Dubai the by

So in a miracle of rapid reorganisation, my Afghanistan trip has been placed in Dubai. That means that not only do I have a new destination, but so do a bunch of Afghans, Iranians and Kyrgyzstanis. Within 3 days of the bomb going off (and I mean that literally) more or less everything bar a few last minute visa hitches had been put in place for the new venue.

Hence I sit here in the Emirates lounge at Munich airport, bound for the highly peculiar city of Dubai. (I was actually the first person in this lounge so I got the run of the place including the TV remote, meaning I am sitting here sipping a very nice "Schneider Weisse" beer, watching Tunisia vs Senegal on a big screen TV and pootling about on my computer. It's all very civilised. To begin with I was outnumbered 10-1 by staff, but now others have arrived to disturb my center-of-attention status. None of them have ventured into my zone though, finding themselves uninterested in African football - which is sad for them as it is a cracking match.)

I had been hoping for a spectacular temperature differential between Csikszereda and Dubai so I could flaunt my destination in people's faces and tell them I'd be on the beach while they shivered in sub -30 icy chills, but in a curious turn of fate, on Monday this week it reached 11 degrees in Szereda (that's PLUS eleven) while the temp in Dubai was a mere 18 (and even dipped as low as 9 at night). So, my heartless gloating was put on hold. This morning was much better though as we drove through a raging blizzard to get to the airport (much better from a "ha ha I'm going to Dubai" perspective, rather than a safe driving perspective).

Last weekend we went up to the local ski resort, amid the slowly melting snows in the unseasonal thaw. You may not be aware but in your house you have an almost perfect sledge. Slick, glossy, plastic, slightly cambered for minimum friction. Know what it is yet? Well, I'll tell you. It's a toilet seat. We found one on the mountain (presumably used by someone else for the same purpose - at least that's what I'm telling myself), and zipped down the snow in our virtually frictionless way (note to any scientifically minded pedants whose fingers are as we speak hovered over the keyboard angrily composing a response - yes I know it's not frictionless or even close to being so, but it's poetic licence. If you'd flown down the side of a mountain on a toilet seat you'd use the same level of hyperbole. Honest). More sedately, I went cross country skiing for the first time in bloody yonks, and remembered how much I like it. In Dubai apparently there is a shopping mall with a ski resort in it (that's Dubai for you). I wonder if they have any cross-country sections?

Kaboom

This time next week I was due to be in Dubai, pootling around that odd city back and forth to the Afghanistan Consulate to get a visa ready to fly there on the 24th (on that well know airline "United Nations Humanitarian Air Services" - anyone know whether they offer free beer or peanuts?)

Sadly however, I will not now be doing that. I was to be in Kabul doing a 5 day workshop in the fancy Serena Hotel, while staying in the same place. If that name rings a kind of recent bell in your mind it is because the Serena Hotel made the news on Monday when it was attacked by the Taliban.

Now when I was first told that the next stage of this project would take me to Kabul, my first reaction was slightly nervous, but after I had assured myself that it was safe and would actually be pretty interesting, I was looking forward to it. I'd read up as much as it was possible to read up (since tourism isn't especially big, and anyway the situation has been fairly, let's call it fluid, ever since the Soviet invasion), and was beginning to really feel enthusiastic. Over the course of various jobs and travels I have been lucky enough to meet a number of Afghans and, without exception, the ones I have met have been wonderful people.

Anyway, the news is obviously much more terrible than the small fact that it has meant my trip has been cancelled. Is there any country that has suffered more in the last 30 years? I suppose most places that have been at the centre of what is euphemistically called "Global politicking" (which as we all know actually means "Creation of human suffering"). Palestine I guess would be up there.

Still, I won't be in Kabul next week, thanks to those lovely people in the Taliban, and I have no idea where I will be. Almost certainly Csikszereda at a guess, but there are other faint possibilities of a plan B for the Kabul workshop. We'll see.

Two legs better

There's a famous story, or parable I suppose, which I'm quite sure you've heard before, but I'll repeat it anyway, because I've obviously got too much time on my hands.

So there's this rich successful retired businessman wandering along the beach in some tropical paradise one afternoon. He sees a young man lying in a hammock and goes over to talk to him. I'll tell it in dialogue since it makes slightly more sense that way:

Rich bloke: "How come you're lying around in this hammock and not working?"
Local layabout: "What for? I went out this morning, caught some fish for my family and others in the village, and now I'm relaxing"
RB:"But you could go out and catch more fish"
LL: "Why would I do that?"
RB: "You could sell it"
LL: "Why?"

(from this point onwards the story becomes a bit repetitive so bear with me. There is a punchline. Honest. Do parables have "punchlines"?)

RB: "So you could buy a better net"
LL: "But the net I have is good enough to catch all the fish I need"
RB: "With a better net you could catch more fish, and when you've caught and sold enough you could buy a bigger boat"
LL: "I don't need a bigger boat"
RB: "With a bigger boat you could go further out, catch more and bigger fish and make even more money. Eventually you'd be able to buy a second boat, and employ someone to work for you catching even more fish"
LL: "Yes, yes, get to the point will you? Why would I be bothered with all this? Why would I go to all this trouble?"

(In the original parable he doesn't actually say all that, but I am already desperate for RB to get to the point and allow me to therefore get to mine - which, I'll warn you now, is probably not worth it)

RB: "Well, after you've made enough money, hired enough people to keep your business running successfully for you, you'll be able to retire"
LL: "And what would I do then?"
RB: "Well you could spend your days lying around on the beach"

I'm sure I could have told that better, but you get the general idea.

Anyway, he says, finally reaching the long overdue point of this blog post, I was reminded of this story on our recent trip to the UK. On December 30th we, along with my parents, my brother and his family went along to "Wimpole Home Farm" which is kind of a touristy attraction type thing near my parents' house. Specifically it is a working farm in which various animals are kept and can be viewed/touched/groomed/fed etc, as children tend to like that kind of thing. It was all very nice, and we got to have fun, and eat a nice lunch, and be with the family and all that kind of thing - as well as see some piglets born that day, some goats, sheep, donkeys, horses etc etc. Paula, for whom animals are incredibly exciting and wonderful, was particularly happy.

But it occurred to me that the whole concept was kind of peculiar, and that anyone from a Transylvanian village (for example) would find it laughable that people in England would pay money (and we did pay money in not-to-be-sniffed-at quantities) to wander round a farm looking at animals. Since this is precisely what normal life offers for free here. [Another example comes from the time that Erika and I first met, which was in the town of Brattleboro, Vermont, USA. She happened to be there - where I worked - attending a course which took place during the weekend when Brattleboro offered up its annual "strolling of the heifers" festival - the local tongue-in-cheek response to Pamplona's "running of the bulls". When offered the chance to go downtown and watch a bunch of cows walk through the streets she laughed disbelievingly saying she could do that any day of the week here. And she was right.]

So is economic development like the parable of the rich industrialist on the beach? You slowly get rid of all your small scale agriculture, swallowed up and sold off to agribusiness so that vast warehouses full of battery chickens, concentration camps full of pigs, and factory farmed cows hyped up on steroids and antibiotics can supply your food needs cheaply and efficiently, and in this way your country/region becomes more and more "developed", until such time as you have enough money that you can set aside smallholdings where you can revive the lost art of animal husbandry and charge tourists large sums to come and groom a donkey or collect eggs from real live free range chickens? Your fresh food tastes like rubbish and is full of chemicals and hormones, but at least you've entered the 21st century.

Transylvaniara

When one arrives at Luton airport to take the plane to Cluj, there is no mention of the city to which the plane flies - the departure boards and the check in lines all read "Transylvania" - I am struggling to think of any other place one could fly to in which the city is not mentioned. Malta is one, but then Malta is a small island which is (to all intents and purposes) one city with lots of bits. Transylvania is very large, and, well, you could be landing anywhere from Oradea to Brasov, two cities that must be getting on for 500 kms apart.

Anyway, it turned out to be a very good thing that we were flying back to Transylvania on Thursday, since, if we'd tried to fly to Bucharest we'd have been up shit creek without a paddle, as it appears the entire south of Romania was blanketed in a blizzard of epic proportions that day, and both of Bucharest's airports were shut for hours (and hours) . So, hurrah for Transylvania, in which the roads were clear, the sky was blue (though it was - and still is- colder than a witch's tit) and the parking was miraculously free at the airport (and the car started first time despite sitting outside in sub -10 degree temperatures for a week).

The upshot of this is that I am now back home and will resume blogging in a 2008 stylee very shortly.

Compliments of the Season

Eid Mubarak, Crăciun fericit, and Boldog Új Évet. I'm off line for the next two weeks, enjoying the festive fun and frolics with various families in Marosvasarhely, Cambridge, and elsewhere. Normal infrequent blogging will resume in 2008. Cheers to all, and have a good holiday

Dracula

I had been meaning to re-read Dracula for ages. It was probably 20 years ago when I first read it, and ever since I moved to Transylvania I thought I should probably re-read it since it is basically the only reason that anyone from outside of Hungary and Romania has even heard of Transylvania.

So anyway I read it again last week, and it's bloody brilliant. I remember enjoying it and thinking it was a cracking read when I read it before, and I'm not usually a fan of literature from before 1900 (though to be fair Dracula was written in 1897 so it's not that far off).

Anyway, on to my first major surprise of the book - that is when we first meet Count Dracula in his castle on the Borgo pass between Bistrita and Bukovina. Jonathan Harker (our hero) journeys from Budapest to Cluj and on to Bistrita before heading into the pass, passing as he does various ethnic groups on the way - Saxons, Szekelys, Magyars, and "Wallachs" in the main, but he also mentions "Slovaks" who actually sound very much like the Gabor clan of Rroma from his description, and Szgany (obviously a corruption of Cigany/Tigani) . Anyway, we meet Count Dracula, who is in fact a Szekely! This is not something I had remembered (to be honest when I read the book before, I'd never heard of the Szekely and it would have flown right over my head). He launches into this big speech about the heroism and bravery of the Szekely. He comes up with some curious historical explanation of the Szekely as being some kind of cross between the Vikings and the Huns, and then launches into a list of the invaders and foes they had beaten back - Magyars, Turks, Bulgars, Lombards, Wallachs, and Avars (whoever they are).

"Ah, young sir, the Szekelys - and the Dracula as their heart's blood, their brains and their swords - can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach"

Just in case there are Szekelys reading this (and I know there are) who are now getting a tad upset that this infamous anti-hero is a Szekely, I should point out that he it was because he was such a great leader, and a strong and intelligent warrior when he was alive that he is so powerful and successful a vampire once he became un-dead. At least that's what it says in the book.

So anyway, I'm not going to retell the book, but I thought I'd do a little bit of digging into how Stoker came to write this novel and set it where he did, with the characters that he did. Firstly it's not thought that he ever visited Transylvania, he just spent a lot of time in the library doing research. He apparently first thought about setting the novel in Austria, but was told that it might be too close to another vampire novel called "Carmilla" set in France, so he decided to relocate it to Transylvania. (Though in fact very little happens in Transylvania in the book - just the opening and closing. The rest is in Whitby and (mostly) London).

The character of Dracula himself is often thought to be have been based on Vlad Tepes ("the Impaler") who was also known as Vlad Dracula (son of Dracul). It is now thought that the only thing the character owes to Vlad is the name, and that probably Stoker knew nothing about Vlad Tepes. Another historical character who may or may not have provided some inspiration is a Hungarian countess named Elizabeth Bathory. "The most infamous serial killer in Hungarian and Slovak history".

The tourist industry of Romania seems to rely very greatly on this one story, which is quite impressive in a way, though extreme lengths are gone to - Bran Castle, which I read somewhere is Romania's most visited tourist attraction, markets itself as "Dracula's Castle", based on the disputed possibility that Vlad Tepes may once have spent the night there. Don't get me wrong, Bran Castle is a nice place, but it has about as much connection to Dracula as the Sydney Opera House does. Sighisoara, which is Vlad Dracula's birthplace, is littered with Dracula Internet Cafes and Vampire Coffee Shops. There was even going to be a Dracula themepark outside Sighisoara, which thankfully got nixed. Apparently someone has even built a castle cum hotel on the Borgo pass where they think the castle might have been in the book.

I reckon the Szekelys need to grab a slice of this lucrative pie and set up some "Real Dracula" attractions. There's money in this myth.

In a round about way

When I arrived in Romania, which is not that long ago let’s face it, there was, to my knowledge, not a single roundabout in the country. At least I never encountered one. However, in some kind of apparent desperate EU inspired anglophilia, they have been appearing everywhere. I can only imagine that all of Romania’s mayors were taken to England on some kind of junket, and introduced to the smooth and sensible traffic flow of the humble roundabout. And maybe offered EU funds to install roundabouts wherever they could. Now, in Csíkszereda alone there are 5 of them, and I’m guessing more will come. There are even roundabouts where none seem necessary – indeed a couple I’ve seen (in Sinaia and Cluj) seem designed to merely slow the traffic down, like a particularly elaborate and expensive sleeping policeman.

There is still some way to go before the cult of the roundabout reaches English proportions (anyone doubting their ubiquity in the UK ought to drive the ten miles from Luton Airport to Hitchin, whence one spends more time circling a central island than one does actually driving in a straight line).

Maybe this is something to do with me. My last residence, Brattleboro, Vermont, USA installed one while I was there too, much to everyone’s confusion. Am I the vector carrying these roundabouts, like some kind of virus? Where else have I infected?

I have to say though, that the locals here have adapted much faster to these alien traffic moderators that Vermonters did, where for months and years afterwards, the benefits of the roundabout as a traffic flow system were outweighed by the utter chaos that accompanied its existence. Indicating seems to present a particular challenge to the unwary driver – especially the need to indicate left when one’s first turn is to the right.

Still, it’s a rum do. I’d love to know what was the spur for this mushrooming of the roundabout.

Uninteresting miscellany

Just discovered through a friend that the Romanian Orthodox Church in London (which actually exists inside another church called St Dunstans) is led by the marvellously named Father Pufulete. A pufulete is a kind of repulsive puffed corn snack that dissolves into dust in your mouth. They are very popular in Romania for some unknown reason (though it is quite amusing to put a couple in your mouth and then say "pufulete" since it occasions hilarious amounts of corn and additive dust exploding into the air around your mouth).

Just in case you don't believe me: Romanian Orthodox Church in London (scroll down about 1/3rd of the way on the left hand side under contact details). Pufuleti (that's more than one pufulete) as reported upon by Sean Romerican, sadly no longer with us (he's not dead, just living in Texas, which to an non-Texan sounds almost worse).

Reforming Paula

I'm quite sure there's some pithy quote that is used to make it clear that children are destined to repeat their parents' lives, or mistakes, or something. Anyway, assuming there is, it would be very apposite here, if only I knew what it was.

When I was very young, and I mean very young, way too young for me to have any memory of it, I was christened in the Church of England. (Christened is the CofE word for "baptised" - I've no idea why they use a different word). Anyway this christening came about despite my parents being avid non-church goers, because my (also non-church going) grandmother kind of pressured them into doing it, since it was traditional and the thing you did and anyway what would the neighbours say? So I was carted along, had my head washed a bit, and was granted some kind of curious non-blood relationship with some of my parents' friends. Having come out of the church, they (my parents that is) turned to each other and vowed never to do that again with any future children as they didn't believe a word of what had passed for the ceremony. Hence neither of my brothers were christened (much to my grandmother's disgust and trauma and fear that whole country were talking about us).

When Paula was born, Erika and I briefly pondered getting her baptised, but since neither of us ever go to church or have a religion to call our own, this seemed a little bit silly. Plus we live in the 21st century and not the 15th, and so were not living in fear that Paula's soul would somehow be forever in limbo unless some bloke in funny clothes put some water on her. But, increasingly we too became aware of grandparently pressure which was gradually being ratcheted up. This despite the grandparent in question (my mother in law) also, like my grandmother before her, not having set in foot in a church for as long as anyone could remember. Last weekend, with my mother in law fairly unwell, we decided to go ahead and perform this meaningless act, as a kind of get-well soon present.

So we fixed up with the priest (when I say we, I mean of course Erika, who takes care of most things that involve language beyond basic shopping vocabulary) to have the ceremony. We went for the Hungarian Reformed Church (since the other two options available in Csikszereda are Roman Catholic - and they are way too serious and would probably need some kind of conversion from me to agree to it - or Romanian Orthodox - which is kind of out of the question for many reasons). I'm not entirely sure what the Hungarian Reformed church is, dogmatically speaking. I don't really understand all the various gradations of protestantism, but I think the Hungarian Reformed Church is Calvinist (though since I have no idea what "Calvinist" means, that's not much use).

The Hungarian Reformed Church, as I discovered when we entered, is very Hungarian. By which I mean it has all the Hungarian paraphernalia on the walls, the red white and green banners and so on, and the priest was the most Hungarian looking man I've ever seen - the big moustache, the works. He should really have entered the church on a horse wearing a wide brimmed hat for the full effect.

Paula, of course, was restless and bored. We quickly discovered why people tend to baptise their kids when they are very young - they may cry, but they don't try running all over the church. As the aforementioned moustachioed priest stepped up the pulpit, she looked up from whatever piece of dirt/hymn book/protruding nail she was focussing on and shouted out "Bácsi! Mit Csinálsz?" (roughly - at least as far as Paula is concerned - "What are you doing, old man?"). The service was, fortunately, mercifully short (another reason to favour the HRC over the Catholic and the Orthodox), and before long we were up the front going through the ritual motions. I have no idea what exactly I agreed to, but since I don't believe in any of it, that doesn't seem terribly relevant. An oral agreement is not worth the paper it's written on. Paula took the opportunity of a break in proceedings while the priest told us our sacred duties or read out his shopping list or just talked about the weather for all I know, to scarper up the stairs to the pulpit itself, so I had to go and rescue/capture her. She was a bit stunned when he actually blessed her, which seemed to take the form of him spreading his arms wide, looming over her, and letting out an odd kind of barking sound in the manner of someone attempting to scare away a mountain lion, but she got over that quickly.

After the service, and after I had handed over a small envelope containing our donation (most transactions in Romania seem to end in this way - even going to the doctor) we repaired to our flat for a traditional slap up feast and traditional slap up palinka with the various new godparents, and other assorted hangers on.

The only negative side to the whole thing (as with more or less anything that involves organised religion) is that because there's all this dogma and tradition involved, there are myriad opportunities to offend. Which we inevitably have unwittingly done and have pissed off about three separate groups of friends who felt that they should have been godparents. So what started out as a nice gesture to cheer up an ailing grandmother, has turned into some kind of icy friendship wasteland (a friendship tundra?). Obviously this is not the fault of religion or the church per se, but it does seem to match up with most of the problems that the church does create. Rigid adherence to arcane rules and bizarre practices, causing conflict and tension.

Anyway, just as Tőkés László is always referred to as a reformed bishop, Paula can now be referred to as a reformed toddler. Mind you, I have to say that she never stuck lego up her nose before she was baptised. There's got to be some kind of message in that.

The Sodden Road to Samarkand

We had one day off in Uzbekistan, so my colleague George and I decided to go to Samarkand. It is obviously one of the things that nearly everyone who goes to Uzbekistan as a tourist goes to see, and I’d heard enough about it to really want to go (though when you get to Uzbekistan, everyone tells you that Khiva and Bukhara are even more beautiful – but we didn’t have the time to get to either of those).

We took the early morning train from Tashkent, which in itself was an experience. In our first class compartment (which only had us in it) was a tea set all laid out. We had a kind of train-stewardess who came round from time to time to check that we were OK but as we didn’t have any common language it was difficult to have any meaningful conversation and it wasn’t really possible to actually make use of her services (and to be honest we didn’t really work out until the end of the return journey that what she was asking us were questions about our well-being and needs). She did come by and turn the TVs on in the carriage though so we could be assailed by pop music and subsequently the execrable post-Bean “Johnny English” film badly dubbed into Russian. After we’d booked the train, one or two people had told us that we should have gone by taxi since the road went through the mountains and was beautiful whereas the railway line didn’t and wasn’t. We still thought it would be a fascinating landscape, since it would be our first glimpse of Uzbekistan beyond Tashkent. We were wrong and they were right. Flat featureless and scrubby would be the best way of describing it. Someone in Tashkent had struggled to come up with an adjective and had settled on “grey”. It was apt.

Sadly, this one day off happened to be the only one during our stay which featured bad weather, and as we got closer to Samarkand, the already grotty conditions deteriorated, until it was just grey, pouring with rain, and utterly miserable. And bitterly cold, as we found out when we stepped out of the warm train onto the platform. We were met by Dilya, our guide, a very nice Tatar woman, who proceeded to take us round the sites. Unfortunately while she was all wrapped up warm and had an umbrella we (and in particular I) were ill prepared for this English weather, and were not really enthused about standing around in the cold and wet, while we learned about the history of Samarkand. I had to keep asking her if we could go and stand out of the rain as she told us about the mausoleum of Tamurlane or the Registan. It’s difficult to fully enjoy and appreciate the majesty of some of these buildings, when you’re freezing your arse off and getting soaked. At one point George, who is diabetic, needed to urgently raise his blood sugar level, so we asked Dilya if there was a café nearby. There was in one of the madrassahs of the Registan, and this small cozy warm place was possibly my best memory of what is probably, seen in better conditions, one of the wonders of the world. While the Registan is possibly the most famous place in Samarkand, my favourite place (and not just because the rain had eased off by this time) was the Shah-i-Zinda cemetery. A stunningly beautiful place.

We had been disappointed originally that we would only get to spend the day in Samarkand and not be able to see it at more leisure, but in the end, we were quite glad to get back to the station at the end of the day, and reboard the same train that had brought us there – with the same staff. This time though, we had company in the compartment. Three women (and subsequently one bloke who we think was probably drafted in to act as so kind of impromptu chaperone for the women). The young one, Nargiza, spoke fairly good English and we learned that she was travelling to Tashkent with her mother-in-law and aunt (the other two) to visit her husband. It was quite a weird conversation as she was obviously friendly and eager to practice her English, but was (despite her marital status) extremely young (at least to old men like us), and the conversation had to bear up under the strain of two strong cultural differences – the first, the Uzbek/British one, being actually interesting and worth investigating, and the second, the teenage girl/middle-aged men one, being somewhat more insurmountable. Her mother-in-law seemed like a right battleaxe, and re-reading “Murder in Samarkand” I was reminded of these two when Murray describes the life of virtual slavery that young girls enter into for their in-laws when they marry in Uzbekistan. Many young married women in Samarkand attempt suicide every year, by the method of dousing themselves in flaming cooking oil. It is an intensely sobering thought.

This time round we were served a diet of Uzbek movies on the TV, all of which seemed to have the theme of puppy love and people pining for the traditional life of the countryside. The love stories also were all based around the city boy/country girl (or vice versa) intrigue. They weren’t exactly too difficult to follow despite the language issue.

When we arrived, Nargiza and family invited us to her husband’s house to have a tea, in typically hospitable Uzbekistan style, but we declined citing another appointment. It was very nice to be invited, but we felt we had gone about as far as the conversation could possibly have gone in the 4 hour train journey, and extending it didn’t seem like something that would be greatly enjoyable for either party, really.

Here are some pics of Samarkand, in the grey and wet weather.

Your correspondent, looking bedraggled and freezing in the RegistanOne of the Madrassahs in the Registan. For an idea of scale look at the two women huddled under an umbrella in the foreground. (For more info about the Registan, check out the wiki page)

Madrassah detail, with autumn tree for photographic effect

Yet more Registan pictures. I had by now managed to find a place sheltered from the rain to take these shots. Note all the tile work on the big building ahead and the pillar in the foreground. Much of this is not original, sadly, but reconstructed during Soviet times after a big earthquake in 1966. However the reconstruction was, as far as I can tell, extremely faithful to the original, and they did a fantastic job of it. It must have cost a fortune.

Inside one of the madrassahs (behind one of those massive facades that face on to the square. The doorway on the lower right led to the wonderful cozy cafe that nourished my need for temporary warmth and dryness.

The ceiling inside one of the buildings of the Registan. It's not really a full on dome, they just decorated it to make it look that way. There were something like 15 kgs of gold used in the reconstruction work. Apologies for slight fuzziness, I needed to turn off the flash to get a good shot

Detail of the wall inside the mausoleum of Tamurlane / Timur (this bloke)

More from the same mausoleum (wiki page)

The Bibi Khanym mosque (wiki page)

Samarkand bazaar. Dried fruits and nuts are the big thing in Uzbekistan. You might almost say they are Uzbekistan's raisin d'etre. (Sorry. Couldn't help myself)

Girl and bread. This round bread is very typical of Uzbekistan. The ritual around breaking it is quite formalised.

What the fashionable man about Samarkand is wearing this season.

The Shah-i-Zinda necropolis. This street wends its way between amazing mausoleum after amazing mausoleum. It's an amazing place. (Wiki page)