoyed the pizza a whole lot because it was topped with sour cream and ketchup, it was yummy in his tummy. Tommy was searching all day for a place to go cliff jumping because he heard that previous voyages have done it, and even though a girl broke her back last year, it still sounded like a fun thing to do. So he asked around all day long, and everybody told him that it could nto be done. Tommy was discouraged, but he finally broke through when the owner of he pizza shop told him about a trail, and a overhanging cliff that was next to this mysterious trail. So Tommy found this trail, and braved the 47 degree temperature, and slanting rain and howling winds... and found the cliff. The seas were really rough on this day, and Tommy was worried that after he jumped in the water the 10 foot waves would crash him into the rocks. Tommy jumped anyway from 30 feet up and did a back flip with a full twist. Tommy over rotated on his flip, and knocked the wind out of himself and spent his first minute in the water in pure panic, but eventually found his way over to a ledge, and let the wave wash him up onto it.

Tommy and his friends went back to the ship to warm up, and to put thier finest on for a night out. Tommys friend Mikey was turning 21 on this day so they all went out to celebrate. They were lured into a fancy restaruant that offered free Croatian wine. Tommy had a great time and was very merry the whole evening long. Tommy and his friends went to an irish pub to watch some soccer, and then relazed the night away with an old norwegian couple at a tiny jazz club in the corner of old town Dubrobvnik.

On the second day of his voyage (from here, you must realize that this is entirely made up), Tommy and his friends rented a car and bought a map and decided to drive anywhere the road took them. So the seven of them piled in a vokswagon minivan and drove up the beautiful Croatian coast for hours. On the map, they realized that Bosnia was very close, and that it was winter... and Sarajevo had the winter Olympics in 1984, so they decided to find some snow skiing. SO they took a right turn, crossed the border and made thier way towards Sarajevo. On the side of the road there was a stand that sold oranges and Cherry brandy. Tommy and his friends were very thirsty and hungry so they bought 10 kilos of oranges and a bottle of heterogeneous alcohol to whet thier appetite. They drove for a while until they came across a castle on the hillside. They ate lunch in a lofted restaruant that happened to play american rap music the second they walked in the door. And Tommy, being a vegetarian, ate cheese and bread... like he did for pretty much ever meal. After thier mid day snack they exlored the castle for a long time. They accidentally missed the sign that forbode any persons from wandering around inside the castle and climbed, peed off of, and admired the beauty of the valley it overlooked. The valley overlooked a river that cut out the landscape, in the distance were snow tipped mountains, and in the foreground were grape vineyards and renaissance age crumbling brick houses. They enjoyed this very much, but soon had to make thier way to Mostar.

Bosnia and Serbia were part of the Former Yugoslavia. They fought a terrible war in the 90's that was very visible in the landscape for Tommy to see. He saw bullet holes in buildings, and bombed out roofs, and got a glimpse of the stunted growth of townships by complete infrastructure devastation. Mostar is a town where Muslims were attacked primarily. They had a stunning bridge in town that was destroyed during the war, and has been rebuilt since. The bridge served as the burial ground for the dead, where they would throw the bodies over board. The water there was a strange shade of blue, as if the human bones beneath had a dying agent in them. Tommy was very moved by the town, and the recency of the events that had taken place. Tommy was playing with his friends at Millstop Elementary when this happened.

Tommy continued to Sarajevo, through mountain passes covered with snow. Tommy and his friends found a hostel with 4 bunk beds, and a communal shower for the 30 residents there. The place was comfortable for them, and they did not pay much at all for this place. They had dinner at a fast foot restaurant that served spinach and potato pasteries, used the local internet cafe, and went to a club. The club they went to said "Cultural Arts center for the University of Sarajevo", on the outside of the office style building. But extended far back on the inside, and was packed with thousands of people. TOmmy could barely move in this place, the people surrounding him were intently listening and singing along to the country western band that was playing on the tiny stage in the middle. Tommy had a lot of fun there. Earlier this evening they met a guy on the street who was absolutely insane. He told us that he had a Psychology degree from Cambridge, and then proceeded to tell us that MLK JR. COmmitted suicide, and quoted the famous "I have a dream speech" with the N word in it a few times. He sang some Led Zeplin and Eric Clapton for them, and had some choice words towards american politics.

On the third day, Tommy and his friends woke up and had breakfast and drove out to the Olyimpic Ski Mountain. The road side was littered with land mine warnings and devastated resort hotels from a time before the war. They arrived on the top of the mountain to find one person in the entire town. The town was empty, and had tons of hotel shells (outsides standing) that had no insides. There was one working hotel, and one restaruant, and 2 appartment complexes in the village. And One person... the ski season didnt start for another day. They made their way back down the mountain, and spent the day in Sarajevo. After lunch where they communicated with locals via drawn pictures, they wandered around the streets. They went to the US embassy where they were almost assaulted for taking pictures, and talked to the gaurd for a long time. The gaurd regaled them with his experience from the war. He told them about the mountain no less than a kilometer away being lined with tanks and M16's. When asked about a famous street called sniper ally, he laughed and told them that every ally was sniper ally. He spent the hour or so with a glazed look in his eye, a look that Tommy and his friends had never really seen before.

They walked the streets for hours more, and visited the Holiday Inn (the only building that was immune during the war because it was the government and media headquarters), and tried to get into a museum... and killed time. They then went to the Wal Mart of Bosnia... Interex. Tommy and his friends foudn this place to be amazing. One of the food samples offered was a table with grain alcohol, where they poured shot after shot for patrons to try the product. They had mouse pads with explicit porn on them, and workers that attempted to pick up Ry Ry and Timmy. They sold beer in 2 liter bottles, and american flag wool socks. It was a glorious place for them. They spent the next few hours scaling the 18 kilometer mountain pass. Tommy and his friends had to get out and push the car a lot of the way because they had to traction on thier tires, and while the tires were spinning at 60 kilometers per hour, they were moving about 5. THey mixed a few games, freeze out, and car hop... where they would take thier shirts off, push the car, and then run and hop in while it was moving. They had a blast, and in retrospect, were complete idiots for not realizing that what goes up, must come back down. They then tried to find a free place to stay for the night. The town had in a matter of hours grown exponentially and there were hundreds of people there. They knocked on the Ski Partol door to sleep on the floor, no dice. Eventually a guy walked by and offered his place for free for the night. This guys name was GiGi. GiGi was an ex-olympian bob sledder that had a sweet little pad in the town. He spent 8 years living in america during the war, and called Tommy Bush's cousin. GiGi had a political converntion to attend the next day, so he gave them his appartment for the night in the hopes that they would not wreck it. In stead of wrecking it, they installed a table, and fixed some things around the house as a payment for thier stay. that night, after rissoto and wine from the restaurant Tommy and his friends went to a house party. The house party was put on by a few Bosnian 20 somethings that had a hefty supply of Rockya (plum brandy). These young adults told Tommy, and Timmy, and Matty, and Bri Bri about thier war experiences. They held nothing back and the experience was probably the best cultural experience Tommy had ever had. Two brothers told them about sneaking in via tunnels into Sarajevo while being shot at, the girls told them about being put on a plane and sent to Norway to live away from thier families. When the lights went out they told them about living without electricity or water for years. They talked about having no animocity for Serbians, and thier love of peace. They talked about media, and thier desperate desire to change thier homelands image to get people there... they talked about the glory of the resort in its day, and didnt have to explain what it has become. Tommy stayed up early into the morning listening and learning from the drunk Bosnians, and got a couple hours of sleep.

On the fourth day, Tommy and his friends Skiid (spelling?) all day long. For 4 days leading up to opening day, the snow dumped feet upon feet of white and soft powder. The ski resort only had a few runs open, but the snow was perfect, and often TOmmy fell and was burried up to his chest in snow. Tommy and his friends had coffee and cookies at GiGi's and hit the road in the evening. The process of getting down the mountain was scary for them because it involved sliding and skidding for a majority of the time. They literally slid down the mountain at a crawling pace, and amazingly escaped without accident. They then drove for hours back to Dubrovnik. The drive back was highlighted by witness of a Bosnian wedding celebration, a narrow escape with a cop from a 250 Euro ticket for a busted tail light, and getting lost in the mountains. At one point, Tommy learned how to drive stick on an Icy Road in Hercegovenia. He drove past abandoned towns that were really really eerie. Somehow, they managed thier way back to the ship at around 4 in the morning. Tommy slept until 7 for his fifth day in Former Yugoslavia.

On the fifth day, Tommy and his good friend SHortsy went to mass in the morning. Tommy had never been to a mass in another language before, and found it interesting because he knew exactly word for word what was going on, and did not feel like he missed a beat even though there was a strong language barrier. The church was inthe middle of old town, and had a door on the side that tourists would pop thier heads into, walk into the congregation, and then take flash photoghraphy during the mass. Tommy was pissed and ashamed because he realized that had been him at one or many points on his voyage. He was ashamed because it was only really sacred to him when it was him worshiping. He was sorry for all the times he made a serious occasion a spectacle. He had a vegetarian burrito for lunch and walked the walls of the city. Dubrovnik is a smallish city that has a wall around it. Inside the walls are blocks of stone buildings, and churches and clock towers galore. The town is directly on the ocean so you could jump off the walls into the sea, and survive if you wanted to... Tommy did not really want to. Tommy felt that this was the most romantic place he had ever been, and wished he could have spent it with Dava. But Tommy took tons of pictures, and met up with his friends and climbed a mountain in the afternoon. The mountain that Tommy climbed had a fort on top that has not had any preservation since the war. The multitude of Head high bullet holes served as an image of death. Loose Shrapenal and holes in walls were very intense. There was a cross on top that had no inscription of plaque, but rather just stood tall. Its simplicity and magnitude was really nice, but seemed awkward to Tommy in such a somber location. Croatia was the first predominantly Christian country that Tommy had visited, so the visible sign of the cross was something foreign to him.

Tommy spent some time on the internet talking to his wonderful girlfriend, and bought some granola and almonds from a grocery store, and boarded the ship late in the evening.

Tommy had a great time in Croatia, and Bosnia, and learned a lot.

(every part of this story is fiction and has nothing to do with the author or his experience)

(back flip full twist off of a cliff in Croatia)
(mine field on side of a mountain)

Turkiye Sandwich

(this is me at the Besiktas game)

Istanbul is the most amazing city I have ever been to. It visibly displays the characteristics of 2 continents, while maintaining a strong Islamic core. Its Paris, and London… and Cairo in one: its boulevards are lined with pastry shops and cafes and glorious mosques. It is the melting pot where the East met the West, where Christianity fought Islam… where Islam fought back. It has hands down been my favorite country thus far. Here is my scoop.

Day 1:

We got off the ship and immediately got in a cab. (This was the first time I realized that Turkey was freaking expensive. For a ride about 10 kilometers or so to a bus station, it cost around 20 US Dollars. Thus, I quickly learned the tram system). After buying some bus tickets, I went out to explore with the guys. The first place we went to was Taksim square. This is like the 5^th avenue of Istanbul. Trendy shops, and pizza joints, and book stores line the well walked streets and pigeons gather in full force to pester everyone around. We grabbed some food (at this café that did not have electricity during the day, so all of its food was cold, and the seating area was almost too dark to see… this was in a place that had an extremely high real estate value) and had to resort to taking another taxi. We asked the guy to go to Topkapi (lonely planet said this was the most famous palace in Istanbul, however asking for Topkapi is like asking for Herman in Houston, there were like 30 different places where he could take us) and he dropped us off in the middle of a walled village that was elevated above the city, we had some Nescafe (Turkey is famous for Coffee and we drink Nescafe... however I did have some Turkish coffee, and the stuff is chewable… literally chewable(the last third of the cup is pure grounds)) and wandered around and found our way to the palace. The place was terrific and beautiful and overlooked the Bosporus strait (where we could see Asia and Europe at once). The palace had a room of Jewels that housed an 86 carat diamond, and some beautiful tiling and so forth. Touristy stuff right… we then hit two of the most famous buildings in the world. Aya Sofia, is an old church that is massive, and beautiful. Inside there is a sports stadium style ramp that leads to the upper chamber where the huge inside area can be admired. Its difficult to describe, so… it was big, and beautiful. This old church was converted into a mosque, so even though there are crosses everywhere along the grounds, the top spire has a crescent on it. Across the hippodrome is the Blue Mosque; a building that was built only to rival the Hagia Sofia in size and beauty. It is one of the most famous buildings in the world for a very good reason. These two buildings, along with the basilica cistern, and the hippodrome make up the most concentrated area of awesome things I have ever been to. 1000 things to see before you die includes all of these on their list… and they are on the same stinking street, within minutes of each other. Anyway, we got some food back on the ship… packed up… went to a whirling dervish ceremony in a train station (on platform one)(really the ceremony is guys spinning for an hour, its pretty boring, but impressive nonetheless), and got on the overnight train to Efes (Ephesus).

Day Two:

After a night of no sleep, we got off the train early in the morning and visited the quaint little town of Selcuk. After tea and cheese pastry for breakfast we walked the 4 kilometers to the Roman ruins at Ephesus. On the way we visited the temple of Artemis (this is weird because it is an ancient wonder of the world), which today is a pile of rocks in the middle of a field. There were no merchants, or hecklers, or cars… no signs of tourism really… just rocks in a field (they reconstructed a single column that stands tall, but is obviously artificial). We proceeded down a few roads, up a few hills and to the gates of the town of Ephesus. Ephesus is a gold mine in terms of quantity and quality, there are pillars, a 20,000 person amphitheater, roads, rooms and everything in between dating back thousands of years. I will spare you the details, I would like to ell you why this place was special to me though.

- The apostle Paul was a tent maker early in his life in the town of Ephesus, and wrote a letter in the Bible to the town called the Letter to the Ephesians. The letter is about unity, and spiritual strength, and one that I deem extremely applicable to my life in the stage I am in right now. In the amphitheater we (Tim, Brandon, Ryan, Matt, and myself) read the letter out loud on the platform. This was special because this was certainly the first place the letter was read, to the people of Ephesus gathered in the seats where Japanese tourists sat now… I am not one to read the bible aloud on the streets, but the scene had a feel of necessity… a need to read and absorb the letter in the same fashion that it was originally read… and absorbed. It was a big moment for me.

- After doing the whole ruins thing we hiked up and over a mountain near the site. We hiked near Shepard’s with their sheep, and mushroom farmers gathering on the top… past ancient city walls, and caves and corroded clay pots that littered the ground in tiny pieces. We explored and climbed and came out at the grotto of the seven sleepers (which is dug out of a rock face and is a pretty amazing cultural site). We hiked through a date farm (and ate raw dates (not recommended at all)) and an Orange orchard… and a cemetery… and somehow made our way back to Selcuk.

After these things we went out to an aqueduct, climbed on it for a while (we just got off the freeway, hiked through some forest… and climbed up onto this ancient bridge like structure) and headed back to town for a meal. Eating as a vegetarian was weird in Turkey. The national dishes are Kebobs and this thing called Doner (which is a slab of meat that they cut slices off of and make sandwiches out of), so I resorted to tons of Cheese, bread… and weird vegetable concoctions (stews and so forth). I then boarded another overnight bus to Cappadocia. (before going any further, google image search this place to get the full effect).

Day 3:

Overnight busses are strange. I mean, they are packed… and take 30 minute breaks every 2 hours or so. They stop at these HUGE gas stations that have restaurants, and candy shops, and clothing stores attached. They wash the exterior with soap and water every 2 hours… and have a guy on board that serves no purpose other than to wake you up, and to occasionally fix the carpets at your feet.

We get off the bus at about 4 in the morning… and walk into a freaking blizzard (we didn’t go snowing because we were told it was too early in the season for snow… great call that was). The temperature was in the negatives (Celsius), and the wind was howling… it was dang cold. 4 days before this I was sweating my ass off in the deserts of Egypt… now I was participating in the first snow that Asia received all year.

Cappadocia is famous for cave dwellings, and the town of Goreme is full of Cave Pensions that house people in rooms that are built into caves. We slept in the lobby of a Pension (hostel built into a cave) for a few hours, used its facilities and bounced after the guy gave us some hot tea. We walked down to the bus station and rented a minibus for the day. After meeting up with a few more SAS kids, and munching on some French bread and goat cheese, we drove out to an underground city. This thing was ridiculous, it stretches for probably 2-3 acres and plummets 58 meters below the ground. In its day it has churches, and a winery and housed hundreds of people. Cappadocia is home to early church Christians that hid out in these dwellings because they were persecuted for their faith. The underground city was of course converted into a playground where we could scare each other, and rock climb, and goof around like the adults that we are.

After this, we drove past snow capped mountains to the Iharla valley. We hiked about 4 kilometers through the valley that is enclosed by cliffs (with dwellings built into the sides) on both sides. The cliffs are probably about 100 feet high and the valley winds with the river. Along this stretch there were about 15 churches that had been carved into the rock. The churches contained ancient frescoes and paintings that were lit only by small holes in the rock walls. Most of the dwelling were filled with trash from the local peoples habitation of them. In fact, some of them are permanently inhabited. Anyway, we skipped out here… went to a park where there were Fairy Chimneys (just google it)… watched the sunset over Pigeon Valley where the dunes and mountain ridges are interlaced with hollow spires that stretch into the sky, and went back to Goreme.

Since we were about to go on our third overnight bus in a row. We decided to treat ourselves to a Turkish bath. The bathing experience is awkward, but rewarding. First you sauna, then you steam, then you lay on a hot stone for about an hour… then this fat, hairy, middle aged, mean looking Arabic man grabs you… lays you down on a table, scrubs you, lathers you, cracks all the bones in your body, massages you… and rinses you off. Then he sends you to another room to recover and drink. The dead skin that man willed off my body was amazing, his facial expression of determination was one that I will not forget for a very long time. After dinner, it was back on the bus… and 13 hours later, we were back in Istanbul.

Day 4:

After breakfast on the ship, I went into Sultanehmet to the Grand bazaar. Wandering the covered area I was extremely disappointed by the lack of grand things. I mean, it was all manufactured, and expensive, and the same from store to store. I wish I could travel back a few hundred years to see this place in its glory, where people sold according to their family’s trade, where shopkeepers didn’t have iphones… nonetheless, the massive area and beautiful architecture of the place provided all of the flashbacks that I needed. I then hit the spice market, which was more authentic, and just as beautiful. I have been to a market in every country, and they are all pretty much the same, so I feel like I have been jaded. I mean, this would have been the most amazing place in the world for me… say, 3 months ago… now its just another place. Travel is good because of experience, but its difficult to soak in new experience because I cant help but to compare it to other things. Beauty by nature has to be more than a comparison because we assign to it a greater degree of truth than just simply preference. Beauty affects us, and when beauty is confused with comparison… it is diminished. I hope I am getting past the comparisons and actually soaking in these beautiful things I am seeing. Plato said that Beauty is good, true and real. St. Augustine says that the self revealing God is the embodiment of this description. I am discovering daily that this world I am experiencing is a reflection of the good, true, real, and beautiful source that is my creator. That is the value that I miss out on when I get into comparison, and preference… it takes away the greater degree of truth in beauty, the truth that God reveals himself in it, and has given us the amazing ability to comprehend and be affected by it (and him).

After the markets I had lunch on the ship (free food), and went on a Bosporus fairy ride with about 8 of my friends. We spent the afternoon in Asia, had a late afternoon snack at a neat little café, and headed back to Europe in the evening. After getting poured on, I went to Taksim square with my friends Aaron and Mia to get some tattoos. Forgetting that Istanbul I expensive, we did not feel like dropping 150 duckets on some ink, so we had a meal (spinach/cheese, bread, yogurt, green beans) and headed over to a local soccer game.

Walking along the streets, we kind of got lost so we asked this group of guys where the stadium was, and being turks (some of the nicest people in the world) they wanted to be our hosts for the rest of the night. Here are some highlights from the game:

- Only one of the guys spoke English (all three were college students (20 years old) and he translated all of the chants for me. They mostly had to do with familial insults and curse words… so that’s enough about that.

- He asked me if Mia was my girlfriend and I told him no. He told me that it is not OK for me to have a girlfriend in America, and to travel with a girl in Turkey. He told me that Turkish men are very jealous, and then asked me if he could make some moves on her…

- These guys were a lot of fun; instead of standing (sitting was not an option) under the covering, they chose to stand in the sleet as close to the field as possible.

- Besiktas lost the game in the final minutes because of a red card and two late goals… and riot police came out in full force. There were about 10,000 home fans and about 500 away fans at the game. Probably 1000 policemen with shields and helmets and beating sticks lined the corridors of the stadium. With about a minute left in the game, one of my Turkish friends told me that he felt uncomfortable being there because there was going to be a fight after the game. He said it wasn’t safe (as a general rule of thumb, if a fit 20 year old tells you that he is unsafe it is wise to get the hell out of there)

- After the game while leaving we could see people fighting and yelling, and aggressively dealing with the police. It ended like any good soccer match should.

Day 5:

I woke up early and went to church with some friends. We all wore our three piece suits because we wanted to look sharp. We went to mass at the cathedral that served as the seat of the archdiocese of Constantinople. This church is where the pope says mass when he is in town, it was founded probably more than a thousand years ago… it was beautiful, and large and decorated like any brilliant cathedral should be… however it was hidden behind a wall of shops. Christianity in general hides in this country. With a population that is 99% Muslim, and a history of having at one point the largest Christian population in the world, the Christian tradition in this city is massively trumped by the present. The congregation was made up of some guys from Nigeria (really nice guys that invited us back to their house after the mass), some guy who controls Coca Cola in the middle East (that’s what he told us, he also says he flies to Iraq every few weeks), 20 or so Philippino’s (some from the ship), and us. The contemporary nature (in terms of music and style) was less traditional than any catholic church I had ever gone to. It was really neat though. After mass we had grilled cheese and pomegranate juice from a sheek little café, and wandered around town in our three piece suits for the day.

It took us two hours to find the Kyire museum (we walked the city walls (every great city has some sort of wall??)) but the place was an old church that had beautiful mosaics of Jesus’s miracles, and a few Lady Madonna and Baby Jesus ones (where Mary was in tact and Jesus was for some reason destroyed), and carvings of the saints (with their heads shopped off), and possessed thousands of years of art and wear and tear. This beautiful church is interesting because even though it has 50 paintings of Jesus, and the saints, and paul, and peter… and the whole Christian bible gang… IT IS NOT IN FACT A CHURCH. It is a mosque. What the hell right? I did not even realize this until we walked out of it and saw a crescent on top. Every sign points to church (which it was for centuries), except for its current state… every place I went plays the same story.

Anyway, to wrap this all up.

We wandered cobble stone streets for hours, dipping in bakeries, and buying prayer rugs, and doing all the local things… we visited a beautiful mosque (where prayer was going on), went into the basilica cistern, did the whole internet café thing… and unfortunately had to get back on the ship.

Here are my final thoughts.

- Turkey is a place where you could spend 6 months and barely crack the surface.

- There is a higher percentage of Muslims in Turkey than Saudi Arabia (and its pretty much Europe… go figure)

- Our 4^th day there was the 69^th anniversary of Ataturks death (a hero), so there were huge creepy photos of him everywhere… it was kind of cool

- I passed up an opportunity to drink on a Canadian Naval ship all day on our last day there. I might not ever go to another Moose Milk party, but I also may never go to Istanbul… good decision to pass that up

- Home is getting closer, and I like that

- People don’t hate Americans… they hate the American attitude (and Bush), open mindedness is respected everywhere

- The coca cola exec told us that he is a republican and will never vote for a democrat, but in the lat 9 years he has seen damage in the middle east that will take us 50 years to undo (this damage he said was created by our current administration)

I am tired, and must plan out my trip in Croatia. I love you all. Write me!! Tal

something random

(Asia is on my left, and Europe is on my right)

Tal’s Top Ten Travel Tips:

1. Buy a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Don’t smoke them, but rather give them to people that you would like to solicit help/a lower price/or a friendship from. It works like a charm. Cigarettes are the way to the heart.
2. More important than learning “thank you” or “please” or “hello” in the native tongue is the word for “friend”. Even if you are not in fact their friend, people think it’s hilarious if you say you are… and with hilarity comes trust.
3. Get a map with pictures and learn the subway/tram/bus system in the first few hours in any city. It saves hours or wandering and a bountiful amount of money in the end. (with this comes another tip: people in the middle east and most of Asia HATE making change, as in… you will use a 5 dollar bill to pay for something worth 2 dollars and they will never ever ever have change for it, so small bills are the ticket)
4. Never travel with a group too large to fit into one Taxi. However, some countries have liberal policies when it comes to what this number is.
5. Your feet go to hell… bring lots of anti fungal cream (courtesy of the charming, honest, and disgusting Christen Toepel) (toilet paper is another good idea)
6. Everything is for sale: this includes clothes people are wearing; CD’s playing in a cab and so forth. This also means that things on your person are worth trading with. I have tried to trade my watch on several occasions (40$ watch knocked 100 dollars off my bribe for my pyramid climb), and using memorabilia from America to haggle is a good idea.
7. Finding the perfect souvenir is a pointless endeavor. Very few things are hand made, and the stuff that is… is expensive. Settle for cheap factory made stuff
8. It’s not necessarily where you go or what you do… but often who you are with that makes traveling fun and memorable. If anything, I have learned this in the past months.
9. For everything you want to do… bring twice as much money as you think you will need, and allocate twice as much time (wear a watch, but try not to look at it)
10. When in doubt follow the crowd. They are heading in the same direction for a reason.
11. When in Rome, do not do as the Romans do… they will laugh at you, just be yourself.

some color for you

this was done in one take... and my vertical is about 48 inches, so it was easy to capture

Let my People Go

When I sit down and reflect on Egypt I find it hard to come up with any conclusive and concrete emotions or feelings within my being. Egypt was beautiful, and ancient, and full of all sorts of people. It was the first “Middle Eastern” Arab state I have ever been to, and I must come out and say this. I need you to throw out every single preconceived notion you have about the middle east… because they aren’t true. Egypt for me was the demolition of any sort of stereotype or previous “knowledge” that I had about the Middle East. Egypt is a place where the ancient and modern dwell on the same street, and where people love Americans (but absolutely hate Bush). Egypt was nothing like what I was expecting, and I have a few stories to prove it. Here’s the skinny.

Day One:

I was originally planning on going to Luxor with a few friends, but I backed out in the final days to travel with the same guys I traveled with in Thailand. (We all dyed our hair black to look more like Egyptians). Our first and only task once we got off the ship was to climb Mt. Sinai that very night. So we got off the ship, bought a rain ticket to Cairo, and then caught some lunch. We met this guy on the street that could tell we were confused, so he directed us to a restaurant, sat us down, and ordered for us. Because we were “habibi” (or friends), we dines like kings for about 30 cents a piece. This guy was one of the few people all week that did not ask for Baksheesh (tips). We had falafel and hummus and it was delicious (eating as a vegetarian was quite easy in Egypt; however I am terribly sick of falafel). On the train to Cairo we got a good taste of agrarian and rural communities in Lower Egypt (even though its upper on the map, Lower Egypt is in the north because of the Nile’s flow). The train followed this river where there was really fertile land and thus cotton, grape, and all sorts of other farms. Most of the workers that I saw were young boys (13 or so) that were holding sickles and harvesting by hand. The villages were built out of dilapidated concrete buildings (and often sprung out of the middle of nowhere). Out of the thousands of concrete buildings we saw, none of them was finished (because you don’t pay taxes on a building under construction), and most of them did not have roofs (but rather leaves and plywood). The filth and litter was amazing, and the condition of the river was disgusting. The river had dead horses floating next to fisherman, next to pumps that pumped the water into the fields for irrigation. Point made… anyway. We get to Cairo and meet up with this Taxi driver who is willing to take us the 500 or so kilometers for about 400 pounds (80 dollars). We get in his taxi; he drives about ten minutes… gets out, and leaves for about 40 minutes. He comes back, gets to the nearest freeway, parks on the street (freaking scary by the way) and gets out again. We wait about 15 minutes, and another car pulls up behind us, we hop in and that guy takes us about an hour to the Suez tunnel where we hop in ANOTHER car, and yada yada we wind up in St. Catherine’s national park at about 1 in the morning. I guess this is the point where day 2 starts.

Day 2:

1 AM: We get to the monastery and are greeted by a pack of Bedouins (nomadic people who live in the desert) that serve as sherpas on the mountain. We get this one guy that will not leave us alone, we kept telling him that we didn’t want a guide, and we wanted to climb ourselves and what not… he followed us incessantly and for a good reason (getting up that thing alone would have been a task). We took these steps that are called the steps of repentance (they were built by a monk as his act of repentance, there are 3,750 of them). There was a second path that kind of swerves up the mountain, and that is accessible by camels, but we are men… and well, yea, we are men… anyway, climbing up this thing at night was amazing. The eeriness of the mountain was tamed by the incredible source of light that emitted from the heavens. Even though we climbed from 1-3:15 AM, the mountain was lit up like it was the late afternoon. The stars were indescribable and the moon was blinding. We climbed through valleys, and ancient arches and past deteriorating monasteries to the very top. And common knowledge would say “its Egypt, and the elevation is not that high, so it should be relatively cool, but certainly not cold at the top right”… common knowledge was bastardly wrong. It was freezing (probably around 40, wind chill maybe lower), and we were not sufficiently dressed to say the least. So we borrowed some blankets from the Bedouins at the top (rattled with fleas and lice), and slept on a ledge on the very top of the mountain (for the record, I also peed over the edge of a massive cliff). We settled in the sleep around 4AM, and were woken up rudely by the sun at around 5. The sunrise was certainly incomparable, the purples and oranges were unlike anything I had ever seen before. A huge crowd that cameled the way up gathered behind us, and underneath us... but being the only people stupid enough to sleep on the mountain we had the prime spot. After dicking around on the top for a few hours (boulder jumping and climbing and so forth (and after a breakfast of Borios (knockoff oreos), ho ho’s, and star crunch bars)) we took the steps back down the mountain. We met this one Bedouin on the top that said he hadn’t been off the mountain in 15 years, and then tried to buy our ipods, backpacks, pocketknives, shoes and everything else we had with the convenient stack of American 20 dollar bills he had in his pocket. After coming down the mountain we payed our chain-smoking/binge drinking guide about 10 bucks and an ink pen (his baksheesh) and visited the monastery at the bottom. The monastery was erected in the 11^th century and has what they say was the “burning bush” within the grounds. I was pretty stinking cool. In fact, the whole area around there had a certain vibe. I am not going to say that “the presence of God was there” or anything like that, because that would be a stretch. It certainly felt like holy and sacred ground though. I mean, waking up and reading the story in Exodus about the presence of God encompassing the mountain while the Israelites were in the valley worshiping a golden calf… while looking down on the valley from the top where the presence of God was… incredible, right?

We then departed and went to Sharm El Sheik. We got a hotel and then chilled for the rest of the day. We went to a beach that overlooked the red sea, and had dinner (at the only reputable and clean restaurant we visited all week, and hung out with this Danish Guy names Ollie. Ollie moved here about 5 years ago and has a hand in everything. He regaled us with stories about how he bribes the cops and has never paid taxes once in his life… the kind of cat that you would expect to find in a resort village. We sat in a back alley, on plastic crates, swarmed by stray cats, drinking a beer (which was drawn out significantly) for HOURS. We had some Sheesha (I had this about 7 times in Egypt… you couldn’t go more than 50 meters or so without coming across a “hookah” (argileh) bar. We called it a night.

Day 3: not much happened today, we snorkeled and then headed back to cairo.

Once we got into Cairo, i split from the group and went alone for the next day in a half. I went and looked up the 1-star hotels and town and found the CIAO hotel. I checked in and met this guy named BJ in the lobby. BJ was a black man from South Africa that was on his way to Toronto (he was a fashion designer). We went to church together, and walked around the city, and sat down in the square and talked for a couple hours (his English was not very good, so the conversation could have been 20 minutes). BJ really wanted to come on the ship, and offered me money to talk to the captain so I could get him on. He was really upset when I told him there was no chance for him…

We went back to the hotel, and I bought some of his clothes (from his suitcase in his hotel room), and then headed out. I walked down the Nile for a while, and then used the phones (where for the first time this trip I felt really homesick)… walked around the US embassy (the largest embassy in the world), the Egyptian Presidents house, and the National museum. As a whole, Cairo has a ton of beautiful European architecture, and the streets are wide, and relatively clean. I then had some tea and sheesha (for 20 cents) and then got in a Taxi and went to the Nile where I booked a night cruise. The night cruise was cool because this couple was getting married, so there was a huge procession with dancing and live music and so forth. I met up with some SAS kids there, and we ate, danced with a middle aged/overweight/rough skinned (from smoking heavily) belly dancer (every single person I met in Egypt smokes… EVERY PERSON). That was a good time, and so was seeing the modern banks of the Nile from the middle of it. It was hard to step out of the present and to imagine the rich history of it, because it looks like every other River in the world (and was stinking filthy). I went to bed around 2, alone, in a really shady 1-star hotel room.

Day 4: I woke up with the morning prayer call at around 5:15. Put a pillow over my head, and slept till around 8. The prayer calls are omnipresent throughout the entire country. I was hard pressed to go more than about a block without seeing a minaret that rose into the sky, equipped with a sound system that carried the prayers into every open (and closed) space. The prayers really are a beautiful thing, and so is Arabic, when it is spoken softly (on the street, it is yelled, even conversationally). Prayers happen 5 times a day, and every public space has mats laid out (train stations, restaraunts, etc) for people to hit the ground. Men have bumps and gray scabs on their foreheads from praying so often. The religiosity of a given man could easily be determined by the size, color, and breadth of his scar. Anyway…

At this point I would love to discuss my general hygene in Egypt. Heres my list.

Showers: 1.5 (no soap for the second, 1-star hotel quality)

Tooth Brushings: 0

Clothe Changing’s: 2.5

Deodorant applications: 0

Sock wearings: 0

Contact cleanings: 0

I was one gross man, mainly because I left my toiletries in Sharm.

Back to business. I headed out early to the most famous bakery in Cairo called El Abd. As any opulent man should I had Baklava for breakfast. The stuff freaking melted in my mouth, and I was very happy. I had some tea and observed the street traffic for a while. There was this one kid that kept popping in and out of a building carrying a tray full of glasses with tea every few minutes, delivering it to all of the shop owners and then reloading. Tea was everywhere, I mean, some of these folks probably had upwards of 20 glasses per day. And this kid was making some bank. I then went out to Al Azhar and to Islamic Cairo where I spent the next 4 hours of my day. It was pretty amazing really. Bazaars, beautiful mosques (al azhar is actually the oldest university in the world, it had a dorm that was founded in the 9^th century), and culture was commonplace. I don’t really know how to describe Islamic Cairo (you see, some cities have “old” and “new” parts of town, Cairo is all old, so they split it into the dominant traditions of the town for namesake), other than that it was the most beautiful and enriching part of any city I have ever been to. I met this guy names Mido next to the Citadel and we hung out for a few hours. I walked me down this 1300 year old street, and to a Mosque that served as a charity. I could tell that this place was not really a tourist place, but desperately yearned to be one. I put a few bucks in a bucket, and sat with Mido as he taught me the architecture and design of Mosques. Stuff like, there are 99 adjectives for God, and this particular mosque had 99 columns to correspond. Anyway, I then got VIP treatment, and a door was unlocked, and I climbed up this Minaret (that looked like nobody had climbed for years), and at the top had a view of the entire freaking city. Mido lived in the neighborhood, so we had some tea, and he told me that he was getting married he next day. So I gave him my email, and he is going to mail me the pictures. He wrote me this note that wished Dava and I happiness, and in return I wrote him one back, and gave him a wedding present (20 pounds, what I could affod). We split ways, and I went to Coptic Cairo which is the Christian Heritage part of town. There was a crypt of the Holy Family where they were said to have lived for a while, and a Church that Hung over nothing (called the Hanging Church) and yada. I then went to a park, sat in the shade and read/laid down/snacked/hung out for a few hours. I think parks are my thing. I have been to one in every country, and each one has a different feel. For instance, this park was the only place in Egypt that I saw obvious and unconcealed signs of affection between men and women. And I saw a few people in western clothes (which was shocking), and most importantly I saw Zero tourists, so I stuck out like a sore thumb (which I love deply). I then hopped in a Taxi, and went out to Giza. Everyone around Giza is in Cahoots with each other for money. The pyramids were the most commercialized/money spoiled place I have ever been. Men bombared me with offers for camels, and my driver wouldn’t take me to the real entrance, and the cops would purposely not be helpful… and so forth. I ended up walking down this alley with tons of poverty and filth (in the shadows of the great pyramids), trying to find my way to the entrance (this was at night now). I ended up paying this guy like 4 dollars to let me hop on his horse, and this undernourished horse somehow managed to not fall (he slipped on the sewage caps and stumbled often) and took me to the “light show”. I did not originally plan on going to the light show, but it wasn’t that expensive and it sounded like the cheesiest and most ridiculous thing I could do at the time, so I went. And it sure did live up to my expectation. The show lights up the Sphinx and Pyramids with lasers and lights and has a loud booming voice that says stuff life “I SAW CLEOPATRA, AND CESAER, AND ANTONY… blah blah blah”. It was hilariously bad, and greatly entertaining. After the show I ran into some friends, and we went to Pizza hut (that had a window view of the pyramids and Sphinx)… and then set out to bribe the guards. We had this amazing vision to climb the to the top at night right, so he walked up to the gaurds and said “habibi”, and “baksheesh” and gave them cigarettes and so on… We ended up climbing through this hole in the gate, and meeting this guy around the side where we bribed him and his friends. It was good fun. He was a bit expensive so we went to another set where we met Moussa. Moussa was the hustler, and the money maker of the climbing operation. He organized nightly trips, but I had no trust in him… because everyone around there only tried to screw you (some of the stories my friends tell me are incredible). I told Moussa that I didn’t trust him, and went away to talk to another set of gaurds, my friends stayed and chatted with him and told me later that Moussa said he was afraid of me because I was ruining his reputation (funny right?). Anyway we get the guys down to about 50 dollars per person, and realize that that’s a load of money to waste on something that wont even be that satisfying… so we went to bed.

Day 5:

I slept on the floor in my friends hotel room, put on the same pants I wore for pretty much the whole trip… and after a powdered sugar and strawberry jam filled pita breakfast we went to the pyramids. They were awesome. I cant really say much else. We climbed into the great pyramid, and up the shaft… and at one point I tried to do a flip off a block (bad idea, I landed straight on my ass), and rode some camels (about 20 feet, for a buck (most people paid like 50-100 dollars for the day to be escorted on Camels all day (lame…)) At one point, we went around the far side of the middle period where we tried to bribe a guard… it was way too easy ( everyone in Egypt has a price), for 2 bucks (for 4 people) he let up climb half the way up the middle pyramid while he abandoned his post for a while. It was good, cheap fun… We then trekked through the desert (one side was city, one side was a huge desert) to the sphinx. The sphinx is a tiny little guy, I mean next to the mass that is the pyramids. The greed of the camel oweners ruined the place for me though. I mean, they would have somebody on their camel, and follwed us for hundreds of feet pestering us about getting on their camel. Their fountain of lies (you cant walk here, you cant enter the sphinx without a camel) were amzing and disappointing. The people of Egypt were nice and helpful, but the tourist leeches were unbelievable.

We bounced that town, got a cab back to Cairo… hitched a 2^nd class train back to Alexandria, and went back to the ship. The line at the ship was like a mile long so we went to the Library of Alexandria (Aaron and myself, who is one of the best men I have ever met in my life) which was amazing. The place was built as a result of a contest held by tons of architects. And the winning design was flooring… The place was A) huge, B) sleek, and C) ostentatious but perfect. My favorite part was this computer they had (I have always wanted to see one of these since reading Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig) that contained a virtual copy of the entire internet starting in 1996. You see, unlike newspapers ( that have physical copies) the internet has no way of recording history without computers like this. So this thing could hold 50 BILLION pages or 1.5 petra bytes (10 ^ 15^th)… it was nuts. I used the computer there, had one last Argileh and Tea session and got back on the ship…

Reflection:

- the food in Egypt came as a delicious surprise. Eating as a vegetarian definitely limited my options (and my convictions for not eating meat were definitely confirmed by seeing the terrible conditions in which they had huge quarters of cows, and pigeons, and all sorts of meat in the back of trucks covered in flies: it made me sick), but falafel and hummus never really got old. However, meals from stands and street vendors for pocket change wreaked its havoc today when I got pretty freaking ill (mummy tummy)

- side note, I really hope I do not become one of those pretentious and arrogant vegetarians that condescendingly look down upon meat eaters, those people suck

- Cairo is probably my favorite of all of the big cities we have gone to, I mean, its hard to have any favorites at all, but if I had to choose, Cairo would take it due to its uniqueness ( a trait that is hard for any big city to possess because “big city culture” takes all of the flavor out of urban conglomerations

- Egypt had some nasty wasteland… the Sinai peninsula had like 50 people living on it, and had check points every 25 kilometers or so where they would check passports and visas, this was at most times the only sign of life around

- Taxi drivers, in every single city in the world… are dicks

- I feel like this voyage is close to over, but I still one third left… nuts right. In turkey I am traveling with my friend Aaron, and we are going to see some country side

- The middle east feels safe to me now… If you are close family or a friend, email Lisa, and she will forward you my attachment to this (that deals with some more personal things)

- The de-mystifying nature of my trip tore down every idea that I believed about the place… they hate Americans (wrong)( they do hate bush though, and Mumbarak too, and Israel BIG TIME), they all wear turbans (wrong), most smoke sheesha and do inefficient and unnecessary jobs all day (true).

- It was weird seeing American Gas stations there, until Jake pointed out to me that all of our freaking oil comes from there

I got more… but I will spare you. Egypt surely was beautiful, and Sinai was life changing. I hope to soak in the next 3 ports, and thank God daily for the life I live. I miss home, and cant wait to sleep in my bed. My back is sore from spending 2 nights sleeping on floors, one nights in a bus, and one night in a cot… home would be really nice right about now. I have 16 days left on the ship, and 15 days left in port. I think the last third of the trip has been much better for me than the first third, and I hope my progress as a man continues at the same pace. I finished “The winter of our discontent” and started on Langston Hughes “Big Sea” and Hellers “Catch-22”, and an currently reading the book of revelations for my study of scripture. If you want to inform me on how your lives are, please send me an email… or write me some mail, they deliver it to our ship (and I am the only student I know that hasn’t received mail… wahhhh wahhhh wahhh…) I love you all, Tal

Interesting instants... captured through a lense