100 happy days :: day 34

a friend and i decided to have a little shopping outing in germany on wednesday - she brought along her son and i my daughter and my daughter's friend. our intention was to hit the outlet mall in neumunster and head on to hamburg for the more funky stuff (e.g. urban outfitters and american apparel). on a kind of high to be getting away, along the way, we discussed staying overnight and extending our stay by a day. we even talked of going on to berlin, but in the end, decided hamburg was enough. while eating dinner, we jumped on booking.com and booked some inexpensive accomodation that looked pretty cool in the pictures. i have only been in hamburg once before and it was work-related, so i didn't really know the place. so, when i booked, i only looked at how close the hotel was to the center and how it looked in the photos, i didn't really notice the address. which happened to be on the reeperbahn. the most infamous of hamburg streets. we were taking three impressionable teenagers to the heart of the red light district. and it gave me a serious case of the giggles. i called husband to tell him and i laughed hysterically.

the hotel was called pyjama park hotel & hostel. it looked funky and modern in the photos on booking.com and best of all, it had reasonably-priced rooms that could accomodate 5 people. what they didn't mention was that it was situated between a strip club and the erotic boutique bizarre. we pulled up out front and made the children wait in the locked car while we went in. we went up the stairs to find the night clerk behind the desk. he was a real character, dressed in a leather vest, with longish hair and a necklace with bone beads, the type of guy who looks like he's been around a bit and was perhaps slightly worse for the wear. but, he was super good natured and helpful and quickly had us laughing and feeling comfortable. the lobby had cool custom wallpaper and was inviting, so we decided to go for it, despite the neighborhood.

we were so glad we did! the room was spacious, freshly-painted, clean and, being on the top floor, was away from the noise of the street. breakfast the next morning was served in the cutest little breakfast room. there was cereal, boiled eggs, bread, a variety of cheeses, pate, juice and lattes, all served in the cozy breakfast room, where it was so nice, we could hardly drag ourselves away.

despite the location in the heart of hamburg's red light district, i'd go back to the pyjama hotel in a heartbeat. you never know what you might find, if you're open to looking for it.

reflections on the blogosphere and real life

it's back to school time. back to work (tho' technically i was working in singapore last week). back to daily routines. and back to the airport - tho' today it's husband who is going (to north carolina, via chicago, oddly enough). me, i don't fly 'til friday, when i head for blog camp 1.5 in london.

looking back on the past month, i realize how busy it's been. i didn't really have time off, since i haven't officially earned any yet, so our small holidays were sneaked in here and there along with work. but we did manage to add three new starbucks mugs to our collection, so three new places were visited - KL, amsterdam and dublin. i didn't get a new singapore mug, tho' they had some that match this new series, because i already got singapore years ago. it's rather fun to have the style of the mug reflect the period in which you first visited the place. and i won't at all devote any reflection to the implications of the cultural imperialism of starbucks in places as different from one another as KL and dublin. me, i'm just grateful for a grande latte, loungey, comfortable seating below the herstal lamps and free wifi, wherever it's found.

* * *

over the past couple of weeks, where i have been largely away from the blogosphere (at least from the reading blogs side of it), i realized a few things. the blogosphere isn't as different from real life as i thought it was. there is lots of drama, catfighting, petty annoyances, pettier obsessions and women being hard on women (why do we do that to ourselves?). happily, that negativity is easier to avoid than in real life, since you can just stay away from the places where it's going on and there's no danger of actually running into someone you'd rather not run into. and there's so much goodness going on in the blogosphere--things to inspire, make you laugh, things to learn, things that make you think there is hope for the world--that it more than makes up for the negatives. maybe it's just normal that in cyberspace, as in real life, we make friends, keep some of them, grow apart from others, move on and make new friends. i'm not sure why i thought it was any different online than offline, but somehow i did.

* * *

and speaking of new friends, in singapore, i got together rather spontaneously for a quick drink with a blogger who i haven't known for that long...kim of measure of all things. kim is a south african who lives and works in singapore. she very good-naturedly allowed herself to be subjected to our questions about how on earth she can take living in the plastic world that is singapore. and she did confirm my suspicions that singapore is a great place to be an ex-pat. it's safe, clean, it functions very well and there are cheap flights to more exotic, real destinations in the region. i still have half a mind to spend some time there working at some point. it is difficult for me to imagine being from cape town tho' and wanting to be anywhere but there, but on the other hand, i do love a good adventure, so it was great fun to meet kim. and for that opportunity, i am very grateful to the blogosphere. and if you really want to both crochet and be really inspired in a really brainy, deep way, you must read kim's latest blog post. and take the time to watch the video. it's blow-you-away amazing.

* * *

this time of year, as summer transitions to fall, i always feel reflective. and i think that transition is an apt word. also here in the blogosphere. when i look back a year, things have changed a great deal. that's partially due to BoN, but i think it's more natural and organic than that. i think that here in cyberspace as in life, we make transitions. new interests that we write about bring new readers and we make new friends. some of the old friends drift away because at the same time, they have moved to different interests and have new readers and new friends on their own blogs. some blog friends endure and sadly, some do not. some go to a place that you simply can't follow. but the beauty and wonder of it to me is that there are always new blogs to discover, new connections to make. and i've noticed that i have a lot of new people leaving comments and i'm really happy for the discoveries of new blogs and new perspectives that gives me. this is not to say that i don't love comments from the old crowd too--i'm just trying to say that i love the expanding sense of community. so thank you ALL for your comments, they're wonderful.

i have found some really good friends here in this bloggy world. and i've drifted away from others. but there are a few, that although we've drifted apart, i know our relationship would prove to be cat love and at some point, something will again strike a chord and we'll be back to our wonderful, deep level of friendship that we had developed. because in some sense we do get to know one another quite well here, don't we? the medium of the blog is very personal and diaristic at times (sometimes nauseatingly so, admittedly). we simply reveal so much of ourselves through our words and pictures, even if those pictures don't necessarily show us. the things we choose to share (or not share) speak volumes and in many ways, we are laid bare for all to see.

maybe that's why failed friendships in the blogosphere hurt as much as they do. we've revealed ourselves, left ourselves vulnerable and open. and when we're rejected or worse, ignored, it hurts that much more. or maybe i'm being too deep and philosophical - forgive me, it's a rainy monday - maybe real life simply intervenes and it's so much more compelling than online life that people just drift away. or maybe it's just that sometimes you feel all vibrant and sometimes you feel like earth tones, so as i said, more natural and organic than anything else.

* * *

at the end of the week, i'll go to blog camp 1.5 at Bee's house in england. Bee is one of several soul sisters i've found in this bloggy world. she and i are the same age, we both married a european man and uprooted ourselves from the land of our birth. we both abandoned Ph.D. studies before the dissertation stage. she has daughters and so do i. strangely enough, we even have an LNG thing in common. i feel i already know her so well and i know that from the minute i see her this weekend, we'll be completely at ease together and we won't even come close to running out of things to talk about. i have that wonderful feeling of anticipation of meeting her. the one where you want to capture that first time moment because you only have a first time once and you want to treasure it so you can mull it over later.

so i'm really looking forward to the bloggy world and the real world converging once again this coming weekend when B, polly, seaside girl, kristina, spudballoo and me get together at bee's house. and i'm certain that i will not be disappointed.

stars in my eyes

here's what i got to see of kuala lumpur today. i spent the whole day in this building that's covered in these starlike thingies. so the entirety of what i saw of KL (other than the airport, which for reasons unfathomable to me, claims to be the world's favorite (just not sure what world)) was through this starry lens...

look, it's the petronas towers!

and some kind of tower thingie that's even taller (i'm really tuned into the sights of KL, eh?)

the architecture was all over the place

but it looked charming from the 17th floor.

entire building covered in this stuff.

and strangely, the main entrance was through the car park.

i think they may have blinded the architect BEFORE he built it.

more tomorrow....
wishing you an adventure-filled weekend.
wherever you are.

monday in albania

i have albania on the brain. why would i do such a thing, you ask? who in their right mind wakes up on a monday morning with albania on their mind? apparently, i do. what causes such a thing which could probably only be characterized as a symptom of some deeper developing psychosis? is it the individual bunkers which dot the albanian countryside, one for every albanian?

is it a fascination for the only country in the world ever to be officially athiest (if one doesn't count the USSR, which doesn't exist anymore)? (it's not anymore, but it was throughout the hoxha regime.) is it a hankering to know more about mother theresa's roots (tho' she was admittedly a kosovo albanian, not an albania albanian)?

is it the memory of a conversation i had at lake ohrid in the summer of 1995 with a respected professor from skopje university, in which he informed me, in all confidence and seriousness, that bob dole wanted to become the next president of the united states in order to turn the US over to albanian interests because he was secretly an albanian? i'll admit to egging him on a bit and asking whether the albanians, who apparently had this grand plan for world domination, were simply trying to fool the world by walking around looking abjectly poor and living in hovels and shooting their AK-47s into the air and then wondering why the bullets rained down on their heads. perhaps they actually lived underground in opulent pleasure palaces, plotting the rise to power of a kansas war veteran. he agreed, without irony, that it was a distinct possibility and ordered us another turkish coffee. in retrospect, i think he may have just been trying to seduce me.  which i can assure you did not work.

or is it the fact that while i was in neighboring macedonia in 1997, albania collapsed in a pyramid scheme and my fellow fulbrighter had to flee to the macedonian border in a taxi, walking the final few kilometers across the border to the relative safety of macedonia? he was trying to avoid some of those bullets which were raining down from the skies as people broke into ammunition depots and shot off all of the ammunition they could find in their personal weapons (another residue of the hoxha regime, in which every citizen was assigned an automatic machinegun), doing quite some damage to all of the stolen cars and ancient mercedes which had made their way, like unwilling lemming, to albania to crumble and die.

or was it the memory of strange images of half-built houses dotting the countryside? apparently being built in stages as albanians abroad sent money home. mysteriously half-painted and half-shingled, standing alone and seemingly abandoned on hillsides, like newer versions of the bunkers.

i think it's actually paul theroux's fault, as i'm reading his pillars of hercules and i read the section on his visit to albania right before bed last night. he was there five years before i was, but i could see that nothing much had changed. my visit, in 2007, was mostly because we wanted to say we'd been there. both husband and i had gone to the border with macedonia at lake ohrid several times, but we'd never crossed it. so, in the summer of 2007, we drove into albania from greece and then crossed into macedonia at that same border near lake ohrid. it was two hours at the greek-albanian border, 45 minutes of driving through the albanian countryside, staring in amazement at the bunkers that were everywhere, an aborted attempt to eat lunch in the little town on the albanian side of ohrid (it was some sort of siesta time and nothing was open), another 30 minutes to check out of albania at the border and then pull forward to check into macedonia. not a vast experience, but somehow it felt like enough. i think an hour or so is all you really need of albania.

it was a dark and stormy night...

...i know, i know, that's supposed to be the worst, most trite sentence ever written, right? but i wanted to get your attention.

last week, as you know, my sister and her boyfriend were visiting and we made a little journey over to the west coast of denmark since they had a hankering to taste the north sea. i rented a little holiday apartment with a thatched roof in blåvand, which is just a stone's throw from blåvandshuk, the westernmost point of denmark.

it was after dark when we arrived and raining, windy and cold. our intrepid tourists were jetlagging and tired from the long drive and looking at large rune-covered rocks along the way:

the jellingesten - denmark's "birth certificate"

husband and i wanted to shake off the long drive and get some fresh air. outside, it was the kind of wind that drives the cold needles of rain straight into your face and leaves you frozen to the bone. but, being half danish (the other half is swedish, i'm still trying after ten years to determine which half is which), husband declared that there was no bad weather, only bad clothing for the weather, so we put on our wellingtons, coats, hats and gloves and headed out. monica, jason and sabin stayed behind in the warmth of the cozy little apartment. 

we jumped in the car and followed the signs for the beach. it was so dark, you couldn't see much else.

before long, the light from the lighthouse came into view, but otherwise, the night was pitch black, except for the reflection of the flash on a reflective sign. what was coming down was something near slush...an icy mixture of rain and snow.

we got out of the car and gave our eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness, then we headed down the path towards the wild sound of the north sea pounding on the shore. just as my eyes were more or less adjusted and i could make out the path, a specter arose on the right, blocking out the rhythmic and comforting pass of the light from the lighthouse.

i grabbed husband's hand and felt my heart race. it was an enormous, black shape with all sorts of strange spiny projectiles sticking out of it.

i blinked and blinked again, wiping the driving sleet from my eyes, trying to make it out. what was this strange and spooky structure?

all of a sudden, i didn't want to go all the way down to the beach anymore, the sound of the waves was eerily menacing as i stood there in that bizarre shadow which blocked the cheerful, life-giving light of the lighthouse. so, hand-in-hand, husband and i ran back towards the car. i felt the creepy, slow-motion horror movie panic of someone or something in pursuit of us. but there wasn't anything there. just the shadows, the storm and our own wild imaginations.

the next day, we returned in the light of day and learned the strange structure wasn't a specter at all, but just an ugly old grey tower from an old german radar installation:

so different in the light of day. it was also surprising to see that the road down to the lighthouse, which had seemed dark and deserted was dotted with picturesque thatch-roof cottages and while a bit grey and wintery, didn't seem the least bit spooky or desolate.

i definitely learned why hollywood and novelists have used a spooky lighthouse out on a point to create suspense and heighten the spookiness of a dark and stormy night.

egyptian adventure - part 2

i've been to egypt three times. the stories this week are from the first time i was there, when i wasn't yet cynical and suspicious and was much more open to egypt's charms. i'm not sure what happened, but on the second trip, i definitely didn't succumb to the charms of egypt, even leaving a few days early, disgusted with how far today's egyptians seem from the greatness of the pharaohs. on the third trip, i was also happy to leave as quickly as i had arrived, which was when i jumped off the stairs on the outside of an LNG carrier traveling at 11 knots through the suez canal onto a small and fragile-looking boat that the agent struggled to maneuver and hold into position up to the ship. but that's another story for another day. back to the first carefree adventures in egypt...

awaking every morning in cairo to the sights and sounds of the traffic quickly gives you the desire to escape to somewhere quiet and leave it all behind. the pyramids at saqqara were just the ticket. they are step pyramids, built for king dzoser and are older than the great pyramids at nearby giza. we started our day at the giza pyramids, being wholly unable to stay away, so strong was their allure.

circulating around the paths near sphinx are countless locals offering rides in a horse-drawn carriage. we chatted with one of these gentlemen and he agreed to take us via horse & carriage down to saqqara. it turned out to be quite a long journey, as it's a good 18km, but this gave us a chance to get to know mansur, our driver and george, his horse.

we rattled along a gravel road beside the nile, gaining insight into the lives of the people who live along her banks. children playing in the water, women washing clothes, the lush greenery of small holdings where people grew food for themselves and a bit for sale in the markets. you definitely got a strong sense of the importance of the nile to life in the region, as well as the suspicion that it hadn't changed all that much over the millennia. there were a lot of horses and donkeys and hand implements in use on the small farms along the way.

eventually, we rolled into saqqara, quite a lot of sweat on george's flanks. we were very nearly the only ones there, which was wonderful. no tour buses, just us, the hot desert wind, the nooks and crannies of the pyramids and temples and quite literally the sands of time. oh, and quite a lot of stray dogs, some with puppies. and a big group of camel ride guys, waiting to pounce. we fended them off rather quickly and later saw them having quite an entertaining argument amongst themselves. at least it was entertaining to us, since we didn't know arabic and had no idea what they were arguing about. that's always the way, isn't it? we have this notion that important conversations are happening in languages we don't understand, whereas in reality they were probably arguing over whether ahmed's camel was better than mohammed's.

we spent several hours wandering the pyramid complex. it's obvious that archaeological digs have gone on there, but none were in progress when we were there. just very deep holes in the ground here and there that you had to watch out for because they often weren't fenced off. if i'd read murakami in those days, i'd have found it a fantastic place to experience the feeling of being down a well.

we had to laugh a few times as we came across random egyptians hanging out in the shade of the complex, as they put out their hand and demanded baksheesh (tips) though they provided us no services. i took to asking them for some as well, which was so disarming to them that they often laughed and then we had the standard egyptian conversation, "welcome to egypt, where you come from?"

i spent quite some time with my journal in a little heiroglyph-covered, half excavated temple, where i imagined that prayers to the various exotic egyptian gods were once offered--experiencing one of those moments of perfect clarity after which this blog is named. when i have one of those, it is imprinted on my memory in all of its glorious textures. i can still remember the quality of the warm air i breathed into my lungs as i sat there and took in what i can only describe as a spiritual experience. my friend had wandered off and i was alone in the little grotto. it was fantastic, having the place pretty much to ourselves. but we know i have a thing about that with ruins.

eventually, it was time to head back for the relative civilization of giza. mansur and george had waited for us. and on the journey back, he invited us to his home for the "ramadan breakfast," as he called it--or the meal after sunset where the faithful break their fast. we'd gotten to know him quite well...he'd told us about his children (he claimed to want his daughter to have an education as well as his sons), his wife and her mother who lived with them in their house in giza. we were eager to see how people lived, so we agreed.

my friend was very worried about contracting the dreaded pharaoh's revenge and had insisted up 'til then that we eat only at mcdonald's, a habit which was driving me a little crazy by then, so i was quite happy that he agreed.

mansur's house was on a crowded little side street that as we drove there, it occurred to me that we'd never find our way back to the main road near the pyramids by ourselves. he showed us in, where his wife looked pretty surprised that he had brought two strangers home for dinner, but she took it in stride and they made room for us on the floor around a huge, low tray that served as a dinner table. they managed to locate a couple of spoons for us so we didn't have to eat with our hands out of the communal bowls like the rest of the family. dinner wasn't quite ready and we made ourselves comfortable while mansur put george away in the floor below, together with his camel. yes, the first floor was the stable.

although it was twelve years ago, i remember clearly the blue walls and that although we ate sitting on pillows on the floor around an enormous tray laden with food--goat meat, a spinach-like dish, some creamy yogurt and a sort of tabbuleh salad--in the room above was a very ornate, elaborate, gold-painted dining room table and chairs. 

once we were upstairs, that's when my friend got his buyer's remorse over the perfumed oils he had bought and he actually left them there, tucked under some furniture in the room we were in. i've often wondered what the family thought when they ran across that little box. 

it was well after dark and we were a bit worried about how we would get back to an area we knew and starting to get the feeling that mansur was going to suddenly demand a lot of money for the dinner, which had been offered  seemingly with an open heart, but that didn't really happen. he found a friend with a car and he drove us back our hotel. i don't entirely recall, but i think we paid a total of about $25 for the entire day. a price well worth it for the experience. i mean how else was i going to get the opportunity to pick gristly goat meat off of the bones in an egyptian home?

an egyptian adventure - part 1

after leaving russia by taking a train to the finnish border all by myself in 1994, i felt i was an invincible traveler. there was nowhere i couldn't go and no adventure i wouldn't attempt. it was with this attitude firmly in place that i arrived in macedonia on my fulbright to find the university and the library i needed for my research closed for several weeks for a winter holiday. finding skopje in january a bit drab and boring (not to mention empty, since everyone had apparently headed for australia or toronto to visit relatives) i did what anyone would do. i took a vacation.

i got in touch with a german friend who i had studied together with in russia and he said, "let's go to egypt, i saw some cheap tickets in a travel agency window." before i knew it, i found myself on malev hungarian airlines, squeezed in between my friend and an elderly muslim woman with a enormous duffel bag (from which i swear i heard a muffled "baa") that she intended to set across both her own lap and mine for the duration of the flight. i immediately told on her to the stewardess and they took the bag away and stowed it somewhere.

armed only with let's go egypt (and isreal. what were they thinking?) and the blankets we appropriated as souvenirs from malev, we stumbled out of the dark airport at midnight and allowed ourselves to be herded into a taxi and taken through the surprising amount of honking traffic for the hour to a random hostel owned by the taxi driver's cousin. not bad at $3 a night, but we were sure glad we had those blankets.

we took off bright and early the next morning for giza and the pyramids, talked into a day trip by an enterprising young "guide" (read: random dude with a car). before taking us to the pyramids, he had other plans for us, taking us to a papyrus "museum" where he surely would get a cut of anything we bought and then to a perfume shop. at that point in time, i traveled with a minimum of cynicism, so i was, in retrospect, charmingly open to the entire experience. the papyrus was lame, but the perfume shop was marvelous.

egypt, for centuries, has been famous for the essences and perfumes and oils that they make. we met this marvelous man, adel (thank goodness i wrote his name on the back of this photograph):

he had presence and bearing. he held himself very elegantly and you can see that his crisply-pressed clothes contributed to his manner. the room itself was wonderful--plush red velvet benches around a dark wood round table, pleated crimson fabric lining the ceiling. the bottles of mysterious and marvelous oils lining the walls. he showed us ingredients from all of the world's best perfumes and told us about how they were made. we were, of course, served sugary tea in small glasses. i loved the experience. i felt privileged to have met such a person and had such an experience. as a poor student, i bought a few small bottles of oils and a selection of the beautiful decanters as gifts. my friend bought a few things as well, tho' he later had buyer's remorse and felt taken advantage of. frankly, we hadn't spent enough money to have been taken advantage of.

as we were leaving for the pyramids, adel mentioned his carpet factory and that we should visit it and see the women (and children!) working on the rugs. but, we were anxious to see the pyramids, so we left him with a vague maybe.

it being early february and ramadan to boot, it wasn't high tourist season, so we had a good day at the pyramids. we were able to get tickets to go inside all 3 and we managed to escape the many offers of camel rides.  in fact, i'm quite surprised we managed to get this picture without any visible camel ride guys getting into it. they must be just out of the frame, because there weren't many tourists and they were quite desperate.

i don't entirely remember why, but i was carrying around a stuffed seal named schuster (i had a cat at home named simon). i think i found it whimsical to have a little arctic seal in the desert, so i took his picture everywhere. i even have a picture of him inside one of the crypts in the great pyramid. i remember that the locals were quite charmed by this eccentricity and often scurried to help me position him just so for his photo or suggested other poses. i definitely talked to a lot more people than i would have because i was carrying him around.

we did go back to adel's carpet shop and it was from him i that i bought the little silk rug that's now in my studio. i never saw the small children who he proudly said knotted the silk rugs because their tiny little hands were suited to it. i guess it was before that became politically incorrect.

i have mixed feelings about it because those kids doing that work are often providing an essential income to their families and would end up involved in all sorts of far more sordid activities if it weren't for the job in the rug factory. but i am glad i didn't actually see them, so i can still tell myself that perhaps my rug wasn't made by children. i must have been out of film at the rug shop because i don't have any pictures from there. alas, remember those days before digital? i think the camera i had was actually a clunky old kodak advantix with the panorama setting. i have to admit i actually really liked that camera, tho' i seem to recall that film was tough to find.

more stories from this journey later this week.

comin' atcha from dunoon, scotland

oh mylanta, as an old friend used to say...what a couple of days it's been! laughter, jokes, £160 cab fare, rides on an old ferry, trying to decipher what is ostensibly english spoken with heavy weegie accents, hilarious conversations with cab drivers, choosing cold or warm beer in a pub, buying new shoes because my feet were killing me in my jessica simpsons and the rain was really not good for them (the shoes), fabulous seared tuna for lunch and gorgeous monkfish for dinner (and you thought glasgow was all haggis and fried mars bars), g&t's with hendrick's (loved by a small handful of people, all over the world), more jokes, insider stories from work, learning about an innovative new design for LNG carriers (i do love me a bit of cryogenics), strange meetings, a glorious hour and a half in scotland's largest bookstore (borders on buchanan st.), a fabulous new design magazine (amelia's magazine), strong desire to mangle the travel agent who put us at fawlty towers in dunoon (he clearly did not look at map and the 40km away he said our hotel was may have been missing a zero), feet that are no longer speaking to me (you cannot go quickly from 1 month of straight havianas back to work pumps), fabulous tights, a reminder of how totally cool it is to be a woman in shipping, 2 brilliant issues of the guardian (i adore that newspaper), the absurdity of having the battery go on all three phones in my possession within 15 minutes of each other, finding the girl who gave me a fabulous haircut last october despite the fact that the salon she worked in had moved and she had moved to a different salon, having an appointment with her tomorrow for a haircut, the weirdness of walking in downtown glasgow while scotland-ireland played a friendly (some of them didn't look that friendly), did i mention lots of jokes and laughing? that's been the best part.

back home tomorrow night and we will then resume regular blogramming. til then, may your day be filled with laughter and great food and your cab fares less than £160 quid!