Regarding sharks in motion.

"I put my money where my mouth was
Until I couldn't breathe through my nose.
And now I'm staring at the floor,
Where my second life just ended,
Where I lost not one but two friends." - Taking Back Sunday

"Everything beautiful comes from pain." - Chuck Palahniuk


The irony is that Halloween is my favorite holiday.


Dear j.a.c.c.k.,

How are things back home?

I wasn't sure until this week whether or not I was doing this all wrong. You see, most of the other backpackers I've met so far, they've given me skeptical looks when I've told them how many countries I've been to on this trip. That with an itinerary at that break-neck of a pace, I couldn't truly be appreciating where I was. That by trying to be everywhere, I was really nowhere. And yeah, there are places I wish I could have stayed longer, sparks of friendship that I wish I could have explored more to see what sort of fire it would grow in to. I'm not one for second-guessing myself, which is strange considering how I have a tendency to jump first, look down second. So when I do, that means it's something that's truly tearing me up. Remember that really brief conversation we had when you were helping me pack up my apartment?

Joshua: "Am I making the right dec-"
j.a.c.c.K.: "Yes. ...Yes."

It took me twenty seconds just to build myself up to ask the question, and you wouldn't even let me finish it. The confidence of your response carried me. When I needed you most, you were there, even if it meant choking back your own emotions at watching me leave. And when we refused to say goodbye, instead saying a casual See you later to keep our emotions from flowing over. To an observer that might sound like denial. But really it was an unspoken promise. That this separation between us wasn't going to be as drastic as it appeared.

Sorry, I got sidetracked there, I'm bad at writing letters from the road. The thing about whether or not I should have been spending a few weeks as opposed to a few days in each country..... Well, I'm in Istanbul right now, had to spend a full week here waiting for my camera to get fixed. It was so frustrating not having the camera, I realized how dependent upon it that I've grown. It's not just a way for me to relate back to you what I'm seeing, it's more of an outlet for my creativity, and taking pictures almost feels like a voluntary occupation that infuses my hours, days, weeks, months, with a richer meaning. So my first four days here, I didn't have a camera, which means I postponed all the sightseeing options, and couldn't do much of anything, and something I didn't want to happen happened. Reality caught up with me.

By switching cities or countries every three or so days, I've been so distracted/enthralled/overwhelmed by everything new to take in, that I haven't worried about my dwindling bank account, the friends who have repeatedly let my facebook messages go unanswered, the economy/housing/job market that I'll be returning to and attempting to conquer in New York. But when those distractions went absent, those realities took over. They didn't creep in, they flew, and with devastating impact.

And that's when I remembered, j.a.C.c.k., that's when I remembered something that I think we learned back in Mr. Sanga's biology class back in sophomore year at Providence. The thing about sharks in motion. That sharks, except for the scavenging bottom-feeders, they have to always keep moving. That the second they stop, they begin to sink.

It wasn't just those looming concerns that caught up with me, it was my health too. I have stomach parasites again, and these are crippling, way worse than the ones I got in Russia. It hurts to stand, let alone walk, and I've doubled over from them more times than I can count. On top of that, and all the symptoms those entail, I also have a terrible cold (I'm hoping it's just a cold), probably because it's been pouring down rain in Istanbul for a week straight. So because of these I feel nauseated all day, and can only eat a few bites of something twice a day at most, and I can feel the weight-loss creeping in. But like a mantra, I've told myself "Remember Naples, remember Naples, remember Naples, remember...."* and that's gotten me through. These sound like complaints, or cries for sympathy, but they're not. I've been trying to relate to everyone else my experiences, and right now I'm just relating to you the lesser-known realities of life on the road. The side-effects they don't advertise. The loneliness of the long-distance runner.

On the night before I left, I told someone else that while I knew that I was doing the right thing, I really underestimated the negatives. I couldn't really gauge the difficulty of saying goodbye until the words were out of my mouth. Until the car doors were shut, and Justin and I were on the 134 East headed for Moab. I know I quoted Conor Oberst back then, and now a different line of his comes to mind. "I haven't been gone very long, but it feels like a lifetime." God it feels like forever ago, j.A.c.c.k., it feels like forever ago that we drove around Hollywood at magic hour with our cameras, photographing murals and neon marquees. It feels like so long because so much has happened, so much has changed. I still feel like I underestimated the negatives, even more so now actually.

I haven't heard the voice of anyone from back home in months. This is because Skype doesn't work on my laptop, and my phone inexplicably doesn't work overseas. For a while there I still carried it around as an extremely-underachieving watch. But then I realized that was silly. With the exception of a train/plane every once in a while, I never have to be anywhere at a certain time. It's weird to live a life in which you can leave time behind you. That with the exception of growing older a day at a time, it doesn't really apply to you anymore. I'm so far removed from this basic human concept that it took me until a few days ago to realize that it was October. I mean clearly I knew that it was October, but I forgot that it was October.... This is my favorite time of year, j.a.c.C.k. When the leaves change color and even in California the sky is grey, the wind howling, and I would hole up inside and watch the horror movies that we both love. I forgot that I was missing this. But sitting around now in Istanbul, it came back, and I was struck by an amalgam equal parts nostalgic and homesick.

So you need to know that you've helped me so much, J.a.c.c.k., maybe without even knowing it. Your emails make me feel like I'm still connected, still missed, and even if you're only reporting anecdotes of sitting on your couch sipping warm cocktails made with Ralph's brand soda, they mean the world to me.

I have at most a month and a half left on this journey... this is something of a two-thirds marker. Literally one hundred days of solitude. I'm not looking forward to this trip ending, but I will be inexpressibly grateful to see you again.

I feel like I've learned something in every city I've been to. And while it has nothing to do with the city itself, other than it was the setting for the perfect storm of the downsides of my travels, I will always remember that it was in Istanbul that I learned that sometimes "road" is a four-letter word as well.

I miss you, J.A.C.C.K.. And I love you.

Joshua



*if you don't understand this, please see my earlier post "Primi piatti: un chien napolitano"

One-way conversation.

Safwan - "I used to play football. Professional. I was really good."
Joshua - "Really? What made you stop?"
Safwan - (silence and a lengthy pause as he shakes his head) "There's no place for that here, I can't in my life. 24/7 in Cairo you have to concentrate just to stay alive."


A Richter scale works by quantifying how devastating a movement is, increasing by one hundred percent with each number behind the decimal point, and one thousand percent with each number before it, so that an earthquake measuring a 7.0 is ten times more violent than one that is 6.0, which in turn is also ten times more than a 5.0..... I'm not going to arbitrarily enumerate the difference in danger and trauma between Cairo and all my previous travels, but the very fact that I'm contemplating how things grow exponentially worse in such a short span should be an indication in itself.

This is my twentieth country. It is also the first in which I have not been mistaken at least once for a local by another local, who usually have stopped to ask me directions or about a train schedule. This ability to blend in has been pretty crucial since I've avoided being an obvious target for would-be hustlers in Barcelona or corrupt policemen in Russia. Entering the Middle East and then Asia, this is a luxury I am sacrificing. But I didn't realize the scale of this sacrifice until Friday.

My plane arrived at the Cairo airport at 2 a.m., and the driver my hostel was supposed to send for me with one of those cute little signs with my name failed to show. So as I gameplanned outside on just how the fuck to cheaply make it to an address in a city with virtually no public transportation in the dead of night, I was approached by scores of cab drivers trying to convince me to come with them. Except for one. That wasn't what he wanted.

"Why white?"
"......What?"
Far more aggressive this time around. "WHY you're white?""
"Why am I white??"
He nodded, his eyes seething further as he waited. I knew the answer he wanted to hear... I'd already been called "Obama" several times by the customs agent who stamped my visa.
"Because my family is white."

And I gave in to the reality of the situation, that standing around in anger and exasperation wasn't going to make my driver appear and I had to get out of here, so I booked a cab with two middlemen for 10 Euros. This price was settled upon and confirmed 3 times, and 30 seconds later it mysteriously jumped to 15 because of a phantom airport toll, and then finally back again to 10 when they were reluctantly forced to admit I'm not a complete moron and wouldn't pay that.

I didn't reach my hostel til 4 in the morning. That's a 2 hour ride from the airport, not because of distance or traffic, but because the driver didn't know where the address was. It's one of the main streets in downtown Cairo. Forty minutes earlier, he pulled over on a street in which thirty men were hanging outside talking animatedly. Thirty mouths that fell silent, thirty heads that turned to follow my face in the passenger window.

"Here."
"This isn't the right place," without hesitation.
"Yes. Here. Hotel."

It was the wrong street, street number, and name. It was also 8 km away from where I was actually staying, though I didn't know he was that far off at the time. The same stoic tenacity that had dropped the price back to 10 Euros made him restart the car. In all, he pulled over about fifteen times to ask for directions. Five of those times, he silently got out of the car, turning it off and taking the keys with him, never saying where he was going. There's a sickening feeling you get, like your stomach being pulled instantly and repeatedly backwards, when you realize that your well-being is being rented back to you. That the only reason you're still somewhat safe is because you didn't pay your driver in advance. That the price of this safety, your well-being, at times it amounts to as little as eight dollars. Safwan was my driver I hired for all day Friday; I had a guide take me around the Pyramids, and another on my overnight trip to the White Desert, and with them I felt this at least a dozen times in three days.

On Saturday afternoon I sat in Sam's living room. Sam is a middle-aged Egyptian man that runs a small tour company for the White Desert, five hours outside of Cairo. On this day, Sam was playing host only to myself and a Brazilian girl named Fernanda. And the "all-meals provided for" meant that his wife was making us lunch, which I actually preferred and appreciated over a restaurant or a kebab stand. Sam was nice to me until he asked where I was from, and from then on all questions were directed solely at Fernanda, all my asked questions went unanswered, and hung heavily, awkwardly in the air of the small room. He turned on the news and expressed his disgust with America before turning back to an Austin Powers movie. Before putting on his Tommy Hilfiger sandals. Before watching his son ride a Superman bicycle. A disgust far more convenient than it is consistent.

My tour guide for the pyramids repeated the same jokes for tourists as other guides along the route, as Sam would with his driver two days later. Verbatim. They must have been the same jokes used for a half century. I heard maybe three or four total facts about the pyramids, and then several times about how the Sphinx was his great-great-great-great grandfather. About how the camel's name was Mickey Mouse... Charlie Brown. I tried to get to know each driver, each guide, wanted their perspective on Egyptian history, or what else their society has been doing for the past three-thousand years, and got flat-out nowhere. I got cartoon answers to human questions. I don't think I'm remotely like the negative American stereotype, but they made no attempt to see me as anything other than that. It takes so much more effort to be close-minded, to ignore facts when they are in front of your eyes, and that was the only effort that they were willing to put forth.

I had a very beautiful four hours on Saturday night. I was camping in the middle of the picturesque White Desert, the sky filled with a continent of illumination, and I sat silently next to Fernanda and our driver/guide Ahmed after having had a bare bones traditional Egyptian meal and the three of us smoked shisha. I sat thinking about my life, and what the moment I was living at that second meant in the overall tapestry of it, the sky above me the perfect metaphor for my memories. A million pockets of light that create something phenomenal when you look at the whole. This is what I wanted to write about in discussing Egypt. But it would be a lie. This is not what defined my experience, but what salvaged it from uninterrupted disaster.

The freeway from Giza to Cairo. DJ Tiesto blaring on the stereo, Safwan weaved us through highway traffic at 180 km an hour in a car that wouldn't turn over twenty minutes earlier. It's not that cars in Egypt don't stay in their own lane, it's that they're never there to begin with. Cars will stack five-wide across a three lane freeway, until they hit the next batch in front which is in a totally different random alignment. A girl sat side-saddle on a motor-bike behind her helmeted father, her hands folded in her lap, staring straight ahead, her face visible as she wore no helmet, emotionless, like she was waiting in class for a lesson to begin. She doesn't hold on to the bike with her hands despite its frequent tilting and darting, doesn't cough despite the visibly ashen cloud of pollution that straddles Cairo, its roads in particular.

The honking isn't merely never-ending, it literally never lightens. On a six hour bus ride from the White Desert back to Cairo, our driver honked at not just every single car he passed up, but he would drive on the wrong side of the road, honking at any cars coming towards him who were in the correct lane. Over a span of six hours, this had to have been over 600 cars. The driver from the airport honked at parked cars. Not double-parked cars. Ordinary. Parked. Cars.

I found Egypt disturbing. And not because it is very unsafe for its residents, and incredibly unsafe for traveling Americans (though it absolutely is), but because of its common theme of disregard. Having been, I almost couldn't care less about the photos I took of the pyramids, since that's not the real Egypt. It's a coincidence, a luck of the draw of history. When you visit, you understand that those are not what defines the Egyptian culture because it is not what they embrace or even attempt to revere. They have an archeological museum with a ton of priceless artifacts from antiquity. In this museum, maybe one in thirty of these is labeled. Visitors have no clue what they're looking at, or why it is important. There are guards, but they sit idly by as children and visitors handle the objects, play with them, eroding them down, smoothing out the hieroglyphics and distorting them with the oil all human hands emit. When you get to the base of the pyramids themselves, you see heaps of people climbing all over them. The last remaining wonder of the ancient world, and 21st century sneakers chip off ends of giant bricks that were put in place thousands and thousands of years ago. It's a disregard for their own history in the museums, for their own safety and for their peers on the road, for common sense and for the basic order necessary to function as a society.

Egypt will be defined in my memory by what I was unable to photograph. It was too unsafe for me to walk around alone at all, let alone with an obviously expensive camera on clear display. So there are images I failed to capture, but also moments not applicable to film or memory cards. Without analysis, without narrative, without pretext, without embellishment, here is what I am bringing back.
Three men bathe a horse in the Nile a mile or so away from where this water is collected for the city's drinking water. A woman walks up and down the aisle of my bus trying to sell the passengers those individual packets of tissues... This is how she believes she will sustain a living. Safwan and I pass a bus with a plywood exterior. A carpet weaving school I walked through, and the boy of five who knew no English but after I took a picture of what he was working on rubbed his thumb together with the tips of his index and middle fingers: the universal sign for demanding money. I walk back on to the bus after a snack stop, and a woman in a full burka snatches her child away from the aisle so that she doesn't touch me (fear? disgust?). The hindquarters of camels scarred from whipping. As we wait for lunch to be served, Sam's son races in to the kitchen to shout something at his mother who is making the meal, and the boy and his parents all laugh at this.... Sam finds it so funny that he translates it for me and Fernanda... He says "Mom, you dog, hurry up with the food!!" And they all laugh more.

I realize in retrospect that I wanted the impossible from Egypt. In a world in which two societies are diametrically opposed, I wanted to achieve, in at least my few days of experience there, a sense of common ground, seeds for hope. Clearly I failed. But I am astounded at how complete my failure was. One last image, but one that I will comment briefly on. On the way back on the bus to Cairo from the White Desert, a couple in their late twenties (I think, she was in a full burka and veil, only her eyes were visible) sit with their two very young children (1 and maybe 2 1/2 at the most) in their laps. The boy is the older one, and when he smiles you see that his recently formed and still growing teeth are already brown with rot, the sides curved in some places from this decay, like the edges of a block of Swiss cheese. A black spot I mistake for a mole is right near his eye, and I stare for almost a minute and wonder if the family will ever have it removed surgically. And the spot moves, because it is a fly. It crawls closer to the boy's eye, and another lands on his lip and scurries in that creepy way that flies do, to the under side of the lip, the interior of the boy's mouth. This whole time, the father is looking at the boy, smiling with a fatherly pride. Yet he never once moves to swat away the flies, even though they are crawling on the boy's eyes and into his mouth. He clearly loves the boy, but at no point does the instinct to swat the flies away ever kick in. Can we be that different? Actions I thought intrinsic, ones so obvious as to be unconscious, even these don't seem to be mutual.

I don't think that my experience is unique, but I also know that it can't be the only one. I met two very nice people that worked at my hostel, ones I was able to speak with only briefly, and maybe my time would have been different if I got to speak more with them, or if I looked a bit less Western. I'm sure there are American backpackers (we're not counting the security of tour groups) that have been to Egypt and loved it, ones that did not experience the discrimination that I did. But it is part of this journey, and an experience that is important, if not pleasant. I now know firsthand what total shit it is to be treated this way, and especially for no true reason that an individual can control.

I included the conversation at the top between Safwan and myself because I thought it set a pretty accurate tone for Cairo and my experience, and also because it was the only real conversation I had in my three days there. The honesty of his answer was the one time I didn't feel like an American, the one time anyone was willing to let me be just human.



Egypt:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2108388&id=35804394&l=f2e5e02169

Dessert: study abroad.

John Keats died on Friday. This happened in 1821, in Rome, in a house at the foot of the Spanish Steps. If you're not familiar with Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century traditions, in a time before airplanes, high-speed international rail, and mass communication, Rome sounds like a strange place for an English poet to die.

To be taken seriously as an artist, it was necessary at the time to spend part of your education in Italy, to study in the country that was the cradle and final resting place of so many talented artists, their canons of work, and the fertile period of the Renaissance. If you think this tradition is presumptuous, that's because it is. But it's also rooted in accuracy. It is not that Italy is an oracle, a magical font of inspiration or skill that visitors can wash down with their Chianti. Not artistry by osmosis. Rather, something happens when you look at incredible pieces of art, and I've never felt it more prominently than I did in Italy. A person drawn to creativity is forever changed when he looks at the folds of Michelangelo's gentle marble, sees in his Pieta and Moses the frozen but living emotions that have existed for centuries, thoughts turned granite..... or as that person's eyes wander the wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, where da Vinci's Last Supper commands the vacuous space. He spent four years painting it, and every hour of that effort is apparent to this day. In these moments, the work catalyzes a desire in you, not the same as but also not entirely unlike competition, and you discover that in the highest strata of art, the art itself becomes the muse. You appreciate the mastery just like everyone else, perhaps more so, as you dissect what it is within the work that elicits that reaction, what somehow turns splendor in to a glorious vise. You stand literally at the feet of the masters, and pledge in this moment of awakening to strive for more in your own work because, having seen theirs, you know what vast heights you are capable of reaching.

It is limiting and misleading to portray Italy as merely some campus for the university of the world. All art aside, just breathing in the vistas of Tuscany, the subtle brownscale spectrum of Siena, or watching the sunset over the perfectly-sized city of Florence, (and I stayed urban, so I can't speak of the beauty of Cinque Terre, the Amalfi Coast, Sicily, Sardinia).... these visions transcend your eyes, permeate your senses and convince you momentarily that surely you must have more than five, for nothing could be this vivid otherwise.

For many of my friends, Italy has been the apex of their travels. If I don't completely share the extent of their enthusiasm, I think I can understand it. There are more beautiful places than this, but there is a deep level of our world more palpable in Italy than anywhere else. Over 2,800 years of cultural passion has made the devotion of artists and architects and that reservoir of majesty tangible, attainable for us, and it has made the country feel more like a conduit. A gateway to the days when God still dreamed.

The sunset I watched on my last night in Florence came on the day that is most likely the exact halfway point in my travels. A symbolism not lost on me. And today, my last day in Europe, the official day when visits to cathedrals become visits to mosques and temples, is the one on which I close the chapter on my European vacation, and thus leave behind my comfort zone for something much dearer. Something that, after my experience in Italy, honestly feels a little like a graduation.


The rest of Italy: Venice, Milan, Pisa, and Siena-
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2105923&id=35804394&l=b880dba2a2

Secondi piatti: the divine comedy.

Italy is a paradox, worthy of Da Vinci's laborious designs.

The country is in no hurry. Locals meander the streets as if crawling on their feet and dinners last hours, and yet people shove one another to pack in to subway cars so as not to have to wait for the next one, the sound of horns on some, if not most, streets in Rome literally never ends, and people will cut in front of everyone else in line at every possible opportunity. It manages to be everything, all at once.

But its duality should not have surprised me. The same national womb gave us both Michelangelo and Machiavelli. One nation managed to inspire and foster the Renaissance as well as elect Silvio Berlusconi. Twice. And he doesn't even keep the trains running on time.

I left Rome 2 days ago, and the best way that I can describe it is that it's the greatest city in the world that I would never want to go back to. I tend to prefer cities over villages, and it holds an embarrassment of riches, historical and religious on an unparalleled scale, and some astonishing pieces of art. Whereas my favorite city I visited during my two and a half weeks in Italy, the miniscule Siena, has almost nothing of any cultural or historical significance whatsoever, and yet I feel compelled to walk within its brown walls once again. Which is to say, spend time in Italy, and you fall victim to the paradox as well.

Its enigmatic duality stretches to the point that at times I thought I was in a different Italy than everyone else had been to. Milan, a major city that I was told by several people to not even bother visiting, held two of the absolute highlights of my time in the country. Its Duomo is the most gorgeous cathedral exterior I have ever seen (and considering my itinerary of the last two months, that is a serious statement), and Da Vinci's Last Supper, a work I considered utilitarian at best a few weeks ago, managed to knock me on my ass with awe in person. And in terms of food, that fun fact you've probably heard, that no one in Italy actually eats pizza, that it's an American dish.... jaw-droppingly wrong. It's everywhere, it's amazing, and maybe ten percent of the orders I overheard in the many pizzerias I went to were in something other than fluent Italian. So hit the next person that tries to tell you that.

And just quickly, while we're on the subject of idiocy.... if you ever get the opportunity to visit Italy, and make it out to Pisa, please do NOT take a picture where you're holding up the Leaning Tower. It's not just that it's unspeakably lame and unfunny, it's what the vast majority of tourists who visit do (saw at least 75 people do it in the span of less than an hour), so you're not being remotely original. So come on, people. You're better than that. (Well, I already know YOU guys are... you're my friends, you'd have to be).

Paradoxes? Duality? That's what we were on? .... Look at the Roman Empire in general. Their entire reputation was built on their romantic paganism, their persecution of Christians. And then they hit the year 380 and make it the official religion. I'm not going to go in to the Vatican issue, but if you ever visit, please keep in mind the whole "Lenders in the Temple" episode as you pass by the gift shops with awkward souvenirs for sale on the actual church grounds. In their defense much fewer than the rest of Rome, but still. Doesn't sit right.

All of this contradiction forces one to submit to the glorious lunacy of Italy. It just can't be taken seriously, and maybe that's what makes your time there so enjoyable. The only way to deal with it all is to laugh it off, and do as the Romans do, preferably with a glass of the house red in hand.


Rome:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2106778&id=35804394&l=70df7e6543

Primi piatti: un chien napolitano.

If you ask anyone that's been to Italy, I wasn't supposed to go to Naples. That it's the birthplace of pizza and neighbor to the ruins of Pompeii are distant seconds to its rampant crime, or its status as the stronghold of the still existent mafia. But my other options were a lot of beautiful places that don't make sense for a guy to visit on his own, especially in the gloom of October, and I have an over-arching tendency not to follow directions.

I often confuse people, particularly locals, by what I stop to photograph. They pass with furrowed brows, jaws ajar, looking from me to what I'm shooting, and usually repeat this a few more times with increasing curiosity. Even more entertaining, which happens pretty frequently, they'll stop to take a photo as well, then stare at the screen of their digital camera, their confusion heightened by a frustrated failure to understand, before walking off in defeat.

Something like this happened as I walked around the Portici district of Naples, as four children of about 10 outside a dingy church I was taking pictures of saw me and instantly broke in to hurried conversation. They quickly rode their bicycles over to where I stood, surrounding me, and asked in Italian who exactly I was and where I was from. I answered, and just as I thought they were about to City-of-God me, the main boy asked excitedly if I could tell him what his name, Alessandro, would translate to in English. I did the same for Francisco, Giuseppe, and Paolo, and left them with huge smiles as they took turns introducing themselves to one another with their new identities in exaggerated American accents.

Wandering downtown in my everyday backpacking uniform of a white v-neck and jeans, I was caught in one of the most torrential rainstorms of my life. After one block, my shirt was essentially transparent, weighed about 4 pounds from all the infused rain, and (along with my scraggly beard and unkempt hair) gave me a visage closer to that of one of Italy's mangy stray dogs than its fashionable, bundled-up citizens. Not really to dry me off, but to at least cauterize the faucet running off my face and shoulders, I was kindly offered pocket tissues in a church, butcher paper in a market, and finally stumbled in to one of Naples' most heralded pizzerias: a hole in the wall with 4 tables and cooks that slide the pies into the ovens while smoking out of the side of their mouths. After taking my order, the waiter gave me the look of fatherly empathy I'd grown accustomed to over the past hour and a half before disappearing upstairs for a few minutes. He re-emerged with one of his own used t-shirts for me to change in to. Something I'll keep forever that encapsulates so much more than any cheesy souvenir ever would, or that any photograph could convey. I'm thousands of miles from anyone that knew I existed before 2 months ago, let alone cared about my well-being. But looking at that shirt, or remembering the outstretched arms of the woman in the church, the grocer with his thin sheets of yellow paper.... that fact is easily forgotten.

I walked back out in to the cramped alleyway, rainwater spread atop the black stone of the street like icing. The revenant sun was bouncing off of it... a welcome warmth, a reflective shine so bright that nobody could see a thing, and the rainstorm a memory only present because my shoes were still soaked. But Naples reminded me in one afternoon everything I need to know to survive.

If you can weather the storm, the sunlight will positively blind you.




Naples, Pompeii, and Florence:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2106379&id=35804394&l=908d5dfd66

Seeing double. / Chronicle of a life foretold.

"You can tell a lot about a person by the places they choose to travel. Some people are drawn to Ireland, Amsterdam. For me it was the Philippines. On the surface an orderly democracy, but barely concealing a world of complete chaos. A place I instantly felt at home." - Alex Garland, The Beach*

"I have decided at twenty-five that something must change." - Bloc Party, "Kreuzberg"

I met my doppelgänger. In Germany, of course.

The story of Berlin for me begins in Bruges, a week before my actual arrival in the city. My hostel in Bruges was above a pretty good restaurant/bar (I think... I only experienced the second half). Just past 5 in the afternoon, which on a Friday is Bruges' Cinderella hour for sightseeing, the only two other people there were a backpacker my age named Johnny, from Derby, England, and a guy named Chris who was from, well he was from everywhere, splitting time in Belgium and Brazil (where he owns a beach resort I'm planning on visiting in the not-too-distant future), but originally from London- a proper bloke that not only should be in an early Guy Ritchie film, but would be the one played by Jason Statham. The only match for the local beer (Bruges Zot- go there and find it... it will change your life) was the local conversation. One round turned in to each of us picking up a shout a-piece, and a few more for good measure before the three of us headed to another restaurant/bar in the next village over for countless (and I do mean countless) rounds of Jupiler and Hoeegaarden.

Traveling this long, meeting this many people, you know in less than one beer whether you get along with someone enough to trust their opinion. With Chris and Johnny, the head hadn't even settled on our first round. Johnny's favorite city was Berlin. And Johnny has great taste.

One of the shitty times as a backpacker is arriving in a new city at night. It's depressing enough to think that you've lost the majority of the day in transit, but before you make it to your hostel to see that all the good beds are taken, you first have to navigate dark unfamiliar streets in a language you can't speak with your luggage silently screaming your status as a tourist. When this happened in Prague last December I was nearly mugged for the first and only time in my life; in Moscow, my very first night in Europe on these travels, I got lost for nearly an hour, trying to make sense of signs that read "крупнейший" .

Thursday.
I arrived in Berlin's Kreuzberg district at 11pm breathing frost. But it was a chill that awakened me, a brisk night walk past graffiti covered buildings that put me more at ease than the sight of flower pots would have. Berlin is another sprawling city, like New York, Paris, London, Chicago, where districts hold far more character than some countries I've been to can even dream of developing. Kreuzberg is kindred to the Lower East Side, the parallels between the two composed of the thick lines of several passes of spray paint. Or tethered by the undulating aromas of Turkish food next to Italian next to Indian food. Kreuzberg was the opposite of an echo. A precursor. A glimpse in to the life I'll be living in 3 months time when I get to New York. My crash education and embrace of the street art that is present throughout the city, my quick ability to decipher the labyrinth of the S-Bahn/U-Bahn system, my immersion in the history that has shaped our modern world, all with Kreuzberg as my base. If my new home is to be like this (which it is) I will be content. A new life that can compete with the one I am leading now (he writes as Italian islands pass by his train window).

Saturday.
The 19th anniversary of the re-unification of Germany.
I began the morning at the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, taking in the rejuvenated beauty of its politically pointed artwork. A few hours and many sights later, I walked through the expansive Tiergarten, meandering vaguely towards the central celebrations near the Brandenberg Gate, but far more concerned with the journey than any fleeting destination. Seeing an unmarked path to my right that lead farther in to the wooded area of the park, I hesitated only briefly before taking it. I soon came upon a gate that held a large garden containing stately yet subtle features, a few gazebos, an anonymous Grecian-style statue of a mother and child bearing alms of fruit to an unseen god, twin bronze elks, a small fountain. The waning flowers that this garden held on a cold October Saturday were not mesmerizing in their beauty but in their mere existence, for each cluster of flowers was accompanied by a small sign marking the date of when it was planted in this garden (got to love German meticulousness). And that's when I became aware that I was not really in a garden, but a time capsule.

Berlin is arguably the capital of history in the Twentieth Century. It was here that the Nazis seized and held power, pulling the majority of the world in to a war they were antagonizing. The city's capture coupled with Hitler's suicide in a bunker below it (in what is now a car park that locals take their dogs to shit on) marked the end of this conflict in Europe, only for it to then re-emerge as the epicenter of the Cold War. A city divided in to quadrants, but realistically into two parts, a division that became concrete in 1961 when the Berlin Wall was surreptitiously erected by the Soviets essentially overnight. The end of the Cold War was marked not by events in Moscow, or Washington, but by the breaching and dismantling of the Berlin Wall. (An event which had as much to do with Ronald Reagan as it did with David Hasselhoff, so let's dispel that fraud of an assertion right now). Point being, for a fifty year stretch there, to watch Berlin was to watch the world. So when I stood in that garden and saw a plaque for Gloria Dei, 1942, what I really saw was the Battle of Midway.... Anne Frank going in to hiding. Gloire de Dijon, 1853 : the Crimean War. Lavender Lassie, 1959 : Fidel Castro coming to power in Cuba, the USSR escalating the space race, Ben-Hur and Some Like It Hot. Alchymist Rambler, 1956: West Germany banning the Communist party, Soviet troops suppressing the Hungarian uprising. Ghislaine de Feligonde, 1916 : Germans bombing Paris with zepplins, the battlefields of Verdun and the Somme running red and ashen from all the slaughtered youth. A garden, but not Eden. That would be boring. Rather a garden in which time ceased to be linear, and was a flat one-dimensional disc on the ground before me. All became equal, and history could be read all at once on a pink and white petal rather than a yellowed page.

Monday.
The story of Berlin ends for me (for now) in Switzerland. I left the city late Sunday night, more out of the duty of seeing Italy in detail than my desire to depart. Friday was my first real look at the city, and I had the privilege of experiencing a massive amount of it, probably the most I've seen in any one day on my travels so far. That night I had a dream. An actual dream. Not the bs pick-up line we've all heard way too often, or a hopeful fantasy that I could control, guide. This was a dream that I could not wake up from right away, and thought of really as a nightmare up until last night, when I finally understood it. In the dream I was in my hostel in Berlin that I had just gone to sleep in and I woke up to see a person sleeping in the bottom bunk across from me. He awoke, rolled over, and looked at me. And he was me. I was instantly pretty terrified, and first checked that I was actually me by looking for the tattoo on my bicep. The one-of-a-kind work was there, but it was on his as well. We both claimed to be me, and what frightened me the most is that I didn't know which of us was telling the truth. Justine, one of my oldest friends in the world, was for some reason there as well, and she could not tell the real me either. This panic went on for what felt like ten minutes, before I finally managed to wake up.

It took me until last night to realize that I met my doppelgänger. And he is Berlin.

I can't describe it any further than that, and am positive that I would sound really idiotic even trying.

I agree with Alex Garland that you can tell a lot about a person by the places one chooses to travel (Having been, every enthusiastic Amsterdam review I hear in hostels, tends to elicit an eye roll, a shift of my lower jaw). But you can tell even more about a person by what places choose to travel to them. That is a defining moment in the life of a backpacker, if it ever comes at all. And I am inexpressibly grateful that this came in Berlin, as opposed to Liverpool or Bern. That the city that I embraced closer than any of the thirty or so I have been to thus far requited that affection. That I can now look at a map and see a mirror.



*My copy of The Beach is in a box somewhere in Pennsylvania, and Alex Garland is not as prevalent in Italian bookstores as I was hoping, so this is a paraphrase, but pretty close to the original.

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(post-script) Incredibly long entry, so thanks if you've made it this far. I actually feel like I've said nothing about the city itself and want to very, VERY briefly. Given the city's history, I anticipated before my arrival that it would fascinate and sicken me, and if I were to read this post from your perspective, I would be a little dismayed that one of my friends found some sort of union with a city with such a dark history. But Berlin is not merely cognizant of its past and hurriedly rushes past it (like the BMW Factory in Munich did). It is proactive in its apology, as well as phenomenally artistic. There is no monument called the Holocaust Memorial. That is because there are five or six separate ones, and a new one currently being built, to honor all of the groups of victims individually, not only the Jewish dead, and they're all centrally located. This is in addition to an incredibly moving Monument to the Victims of War and Tyranny, and a prominently-placed recognition of the Nazi book burning of 1933 to call attention to us to never allow something like that to happen again. And in contemporary times, as I alluded to, it is a Mecca of street artists. Not simply worthless tagging (although that is of course there as well), but true artistry in a subversive, sometimes illegal, form.

Berlin:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2104926&id=35804394&l=a1003e77fe

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2105381&id=35804394&l=67f870bc6b