tgtravels

Aaaaand that's a wrap

2010-06-07T23:11:00.002-04:00

I didn't really have anything to say while I was in Buffalo, so I didn't. Which is not to say that I didn't have a good time. Because I did. I just had nothing to say. I'm back to wondering why I even try to maintain this thing.

Buffalo, Day 1

2010-05-31T23:44:00.002-04:00

So here I am, six years after my first visit.

This isn't a proper trip. I'm basically here for a conference which begins Thursday night, and I will have to spend my nights working on my presentation. This is hardly ideal - there are some interesting pubs around here that I wanted to check out - but I will still have plenty of time to wander and explore during the day. And eat. Definitely, definitely, definitely. That all begins tomorrow.

Earlier tonight I asked two dudes on the street, both African American, if they knew anywhere I could get soul food/southern food in Buffalo. The first guy responded "fuck you man!" and stomped away. I wonder if perhaps he thought that I was being racist. The second guy told me to check out Broadway Market, in the East Side (not the safest part of the city). He then demanded money for having answered the question; I think he may have been a hobo. I gave him a dollar.

The end

2010-05-18T05:25:00.002-04:00

I'll be back in Canada in less than ten hours, and already thinking about getting back into my life there. First, my beloved Club de Hockey Canadien. They're having their best playoff run in 17 years, and I've basically missed all of it (Game 7 vs. Washington, all of the Pittsburgh series, Game 1 vs. Philly). I'll be back in Toronto in time to watch Game 2. And thank goodness.

A little tougher will be getting back into my work. I've done bits and pieces while on this trip, but obviously not enough, and I will have a mountain to plough through when I get back, not least of which will be preparing a presentation that I will be giving in at a conference in Buffalo on June 4. Usually when I travel, I have a brutally hard time getting back into my work; for me to be an effective, efficient academic, I must be sealed in the academic bubble. It has to be my entire life, or at the very least, I have to live by its logic. Traveling has the nasty side effect of prompting in me an existential crisis: traveling takes me outside this bubble, forces me to interact with loads of interesing people who live fulfilling lives outside the academic realm and inevitably results in me questioning why the hell I'm doing a PhD in an obscure field in which there are basically no jobs. Why do this when I can work for an NGO in London like B? Why do this when I can be a teacher in Sweden like Cailan? Why do this when I can have any number of rewarding jobs that actually pay decent salaries, which of course would allow me to travel even more? I've already begun asking these questions, and I suspect it will take a little bit of time before I can adequately answer them.

In the meantime, I already have another trip lined up: Buffalo! It's for a conference yes, but I've arranged to go a few days earlier so that I can adequately explore the city. I'm beyond excited to be in the rust belt again, and in a rust belt city with such a crazy local food culture no less! I'm sure I will be dispatching reports from there in this space as well.

Denoument: or, a frenzied return to London

2010-05-17T06:16:00.002-04:00

So I am probably by now the world's foremost lay expert on ash clouds and that blasted Icelandic volcano. This is what happens when a much desired holiday is imperiled. I have actually been very lucky with my flights so far. My Toronto-London flight took off as scheduled only two days after ash cloud related cancellations in the UK. My London-Stockholm flight took off, but only after a dramatic shift in winds that prevented the ash which had wiped out flights as far south as Birmingham from descending upon London. So I was probably due some ash-related inconvenience.

The story is this: I was supposed to fly from Stockholm to London (Stansted) on Monday night, and then London (Gatwick) to Toronto on Tuesday morning. But then, upon my arrival in Stockholm from Helsinki, I read that more ash was drifting southeast and had forced flight cancellations as far south as Manchester and Liverpool. Every news story I could find predicted that the ash would continue moving southeast and disrupt flights in London on Monday (the day I was scheduled to fly). I guess I began getting really nervous when East Midlands Airport, not too far from Stansted, closed. I called my airlines, and here is what I figured out:

If my flight TO London on Monday was wiped out, stranding me in Stockholm, but my flight FROM London on Tuesday morning went ahead (a very, very, very, very real possibility), I would have had to buy a brand new ticket back to Canada, because Air Transat would be unable to accommodate me.

So basically, I had to answer these questions:

1. Did I really need to get back to Canada quickly? (YES)

2. If so, how much would I be willing to pay to ensure this? (Unclear)

3. Assuming that there would be ash issues in London on Monday preventing my arrival there (and every single report that I read on Sunday anticipated that there would be), was I willing to pay for a one-way Stockholm-Toronto flight? (NO)

So I took a massive gamble, packed up all my stuff, bolted to Arlanda airport, and bought a ticket on the last flight into London Sunday night. It was expensive... not as expensive as it could have been, and certainly not as expensive as a ticket to Toronto, but expensive nonetheless. And now I'm in London. And wouldn't you know it, it looks like all my freaking out was for nothing: flight restrictions in London were JUST lifted (literally five minutes ago), and it appears as though my originally scheduled flight will proceed. But I don't give a shit. I made the best decision with the information that I had at the time. As far as I'm concerned, I bought myself rather expensive flight insurance for my London-Toronto flight, as well as piece of mind. I had a good sleep last night. I probably would have stayed up all night in Stockholm monitoring weather reports.

And oooh, let's rationalize this a bit further: the amount I spent on that flight last night was probably the same amount of money I would have spent on hostels in England, Sweden, and Denmark if I didn't stay with friends.

I hope I never have to write about ash clouds ever again.

Vegas-On-The-Baltic, and Helsinki

2010-05-16T05:52:00.002-04:00

So here was the deal: an overnight sail from Stockholm to Finland, followed by a frenzied handful of hours in Helsinki, followed in turn by an overnight cruise back to Stockholm. Pretty much everybody who has ever met me knows that this isn't ideal for me. But I agreed to it because

1. I had awesome company for the cruise
2. This whole trip has been unideal and rushed, so why not rush Helsinki as well.
3. These cruises were evidently a cultural experience unto themselves.

And you know what? I had a blast. I may have had too much of a good time, as I barely got any sleep Friday night and basically explored Helsinki whilst running on fumes. And it's true, the cruise is a hell of an experience, with a very definite Vegas-on-the-Baltic vibe. There was a nightclub, a casino, slot machines, overpriced restaurants and tacky shows such as an American Idol style karaoke contest and an ABBA tribute band. The whole thing seems obviously geared toward Finns. Everybody who worked on board was Finnish, and all the emceeing for the shows and such was done in Finnish only. There was also a sauna. The passengers were a strange mix: seniors, families, and working class Finnish youth (mostly males) looking to get drunk on duty free alcohol.

I may have sung "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in the karaoke lounge.

Helsinki was very pleasant indeed. I wasn't there for very long, but I got a half-decent taste of what it's all about. It seems very livable, and there is plenty of water and green space. Very cool, but in an unpretentious way. The architectural mix is fun (19th and early 20th century), and was a welcome change of pace from Copenhagen and especially Stockholm. I encountered a lot of interesting bars, and some kickass music stores, where I ended up buying an album of Finnish surf music from the early 60s (I'm kicking myself for not buying the CD of Finnish do-wop classics). Mostly everybody I encountered was lovely. I was tired enough to butcher the Finnish word for "thank you" on three occasions, and each time the merchant apologized to me on behalf of the Finnish language. AWWWWWWWW! Finns are so cute and self-conscious!

I don't really have much else to say at this point.

This is my last day in Stockholm before flying back to London tomorrow and Toronto the day after. Or so says my itinerary: unfortunately, the ash cloud looks like it will probably screw this up completely. I told my Mom in an email that I should probably make it to London tomorrow night, but now I'm not so sure. Either way, it seems likely that at least one, if not both, of my flights will be disrupted in some way. We'll see. Come on north winds!

Södermalm, or how I discovered Stockholm's soul

2010-05-13T17:21:00.003-04:00

Ahoy. In Stockholm now, about to sleep my second night here. Synopsis: it's a'ight. I definitely prefer Copenhagen, but there is a case to be made for this city too. It's very pretty, particularly the old town. The public buildings are large and impressive. There are lots of swell sounding museums. There is lots of green space. And so forth. But walking around today... I'm not going to lie, I was a little bored. There was little of the grit or impatience or EXCITEMENT that is so refreshing about Copenhagen, and that smacks you in the face as soon as you abandon the tourist hordes. Did this city have a soul?

I should have known better. Last night, upon arrival, we met up with Cailan's friend Henrik at a bar in Södermalm, which appears to be the trendy or boho or hipster district du jour. The bar was great, and so were Henrik and his friends, and then we went to another bar, with Henrik but without the friends, and it was pretty great too. And a lot of other bars that we didn't go to likewise appeared to be pretty great. A lot of them had lineups, and there was a pretty lively street scene too. Obviously, we should have made a beeline for Södermalm this morning, but we were stupid and chose to wander around Stockholm's shopping area, which was about as souless an area as one can imagine (bearing the scars of 1960s urban renewal projects). Better late than never I suppose. We went for dinner in Södermalm, to some really old beer hall with high ceilings and really traditional Swedish food on the menu. The ambiance was raucous, the food was... errr... Swedish (OK, I didn't like my dish, it was too rich, but my starter, herring and cheese, was amazing), and there were fun drawings on the walls. That was more like it. A brief stroll through the streets post-dinner confirmed that Södermalm was indeed the place that Stockholm goes to party.

So yeah, we're heading there first thing tomorrow morning.

København

2010-05-11T10:32:00.002-04:00

I had an awesome post planned for today - seriously, probably the most awesome post in the history of the universe - but I am cold and tired and generally feel like shit. I will do my best not to sound too grumpy. Evidently people don't especially like hearing bad news when you're on vacation and they're not.

Regardless. I like this city. Most people do, I think. But I REALLY like it. I've tried very hard to find reasons I don't like it, but this has proven a frustrating exercise. The only thing that I knew really about Copenhagen before I came here was that a) it was the capital of Denmark, and that b) it's currently very, very, very trendy in architecture, design, urban planning, and food circles. This made me want to dismiss it as a little too perfect: too many clean streets, too many perfect little squares, too many perfect waterfront apartment buildings, too many contented, perfect-looking Danes whizzing by me single file on their bicycles, too many photonic energy workships. I tried hard to see it as a souless city that was too happily post-industrial, post-racial, post-political, post-everything.

Instead, I found a city with a surprising (?) amount of grit and soul, and a whole lot of really yummy smørebrøds (open-faced sandwiches) to eat. I've seen a lot of really awesome graffiti. I stumbled into what must surely be the coolest bar in the world (even though I never went inside). I was shocked to find an immigrant neighbourhood - Nørrebro, where I'm writing this blog - so close to the city centre, since immigrants have priced out and pushed to the periphery in pretty much every other major European city. I met some squatters. These are all good things.

Smørrebrøds are the cheapest things here to eat, by far: you can get them for as little as 10 kr (~€1.30). Consequently, I ate a lot. It would take me hours to describe every kind of smørrebrød I had, because I definitely had over 10, and maybe over 15. I will however say this: dill pesto may be the most perfect sandwich condiment every created. Yessir.

Tomorrow is a travel day. I'm headed back to Sweden, meeting Cailan and Sarah in Stockholm for a Swedish long weekend. I am very much looking forward to sitting and sleeping on a train for most of my day tomorrow. I think a day spent outside of Scandinavian drizzle will do my cold very good.

æ i ø u and sometimes y

2010-05-10T07:46:00.002-04:00

I already wrote this point once, but dodgy pirated Swedish wireless wiped it out. So perhaps this is the tuncated version.

I am in Copenhagen now, after 3 days in Orebro visiting with Cailan and Sarah. On the first night I snored and Cailan had to wake me up and tell me to roll over. On the second night, Sarah and I wandered around Orebro and bought me train tickets and ate yummy sandwiches and then met Cailan at her school and bought groceries and I ate a yummy dinner and then chatted with two of Cailan's Swedish friends about the lead singer of Europe and Swedish pornography from the 1970s. Orebro isn's particularly interesting to be 100% honest. "Functional" is probably the best word for it. My favourite part was probably where Cailan lives, Brickebacken. Brickebacken is what the locals would describe as the "ghetto", which in Sweden means the place where the dark-skinned immigrants live. I've read a decent amount about low-cost housing projects in Sweden (look up the Million Programme if interested), so it was rather fascinating to actually live in one for a few days.

And who knew that 1970s Swedish porno was so noteworthy?

Saturday was magic. We basically spent the day sleeping and watching 90s movies, resting up for the snaps (schnapps) party that night at one of Cailan's friends apartments. Here is the premise of a schnapps party: a bunch of Swedes make their own booze, prepare a bit of food, and then assemble at somebody's apartment to drink the booze, eat the food, and sing Swedish drinking songs. Unsurprisingly, I had a blast. These are the kinds of experiences I hope for when I travel: local booze, local food, and access to locals, all at the same time.

There were about 10-15 different kinds of booze, including one bottle that somebody had brought from Vietnam with a snake in it. Most of them were emminently drinkable, but my favourite was that one that was flavoured with chili powder, giving it one hell of a finish. It went really nicely with a piece of herring (of which there was plenty). For a while I tried to drink shot-for-shot with a tattooed gentleman named Kristian, but it soon became clear that this would likely result in my hospitalization, so I slowed to a more relaxed pace. And ate more herring. And then we went out to a bar for more drinks, and an exuberant fellow came in and began singing the Hives, and I had the inevitable soccer discussion with some dude where I got to show off my knowledge of Swedish soccer.

Everybody was lovely, even the bitchy people. I have decided that I like the Swedes. Except for that racist guy who got into the fight with the Englishman on the bus Sunday morning.

And now I am amongst the Danes! Copenhagen is pretty breathtaking so far. I'm staying with my friend Tiffany, who I met once upon a time in Malawi. She's interning with the WHO this summer, and has graciously allowed me a rent-free existence while in Copenhagen (much appreciated, accommodation in this city is stupidly expensive). She lives in an industrial area southeast of the city centre, about a block from what appears to be the Hell's Angels Copenhagen headquarters, in some sort of strange industrial era house/apartment building along with a gaggle of itinerant German labourers. This, of course, is awesome.

Sweden?

2010-05-07T04:18:00.002-04:00

I haven't been here for very long, only long enough to land at "Stockholm" Skavsta Airport (not actually in Stockholm, or even very close... thanks Ryanair!), take a bus to Stockholm, purchase a ticket for Orebro, and ride on a very lovely train through some fun countryside to Orebro. Initial impressions: this is like the bizarro NWT. The trees are the exactly the same: small, stunted, mostly pine, basically shitty. There appear to be lots of little lakes basically exactly like the ones out past Yellowknife on the Ingraham Trail, with cabins built on rocky shores. Except there are railway bridges soaring over these lakes, and next to a thicket of those pathetic little trees is what appears to be a fertile field. Things actually grow here! That, and periodically, there is a large city like Stockholm or Vasteras or Orebro, where in the NWT there are only places like Fort Providence and Hay River.

Servings of herring I've consumed so far: 0

Open-faced sandwiches I've consumed so far: 0

Conversations I've had about ABBA so far: 0

A-Bomb in Wardour Street

2010-05-04T16:53:00.002-04:00

Greetings. So, it appears that this bastard of an Icelandic volcano has begun to act petulantly again. It appears that the ash will drift south overnight and disrupt flights certainly in Scotland and maybe in the northwest of England (Liverpool, Manchester) tomorrow. And indeed, I've just read Scottish airspace is closed tomorrow morning. But the UK weather office is predicting that the winds will shift and blow the ash out of UK airspace completely in time for my flight to Sweden on Thursday. This better well bloody happen. That volcano DOES NOT want to mess with TG's travel plans.

It's unfortunate that I had to catch wind of that story this morning, because it really did prevent me from completely enjoying my day. Nothing spoils a day of wanderings more than worry.

So. I am tired as hell and ready for an early night's sleep before my equally early train to Leicester this morning. This is why. Please keep in mind that I walked this whole trajectory unless otherwise noted.

1. Angel to St. Pancras Station. Purchased train ticket to Leicester for tomorrow. It was expensive. Felt some very British righteous indignation about British trains. Again.

2. St. Pancras to Piccadilly Circus by tube. Went to see an art exhibit close to the south end of Savile Row - Soviet Art from the late 1980s. It was pretty fascinating. All of it was intensely critical of the regime, even despite Glasnost. A lot of the paintings were perversions of the hammer and sickle flag. There was a painting of Brezhnev making out with Erich Honecher.

It was very, very, very, very, very nice to go to an art gallery in a city named London and not have to worry about seeing 60 people I know. I knew 0 people in that gallery.

3. Piccadilly Circus to Soho. Went to check out a music store just off Wardour Street. Good selection, too expensive for TG. I had decided ahead of time that I wasn't buying anything for more than 3 or 4 pounds.

4. Soho to Covent Garden. Canadian/Australian/New Zealand/South African import shop. Bought two jars of Kraft peanut butter to deliver to Sweden, though I was stuck buying the Australian Kraft as opposed to the Canadian variant. Evidently the pb in Sweden is shite.

5. Covent Garden to Clerkenwell. Lunch at Exmouth Market. I was afraid that the food stalls were going to close - they're open for lunch only - so I had to resort to a mad dash up Farringdon Street. Turns out all that effort was for nothing, as not only was everything still open, but the Ghanaian guy from who I wanted to buy my lunch hadn't even started cooking yet. The solution: eat two lunches. First, a big cup of proper ramen, which I obliterated in about 2 minutes flat. Then, chicken and peanut stew from the Ghanaian bloke. Yummy. I definitely want to eat (and cook) more West African food.

6. Clerkenwell to Islington. More music perusal. Found and bought a cheap second hand CD by a singer/songwriter I like named Hermas Zopoula. He is from Burkina Faso. The capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou.

7. Islington to East Finchley by tube. What a terrible, terrible decision. East Finchley is far - zone 3 on the underground, which means that getting to it costs a lot of time and money. I went to check out a legendary music store, which I was led to believe had lots of used CDs, and better yet, had used italo disco CDs (finding italo disco CDs of any sort is generally difficult). I was poorly informed. Good vinyl store, mediocre CD store. And no italo disco anywhere, from what I could tell.

8. East Finchley to Southall by tube and train. This entailed taking to tube from East Finchley to King's Cross/St. Pancras, then switching lines and riding to Paddington, then getting on a regional train to Southall, which is out by Heathrow. Southall is known as London's biggest Punjabi neighbourhood, and it was wild. I figure Southall is as close to India as is possible in countries like the UK. Punjabi is definitely the main language there. Best part - the vast array of street food available: corn, vada pavs, tandoori meats, chaats, whatever. I opted for two cups of corns, served with lime and chili, and a vadapav, which is a mini potato and chutney sandwich that is popular in Mumbai. I tried to go shopping for some music, primarily bhangra and soundtrack music from the 70s, but everybody tried to rip me off. One lady quoted me outrageous prices for used CDs that couldn't have cost more than 2 pounds. Another guy asked for 3 pounds for CDs I found in a 1 pound bin. So in the end I didn't take anything home with me, other than the makhani daal I bought for B.

9. Southall to Old Street. Malaysian-Chinese dinner. Sweet and sour fish curry with okra. Yummmmmmmmmm.

10. Old Street to Angel. Home. Sleep. Leicester tomorrow!

Don't be a dick, ash cloud.

We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue

2010-05-03T10:29:00.003-04:00

Greetings. I am in London now. More specifically, south London. More specifically, in an internet cafe on Brixton Road. Truth be told, I'm glad to be here. I very much enjoyed my time in the countryside, but by Sunday I was itching to get back to a city. And here I am.

Obviously the best part of my tenure in the country was Amy's wedding. She got married in her home village, a place called Hanbury somewhere between Birmingham and Worcestershire. Hanbury Church is absolutely stunning, so of course I didn't take any pictures. It's on the top of a hill, and on a clear day you can see for miles, all the way to the Malvern Hills. Evidently the old stone church was used in some BBC program called the Arches. I don't know what that is, but everybody seemed quite pleased about it so I smiled and nodded.

I hadn't been to an Anglican wedding before, and the ceremony turned out to be simultaneously completely foreign and totally familiar. Foreign for obvious reasons; familiar because the structure, the music, the priest's spiel, the vows, and basically everything else are what we see on TV in Canada all the time.

There was a choir there, as well as people specifically charged to ring the church bells.

The reception was incredibly fun. Obviously I didn't know anybody other than the bride, the groom, and to a lesser extent Amy's family. Also, a fellow I encountered in Nottingham several years ago, who snuck into a club wearing jorts and hiking boots while the door Nazis were inspecting my passport. But he didn't remember me. No problem; being the Foreigner Who Has Drank Too Much is a role that TG can play very, very well. I don't really want to give a blow-by-blow summary of the reception, so I will leave you with three things:

-An entire pig was roasted towards midnight, and I estimate that I ate about a tenth of it.

-TG: "hello, I've never met you before. I'm from Canada, that's why I talk this way. Want to do a shot?"

-TG: "Hello, pleased to meet you. My name is Terry.
Lee: "Hi, my name is Lee, and this is my partner _________." (I'm pretty sure he said Danielle, but I'm not 100% sure.
TG: "Excuse me? I didn't quite hear that."
Lee: "My name is Lee, and this is my partner ___________."
TG: "Did you say that this is your harlot?"
Lee: "No. This is my partner."
TG: "Oh. Sorry."

This was when I stopped drinking.

So now I'm in London, enjoying the hospitality of Yellowknife expat and London bon vivant B, who has a much better blog than this one. It's a bank holiday today, so I'm just wandering around. I dropped by the Tate Modern to look at early Soviet propaganda posters, and I ran into a bunch of joyous Madeirans cecebrating Madeira Day in Kennington Park. I then proceeded to argue with an old man about how one is supposed to properly eat sardines. In Madeira, they peel all the skin away, and suck the meat off the bones. They discard the head, and ignore the liver and other inards. I think this is incredibly wasteful... in Greece, we eat EVERYTHING, although to be fair our sardines are much, much smaller than the ones I was eating. The old man thought that was tantamount to savagery. Proof that this man has doesn't have the palette to make that argument: he was happily drinking Portuguese beer, Sagres to be exact, which is likely the worst beer I've ever had in my life (other than Super Bock, another Portuguese beer).

I have big, big plans for tomorrow. Big plans. Also, Leicester on Wednesday. And Sweden on Thursday!

Ta.

Birmingham/Bromsgrove/Hanbury/awesomeness

2010-04-30T13:44:00.002-04:00

So, here I am. Jetlagged as hell and carrying a wee bit of a sniffle, but here nonetheless. The following things have happened so far:

-Thomas Cook REALLY crams people into the planes, I think there's even less room than Air Transat. I had a middle seat on my flight over, sandwiched between two rather burly men who made contact with me every time they moved. You can imagine how much I slept on the flight. I guess you get what you pay for - and I really didn't pay very much for this flight.

-I had the pleasure of informing three die hard Habs fans of Game 7's score in the Gatwick customs zone. They celebrated very loudly, and the customs agents told them to shut up.

-I've slept a lot, and at weird hours too. The couple that run my guesthouse are very pleasant, and have delighful Birmingham accents.

-I drank proper English beer at a proper English country pub with proper English people.

-There are sheep very close to my guesthouse. It's in the country, you see.

-I'm in Birmingham right now on a day trip, and have almost been hit by cars roughly 260 times. Evidently the cars here drive on the left side of the road. Who knew?

-It took me roughly 2 hours to begin complaining about the trains. How very English of me. But seriously, the amount they charge is scandalous: a return trip from London to Birminham, only about a two hour trip, cost about 65% of the cost of my flight. OF MY FLIGHT.

-The clouds move very quickly here. I had almost forgotten.

-I realized how much I like Birmingham, and regret not having spent more time here when I lived in Leicester.

Wedding tomorrow.

2010-04-27T17:59:00.002-04:00

So I'm buggering off again, and not a minute too soon. I'm off to England for a wedding + other matters, and then Scandinavia for an adventure. This trip will hopefully include scrumpy, baltis, Borough Market, Indian music stores, the cantankerous woman in Leicester who used to sell me cheese, the other cantankerous woman in Leicester who used to sell me jacket potatoes, schnapps, saunas, KD, rye bread, lingonberries, and so forth.

My plans in England are pretty set. 3 nights at a B&B in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, culminating in my dear friend Amy's wedding Saturday in Hanbury (just down the road from Bromsgrove). I may go into Birmingham the day before if I feel up to it. Then I'm off to London for four days of wandering, eating, CD bin digging, and other miscellaneous shenanigans. I will definitely be daytripping Leicester too.

And then, Scandinavia! I know the following: I am flying to Stockholm on UK Election Day, May 6. From there I'm heading to Örebro to visit my beloved friend Cailan. And I know that the weekend after, we're piling onto a ferry and heading to Finland (Helsinki? Turku?) for the Swedish long weekend. In between, ??? I'm thinking I might head down to Copenhagen to hang out with my dear friend Tiffany, who will have just moved there for the summer.

This kind of country hopping isn't really my bag these days. I much prefer to explore a city or region or country for a longer period of time. But I don't exactly have long periods of time to spare these days. Oh well.

Panic in Detroit

2010-03-28T19:12:00.004-04:00

Now that my parents are in Toronto, I have been quite the dutiful son and have visited them fairly frequently. This is both good and bad. Good: well, my parents are awesome, and so is Toronto. Bad: my trips to Toronto are heavy on family time, and very, very short of exploring time; and going to Toronto takes time and money, both of which are limited, and both of which I could be spending on expeditions elsewhere. So how does a wannabe twentysomething nomad make excuses to travel?

For one, sports. I have done a terrible job capitalizing on this so far, just terrible. How many times have I resolved to structure a Hamilton visit around a Bulldogs or Ticats game? Probably fifty times, no joke, and I still have never been. Perhaps these kinds of excursions are best done spontaneously, which is how this Detroit business came about. I am a fairly big boxing fan - please don't ask me to justify why I am passionate such a clearly barbaric sport, because I can't - and one day when I was looking through schedules, I noticed that a pretty big fight between two chaps named Andre Dirrell and Arthur Abraham had been postponed, with the venue switching to Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. DETROIT. Clearly a trip was in order, and it came together in literally a day (this is about two weeks ago). My travel partner was my buddy Mac, UWO's resident boxing fanatic (he's writing his thesis about it) and the dude that I watch most boxing PPVs with.

I have been obsessed with Detroit for a long time. For some odd reason, Yellowknife used to get CBS, ABC and NBC affiliates from Detroit, so I grew up watching Detroit local news and watching Detroit sports (I know more about Detroit high school basketball in the 1990s than a person from Yellowknife ought to). I feel like I know the city on a certain level, even though I had never been there. And more importantly: I'm really interested in postindustrial cities (rust belt, if you prefer), and Detroit is the mother of all postindustrial cities. Enough hacky articles have been written about the decline and current plight of Detroit, so I will save you the cliches. Clearly, the city is struggling, and this cannot and should not be sugar coated. But tales of Detroit's demise always seem to forget that actual people continue to live there, and that these people have a multiplicity of stories to tell.* So yeah, I was just a little curious about Detroit. How it took me almost three years to venture down there is beyond me.

(*It really bothers me when people talk about Detroit using death motifs. Detroit is NOT, I repeat, NOT a dead city. Dead cities, for example, do not produce the kind of music as is currently being produced in Detroit. IMO, Detroit is the best hip hop city in the USA, and the best techno city in the world. And I'm talking about right now. Detroit might be in the mother of economic slumps, but its inhabitants remain relentlessly creative. Dead my ass.

I decided to load my ipod exclusively with Detroit music for the trip. This was an inspired decision. Here's the list:

Black Merda - Black Merda
Death - ... For the Whole World To See
Finale - A Pipe Dream and a Promise
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On (obviously)
Morgan Geist - The Driving Memoirs
Invincible - Shapeshifters
J Dilla - Donuts
Yusef Lateef - Yusef Lateef's Detroit
Bettye Lavette - The Scene of the Crime
MC5 - Kick Out The Jams
Rodriguez - Cold Fact
The Stooges - Raw Power
Gino Washington - Out Of This World
Mixes by Kyle Hall, Robert Hood, Moodymann, Omar S, and Kevin Saunderson)

Given that we arrived Saturday afternoon and left the day after, I only had a few hours to explore the city. Just long enough to make me want to come back very, very soon.* We didn't even make it out of downtown, save for a short stroll west to Michigan and Trumbull to see what remains of Tiger Stadium (nothing), so we didn't see any urban prairie, burnt out city blocks, or any of that kind of urban blight. Downtown Detroit is bizarre. It is one of the most architecturally impressive downtowns that I've seen in North America. I'm a sucker for old school skyscrapers, and Detroit has them in abundance: Art Deco ones, neo-Gothic ones, you name it. It's pretty clear that Detroit once upon a time was a confident, important city. There are stately, imposing squares. There are statues of important people every couple of blocks. There are wide boulevards with what probably used to be luxury apartment buildings lining them. In many areas, the streetscapes are probably remarkably similar to what they would have been in the 1950s or even earlier; I guess one of the by products of being a financially strapped city is that you can't afford to tear down old buildings.

(*The agent inspecting my luggage at the border, after learning that this was my first visit to Detroit, said "yeah, it'll probably be your last." She is wrong.)

If the first thing that struck me about downtown Detroit was the architecture, the second thing I noticed was how deserted it was. I guess I should have expected this - trust me, I've done my required reading about Detroit, white flight, and suburbanization - but it was still jarring. Seriously, Mac and I would sometimes go five minutes without seeing anybody else. We jaywalked at every intersection because there were never any cars coming. These enormous squares, like the Campus Martius, were literally completely deserted. The same goes for the Riverfront. Most businesses don't even bother opening on the weekend.* It was eerie. There were more people around at night then during the day, which is both both reassuring and really, really creepy.**

(*Presumably these businesses open during Tigers and Lions games.)

(**At around 12:30 AM, we passed a club on Michigan Avenue that seemed to be where young, moneyed Detroiters go to show off their money. We passed millions of dollars worth of cars parked on the street. Most of the people in line were barely out of their twenties. Now, there are only a few ways that a 21 year old can make that kind of money. In a city like Detroit, there are even less ways. Draw your own conclusions.)

The third thing that jumped out was how preposterous the Detroit People Mover is. The People Mover is an automated train that takes people around downtown. It is also a colossal waste of money, which is made worse by the fact that Detroit doesn't have any to spend. Downtown was much, much, much more compact than I expected, it can't take more than 20 minutes to walk across it. There is no need to have a people mover in such a small area. None. Especially not when the the stations are 200 metres apart in some area, and especially not when the frigging thing ONLY GOES CLOCKWISE. So if you want to get from Joe Louis Arena to the Financial District, you have to go all around the downtown circle. Of course, nobody would ever take the people mover from the Joe to the Financial District - it's a 3 minute walk.

The only part of downtown that had any foot traffic at all was Greektown, which by all accounts is thriving. This is where we had our pre-fight dinner. Now, I usually steer clear of going out for Greek food. Greek resto food in North America, some notable exceptions in New York and Washington notwithstanding, is incredibly boring. Every restaurant has pretty much the exact same menu, and most of their quality is nothing to write home about (especially not when you grew up eating my Mom's Greek food). But Detroit is known as one of the better cities in North America for Greek... so why the hell not? And you know what? It was half decent. We ordered a bunch of things and shared them (which really is the only way Greek food should ever be eaten at a restaurant). I did the cliche thing and ordered saganaki, both because it's impossible to fuck up and because I wanted to see if the waiter would light himself on fire. No such luck. We also ordered marinated octopus salad and fried calamari. The octopus was perfectly acceptable; the thing with octopus is that it takes a long bloody time to prepare, and if the restaurant cuts corners you can taste it immediately. The Cyprus Taverna doesn't cut corners. The calamari was heavy on the batter and therefore not good. They clearly fried the entire batch in old oil; seriously good calamari always uses fresh oil for every batch, so that the batter cooks up to be light (there are some places I know that change the oil in the middle of a batch). The roast lamb that we ordered, however, was spectacular, fall-off-the-bone tender and not overcooked (a problem in Greek restos) and overall delicious. Score.

Also eaten in Detroit: a Coney Island hot dog! A Coney is basically chili dog, but deserves a different name in Detroit because Coney eating seems to be an important cultural activity. We went for a Coney at about 12:30 AM after the right, and the place was PACKED. I saw more people chowing down on Coneys and chili fries in that little diner than I saw on the street the entire afternoon. And rightfully so, Detroit Coneys are magnificent. It's all in the chili: it's beanless (beans would serve merely to weigh the dog down), a little spicy, and mixes really well with mustard. There is clearly another Coney in TG's future.

So the boxing. This was my chance to interact with Detroiters (as well as watch people pummel each other in the ring). Boxing in the US is now basically an ethnic sport, and Detroit is no different. The overwhelming majority of the fans at the Joe were African-American (there to cheer on Andre Dirrell, from just up the road in Flint), with a small but vocal group of Armenians there to cheer on Arthur Abraham. Because pretty much everything in Detroit has to be understood in the context of race, I should probably state that there were few non-Armenian Caucasians there. Everyone seemed to know each other; local boxers from the under card went up into the crowd to shake hands and mingle with friends/fans/whoever. Everyone was super nice (this goes for the city in general; lovely people).

The main event was insane. Dirrell had the fight of his life and looked like he was cruising to a win over Abraham. But in the 10th and 11th rounds, Abraham came storming back. At the end of the 11th, Dirrell slipped on the canvas while trying to dodge an Abraham punch and fell to his knees. Abraham promptly clocked him and put him down for the count. Nobody knew what had happened until they showed the replay of Abraham punching Dirrell when he was on his knees (very illegal, and very dirty). You evidently do not punch Andre Dirrell when he's on his knees in Detroit. Shit turned ugly really, really quickly. Random dudes jumped the boards onto the floor level and were heading toward the ring, clearly with the intention of starting a melee (the security was nonexistent). Once I saw these dudes jump the barrier and head for the ring, I was 99% sure there was going to be a riot. This may seem like a ridiculous thing to say, but you just had to be there. Violence was in the air. Thankfully, they announced at this point that Dirrell had won by disqualification. Any other result and some really, really, really bad shit would have went down.

DETROIT!

Conference fatigue

2009-11-07T09:59:00.003-05:00

So, NASSS. Interesting conference. I don't really have anything to compare it to except for the other conference I've attended, NASSH (North American Society for Sport History). You'd think that a sport history and a sport sociology conference would be reasonably similar, but they definitely are not. I'm not really interested in assessing their respective strengths and weaknesses in this space. But NASSH is definitely an easier conference for me to attend, because people there tend to be more interested in my work. Case in point: I received literally zero constructive feedback about my presentation here on Thursday. There was barely anybody there to begin with, and, other than the TG support group (Western people + a really awesome dude named Travis from Indiana University that I met at NASSH), everyone else was clearly there for the other guy in my session (Jonathan Magee). I think I got two questions after my presentation (both were softballs), and nobody sought me out afterward for follow ups (which usually tends to happen).

So yeah, I've found it difficult to talk to people here because there simply aren't many people who are interested in the kind of stuff I'm currently working on (sport and national identity, sport media, sport in the developing world). There have probably been 4 or 5 presentations about national identity (compare this with probably over 20 sessions about gender), barely anything about sport and media. Probably 97% of the presentations (if not higher) have been concerned with the English speaking West. And that's fine, it's not as though I dislike presentations about gender, race, obesity etc. etc. But these conditions make mingling and networking, which I'm not particularly good at to begin with, extraordinarily difficult. There have been a couple of occasions where I've introduced myself to someone, explained what it is that I did, and then had that person mumble something and then walk away rather quickly. This is not to say that people here are unfriendly, just that people would rather mingle with peers whose work they're interested in. And that's fine. But it also makes for some awkward mingling sessions.

It's been pretty cool to be around people who are so passionate about their work. It has rubbed off on me a little, but I still remain pretty down on academia.

Truth be told, I'm suffering from acute conference fatigue. I just don't have the personality to be around people as frequently as a conference dictates. I could use some TG time before I head off to Montreal on Sunday, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.

NASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

2009-11-06T10:27:00.002-05:00

So I presented yesterday. It went fine. My goal at these things is to avoid being humiliated, and I wasn't humiliated. I haven't gotten any feedback from anyone at my session, so I'm not sure whether it was well received or not.

Ottawa! (kind of)

2009-11-03T15:24:00.002-05:00

I haven't updated this blog in a long time because there hasn't been anything in my life worth writing about - specifically, there haven't been any travels from May until now. My summer was a complete waste on the travel front. I had to study for my comprehensive exams and couldn't get out of the province, much less the country (I passed, by the way).

My wild and impetuous travel days are basically finished, methinks. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I'm getting to an age where I'm supposed to take work seriously. I'm not really in a position to travel while I'm writing my thesis (because, you know, I have to write my thesis), and then presumably I'll have a job of some sort, where I'll be expected to work and not encouraged to strap on the backpack every so often for a grand adventure. Sure, I guess that there's always the chance (hope?) of a debilitating quarter life crisis where I quit my job and board a one-way flight to Algeria. But I doubt it; I'm just not the type of person to dynamite my Plan A without a coherent Plan B.

I realize that lots of people manage to squeeze in trips even while having demanding and time consuming jobs - it's just a matter of capitalizing on the small amounts of time I'll have. And this brings me to the second problem: should I spend the small amount of travel time and money I have to go off on grand adventures, or to go see my family and friends? I live in London, Ontario. My parents live in Toronto during the winter and Greece during the summer. My sister lives in Calgary. I have cousins in Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, and Greece. My closest friends live in Yellowknife, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Sweden. I have other friends that I would love to visit in places like Halifax, Washington, Nashville, Boston, England, Germany, Italy, and Korea. But to do so takes time and money so by doing so I'm basically putting paid to any opportunity of having another grand adventure. It's a terrible, terrible conundrum: I'm basically being asked to chose between my friends/family, and my single most favourite activity. So far the friends and family are winning out. I only had the time for a one week trip this summer, and rather than jet off to San Francisco or Chicago or New Orleans or Philadelphia or one of these cities that I so desperately want to visit, I went to Toronto and Montreal. And I'm perfectly fine with that, because I like both of those places and I like the people I see when I'm there... but at the same time it kills me that I'm not using that time to explore new places. I dunno.

My last hope is school-related travel. Going to conferences for me is a professional obligation, and I even get a little bit of money back from my school as reimbursement. I've been fairly unlucky with conferences so far: two of the three so far have been in places I've already visited before (and the next one I hope to attend will be in Buffalo, New York - which I checked out in 2004). Still though; Ottawa IS preferable to London, and a conference is still infinitely more exciting then my everyday life. The conference is that of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. I'm giving a 20 minute presentation about sports blogging. I don't actually know how to do sociology, so it should be a pretty intimidating experience. Mercifully, I present very early in the proceedings - I'm scheduled for the first day (Thursday) during the second session (the morning) - so I'll be able to relax afterward and enjoy the proceedings.

The conference runs through Saturday night. On Sunday, I head to Montreal for three days of research, beer and merriment. Wheeeeeee!!!!!!

Washington, Day 1

2009-05-26T13:23:00.002-04:00

Just got here. Tired as hell. Slept maybe 15 hours in my 4 nights at the conference. Don't feel like writing right now.

Asheville, Day 2

2009-05-22T00:17:00.002-04:00

Today I made a big decision: I've resolved to read rather than lecture for my NASSH presentation. The lecture style just wasn't working: there was just too much stuttering, too many pauses, too much nervousness. Reading from a prepared text is much easier, and has the added bonus of not needing any more preparation. So rather than spend the next few days worrying and giving myself an ulcer, I'll get to actually enjoy the conference. Assuming it doesn't suck.

I wish I had made that decision earlier, because I just wasted two nights in Asheville prepping for a presentation I'm no longer giving. I did some decent wandering today though, and some damn good eating. Had breakfast as a local southern joint, and had eggs, sausage, grits, a biscuit and fruit. The place came recommended, but I wasn't really impressed with it. The grits were plain (completely unacceptable) and the biscuit likely wasn't homemade. For shame. Lunch was much, much, much, much better. I went to a BBQ joint in some industrial park called 12 Bones and had an entire rack of ribs, jalapeno and cheese grits, collard greens and cornbread. Hog heaven. Asheville isn't considered a great BBQ city, but I honestly can't imagine pork being cooked any better.

The only problem with eating southern BBQ is that you inevitably feel like shit afterwards. It's 9 hours later and I'm still full, and I feel like I weigh approximately 300 pounds. Which I very well may. I need to seriously cut my caloric intake for a while.

Tomorrow I leave this old house on Ravenscroft and head across the river to the Crowne Plaza, where the conference is taking place (it starts tomorrow night with a wine and cheese). As long as the hotel bar serves local beer, I'll be happy.

Asheville, Day 1

2009-05-21T00:16:00.002-04:00

Here I am, safe and sound. It has been an acceptable first day. My first impression of Asheville is pretty favourable. It has a cute, compact, Art Deco downtown; most of the good stuff the city has to offer seems to be located downtown (good for people like me without a car); there are scores of hippies and other miscellaneous weirdos (like the kind with dishevelled hair who talk to themselves on the street) milling about to keep things interesting; there are more than enough coffee shops, little shops and restaurants to keep me busy for 6 days; and the bars serve very, very, very good local beer. That's a pretty good package for a city of 75,000.

I didn't get up to too much today. I arrived in the city at about 4:30 or so, and by the time I was settled in my hostel, it was 5:00. That left me enough time to get my bearings around downtown, sample three pints of local beer and a sample of local mead (!!!), and eat an insanely large portion at a Carribean/Mexican restaurant (pulled pork enchilada with pineapple salsa and various other yummy things) which I still haven't fully digested. Then I had to wander back to my hostel to work on my NASSH presentation.* Sucks. It is very frustrating to be in a new city and have your exploring time limited by work obligations.

(*I'm staying by myself in a fairly large house just south of downtown. It's owned by the hostel I was supposed to be staying in. The dude who runs the hostel - a dude named BJ politically liberal enough to have already turned on Obama - had given away my reservation. I think he was stoned when I spoke to him. But he placed me two doors down in this house, which he's converting into a second hostel building. The place is, ahem, under construction - the living room is ripped up, and there's basically nothing finished in here except for the room I'm staying in and the bathroom. I'm the only guest staying here. B.J. is letting me pay half price, which is pretty sweet.)

Some random occurrences/observations from today:

-A sales clerk in the Detroit airport cold me that I had "cute jeans".

-The Detroit airport rules.

-Delta Airlines now charges $15 to check in luggage, the bastards.

-The Asheville airport is basically on a mountaintop. If a plane ever skids off the runway... well, let's just say I wouldn't want to be in that plane.

-The highway that connects Asheville to the airport is called the Billy Graham Parkway.

-My taxi driver, who I think could be accurately described as a good ol' boy, was cold to me, and perhaps even borderline rude, until he discovered that I was from Canada and not some stinking Yankee carpetbagger. Then he was super nice.

-Not too many Southern accents here so far, and the ones I've encountered aren't very pronounced (my taxi driver aside). I've decided I'm disappointed about this.

-I hate school.

Why I hate French sociologists

2009-03-23T22:30:00.002-04:00

I will NOT be making an overseas trip this summer, and it's all because of this guy.

I'm taking a Social Theory class this term, which is actually a Bourdieu class. This is the fifth class I've taken during my PhD; I was only required to take 4 to meet my institutional requirement. Still, my advisory committee thought it was a good idea for me to take the class, in order to give me some exposure to social theory. Taking a class exclusively about Bourdieu doesn't really give me real exposure to "social theory", but whatever. I agreed to take the class.

(I have now taken 1 social theory class and 0 historiography classes in my PhD. I am allegedly doing a degree in history. Makes total sense.)

Anyway, Bourdieu has taken up enough of my time this semester that I haven't been able to study for comps... at all. It became evident that writing comps in June would have been suicidal. So now I'm writing comps in September, which means that I'll be studying for them over the summer. Which means I'm not going overseas anymore.

Initially, I was absolutely devastated. But I've known this for about three weeks now, so I've begun looking on the brightside. Clearly, I'll be using this summer to discover the surrounding area a little. There's no excuse to not go to the Stratford Festival. I could see myself discovering some Lake Huron beach towns. I'll probably head to Hamilton for the first time (Mustard Festival?). I almost guarantee that I'll be tagging along to Oshawa with my roommate at some point. A proper trip to Windsor and Point Pelee is almost definitely on the cards. I'll definitely head to Montreal at some point, I've never actually been to any of the thousand summer festivals there.

And I can go further afield too! I can guarantee that I'll go do a Western Canada trip to see my sister in Calgary and miscellaneous other friends in Alberta and B.C. Perhaps I should go to Calgary for Stampede? And I'll probably throw in a US trip too, since this summer seems like an opportune time to finally go to Chicago and Detroit.

Any who knows where else? At least it won't be an uneventful summer.

Yesssssssssssssss

2009-02-26T19:46:00.002-05:00

My friend Amy is getting married in May, either this year or in May 2010. That was unclear in the e-mail. That is interesting for two reasons:

1) May is an anagram of Amy.

2) Amy lives in England. To go to her wedding, I would have to travel to England.

ROADTRIP!

New Trip!

2009-01-31T15:07:00.003-05:00

My hope with academic conferences was that they'd give me an excuse to travel. You know: I'm going to be in Place X anyway, which is close to Place Y, so I might as well go to Place Y since I'll be in the area. I did that last year with the NASSH conference last year. I was disappointed that the conference was in Lake Placid, a place I had visited on a school field trip two months prior, but Lake Placid is relatively close to my beloved Montreal so I spent a few days there before the conference. This year's NASSH conference is in Asheville, North Carolina, which is exciting for a couple of reasons:

1. It'll be my first time in North Carolina.
2. Asheville sounds like a reasonably interesting place
3. Asheville is kinda/sorta close to Washington, where my friends Chris and Roshni live.

Road trip! Here's my itinerary:

1. Northwest Flight 2975, Detroit (DTW) to Asheville (AVL). Departs May 20 1:35 PM, arrives 3:10 PM.

2. Delta Flight 4946, Asheville (AVL) to Atlanta (ATL). Departs May 26 7:20 AM, arrives 8:23 AM.

3. Delta Flight 1956, Atlanta (ATL) to Washington (DCA). Departs May 26 9:30 AM, arrives 11:12 AM.

4. Northwest Flight 237, Washington (DCA) to Detroit (DTW). Departs May 30 6:30 PM, arrives 8:16 PM.

How are there direct flights from Detroit to Asheville?

The conference festivities start May 22, so I've given myself 1.5 days to properly investigate Asheville. There will also be some free time during the conference itself, which I plan on maximizing. I had a pretty negative experience at NASSH last year and want to spend as little time as possible around the conference. Goals for Asheville? My primary goal is to eat North Carolina barbecue and various other southern delicacies. But allegedly Asheville has become a centre for various cultures, has a better nightlife than most most cities of under 100,000 people, and the downtown is peppered with Art Deco buildings. In other words, it's a definite upgrade on Lake Placid as a conference site.

I looked into taking the bus from Asheville to DC because I really wanted to go through some of the towns on the route, but it's not really doable in a day; the only option that would get you there same day is via Winston-Salem, where you'd have 10 minutes to change buses. I'm sort of on a tight schedule (you know, studying for comps and all) so I really can't afford to get marrooned in Winston-Salem for a day. Though Winston-Salem sounds pretty interesting too. So I bit the bullet and plumped for a flight. It wasn't even expensive either, this whole trip (including transportation from London to the Detroit Airport) costs about the same as a ticket from London to Calgary.

Four nights in DC. I've been there before, with my parents when I was 12 years old, but we basically treated it like a museum. My only recollection of Washington the city was being in a MacDonalds with a whole bunch of black people; it was the first time I'd been around so many black people in my life. This time I will go neighbourhood hopping instead. Though I might go to a museum. I'm also contemplating a daytrip to Baltimore, because I find that city absolutely fascinating (I love, LOVE, old American cities). Chris and Roshni actually live in Bethesda, Maryland, so getting to Baltimore shouldn't prove much more complicated than getting to DC. But we'll see... I'm sure there's plenty in DC that will keep me occupied for four days, and I don't want to give Baltimore just a cursory look over. But the allure of crabs is very, very, very hard to resist.

2009-01-18T22:52:00.002-05:00

So I've decided to keep this a travel blog. I've thought about blogging regularly about other topics, and even made a few abortive efforts to that end, but ultimately the minutiae of my daily life doesn't interest me enough to bother chronicling on a regular basis. But traveling... now there's a topic everyone loves. I like writing about it and people evidently like reading about it.* So I'm going to stick to that.

(*A woman from Mozambique actually commented on one of my Maputo posts. I am absolutely shocked that anybody outside my circle of family/friends/acquaintances actually reads this.)

The bad news: since I have a semester from hell*, there will be very little traveling for the next four or so months. The good news: from May until August it looks I'll be in almost constant motion. For starters, I'll be attending a conference in Asheville, North Carolina at the end of May. Also, I've resolved to do some local travel in southwestern Ontario when the weather turns. And finally, it looks as though I may have all of July and August to myself, so obviously I'm getting out of the country (though I'm still thinking about where I want to go).

(*Semester from hell: comprehensive exam [massive written/oral exam that take 3-5 months to prepare for, and if I get less than 75% then I get thrown out of my program. No pressure or anything] + reading-intensive class + re-writing two papers + preparing two conference presentations + Grapevine duties + finding a new apartment for early May + helping to find my parents a place in Toronto for their imminent move)

But as of now I'm stuck here... and Ontario in the winter SUX.

TG = future Pulitzer Prize winner

2008-10-07T16:37:00.002-04:00

So I am currently writing for a monthly campus newspaper called the Grapevine. Quite unexpectedly too: my editor approached me after a few Irish car bombs and I was quite happy to help out. I am quite happy to do most things after a few Irish car bombs. The deal was initially to write a sports column, but I'm now also penning a restaurant column and various other things (hopefully a music column soon?). It's all quite exciting. I've become bored with writing academic papers and the Grapevine gives me an opportunity to express myself in a different and much more interesting way. I think the Grapevine is Western's "alternative" student publication, and my editor wants us to write as informally as possible. I can use as many expletives as I want. It beats the hell out of the shit I produce from 9 to 5.

My first batch of articles was mediocre at best but I guess that's to be expected... I'm not exactly experienced in this kind of writing. My sports column was a piece of shit, but a lot of that was circumstance's fault. I wanted to write a retrospective on J.P. Ricciardi's tenure as Jays GM, because I was fully expecting JP to get the sack. Well, about a day before my deadline news filtered out of Toronto that Cito Gaston was being extended as manager, which made it likely J.P. would hang on for at least another year. So I have to completely reshape my column into a 2009 Jays lookahead. I pinpointed the Jays lack of offense as their most pressing offseason issue, which it was... until two days after I passed in my story, at which point I found out that Shawn Marcum signed up for Tommy John surgery and Dustin McGowan likely wouldn't be ready for the start of the season. And of course I didn't mention pitching at all. What a piss off!

The restaurant column went much better. Notice my using the term "column" instead of "review". I prefer not to assign grades or anything like that in my column, I'm instead cherry picking places I already like, and writing about how awesome they are. I have intention of being critical, because London's dining scene/culture is such a pathetic joke that it strikes me as preferable to try and build it up rather than be negative. For example: I've been at Hong Ping, my favourite Chinese place in the city, on three separate nights when I've been the only patron in the joint. This is an A+ restaurant about a 5-10 minute walk from downtown (albeit in a dodgy part of town), and it's frequently less than 25% full. Meanwhile, all the overpriced, mediocre places downtown or on Richmond Row are rammed, pretty much every night. It's a ridiculous state of affairs - one which I hope to fight against by highlighting good restos in out of the way locations and praising the hell out of them.

So here is my inaugural resto column. Turns out it's difficult to use a lot of qualitative descriptors in one paragraph.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, so London isn’t exactly a dining mecca. But still, doesn’t it seem like there should be more options for West Indian food? The choices here are sadly limited: Island Style on Hamilton Road has been serving up Jamaican food for a long time, Jambalaya on Richmond Row has rotis and a few other Caribbean inspired dishes, and West Indian curry cravings can also be satiated at the New Delhi Deli in Covent Garden. Beyond that, serious aficionados have to make the trek to Hamilton or to one of the hundreds of good places in the GTA. So naturally I was curious when I heard scuttlebutt that a Trinidadian-run place had opened in East London. When I was informed that the food was actually pretty good, I assembled a great gang of hungry friends, herded them onto the #2 bus and went off to investigate this place myself.

As it turns out, Trini Town isn’t a “new” restaurant in the strictest sense. Located amid a dystopian stretch of car dealerships, strip malls and big box outlets on Dundas east of Highbury, it occupies the same building as the former White House Pizza, which closed not too long ago when the owners retired. But a new proprietor with a delightful Trini accent took over the building, dusted off White House’s pizza recipes (including the White House special, featuring ingredients such as saltfish, pimento peppers and tamarind sauce), added a menu full of West Indian fare and voila! Trini Town was born.

And thank goodness for that, because the food was very, very good. We were unfortunately limited in what we could order due to an inopportune shortage of saltfish and oxtail, but we still managed to sample a large portion of the menu between the six of us. The jerk chicken, accompanied by a veritable mountain of rice & peas and some coleslaw ($14), was a revelation: it was fall-off-the-bone tender, practically melting in my mouth. This dish, like all mains, was served with tamarind sauce and a blazing hot scotch bonnet pepper sauce that is not to be taken lightly. A bunch of us ordered rotis, which come in vegetarian, chicken, beef (all $10), goat ($13) and shrimp ($15) varieties. These too were freshly made and scrumptious, with whole chickpeas instead of that dubious paste that some restaurants insist on using, and big hunks of meat. The Trini San Coche ($14), a beef, lentil and dumpling soup, was also a standout: it was aromatic, savoury, and incredibly filling. But the fried okra and melogne (both $4) side dishes may have stolen the show. The okra was dusted with cornmeal, lightly fried, bursting with flavour and left us wanting more. The melogne consisted of baked eggplant mashed with garlic, a no-nonsense and tasty compliment to the main courses.

Trini Town is the kind of place where you walk in starving and waddle away bursting, but don’t expect to be in and out in half an hour. The food takes an excruciatingly long time to emerge, a wait made worse by the tantalizing smells wafting in from the kitchen. And the service, though friendly and apologetic (the owner/cook gave my friend a hug after his order was screwed up), was disorganized and left a lot to be desired. But these are minor quibbles, easily outweighed by the quality of the food offer. Go, and go often.

Trini Town
Address: 1487 Dundas Street (east of Hale) – take bus #2 (Dundas) from UWO or downtown
Phone: (519) 453-0066‎
Hours: TUE-WED 11 AM-9 PM; THU-SAT 11 AM-MIDNIGHT
Alcohol: Yes
Wheelchair Access: Yes, through a street level doorway.
Vegetarian Friendly: Yes (veggie roti, veggie curry, corn soup, a plethora of sides)
Credit Cards: All types of plastic accepted
Price: roughly $20 per person for main, side and drink
Delivery: Available for pizza, but delivery coverage isn’t city wide.
Website: www.trinitownrestaurant.com

Now what?

2008-09-29T23:30:00.002-04:00

I keep flirting with the idea of continuing to write posts in this space and make it a "real" blog instead of a specialized travel blog. There are a bunch of reasons why I probably won't:

a) I've tried it before and discovered that I don't have anything particularly interesting to say when I'm not traveling;

b) I am not a particularly strong writer, especially when I'm writing about non-travel things, and I dislike doing things I am bad at;

c) I am generally stressed out and unhappy during the school year and would like to prevent this space from becoming an outlet for my pseudo-philosophical whinging;

d) Sedentary life SUCKS.

Strange places I'm currently dreaming about visiting: Egypt, Korea, Suriname, Angola, Kyrgyzstan, and pretty much everywhere else with an airport. *Sigh*

Yup

2008-09-22T23:45:00.003-04:00

I have been back in Canada for almost a month. Sedentary life SUCKS.

Sotiritsa, Greece

2008-08-19T15:09:00.003-04:00

There is an internet cafe in my village! And what a wretched place it is. There are only ten terminals here, two don't function, and the other eight are usually taken by kids playing Counter Strike or sullen middle ages dudes hemorrhaging money on Party Poker. Everyone else is sitting around, smoking cigarettes.

Life has been rather idyllic here, at least since my sister got out of the hospital. She picked up something approximating traveler's diarrhea, but much worse. We thought that maybe it was amoebic dysentery, but I'm assuming they tested for that, and it came back negative. She was in the hospital in Larisa, about 40 km away from the Estate. It was an unfortunate experience, but it was interesting to see how Greek hospitals work. The verdict: not very well; it was inefficient, there was an appalling shortage of nurses, and nobody cares about you unless you know somebody. Luckily for my sister, my family has connections at that hospital: three of my cousins are doctors there, and pretty high ranking doctors too. At first, the junior doctors and the nurses were rude to my sister because she is obviously a foreigner, and they were set to shove her into a room with like 10 other patients. But then my cousin Costas, one of the doctors, came to visit with my parents and let's just say that there was a marked change in how my sister was treated after that. She was moved into the smallest room in the hospital, and once it was determined that her roommate (a decrepit 80 year old woman from some village in Epiros) was insane they were all set to move her into a room all by herself. Getting good service in Greece is definitely still about who you know.

After Helen was released, the usual Estate activities of swimming, watermelon-eating and general laziness began. They haven't stopped yet. Yesterday was the first day Greeks had to go back to work following their two-week summer vacation, so now the beach in front of the Estate is empty. Good. The less people the better. We now have an uncle of ours from Toronto staying with us for an undetermined period of time. Other various family members have passed through as well. One night there were about 15 people visiting, which was insane. It was my family (4 people), close family friends and their four kids, my sister's godfather and godmother and three members of the godmother's extended family, plus my cousin and his girlfriend. But usually it's a steady trickle, with just a few people visiting every night.

I have vague plans to hike up Mount Olympus. Vague, because once I get to the Estate it's very difficult to get me to go elsewhere.

Life is good.

I don't want to go back to school.

Guca, Day 5

2008-08-10T05:16:00.002-04:00

This is the last day of the festival and frankly, I'm pretty happy about that. Overall, this has been an unbelievable experience, likely the most fun I've ever had, but I'm really eager to move on to Greece and see my family.

Also, I'm didn't have as fun a time last night as I had the previous three nights. The village is now overcrowded to the point where it takes half an hour to walk down one street. It is literally shoulder to shoulder out there, with barely any room to dance. This makes it impossible to meet people on the street. I spent half of last night looking for people I had met during my first two nights here, but it proved basically impossible. I eventually met four Polish people who were absolutely lovely, but I'm incredibly disappointed that I didn't run into the two Austrians, two Australians and two Brits who I previously partied with. We hadn't yet exchanged emails and now never will because they left for Belgrade this morning. My other problem with having this many people around is all the garbage it creates. There are hundreds of temporary rubbish bins around Guca, but a thousand more are probably required. By 3 PM, there are greats heaps of rubbish piling the streets: beer bottles, beer cans, various food wrappers, etc. By midnight, the village is absolutely filthy. Honestly, the true heroes of Guca, in addition to the families who open up their houses to visitors, are the people who clean the place in the middle of the night. At 9 AM, when the party is in full swing again, Guca is actually clean.

I also think the tone of the party has changed. It's still a drunken piss-up with crazy music playing at all times, but now it's a Serbian nationalist drunken piss-up with crazy music playing at all times. There were always people wandering around with Mladic or Karadzic t-shirts and shouting nationalist slogans, but during the first three days there were also people sporting Zoran Djindic t-shirts. It seems like all the Serbs who have poured into the village starting Friday afternoon are all ultra-nationalists from either Republika Srpska or southern Serbia (notorious nationalist heartlands). Honestly, I could care less if people want to be ultra-nationalists, and I think I'm a lot more tolerant and understanding of Serbian nationalist than most people. Plus, Guca is first and foremost a festival run by Serbs for Serbs, so they can express themselves however they please. But it can be very uncomfortable for foreigners, or Serbs who aren't ultra-nationalists, it just kills the party vibe for them. For example: I was chatting and drinking with a bunch of Serbs near the town centre, and having a great time. I was dancing and shouting. Before I knew it, half the people around had Karadzic posters and were shouting slogans which I presume meant something like "Karadzic is a hero." What am I supposed to do in a situation like that? I'm certainly not going to start waving around a Karadzic poster. So I left. This wasn't the only such situation either.

So it's time to leave. I'm slated to go back Belgrade tomorrow, and from there I jump on a Thessaloniki-bound overnight train that goes via Macedonia. That's pretty exciting. But first there are more brass bands to dig! The finals of the competition are today at 3 PM in the stadium, after which there's a big street party with the winning band. Should be fun.

Guca, Day 4

2008-08-09T06:41:00.003-04:00

I'm still alive!

Things just get more and more insane. People have poured into the city in the last 24 hours as week has turned to weekend. And it's not just people looking for a party either, every street hawker, panhandler, war amputee, swindler, crook and pickpocket has arrived as well. I've seen the strangest things for sale. Ever needed one of those long wire thingies to snake out your drain? You can get them from three different people in Guca. How about a vintage Bosnian Serb army uniform? Ditto. One guy was selling chainsaws. I'm pretty sure chainsaws are the last thing you should be selling to drunk people.

The Boban Markovic concert last night was a level of crazy that I've never seen before. I have no idea how many people were in the stadium last night, I tend to be very bad at estimating these things. There could have been 20 000, 50 000 or even 100 000. Either way, it was a sea of humanity. You could tell the Serbs from the foreigners because the Serbs were so drunk they could barely stand. Foreigners were a little more stable on their feet. People were passing around bottles of booze and were throwing entire cups of beer into the air. By the end of the concert pretty much everyone was soaked. Toward the end, an Italian dude (acting like he was just released from jail) dumped an entire cup of beer on my head. Everyone was dancing like maniacs and shouting. Towards the back of the stadium, where there was more room, people were just running around in circles and hurling themselves into the grass. I've never seen people hard so hard in my life.

And the music was unbelievable. A number of foreign bands opened for Boban Markovic. The best of the lot was from Reims, France, composed exclusively of either doctors or medical students. They ran around the stage like maniacs and yodelled into a microphone. There was also a school band type of outfit from Poland. They even had cheerleaders. They were all 10 years old and were scary good musicians for being so young. Then, finally, Boban Markovic took the stage at about midnight. I forgot to take note of how many people were in his hand, but it was something like this: Boban and his son Marko on trumpet, one guy on bass drum, one guy with snare drums, three French horns, two tubas, and perhaps a trombone. Not sure about the trombone. They were amazing. Most of the bands around town play one of two kinds of song: either fast and loud, or slow Serbian singalong folk songs. Boban and his band played everything, including a lot of mid-tempo stuff in strange time signatures with long, intricate trumpet solos that the drunken crowd didn't know how to dance to. They were clearly better than every other band in this village. Every note they played was crisp, clean and clear. This was particularly impressive when they were playing fast - even at 250 beats per minute, every note played was crisp and precise. Boban Markovic is still the band leader, but the main trumpet is now his son Marko, who I think is only 20 years old. He is already better than his father. I have never seen or heard a better technical trumpet player than Marko Markovic, and I doubt I ever will. He can play anything, at any speed, in any style. And he can also scat in Serbian! The band played for about 2 hours. With half an hour left, there was a loud screech, and then silence. It looked like the band had busted an amp or a speaker or something. I didn't see any technicians anywhere and I wondered if they were as drunk and everyone else. Some people in the crowd started to boo and throw beer cans in the direction of the sound engineers, but then suddenly the music started again. It turned out only to be a power surge and thank god, because I'm pretty sure there would have been a riot if the concert had to stop prematurely.

And today - more of the same! There is a parade through the streets of Guca today with all the bands involved in the competition playing and hundreds of thousands of people drinking and dancing. It is going to be insane. Before that, at 3:00, I am having lunch with my family again. They are roasting a pig in their guests honour. We'll see if the pig is enough food for everyone. They have accepted more and more guests as the week has gone on. In addition to over 10 people sleeping in their house, they now have about 20 people, mostly French, sleeping on their lawn in tents or, in the case of one guy, sleeping on the grass wrapped in a tarp. But the food will almost certainly be amazing. Yesterday I had lunch with my family as well, we had a stew of cabbage and pork which is evidently common at Serbian weddings. It was delicious.

This rules.

Guca Day 3

2008-08-08T08:01:00.002-04:00

And I'm beginning to slow down. Last night was about as ridiculous as the last one, ending with me climbing to the top of a statue of a man playing a trumpet with a Serbian dude, then almost falling off and breaking my back. Good times! But I can't take that much more of this, for two reasons. First of all, I'm tired. My stay in Serbia has been basically a nonstop party, and I simply am not used to partying this often. Nor do I particularly like it; if nothing else, all this jumping around has taught me that I really, really, really value my quiet time. Secondly, somewhere along the way, probably in Belgrade, I ingested something that I shouldn't have ingested and now my stomach does backflips pretty much every time I put anything into it, including water. So you can image what booze does. 40 days in Africa and I didn't get sick once, and here I am with stomach pains in Serbia.

So even though tonight promises to be more frantic than the last two nights combined (all the Serbs who couldn't get time off work will be flooding into town tonight), it will necessity have to be a quiet night for me. In an hour of so, I'm having lunch with my host family. From what I have gleaned about Serbian hospitality, there will be more food than I can possibly eat. That will likely be followed by an hour or so hovering near the toilet as the food makes quickly makes its way through my system. And then tonight, Boban Markovic plays a concert in the stadium. Markovic leads the best brass orchestra in Serbia; if I hadn't randomly bought a Boban Markovic album three years ago, I wouldn't be there today. The concert starts at 11 in the stadium and will go probably until 3 in the morning. I probably won't get to sleep until 4. This is what constitutes a "quiet" day at Guca.

Guca, Day 2

2008-08-07T09:17:00.002-04:00

There is an internet cafe in Guca! I was afraid that I would have to write a gigantic post when I got back to Belgrade, and there is no way that I would be able to encapsulate everything that's going on here in one post.

Guca is a village of 3000 people, about three and a half hours south of Belgrade. For those driven to try and find it on a map, the closest major city is Cacak. This part of Serbia is mountainous, and Guca is surrounded by hills. It is an absolutely breathtaking village. Holding a gigantic trumpet festival/debaucherous party in a village of 3000 people presents some serious problems, not least with accommodation. 500,000 people will come to Guca this year. A lot of them are Serbs from Belgrade or Cacak or Nis or somewhere within driving distance who come for the day then retreat back home (driving drunk, inevitably) to sleep. But even if only 20% of the people who come to Guca sleep here... well, that's still a gigantic problem. They tell me there is a hotel here, but I haven't seen it yet. Pretty much every family in Guca has opened up their houses to travellers. A lot of people camp. And a lot of people, including a Welshman who I met in Belgrade, sleep in fields, the town square, or collapse on the street, drunk. I am staying with a family. There are nine of us staying at their house, three per room. I have no idea where the family is sleeping. I am staying in a room with a Frenchman, Laurent, and an Irishman with arguably the most Irish name of all time, Patrick Murphy. We arrived at about 6:00 PM last night. Immediately, the family made us sit down and offered us food, coffee and booze. The father, who's in his 50s, immediately took out shot glasses and put them in front of Patrick, Laurent and I. It was slivovice. We thought that it was just a welcome drink (very common in Serbia), but he kept filling up our glasses after we finished and insisting that we drank more. We probably had 7 shots of slivovice, and we were drunk. And then we went off into the night.

How can I describe this festival? How's this: it's a bunch of crazy people (almost all Roma) playing crazy music to even crazier people (probably 95 Serbs and miscellaneous other foreigners). The festival is loosely structured around a battle of the bands. There are competitions all overt Serbia, regional playdowns, and at the end 16 bands emerge, representing all regions of the country. These bands give concerts in the stadium (not a soccer stadium, but a specially-built stadium for brass music!) and there is a panel of judges who give the bands marks. The winner wins the title of "zlatna truba", or golden trumpet. What that entails I don't know. Probably money and definitely fame. Meanwhile, in downtown Guca, hundreds of brass bands play for the thousands of people milling around. They play in restaurants, on the street, anywhere there is room. Remember, this is a village of 3000 people, so this is all happening in a very confined area. You can walk 20 metres and another band is playing.

It is absolute madness. The music is fast and pulsating. Serbian brass music isn't "traditional" music per se. A lot of it is, and I'd say that the bulk of the repetoire of most bands consists of Serbian folk songs. But there is new material being written all the time, and all sorts of foreign influences are easily identifable. Last night I heard a band playing Brazilian samba on brass. Most bands are about 8 people, but sometimes more. You'll always have a bass drum, a snare drum, at least two trumpets (definitely the most important instrument in the band), a tuba or two, and some melange of trombones, french horns, flugelhorns, sousaphones, whatever. The music is absolutely frenzied - songs are played in double time, at 200 beats per minute or faster. The harder people dance, the faster the musicians play. Everyone is drunk. I've never met a group of people who enjoy drinking and partying as much as the Serbs. The music starts at about 7 AM, and continues in earnest until about 3 AM though if you know the right bar, it never stops. Meanwhile, there are vendors everywhere, selling beer, slivovice, vodka, every other kind of alcohol you can imagine, massive amounts of grilled and roasted meat (ethical vegetarians probably shouldn't ever come here, because there are entire pigs being roasted on spits pretty much everywhere you look), t-shirt and every other kind of trinket you can imagine. It's a crush of people in a very confined area.

I was separated from Laurent and Patrick but I ran into some people who I met on the bus down here, two insane Austrian guys and two Australian girls. We just bounced around from bar to bar and wandered down the street, listened to music and danced. Various people joined us along the way, including an English couple, various Serbs, a couple from Madrid, and innumerable French people. French is basically the second language of this festival, there are a lot of French people here. At about 1 AM we went into a bar and we stayed a while because the band was good. If you like what the band is going, you give them money. The more money you give them, the longer they will play, otherwise they'll just leave and set up shop at another bar. But this band was good and the people at the restaurant were generous. I guess word gets around among the bands about good places to play, because soon there was another band in this tiny restaurant. And then there was a third. It was absolutely insane. You had to get really close to the band you wanted to hear or else the other bands would kind of drown them out. Consequently I spent a lot of the night dancing right next to blaring tubas, which is definitely fine by me.

We moved on to another bar where we made the acquaintance of some Bosnian Serbs who insisted on buying us drinks. OK then. The band at the previous restaurant followed us there. They made a circle around me and one of the Australian girls and we went absolutely crazy. I danced harder than I'd ever danced in my life. I probably spent $40 (a lot of money in Serbia) on this band because they were amazing and I didn't want them to stop. There are two main ways of paying the band. First, you can shove the bill into the lead trumpet (always the trumpet). Or, and this is my preferred option, you paste the bill on the lead trumpeteer's forehead. They are invariably sweating so much (everyone sweats in Guca all the time) that the bill sticks. They blasted at us for about 45 minutes. Afterwards, everyone was exhausted (it was about 3 AM) and wanted to sleep, but I ran into the Welshman who I had met in Belgrade and we decided to keep partying. We went to the main square and drank with Serbs (who of course never sleep). I learned some interesting things from them. For example, some of the bars, including the one we had just been at, are known as havens for Serbian ultra-nationalists. The Bosnian Serbs we met there definitely fall into that category. Moderate or pro-European Swerbs generally don't step foot into those bars. They have their own preferred bars and restaurants, where ultra-nationalists (many of whom are wearing Mladic or Karadzic t-shirts) aren't welcome. I am learning a lot about Serbia here, more than I did in Belgrade.

I finally stumbled home at 5 AM. This morning, the family served me a wonderful breakfast of cheese pie, eggs, watermelon, greats heaps of food I had no prayer of finishing. He also offered me slivovice. Brandy at 9 AM. Why the hell not. The insanity here never ends.

Belgrade Day 5

2008-08-05T12:24:00.003-04:00

I am leaving Belgrade tomorrow and thank God. This is less a reflection of the city than of the people who are staying at the hostel with me. Belgrade has a fantastic, debaucherous nightlife, but it's hardly the only thing to do here, though you wouldn't know that from the habits of everyone staying at this hostel. People want to get destroyed every night. And that's fine, but I've began to get a little bored of that. I've tried to float the idea of finding some kind of unique Serbian restaurant, but nobody finds that idea interesting (there are traditional Belgrade bistros called kafanas with ale and crazy food and people playing the accordion). Disappointing.

I am deeply disillusioned with hosteling in general. I'm 26 years old; it's no longer fun to share bunks with drunken 18 year old English guys who want to get drunk and buy Serbian prostitutes.

I had to leave Belgrade yesterday or else my head was going to blow up. I took a day trip to Subotica, which used to be an important city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now basically a sleepy border town on Serbia's border with Hungary. Northern Serbia has a significant Hungarian minority, and the bus went through a lot of Hungarian villages on the way to Subotica. There isn't a lot going on in Subotica, but it's very leafy and pleasant and drips with Austro-Hungarian ambiance and was basically a perfect change of pace for me.

So this is it for me in Belgrade. I come back here after Guca, but just for enough time to catch an overnight train in Thessaloniki. This city is pretty amazing but if you visit, make sure you come with a LOT of energy. This is a 24 hour city, and it's rather pointless to visit if you're not willing to adapt to those terms. Belgrade reminds me a lot of Bucharest: similar size, not always aesthetically pleasing (though there are some very, very nice parts of both cities), exuberant, hard-partying, full of really, really nice people.

And now, five days of trumpets.

Belgrade Day 3

2008-08-03T13:41:00.002-04:00

This city is absolutely FRANTIC, and it may just be impossible to avoid getting caught up in the madness. I partied last night until 9 AM and I didn't even mean to. I finally got my clothes back at 9 PM, and to celebrate I went immediately on walkabout (I had been cooped up in the hostel all day waiting for my luggage). I got back to the hostel at about 12:30 AM, and I was all set to go to bed, I wanted to wake up early and make a day trip to Novi Sad or Subotica or somewhere. I thought that by coming back so late, I would avoid outgoing partygoers. Well, nobody in Belgrade goes out before midnight, and things don't really heat up until 2 or 3 AM. So the partygoers were still at the hostel and convinced me to go out. What's the harm in a few beers?

A few beers is never just a few beers in Belgrade; the city just sucks you in. We ended up back at the Sava River, on a floating bar. It was a turbopop bar. Turbopop is a form of Serbian popular music that's basically souped-up versions of old songs, with synths and drum machines replacing traditional instrumentation. Turbopop basically sounds exactly like Greek music from the same era, just sung in Serbian and with a slightly different sound (i.e. synths instead of acoustic instrumentation). But the rhythms are the same, the timber and style of singing is exactly the same. Walking into that bar (we were definitely the only non-Serbs there) was like walking into a Greek wedding. So I stayed there until close and danced and danced and introduced myself to various Serbs (who of course liked me because I'm Greek and bought me slivovice) and sweated. In recent years, certain Serbian DJs have started remixing old turbopop songs; I started listening to this "neo-turbopop" about a year ago and I absolutely love it. The band actually played a few songs that I knew and could sing along with (well as much as one can sing along with lyrics in a language they can't speak). The Serbs at the club was pretty thunderstruck that I knew Serbian songs; they thought I was a madman. So more drinks were bought on my behalf.

At closing time (6 AM), I wandered out of there and promptly made the acquaintance of a Serbian-Australian and his Serbian cousin who had all sorts of crazy tattoos on his arm and was a complete lunatic. I chatted with them for a while and before I knew it, it was 8:30 AM. Oh shit. Time to go home.

If I don't leave Belgrade soon, it's going to kill me.

Belgrade Day 2

2008-08-02T13:44:00.002-04:00

My luggage is still AWOL. I called Air France at 1:30 and confirmed that my bags had indeed made it to Belgrade (whooo hooo!). The delivery guy was currently out distributing other people's lost bags (there's one guy employed by Nikola Tesla airport to deliver almost every airline's lost luggage, JAT has their own I think) but my bag was slated for the next load. He estimated the wait at 2 or 3 hours... and 6 hours later I'm still waiting. *Sigh* I called them back an hour ago and they confirmed that my bag had left the airport, so I guess that's progress. $10 says alcohol is involved some way.

Here's the thing: I am in dire need of fresh clothes because I went out last night and sweated and basically made my current clothes unfit for further use. I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but I met a girl from Montreal who convinced me to go to some club with her and some other random hostel people. Here is a transcript of our conversation.

Girl From Montreal: hey, what are you doing tonight?
TG: Nothing.
GFM: You should come partying with us.
TG: OK!

As you can see, it was a tough sell. So out we went into Belgrade's vaunted nightlife. I can confirm that everything I'd heard about this city and its nocturnal partying seems to be accurate: Belgrade is indeed a rollicking good time. This city jumps, and large swathes of it are open 24 hours a day. I've so far seen 24 hour a day restaurants, bars, internet cafes, pharmacies, supermarkets, and, coolest of all, a 24 hour bakery, ideal for getting a greasy slice of burek at 3:30 AM. Last night we went to the Sava River, where there are a series of floating clubs on the river. Floating clubs sound kind of gimmicky and lame, or at least they do to me, but there is actually quite a useful utilitarian reason for their existence: being in the middle of a river means that floating clubs can make as much noise and stay open as late as they desire as they aren't located in anything approaching a residential district. There were about 10 clubs in a row on the river, and from what I understand there are more moored on the Danube a few minutes walk away. The first one we went to was completely dead, while the other had a lineup outside. I of course befriended every Serb who cared to talk to me. There is a difference in how I introduce myself to Serbs, and how I introduced myself in Mozambique any pretty much everywhere else I've visited:

Mozambique: "Hi, my name is Terry. I am from Canada."
Serbia: "Hi, my name is Terry. I am Greek."

Being Greek means something here, Greeks and Serbs are very good friends. Part of that is history (similar histories of Turkish occupation, and we tagged with the Serbs during the Balkan Wars against first the Turks and then the Bulgarians), part of it is sharing a common religion (Orthodoxy) and part of it is contemporary politics: Greece opposed the NATO bombing strikes on Serbia, getting themselves into a bit of trouble with their NATO allies along the way, and have generally stuck up for Serbia in every conceivable way in the past 10 years (example: Greece will recognize Kosovo's independence when hell freezes over). So being Greek matters here; announcing myself as such generally meant someone either hugging me or buying me a shot of slivovice (Serbian plum brandy/firewater that I think I will be referencing multiple times in this space). Sometimes both. I even met a Serb who spoke Greek, he evidently lived in Greece eight years ago. As per usual, my Greek is pretty damn good with a belly full of slivovice.

So you can imagine how my night went: pretty wildly, once we moved to the club that was packed. I never received an explanation why the other one was dead, unless "because people are here instead" counts as a reason. It ended with me dancing on a table, hugging random Serbs and saying phrases in Serbian that random people had scribbled on a piece of paper (somewhere, Matt Voytilla is reading this and laughing). I think I am friends with half of Belgrade now. I went to a 24 hour fast food place at 3:15 AM or so (the party continued on the river until God knows when), made friends with the dude tending shop, and he made me some crazy food, like chicken stuffed with sausage and other stuff then shoved into a bun. It was heavenly.

And now I anxiously await my clothes...

Belgrade Day 1

2008-08-01T12:14:00.002-04:00

I am in Belgrade. My backpack is in Paris. This is a problem.

This is how it went down: my ticket called for a really quick connection in Paris, only 45 minutes. When I first saw the itinerary, I was immediately concerned and even went so far as to call Air France to see what they had to say about it. No sweat, I was told; because both of my flights were using Terminal 2E, I would basically jump off one plane and on to the other with a minimum of fuss and time to spare. OK, no problem.

Air France, by the way, is an amazing airline, probably the best I've taken (though I have yet to take Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific or Emirates or any of those "deluxe" Asian airlines). They give you half a baguette with dinner, and a healthy slice of camembert afterwards. Champagne is free. Also, they have cameras both on the underside of the plane and in the cockpit, both accessible from your personal entertainment system thingie, that afford crazy views. I have no problems with Air France.

(The internet cafe I am in is playing a Serbian language version of "Just Another Day" by Jon Secada. I'm not even making that up.)

My problem is with Charles-de-Gaulle airport and the people working there. For some inexplicable reason, Air Traffic Control told us to dock at Terminal 2C. It took 15 minutes for us to taxi into our stop, then 5 minutes for busses to transport us to the actual building, and then it took 30 minutes to get to 2E and go through security and sprint to my gate. That would make me 5 minutes late for my flight. At that point, I thought my bags would be left behind for sure. But then the captain accounced that because we missed our takeoff slot, Air Traffic Control was delaying us at the gate another 40 minutes. Probably for the best from my perspective - 40 extra minutes would have given baggage handlers a total of one hour and 25 minutes to move my bags from 2C to 2E. That is a lot of time. No reason why my luggage shouldn't make it to Belgrade, right?

Of course my luggage didn't make it to Belgrade. I don't understand how it's possible to fail to transfer a bag from one plane to another in 1:25. Remind me never to fly through Paris unless I have 3 hours connection time. My bag is supposedly arriving tomorrow aboard the same flight. It had better, because the clothes I do have are completely unsuitable for Belgrade's scorching heat. I have a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and a long-sleeved hoodie, absolutely the worst possible clothes to have under the circumstances. To minimize sweating, I only left my hostel at 4 PM and walked VERY slowly and took numerous breaks in the shade but I am still dripping with sweat and probably smell very badly. I think I may take it easy tonight, which is a shame because it's Friday night and Belgrade from what I understand jumps on weekends (and every other day, actually). But I can't risk completely ruining these clothes just in case I have to wear them again tomorrow. Actually, I do have to wear these clothes tomorrow... my bag isn't being delivered until 5 PM. Or, I can hang out with the hostel staff. I am staying at a hostel where my sister stayed literally 3 days ago (she is in Greece now). They quite definitely remember her, and liked her, so they are being extremely nice to me. All this coasting off my sister's reputation kind of reminds me of high school.

Off to seek shade...

So you mean I leave tomorrow?

2008-07-30T23:37:00.003-04:00

Evidently tomorrow is July 31. What the hell happened to the last three weeks? I feel as though I haven't slept in my bed in London for longer than three nights in a row. And I probably haven't. Tomorrow I will be sleeping on an Air France A330, and the night after in Belgrade. Crazy, that. Itinerary:

1. Air France 373, Detroit (DTW) to Paris (CDG). Departs July 31 19:00, arrives August 1 8:50

2. Air France 2988, Paris (CDG) to Belgrade (BEG). Departs August 1 9:35, arrives 11:50

I don't have anywhere to stay in Belgrade right now. I should probably get on that.

I am extremely curious about what kind of shit is going down in Serbia after Karadzic's capture and extradition to the Hague.

Adieu!

And soon, Guča

2008-07-18T14:30:00.002-04:00

I first became aware of Guča through a report on the BBC News. I can’t remember exactly what year it was, but it was either 2001, 2002 or 2003. This I know because I distinctly remember lying on the couch in my old house in Yellowknife, on Finlayson Drive North. The report was one of those hacky “look what these crazy people get up to in Serbia!” numbers. There were people dancing, drinking and, of course, playing brass instruments in this tiny village in Serbia. Of particular interest to me were the young Serbian men shown singing ultra-nationalist songs (“Kosovo is Serbia!” and similar ditties); evidently, Guča was some sort of stage for the expression of Serbian identity, or so said the BBC. It all looked very interesting. I filed the report away in my memory. If I ever found myself in Serbia in August… why the hell not?

I heard my first Boban Marković album in 2005 while I was living in Leicester. Marković is a trumpeter/bandleader who is widely recognized as the best in Serbia, perhaps the best to ever emerge from the Balkans. In 2001, his band received perfect scores from every single judge on the Guča panel during the battle of the bands competition, something which had never happened before (because he’s presumed to be so much better than everyone else, Marković has stopped competing at Guča, though he still performs). At this time, I had never even heard of Boban Marković and had no idea of his association with Guča, I only discovered this after reading the CD’s liner notes. I don’t remember what possessed me to buy the CD. I think I was killing time in the world music section at the HMV at Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road in Big London and decided to blow my money on random CDs by random artists I’d never heard or from random countries. But I did buy it and, to make a long story short, I can confirm that Marković is as good as advertised. His music absolutely blew me away and was the catalyst for a fixation with brass music that continues to this day and has introduced me to klezmer, Romanian fanfares, DJs such as Shantel that produce/spin brass-heavy tracks, and god knows how many other musical forms. This in turn led to me rediscovering Guča. Making the pilgrimage to the festival became a priority for me. I originally wanted to go in 2006, but problems with a Macedonian transit visa scuppered those plans. So I am going this year. I have a plane ticket to Belgrade, and I’ve organized accommodation in Guča with an old lady in what might be a barn. Barring a catastrophe, I’m going.

Even though music is among my favourite things, Guča will be my first big festival (Folk on the Rocks does NOT count). I chalk this up to my bizarre aversion to live music - I think I understand and enjoy music more alone, at home, in isolation – as well as my awkwardness in large crowds. And, the music aside, how different is one festival to another? I’ve always assumed that the experience at Burning Man is basically the same as it is at Glastonbury as it is at Exit as it is at I Love Techno: you go, listen to music, get drunk, probably do some drugs, see a few crazy people doing crazy things, etc. etc., all against the backdrop of this obnoxious, vacuous talk of peace and love and harmony and togetherness and community that means nothing except for too much weed and E and too many hours listening to late Bob Marley and John Lennon’s “Imagine”. Obviously I’m generalizing here, but I know a lot of people who have gone to a lot of different music festivals, and I honestly don’t see that much meaningful variance in their experiences. As you may have ascertained from my Mozambique/Malawi chronicles, I try and avoid genericism in my travels. I want my voyages to be, if possible, once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

This is why I’m going to Guča: I’m hoping that it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Guča is often described as the “Serbian Woodstock”, but the most important word in that phrase isn’t “Woodstock”; it’s “Serbian”. Guča, as the BBC described it to me all those years ago, is allegedly a window into the Serbian soul, and though it has become more and more popular with tourists over the past five or so years, it remains a music festival run by Serbs, for Serbs and according to a distinctly Serbian sensibility. This is how Wikipedia claims former Serbian President Vojislav Koštunica describes Guča:

“Guča represents in a best way what Serbia is today, what does its openness, belief in oneself, hospitality, party and music. [The] trumpet festival is a confirmation on our courage and joy both in good and bad times. It represents people’s return to the roots, joy and meaning of life. It speaks about who we are, what we are, our urges. We express our joy and sadness with [the] trumpet, we are born with sounds of [the] trumpet, and also buried with sounds of [the] trumpet. Guča is [a] Serbian brand, it’s a value that can represent Serbia in the world. Those that can’t understand and love Guča, can’t understand Serbia. If we are going to go in [the] EU without our melodies and colours, then we wouldn’t know who we are.”

So how could I resist? That sounds like the kind of cultural experience that I live for. We’ll see if it lives up to expectations. My guess is that it will… because really, how can you go wrong with slivovice-fuelled Serbs dancing to brass bands and singing ultra-nationalist Serbian folk songs? I can’t wait.

Post-travel doldrums

2008-07-16T19:35:00.002-04:00

Culture shock has subsided and life is basically back to normal now. That is to say, I have become myself again. Plunging back into academia so quickly after my return probably did it. Nothing cleanses the soul of Africa like the pursuit of mahogany-framed fancy pieces of paper written in Latin!

I'm unsure whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. Frankly, I'm trying not to care.

London, Ontario

2008-07-11T16:19:00.002-04:00

So I made it back without incident. Well, almost. On the morning of my departure, in Maputo, I wasn't looking where I was going and I collided head-on with a big baobab tree. The tree won; I have a big bloody scab on my head now. I also met a Greek lady at breakfast in my hotel, which is remarkable because Greeks - how should I put this? - prefer not to travel in Africa. I didn't know she was Greek at first. She asked me for information about northern Mozambique and Malawi, where she was heading, specifically about the Nampula-Cuamba train. I asked if she could speak Portuguese, as basically nobody speaks English around Cuamba. She responded that she could not, she was from Greece. So we switched to Greek. Her name was Eleni, which is my sister's Greek name. Coincidentally, she has a brother named Vaios, which is my Greek name. She is a professor at the university in Thessaloniki, and was in Africa to research a book about the Greek diaspora on the continent. Evidently, Maputo has a Greek community of 50, though there were more when it was a Portuguese colony. In Blantyre, Malawi, there are about 100 or so. I told her about the Greek community in the Congo, which I know about because they were instrumental in setting up early Congolese record companies. Lesson to be learned from all of this: Greeks are like ants. We are everywhere.

And then it was time to fly on out of Africa. My flight to Lisbon was a final crazy slice of African life. Half of the plane had been claimed by Indian-Mozambicans heading to Lisbon to see a religious guru. They spoke loudly and excitedly and cheered lustily when we landed. The Lisbon airport at 6:00 AM is a lonely, lonely place, but by 7:00 people were beginning to come through security. There was a band heading to Madrid. They took out their accordions and guitars and began to play in their departure gate. Another guy tapped a beat on a plastic chair. This was accompanied by a dark-skinned man, presumably the lead singer, singing the most beautiful songs in Portuguese. I wished I spoke better Portuguese so I could understand what he was saying. I had to leave the band to board my Heathrow-bound flight. A rare cloudless day in London provided a spectacular view of Canary Wharf, the Tower of London, the Thames, Westminster, the London Eye etc., and I realized how much I missed that city. These thoughts were soon lost in familiar Heathrow aggravations - landing late, sprinting to catch my connection, then sitting on the tarmac for an hour waiting for an interminable lineup of planes to take off. Soon I was in Toronto, and three hours later in London.

I am not upset to be back. I'm not one of these travelers, displeased with their life, who hits the road searching for something, or running away from something. Though I often intimate otherwise, I am generally pleased with my life at the moment. I quite like Canada. I like my family and my friends. Being back here certainly is not a bad thing. That being said, I am having unbelievable culture shock. I did not expect this. Aren't you supposed to have culture shock when you arrive in Africa and not when you leave? I am stunned by how different Ontario is to the society I've been living in the past month+. And I'm not even talking about cosmetic differences like the lack of rubbish in London's streets, or how people all the people with black skin have been replaced by people with white skin, how I can pass a police officer without them demanding to see my papers, or how taking a taxi doesn't require ten minutes of bargaining. It's much, much deeper and more complicated than that, and I'm not sure if I can adequately explain it.

At the conference I attended in New York before I left, I met an academic who has now begun to work at Western. He had just finished a four month stint in Uganda. We talked a little about Africa, and about what I could expect. Africa, to him, was "a different universe" than anywhere else he'd ever been, and the guy is very well traveled. I didn't really understand what he meant while I was traveling. I didn't really think that Mozambique and Malawi were that much different from Cuba or Nicaragua; nor were they that much different from Greece in the 1980s or early 1990s. It is only after I have arrived back in Canada that I understand and concur: indeed, Africa is truly a different universe. There was a late 1960s/early 1970s funk band from Kenya called Mombasa. I've heard a couple of their songs, my favourite being a James Brown-style number called "African Hustle". "You better learn the African hustle", the song urges, "you better learn it right now." Most of the tourists I met in Africa had no interest in learning the African hustle. This is why I think I met so many people who loved the African land, the animals, the coast, the rugged terrain, but could never come to grips with African people. I don't think you can understand or appreciate African people unless you learn how to think like an African (I realize that Mozambique and Malawi are hardly "Africa", but Mozambicans and Malawians, most of which had never been outside their own countries, frequently spoke of "Africa" and "Africans" with authority, they certainly believe that there are more shared characteristics than differences). Somewhere along the way, I think I learned how to do that, and I think that was the key to me having such a fulfilling adventure. But it has also made Canada seem completely foreign to me in the interim. I listened to people discuss their lives on the bus today, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around their conversations. There simply isn't any African parallel to the bourgeois North American consumer lifestyle, not even close. It's making my head spin.

I'm explaining this really poorly. I'm not sure there is a way to describe it well.

Maputo Redux Part 2 - The End

2008-07-08T06:33:00.002-04:00

So I've decided that Maputo is my favourite place in Mozambique. There may be a Naples-like rubbish problem, and the chapa drivers may be homicidal, but these negatives are far outweighed by its cultural diversity (there are probably 10 to 15 languages spoken on a daily basis in Maputo), surprisingly good restaurant life, and laid-back attitude. Maputo bustles, but it seems like only 1% of the population does the bustling. The rest are sitting around in cafes doing nothing, or loitering under the shade of a jacaranda tree. Best of all, people leave you alone here (with the exception of the craft sellers on Av. Julius Nyerere). They could care less if I'm a tourist, they have better things to do than harass me.

I am very glad I came back to Maputo. Cities are always better when you've been there before and know what you're doing and where you're going. There are two things that I wanted to do in Maputo, which I didn't do the first time around because I was too yellow. The first is sample the nightlife, which is reportedly amazing. Specifically, I wanted to go to Chez Rangel, which is a club in the train station. I read about Chez Rangel in an issue of National Geographic a while back - it was one of those "Mozambique is on the move!" type of articles - and ever since then Chez Rangel has been a big symbol of Mozambique for me. That article got me interested in Mozambique and sowed the curiosity that possessed me to come here. But I didn't end up going to Chez Rangel, because it's closed. Clubs in Maputo are open only from Wednesday to Saturday, and I unfortunately am here on a Monday and Tuesday. Secondly, I wanted to go to a giant market, the Mercado de Xipamanine. I went this morning. The market is the size of about 5 or 6 football fields, if not bigger. I'd say 75% of the goods on sale there were stolen; Xipamanine is the domain of the Maputo underworld. Shifty eyed people sized me up as I looked over gold jewelry. I'm very glad that I left my valuables at my hotel.

And so I leave tomorrow. I have had a blast in Mozambique. I don't really feel the need to elaborate on this in a larger passage, so I will just leave it at that. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures. I've enjoyed writing about them.

Here is my itinerary for people who are interested in such things:

1. TAP 278, departs Maputo 17:35 (July 9), arrives Lisbon 5:45 (July 10)
2. TAP 354, departs Lisbon 8:10 (July 10), arrives London Heathrow 10:50
3. Air Canada 857, departs London Heathrow 12:05, arrives Toronto 14:45
4. Air Canada 7717, departs Toronto 16:50, arrives London, ON 17:30

I don't know what possessed me to take a flight through Heathrow, I despise that airport and avoid it like the plague. I'm a little worried that my bags will only be checked as far as Heathrow because on my way down, my bags were checked only as far as Sao Paulo. If I have to get my bags at Heathrow, I'm completely screwed, I'll miss my flight. There is no way I'll be able to fetch my bags, go from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3 and then check in again in 1 hour and 15 minutes. The people at the TAP office here told me that I'll be able to check my bags straight through to Canada from Maputo. I certainly hope so.

Also, that first flight almost definitely stops somewhere, because it does not take 13+ hours to fly from Maputo to Lisbon direct on an A340. I'm guessing it will stop in Johannesburg, but I'm hoping for some place more interesting, like Luanda (possible, but probably not), Bissau (unlikely), or Cape Verde (no chance).

Maputo Redux

2008-07-07T11:14:00.002-04:00

I am back among the communist streets and bourgeois comforts of Maputo. I am sick and tired of hostels, so I've sprung for a $40 a night hotel that's above a wonderful smelling Goan restaurant. Of course, this place is the best deal in Maputo. I'm right in the centre of town, in the safest and most happening part of the city. My hotel has hot water and water pressure. There are tiny little shitboxes in Maputo, in less-than-salubrious parts of town, that cost $60 a night.

I have an amazing story from Pemba. Remember the guy Charles, who led me to my awesome inland hotel? Well, he began following me around town during the remainder of my stay in Pemba. Not so much following me around as placing himself in strategic locations that he'd know I pass. He would walk with me down the beach, telling me his life story, with emphasis on how poor he was, how tragic his home situation was etc. When he began calling me "my friend" all the time, I knew he was laying the groundwork for a soft sell.

I of course because familiar with soft sell thanks to my "brothers" in Malawi. To recap: a hard sell basically consists of someone asking me for money up front. Sometimes they went to sell me something, sometimes they just ask for cash, but it's made explicit from the getgo that the person wants money from me. A soft sell occurs when the seller tries to cultivate a personal connection with you, so that in the end you feel a moral obligation to give them money. The soft sell drives me up a well, for two reasons:

1. It's basically a straight con. Even worse, the con rest on the assumption that I am easily duped. In that respect, the con artist insults my intelligence. I really, really, REALLY dislike having my intelligence insulted.

2. I am infinitely more susceptible to a soft sell. I'm not a bad guy. I have a heart. I generally care about Mozambique and the welfare of Mozambicans and genuinely want to help, even if I'm not always sure what is the best way. I know that Charles isn't any different than any other Mozambican trying to make ends meet. If he lived in the countryside, he'd be growing a little bit of cassava and aggressively peddling it to city dwellers on passing chapas. It just so happens that he lives in a tourist area. Conning tourists is just what he has to do to feed his family. I understand all this, and I sympathize; or, perhaps more accurately, I'm torn between sympathy and my selfish desire to be left alone. Mozambicans aren't stupid, they figure this out within about three minutes of speaking to me. They know that I'm bound to yield more cash than a fat South African tourist, even though the fat Saffer has 5000 times more money than me to spend.

And so Charles began trying to con me. Either he is a terrible con artist, or he thought I was really stupid, because he did a very bad job masking his intentions. He tried to get me to go into craft stores, even after I made it clear that I didn't want any crafts. The rub is of course that he gets commission from the store he steers me into if I buy something. He did the same thing with restaurants too, he tried steering me into some restaurants as opposed to others. One night, I wanted to eat at a place called Pemba Dolphin. Charles wanted me to eat at another place called Mar e Sol, where I had already eaten twice. Charles was adamant that Mar e Sol was the cheapest place for seafood in town. Of course it wasn't, Pemba Dolphin was cheaper, I knew this because I'd had a cup of tea at Pemba Dolphin earlier in the day. I ate at Mar e Sol anyway. Charles sat next to me. I bought him a coke. He had the gall to tell me that the waiter has asked him why he wasn't eating - this was supposed to show me that he wasn't after my money. The waiter had asked no such thing; Charles had no idea that I could understand Portuguese. I ate my meal, seething. I made a mental note of this for when Charles made his big, final sales pitch. I was going to tell him off.

The big sell came the next day. I was eating an early dinner at Pemba Dolphin. Charles saw me and waited outside, on the beach. He told me that he had been to the doctor, and he was very sick. He needed about $10 US so he could go to some random village for treatment. He showed me some sort of note in doctor's scrawl. He said that I was his friend and that friends help each other out. That's when I turned on him. I informed that we were not friends. I knew he was conning me, and I knew that he had been conning me since I arrived. He of course denied this and repeated over and over again that he was sick. I didn't disbelieve this; my argument was simply that I had no obligation to do anything about it. He repeated more rubbish about us being friends blah blah blah. That's when I pulled out my ace. "OK Charles. If we're friends, how many brothers and sister do I have? What's my job? What country are my parents from?" These are fair questions; I usually start blathering on about these things within three minutes of meeting someone. Of course Charles didn't know; he had never asked because he didn't care. I thought I had won the argument.

Then Charles pulled out his trump card. Literally. It was his penis. He had severe syphilis or some such disease. I almost vomited into the sand; it may have been the most disgusting sight I've ever seen in my life. Everything made sense now. That's why he was going to a village and not the big, well-equipped hospital in Pemba. He was infected so bad that antibiotics couldn't do a damn thing for him anymore, not that he could afford antibiotics anyway. He was going to a witch doctor, which probably wouldn't help a bit. I had been shown visual evidence that Charles was probably going to die of syphilis, and pretty quickly at that. "I'm very sick my friend", he repeated. He showed me his penis again, and I nearly vomited again. So of course I gave him the money. What, did you think I was going to deny $10 to a dying syphilitic? I thrust the money at him, told him not to speak to me for the rest of the time I was in Pemba, and trudged away.

A day later, Charles was calling me "my friend" again and trying to sow the seeds of another con. Can't really blame him, I had proven a relatively easy sell. He asked what time I was leaving for Maputo, so that he could come and say goodbye (i.e. ask for more money). I said I was leaving at 5:00 PM, had to be at the airport by 3:00, and he should come by at 2. My flight left at 11:30. Two can play at games of deception.

Pemba

2008-07-04T02:52:00.002-04:00

So my big plan was to go kto Montepuez from Pemba. Montepuez is a an uninteresting mountain town inland, but there is a lodge there called Aurora. It costs 50 dollars a night to stay at Aurora in a dorm, which would be an outrageous price except that part of the deal is that Aurora organizes cultural activites for their guests. And not bullshit cultural activities, either. For example, they can arrange to send you out into the bush for a day with a traditional medicine practitioner. Or with a local woman to harvest and prepare cassava flour. That all sounded lovely to me. I've always wanted to learn to be a bush doctor.

Getting there from Nampula was a little complicated. I had to take a bus to a village called Metoro - a bus, not a chapa - then find onward transport to Montepuez. The bus was unbelievably overstuffed with people and luggage, and it was an uncomfortable experience. By the time I got off at Metoro, it was too late to catch and westward public transport. I had to hitchhike. Hitching is really common and easy in Mozambique. Sometimes it's the only way to get around, so everyone does it. A truck, driven by an Arab-Mozambican, stopped and gave me a lift. He was hauling beer to Montepuez. He drove like a maniac and talked non-stop the entire way there in Portuguese that was much too fast for me to understand. We were stopped by the police on the way. They wanted a bribe and to see my papers. Cops want to see my papers basically every day. The bribe came up to 50 meticais ($2) - it was paid on the ground that the truck couldn't transport civilians because it didn't have a chapa license. What rubbish.

To make a long story short, Aurora was closed. The priests who run the place were on vacation. I was extremely disappointed, not just because I missed out on a chance to become a bush doctor's apprentice, but because I was sick and tired of constantly traveling. I've basically been constantly on the move since I left Malawi. I hadn't stayed anymore for two consecutive nights other thanh Ihla de Moçambique. Pretty much I would wake up really early, sit on a hot, crowded chapa for long periods of the day, then sleep in shitty hotels, most of which didn't have running water or electricity, before repeating the exercise the next day. I desperately wanted to stay somewhere for longer than a day, if for no other reason then because I'd caught a cold along the way and needed to relax and recuperate.

I would not relax or recuperate in Montepuez. There is literally nothing in that town. There was one hotel, with shabby rooms without running water for $16 per night, and one restaurant, which only served chicken with fries. Plus, Montepuez is in the mountains and gets chilly at night. Screw Montepuez. I would stay the night - it was much too late to head elsewhere - and then head elsewhere in the morning. I decided to go to Pemba. My flight back to Maputo leaves from here, it's hot, and lying on the beach under the hot sun would be good for my cold. I ordinarily don't like spending as much as 5 days in one particular place, but I was REALLY worn out that night in Montepuez. I wanted to go somewhere and do nothing for five days. Pemba was the most convenient place to do that.

So at 6 AM morning I walked to the head of the Pemba highway and waited for a chapa to pass. None did. So I walked back to town to see if I could hitch a ride with someone. Eventually, a truck passed. As luck would have it, the truck was driven was driven by the same guy who drove me yesterday! I think it was a different truck, though; in any case, the beer was gone and there was no load in the back. There was a case of bottled water in the cab. He was going to Mecufi, so I'd have to hitch a ride for the remaining 12 km into Pemba. He actually invited me to his house in Mecufi. There is a beach there, and he said his wife was the best cook in Cabo Delgado. I seriously thought about going. I was curious about how Arab-Mozambicans, who are definitely wealthier than the average person here, lived. But I decided to go to Pemba. It was an awesome ride, once again. He was listening to cheesy Portuguese power ballads. Once again a cop wanted to pull us over. Instead of stopping, this time the guy took out a 100 metical note, crumpled it up, and threw it out the window at the cop! At the end of the trip, the guy asked me if I wanted a bottle of water. He told me to open the box and pull one out. I looked into the box. There was no water there, it was filled with cash. The driver cackled at me. I'm assuming the money was somehow obtained illegally, which is why he didn't want to stop for the cop. At least that's what I want to believe. It's much more interesting to think that I got a ride to Pemba with a Mozambican gangster of some sort.

A South African tourist ended up driving me into Pemba. He was staying at the same place I had earmarked: Russell's Place. They had the only dorm beds at Praia de Wimbi, the beach section of Pemba. Everything else was expensive. Turns out Russell's Place had done away with their dorms. The cheapest option is camping, but I don't have a tent. They also had their own tents on site, with electricity. They charged $32 a night for them. $32 per night for a tent, at a campsite with no running water, is absolutely insane. Their beach chalets cost even more. So I told them no thanks, and left in search of other accommodation. Everything was ridiculously expensive - 100% or even 200% more than the prices as of two years ago (when my Lonely Planet was published). If there was a Mozambican Riviera, Wimbi would be it - the steady stream of rich South Africans seeking palms, prawns and prostitutes who are willing to pay exorbitant prices for accommodation keeps the price high. I began to despair - there was no way I could afford anything here, and I sure as hell wasn't sleeping in a frigging tent at Russell's Place - and I considered hitching back out of town to Mecufi to find my Arab-Mozambican gangster. I ran into a guy named Charles who said he knew of a place about a 10 minute walk inland where I could stay for 1000 meticais a night ($40). I pictured an unventilated room in a guy's house. I said $40 was a ridiculous price and if that's how much it cost I would go to Mecufi. Charles said there may be rooms for 750 meticais ($30). I had no intention of staying in a tiny room with no running water for $30 a night, but I went to look anyway.

Turns out Charles got his prices all wrong, and I had my assumptions about the place all wrong. It was a hotel, run by a Mozambican named Joao. Their cheapest rooms cost 600 meticais a night ($24), which is surely the cheapest room in town and which I could afford. And the room was magnificent - it was actually a two room suite, with private bathroom, electricity, hot water, a mini fridge, and satellite TV. I thought I understood the price wrong, but 600 meticais was what they were charging. I'm pretty sure I backed into the best deal in Pemba. The only problem with the place is that the doors don't go all the way to the ground, so mosquitos get into the suite pretty easily. But I put up my mosquito net - something that proved rather difficult, picture me putting it up to the tune of the Benny Hill theme - and the mosquitos ceased being an issue.

I am so happy in my little suite. I will stay in Pemba until my flight back to Maputo on July 7. I'm overjoyed that I can finally rest. I sleep at least 10 hours a day. I have no ambition other than to go to the beach and eat seafood at night. Fixers around town offer to find me a motorcycle for rent or to set me up with a boat cruise, but I can't be bothered to do anything like that. I could barely be bothered to come into town to use the internet today, but I figured I should let my mother know I'm alive. After netty potting my nose out in the Indian Ocean multiple times, my cold is roughly 500% better. It helps that Pemba is the hottest place I've been in Mozambique so far. There are some bars and a casino on the beach, but I'm too lazy to go to them. I'd much rather drowsily sit in my room and watch Brazilian soap operas. They are a riot. There is one called Os Mutantes (also the name of an unbelievable 60s/70s/80s Brazilian band) that is half X-Men and half Days of Our Lives.

I am rather enjoying my stay here.

Nampula

2008-06-30T11:23:00.002-04:00

Not for the first time, the chapa I was riding on broke down (random factoid: standard minibuses in Nampula province are called tanzanianos, because they were bought from Tanzania). Usually, the driver or conductor gets out and toils under the hood or under the car for a while and fixes the problem within 5 or 10 minutes. On my way to Cuamba, of course, the bus broke beyond immediate repair and I had to take a truck. But instances like that are rare, Mozambicans are skilled and resourceful mechanics. So when I heard a thud and a pop perhaps 20 minutes out of Ilha, I wasn't overly concerned. I started getting worried 20 minutes later when the driver took out his cell phone and called someone... ten minutes later, a guy showed in a truck with a bunch of ropes, and towed the tanzaniano to the nearest village, to a garage.

The problem was with a giant spring. Don't ask me where the spring came from, I know absolutely nothing about cars. It was a really big spring, however. So this is what ended up happening: the biggest men in the area had to hold down the spring while a smaller dude wrapped twine around it or something like that. And by biggest guys in the area, I mean me. The thing was really difficult to hold down, it took like 15 of us to do it. We had to hold it there for half an hour while the smaller mechanic did whatever he was doing with it. I asked someone what exactly was happening but my Portuguese vocabulary doesn't extend to automotive/mechanic words. Eventually, the problem was fixed to the mechanic's satisfaction and the spring was re-fitted. And then we drove off.

I will now add "Mozambican garagehand" next to "Mozambican firefighter" on my CV.

Ilha de Moçambique

2008-06-29T11:36:00.003-04:00

I wasn't planning to write this today. Tomorrow I'll be stuck in Nampula, a rather boring city, and was planning on doing all my internet business there. All I wanted to do today was make some phone calls. I reached my Dad OK (he's in Greece now) but calling Canada has once again proven difficult. I'm not sure one can actually dial North America from Mozambique. My phone call came to 117 meticais, but I only had a 200 meticais note. Of course, the attendant here doesn't have change (standard for Mozambique). Instead, he's letting me use the internet to make up the difference. Alright then!

I like trains. I like riding them, I like looking out of their windows, I like hearing trains whistles. So naturally, I jumped at the chance to take Mozambique's last remaining regularly scheduled passenger train, from Cuamba to Nampula. It was supposed to leave at 5 AM. I arrived at 4:30. There are no lights in Cuamba at 4:30 AM, not even at the train station. I couldn't see where I was going, and I ran into a barbed wire fence at the station. I probably have tetanus now. Hundreds of Mozambicans were sleeping on the platform, covered in blankets, tarps, anything to keep warm. The train didn't pull up until 6:30. I figured we'd leave at 8 or so, but at 7:30 it disappeared. Soon, a handwritten note appeared on a chalkboard saying that the train was expected at noon. I puttered around for half an hour trying to decide what to do; ultimately, I resolved to trudge back to my hotel and ask the lady there if I could sleep for a few more hours, as check out time wasn't until 11:00. Just as I began to leave the train station, there was a commotion behind me: now, the train was leaving at 10:00. Thank goodness I saw that, or else I would have been stuck in Cuamba.

The train was pretty much like taking a chapa, but slower and less cramped. There was only one other woman in my compartment, so I could sprawl out. We spoke a little, but mostly she just sang to herself. She also bought a whole bunch of vegetables as the train passed through various villages; by the end, she had great bundles of onions, carrots, and cassava. One guy was selling chickens. Someone three compartments over from me bought two of them, I could heard them flapping and squawking around. I wished I was in that compartment; I love seeing chickens on public transport. The people selling all this stuff basically attacked the train as it stopped in their village. Their life basically revolves around that thing. They make their money selling produce to passengers. Little kids run down to the tracks to watch it pass, and sing songs. It was not uncommon to pass a village and see 150 or 200 vendors converge on the train, and another 700 or 800 people watching it pass. I am extremely happy that my life doesn't revolve around a passing train.

After a brief stay in Nampula at a hotel that reminded me of every small hotel in Thessaloniki, I moved on to Ilha yesterday. Ilha is pretty much amazing. It is an island 3.5 km off the mainland, in the Indian Ocean. It was the capital of Portuguese East Africa for 350+ years. There is more colonial architecture here than in the rest of Mozambique combined, Maputo included. The top half of the island is basically a ghost town, full of crumbling old buildings that nobody lives in anymore. The bottom half is a densely populated Makua fishing village with reed and bamboo shacks. It makes for a really interesting contrast. Pretty much everyone who comes here loves it. I met a Polish guy today who has traveled in Africa for 6 months, and he claims that Ilha is his favourite place in southern Africa. I can definitely see that.

Here's the problem with this place: the children here are extraordinarily poorly behaved. By children, I mean everyone under the age of 20, basically. The older people here are lovely. They smile and say good morning to you, but leave you alone. They're used to seeing a trickle of white people so I'm not a curiosity to them. In contrast, the kids are just vile. It's worse then just asking for money. That I can deal with. They harass you until you want to punch them in the face. Worse still, they know that they are being obnoxious, and continue being obnoxious because they know it's making you upset. For example: there are all sorts of people around town trying to sell you old coins which have been found on the beach. The oldest coin I've seen is an old Arabian slave trading coin, from the 1500s. I had a kid, about 14 or 15 years old, follow me around town trying to sell me bullshit hoax coins. For example, he showed me a coin and said it was a Portuguese imperial coin from the 1800s. I could plainly see that it wasn't; it was a 20 escudo coin from 1986. When I shook my head no, he laughed and ran away. 15 minutes later he was back. Now he wanted to sell me 5 euro cents. Again he told me it was an old imperial coin. Again he laughed and ran away, as I told him to fuck off and not to speak to me. Finally, he tried selling me a Mozambican 50 centavos coin, which is currently legal tender. He couldn't even finish his sales pitch because he was too busy laughing. I have about a million stories like this. Here is another one. I was walking back to my hotel from a restaurant yesterday, and kids were following me home. At first, I didn't know it was kids. All I heard were footsteps behind me. I kept turning around to see if someone was following me. Ilha gets really dark at night, there are barely any electric lights here, so I couldn't see anything. I kept hearing people behind me and I kept turning around to see who it was. I thought someone was going to jump me. I guess I was growing visibly agitated, because then I heard giggling. It was a group of 3 teenagers, and they thought it was funny to follow me and freak me out. They emerged from their hiding places them began running around me. Some asked for money. The youngest kid, probably about 9, actually reached into my pocket. I wanted to dropkick him. Eventually, after 5 minutes of this nonsense, they were admonished by a passerby and finally stopped. I've had rocks thrown at me innumerable times. Kids run up to me and yell things at me in Makua. I've considered the possibility that this is just how kids on Ilha ammuse themselves, because there really isn't too much for them to do. But no, I've decided that they are little twerps who know they are being obnoxious, and revel in that.

This is how my entire stay has been. I have been unable to relax because of the packs of idiotic kids who think it's funny to annoy the foreigners. My extreme dislike for children is pretty legendary, so you can imagine how agitated I am right about now. I trudge around, devising new and gruesome methods of torture, in case I should be so lucky as to find myself in a secluded area with one of the little bastards. I want to drown them in the Indian Ocean. I envisioned staying here more than just two nights, but now I can't wait to leave.

I basically only have a week left on this trip. I have a forced one stay stopover in Nampula as making it north from here is very difficult. Then I'll spend three nights somewhere (to be decided in Nampula) before spending three nights in Pemba lying on the beach. From Pemba I fly back to Maputo on the 7th. The last two days in Maputo will be spent tying up loose ends, buying music and generally preparing for my flight back on the 9th. It's begun to dawn on me that I'll be back in Canada soon, and I've begun to think a lot about Greece.

Cuamba, Mozambique

2008-06-26T11:15:00.003-04:00

So I made it across the lake safely. Frankly, I don't know what the fuss was about. Some people I spoke to in Malawi make the Ilala sound like an unsanitary death trap. I guess it was kind of on the dirty side - I woke up in the middle of the night face-to-face with a rat, and there were plenty of cockroaches and ants about - but it was as sturdy as you'd like, there was no chance of it sinking. People who think the Ilala is dangerous should go ride ferries in Nicaragua. Instead, my two biggest issues were as follows: first, I was riding on the top deck, which got extremely cold and windy at night, and I have neither a tent or a sleeping bag; second, I assumed that the ferry would accept Mozambican currency since it called at three Mozambican ports. It didn't; only Malawian kwachas were accepted. So I couldn't buy any food or water while I was on board.

The first problem was weathered pretty successfully. I wore two sweaters over two t-shirts, my one pair of pants over a pair of shorts, and then 3 pairs of socks. I wrapped a towel around my head it warm. I slept on a bench. The cold kept waking me up at night, but I probably got in about three or four hours of sleep. Probably three. I slept on a bench. Perhapa I could be a hobo after all. The money problem was a bigger issue, since the ferry was dreadfully late. We arrived at Likoma Island two hours late; we left Likoma seven hours behind schedule. It took an unbelievably long time to unload everything. There was no jetty on Likoma - or indeed at any other port of call - so the ferry anchored about 100 metres off shore, and then everything had to loaded into small motorboats to be taken to shore. By the time we got to my stop, Metangula, we were ten hours late and it was 10 PM. I hadn't eaten since 1 PM the day before. I was STARVING and also quite thirsty, as my water had run out probably seven hours previous. I jostled with random Mozambicans to get on the first motorboat to shore - all I could think about was sleep (I figured nothing would be open and I'd have to eat in the morning, which was right). The boat dropped us off about 10 metres from shore in knee deep water. I had to jump into the lake while Mozambicans climbed over me to get on.

I found a small hotel by about 10:30. I was pretty sure the woman who ran it quoted me a price of 1,250 meticais. This seemed like a ridiculous price for this particular hotel, but I figured it was just the foreigner's tax and I didn't really say anything. Turns out that she had actually said 250 meticais, and I had misunderstood. In Niassa province, the way they say two (dois) is almost identical to how they say twelve (doze). I thought she had said "twelve hundred", but she was actually saying "two hundred". Even though I was delirious with hunger and thirst and fatigue, this was a ridiculous error on my part, because the only language where people say things like "twelve hundred" or "fifty nine hundred" is in English. I gave the woman 1,250. This is how I figured out my mistake.

I was about the go to sleep when there was knock on the door. It was the woman who had sold me the room. She wanted to know if I wanted a girl to sleep with me tonight. I was a little taken aback - I've never heard of women playing the pimp role in Mozambique, it's always men - and for a second I thought that maybe I was staying in a brothel. I told her no, thank you, I just wanted to sleep because I was waking up early to go to Lichinga. She looked confused. Then I asked her where the bathroom was. She smiled, then led me towards an outhouse a little ways to the right. She then asked me if I wanted to have sex with her in the bathroom. I was still really confused, and I wasn't sure what to do, so I again declined, and said that I'd rather sleep. Thanks for asking though.

I lay awake for a while thinking about this bizarre incident, and I pieced together what happened. She had asked me for 250 meticais ($10). I had given her 1,250 meticais ($50). She assumed that I had given her the extra money because I wanted to have sex with her. In the morning, I told her in my best Portuguese that there had been a misunderstanding and that I thought the room was 1,250 meticais, so therefore I needed 1000 meticais in change. She pretended like she didn't know what I was talking about, and she tried to tell me that the room costed 1,040 meticais. Things got pretty heated. Eventually, I made my point forecefully enough that she gave me my 1000 meticais back.

And that is the story of how I inadvertantly paid a Mozambican woman to have sex with me.

By 10:00 AM that day I ended up in Lichinga. There is nothing to do in Lichinga, and I seriously contemplated pushing on to Cuamba, but I thought I needed a day to eat (I still hadn't eaten - I ate at about noon for the first time in 46 hours) and rehydrate and rest. Also, crucially, there was a LAM (Mozambique's biggest airline) office in Lichinga, and I needed to buy a ticket for a flight back south to Maputo in advance for my flight back to Canada. So I stayed in Lichinga for a night. As it turns out the LAM office was closed because it was Mozambican independence day! Happy 33rd birthday Mozambique! I really should have known better - there is a street named 25 de Junho in every single Mozambican city. There wasn't really a parade in Lichinga, the town is too sleepy for that. Once in a while, a war veteran would amble by, drunk, singing revolutionary songs. Instead I watched the big celebrations in Maputo on TV. I could write an entire post on how amazing and hilarious it was, but I have more interesting things to talk about.

My trip from Lichinga to Cuamba was the best yet. It started on a chapa. This was the most beat up chapa I've been in so far - the door didn't close and every window was cracked - and, sure enough, about two hours into the trip, it bottomed out on a shitty dirty road and broke down. The driver got out and toiled underneath. He emerged with a bunch of parts and beat at them with a hammer for a while. That didn't seem to do the trick, so he flagged down a passing car, jumped in, and made off for the nearest town. Us passengers had to wait until another vehicle passed, or until the chapa was fixed.

Another chapa passed first, and maybe 5 or 6 passengers squeezed into that one. About an hour later, this is after two hours of waiting, a two-ton truck with a flat bed stopped, and we all piled in. The driver was driving this thing at about 120 km per hour on a dirt road, it was positively harrowing. I was sitting at the front of the box on a big sack of grain, and I thought I was going to go hurtling off the side. I held on for dear life; the conductor (rather, the guy who collected fares) thought that was funny. After a while I kind of got used to it, and decided to stand up and enjoy the landscape. It was amazing. At first I was looking behind me, and I could see the entire Lichinga Plateau (one of the only mountainous areas in Mozambique) recede behind me. Simply breathtaking. I would not sit down for the rest of the trip - for the next seven hours I was standing, looking mostly in front of me, enjoying the feeling of the wind battering my face.

The conductor eventually decided that I was a lunatic and, therefore, worth his affections. A bunch of other people on the minibus also took a liking to me. At a town called Mandimba, the conductor went off and bought a bottle of gin. He opened it and insisted that I had some. I took a big swig. It tasted like rubbing alcohol. I passed it around. This pattern would continue every time we stopped at a market, which was pretty often: the conductor would get out, buy more gin, insist that I took the first gulp, then passed it around. There were probably 11 or 12 bottles of gin; by the end, it was only me, the conductor and two other dudes drinking the gin. Things became more crazy the more we drank. Eventually, I stopped holding on the rail at all and just stood straight up in the box, leaning on the cage. What a dumb thing to do - we were going at brakeneck speeds on a shitty dirt road, and the driver was piloting the truck erratically because he had drank gin as well (not the first and definitely not the last drunk driver I've had here - it's very common). At one point we almost nailed a buy on a bike. It was the biker's fault, he had suddenly emerged from the bushes and pedaled in front of the truck. We missed him by half an inch at the most. The driver stopped and had to be physically restrained from going after the biker. He wanted to beat him down. We kept going. The road went from being packed down dirt to loose dirt and we went fish-tailing all over the road. Cars passed in the other direction, kicking up dust and making us incredibly filthy. I was very, very tipsy - I can still feel the gin now. We probably ran over two or three chickens. At one point, a man disembarked and tried to pay with a torn 50 meticais note. The problem was that the tear was through the serial number, so the note was invalid. The conductor refused to accept it and appropriated a bit of the guy's grain. We continued down the road. Kids covered in dust on the side of the road thought it was hilarious that a white guy was in the truck (definitely not the way tourists get around up here... not that there are tourists here in the first place) and called to me. I waved back. The conductor kept getting more gin - thank goodness I had eaten some bread and oranges along the way or else I surely would have vomited. Still more gin. Eventually, finally, mericfully, we reached Cuamba. The conductor and another dude wanted to go drinking with me in the city. I was sober enough to realize that this was the worst idea in the world (I am leaving here tomorrow on a 5 AM train to Nampula), so I sneaked off while they were unloading grain from the truck. And here I am now.

Northern Mozambique is definitely to my liking so far.

Nkhata Bay

2008-06-23T04:56:00.003-04:00

I never should have left Kande, I really enjoyed it there. The beach was beautiful, and the people I met were lovely. Tiffany left yesterday as well, but I had also made the acquaintance of three Swiss people with whom I would watch soccer at the local watering hole. They were a riot. One of them, Till, would swear at the television in Swiss German when something happened that he didn't like. They were amazed that I knew more about European soccer than they did, something they conceded after I won 1500 kwachas from each of them after Russia beat the Netherlands two days ago. They gave me the money in the form of vodka shots. I had also come to like the locals. The bartender at the local watering hole, John, was an especially wonderful type. I learned more about Malawi from him than I did from pretty much everyone else I've met here combined.

Furthermore, I was pretty sure that I wouldn't enjoy Nkhata Bay. I inevitably had to pass through here, since the ferry that will take me back to Mozambique leaves from here at 8:00 PM tonight. But I could easily have spent a fourth night in Kande and taken a bus here in the morning. I would have had hours to spare before the ferry left. But I came a day earlier anyway. And lo and behold, I haven't enjoyed the experience. Nkhata Bay is the most touristed place in Malawi. I'm not particularly sure why: it's a small port town, albeit a rather picturesque port town surrounded by hills, but there is no beach here and not particularly much to do. It has built its appeal as a hedonistic backpackers retreat. Hordes of travelers come here to get wasted in their hostel bars, lie around in hammocks all day, then get wasted again at night. As I've gone over already, this isn't really what I'm looking to do this trip. To be fair, I liked the hostel a lot. They offered a range of cultural activities, such as Tonga lessons, and helped guests get involved in community projects. But most guests there are there to drink, smoke weed (a.k.a. Malawi Gold, a.k.a. Malawi Wowie), and consume other miscellaneous drugs.

As you might imagine, there is an army of townspeople trying to sell art, random trinkets and psychotropic drugs to tourists. Locals do not talk to you unless they are trying to sell you something. Often, their sales pitch is rather aggressive. If you say you have no money, they ask if you can trade something; one guy asked to go through my bag to find something worth a trade, and began to reach for it, which did not sit well with me. One guy uttered a quasi-threat towards me when I refused to sell him my shorts (a guy in Kande wanted my shorts too... they really aren't that nice!). The guy was messed up on something much worse than Malawi Wowie. He later heard me tell someone else where I was staying, and he promised to pay me a visit while I was sleeping. Laughable, since the hostel is patrolled by at least five security guards, and a troupe of ornery dogs. Point is, I felt uncomfortable pretty much the whole time I was here. A disappointing end to my time in Malawi, which has on the whole been rather pleasant.

I feel bad about passing through Malawi so quickly, especially because I'll probably never return, but my priority on this trip is Mozambique. Malawi is a very nice country with very friendly people. It is a dreadfully poor country: most of the population here lives on less than $1 per day, unemployment/underemployment is unimaginably high and the country isn't particularly fertile, is overpopulated and seemingly always on the precipice of a famine or food crisis. High world prices for fuel and food are currently exacerbating these problems. What is
most troubling though, is that Malawians seem to be extremely pessimistic about the future. Nobody thinks things will get better, and many people think it will get much, much worse. This is in stark contrast to Mozambique, where people are extremely optimistic about the future.

I'm also alarmed at how tourism has developed in Malawi. Most of the industry is controlled by foreigners, mostly Brits, which is probably inevitable because establishing a scuba shop or a hotel is extremely expensive and 99.9999% of Malawians simply don't have the money to start a venture like that. But I question how much of the profits are reinvested in Malawi - I've heard from more than one Malawian, including an alarming number of the villagers in Kande, that most foreigners involved in tourism invest their money elsewhere. Most galling to me are the employment practices at some hostels. Often, foreigners will be employed as managers, bartenders and in other miscellaneous positions. Surely, in a country where unemployment is easily over 50%, they should be able to find a local who can mix a gin and tonic. I also wonder how much the owners of these places pay their employees. My guess is that they're paid better than the average Malawian (which isn't very much), but much less than the profits of the business should ensure.

So tomorrow I return to Mozambique. I arrive in Metangula, which is on the other side of Lake Malawi (called Lago Niassa in Moz.). Northern Mozambique, where I will be spending pretty much the rest of my trip, is way, way, way off the backpacker loop. I have yet to meet anyone on my travels who has been to the north; most travelers in Mozambique never venture north of the Zambezi River. There are no hostels in the north, with the exception of Pemba (where it is low season and probably empty); accommodation will have to be sought in local cheap hotels, most of which I'm assuming will be sketchy. The roads up north are crap. Elephants and lions roam free and sometimes terrorize local villages. Traditional religion and medicine predominate. English certainly won't help me as much as it did in southern Mozambique; in some Swahili-speaking areas, Portuguese won't help me much either. It's all very exciting; I can't wait.

Kande, Part 2

2008-06-21T11:52:00.002-04:00

I had a splendid day on the beach. I swam in the warm, calm, clear water, and then Tiffany and I did pilates on the beach. I also got a ridiculous sunburn. So both my muscles and my skin are burning. It is not a good feeling.

I am going to Nkhata Bay tomorrow; the day after, I go back to Mozambique, travelling across the lake aboard what is reportedly a rickety ferry. It stops at small towns along the way and unloads livestock. I can't wait.

Kande

2008-06-21T01:42:00.003-04:00

Kande is a village very close to the sandy shores of Lake Malawi. An Englishman has put up a lodge on the beach, and that is where I'm staying. I've been here two days and am staying a third night.

People in this village are extremely friendly. The bus lets you off on the highway, about a 3km walk from the lodge. The walk took me about an hour and half, no because it was particularly difficult, but because I stopped and talked to random people every 200 metres or so. People are very curious about foreigners. That I'm Canadian is also beneficial in Kande: CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency... I think) is doing a project here. I met a guy named Banjo. He offered to give me a tour of the village and the school, and then to have me over for dinner. Obviously this was going to cost me, the price was $10. Remembering the wild night I had with Vanesio in Vilankulo, I happily accepted.

The next morning, I went to meet Banjo outside my lodge. Except he didn't show up. In his place came his twin brother, who I met on my walk to the lodge the day before. His name was Mel Gibson. That is a nickname; in Kande, I have also met a Donald Duck, a Georgie Porgie, and a Mr. Loverman (Shabba!). Mel Gibson did the ''tour'' - it was less a tour than an organized attempt to extract money from me. Not that I necessarily hold it against Mel Gibson; he and his family are obviously extremely poor, and I can't really say that I wouldn't do the same if I was in his position. But it was very uncomfortable for me. I had high hopes for yesterday - it strikes me as rare that villagers are so open and so accessible to travelers. The day before, after I had dropped off my backpack, I spent 3 hours on the beach watching fishermen. They insisted on showing me exactly how they fished, what kind of bait they used, and they insisted that I go out on a rickety wooden canoe with them. Later, a woman in the village insisted that I watch her pound cassava into flour in a gigantic mortar and pestle. So I was hoping for a really interesting and enlightening tour, a cultural exchange of some sort.

Don't get me wrong - Mel Gibson took me all around the village, led me into the local school, the local hospital, and deserves compensation for his efforts. I understand that relations I will form with locals in developing countries will almost always be of the cash-for-a good time variety. But there is a difference between that and what happened to me yesterday. After a brief tour around the village, we went to Mel Gibson's house, along with his brother Golden. There he sat me down and explained that I was his brother, his Canadian brother, and that families help each and that he would appreciate any assistance I could provide him. I assumed he was referring to a tip after the tour, which is expected and fair. But instead he brought up driving school - he asked me to provide 40,000 kwachas for him to take driving lessons. 40,000 is somewhere in between $250 and $300. I told him, in the nicest way I could muster, to get stuffed. He seemed OK with that... but he kept referring to me as his brother, and saying that his house was my house and that I should sleep there, and blah blah blah. That made me really uncomfortable. I know how families work in Africa: if one member is lucky enough to have a good job, he/she is expected to support the rest of the family. I could see where the day was headed.

The school was interesting. I spoke to the headmaster, and he outlined some of the problems and challenges that the school faced. He then asked a donation. I happily provided one. Then we went to the craft workshop in town. Mel Gibson does crafts too, and I was pressured to buy one of his various trinkets. Because, of course, I was his brother and brothers help out their family, right? Every time he referred to me as his brother, I wanted to punch him in the face. I much prefer the hard sell that is common in Mozambique - ''hey, white boy, buy my stuff". The kind of sales pitch I experienced yesterday makes me really uncomfortable. I ended buying something, hoping I would be left alone after that. I was not. Mel Gibson insisted I played bao (a very common, and fun, African table game) with him for an hour, and afterwards he spent half and hour cajoling me to buy a bao set from him. I refused.

After that was lunch. We had cassava with a little bit of meat, beans, and spinach. It wasn't very good; Malawian food is extremely mediocre. I was spoiled by the food in Mozambique. Moz. is a poor country, but food is abundant: tropical fruit grows like weeds in the fertile soil, and great hauls of seafood come from the Indian Ocean. There will always be enough food in Mozambique, the only issue is whether or not the locals will have enough money to pay for it. Malawi, on the other hand, is basically slab of mountain with very poor soil for growing anything other than tubers (and marijuana - Malawi is alleged to the have the best weed in Africa, and it costs 10 cents a gram. No, that is not a typo). The dearth of food is noticeable as soon as you cross the border - the giant stacks of fruit so ubiquitous at roadside stands in Mozambique are completely nonexistent in Malawi. People eat what they can grow, which most of the time is a little bit of maize or cassava, soaked, dried then beaten into a flour. Water is added, which makes a paste after vigourous stirring. It doesn't taste very good, but it's filling.

After lunch, my "brother" broached the topic of money a few more times, but by that time I had grown quiet and withdrawn, as I usually get when confronted with unpleasantness. I mumbled a refusal and an apology. We sat around in stony silence for like an hour, until Mel Gibson got the point and asked one of his brothers to walk me back to the lodge. On the way back, the brother, who's name I have forgotten now, asked me to send him money from Canada since he was a student and needed to pay for various things. *Sigh*

I had already paid for dinner so I decided to go back to their house to eat another mediocre meal. I was subjected to a long lecture about how I was their brother and brothers are supposed to help each other. There were brothers there that I had never met before. It was clear that it was hoped that I would be a sugar daddy for the entire village. I was sullen and didn't speak. After dinner I left. They invited me back the next day, but I have no intention of going. I've had enough, my brain hurts. I've been here two days and have done very little beach bumming, I've been in the village most of the time. So today is devoted to the beach. I have met my first A++ travel friend in Kande, a nurse from Calgary named Tiffany who is going to Zimbabwe two days before the elections to volunteer at a hospital there - amazing. We are going kayaking in the lake. It will be my first time on a kayak since I almost drowned in the Pacific Ocean off of Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in February 2007. Should be a blast.

Mzuzu

2008-06-18T10:23:00.002-04:00

I have little to say about Lilongwe except that it sucks and I'm glad I'm out of there. I went there for two pieces of business, which I accomplished successfully. First, I needed to get a fresh Mozambican visa. Second, I wanted to buy a new memory card for my camera.

I am now in Mzuzu, which is the main city in northern Malawi. I just got here so have little to say, except that I walked through town and nobody harassed me, not even once, and I am quite glad for that.

I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank my mother, who bailed out my sorry ass by wiring money to the organizers of the Guca festival on my behalf. So I'll actually have something to do in Serbia. Thanks Mom! I figure this is worth at least one Greek grandchild, no?

Lilongwe, Malawi

2008-06-16T12:42:00.003-04:00

This is the story of how I became a Mozambican firefighter, drank palm wine in a Vilankulo slum, was almost robbed (kind of) and ended up eating Korean food in a totally different country.

So on my last day in Vilankulo, I went on a dhow safari to the Archipelago de Bazaruto. It was a waste of time and money, but is important because a guy named Vanesio arranged it for me. He also arranged trips for the two Dutch guys I was traveling with (Kjeld and Rainier are their names). He approached me on the street and said that he worked with a guy named Rodrigues who did dhow safaris. It sounded sketchy - I asked him where the office was, or to show me the boat I'd be going on. I didn't really get any satisfactory answers. I stalled for an afternoon while I waited for the Dutch guys to get back, but Vanesio intercepted me before I could find them. So I agreed to pay him on behalf of "Rodrigues"; I was convinced it was a scam.

Turns out it wasn't. Kjeld and Rainier vouched for Vanesio and Rodrigues. We had beers later and ran into Vanesio. He invited us over to his house for dinner the next day. His girlfriend was evidently an amazing cook and would make us matapa with crap. It would cost us sabout $10, which is about normal price in Mozambique when crustaceans are involved. We agreed.

On Friday morning, I met Vanesio at 8:00 AM and we began walking to the dock where the dhow was anchored. On the way, we saw a house on fire. There are no firefighters in Vilankulo; there is barely running water in Vilankulo, and there aren't any high pressure hoses. People were running down to the beach, filling buckets with water and then hurling it into the flames. Those without buckets took armfuls of sand and did the same. Half the town was there. I ran back to my hostel and got some buckets, and joined in the fight. Some burly dudes appropriated my buckets, so I switched to throwing sand. Eventually we subdued the fire. The frame was still standing, but was severly damaged. The roof, which was made of straw, was completely ruined. More importantly, we saved the bar next door. Because god forbid a bar burns down.

After the dhow trip, it was time for supper. Since Vanesio worked in town and spoke perfect English (extremely rare in Mozambique), I assumed he was relatively wealthy. Turns out he lived in the slums of Vilankulo, probably 3 km away from the city centre. He lived in a small shack made of sticks with a thatched roof. So did everyone else in that area. His girlfriend, Giovencia, prepared absolutely fantastic food, matapa with soft shell crab. Most Mozambican food is amazing, that has been the definite highlight of my trip here. The local staple is allegedly xima, which is cassava grain. But it seems like nobody bothers eating that if something else is available, like rice or very tasty Portuguese style bread. Chicken is the most widely available meat, and it's usually served with piri-piri (which, by the way, is Mozambican in origin). On the coast, there are amazing prawns and fish and squid and crayfish. There are also all sorts of local greens too, like matapa, which is the leafy part of a cassava plant. And the fruit... oh my gosh don't get me started. I've had the best pineapples and bananas and mangoes of my life here, better even than in Central America.

We ate way more than $10 worth. I had two servings of matapa and crab (served with rice), and then an entire barracuda. Vanesio said that I ate like a Mozambican because I suck every last ounce of meat from the fish head; that may be the best compliment I've received in a while. While we ate, random people showed up. There was a 60 year old man, possibly drunk, who spouted complete nonesense. Mozambicans are unbelievably respectful to seniors, so we were forced to listen. But hey, I figure that if you live until you're 60 in Mozambique, you should be able to do whatever you want. Vanesio's friends stopped by. There was Maneiro, Benny, Paul (not his real name, I didn't get why he used a pseudonym) and a bunch of other guys who didn't say much. After we finished the meal, these guys began engaging in the preferred pastime of most Mozambican men: getting incomprehensibly drunk. There was beer, wine, local gin; I finally tasted palm wine and it was amazing; I also tasted some local brew that shockingly didn't blind me. Before long everyone was crocked, which was a bad idea for me as I had a 4 AM bus the next morning, and having a great time. I speak Portuguese better when I've drank palm wine. Eventually Paul, who is a street hawker, tried to sell us random knick-knacks and the discussion turned to money and became sullen; but this only lasted a while and we were soon having a good time again. At 11:30 PM, we left; the Mozambicans had to walk us back to town because there was a 100% chance we would have been jumped if we walked alone. There were parties everywhere in the slums, and we stopped at a few. In contrast, the town was completely dead but we hit a few bars anyway. I finally got to sleep at about 1:00 AM and woke up two hours later with a raging headache.

I am guessing that 0.000001% of visitors to Mozambique have experiences like that.

I realized in Vilankulo that I needed to visit another country. My Mozambique visa lasted for only 30 days, which is shorter than my trip. The penalty for overstaying a visa is about $500 US, so that was not an option. I decided to go to Malawi, and began making my way there after I left Vilankulo. The first stop was Chimoio, dusty impoverished city in the interior. I was hoping to organize a trip to the Gorongosa National Park from there, but I learned that the park has upped their fees by about 200% in order to cater to rich travelers. It was disappointing, since Gorongosa promised to be my best and perhaps only chance to go on safari and see large animals. I probably won't get to do that now. There was no reason to stay in Chimoio. I hated that town and felt very unsafe there. Someone tried to rob me there, kind of. I was walking back to the hostel when the following exchange happened:

Random Mozambican (angrily): HEY WHITE! WHITE! WHITE!
Me: Hello, how are you?
RM: Let's go have a party. (points menacingly to an abandoned building)
Me: No, thank you.
RM: Fuck you! (Gives me the finger)

A rather crude at robbery, and now I can actually laugh about it. But at the time I was quite shaken. I thought the guy was going to take a run at me, so I had balled up my fists. I would have punched him in the balls, I fight dirty. That was definitely the nastiest exchange I've had with anyone on any of my travels.

I left Chimoio the next morning for Tete, where I got a room from a sullen woman who barely spoke Portuguese. There was no running water or electricity and the shower consisted of a bucket filled with water. The next day, I took two chapas to the border, where I got to see how corrupt both these countries are. On the Mozambican side, people passed their passports to the agents with money in them; a Zambian guy I met told me that Mozambican customs agents outright refuse to stamp passports if they're not payed first. Mine was stamped with little fuss. The same exercise was repreated on the Malawian side, but this time I was asked for a bribe. I calmly replied that I knew that Commonwealth countries didn't have to pay for visas in Malawi, and if the agent liked we call my embassy in Lilongwe to double check. That did the trick.

I am now in Lilongwe, and I ate Korean food last night because the place was right next door to my guesthouse and people in Lilongwe tend to get stabbed if they walk around by themselves. It was the worst Korean food I've ever had in my life.

Vilankulo

2008-06-12T05:30:00.002-04:00

So this isn't exactly Paradise like Tofo, which isn't to say that it isn't extremely touristed. It's a different kind of tourist. Rather than bursting at the seams with backpackers, Vilankulo caters more to well-heeled South Africans, arriving by plane from Johannesburg to stay at expensive lodges just off the coast, in the Archipelago de Barazuto. I am going there tomorrow, on a day trip. There are actually only two people staying at my hostel, the other one being an Aussie fellow named Lachlan who is years old, just out of high school, and travelling up the Indian Ocean coast camping. Definitely not what I was doing at the age of 18. Our dorm is actually open air. Even though it gets pretty chilly at night, that's fine by me - my mattress is covered by a mosquito net and plus, it's rather nice going to sleep listening to bats fly around and hearing the wild dogs cry out in the night, as they grow restless longing for some solitary company.

My ride here was pretty wild. I had to catch a 7:00 bus out of Tofo. I was supposed to catch it with some Dutch guys, but I woke up late and hurried to the bus station rather than meet them at their campsite, as planned. They weren't at the station, but I got on the bus anyway. The bus drove at great speed with the doors open, slowing only to let people standing along the road jump on. The bus went only as far as Inhambane, which looked like an interesting place. But I was there only to catch a ferry to Maxixe. The jetty was two blocks away from the bus station, but it was under construction. A temporary one has been constructed, basically a bunch of 2 x 4s nailed together and reinforced. It was rickety, and it creaked a lot. The boat was a 15 seater boat with 25 people crammed into it, very common for Mozambique, pushed along by a 20 horsepower motor. It took 30 minutes to cross a very slow channel to Maxixe. Once there, I walked to the bus station, but the buses to Vilankulo were leaving from elsewhere. I started to walk there, but a guy pulled up in a pickup truck and offered me a lift. Mozambicans are ludicrously nice, and offer their services like this all the time. I jumped in the back of the truck and he motored off so fast that I almost fell out of the truck. But I got to the Vilankulo bus station all in one piece.

The "bus" is actually what in Mozambique is called a "chapa": so something smaller than a bus, but which still travels long distances. In this case it was a Chinese-made minibus. In North America, it would have seated 10. In Central America, they would have packed in 15. In Mozambique, they squeezed in 20, plus a formidable stack of luggage. It felt like a clown car. For whatever reason, there was a long discussion between the driver and a passenger about what to do with my backpack. It lasted about 5 minutes, but in the end the driver told me to board. I was assigned the absolute worst seat in the chapa: at the back next to a window, but right over a wheel, and with a steel bar digging into my shoulder. The seats were like concrete. I was sitting behind a talkative fellow who could speak a bit of English. He had a bottle of wine and offered me some - in Mozambique, it's polite when on a chapa/bus to offer everyone some of your food/drink. I accepted. It tasted like kerosene, I'm assuming it was home brew. The guy drank the entire bottle of wine during the 4 hour trip to Vilankulo and got extraordinarily drunk. His questions became more and more strange as the trip went one. At one point, he turned and asked me if I was a fan of Westlife and the Backstreet Boys.

The trip to Vilankulo was extremely uncomfortable. The road was potholed and absolutely abominable. That was the main north-south highway, too. Everytime we went over a pothole my shoulder dug into the bar next to me; I have a rather large welt there now. Something else you should know about Mozambican highways: they are both completely deserted and teeming with people. There aren't any towns. Periodically you'll see a shack made of sticks or corrugated tin in the bush, and every 100 kilomtres there is a service station, which in Mozambique consists of a shack manned by a dude with a bunch of jericans full of gas and a funnel. But people are always walking along the side of the road: white shirted kids hurrying to school, women carrying great weights on their head. The chapa honked at them as it slalomed around the potholes.

A couple random thoughts I had along the trip, which I think illustrate the poverty of this country. When you finally hit a town, people selling everything rush at the bus. I tried to buy a bag of tangerines, which would have cost me the equivalent of one dollar. I paid with the equivalent of four dollars. She didn't have enough change to give back to me. This happens a lot here. Four dollars is a lot of money here; if you don't have small change, you can't buy anything. Secondly, on the bus from Tofo to Inhambane, I found myself sitting immediately in front of the door, and I braced myself to move for a senior when one boarded. But no seniors caught the bus; this was, as I realized, because the majority of people in Mozambique don't make it out of their 40s.

At some point I need to properly discuss Mozambican food, which is amazing, but I've run out of internet time...

Tofo

2008-06-10T06:46:00.002-04:00

I has taken me 10 minutes to open this web page! Long live Mozambican internet connections!

I am in Tofo. If you are moved to look that up on a map, it's north of Maputo, across the bay from the city of Inhambane. It is Paradise. There are white sand beaches and the warm Indian Ocean, which I yesterday used as an ersatz netty pot. A brief boat ride leads you to a coral reef with world class diving. One can snorkel with dolphins and manta rays. The hostel here is built on sand dunes just above the ocean. There is a beach bar and the dorms are located in reed huts with thatched roofs. There are all sorts of backpackers from 15 or so countries milling about. There is lots to do at night, beach parties, full moon parties and the like. It's the kind of place you visit for a few days, but end up staying a month. Like I said, it is Paradise.

So of course, I cannot WAIT wait to move on. I came to Mozambique for some pretty well-defined reasons. First, because I was legitimately interested in its history, politics, music, food, society, palm wine (!!), art, culture etc., and I wanted to learn more about it. Second, I wanted to begin to learn Portuguese, with a long-term goal of hopefully one day being able to research in that language. Tofo, for all it's charms, does not offer any of that. This is the surely the most commercialized place in Mozambique, and there are probably as many backpackers/expats here than Mozambicans. The only cultural insights to be gleaned here are into backpacker culture, something which quite frankly bores me now. Tofo is less a Mozambican beach town than an international backpackers' town, no different than similar places in Costa Rica or Thailand or wherever; my hostel actually is about 99% similar to a surf camp I stayed in at Malpais, Costa Rica, in February 2008 (long time TG Travels readers will remember that I didn't much care for that place). As for speaking Portuguese, that is impossible here. Mozambicans are enterprising people. Pretty much everyone in this town has learned enough English that if you ask them a question in less-than-fluent Portuguese, the response is always in English.

I do not dislike Tofo. It really is quite pleasant, and if I was traveling for longer than five weeks, I would probably stay here longer than two nights. But given my time constraints, and the fact that Tofo clearly isn't my scene, I think it's best if I get back on the road and head elsewhere. I have no idea where I'll end up tomorrow night. Tofo is in a weird location with bad transport links to the north so I may only get as far as Maxixe tomorrow; Maxixe is more or less a highway town with flophouse-type accommodation that should be palatable for a night. The goal is to eventually make it to Vilankulo, which is ironically another backpacker Paradise. This highlights the most annoying things about Mozambique so far. Budget accommodation is relatively scarce and because I'm not camping, where I spend extended periods of time is basically already decided for me. So I'm stuck going to Vilankulo even though I know it likely will not be my scene, because I won't be able to make it further north in one day (or two days, even).

But these are minor quibbles. My trip has gone rather well so far and I haven't even lost my camera yet.

Maputo

2008-06-08T07:54:00.003-04:00

This is my last day in Maputo. I wouldn't say I love it here, but I definitely like it. I can see how it's earned a reputation as one of the more palatable capital cities in Africa. It's physical location is pretty stunning, set on a bay in the Indian Ocean. There are pretty good beaches maybe 1km from the city centre. But it's also dirty, smells like raw sewage in some areas, has the most uneven sidewalks I've ever seen in my life, and many buildings haven't been rebuilt from the civil war (18 years and counting). The thing I like most, other than the communist theme to the street names (I forgot to mention Rua Kim Il-Sung, which is where this internet cafe is!), is how laid back it is. I wouldn't call Maputo chaotic. It's big and loud and bustling and impoverished and traffic careens through the streets at 100 km per hour, but it's not really chaotic. People leave you alone here, for the most part. I spent maybe an hour chilling in the botanical gardens yesterday, and nobody harassed me, not even once. I also like how multiracial Maputo is, which is something I didn't expect. There are a lot of white Mozambiquans - evidently they didn't flee en masse in 1975 as happened in Angola - as well as white South Africans who now live here. There are also noticeable populations of Arabs and Chinese. I'm comfortable here. Wandering around here certainly isn't an ordeal, as it was in many large Central American cities. Or perhaps I'm just dealing with it better.

So what have I been doing? Not a whole hell of a lot. Relaxing, loitering, listening to music blaring from cars, getting lost in the streets. Observing. Going to markets. I went to the National Art Museum and was blown away by the calibre of artist that a small country like Mozambique has produced. There are two really famous Moz. artists, Chissano (a sculptor) and Malangatana (a painter). But I saw paintings in that museum that rival anything Malangatana, or any other artist I've ever seen, has produced. Check out names like Bertina Lopes, Samate and Naguib if you're interested. There are like 10 others that I liked but I can't remember their names right now. There was also some moderately interesting communist and revolutionary art on display, as well as a room displaying the strangest sculptures I've ever seen in my life. I guess a doctor here in the 1930s commissioned a sculptor to recreate boldily deformities out of clay. So this room was filled with sculptures of heads with gigantic bloody tumours protruding out of the necks. I wish I had pictures, but no cameras were allowed in the museum.

Today was all about the ocean. I went to the local fish market, about 2 km up the coast from the centre, with a Zimbabwean/Polish couple I met. The deal was this: you buy some seafood, then there are restaurants in the back where you pay people to cook it for you. The restaurants supply fries, salad and drinks as well. As as we got there, people latched on to us immediately and tried taking us to specific fish mongers. They pretty clearly wanted commission, and were a nuissance. The opening price quoted to us was 200 meticais (like $8) for a kilo of shrimp. Eventually, after much wrangling, histrionics and bartering, we found someone to sell us shrimp for 150 meticais ($6) a kilo, and a kilo of squid for exactly the same price. Then I had to fight 3 or four random touts to take possession of the bag our seafood was in - again commission - and we went to find a restaurant. So then we had to bargain with restaurant owners. Everyone was offering a price of 150 meticais, but eventually we got one man to lower his price to 100. After he sat down, he told us that the 100 was just for the cooking, and it would cost 40 extra for cleaning, etc. I told him to fuck off in my best Portuguese (which is to say, not very well) but he knew he was being naughty and agreed for 100 meticais total for services ($4). So we got 2 kilos of seafood with fries and salad for about $5 each. Pretty damn good!

Mozambiquan prawns are amazing, by the way.

I'm frittering away the rest of this day watching volleyball games on the beach, and eventually I'm going to buy a pineapple from a fruit stand for an extremely low price. That will be my supper.

Tomorrow I go to a beach town called Tofo, where I will swim with manta rays and dugongs. I'm rather excited.

I'm here!

2008-06-06T07:47:00.002-04:00

I had to e-mail my Mom to tell her that that my plane didn't crash into the south Atlantic, so I thought I'd post my first entry. I'm tired, but not as tired as I thought I'd be. I usually have trouble sleeping on planes, but this time I dozed on both of my intercontinental flights. My Toronto-Sao Paulo flight was especially good for snoozing since I had the whole row to myself and could stretch out a little bit. I was sitting next to a nervous Colombian on my flight to Johannesburg, so I was crammed in a little more tightly (made worse by the appalling lack of legroom on South African Airways) and didn't sleep as much. Still, it was a pleasant flight - air traffic control sent us close to Rio, and Rio looks pretty damn nice from 18,000 feet.

My Johannesburg-Maputo flight was 75% occupied by a Canadian church group. They are Baptists and they came to Mozambique to convert people. I know that because I heard two of them say that, in basically exactly those words.

I've been in Maputo for about 3 hours, two of which were spent lying on my hostel bed snoring happily. Still, that has been enough time to draw a few meaningful conclusions.

1. Gettimg around Maputo is roughly 600,000,000 times easier than navigating comparably sized Central American cities (Managua, San José) because the streets in Maputo actually have names. Rejoice!

2. An astonishingly high % of the streets here are named for various famous socialists/communists. I am staying on Avenido (is that even a Portuguese word?) Mao Tse Tung. There are also streets named for Marx, Lenin, Salvador Allende, Ho Choi Minh, Olof Palme and a bevy of African pinkos such as Ahmed Sekou Touré, Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto and a bunch of others most people have never heard of.

3. You drive on the left in Mozambique. I'm kind of curious as to how that came about.

4. The drivers in Maputo are insane. I took a cab from the airport - only after the "free ride" promised to me by my hostel failed to show up - and I think I began fearing for my life about five seconds in. At one point there was a traffic jam. Rather than wait it out in, my driver drove went over the dividing line into the right lane and began driving into incoming traffic. Not that he was the only one: enough people did the same thing that pretty soon there was a southbound traffic jam in the right lane too. Periodically a car going north would weave its way through the traffic jam, horn blaring. Insane.

5. I can't speak Portuguese particularly well. I spent my layover in Sao Paulo reading signs, listening to announcements, conjugating verbs in my head and writing down vocabulary words in the hopes that I'd remember them once I touched down in Maputo. Then I said "gracias" instead of "obrigado" to my taxi driver after he dropped me off. Whooops.

6. I am not getting culture shock. I thought I would.

2008-06-04T18:09:00.002-04:00

It's finally time to go. After I write this post, I will be shutting down my computer, hiding it in the depths of my closet, calling a cab, then heading to the London airport (reason #498549549824 why I'm happy my ticket is from YXU: I can go to the airport 30 minutes before a flight be through security with 10 minutes to spare). I think I've packed everything I need, but then again, I seem to always forget something. Hopefully it isn't my passport or my money.

For people who are into these kind of things, here's my itinerary.

1. Air Canada 7724, London (YXU) to Toronto (YYZ). Departs June 4 20:20, arrives 21:02

2. Air Canada 90, Toronto (YYZ) to Sao Paulo (GRU). Departs June 4 23:15, arrives June 5 10:25

3. South African 223, Sao Paulo (GRU) to Johannesburg (JNB). Departs June 5 18:00, arrives June 6, 7:40

4. South African 142, Johannesburg (JNB) to Maputo (MPM). Departs June 6 9:40, arrives 10:45

Unintentional comedy potential: my sister informs me that the Toronto-Sao Paulo flight, which she once observed while boarding a flight to Frankfurt from a few gates away, is full of extremely attractive, well-dressed Brazilians. I meanwhile, am wearing hemp pants, my Yellowknife t-shirt, my Sarajevo sweatshirt, white socks, and my shitty black crocs. I look like a vagabond. If I'm not stared at with complete disdain at least 15 times by hot Brazilians, I will be extremely disappointed.

Holy shit, I'm actually doing this.

2008-06-04T11:37:00.003-04:00

Reason #49054024 why one should never equate "intelligence" with "doing a PhD": I wanted to go to bed early last night and get a 10 hour sleep under my belt before my 30 hour nightmare trip to Maputo. So of course, I went to trivia, drank several glasses of beer, went to the APK, drank more beer, went home much too late, slept poorly and then woke up at 7 AM. *Sigh*

I arrive in Maputo on June 6 in the late morning, and I'm assuming that day will be frittered away sleeping, and maybe taking a brief walkabout to get my bearings. Thankfully, this starts on June 7, so I won't miss any of it. Perhaps it's gauche to make a point of watching a European soccer tournament whilst traveling in Africa, but the locals will definitely be watching too (Mozambique, by the way, produced one of the greatest soccer players of all time) and plus, watching Greece win Euro 2004 in various Central European cities ranks among my most cherished travel memories.

I'm especially curious to observe the vibe during the Portugal games. Mozambique is of course a former Portuguese colony. Portugal was without a shadow of a doubt the worst African colonizers: they were the first ones in, the last to pull out (1975, as compared to the 1950s and 1960s for the French, British and Belgians), were enthusiastic slave traders, plundered pretty much everything of value, left comparatively little useful infrastructure (as I'm evidently going to find out first hand in northern Mozambique), and played domestic divide-and-rule so effectively that Mozambique and Angola were plunged into civil war almost immediately after achieving independence (South African shenanigans had a lot to do with that too). To be fair to the Portuguese, they've tried very hand to undo that legacy recently, not just in Africa but in all of their former colonies - I read somewhere that Portugal provides something like half of East Timor's operating budget in the form of no-strings-attached direct aid (I am too lazy to verify this, aren't I a fantastic scholar?), and I also know that Portuguese diplomats played important roles in trying to end the civil wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.

Which begs the question - how will the Portuguese team be treated by Mozambican spectators? Will they be cheered? Booed? Will they root for the other team to win? Whatever happens, methinks it'll be an interesting insight into the current state of Portuguese/Mozambican relations.

2008-06-02T23:50:00.003-04:00

So it's almost go time, and I'm starting to have that nervous/apprehensive/freaked out feeling I always get before I set off on extended travels. Eeeeek! Tonight I began the packing process. It looks as though my backpack will be half clothes, half miscellaneous other stuff, which is unusual for me. I usually bring as little miscellaneous stuff other as possible, because it's almost easier (and cheaper) to buy things on location once you get there (case in point: the preposterous $5 rain poncho I bought in Costa Rica). So this trip is a little different. For example, I am bringing bug dope from here, largely because I'd read that the stuff most commonly available in Moz. isn't especially good (I'm curious - does that mean it's too weak, or that it's 100% DEET and will make my skin melt?).

There is still a lot of stuff left to buy, so I'm making a trip to Canadian Tire at Wonderland and Southdale tomorrow (really, a gigantic excuse to eat Colombian concoctions at La Tienda). There is additional strip mall dystopia around there so I can pick up whatever I can't get at Crappy Tire close by. I need the following:

-A Leatherman Tool, because I am a real man who kills snakes with my bare hands, skins them with my Leatherman and then turns them into a fine pair of boots. Swiss Army knives are for girly men.
-String, which I will offer to corrupt police officers asking for bribes.
-A flashlight, preferably lighthouse-strength.
-Thumb tacks, because you'd be surprised by how much one can do with thumb tacks.
-Ziploc bags, which will be used to smuggle contraband back to Canada.

I am thinking about maybe buying a lightweight belt, preferably one I won't have to remove when I go through metal detectors. Maybe I'll just lash a rope around my pants, because that is what REAL men who use Leatherman Tools do. I also thought about buying a hat to protect to my rapidly balding head from the tropical sun, but I couldn't find what I was looking for and will tempt sun stroke instead.

2008-06-02T13:06:00.002-04:00

I have to start taking my malaria pills in a couple of days. I've never taken malarone before, only choloroquine, so I'm not sure if I'll experience any side effects. There are a lot of people, judging from anecdotal stories and message board posts who choose not to take their malaria meds in Africa, citing unwanted side effects.

A common side effect of malarone: dizziness
A common side effect of malaria: death

2008-06-01T13:07:00.002-04:00

I am now the ~~proud~~ ashamed owner of a pair of black Crocs. Crocs are the ugliest shoes I've ever seen in my life, but people tell me that they're extremely low maintenance and so comfortable that they require no break-in period at all. But the best thing about Crocs is that they cost less than $10 at Zellers (the Ontario Wal-Mart!), so I can beat the shit out of them in Africa, then never wear them again.

2008-06-01T00:09:00.005-04:00

People have interesting reactions when I tell them I'm going to Mozambique. A lot of people clearly have no idea where that is, which is fine. And a lot of people immediately ask me whether or not I'd be doing relief work there, with which organization and for how long. This question is often followed by a look of puzzlement when I let them know that, no, I'd be tramping around, eating, lying on beaches, dancing in nightclubs and doing other "vacation" things while I'm there.

It's interesting that Africa is seen by some as a place that needs to be "saved" by caucasoid travelers. That's not to denigrate relief work, or the people who do it; I'm inclined to think they do pretty awesome work. I guess I just find it curious that nobody asked me similar questions when I was on my way to Central America, or that travelers heading to places like SE Asia aren't expected to build houses or whatever while they're there. Perhaps it speaks to a certain perception of Africa in the West, an attitude rooted in White Man's Burden-like doctrines that presuppose that Africa is inhabited by a rather hapless population, making it incumbent on caucasians to go to Africa and teach the locals how to do things properly. Or, maybe not. All I know is that I'm bored of people asking me about relief work.

2008-05-19T12:29:00.001-04:00

Amazing.

2008-05-19T10:22:00.003-04:00

It is still the AM hours on Victoria Day. I should be sleeping, or at the very least propped up in my bed watching Bollywood movies and eating pineapple. But instead I'm sitting in my office, ~~procrastinating~~ frantically putting the finishing touches on a presentation that I am giving here in about one week's time. I am expecting a miserable experience, frankly. Somehow spending four days in a remote mountain village talking about sport history doesn't sound like a particularly good time. That, and I'm terrified of public speaking. I wish that every time I said "uh" or "um" or pause awkwardly during my presentation a food trough in a Burmese village filled with millet. Because then there would be lots of heaping food troughs in Burma.

On my way to Lake Placid, I'm going home for a couple of days. I'm going to eat Schwartz's, drink Boréale and snore happily on Kim and Renée's couch. Also, I'm going to pick up some olive oil, and hopefully learn how to use my camera properly.

I still haven't really thought about my upcoming travels. I blame my blasted conference presentation. By the time I get back from Montreal/Lake Placid, it'll be about a week before I leave. Do you think a week is enough time to learn how to speak Portuguese? I may be able to understand it already. I could understand large parts of this movie but I'm pretty sure the Mozambiquan accent will be 100% different from the Brazilian accent.

At least I have a piece of paper certifying that I don't have yellow fever.

2008-05-02T12:22:00.002-04:00

I need to get a yellow fever vaccine or else South African Airways will not let me board my flight. All right then!

2008-05-01T12:35:00.002-04:00

I was injected with my Hepatitis A on Tuesday and my arm felt like it weighed 50,000 pounds for about a day and half afterwards. Shockingly, that's the vaccines I need - maybe. Mozambique and Malawi aren't yellow fever countries, but Brazil is. I need to contact Air Canada, South African Airlines, and the embassies of Malawi and Mozambique to figure out what their policies are about travel to/from Brazil. It's conceivable that Air Canada and SAA won't let me board their flights without proof of vaccination (despite the fact that I'm leaving the Sao Paulo airport, which is hardly a yellow fever zone), or that Mozambique and Malawi might not let me enter their countries. Or, says my doctor, they might put me into quarantine and then administer the vaccine themselves. I've kind of always wanted the experience of being quarantined, but not on this trip.

Also, I'm learning Portuguese.

2008-04-28T00:48:00.004-04:00

Check out my Brazilian transit visa:

I'm kind of disappointed that it's filled in by hand, I was hoping for some crazy holograms or something bad ass like that.

2008-03-30T13:25:00.002-04:00

Behold:

Is it strange that I'm more excited for a trumpet festival then I am to go to Africa?

2008-03-22T23:14:00.005-04:00

Part 2 of my summer has been confirmed! I'm flying to Belgrade (Belgrade!) on July 31, hanging around Serbia for a week, then heading down to Guca for some brass music and slivovice, then taking an overnight train to Greece to lie on a beach, eat fish and chill with my family. I return to London on August 28.

I got a pretty good deal on my ticket. I'm flying in and out of Detroit, which took the price down a substantial margin. I fly to Belgrade with Air France via Paris, and then fly back from Thessaloniki via Athens (with Olympic) and Atlanta (Delta).

So I am basically taking two trips for the price of one: I'm not paying for my ticket to Africa, and once I get to Greece my expenses will be covered by the Bank of Mom and Dad.

Also,

2008-03-16T20:26:00.004-04:00

So my first trip is booked! I want to reprint my itinerary because it's so effing awesome.

June 4: AC Jazz #7724. Depart London 20:20, arrive Toronto 21:02.
June 4: Air Canada #90. Depart Toronto 22:45, arrive Sao Paulo 9:55 (June 5)
June 5: South African Airlines #223. Depart Sao Paulo 18:00, arrive Johannesburg 7:40 (June 6)
June 6: SA Airlines #142. Depart Johannesburg 9:40, arrive Maputo 10:45

July 9: TAP Portugal #278. Depart Maputo 17:35, arrive Lisbon 5:45 (July 10)
July 10: TAP #354. Depart Lisbon 8:10, arrive Heathrow 10:50
July 10: AC #857. Depart Heathrow 12:05, arrive Toronto 14:45
July 10: AC Jazz #7717. Depart Toronto 16:50, arrive London 17:30

EXCITING! New airlines, new airports, a flight over the South Atlantic, and, oh yeah, 5 weeks in Mozambique. I'm more than likely going to check out Malawi as well. 5 weeks is not enough - Mozambique is a BIG country - but it's the best I can do right now.

I was briefly considering going into Sao Paulo during the 8 hour layover I have there for I've decided not to for multiple reasons (cost of a visa, distance to the city center, unpredictable traffic jams). Too bad, I had visions of spending my June 5 eating sushi in Liberdade. Guarulhos Airport will have to do!

Um, should I be learning Portuguese?

2008-03-09T11:23:00.004-04:00

I am scheming a trip. Actually, I am scheming two trips. I will not divulge what they are for fear of jinxing them, but I guess I can divulge the following:

a) Portuguese is very prominently involved. Think I can learn Portuguese in three months?

b) A flugelhorn may be prominently involved. Several flugelhorns, actually.

c) I am not going to Iran/Armenia/Georgia. This was originally my plan, but unrest in Armenia has put the kibosh on that. I've had a long year (which isn't even over yet), and I don't particularly feel like dealing with political instability/danger/violence this summer. I guess I'm getting soft.