You know Fuqua has something special afoot when the BMO moves the black benches out of the Fox Center and into the mallway. Perhaps it’s the fresh alignment, the extra places to crash and chat, or simply a gerrymandered absence of blank space that brings the school a fresh, inviting look. Hi, nice to see you. Welcome home. For the first time, the honored guest, the debutante, is you.
Growing up, my father always used to tell us the Riddle of the Sphinx, the winged gatekeeper that guarded ancient Thebes: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?” Why, that, Oedipus solved, is the man! He crawls when he is a baby, walks upright in his prime, and uses a cane in his old age. For his wisdom, the Thebans named him king.
While we’ll save Oedipus’ other deeds for Behavioral Econ, I’m thinking he was onto something. BDW tells you the same riddle, only you don’t realize it until the third go-around, when you effectively are the answer. You drive or fly down to Durham, walk into Fuqua on the proverbial four legs, green and awestruck – ohmigahd this is really happening; wait, the lights went down and they’re cheering for me; they want me, they really want me!; this is my school now, I don’t have to kiss ass anymore... A year later, it’s your show – time to groom the new class, read them, mold them, pep-talk them, guide them. Nice to meet you, see you soon. Let’s have fun next year... Then, suddenly, blink!, you’re the old man, preparing for your pasture. It’s BDW again, and you’re not the debutante, not the guest of honor; there’s little left but to watch and smile with the grace of an elder statesman.
For me, BDW personified the most seismic shakeup in life since I studied abroad at 16, bigger even than college, first job, or trip to New Zealand. In the months prior, the MBA had been a distant mirage – yeah, Duke, that’s happening at some point, but let's hit Mackey's for happy hour – and suddenly, poof!, Duke shoved itself, regally, to the front of the line. I wouldn’t be living in Washington much longer; Afghanistan would have to stand or fall without me. Goodbye, Nationals; hello, Bulls (an upgrade, in case you’re wondering). Now, BDW portends another bittersweet change, a move out of Durham, back to world that sent me. I hope I've fared well.
My friend Stacey, Duke ’07, had raved about BDW since before I had even applied. We caught up when I was on the way home.
“So,” she asked. “Did you meet a lot of great people?”
“Yes.”
“Are they the people you want to spend the next two years of your life with?”
At the time, it felt like “are you going to marry this girl?” after a first date. Now, I’m looking back wondering why I had even thought of going out with anyone else.
And so, Class of ’12, here’s your MBA: Synergies good. Labor unions bad. Don’t T-Rex.
But Duke is so much more, and for now, BDW is your movie trailer, a harbinger of two years of emotions on speed – of deep despair and soaring exhilaration, of paradise lost and regained, of friendship born and emboldened, of slings, arrows, and outrageous fortune.
Welcome home, 2012.
You have no idea.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Raising Sedona (3/18/2009)
You folk come through the canyon?”
“Yah.”
“Last night?”
“Yah.”
“In the snow?”
“Yah.”
“Son… ain’t no one ever survived the canyon in such a blizzard before...”
The last 26 miles of Arizona 89A were a flaky white powder that had smothered our 2,000-foot decent from the highway to Sedona, and Ellen, Kristin, and I were mildly dismayed. The nearest town, and lights, were miles back in Flagstaff, which may well have been on Mars. Funny, the locals told us later, they usually close 40 and 89A in a blizzard like this; for a city that draws 17 inches of precipitation a year, the fact that we were drawing a quarter in a few hours was remarkably unsettling.
Behind the wheel, I wasn’t scared of skidding off road per se (lie alert) as I glanced at the GPS every six seconds, but more of a coyote, an elk, or The Shining twins that might be waiting around the next hairpin. “Totus tuus,” Pope John Paul would have surrendered; and when your SUV is running a marathon straight downhill with no civilization, no lights, no space to turn around, and sheer rock face beckoning six feet to your left, theology turns appetizing: Call on God. Ask forgiveness. Thank him you’re not in a Toyota.
Earn this, Sedona cackled.
The night, we deduced later, was a blessing, both since it veiled the rock cliffs abutting the road and the red buttes towering above it, as foreign to a New Englander as the rattlesnake meat on the saloon’s menu. Turns out the buttes are foreign to everyone: their power, or wisdom, heal-iocentricity, or whatever, has turned Sedona from backwater Wild West town – think Hill Valley, 1885 – to gathering ground for new-age mystics and healers where “crystal,” “vortex,” and “you’re f*cking kidding me, right?” dominate local dialect. Miss Cleo, meet Buford Tannen.
Two mornings later, I got my McFly on and decided to explore. Still jetlagged, I snapped awake at 5:30, a wholly unreasonable vacation hour. With few options, I bounded out the door, camera in tow, to see auroral Sedona, capture the sun as it met the red rocks, examine up close the new-age splendour (yes, that deserves a “u”) that the storm two days hence had hidden. For two hours, Sedona teased me incessantly – cute initially, but eventually a man v. foul temptress chicken game that kept me outdoors, matching wits with mountain air, strolling up and down 89A and Jordan Road, in 24-degree pre-dawn cold.
Earn this, Sedona cackled.
Suddenly, dawn awoke, a swell like Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man ripping through the street. The bronze sculptures, the wooden facades roared to life, the ravens pecked around me, as I stood, pallid, a witness to Sedona, tired, frigid, awed...
Twelve hours later, Ellen, Kristin, and I boarded a jeep tour, a last fling with the splendour off-road and personal. The trail, which wound us through buttes, forests, red mud, and bacteria-ridden topsoil, took us up and down 45-degree inclines and around sharp turns. Good evening, red rocks, nice to see you. “This was the bed of a prehistoric ocean. The limestone that starts here forms the Colorado Plateau” our guide explained, “the red you see comes from a 1/10 of 1 percent iron pigment that your is trained to pick up.”
As we stood on Submarine Rock overlooking the eventide, the light bouncing from strange angles illuminating scars of ancient iron, Utah Spruce trees, and (perhaps) mystical vortexes that stretched beyond fault lines and buttes, through the Old West town. Slowly, we headed back downhill to our jeep.
We had earned it.
Las Vegas, a Love Story (3/16/2009)
The morning light hits Las Vegas early, a radiant yet unwelcome call to life from eastward. My coast, some 3000 miles its orient, has already bustled away two hours, and Vegas, wanting none of it, continually hits the snooze. “If it be thus a dream,” it picks from Twelfth Night, “then let me sleep.”
Rita Hayworth famously held “They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me.” Befitting a starlet who distracted America through depression and war, Vegas will indulge you and dine you, intoxicate your vices and wax your splendor. Slots! Music! Blackjack! Strippers! In nowhere but Vegas can you waltz to bed with Gilda on a continuous desert high, glorious and deafening, with neon flickering outside your window begging you to come back for another hand, another dance, another tryst. But before the light can bounce off the golden windows of Mandalay Bay, Gilda slinks away to primp anew, and leaves you to wake up alone.
Vegas is an American gem, as part of the cultural canon as baseball, Gone with the Wind, or the Super Bowl, a sanitized snapshot of how wildly we dream. Dance with Gilda down Las Vegas Boulevard and get lost in neon, in flashing dreams, in names that roll off like lovers. Bellagio. Mirage. Mandalay Bay. Encore.
Vegas will take you around the world in eighty minutes, to indulge your worldliness without leaving the desert. Eschew your passport and in less than four miles, you can paddle the canals of Venice, stare down a pale, blue-eyed sphinx; swim amid Roman gods and flirt with Kipling on the Road to Mandalay. If you want to rekindle your childhood (our deepest longing, if Glenn Beck has taught us anything), there’s King Arthur’s castle, the Emerald City, and a pirate ship. Want some guarantees on the local nine? Grab a sports book. Sox at 6/1? Sign me up.
Which is why the Vegas morning is such a bleaching experience, a sobering gap between ecstasy and banality, between Gilda and, well, not Gilda. "Remember last night?" the empty slots seem to ask: "Sorry we couldn't stay... we know you understand." Checking out? Here’s your airport cab, we’ve got more coming, thanks for the memories. More new hopes, more dreams, more Americans willing to forego worries, war, and Depression, for a tryst or three with Gilda.
In Vegas, you can forget your perils at will, and let Gilda glide you to sleep. When you wake up and she's gone, at least you know you got a goodnight kiss.
Rita Hayworth famously held “They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me.” Befitting a starlet who distracted America through depression and war, Vegas will indulge you and dine you, intoxicate your vices and wax your splendor. Slots! Music! Blackjack! Strippers! In nowhere but Vegas can you waltz to bed with Gilda on a continuous desert high, glorious and deafening, with neon flickering outside your window begging you to come back for another hand, another dance, another tryst. But before the light can bounce off the golden windows of Mandalay Bay, Gilda slinks away to primp anew, and leaves you to wake up alone.
Vegas is an American gem, as part of the cultural canon as baseball, Gone with the Wind, or the Super Bowl, a sanitized snapshot of how wildly we dream. Dance with Gilda down Las Vegas Boulevard and get lost in neon, in flashing dreams, in names that roll off like lovers. Bellagio. Mirage. Mandalay Bay. Encore.
Vegas will take you around the world in eighty minutes, to indulge your worldliness without leaving the desert. Eschew your passport and in less than four miles, you can paddle the canals of Venice, stare down a pale, blue-eyed sphinx; swim amid Roman gods and flirt with Kipling on the Road to Mandalay. If you want to rekindle your childhood (our deepest longing, if Glenn Beck has taught us anything), there’s King Arthur’s castle, the Emerald City, and a pirate ship. Want some guarantees on the local nine? Grab a sports book. Sox at 6/1? Sign me up.
Which is why the Vegas morning is such a bleaching experience, a sobering gap between ecstasy and banality, between Gilda and, well, not Gilda. "Remember last night?" the empty slots seem to ask: "Sorry we couldn't stay... we know you understand." Checking out? Here’s your airport cab, we’ve got more coming, thanks for the memories. More new hopes, more dreams, more Americans willing to forego worries, war, and Depression, for a tryst or three with Gilda.
In Vegas, you can forget your perils at will, and let Gilda glide you to sleep. When you wake up and she's gone, at least you know you got a goodnight kiss.
After Sunrise (9/26/2009)
The most haunting scene in Richard Linklater's “Before Sunrise” is a montage right before the fade to black. A solo violin resonates over empty Vienna; chairs, a graveyard, a bridge, a park, a river, empty wine glasses, each of which Jesse and Celine – our travelers – had visited while falling in love hours before. The Danube flows unashamedly; Vienna lives on. The message is clear: travel is never about landscapes or landmarks, the military parades or luxury hotels. It’s the fleeting moments – the late afternoons on outdated trams, the fleeting connections with strangers, the midnight strolls through empty Hapsburg streets.
"Before Sunrise" is my Europe, an emotional time capsule of bright-eyed youth. There I was, 17 and idealistic, wandering the same streets, alone or with two, three, four friends. Vienna, Munich, Nuremberg, Berlin ... a smoky cafe, a train station where fog obscured everything beyond the platform, a sip of hot wine and cinnamon sticks, no thought of home or even tomorrow... It was, for a romantic, idealistic kid, a banquet of discovery and imagination.
Of course Jesse and Celine could fall in love. When time and circumstance converge, in Central Europe, no less - you would too. The Danube, the sunset, the eerie silence... the unashamed guts to plant one, as Jesse did, on French girl atop Orson Wells’ “The Third Man” Ferris wheel.
Ten years later, I ventured back to Budapest - a new city this time, but still my Europe, an expense account, and three days' wages for (yes) 30 minutes of work. A chance to reconnect to say hi to the blue Danube, to wander and discover through those same Hapsburg streets. I was no nervous teenager, but still twenty-six, wry and plucky.
In Budapest, though, something had changed. Maybe it was the digital invasion - yes, that was it - the Internet cafes in the old stucco buildings, the wireless ads whitewashed over the hammer and sickle. Or maybe it was the sleek, modern airport; convenient, yes, but a thrill below the transient, watch-thy-pockets train station... Or the rain - always an easy culprit...
But no... Budapest was gorgeous, particularly in the morning. I couldn't begrudge the conveniences, and I always harbored a secret love for the Central European rain - reading in a cafe, watching it fall, or seeing how the sleek streets shimmered in the moonlight.
Maybe the change was me. The idealism was gone, usurped by an uninvited day-to-day order. Ten years ago, tomorrow didn't matter. Now, six more months till b-school applications are due - oh, this back pain is really getting to me - I can really go without seeing that park, who cares - better rest up so I can catch that early flight...
Somewhere, a lonely violin was twanging.
Thus the empty Vienna of “Before Sunrise” still resonates: a hallmark, a reminder of bygone idealism, of young love and friendships blossoming in the fading daylight. Twelve years and four continents on, little can equal the awe of discovery in a musty Vienna (Prague, Munich, Nuernberg) café beside the echoes of an rickety steel tram.
"Before Sunrise" is my Europe, an emotional time capsule of bright-eyed youth. There I was, 17 and idealistic, wandering the same streets, alone or with two, three, four friends. Vienna, Munich, Nuremberg, Berlin ... a smoky cafe, a train station where fog obscured everything beyond the platform, a sip of hot wine and cinnamon sticks, no thought of home or even tomorrow... It was, for a romantic, idealistic kid, a banquet of discovery and imagination.
Of course Jesse and Celine could fall in love. When time and circumstance converge, in Central Europe, no less - you would too. The Danube, the sunset, the eerie silence... the unashamed guts to plant one, as Jesse did, on French girl atop Orson Wells’ “The Third Man” Ferris wheel.
Ten years later, I ventured back to Budapest - a new city this time, but still my Europe, an expense account, and three days' wages for (yes) 30 minutes of work. A chance to reconnect to say hi to the blue Danube, to wander and discover through those same Hapsburg streets. I was no nervous teenager, but still twenty-six, wry and plucky.
In Budapest, though, something had changed. Maybe it was the digital invasion - yes, that was it - the Internet cafes in the old stucco buildings, the wireless ads whitewashed over the hammer and sickle. Or maybe it was the sleek, modern airport; convenient, yes, but a thrill below the transient, watch-thy-pockets train station... Or the rain - always an easy culprit...
But no... Budapest was gorgeous, particularly in the morning. I couldn't begrudge the conveniences, and I always harbored a secret love for the Central European rain - reading in a cafe, watching it fall, or seeing how the sleek streets shimmered in the moonlight.
Maybe the change was me. The idealism was gone, usurped by an uninvited day-to-day order. Ten years ago, tomorrow didn't matter. Now, six more months till b-school applications are due - oh, this back pain is really getting to me - I can really go without seeing that park, who cares - better rest up so I can catch that early flight...
Somewhere, a lonely violin was twanging.
Thus the empty Vienna of “Before Sunrise” still resonates: a hallmark, a reminder of bygone idealism, of young love and friendships blossoming in the fading daylight. Twelve years and four continents on, little can equal the awe of discovery in a musty Vienna (Prague, Munich, Nuernberg) café beside the echoes of an rickety steel tram.
Rue the Day (7/9/2009)
It was late Tuesday afternoon on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and the Parisian traffic was whipping by in the waning time that it could move somewhat steadily before rush hour. My friend Chuck and I had just alighted from the Odeon Metro, burdened with 50 pounds of luggage, overtired, and lacking any idea where the hell we were.
This was, perhaps, our fault. Theoretically, London and Paris should be the most easily connected European capitals, though we had gone to significant lengths to make the trip as complicated as possible. We’d caught a cheap (like, 15 pound cheap) flight out of distant and obscure Luton airport, which required us to be out of our Kensington hotel before 4 a.m., catch a Tube to a regional train that might as well have taken us to the Industrial midlands as far as we were concerned, only to have to run to our general-admission-seating flight, and had been ripped off by buying more expensive train tickets than we’d needed to get into Paris. Added to that, it was cloudy. Louis XIV had not drawn it up this way.
Paris had always been the dessert that I was content to save. My designs – probably like yours — had been purely romantic – a sip of wine in the Latin Quarter with my lady love, or if that didn’t work, Sophie Marceau. A drive through the Provence countryside in the spring … a twilight gaze at Mont Saint Michel at high tide … a trek up the Rouen Cathedral…
And now, I’m stranded on the curb at rush hour. In March.
With my roommate.
Paris marked, in effect, the first time I had been anywhere without being able to get by with English, German, or Russian. As a language student – and one who could read rudimentary French but not form a diphthong to save my life — this frustrated me to no end. The best I could do was name drop some Montreal Canadiens lineup and recite untranslated passages from Les Mis, which needless to say, did me little good here.
Our hotel – which we’d found through a friend – was tucked away in an alley off a side street, roughly halfway between Odeon and Pont Neuf. For all we knew, every hotel in Paris may well have been between Odeon and Pont Neuf. We flagged a cab: “Rue de Nesle, si vous plait!” “Non,” the cabbie responded, rolling off. Pedestrians, maps and tour books didn’t mark alleyways… finally, we ducked into the post office, a few minutes before it closed. They drew us up a map on goldenrod scratch paper. Success.
Hotel de Nesle is an independent travelers’ hotel, one owned and run by a proprietor who, despite the fact that one reviewer confirms that “La clientèle est en majorité anglo-saxonne,” speaks no English. In retrospect, this was hysterical and, perhaps, defied logic or common sense. She was a very polite, extremely nutritionally gifted woman who collected daily bills in cash and didn’t budge from behind the desk in the back corner of the lobby, which strategically always remained in the shadows. The only indication that she moved – or was moved – was her periodically changing muumuu.
There are about 20 rooms, give or take, off the spiral staircase up the building’s backbone, up which, of course, we had to schlep 50 pounds of luggage. Each room, furthermore, was painted with murals that depicted famous figures from French history. I was crossing my fingers for Victor Hugo, and thought fleetingly, that reciting some of Enjolras’ lament might woo the matron, though quickly dashed the thought when realizing that, no exceptions, you never sweet-talk anyone wearing a muumuu. Climbing the stairs, I tried to guess.
Marie Antoinette … an endless supply of cake.
No, too much of a downer. How about de Gaulle and governing in exile…
Nah. Too modern. But Napoleon would be fitting of a small hotel…
Athos. Porthos. Aramis … Richelieu … Voltaire… Rodin, I think…
We climbed to third floor and threw open the door: Paul Gauguin and the conquest of Polynesia.
The fact that this rang like a PBS miniseries aside, the decor added to the peculiarity. Plastered against the wall were two four-foot Polynesian women who looked sort of like Mulan, dressed only in flower wreaths and grass skirts. Because you can never have enough blanket stereotypes. Gauguin himself occupied maybe a twentieth of the space – just a head peeking out of the upper left corner, his tongue from a promiscuous grin.
And so, my first two hours in Paris taught me that you can run an Anglo-centered business without knowing Anglo, that cab drivers would rather blow you off than earn easy cash, that no one can differentiate the “numerous” hotels that sit between Odeon and Pont Neuf, that the French penchant for nudes extends to cartoony wallpaper, and above all, that Mr. Synthetism was a peeping tom.
Sacre bleu, this was going to be a fun week.
This was, perhaps, our fault. Theoretically, London and Paris should be the most easily connected European capitals, though we had gone to significant lengths to make the trip as complicated as possible. We’d caught a cheap (like, 15 pound cheap) flight out of distant and obscure Luton airport, which required us to be out of our Kensington hotel before 4 a.m., catch a Tube to a regional train that might as well have taken us to the Industrial midlands as far as we were concerned, only to have to run to our general-admission-seating flight, and had been ripped off by buying more expensive train tickets than we’d needed to get into Paris. Added to that, it was cloudy. Louis XIV had not drawn it up this way.
Paris had always been the dessert that I was content to save. My designs – probably like yours — had been purely romantic – a sip of wine in the Latin Quarter with my lady love, or if that didn’t work, Sophie Marceau. A drive through the Provence countryside in the spring … a twilight gaze at Mont Saint Michel at high tide … a trek up the Rouen Cathedral…
And now, I’m stranded on the curb at rush hour. In March.
With my roommate.
Paris marked, in effect, the first time I had been anywhere without being able to get by with English, German, or Russian. As a language student – and one who could read rudimentary French but not form a diphthong to save my life — this frustrated me to no end. The best I could do was name drop some Montreal Canadiens lineup and recite untranslated passages from Les Mis, which needless to say, did me little good here.
Our hotel – which we’d found through a friend – was tucked away in an alley off a side street, roughly halfway between Odeon and Pont Neuf. For all we knew, every hotel in Paris may well have been between Odeon and Pont Neuf. We flagged a cab: “Rue de Nesle, si vous plait!” “Non,” the cabbie responded, rolling off. Pedestrians, maps and tour books didn’t mark alleyways… finally, we ducked into the post office, a few minutes before it closed. They drew us up a map on goldenrod scratch paper. Success.
Hotel de Nesle is an independent travelers’ hotel, one owned and run by a proprietor who, despite the fact that one reviewer confirms that “La clientèle est en majorité anglo-saxonne,” speaks no English. In retrospect, this was hysterical and, perhaps, defied logic or common sense. She was a very polite, extremely nutritionally gifted woman who collected daily bills in cash and didn’t budge from behind the desk in the back corner of the lobby, which strategically always remained in the shadows. The only indication that she moved – or was moved – was her periodically changing muumuu.
There are about 20 rooms, give or take, off the spiral staircase up the building’s backbone, up which, of course, we had to schlep 50 pounds of luggage. Each room, furthermore, was painted with murals that depicted famous figures from French history. I was crossing my fingers for Victor Hugo, and thought fleetingly, that reciting some of Enjolras’ lament might woo the matron, though quickly dashed the thought when realizing that, no exceptions, you never sweet-talk anyone wearing a muumuu. Climbing the stairs, I tried to guess.
Marie Antoinette … an endless supply of cake.
No, too much of a downer. How about de Gaulle and governing in exile…
Nah. Too modern. But Napoleon would be fitting of a small hotel…
Athos. Porthos. Aramis … Richelieu … Voltaire… Rodin, I think…
We climbed to third floor and threw open the door: Paul Gauguin and the conquest of Polynesia.
The fact that this rang like a PBS miniseries aside, the decor added to the peculiarity. Plastered against the wall were two four-foot Polynesian women who looked sort of like Mulan, dressed only in flower wreaths and grass skirts. Because you can never have enough blanket stereotypes. Gauguin himself occupied maybe a twentieth of the space – just a head peeking out of the upper left corner, his tongue from a promiscuous grin.
And so, my first two hours in Paris taught me that you can run an Anglo-centered business without knowing Anglo, that cab drivers would rather blow you off than earn easy cash, that no one can differentiate the “numerous” hotels that sit between Odeon and Pont Neuf, that the French penchant for nudes extends to cartoony wallpaper, and above all, that Mr. Synthetism was a peeping tom.
Sacre bleu, this was going to be a fun week.
The Lamp, Part 4 (7/6/2009)
Soaked, I headed back down Mariahilfberg, across town to the only person I could pay a surprise visit to on a Sunday evening: my advisor, Inken. I had met her a solid month before, and we’d established a good rapport as I worked through the original jitters: She was a gorgeous, blonde 21-year-old law student at Passau University, and had spent her own exchange, five years previous, in rural Maine. Her German was a clean Lubeck dialect, free from the vowel mutations of back-country Bavarian. Her English was littered with the dropped “-r” of a New Englander.
Inken smiled as I opened the door. We hadn’t chatted in a while, and now that the Lechner tempest had quelled, we talked idly in English and German for half an hour or so. We tried a few times to call my host family. By this point, I had a feeling that something was wrong – I thought (correctly) they were at their grandmother’s in neighboring Vilshofen, but played dumb and said I didn’t know. I wanted to delay; maybe they’d have blown off steam by the time they came home.
They finally picked up the phone, and I headed back up around eight. The sky was clear now, the walk a bit more pleasant. When I got home, I knocked on the side door; my host mother threw it open and thundered “Get changed. I have to talk to you.”
I was screwed. I knew it.
And so, I did, and as expected, they laid into me. You broke your vow. You are a liar, an actor, a manipulator. All the progress from the last month had dissolved. My explanation – or attempted one, of “actually, I was telling people I can’t email” didn’t hold water, they didn’t want to hear it. Hand in the modem. You can’t call home until Christmas. You betrayed us. How could you do that? O the times! O the mores!
My host sisters stood, one to each side, openly lamenting like the women on Calvary. “Why, Matt? What’s wrong with letters?” You’d have thought I’d knocked one of them up.
That was that. No use explaining my side, how I was doing it for a longer-term good. I admitted I was wrong, and accepted defeat.
I retired to my room, shaken. I knew I had screwed up, but the task certainly hadn’t warranted the reaction. As I opened my door, wondering where this would lead, I noticed the patio light was off.
On Tuesday afternoon, my host parents made it official; they were tossing me out, effective at noon the next day. Frau Renner, who oversaw all students in Passau, would pick me up and find me a new abode. Forget school and pack your stuff now. But at least, my host mother said, “this wasn’t an easy decision. We barely slept last night.” I took slight consolation.
Leaving the Lechners was bittersweet. On the one side, I was relieved. I had literally no idea what the next eight months could hold – that village in Saxony, perhaps – but at the same time, I had just started to feel comfortable, had a superficial yet tangible rapport with a family who, on the surface, seemed to like me. And now, an innocent mistake dashed it all for an unknown beginning.
Wednesday morning, I was stuffing the last pieces into my backpack, one of which was my black folder containing all my letters. There among them was the Lechners’ treatise – 95 things we hate about you – staring at me in Consolas font and with five signatures waxed across the bottom. I contemplated for a moment whether to keep it, a last memory of them, a paper trail of their passive aggression and a reminder that, sometimes, you can’t please everyone.
I read it once, tore it into 200 pieces, and piled them on the desk.
*********************************************************************************
Epilogue:
Twelve years on, I wish I had kept the letter. It was, in hindsight, a break-up note nonpareil, and since the rest of the letters from that year – filed, neatly in my parents’ house – are truly my most treasured possession, it would have been a perfect yardstick in tracking my own growth and friendships as they matured throughout the year.
My decision – Blink! – not to extinguish the light on that Friday evening was far more seismic than I realized at the time, or even that year. Without it – and the escape it provided – my year would likely have stagnated. A continuing détente at best, a time bomb at worst. The subsequent eight months, none of which would have happened as they did, snowballed into events that shaped my life, relationships, and worldview.
I began to list them all here – highlighted by a fateful trip to Prague – but stopped. Each trip its own nut, each relationship its own gem, each lesson its own thread. And each one, its own story.
A last word on the Lechners, though: I never saw them, as a whole, again. On subsequent Passau trips, I have seen a few of them in passing – my host mother in the shopping district, Flo walking from a bus, Anna on the footbridge headed to university. None of them have flinched, and I’m guessing they didn’t recognize me. Who's to say they would, too? They had convinced themselves fully that I didn't want to be there, that I didn't love Germany the way I they wanted me to. Hard to think they'd ever see me returning. The joke, I guess, was on them.
Several times since, I’ve found myself making the walk back up to Schaerdingerstrasse. Most of the time I go all the way to the border; the station is abandoned now, the arm permanently raised. On the way to and from the station, I spend a few minutes staring at the house, wondering how life would have differed had I flicked the switch back in November ’97. The basement rooms are probably empty, the path to the back patio less trampled than it was a decade ago.
I smile, sometimes. Laugh, even. The light, I’m sure, is out.
Inken smiled as I opened the door. We hadn’t chatted in a while, and now that the Lechner tempest had quelled, we talked idly in English and German for half an hour or so. We tried a few times to call my host family. By this point, I had a feeling that something was wrong – I thought (correctly) they were at their grandmother’s in neighboring Vilshofen, but played dumb and said I didn’t know. I wanted to delay; maybe they’d have blown off steam by the time they came home.
They finally picked up the phone, and I headed back up around eight. The sky was clear now, the walk a bit more pleasant. When I got home, I knocked on the side door; my host mother threw it open and thundered “Get changed. I have to talk to you.”
I was screwed. I knew it.
And so, I did, and as expected, they laid into me. You broke your vow. You are a liar, an actor, a manipulator. All the progress from the last month had dissolved. My explanation – or attempted one, of “actually, I was telling people I can’t email” didn’t hold water, they didn’t want to hear it. Hand in the modem. You can’t call home until Christmas. You betrayed us. How could you do that? O the times! O the mores!
My host sisters stood, one to each side, openly lamenting like the women on Calvary. “Why, Matt? What’s wrong with letters?” You’d have thought I’d knocked one of them up.
That was that. No use explaining my side, how I was doing it for a longer-term good. I admitted I was wrong, and accepted defeat.
I retired to my room, shaken. I knew I had screwed up, but the task certainly hadn’t warranted the reaction. As I opened my door, wondering where this would lead, I noticed the patio light was off.
On Tuesday afternoon, my host parents made it official; they were tossing me out, effective at noon the next day. Frau Renner, who oversaw all students in Passau, would pick me up and find me a new abode. Forget school and pack your stuff now. But at least, my host mother said, “this wasn’t an easy decision. We barely slept last night.” I took slight consolation.
Leaving the Lechners was bittersweet. On the one side, I was relieved. I had literally no idea what the next eight months could hold – that village in Saxony, perhaps – but at the same time, I had just started to feel comfortable, had a superficial yet tangible rapport with a family who, on the surface, seemed to like me. And now, an innocent mistake dashed it all for an unknown beginning.
Wednesday morning, I was stuffing the last pieces into my backpack, one of which was my black folder containing all my letters. There among them was the Lechners’ treatise – 95 things we hate about you – staring at me in Consolas font and with five signatures waxed across the bottom. I contemplated for a moment whether to keep it, a last memory of them, a paper trail of their passive aggression and a reminder that, sometimes, you can’t please everyone.
I read it once, tore it into 200 pieces, and piled them on the desk.
*********************************************************************************
Epilogue:
Twelve years on, I wish I had kept the letter. It was, in hindsight, a break-up note nonpareil, and since the rest of the letters from that year – filed, neatly in my parents’ house – are truly my most treasured possession, it would have been a perfect yardstick in tracking my own growth and friendships as they matured throughout the year.
My decision – Blink! – not to extinguish the light on that Friday evening was far more seismic than I realized at the time, or even that year. Without it – and the escape it provided – my year would likely have stagnated. A continuing détente at best, a time bomb at worst. The subsequent eight months, none of which would have happened as they did, snowballed into events that shaped my life, relationships, and worldview.
I began to list them all here – highlighted by a fateful trip to Prague – but stopped. Each trip its own nut, each relationship its own gem, each lesson its own thread. And each one, its own story.
A last word on the Lechners, though: I never saw them, as a whole, again. On subsequent Passau trips, I have seen a few of them in passing – my host mother in the shopping district, Flo walking from a bus, Anna on the footbridge headed to university. None of them have flinched, and I’m guessing they didn’t recognize me. Who's to say they would, too? They had convinced themselves fully that I didn't want to be there, that I didn't love Germany the way I they wanted me to. Hard to think they'd ever see me returning. The joke, I guess, was on them.
Several times since, I’ve found myself making the walk back up to Schaerdingerstrasse. Most of the time I go all the way to the border; the station is abandoned now, the arm permanently raised. On the way to and from the station, I spend a few minutes staring at the house, wondering how life would have differed had I flicked the switch back in November ’97. The basement rooms are probably empty, the path to the back patio less trampled than it was a decade ago.
I smile, sometimes. Laugh, even. The light, I’m sure, is out.
The Lamp, Part 3 (7/5/2009)
I had had the choice to leave my host family after the first four weeks. It was standard operating procedure in those days for the student to choose, two weeks in, whether to stay with the orientation-time family or to play Roulette and be placed elsewhere in the country. The Lechners and I had always considered this a long-haul gig; the first two weeks had gone fine, I loved Bavaria, and I had no real reason to uproot myself and head for what may well have been a tiny village in Saxony.
It was, I maintain, the right choice. And as I continued to make friends, see Bavaria, and improve my German, I fell in love with my new life. My friends at home were battling PSAT and balancing around on college visits while I was bouncing around Germany, speaking a new language, tasting the delicacies. True, my host family was growing more distant, but I never considered it more than the honeymoon wearing off – perhaps school was too heavy, or the quiet American wasn’t novel anymore.
I loved seeing, breathing, experiencing Germany and wanted to share it. I needed to talk. And so, on top of sending copious letters and postcards, I also called home – friends and family – every couple of days. It was, even I knew, too much. I’d given thought to quitting and relying solely on snail mail, but for some reason I couldn’t break the tie completely. Maybe by November, I thought…
My host family, it turned out, drew up a lot of negative connotations from the phone calls, and strikingly, never told me save a few veiled references in passing. Slowly, their anger waxed. They talked to other host parents, vented behind my back. Vietnam barbs aside, I barely noticed.
The fever broke 10 days before Halloween, and 48 hours before I left for a week to visit some German friends up north. At around 7 p.m., my host family and I sat down around the dinner table. They sent their youngest to another room, and one by one, teed off. Four months of rage poured out.
“You don’t really want to be here.” (Actually, I really like it…)
“You never walk our dog.” (You never asked me to…)
“You get your news from CNN, so you only care about America.” (Logical fallacy aside, the CNN you get is CNN international. Its US coverage is paltry at best…)
“You call home too often.” (You got me there. But I’ve slowed down; give me some time…)
“You don’t like our food.” (That’s a new one…)
“You never ask us how our day was.” (I suck at small talk. You should see me try to chat up women…)
“You’re unfriendly.” (Shy, yes. But unfriendly … that’s excessive…)
“You probably sleep in school.” (That’s conjecture, but no, I actually don’t…)
On it went for over an hour, a repeated tongue-lashing where I sat, largely silent, picking at walnut shells. Unequivocally and remarkably, none of their opinions varied. Five voices spoke as one. At the end, they handed me a letter – a typewritten 95 theses we hate about you, ratified by all of them – to ruminate on, before they left the table en masse. I retreated to my room, shocked and awed, before I read and shoved the letter out of sight.
And so, for the next few months, I made myself who they wanted. I BSed. Lauged with them. Said thanks for dinner every night. Walked the dog. Played hockey with the six-year-old. Stopped calling home. Stayed off e-mail. My conversations about their days were, sometimes, downright remnant of the German 101 textbook.
“Hi Dorothea! How was your day today?”
“My day was great, Matt. Thanks for asking! How was your day?”
“Thanks for asking, Dorothea. My day was excellent. My math teacher came in today with the letters ‘VD’ emblazoned across his belt buckle. That’s probably not funny to you, since you know it’s just his initials, but to me…”
Small talk is hardly my game, but my host family liked it. And more importantly, they liked me. It was forced, yes. Stereotypical, yes. But in the don’t-screw-up détente of Schaerdingerstrasse, I was hardly one to argue.
A month later, the first weekend of Advent, I shared a joke with my host parents before retiring to my room at 7:30. It was Friday, but I had to be up in 10 hours anyway to catch an early train to Nurnberg for the Christkindlmarkt, an outdoor holiday market with wooden toys and Lebkuchen and Gluhwein – with the slight snowfall that the paper expected, it would be the typical German Christmas. Somewhere, the Brothers Grimm were smiling.
It was already dark out as I walked downstairs. My host brother had left an hour or so before, and the outside light was still illuminating the back stairs. I went to the door, and put my hand on the switch. I contemplated for a second whether to flip it. No, I decided – better leave it on. Flo must have wanted to light his way home, maybe in case the stairs ice over or something. I thought nothing more of it and went to my room.
I read some letters that night to pass the few hours before bed. A few were imploring me to check my e-mail. With the pax dontcallica reigning above, I figured it better to end the e-mail thing by sending a quick blast – Hi guys, love you all, but I want to rely on snail mail now rather than calls and e-mails. Write me that way. Peace, Matt – to everyone. I fired up the ancient laptop.
As I did, my host father came down to shut the light off – drat, I knew I should have done that. He looked at me typing, saw the modem’s cord to the phone jack, said goodnight, and went to bed. I wondered if he was pissed: but when a couple hours passed and no one came down, I figured he trusted I hadn’t broken our détente.
The next morning, I headed to the train station and spent a memorable weekend with students from Germany, Norway, Russia, Finland, Denmark, and the US. Nurnberg – which I still consider one of Europe’s most striking cities – was in full holiday regalia. If the American Christmas comes from anywhere, it’s decidedly Germanic – one which I couldn’t wait to chat about once I got home.
By Sunday, the dusting of snow had turned to a deep rain. When the train pulled into Passau around five, I decided, stubbornly, to walk back up Mariahilfberg. I was already wet, I thought, plus it’ll give me the chance to burn off the Lebkuchen I’d been chomping down all weekend. If nothing else, the tranquility of that walk never got old.
I reached the house on Schaerdingerstrasse about 45 minutes later. The lights, strange for a Sunday, were all off. I plodded around the house to the basement entrance and shook the water off my hair as I fished for my key.
Finally, I grabbed it. I shoved it into the lock. It didn’t move. I tried again, a few more times, but no luck. A key was in the other end. I stood outside, in the rain, locked out.
It was, I maintain, the right choice. And as I continued to make friends, see Bavaria, and improve my German, I fell in love with my new life. My friends at home were battling PSAT and balancing around on college visits while I was bouncing around Germany, speaking a new language, tasting the delicacies. True, my host family was growing more distant, but I never considered it more than the honeymoon wearing off – perhaps school was too heavy, or the quiet American wasn’t novel anymore.
I loved seeing, breathing, experiencing Germany and wanted to share it. I needed to talk. And so, on top of sending copious letters and postcards, I also called home – friends and family – every couple of days. It was, even I knew, too much. I’d given thought to quitting and relying solely on snail mail, but for some reason I couldn’t break the tie completely. Maybe by November, I thought…
My host family, it turned out, drew up a lot of negative connotations from the phone calls, and strikingly, never told me save a few veiled references in passing. Slowly, their anger waxed. They talked to other host parents, vented behind my back. Vietnam barbs aside, I barely noticed.
The fever broke 10 days before Halloween, and 48 hours before I left for a week to visit some German friends up north. At around 7 p.m., my host family and I sat down around the dinner table. They sent their youngest to another room, and one by one, teed off. Four months of rage poured out.
“You don’t really want to be here.” (Actually, I really like it…)
“You never walk our dog.” (You never asked me to…)
“You get your news from CNN, so you only care about America.” (Logical fallacy aside, the CNN you get is CNN international. Its US coverage is paltry at best…)
“You call home too often.” (You got me there. But I’ve slowed down; give me some time…)
“You don’t like our food.” (That’s a new one…)
“You never ask us how our day was.” (I suck at small talk. You should see me try to chat up women…)
“You’re unfriendly.” (Shy, yes. But unfriendly … that’s excessive…)
“You probably sleep in school.” (That’s conjecture, but no, I actually don’t…)
On it went for over an hour, a repeated tongue-lashing where I sat, largely silent, picking at walnut shells. Unequivocally and remarkably, none of their opinions varied. Five voices spoke as one. At the end, they handed me a letter – a typewritten 95 theses we hate about you, ratified by all of them – to ruminate on, before they left the table en masse. I retreated to my room, shocked and awed, before I read and shoved the letter out of sight.
And so, for the next few months, I made myself who they wanted. I BSed. Lauged with them. Said thanks for dinner every night. Walked the dog. Played hockey with the six-year-old. Stopped calling home. Stayed off e-mail. My conversations about their days were, sometimes, downright remnant of the German 101 textbook.
“Hi Dorothea! How was your day today?”
“My day was great, Matt. Thanks for asking! How was your day?”
“Thanks for asking, Dorothea. My day was excellent. My math teacher came in today with the letters ‘VD’ emblazoned across his belt buckle. That’s probably not funny to you, since you know it’s just his initials, but to me…”
Small talk is hardly my game, but my host family liked it. And more importantly, they liked me. It was forced, yes. Stereotypical, yes. But in the don’t-screw-up détente of Schaerdingerstrasse, I was hardly one to argue.
A month later, the first weekend of Advent, I shared a joke with my host parents before retiring to my room at 7:30. It was Friday, but I had to be up in 10 hours anyway to catch an early train to Nurnberg for the Christkindlmarkt, an outdoor holiday market with wooden toys and Lebkuchen and Gluhwein – with the slight snowfall that the paper expected, it would be the typical German Christmas. Somewhere, the Brothers Grimm were smiling.
It was already dark out as I walked downstairs. My host brother had left an hour or so before, and the outside light was still illuminating the back stairs. I went to the door, and put my hand on the switch. I contemplated for a second whether to flip it. No, I decided – better leave it on. Flo must have wanted to light his way home, maybe in case the stairs ice over or something. I thought nothing more of it and went to my room.
I read some letters that night to pass the few hours before bed. A few were imploring me to check my e-mail. With the pax dontcallica reigning above, I figured it better to end the e-mail thing by sending a quick blast – Hi guys, love you all, but I want to rely on snail mail now rather than calls and e-mails. Write me that way. Peace, Matt – to everyone. I fired up the ancient laptop.
As I did, my host father came down to shut the light off – drat, I knew I should have done that. He looked at me typing, saw the modem’s cord to the phone jack, said goodnight, and went to bed. I wondered if he was pissed: but when a couple hours passed and no one came down, I figured he trusted I hadn’t broken our détente.
The next morning, I headed to the train station and spent a memorable weekend with students from Germany, Norway, Russia, Finland, Denmark, and the US. Nurnberg – which I still consider one of Europe’s most striking cities – was in full holiday regalia. If the American Christmas comes from anywhere, it’s decidedly Germanic – one which I couldn’t wait to chat about once I got home.
By Sunday, the dusting of snow had turned to a deep rain. When the train pulled into Passau around five, I decided, stubbornly, to walk back up Mariahilfberg. I was already wet, I thought, plus it’ll give me the chance to burn off the Lebkuchen I’d been chomping down all weekend. If nothing else, the tranquility of that walk never got old.
I reached the house on Schaerdingerstrasse about 45 minutes later. The lights, strange for a Sunday, were all off. I plodded around the house to the basement entrance and shook the water off my hair as I fished for my key.
Finally, I grabbed it. I shoved it into the lock. It didn’t move. I tried again, a few more times, but no luck. A key was in the other end. I stood outside, in the rain, locked out.
The Lamp, Part 2 (7/5/2009)
My host parents had converted the basement from a private apartment to extra bedrooms six years prior to accommodate their fourth child. Even in heavily Catholic Bavaria, four kids is substantial: That they took on me, a fifth, effectively, was surprising but admirable. But then, you would have too.
You see, the previous year, family friends had hosted Bill, the California wunderkind. Bill was the consummate American exchange student; a chatterbox who loved small talk about your day. He frequented the Kamera diskothek (which for Passau, might well have been Studio 54.) He smiled a lot, and his flowing curly hair slinkied out from the everpresent fedora.
I’m not exaggerating: Bill was a Passau legend. Passau is a small city with few celebrities, and Bill was the local youth’s rock star. Everyone in Dublin has a Bono story; everyone in Passau had a Bill story. I arrived two weeks after his departure – one celebrated with a gathering at the train station and, if pictures were any testament, a sendoff remnant of the end of Revelation.
They wanted the outgoing Californian. They got the shy New Englander. Guess who came to dinner.
And, with all these expectations, my year actually began well. My language skills were rudimentary but solid, and I was away most of the day at a monthlong orientation anyway, learning that (among others) it wouldn’t all be roses, so wait for the other shoe to drop. Ha ha, I’m different, suckers, I thought. These initial nerves subsided; we’d joke, best we could at least, about the days ongoings, and I’d ask them about various Passau landmarks… what do you think of this architecture? What do you like better, the Dom or St. Paul Church? That hockey team in Deggendorf… how easy is it to get tickets?
Germany fascinated me, and I wanted to decipher the dialects, see the landscapes, taste the beer. As I poured over maps and travel magazines in their living room, they’d occasionally jump in. You have to make it to Munich. Linz. Nurnberg. Vienna. Landshut…
By early October, my weeks and weekends were full, and I hardly noticed my family’s passive aggression escalating. My host sister Dorothea, 17, stopped inviting me out with her friends. Well, whatever, I thought: she’d just had a falling out with the guy I’d talked to most when we hung out together. My host brother Flo, 19, was short with me once or twice. My host mother took to communicating through signs she posted for “general use” in the bathroom.
Still, I’m not a natural confronter, and maybe I was imagining all this. After all, the euphoria and newness had worn off and we were still cordial. Best, I thought, to keep a low profile and stay out of their hair.
One Saturday morning, though, I learned how long that hair stretched. My host father and sisters were finishing a late breakfast. There were a few extra rolls on the table; better eat them before they go stale.
“Who wants them?” my host father asked.
“Ach, I can’t” said Dorothea.
“Me neither, I’m too stuffed,” said Anna.
He looked at me, and said in the only English I'd ever heard from him: “Matt, kill ‘em all.”
“Kill ‘em all?” Dorothea asked. “Where’s that from?”
“You know,” he responded. “Kill ‘em all. Like in Vietnam.”
You see, the previous year, family friends had hosted Bill, the California wunderkind. Bill was the consummate American exchange student; a chatterbox who loved small talk about your day. He frequented the Kamera diskothek (which for Passau, might well have been Studio 54.) He smiled a lot, and his flowing curly hair slinkied out from the everpresent fedora.
I’m not exaggerating: Bill was a Passau legend. Passau is a small city with few celebrities, and Bill was the local youth’s rock star. Everyone in Dublin has a Bono story; everyone in Passau had a Bill story. I arrived two weeks after his departure – one celebrated with a gathering at the train station and, if pictures were any testament, a sendoff remnant of the end of Revelation.
They wanted the outgoing Californian. They got the shy New Englander. Guess who came to dinner.
And, with all these expectations, my year actually began well. My language skills were rudimentary but solid, and I was away most of the day at a monthlong orientation anyway, learning that (among others) it wouldn’t all be roses, so wait for the other shoe to drop. Ha ha, I’m different, suckers, I thought. These initial nerves subsided; we’d joke, best we could at least, about the days ongoings, and I’d ask them about various Passau landmarks… what do you think of this architecture? What do you like better, the Dom or St. Paul Church? That hockey team in Deggendorf… how easy is it to get tickets?
Germany fascinated me, and I wanted to decipher the dialects, see the landscapes, taste the beer. As I poured over maps and travel magazines in their living room, they’d occasionally jump in. You have to make it to Munich. Linz. Nurnberg. Vienna. Landshut…
By early October, my weeks and weekends were full, and I hardly noticed my family’s passive aggression escalating. My host sister Dorothea, 17, stopped inviting me out with her friends. Well, whatever, I thought: she’d just had a falling out with the guy I’d talked to most when we hung out together. My host brother Flo, 19, was short with me once or twice. My host mother took to communicating through signs she posted for “general use” in the bathroom.
Still, I’m not a natural confronter, and maybe I was imagining all this. After all, the euphoria and newness had worn off and we were still cordial. Best, I thought, to keep a low profile and stay out of their hair.
One Saturday morning, though, I learned how long that hair stretched. My host father and sisters were finishing a late breakfast. There were a few extra rolls on the table; better eat them before they go stale.
“Who wants them?” my host father asked.
“Ach, I can’t” said Dorothea.
“Me neither, I’m too stuffed,” said Anna.
He looked at me, and said in the only English I'd ever heard from him: “Matt, kill ‘em all.”
“Kill ‘em all?” Dorothea asked. “Where’s that from?”
“You know,” he responded. “Kill ‘em all. Like in Vietnam.”
The Lamp, Part 1 (6/21/2009)
Number 49 Schaerdinger Strasse stood on the southern slope of Mariahilfberg – “Mary’s Help Hill,” the only bit of Passau, Germany, south of the Inn River, which otherwise divided it from Austria.
Few people ventured there, and those that did stopped at the Baroque convent halfway up. It was a pilgrimage site, you see, and getting there tested the most devout. If you drove, you prayed that your suspension could hold up during the half-mile, switchbackless drive up the 45-degree hill. If you were intrepid and walked, your thighs might scream mutiny. Lose your brakes or your footing, and well, Mary help you.
Beyond the convent, there was little reason to go further – just a few farms, houses, and a nursing home tucked away in the mile or so before the border. There also were cornfields and deer farms, guarded over by a wooden barn that seemed to age in dog years. You could get to Austria, sure, but there wasn’t much once you got there. The nearest town, Schaerding, was a solid 10 miles of country roads away – if you wanted to get there from Passau, the Mariahilfberg route was probably the least convenient; you’d have to cut through town and uphill to get there, and by the time you did, you could have been speeding down the Autobahn and have been there in minutes.
Number 49’s garage door and eight-foot gray fence were the only parts visible from the front. There were never cars in the driveway, and the courtyard was completely surrounded by a high wall and, occasionally, the stray vine. It was almost always impossible to tell if anyone was home. Walk down the hill, though, and the façade – a long one, perhaps 25 yards of house, revealed itself:
The garage, big enough to fit two cars, though the family of six could only afford one, a burgundy Previa with an oversized ass…
Behind that, the passageway… it looked on the outside like a painted accordion, but inside was a sheltered, open-air hallway between garage and home. You could look out on the courtyard from there, and occasionally my host father would peer through the vines and greet his oldest daughter, sunbathing in the yard.
After the passageway, the house began. It was two stories, and the roof shaped much of the top floor’s ceiling. You could see three windows from the street; my host sisters’ bedrooms, I think, since they’d occasionally study out on the porch…
After the windows came the front door, which was technically on the side, I guess … I dunno. I rarely used it anyway, and if so, more as an exit than an entrance. I’d occasionally pop out to grab my mail – oh, the mail in those days! – but rarely used it for anything else. My only key was to the basement door, and the only times I had to knock on this one were when my host brother had left his key in the inside part of the basement lock, preventing mine from going in the outside. He did that once during my first month, but quickly apologized.
Beyond the front door, the path continued down the hill, 10 more yards maybe, to the end of the house. My door was back there, at the bottom of a small staircase. The staircase sat right below the panorama window in the living room – from there you could look out to the farms of Saming, Austria. Most days, I woke up and looked abroad before I saw another person.
I trudged the path alongside the house many times, mostly at night as my social and traveling lives became more robust. The back entryway was illuminated only by a solitary lamp, next to the door. Unlike the one out front, this one was not on a motion detector; its only switch was inside.
Whether my host father designed it this way, I’ll never know. But his decision to do so years before, spurred on the turning point of my exchange year – and, perhaps, my life – on a rainy Sunday in November 1997.
Few people ventured there, and those that did stopped at the Baroque convent halfway up. It was a pilgrimage site, you see, and getting there tested the most devout. If you drove, you prayed that your suspension could hold up during the half-mile, switchbackless drive up the 45-degree hill. If you were intrepid and walked, your thighs might scream mutiny. Lose your brakes or your footing, and well, Mary help you.
Beyond the convent, there was little reason to go further – just a few farms, houses, and a nursing home tucked away in the mile or so before the border. There also were cornfields and deer farms, guarded over by a wooden barn that seemed to age in dog years. You could get to Austria, sure, but there wasn’t much once you got there. The nearest town, Schaerding, was a solid 10 miles of country roads away – if you wanted to get there from Passau, the Mariahilfberg route was probably the least convenient; you’d have to cut through town and uphill to get there, and by the time you did, you could have been speeding down the Autobahn and have been there in minutes.
Number 49’s garage door and eight-foot gray fence were the only parts visible from the front. There were never cars in the driveway, and the courtyard was completely surrounded by a high wall and, occasionally, the stray vine. It was almost always impossible to tell if anyone was home. Walk down the hill, though, and the façade – a long one, perhaps 25 yards of house, revealed itself:
The garage, big enough to fit two cars, though the family of six could only afford one, a burgundy Previa with an oversized ass…
Behind that, the passageway… it looked on the outside like a painted accordion, but inside was a sheltered, open-air hallway between garage and home. You could look out on the courtyard from there, and occasionally my host father would peer through the vines and greet his oldest daughter, sunbathing in the yard.
After the passageway, the house began. It was two stories, and the roof shaped much of the top floor’s ceiling. You could see three windows from the street; my host sisters’ bedrooms, I think, since they’d occasionally study out on the porch…
After the windows came the front door, which was technically on the side, I guess … I dunno. I rarely used it anyway, and if so, more as an exit than an entrance. I’d occasionally pop out to grab my mail – oh, the mail in those days! – but rarely used it for anything else. My only key was to the basement door, and the only times I had to knock on this one were when my host brother had left his key in the inside part of the basement lock, preventing mine from going in the outside. He did that once during my first month, but quickly apologized.
Beyond the front door, the path continued down the hill, 10 more yards maybe, to the end of the house. My door was back there, at the bottom of a small staircase. The staircase sat right below the panorama window in the living room – from there you could look out to the farms of Saming, Austria. Most days, I woke up and looked abroad before I saw another person.
I trudged the path alongside the house many times, mostly at night as my social and traveling lives became more robust. The back entryway was illuminated only by a solitary lamp, next to the door. Unlike the one out front, this one was not on a motion detector; its only switch was inside.
Whether my host father designed it this way, I’ll never know. But his decision to do so years before, spurred on the turning point of my exchange year – and, perhaps, my life – on a rainy Sunday in November 1997.
Bereshit, or "Prologue: Bellevue Hill" (6/8/2009)
A century ago, Bellevue Hill afforded the best views in Boston. On a spring day after a long New England winter, you could ride the steam train from downtown to Highland Station. If you’re chipper – and why wouldn’t you be – you can walk that mile up Park Street. If you want to conserve your energy, pay a quarter and ride that shuttle up, up, up 347 feet.
There’s a water tower there; looks like a turret. "This is the highest point in town," the tower keeper would brag, bounding out to greet you.
"Look, to the northwest! There’s snowcapped Monadnock, sixty five miles away in New Hampshire. Live free or die, those folks say.
"See in front of it? That’s Mount Wachusett, a lonely drumlin where that little girl, bless her, disappeared some hundred years ago. Probably abducted, she was. Or killed! That poor mother, though… Some say you can still hear her voice on the wind, calling…
"See downtown, the gold dome of the State House! We have the oldest Constitution in the world. We had our act together seven years before those nitwits in Philadelphia pulled it off. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a pine cone on top; supposed to remind us how important our lumber industry is.
"And east, across town, Castle Island and Dorchester Heights: if you were here in March of 1776, you’d have seen the Redcoats flee in those frigates. Take your tea home, George! Don’t tread on us!"
A century on, the trees have obstructed the view, and there’s no real reason to scale the last hundred feet, save curiosity or seclusion. A barbed-wire fence blocks off the summit now; after those terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, West Roxbury might be next. The standpipe still stands – hey, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places – but few locals know and fewer care.
I grew up a quarter mile from the tower and only once or twice felt the need to visit. Still, the hill’s height affords a few advantages. Major thoroughfares criss-cross it on all sides, meaning that public transportation into town, particularly from the city’s most suburban neighborhood, is plentiful. There is apparently a “Bellevue Hill” aura that is supposed to impress people who don’t live on it, though at 28, I have yet to see anyone’s jaw drop when I told them I lived there.
The last advantage, though I didn't see it as one, was the waves.
You see, our house was about five blocks down the hill from the water tower, and though not the highest point, we were still some 250 feet above the city and the satellite dishes which beam Boston TV to the masses. Up high, the airwaves were freer and reception comparatively sound. Since we could get the major networks with relatively little interference, we didn’t need cable. And so, in 1986, my parents made the first decision that my siblings and I rib them for today; they deep sixed the cable box.
No Disney Channel, no ESPN, no NESN. My beloved Fraggle Rock was gone; for 19 years, I was slave to network TV.
We had one of those old clunkers encased with faux oak and equipped with different VHF and UHF dials that we had to – thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk – change by hand. After the initial shock wore off, which was softened by the introduction of Nintendo, the standard nine channels (on a good day) usually sufficed. The Red Sox or Bruins were on once a week, usually Fridays, and the Saturday morning cartoon lineup of Garfield and U.S. Acres kept me attentive on days with no hockey practice.
With no Disney Channel or Nickelodeon (I never knew what you couldn’t do on television) my access to kids’ TV was limited. And so, when ABC aired the occasional Peanuts special, I jumped. I wasn’t going to miss Charlie Brown, thank you very much. Years later, I could still recite much of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or protest with the most adamant among them that Woodstock never should have won in "Race for your Life, Charlie Brown." He built his boat 10 feet from the finish line, for Pete’s sake.
But it was "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown" that set my compass.
You see, in "Bon Voyage," Chuck and friends jet to France on a two-week exchange spurred by a mysterious letter and – like everything in Europe – a deep, mysterious history. In typical Peanuts fashion, the invitation’s translation gets jumbled, Charlie and Linus are relegated to a stable behind a country chateau, dodging a faceless Baron who – are you channeling Herod now? Good. – threatens “drastic steps” if they aren’t out. Of course, being a kids film, all becomes right with the world after Snoopy rescues the baron’s niece from a fire, and international peace ensues. Kind of like the Marshall Plan, costarring Woodstock.
Charlie Brown’s Europe enchanted me. His trip to the chateau – which comprises almost half the movie – was the classic European adventure that I still want today. A jaunt across the pond to Heathrow – England! I live in New England! It couldn’t be that different .... Wimbeldon … A double-decker bus across London ... Eurail to Dover … Hovercraft to Calais ... Rental car through back-country France … Doris Day on the juke box … Sheets of continental rain … Medieval, small town squares which still exist because they weren’t important enough for the Nazis to torch … Ordering a baguette in jumbled Frenglish …
Ironically, my first European road trip, from Frankfurt to Passau, was remarkably similar. But that was years off. I asked my dad if exchange students really existed. They did, he said.
At six, I knew it. When I grew up, I was going to be an exchange student.
There’s a water tower there; looks like a turret. "This is the highest point in town," the tower keeper would brag, bounding out to greet you.
"Look, to the northwest! There’s snowcapped Monadnock, sixty five miles away in New Hampshire. Live free or die, those folks say.
"See in front of it? That’s Mount Wachusett, a lonely drumlin where that little girl, bless her, disappeared some hundred years ago. Probably abducted, she was. Or killed! That poor mother, though… Some say you can still hear her voice on the wind, calling…
"See downtown, the gold dome of the State House! We have the oldest Constitution in the world. We had our act together seven years before those nitwits in Philadelphia pulled it off. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a pine cone on top; supposed to remind us how important our lumber industry is.
"And east, across town, Castle Island and Dorchester Heights: if you were here in March of 1776, you’d have seen the Redcoats flee in those frigates. Take your tea home, George! Don’t tread on us!"
A century on, the trees have obstructed the view, and there’s no real reason to scale the last hundred feet, save curiosity or seclusion. A barbed-wire fence blocks off the summit now; after those terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, West Roxbury might be next. The standpipe still stands – hey, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places – but few locals know and fewer care.
I grew up a quarter mile from the tower and only once or twice felt the need to visit. Still, the hill’s height affords a few advantages. Major thoroughfares criss-cross it on all sides, meaning that public transportation into town, particularly from the city’s most suburban neighborhood, is plentiful. There is apparently a “Bellevue Hill” aura that is supposed to impress people who don’t live on it, though at 28, I have yet to see anyone’s jaw drop when I told them I lived there.
The last advantage, though I didn't see it as one, was the waves.
You see, our house was about five blocks down the hill from the water tower, and though not the highest point, we were still some 250 feet above the city and the satellite dishes which beam Boston TV to the masses. Up high, the airwaves were freer and reception comparatively sound. Since we could get the major networks with relatively little interference, we didn’t need cable. And so, in 1986, my parents made the first decision that my siblings and I rib them for today; they deep sixed the cable box.
No Disney Channel, no ESPN, no NESN. My beloved Fraggle Rock was gone; for 19 years, I was slave to network TV.
We had one of those old clunkers encased with faux oak and equipped with different VHF and UHF dials that we had to – thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk – change by hand. After the initial shock wore off, which was softened by the introduction of Nintendo, the standard nine channels (on a good day) usually sufficed. The Red Sox or Bruins were on once a week, usually Fridays, and the Saturday morning cartoon lineup of Garfield and U.S. Acres kept me attentive on days with no hockey practice.
With no Disney Channel or Nickelodeon (I never knew what you couldn’t do on television) my access to kids’ TV was limited. And so, when ABC aired the occasional Peanuts special, I jumped. I wasn’t going to miss Charlie Brown, thank you very much. Years later, I could still recite much of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or protest with the most adamant among them that Woodstock never should have won in "Race for your Life, Charlie Brown." He built his boat 10 feet from the finish line, for Pete’s sake.
But it was "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown" that set my compass.
You see, in "Bon Voyage," Chuck and friends jet to France on a two-week exchange spurred by a mysterious letter and – like everything in Europe – a deep, mysterious history. In typical Peanuts fashion, the invitation’s translation gets jumbled, Charlie and Linus are relegated to a stable behind a country chateau, dodging a faceless Baron who – are you channeling Herod now? Good. – threatens “drastic steps” if they aren’t out. Of course, being a kids film, all becomes right with the world after Snoopy rescues the baron’s niece from a fire, and international peace ensues. Kind of like the Marshall Plan, costarring Woodstock.
Charlie Brown’s Europe enchanted me. His trip to the chateau – which comprises almost half the movie – was the classic European adventure that I still want today. A jaunt across the pond to Heathrow – England! I live in New England! It couldn’t be that different .... Wimbeldon … A double-decker bus across London ... Eurail to Dover … Hovercraft to Calais ... Rental car through back-country France … Doris Day on the juke box … Sheets of continental rain … Medieval, small town squares which still exist because they weren’t important enough for the Nazis to torch … Ordering a baguette in jumbled Frenglish …
Ironically, my first European road trip, from Frankfurt to Passau, was remarkably similar. But that was years off. I asked my dad if exchange students really existed. They did, he said.
At six, I knew it. When I grew up, I was going to be an exchange student.
Summer's Tales (6/1/2009)
Somewhere over the South China Sea, during hour three of a flight from Singapore to Seoul, I needed to stretch my legs. Groggily, I walked back to the galley, where I met a Canadian woman. Let's call her Amber.
We were two of the few gringos on the flight. She smiled. “Where you headed?”, she asked.
“Oh…” I replied nonchalantly. “Mongolia.”
Her face dropped. She almost screamed.
To me, Mongolia wasn’t exotic – another assignment, another hotel, another per diem. Having spent the previous week in Jakarta traffic, I was approaching Ulaanbaatar with the same zest as a trip to Chicago. While I wasn’t looking, my perspective had changed.
At twenty-eight and with forty-two ticks into the Traveler’s Century Club, I’ve racked up more travel stories than most accumulate over a lifetime. And, you, dear readers, have told me how much you enjoy them.
You flatter me, honestly.
I say this because, truth be told, my travel experiences aren’t particularly earth shaking. I haven’t lived in Asia surviving on kimchee and my rugged looks. I haven’t joined the Peace Corps and ridden out monsoon season in a tin shack. I haven’t caused or witnessed politically seismic events (as far as I can tell you), hang glided over piranha-infested rivers or hunted lion armed only with a spear. I haven’t been to a World Cup or World Series, crashed a Siberian wedding, retraced the path of Captain Cook, or served as Chief of the Tribe of Sixteen Nations at a Maori hangi. I haven’t taken a train from Boston to Patagonia, and am not one to drive across Sudan in search of meaning. I even survived Vietnam without eating a single shrimp.
In the absence of riveting plot, I am left with travelogues laced with puns and pop culture, jabs at the Limbaugh-thumping right, and overdependence on imagery. When in doubt, tell them what the sun is doing. Everyone loves the sun.
Yet somehow, you tell me, it works.
But I want more. As stories progress, I notice that more and more begin with “This one time, in Tajikistan…”, “You know, in Serbia…”, or “You should totally do New Zealand,” I want to explore for myself how these stories and experiences have developed a deeper meaning. This, as Blair Sheppard would put it – twice – is my tapestry.
How did a late night in New York crack my shy cocoon? Why are European train stations my favorite places to peoplewatch? Why is Dushanbe, Tajikistan less weird than Greenville, North Carolina?
And so, a summer project was born. I want to know where these travels have led, why they mean what they do. With no travels scheduled (a scary notion), I want to re-examine those old photos, the hokey scrapbooks, pore through that slutty passport. Instead of the politically imagery-ridden travelogue (“Hi from South Africa. Apartheid sucks. It’s sunny.”), I am going to write about the 11, or 12, or 13 (because 10 is lame) moments on my traveler’s resume. Not the glitziest, most expensive – or, get real, the most romantic – but those I continue to feel today.
As a blogger, I want to test my hand at writing longer bits and recreating scenes from lives past. As a traveler, I want to remember.
Join me.
We were two of the few gringos on the flight. She smiled. “Where you headed?”, she asked.
“Oh…” I replied nonchalantly. “Mongolia.”
Her face dropped. She almost screamed.
To me, Mongolia wasn’t exotic – another assignment, another hotel, another per diem. Having spent the previous week in Jakarta traffic, I was approaching Ulaanbaatar with the same zest as a trip to Chicago. While I wasn’t looking, my perspective had changed.
At twenty-eight and with forty-two ticks into the Traveler’s Century Club, I’ve racked up more travel stories than most accumulate over a lifetime. And, you, dear readers, have told me how much you enjoy them.
You flatter me, honestly.
I say this because, truth be told, my travel experiences aren’t particularly earth shaking. I haven’t lived in Asia surviving on kimchee and my rugged looks. I haven’t joined the Peace Corps and ridden out monsoon season in a tin shack. I haven’t caused or witnessed politically seismic events (as far as I can tell you), hang glided over piranha-infested rivers or hunted lion armed only with a spear. I haven’t been to a World Cup or World Series, crashed a Siberian wedding, retraced the path of Captain Cook, or served as Chief of the Tribe of Sixteen Nations at a Maori hangi. I haven’t taken a train from Boston to Patagonia, and am not one to drive across Sudan in search of meaning. I even survived Vietnam without eating a single shrimp.
In the absence of riveting plot, I am left with travelogues laced with puns and pop culture, jabs at the Limbaugh-thumping right, and overdependence on imagery. When in doubt, tell them what the sun is doing. Everyone loves the sun.
Yet somehow, you tell me, it works.
But I want more. As stories progress, I notice that more and more begin with “This one time, in Tajikistan…”, “You know, in Serbia…”, or “You should totally do New Zealand,” I want to explore for myself how these stories and experiences have developed a deeper meaning. This, as Blair Sheppard would put it – twice – is my tapestry.
How did a late night in New York crack my shy cocoon? Why are European train stations my favorite places to peoplewatch? Why is Dushanbe, Tajikistan less weird than Greenville, North Carolina?
And so, a summer project was born. I want to know where these travels have led, why they mean what they do. With no travels scheduled (a scary notion), I want to re-examine those old photos, the hokey scrapbooks, pore through that slutty passport. Instead of the politically imagery-ridden travelogue (“Hi from South Africa. Apartheid sucks. It’s sunny.”), I am going to write about the 11, or 12, or 13 (because 10 is lame) moments on my traveler’s resume. Not the glitziest, most expensive – or, get real, the most romantic – but those I continue to feel today.
As a blogger, I want to test my hand at writing longer bits and recreating scenes from lives past. As a traveler, I want to remember.
Join me.
The Quiet Americans (3/24/2009)
The terms of Goethe's Faust's deal with the devil are simple. You give me everything I want, and if I’m ever satisfied, my soul’s yours. You’ll know I’m satisfied is if I say “stay there – you’re so beautiful.” And, since I’ve been plundering away at the world’s wisdom for decades, I’m never going to say that, so there. I win.
Having been to 42 stops on the Traveler’s Century Club (a better yardstick than the UN), my pantheon – those places and moments that would give Faust pause – is rare. A 7 a.m. drive up the wispy Milford Road. Shabbat at the Western Wall. Sunset cevapi in Turkish Bosnia. Gluhwein in snowy Nurnberg. A morning stroll through misty Prague.
Southeast Asia 2009 was that rare blend of time, place, circumstance, and (most importantly) traveling companions that culminated in those rare traveling moments. I loved it, but am tentative at going back, revisiting the same sites without the familiar faces. Chalk another for the ending of "Before Sunrise"; an empty dawn in Bangkok would haunt me as much as Richard Linklater's lonely Vienna.
In closing, a few observations:
- The propaganda fascinated me. In communist Vietnam, it's most expected – pictures of Ho Chi Minh above city squares, grand posters of workers and hammers and sickles and laborers and grinning babymaking families. Think the Palins. Thailand was a bit different - lots of massive pictures of the King. Singapore, though, was more complex and more embedded, and (I would guess) most effective. The government there is omnipresent, imbuing itself skillfully but not harmfully into commerce. Everyone seems to believe the government because ... that's the way it is.
- Books and films abound about how a tiny, poppy-shaped country with little infrastructure - and which had just finished staving off the French - dealt the vaunted American military its first defeat. Give Vietnam its credit; take note, though: it was NOT the American military's first loss: it was half of the American military's first defeat. The South was already 0-1.
- We need more city states in this world. I would have paid good money to hear "This is madness!" "This is SINGAPORE!".
- I've been trying to pin down how to do Singapore its diligence, and finally settled on this: Singapore is Southeast Asia's Toronto. Nothing against Toronto, though consider: you just flew 30 hours, have trips lined up to New York, DC, and the Outer Banks, and your first stop is Toronto. Exactly. Oh, and if you need more, Singaporeans add “neh’” to the end of every sentence. "We have the greatest zoo in the world, 'neh!" Nuff said.
Best (repeatable) exchange of the trip:
Matt: "You know, Fusionopolis has a big rival across town, Fissionopolis."
Jonathan: "Yeah, it was quite a split."
- As we headed to the airport in Saigon, we passed a megaplex with a bowling alley. An inescapable conundrum: Bowling. Nam ... Rules?
Our soundtrack was particularly remarkable, including:
- Richard Marx, in all three countries. Wherever we went, he was right there waiting for us.
- Accompanying dinner in Hoi An included country music, Phantom of the Opera, The Chipmunks, and ... "We Wish you a Merry Christmas." - Not to be outdone, our hotel in Bangkok serenaded us with "Silent Night," ironic on multiple levels given that 1) it was morning, 2) In March; and 3) A silent night in Bangkok? Really? - The kicker, though, was back atdinner in Hoi An. I didn't catch the entire song, but the refrain repeated "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." Nothing screams romance like Lenten Pop.
Thirty-three floors above Bangkok and eight hours before we flew out, we celebrated - chilled our drinks in improvised refrigerators (read: the bathtub), raised toasts, and watched a slideshow before one last hurrah on the glamorous town. What struck me was just ... how happy everyone was. Having traveled by myself and with small and large groups, I can't overemphasize how rare this is at the end of a trip; having come from an (admit it) dangerously cliquey environment, here were 26 people with no conflict, no Mean Girls-like barbs, who just spent two weeks poking around four scintillating cities. Congratulations, folks: you've cracked my traveling pantheon. Raise the Singha.
And stay there, Indochina. You're so beautiful.
Having been to 42 stops on the Traveler’s Century Club (a better yardstick than the UN), my pantheon – those places and moments that would give Faust pause – is rare. A 7 a.m. drive up the wispy Milford Road. Shabbat at the Western Wall. Sunset cevapi in Turkish Bosnia. Gluhwein in snowy Nurnberg. A morning stroll through misty Prague.
Southeast Asia 2009 was that rare blend of time, place, circumstance, and (most importantly) traveling companions that culminated in those rare traveling moments. I loved it, but am tentative at going back, revisiting the same sites without the familiar faces. Chalk another for the ending of "Before Sunrise"; an empty dawn in Bangkok would haunt me as much as Richard Linklater's lonely Vienna.
In closing, a few observations:
- The propaganda fascinated me. In communist Vietnam, it's most expected – pictures of Ho Chi Minh above city squares, grand posters of workers and hammers and sickles and laborers and grinning babymaking families. Think the Palins. Thailand was a bit different - lots of massive pictures of the King. Singapore, though, was more complex and more embedded, and (I would guess) most effective. The government there is omnipresent, imbuing itself skillfully but not harmfully into commerce. Everyone seems to believe the government because ... that's the way it is.
- Books and films abound about how a tiny, poppy-shaped country with little infrastructure - and which had just finished staving off the French - dealt the vaunted American military its first defeat. Give Vietnam its credit; take note, though: it was NOT the American military's first loss: it was half of the American military's first defeat. The South was already 0-1.
- We need more city states in this world. I would have paid good money to hear "This is madness!" "This is SINGAPORE!".
- I've been trying to pin down how to do Singapore its diligence, and finally settled on this: Singapore is Southeast Asia's Toronto. Nothing against Toronto, though consider: you just flew 30 hours, have trips lined up to New York, DC, and the Outer Banks, and your first stop is Toronto. Exactly. Oh, and if you need more, Singaporeans add “neh’” to the end of every sentence. "We have the greatest zoo in the world, 'neh!" Nuff said.
Best (repeatable) exchange of the trip:
Matt: "You know, Fusionopolis has a big rival across town, Fissionopolis."
Jonathan: "Yeah, it was quite a split."
- As we headed to the airport in Saigon, we passed a megaplex with a bowling alley. An inescapable conundrum: Bowling. Nam ... Rules?
Our soundtrack was particularly remarkable, including:
- Richard Marx, in all three countries. Wherever we went, he was right there waiting for us.
- Accompanying dinner in Hoi An included country music, Phantom of the Opera, The Chipmunks, and ... "We Wish you a Merry Christmas." - Not to be outdone, our hotel in Bangkok serenaded us with "Silent Night," ironic on multiple levels given that 1) it was morning, 2) In March; and 3) A silent night in Bangkok? Really? - The kicker, though, was back atdinner in Hoi An. I didn't catch the entire song, but the refrain repeated "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." Nothing screams romance like Lenten Pop.
Thirty-three floors above Bangkok and eight hours before we flew out, we celebrated - chilled our drinks in improvised refrigerators (read: the bathtub), raised toasts, and watched a slideshow before one last hurrah on the glamorous town. What struck me was just ... how happy everyone was. Having traveled by myself and with small and large groups, I can't overemphasize how rare this is at the end of a trip; having come from an (admit it) dangerously cliquey environment, here were 26 people with no conflict, no Mean Girls-like barbs, who just spent two weeks poking around four scintillating cities. Congratulations, folks: you've cracked my traveling pantheon. Raise the Singha.
And stay there, Indochina. You're so beautiful.
Siam I Am (3/18/2009)
At 3:30 a.m., I caught the elevator from the fifteenth floor of my hotel - one of Bangkok's chicest, mind you - to begin the long trip home. There, dressed in a collared shirt and tweed blazer, was a middle-aged Russian man negotiating pricing terms with a twentysomething Thai woman. A friend had once told me that, in Bangkok, "everything is for sale, even your dignity." Judging from this - and the stream of young ladies strolling out as we gathered in the lobby - dignity futures must be recession proof.
Bangkok, though, is far more glory than cheap, colored lights. With due heed to its larger, richer, cleaner neighbors, it is the indisputable hub of Southeast Asia, a city whose anything-goes mentality and openness make it a scrumptious treat for all who venture through it. Singapore should be seen, Saigon witnessed. Bangkok should be lived.
You, though, will never live Bangkok as we did. The last stop on our three-country tour (three-country tour), we were slated to visit several firms to get a sense of the Thai economy, contrast it with technically communist Vietnam and technically democratic Singapore. Our first host, the Boonrawd Brewery (producers of Singha Beer, Thailand's best-selling lager), cast Ceasar's proverbial die, welcomed us with more bells and whistles, chutes and ladders, pomp and circumstance than when the Pope visited Washington (I know. I was there.) For two days, we were visiting royalty, a state visit from the Duchy of Durham. A double-decker bus. Motorcycles that stopped traffic. A banner larger than the championship ones which hang in Cameron. A party boat. An executive reception. The Singha ladies (all the Singha ladies). A staff photographer who snapped 1,007 pictures. A brewery tour. Puppet shows. Karaoke. Sightseeing vans. And a farewell dinner that sent us - some without sleep - directly onto our flight home.
Bangkok is Southeast Asia's liveliest city, one where you can do anything (yes, anything) anytime of day or night. Tour the Grand Palace in the pulsating heat, be Yul Brynner. Stand in awe of the Reclining Buddha, half a football field of deity. Relax with a Thai
Massage, and contour yourself like Cirque du Soleil. Sip Singha Beer. Take the Sky Train and give up your seat to a monk. Float down the river and gawk at the abutting temples; watch the fish who spawn nearby, realizing that it's uncool to kill things near Buddhist temples (go natural selection!). While away your evening at a Thai kickboxing match or the night markets.
"Night markets" sounds sleazy, but it's not, I promise. A word on that, though: it's difficult to view Bangkok's red light districts, two of which were blocks from our hotel, without the typical Western prejudices. Interestingly, the industry was born of American hormones: GIs used Bangkok as an R&R post during the Vietnam war. Add that to the different sexual mores (no Christianity to tell you it's evil, no Freud to whisper Oedipus in your ear), and you have 18 year-olds thinking they're about to die in a culture where sex is more open and less repressed. Score another for the great moral enforcer, but don't lie, you would have too. Thirty years on, it's still disturbing to stroll three blocks from your hotel and notice women who look 20 (but ...) wearing numbers, a walking lineup for Johns. Many come to support their families in provinces, others, more tragically, are trafficked in from overseas. Though what happens when the neon is off ... I don't want to think about.
Bangkok, though, is more lively and fascinating than its one-off seedy areas. The vivacity of its streets, the grandeur of the Buddhist temples, the brilliant sun, the spicy Thai food, and the hospitality of the people (particularly a gracious brewery) work in near perfect rhythm. Add to that our trip's near perfect conflux of time, place, circumstance, and - most importantly - people, and Bangkok has reached my hard-to-crack travel pantheon. My companions here were such a quintessential part, and to return without them would be bittersweet.
Keep Paris. We'll always have Bangkok.
Bangkok, though, is far more glory than cheap, colored lights. With due heed to its larger, richer, cleaner neighbors, it is the indisputable hub of Southeast Asia, a city whose anything-goes mentality and openness make it a scrumptious treat for all who venture through it. Singapore should be seen, Saigon witnessed. Bangkok should be lived.
You, though, will never live Bangkok as we did. The last stop on our three-country tour (three-country tour), we were slated to visit several firms to get a sense of the Thai economy, contrast it with technically communist Vietnam and technically democratic Singapore. Our first host, the Boonrawd Brewery (producers of Singha Beer, Thailand's best-selling lager), cast Ceasar's proverbial die, welcomed us with more bells and whistles, chutes and ladders, pomp and circumstance than when the Pope visited Washington (I know. I was there.) For two days, we were visiting royalty, a state visit from the Duchy of Durham. A double-decker bus. Motorcycles that stopped traffic. A banner larger than the championship ones which hang in Cameron. A party boat. An executive reception. The Singha ladies (all the Singha ladies). A staff photographer who snapped 1,007 pictures. A brewery tour. Puppet shows. Karaoke. Sightseeing vans. And a farewell dinner that sent us - some without sleep - directly onto our flight home.
Bangkok is Southeast Asia's liveliest city, one where you can do anything (yes, anything) anytime of day or night. Tour the Grand Palace in the pulsating heat, be Yul Brynner. Stand in awe of the Reclining Buddha, half a football field of deity. Relax with a Thai
Massage, and contour yourself like Cirque du Soleil. Sip Singha Beer. Take the Sky Train and give up your seat to a monk. Float down the river and gawk at the abutting temples; watch the fish who spawn nearby, realizing that it's uncool to kill things near Buddhist temples (go natural selection!). While away your evening at a Thai kickboxing match or the night markets.
"Night markets" sounds sleazy, but it's not, I promise. A word on that, though: it's difficult to view Bangkok's red light districts, two of which were blocks from our hotel, without the typical Western prejudices. Interestingly, the industry was born of American hormones: GIs used Bangkok as an R&R post during the Vietnam war. Add that to the different sexual mores (no Christianity to tell you it's evil, no Freud to whisper Oedipus in your ear), and you have 18 year-olds thinking they're about to die in a culture where sex is more open and less repressed. Score another for the great moral enforcer, but don't lie, you would have too. Thirty years on, it's still disturbing to stroll three blocks from your hotel and notice women who look 20 (but ...) wearing numbers, a walking lineup for Johns. Many come to support their families in provinces, others, more tragically, are trafficked in from overseas. Though what happens when the neon is off ... I don't want to think about.
Bangkok, though, is more lively and fascinating than its one-off seedy areas. The vivacity of its streets, the grandeur of the Buddhist temples, the brilliant sun, the spicy Thai food, and the hospitality of the people (particularly a gracious brewery) work in near perfect rhythm. Add to that our trip's near perfect conflux of time, place, circumstance, and - most importantly - people, and Bangkok has reached my hard-to-crack travel pantheon. My companions here were such a quintessential part, and to return without them would be bittersweet.
Keep Paris. We'll always have Bangkok.
We'll Miss Saigon (3/11/2009)
Come to Vietnam. As part of an American generation born in the decade after the helicopter took off from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, the specter of Vietnam has always hung, an immobile overhead specter waiting to rear its head. No other country's name evokes, at best, an inescapable quagmire, and at worst, abject failure. Our pop culture teems with references: "Apocalypse Now." John Lennon. Muhammad Ali. The Dixie Chicks. "Forrest Gump." CCR. Even "Tropic Thunder." Our parents lived through it - made it, some of them. Reignited by another war launched on questionable intelligence, the shadow of Vietnam has emerged anew.
For a Gen Y traveler, Vietnam is one of the world’s most wondrous and fascinating places. Twenty-three years after Uncle Ho’s descendants opened the borders to capitalism and fourteen after Bill Clinton buried the diplomatic hatchet, Vietnam is a bustling economy, a vibrant atmosphere, and an even more outgoing people. The new dragon is taking the manufacturing jobs from China and shipping more and more goods to the U.S. and beyond. Thanks, Karl, but to – and from – each according to his productivity is much better. Nike alone employs 200,000 Vietnamese: we who grew up considering Vietnam evil will inevitably come to see the country as a partner, even a competitor.
Saigon – technically Ho Chi Minh City – is a bustling metropolis that is not only distinctly Vietnamese but also one of the most Westernized emerging cities I’ve visited. Three million motorbikes scuttle Saigonites (Saigoners?) to and from work, home, bars, clubs. Uncle Ho – liberator, patriot – is present but not gaudy (King Abdullah in quasi-democratic Jordan is far more dominant; yes, Your Majesty, you look great over that convenience store.) And even so, the lights of Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer and others far outshine the party propaganda. Domino effect, meet Domino’s Pizza.
As a young American, Vietnam brings a new dimension that is an inescapable, vital — and, much untold — part of our own history. On Monday, we made our way to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a 250-some-kilometer-long labyrinth that the Viet Cong guerillas – some teenagers, mind you – used to launch surprise attacks on the French and later, the Americans. Deep under a jungle, the tunnels are wrought with maniacal traps, landmines, and remnants of the hell of ground, aerial, and even subterranean combat. The VC used traps that impaled our countrymen’s legs, faces, or genitals; maimed them with basketball-sized maces which swung out of trees; threw metal fishooks through their skulls. We, in turn, made it the most bombed patch in the history of warfare. Smoke 'em out.
Even more moving, though, was Saigon’s War Remnants Museum, a collection of spoils and photographs showcasing the stories we don’t hear. The women and children disfigured by 44 million tons of Agent Orange. The innocent villages the Americans torched. GIs pushing Vietnamese civilians on forced marches. Beheadings. Suspects dropped headfirst out of helicopters -- photos that, I’m serious, made the leaked shots from Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo seem tame.
In the United States, we are forced into two corners, everything in black and white. Republican or Democrat. Liberal or conservative. Pro-life or pro-choice. Good or evil. With us or with the terrorists. Four decades on, our window on Vietnam is no different; we prevented communism from overrunning Southeast Asia. It wouldn’t have spread anyway. You’re an M16-toting warmonger. You’re a useless, pacifist hippie.
Come to Vietnam, and experience a dish as deliciously decadent as the Pho on Saigon street corners, as inescapable a part of your history as Yorktown or Pearl Harbor. Witness how brutal conflict begat (eventually) a simmering future, see how countries can bury diplomatic grudges and stop behaving like fifteen-year-olds. Most importantly, use the country as a mirror to understand that no decision, however black and white, arrives without consequences.
In Vietnam, the only shade you'll see is Dorian Gray.
Matt
For a Gen Y traveler, Vietnam is one of the world’s most wondrous and fascinating places. Twenty-three years after Uncle Ho’s descendants opened the borders to capitalism and fourteen after Bill Clinton buried the diplomatic hatchet, Vietnam is a bustling economy, a vibrant atmosphere, and an even more outgoing people. The new dragon is taking the manufacturing jobs from China and shipping more and more goods to the U.S. and beyond. Thanks, Karl, but to – and from – each according to his productivity is much better. Nike alone employs 200,000 Vietnamese: we who grew up considering Vietnam evil will inevitably come to see the country as a partner, even a competitor.
Saigon – technically Ho Chi Minh City – is a bustling metropolis that is not only distinctly Vietnamese but also one of the most Westernized emerging cities I’ve visited. Three million motorbikes scuttle Saigonites (Saigoners?) to and from work, home, bars, clubs. Uncle Ho – liberator, patriot – is present but not gaudy (King Abdullah in quasi-democratic Jordan is far more dominant; yes, Your Majesty, you look great over that convenience store.) And even so, the lights of Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer and others far outshine the party propaganda. Domino effect, meet Domino’s Pizza.
As a young American, Vietnam brings a new dimension that is an inescapable, vital — and, much untold — part of our own history. On Monday, we made our way to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a 250-some-kilometer-long labyrinth that the Viet Cong guerillas – some teenagers, mind you – used to launch surprise attacks on the French and later, the Americans. Deep under a jungle, the tunnels are wrought with maniacal traps, landmines, and remnants of the hell of ground, aerial, and even subterranean combat. The VC used traps that impaled our countrymen’s legs, faces, or genitals; maimed them with basketball-sized maces which swung out of trees; threw metal fishooks through their skulls. We, in turn, made it the most bombed patch in the history of warfare. Smoke 'em out.
Even more moving, though, was Saigon’s War Remnants Museum, a collection of spoils and photographs showcasing the stories we don’t hear. The women and children disfigured by 44 million tons of Agent Orange. The innocent villages the Americans torched. GIs pushing Vietnamese civilians on forced marches. Beheadings. Suspects dropped headfirst out of helicopters -- photos that, I’m serious, made the leaked shots from Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo seem tame.
In the United States, we are forced into two corners, everything in black and white. Republican or Democrat. Liberal or conservative. Pro-life or pro-choice. Good or evil. With us or with the terrorists. Four decades on, our window on Vietnam is no different; we prevented communism from overrunning Southeast Asia. It wouldn’t have spread anyway. You’re an M16-toting warmonger. You’re a useless, pacifist hippie.
Come to Vietnam, and experience a dish as deliciously decadent as the Pho on Saigon street corners, as inescapable a part of your history as Yorktown or Pearl Harbor. Witness how brutal conflict begat (eventually) a simmering future, see how countries can bury diplomatic grudges and stop behaving like fifteen-year-olds. Most importantly, use the country as a mirror to understand that no decision, however black and white, arrives without consequences.
In Vietnam, the only shade you'll see is Dorian Gray.
Matt
The Secret of Nam (3/11/2009)
After dawn, the Americans landed at Danang. The coast was to the east, the highlands to the west. The breeze softened the coastal heat. They looked around, excited and tingling as their vessel rolled in; this, they realized, wasn’t Kansas – or Singapore – anymore.
And, 44 years after their countrymen first hit shore, the young Americans had their visas stamped and proceeded into their erstwhile nemesis. Hail to the victors.
We spent the weekend in Hoi An, Vietnam’s ancient harbor that bore comparatively little carnage during the French or American wars. It is a beach- and riverfront town that (cheers, UNESCO) maintains its ancient charm while catering to and profiting from mass tourism. Hoi An’s old town is a remnant of its colonial past – gorgeous, decadent French and Indochinese architecture with merchants hawking wares and clothing – oh, the clothing! – in each. The touchup paint has long since chipped, the stone faces crumbling, but the serenity and timelessness of colonial Asia still lingers.
The city, whose glory days have long passed, maintains an old-world charm with a new world Vietnamese economy. The town’s vivacity was amazing; Everyday life bustled around the tourists unlike anywhere I’ve seen in the world. Little was for show; go souvenir hunting down by the docks and be assaulted by hawkers of statues, “silk,” and jewelry, all while dodging farmers selling their goods to locals. You’re here, hi, but out of my way, I need some ochre. Head down streets lined with tailors (specially cut suits for $60, shirts for $10, dresses for $30. I am five slick shirts richer.), and see women in conical hats scurrying beans, rice, sprouts, and other goods home on their backs. Watch motorbikes for five minutes and see them carrying stuff which Vespa didn’t calculate; chicken coops, children,
and … beds.
Hoi An introduced us to the soul of an ancient country which existed long before it dominated dour headlines. Communism, while a red herring, is practically nonexistent. Uncle Ho is present but not overbearing; his likeness and quotations dot a few propaganda posters into town. Hi, Ho. Hi, Ho, but capitalism is the new nom du guerre: the most amusing juxtaposition of this came from the customs official who stamped my passport – a communist star on each collar; between them, a Nike swoosh.
While Vietnam’s past, both true and exaggerated, is well-documented, Hoi An provided an excellent first impression of a proud nation and promising future. Plus, who can argue with a day’s toils when the crashing of the South China Sea lulls you to sleep.
And, 44 years after their countrymen first hit shore, the young Americans had their visas stamped and proceeded into their erstwhile nemesis. Hail to the victors.
We spent the weekend in Hoi An, Vietnam’s ancient harbor that bore comparatively little carnage during the French or American wars. It is a beach- and riverfront town that (cheers, UNESCO) maintains its ancient charm while catering to and profiting from mass tourism. Hoi An’s old town is a remnant of its colonial past – gorgeous, decadent French and Indochinese architecture with merchants hawking wares and clothing – oh, the clothing! – in each. The touchup paint has long since chipped, the stone faces crumbling, but the serenity and timelessness of colonial Asia still lingers.
The city, whose glory days have long passed, maintains an old-world charm with a new world Vietnamese economy. The town’s vivacity was amazing; Everyday life bustled around the tourists unlike anywhere I’ve seen in the world. Little was for show; go souvenir hunting down by the docks and be assaulted by hawkers of statues, “silk,” and jewelry, all while dodging farmers selling their goods to locals. You’re here, hi, but out of my way, I need some ochre. Head down streets lined with tailors (specially cut suits for $60, shirts for $10, dresses for $30. I am five slick shirts richer.), and see women in conical hats scurrying beans, rice, sprouts, and other goods home on their backs. Watch motorbikes for five minutes and see them carrying stuff which Vespa didn’t calculate; chicken coops, children,
and … beds.
Hoi An introduced us to the soul of an ancient country which existed long before it dominated dour headlines. Communism, while a red herring, is practically nonexistent. Uncle Ho is present but not overbearing; his likeness and quotations dot a few propaganda posters into town. Hi, Ho. Hi, Ho, but capitalism is the new nom du guerre: the most amusing juxtaposition of this came from the customs official who stamped my passport – a communist star on each collar; between them, a Nike swoosh.
While Vietnam’s past, both true and exaggerated, is well-documented, Hoi An provided an excellent first impression of a proud nation and promising future. Plus, who can argue with a day’s toils when the crashing of the South China Sea lulls you to sleep.
Yes We Cane! (3/6/2009)
Sir Stamford Raffles, legend might say, was born from a winged tiger that curled its paw into a cup of virgin sand and nestled the lump of sand to life. Raffles emerged, fully grown, clothed in military regalia and striking the “I bad” pose that his waterfront statue so dictates, to found a nation. That nation, the ancients said, would be called Singapore, the Lion City. And Raffles would be the high lord of all men …
I exaggerate. Still, Raffles’ baby – the “Red Dot in Asia” that punctuates the Malay Peninsula, is one of the most deeply fascinating case studies for the business-minded traveler. On the surface, the cleanliness, safety, lack of traffic and crime and British colonial touch give it the feel of a Southeast Asian Canada. Go deeper and discover omnipresent business, a government inseparable from public and private. Delve deeper still, and see a melting pot of Southeast Asia, one wrought with diversity and mutual respect; no landed gentry or elites, no ill-fitting colonial structures; while overtly Western on its surface, Singapore, at its core, is Southeast Asian. And here, our adventure begins.
“Singapore, Inc.,” as the nickname goes, represents far more government involvement than I’ve ever seen in a country (and, yes, I’ve been to five Soviet republics and I voted for Barack Obama). A wholly private enterprise – while not forbidden – is practically non-existent. The prime minister, whose party has ruled parliament since 1959, is an uber-CEO. Political freedoms, naturally, are few; the press is effectively a ward of the state, and publish a dissenting editorial (that’s you, WSJ) and be sued or bankrupted. Big Brother watches constantly; Jaywalk, litter, spit and be fined; do worse and risk caning. The result is a remarkably clean, safe city that rakes in cash and plows them into public works. You can’t argue with results.
If the prime minister is the CEO, the nation of some 4.4 million are all shareholders. For a country with no natural resources, the returns have been staggering; within a few decades, Singapore’s GDP has grown from several hundred dollars to about $35,000 per head. The port, Singapore’s life blood, is the world’s third largest, taking in a fifth of the world’s shipments including all oil supplies to Japan and China (yikes). The government, no fool, sends its talent to study in major universities around the world (one, that I know of, in my Georgetown class), all in efforts to gain return for the shareholders. Ad maiorem patriae gloriam.
While business reigns, Singapore’s cultural soul is distinctly South Asian. Away from the land reclamation projects, the cranes which rival Dubai’s, and the huge waterfront highrises, a quick walk about the various neighborhoods reveals a vibe similar to Manila or Jakarta. Hindu, Buddhist, Tao, and Christian shrines dot the streets; Street food is present and sanitary, signs teem in Hindi, Chinese, Malay, English and other languages. "Sir, please!" reigns as you pass restaurants and vendors. Gargantuan, socialist-looking apartment buildings house scores upon scores of people. The mall culture – shop and escape the Equatorial heat – is present in all three. The smaller, and more mixed, population begets a vibrant street atmosphere without the pollution or overcrowding. Traffic is comparatively minimal. If Singapore is the responsible parent, Manila and Jakarta are octuplet-moms.
Four days in Raffles’ “Lion City” are a staggering look at business and politics, and how the two can and do indelibly overlap with little friction or ruckus. While single-party rule may assault Enlightenment devotees, it strikingly works in a nation-state with less land than Kansas City, more clout over its larger neighbors, and tremendous resources to pour back into their people. Indeed, a highlight of any visit to Singapore is interaction with Singaporeans; many of whom were educated, intelligent, Westernized, and quick to point out the government’s role (a 50 year plan: ?!?) in keeping Singapore on Asia’s forefront, an ever glowing red dot drawing increased returns for all.
They love Big Brother.
I exaggerate. Still, Raffles’ baby – the “Red Dot in Asia” that punctuates the Malay Peninsula, is one of the most deeply fascinating case studies for the business-minded traveler. On the surface, the cleanliness, safety, lack of traffic and crime and British colonial touch give it the feel of a Southeast Asian Canada. Go deeper and discover omnipresent business, a government inseparable from public and private. Delve deeper still, and see a melting pot of Southeast Asia, one wrought with diversity and mutual respect; no landed gentry or elites, no ill-fitting colonial structures; while overtly Western on its surface, Singapore, at its core, is Southeast Asian. And here, our adventure begins.
“Singapore, Inc.,” as the nickname goes, represents far more government involvement than I’ve ever seen in a country (and, yes, I’ve been to five Soviet republics and I voted for Barack Obama). A wholly private enterprise – while not forbidden – is practically non-existent. The prime minister, whose party has ruled parliament since 1959, is an uber-CEO. Political freedoms, naturally, are few; the press is effectively a ward of the state, and publish a dissenting editorial (that’s you, WSJ) and be sued or bankrupted. Big Brother watches constantly; Jaywalk, litter, spit and be fined; do worse and risk caning. The result is a remarkably clean, safe city that rakes in cash and plows them into public works. You can’t argue with results.
If the prime minister is the CEO, the nation of some 4.4 million are all shareholders. For a country with no natural resources, the returns have been staggering; within a few decades, Singapore’s GDP has grown from several hundred dollars to about $35,000 per head. The port, Singapore’s life blood, is the world’s third largest, taking in a fifth of the world’s shipments including all oil supplies to Japan and China (yikes). The government, no fool, sends its talent to study in major universities around the world (one, that I know of, in my Georgetown class), all in efforts to gain return for the shareholders. Ad maiorem patriae gloriam.
While business reigns, Singapore’s cultural soul is distinctly South Asian. Away from the land reclamation projects, the cranes which rival Dubai’s, and the huge waterfront highrises, a quick walk about the various neighborhoods reveals a vibe similar to Manila or Jakarta. Hindu, Buddhist, Tao, and Christian shrines dot the streets; Street food is present and sanitary, signs teem in Hindi, Chinese, Malay, English and other languages. "Sir, please!" reigns as you pass restaurants and vendors. Gargantuan, socialist-looking apartment buildings house scores upon scores of people. The mall culture – shop and escape the Equatorial heat – is present in all three. The smaller, and more mixed, population begets a vibrant street atmosphere without the pollution or overcrowding. Traffic is comparatively minimal. If Singapore is the responsible parent, Manila and Jakarta are octuplet-moms.
Four days in Raffles’ “Lion City” are a staggering look at business and politics, and how the two can and do indelibly overlap with little friction or ruckus. While single-party rule may assault Enlightenment devotees, it strikingly works in a nation-state with less land than Kansas City, more clout over its larger neighbors, and tremendous resources to pour back into their people. Indeed, a highlight of any visit to Singapore is interaction with Singaporeans; many of whom were educated, intelligent, Westernized, and quick to point out the government’s role (a 50 year plan: ?!?) in keeping Singapore on Asia’s forefront, an ever glowing red dot drawing increased returns for all.
They love Big Brother.
Of the Arctic Ocean and Exploding Produce (3/3/2009)
There’s something ironic in a trans-Pacific flight that doesn’t cross a drop of Pacific water until you have to double back over Hong Kong Harbour. The shortest distance across the world's largest body of water is actually around it: A fifteen-and-a-half-hour, ohmigod-Please-spare-me-this-dastardly-stretch flight from Chicago to China, while clearly easier than it was for Sir Francis Drake, is an illuminating step in the pursuit of swollen feet. "On your flight today you will enjoy three movies, two meals, and cankles."
A stretch from Durham to Singapore took us from below the 45th Parallel, well north of the Arctic Circle and over the Arctic Ocean, before charging straight south – hello, Siberia; Nice to see you again, Mongolia; oh that’s what Beijing looks like from 30,000 feet, wow the lights of Hong Kong fade in the rain. Fifteen hours from middle America to the north pole to the equator. An aerial version of Jacques Cartier’s Northwest Passage. Lindbergh, meet Boeing.
And north of the Bering Strait, there they were, in plain sight: Russia’s nuclear arsenal, lined up like stoic terracotta warriors, directly gazing over four miles of maritime border. Putin’s ugly head staring America straight down, a sliver of Cold War ideology still alive north of the Arctic Circle. But there, in his face, was the Alaska legislature, rearin’ its hearty American freedom, returnin’ that stare, God love ‘em...**
Our flight – nuclear arsenals aside – was fifteen hours of constant daylight, leaving at high noon on Sunday, arrive at dinnertime Monday. Between the movies, our entertainment was -- I loved this – a Discovery Channel special on the wonders of 1000-frame-per-second photography. “Now we can see what we’ve never seen before…” ran the narrator, and we were treated to microsecond-by-microsecond shots of:
- Water balloons to the face
- Shattering wine glasses
- Exploding fruit
Ten thousand frames per second to watch apples blow up. Scientia gratis scientiae. Knowledge at its pinnacle. Thank you, United.
We arrived in Singapore just before midnight, and it was well after 1 a.m. Tuesday as we pulled in, exhausted and we’re-actually-here-what-now? exhilarated. Singapore, dismissed as “Asia Lite” next to the chaos of Manila, Jakarta, or Bangkok, will probably be the ideal jumping off point for exploration of the sub-subcontinent. Witness the progressive island nation before flinging yourself into chaos, a dash of British tea and high culture before le dirty Indochine.
Controlled chaos begins tomorrow.
** This paragraph may or may not have happened.
A stretch from Durham to Singapore took us from below the 45th Parallel, well north of the Arctic Circle and over the Arctic Ocean, before charging straight south – hello, Siberia; Nice to see you again, Mongolia; oh that’s what Beijing looks like from 30,000 feet, wow the lights of Hong Kong fade in the rain. Fifteen hours from middle America to the north pole to the equator. An aerial version of Jacques Cartier’s Northwest Passage. Lindbergh, meet Boeing.
And north of the Bering Strait, there they were, in plain sight: Russia’s nuclear arsenal, lined up like stoic terracotta warriors, directly gazing over four miles of maritime border. Putin’s ugly head staring America straight down, a sliver of Cold War ideology still alive north of the Arctic Circle. But there, in his face, was the Alaska legislature, rearin’ its hearty American freedom, returnin’ that stare, God love ‘em...**
Our flight – nuclear arsenals aside – was fifteen hours of constant daylight, leaving at high noon on Sunday, arrive at dinnertime Monday. Between the movies, our entertainment was -- I loved this – a Discovery Channel special on the wonders of 1000-frame-per-second photography. “Now we can see what we’ve never seen before…” ran the narrator, and we were treated to microsecond-by-microsecond shots of:
- Water balloons to the face
- Shattering wine glasses
- Exploding fruit
Ten thousand frames per second to watch apples blow up. Scientia gratis scientiae. Knowledge at its pinnacle. Thank you, United.
We arrived in Singapore just before midnight, and it was well after 1 a.m. Tuesday as we pulled in, exhausted and we’re-actually-here-what-now? exhilarated. Singapore, dismissed as “Asia Lite” next to the chaos of Manila, Jakarta, or Bangkok, will probably be the ideal jumping off point for exploration of the sub-subcontinent. Witness the progressive island nation before flinging yourself into chaos, a dash of British tea and high culture before le dirty Indochine.
Controlled chaos begins tomorrow.
** This paragraph may or may not have happened.
Before Sunrise (2/7/2009)
The most haunting scene in “Before Sunrise” – or any traveler’s DVD library – comes right before the fade to black. A solo violin resonates over empty Vienna; chairs, a graveyard, a bridge, a park, each of which Jesse and Celine – our travelers – had visited while falling in love hours before. The Danube flows on. Vienna lives without them. The message, of course, is clear; travel is never about the stunning landscapes or famous statues, the military parades or luxury hotels. It’s the fleeting moments – the late afternoons on rickety trams, the fleeting connections with random strangers, the midnight strolls through empty Hapsburg streets.
“Before Sunrise” is a dream Europe that now seems primeval. No e-mail, no Euro, no open borders, and less English. In 1995, two years before I began my own European foray wrought with plenty of walks through plenty of cities, the continent still felt foreign; no Lonely Planet, no Internet, and only discovery and imagination. Of course young romance could blossom: as the sun set over the Danube, you could plant one, as Jesse did, on French girl atop Orson Wells’ “The Third Man” Ferris wheel without a simulcast on YouTube.
The realization hit when I ventured to Budapest in July 2007, nearly exactly a decade after detraining in Vienna. The cities are natural foils, empirical compatriots that coexisted to rule a quarter of Europe for four decades. The blue Danube snakes through both, and each touts grand, old Hapsburg buildings echoing the whispers of a proud but forgotten empire. The two cities are more similar than any two I’ve visited.
But the timelessness of the late nineties, my Europe, had faded. The digital age was apparent amid the yellow stucco buildings, and my own teenage idealism replaced with a more mature realism. The airport was sleek and modern, the thunderous Central European rain seemed to shimmer less vibrantly. The locations, beautiful and memorable, could have been twanged with a lonely violin. No Jesse and Celine falling in love through new discoveries, a gorgeous city hauntingly empty.
Precisely that makes the time and location of “Before Sunrise” resonate. Having spent months strolling the streets of Central Europe with several memorable friends, only to return by myself later, I realized quickly how the tingling of newness and the ideals of teenage love fleet away.
Twelve years and four continents on, “Before Sunrise” has continually struck a chord in my worldwide travels – my Europe, my era, young love and friendships blossoming in the fading daylight. Though new venues are more foreign and more shocking, little can equal the awe of discovery in a musty Vienna (Prague, Munich, Nuernberg) café, interrupted by the echoes of a rickety steel tram.
“Before Sunrise” is a dream Europe that now seems primeval. No e-mail, no Euro, no open borders, and less English. In 1995, two years before I began my own European foray wrought with plenty of walks through plenty of cities, the continent still felt foreign; no Lonely Planet, no Internet, and only discovery and imagination. Of course young romance could blossom: as the sun set over the Danube, you could plant one, as Jesse did, on French girl atop Orson Wells’ “The Third Man” Ferris wheel without a simulcast on YouTube.
The realization hit when I ventured to Budapest in July 2007, nearly exactly a decade after detraining in Vienna. The cities are natural foils, empirical compatriots that coexisted to rule a quarter of Europe for four decades. The blue Danube snakes through both, and each touts grand, old Hapsburg buildings echoing the whispers of a proud but forgotten empire. The two cities are more similar than any two I’ve visited.
But the timelessness of the late nineties, my Europe, had faded. The digital age was apparent amid the yellow stucco buildings, and my own teenage idealism replaced with a more mature realism. The airport was sleek and modern, the thunderous Central European rain seemed to shimmer less vibrantly. The locations, beautiful and memorable, could have been twanged with a lonely violin. No Jesse and Celine falling in love through new discoveries, a gorgeous city hauntingly empty.
Precisely that makes the time and location of “Before Sunrise” resonate. Having spent months strolling the streets of Central Europe with several memorable friends, only to return by myself later, I realized quickly how the tingling of newness and the ideals of teenage love fleet away.
Twelve years and four continents on, “Before Sunrise” has continually struck a chord in my worldwide travels – my Europe, my era, young love and friendships blossoming in the fading daylight. Though new venues are more foreign and more shocking, little can equal the awe of discovery in a musty Vienna (Prague, Munich, Nuernberg) café, interrupted by the echoes of a rickety steel tram.
London Actually (12/23/2008)
Since I began traveloging in 2002, I've visited the United Kingdom three times, and each time have failed to pen a UK entry. Chalk it up to familiarity, fear of striking a wrong chord, or a general lack of mews. For someone who grew up in the US, and New England in particular, the UK -- historically, politically, culturally -- has more common 1s and 0s with my own hardwiring than any other place in the world, even parts of my own country (North Carolina, but who's counting?). What can I say that isn't already common knowledge?
- The speak English there! But not the same kind we do -- they say things like "the tube" and "bloke" and "trousers" and "blimey" and "rubbish!" How funny! (Er, no.)
- They have a queen! But if she dies, 483 people would have to die before her husband could succeed her! (Interesting and true, but no.)
- Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, but did you know that only one -- "The Merry Wives of Windsor" -- took place in contemporary England? (I'd discuss, but you'd tune out.)
- Sienna Miller. (Well...)
When I first visited the UK in March 2003, the Pound was trading at 1.6 to 1 US dollar ... this time, it traded at 2 to 1. Account for ATM fees and the London big-city surcharge, and everything is more than twice as expensive. Holy fly tipping! I love the UK, but can't really convey the sense of defeat at looking at a restaurant menu and realizing you need to spend $20 on a cheeseburger and chips. By jolly Roger! Indeed, my four days of subsistence on chips and scones set up the a duel of wits, "Traveler v. Onset of Scurvy," unlike any the Old Bailey had ever seen. I did prevail, but had I stayed another week, George III may have cackled in his crypt. And so with due respect to New York -- or Rome -- the southwestern United Kingdom is the center of the world. A walk (since that's all I could afford) around the streets of London and Oxford gave me a few insights as to why:
- The British accent, whether it comes from a Cockney bloke (few that remain), an Indian immigrant, or American grad student who has holed herself up in the UK since 2004 (not that I know any of those), is perfectly endearing and adds a fourth degree of sophistication that the most educated Americans lack. The temptation is vicious to saunter up to any of the above and launching into "So, my good man... 'The Fire Sermon'..."
- When wandering London, one can't avoid seeing what buildings did (or, more easily, didn't) hold governments in exile. This trend started during WWII, when the Poles, Dutch, French, and Czechs all set up governments in exile in London. The Czechs, callling on that retreat tactic which had worked so well, actually fled London for Buckinghamshire during the Blitz; the next step, apparently, was a consulate in Narnia.
- There's Providence in hearing "I'm sorry, sir, but the bus to Stratford-on-Avon is sold out..."
- A glance through the Oxford Authors section of the Oxford University bookstore is simultaneously mind-jarring and depressing. Where Oxford can stack its tables with J.R.R. Tolkien, W.H. Auden, C.S. Lewis, T.E. Lawrence (apparently the initials are a sign of Oxford grace), all the way down to Bill Clinton, Georgetown is left with ... Deborah Tannen's greatest hits.
- My one day in London was, amusingly, Canada Day. The North (or do they say "The West"?) came out Eastons-blazin', including rows of Canadian flags strung across the Canada House, ongoing hockey games and Banff placards on Trafalgar Square, and, the kicker, a huge maple-leaf banner atop Westminster Abbey. Either THAT's international friendship ... or the slyest invasion in the history of man. (Look out for Mounties in trees!)
London needn't be romanticized (though "blessed plot," "earthly seat of Mars," and "demi-paradise" might be a slight overstatement), and eight hours of solid pavement-pounding, Tubing, and subsisting on scones and tea (tea!) doesn't diminish it. London, for us New Englanders, will always be poetic... after all, in London, you never need to look far for a mews.
- The speak English there! But not the same kind we do -- they say things like "the tube" and "bloke" and "trousers" and "blimey" and "rubbish!" How funny! (Er, no.)
- They have a queen! But if she dies, 483 people would have to die before her husband could succeed her! (Interesting and true, but no.)
- Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, but did you know that only one -- "The Merry Wives of Windsor" -- took place in contemporary England? (I'd discuss, but you'd tune out.)
- Sienna Miller. (Well...)
When I first visited the UK in March 2003, the Pound was trading at 1.6 to 1 US dollar ... this time, it traded at 2 to 1. Account for ATM fees and the London big-city surcharge, and everything is more than twice as expensive. Holy fly tipping! I love the UK, but can't really convey the sense of defeat at looking at a restaurant menu and realizing you need to spend $20 on a cheeseburger and chips. By jolly Roger! Indeed, my four days of subsistence on chips and scones set up the a duel of wits, "Traveler v. Onset of Scurvy," unlike any the Old Bailey had ever seen. I did prevail, but had I stayed another week, George III may have cackled in his crypt. And so with due respect to New York -- or Rome -- the southwestern United Kingdom is the center of the world. A walk (since that's all I could afford) around the streets of London and Oxford gave me a few insights as to why:
- The British accent, whether it comes from a Cockney bloke (few that remain), an Indian immigrant, or American grad student who has holed herself up in the UK since 2004 (not that I know any of those), is perfectly endearing and adds a fourth degree of sophistication that the most educated Americans lack. The temptation is vicious to saunter up to any of the above and launching into "So, my good man... 'The Fire Sermon'..."
- When wandering London, one can't avoid seeing what buildings did (or, more easily, didn't) hold governments in exile. This trend started during WWII, when the Poles, Dutch, French, and Czechs all set up governments in exile in London. The Czechs, callling on that retreat tactic which had worked so well, actually fled London for Buckinghamshire during the Blitz; the next step, apparently, was a consulate in Narnia.
- There's Providence in hearing "I'm sorry, sir, but the bus to Stratford-on-Avon is sold out..."
- A glance through the Oxford Authors section of the Oxford University bookstore is simultaneously mind-jarring and depressing. Where Oxford can stack its tables with J.R.R. Tolkien, W.H. Auden, C.S. Lewis, T.E. Lawrence (apparently the initials are a sign of Oxford grace), all the way down to Bill Clinton, Georgetown is left with ... Deborah Tannen's greatest hits.
- My one day in London was, amusingly, Canada Day. The North (or do they say "The West"?) came out Eastons-blazin', including rows of Canadian flags strung across the Canada House, ongoing hockey games and Banff placards on Trafalgar Square, and, the kicker, a huge maple-leaf banner atop Westminster Abbey. Either THAT's international friendship ... or the slyest invasion in the history of man. (Look out for Mounties in trees!)
London needn't be romanticized (though "blessed plot," "earthly seat of Mars," and "demi-paradise" might be a slight overstatement), and eight hours of solid pavement-pounding, Tubing, and subsisting on scones and tea (tea!) doesn't diminish it. London, for us New Englanders, will always be poetic... after all, in London, you never need to look far for a mews.
Take Now Thy Son (11/28/2008)
I had promised my friend TJ that I would visit him in Cairo since we graduated college in 2003. Several vacations -- South Africa, New Zealand, the Balkans, and 20 baseball stadiums later -- I finally upheld my promise. In hindsight, I'm glad I held out for so long -- a chance to let the trip marinate, allow the anticipation to build, and read up small fractions of the literature: the Bible to Mark Twain, Lonely Planet to the BBC. A trip through the Holy Land -- a three-week Exodus but-I-crossed-the-Jordan-River-so-take-that-Moses jaunt. This was, and will be, the longest vacation on my life -- in an area where people opine as deeply as anywhere in the world.
Whether you're a religious zealot or passionately atheist, it's hard to put into perspective the influence of the region on the modern world. This is the year 2008 for a reason, and we work five days and rest on Saturday and Sunday for another. The world's largest bestseller is a collection of stories that centers around a carpenter from a hilly town in an otherwise nondescript valley resort town. Laws created in Israel 2000 years ago still influence constitutions that effectively divide church and state.
My three destinations -- Jordan, Israel, and Egypt -- are baby boomers with deep roots (born 1946, 1948, 1956 respectively), each uniquely ancient, each uniquely modern. Histories, images, and prejudices of Egypt and Israel are well documented (Jordan, having been conceived by the pen of the British Empire, gets a relative free pass). The differences are distinct, each with a distinct banquet for the shoestring (well, it would be if the dollar had value) or lavishly spending traveler. For a region plastered in the daily headlines, I not once felt unsafe; and strangely, it wasn't the function of guys -- and girls -- carrying machine guns. Perhaps you know you've been in the Middle East too long when an Uzi doesn't phase you.
Most surprising is the way these three countries completely destroyed my prejudices. The Valley of the Kings isn't littered with gold, and is leg-bendingly hot. King Tut's tomb is ironically tiny. The Egyptian Museum is as organized as Tutmosis' attic. Say what you will about their status as tourist attractions, you still can't put the Pyramids' scale into perspective. Wandering around residential Cairo, away from the tourist traps, is fascinating -- and, for hours, no one will bother you. It is amusing to no end when a herd of camel passes you (on the road) as you walk to the Israeli border. Eilat is tantalizingly similar to Atlantic City. Sitting on a rock where you can see four countries never gets old. "Lawrence of Arabia" can't do the desert justice. Petra is much more open and expansive than "Indiana Jones" leads you to believe. Calls to prayer are glorious ... except outside your hotel room at 4 a.m. You'll never forget sitting in Amman on Tuesday preparing to cross the West Bank on Wednesday, and hearing that Israel and Hamas have struck a cease-fire set to take effect at 6 a.m. ... on Thursday. Israel is far less religious than you'd think... but you still can't replicate the Western Wall on Shabbat. Or Jerusalem on Shabbat for that matter. Or Jerusalem in general. Particularly the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and old, fat Russian tourists with "THIS THING IS BOOTY" t-shirts. Or East Jerusalem on Shabbat, or as they know it, Saturday. Bethlehem's steep hills + donkey = ultimate labor ball. Floating in the Dead Sea is wholly surreal. Having your 58-year old father get you out of bed at 4 a.m. so you can see sunrise from Masada only slightly less so. A cotton Abraham in Beer Sheva is more astounding than Nelson's Column. The Sea of Galilee is remarkably far below sea level. Cana wine is both sweet and dry; who's to say what the "best wine at the party" was? St. Peter's Fish is so underwhelming it's no wonder the guy changed jobs. The Golan Heights is staggeringly craggy; everyone should view the UN's buffer zone between Israel and Syria from Coffee Anan. Getting stuck behind tanks on winding, hilly highways is even cooler, though. Basketball-sized jellyfish are pretty damn intimidating. Driving around Haifa like madmen looking for Elijah's cave is maddening, even before you get tricked into "buying" a bracelet for like $5. But at least you know you've succeeded in getting off the tourist trail, since it's not signed in English. So there. The beachfront in Tel Aviv might as well be Miami. And there is no more ironic way to conclude three weeks in the Holy Land than ... "do you want bacon with that?"
A trip to God's country (the non-West Roxbury version) will shatter your expectations on the roots of Western of civilization, and not to mention, challenge your wits as a traveler. After this, any trip should be icing on the proverbial baklava.
Whether you're a religious zealot or passionately atheist, it's hard to put into perspective the influence of the region on the modern world. This is the year 2008 for a reason, and we work five days and rest on Saturday and Sunday for another. The world's largest bestseller is a collection of stories that centers around a carpenter from a hilly town in an otherwise nondescript valley resort town. Laws created in Israel 2000 years ago still influence constitutions that effectively divide church and state.
My three destinations -- Jordan, Israel, and Egypt -- are baby boomers with deep roots (born 1946, 1948, 1956 respectively), each uniquely ancient, each uniquely modern. Histories, images, and prejudices of Egypt and Israel are well documented (Jordan, having been conceived by the pen of the British Empire, gets a relative free pass). The differences are distinct, each with a distinct banquet for the shoestring (well, it would be if the dollar had value) or lavishly spending traveler. For a region plastered in the daily headlines, I not once felt unsafe; and strangely, it wasn't the function of guys -- and girls -- carrying machine guns. Perhaps you know you've been in the Middle East too long when an Uzi doesn't phase you.
Most surprising is the way these three countries completely destroyed my prejudices. The Valley of the Kings isn't littered with gold, and is leg-bendingly hot. King Tut's tomb is ironically tiny. The Egyptian Museum is as organized as Tutmosis' attic. Say what you will about their status as tourist attractions, you still can't put the Pyramids' scale into perspective. Wandering around residential Cairo, away from the tourist traps, is fascinating -- and, for hours, no one will bother you. It is amusing to no end when a herd of camel passes you (on the road) as you walk to the Israeli border. Eilat is tantalizingly similar to Atlantic City. Sitting on a rock where you can see four countries never gets old. "Lawrence of Arabia" can't do the desert justice. Petra is much more open and expansive than "Indiana Jones" leads you to believe. Calls to prayer are glorious ... except outside your hotel room at 4 a.m. You'll never forget sitting in Amman on Tuesday preparing to cross the West Bank on Wednesday, and hearing that Israel and Hamas have struck a cease-fire set to take effect at 6 a.m. ... on Thursday. Israel is far less religious than you'd think... but you still can't replicate the Western Wall on Shabbat. Or Jerusalem on Shabbat for that matter. Or Jerusalem in general. Particularly the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and old, fat Russian tourists with "THIS THING IS BOOTY" t-shirts. Or East Jerusalem on Shabbat, or as they know it, Saturday. Bethlehem's steep hills + donkey = ultimate labor ball. Floating in the Dead Sea is wholly surreal. Having your 58-year old father get you out of bed at 4 a.m. so you can see sunrise from Masada only slightly less so. A cotton Abraham in Beer Sheva is more astounding than Nelson's Column. The Sea of Galilee is remarkably far below sea level. Cana wine is both sweet and dry; who's to say what the "best wine at the party" was? St. Peter's Fish is so underwhelming it's no wonder the guy changed jobs. The Golan Heights is staggeringly craggy; everyone should view the UN's buffer zone between Israel and Syria from Coffee Anan. Getting stuck behind tanks on winding, hilly highways is even cooler, though. Basketball-sized jellyfish are pretty damn intimidating. Driving around Haifa like madmen looking for Elijah's cave is maddening, even before you get tricked into "buying" a bracelet for like $5. But at least you know you've succeeded in getting off the tourist trail, since it's not signed in English. So there. The beachfront in Tel Aviv might as well be Miami. And there is no more ironic way to conclude three weeks in the Holy Land than ... "do you want bacon with that?"
A trip to God's country (the non-West Roxbury version) will shatter your expectations on the roots of Western of civilization, and not to mention, challenge your wits as a traveler. After this, any trip should be icing on the proverbial baklava.
The Penitent Man will Pass (7/7/2008)
One of the most popular New Testament stories is the wedding at Cana. When the hosts -- who obviously went bargain-hunting on their wedding planner -- ran out of wine, Jesus changed several jugs of plain water into wine ... not only that, it ended up being the best stuff of the day. The story is popular at (would you believe) Christian weddings, and naturally, is prime ammunition against arguments that drinking is unchristian. It is also, I have heard, indisputable proof that Jesus was Irish.
Despite this, it might be one of the world's great ironies that, for a city world renowned for its alcohol, Cana today is ... dry. The reason, of course, is that Cana is a predominantly Muslim suburb of predominantly Muslim Nazareth (wave that sentence in front of Pope Innocent III. Whoa, Nellie.) The churches -- one where the Catholics say the miracle happened, another where the Orthodox say it did (schism!) -- are pretty much the only tourist sites in town, dwarfed by the surrounding shops, souqs, and mosques. It is pretty much the same in Nazareth, next door over a couple of gear-busting hills -- the Christians administer their holy sites in bustling Arab towns who let them be, earn their keep from the tourists, but otherwise live their lives around them.
For Christian pilgrims or curious tourists, that is pretty much the norm in Northern Israel, where a young Jesus of Nazareth is said to have preached and performed his miracles. The New Testament sites are there -- usually marked by a church built over ruins of other churches, with nothing from the first century AD to mark a spot. (Or, in one case, where the Virgin Mary is said to have witnessed events that she had no role in.) The simplicity was the most fascinating, and frankly awe-inspiring, facet of the sites. Given their significance, they are strikingly small: most sites (Cana, Mt. Tabor, Mount of Beatitudes, Loaves and Fishes, etc.) are marked by a small church with a grotto over the original rock. Perhaps this is a function of being conquered and leveled so many times, or the fact that the Franciscans (a Catholic order sworn to poverty) run most of them, I dunno. But, compared to the grandiose European cathedrals, the Mormon temple in Bethesda, or, well, even the church I grew up with in West Roxbury, they are remarkably understated, even humbling. And maybe... that's the point.
Northern Israel reminded me a little bit of a dry, more populated New Hampshire (and, honestly, to picture Jesus running around New Hampshire is a little perplexing), with rolling hills and "mountains" marking the northern borders. After skirting the Sea of Galilee on our second day there, we headed up into the Golan Heights, which Israel gained from Syria in 1967. The landscape was stunning -- not lush, as my guidebooks said (though, after traveling through Moab, Edom, and the Negev, I suppose "lush" is relative), but rolling fields with dotted with rocks. A geopolitically hot Poolburn, New Zealand, if you will -- Rohan with land mines. As we climbed upward toward Mt. Bental above the disengagement zone between Israel and Syria, towns became more sparse and we saw more tanks, more UN peacekeepers. Atop Bental, we were said to have views of five countries (!), though I'm guessing the haze only allowed for Israel, Syria, and (maybe) Lebanon. Regardless, the site easily compensated us for the lack of view, since we were still able to watch over the UN-administered zone from perhaps the greatest-named restaurant ever, "Coffee Anan."
Having never been to Rome or Constantinople (we'll always have Byzantium...), I can't directly compare any of Israel's Christian pilgrimage sites to the places where the various churches found their homes -- ones with political power and (at least at one point) endless streams of money from war and real estate. Still, having been around Europe enough, I can tell you that the feeling in these sites is much different -- far less exalting, more subdued -- than anything those cathedrals offer; the churches of Europe are Walter Donovan's chalice, the churches in Galilee are Indiana Jones'. (The penitent man IS humble before God!) I never felt awestruck down by the sheer awesomeness of the place -- nothing threw at me that the head of the local church (Pope, patriarch, bishop, priest, whomever) is God's vicar on earth. In fact, the only "look at me!" monuments were built by Pope Paul VI to commemorate his own visits. (How humble.) The simplicity, though, was overwhelming -- deafening silence to let the beautiful settings and serenity speak for themselves. e.e. cummings -- who, if he didn't travel to Galilee, should have -- would grin.
Next up: three weeks, three countries, two languages, three religions (four if you count Ra), and two alphabets (three if you count hieroglyphics). What now?
Despite this, it might be one of the world's great ironies that, for a city world renowned for its alcohol, Cana today is ... dry. The reason, of course, is that Cana is a predominantly Muslim suburb of predominantly Muslim Nazareth (wave that sentence in front of Pope Innocent III. Whoa, Nellie.) The churches -- one where the Catholics say the miracle happened, another where the Orthodox say it did (schism!) -- are pretty much the only tourist sites in town, dwarfed by the surrounding shops, souqs, and mosques. It is pretty much the same in Nazareth, next door over a couple of gear-busting hills -- the Christians administer their holy sites in bustling Arab towns who let them be, earn their keep from the tourists, but otherwise live their lives around them.
For Christian pilgrims or curious tourists, that is pretty much the norm in Northern Israel, where a young Jesus of Nazareth is said to have preached and performed his miracles. The New Testament sites are there -- usually marked by a church built over ruins of other churches, with nothing from the first century AD to mark a spot. (Or, in one case, where the Virgin Mary is said to have witnessed events that she had no role in.) The simplicity was the most fascinating, and frankly awe-inspiring, facet of the sites. Given their significance, they are strikingly small: most sites (Cana, Mt. Tabor, Mount of Beatitudes, Loaves and Fishes, etc.) are marked by a small church with a grotto over the original rock. Perhaps this is a function of being conquered and leveled so many times, or the fact that the Franciscans (a Catholic order sworn to poverty) run most of them, I dunno. But, compared to the grandiose European cathedrals, the Mormon temple in Bethesda, or, well, even the church I grew up with in West Roxbury, they are remarkably understated, even humbling. And maybe... that's the point.
Northern Israel reminded me a little bit of a dry, more populated New Hampshire (and, honestly, to picture Jesus running around New Hampshire is a little perplexing), with rolling hills and "mountains" marking the northern borders. After skirting the Sea of Galilee on our second day there, we headed up into the Golan Heights, which Israel gained from Syria in 1967. The landscape was stunning -- not lush, as my guidebooks said (though, after traveling through Moab, Edom, and the Negev, I suppose "lush" is relative), but rolling fields with dotted with rocks. A geopolitically hot Poolburn, New Zealand, if you will -- Rohan with land mines. As we climbed upward toward Mt. Bental above the disengagement zone between Israel and Syria, towns became more sparse and we saw more tanks, more UN peacekeepers. Atop Bental, we were said to have views of five countries (!), though I'm guessing the haze only allowed for Israel, Syria, and (maybe) Lebanon. Regardless, the site easily compensated us for the lack of view, since we were still able to watch over the UN-administered zone from perhaps the greatest-named restaurant ever, "Coffee Anan."
Having never been to Rome or Constantinople (we'll always have Byzantium...), I can't directly compare any of Israel's Christian pilgrimage sites to the places where the various churches found their homes -- ones with political power and (at least at one point) endless streams of money from war and real estate. Still, having been around Europe enough, I can tell you that the feeling in these sites is much different -- far less exalting, more subdued -- than anything those cathedrals offer; the churches of Europe are Walter Donovan's chalice, the churches in Galilee are Indiana Jones'. (The penitent man IS humble before God!) I never felt awestruck down by the sheer awesomeness of the place -- nothing threw at me that the head of the local church (Pope, patriarch, bishop, priest, whomever) is God's vicar on earth. In fact, the only "look at me!" monuments were built by Pope Paul VI to commemorate his own visits. (How humble.) The simplicity, though, was overwhelming -- deafening silence to let the beautiful settings and serenity speak for themselves. e.e. cummings -- who, if he didn't travel to Galilee, should have -- would grin.
Next up: three weeks, three countries, two languages, three religions (four if you count Ra), and two alphabets (three if you count hieroglyphics). What now?
Dead Sea Rolls (7/6/2008)
"When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan was four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety miles long, and so crooked that a man does not know which side of it he is on half the time. In going ninety miles it does not get over more than fifty miles of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New York."
- Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad."
My bus sat on the Allenby -- or King Hussein -- Bridge, suspended over the Jordan River, arguably the most legendary stream in the world. I'd been told it wouldn't meet my expectations, particularly after a week on the Nile: Twain had said it wasn't any wider than Broadway, and I knew that subsequent diversions of its flow to irrigate the Galilee had rendered it smaller still. But nevertheless... I wasn't ready for the minisculeness I saw that Wednesday. At the point where it "flows" into the Dead Sea, just south of the bridge, the Jordan is barely wider than a sidewalk. It hardly moves; the plant life, scarce in the desert, hangs over the water and makes it nearly indiscernible through the leaves. If it weren't for historical precedent, I wouldn't have thought it a river -- more like Jordan Marsh.
The Jordan is the largest tributary of the Dead Sea, which had been a backdrop for much of my trip. Everyone who had been to the region told me to go -- a float in the Dead Sea, they contended, was a Middle East must on par with Petra, the Pyramids, or the Via Dolorosa. After visiting, it's hard to disagree: bobbing in the Dead Sea is truly one of the most otherworldly travel experiences.
At 1378 feet (and counting) below sea level, the sea is a whopping 30 percent salt, which is more than eight times saltier than any ocean. The salinity is a function of the region's desert climate, the depth below sea level, and the lack of outlets for the seawater. Put simply, the Jordan and other rivers pour water and minerals into the sea; when the water evaporates in the extreme heat, the minerals remain and crystallize into salt. Compounded over millions of years, the sea has gained so much salt that no life (algae, bacteria, fish, et al.) can survive. Dead, dead, dead.
What surprised me most was the effort you have to extend not to float -- if you are idiotic enough to dunk your full body underwater, the sea will force you back to the top as you writhe in Oedipan eye-gouging pain (I didn't try this, by the way). Even to stay prostrate on your back demands attention, since the currents catch your limbs and flip you like a rotisserie. When the water is calmer, you can have your way with it: I did stomach crunches in the Dead Sea. When the novelty wears thin, the nearby spas are chocked with mud baths and sulfur showers which clear out your pores: For you New Zealand lovers, it's a bit like showering in Rotorua's hot springs. And of course, anything quasi-New Zealand is partially divine.
The next morning, we drove south along the Dead Sea shores in search of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities which by definition, shouldn't be "findable" per se. (God, in what for you or me would be a "mid-life crisis moment," is said to have destroyed the two cities with fire and brimstone after Abraham couldn't find 10 innocent people there. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson cited similar causality for 9/11 and Katrina.) Admittedly, there's not much to see other than the stunning landscape -- salt mountains shooting hundreds of feet to east left, salt mines and the azure sea to the west. One breakaway salt pillar has been dubbed "Lot's wife" after the story of Mrs. Lot who got the itch to witness the fire and brimstone, turned around, and was turned into a salt pillar. (However, if this one is REALLY Mrs. Lot, then she was about 30 feet tall and, er, about 10 feet wide. Use your imagination.)
In perhaps a greater tragedy, the Dead Sea is shrinking significantly. With water from the Jordan and other rivers being diverted for Israeli and Jordanian agriculture, the sea has been evaporating at a staggering rate: in 2007 alone, the water table sank by a full meter. While environmentalists have been racing to replenish the sea with water from the Red Sea (Better Dead than Red!), the future is remarkably uncertain.
Next time: Is there balm in Gilead? I don't know. But is there balm in Galilee? Well, now...
- Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad."
My bus sat on the Allenby -- or King Hussein -- Bridge, suspended over the Jordan River, arguably the most legendary stream in the world. I'd been told it wouldn't meet my expectations, particularly after a week on the Nile: Twain had said it wasn't any wider than Broadway, and I knew that subsequent diversions of its flow to irrigate the Galilee had rendered it smaller still. But nevertheless... I wasn't ready for the minisculeness I saw that Wednesday. At the point where it "flows" into the Dead Sea, just south of the bridge, the Jordan is barely wider than a sidewalk. It hardly moves; the plant life, scarce in the desert, hangs over the water and makes it nearly indiscernible through the leaves. If it weren't for historical precedent, I wouldn't have thought it a river -- more like Jordan Marsh.
The Jordan is the largest tributary of the Dead Sea, which had been a backdrop for much of my trip. Everyone who had been to the region told me to go -- a float in the Dead Sea, they contended, was a Middle East must on par with Petra, the Pyramids, or the Via Dolorosa. After visiting, it's hard to disagree: bobbing in the Dead Sea is truly one of the most otherworldly travel experiences.
At 1378 feet (and counting) below sea level, the sea is a whopping 30 percent salt, which is more than eight times saltier than any ocean. The salinity is a function of the region's desert climate, the depth below sea level, and the lack of outlets for the seawater. Put simply, the Jordan and other rivers pour water and minerals into the sea; when the water evaporates in the extreme heat, the minerals remain and crystallize into salt. Compounded over millions of years, the sea has gained so much salt that no life (algae, bacteria, fish, et al.) can survive. Dead, dead, dead.
What surprised me most was the effort you have to extend not to float -- if you are idiotic enough to dunk your full body underwater, the sea will force you back to the top as you writhe in Oedipan eye-gouging pain (I didn't try this, by the way). Even to stay prostrate on your back demands attention, since the currents catch your limbs and flip you like a rotisserie. When the water is calmer, you can have your way with it: I did stomach crunches in the Dead Sea. When the novelty wears thin, the nearby spas are chocked with mud baths and sulfur showers which clear out your pores: For you New Zealand lovers, it's a bit like showering in Rotorua's hot springs. And of course, anything quasi-New Zealand is partially divine.
The next morning, we drove south along the Dead Sea shores in search of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities which by definition, shouldn't be "findable" per se. (God, in what for you or me would be a "mid-life crisis moment," is said to have destroyed the two cities with fire and brimstone after Abraham couldn't find 10 innocent people there. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson cited similar causality for 9/11 and Katrina.) Admittedly, there's not much to see other than the stunning landscape -- salt mountains shooting hundreds of feet to east left, salt mines and the azure sea to the west. One breakaway salt pillar has been dubbed "Lot's wife" after the story of Mrs. Lot who got the itch to witness the fire and brimstone, turned around, and was turned into a salt pillar. (However, if this one is REALLY Mrs. Lot, then she was about 30 feet tall and, er, about 10 feet wide. Use your imagination.)
In perhaps a greater tragedy, the Dead Sea is shrinking significantly. With water from the Jordan and other rivers being diverted for Israeli and Jordanian agriculture, the sea has been evaporating at a staggering rate: in 2007 alone, the water table sank by a full meter. While environmentalists have been racing to replenish the sea with water from the Red Sea (Better Dead than Red!), the future is remarkably uncertain.
Next time: Is there balm in Gilead? I don't know. But is there balm in Galilee? Well, now...
Crossing Jordan (6/30/2008)
Geography, circumstance, and U.S. foreign policy seem to have conspired against the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. A holstered handgun-shaped nation skirting the East Bank of the Jordan River, Jordan has few makings of stability: a staggering 91 percent of its land is desert. Twenty percent of the land supports 80 percent of the population -- one which has grown by more than a million since 2003 with the influx of Iraqi refugees, and for which the country has received little to no outside assistance. The government is a hereditary monarchy with a strong king who executes all laws but is constitutionally "immune from any liability and responsibility" for their outcome. To Jordan's east lies an unstable Iraq, to its south dogmatic Saudi Arabia, and to its north a fickle Syria; westward simmers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In all directions, Jordan is mired between Iraq and a hard place.
And yet Jordan, for all going against it, is the most stable Arab country in the region. With few natural resources to export, Jordan has instead turned to its tourist industry as its economic driver, which is readily apparent for the average visitor. While most tourists dip in and out of Petra within a day or two - salaam and thanks for the memories - Jordan offers so much more than Indy's Nabatean capital. In hindsight, I wish I had rented a car to explore Jordan at my own pace.
En route from Petra to Amman, I persuaded my driver to stop over at two Dead Sea vistas. The first, Karak, is a crusader castle which sits high atop a hill overlooking a modern town on one side and the Great Rift Valley (and Dead Sea) on the other. As far as ruins go, the site is impressive -- even more so that the abutting residences actually incorporate the medieval castle walls into their own properties. (Saladin was here. Like my begonias?) The castle, while one of Jordan's most famous sites, doesn't strike a chord outside the trained Western ear: for those unread on the Middle East, it was the setting for Orlando Bloom's "look-at-me-I'm-Legolas-but-I-can-really-act-like-a-badass" movie "Kingdom of Heaven." I'll pause while you clear your heartburn. Moving on...
Next was Mt. Nebo, where, Deutoronomy has it, Moses took a physics-defying look at the Promised Land he never entered (this, dear friends, is called "term limits." God wanted them; take note.) As with most biblical sites, ruins (yay! more ruins!) of a Byzantine Monestary sit on the site, in front of a vista where tourists can survey Moses' view. Well, almost the same view, since the haze and pollution hamper pretty much everything beyond the Dead Sea and (I think, since I'm not sure if I could actually see it) Jericho, the oldest continually-inhabited city on earth. Pity, since clear days are supposed to yield views of the salty Rift Valley hills and the Judean desert, even Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, glittering gold in the distance. Alas, the haze didn't abate during my time there, so I had to imagine the panorama -- or just wait two days.
What struck me most about traveling in Jordan was the presence of the monarchy. I'd expected just a photo of the King at the border - Hi, nice to meet you, welcome to Jordan, I'm the King, I rule, any problems let me know, enjoy your stay. No, though, King Abdullah and his father King Hussein are everywhere. I'm not kidding. On the banknotes and state buildings are expected. But both - or just Abdullah - are on private storefronts, in front of tourist attractions, inside taxis, in hotels, on postage stamps, in souvenir shops. They are in various forms of military garb, in Bedouin headgear, in plain white kiffeyehs (headdresses), smiling or sternly scorning. Sometimes Hussein is pictured behind Abdullah, eminating "this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Their omnipresence (and I hate to make this comparison, since I liked Jordan a lot) reminded me eerily of another father-son dynasty at the other end of the continent.
That aside, though, both Hussein and Abdullah have toed lines of moderation in an otherwise uncompromising region. Hussein, much to his neighbors' chagrin, struck a peace accord with Israel in 1994 and steadied Jordan while its largest trading partner, Iraq, was mired in three wars. Abdullah, for his part, has increased foreign investment and has dialogued with Pope Benedict on Christian-Muslim relations. Not that I wouldn't expect it, though: the man attended high school in Massachusetts (Deerfield Academy), undergraduate university in the UK, completed a postgraduate program at Georgetown (WE ARE..!!!), is an avid sportsman to boot. His cosmetically gifted Palestinian wife, Queen Rania, champions women's rights, speaks at the World Economic forum, and (the clincher) was on Oprah. Abdullah, not to be outdone, had a guest role on "Star Trek: Voyager" and has been spotted wearing Harley Davidson jackets in public. I'm guessing that on rainy days he plays the Royal Wii.
While Jordan is not by no means perfect, the city streets show the fruits of the kings' efforts. Amman is a base for most NGOs and companies operating in Iraq, which has brought a boom of Westerners in to follow the money. Downtown apartments fetch upwards of $700,000 - and, hell, you can even shop at Safeway. In the annals of Arab history, Amman doesn't hold a candle to Cairo, Damascus, or even Baghdad -- in fact, it's built on seven circles (cue Dante's "Inferno" references now), and according to one friend of mine, is "the Middle East's suburb." From a panoramic view - beige apartment blocks rolling on 24 hills - it's hard to argue. Nonetheless, though, Amman served its purpose for my journey: it was a (relatvely) quiet comfortable base to relax, see a few sites at my leisure, and recover my legs after Petra. I needed them back for Jerusalem.
And yet Jordan, for all going against it, is the most stable Arab country in the region. With few natural resources to export, Jordan has instead turned to its tourist industry as its economic driver, which is readily apparent for the average visitor. While most tourists dip in and out of Petra within a day or two - salaam and thanks for the memories - Jordan offers so much more than Indy's Nabatean capital. In hindsight, I wish I had rented a car to explore Jordan at my own pace.
En route from Petra to Amman, I persuaded my driver to stop over at two Dead Sea vistas. The first, Karak, is a crusader castle which sits high atop a hill overlooking a modern town on one side and the Great Rift Valley (and Dead Sea) on the other. As far as ruins go, the site is impressive -- even more so that the abutting residences actually incorporate the medieval castle walls into their own properties. (Saladin was here. Like my begonias?) The castle, while one of Jordan's most famous sites, doesn't strike a chord outside the trained Western ear: for those unread on the Middle East, it was the setting for Orlando Bloom's "look-at-me-I'm-Legolas-but-I-can-really-act-like-a-badass" movie "Kingdom of Heaven." I'll pause while you clear your heartburn. Moving on...
Next was Mt. Nebo, where, Deutoronomy has it, Moses took a physics-defying look at the Promised Land he never entered (this, dear friends, is called "term limits." God wanted them; take note.) As with most biblical sites, ruins (yay! more ruins!) of a Byzantine Monestary sit on the site, in front of a vista where tourists can survey Moses' view. Well, almost the same view, since the haze and pollution hamper pretty much everything beyond the Dead Sea and (I think, since I'm not sure if I could actually see it) Jericho, the oldest continually-inhabited city on earth. Pity, since clear days are supposed to yield views of the salty Rift Valley hills and the Judean desert, even Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, glittering gold in the distance. Alas, the haze didn't abate during my time there, so I had to imagine the panorama -- or just wait two days.
What struck me most about traveling in Jordan was the presence of the monarchy. I'd expected just a photo of the King at the border - Hi, nice to meet you, welcome to Jordan, I'm the King, I rule, any problems let me know, enjoy your stay. No, though, King Abdullah and his father King Hussein are everywhere. I'm not kidding. On the banknotes and state buildings are expected. But both - or just Abdullah - are on private storefronts, in front of tourist attractions, inside taxis, in hotels, on postage stamps, in souvenir shops. They are in various forms of military garb, in Bedouin headgear, in plain white kiffeyehs (headdresses), smiling or sternly scorning. Sometimes Hussein is pictured behind Abdullah, eminating "this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Their omnipresence (and I hate to make this comparison, since I liked Jordan a lot) reminded me eerily of another father-son dynasty at the other end of the continent.
That aside, though, both Hussein and Abdullah have toed lines of moderation in an otherwise uncompromising region. Hussein, much to his neighbors' chagrin, struck a peace accord with Israel in 1994 and steadied Jordan while its largest trading partner, Iraq, was mired in three wars. Abdullah, for his part, has increased foreign investment and has dialogued with Pope Benedict on Christian-Muslim relations. Not that I wouldn't expect it, though: the man attended high school in Massachusetts (Deerfield Academy), undergraduate university in the UK, completed a postgraduate program at Georgetown (WE ARE..!!!), is an avid sportsman to boot. His cosmetically gifted Palestinian wife, Queen Rania, champions women's rights, speaks at the World Economic forum, and (the clincher) was on Oprah. Abdullah, not to be outdone, had a guest role on "Star Trek: Voyager" and has been spotted wearing Harley Davidson jackets in public. I'm guessing that on rainy days he plays the Royal Wii.
While Jordan is not by no means perfect, the city streets show the fruits of the kings' efforts. Amman is a base for most NGOs and companies operating in Iraq, which has brought a boom of Westerners in to follow the money. Downtown apartments fetch upwards of $700,000 - and, hell, you can even shop at Safeway. In the annals of Arab history, Amman doesn't hold a candle to Cairo, Damascus, or even Baghdad -- in fact, it's built on seven circles (cue Dante's "Inferno" references now), and according to one friend of mine, is "the Middle East's suburb." From a panoramic view - beige apartment blocks rolling on 24 hills - it's hard to argue. Nonetheless, though, Amman served its purpose for my journey: it was a (relatvely) quiet comfortable base to relax, see a few sites at my leisure, and recover my legs after Petra. I needed them back for Jerusalem.
Across the Desert, Through the Mountains (6/28/2008)
"Forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and 'X' never, ever marks the spot."
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
It was fitting that I visited Petra in the summer of the fourth "Indiana Jones" installment. We had last left Indy, nineteen years ago, outside the Treasury, the best-preserved relic of the ancient Nabatean lost city. While the rose-red facade doesn't house the Holy Grail - or anything, really - its simple majesty is overwhelming. If the cup of Christ were stashed away somewhere, here's as good a place as any.
Petra is Jordan's holy grail too. In a desert country whose neighbors dwarf it in headlines and vistors (more on that in my next installment), Petra is the lone exception which steadily fills the hotels, restaurants, and state coffers. Busloads pour in, almost magnetically, from all around the region; you can find day-long excursions to Petra everywhere from Tel Aviv, Cairo, Eilat, and certainly Amman. For a country devoid of its neighbors' oil and religious historicity, Petra is, poetically and ironically, Jordan's treasury.
Most amusing is that nothing else in Petra looks like the Treasury. It's much like St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow - iconic dressing, but hardly representative of the rest of the salad. Petra is far more than Indy's last crusade; it is the anticipation that builds as you descend the 3/4-mile Siq (entry path) and watch is walls rise to 200 feet over your head. It is the Royal Tombs that peer over the city with their elaborately cut sandstone. It is the amphitheater which looks out, almost on nothing. It is the collonaded city center and freestanding temples which are more of your typical "ruins." All together, it's the last vestage of a civilization that, were this city not found less than two centuries ago - would be lost to all but a few scholars. Don't expect miles of Indy's view, but don't let that disappoint.
Petra is not for the weak-hearted, or better said, the weak-soled. The walking you put in is staggering - you hoof more than a mile in desert heat before you even see the Treasury (your first glimpse of anything), and that doesn't even account for the miles beyond the famous facade. The town center is perhaps another mile, if you don't climb up to any of the royal tombs or lookouts. If you can hoof it to the Monastery, you're in for another mile or more straight uphill (or, in New Zealand English, "flat"). The Monastery is particularly rewarding; as you ascend the switchbacks, ancient staircases, and paths that skirt sheer rock faces, you compete against a diminishing water supply and a mid-day desert sun. If a king was buried up here - as Nabatea's Obodas I was - he obviously didn't want pokey travelers to find him. The view - legs be damned - is staggering: atop a higher, neighboring mountain is Aaron's (Moses' brother's) tomb, and directly due east are the Dead Sea and the Israeli fronteir. For all the humdrum and biblicalness of Moses' view from Mt. Nebo, Aaron and his second fiddle have him beaten hands down. Cast the Golden Calf, earn a better view. There's biblical irony.
While those busloads usually dip in and out within a few hours, Petra provides its visitors with days', maybe even weeks', worth of similar hikes. She's yours, as long as your legs can take it. Indeed, after every Petra hike - however long or short - your last trip is always more than a mile back to the entrance -- all uphill. As a vigilant traveler - not an in/out day-tripper - you don't visit Petra; you conquer it. For me, two days exploring successfully decommissioned my legs for another three, and I undoubtedly got the better deal. So while I didn't stumble upon the Holy Grail, I did leave with some exhausted - but golden - calves.
Matt
PS: This log is out of order -- Petra came before Jerusalem -- but I have a few more that I'll be sending over the next few days. Bear with me... until next time.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
It was fitting that I visited Petra in the summer of the fourth "Indiana Jones" installment. We had last left Indy, nineteen years ago, outside the Treasury, the best-preserved relic of the ancient Nabatean lost city. While the rose-red facade doesn't house the Holy Grail - or anything, really - its simple majesty is overwhelming. If the cup of Christ were stashed away somewhere, here's as good a place as any.
Petra is Jordan's holy grail too. In a desert country whose neighbors dwarf it in headlines and vistors (more on that in my next installment), Petra is the lone exception which steadily fills the hotels, restaurants, and state coffers. Busloads pour in, almost magnetically, from all around the region; you can find day-long excursions to Petra everywhere from Tel Aviv, Cairo, Eilat, and certainly Amman. For a country devoid of its neighbors' oil and religious historicity, Petra is, poetically and ironically, Jordan's treasury.
Most amusing is that nothing else in Petra looks like the Treasury. It's much like St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow - iconic dressing, but hardly representative of the rest of the salad. Petra is far more than Indy's last crusade; it is the anticipation that builds as you descend the 3/4-mile Siq (entry path) and watch is walls rise to 200 feet over your head. It is the Royal Tombs that peer over the city with their elaborately cut sandstone. It is the amphitheater which looks out, almost on nothing. It is the collonaded city center and freestanding temples which are more of your typical "ruins." All together, it's the last vestage of a civilization that, were this city not found less than two centuries ago - would be lost to all but a few scholars. Don't expect miles of Indy's view, but don't let that disappoint.
Petra is not for the weak-hearted, or better said, the weak-soled. The walking you put in is staggering - you hoof more than a mile in desert heat before you even see the Treasury (your first glimpse of anything), and that doesn't even account for the miles beyond the famous facade. The town center is perhaps another mile, if you don't climb up to any of the royal tombs or lookouts. If you can hoof it to the Monastery, you're in for another mile or more straight uphill (or, in New Zealand English, "flat"). The Monastery is particularly rewarding; as you ascend the switchbacks, ancient staircases, and paths that skirt sheer rock faces, you compete against a diminishing water supply and a mid-day desert sun. If a king was buried up here - as Nabatea's Obodas I was - he obviously didn't want pokey travelers to find him. The view - legs be damned - is staggering: atop a higher, neighboring mountain is Aaron's (Moses' brother's) tomb, and directly due east are the Dead Sea and the Israeli fronteir. For all the humdrum and biblicalness of Moses' view from Mt. Nebo, Aaron and his second fiddle have him beaten hands down. Cast the Golden Calf, earn a better view. There's biblical irony.
While those busloads usually dip in and out within a few hours, Petra provides its visitors with days', maybe even weeks', worth of similar hikes. She's yours, as long as your legs can take it. Indeed, after every Petra hike - however long or short - your last trip is always more than a mile back to the entrance -- all uphill. As a vigilant traveler - not an in/out day-tripper - you don't visit Petra; you conquer it. For me, two days exploring successfully decommissioned my legs for another three, and I undoubtedly got the better deal. So while I didn't stumble upon the Holy Grail, I did leave with some exhausted - but golden - calves.
Matt
PS: This log is out of order -- Petra came before Jerusalem -- but I have a few more that I'll be sending over the next few days. Bear with me... until next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
