The curious incident of the dog in the minivan

I realize that I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the weather. A serious omission for someone of my background I realize. And as I don’t have much to say at the moment, when better to drag out the tried and tested method of filling awkward silences in conversation. Or in this case, monologue.

So, the week after I got back from Bishkek, it was cold. Ridiculously cold. Blisteringly cold. Colder than a welldigger’s arse, and a witch’s tit. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Colder than Jeremy Irons’s dick. There isn’t really an expression in general use that matches that last one, but just looking at him you get the sense the he’d have one of the world’s coldest dicks. Plus I saw him on TV yesterday supporting the odious fox hunting community so I’m particularly ill disposed toward him today. It was so cold, that upon leaving the apartment I was unable to prevent myself from uttering “Holy fucking Christ”. Now I realize that there are some who’d find such language offensive, but I‘ll wager those people have never walked out into a temperature of -35 degrees Centigrade.

This week things have perked up and it has hovered around the zero mark. A vast improvement and almost balmy after the week before. It felt springlike. Lambs frolicked in the glades, buds burst forth, and the whole animal kingdom engaged in a mad and frantic orgy of sexual congress. OK, so none of that actually happened outside of my fevered and frankly perverted imagination, but it did seem nice, although, it has to be said, decidedly slushy.

To celebrate the snowy but warm (well warmish) winter wonderland, we headed out this weekend to enjoy the snow. Specifically we went with Elvira, a friend, to assist her in her new hobby – sled dog racing. You know the kind of thing – team of huskies pulling human being through the tundra for no reason other than they are dogs, and will do any old shit that humans ask them to. In fact, I can say that this weekend has confirmed both of my concerns about dogs.

1. That they are (as mentioned) insanely willing to humiliate and exhaust themselves for the sake of their humans.
2. That they stink. Fortunately our two trips in Elvira’s minivan to different locations from which to begin these mini-iditarods were both short. Being cooped up in a confined space with dogs who are not well acquainted with the concept of personal hygiene can be a trying experience. Even the 15 kms we had to travel at times became an olfactory endurance test. On Saturday’s trip the dogs stopped to partake in the gastronomic delights of a pile of horse shit (Hungarian: Lo Szar – see how my language skills are coming along). Subsequently (and unsurprisingly) on our way home one of them proceeded to vomit this delicious feast back up. Let me tell you if you’ve never spent time in a confined space with horse shit that has been chucked up by a husky, then you’ve never lived. To give an indication of how bad it was, I can honestly say that parmesan cheese smells better.

If anyone ever read this site, then chances are that one of those non-existent readers would be a dog lover and would write in to complain that I am being grossly unfair. Dogs do not, in fact, stink, but merely exist in a different plane of understanding of smell from us. Spend time with dogs, they would go on, and you will soon love to appreciate their delightfully playful aromas. It is true, I have to say, that the only people who don’t seem to recognize how horribly smelly dogs are, are their owners themselves. So possibly I have hit on something here. Some kind of nasal acculturation takes place. I’m just not sure if I want to spend that long becoming acclimatized.

Anyway, we had a good time, chucking snowballs at one another, sledding, building snowmen and walking through the snowy hills (occasionally cheering as Elvira whooshed by in the midst of a caninic cloud of snow powder). I even had a short go on the dog sled myself, but had to do most of the work myself as the lazy bastards couldn’t be arsed to really pull. It was a fairly steep uphill climb though, and I could use losing a kilo or ten, so it may have been understandable (here the dog lovers are thinking “oh that’s why he’s so down on dogs, they couldn’t pull his huge blubbery fat arse up a mountain”). They have nice eyes, huskies. That’s about as far as I’m prepared to go in a conciliatory direction.

Ice hockey update

I know how desperate you all probably are to hear how the ice hockey playoffs are going, after I so successfully piqued your dormant interest last week. Well, I’ll tell you. On Friday night game 3 went in a predictable way and ended up in a 5-2 win for Steaua. Frankly the game was similar to the one I saw up here, and I really couldn’t imagine anything other than a 4-1 series win. Then yesterday, and by some miracle, we (ie Sport Club) won 4-0. Yes, 4-0. After conceding at least 4 goals in every previous game, we managed to keep a clean sheet. I have no idea what happened, but the series is coming back here for games 5 and 6. I still can’t see SC winning, but it looks more evenly matched than I thought it was. The stadium was distinctly half empty though which only goes to show me that we deserve it more. There are 2.2 million people in Bucharest and they can’t fill an ice rink. Puffs. We have 40,000 and packed the place two or three to a seat. Half of the fans there seemed to be from here anyway. They really don’t deserve it. Plastic fans, plastic team. Csiki-csiki-csiki-csiki-csiki-csiki-CSIKSZEREDA!

Photos

I have fiunally put some of my photos online, and they can be found by all you lucky people at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/adhoc.rm/my_photos One day I'll caption them so you can actually know what they hell they are.

Of Ice and Men

The Romanian ice hockey “Superliga” consists of 6 teams. (I’ll leave it up to you to guess whether that’s because it genuinely is a superleague of the 6 top teams in the country, or whether it’s because there are basically 6 teams in Romania). Of these six teams, 3 are from Bucharest and the other three are from Hargita County. Hargita County is where I live and essentially it is the one part of the country (along with neighbouring Covasna County) that is majority Hungarian. (and the majority is of the 90% variety). Hence the league is basically a sporting venue for dealing with ethnic tension. The fans of the Bucharest teams probably see the Hargitans as merely hicks rather than as a representative of some kind of pro-Hungarian independence movement, but the fans of the three Transylvanian teams certainly see themselves as representative of something more fundamental. It’s Barcelona vs. Real Madrid with fewer people. All it needs is a banner at the games reading (in English) “Transylvania is not Romania”.

So, back to the hockey. Despite only having 6 teams there are in reality only two that are any good. Steaua Bucharest and Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc. So each year there is a league and a cup. The final of the cup is contested by Steaua and Sport Club, and the end of the league play off between the top two teams in the table is between Steaua and Sport Club. It’s like the Scottish Premier League only more so. It’s kind of a waste of time even having a regular season and they should probably just skip ahead to the playoffs. Anyway a few weeks ago the cup final took place in Bucharest and while I wasn’t here and don’t really know what happened, there were some let’s-just-say dodgy refereeing decisions that led to the game being won by Steaua. Sport Club refused their second place medals and gave them instead to the referee, and the fans in Csikszereda awarded the team the “Cup of Truth” when they got back from the capital. As a result of that game, it was decided that the referees for the upcoming play-off series must be foreign (i.e. not Romanian – also presumably not Hungarian).

So last weekend was the first game in the best of seven play-off final. It was in Bucharest and sounds like a real cracker. After two periods (of three) Steaua were leading 4-1 and it seemed like the game was lost, but somehow, Csikszereda came back to level the match and then win it 5-4 in overtime. The second game was yesterday back here in the sticks, and as a result of that epic comeback, the town was buzzing.

We arrived at the stadium at about 4.45 for a 6.30pm kickoff (kickoff? Must be face-off or something?). Even that early we heard rumours flying around that the rink was already full. The fact that we had tickets seemed to mean very little – and as they weren’t attached to a seat but were just general admission, it was clear that it could be a problem. As crowds flooded in we had to wait for the fourth member of our party, Gyözö, to arrive. The “stadium” (more like a glorified sports hall) was full, but there were still loads of people entering. Hundreds must have gone in in just the 15 minutes we waited outside anxiously for Gyözö to show up. Finally he turned up and we could go in. It was packed, but not beyond the bounds of reason. However it was fairly clear that the number of tickets and the number of seats were not exactly the same thing. As we all crowded into the seating area above the team benches, there were obviously no remaining seats. In fact there were probably already 2 people to each seat, and the crowds showed no sign of abating. We stood on the walkway for a while until the police appeared and told us to move up somewhere. It wasn’t clear how we were to do that or where we ought to head for. The staircases between seats were all occupied too. Eventually we found somewhere to stand between seats, and relaxed for a while. Until it became obvious that in fact everyone would end up standing on the seats to see, and therefore being between seats wouldn’t help. One old man next to Erika complained that he had arrived three hours early in order to get a good seat – which he would now have to stand on. He’d even brought a cushion for himself, which was now proving to be not a lot of use. One bank of seats was curiously empty though. “Reserved” by some unwritten reservation system. These were for the hard core fans, who presumably follow the team through the whole season, attending every 10-0 thrashing of Gyergyo or Dinamo Bucharest, and probably going to away games too. It does seem reasonable that when the season gets interesting and the rest of us Laszlo-come-latelys showed up, that these more serious fans ought to have some kind of special treatment.

At about 5.45 the Steaua fans showed up. There were probably about 50 or so of them and they occupied one corner of the arena, surrounded by an equal number of policemen. There was lots of booing from our side. Then they unfurled a Romanian flag and the volume of the booing went up dramatically. They were told, quite vehemently, to go home. This was done in Romanian, which was a nice gesture, as most epithets were hurled, defiantly, in Hungarian. The next chant was to repeat the word “gypsies” over and over in a crescendo of meta-racism. I have to say that the idea of abusing an ethnic group who you dislike by referring to them as another ethnic group you dislike even more is taking the shitty casual crowd racism concept to a whole new level. While European football is gripped in the midst of discussions about terrace bigotry, and a “Kick Racism Out Of Football” campaign, Romanian ice hockey it seems is not yet ready for such direct movements and will need to start, one step at a time, with a “Let’s Kick Racism Out Of Racism” campaign.

The hardcore fans arrived, daubed in blue and white paint and hats and shirts [the local high school’s geography teacher was one and as he looked at the massed ranks of not-so-loyal fans around him, started chanting “Szervusztok, szervusztok, szervusztok” (hello everyone)], and as if on cue the teams came out to warm up. Booing for the Steaua players seemed to override cheering the local team. The most instantly noticeable thing about the Steaua team is that principle sponsor is something called “PUFF”. I have no idea what PUFF is or what they do (probably something prosaic like manufacturing distributor caps or underwriting mortgages), but it was quite weird to see a whole team of skew-nosed, toothless, rough-as-fuck ice-hockey players to be skating around bearing the motto “PUFF” proudly on their chests. If I could put pictures on here, I’d post one and caption it “Steaua – a bunch of puffs?”, but since I can’t you’ll just have to imagine that kind of rapier sharp Wildean wit, and trust me on how hysterically funny it would have been.

Anyway, the game. I’ve seen ice hockey on TV before, but never watched a game in the flesh. It’s much better when you’re there. Not only because of the fans and all that atmosphere thang, but also because you can actually see the puck. Also when I’ve watched it on TV I’ve just ended up marveling at the skill of the players – they can skate AND whip this puck back and forth between them – and not imagined that they were fallible in any way. When you’re there (and when you’re supporting Sport Club) you can see just as many errors and groan just as agonizingly as if you were watching, say, Sheffield Wednesday.

Most of the action was one way, and there were a number of penalties called on those dirty southern capital dwellers (y’see the similarities between English football and Romanian ice hockey are not invisible). In particular whoever was playing number 23 for Steaua seemed to spend more time in the penalty box than he did on the ice. I had him down as a Romanian Steve Bould. Sport Club poured forward shooting whenever they got a chance but seemingly unable to get very close to the goal before doing so. Ten minutes in they did get close and the shot rebounded off the keeper and was rammed home by a player following up. The place went nuts. We were 1-0 up and looking good. Steaua hadn’t even had an attack. Then less than a minute later, they did. And they scored. And a few minutes later they had another one, and scored again. And before the first period was over it had happened again. Three attacks, three goals. In fact, on three occasions in the first period Sport Club had a player in the penalty box, and on all three of those occasions Steaua scored. Whenever Sport Club had the man advantage it seemed to actually interfere with their rhythm and they were less dangerous than when it was five against five.

The second period started off similar to the first. All Csikszereda for most of the period, and the first goal went to us. 3-2 and we still had a chance. But then another Steaua powerplay (that’s what it’s called when your opponent has a man in the sin bin, see how much attention I paid?), and another goal. (To be fair we did survive two other powerplays that period unscathed). This fourth goal, to add insult to injury, was scored by a native of Csikszereda who’d recently been transferred to Steaua.

With about 4 or 5 minutes left in the period and the score 4-2, things started warming up on the ice. Violence wise, I mean. And since this is what most people seem to watch ice hockey for, I was glad we were getting the other part of the show. A number of fights broke out and at one point both teams had two blokes in the penalty box. At one point a Steaua player ended up face down on the ice, semi-comatose, and unable to get up. The ice began to turn red around his face and the medics were called to help him up. The Csikszereda fans started booing him and chanting (in Romanian) “This is Steaua”, as if to say that this kind of pathetic unmanly behaviour – not playing on while lying face down, bleeding and semi-conscious – was not the kind of thing that a true Szekely man would do, and was in fact more befitting of someone who had the word “PUFF” emblazoned across his midriff.

Sadly the fight club nature of proceedings seemed to end with the second period, and the third and final period, while conducted at a frenetic pace, was much more gentlemanly. Perhaps the Russian ref had gone in to each team at the break and told them to cut it out. Whatever had happened, it was very much like the other two periods in terms of action. First ten minutes, all Csikszereda, loads of shots. Last ten minutes, no particular direction, lots of penalties and nothing that resembled a chance for the home team. Supporting a team in blue and white, with a passionate home crowd, full of sound and fury but being beaten by a more skilful team brought on some flashbacks I can tell you. I’d like to be able to say that Csikszereda were laid low by a combination of bent refereeing, dirty Wallachian bastardy, and just plain bad luck, as I think it would finish this off nicely. But I can’t. Steaua were clearly better, and deserved to win, despite having less possession, and despite me not really knowing what I’m talking about. But when a team has to rely on dribbling to go forward, since they are unable to string two passes together, you kind of realize they’re a tad rubbish, even if you’re supporting them.

At the end after both teams had shaken hands with each other, and we’d applauded our boys off the ice, the Steaua players came and applauded us for our fandom and we applauded them back for their ice hockey skills. Frankly, when all is said and done and despite the initial somewhat obnoxious nationalism from both sets of fans, the crowd were pretty similar to an English (or otherwise) football crowd. Regionalism, certainly, and dislike of the opposition purely for being the opposition, but very little “Hungarian” vs. Romanian. It would be kind of weird if there were to be honest, since a fair few of the Sport Club team had Romanian names, as well as a smattering of other nationalities (Russian, mostly), and there was at least one Hungarian sounding player on the Steaua team.

The series now goes back to Bucharest, where there will be two games next weekend, and then back here the weekend after that. Hopefully, Sport Club will win at least one of the games in the capital so that when they come back here they could actually win the series in Csikszereda. But I’m not holding out much hope. I saw one good team on Saturday night and it wasn’t the one I was supporting. Still, who knows? What’s that quote about it being the hope that kills you and not the despair? I suspect I need to look it up.

God this was a long one. I have the distinct feeling that I’m a frustrated sports writer. And destined to remain so re-reading all that. Anyway if you really want to keep up with Romanian ice hockey action told from a more fact-based perspective, this is the best place to go: http://hem.bredband.net/hochei/

Not constant in Opal?

Istanbul Çok Guzel as a bloke called Kayahan was singing when I lived in Turkey back in the mists of time. Or the early 90s anyway. Well, it is definitely çok guzel (very beautiful) in the normal scheme of things, but it is difficult to tell on a day like today. It’s pretty much a full on blizzard outside (although after 6 winters in Vermont, I’m reluctant to bandy the word “blizzard” around lightly). The visibility is almost zero (or what meteorologists refer to as dead fucking foggy). It looks cold, wet, and frankly miserable.

I say “it looks” because I haven’t actually been out in it. I am stopped over between Bishkek and Bucharest, and was looking forward to spending the day wandering around Istanbul, which is one of my favourite cities in the world. Poking around the back streets of Sultanahmet, pausing to take in the splendour of the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya, wandering over the Galata bridge and up the main street towards Taksim Square. It sounds the perfect way to spend a Sunday. However, I have put this delightful plan on ice, because of the weather (do you see what I did there?). While ambling round the minarets of the old heart of Istanbul is a delightful thought, ambling round cold, wet and buffeted by storms is less of one. So much to my own personal disgust I have elected to spend my hours here at the airport. At the moment I don’t regret it, but I’m sure by the time I’ve been here about 4 hours I’ll be going neon-light-crazy. My big fear of course is that my flight will not be able to take off and take me home. In which case this time spent in the airport is a complete waste and I might just as well be in some back street hotel in downtown Istanbul.

One thing I’m struggling with is my first encounter with Wi-Fi (pronounced “wife – I”). This laptop is fairly new and the fact that I can hook into networks and check my email while sitting at a table in the Divan Pub (which is where I am typing this) is dead cool. Except of course that I must be doing something wrong. My computer happily hooks up to the network and tells me that the signal strength is excellent, and that, shockingly the speed of the connection is 11Mbps. The best speed of connection I ever had in Bishkek was 28.0 Kbps, and by my calculations this connection is therefore approximately 400 times as fast as that one was. But despite this theoretically wonderful connection, I cannot actually get online. I’m hooked to the network, but I just get “The page cannot be displayed” messages. After a baffling and headache inducing cruise through the wondrs of Microsoft “help”, and coming up short with pinging IP addresses and checking my WSP (whatever that is), I have basically given up. Which is disappointing in the extreme*.

The wireless network at Istanbul airport is called "tsunami" (all wireless networks have names for whatever reason). Now, my guess is that when they set it up they thought they should choose some cool ethnic internationally recognised word. Like Cosmonaut or Quetzalcoatl or Inshallah or Krishna or Kebab or something. Tsunami must have seemed like the perfect choice. Sufficiently go-getting and thrusting sounding, while still sounding cool when tripping off the tongue. I bet they're regretting it now. While two months ago "tsunami" was a cool word, now it's moved from the category of trendy international word to well known for the wrong reasons international word - like Blitzkrieg or Jihad or Nagasaki or Srebrenice.

*Woohoo! I got online. No idea really what I did but I fiddled with my internet settings until voila, here I am. So, I'll post this now. Hope you're all well, whoever and wherever you are.

Steppe Three

I love Cyrillic. Walking around Bishkek is like being a kid living in one of those code books. If P=R then what does this say? That type of thing. And as I’ve been here longer, I’m familiar with more and more letters. While I knew that PECTOPAH meant Restaurant before I arrived, and I vividly remember the day in a post office in Lviv, Ukraine when I translated a sign reading “ФАКС” (I slowly sounded it out to myself like a 5 year old reading “duh – o – guh…urrrm dog!”. In this case “fuh..a..kuh..suh…urrrrm fax! I got it! It’s fax!” I wanted to hug the babushka next to me in the line with joy at my cleverness. But I restrained myself.). Anyway, I have since that time moved way beyond fax and restaurant. Obviously, not speaking Russian, most of the words I sound out to myself make no sense to me, but some of them do, once you work them out. Earlier I saw a film poster for ТРОЯ starring someone called БРЕД ПИТ. So comfortable have I become with this script that I was quickly able to translate the film as Troya and the star as Brad Pitt. Actually to me it reads more like Bread Pit, which is somehow nicer, I feel. Next to it in this current period of hollywood obsession with ancient Greece was a poster for АЛЕKСАНДР with АНДЖЕЛИНА ДЖОЛИ. Just so you can all the fun that I have with this here are the sounds you need to know to work these out:
A,E,K,O – as in the latin alphabet.
Л – L
C – S
H – N
P – R
Д - D
Ж – J
И – I
Enjoy.

Cyrillic was, I learned recently, invented by someone called Cyril. No, really. Just think – different parents and one of the world’s major alphabets may have been called Colinic or Waynic. Having told you all this I have just looked this up to make sure my facts are straight and learned that actually the guy who first thought up this alphabet was called Constantine, and he created something called Glagotlitic which had 38 characters. Constantine was a religious bloke who went round attempting to convert people (this was the 9th century), like some kind of Balkan pre-cursor to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. On his death bed he took Monastic vows (like that’s a big sacrifice. “From this point onwards I will be celibate and silent…euuurgh”) and – possibly to make up for this rather pathetic gesture of monasticism – changed his name to Cyril. “Hmmm, I’m about to die, people will see through this monastic vow thing. Perhaps I can convince them that I want to really want to give something up, by dumping my perfectly acceptable name and taking on a stupid one”. One of his followers then later simplified his alphabet and in honour of his guru named it Cyrillic. So the name thing really backfired. Now only was he made a Saint, and had his new ridiculous name immortalized that way, but a version of his alphabet got named after him. I bet he feels a right charlie. Or at least he would do if he wasn’t dead.

Before I go, I want to mention cake. There is a patch of pavement down Sovietskaya (which is the street I live on. Curiously the Kyrgyz don’t seem to have done much to erase the Soviet past) on which there is a regular and seemingly impromptu market. It is basically a bunch of people stamping their feet and clapping their hands against the cold, selling things from boxes. As you approach these characters standing around shiftily with their mysterious wares you can only assume they are selling something extremely dodgy. The cardboard boxes are stacked high and there are plenty of them. As you come close you realize that what is for sale here is cake. Large elaborately iced cakes. Loads and loads of them. There are people coming up and haggling over these things, just like they fell off the back of a lorry. It’s frankly bizarre in the extreme. Not for the locals no doubt, for whom it’s probably well known that the best value in a victoria sponge or a battenburg is to be found down on Sovietskaya. Maybe for them the idea of buying cakes in shops is baffling, and they would approach a seller of car stereos in London, for example, assuming that they could pick up a bunch of éclairs.

That’s probably it from me from Bishkek. Time is pressing and work here sucks most of my time, so I’ll probably send my next dispatch from back home in a snow-clad (finally) Transylvania. Of course you might strike it unlucky and get one more set of steppe-stuff. But you can probably relax. Also, as may be obvious I've already run out of crap ideas on the oh-so-hilarious steppe puns thing, so it may be time to steppe down anyway.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single steppe

I have received criticism from certain quarters over my poor steppe-related pun from that last post here, so in response I have elected to make all of my posts from here include ever more cringeworthy puns. Sorry everyone - blame “nojer”.

Today, I went to a supermarket for the first time. It was an interesting experience. Wagner (my co-trainer and house mate) and I ventured in to stock up on basic essentials (coffee, beer, bog roll, etc) to survive on for the next few days. It was a fascinating experience. Firstly, very few people here speak English. Secondly, everything is written in Cyrillic. Some things are fairly straightforward – toilet paper for example, is recognizably toilet paper, whatever the script on the packaging. Likewise with beer. Other things are a tad more difficult. We spent ages acting out the difference between instant and regular coffee before we finally settled on what we thought was real coffee.

One peculiarity was with the whole supermarket concept. It looked like a supermarket, and had all the aspects that you might expect in such a place – trolleys, baskets, various aisles and sections for different kinds of goods. But taking a closer look revealed an interesting omission – no checkouts. In fact it seemed that each little section of the shop had its own woman armed with a calculator and a pocket full of Som (Kyrgyz currency), who charged you as you moved about the place and bagged your different prizes. It was a little bit like it was a series of market stalls inside what would normally be one supermarket. When we reached the last girl-with-calculator near the exit it became clear that we had erred and in fact had managed to walk out of some undefined area of the shop without paying the section controller. Our girl was shocked at our mistake and attempted to explain, but it was clear that we had no idea how to rectify our error, so she called the woman over from the relevant section, added everything up in one go and charged us accordingly. As we left, the two of them were exchanging money between them to make up for our foreign stupidity.

Still we managed, and ended up with everything we intended to get, and came home to crack open our beers and celebrate. We are drinking СИБИРСКАЯ КОРОНА ПИВО, which I’m sure you’re aware translates as Siberian Crown beer (My limited knowledge of Cyrillic tells me it actually sounds more like Sibirska Corona Pivo, but it means Siberian Crown). I have no idea whether my carefully constructed Cyrillic will come across on your screen, but if it doesn’t, believe me - it looked good when I typed it. Not only did they stock Siberia’s finest, but also a fair smattering of international non-cyrillic beers, including Budweiser (the real Czech one, not the bland tasteless American pisswater), and other appealing brews. It could be a good month.

In addition to some good beers, I also managed to buy a can of Heinz baked beans. Outside of the UK and Australia I have never encountered such things. (Well, they are available in those little “British goods” shops scattered around the US in which you can buy McVitie’s biscuits and pickled onions and things, but normally baked beans in the US are a disgusting sweet affair*). This was very exciting to me and I had for my dinner the great meal of beans on toast and a bottle (or two) of beer.

* I should perhaps clarify here having slagged off two American things in the last two paragraphs that I am not against all things American. To sum up: Budweiser – shit. Baked beans – shit. George Bush, his government, and everyone who voted for him – extremely shit. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – non-shit. The Simpsons - non-shit. Noam Chomsky - non-shit. Pacifica Radio - non-shit. Smoky Robinson and The Miracles - non-shit. I mean, I could go on.

One Steppe Beyond

So, I find myself in Bishkek. Bishkek, for those of you unfamiliar with obscure central Asian capitals, is in Kyrgyzstan. (Or Kyrgyzstn as it would be written in txt speak). Bishkek used to be called Frunze after some important Bolshevik who was born here, but at some point in the not too distant past, was renamed Bishkek. A Bishkek is some kind of churn used to make fermented mare’s milk. It says here. The Lonely Planet even goes so far as to claim that it’s the only town in the world named after a wooden plunger. Though I think that’s unfair to Plunger, Illinois. Not to mention Pine Syringe, Madagascar; and of course Oak Pestle, Venezuela.

It’s a fairly new city, having been mostly built during Soviet times. This means, as you might possibly imagine, that the architecture is, how can I put this, less than beautiful. It’s not a spectacularly ugly city, since (a) there are lots of trees, (b) there are some beautiful snow capped mountains that overlook the town, and (c) the buildings, while bland or just plain ugly, are not very high so they don’t completely overwhelm you with their in your face repulsiveness.

I came here last year for a conference, but was only here a few days in an “international” hotel, and so didn’t really get the full on Bishkek experience. This year, I’m here for a whole month doing a course and already I have been getting more of a feeling for the place. I’m in an apartment, which is very comfortable if a tad over-furnished. The effect of 70 odd years of Communism seems to have been a post-command-economy desperation to own as many things as possible, and more importantly, to be seen to own them. The room in which I am currently sitting, for example, has red and green polka dot net curtains, a massive black wood thing along all of one wall, covered in weird kitschy knick-knacks and random ornaments and soft toys. The furniture (aside from the ‘thing’ just described) is sort of patterned brown armchairs and a sofa. The two visible walls have this kind of speckly patterned mint green wallpaper, highlighted in the centre of each by this kind of embossed flock shimmery pre-French revolution pattern. In front of the window there is a large TV and associated electronic gadgetry, and next to me (on part of the black thing) is a TV set up as a karaoke machine. To top it all off there is currently (and I am just hoping that this is a temporary feature) a fibre optic Christmas tree, covered in tinsel and random baubles. The ceiling is one of those molded ones with repeating patterns in little squares, and on the floor (actually a very nice wooden floor) there is a large brown patterned rug. The effect of all this is somewhat overwhelming.

Things I have been learning/getting used to include an electric samovar which is my way of heating water for tea and what have you. The landlady came in and demonstrated to me how this would work, but it seemed to involve some weird plug wiggling activity which I couldn’t follow, so I just unplug and re-plug it in to make it work. It’s a bit fancier and more ethnic than a Russell Hobbs electric kettle though, so I’m happy.

Yesterday I popped into Tsum the large department store in the middle of town (I think – the town doesn’t really have a clear middle, it’s more like a very large suburb than a city in some senses). Tsum is a four story tribute to untrammeled capitalism. The kind of capitalism that the libertarian arm of the far right can only dream of. Capitalism unfettered by considerations of intellectual property or such like issues. The kind of stuff you might buy down a dodgy pub or off some guy with a suitcase outside a metro station. Here it’s mainstream and available down the equivalent of Debenhams or Sears. On Sunday for example I bought (for an extremely reasonable price) a DVD of “The Incredibles”. The Incredibles is not yet available on DVD, so what this actually is is a video shot of the film playing in a cinema somewhere. If you ever saw the relevant episode of Seinfeld you’ll know what I mean. Some bloke (I assume it was a bloke) goes into a cinema somewhere in the States with a video camera tucked up his jumper and proceeds to video the entire film. Somehow they manage to do this with incredible steadiness and without a single extraneous noise or movement coming across on the video tape. Maybe they do a deal with the projectionist to show it at 4am privately so no-one is there to interrupt. Then they turn it into a DVD, knock out a ton of copies, and stick it in Zum (or any other department store in the former Soviet Union) as well probably as on the black market everywhere else. There were loads of films there that were so new (ie only released in the US) that I’d never heard of them. I have to read some movie reviews to see whether I’d be interested in buying one or two to watch on my weekends.

That's it from Bishkek for today. I bet you can't wait to hear more can you?

Permission to sit

I forgot to mention, I have finally been granted Permission To Sit in Romania. In fact I am now the owner of a very fancy looking dark green booklet entitled "Legitimaţie de Şedere Temporară Pentru Cetăţeni Străini" Which means (roughly) Temporary permission to sit for strange citizens. I am very glad about this, as having to constantly stand or lie down was beginning to wear on me.

The booklet is actually deceptive, as from the outside it looks quite offical and impressive - like a small passport, actually - but when you open it up it looks dead rubbish. Cheap paper with lots of information about me in very bad handwriting (not mine, better than that, but still crappy looking). Some bloke at the police station just filled it in when he felt like it (we handed all the paperwork in at the beginning of December and he said it would be ready between Christmas and New Year. We popped in on the 30th to see if it was done, and he said "Oh, it's you. Hmmm. Yes it'll be ready tomorrow morning". He then obviously went off and filled it in and stuck my picture in the correct place).

Ben

No, not Michael Jackson's pet rat from that crappy song, but my new nephew. He was born in November and I met him on Boxing Day. He's dead cool. Even though he is not even two months old yet, he has already been selected for England at football, unified quantum and newtonian physics, and written a book of poetry which the Times Literary Supplement described as "Breathtaking". He's currently appearing as Prospero in the RSC's production of The Tempest.

Szilveszter

As well as being a hapless cartoon cat, and a Hi-NRG disco star, Sylvester is also the Hungarian festival of New Year. I think, though am not entirely certain, that it is because December 31st is also St Sylvester's day. This was a stroke of luck for Sylvester as it means that he is remembered - at least in the Hungarian speaking world - unlike, say, St Phoebe or St Colin. I don't know what Sylvester did that was especially St-worthy, but it was probably something mystical and unlikely. Or he could be one of those boring saints that get canonised for tending to his flock for a very long time.

Anyway, we had intended to get out of town and spend Szilveszter with some friends at their mountain cabin a while north of here, sipping mulled wine among the snowy peaks and ushering in 2005 before getting up the next day and skiing and sledding to our hearts' content. However, a postponement of winter this year (there's no snow, much to the consternation of the masses), meant that we decided against it, and ended up making plans to do the business in their apartment in downtown Csikszereda instead.

I asked my students (I am teaching one class here in some kind of back-to-my-roots old-school festival of fun) what they were doing for the evening and they all sneered in that high school way and said they were all going away somewhere because there really isn't anything worse than celebrating in the Csikszereda Piata Libertatii. That's for hicks and children they seemed to say. So I wasn't really expecting much of the town's celebration.

When I got back from a short Christmas visit to England on December 28th, I did notice that there was a certain amount of firework action that previously didn't exist. On a fairly regular basis bangers were thrown in the street and there was a constant feeling of living in some slightly dodgy neighbourhood where guns were let off every half hour or so. As the big day approached though, these became more and more frequent, and at times louder and louder until, by the 31st itself, the noise level had risen to almost comically violent levels. At around 6pm that day, after we had cooked all the food for the party, we tried to grab a short sleep in order to be refreshed for the evening ahead. We might as well have been trying to have a nap in Fallujah, such was the ongoing rumble of explosions and gunshots. I nipped out to the shops to get a few last minute items and discovered that many of these explosions were caused by lone teenage boys, wandering around, wrapped up against the cold, and just randomly chucking fireworks as they roamed. It seemed a curiously unsociable thing to do (as well as being fairly anti-social) - I had assumed that they were being let off as a kind of fun thing to do with your mates, rather than a solitary rebel-without-a-cause type thing.

So, we got to our friends' place at around 8pm and proceeded to stuff ourselves with food. Their place overlooks the Piata (the vast windswept one mentioned in an earlier post), so whatever was to come there we would have a good view of. They told us how when Ceausescu had paid his last visit to Csikszereda the Securitate had come round and told them to sign some piece of paper assuring that they wouldn't let any strange snipers pop by for a couple of days. The story then continued that when Ceausescu had continued on to the nearby village of Csikszentmartin, a sudden storm had blown up, sending all of the happy crowds home. Since these people were not exactly out on the streets cheering on old Nic out of choice, it proved very difficult to coax them back out to do their patriotic duty and get pissed on for their beloved leader. By the time he arrived then, his advisers were desperate not to make it look like the entire town were snubbing him, but luckily they found the one place in town where there was a crowd gathered. 40 people in a bread line who weren't about to lose their place in the line to just a violent squall. So the Securitate equipped them with flags and ordered them to wave and cheer as the motorcade drove past. I have a feeling that this story is just a little to perfect to be true and in fact it may be the kind of Romanian urban myth told about many towns lucky enough to be visited by the great man. But it is still a good story.

Anyway, the evening progressed and occasionally I would glance out of the window at the square below to see it empty and silent. Every now and again a group of stragglers would wander across it, or one of the solitary firework tossers would zig zag across from bin to bin his face briefly lighting up as he lit the fuse of yet another banger and chucked it into the receptacle, moving on without even bothering to survey the results of his handiwork. I asked Erika if there was going to be some kind of firework display there and she laughed and said, well, not an organised one, if that's what you mean. If pretty much was what I meant, so I was intrigued as to what was going to happen.

At about 11.30, the previously civil war levels of noise began to rise noticeably and we headed to the balcony to see what was going on. It seemed at first as if the banger boys were beginning to converge. From all corners of the city they came - drawn by the promise of competing in noisiness or something. But then cars started to show up too, filled with families and groups of friends. As the square began to fill with groups of people ready for the new year, the amount and quality of the fireworks being discharged increased rapidly. The noise now was constant, explosions reverberating around the concrete sides of the plaza, and the rockets and colourful fireworks began to show up. The whistling, screaming, wheedling ones meshed with the booming, banging, rumbling ones.

By 11.45 the once quiet square was beginning to fill up with the residents of the town and the fireworks were everywhere. Every single rule of the firework code or whatever it is that we English are asked to follow on November 5th was being broken. Indeed, rules that the writers of the firework code had not even thought of were being broken. I saw one dad walking down the street holding his three year old daughter's hand and shooting off a rocket from his other hand. Bangers and fireworks were being thrown around with no apparent regard for anyone's safety. Or even that anyone in this crowd was actually familiar with the concept of safety.

But in its own way it was spectacular. No coordinated choreographed show to dazzle the crowd here. Here the crowd themselves were the show. They were the ones providing the action, they were the ones making the performance what it was. A very democratic and interactive event in all senses of the (buzz)words. It lasted (at least the principle action) for an hour. A whole hour of manic and crazy anarchy. I loved it. It was like the difference between watching the world Cup Final on TV and playing a match with your mates. The two experiences are based on the same activity (be it football or fireworks), but the actual experience is completely and totally different.

I didn’t see a single ambulance turn up either, though this may have been as a result of the ambulance drivers all being out chucking roman candles at each other, rather than because there was no actual need for medical services. Apparently in the years of communist deprivation, when fireworks, like bread and stuff, were unavailable, everybody used to go out with sparklers and using makeshift catapults launch them (lit) into the night sky. Even that sounds kind of cool and culturally intriguing to me.

When we left the party at about 2am, the whole square was like a war zone. Like the scenes of Hebron after a murderous Israeli incursion, with spent bullets and shells lying all over the place. The smoke still hung in the cool night air and the plaza was carpeted with burned out bits of cardboard.

On a completely unrelated note, has anyone seen that militaristic Pepsi Father Christmas commercials. This invading army of blue clad tooled-up santas come down to the festive town and blow away the traditional red ones. It’s (frankly) fucking disgusting. Whichever shitbag came up with this obnoxious ad should be forced to drown in a vat of sickly sweet soft drink. What next oh Pepsi fascists? The tooth fairy torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib? Mickey Mouse bulldozing houses and killing their occupants in Rafah? Wankers.

And so, on that note, I would like to wish all my readers boldog új évet and la mulţi ani. Have a good one. I’m off to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for the next month, so may not be blogging much for a while, but when I can check in I will.

Last news post of 2004. Probably.

The parting shots of a corrupt old bastard. Or, Iliescu leaves office.

So Ion Iliescu is coming to the end of his time as president of Romania. He’s been president three times now, despite the fact that constitutionally he’s only supposed to be able to do it twice. Since Christmas 1989 when the Ceasescu’s were booted out of office (and off this mortal coil), he has been president aside from a four year aberration from 1996 to 2000.

So, now, though no-one expects him to go far, he is no longer president, but he has decided to just do a few little errands before he walks off into some senatorial role. The first was to pardon Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners who swept into Bucharest in 1990 and 1991 looting rioting and burning stuff in a clearly state sponsored (i.e. Iliescu sponsored) attempt to ensure that the democratic reforms sweeping Eastern Europe didn’t take too much of a foothold in Romania. These events are often credited with being responsible for Romania’s sloth in adopting reform and in keeping up with the rest of Eastern Europe. And since of all the former Warsaw pact (nonUSSR) countries Romania is the least advanced in the sense of implementing democratic reforms, having a functioning economy and not being corrupt, something must be to blame. Cosma was of course jailed (eventually) for his role in this anti-democratic palaver, and the rumour always was that it was Iliescu that was behind it. Freeing him as your final act, tends to leave people with the same impression.

But people were well pissed off about this. Even the American government (not one currently to be pro-democracy) were shocked, as was the vast majority of Romania. So, 24 hours after he had announced his release, Iliescu took it back “No, only kidding! Free Cozma? The very idea” I don’t know if Cozma actually got out of jail during this time or whether he was just packing up his suitcase in his Bucharest cell when the news came through. I have this image of him walking out the prison gates, taking a deep breath and walking off down the street, when round the corner, sirens blazing comes a police car. They pull him over and say “You’re re-nicked, mate”.

The other thing that he (Iliescu) did was to award some Romanian medal of honour to that complete psycho nationalist fascist nut job Cornelius Vadim Tudor. That’s right. I guess this is an award given to great Romanians (or people born within Romania’s borders) for their services to the world, or Romania or something. Anyway, giving it to that right wing nazi is like slapping the world in the face and saying fuck you. Elie Wiesel, the holocaust survivor and writer, who was born in Maramures, and was a previous recipient of this medal, promptly, and unsurprisingly, sent his back. CVT actually is (or at least was until recently) a holocaust denier, so to give him the same medal as Wiesel is a sick joke of horrendous proportions.

The good thing about all this, is that surely, if there was any lingering doubt in anyone’s mind about Iliescu's wankishness, then this must have dispelled it.

How to win friends and influence people

One of the countries in Europe where the US still has some friends is Romania. Romania is one of members of the “coalition”, and is in the New Europe that that mofo Rumsfeld referred to in one of his infamous speeches. (Have I ever told you how much I hate Donald Rumsfeld? Cancer’s too good for him). Anyway, to get back to the USA and its friends in Romania, well, they may just have lost most of them. You see it’s like this. A few weeks ago, a US embassy employee who was pissed as a fart was driving some US Govt vehicle through the streets of Bucharest. He runs a red light, and slams straight into a taxi, killing its passenger. Now, just possibly the embassy could have got away with this, and just shipped the offender home, but unfortunately for them the passenger was not just anyone, but was in fact the bass player with Romania’s answer to the Rolling Stones. So this is not some random unknown Romania being killed and having his death swept under the carpet. This is Teo Peter we’re talking apart (that’s his name by the way, I don’t know if it means Uncle Peter as it sounds like it ought, but if so, it sounds like a fictional paedophile. But with that all similarities with Bill Wyman must end). So, the US Embassy shipped this drunken moronic murdering bastard home, and of course the Romanian press and people are up in arms about this incident. The embassy spokesman came out and said how they’re going to definitely prosecute him in the US, honestly, but frankly the damage has been done. I suspect the general Romanian sanguinity with the US in general may be evaporating as fast as Iliescu’s brain cells.

Random nothingness

It’s about time I wrote something, so I’m just going to start typing and see what comes out. I’ll be away from this blog for a good while soon – first I’m off to the UK for a week next week to visit my nephew Ben, and to coincidentally have Christmas drinks and food with various people around the country. At about 1kg per day, I should put on about 7kg.

The presidential election run –off was won – much to everyone’s surprise – by Traian Basescu. I think it was the orange jacket wot won it. That whole Ukrainian thing coming through. Ironic really that given the orange revolution in Ukraine that the whole thing may have been sparked by Yushenko being poisoned with Agent Orange. Is there a fruit based version of the Chinese astrological calendar? If so, it’s clearly year of the orange.

What does Basescu mean for us? I think no-one really knows. People I know are happy that the PSD is gone, but most are suspicious and concerned about Basescu’s lack of experience. The one thing that he has done which everyone knows about is ridding the streets of Bucharest of stray dogs. Other than that his record is a mystery. Now he has to organise a government. As the PSD-PUR alliance has the most seats, it might be tough to do that without their support. And the real fly in the ointment is nightMare party. The UDMR (the Hungarians) threw their hat into the wrong corner and may end up getting screwed. But no-one really knows. Just as long as Vadim Tudor, henchman of Voldemort, doesn’t get a sniff of power, all should be well.

Religion in Romania (he says, shifting the topic for no apparent reason) is something I haven’t covered yet. Romanian Orthodox is the official state religion, and as such there are elaborate monasteries and churches of that church dotting the countryside. The most prominent building in Csikszereda for example is the Orthodox church, despite the fact that its congregation probably numbers in the single digits. The other churches (at least in these parts) are the Catholic and the Reformat. I mentioned this to my brother the other day and he pointed out that “reformat” is something you do to your computer, which though it now seems obvious, was something I hadn’t even noticed before. They’re not some kind of doomsday cult though, waiting patiently for the day that God decides to wipe and repartition the earth’s hard drive, but rather some kind of Lutheran faith from Hungary. I don’t know anything about them really aside from the fact that their graveyards are dead interesting with elaborate totem-pole style monuments carved from wood.

God, I’m really running short of ideas aren’t I? I’ll stop now, for a while, and come back before I leave the country (on Wizz Air, which sounds like I may be pissing in the wind) and fill you in on the other randomly boring thoughts coursing through my brain (and for coursing, read “sluggishly struggling”)