No yesterdays on the road

Home: the final meditations.

climberchris — Wed, 3 Sep 2008 09:21:00 GMT

I’m home now. Well, I’m as good as home. I’m at my Grandparents in Suffolk. It’s only a week since I left Mongolia, but memories fade fast and this is perhaps my last blog. Overlaid with the flight home (business class, naturally), then two days in Berlin and two more in Amsterdam, the freshness of Mongolia, the brittle brightness of its light, has faded.

Perhaps it’s too early for it to have sunk in, but frankly it doesn’t feel strange. I haven’t experienced culture shock, though I’d been expecting to. It could be that the days in Berlin and Amsterdam tempered the contrast between Mongolia and here, or perhaps it was just so different that I can’t find terms of reference for comparison.

I found in Mongolia a reality so wildly different from Europe that perhaps they’re simply incommensurable. Maybe it’s a mental rift analogous to Levi-Strauss’ ‘savages’: the ones with whom communication is possible have already been ‘spoilt’ by Western contact and are no longer truly primitive, but those ones who were (then) ‘uncontaminated’ were simply so different that mutual understanding was simply impossible. Maybe I just I can’t meaningfully hold in my head such disparate experiences as Mongolia and home in order to compare them.

I was conscious, whilst there, that everything felt normal. Accustomed to hundreds of miles of nothing, I was rarely in awe of the emptiness, rarely surprised by the remoteness or lack of anyone or anything. The beauty was there, but I grew used to it. The traditions of nomad hospitality struck me as, well, just common sense almost. In almost no time after my arrival, Mongolia and its terms of reference had become my norms. Toilets don’t exist, people don’t have running water, everyone eats nothing but cheese and airag in summer, such is life. It’s so normal it no longer feels ‘deprived’ or ‘poor’ or whatever Eurocentric expectations or ideas we might have. It just is.

I had to work to mentally translate events and customs in Mongolia to counterpart equivalents back home to be able to fully appreciate them. I had to imagine a friend cycling across London to pick me up from Heathrow at 5am to fully appreciate Begz’s hospitality. The practise of simply stopping at nomad’s ger and receiving food and drink (albeit of the cheese and airag variety) automatically and without hesitation just never felt extraordinary. But imagine driving down the M1 one day and spotting a nice farmhouse just about the time you’re starting to feel peckish. You pull off the motorway by simply driving over the embankment and across the field, halting outside the door. The family stop whatever they’re doing, comes to greet you and welcomes you inside, making small talk before offering you tea and a few sandwhiches. An hour or so later, you realise you need to be getting on and they fill up your flask with tea for the journey. That’s what it’s like. And in these terms, isn't it extraordinary? You forget roads ever had tarmac and are simply grateful when the stones stop and the track is less bumpy.

I’m now slowly beginning to appreciate the change, the contrast, but it isn’t with Mongolia in itself. It lies in the difference between the state of travelling and the state of home. Rather than the physical differences becoming apparent, it’s the mental. It is, most fundamentally, a sense of loss that I feel myself coming to terms with.

Travelling is existentialism at its most pure: the sense of freedom, of creation, of becoming. No one has asked, but it is in that spirit that I chose the (slightly pretentious) title for my blog – No Yesterdays on the Road. It’s taken from a quote by William Least Heat-Moon, that archetypal evocateur and observer of the small town and the rural in America*.

“What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”

The sense of freedom inherent in travelling alone (perhaps in what I in my middle-class conceit consider authentic travelling, as opposed to tourism) is not just being by yourself, not just not having no one to tell you what to do, nor anyone to curb your self-centred impulses but, for me at least, arises because there is no one to define your role. When you meet new people, old locals or fellow travellers, you can, in a classically existential manner, create yourself. (This incidentally gives originally unintended extra meaning to the idea of authenticity in travel, though when I first considered it, in Great Expectations, I explicitly ruled out that conception of the term.) You become of that moment, no longer constrained by the roles you played or the opinions others formed of and about you. This is freedom, glorious freedom. I am a relatively independent person, both by accident and design, and this almost Nietzschean will-to-creativity, an untethered freedom of spirit to create itself, speaks to me deeply.

Returning to Britain I can already feel the well worn grooves of who I am here. It is not that they are intrinsically bad, it’s not a matter of being too good for them or somehow superior to those who live their lives of ‘miserable ease’. Not at all. There is no condescension in what I feel – if it sounds like there is it is only because I can’t write well enough. It is just the familiar roles are precisely that – familiar. Perhaps what is scary, what drives my instinct to get out again, is the sure knowledge that the slow fingers of day to day life will creep in again. That I will run my groove until, inevitably, I forget there was anything other than the groove I’m in, the roles I’m playing and I am just those and no more. I will have lost that freedom and, with it, part of myself. Not just the parts that somehow my life here doesn’t reveal, because the self is more dynamic than simply a shape with faces hidden from view., but the very possibility of creating new faces, and in creating, explore more fully the rest.

Now this is all very overblown. And, yes, I know, I know the value of old friends and close family, of the just plain friends, or even acquaintances, of having strong and close relationships with people who really know you. It is precisely this dilemma that settling home reveals. That to travel is to experience real life, and yet real life is lived at home. The mundane grooves of polished roles are precisely what make up real life. That real life happens at home is evidenced by the fact that as much as I love it, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life travelling. I don’t want to wander lonely as a cloud, totally free, because I know myself well enough to know I would be unfulfilled. Life lived in travel feels so raw, so simplified, so direct; it’s a passionate reality - the concomitant of freedom possibly – that leaves a powerful impression. But ceaselessly experiencing the deep emotional swell is not sufficient for a long life full of meaning (however to the contrary it feels whilst travelling).

It is, ultimately, not that I struggle with one particular, difficult feeling upon returning, but that I struggle with the conflict, the duality of emotional reality. Travel is eventually unfulfilling because it offers only one side of the argument: the chaotically new, the constantly creative, the ever evaluative, the ticklist of experiences - the emotional sea. But without any travel, for me home offers only the offer side: the comfortable familiarity, the practised roles, unquestioning habit, the ebb and flow of day to day routine - the emotional shore. Thrown into stark contrast, it’s the anarchic collision of the two that is the source of the listless sense of dislocation that I feel - caught in the breakers between the sea and the shore...

Not that I’d ever have it any other way, of course...

*If, like me, you are something of an Americophile and you haven’t read either of his classics (Blue Highways – a cult classic – and River Horse), then I’d recommend them, especially if you like slow, philosophical observations of the less-explored.

Gallery: Mongolia

climberchris — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:34:00 GMT

A selection of pictures in no particular order...

One Month in Mongolia. Part 5.

climberchris — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:55:00 GMT

In which Chris goes horse trekking in the taiga.

From Naiman Nuur we returned to Orkhon Khürkhree, spent a night there and then headed into the North. Pausing at some ‘hot springs’, $5 to sit in a hot tub seemed somewhat exorbitant, it wasn’t exactly Yellowstone, we headed up to Tsetserleg and onwards to Terkhin Tsagaan Nuur, the Great White Lake. Surrounded by volcanic landscape peppered with extinct volcanoes and empty craters, this was one of the most beautiful places we’d seen. The water wasn’t too cold and the plans for organising a hike quickly evaporated in the face of sunbathing and swimming. Sadly the thing was marred for me by feeling extremely bad with an upset stomach. We did a few little walks, to the top of a small crater and to see some underground caverns and potholes, but whilst not eating for a day or two allowed me to get rid of the stomach cramps, it left me with no energy for anything but reading and dozing and lolling around in the water.

I’d hit my low point. I felt rubbish and had no energy. We been travelling about two weeks and the journey had worn me down, unending driving and discomfort doing their best to combine with feeling ill in miasma of self-pity. I basically wanted it to end. I was tired of eating nothing but rice and pasta alternate nights and was sick of the endlessness of the days of driving. The one good point was that losing my desire to eat meant I’d also lost my cravings for various luxury foods, such as beer and ice cream, and on occasion, pizza. It should be stressed at this point that our diet consisted entirely or rice, pasta, onions, garlic, tinned tomatoes and curry powder for dinner, bread and chocolate spread or local cheese (initially embraced but then ignored for the dire effects it sometimes produced) and porridge for breakfast. This might sound ok but try it - after two weeks it was really getting too much.

Gradually it passed and as we left the lake and continued north I begin to eat a bit and feel generally less pessimistic about the world. The North was perhaps the highlight of the trip for me. It was stunningly beautiful, as beautiful as anywhere I’d seen in New Zealand or California and far more remote. The Russian border lay around 50km to the north and the habitat was taiga, that classic image of Siberia of vast expanses of conifers, steep and inaccessible mountains and deep and sparkling lakes.

Khüvsgül Nuur is the world’s fourteenth largest source of freshwater (according to the guidebook anyway) and, surrounded by spectacular mountains, protected by the Khüvsgül Nuur National Park. The roads were difficult, steep and rocky and we often averaged 15 or 20km/h. It was cold too, cold enough (and drizzly enough on the first night) to persuade us to stay in a ger camp. We enjoyed two nights of relative comfort and luxury on the shores of the lake while we organised a horse trek.

We had three days of horse trekking and it could easily have been more. We had a guide, a couple of pack horses and our guide’s son along for the ride. Our first day took us along the edge of the water under grey skies. The guide, Boya, and his son, Vasandorje (but who got nicknamed Pitta for some ineffable reason), didn’t speak English but were cheery and helpful. There weren’t any lessons, we just sort of got plonked on a horse and it followed the one in front until it got bored and went a different way. Actually it wasn’t that bad – noone’s horse bolted in any significant way – and by the end of the day I was generally happy in making it go somewhere in the vague direction that I wanted, at least, if it wasn’t too far off the direction it wanted to go. We couldn’t remember their names so we gave them new ones, mine being Onyx because it was black and shiny (my camel had likewise been called Shakira, though I can’t remember exactly why anymore) and sort of mysterious.

We camped near the lake and spent the evening playing games with Vasandorje and then singing songs around the campfire, watching the stars and doing the hokey-kokey.

Our second day took us up into the mountains, into wild and rocky terrain where eventually we had to lead the horses by hand. Our campsite was at the head of a steep valley, looking out over the lake and the peaks stretching to Russia to the North. Another campfire night, followed by a sloping and sleepless night fending off the cold (remember that useless sleeping bag I had in Fontainebleau? well, I still had it, and this time I was 50km from Siberia). Our last day took us up and over the valley ridge, leading the horses by hand up a steep, steep hillside before pausing for breath at the top and then dropping down the other side to traverse a precipitous and impressive scree slope that plunged to the valley floor below. It was wild and perhaps the most exhilarating hour’s walk of the whole trip.

From Khüvsgül, two days of driving across the steppe and through the classic Central Mongolian landscape took us back to Ulaanbaatar, back to civilisation 23 days and 3,152km after we’d started.

And that was it really. Just like that it was over. It was time to go home.

One Month in Mongolia. Part 4.

climberchris — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:50:00 GMT

The centre of Mongolia is the archetypal Mongolian landscape, desert steppe rolling into wide empty green valleys, a handful of Gers dotted along the course of the river running between distant dark green mountains. Horses roamed the plains and herders lived wherever water could be found. We took a couple of days to head up through the aimags (provinces) of Dundgov and Övörkkhangai, a journey broken by our happening across a small Naadam (games) in the middle of the steppe.

Perhaps a hundred people had arrived, as if from nowhere, in a flat area in the middle of nowhere. People on horses, families in Russian minivans and young men on motorbikes, most wearing Dels and wielding horse brushes, all gathered together in the dusty plain. A jeep sold basic ice cream and another khuushuur (fired goat dumplings) as we waited for the wrestling to start and the horses to appear. The wrestling was exciting and usually over quickly, the victor presented with a traditional before circling the national flag clockwise, his arms waving and his knees bent in a melodramatic dance (I think it might represent some sort of bird, perhaps a crane). The horse race was 15km of flat-out racing over flat steppe. The finish line was two flags placed somewhere that seemed fairly arbitrary to me, and the spectators gathered there when the first plumes of dust could be seen on the horizon. I found the whole thing tremendously exciting, watching the young riders of about 12, who these days ride without saddles because of too many accidents in the past, spur their exhausted horses to a finish in a dusty cloud of cheers. It was great.

We visited Erdene Zuu Khiid, the ancient monastery, famous for its 108 stupas surrounding it and spent the morning in Kharkhorin, stocking up with supplies. The monastery is considered one of the three greatest Buddhist sites in Mongolia (along with Gandantegchinlen Khiid in Ulaanbaatar and another I didn’t see), but like all the others, is a shadow of its former glory. Communist purges banished or executed most of the monks and destroyed most of the temples, removing all their relics and using the stones for other buildings. Only since 1995 has work begun to restore the country’s religious heritage, though it’s proven a very difficult task as several generations of Mongolians have now grown up with little knowledge of traditional beliefs and there is hardly any money available for restoration.

The great emptiness of the landscape has a profound impact on the feeling of spiritual desolation you get in such places, especially Ongiin Khiid, a monastery we visited on our way north. It was a once thriving Buddhist community home to 1000 before being utterly destroyed and its water source diverted for a communist factory. Two monks, educated there long ago, have returned to attempt to rebuild the monastery and have no completed one temple. I found a profoundly affecting place, somewhere so desolate and empty that had once been so busy, bustling with the sounds of praying monks and day to day life of religious ritual.

From Kharkhorin we travelled through a spectacularly beautiful river valley, so stunning it was hard to take in. Mountains rose on either side and a broad river braided its way through green pastures, Gers littering the valley floor and filling it with wandering herds of sheep, goats, cows and horses. Orkhon Khürkhree, our campsite, was no less beautiful, a spectacular plunge of the Orkhon waterfall into a deep canyon. This is a popular tourist site, especially with urban Mongolians from Ulaanbaatar who come for the weekend to swim and walk around the falls. From here we planned a two day walk to Naiman Nuur, an area of eight lakes (which is the meaning of the name) at the head of the valley, inaccessible to vehicles. This involved Bagi first finding a translator, he found an enthusiastic but somehow exceedingly annoying American-accented guide who was leading a group and staying in the next door Ger camp (we were camping). She was very helpful, but probably didn’t need to specify that she was the ‘enthusiastic guide on page 80 of the new Lonely Planet’, which only grated more.

We hired a guide to lead us and take a pack horse for our stuff. Although we were told you need a guide, all you really need is a map, which we didn’t have, because the navigation wasn’t that hard and in fact was significantly less challenging than many hillwalks in the Highlands. However, hiking remains something of a foreign concept to most Mongolians, who can’t think of any earthly reason why someone should walk to see some lakes just for the sake of it.

The trip was great, but proved a good lesson in failing to communicate. After about four or five hours of walking, we came to rest near a Ger on a hill above the first lake (actually the eighth as they’re numbered from the other side). Our guide made signs that we should camp here and tomorrow go somewhere else and then some more signs as well. As it was still early and we’d only seen one lake, which was somewhat dried up at best, we didn’t want to camp there but carry on to the next one. A long discussion ensued with much gesticulation and pointing at the phrase book. Eventually we persuaded him to go to the Ger where another group, heading the other way, had stopped for a bite to eat. Their guide was able to translate and the misunderstanding was cleared up. It turned out that for the last twenty minutes he’d been trying to tell us we shouldn’t swim in the lakes because they’re so deep (?!), but we’d had literally NO idea that was the message he was giving us. We thought we’d arguing about where we were going to stay. It was, of course, sorted out and we moved on to the next lake, about five kilometres over a ridge. And it was worth it. It was beautiful, remote and peaceful. The scenery was a little like Scotland in fact, but then Scotland is beautiful too, so who cared? We were alone, camping far from the world, cosy by the campfire and refreshed by our swim in the lake. What else mattered?

One Month in Mongolia. Part 3.

climberchris — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:35:00 GMT

In which Chris goes to the Gobi.

Heading south, it felt as if the world was falling away from us (myself and the four Israelis: Gil, Gili, Rotem and Sigal). The city passed and with it, the road. The track took us slowly upwards, houses gradually disappearing until there was nothing but green hills that rose and fell into the distance and wind that whistled a freshness and freedom that has to be felt to be imagined. Our excited chatter died away too, leaving just a sense of silence and emptiness as we each were absorbed into our own reveries, contemplating the beauty of the landscape and thinking of our adventures ahead.

We drove south through scenery that hardly changed the whole day. Very gently rolling grassland continued for as far as you could imagine. As we crested one slight rise, imagining somehow that the next view would be different, we were perpetually surprised by the sameness. Lunch was taken in the shadow of the van, flatness and stillness to the horizon. Towards evening we began to reach more undulating hills, marked by dry river beds that forced us to slow right to a crawl before launching over the edge, then bumping over gravel and rocks before launching up again, nothing ahead but empty blue sky. Our driver would take one ‘road’ (Mongolia reputedly has 50,000km of ‘roads’, but only 2,000 of these are paved: the rest varied from ‘decent farm track’ to ‘impassable river bed’) then he’d veer one way before changing his mind, veer back again and strike off across country, bumping and rattling our teeth until we swerved onto an identical track heading in a slightly different direction. Road signs simply don’t exist and overtaking just means speeding up instead of slowing when you decide to leave the track.

Towards evening we made just one heroic switch onto another, seemingly identical track, when the was an enormous crunch and our van tilted precipitously to the right. Our driver half-skidded to a halt and we tumbled out to inspect. One day in and we’d already lost a wheel (not a flat tyre, the bolts had sheared and the wheel actually fell off). So that was how it was going to be. We stretched, looked about us and resigned ourselves to waiting while our driver fixed it. We only found three replacement bolts, but that didn’t deter our intrepid driver from hurtling on at ever greater speeds (In the Gobi, we averaged around 60km/h, hitting over 100 on one flat stretch. In the centre and north, we usually averaged 30 the roads were so bad.) Our first night was incredible, camped amongst the rocks near an ancient monastery, a huge, perfect sky draped over us, shot through with shooting stars and countless constellations. It was beautiful.

The next day took us into the real desert. Rolling green grass gave way to flat rocky plains with tufts of straggly grasses and small but determined-looking bushes. Groups of camels began to appear amongst the mixed herds of sheep and goats and groups of horses that we drove through (this would consist of our driver hurtling towards said herd, before honking the horn vehemently and if they still didn’t move, crashing to a halt inches from the prone and idiotic beast lying in our way). We camped near an oasis close to Bayanzag (the Flaming Cliffs, made famous by the dinosaur discoveries of Roy Chapman Andrews, the 1920s palaeontologist, adventurer and supposed inspiration for Indiana Jones) , a campfire of dried dung and thorny saxaul shrubs burning fiercely as we watched the sunset over the desert. Sadly, though, our baked potato experiment failed: they weren’t ready when we decided to head to bed, so we thought we’d live them in the embers until morning, by which time, of course, they’d become deformed black husks of burnt-out potatoes.

Bayanzag was impressive, all scorched red rocks and dry wind whistling up the between the outcrops, but there was little reason to stay long. Around mid-afternoon we reached our first National Park – Gurvan Saikhan National Park – where we spent the afternoon exploring Yoliin Am, the famous ice gorge. A four kilometre walk takes you through a gorge that gradually narrows and rises until you stand in a narrow river bed with cliffs towering far above you on both sides. It’s cool in the gorge and there’s ice there almost all year round, though we found only a couple of blocks a few metres square. Wallcreepers and snow finches abounded, whilst vultures soared overhead as we picnicked and washed in the river. We took the “adventurous and rough alternative route” (according to the guidebook anyway) west, through the Dugany Am, a river gorge (it wasn’t dried up, the river still ran) so narrow I honestly thought the van would be too wide. Of course it wasn’t (our driver had obviously done this before), but it was so narrow that we had to fold in the wing mirrors and then once in the narrow section, we wouldn’t have been able to open the doors to get out. It was probably the coolest bit of off-roading I’ve ever seen.

We camped high on a hill, next to a small stupa with a couple of gers belonging to a herder and his family. We looked out down over an enormous plain and as we ate dinner, supplemented with öröm from the ger, we watched herds of goats and horses sweep past in clouds of settling dust, rounded up by the malchin (herder) on his traditional Mongolia wooden saddle and dressed in his del (a thick, warm long coat worn by almost everyone outside of the city). It was perhaps the most Mongolian of evenings imaginable.

We reached Khongoryn Els the next day: true sand dunes stretched over an area 100 kilometres long and twenty wide. The highest ones were over 200m high and towered over the flat scrubby steppe below, baking in the heat. We rode camels from the Ger camp where we stayed (the little stream nearby was too shallow and too muddy to use for camping) to the base of the dunes, and then struggled up to the first ridgeline, swathed in headscarves and lathered in suncream. We spent two nights in the Ger camp at the base of the dunes and then turned right and headed north.

Not, however, before the biggest scare I had on the whole. Camped for our last night in the Gobi on the edge of the national park, I went to the loo (a phrase that eternally delighted the Israelis with their American English) and, as was our practise, unthinkingly set fire to the toilet paper. Almost immediately a small tuft of dry grass went up in flames and, fanned by the warm breeze, spread to the next tuft and beyond. In the fractions of a second elapsed by the time the third tuft had caught, I had realised the danger of the situation, visions of the entire hillside of dry grass going up and engulfing the tents (and our driver sleeping in the van) and I shouted for help. As the fire started to spread, I somehow, and very luckily, reacted quickly, whipping off one of my flip-flops and beating like a maniac and swearing at the area of spreading fire (now a metre or two square). By the time Gil had arrived I’d all but put it out and was just beating the last of the embers. As I sat down and the adrenaline passed I realised how close I’d come to starting a serious fire: the conditions were perfect, the grass tinder dry and stretching uninterrupted all the way to the plain below and the wind a gentle and warm fan for the flames. In retrospect I’ve come to view it as perhaps my finest hour in all my trip, after all, how many can say they very nearly set fire to a Mongolian National Park whilst going to the toilet one night?

One Month in Mongolia. Part 2.

climberchris — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:16:00 GMT

In which Chris thwarts the dastardly deeds of a criminal mastermind greater even than Moriarty, finds four intrepid travelling companions with whom to set off into the wilderness.

Ulaanbaatar has a reputation for being rough, but I never felt unease there. It's not seedy, just half-built and lacking in traffic rules. Or at least that's how I felt at first... After three days in the Ger district, I decided to head into town and stay in a hostel, having realised that that was the best way to find travelling companions. Leaving behind Begz and his family, with promises to return when I could, I hit one of the lowest points of my trip. I hadn't yet booked a plane home and everything seemed uncertain and up in the air. Underlying it all were concerns about my money situation, which combined with a sense of dislocation and unsettling uncertainty over the possibility of simply being stuck in Ulaanbaatar, unable to afford to go to China (or, more likely, unable to get a visa) and unable to find any way of seeing anything of Mongolia.

Ulaanbaatar is not a city that is immediately attracts you, it somehow feels too half-built, the main square - Sukhbaatar - bakes under the doubly oppressive twins of the surrounding communist blocks and, almost paradoxically, their very distance apart. I don't know the motivation for this, but one thing that communist architecture seemingly never got the hang of was shade. All avenues are tremendously wide, all public spaces tremendously openand Sukhbaatar is no exception. Under the heat of the Mongolian sun and the threat of Mongolian traffic, Ulaanbaatar doesn't welcome you with cool shady streets, it wears you down with long dusty roads. It's spread out and there seems little in the way of anything to see or do. Or that's how it seemed to me at first. In fact, I was drawn slowly into Ulaanbaatar and after a day or two more there, I had dug out the little corners worth seeing, found the various museums hidden away and began to be charmed by it's rough edges and apparent emptiness. I can imagine being slowly sucked in and eventually being unable to escape as though the very difficulty in getting to know its charms eventually draws you in deeper than a city more immediately charming.

With the complex mixture of oppressive feelings I had, coupled perhaps with a little anxiety, a fear of the unknown and unknowable, I found myself extremely pessimistic. I settled into a hostel (one known for being a good place to find free spaces on tours) and listlessly wandered the main streets, trying to decide what to do and yet unable to make firm plans with so much unknown and up in the air.

Wandering once more down Peace Avenue, I was suddenly jostled from behind by two men, just as I stepped down from the curb, crossing a side street. At the very next instant a small man slammed into my left shoulder, and I was caught stumbling first one way - down and left - and then back again to the right. In retrospect I don't know what made me react as I did, but as I felt the two behind me push forward, some instinct, perhaps honed a little by four months of travelling, made me grab my pockets. Perhaps it wasn't instinct, it could have been pure luck: I can no longer visualise the events as a sequence, too fast and blurred as they are. Certainly I don't remember any thought process, I just remember being pushed and reacting as instanteously as if it were simultaneous. Whatever, I grabbed my pockets, clamping my hands over the bulge of my wallet and passport (kept in the same pocket for this very reason), and I immediately felt the man to my left attempt to push his hand into my pocket. I remember distinctly the feel of his fingers, the pressure of his trying push in and down under my hand, before, in almost the same instant, he (presumably realising the situation) gave up and passed by. As I stumbled right, I trod firmly on the foot of one of the men behind me (actually an insult so grievous that the guidebook suggests shaking the hand of the person you step on straight away), causing him to shout out. I, of course, shouted out at the surprise of the whole thing and, recovering my balance, turned to see the three of them walking away, muttering darkly and staring balefully in my direction: as if I had wronged them! I gave them as dark a look as I could muster and carried on.

In a strange way, far from being the straw that broke the camel's back of my mood (to mix metaphors), this failed pickpocket attempt proved the turning point. Rather than being disturbed, I felt triumphant and newly confident. I'd never been the victim of any kind of crime before and though this attempt was rather low down on the scale of things, to come out of it not only unscathed (however luckily) but having insulted the perpetrators (however accidentally) as well felt good. Walking back to the hostel I sat down on my bed and, flushed with the post adrenaline rush of success, I started talking to two Americans who'd also settled into my dorm. Within minutes I'd got myself a possible invite onto an organised tour to the Gobi. It wasn't exactly what I would have immediately chosen, but it was a start and more than that, it was sign that finding travelling companions might just work out fine.

Buoyed by this I went out to look around and check my emails. Greeted with the news that I had enough money and confirmation of exactly when I needed to be home, things began to fall into place. I'd put a notice up that morning in one of the expat cafes (yet another reason for my pessism was the fact that there wasn't a single relevant or even recent notice up on the noticeboard, recommended by the guidebook as the single best way to find travel companions) and a reply was already there - four Israelis were looking for an extra person to join them on a three and a half week independent expedition (they'd hired a van and driver but no tourguide or translator).

I now found myself in a dilemma. Faced with nothing this morning, I'd eagerly agreed to go with the organised, week long, tour to the Gobi, figuring I could go somewhere else afterwards, perhaps even couchsurf again. Suddenly an offer appeared of a trip that perfectly fitted my ideas of how I wanted to travel - independently, for three weeks or more - but with people I'd never met. I was drawn to the three week trip, but felt particularly bad for then backing out on the other two. Voicing my concerns to them they assured me they weren't bothered and I hoped they weren't simply being polite and decided to go with the Israelis without even having met them. Not, in retrospect, that I would have changed my mind, but still, it added to the adventure...

One Month in Mongolia. Part 1.

climberchris — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:32:00 GMT

One month in Mongolia. Part 1. Of Many...

In which Chris couchsurfs the Ger district...

Where do I even begin? With a sentence like this? How can I possibly sum up 29 days of wild experience here, like this? The first few days alone could fill this. Perhaps they will. It's been a wonderful month, no doubt. Highlights and shadows and more jumbled impressions and memories than my mind can hold, never mind recall and evoke online.

To continue the story from where we'd left off, I'd booked a last minute plane from Berlin, with the still vague plan of travelling on to China and Japan. Settling into the seat of the half empty MIAT flight, I gradually changed my mind.

Just as I had no idea if I'd manage to get a flight, I had no idea of what to expect. I mean it's Mongolia, right? One of the last great wildernesses on Earth. The only thing I knew about it was, well, something to do with Genghis Khan and Coleridge or something. And even that turned out to be wrong. Lulled into torpor by the unbelievably inaccurate scenes of 10,000 BC, the inflight movie, I finally opened the one guidebook I had for my entire trip: Mongolia. Avidly absorbing the sections on history, culture and general travel tips, I'd soon decided to simply spend a full month in Mongolia and forget about the rest. I'd book a flight home when I got to Ulaanbaatar and do my best to explore, rather than just pass on by. 10,000BC came and went and the inanity of Fool's Gold convinced me to carry on reading. I was half way through when we finally touched down at 6am in Ulaanbaatar. I never did finish it.

I'd managed to arrange a host in Ulaanbaatar, and what a host he was. The man woke up at 3:30am, to cycle for an hour and a half across the city to be able to pick me up. Heroic. The buses didn't start until 8am, so he said we could walk a little to pass the time and see the Ger district of south of Ulaanbaatar. What he didn't mention was that he was going to quickmarch me 10km into town.

It was, quite possibly, the most dramatic arrival impression I've ever experienced. A grey drizzle covered everything and a taxi driver, apparently concerned (I never did work out if it was genuine or not) at a foreigner being accosted by a small man who was marching him about the place before heading off into the mist, followed us doggedly for a kilometre or two. As the mist cleared, I found myself walking red-dirt roads through a ramshackle suburb of wooden shacks and traditional round felt gers (yurts), a neighbourhood unlike anything I could have imagined. Mangy dogs trailed behind us, hoping for scraps maybe, and a few surprised locals watched as I heaved my backpack up the hill after Begz, my host. We passed through the district and down a hill towards the river. Here we picked up a little puppy that had decided to follow us. Since it was a male, it was good luck, and we let it follow us, even going so far as to give it a ride in the bicycle's basket (bringing a female dog home is bad luck).

We dropped adventurously down from the hillside over a small muddy cliff and onto the flat river plain. In the distance the city could be seen, a road leading to it a couple of kilometres ahead. Twenty minutes later we scramled up onto the pot-holed road and turned left into town. Bemused drivers of ancient Russian trucks passed by , bemused at the sight of the disparate pair of us walking along a highway miles from anywhere. Mongolia is the only country I've ever seen where right and left drive vehicles appear in equal numbers, it's weird. I couldn't work out why, though it doesn't matter because only in town are there actually roads, never mind sides to the road. We'd been walking an hour now and the extreme pace, the weight of my backpack and a night with no sleep whatsoever were beginning to take their toll. I resolved not to say a word however, as when Begz had asked if I minded walking and I'd replied with a no, he'd then answered something along the lines of, "Well you're a young man, so you should be able to walk more than me anyway". Hmm. Considering the guy had once spent twelve hours carrying coal across the city for winter fuel (summer fuel would turn out to be dried cow dung), I wasn't so sure of that at all. Anyway. After two hours the first buses had begun to appear. By this time I am pretty sure we'd covered 10km without a break and my resolve was beginning to rebel. Luckily the right bus eventually appeared and I had my first taste of urban Mongolia - a mixture of half-built blocks of flats, open tracts of empty grass and derelict buildings and communist built offices and concrete boxes.

The bus took me through the heart of Ulaanbaatar and on to the northen Ger district where Begz lived with his family. Getting off at the 11th stop as instructed I waited for him to catch up on his bike. Two minutes up the hill and I was home.

I spent the next three days with Begz and his delightful family. He and his wife had four children, three girls of 1, 3 and 7 and a boy of 9. I have never met such incredibly happy, goodnatured and well-behaved children in my life. Truly, they were amazing. The little one grizzled occasionally, but the others were quick to smile and always happy to help. They seemed unconcerned that a strange man had turned up at 9am on a Saturday morning, totally unable to understand them and only able to communicate through smiles. At least he'd brought German biscuits though, which means a lot in any language.

My days there were wonderful. My mind is full of flashes of memories. The clear, fresh air on top of the hills North of Ulaanbaatar, the entire city and all it's ger districts spread out beneath my feet, empty hills running off to the South, to the North and East. Herding the family's cows with Begz and his boy and the old woman from up the hill with her cows. Learning how to read sheep's ankle bones to foretell your prospects for the day and trying to remember the myriad games you could play with them. Drinking thick milky tea and watching how to make öröm, one of the infinte numbers dairy products that Mongolians eat during the summer (in the countryside, nomads eat almost nothing but dairy products all summer, drinking airag - fermented mare's milk - and eating enormous amounts of cheese, and then nothing but meat, mostly boiled mutton, in winter). To do this, take unpasteurised fresh milk, straight from the cow. Heat it until reasonably hot and then seive repeatedly until a layer of bubbles is formed. Leave to cool and scrape off the top. Eat with bread and resist the temptation to simply lick it off, leaving a pile of milky, half-licked slices of bread, as the children tended to do.

What else? A traditional hair cutting ceremony and all the festivities that accompanied it - the entire extended family gathering to watch as a young boy's hair is cut for the very first time. This happens sometime after the children turn two and is a very important event. Everyone present snips a little of the hair, yes, even the random Scotsman in the corner, which is then kept. Presents and blessings are given before everyone gathers for the requisite boiled goat and airag. An entire goat, skin and all, is carved up and placed in a metal container with a little water and a lot of hot stones - a very traditional dish called khorkhog. This is sealed, placed in a fire and left to cook for some unknown length of time. It's actually pretty good, though the blackened, leathery skin with two centimetres of white fat below it proved a bit much for even my adventurous mood. Songs, vital to all Mongolian occasions, were sung by every member of the party and much airag was consumed, though not by me. You can also make this at home. Simply take one part of full fat milk and mix with one part of vinegar. Drink straight up. Really, it's that bad the first time you try it, though it becomes almost tolerable after a month of politely sipping it - whilst trying not to gag too much - in various gers around the country.

To be honest, though, most of my time was spent playing with the children, from basketball to making scary faces and throwing them up in the air and then chess in the evenings. This game inspired my first, unknowing, Mongolian sentence. One evening I heard the three year old making a sound similar to the Woo-whoop that I made whilst tossing them as high as possible (and usually catching them again). I assumed that she was just copying a noise she'd heard, but it turned out to mean something along the lines of "What's going on?". Which is really a rather apt thing to say to a small child you're throwing into the air. Somewhat surreally, they also had an electric keyboard (this in a single-room, two bed homemade wooden house for six people with no running water) which meant I could play scraps of half learnt Chopin to the delight of the children.

After three days though, I'd soon realised that attempting to plan the rest of my time in Mongolia whilst based in a single-roomed wooden hut 30 minutes from the centre of town was going to prove difficult. The guidebook basically informed me that independent travel was technically possibly, but frankly not worth. Hitching would get you so far (actually hitching is a very common way of getting around, even in the city, as public transport is practically nonexistent) and then you'd be in the middle of nowhere in a nothing town and you'd still have to hire a jeep to go somewhere interesting. So I headed into town...

The Audacity of Hope

climberchris — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:32:00 GMT

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Or so some would have you believe from the hype surrounding his visit...

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat/.../Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!/.../He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave" and his is "a tidal wave of Change!", "Change is coming!" and "Yes we can!" (some of these are real slogans on t-shirts at the speech, one is not...)

Truly, I have seen the revolution. And I fear it may be something of a damp squib. As I write, it's not even an hour old yet, but I am willing to predict what reaction you will see on your TVs (or, more likely, on Youtube, who watches TV these days?) or read the Comment and Opinion section of your papers tomorro. Billed as probably the most anticipated American campaign speech ever held on foreign soil, it is undoubtedly going to be considered, well, good, but not great. A slight disappointment, in fact.

Yes, he's a great speaker, but this wasn't, in my opinion, a great speech. It was good. There was a slight tear in my eye at some points, but frankly I've been known to cry reading a Tom Clancy novel (this is actually true), so perhaps that isn't saying all that much. But it needs more than being good to be great. There wasn't any mass histeria, no fainting or screaming or crying that I could see. This wasn't yet JFK or Nixon or Jesus...

It started with a poor piece of organisation. The first large television screen wasn't close enough to the stage. This left a significant no-man's land where you weren't close enough to see him properly and yet all the screens were behind you. So naturally there was a gap. It got to 18:55 and stewards began to more and more frantically usher us forward. But the crowd wasn't here to make him look good. This is Germany. There were of course the, no doubt specially selected, American flag wavers right up there, but no one particularly cared to get close if they could see him better 50m further back. The gap never closed - this wasn't a delirious Democratic convention, this was Germany, they can't make the crowd move if they don't want to. Not when the speech is all about our common fight for freedom. I am sure that this spoiled the desired effect somewhat, it certainly didn't please the crowd nor draw them into the proceedings. And it ain't going to look too hot the cameras back home either.

He came on late (presumably while they waited for the crowd to move up) and finished early. Expected to talk for an hour, it lasted about half that. I have no idea of the numbers of people, but there were plenty there, stretching almost all the way up to the Branderbuger Tor along the Straße des 17. Juni, a good kilometre or more.

The rhetoric was fiery, the speech was well constructed, but it lacked that certain something that would have made it great. Perhaps his mispronunciation of Berlin's Mayor's name didn't help. Perhaps he thanked the crowd one too many times. But I rather think that what he lacked was the occasion.

The speech was carefully constructed, but without the sense of occasion, the bones of its structure were a little too bare. He dealt well with the controversy of the setting - along the lines of though this tower was built to celebrate victory in war, we stand here in celebration of peace, etc... - but one could see him do it, which disappointed, just as seeing how well a novel is constructed is a sign that it isn't quite constructed well enough.

Naturally he concentrated on the shared history of America and Berlin, empathising how Berlin has long stood at the frontline of the fight for democracy and the indomitable spirit of the people, from the Airdrop to the fall of the wall. He spoke fine, true and often stirring words about our common history - not ignoring Germany's past, but not dwelling on it either - and more importantly, our common humanity.

He referenced those famous speeches subtly and cleverly, but then of course he did. He came as a citizen not a politician (which is his excuse for not being able to talk at his first choice of venue). He spoke of Berliners and again, later, that all the world were citizens of Berlin. He talked continually of tearing down walls. And herein lies the crux of his failure I think.

His failure was twofold, but they are inter-related. He spoke of grand themes and great causes that unite us. He ticked all the usual boxes for the left. We had, albeit far too briefly, climate change and the environment, AIDS, an end to nuclear weapons, welcoming immigration, overcoming racism and discrimination and so on (I am sure there are more, I just can't remember them all). Not everything he said was crowd pleasing, speaking of a common duty to intervene and finish the job in Afghanistan (an unpopular view here, ask Merkel). Yes, he spoke to the crowd at home. Security was mentioned frequently, 9/11 touched on, terror and Iranian nuclear weapons. It was noticeable that whenever he mentioned a strong EU or a strong, united trans-Atlanticism the first reason mentioned was always our common security. In fact, I was surprised by how often he used the word security, terror too, but perhaps I was being naive about the demands of realpolitik back home.

Speaking to the middle ground back home wasn't where he went wrong though. No, for me, it was a lack of substance. A lack of substance and a lack of occasion. The latter highlighted the former. Great words are great, but they are only truly inspiring when the circumstance is great. Tear down the wall was a meaningful sentiment and even a meaningful policy position when there was a physical wall to bring down. What more sentiment or policy do you need? For every man to be a citizen of Berlin is fine indeed, when the danger is so apparent and stands right over there, wielding guns and manouvering tanks to prevent your family from enjoying basic freedoms, from seeing you. But when the walls that divide are internal, as he rightly said, it is no longer good enough to say that our common humanity must unite us to allow us to tear them down. What does that mean? How? How are you going to tear down the walls between you and the Serbs I met last month? How are you going to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the table? Why have you renounced unconditional talks with Iran or Syria or North Korea (ok, we know the answer to that one, duh, the voters won't go for it)? How?

Yes, it is naive to think that he is going to come to Berlin and spell out carefully his domestic policy. But without any details, without any promises of any substance, it leaves a bitter taste of rather too much politician in one's mouth. He promises change, but sadly I couldn't help wondering if he will be a real change at all. After all, didn't he just say what he knew we wanted to hear in Europe, without the substance we wanted, so that he could spin it as the folks would like to hear it back home. And here the audacity of hope founders against the reality of the world. Because what else could one really expect without incredible political naivety?

Surely the fact that he will be first Black President counts for change enough, you may say? Well, yes, that is undoubtedly a bid deal, but what does it matter whether it's a black man or white that refuses to bring the troops home from Iraq? They die all the same. Big business profits all the same. Climate change happens all the same. I suspect that the demands of the American election will bring him further and further from the change once promised and chasing the centre he will talk rather more about security and rather less about the personal sacrifice required to slow climate change. But don't they all?

Let's hope he does get elected. And let's hope that he returns to his strong positions on equality and open dialogue and real change. After all, what other chance have we got than the audacity of hope? It's either that or McCain and he is most definitely the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...

Reflections

climberchris — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:41:00 GMT

And so it is decided. I am going to Mongolia. Tomorrow. It's hard to believe that this most incompentent and harebrained of schemes has actually worked. I mean, I actually rocked up in Berlin, found the MIAT travel office and said I want to go to Mongolia this week. Right there and then I bought a ticket, in cash, and for almost half the price of the ones I found online before I left, way back when in March.

I suppose that it had seemed like such an unlikely eventuality, doubted by pretty much everyone that I mentioned it to, that I too had begun to convince myself that it wasn't going to happen. I had accepted that there wouldn't be an available flight, that I wouldn't have the money. I had constructed an alternative route, heading back East through Poland and Ukraine before heading North to the Baltic and then perhaps looping round through Scandinavia. Or something like that. I'd grown rather fond of this route. It meant I could see and tick off more countries, I could go back to the Eastern Europe that I enjoyed so much, get to see Ukraine, which I now have a strong desire to see, and perhaps most of all, it felt safe. I could do it easily, I know how to get around Europe, I wouldn't go anywhere wilder than I'd already been. It would have had a nice narrative arc, too; as a journey, it would make some sort of sense on the map. I knew I'd find couches and friendly people and internet and train timetables and all that. It was comfortable.

And so, in the manner of all things, do we come full circle.

Almost three months ago, I sat in French campsite wondering many things. As I approached this junction in my journey, not knowing which road through the "yellow wood" I would take, I have found myself reflecting again. I suddenly realised that I hadn't been thinking much recently. By the Seine, I'd wanted to be able to just sit, and like that moment climbing when you realise you haven't been thinking anything, it struck me that that was what I missed about Eastern Europe. Looking back I found that over time, as I ventured further and as time passed, I thought less and less. I could sit on a bench and watch the world go by or the sea sparkle; half an hour, and hour would go by. I could sit in a train contentedly, just looking out the window, perhaps waiting for something interesting to fly by, but if it didn't, well that was fine too.I t makes you patient, this travelling. Trains are late, connections are missed, but without commitments, without anyone else, what does it matter whether you are here or there? The present moment becomes the only thing, full and content in itself*.

As I reflected more and more on the journey I'd taken, I grew more and more attached to the idea of carrying on round Europe. After I had bought the ticket to Mongolia I was surprised to find myself neither excited nor satisfied, but a little disappointed. I was surprised, most of all, by the ambiguity of my feelings. All the old arguments I had rehearsed in France were there. On the one hand, I'd actually managed to get a flight to Mongolia, and, wow, I mean, it's Mongolia, it's going to be wild and exciting and adventurous and amazing, right? On the other lay the comforting idea of Eastern Europe. There were double layers beyond those too, the desire to do something that scares me a little, the need to overcome doubts and throw myself forward just because it scares me. Like Frost's traveller, I too found myself sorry that I could not travel both paths.

But I thought more about this, wandering around Alexanderplatz and down Unter den Linden. And I saw that it wasn't simple comfort, that there was something more that I missed about my travels, something I'd missed whilst in Slovenia too. The people I'd met. I was sad to leave them behind. Buying a ticket to Mongolia meant the end of halfhoped ideas of seeing people again. While I was still in Europe the possibility remained that I could relatively easily have visited pretty much any of the travellers or hosts I'd got to know. That is gone now and the truth is that I don't know when I will see them again, because I know how life goes when you move somewhere new and start something as tough as a PhD and things just, well, overtake you.

Someone pointed out to me, a while ago now, that I never wrote about people in my blogs. I thought about this for a long time. It hadn't been a conscious decision, but I recognised that it was true. I think there were, and are, several reasons for this and, realising that these weren't going to change, the decision became conscious. I sought ways to get round it, flirting with the idea of simply listing all the people that have had some impact on my travels, from the most trivial to the most important, but I haven't tried that yet, I'm not sure why. Who knows, maybe I will towards the end. Why, then, have I avoided writing about people?

Maybe it is like painting or drawing, where I always found capturing faces the hardest aspect to manage, in that capturing a character in words is just too difficult. I shy away from trapping people in words that don't fit. If the reality of places is multifaceted, then people even more so. Too frequently I only see one part of them, one person of the many that make them who they are. Perhaps I miss their depths or sides hidden from even themselves. And if this happens when we meet, how crude any description must then be: one crudely sketched aspect of one aspect of of one side of one person. A sort of poor written equivalent of Sugimoto's "copies of copies of copies".

This could be seen as a cop-out of course. Perhaps it is. But maybe there is slightly more to it than that. I don't know how people would react to seeing themselves blogged about, it can be a strange experience. I wouldn't want to offend them or get them wrong and I am such an inexperienced writer I surely would. Many people have been incredibly kind to me, but write anything other than the highest praise and the internet is a big scary place and words can be interpreted in many ways... That might not be everyone's idea of fifteen minutes of fame.

Beyond that, many of the interesting things that have been said or shared with me are personal, perhaps not to me (but then if this blog doesn't attest to the fact that I have slightly unusual boundaries of what constitutes personal, then what does?) and who knows what people want for themselves and what they are prepared to share? Some of the magic of shared memories and special people are too easily lost when up there in neon. There is simply too much unknown, too much involved and that is why I stick to the places I see and the thoughts and feelings I have.

In many ways, it's a shame. Like looking at other's photos, perhaps blogs are more interesting when there are people in them, rather than an endless succession of beaches and mountain views. It is truly the people that make a journey. They make it worthwhile and it's from them that you learn. As I've been reflecting about the journey so far, it's the people I have met that stand out. For this, I have certainly couchsurfing to thank. I´ve been couchsurfing for over two months now and it has been a nothing short of a revelation.

It started as a way for me to save money, but it has rapidly become so much more. In fact it's now hard to imagine ever hostelling again, except through necessity. It's not just a way to meet people either, though that is what makes it great. No, for me, it represents my aspirations for the way the world should be: a global community based on trust, honesty, reciprocity, generosity, optimism and a sharing of all the good things in life. Above all it is about meeting some of the very best people I´ve had the fortune to spend time with; people that have changed my worldview, that constantly renew my faith in humanity and are rolemodels for ways to live well - thoughtfully, compassionately, meaningfully - wherever you find yourself. They have shown me how kind, considerate and generous it is possible to be**. Long live the couchsurfing revolution!

Speaking of revolutions, I am off to witness what might be the start of the next one, to see that harbinger of youth, passion and change. Yes, he who dares to hope for audacity - JFK. Wait, that is him right? ... maybe I'm just getting confused with all this Berlin history and symbolism and stuff... I'm sure no Berliner... Anyway I'm off to see him, because, well who knows what might happen and anyhow the museum I wanted to visit costs ten euros.

Little differences

climberchris — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:01:00 GMT

Crossing the border from Serbia to Croatia, the differences are immediately apparent. Actually, that isn't strictly accurate. Croatia does immediately feel different, if only in subtle ways, but it takes a little while to register just where those differences lie.

There's the same flat landscape of the edge of the Carpathian Basin, the crops much the same in similar looking fields. But look again and you notice the hedgerows and fences are better looked after. Tracks and paths and the strips of grass between crops are all tidier with less litter.

Thin white church toweres rise over scattered woods, hiding little villages in the middle distance and it looks so comfortable that it takes a moment to register that it is precisely those towers that are different. You don't see those signatures of Central European Catholicism dotted around the Serbian countryside any more than you see the bulging onion domes of Serbian Orthodoxy in the rolling Croatian plains. For that is where I most definitely I was as I crossed the border: back in Central Europe. The border marks, for me, the watershed between the Balkans and Central Europe. Naturally these distinctions are always rather murky and vague, a little arbitrary even - bullet holes still marr the concrete buildings of communism on both sides after all - but recent history has perhaps made the distinction rather sharper in this region than others.

Arriving in Zagreb only confirms the feeling that the Balkans have been left behind. It is a small city, compact and tidy. Things seem well organised and the streets are cleaner. Little differences like the lack of beeping horns, even in the worst traffic jams, attest to the pull of Central Europe. Seriously, the silence of a quiet traffic jam is a deafening surprise after the tumult of traffic in places like Skopje or Tirana, or even Belgrade, where people seem to beep just for the solidarity and sheer joy of the thing. There are recycling bins, non-existent in Belgrade, and fewer people just hanging around, passing the time because they've nothing else to do.

Zagreb is a charming city, though it suffers in reputation for the proximity of the Croatian coast (which I didn't visit). Some backpackers I met said it was a two-day city (on the backpacker circuit, cities are ranked according to the time required to see everything). I, of course, could have spent a week there. It is altogether a lovely city, unjustly ignored in the race for the beach. It is kind to tourists and travellers, of which there are many, both backpackers (two main types: those on the Southern trail to Istanbul - something like Venice, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul - and those on their way to the coast) and good old tourists of the usual sort, American, German and Japanese (us Brits still haven't made it out of Spain yet it seems). The streets are full of bustling cafes lining the picturesque squares, with trams wending their way down past regal houses and handsome churches. The city is also packed with museums. The Modern Art gallery is particularly good, though the upper rooms are covered in so much contemporary art it feels like you've been hit over the head with giant red and black iron installations when you walk in.

If Croatia is pretty much Central Europe (with a twist of the Mediterreanean and a touch of the Balkans), then Slovenia is just pure Central Europe, a veritable miniature Austria. Everything is on a small scale, the whole country has something like two million people, and you can drive across it in a couple of hours. It's by far the most Western and rich of the Balkan countries (I am never sure if Greece counts or not as a Balkan country). It's GDP per capita is 1.5 times that of Croatia and twice that of Serbia (it's about four times that of lawless Albania). The scenery is distinctly Alpine, little Austrian-like villages set in little Austrian-like mountains. It was almost a continual surprise to hear Slovenes speak with what was clearly a Slavic language and not some variant of German. Everything feels neat, prim and in its proper place and the whole atmosphere was one of typical Alpine health, as if the locals rose early to catch the sunrise on the local Alp before swishing stylishly down the perfect offpiste powder for a splendidly healthy breakfast and another day on the slopes. Ljubljana, the capital, is tiny, a little gem of a city that you can walk plain across in an hour. It does, however, feel rather too much like the perfect romantic weekend getaway rather than a budget backpackers destination. Restaurants full of fawning couples crowd the riverfront, the trees and cute little bridges reflected in the water in the still evening air. It's just the right size to do in two days, too.

Most people recommend basing yourself in Ljubljana and then seeing the rest of the country in a series of day trips. I, of course, like to do things differently. I spent the requisite two days in Ljubljana before even I began to wonder if I could bear walking up to see the view from the castle for the fourth time in 36 hours. I therefore thought I'd sacrifice my usually snobbery and use my third and last day to take a touristy day trip to Bled, a super picturesque village somewhere near the Southern reaches of the Alps.

Before I left, I thought I'd be clever and swap the book I'd just finished at the hostel bookswap where my host worked. Little did I know that it would be my undoing. Though, in retrospect, perhaps it was the punishment I incurred by my choice of book, because, yes, I did in fact choose The World According To Clarkson. But, actually, and bear with me here, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't nearly as outrageous as I'd expected. In fact, I found myself agreeing with some of what he said. Now I know that many of my friends, and some of my family too probably, would rather go whaling, felling rainforests and then voting Tory before admitting to agreeing with anything written by Clarkson. But travel broadens the mind, as they say. Isn't that one of the good things about travelling, the chance to expose oneself to differing views?

And I found myself on the train to Bled, absorbed in Clarkson's battles with the lawn. I should point out, that while it's ok, it's not a great read and it most definitely not "the funniest book you'll read this year" - it will be a million years before Clarkson is funnier than Sedaris - and it did suffer somewhat in comparison with the book I'd just handed in, Anna Karenina. (After all, one is one of the greatest works ever written and the other is Anna Karenina, right?) But anyway, I was absorbed (maybe it's a worrying sign that I thought much of what he said was basically common sense, though we do comforting differ on what makes a good book, so that's ok, right?). When we stopped after about an hour, and I looked up and saw a sign with Bled on it, I jumped up, slammed the book the shut and rushed out, congratulating myself on escaping just before the doors closed and the train pulled away. To quote Ron Burgundy, I immediately this decision. The sign in fact said Lesce-Bled. And then I remembered I was supposed to change trains anyway. Hmm. I glanced around me. Beautiful Alps soared on the horizon, always just out of sight behind the admittedly quite clean and handsome Builder's Merchants (thanks to Dad I consider myself something of a Builder's Merchants connoisseur: this one was good but no HIS).

The next train was in an hour, leaving me with about 10 minutes in Bled before I had to get the last train back to Ljubljana. There was nothing for it but to explore Lesce. I walked along the main road for five minutes until I hit the edge of the village. I walked back the way I'd come, past the railway station, the Builder's Mechants, the supermarket and out the other side. That was it, I'd seen the entire place in about 15 minutes. The main road branched, one way dipping down towards fields filling flat valley leading to the soaring Alps. The sign pointed to Bled. Yep, that is where I should have been I thought. I tried to halfheartedly hitchhike, but gave up after 10 minutes, knowing I was running out of time anyway. There was nothing for it but to have a beer in the town's only cafe (which was in the station) and get the next train back to Ljubljana.

That evening, I walked up to the Castle for a fifth time...

Perhaps it is just jealousy. Perhaps I too wanted to swish stylishly down the slopes to breakfast, naturally conducted fluently in five languages with my good looking friends with their great complexions, or maybe it was simply the prices. Whatever it was, I soon missed being in the East. It was all too perfect, all too tidy and just too damn cute. I missed being able to stick my head out of the window of the ramshackle trains of Romania and Bulgaria, travelling so slowly I could make out the curled russet husk of a mouse impaled on a thorn by a Shrike. I missed good old concrete and no one speaking much English. Rakia and meat stew for breakfast. Hot, hot countryside and communist statues in baked and ugly towns... It's just not the same, this travelling in Central Europe, it's just all too pretty...

Rakia: connecting people

climberchris — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:34:00 GMT

If I were forced to choose a word to describe the Serbs I've met, it would be proud. Or maybe tall. No, definitely proud. But they are also all really tall. It's like being in Brobdingnag...

I've had an extraordinary time in Serbia. The kind of experience that makes me thank the Lord for couchsurfing and all the good people in this World. I'd struggled to find a place to stay in Belgrade and so it was with real gratitude that I finally found an kind and accommodating host. I'd heard good things about Belgrade: famous for its arts and music, its brave journalists (especially its radio), its bohemian edge and its nightlife, all during dark times for Eastern European arts and free thought and press. So I was looking forward to experiencing it all, meeting young Serbs and finding out what it was like to live here. Seeing a slice of real Belgrade.

What I didn't expect was that the slice of real Belgrade I would see was the infamous* force of nature that is the Balkan Granny.

My host had planned to have me stay with him and his family, but in the end it wasn't possible and he arranged for me to stay with his Grandmother. I couldn't have been more delighted. Go looking for reality and it finds you - in the most unexpected ways. My host's Grandmother was 82 and came up to my waist when she stretched. She spoke not a word of English and on meeting me refused to believe I was really from the UK, believing instead that I was one of those unfortunate souls whose parents had emigrated and neglected to teach me my Mother tongue.

She insisted that I sleep in her bed, while she took the couch. I struggled at first with the suggestion that I should be the one to turf an 82 year old woman out of her bed, but after a moment's reflection conceded (though I could no more have resisted the flow of an oncoming glacier). Firstly she was right that I would be less disturbed in her room (there were two rooms and the bathroom in her cottage) as she got up at 5am everyday. Secondly it occurred to me that she had, in her 82 years, been through more hardship than I could imagine or would want to. She'd lived through the Second World War and its aftermath, through communism and through another war, barely 15 years old, during which she and her family had been forced to leave their home in Dalmatia (in what is now Croatia) and resettle in Serbia, ethnically cleansed with so many others (on all sides). A night on the couch would likely do her less harm than it would me.

My days there followed the same pattern. I got up about four or five hours after my host, who'd got up at dawn, and as I showered she put on some Serbian coffee (which is or isn't, depending whom you ask, very much like Turkish coffee). In her case she didn't believe in small portions (this is another Serbian trait: they eat enormous amounts - I was permanently stuffed) and I started the day with the largest mug of sweet black coffee I've ever seen. Along with the coffee she gave me a shot of Rakia to whet my appetite. Rakia is a strong, often home-brewed, spirit, found throughout the Balkans, and even in Turkey, in various guises: Raki, Rakia, Rakija etc. It tends to be drunk by older generations and is known to be the cure for all manner of ills. Especially if drunk every monrning. The variants are all pretty much the same and all sufficiently strong (usually 45 to 50 %) to burn all the way down. The title of this blog is taken from a Balkan play on the Nokia slogan and the effects of Rakia.

And so my days started half drunk and wild-eyed from the coffee, listening to a tape of Dalmatian folk music that my host played at every opportunity. She first put it on the evening I arrived and as I sat there in her small cottage, nodding and smiling at a four foot Serbian woman in her headscarf and with her hens pecking outside and the smell of freshly spread muck pervading the neighbourhood, I couldn't help but inwardly smile. An ethnomusicologist's wetdream, the music initially sounded like someone trying to play the bagpipes and the harmonica at the same time, but as I heard it more and more I began to distinguish more subtlety in it than I'd first imagined. It was in simple time, with what I guessed was only one instrument, playing a droning note on the beat and a melody that was more rhythm than tune, a sort of Dalmatian funk. A bar-long phrase would be repeated five or six times and then a slight variation would be introduced and that phrase repeated, the whole thing four or five minutes long.

As I sat outside in the shade of the garden on my first morning, I reflected on the music. I'd tried to ask if it was from Dalmatia and when she in turn tried to explain it brought tears to her eyes. I first heard the music as something I could easily categorise - this was "real" folk music - not the kind you buy in the airport or watch at shows in your hotel restaurant, but a tape of real live musicians who'd really played this music in a remote village in Dalmatia. Listening to it felt exactly like the authentic experience I was looking for on my travels. And that made me smile. But as I sat there in the sunshine and thought how real this experience was and how great it was to stumble across this slice of real Serbia and experience it all, soak it up, I realised how shallow an initial response that was. I found myself listening to the music, not understanding it, almost looking down on it or looking in from the outside. It was as if rather than really experience it meaningfully, my search for the authentic had lead me to feel everything at one stage removed. I could see myself turning it about in my head as an abstract thing, not inside the very here and now, with all its attendant emotions and impressions, but outside.

I heard anew the music, trying to understand what it meant to the old woman sitting next to me. I tried to imagine what it was like for this, a single tape played over and over again, to be the only link to my home. I imagined all the pain of living a new life, losing life as you know it, being transplanted into a new country, a new town, and living there alone, far from home. And in this light the music became intolerably sad, the rhythmic tune reflecting the endless thoughts of what once was. So it became real folk music, music of heritage and memory and loss and finally I began to understand what I was looking for and what I'd found...

I said that if I'd been forced to choose one word to describe the Serbs I'd met it would be proud, and that's true. It's almost impossible to imagine asking the question "Are you proud of your country, are you proud to be where you're from?" and receiving the negative answer I found in Romania, where many I spoke to seemed to be sick of being in Romania and being Romanian. After Serbia, the difference was striking. The Serbs I chatted with saw corruption as a problem (it is a truth universally acknowledged that the curse of the Balkans is corruption), though none could have imagined a better country to herald from and none seemed to move abroad.

Pride is close, but it isn't quite right. It would in fact be inat. But this is a Serbian word, apparently untranslatable, but, for many Serbs, summing up their national spirit exactly. The closest English expression that I can make it out to be is something like Fighting Spirit. They could only translate it via examples, such as "if someone tells you you can't do something, then you do it, just to prove you can." Or "if someone knocks you down then you get up to prove that you can, that you're not beaten".

The Serbs I met were certainly full of inat. Perhaps because I stayed in a community of Serbs exiled from Dalmatia and Krajina (now Croatia), but I got the impression they believed most, if not all, Serbs were similar. I can't vouch for that, but somehow I wouldn't be surprised. The pride I saw was muscular, almost pugnacious. As the Serbs saw it, Serbia had once been great and had had its heart ripped out. Worse still, it had had its heart ripped out and the World didn't just stand by and watch, but had participated, and still the West's media portrayed the Serbs as wrongdoers. From the Serbs point of view the injustice could not have been greater.

It was from my friend Goran that I learnt of how most Serbs felt about Kosovo. Goran, the proud singer of proud Serbian songs, an entertainer known throughout the local community (a suburb on the edge of Belgrade) for his guitar and ready banter and his songs of home. We got on well, introduced by my host on the first night while he worked in his parent's cafe. (His parents were as kind as his Grandmother, welcoming me into their home and even going so far as to give me a t-shirt from their cafe 'Zaljubiska', which, I am told means 'In love'. In fact all the Serbs I met were incredibly kind and welcoming.) We sat in the carpark of the high school, watching the world go by, drinking cheap beer from a plastic bottle as he sang Serbian songs in the warm night's air. And there, from Goran the proud Serb, I learnt just a little more about another side of the Balkans, one that we don't see too often in the West, or perhaps rather, a side that I haven't seen too often in the West. It's not an easy or comfortable side, I personally don't find it easy to empathise with - perhaps you do, but it's there nonetheless. As I've said in a previous blog, I never want to be accused of seeing the world in black and white. The Balkans couldn't be less black and white. I've heard the clouds over the Balkans have two sides, but I'm not sure there's a silver lining. In fact, to steal a song, I would say I've looked at clouds from both sides now, but still I really dont know clouds at all.

*Ok, so I'm not sure they're really infamous, but they should be.
staying with a Serbian Grandmother who didn't speak a word of English.

Impressions of the End of the Orient Express

climberchris — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 03:21:00 GMT

Steam swirled around legs as I stepped elegantly off the carriage, momentarily casting my flannel walkıng suıt in monotone grey. Harrıed porters hurrıed past, theır shouts mınglıng wıth the clanking engıne and the pop and hıss of coolıng metal. The acrıd smell of the porter´s sweat mingled with the smoke, a hınt of spıces ın hıdden bazaars and darkened souks on the aır. Shafts of lıght poured through the hıgh wındows, illuminating the young French Countess who´d laughed a lıttle too readıly at my tales of goıng down to Cambrıdge and lost summers on the Rıvıere for her Italıan Governess´s comfort. Catching myself, I beckoned to a porter to fetch my hamper and trunk from the compartment. The world was black and whıte...

Sadly my arrival didn't quite go like that. I'd just finished Tender is the Night (another example of books bending my expectations), giving me a rather more Jazz Age view of the Orient Express than my budget allows, and really it went more like ... this.

Shouldering my backpack I stepped out of the carriage. The station was quiet, surprisingly empty. A few other backpackers spilled out onto the platform, a few consulted their guidebooks nervously, a couple chattering in loud American accents. The station was small, perhaps four platforms. Down one side ran wrought iron curlicues, hints of glories past. A small sign pointing to a closed museum and a cafe restaurant served tea on ostentatious trays with immaculate white tablecloths, strange and isolated reminders of what once was.

Stepping out of my own dreams and into the bright sunshine I was in Istanbul, the gateway to the Orient, the city that "If the Earth were a single state ... would be its capital". Istanbul is a huge city, something like 12 million inhabitants, spanning two continents. A lifetime here and you still wouldn't know it, never mind attempt to describe it in 2000 words (I think that is roughly what my blogs come to these days; 1999 words too long many of you might think). I will content myself with the few impressions I had of it.

Much to my host's bemusement I found it an ineffably romantic city, a city that, if I were pushed to associate with other memories, I would say reminded me of Jerusalem. It has that same air of a meeting place of many cultures, a heroic city, walled and fortified, home to empires lost and perhaps to come, a city that untold numbers have fought and died for. There is the mix of the West and the Middle East too. It feels an undeniably Western, if not European, city (it doesn't have the wide central avenues of more or less grand buildings that make European cities so quintessentially European), but equally, paradoxically, it is undeniably not a Western city.

It is one of the few places I have visited that I have felt slip through my fingers as I tried to grasp it, as if it were too grand, too dignified and just too complex to let itself be caught in the amateur descriptions of a young backpacker, even the internal ones. Seen through the lens of a 24 hour train ride, all I can see is vague memories, impressions, nothing definite that I could pin my hat on and say, "For me, at least, Istanbul was just so."

And what do I remember, perhaps more interestingly, what I do think I will remember in years from now?

Sitting on the steps of the Yeni (New) Mosque, undoubtedly; the Golden Horn before me, chewing on salted corn and watching the devout pour into the courtyard at the insistence of the evening call to prayer. Sun catching on the water and sparkling, heat and crowds and the noise of people milling around, idly passing the time, chatting, joking and simply sitting. Getting vaguely lost in the Sultanahmet, blinded by store after store after store of gold and silver, cheap t-shirts and rugs, tourist tat and local bargains. Small dark passageways and strong coffee maybe. Kebabs.

I will remember the Ayasofya. Or will I? Like the station, it's perhaps an idea of a building that suffers from a surfeit of imagination. I was told it was so beautiful it had rendered strong men speechless, struck by the glories of both Man and God. And as I approached it reverentially, I could feel the emotion, the presence that it must of had on so many people of the past (though for not inconsiderable periods of its 1500 year existence it had been destroyed, desecrated and otherwise in less than perfect state). I prepared myself for its majesty, readied myself for its marvels. I walked finally through the Emperors doors (which are simply enormous, they must 8 metres high) and lo was there scaffolding. Great, magnificaent scaffolding that stretched to the very height of the dome, all 55.6 metres of it. Of course, it remained an astoundingly beautiful building, the biggest cathedral in the entire world for over a 1000 years. The famous pendentives were still visible; some of the mosaics - that caused Justinian to exclaim "Solomon, I have surpassed thee" - were uncovered and light streamed in through windows that could give even Dawkins pause for thought. It's just a shame about that scaffolding really. At least the almost equally fantastic Sultan Ahmed Mosque didn't have the same problems. And it was free to enter. I love Mosques, perhaps even more than Orthodox Basilicas, with the calm, quiet light and their spacious domes. Maybe they're really the buildings to give Dawkins pause for thought?

Istanbul is a modern city too. My host was convinced that I'd find it almost "a little bit 3rd world" and I had trouble persuading him that, actually, my impressions couldn't have been further from that. I had difficulty explaining that after the Balkans, and Albania in particular, Istanbul felt quite quite 'developed'. I had little trouble with taxi drivers - only one half-heartedly called "Taksi" at the station on my arrival - and almost no one tried to sell me anything on the street. Perhaps it was just testament to my 'trying-desperately-to-blend-in' outfit of ragged t-shirt and wares stored in my "Bulgarian Handbag" (i.e. a plastic bag), because some travellers I knew told me they'd got sick of the carpet sellers and tea vendors calling after them. But then they were two Norwegian girls, so they were never quite going to manage to blend in. It might also have been that I only really spent one day in Sultanahmet, the touristy part. My host lived a little way away from that, close to the cafes and bars of Taksim.

In the evening crowds filled the several kilometres of Istiklal (I think that is what it's called!), tables and chairs cramming the side streets in a sea of bars. It was warm, pleasant after hot days (usually 35+) to drink beer and chat. All my host's friends spoke English and as he was busy, only back in town for a week after a year away, he was happy to hand me over to them. And, to be honest, so passed much of my time in Istanbul. But then, it's not really a bad way to pass time anywhere...

So why Istanbul? Why not just keep going, why not pass time in Ankara? I thought about this for a long time, enjoying the idea of just keepin' on goin'. I'd considered carrying on into Turkey and exploring the lesser explored East, perhaps even going to Cyprus. In the end I realised that to really travel Turkey I'd need more time. I couldn't make it part of my journey Eastwards, the Israel stamp preventing me from getting any further East than the Turkish-Iranian border. Armenia and Georgia, even Azerbaijan, would be fascinating places to see, but ultimately I decided that was another trip entirely. To go into Turkey only to turn around again seemed too arbitrary, too much of a loose end for my narrative arc. And therefore I contented myself with Istanbul, the edge of Europe, the end of the Orient Express. The symmetry of a journey to the end of Europe appealed to the field theorist in me; I'd touch Asia and no more and leave the rest for another time. It seemed, well, dulce et decorum (without the rest of it...!). What more romantic destination or glamorous turning point could there be for a train journey than the end of the Orient Express? I've come to the edge of a continent: it's time to turn back.

Gallery: Greece 1

climberchris — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:31:00 GMT

Greece so far...

Gallery: Macedonia and Albania

climberchris — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:28:00 GMT

Gallery: Bulgaria

climberchris — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:37:00 GMT

Varna, Sofia and random rail bits in between.

Gallery: Romania

climberchris — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:11:00 GMT

Photos from Bucharest to the border

From Albania to the Acropolis

climberchris — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:52:00 GMT

Well, I've made it to Athens; dreamlike, I'm almost unsure of how I got here. After Albania, Athens is a waking dream of Frappes and Smart cars; of Bluetooth and ipods. I'm back in the West. However Eastern that West may be.

It's been two weeks since I last wrote and it's been an up and down two weeks. From Varna I took the train West to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria: the highest capital in Europe. My couchsurfing host was fantastic and I was thrown straight into meeting her Sex and the City friends, as she called them, for dinner. (As I sat there with them, it occurred to me that that must make me Stanford...*) Sofia was fun, vibrant and, surrounded by mountains, felt fresher and more exciting than the slightly faded streets first suggested. I loved the people I met there, friendly and interesting and engaging. In a wonderfully random series of days we visited the justly famous and gorgeous Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, pausing to listen to the low sounds and breath in the scents of Mass; went to the ubiquitous Irish pub, present in every city in the World; played table tennis with a former semi-professional; watched a hip-hop dance competition and then danced until 4:30 in the morning. Looking back, the slump that came next was inevitable.

From Sofia I took the bus to Skopje, a spectacular winding drive through ravines and hidden valleys, Italian job moments threatening at every corner. Deposited unceremoniously in Skopje, jolted awake by the dust and heat, I joined up with two other backpackers and headed to the hostel. I'd been unable to find couchsurfers in FYROM or Albania and sadly it would be hostels until Greece. Two nights in Skopje was enough, abandoning my planned third night for an unexpected trip to Ohrid, in Southwestern Macedonia. I spent two days there, absorbed in sunbathing and swimming in the clear blue Lake Ohrid. The hostel in Ohrid was nice, but with that slightly strange atmosphere of expat, overloud nerviness that solitary hostels in small towns can acquire. With nowhere else for backpackers to stay, the hostel becomes a shelter and a warning beacon. It's that distinctive air of foreigners crowded together in a foreign land, sheltering perhaps, a little bit of home mixed up alcohol and incest and powerful personalities.

I had fun: eight of us hired a boat and the kind boatman dropeed us off on a spectacular, secluded beach. We had beer and a picnic, books to read and the crystal clear waters to swim in after the bright sunshine became too hot. It was fun and I had a good time, unable to keep the smile from my face at the beauty of it all.

But for reasons I can't quite work out, Macedonia was still the low point of my trip. I felt tired and underwhelmed by Macedonia, Skopje was a disappointment, boring with little to stay for. I walked round the castle and the old town bazaar twice and couldn't face a third time; there's really nothing else to do, no nice big parks to kill time in or shady avenues with benches on which to read your book. There are no trains and bus travel is much less pleasant. I felt hassled by taxi drivers and market vendors. No one spoke English and everything felt difficult.

The problem, of course, lay not with Macedonia, but with me. I felt a general malaise, a melancholy that had no obvious reason, but just was. I was tired and I no longer had my heart in travelling. My mindset was all wrong. Rather than thinking "A 10 hour bus journey? What an adventure. No air conditioning or opening windows? Even better!" - the prerequisite paradigm for long distance travelling and the way I'd viewed the trip up to this point - I was just tired of it all. I was tired of waiting, of being hot and dusty, of not understanding, of nothing being on time and of nothing being easy.

Perhaps it was a combination of a number of so-called reasons. It was possibly just those unexplained but inevitable lows that accompany long journeys, the melancholy that sometimes strikes, wherever you are or whatever you are doing. They pass, of course, and I knew this one would too. Maybe it was tiredness, or maybe a little homesickness. I still don't know. It gradually passed in Albania, and I'm back to loving the whole thing, eating up the miles and relishing the adventure.

From Ohrid, a bus took me, slowly and painfully, to Tirana, the capital of Albania. I've noticed a strong trend that, as you travel Southeast through Europe, each country views your next stop as being more backward, more difficult and less friendly for visitors. The Czech consider themselves more advanced than the Slovaks, who, in turn, consider their country more developed than Romania, which is, of course, less backward than Bulgaria. Here you hit the sea and the process heads West. Bulgarians consider Macedonia a backwater (albeit a pretty one) and Macedonians view Albania with suspicion. Here it all stops; you've reached the end of the world as far as many people in the neighbouring countries see it. In general most people living in the Balkans had visited their neighbours, but very few, if any at all, that I met had been to Albania. As one Macedonian observed, "I have Albanian friends, they're nice. But in their own country, they live like gypsies."...

Tirana is certainly a crazy place. There are no trains to speak of in Albania, a few that run occasionally and very slowly, but absolutely no international rail links. The buses don't usually have timetables, they just wait until they are full, the ticket collector standing on the street shouting himself (it's invariably a man) hoarse, encouraging travellers to get on. Pavements are generally non-existent, or just mud, and crossing the street is as adventurous as anywhere you could care to think of, especially with drivers frequently ignoring redlights. Power cuts and water shortages are common, particularly in winter, though I experienced a random blackout while I was there. It does feel safe though. And this isn't just due to the 700,000 indestructible concrete bunkers constructed by the crazed dictator Hoxha, who ruled until twenty years ago (though the Communists ruled until 1992, when economic mismanagement finally did for them).

The people were helpful and friendly, though no one spoke English (Italian is the most common Western European language spoken). And the hostel was fun, less fraught, more relaxed than the one in Ohrid. I really enjoyed my time there. Albania was beautiful, though obviously poor even for the Balkans, and there's a lot to see, if little infrastructure to see it. I guess that it's all changing but I'd like to go back, with more time and well rested, to see the beaches and mountains of the South and to dip my feet in the Adriatic again. In two weeks I'd watched the sun rise over the Black Sea, I'd crossed the Balkan peninsula, and I'd seen the sun set over the Adriatic. It was time to head South.

Which I did at four am. A foolish thing to do, it turns out, but I made it in the end. The bus was uncomfy and, despite my exhaustion (I hadn't had more than four or five hours sleep for nearly a week), I couldn't sleep. Loud Albanian music filled the bus and everyone was content to leave the lights on and chat. I was not. We made it, of course, arriving at the border six hours later. The border took nearly two hours to cross (getting into the EU isn't so easy as getting out), though as soon as they saw my British passport, customs waved me on and the border guards dismissed me. An hour later and we were in Ioannina. This being an Albanian bus, it didn't stop at the bus station, preferring to drop me on the outskirts before driving off in a cloud of dust. I wandered for a while, looking for a pharmacy (traveller's tip people: high probability of someone speaking English in a pharmacy) and they directed me to the centre of town.

And so I'm in Greece. I love it. The bus to Patra was fast and comfortable, the drive down the coast every bit as spectacular as the One in California, though perhaps not as long. As I arrived at my hosts in Patra, there for only one night, I took a shower and, reaching for my wallet, I had that sickening feeling you get when you just know it's not there. I searched and I emptied my bag and I searched again, but I knew it was gone. There were two options: I had either left my wallet in the bus station or on the bus.

It turned out to be the former and a kind woman had handed it in. Thank you World for kind people. They are out there. I had it back within two hours and I liked Greece already. The next day seemed only to confirm my impression. The bus ride to Athens was almost as spectacular as the day before, as if there isn't a boring view to be had in Greece at all (until the suburbs of Athens anyway). My first day here and I've seen the Acropolis, gawped at the Pantheon and wandered around the Ancient Agora. My couchsurfing host is lovely, the perfect host in fact, and Athens a wonder of sights and sounds yet to be explored. The world is sunny again and Macedonia long forgotten.

* For those of you who haven't seen it (i.e. probably large sections of my family) he's the Gay Bestfriend, the "Fifth lady" of the group.

The Cyrillic and the Sea

climberchris — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:46:00 GMT

I swam in the Black Sea this morning. A cool, salty-blue surprise to someone who had originally planned to be somewhere in Eastern Poland about now. An email from The Parents reminded that I'd been lax in keeping you all up to date with where I was and where I'm going, a situation I can only put down to laziness and ignorance.

My original conception of the journey had been to go as far as realistically possible without flying. I'd first thought this would be China, but then discovered the boat to Japan and that became my goal. Shortly after leaving I learnt that I couldn't get a visa to Russia and the plan changed to accommodate this - I would fly to Mongolia and carry on from there. I'd said I'd go to Romania in the first week of June, the first fixed point of my trip. From there I thought I could loop northwards through Ukraine and Poland, on and up to the Baltic, perhaps crossing to Finland from Estonia, then Sweden, Denmark and to Berlin, the only European city with a direct flight to Mongolia. However, as I progressed through the Czech Republic and Slovakia, I began to change my mind. Having finally actually looked at a map, I realised that from Romania I could equally well head south: Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey even. Time constraints would then (probably) necessitate flying back to Berlin, so I resolved to put off my decision until I Romania, where I'd be spending nearly a week in one place and could ask my friends what they thought.

And, after a few pints, that is why I'm here, in Varna, on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. Rather than take the straight forward option - do I ever? - I thought I'd meander my way through Macedonia and Albania before heading to Greece and then Turkey. We shall see. At any rate, I have a ticket to Sofia and what more do I need?

Varna is a wonderful mix of Balkan and Mediterreanean, of Orthodox churches and carefully coiffed mullets (that most Mediterreanean of things). It has an air of an Edwardian seaside resort, though I doubt the speedos the men wear here would escape censure in Margate (and I think I'd be inclined to agree with the Edwardians on this one). The Cyrillic script (a tangent: wouldn't it suck to be called Methodius, possibly the greatest name ever, help invent an entire alphabet and then have it named after your brother Cyril?) adds an air of the unknown to the familiarity of a faded beach resort. The city centre is open, pedestrianised in the main part, with the large Seaside Park leading down to the beach. The latter is, according to the delightful City guide lent to me by my host, home to not only the Dolphinarium - "with an amusing show etc" - but also the "Astronomical Observatory and the Planetarium which organises observation seances for visitors". Perhaps that's where we are going wrong with public science education in the UK: we need more mediums (should that be media?). And wouldn't it just solve the great science religion schism in a stroke?

Bulgaria is apparently poorer than Romania, but I've seen no sign of that yet. The train journey here passed through fields more reminiscent of France or England than Romania. Gone were the horse-drawn ploughs and small plots, replaced with huge rolling fields of potatoes, rape and wheat. The villages were different too, no longer odd mixtures of concrete and stone, Communist and traditional. Instead the houses marched in loose rows down hillsides, in rough white uniform with red-tiled roofs, nestled against the rolling fields.

Varna is probably better off than most other towns in Bulgaria, being the 'tourist capital of Bulgaria'. Russian tourists come in large numbers and I've heard a lot of German, a stroke of luck that allowed me to actually find my couchsurfing host. I was given instructions to take bus number 8 to Trakata, but it turned out to be a restaurant that no Bulgarians (one or two of whom that I spoke to could speak some English) had heard of. I was saved by two elderly Germans who spoke no English but, astonishingly, had both heard of the restaurant and could understand my atrocious German.

Varna is also a popular area for British ex-pats, tired of the weather and Tony Blair, or whatever his name is. There are numerous signs for companies specialising in British Bulgarian real estate ("We Build We Sale"). The beaches are narrow strips of rough sand, yellow-white in the sunshine. The water is clear: bright, bright-blue and glinting; you can swim leisurely before heading up to the beachside restaurants and cafes. At night these become wild bars or clubs and it seems like half the Balkans are here to promenade the front in the warm air. It's cheap here too, the food delicious (especially the fantaaastic salads and their famous Bulgarian portions) and the weather has so far been amazing: I can certainly see the appeal.

It's a real town though and perhaps that's why I like it. Most of the visitors to the beach are young Bulgarians and behind the hotels lie the vast cranes and rusting piles of containers of an active port with the smokestacks of large factories just visible in the background. Yesterday afternoon we witnessed a local drama, evidence in miniature, as if it were needed, of real life.

Meandering down from the Seaside Park to the beachfront we passed a rough knot of Bulgarians, all leaning on the railings of a fence. We stopped and as we peered over the barrier we saw a diving tower, outlined high against the sky. A boy detached himself from the top and twisting and turning, he landed with a slap against the water.

A younger boy, perhaps 9 or 10, appeared at the second highest board. He carried on climbing, obviously nervous. The boys' coach wandered over to the music playing and turned it off, taking up a microphone. Now 10 metres up, the boy peered over the edge of the board, unconvinced. His coach began to urge him on in gruff Bulgarian, encouragement perhaps or maybe instructions. The boy climbed down to the lower board, picked up two small squares of towel and re-ascended to the top. He laid one of the squares delicately over the edge, minutely repositioning it exactly in a ritual of careful preparation. He walked purposefully back to the steps and, turning, paused. We waited. Slowly the boy approached the edge and, pausing finally, he spun round. Silhouetted against the bright sky, he stood on the edge, his heels taut, stretched over nothing but sparkling water. 10 seconds passed, then 20, maybe 30. With a start he stepped forward and away from the edge. The man began talking to the boy, urging, cajoling, persuading perhaps. We waited. As if unexpectedly resolved he stepped forward once more, spinning and then stopping. He lifted his head, his heels in that same stretched position, his calves ridged and rigid, arms outstretched, gymnastic and ready. As he fought for composure, the crowd fell silent, each of us perhaps imagining our battles, fighting our own fears through the image of the diving board. The noise and colour of the beach, out of sight behind the pool, had seemed to fade and now there was just the boy and the water and the bright blue sky. With a jerk he leapt backwards, turning twice until, at a barked shout from his coach, he stretched out, arms and legs now vertical and - crack - he hit the water, all lithe line and stretched muscle. A Bulgarian Bigger Splash. Applause broke out, the crowd gradually dispersing with the too-bright conversation of the relieved.

It had become theatre, drama that engaged and questioned, challenging each of us to ask whether we would have jumped. It challenged us to weigh ourselves in the balance, to measure our own courage, to ask whether we too could fight our own fears: art of the very highest kind. Deeper than that, it had become existential art too; the diving board a very literal representation of angst - that condition so often compared with vertigo - and the acknowledgement of our total freedom. Would we take that step, accepting, not certain but with courage enough? Or would we step away, retreating into the inauthenticity of the board, the myth of the solid?

As we watched, his battle had become our own individual struggle; he had taken on the metaphor of the heroic, the idol of those who are life's spectators. Through his triumph we too had triumphed. His success was ours, as the success of all idols through all ages has taken on the rich metaphor of own struggles with our own demons and become ours. And so are myths born. We watch and we know that perhaps we would have failed. Perhaps not. Perhaps we will never know until the time comes. All I know is that I'll remember that boy and his courage when mine next fails.

Carbuncle of the East

climberchris — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:29:00 GMT

Bucharest is, without wishing to be too rude, the ugliest city I have ever seen. There is almost entirely without redeeming features, except perhaps my couchsurfing hosts, but they're planning to leave anyway. You know how some things are so ugly, or so kitsch, that they become beautiful or cool again? Well Bucharest is uglier still. It's like gone through ugly, through so-ugly-it's-beautiful and carried on going so that it's ugly again. And, as someone who positively adored Bratislava, that's really saying something. It's really that bad. (If you haven't seen Eurotrip and how it portrays Bratislava, go see it. It's far from a good movie - it is to the backpacking experience what l'Auberge Espagnole is to Erasmus, but without any of the latter's more subtle cinematic charms - but I did laugh pretty hard watching it).

Ok, so it's not that bad actually. I'd arrived on the overnight train and, though I'd slept well, I was exhausted and overwrought and the skies had clouded over menacingly. The next day I'd slept, the sun was out and I could appreciate the wonders of Bucharest a little more. And wonders they are, in their own way. Not in the usual sense; worth seeing, as Johnson would have it, but not worth going to see.

Pride of place necessarily goes to the Palace of the Parliament, Ceaucescu's greatest folly. It is apparently the largest civilian administrative building in the world (the Pentagon claims to be the largest office building in the world). Interestingly enough, it is also the third ugliest building in the history of mankind, just after the Centre George Pompidou and just one place ahead of the Highland Council Offices in Inverness. Who knew? It's simply enormous, a squat grey cube with ungainly pillars and unending balconies. You really can't miss it. It is home to the parliament and to the National Contemporary Art Gallery, perhaps the strangest I've ever visited. The rooms are gigantic, white washed and bare. I began to worry about taking the wrong turning or getting lost walking between the art. It didn't help that three floors were dedicated to a temporary exhibition about some architect or other, profoundly boring to my eyes anyway. Of the rest, there were a couple of good works, the large, cartoon like anti-war sculpture in the foyer and a couple of cartoons with some wit and originality. Too much was banal, though; the kind of art that too easily gives fodder to that common criticism - My kid could have done better than that! It's probably great if you like architecture though.

The centre of Bucharest is carved up by wide, wide avenues, criss-crossing seemingly forever from one side of the city to the other. Things are on a grand scale here. After all, much of it was designed by a man who went to North Korea and came back inspired. What more can be said? The massive blocks closest to the parliament are all designed to echo and fit in with the parliament but many were not completed. In fact, most of Bucharest appeared to be under construction, victims of the two main forces that shaped the city: Ceaucescu and earthquakes. It's a city to give building control and health and safety inspectors epilepsy.

Tiny old churches, frequently saved by the Church's collusion with Communism, nestle against massive concrete apartments. Old houses crumble against modern shops. The old city centre is a maze of falling down houses and partially constructed shops, with the debris and detritus of construction and destruction littering the streets. Corruption is apparently rife and building is totally unregulated. There are red discs on the most dangerous buildings, the ones with the worst earthquake damage. It's never clear whether there's a real threat or whether someone has paid someone else to put them there, allowing the building to be knocked down cheap and replaced with yet another concrete, rent-earning monstrosity.

I did grow to like it a little more as time passed. The sun helped, and a recognition that after the fun that I'd had in Cluj, Bucharest was always going to be something of a come-down. Some sleep, a nice place to stay and a host prepared to show me some of the less obvious, but vaguely prettier parts, did no harm either. I'd almost be tempted to say some of it was quite pretty.

Romania has been undoubtedly the most interesting part of my trip. The contrast with Hungary is striking. From Budapest, the train takes you East through the Carpathian Basin towards the Romanian border. The countryside stretches out, flat to the horizon. The fields are large, expansive; modern fields. The only reminder that you are not in France are the interminable stops in tiny stations, the platforms nothing more than concrete beds next to the tracks. For four or five hours there's nothing but fields and flowers and sky.

At the border with Romania everything changes. Not immediately, but quickly. The fields wither away to become small strips of individual crops with no borders between them. Hayricks become common, every bit of spare grazing, from the side of the tracks to the paths between the houses, is mown and heaped in drying stacks. For the first time I see horse drawn carts and then horse-drawn ploughs. Old women, in long dark skirts and colourful headscarves hand-weed the higgledy-piggledy patches of crops. Further east, the train begins to snake its way through low hills, densely wooded, far more like the hills of the Czech Republic than the vast plains of Hungary. There are the same thick, dense hedges and ancient trees too, but slightly wilder, more full of birdsong and flashes of colour than previously. It's really beautiful, by far the most beautiful scenery I've seen.

And the memory of a kind Hungarian had stayed with me as I entered Romania. When I booked my ticket in Bratislava the woman didn't tell me - or didn't know - that I needed a seat reservation. I, of course, hadn't any Forints as I thought I'd only be passing through Hungary. So when the ticket collector asked for my reservation I was a little surprised and slightly nervous. I thought that perhaps he was just looking to extort something extra from an unwitting foreigner, but the other passenger in the carriage didn't look perturbed. Perhaps he was in on it. The conductor called another conductor and they conversed for five minutes. All I had was some Slovak Crowns and, randomly, a $20 dollar bill. So the conductors eventually decided to charge me in dollars. Ok, I thought, as long as you don't throw me off the train, I don't really care. 500 forints, or $10, the conductor said. Suddenly the other man stepped in and handed over a 500 note. We all looked surprised and the conductor seemed just a little miffed. So I thanked him profusely (he spoke some English and I some German, between them we managed). He said it was really nothing, it was fine. "But $10 is not nothing. Are you going to Cluj, I can pay you back maybe when we get there?" "No, actually it's about $3.". I guess that you really do need a reservation and no doubt the conductor would have been happy with the actual fare, had I had it. When I didn't I suppose he saw an opportunity for a little tip and the stranger, seeing this, stepped in. So thank you strange Hungarian man. If we ever meet again, I hope I get the chance to repay the favour.

Great Expectations

climberchris — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:39:00 GMT

Warning: this one is an unconnected jumble of thoughts and inadequate philosophising. It sort of follows on from the previous one, but I thought I'd break it up so that if you only want to know roughly what I've been doing or seeing, rather than what I've been thinking, you can skip it.

My reactions to Prague and Bratislava have been making me think. Just as I wonder what I make this trip, so do I wonder what this trip makes me. They are bound up together; the experiences of travel undoubtedly shape you, if you allow them, but you shape your experiences. It is obvious that in reflecting on your reaction to events, you learn as much as you do from the actual events themselves, but, more subtly, it is just as valuable to understand why you sought those experiences in the first place, and why took what you did from them.

My feelings towards the two cities are not just a matter of simple expectations: everyone told me Prague was beautiful, Munich and Bratislava (and even Madrid - "why are you going there, why not Barcelona?" - to some extent) boring or ugly and so, expecting the best or the worst, what I found naturally didn't fit. Expectations effect reactions: it is often easier to deal with difficult situations by managing expectations to prevent the need to deal with unhealthy thought patterns than attempting to directly manipulate said thought patterns after the fact. So these are not unrelated, but neither are they simply related. One aspect of this complexity is perhaps not in explicit expectations but (subconscious) mental 'landscapes' that condition our perception. This might explain my strong experience in Munich, conditioned by my reading, in Fontainebleau, of a number of books about the Middle East that I had picked up in charity shops over my last six months in Edinburgh (and that I hadn't previously found time to read).

Nor are my reactions, as some cynics might suggest, just a matter of me being contrary or obstreperous (I suspect you could mark that one down, along with stubbornness, as another family trait). I've begun to wonder if it isn't more complicated than that.

In reading my description of Braislava, it occurred to me that maybe the keyword there is quintessential. It's a telling term, saying as much about the describer as the described. Perhaps it's also telling that my favourite building in Prague was the magnificent and playful, but thoroughly contemporary, dancing "Fred and Ginger" Milunić and Gehry building, a contrast to the Neo-Baroque and Neo-Gothic panoramas of the old town. (It might also be worth noting that it is not unlike, in some respects, the Scottish Parliament building, my favourite building in Edinburgh.)

As someone who would like to consider themselves a traveller rather than a tourist, I seek authenticity. Not existential authenticity - the authenticity of being - but that of experience. I want to experience the 'real' country. Ticking off the tourist sites, snapping holiday snaps and following the crowd are not what I want. I want to go off the beaten path perhaps, try to find out what life is 'really' like in the countries I visit, uncover what people 'really' think.

It was a shock to realise that on my final morning in Prague I was glad to finally see some dilapidated buildings, graffitied and run-down. That I was glad to see them made me realise the absurdity of the lengths I go to, perhaps subconsciously, to find the authentic. And I suddenly understood that I, too, just see what I want to see. In travel, as in science, all observations are theory-laden. By that I mean that in observing, we necessarily use terms that are grounded in a net of pre-existing metaphysical concepts.

In order to describe what we see, we must use concepts and terms we already understand, terms that have connotations and meanings in the context of our entire world-view. We cannot truly see something afresh. The concepts we have available to describe the world are proscribed bthe fetters of our upbringing, our culture and, perhaps most importantly, our language. Those things for which we don't have the concepts cannot be conceptualised and so cannot be perceived - they fall through our perceptual net. G.K. Chesterton was wrong in claiming the difference between a traveller and a tourist is that the former sees what he sees and the latter what he wants to see; in this regard there is no difference. In some sense, we all see what we want to see.

This is, perhaps, related to the subconscious mental landscapes of which I spoke earlier. One way to view this is to imagine that experiences shape our internal landscape, but subsequent experiences must lie in the plane of that landscape, confined to its contours, though those later experiences change the landscape to which they are bound (analogous, if you like, to General Relativity: matter shapes spacetime and spacetime tells matter how to move). A cynic might say that the difference between tourist and traveller is just a bourgeois conceit constructed to differentiate the tourist with pretensions to intellectualism and upward mobility from the other, the plain tourist, the proletariat (and it's pretty clear I'm a tourist with pretensions to intellectualism if not upward-mobility). And so Alice Thompson was wrong too: Inter-railers aren't "the ambulatory equivalent of McDonalds, walking testimony to the erosion of French culture": that's just middle-class snobbery.

There is a second side to this, perhaps just the other side of the same coin. That is to view the different modes of travel experience as simply differents methods of illuminating the same reality. Here I'm going to lay out my cards and admit to being a realist about reality - I don't think that we all simply construct our own, or that some demon (or, yes, some sort of matrix) is feeding us a bunch of lies about our world. One half-reasons for this is just economy of metaphysical explanation - it's simply more sensible to explain how we all manage to perceive roughly the same stuff most of the time using the rather simple and obvious explanation that that stuff is actually there. If you don't think that stuff actually exists, you've got a lot of explanatory work to do in mapping out how we are all so similar when it comes to seeing the world (in particular why science gets such uniform results).

Of course we can doubt this, but in the end, even Descartes didn't deny the existence of an external reality, just the possibility that we could definitely know about it. And, as Hume pointed out, any reasoned thinking about sceptism leads to schizophrenic intellectualism and doubts about the existence of external reality quickly vanish in the light of the quotidien world. It is simply impossible to function as a true sceptic in everyday life - try it. And, as someone who would like to think of themselves as taking a down-to-earth approach to metaphysical philosophy, this dichotomy suggests the error lies in the library-bound rationalisations of true scepticisms, rather than everyday experience. So that was a rather long, and possibly muddle-headed, tangent. The point is that through our perceptions, we all perceive the same underlying stuff, stuff that actually exists (like different shafts of light partially illuminating a sculpture in a dark room).

In this sort of view, the modes of travel experience could possibly be viewed like modes of literary criticism: we can intepret a text in many ways, depending on our intellectual bent, or school of thought. The text is the same underlying object (yes, this is most definitely controversial, please feel free to comment or email me to point out my errors), but no one way of reading it will capture it in its entirety. A feminist reading is as valid as a close account of its historical context, but neither is complete. Reality and our experience of it (most importantly and pertinently for our discussion, our travel reality - that of a foreign, unknown destination) is like this. Maybe. (If you prefer shafts of light illuminating a sculpture, fine. It's probably less controversial.)

My view of Prague, in this account, is just another way of looking, just as pitching up, like the three Irishmen I met on the train, to do nothing but get drunk is a way of seeing the reality (ha, some people might say getting drunk is the only way to see reality). These guys were on a month long trip, their sole proclaimed aim to 'drink their way round Europe'. One of them was chiefly excited about Prague because it had excellent brothels and you could go to a firing range and fire a real AK47.

And so the question is as follows: there are many ways of accessing the same reality (ie many ways of travelling, or many ways of experiencing the same destination) - does that mean all are equally valid? This is an open question for me, though I have some thoughts.

My couchsurfing host in Prague was a pubcrawl guide. I'd never come across the concept of paying to go on a pubcrawl, but apparently it's very common, especially in Berlin, Amsterdam and Prague. So my first evening there (and my second too) was a pub crawl, an experience I would never have contemplated had it not been my host's job (I must point out that it wasn't something they were that psyched about, but it paid the bills). And I should say I felt very uncomfortable. Not least when we went to Coyote's, a bar based on the film Coyote Ugly, where, in fact, I felt so uncomfortable I almost left. Not since Bangkok had I been somewhere so flagrantly exploitative and I didn't like it. However, spurned on by the fact that when you're having a rubbish time it's often largely you, rather than your circumstances, I became more accepting and ended up having a reasonable night.

This forced me to become more accepting in general of the type of traveller that would seek out a pub crawl as way of experiencing a city such as Prague. If we are all conditioned to see what we want to see, and all modes of experience are just the same, no better and no worse, then maybe it really is just middle-class conceit to think that I'm a traveller and not a tourist. Or even to distinguish them at all.

And then, just as I became more accepting, more tolerant of that type of all drinking tourist, as I strove to understand and accept the insight that all modes of travel experience are equal, I heard some Aussies brag about a hilarious taxi ride in which they found the driver couldn't speak English. So they swore at him and insulted him in English for the entirety of the ride, to gales of laughter from all concerned. I don't even know what to say.