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October 28, 2004

From Constantinople to Istanbul

ISTANBUL, TURKEY: One of the best things about hanging out with Southern Europeans is that they keep very late hours. This is, of course, because the middle of the day is too hot to do anything. In fact, Beograd and Sarajevo are dead before 10AM, but humming at 10PM, with shops typically closed for four hours after noon. I am consistantly amazed to see banks open at 8PM. This all appears true in Istanbul as well. I spent this evening at the Hippodrome, a giant outdoor carnival. (Phinneas T. Barnum appropriated the name for his circus building.) This original Hippodrome, the centre of life in this city since the fourth century, is dead by day when the tourists are present, but at night it is choked with Turks living it up.

Hippodrome Observation 1: people here can't ride a mechanical bull. I've never seen such deep fear in the eyes of macho young Muslim males as when they climbed on that bull. Screw the tough visa rules and fingerprinting... let's put a mechanical bull at every passport control office and require visitors to ride it. Anyone who lasts 10 seconds, regardless of nationality, gets a 90-day visa. Knowing how to hold the cowboy hat properly whilst riding qualifies one for automatic citizenship. (These would certainly be Bush voters.)

Hippodrome Observation 2: Turkish carnivals seem far more enjoyable than American county fairs. I do miss the swine barn, but there is no white trash, or even slightly-off-white trash. The food is far better--kebabs, gyros, no-butter popcorn, baked potatoes, corn on the kebab (as it's called here), and even chestnuts roasting on an enclosed bed of embers. The lattermost smell absolutely wonderful, a smashingly rich aroma that also filled Sarajevo. Americans sing a lot about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, but I don't think many Americans ever experienced that smell. As you see from the list, the food is fairly healthy... no deep-fried candy bars or oil-soaked elephant ears here. I will again be in for a surprise when I return to the states, having seen so few fat people for 6 months. After a long day in the Paris office, the Europeans once gave me a hard time by playing "spot the American" from the back of Paris taxis. My European colleagues would point out every fat person and say, "that's an American." When the truly obese were seen, "that's definitely an American." Given that fat Parisians are as rare as optimistic Democrats, they were probably right. I was very worried when I moved to Europe that, with nutrition labels and low-fat options almost non-existant, I would be in for some rough eating. However, with Europeans' preference for natural foods and quality before quantity, eating right wasn't a problem.

In other news, I experienced my first earthquake, and less than 8 hours after arriving in Turkey! As I was doing good-ole sink-laundry, there was a spasm lasting about three seconds. It was a little bit freaky, but I suppose that if I had not been standing over a basin of water, I would not have felt the earth moving under my feet. I think I prefer the slow, predictable rocking of a skyscraper to the sudden spasms of a quake.


You may know that I keep a blacklist of companies I don't do business with. It includes Ramada Hotels (for assigning me a room occupied by a showering woman), restaurants that use hearts of palm (a rainforest product) and foie gras (produced extremely inhumanely), and Midway Airport (for being perhaps the worst in the world). Add FedEx. They have been holding the contents of my Belgian apartment in Memphis for 10 days now, all the while claiming it has Customs problems when it is really a FedEx problem. In the $5500 worth of stuff in my apartment in Belgium, I included three small bottles of alcohol somewhere among my shirts. Customs and the ATF have no problems with personal shipments like this, but FedEx does. FedEx even sent me an official US Customs form to allow Customs to seize the alcohol and allow me to seek "administrative relief" with Customs. But when I wrote on the form that only US Customs (and not FedEx) is allowed to seize the alcohol, FedEx finally admitted that it wasn't Customs objecting to my alcohol but FedEx, since they don't want to be accused of delivering to minors. Never mind that they picked up the shipment knowing it has alcohol and that I can easily prove my adultivity, as can the doorman at my apartment building. I don't buy many sovenirs when traveling, perhaps only one from each country I visit. When that souvenir is Norwegian vodka or a friend's company's gin, I don't want FedEx lying about why they "can't" deliver it.


Below in the pictures I've omitted the obviously tourist crap, because you can google it (try: "Aya Sofia") and see it just as easily, without battling the obnoxious crowds and paying the exhorbitant entry fees, which can top 20,000,000 lira. Instead, here are three pictures covering two hours on Kennedy Street.


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October 26, 2004

I survived Belgrade, Serbia

BEOGRAD, SERBIA: Beograd (a.k.a. Belgrade) had four tough acts to follow. I would recommend anyone to visit Kotor, Dubrovnik, Mostar, and Sarajevo: a week on this little circuit is as much a must-do as a week in Paris or Bhutan. In fact, I really wish I had another day on the Dalmatian coast to vist Split or some of the Croatian islands. Unfortunately, Belgrade isn't a particularly interesting destination: streets are poorly marked, the government is crooked, there are few things to see, the city reeks of diesel fumes, the food is terrible (esp. compared to Sarajevo), and some of the bad elements of the communist days survive. The city's largest Orthodox cathedral is a giant bare-concrete cavern, and two of the three major museums were half-closed. The Sarajevo-Istanbul flight was 350 Euros ($450) more expensive than the Belgrade-Istanbul flight, and I quite wish I had shelled out the dough, as it would also have avoided the 7 hour bus ride here.

I won't moan further about the annoyances here (you can discover them for yourself), except to point out one thing that I find quite offensive. The Yugoslav Military Museum, which is dedicated to "Yugoslav socialistic patriotism," proudly displays American bombs dropped on Serbia in 1999 (to stop the Serbs from kicking Albanians out of Kosovo). Also displayed are the uniform of a GI named Carpenter and pieces of a downed F-17. The exhibit concludes with a gruesome picture of a bloody corpse with the caption that NATO dropped a bomb on 7 May 1999 that killed 16 civilians. Oh, and the type of bombs used "violated international law." Of course, this bellyache comes from the government that sponsored Europe's worst genocide since the Holocaust, that supported and armed the Bosnian Serb thugs who intentionally fired upon women and children in Sarajevo, and that continues to harbour their former leaders who are accused of crimes against humanity (e.g. Ratko Mladic). And the international community (NATO) attacked Serbia to stop a the Serb army from carrying out another genocide in Kosovo. If there was any doubt that the Serbian government is still evil, their hypocrisy in this exhibit proves it. The exhibit should be taken down until the Serb government is willing to atone for Serbs' crimes against humanity in the 1990s civil war.

I would be remiss not to mention a few of Serbia's charms. Well, I can think of one. Belgrade has an excellent pedestrian mall/street. I can't tell you the name of the street because I haven't translated the Cyrillic street sign. It is like any European city's pedestrian mall, except the Serbs are quite aggressive in eyeing up the opposite sex. I thought I noticed this a lot in Sarajevo, but it really hit me in Beograd. I've been eyed up by so many girls today that by afternoon I grew worried that perhaps my fly had been down all day. (It was OK.) In fact, this particular street seems to be the Beograd meat market, since the nightlife is limited and dispersed. I like the attention, but as I learned, Serb girls' English is poor:(

Speaking of language, French is huge here--there is an Centre Culturel Francaise, a Société Generale branch, and many boulangeries. The hotel's signs are in Serbian (Cyrillic) and French. I had a conversation with a travel agent in French, even though I don't really speak French. German appears #2, with a prominent Goethe Institute and vendors who ask first if I speak Deutsche.

Tomorrow I go to Istanbul, the last city in Europe. The hotel is 200 feet from the Bosporus, the end of Europe. I suppose it's appropriate to end Summer-in-Europe at the very end of Europe.

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October 25, 2004

Yugoslav busses are fun as a barrel of monkeys

BEOGRAD, SERBIA: Today was a travel day, as it takes all day to go from Sarajevo to Beograd, known better by the needlessly-Anglicized name Belgrade, formerly the capital of Yugoslavia and now the capital of the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro. I've commented earlier on Yugoslavian autobuskas, and only because of the miracle drug Dramamine did I survive seven-and-a-half hours on a carbon-monoxide-filled old rumbler today.

Because it goes to Serbia, the bus line does not start in Sarajevo (where, as I explain below, they don't really like the Serbs.) Instead, one takes a taxi from Sarajevo across an unmarked border to a semi-autonomous country called Republika Srpska, or the Serb half of Bosna i Hercegovina. By the way, Srpska counts as country #54 on the way to membership in the Travelers' Century Club. Srpska is very mountainous, with lots of switchbacks and wide vistas dotted with ethnically-cleansed villages. Srpska gradually flattens out until the land is almost perfectly flat in Serbia's Carpathian basin. All the while, the bus is stopping and starting as Serbs board at one village and alight at the next.

The countryside in Serbia actually resembles Indiana--broad, flat, and lots of corn. However, the inhabitants of these hinterlands are still rather poor: heating is by wood, there are livestock pens instead of grassy lawns, the small combines only pick one row at a time, houses are brick but very small, and the horse-and-dray is still used. Darkness and fog set in, and driving becomes quite hazardous. The bus thunders past unlit tractors towing multiple trailers full with corn. The bus driver flashes the dipper (high-beams) at oncoming traffic in a dangerous game of chicken. I feel like I'm on the Estonia running full-screw into a giant storm. Finally, 30 miles outside Beograd, I see a four-lane limited-access highway and I feel like I'm back in America.

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October 24, 2004

Cooking lessons in Sarajevo

SARAJEVO, BOSNIA: The first time I heard of Sarajevo was when the city was sieged by Serbs for three years in the 1992-1995 civil war, when the city was shelled constantly from the ridge of mountains surrounding it, resulting in 10,500 deaths. Sarajevo may be the only place outside Jerusalem where all three major western religions coexist somewhat equally: Catholicism/Orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The city's appearance seems initially a bit strange. Sarajevo is laid out in a valley surrounded by a ridge of mountains with houses built up the ridge--many houses, apparently very closely together. In fact, the strange apperance is because there are virtually no mature trees in Sarajevo--almost every old tree was cut to provide heat during the siege, along with the park benches. Ironically, there are many big trees near Sniper Alley, where it was too dangerous to cut wood.

The siege destroyed much of the city, leaving bombed-out shells of buildings, ranging from families' homes to the Parliament. Indeed, the hotel where I am staying was rebuilt in 1997 behind its former self, which stands as a burned-out 7-storey concrete hulk with some crumbling Art Nouveau gingerbread. However, unlike in Mostar, most of the city has been repaired or rebuilt, including the Olympic skating arena. The city's mosques were spared destruction (unlike in Banja Luka where all 16 were blown up), and Ramadan observance is in full swing. I didn't realize it until I was sitting in an empty Muslim restaurant at dinner tonight shortly before sundown, and within a few minutes, every table was taken by hungry Muslim men. Sarajevo's old Turkish market is also a busy meeting place; in fact, it is busier at 11PM with Sarajevans than at noon when the few Sarajevo tourists like me were checking out the wares, which include 1984 Olympic shirts and pens made from semi-automatic weapon casings. I suppose that I've seen a half-dozen English-speaking tourists here, which is a good number. Had one slept from the years 1992-1995, Sarajevo might seem a rather ordinary east-meets-west city but for a few ghetto buildings. There are ATMs on every corner, billboards for Tide detergent, bustling terrace cafes, magazines with covergirl Paris Hilton, and smartly-dressed young Slavs promenading through the see-and-be-seen streets. United Colors of Benneton belly shirts are all the rage for the young femmes, despite the chilly weather. (This is sure better than Latvia, where the trend this summer was see-through white pants. This would have been a great trend, except older Latvians who ape the young trend-setters usually didn't grasp that see-through white pants require white thong panties.)

Much of Sarajevo is closed on Sunday, which was quite surprising given how shops were open at 11PM last night. The national history museum, however, was open with two exhibits on the war. The first concerned the Sarajevo siege cookbook, an informal collection of recipes that developed when Sarajevo had to survive on airlifted food aid and whatever could be scavenged. The cookbook included instructions for dandelion pie and cooked garden snails: "After the rain, in the park or garden, find snails, wash them, and cook as long as it takes them to leave their homes. ... Add salt, pepper, some canned tomato paste, a spoon of vinegar, a spoon of flour ... Cook well, add snail-meat, cook more. Try. Add whatever necessary." The second exhibit covered the siege in photographs and documents, including panicked mothers carrying children as they dashed across Sniper Alley, terrified men ducking to avoid mortar blasts, elderly women in plaid babushkas lying dead in the street after a Serb artillery shell hit a bread queue (killing 68), a bombed out cigarette factory that still managed to produce through the war's end, and some of the 250 Sarajevo Orchestra concerts held through the siege in the burned and roofless Orchestra hall. Teenagers step over dead bodies in the street. The library burns. A classroom's walls are splattered with children's blood. Surgeons at Koshevo Hospital operate by candlelight. Casualties are buried at night in the auxillary soccer field just behind the hospital (since snipers target even the funerals by day). In a sense, the bombed-out and bullet-riddled buildings that one sees here and in Mostar are nowadays regarded as white elephants like the unfinished hulks in Thailand (see the Bangkok gallery page). But unlike unfinished Thai skyscrapers, which were abandoned when the bhat collapsed in 1997, there is a tragic human element to Sarajevo's ghostly buildings.

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October 22, 2004

A toast to the host who boasts the most Stari Mosts

MOSTAR, HERCEGOVINA: I wasn't sure what to expect coming to Hercegovina, which 9 years ago was in civil war. In fact, the front line in the fighting between Bosnian Muslims and Christian Croats is a block from the hotel where I am staying. The hotel itself was destroyed in the war but rebuilt in 1997, like much of the rest of the city. Many buildings, however, retain the scars of the 1990s war. Many have at least bullet holes in the stucco, perhaps even a larger hole where a mortar shell hit. But many other buildings, at least one on most blocks, are still blackened carcasses wholly untouched since the day their occupants fled. One seven-storey office tower on the front line was turned into a blackened shell, its glass blown out and aluminum window frames riddled with bullet holes. The shattered curtainwall glass fell to the sidewalk, where it still sits today. The building's doors were blown off, but nobody dares enter. Everyone is aware of the threat posed by unexploded ordinance (UXO)--the dormant grenade, shell, or landmine that just needs a jostle to do its work. The Muslim side of the city has a non-descript cemetary where everyone happens to have died in 1993, and nobody wants to be the next victim of the war.

Although the front line fighting occured on the Croat half of this city (which is divided into a Muslim side and a Croat side by a river), the biggest physical loss was the whole city's. The shelling of Stari Most, the old bridge built in 1566, destroyed the key symbol of the city, akin to the loss of the Golden Gate for San Franciscans. In fact, a mostar is a keeper of a bridge (a most), and the jumping from the bridge into the river is a rite of passage into manhood. The bridge is no ordinary bridge; it is a limestone and marble hump bridge 60 feet over the river, instantly recognizable. It has perfect form deriving from moderate scale, bright buff marble, angled hump, and oversize guard towers rising from the river. It is a perfect example of building something beautiful when something plain would suffice. With help from UNESCO, Norway, and others, the bridge was rebuilt and reopened in July of this year, when there was a long line of boys needing to prove that they are men. Today, locals collect 5-euro "donations" to jump from the bridge. Eventually they'll learn that tourists will pay 10 euros to jump themselves, plus 10 euros for a picture of their jump and 20 euros for an "I jumped the Mostar Bridge" souvernir t-shirt. Get here before that happens, when you can jump for free.

Tomorrow I leave this attractive little village and head up to Sarajevo, the largest city in Bosnia, which was held in siege for three years during the Yugoslav Civil War.

In other news, US Customs has decided that the 1.5 litres of alcohol I shipped back to the states, along with $5331 of other personal effects, constitutes a commercial shipment rather than an amount for personal use, and they have told me that I either allow them to seize the goods or have my entire shipment deported back to Belgium. Apparently since Customs is doing such a good job keeping pot, cocaine, and heroin out of the country, they have turned to harassing innocent civilians importing a litre and a half of wine and vodka. Bloody hell. I've asked them for an explanation of how 1.5 litres constitutes a commercial shipment, and since I think it will be funny reading, I will post their response here.

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October 21, 2004

Where have all the beggars gone? (Dubrovnik, Croatia)

DUBROVNIK, on the DALMATIAN COAST, CROATIA (HRVATSKA): I was a bit worried when I first arrived in Dubrovnik that it was overrun with cruise ship passengers, perhaps the most annoying tourists in the world. Cities that receive cruise ships are the whores of the tourist world. They get crawled over by the passengers and receive no economic benefit except the docking fee and the purchase of a few Cokes and handicrafts in town. This is true of Dubrovnik, but only during the day. In the evening, the Croat families, kids, and seniors come out of the woodwork to reclaim their streets. As for me, I found places to go during the day that didn't involve rubbing elbows with cruise ship lame-os. Perhaps Holland America Line and I have found a peaceful coexistance.

Dubrovnik is a very middle-class city, in fact, really middle class. There are almost no fancy cars of houses and yet also no really sketchy people. In fact, it occurs to me that since I left Italy, I have seen no beggars, drifters, grifters, bums, street-people, alms-seekers, or other layabouts and slugabeds. There were beggars in all the rich and socially liberal Scandinavian countries, in Italy (gobs of them), in Belgium--in fact, in all the wealthy Robin Hood countries that liberals would have America emulate, there were beggars. But none in Croatia, a country only a dozen years removed from a civil war. Maybe it's because here, without a government handout, unemployment check, shelter, and soup kitchen around every corner, it makes sense for people to earn their daily bread. Now there's a novel idea. Viola.

In other news, now that I'm in my mid-20s, I'm starting to realize that I'm not a pre-teen boy anymore. Tonight, the hotel is completely overrun with little uncontrollable German brats, resulting in several complaints to the front desk. (As a side note, a widespread decline of manners in Germany has led to Germans being considered the least-liked Europeans in surveys.) At first, I wasn't going to disturb the kids' fun--boys will be boys. But the one and only bus to Mostar leaves at 8h00 tomorrow and I need my sleep. Front desk? By the way, in other bad news, there is no funicular in Dubrovnik. I don't know what Lonely Planet was drawing on the map of Dubrovnik, but it's not a funicular. Bummer.

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October 20, 2004

I can't wait to rid the funicular (Dubrovnik, Croatia)

DUBROVNIK, on the DALMATIAN COAST, CROATIA (HRVATSKA): After the amazing beauty of Kotor fjord, Dubrovnik has a tough act to follow. Getting here involved a beautiful bus trip around the fjord that nearly gave me deep-vein thombrosis. Soviet-era Yugoslav busses aren't particularly luxurious, and I ended up on a bus that is also a schoolbus, seated next to a nice Montenegrin high school girl. Unfortunately, with the small seat and the wheel-well, I could barely move and the sensitive male areas of my body were squeezed in a painful way. This was a far greater concern to me than chatting up the locals. Yet for whatever reason, Montenegro's jailbait didn't have any desire to move to any of the dozens of vacant seats, so I was stuck, almost all the way till the Croatian border, where I decided I had had enough of Yugoslav busses and joined two old Yugoslav women in hiring a taxi to Dubrovnik.

Somehow in the Yugoslav civil war in 1991, Croatia managed to steal all but a sliver of the Damacijan coast from the rest of Yugoslavia. The Serbs and Montenegrins got their revenge, however, by shelling Dubrovnik in 1991--for no military reason. Today at the entrances to Dubrovnik's stare miasto (old town), a large map shows where every single Serbo-Montenegrin shell landed and the damage caused (building, pavements, fire, etc.) Nonetheless, Croatia's large coastline and the tourism revenue it generates may be one reason that Dubrovnik is significantly wealthier than its neighbors across the border in Montenegro. One sign of this wealth is how few Yugos are found around Dubrovnik. ...and perhaps also how prices for things like a Coke double as soon as one crosses the border.

Dubrovnik itself is significantly larger than Kotor but in a less dramatic location. It is a favourite of package-tour operators, but so far they haven't bothered me too much. The stare miasto is much larger, and a walk around the old walls is supposed to be the highlight of the trip. There is also a funicular running up a mountain to a lookout point, which I am looking forward to, particularly because I like saying "funicular."

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October 19, 2004

In the land of the Yugo (Kotor, Montenegro)

KOTOR, MONTENEGRO: After two days in Rome, I was really ready to throw in the towel on reaching Constantinople by Halloween. When they announced final boarding for US Air flight 5 to Philadelphia this morning, I was ready to roll. Except I was at the gate for JAT Yugoslavian Airways flight 405 to Belgrade. Rome was at times fascinating but often choked with tourists with their Rick Steves guides thinking that they're "discovering" the "real" Rome as Steves exhorts them to do. Hogwash.

The flight to Belgrade gave me my first taste of what some have called Slavic hard-headedness, like the fact that the cockpit door was open the entire flight and, when overhead space ran out, passengers were encouraged to pile luggage on empty seats. No wonder the FAA says Serbia & Montenegro's air transportation system is unsafe. In Belgrade, where I planned to take a leisurely flight down to the coastal city of Tivat, three flights were cancelled into one. This meant I was sitting in the back of a 727 with the national kickboxing teams of Iran, Hellas (Greece), and Russia, in an old 727 with about 6 inches of legroom. I'm not kidding. I've never felt more like a sardine on a cattle car--yes, both. During the rough and bumpy flight, when the plane was making noises I've never heard a plane make, the female Hellenic kickboxer next to me said a prayer. I thought of Alanis Morrissette's Ironic: "and as the plane crashed down / he thought, well isn't this nice?". And hey, if I can borrow some Greek chick's goodwill with the man upstairs, why not?

I wrote on the Bhutan page in the gallery how the flight that weaves into Bhutan through the Himalayas is one of the scariest landings in the world, even scarier than the old Hong Kong airport landing. Add Tivat to the list of nerve-rattling landings. The flight descended out of the clouds, bumping all the while, and I look to the right: green. Look to the left: green. We are flying between two ridges of mountains, with the moutains and ground getting closer all the while. 1000 feet. 500 feet. Grazing treetops. Finally a soft landing at the Tivat airstrip. I say "airstrip" and not "international airport" because Tivat is really an airstrip: no hangar, and a tiny terminal building, with luggage brought by farm tractor to the terminal.

This as all worth it though, because Kotor, Montenegro, where I am spending tonight, is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. Kotor is like a poor man's Cote d'Azur, with the streets filled with Yugos rather than Ferraris. (Yes, this is the former Yugoslavia.) Kotor is an old walled medieval city that, today, sprawls along a fjord in the Adriatic Sea with 2000-ft mountains all around. The mountains dip just low enough to allow a tiny outlet to the sea. Kotor's old town rivals the best in Europe and rightly deserves its place on UNESCO's famous list. Unlike, say, Estonia's polished but dead old town in Tallinn, old Kotor is still used by Kotorites and is alive with Montenegrins. Tiny clothing shops are patronized by local teen girls; schoolkids take French horn lessons, the sounds echoing down the street; people hang the wash to dry on a line stretching from one window to their neighbor's window; local boys amuse themselves chasing cats throught the maze of four-foot-wide cobbled alleyways; a simple church bell chimes 10 times as it is now 10PM. A cool 70-degree breeze blows off the bay. And, blissfully, one hears no English. Except one line on the bus schedule written in Roman characters: Dubrovnik 1315, the departure time of tomorrow's bus to Croatia, where I will update you again.


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October 18, 2004

Chillin' with El Papa at the Vatican

ROMA, ITALIA: I'm going to make a bit of an effort to blog the current trip from Rome to Istanbul, as I have the laptop with me this time. (See below for details.) I've spent the last two days in Rome, capital of the greatest empire in history and the world's largest organized religion (though technically this religion has its own country, surrounded by Rome). Quite honestly, I don't really like Rome. There are some horrible annoyances here, like inconvenient transfers to the far-off Leonardo da Vinci airport, steep fees to entrance monuments, a nearly non-existant subway sustem, surly cashiers, street hawkers, extraordinarily expensive accomodation, Woodstock II prices for beverages, and masses of idiotic Rick James-toting tourists.

The Vatican makes up for Rome's annoyances. Indeed, today is the first time I've ever stood in a line that started in one country and ended in another country. Specifically, it was a four-block-long line to get into the Vatican museum, home of such masterpieces as the Sistine Chapel ceiling and Raphael's School of Athens. The Sistine Chapel was a bit disappointing--filled with people talking loudly (echoing) and taking flash-photographs, which destroy the delicate paint and don't result in a better photo. One guard finally started kicking people out and swatting down cameras, resulting in a shouting match with one patron. F#&@ing touists.

In Belgium, everyone asked why I went north to places like Norway and the Baltics, and not to Italy. I can see how Italy may be charming, but Rome is not, despite the efforts of a minority of Romans who are really swell people. Then again, everyone said, "oh, you must go to Italy," not "you must go to Rome".


A few pictures. Again, I'm writing this in native HTML, so forgive the lack of thumbnails:

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October 15, 2004

Final night in Belgium

BRUXELLES, BELGIQUE: This is my last night in Belgium, and it's hard to believe that it will soon end. However, I've kept myself busy preparing for a trip back to Chicago that will start in Rome, from whence I will make my way to Turkey and back to Chicago. The route will be as follows: Rome; Kotor, Montenegro; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Mostar, Hercegovina; Sarajevo, Bosnia; Belgrade, Serbia; and Istanbul, Turkey. I went to Waterstone's today (the English bookstore here) and realized that Hercegovina will be as far off the tourist circuit that I've ever been. There is not a single guidebook dedicated to the area, nor is there a guidebook for Serbia. Bosnia also has a nice travel warning from the Embassy. Bhutan was off the tourist circuit, but the country has been politically stable since the 1800s and has an extensive Lonely Planet guide. Sarajevo is still partolled by the UN, and many buildings in Mostar and Sarajevo still have shell damage. Only this summer did the 1566-vintage Mostar Bridge reopen, having been destroyed by Croat shelling in the 1990s civil war. I remember watching the news in middle school and high school and seeing the daily reports of death in the siege of Sarajevo, genocides, sniper alley, etc., and it will be a learning experience to see how a nation ripped apart by civil war recovers.

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October 11, 2004

Finding the Halloween Spirit under the Boulevards de Paris

PARIS, FRANCE: If you wish to get into the Halloween spirit (and it's sure better than the Thanksgiving spirit), pay a visit to the Paris catacombs. The catacombs are old mining tunnels that run under central Paris; stone for the Louvre came from these mines. In the late 1700s, the city's cemeteries were overflowing, and it was decided to dig them all up and stuff the bones in the tunnels. Now, a visit to this giant ossuary provides the opportunity to view some 6-7 million Frenchmens' bones, stacked very neatly along a full half-mile of tunnels. Typically, femurs form a sort of retaining wall with a few rows of skulls for decoration. Other random bones (pelvises, shoulder blades, ulnas, etc.) are piled floor-to-ceiling behind. (There are quite few hammers, anvils, or tarsels.) Some of the skulls are bashed in (though this may have occurred when the skeletons were dug out of their graves), and others bear what look like bullet holes. Here are some pics:


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October 08, 2004

Get your new ballcock today at Ace Hardware

For those curious, my time in Europe has been extended till late Oct, so I'll be back by Nov to vote, but not much before then. The artwork in the Brussels office is particularly unusual. Among the artworks is a large canvas painted light green with a splotch of plaster, as if someone were patching a hole in the drywall. I've been meaning to take a piece of sandpaper to it, and yesterday a client asked why a "prestegious" (sp?) professional services firm "can't patch their drywall properly." Well, apparently this wall is actually a painting, and it's by quite a well-regarded artist. I swear the guys here are joshing me. I also learned that we are not to hang jackets from the bronze statue in a corner of the small conference room, because it, too, is a costly piece of art. This particular bronze reminds me of a bronze horse statue I bought in Chicago. Except I bought mine for $4 on super-final-clearance at Pottery Barn.

In other news... since I joined this line of work, I often think about marketing stuff, like real estate or food or airplane seats. Then there are things I just couldn't ever see myself marketing, principally things I don't use and find boring, such as rubber nipples and motorcars. Add to this list: ballcocks. Why no ballcocks? Because despite my age, maturity, etc., I can't resist chuckling when I read this marketing description of the 400LS Leak Sentry Ballcock: "Replaces old fashioned ballcocks, preventing endless, automatic refilling of leaky tanks. Height adjusts from 9 in. to 14 in. to fit most tanks. [Provides] water level adjustment for best flush. Fits most toilets." And to think, there is someone at Fluidmaster headquarters slaving over a spreadsheet tracking ballcock sales and profits.

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