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Weekend in St Petersburg

“The Convict”

We took the train to Saint Petersburg on a Friday morning - a four hour ride on a fast train through the forests of northern Russia. The city immediately struck as more crowded - perhaps a result of us staying closer to city center - and the weather, which had been sunny and hot in Moscow, cooled off a bit to remind of us home (SF). We explored that evening and strolled along the canals as the sun set slowly around 11PM. 

St. Petersburg is even grander and more stately than Moscow. The building facades are punctuated by gargoyles and columns and other exotic pieces of statuary. On Saturday we walked over to the large plaza that opens up in front of the Winter Palace, and strolled onto the grounds to see the museum (The Hermitage). The footprint of this place is huge, and inside we found lots of furniture and carpets and portraiture like the bracketing pictures.

The main street was blocked to cars and thronged with tourists by the time we got out - we decided to sidle up to a large open air bar instead to watch the Germany game that ended with Kroos nailing the free kick to win the game. I was around 5 Paulaners deep  at that moment and the place absolutely erupted, with hundreds drumroll’ing the bar and cheering for a good 5 minutes.

Now that’s a clock

Sunday was my opportunity to check out the banya - the Russian bath house. I first got introduced to the banya in San Francisco by my friend Pete - a place out in Hunter’s Point called Archimedes. You get all heated up and vasodilated in the sauna, then you counter attack your circulatory system with a plunge in ice water. Then repeat. And relax. It’s epic, I promise you. Facing down the cold water and dunking yourself all the way in is a big part of it - you get stronger every time. I’ve been back 30+ times to the SF one, and when I was in Chicago last year, Pete (who had since moved cities) took me to a banya out there. The sign on the wall inside has the (telling) maxim; “Heat depletes, cold replenishes”. So true.

So naturally I had to make a banya trip happen while in Russia. It’s particularly intimidating for a couple reasons. This is most definitely not a common tourist activity - more the purview of old Russian men (who have it absolutely on this score). That plus Kexin has almost no interest in plunging her body into the ice. (Also even if she did there’s typically a separation between men and women). I researched some places and found one relatively close to our hotel called Yamskie, their claim seems to be that Dostoevsky himself bathed here.

Badass Hermitage museum carpet, possible ROUS.

The Winter Palace / Hermitage museum

The place was an experience - a rickety-looking (but still grand) building on a quiet neighborhood corner, with a large metal door out front and very minimal signage outside. The door-manning babushka pointed me on up the stairs without a word, where the cashier and I used google translate to communicate. After I stripped down, I met a helpful old man inside, who was excited to show me that, in addition to the standard cold plunge tank, there was also an ever-refilling bucket shower with a draw string to dump the coldest water over yourself. I grabbed a coffee on the way home and we got started with another day of walking the city. 

Church of the Savior on Blood - under construction but kind of lovely and subdued in its colors compared to St Basil’s

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The grandeur and the dumplings

The subway station in Moscow, looking like a ballroom

After the football game, after the long crawl out of the stadium and the subway with 71,000 other fans, we went looking for dumplings. Kexin researched an awesome little hipster spot called Lepim | Varim with Russian ladies behind the glass making pelmeni (russian-style dumplings) fresh to order. The menu had names like “My Uncle from Kamchatka” for crab dumplings and “Mom’s Siberian” for the classic beef and pork. We grabbed a beer and some small containers of sour cream flavors and enjoyed the heck out of ourselves at the communal wooden tables. 

A guy sitting across from us at the big wooden table was by himself, so we ended up chatting with him. He was from London but living in Dubai, and we spoke about our friends living in Dubai whom we had initially planned to meet here before the plans fell through. When he mentioned he was hoping one of the North African teams would make it farther along in the tournament, I asked if he spoke Arabic. Turns out he’s Palestinian - and he pointed to his ball cap sitting on the table which said “Palestinian” in Arabic on it. We chatted more and exchanged info and of course we told him to look us up in San Francisco when he was there as it’d be our pleasure to show him around. He ended up giving me the hat - telling me that he makes them himself and was happy to part with it. 

Dumpling-time, hipster Moscow style

After dumplings we kept on strolling through the Moscow evening, back to Red Square at dusk for more pictures, and to see what the square looked like all lit up. The long commercial streets had lights strung out overhead. We saw hip stores and bars and art installations. We saw young guys “juggling” soccer balls together in a circle. We saw a brass band (with a drummer) on the street playing “Pastime Paradise”. Not sure how much of what we’re seeing and experiencing is the World Cup vs Moscow culture, but the vibe is extremely friendly and open. Shopkeepers seems both ready and happy to be receiving everyone from around the world as tourists. The city is clean and the skies are blue. 

Fans seeing fans of rival teams on the street are smiling and high-fiving. At the Morocco - Portugal game, we were sitting next to two Portuguese brothers but mostly surrounded by Morocco supporters. As the game slipped through Morocco’s fingers, there was a guy behind us starting to get a little heated, but when the brothers took some notice the guy immediately apologized and starting saying that he too loved Ronaldo (star of Portugal’s national team and one of the most prominent footballers in the world currently). Who doesn’t?

The streets around Red Square, all lit up in the evening 

Two different views of St Basil’s at sunset 

The following day we set out to try a different kind of cuisine: Georgian food. I read on a blog about the World Cup that best food in Russian may not be classically Russian at all, but rather coming from some of the surrounding republics like Georgia, Ukraine, or Uzbekistan. Kexin researched a cool little lunch spot where we ate Georgian style dumplings (called Khinkali) and something I had heard referred to as Georgian “pizza”, called Khachapuri. The Khinkali were big steamed dumplings with mushroom or meat in them, with a sort of built in handle at the top where the dough came together in a thick stem that wasn’t intended for eating (according to our waiter). The Georgian pizza was a diamond shaped cheese bread with a raw egg cracked over the top right before it hit the table so that it sort of cooked in there as the whole thing cooled off. We also had lamb chops. All of it was delicious.

The next day we decided to go back to Sparrow Hills to watch a game with a crowd of fans. The trip was much easier this time - we got off at the Sparrow Hills subway station and walked into the pavilion in the middle of the afternoon. Vorybyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills) is a big half circle of a nature preserve hugging the river, so we walked more or less through the woods to get to the festival. We went through the metal detectors (everywhere in Russia one must go through metal detectors) and entered through the gift shop. Very clever, FIFA. Inside the FanFest, they were selling Budweiser plus a Russian beer I couldn’t pronounce at remarkably reasonable prices. Basically $3 for a tall boy, which is not bad at all for a captive audience situation. We walked around a while in a heat of the midday sun and posted up to watch the first half of the Peru - Denmark game on the large screens all around, eventually deciding to go elsewhere and find a bar to sit comfortably and watch the late (and most popular) game of the day: Argentina - Croatia. 

We headed back across town and located a sports bar closer to downtown with a large outdoor area and people all along the sidewalk drinking beers and smoking. After managing to get a small table outside before the game began, we settled in and started drinking copious amounts of cheap Russian beer (or at least, I did) to prepare for Messi to hit the pitch. I only saw a few Argentina jerseys at the bar but most fans (and presumably all the spanish-speakers) were routing for the world-famous Lio Messi to help his national team advance and perhaps finally win his World Cup.* We sat and watched the entire game as the sun set around 10PM and the Spanish curses flew all around us.  Croatia beat Argentina handily 3-0, and Messi, though not completely out of the tournament just yet, looked dejected. 

*Context: Messi has won every other trophy/accolade in football, basically, and is now nearing retirement / may retire after this tournament. Also, in the 2014 World Cup Argentina (with Messi) made it to the final and lost in a heartbreaker to Germany.

Georgian Khinkali (dumplings) and Khachapuri (”pizza” bread) 

Rob’s Russian Starbucks name

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Game day - Portugal vs Morocco

After our adventure trying to make it to Sparrow Hills, we agreed that leaving early would be a smart move for our first ever World Cup game at Luzhniki Stadium. We left the hotel early and grabbed a sit down breakfast nearby  - I ordered the “russian” style - eggs sunny side up plus potatoes and fried tomatoes on the side, then a soup bowl of chicken broth to go along with it. From there we headed into the city center.

We weren’t sure what to expect exactly, but had already been seeing loads of fans sporting country flags as capes and wearing colorful wigs prowling the streets in Moscow, singing homeland songs. We saw Portugal fans dancing all across red square, showing off scarves and flags and drawing lots of attention. We heard Russian fans chanting “Ros-i-ya” multiple times, including on our walk to Sparrow Hills. We saw a Polish group all decked out in red and white and chanting “Pol-ska, Pol-ska” then breaking into (polish) song and posing happily with asian tourists. I was starting to get jealous, truth be told. How cool would it be to be repping the old US of A out here with a big group of my countrymen? Face paint and funny hats and singing in the streets? Basically Bay to Breakers on the world stage. Looking forward to that at some future date.

After a brief stop by Red Square for another look at that mesmerizing St Basil’s cathedral, we hopped on the subway line to the stadium. It was crowded. It was hot. There were red and green-clad fans all around us (both Portugal and Morocco have red and green flags).* We went deep into the earth and on the escalator ride, the chanting picked up. Soon the whole tunnel was humming - singing stadium melodies and cheering and clapping as we went farther down. The excitement was palpable. Everyone headed to the game was smiling from ear to ear and even the daily commuters couldn’t help but be taken up with the enthusiasm on display. The roar was contagious and our hearts were beating excitement with all the rest.

*I think the majority in the subway (and at the game) were Moroccan fans, our guess is that since the country has not qualified in 20 years, fans came out in force this year.

The process of getting into the actual stadium was long but orderly - Russia pioneered this badge (around my neck above) called a FanID, which served as our Russian visa, our scannable way into the stadium, and more generally as an indicator of who the tourists around town were. Inside, we made our way up to the top of the stands: high up but with a very good view of the action. The stadium itself felt very modern and well-designed. I grabbed a Budweiser (the only beer being sold) and we settled in, taking note of our surroundings. We saw jerseys of all types around us, but mostly the stadium was a sea of red, and when they played the Moroccan national anthem, the crowd singing along was significantly louder than with the Portuguese one. 

The game got off to a great start, with Ronaldo scoring for Portugal with a diving header off a corner kick. That ended up being the only score in the game and Portugal took the win, but there were a lot of great moments after that. Morocco created lots of worthy chances but couldn’t get the ball in, ultimately. The stadium attendance was announced to be like 71,000 people, and after the game they all headed back to the subway station with us. 

Kexin had the very good idea to hop on the train going the opposite direction (away from downtown) for just one stop, and then to get back on going the correct direction. By doing this we would avoid an extra 20 minutes of the crushing crowd waiting all along the platform. It worked like a charm, by the way - but perhaps the most satisfying moment of the whole day was watching a young Russian guy’s face change during that short, one-stop ride back to the masses. He was loaded up with packages in the train and going about his day but as the train slowed into the stadium stop and he saw literally thousands of people waiting, his expression cycled quickly from confusion to understanding to (good-humored) annoyance at himself for not predicting/avoiding this nonsense, to a shoulder shrug of acceptance as the doors opened and he got himself and all his cargo squeezed backwards into a corner by the massive crowd.  

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Arriving in Moscow

Cathedral with the flaming candle toppers, inside the Kremlin walls

We took the red eye to Finland and in the process shot up over the North Pole,  the flight map alerting me to our passing over Greenland, Svalbard, and a Canadian mining town with the unexpectedly excellent name of Flin Flon.  In Helsinki airport we laid ourselves over the FinnAir lounge, designed to look like the adjoining rooms of a pleasantly Ikea-furnished home and stocked with beer and treats and televisions playing the matches. From there we boarded a flight on to Moscow.  

Moscow has taken us by (pleasant) surprise. This city is absolutely refusing to conform to my preconceived notions. I think in my head it was going to be stuck back in the 80s, or be full of concrete rectangles. Instead we’re finding stately wide boulevards with ornate architectural styling, and an unexpectedly clean and modern vibe to the city.

We did a walking tour of the Kremlin (which I found out simply means “fortress city”) and our tour guide was full of lots of wonderful historical information. For instance he explained that the onion tops on every Russian orthodox church are intended to be candle flames (hence both their shape and their gold color) and that Ivan the Terrible is really Ivan (the) Grozny, a Russian term our guide defined as something more like “strict”. Wikipedia pegs it closer to “fearsome” or maybe “formidable” - you can do your own reading and be the judge. We walked by Putin’s office, saw the inside of a couple cathedrals (including the one pictured above), and saw the tombs of the first several Russian czars. Also Alexi Antolovich told us about how formal address references a man’s father  (the “vich” on the end of the middle name means “son of”) and then showed us the oak tree that Yuri Gargarin planted a couple days after he became the first cosmonaut.

St Basil’s in Red Square

After leaving the fortress we spilled out into Red Square and into the presence of St Basil’s - a fairytale construction if ever there was one. All around the square are beautiful buildings, full of symmetrical details that Wes Anderson would be proud of and the square is packed with people, in particular lots of tourists sporting their country colors. We hung around taking pictures for a while then eventually wandered out to the surrounding city center, eventually stopping off for an excellently crafted beef stroganoff at a little sidewalk cafe nearby.

Russia was playing their second game of the tournament that evening and after a bit of rest back at the hotel we decided to head to the FIFA watch party across town at Vorybyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills). The game itself was being played in a different city but we had heard that FIFA set up events for fans to watch on the big screen in every city for every game, regardless. The escalator for the metro went deep underneath the city, and the cars were packed with fans bearing the jerseys and colors of all nations, but Russian colors in particular. After a Russian language announcement, a bunch of people got off the train - we stayed but were left wondering what we missed. Two closed subways stops later we got it (they had closed two subway stations in an effort to throttle the crowds) and hopped back on to backtrack. Even with the delay, there was a rather large crowd to follow out as we got off and started walking. And we walked. Up to the stadium, Then around the side of the stadium. Then past a long row of port-a-potties that looked like they might have something to do with the watch party. Then past some gates that we couldn’t go in with Russian military out in front. Then down a roadway in the grass, and through some holes in a fence. By this point we had absolutely no clue what we were doing but were in a pack of hundreds of fans, many of them bearing Russian flags as capes or watching the (already begun) match on their phones. This had to be the way to the watch party, even as our logical brains (and feet) were telling us that this was a rather far walk. In any case, we reasoned, we were having a thoroughly “Russian” experience.

Next we doubled back up onto a large (freeway) bridge. There was no pedestrian walkway, so the crowd simply took over the far right lane. We saw other foreign tourists looking at their friends questioningly at this point but we were all resigned to find out where this parade was headed so we trudged on. The bridge crossed us over the Moskva river at sunset - beautiful. Cars on the bridge honked and shouted their support as they passed - then all at once  the group decided it was time to cross the 6 lane freeway to the other side of the bridge, hopping over a significant median in the middle. Groupthink steered us with them, and hundreds of people did a mad dash across with us. It certainly seemed like at least someone in this mob knew where to go.

Finally across the bridge, we came to a steep grass embankment, perhaps 20 feet up at at least 65 degrees. Everyone started climbing it so we climbed as well. It looked like we finally arriving where we wanted to be - we had walked perhaps 2 or 2.5 miles from the metro at this point. At the top of the hill there were barricades and hundreds of Russian military guys. The loudspeaker was difficult to understand but we managed to hear “apology” and “capacity” and continued our walk on by. Mystery solved: we were walking to the correct spot (Sparrow Hills) but the party had reached capacity (of 25,000) and they stopped letting people in. Perhaps this is why they closed the subway stops as well, though if so why were so many Russians leading the charge to this just to be turned away? We kept walking with the group right back to the previously closed subway station (the correct / convenient one), our path lined the whole way with military guys in blue camo standing along the edges.  From there we made our way back home. Russia had won.

From our highest vantage point (just after being turned away) I snapped the photo below of the revelers still coming in across the bridge, 20 or more minutes walk behind us.  

The view from (near) Sparrow Hills (including a line of Russia fans still crossing that bridge)  

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Pizza quest 2016

Positano, Amalfi Coast

We headed south from Rome - a train bound for Napoli first, then down a little farther to Sorrento where we’d be staying for the week. Outside the window everything got greener. The transfer at Napoli’s Garibaldi station to a local train called the circumvesuviana gave us our first impressions of the city - it looked like the New York subway circa 1973, a platform where the Warriors could have just stepped off. Graffiti tags were omnipresent and ancient train cars and while we were waiting on the platform I saw a fresh-to-death kind of guy wearing a Masters of the Universe hat. In my mind I struggled to determine if this was cool or not. 

Sorrento is a small town along the Amalfi peninsula and so would provide us easy reach to Napoli, Sorrento, Pompeii. Our apartment had a balcony that overlooked the sea and from which on the clearer days you could see Napoli and Vesuvius. 

(I’m going to pick back up writing this about 2 years later at 2AM in Hanoi, because, what the heck)

Our first full day we took that train on back to Napoli and spent a day on the grimier side of Italy. Napoli is crowded with motorbikes and loud from honking. The sidewalks are cracked and narrow. The pizza, omnipresent as expected, was delicious. We walked through winding alleyways and took direction from a 3rd story Italian grandma to get to our first meal destination, Starita. The pizza was tennis racket-shaped, with a handle full of ricotta and mushrooms. Welcome to flavor country. Best pizza marks of the month long trip. 

Napoli is all hustle - a place where gritty Italian cop dramas should be set and a stark contrast from Rome. 

We hit the museum a bit later and kept strolling around, catching a lovely sunset with the volcano is the distance. Vesuvius looms in my mind as another name from childhood that signaled an incredibly impossible and far distant place. Like Istanbul and Reykjavik I can remember pressing my finger against the map and pronouncing the words but never in a million years thinking I’d be standing there eating baklava on the sidewalk. We rounded out our day in the city with a more traditional pizza spot: Da Michelle- with no frills plastic tables, pictures of Eat Pray Love’s Julia Roberts on the wall and a soft doughy center that absolutely necessitated a fold or three. The only two options here were Margherita and Marinara, and we were both pleasantly surprised by just how different these two tasted.  

The next day we decided to head to the scenic side of the peninsula - towards Amalfi itself, so we grabbed a bus for the windy mountain without a guardrail over the deep blue sea ride along the coast. I managed to look out the window too much and get carsick so we hopped off in Positano, a town just carved into the cliffs. After 643 steps down to the sea, we ate lunch at an outdoor cafe and counted the steps on our way back. Waiting for the bus in Positano, the little cafe next to the bus stop was playing Bed’s Too Big Without You and I closed my eyes on the way back home. 

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Roman Holiday

View from atop St. Peter’s in the Vatican

Some years back, Kexin and I had an impromptu and amazing winter trip to northern Italy. It began with an absolutely magical first glimpse of the Grand Canal after arriving by night train to Venice, was highlighted by a ravioli flight lunch in Parma and a 33-year record blizzard in Bologna, and ended in Florence with me having my most visceral, emotional reaction to the fine arts ever. That is to say, it was a great experience that left us excited to come back. After a weekend of cheese and snowy mountains, we left Zurich and crossed our own Rubicon into Rome.

Our apartment for the week was in the old town, east of the Tiber and just south of the Pantheon. This was our first time in the eternal city and Rome immediately struck us as a sort of living ruin. A combination of ancient history and religious reverence meets modern metro grime: in short a recipe for a fun and lively place. We had given ourselves 6 days to explore and so took our time checking off the major boxes like the Colosseum and the Vatican on a series leisurely afternoon walks. Recommendations from some good friends who had recently spent two weeks here plus the power of the restaurant-critiquing internet meant we were never hungry for very long.. 

Papal graffiti that leads to a fun little wiki wormhole

One lunch spot offered a flight of pasta - four plates in total of different shapes and flavors which we wolfed down over wine. Then there was the internet famous hipster pizza joint delivered on serving up weird topping’d Roman style slices priced by weight. What ended being our favorite however was a small bistro slash grocery about 2 blocks from our place called Roscioli. In a land where even the mediocre food is pretty great and where the pasta is always fresh, this joint’s specialty ‘cacio e pepe’ stood out enough for us to come back a second time.

Midnight at Trevi fountain

Rome also feels like a great wandering city - lots of alleyways and twisty street plans lead to discovering hidden piazzas (and hidden pizzas, there I said it) and stumbling upon epic fountains. Most mornings I took my run along the banks of the Tiber dodging traffic, tourists, and a surprising amount of nuns. The Vatican museums were a surprising highlight - the grandeur contained in that place is absolutely stunning. Statuary gardens and tapestries and long hallways with painted ceilings for days. You can’t help but think about just how rich this tiny nationstate has been for well over a thousand years. Impressive collection, regardless of the politics. 

On one of our last afternoons in town we saw a poster for JC Superstar in town and while I made a mental note to look into it later over wifi an hour or so later I turned a corner and came upon the theater. If you know me you know this was a rather exciting moment/prospect. We bought tickets and saw the show that night. Though my main interest in and exposure to Superstar has been through the original, awesomely funky 70s concept album starring Ian Gillian as Jesus, I was first introduced to this epic counter narrative at a production over 20 years ago in Philadelphia. Ted Neeley (the actor who played Jesus in the 1970s film production) was there in Philadelphia and he was here in Rome as well so I felt like some sort of weird melodramatic sing-talking circle has been closed now. There was a full rock band on stage playing the jams and perched up in the wings was a 4 piece string section and 3 horn players. The rest of the actors all sang in English with Italian accents and were generally quite good. At the very end the band launched into a finale round of “Superstar” whereupon the actor playing Annas grabbed a guitar and ripped a vicious solo. He had that look you very rarely find...the haunted, hunted, (band dude, probably metal) kind. 

Italian flag coordination at the end of JC Superstar (before Annas shreds)

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Old empires and tiny fiefdoms

Hungarian parliament at dusk

We’re now more than a week beyond our departure from Hungary and besides glancing over my journal notes I’m turning to sips of Unicum (the Hungarian herbal elixir currently inhabiting my flask) for inspiration. Budapest was rainy when we arrived and immediately presented itself as a much larger, more congested kind of metropolis. Just as snow effortlessly beautifies a city, a rainy night seems to bring everyday grime and lackluster paint jobs into sharper focus. This was our first impression as we rode the bus with all our suitcases in tow. Our apartment building was in an old style - a cavernous spiral stairwell around a central elevator made it feel more like we were walking to Occlumency class than heading home at night. The interior was very modern, however, and the most spacious we’ve had the entire trip. Our front door opened direct to the air, a little balcony wraparound and a view of one of Budapest’s most famous landmarks, the basilica of St. Stephen.

In the morning the sun came out and we walked about and saw the first McDonald’s to open inside the Iron Curtain - a train station of building which loses little of its grandeur to the greasy (but still appetizing) french fry smell. We climbed the cupola of St Stephen’s and up the Buda-side hill to look out over the Pest-side city. Budapest has a kind of old-school charm, a retro-luxury vibe from the imperial days. The subway is the oldest underground rail system on continental Europe and 2nd oldest in the world (besides a section from London’s). Similar to Vienna we found stately buildings at every corner. The parliament building and the opera house and the old palace-now-museum all retain a distinct air of the highest society.

Several bread dumplings and paprikashes later, we walked to the train station at 5AM and saw more than a few people on the street. Few if any looked like they were headed to work, and one guy was slumped over a set of concrete steps in normal (non-homeless) clothes - like he’d just been chatting and decided to doze off a moment. It’s that kind of (blue collar, hard-drinking) city.

Budapest street cars

Chain bridge, Danube, and Buda side by night

After Hungary we took a long train ride back west to Switzerland - to stay with some awesome friends on the lake. Since we had taken in the sights of Zurich proper once before, we instead focused our attention elsewhere: a little principality called Liechtenstein. 

The marketing office (pictured above) in Vaduz the capital was as friendly as you’d imagine a “twice landlocked” country of 50,000 could be. They stamped our passports and let us crown each other on a replica throne. It had snowed some the night before and we climbed to the castle for a terrific view of the nearby Swiss mountains. The castle is still in use as the private residence of the Liechtensteiner royalty, and as we peered into the estate grounds the Princess herself drove by us on her way into the compound. Exciting!

Back at home, we were discovering raclette, an awesome Swiss dinner option that involves melting cheese and meat and veggies in a personal melting pan at the table, then scraping the deliciousness onto potatoes on your plate. At the same time our friend Adi was busy introducing us to tzuika, a homemade Romanian brandy he had brought back from a recent trip to the motherland. By coincidence it’s pronounced very similarly to a chinese term for “drunk person” and I was very shortly to fulfill that prophesy. The next day we all shook off the plum wine and swiss hangover and drove to Luzern, where full regalia’d marching bands and other costumed drunk folk were gathering at the train station to welcome in the winter spirits with an annual festival. Seriously it was a party - I’m finding the Swiss to be quite a bit rowdier than I had expected. One thinks only of tiny watch precision and the subtleties of chocolate-craft but this crowd was both raucous and rather messy (gasp!). The mountain air, the snow capped peaks everywhere - although our hosts swore to us that Switzerland was ever so beautiful in summertime we couldn’t help but feel lucky to be here for the winter.

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Bowie

I woke up this morning to the news that David Bowie had died after having just released his 25th studio album a few days ago to mark his 69th birthday. The news is a shock to my system - something that had seemed impossible. The dude was timeless - he’s the original weirdo who went around gathering other people’s weirdnesses and re-purposing them into a series of rock star alien personas.

When I was probably 13 or 14, I was busy getting into 60s and 70s music, buying up greatest hits compilations and learning all the basics from my local record store. This was a great time - when songs like “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Life During Wartime”, and “Whipping Post” were still brand spanking new to my ears. I’m not sure what originally motivated me to pick up ChangesBowie (the classic one disc Bowie greatest hits comp) around that time but I do remember realizing that this represented my first significant deviation from my parents’ taste in music - the taste that had led me through my initial paces in classic rock with the Beatles, Hendrix, and Dylan at the forefront. At that time I think I only knew Bowie as the funky goblin king from Labyrinth. I put my new disc in the player and on comes “Space Oddity”. Holy shit. Everything about that song is amazing, from the left-right panned harmonies in the beginning to the creepy story of an astronaut (or, as I later realized after careful study of Ashes to Ashes, junkie) losing his ship, to the wild orchestra production complete with wholetone scale ascends and a well-placed tuba. I suppose this is where I fell in love. I may have stopped for a while right there, reveling for years in the tragic downfall of Ziggy Stardust, the Clockwork Orange references of Suffragette City, the plastic funk of Golden Years, or the dead strings intro and doowop chorus of Modern Love. But as luck would have it MTV stepped up and helped me dive a bit deeper. 

Later that year or thereabouts an interesting thing happened. Nirvana released their MTV Unplugged album - a terrific piece in its own right but perhaps most interestingly filled with obscure covers of other artists Kurt and the band really admired. One of these was Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World” and sometime in 1994 or so it started getting consistent MTV and radio airplay. I liked it a lot and wanted to hear the original Bowie version out of curiosity. In those pre-convenient-musical-internet days, my only option was buying the CD at the store. Luckily I managed to find it (along with numerous other Bowie classics) in the $9.99 discount bin and from there began my descent into deep cut Bowie fan-ship. 

It’s difficult to get a handle on it now. Nowadays everything from an artist’s catalog is my fingertips at all times. Discover a band and instantly you’ve pulled them up on Spotify and can listen to everything they’ve ever done including popular live bootlegs, various in studio demos, or BBC sessions. The result of course is that I now rarely care to actually do that. The convenience (plus adult life responsibilities) has sapped my strength to explore. It would be impossible to care as much about listening to music now as I did when I was 15 - then it was everything. My entire world was track lists, librettos, and liner notes.

The Man Who Sold the World (the album. terrific double meaning in that phrase, don’t you agree?) was also distinctive for me at that time because it contained zero “hits”. Nothing from the 18 song greatest hits record I already had was on the track listing. There was nothing to anchor my listening, no songs I knew and would be tempted to skip to. Thus I took in the whole record as a piece and ending up loving every inch of it. From there I pretty quickly moved into Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust - two more undeniably epic albums with deep cut tracks (”Five Years”, “Life on Mars”, “Queen Bitch”, and “Rock and Roll Suicide”, to name a few) that literally blew my mind with their soaring melodies, lyrical riddles, and crazy complex production. I was in a complete Bowie spiral at this point. Within the next two or three years I’d buy and get to know intimately Space Oddity, Heroes, Station to Station, Scary Monsters, Diamond Dogs, and Low. The less than exciting full album Let’s Dance kept me staunchly in the 70s until in 1997, the year I turned 17, when Bowie announced a new album and decided to go on tour. Earthling was purchased for me, I think. The modern production choices and collaborations with Trent Reznor were a mild shock at first but I quickly got acquainted with and really dug it. 

Bowie always had this way of feeling very contemporary with each new thing he did. A “culture vulture” is how one friend described him to me, although I think Bowie probably preferred the term “constant reinvention”. To my mind no matter what one calls it it’s an amazing and admirable skill, a sort of blind bravery maybe, to keep facing up to the changing of the tide. Bowie never lost his cool factor - you’d find few to dispute this. 

Me and five other friends saw Bowie live - at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia in 1997 on the Earthling tour. The Electric Factory. A (2500 ticket) club. Still an extremely small venue for an alien icon such as Bowie. I couldn’t drink yet, I didn’t play music yet (was just starting on guitar that year), and I hadn’t been to many shows yet (shortly to change). I knew it was awesome to be seeing him but didn’t at the time appreciate how insanely rare and cool an opportunity it really was. He didn’t tour much in the decade before or after that. I remember he kept us waiting for at least 60 minutes past the scheduled show time and had no opener. It was a lot to withstand in a completely packed standing room only flat-floored warehouse but it still seemed very rock and roll to us, and we traded various theories about what kinds of rock and roll activities he was up to backstage. Finally he came out with an acoustic guitar, opening the show solo with “Quicksand” off Hunky Dory. The rest of the set was with his full band, which I recall included a guitar player called Reeves Gabrels who was pretty gnarly. I’ve since heard/deduced that one of the reasons Bowie didn’t much care for playing shows in his later years was that he absolutely refused to do a greatest hits victory lap. I’m conflicted on how I feel about that specific artistic choice, actually, but I respect it regardless and acknowledge that it’s part of how he maintained his mystique all this time.

At the show I was at he played very few things in the general public consciousness - “Fame” was in the set, as was “Under Pressure” and I think “Fashion”. Near the end he played “All the Young Dudes” (which he famously wrote then gave to Mott the Hoople who had a hit with it). Because I was such a deep nerdy Bowie fan though it was actually pretty perfect for me. He also played a long time - at least 2.5 hours. I remember because my friend Erin was driving us all and we ended up leaving before the show was over at her insistence. We must have parked right outside the stage right exit door because I remember piling into the back of her Chevy Blazer and still being able to hear the show. John was comically upset, telling us we were missing the best part, that Bowie was probably naked on stage right now. What a thing to miss!

Edit: Found a setlist to the show we were at, after writing this and pulling from memort what I could: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/david-bowie/1997/electric-factory-philadelphia-pa-6bd22a22.html

Congratulations, David Jones/Bowie -  you killed it at life, at fame, at art. Way to release your 25th album right before crossing over to the other side. Totally badass. Getting to know Blackstar will be an exercise in mourning but one that I am thoroughly looking forward to. You meant an awful lot to me and to my life, musical or otherwise. I’m sad as hell today but I think your spaceship knows which way to go...

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Scotch eggs, Czech nights

Old town Prague - Christmas winding down, snowfall just beginning

For the last week, we’ve had a little studio apartment the western side of Prague in the Czech Republic. It’s been cold and snowing here. Funny how the beauty of the snow helps mitigate the bite and snarl of the icy wind, making it all seem a bit more reasonable. Prague has really been great to us - there’s a delicious explosion of a food scene here combined with the extensive, neighborhood-specific resources to help us foreigners locate it. In addition it’s a relatively small but dense city where nearly every little street we walk down (even far outside the main old town center) has its own cute shops, cafes, and butcher shops. This is old Bohemia - a historical detail that wasn’t apparent to me before our free walking tour of the city the other day but which now seems to make perfect sense.

Scotch eggs, from the internet

I learned about the existence of something called scotch eggs (hard boiled eggs surrounded by sausage) and waited a whole 3 days to finally taste the rainbow. They are glorious. I learned that Prague is famous for its defenestrations. What an excellent thing to be famous for! Twelve year old me (who, just having learned the word “defenestrate” and a bit over eager to get it in play) approves, Prague. Also pilsner beer was invented just a stone’s throw from here (in a town called Pilsen) and thus Pilsner Urquell (the original, baby) is both the inspiration for 2/3 of the world’s total beer production and extra tasty off the tap. I also learned that there’s a famous Czech cartoon mole (called simply, “Little Mole”) that Kexin grew up watching in China and also a town metronome in a spot on a hill where a statue of Stalin used to sit (”in remembrance of the time we’ve lost”). The guy who designed the statue won a contest - he was actually a would be dissident and had entered the contest assuming it was fixed and that he wouldn’t win. Then he found himself actually having to make the statue and was so ashamed that he and his wife killed themselves. The sort of happy ending is that when they wanted to get rid of the statue years later after the Velvet Revolution precipitated the end of communism here, they waited until very late at night and blew it up with several hundred pounds of dynamite. 

Ok let’s get back to talking about food and coffee. We found an absolutely awesome meatloaf sandwich; it amounts to the best burger I’ve had in ages, we went back a second time, and they had a beer faucet built into their wall. Near Prague castle is a monastery on a hill that brews its own delicious beer where we ate gulash after tromping around the castle and making mini snowmen along the wall.

Snowing on our walk to the castle

But seriously, aren’t you wondering about the national drink? I certainly was. Becherovka is an herbal concoction not totally unlike Fernet Branca - in the same general family of bitter, strong-flavored alcoholic elixirs anyway. It’s one of these family recipe, 7000 random ingredients, will die with us kind of drinks and it’s omnipresent here. I quickly procured a half liter for $7 and have been working my way through. In fact I’m drinking some right now as I type this in Budapest. 

Our last night in town we saw a production of the Magic Flute in the only theater left standing where Mozart actually performed. The theater is a real wedding cake of a building (similar to but smaller than the theater in Buenos Aires where we saw a production of Swan Lake last year) and we were at the very tip top but still had no problem seeing the action on stage. Wolfgang, we heard, was feeling a bit unloved in Austria and came to live in Prague for a while, writing and then premiering Don Giovanni here. This opera had a combination of talking and singing, which I read on wikipedia is kind of rare. This opera also had black and white pagan chessboard bishop outfits, lots of awesome hear gear in general, and guys doing bird calls (in full-head masks) from the highest balconies (where we were sitting). There was also a flaming sword - an actual sword on fire at the opera house being swung around on stage. I’m no marketing genius but I would at least consider putting that on the poster next time. It’s rather interesting to be this invested in music in my life and still be able to see a musical performance that I have almost no context for at all. 

Although they had English and Czech subtitles going, I’m still not really sure what happened in the story. I think the English bits may have fallen off at some key moments, actually. I mostly kept wondering if Papageno the bird catcher was actually playing his little (non magic) pan flute in time and key with the orchestra. I’m pretty sure he was. As we were walking back down the 13 or so flights of stairs to exit Kexin voiced her surprise at the lack of elevator. A greybeard in a tux who happened to hear her came back without missing a beat, “now we know why Mozart went back to Vienna”.

Don Giovanni outside the theatre

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The Slovak Robin Hood

Sound of Music Pavilion at Schloss Hellbrunn in Salzburg

After our adventures in Bavaria, we kept traveling east into Austria. Salzburg is normally a quick 2 hour train ride away but we managed a longer, more scenic version of the trip and finally got a glimpse of Lake Chiemsee in the process. The train tracks got themselves closed down for a stretch - possibly the result of something on the gruesome side but we couldn’t understand anything from the loudspeaker and were herded off at Prien with the rest of the travelers. This made for our second time in two days on the platform at Prien au Chiemsee - this was also where we had transferred to a small regional train in order to get to Stefan’s place in Aschau. The weather was still pleasant enough and so we waited with everyone else for a bus to pick us up and drive us all a couple train stops east, past the shutdown, and on the way we drove along the 3rd largest lake in Germany as the sun set. A convoluted path to beauty is beauty nonetheless.

Soft-boiled eggs get their own santa hats in Austria 

Salzburg turned out to be a pretty little town on a river filled with Mozart paraphernalia and Sound of Music filming landmarks. The weather had suddenly snapped into winter right as we crossed the border and so although we had only traveled a short distance, a sharp line was drawn in our minds. We had the best coffee of the trip so far along with some excellent homemade jams and croissants at Austria’s version of a hipster brunch spot, 220 GRAD. After breakfast we made for the fortress on the hill which offered a great view of the cathedral and the city but a boring but required audio tour to get up there and view it. After that we strolled through Schloss Hellbrunn’s winter gardens, past the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen″ gazebo and a palace-sized advent calendar. To get home we walked along a small bike path; a wide green field was to our left, posh yellow-painted estates to our right, and an imposing misty mountain loomed somewhere in the distance behind. 

Schloss Belvedere in Vienna

Next stop was Vienna - a city of stately buildings at every corner and doner kebab stands at every tram stop. Our apartment had a kitchen and a fridge but no oven. We found this out shortly after purchasing a bake tin mini-lasagna at the grocery store but jokes on them because we ended up pan-frying that baby. We took in the fancy estate (Schloss Belvedere) where Klimt’s major works are on display and roamed the vast, manorly grounds looking for photo ops of Kexin and shrubbery. We saw the “The Kiss” (Klimt’s most famous piece) up close and then saw the replica print in the next room specifically designated for selfies. The next day we ate a dessert that looked a carefully dismantled bundt cake and rung in the New Year listening to (or perhaps, taking a chance on) an ABBA tribute band playing in the main square.

On New Year’s Day we decided to check out Bratislava (Slovakia) for lunch - it’s a short train from Vienna but a world apart to look at and walk about in. Finally we felt like we had entered the eastern bloc - the graffiti tags and the muted tones. It started snowing and we hopped into a pub for some fried pierogies and the story of Janosik, the Slovak highwayman of the early 18th century. A bit of a folk hero in these parts, Janosik’s tale, like most flim flam men of old, alas ends in woe. A large storyboard in the pub’s dining room was happy to fill us in on the gory, Braveheart-esque details. Before we skipped town (and country) we walked a ways out to the church pictured below. It was snowing, it was January 1st of 2016, and this church, in all its confectionary glory, was suddenly filling me with the surety that there are still a million more beautiful and unexpected little places left for us to see.

The blue church in Bratislava, looking like a lump of marzipan

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2015: Year in review

Top 9

I woke up January 1st of 2015 (a year ago today) at a friend’s house nestled into the twisting lanes of Chiang Mai’s old city (in the northern part of Thailand). We were house/dog sitting and exploring the area on scooter everyday before parking it under the jackfruit trees along their gated driveway.

Last night, new year’s eve 2015, Kexin and I drank gluhwein and listened to an ABBA tribute band in central Vienna before retiring early to our apartment nearby to plan the next legs of our adventure and to watch the fireworks from our window.

In between it’s been an absolutely wondrous and awe-inspiring kind of year. I spent time in 18 different countries in total* while living out the second half of our year abroad in Taiwan and completing work for my cross-continent MBA at Duke. Along the way I saw Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal and Petra. I ran my morning run in Tokyo and in Jerusalem. I rode on the back of a local’s motorbike in Saigon and on the back of a donkey in the canyon of the crescent moon. I crossed from Europe to Asia for lunch and was back by dinner. I ate tacos in Okinawa, cake in the Black Forest, and went bowling in southern India. I visited my grandparents hometown for the first time. I got an advanced degree. Most importantly, my adventure buddy (aka my lovely wife) was along for the ride and we had an epic time.

#top 9: clockwise from top left, center last: Salk Institute San Diego, Taj Mahal through the trees, Portland Oregon, Vietnam scooters, Angkor Wat, Tamil Nadu Shiva temple, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Taipei, Black Forest Germany, Saigon bike tour in the blazing heat.

*Thailand, Taiwan, Chile, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Japan, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, China, USA, Germany, France, and Austria

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Gingerbread and haircuts

Driving (or train railin’ it) through southern Germany this oddly warm December the view is of rolling green hills and wide open fields dotted with quaint but practical farmhouses. What separates this landscape from others, similarly vibrant, is the absolutely startling volume of solar panels. The country has apparently been leading the charge (ahead of the US, China, etc..) in installing photo-voltaic cells and switching the grid over to rely more heavily on solar energy. As we drove a small village road in Baden-Wuttemburg the other day Sam pointed to what looked like a small tool shed with its own solar panel. Amazing.

On our last full day in Amelie’s village we woke up and headed off for Strasbourg (France) right across the border from Germany. The Alsace area it’s in was historically populated with German speakers (hence the germanic name), and we heard they were big on this whole Christmas thing. After a quick lunch on the German side of the line we crossed the Rhine into Strasbourg, the self-proclaimed Christmas capital. The city center is surrounded by a canal and is home to what was easily the largest and most ornate Christmas market we had pleasure to see. Every small alley was decorated with exquisite care and the streets were packed. We ate croissants at a bakery called “Au Pain de Mon Gran Pere” which is an excellent name for a bakery. We had crepes and sauerkraut (separately). We sipped a deliciously warm and salty lentil “Syrian” soup from a couple’s tiny stall. All the Christmas markets have a convention where they give you real cups and plates and you pay a deposit for them. Then you give them back the dishes when you’re done (or else keep the designed, town/season/year specific mug for yourself) and get your two euros back. When I gave the cup back to the Syrian guy I offered my compliments in Arabic and he was pretty stoked. This is my most successful foreign language interaction in weeks. 

In Strasbourg

The next day we left our friends and drove into Bavaria - to a medieval town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber for more stonewall verdant valley overlooks, uber-quaint cuckoo clock facade houses, and sausage/hot wine/schnapps consumption. The specialty here (other than foreigners. zing!) is a schneeball (i.e. snowball) pastry - a deep friend lump of a cookie thing. The one I tried had marzipan. This treat was ok, but the most delicious German pastry category is being dominated at the moment by schmalznudel (a delicate and fluffy bit of fried dough that we ate the other day in a small Munich cafe our friend recommended).

Rothenburg odT gate

We drove on from here to Munich and returned our rental car. We’d decided to spend the 5 days surrounding Christmas here because much of Germany closes down. We stayed in a hotel that doubled as a mini-apartment with a kitchen and an espresso machine at our disposal. First things first we shopped for the holiday shutdown across three separate grocery stores: chinese, korean, and western. Then we cooked Japanese curry to go with our frozen schnitzel for Christmas dinner and snacked on kimchi soup and dumplings the other days. We also saw Star Wars (!) which wasn’t the easiest thing since Germans like their hollywood movies dubbed (without any subtitles/english) but because The Force Awakens was such a big deal they scheduled some showings in original english. The beer here is very nearly cheaper than water - I snagged an oversized bottle for the movie for under $4. We also ate pretzels and pork knuckles and I got a haircut from a Turkish guy which is just what you do in Munich. 

Our last full day in Germany we took a train up into the mountains to Aschau au Chiemsee to see a friend who we met originally at a Bavarian restaurant in Taipei. Stefan met us at the station and after an awesome Bavarian lunch (including two 22oz beers, duh) took us for an absolutely stunning walk around the small town where most of his family still lives. With the sun shining and the alps in surround sound we were feeling amazingly grateful just to be breathing that sweet mountain air. Stefan ended the tour at his mother’s house where we sipped coffee and ate homemade gingerbread. An awesome end to an awesome German adventure. We rode back to Munich in the evening and packed our things up for Austria the next day.

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Villages and Castles

Schloss Neuschwanstein

Today we visited a castle - Schloss Neuschwanstein, way out in the wilds of Bavaria. We took a 2 hour train south from Munich then hiked up the mountain where thing sits to check out the courtyard and gaze upon the spires. It’s known for being the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s castle, (i.e. the quintessential Disney postcard) and the crowds of tourists from various continents vying for their spot (us among them) brings the Disney experience to mind as well. The bridge which affords the best view from afar was sadly closed for maintenance, but that didn’t stop us (or hoards of others) from the kind of tenacious rule-breaking that non-Germans are known for. We ducked barriers and some light barbed wire in order to hike up to forbidden crest above the closed off bridge where I snapped the above shot. Honestly though it’s impossible to take a better photograph than the postcard or to capture the grandeur of being on this mountain or in this castle courtyard with one’s iphone. The fresh mountain air, the crisp cold air that has been hiding away so far this winter, the passing conversations in Korean, Chinese, Spanish, English, Italian, Hindi, etc...or the bizarre inability of the Germans running this place to fully pack a shuttle bus with people and thus make the process more efficient. The photos we share help us recall specific experiences and to create brand new ones once beheld but do a poor job of actually capturing the experience on their own. So it goes. That’s why I’m writing this down.

We’ve been in Germany now for around two weeks. We started in Frankfurt, a city that was immediately deemed underrated for its beautiful integration of new architecture with historic buildings in the downtown area and it’s raucous, international-feeling Christmas market. Gluhwein was drunk in spades and we ate some truly killer lattkes before trying the local beverage of choice, apple wine (exactly as it sounds), and then walking home along the river in the midst of an extremely mild December evening.

Heidelberg panorama

Next up we trained it south to Heidelberg - a supremely quaint little city in the mountains with a castle of its own (in ruins) where we hiked up and played with panorama function on the camera, managing to get both of us in the shot. Heidelberg was a really pretty place - though the weather was rainy we explored both mountainsides and found it to be charming as heck, if rather touristy. Extra points for a pretty great Korean restaurant and a (separate) hand-pulled noodle joint where we stopped for snacks over the few days we were there. 

From here we rented a car and got out on the autobahn. The recommended limit is typically around 110-120kph (68-75mph) but this is just a recommendation. In practice it means two things: if you get in an accident while going  faster than that you’re more likely to be found at fault, and one can drive upwards of 90mph in the right lane and watch cars whiz by on the left all day long going at least 130. Now we were headed further south, past Stuttgart, to visit our friend’s home town and stay for a few nights in her village with her family. Our hosts were the most welcoming and gracious people you could ever imagine - delicious meats and cheese and beers and plenty of homemade schnapps made our stay a particularly amazing time and a great little slice of small town German life. 

We drove our little Ford Fiesta all around the area exploring various local Christmas markets as well as hiking into the Black Forest for some great views and a slice of that famous cake. The Black Forest wasn’t nearly as intimidating as my little kids dreams implied. What we found there was quaint mountain towns with mini-main streets and bridges over babbling brooks, pine trees for miles in every direction, and a sturdy wooden skywalk that afforded us some dizzying heights as well as many great selfie stick opportunities. 

Black Forest meta-selfie

Next up - Strasbourg, Munich, and the Bavarian Alps

Cheers to everyone who helped make our stay completely awesome - we love you all!

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East side, West Bank

Kishor and I got up about 8AM and set out running. We jogged up the steps separating the Jaffa Gate entrance to the old city from a posh brands open air mall in the new city (old gods and new, he slyly observed). The streets of the Armenian quarter were a passel quieter this time and we made sure to take extra care as we hustled downhill on the worn out, slippery stones. No special route in place we zigged and zagged as piqued our interest, winding our way into the Jewish quarter in time to see school children lined up for the 5th grade and some mountain-biking hasidim zipping through the alleys. We swung by the Western Wall again and then out unto an open curving road with a panoramic view of the southern city before running back up the hill and out.

Later that day we walked through the Arab quarter. What a difference from yesterday’s trek through the other sections - more smells, more sounds, more life happening here. The narrow streets were crowded with people and the call to prayer rang loud off the stone as everyone around us started moving a bit quicker to get where they were going. The place became eerily quiet then, only shuffling feet could be heard around us during that hypnotic minute. Palestinian flags and other paraphernalia everywhere as we wound our way (with some pedestrian help) to Jaffar sweets. This place feels more intimate in some hard to describe ways - more like a neighborhood. It feels lived in. At the same time I can sense a less-than-friendly attitude here towards tourists. Maybe it’s the Ramadan fasting that’s made people crankier than normal, or the years of occupation and hardship that shows on their faces as (less often) naked disdain or (more often) as world-weary distrust. The sweet shop was open but with all the chairs up on the tables. Our k’nafa was served hot and surly, and most definitely in a to go bag. No one eating or drinking anything here, so we saved our desserts for later when, back in the Christian quarter, we sat on the sidewalk eating hummus and recounting our time in the quarter. Kishor had seen a young kid who was all smiles playing with a (real) gun, casually pantomiming shooting him when he got caught looking for a second.

Later that afternoon we set out for the Mount of Olives - the hillside on the Eastern end of old Jerusalem and the site of Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus was arrested. We were going to see the sunset, and figured we’d catch an easy cab (~3km) across the city from right around our place. We flagged the first cab we saw, hopped in, and then told him where we were going. “I am not going there” he told us unceremoniously. This repeated two more times, the last guy giving us the more direct message “You need Arab”. Israeli cabs are basically unwilling to cross into Palestinian territory - we had understood this would be the case with crossing through wall itself but didn’t it would be such an issue just getting to the other side of the (un-physically divided) city. With some urgency, we began looking for an Arab driver and, as luck would have it, the next guy who pulled over looked/spoke the part and he agreed to take us. Interestingly, he already had a passenger in his car - a Jewish guy about our age (btw I’m going purely by yarmulke here) who spoke to him in Arabic. Because the cab driver (we later learned his name to be Abir) didn’t speak much English, young Jewish guy helped us translate, telling us that they were going to drop him first, then be on our way to the Mount. We got moving - the two in front having a cordial but not overly familiar conversation (in Arabic) - first through the posh parts of West Jerusalem. Sidewalk cafes and plant nurseries - a couple happening little strips we hadn’t yet caught any glimpse of. Then we dropped passenger #1 and headed into the east side. 

We had negotiated a fixed rate with Abir for the trip (first it was an option - when we declined and asked for the meter he changed his strategy). Assured of his fare and running late for iftar, Abir set sail. Bobbing and weaving through the side streets - “is traffic - why turn” - sent us rolling up the hill and into the Palestinian neighborhood. Arabic graffiti and bombed-out concrete foundations dominated the architecture.  A lot more people were on the street, just hanging - families with kids and all that. Our minds both jumped to comparison with the predominantly black neighborhoods around where we grew up along the Mid-atlantic (of the US). On the one hand, poverty was evident everywhere you looked - the houses and cars were humble and the place was run down. Corner stores seemed like the only businesses (probably these places didn’t sell any booze at all although I can’t be certain - but basically the same look and feel as a corner liquor store in the states). However this place had again the clear feel of a real neighborhood - an actual community where families hung out on the street, kids played amidst the bent rebar, and young guys stopped passing cars to say what’s up to their friends who were coming through.

Abir was relentless - slamming the accelerator every time 50 feet opened up ahead of him, honking non stop, sliding by other cars quickly on dangerously narrow cliffside roads. He had to stop for a cop car that was blocking the way trying to turn left. I thought to myself there’s no way he’s honking his way past this guy, at least. Instead the cop, immediately recognizing his own error, threw it in reverse to clear the road. Abir had stopped already and was annoyed (I guess) that he didn’t just go through with his turn, so even as he was being allowed through first he gave a honk of displeasure.

Finally we arrived at the lookout on the Mount of Olives. Abir dropped us, gave us his number, and went off to break his fast. The Mount of Olives is a panoramic view of the entire city and we arrived in time to see an absolutely brilliant (if windy) sunset. It was mostly empty - a couple of stragglers but it felt like just us up there. As per usual Kishor snapped some killer photos of the course of an hour and we wondered how we were getting back as some kids in a Mercedes sped over and did a few donuts in the lookout parking lot. They lit off but we found a separate cab that just happened to be waiting there for some gents like us. We even got a slightly better deal on the ride home. 

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3 Quarters of Jerusalem

Sunset in Tel Aviv

The first day in old Jerusalem was more like walking through a museum than through a city - historically fascinating and box checking-ly rich but without much of a lived in feel. We had come the afternoon before on the bus from Tel Aviv - which from parts I saw could as well be Montreal in the summertime or another such breezy, cafe-strewn kind of place. I’m not knocking it - in fact it was extremely friendly and pleasant, just not overly “foreign” to my american eyes. Jerusalem was wholly different right from the jump.

We walked from our one bedroom apartment in West Jerusalem to the old city - through the Jaffa gate into the Armenian quarter, past a million Arab-run souvenir shops selling postcards, crosses, and flimsy backgammon sets. We walked down a hundred stone steps that made up the ancient street where later we saw a mom struggling to get her stroller kid up and out. It looked exhausting even from a distance until a friendly stranger helped her out by grabbing the front end and they nearly ran the rest of the hill together as the sun set and it seemed like the entire old city was emptying out for iftar.

I’m honestly not sure whether to laugh or cry with this one

Down along those stairways we found our way to the major sites - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on top of the tomb of Christ and Golgotha (Kishor seemed mildly impressed when I pulled out “place of the skull” immediately - 12 years of nuns, uniforms, and confession to thank for that). At the Greek Orthodox chapel inside there was some chanting going on when we arrived, and we all stood in line to kneel down underneath the main altar and you reach your hand inside to touch the actual rock. The way it’s set up is pretty unnerving, actually. The tomb itself is in a tiny room you have to get all the way down and kind of crawl into and then there’s only room for two people to kneel down and pray.

The church is cavernous. Something like 19 different church sects are represented there on various floors and with various chapels - these include Ethiopian, Syrian, and Armenian Orthodox, as well as the Coptics, the Catholics, and the aforementioned Greek Orthodox. Lots of spiral staircases leading to secret rooms we did not explore and lots of guys wearing large hats.

An hour later we were standing at the Western Wall over in the Jewish quarter. That had made for three quarters out of four but something told us there was more. More life to this old city - less tourism more reality. Less chintzy fake gold camels and more hustle bustle / street hummus. Sadly the sun was dipping low by the time we tried to cross into the Arab quarter (geographically a good bit more than a quarter, it turns out) the border patrol Israeli soldiers denied us from going in. It’s Ramadan, recall, and everyone is headed to the mosque to break fast or home to do the same. The old city was shutting its doors. We were trying to reach the mosque as well - The Dome of the Rock - to complete our religious trifecta in a day, but quickly figured out that it wasn’t going to happen. As it turned out because of Ramadan we couldn’t ever get to the Dome courtyard at all, let alone go inside. 

Instead we hightailed it back through the Christian quarter and after a quick sidewalk falafel stumbled upon a humble-looking Lutheran church with a high tower. It was a place Chelsea (who lived and worked in Bethlehem for a couple years) had recommended. Turned out to give us an awesome view of the city, including the dome, after what seemed like infinite stairs. 

Photo credit: Kishor

[ihavemorequestions]

LOST is telling us to relax

I’m digging through my archives and finding other pieces of writing sitting in various other places that I like. This is one of those, originally posted right after LOST, a show I was pretty darn invested in, ended.

LOST ended last night, and hundreds (if not thousands) of analyses will soon be written and posted. Before I go ahead and read any of those (notably: Noel Murray's from the A.V. Club, who I've been following pretty consistently but haven't read in a couple weeks) I thought I'd make some comments of my own.

Majors spoilers to follow. In quick summary, what happened last night was this: they killed Smokey after pulling out the earthquake plug, then Jack put it back in and left Hurley in charge before keeling over in the bamboo forest where the series began. Sawyer, Kate and "the rest" were last seen taking off in the Ajira plane to escape. But more importantly (at least, in the context of this post) they wrapped the alterna-timeline with Jack realizing he (and everyone else) is dead, and that they've basically constructed this reality in order to ease their passage onto the next stage of the afterlife game. In other words, alterna-LA was purgatory, but the island was real life.

The crowd I was with last night gave it an immediate (and knowingly hasty, half-joking) thumbs down. I've always been of the opinion that LOST is the type of show you either decide to like or decide to be frustrated by, and after making up your mind about this what actually happens on the show is of small consequence. Having of course chosen the former, I've always been slightly confused as to why the latter continue to watch religiously each week. In any case, the common complaints about the show (it's slow, it's cheesy, no answers, or the plot's too ridiculous) have always puzzled me as well, since it seems to me these are actually the foundations the show has been built on and has managed (somewhat impressively) to stay consistent to throughout. Also I've never found it "slow"at all (except maybe season 3) but I think that's just a difference of opinion on what the word "slow" means in this case.

On to the analysis: I've digested it a bit and as predicted I've been liking this ending more and more. On the one hand, they've managed to tie up their gambit with the alterna-timeline and package it as an epilogue of sorts, albeit a psychological one. Secondly, they've stayed consistent with the show's own format of outlining characters lives past, present and future. And finally, they've reinforced one of the major themes of the show which is "letting go of old shit so you can move on".

Throughout the season I found the alterna-timeline interesting but also exhausting. Like past LOST story arcs and secret methods, I couldn't see where it was going and so it was easy to be frustrated with it. It didn't appear to be moving the plot forward at all or serving the show as a whole other than perhaps continuing to question the relative nature of time-space and fate versus free will, while also (now it's easier to see) not so subtly pushing the "let it go" philosophy. The end has Jack finally coming to terms with (basically) his own death, then embracing the most important people in his life one last time before letting go and moving on. It was a nice way for the audience to see the characters interact again (even post-death, I mean) and within a more subdued and calm reality (read: LA after a safe landing). It also helped a lot in rinsing our mouths of the potential evil-Locke aftertaste by showing the Locke we love triumphing (finally!).

Certainly one way the show will be remembered is by its sometimes overly direct, occasionally delicate interaction with the blogosphere. It strikes me as the first show with writing and story arcs being directly affected by nerds analyzing and discussing the show. Clearly this was a curse and a blessing, but all in all I believe Darlton handled it quite well. I think a lot of people will be saying that the whole "purgatory" idea may have originally been planned as the conceit of the entire show (like, the island isn't a real place) but that because of speculation and direct questions to that effect early on in the series, the producers had to change their plan a bit and then come back to the purgatory concept in a roundabout way. I could definitely believe that, but let's leave it aside and just say the show got to where they eventually wanted to go.

The show's always been about the details of the characters lives. At the outset, they accomplished this through a creative flashback structure. Later they used flashforwards, and now, as it's finally been revealed, we even get the characters' post-death stories. Think about that for one second. There's a completism there that is admirable, if nothing else. We got very full stories for our 6-10 major characters.

I've got a soft spot for material that suggests death as another birth, so my immediate reaction was to like this approach. I'm a scientist and an atheist, but find these ways of thinking are completely compatible with the possibility of an afterlife. In fact I dislike the idea that belief in an afterlife is seen as synonymous with belief in god (why's the universe gotta be a dictatorship?), and notice how the non-denominational church in LOST is basically saying we all end up the same, regardless of our beliefs...but anyway this is a digression. The alterna-timeline showed us how the characters all eventually came to terms with what's really the most significant thing humans have to come to terms with: their own mortality. Perhaps it also showed the characters as their own ideal manifestations of themselves (Sawyer's on the right side of the law, Jack's well-adjusted, Hurley's lucky, and Locke has his shit together, sort of). It was pretty uplifting, really, not only because of the suggestion that we can meet up with lost loved ones (so they're not "lost", are they?) but also because it helped put in sharp perspective all the "real life" events of the show, which brings me to my final point: LOST is telling us to relax.

Despite the island being a real place and the events and struggles therein being very real, the purgatory storyline about letting go makes it seem a bit allegorical to the unnecessary stress and out perceived importance of everyday life. This is accomplished two ways, I think: first, the obvious juxtaposition of a relatively calm and simple purgatory/afterlife with the breakneck pace and life or death/save the world shitstorm of (on and off) island life, and second by leaving so much to the imagination in the real timelines' conclusion. Ambiguity was a great move here. We can just assume that Kate and Sawyer made it home to their (sorta) kids and Desmond somehow made it to Penny and Hurley stayed on as protector with Ben as his number 2 (also alluded to in a line from Hurley to Ben outside the church), but also, I don't really care so much. We all end up dead sometime, and the wheres and whens seem a lot less important in retrospect, right? (The other purpose of this was to highlight that the show is really about Jack and that he's the one who get's the most complete arc, and the last shot of the show gave it nice wrap around as well, etc...).

More importantly, everything on the island was put through a prism of black and white, all or none, won or "lost". Every event was seen as having (potentially) grave consequences toward the fate of the universe and each individual's specific importance (and special status) was reinforced again and again. I keep thinking that one of the major issues in the world is so many people seeing life this way (in other words, in terms of the extreme). In truth, nothing is black and white, and realizing this has a remarkable ability to calm people down. Our lives and actions aren't the going to make or break the entire world (see: fate vs free will and the Faraday debate of "details"). We, as individuals, aren't terribly important (see: the shifting candidate list). So in the end LOST is trying to put a fine point on how even through some serious struggles the black and white conception of the world is a fantasy. It's something we dreamed up so that games like backgammon make sense, but you simply can't apply it across the board (ha ha). So seriously, everybody: relax. post script: I could say more but this seems like plenty

post post script: I also just got back from Japan yesterday, so I'll write about that soon.

[ihavemorequestions]

Christmas in Chiang Mai

After our bevy of American visitors left us we headed in the opposite direction - deeper into Asia to housesit for some friends living in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chiang Mai is in the far northern section of Thailand - a small town by comparison to Bangkok but a thriving destination for tourism and ultimately a very singular place. It’s got a reputation for being a bit like Berkeley - slowed down, granola-infused lifestyle with a ton of natural beauty and a quirky art scene. Although fairly accurate, this description doesn’t do the place justice at all. Despite crawling with foreigners of all strands this place managed to feel a lot more like “the real Thailand” to me, and made reevaluate my concept of this country. There are, as it turns out, at least 3 Thailands and my current preference is for the northern, landlocked version. 

We stayed in the old city - a series of awesomely explorable alleyways and main drags surrounded by a well-manicured moat with pedestrian walks and fountains amidst the crumbling chunks of an ancient city wall. Our friends had recently moved from Berkeley (coincidence?) and had a sweet two-story house nestled into an elbow joint of the map and surrounded by jackfruit trees. While they traveled in India, we offered to come stay and watch their dog, Chloe. House to spread out and work? Check. Dog as companion? Check. Mexican food on delivery? Scooter fueled up and ready to rock? Oh yes - Christmas indeed.

The driveway of our Chiang Mai homestay with Kexin at the helm of the Honda

Exploring the alleys of Chiang Mai old city was made infinitely more fun on a scooter. Something about a non-grid pattern where you’re just using a general compass direction as guidance is so liberating. We had a similar experience walking the maze-like streets of Venice a couple years ago and this felt like somewhat of a throwback. Just think about parking and you’ve found a spot already. Brilliant.

The plan had initially been to connect with my old boss (Flywheel founder) Ali on Christmas eve, as he just happened to be traveling in Thailand at the same time - unfortunately Kexin got some kind of food poisoning and was sick in bed for most of the next two days, while Ali ended up hopping a plane to the islands. When we did venture out it was to one of the many temples in and around the city. After so much Chinese temple architecture, these buddhist temples felt like a splash of cool water. Some really breathtaking courtyards exist right within the city walls. 

Monks sweeping up the high steps of a temple

I saw a lot of young kids in monk attire (temple boys, like monks in training). One such group was laughing merrily around a stone table while older devotees “ohm-ed” in the background. They were playing jacks - the most old-school, innocent game there is. Then I looked closer and noticed that all they had was rocks. The game consisted of tossing a small rock in the air and seeing how many rocks you could pick up before catching the first rock in your hand again. After the initial confusion I felt nothing but raw, nostalgic envy.

Chiang Mai has a lot more backpacker bars, roadside coconut stands, flavors of RedBull (proud product of Thailand) and open air martial arts bouts than Taipei, but that record wasn’t very tough to beat. I always marvel at how supportive Thailand is of its national sport Muay Thai. Everywhere I’ve been in Thailand there have been full fight cards promoted just about evert night of the week. I guess I’m a sucker for watching guys kick each other. Apart from drinking and night bazaars and the completely awesome Sunday market (where it seems like the entire city comes out to hang), Chiang Mai also had a bunch of trendy coffee house and boutique areas. Pop art sculptures and mobile maker-fairs were found along the outskirts (or rather near the newest condo developments, I’d gather). There was one shopping district we went to that was aiming at “winter wonderland” by covering a huge pedestrian area in white sand and playing Christmas music. They had even employed people to walk around and sift out the leaves that were disrupting the illusion. 

Speaking of winter wonderlands - we spent one day in a small tour bus in order to visit the Golden Triangle, the spot in the north where Thailand meets Myanmar and Laos. On the way we stopped in a smaller city called Chiang Rai and this beast pictured below. The weirdness is not really being captured in the picture but it’s bizarre and magnificent all at once. 

As for the Golden Triangle, you go up to a lookout point above the Mekong river (I was destined to visit river again in just a few short weeks, this time thousands of miles downstream at the delta) and you can see all three countries. We took a boat trip to Laos for just long enough to mail a postcard and to hear that, because of a large casino on the Laotian side, locals often refer to it as “Laos Vegas”. 

All in all we had an amazing week in Chiang Mai - we stayed there through New Year’s, a night punctuated by many homemade fireworks and a city full of paper lanterns. Unlike the ones in Taiwan that we calligraphed our hopes and dreams upon - these were straightforward white paper being sold cheaply on every street corner. The entire sky was lit orange by the lanterns floating away as we walked home along the moat and into 2015.