stranded (a bit)

a european odyssey in several parts

Let's see ... yep, I think there's time for one more flashback before I finally tell you why I'm in Krakow tonight. And you know I can never resist those ... so, are you ready for this?

Ok, let's go.

*flash*


4: THE END OF 'NEAR MISSES'

Hi! Welcome to the recent past )))

It's like this: a few days ago I left Lviv and travelled overland to Bratislava in Slovakia, to see two of my oldest and dearest friends, Span and Jits (and to meet their children Inka and Sidney for the first time).

Although Slovakia and Ukraine are neighbours, working out my route and acquiring the necessary tickets was no mean feat – Ukraine is, after all, a former Soviet country, so naturally the job of public transport providers here is to make life as difficult as possible for prospective travellers.

On this particular occasion, the award for Most Effective Hindrance to the Travel Plans of Foreigners went to the "international" booking office in Lviv. When I dropped the word "Bratislava" to the lady-at-the-window there, she gave me a completely mystified look, as though I'd just walked into a shoe shop and asked "Do you happen to know if they have Rochefort cheese on Mars, and if so, could you tell me the approximate price per kilo?" I'm absolutely convinced that the irony of having the word "international" stuck above your window, and yet being unable to help me get to the capital city of a directly adjacent country, would be entirely lost on this woman and all her colleagues.

Anyway, in the end she sold me a ticket to Krakow, leaving at a minute to midnight. I travelled in a bunk so high up in the carriage, and so cramped, that I could sit with my legs bent and touch the ceiling with my knees ... which felt kinda fun and adventurous (though not overly comfortable!). Then, as morning broke in eastern Poland, I bought my onward tickets at Krakow Glowny station. With some time to wait, I wandered into the city and walked around, seeing it for the first time with greenery and without snow. Then I continued south-westwards, crossing three borders in all, making four train journeys, and kind of enjoying the road-trippish nature of it all.

Seeing Span and Jits again was, I have to say, a real highlight of my year so far. The last time we were face-to-face was 2005 in Sydney, and since then we've come very close to meeting on several occasions, but never quite made it happen. Span works for the UN, so he can randomly turn up in almost any part of the world ... as in early 2009, when he wrote to me and said "I'll be in Turkmenistan next month. Can you make it across to Ashgabat** to hang out for a couple of days?"

I naturally thought "Yep, fantastic!". It's only two countries over from Kazakhstan (where I was living at the time), and it seemed like a golden opportunity. So I tried to get an express Turkmeni visa from the consulate in Almaty.

Of course, you can see what'scoming here. I arrived at the consulate to find it closed, so I returned during their opening hours (displayed on a sign outside the door), was re-directed to another office, tried again, was redirected again, went to an agency, was told the lead-time for a visa was almost infinite and the flights were irregular ... and so on.

I recently read in an ESL coursebook that beating your head against a wall burns about 150 calories an hour. So, when the Turkmeni bureacracy defeated me and I was forced to give up on our Ashgabat rendezvous, I felt frustrated and disappointed – especially as it wasn't the first time Span and I had planned to meet in the 'Stans. (There had been a vague plan to meet in Tashkent the previous year.) But hey ... at least now I know that I was getting some decent exercise ;-)

Anyway, as I was saying: after the repeated 'near misses', to finally be in the same city as two of my favourite humans was fantastic. We did the usual touristy 'walk through the Old Town' thing, we hung out and philosophised about life, the universe and everything, we told travel stories, we drank good coffee and good wine, we played scrabble, we learned to make blinchiki***, we strolled along the banks of the Danube ... we more or less did all the usual things you do when catching up with friends after a long period of geographical separation. And all were good.

Also, three-year-old Inka was a real charmer, and as a parting gift she gave me an original artwork that's sure to be worth millions one day. (As an innovative contemporary artist, her preferred medium is corn chips coloured with food dye.) It's on my fridge now.

So the weekend was definitely one for the 'plus' column )))


5: ONCE MORE WITH PRZEZ

My journey back to Lviv was basically the same route in reverse, and I almost made it without incident. Getting on the right train in Katowice (Poland) was always going to be the difficult part – the station management there seem to consider it acceptable practice to omit some trains completely from their published timetable, and to leave platform departure signs blank or display random names on them. I guess they feel a duty to imbue the humdrum business of intercity travel with an air of mystery and a surprise element. To which one can only say "Thanks, guys ... Maladyets!***".

When I got to the platform which I thought was the right one, the signs there simply read "Przez". Now, I've no idea where Przez is, and I feel fairly confident that if you surveyed 200 random people on the streets of any world city, none of them would have a clue either. In fact, for all I know it might not be a city at all – it could be Polish for "sign out of order", or "apologies for the delay", or "Hey guys, guess what? Poland just qualified for the next World Cup! No more trains tonight ... we're gonna party like it's 1999!".

Ok, so it probably isn't the last one. But you never know ...

Eventually a train did turn up on my platform, and I saw the reassuringly familiar word "Lvov" (Russian for "Lviv") on the front of it. I cheerfully boarded the sleeper carriage – or at least, I tried to. The carriage attendant told me that my ticket was for platzkarte (a compartment full of seats; no sleeping berths), and directed me to the back of the train. I'd specifically asked for a spal'niy wagon (sleeping cabin), and the woman behind the counter had repeated the phrase as she handed me my ticket. But ok, whatever. At least I wouldn't be spending a night with the good folk of Przez ... and that was probably something to be thankful for!

6: BACK IN REVERSE GEAR

Next came a lucky break – or so it seemed. A few hours after I'd boarded the train in Katowice, it pulled into Krakow Glowny station, and all the other passengers in my seating compartment got out. This meant that I'd be able to push all the arm rests out of the way, and sleep lying across four seats.

"Brilliant!", thought the Word Nerd.  

As I was getting comfortable on my luxurious four-seater bed, the train pulled out of the platform ever-so-gradually, and for a few seconds the sensation of movement felt very satisfying. Then my deja vu sense began tingling. We were going back toward Katowice – i.e. back to where we'd come from!

"Hmmm", I thought. "That's a little weird ... but ok, not entirely unprecedented". 

We continued Katowice-wards for about five minutes, and then started going forwards again, at which point I guessed correctly that the train was going to pull into a different platform. Back at Krakow Glowny, I jumped off – a little surprised that there were no other passengers on the platform – but then had to leap back on a few seconds later, because the train had started moving backwards yet again.

The next humans I saw were railway maintenance workers and cleaners, standing beside the track and waiting for my train to arrive in a siding. By this time, I'd walked up and down my carriage and noticed that it was completely empty. I'd also noticed that the door to the next carriage was padlocked. Don't know if you've ever seen a padlock on the door of a train while you were inside it, but I can assure you that it's a sight which inspires neither calm nor confidence!

Anyway ... when the crowd of maintenance staff saw me through an open carriage window, I heard a few of them gasp. The train stopped and a guy in a bright orange vest got on, carrying a two-way radio. We attempted to communicate in a mish-mash of languages (a word of Polish here, a Russian or Ukrainian phrase there, the odd bit of English thrown in), and after this difficult exchange I understood that the back end of my train had been detached at Krakow Glowny. The first three carriages had gone on to Lviv – meaning that the spal'niy wagon which I'd attempted to board in Katowice was in fact the right one! Either I'd been sold the wrong ticket, or the carriage attendant had made a mistake when I tried to board.

Either way, my ride home tonight was well and truly gone.

The situation was undeniably bad, 'cause my Belle was waiting for me to return and I had no way of telling her what had happened. It was saved from complete and unmitigated awfulness, though, by one thing: namely, the incredibly sympathetic and eager-to-help maintenance staff of Polish National Railways.

After explaining things to me as well as he could, Mr Orange Coat got on his radio and said something that included the words do L'vova ("to Lviv") to gods-know-who. Then he motioned me off the train, and I climbed down onto the stones with my suitcase. He ushered me along the track, shining his flashlight at pieces of wire and other stuff that I should try to avoid, and took me to a huge man standing in front of another train. This guy just said "Wait" in Polish (luckily the same word as in Ukrainian), and there was some more two-way radio action.

I stood for about two minutes, then heard (or maybe felt) a deep approaching rumble. A few seconds later a diesel locomotive appeared, and stopped about three feet away from us. The huge guy lifted my suitcase into the cabin and gestured for me to follow it. There were two drivers on board who, with smiles but without a single word, gave me and my suitcase a private lift back to Krakow in their enormous machine. I watched them drive the train, and smiled to myself at the fluffy toys and other stuff sitting on the dashboard.

How's that for customer service?!

And so, here's where I find myself: a nearby clock is showing a little after 2am, I've moved off the market square to get out of the pouring rain (which started about 20 minutes ago) and I'm sitting at an outdoor table beside a closed café, writing on damp paper and hoping that none of the frequent police patrols will decide to hassle me as they pass. I've got about 30 more minutes to wait before I head back to the station to board my 3:20am train to the Ukrainian border where, after the usual customs palaver, I'll hopefully be able to hop back to Lviv by bus.

My pockets contain approximately enough Polish Zloty to buy half a cappuccino (if there was an open place to buy one), some fabulously useless Euro coins (they're accepted by the internet kiosk on the railway station concourse, but when I walked through there earlier, a homeless guy had unplugged the kiosk so that he could use the socket to charge his mobile), and a wad of Ukrainian Hryvnia which is unexchangeable anywhere outside of Europe's largest country****. Oh, and I have a banana and about four or five butterscotch candies.

Gosh, how I love this traveller's life!

Anyway, now you know more or less the full history of my slightly odd relationship with Krakow. With any luck, I'll get the chance to come back here once more before I leave Eastern Europe, and enjoy it properly in non-freezing temperatures and without transport hassles. We'll see.

Hope you enjoyed my extended ramble about nothing in particular. I promise the next entry will contain something more than a bunch of tangents and train rides!

Bye )))


* Ashgabat is Turkmenistan's capital, and a place I'd absolutely love to visit – especially after realising last year that I'd unknowingly turned into one of those people for whom "the Stans" exert a strange fascination. The city is a modern Islamic metropolis with touches of the typically Central Asian 'God King' mentality in its architecture ... like the enormous Neutrality Arch, topped with a 12m-high gold-plated statue of President Niyazov which rotates to always face the sun. This kind of 'president worship' never fails to interest me ... it's like stepping back into a land of Khans and Emirs. So there you go.

** Blinchiki = Russian-style pancakes. 

**** "Well done".

**** Europe's largest country is Ukraine, btw ... unless you're talking to a French person, in which case it's France. Or so I've heard, at any rate.

stranded (a bit)

a european odyssey in several parts

2: FREE-WHEELER
    (a.k.a. "All I want is a few hours' sleep, gods-dammit!")

You'd be amazed at what you can do to a train while people are on it. Or maybe you wouldn't ... depends on where you've travelled by train, I guess.

In any case, I was amazed at what happened on the border between Ukraine and Poland in December.

As you may or may not recall, I'd had no sleep the night before, so as the sun came up I tried to settle in for a restful journey to Krakow. It was difficult, though, 'cause I knew there'd be a border check and I didn't know what time we were meant to arrive at the magic line-in-the-sand.

About 90 minutes later, while I was staring vacantly into space, a tall red-headed woman with intense blue eyes came into my compartment. I remember being struck by the fact that the colour of her eyes matched her shapka* perfectly. Then it registered that the tall furry hat was part of the Ukrainian Border Patrol uniform, and that I was going to be asked for my passport. I quickly grabbed it from my bag and handed it over, and she took it politely and respectfully, asked me a few searching questions, and handed it back. Ok ... so far, so good.

However, when the process was repeated on the Polish side of the border, things started to get a little weird. (It's always a small increment of weirdness first, followed by larger and larger increments ... don't you find?) This time, when I tell you they took my passport, I don't just mean that they grabbed it, inspected it and added a big red stamp. The border patrol guy actually walked away with the passport in his hand, and a few minutes later I saw him getting off  the train and disappearing into a station office. I was suddenly ID-free, at the exact point in space where Europe officially begins and ... well, not officially Europe ends.

Almost half an hour elapsed before I got my passport back, and by this time I was more or less in a Zombie State. The moment the border patrol guard was gone, I keeled over in my bunk and tried to get comfortable. At last, I could fall into the waiting arms of sleep. At last I could make at least some attempt to arrive at my destination refreshed and ready for the Embassy visit which was the focus of my journey. At last, I could ...

Wait a second: what's going on? Why the Hell are we going backwards?

It was a largely rhetorical question: I knew there was no hope of me getting an understandable answer from the Ukrainian-speaking carriage attendant, even if I could find him.

And so I closed my eyes.

I've found that when you live as a foreigner – and often when you travel too – there are occasions when you just have to trust that whatever strangeness is happening around you will turn out to be non-fatal, and let it wash over you. Luckily, living in the former USSR provides plenty of practice in this art, and especially in Kazakhstan I learned to worry far less about things that would previously have sent me into Freakout Mode. So I guess that's what happened in this case: I just realised there was nothing I could do, and that realisation coupled with complete exhauston was enough to let me drift off to sleep, without any clear idea of where I might wake up.

I don't know how much later it was when I was shaken violently awake by the sound of an electric drill close by.

"Errr ... huh???"

I peeked into the corridor and saw two guys who looked like customs officers. One of them had a tool kit ... not something I'm used to seeing customs guys carrying! A few minutes later they entered my compartment, lifted up my bunk and asked me to open my suitcase. Ok, no problem. Then they got the drill out, and started removing the ceiling panel.

It was at this point that bells started ringing in my head. I remembered hearing about some of my colleagues crossing the Polish border by bus, and how customs had stripped the bus to find smuggled cartons of cigarettes (worth about $1 a pack in Ukraine, and $4 a pack in Poland).

The weird thing about that episode was that everyone, including the customs officers and most of the ordinary passengers, seemed to have been in on the scam. Customs delved into almost every little hidden space on the bus, and took out maybe ten cartons ... but they deliberately ignored a few obvious places, where most of the contraband cigarettes were hidden. And sure enough, as soon as the border was safely behind them, locals pulled out screwdrivers and crowbars, retrieved all the 'accidentally missed' cartons, and passed them to the driver. My friends, meanwhile, sat stunned in their seats. One of said friends had arrived in Ukraine barely a month earlier, after spending two years in sane and sunly Budapest. Nice introduction to the East for her )))

So anyway, back to my situation: the customs guys took apart my little sleep chamber, felt inside the ceiling with gloved hands, poked into all the corners with mirrors on long sticks and shined torches on the mirrors ... and then, apparently satisfied that I wasn't an evil tobacco smuggler, they smiled politely and left.

A few minutes later I peeked into the corridor again to see if they'd really gone, and if it was ok to sleep. The first thing I saw was a shifty-looking Ukrainian guy loitering less than a metre from me, with a question on the tip of his tongue: "Do you want to buy some cheap cigarettes?"

I closed my compartment door and locked it.

When the train started creeping forward a few minutes later – heading once again for the wonderfully unpronouncable Polish border town of Przemysl** – I lost consciousness entirely.
 
The next time I woke up we were in Przemysl, and my carriage was being jolted about violently in all directions. When I went to the vestibule for a cigarette, I noticed with horror that the carriage which had previously adjoined mine was gone, and that there was a locomotive in its place.
 
"WTF?", was naturally the next thing that went through my mind.
 
My first theory was this: there had been a technical problem with my carriage, and it had been hauled into a goods yard for maintenance, with me still inside. The carriage attendant was still on board, though. I couldn't ask him what was going on, so I just sat in my cabin, being buffeted backwards and forwards, until about 10 minutes later I finally remembered something that Scott had told me, which more or less explained what was happening.
 
"It's ok", I reassured myself. "Everything's going to be fine. They're just changing the wheels."

Mm-hmm, that's right; going from Ukraine to Poland, every train has its wheels taken off and replaced with wheels of a different size ... while the passengers are on board! Not only can I not imagine how this is done; I can't even imagine why it's done. I mean, if the rails are a different size in Poland, why not just get everyone to change trains at the border? I really don't get it. But anyway, that's what happened ... and it was not a gentle process!


3: STEAM & THINGS

Anyway, once the new wheels were affixed, the rest of the journey to Krakow passed smoothly, and I finally, finally slept.

Some time later I had my first glimpse of Poland's "cultural capital", and I have to say it was very pleasant (apart from the biting cold). As I mentioned in the last entry, the christmas market with its steaming sausages, its steaming hot wine and its steaming everything-else-that-had-been-heated-to-above-freezing was rather wonderful. And there were plenty of poky little streets to explore in this beautiful medieval city. I mean, it didn't blow my mind the way Tallinn does – but then, few other places in Europe can compete with that level of prettiness.

(I have to ignore Tallinn when I'm rating other European cities, 'cause it just throws the whole scale. With that done, I'd probably put Krakow somewhere not too far from the top.)

The alternative, 'arty' vibe in the city was definitely not something I'd expected to encounter – especially after living in nearby Lviv for a few months, where said vibe exists only in pockets. On my second night in Krakow, I spent most of the evening in an underground 'rock club' where I danced to everything from Rammstein to The Doors, sharing the premises with a motley collection of metalheads, punks, goths, rockers and other interesting folk. The next morning I woke up on a sofa in the hostel reception, alongside other guests and staff members who'd all come back and collapsed with me after a great but exhausting night out.

This was definitely a contrast to Lviv, where the 'cool' clubs are frighteningly pedestrian, sleazy and depressing (and where I haven't dared to venture into any of the less reputable ones, for fear of throwing up in disgust).

And that – apart from a little bribery to get myself a private compartment on the way back, which I'd actually purchased but then been denied – was my first visit to Krakow.

Which brings me almost back to the present moment, sitting on the bench in the main market (sans christmas stalls this time) and hoping my laptop battery doesn't run out as I scribble down my thoughts (or at least, as I do the electronic equivalent of scribbling ... i.e. typing anything that comes to mind at 20,000 kph, then going back later and wondering what the Hell I was trying to say, and whether it can be organised into anything that approaches coherency).

So ... how did I end up here again, on this chilly May evening?

Hmmm, good question. Glad you asked ;-)

Tell you later.


... to be continued


* shapka - I've mentioned these before in The Manor, but in case you've forgotten, they're those tall furry hats that are popular in Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere within the 'former Soviet world'.

** I remember in the 1990s seeing a fake news story on The Onion (political satire website), to the effect that Clinton was sending the US Army into the former Yugoslavia to bomb it with vowels. The article was full of stuff like "Officials in the regional capital of Brzlsmc say that the shortage of vowels here could lead to ethnic cleansing if the situation doesn't improve soon." I often think of that silly piece of humour when faced with names like "Przemysl".

stranded (a bit):

a european odyssey in several parts

Er ... hmmm. Technically this is my third time in Krakow. To say that, though, almost seems like a form of cheating. The second visit was just a whistle-stop en route to a further-away destination, and the third (i.e. now) was completely unplanned ... kind of a "stranded by the dysfunctional character of Polish public transport and by my own unobservant nature" type situation.

As I write this, I'm sitting at one end of the huge and elegant main market square, where five months ago I bought one hell of a fabulous kielbasa (Polish sausage) at the Xmas market. Almost as memorable as the sausage was the mulled wine, which I sipped while walking around in -12C, blowing on my cup to make the steam rise up in clouds and warm my frozen face.

I love doing that!

Anyway, it's now a little after 1am on a Tuesday morning, and the square is thinly populated by ... well, by the kinds of people who thinly populate squares at 1am on weeknights. Most of them are drunk, and one or two are singing. (I just heard a few bars of Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2U, somewhat massacred by two drunken Polish girls staggering home from a bar.)

Under normal circumstances, I'd probably be thinking "Wow, it's great to be back in Krakow!" My first impressions of this city were very positive, and I told myself that I had to return here in warmer weather, to see how it looked in its beautiful spring green coat. But as you've no doubt guessed, the present circumstances depart somewhat from normality. I feel that my relationship with "Poland's cultural capital" has taken another strange turn ... and I use the word "another" quite deliberately.

Let's start at the beginning ...


1: SLEEP DISRUPTION

My friend Scott – as all who know him will surely attest – can be rather persuasive. He first demonstrated this ability when we lived together in Kazakhstan, and has continued to do so over the last six months. (We work together now in Lviv.) And I have to say that, when it's cold and snowy outside, and I don't have to work the following day, I'm rather an easy target :-)

Here's a case in point: on the night before my visa run* to Poland last December, as we were finishing up at work, Scott said "Hey, you're going to another country tomorrow. Let's have a quick drink to celebrate!" I agreed, adding the caveat "but it has to be only one. My train leaves at 7:20 in the morning." However, that night we saw the first real snow in Lviv; the streets were icy-cold and glistening, and the cafes were warm and full.

And yes ... I think you can guess what happened ;-)

In fact, as I was walking home through the pristine snow at 5am the next morning – accompanied by some random guy who claimed to be a 'skinhead' and enthusiastically outlined his views on Pan-Slavic Solidarity and Death to All Russians** – I realised that I'd barely have time to iron, pack and get a taxi in time to be on the train.

But hey ... gotta live while you can, right?

As it turned out, this was a fitting start to a weekend characterised by weird sleeping patterns, continually disrupted by random occurences.

The first wake-up call came an hour later, when my taxi driver dropped me at the wrong station. I'd almost fallen asleep in the passenger seat, but to get my train I had to run with my wheelie bag through a thick blanket of white for about 15 minutes. A nearby LED display showed
-13C, and the wind whipped me mercilessly as I struggled along the roadside. That will always wake you up ... especially when your train is leaving soon and you're not entirely sure that you're running in the right direction!

I reached the station and found the platform with only minutes to spare. As I climbed the stairs to the platform, the clock showed 7:18am. My train's exact departure time: 7:19. The platform was deserted, and the signs on the carriages were cryptic. I had no idea which was my carriage, and no time to find out ... so I threw my bag through the nearest open door and leapt in behind it. I almost lost my footing as the train jolted forward and began rolling out of the station, pulling my right foot in behind me to avoid the crush of the closing door.

The conductor showed me to my place in the carriage (which by some miracle was the right one), and I thankfully discovered that I had a whole cabin to myself – a rare luxury in this part of the world, where you normally have to share your sleeper compartment with strangers. I collapsed on the lower bed, thinking "Yay! I can sleep all day, and arrive refreshed!"

I could hardly have been more wrong.

The journey ahead was a mini-adventure in itself, and an education for those like me who had never before travelled by land from the wilds of Eastern Europe to the 'civilised' territories of the EU. I was about to make rather an unusual border crossing ... and it's not the kind of thing you can sleep through.

I'll tell you about that soon. For now, let me wish you a good night :-)

... to be continued ...



* "visa run": I mentioned these once before, but in case you missed it: this is where you get a visa for the country where you're living, but at some point you have to go to another country to either change your visa type or extend the validity of the visa. It's common to a lot of countries, from Russia to Thailand and beyond.

*** "Pan-Slavic solidarity and death to all Russians": a plainly self-contradictory philosophy of course. But then, it seems to me that zealots of all kinds are drawn only to ideas which clearly contradict themselves ... have you noticed that too?

word nerd vs. big blue watery thing

waddle, waddle, waddle ... kick.

"Ow!"

difficult.

waddle, waddle, stop.
hesitate ... leap ...

(1/2 a second of suspended time)

SPLASH!

ohmigod: shock of water ... cold!
salty taste ... awful.

open eyes. blue everywhere.
Yuliya nowhere.

surface. breathe.
awareness of the tide,
pushing me towards ... wait, I see legs!
found her.

ok ... swim, swim, stop. swim a bit more.
look around: girlfriend location check.

but what's ...
and the amazing swirly patterns on the rocks ...
are they really ...
and how close is it to ...

"Aaaarrgghhh!!!"

rock ... very, very sharp!

can't be more than 20cm below the surface;
can't swim over it,
can't go round it,
and now I'm on top of it.

brain dredges up long-forgotten coral references:

"knife-edged and deadly",
"slicing through human skin like razor blades" 

hands try to push away into the blue;
tide pushes back.

breathe ... push ...
ignore cuts and scratches on legs;
ignore salt in wounds;
ignore impulse to inspect the bleeding.

A quasi-haiku of reassuring self-talk:

clarity
calm, rational thoughts
push into the open sea
breathing normally
relax

off the coral now, and swimming

look down.
freak out ... abyss!
empty, blue, shadowy and vertiginous.

no way of telling
how deep ...
what lives there ...
what might suddenly appear

no escape route,
except back to the razor blade mountain.

don't panic

look for Yuliya.
ok, still there,
and seems to be enjoying
(weird)

look for boat. where's ...

whatthe   

ok: now you can panic.

"Where's the f!@#%ing boat?
The f!@#%ing boat has f!@#%ing gone! F!@#%CK!!!"

stomach turns like a pancake ...
and again, for more frying on the bottom side.

no more hai and no more ku;
just lots of pissed off noises,
and against-the-current exertions,

constricted in my ill-fitting life-jacket 
this is probably the least fun
I could have
with my pants off*.

Anthony's introduction to the Red Sea (and to snorkelling) is definitely not going well.

Twenty minutes later, back on the boat, I try to explain to The Belle why I'd had such a relentlessly awful experience in the water. The problem is, I'm not even sure myself. I mean, being dropped so close to the wall of coral certainly had something to do with it ... as did the fact that our boat pulled away from us, following people who had jumped out earlier and swum to another location.

But it was more than that. For me, the whole thing was a heart-pounding terror – the equivalent of a claustrophobe spending 20 minutes in a broken-down elevator, or a pogonophobe** being forced to wear a suit lined with stubble for a week.

I guess part of it was about the sea itself. I don't get in it very often, and every time I do, it has an effect similar to that "staring up at the night sky and feeling very tiny and insignificant" feeling. I'm aware – sometimes consciously, sometimes not – that what I'm immersed in is the biggest and most powerful thing on our planet, and it makes me realise just how small and ineffectual I am by comparison. This knowledge tends to overwhelm me a little.

Btw, this 20-minute stress-a-thon was part of a day-long excursion which included both snorkelling and diving – and the diving part (which had seemed far scarier than snorkelling when we booked the trip) was up next.

After the horridness of snorkelling, it seemed clear that there was no way I'd enjoy diving. I therefore told Yuliya that I didn't want to do it, and when we got the call to go below deck and suit up, I stayed above in the sunshine.

Here's the thing, though: with no-one else around, I was free to begin the process of talking myself into something that scared the shit out of me. I had no idea if it would work this time, but it has in the past ... especially when I've been able to add a "This may be the only time I get such an opportunity" clause to the mix.

About 10 minutes later, I joined My Belle in the lower cabin. 

Our first task was to read the waiver form. Of course the confidentiality clause prevents me from telling you exactly what was in it (and I don't remember the wording anyway), but here's the general gist:

You may die of fright. You may drown. Your arms and legs and torso and reproductive organs may end up in the digestive system of a shark. Your equipment may fail, fall off, strangle you or explode in an underwater ball of flame. You may break your back, lose your mind, throw up your spleen or bleed the entire contents of your arteries out your ears due to pressure changes. Or you may simply be sliced into julienne by the boat propellor. In all of these cases, or in the event of any other disaster our lawyers haven't dreamed up yet, our company reserves the right to say "I'm sorry, we don't know this person – they must've snuck onto our boat and stolen our equipment while we weren't looking." So it's your problem, basically.

Have a great time!

When we'd both finished reading we held our pens poised above the document, ready to add our sginatures but hesitating at the grimness of it all. I asked Yuliya "How did you feel about all of that?"

"Terrified", was her reply.

And so we signed.

I distinctly remember the song that was in my head while I was adding my scrawl to the document: it was Neuroticfish's They're Coming to Take Me Away. How appropriate.

Almost immediately after we'd signed our lives away, a nervous Yuliya was loaded up with an oxygen tank that weighed almost as much as she does, helped to her feet, and lowered into the sea. On her way in she bruised her elbow rather badly. Then she disappeared beneath the surface. I tried to relax.

(Ha ... like that was going to happen!)

Half an hour later she was back, telling me how incredible the experience had been. And then it was my turn.

Tank on, wetsuit on, mask on.
Off the boat, into the water next to the instructor.

Instructor says "go under the water and breathe".
I try. The panic returns. I surface.

"Try again. Hold the oxygen tightly in your mouth."

I do as he says. Same panic.

"You're not doing as I say!"

He was wrong; there was some other problem. I couldn't quite work it out, but something was making me see red every time I went beneath the surface. I could breathe from the tank, but my heart started racing each time I took a breath, and I had this feeling that I couldn't get the whole action to work ... like the first time you get behind the wheel of a car, and there seem to be far too many things to think about at once.

"You have to listen to me!",

he says.

"I am listening, but something else is wrong. Just a second ... I'll try one more time."

Down into the blue again, and ... wait, got it!

I came up and adjusted my mask, which I'd suddenly realised had been jammed against my nostrils the whole time, making it impossible to breathe out through my nose.

The adjustment couldn't have been more than a few millimetres, but when I went under the fourth time, everything was absolutely fine ... oxygen ok, heart ok, panic levels pretty close to absolute zero.

So that had been the problem all along ... so simple! And the same for snorkelling: the panic had been my unconscious reaction to something that hadn't even registered in my conscious mind – i.e. that my nasal passage was being forced closed. And that's all.

With that sorted, we did the other pre-flight tests, and then the instructor deflated my buoyancy vest and I began to sink. And then to swim very gently.

I looked down. There was the void again, as deep and almost-limitless as before, but this time I couldn't take my eyes off it (whereas before I couldn't look for more than half a second without the fear taking hold).

As we descended, the instructor kept checking that I was ok with pressure and so on, and gently guiding me down towards the seabed. I was transfixed. Not the most original metaphor, I know, but at times I really felt as though I was flying in slow motion over the surface of an alien world. I could see valleys, country roads, little mountain ranges, and other geographical features which we don't have on our planet.

The beauty of it all was just absolutely mind-bending.

A few minutes later we were almost at the bottom, and I was still staring straight down in complete wonder. Suddenly the instructor pointed ahead. I looked up, realising I'd been so intent on the seabed that it hadn't occurred to me that this was a 3-D environment ... I could look in any direction I wanted. Stupid first-timer!

Then it became apparent why the instructor had chosen that particular moment to make his pointing motions: we were approaching, and in fact almost touching, a vertical underwater cliff. It was a coral city! Lots of fish winding between rocky outcrops, plants waving about softly, and so on and so forth. This was just magical.

We swam around the base of the cliff for a minute or two, then headed out onto the sea floor, ascending and descending slightly to get over ridges of coral growing on the bottom. I was truly stunned at this point ... everywhere I looked was life, and lots of it.

The whole dive lasted for about 25 minutes, and after heaving myself back onto the boat I had one thing to say to Yuliya: "How soon can we go again?"

Before we headed back to Sharm, we snorkelled again – this time in calm waters that were absolutely teeming with fish. You'd literally stick your head under the surface and find them swimming beside your cheek ... or you'd look down and see a whole school of colourful, sucker-mouthed aquatic folk passing beneath you, with some sword-shaped companions in tow. No fear this time ... just a sense of "Wow, this is frikkin' unbelievable!"

And then, as I was preparing boarding the boat for the final time, someone shouted "Jelly!" The implication was that we couldn't get back to the boat without risking a jellyfish sting, 'cause there was one hanging around near the ladder. I stayed at a safe distance, treading water; stuck my head under water for a second, and saw another jelly about six inches away from my face. Went "Aaaaaah!", tried to paddle away from it, and actually touched the damn thing with my hand.

Uh-oh ... poison time!

But nothing happened. No pain, no paralysis, no poisoned hands of death closing around my heart. No change at all.

I was then joined by an Egyptian guy who I'd met earlier in the day. He asked why I was here doing essentially nothing, and I said "There's a jellyfish over there, and we're waiting for it to move away from the boat. There's one around here somewhere too".

"Like this one?", he said.

"Er ... yeah."

By "this one", he meant the jelly that he was now holding in his hand (probably the same one I'd touched a minute eaerlier). He'd picked it up in his palm, turning it upside down so that the creature's outer 'umbrella' flopped over the sides of his hand, and its insides were visible.

"Don't worry", he said cheerfully. "They're not dangerous."

Apparently not. Hmmm ... that's certainly one difference between Australia and Egypt that I hadn't anticipated!

Heading back to Sharm el-Sheikh, I felt contented and reflective: this had been an amazing day. It's not often that you get to discover a whole new kind of physical environment that you've never seen before, whilst overcoming a blinding fear at the same time. All in all, I'd say it was worth the airfare by itself. And it definitely won't be the last time I venture under the sea. Stay tuned for more fishy adventures ...

:-)



* Many years ago I had a colleague called Odette who was very fond of the expression "It's the most fun you can have with your pants on!". I always found it quite amusing ... hence the desire to 'flip the phrase over' when describing a horrible experience which entailed me wearing only bathers.

(A ridiculous footnote, if ever there was one!)   

** pogonophobia = fear of beards. (Margaret Thatcher was apparently a pogonophobe, and wouldn't let any of the ministers in her cabinet grow facial hair.)

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.