Cold Mountain

Belgium for Christmas Maybe Berlin utill right before New Year Most likely Belgium for New Year’s Eve New York between 6 and 26 January After that I have a laptop and I don’t know

Vienna

Coming to Vienna was easy, with 2 friendly Hungarians taking me directly from Belgium. Being here is a different matter. Rather then being able to appreciate everything here for what they are, I keep framing it in terms of what I know and am comfortable with. Maybe it’s because I’m still speaking German. Maybe the city looks too much like Berlin in the dark and drizzle.  Perhaps I just really want to be home, which is tricky because the home I would feel the most comfortable in is about 10 months in the past. My new years resolution is to complain less.

I also met up with some old friends, and I’m staying long enough to learn more about them and myself. I’m always amazed at my eagerness to relate other people’s experiences and problems with my own. This can obviously be a dangerous thing, as it’s very easy to feel a deep understanding after a couple of minutes, or right after a couple of words that seem awfully familiar are spoken. On the other hand, it’s of course impossible to know the whole context. We all have our own story, in the end.

My life the last couple of weeks seems to be mainly one if reflection and nostalgia, and I hope I can replace that soon with the feeling of wide eyed amazement of a random found experience.

I tried to caramelize onions today, and I failed miserably. It’s a delicate balance between letting it bake for a couple of minutes, and making sure it doesn’t burn. Somewhere between white and black is perfect.

Egon Schiele is amazingly great. I spend 30 minutes in front of this “Mother with 2 Children”. Colours are better at the Leopoldmuseum, of course.

Many Millions

Please take me to this place of many million people where I can get lost without trying in the hope of finding you

Please take me to this place where every corner is it’s own country ready to be found at random maybe everyone there is a traveler?

Please take me, so I can walk the streets like all the other immigrants here full of wide eyed wonder

Please let me find what I wasn’t even looking for

I’m going to NY in January, and I’ve been looking forward to this for many years now.

Il y avait mon grand-père

I’m back.

I waited a total of 20 minutes on the autobahn and learned many things. Apparently, the highway from Berlin west is called Warsaw Alle, which is way better than my attempt, Poland Express. Apparently, the Hungarians are just as great as Polish people.

I was so relaxed the attendant right across the border asked me how I kept up my moral after 2 hours in the dark and cold. I took the hint, and let myself be herded onto the train. The first song I hear in Belgium is “Bruxelles”. I promptly ordered a gauffre, and ate it relishing the experience,. watching the board of Liege train station slowly light up delay-red. I wish I was making all of this up. To all the doubters in Berlin: Belgium IS a country of stereotypes, I wasn’t joking.

Emmenez-moi au bout de la terre Emmenez-moi au pays des merveilles Il me semble que la misère Serait moins pénible au soleil

Hitchhiking: Journeyman

And that day, sonnyboy, we hitched a tour bus.

The unbearable lightness of travelling

I apologize in advance for the biased and uninformed nature of this post. I’ve been reading Kerouac’s “Lonely Traveller” on the road, and it really is a piece of disconnected, confused, fibreless crap. The worst part of reading Kerouac is the realization that you could have spend your time much better re-reading Thompson, but then again, your books are at least 300 km away. To make a long story short, and progress to the actual topic of this post, I think Hunter Thompson is one of the best thing that happened in literature in the 20th century, and he has been a great inspiration to me. I also think Kerouac owes me 8 euros, because he just stole a whole day off of my gypsy intermezzo with his crap.

• France I have to say I love France, and maybe I’m obligated because I don’t really like Germany. I speak the language better, and I want to perfect it. The culture seems to be more different than where I grew up in, and the different regions appeal to me more on a per-case basis. And going there leads South!

** Paris I went to Paris mainly to visit my good friend P, and also to meet my host, a friend of a friend I met hosting her in Berlin. He showed us the unofficial catacombs, about 300 km of tunnels ready to be explored. The people down there are an organized community, of course. They clean the halls every week. It’s the nicest (although dirtiest) places in Paris, because everyone says hello to each other. I think I would never have been to that place if I wasn’t sleeping with a random person. On the other hand, I was very happy to see my old French friends A, N and of course I. I finally have had some authentic borscht.

Paris is a problem. The city is quite perfect: museums are incredibly good, every single building is perfect. There is nothing for me to do in Paris. And I believe it’s the same for the people living there too, they seem quite unhappy and I think I understand why. I sit down on the stairs where everyone else is sitting. I have an unhealthy obsessions with finding benches in any city I visit, as an indicator for quality of life. I haven’t seen one yet. I think I only want to live in Paris when somebody pays me to do it.

** Marseille Marseille is almost exactly what you would expect a poor port city to be like: busy, difficult, and a lot of raw fun. People warned me about the high level of crime, but I didn’t notice any of that.  I found myself wandering random (in hindsight bad) neighbourhoods at 4am, alone, talking to random youngsters. They told me that Marseille has an interesting position in the immigration debate, as it has a strong city nationality the immigrants subscribe to, rather than the national one. They also talked local

** Mistral My backpack caught the enough wind to make me feel like I was on a sailboat. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to go to the coast. I was continually sandblasted, with only sporadic ocean drops provided some relief for my skin. I found sand in my nose and salt on my lips for hours afterwards.

The Mistral is a cold wind that hits all of SE France en Sardinia. It can cause sudden storms, and reaches speeds up to 120 km/hour.

** Aix en Provence It’s as if all the kind of people I don’t like moved out of Marseille and founded their own town. It’s a pretty typical “bigger” town of France where everyone (French and tourists)  form the small towns come in the weekend, and try and spend their money. The one word description everyone gives is “nice”. It seems all people fall in 2 categories: Aix people, and Marseille people. Count me in the Marseille camp. My opinion on the bourgeoisie is the same as Brel’s.

So I’d rather just show you small town Provence, St Zacharie :)

** Lyon I have nothing interesting to say about Lyon.

** Toulon Miami of the Provence. Horrible avenues, artificial looking palm trees and people, great scenery. Too close to Cannes and Nice for comfort.

** La Redorte aka Petit France La Redorte is a small town in the Languedoc, between Narbonne and Carcassone.  It’s population barely passes a thousand. The reason it’s not considered a tiny town in France, is by virtue of it’s supermarket. If you are a tiny town in France, you have the baker come by in his van 3 times a week. I spend 6 days with T there, cut off from civilization by lack of internet and motorized transport. And it was great. We were sick back to back, so we spend most of the time around the flat, taking walks to the canal, cooking, and discussing art. A great commune of 2.

The Languedoc is a very interesting region in general. The regional language is Occitan, close relative to Catalan, but you’ll be hard pressed to find it spoke anymore nowadays. It’s also the region of the Kathars, a form of Christianity that has a duality at it’s core. They where also ascetics, and this is why they ran afoul of the pope. The region was the battleground for the first crusade on European soil. The region is full of impressive fortresses, and terrible history. Just make sure you have motorized transport when you’re there.

• Greece Is actually quite cheap to get to. Make sure you stay well away from tourist season (April-October, although especially July-September), but close enough that stuff isn’t closed. Although I was there in November, I think the best time to go would be very early in spring. Nature is blooming. People aren’t burned out from tourist any more. Every year, more people visit Greece than live there, to a factor of 1.6.

** Athens Great place to visit, terrible place to live. This is probably worded too strongly, although I do believe it after a 6 day introduction.  I’m very enthusiastic about the attitude of the people living there, as they are very open and friendly for the size of the city ( 3 million, 30 percent of the population). The quality of museums is, of course excellent. On the other hand, it suffers from some mayor problems for inhabitants: almost complete lack of parks, big unemployment numbers for all levels of education, pollution, and bad traffic situation (although nowhere near Rome or Istanbul). I’ll love to be back, but I won’t stay.

** Crete A short history of Crete:

• Minoans/Cretans* Dorians/Greeks* Pirates* Romans* Byzantine Empire* Muslims* Byzantine Empire* Venetians* Ottomans/Turks* Greek/Cretan rebels* Egyptians* Greeks* Germans* Allies* GreeksCrete is quite beautiful, mainly because of the nature. It also has a very distinct culture and local flavour, mainly due to the countless invasions, rebellions and massacres. I loved Sfakia, a tiny town on the south coast know for it’s role in resisting, as well as Iraklion, known for it’s haphazard reconstruction after 39-45, with meandering roads cutting through ancient fortifications.

Due to unfortunate timing, I was unable to visit the famous Samaria gorge, and had to settle for Himbros. I did have the rare luck of meeting the Kri Kri. I also hitchhiked back home from the gorge, and it works in Greece ;)

** Greeks All you have heard about Greek hospitality is true, or an understatement. They speak English, and they will be very friendly as long as they are in the majority. In short, they’re the bee’s knees. I love them and their country.

The Honeypot

Finally made it home after some extensive travelling. I will blog more about the actual trip, right now I’m preparing to leave to Greece the 10th. I’m also very happy P, a very close Russian friend, arrived in Berlin. We have now met in 4 capitals: Prague, Paris, Berlin and Ulan Baatar. I’ve hitchhiked over 5000 km in one month. I had no internet for 9 days, and it’s funny it’s mentionable. My plans for the future are still as vague as ever.

Meeting old friends and random friendly people has showed me many possible ways of living, and the relevance of choices. I think I don’t want a standard full time job. I want to travel, and learn languages. I want my job and location to be decoupled. I want to spend more time in Berlin. Berlin is still great, as ever. Maybe I’m stuck here, in this city and these responsibilities. I want to start things, but some people say it seems more like I am running away.

I feel like I’m avoiding any responsibility until I come back into a stable environment. I was never able to do anything I was passionate about for only part of my time. When I learned graphics or when I met Tau, I always had difficulty doing anything else that was not necessary. I hope I can find the next passion to sink my teeth in.

Next: France

Snail mail

I took a bold step this week and did the unthinkable: I bought some cheap paper and a 100 envelopes, sat down and wrote some letter according to traditional recipe. It took me a long time, because my muscle memory has lost the ability to make all the abstract curves and lines pretty. I  do intend those letter to also be read by the recipient.

I found it surprisingly difficult to compose them, without the reassurance of fast feedback in case of misunderstanding that we have with electronic communications). Because of the effort involved, I found myself taking more “leaps in the dark” and creating much richer and interesting context.. There are some difficulties however, and I want to tackle speed in this post.

In chess by traditional mail,  a game takes many weeks due to the time necessary to communicate moves to the adversary. Chess players, a clever lot, have devised a novel way of making the game progress faster. When the opponent has a limited amount of moves, the player will send two separate instructions. One is the current move, the other contains instructions on the what the sender would do in response to every move action the recipient would undertake in response to the first move. Speed is effectively doubled.

In ordinary letters, this is of course tricky. Open letter B if you feel charmed, C if you feel non-committal. The novelty would wear off soon. So there are traditionally 2 ways of coping with this.

The inelegant way would be to assume the mosr likely (or desired) response from the recipient, and write on with full confidence.

The elegant way, of course, is to make your letter open to interpretation from different types of responses, through the usual tools of irony, double-entendres, allusions and other literary devices. These allow one the ability to say more than usual, with the recipient deciding which of the multiple meanings in the letter was probably intended. This comes with the risk that the receiver is unsure about the intentions of the sender, and will use the same trick in replying. You will end up with simultaneously advancing parallel, ephemeral conversations. Of course, this is not really the solution for the speed issue in the long run. On the other hand, it’s much more fun and challenging, and some new unforeseen possibilities might be discovered on the way…

I think I want to write more letters. Too bad I don’t have an address.

Tu Puta Madre express

Mon déjeuner avec Martha

I spend almost four days in Barcelona, so I could see off T as she left for NY, and so I could spend some more time wrapping my head around the city. I also spend a delightful 3 hour lunch with her very Catalan mother, Martha.