Ashley's Back in Asia...And in a jetlagged stupor at the Singapore Airport

Hellllloooo! I am reporting in from the business class lounge in the Singapore Airport on my way to Hyderabad for the first time since I left India almost exactly a year ago. I am flying business class for the first time in my life, and despite 8 hours of almost decent sleep on the plane, I am still totally loopy. Due to the loopiness factor, I plan to write this entry in stream of consciousness style in order to scientifically document the mind on jetlag. This means that I am not responsible for 5th grade level grammar mistakes, heinous misspellings (did anyone ever notice that 'heinous' does not follow the 'I before E except after C' rule?), and incorrect metaphors.

To contribute to this experiment, the only thing for me to really do for the next 8 hours while I wait for my next flight is to sit in this lounge, watch the olympics live (showing the Chinese team at practically every event in which they compete...currently watching ping pong, a sport that I'm pretty sure would not be televised in the US), study Hindi (MaiN Hindi sikh rahi huN ;) so that I can shoot the shit with peeps in Hyderabad, write this blog, and drink champagne (which shall now be referred to as 'Creativity Juice' (brought to you by the champagne and light spirits PAC...)

I got a little Sony digital recorder last week because I had a brilliant idea to interview all the interesting people I know about interesting stuff like they do on 'This American Life' and then post it on my blog in a series of conversations with people about interesting stuff (I articulated it better when I wasn't loopy). I was really gung-ho about this project, but seem to have hit a stumbling block with a) the recorder software doesn't work on my computer and b) the recordings sound like they're in a tin can, kind of like the recordings I made of myself singing Bette Midler's 'From A Distance' on my dad's old tape recorder when I was 8 years old.

This anecdote entered this blog entry because I just heard the Sony recorder beeping when I moved my bag and was reminded that it's so 'ingeniously' designed that I can't figure out how to turn the damn thing off, and seem to have recorded several segments unintentionally. Those will be thrilling to listen to later, I'm sure.

Once I figure out how to get the recordings up, I'm still planning on posting them (assuming I can figure out how to post audio recordings to blogger, another hurdle to my plan). I already have several excellent interviews just waiting to be edited and uploaded, including the story of a super cute Ukrainian Jewish boy and his family running through the airport in New York with relatives stuffing bills in their pockets on their way from Kiev to the big unknown West Hollywood, USA during the turbulent days before the fall of the Soviet Union;) I plan to contend that the tin can quality sound and bad editing contribute to the artistic message of my edgy amateur recording project- Real People. Real Stories. Real-time Recording.


But, back to the main themes I planned to talk about in this entry, my 'Theses' as a high school English teacher or college freshman TA might say. [Fragment. 10 points off]. First, I never finished writing about my trip with Yev to Bulgaria in June. Second, I'm on my way to INDIA! For the first time since I left India a year ago I'm returning to my old stomping ground, which from everything I've heard, has changed a lot in a year, including the opening of the first modern airport in India.


Yay! Two americans just won the women's all around gymnastics competition! And I can see the underwear lines of the chinese girl who hands out the medals, because she is standing right in front of the camera in a very tight skirt. Uh oh, Nastia doesn't know the words to the national anthem but tried to mouth the words anyway - way to show everyone you don't know the words! Why do they do that? If they just didn't do it at all no one would notice, but instead they always do "Oh say can you see, na na na, blah blah blah." Either way, the 4 ft tall, 10 year old on the Chinese girl came in third, and all I can say is "You Go, you 5'3, 100 pound, 'enormous' 18 year old American!"


The lounge has really cleared out, which is weird because lots of people have insanely long connections in Singapore. I surmise that they time flights like this so that more people have to shop in the airport. The cleaning staff now officially outnumbers the guests in the lounge. Speaking of staff outnumbering guests, it's possible that the flight crew outnumbered the number of passengers in business class on my flight yesterday/today.

I say yesterday/today because I have officially lost the day of August 14. I don't know where it went. I left on August 13, I arrived on August 15, 18 hours later. Did it go where all lost things go? Is it hidden with Jimmy Hoffa, the end of Mozart's Requiem Mass, my keys, and that pile of individual socks that disappear every time I do the laundry?

Here are some more brilliant observations I made earlier while on the plane. To summarize, Singapore Airlines business class is pretty wicked (in the 1980's glam rock/Ron in Harry Potter meaning of the term, not the standard dictionary, Wicked Witch of the West meaning):

• The service is pretty insane. In SFO I couldn't find the lounge so I went to the gate and asked where it was. A girl escorted me across the entire airport to get to the lounge. It was seriously a 10 minute walk each way. I thought she was going there anyway, but when we got there she turned around and headed back to the gate!
  
• I got to be on the top of the airplane! Those elusive seats you see on the top of 747's and wonder what it's like to sit there. One word: Awesome.
  
• There were about 8 rows of 4 seats each, two fully reclining seats on each side of the aisle. Window seats get a secret comparment/shelf to put stuff on.
  
• Haven't felt like a kid (or Jed Clampett) in a long time, but there were so many buttons to control the seat, I couldn't figure out how to do basic things like recline. I was like the Indian guy next to me on my flight from Hyderabad to Thailand who had never been on a plane before and couldn't figure out how to buckle his seat belt.
  
• The secret compartment next to the window where I could store all my stuff during take-off and landing was awesome. When I called it a 'secret compartment' (after fiddling around with the high tech buttons for 10 minutes trying to recline my seat) the guy next to me, an Indian businessman from Singapore, gave me the 'isn't that cute' laugh (the semi-verbal equivalent of a pat on the head)...probably the same laugh that I gave the guy who couldn't buckle his seat belt...
• The seats did this fully reclining thing that is somehow designed such that when the person in front of you reclines, they don't recline into you, they 'recline' forward. This is a truly brilliant invention, probably brought to us by the same wonderful person who designed the movie theaters where the seats are tiered enough that even if a tall guy with a big hat sits in front of you, you can still see the screen. Now that deserves a Nobel Prize.
  
• The flight crew memorized everyone's names before we got on board and they addressed me as Ms. Roof from the moment I arrived on the plane. Ms Roof can I carry your luggage for you? Ms. Roof would you like a warm towel? Ms. Roof can I offer you some champagne? I wonder how far in advance they get the passenger list, and do they get our passport photos? How would they know what we look like when we get on the plane? Do they have to spend the hour before the flight studying our names and pictures? Maybe they have secret service ear-pieces:
  
• 'Ms. Roof approaching the entrance, I repeat, Ms. Roof approaching in 10, 9, 8, 7... Jonnie-alpha-beta - INCOMING!'
  
• 'Roger That. Ms. Roof intercepted, luggage and champagne have been handled. Over.'
• '10-4. Mr. Srinivasan now approaching, I repeat Mr. Srinivasan is approaching...'
  
• Overall, I felt like the flight crew was there to seduce us. At 2am they served dinner. They asked me what I wanted from the menu and I told them I just wanted the salad. The salad in general is a good example of the calibre of Singapore Airlines business class (let's not get started thinking about what first class must be like if this is business class...). Meals are served with a personal place-setting with a table cloth, dishes, silverwear, and crystal glasses. My salad came on a chilled porcelain plate, and included scallops, greens, and cherry tomatoes. It was literally served on a silver platter. When I finished my salad they asked me if they may offer me some fresh fruit? Ice Cream? Chocolate creme brulee with fresh berries? Now seriously, even at 2am, who can refuse chocolate creme brulee with fresh berries? Then there were 10 choices of tea, a wine menu, and in the morning I had a mocha made with melted chocolate chips (I know it was made this way because there were some half melted chocolate chips at the bottom of my cup). I'm pretty sure I actually gained weight on the flight.
  
• And finally, I'm pretty sure that the stewardesses have their hair permanently plastered to their heads. I also wonder if they have official breaks to reapply their make-up, because they were like movie stars. For 14 hours their hair and make-up stayed perfectly in place. They do so much walking and baggage lifting in official uniform platform heels and skin-tight tailored outfits for 18 hours at a time - maybe flight attending should be an olympic sport! It's amazing how good looking the flight crews are in countries where discrimination based on looks is allowed and where being a flight attendant is a cool thing to do. I don't expect to see any gorgeous stewardesses on American Airlines anytime soon.

No one likes really long blog entires and I have now passed another hour. However, with 7 more hours to go until my flight, I shall continue...

I have mixed feelings about Hyderabad. I'm excited to see people, but I'm also worried that I'm going to get sick. Coming back is reminding me just how hard it is to live there, and to not even be able to brush your teeth with tap water. Which reminds me, I am now taking my second malaria pill. Right now. This instant...Ok. done. I couldn't open the water bottle, no matter how hard I tried. I ended up having to go get a different bottle, and now I'm drinking Gerolsteiner German sparkling water that tastes too much like minerals. So much for independent woman of substance... But, that's pretty much all my tired mind can wrap around at this point.

I've been studying Hindi for the last few days so I can shoot the shit with the drivers and a few other people. I'm hoping to see Sayed, my favorite driver, while I'm there. We'll see how well I can communicate with him in Hindi this time around. He pretty much taught me everything I knew, which is mostly street Hindi with a thick Urdu slant. When I say the things he taught me to people who speak classical Hindi from the north, they say chuckle and say 'where did you hear that?' I think I'm pretty much saying "What up, yo? You down with the 411?" which, we can all agree, already sounds pretty ridiculous coming from me and would sound even more hilarious coming from someone with a thick foreign accent. Luckily, as far as I know, he didn't slip any swear words into the phrases he taught me.

I think I'm doing pretty well for studying for 2 days - I even wrote myself a little essay (in the anglicized script, not in davanagari sanskrit script- one step at a time...). Simple grammar isn't that hard (famous last words from someone who hasn't had anyone check the grammar in the brilliant little essay), and it's the only language I know of other than English that uses the verb 'to be' in present tense (like "I am going" = "MaiN ja rahi huN" when "MaiN huN is "I am.' For comparison, in Italian the present tense is 'Vado,' in French it's 'Je Vais' and in Russian it's unofficially anglicized as 'ya paidoo.'). Here is my enlightening little essay for any Hindi speakers out there:

Mera naam Ashley hai. MaiN (N stands for a frenchy nasal sound) California meN reheti huN. MaiN 'IniTech' meN karti kam huN. MaiN karti kam huN kampyutareN ke sath. MaiN aksar yatra karti huN ko dur sthani. MaiN bharat (the word for India, which, when pronounced bharAt means a wedding procession...) karti pasand huN kyoNki yeh bahoot sundar hai. Log bahoot accha haiN. MaiN Hyderabad meN paNch mahine reheti thi. MaiN bahoot dosti se milti thi. MaiN hindi sikhti huN, magar maiN bolti huN nahiN accha. MaiN nahiN par sakti ya likh sakti huN. MaiN sochti huN ki hindi mushkil bhasa hai. MaiN yatra karna chahati huN meN Bharat aksar. MaiN dekhna chahati Rajasthan, Assam, aur Darjeeling. Mera manpasand sthan ki maiN ko yatra karti thi Kerala hai. MaiN Singapora meN huN.

I think for 2 days with a dictionary with a 15 page summary labelled 'Simple grammar' it's pretty good! If only I could remember this stuff when I'm talking. Instead it comes out 'MaiN globbymumbleboo hai.' Alas, perhaps some practice will make it better.

Here I am, another hour passed, and I still haven't gotten to Bulgaria. Perhaps its because I was there several months ago now, I already wrote several blog entries on the trip, and I'm loopy. I have half an unpublished entry in which I rip apart a recent article on Sofia that was published by the Chicago Tribune. Suffice it to say, even the headline was so inaccurate that it could be disproved by any unpaid intern fact checker, and they really do need to institute some sort of punishment for people who write travel articles that are grossly incorrect.

A few not grossly incorrect notes on Bulgaria:

• As the photos prove, the Black Sea is not black but instead a deep color of blue. The only thing black about the Black Sea is the color of the pollutants floating around in it.
• The currency is linked to the Euro, and therefore, although things were cheaper than Vienna, they were by no means cheap, and certainly not as cheap as they should be given that Bulgaria is in the Balkans,has a struggling economy, vast rural areas, lots of poor people, and areas of challenged infrastructure.
  
• We can also thank an influx of British tourists and holiday house owners for the lack of hospitality and general expensiveness of anything anywhere near a resort area. Bulgarians were less than friendly, and I can see why. Their entire Black Sea coast has been destroyed by the development of crappy cheap resorts to cater to western Europeans looking for a budget vacation by the sea. The very reason people went there for generations is now missing, since the natural beauty and interesting culture has been almost completely replaced with 1960's style cheap resorts built up on all the formerly beautiful beaches.
  
• As with Romania, it's tough to pontificate the 'right' strategy for how Bulgaria should develop. The new EU infrastructure including a new big airport in the Black Sea port of Burgas so that Brits don't have to see any of Bulgaria but the cheap resorts and a real highway from Sophia to Burgas, is making it easier for some Bulgarians to do business and get out of poverty. Many of the towns that are tourist stops only still exist because of the tourist dollars that keep them financially afloat. But, at what cost does this development come? Bulgarian culture is struggling to stay afloat against the influx of western culture that has grown like wildfire since Bulgaria joined the EU. Bulgaria's music, full of middle-eastern tones and reminiscent of Greek and Turkish music, now has to compete with bad German techno from the early 90's in clubs. How could anyone prefer dancing to bad German techno to those seductive middle-eastern beats?
• The Bulgarian goverment also faces challenges to development since there are still remnants of the old ways. There is a sign in customs that says 'No Payments Allowed' meaning, don't try to bribe your way through customs... There were cops everywhere pulling people over randomly, and apparently to make that custom easier, the city government of Sofia had passed a few draconian laws saying that you weren't allowed to have a dirty car in Sofia and you weren't allowed to wear sunglasses in a car (presumably because they couldn't see your eyes to see if they could make eye contact with you and pull you over).
  
• In contrast to the previous point, Bulgaria is another one of those countries that lets you do pretty much whatever you want at their precious historic sites. While it is awesome to be able to sit on Roman ruins and take funny pictures, I'm pretty sure this doesn't help preserve them. In the World Heritage Site Byzantine ruins in Nessebar, kids were playing a version of in-door soccer using the ancient pillars as bouncers to get a 'goal' ie. bounce the ball off the ancient altar. The boys did this every day of the 4 days we were there, so I assume it was a regular sport. While the fence 100 metres away from the edge of Stone Henge preventing you from pretty much seeing anything is a bit much, using ancient ruins as a soccer stadium kind of takes it to the other extreme - if only there was a happy medium.
  
• Despite any shortcomings we experienced with strangers, the Bulgarians we knew and met at the wedding were delightful and so hospitable. Irina's wedding was so much fun that it lasted over 12 hours that went by in a blink! They stayed out later than that at a club, but we were partied out. That Bulgarian music is just so easy to dance to!
• Irina's Bulgarian wedding included a civil and a relgious ceremony and a reception at the palace of culture with great views of Sofia. The civil ceremony was surprisingly nationalistic, with the woman leading it wearing a sash of the Bulgarian flag, and saluting while the Bulgarian national anthem played (can you imagine playing the star-spangled banner at your wedding? way to kill the romance!). Much of the tradition that is also included in America, like the exchanging of rings, took place during the civil ceremony (possibly a holdover from the old Soviet days when religious ceremonies weren't allowed?). Everyone brought flowers for the couple and family members danced in the street to an accordion in the alley outside the court house after the ceremony.
  
• The church ceremony in the second largest cathedral in Sofia was everything I thought an orthodox ceremony would be, with lots of incence, chanting, and walking around in a circle. There was an added bonus of some crown-wearing. Since it was in Bulgarian, I have no idea what they were saying, but the effect of the rituals in the church were pretty awesome themselves. I enjoyed the modern touch of about 100 digital cameras going off every second to get pictures of the ceremony.
  

I have passed another hour and now I am very, very, very sleepy. It's 12:27am in California and 3:37pm in Singapore. I must stay awake, but I'm getting that truck-ran-over-me feeling that comes with extreme jetlag. I don't know what I would be feeling if I hadn't slept on the plane. I might be in the corner in a fetal position. Hmm, that actually sounds kind of appealing...

I have had a total of half a glass of creativity juice, a cappuccino, a mineral water, a cream puff, and a mini-eclair and I'm ready to pass out. I shall now leave to go find a corner for the rest of my layover on this very, very long day of travel (I left for the airport 26 hours ago). I think watching olympic ping pong is the perfect ointment for my current state of mind...ping...pong...ping...pong...


Baby hot dog speaks for itself.

The World From (100 feet) Above

The formatting of this entry got all screwed up and I have fixed it by editing the HTML. I feel like I have just crossed a threshold in my computer-using life.

Yesterday Yev and I went on a hot air balloon ride in Napa Valley at sunrise to commemorate my quarter-century birthday. Along the lines of my previous entry about travel making me appreciate things more, even when I'm home- I realized that I still haven't done many of the things that California has to offer. And so I decided that I wanted to do one of those very 'California'(and, I admit, yuppie) things, and take a balloon ride over Napa.

We awoke at 4am to roll out of bed and drive to Napa from Palo Alto (about an hour and a half drive) in order to be there by 5:30am. Amazingly, we did it and in the wee hours of the morning found ourselves in a vineyard , standing next to an enormous balloon with a little bitty basket big enough to barely fit our 6 passengers and one captain. The basket was a bit smaller than we anticipated, and even though the basket was definitely small enough for us to be able to fall out if we so chose, it still turned out to be a lot less scary than I expected. We leisurely floated up and around between 10-400 feet above the ground, and my favorite part was when we were just 20-20 feet off the ground (we felt like we were going the fastest then).

To get a hot air balloon up, they basically blow up at 125ft balloon with a big tank of fiery fuel and then you float up slowly. You depend on the wind to move you, much like a sail boat, so if there isn't any wind, you might just float in the same place. Luckily it was a clear, slightly windy day which made for perfect conditions. The balloon can't stay aloft on its own, and so every time we started veering down (sometimes only 10-15 feet above the ground), our captain with the handle-bar mustache, Russ, whose name I know because it was imprinted in big letters on his belt, would pull the string and set the fuel ablaze to get the balloon back up and to avoid a showdown with the not-too-pleased vineyard owners.

We were joined on the trip by a couple on their honeymoon from Seattle who didn't say a single word the entire time, and a girl and her brother in their mid-20's, who I will call Jenny and Bobby (not their real names) from the Napa Valley who were there for Bobby's birthday. Bobby had special needs, and brought that sense of innocence to the conversation that tends to come from children. He kept asking Russ if he was from Texas because of Russ's cowboy demeanor (and handlebar mustache...very astute of Bobby, I think).

It turns out Russ wasn't from Texas, but does work on a ranch in Northern California as his 'day job.' Bobby asked Russ about being from Texas about every 10 minutes, every time Russ spoke, I think, and it became hard not to laugh. Jenny would then have to shout 'No, Bobby, he's not from Texas' because Bobby had to take his hearing aid out because the blow torch used to keep the balloon up was so loud. We were finished by 8am, and after getting 4 hours of sleep the night before, I was about ready for a nap. It's amazing how long your day is when you wake up that early, and by noon we felt totally jetlagged. Possibly the first time anyone has felt jetlagged after a hot air balloon ride...

The whole thing wasn't as exciting as I expected, but it was very interesting to see how the balloon worked, how it's possible to be 400 feet above the ground in a tiny basket and not be scared, and it was a great way of seeing Napa. All and all, a very California thing to do as my 2 week countdown to my next travels begins.

Inside the Ballon before we took off

Getting the balloon up with the 'blow torch'

Fellow sunrise ballooners

What's left of the balloon after we packed it up - almost a bean bag chair!

I'd also like to give a shout out to our balloon company at www.NapaValleyDrifters.com. This was waaay less touristy than I expected it to be.

Back in the Hotel California

Curses! The big time lapses between my entries are diminishing what little blogging credibility I built up with the tales of my time in India and Asia!

Alas, when I actually bring myself to sit down and write, I develop all sorts of grandiose plans to write every day, publish articles, win a Pulitzer, blah blah blah, and then the next day those addictive TV series DVD sets turn me into a Ray Bradbury "this is what technology can do to you" TV zombie. You know the culprits, the series that end every episode on a cliff-hanger thus turning the unsuspecting watcher into a TV gunky who, much like a drug addict, only realizes they have a problem when they find themselves rationalizing staying up all night just to find out what happens at the end of season 1. Then 925 minutes and a permanent indentation on the couch later, you know what happens at the end of season 1 - a clever cliff-hanger that can only be resolved by starting season 2...and thus the vicious cycle of zombie behavior continues.

And so now, as I am home early from work on a Friday and am avoiding hooking up the television I-V (that's the letters, not the roman numeral), I plan to blob out lots of brilliant (not to mention modest...) ideas that have been floating around my brain since the last time I wrote 2 months ago...

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Since no one likes to read a long blog entry, I have decided to entice you to read on with this picture of an adorable puppy with whom I have no connection except that that I Google image searched him using the term 'adorable puppy.'

<- Awwweee, isn't he adorable?...and confused? Puppy: Why have they put me in this flower pot? Are they trying to plant me? Will I grow into a puppy flower? a puppy tree? Where's the kibble? I smell food... --------------------- First let's get the status update out of the way. I've been in California for 6 weeks since my European excursion ended (I'll be getting to my final thoughts on my time in Eastern Europe later), and in 2 weeks I'm leaving for a 10 day trip down memory lane in Hyderabad for a conference. I plan to visit all my old pals and show around some new pals - I'm dying to see what has changed drastically with all the development (my guess: Hi Tech City, the new modern airport, and the rich neighborhoods) and what has stayed the same (my guess: the Old City and the slums, which have stayed the same since the beginning of civilization). After that I am back in California for a week before I head off to another adventure spending time in Sydney until I am able to move to Singapore. I'm super excited about Sydney, but am definitely worried that once I get there I'll call Yev up and demand that he move there right away so that we can buy a beach house and live in Australia for ever and ever. Not quite sure why I'm afraid of that, since it sounds pretty awesome actually... I've only been there for one week in the past, and I have a sneaking suspicion that over a month there will make me love it even more. The fact that in 2 weeks I'll essentially be traveling for the next year+ is still so overwhelming that I'm in the denial phase. One comforting thought that helps me sleep at night: there is an IKEA in Singapore. This means that if I really go crazy, I can probably re-create my apartment with the same stuff in Singapore (at only twice the cost...). Come to think of it, that thought is equal parts creepy and comforting...

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Hmmm...this entry is really long. What else can I put here to keep you reading? How about, pandas riding a rocking horse? These are not men dressed in Panda suits...these are real pandas at the zoo in Chengdu according to the British news article that published the pic.


One of my favorite things about traveling is that it makes me pay a lot more attention to the details of what is going on around me - both while I'm traveling and when I'm back at home. Take, for example, the writing of the brand names on cars. When I was in China, it was so noticeable that the brand names were written in both English characters and Chinese (except the cherries, the Chinese brand), which stuck me as remarkably strange. I've never been anywhere else with an alternative writing system, including Egypt, Kiev, Bulgaria, Greece, India, Thailand, and Hong Kong, where the names of the cars were written in the local writing system.

Not to say that they aren't, but I never noticed them. But in China, every single car had a brand written in Chinese. Wouldn't it be cool if Toyotas had their brand names written in Japanese and English? Then we could learn characters of other languages, and have an idea of where the cars are from (precisely the reason they don't do this, I'm sure) - but it would be exotic and educational! Like those international olympic Coke cans. Note that even in China, American cars have their brand names written in English, unlike any foreign car company's logos in America.

My humanities-educated brain that automatically tries to analyze the root causes of my observations leads me in the direction of the US, about 40-50 years ago when Toyota was first trying to break into the market. Of course they wouldn't write the car name in Japanese, even if it was also in English - the xenophobic American populace of the 1950's and 1960's would have freaked out - it wasn't too long ago that we had thrown Japanese-Americans into internment camps - you bombed Pearl Harbor and you expect us to buy a car from you?

I'm surprised they even used the Japanese name Toyota and didn't come up with some other, more American name, such as the Freedom-mobile (although, they weren't making this decision with the Bush administration in power, or else it may have had a stronger chance of making it - "hey Verne, let's hop in our Freedom-mobile and get us some Freedom Fries!" After all, almost everything sold in America today was made somewhere else, and the more 'American'/'Patriotic'/'Freedom' their name is, the more guaranteed the product is to have been made in China.) If I were their marketing manager I would have created and entire line of Freedom and Liberty mobiles (although, come to think of it, the term 'liberty-mobile' may already be trademarked by the McCain For President campaign), and now I would be a gazillionaire - alas, wrong place and wrong time for my ingenious marketing ideas (GM- you can feel free to give me a high paid marketing job to get you out of the gas-guzzling, ugly-ass, outsourced-labor bankruptcy you're entering any moment now and I might consider offering my services...).

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On another note, I saw this YouTube video today. Apparently, 'Where in the Hell is Matt' has had quite a following that I missed. A gum company paid for him to go dance a little jig around the world in 43 countries. Can I do that please?

Eastern Europe in Pictures

Hermitage of St. Ivan of Rila, Rila Mountains, Western Bulgaria near Macedonia

Yoghurt and honey for sale in Rila

Irina the bride enters her reception in Sofia

Irina and Parvan break bread together

Us with Irina

Being Roman statues at the Roman ruins inside the courtyard of the Sheraton in Sofia

Alexandr Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia

Happy Donuts, Bulgarian Style- Rila

Rila Monestery, UNESCO world heritage site

Monk and mineral water fountain, Rila Monestery

Cherries for sale - Bulgarian countryside

Black Sea, Sinemoritz, near the Bulgarian Turkish border

Sunset in our room in Nessebar at the Black Sea in Bulgaria

World Heritage Byzantine Ruins in Nessebar, Bulgaria

Playing with guns?

Liederhosen (and marching band) contest - Vienna

The best Eiskaffe and Apfelstrudel in the world - Mozarthaus, Salzburg

Masonic Grave, Salzburg (remind you of...the dollar?)

Mmmm...enormous pretzels in Salsburg

Salzburg

"Dracula's Real Castle" - Vlad the Impaler's citadel, Wallachia, Romania in the Carpathians

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Budapest

Main Synagogue, Budapest- Monument to Hungarian Holocaust victims

Hungarian Sandwich shop

Indiana Jones - Austrian Arrows 30 min prop flight from Budapest to Vienna

Romanian Church, Transylvania

Bran Castle, Transylvania

Transylvania

Transylvania

Curtea de Arges, Wallachia, Romania

Oradea, Romania

Oradea, Romania

The entrance to our hotel in Oradea, La Vultura Negra (the Black Vulture)

Parachuter over Sighasoara, Transylvania, hometown of 'Dracula'

Ice Coffee in Brasov, the capital of Transylvania

When In Rome-ania...

On the train from Vienna to Salzburg on the Mozart pilgrimage segment of our trip. The man across from us in our train compartment is speaking Georgian (the former Soviet Republic, not the southern state) on his cell phone and reading a Russian magazine, creating a ‘Dr. Zhivago’ atmosphere.

Romania-Mania

After a few days in Budapest, we decided to see if the incorrect reputation of Hungary as Eastern Europe extended to its neighbor, Romania. We rented our car and started off on an 1800 km road trip around more of the country than any Romanian has ever seen.

Rome (ania) wasn't built in a day (by the EU...)

1. Despite its new place in the EU, Romania is indeed still a developing nation. This is demonstrated by the piles of rubble, abandoned houses, garbage and stray dogs found in every village and city across the country. The contrast between the prosperity and infrastructure on the Hungarian side of the border and the destitution on the Romanian side of the border is immediately striking when you drive into Romania.
2. People in the Romanian countryside really do live the way they have for thousands of years. Sometimes this fact is elusive because they often wear modern clothing, but they still ride horse-drawn carriages, do subsistence farming, cut their fields by hand with sickles, and shepherds carry staffs as they tend their animals from the rolling hills, down to the only paved roads (80% of Romania’s roads remain unpaved, and even streets connecting directly to the main highway are often not paved). The contrast between modernity (nuclear power plants, exhaust-belching trucks, new roads without potholes) and tradition is particularly interesting, and I am curious but apprehensive about what the new influx of culture and money from the EU will do to this culture that is already on the edge.
3. Villages in Romania are real ‘villages,’ similar to what we would call villages in India – supply centers for the people who live in even more rural areas with a few houses and possibly a small store, and where the center of life is the church. Most rural houses have crosses painted on them and there are little alters to saints along the road in most of Transylvania and Wallachia. We also saw these altars in Greece and India, and they are obviously a Christian interpretation of a more ancient pagan religion.
4. Romania is also similar to India in that most places where people have settled are covered in garbage and pollution, and the really beautiful places are the ones with fewer people rather than more. Unlike India, tap water is ok to use in Romania, however, most rural villagers we saw were using wells because they didn’t have running water.

Full House meets the Uni-brow – Fashion in Romania

5. The uni-brow is not only acceptable, but is, in many cases, stylish. Many politicians flaunt their extreme unibrows in 3-4 story tall policital posters hung down the sides of buildings.
6. Generally fashion is in the early 1990’s, and in addition to the amazing unibrow, the mullet is also a popular classic. Watching ‘The Nanny’ and a selection of American teen movies from the early 1990’s on Romanian television explains this fashion phenomenon.
7. Many old people wear traditional clothing, but many young people working in the fields wear jeans and t-shirts, but still do back-breaking manual labor, hacking hay with sickles and piling it into haystacks. Occasionally young people wear traditional clothing too. Gypsies wear clothing befitting Carmen’s opera costumes.

Melting Pot of Doom

8. Romania has a hodge-podge of ethnic groups, including Romanians (a mix of Romans and the native ‘Dacian’ tribes), Saxons (Germans), Hungarians (Magyars), and Gypsies (Roma). In some cities, particularly the Saxon ones, you can see the difference between ethnic Romanians and Ethnic Germans. In Sibiu (probably the most civilized city in Romania), there is a German-speaking mayor. What you generally don’t see in Romania (also a sign of its development status), is immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. I fear what will happen if people from these places begin to immigrate to Romania, since Romania is already walking a fine line keeping their current ethnic strife in check.
9. Romania has a long history of bloody abuse of its people (by government and each other). This history is so recent that even in the 1990’s the government incited the villagers from outside of the ethnic Hungarian city of Targu Mures to attack a poet who wrote in Hungarian rather than Romanian. The government provided pitch forks and the villagers managed to cut off the man’s ears. This happened less than 20 years ago.

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle – Gypsies (the real ones)

10. There are many different groups of Gypsies, but most all of the ones we saw looked Indian in physical features and dress.
11. We had the fortune of coming upon a real nomadic gypsy caravan on a back country road (there are only 5,000-10,000 nomadic gypsies left), and it looked exactly how it looks in literature, opera, etc.. There was a covered wagon, with animals and horses and a few other wagons full of scrap metal and junk. Most of the people were hidden away in the back of the covered wagon.
12. There are colorful abandoned gypsy wagons all over the countryside (in fields, by barns, by the side of the road). I am very curious about what happened to the proprietors of the abandoned wagons and how they ended up where they were.
13. Most gypsies are poor, and ethnic Romanians discriminate against them (we saw the police hassling a few).
14. There are some rich gypsies (not sure where they got their money) and they construct enormous, ornate, bizarre mansions in the countryside, often covered in gold or silver.

Verbetz Engleza, va rog?

15. Possibly due to the reputation gained from fact number 9, there are almost no tourists in Romania and there is almost no tourist infrastructure. There are very few tourist shops, even in the most ‘touristy’ places (such as ‘Dracula’s castle’ – really Vlad Tepes’ castle) and the medieval town where Vlad was born. There were so few tourists in Romania that when we rolled into the citadel in Sighisoara (Vlad’s medieval birthplace), which is a fully intact saxon medieval city complete with cobblestone streets, clocktower, churches, town square, and tall stone city walls to keep the Ottomans out, we were able to get a room (on an empty floor) in the main hotel, on the main square, without a reservation. There couldn’t have been more than 20 tourists in the entire town, and most of them were Romanian tourists. We stayed just a few meters from the town square where many-a-grotesque event has occurred in the last thousand years, including lots of bloody executions, witch trials, etc. If this town were anywhere in Western Europe, it would have been a tourist circus. It was amazing to have it to ourselves (I had ‘blood orange’ gelato at the house where Vlad was born for less than $1), and I expect this to be one of the first places to lose its identity in the coming years.
16. Young people are now learning English, although much of the country is rural, and in rural areas almost no one speaks English. Which leads us to – what is Romanian?
17. Romanian is a romance language and is possibly the most similar language to Latin that is spoken in the modern world (competing for the title with Romanisch, an odd Latin dialect spoken in a small part of Switzerland). It is not, however, a mix of Italian and Russian, as one who has studied those languages might hope, and although learning a few phrases was easier with backgrounds in those languages (‘da’ is ‘yes,’ and ‘ce placere’ is ‘you’re welcome’), it was necessary to memorize Romanian phrases to get around. Mixing Romanian words and Italian words was generally effective.
18. Along the lines of language, Romanians are very proud of their Roman heritage, even though Romania was part of the Roman Empire for a shorter period of time than Britain was.

History - Fact or Fiction? Does Bela Lugosi Really Care?

19. Romania also fought the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, and the particularly bloody history and dramatic architecture of most medieval cities reflects this fact.Interestingly, Romania was actually part of the Ottoman Empire at some point in history, but unlike Spain and Sicily, reflects almost no Ottoman architecture.
20. Only a small part of Transylvania looks like the pictures that we see that evoke images of Dracula’s castle- most of Transylvania is flat farmland and rolling hills. The Transylvanian Alps are where all the ‘Dracula’ imagery comes from, and is the home of Vlad Tepes’ castle.
21. On the subject of Dracula, Romanians are clearly trying to distance themselves from the ‘Dracula’ myth, and aside from a few extra-kitsch Dracula t-shirts tucked away in a few tourist shops, there really wasn’t a huge emphasis on him. Bram Stoker’s book wasn’t even translated into Romanian until the 1990’s. The ‘real’ Dracula, Vlad Tepes ‘The Impaler,’ was a ruler in the state of Wallachia (not Transylvania, although the topography of Wallachia was much more like the images of Transylvania that we are used to), and aside from having a particularly bloody hatred of Turks rooted in his childhood in a Turkish prison, he wasn’t particularly supernatural. He did, however, supposedly eat his meals while watching his impaled Turkish prisoners writhe on stakes (thus ‘The Impaler’ nickname). The name ‘Dracula’ comes from his father, ‘Dracul’ which means ‘dragon’. Vlad is also well-loved by Romanians and the people of the region that he ruled, since is lust for torture was aimed at the Turks, whom they hated, rather than them. He actually gave land to the Romanian surfs in his kingdom as a reward for their help escaping a Turkish attack, and descendants of those surfs continue to work the land, sickles in hand, to this day.
22. Since Romania’s history is full of equally brutal stories in every village and city from one side of the country to another, from every generation as far back as people can remember, I think Romanians don’t understand why foreigners make such a big deal about the particular character of Vlad Dracula. People who are constantly struggling for survival don’t tend to get too excited about stories of brutality – they’ve seen enough of it in their own lives to understand that it isn’t actually something ‘cool.’ It’s not cool when it’s real.

Which leads me to my last, most important point about Romania. This point begins with a story.

Dedicated to a different Vlad, the English-speaking waiter at the Siesta Pensiune, about 5 km south of the snow-blocked mountain pass at Belea Lac and about 75 looooong km north of the last petrol station of the Transylvanian Alps.

Two Americans, who have been in Romania for 3 days and think they are finally getting the swing of things, leave for a leisurely 80 km (about 50 miles) drive along the [transforgan] road with a third of a tank of gas. This is a road what was highlighted in multiple entries in ‘Stupid Planet’ (more curses later about how much we hate ‘Lonely Planet,’ and in particular, the asshole who wrote and published a travel book about places he had clearly not been), and they said it was ‘communism’s greatest achievement. Blah blah blah, this beautiful drive with sweeping views, blah blah.’

This road may have been a great achievement in the 1970s when it opened, but it has clearly not been updated since, and was so full of potholes that in some places ‘paved’ would be a loose term. Our brilliant, yet misguided plan was to take this road through the mountain pass over to the city of Sibiu, a total drive of only 95 km. After an hour and a half and 75 km down this windy, potholed, empty uphill road, we were down to our last drops of gas, and had to pull over to a pensiune (country inn with a restaurant) that was so remote that even the 100 m drive to the front wasn’t paved. One of the waiters spoke English, and we asked if they had petrol, but all they had was diesel. As an added bonus, we were informed that the pass was closed due to snow (it had been 75 degrees and sunny on the previous days), and the only way to Sibiu (and anywhere else) was to go back down the entire road we had come up on. The only petrol would be about 70 km down the road.

He suggested we put the car in neutral and try to coast the 70 km and hope that a car with petrol would drive past and offer us some. Thinking that this might be the worst idea of the day (and it had a lot of competition at this point) we sat down in despair, trying to figure out what to do. The waiter came by about 5 minutes later, with another waiter whose car was parked outside, and they offered to use a tube to take a gallon of petrol from his car for our car. The guy put the tube in his mouth (yuck!) and blew into it to get the petrol to flow. Yev gave them 50 lei (about $23 and at least a day’s salary for most Romanians), but the guy would only take 20 lei (about what the petrol must have cost him to begin with). I would like to end with this story about Romania, because this will be the story that I remember whenever I think about Romania and its people. Two foreigners, in the middle of nowhere, get themselves into a stupid, stupid mess. These Romanians in the rural mountains go out of their way to help us, and won’t even take enough money to compensate them for their troubles.

Was it their sense of hospitality? Was it the idea of helping another person in need? Whatever their motivation (which clearly wasn’t money), they helped total strangers out of a difficult situation for no benefit to themselves. If that attitude were to extend to other people within their country, they might be able to transcend their history of brutal treatment of others, and take their place as a prosperous nation with hope for the future, rather than the place that young people want to leave for any other country in the EU.

Romania has a lot at stake right now, and I hope that its people can find a way to balance maintaining their culture with developing enough to give most people a better life where they don’t need to worry about day to day survival. But then again, perhaps it is that daily struggle that has defined their culture for so long, that by losing it, they may lose themselves.

I wish them the best – la revedere Romania.

Ashley's In Europe

I am on vacation in Europe. First, I must specify that I am fully aware that Europe is not in Asia. That said, I'm going to blog anyway. And with that, let's begin a little story...

Once upon a time a couple of Americans decided to go on an adventurous trip in Europe. This couple thought, “how can we make our trip adventurous when there are tourists in every city and town from Northern Scotland to the Rock of Gibraltar?” Then they had an idea – to go to the part of Europe where no one goes because of their more recent affinity towards revolution and dictatorship. And thus they decided to do an Eastern European vacation to Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary (with a few days in Austria thrown in for contrast), in search of a Europe where people and menus don’t translate to English and where life as it has been continues.

Currently writing in from the airport in Budapest, waiting for a flight from Budapest to Vienna (about the same as flying from San Diego to Santa Barbara). We're flying because it was cheaper to fly from Budapest to Sofia with a stop in Vienna than it was to fly direct, so we're taking a 3 day stop and enjoying our resurgence in the western world. Something about flying this short distance between Budapest and Vienna on Austrian airlines evokes the image of Indiana Jones trying to sneak into Berlin on the eve of WW2 on a Zeppelin, wondering if he's going to get caught going into enemy territory.

Budapest

On all accounts, Hungary is a western nation. The name for Hungary in Hungarian is Magyarorszod– not sure where English got the name ‘Hungary’ since the word for the Hungarian people and language is ‘Magyar’ which doesn’t sound anything like ‘Hungary.’ It is clean, organized, and people generally follow the rules. The remnants of any association with the Eastern block can be found in a few communist style apartment blocks splashed around a city dominated by Viennese architecture, and an occasional sign in both Hungarian and Cyrillic.

German is far more prevalent than English or Russian, and Hungarians are extremely nationalistic (and xenophobic). I can understand a degree of xenophobia from a land-locked flat country that has been dominated by other empires since the beginning of time, and the current situation isn’t helped by the fact that the city of Budapest is literally overrun with tourists, as there are significantly more tourists in the city than there are residents.

I didn’t notice how striking this disconnect was until we arrived in Vienna, where there are tons of tourists, but enough residents that even the thousands of camera-wielding foreigners don’t seem to make too much of a dent in the day to day life of residents. In Budapest, in contrast, I believe partly because everything is exorbitantly priced outside of the reach of almost all Hungarians, the entire central area of the city is a ghost town except for foreign tourists. The only time we ever saw Hungarians who weren’t involved in the tourism industry was when we walked down a side street beside an old communist apartment block and saw some old people sitting I front of their building.

As in other western European countries, most of the young people speak English and Hungarian, although most signs and information are only in Hungarian. We had an interesting experience on the metro when our inability to read the instructions in Hungarian left us without a properly validated ticket which led to us getting hassled by the metro ‘police’ (think underground meter-maids who target foreigners and then don’t speak anything but Hungarian).

Budapest’s metro is, without a doubt, the worst-organized metro system in the entire world, where you need to buy and validate a new ticket every time you change trains. As the metro-maid hassled us with our newly purchased but apparently ‘invalid’ ticket and tried to make us pay an extortionate sum equivalent to her yearly salary, a stylishly western-dressed Indian woman and her two daughters came up and asked us in perfect British-Indian English if we needed help.

When she saw what was happening, she started yelling at the metro-maid in English and then Hungarian, saying that we were ‘tourists’ and that they should leave us alone. She passionately explained to us that the metro-maids always target foreigners and that Hungarians are racist. She was steaming mad and her daughters were mortified (as any teenage daughter would be if their mother got in a fighting match with a metermaid in public, yelling that they were racist).

She kept apologizing to us and saying that Hungarians hate foreigners and that they always do this, and that we shouldn’t pay the fee, we should fight it (shortly after this when we asked to talk to the real police the metro-maid suspiciously let us go).

I don’t know what this woman and her family were doing living in Budapest (working for the Indian embassy?), but what really struck me was how much of a nerve our situation struck with her. How much racism and racial profiling must she face that two Americans getting hassled on the metro would illicit such a strong response from her?

Overall, I’d say that the people of Budapest were some of the least hospitable in Europe. Now, it might be very American of me to think this, but I have to say that of all the cultures to be upset about foreigners not speaking their language, Hungary shouldn't be at the top of the list. In Paris people are mean because people come to Paris not speaking a word of French. French is a common language that many people learn and that is spoken by many people of many nations around the world, and the UN. Hungarian, on the other hand, is totally unrelated to almost any other language and is spoken by a small group of people in a random country in central Europe. Czechs aren’t upset that visitors don’t speak Czech, so what’s the big deal for Hungarians? Alas, it is an attitude like mine that may be their problem…

Suffice it to say, I am glad to be out of Hungary, and back to a place where I can at least say a few words of the local language and not feel like a total idiot. Thanks to years of studying music, if anyone asks me how I'm doing, I can give them the very poetic Goethe response of 'Meine Ruh is hin, mein herz is schwer. Ich finde sie nimmer, und nimmermehr.' Somehow I sense that may not be the conversation starter I was hoping for.