And Lima goes to Obama!

Sorry for the long delay, guys. I finally got ahold of a computer that could load my pictures.

After a long day of plane rides full of dull movies and spectacular sunsets (right), I landed in Lima on Friday night. The hostel sent someone to get me at the airport with sign bearing my name, utterly fulfilling a long unrequited dream. The driver, Mauro, was incredibly friendly and we spoke almost the whole ride in Spanish.

Now I studied Spanish in middle school, but haven´t taken classes in 10 years. So, I spent a good part of the converstaion desperately trying to avoid Hebrew prepositions and Bosnian nouns. (I had limited success. At some point I mentioned how I love the sea, and unwittingly agreed to a short detour along the Pacific coast.)

In addition to wandering the city with an Australian woman named Hen (met at an archeological dig), and learning the difference between a Llama and an Alpaca (according to the guide at the archeological site, right, Llamas are prettier), I spent today unearthing my Spanish. I swear, my trip to the Incan Market was just an excuse to remaster counting. (I spent I lot of time convincing myself that I really didn´t want to carry various peices of pottery for the next 2 months.)

By about 1 PM, I was actually feeling pretty good about myself. Then I ran into an Israeli couple and tried to talk to them a bit in Hebrew and SPANISH kept coming out. I could barely construct a sentence, when 2 weeks ago in Sarajevo I was having political discussions in Hebrew with an elderly Bosnian Jew. Talk about a reversal.

The next morning I ran into a parade in Lima´s central Plaza Mejor, featuring not only huge floats of la Virgen and various patron saints, but also men and women dancing in costume, including men dressed as 20´s mobsters, complete with wooden Tommy guns, and other troops in demon masks and sequined hats. But the best part of the morning, by far ? Running into a man who, when he found out I was American, gushed to me (in Spanish) about how he LOVED Obama, (¨pero no Bush o McCain o Clinton¨.) Yes, I think Spanish is gonna come in real handy.

"I Am My Own Sherpa" and Other Un-aired Episodes

Over the course of our trip (and during the innumerable, but spectacular bus rides - see left), Adina, Jon, Shaina and I amused ourselves by coming up with absurd or poignant essay/dissertation titles. They were loosely based on the places we saw, what were were doing, or hilarious, out of context statements. I've used a lot of them for the titles of my posts. But there are some gems that I'm won't have a chance to expound upon before I head out to Peru tomorrow.

So here are some un-aired highlights:

I Am My Own Sherpa

This Train is Bound: Why Heathrow and Glory are Mutually Exclusive

Do Vampires Believe in Patrilineal Descent?: Topics in Interfaith Relations

"I want him hot and verbal" and Other Ghettobar Revelations

He's gritty, thinks on his feet and has a Ph.D.: Why Indiana Jones is the Ultimate Superhero.

(. . . )* [*Evin hugging Adina]

Climbing Stairs with a 3.7 Kilo Rug: A Parable for the Serbo-Croatian Conflict

Ridiculous: A Monetary 3-way Over Bosnian Coffee

The Spreadability Quotient: An Algorithm for Choosing Cheese

"Will you be my tripod?": Tales from the Top of Split

"It may look like a setting where rich people go, but that's not the setting's fault": Why You Shouldn't Judge the Dalmatian Coast (below)


I'm just finishing up packing and seeing friends in Chicago. Tomorrow, it's off to Lima, Peru.
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Projecting Narnia: A Search For Talking Animals in Dubrovnik

Where as Sarajevo felt well worn and lived-in, the walled city of Old Town Dubrovnik felt kind of like a theme park. It was gorgeous, but was purely a tourist attraction. Its noone's home today. The striking difference lent itself to grandiose metaphor.

But we rose to the challenge and came up with this:

If Sarajevo is fallen royalty, tarnished but regal, then Dubrovnik is royalty that's been frozen into statutes by the White Witch of the Narnia stories, complete with pigeons roosting in the crevices (and by pigeons, I mean souvenir shops).

And just as Adina and I came with this allusion, we stumbled on the movie theater, which was going to be showing Prince Caspian at 9:00 PM. Not in the mood for a bar, we decided to indulge ourselves. It somehow felt appropriate: the movie looked could have been filmed in Dubrovnik, and, ridiculous as it was, the city seemed a little more magical because of it. (Sex and the City is playing in that theater this week. THAT, we couldn't have justified seeing in Croatia.)

The next day, we jokingly kept an eye out for magical creatures (and cute swordsmen). On the Island of Lokrum (ten minutes from Dubrovnik by ferry), we came up this guy, undomesticated but just sitting on a forest path. Now, if only he had been able to talk:

What WERE They Doing on that Hill?: Six Tourists Reenact Medugorje

In 1981, the year after Tito died, Yugoslavia was in turmoil. The ethnic strife that had been dormant under the much-loved Communist dictator was making its way to the surface. That same year, six teenagers climbed a hill in Medugorje (at that time a 17-house town) and saw the Virgin Mary.

All six of the teenagers (who are not exactly teen-aged any more) still claim see the Virgin's apparition , and Medugorje, though not recognized by that Vatican, has become a major pilgrimage destination, with over 1 million visitors every year (mostly Irish and Italian Catholics). Souvenir shops stocked with Jesus pencil cases and Mary statuettes line the streets.

We weren't so gauche as to ask Bata (left), our guide and host, if the apparitions were real. But we tried to ask some logistical questions: If you see the Virgin Mary on a hill, who do you tell? And, what WERE they doing on that hill in the middle of nowhere?? He'd have none of it. Bata had been perfectly blunt in offering opinions on the Serbo-Croat conflict, on the dubious merits of Balkan turbo folk, etc. But on this he was uncharacteristically evasive. If you believe, he said, it offers you hope. If you don't, it's brought foreign investment into an economically depressed region. Everyone wins. Why push it?

Four nights later, with tipsy exuberance, Adina and I decided that it would be a great idea to spend our last night in the Balkans climbing Marjan Hill with some fellow hostelers, in order to glimpse the city of Split and the Adriatic (right) from above. About 400 steps up the hill, we realized we were only half way there, and the sheen of our brilliant idea started to fade. What in the world were we doing on this hill in the middle of nowhere?? And then we noticed - there were six of us.

Okay, so, no. We didn't see the Virgin Mary. But the view of the moon over the Adriatic was pretty damn impressive in its own right.

But Would Brenda and Dylan's Love Survive the Seige? OR How Beverly Hills Came to Brac

Adina and I spent a gorgeous afternoon on the beach on the island of Brac, off the coast of Split, Croatia. On the ferry back to the mainland (left), there was an old episode of Beverly Hills: 90210 on tv (with Croatian subtitles, of course). Suddenly, it hit Adina that this particular episode had aired (and she had watched it) in 1991, when Croatia was in the midst of a brutal war.

In Croatia, the evidence of the war had been almost fully erased. But in Bosnia, it's everywhere. Whether pock marks on facades from sniper fire, shells of buildings, or endless headstones, it's fully integrated into the restored cities. It's clear that, in many cases, they've made a deliberate effort not to whitewash their history.




Within the first 15 minutes of talking to a Bosnian, they would usually tell us exactly where they were during the war or the Siege of Sarajevo. Our hosts in Mostar, Majda, Bata and their parents, got visas to Sweden and Norway. Tarik, from our hostel in Sarajevo, didn't think the war would last more than a few months, and by the time he wanted to get out, it was too late.

We heard a similar story from the security guard at a gallery of Jewish art. He told us, in Hebrew, that he'd also thought the war would be over in six months, and when he realized he was mistaken, he and his children were able to get visas to Israel when no one else could leave the country. His children are still there. Whatever our politics about Israel and the right of return, we had to admit, it probably saved his life.

More than Words: The Call of the Muezzin

There is little that's more incredible than standing on a bridge designed in the 16th Century (below, right), in the middle of an old Ottoman town and then suddenly hearing muezzins calling Muslims to prayer. First there is a solitary voice, then harmony and then finally 3 or 4 voices blend together, echoing from minarets in every direction. That was Adina's, Shaina's (left) and my introduction to Mostar, Bosnia.


That night, after watching the sun go down on the old Bridge over a meal of trout from the river, we sat at a bar, sipping wine and listening to REM and Justin Timberlake. The 90's classic "More Than Words" came on, and we couldn't help but sing along. And suddenly, from the other side of the river, the voice of one muzzein chimed in, and then another, and then another. Talk about surreal. We could not stop laughing.


Also, can I point out that the minarets look like the Disney Castle's turrets at night?

Where Empires Collide

Vienna. Rome. Moscow. Istanbul. Athens. In high school you learn the "great cities" version of history, and it's these cities that were the seats of empires. But the Balkans are literally on the fault line of history - and are all the more fascinating for it.


AHR and I spent 2 weeks there, wandering between Croatia (which could have passed for Italy but for the palpably Slavic culture of the people) and Bosnia (where a mere 300 yards can carry you from an Ottoman market deep into Hapsburg Vienna). In Sarajevo, we practically stumbled on the bridge (below) where Archduke Ferdinand was shot, sparking the start of WWI.

It used to seem so random that the first World War started in some obscure corner of Europe. But of course it did -- this is where Empires collide.

Well that, and there's a serious (but related) dose of local ethnic tension.

At the same time, it's a land of amazing hospitality, breathtaking scenery and fantastic food. Some advice: When in Bosnia, eat burek. And when in Sarajevo, order goulash and homemade bread at Dveri.

Stuck On Horizon

There's a song called "Don't Know Why (You Stay)" (by the Essex Green), which compares people stuck in the urban daily grind to wooden marionettes, and fantasizes about "stepping long," cutting the strings and getting out.

Well, after 3 years in DC, I quit my job, broke my lease and am heading out for 2+ months of unadulterated, unemployed travel before going back to school in the fall. It would be easy to cast this as an escape from the drudgery of working life and my cramped urban apartment. But the truth is, I loved my job and I adored all 225 square feet of my Mt. Pleasant efficiency. (That's the view from my apartment during cherry blossom season on the right.)


At the same time, there's a ton of world to see. As the Essex Green put it:

"if we swim away we're stuck on horizon
just catch it when it goes
or to take a piece and pull back the curtains
and there's nothing left but your clothes"




I'm stuck on horizon. This year, I've gotten to go to Thailand and Cambodia (yay E&K!) and Croatia and Bosnia (yay Adina! yay Shaina! yay Jon!). But I seem to have missed a whole continent in this hemisphere.

So I'm off to South America for the next two months.

As excited as I am, I don't believe in this whole dramatic "cutting ties" and "moving on" thing.
Thus, the blog.

So enjoy, keep in touch, and comment as you will.