camels by candlelight

PHASE ONE: MISSION-BOUND

Here' a question I plan to ask my students next time we study the present perfect tense*: "Have you ever tried to buy candles in the desert at night?"

My own answer to this question?
"Yes, I have."

Let me explain ...

It was a little after 1am, and we were way, way out of town. As our bus pulled off the road, I noticed three things: first, the imposing silhouettes of tall, bare hills, towering just metres away in the darkness. Second, the intense brightness of the stars. And third, some black goats on the dirt road in front of us, two of them huddled together for warmth and looking rather cute'n'snuggly.

I had absolutely no idea of our whereabouts, but the place looked like a roadside diner/tea house of some kind. A cheery neon "Welcome" sign hung over the roof, but the owners hadn't bothered to light it for our small group. There was also a little shop, which was the reason I decided to risk waking Yuliya (who was asleep on my shoulder) by standing up. I had to get off the bus, 'cause I had a mission. Probably a fruitless one, mind you … and yet one which had to be attempted.

"But why?", you might ask (and my thanks to you if you did :-)

The answer: it was all to do with The Belle.

See, Yuliya's birthday had fallen about ten days earlier, and we'd had a little celebration at my flat in Lviv. I'd promised her, though, that the real party would be in Egypt. It seemed to me that there would be no more appropriate moment to hold said party than sunrise on the summit of Mt. Sinai ... which was exactly where we were headed along this (almost) deserted highway. But of course, this meant preparations.

The gifts-and-cake part already had been taken care of – though cake-wise, I was only able to manage a twinkie bought from an all-night service station. However, I'd stupidly forgotten the other crucial ingredient – the things you’re supposed to put IN the cake and then set on fire. As a result, the following thought had been burning a hole in my brain throughout the first part of our journey:

"You idiot ... you've got no freaking candles!!!"

I wander into the shop, knowing my chances are slim. There I'm greeted by a friendly, slightly stoned-looking Egyptian guy who wants to show me every single thing he has. His collection is rather extensive, and over the next two minutes I see tiny camels, commemorative Sinai plates, pyramid keyrings, ashtrays, postcards, tiny tutenkhamuns, the cartouches of various pharaohs ... I think I could've been shown the entire contents of the Cairo Museum in miniature paperweight form if I hadn't been in such a hurry! So after the first half-a-dozen items, I blurt out the question in Russian**:

"Do you have candles?"

No comprehension.

Repeat the question in English.

A vague glimmer of familiarity spreads across his face … but we still have some distance to go toward full understanding.

Feeling sleepy and not really up to this, I do my best to mime the action of lighting a candle. Somehow, this does the trick – he understands what I'm after. And amazingly, in the small hours of the morning in the absolute middle of nowhere, I then find myself staring at two perfect little yellow wax cylinders with wicks at one end.

They're quite thick, and it's clear that only one of them will fit comfortably on top of a twinkie. But I’m so grateful to this guy for having what I wanted, that – explaining that it’s my wife's*** birthday – I buy them both.

Then a question from the shop attendant: "You are going to give your wife party?"

"Mm-hmm. On Moses Mountain."

"Aaaaaah", he says, and reaches underneath his counter to pull out a little ornamental bowl full of loose greenish-brown leaves.

"Your wife ... she smoke?"

"Er, no."

He shakes his head. "No, no cigarettes ... she smoke this?"

I can be a little slow to understand when someone is making a drug reference, but now I've got the message.
 
"No, thanks, she doesn't use hashish."

"Oh, come now my friend. Maybe she try first time. Perfect present for you, uh?"

"Thank you, but I won't".

I shift my attention to the collection of foreign currency stuck on the wall behind him, noticing a Kazakh 200 Tenge note and feeling the pull of nostalgia drawing me towards it. I inspect the note closely (though I'd seen hundreds of them before), and mention that I used to live in Kazakhstan, thinking it might help to change the subject.

It doesn't.

"Ok, well I have to go now. But thank you very much for the candles."

"No, thank you, my friend. I see you again some time."

As I walk out the door, he resumes combing the little hashish leaves around his bowl with a packet of tobacco papers.

Shuffling out into the darkness under the non-functioning neon sign, I feel extremely fortunate and happily disposed towards everything ... especially the goats, who are still huddling together, looking even cuter than before. I figure there can't have been too many occasions in history when a chance meeting between two people at completely cross-purposes (a souvenir shop attendant / amateur hash dealer and a foreigner seeking party supplies) has gone so well.


PHASE 2: ASCENDING

For the next hour-and-a-half we tried to sleep on the bus, knowing that it would be our only opportunity for rest tonight. It was difficult, though ... we passed through some amazing desert terrain which drew the eye, and (it seemed to me) a couple of minor military outposts. These were fascinating, in that I could make no sense of their locations at all. They seemed to just rise out of the sand without warning, and I had weird "This must be what it's like to suddenly come upon an Iraqi resistance camp" thoughts.

Anyway, just before 3am our bus pulled up at the foot of Mt Sinai, and we were guided to the departure point with our torches. Yuliya switched on our torch and we started moving, staying a little way behind the others in our group so as to enjoy the silence.

A few minutes later the torch was switched off, never to be used again. "It's more beautiful without it", Yuliya explained. How true.

For the next three hours we climbed the 1800 metres towards Sinai's peak. The first two of those were done in darkness ... though it wasn't completely dark, thanks to an elegant half-moon which illuminated our path beautifully.

It's difficult to explain the allure of climbing a mountain in the dark. I mean, mountain climbing is generally such a visual pastime ... you want to stop frequently, turn your gaze away from the path and take in the landscape as each increase in altitude further expands and enhances the panorama. So why do it at night, when this part of the experience is denied you?

I didn't have an answer to that question when we booked our night-time hike – it just seemed like the thing to do. But I have one now, and it's this: those mountain peaks and boulders and valleys are perhaps even more beautiful, and certainly a lot more mysterious, when glimpsed in outline under the moonlight. Sometimes a rock lying on the path ahead seems to take on the form of a reclining bedouin, almost visibly breathing the night air. Then you see one that’s an animal, or a house, or some other semi-familiar object. And then, at other times, the shapes looming up before and around you are entirely exotic and alien. There were moments when we could easily have imagined that we were space tourists, dropped on the surface of another planet.

On the other hand, sometimes the looming things really were bedouin, dragging their camels down the mountain.

In fact, I've never seen so many goddam camels in my life. If I were to add up all the camels I'd seen before tonight, and multiply the resulting number by 20, I still wouldn't be close to the number of times I heard the words "You want camel? Good camel!" last night.

This was sort of cool at first, but after the 100th sales pitch, I began to lose patience:

"You want camel? Good camel!"
"No! Bad, baaaad camel!"

I really shouldn't be so rude. This is their livelihood, after all.


PHASE 3: UNCLUTTERED/UNBUSHED

The last 150m or so of the ascent was quite challenging to say the least, especially after a sleepless night. But a few doubtful rest stops later, I finally reached the summit ... where Yuliya had been waiting for me for some time. (Damn these naturally fit people!)

I can't say that the sunrise itself was especially spectacular – I've seen more dramatic horizons, to be honest – but the views around us were definitely worth writing home about (so I am!). Even though we were sharing the occasion with a sizeable crowd, who lined up along the narrow summit like a string of brightly-coloured teeth, there was still a sense of peacefulness at the top.

I remember reading once that Nietzsche used to go walking in the mountains of  'Upper' Bavaria****, because the sensation of vast openness helped to focus his thoughts, stripping away all that was unnecessary and bringing simplicity and clarity. On Sinai there was a similar sense that the world had suddenly become 'uncluttered'. As we stood level with the wispy clouds, daylight resolved the grainy blue silhouettes around us into well-defined rock massifs, and a kind of 'natural lens flare' effect gave the whole scene a filmic quality as the sun crept over each peak. But in the spaces between them ... only sky. And we were in it.

And so we watched the day's arrival, stabbed a twinkie with a candle, did the little birthday rituals (a quick rendition of "Happy Birthday", unwrapping of presents) and posed for a few pics.

And that, in short form, was our Sinai experience. The rest of the excursion mostly involved a tired descent (thankfully via a different path – Yuliya and I both hate back-tracking!), and standing around for ages waiting to go into the monastery which supposedly contains the ‘burning bush’.

For those of you unfamiliar with the burning bush myth, it’s worth spending a minute or two trying to come to grips with the sheer monumental absurdity of it. Here’s the abridged version:

Basically, this regular guy called Moses was out wandering in the hills one day when a bush suddenly burst into flames next to him. Naturally he was surprised – and if he’d been a more level-headed fellow, he probably would’ve concluded that his family’s bread supply had gone mouldy, and that the mould contained hallucinogens. Or else wondered if his wife had started slipping hardcore hashish into the dough mixture. But Moses really wasn’t what you’d call an ‘anaytical personality type’.

Even when the bush began speaking to him, and claiming it was the voice of God, Moses still didn’t see the drug connection. He didn't even take a moment to wonder if it was his neighbour Matthias – an annoying man with a practical joke fetish – who'd doused the bush in rubbing alcohol, set it alight, and hid behind it going  "Moooooseeeees ... MOOOOseeeees ... listen to me, Moses, for I am your Lord and Father" etc. etc.

Instead, Mr Gullible (Moses' surname, known to relatively few) listened attentively to the instructions the bush gave him. These mostly involved heading into Egypt and behaving in an incredibly petty and irritating way towards the Pharaoh and his subjects, throwing around sadistic threats about weeping sores and locusts and beating the local magicians at a game of "wave the magic staff around and watch nasty things pop out of thin air". Then, having taken it all in, Moses went and did exactly what the bush commanded … which is logical, of course. I mean, if your house plants started talking to you, claiming to be divine and advising you to go and confront your head of government, you’d probably be ok with it, right?

*shakes head*

Stupid story!
 
So yeah … we know that none of that ever happened – it was just an idiotic bit of Jewish literary bravado, which would’ve been rejected if the Bible’s editors had been able to find something more plausible and inspiring to add to their story than talking foliage. Therefore I wasn’t overly disappointed when I didn’t get to see the famous bush. Besides, by that time of the morning, we were beginning to to look a little dried up and charred ourselves!


PHASE 4: SHARMED, UNCHARMED

About four hours later – after a gruelling bus ride during which Yuliya suffered the violent effects of motion sickness – we approached a gilded, arched gateway in the middle of a small intersection. As the inevitable guys with machine guns waved us through, our guide said "So, guys, welcome back to Sharm el Sheikh."

"Fantastic!", I thought. I can finally get out of this awful bus and get Yuliya into the hotel room for some rest and recuperation.

Wrong!

The bus ride, it turned out, wasn't even close to being over. For the next hour-and-a-quarter, we wound through an endless maze of resort hotels, dropping off the various people with whom we'd been on excursion. Hionestly, I hadn't realised there were this many hideous resort hotels on the whole frikkin' planet, let alone that there could be so many in one place.

"Welcome to Sharm el-Sheikh" indeed; we were back in the city which one Englishwoman I'd spoken to earlier that day had called "the false Egypt". And how right she was.

The biggest challenge we faced in "Sharm" (as the locals call it) was finding an Egyptian restaurant. The hotels
have completely pushed out any semblance of local culture, and what's left is completely catered to people who want to be surrounded by palms and faux sphinxes, but without ever stepping outside their culinary or linguistic comfort zones. The second biggest challenge: working out whereabouts in the city people actually live. In one week, I saw exactly one crappy apartment building – and when I did, it was like "Look ... washing on clotheslines! It's a real block of flats!"

The rest of the time: wall-to-wall resorts. Seriously, there's rarely more than 3 metres separating them, and some even have adjoining walls. And the scariest part: they're building even more of the bastards. Appalling.

However, with all that said, I quickly worked out that the appeal of Sharm is not what's in it, but rather what's around it. We'd already climbed a mountain by moonlight, ridden horses through the desert and swum off pristine shores where the crystal waters were packed with exotic fish and corals (or at least Yuliya had – I was yet to acquire a pair of bathers at that point in the holiday). And the biggest thrill was yet to come: we'd signed up for diving in The Red Sea, and we were both terrified and painfully excited about it.

And that, my friends, is where I'll pick up in the next entry.

Till then ... take care )))




* Present perfect tense: er ... the short explanation is that it's a kind of grammatical tense which appears in a few of the Earth's languages (including English), but not in the majority. You therefore have to explain it a LOT to people learning English.

The detailed explanation is ... well, already known to a lot of people who read this blog, and probably extremely dull to 99% of everyone else. It's about 'aspect', and connections between past actions and present results, and so on blah-de-blah. If you've spoken English or another Germanic or Latin language from birth, you're damn lucky you never had to learn about this tense consciously – it's a real killer!


** Odd thing about Sharm el-Sheikh (from an English-speaking point of view): 90% of the tourists there are Russian, and it's surprisingly famous in the Russian-speaking world. Tell an Australian that you've been to Sharm, and they'll probably say "Where's that?" But tell a Russian that you've been to Egypt, and they'll immediately ask "Did you go to Cairo or Sharm el-Sheikh?" Hence speaking to the Egyptian shop assistant in Russian before trying English.

*** In Egypt I was continually asked about Yuliya "Is she your wife?" Easier just to answer "yes" sometimes than to explain the situation.

**** Rather charmingly, "Upper Bavaria" is called that not because it's more northerly than the rest of Bavaria (which it isn't), but because it's higher. There are simply more mountains there :-) 

wednesday evening in the hands of allah

Ummmm ... does anyone remember the late 80s? I do! It was a time when I felt intensely engaged in the world, growing up and discovering an awful lot of reality in the space of a few short years ... and yet, hen I think back now, it's difficult to know what to say about it. Those years were weird and schizophrenic, and  I'm not sure there's any adequate way to sum them up.

I mean, I s'pose I could go all flashbacky and talk about people like Gorbachev, hammering out the history-changing policies that made him a hero internationally and a spineless traitor in the eyes of his own people; I could evoke the memory of Red Noses sweeping the planet (a very weird image, I know!); of Eurovision letting new monsters loose on it (Celine Dion in '89, for example); I could mention Steven Hawking, topping the bestseller list and acquainting millions with the mysteries of cosmology; drop in a word about the Beta vs. VHS saga; comment caustically about Benazir Bhutto's ascension to power in Pakistan, long before smug folk in 'modern' Western countries like the USA and Australia had ever dreamed of electing a woman to office; and I could definitely wax nostalgic about the goths, swampies and an other gentle folk with whom the streets of inner Sydney were awash at the time. In fact, I could mention all of those things, and much besides. But quite frankly, you can find that stuff elsewhere on the web, and I'd rather discuss something else.


So ... let's talk about me )))

Oh, come on. You know you want to!

See, at some point late in 1988, while all the other late-80s shenanigans were going on, a youthful Word Nerd was boarding a 747 with his family, bound for Europe and beyond. Some time earlier, my father had decided that we could afford to do the Traditional Australian H.O.H. (huge overseas holiday). And to help him plan this odyssey, he'd asked each of us to nominate one place anywhere in the world which we really, really wanted to visit.
 
Dad himself chose, Ireland ('cause he wanted to trace a few family roots), which was cool. Mum chose a slightly bleak and depressing town in England where Royal Dalton* figurines are made. I chose Köln in Germany, partly because I wanted to see the world's blackest and most imposing gothic cathedral, the Kölner Dom (tortured little Teeny Goth that I was). And my sister Elizabeth – to my great and everlasting gratitiude – chose Egypt. 

It was Elizabeth's wise decision that brought me, in the opening days of Feb 1989, to Cairo International Airport. A couple of hours after stepping off our British Airways flight (hideously uncomfortable, as I recall), we entered a vast city of a kind I'd never dreamed existed. I was terrified, bewildered and fascinated all at once; going to Cairo at such a young age probably turned out to be one of my 'formative experiences', in the sense that it opened my eyes how utterly, fundamentally different life was and is in many parts of the world.

Unfortunately not all of my time in Egypt was great – spending two days flat on my back in Luxor with food poisoning was a fairly low ebb! But there were loads of 'Cairo moments' which were instantly and permanently etched into my memory. Like watching the sun set over the pyramids through beaded curtains in an atmospheric hotel cafe. And drawing stares in a covered market that we found by accident – a real 'locals' market away from the tourist trails, where people leaned out from their clothes-strewn balconies and shouted at vendors in the street below. And watching people run at moving buses and fling themselves at the outside railings, assisted by other passengers who put their arms out of the windows for the new arrivals to cling onto. And walking around the Cairo museum simply stunned by the masses of priceless ancient stuff, seemingly scattered at random across several floors. And our bus driver yelling at a passing pedestrian, who reached through the window of a parked car and let the hand-brake off, so that the car rolled down the road and hit another one ... thus making space for our bus to park. And last but not least, riding a camel – that was lots of fun!

To sum up my impressions of Cairo in one sentence: it seemed to me that the whole city was completely mad. Clearly, this was a place to which I had to return to one day. The only real question was when.

So that was my first taste of Egypt. But how to segue from that point to the present day? Hmmm ...

Maybe you could help me by imagining the scene slowly dissolving (so a disintegrating camel with a disintegrating teenaged me on it is what you're aiming for – have fun!). Then replace that picture in your mind's eye with a temporary blackness, and let the light fade up again slowly. I'll supply the new scene details in a sec.

Could you do that for me?

Thanks )))

Ok, scene details. It's a Wednesday evening, and the Word Nerd is looking a lot meaner and less youthful, sporting a goatee and a brand new shaven-headed 'American History X' look (courtesy of his Russian/Ukrainian partner Yuliya, who decided it would be fun to remove all of Anthony's hair on day one of our Big Adventure). Sitting on the back seat of a minibus, he's teaching a young guy called Achmed the numbers from one to ten in Russian.

The minibus contains himself, The Fabulous Yuliya, his new temporary student Achmed, a woman from Moscow who we'd met about two hours earlier while horse-riding in the desert, and approximately a dozen strangers. Together we're screaming along well-sealed, palm-lined roads with hibiscus blooming on the median strips, passing an endless succession of ugly resort hotels that sprawl gracelessly in all directions. Arabic music augmented by a doof ** is playing at a ridiculous volume inside the bus, and the driver is flicking the cabin lights on and off about three times a second, to simulate the effect of a strobe light on a nightclub dancefloor.

As we lurch over yet another speed hump, Anthony briefly wonders to himself how it is that his life has become so full of these mad deathrides in the last few years ... but he doesn't have much time to ponder, 'cause Achmed has nearly mastered 1-5 but needs some pronunciation help on the nasty little word "четыре" (four). Also, in between saying numbers he's started clapping above his head to the beat and going "Ay! Ay!", and the urge to join him is irresistible.

(Might as well die in high spirits, right?)

We're joined in celebration by a handsome Cuban/German boy sitting opposite, wearing an Arabic head-dress. Achmed feels the mood spreading, and tries to persuade others to join us, but most of the passengers seem pre-occupied with something else. We've got the driver's attention, though; our clapping seems to have inspired him to even greater feats of recklessness, and now we're madly overtaking vehicles less than half our size and weight. I'm reminded of what a Turkish guy once told me about people's attitude to driving in his country: "If Allah wills it, we shall reach our destination".

And the strangest thing about this? Right now I'm feeling completely in my element. These manic moments are something I've missed since I left Kazakhstan, and they seem to typify one aspect of how I want my life to be from here on in. Weirdness.

Then we discover what it is that the other passengers are so concerned about: our driver seems to have no clue where we're actually going. Over the general din, I hear him ask Moscow Woman "Which Hotel?"

"Cleopatra", she answers.

"Kilipatra?"

"Cleopatra."

"Ah, Kilipatra!", he yells to his colleague, who says something in Arabic that seems to mean "Ok, I think I know where that is".

Then the same question to Yuliya.

"Country Club", she says. Her answer seems to be understood.

Then about two minutes and 3kms later: "Which hotel?"

All of these hotel details, btw, were checked and seemingly well-established before we boarded the bus. But this sometimes appears to be the way of things here: people ask for your information, roll it around in their minds, decide that it presents no problem ... and then forget it! So the first hotel ID check didn't worry me too much.

After hotel ID check #3, though, something seems to click in our driver's head. He yells something back at my friend Achmed, who relays the message to me: basically, we're in completely the wrong part of town. The bus pulls up abruptly, and Achmed says "Get out!". So Yuliya, Moscow Woman and I are immediately dumped on a roadside in an unfamiliar city, and told that we'll need to get a taxi back in the other direction.

Luckily, Achmed tags along to make sure we find our hotels, and spends part of the journey struggling with Russian pronunciation. (Oh gods, how I sympathise!) I ask "Why do you want to learn Russian numbers?", and he answers something like "Шестнадцат фунтов, пожалуйста" ("Sixteen pounds, please"). Clearly, my new friend is yet another self-made entrepeneur in this country where nearly everyone has something to sell you, along with a detailed story distinguishing their wares from everyone else's. 

Several twists and u-turns later, Yuliya and I arrive at our hotel, where Achmed gets out of the cab and gives us both a warm farewell. Then he disappears with his video camera, and we're left to face the friendly but forgetful reception staff and the starving mosquitos in our room.

And yes, you guessed it: I've finally made it back to Egypt.

About frikkin' time, too!




* Royal Dalton: expensive porcelain figures of women in flowing ballroom gowns and the like. Really, REALLY not my taste, but for some reason my mum – who would no sooner put on a flowing ballroom gown than saw off her feet with a bread knife – loves them.

** "doof": not sure if it's used elsewhere, but in Australia this is the slang word for the beat in rave music – "doof tsi doof tsi doof tsi doof tsi" is how it sounds when you hear it coming from inside a car with speakers that are almost as large and heavy as the passengers.

the ‘khazyaika effect'

As most of you know, I’ve been in Tallinn for the last two months, just working and enjoying the beauty of this medieval Hanseatic marvel. I’m leaving today.

To tell you the truth it’s been kind of a lonely period in my life. That's partly because, within about a month of arriving, I’d more or less worked out that I couldn’t stay long-term, mostly for financial reasons. So I didn't see much point in trying to forge social ties.

Meanwhile, both of my existing friends here moved to other countries in that same first month, which isolated me further. I  therefore spent a lot of time being ‘one’* ... which of course has its up and its down sides.

Still, Tallinn presented me with quite a few great moments, and I’ll remember my time here with some fondness. For a start, any time I needed to de-stress I could just go for a walk through the atmospheric alleys of the Old Town, which was two minutes from the front door of my school. It’s amazing how much that relaxed me when I felt stressed &/or cheered me up when I was a little down. I don’t think I’ve been to many places that are quite as therapeutic as “Vana Tallinna” (Old Tallinn), and having it so close by allowed me to re-discover my sense of wonder on at least a weekly basis**.

I also really enjoyed my Russian lessons, which took place in a 400-year-old stone labyrinth of a building with an Orthodox Ukrainian church in the basement, in a wonderfully rundown and comparatively tourist-free corner of the Old Town, right next to the medieval wall. Quite inspiring surrounds in which to do battle with the insanely complicated riddle of the Russian language ;-)

On top of that, I found another wonderful group of crazy Russian teenagers to keep me amused and occupied. In some ways they were the best thing about my time here, and I know I'm going to miss them a lot.

Yesterday was our final lesson, and it was mostly taken up by a ‘Death Match’ between three creatures that my students (working in teams of “evil geneticists”) had created during the previous week. The idea was to see which of their monsters would kill the others and take over the world after humanity’s demise – but we couldn’t decide, so one creature went to live on the Sun, another on Mars and a third to a faraway galaxy. I love it when I find a class who is willing to do this kind of ridiculous stuff with me. Thanks, guys!

And then, last but not least, there was my Khazyaika.

Before I explain that sentence, two things about the word itself. First, it’s one of many Russian words that look much cooler in cyrillic script than they do when transliterated into Roman letters. So here it is in cyrillic: “хозяйка”. See?

The second thing: “хозяйка” translates into English as “landlady”, but I always find myself wanting to use the Russian word instead – not because it looks cooler, but because, in my experience, the role of a хозяйка is quite different to that of a Western landlady. She conceives herself very differently in relation to her tenants, often taking a far more ‘hands-on’ role in their lives.

Of course, this can be a bad thing. I had one хозяйка in Kazakhstan, for example, who I could happily have watched being run over by a truck – she was quite frankly an evil, rat-faced bitch, whose rude intrusions into our lives never failed to make me feel angry and disgusted. But generally the хозяйка experience has been interesting, and occasionally very rewarding. Easily the best example so far has been Natalya, who owns 'my' flat in Tallinn.

Natalya is (at a guess) about 50 years old, Russian, lives next door and frequently comes to visit. When I first met her, I thought she was going to kill me: she’s one of those Russian ladies who comes across as incredibly scary (and on occasion I did avoid from her out of fear), but who is actually hiding a warm, generous heart beneath her formidable exterior ... much like a crocodile scooped out and filled with runny marshmallow ... or a cuddly kitten in a cactus suit ... or, ummmm ...

[word nerd considers momentarily]
[sees no good similes approaching down adjacent synaptic tunnels]

Ok, might be best if you insert your own comparison here. Use whatever soft-and-pleasant-thing-inside-a-hard-and-scary-thing image you prefer :-)

*ahem*

Moving on ...

Every time Natalya came to visit, she would leave me feeling exhausted, but I’d always be better off than when she'd arrived. She spoke to me in Russian at about 700 miles an hour, which led to some funny/embarrassing misunderstandings – like a few nights ago when she asked me if she could come around and take some photos. I assumed she meant with me, because I was planning to leave, so I said “Oh no, I’ve just had a haircut and it’s a nightmare!” (True story.) Turns out I hadn’t understood the whole intent of what she’d said – she actually wanted to take photos of the bath! I guess she’s going to put it in the ad for the next tenant.

Anyway, Natalya duly arrived the following night with her impossibly cute six-year-old granddaughter Dasha***. While she took photos of the bath, Dasha and I did some impromptu ‘language exchange’ – I taught her a few English words (like “cow”) and she chatted to me in Russian about her playhouse. Then Natalya (her breath smelling a little of whisky) gave me a shopping bag full of apples from her sister’s dacha, and we browsed Google maps together for about an hour while she told me amazing stories about her many journies through various parts of the USSR. It was a pretty cool part-of-an-evening – almost as cool as last night, when Nataliya came around to work out the electricity, gas and water bills with me, and then proceeded to bring my living room to life with her impersonation of a group of baby hedgehogs, who had followed her daughter Masha home once after losing their mother.

That might not seem like something worth re-telling, but just try and picture it for a moment. Conjure up your most stereotypical image of a stern-looking middle-aged Russian woman, with the cardigan, her hair wound up around her head several times, and a look of defiant self-determination on her face. Focus on that for a moment, and now imagine her in your living room, telling you a story which she punctuates with uproarious laughter and “Eeek! Eeek!” noises, as she holds her hands up to her face in the shape of baby hedgehog paws.

Would that not cause the needle on your surreal-o-meter to quiver?

Oh, and I want to tell you about the apples, ‘cause that became almost a custom between Natalya and I. It started one morning when she called me to find out if I’d managed to buy a good winter coat yet. (See what I mean about the difference between a хозяйка and a Western landlady?). I said that I had, and she insisted that I come in to her flat and model it for her. Of course, Natalya felt a duty to spend the next few minutes telling me all the reasons why my coat was rubbish. But she didn’t stand around idly while she was criticising my purchase; instead, she loaded up three full shopping bags with apples from the dacha, and gave them to me to take home.

I had no idea what to do with so many apples, so I looked around on the 'net for recipes. The upshot: I spent most of the following Saturday night baking an enormous German-style apple rum custard cake. After saving myself a generous-sized piece, I took about 2/3 of the cake to Natalya, to share with Masha and Dasha. My Russian teacher got the rest.

After that, I could scarcely lay eyes on Natalya without her foisting more apples onto me. In the end, the vegetable crisper in my fridge was full of them … I couldn’t keep up!

Anyway, as I said, I’m leaving Tallinn today. As I was doing the last of my cleaning, I got a phone call, and I knew exactly who it would be. “Anton!”, said a stern voice. “I invite you to breakfast!”

It was clear that this was not so much an invitation as an order.

”But Natalya, I’ve already had breakfast. I could come for coffee, though.”

”Anton, you know that they never feed you on those aeroplanes!****. If you want food, you have to pay a lot. That’s why you need MORE breakfast today!”

”Yes, I know, but …”

”So you’ll be here in 15 minutes? Good. That’s all.” And she hung up.

And so, my last half an hour on Sikupilli (my street in Tallinn) was spent in Natalya’s kitchen, eating her home-made pancakes with – what else? – apple sauce. She was in full flight, telling me about all the places I MUST visit in the next year, and about the genealogy of her family going back to the 15th Century. So I just sat back, shut up, ate my breakfast and enjoyed the whirlwind one final time :-)

Then she said “I’m coming downstairs with you!”, posed for a photo, ordered me into her car and drove me to the airport. Again, I didn’t have a choice. Natalya threw her car violently around the road like a Central Asian man while wondering aloud whether or not she actually knew the way, and for a moment I thought we might end our journey under a truck or wrapped around a traffic light. But somehow we made it, and I tumbled out onto the roadside with all my limbs attached.

As her car pulled away, I felt quite sad to think that I'll probably never see my хозяйка again. But hopefully she won't be the last – I'm not even close to being done with the former USSR yet, and I'm sure to meet my next landlord or landlady before too long. I can only wait and see what the Xозяйка Effect will throw my way next ...
 


*In Russian you say not “I’m alone” but "Ya adeen" – which literally translates as "I am one". I think that’s a nicer way to look at it, don’t you?

** Btw, the two-month period I've described in this entry was in fact my fourth time in Tallinn. As I've said elsewhere on this blog, I've actually visited the gorgeous Estonian capital more times than I've been to Melbourne! So I didn't sprinkle this page with pics of the Old Town etc., 'cause I did that three years ago after my first awe-sruck visit.

To see some of my original "Tallinn rocks!" photos, you can go here:
http://rantingmanor2.blogspot.com/2006/02/land-of-eeks-and-baars.html

*** A curious fact that you may not know: almost all people in the world called Dasha are extremely nice. I have no idea why, but I must’ve met at least 20 Dashas by now, and I get along really well with nearly all of them. Plus, at least one of my all-time favourite humans is a Dasha. (Привет, Букаш!)

**** Incidentally, it’s true in this part of the world – Air Baltic and Estonian Air both charge for food and drinks.

khan you believe it?

The sun had set over the desert, signalling that our journey had taken us a full day. As our taxi driver pulled into the town, the near absence of street lights meant that we got only brief glimpses of our new surroundings. People strolling through the darkness would come into the range of our headlights for a second then disappear again; fragments of old mud-brick walls would loom up and then fade; rubble on the streets would appear suddenly, and we’d swerve to avoid it. This was exciting, tantalising … and a tiny bit scary.

As we stopped outside our hotel, we could see only silhouettes of the town in front of us – a softly illuminated minaret, the outline of a dome that was a little darker than the sky around it, and the shapes of low, square buildings. Turning off the engine, the driver pointed to a disheveled, overweight man lying sideways on some street furniture, looking a bit like a homeless person resting on a park bench. “That’s your hotel manager”, he said.

On the way here from the local airfield, our driver, Bahatir, had overtaken almost every other vehicle in sight, which had ranged from donkeys to Chevrolets. We knew we’d be seeing more of Bahatir, because he’d asked us about our onward travel plans, and we’d subsequently arranged to meet him again in three days’ time. He’d agreed to drive my father, my uncle and I across a six-and-a-half-hour stretch of desert for US$100, to our next destination after this.

As we were unloading our bags from the taxi, I asked Bahatir for his number so we could call him to confirm the pick-up. He responded with a question: “Do you have the Lonely Planet?”

“Er, yes.”

“Well, if you
  have the
  Lonely Planet,
  you have
  my number.”
 
He wasn’t lying.

And that, in a nutshell, was our introduction to the ancient Silk Road city of Khiva.

This word “ancient” is one of those (like “literally”) which sees far too much use nowadays, but in this case I’m definitely not exaggerating. A fortified citadel, built in an oasis near the rugged frontier separating Uzbekistan from Turkmenistan, Khiva celebrated its 2,500th birthday a few years back. And to be honest, it looks its age.

Mind you, nearly all of the original city is long gone. The walls, for example, are about sixth generation; they were first built in the 3rd century BC, but everyone from Chingiz Khan* to The Red Army has queued up over the millennia to try and destroy them, and some have succeeded. The desert itself has also engulfed the walls a couple of times, forcing Khiva’s inhabitants to start almost from scratch. But despite the reconstructions, you definitely get the feeling that this place has been around more or less forever, and will probably outlast a few more empires before it finally sinks into the sand.

The old city is an incredible network of avenues and alleyways, absolutely packed with historical sites. The Four Ms (mosques, madrassas, minarets and mausoleums) are here in huge abundance, along with some tumbledown dwellings and the palaces of the Khans who ruled this place for five hundred years or so up until the 1920s. And the whole place positively drips with history. Past rulers have included Tamerlane (one of those guys who you don’t hear much about in the West, but who had the third biggest empire in the world in his day), the Kungrad Sufi dynasty, and the caliph of Arabia. Then of course you had the khans – descendents of Chingiz – and later, the Tsars and their Bolshevik successors.

Politics and religion aside, there are also echoes here of the amazing scientific revolution that spread throughout the Middle East and adjacent areas in early medieval times. For example, the mathematician Al-Khorezm was a native of Khiva, and you might notice a resemblance to the word “algorithm” in his name. That’s because he was the guy who basically invented algebra (and yes, you can feel free to hate him for it if you want, but hey … obviously not a stupid man!). So algorithms are named after him.

Just a little more historical blah, then I’m done. I wanted to mention that, under the Khans, Khiva became the centre of the slave trade in Central Asia, which was rather brutal (almost as brutal as putting your wife into a sack with a wild cat, then beating the sack with big sticks – which, incidentally, was the penalty for adultery here at around the same time). The Khanate forces tended to bring back great herds of people from their various campaigns, including many thousands of Russians. These people were sold here at the market.

As it turned out, this provided Russia with a perfect excuse to move on the Khanate in the late 19th century, before the British (who also had their eye on it) could do likewise. So indirectly, it was slavery that ensured Khiva, and the surrounding area of Khorezmia, would become part of the USSR. Had things worked out just a little bit differently, this part of Uzbekistan would probably have been a British colony, and instead of enjoying a leisurely game of nardiy** in the streets at night, guys here would be playing cricket.

Lucky for them the Russians got here first – I mean, throwing women into sacks with angry cats is pretty damn cruel, but condemning an entire culture to cricket is just downright inhumane ;-)

So yeah, that’s the guts of what we managed to pick up in two days. We spent the first day walking around by ourselves, just going “wow” and “ooh” and “Hey, look at that!”. Then on Day Two we scored ourselves a guide, who led us through the Four Ms, the palaces, the local harem and a sackload of other places that left us open-mouthed.

Amongst all of this serious historical stuff, we had plenty of time to explore the amazing architecture, relax in some cool outdoor restaurants, and say “hello” to about fifty thousand Uzbek children (see below.) We even found real, ground coffee, which was quite a feat in this dyed-in-the-wool tea culture. Needless to say, our first sip of coffee for days was a blissful moment!

And what was the coolest thing I saw in Khiva? Hard to say. I’m still digesting it all, and actually I’ve re-written this entry three or four times, trying to give a sense of how it felt to be there, but falling short each time.

Probably the best place to start is the silliest, so let’s try that. One thing I loved about Khiva was the fact that you could stand around admiring the ancient mud-brick walls of an Islamic fortress while crappy old Soviet cars drove past. As many of you know, Anthony says a big “yay!” to the crappy old Soviet cars; the only things I’ve bothered to become a ‘fan’ of on Facebook are Bill Bailey and Lada, and I’m proud to be associated with both :-) So that was really cool … it was like a living collage of elements from different cultures that you previously thought of as being completely separate.

What else? Oh yeah, the tapchan. I have to tell you about that – it may be the greatest piece of furniture ever invented.

See, the weather in Khiva – as you could probably have guessed – is frighteningly hot. Walking around without a hat for just one morning, I got such a bad case of sunburn that I was concerned it might have permanently scarred me … and that was on a mild day! Bahatir (the taxi guy) told us that, four days before we arrived, the temperatures had hit 50C. We were dealing with 35-40, and only just coping. At one point, it got so bad that I actually bought a baseball cap to protect myself … and wore it! Now that’s desperation, wouldn’t you say?

Anyway, in conditions like these, people tend to spend a lot of their evening time outside. So as you walk around town you find beds in the street, and there are more on the rooftops. But the tapchan is much cooler than a conventional bed; it’s a platform raised about 40cm off the ground, large enough to accommodate a whole family and strewn with silk rugs (a specialty of this area) and cushions.

A lot of families in Khiva have one outside their lounge room, with an electrical cord running out to power the TV and a small dining table in the middle. So they recline together on their tapchan, chatting and watching football or soaps or whatever, as bats and insects swoop and dive around them. And let me tell you, these things are amazingly comfortable. I sat on one tonight whilst having snacks and coffee with my father and uncle***, and after an hour on the tapchan, I was so relaxed that I could’ve been fined for it in some of the world’s more uptight countries. And so I’ve decided: if I ever have a house with a yard (which is doubtful, admittedly), I’m definitely placing an order for one of these things. They’re just awesome.

Two more things to mention, and then I’m done. First, the Uzbek people. They’re quite devout Muslims, from what I can see, and of course we Westerners are socialized to think that many devout Muslims harbor a certain antipathy towards the West. Come here for a week, and you’ll see how absurd that is. I’ve never had so many people randomly say “hello” to me on the street as I’ve had in Uzbekistan. Ask someone for assistance here, and they’ll do everything in their power to help you get what you need. Of course they often don’t succeed, ‘cause there are certain things which are just a lot more difficult here than in other places – like getting money, for example. (At one point we wandered into the National Bank of Uzbekistan and were told “Sorry, we have no more money today.” Two cash machines were sulking in a corner, unplugged, and the tellers were all standing around going “Hmmm, what now?” It was a real Central Asia Moment.)

And the police, who I was warned about so sternly by Lonely Planet and other ‘authorities’? Well, they’re definitely curious about foreigners, and also rather ‘enterprising’, let’s say. They have a habit of standing near the entrances to off-limits areas of historical sites – like the section of the Emir’s palace in Bukhara that was bombed by the Red Army in 1920. It’s basically rubble now, and rightfully barred from the public, because there are deep shell craters and no barriers around the high walls. But for 2,000 Uzbek Som (about US$1.50) you can ‘bribe’ a policeman to let you in, for a truly spectacular view of the city that you can’t get anywhere else. As far as their scary reputation, though, I’d have to say it’s just more Western paranoia. Crack a little joke with a policeman, and suddenly he’s flashing his gold teeth and wishing you many grandchildren.

So yeah … the Uzbek people get my ‘thumbs up’. Very relaxed, down-to-Earth, and just nice. The only downside: they’re nowhere near as pretty as the Kazakhs. Less than a week outside Almaty, and I’m already missing the princesses.

*sigh*

Oh ^deer^ … so superficial.

The final thing I wanted to mention is something totally incidental, but nonetheless very cool i.m.o. In Khiva our guide took us to the mausoleum of a local hero called Pahlavan Mahmud. After the tour, as we were sitting in the mosque and watching the Imam pray for a married couple who had come in, something caught my eye. About three feet to the left of the Imam, a cat lay sleeping on the plush, carpeted floor. The Imam seemed to know he was there, and obviously didn’t mind.

I asked our tour guide about this, and she told me that The Prophet was often accompanied by a cat when he prayed, so now every Mosque has a cat that hangs out with the Imam during ceremonies.

This struck me as cool for three reasons. First, it’s a cat in a house of worship, and the presence of a cat anywhere is a good thing. Second, the kitty was totally uninterested in all the human business – as cats are wont to be – and far more intent on his nap. This seemed to me the perfect reminder that, while we humans are going about our rituals, there’s a whole world out there that continues doing its thing regardless of what we believe or don’t believe. And third, Imams are sustained by the food that people bring them, and some of that food goes to the cat. As our guide tells it, Mosque kitties are very spoiled indeed. I like that :-)

So … if I had to choose a ‘favourite’ among the five major world religions, right now it would be Islam. Nothing to do with the theology, of course – I mean, I try to respect all religions except Catholicism, Scientology and the other clearly insane ones, but at the same time I know that none of them have anything relevant to say to me personally. No, I just like the fact that Imams spoil their cats. To me, that seems a very appropriate thing for a ‘spiritual’ person to do.

(Later postscript: after my friend Ally read this, she told me that Muslims believe the 'M'-shaped stripes on a tabby cat's head come from Mohammed. They're echoes of the Prophet's fingertips, where he used to stroke his tabby. How cool is that?)

Anyway, we left Khiva a couple of days ago, and took the aforementioned drive across the desert. That was an experience in itself. Probably the highlight was the bridge which took us across the Amur-Darya river. It was an extremely makeshift-looking construction, with steep ramps at either end and various sections imperfectly fitted together, each at a slightly different angle to the horizontal. I asked Bahatir about the bridge, and he told me “The Red Army built this out of old pontoons, to get their tanks to Afghanistan”. Er … wow.

I’m currently in Bukhara – another ancient city of decaying mosques and madrassas, darked-skinned desert folk with oodles of gold in their mouths, and more outmoded Soviet automotive technology than you could shake a can of leaded petrol at. Being here, and in Khiva even more so, has re-kindled my enthusiasm for Central Asia. In the last week or so, I feel as though I’ve had a little ‘wake-up call’. By that, I mean that what I’ve seen so far in Uzbekistan seems like a first taste of the diversity that exists in this part of the world. In that respect, getting out of Almaty for a while was probably the most sensible thing I’ve done in ages, ‘cause I was never going to see much of that diversity while I stayed put in one city. Wish I’d done it earlier.

Incidentally, one of the smaller but more well-restored madrassas in Bukhara is called Mekhtar Ambar. It’s over a thousand years old, an elegant two-storey hexagonal structure with low, elongated rooms ranged around a central courtyard, with a shaded stone terrace on the rooftop. I mention this one specifically because it also happens to be our hotel. I’ve never stayed in a former ‘academy of Islam’ before. It’s pretty damn cool.

Tomorrow we take the golden road to Samarkand. Truthfully, I’m finding it difficult to believe that we’ll really be there in less than 24 hours – it’s one of those city names that has a slightly fantastical ring, and it seems unlikely that the place actually exists and functions the way normal cities do. But we’ll see.

I’ll keep you updated as much as possible in this land of unreliable internet access. Meanwhile, take care and avoid pushy taxi drivers :-)

Anthony.


(*Known in the West as “Genghis Khan” for some reason. I’m not sure why we can’t seem to cope with the real pronunciation of his first name – it isn’t difficult!)

(**The Central Asian equivalent of backgammon – extremely popular here.)


(***How my father and uncle came to be here with me in Uzbekistan is another story in itself. I’ll tell you about some other time.)

transit therapy #5

going peripheral

I want you to do something for me: go grab a map of the world and find Kazakhstan. It's the big country underneath the central part of Russia, shaped a bit like a fish with its head nuzzling the northern tip of the Himalayas and its tail splashing in the Caspian Sea.

Now, trace a few routes away from KZ to other parts of the world, and tell me what you notice. Yes, exactly: it's right in the frikkin' middle! Starting from inside the fish, you can strike out into China, eastern Asia, Russia, the Indian sub-continent, eastern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, and in each case your path radiates away from a central point on the map.

Being at the centre is interesting; you sense occasional echoes of the times when the Silk Road ran through here, bringing exotic influences from all corners. However, if you've ever been in an earthquake, on a large passenger aircraft or in a protracted family dispute, you know that sometimes the centre is exactly where you don't want to be. Sometimes what you really need is to be as close as possible to the Absolute Periphery – out of sight, out of everyone else's way and, if possible, near an exit.

That was the feeling that gripped me five or six weeks ago, when I found myself evacuating Budapest to explore the forests, lakes, caves, alpine villages etc. etc. of Slovenia. However, before going entirely peripheral, I wanted to acquaint myself with its modest little capital, the 'Beloved City' of Ljubljana.

 
1: CAPITAL "L"

At first glance, there isn't an awful lot about Ljubljana that couldn't be found in dozens of other small cities around Europe. Which, to be honest, suits me fine. I love the small Euro-city vibe; you get the cute architecture, the café culture, the cobble stones, relaxed ambience and so forth, but without the "We are the boiler room of civilisation – come to us on your buses, tiny tourists, and witness our inestimable historical importance" attitude that infects the bigger cities on da Continent.

Ljubljana doesn't advertise itself too much; it just gets on with its usual low-key thing – attractive, green, studenty and (therefore) quite Bohemian. The Boho aspect of the city was a real breath of fresh air for me, since I haven't found anything in Almaty that resembles an 'alternative scene' yet. You do spot a few piercings and the occasional metalhead, but that's about it.

By contrast, Ljubljana is awash with purple and green hair dye, baggy pirate shirts, Doc Martins, dreadlocks, body art, long-haired men, short-haired women, those funny hats that look like tea cosies, teens in goth/metal make-up and a variety of off-beat fashions.

It was so nice to be back among the freaks!

The Boho folk even have their own street: a zig-zagging lane near the Ljubljanitsa River called Trubarjeva Cesta, where you can visit head shops, jazz shops, funky little cafés and even ... wait for it ... a falafel restaurant! I was lucky enough to stumble onto Trubarjeva on my first night in Ljubljana, and believe me, my taste buds have rarely been more grateful. You can't get falafel anywhere in my adopted home town :-(

(Brief aside: a few months ago I was in the food court of Almaty's Mega shopping mall – or 'The Glittering Turd', as I like to call it – and I noticed a shop actually called 'Falafel'. Eyes lighting up, I went up to the counter and ordered their namesake dish, but was met with blank stares all 'round. The staff didn't seem to understand that what I was asking for was in fact a real food that exists on Earth. And yet there they all were, standing directly berneath a gleaming sign that said "Falafel" in cyrillic letters, suitably stylised to look Arabic. Appalling.)

Anyway, I hung out for a couple of days in The Beloved City, doing a bit of the tourist thing and just absorbing the general vibe. The centre of town, which follows the curve of the river, is virtually deserted at night but comes to life during the day, as outdoor café tables and market stalls sprout

everywhere beside the calm green waters of the Ljubjanitsa. It's definitely one of those "Mmmm, Europey ..." type places. And the whole thing proceeds under the quiet auspices of the Julian Alps, which sprawl across the far horizon inviting you to join them when you're done exploring the capital.

Of course, what you often don't get in these smaller cities is anything resembling decent nightlife. Ljubljana's limitations in this regard are compensated for by a surprisingly healthy 'underground'. On my second night in the capital there was a triple-billed Black Metal gig in town, with international bands. On the same night I was taken by some locals to a newly-opened warehouse club called Planet Rogue (definite goth/industrial hangout) and then on to the Metelkova artists' squat, which is notorious enough that I'd already read about it before coming to Slovenia.

Local authorities have been trying to close down this freaks' haunt for years, but somehow it keeps rolling on. The night (and morning) when I was there was seemingly typical; in the main rooms, DJs played hardcore electronica for a crowd of hippies, goths, ravers and assorted folk, while darkened outer hallways hosted small gatherings of Ljubljana's alternative crowd – talking, canoodling and, I suspect, imbibing things they could be arrested for. Surrounded by a vacant lot where people stepped over trenches and sat on uprooted cement blocks to chat and smoke, the whole place felt a little structurally unsound ... which seemed somehow appropriate.  

I spent several hours at Metelkova observing the intriguingly diverse crowd. At the bar I was served Red Bull by a Jamaican-looking woman with an enormous profusion of curls, who later came and chatted with the New Romantic girlie standing next to me in a long grey riding coat and white high-collared shirt, looking like she'd fallen out of an Ultravox film clip. Then their friends turned up in tie-dyed smocks and ripped cardies, and they transferred themselves onto the dancefloor.

Meanwhile, my new best friend – a guy whose house I'd been taken to earlier to chill out between venues and listen to him talk about the imminent collapse of the global monetary system – bounced joyfully up and down while telling me why the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012.

To illustrate his sincerity (and because I was the only Australian-born resident of Kazakhstan he'd ever met, and hence a bit of a novelty), he gave me a little keepsake. It was a tiny brass boot of the kind you often see on charm bracelets. He told me I mustn't ever lose it, or the consequences would be dire for both of us. So far I haven't.

2: SWEET DREAMS, MR. FOX ...

The first semester of uni began a few weeks back, so among other things I've resumed my German studies. A few days ago I was looking at some German idioms online, and found this one: "Dort, wo sich die Füchse gute Nacht sagen" ("Out there, where the foxes say good night to each other"). In English we'd simply say "in the middle of nowhere", which I think is a pretty cool phrase – but the German one is far more poetic, don't you think?

The first time I ventured outside Ljubljana, to say that I went to where the foxes say good night would be a slight exaggeration – but only slight. My first destination was Lake Bled, which is actually quite famous in its way. Anyone who's familiar with Slovenia knows about Bled, and it's even been called "the most beautiful spot in Europe" by one or two enthusiastic travel writers and bloggers. Still, as I got off the coach and dragged my Big Red Bag up the hill to the hostel, it definitely felt like I'd taken another sizeable step away from the hustle and bustle and towards the Absolute Periphery of things.

It helped that the road to the hostel was lined with sleepy-looking cottages, their yards strewn with stuff you could probably use on a farm, each one containing a tied-up watchdog assiduously guarding its owner's chickens. (Live fowl always seem to add that sense of "Ooh, we're really in the sticks now!", don't they?)

It was actually a postcard image of Lake Bled, on the edge of the Julian Alps in far north-western Slovenia, that first piqued my interest in this country. I remember looking at it, thinking "Whoa, where the Hell is that?", reading the caption on the back and immediately deciding that I would, at all costs, go there. Then I researched a bit and realised that Bled was just the tip of the glacier. Before long, my LP guide to Central Europe was dog-eared on almost every page of the Slovenia section. And yet, whenever I think of Slovenia, Lake Bled is the first image that pops into my brain.

So now that I was finally here, I had to get to the lake as soon as possible. I checked in to my top-floor room in the Alpine lodge that served as a hostel, spent a couple of minutes admiring the exposed beams and the mountain view from my window, and then set off.

The lake isn't huge by any means, and I was told that a walking circuit would take about an hour if I didn't stop. But this turned to be an entirely useless piece of information, because when you walk around Lake Bled, you do stop. It's one of those places where you're compelled to find a seat or a grassy spot and take it all in for a bit, then walk some more, sit some more and so on.

In the centre of the lake is a tiny island with several elegant old church buildings on it, and on one shore a bare cliff-face towers for several hundred metres, topped by a medieval fortress. Behind that ... alps a-plenty. At every point around the lake, these three features change their orientation to one another, and at dusk the whole scene is reflected in what I'm tempted to call the mirror-black waters. It's utterly breathtaking. I found it necessary to mentally pinch myself a few times as I strolled along in quiet awe, a little less than certain that I was actually here after all this time.

The only drawback of Lake Bled is that it's undeniably a place custom-designed for short holidays of the 'romantic getaway' kind. As I ambled around its shorelines (both in the cooling twilight and again the following morning, to see it in the daytime) most of the other humans I came across were hand-fast couples, gazing dreamily at each other and/or the scenery, and looking thoroughly invincible in their happiness. And I have to admit that, being the bitter old loner that I am, I did send a few uncharitable thoughts their way.

(Bastards!)

Meanwhile, although the village itself is quite a pretty place, it isn't what you'd call action-packed. So after fulfilling my little 'see the lake that makes other lakes envious' ambition, I headed further into the Alpine hinterland – another step closer to where I might get lucky and hear some of the local vulpine* population exchanging their night-time pleasantries.

Working out how to get onesself around rural Slovenia turned out to be quite a challenge (though less problematic than trying to do the same in former Soviet countries), and I ended up spending a good deal less time taking in mountaintop panoramas than I'd hoped for. That was ok, though, because the route from Bled to the Julian peaks took me through some wonderfully wild terrain.

Out here in the Slovenian never-never, I knew I was entirely 'lost to the world'. A brief stop in a village called Bohinjska Bela really brought it all home. As I stood there admiring the modest cottages and outhouses, nestled at the bottom of rugged cliffs with Alps towering in the distance, I just knew that I was standing in a spot where no-one I know had ever stood before, and where it would take a mammoth effort to find me if I decided not to be found.

This was what I'd fled Almaty for: at last I'd managed to disappear, completely off the the radar and a world away from what I usually (albeit loosely) refer to as "my life". It was, at last, Transit Therapy in its pure, undiluted form. About time!


3: ROCK AIN'T DEAD

After the Julian Alps, the next imaginary bullet point on my itinerary was the township of Postojna. Near the town, I'd been told, were two quite unique attractions. The first was a limestone cave you could enter by train. (Slovenia's karst caves – the largest and most lavishly decorated in Europe – were among the things that had drawn me to this country.) The second was Predjamski Grad, a castle built into a sheer cliff-face, and apparently quite a sight to see.

Here's the thing, though, about the preposition "near": it really isn't the most precise word ever coined. Example: I live "near" a supermarket (meaning that it's five minutes' walk from my house). At the same time, about a week ago I met a guy from Urumqi in far-western China, which (as you'll see if you refer back to your world map) could reasonably be described as being "near" Almaty. But no way would I want to actually walk there.

Such was the case in Postojna. The caves were more or less walking distance, but the castle (located just beyond the village of Predjama) definitely wasn't. And the local tourist office's advice? "If you have a few hours you could hike there; otherwise, maybe you can hitch."

"So there's no public transport?"

"No."

"To one of your country's most well-known landmarks?"

"No."
"Ok then, I'll try to flag down a car".

At this point I'd like to pause and thank the people of Almaty for helping me lose my ridiculous fear of hitch-hiking, deeply ingrained in my psyche while I was growing up in Paranoid Delusional Land (a.k.a. Australia). Since I took up residence in The Big K, I've travelled in more cars owned by other people than I had during the rest of my life up to that point. And yet, not once has my driver strangled me, tied me inside a garbage bag sealed with packing tape, thrown me into the boot and dumped my body in a National Park. Not even a little bit.

I mean, of course you have to be careful and selective, and I am – not to mention ideologically picky. (I never accept a ride from anyone in an SUV; the fuckers aren't getting a single Tenge from me to help run their planet-choking deathtraps!) But if anyone tries to tell you that hitching is unsafe, my advice is to inform them that there are plenty of countries where it's a standard means of transport, and the murder rates in those countries are unaffected by this fact.

You could then suggest the following: maybe the problem is that the people in their country are either a bunch of serial-killing psychos, or (far more likely) just socially conditioned to fill their minds with imaginary sources of fear and suspicion.

Or maybe not. Depends how adversarial you're feeling that day :-)

  

Anyway, I hitched about 3/4 of the way to the castle and walked the rest, which was a fair step through the obscure Slovenian back-blocks. Once again I had that great 'disappearing' feeling, but this time it was accompanied by slight nerves for some reason. I think it was a combination of the unsettled weather, the barking dogs, and the nearby eagles who were screeching "Don't you even think about coming any closer to our nest, Sonny Boy!". Not sure.

Predjama village was set in wild, steeply undulating territory, and so eerily quiet as to seem almost deserted. The vibe faintly resembled ten-year-old news reports about Bosnia or Kosovo, but you could also feel echoes of far longer time-spans. Some of the cottages looked truly ancient. I felt quite privileged to be here, in a way, but at the same time I really wanted to hurry on.

And then, rounding a corner, I got my first glimpse of one of the most striking castles I've ever seen.

Cut-and-pasted into a cave mouth half-way up a vertical wall of rock, with an icy natural stream

gushing out from directly beneath it,

the Predjamski Grad almost looked as though it might have grown from an errant spore.

I imagined the tiny seed drifting away from its mother castle, floating blindly towards the cliff, being snagged on the rock face, taking root like an epiphyte* and slowly growing into an adult-sized fortress. It

seemed to me quite a convincing theory as to how such an impressive structure could've found its way to such an unlikely spot.

Inside the castle, I was asked for some money and handed a little guide booklet, the whole transaction proceeding in a very detached, post-Soviet manner. At first glance it didn't look like much: a couple of sandstone rooms with workmen milling about, doing restoration work of one sort or another. But as I ventured further into the innards of the building, I was increasingly blown away.

The folk who built this place had been remarkably clever: rooms were simple, but ingenious in the way they used existing rock formations as part of their architectural framework. At times you couldn't easily tell where Nature gave way to construction, or even at what point 'inside' became 'outside'. 

After marvelling at this for a while and ingesting every word of the booklet I'd been given, I realised that I'd have to take off soon if I wanted to make it back to the caves in time for the one-and-only afternoon tour. So again, I trekked through Predjama village, hoping to hitch a ride somewhere along the way. Then, without warning ... a bus!

Evidently the tourist office actually had no clue at all about the real transport situation, 'cause there it was, undeniably heading back in the direction I wanted to go, and averting my rather urgent need to find a lift on a deserted back-road with almost no cars on it.

(I took this up with Tourist Info when I got back to town, and they just said "Yes, but that's a school bus". Okay, whatever.)

At this point I'd already seen one remarkable sight that day, and I wouldn't have been overly concerned if the Postojnska Jama (caves of Postojna) had been on the average side of average. An hour later, though, I was taking a five-minute subterranean train journey through chamber after chamber filled with some of the most intricately decorated limestone I'd ever seen, thinking "Wait a second, stop the train! Surely you're going past all the good bits!"

I was wrong. We were going to the good bits.

The Postojnska Jama were huge and ornate and just beyond belief. As the train ground to a halt, I found myself in a cavern that resembled the Grand Hall of a large railway station - except that it was completely natural (apart from the tracks of course). The roof was absolutely teeming with stalactites, the walls decorated with translucent shawls. This in turn led to an even larger chamber – not quite as decorative but still extremely impressive – where you could see signs pointing you to a tour guide who spoke your language.

Most of you know how much I love limestone caves, so I think you'll believe me when I say that, as I wandered toward the "English" sign, my mouth was hanging open, my legs were shaking slightly and I was swearing under my breath. This place was un-frikkin'-believable, and I was completely in awe. It was larger, grander and more beautiful than any cave I'd previously visited, or even imagined visiting.

So we toured the Postojnska Jama, I took loads of photos (knowing that only a small % would turn out), went "Wow!" a lot, and got into quite an interesting discussion with the tour guide about earthquakes.

(I seem to have developed a talent for choosing earthquake-prone locations lately – as partly evidenced by the fact that I live in one.)

Then finally, after passing my seventeen-millionth stalactite for the day, we saw the other thing I'd trekked here for: the Proteus Anguinus or 'human fish'.

These odd little guys were also on my extensive 'things that must be seen whilst in Slovenia' list. More salamanders than fish really, their folk name comes from the fact that they have a remarkable feature on the ends of their forelegs: tiny hands that look eerily human.

The weirdness doesn't end there, though. Because they live in complete darkness, Proteus are blind and their eyes are regressed, yet for some reason they've evolved photosensitivity – not just in their eyes but in their skin as well. Bring them out into the sun, and they tan. Not sure why, but the idea of a salamander getting a suntan just tickles me.

The Proteus' other senses, meanwhile, are amazingly well-developed. They have a Jacobson's Organ (the contraption in snakes' heads that allows them to 'taste' the air), and they get a really detailed world picture by detecting stuff we can't – chemical variations in organic compounds, vibrations beneath the Earth's surface and so on. Also, they're the only known animal whose gills never regress as they grow up, meaning that you can basically see their lungs hanging off their bodies like little fins. And lastly – as pointed out by my lovely Kazakh colleague Assel while I was showing her my holiday snaps – when Proteus nuzzle up together, they make a cute little heart shape :-)

Given their multi-faceted strangeness, it probably won't surprise you hugely to learn that Proteus have no cousins. They're in a genera all of their own. And they only live in the Mediterranean Karst caves – i.e. Slovenia, a little bit of Croatia and the area around Trieste in Italy (though you can see an artist's impression of them on a public fountain in Venice). In other words, they're freaks. But as I mentioned before, being in the company of freaks is something I tend to treasure, especially when I haven't seen any for a while.

The speleobiologists at Postojna catch a couple of these guys every month, throw them into a marble tank and let visitors wander past each day and gawk at them. Then, at the end of their month-long shift, the little Proteus are returned to the comforting darkness of their underground river and two more are caught. Were it not for this project, there'd be pretty much no chance of humans ever laying eyes on one. So meeting two of them was ... well, it was just very cool.


4: A MULTIPLICITY OF DENOUEMENTS

The last part of my Slovenia Plan entailed a brief visit to the city of Maribor, which is a reputedly elegant red-roofed marvel. Unfortunately, said plan was trampled on by the weirdness of train schedules. I thought I had an extra day-and-a-half up my sleeve, but when I returned to Ljubljana and looked at the timetables, I had the following unpleasant realisation: "Oh no, I have to leave tonight!". Not the most climactic end to my holiday, but I wasn't too bothered. The last week had been more or less a dream come true, and I certainly had no reason to complain.

And so it was back to Budapest briefly to meet up with Scott, then another flight through Moscow (and another surreal Sheremetyevo ordeal), before landing in KZ on a frosty February morning to resume my everyday existence.

Within ten minutes of returning we found ourselves caught up in the 'Almaty experience' once again.

It began when a taxi driver tried to scam us out of 6,000 Tenge (US$50) and we had to exit his cab on a highway, amid much heated discussion (mostly between the driver and Scott – I was feeling strangely philosophical about it all). Then another guy picked us up, shoved our bags into his 98% unroadworthy van and thoroughly charmed us on the way home with his amiable chatter, all for a bargain basement price. It was both sides of the KZ coin encapsulated in a one-hour journey, and a more fitting 'welcome back' could scarcely have been arranged.

So ... was it good to be 'home'? Actually I wasn't entirely sure, but there were certainly moments when it felt that way. Looking out the window of the friendly guy's van and seeing the snowy peaks of the Zailiysky Alatau towering over the city's outskirts provided a few tingles, and there were definitely people I was looking forward to seeing after my time away.

In any case, I did feel strongly that the therapy had worked. I had a perspective on things that I'd been lacking before, and it seemed to be helping.

And then four weeks passed. I got back into the routine of things, was re-acquainted with the office politics and the bad food, the school was raided by police (again), I got into my studies ... basically life resumed.

There have been times when looking back on the whole Transit Therapy adventure has appeared to offer some real insight, and other times when it's seemed like just another convoluted circuit to get me back to exactly where I was before. Either way, though, it did allow me to cross one more travel ambition off my ridiculously long list ... and that can't be a bad thing :-)

To conclude: as I said in the email, I hope you've enjoyed my little 'mini-series' of rants. It seems to have borne some strange fruit. For example, a close friend from Sydney has written a song about my moment of crazed exhiliration in the Lada. (Thanks Benji - very gratifying!)

Meanwhile, another good friend has tried out that particular form of therapy (i.e. the former Soviet republic urban death-ride) for himself in Uzbekistan, with reportedly good results. So ... if you haven't done so yet, be sure to put it on your list of things to do before you die. I promise I'll be there with you in spirit ;-)

Bye!


(*Sorry for the $10 words, btw. I'm not showing off, honest! I just love the word "vulpine", and it isn't one that you get to use every day. Same with "epiphyte" – which, btw, is the generic name for any plant that grows above ground, attaching itself to a host as a parasite would, but deriving its sustenance non-parasitically from moisture &/or nutrients in the surrounding atmosphere. There: aren't you glad you know that? Who needs 'Word of The Week' websites when you've got me, eh?)

transit therapy #4

Bored-a-pescht (a.k.a. Towards The Beloved)
   
Relative to my normal routine I've had quite a lot of 'thinking time' lately, so these last few entries have been more ruminatious (a word I just made up) than usual. I hope you're enjoying them, and sincerely apologise if you're not. Promise I'll get back to the usual "Hey, look at the cool stuff!" format soon, combined with the usual dysfunctional travel stories that bring so much Schadenfreude to so many.

(Well, to a few anyway.)

Meanwhile, bear with me while I continue ruminating just a little longer.

Let me start with something I've said before in The Manor, but which bears repeating here for context's sake: in September 2007, when I first arrived in Almaty, I really wasn't sure that I'd made a wise choice. There were quite a few moments when I honestly wondered whether I should just admit my mistake and get on a plane outta there, without further delay.

The thing is, though, I've gradually learned that when you move to a new place you're always going to have these doubts during the early days. Auckland was a case in point: if you'd asked me how I felt about it, say, a week after my arrival, the answer would've been something like "Let's hope it gets a whole lot better, 'cause right now I'm having a truly shit time." And as you probably know, I grew very fond of Auckland, to the point where leaving it was bitterly disappointing. And being the romantic optimist that I am – or at least, that I've recently been told I am – I still dream of returning one day.

The point, however, is this: when you arrive in a new place with the intention of settling there, you've got not only time but also money on your side. Ties with your previous employer have been cut, so your only immediate means of earning a living is to perservere in your newly-adopted home. And with the prospect of money coming in, you just try to ride out the stresses of the first few weeks, then see how you feel about the new environs once you've had a chance to meet a few people and discover a few cool things.

That's what happened to me both in Auckland and in Almaty, and I'm sure it'll happen again if I decide to move in July when my contract runs out.

When you're travelling, though, the situation is a bit different. If you're on a tight budget (which I always seem to be), you don't have time to invest in places that initially come across as ugly or bland or unfriendly, or where the 'vibe' isn't right for you. Therefore, if you find yourself in a place like that, sometimes you have to make a snap decision: do I stay and  hope that my first impressions were a bunch of big fat liars, or do I move on to somewhere else that stands a better chance of engaging me?

I realise that none of this is particularly shocking information. The surprising thing for me, though, is that I now have to add Budapest to the list of places that failed the test.

I really was expecting to be impressed by this city. Why? Well, apart from anything else, every person I've ever met who's been there has loved it. I know they loved it, because they've told me at some length about how total phantastisch it is, and assured me that I was certain to fall for its charms. And I believed them.

I'm a little shocked, therefore, to be sitting here now in a rickety train carriage about two-and-half hours outside the Hungarian capital, and heading away from it as rapidly as I can.

I should probably be feeling disappointed about this whole not-warming-to-the-Budally-Peschtian-vibe issue, but actually I'm not so bothered. There are several reasons for this.

For one thing, I think there's a certain poetry in my present situation. I mean, here I am on St. Valentine's Day, heading towards a city whose name translates roughly into English as 'Beloved'. That's pretty poetic, right? Okay, so the fact that I'm going there alone takes away from the romance a bit – but hey, I never said it was a perfect world (or if I did, I was probably pointing at a computer running Windows at the time, so you should've known I was being sarcastic).

The other reason for my lack of disappointment is that I've actually been planning to visit The Beloved City – known in its native language as 'Ljubljana' – for about six or seven years now. Ditto the country which surrounds it. Many of you have no doubt heard my rants on this subject: I'd say things like "It's my #1 must-see country!" or "I make plans to go there every frikkin' year, and somehow it never works out".

Well, here's the good news: give me another six hours or so, and you'll never have to endure those rants again.

With Budapest inspiring me about as much as a pork milkshake, and my #1 must-see country looming just over the border, whispering "Hey Anthony, here I am – you can come and get me if you want me!", it was all too much of a temptation. After a restless night in the hostel, tossing and turning and wondering if I should give it more time, I woke up this morning and said to Scott "Listen, I've made my decision. If there's a train to Ljubljana today, I'm on it."

I asked Scott if he wanted to join me, and he said "Maybe, I'll think about it". He thought, and he thought, and he thought ... and eventually the time rolled around when I had to get in the taxi and go. Consequently, he's still thinking and I'm now travelling solo – which to be truthful is how I usually like it.

So then ... here I am, alone on St. Val's, on a train and on a Mission. I'm tired, I'm stressed (because it's a nine-hour journey and there's no smoking carriage), and due to a problem exchanging Kazakh Tenge for, say, any other goddam currency on Earth, I'm really not sure my money will last.

The truth is, none of that matters when you've got the travel bug in your system. I could scarcely be more excited if I was going to the Moon.

I'll let you know how things pan out in my #1 must-see country (a.k.a. Slovenia) when this winding little tale is yet again

(to be) continued