Poptarticus

It is 6:13 PM, and outside the call to prayer has just started.  It is loud.  I guess that instead of church bells, this is how the locals keep track of the time.  No bell, only this beautiful voice wafting through the air via who knows how many giant speakers.

No church bells here.  Only a voice.  Now that is something I never thought about before.

Anyway.  After my Orson Wellesian evening last night, I got out with the full-on intent of Getting My Bearings.  Before I left I also had a humorous encounter with the lady that cleans the rooms.  In the hall I told her I didn’t need her to worry about my room. She was very jolly, and not just because of the no-cleaning thing, I don’t think.  She asked where I was from (everybody seems to do that here) and then she told me she was from Sofia, Bulgaria and went on about how beautiful Sofia, and the Varna are and did lots of abbondanza finger kisses as she talked.  When I said goodbye she said “Goodbye! I love you!” OK lady, if you were looking for an end of stay tip, you just succeeded, and brilliantly.

I left my hotel which is very close to the southern waters edge and decided to walk around the bottom tip of the peninsula and then head back in to go to the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque.  While walking I passed a place with a bunch of tourist buses, and some guy started talking to me.  It was not a tourist attraction, but a place that sells leather jackets.  The questions… where are you from? Where is your boyfriend?  How long are you in town for?  Do you want to look at some jackets?  Can I give you my card?  You will come back, promise? Oh, by the way, there is a shortcut to the Hagia Sophia through my shop!

Finally I extracted myself and made my way to the Hagia Sophia, but I never actually made it into the main part. I visited the Sultan Tombs off to the side of the massive main structure - five small buildings with vibrantly colored ceramic tiles inside, and simple sarcophagus on the floor - sometimes a lot of them, sometimes very small. Like baby small. They are all what look like simple green tents with a little sultans hat sticking out.  All the ornamentation is on the walls.

Walking to the main entrance of Hagia Sophia I saw the hop-on hop off bus that takes you around and you can get on and off to see different places.  I was interested so I went over there.  Got the sales pitch from the guy in charge, but when he said it was 20 euros I said that is too much.  Which it is, really, since the buses are running on a winter schedule, and there are hardly any of them.  So he said OK 15 euros.  And I said yeah but it is 12:00 and there are only buses until 4:30.  OK I will make a special deal for you! He said.  2 days for 15 euros.  How much is that in lire?  I asked.  Cause I can only figure out what the dollar/lire ratio is, at this point in time. 40 Turkish lire, he said.  OK! I said.  I hope that was low enough, my trying-to-teach-me-to haggle friends.

I learned many things on the bus one of which was, last night I was not circling the Hagia Sophia for hours last night - I was circling a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MOSQUE. LIKE A MILE AWAY.  No wonder everything was so whackadoodle.  Note to self, and others - a lit up extremely tall pointy thing is not a good landmark in Istanbul.  They are everywhere, and will mess you up.  On the bus, looking at the map, I saw in great detail where it all went wrong.  I went out of the bazaar to the north, not the south, and thought I was in my general neighborhood.  NOT.  I could have totally taken a cab and not been 30 feet away, as was my fear.  Oh well, more mind-expanding travel trials and tribulations to round out my resume.  It was beautiful outside and also, freezing as hell on top of that bus.  I got off at Taksim Square to eat something and get back to a normal body temperature in a trendy place with a small movie screen (showing a hot blonde news reporter on the Turkish MSNBC) obscuring the pizza oven.  I would rather see the pizza oven.  Wouldn’t everybody?  Anyway I didn’t hang too much in the Taksim area after that because I will be there for eight days next week.

Coming back on the bus, I saw many burned out buildings, old ladies smoking cigarettes and (I think) playing cards on the street, several hundred near-traffic-accidents, the old city walls (which are incredible - ancient, yet sort of just there - because they were there, and continue to be there. No fuss at all) and just outside the walls lots of cemeteries.  Oh and you fans of swarthy dudes - Istanbul, I think, may be the capital of the Swarthy Man.  More than Sicily even, and that is saying something.

Leaving the bus I got hit up by yet another guy asking where I am from then trying to sell me carpets, a tour, etc.  I have to learn to ignore these guys, but it is hard.  I was thinking I could just say, when they ask where I am from, that I can’t say because it is “classified” or “THEY won’t let me” or something Orson Wellesian (any ideas?) But now I have decided, I can just wear my headphones! As soon as I hear the telltale “hello! Where are you from!” I will just keep walking and bop my head around like I am listening to Daft Punk or something.  It is extreme I know but I am not going to buy any carpets, hence, it is only these salesmen that I am looking after, in the long run.  Of course, me being me, I allowed some sincere cafe owner wearing one of those old fashioned shriner/Turkish hats to corral me into his place to have a glass of wine (mostly because I wanted some wine.) He sat down and we talked for some time - he has lived in Malaga, and Sweden, and Finland, and some French people came in and he busted out in some perfect French and sold them wine, tea, and some giant iron kebab skewers to take home.  I was very impressed.  Try to get an American guy to stand on the street with a hat like that and try to talk to people about how fresh your food is.  Also, though I told him my name, he kept calling me Kelly, which is what I always tell people my name is when I really don’t want them to know.  Hmm.

I did not get too lost today.  But I think, in the future, I will put in this blog about Turkey, a la Bridget Jones:

Times I got asked where I am from by a guy who really did not give a shit: 5

Wrong turns: 15

Trying not to look too closely at Swarthy Guy: 20

Trying not to look to closely at all the other guys: 642

Looking at my phrasebook to see how to say “white wine” then chickening out: 3 (I will get over this, eventually)

And so on.

I’m starting to get very settled in to my little apartment.  The floors are a little slanted, and the first three floors to get up here are easy but on the last landing, the stairs themselves get bigger. It is all a bit precarious to be totally truthful but I guess I would not have it any other way.  Marble floors freak me out way more than my crooked linoleum one.  Also white furniture freaks me out.  Thank the travel gods there is no white furniture here.

Other than that, I guess I don’t have a lot to report.  Yesterday it was cloudy and I forced myself to stay in and work all day.  I am not on vacation.  I am living here.  There is a major difference.  The difference being, I really have to work.  So work I did, except for a couple of excursions to the store.  It was not easy as from my working place I look out to the sky, which seemed ever-changing and constantly inviting.  I applaud myself for my self discipline.  Now if I can just keep that going.

Oh, and that was no drum and bass party I heard the other night.  I am realizing now, that there is a train passing nearby, or under the house, and I can only hear this train from my bed.  It is not loud and sometimes I can swear I hear music with it, like it really is a club somewhere.  But at 9:00 in the morning?  Whatever it is, it is the sound that comes with my experience.  I am already getting used to it, and may even come to love it.  Maybe even miss it.  But check in on that one with me in two weeks.

I woke up today with the following two thoughts - I have not walked through Place des Vosges yet and I also have not crossed the Seine.  Well, I could really give two figs about Place des Vosges, it’s pretty and all but it doesn’t exactly drive me to distraction thinking about it.  The river on the other hand, well that drives me to distraction.  So with that in mind I left midday (after some work, also a trip to the Nicolas wine store chain) and walked by the Place des Vosges which pretty much looks the same as last time I saw it.  Then I went to the Musee Carnavelet, which is the Paris history museum.  It is a cool museum with interesting artifacts from Roman times until sometime after 1830, but the after 1830 part was closed today.  So I only got to 1830.  There was a lock of Marie Antoinette’s hair in a pendant and on a ring which I found creepy and also, totally fascinating.  Did you know that there are some hypothesis that Marie Antoinette was actually dying of ovarian cancer when she get her head cut off?  I didn’t know that from the museum, I knew that from before.  Unless I dreamed that.

There were some school groups at the museum.  I spent my two hours there mostly trying to stay ahead of them, or get behind them.  The older ones (14 or 15 or whatever) were, of course, obnoxious as kids of that age tend to be (I know I was.) But there was a group of younger kids that were so cute.  They must have been 8 or 9, and I saw them twice sitting on the floor while their teacher talked to them about Napolean.  An assortment of races, all Parisian, all learning about the French Revolution.  Little hands in the air.  I wanted to get a picture but I thought that might look pervertesque.  So I didn’t even try.

Later I crossed the Seine.  I packed my little bottle of wine and some potato chips and crossed over, and perched myself on the river bank for a couple of hours.  Across the river a guy was playing his guitar.  At one point, he was singing Bob Dylan.  Like a Rolling Stone.  A couple of nights ago it occurred to me that no one, save my landlady knows exactly where I am.  People know where I am, but not really.  If the bottom of this ancient building were to give away and the whole thing plummet into the depths of whatever train thingy is down there, no one would know I was down there.  A complete unknown.  As you can see, the utter romance of Paris is totally getting to me. Like a rolling stone.  Heh.

It really does feel good to be on my own here, however.  I am totally digging it.

As I sat on the cement quai with my legs dangling over the edge, I noticed that the real party seemed to be on the other side of the river - at least the dude singing Bob Dylan was.  On my side, a young woman sat close to me.  She read from a prayer book, occasionally closing her eyes and praying.  She had a box of cookies in her purse and would eat a cookie between each prayer.  A tour boat went by with a bunch of school kids on it and they all screamed and waved at us.  The girl waved and smiled, and so did I. There are worlds of differences between her and me, but we still smile at the same things.

The dander of dandelion is flying through the air.  A ton of it.  It gets in my wine, on my clothes, in my hair.  It is the spring snow that peppers the view of the Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville and the fancy apartment buildings across the river.  I pick the fuzz out of my wine while the sun goes down behind me.  My butt hurts from the cement, and I am totally in love. Next time I should probably bring a cushion, though.

Back in June of last year, I got this crazy obsession to spend a month in Paris.  In those foggy days in my little apartment at the beach in San Diego, this obsession seemed to totally take over my life for like, I don’t know, 72 hours.  Maybe that doesn’t seem like too long but it was as I was TOTALLY obsessing.  Also I didn’t have a lot of money in the bank, and that made me obsess even more.

Well, enough about obsessing.  Whatever happened in that 72 hours, I managed to find an apartment for 1000 euros for the month, and I managed to convince myself (with the help of quite a few other people, who also obsess a lot about Paris, I have a feeling) that I could live here, for 25 euros per day after rent.

Well, now I am here.  For a month!  And the rent is paid. Now I have to stick to the rest, but I already kind of blew it.

I got here yesterday.  The only snafus of the day were at the airport - I needed to get a crapload of euros (like 800) to pay for my apartment when I got here, and the first ATM I went to was first shut down, then opened back up a few minutes later, then said my card(s) were no good.  So I checked with an info guy and he directed me to an ATM in another terminal.  En route I had a fairly comical interaction which was indeed so comical, I’m not completely sure I would even consider it a snafu.  I was pushing my cart with my stuff on there, and there was a sort of cart “accident” in front of me, so I slowed down but the guy in front of me, who was one of the ones in the cart accident, backed up and grazed his heel on my cart.  He about had a meltdown there.  He was going on like I had severed an artery or something… seriously, he could not have felt anything unless he was one of those glass people like that dude in Amelie.  Anyway after that 5 seconds of fuss I was at the other ATM and got the money and got a cab and then voila, I was here.

Once I got here, and got into my little attic apartment in the Bastille area, I went out for lunch then supplies.  This is where I sort of blew my budget, on my very first day.  Actually, after spending 45 euros on a taxi and then 1000 on the apartment, I was kind of like “what the hell I just won’t count day one.”  So I went out and spent 20 euros on some substandard Thai food and crap wine and then another 75 euros but on a lot of food and 4 bottles of wine.  It doesn’t count, plus it is going to make the next few days way easier!  After this though, it is all about the budget.

In the late afternoon, after unpacking all my goodies, I took a short nap and then walked down to the Seine and the Notre Dame.  There weren’t that many people in front of Notre Dame, but there sure were a lot of youngsters drinking down on the quai.  Which brings me to this: there are a lot of youngsters drinking in public in general.  Now, I am not against public drinking, in fact I am a serious advocate of it.  As long as those involved are nice about it and don’t litter.  Or sit in the way of folks from the neighborhood who are out for a walk, especially if you are going to play quarters with a couple of 12-packs of Kronenburg.   I was crossing a bridge over the canal that leads up to the Place de la Bastille to get back home, and there are these concrete post thingies coming up at either end, and some kid is passing me with his beer and then proceeds to deposit his empty bottle, right there on the post.  Dude.  Can you not find one of the gazillion garbage cans the city of Paris has put all over the friggen place?  This is one of the moments when I really truly wish I was born with the language gene. (If someone can please tell me, how to say “Pick up that bottle and put it in the garbage, young whippersnapper!” that would be great.  (Only, if you are going to suggest a comparable French word for whippersnapper, please don’t mess with me and give me word that would get me in trouble with the whippersnapper and/or the police.)

The Place de la Bastille was a little nutty too.  Heck, I thought all the partying I saw there before was due to the Techno parade that I went to twice there.  Wrong!

I love my street though and there is everything you could possibly want or need within a five minute walk.  And the only thing I can hear, even though the crazy Place de la Bastille is right up the street, are the birds singing.

Today I got a bit of a late start (normal for me) and had no real plan, but it being a beautiful day, and a Saturday, I headed out to the Parc Villette. Got on the subway, and of course some weirdo sits next to me.  He starts poking me and I just shake my head.  He pokes me again.  I shake my head again.  He pokes me again.  Asks me if I speak French.  No, I say.  Espanol?  No, Italian.  Heh.  That shut him up.  (By the way I don’t really speak Italian.) Then he pokes a woman standing in front of us.  I think he asked her for the time, because she sort of smiled and pointed at her wrist a la “dude, you have a watch.” But he poked her again so she told him the time, then he got up and left.  Me and her exchanged a shrug, the “what a weirdo” shrug which, thankfully, is kind of universal.  My first full day in Paris, and already I have the What a Weirdo Shrug Exchange with a local.  Awesome!

There is not much green space in Parc Villette, but a lot of museums and an exhibition hall and a merry go round.  It is big, a canal runs through it, and it was packed with families enjoying the warm weather with their kids.  As it is everywhere, it was fun to watch the little kids run and play.  The rock venue the Zenith is there; and there were a lot of young girls sitting in a long line waiting to get the spot on the rail for this evening’s show.  I had no idea who it was so went to see if I could hear what appeared to be a sound check.  But it was Sting singing King of Pain and there is no way, no how these girls are lining up for Sting.  Turns out it is Enrique Iglesias. Also, that was not a sound check.  Unless Mr. Iglesias is covering a Sting song, something I highly doubt.

I took the metro back to Oberkampf, then walked all the way back up the Canal St. Martin.  The whole canal was lined with people hanging out, talking, playing music, eating, drinking.  I even saw four chicks playing an accordian and three wind instruments.  I walked and walked, back towards the Bastille, sort of having a race with a tourist canal boat.  I’d be way in front, but then I would stop to look at something, and the boat would catch up.  Then I was in front, then I stopped to buy an orange.  Then the boat was in front.  As you can see, traveling with me is a thrill a minute.  I did learn that when the tourist boat on the Canal St. Martin has to be lowered in those lock thingys, it makes the most cool refreshing breeze.  Kind of like walking into a cave.

Once home, I had a real bee in my bonnet to go out and have some wine by a canal like everyone else in Paris seemed to be doing.  So I got some Burgundy and some potato chips and headed down to that canal that goes to the Bastille from the Seine, which is decidedly more upscale than the Canal St. Martin but a lot closer to my apartment.  There, I spent the late afternoon writing, reading, and drinking red wine while the sun set over the rooftops across the canal.  Well, I say reading but what I was really doing was watching people walk by, or drink on their yacht, or reveling in the fact that I could drink Burgundy out of a glass while the cops drove by.

Now I am back in my apartment, where I will eat Alsatian sausage, mashed potatoes and some sauteed tomatoes.  This is actually most likely my meal for the next three nights.  Before you think I am unhappy about this, or that I am crazy to come to Paris and not eat all those fine restaurant meals, know that this is the way I want it to be.  If you could have a month in Paris and eat sausage at home, or a week in Paris and eat out all the time, what would you choose?  I know some would say the week; but for me, it is all about The Month.  And I am so lucky, and I know that.  Lucky.

Time is going by fast.  So fast, that it is kind of crazy.  Time is accelerating in general, but somehow I thought that when I got here, it would slow down.  It has not.  It goes faster.  Before I know it, it will be next year, next years trip.  Before I know it, my nephews will be teenagers.  It could be tomorrow.  I could be dead tomorrow, so I will keep traveling, but if anyone knows a way to slow time down, could you please let me know.

Anyway.  Right now I am in Sondrio, a town high in the north of Italy on the border of Switzerland. What is it, Saturday?  I think it is Saturday… last Saturday then, I was in Padova, the highlight of that particular Saturday being the two minutes I was completely alone in the Scrovegni Chapel.  Completely alone! Me, Giotto, and two minutes of complete silence.  It was, is, one of the most amazing two minutes not only of this trip but of any trip and possibly of my entire life.

I also had a very nice Sunday in Padova.  There was a bio-market in the main Piazza, and a really cool exposition of dozens of local mushrooms, and got to see an old friend in the afternoon.

Monday, headed west to the town of Acqui Termi.  Essentially I went there to have a little slowtravel get together, but it was a bit like flying from San Diego to Alexandria, Virginia to have a couple of drinks with friends.  Still, if there was any place to eat, drink and sleep for 36 hours, Acqui Termi is as good a place as any.  Even if it took 7 hours to get there and 6 to get out.  It poured rain the first night, and I mean poured, making rivers everywhere.  Rivers coming down the street, rivers making my lame umbrella a cruel joke. Rivers reminding me that sometimes, the travel gods have to have a hehe moment.  In these moments, what else is there to do, but to eat, drink, sleep.  Thank the gods for wine and chocolate. (Maybe the travel gods are in a lucrative marketing scheme with the wine and chocolate gods, and when the rent is due, they have a whole program worked out.)

Anyway.  Left that town and once again, was reminded of the simple fact that it does not pay to deviate from the plan; my plan being, take the 8:54 train to Genoa and then the 11:40 to Milan Lambrate to meet Kim.  My motus operandi was to have the least connections possible.  There were all manner of other 6 hour trips I could take to MIlan, but they involved multiple changes.  I got up early though, and though I could maybe make it on the earlier train to Genoa and then Milan, getting me in a couple of hours earlier.  Ha.  Got to the station and made it on the train only to hear the announcement that this particular train would not go all the way to Genoa.  Uh.  Could you not have relayed that information in the station?  Allora, not really.  Instead I got off the train with all the other passengers and boarded a really comfy Trenitalia chartered bus, and enjoyed some nice views of some rivers, and then the morning rush hour traffic.  Basically my deviating from plan A resulted in some extra time hanging out at the Genoa train station.  One cafe macchiato, a cappucino, a cornetti, and one prosecco later, I was on my way to Milano.  Finally.

It was a beautiful trip though.  The train wound through the mountains of Liguria and we went over many rivers.  Everytime we went over a river, I was like, is that the Po?  But it would take a better riverologist than me to answer my question.  Actually, I am somewhat of a river lameass.  I need to brush up on my rivers.

This entry is getting a little long so I will try to fast forward.  Crap, I am trying to SLOW THINGS DOWN.  Oh well.  Speaking of crap, in this town of Sondrio, there is a place that is called Il Crap.  I am serious!  I do not know if this is the local dialect or what, but it relates to the monastery, or a castle, that is on the top of the hill.  One thing that you may be asking, and that indeed I have been asking myself is, what the hell I am doing in Sondrio.  But the cool thing is, I like asking myself questions like “where the hell am I?”  (As long as it is not raining rivers. In this case, this question kind of sucks.)

Well what I am doing here is, looking for the family of my friend Chris Spene.  His grandfather came from here, in the 1800’s then migrated to America - the family name here is Spini.  So it is Chris here, and his wife Jen and Kim and me.  And we have nothing to go on, but somehow here we have found some Spinis and ended up in a bar tonight in a place that seriously, I never ever in a million years I thought I would be in and now Chris is with some Spinis and me and Kim and Jen are hanging out drinking wine. Where the hell are we? We are in travel land.  The land where maybe the rivers don’t involve water; where maybe the rivers involve the thread that binds us together.  Rivers of blood - the blood that binds us.  Rivers of desire - the desire to understand the parts of ourselves that we do not know.  Rivers, that never stop, coming down, down, the mountains and that carry memories, carry history; maybe we do not know the mountain, maybe we do not know the river.  But we will.  And the moments that we find a particular river - well those are the moments that we remember.  Right?

Onward.

We are making some changes to Poptarticus - changing from Movable Type to Wordpress and changing the look of the site. We should be done by the end of today (Monday August 18 2008).

Posting an example photo. Click on the photo and you get the large version.

Here’s an awesome video of Monday night’s Rush show at Coors.

WOW! We were sitting very close to this person; and I think you can even hear us, which is kind of embarrassing.

Oh well, I’ll cure my embarrassment with Hurricanes and Beachcombers at Brian’s Birthday Luau at the beach today. Rum + all day at the beach = forgetfulness. Which is what a summer Saturday is all about, right?

Happy New Year!

I think I spend too much time alone these days. There are so many great things about being alone, but if you spend too much time there, you sort of forget about other stuff. Like, speaking. I think I listen to music and the voices in my head too much and also, I spend too much time looking through my fuschia bangs, because when I look through them everything looks pink. If you have the right music on, it’s like you are on drugs even when you are not. It’s pretty cool, let me tell you, and absolutely worth the money and eventual hair-loss it costs you in the end.

But this is not what I meant to write about tonight.

Today I talked to the guy who manages my IRA and he said the bus is about to hit a wall, and everyone in the world is on that bus.

Today I saw on amazon.com that today is the last day to order, if you want that stuff by Christmas.

Today I couldn’t stop thinking about the liver of the guy in that movie Super Size Me.

Today I realized, I sometimes wish I didn’t have any communication with the world whatsoever.

Today I realized my current dream of traveling and blogging through Russia might be crazy, because they don’t make it easy for travelers there, and shake you down for cash and shit.

But I know in the end, everything will stay the same as before. Including the dream. So get ready Moscow muthas, for 2006.

Tonight I moved Shannon’s blog from Blogger format to our new Movable Type that we are running on the SlowTrav server! The format is not perfect yet - I need to add links to her book and to SlowTrav - but it is good enough for now (and it is bedtime).

Now you can post comments and search the blog. Shannon can group her posts by category.

So, welcome to Shannon’s blog in a slightly different format.

Who was responsible for casting 1957’s The Sun Also Rises? What a piss-poor job that was. I think when they got to the part of Brett Ashley, they scratched their heads and said, “hmmm, what actress likes nineteen-year-olds in really tight pants?” Why, Ava Gardner, of course! It probably made perfect sense at the time.

Of course then the whole cast had to be twenty years older than they should have been. The only worse casting in the history of mankind was the TV version of the same novel with Jane Seymour and Hart Bochner (now there’s a juicy twosome. Gag.)