Weblog » 2005 » March

Wow.

Russia appears to be the most different (from the USA) place I’ve visited yet. Even though the keyboards are US keyboards, everything else here is writen in Cyrillic. When I thoght I was lost in Venezuela or Morocco, someone should have slapped me upside the head and told me to be happy I had the roman alphabet! (In Morocco, most Arabic signs were subtitled in French… most likely only because I was in the cities though.)

I was slightly prepared for a different writing system and language, but it was alot more overwhelming than I expected. The hardest part is that the letters look like you should understand them, but you can’t. In Spanish, I could try to fuddle my way through the words… massacring pronunciation and the such. In Arabic, I could do the same with the French subtitles and ignore the parts of the script I didn’t understand. Here, I can do neither.

I’m getting the hang of certain things so far though. It turns out that the transliterations for the words are very good (much better than they were in Morocco). So if I need something, I just read what my map/guidebook says. Its like there is a common language seperated by a seperate alphabet. I’ve also been able to figure out certain words like Проспект – Prospekt. (Thats the word for Avenue in case you were wondering.)

Andy arrives here tonight around 6pm, so then we’ll be able to tackle this language together. With 3 weeks here in some of the most remote parts of the country, we’re going to need it. I’m also going to need to purchase a hat and gloves. I had expected cold and it most certainly is. My dilemma is which of the uniquely Russian hats I should buy.

There appear to be 2 primary types of hats worn by the older men here (the younger wear boring american knit caps and don’t know what they are missing). The first is a very bushy round fur hat. It features big furry ear flaps which get fastened up when it is not that cold. I believe it is called an Ushanka.
The second hat is more what I would call “Soviet” because to me it seems like what you would wear when you were calling your friend “comrade”. It is more like a leather cap with a short bill and has smaller ear flaps that are not necessarily furry at all. It seems like something they’d wear at an East German prisoner of war camp.

Since I’m going to be in Siberia, I figure I should go for the furrier one even though it will undoubtedly look preposterous on me. If you have any suggestions, let me know because its suppossed to be warm here for a few more days. (Warm being above freezing.)

Next up for discussion is my money situation. I’ve moaned and complained about the weak dollar with respect to the Euro and the Pound. Here, a dollar is 27 rubles. It sounds like it would be great… like Morocco and Venezuela where I could buy a beer for 50 cents and there were shirts and pants on sale for the equivalent of $5. Even in Britain when a dollar was only half a pound, at least most of the prices appeared to be half of what they’d cost in an equivalent US city… Beer cost about $4 but was listed as 2 GBP so I didn’t feel that terrible.
But not here. Here, even though the ruble is weak, the prices make up for it with abandon. They no longer have a scarcity of products, but you pay through the nose for whatever you want. This makes it even more difficult because technically it is illegal to use US dollars here. So I have to take out huge sums of Rubles to pay for things… and since I can’t really divide by 27 very well in my head, I have no idea how much I’m withdrawing.

Hopefully I’ll be able to withdraw a sufficient amount before I leave the major cities, because once I get to Siberia I anticipate being unable to do much of anything in terms of communicating.

I’ll check in again before I leave civilization… till then, enjoy the spammer who appears to have hit my weblog with poker advertisements.

I promised I’d write, and now I am.

But first, a response to my grandfather: I have no idea why the staircase was called heliocolloidal. The entire audio tour was filled with words that seemed to have been picked only because they were the largest in the thesaurus. A perfect example was “The most fantastic and extravagant room in which you have ever been” which was neither fantastic nor extravagant, but very well could have been a less superlative synonym.
It is also possible that the Spanish-accented, British-educated voice said a different word that the 3 of us heard as heliocolloidal… heliocolumnal perhaps?
In the end, the thing was a big concrete spiral staircase… is wet cement colloidal–not quite solution, not quite emulsion?

Anyway, back to what I’m up to at the moment.

I’ve been in the UK now for about 10 days, and it is quite civilized here. I have been able to get access to computers, but I’ve been using the time to do some other things besides update the weblog. (sorry)

I’ve managed to log into the machines back home and fix some problems for FCI. I’ve also helped Andy get stuff sorted out and ready for Russia and his little trip “around the world”. I helped him move out of his London apartment, and buy his air tickets (he’s worse than me when it comes to procrastinating).

I’ve also just gone up and visited Kiyan and Pat from IBM. Kiyan is studying abroad in Leeds and Pat in Glasgow. They both seem to be having a great time, and are both planning trips to tour areas of Europe. — Me, I’ve got Russia to see.

I’ve managed to get quite a bunch of pictures from the UK (mostly in London) and on the train in Russia, I plan to do some major work on my Travelogue where I will write up a proper story about where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, and how I survived. It will be complete with pictures so you can all see the things I did.

Here are some quick observations about England:

• The Queen’s guards don’t wear Red in the winter apparently. Their coats were a dark grey when I went, and there weren’t nearly as many as you’d expect… they were also exceedingly far away. Fortunately, they still wore the fuzzy hats.
• The British drive on the left, walk to the left on sidewalks, have the up escalator on the left hand side, but still stand right/walk left when actually using the escalator… very strange.
• If you are ever tempted to believe that the British are pretentious in their language, just remember that their official term for what we call “articulated busses” is, “Bendy Busses”.

Well, I’ve arrived in England, and the keyboard is still funky, but at least its not as bad as that Arabic/French one.

I should have done a tour of the keyboards of the world… oh well maybe next year.

I haven’t been able to write in a while because I’ve been helping Andy move the things from his apartment in London to his home in Petersfield. Then I managed to fix the computers back at Floral Concepts, and now I’m up visiting Kiyan in Leeds (where we have to use the lab, and I’ll probably get kicked out because I rebooted the computer like the fiddler I am).

I’ll try to get a full update up soon describing all the exciting things I’ve seen in London (yes including the palace guards with the fuzzy hats) and hopefully before I leave the UK, Ill get a bunch of my Travelogue updated so you can read about my travles with a more refined sense of storytelling.

Well, I made it to Morocco, and besides all the letters being in the wrong place on the keyboard, its going ok.

Fortunately for me, “Internet” is spelled Internet in every language, even arabic.

Over the last 2 days, I have spent 20 hours on trains, 8 hours waiting at stations, and 4 hours on a ferry. Needless to say, when I finally got to the hostel here in Casablanca, I was happy for a place to sleep.

Ive come to realize that the main point of my journey is turning out to be about the “people”. I’ve met tons of people now, all with different reasons for their trips… some for partying, some for break, some for the sites, and some to find themselves. I met this one guy from my hostel here who has been travelling for 3 years all around the world. He went home for the first time in January, and started right back out 2 weeks ago. His photo album contains some of the most amazing pictures of places most humans will never see. Tibet, tribes in Africa, Mountains of South America, and soon his pictures from this trip into western Africa.

There seem to be alot of people here looking for hiking, trekking, and seeing the countryside. Back in barcelona, people were looking for the excitement of the city and some, for the partying. Me, I’ve decided that I’ve come for the urban people. Everyone is a little bit the same and a whole lot different from everyone else, and this trip of mine will hopefully let me see alot of that.

So I’m leaving the countrysides to my views out of the trains, and to the people who like to trek with their cameras… Me, I’ll walk around a city any day, eat somewhere they don’t speak english, and try to absorb whatever I can.

On the train down to Algeciras, I met a guy planning to take the ferry to Morroco and go hiking in the mountains. His idea was to go somewhere far away and “find himself”. It seemed like a respectable goal, and since we were travelling in the same direction, we figured we’d stay together.
I found out why I went on this trip alone… There are some things that are much better done in groups, others alone, and still others with people who are at least somewhat sensitive to the ways of the people around you.
This guy appeared to be the perfect example of a witless gullible American come to use the country he was entering for his own amusement.

An Example: Here in Morocco, in the cities, they speak French and Arabic. French is the language of the cities because it was the old official language of the French Occupation. I decided to forgo the french and try to pick up some basic arabic… what a good idea. He on the other hand said “nah Ill just learn french”

Note to All: when given the choice of learning the language of the oppressors or the language of the people, learn the language of the people.

In the end when I greated the man at the restaurant and ordered my food I received my meal first and for 3 dirhams (30 cents) less than my companion who ordered before me but greated them in french.

Seriously, I am surprised this guy hasn’t been swindled or robbed yet with the way he simply agrees with every hustler on the street and every fake “guide” who approaches him… After the 3rd time of saving him and the second time of following him into a shady unofficial taxi which charged us twice as much as it should have, I told him I was going my own way and wished him luck on his journeys in the mountains… if he survives.

I am getting on my plane to the UK (via brussels) tomorrow morning. Part of me is sad that I cant see more of morocco, but the other part is looking forward to a real bed, hot water, and a place to do my laundry. It will be a kind of recharging before heading off to Russia for a week on a train.

Ok, I just bought some cold medicine here in barcelona, and let me tell you something about the pharmacies here…

You cannot buy NyQuil-like products in a supermarket at all… you have to go to an actual pharmacy… and then you can´t pick something off a shelf! you have to talk to they guy behind the counter, tell what you have, and then he hands you a box of pills “over the counter”.

And there’s really no choice… I had to tell him the exact medicines I wanted… it was crazy.

and then I had to buy stamps…. which are sold in tobacco stores!

Well, I looked into the trains to Algeciras (where the ferries leave from spain) and there are several options… I can go back to madrid and get a train there or take this weird train right to the center of spain, and then take a cheap regional train (with 4 million stops) to the ferry port.

I am cheap, so I’m going with the latter option.

Seriously, Europe is terribly expensive… without even taking the exchange rate into account.

But on another note, its great fun here. I’ve met tons of friendly foreigners at the hostel (much different from venezuela where there weren’t really any people at the hostel)

While I didn’t really intend to stop at touristy places with lots of non-natives, I have to admit that this is a unique experience in itself and is quite fun.

I met up with steve today, and we visited the sites of barcelona and he invited me back to eat real food with his host family. They were great and the food was excellent (and of incredible amounts) I really should have skipped the 5 euro chinese buffet lunch. (cheap spanish chinese food isn’t so hot in comparison)

Since it seems like I have the whole computer to myself here and no one is waiting in line, Ill go ahead and tell you some more stories of spain… i realize that my recent posts have been a bit lacking.

First off, Madrid was nice, but filled with tourists… old retired tourists. They even have a park full of them called “retiro”… i mean c’mon.

The train ride to barcelona was on a bullet train that traveled about 200 kph (140 mph) which was very nice… they run their trains over here like airplanes… you check in at the “gate” with a boarding pass, and then the cabins have the overhead lights and in first class they even serve meals with the little trolley carts.

One of the most notable things I found was that there are NO suburbs of Madrid… the city gets smaller and smaller and then just stops… its impossible to describe the suddenness of how civilization just ceases to exist. I got some pictures of the essentially barren wasteland that exists in the inner country of Spain. Wasteland is a harsh word, because much of it seemed like farms, but there were no farm houses, silos, barns, or anything to speak of… there were plenty of what looked like ancient foundations or battlements, but no sign of life anywhere. It was shocking and pretty amazing.

Barcelona is quite a party city. It seems like every student for 5000 miles comes here to party (some it seems on a frequent basis). I went out with a group from the hostel, and we got solicited by prostitutes. (for the second time in my life… first was coming home from the Reading library… but that was in a car)
This time, they came up to our group and started groping us and speaking in Catalan (sp?) Spanish… the language they speak in this region of Spain. I said to the one, “No Habla Espanol” and she looked at me and said, “You know… for the Sex!” and made a full body hip gesture.
I laughed hysterically. Right at her.

We learned later that one of our group had been pickpocketed by those same prostitutes. Their groping was simply a ploy to get in our pockets.

and it gets better.

the next night, walking down the same street, we saw the same girls again. All dolled up like the whores they were, they approached us again. This time we knew better and all reached for our personal belongings and said, “no no go away” and to distract us, the one lifted up er shirt and flashed us… the other meanwhile started groping the group and I could distinctly feel her hands in my jacket pockets… I would have pushed her away, but I was too busy holding on to my wallet.

other than the delightful pick-pocketing prostitutes, barcelona was great. We saw some Gaudi Architecture (which I might add was pretty gaudy). and even went inside one of his houses.
The free audio tour was hilarious. it seemed as if they opened up a thesauras and went wild. Examples:

Feel the strength and power of the heliocolloidal staircase…

The room you are entering is the most fantastic and extravagant room in which you have ever been.

You are entering Gaudis playground… as you step into the courtyard you are entering a sea of modernity.

Notice the undulating glasswork expressing the perfect fluidity of the dynamic window forms

In all, a great experience.

Tomorrow, I’m getting on the train to Algeciras and hopefully arriving there the next day (the first train takes 11 hours or so, and the second 4) then I’ll hop over the mediterranean and depending on how sick I am of trains, I’ll either stay a night in Tangier or simply head straight onto Casablanca after looking around the town a bit.

I’m not sure about the internet access in Morocco, so this might be my last post before the 19th when I arrive in London. If that is the case, I’ll give someone a call and have them update the site via a comment…

This poor old computer I’m at has a hard time typing vowels, so bear with me if I drop an “a” or so.

I think I picked up something on the train into barcelona. I’m going to go medict myself, and hopefully it will be a quick thing.

I’m suppossed to meet steve here today, and then I think I’m going to get on a train to algeciras to take the ferry into Morocco.

I’ll try to write again soon from where I don’t need to slam the keybord as much.

Well, my dad’s comment was correct (even if it was in all capitals… must’ve been from his work computer or something — I think they have a mainframe system there which takes all caps.)

Anyway, yes. Barcelona is insane. I’m not sure if its just the fact that my Hostel is in the middle of the “hostel district” (with about 10-15 hostals within as many blocks) but it seems like one giant international university.

There are thousands of college aged kids here from every nationality race and creed, speaking every language and all (it seems) on some sort of spring break. The menu at the little tiny local restaurant I went to was in 6 different languages… for fun I ordered in German.

Now, about Madrid… I tried to find the “Palace” but there are something like 5 or 6 Palaces on the tourist map. I went to a few and took some pictures. But essentially, I just wandered around the busy parts of the city and took pictures of stuff that was interesting. Then I went into what little restaurants I could find that weren’t either packed, expensive, McDonalds, or unfriendly looking.

I’m planning on staying here in Barcelona until the 14th when Steve comes back from his class trip. Hopefully I can stand the crazy “second college” I’m at for another day.

OK, this message is like 3 minutes after my previous one, but I wanted to get this out of my head while it is blaring here in the internet cafe.

Overseas (Both here in Madrid and in Caracas) the music that is playing is always 70s or 80s dance music. Seriously, right now its ABBA.

I’ve decided that it is far too expensive here in Madrid. Also, I don’t have a guidebook, so I’m spending most of my time wandering around aimlessly taking pictures of things that look interesting.

Everyone here speaks English… which is no challenge at all, nothing like barely surviving in Caracas. In fact, I feel like I could wander around town in the middle of the night with no worries at all here… in fact, I did.

I met a sociology teacher from William and Mary college here today… she is on her spring break…. and hasn´t graded her Mid-Terms yet… I yelled at her for procrastinating.

Madrid is like a quieter, cleaner, nicer smelling New York City. Its quite strange really… the whole place smells oddly of flowers or something. I figured it out though the second day I ws here. They have these guys who go around with sidewalk zambonies. Its like a streetcleaner for the sidewalk. When the one guy passed me, I could most definitely smell whatever it is they wash the sidewlks with. That cannot be good for the environment.

But anyway, being in a city that reminds me of a New York where they don’t honk their horns isn’t exactly what this trip was about. Especially since I met other Americans and everyone speaks English, this place just seems too “touristy”. Nope, not for me, its off to barcelona for a bit to say hello to A7 Steve, and then off to Morocco where there may be tourists, but everyone is clutching their belongings and avoiding rug merchants. Ahh, the thrill.

Anyone want a rug? Too bad, I can’t carry it.

PS on a side note, the metro here in madrid runs Windows 2000 on a Pentium III 800Mhz with 256MB of RAM… basically the same computer hosting this website (my personal one)
Mine, however, doesn’t crash lke the Madrid Metro… thats how I figured out what it runs; the entire metro system’s display blue-screened and then rebooted.

Actually, in Newark and Houston, the display screens there are also running Windows, but they didn’t crash, they just had a delightful “Illegal Operation”(Newark) and “Windows is Expanding the Page Cache”(Houston) message on the screen overtop of the Arrivals and Departures display.

This is why I run Linux.