Hitchhiking Planet

me levanto,

2012-02-09T02:11:23+00:00

Fritz Goro - Sooty tern chick standing forlornly as it waits for its parents from their daily hunting on the Great Barrier Reef, 1950.

/.
I felt I was myself a crawling insect doomed to perish, seized by destruction in the midst of a whole world ready to go to sleep.
-Knut Hamsun

I collected herbs from the mountains and dropped them into my breast pocket of my coat. Every time I put it on now, I am taken back.
Each morning I cycle to the sea and work on my Spanish for at least an hour. When Siberia leaves, I will begin to run again. And there are certain books that I pick up that remind me of heightened senses. I try my best to avoid them when the sinking days are around, as if drowning myself voluntarily.
The sacred white tea that was found behind a bakery in Denmark is with me here, six months on. It still clears my eyes, steadies my breaths. I drink it rarely, in the important times.
This is an important time. I am no longer headless but I wish the existential crises' would just shoo. There have been so many over the last couple of years. Does it matter what I'm doing with my life? Shoo, shoo. It does not help in the slightest that there is a dog across the road with exactly the same problem. He and I howl together often but he's far more persistent than me and rarely sleeps.

You’ve been had big time!

2012-02-07T08:49:32+00:00

Just a couple of days ago I talked with some british folks about renewable energy and the german energy policy. Apparently German polititians finaly understood what the people have demanded for decades already. At least since the protests against the planed nuclear power plant in Wyhl in the early 1970s there is a big movement against nuclear power in Germany.
Ever since, the polititians repeated their mantra: “Without nucelar power we will have blackouts.”

Ignoring the fact that other major european countries do not use nuclear power in their energy mix. Ignoring the huge potential of renewable energy. Ignoring the dangers that nuclear energy brings even to high-tech countries.

My british friends made a deprecatory comment like: “Yeah it is nice to shut down your nuclear power plants and then import the nuclear energy from France.“.
That seems to be the narrative framed by the british media – or at least thats what stick with the people. Even though I don t know my friends for a long time I would guess that they are quite aware of politics and especially sensible for environmental news. So I was in fact quite surprised by their comment.
I answered, that even though we shut down 8 nuclear reactos after Fukushima, we still export energy to our neighboring countries. Reading the Newspaper this morning I could not resist a big smile when I read, that even while facing an unusual wave of cold wheater in central Europe, we are actually exporting energy to France – the biggest nuclear energy producer in Europe.

How did that come? Due to a German Renewable Energy Act, introduced by the green party and the social-democrats in 2000, Germany managed to boost the share or renewable energy supply on total electricity consumption from 6.4 % in 2000 to more then 20 % in 2011. Our Minister of Economy (head of a marginal 3 % liberal party) Philipp Rössler wants to undermine this law by cutting down on the secure payment of little solar power plants who are mostly owned by individuals or families as a personal investment or by cooperatives who try to build up local energy supply. Ignoring the fact that in these days of high energy demand the nuclear energy actually provides almost 10 000 MW in peak hours (that is the equivalent of seven nuclear power plants).

Face it! The future is renewable!

Raft on the river Jamanxim

2012-02-06T15:15:18+00:00

Quick update on the raft situation:

I tarvelled to the Crepori river, and found it swollen with rapids. This inspired me to start instead at the Jamanxim River, about 90 KM east of Mundico Coelho. I had passed it and it seemed wide and rapid free. So I spent four days there and built this raft:

My balsa raft on the Jamanxim River, with scavenged boards for my mangy deck.

The work was hard and balsa wood is actually very heavy when it’s in tree form and not made into little airplanes. The trees were about 1km into the jungle, so I had to drag them out using rope and a couple of timber hitches, wade through a swamp, and then float them downriver about 500m.

The locals had warned me about a large waterfall downstream known as “Ao Portão de Inferno” - translated, meaning “the gates of hell.” It is about 20 m (60 feet) high. I figured I would just disassemble the raft before the waterfall, portage it downriver, reassemble it, and continue. I also spoke with a few fisherman who had been down there and they told me of at least 50 smaller waterfalls between the place I was at (Jardim do Ouro) and the place where the Jamanxim flows into the Tapajós. Undeterred, I was determined to tackle the river anyways, and continued building my raft.

After the basics of the craft were completed, I took her out for a test run, and discovered just how unmaneuverable rafts are. If I went down the river, it was likely I would be unable to get out of the river in time to avoid the waterfalls. And so the situation changed, going from”possible death” to “probable death.”

I do love life. So there’s no reason why I shouldn’t just start the adventure further upriver, where there are no rapids or portãos de infernos.

New plan: Start on the Tapajós river in São Luis de Tapajós. Down the Tapajós to Santarém, turn east and ride the Amazon to Macapá. This takes about 250 km off the trip, but adds about 50 years to my life. I figure this to be a fair trade.

In Itaituba now, close by. Busking and selling paintings for some extra cash. To São Luis in a few. Take care.

-Patrick

PS: Also, I put up a new post about my time on the streets of Belém before I went home to the US for a month. Enjoy, and sorry for the delays!

Filed under: Brazil

2012-02-06T10:16:51+00:00

On my way to Iran, the last town I visited in Pakistan was Quetta, the most conservative of Pakistani cities, a mere 130 km from the Afghan border, mirrored on the other side by Kandahar, another 110 kilometers further on. To get there I had to pass many hours of the barren dessert and desicated hills of Baloochistan. On arrival, I made it to the town centre, where I strolled across the bazaar, for the two hours my local contacts gave me before they could come and pick me up.

I was surprised at how different this bustling market was from others like it around the country. Textiles as beautiful as elsewhere were on display, although of a completely different style than the gorgeous headscarves of Lahore or Gilgit –here, the patterns on the scarves were not woven in, but embroidered onto them. Women on the streets were extremely rare, and most of those on sight who showed their faces at all, exposed Central Asian features – they were Hazara, an ethnic in Pakistan only present in Quetta, whereas in nighbouring Afghanistan they constitute a considerable component of the population.
Most of the men on the streets wore prayer caps and sported the bristly beards shaved over the lip as worn by the prophet Mohammed himself. Many eyed me as curiously, in what seemed an entirely friendly and innocent fashion, just as I equally felt drawn to ogle them. This seemed to me the most exotic of all places in Pakistan.

Finally, I got a phone call from my contacts. Emran Khan, a bank manager fromAbbotabad who had picked me up hitch-hiking on the Karakoram highway a month earlier, had given me the phone number of his wife, who stayed with her family down here. She could not come herself, and sent her brother in her stead, who tugged along a friend. Both having donned white, embroidered prayer caps and crisp, white Shalvar Kameez, the two of them were choice exhibits of young, male Quettans, with their wild Islamic beards and the blue, piercing eyes of Taliban fanatics. Well educated, their English was excellent. To each other they spoke the language Hindko, called `Gunda` by themselves, which the Hazara of Quetta also speak, as well as half the Pashtoun across the country, from Abbottabad to Quetta. It counts as an Indo-Arian language, whereas Pashtoun itself is Indo-Iranian.

(part 1)

Riet Not Diot

2012-02-06T07:16:56+00:00

My hands are crusted with carmine flakes of dried blood coming off my skin, and there are brown stains of dried blood all over my clothes, only some of which are from my periods.
I have been smashing in glass windows like when I was a teenager.
Throwing strops like when I was a little kid.
The taxi driver in the late evening invited me to stay at his house. I took my usual precautions and asked whether he lived with his family. Yes, he said, with his wife and little boy. It just turned out that when we arrived at the apartment, they both had gone to see a relative. He kept saying, “she’ll be back soon”, but the wife never came. The inevitable happened: The guy tried to sneak a look at me when taking a shower, asked me whether at home in Europe I would wear what I was wearing and not shorts ending above the knee, -as if that would make me an extremely easy girl-, and was actually holding his hand on his crotch while he was asking me that, too. Ultimately, of course, he asked to sleep next to me. Usually I would leave the house in such a situation, but it was after midnight and he hadn’t actually tried to touch me, so I quickly took a room that I could lock from the inside and went to bed. It turned out fine. I slept till the morning and left the flat.

Nothing worse than that. However, as I stepped outside the house, I picked up half a brick and tried to smash in his car windows. I left out the windshield which is built of safety glass, with layers of plastic between, and so basically unbreakable. Althought they sometimes break with a single large pebble launched hard enough, this time around it took me several tries on the side windows, but I finally broke one of them, plus the car’s back window. I had to use both my hands to hold the stone, since my right hand was already weak from the previous day’s excesses –A soft drink vendor asked me for sex and I punched in his shop window with my bare fist. That the shop window actually broke was to my own surprise. I had to pull out my hand bleeding all over.
My second to last week in Iran, when my nerves were already thread-bare, I threw an item of canned food at some old fat guy who annoyed me with nothing more than a muttered "Masha'allah" (the equivalent of a wolf whistle in Europe) as I walked by on the street. A tree of sparkling blood branching down his forehead soon became the most appealing aspect of his physique. Had he been young and cute, I would have still thrown the can, although I might have cared less about throwing it that hard.
Other misadventrues include slapping as hard as I could a man sitting behind me on the bus trying to grope me, and emptying the content of an ice-cold water-bottle on a man in the city offering me a hundred dollars if I fucked him. The other three times someone grabbed my ass on the street and the other sixty-seven times I got verbally sexually harassed are, of course, not even worth mentioning.

By the way, I had a much better memory of the behavior of Iranian men from my first trip four years ago. That just goes to show that the tombola of one-off trips can yield very different impressions.

Fridges.

2012-02-06T07:07:01+00:00

Turmeric and Dodo went to check the Alberto skip down at
Papierkade. Usually all you would find would be maybe one pack
of yoghurt, two glasses of baby food or one or other small
thingamy. Into the bargain you would most of the time have to
bring a folding chair to be able to reach it, or you would just end
up hopping  up and down in order to swing your arm over the
ledge, a mostly pointless endeavour. This time, however, my two
housemates hit a jack pot: The skip was full of canned beer. Not
one or two beercans, and not one or two crates’ worth either - no,
there was at least a crateful of palatable Belgian beer,  many cans
of a popular type of mild white beer, and probably several crates
worth of some cheap generic brand. They  hardly had enough
space in their bags to carry everything on the back of their bikes.

Earlier that evening, Turmeric had shared an acid trip with Dodo
who took this drug for the first time. It was only a little LSD,
and the first hallucinatory effects set in on Dodo while sitting on
a park bench near the skip, opening the first can.  As she held her
drink, her arms grew long and longer and lifting it to her lips
became amusingly difficult.  She burst into a paroxysm of mirth
which turned into a long, low series of half-supressed peals of
laughter. A bag-lady in tattered, squalid clothes pulling a
shopping trolley came along, blinking puzzled at the tittering
girl and asked the couple if she could have one among the pile
of beers she saw there. Sure this was a moment to be generous
and they handed her even two more than she asked for. The
woman beamed a toothless, contented smile and off rattled her
shopping trolley over the paving-stones of Papierkade.

Home my house mates came with this large, accidental
treasure to share, finding the house empty. The first person
to come back was me, at around half past ten in the evening.
Dodo was already in an advanced state of alcohol-induced
merriment, and it was cheerfully that I acquiesced to the
reality that I would have to seriously dig in to catch up. We
talked around the kitchen table, sharing details of different
periods of our lives.

At the end of the night, the second fridge in the storage room
was stacked with the remaining beers. Without asking help from
anyone, it was of course Turmeric who during the following days
took to the chore of depleting the stocks, and that with seeming
effortlessness (I mean that you could never see that he was
drunk). Less than a week later, the fridge was completely empty
again.

Across the Atlantic in 27 days!

2012-02-05T12:43:00+00:00

------------- Statistics ------------- 9.1 --> knots, top speed of the boat (nautical miles per hour) 35 --> knots, top wind speed during the trip (force 7) 30 --> flying fish that jumped on board, more or less 5 --> meters, h...

Giving Birth

2012-01-28T13:18:55+00:00

Obviously, I didn’t know what it would be like to give birth to a baby. Still, I stayed so convinced throughout my pregnancy that it would be a wonderful experience, and I was surprised to see how many of my girlfriends that came to me and asked me if I wasn’t scared to death. I wasn’t. But all I could do was to give them my personal thoughts about giving birth in general, not knowing if and how they would change when it actually happened. Now I know, and my thoughts haven’t changed a bit. It makes me concerned to see that plenty of young women believe it must be horrible to give birth since I know most of them want to have children. Therefore I’d like to share my experience with you.

It seems to be the fear of pain that scares people the most. I’ve used three helpful thoughts when it comes to going through the pain:

1, The pain itself doesn’t have to be a bad thing, only pain in combination with fear is damaging and traumatic. I read a lot about this in “Att möta förlossningssmärtan” (“Facing the labor pains”) by the Swedish midwife and author Gudrun Abascal, a book I highly recommend. Unfortunately there is no English version yet, only Swedish.

2, No matter how painful it might be, the time of the actual delivery is a fractional part of the looong pregnancy. You’re at the finish line!

3, Every single person on Earth has been born. I kept this in mind every time a walked through a big crowd through my pregnancy. Imagine how many successful births that is!

I can’t say giving birth to Kima didn’t hurt. If it wouldn’t hurt at all people could give birth anywhere out in the streets, which would be a direct danger to the baby. In other words, the pain is useful, it makes you perfectly focused on delivering your baby and nothing but that. Unlike other pain, this is a positive type. It leads you to the first meeting with your child. What a reward after 9 months of carrying it inside you! I guess I could compare it with running a marathon; it’s a huge physical exertion that I’m sure is not only pleasant, but it’s still an amazing experience to go through.

And really, I never found the pain any worse than that I’ve been looking forward to doing it again form the very second our daughter was born. I’m therefore convinced that anybody can manage even the most painful situation — as long as you don’t panic. I didn’t use any medical pain relief either, since the whole process was over in a few hours and I felt alright with just a heating pad and some hot towels. Though I think it’s great that all sorts of pain relief is accessible in modern hospitals, I believe it might make you even more afraid of how much it would hurt WITHOUT medical help, since no pain killers will numb the pain completely.

Another aspect that makes me critical towards using medical pain relief is that I’m not sure I would have felt completely how much and when to push or to take a break etc. And I found this to be the most fascinating part of the process — my body told me EXACTLY what to do and I just had to string along. Somehow I think that makes baby delivering one of the easiest things a woman can do, funny enough! And no matter what happens when you give birth, I’m sure the pride, love and relaxation you feel once you can finally hold your baby in your hand for the first time is the same.

I’d be incredibly happy if I could inspire a future mother or two who might feel anxious about giving birth. I look at my one month old daughter who I’m breastfeeding while i write, and I happily confirm my overwhelming conviction from early in the the pregnancy: Giving birth to her was absolutely wonderful.

Dr. Vargeus

2012-01-26T22:34:54+00:00

First of all, I want to apologise for leaving anybody who follows this site without news for so long. I assure you that the events of the past two months will be posted here. I hopped freight trains in Minas Gerais, was arrested, spent 1 month in the USA, squatted on the streets of Belém for 11 days, and more. Sadly, it may be some time before I can get them up, as I am deep in the jungle without Internet or electricity.

Excuse this break in the normal rythmn of the posts; I need to post this now, while I have the chance.

Greetings from Altamira, Brazil.

I am currently hitchhiking along the Trans-Amazonian highway through northeastern Pará, on my way to a microscopic town that Google Maps does not show, near the border with the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

Of course, the objective at first was simply to get to Macapá without paying. But, overdoer that I am, that soon was not enough in my mind. With every day that went by, I knew I would have to take the longest, hardest, most dangerous route possible. First I was going to start from here, then decided on Santarém. Then Itaituba. Finally, I figured, “go big or go on living life wondering about what you would have found down that unexplored river…”

So I chose Mundico Coelho, the last stop on a dead end gold mining road in southwastern Pará, as the starting place for my journey. I will float 1.356 km (842 mi) down the rivers Mapurá, Crepori, Tapajós, and Amazon. My raft will be constructed of balsa trees, of which there are many here in the Amazon.

River conditions along the Tapajós and Amazon are expected to be relatively danger-free, with reguards to rapids, as they are very wide and this is the height of the rainy season. River conditions along the Mapurá and Crepori are unknown. Will rely on information gathered from locals. Have spotted on SAT photos of the Mapurá what appears to be a waterfall about 100 km downriver from Mundico Coelho. Still not sure what to do about that. Perhaps will have to disassemble raft and pack it downstream.

I am well equipped for jungle, with machete, hatchet, plenty of rope, quinine pills, jungle clothing, extensive fishing gear, various types of mosquito netting, hammock, tarp, and various pots and pans, compass, map, and GPS locator from 2002. I’ve spent the past week learning of edible plants (of which there are MANY here in the Amazon) from a farmer I met somewhere north of Amapú.

While I fully expect to survive this journey, I am also fully aware of the dangers, and the fact that this adventure may be my last (there are no human habitations closer than 80 miles through jungle for the first 300 miles of the trip, most notably along the rivers Mapurá and Crepori). Yet I am a firm believer in the idea that no adventure is truly adventure without the very real possibility of not living to tell the tale. Anyways, I couldn’t think of a better final resting place than the heart of the most wild place on earth. If I do die, rest assured it will have been whilst doing what I love.

My other adventures pale in comparison to this one, which is either the most couragous or the most stupid thing I have ever done. Either way…I’m all over it. Normacly and security were never my cup of tea, anyways.

Hope to post here again. I really do like living and do not have a death wish, despite what some of you may think. Please don’t interpret this as a suicide note of sorts. I merely have a more…erm…flexible point of view, as to what level of danger is too much.

For anybody interested, coordiates of Mundico Coelho are somewhere around 6° 55′ 49.8612 S, 56° 53′ 13.9446 W.

Chao, my friends. Until…we meet again.

-Patrick

EDIT: Next day.

I visited the hospital here in Altamira to attempt to procure necessary medicines. After explaining my travel intentions to the nurse on duty, she took me to see the director, Dr. Vargeus. As luck would have it, he has been to the Crepori area, and was able to give me valuable information reguarding this river.

Due to it being in a gold mining area, it is not as uninhabited as I was led to believe. In fact, Dr. Vargeus assured me there were several malaria laboratories along it’s banks, along with isolated pockets of population, mostly either miners or natives. However, my suspicions that the Crepori has a waterfall were confirmed, along with rapids. Despite this, the director assured me the river is navigated by local boats on a frequent basis, and that the rapids are not so trecherous.

So, a few mysteries of the Crepori have been reveled. Hazards of isolation are expected to be somewhat less, while hazards of navigation may perhaps be more of a risk to my personal well-being. This, of course – like everything else, really – remains to be seen.

Dr. Vargeus has also worked along the sector of the Tapajós where I will be travelling. While there are no modern inhabitants, I am told there are more than fifty indiginous tribes who call this area home. I am assured that none of them are of the head-hunter variety.

The director and another malaria specialist (Dr. Jorge) assured me that malaria is indeed a risk, though that I will probably be able to seek help should I fall victem. Still, I was given as a gift a mess of quinine and cloroquina, which he states “will not cure malaria, but will keep you from becoming incapacitated so as you can seek help in one of our laboratories.” I was also given 50 pills of sulfametoxazol trimetoprima, which I can use as an antibiotic, as well as a way to fend off extreme cholera for long enough to seek help. All without paying anything. In fact, Dr. Vargeus gave me 10 reais and filmed me playing the harmonica in his office for twenty minutes.

Dr. Jorge. Malaria specialist, Altamira, Brazil

Dr. Vargeus, Director, General Hospital of Altamira, Brazil

Thanks, guys.

All right, now I’m really outta here.

-MN

Filed under: Brazil

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-23

2012-01-22T23:19:00+00:00

RT @tribily: Recommended reading: Getting rid of dependency on #google services: #piwik http://t.co/8BDfsIYX #googlealternatives #analytics # Powered by Twitter Tools

Pekka Haavisto vai Sauli Niinistö?

2012-01-22T21:52:47+00:00

Puolueiden kannatuslukemia tuijottamalla äänestyskäyttäytyminen oli taas melkoista!

Presidentinvaalit ovat kuitenkin selkeästi henkilövaalit, eikä niissä äännestyskäyttäytymistä siksi voi suoraan verrata eduskuntavaaleihin – ne kun taasen ovat puhtaat puoluevaalit. Rakennan näiden vaalien välille kuitenkin pienoisen aasinsillan ja poliittisen kehityskaaren, koska nämähän ovat kaikki arvovaaleja. Ehdokkaat ja puolueet edustavat tiettyjä arvoja ja maailmankuvia, joita sitten kannatetaan tai vastustetaan.

Eduskuntavaalien 2011 jälkeen vihreät syvässä häviöitsesäälissä rypiessään menivät julistamaan, kuinka heille tärkeät arvot nyt kokivat rökäletappion. Sulkeutunut, takapajuinen poliittiikka oli ottanut voiton. Näin siitäkin huolimatta, että edelleenkin kansan enemmistö äänesti myös sellaisia puolueita kuin Kokoomus, SDP ja Vasemmisto. Yli 80% äänesti muita kuin Perussuomalaisia.

Näitä muita puolueita äänestänyt enemmistö jatkoi suruvirttä blogeissa ja sosiaalisessa mediassa nostamalla esiin kokemattomien Perussuomalaisten edustajien sammakoita ja voivottelemalla että hyi kun kauheaa tommonen. Kattokaan nyt tätäkin ehdokasta! Kun oikein meni yli niin vertauskuvat menivät jossain Natsi-Saksan suunnassa. Myönnän, syyllistyin tähän kauhisteluun itsekin. Välillä syystäkin, mutta usein syyttä.

Alkoi myös näkyä merkkejä siitä kuinka syvät kansan perussuomalaiset rivit olivat ottaneet ulkomaalaiset, ulkomaalaisperäiset tai ihan vain muut kuin suomenkieliset sylkykupikseen. Nyt sai vihdoin sanoa! Ruotsinkielisille huudeltiin ja somaleja tönittiin.

Ilmapiiri oli selkeästi muuttumassa synkempään suuntaan. Näin kansainvälisen, avoimen ja modernin puolueen kannattajana tietysti hävetti.

Oikeastaan koko asetelman pystyi summaamaan siihen, että vihreät huusivat perussuomalaisille ja perussuomalaiset vihreille, eikä kukaan ottanut koko hommasta mitään tolkkua. Keskustelua ei ollut.

Kunnes tuli ihan perus Pekka ja otti hommasta kopin.

Kun Haaviston vaalikampanja pyörähti käyntiin, hän suuntasi ensimmäisenä Viitasaarelle, moikkaamaan kaveriaan Hakkaraista (ps). Sitten seurasi koko kiertue ympäri Suomen ja lukuisat TV-esiintymiset, joissa Haavisto antaa kiitosta Perussuomalaisille ja Perussuomalaiset Haavistolle. Koko kampanjan ajan vire oli selkeä; tämä mies kuuntelee ja tämän miehen kanssa voi keskustella.

Jos omassa agendassa on mitään tolkkua, pitää se tietysti myös pystyä perustelemaan. Jos Perussuomalaisten arvoja vastustaa, pitää voida keskustelemalla osoittaa mikä niissä on vikana ja mikä on vaihtoehto.

Näin on Haavisto tehnyt. Haavisto on kuunnellut mikä Perussuomalaisten mielessä Suomessa mättää ja puolestaan kertonut, mikä Perussuomalaisten käytöksessä mättää. Selittänyt, millainen suvaitsemattomuus ei vetele ja miksi.

Monilta on varmaankin mennyt ohi Homma foorumin seminaari joulukuulta “Samaa maata, eri mieltä”, jossa keskusteltiin maahanmuuttokeskustelun sävystä Suomessa. Keskustelu videolla on laadukasta sekä erityisen rauhallista.

Näen tämän nyt niin, että myös Perussuomalaisten suunnasta on tultu Vihreitä vastaan. Ikäänkuin molemmissa leireissä oltaisiin opittu kuuntelemaan, arvostamaan keskustelun toista osapuolta – sekä mikä tärkeintä – viimein myös argumentoimaan ja käyttäytymään sillä tavalla kun politiikkaan kuuluukin. Tajuttu, että ei tarvitsekaan huutaa, että huutamista ei kuuntele muut kuin omat (jos nekään).

Olen nyt yli puolitoista vuotta asunut poissa Suomesta ja viimeksi kävin siellä viime toukokuussa 2011. Luulen, että kun nyt tänä keväänä tulen käymään, saavun hieman erilaisen maan kamaralle. Maahan, jossa ei enää riidellä, vaan jossa taas viimein osataan käyttäytyä. Maahan jossa kaikki ymmärtävät paremmin toisiaan ja jossa toivottavasti myös eri kieliset, –väriset ja –kokoiset ihmiset saavat elää rauhassa.

Kun yksi henkilö kykenee kääntämään poliittisen kulttuurin näin vahvasti parempaan suuntaan, ansaitsee hän myös tulla valituksi johtamaan maata presidenttinä.

Siksi matkustan parin päivän päästä Kuala Lumpuriin äänestämään Haavistoa, koska Haaviston Suomessa on kaikilla paremmin tilaa hengittää.

» Pekka Haavisto
» Sauli Niinistö

Seek knowledge, even in China,

2012-01-20T00:21:00+00:00

Giambattista Piranesi: “Il Ponte Levatoio/The Drawbridge” (1761).

Suddenly, the temperature has dropped. Last night travelling back in the dark, a large boulder of a man picked me up and he looked at me and asked if he could dunk me in his tea as he did not have any biscuits.
I had two hundred and fifty grams of smoky tea from China in my bag, enough to last me until the summer and most of my hair swiped off like a goat by a man who once worked with Vidal Sassoon and in Hollywood. I didn't think that was so much to be proud of when he spoke of the glory and the celebrities but I like my ears just the way they are and his scissors were sharp. He was from Sicily and expressed dismay at my washing my hair with stinging nettles.

Off for the journey of two thousand kilometres where it will almost be thirty degrees warmer than here. A winter of tea and books and the sea. And a bicycle and a small house of my own. It doesn't feel real, right now, as if good things cannot come without great struggle and pain.
It has already been, I tell myself. Go towards good things.

[title - an old Chinese proverb].

Belize and Mexico.

2012-01-19T01:05:44+00:00

After an entire night of displaying my knowledge of Constellations and physics in general to my small but interested audience in Flores, Guatemala, it was still dark when I caught the next bus to Belize:

The last two weeks in Central America.

2012-01-19T00:56:09+00:00

The story was written in the picture in front of me:

Temmuzda

2012-01-16T11:00:30+00:00

dear fatih akin, on behalf of female hitchhikers: thank you for showing us as we are ---

strong, daring, assertive, emotional, patient, crafty, perceptive, resourceful, and still "real".

i love these stereotypes.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-16

2012-01-15T23:19:00+00:00

Are you prepared for #sysadmin disasters? 6 questions to ask yourself in a #disaster recovery plan: http://t.co/CLCMoQ0k #devops #startup # Powered by Twitter Tools

Shiny January

2012-01-15T21:41:42+00:00

After dealing with a lot of burrocracy in the last weeks I managed to sneak out of day-to-day work and enjoyed the sunny weekend outside.
On Saturday morning I woke up with a sunray in my face and decided to go hiking. Fetching my map of the region I decided to take Bike/train/bus and start my hike in “Glottertal”.
I decided on the following tour:
On the first 10 km I met one cyclist and a couple of hikers. After reaching the Rosskopf dozens of Freiburgers and tourists met my way which formed a nice contrast. With every step I came closer to Freiburg I met more people taking some time for enjoying the forest. On the first part of my trip I ve even met a fox in the woods.
Now I want to share two pictures with you.

After approx. 15 km I recognized that my favourite cafe had already closed. So I went back home where a deliciouse Pumpkin-soup was waiting for me.
On Sunday I took my bicycle and rode 50 km in the valley. Now I m tired and I m going to sleep very very well ….

Inside Guatemala

2012-01-15T02:39:43+00:00

Once inside of Guatemala my Central American trip took a change for the better, in that upon meeting an Ex-Pat American with a Guatemalan family I was able to experience a side of the country that many tourists never get to see.

Last trip out, Riding with Crazys

2012-01-14T15:10:51+00:00

Exciting, or scary, It's hard to label. Riding with the drunkest:

Hitchhiking, like a Virgin

2012-01-13T16:54:27+00:00

From LV to LA, and the inertia of a sparkie.

The Trainee

2012-01-13T16:48:01+00:00

Having Fun in Redwood Country.

to write means to give all,

2012-01-11T02:49:38+00:00

Letters from a shipwreck - recovered and delivered [source unknown]

migration
some of my writing, hopes and attempts at clarity will be here now - http://birdsongsofpersia.tumblr.com/.
This journal will most likely stay in motion but within another form. It has been dear to me during these last near-on seven years. Thank you all for reading through these turbulent, passionate, sometimes ridiculous growth of times.

With warmth and the promise of hot steaming tea on long winter days,
Jass

Close encounter of the wrong kind

2012-01-10T01:15:18+00:00

Close encounter with the worst kind of person:

Mexico City to Guatemala

2012-01-10T01:06:40+00:00

After getting somewhat tired of the dramas being played out in my home town of Chino Valley, Arizona and acquiring enough funds to make it happen, I decided that more of Central America was both interesting, available, and therapeutic for what ailed me.

Back from the dead...or at least mute. It's an update!

2012-01-09T04:21:35+00:00

My my my, how the days have passed since the last time I sent an update. I completely missed both 2010 and 2011, and those were two of the most eventful years

Kima

2012-01-06T11:20:11+00:00

We are proud to finally welcome our daughter Kima Heijbel to the world!
Born in Stockholm on December 26, 3160 g and 49 cm tall.
We’re spending an amazing first month together.
The biggest adventure of our lives has begun.
And truthfully, it has never been better!

getting older …

2012-01-06T09:32:39+00:00

A couple of days ago an old friend from primary school visited me at the GartenCoop. We harvested corn salad for a couple of hours and then went to our regular coordination assembly. I have already announced to the other participants that I will just stay for an hour because I did not want to expect from my friend to listen to these debates for too long. We were a surprisingly diverse crowd this time and a lot of issues were raised. Even though he probably did not understand every detail he endured 2,5 hours of our meeting (we had beer so it was not too hard in fact).
Afterwards we went back home to enjoy the lovely pumpkin soup prepared by my granny and had a little wine. In fact due to the discussion beforehand he was pretty much up-to-date with what I am dealing these days in my life. The GartenCoop consumes lots of my time but I do enjoy it!

During our conversation after dinner I figured out that due to my involvement in the long term project GartenCoop I basically lost my desire to travel the world and get to know every corner of this world. I would not say that during my studies I did not like Germany or the places I lived. The problem was that I did not have any projects which fascinated me to that extend the GartenCoop does. For the first time in recent years I do not already plan my travels but plan my year entirely in Germany.

My friend just commented: Yeah – we are getting older…

Setting sail for Paramaribo!!

2012-01-05T16:11:00+00:00

hello all, for you, a little story about big surprises: A little over two weeks ago I went to the airport of Charleroi thinking that that night I would sleep at the airport of Gran Canaria (the plane would arrive around midnight), and that I wo...

Seek first the Kingdom of God ...

2012-01-05T01:31:44+00:00

... From that moment I only wanted to be with God and do his will because he had saved me from my earthly life and I have now the right to lay all my worries in his hands. And that is where I am going to tell about: One of my Hitchhiking journeys wherein God had revealed me this passage of the Bible:

Rooster Burr

2012-01-04T00:54:08+00:00

Hitchhiking from Riverton to Dubois, Wyoming.

Montpelier, Idaho

2012-01-04T00:50:48+00:00

Getting a ride in a lumber delivery truck.

Northern California

2012-01-01T04:11:42+00:00

A hitchhiking trip from Dubois, Wyoming to Northern California.

Glastonbury High Street

2011-12-30T23:19:46+00:00

“This song was channelled by a woman called Teresa Matthews… from John Lennon.” Ah yes, this is Glastonbury all right. Earlier on we had a song for balancing the root chakra and another which resonated with the heart. Daniella told us it was derived from the scale on which the Gregorian chants were based, before [...]

Bike Race from Logan, Utah to Jackson, Wyoming

2011-12-27T15:14:00+00:00

Helping a couple of guys in a bike race.

Two Nights in Fort Sumner, New Mexico

2011-12-27T15:11:20+00:00

Getting a ride and helping someone haul railroad ties.

Three Rides

2011-12-27T15:08:27+00:00

Meeting members of the same family on three different occasions.

Talking to a Coyote in the Nevada Desert

2011-12-25T00:47:18+00:00

I meet a curious coyote while eating a lemon pie.

Prodigal Son

2011-12-25T00:43:51+00:00

People are put in your path for a reason.

the only way to leave the gallows is by flying,

2011-12-23T20:08:03+00:00

<
by Ben Shahn

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.
— Blaise Cendrars

Time in Berlin fell with the snow, gradual and soft, the days almost infinite. I sleep for twelve hours and wake as if from underground, inside myself. The eyes of this city leave me enchanted, powerful beacons of light through the thick, hard winter. I anticipate exploding. I wait, and I wait. For my heart to lurch out through the windows of candlelit slick graffiti bars or into the arms of a ticket inspector of the metro we hop on without tickets. But nothing. Just absence that grows stronger and stronger the more solitude that comes.
God, I'm so so sorry. I have not been enough. Not for you, not for I.
Too - I have not written enough and my life is not a transformation any longer. All the clarity that came in summer migrated to confused, foolish lands in autumn. And now winter.
But enough is a ridiculous notion.
Berlin, an energy of rebirth. A coat and a sweater given to me for the trip east. Blessings everywhere, despite all this.

Wroclaw - baked bread, tea, all day cooking a Christmas Pudding from my grandmother's old recipe.
Here the time hurtles by and I don't know what to make of it all. Deep, relentless confusion.
Be as light as the first snowflakes, I tell myself. Be the breath that came out of you when you saw your first moose in North America. Be excitement itself and curious even for the things that are already known. This must be the core and sweetness of what it is to be alive, I'm sure of it.
To rediscover instinct and to be led on whims and passion.

Al-Qaeda and the Mafia

2011-12-23T00:04:19+00:00

A ride from Mount Vernon to Long Creek, Oregon.

a corner that is liveable,

2011-12-22T18:44:19+00:00

Ko Siu Lan, All That is Rose Melts Into Air, 120 Kg of Rose Petals, India, 2008

Hemingway pacing up and down in his den saying : 'There is another dimension. I am fully aware of it, but I can't get to it'. So he was trapped in his reporting of externals, his faithfulness to the surface, to words actually said.

- James Boyd

An enormous, overwhelming desire for tales to be lost in. To weave, to be woven, to bring everything together.
A satellite heading to earth tonight. I head the other way - far from myself, my doubts, my anxieties, my direction or lack of it. Away from here. The times so dramatically in contrast of belonging, fitting, nesting.
I cycle blind to the beach past midnight. Owls passing over my head, shrews scurrying between my two tyres. They never get hit. I cycle fast to peddle the blues out of me. The moon so bright it burns my skin. Sirens on the bypass, a constant in these days. People torching their own houses, for things have to change. They must. Peddle so hard that my lungs explode, that steam rises from my skin. But I can't get there, cannot touch it or discover it. It will only come when all falls away. I know it too, but must give myself entirely to something, to all.

Past the two broken down trucks, a smoking tin bin fire, the horses. Past the plum trees that have long stopped offering their fruit. Almost Autumn now and golden leaves will take their place. Past the old farm roads, the rusty tower, the rabbits leaping away from me.
And the gunshots. It's hunting season. For an instant I yearn for a blast to the head. I taunt them, shouting out to them, yelling myself hoarse. 'Take your best shot!', I croon. To be invincible for a moment, to fear nothing, to brave death. But they are too far away and I know it and just as quickly as the desire comes, it soars away and I reach for a pulse once more. For harsh, raw, tender, nectar existence. Turn it to song, to imagination, to wonder and wandering.
I make a list in my head of all the things I adore. Try not to dwell on who I miss so much, how it all feels impossible right now. That she will not come, that fear will be more powerful than excitement and joy.
Wild mushrooms, Paris, Rumi, waking up next to Ven. The tingle of new travels, soup in winter, red wine, Anais Nin. Grass dew, tea at sunset. Forests.
Being here and cycling.
The beginnings, once more, of a search for mysticism. I go back east. I listen to the winds of Persia. Climb the hill and scoot back down it, along the thin path to the sea. Cross the two lakes and push up to the dunes.
A bottle of cider that was dragged back sixty miles in a messenger bag. Eight bottles of it found discarded behind a supermarket. Gave one to my driver who stopped for me, heading to the sea too for kite surfing. The best place in these lands for it. As the waves come to me, close to my feet now. Wrapped up, warm. Ducks flying over me head to sea. Where are we going? I don't know, I murmer to myself. Build yourself up and you can do anything, go anywhere. We forget so often. I could drink the night. I fix my headtorch, like a lighthouse and give myself to my notebook.
All this anxiety, this neurosis, this unfulfilled longing. Just concentrate on these small things and everything else will happen as it may. To make this corner of the earth, small...almost invisible...to make it liveable. More than this - to give it passion, softness and feeling.
I turn round. A large, dark shape on the dunes. Somehow I'd missed it.
A van.
At this time, it's like an intrusion. As if to find an old shrivelled man sleeping in your bed. I imagine them waking to the sunset and the dawn birds. I turn on back to the sea, opening up.

A Different Kind of Challenge

2011-12-20T12:41:37+00:00

It’s been over 9 months since we got back from Pakistan and settled for a while in Stockholm, and our baby moved into my belly. Made him/herself comfortable and became the third part of our family. Now that we’re no more than two days (!) from due date, I reflect a lot upon the different kind of adventure that we’ve had the privilege to meet this year.

Travelling around the world is a big challenge. Constantly meeting new people, new scenarios, adjust, adapt, stay alert, keep the energy and passion even if your money run out or you loose your way. But in a way I find all that very easy, very natural. When we’re on the move, we are also “served” with experiences. Automatically fascinated and amused by the world around us as we gain new skills and knowledge. I’m not saying travelling is only easy, but it’s part of a travelers nature to discover and soak up the new atmosphere. Inspired to tell, to write, to share and learn.

Since March when we moved to Stockholm and started working regular jobs again, we’ve obviously been a lot more stationary. Especially due to the pregnancy and me vomiting 15 times a day for a few months. That makes me philosophize about what’s more challenging; to travel the world or to stay just as inspired in your daily, stationary life? Both, I’m sure, in their own ways as the grass often seems to be greener on the other side. For me personally right now, I know the answer :) !

Make no mistake; I am incredibly happy and I’m doing excellent. We are so excited to meet our baby that our apartment shivers, and I absolutely LOVE living the life I live right now! All I want is to remind you all including myself for the new year ahead, that making your weekdays feel fresh and new is a challenge worth credit. To keep lifting your chin above the wall, to keep looking AROUND the corner you pass every day on your way home from work, that takes some effort.

We are inspired by our friends, by making bread and baking cakes, by our mango baby plant, meeting couchsurfers (although it’s been a while now), picking mushrooms in Gotland and spending time with each other and the kicking belly. What ever you do in your daily life, it will be just as much fun as YOU make it! Merry Christmas to those of you who will celebrate it and a happy new year to all you njaros out there!

Amanda

Home through the eyes of a stranger

2011-12-19T10:39:53+00:00

One evening this September, I was watching a shitty DVD while lying on the sofa out in the vast hall of our squatted car repair shop where we arranged what we call our living room out of a large square of moquette and a rather wild assembly of furniture once found on a scrapheap. Next to me, somewhat squeezed, was Andy, who had recently charmed me with his assumption that the capital city of Finland was "Heineken".

It had been a rainy evening, and the sound of water drops plopping in the back of the hall reverberated over to us through the dark. In the past our living group had tried several times to fix the leaks in the roof with asphalt cartridges or tarpaulin, but evidently it had proven too formidable a task for us. This made the atmosphere rather spooky, especially late in the night as it was now.

It was already two o'clock when abruptly our cosy-eerie get-together was interrupted by Eline's voice echoing over from the entrance via the former reception desk: "Hoi Iris, ik heb een verjaardagskadootje voor jou!" It wasn't my birthday, but, hey, whatever, I propped myself up on my elbows and turned my head. Accompanying our friend as she approached was a young, stridently blond woman. "Here, I found a chick for you to speak Russian to," Eline introduced the girl jokingly, and after asking her to sit down, added with a wink, "thought you would like her".

Natasha was her name and she told me she had just run into Eline after having been desperate enough to choose a Centraal Station train platform as a publically available bed. She had been dropped off around an hour earlier in Amsterdam by a driver who had picked her up hitchhiking all the way back in France. After having reached his destination in Western Belgium, he had taken it upon him to do the long, 250 kilometer haul to the Dutch capital city, seemingly entirely out of a mixture of sheer kindness and a good measure of boredom... until he proposed to drive her all the way to Berlin a few days later, if she'd first come back to Belgium with him.
The girl declined, and that was that.

Natasha was a Russian beauty from Nizhny Novgorod with water-blue eyes and near-translucent skin, adorning herself with elaborately ornamented silver and turquoise earrings. The jewelry didn't mean she wasn't a tough girl. For her it was the end of a two months hitchhiking and wild camping trip around Spain and Portugal, and she was on her gradual way home. In Barcelona all her valuable belongings and money had been stolen out of the tent she and a friend had pitched on the beach, and she was left with a 20 Euro bill handed to her by a French travel mate from a week back.
Conditions being as they were she announced, "I am leaving straight away tomorrow morning".
Supine Andy groaned that he wanted to hear what the actors were saying, but me and Eline, after a short translation action on my part, began to remonstrate vociferously : "You can't just come and breeze through like that, you have to at least come on a bike tour around the city tomorrow!"

Natasha's opinion could be swayed. She was to be with us the following day.

Being the house's only Russian speaker, I automatically became the designated tourist guide. It turned out to be raining cats and dogs, and coming from our house in the rather far out yet lovely, canal and river-streaked suburb of Zeeburg, by the time we'd reached the centre already we were soaked to the skin. Natasha was none the less enthusiastic. I asked what she wanted to see first, and the answer was direct and curt: The Red Light District. And not only that, she wanted to see "those girls behind their window panes."

For inexplicable reasons, despite having lived this long in Amsterdam, I had no real idea how to precisely locate the hookers and their walk-in windows and had to touch-feel my way around the Red Light District. We started along Warmoestaaat, one of the oldest streets of Amsterdam, a touristy main artery adjacent to the real seedy areas of town. It is lined with innocuous pubs and the one or other sexshop. On our way we came across what you can really also see elsewhere in the city centre: Naked female mannequins wearing strap-on dicks, vitrines stuffed with granny fetish porn, and drunken Germans hanging drunkenly out of coffeeshop doors shouting "Scheiße, Scheiße" at this still early forenoon hour. Ducking into a small alleyway to the left, and then again left, we finally found the stuff Natasha wanted; dapper young ladies behind glassdoors, strutting their stuff under the soft glow of crimson tinted lamps in nothing but black bras and panties. She was positively thrilled of her discovery, "Какие они красивые!" - "Wow, what beautiful girls!" One young lady, having wrapped herself up in a large dark towel, was just striding out on dizzyingly high high-heels, leaving her door open. Natasha and I glanced inside and could see all sorts of mountaineering equipment, with which the lady was daily tying up up expectedly large, quivering mountains of customers to mount them and flagellate and generally mistreat. "Look at all the stuff she has in there! Handcuffs, whips, studded leather straps!", Natasha shrieked happily.
Around us, all other tourists were men alone. One Dutch guy stood out who looked about 16 years of age, affecting airs of having stranded here by accident and being the least of all interested in the women on show, casting only sidelong glances at them; although we presently would see him come circling around the same alleyway a second time. A fat Italian guy with his group of homies was negotiating half-jokingly, leaning to the brick wall near one of the display windows fractionally held ajar by the "inmate" on the other side, just enough so her voice could be filter through; "nah, I think I will come back after a few pints with my mates", the Italian seemed to be saying, then waddled off after his friends.

Next, Natasha was less interested in seeing some of the quainter small streets and canals of the Jordaan, as I proposed, than in doing a round of the famous squats, real deal or legalized. So we breezed on, through the rain, to the other side of the city centre, through the verdant Vondelpark and the villas exorbitant in size and comforts surrounding it. I took her all this way to catch a glimpse of the Occii, the formerly squatted now legalized punk rock club, and seriously one of the most beautiful ancient buildings of Amsterdam. It still being early in the day and the place being closed, we could only glance at the façade, but that being the Occii's prime touristic allurement, that may have been all the better. I myself remembered the building from before the summer, remembered the moldy, dark wood carvings whose desolate state spoke of the great age of the building, and found its newly renovated, particoloured and shiny as if lacquered, present state rather tacky.

On we went to the Hallen, the imposing former tramway depot. Robbie having left her bike there some Friday bar-night and having handed me the key to pick it up turned out a perfect excuse for ringing the bell and letting Natasha see the building's entrails. Its inside being similar to our own industrial area squat, although a bit larger, and maybe even damper, it was the outside, the vastness and the gloom of the row of high gables under the cloudy sky that Natasha found more impressive than the saw-tooth roof of our own current home back in Zeeburg.

We went to the wonderfully cheap and multicultural neighbourhood market round the corner to buy a small picknick, then we popped into a big-chain supermarket where, taking into account that all her money had been stolen, I looted all the ingredients for Natasha to cook Borshchsh later on tonight for the gang at home. On the way back, we rode through parts of Amsterdam home to my own or our living group's shared history in the city, and I could not stop myself from telling stories.

First we cycled past the bar my friends from another, smaller town squatted one and a half years ago, with whom I first came to the city, helping them with the action and the first week's occupation.
About ten days after the opening of the squat, I had just had a quick breakfast and gone out the house, as one of the lads, Matt, was trodding around in his pyjamas probably searching for the coffee, when a man politely knocked outside at the door. Neighbbours had been regularly presenting themselves in this way, and Matt, in all innocence suspecting nothing, unlocked the door from inside and... - found himself grabbed like a kitten by the scruff of the neck and put out on the street in his socks. Around the corner, in a blind spot from the door, eight other men had stood in wait, and they were now flowing inside, quick to change the lock. Then they dug into the crate of beer they brought along for the occasion, much like squatters themselves do the day of an action.
Now, the nice detail was that at those times, squatting was still legal, and Matt being the legal resident had no qualms about going to the police. So in the very same evening, it was Matt, Étienne, I and our friends back in there, drinking their beer.
It is not always possible to rely on the righteousness of the law-enforcers, but when it happens, it can have some amusing outcomes.

Although, to be honest, I don't know why I still tell this story. Matt and Étienne clearly were fly-by-night squatters. They had not even barricaded the door in the simplest of fashions.
Coming to think of it, maybe Matt was actually lucky, being so harmless and naïve to even open the door for the guys. A gang of musclemen assembled for the very purpose of coming in would probably have been ready for rather more distressing actions.

The next stop on Natasha's and my road was a house where I lived for a few months: "A friend of mine from a smaller city started it. She knew the location and figured as a squat it would might have a chance to last a while. In the last minute before the action, she ended up giving her room away to someone else, being from then on involved only as an outsider. The first few months the one-house squat bided its time quietly, but then, in the summer, the three houses next to it were occupied by squatters as well, and the whole thing rapidly swole up into a city-wide campaign against the company owning the dilapidated structures, the speculation giant Ymere. Not a week went past that there wasn't at least a small notice about it in one of the national newspapers."
That I (luckily) had already moved out when that sort of craziness started and am on bad terms with most of the members of this particular gang of hippies today, I conveniently left out.

Then, as we began crossing a bridge over the river Amstel, I pointed my finger at a row of appartment blocks on the other side, nice examples of riverine architecture: "It was in one of the appartments of those houses, that we all met, Eline, Robbie and I".
It was Eline and her friend Dirk's plan to squat two adjacent properties each one million Euros worth. The space required more people though. Eline somehow chanced upon this new girl Robbie, whereas Dirk invited his friend Dotty, who invited her friend Dolly, who invited her friend Iris, that is, me.
The action itself had rather more political motives than being a good plan for setting up a domicile: Still a few years ago, the building had been ascribed for social housing. The inhabitants however had got evicted, in order to renovate the flats and sell them for a much higher price. The owner at the time was a well-known speculant and low rank Mafiosi, the middleman for big scale drug-dealers, white-washing money through buying up immobilia. He finally had died through a bullet in his head in 2004, after which the house was sold to the large Estate company Libra.
When so much money as a million Euros is involved, it could only be expected that we would last no more than three weeks in the habitations, which is exactly what happened.
Yet, new friendships were visibly kindled. We were the core of the living group of the new industrial squat we were to open, around whom a bigger group finally gelled.

Natasha was getting dizzy from all the talk and exclaimed, "Jesus, I want to come and live in Amsterdam. How can I get a job here?"

That evening at dinner, with our house group of eight complemented by our two guests, Andy and Natasha, all of us slobbering tasty Borshchsh (typical Russian vegetable soup bloodred from the beetroot in it), and with everyone joking around and laughing, I guess it was exactly what Dutch people call gezellig - convivial, cosy, fun.
At the dinner table, Natasha spotted a cute guy, and started riotously flirting with him. The cute guy was Andy. Always one quick to accomodate myself to the fact that my lovers will be snitched by lassies of a more extroverted fibre, I resigned myself to do nothing but sort of wiggle my chair further away from the table and let the free love axiom run its course.

Anyway, later on that night, I correctly assumed Andy would be up for coming along on an evening adventure: Eline and I wanted to round off the evening by taking Natasha to a coffee shop, an activity she had wished for during the daytime. It just so happened that on our way to Muntplein, where we knew a nice exemplary, I wanted to get some beer, because neither Natasha nor I actually smoked weed. So I spurted into a supermarket and pilfered a six-pack, which spurted mucho-macho Andy, peeved at my superior stealing skills, into wanting to outdo me, so he pilfered another one... Suddenly we had a lot of beer, and somehow we ended up in a park, drinking.

Not too late after midnight, the beer was finished and the air started to become night-time nippy. Time to go home. Natasha had expressed interest in the archetypal Dutch experience of riding on the rear carrier, usually a rather uncomfortable way of travelling, although in the given case it was probably msotly an excuse to be able to pat Andy's back. So Eline and I took our two bikes, leaving the couple with the third one we had brought and shouted: "Andy, just don't forget to take your girlfriend with you!"

The next day, after breakfast, Natasha stood bright-eyed at the kitchen table, said she had a gut feeling it was time to leave, hitchhike on. On Tuesday her school started, 400 km East of Moscow, some 3000 km from here.
The whole group of us protested emphatically: "You cannot leave yet, you only spent two nights here, that is hardly a flattering gesture of you to want to leave!", each and every of us providing a different reason for her to abide with us for just a few more days. After all the incalculable hospitality I personally have received around the world, I must honestly say I was extremely happy my so very disparate group of housemates, bike-nerd Tobbie, opium-eyed Matza, trippy-hippy Eline, and usually so lackadaisical Robbie were all so readily and unreservedly hospitable.
In the end, Natasha's gut feeling won over our collective expostulations though, and Eline, Robbie and I got Tobbie's car and drove Natasha to the motorway.

Our road took us past the kringloopwinkel (that's a second hand shop) round the corner, over the bridge under which Matza spraypaints his artwork, over the riparian, lush greenery hugging the IJ's confluence with the IJmeer, straight past the student homes we sneak in to wash our laundry for free. There we turned into a garage to tank up and buy a last souvenir, a packet of drop (liquorice).
At the exit back to the ring road, another hitchhiker. Eline, ever the communicator, approached him. He was a German student, living in the very same student residence we know so well, and who had just walked out his door and started hitching from right there. Bad idea, he had been there for an hour already. Heading he was to Hamburg for the birthday of his older brother.
That is more than half the way to Berlin, where our guest was heading for.
Great news for Natasha who now had a hitch-hiking partner.

Indeed, she was duly delighted, "Oh cool, I think I'm going to Hamburg next!"

"Hell, yeah"

2011-12-19T10:37:55+00:00

At the end of our street lives a man whose remarkable skills and talent I cannot laud enough, whose virtues and good intent it is impossible to exaggerate: He has refined the great art of vodka distilling. His products indeed excel in quality, and can usually be ranged somewhere on a scale between delicious and ambrosial, except the one or other misfired jugful every eight weeks or so.
The house where he lives is a curiosity in and of itself. Having initially been a glue factory, it was used after several years of emptiness as a building for the Dutch police to train themselves on evicting squats. They would move in once or twice a month, smash in doors just to replace them, saw through barricaded windows or even the roof. This sort of business went on up until the day before the squatting action. Reparing work on the building evidently represented an almost sisyphian task, but the squatters did an ingenious job of it and live in a very cosy and even rather swank place now, almost two years later.

But back to Aad, and why I write about him here. At the end of the nineties this guy went on a quite incredible round-the-world trip with his brother. In a small port on the Dutch island Texel, they "abducted" an over 20-metres long luxury yacht which was worth something to the tune of two million Euros; then they sailed it around the world for one and a half years.
They started off sailing down to Spain and Portugal. From there their prime intent was to move away as fast as possible from the police on their heels, choosing whichever direction the trade winds would take them. This happened to be first to Madeira, then across the Atlantic to Brazil.

Initially I was sceptical about Aad's story. You hear all sorts of people making up all sorts of tall tales after all. So, I tried to verify at least one partof it: Aad said at the end they abandoned the yacht in Senegal and he hydro-hitchhiked from Dakar North on a ship transporting French wines.
Having myself worked on a cargo ship in Senegal in the year 2003, I was in a good position to ask those of my sailor friends who were there before me, whether such a ship as Aad claimed existed. In my time in Senegal and neighbouring countries, there was no single other vessel transporting anything except the one we were on ourselves, the Oméga, a French owned, Tonga-flagged eighty meter long cargo ship which carried anything, from carparts to rice sacks. Those sailor friends I asked informed me from the nineties until 2002 there indeed was a ship that did the very route Aad asserted, that is from Senegal to France carrying wine. Its route was nicknamed Le Tour du Pomerol, Pomerol being a kind of French wine. The near-infinite stacks of alcohol sure must have kept Aad happy for the time of the voyage.
This is no proof, but I am not completely disinclined to believe Aad's story after all.

It usually being three or four in the morning when we chatted, I have forgotten most of the numerous anecdotes Aad told me from his journey. There is only one story I have been able to retain, one about Italy, from the very end, when Aad and his brother got arrested. The two of them spent the initial few weeks of their two year prison stint in Italian jails, before being sent to their home country, the Netherlands.
"Sure, the cells were more squalid, but on being transferred to Dutch prisons, there was one outstanding feature which made me wish I had remained down South: They gave you a pack of wine each Friday there. It wasn't enough for the whole week, but it got you sufficiently drunk for a day. In my second week, I went on a short, alcohol-fuelled prison riot. I managed even to kick down one of my cell's walls - it was a very old jail as you can imagine. In consequence they first they put me in solitary confinement, but later they had me change cells, and put me together with six Moroccans. They were all Muslims, so that meant I had six times the ration of alcohol. I could not have wished for a better result of my violent outburst! "

There is one question Aad is understandably asked a lot: Were two entire years of being locked up worth the 18 months trip around the world?

"Hell yeah", is his answer.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-19

2011-12-18T23:19:00+00:00

I've just personalized @SwiftKey X for Android with my Twitter posts! Get it free at http://t.co/IAcxRuBM # Powered by Twitter Tools

Back in the saddle!

2011-12-18T10:58:00+00:00

Saddle... boat... oh well, you get the picture. But before I go further into this whole new thing I'm starting, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the people that have sent me encouragement of all kinds in the past weeks. Getting shipwreck...

Stacking Hay in Ellensburg, Washington

2011-12-18T01:34:57+00:00

Finding work on the road.

The Closest I Ever Got To Hypothermia

2011-12-18T01:30:37+00:00

Getting wet and cold hitchhiking from Texas to Kansas.

Tim! We Thought You Were Dead!

2011-12-18T01:28:06+00:00

This story reminds me of John Wayne movie.

LIVE!

2011-12-16T01:32:01+00:00

Fellow human beings, go forth and travel!

Journey to Nowhere

2011-12-16T01:25:27+00:00

I've been on the road now for two years . . .

redoublement des mystiques,

2011-12-15T14:03:13+00:00

how we talk
together in the snow,
- Bahauddin

The need of deep creative destruction, songs to the arctic owl. Two degrees outside and travelling becomes a suffering to be sharpened and plunged deep into my stomach. Ven sleeping close to me upon the last night on earth, our last together for I don't know how many days or months or years as she makes her return back to Bulgaria and I must at last figure out what it is that I want to do beyond all, past motion, past whatever rabbits jump out of my hat. What is it that I'm doing after all of this? Where is my writing at the ends of the earth?
Try my best not to feel the abandonment, the desolation of a life alone once more. I ask if we just didn't want this life here. Four days together, passing in a stampede of blues.The maddened cold days of Copenhagen. They crawl into our words as irritations build en mass, flattened under the rails by trains carrying wingless birds. Loved, in love and will love but can no longer expect the miraculous to leap out of every street corner. I must have the strength to search it out at least.
The most logical thing. Bounding up to Scandinavia in winter could lose me my fingers. What is it that I'm becoming, growing to? If we are strong enough, we will make it through all. Horses galloping through ice-storms inside of me. To create an astonishing existence, finally.

September 1, 2011

2011-12-14T09:47:24+00:00

I go into the city after a summer in the mountains:

hitchtheworld

2011-12-12T14:38:16+00:00

Belém do Pará, Brazil

I used to play a computer game that I got out of a Mini-Wheats box about twelve years ago that was called Amazon Canoe Adventure. Basically, you paddled upriver with the objective of taking photos of animals and visiting cities and towns along the way, hence learning about the local culture and buying more Mini-Wheats. Sometimes the city would be in 1899, sometimes in 1954, or 1753 – and at one point you meet Teddy Roosevelt stranded along the river with his native guides.

All in all, the coolest cereal box prize I had ever gotten. Thanks to Kellogg Cereals, a seed had been planted in my child’s brain, and it was called Amazon. Canoe. Adventure. When you first started out you were in Belém. You got off the ship, and immediately were met by a fellow selling birds in a cage. He tells you in really good English:

Welcome to Belém, the mouth of the mighty Amazon River. Your adventure lies in wait.

Then you could ask him all sorts of questions about the city and where to find a guide, food, whatever.

Belém, Belém, Belém. That name, more than any other one, stood out to me from that computer game. My nine year old brain figured Belém was the bee’s knees. Adventure Central! Must go there someday…

Twelve years later, an old Volkswagen van driven by a trader from Marabá dropped me off. Belém, 2011. This wasn’t in Amazon Canoe Adventure.

I had a week to kill, a flight home to catch, a stomach full of açaí, and one real in my pocket. It was two weeks to Christmas. The temperature soared past 100°F, and the sun boiled down upon me from a cloudless sky. Small green parrots frolicked overhead, cackling at one another as they swooped in and out of the huge mango trees lining the streets, and suddenly all I could think was:

Welcome to Belém, the mouth of the mighty Amazon River. Your adventure lies in wait.

I chuckled lightly to myself, and followed the signs that pointed me to the downtown. I can hardly wait…

—————————————–

The first order of business was to get to what was known as the Cidade Velha, or “Old Town.” Word on the street (literally) was that it was the best place to play music and be on the streets. “More lights, more police. Better for you,” assured the gas station pump attendant when I asked.

“How far?”

“Oh, ten kilometres. Very far, take the bus, gringo, or walk all day.”

Ten kilometres didn’t sound so bad – until about one kilometre later, when all of a sudden the clear sky from before quite disappeared from view. Huge rogue thunderstorm clouds appeared literally out of nowhere; I swear to you they materialized out of thin air. One moment the sky was blue, next the wind was blowing and huge thunderheads swirled into existence right before my very eyes!

Then came the rain. The rain in Belém falls as if it’s on a personal mission to destroy all land in existence. It’s unlike any rain I’ve ever seen. I took shelter at a bus stop as I witnessed larger and larger drops pound down onto the ground, hitting the tin roof of the bus stop with such force that I thought for a moment it might be hailing. It is so intense that seeing the other side of the road is an impossible task, and the streets are converted into Class IV rapids in less than three minutes. The drops falling looked to be the size of softballs; I could have probably filled up an entire two litre bottle with just a few of them.

About twenty minutes later, the rain vanished as quickly as it had come. The sky was blue again. The sun beat down on the sidewalk and road; steam cooked off the concrete, rising up into the mangos, as if all of Belém had been converted into one giant, city-sized sauna.

Awesome, I thought.

———————————-

Twice more during my walk, I was forced to take shelter under various cityscape features when more rain manifested from clear skies. Finally I deemed it easier to just busk at one of the bus stops until I had 1 more real for the bus. During the next downpour I curled up in the corner of one of the stops, sitting on my pack with my hat out on the ground in front of me, playing as impressively as I could as my hat got wetter and wetter.

After about fifteen minutes a lady gave me a 5 real bill. I jumped on the next bus marked “Praça da República,” and watched as we plowed through rivers on our way to Cidade Velha.

———————————

The busking in Cidade Velha turned out to be much nicer, and I made a fair amount of money in a relatively short time. Enough to eat well from the street food vendors, who rode precariously around the streets, dodging both traffic and pedestrians on bicycles modified to carry – and even cook – food on the go. They zoomed up and down my busking territory, never far away from overhangs – shelter in the event of rouge rainy season thunderstorms.

As evening drew closer, I began to wonder about where I would sleep. Generally, my policies when scouting for camping sites in cities on or near a body of water is to find someplace near the water. For some reason I find that the camping is both more enjoyable and more secure when I can hear the sounds of water as I dream.

Belém is surrounded on almost on all sides by water, it being on a peninsula between the rivers Pará and Guamá – so the obvious spot to start was the shore. The river Pará was considerably closer to me than the more westerly Guamá, so I set out to walk the four blocks to the docks.

To my dismay I found the shore of the Pará to be very much clogged with a shopping centre, an old Portuguese fort converted into a park and tourist attraction, and a number of resturaunts. Further upriver was fenced off and was the industrial docks of Belém – a dark, rusty place where I didn’t care to trespass.

While walking along a well-kept costanera between the fort and the first of the restaurants, I noticed a concrete dock which went out into the Pará about twenty metres. More interesting to me than this was a small ladder which led down to the rocky beach below, and consequently to the sheltered area under the dock. This would provide both privacy, and shelter from inevitable rain. A promising spot, if I ever saw one.

I climbed down the ladder and scouted out the area. While the immediate shoreline hosted huge concrete pylons which were rather wide to be hanging hammocks on, further out over the water were posts of reasonable size which were entirely hammockable. These were, I noticed, easily accessible by a network of concrete stabilizers which ran from post to post, with the water being just beneath them, and sometimes lapping under them in the event of the occasional boat wake or wind.

I unpacked my rope and set out on the stabilizers to tie up and prepare for the hammock. This was quickly and easily done, after which I rigged the mosquito netting and brought out the hammock, hanging it about four feet above the waters of the Pará. My work was now almost complete – with the exception of my pack. Where was I to secure it so that it would not fall into the river?

Following ten or so minutes of figuring, I decided to simply tie it to the junction of the poles and one of the concrete stabilizers. Though my pack was a bit closer to the waters of the river than I would have liked (about one foot above it), so long as I secured it tightly there was no danger of it falling in.

After taking care of this with some difficulty (my balance on the stabilizers was somewhat thrown off by the pack, and being as my poles were four poles distant the shore, working my way around the others was rather cumbersome), I began working my way back to shore to collect the last of my gear.

It was then I noticed that the water seemed to be…erm…rising.

At first I figured it to be my imagination. There were simply more waves, that was all. But when I had first set out to tie my ropes the water level had been a good four inches below the stabilizers, and made loud slapping noises when a wave crashed against them. Now there was no space at all, and my feet were beginning to get wet. I stood out by my hammock for a good fifteen minutes, trying to figure out if I was going mad, or what. Rivers didn’t rise and fall unless there was a flood. There is no tide in the river!

And yet, it soon became apparent that in the Pará, 200 km inland from the Atlantic Ocean, there is indeed a tide. The mouth of the Amazon is so wide that inland cities like Belém atually experience the effects of tide on freshwater rivers! I later learned that in some places even further inland – places part of the main Amazon river – also experience tide during the rainy season due to them being more than 50km wide! The reason the Amazon was called by Portuguese explorers “the inland sea” was now blatantly apparent to me.

Obviously, over the water under the docks was no longer a viable place for me to camp. I needed to vacate before I was washed away in the midnight tide! Quickly, and with a slight note of panic, I untied my pack and hauled it back to the shore, which took another ten minutes. By this time there was an inch of water over the stabilizers, making them invisible, and I had to feel around with my feet in order to work my way back out to retrieve my hammock.

Disassembling this and the mosquito netting took another ten minutes, and now the water was up to my ankles. By the time I had made my third return trip to retrieve the last of my rope the water was past my knees, and I could feel the current of the Pará river, which nearly threw me off balance and into it´s muddy depths on more than one occasion.

While working my way around one of the posts with the last of my gear, now thigh-deep in the warm, muddy river, I suddenly felt something rough brushing against my ankle. Looking down, I saw to my great alarm the head of an enormous crocodile, sniffing my leg in apparent preparation to snap it viciously off!

I shouted and kicked at the reptile – and found it was only a half submerged piece of driftwood. I looked around sheepishly, hoping no-one had seen.

With all my gear safely on shore, I decided to hang the hammock between the wide pylons about twenty feet up from the rising river. This proved to be a long, arduous task – for it was difficult to climb up to a good height from which to hang my hammock, them being so massive. Finally, after a good hour, the hammock and mosquito netting was hung, and pack safely stashed away under a pile of river rubbish directly below me. I looked at my watch; eleven-thirty. Time for bed.

As I was doing my evening push-ups, I heard a voice shout at me from up above on the costanera:

“Ey! Qué você tá fazendo lá?”

I looked up. A pair of security guards glared down at me. I smiled and gave the thumbs-up, pretending to not understand.

“Ey! Cara de pau! Não pode fazer hede aquí! É proibido! Ey!”

I again pretended not to understand that they had just called me a cheeky bastard and told me that hammocking was forbidden here. Smile. Thumbs up. They weren’t pleased. They wouldn’t leave me alone and kept shouting, so I climbed back up the ladder to see if I could reason with them.

The one who had been shouting was not happy at all; his partner seemed more reasonable, so I talked to him. Angry Guard, his hand on his pistol, shouted at my face:

“You can’t put your hammock here, freeloader!”

I addressed the other guard.

“I don’t see why I can’t. Nobody owns the river. I’m not hurting anyone. I just want to keep out the rain. Aquí me fico seco. Lá (I pointed in the general direction of Belém) não tem techo. E aquí não tem ladrãos. I don’t want to be robbed in Cidade Velha.”

He shrugged, and said that he was sorry, but those were the rules. Angry Guard kept on shouting at me and drumming his fingers on his pistol.

“Fine,” I conceded at last. “I’ll move. But I’ll have you know I spent about two hours setting all this up.”

“I don’t care!” fumed Angry Guard.

“You know,” I said, addressing Angry Guard for the first time, “There’s no need to finger your pistol.” I patted my pockets. “I’m shirtless and wet. I’m not carrying anything that will hurt you.” I climbed back down the ladder, leaving Angry Guard to fume with his Glock.

—————————————————

I waved cheerfully at Angry Guard as I left the costanera, and began walking further downriver. Surely a more suitable dock lay somewhere that way.

However, the further downriver I got, the more Belém changed. The streets were filthier and narrower, sometimes so narrow that it would be impossible for two cars to pass each other going in opposite directions. Open sewers lined the sidewalks, where rats scurried in and out of the gaping holes, tracking filth onto the sidewalk, frolicking in piles of trash, and fighting with one another. Their loud squeals echoed up and down the waste-littered alleyways. Groups of unarguably shady characters leered at me from the shadows, whispering suspiciously amongst themselves, cackling, and staring obviously at me as I went by.

Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Get out, they told me. Now. I took the first left I could and headed back toward Praça da República. The bells faded.

Here was better. The sewers and rats stayed under the street where they belonged. The street was wider and better lit. I turned downriver again, paralleling the shore but careful to keep a good five blocks between me and those narrow allies.

I passed a couple of plazas; this one was too well lit. This one was too dark. This one had no places to hang the hammock. After awhile there were no more plazas or even grass, and I was surrounded by dark and grimy homes and buildings. It was around 0000 hrs, and I was rather lost in Belém with no good camping spots in sight. I spotted a church down the street. Further investigation revealed a perfect little gazebo inside the fenced-in area. All I needed now was permission…

———————————————————

The church behaved as most churches do, glaring suspiciously at me and spewing flimsy excuses. The pastor brought his armed security guard with him to talk to me, and didn’t shake my outstretched hand. I didn’t bother pressing it; people like that deserved neither my time nor my company. Disgusted but not surprised, I left the church, determined to walk downriver until I either found a good spot or Belém ran out.

Fortunately, this wasn’t necessary. I hadn’t walked six steps when one of the many two-stroke motorcycles found puttering around all tropical cities in South America pulled up next to me. Driving it was a man about my age, with a young woman straddling the back. The woman addressed me in English:

“Where you go?”

“I don’t know,” I responded in Portuguese. “I’m looking for a place to sleep.”

“You want a hotel?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Não. I meant a place to camp.”

The woman lifted the visor of her helmet and looked at me. She had soft, caramel skin. Her eyes, black as coal, were framed by long, naturally curly lashes. “Camp?” she said.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

She exchanged glances with the driver. “You want to camp down there?” she said, pointing the direction I had been walking.

“Why not?”

The driver shook his finger side to side. “Very dangerous,” he said. “They will kill you. That is a bad place for camping.”

“Well,” I said, scratching my head. “Any suggestions?”

The pair leaned in together and had a conversation in very fast Portuguese that I had trouble understanding. Soon they seemed to come to an agreement, and the man dismounted the motorcycle. The woman slid up and took his place.

“Come on,” she said, beckoning. “I’ll take you to a place where many people sleep. Maybe it will be good for you.”

Shrugging, I hopped on; she gunned the motor and we took off. I could see the man waving in the rearview mirror. We waved back in unison.

—————————————————————–

It was Christmas time in Belém, and being as Belém is Portuguese for Bethlehem, the city takes this holiday very seriously. The Praça da República was decked out in thousands of lights and decorations, the mango trees wrapped in long strands of flashing, multicoloured bulbs. Live music played every night, realistic Santa Clauses were set up in the ponds fishing, there were moon bounces, singing and dancing, parades, and of course, Santa himself – much to the delight of all the children.

“Here, there are many lights. Policemen. Better for you, I think,” said the young woman as I got off the motorcycle.

“Thanks,” I said. I could see Santa throwing candy at a horde of children behind her. They squealed with delight, and after picking the ground clean, swarmed Santa for more. He threw out another handful and retreated back to the temporary stage with the band.

“Well, good luck,” she said, popping the bike into gear.

“Ok,” I said. She roared off back the way she came, waving as she went.

A walk around of the plaza revealed few good places to hang my hammock, though plenty of green spaces which could have worked if I had had my tent with me. Finally, I found a spot under the eve of a large temporary tent wedged between two permanent, colonial-style buildings. The tent sold evangelical literature. There was a space about eight feet wide between either side of the tent and the buildings; this was not frequented by too many people, and since the tent was set up with a metal skeleton, I could hang my hammock off the supports. I heard the announcer say over the speakers that the festivities would continue for one more hour before closing down for the evening. I decided to wander around until that time.

I sat in the grass, smoking my pipe and sipping on a coconut I bought for 1 real. On the stage in front of me, dancers moved gracefully to Portuguese versions of Christmas songs – which, while were still about Christmas, oftentimes had completely different words (for example, throughout the tune of “Jingle Bells,” not once did I hear anything about bells or sleighs or Grandma’s house).

At the end of the last song the dancers made a complex pyramid with their bodies and shot confetti out over the audience, as fireworks were set off simultaneously. It was quite an impressive spectacle. Brazilians really love Christmas – though the Mexicans, with their 400-foot Christmas tree, extravagant 18-wheeler floats, and full-on symphony orchestra and opera still had them beat. But not by much.

Finally the announcer called out the end of the night’s celebrations. The dancers blew kisses to the audience, the coconut vendors scurried around trying to get rid of the last of their drinks, and Santa waved goodbye to the children and did laps around the plaza in a Porsche (yes, a Porsche. Santa.)

After a half an hour the place had cleared out considerably. It was time for bed.

I hung up my hammock, keeping it low and inconspicuous (about 1 inch off the ground). I tied my pack up, shoved it under the elevated floor, did my push-ups, and fell immediately asleep. What a day.

——————————————————-

I was flying home in six days to see my family for Christmas. It would be the first time I had seen them in about 2 ½ years of vagabonding South America. I decided the surprise everyone and return home with gifts for all. And so I dedicated myself to spending even more time than usual busking, this time for Christmas money. Fortunately the holiday spirit ran strong though the hearts of the inhabitants of Belém, and I made very good tips my first morning in front of the post office.

Between 0800 and 1100 I made about thirty reais. I wandered around and bought some earrings for my Mom and my sister, and some more tobacco for myself. I bought more food from the street vendors, and a tribal-looking necklace for my brother. Then I played some more.

In the evenings I would go to the shopping centre by the docks (near where I had been evicted by the security guards), where I had found WiFi. Sometimes I would meet interesting people there. Once, a few locals took it upon themselves to give me a “tour” of the Portuguese fort and costanera where I had been busted. I saw Angry Guard there, and smiled at him. He was still angry, it seemed.

Every night I returned to my spot under the eve of the temporary evangelical bookstore. I would go to the Praça da República around ten or eleven and watch the festivities while laying in the grass, eating 2 real popcorn, and clapping loudly at the end of each performance. I smoked my pipe and watched ballet dancers move daintily to a live version of “Silent Night” – which was interesting, because it kept the original words, and every time they said “Bethlehem” they actually said “Belém.” And we were in Belém.

This reminded me of a story that my friends in Paraná had told me about Belém. A professional soccer player from Rio de Janiero was headed to Belém for a big game. When the reporters asked him how he felt about the upcoming match being played in Belém, a hot city for soccer, he responded, “I am filled with joy to be playing in the city where Christ was born.”

Amazonian Jesus. Ha.

As the crowds dispersed in the evenings, I lay back in my hammock, smoked my pipe, and enjoyed the night. There was a palm tree near my hammock that had bats nesting in the dead fronds up at the top. All night long they would flit in and out, swooping around the buildings, and sometimes making loud screeching noises from inside the nest. I wasn’t sure if they were fighting or mating. Either way – cool!

There was also a small, black and white city cat who lived in the plaza, and who liked particularly to frequent the area where I had my hammock hung. She hunted rats and mice from somewhere nearby, and then retreated back to my space and chewed their heads off. She didn’t trust me and wouldn’t let me near her. One night – maybe the fifth or sixth – I bought a piece of fish from the market and brought it back for her. After about an hour, I got her to eat it from my hand, and she permitted me to scratch her head briefly before stalking loftily off. Typical.

Every morning I went to an outdoor bar, which was open 24 hours, for coffee. After my second night in Belém they stopped charging me. When I inquired, the owner told me, “I’ve seen you in your hammock, and I think you deserve free coffee. Also, I hate evangelicalism, and that damned bookstore. Seeing you sleeping there made me laugh.” He let me have as many cups as I wanted, all day long.

The bar, known as the Bar do Parque, was another frequent hangout of mine. In the early morning when I got up, it was filled with still-drunk boozers and desperate whores. Both types were attracted to me like a moth to the flame. The boozers cried and told me long, drawn out stories and threw up in the bushes, and the hookers (both male and female) asked me, was I refusing their advances because they were ugly?

In the evening groups of men wearing Panama hats swooped in to suckle on cans of Skol beer and laugh loudly. Women came to sit alone until one of the men in Panama hats bought them beer, which never took long. Youth crowded around side tables with guitars, asking for weed. Pretty young women slithered around the tables selling it. Bums wandered through periodically and begged. Artesanos made frequent stops to sell their earrings and things. And me? I just sat at a corner table, smoked my pipe, and drank coffee.

After a few days in Belém people started recognizing me – I was spending about eight hours a day busking, after all. They waved at me on the streets, and called me homen da gaita – the harmonica man, or bem cargada, which means “heavily loaded,” since I always had my pack on me. They called my tobacco pipe ao cachimbo da paz – the peace pipe.

Some would simply nod and smile as I played. Some would tip. Some would dance and laugh, and some would sit with me and talk for hours. Once, as I was playing in my spot in front of the post office, I saw a man passing by nodding his head along to my music. He pointed at me as he went by, grinning widely, and said to his companion, “Ísso é Belém do Pará!” This is Belém, of Pará!

I felt honored – like I was a part of the city, something that travellers rarely have the privilege to feel. In that moment, my blues helped form the impression of Belém for somebody. Maybe when Belém was mentioned to them in the future, they would think of the Pará river, the Teatro da Paz, the Praça da Rebública…and me, playing the harmonica by the post office.

I slowly accumulated enough money to buy presents for everyone. There was a nice, handmade wooden plane that a man was selling across the street from where I played that I wanted to buy for my Dad, since he’s an airline pilot. It was breakable, so I waited until the last day to buy it, but I made friends with the guy who sold it (along with other things made from wood).

His name was Gabriel, and he lived in the ragtag conglomeration of fruit stands and peddler’s warehouses across the street from the post office. At one point there had been a building there, but it was torn down years ago, leaving a vacant lot in the middle of Cidade Velha. The artesanos and street vendors quickly descended upon it, putting up metal frames with tarp roofs where they sold their respective goods, creating a little marketplace. Gabriel had been one of the first people to build there, and was the only one who lived in his little hut full-time.

“I’m safe here,” he would say to me. “Look – I’ve got a little stove, and electricity! See, I have a TV and everything.” He showed me how he barricaded himself inside at night, locking a series of metal screens around the whole thing, and his curtains. He slept in the same place he used to display the wooden things he built, for sale every day – even Sunday, when the rest of the huts would be empty metal skeletons. All except for Gabriel, who was always there with his wooden airplanes and tanks and school buses. How or where he went to the bathroom, or showered, is still a mystery; as far as I knew he never left. A whole life, lived along the sidewalk in Cidade Velha.

One evening, while sitting in the Bar do Parque and wondering how many beers the Panama hat men would buy this woman before he realized she wasn’t going to sleep with him, I noticed a pretty young lady a few tables away smiling towards me. I looked behind me, wondering who she was smiling at – then remembered I was at a corner table and the only thing behind me was a mango tree.

She sauntered over and sat down. “Hi,” she said. “I like your pipe.”

“Um,” I stumbled, “Okay.”

Why was she talking to me? I was homeless. I lived on the streets. People called me the harmonica man, and knew I played each day in front of the post office. I hadn’t showered in three weeks, and I hadn’t changed my T-shirt since I was in Brasília about a month before. She had no business talking to me.

“Pipes are cool,” she went on. “Do you smoke weed out of it?”

“No. That would destroy the flavour.”

“So you don’t smoke weed?”

“Not out of this pipe.”

“But you do smoke weed?” She gazed at me coyly from behind her eyeliner. I noticed that she had enormous ti – I mean, blue shirt.

An enormous blue shirt.

“Well, sure I do,” I said, staring at her enormous blue shirt.

She leaned slowly forward, staring into my eyes, and whispered into my ear, “I’ve got something for you.” She smelled like vanilla. And she had an enormous blue shirt. Truly massive. And…she had something for me?

“You have something for me,” I repeated, not really remembering what those words meant.

“Yes,” she whispered again, and placed her hand in mine. I could feel something in there. “Five reais,” she said, “and you don’t have to use your pipe.”

“Five reais,” I trailed. I could see down her enormous blue shirt, and knew for sure now why it was enormous.

“Well.” I said. “Um.” Silence. I cleared my throat. “Five reais. Hm.”

She leaned even closer. “So, do you want it or not?” I couldn’t see anything except for her blue shirt, and everything smelled like vanilla.

I didn’t stand a chance.

———————————————————————

As I lay in my hammock later that evening, I smoked my five reais worth of weed and watched the city cat try to catch the bats in the palm tree.

That blue shirt was a hell of a salesman.

——————————————————————-

There was another person in Belém who was also known as “the harmonica man.” He wasn’t a busker, he was a homeless person who wandered around selling cheap plastic Bee harmonicas for ten reais apiece. He played a tune while he walked – the same tune, always.

You could hear him coming from two blocks away, even over the street noise and the buses. Once, he sat down and played with me. I played along to his endlessly looping tune with short, three note chords. We made three reais; I gave them all to him.

From then on, whenever we passed in the street he would stop me, smile impossibly widely, and dance. Every time. Then he would pat me on the shoulder a couple of times and skip away, laughing wildly and shouting “Homens das gaitas!”, before resuming his endless loop.

——————————————————————

There is a tobacco shop in Belém about six blocks from the main avenue in Cidade Velha. I went there every couple of days to buy tobacco, and also bought another pipe there. The owner recognized me every time I went in, and was the only person in Belém who called me by my real name. She told me I should move to Belém. I asked her why. She said it was because I was the only person that ever bought pipe tobacco from her.

“Well, you sell a lot of cigarettes,” I said.

“But it’s not the same,” she sighed. “Cigarettes are ugly. The tobacco pipe is a beautiful thing. More people need to smoke tobacco pipes in Belém.”

I liked her a lot.

———————————————————————-

Once, while I was busking in early afternoon – which is a slow part of the day – a couple walked past me. They smiled, stopped, and the man started digging around in his pockets for coins. He threw 75 cents into my hat.

His girlfriend glared at him.

“All of it!” she hissed.

He threw the rest of his coins in my hat.

After they left, I counted them. They added up to almost five reais.

I liked her, too.

———————————————————————

Another evening in the Bar do Parque. The Panama hat men were talking about Colombia, while a marching band paraded around the plaza, playing the same song over, and over, and over again. The guitar kids were stoned, and couldn’t play the guitar. I had spent all of my money on gifts that day, and was really hungry but had no means to buy food. It was too dark to busk. I was hoping the man a few tables over would leave some pizza crusts on his plate that I could swipe.

Suddenly the sky rumbled, and a typical spontaneous Belém thunderstorm developed. We all scurried for cover. I hid under the overhang of the municipal museum, while the Panama hat guys quickly finished their beers and trotted off the nearest indoor bar, and the stoned guitar kids voiced concerns about their guitars getting wet. Soon it was pouring, and the Bar do Parque was empty.

Twenty minutes later the rain stopped completely. I could see the moon through the mango trees. I went back to the little plaza, got another free coffee, and sat down in my usual chair.

I noticed a wet, blue piece of paper on the ground in front of me. It was muddy, as if someone had stepped on it. Curious, I picked it up.

It was a 100-real bill. One of the Panama hat men must’ve dropped it while running for cover – for it was unlikely the guitar kids had any 100-real bills.

I left the bar quickly and blended into the crowd behind the marching band. Later on that night, I bought a gargantuan slab of meat, a plate of shrimp, a bowl of açaí, and a can of Skol beer.

Who ever said vagrancy doesn’t pay?

———————————————————————-

On my last day in Belém, I played for the first half of the morning and made as much money as I could. I got my last free coffees from the Bar do Parque, and bought the last of my Christmas gifts, which were a bottle of cognac for my uncle, a few necklaces for my cousin, and my Dad’s wooden airplane. Gabriel said it was ten reais; I paid him fifteen. Then I took the bus to the airport, buried my knife and fingernail clippers out by the bus stop, and went to check in for my flight, which would take me first to Rio de Janiero on TAM airlines, and then to Charlotte, North Carolina, vía US Airways, and later to my family in Houston, Texas.

I slept in the airport that night, and the next day I stepped on an airplane and disappeared into the sky. I could see Cidade Velha from the tiny window of the Airbus 319 passenger jet. I felt privileged to have been a part of its history, if not very briefly.

I would be back in a month; I wondered if anyone would remember me. Would my spot in front of the post office be re-occupied? Would the temporary evangelical bookstore where I slept be taken down? Would the other harmonica man still dance for me?

One thing was for sure: Gabriel would definitely still be in his hut.

-MN

Filed under: Brazil

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-12

2011-12-11T23:19:00+00:00

Rich polluters are trying to kill #COP17 climate talks in #Durban but a new #GreenDreamTeam can stop them. Act now! http://t.co/7q5TaziU # New blog: 8 reasons we use #puppet for #DevOps / #systemadministration http://t.co/K5iNpyPY # Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-12

2011-12-11T23:19:00+00:00

The Dangers of Drunken Boys Named Billy

2011-12-09T23:12:27+00:00

The dangers of being too comfortable.

A Life-changing Story - Part I

2011-12-09T23:05:22+00:00

Part I - "Scrappy"

First Time on a Freight Train

2011-12-09T23:01:17+00:00

The title says it all.

2011-12-08T12:56:32+00:00

Given that this was Iran, that it was Ramadan, and that it was already noon time, it seemed about the right moment to get drunk. We started off with some shots of moonlight whisky with mint and lemon cordial, then followed up with vodka that was good enough to be downed straight.

The way to procure alcohol in this country is to call up the person that amounts to the equivalent of a (drug) dealer in Europe. Beer not being popular they will let you choose from the types of wine and liquors at hand over the phone, either homemade or imported. Imports are the more expensive option. Then you will usually be given an appointment somewhere on the streets. The "dealers" are men from young to middle age, dressed in varying degrees of neatness or sloppiness, all generally respectable people, nowhere in the vicinity of the European prototype of a drugdealer in terms of sleaziness.
They wait in a car somewhere, you walk up and exchange a few bills with one or two bottles of your chosen poison wrapped up in black plasticbag that you promptly slip in your rucksack or handbag. One dealer once gave my friend Maryam an appointment right in front of a police station. Even though supremely awkward, it certainly was the safest option, said my friend. The police at the station trust people who meet just outside their door intuitively, and it can be glaringly incongruous for a prim 20-something to walk up to a battered old Paykan with a balding fifty-something wearing slacker's clothes at the steering wheel. I don't know if being safer is necessarily true for the police station scenario. Some people might get so nervous, their visibly shaky hands would certainly give them away and attract the police's attention.
In any case, to remedy such predicaments, in Teheran there is even door-to-door service.

As for my friend Pouya and me, we were soon off to take a taxi to his friends' house. It was hard to stop the bottles in my bag from clunking against each other, making that sound that only wine bottles can make. This would have been too risky on a public bus.

Having arrived in the luxurious appartment in Northern Teheran, where the Alborz mountains loomed seemingly within touching distance outside the window, the general atmosphere was one of laid-back nonchalance. Everyone was there with their boyfriend and the bong circulated as Hollywood movies rotated in the DVD player. I felt like I might have just as well been in a rich kids' parents' appartment in the 16th arrondissement in Paris, or elsewhere in Europe.

Mahan leaned back on the couch holding the bong with both hands on his lap, informing me, "so many of my friends like opium, they smoke it all the time, opium is just anywhere in this country," only to add, tapping his thigh with the lighter that was balanced on his knee, "but I just love my weed."
As for personal, anecdotal evidence, in rural Iran I had certainly seen my share of opium-smokers, although in Teheran marijuana had seemed to me thus far to prevail.

Pseudo-philosophical conversation kept flowing, annoying me just as much as the brainless flicks on the plasma TV. There were moments when you were reminded you were in Iran: Like When the girls got up and served a platter of sliced watermelon to everyone, then took away the plates to share doing the dishes between themselves.

The risk of it being too great, Iranians don't go out of the house once they are drunk. So I was stuck with the rich kids for the remainder of the day. It was a good thing I could medicate my ennui with the red wine for those few hours.

In the night Pouya had planned to go to some sort of birthday party. It seemed to be one of those Teherani parties where men and women mingle freely, the females wearing deep decolletés and having their hair styled up, everyone nibbling on canapés and sipping on glasses of whisky on the rocks. I had never attended such a party, but heard and read much about them, so I was curious. Organizing the evening was Pouya's official girl-friend, a suppposedly platonic affair(I don't know if that's true).
Turned out though that the plan fell through. It just happened so that today the girl-friend had a chat with Pouya's mother, and found out about some recent cavortings of his (while not being exactly happy about my presence neither). Whereas on the phone she sounded supremely cheesed off, when we were at the doorstep of her tower block flat, -her leaning out of the door with her long hair flowing down over her skimpy cocktail party dress with the (not particularly appealing) party music spilling out onto the street from the closed appartment door behind her- she worked herself right up into a frenzy, producing an unabating flow of reprehensions, ultimately rejecting us. As we turned away, deciding to go for a stroll through the city instead, Pouya told me sourly in his discontent that every girlfriend of his always had a separate relationship with his mother, "They talk to each other to find out more about me. The girls to get to know me, my mother to control me."

We walked through the Ramadan night, grabbing free tea and sweets to nurse our onsetting hangovers at some sort of band stand in the neighbourhood. Enormous loudspeakers blared noisy trance music weirdly inappropriate for the holy occasion.