i am a lefty

kitchen nightmare

2012-01-04T09:28:00.000-05:00

spent a few days in paris over the weekend, in one of my old haunts, the 11th arrondissement, near bastille. mother set up a lovely apartment of a friend of hers, a stone's throw from one of my favorite restaurants Paris-Hanoi, which serves delicious, fresh vietnamese food, in a tiny space with a line out the door.
the night we wanted to go, it was especially cold and we didn't feel like waiting, so we walked up the street to a place my mother had previously recommended, called "le grain de riz." the reviews on qype and google made it seem like a little gem of a spot that really brings true the spirit of saigon.
so there it was, little tiny storefront, the windows were steamed up so you couldn't really see what was happening inside. but how often do you get bad food in paris, right?
the series of events that followed led me to believe this was some sort of practical joke set up by my stepfather, or one of these "ha, you're on hidden camera!" type things, but no. this was far worse than any episode of kitchen nightmare, chef ramsey would have burned the place down if he had seen it.
so the place is run by this overly cheerful petite vietnamese woman with a really thick accent. daily specials on the chalkboard, and a display case...with some of the most disgusting food i have seen since Kinshasa. some old shrimp that were so browned you couldn't tell if they were raw or cooked, discolored noodles, and some dumplings made with see-through gelatin which allowed you to see the poo-like meat inside.
i tentatively order 1 dish for the 2 of us to take away, as i'm already hit with uneasiness and wondering if we should make a run for the door.
one of the employees, fresh from being berated by the boss lady, emerges from the kitchen with bowl of nasty smelling meat, which he lays out by the window to cool off. this guy is an indian reincarnation of vanilla ice, his persona complete with artisitcally shaved eyebrows, and "don't fuck with me" scowl.
the woman goes back to yelling at him and his co-worker, who are so emotionless i wonder if they have been zombified. she is screaming at them "don't ever put this in there!" and when i see them all hunched over, i realize, oh, they are cooking on the floor. how cute. it becomes less cute when the meat is placed on said floor, and suddently a very well groomed cocker spaniel starts walking around, wagging his tail, sniffing the food, patted on the head, but quickly gets ordered back into his laid in the kithen. what is going on here? i'm thankful that their demeanor towards the dog shows that he's not ready to be eaten, but still...

we turn our gaze to the decorations on the shelf, some lovely bottles with reptiles and half-filled with strange colored liquid. "if she takes any of those bottles into the kitchen, we are out of here."

the coup de grace is when i see one of the chefs, spinning around with a hot dish, eager to find a surface to put it down - but there are none, the kitchen is the size of a closet, so he lays it on the toilet and wipes his hand on his forehead. meanwhile, the lady comes out, sneezes full force into her hands, asks me how many dumplings i want and grabs them from the display case with her bare hands.
my manpanion and i look at our suddenly pale faces and if this can't get any weirder we hear a frog sound. that's it, we're leaving, they are cooking live frogs? when it's not a frog, but the movement of a mechanical piggy bank on the counter, springing suddenly to life. are we hallucinating? the couple sitting at a table, their backs to this entire scene are nuzzling, saying, isn't this just like saigon?
well if this is saigon, then i'm cancelling my trip. i've seen better hygeine in Congo, and that was some pretty weird shit.
i still felt some obligation to buy the food and take it. on the way home we passed some happy drunks and i was about the give them the package, and then tomorrow's headlines flashed before my eyes "3 homeless men, found dead, poisoned."
we went back to the apartment and cooked pasta. i opened the container that accompanied my pho, out of curiosity. gleaming, raw meat, alongside the cooked pieces. nasty!

i'm not blind, that's raw, right?

and that's when we realized, the hype around le grain de riz is simply evidence of the last bastion to be conquered by parisian hippes, because they are really the pioneers when deciding what is cool or not. and the only crap left to be discovered and kept secret are places like this, that are so dirty and underground it must be good...except that once you remove your fur ear flap hat and plastic rimmed glasses, well you just got raw meat served to you, which you paid 10 euros for and nearly contracted hepatitis from.
way to go, guys!

ain't no party like a fireworks party

2012-01-02T08:41:00.002-05:00

so in germany no one crosses the street when the light is red, you always wear your seat belt or helmet, and commercial food is clearly labeled - all for our safety, right? However, on december 29, 30, and 31 it's totally ok to buy as many professional fireworks as your pocketbook will allow and have yourself a festival of explosion that can send you and your neighbors to the moon. frighteningly non-dangerous from the german perspective.
before the holidays, i asked a friend where i can procure some fireworks to enhance my new year's celebration - i did this in a low voice, like you do in new york, where it's illegal, or maybe the stasi is listening. he laughed and said "anywhere!" as in, you walk left right up or down and every store is selling fireworks.
and he was totally right! at the aldi supermarket i picked up a family pack called "moonwalker" and then at the hardware store, i fought a kid and his dad for the last car battery sized box called "evil lights" and some more of these huge rockets sold under the name "sky explosion," and some 3 foot long SUPERMEGAMAX sparklers.you can even buy remote controlled stuff that explodes when you want it to. amazing.
upon returning home, my boyfriend, who declared he wanted nothing to do with fireworks this year proceeded to tear open the packages like i was santa claus and lit them right off the balcony. we smoked up the entire courtyard and rattled the windows with some 1/4 sticks of dynamite. i expected the doorbell to ring courtesy of the police, but the people across the way, sitting in their kitchen didn't even flinch. they proceeded to drink their tea, even as we pointed a roman candle directly at them.

ready to light up

so 10 minutes before new years, as we heard the roaring skies swelling with sound, me and 20 random party guests climbed a rickety ladder up to the treacherously wet and dangerous rooftop to see an endless display of colors and explosions. i thought for a second that maybe people wouldn't want us up there, trampling on their ceilings, but hey, there were other people, far more drunken than us hopping across the rooftops like chimney sweeps from mary poppins. the air was thiick with smoke that stung the back of my throat and burned my eyes. so this is what bahdad is like!

butnin' down the house

it was like a scene from a war zone, shock and awe in 360 degrees, complete insanity that lasted well ino the wee hours. all these people, spending all this money and blasting all this tnt - makes for a real swell evening! and so thankful for not blowing my hands off!

until next year...which will be even bigger and brighter!

Majnun

2011-12-01T12:12:00.000-05:00

Elegant master procrastinator

berlin burger battles

2011-11-28T13:42:00.001-05:00

mcdonald's, burger king, they are actually few and far between in berlin. mostly at train stations - and for good reason. homeless people and the punks with their dogs eat big macs all day long. so while new york is all cupcakes and bahn mi (ok, those are good), and washington dc is the new tossed salad capital, berlin is back to burgers, bro!
in a block radius from my house there is the burgeramt, kreuzburger, burgermeister, and others which i can't name, and they all have the same recipe: a tiny 12 square meter space, organic beef, toppings, and weird choices that mimic pizza styles, like the hawaii burger (canadian bacon and pineapple)? and to my dear brother who seems to never worry about the bottom line: these places are always packed. these guys might be on their feet all day, but they are maxing relaxing when they come from the bank (imagine what you could do with sausages?). anyway, the burgeramt stays open until 4am, accompanied by requisite berlin techno music and it's a wonder the neighbors don't complain. maybe cuz the fries are so tasty. they even opened a sister sit-down place.
what's nice about berlin though, is the fries come with mayo and you can order different size patties, like normal, mini and super huge, and, if you're feeling veggie, you can go with haloumi. big old chunk of greek cheese. or, like the offer at my current favorite, berlin burger international in Neukoelln, you go all the way for the triple cheese double decker high ball: haloumi, cream cheese and tyroler, 2 patties, 3 buns. absolute ridiculousness, but when my friends ordered one the other night, and i only had potato wedges, i was slightly jealous. they are open sundays now, btw.

this little piggie gives a thumbs up

the thing about bbi though that tops the list of burger joints, is that you can get a stamp card (10th burger free) and all come with feld salat, what you call mache, (nice touch), fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, ketchup and mayo and a big toothpick to keep it all in place. i want another one.

sorry to be so scatalogical...

2011-11-10T04:29:00.000-05:00

...but never has a country been so unkind to my bowels. and is it normal that the only bathroom at the office... is in someone's office? that someone is also the chatty young guy. so you have to walk in there, like, hi....i'm just...going to...don't mind me! and they are meters away, on a conference call or something, on speakerphone. and you can't go in there too often, right, so, i'm pretty good at coming up with an excuse to go back to the guesthouse, which is right down the street. oh, forgot my phone charger...wiping the cold sweat off my brow...but i can only forget so many things a day, right? it's just not right...

if i had room in my luggage...

2011-11-09T02:29:00.003-05:00

...i would bring back some killer ratan furniture (better quality than the crap we had in our living room 20 years ago...)

regabbing

2011-11-07T09:42:00.000-05:00

so after working 12 hours days all week, it was friday and the other colleagues summoned nay, ordered us to leave our computers. ok. so we go to a little courtyard cafe that is just lovely. under the mango trees, a little courtyard partly covered by zinc roofs on comfy cushioned couches. this is very nice. we are just sitting around, having a great time when GADONGDONGDGONG! mangos. falling. sometimes hitting the zinc roof and blubblublblub rolling off, but more often than not, falling within centimeters of my head or my beer. hey this isn't cool guys, these are really big mangoes!
oh, don't worry about them. it's the bats that eat them, and then they fall.
ok, bats. don't bats carry ebola?
yes they do.
so these are ebola infected mangoes falling on my head?? finally, one manages to smash my glass and the cafe owner comes to clean up, and offer a plastic bag to take the mangoes home. souvenir!

we then decide it's too perilous to eat dinner there and head to some distant part of town, full of loud music, mangy dogs and zinc roof huts. we sit down and order "cotisse" which are some sort of mini porc ribs. being pseudo-vegetarian, i wander to the bbq stand across the way that has different sorts of fish and french fries. but quickly realize it was a mistake to order there, because the cotisse are delicious. absolutely devine, finger lickin' good. the ladies at the grill just chop chop chop and serve. with zesty mayo and mustard. eat, suck bones, eat some more. yum.

so i'm licking my fingers and tossing the bones to this street dog, which looks like it's like a large rat skeleton covered in scruff. it might be a puppy but it's suuuuuper skinny. kinda sad. i toss it some more bones, and of course it starts choking on them, and then gets nearly run over by a landcruiser and i feel especially bad. that's what you get for helping street dogs.
we then figure out that we are in the one spot of town where everyone makes a 3 point u turn and blares their headlights in your face. this is really annoying. why is everyone turning around right here? and running over my street dog? let's go.

so we head down the street to a place appropriately called "le terminus." a road that ends in some stinky muddy mangroves. yet, le terminus is this wonderful cafe sitting just inside an 8 meter tall stand of mangroves. they are mysterious, complex, and tey put neon lights in them, it's quite breathtaking. the bar is desolately empty, but there is a working bathroom and a friendly bartender who seems to have recorded every date and every score of every soccer match between gabon and equitorial guinee since the beginning of time. at this point i've realized our tunisian colleague in fact eats pork, and drinks, and is really funny. richard the camerounian is arguing that his country has a better offense. here i am, in the middle of a mangrove, the first natural thing i've seen since coming here. i order another beer, a regab, which the bartender says "french people love it." ok. because it's what you drink when you want to "regarder les gabonais ne pas le boire. regab." nice.

hello mr. grumpy

2011-11-04T04:46:00.003-04:00

so my colleagues and i are sitting in a little terrace in libreville, calmly drinking our giant beers, occasionally trying to name each hip hop artist on the extremely why-does-it-have-to-be-turned-up-so-dang-loud tv next to the bar. no, that's not beyonce, that's rihannah. duh.

this old belgian guy comes up to hans to say hi and sits down, and instructs the waitress to bring him a beer as soon as this one is empty - and don't stop with the beers until he says so. he starts rambling ON and ON and ON about how much Gabon sucks, the government sucks, the gabonese people suck (uhh, ya mind buddy? stephane is from gabon and he's sitting right in front of you). and i deduce that he's some sort of old timey botanist or something. the pocketed khaki vest kinda gives it away.

i watch some more jay z and then i hear the guy start bitching about those americans, and their stupid satellite imagery and so then i perk up and lend my ear a bit. blah blah, then he starts talking about congo, and all the stupid satellite imagery those stupid americans collect over there, and how they use computers, to, you know, design parks and corridors and zones and stuff, like robots, you know, these stupid americans, with their little hexagons, and their little digital maps and their silly workshops ---woah woah hey buddy--- led by little girls with cutesy french names like...

---like, my name? hi. nice to meetcha.

so i caught him, a few nanoseconds before he called me a "petasse." wow. so my fame is international i guess.

but it continued. his beer glass never emptied, hours after we paid the bill. every loooooong paragraph started with: . BUT! the problem is....and on and on. hans escaped by faking a phone call, but me and stephane had to listen to him trash our respective countries, our organization, and, of course, the book he was commissioned to write on the whole process, before he quit and dumped it all on me. just last week i started editing his grumpy toned chapters to make it publishable. we left him in the bartalking to a plastic chair. small world.

the dinner party

2011-11-03T03:19:00.001-04:00

so today was the wishy washy meeting day. i was warned about it, a meeting with ms. wishy washy, whom i had met over a phone call years ago, and was indeed the most wishy washy person i had ever talked to then, and still today.
ms. wishy washy has a way of talking slowly, elegantly, what with her drapey scarf around her neck, flowing hair, underbite, she and promises the world! endless amounts of data, sortof...maybe...because as soon as you mention concrete details, like, oh, today? or can you put that on this usb stick? it then dissipates into total vagueness. if someone could speak like a grey fog cloud, it's ms. wishy washy. it sortof became tiring, and then i got antsy because i was hungry and it was time for lunch, so goodbye ms. wishy washy see ya around, whatever, maybe sometime. and that was it.
at the end of the day, our little dutch colleague hans comes into the office and declares he's invited to a dinner party at one of the other ngos. and is allowed only one guest. he scans the room -the gabonese guy sinks behind his screen and quickly mutters, no way man, not interested in being drawn into that trap again!...the camerounian waves his arms, champions league! sorry! so then the dutch guy looks between me and mahmoud, the tunisian whom i say is not white enough to be an expat. mahmoud is also on some sort of anti-ramadan diet where he only eats [an excessive amount] during the day and diets at night. and so i'm selected.
oooooh! dinner party!
we drive off through town, getting lost here and there. i'm getting all excited about a home cooked meal. what should we bring to our hosts, a pineapple? giant bottle of beer? hans says, we bring nothing but ourselves, we will be the most interesting people there. oh, it's a trap indeed.
we show up and it's this massive house with lots of random boats parked in the yard....and who is there? well if it isn't little miss wishy washy. yargh. i quickly say hi, and ask if i can use the bathroom (why do we do this? has anyone ever said, no you can't?) but i have to pee like crazy, because when night falls i learned on day 1, never, ever, ever use the office toilet. you turn the light on and every surface is covered with huge flying cockroaches who are much less scared of me than i am of them. and they seem to like toes. the first time i screamed hans screamed back from his desk oh, nicer than the toilets in germany eh?!
so i run to the bathroom and i'm about to do my bidness and woah, there is a gargantuan turd floating there. huge. hmm. seeing as i'm have a sortof complex about toilets, and am a self proclaimed pro at fixing them, i get striaght to work, take the lid off of the top, check the water hose, test the lever action thingie, try a little flush etc.. etc...i find the source of the problem (has anyone touched this thing in days??) and so i flush some more, things are going great, things are working, but let's face it-while the mechanism functions this thing is just clogged. really clogged. i don't get it - in libreville there are handmade call-a-plumber signs on every light post. but the water level's rising, i realize i've been in here way too long, it smells, i flushed many times. crap, i'm like the guy in the fukushima reactor core, time to get out! now!
i stroll back to the kitchen like nothing's wrong, la dee da have myself a little gin and tonic and engage in some mundane conversation about golden cats. cool, golden cats.
anyway, the lady who studies turtles gets up and minute later and we hear her screams "oy my god! clooooggggged!" and she starts freaking out and everyone suddenly looks at me. me! what did i do? i didn't even go! i'm turning bright red, even though i'm telling myself, don't blush, don't blush! it's a sign of guilt! but my cheeks are naturally red. crap! can't we talk about cats some more? but it's so fucking hot don't they have air conditioning. dang! hans is disapprovingly laughing. the botanist, panther expert, cat lady, turle woman and tree dude all think that i destroyed ms. wishy washy's toilet.
i'll have you know i actually fixed it and you should be thanking me!
and that's when we left the dinner party.

surfing hippos?

2011-11-01T03:48:00.001-04:00

the only thing i knew about gabon before coming here was surfing hippos. they have hippos that come out onto the beach and play in the ocean. they actually still have hippos. in Congo they have all been decimated by trigger happy militias.

i also found out that the population of kinshasa is about 10times all of gabon. (so how did the 7 billionth baby get born in gabon?? should have been DRC. where the baby probably has a 10% chance of getting AIDS, and a 90% chance of having a miserable life...) and that's really where the difference is. oh, and all the oil money.

which is why the maps I'm making are pretty boring. green...green...all forest...green. and lots of mining and forest concessions though, almost the entire country. so that's the main issue, but still, the forests are full of animals, not so much of people. they have fresh croissants, cafe au lait! france24 on every tv (al jazeera shows nothing but football), you can walk on the streets day or night, traffic jam? what's that? and there is a fresh breeze from the beach, which is right there, where you can also swim, and find sea turtles nesting at night. this is a capital city. in africa. though the house where i'm staying has no hot water, the sink is clogged and there is no internet...but hey, you can't have it all.

Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes

2011-09-17T19:13:00.000-04:00

Les sapeurs.

my coworkers took me out tonight, i thought it was going to be a concert but it was 100x better. it was a show by the sapeurs- the famous well dressed congolese: Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes. the group that has been hanging out together here, we call ourselves the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Un Peu Élégantes quoi. that's our new name because we inject ambiance anywhere we go, and we are moderately well dressed.

read about them here and here.
fantastic show with rhythmic tapping, dancing, and a guy dressed in paper who calls himself 100% papier. it was undescribable.

i was designated to go to the bar and buy a round of beers.
i order a tembo, they dont have it.
i order turbo dog, the next best thing.
but they don't allow glass in the theater area.
ok, so can i have 4 beers in plastic cups?
you have to buy a bottle
but you said no bottles
you have to buy a bottle that we pour into plastic cups
how big are the cups?
we are looking for them
<10 minutes>
ok...so those are pretty small, give me one big beer into 4 cups
it won't be enough, you want 2 beers
um...ok fine.
the 2 beers end up being poured into 7 perfectly even cups.
how am i going to bring these back to our group? can i borrow a tray?
you can borrow temba.
temba is a guy in a tux. he brings the tray.
this is the greatest way to bring beers back to our seats. i go and sit down and everyone is all heeeyyy where are the beers? you were supposed to get beers! and i snap - temba! over here. niiiiice.

another night on the town

2011-09-17T11:51:00.000-04:00

my days in kinshasa are numbered, so our little juvenile threesome is taking it up a notch. tonight we decided to go all bourgeois and get whiskey and sodas at the grand hotel. at 4 times the price, yes 4 times the volume of lunch we were pretty content. there's a nice little terrace by the pool and a 10 piece band that plays, note for note, this music:

next we went to a place that was essentially the set for Roadhouse. endless james brown from a crappy sound system, super smokey, wood paneled walls and strange leather banquettes. the first place i've ever been to here that serves club sandwiches and steak tartare. though the weirdest thing was people actually order the steak tartare. the spanish girl next to me was on her second plate (also called the cannibal's platter, which is a little too close to DRC for me) and told me how she had it yesterday and it was wonderful. wow.
there was also something else a little weird - i'm used to seeing the mixed congolese/white couples that often includes an exchange of money, but here they were all old white guys with young african boys. blech. though a little odd that it was so blatant, when we're in one of those "homophobia isn't a problem here because we don't HAVE any gay people!" on the way home the driver wasn't really seeing straight and so i was volunteered to co-pilot, meaning notify the driver of th vehicle for hazards. well it was like hosting an auction, there's a pothole there! there! and there!
and he would say too late! crash. too late! crash. too late! crash
and then it was street kid on your right! on your left! guy in a wheechair! guy wth no legs! three guys with no legs in a wheelchair! gaaaarhhhhhhh!

chile con carne?

2011-09-16T13:15:00.000-04:00

Today i had lunch with the japanese. A while ago, I wrote to the Japanese aid agency because they had a project that overlaps one of ours and the guy wrote back and was all “you don’t remember me? We went to grad school together!” and I felt really horrible because I didn’t recognize his name, even if it was fuji yakashima and hiroshi majato, it’s all the same. because i'm so ignorant.

we decided to have lunch. My Japanese friend suggested the Cercle Gourmand, the really fancy french restaurant at the golf course. I didn’t want to go alone (and I really needed a ride) so I invited the loudmouth French guy, cedric, whom I’m working for at the ministry. I’ll totally go! He says, in his messed up hair and dusty jeans.

So we careen into the parking lot in a cloud of dust with our dented up pickup, and realize it’sone of those places were you get dropped off under the awning and a guy with white gloves opens the door. I asked cedric to drop me off at the awning but he said no.

We go in and it’s all classical music and oil paintings on the walls, and white table cloths and wine glasses. We’re just laughing and pointing at things, and I recall this is the place where I ate a duck salad with a former American governor 4 years ago and puked my guts out.
Anyway, we ask the host – there’s a host, I’ve never seen a restaurant in DRC with a host- if there are any Japanese people here and he says, yes, of course, the ambassador is right this way. And I’m thinking, really? They brought the ambassador? And I look at cedric, who’s sweating through his shirt and has a backpack and think this can’t be right. Then I see some asian dudes with ponytails on the patio and point – are those guys Japanese? Looks much more our style. they are.

I goof around with my 3 words of Japanese and we sit down amidst the foliage and sounds of parakeets. They get right to business. They have business cards, handouts, a giant map. Cedric is digging through his pockets for a pen and the Japanese guys are inquiring about the lunch special and there is some drawn out description, I’m not paying attending, I'm looking around at all the fancy people and what they are eating and when the waiter asks me, I just say, yeah, me too lunch special.

So we start talking, and sweating, the Japanese guys are wearing full suits, super rigid, radios on their belts (security) sitting straight up, occasionally answering their cell phones. It’s all rather surreal. The one guy baaaaarely speaks French or English, it’s super choppy incomprehensible accent and when I ask him what he thinks of Kinshasa, all I can make out it

“so very dangerous!....But!....Exciting!”

True dat.

So our meals come out, silver bowl over them and everything. White gloves delicately remove the cover to reveal a steaming…wait, is that chile con carne? Indeed it is. The beans were so undercooked I thought they were peanuts. And it cost the same as a monthly pass to a berlin gym. robbery. i thought the japanese would have paid but then i thought it's probably a cultural thing, or we weren't dressed well enough.

There were a few awkward moments but that was the jist of it. Cedric, as usual didn’t have any money, with his daily ritual “can I tax you 50 bucks?” and it basically blew my budget. Chile con f-ing carne?

getting stuff

2011-09-15T17:47:00.002-04:00

a friend of a friend of a friend had some weed the other day...it doesn't come in a little package here, it's a garbage bag. you basically get a whole dried bush of the stuff. your own tiny christmas tree. absolutely amazing.
then i started wondering about how one goes about purchasing this huge thing without anyone seeing you, white person, you probably stick out wherever they sell it but then i think duhhhh. you don't ever go get stuff here, there's always someone to go get it for you.
seriously, right now, there's a guy in brown pyjamas sleeping in a chair outside my room. i can wake him, show him a 5$ bill and say i want an unripe avocado and a baseball signed by mickey mantle and i swear he'll get it. that's how we got dry erase markers for the white board at the office. hey, papa, see this? i want four of them. in different colors. go. and voila.
buuuuut it's not only because i'm a cute white girl, i'm also madame petit dejeuner. you see at breakfast they serve you an entire loaf of sliced bread, eggs, bananas, juice boxes, it's way too much for a normal human. so i'll eat one piece of toast and then i'll make these wonderful little sandwiches - with butter, and salt, and you know, really made with love. and everyone gets one on my way out in the morning, the car washer, the gate guy with the baton, some guys at the office.
the bananas and fruit i save for the street kids at the intersection, especially the skinner smaller ones- only problem is they are starting to recognize our car and next week the driver is going to even more harassed- anyway, one day the hotel lady asked me what i did with all those sandwiches - as i'm apparently the only one who finishes their tray in the morning - and i told her.
and she looked at me like someone who has to pick up a dead bug "that isn't really done here" but in a more passive agressive way "ca ne se fait pas ici" like this is a sorority or something. so i ask half laughing, what they do with leftovers, ha, you throw them away? in the stinky open sewage canal? ben oui, of course.

the congo river

2011-09-15T12:32:00.000-04:00

This morning there was a political rally outside our hotel so we thought it would be a good idea to go out for lunch a little further away. We went to "Chez Tintin", a little patio on a patch of grass on the congo river. We drank primus and ate our daily ration of roasted chicken with plantains and fries. there is this amazing view on the congo river that is as beautiful as it is troubling.

The river at this point is a series of massive rapids, waves 30 feet high, fast rushing brown water. On the river banks, which are now quite larger from the dry season is a strange mix of Congolese. On the one hand there’s the people from the shanty town who are washing their clothes or bathing in one of the pools, or the family rock mining activity- multiple generations, from 6 years old to grandma slowly hitting at rocks, carrying them away on their heads to sell on the road. And then the more well off people from kinshasa taking a stroll with their girlfriends and taking pictures on their cameras, and then us, the mondeles. The sound of the rushing water are almost overwhelmed by the clinking of the rock hammers – all of which are smothered in garbage. Burned aerosol cans, plastic bottles, flip flops and medical waste. It stinks. And this is the Kinshasa waterfront. 20 years ago this was the place to be.
i also made some new friends.

carrying rocks

team vodacom

the future of DRC!

2011-09-13T17:22:00.001-04:00

these days i'm helping out at the ministry of environment in kinshasa. there's a new office and we are essentially setting up the future park system of DRC and these are the headquarters!

The place is a big ole villa with a busted up schoolbus in the courtyard and a boat up on pilons.
There’s a giant ditch out front you have to leap over to get in and I found the ditch is juuust a bit wide for one of my skirts.

leap of faith

Across the street is some foreign ministry where pimping black cadillacs (from 1982) show up with kids running after it. A bunch of guys in leopard print will get out – chiefs from the other provinces. One day they caught me staring at them, I was contemplating the leopard print caps and rattan pants and they blew kisses and waved. So cute. I could have been part of their harem.
normally, there are employees in our building, but i heard the bus that picks them up (is probably the one out front) and brings them here apparently broke down and no bus means no employees come anymore. there are a few stragglers, people who sit in empty offices at empty desks and take naps. whenever we pass the door that says “Information Technology” and has 3 people in it (only working a/c) even though there are no computers or servers or phones we keep telling ourselves, the future of the park system of DRC!

sometimes i'll walk around and say hi to the folks around and it makes everyone so happy. They look up from their bible or empty hands and say heeeeeyyy! Madaaaaame! My favorite was how the papa who cleans the place apologized to me for 20 minutes that he has been out for the past 3 days because he was at the other office getting a new broom, check out his broom. It’s going to clean now.

The copy machine is just outside. Next to the ministry, a bunch of guys on the dirt with a table and a big old photocopier on it. There’s a sign advertising "crystal clear"black and white copies. They plug in to the guy next to them who has a grid of outlets screwed to a board. And this board has a long extension cord that plugs in somewhere, probably the foreign ministry.

The street is rather nice to walk around, lots of impulse shopping (eggs from a box on my head? jeans? cds?) but the corner at the boulevard is treacherous, with aggressively begging kids. Even if you give them money they end up fighting over it and getting all mad, it’s awful.
So it’s apparently a phenomenon now, the street kid, or shege. They’re not even orphans, it’s like a woman will have too many kids, or kids with a new boyfriend and they end up accusing the kids of their previous relationship of sorcery, which i guess is the most socially acceptable grounds to kick them out of the house and they end up as one of the 30-40,000 street kids who hang around intersections and reach into your car. The worst is that a lot of these kids are no longer kids, when sheges grow up they don't go off to college and marry, they become angry, bitter, very violent teenagers who don’t think twice about punching you in the face in broad daylight. happens almost every day, so far, thankfully, to everyone but me. And that’s the reality of Kinshasa.

goat: it's what's for dinner

2011-09-13T16:56:00.000-04:00

so i'm sorry there's no crazy field trips to write about this time, it's really just a week of work in kinshasa and the only time i go out is to eat.

i can't explain why we keep going out for asian food. maybe because the beloved indian place closed down, or the pizza places have too many mosquitos and prostitutes, or perhaps it's because of "5 chantiers!!" the rallying cry of mr. kabila - which are the 5 example construction sites in DRC, you see them on tv....and they are entirely run by chinese.

tonight we decided to try the place next door to the hotel, the one with ~~chinese japanese korean~~ asian fusion food painted on the wall.

there were 2 relatively happy goats tied up outside and the nicer one, well i scratched his chin and named him "yummy."

i immediately discovered the fantastic appeal of this restaurant - it's not the tables which seem to be lined with real ivory, but the bright red glowing button that adorns each of them.

what does this thing do? i press the red glow-BING BONG!- a giant bell sound echoes - in the dining room, which is actually not the room where all the waitresses are hanging out watching tv - and in kinshasa people only watch tv at one volume: all the way up.

anyway, they apparently respond as a few minutes later you can hear the s l o w flip flop shuffling and poof! a pudgy congolese woman squeezed into a kimono appears!

every restaurant should have one of these bells!

the prices and menu are, as usual all over the place, from $4 for tempura, $13 for noodle soup, $24 for sashimi to $37 for a kilo of kimchi? who orders a kilo? and pictures of everything.

and hot towels? and glowing cases of mushroom wine and sake. the lunch special is 18$. this place is fancy.

we ordered a bunch of food and the waitresses wheel your stuff over (an hour later) on a wobbly metal cart. i guess this is fancy asian congo style. except that from the kitchen to the dining area there are at least 2 steps of varying height, so they are constantly struggling with this cart, lifting up one side, and so all you hear are dishes jingling, knocking over the teas and drinks. and then BING BONG the other table wants to order!
let's give them an A for effort.

and wow, this is really the only place where the food actually resembled the pictures. it was delicious and delicate and all i know is we kinda ran out of there when it was clear they messed up on the bill and undercharged us. thankyoumercigoodnight!

on the way out, there was only one goat.
so that's why the "pork" was so chewy, yet fresh!
yummy!

breakfast

2011-09-12T02:30:00.001-04:00

ils nous prennent tous pour des gros cons!

2011-09-11T18:01:00.002-04:00

The other night we were talking about what it's like to live in Kinshasa, how you meet people, who are they, and I asked my co-worker about the NGO scene. Surely it’s easy to meet people in that circle? What about UN parties, medecins sans frontiers etc…?
well he let’s out this huge laugh and described that in the hierarchy of coolness of expats, WWF is apparently the bottom rung of the ladder. this was a total shock to me.

At that point a little musical interlude blooper reel cycles through my head, with images of the guys at the office loading stuff onto the roofs of vehicles, where they push more stuff from the back, the load ends up sliding down the windshield. Or the overweight quebecois guy with long hair and bulgy eyes whom you barely understand when he speaks French (it seems he only talks about mangwain, whatever that is), how there's never any toilet paper, and the we managed to destroy 2 boats in 2 days...etc...etc...
So i guess at the very top level of coolness you have diplomats, but you don’t really mingle with them unless you have a connection. Neither do you with the UN. They are overpaid, act like their shit don’t stink and if they are guys they spend half their salaries on prostitutes and if they are girls they are 22 years old and get their hair braided African style and just loooove Africa, omg it’s so great!

If there was still a peace corps here, they would probably come next, and then the NGOs. Though the ones building latrines walk some moral high ground over us, and since the rest of the conservation NGOs are apparently all run like they are on rails, and by prettier people, at the very bottom, well I guess that leaves us!

i was pretty bummed to find that out, but he ended it with, Aurelgrooves, don’t you know? “ils nous prennent tous pour des gros cons!”

another typical restaurant experience

2011-09-11T11:57:00.000-04:00

so i'm working in a team with 2 other people, an american woman from wwfus who is staying at my hotel and a french guy based here. we've worked through the weekend. well, there's supposed to be another belgian guy but his wife put him on some sort of low-calorie diet and he's even slower than the typical belgian so we let him stay home.

the plan is to meet at 8am at our hotel cafe and whoever is there first orders our two alloted breakfasts withfried eggs, and one extra coffee and we all just split it.

it's kinda odd that the lady doesn't blink twice when i'm there all alone, ordering 4 eggs, 8 pieces of toast, 2 yogurts and 2 orange juices but she flips out when i ask for 3 coffees. TROIS CAFES??? we went through this yesterday do you remember?

at lunch on saturday we decided to try the chinese restaurant where no one ever eats at, but there's a nice patio. the kitchen is all Chinese, and the service is 100% consoles. chinese restaurants are for some reason extremely expensive, so we went with some appetizers and only TWO dishes for THREE people. we are very clear about this. we would like THREE plates and TWO dishes. she writes everything down.

if the waitress doesn't come back with the menu 5 minutes later it means they have all the ingredients for your dishes and order has succeeded.

she comes back 5 minutes later with the menu.

no sweet and sour pork.

so we have to ask - what are you missing, the pork? the sweet and sour sauce?

she has to go back into the kitchen, comes back as always walking real slow, with the shuffling of flip flops, no pork..so we order the beef.

a few minutes later she brings out a dish and places in front of us. we have no plates, no silverware, there's just this dish and it's not our appetizer. i'm sort of poking at it, scrutinizing...it looks like general tao's fish or something. smells like fish.

madame, what is this?

it's chicken.

it really smells like fish. it takes like fish. ok...

all our other dishes come out and we now have this extra dish.

where's the chicken with cashews?

there were no cashews so we put cucumbers.

cucumbers? who cooks cucumbers?

whatever, just eat.

we all had stomach cramps 4 hours later.

what's the same in kinshasa!

2011-09-11T08:06:00.000-04:00

what's the same in kinshasa!

the luggage claim at the airport remains...a dazzling display of madness.

this time, i was lucky to be one of the first through customs (i chose the diplomatic passport line, hehehe), and got a spot at the front, but only to witness how ridiculous it all is.

first, there's a really sharp curve where all the bags gets stuck and eventually pile up and fall onto the ground. so don't bother standing after the curve. people will also accuse you of taking all the bags off the belt.

second, uh, why doesn't anyone remember what their bag looks like? you packed it 10 hours ago, do you not recall that it is a carboard box with a picture of a microwave on it wrapped in pink plastic and weighs 900 pounds?? since i am the front, i'm expected to be like the guys in the blue suits and check the nametag on same the bag EACH TIME is goes around...and around..and around. no, it's not your bag ma'am.

which leads me to my next point. no one seems to realize that the moving belt is actually a circle. people freak out, that's my bag! there goes my bag! someone get my bag! like they will never see it again.
then it comes back around and they don't recognize it, because they don't know what their bag looks like in the first place (see above)

and...then they get very angry when they finally realize they are seeing the same bags over and over again, like this is some collossal joke that they just figured out. wait.....these are all the same bags we just saw!!
which is when they start screaming at the guys behind the plastic curtain "hey!! stop sending the same bags around! we want new ones!"

what's new in kinshasa!

2011-09-09T20:04:00.002-04:00

1. there's a traffic light. a working traffic light. a big fancy one with bright digital numbers that count down until the change.

only problem is no one really follows it.

because if you're a big stupid sucker and you are waiting at the light, you're basically a sitting duck for the police dudes rapping their sticks against everyone's doors and getting bribes.

2. my hotel has internet! working internet! wireless internet! that works! and no animals in cages!

3. bottled water is now 4$ for 50cl, and a package of instant coffee (one serving) is 5$. robbery.

4. there's a suggestion box at the office....

.....located in the toilet. and it's open.

i will suggest they move the suggestion box.

5. the lunch place has a chalkboard that features the specials of the day. today it read:

yaourt du lait

00 F.C.

like, it used to be 500 francs congolais (F.C.) but now someone erased the 5. you can buy them from a dude right right outside for 300 F.C. but it's ok, maybe these are actually cold? so today i nodded in direction of said chalkboard and asked, "oh, you have yogurt today?"

next week, madame.

jever fun is so NOT fun!

2011-07-27T15:10:00.000-04:00

when i first arrived in Berlin, i made extreme efforts to be social, like going out on sundays to madame claude's a little hangout in kreuzberg. on sundays there would be this open mic in a little back cave hosted by some hipster with a really thick funny german accent. lotz of zzz's. zo, ze next muzician eez...that kind of thing. the other novelty of madame claude's was that it was in a basement, and by that some sort of topsy turvy world where all this furniture was glued to the ceiling, tvs are upside down, so are coat racks, you get the idea. as such, the beer menus were also upside down.

what i like about mc's was their cheap beer selection, with several varieties of this jever brand. when at the bar i would peruse down - nay, up the menu for my cheapest selection: jever fun. looking back i recall a sortof smirk or under the breath laugh from the bartenders when i would order "ein mehr jever fun, bitte." i sometimes thought it was because i didn't tip or something, even though that's the norm - i'm no tourist you anglophone mockers. some nights i would have 4, 5 jever funs, though being a school night i would be sure to pace myself. never had a hangover. though never had an astounding time either. but props to jever fun for not compromising my monday

fast foward 13 months, at the most recent frisbee tournament where they modestly priced 1€ Jever varieties in between games.

do you have jever fun?? i asked eagerly.

no we don't.

why not?

why not? are you stupid? jever fun is non-alcoholic! why would we serve non-alcoholic at a frisbee tournament?

though that question deserves an answer - i quickly sunk into a funk so deep, like finding out someone has been sneaking 5€ bills out of my wallet all these years.

i've been duped! all those nights now making sense, and making an idiot of myself only powered by 0.05% or less alcohol that my grandmother would drink...the clean recollections of the night before, the tireness and barely mild mockable drunkenness.

in fact. jever fun is ANTI-fun!

does this work?

2011-07-06T11:23:00.002-04:00

so dignified...

2011-06-15T17:12:00.000-04:00

good stuff this weekend

2011-06-05T16:48:00.001-04:00

1. The weinhadlung & fahrschule is on my street. it's a driving school/wine distributor. and several pimpin' black mercedes. yes, yes, yes.

2. the chalkboard sign at my favorite ice cream shop now reads:
"flavor of the week: VANILLA"
sorry, no photo.

3. the holocaust memorial always looks different, everytime you go

4. graffiti

Seen in Mauerpark

2011-04-26T07:43:00.001-04:00

...on a garbage can.

i'm moving to friedrichshain!

2011-04-12T07:40:00.000-04:00

after 2 months of endless apartment -er, they call them "flats" here, like in england, at long last i found a place that was liveable, somewhat close to a u-bahn and doesn't have a brothel on the ground floor*
so, it's in friedrichshain, which i don't know too much about, but it has the secret movie threater, you can eat sri lankan food, see half demolished train depots, buy grungy locally designed clothing, go rock climbing on a historic tower, and get beat up by neo-nazis. and i have a private terrasse! coool!

*yes, at one place i visited, for which they were charging over 900€rent, the real estate agent didn't have the front door key, and no one would buzz him in, so he said, oh, maybe they're home and rang the "24h erotische salon" who of course let us in,. and after we entered we were greeted by a skankily clad..skanky lady who was erotically touching the doorknob. gross.

the berliner teller

2011-03-10T16:57:00.004-05:00

every day on my way to work i pass the 'ecke kneipe:' the corner pub with red and gold signs that is on every corner of every street in berlin. you can't see in the window because there's all this junk, and flower and jagermeister signs. mine has an actual hobo drunk little character. red nose, jug with three x's on it.

friendly neighborhood hobo

these place have the same recipe: wood paneled walls, they serve schultheiss, they open at 8 am on tuesdays. because a drunk needs his fix on tuesdays, as much as mondays.
on my way to work i often pass the little chalkboard outside announcing the day's specials. during christmas they had duck and goose. on fridays they serve fish. always something with sauerkraut.
i never had the courage to go in there, it was a sortof last frontier i haven't been confident enough to encounter with limited german. then one my american house guests went it and said it was everything they expected from a german pub, and more. and last week, they started advertising the "berliner teller." a plate of two meatballs, a currywurst, a schnitzel, roasted potatoes, and it that's not enough, a fried egg. for 8 Euro.
i'm living in berlin. this is my corner pub. i must try this platter.
well, all in all it was about what you'd expect, delicious, 2000 calories of brown. took an hour to get served. and the meatballs were actually hamburgers. with mustard.
i signed up for the eisbeinessen the last saturday of the month, a special event you need to reserve 3 weeks in advance. they serve one thing: pork knuckle. i'm so there.

mixed nuts

2011-03-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

one of the perks of living in little istanbul are these nut shops. like a deli that specializes in nuts, dried fruits and candy dates and stuff. there's a huge display case of little baskets of colorful nuts and assortments that you order in weighted quantities or whatever. there are picnic tables where people drink tea and eat sunflower seeds out of these giant bowls and spit out the shells onto the floor. the sidewalk and store are littered with shells that crunch under your feet. crrrunch.
now, i like sunflower seeds as much as ther next guy, but honestly, i have neither the patience nor mandibular prowess to eat more than one seed per minute. makes the whole thing very frustrating.
so they also have nut mixes.
a friend brought one of their nut mixes over once and it had all these delicious wasabi peas and cashews and you just wanted to put a handful in your mouth, but you would end up choking on a sunflower seed. why would they mix sunflower seeds into a perfectly edible and tasty mix?
so i am determined to come up with my own mix, the perfect variety and ratio of delicous nuts, without sunflower seeds. or raisins for that matter. this isn't trader joes trail mix. this is just nuts. i want to give planters a run for their money, and put utz pub and party mix to shame. my nut mix will be delectable, perfect, famous.
so once a week after work i go to the nut place and order a bunch of diffferent nuts. they always try to sell me their selected mix, but no, i don't want any of yuor heimlich maneuver choking nuts, i'm gonna make my own. so ask them to mix all these different quantities of nuts into one bag. it took me several attempts to get them to do it, at first the guy was all sassy and giving me 5 little bags of nuts, and then complaining that i only ordered 100 or 150 grams at a time (does he really want me ordering a kilo of cashews? i will eat it all on the way home and then be sick). like i was wasting his time. one visit i got the guy to mix them up, but then he gave me grief about mixing sweet and savory. it's wrong, he said. seriously guy? you have a phD in nut science and you've never put sweet sesame almonds with salted blister nuts? what's wrong with you?
well, it's not perfected yet, but i have tried many different combinations and ratios and i will tell you that i have a mix so good, they should dedicate one of their little baskets to it. and i am telling you the receipe now, dear reader, so you can go and order it yourself, and get treated like dirt for your unorthodox ways, but i tell you, i never go to a movie without the following:

150 grams of roasted cashews (the dark brown ones)
200 grams of the wasabi peanut things. these weigh more, and they are the most delicious so always err on the side of a lot)
100 grams of sesame covered almonds (you need some sweet)
100g walnuts or hazelnuts, whatever you are in the mood for.
50g of the orange chick pea things. they'll complain that 100g is the minimum, but then you'll tell them that they aren't really good, it's just for color.
100g of the student mix - ok this is a decent mix that doesn't have sunflower, but a lot of other junk. good variety.

shake the bag around to ensure proper mixage. you now have 700g of deliciousness.

fastest checkout guy EVER

2011-02-23T15:20:00.000-05:00

so one of the stressful things about going to the big discount supermarket is that the checkout people are so fast, by the time you've found your debit card to hand over, your groceries are all piled up at the end of the moving carpet thing, and the next person's stuff is already threatening to topple and co-mingle. and these are small, european checkout counters, and you don't have the separator thingie so the whole line, as well as the cashier will be glaring at you, like hungry lions, their eyes saying "get your shit out of here so we can eat."
so you must prepare ahead of time. you get your money out, you arrange your bag in grocery collecting formation, plan your packing strategy far in advance, you put the heavy things in front. eggs last. stuff you can stick in your pockets in the middle. it takes a lot of planning and there is little room for error.
but nothing culd have prepared be for the tattooed guy at the ostbahnhof lidl with glasses so thick you underestimate his dexterity. guy was like a dog digging a hole. his hands were a blur, and there was nary a nano-second between beeps of the machine. he may have even just dragged everything at once over the sensor, like the guy who just won the pot during poker. i must have looked away for a tiny moment, pondering the impulse buy offerings and when i look over, he's leaning back, hands behind his head all proud. and all my stuff, piled up, mixed up senslessly, all that delicate forethought for nothing. as i got the glare from him and every homeless drunk in line behind with their plastic 6 pack of beer that they are paying for with the bottle refunds from yesterday night's binge.
checkout: fail.

i have a new band! look!

2011-02-17T06:52:00.000-05:00

http://anniehow.tumblr.com/post/3085890985/that-s-my-one-of-a-kind-girl-playing-the-cello

the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained.

2011-02-03T08:52:00.003-05:00

from http://blog.cgpgrey.com/

bargain basement beers

2011-01-16T13:23:00.002-05:00

so the karstadt is your german department store, a fancy-ish Macy's if you will, that has your household goods, clothing, whatever. in german class, you learn the term "Kaufhof" the building where you buy things. i usually regard the karstaft and its sister stores with the same bland indifference i give a bloomingdales: you only go there if you really have to.
but i recently discovered a few things that quickly changed my mind! first, every kaufhof has a ridiculous supermarket inside. like, dean and deluca on cocaine meets whole foods in a saks fifth avenue. it's insane. a deli counter that would make my brother blush, sparkling organic produce, a hot sausage grill with bratwurst for 2Euro, kilometers of yogurt aisles, an international aisle that even has an "american" section with doritos and peanut butter. pretty much anything you could ever want or imagine. it's a guilty pleasure those secret supermarkets.
but the karstadt at hermannplatz in neukolln has another hidden gem: a pub. in the bargain basement, amidst bins of extra large brassieres adn underwear, leftover shirts from last season, a quite wonderful classic german style kneipe, a circular counter thingie in the middle of the store with a clientele strictly over 65, a few of whom are usually asleep over their drinks.
the bartender is a chipper old lady who blasts boney M mega mixes and the like to drown out the department store muzak, and eagerly invites you to friday happy hour! starts at 12 noon! only 1.5Euro beer! i'm surprised there aren't more bored husbands, sick of waiting/watching their wives shop and tryon outfits. there are a few casino machines in one corner, a few tables where last time, octogenarians were eagerly swigging screw top mini bottles of champagne, there's a wheelchair accessible corner counter, free pretzels in plastic cups, what else could you ask for?

more VENN

2011-01-06T09:54:00.003-05:00

http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/2582957671/how-do-you-like-your-graphic-design

another day for Venn

2010-12-20T08:30:00.002-05:00

Schornsteinfeger wuz here

2010-12-17T10:15:00.009-05:00

I have gotten two bright red notices on my apartment door about the Schornsteinfeger. the Schornsteinfeger has come by twice now, and is increasingly urgent about visiting my apartment. what the f is a Schornsteinfeger? i ask my german manpanion who can only come up with cryptic clues like, "he is the man in black" or "he comes down the tube" and all i could think was that a Schornsteinfeger is a santa claus in black? well according to google übersetzer, that is a chimney sweep. i do not have a chimney, therefore i do not need a chimney sweep, correct? wrong.
manpanion says "he comes to check the poison in your radiator, he is here to save your life!" poison? i gather this is some sort of carbon monoxide test or something? (why would they only do that once a year?)
so, fine, i stay home from work to wait for the Schornsteinfeger, because apparently, the 4th time he comes you must pay. this is a free service, this Schornsteinfeger.
well, just like an american cable guy, he did not come within his alloted 3 hour time slot. he didn't even come 2 hours after his alloted 3 hour time slot. i knew that as soon as i would leave my house (perhaps make it to work before the end of the day?) he would show up. lo and behold, at 2:30 pm, there is a long-haired man at my door.
he wipes the snow off his shoes like crazy. uses both doormats. he is about to untie his boots when i say, it's kein problem. he is so polite, this Schornsteinfeger. i really should have offered him coffee, then again, i didn't know this whole procedure was going to take hours. he goes up to my bathroom, where the gas heater thing is, and i'm certain he must have sat on the toilet to make a caca or something, because seriously, he was up there a while. i'm putzing around, with my coat on, waiting for him to leave any minute.
finally he comes downstairs with the paperwork. always paperwork. of course i must sign somewhere. i must agree with his assessment that only 4.7 parts per million poison are emitted from my bathroom gas heater! no need to worry! as it is under 1000 ppm. only then, do you worry. he has saved my life! my gasburner is in excellent shape! we are holding hands and jumping! no poison!
the Schornsteinfeger, now showing off that he speaks near perfect english AND french tells me that i will leave to see another year - that is, until his next visit in 2011 when he will return once again in order to reassure me of survival.
i thank the Schornsteinfeger, he asks for my number.. my number? to call you next year! of course! so you don't have to wait around! so polite. and then gives me a momento, a good luck charm if you will. why it is a little ramoneur, no larger than 4 cm, a man in black, with his rope and ladder.
Schornsteinfeger!

the secret movie theater

2010-12-16T06:49:00.002-05:00

i could tell you where the secret movie theater is, but then it wouldn't be secret anymore would it? and they probably wouldn't let me in next time. so no, you don't get to know where the secret movie theater is.

my manpanion invited me on a secret evening, he wouldn't tell me where. it's a secret. we were wandering lost, in the falling snow, when he finally said "here it is!" and knocked on a window of some dimly lit apartment that appeared to have a bar in it. they open the window and you climb onto a box and then into their little living room. lots of dim red lighting, strange people and weird furniture (a chair made out of a shopping cart) and all very quiet, i felt like i walked through the window of a stanley kubrick film. we paid 8 euro total for 2 tickets and 2 large beers for the evening's showing of Inception with Leo DiCaprio.
we enter throguh a curtain to the back room and there is actually some sort of stadium seating, with random movie theater chairs/church pews and couches on various levels. i wanted the comfy couch, but it appeared to be fully reserved by the small shaggy grey dog who snarled when i approached. we grabbed our seats instead in one of the 4 rows uneven, were handed an ashtray and some peanuts and pulled out some packages of haribo candies frm ourbag. the old guy next to us was smoking some rather pungent weed.
the theater set up is a mess of electronics in one corner, and a projector on the ceiling pointing at a sheet. my aunt's theater room in her new bethesda townhouse is far more fancy than this. (hint to babs: start your own speakeasy movie theater!)
there was a lot of commotion between the "employees" a ragtag bunch of longhaired druggies with black hooded sweatshirts with dragons on them. there was a new dvd playe r, but someone had misplaced the remote. is it under your seat? at the bar? in between hte cushions of the couch - hey dog, move. so we were then asked to vote: we either watch the movie dubbed in german, or wait 5 minutes and use the old dvd player, which doesn't work so well. the other french moviegoers adn myself voted for takin the risk with the old dvd player. and thank goodness, because i am not sure i would have understood the whole level 3 dream within a dream within a dream concept in german.
so i viewed the whole movie through a mist of smoke, people knocking over beer bottles and the growling dog, but i must say, it might be the best movie theater ever. and they show old star trek episodes every monday. if you want to go, just let me know, i might be able to get you in...

Münchener weißwurst: love

2010-12-14T04:01:00.000-05:00

i don't really know what it is Münchener weißwurst could have intestines and ligaments, i don't care, because it's delicious. and with sweet, sweet mustard, it can be my breakfast lunch or dinner. you're supposed to eat it with your hands, suck out the meat and leave the skin in a gooey mess on your plate.

they saying is a weißwurst never hears the stroke of 12 noon - as they are made in the morning and eaten only a few hours later. well, in modern times you can buy the pre-cooked variety full of preservatives and chemicals so they'll even last the 7 hours train ride back to berlin.

file under Venn

2010-12-12T07:28:00.000-05:00

time for christmas markets!

2010-12-09T06:14:00.002-05:00

all november, people were announcing the approaching christmas markets coming like it was the messiah..."in december, we will be drinking glühwein, enjoying winter..." and they were so right!
in every city, village, small town, even train station these little cheesy log cabin stands sprout up all over germany, selling reindeer skins, olivewood spoons, bratwurst, potatoes, and of course, glühwein. though if you're a little sadistic, and really want a headache the next day you order the Feuerzangenbowle, which is glühwein lit on fire with a rum sugar cube like it's absynthe or something.

anyway, the typical thing is after work to go get plowed on some hot beverages and eat fries and sausages and crepes and such with your friends or coworkers. the places close down at 9pm so you best get there early, stake a spot next to a heat lamp if you can. people just hang around in these little makeshift bars with their parkas and fur hats and moonboots, it's wonderful. sometimes there is live music, lots of dogs. if you are in munich, of course, it's the mega huge christmasmarket that is more like decemberfest.

dinner of champions - 2 weisswurst and sweet, sweet, mustard

each glühwein hut has their own mug. sometimes they are shaped like little boots, or have little winter scenes on them. you pay a deposit up front on the mug, and you can either return it, or buy it. germans are brilliant. i have an excellent little mug collection now.

but no christmas market is complete without the nativity scene!

thumbs up for baby jesus

new file format: save a tree. save as WWF!

2010-12-07T03:02:00.000-05:00

Das WWF-Format ist ein PDF, das man nicht ausdrucken kann. So einfach können unnötige Ausdrucke von Dokumenten vermieden, die Umwelt entlastet und Bäume gerettet werden. Mit Ihrer Hilfe. Bestimmen Sie selbst, was nicht ausgedruckt werden soll, und speichern Sie es im WWF-Format.
SAVE AS WWF, SAVE A TREE

The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.

i heart venn diagrams

2010-11-18T07:55:00.002-05:00

only in berlin

2010-11-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

this is berlin kunst edition

every time you come across a table of edible poo, it is generally accompanied by the universal sigh, "only in berlin."

i get it, i eat artist shit

berlin and its affordable lifestyle supports an entire sub population of under-appreciated artists and creative types, we do all love that. we just wish we could filter out the crap sometimes. or, there are some nights when it just doesn't matter.

take nacht und nebel, or night and fog, a wonderful evening of anything goes. street after street, every gallery or whatever space in neukoln open its doors to wonderful craziness. you purchase a large 1liter beer and take it with you as you enter place after place thinking, the next one can't be this weird, let's stay here for a while. butthe next one surpasses the one before that, it never ends.

exhibit a. boomerangs..and stuff.

exhibit b. the bicycle powered dj hip hop show. this place had a tv showing something, a documetary of who cares because here come the guys in spandex! backed by a plastic sheet showing vintage cycling clips, dj cycle 1 and 2 flank mc ridiculous.

tour de DJ

so then, when you come across a glowing mannequin on fire, it's not so weird anymore..

how to embarass yourself in front of co-workers

2010-11-11T16:50:00.001-05:00

on a friday ngiht after work, an NGO nearby had an office-warming. i'm thinking free drinks and food why not. so we go there and it's this 1984 cement GDR/DDR marvel. small offices with small windows, lime green walls and padded doors (so the SS don't hear what you're up to), foward-thinking unisex bathrooms and cramped hallway corridors.

urinals are out of order

in the small conference room there were munchies erdnuss flips (look like cheese puffs, only peanut flavor -heaven) and socially conscious beer and organic white wine. there were some rather long speeches, during which my colleagues would periodically poke me and ask if i understand. this happens a lot. and so as usual, i nod, sure, as in yes, i udnerstand most of it, but honestly it's just really boring so i eventually zone out and stop listening and wonder what bratislava is like or what i will eat later. this is also true for most meetings and discussions, sorry.

so after the terribly long and boring speeches, and one rather funny intern showed pictures of the old parking spaces, my wonderful colleagues and i sigh at the prospect of friday night networking. we examine our empty wine glasses, promptly fill them up and wander out to the stairwell where a DJ has recently set up. i don't know who said it, but i heard it "we might as well just dance."

my wine glass was magically refilled and there you go, 730pm dance party. i may have done something that qualifies as "grinding." our organization was the sole one represented on this dance floor, though i did try desperately to get the cute intern to join us, he just seemed to think we were aliens.
there were glares are questionable stares and "are they really dancing like that" but you know what, we just proved who is more fun, and who will probably not get invited back to the christmas party.

DE. Do Easy

2010-11-09T11:09:00.001-05:00

i have just enrolled in the school of DE. the discipline of do easy.
you should too.
"how fast can you do it and get it done?"

new building mural on my street

2010-11-09T04:36:00.003-05:00

a few weeks ago some guys in grey hoodies showed up every morning at 7 am (early risers!) to repaint the building next door. they worked confidently on this large image with nothing but notes to follow. i never heard them mutter a single word, they were like graffiti ninjas as the little turkish kids who live in the apartments would open their windows or come out on the street and ask what are you doing? what color is that? why are you wearing a mask? what is that for?

what are you going to do there?

wurst cake - kitsch n classics edition

2010-11-05T07:39:00.000-04:00

a special kitsch n classics edition for you.
my adobrable neighbor celebrated his birthday with a kuchen und wurst party - i presume the typical 4pm cake and coffee that turns into a bbq or something. i though i would kick it up a notch and just end th e party early with an amazing..shazam! wurstcake.
i consulted the venerable chef raspberry for ideas. corn bread basics, with some meats.
i went to the knockoff ikea to find a good cake pan. the one i picked was loaf sized, non-stick, sturdy, and had a picture of a holiday fruitcake and colorful jellies and nuts and powdered sugar and snowflakes. oh cake pan you could not be more wrong today.
instructions from the chef:
125g cornmeal
150g AP Flour
40g sugar
20g honey
9g baking powder
2g baking soda
7g salt
100g whole egg
200g sour cream
100g milk
50g butter
Mix dry together and add all wet ingredients. Add in the chopped wurst and bake in a greased pan at whatever 350F is for 30-40 minutes. Put in some chopped rosemary and maybe some chopped cooked onion.
so i bought some organic mittelwurst (no idea what that is, took me an hour to pick it from all of its wurst cousins), cooked 'em up with onions, shallots. i didn't have a scale so there was a lot guesswork.
in the end, i had a concotion that rather tasted like cornbread. the air of my apartment, entirely infused with the smokey bacon like smell of the wurst. fresh rosemary and voila.

only issue was the whole what is baking powder what is baking soda, why are they different and why do you need both. i only had baeckpulver, whatever that is, and i just dumped a bunch in.

mixin' wurst

overall, tasty as hell. on a nice cakedish among the sweeter variety cakes.

best wurstcake

the kids at the party all grabbed some against their mother's wishes "honey, that cake has WURST in it, don't you want the chocolate cheesecake?"
nein! wurstkuchen!
later on i beat that little rat at pickup sticks.
the second version had cheese, smaller pieces of wurst. sweet, savory, delicious.
best of the wurst:
need more eggs, a bit floury, needs more gooey.
and need to take it higher - fluffier might be better. it's dense, tasty, hefty, more like the fruitcake on that picture now that i think of it.

the turkish everything-you-don't-need-store

2010-10-29T13:16:00.001-04:00

there's this store near my house.
it's one of those random metal/plastic item things that you think is the small mom-and-pop equivelent of a Target in 1/900th of the size that sells everything you need - until you go there, repeatedly, and find out it in fact stores entirely useless items, none of which are ever even remotely what you are looking for.
a short list of normal items that i have looked for in said store but they never have:
-a mixer, blender, or anything that might facilitate the making of soup or hummus (i live in a turkish/lebanese/algerian neighborhood where NO ONE can make hummmus. no, it's not just a clump of tahini and chick peas, people, you actually need lemon, salt, garlic, maybe olive oil? i know you guys have olive oil.)
-a strainer, like for spaghetti
-a toaster
-deck of cards (we were in the bar next door and really wanted to play a game of heartssss)
-a hair dryer
-an iron
-thing to heat up milk on the stove
-a non-plastic basket (i thought turks were into that stuff)
-champagne flutes (prosecco is mad cheap here)
-all purpose cleaner, like, for the bathroom
-a square cake pan, like for making banana bread or, the wurst-cake i plan on making next weekend for the cake and wurst party (thus: wurstcake.)

and i go here, because, i haven't found anything that resembles a target or store that sells useful items, that is not ridiculously expensive or within biking distance. and because everything is closed at 7pm, and on sundays, your window for searching for said establishments is very limited. and because you presume, within all the crap that's in the windows and exploding onto the sidewalk there must be what you are looking for. it's not just me, my dad and mom both fell for the place too. we are suckers.

the store routine goes a little something like this:
i walk in, and the really old turkish lady with the head scarf behind the counter smiles, but other than that makes no facial reaction to what i am saying. she may be deaf. i wander the 2 aisles, and then the guy comes out, he's clearly the awkward 40 year old son who still lives with his mom.
he pushes mom over to help in my quest, and takes her place as master/cashier/translator.
i then explain in broken german, or more often hand motions and charades "this is me, with wet hair, i am cold and miserable! brrrr!" that sort of thing.
the guy then explains - nay, screams to his mom what i'm looking for. which i imagine is the turkish equivelent of (brooklyn accent) "Ma!! she wants a hair dry-ah!!" the old lady, then digs through the piles of stuff and pulls out the furthest thing from what you want.
that is a spatula. i wanted a strainer?
no, that is paint. i wanted cleaner? you see, this is me, cleaning, my apartment so dirty!
that is a scooby doo blanket. i asked for a cake pan? because i want to put wurst, mmm wurst, in a cake - oh, forget it.
she then shows me every single oven-friendly dish that you would never fathom cooking a cake in. are these for baklava?
or, i have no idea what that is, but i was looking for a deck of cards.

now, i do realize there are ample opportunities for miscommunication in this game of telephone, but they really just do not have anything i need.

so, in case you were wondering, things they do have:
-scooby doo blankets, and casper the ghost blankets, and strawberry shortcake blankets. if you are a turk in berlin, i imagine you are often cold.
-clothes drying racks. lots of them. these people they have very clean, wrinkled clothes (they do not have irons! only rolling pins).
-rolling luggage. this is the hotbeds of cheap chinese luggage. Ramsonite brand, just fell off the truck. not that you ever see anyone rolling through the streets with luggage or anything.
-thermal food bags. it is october, which means it will no longer get above freezing, no need to go to extra measures to keep my food cold thanks, i think my picnics will now be inside. probably until june.
-teapots! millions of teapots! metal, glass, porcelaine, teapots of every shape size, brand and color!

well, i already have a teapot. so i can only hope for the day when i actually find a use for something in your store. elveda, gule gule!

japanese or bavarian. how about both?

2010-10-27T07:23:00.000-04:00

in munich, i was with johannes who wanted asian food, martin who wanted bavarian, so we went to noyima. basically, a japanese yakitori grill with polka music and steins of local beer. i asked the punky asian waitress for an asahi

"munchner hell"

i said asahi

"munchner hell"

so i had a dunkel hefeweissen.

the owner was sitting outside, looking like he just walked off the set of sound of music, smoking a cigar with his leather austrian cap and paying the accordion players to serenade us.
i had a delicious octopus seaweed salad with tons of ginger, some perfect rolls, and grilled kangaroo, ostrich, butterfish (?) and plums wrapped in bacon.

is this really japanese? who cares. tasty.

peter fox is moving out

2010-10-24T04:54:00.004-04:00

a few weeks after i moved in i had a dinner party with some germans friends, and one of my guests see a neighbor outside putting his trash in the bin and screams out, "holy f-ing sheizer, that's peter fox!"
oh yeah, neighbor guy, is he famous or something?
this guy is indeed my neighbor.

i live in the same building as the german p.diddy
.

whenever i go to someone's house, i always hear his songs emanating from a laptop or stereo. i also realized this week that no one introduces me as their friend, or their colleague, or a nice person they just got to know, it's always, hey, this is aurelgrooves - she lives in the same building as peter fox. and then i'm instant center of attention "what's he like?" "does he has a girlfriend?"
yes, and a kid actually, and then all the girls pout. which is probably why he is moving out this weekend.
as confirmed by the yentas at the spaetkauf, peter fox is indeed moving out.
so there it is, in one day, i'm back to just being your friend or colleague....
that day i was in the courtyard putting my garbage into its apprpriate trashcan when, hey, ho, what have we here? inside the plastics and recyclable packaging yellow dumpster are 2, rather clean, seemingly barely used, not so bad smelling ikea Dilling under bed storage boxes. with their lids. i've so been looking for one of these!

peter fox's box

i'm well within view of every neighbor i have...but i did it. i held the lid of the dumpster open, pulled one out. inspected it, gave it a sniff. good to go.
i may be your friend, i may be your colleague, i may be a dumpster diver, but i have peter fox's Ikea Dilling under bed storage unit.

little otik

2010-10-21T09:03:00.002-04:00

Little Otik

(interview with little otik -they smile more in person).

so the great thing about hanging out with colleagues, is that unlike every other berliner i know, they actually have jobs, and so they don't mind dropping (gasp!) 30€ on a dinner once in a while.
so a colleague and i, we went to little otik. on a friday. tiny restaurant in a fashionable part of east Kreuzberg. no seats available at the 2 big picnic tables, 2 2/4 tops or the 2 top in the window. no parties of more than 6 people allowed. a big long beautiful recycled wooden bar that always seems to have room if you like sitting at a bar. i like sitting at a bar.
it's run by 2 american dudes from michigan and new york, who don't speak much german. they told me what little otik stands for, but i forgot. i think it's related to the creepy movie of the same title where they carve a piece of wood into a baby and pretend it's a baby or something. (will watch this asap).

yes, creepy

anyway, the cook guy used to work at Diner in Williamsburg. he came to visit his friend in berlin and they started a supper club. and then they, like anyone else who realizes how easy it is to open something in berlin were like duh, we should open a restaurant in berlin.
they found a portuguese cafe at a nice address that was closing down and haggled with the owner to rent it cheap (well, rent is already stupid cheap in berlin) - cheap and with everything in it. most of the kitchen was already there. they sold all the chairs, tables, bar stuff and a collection of mini fridges, then gutted and painted the dining room to convert it to an extremely simple, kinda echoey space with not much on the walls besides a few mirrors. (a stark contrast to the baubble you might find adorning every vertical surface of a buca di beppo's).
they are closed sunday, monday, (ah, european style) and on tuesday they go to the farmer's market down the street and buy all the organic, local items from farmers. stuff like wild boar bacon and heirloom tomatoes, duck. then they plan the menu, and open wednesday-saturday. packed every night, call weeks ahead for a reservation. pretty cheap eats, a little pricey on the wines. we bought an entire bottle instead - now that's good economics!

but my friend told them you can't get away with charging minimum 6€ for a glass of wine, berliners usually don't go for that. but it looks like they can and berliners are going for it. jerks. they better not ruin the median 2.50 € huge wine glasses i'm getting used to...we recommended a wine shop they should talk to (the same one we had just previously turned into a bistro by chatting, tasting wine, and forgetting it's just a store, must pay and leave now).
so we had the last of heirloom tomatoes (a freeze this weekend), perfect, simple, coarse salt. ate the super delish no salt needed chicken n dumplings, and an amazing turnip soup with smoked wild boar bacon that was just awesome. fried zuccini blossoms or something like that. lemony. crunchy. they were very stingy on the bread (and yeah, we recommended a better bakery and they should probably switch from baguette to ciabatta or something. germans know their bread, you can serve stale baguette. or get a toaster!!).
they make coffee themselves on the bar in these plastic filter things from taiwan and a plug in water boiler, and cross their fingers in the hope that no one ever orders more than 4 at a time. (drank it without milk and i was up ALL night. good stuff, though i would recommend a french press. afterall, i am franzosich!).
all the plates, mugs are eitehr from ikea or the german target. cash only. 4 employees total (someone in the kitchen and a german girl for front of the house). every order written on notebook paper, no computers.
so that's pretty much your typical, ok let's open a restaurant and do this right and low key and not bother with liquor licenses kinda place.
though in the back of my mind i was thinking about wrestling the property away from the owners (perhaps a duel or betting it in poker, or sending in my own litte otik to scare them away?) and installing my brother as chef, but then, i think my brother can do even better...

discovering berlin: potsdam

2010-10-19T13:48:00.001-04:00

i had some friends in town for more than a week, and it was soon time to pull out all the stops - like visiting potsdam. i had never been, have only heard good things so, let's go to potsdam.
the 50 minute S-bahn ride was made more attractive by our bag full of sternburg export, the cheapest strongest beer from the spaetkauf and a bag full of gummies that were gifted directly from spaetkauf through my living room window at 4 am the previous night.
we took 2 bikes and a skateboard and landed at potsdam Hbf.
we didn't have a map, or any idea where to go, we figured we would just find it when we got there.

the tourist information people wanted 2 Euro for a map drawing i could have made without looking. . a nice guy from the bus tour company gave us one, which we soon found out was a bit useless as it had no constant scale, so was wickedly deceptive about distances.
nevertheless, we headed into the old potsdam, my friend being pulled on his axe by two lovely ladies on bikes. we came upon a neighborhood with these small brick buildings and cobbled stones, a perfect foreground to a wonderful fall day. even some disc golf holes in the center park.

looks like alexandria

we found no less than 4 different wurst stands at various markets and tasted each one, beginning our day of 1000 weiners.

innovative transpo

i ended up having a flat tire, but found enough bike shops with free outside pumps to keep me inflated. go potsdam. we meandered around, nibbling at weiners and bag of gummies and came upon the famous parc sanssouci.
we got a lot of dirty looks from people towards the skateboard, but found someone kind enough to take our picture.

how do you get an outofofocus picture with a point and shoot?

we played frisbee in a field, drank a few sternburgs, and spent one of the nicest days left in 2010.
we later found out that the previous activities broke no less than 4 rules but those are just rules that are meant to be broken.
we were hungry for more weiners and came upon a nice little bavarian place near the charlottenburg hof train station. since big beers and sausage are what everyone outside germany thinks is germany, it was a must do. trains for east berlin only came ever 40 minutes to we waited in the biergarten with some liters of oktoberfest paulaner and delicious weisswurst and pretzels.

finally, we're in germany.

after drinking so much beer we logically had to visit the bathroom which is when we discovered the hidden gem in the back room - a bowling alley. 2 lanes of duckpin, and one full normal lane. totally empty.
the walls were a faded hue of retro yellowish green, the equipment strangely antique. our waiter came in and offered us a chance to play a game and fired up the machines. ok...we didn't have the right kind of shoes, so he pulled some out from under the bar, clearly from the lost and found or a second hand shop. i had some turquoise boat shoes, while my friends sported late 70s velcro gold sneakers.
we get a little introduction to the system, built in 1969. older than us. you can't rename the players (aw shucks, one of our favorite things about bowling!), so on the modern addition screen, you are destined to be boring speiler 1,2 oder 3. there are blinking lights and buttons like in a spaceship on the manifold, but do not touch them!!

the jukebox in the corner has those small record EPs, and a wide coin slot for "DM." Deutschmarks? uhhhhh. the waiter opens the machine, pulls coins out of one slot and feeds us some credit. free tunes!
the artists, all handwritten include, and i'm not making this up - one column with D. Hasselhof (another jaded german stereotype turns out to be true?), beatles, abba, and the rest of the 1,000 or so songs are not related to the labels and are simply bavarian polka.

have we entered a vortex to another decade?
we find ourselves incapable of hitting any pins, as every ball, no matter where you stand and where you throw it, end up in the left gutter. is it me or is this whole place just, perhaps, leaning?
finally, sarah gets a strike and we order up a round of jaegermeister shots to celebrate.

it turns out, the pin apparatus is not at all like what we're used to - the pins are on strings and get lifted up like little marionnettes and dance, and then get put down, often at uneven distances from eachother.
the game gets weirder and weirder when one of the balls on its return journey doesn't make it up the little track and gets stuck halfway down the lane, and then the other ball hits it, and soon all our balls get stuck there, and so after every roll we have to walk down the lane to go pick them up.
the jukebox is playing david hasselhof's crazy for you, which is the music of YMCA, but the lyrics aof the chorus re changed to craaaazy for you, craaaazy for me.
we find some techno and think this cannot get any stranger, and race to meet our train.
we miss it, and then go back to the bar and the waiter seems less than thrilled to see us. at this point we've had way too many large beers so he urges us to order the small cuter ones. we are still way too loud and annoying for the 2 other passed out drunks next to us.
finally, it's train time again and the waiter, despite his air of indifference sends us off with 3 tiny bottles of what are like jaegermeister but it must be the vegetarian version- lots o spice. i think they are the german hangover cure things...
we take the regional train home and eat more gummies, the ones that are fake teeth and cannot believe how incredibly cool potsdam is. and because my friend left my spare keys on the bar, we actually have to go back.

german ultimate frisbee - so fun, so weird

2010-10-13T14:52:00.000-04:00

through a connection from DC and the magic of email, i am on a traveling frisbee team composed of english speaker expats living all over germany, and anyone else who might want to play with us, we're not fussy.
our team entered a tournament south of frankfurt. i was going to take the train, but the captain sent me a phone number of some other people coming from berlin if i wanted a ride. i called ben, who rented a minivan and said i was welcome to join as long as i have a driver's license. i love driving in germany, hell yes!
so i meet ben in front of a budget polish car rental place and slowly more and more people show up...all i could think was, wow, these guys are exceptionally tall. so i ask, what team are you on?
"vat do you think?" one answers in a low grumbling voice
i dunno, The Giants?
"you are correct."
we pile into our tiny kia van and they all fight over who doesn't sit in the middle. i don't even get a choice, i'm in the way back back with the luggage while the first guy drives.
i got to drive for a bit but the guy who traded seats with me wasn't happy. we get to the tourney site and people just stare as i let 6 giants out of this clown car. we have a couple of beers and set up our tents.
i meet some friendly people from my team, and we see on the schedule that our first opponents are PUF, from holland. hehe buncha stoners, we all laugh.
um, but they were anything but. they were the rare non-smoking dutch people who ran laps around us the next morning, and i kept on having to guard some guy with smelly dreadlocks and the whole game was a catastrophy. more and more games followed in the same manner, miserable loss after miserable loss. it wasn't just bad, it was blooper reel awful.
my team was composed of mostly over 40 english and american expats, who as it turns out couldn't run much, so there weren't many people available to score. there was barnie, the 50 year old who looked and sounded exactly like the "inconceivable!" guy from the princess bride. before our third game barnie lit up a big joint and as he blew smoke into my face said "you can take the guy outta california..."
the next game, barnie was the first, and only person to score.
we then had a big pause and i was invited to play with another team that needed girls. this team had all the the hot guys from luxembourg and even though i was tired, and on my third beer, and a stomach full of bean chili there was no way i was saying no to the hot luxembourgers.
and maybe because they were hot and i was trying to impress them but i think i played the best frisbee of my life - diving for stuff, not throwing the disc into the ground, it was amazing. they also lent me one of their amazing silky red shirts. so silky.
barnie was cheering me on, "go hot luxembourgers! and aurelgrooves" for the rest of the weekend, i never said no to the luxembourgers and that is how i came to play 13 frisbee games in one weekend and lost all feeling in my legs and feet for 2 days.
The Giants were doing really well, and during their breaks they would sometimes mill around me and say hi. for whatever reason they became known as "my" giants. hey aurelgrooves, your giants scored another point! i loved my giants. we were watching them play a point when barnie said "you know, when they're not standing anywhere near normal sized humans, they don't actually look that freakish."
after our games i had to ask one of the giants if i could take the car to drive my team to a mexican restaurant and ben pointed his finger to me said "no drinking and driving, only driving while drinking" and then dangled the keys above my head while i tried to jump for them. i finally caught them and said "thanks DAD", and one of the eavesdropping guys from the under 21 team asked puzzled "wow, really that's your dad?" barnie blew smoke into my face and hugged me and said "no, she's the daughter i never had." under 21 one kid walked away perplexed, with his juicebox. "you people are strange."
at the saturday night party i was surrounded by giants, like my own team of bodyguards. as soon as they left to sleep (i think giants need a lot of rest to power those gargantuan bodies) i was left to my own defenses. my irresistable charm attracted a series of weirdos, and all i could do was call "foul!" whenever they got too close, just like in a game.
these guys were all the leftovers, because the girl with the wolflike dog came and had sucked all the hot luxembourgers off the dance floor. they were all around her, petting her wolfdog. that's when barnie agreed "yeah, you need a wolfdog." we then made a bunch of jokes about the twighlight series, and moonlit yoga circles, which wolfgirl is probably into. stupid luxembourgers.
i then went to the bar and decided to play my luck at the frisbee wheel.

spin the wheel of misfortune

the frisbee was divided into 6 sections - 2 areas for a free beer, 3 spots for 1x the price, and one area for 2x the price. spin and play and pay (or not).i figured those were damn good odds and somehow managed to hit the one 2x and had to bum the extra coins off of barnie.
"thanks sugar daddy" and high five barnie when the matronly woman behind the bar asks "vat eez a sugar daddy?" and so i explain it's when a young woman gets an older guy to pay for stuff and barnie adds "yeah, well where i come from the older guy gets a in return" and i'm laughing and spitting beer out my nose and the woman asks "vat eez a ?" and the captain of the team, a respectable english bloke catches a whiff of the conversation and is agast "what are earth are you fools talking about?"
on the way back to the campsite we find that someone tried to get their bike through one of those metal revolving door fence things, like the ones at entrances of stadiums and metro stations. the person had just abandoned it there, giving up. it was a really nice bike. but it wasn't budging an inch. but it meant we had to climb a giant slippery metal fence to get back to our tents. not fun.
anyway, our team continued to lose on day 2, but managed to squeak into next to last place in a one point sudden death against some high schoolers who had never played frisbee before. whew!
so, the absolute weirdest thing about the whole german frisbee is the co-ed shower at the end. i managed to bathe the first day in the handicapped stall in total privacy, but after the tournament was over, barnie told me the luxembourgers would be there in the shower too so i joined the team in the locker room. it was all a ruse though, it was just our team and some of the less hot dutch guys, but we all drank a beer and i put all my concentration into "look at them in the eyes when they speak to you" that i washed my hair with shower body gel.
we bid our adieus, sadly no luxembourger phone numbers (what is their country code?) and i drove most of the way home. sitting in shotgun was the singing giant. he put in his mix cd and we got to sing the meatloaf paradise by the dashboard light duets and guns n roses harmonies.
we stopped at a restaurant with a plaque saying that it won the prize for best rest stop in Germany, ever. i totally agree. the bathroom stalls were all themed. i peed in an honourable shrine to einstein.
as we got to berlin i got tired and didn't want to have an accident so i switched with the other guy, who managed to hit a phone pole and destroy the front bumper right within minutes of taking over the wheel. ...whoopsie. i said goodbye to the giants, and the endearing end to the weekend was when one of them hugged me and said if they form a "Giants and Dwarf" team next year that i could maybe join. maybe!

an angel!

2010-10-04T14:59:00.000-04:00

after a horrid trans-atlantic charter flight, i passed out in a very uncomfortable chair in the duesseldorf airport, hips awkwardly and painfully jammed under an armrest, only to awake minutes later with a shiver. and as i reached for my brand new warm black cashmere cardigan that i had placed just besides me --it was gone. son of a $%&$#!!!!
some little piece of garbage not only stole from me, while only a mere cm from my arm, but made me live with this punishment for the remainder of my freezing cold flight, and landing in freezy rainy berlin with nothing but a t-shirt. i cursed so much that day.
and here, only a few days later, a package was waiting me for on my doorstep. an exact perfect new replacement! i slept in it last night. thank you, angel!

das Oktoberfest

2010-09-27T16:34:00.001-04:00

most berliners and north germans cringed and mocked me when i said i was going to oktoberfest. "you'll see so many drunk tourists." well, i did see lots of drunk tourists. i was a drunk tourist. and it was fantastic!
i was lucky enough to secure a last minute spot in an oktoberfest frisbee beach tournament outside munich, which meant for 60 Euros i would have a place to stay for 2 nights, food, and 140 other people to attend oktoberfest with - in a reserved box in hofbrau tent. oh, and i'd get to play a lot of beach frisbee.

i took a night train to munich the day before the tourney and met some mates from berlin on the bus to the frisbee beach. it was a hat tournament so you get automatically put on a team. every team was named after a classic oktoberfest ride. we were team schichtl, which only one person on our team (the german girl) could pronounce so eventually we became known as "shitshow." greatest show on earth!

it took a little while for us random group of dane, australian, canadian, slovenian, portuguese to get our groove on, but even losing in shitshow style was fun. that night there was a dinner and party in this weird indoor beach greenhouse, and i set up my tent near a lovely lagoon. i invited people to my lagoon. but beware of pirates!

camping under the palm trees of suburban munich

there were no games on saturday. we were woken up by annoying salsa music emanating from the bar, and served white sausages, pretzel and beer and sent on our way to the s-bahn to the fest.

we had a few hours to kill before our beer tent reservation and i begged my group to go to the infamous teufelsrad, a 100 year old ride that i so badly wanted to see.

the devil's wheel moo hwaa haaa

it's a spinning floor thing and they try to kick people off with a big medicine ball, ropes, whatever. there is lots of funny commentary, and you don't win anything but pride for being the last person. it took me a few tries to get the hang of it, and i learned how to kick other people off and then square off against the medicine ball and the rope wranglers. i had a few beers so my senses were a little dulled, but i did make it to the top four once. i had the spinnies for the next 2 hours. my arms are still sore.

the teufelsrad was the best 3 euros you could ever spend at oktoberfest, i could have stayed there all day.

even after the girl with the thong was last one standing, the bunch of german guys in lederhosen who were with me insisting on going to the traditional oktoberfest, where they were re-enacting and showing the oktoberfest activities from 200 years ago. someone had told us there was this famous horse race, but we were 2 hours late and all we saw was an 8 year old riding a miniature pony.

i was quickly over ye olde boring oktoberfest, though i ate a quark pastry bag thing that was tasty. we did drink a really old beer recipe and then go through the moving tunnel thing and the house of mirrors. i found it odd that the calypso ride was in between the oktoberfest museum and the traditional chicken hut. the calypso was meant to be a children's ride, but i'm pretty sure you can see boobies on those girls.

so we went back to the teufelsrad to see 2 kids trying to box on the rotating floor, and i spun around a few more times to really shake up the olde beer in my stomach.
we walked towards te beer tent, but not before stopping at a couple of stands. the handsome gentleman i was with did the hammer thingie and won me got a whistle.

as we approached the beer tent area things changed from old timey fun to seriously weird.
there was suddenly trash, wobbly people, puke, a grown man who had shat in his pants. one guy had puke on his face and tried to get into the tent. the bouncer turned him away. he wiped off his face with his hands and then tried again. rejected.
near the tent was this hill that looked like the aftermath of a beer war. people were moaning, lying there in the mud, puking, peeing, shitting, having sex. like nothing i've ever seen before.
i averted my eyes and entered the special line at the back of the tent. here, in this temporary tent, thousands upon thousands of people drinking out of huge steins with a loud oompa band on a platform. the handsome german pointed to the angel hanging from the ceiling: "welcome to heaven." people were tossing clothing up to the angel, and there was a large pair of panties hanging from the nose.

hofbrau heaven

we sat on these long benches and tables and fraus came by frequently with arms full of glassware to refill. utter chaos. everyone once in a while the band would play a short song which signaled everyone to stand on their benches and clink glasses. my arms were pretty tired from frisbee, it often took me two hands. we had a lot of big guys on our bench and it was sagging dangerously. i figure this is germany, they make good benches, at which point ours snaps and collapses on itself and 6 of us all land in a pile of humans covered in beer, our glasses sadly empty.

they give us a new bench, new beers and off we go.

beer as big as your FACE

i ate some chicken, a really huge pretzel, and according to the colored-in beers on my tournament t-shirt, i drank 3 steins, but somehow spent 80 euros. we sang to queen and led zeppelin and played kazoos...i don't know. i thankfully ended not on the hill of puke, and instead in a dance club with some french guys but then left without saying goodbye and took some s-bahn's, a taxi, back to my tropical beach where i caught up with my team and we all recounted the evening shenanegans.

believe it or not, i wasn't too hung over to play more frisbee the next day, this is quality beer people. and after the weissbeer and sausage breakfast, we managed to actually win a few games. i caught my train and was home in berlin by midnight.

you still think oktoberfest is awaste of time? no way, i'll be there next year! in a dirndl!

more pictures and movies here.

the talking bench

2010-09-22T13:14:00.000-04:00

when I was in the 3rd grade I published a book, an oeuvre precursor to mapquest called: "how to get to the king kullen supermarket from my house"; the king kullen supermarket being a pinnacle location in my 7 year old mind (I wanted to be a cashier in the marine/seafaring themed foodstore up until I was 15). the book featured all the landmarks you see on your way, from the general store where i would buy treats (and benson & hedges cigarettes for my mom), the broken tree to the crazy cat lady's house.

on my bike to work everyday in berlin i have formulated the same series of little events.

1. you start with the spatkauf that is inevitably closed, the "open 24hours" sign blinking behind the metal shades,

2. you go by the gypsy people living in their army vehicles near the big church,

3. then the bombed out church

4. then the supermarket with my favorite vietnamese fruit guy.

i learn all my german from immigrants, btw. vietnamese fruit guy taught me all my obst and krauter, when i point to something, he says it back slowly, and then makes a sentence like, "you want some peaches? these peaches are as sweet as your eyes." i also learned "have no fear" when i freaked out at all the bees on the raspberries one day. he pulled them off the fruit with his fingers and flicked them away "keine angst! keine angst!"

anyway before the museum insel and the berliner dome is a peculiar mess of construction. my original google map instructions led me down a street which has been blocked ever since january. so i take a shortcut through this park near the humboldt box.

5. that's where you have the boardwalk with the talking bench.

boardwalk right, luv field left.

biking on the boardwalk is strictly verboten but whatevs, everybody does it. on one side is the archeological site that progresses more and more each week, on the other side there are people playing on a nice grass field with their dogs, the occasional karaoke machine on a bicycle, and right in the middle, homeless guys sleeping on this long wooden bench the morning sun warming their faces, totally oblivious to the fact that the bench is talking.

washington DC installed armrests on every public bench so as the prevent loitering and sleeping (kinda like those assholes who designed the duesseldorf airport where sleeping is strictly impossible). berlin has nothing like this, but it has the weird talking bench. i'm not sure what the point or artistic value of the talking bench is but it's an older woman's voice talking in harsh (probably typical) german phrases,, it's a story or something. i'm wondering if movement triggers it. i never catch the sentences at the same moment so it's saying something different every day, and i'm never there long enough to hear more than a few words (don't want the polizei catching me biking on the boardwalk).

anyway, today i heard "(something something) angeschluss." something about closing? i can't find any information about the talking bench, but if anyone knows what i'm talking about, i would love to know more.

americuh - a photo diary

2010-09-14T19:33:00.004-04:00

when you are away from the good ole USA for long periods of time, you tend to forget all those quirks that make it truly the weirdest craziest place on earth. the joke used to be yogurt has more culture than yogurt, but now i think americans have culture too, it's just a little strange.
i had an all-out american vacay straddling labor day (2nd most patriotic holiday after july 4th) and september 11th (which beats out a bicentenial independence day in the number of flags and prejudiced attitude).
it started with a lovely wedding in southern virginia, near roanoke. the post-rehearsal dinner bar had strict rules of attire, enforced by a tattoo'd gent with arms the size of my thighs. his sleeves were ripped off like he was the hulk. doesn't that count as "cutoffs?" he wasn't in the mood for humour.

my brother remarked several times that the place was not crowded because of number of people, it was mostly due to the size of their asses. so true.

we camped in a slanted field next to an old barn.

the view was ok.

had a successful day at happy's flea market in hollins, VA, which had tents and stores far more crowded than the teeth in anyone's mouths. it was amazing that the prices never teetered beyond 15$ for an item, yet we were"monitered by camera" as the misspelled signs constantly informed. had a taquito from a mexi-van, now i know these actually exist outside a 7-11.
next stop was foamhenge. the name pretty much says it all.

it's stonehenge, just made out of foam.

you can't tell which stones are real and which ones aren't eh? eh?

stonehenge took 1500 years and 600 men. foamhenge took 4-5 mexicans a weekend.

we then bathed in a lake, had a memorable meal at the country cafe restaurant, with pages of mystery items to choose from: chicken fried steak and the like, of which only 3 in our party 15 had to pull over for...and pull over...and pull over...

"what is horse relish?"

labor day is traditional bbq holiday, and what better way to celebrate than with 10 types of bbq sauce on pieces of a 350 pound pig cooked on a truck trailer.

big pig

someone had the brilliant idea to give you sharpies to write your name on your beer. of course, my friends came up with far better than a plane jane regular first name. we took those names to the bowling alley. i felt bad for the parents attending their child's birthday party on either side of us. i should add that there were several phDs and US state department employees on our team.

hey dad, what's a mexican waffle?
son, it's when you poop in a pull-out sofa, and then fold it up!

but that's not all, the final weekend included cookin' up 13 gallons of chowder (pronounced chowdaaaah)...

manhattan or new england?

...and dipping my feet into the long island sound.

it doesn't get any more american than that, folks!

be part of a movie! a really cool funny movie

2010-09-04T15:38:00.013-04:00

my friends in berlin have an excellent movie idea and script for a post-apocalyptic comedy:

...and an even more clever idea on how to finance it...a sortof socal networking experiment if you will. you invest in the movie and get to take part in it different aspects of it, say, like selecting the post-apocalyptic getaway vehicle or bunker location.

i got box seats (asked for an aisle though, since i pee often).

even if you are too busy to take part in a movie, at least help fund this one because i really want to see it. it will be funny, and probably be filmed in berlin, too.

we got no cellahs

2010-09-02T03:17:00.000-04:00

i'm playing cello at a lovely wedding on a virginian farm this weekend but don't really want to lug mine over the atlantic. the groom called ahead to a string shop to reserve a rental instrument, that i specifically requested to be non-chinese (they make good electronics, but instruments not so much). i called today, to discuss these arrangements, which of course they had no recollection of.

(weird guy with very typical midwestern accent that i sounded more like i was calling an auto shop): "sorry, we're all outta chellahs ."
but i called ahead, are you sure?
"hold on, lemme check the basement"
weird guy returns 5 minutes later, out of breath "yeah ok i think i got somethin' for ya"
ok, what is it?
"it's what we call an economy cello"
(i think about the dire state of our national economy) you mean a basement cello
"sure"
ok, i'll pick it up friday.
and so there you have it.
and since hurricane earl is threatening to lift up porta potties and rain down sewage on this weekend, we won't feel so bad about it returning it stuffed with beer cans will we.

greetings from space, oberpfaffenhofen

2010-08-31T07:22:00.003-04:00

so my first impression upon arriving at DLR (the deutsches zentrum for luft und raumfahrt, i.e. German Aerospace Agency) was wow, so many nerds.
my second impression, wow, they're actually quite attractive! all these young cute girls and guys with fashionable haircuts, no tattoos, who don't smoke and have good jobs! - a very stark cotrast to berlin.
3 non-stop days of meetings with aerial data experts, radar gurus, geo-physicists, engineers, 4 screens for every computer, i was a veritable child in an unbelievable candy store.
the weather was perfect, a glimpse of the alps over the tiny airport, the cafeteria simple and subsidized, i could die happy here.
the highlight however, was when my host bartered a paid lunch for some young cute girl with multiple ear piercings to give me and a colleague Martin a guided tour of the columbus center, which houses the control room for the TanDEM X mission: a new satellite was launched in June and caught up with TerraSAR-X, resulting in 2 synchronized radar satellites that collect in unison 20 minutes apart for interferometric data for detailed elevation data, as well as high resolution imagery that allows us to map cities and fences, as well as detect ships day and night pretty much anywhere in the world! and other cool stuff i won't bore you with. speaking of boring, standing at big windows overlooking the people in the windowless rather empty control room staring at computers with graphs and blinking squares was nothing to write home about. across the hall however, was a whole different story. this was the command for the ISS (International SPace Station, formerly MIR).
at 9:30 am, we just happened to catch the crew upon wake-up (slackers) - the daily schedule of all 6 astronauts displayed on a giant outlook calendar on a movie screen - every minute planned with acronyms, meeting, meals, exercise. there were black and white lines indicating when their day and night are, i guess they are in a superspeedy orbit where days are only 6 hours long. another screen showed a map of the position, somewhere in the southern pacific.
The live feed camera screen was blank, we were kinda bummed but there was plenty of other stuff to look at and talk about, like how they don't call it Oberpfaffenhofen, but Munich, for short, and how the common language on the station is russian, not english.
there was some screen with error messages which sounded scarier than they were.
some smartly dressed dudes clicked keyboards and talked into their headphones. i imagine what they tell their girlfriends at the biergarten later that evening, "yeah, i played chess with some guy on the ISS today." i messed around with a screen displaying an interactive 3D simulation of the iSS when suddently, the video feed turned on.
our guide says, yeah, i've been working here for a year and I've never seen anything interesting on the video.
a tiny speckle appeared and our faces were pressed to the glass, this could be interesting.
soon the speckle turned into a glow, and them a glimmer, and then a faint arc, with blue, clouds - dude, is this the sunrise over planet earth?
yup.
solar panels and other spacey stuff slowly showed up, first glowing red, then yellow. neat-O. our guide girl wants to stay, so we watch some of the activity below. i mentioned how my dad thinks space station science experiments are pretty much at a 2nd grade level. that didn't go over well, so then i asked about space farts.
next, another video panel went on, displaying some wall with bunches of storage and a computer.
we were on our way out, congratulating ourselves on the luck we just had when wait! i think i just saw a ponytail zoom by screen 3. we wait a few minutes more and low and behold, some buff female astronaut is talking offscreen, making hand motions while her gold chain necklace gently floats around her neck.
i ponder the conspiracy theory that maybe, she's actually just on a 747 doing nose dives above the utah desert but woah, there goes another guy, zooming through the screen like he is roller skates.
the girl comes back, her pony tail pointing awkwardly horizontal like pippi longstocking. this has to be real. a suitcase of sorts starts floating up and she bats it out of the way.
this is probably the coolest thing i've ever seen. guidegirl agrees. for the next 2 days i am bragging to everyone how i saw the astronauts and no one believes me - because no one ever sees the astronauts.
do space farts smell like earth farts?

lunch bavaria style

2010-08-30T07:23:00.000-04:00

one day in munich,we were walking to the cafeteria for lunch, when this nice woman i was talking radar with decided we would go "somewhere nice."
i climb into her tiny VW polo with one of her assistants, and we proceed on a wonderful hour-long guided tour of the lakes of southwest munich. we glide through little villages with green grassy fields with the alps in the background - it seems made up.
we arrive at a larger lake and decide between one of the 3 idyllic biergartens on the shore. there's a guy grilling big troutlike fish heads and all on big silver skewers that go from mouth through tail (i found out it's called stecklerfish). he shows me a picture of his aquaculture farm. i pick the fattest one. and a giant pretzel twice the size of my head. the fish is served in wax paper with a teeny tiny useless toothpick like fork thing. we sit at a bench on the water, an unusual strong wind blowing hair into my mouth. i don't care about my hair, i'll eat it too, this is delicious. moist, salty, garlicy, parsley-y, everything falling off the bone.

shhhhhtecklerfish!

a bunch of guys, all over 50 are showing off their windsurfing skills, waves sparkling, glistening, DLR lady is telling me about the glacier that once covered the mountains there. the assistant guy has never been outside munich. is this the best lunch ever?

it's friday! that means herring party!

2010-08-27T08:54:00.001-04:00

if you happen to be in scandanavia on a friday, i highly recommend you drop whatever plans you have and make it over to the best party this side of the Öresund: Nyhamnsläge herring night (weather permitting).

get there early, seats fill up. i recommend the picnic table closest to the water.
BYOS: bring your own schnaps. or, if you are my family, bring multiple varieties of your own schnapps in tiny bottles, white wine and beer (chasers). it's a good thing we came by bike.
also, we are classy types who always travel with our own table cloths.
wander up to the grill where these friendly gentleman grill up some very fresh perfectly cleaned herring filets.

for 30 krona they serve them on a slice of dark brown nutty bread with butter and you pour this delicious mustardy sauce on it and red onions from a giant bowl that make your eyes water just looking at them.

open face herring samwich

if you're feeling adventurous, try the pickled herring, or if you're not into fish, a nice hot dog smothered in fried onions.

better than what they serve on the scandlines ferry

my dad drinks for the tigers!

it's a fundraiser for the harbour, i heard. i'm willing to support a floating kids table for herring night.

who knew?

2010-08-19T06:52:00.002-04:00

that sweden has so many varieties of tiny tomatoes

tomatoes for all!

and things in tubes

(yes, i am kicking myself for not buying the tube of squeezable bacon flavored cheese).

totally tubular. also, this is a special open refridgerated tube display.

Grüne Soße (green sauce!)

2010-08-18T17:16:00.002-04:00

the first time i told my berlin aquaintances i was going to frankfurt, i was bombarded with a string of expletives interspersed with "boring" "ugly" and "never go there."
on the other hand, those that live in frankfurt kinda like it. i can't really blame them, it's one of these places that isn't paris, but makes the best of what it has. there's an ok river, the Main, on which Frankfurt provides a kebab boat. where you have little german tudor houses, frankfurt gives you ample apple wine and meat. and where you have potatoes and eggs, you have GREEN SAUCE.

the first time i saw green sauce it was in a cafeteria and there was a few gallons of it behind a sneeze guard. i was skeptical and passed it up for the sour cream-like white cream. boy do i regret not putting my face in it like i was bobbing for apples.

it has a bunch of herbs and stuff, i don't know, but a very legit frankfurter made some with his mom's recipe and brought it to my house for dinner last weekend. when no one was looking i dipped my finger in it. i also put pertzels in it, pita chips, eggs, bread, risotto, anything edible. probably could have put wet newspaper in it and loved it. it all tastes good because green sauce is SO good.
at the end of the very long night of wine drinking we were cleaning up and i so cleverly dumped the remaining green sauce contents into my tupperware and slid it into the fridge for later. unfortunately, it was cheap german supermarket tupperware and when it slid of the shelf it exploded its contents on the floor.
oh no! the green sauce!!
i will not tell you if i licked it up off the floor.
make fun of me if you will, for liking expensive, boring, lame-o frankfurt, but i don't care what you say because as long as there is green sauce, i LOVE frankfurt.

travel complaints

2010-08-16T17:15:00.000-04:00

the next time you complain about travel, just be happy you're not a passenger for multiple days on one of these:

or these:

or this thing:

at least these ones have toilets:

feeding my little birdie

2010-08-06T18:52:00.001-04:00

sunset on the oubangui

2010-08-06T18:40:00.002-04:00

we're lost...let's ask for directions to bobangui

2010-08-06T18:36:00.001-04:00

ladies only

2010-08-05T04:05:00.001-04:00

being a woman in africa is no easy thing.
basically, you are meant to churn out kids (probably starting from the age of 11), and cook, and that's about it.

i've written about poo, peeing, vomiting, now let's talk about something of the female persusion and a little more sensitive - guys, look away, cover your eyes, go talk about chicks and cars or something. this is about menstruation.
let me preface this with the fact that i have always noticed that unlike any other trip where your baggage becomes more and more unbearable and cumbersome over time, when i travel to congo my bag alwyas gets smaller and smaller. sure, i give stuff away, and yeah, i guess i lose things, but really, in the end everything just gets selectively removed.
but it's nothing to worry about, theft is not about valuables, more about necessity. they won't take your laptop, because they won't know what to do with it (no one has outlets)...but a flashlight or cell phone better be locked up. your fancy patagonia fleece isn't that vulnerable, just watch out for your shoes and socks. they will never take your camera, just your toilet paper.
and so it was, the feeling of a lighter bag is a good thing right? until that day of the month came, i searched confidently in my bag for my well planned stash of tampons and maxipads.
GONE.
fuuuuuuuuuuuudge.
i'm travelling on a tiny speedboat for 2 days on the congo river with 4 dudes. we stop like, once every 5 hours at villages that consist of huts. i have a total of 400 congolese francs on me (that's less than 40 cents. don't even get me started on the economics of this trip, and how all my budgeted money was spent in one day covering for johannes, i am pretty iritated at being poor).
oh, and it is pouring rain and everything i own is either soaked in sweat, rain, or covered in gasoline.
oh, and i'm piss drunk on palm wine that i've been sipping out of a recycled beer bottle.

not a happy camper

i ask ino to borrow money he's all, what do you need, i'll buy it! you want some beer? he buys beer and hands me one.

this is not good.

recall that we are stopping in hut villages, that with the rain now are muddy hut villages. in one village, i asked a guy if i could use his toilet. he brought me to his hut, and showed me to the corner in which i could pee, in front of his family and his ducks.

i wonder what the female residents do with thier monthly task...this is more mind boggling than indonesian turlets.
i am back in the boat, i sit uncomfortably and sip my palm wine, pondering gender issues when we stop in the town of bolobo to spend the night. i am drunk, hungover, tired, and still entirely soaked and cold from the earlier rain, and quite ready to be done with this endless bumpy boat trip (i am actually looking forward to a cold brown shower in dusty hectic kinshasa?).
we check in with the missionaries, get hassled by the CGM and then wander off into the town in search of food and booze. we find a little bar with really loud music that also just happens to be a pharmacy! what luck! everyone sits in plastic chairs and orders beer and peanuts and i make an excuse and sneakinto the little store.
as a mondele, it is impossible to do anything without being followed by at least 10 children so they all join me in the pharmacy to watch. this is SO embarassing. i have a hard enough time buying tampons at the supermarket, this is something entirely different.
i scan the shelves which are full of malaria medicine, eye drops and other stuff and finally notice a box that has the same color and design at those always brand maxi pads, but the text is in chinese. i point to those, i'll take one.
my little audience chatters in response and all the blood rushes to my face. the pharmacy guy opens the carboard box with an exacto knife and pulls out a large handy plastic carrying case of what seem like adult diapers.
oh no oh no, these are from the 80s, or what comes out of those automatic machines in airport restrooms. i want to die. just imagine me walking up to the guys at the bar, with my little plastic suitcase, hey guys i just bought these, thought they might come in handy!
i negotiate a purchase by the unit, which means the guy opens the package and pulls a thick pad out, clearly showing me the blue medicinal strip and then waves it around, using it for emphasis as we do business. everyone is talking, yelling, i can feel my heartbeat in my face. it's hot, i'm sweating, i want to crawl under a rock and die.
i look in my wallet and realize i don't have enough cash and really need to turn up the bargaining. we argue and argue back and forth, i offer euros, my phone number, he then displays the wings for extra protection and squeezes it to demonstrate the absorbency, I'm half expecting him to pour blue liquid on it like in the commercial. somehow we come to an agreement and i get a package of tissues thrown in with a deal i can afford. yes!
as it turns out they don't actually have the tissues, someone will bring them to me in the bar. the perfect alibi for when i get back to my colleagues and someone asks me what took so long! i stuff 2 thick diaper like items into the pockets of my cargo pants saddle up to the plastic table and down some beer.
momentarily, a little boy brings me the tissues and i thank him and confidently wave him away.
so i spent about 20cents on one rather thick diaper.
let's now imagine i'm a shy 14 year old girl who has no income whose family lives in a thatch hut a can barely afford enough manioc to feed my 6 siblings. it's no wonder they stole my tampons, that stuff is luxury.

chunky

2010-08-04T13:46:00.000-04:00

bolobo

2010-08-04T07:53:00.002-04:00

oly shit bolobo. descending the congo river in our speedboat, it's getting dark so we pull into a harbour that is dominated by rusty shipwrecks, one of them an overturned large canoe-like thing with a tree growing out of it, guarded by military guys. Dodo the boat driver urges me to put away the camera. the sounds of children and people are emanating from all over this village. we jump out of the boat, everyone forgetting to remove their bright orange life vest which only adds to the perception that we are aliens. we leave Dodo to guard the boat and head to the missionary place to check if they have room.

we walk up through the village, leading a parade of children. we pass the trait d'union, former bar turned convenience shop, and the humble abode of kingboy.

trait-d'union

kingboy lives here

we arrive at a serene missionary establishment with goats and chickens and they serve us cold beer while we wait for our rooms. we are repeatedly made aware of the rules: NO COUPLES.
i gladly accept my single room, letting the guys duke out their bunk beds.
We go back to the boat and get intercepted by the CGM, who was apparently notified by the priest (jerk). it's a guy in a cardinals jersey and his assistant in uniform with a 70s briefcase. they hassle us, rather rudely that they were inconvenienced by our unannounced arrival. we make them follow us to our boat.
we find Dodo managing well. he's apparently used to this, living, sleeping on the boat, guarding it from thieves. i ask him if he needs anything, and no, he's already managed to get a beer and dinner, and is giving himself a shave.
we grab our stuff, bid farewell to dodo and walk back up the hill. the CGM assistant guy is now eagerly asking for my number, but at the same time hassling us for money. where is the logic? we tell the main guy that we see through his bullshit but he argues that he is very important, and has a lot of work dealing with visitors, and he stops, instructs his assistant to open his suitcase to show us a wrinkled picture of a white guy with sunglasses. this guy is a very important belgian from kinshasa, and of course we know him, because we are white therefore we know all the white people in kinshasa. cardinals puts the picture back in the suitcase like he won this round and continues to follow us as we completely ignore them.
we get to the missionary and our tactics no longer work, we can't shake these guys. we finally give them our passports and lead them to our room and leave them while we drink 12 more beers in the courtyard.
they scrutinze every detail of our papers and passports, write stuff down and call people but they got nuthin'. meanwhile, we're drunk and hungry.
the missionary guy promises that our dinner will be ready in one hour, at 830pm. we are very hungry and from previous experiences where my colleagues went dinnerless at this place they don't believe him and we start to exit the compound in search for some famous bolobo grilled fish. but the missionary argues, ok dinner at 815 pm! geert presents a challenge:
we will go eat some fish and return at 9pm and if the dinner is on the table then we eat and we will pay for it.
if we return at 9pm and dinner is not ready, then we will wait and eat it and will not pay for it.
the aspiring priest thinks for a minute and hesitates, ok.
i asked geert what's the deal and he answers, "this is africa, you need to bet on two horses" and it makes sense.
we walk in the absolute pitch dark towards the nighttime fish market.
this place is nutso. there's no electricty, just candles, people, fish. it smells like fish. it's dark. the most wonderful part is that it is so dark no one knows we are mondele and we can walk through and mingle unnoticed. big fish, small fish, smelly fish. geert negotiates something with yves, one of the missionary boys, but i am too much in awe of all the fish hacking, yelling, singing, pushing, to notice. we meet up at the bar and instruct the aspiring priest to get our fish grilled and deliver to the bar. he eagerly embarks on his mission.
we get drunk, i deal with the pharmacy (story to follow), and a few beers later, our fish still hasn't arrived.
we ditch the aspiring priest for our dinner appointment. we're actuall 30 minutes late and dinner has just been served. we are hungry and won't argue technicalities. i sit down to eat and find one of the other missionary guys hitting on me. wtf, aren't you guys supposed to be celibate?
we talk to a doctor who rattles on depressing statistics about malarial deaths which outnumber hiv cases. johannes and i tell priest and rabbi jokes. hours later, we're about to go to bed and in comes yves, whom we had ditched at the market and totally forgotten about. your fish! it is uncooked. we specifically instructed him to cook the fish, and this was hours ago, what have you been up to since then?? geert lambasts him. we give the fish to the cook and go to bed. yves bows his head in shame, but along with his buddies follows me to my room and watches me undress through the curtains, and eagerly invite me to morning mass. oh don't worry, we will make sure we skidaddle before services!
at 6 am the sounds of bells emanate from the bell tower of the church. but these are not real bells, this is a recording of the vatican bells, but played at the same volume as the bar music, which means scratchy and barely discernible. i go to the restroom and hold my nose, and ultimately decide to hold my urge to pee or poop until we get to kinshasa.
goodbye bolobo.

chunky update

2010-08-03T14:53:00.001-04:00

i passed through the hotel reception voicing my daily contempt towards the staff concerning the treatment of chunky this morning. as usual, i manage to rouse a few of the other guests too, and the lady who counts the money (whom i think is the wife of the hotel owner) tries to ignore me, but has to listen. i vow never to return as long as chunky is in is cage, and declared that i will leave today for another hotel (i actually fly out of DRC tonight anyway). i also posted a real nasty review on tripadvisor (as if people actually choose kinshasa as a recreational destination...)

this morning the staff sounded a little disappointed and countered "but we fed him on sunday when you were away! doesn't that make you happy??"
sigh.
a monkey eats all day, every day, he drinks water too.
they throw their hands up in the air, like they will never win.
i stare cruelly: you will be punished by your god.
johannes has found someone to take him. they can hardly say no to be relieved of the burden...we shall see.
i also found out that chunky really likes cucumber.

adventure to Ngiri, part II

2010-08-03T08:26:00.005-04:00

we arrive in the dark at Ntondo. we can't find our way (there are no lights anywhere, nor roads for that matter, just huts and stuff) so we pick up a guy from the village to guide us. we have since lost the second car, the one that happens to have all the food, and our luggage. we sit quietly on the porch of our research station situated perfectly on the lake. there are fireflies, stars reflected in the perfectly still water.
we're starting to get antsy so we pay a guy with a motorcycle to go get us some beer. beer guy is gone a long time. geert laments the departure of the doctor and his very attractive wife who also cooks a hell of a meal. beer guy returns and we are happy. the other car shows up quickly after (they must have been attracted by the beer) and in the meantime i serve up some life-saving trader joe's mix.
we went for an amazing swim in the lake, the water was warm and it's very acidic, so good for the skin! i washed my hair and cursed my lack of conditioner and hair stuff which had previously exploded in my bag which foreshadows a coming week of thick knot hair.
i sleep in an afterthought bunk bed - it's like they had a bed that was kinda high up and then decided to put another underneath. there is about 2 feet between this bed and the one above and it has been decided that i am the only one who will fit there. i slide in my bed sandwich and sleep.
the house has walls that only go so high, not to the ceiling, probably for ventilation or something. but it means you can hear everything. so in the middle of the night when guard number 1 came in to do a number 1 you heard e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. i really had to pee but decided to hold it in.
in the morning we got up super early with the sun, had breakfast (peanuts and coffee) and i went for another swim. of course, all the local boys came to stare and 13 sets of eyeballs were popping out of their sockets while i undressed, what am i supposed to do, wear a burka? some fishermen came and fished right on the beach which in theory is supposed to be a reserve. i took pictures. they were super friendly and so incredibly proud of the miniscule fish they were catching with mosquito nets. you know you are killing absolutely every living thing in this lake and you won't have anything to eat tomorrow, right?

look at my teeny tiny baby fish, only 50 calories!

bowl o fish

i give a perogue a go and once again this is a spectacle - mondele in a perodgue! like they must think we whietys have gelatinous brains, eat nothing but bread and are incapabable of anything. like when you're eating grilled goat and people go "look at the mondele eating goat!" and laugh because it's hilariously weird to them.

crazy mondele, you can't pirogue!

everyone from the research station comes to the beach to board the speedboat, which clearly isn't there. Dodo the speedboat driver had left kinshasa a few days earlier and was meant to be here by now...and his cell phone is out of minutes (convenient)...so instead we put an engine the fancy perogue and conveniently outfit it with ubiquitous plastic chairs. i called dibs on the one with the words of praise to god. i was also seated behind the guy with the gun who would protect me in the event of a pirate attack.

off we go, and i take thousands of pictures of perogues. they are everywhere and they are so cool!

pirogue # 323

pirogue # 947

super loaded perogue # 1012 - (i would take nicer pictures if i had a better camera hint hint birthday in november)

we cruise down the lake, chatting, feeling the breeze and watching the mist lift and woah, 2 hours later lo and behold i still don't have to pee and there is our speedboat! we transfer our belongings mid-lake and off we go.
now we are 4 mondeles and 3 congolese (one heavily armed) in a speedboat that no local has ever seen or imagined before. everyone and anyone you pass stops what they are doing, stares and then starts waves madly and smiling. i am doing so much waving i feel like the pope.
every once in a while we need to add gas from the 11 or so vegetable oil canisters we have on board. we calculate that this boat burns more fuel and emits more carbon than the plane we took to Mbandaka. we will never speak of this gas consumption again.
we stop in crazy little villages with markets and more staring children. the kids all come to shore and just stare. they don't talk to eachother, or poke another's arm and talk, they just stare silently. if you look them in the eye, some smile and giggle, most of them run away in fear. woah, we're in the kind of place where white people aren't just different, they are scary.
a lady comes out of a hut with a small barely walking baby who takes one look at me and screams in terror like i am the baby eater all his baby friends have been telling him about. she is dragging the baby towards me and it is doing everything as baby-possible to escape but it's no use. she finally brings the baby to me and despite its every effort makes it touch me. this thing is screaming bloody murder, and once it touches me doesn't stop. she brings it back into the hut. touching a mondele is good luck, some people say.
more kids start to follow and if you turn around they freeze, it's like we're playing a schoolyard game. geert finds some ladies selling bananas and bread and we pick up lunch.
a self-important feeling man scuttles up with his little assistant and introduces himself as the CGM immigration service. these guys again. this village has 15 huts, probably 200 people, and there's an immigration service? he's demanding our passports as usual, and we just ignore him, drink a coke, chat with the people, trying to convert their frozen staring into thoughtful conversation. a young-ish lady named Fabiola shows me her house, and proudly talks about her kids and shows me the neighboring huts that stand empty since the war, the war being the whole mess last march. she keeps saying god sent me to her that she's so happy to meet me. thanks fabiola. geert likes to ask people what they eat, what they grow. and i look under a hut and see some ducks. we should eat some duck. good idea, geert says.
the perogue catches up with us and we go across the river and negotiate a live duck for dinner. thankfully it gets carried away in the the other boat so i don't have to stare into its vacant eyes for the next few hours.
more villages, tiny bananas and peanuts.

oubangui village

next we stop at the military base (no photos, hide your camera!!!!!) for more formalities (e.g. ass-kissing). this is an old belgian colonial site with overgrown busted up mansions and a large alley lined with tall palms, where our team was previously stuck overnight for refusing to pay a bribe - er, i mean 'immigration fee.' we once again give our passports to some very important people, watch them copy the numbersand hand our paperwork to dudes as we have been doing all day.
a lieutenant ambles up and introduces himself, along with his underling. geert vaguely ignores him by looking directly through him. these guys are most likely the ones who bombed our house. the lieutenant talks with his arms behind his back, waxing poetic about the cycles of war, and how things are destroyed, but that allows new better things to grow again.
geert says wearily "yeah, that's really great, papa, but we liked our house the way it was. would you like to build it up and make it new again for us?"
the lieutenant, realizes he is being indirectly accused walks off angrily. we get back into our boat and continue.
more villages, perogues.
we finally make it bobangui, it is now 32 hours since we left kinshasa, a trip our logistics guy said we could do "in a day no problem." ha.

arrival at base camp. there's our duck, whom we've named "dinner"

we are warmly greeted by the field team, and more guys with guns. we see the house, whose roof has clearly been burnt but besides the bullet marks on the outside, no evidence of rockets or grenades or any of that sort. this is a regular ole looting, folks. it's pretty obvious who are the mutherfuckers who did this. everyone knows the rebels (who are armed with little more than machetes), and local people aren't really the steal glass windows and shoot bullets in walls kinda type.
someone brings a plastic table and 4 chairs and we sit down to some peanuts and beer to ponder. oh, we will get them, we will win...and we will use our strongest weapon....the weapon of...conservation!? we each drink from our warm Turbo King beer and no one speaks as we listen to the overwhelming sounds of the peeping frogs and insects, who all seem to agree.

adventure to Ngiri, part I

2010-08-02T05:54:00.005-04:00

when i came to DRC 3 years ago we had a workshop to identify the most biologically important areas to conserve and protect. one of these 62 areas is the Nrigi triangle, an area in northwest DRC surrounded by the Oubangui and Ngiri rivers and is home to swamp forest chimpanzees, elephants buffalos, and probably a lot of other stuff, but who knows. a few years ago the German government agreed to support the creation of the Ngiri biosphere reserve, and this is one of Johannes' projects.
Less than a year ago, a ranger/research station was completed in a little village called Bobangui on the shores of the Oubangui river. only 2 months later, in March 2010 a little tiff erupted between some rebels and the government military, all the villagers fled to the opposite shore in Republic of Congo, and we heard the Boubangui house was destroyed, the rumours running the gamut from a canoe-launched grenade to a missile attack, to hostile takeover by rebels.
johannes had already tried 3 times to visit the famous Ngiri river ecoystem he was to protect, and he decided ths time, he was going to make it. and so there it was, we would get to the ngiri river, whatever it takes. we would fly to Mbandaka or Ntondo, where another research station is, then take a boat to Boubangui.
the trip was planned 3 weeks in advance along with our belgium cohort and luckily, i secured a spot. a few days before our trip, our logistician, olivier, whose title implies full time assistance with logistics for just these types of trips tells me "there are no flights to Mbandaka this week" which is congolese for "i never made the reservations and all the flights are booked." so we decided to charter a plane to Mbandaka on wednesday, and take the new speedboat we just purchased from the swedish ambassador back down to kinshasa on sunday. we found 2 cute french pilots from Aviation Sans Frontieres to take us to Mbandaka. We picked up an extra passenger and haggled a bit so it was a little bit more affordable.
Flying from the N'dolo airport is one of my favorite things ever. First, there's the drive through kinshasa. in one neighborhood i noticed that every single lady on the street was carrying a huge bin of bread on her head. it was mystical. Geert, our belgian colleague read my mind and pointed across the street "La!." and there is the hq of the factory rthe soze of a city block where pretty much all the bread comes from. that place must churn out over 3 million large format hot dog buns (that's what they call bread) a day and distribute it through various sources, mostly, women's heads.
we get to the small domestic airport to begin the "procedures." these involve a series of doors, offices, whatever through which you must go through to travel to a destination that is not outside DRC. thankfully we were led by Ino, our congolese primate scientist who is the master of local procedure. he has a very african way of speaking ngala without moving his jaw while looking around, scanning the horizon, doing a million things like checking his watch or drinking a beer and without fail it passifies even the most eager of bribe seekers.
we enter the first "office," which is actually a shipping container. some money is exchanged, maybe for the airport tax. i hear my name mentioned, my passport passed around, forms filled out. what are we doing here? i ask ino.
we need to pay for the visa.
"but i already have a visa"
you need a visa for your visa
and i'm about to ask the logical next question as to why you need a visa for your visa and ino waves me away, irrirated, aurelgrooves stop asking stupid questions!
i retreat into the corner with my book.
we exit and enter the next office, and something similar happens, i am uninterested.
next door is customs. customs? we aren't leaving the country. don't ask questions.
there's a booth for locals, and one for foreigners. my name is called and i am summoned to the foreigner booth.
a very serious, borderline angry man asks what do you do, where are you staying. i answer diligently, back straight.
and your birthday?
dude quickly waves me into the booth, pulls out out the id card around his neck and demands "read here" and points to the same birthdate as mine. we are twins! he exclaims and hugs me. this is the most exciting day of his life. i want to tell him how cool it is to have a birthday around thanksgiving and then realize he doesn't celebrate thanksgiving and so we are talking, shaking hands, and then geert comes and knocks on the window and urges in his flemish accent, "eh papa, c'est pour aujourd'hui ou demain?" i get pushed out of the booth, back to business.
Geert gets asked the same questions, his answer "i am the capitan of Flanders, I am staying at the Ritz Carlton and my birthday is none of your business." as the guy is writing all this down i'm trying not to snicker at johannes, who is presuming the ritz carlton is the one between the Macy's and the movie theater.
next step is the hygeine station where a guy with a lab coat inspects you, i guess. all he really does is ask you for a piece of paper than ino has, and then whispers to his assistant who adds another hash mark to her sheet. this sheet is full of hash marks, she must have been keeping score since the day this place opened. the dr. double checks her work by gingerly putting on his glasses which are in his lab coat pocket. they are thick coke bottle glasses, entirely dirty cracked and broken there is no way he can see through them. he proudly waves me by.
the bar is a bunch of metal chairs that are falling apart, and the bathroom is more like a crime scene. we are taken to our truck with our luggage and drive out to the plane. the cute pilots are scanning us with the metal detector wand and are waving it in my face trying to make beep near my nose ring. geert meanwhile declares he is going to relieve himself "a la congolese" and is peeing on an abandoned shack.
we take off, the flight is not very exciting, mostly hazy. we land in Mbandaka which has nothing particular besides a UN building with lots and lots and lots and lots of barbed wire. the airport is an impressivly run down, empty structure with one door that says
entree
baggages
sortie
the door to everywhere! there are people sleeping on different surfaces and a shoeless man at a table, reading the bible and intently making notes. he instructs us to wait. because all zero of the other passengers in this terminal also need to have their passports checked and this means a 35 minute wait. we finally get called into the CGM (immigration or something or other) office and 2 different people write my passport number down. i then realize that the top three congolese passtimes are:

1. sitting in plastic chairs
2. walking while making that despondent shuffling sound with flip flops (like my dad does with his slippers)
3. writing down passport numbers.

we are cleared and then escorted out to the parking lot which is full of armed soldiers. 2 are selected to escort us and thus begins the "formalities."
first visit is to the governor of Equateur province. he greets us in a room that tries to be the oval office in 1/10th of the size. there is a large fancy wooden table that takes up 95% of the room, the rest of it is filled with flags and those fancy boardroom office chairs. you come in the door and you can't move through the sea of chairs. i have a bag and i'm stuck between two chairs. a press guy is there, it's very embarassing. we all do our little speeches, happy to be here, we welcome you to our province, sorry your house got destroyed blah blah blah. the governor's cell phone starts to ring but he ignores it. it's playing the hokey pokey song. finally he answers and we squeeze back out and buy some cool litchi-like fruit with long spikes from a lady outside. SO yummy.

back in the car, next stop, the real man in charge, the military colonel, who's people may or may have not bombed our house. the colonel isn't there, which would have meant an hour's wait but instead we meet his goofy deputy who has heavy dress shoes 5 sizes too big. same drill, passport numbers written down and he talks and winks at me a few times. he points to his vast empire on a map from 1963 and says he's in charge when the colonel is out. if the colonel knew about this he probably wouldn't be too happy. we then head to the office where we pick up fuel, and more guys with guns.

dirty map of DRC circa 1963

picking up fuel and guys with guns

we now have a 2 car convoy for the 4 hours drive to ntondo.

it's a bumpy dusty road through villages with kids running and screaming "mondele!" we run over quite a few chickens (man they're stupid). apparently, a chicken isn't a big deal but if you hit a goat or a kid you need to stop.

we pass a lot of awesome bicycles, packed to the gills with stuff.
we're driving really fast with guys with guns and so we seem really important. plus, not a lot of cars in these parts, so the guys on bicycles sortof freak out when we pass, it's a little sad. instead of just riding on the right and letting us pass they kind of disperse as if a helicopter is landing, feet come off of the pedals and they scatter in every direction and run off the road and crash into the bushes. they may have brakes, or maybe they don't know how to use them.

i want one of these bikes!

the windshield has a giant crack in it, and the place where the radio would be is empty.

rollin' rollin' rollin'

we stop at crazy markets like this one and the guy with the gun buys what we ask him to

geert starts singing flemish songs, meanwhile the military dude in the back is falling asleep and doing the violent head bob, but his beret manages to stay on. the way his gun is leaning on his knee makes the barrel point straight towards the base of my neck. we're hitting some nasty bumps and i'd rather not think about it. i'm sure that thing has a safety latch or something. he startles awake, looks at his gun and changes the ammunition cartridge. what was wrong with the old one? are you really allowed to sleep while we drive? have you ever shot someone?

aurelgrooves, stop asking stupid questions!

some humans are just savages

2010-07-30T06:59:00.000-04:00

i have found out here that for every 3 good days in DRC, you get one bad one.

the last bad one was saturday, when the whole water issue was happening, the next was when i discovered this poor monkey, whom after populat vote has been named "chunky."

chunky is a young putty nosed monkey whose parents were presumably murdered for meat and rendered an orphan and then sold in a market. the brainless, soulless, savage owners of the Luntu Apartment Flats Hotel thought chunky would make an amusing pet and entertain their guests. they quikcly realized that chunky was indeed a wild animal more than a perfectly domesticated pet, and that chunky might possibly bite and misbehave and scare guests and so they decided to lock chunky up in tiny iron cage to spend the rest of his days sitting on a metal bar amidst his own feces, and barely given scraps to eat or water to drink.

the cage is so small he can't stand or stretch, hasn't felt the ground or walked on his own two feet in months. these people think bread is a staple of a monkey's diet. even worse, his cage is right next to a noisy construction site and lit up at night by streetlights so the poor guy barely can't even sleep. chunky never gets a break.

i've started sharing my trader joe's trailmix with chunky - it's perfect because i found out he only eats the craisins, which i don't like, and he hates everything else so i don't feel bad about picking out the almonds and cashews. he makes bird noises when i feed him. i gave him water from a bottle which he slurped up with his little tongue. i hardly see how he can bite given that his teeth are but millimeters long.

i have repeatedly threatened the hotel owners that it's barbaric, we will call the authorities, no longer stay at this hotel and we are constantly harassing the staff as to why they let this go on and we have repeatedly offered to take it away (where to? what do you do with a monkey, it's like a child!)...yet we are always met with the saddest moment which is when they laugh. silly lady, it's just a monkey.

they think it's funny.

ok, the kite birds with clipped wings are one thing but this monkey is a totally different level. i can hardly understand how keeping this monkey justifies losing $360 a day of my organizations's business but if that's their principle, then i am allowed mine and so be it. so whoever comes across this blog, please, don't stay one single night at the Hotel Luntu Flats in Gombe/Kintambo Magasin as long as that monkey is there. (other choices are African Dreams, Hotel La Residence 165, El Castillo).

there are times when you wonder whether humans can actually stop being human - whatever quality "human" describes? it's not a matter of different culture anymore. i truly believe that the people who publicly torture this innocent animal every day will be punished by whatever god or karma they believe in.

kinshasa supermarket

2010-07-29T07:21:00.000-04:00

the supermarket i used to go to is gone. but the big fancy chain supermarket is still there...sorta. it is now rather empty and one of the creepiest places in kinshasa. half of it is totally dark, weirder than the LIDL in Berlin. i'm waiting for zombies to crawl out of the ceiling tiles and chase after me under the flickering neon lights.
the wine section is interesting, dusty bottles with brown rotting labels, none of them younger than 1992. i guess that's a good thing? what about white wine? i bought a 1991 reisling for a dinner party...i think we'll make sangria.

the frozen food and cheese section are a bit of a disappointment.

logical shower debate

2010-07-28T07:10:00.002-04:00

it's kinda hard to yell at people and expect them to take you seriously when they are laughing.

so i haven't had a legitimate shower in 3 days. sink trickle jewish bath doesn't count.
my bathroom faucets sound like a 90 year old with emphyzema when you turn them on. but i figure hey, it's the dry season, water is scarce, showering is a western luxury right? you know when little black girls get their braids taken out, and their mom is picking at their hair with a comb, and it is all an unraveled mess? this is my hair.
i wake up late (some guys in the room next door partied until 7 am, even though the sign on the room doors specifically say "absolutely NO occupany by people of the same sex. punishment is a FINE."), but once again, no water. sigh.
i go get breakfast, but they have no coffee, no tea, no nothing, i have a coke. i come back, still no water.
i finally ask them what's up and they are all shocked like, what? no water? 5 guys all come to my room to investigate, hmmmm, indeed no water. "go have another coke and we'll see what we can do."
i come back 30 minutes later and nothing has changed. the still is still mezmerized by "under the tuscan sun," that lame romantic movie with Diane Lane. (they have a tiny 8 inch color tv in the lobby now) on one really wants to clean my room, but they must.
you don't need to clean my room, i just want to get some work done, maybe take a shower.
"it's the dry season, water is scarce. there is no water. alain needs to clean your room. he will bring you a bucket"
i really don't want the budket shower. i go get another coke.
i come back and alain has stripped all my sheets and is replacing my towel, which i clearly didn't use since tuesday. why are you changing the towel? and the sheets?
"we clean the sheets and towels every day."
what the...are we not the dry season? is water not scarce? and you wash everyone's sheets EVERY day?? do YOU clean your own sheets every day? this is ridiculous! why don't you NOT clean my sheets so i can take a fucking shower??
the people across the hall have all come to spectate and they are just laughing at me.
i look in the mirror, i am a freak. my hair is an absolute disaster, i am wearing no bra, no shoes on my disgusting dirty feet. i'm covered in nasty mosquito bites. and they are supposed to take me seriously? i'm just a crazy mondele. i'm going to get another coke.

bathroom instructions

2010-07-27T07:02:00.002-04:00

these signs in the women's restroom are totally something this guy would write. a very convincing debate on why you should flush the toilet when you are finished with your business:

this is my chair

2010-07-26T07:56:00.000-04:00

johannes and i fight over who gets to sit in this chair every day at lunch. it's the only one of its kind, out of the sea of plastic chairs in this country, but it might very well determine the fate of our little missionary 4 seater cessna flight on wednesday...

chinese for YUMMY.

2010-07-25T12:07:00.002-04:00

johannes and i are feasting on ethnics wonders of kinshasa. who knew this place would have such culinary delights?
on the way back to the hotel there is a newish chinese restaurant with bright red lanterns and lights with DONG FANG written on the wall. we figured why not.
we enter the huge building...into a teeny tiny dining room with glass tables, and all the windows covered shut by thick curtains...we were kinda hoping for a patio but whatever.
we quickly realize none of the staff speak english, french or german (worth a shot). all the other patrons are chinese, hunkered around various frangrant dishes and slurping out of soup bowls. we get the menu and ask if they have beer.
beer? the waitress looks around nervous, be-er? totally confused.
she rushes outside and brings back the security guard from the parking lot and stands him in front of us. translator, i guess.
biere?
oh oui! and he rushes to the cooler to get 2 mützig.
the menu is extensive, page after page, not organized in any particular way, but has large out-of-focus glossy photos of the dishes, their prices, and hilarious nonsensical names like "fantastic fish farm" or "towering castle of radish!"
we choke on our beers when we come across "pepered pangolin" which is a protected kind of anteater found in one of our study regions. i'm fairly certain you could get tiger if you knew how to ask but whatever.
we pick three random things and wait.
on the other side of the window there is what sounds like a struggling jet engine. i immediately flash back to our flight here, when i was bored of looking out the window at endless sahara desert and asked johannes to wake me up when we hit rainforest. an hour later i was jolted awake by the screams of the fellow passengers, drinks flying everywhere as we went through some pertty hairy turbulence. johannes relaxes back into his magazine "there's your rainforest!" there was a forceful shifting sound, like the engines are suddenly put into another gear and fighting for survival. you wonder what the pilot is thinking, has he done this before? you grip the seat and closely watch the face of the flight attendants for any hint of fear...anyway, the sound behind this window of our restaurant is EXACTLY the sound of those engines, including the swirling wind part, i'm having a total flashback.
i go outside to find our parking lot attendant/waiter sitting in his plastic chair and ask, what on earth is that noise?.
"those are the ovens."
i communicate this fact to johannes who says, "that's it, ve are leaving! ve are not eating in a place where they serve elephant!!"
but at that moment our dishes, our fragrant, glistening dishes arrive, and i don't know what kind of meat it was, except that it was dark and fried and tasty and we each picked out all the shiitake mushrooms, which were some of the best ever. they don't exactly sell jars of sweet and sour sauce and chinese vegetables at the kinshasa market, this stuff has to be authentic.
what is chinese for YUMMY?

s.s. tandoori

2010-07-23T09:42:00.002-04:00

this visit is all about re-visits. met up with some young germans introduced by my mother (small world) who took johannes and i to the taj tandoori, the indian place at the top of a building downtown with a fantastic boat-shaped patio overlooking the city. we didn't take the manually operated elevator, as it was out fo service, evident from the screams from the elevator shaft. "hey! pierre! up! up! ok fine, down! just please move us!!"

each of the 8 floors was as mysterious as the previous. there were abandoned offices and desks, a gentle breeze blowing through a blown out wall. does that keep the building structurally sound? hmmmm.

another floor had a long past its heyday shuttered night club, floor 4 had bunch of dudes watching a small tv and one level above, a guy was setting up his mosquito net above his new bed. a weird sortof squat i guess, but at the top you reach the opulent tandoori smelling restaurant with views extending all over. we didn't take the elevator down, either, because i got a glimpse of the mechanism, and the operator getting electric shocks trying to fix it

...no thanks i'll take the stairs!

Platanus temporalis: the time-telling tree

2010-07-23T07:54:00.003-04:00

if this tree could talk, it would say "lunch time is over!"

hello luntu!

2010-07-22T07:42:00.003-04:00

prices in kinshasa have gone downright apeshit.

it's like someone went and drew 0's after every number they saw.
gone are the days of 50 cent lunches or dollar beers, everything has at least quadrupled, and you wonder how these poor people survive.
our hotel was eager to lead the price fiasco and after dropping $70 US on a bowl of pasta and a small bottle of water johannes and i said that's it, we're outta here.
bare simple rooms have skyrocketed to $170/night, a clear consequence of the influx of UN and aid agencies, little supply of adequate accomodations. sadly, our do-gooder environmental NGO, which probably hasn't been innocent to the mismanagement of foreign money has been wrapped up in the targets of this price gouging. this was a "special price."
johannes was furious. we're going to ruin our budgets if we continue at this rate. do you know of any affordable hotels?
weellllll, i do know one place...as i thought lovingly back to the luntu flats, a hotel i swore i would never return to. i told johannes, it doesn't often have electricity, an apathetic staff, birds of prey as pets and snow white and the 7 dwarf lawn gnomes.
"sounds wonderful! let's go!"
and so here we are, 3 years later, the luntu has transformed itself into a luxury, albeit affordable hotel. there is power, a shiny brand new generator whose services aren't often needed, hot water, internet! one of those gold baggage cart things like you see at the four seasons (but no elevators, and not sure how those roll through the dirt which separates the buildings, but let's not criticize), and of course, the begging birds of prey who have gotten larger and wiser.
sadly, the pool is no longer, it's now a construction site for a new 3 story building, but the lawn gnomes have been redistributed throughout the comlpex, the restaurant still has alush ample patio, classy red table cloths and gold mongrammed plates with LUNTU all over them.
alain recognized me immediately. "do yo have a present for me?? you promised me a present!" shit, i totally gave away all my tiger t-shirts. i think he's going to get my ann taylor loft sunglasses, as i bought a nicer pair at duty free.
they put me in the same crappy room i switched out of before, because it has holes the size of my head in the window screens. those are still there. and no hanger in the closet for any of my clothes. the luntu has welcomed me back with open arms!

the war of luggage

2010-07-21T11:00:00.007-04:00

if i may declare one thing about Kinshasa, and that is that the baggage carousel at n'djili airport needs to be lengthened about 14 times its current size.
it is about 20 feet long total. For 200 passengers plus their families, acquaintances, employees, associates clamouring for luggage, this 0.12 inches per person is clearly not enough, and i learned that last time.
moses did not meet us at the airport as i had hoped, instead it was his matriarchal counterpart. a sort of dr. bailey with purple lipstick. normally, moses would be off answering his cellphones and chatting with his friends so i expected to attack the luggage issue myself, but this lady surprised me with a "would you like me to get your luggage, madame?"
she takes me luggage tag receipt, rolls up her sleeves and does a loud finger whistle which attracts 3 eager luggage grabbers. she shouts the baggage tag numbers to them and they disappear into the mob of limbs like those creatures in lord of the rings who can climb vertical surfaces.
after 15 minutes she senses no progress, determines i should help. she grabs my arm and literally shoves me into the human mass. my feet are no longer touching the ground, my weight is supported by the 5 different people spooning me. one of them i find out is my colleague johannes.
hey there!
how did you get here?
i don't know!
there are 3.5 pairs of hands all over me, searching every orifice for money, perhaps my cell phone, but i am smarter than that.
dr. bailey is tring to protect me, complaining loudly in her dialect at everyone who tries to push me, but i am on my own. this is war. we finally float to the front of the crowd and hold our place near the carousel.
there are no bags, just the guy riding the carousel who tries with little effort to push people back. and a few coolers.
some guy in the back screams that's his cooler! which cooler? there are three different ones! they are each extremely heavy, probably packed stiff with meat and vegetables. people team up and pass the coolers over their heads and they are gone.
then there's the box. a plain black box. we wonder what's in that box? it's heavier than the coolers.
i crouch down and look through the little door to see what is behind the scenes and see the guys unloading our plane's luggage from the little trains. they are not unloading the bags directly onto the carousel as you would expect, but forming a random heap which other guys with orange vests are crawling and climbing on. the guys with the vests then get on the carousel and ride a lap, shaking hands with the dudes on carousel island who pull random bags out and hold them there.
there are a few phone numbers exchanged, cool head butt handshakes, and the orange vest guys disappear into the back.
i am not describing to you the 80-odd minutes in between these events but we have seen the black box a hundred times now. i declare that we need to rub the box each time it passes for good luck. the box doesn't really stay in the same place because people flip it and inspect it each time it comes around, perhaps looking for an address label, or maybe rubbing it for good luck. sometimes it's hard to reach it but i make johannes rub it too.
finally, after 3 black box rubs the guys start dismantling the heap onto the carousel.
YES!! here come the bags! this is the most exciting part of my trip. i hug Dr. Bailey and she is holding my hand like we are ready to jump together.
now the people are really shoving. i notice that across from us, people are calmly waiting 3 feet from the carousel with ample space in between them, civilized. oh, and they are all white people. but i will get my bag 5 seconds before they will!! i win! watch me. i grab my bag and get crowd surfed all the way to the door. the little baggage grabber people will not earn their tip today! i give $5 to dr. bailey, float confidently through the crowd of amputees and beggars and SIM card salesmen and find our van with its sleeping driver who has been waiting for 5 hours.
so i guess they could make the baggage carousel at n'djili airport a little longer, but not sure it would be as exciting to arrive to DRC.

you don't need a bar to drink a beer

2010-07-16T17:55:00.001-04:00

one of my favorite things about germany is that public drinking is not a right, it's practically a duty. and it seems you don't need a fancy bar with a liquor license to sell beer to patrons, all you need are some chairs.
since the finally above freezing weather has come about plastic chairs and tables are popping up left and right, notably in front of each little store, also called a kiosk, or spätkauf.
this kiosk in my building is great. in the winter they set up a little drab room with chairs and tables with doilies and a little CD player and a laptop in the corner, presuming you'll order a moccachino from the automated coffee machine thing and hang out and watch a movie or something.
now that it's nice out, the owners have moved the chairs outside and hang out every day, all day with their adorable pit bull Apollo who has now started to recognize me every time i come home. they spatkauf dudes say hi, hide their weed (i have a job, i guess that makes them think i'm uptight) give me whatever packages they've signed for during the day and ask what it is, apollo's tail whaps the pavement. i love coming home.
they've started to hand out expired soy sauce with every purchase, and sometimes, a kinder egg.
the spätkauf we went to after a frisbee game was special. literally PILES of beer. no pit bull, but a very nice smelling collie. and it was russian-owned, which meant vodka. don't believe me? piles of beer.

don't forget, there's a 20 cent deposit returned for empty bottles...keep drinkin'...