Travel writing is a gas, but I haven't been abroad in a while and I feel like pulling back from the Memoria (name of a Russian novel sitting on my shelf at home that I've never read but bought because it looks ancient and I thought it would lend an humbling tone to my literary collection to have a grim tome of the steppes) and talking a bit about life in general, with perhaps a few asides here and there to the adventures I didn't mention from the UK. So, we really must press on...
Exam season has fallen upon North Carolina State University like it wasn't even exam season. I'm not afraid of my classes; I'm afraid of my research. I can't tell whether it was a mistake to join a $25 million grant project doing computational modeling of cellulose spinning transmembrane proteins because it seems that whenever I hit some roadblock trying to convince our modeling program that it should do something other than fill me with the intense desire to leap from Dr. Irving's tiny window or headbutt a couple of vertical pencils, some kind of breakthrough will occur, and fill me with an orgasmic satisfaction. Then, it happens all over again. Is that what stress is? Mood swings like Kirby in Supersmash bros.? I really screwed myself over taking it for credit though; it puts me on a deadline that isn't fixed but lives in an evil flux that just makes me want to do the work less. I should be getting paid, but I'm afraid to demand anything while a grade hangs by a poorly tied noose. I need to go see my chem professor from last year; wonderful guy, world traveler. Also, does all of his theoretical work by hand; no joke, he writes everything out. It's nuts, and I want to be able to do that. I need to either do something experimental with human tissue engineering, which would be choice, or get on hand written work. If anyone knows someone who is calculating protein folding on paper, let me know.
One thing that I do have to benefit form working with my current mentor is the possibility of a position in a Denmark lab over the end of the summer doing DNA films again. This work was mildly interesting and they say Denmark is pleasant, but more importantly, it puts me close to Scotland for a few weeks after summer school and before the programs starts, which is where I am planning my next, potentially disastrous adventure.
You see, I have this friend who is also a lover of the outdoors and we made a pact in the Park Scholar lounge (A pact that thus can't be broken) to apply for a National Geographic Young Explorer's Grant before we both turn 25 and then become such iconic adventurers that Nat Geo can't help but offer us a TV show. The best chance I think that I have of winning one of these is to apply under the exploration category for "Adventures of an Epic Nature," which means that I have to start building my explorer's resume. That's where Scotland comes in. I love everything there is to mention about this country, from the sheep to the haggis, from the sunrises off Arthur's Seat to the free shows on the strip (I tipped in Kuna), and I want to go back. I saw a Man vs. Wild episode where Bear Grylls stranded himself in the Scottish highlands where weather can go from foggy to blizzard to monsoon within the space of twenty minutes and the terrain is filled with Mordor-like rock formations and unforgiving sinkholes. Obviously, I cannot pass up this opportunity. I'm thinking about having my cousins direct me to a pilot who can drop me off in the middle of nowhere with my pack and a video camera, with the sole intent of making it to Glasgow before my luck runs out. If I make it back, I will have an epic chronicle of dedicated research in one of the world's most hostile environments that I feel would add some weight to my resume.
If anyone has some other suggestions as to how to augment my resume, I'm welcome to your ideas. Open cage diving with the Great Whites of Cape Hope? A trek along the old grizzly trails in Alaska? Trying to island hop the pacific rim in a kayak? All the while taking notes and filming of course. Whatever; throw it out there.
It's eleven O'clock. Bedtime. Go Scotland. You rock.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Iron Fist of the Machine!
A week ago, I was running in the morning, and I was hit by a car. I had not been wearing my contacts and I came up to a guy that was pulling out of an intersecting road with the road I was abutting. I could have sworn that he had given me the conformatory glance and that I would be safe in doing my little jig in front of his beamer, but to my surprise, he began to pull out as I got in front of him. I slammed my fist on the front of his hood as I was thrown out into the street, and I could tell, after I got up, from his blurry expression that he was unnerved in the extreme; I felt bad. So, in strange form I mouthed an apology and kept on running albiet a bit slower as my legs had gotten kind of beat up. I will say though, there is nothing like getting hit by a car to pump you up for a 10 mile run before you've eaten breakfast.
There is a point to this. Getting hit by cars reminded me of the daily experiences of Polish drivers over the summer. While I was in Poznan, I was hit twice by vehicles, one going about 5 mph and the other probably about 15. At crosswalks. This flabbergasted me; I mean seriously? I'm crossing the street, and a car just straight up hits me? The crosswalk is clearly marked, there's no ambiguity here, and the driver felt his time was more important than my life. I was fairly pissed, but this seemed plausible in a country where everyone peels out, whether you are going a mile or 5 feet, in every kind of car you can imagine. One morning, I saw a minivan full of kids take off like a bullet out of a back alley, nearly hitting 12 pedestrians on the sidewalk, all of whom reacted to the sudden appearance of a fast moving 2 ton piece of metal full of screaming children with stoic indifference.
The ridiculousness of Polish driving left me in terible confusion, but I had the whole situation elucidated when I met my man Boris in Zadar. He told me that this kind of behavior on the road is a product of the post communist mentality that pervades eastern Europe. You see, when you are a human crossing the road, you are just an individual; you are essentially nothing. But as soon as you get behind the wheel of the car, you are part of something greater. From behind the turning cranks and blasting valves, seated at the controls of the gleaming, steel machine, you become a god. Who is anyone to cross in front of you when you are so much more powerful? Any fool unwise enough to cross in the crosswalk deserves to have his pitiful form tossed aside.
And perhaps this can represent one of the facets of my enthusiasm with being an American. I step into the road with abandon, for I know that, here, cars must stop. There are many things that Americans take for granted, but I feel like the individual's safety when crossing the street in a designated crossing area is something that everyone deserves. Perhaps it would serve our current administration well to concentrate on this aspect of Foreign relations. Maybe we could be more sucessful in improving our foreign image if America is touted as the land of right-of-way. Chortle.
There is a point to this. Getting hit by cars reminded me of the daily experiences of Polish drivers over the summer. While I was in Poznan, I was hit twice by vehicles, one going about 5 mph and the other probably about 15. At crosswalks. This flabbergasted me; I mean seriously? I'm crossing the street, and a car just straight up hits me? The crosswalk is clearly marked, there's no ambiguity here, and the driver felt his time was more important than my life. I was fairly pissed, but this seemed plausible in a country where everyone peels out, whether you are going a mile or 5 feet, in every kind of car you can imagine. One morning, I saw a minivan full of kids take off like a bullet out of a back alley, nearly hitting 12 pedestrians on the sidewalk, all of whom reacted to the sudden appearance of a fast moving 2 ton piece of metal full of screaming children with stoic indifference.
The ridiculousness of Polish driving left me in terible confusion, but I had the whole situation elucidated when I met my man Boris in Zadar. He told me that this kind of behavior on the road is a product of the post communist mentality that pervades eastern Europe. You see, when you are a human crossing the road, you are just an individual; you are essentially nothing. But as soon as you get behind the wheel of the car, you are part of something greater. From behind the turning cranks and blasting valves, seated at the controls of the gleaming, steel machine, you become a god. Who is anyone to cross in front of you when you are so much more powerful? Any fool unwise enough to cross in the crosswalk deserves to have his pitiful form tossed aside.
And perhaps this can represent one of the facets of my enthusiasm with being an American. I step into the road with abandon, for I know that, here, cars must stop. There are many things that Americans take for granted, but I feel like the individual's safety when crossing the street in a designated crossing area is something that everyone deserves. Perhaps it would serve our current administration well to concentrate on this aspect of Foreign relations. Maybe we could be more sucessful in improving our foreign image if America is touted as the land of right-of-way. Chortle.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Heady Brews
I was asked a couple of weeks back, "If you were a drink, what kind would you be?" If I was a drink, I would be a mix of blended frozen peaches, Croatian red wine, and virgin's tears.
While in Croatia, I drank the wine; it's their thing, and it really is rude to refuse. I came into my hosts town the first night and we were sitting on the stoop watching people go past. He offered me a glass of wine and, reluctant but not wanting to offend my host, I accepted. I must have drank about a sixth of the glass, maybe 25mLs when it started to affect me. Apparently, this is common; Croatian wine is unusually strong and native Hrvatskans take great pride in the local wines. My host had seen many people pass through, and the only ones that could keep up with his wine intake were the Irish.
He was getting hungry so we went to get him a pizza and as soon as I stood up, I was nearly knocked off my feet. Somehow we made it to a hotel where he ordered himself a pizza and a big jug of woda gazowana, which he made fun of me for saying. My host lived an interesting life as far as monetary systems go. Almost all of the interactions we had where money would usually have been exchanged were handled through an invisible tab that he explained to me as, "I help him, and he is my friend. Later, he sees that I need help, and he helps me. We are friends." I thought this was wonderful; I've had success with this in the states as far as becoming everyone's friend, but I have seen little coming back my way. That's ok. I like having friends. In any case, I was apparently gesturing wildly and exhuberently explaining the details of my research while he sat there and ate his pizza. I passed out that night after drinking about 6 liters of water and slept for 11 hours. When I woke up, my host told me that I had been stretched out on the floor like Superman and that it was the funniest reaction anyone has had to the heady fruit of the Croatian vine in his entire life.
I had a lot of misgivings about alcohol this summer, as I don't drink in the states on the principle that I want to have control over my body, but, as I mentioned before, there is a serious rudeness factor that one incurrs simply by refusing an offered alcoholic beverage. And I feel that, because I was young, it was even more expected of me. I refused drinks as much as I could, but there were times when I knew that in order to save myself from cultural suicide, I needed to imbibe. And this process brought me closer to understanding just what the phrase "drinking culture" means and how the stigma that has become associated with alcohol in America is relatively nonexistant in the span of my travels. It is simply what people do as habit, but it is nothing like saying habit in the context of an American. In a social drinking situation, it seems like we tend to rely on the drink as the stress reliever, while the social interactions can be demanding and dramatic. In Croatia, Poland, and especially Scotland, the drink provides background while the social interaction is the prime reason for gathering. Where a Scotsman would say that a football match is a chance to get together with friends and get pissed, an American would say that a football game is an excuse to get wasted with friends. Drink becomes the main focus of the event; people tend to take what and how much they drink more seriously.
And I recognize that my perspective here is that of a college student, and to be honest, I can't imagine that it is very representative of American drinkers as a whole. All I will say is that, where I was comfortable having a beer with my cousins in Scotland, it just feels strange to me when I hear stories from friends about parties they have been to. The first thing they will tell me is how wasted they were, as if there was something they had to prove. Eastern Europeans do drink a lot, don't get me wrong, but there is never anything to prove. It's just something they do.
If you were wondering, the peaches would be something light and delicious, the Croatian wine would be something profoundly affecting, and the virgin tears would be, I don't know, eccentric?Satchel next time. Get stoked.
While in Croatia, I drank the wine; it's their thing, and it really is rude to refuse. I came into my hosts town the first night and we were sitting on the stoop watching people go past. He offered me a glass of wine and, reluctant but not wanting to offend my host, I accepted. I must have drank about a sixth of the glass, maybe 25mLs when it started to affect me. Apparently, this is common; Croatian wine is unusually strong and native Hrvatskans take great pride in the local wines. My host had seen many people pass through, and the only ones that could keep up with his wine intake were the Irish.
He was getting hungry so we went to get him a pizza and as soon as I stood up, I was nearly knocked off my feet. Somehow we made it to a hotel where he ordered himself a pizza and a big jug of woda gazowana, which he made fun of me for saying. My host lived an interesting life as far as monetary systems go. Almost all of the interactions we had where money would usually have been exchanged were handled through an invisible tab that he explained to me as, "I help him, and he is my friend. Later, he sees that I need help, and he helps me. We are friends." I thought this was wonderful; I've had success with this in the states as far as becoming everyone's friend, but I have seen little coming back my way. That's ok. I like having friends. In any case, I was apparently gesturing wildly and exhuberently explaining the details of my research while he sat there and ate his pizza. I passed out that night after drinking about 6 liters of water and slept for 11 hours. When I woke up, my host told me that I had been stretched out on the floor like Superman and that it was the funniest reaction anyone has had to the heady fruit of the Croatian vine in his entire life.
I had a lot of misgivings about alcohol this summer, as I don't drink in the states on the principle that I want to have control over my body, but, as I mentioned before, there is a serious rudeness factor that one incurrs simply by refusing an offered alcoholic beverage. And I feel that, because I was young, it was even more expected of me. I refused drinks as much as I could, but there were times when I knew that in order to save myself from cultural suicide, I needed to imbibe. And this process brought me closer to understanding just what the phrase "drinking culture" means and how the stigma that has become associated with alcohol in America is relatively nonexistant in the span of my travels. It is simply what people do as habit, but it is nothing like saying habit in the context of an American. In a social drinking situation, it seems like we tend to rely on the drink as the stress reliever, while the social interactions can be demanding and dramatic. In Croatia, Poland, and especially Scotland, the drink provides background while the social interaction is the prime reason for gathering. Where a Scotsman would say that a football match is a chance to get together with friends and get pissed, an American would say that a football game is an excuse to get wasted with friends. Drink becomes the main focus of the event; people tend to take what and how much they drink more seriously.
And I recognize that my perspective here is that of a college student, and to be honest, I can't imagine that it is very representative of American drinkers as a whole. All I will say is that, where I was comfortable having a beer with my cousins in Scotland, it just feels strange to me when I hear stories from friends about parties they have been to. The first thing they will tell me is how wasted they were, as if there was something they had to prove. Eastern Europeans do drink a lot, don't get me wrong, but there is never anything to prove. It's just something they do.
If you were wondering, the peaches would be something light and delicious, the Croatian wine would be something profoundly affecting, and the virgin tears would be, I don't know, eccentric?Satchel next time. Get stoked.
Monday, September 21, 2009
The only word I recognized from Harry Potter und der Halb-Blut Prinz was Gluck!
There have only been a few times in my life where the danger that I had exposed myself to was, as judged by a random selection of the people I know, more than enough to leave me dead; perhaps, when there was a 90% or greater chance that I would not make it out alive. Thrice did this happen over my summer adventures, and thrice did I escape my end through great propensity for luck. It's funny; this reminds me of how Harry Potter described fighting dark wizards (I listen to the books on tape to help me get to sleep; I can quote from Rowling without effort. Geeky, I know, but Jim Dale, the narrator, gave me the ability to employ a British accent at will). He says, essentially, that preparation can only get you so far; in the end, it is simply a matter of luck. I don't disagree with this, but I would say that one's will to live is the driving force behind whatever domain in which God chooses to place luck.
I will tell you about one of these instances; the others, those are for me, but the event that I lived through on the morning of August 4th is too proposterous to keep to myself. I may go back and talk about previous adventures in Croatia at some point, but for now, I'll give the basic situation. At that point, I hd been in Croatia for nearly two weeks; I'd done a fair amount of shepherding, traveled to Mostar with two fellow couchsurfers, got off a bus in Sarajevo with no idea what I was doing and spent the two subsequent days smoking hookah with a Sweed and a Canadian on a balcony overlooking the old town, done more shepherding in Dubrovnik, climbed some mountains, and played to my heart's content in the ocean. Now, it was not all fun and games; I had lined up a guy in a small town to couchsurf with while I was in Poland, and had secured a place to sleep at his home for most of the three weeks. Or so I thought; through vrious changes that his life took quite rapidly on him, it transpired that I became a bit of a burden very quickly. After returing to his home from Dubrovnik to find him upset, I had to quickly devise a way to get out of his hair. I had planned on camping along the coast before I got there, and it seemed like the perfect time to get out of that tiny town where everyone knew what was up. My host drove me to a popular place to camp and chill about 20 km south of the town, and I told him that I would be there for about a week, and that I would come through the town and stay with him one more night before I left for the north. I don't think he was even paying attention to that; he drove off and I was left on my own.
After some exploration, I found a small island about a sixth of a mile off land, and was able to bundle up my pack in a convienently discarded tarp and float all of my gear out to the island where I set up my home for the next week. I spent 5 days living off what I could find and catch, most of which consisted of squids and sea urchins. I would not reccommend eating sea urchins; not good for one's health. In my physical journal, I believe that I wrote, "Never, in the history of mankind, has anyone subjected themselves to the appaling sanitary conditions to which I have now sunk." It is because of this that I will never eat squids again. It is also because of this that I have had such little regard for the sanitary protocol of the majority of Americans; things like washing one's hands before eating and using a spoon to get raisins out of a shared bag in order to prevent the spread of swine flu are still taking time for me to get used to. I'm living under the assumption that if I did not die from some horrible disease whilst on the island, there is no germ, virus, or fungus that will ever be able to harm me again.
And so it came to the morning of that 6th day of seclusion, and I woke to a desperate hunger. I had discovered a sun cherry tree on the other side of the island a couple of days back, and was contemplating heding over and grabbing some breakfast. There was also the option of getting into the blackberries, but I had learned fairly quickly that wild blackberries are the most powerful laxitive in existance (I could discribe how I discovered this. Be thankful I am not). I unzipped my tent and stepped out into the little patch of small rocks that I had designated as my cooking area. I did my best to try to shoo away the yellow jackets that had been hanging around since my first meal at the beginning of the week. They got there before the sun rose every morning, and at first I was worried about getting stung, then I was worried about them crawling on my food, then I was worried that I might accidentally eat one that had gotten itself stuck to a piece of food. Then I just didn't worry. The air was crisp and the flies had not yet come, so all I could hear was the crashing of the waves in the bay behind me. (Swich to present tense for dramatic emphasis). I face the sun to the east and let the rays wash over my face so as to ensure that I come back from Croatia with some kind of tan. It feels good to have warmth on my body again; it's incrediblly relaxing after sleeping in a tent pitched over a bed of reeds that is supposed to serve as a rudimentary thermarest. I drink in the glory of a beautiful sunny Croatian day for a few more seconds, and then turn to the West to see a gigantic cyclone heading straight for me.
What followed was almost entirely mechanical. I had no fly on my tent, so my first thought was to stormproof the situation. I attached the goretex material to the half of my tent that was mesh and shifted four 70 pound boulders so that they sat on the corners of my rather flimsy looking shelter. I gathered all of my belongings and spread them out over the floor, adding several more boulders for good measure. After taking one more look towards appoaching doom, I got into the tent, zipped up and layed spread eagle across the pile. There was easily a good 250 lbs in that tent, but when the storm hit a few minutes later, I was nearly blown straight into the ocean. After about 30 minutes of desperately trying to keep the tent from going airborne, the gale winds and hammering rain broke almost instantly, and the sun popped out as if astonished that I wasn't out enjoying it's warmth. I was fairly pissed; my stuff was soaked from rain that had been blown straight under the fly and into the bottom of the tent, and all of the contraptions that I had set up to make life easier were either destroyed or gone. A couple of trees had fallen over, and that scared me. If I had been hit by a tree, I could have been stuck out there with no help and no one who knew where I was. My host knew that I was in the area, but I don't think he cared much about me at that point; I was on my own. I considered myself incredibly lucky to have survived the storm with everything intact, but I did not find out just how lucky I actually was until my return to my hosts town the next day.
After a 20km attempt to hitchhike back (To be fair, a pair of really nice Russians showed up with 1 km left to go), I came back into town to find that nerly everyone was gone. I asked where everyone was and found that they had all gon to insurance claims adjusters. I passed through, I noticed that several homes had large holes, missing windows, and a few that had caved in sections. Cars had plastic over the windows and all of the roofs were peppered with the exact same pattern of stippled dents. It was like I had left a normal town and come back to a war zone.
As it transpired, the cyclone had not hit the bay I was staying in directly, but it had hit my host's town, which was only 2 km north of where I was in costal distance. And this funnel of death wasn't just carrying water; it brought a rain of grapefruit sized ice that had completely destroyed the town; cars, homes, all windows, all destroyed. A guy had gone out to grab something and his arm had been broken by a chunk of ice nearly as large as some of the rocks I had used to weight down my tent. Needless to say, if the cyclone had hit shore even 1 more km south, the ice would have caught me completely unprepared, would have destroyed my tent, and most likely left me paralyzed and beyond the help of anyone. It was Croatia's worst storm in 33 years; 30 minutes of hell on earth.
If you do not have a sense of surprise that I can still count myself among the living, than you have lost touch with life and I would reccommend trying my Croatian Scampi sauce (I'll credit Boris with teaching me how to make that). My own experience was quite scary and frought with enough danger to be lethal, but by some magical stroke of luck, I once again avoided a disaster that would have been certain death. Just to clarify, I did not intentionally put myself in harm's way, but I was really asking for it. And thus, since I am allowed to delude myself into thinking my opinion matters, there are a few lessons here: 1) Be prepared for anything, even a tempest of ice bricks falling from the sky, 2) Make sure someone who cares about you knows where you are, otherwise no one will ever find your humorous journal entries, and 3) Sheep are simple; never leave their sides.
The next day I got on a bus and used my iPod for the first time in a month as I headed north. It was like citric acid was being poured into my crainial cavity; I was amped. By the time I hit Split, I was ready for my mext quest: The Search for the Satch (European Manpurse) of DOOM!
I will tell you about one of these instances; the others, those are for me, but the event that I lived through on the morning of August 4th is too proposterous to keep to myself. I may go back and talk about previous adventures in Croatia at some point, but for now, I'll give the basic situation. At that point, I hd been in Croatia for nearly two weeks; I'd done a fair amount of shepherding, traveled to Mostar with two fellow couchsurfers, got off a bus in Sarajevo with no idea what I was doing and spent the two subsequent days smoking hookah with a Sweed and a Canadian on a balcony overlooking the old town, done more shepherding in Dubrovnik, climbed some mountains, and played to my heart's content in the ocean. Now, it was not all fun and games; I had lined up a guy in a small town to couchsurf with while I was in Poland, and had secured a place to sleep at his home for most of the three weeks. Or so I thought; through vrious changes that his life took quite rapidly on him, it transpired that I became a bit of a burden very quickly. After returing to his home from Dubrovnik to find him upset, I had to quickly devise a way to get out of his hair. I had planned on camping along the coast before I got there, and it seemed like the perfect time to get out of that tiny town where everyone knew what was up. My host drove me to a popular place to camp and chill about 20 km south of the town, and I told him that I would be there for about a week, and that I would come through the town and stay with him one more night before I left for the north. I don't think he was even paying attention to that; he drove off and I was left on my own.
After some exploration, I found a small island about a sixth of a mile off land, and was able to bundle up my pack in a convienently discarded tarp and float all of my gear out to the island where I set up my home for the next week. I spent 5 days living off what I could find and catch, most of which consisted of squids and sea urchins. I would not reccommend eating sea urchins; not good for one's health. In my physical journal, I believe that I wrote, "Never, in the history of mankind, has anyone subjected themselves to the appaling sanitary conditions to which I have now sunk." It is because of this that I will never eat squids again. It is also because of this that I have had such little regard for the sanitary protocol of the majority of Americans; things like washing one's hands before eating and using a spoon to get raisins out of a shared bag in order to prevent the spread of swine flu are still taking time for me to get used to. I'm living under the assumption that if I did not die from some horrible disease whilst on the island, there is no germ, virus, or fungus that will ever be able to harm me again.
And so it came to the morning of that 6th day of seclusion, and I woke to a desperate hunger. I had discovered a sun cherry tree on the other side of the island a couple of days back, and was contemplating heding over and grabbing some breakfast. There was also the option of getting into the blackberries, but I had learned fairly quickly that wild blackberries are the most powerful laxitive in existance (I could discribe how I discovered this. Be thankful I am not). I unzipped my tent and stepped out into the little patch of small rocks that I had designated as my cooking area. I did my best to try to shoo away the yellow jackets that had been hanging around since my first meal at the beginning of the week. They got there before the sun rose every morning, and at first I was worried about getting stung, then I was worried about them crawling on my food, then I was worried that I might accidentally eat one that had gotten itself stuck to a piece of food. Then I just didn't worry. The air was crisp and the flies had not yet come, so all I could hear was the crashing of the waves in the bay behind me. (Swich to present tense for dramatic emphasis). I face the sun to the east and let the rays wash over my face so as to ensure that I come back from Croatia with some kind of tan. It feels good to have warmth on my body again; it's incrediblly relaxing after sleeping in a tent pitched over a bed of reeds that is supposed to serve as a rudimentary thermarest. I drink in the glory of a beautiful sunny Croatian day for a few more seconds, and then turn to the West to see a gigantic cyclone heading straight for me.
What followed was almost entirely mechanical. I had no fly on my tent, so my first thought was to stormproof the situation. I attached the goretex material to the half of my tent that was mesh and shifted four 70 pound boulders so that they sat on the corners of my rather flimsy looking shelter. I gathered all of my belongings and spread them out over the floor, adding several more boulders for good measure. After taking one more look towards appoaching doom, I got into the tent, zipped up and layed spread eagle across the pile. There was easily a good 250 lbs in that tent, but when the storm hit a few minutes later, I was nearly blown straight into the ocean. After about 30 minutes of desperately trying to keep the tent from going airborne, the gale winds and hammering rain broke almost instantly, and the sun popped out as if astonished that I wasn't out enjoying it's warmth. I was fairly pissed; my stuff was soaked from rain that had been blown straight under the fly and into the bottom of the tent, and all of the contraptions that I had set up to make life easier were either destroyed or gone. A couple of trees had fallen over, and that scared me. If I had been hit by a tree, I could have been stuck out there with no help and no one who knew where I was. My host knew that I was in the area, but I don't think he cared much about me at that point; I was on my own. I considered myself incredibly lucky to have survived the storm with everything intact, but I did not find out just how lucky I actually was until my return to my hosts town the next day.
After a 20km attempt to hitchhike back (To be fair, a pair of really nice Russians showed up with 1 km left to go), I came back into town to find that nerly everyone was gone. I asked where everyone was and found that they had all gon to insurance claims adjusters. I passed through, I noticed that several homes had large holes, missing windows, and a few that had caved in sections. Cars had plastic over the windows and all of the roofs were peppered with the exact same pattern of stippled dents. It was like I had left a normal town and come back to a war zone.
As it transpired, the cyclone had not hit the bay I was staying in directly, but it had hit my host's town, which was only 2 km north of where I was in costal distance. And this funnel of death wasn't just carrying water; it brought a rain of grapefruit sized ice that had completely destroyed the town; cars, homes, all windows, all destroyed. A guy had gone out to grab something and his arm had been broken by a chunk of ice nearly as large as some of the rocks I had used to weight down my tent. Needless to say, if the cyclone had hit shore even 1 more km south, the ice would have caught me completely unprepared, would have destroyed my tent, and most likely left me paralyzed and beyond the help of anyone. It was Croatia's worst storm in 33 years; 30 minutes of hell on earth.
If you do not have a sense of surprise that I can still count myself among the living, than you have lost touch with life and I would reccommend trying my Croatian Scampi sauce (I'll credit Boris with teaching me how to make that). My own experience was quite scary and frought with enough danger to be lethal, but by some magical stroke of luck, I once again avoided a disaster that would have been certain death. Just to clarify, I did not intentionally put myself in harm's way, but I was really asking for it. And thus, since I am allowed to delude myself into thinking my opinion matters, there are a few lessons here: 1) Be prepared for anything, even a tempest of ice bricks falling from the sky, 2) Make sure someone who cares about you knows where you are, otherwise no one will ever find your humorous journal entries, and 3) Sheep are simple; never leave their sides.
The next day I got on a bus and used my iPod for the first time in a month as I headed north. It was like citric acid was being poured into my crainial cavity; I was amped. By the time I hit Split, I was ready for my mext quest: The Search for the Satch (European Manpurse) of DOOM!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
A little Appeteaser of Adventure: ZOMBIES!
Well, well, well... thought you'd never hear from me again, did you? Thought that I might succeed in getting myself imprisoned on some minor offense in an obscure region that doesn't appear on google maps? Convinced I might end up eaten by a Great White at the bottom of the world? Believed that I would never leave the fruit groves? Well, you were mistaken. This Time. I still have plenty of life to live.
The last time you heard from me, I was making my way from Poznan towards Croatia, or Hrvatska as they say it, for some mad couchsurfing and spectacular shepherding. Now, I am back in the states, back in school, and back in the same dorm, the same room, same RA, and living with the same roommate. It's like everything around me is shifiting in a constant state of flux, but a small bubble floats from my frame, eternally preserving what works. Thinking back, I could not have possibly predicted the meanderings that my 4 or so weeks on my own forced me to take, and I've told the stories (Though only a few of them; my faithful readers will be treated to much more revealing versions) to many who felt that they would have been unblievable if told by anyone else. Even I don't quite believe all of the things that happened, but, in the words of someone I came across while reading Neil Gaiman, "Always trust the story, never the storyteller."
I think the way I'll handle this is to publish small bits of my adventure, both the ups and the downs, at intermittent intervals in order to keep you all wanting more (and possibly buying my book; you know, the one I'm going to write). I'll start with Germany.
I only spent two days in the land of Wienersnichzel (I have no idea how to spell that), but Frankfurt was so chill and pleasant, for the most part, that even with all the crap that befell my stay, I wish I could have stayed there longer. I parted from JP and Jonathan in the airport after some complex manuvering to get all of Jonathan's weighty baggage home (a move that resulted in them missing their flights) and proceeded to use the S Bhan with a syste of guess and check. Granted, it wasn't very hard to deduce where I was going to; I'm good at figuring out stuff like that and I love the band Rammstein, so I wasn't completely thrown by the Greman language. The advert for the hostel I was staying at mentioned that the location was culturally interesting, but stepping out of the station with a gigantic backpack and finding myself smack in the middle of Frankfurt's red light district was a bit disconcerting. It took me a while to find the street in question and even longer to convince the Russian bouncers that I wasn't interested in a lap dance, but I found my way to the best hostel I think I've ever stayed in. Wish I remembered the name, but I wouldn't really reccommend it simply due to the nature of the surrounding alleyways.
After unpacking, I stepped through the front door of my hostel with the plan to walk along the wide river with some pleasant mood music. I walked right into a hoarde of zombies. A parade of the undead was filing slowly through the streets of Frankfurt, drawing with them a string of tourists with their cameras, wildly snapping photos. Every once in a while, one of the zombies would savage one of them, and the rest would all run excitedly to capture the photo op. At one point, a small group of dead females attempted to "rough me up", but I managed to escape with my life and wallet intact.
I stuck with the parade for a while and split off at the mall to explore, but really, a mall in Germany is just like a mall in the US; just more tourist crap with "Germany" and "Bier" featured prominently. I left the establishment to try to find grocery store to get some eats, but they were few and far between in that part of town. Stumbing into a theatre, I ended up purchasing a ticket for Harry Potter und der Halb Blut Prinz, which I was only able to follow because I had the name of the incantations and potions memorized from my extensive listening to the books on CD, as read by that most magical of vocalist actors, Jim Dale. I retired to my room around 1:00, and you can imagine what I faced trying to get through the local "shops" to my hostel. I was quite pleased to be in a bed that night.
The next day was fairly uneventful. Actually, a very scary thing happened, but I am going to leave that out. Maybe one day. But for the most part, I did what I thought I was going to do earlier, and took a long walk by the riverside. Frankfurt really is a beautiful city, and my Dad tells me that it pales in comparison with the rest of the country. The people are friendly, there are plenty of open air theatres showing alien movies from the 60s, the dark bread is thick and cheap, I assume the bier is good (I didn't actually have any beer in Germany! What a jest!), the smells and sounds of juicy, stomach-vicing saussage pervades the air, and the Chinese resturants are open until 12:00.
I love Ryanair for the prices; I flew for 20 euro, or something like that. But the locations of their airports leave much to be desired. I took a 6:00 bus to the airport that is not actually in Frankfurt, but 2 hours away in a small town famous for it's proximity to something toxic. I really did get what I paid for.
But at least I made it on the plane, and that is where I leave you for now, salivating to hear what happened once I touched down in Zadar, in one of the few airports in the world that actually uses the highway as a taxi surface for the planes. By the way, I really appreciate everyone reading this. It gives me a sense of fulfillment that my chronicles are passing through more than just my own head. Cheers.
The last time you heard from me, I was making my way from Poznan towards Croatia, or Hrvatska as they say it, for some mad couchsurfing and spectacular shepherding. Now, I am back in the states, back in school, and back in the same dorm, the same room, same RA, and living with the same roommate. It's like everything around me is shifiting in a constant state of flux, but a small bubble floats from my frame, eternally preserving what works. Thinking back, I could not have possibly predicted the meanderings that my 4 or so weeks on my own forced me to take, and I've told the stories (Though only a few of them; my faithful readers will be treated to much more revealing versions) to many who felt that they would have been unblievable if told by anyone else. Even I don't quite believe all of the things that happened, but, in the words of someone I came across while reading Neil Gaiman, "Always trust the story, never the storyteller."
I think the way I'll handle this is to publish small bits of my adventure, both the ups and the downs, at intermittent intervals in order to keep you all wanting more (and possibly buying my book; you know, the one I'm going to write). I'll start with Germany.
I only spent two days in the land of Wienersnichzel (I have no idea how to spell that), but Frankfurt was so chill and pleasant, for the most part, that even with all the crap that befell my stay, I wish I could have stayed there longer. I parted from JP and Jonathan in the airport after some complex manuvering to get all of Jonathan's weighty baggage home (a move that resulted in them missing their flights) and proceeded to use the S Bhan with a syste of guess and check. Granted, it wasn't very hard to deduce where I was going to; I'm good at figuring out stuff like that and I love the band Rammstein, so I wasn't completely thrown by the Greman language. The advert for the hostel I was staying at mentioned that the location was culturally interesting, but stepping out of the station with a gigantic backpack and finding myself smack in the middle of Frankfurt's red light district was a bit disconcerting. It took me a while to find the street in question and even longer to convince the Russian bouncers that I wasn't interested in a lap dance, but I found my way to the best hostel I think I've ever stayed in. Wish I remembered the name, but I wouldn't really reccommend it simply due to the nature of the surrounding alleyways.
After unpacking, I stepped through the front door of my hostel with the plan to walk along the wide river with some pleasant mood music. I walked right into a hoarde of zombies. A parade of the undead was filing slowly through the streets of Frankfurt, drawing with them a string of tourists with their cameras, wildly snapping photos. Every once in a while, one of the zombies would savage one of them, and the rest would all run excitedly to capture the photo op. At one point, a small group of dead females attempted to "rough me up", but I managed to escape with my life and wallet intact.
I stuck with the parade for a while and split off at the mall to explore, but really, a mall in Germany is just like a mall in the US; just more tourist crap with "Germany" and "Bier" featured prominently. I left the establishment to try to find grocery store to get some eats, but they were few and far between in that part of town. Stumbing into a theatre, I ended up purchasing a ticket for Harry Potter und der Halb Blut Prinz, which I was only able to follow because I had the name of the incantations and potions memorized from my extensive listening to the books on CD, as read by that most magical of vocalist actors, Jim Dale. I retired to my room around 1:00, and you can imagine what I faced trying to get through the local "shops" to my hostel. I was quite pleased to be in a bed that night.
The next day was fairly uneventful. Actually, a very scary thing happened, but I am going to leave that out. Maybe one day. But for the most part, I did what I thought I was going to do earlier, and took a long walk by the riverside. Frankfurt really is a beautiful city, and my Dad tells me that it pales in comparison with the rest of the country. The people are friendly, there are plenty of open air theatres showing alien movies from the 60s, the dark bread is thick and cheap, I assume the bier is good (I didn't actually have any beer in Germany! What a jest!), the smells and sounds of juicy, stomach-vicing saussage pervades the air, and the Chinese resturants are open until 12:00.
I love Ryanair for the prices; I flew for 20 euro, or something like that. But the locations of their airports leave much to be desired. I took a 6:00 bus to the airport that is not actually in Frankfurt, but 2 hours away in a small town famous for it's proximity to something toxic. I really did get what I paid for.
But at least I made it on the plane, and that is where I leave you for now, salivating to hear what happened once I touched down in Zadar, in one of the few airports in the world that actually uses the highway as a taxi surface for the planes. By the way, I really appreciate everyone reading this. It gives me a sense of fulfillment that my chronicles are passing through more than just my own head. Cheers.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
1000 & 1 Places to Pee on Before You Die
"The last evening in Poznan", the title of the spectacular independent film, coming at the end of the summer 2009, and I am spending my time trying to give away all of my stuff so that my baggage will conform to Ryanair's hellish demands. Our sponsor from the states, Stefan, who has been with us for the past few days, says that people were literally crying when he was taking a Ryanair flight to Poznan. Can't wait. I've planned much less for this lag of the journey than I did for France; I'm just too tired. I'll probably wake up early and try to write down at least the directions to the bus station in Zadar before I walk out into the great unknown, but for the most part, I'm acting almost like I'm going to be winging things, which would usually have me frightened, but I'm so tired from working my butt off for the past three days that my level of personal apathy has risen to unprecedented heights.
Our final week in the lab has been representative of our time here in some ways and in others, this last week has become a kind of farce that has me quite frustrated. I mean, you spend three weeks telling me that you just want to relax and take it easy after the grad student leaves because there's only so much that can be done. You barely come in to work, saying that not everyone needs to be there, and then leaving. You speak condescendingly to me while you are there, but I go along with it because I'm exhausted and I just don't care. And then, all of a sudden, someone who matters shows up, and now, for the last three days, you ensure that all of the projects are yours, you are giving arbitrary directions for the sake of getting face time, and you have suddenly become the most dedicated worker in the lab. Would that not frustrate anyone just a bit?
But I am feeling better about this now, after some good feedback. We've done well and I might have an opportunity to come back, the best of all possible outcomes. It will be nice to have a break from the lab group (Though, honestly, I didn't spend a whole lot of my free time with them, so my parting is not as sweet as it will be when JP and Jonathan return to their respective routines, devoid of each other's company), but don't get me wrong; for the most part, I have enjoyed our moments together; the handshakes and hugs sure to come at the entrance to the S-Bhan in Frankfurt are sure to be a bittersweet thing.
I am sure to get over it though; Croatia, and beaches that face the sunset, await me in less than three days.
It is a sad thing to be leaving Poland, but I go with the knowledge that I have had my fill of the Ziwiec glass, made Hanna ecstatic by urinating on the Palace of Culture in Warszawa, done a plank off in the laser room on the hottest day of the summer thus far, gotten laughed at in the Stary Browar food court for pulling out two bags of frozen plums and tucking in, gotten anxious questions from Poles about whether or not all Americans are obsessed with frozen fruit (I assured them that, in this respect, my behavior is strange in all lands on this green earth), eaten so much I nearly wept with pain (10 apples and a whole chicken breast in the space of 2 hours), spent long hours of the night listening to the whine of hundreds of police cars and ambulans passing directly under my window, learned Polish from Rosetta Stone and drunk guys in equal amounts, danced to lady GaGa in the halls, witnessed a horde of Spaniards (Who are apparently SO cool) douse an entire corridor with the fire extinguisher during a hallway disco at the Jowita at 5 in the morning, explained to the masses of firemen who showed up that I didn't live on that floor, kept my alcohol consumption to a minimum but trying the mulled wine from Germany, eaten so much Polish food that I have the palate memorized for future culinary enterprises, sat on the banks of one of the largest natural lakes in Poznan and watched the sunset, and listened to Joe Dassin with my hallmates, all of us recalling our first time travelling down Les Champs Elysses.
It has been one of the most wonderful periods of my life and has offered much in the way of bolstered courage. I am grateful for the positive feedback that I have received about my portrayal of the American people while here, and I hope that my friends don't take too much stock in Bruno (Well, not them actually; I know they are a bit brighter than that.).
And so, with my last opportunity to give you all a glimpse into the wonderful world of Poland before I start telling you how great fresh fish is while you're herding sheep, I will share with you one thing: if someone is wearing a Poznan Lech scarf, tell them that Poznan Lech is very dear to your heart, and never mention Warszawa. Not even in passing.
Thanks to everyone who supported me with comments and feedback; I truly appreciate it and I hope that you are interested in more than just Poland, for I can find adventure anywhere, even if it is only a dark alley where I can relieve myself.
Croatia Ho!
Our final week in the lab has been representative of our time here in some ways and in others, this last week has become a kind of farce that has me quite frustrated. I mean, you spend three weeks telling me that you just want to relax and take it easy after the grad student leaves because there's only so much that can be done. You barely come in to work, saying that not everyone needs to be there, and then leaving. You speak condescendingly to me while you are there, but I go along with it because I'm exhausted and I just don't care. And then, all of a sudden, someone who matters shows up, and now, for the last three days, you ensure that all of the projects are yours, you are giving arbitrary directions for the sake of getting face time, and you have suddenly become the most dedicated worker in the lab. Would that not frustrate anyone just a bit?
But I am feeling better about this now, after some good feedback. We've done well and I might have an opportunity to come back, the best of all possible outcomes. It will be nice to have a break from the lab group (Though, honestly, I didn't spend a whole lot of my free time with them, so my parting is not as sweet as it will be when JP and Jonathan return to their respective routines, devoid of each other's company), but don't get me wrong; for the most part, I have enjoyed our moments together; the handshakes and hugs sure to come at the entrance to the S-Bhan in Frankfurt are sure to be a bittersweet thing.
I am sure to get over it though; Croatia, and beaches that face the sunset, await me in less than three days.
It is a sad thing to be leaving Poland, but I go with the knowledge that I have had my fill of the Ziwiec glass, made Hanna ecstatic by urinating on the Palace of Culture in Warszawa, done a plank off in the laser room on the hottest day of the summer thus far, gotten laughed at in the Stary Browar food court for pulling out two bags of frozen plums and tucking in, gotten anxious questions from Poles about whether or not all Americans are obsessed with frozen fruit (I assured them that, in this respect, my behavior is strange in all lands on this green earth), eaten so much I nearly wept with pain (10 apples and a whole chicken breast in the space of 2 hours), spent long hours of the night listening to the whine of hundreds of police cars and ambulans passing directly under my window, learned Polish from Rosetta Stone and drunk guys in equal amounts, danced to lady GaGa in the halls, witnessed a horde of Spaniards (Who are apparently SO cool) douse an entire corridor with the fire extinguisher during a hallway disco at the Jowita at 5 in the morning, explained to the masses of firemen who showed up that I didn't live on that floor, kept my alcohol consumption to a minimum but trying the mulled wine from Germany, eaten so much Polish food that I have the palate memorized for future culinary enterprises, sat on the banks of one of the largest natural lakes in Poznan and watched the sunset, and listened to Joe Dassin with my hallmates, all of us recalling our first time travelling down Les Champs Elysses.
It has been one of the most wonderful periods of my life and has offered much in the way of bolstered courage. I am grateful for the positive feedback that I have received about my portrayal of the American people while here, and I hope that my friends don't take too much stock in Bruno (Well, not them actually; I know they are a bit brighter than that.).
And so, with my last opportunity to give you all a glimpse into the wonderful world of Poland before I start telling you how great fresh fish is while you're herding sheep, I will share with you one thing: if someone is wearing a Poznan Lech scarf, tell them that Poznan Lech is very dear to your heart, and never mention Warszawa. Not even in passing.
Thanks to everyone who supported me with comments and feedback; I truly appreciate it and I hope that you are interested in more than just Poland, for I can find adventure anywhere, even if it is only a dark alley where I can relieve myself.
Croatia Ho!
Monday, July 13, 2009
"Bosko!" (I No Ruskie Spy)
Just a quick observation that I had this afternoon when I was eating the Texas Pete that I brought back (I brought back 6 things; Texas Pete, Tostidos Salsa, Cookie Crisp, Kool Aid, extra strength Benedryl, and a bag of resturant chips. One of my carry on bags was a big bag of chips. I got looks, but I managed to get them back to Poland completely intact. You are all in awe, I'm sure):
Polish people love foreigners; the impression I get is that Poland has been insular for so long (By influence of Governmantal Regime, oppression from external powers, lack of investment, a unique and incredibly difficult language, and general absence of knowledge from the rest of the world) that Polish people are tired of each other. My neighbors all want to know me, and they are especially excited to see an American; apparently not too many of those here, as most of the foreigners are EU, most of the students Erasmus. And thus, you don't even have to try to be liked by the general populace of Poland (Excluding the skin heads who wait on the corner outside of the Jowita. Actually, I'm wrong; they think we're British). It's as if just picking Poland as a country to come to is good enough; by choosing Poland, you become family.
And if you go out of your way to learn a bit of Polish history or culture, the Poles will dote on you. I spent 4 hours talking with a guy who conned me into buying him a beer, even though he spoke only Polish and a few words of Espanol. He never seemed to realize that I didn't fully understand, he was just happy that I was a foreigner and that I was listening. But buying him that beer paid off, since I was able to pick up a fair amount of Polish after the 4 hours in the rain and darkening skies (I could have been arrested. I was told last night that drinking in public is illegal, and that it doesn't even matter if you were the one drinking. I mean, seriously?! In Poland?!!). So, when I throw out random words of Polish into conversations with my neighbor, she always seems ecstatic. I can actually string some sentences together now; I wonder how she would react to that.
One guy told me that to know a little bit of Polish is great; people are very appreciative of your interest in the culture and truly value your attempts to learn one of the hardest languages on earth (Possibly the hardest). But if you know too much Polish, people can get suspicious. This is why, if you become fluent in Polish, you should be living here so that your abilities to navigate social customs are up to speed with your lengual skills and Poles assume that you are one of them, and not a Ruskie spy. Also a good tip; I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: don't speak Russian or German.
So in the end, this should be encouragement for other to follow in my footsteps to this country. Here is a place that is on the cusp of a technological and cultural revolution that loves foreigners, values their opinions, and makes a place for them in society. While Poland is not one of the frequently toted "emerging powers" (And I think this is mainly because everyone forgets about them. Maybe when they go on the Euro in 2012, there will be more notice, but that's worse for those that use the dollar. My chicken will suddenly become expensive!), it is going to be important soon.
It's my last week here, and I know already that passing from these borders will lie heavy on my heart. When I was in France, I was thinking about returning "home", and it dawned on me that the home I was thinking about was my little one room in the Jowita. Going back to the states, I knew that I was returning to my family and the place I lived, but once again, when I left, I was leaving for "home" in Poznan. To pharaphrase my friend from Portugal with my own vivid diction, "Ah, that Polonia. 'Aye, she is a fiesty beast. Those who travel amongst her bounties are oft trapt by her wily ways. They come and never return to their home ports. Their hearts are repainted Red and White." I'm not that bad off, but Poland will always have a place in my heart, as will the bonny banks of Loch Lomund.
Polish people love foreigners; the impression I get is that Poland has been insular for so long (By influence of Governmantal Regime, oppression from external powers, lack of investment, a unique and incredibly difficult language, and general absence of knowledge from the rest of the world) that Polish people are tired of each other. My neighbors all want to know me, and they are especially excited to see an American; apparently not too many of those here, as most of the foreigners are EU, most of the students Erasmus. And thus, you don't even have to try to be liked by the general populace of Poland (Excluding the skin heads who wait on the corner outside of the Jowita. Actually, I'm wrong; they think we're British). It's as if just picking Poland as a country to come to is good enough; by choosing Poland, you become family.
And if you go out of your way to learn a bit of Polish history or culture, the Poles will dote on you. I spent 4 hours talking with a guy who conned me into buying him a beer, even though he spoke only Polish and a few words of Espanol. He never seemed to realize that I didn't fully understand, he was just happy that I was a foreigner and that I was listening. But buying him that beer paid off, since I was able to pick up a fair amount of Polish after the 4 hours in the rain and darkening skies (I could have been arrested. I was told last night that drinking in public is illegal, and that it doesn't even matter if you were the one drinking. I mean, seriously?! In Poland?!!). So, when I throw out random words of Polish into conversations with my neighbor, she always seems ecstatic. I can actually string some sentences together now; I wonder how she would react to that.
One guy told me that to know a little bit of Polish is great; people are very appreciative of your interest in the culture and truly value your attempts to learn one of the hardest languages on earth (Possibly the hardest). But if you know too much Polish, people can get suspicious. This is why, if you become fluent in Polish, you should be living here so that your abilities to navigate social customs are up to speed with your lengual skills and Poles assume that you are one of them, and not a Ruskie spy. Also a good tip; I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: don't speak Russian or German.
So in the end, this should be encouragement for other to follow in my footsteps to this country. Here is a place that is on the cusp of a technological and cultural revolution that loves foreigners, values their opinions, and makes a place for them in society. While Poland is not one of the frequently toted "emerging powers" (And I think this is mainly because everyone forgets about them. Maybe when they go on the Euro in 2012, there will be more notice, but that's worse for those that use the dollar. My chicken will suddenly become expensive!), it is going to be important soon.
It's my last week here, and I know already that passing from these borders will lie heavy on my heart. When I was in France, I was thinking about returning "home", and it dawned on me that the home I was thinking about was my little one room in the Jowita. Going back to the states, I knew that I was returning to my family and the place I lived, but once again, when I left, I was leaving for "home" in Poznan. To pharaphrase my friend from Portugal with my own vivid diction, "Ah, that Polonia. 'Aye, she is a fiesty beast. Those who travel amongst her bounties are oft trapt by her wily ways. They come and never return to their home ports. Their hearts are repainted Red and White." I'm not that bad off, but Poland will always have a place in my heart, as will the bonny banks of Loch Lomund.
I want to hit short, panhandling women
-Taken directly from my notes, drafted upon arrival at Charles de Gaulle RER station B;
"F*** LOT Polish Airlines."
A couple of weekends ago, before I went back to the states for the funeral, I took my first solo international sojourn, hitting up the cities of Warszawa to do what I came to Poland to do, Paris (the one in France) to hear my sister sing wondrous melodies with the Capital City Girls Choir, and then Cracow to sit on the bank of the river and snack on frozen plums while I got a forehead tan. For every step of the journey, save the first since JP and Jonathan spent the weekend in Warszawa with one of JPs Polish girlfriends (He met her at a birthday party that he, Jonathan, and Dustin crashed), I was getting by through my own volition and blind luck, and I figured that, if I could get through this, somehow getting to France from Poland without being fluent in either French or Polish, without knowing the bus routes, without knowing how to get to my hotel, and with flights timed ever so perfectly to put me in terrible situations, as you shall read later, then I would be uberman, able to do anything. It would be by God's will that I made it back to Poland in one piece, and the whole trip was like one long chain of close calls, conspiring to have me stuck in a country where you can be stuck at an intersection for three hours while a gay pride parade files past (Nothing on gays, but Man! was that parade long. Quite entertaining though. I did the YMCA)
We got into Warszawa after a fairly uneventful train ride; I've gotten in the habit of trying to exersize whenever I travel, so I don't feel like crap, and on this ride I stood out in the hall and was doing a pretty strenuous ab workout when a guy came out of the coach next to me, took one look at my screwed up face muscles, and then retreated back into his little space with a startled look on his face. After picking up my first batch of Apples and meeting Claudia at the mall, she took me to the bus stop where I would need to board in order to leave my walking directions to the airport in my backpack; I really didn't want to be that guy that walks to the terminal. And then, a quick hug form JP and Jonathan, and I was on my own. I knew what I had to do. I was going to the Archeological Museum even if it meant missing my flight (At least this is wht I eventually decided. I fought with myself for about 20 minutes; there was a part of my brain that just wanted to give up, play it safe, and get to the airport 3 hours beforehand. Another part told me I was nuts to give up now. Guess which side won?). But the ancient slavic gods and tutelary spirits in whom my quest is borne must be conspiring against me, for the museum is closed on Fridays. If I had but looked at the picture I took earlier of my exasperation over the closing hours, I would have seen that my excitement upon arriving in Warszawa was in vain. But sometimes, it is the wish unfulfilled that brews the most heady mead, and this one has stirred up a doozie of longing. I will return. And when I do, I shall storm the stronghold with my anticipation.
I arrived at the airport with plenty of time, and then found out that even more time still, as LOT had delayed my flight for two more hours so they could do a series of tests that never really seemed to end. A good example to the Polish mindset; planes will take off when they take off. At least trains leave on time. Dramatic pause for forshadowing. What didn't occur to me when I was stuck twiddling thumbs and eating 7 apples was that a two hour delay would put my flight at CDG airport around 12:15, 15 minutes after the last RER B line train left for the night, the train I needed to catch to put me within 2 hours of my hotel. I was pissed like a brooding viper. I spent the first hour waiting for the trains in the station next to some Hungarians and Japaneese tourists, fuming and ready to curb stomp anyone who disturbed me. The second hour I realized that at two in the morning, CDG was practically empty, and why did I have to be confined to the station? I could explore to my heart's content! So I went free running for about an hour in a business park adjcent to the station. During my explorations, I found a four star Hilton that was being cleaned by a skeleton crew that wasn't paying attention to the door, so for the last two hours, until 4:30 when the trains started running, I slept in a very nice armchair in a corner behind the bar and they never found me. Then, as I was getting off the train a young Arab guy grabbed my arm and tried to pickpocket me. He wasn't very good, and he was blazed out of his mind; I was able to slam his hand in the door of the train and he got away empty handed. As I walked away from the train, a guy who had seen what happened launched into a violent tirade about Arabs coming to France and doing nothing but stealing from society, voicing all of the concerns that I had heard from my friends at the Jowita. That gave me a little smile, but I felt so naive; next time, I'll be more quick to punch the guy in the face. Two more hours of walking in the French twilight, and I was able to collapse into my bed at 6 in the morning.
At 11, I woke up and started out for the City Hall, where my sister would be singing early in the afternoon. On the way, I exchanged 8 euro for 13 apples and some chicken at a Chinese market; they told me I had to spend at least 8 euro. By the time I reached the venue, all but 3 of the apples had disappeared. Don't judge me; I hadn't eaten in a long time. The guard outside the town hall didn't speak English, so I tried to explain in Espanol that I was there to see a concert, which he told me was happening on Monday and that I needed to leave. Perplexed, I wandered for the next 3 hours through the streets of Paris, past Notre Dame, back through the Gay pride parade, among several enormous buildings of state, and all along the Siene, in the direction of the gril's hotel, where I waited for another hour an a half, reading French graphic novels in the lobby and sprinting into the keycoded bathroom whenever someone was leaving. Convinced that the girls had, in my absence at the concert, given up on me and gone to do some shopping and dining, I decided to set out on my own for Les Champs Elysees, to see the familiar landmark from the many hours I have spent playing Deus Ex. I can't remember if I've talked about this before now, but there was a computer game called Deus Ex that was the catylyst for one of the four true turning points in my life; I study nanoscience and biomaterials now because of my experience with this game. The globe hopping adventure led me to CG haunts all over the world, one of them being the streets of Les Champs Elysses in a Paris under martial law, and it became my quest to find and photograph the real world inspiration for the allyways I spent so much time wandering at my console.
On the way I passed back through the Gay pride parade for now the third time since waking up that morning (I later discovered that it was this parade that had held up the girl's bus in traffic for 3 hours), stopped off at the doggy park behind the Notre Dame and got some amazing pictures, bought more apples, saw the outside of the Louvre, stood in the exact spot that Chris Cooper stood in the Bourne Identity on Pont Neuf (And then proceeded to the corner where Matt Damon placed the tracking device on the white van), marveled at the glass pyramid that I think was somehow significant in the Da Vinci code, trapsed through the Garden of Tulips, and was accosted by a guy who wanted to do a characture of me.
This was probably my most interesting encounter of the day, other than being pickpocketed. I used the phrase "Nie razumiem po Angrosku" throughout the day (I don't understand English, in Polish) as a means of avoiding those that wanted to take my money, and it always worked because, really, no one speaks Polish outside of Poland. But for some reason, when this guy came up to me and said that he wanted to paint me because I had great hair, I started speaking in Russian. First he asked me where I was from, (in English, so I could have stopped him right there, but I'm not that fast) and I replied "Ya Ruskie". He then gave me a cheerful "Dobre Dien! A kak ble?" and I panicked, stammering "Ya Polskie, Ya Polskie". It is likely that he caught on to my ruse then because he greeted me in Polish and then started speaking in French and English, attempting to cooerce some euros out of my pocket. By that point I realized that he only knew how to greet people in all of these languages and that he couldn't really speak any of them, so I continued denying him in Polish, and wandered away, leaving him a bit angry.
Back through the ponds by the tulips, across Le Plac du Conchordes, where I did my obligatory dance as the FOTC song "Fou du Fa Fah" played over my iPod, and then the long walk down the Champs, stopping in several stores including the Louis Vuitton store and the Virgin megashop, until I reached Le Arc de Triomphe just as the moon was coming up behind it. The 2 minute photo shoot was over soon enough, and I realized that I would now have to repeat the three hour walk back to the girl's hotel and then walk another two hours to get to my hotel; it was already 9. I got back to where the girls were staying just in time to catch their director in a quick phone call from the lobby, who confirmed both the place they were singing the next day and that I definitely couldn't see my sister at midnight.
Walking through Paris at midnight through neighborhoods that were not on the tourist bill had me a bit worried at first, but I soon discovered that my fears lay unfounded. I was not stopped once, though I changed sides of the road several times to avoid figures that seemed a wee bit suspicious. The highlight of this trek came when I saw a guy a little ways ahead of me appear out of the darkness and run up to a kebab stand, frantically grabbing napkins. As I got closer, I saw that his entire right arm was shredded and that blood was pouring from the wounds now bound by tissue. The women sitting outside enjoying the all to familiar midnight kebab stood up repulsed, and quickly backed off to a resturant across the road. This guy was moving incredibly fast for someone who had lost so much blood, and as I came upon him nearly sprinting away from the stand, he started yelling something into his phone. I certainly hope he was calling for an ambulance. I got worried that the same fate would befall me, but I realized that I could tell where he had come from by watching the road to the reflective drips of blood that marked his trail like breadcrumbs. I was not at all pleased to find that he had been following the exact path that I now had to take to my hotel, but just as I went under a bridge, I lost the trail and felt more comfortable. Never once did I see the huge splatter that I imagine would have marked the place where he ran into trouble. By the time I got to my room, I had been walking for 8 hours without sitting once, and I gladly passed out on top of the sheets.
After picking up another peck of apples the next morning, I easily found my way to the American Church, a beautiful venue that made me wonder if there was such a thing in Poznan. This is unlikely; all churches are Catholic and very conservative, not exactly the combination that would suit the more contemporary leanings of American Catholisism. I greeted my sister with the standard Polish fare, three kisses on the cheek and met everyone I would be travelling with for the day. I was warned by my sister's friend that the thirty or so girls had not been let out much and had not seen a teenage boy for nearly a week, so I should prepare myself for what was sure to come.
The day passed quite well and I managed to fulfill my little dream of having lunch in a small French Caf on the banks of the Siene, though I did not get my chance to have my glass of French wine until midnight; two things that I would dispise myself for if I missed the opportunity to sample. My sister and I talked pretty much all day, trading stories from the land of bree and the home of bad rave (Happened in Warszawa; I thought it was going to be a live concert, but it turned into a night with a mediocre DJ. Still can't believe they kicked me off the stage). We forwent the Louvre and instead wandered through the street shops until our date at the Notre Dame. The inside of the cathedral was spectacular and the outside was crawling with women who had learned how to say "Do you speak English" and how to hold up a card with a sob story written by their panhandling bossman. Honestly, I just wanted to hit them; it sounds terrible, but you would too. If you want my money, you have to learn more than four words; they should all take a leaf from the guy who tried to make me a hair model.
Dinner was, well, pork, but it was free and the ratatoullie tasted heavenly. I also managed to steal several apples from the hotel resturant, but when I broke them out during our spectacular river cruise that night, they were revealed to have a crispiness that was subpar to everything else I bought. My sis and I did the Zissou pose on the bow of the ship as the sun faded into a horizon of archaic towers, the skyline of Grand Old Europe. One day I'll return here, but when I do, I must return with a lover, for Paris truly is a city for lovers. Just like Wroclaw.
Then everything went nuts. Got back to the hotel at midnight and asked for a wakeup call at 3. The wakeup call at 3 never came. I slept until 6 when my consciousness fell subject to the deus ex machina of my sleeping irregularities and awoke me naturally. I saw sunlight in the windows, yelled out a bunch of stuff that I won't repeat, threw a towel around my waist (I had fallen into bed straight from the shower that morning), and started frantically searching for someone at the front desk. Crazy-eye set in, with good reason; my flight left in an hour. The drive to the airport was nearly 40 minutes. I had to hire a cab (the price of that cab was more expensive than my total purchases in Poland for the first three weeks), and on the way over, a sudden calm hit me. I was feeling down about my rapidly depleating funds, but I realized that I had spent in two days what I was expecting to spend in Poland over 10 weeks to see family, and that revelation made me realize just how far you will go to find your blood ties. Everything felt like it was rushing by me as I maintained a steady hand and a relaxed and happy mood; just barely making it on the plane, having to deal with the screaming child, a train ride out of a blistering heat in Cracow that got back to Poznan at 3. Family took me to do it all, and I wrote something in my journal on the ride back that captures the feeling in a sense. All I know is that I'm lucky to feel that way about kin.
Ironic that I had such a startling acceptance of this, and then I come back to find that my Granddad died.
"F*** LOT Polish Airlines."
A couple of weekends ago, before I went back to the states for the funeral, I took my first solo international sojourn, hitting up the cities of Warszawa to do what I came to Poland to do, Paris (the one in France) to hear my sister sing wondrous melodies with the Capital City Girls Choir, and then Cracow to sit on the bank of the river and snack on frozen plums while I got a forehead tan. For every step of the journey, save the first since JP and Jonathan spent the weekend in Warszawa with one of JPs Polish girlfriends (He met her at a birthday party that he, Jonathan, and Dustin crashed), I was getting by through my own volition and blind luck, and I figured that, if I could get through this, somehow getting to France from Poland without being fluent in either French or Polish, without knowing the bus routes, without knowing how to get to my hotel, and with flights timed ever so perfectly to put me in terrible situations, as you shall read later, then I would be uberman, able to do anything. It would be by God's will that I made it back to Poland in one piece, and the whole trip was like one long chain of close calls, conspiring to have me stuck in a country where you can be stuck at an intersection for three hours while a gay pride parade files past (Nothing on gays, but Man! was that parade long. Quite entertaining though. I did the YMCA)
We got into Warszawa after a fairly uneventful train ride; I've gotten in the habit of trying to exersize whenever I travel, so I don't feel like crap, and on this ride I stood out in the hall and was doing a pretty strenuous ab workout when a guy came out of the coach next to me, took one look at my screwed up face muscles, and then retreated back into his little space with a startled look on his face. After picking up my first batch of Apples and meeting Claudia at the mall, she took me to the bus stop where I would need to board in order to leave my walking directions to the airport in my backpack; I really didn't want to be that guy that walks to the terminal. And then, a quick hug form JP and Jonathan, and I was on my own. I knew what I had to do. I was going to the Archeological Museum even if it meant missing my flight (At least this is wht I eventually decided. I fought with myself for about 20 minutes; there was a part of my brain that just wanted to give up, play it safe, and get to the airport 3 hours beforehand. Another part told me I was nuts to give up now. Guess which side won?). But the ancient slavic gods and tutelary spirits in whom my quest is borne must be conspiring against me, for the museum is closed on Fridays. If I had but looked at the picture I took earlier of my exasperation over the closing hours, I would have seen that my excitement upon arriving in Warszawa was in vain. But sometimes, it is the wish unfulfilled that brews the most heady mead, and this one has stirred up a doozie of longing. I will return. And when I do, I shall storm the stronghold with my anticipation.
I arrived at the airport with plenty of time, and then found out that even more time still, as LOT had delayed my flight for two more hours so they could do a series of tests that never really seemed to end. A good example to the Polish mindset; planes will take off when they take off. At least trains leave on time. Dramatic pause for forshadowing. What didn't occur to me when I was stuck twiddling thumbs and eating 7 apples was that a two hour delay would put my flight at CDG airport around 12:15, 15 minutes after the last RER B line train left for the night, the train I needed to catch to put me within 2 hours of my hotel. I was pissed like a brooding viper. I spent the first hour waiting for the trains in the station next to some Hungarians and Japaneese tourists, fuming and ready to curb stomp anyone who disturbed me. The second hour I realized that at two in the morning, CDG was practically empty, and why did I have to be confined to the station? I could explore to my heart's content! So I went free running for about an hour in a business park adjcent to the station. During my explorations, I found a four star Hilton that was being cleaned by a skeleton crew that wasn't paying attention to the door, so for the last two hours, until 4:30 when the trains started running, I slept in a very nice armchair in a corner behind the bar and they never found me. Then, as I was getting off the train a young Arab guy grabbed my arm and tried to pickpocket me. He wasn't very good, and he was blazed out of his mind; I was able to slam his hand in the door of the train and he got away empty handed. As I walked away from the train, a guy who had seen what happened launched into a violent tirade about Arabs coming to France and doing nothing but stealing from society, voicing all of the concerns that I had heard from my friends at the Jowita. That gave me a little smile, but I felt so naive; next time, I'll be more quick to punch the guy in the face. Two more hours of walking in the French twilight, and I was able to collapse into my bed at 6 in the morning.
At 11, I woke up and started out for the City Hall, where my sister would be singing early in the afternoon. On the way, I exchanged 8 euro for 13 apples and some chicken at a Chinese market; they told me I had to spend at least 8 euro. By the time I reached the venue, all but 3 of the apples had disappeared. Don't judge me; I hadn't eaten in a long time. The guard outside the town hall didn't speak English, so I tried to explain in Espanol that I was there to see a concert, which he told me was happening on Monday and that I needed to leave. Perplexed, I wandered for the next 3 hours through the streets of Paris, past Notre Dame, back through the Gay pride parade, among several enormous buildings of state, and all along the Siene, in the direction of the gril's hotel, where I waited for another hour an a half, reading French graphic novels in the lobby and sprinting into the keycoded bathroom whenever someone was leaving. Convinced that the girls had, in my absence at the concert, given up on me and gone to do some shopping and dining, I decided to set out on my own for Les Champs Elysees, to see the familiar landmark from the many hours I have spent playing Deus Ex. I can't remember if I've talked about this before now, but there was a computer game called Deus Ex that was the catylyst for one of the four true turning points in my life; I study nanoscience and biomaterials now because of my experience with this game. The globe hopping adventure led me to CG haunts all over the world, one of them being the streets of Les Champs Elysses in a Paris under martial law, and it became my quest to find and photograph the real world inspiration for the allyways I spent so much time wandering at my console.
On the way I passed back through the Gay pride parade for now the third time since waking up that morning (I later discovered that it was this parade that had held up the girl's bus in traffic for 3 hours), stopped off at the doggy park behind the Notre Dame and got some amazing pictures, bought more apples, saw the outside of the Louvre, stood in the exact spot that Chris Cooper stood in the Bourne Identity on Pont Neuf (And then proceeded to the corner where Matt Damon placed the tracking device on the white van), marveled at the glass pyramid that I think was somehow significant in the Da Vinci code, trapsed through the Garden of Tulips, and was accosted by a guy who wanted to do a characture of me.
This was probably my most interesting encounter of the day, other than being pickpocketed. I used the phrase "Nie razumiem po Angrosku" throughout the day (I don't understand English, in Polish) as a means of avoiding those that wanted to take my money, and it always worked because, really, no one speaks Polish outside of Poland. But for some reason, when this guy came up to me and said that he wanted to paint me because I had great hair, I started speaking in Russian. First he asked me where I was from, (in English, so I could have stopped him right there, but I'm not that fast) and I replied "Ya Ruskie". He then gave me a cheerful "Dobre Dien! A kak ble?" and I panicked, stammering "Ya Polskie, Ya Polskie". It is likely that he caught on to my ruse then because he greeted me in Polish and then started speaking in French and English, attempting to cooerce some euros out of my pocket. By that point I realized that he only knew how to greet people in all of these languages and that he couldn't really speak any of them, so I continued denying him in Polish, and wandered away, leaving him a bit angry.
Back through the ponds by the tulips, across Le Plac du Conchordes, where I did my obligatory dance as the FOTC song "Fou du Fa Fah" played over my iPod, and then the long walk down the Champs, stopping in several stores including the Louis Vuitton store and the Virgin megashop, until I reached Le Arc de Triomphe just as the moon was coming up behind it. The 2 minute photo shoot was over soon enough, and I realized that I would now have to repeat the three hour walk back to the girl's hotel and then walk another two hours to get to my hotel; it was already 9. I got back to where the girls were staying just in time to catch their director in a quick phone call from the lobby, who confirmed both the place they were singing the next day and that I definitely couldn't see my sister at midnight.
Walking through Paris at midnight through neighborhoods that were not on the tourist bill had me a bit worried at first, but I soon discovered that my fears lay unfounded. I was not stopped once, though I changed sides of the road several times to avoid figures that seemed a wee bit suspicious. The highlight of this trek came when I saw a guy a little ways ahead of me appear out of the darkness and run up to a kebab stand, frantically grabbing napkins. As I got closer, I saw that his entire right arm was shredded and that blood was pouring from the wounds now bound by tissue. The women sitting outside enjoying the all to familiar midnight kebab stood up repulsed, and quickly backed off to a resturant across the road. This guy was moving incredibly fast for someone who had lost so much blood, and as I came upon him nearly sprinting away from the stand, he started yelling something into his phone. I certainly hope he was calling for an ambulance. I got worried that the same fate would befall me, but I realized that I could tell where he had come from by watching the road to the reflective drips of blood that marked his trail like breadcrumbs. I was not at all pleased to find that he had been following the exact path that I now had to take to my hotel, but just as I went under a bridge, I lost the trail and felt more comfortable. Never once did I see the huge splatter that I imagine would have marked the place where he ran into trouble. By the time I got to my room, I had been walking for 8 hours without sitting once, and I gladly passed out on top of the sheets.
After picking up another peck of apples the next morning, I easily found my way to the American Church, a beautiful venue that made me wonder if there was such a thing in Poznan. This is unlikely; all churches are Catholic and very conservative, not exactly the combination that would suit the more contemporary leanings of American Catholisism. I greeted my sister with the standard Polish fare, three kisses on the cheek and met everyone I would be travelling with for the day. I was warned by my sister's friend that the thirty or so girls had not been let out much and had not seen a teenage boy for nearly a week, so I should prepare myself for what was sure to come.
The day passed quite well and I managed to fulfill my little dream of having lunch in a small French Caf on the banks of the Siene, though I did not get my chance to have my glass of French wine until midnight; two things that I would dispise myself for if I missed the opportunity to sample. My sister and I talked pretty much all day, trading stories from the land of bree and the home of bad rave (Happened in Warszawa; I thought it was going to be a live concert, but it turned into a night with a mediocre DJ. Still can't believe they kicked me off the stage). We forwent the Louvre and instead wandered through the street shops until our date at the Notre Dame. The inside of the cathedral was spectacular and the outside was crawling with women who had learned how to say "Do you speak English" and how to hold up a card with a sob story written by their panhandling bossman. Honestly, I just wanted to hit them; it sounds terrible, but you would too. If you want my money, you have to learn more than four words; they should all take a leaf from the guy who tried to make me a hair model.
Dinner was, well, pork, but it was free and the ratatoullie tasted heavenly. I also managed to steal several apples from the hotel resturant, but when I broke them out during our spectacular river cruise that night, they were revealed to have a crispiness that was subpar to everything else I bought. My sis and I did the Zissou pose on the bow of the ship as the sun faded into a horizon of archaic towers, the skyline of Grand Old Europe. One day I'll return here, but when I do, I must return with a lover, for Paris truly is a city for lovers. Just like Wroclaw.
Then everything went nuts. Got back to the hotel at midnight and asked for a wakeup call at 3. The wakeup call at 3 never came. I slept until 6 when my consciousness fell subject to the deus ex machina of my sleeping irregularities and awoke me naturally. I saw sunlight in the windows, yelled out a bunch of stuff that I won't repeat, threw a towel around my waist (I had fallen into bed straight from the shower that morning), and started frantically searching for someone at the front desk. Crazy-eye set in, with good reason; my flight left in an hour. The drive to the airport was nearly 40 minutes. I had to hire a cab (the price of that cab was more expensive than my total purchases in Poland for the first three weeks), and on the way over, a sudden calm hit me. I was feeling down about my rapidly depleating funds, but I realized that I had spent in two days what I was expecting to spend in Poland over 10 weeks to see family, and that revelation made me realize just how far you will go to find your blood ties. Everything felt like it was rushing by me as I maintained a steady hand and a relaxed and happy mood; just barely making it on the plane, having to deal with the screaming child, a train ride out of a blistering heat in Cracow that got back to Poznan at 3. Family took me to do it all, and I wrote something in my journal on the ride back that captures the feeling in a sense. All I know is that I'm lucky to feel that way about kin.
Ironic that I had such a startling acceptance of this, and then I come back to find that my Granddad died.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Cruise
Hello everyone; if you are still with me after nearly two weeks without a post, I am deeply grateful for your patience and I promise that it shall be rewarded. It has been a long and difficult time since last I sat writing, but I am glad to once again be telling my tale.
I got back from Paris the weekend before last (This trip, and my new found hate for LOT Polish Airlines, will be the subject of the next post) to find that I had several e-mails from my Dad, each subsequent message more urgent sounding than the last, until the last two e-mails, telling me that I should call home immediately. Not exactly the kind of thing that you want to come back to after a trip out of the country. I called home and did not receive an answer, so I went to bed and called home the next morning. My Dad answered and passed on the news.
My Granddad, Aaron Victor Cruise, one of the greatest and most resounding influences on my life, died on June 29, 2009, on a bright and wonderful Monday afternoon.
I finished my groats and called Jonathan to tell him that I would be taking the day off. I then sat around and debated what to do. There are rituals that I usually perform for the dead in my life, carried out in solitude and silence, as a way of putting my own emotional turmoil to rest. They are especially important when I cannot be present for funerals or dedications; I did one for my Aunt Ella, who died a few weeks ago, when I knew that I could not return for her funeral. But this time I did not feel like doing anything. I took a shower and wept for the first time, then headed out to the Morasco campus to sit in their beautiful gardens, taking along a couple of bags of frozen plums and the little journal that I had received at the beginning of my freshman year. It is a hard thing for me to journal; I find it incredibly abrasive to my personality to write as if I were speaking to a friend. Esoteric stories are much simpler to transfer to paper. But that day, I sat and wrote, remembering a few of the things that my Granddad had brought into my life. In the end, I was not able to write much; I was distracted by the beautiful day, but it was just as well since, when I got back that night I was able to put much more on paper. On the way back from Morasco, I picked up a bag of onions, a jar of apple cider vinegar, wheat cracker bread, some grapefruit, and a bottle of the darkest, most bitter wine that I could find.
One of the things that Granddad most loved to do was come in after a long day outside, sit at the table with a bowl of onions and vinegar to put on crackers, and watch a couple of episodes of Frasier. Some of my most vivid memories of him stem from laughing at the disproportionally highbrow antics of Kelsey Grammar and David Hyde Pierce. That night, I ate enough onions to make me sick, and I laughed so hard, and so desperately, that it hurt to move. As for the wine, there is something I once read about the death of one of the oldest African gods. When his two sons, estranged for years, met again the eve after his death, they sat, drinking an old, bitter vintage made from the tears of virgins, wine made for the gods, and told stories. While my draught was not the product of virgin tears, nor did I drink as deeply as the brothers, it was a mighty thing to be able, for the first time in my life, to do, and as I had no family with whom to tell stories, I wrote.
And I wrote.
And I ate.
And I wept.
I travelled home on Thursday, arriving back in Raleigh on Friday, coming home to a house filled with all of my family, from all over the world; myself from Poland, my cousin from Korea, and my Aunt from Scotland. At the table the following morning, we had a truly international conversation, exchanging Won bills and Zloty. It was incredible to see someone representing every branch of the Cruise tree all under the same roof. I hadn't seen my cousin West for 9 years; the last memories he had of me were from back when I toted around my 20 pounds of Pokémon cards wherever I went. Needless to say, it had been far too long, and though the circumstances had an underlying tone of the morbid, the atmosphere was much akin to the end of a Wes Anderson movie. It was three days of "Ooh La Lah", "Everyone", "Queen Bitch", and "Les Champs Elysses".
Music was a big thing over the weekend. I finally pulled off "Into the West" from the end of Return of the King and I could not get it out of my head (actually, it's still stuck in there), but it was so appropriate that I only encouraged its entrenchment by listening to it over and over again. Tim Stewart from the NC Symphony played a couple of pieces to accompany my brother, my sister and I, and he played the best taps that I've ever heard. No fitter ceremony for a magnificently lived life could have been given.
While I was in the States, it felt like everything was moving very slowly, that I would have plenty of time with my family and friends, an ample chance to grieve my loss and to recover; now that I am back in Poznan, it feels like everything moved to fast to be real, and that none of it really happened. The feelings are very confusing and difficult to master. I am incredibly sad about the great man that I have lost, but memories are still fresh enough and I have not truly come to grips with my Granddad's absence, so it seems as if I could return in a few weeks and see him out in the yard, doing what he always did. At the same time, I have said goodbye and I know that what I have left of him is the sizable portion of my own character which draws its strength from his being.
What this disparity leaves is a calm sadness and the overcoming desire to live gloriously. Glimpses of the past, mostly images of sitting at the table with my Granddad, or hugging him when he arrived and left my house three times a year, rise to the surface of my consciousness whenever concentration drifts, and these parsings make my heart heavy. But knowing that I got everything I could possibly get out of our relationship, and that he was following every step of this journey I am currently on, it pushes me past sadness and into a jump up and get busy mode. Before his death, life in Poznan had been stagnating, but I am now seeing beyond what kept me locked in earlier.
I have not yet let on my plans for after the next couple of weeks yet, I think. The research project was only supposed to last for 10 weeks and then we would all go home, but I have elected to stay on in Europe and do a bit of travelling on my own. After leaving Poznan, I will fly with the others for Frankfurt am Main, Germany and then take a train to Frankfurt Hesse where I will spend a day, doing what I don't know (maybe checking out the Deus Ex II location in Trier). Then I will fly to Zadar, Croatia and make my way down the coast to the town of Opuzen, where a recent acquaintance will be getting me in touch with a shepherd. I will spend the next three weeks shepping sheep, swimming in the warm, blue ocean, camping on the beach, and whittling my crook. Then I have to get back to Zadar, where I will fly to Edinburgh, Scotland.
Here is where I complete my encircling of the family tree. My Granddad came from a line of Scots, the Foster Clan, and I value this heritage just as much as that which stems from Polish soil. It pains me that, only now after he can no longer read my adventures, do I come around to mentioning this part of my trip and the importance that my Granddad's roots have to me. But in a way, I feel like he was always aware of this; it didn't necessarily need to be said.
It has taken much courage to get through some of the ordeals I have faced on this splendid sojourn into parts of the world previously unknown, courage that I can trace directly to experiences and lessons shared through my Granddad. Without his presence in my life, I would have turned out a much different person, and I don't know how much of this I would have been able to do. It is thus that I dedicate this trip and everything I have done and will do this summer to his memory. At his funeral, I spoke of the living's remembrances and how my Granddad's life was so powerful and affected so much that it could never be forgotten. And I spoke of the continuation of adventures, both those of the surviving and those that now await Granddad, in a far green country with a swift sunrise. There will be a day when I can have that country too, but until then I shall seek Fiddler's Green on Earth and I shall not forget, because I simply cannot, my Granddad. He is a part of me, and though the source is gone, its creation lingers and flourishes, rewriting its origins again and again in the minds of others.
I found it incredibly fitting that the 23rd psalm was explained during the funeral. This is a psalm for shepherds, and the reader gave advice on the actual art of shepherding during the service. It was as if I was simply receiving another lesson from a man hell bent on seeing his grandson succeed. There is none more fortunate in familial ties than I.
If you would like to read my speech, the link to the google doc is here: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcwm2bz6_0d5wtxnhm
I got back from Paris the weekend before last (This trip, and my new found hate for LOT Polish Airlines, will be the subject of the next post) to find that I had several e-mails from my Dad, each subsequent message more urgent sounding than the last, until the last two e-mails, telling me that I should call home immediately. Not exactly the kind of thing that you want to come back to after a trip out of the country. I called home and did not receive an answer, so I went to bed and called home the next morning. My Dad answered and passed on the news.
My Granddad, Aaron Victor Cruise, one of the greatest and most resounding influences on my life, died on June 29, 2009, on a bright and wonderful Monday afternoon.
I finished my groats and called Jonathan to tell him that I would be taking the day off. I then sat around and debated what to do. There are rituals that I usually perform for the dead in my life, carried out in solitude and silence, as a way of putting my own emotional turmoil to rest. They are especially important when I cannot be present for funerals or dedications; I did one for my Aunt Ella, who died a few weeks ago, when I knew that I could not return for her funeral. But this time I did not feel like doing anything. I took a shower and wept for the first time, then headed out to the Morasco campus to sit in their beautiful gardens, taking along a couple of bags of frozen plums and the little journal that I had received at the beginning of my freshman year. It is a hard thing for me to journal; I find it incredibly abrasive to my personality to write as if I were speaking to a friend. Esoteric stories are much simpler to transfer to paper. But that day, I sat and wrote, remembering a few of the things that my Granddad had brought into my life. In the end, I was not able to write much; I was distracted by the beautiful day, but it was just as well since, when I got back that night I was able to put much more on paper. On the way back from Morasco, I picked up a bag of onions, a jar of apple cider vinegar, wheat cracker bread, some grapefruit, and a bottle of the darkest, most bitter wine that I could find.
One of the things that Granddad most loved to do was come in after a long day outside, sit at the table with a bowl of onions and vinegar to put on crackers, and watch a couple of episodes of Frasier. Some of my most vivid memories of him stem from laughing at the disproportionally highbrow antics of Kelsey Grammar and David Hyde Pierce. That night, I ate enough onions to make me sick, and I laughed so hard, and so desperately, that it hurt to move. As for the wine, there is something I once read about the death of one of the oldest African gods. When his two sons, estranged for years, met again the eve after his death, they sat, drinking an old, bitter vintage made from the tears of virgins, wine made for the gods, and told stories. While my draught was not the product of virgin tears, nor did I drink as deeply as the brothers, it was a mighty thing to be able, for the first time in my life, to do, and as I had no family with whom to tell stories, I wrote.
And I wrote.
And I ate.
And I wept.
I travelled home on Thursday, arriving back in Raleigh on Friday, coming home to a house filled with all of my family, from all over the world; myself from Poland, my cousin from Korea, and my Aunt from Scotland. At the table the following morning, we had a truly international conversation, exchanging Won bills and Zloty. It was incredible to see someone representing every branch of the Cruise tree all under the same roof. I hadn't seen my cousin West for 9 years; the last memories he had of me were from back when I toted around my 20 pounds of Pokémon cards wherever I went. Needless to say, it had been far too long, and though the circumstances had an underlying tone of the morbid, the atmosphere was much akin to the end of a Wes Anderson movie. It was three days of "Ooh La Lah", "Everyone", "Queen Bitch", and "Les Champs Elysses".
Music was a big thing over the weekend. I finally pulled off "Into the West" from the end of Return of the King and I could not get it out of my head (actually, it's still stuck in there), but it was so appropriate that I only encouraged its entrenchment by listening to it over and over again. Tim Stewart from the NC Symphony played a couple of pieces to accompany my brother, my sister and I, and he played the best taps that I've ever heard. No fitter ceremony for a magnificently lived life could have been given.
While I was in the States, it felt like everything was moving very slowly, that I would have plenty of time with my family and friends, an ample chance to grieve my loss and to recover; now that I am back in Poznan, it feels like everything moved to fast to be real, and that none of it really happened. The feelings are very confusing and difficult to master. I am incredibly sad about the great man that I have lost, but memories are still fresh enough and I have not truly come to grips with my Granddad's absence, so it seems as if I could return in a few weeks and see him out in the yard, doing what he always did. At the same time, I have said goodbye and I know that what I have left of him is the sizable portion of my own character which draws its strength from his being.
What this disparity leaves is a calm sadness and the overcoming desire to live gloriously. Glimpses of the past, mostly images of sitting at the table with my Granddad, or hugging him when he arrived and left my house three times a year, rise to the surface of my consciousness whenever concentration drifts, and these parsings make my heart heavy. But knowing that I got everything I could possibly get out of our relationship, and that he was following every step of this journey I am currently on, it pushes me past sadness and into a jump up and get busy mode. Before his death, life in Poznan had been stagnating, but I am now seeing beyond what kept me locked in earlier.
I have not yet let on my plans for after the next couple of weeks yet, I think. The research project was only supposed to last for 10 weeks and then we would all go home, but I have elected to stay on in Europe and do a bit of travelling on my own. After leaving Poznan, I will fly with the others for Frankfurt am Main, Germany and then take a train to Frankfurt Hesse where I will spend a day, doing what I don't know (maybe checking out the Deus Ex II location in Trier). Then I will fly to Zadar, Croatia and make my way down the coast to the town of Opuzen, where a recent acquaintance will be getting me in touch with a shepherd. I will spend the next three weeks shepping sheep, swimming in the warm, blue ocean, camping on the beach, and whittling my crook. Then I have to get back to Zadar, where I will fly to Edinburgh, Scotland.
Here is where I complete my encircling of the family tree. My Granddad came from a line of Scots, the Foster Clan, and I value this heritage just as much as that which stems from Polish soil. It pains me that, only now after he can no longer read my adventures, do I come around to mentioning this part of my trip and the importance that my Granddad's roots have to me. But in a way, I feel like he was always aware of this; it didn't necessarily need to be said.
It has taken much courage to get through some of the ordeals I have faced on this splendid sojourn into parts of the world previously unknown, courage that I can trace directly to experiences and lessons shared through my Granddad. Without his presence in my life, I would have turned out a much different person, and I don't know how much of this I would have been able to do. It is thus that I dedicate this trip and everything I have done and will do this summer to his memory. At his funeral, I spoke of the living's remembrances and how my Granddad's life was so powerful and affected so much that it could never be forgotten. And I spoke of the continuation of adventures, both those of the surviving and those that now await Granddad, in a far green country with a swift sunrise. There will be a day when I can have that country too, but until then I shall seek Fiddler's Green on Earth and I shall not forget, because I simply cannot, my Granddad. He is a part of me, and though the source is gone, its creation lingers and flourishes, rewriting its origins again and again in the minds of others.
I found it incredibly fitting that the 23rd psalm was explained during the funeral. This is a psalm for shepherds, and the reader gave advice on the actual art of shepherding during the service. It was as if I was simply receiving another lesson from a man hell bent on seeing his grandson succeed. There is none more fortunate in familial ties than I.
If you would like to read my speech, the link to the google doc is here: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcwm2bz6_0d5wtxnhm
Monday, June 22, 2009
Everybody's Surfin' Now (in Poland)!
Dustin has left us. He has journeyed back to the States to move in with his girlfriend and has left three lonesome undergraduate researchers in his wake. While we are not lost without his guidance, I fear that we shall soon find that we took Daddy Dustin and the calm and work ethic that his presence inspired for granted. None of us managed to get much done today; I recovered a bit of Oligos 9 and 11, though it will take much longer to figure out what else came off the HPLC column, Jonathan found all of the absorptions of the different peak samples, though we are afraid to do an OD dilution because we don't know exactly what Prof. M. wants, and JP managed to finish all of Ghostbusters. You see what I mean. Hopefully we can get some results from Maldy tomorrow and find out if we actually made the hairpin crosslink or not. I'm optimistic though; it's only Monday. But this absence of graduate students who desperately want to publish raises some interesting questions.
For instance, did you know that there is going to be a Ghostbusters III? I'm stoked.
It's been almost two weeks now, but I keep thinking about the Farm and how much I want to be there again. The Farm is a large piece of land located outside of Warszawa that used to belong to Hanna, but when she left for the states, she was given the option of passing it to a family member or giving it up to the state. She chose the former option, and now her brother maintains the beautiful establishment that functions both as a home for his family and a resort for all types. It was here, on the first day, that I was able to sleep for 17 hours, wake up to a party just as the sun was rising at 3, do my Dr. Dre impression, and then fall back asleep. All meals were served outside in the summer kitchen, which, by the way, is the most kick ace kitchen I've ever been in, with a fire pit and everything. I've always wanted a home with a large exterior kitchen, and this place has given me some excellent ideas. I could tell you all about the food, but that would only piss you off. I will say this though; Polish people like their cold cuts for breakfast. This is not good for me, since ever time, without fail, that I have consumed red meat or ham (And the Polish eat almost nothing but ham), I have been overcome by a terrible stomach ache. The one unexpected blessing the Farm was to find sliced chicken amongst the morning's meaty appeteasers. I was stoked.
To me, the Farm was like a slap in the face of oppressive communism in Poland. Hanna also told us how it was that her brother acquired the vast amount of open field that I wandered around for 2 hours before finding my way back to the farm. This land had been taken away from its owners (Hanna said that they were probably killed. Her Grandfather, the original owner was only spared because he knew the right people) and split into several small pieces and doled out to the citizens of the new communist state. Well, many of these citizens had no use for farmland; they never were and would never be farmers. So her brother bought all of the individual tracts at cutthroat rates until he amassed the giant holding that he owns now. The system that prides itself on equalizing the classes definitely failed to stop this intelligent guy from exercising his ambitions. The whole time I was there, I just couldn't get over the fact that this whole beautiful little oasis of comfort once stood on the edge of takeover by the same people who tore down the friendly city of Warszawa and erected cold towers that playacted at power. I didn't mind laughing and enjoying myself at their expense.
Some of the things to do at the Farm; sleep for very long periods of time, take a shower in the room next to yours because something unspeakable has been done in your shower, eat heartily, chase rabbits as large as jungle cats through giant fields of poppies and tall grass, lose your bearings for several hours in giant fields of poppies and tall grass, eat heartily, dive into the lake, search for a warm spot before you achieve hypothermic conditions, pick off the leaches, sun yourself (Now a certain SOMEONE can't call me Casper), eat heartily, plan a celebratory party for being young and in Poland, dance with a older women to Surfin' Safari, eat 8 tomatoes, drag your friend off the stairs to pass out on the couch, get beat by a 11 year old at pool, start a fire (In the fireplace this time), cook sausages that you keep giving to other people so you can save room for tomatoes, exhaustedly play card games, sing selections from Les Miserables, watch "On a Boat", stop your friend from doing something ghastly to a mermaid. Then you fall asleep at 5, wake up at ten, and attempt to repeat. Though, this time, they tell you have to pack up and leave.
It was here that I decided that I would stage a coup. Violent or non-violent, whatever it takes, I made it my long term goal to unseat current representative of the USA Victor Ashe, and install myself as the Ambassador to Poland. I woke up after my 17 hour nap and since it was 3 in the morning and I didn't feel like partying, I got on the computer in the upstairs loft. For some reason, I looked up the embassy's website and I found researched the current Ambassador. Mr. Ashe is a History BA from Yale who served as Mayor of Knoxville TN for several years and is also a former state senator. There was no mention of whether or not Mr. Ashe spoke Polish, and I feel like that is something that they would have mentioned if he did. Kind of disappointing; I expected to find an Uber Polish superhero, but the reality was a letdown. I mean, what had this guy really done to merit an Ambassadorship to Poland? Yeah, he did a couple of things with Chelm when he was mayor, but really, anyone can do that. And history? Nothing on history majors, but this is not what Poland needs right now. Poland wants to establish a stronger relationship with our scientific community in order to bolster their own international standing in the sciences, so one would think that a logical choice for Ambassador to Poland would be an engineer or scientist. Hanna was also telling me that Poland is in a generational shift of the political sector; offices currently held by aging remnants of the communist era will soon be phased out by what she feels is the most important part of a revitalized Poland: youthful diplomats. Poland used to be famous for its diplomats, but this status suffered greatly under Russia's heel. Now there is a chance to regain that reputation through education of the youth, who know Poland by more than communist rule.
This is where I come in; a young and ambitious engineer, fascinated by Poland and his familial ties to the country, eager to learn the language and to watch others follow in his footsteps to the land of the White Eagle. Makes sense right? And who would you trust more with USA-Poland relations, A guy named Victor Ashe or Garyk Sadowy? Not a hard choice. I just have to contribute the right amount to the right Presidential campaign when the time comes. And as my first action, I will level the US Embassy (An incredibly ugly building) and build a one story farm in its place. Then, as Hanna suggested, I'll buy the Russian Embassy.
I met my good friend's Godfather and his family this past weekend. It's been hard to find things to do of late, since I come out of the lab at 9, exhausted and not wanting to do much else than eat and read foreign literature or watch Afro Samurai cartoons while I do pull ups in my door frame, so I was hoping that I could do something diverting with some Polish friends. We decided to go to the place where it is thought that Poland was baptized in 966, making Poland, for the first time, a true state ruled by the crown prince. The prince had a small, well-defended island in the middle of a lake where he had built a stone palace and a small chapel. We took a ferry over to the island and walked around the ruins of the stone structures. It was intriguing at first to see buildings more than a thousand years old, but after a few minutes of standing around looking at the rocks (All of the signs were in Polish, so they had to be translated laboriously for me), I found less enjoyment in the actual attractions and more diversion in the beautiful, summer day. That was when I realized what day it was.
The 21st of June is St. John's day, known as the longest day of the year, and there is an ancient Slavic myth that goes along with this day (One of my favorite pastimes is world mythology, my favorites being Polish and Norse). It was said that, on St. John's day, the peoples would go into the forests of Poland and search for what is called a fire flower, the bloom of the fern. They were incredibly hard to find, and even when one stumbled across one deep within the ancient woods, the hunt did not end there. Small demons and ifrits would attempt to distract the hunter from picking the flower. Often, they would succeed in preventing the hopeful picker from even approaching the flower, but with enormous strength of will, one could resist the demon's antics and wrest the flower from the magical fern. Bearers of fire flowers were said to be blessed with many boons, including the ability to read minds and deduce the locations of hidden treasures. I told my host about this and was surprised to find that he knew the myth! Out of all of the Polish people I have had the gall to tell my tales to (Most have simply laughed at me); he was the only one who knew what I was talking about. And what's more, he knew about some of the more risqué sides to the myth. For example, the search for fire flowers, or in modern times, the hunt for mushrooms, in the forest was often an excuse to escape accompanied by many lovers to a secluded place where giant sexual orgies took place. I was quite impressed.
I am disappointed in myself, however; it was St. John's day and I was in Poland, and what did I do that night? I fell into my sleeping bag, exhausted in my bones and with a swollen face, the product of some unknown allergic curse. This was no way to spend the evening; I should have been deep within the woods searching for the legendary flower. But in a way, maybe this is good. Now I have to come back to Poland. And when I biome Ambassador, I will fly over ever June 21st to canvass the forests, seeking destiny in the bloom of the fern.
This post has become quite lengthy, but I feel that I have made too many allusions to my favorite Polish myth to let it go unexplained any longer. In addition to the fire flower, I am seeking another Polish Artifact of great power, though this one is undoubtedly the more elusive. The Magic Belt of Poland was a cloth belt inscribed with the ancient runes form the Key of Solomon and the Grimorie Infernval that Polish Knights of the Jagellonian Golden Age carried into battle, held high above their heads. The legend of the Belt tell us that the Knights bearing it could summon the aid of both the Angelic host and the Infernal armies to the battlefield and that anyone riding under the belt would be impervious to any weapon. A true boon of God. The Belt itself actually existed, and it was being displayed at the Warszawa Museum of Archeology until 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi forces. Whether the Belt was destroyed, plundered, or just simply lost, as many things were at that time, is unknown, but it is my ultimate animus to find the lost Magic Belt of Poland, and to wear it proudly as the #1 Headband, bearing it back to its rightful place upon Polish soil.
Can you not see this? Me, riding into Poland wearing the Magic Belt of Poland about my head with a Fire Flower at my hip, the powers of the ancient Polish orders at my beck and call. I would be appointed Ambassador immediately. This sounds a lot like the return to a feudal Poland that I pooh-poohed earlier, but my vision is not to establish a line of knights and kings, but to unite the lost powers of ancient Poland with the dawn of the new Poland. I shall await that day with a great fire in my heart.
Anyway, that's what I'm talking about when I mention the Belt, and I was so close to getting some proof of its existence for the doubting Thomases who think I made up the whole thing from the Archeological Museum in Warszawa, but I arrived at its gates 15 minutes after they stopped selling tickets. But no matter; I am revisiting that stronghold of history this Friday, before I leave for France. Soon I shall have my documentation for you all (Though I will probably still be laughed at).
I'm getting stoked about France; apparently, I'm taking a river cruise on Sunday. This trip is going to mentally tax me when I end up spending more money in three days than I have for the past two months, but according to Jonathan, I've done my hobo thing long enough (Do I honestly have no pride to be taking what other people haven't eaten and making a meal of it? I would call that thrifty).
For instance, did you know that there is going to be a Ghostbusters III? I'm stoked.
It's been almost two weeks now, but I keep thinking about the Farm and how much I want to be there again. The Farm is a large piece of land located outside of Warszawa that used to belong to Hanna, but when she left for the states, she was given the option of passing it to a family member or giving it up to the state. She chose the former option, and now her brother maintains the beautiful establishment that functions both as a home for his family and a resort for all types. It was here, on the first day, that I was able to sleep for 17 hours, wake up to a party just as the sun was rising at 3, do my Dr. Dre impression, and then fall back asleep. All meals were served outside in the summer kitchen, which, by the way, is the most kick ace kitchen I've ever been in, with a fire pit and everything. I've always wanted a home with a large exterior kitchen, and this place has given me some excellent ideas. I could tell you all about the food, but that would only piss you off. I will say this though; Polish people like their cold cuts for breakfast. This is not good for me, since ever time, without fail, that I have consumed red meat or ham (And the Polish eat almost nothing but ham), I have been overcome by a terrible stomach ache. The one unexpected blessing the Farm was to find sliced chicken amongst the morning's meaty appeteasers. I was stoked.
To me, the Farm was like a slap in the face of oppressive communism in Poland. Hanna also told us how it was that her brother acquired the vast amount of open field that I wandered around for 2 hours before finding my way back to the farm. This land had been taken away from its owners (Hanna said that they were probably killed. Her Grandfather, the original owner was only spared because he knew the right people) and split into several small pieces and doled out to the citizens of the new communist state. Well, many of these citizens had no use for farmland; they never were and would never be farmers. So her brother bought all of the individual tracts at cutthroat rates until he amassed the giant holding that he owns now. The system that prides itself on equalizing the classes definitely failed to stop this intelligent guy from exercising his ambitions. The whole time I was there, I just couldn't get over the fact that this whole beautiful little oasis of comfort once stood on the edge of takeover by the same people who tore down the friendly city of Warszawa and erected cold towers that playacted at power. I didn't mind laughing and enjoying myself at their expense.
Some of the things to do at the Farm; sleep for very long periods of time, take a shower in the room next to yours because something unspeakable has been done in your shower, eat heartily, chase rabbits as large as jungle cats through giant fields of poppies and tall grass, lose your bearings for several hours in giant fields of poppies and tall grass, eat heartily, dive into the lake, search for a warm spot before you achieve hypothermic conditions, pick off the leaches, sun yourself (Now a certain SOMEONE can't call me Casper), eat heartily, plan a celebratory party for being young and in Poland, dance with a older women to Surfin' Safari, eat 8 tomatoes, drag your friend off the stairs to pass out on the couch, get beat by a 11 year old at pool, start a fire (In the fireplace this time), cook sausages that you keep giving to other people so you can save room for tomatoes, exhaustedly play card games, sing selections from Les Miserables, watch "On a Boat", stop your friend from doing something ghastly to a mermaid. Then you fall asleep at 5, wake up at ten, and attempt to repeat. Though, this time, they tell you have to pack up and leave.
It was here that I decided that I would stage a coup. Violent or non-violent, whatever it takes, I made it my long term goal to unseat current representative of the USA Victor Ashe, and install myself as the Ambassador to Poland. I woke up after my 17 hour nap and since it was 3 in the morning and I didn't feel like partying, I got on the computer in the upstairs loft. For some reason, I looked up the embassy's website and I found researched the current Ambassador. Mr. Ashe is a History BA from Yale who served as Mayor of Knoxville TN for several years and is also a former state senator. There was no mention of whether or not Mr. Ashe spoke Polish, and I feel like that is something that they would have mentioned if he did. Kind of disappointing; I expected to find an Uber Polish superhero, but the reality was a letdown. I mean, what had this guy really done to merit an Ambassadorship to Poland? Yeah, he did a couple of things with Chelm when he was mayor, but really, anyone can do that. And history? Nothing on history majors, but this is not what Poland needs right now. Poland wants to establish a stronger relationship with our scientific community in order to bolster their own international standing in the sciences, so one would think that a logical choice for Ambassador to Poland would be an engineer or scientist. Hanna was also telling me that Poland is in a generational shift of the political sector; offices currently held by aging remnants of the communist era will soon be phased out by what she feels is the most important part of a revitalized Poland: youthful diplomats. Poland used to be famous for its diplomats, but this status suffered greatly under Russia's heel. Now there is a chance to regain that reputation through education of the youth, who know Poland by more than communist rule.
This is where I come in; a young and ambitious engineer, fascinated by Poland and his familial ties to the country, eager to learn the language and to watch others follow in his footsteps to the land of the White Eagle. Makes sense right? And who would you trust more with USA-Poland relations, A guy named Victor Ashe or Garyk Sadowy? Not a hard choice. I just have to contribute the right amount to the right Presidential campaign when the time comes. And as my first action, I will level the US Embassy (An incredibly ugly building) and build a one story farm in its place. Then, as Hanna suggested, I'll buy the Russian Embassy.
I met my good friend's Godfather and his family this past weekend. It's been hard to find things to do of late, since I come out of the lab at 9, exhausted and not wanting to do much else than eat and read foreign literature or watch Afro Samurai cartoons while I do pull ups in my door frame, so I was hoping that I could do something diverting with some Polish friends. We decided to go to the place where it is thought that Poland was baptized in 966, making Poland, for the first time, a true state ruled by the crown prince. The prince had a small, well-defended island in the middle of a lake where he had built a stone palace and a small chapel. We took a ferry over to the island and walked around the ruins of the stone structures. It was intriguing at first to see buildings more than a thousand years old, but after a few minutes of standing around looking at the rocks (All of the signs were in Polish, so they had to be translated laboriously for me), I found less enjoyment in the actual attractions and more diversion in the beautiful, summer day. That was when I realized what day it was.
The 21st of June is St. John's day, known as the longest day of the year, and there is an ancient Slavic myth that goes along with this day (One of my favorite pastimes is world mythology, my favorites being Polish and Norse). It was said that, on St. John's day, the peoples would go into the forests of Poland and search for what is called a fire flower, the bloom of the fern. They were incredibly hard to find, and even when one stumbled across one deep within the ancient woods, the hunt did not end there. Small demons and ifrits would attempt to distract the hunter from picking the flower. Often, they would succeed in preventing the hopeful picker from even approaching the flower, but with enormous strength of will, one could resist the demon's antics and wrest the flower from the magical fern. Bearers of fire flowers were said to be blessed with many boons, including the ability to read minds and deduce the locations of hidden treasures. I told my host about this and was surprised to find that he knew the myth! Out of all of the Polish people I have had the gall to tell my tales to (Most have simply laughed at me); he was the only one who knew what I was talking about. And what's more, he knew about some of the more risqué sides to the myth. For example, the search for fire flowers, or in modern times, the hunt for mushrooms, in the forest was often an excuse to escape accompanied by many lovers to a secluded place where giant sexual orgies took place. I was quite impressed.
I am disappointed in myself, however; it was St. John's day and I was in Poland, and what did I do that night? I fell into my sleeping bag, exhausted in my bones and with a swollen face, the product of some unknown allergic curse. This was no way to spend the evening; I should have been deep within the woods searching for the legendary flower. But in a way, maybe this is good. Now I have to come back to Poland. And when I biome Ambassador, I will fly over ever June 21st to canvass the forests, seeking destiny in the bloom of the fern.
This post has become quite lengthy, but I feel that I have made too many allusions to my favorite Polish myth to let it go unexplained any longer. In addition to the fire flower, I am seeking another Polish Artifact of great power, though this one is undoubtedly the more elusive. The Magic Belt of Poland was a cloth belt inscribed with the ancient runes form the Key of Solomon and the Grimorie Infernval that Polish Knights of the Jagellonian Golden Age carried into battle, held high above their heads. The legend of the Belt tell us that the Knights bearing it could summon the aid of both the Angelic host and the Infernal armies to the battlefield and that anyone riding under the belt would be impervious to any weapon. A true boon of God. The Belt itself actually existed, and it was being displayed at the Warszawa Museum of Archeology until 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi forces. Whether the Belt was destroyed, plundered, or just simply lost, as many things were at that time, is unknown, but it is my ultimate animus to find the lost Magic Belt of Poland, and to wear it proudly as the #1 Headband, bearing it back to its rightful place upon Polish soil.
Can you not see this? Me, riding into Poland wearing the Magic Belt of Poland about my head with a Fire Flower at my hip, the powers of the ancient Polish orders at my beck and call. I would be appointed Ambassador immediately. This sounds a lot like the return to a feudal Poland that I pooh-poohed earlier, but my vision is not to establish a line of knights and kings, but to unite the lost powers of ancient Poland with the dawn of the new Poland. I shall await that day with a great fire in my heart.
Anyway, that's what I'm talking about when I mention the Belt, and I was so close to getting some proof of its existence for the doubting Thomases who think I made up the whole thing from the Archeological Museum in Warszawa, but I arrived at its gates 15 minutes after they stopped selling tickets. But no matter; I am revisiting that stronghold of history this Friday, before I leave for France. Soon I shall have my documentation for you all (Though I will probably still be laughed at).
I'm getting stoked about France; apparently, I'm taking a river cruise on Sunday. This trip is going to mentally tax me when I end up spending more money in three days than I have for the past two months, but according to Jonathan, I've done my hobo thing long enough (Do I honestly have no pride to be taking what other people haven't eaten and making a meal of it? I would call that thrifty).
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Eau de Garyk
All my clothes reek of cigarette smoke. When I get back to the states, I think I'll repeat that line from Spaceballs; Air... AIR!
All Hail Baron Sadowy of the Order of the White Eagle!
I'm relatively worried right now. I'm travelling to Paris in just a few short days and I have yet to find a place to stay for the two nights that I will be there (I figured I'd spend my third night in the airport, since my flight back to Cracow is at 5). Many couchsurfers have told me that they will be out at that time, and I'm starting to get a little desperate. Worst comes to worst, I can Jason Boune it and sleep in the park, breaking the arms of any cops that try to kick me off the benches. Or I could try to find a cheap hostel. Whatever I feel like at the time.
A couple of weeks ago, on my second day in Cracow, I dined at the Wierzynek, a resturant for the highest class of dining, established in 1364 and fequented by Kings and Emperors. Hanna made reservations, telling us that we should expect to fork over a ridiculous amount of Zloty for a meal here; as much as 100 a head. I was excited. I've never had a 30-40 dollar meal before, and it just seems fitting that my first would be at the resturant listed under Poland in "1000 Places to See Before You Die". So, after Birkenau, we got together all of our classiest clothes (In Jonathan's case, this meant a faded blue t-shirt that, well, made him look like a bit of a bum. I think he should have gone with the eighties v-neck that he wore the first day in Poland) and walked the short distance to the market square, where the upper floor of the resturant over looks the hustle and bustle of central Cracow. It took us close to 20 minutes for everyone to decide what to get, and I find it significant that I bought water here; it cost just as much as beer in posh resturants like this. We agreed that we would all share our dishes, and thus, I dined not only on the duck that I had ordered, which was an orgasmic epicurian delight that took me nearly an hour and a half to eat, but on wild boar, goose, herrings, plum chicken, and an excellent barszcz czerwony. And everything was served under those silver dishes that I'd seen before only in bugs bunny cartoons; the waiters even pulled the dishes away in perfect coordination! What grace! It was darkening as we left and nering the time we had planned to meet up with some friends, and I grabbed a brochure from the resturant, in which were innumerated the various distinguished guests that had been hosted. I felt honored to have feasted in the same hall as George Bush, Juan Carlos, Charles de Gaulle, Viktor Yushchenko. It suprised me, though, to find that Kate Moss was listed before Steven Spielberg and Robert De Niro.
Cracow has some good memories. As I mentioned earlier, it feels much less like a city than Poznan and more like a walk through a park, in which beautiful edifices just happen to have been erected, much to the augmentation of the city's ambience. I won't forget my early morning runs through the mile long Warka field that led up to the city's ancient Barrows Hill, buying the most excellent Razowy bread at a specialty liquor shop and then eating a whole loaf, sunning myself on the banks of the river smack in the middle of the city with three bags of frozen plums and a can of herrings, being asked if I wanted a shot of heroin for 1 Zloty (about $ 00.32 at the time), learning how to make waiters understand that I was ordering my meal in Polish, looking at the tombs of the Polish Kings from beyond a roped off section because Hanna had my ticket for the exhibit, and not turning a corner without jumping back in alarm from a John Paul II statue that had suddenly run up in my face. Also watching the cherry blossoms float above Wawel Castle like lazy drifts of snow, disappearing into a brialliant arc of sun.
I'm so glad that neither the Nazis nor the Russians touched Cracow; it seems like there are very few places in Poland where the influence of these cultures has not choked out the life of the city, and Cracow reigns supreme amongst them. Everyone knows why there is an underlying animosity between the Polish and the Germans, or at least eeryone can figure this out after reading an AP history lesson on WWII. But the lingering hate the the Polish have for Russians is much less easily come by; the history books in the states say nothing about Stalin abandoning the Polish Home Army during the Warshawa Uprising in order to cut his own losses, about his "gift" to the Polish people of leveled cities and ugly monoliths dedicated to the working class that he would eventually persecute and kill. There is a brief mention of Solidarnosc, but nothing of the toll that enforced communism took upon the Polish people. And unmentioned is the good that did come out of this era; Poland was left with an essentially classless society, making it very easy to make a name for one's self under the new rule of capitalism. And now, Hanna says, there is an element of the Polish people that want to return to the class based society, to lines of Kings and Queens, where your name dictates your worth (This might work in my favor; Mark says that I have the distinguishing features of the Polish Aristocracy). While I wouldn't mind going by Baron Sadowy, this is all just BS. I hope that I won't have to kiss a ring in the near future.
Needless to say, when acosted by three drunken fifteen year old Polish skinheads who punched Jonathan in the back of the head, I felt a strong urge to curse them in Russian, or maybe repeat some Rammstein lyrics. I can just imagine how their little pre pubecent faces would have twisted under those dialects of oppression.
Just as a little note; my Aunt died Monday evening in a Burlington Hospice home. It felt good to know that she had heard my voice, but it pains me greatly that I missed the funeral. It really is difficult to be seperated from family at times like these.
In my next installment, I shall relate to you the beauty of Hanna's farm, where I decided that I would unseat Victor Ashe and install myself as Ambassador to Poland.
A couple of weeks ago, on my second day in Cracow, I dined at the Wierzynek, a resturant for the highest class of dining, established in 1364 and fequented by Kings and Emperors. Hanna made reservations, telling us that we should expect to fork over a ridiculous amount of Zloty for a meal here; as much as 100 a head. I was excited. I've never had a 30-40 dollar meal before, and it just seems fitting that my first would be at the resturant listed under Poland in "1000 Places to See Before You Die". So, after Birkenau, we got together all of our classiest clothes (In Jonathan's case, this meant a faded blue t-shirt that, well, made him look like a bit of a bum. I think he should have gone with the eighties v-neck that he wore the first day in Poland) and walked the short distance to the market square, where the upper floor of the resturant over looks the hustle and bustle of central Cracow. It took us close to 20 minutes for everyone to decide what to get, and I find it significant that I bought water here; it cost just as much as beer in posh resturants like this. We agreed that we would all share our dishes, and thus, I dined not only on the duck that I had ordered, which was an orgasmic epicurian delight that took me nearly an hour and a half to eat, but on wild boar, goose, herrings, plum chicken, and an excellent barszcz czerwony. And everything was served under those silver dishes that I'd seen before only in bugs bunny cartoons; the waiters even pulled the dishes away in perfect coordination! What grace! It was darkening as we left and nering the time we had planned to meet up with some friends, and I grabbed a brochure from the resturant, in which were innumerated the various distinguished guests that had been hosted. I felt honored to have feasted in the same hall as George Bush, Juan Carlos, Charles de Gaulle, Viktor Yushchenko. It suprised me, though, to find that Kate Moss was listed before Steven Spielberg and Robert De Niro.
Cracow has some good memories. As I mentioned earlier, it feels much less like a city than Poznan and more like a walk through a park, in which beautiful edifices just happen to have been erected, much to the augmentation of the city's ambience. I won't forget my early morning runs through the mile long Warka field that led up to the city's ancient Barrows Hill, buying the most excellent Razowy bread at a specialty liquor shop and then eating a whole loaf, sunning myself on the banks of the river smack in the middle of the city with three bags of frozen plums and a can of herrings, being asked if I wanted a shot of heroin for 1 Zloty (about $ 00.32 at the time), learning how to make waiters understand that I was ordering my meal in Polish, looking at the tombs of the Polish Kings from beyond a roped off section because Hanna had my ticket for the exhibit, and not turning a corner without jumping back in alarm from a John Paul II statue that had suddenly run up in my face. Also watching the cherry blossoms float above Wawel Castle like lazy drifts of snow, disappearing into a brialliant arc of sun.
I'm so glad that neither the Nazis nor the Russians touched Cracow; it seems like there are very few places in Poland where the influence of these cultures has not choked out the life of the city, and Cracow reigns supreme amongst them. Everyone knows why there is an underlying animosity between the Polish and the Germans, or at least eeryone can figure this out after reading an AP history lesson on WWII. But the lingering hate the the Polish have for Russians is much less easily come by; the history books in the states say nothing about Stalin abandoning the Polish Home Army during the Warshawa Uprising in order to cut his own losses, about his "gift" to the Polish people of leveled cities and ugly monoliths dedicated to the working class that he would eventually persecute and kill. There is a brief mention of Solidarnosc, but nothing of the toll that enforced communism took upon the Polish people. And unmentioned is the good that did come out of this era; Poland was left with an essentially classless society, making it very easy to make a name for one's self under the new rule of capitalism. And now, Hanna says, there is an element of the Polish people that want to return to the class based society, to lines of Kings and Queens, where your name dictates your worth (This might work in my favor; Mark says that I have the distinguishing features of the Polish Aristocracy). While I wouldn't mind going by Baron Sadowy, this is all just BS. I hope that I won't have to kiss a ring in the near future.
Needless to say, when acosted by three drunken fifteen year old Polish skinheads who punched Jonathan in the back of the head, I felt a strong urge to curse them in Russian, or maybe repeat some Rammstein lyrics. I can just imagine how their little pre pubecent faces would have twisted under those dialects of oppression.
Just as a little note; my Aunt died Monday evening in a Burlington Hospice home. It felt good to know that she had heard my voice, but it pains me greatly that I missed the funeral. It really is difficult to be seperated from family at times like these.
In my next installment, I shall relate to you the beauty of Hanna's farm, where I decided that I would unseat Victor Ashe and install myself as Ambassador to Poland.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Dragon's Teeth
It's taken me a while to truly gather my thoughts about Auschwitz and Birkenau; even while I was there, I didn't actually know what I was feeling. All I knew was that the platitudes that people so oft utter after visiting such places have no true meaning or bearing on the effect of the most famous of extermination engines. Getting off the small van after seeing the camps, I heard many people saying things like "That was incredible" or "What an amazing experience." It's not that I'm angry with these people for saying what they know they are supposed to say after visiting the camp, but I feel that to not actually examine your feelings is to detract from the significance of the place. And no one who really pays attention can walk out of Auschwitz and say it was incredible or amazing; after some introspection, I was a bit surprised to find that all of the things we are supposed to feel are not necessarily part of the subtle emotional tide that creeps over your frame as you follow the railroad tracks.
Auschwitz itself is a concentration camp, meaning that it was not meant for the mass exterminations that the slaughtering camps, like Birkenau and Treblinka, were engineered for. True, it does have a crematorium, a gallows, and a wall of death, but all of these devices were meant for more small scale elimination of those the Nazis felt had no right to live. Walking through its tree lined streets, I felt no connection to the place. In my mind I was struggling to rectify this; I had read Night in 10th grade and wept until there was nothing left. Shouldn't I be feeling something?
I had watched a very graphic short film about the camps on the journey out of Cracow and had been overcome with an urge of self-destruction. I wanted to feel pain! I desired in my heart to have my soul crushed by the bastion of death, to know the same tragic wisdom of the millions who passed through the gates of freedom, to be irrevocably scarred, to walk from the camp with the marks that never leave. But when I first saw the sign bearing black, rusting irony, there was nothing there. The buildings had no punishment for me. The cells couldn't tell me their tales. The gallows couldn't shorten my breath and the crematorium remained cold and stagnant. I had come wanting to be tortured by memories, but Auschwitz seemed determined to keep them from me.
We left that place and travelled the short distance to the sister camp of Birkenau, the massive, extermination counterpart. Approaching the gates to this camp, merely red brick and iron bars, I knew that this would be different. I stared through those bars down the train tracks to the end of the camp, where the ruins of crematoriums 4 and 5 were, and I became very peaceful. I had spent the time before entering the camps in a state of violent internal rage and had wandered through Auschwitz in a state of confusion, as if I had somehow travelled to the wrong place. None of it made any associative sense, but I feel like I had finally figured out how to "be" within the walls of the Final Solution, and that the camp itself was now allowing my soul a connection.
I separated myself from the group as we walked in, which turned out to be an excellent move. If you don't know too much about the camps, I might recommend taking a tour, but otherwise, just get a map; you get a much better opportunity to listen to the wind as it whistles through the grass.
Looking down at the whole camp from a watchtower at the entrance, a feeling of bitter irony rose against the peace within my mind. Birkenau is like a broken skeleton, emaciated from its own burning hunger and dashed by its terrible ambition. It is something to be laughed at. To the left and right are systemically placed chimneys and piles of brick, marking the houses of destruction that the Nazis themselves had to destroy as they were leaving, in an attempt to erase their high crimes. Birkenau, from above is a parody of both life and death, because, in the end, it could achieve neither and now it lies, frozen, a stillborn dream of glory and ashy remains of the heart of darkness from which we all flee. My face became long, in the fashion of a critiquing artist, and my eyes gazed out in disdain, as if I had no taste for this paradox of beginning/end.
But, the ground level was another story. As I mentioned before, you can hear the wind as it blows through the grass. The camp itself is beautiful; it reminds me of the countryside I used to wander through as a child in Texas. Clouds shift back and forth, scattering individual rays down upon the pathways and fields, briefly illuminating some ruin before sweeping across a wide plain of vivid green. That peaceful feeling returned with bolstered strength, and I felt a little like a hobbit at the end of The Lord of the Rings. After much destruction and pain, one finds that there is still beauty in the world, and that this beauty, coupled with the joy one feels when looking upon it, is exponentially more important than letting your smile recede under the weight of the past. We use places like this to remember our mistakes, because they are mistakes of a most grievous kind, and humanity shall never evolve unless we can overcome the desires that lead us to make them. But there is another reason we remember places like these. They are a foil for our own lives by which the wonderful nature of our existence is revealed. This is at least what I felt. I walked out of the camp, knowing that there were so many who were not as lucky as I, not with a smile on my face, but the shadow of one in any case, and a peace in my heart.
So, if you go to Auschwitz and Birkenau in standard masochist's fashion as I first thought I should, do not be surprised if the camp keeps its feelings to itself. The place is too powerful to simply acquiesce to the demanding sightseer, who wants instant emotional gratification. You will end up having to create your own sense of what you saw, and this memory will be dry and have no meaning. But if you walk amongst the crumbling monuments of millions and try to listen to the whistling grass, the camp may give you something that you did not expect, but something that is real, so real in fact that you may burst with the strength of it.
I looked back at my pictures after the trip, and found that I didn't really like any of them, except for one picture, where a single twist of barbed wire stands in focus against the long, iron fence. There is a sense of smallness that brings about the true feelings of a place like Auschwitz.
Auschwitz itself is a concentration camp, meaning that it was not meant for the mass exterminations that the slaughtering camps, like Birkenau and Treblinka, were engineered for. True, it does have a crematorium, a gallows, and a wall of death, but all of these devices were meant for more small scale elimination of those the Nazis felt had no right to live. Walking through its tree lined streets, I felt no connection to the place. In my mind I was struggling to rectify this; I had read Night in 10th grade and wept until there was nothing left. Shouldn't I be feeling something?
I had watched a very graphic short film about the camps on the journey out of Cracow and had been overcome with an urge of self-destruction. I wanted to feel pain! I desired in my heart to have my soul crushed by the bastion of death, to know the same tragic wisdom of the millions who passed through the gates of freedom, to be irrevocably scarred, to walk from the camp with the marks that never leave. But when I first saw the sign bearing black, rusting irony, there was nothing there. The buildings had no punishment for me. The cells couldn't tell me their tales. The gallows couldn't shorten my breath and the crematorium remained cold and stagnant. I had come wanting to be tortured by memories, but Auschwitz seemed determined to keep them from me.
We left that place and travelled the short distance to the sister camp of Birkenau, the massive, extermination counterpart. Approaching the gates to this camp, merely red brick and iron bars, I knew that this would be different. I stared through those bars down the train tracks to the end of the camp, where the ruins of crematoriums 4 and 5 were, and I became very peaceful. I had spent the time before entering the camps in a state of violent internal rage and had wandered through Auschwitz in a state of confusion, as if I had somehow travelled to the wrong place. None of it made any associative sense, but I feel like I had finally figured out how to "be" within the walls of the Final Solution, and that the camp itself was now allowing my soul a connection.
I separated myself from the group as we walked in, which turned out to be an excellent move. If you don't know too much about the camps, I might recommend taking a tour, but otherwise, just get a map; you get a much better opportunity to listen to the wind as it whistles through the grass.
Looking down at the whole camp from a watchtower at the entrance, a feeling of bitter irony rose against the peace within my mind. Birkenau is like a broken skeleton, emaciated from its own burning hunger and dashed by its terrible ambition. It is something to be laughed at. To the left and right are systemically placed chimneys and piles of brick, marking the houses of destruction that the Nazis themselves had to destroy as they were leaving, in an attempt to erase their high crimes. Birkenau, from above is a parody of both life and death, because, in the end, it could achieve neither and now it lies, frozen, a stillborn dream of glory and ashy remains of the heart of darkness from which we all flee. My face became long, in the fashion of a critiquing artist, and my eyes gazed out in disdain, as if I had no taste for this paradox of beginning/end.
But, the ground level was another story. As I mentioned before, you can hear the wind as it blows through the grass. The camp itself is beautiful; it reminds me of the countryside I used to wander through as a child in Texas. Clouds shift back and forth, scattering individual rays down upon the pathways and fields, briefly illuminating some ruin before sweeping across a wide plain of vivid green. That peaceful feeling returned with bolstered strength, and I felt a little like a hobbit at the end of The Lord of the Rings. After much destruction and pain, one finds that there is still beauty in the world, and that this beauty, coupled with the joy one feels when looking upon it, is exponentially more important than letting your smile recede under the weight of the past. We use places like this to remember our mistakes, because they are mistakes of a most grievous kind, and humanity shall never evolve unless we can overcome the desires that lead us to make them. But there is another reason we remember places like these. They are a foil for our own lives by which the wonderful nature of our existence is revealed. This is at least what I felt. I walked out of the camp, knowing that there were so many who were not as lucky as I, not with a smile on my face, but the shadow of one in any case, and a peace in my heart.
So, if you go to Auschwitz and Birkenau in standard masochist's fashion as I first thought I should, do not be surprised if the camp keeps its feelings to itself. The place is too powerful to simply acquiesce to the demanding sightseer, who wants instant emotional gratification. You will end up having to create your own sense of what you saw, and this memory will be dry and have no meaning. But if you walk amongst the crumbling monuments of millions and try to listen to the whistling grass, the camp may give you something that you did not expect, but something that is real, so real in fact that you may burst with the strength of it.
I looked back at my pictures after the trip, and found that I didn't really like any of them, except for one picture, where a single twist of barbed wire stands in focus against the long, iron fence. There is a sense of smallness that brings about the true feelings of a place like Auschwitz.
Monday, June 15, 2009
How did we get into that party?
As a note to start this off; I have been travelling around Poland for the past week or so, and have not had sufficient access to a computer to regale you with the exciting adventures I've been having. In lieu of posting, I took notes throughout my trip, so I will convert these into more interesting stories for your reading pleasure. I'll break them down into several different posts.
Last Saturday, I set out for the city of Cracow at 5 in the morning, after burning the groats that I cooked at 4:25; I swear, those hot plates are just getting hotter. My experience with trains in Poland has thus far been excellent and this trip, though long and indirect, was no exception. It was on the trains that I first experienced what my friend had told me, that the Polish truly value foreigners who travel to their country. When Mark and I travelled to Wroclaw, a couple of weeks ago now, and there was an altercation with the guy coming down hard off of something (knowing neither where he was going nor where he had placed his ticket), the train conductor handled the situation quite calmly, and with what I thought was superhuman patience. Afterwards, the girl in our compartment told me that he was really behaving himself in front of foreigners. I've since seen other examples of this (some more dubious than others), and I am incredibly grateful for this aspect of Polish culture. It's wonderful to go somewhere that you are wanted. Apparently, this also applies to the job market in Poland. A lot of emphasis is placed on foreigners and the skill that they could bring, so much so that they are often selected over Polish national for competitive jobs. Very different from the Godzone (NZ).
After 8 hours of random conversations with the study abroad students, finishing The Satanic Verses, and doing isometrics in the dining car, I arrived in Cracow, one of the few major cities that was not completely destroyed by either Hitler or Stalin, and was overcome by the beauty of the city that was immediately apparent. Where my location in Poznan boasted block after block of Soviet style egg crates, with some German bastions interspersed here and there, Cracow was like a walk through one giant park, bedecked with Italian ornamental designs. After leaving our bed and breakfast (where I got taken out by some ham the next morning), we ventured into the rynek, which was not a far walk and thus quite easily accessible. One of our number clamored for food, so we ate and then ventured up the uncountable steps of St. Mary's cathedral to buy a postcard from the bugler. He bugles from the four corners of his small living space up in that tower every hour of every day. I wondered how one became the bugler; is it an elected position, or perhaps defined by familial lineage? In any case, I wanted to be bugler for about 5 minutes, until he finished playing, and I realized just how terrible that job must be.
The next couple hours were spent wandering along the oldest shopping mall in Europe where I purchased certain gifts and spent nearly twenty minutes trying to decide whether or not I should get a "genuine" Russian hat, complete with silly ear flaps and realistic Soviet stars. In the end, I decided not to buy it, for I had been warned not to act too Russian in Poland. Later in the week, I was to learn why most Poles frown when they hear that I speak some Russian, but at that point, I was unaware of the extent of the animosity and thus count myself lucky that I have a hard time parting with my Zloty. After I had taken in my fill of cheap trinkets and Baltic amber, I headed back to my room where I found both JP and Jonathan passed out on their beds.
The events that transpired next occurred in such a way that, if one of them were but slightly altered, I would not have had what I consider to be my best night in Poland thus far. Here is my tale:
I sat out in the lobby reading a book, since I didn't want to disturb the sleepers. A couple of the study abroad students passed by as I was falling into a state of sleep and told me that they were going to look for some food and an internet cafe. Hanna had said to meet her at 8:30, but no one knew what she wanted to do, so we figured that we'd just skip it and see her in the morning. But as we wandered closer and closer to the market, we figured we'd meet up with her and find out what was going on. Hanna's friend Kasia, the woman I met in Wroclaw, and her husband Michael were there and they told us that we had to come with them to see the parade of monsters on the river.
I feel a bit of explanation is needed. I have not gone a whole week yet without witnessing some kind of celebration; it seems like every other day I nearly starve since I can't find a delikatessy that hasn't been closed for a holiday. Poland is a party country, and the party that night in Cracow was one of the best I've ever seen. In Cracow, there is a giant castle, the Wawel Castle, that has stood since Poland was newly baptized thanks to the Nazi commander who was using it as a base and opted not to destroy it as he fled; he merely plundered some of the artifacts. As Hanna said, there were a lot of good Germans. In ancient times, a dragon lived under the castle, and the king entreated his sons to kill it. They did so by filling cattle skins with sulfur, which choked the beast when he attempted to swallow his foul smelling snack. The dragon under the castle became the symbol of Cracow, and every year the people put on a parade of monsters and dragons that puts the collective American parades on Thanksgiving to shame. I can only describe the celebration as a never ending, river borne, conga line of Nightmare Before Christmas/The Wall half-breeds, floating along in ponderous arcs amidst sweeping lasers and exploding fireworks, all set to John Williams' brilliant score for Star Wars: Episode I.
We started walking towards the river, eventually passing over it and coming to a posh looking building with many people in suits and dresses standing around. As we approached, I remember thinking, What the Hell are we doing? We can't be here! I was dead wrong. It transpired that Kasia had been invited to a private party for the guy (I don't know who he is, but I was told that we only missed him by about 30 minutes at the party) who had spearheaded the recovery of the Polish economy during the post Solidarnosc era, after the fall of communism. Everyone was impeccably dressed except for our group, wearing t-shirts and incredulous expressions, struggling to understand how we had found ourselves with free food and drink, not to mention the first class view of the river front and the surreal creatures. I took advantage of the situation and ate 5 plates of salad and about 3 kilos of fresh Polish strawberries.
All in all, this was the best night I have had in Poland, and I just can't get over the fact that somehow, I got into a private Polish party only 3 days after the celebration of Solidarnosc for one of the founders of modern day Poland, ate a ton of free food, and experienced the parade of monsters from a vantage that very few people have ever had. This is the kind of thing that I was hoping I'd get to do more of through the Park program, and it's funny that it happened first in Poland.
When I got back to the room, JP and Jonathan woke up and headed out for a kebab. Some things will never change.
It's been good to think back on these great times today since I recently learned that my Aunt is not expected to live, as of right now, for more than an hour. I just called her and sang a song written by Seu Jorge that my Portuguese friend translated for me a couple of weeks ago. It is a terribly desperate feeling to be in another country while a member of your family dies. I am grateful for my ability to communicate with her in her last hours over the phone, but it pains me not to be there with her. I have thought of her often over the past couple of weeks and unfortunately missed my last chance to actually have a conversation with her; life can play cruel tricks on us, but we must not shield feelings in regrets. I love her, and I wish her well; we have both lived our glorious lives, but mine is not quite at an end.
Tomorrow, I will write what has been very difficult in formulation: my journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I will probably keep up this method of posting to get in all of the events and information acquired during my trip, as well as the day to day dance that is the UAM physical chemistry lab. Things are moving along and look promising; I shall know more soon.
Last Saturday, I set out for the city of Cracow at 5 in the morning, after burning the groats that I cooked at 4:25; I swear, those hot plates are just getting hotter. My experience with trains in Poland has thus far been excellent and this trip, though long and indirect, was no exception. It was on the trains that I first experienced what my friend had told me, that the Polish truly value foreigners who travel to their country. When Mark and I travelled to Wroclaw, a couple of weeks ago now, and there was an altercation with the guy coming down hard off of something (knowing neither where he was going nor where he had placed his ticket), the train conductor handled the situation quite calmly, and with what I thought was superhuman patience. Afterwards, the girl in our compartment told me that he was really behaving himself in front of foreigners. I've since seen other examples of this (some more dubious than others), and I am incredibly grateful for this aspect of Polish culture. It's wonderful to go somewhere that you are wanted. Apparently, this also applies to the job market in Poland. A lot of emphasis is placed on foreigners and the skill that they could bring, so much so that they are often selected over Polish national for competitive jobs. Very different from the Godzone (NZ).
After 8 hours of random conversations with the study abroad students, finishing The Satanic Verses, and doing isometrics in the dining car, I arrived in Cracow, one of the few major cities that was not completely destroyed by either Hitler or Stalin, and was overcome by the beauty of the city that was immediately apparent. Where my location in Poznan boasted block after block of Soviet style egg crates, with some German bastions interspersed here and there, Cracow was like a walk through one giant park, bedecked with Italian ornamental designs. After leaving our bed and breakfast (where I got taken out by some ham the next morning), we ventured into the rynek, which was not a far walk and thus quite easily accessible. One of our number clamored for food, so we ate and then ventured up the uncountable steps of St. Mary's cathedral to buy a postcard from the bugler. He bugles from the four corners of his small living space up in that tower every hour of every day. I wondered how one became the bugler; is it an elected position, or perhaps defined by familial lineage? In any case, I wanted to be bugler for about 5 minutes, until he finished playing, and I realized just how terrible that job must be.
The next couple hours were spent wandering along the oldest shopping mall in Europe where I purchased certain gifts and spent nearly twenty minutes trying to decide whether or not I should get a "genuine" Russian hat, complete with silly ear flaps and realistic Soviet stars. In the end, I decided not to buy it, for I had been warned not to act too Russian in Poland. Later in the week, I was to learn why most Poles frown when they hear that I speak some Russian, but at that point, I was unaware of the extent of the animosity and thus count myself lucky that I have a hard time parting with my Zloty. After I had taken in my fill of cheap trinkets and Baltic amber, I headed back to my room where I found both JP and Jonathan passed out on their beds.
The events that transpired next occurred in such a way that, if one of them were but slightly altered, I would not have had what I consider to be my best night in Poland thus far. Here is my tale:
I sat out in the lobby reading a book, since I didn't want to disturb the sleepers. A couple of the study abroad students passed by as I was falling into a state of sleep and told me that they were going to look for some food and an internet cafe. Hanna had said to meet her at 8:30, but no one knew what she wanted to do, so we figured that we'd just skip it and see her in the morning. But as we wandered closer and closer to the market, we figured we'd meet up with her and find out what was going on. Hanna's friend Kasia, the woman I met in Wroclaw, and her husband Michael were there and they told us that we had to come with them to see the parade of monsters on the river.
I feel a bit of explanation is needed. I have not gone a whole week yet without witnessing some kind of celebration; it seems like every other day I nearly starve since I can't find a delikatessy that hasn't been closed for a holiday. Poland is a party country, and the party that night in Cracow was one of the best I've ever seen. In Cracow, there is a giant castle, the Wawel Castle, that has stood since Poland was newly baptized thanks to the Nazi commander who was using it as a base and opted not to destroy it as he fled; he merely plundered some of the artifacts. As Hanna said, there were a lot of good Germans. In ancient times, a dragon lived under the castle, and the king entreated his sons to kill it. They did so by filling cattle skins with sulfur, which choked the beast when he attempted to swallow his foul smelling snack. The dragon under the castle became the symbol of Cracow, and every year the people put on a parade of monsters and dragons that puts the collective American parades on Thanksgiving to shame. I can only describe the celebration as a never ending, river borne, conga line of Nightmare Before Christmas/The Wall half-breeds, floating along in ponderous arcs amidst sweeping lasers and exploding fireworks, all set to John Williams' brilliant score for Star Wars: Episode I.
We started walking towards the river, eventually passing over it and coming to a posh looking building with many people in suits and dresses standing around. As we approached, I remember thinking, What the Hell are we doing? We can't be here! I was dead wrong. It transpired that Kasia had been invited to a private party for the guy (I don't know who he is, but I was told that we only missed him by about 30 minutes at the party) who had spearheaded the recovery of the Polish economy during the post Solidarnosc era, after the fall of communism. Everyone was impeccably dressed except for our group, wearing t-shirts and incredulous expressions, struggling to understand how we had found ourselves with free food and drink, not to mention the first class view of the river front and the surreal creatures. I took advantage of the situation and ate 5 plates of salad and about 3 kilos of fresh Polish strawberries.
All in all, this was the best night I have had in Poland, and I just can't get over the fact that somehow, I got into a private Polish party only 3 days after the celebration of Solidarnosc for one of the founders of modern day Poland, ate a ton of free food, and experienced the parade of monsters from a vantage that very few people have ever had. This is the kind of thing that I was hoping I'd get to do more of through the Park program, and it's funny that it happened first in Poland.
When I got back to the room, JP and Jonathan woke up and headed out for a kebab. Some things will never change.
It's been good to think back on these great times today since I recently learned that my Aunt is not expected to live, as of right now, for more than an hour. I just called her and sang a song written by Seu Jorge that my Portuguese friend translated for me a couple of weeks ago. It is a terribly desperate feeling to be in another country while a member of your family dies. I am grateful for my ability to communicate with her in her last hours over the phone, but it pains me not to be there with her. I have thought of her often over the past couple of weeks and unfortunately missed my last chance to actually have a conversation with her; life can play cruel tricks on us, but we must not shield feelings in regrets. I love her, and I wish her well; we have both lived our glorious lives, but mine is not quite at an end.
Tomorrow, I will write what has been very difficult in formulation: my journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I will probably keep up this method of posting to get in all of the events and information acquired during my trip, as well as the day to day dance that is the UAM physical chemistry lab. Things are moving along and look promising; I shall know more soon.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Liquid Oxygen and Politics
Yesterday, Dustin, our grad student, came down with bronchitis and was rushed to the hospital by Tomek before I even strolled in the door of the chemistry building. We were supposed to be learning how to change optics on the argon ion laser, though Tomek was the one who had to show us. By the time he got back, there were so many people waiting to learn about the laser, that he picked only JP to sit in on learning how to use it. I was ticked at first, since I had gotten excited about working with a two meter long instrument of certain death, but I had the rest of the day pretty much off, so that was a plus. I spent the time trying to figure out the cheapest way to achieve my post Poland plans, which are currently to head to Croatia and shep some sheep before visiting my fam in Scotland. God willing, by the end of the summer, I will have had enough experience herding those remarkably bright woolly friends that New Zealand will be bending over backwards to get me to emigrate. I may even be allowed to bring in some fruit!
So, what I'm trying to get to here is that Jonathan and I accidentally caused a buildup of liquid oxygen in the rotovap. Thank God there was no grease on the apparatus, or else we could have done a lot more damage to the lab than a mere fridge explosion.
I promised that I'd give you a little taste of the political viewpoint that I've seen here, which is comprised of several encounters, mostly with people my age and mostly with fairly reasonable people. I'll say first that Poland is not a nation of extremes; this is no China. Some people agree with government and some people don't. Some people think for themselves, and some people don't. If discussing politics with anyone here (not just polish students) could prompt me to make any kind of general statement, it would be that general statements are bunk. I've heard many things from fellow Americans studying abroad, and I find some of their perceptions to be a bit misconceived at the best, and just flat out wrong at the worst. But, I can give you what I have seen and heard.
First of all, I was fortunate enough to meet a political sciences student from Portugal who shares my conservative viewpoints on many matters. His first question was regarding Bush; live or let die? Perhaps he expected me to get defensive like so many Americans here who don't really have opinions about anything substantial, but have been told that the answer to this question is "**** Bush". Instead, I provided a detailed outline of what I found faulty with the Bush administration and what I felt they had done right. There were nods of agreement; I knew I was off to a good start. I cannot tell you how happy I was to encounter a European who did not blindly hate America's former leaders (The next night, I was depressed when, after being introduced to one of JP's friends, I was blamed for the mistakes of America).
I then inquired as to the image of President Obama in Western Europe, especially in his attempts to revamp foreign policy. What my Portuguese friend told me was that Obama has charisma (this I know, for Obama told me so), and had struck a harmonious note with two major concerns for Europeans: open foreign relationships and the environment. However, he felt, as I feel, worried about Obama; neither of us has very much hope that Obama can do half of the things that he's promised. And as far as foreign relationships go (I laughed for days when I heard about the "Overcharge" button in Russia; I mean, there is just something about giving Russia a button to push that defies all pretenses of professional behavior), Europeans are less concerned with some of the blunders that the administration has made trying to connect culturally, i.e. the aforementioned Russian incident, bowing to the House of Saud (some dark symbolism lurks in the shadows with this one), hugging the Queen, and more pleased with the fact that at least this administration is trying. It's the thought that counts apparently.
When I informed my friend that I was a supporter of Ron Paul, he was lost, but when I said Libertarian, his reaction was akin to Van Helsing attempting to stave off vampires with an outstretched crucifix. In European political science, students are taught that Libertarians want everyone to own their own nuclear weapons and smoke grass all day. I tried to assure that I wasn't pushing for backyard nukes, but I don't know if he believed me.
He said the view of Americans is just as we in the States fear; we are ignorant of our own political system and care little for the rest of the world. In reality, I see little difference between Estadosunidenses and the general European populace. I am familiar with the levels in the States where people either don't care, know very little and express other's opinions, or are knowledgeable and form their own opinions; the same categories are expressed here. It may be that Europeans just have a natural immunity to the guilt that the government in the US is affecting upon its citizens.
Just as a little side note; I am aware that there are other things that fall into play here. I'm just tired of writing about America's perceived shortcomings, especially when I consider that many Europeans who have attempted to criticize America know next to nothing about American culture.
That's all for my political diatribe. You may be able to tell that my good humor is ebbing. I will, however, relate one more thing that gave me some musings. I had another friend, Polish this time, tell me that she couldn't think of me as an American. She considered me, after a fashion, Polish. This is strange, and I don't know what it means. I could interpret this as a compliment on my personal character and composure, or this might be a revelation that the European perception of Americans is highly skewed. Which, I am not sure, but I aim to find out more.
Many of you will be pleased to know that I am well on the way to unearthing some of the legends of the Magic Belt of Poland. I will be travelling to Warszawa next week, and I will make sure to drop by the archeology museum, the last known resting place of the Belt, for some information. Hopefully, I can get some documentation to show all of you who think that I wrote the Wikipedia article that the Belt is a true legend (You know who you are).
Stay tuned for my next edition when I shall enlighten you with more of the nuances I discover hiding in the only country where it is fashionable for male teenagers to wear capris.
So, what I'm trying to get to here is that Jonathan and I accidentally caused a buildup of liquid oxygen in the rotovap. Thank God there was no grease on the apparatus, or else we could have done a lot more damage to the lab than a mere fridge explosion.
I promised that I'd give you a little taste of the political viewpoint that I've seen here, which is comprised of several encounters, mostly with people my age and mostly with fairly reasonable people. I'll say first that Poland is not a nation of extremes; this is no China. Some people agree with government and some people don't. Some people think for themselves, and some people don't. If discussing politics with anyone here (not just polish students) could prompt me to make any kind of general statement, it would be that general statements are bunk. I've heard many things from fellow Americans studying abroad, and I find some of their perceptions to be a bit misconceived at the best, and just flat out wrong at the worst. But, I can give you what I have seen and heard.
First of all, I was fortunate enough to meet a political sciences student from Portugal who shares my conservative viewpoints on many matters. His first question was regarding Bush; live or let die? Perhaps he expected me to get defensive like so many Americans here who don't really have opinions about anything substantial, but have been told that the answer to this question is "**** Bush". Instead, I provided a detailed outline of what I found faulty with the Bush administration and what I felt they had done right. There were nods of agreement; I knew I was off to a good start. I cannot tell you how happy I was to encounter a European who did not blindly hate America's former leaders (The next night, I was depressed when, after being introduced to one of JP's friends, I was blamed for the mistakes of America).
I then inquired as to the image of President Obama in Western Europe, especially in his attempts to revamp foreign policy. What my Portuguese friend told me was that Obama has charisma (this I know, for Obama told me so), and had struck a harmonious note with two major concerns for Europeans: open foreign relationships and the environment. However, he felt, as I feel, worried about Obama; neither of us has very much hope that Obama can do half of the things that he's promised. And as far as foreign relationships go (I laughed for days when I heard about the "Overcharge" button in Russia; I mean, there is just something about giving Russia a button to push that defies all pretenses of professional behavior), Europeans are less concerned with some of the blunders that the administration has made trying to connect culturally, i.e. the aforementioned Russian incident, bowing to the House of Saud (some dark symbolism lurks in the shadows with this one), hugging the Queen, and more pleased with the fact that at least this administration is trying. It's the thought that counts apparently.
When I informed my friend that I was a supporter of Ron Paul, he was lost, but when I said Libertarian, his reaction was akin to Van Helsing attempting to stave off vampires with an outstretched crucifix. In European political science, students are taught that Libertarians want everyone to own their own nuclear weapons and smoke grass all day. I tried to assure that I wasn't pushing for backyard nukes, but I don't know if he believed me.
He said the view of Americans is just as we in the States fear; we are ignorant of our own political system and care little for the rest of the world. In reality, I see little difference between Estadosunidenses and the general European populace. I am familiar with the levels in the States where people either don't care, know very little and express other's opinions, or are knowledgeable and form their own opinions; the same categories are expressed here. It may be that Europeans just have a natural immunity to the guilt that the government in the US is affecting upon its citizens.
Just as a little side note; I am aware that there are other things that fall into play here. I'm just tired of writing about America's perceived shortcomings, especially when I consider that many Europeans who have attempted to criticize America know next to nothing about American culture.
That's all for my political diatribe. You may be able to tell that my good humor is ebbing. I will, however, relate one more thing that gave me some musings. I had another friend, Polish this time, tell me that she couldn't think of me as an American. She considered me, after a fashion, Polish. This is strange, and I don't know what it means. I could interpret this as a compliment on my personal character and composure, or this might be a revelation that the European perception of Americans is highly skewed. Which, I am not sure, but I aim to find out more.
Many of you will be pleased to know that I am well on the way to unearthing some of the legends of the Magic Belt of Poland. I will be travelling to Warszawa next week, and I will make sure to drop by the archeology museum, the last known resting place of the Belt, for some information. Hopefully, I can get some documentation to show all of you who think that I wrote the Wikipedia article that the Belt is a true legend (You know who you are).
Stay tuned for my next edition when I shall enlighten you with more of the nuances I discover hiding in the only country where it is fashionable for male teenagers to wear capris.
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