my nutshell

new blog!

2010-10-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

howdy guys,

I've moved. New blog on https://desperateirony.wordpress.com/ (I couldn't really come up with a good name on the spot.. so if and when I find one, I might move again, since they don't let you change your blog title for some funny and probably good reason... ideas and input is welcome too. And of course, comments, so that I'll know I don't just write for the aliens in Outer Space, you know the guys who see and know and read everything.)

love

from me to you

home

2010-03-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

so now I'm back in Berlin. And everybody - well, some people, those that I know - are asking: What is it like? How do you feel?

And I can't just drop this blog just like that. on a wedding post, what an omen.

Yes, it is strange, of course it is. I feel still in a half-world, I could close my eyes and imagine myself to wake up to buy fruits and fish on the market, to look at the pretty houses in Valpo and the less pretty ones, to go arguing with R, to watch the little girl in the opposite house who would play with us through the window and the small child that cried every afternoon and the lady with her washing every morning and the giant hairy dog who lived downstairs, and the salty smell from the sea would be in the air. There would be dogs everywhere and tiny flea-bitten kitten. The two tiny corner shops who never seem to sell much except for bread, and they don't even have cigarettes but I wasn't smoking anyway. I could wake up to make cake or sushi or tabulé or humus or potatoe variations or ceviche. I could write about how it feels when nothing moves and everything is in a circle, everybody is breathing summer, and I am in a bubble.

But I'm back. I'm finally back to see my lovely nieces so that I can force their little memories to remember me. It is cold in Berlin, and I find the metro stations suddenly very small, and there are many more trees than I remembered. The women all look very well-clothed and the men all seem to have big hair, but maybe that's Kreuzberg. Feel so Raggamuffin. My cat seems very big and she hasn't forgotten me.

I am still instinctively looking for the little extra bin for toilet paper. I am registering the urge to watch my bag and watch the people at night, to show them I am vigilant. I love to be able to walk unafraid at night, everywhere, as alone, white, tall and uninteresting as everybody else. I'm smoking again. I'm back to organizing like a maniac: housing, internship interviews and clothing, insurance, phone, getting my things back. My flea bites are healing, there are only tiny hard spots left.

I'm looking forward to have a real room of my own. I'm looking forward to go food-hunting, place after place with food I haven't eaten for a year. I'm looking forward to getting to know my nieces and connecting with friends.

Right now, it feels like I will be very very sad then, and I will not regret anything, not leaving, not coming back. So, hello again.

Tell me why you are so pretty? - Well, it's that I am a princess!

2010-03-23T09:11:00.001-07:00

said that little girl to her mother. I think it's a brilliant answer to a very popular question.

The last weekend I went to another wedding,which was very contrary to the other one en el campo. First of all, the food was good, and a free bar put me in great mood. I also fell asleep on the table at 2 o'clock (my social inhibitions are not what they used to be) but it was relaxed sleep from some nice Pisco Sours, a hearty Cabernet-Carmenére mélange, and some Sex on the beach, just for principle and old time's sake.

groom and friends

sexy shoe pictures

Oh, and the wedding was in a "ceremonies' center" outside of a pueblo, village, outside of Santiago. Fun! About three hours getting there in public transportation! More fun! Bathrooms are inside, everybody else seems to be arriving in cars and in full gear (suit and dresses ranging from something that used to be a flowery nylon tent to really elegant cocktail thingies). Where do we change? I was so exhausted at that point that I would have stripped in front of everybody, as long as I get it done quickly. Luckily, we had a bit more anonymity and scrub cover.

Anyway. The ceremony was as dulce as it can get, with white stuff everywhere and sweetener music, a carriage and a horse, a priest conducting an earnest speech with a microphone. Get up, sit down, pray, get up again. Luckily we arrived late and could linger in the back rows. It's just weird when you don't know anybody there. I decided on a mental cover as being a tester of the organization's services.

Lots of service ushering the guests into position (our waiter was called Kevin and about 17, and it was probably his first day. He was refreshingly morose yet terrified). A program all the time - The barkeeper is juggling bottles in front of a fire! The first dance! The cake! Now more cakes to feed the masses (with service. We can't be trusted to choose our own size of cake) The waiters are making a choreography with meat spears to bombastic music! Fotos taken with every table! Old pictures of the bride and the groom! (People are evil. I knew the bride used to be fat while I didn't even remember her name.)

the unknown now-married couple

So it was fun. A lot more relaxed than the other one. But maybe I'm just getting used to the whole thing.

And in the days afterwards, some posing in Santiago:

What Is wrong with Avatar: part one

2010-03-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

After wanting to see the movie for a couple of weeks and fending off non-3D versions of it - cracked on DVD or shown on mini-screen in busses with a hickupping sound system in Spanish -, this weekend I finally went to see it: 3D, in English, the Full Monty! I schlepped R along, which took a lot of convincing. I still don't know what to respond to the earnest entreaty "But N... you studied literature, surely you must agree with me that the Oscars are only for blockbusters and basically worthless crap giving awards to the worst movies, entirely manipulated by mammon and box office numbers skyrocketing and (continued tirade)".

I'm not sure what studying literature has to do with this, apart from making me feel very much like an imposter. (Although of course I do look and behave like a bookish bluestocking snorting about Proust jokes.)

The problem is not so much with the argument on the Oscars, and more with a lack of a space for a real discussion, as in "diverse opinion, civil conversation, interested back-and-forth of point of views". Maybe I just went to university for too long. On a side note, nothing beats the look on the guys' faces when I announce my being feminist, after they ranted for some time about some mina (chick). Since I gave up discussing the topic (nobody wants to) or trying to educate (nobody listens to me and I would be an idiot), watching these expressions is my secret reward.

I digress. (or do I) This is a post about Avatar! For although my eyes hurt - a lot - and I had a strong headache afterwards, I am totally happy about having done "the 3D experience"... I was truly impressed, happy, and even thankful for returning to a kid's perspective of awe and wonder again...

BUT. I wouldn't be me if I could that supreme crap of a story stand uncommented. PLEASE feel free to add your points to this list. Spoiler alert.

What's wrong with Avatar, no chronological order

- The natives all secretly speak English. They resort to their dialect when they are pissed off and want to shun out skypeople. Otherwise they happily express themselves in English, especially at emotional moments of "mating" or saving lives. If a skyperson says something in their language (like "please" or "thank you") it's to throw them a cookie, to make them happy. The real talking is done in English, of course.

- The military general exists only as a , a potpourri of clichés (with a coffee cup on the plane? Really?! Why not have him say straight out "I love the smell of napalm in a hanging forest"?). Even the corporate guy has more conscience than the military guy. (By the way, I LOVE Giovanni Ribisi. He's like the doppelgänger to Edward Norton; like Tilda Swinton is to Jodie Foster (as Passepartout once said)

- Scientist are not only totally inept pricks - after all, you can learn to be the Über-Na'vi in less than three months. If you are a brainless marine, that is. Scientists are also BULLIES!

- If you are a brainless marine, you will agree to spy on those people who - for no reason whatsoever - decided to trust you and to teach you "their ways". In a totally illogical move, they will also show you their most secret place, to which no outsiders are permitted, even before you become a man and thus one of them. You will agree to spy even before having been offered new legs. You will continue to do so while living with the Na'vi, without qualms, until about the time when you mate with one of them. Then you will waste much important time on self-gratifying excuses and talking about how bad you feel about all of this.

- Then you will propose a mission in which all of your friends and uncounted un-individualized Na'vi's - "a herd of natives" - will die. When your friends point out the idiocy of your plan (of putting into danger the most important and sacred place of the Na'vi people) your answer is we better don't let that happen then! Yeah. Great. For a douchebag.

- for no reason whatsoever the Na'vi girl will fall in love with you. Despite all the feline elegant noiseless moving and behaving, at this moment there will be the usual carnal scenes. boring.

- after having betrayed her trust and her secrets of her people, your Na'vi woman will apologize to you for having been pissed off, if you only come flying along on a big red dinosaur.

- to understand and help the Na'vi you actually have to turn into them. So much for dialogue, intercultural or interracial understanding, to hell with hybridity and individualism, this is an arachaic question of Who is better.

And who is better and cooler (and I can already see the videogames)? Those who have the cooler toys, such as flying on dinosaurs and playing tarzan. Jake Sully has not understood shit of Na'vi life at no point: He talks in the same idiotic way, with the same idiotic Marine metaphors, the same mindset, he only has switched camp, to where he is bigger, bluer, cooler, has a woman and other toys.

Also, the eventual "solution" is throwing out all the humans from Pandora "except for a selected few". A-ha. Great point.

So far. I'm still pissed at Jake Sully. and at Cameron. Maybe I'll have it a bit more digested by tomorrow.

more earthquakes & more other things

2010-03-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

1. Okay, I was chatting away / half-heartedly researching Chilean bloggs on president-elect Sebastian Piñera's inauguration today, when there was a pretty prominent tremblor, so prominent in fact that I was mentioning it to my friend, followed by an even stronger one shortly thereafter - the second one was worse because it got worse (and that's when you freak out) so I cried for R. (since he was here... just to give him the opportunity to make up for last time) But compared to the other time it wasn't that bad so I didn't freak until we saw crowds of people streaming up the streets uphill: Tsunami warning. My roommate got a waxen face and left instantly; R and I packed few things and rushed after. (In retrospect, I'm quite proud of my cool calculation, my hands were quivering but I didn't take idiotic things, but the computer, passport, proof of my visa process, money, camera, my notebooks).

It really seems kind of silly now. Like sheep we were waiting with all these office people (who work in el plan, the flat area) uphill, driving each other crazy. And absolutely nothing was happening, apart from constant quivers and random sign reading: Aren't the birds behaving strangely? Is this wind normal? What does it MEAN what the military boats out there and the helicopter is doing? Seemed that the authorities who failed so lethally last time were trying to be absolutely certain this time. I think I would have waited longer than the hour that we waited but I had to go pee. And I was thirsty and hungry. And somehow, the whole thing wasn't happening. I decided to go down to our house so I won't pee in the water when I'd die cause we all know that is disgusting. At our house, there were a lot of people waiting at only that altitude, so I realized that we could as well wait at the house.

so, totally underwhelming in retrospect, but I was really really really scared!

2. Chileans showed some of their adorable qualities by mentioning all over facebook, twitter et alter that in precisely the moment when "the Antichrist" was swearing to guard and lead Chile according to his best capacities (or something like that), the earth groaned and moved in protest.

3. I've so far neglected to mention the three-legged dog. There is more than one, in a city with so many dogs (think New Zealand - but with dogs), but one that sort of belongs to "our" neighborhood. It holds itself up fine against other higher-legged versions. Gives you a real example.

all those office people...

office people in front of our house

me being afraid

IV

2010-03-02T15:05:00.000-08:00

R is back (and we promptly got into a fight. priorities!). Valparaíso is back as well, going about more or less business as usual, apart from people still clearing out the supermarkets, and half the town being cordoned off with white and yellow "danger!" bands : danger of collapse. I just realized how lucky the town was to be so far away from the epicenter: Had it been a bit stronger, or a bit closer, Valpo would definitely be in shambles, seeing that the buildings are quite old - i.e. built before Chile enacted its severe building laws -, often randomly put somewhere, and made of adobe or wood. or corrugated aluminium. Or un-corrugated aluminium, I haven't checked the difference yet.

so I'm watching the devastation mostly online and on tv, just like you. R's brother went to a town at the beach south of Cúrico, and came back to tell terrible stories on bad organization (I told you so...). Example: A heap of clothes at the entrance of some town, and the mayor saying, the villagers will come to get them. But those villagers are scared to leave their houses, which are some 10 kilometres away from said heap. They don't even know that stuff is there. And they said to Francisco (R's brother), yes, that's what we need, clothes, it's cold here and ours are wet (or eaten by the sea). the clothes will come to us when they are there. That town was comparatively lucky - people were not dead - so there were few helpers around, and probably no cars, and in any case, nobody who said: You load up these clothes and drive them into town. Which is not really a tricky solution, but I'm probably oversimplifying.

It's just distressing to hear these stories. I'm looking into opportunities to volunteer right now, but I don't want to be in the way either, blocking roads, resources etc. I'll let you know.

e. update III

2010-03-01T05:57:00.000-08:00

death toll, according to BBC: 700. They also say that

"About 90% of the historic centre of the town of Curico was destroyed. Many roads and bridges across the affected area were damaged or destroyed."

Troops are being deployed in the hardest hit regions: Chile is divided in 15 regions. Valparaíso the town lies the 5th region - aptly named Valparaíso -, Cúrico is part of the 7th, which is called Maule, and Concepción the 8th, named Bío-Bío.

The Maule and Bío-Bío (another Mapuche double sound) are hardest hit. They have a curfew and the army as "support", apparently mostly against looting. There are videos of a guy carrying out a brand new refrigerator out of the store. But also of people just grabbing bread and water - if they are not helped in time, who can blame them for taking the stuff that is just lying around in those supermarket's storage centers.

The Tsunami hit the Juan Fernandez islands, where warnings were not issued in time, and killed 16 people.

R is determined to come back today, but information on the possibility of transportation is running sparse. Roommate M claimed they will cut the water today "for a couple of days, like 3 or 4" - excuse me? There are worse things, I know but I still hope it's just another fake alarm. I have no clue how to hoard water for toilet-related needs in sufficient quantity, for four days.

will continue updating; it's hard to concentrate on other things.

earthquake update II

2010-02-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

R says in the Cúrico region the death toll is now 500 people. Santiago had 16 I think, and this is the range of the other regions as well.

Valparaíso suffered at least one loss, a person who died from cardiac arrest when s/he heard that fuckhead announcing a tsunami. He was taken into custody (the fuckhead).

Now the rumor goes that the false alarm was set off so people would leave their houses to be robbed. nice. I personally think he might have just been crazy (but then I watched "incident at loch ness" recently).

There is this town further south - another one that begins with "C" - where they cleaned out the entire supermarket - and I mean sparkling clean. And that was the only supermarket in town! So I'm not talking those "looters" who take what they need and are not given - but total pieces of shit who take everything and leave others such a mess, in such a mess. (I'm certainly not feeling bad for Líder - the evilness of this chain would valid a post in itself.) Strangely, the attitude I encountered in response to this supermarket incidence, was: El Chileno es así - Chileans are like that. This is not the first time I heard this.

Here the supermarkets are cleaned out the regular way: lines till the back, atmosphere of panic and confusion (times ten of the usual). There is heavy policing. Somehow this does not make me feel so safe. The atmosphere is still of paranoia, but all goes relatively orderly.

It's just ridiculous. Polemics on bloggs still talk the language of "shoot the Communist bastards/dogs/scum/vemrin", "Allende equals anarchy", the military will sort it out "as usual" etc. I don't get it. There is "we are like that", there is the "viva chile" for God-knows-what (mostly said without any context/supportive evidence), then there is this image of Chileans as friendly and cariñoso, as I mentioned in another post, and also as showing solidarity. Which I find the most ridiculous, given the extreme inequality of this society, the extremely clasist structures, permeated by racist reasoning (more "Indian" looking vs "Spanish" looking/last names etc).

The explanation for this solidarity myth, according to R, is the teleton, the one charity event, which collects money for disabled kids. And the companies supporting that event, such as Lider, do not give an actual peso, they just raise prices on their products, tell consumers if they buy those they do a good deed, and thus have an enormous free advertising and public relations campaign.

Okay, that did not have anything to do with the quake. I just needed to express my confusion.

Earthquake update

2010-02-28T12:08:00.000-08:00

Information comes in dribbles, and information policy is a puzzle, to put it friendly.

Information from R: Cúrico is now with water, still without electricity. Central Cúrico looks like a war zone, many collapsed buildings. Cúrico is in the Maule region, close to Talca (40 minutes) which was hit really badly. The villages around are most affected, and people are without water; hospitals are affected. The family went somewhere to help out with a 50-200 litre (maternal and paternal reports differed) water tank (something everyone should have handy).

The Santiago Times said the aftershocks, which continued night and day, went something as high up as 6 points. More than 200 prisoners escape a prison in nearby Chillan. Kleist's "Earthquake in Chili" anyone?

Cúrico Radio reports people selling bread for $2000 (instead of the usual $750-$1000). Nothing like an earthquake to make some extra cash it seems. Also long lines in front of gas stations. Cúrico Radioalso denied the existence of a tsunami (you know, the one which hit Juan Fernandez and Hawai).

Today there has been a fake tsunami alarm for Valparaíso.

I freaked a bit today because it was raining (well, drizzling), for about the first time in three months (which is totally normal for the region). So I'm standing there, having dared to go outside, thinking: What, rain? Here? Now? Why? What does this Mean??

I guess I wasn't alone; maybe that's why the fake tsunami alarm worked so well.

Supermarkets opened today and people were buying like crazy: back home, I would say "for the next world war," here it's probably rather "for the next military coup." the guy in front of me bought 6 bottles of regular cooking oil. But they might be right in hoarding sugar, flour and other stuff that is produced far away. Parts of the roads are damaged, and most things are transported in trucks (which also makes the truck union extremely powerful, but that's for another post).

Earthquake!

2010-02-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

okay, it's 3.36 in the morning and I'm waking up to a shaking house. It does not stop shaking for what seems like five minutes, or five hours (official numbers: about a minute and a half)

maybe given to the fact that I had been sleeping, my thoughts were very coherent and they went like this: NOOOO! MAKE IT STOP! STOP! NOOOO! I felt like 6-year-old, I swear.

And then at one point my adult self joined the party in my head and threw up previously collected information so I went to stand under the frame of the door. Safest place, I have been told.

And then it stopped. There is a sound to an earthquake; I didn't know before. The sound is something like the roaring of a dragon or hell's ovens exploding. And afterwards there was silence. and then more quakes, more or less little. Sirens. the sound of a group of people in the streets, of crashing glass and general mayhem. Electricity died, internet connection died. I was alone - R was in Cúrico with his family, my new roommate Montserrat at her boyfriend's place.

(aside: yes that is a name, not just a monk place in Spain, and the appropriate affectionate nickname is "Montse". Which to me sounds like Beyoncé in Berlinerisch, with the final "se" like the ending of a certain F-ord. Or was it a V-word?)

There are more little shakes. the feeling is somewhat like this: throwing up seasick in a tempest. At the same time I have never experienced an earthquake so my brain is searching frantically to classify it, and mostly seems to return messages to me like: this is not happening. you are dreaming. you are imagining this. We don't know this, therefore it isn't.

The whole morning was eerily silent. I went out for 15 minutes in the morning, against Rs admonishions. I did not go very far; I feel really safe in this house. Things - like strutting parts of houses or convoluted electricity lines - have crashed here before, all without quaking, I don't need to try my luck. In the small radius I saw, there were a lot of looted shops, broken glass, broken facades. Almost all shops closed of course, and very empty. But mostly the flat downtown area seemed okay. In the hills, I've heard and read, it's worse. From my tour guide walks I remember many houses perched precariously on hillsides, made of flimsy material. the damage there must be bad.

by now the phone and, thankfully! the internet connection is working. R calls me hourly to check and report from Cúrico. The 7th region, where he is stuck (tunnels and bridges have to be checked before half of vacationing Chile can safely be sent home; some collapsed), appears much worse off: no electricity, no water, lots of after-quakes, and heavy damage zone.

thanks to the internet I know now it was a 8.8 earthquake, epicentre further south, close to Concepción, Chile's second largest city, from which there do not seem to come many consistent news. It must have been less strong here then. Outside is nobody. It just feels a bit strange to be alone in this.

Update: still afterquakes, some quite long too. I went outside another time and realized how shaky my legs are. the quake here was "only" 6+ strong.

it's so strange to not be able to do anything. everybody seems dazed, and all you can do is wait.

The Wedding Rant

2010-02-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve been holding back since so many people are getting married now, and also to calm my rant.

But then... why? This is a funny story and material for a good rant. So there:

Recetly, R and I went to a wedding. A wedding “en el campo”.

Which proved a number a things:

a. I can be in friendly engagement with a horse (!)

and I can prove it (fine it's not the same horse. But it's a horse!)

b. Rustic is overrated. Read story below. Still, the pictures came out nice:

c. It takes half an hour for the remainders of a 70+ wedding congregation to get together to take the one picture where everybody’s on it (why you might ask? Because there is always two or three who walk past the waiting crowd in posture, in order to reshuffle some things on the table, or to do private washing… the more amazing thing is: nobody says anything. Everybody waits patiently. If patience is a cardinal virtue, heaven is full of Chileans)

Okay, there could be more sarcastic-bloggy listings, but here’s the story. R’s friend Cesar wanted to get married to his long-term girlfriend (a friendly gal who called everybody, me included, “my daughter (son)” or “my love” which I have so far only experienced from older shopkeepers). Cesar tells R the date. Everybody’s happy. A couple of weeks later he says, oh and it’s in “el campo”, which I naively associated with cows and pasture. And then some days later he said apparently, we have to sleep in tents (I think R did not tell me that straight away). Then, before we went to his parents' home, I asked R whether he was absolutely sure that the tent was there. Yes, totally, and I should stop nagging. We got there: no tent. Big fuss. Lots of agitation. Lots of repeated disbelief from R, lots of following-through-the-rooms and strange advice from his mother. It felt sort of Italian. In the end we went with the grand family tent (gained with heavy second-son-bargaining from reluctant parents), which fits six people and R did not know how to build it. We managed just fine in the end (I wasn’t too worried, it’s the same basic construction with every tent, but I was worried about daylight, since it took us ages to get to the places over cobblier and cobblier roads.) Good thing too, because – as was mentioned in the Cesar’s last and unfairly timed informational call – it was going to rain. Which it did. Which let another girl’s tent shipwreck, so she and her daughter slept in our tent.

A bit of rain you say? Well, this was “pre-Cordillera.” Translated: friggin cold. We were 20 kilometres away from civilization, and civilization meant a nest that I usually wouldn't call a town. Also, to get to the actual place, some family heirloom, you had to descend. Descend along serpentine mud roads into the forest. And then there was sort of pasture for the tents. Then descend some more into the forest until there is the house and a bit of space around, but not much, and a river.

Sounds charming? Claustrophobic is more like it. The only open space was the sky. Also, guess what happens to the mud road after the rain, which started more punctual than the ceremony, at five o'clock on wedding day and continued during the whole night? Yes, right. So the next day, the big guys spent 6 HOURS to push up 6 cars. Among those guys was a friend of R who had offered to take us home in his VW bus (VERY nostalgic feelings at this point). No communication about this point: I was basically waiting and repeatedly asking people What is happening, and Where is Christian and Shouldn't we go help? Around five or six in the evening, the others' apathy slowly started to wear off (daylight), but not to real arousal. I think it took another three hours to take off: Just to get everyone to pack and leave (it's not like we've been waiting for this THE WHOLE DAY!), and then how to get all the people and all the stuff in the bus, and somebody wants a banana, and wow, we need water? Why did nobody tell me that? and WhoofWhoof! (at least that's how it started to feel to me, I had a very passive-aggressive internal breakdown) We were 12 people in that bus, among them a constantly talking woman, 7 months pregnant with twins and throwing up, and a mother with her 4-year old. So I was definitely not the one worst off.

This is the 4 year old: He named us (the duly waiting females) his horse, waggon, and in my case, first Bambi (!) and then some fabled animal, like a unicorn if I got that. Not too bad right?

still. I had wanted to leave asap. Apart from the claustrophic feeling, the uncomfortable atmosphere stemmed from the fact that the bride and groom's family were treating every friend-guest like an intruder on the scrounge, regardless of the fact that it took us two days and quite some money to get there, and that I helped the whole day peeling and cutting and cleaning, mostly for food which I would not see at all, while R was making a video for the happy couple, and other guests brought a whole band equipment with them!

You got there from your tent and there's nothing. If you go in the house (where the family slept, admittedly including some elders and kids), there was an immediate "Que necessitas?", translated: Get out! (I know "Qué necessitas" only from the most unfriendly shop vendors). You take a bit of bread under stern looks and shuffle out. Or you get in line for the (one) bathroom. The food was dreadful, I had no more cigarettes, and the friendliest conversation was with a sixteen-year old - he was genuinely interested in German-Chilean differences. The others got drunk and told me a) I should smile more, relax, dance, drink, do stupid things, etc (which annoyed me immensely because I saw a couple of guys never cracking a single smile and no-one told them to be more accomodating) and/or b) clarified cultural differences for me. Which goes like this: Me not saying or asking anything to the topic; They tell me that "Europeans" are cold and work all day, whereas here, people were friendly warm, and fun-loving. At this point I had finished drinking (so as to not be rude) and could excuse myself to get more booze. Which was easier said than done, because apart from the disgusting mix drinks (terremoto: cheap white wine with pineapple ice cream) and "country wine" which in this case was pure acid, there was little to be had.

Yeah yeah, good intentions. I can't stand any more Chilean unwantedly telling me about "Europeans" without ever having set foot in a single European country, without having me said ANYTHING AT ALL about their country or any other Latin American country either, and then they tell me CRAP! There was a guy on the streets of Valparaíso who robbed a woman's purse. She cried for help, and people swarmed in from everywhere to BEAT the guy - just leave your business, get in a couple of swings at the head, and go back to business. Warm, friendly, welcoming? You're kidding. What is this, self-hypnosis: You are no longer a cat, you are a doughnut! Against Europe, this is Rio during Carnival, these guys seem to think. (and don't care for any of what I say either)

Of course, there were good things, too. It was amazing to see how all the friends and family worked together to pull through what was simply an organizational nightmare. There were two toilets for the 70+ people (about 100 were invited, I'm thankful to those who did not come), and one shower, which was not working, and when it did, about one hour before the ceremony, there was of course a preferential treatment for family - including 20 minute non-use of the shower while one of those went to collect his things in all tranquility (Once again:It's not like we've been waiting for this since 10am...).

So, no shower, no cigarettes, and food reduced to bread and lamb. Not nice lamb, fatty dry pungent-tasting lamb. Every day. And me, being expected to be excited about everything of course, so as not to wound the national soul. Which did not stop some random guy who I hadn't even talked to, say "Chao, gringa" in the end, which is pretty insulting. An adventure, yes. Does it look more glamorous now, and on the pictures? definitely. to be repeated? No way!

end of rant. I promise something lighter as the next post...

(ps: sorry... earthquake got in the way of upbeat post)

numbers

2010-02-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, R and I went to see the recently inaugurated "Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos", the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. This is what it looks like

from outside

inside

This is a wall full of pictures of disappeared and openly executed people, 3185 in total.

In September 1973 alone, there were 600 deaths, 270 “disappeared persons” and 12,800 kidnapped and tortured.

Altogether, almost 28,5000 Chileans were victims of torture and imprisonment by the military regime. Of these, 3600 were women. According to one of the Truth Commissions, 150 persons younger than 18 were executed, 39 disappeared, 1244 children were kept in prison and tortured.

Another topic is the Remembering in itself. When, where, who, and how?

Inside the museum, there is an exhibition of a guy: An artist, who was taken and tortured for decades by the regime (no political affiliation whatsoever), among other things he was locked up in isolation, in a tiny dark cell, for years. Not surprisingly, his exhibition focusses on cages. He explicitly tells you to "put on" one cage, which is dangling from the ceiling. When we did this - here's proof:

- a lady scoffed at us, saying How Dare We, and when R tried to tell her that it is the artist who wants you to "try the perspective of a bird" (true citation) she snapped Don't Talk To Me (you scum, editorial edit)

I hate shouting laughing tourists around the holocaust museum as well. Unfortunately, it's an invitation to hypocrisy. All very Feel-Deep-Now and Show-Stricken-Face, and Busy-Thyself-With-Thy-Neighbors.

The stories you can read are heartbreaking, the numbers jarring. Now they have a museum, apart from the many smaller, more or less incomprehensible/ random /pompous memorials around town (mostly Santiago).

In my totally unscientific and supremely subjective point of view, the country is still very much in the Get-over-it, Let's-not-talk-too-much-lest-we-step-on-somebody's-toes, Still-afraid-of-everything, and mostly in a Get-well-soon - phase ("well" in the sense of developed, rich, economically healthy). Or to put it another way: In German terms, it is 1965, and things should flare up soon. Maybe electing Piñera helps for that. Call me Cassandra, Moby.

social ineptitude

2010-01-29T19:12:00.000-08:00

Today was roommate Rose's despedida, goodbye party, occasion for good food, too much wine, the uncountable "occasional" cigarettes and opportunity for me to retrospectively admire the current heights of my social ineptitude. I am trying to cling to the idea that it is not me, it is cultural. My conviction, shaky to begin with, reached the flimsy stages of a fatamorgana about ten minutes into the evening.

My sins read more or less like this:

- I start overly aggressively communicative, trying to make up for the times when I refused the whole cumba-party atmosphere, coming home from a failed tango lesson and a fresh fight with R, only to go straight to my room, defensively thinking: This is freedom too ...

Anyway, I am thinking of that, they are thinking (I guess): Is she high? Or newly deafmute?

- I try to make jokes. That's my worst sin I think. Half-way through the joke I realize it does not sound funny in Spanish (that could be my Spanish) and therefore no-one understands, therefore I try to change the joke or the general drift of what I am saying, making it now completely unintellegible. Nobody laughs, but everybody looks at me very patiently and between pity and boredom. I swear I can hear R's brain sometimes.

- After the inappropriate jokes that noone understands as a joke - mostly it's a problem of irony - and now that they already think I am an idiot, to top it off I start political topics that only interest me.

When people respond to the topic, I am so enthusiastic (and intellectually starved I might add) that I drown them in my questions : Instead of encouraging to elaborate I kill the moment. (is there a "moment" for political conversations? I feel sometimes there is, some people have to get drunk, some have to trust you, some have to suddenly discover a momentary interest in the subject or in uttering an opinion...)

- Being the positive and life-loving person that I am as you all know so well, I think: Well, that could have been worse! and in an attempt to seize the moment I ask for some girl's phone number because "we" won't be here for her birthday but at some dude's wedding in el campo (I will report).

I fully intended to flatter her and make her feel important, but somehow the question must have come out rather rude and demanding. Yet I was not sure whether it's worth getting into a rectifying "no-I-really-meant"- discussion or to shut up, not talk so much, so loud, so OFF in general and just hope (and pray) she sees through my social handicaps some better person that should be somewhere inside me.

Really.

I was never queen of sociality but I was doing ok at one point, can you forget how to do that?

I got mail!

2010-01-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

haha el correo de chile is slow but sure - everything comes home to me in the end...

this way I had the pleasure of Christmas in a half-sunny, half-windy end of January: something new. Now something blue please; oh wow, the choclo is making me high... and the presents of course...

pour some sugar on me...

2010-01-25T16:40:00.001-08:00

Sorry, I sort of lost track of my "going-housewively-homely" subject in the last post.

Yet I believe it is thanks to this tendency that my repertoire of Chilean recipes is up by over 100 % - to 5 (five!) recipes! (yes, I completely made up that "process". I just suck at introductory paragraphs. Anyway, I want to write about my feats.)

So far I was able to make ensalada chilena - which is (give and take and ignore R's strange pride in the dish) basically tomato-onion salad, albeit a good one - as well as Pebre, a spicy coriander-tomato-onion-chili-dip (works as purée as well. I like playing with the mixer).

My two new accomplishments are called porotos granados, meaning beans "so far untranslatable to me." Rose said they are called cranberry beans in English, which I find equally intriguing. The beans do look sort of purple-spotted. green-purple. I don't know much about beans, my way of distinguishing until now went: They are green, red or white. Green with some red is confusing.

But I also had generally little clue as to a bean's original state (with shells/pods and all). Anyway, the dish is great. I'm a big fan of the current choclo season, young choclo, big choclo, as well as the ubiquitous pumpkin. And porotos granados contains the beans, the pumpkin, corn, and a number of other ingredients I don't remember right now.

My next dishes were pastel de choclo and humitas, and that now is really as Chilean as it gets. I mentioned the slightly disappointing (in terms of novelty) tomato salad, then there are of course empanadas (like in every country on this continent), Pisco was Peruvian first, and the porotos are an stew, when it comes down to it ...

But! Pastel de choclo - and also it's relative humitas are fairly "exotic", at least for me, and even though humitas are basically the same thing as the Mexican Tamale (different name same species, as ALF would say... ).

It is quite an elaborate preparation to get the corn paste you need for both dishes. Here's your recipe:

Buy ten or so of the big choclos.

Rip off the leaves (it's harder than it sounds).

Get rid of the "hair" of the corn (it has hair. did you know that?).

Cut off the grains with a knife (spray yourself and everything around you with juice while you're at it), grind the corns (since you don't have a grinder, be in perpetual fear that your improvised mix-thingy will explode from heat exhaustion).

for humitas

Add to that paste slowly-sautéed onions and aji and lots of Basil. (which they call albahaca, but because Chileans notoriously drop or swallow sounds and sillables, it sounds like albaca. So it makes me think of lamas and I get all confused).

Fill them in the "best leaves" of the corn, which you selected earlier (sorry.. forgot that..). I have no clue how to select them, and R kept being contradictory in the selection process.

Put 2 leaves that "go well together" (same irreproducible process as for the selection) one over the other, put paste on it, wrap together quickly.

This you must do rapidly (even though you don't know how)

Now bind it together with a string (what? I needed string??)

If you are making pastel, it's comparatively easy.

Put paste of choclo (without basil, but if you want with an egg or milk.. there are different recipes) layered with the onion-chicken paste. Like a lasagne.

Put sugar on top.

Oh, this is really important, and I was at first adversed to the idea but it is absolutely necessary to eat both dishes WITH SUGAR! only then are they really good...

here's proof I really did this:

the paste

the finished humitas

me putting them into water

(oh yes, you have to cook the humitas and put the pastel in the oven. didn't I mention? Well you go and find out where to buy that choclo - I'll post a picture of that soon - and then you call me and I promise I'll give better instructions..)

Recovering

2010-01-23T15:52:00.000-08:00

someone I would call The Chilean Dude

Somebody said that in dark/conservative/G.W.B political times, people tend to become introvertive and mind their own business (even more than we do anyway).

Piñera has been elected, and I am still annoyed about it (not that it's my country, but still). Yes, it was foreseeable, but insult is added to injury every time I read another stupid op-ed, such as the LA Times editorial on how the election of a rightist, populist billionaire was proof of the strength of Chilean democracy... Yeah. Sure. Anyway.

So, these last days were for the "Carnival de Valparaíso". The weather was ominously cold and therefore "scenic" or whatever would be the latest slang words among photographers, beautifully shot etc.

So, there:

this was something like a death-theatre-show. really cool, good music too.

everybody's watching...

I must say, I was impressed, and especially taken with the giant puppets - called "monos" (apes) if my treacherous ears have not deceived me (as they do so often...)

Costumes ranged from the more regular...

to the absolutely crazy, logic-defying stuff... it's obviously a very personal distinction..

This was the highlight of everyone who saw it: A paco lets them go wild...!

And here's that scenic light, the afterglow...

politics and aspirations

2010-01-17T18:14:00.000-08:00

Did any of you ever do this one-post-a-day-blogging month? I think I will try that - yes, I know it was in November but what could be more individualist than to pick your private NaBloMo or what it was called - so I'll do that. not this month though.. maybe the next..

I was thinking of this because it is much harder that it looks to select your brilliantly random from your boringly repetitive ideas. Recently, I had no look in structuring my thoughts, none at all. And I heard that if you are FORCED (well, voluntarily forced) to do this EVERY DAY, you probably learn ways of outtricking procrastination. And also to let go of perfectionism. Write that boring thought.

In this spirit, here are my thoughts of the day.

1. Piñera won. We don't like that, but I'm not sure about the extent yet. Have to wait and see how immediately different life in Chile will feel with a right-wing opportunist VERY rich president ...

2. I am writing an application, and it is a total nightmare. I sort of forgot about how nightmarish things get when you have a seven-point list of things to hand in, in two languages, plus language certificates and diverse other proofs and credits.

Speaking of the language certificates, I was appalled to learn that after an entry test to study Northern American Studies, 5 or 6 obligatory language classes, half an intermediate exam in English, a full hour of the final exam and the final written exam AND my master thesis being written in English AND a good Toefl test AND studying in the States for a year - they still make me do a goddamn language test.

Yes, on the one hand that is okay, because my rant just now reads like a really annoying person (my tree, my baby, my career). And I can just picture an entirely unimpressed dwarf of a person (sorry, it's my fantasy after all), working a boring office job, looking you in the eye saying, You are able to read after all, right? It says plainly here, no exceptions.

But it is a pain in my private parts to go and get the stupid thing.

That said, wish me luck and press the appropriate fingers, please!

Auferstanden aus Ruinen…

2010-01-02T05:53:00.000-08:00

eh, wrong text, wrong time - but that’s how I feel … Happy New Year, everyone… gentlemen… good morning…

I had been told about New Year’s in Valparaíso more or less since meeting R, therefore, I thought, it can only be disappointing due to high expectations. It wasn’t.

First of all, a good build-up: Valparaíso’s fireworks are totally famous, everyone said misty-eyed. Chileans (!) around me were planning (!) furiously where to be when, with whom, how to get there …. Which made sense as the city steadily swelled to a triple of the original 500.000 (that’s 500.000 if you count the entire area but guess where all those New Years guests were hanging out). Accordingly the traffic was supposed to be deathly (admittedly this probably does not need much). It was, too, with public places being jammed up by cars and everyone hoarding for the next world war. I gave up on buying myself yogurt when I saw the lines reaching till the back of the supermarket.

Second part of the build-up was privat nature – constant fighting between R and myself right down to the moment when his Santiago friends came and everything dissolved into a night of enamored bliss.

The fireworks were absolutely amazing! I have seen some great fireworks in my life, but these clearly made the top five, with lights bombarding the sky all along the bay from Cón Cón, Riñaca, over Viña to the South end of Valparaíso, Playa Ancha. There was a giant, yellow, full or almost full moon hanging over it all which turned orange in the afterglow – amazing! The crowd was one of the best I have ever experienced – everybody was going absolutely and truly crazy up on the crammed paseo Yugoslavio – even before anything had started - people threw confetti all around and popped the corks way before 12 – interestingly, no-one here bothered counting, so for about two minutes and two minutes after 12, everybody went wild (while I was blankly looking at my watch), until the fireworks started shortly after 12. Those pyrotecs want to toast too, I imagine.

Then we all – the Santiagonian friends Alex, Victor and Danielle (that’s how it sounds not sure how it’s written), R and myself – together with EVERYONE ELSE descended on the streets of the flat area. People, sometimes costumed, were drinking and dancing in the streets. the police lets everyone have it with drinking this day (everything else would have been suicidal). It’s safe because people don’t buy their own firecrackers, and I love this. After some time of here and there, randomly hugging people, and finding an abandoned pink platform shoe (also tooth paste and a mirror) which inspired the single guys to go play Cinderella, we went to a party. It was an interesting set-up of gays and people who said “No, I’m not against gays, only - he is so gay, isn’t he? It’s just .. gay, you know? Is that one gay too?” Eventually, after I had left, the remains of our group were thrown out for overdoing it with their tolerance. From what I understood, the final offending phrase was “So, why do you like dicks?” Bonding on the toilet, the drunken guys made confessions regarding similar areas, unfortunately, I only understood half of that. A guy asked R permission to dance with me: Whatever you like, this is weird. I had been told that the party here goes until 8, and while I had been settling for 4am, I am proud to report that, with a little bit of help, I made it till 7am.

Then, at dawn or madruga, R and I were walking home : the streets were still packed and littered with garbage; in one area, whitish fog was in the air, biting your eyes – apparently here the police had put its foot down.

The friendly and alcohol-prone friends came home later and continued partying yesterday – but I was so out, I slept through it, after going through the ritual of a) mariscal (marisco soup), b) terremote (literally: earthquake, it’s made of cheap white wine and pineapple ice cream. And yes, that sounds like it tastes.)

To summarize:

Clearly, everything Christmas is not, New Year’s is. I did not make any resolutions (but one of them must be to quit, again, soon). Phone connection was down until 3 (I apologize if anybody was trying to reach me). Happy 2010 everyone!

I'm baking a cake - but I don't know how

2009-12-26T16:14:00.001-08:00

random Valpo picture thrown in

Christmas: David Byrne, Raw Fish and broken Sunglasses

2009-12-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

Christmas here is numbingly boring.
a family gathering with lots of food, plus presents and santa claus for the kids. And church, if you like.
No singing, apart from the worst christmas carols which are played in the big shopping houses. only the sins of the states are exported.
oh and there was a fería with the worst worst worst plastic crap I've ever seen - just real rubbish, plastic, ribbons and papers and just worse-than-kitsch, and I do like kitsch, sometimes.
On the other hand, the presence of this market probably proves that some people do have a tree (we don't), decorations and stuff. there is one Santa Claus up on the Avenida Alemana, swinging from a private balcony (yes, swinging. he sits in a swing.) Another Santa Claus - my first here - was in front of one of the shopping malls. When I excitedly pointed him out to R, he commented that the Santas always wear the same boots as Pinochet's henchmen. hum.

Christmas christmas christmas. What was your Christmas like? Is it just an annoying routine, an act, a performance that you must do socially? Is it an opportunity to delve into ritual and to give each other presents? Is it sad? Fun? Depends whether kids are present? Do you dress up for it?

This was my Christmas:

I went to the beach, which was nice. No clouds, damn hot, even though we only went at four. it's officially on the internet 20 degrees celsius (it feels much much warmer). There was hardly anybody there - great plus. Greatest feat of the day (since I did not get to cut the bird in pieces, that is on the list for the next holiday) : I went into the water - in whole!
The pacific is FRIGGIN cold, and although I'm made of steel, if you have to do it SLOW your feet are freezing - and that truly hurts at one point - while the navel is not even wet yet.
Is the pacific always so cold? Here it is cold. And I have been known to swim in some freezing waters. I tried to go into the water before, but really, my feet started to hurt as hell from the water before my navel was even wet.

here is proof (and I know, it looks like an UFO sighting)

So yesterday we went to another beach - one of my resolutions for next year: go to the beach more often! - and there it was easier to delve in, the water even seemed warmer. I was all excited and broke my sunglasses. R made pictures of me (he forgot his trunk) and was all happy, and I was too, until I saw the pictures and thought okay so I look like a mother of four. that happens, right... so much for all the "you don't look like thirty" compliments, probably everyone was talking about my clothes.

My song for the day was "Miss America" by David Byrne. perfect.

then off home and R began cooking whilst I chatted with my family - I had been baking cookies on the 23rd and 24th, to general success. Once you get used to not having a scale, or all the right ingredients, you acquire a more relaxed attitude and possibly better eyesight (does that look like 180 grams?). and you always have an excuse if things go wrong.

We ate - accopanied by delicious wine, and I'm starting to take notes now -

ceviche, made by Rose - that's raw fish "cooked" in lemon. It's friggin delicious. like sushi, only healthier ;) unfortunately they were not quite all done. apparently, peruvian cuisine is a big hit in the States - it isn't in Germany or England, is it? Did I miss something?
a whole chicken filled with vegetables, cooked in wine which gave a really really delicious sauce
the delicious wine sauce
potatoe puree (my first)
oven-baked zuccini

R attacking the bird

me pouring the drinks

and then we had an improvised cheese cake from rose and cookies, and some cigarettes and wine. Splendid.

Vote

2009-12-13T16:19:00.001-08:00

There is nothing new in my own blog, because I was busy writing about Chilean elections here.
Voting laws here are a strange thing (one I did not manage to get into the article):
- You have to register to vote, which is voluntary, but once you are registered, you must vote, and if not, you are being fined. If you can show that you live or work more than 300 km away from your supposed polling place, you might be able to avoid the fine (if your paco is buena onda). A lot of people don't register.
- There is the ley seca, the “dry law” which prohibits drinking or buying drinks as well as “reunions” the day before and on voting day. Which makes you think: Were they so drunk (considering the options offered) that this law was needed?
- You cannot vote if you live abroad and if you were abroad before, you have to have lived in Chile for something like three years again before you are cleared to vote! Guess who and when this law was invented? Correct! Sort of like NATO: keep the Communists out… These and worse strange laws were created under the Pinochet dictatorship.

As to the results – right-wing candidate Sebastian Piñera (Opus Dei, need I say more?) predictably won the first round, but a run-off election is needed and the results are open, as the split vote on the left could come together to avoid Piñera.

beach girl

2009-12-11T16:13:00.001-08:00

These are actually "dated" but it had been a really nice day on Viña's beach "Reñaca." It is a bit like the Chilean version of the are sort of the Côte d'Azur. People there looking good looking out for other good-looking ones. Currently there are only few tourists, so you can block them out and feel like you are alone on a gorgeous beach with a great view.

Only you can't swim, because the water is freezing! I carried a proud sunburn at the end of the day; it was so windy, you did not notice the heat so much...

man brings flower

Kitsch:

I was so happy to pick the pretty ones (yes I'm vain! When you're over thirty you can admit it and play to sympathy right?)

Imaginary Pets

2009-12-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

Dear canine lovers and friends and distant observers,

Chile has a funny thing with its dogs. There are too many of them here. Definitely. But sterilization is apparently not an option. Why? I have no idea. The machismo? Some Catholic misunderstanding - all the tiny murderings if there is no insemination…?

Now they have a Dog Picture Contest. I wanted to participate (the deadline was today), but looking at the pictures I got I thought, it’s not really worth the money for the stamp … BUT! Now you can enjoy those dog pictures… and I have a story to go along with them, too.

So this morning I was joined on my “run” (=trott) by a not-unpretty yellowish dog … It was really kind of cute, the dog would run on a litte, stop and turn and wait for me, then keep at my side till it got bored and sped on, only to turn and wait for me again. (btw, not too great for my self-esteem, being patronized like this by a dog.)

I was beginning to worry, to be honest. I am really no fan of dogs – they don’t clean themselves like cats, the whole public anal business is nothing for me, nor the saliva-involving emotional expressions. But this dog was kind of cute. And it waited for me. It was searching my eyes… (ooh)… so I imagined immediately, what will happen after the run, how can I send it away? Do I have no heart? Should I feed it and send it away? Would it be good for a freedom-loving dog to be corrupted in that way? How can I take it in, what will R and R say, and the duckling (which I don’t have yet and which technically would never say anything)? Does this mean I can never have a duckling?

I think it was at that point that the dog got bored with me and my slow trot and remained at a central plaza, to join the other dogs.

sniff.

more pictures!

2009-12-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

First things first: Is our toilet paper Racist?

mosaic art

the view from Avenida Alemana

The "secret" view from the back of Pablo Neruda's house, where there is Theatre

Chilean school class posing for a picture

please amire the great color composition:

Yours Truly

home pictures

2009-12-02T17:31:00.000-08:00

at home: here is being cooked for me, with drama and song (the food: scrambled eggs, if I remember correctly...)

this is A Room of My Own

our lovely, perfect living room table

me with The Clinic and diverse other stuff

picture time!

2009-12-02T16:47:00.000-08:00

some late afternoon pictures of "my" Cerro Alegre, looking out at the harbor

jajaja... like they say here (somebody told me it's the German influence but I would have to verify that)... this is campaign posters plastering everything.... you can't blame the guys who chop up the faces...

that was Valpo during the garbage collector's strike

A moral question…

2009-11-29T09:18:00.000-08:00

Roommate Rose made a terrific thanksgiving dinner and invited all the friends she has made so far – which are considerably more than I made, but I don’t mind coattailing. The group consisted of good-humored, friendly, and likeable people, and I enjoyed myself.

There was one snippet of conversation that bothered me and I would love to hear your opinion on it. Some of the Chileans present were working in tourism (hostel, tours etc), and at one point there was a short collective bashing of Israeli tourists as “the worst”, dirty, loud, cheap; one of them said that when an Israeli comes asking they would say they are closed and send them away.

As always, when I feel surprised by sudden spite, my reactions are incredibly slow. I asked why they thought this way, they told me few personal experiences, but much seemed some sort of collective sediment.

I managed to bring in a somewhat lame defense that their personal experiences might be due to the fact that – as far as I know – Israelis travel after three years of military service, and are thus somewhat hungry for life but equally desensitized, that they travel on a very restricted budget, always trying to save money to make time last.

My defense did not have any impact at akk. I was confused what to say as well, or if I should say something at all (seeing that obviously it would not change their opinion), it was a party after all and I disliked being the “serious” wait-a-moment person. But then, that’s quite cowardly and subjective.

Once, just back in Chile, R and I had met a crazy gringo. He blabbered and blabbered about this and that, and I was listening politely, and at one point he said Does he (headjerk to R) speak English? (I, naively, respond in the negative) I’m gonna tell you this in English then. Have your fun but don't trust too much; A good many of them are just after your pretty little passport. There was more but I don’t remember, and that was the punchline. R did understand enough English to know he was being insulted and we had a big fight afterwards because I had just stood there, feeling slapped in the face, without a clue of how to respond.

While that guy had obviously been crazy, there were a lot sane people with weird opinions around – the Australian conservatists: They (the Aborigines) are a lovely people I tell you (threatening deeply sarcastic tone of voice), the Israeli hardliner girls, the American and his sexual jokes about taking “two Thais, they’re tiny”.

I must admit that I am mostly curious about those people. I want to dissect them. I want to understand how they think. While this might help me for a story, it does not show exactly moral courage. I feel curious only as long as I am safe, for I am not among the offended (with the exception of Thai girl-joker). Am I not complicit, just asking and listening?

On that, I’d love to hear your opinion: Should you be firm and point out that people-stereotyping is offensive and stupid? Seeing that we all stereotype based on a couple of experiences, should you shut up, listen humbly and tolerantly, ask for the subjective proof? Seeing that it does not change anything, is it worth it, is it important, to register protest, even feeble one? Joking in response might be best (but I suck at that, especially spontaneous)

Other, hopefully more interesting takes on the matter?

culture, baby!

2009-11-20T06:06:00.001-08:00

Now! Is happening what everyone was raving about (well... sort of), is being explained why Valparaíso has that glamourous touch to its name ... No, it is not the number of dogs and the equivalent amount of their shit, and no, neither is it the longish pavo (strike) of more or less everyone, but most specifically, the garbage people... lots of dogs and the garbage of a couple of days piling up... imagine the scenery.. the merciless slaughering of helpless plastic bags, the cold-blooded fights, and the voracious feasting...

well. now stop imagining that.

What is happening is : Sun! You CAN go to the beach! Festivals!

to be precise, there is the Festival de Teatro Container (I have no idea... they do use containers though... it's not for the claustrophobic)

Initially, my attempts at enjoying a movie at the famous Viña Festival Internacional de Cine(at least I was told it is famous in Latinamerica) were constantly thwarted.

The first movie was screened at an incredibly impressive movie theatre at one of the richer universities here in Valparaiso (there are about... 4? 6?). Unfortunately, the projection was so bad that La Nana was almost unintellegible and several times sound and/or image broke off altogether. (Nevertheless, I think it was the most brilliant and impressive film of the lot, see what this blogg had found out about it (in German))

At night of the same day, I tried to watch an Iranian movie with my roommate, about girls who are trying to smuggle themselves into a stadium to support their team. In Iran. Disguised as men. Sport as subversion and kumbayah, the usual, you know, at least I think that was the message because 15 minutes into the movie, the DVD got stuck and that was that.

Then, all three of us wanted to watch a movie, but due to “?” the schedule changed and that thing that was screened was so terribly bad that we had to leave the movie theatre. I don't remember ever doing that except once, watching “The Lamey” with a group of friends - and in retrospect, I think we were wrong and that TL was probably a brilliant movie! Anyway, but THIS was the worst movie ever! There was just nothing to be said for it, it sucked from bad actors, bad aesthetics, bad lighting, TERRIBLE sound to annoying and boring script - a lamely paced, aimlessly tinkering lost-son-comes-home, then turning unannouncedly into an incest story, but loosing the potential momentum immediately. I know it sounds kind of interesting when you see it in writing, but believe me, no! Ed Wood could do way better.

After the rocky beginning of these experiences, things changed for the better and for screenings and movies movie unhampered by unjumped technical hurdles. The Argentinian movie No mires para abajo : a gorgeous girl teaches gorgeous guy how to be the world's best lover. The guy starts out somnabulic and mourning his dead father but that somehow gets lost in the act... . Lots of nakedness and every single picture and set and color is beautiful, bursting of aesthetic will, some funny dialogue.

The wildly praised "El secreto de sus ojos" was good, but as mentioned, wildly praised, and my high expectations, combined with struggling to understand Argentinian lingo ruined it a bit for me. Nevertheless: funny, beautiful images (almost too lascivious) and a taxing script.

Before that, a subtle sweet little Chilean film "La Navidad", which I liked until they had to insert a threesome - of course in the "bad" way (bad for me) - but at least it had a narrative purpose: 18-year-old girl and guy, not together but in sexual relations, spend Christmas together in a godforsaken house in the country. They encounter a 15-year-old runaway looking for her father, take care of her, she for them, alcohol and a stranded puppy are thrown in, at one point there is the threesome, and then the girl leaves to find and acknowledge her Argentinian lesbian adventure.

(Uhm. No one was planning on watching this movie, I hope...?)

anyway, cinema is good! culture is good! Did I mention the sun! Did I mention my excitement over recently discovered fruit cycles? - after strawberries, it seems we are nearing peaches, cherries and corn... yummy...

ps:

Is anyone doing this one-entry-a-day-thing? (see how quickly I catch up with things...)

pps: I get back to the blog-linking thing once I figured out how to actually do it...

life and Shamballah

2009-11-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, R and I (R and me?) were taking one of our lively discussions outside the hills of Valparaíso, where we stumbled upon a Escula Holística de Arte y Creatividad, which looks and sounds like its name… We stumbled in and entered a weirdly vibed discussion with a wide-eyed and willowy lady who gives classes on laughing yoga or yoga laugh or whatever. It does sound interesting. If it were a little chepaer I'd definitely go for it. Well, I'll see...

Anyway, she appeared to have a scary amount of intuition. I for one felt completely x-rayed by her intensity and silent fixed gaze.Perhaps that is why we went to the Shamballah talk, to which she had been inviting us.

Yes, Shamballah.

Now picture a bunch of elderly Chileans, and the instructor: hair-whipping, wide-eyed Shamballah instructor in see-through clothing, whipping her hair in an annoyingly girlish fashion, talking about her life and her ascent in shamanism (modesty is obviously not a requirement) and occasionally demonstrating in performance how not to be sexual and how to be (correctly, i.e. tantric) sensual.

That is because after this (free and concerning Shamballah, quite uninstructive talk), there was to be a (paid) instruction in tantric sexo, which we skipped (put all the elderly Chileans in a perspective in my dirty mind, though). See-through had elected R as her tantric partner in one of her examples, and I think he was scared. At least he did not want to give her the hug that she intended to bestow upon all of us.

I did. I was hoping for some deeper, personalized insight. When she hugged me she said “Was I talking too fast?”

It´s official

2009-11-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

I can´t talk to people anymore. I am drawing a total blank on the "how to behave in a social context" rulebook.

Inadvertedly offended this Rumanian/Bulgarian girl (did not quite catch which ) my roommate had met in her language class. They were passing me on the street, which did not seem the perfect moment for a chat, but I tried anyway. My only hope is that the Spanish was incomprehensible.

In an attempt to put myself down (and thus appear nicer...? WHY am I doing this..?) I commented on my own nationality as "boring" in comparison to her "exotic" one - exotic? yuk! I realized my idiocy upon expressing it, tried to turn it around, failed, and continued drooling in increasingly lower volume... not unlike the babyblue sweater guy from before yesterday. It´s almost certainly karma.

They then commented on the fact that I had "so many" groceries (veggies and fruits, I might add) and how everything is sort of too much and too heavy here. Here I drew the blank they drew upon my drooling. What is the problem with 2 kg of strawberries for about 70cts? If 1kg costs 60cts? What´s the point? First step to gluttony?

To top it off, I wanted to ask the girl her name again, actually as a show of interest and because I had forgotten it instantly - Valerie or Ivonne or something like that - but instead of saying, Tell me your name again, I said, I did not quite catch your name. I-v-anna. complicated name. Meet German idiot, un gusto.

Then I hurried away, so did they, and now I´m hiding in my room.

time for a rant

2009-11-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

yes, even in godforsaken Valparaíso (where the Deutscher Verein is proud of his decade-old history but without any sort of purpose, mission, or activity stated either on its online platform or its real life version, a beautiful neoclassist building in complete disarray), yes even here (and I´m proud of this convoluted Germanic sentence) there was a little something-something in praise of el caída del muro.
So I went. This was great because I had spent the last days captive, nurturing my foot, which was sprained in pursuit of the F***head who stole my bag – ripped it off my body to be precise – but as this is the second time that happened to me, I did not have too much in it.. hah! Anyway, my foot hurt and was half-green, now less pain and less color, I went to the thing.
The introduction was given by a scarily inept boyish-looking guy: He hunched over the microphone and read with an intonation as if he had been Honecker´s personal disciple. In Spanish of course. The German accent in its purest form does amazing things to a language. I later saw him up close and was shocked to see that the 20something-from-afar up close looked like 40-something with a plastic face – an accident? Aesthetic surgery gone awry? And also, would Carrie not help but wonder about this, too?

But StrangeBabyFace also promised “Cocktails” after the films – and after the discussion … a “discussion”!! All of you went to university, right…? Anybody empathize with my immediate post-trauma reaction induced by the word “discussion”??? And what is there to “discuss”, exactly?! I feared the worst…

The films were the the usual fare, except an animation thing by Deutsche Welle that showed exactly how the walls functioned and how many lethal mechanism of “protection” were involved. All of it gave me goosebumps nevertheless, might be the distance from home. So I felt happy, actually.

The promise of the cocktail kept me until after the films, and I was hoping that everybody would be too shy to say anything, seeing that this guy was definitely unable to spark anything even if they gave him a flamethrower.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Lots of people had the urge to talk. There were a couple of Chileans whose recollection for the most part went like this: “I went to Berlin/Germany/obscure other city, for the first time in…. and then again in … we really liked it and my husband said… that was so entertaining!“

Then there was a German guy, one of those cringe-inducing prototypes: long blond ponytail embracing the bald “spot”/greater part of the head, eye-wateringly babyblue sweater (I think the correct color is acquamarin… like the Skype logo or how do you call that button?), deathly thin, weathered face, talked as if he just smoked at least 3 giant spliffs. Even though at one (late) point he was lucid enough to realize (and express) that he was rambling, this did not stop him from continuing to do so.

Despite all this, the promise of “cocktails” kept me in buena honda though until this 24-year old blonde baby started speaking. She was obviously having the time of her life (and yes, I felt a touch of jealousy), judging from the hair-throwing and wrist-waving and general coquettishness, and she claimed that differences between East and West were still enormous.
Case in point: The different ways to tell the time (an example that another speaker had already used). “Every day” she was having great problems at understanding “the other half” (this is not a quote but my scorn). Allegedly the girl was from East Berlin, where people are more “egalitarian-oriented” and not “arrogant” as those nasty nasty Wessies.

Now. Have you ever heard of an East German not understanding the way in which a West German is telling the time?! The idiots in this time-trouble are those from the West, as far as my experience goes. And even if she grew up under a rock – and she was already four after all when the wall came down –, how hard can it be to figure out that unintellegible thing that the other person wants to say when she does not say “viertel”...
yes yes I know you are telling me I should say this to her… but I was so angry and I could not come up with anything that would make me look not arrogant to her.
And then, to top it off, there was one of those unsupportable “Gutmenschen” who wanted to finish the discussion on a happy, harmonic note and twittered that we should not judge (as if anybody had), there were good and bad things everywhere etc. Babyface accepted this as the last comment, he was obviously happy to have the thing over and done with.
By the way, the cocktails turned out to be terrible, headache-inducing red wine (I hate it when things are not properly denominated) and baby empanadas. Those were actually quite good.

don´t let them get you down

2009-11-06T05:28:00.000-08:00

While I do not feel much on the “inside” of Valparaíso, what I do know, has definitely gossip potential. Valpo features the highest number of dogs of any Chilean city, for starters. This is unnerving as I recently had to get treatment for pulgas (flees!)!
A maybe more public matter: The chief of the PDI – the equivalent of the U.S.’s FBI – had to step down after a child prostitution scandal, which took place in Valparaíso. PDIs had apparently participated in the scandal and the chief seems to have covered for them. There has been a series of corruption scandals in the PDI over the past two years, ranging from bribery and destruction of evidence to “adulteration of an alcohol test to involvement in a ring that protected criminals by falsifying documents” (says the Santiago Times).

By the way, I am now able to read (and understand) The Clinic, Chile´s very own – and only, as far as I can see – magazine for political caricature/serious opposition/culture information/language joking. So it has all that I desire. It is named so after Pinochet´s sojourn in the London Clinic ...Once you get over the sexism it has a lot of great information - sometimes funny, sometimes appalling, titillating, inspiring, unnerving - but never boring.

With regards to commodities, I am generally appalled at the lack of selection and competition here. There was even an article about it in The Clinic which said Chile is lacking a law which exists in Europe and Northern America, which allows persecution and sufficient punishment for price agreements / collusion. And you can feel it. I have never seen more relaxed enterprises, with hardly any price difference, i.e. competition between their products. The ofertas and remate here remind me of elections in the Former Eastern Europe :: it´s cosmetics for form´s sake.

Equally annoying is that the big three enterprises have all about the same stuff. All of which is equally not-presented by bored overstaff who react annoyed when you ask them something. At other times there is one or two lonesome guys working their ass off for a horde of rude customers.
Rs theory is that this is Valparaíso, more than Chile. On the other hand, a guy – on the expatriate-blogosphere –, I quote: “no one gets out of your way on the street, hardly anyone walks on those moving walkways (and blocks everyone else from trying to walk), no one says sorry if they knock into you, you barely get a grunt when you walk into a shop from the workers, drivers are selfish etc” He also said, correctly, that this is how Chileans behave in public, you better get used to it, don´t take it personal and be aware that it is public not private behavior.

philosophical days

2009-11-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

It is strange to follow the internet wars from here - internet equality/net neutrality being attacked for the greater good of coming down hard on copyright infringement, fighting against the “Wild West” of the internet (who ever wanted to be the cavallery, really), government snooping in Europe – Maybe I should vote for the pirates next time. There goes your uninformed voter… and now I have to wait four years!

But what I wanted to say, it is surreal to follow these conversations from here – where there is not even the famous “Unrechtsbewußtsein” - or more simply, no fear of being caught. (That reminds me of an interesting riddle I had recently: If you say you´re sorry for something when you are caught – are you only sorry that you are caught? And if so, does the “sorry” count? I think it was on This American Life, wasn´t it?)

Here, favorite pastime and present for the greater good seems to be the generous sharing of your cell phone music (in mostly abysmal quality, I have to add, a fact that is not being helped by earsplitting volume).
This made me think (and I have to admit and apologize in advance that I was never very busy with these questions, out of sheer mental laziness.)

So, when can you share and when not?

If I listen to a song that only I bought, together with a friend or just another person who did not pay for that song, I am obviously not supposed to be cheating copyright laws … But if the friend or person listens to my music when I am not even there?
When is it cheating?
Do I have to know the person I am sharing my music with? What about parties (bring an other, significant or random..)?
Does the person have to be in the same space as you, when I give the music? What happens if I want to give music to my brother in China, do I have to wait till I see him in person, or at least, not in digital form? And what happens to that phony art thing then, where people in New York saw people in London at the same time via satellite or something, did that not also include music? (and even if it did not, what if it had included music? Yes, I know they probably paid, but what if someone had a cellphone and was playing music on the cellphone….)
Is it a question of numbers – sharing with 6 friends is okay, sharing with 100 is not? (I can only repeat, what about parties?!)

Or is the giving okay, only the taking is not? That would at least be Christian ;) But then, the whole point of coming down on the filesharing is that it is not for your economic benefit isn´t it - so are we not being sanctioned for being better, less materialistic human beings (at least if you share. If you mostly take, your soul is probably in as bad a state as ever).
But they are persecuting those who share, right, less than those who take. Is that only because there are too many takers (logistical problems) or is there a whole conspiracy against anti-capitalist impulses?

Sorry to bore you if you all made up your mind about this / are following those discussions / have understood the legal defense of both parties. I know I must sound like a fourteen-year-old having her first philosophical moment. Special apologies to N, T, and Mr Dukat…

internet! this time for real!

2009-11-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to say but need to share this news so... let me think a minute...

yes

Good things today: strawberries at 50 cts / kg. am also partial to cherimoya, something I did not even know before. is known as custard apple in English.

that was very chilean, by the way: lots of talk about prices and food...

pets, food, tables

2009-10-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

After reacting for weeks to imagined cat shadows in the apartment (second stage of brain disintegration?), I did almost buy a baby duck at the local fería. (Did you know how cute they are?! OMG! etc) I was going completely chica-chica while R was driveling of how a chicken (the other option) or a duck are NOT happy in an apartment, how they will grow, and whether I will want to eat them then... I ignored the latter part and said they told me all of that before I bought my cat, too.
And then I retorted with Friends as precedent. I don´t really know why I am such a chicken. But I did not buy my baby duck.
Instead we bought the best table in the world and ever. It is big and fancy (extendable ends), and made of wood of a pretty kind and color.
Tomorrow we´ll go to the fería again (a table is great, but it´s probably even better with chairs). I´ll see about the duck thing then. And keep you posted.

Internet!

2009-10-24T18:21:00.000-07:00

The new apartment is slowly becoming more inhabitable. I love it because there are windows for every room, the place is sunny, warm and bright, the floor throughout is made of parquet, and there is a bidet (how decadent is that!). We are currently using about 1.5 of the available (3) rooms, plus the living room, or as they say, el líving. Fascinating how (and when) English enters the Spanish language… Other examples: There are “líders” who are indeed leaders, but Líder is also the name a supermarket chain (the other chains are called Jumbo and Extra, apparently the level of entrepreneurial “creativity” in baptizing is universal). At university people are studying for a “bachillerato.” There is tipear, clickear (Haz clic aquí), a political “mitin,” “el flash” (for cameras) and “sushi,” spoken, at least by R, like “sutschi.”

Now. we have a kitchen, sponsored by R.s parents. Both a kitchen and a fridge were supposed to come around now, so it was fun when the kitchen came about a week ago. More funny still is that we can´t use it. The kitchen takes its energy from a gas ballon which we don´t have. So, the last days`task was to find that gas ballon. Well! Everybody you ask says, well everybody has one (or more). You just change the empty ones against a full one.
Some gas-filling guy with cross eyes and teeth so crooked and yellow he seemed to have jumped right out of one of those colorful 19th century novels, deliberated selling us one, but then reflected that he might need it, too… This kind of search is something completely unknown to me.

First there is the obligatory no, which to my ear, always sounds rude for lack of sugarcoating (no thank you, maybe later, ups we´ve run out of that one…) But Chileans seem to just save words, letters, time… Another example. Scene: an internet place, me leaving. Girl: Numero? – Me: Cuatro. – Algun imprimado? – No. – Ciento cincuenta – (exchange of money) - Gracias. – A ti. Over and out.

Anyway. What I like about this kind of search is that you start to be happy when someone says, you know there is someone/something/I´ve heard someone say once there might be, on occasion, a guy on Independencía and Las Heras. And then you go. There is nothing of course on Independencia and Las Heras, at least nothing obvious. You start looking around, asking around. The day before yesterday, we went to about 3-4 places in that fashion, finding not a single damned ballon.

Today at 11am, we have a rendez-vous with destiny, a guy who allegedly has a ballon. In that spirit, yours truly…

PS: Has anyone seen “Inglourious Basterds” and has an opinion s/he would like to treat me to? I need some input. My brain is kind of stuck between repulsion, high-speed intertext readings, and some kind of carnal pleasure (the technologics minus the let´s-show-the-groins-in-close-up violence)

we are the world.. we are the children... (why why why IS my brain torturing me?)

2009-10-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

Being sick

2009-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Well. I loved Sontag´s Illness as metaphor so much it seems apt to have an(other) entry on sickness. And timely, too!
I have come down with pneumonia. It is almost exciting. I cannot remember ever having had pneumonia. I even stopped smoking a week after I got back to Chile! The word pneumonia sounds scary and oldschool and it reminds me of TBC which again reminds me of Klaus Kordon`s “Die roten Matrosen” and the untimely death of its hero´s love pretty blond interest. And of course, TBC reminds me of Susan Sontag who writes in her great "Illness as Metaphor" that the “noble” death of the exihilarated thin (no appetite), “transcending” white (!) death of TBC was romantized in literature whereas things like cancer are an abject, gross, blaming-the-victim kind of sickness…
Well. Maybe the only thing I will really learn here is how to wait. It is certainly the only thing that I should learn, soon, if I am not to loose my mind! Rodrigo told me upon one of my impatient fits that impatience is a sign of having been pampered as a small child when all your needs were met immediately (apparently too much so). That kind of comment shuts you up, let me tell you… Although I`m talking “shut up” in the comic figure kind of way, incoherently mumbling and with clenched fists in your pocket…
Example: I went to the doctor. My appointment was at 6.30 but I had had another appointment at 4, and I did not feel up to clamber up the hill twice that day – feeling lousy, with heavy coughing, some kind of allergic skin reaction, completely congested and many more disgusting details I will spare you… Also, I foolishly thought showin up early at the practice might help squeeze me in a little earlier. When I entered the doctor´s office, at 7.15, I had certainly learnt I was wrong. It does not. Patience is a virtue and I haven´t got it.
The doctor however, was a real comic figure. He was small, bald, white-frocked, with a stetoskope stuck on his head quite permanently – are they called stetoskope? Those mirror-like things, a bit alien, like a hairband with a UFO attached to it. But he was friendly, entertaining, old-school (taking time for his patients, you see…). He insisted on showing Rodrigo the inside of my nose – “you should know what she looks like inside” (wtf!?!)-; I might mention that at this point various torture instruments were already stuck into my nose, so there was no possiblity of defense. After some more cleaning and coughing and explanations and a transcript to x-ray my lungs, I was also given a anti-histamin and anti-congestion shot – “gluttonal”! When my incomprehending outstretched arms did not waver, the syringe señora showed me: in the ass! Well! And I thought those days were gone!
I will return to my sickbed now, pop some more penicillin and wonder about my body, and after the narcisstic face changes into boredom, about other people´s bodies...

happier days

2009-09-21T17:50:00.001-07:00

my birthday:

About Language

2009-09-21T17:43:00.000-07:00

I recently realized that my homesickness has reached a new height. In a recent LEO-discussion an energetic lady told off the various bickering participants like toddlers. She claimed that a certain word difference is “gehupft wie gesprungen.” An even more gruesome example of my homesickness would be feeling whinesome reading a citation of “Pippi in den Augen” on spiegel.de ... (insert vomit smiley here)

Of course, there are funny Spanish words – and then there are funny Chilean ways of saying things. As a token of affection or nicety, everyone is saying things such as “chicitito” or "chicillos" (instead of chico), “besito” (instead of beso), “sopita” (instead of sopa) and so on. This excessive use of diminutives can lead to funny moments, such as when a vendor, selling quite an enormous backpack, asked her co-vendor for a “bolsita grande” (a big tiny-bag).

Nevertheless, I seem to be making progress on my Spanish. Firstly, I was told by several people that they thought I was Brasilian – “you sound like Brasilians when they try to speak Spanish” I(note the “try to speak” part). At another occasion there was musing that I were having a French accent. (I can assure this is not true, regrettably or not). Like most (I'm tempted to say "every true") Germans, I seem to be happy about having almost any other accent as long as it is not a German one. Is the implication of this (still) a wish to pass as a non-German? I was talking to an American in the hostel in Santiago, and funnily enough, he did not even ask but wanted to know whether I came directly from France to Santiago. It was a very short conversation I admit. I find the backpacker scene tiring now. Hey I´m a surfing Uruguayan – hey I´m a hip girl from Vermont, “you know, (close to) Boston and New York…” (yeah sure) – Hey, I´m an Californian skiing teacher. My thought for the day: I used to think Obama would be assassinated by the Religious Right. Now I think Obama IS the Religious Right.
Ehm.
did I miss something that happened in Gringo-land?

But then I watched a movie and the credits said, a guy on the team, gaffer or something, was called “Gonzalo Palta” (Palta meaning Avocado), and that made me think of ALF and I was happy. No problemo!

Food Days

2009-09-21T17:26:00.000-07:00

These days are the “days of the empanada.” In truth, the 18th of September is the day of independencia – not the 11th of September, as I had thought. This one is the day of the military coup. Rodrigo said, make that mistake to the wrong people and they kill you. I try to think/hope he was just playing up the “dangerous (Latin) world” part; they are always very anxious here. (And there is the joke that the gringos stole that day, too, by having an even worse 11th of September…)
Anyway, the Day of the golpe, the coup, is not exactly celebrated, and not exactly commemorated either. I don´t know much more of yet; I am not surrounded by very political people – politics still reeks of “danger” and “trouble”, at best, futility. I just read that a third of young Chilenos is more or less apolitical, which I find astounding. Not in comparison to Europe or the States (where the figures are the same or higher, I imagine) but for the context of a country that just got rid of its dictatorship. I don´t know. Surely seems like democracy is not the hottest thing after all, at least not in this form.

Well, the 18th of September is for eating empanada de pino, a fatty delicious dough filled with pieces of beef, onions, a bit of boiled egg, olives and raisins. I think one would be enough for a calorie-comfortable day, so I had about 3 and a half. On the first day. Señora Viviana, who invited us recently to have lunch at her house in the neighboring town of Lago Algo, said it´s the healthiest empanada there is. There is also one that is filled with cheese and then deep-fried, so she might be right.

After the empanada day, there is the meat-and-potato day. The family meets and starts preparing various foods from the morning onward, mostly meat and hum, potatoes.
It is barbecue time, or rather, time for asado. Lots of wine is involved, three kinds of formery free-running, former animals, and some salads. All very relaxed and friendly; the presence of 3-year-old Angela helped when I would tighten up about all that family presence. Rodrigo and I were preparing Kartoffelschnitze (to general appreciation) in an outdoor oven, while the radio was blasting the Cueca.

I continue to be fascinated by this tradition. read this: "The Cueca has rich historical roots in both African and Native American cultures. The dance is a parody of the courtship of a chicken and rooster. The dancers wave handkerchiefs above their heads during the dance. These handkerchiefs can symbolize the feathers of the bird or the rooster’s comb."
Yesterday Chile´s president Michelle Bachelet had to/the pleasure to do the chicken dance on National Television. I savor the thought of Merkel, Schröder (less funny) or Kohl having to do a national dance.

mixed salad

2009-09-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I went to this seminar at Valparaíso University - not the Valpo U in Indiana, US, where they offer a writing workshop and writing jobs that got me all excited. No, the Valparaíso University in Valparaíso Region, región Valparaíso, Middle Région, Greater Santiago Region, Second Largest Metropolitan Region of Chile and so on. Whatever it is called, really. So far the country´s ways of working these things out have eluded me. To find out whether a phone number is a cell or a landline, you have to count the numbers, starting from the back, and if it´s eight, it´s a cell! Nothing more obvious than that! Only no-one tells you!

Aside: This seems a good moment to squeeze in some random information about Chile (I have forgotten why it seemed a good moment though). Chile has a population of 15,665,216 (July 2003 estimates) and a total land area of 756,950 sq km. Ist economy is considered one of the strongest of South America. They export a lot of copper, apparently. The country has an extreme northern-southern length of approximately 4270 km (about 2650 mi), but its average width is less than 180 km (less than 110 mi). Archipelagoes extend along the southern Chilean coast from Chiloé Island to Cape Horn, the southernmost point of the South American continent. Islands claimed by Chile include the Juan Fernández Islands (Robinson Crusoe), Easter Island, and Sala y Gómez, all of which lie in the South Pacific. Chile also claims a section of Antarctica. Relevant economical areas of Valparaíso are maritime port, agricultural, fishing, tourism and education. I have read that the weather in Valpo and Viña is considered „temperate“ but I continue to take issue with that.

The seminar was about Latinamerican Cinema, so a fairly clearly outlined ;) and ambitious project. I haven`t sorted out what I learnt yet. It is of course all very political, which is good, and often a little boring, which is bad, but it might be my fault for not understanding the dialogue better. well. more on art later.

London, Berlin, Friends, Europe, Cheese, Bread, Television, Summer, Babys (not mine)

2009-09-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

london

london
berlin berlin: trash cans and church

which city is it??

sah der görli je so romantisch aus?

das hier ist für insider... (in Berlin, Altonaer Strasse, toilet, and a jaguar)

my lovely nieces

doing the chicken

2009-09-08T08:22:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we went to the “Club Aleman”.
You have to imagine the interior of that "club" like a period movie. Enter a (inconspicuous looking) building. There is a doorman, an elevator and a spacious stairway, all rather obscure, but with red carpet. Inside, seemingly randomly arranged rooms. Those are more or less empty but for chairs and tables, heavy chandeliers. The furniture is made of dark wood, it is also dark for the chunky curtains and the waiter who looks like a pimp behind a table with beverages… Well, this last bit had a different character, I read it as the Chilean part, with all the improvisation of a school event.
On the first floor we are passing tango – women heavily tarted up, in strange dresses and high shoes. Our thing is on the second floor: the national dance! It is called cueca.
Is there a national dance in Germany? Or England? The dance is awesome. I did not really get it at first, because there were only shy couples solitarily doing the thing, one after the other, although the atmosphere was great and raunchy. But then the pros stepped on stage (no stage involved)! That was so funny! For the dance has a narrative : The woman is a hen flirting with and teasing and getting away from the man, who is, you guessed it, a rooster. Imagine a guy doing a chicken, flapping the jacket, stamping the feet, moving the whole body in that sweeling, puffing fashion, uncannily like both a duck and a man (the latter puffing only on the inside, of course)
Here is a link to that dance. Enjoy! (oh, and watch the guy. Seriously, so much fun) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik7bTRYWCS4&feature=related

after shopping..

2009-07-09T19:06:00.000-07:00

This is what I have learned:
- Flu AH1 warnings in the supermarket are creepy and strange. Advice ran along the line of "Don`t stand too close to other shoppers." Hello, paranoia anyone? On the other hand, if the pandemic serves to make people less pushy, there`s something good in it for me..
- I have managed to eat both Pizza and steak in one day, my last day in Buenos Aires. As you know, the city combines the best of many worlds: Italian Pizza and Pasta, french bread, argentinian steak...
- everything is artesanal here, chocolate, beer, ice-cream. I thought this means something related to artwork, but maybe it only means "hand-made." It is certainly no guarantee for quality but I like the way it sounds.
- I have been visually insulted by a “manly leather store“-watch men: Yes, it IS possible.
- Berlin remains the only city featuring the possibility of a unisex clothes style

One thing that is boiling the blood pressure both in Argentina and in Chile is the "Parricidio de Estado," recent laws which allow a parent or judge to prohibit the other parent to see the (usually his) child if child support is not paid. This rather strict law seems to have come to pass reacting to the original highly lax one, where the parent (usually father) could simply disavow his child and fuck off. Yet what is happening now seems to be quite bad, where children are used as bargaining chip, in a difficult economic situation, and hitting devoted, not louche, fathers.

There were other themes that wanted attention – in the form of banners, balloons, and a loudspeaker accusing and making a roll call for a demonstration - at the plaza de Mayo, where I went to glimpse the remnants of a bit of Independence Day Celebration. Among the various colorful posters I remember “Las Maledivan quedan Argentinian“ and “Pirata Ingles nos sigue invadiendo“ – anybody heard of English Pirates molesting Argentinian waters? Is this something or is it something like the guy who can cook noodles with his mind?
Walking on. On Avenida Corrientes they are showing "Frankenstein - the musical," and I almost bought a magazine about dwarfs (to see what the competition is doing) before I realized my mistake, that the magazine is in fact called "pymies"... so I sticked to a Rolling Stones with Michael Jackson cover.

My flight home was less nice than the first one; British Airways´food quality seems to depend on the country where they can buy supplies; we were waiting at least two hours in Sao Paulo where they filled up, cleaned and scrubbed the airplane – or whatever they did – until we left, in heavy rain. The silence in the – quite big – plane was palpable. It is a creepy feeling to hold one´s breath with some hundred other people. I wonder why there are no smoking signs AND ashtrays on the toilets (is the plane that old?). I miss my connection flight in Heathrow - even though, hello P! Hello I! Hello N, and hello T! – I did not plan it! Makes you superstitious doesn´t it?

Buenos Aires, Independence Day

2009-07-08T17:29:00.001-07:00

My second Buenos Aires experience could hardly be more different from the first. First time, it was the party hostel in Palermo, going to dinner at 12, the dog stand outside the 10-people dorm room, a British chick going crazy (before getting drunk), and everybody in general summerily hyped.. except me and my untimely bout of what-will-become-of-me-depression.
This time, I flew into an airport scenery fresh from "Twelve Monkeys." After givig a bogey health report - who`d voluntarily check any flu symptoms? not me, cough-cough - we were fotographed by mouth-masked airport personel. With about 79, Argentinia`s death toll is highest after the US and Mexiko. (Chile is 5th. as you see I'm flirting with death)
Leaving that atmosphere behind, as well as Argentinians eager to practice their English, which leaves a devastating effect on my confidence and comfort to speak Spanish (It`s a bit like a friendly struggle of wills, I ask in Spanish, they respond in English ...)
All grown-up I called up hostels (hence the struggles) and mastered public transport to a hostel in Palermo. I remember that first traveller I met, a fairly boring Itailan. Today I would consider using the Bangkok public transport. Or at least I would be less impressed.
The hostel is remarkably quiet. It is also cold, but they told me this morning if I had told them, they would have switched on the heating. I am on the third floor with a hermosa view of the roofs and a fatty smell from the fast food restaurant nearby. There aren`t even many people smoking in the hostel, which amazed me. This in a country where you still find smoke-infested toilets in busses and at the airport, where people just can`t wait... I remember the airport in oklahoma which had a positively smoker-hating architecture, making it necessary to walk for half an hour until you could exit somewhere to put dirt in your lungs...

Anyway, shopping in Buenos Aires - in fact, being in Buenos Aires - is not a good idea when all you have for clothes is the same tattered and incongruent stuff you have worn for a year. In my opinion, shopping always requires stomach, especially if you are a woman, but this here is a different level of the game. Today is Independence Day in Argentina (see my sensational title), I will see whether any stores are open to spend my money in shame and gibbery excitation about so much pretty leather stuff..

wrap-up party, santiago

2009-07-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

The last day in Santiago was eerie. Much of this was certainly caused by my lack of sleep. There was much rum - here in Chile I can stomach this kind of alcohol, it`s drinkable like water from an old faucet with its personal aroma -, there was much cold, and there were shifting combinations of friends in the famous apartment - I slept in between so I wasn`t too attentive.

Then we watched two movies at Festival "Cine B". Nobody has explained to me what the "B" stands for but I will wait to ask until my own, wilder theories have settled down a bit. One was a short film which abruptly and frustratingly stopped in the middle of things, and a feature filma bout a day in the life of a family of Chilean peasants, or "huacho" (that was the title of the film). This one had been at cannes, but I wasn`t smitten - it certainly had nice images but dragged on painfully - first we see the grandmother`s day. Then we see the mother`s day. Then we see the grandfather`s day. Then we see the son`s day...

The atmosphere was invigorating and energetic yet I almost dropped from lack of sleep. I had had to pick up my Ersatz passport at the German embassy on their generous opening hours 9-12, four times a week. This time the embassy was packed, including 10 nuns, all of them old, funny and German. "Ich kam fuenfundfuenzig nach Chile..." a ball.

Entering the Santiago streets after the movies felt like stepping into a war zone - or like Kreuzberg on the 2nd of May. Some Chilean socker team had won against some other Chilean socker team, and everybody seemed to think it was time for a statement. I blame partly the incessant loop of and the live coverage of Michael Jackson`s funeral. I saw that girl cry for her dead at least seven times, and it was surreal before that number. The guys of the apartment were watching transfixed and commented rather bitterly.

the idea was to get four hours of sleep before getting up at 4.30 to get to the airport. Yet the apartment hosted a friendly and lively political roundtable (or so it seemed from listening to them), which meant sleep between 1-3am, approximately. Remarkably, everything worked so far, despite the dazed state of mind and body (yes, I can hear the loud coughs of all you fresh parenting people, but I don`t have a baby - and hence the incentive and the hormones - so I am amazed..)

a little bit of this and that in valpo

2009-07-02T14:50:00.001-07:00

the weather remains unpredictable and therefore entertaining. there was an all-day long downpour two days ago, which made you feel sad for all the free-spirited but sickly looking dogs here. even when they drag themselves to the middle of road to empty the sick content of their bowels exactly THERE.
but I was talking about the weather. glorious sun today so we went to the beach, with the idea of exercise. The air smells of sea and everything is pretty much "nordsee" to me, although it is the pacific. on the way back we pass a monton of pretty witches`houses, derelict, with bays and corroding roofs, overgrown gardens, simply fetching. one house even had an old lady watching us secretly behind her gardine.
señora viviana, owner of the house, continues to show her motherly affection. Fortunately, Rodrigo is her main target. To me, it can be quite amusing. when she is around, he always has to do stuff and answer her questions. (But then, I sometimes have to answer questions too. there was the remarkable incident with a towel-lady, who asked me whether my father permitted me to live with a man..) She is a dentist and doing his teeth as well, or rather, something with his teeth, I didn`t quite understand the details of this explanation. She told us, in her usual fluttery non-stop style, that her son was having "la gripa famosa", which was freaky until new information arrived, the son had only been vaccinated against that famous flu...

Being lucky

2009-06-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

The first half month in Valparaiso was spent in a colorful and ice-cold room in a house on the street Victor Hugo, right at the ascensor Cordillera (and accordingly, on cerro Cordillera). The artist couple Lorena and Andres, who rent out the place on Victor Hugo, have a café downstairs. they also have a tabby cat with the annoying habit to climb up and pee everywhere after searching through the garbage. We practically had the second floor to ourselves – the other guy who lived there studied and worked a couple of jobs and probably never slept. The only drawback of this was having to share facilities, and having only one bottle of gas for either cooking or showering.

After the guy stole my bag and his cronies threatened Rodrigo with a knife, I pretty much hibernated in that room on Victor Hugo, feeling safe there. Everyone seemed even stranger to me than normal and I felt extremely suspicious to the point of paranoia. The guy who stays in the adjacent room for one night seems aggressively friendly – "soy de campo" (I`m from the countryside - who is calmed by that information?!)He insists on giving us a tin with mussels, and then asks every day “did you eat them yet?” gave me bad dreams of fairy tales and scarecrows.

The idea was to change something. When we crept out of that room and visited other Cerros (there are at least as many as in Rome), it felt like breathing different air.
To me, Valparaiso is very much like Berlin in this sense of contrast: much art, much street art, many young people (a couple of universities), many colors; at the same time, much dirt, no jobs, poverty, and “te assaltan en todas partes.” There is both the gringo tourism and the romantic sense of artists’ living and scraping by: the French guy had been living off playing guitar in the street for months - although the whole being (and singing in) French in a lanky, slightly gay way certainly helped - before the girl broke it off and he cut his hair and went back to France.

On Cerro Alegre, there are expensive restaurants and cars and gringos around, the houses are beautiful, with vines and paintings and neighborhood watch programs, and I was immediately convinced anything here would be way too expensive. The few places available - dingy, overpriced and cold - supported my assumption. Then we came upon the first floor of a house that had just been vacated by a family: the kids would still come to the second floor (passing by the common gallery). Two rooms and a living room, a fully equipped kitchen and bathroom, all in excellent shape and quality (a functioning toilet flush, a faucet that is usable without flooding the kitchen or hurting oneself in gymnastic efforts; things I had almost forgotten). Señora Viviana, mother of the family and now my favorite person in Valparaiso, is a well-shaped 40ish dentist with a girlish air, very pragmatic, extremely friendly, and she talks nonstop. (Seriously. I caught myself reflecting whether this could be a dysfunction or something. When I met her husband – a very large barbed lawyer –, all he was able to squeeze in was “encantado”) She told me I looked “chicitita” - like 21 or something (I kid you not). But I doubt this owes to my youthful complexity. Either Chilean girls my age are married or at least pregnant, or it was my clothes, my tattered “pantalones de guerra” and hoodie.
From the moment I feel in love with the place and señora Viviana decided to rent it to us, the list of goodies went on and on. The place is ridiculously cheap, considering its qualities. There is a functioning phone line, so you can call me!
+56 32 22 22 784. please do, I’m missing my friends! Moreover, Señora Viviana decided to buy both a new bed and a fridge for us. She also left a number of beautiful furniture and plants, and lots and lots of useful bits and pieces. For about a day I was expecting the hitch, the payment of some form, the firma or mafia or “that’s US$ not Chilean$“ or similar. It feels like having a patron.

Recap: right now, in Santiago…

2009-06-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

A roommate (or a guest or an amigo) is showering while Rodrigo is making eggs, with vapor only. There was a camping cooking set here but we took it to Valparaiso. I will start using it next time the French dreadlock couple with whom we share facilities, completely messes up the kitchen without cleaning up after themselves. The guys of this apartment don´t do cooking. They all work (and eat) in restaurants - with the exception of M., an unemployed actor who doesn´t live here anymore but who comes around when his girl goes to work and he is bored. I dislike his loud, vulgar, chain-smoking and game-playing way, but after all, I am a guest here myself. The other guys are: V, the oldest, a thirtish writer and supervisor in a fancy-schmanzy (Italian) restaurant, with a soft spot for things French and sniffable, extremely well-educated and funny. Kind of a Chilean version of the French comedian Gad Elmaleg.
Then there is C, a sweet guy around my age, who threw out his wife-and-children-beating father when he was 16 and built a house for his mother.
Finally, there is another guy, and there is his brother and I always mix up the two; when they leave separately in the morning, I always get a Groundhog Day – moment: Didn’t you just walk out that door..?
V,C, and M are not sure or decided whether this guy is gay or not, and I am not sure how much this matters to them.

hospitals in Chile, part II

2009-05-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

So, hospitals are crowded, and stingy about offering information. This particular hospital had a security guy controlling the hallway. Valparaiso is Chile’s most dangerous place, or so I’ve been told. And the hospital’s audience did seem to warrant some authoritative presence. I don’t know about you but I never know whether these guys’ presence shouldn’t render me more nervous: If security is necessary, why is there only one guy? But then, I’m in a paranoid state because a few days ago I got robbed of my bag with ALL that is valuable to me here (except passport and credit card which I kept apart…)

The first guy I had to talk to wanted to chat about Paris. (I thought, stupidly, that this was already the doctor but no-no-no. That was only the guy to take my data. I had to make an appointment and return later that day for this) I never like it when doctors like to chat. They probably think they are doing me a favor, calming the nerves and whatnot, but I want my questions answered, get the thing done, over and out of there.
Anyway, the guy was what they call a “Viejo caliente,” and he addressed every nurse as “amor de mi vida.” After another half an hour of waiting and playing Naipes, I was let into another room, where two women, a young and an old one, practiced whether or not “ella” (me) understands them.
When they finally took my blood, or tried to, I had been waiting 2-3 hours (with appointment), and I was freezing. It gets quite chilly here but there is no calefaction, nowhere, because “it doesn’t get cold enough” (this is a very relative statement) to justify squandering money on heating. As a result, everybody has a cold and/or expensive electric heater.
Have I mentioned the obsession with money that people display here? Forget prudence about “dirty money”: every price and paycheck is relentlessly asked, told, compared and memorized; and even the least helpful staff member will be able to rattle off the prices of things.
The corpulent lady did not find a suitable vein and complained to me about this. She then decided to tell me she would “try her luck” and literally poking in my arm in search of blood, occasionally asking me if it hurt. I have been watching In the Valley of Elah recently, and was weirdly reminded of the sadistic private in that movie. When she gave up she told me she would try my hand now, informing me that “this will hurt.” There was only a little blood coming, and I tried to tell her that I was going to faint but she didn’t listen or pay attention. When I was coming to, there were four women in the room, two holding me tight, all of them gabbering in Spanish at high voice and speed. Unmitigated terror. I had no clue what was going on but felt that I definitely should.
Afterwards, one of the ladies was indignated that I couldn’t tell her what was my usual low blood pressure (Seriously, do you know?) Whether I haven’t been told my pressure? In innocent and unintentionl rudeness I told her yes but that I found the information uninteresting and therefore forgot it. Great look on her face.

Tales of Chile, part I

2009-05-28T13:31:00.002-07:00

I recently found myself in a hospital in Valparaiso (don´t be worried). This endeavor – to take a blood test – turned out to be quite a surreal experience. I have had time to observe before that hospitals in Chile (with the exception of the places for the very rich) are places for social gatherings and exchange. A bit like going to the market. There are always a lot of people waiting and chatting, and blocking the entrance to the information counter.

As an aside, the relation to space, both personal and social, is definitely different here. For example, many times I exasperate because there are no stable currents in highly overcrowded places; Instead, everyone walks han-solo-style, in a chaos, with sudden stops, turns and blockades. - On the other hand, I enjoy the fact that people are less dominated by a “social pace” and walking in right angles. - Relating to this subject matter is the territorial behavior of females of a certain age group. Shopping carts become weapons in their pushy fingers. But this might be an international problem? Am I mistaken, or are men, generally speaking, more considerate of possible backs, feet and knees into which they might be ramming their protruding artificial limbs? (Or is that because here you’d find only non-machistic men doing the shopping here?)

To return to my point, possibly as a result of this permanently crowded state of affairs, forget privacy: Both in hospitals and in farmacias, no-one would dream of voluntarily relinquishing space (even if it were possible) or at least turn the head or eyes away as a social act of performing inexistence (I really should find a place here that has huge and crowded elevators, and experiment with it). Again, this has its plus side. While everybody will know your tampon brand, rash medicine or worse, people are willing to assist with information. While in my case - that of a grumpy European - this interaction is mostly unasked for, I’ve had to grudgingly admit that it is very very helpful because of Information Gathering Rule 1. Which says that there is no secure way to obtain information. Forget authorities, certificates or logic such as “in a place where they sell xx, the vendors should know about xx.” The only reliable way to obtain valid information is to ask as many people as possible. Ask at least three times for a way, and don’t be shy to walk back a couple of blocks if the last person you asked, seemed to be more well-informed than the previous ones.

this is funny (I didn't write it)

2009-05-28T13:31:00.001-07:00

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its
yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative
meanings for common words.

*The winners are:
*
1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3 . Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run
over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when
you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there..

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish
men

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word
from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one
letter, and supply a new definition.

*Here are this year's winners:
*
1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign
of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of
getting laid.

3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject
financially impotent for an indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person
who doesn't get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really
bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a
serious bummer.

10. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming
only things that are good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when
they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've
accidentally walked through a spider web

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into you
bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in
thefruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

"Deliverance" reloaded and without hillbillies

2009-04-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

Outside of Arequipa lies a beautiful landscape of volcanoes, hot and thermal springs, and other fancy-sounding things. We made for the "Canyon de Coca" the other day: "This is one of the deepest canyons in the world where the distance from the Colca riverbed to the top of the cliff is more than 13,100 feet." It took a nerve-wrecking, stomach-clenching 5-hour bus journey to arrive in Cabanaconda, home base for trips to the Canyon. I had in mind something like the Isla del Sol in Boliva: some peaceful walking, easy on the altitude, beautiful landscape,repetitive food, and cheeky kids.

Instead, as became crystal clear on day 1, this was a different business. We made out as late as 8am, what with all the last-minute water-and-banana-buying. Around 9am it was seriously hot. There weren´t many people - we had taken the "less touristic" road -, but among those we met was a shrivelled old lady who slowly but steadily walked by with her donkeys where I had collapsed in a rare spot of shade, around 12pm.
Upon arrival at our destination of Llamar (or similar) realization dawned that this wasn't a pueblo, only a place for weary tourists. It turned out to be quite incredible: With a stellar view on the canyon, comfortable bamboo-based beds, really good food, 2 cats, and very soothing thermal springs.

On day 2 we started earlier, at 6.30, without (the heavy and egg-based) breakfast from yesterday and with only about 1.5 liters of water, as the next pueblo was supposed to be close (drumrolls).
Climbing up, I took the first round of carrying the heavy backpack; I was playing the lady card, as my Chilenean co-traveller was supposed to carry it during the hotter time.
We reached a forsaken little place, decorated with cactus and red flowers as garden. A blind man and a deaf lady lived there. I wondered who took care of the old couple. They didn't appear to be very agile. The blind man asked for cigarettes and showed us the way and called me Mamacita. I told my compadre about that time when my family went trekking in some Scandinavian country, and my dad got lost. I must have been 7 or so, and I remember mostly the endless empty promises of "after the next hill, there'll be the hut." but there was always only a next hill... (drumroll 2)
We came to a crossing. As I remember it, we took the way as indicated, even though my companion said, Seeing that the man was blind... It didn't seem to be the right way. It was very narrow and unkempt and after a while it hugged so closely the hill on one side and fell down steeply on the other that I was frightened to slip and fall. We changed packs. We walked on. Malata was supposed to be 1.5 hours from the couple's place. After two hours there was nothing, but the way got worse and worse. There were cactus and scrubs everywhere, steep up a hill on one side, steep down to the river on the other side. We felt we might be too high. It was hard to have an overview but there was a different path below us. We climbed down. The path turned out to have the same characteristics as the first path. To make this whole thing shorter, at one point the way ceased to exist.

I don't remember our reasoning, but we climbed down to the river. By climbing down I mean climbing. There was no path fit for humns, only vague animal treks. Twice I put my hand in a cactus. I was most afraid to fall and break something. My sneakers slipped, unfit for the excursion. I slipped. He slipped. It was hot. there was no fucking path.
Arrived at the river, there were three horses or horse-mule creatures. It was 11.30 am now, and we needed rest. My legs quivered, and while on the hill, the only shadow to be had was the occasional larger cactus. I had stopped taking pictures when the amount of sliding increased and my cooompaion stopped making "before death" jokes. There seems to be a time for everything.
The water in the river seemed, smelled and tasted quite obviously unfit for drinking, but I filled one empty bottle anyway. There was no path to make our way along the river to the next bridge, which I surmised should be close and would serve as landmark. The single house we had seen on the other side of the river - broad and heavily currented - seemed deserted.
After that excursion, the horses were gone, which worked quite devastatingly on my mood, although don't know what I had in mind: follow them (they ran quickly while we hobbled painfully and slow), ride them (yeah. right.), use them as messengers (how tacky)? But they were living beings, reassuringly alive.
However, as fate blinked for a moment and thus forgot about her current pastime of torturing two insignificant idiots (forgive the hyperbole), two guys appeared. They hopped as easily as the horses and didn't linger, but they told us where we were - 1km from the next bridge, and nowhere on the map really. (This doesn't say much, in my experience here, maps resemble kids' drawings of treasure map, with limited capacity for real information and unproportional dimensions).
The guys also told us how to get away. They said it was three hours either way, back to home base in Copacabana, or on to Malata, which meant all the way back upon the hill, on top of which there was a path to lead us to Malata.
We went back up the hill.

Don't ask me why, I really don't know. And I cursed and asked myself a lot on the way, until I stopped noticing anything anymore, not the threatening-looking declivity, the squishing and growling of the river, the startled birds exploding in a vertical fright flight like spacecrafts, the desert flowers, the pebbles and rocks, the sweetish smell of sweat. I stopped noticing all the scratching of my legs and arms and every exposed piece of skin of my body. My face was burning from sun, dirt, and sweat. We were also low on sunscreen.
I pulled on every plant that got my way and wasn't a cactus. This wasn't a way, it was vertically hagling up a steep slope on loose ground, in intense heat, with backpacks, and so little water that we rationed every sip. We were very slow. The boost that I had initially felt about finally knowing where we are quickly vanished. The hill seemed endless. no shade. no person. not even fresh animal trackings. we ate tuna - the fruit of cactus, and probably spelt differntly - cut with my knife. I must have eaten eight tunas that day. But they were so thoroughly spiked that we pulled out the fine stinging hairs endlessly afterwards, from hands, lips, face, tongue. I drank from the river water. My companion poured it over his head. When he started cutting open cactus in search of water, I decided it was time to change packs again. My body was in death mode, and I felt I couldn't linger while he sucked on a piece of peyote or else I might never get up again.
Little later, I cut open cactus as well and rammed a spike so deeply in my finger that my whole hand hurt. when we were on top one hill (there is always the next "top") it was 3 o'clock, and there was no way.
There were two pueblos visible, far away, in the direction we came from, without a way to get there. I couldn't think. It was all I could do not to panick but I was very very scared. Apart from the two sprinters, we hadn't met anybody all day. In three hours it would be dark. No water, and only dry, useless food. My cell phone didn't work here, and his had blocked itself. We were uttlerly exhausted, dehydrated, and by now I was less afraid of falling than of actually dying. Isn't this exactly what happens to stupid gringo tourists?
He wanted to go to the pueblo. The guys had told us shit. I wanted to go on. We went on. First we found the imprint of a human sole in the sand. Then we found a way. I was too dehydrated to cry. It was a broad, long path. We walked on. There was always another turn, but less sun now. There was wind, welcome and refreshing, even though it slapped you and your pack to the ground. When I finally saw a pueblo - Malata! - quite afar and below, I had a feeling of biblical dimension.
When we tottered into Malata, it was ten past 5pm. The town seemed deserted. We found a hostel, complete with guinea pigs and chicken (I though, "food!") and big black insects, but without any owner. We emptied all water bottles we could find. I actually staggered. Then we went twenty minutes more to the next town to find a hostel inhabited with human life. And that was it. A bed witha view, a hot shower, food and pulling out a 4cm-spike out of my finger, after 10hrs walking.

Bolivia baby

2009-03-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

firstly, pictures from the North of Argentinia: my favorite llama baby, relaxing in Tafi de valle, a tiny town on the way from cordoba to salta

and on to Bolivia:

A train took me from Villazon - the border town btw Argentina and Bolivia - to Uyuni, famous salt desert of Bolivia (biggest desert in the world). The train was quite an experience. We paid dearly (comparatively speaking) for a dinner, and were offered four sorts of toasted white bread with a little butter and a little jam. But this with style! In an old-fashioned food salon waggon, like in an old movie, with fashionable waiters serving the toast and falling over the tables because the train was shaking so hard.

First stop in Bolivia were the salteras of Uyuni: mindblowing. it's a beach, a desert, an ocean of white salt. amazing. (on the third picture I'm enacting a Hitchcock movie, and on the fourth, I'mcrying out for a banana.)

shopping
On the way to the salteras, there is shopping - this is a spiderman-hand puppet

and a cemetery of trains

There are more tourists than I expected in Bolivia. But then, I expected nothing, not knowing anything, and for that, it's great! The first thing that became obvious is that they have an issue with toilets. Mostly, there are none - in the busses for example. Then, those that exist, are always dirty, the flush almost never works, the seats are wrongly in place etc etc. It seems a totally strange object.

maybe because the decision to come here was taken within such short notice, I'm surprised at how much I like the land here. The landscape is occasionally entirely incomprehensible. Sometimes it´s legible and fantastic: A giant sky and puffy clouds, great colors, an eagle, sheep and pigs and cows that look like they're supposed to, like in my children's books.

The only thing is, I'm craving for a Wiener Wuerstchen with mustard. But on the last day in Sucre, I had the best fish ever.

some market town in Bolivia

Then there is the whole thing about altitude. Weird. I enjoy the coca-chewing ritual, just like the mate-drinking (basically wasting time). I don't think it does a damn, but I like the aenesthetization of the soda.

In Sucre, the first hostel had the strangest vibe. A giant white breakfast room, empty, cold, with candelabras, and the guests are cramped in a tiny drafty kitchen.
The hostel in the centre had atmosphere, no kitchen, and electric short circuits in the bathroom. The cranky Bolivian lady refused point blank to lend so much as a knife, but the French expat, a lumberjack (hello darling), who was also sort of there, slipped at least some hot water. (It gets damn cold here at night). They also had a bad-tempered aggressive puppy called "Baby."
this is Salta. or sucre?

the one about noise

2009-03-13T11:03:00.001-07:00

a last glacier picture (that I had uploaded and then forgotten to post.. duh)

This is La Paz. My idea of the place is equally erratic. remember tired-ness and noise and smell and shouting people and honking cars (the honk of many many cars resemble wolf whistling - but there was also a recent truck with "For Elise" at full dezibel level)

Speaking of noise, I forgot to mention that in my Buenos Aires hostel there was a dogwalker stand outside the dorm room. Trucks were thundering past at night, although, to be fair, it was always rather morning than night. There was partying in this hostel EVERY night, and when we went out for dinner, it never started before 9 or 10pm. You adapt immediately to this time frame.

Of the following BA impression I had fotos on my cell phone, which got stolen in Mendoza however, so there's only a verbalized version:
Jugglers on the giant Avenida del Libertad. An acid green parrot eating an orange colored fruit from this claws. Around the strangely artificial rose garden, people walk, bike and run by. There's even a streetball court, for an upcoming "Buenos Aires in zapatos" festival, and Toto's Africa is playing for a nonexistent audience from the empty stage.
Middle-aged medium-built men are meating meat from a street cart, where kebab-sized pieces are grilled. Middle-aged ladies are elegantly dressed up. The weather changed from dull and sticky to almost impalpable rain to sunny and downpour of rain. At night, the sky was burning and I left for Mendoza in the usual hectic chaos.

In the bus to Mendoza I suffered the usual enforcement of acustic contamination. This time rendering hilarious moments, though and opportunities for a teenage revival: Besides heaps of languishing "latin lovers" and extremely sensualized female singels (the argentinian videos), I was enjoying an amazingly innocent video of "I want it that way," "Total Eclipse of the Heart" which seems to me to be the 80s version of camp? It's a mix between "Bad (the fog machines), the Rocky Hrror Picture Show (her hairstyle), and evidence in a conspiracy case: doors opening unmotivatedly, a scary alien congregation on "bright eyes"... scary

mostly pictures

2009-03-09T09:29:00.001-07:00

at the torres - I forgot to say that I got randomly kissed by the nightshift in one of the Torres refugios. I stumbled in from my tent, to use the toilet, and I´m pretty sure I did ask for a bathroom and not a kiss, but que importe, I said "oh" and left again...

Torres del Paine (random):

after the hike:

To get to Puerto Madryn - to see Orcas! -, I had to spend three hours in Rio Gallegos, the most forsaken town ever. I felt a bit Butch Cassidy entering Patagonia - Squinting, excruciatingly dirty and with torn jeans (from when I fell from the sidewalk.. hum, yes that can happen...). Eva Peron is waving to the honking cars with grotesquely disproportionate arms. Always schlepping my stuff around, as it's always too hot or drafty in the bus. Desperate about my dry skin and the lack of stock I've bought a post-natal bodylotion somewhere, thinking it couldn't hurt, but now I can't find it. Met a single fortyish woman traveller on the bus who seriously scared me, as she was about everything I'm sometimes afraid I'll become, save for the cats. (Maybe they weren't with her). I walked to Rio G's "laguna," as the name conjured up images from my last, too exhausting trek in Chalten. There the rocky hills and crates of bleak pebbles rubble suddenly gave way ato a beautiful silvery laguna, very still with white ice lumps like swans and the Fitzroy scenery looking proudly down.

Not so here. steady strong wind and lots of garbage at the shore, several old tires. What do people do here? It's like post-Ford Detroit, without ever having been Detroit (not that I've been to detroit). In Chile they go on sugar and grow heavy. Here, I just don't know...

this is el chalten:

okay, I'm hopelessly behind any consistent blogging so here come some jumbles

2009-03-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

this is where I got sick, going to the Penguins and freezing my ass off

but look at the penguins - aren´t they worth it! hi-larious! the three musketeers and all that..

the glaciers are awesomely overwhelmingly blue. I didn´t know that and was happy as a toddler who has just discovered the color..

this is the best not-faked fake picture ever

El Calafate: offered an inordinate amount of Germans. We do seem to like hiking, and little neat expensive towns. And where Germans meet, they immediately and happily start complaining. This can feel very homey and reassuring, but leaves a bad aftertaste...
El Chalten:

El Chalten: a town that closes down for the non-holiday period entirely. When I left this "trekking capital of the world", it was pouring down. A little later, there was the most beautiful stretch of liquid golden clouds separating the vast grey dome of the sky from a stripe of babyblue sky over another thin strip of mountains and vast yellow plains. (and no, it doesn't come out that good on pictures, especially through a dirty bus window).

In love with Buenos Aires

2009-03-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

predictably. Yesterday it rained the whole day, and at the end of the day (around 8.30 pm when it was still light outside and it finally stopped raining and I had given up trying to go shopping), there was the most perfect rainbow I have ever seen in my life. A perfect high bow stretching across the sky.
I have spent my first days here shopping: In two days I managed to buy two skirts, a shirt, flip-flops (mine have miraculously disappeared between my last using them, Patagonia, and now), and sandals (despite the fact they only have up to size 40 and I´m a 41). Those of you who know my shopping habits and decision-making abilities will admit that this is no small feat.
I tremendously enjoy staying in one place for more than one night (three already!). By taking my time and not doing any tourist stuff at all, I also avoided being a full-time witness to "Who gets the Californian chick," a drama that´s been on for the last days. My Palermo hostel is a bit like "a hotel at night" (the last bus journey showed us "Benjamin Britton"; anybody else disappointed?), with a different batch of people... There´s two Canadians who-might-be-not-sure-could-be-gay, but if they are, they are not yet together. There´s this guy from New York now living in Michigan who studies Global Health (he agreed with me and passepartout that parts of the city seem like New York in the 1980s, or an idea of New York, with some Paris laisser-faire and even some lingering of Berlin, in the graffittis...). There´s the musician. There´s the two American girls, a thin one from California with big pretty cherry eyes, one from Oklahoma with bad knees. There´s the vulgar and constantlydrunk American girl. A British girl with almost white-bleached hair, an Australian who defended John Howard´s policies, and a Columbian pilot whom I befriended until I couldn´t stand his desperate role in WgtCc anymore...
Other than that, Buenos Aires is simply weird so far. Every shop smells sickly of strawberry chewing gum. There is something wrong with the people and their relation to money and selling here. Most ATMs don´t give you money or only a little bit - like 300 Pesos (about 70 Euros). After that, your "daily limit" is reached. Wtf?!! And then, it´s kind of hard to spend the money - nobody ever has moneda or cambio(change, small money). I´ve tried to buy things worth 3 Pesos, giving 4, and received exasperated Don´t-you-have-it-smaller?! responses... I´ve had a couple of seriously irritating "shopping experiences" when I entered shops which were empty apart from the salespersons - a chick for every rack, almost exclusively without any selling talent at all, standing in your way, chatting with friends, watching and sizing you (I could almost hear them think "really, a two? well, if you must..")...

trekking stories

2009-02-23T15:47:00.000-08:00

rustyn, who helds the daily lecture in the Erratic Rock about tackling the mighty Torres Del Paine National Park, claimed that we are all somehow connected : "We could hve gone anywhere - but we chose to go to the bottom!" I´ve been thinking about this statement more than it probably deserves. Do I have something in common with everybody here? Are we all in phase of change, as Nina, one of the girls in my hiking group claimed?
Rustyn´s sketch of the Torres trek as a sort of coming-of-age experience half put me off the project altogether. I think he´s doing it for the benefit of Americans mostly who would otherwise schlepp their whole cosmetic and wardrobe arsenal around and die of shock about the hygienic conditions. It turned out Rustyn wasn´t wrong but he wasn´t right either. I was sick and therefore more miserable than necessary, but on the other hand we were quite lucky weatherwise. Nevertheless, camping, when it`s cold outside, is just a stupid idea. I wonder why I didn´t realize this erlier. On day one, I saw a fox, day two was as bootcamp-as-I-got so far (and I´m not planning to go further), but after that, I got better, and the last day ended in glorious sun and absolutely nerve-wrecking annoying wind. Now I´m in El Calafate and it feels like, after one day here - spent mostly at a lourdly cracking glacier - I´ve got the city down: The stray dogs seem to know me by now and I encountered my taxi driver from day one (He did actually get lost, which is quite an achievement: The city has about 150,000 inhabitants.) Tomorow I`ll be off to "the trekking capital of Patagonia" a place that doesn´t have ATMs..

rough times

2009-02-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

Waiting for my bus, I spent half the day in Puenta Arenas in one of the most ugly tourist places imaginable / even though the sun was shining tantalizingly but I didn´t trust wind and coldth, having developed a sore throat and ear pain / I have spent decidedly too much time in Chile´s (ugly) cities: The weather killed the idea of pushing further south until further notice.
The bus ride to Puenta Natales was remarkable for the fact how taken the bus guy was with my height, an American couple from DC but working in Africa who kept calling themselves "freethinkers," and the choice of music (Mr Vain (is that how it´s written?), Barbie Girl..)

The view out of the window towards the Torres is beautiful: Rain washes out a part of the sky like an aquarell painting. Why is it that you always think of the mimesis, the enactment first, even when the real thing is in front of you? Windswept, darkgreen trees are dotting the yellow land and remind me of the tousled penguins on Isla Magdalena, near Puenta Arenas. Hundreds of these funny creatures congregate at this time of year to "mate and breed" - which looks like some post-alcoholic party gathering, with fighting, lots of noise and LOTS of staring dumbly in front of one´s beak. It is remarkable how much the Disney guys (or was it Pixar?) nailed the common penguin´s quirks and looks, way of walking and bragging..

villarica volcano and trekking pics (random.. at least the connection didn´t crash this time..)

2009-02-13T08:10:00.000-08:00

lots of nature

2009-02-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

that´s the arancia tree (the whole point of the parc in Villa Angosture), peeling skin in pretty shades of brown

these are pictures from the ferry over to Argentina (well almost)

villa traful..

some pictures from the Lake District.. more "lieblich" than the Carreterra...

into the wild (and back)

2009-02-11T15:02:00.000-08:00

In the bus from Puyunhabi, which I thought would be a regional gem but is more appropriately described by co-traveller Michael as a "Drecksnest" - pueblo de mierda ?
It takes 230 k´s to Coyhaique (yet another unpronouncable name) or 5 hours on an unpaved road. My shoes are wet, my clothes clammy, I´m wearing five layers and goosebumps. This is how I imagine the English moor in novels like "Wuthering Heights"; I understand why the heroines catch pneumonia and die in a jiffy. We amble past dense forest, then wild bushels, out of which the white trunks of bald trees are glimmering, rough mountains and fat glaciers in the distance. It is really beautiful.
The days before, I got quality dirt from the incredibly dusty roads in Argentina, missed out on the busses that were all booked out but hitched with a Chilenian truck driver (and cowboy, he claims. for the visual, think jockey) from Villa Angostura to Osorno, got a bus south and waited there for five hours to see whether I could get on the ferry to Chaiten (twice weekly, completely booked out, cancellation chaos). In the end, I was lucky: my overpriced dorm-style bed turned out to be a blessing in disguise on an overfilled ferry with many little children and crying babies; I got help from Chilenos Michelangelo and Jesus (yess....) and Belgian Antoine, we played poker, and halfway through the the trip I found out that the local volcano had practically erased Chaiten, Pompeji-style -was that on our news? In retrospect it seems to ring a bell, or am I making this up?
Chaiten was one of the most bizarre places I´ve ever been. Heaps of ashes, toxic-looking rivers, deserted and demolished houses, the volcano beautifully sublime and threateningly smoking in the background, and defiant banners everywhere: We are not leaving! Save Chaiten! Government go home, we live here!

Four mochiledas and hardly a car are not a winning combination. Gentlemanly, I was given the first (short) ride. Getting in for the next one - two middle-aged truck drivers - was not the best feeling in the world. They had actually come back for me, explaining that I was weighing on their conscience, huddled alone in this deserted area. I thought of Helmut (the jockey-truck driver) and decided to trust my instincts and refuse to be scared, or to understand insinuations). The insistence on curious small-talk in Spanish was tiring however, in all senses of this word: Are Germans romantic? Are the guys, the girls, are you? What do Germans think of Chile? What do you think of Chilenian guys? What kind of guys do you like, white or "negro" (an apparently important distinction for their own skin tone variations)? Are all German girls like me - tall, white, without make-up? When are German girls getting married, are you, do you want to and when; the same for kids.. Are you not scared to be alone here/to hitchhike (by far the most annoying question) and Can you swim ? (?!) at this piont I suspected him desparate and starving for conversation...
Then luck ran out for a couple of hours. It was now early evening, windy, freezing cold, and soon raining profusely. Finally, a Belgian family, whose car was already badly crammed, took pity on me and fellow German Michael who I had met waiting at La Junta´s Pinochet memorial.
An exhausted search for accomodation followed, more rain, wet shoes and an aching back. I´m running perilously low on cash. There no ATMs in town. There is no internet, there are about five supermercados (with sad stock).

everything happens for a reason, says maria

2009-02-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

I had to sort of escape from alejandra´s place, both because of her mother´s feeding instincts and the fact that A. - and I love her dearly! - is slow even in South American standards! On the day where "going shopping" was the main and only item on our daily itinerary, and when we hadn´t left at 6pm, I decided to split...
Taking the night bus to Pucon was quite an adventure: the busses are not exactly neatly labeled, it was full as hell, and my bus was late; but one of the "que rica!" guys helped me out. The busses are quite wonderful (most of them), spacious and including a toilet (unless it´s broken... then it is TERRIBLE!). Pucon was a town seemingly entirely created for tourism, but at least the tourists were mostly from Chile or South America. The funniest thing about Pucon is that its airport was closed because some farmer refuses to cut his trees. and while the law sorts things out, there are no planes... In Pucon, I climbed the Volcano Villarica which was worth every penny of its proud price. four Brazilian girls dropped out right from the beginning, so it was only Dutch girl Linda ("so hard to be called linda in South America.."), the guide (who does this thing EVERY DAY) and me who ran up the mountain - and I say "run" because we made it in less than 3 hours, while 4-5 hrs were envisaged (Forgetting I wheezed like a middle-aged hippo on the final ascent, I am quite proud). The way back, sliding down, was the icing on the butt, really much fun. and we saw Condors.
The day hike on the next day turned out to be not the 9km promised by my (4year old) Lonely Planet, but 17 k´s, and pretty steep trekking too (everybody around me was walking with these funny ski poles..). In the end I almost missed the bus, having chatted and dawdled over a cafe con leche (which here means a mug of hot milk to which nescafe and sugar is added according to taste:), so I had to RUN to catch the bus.. Tired from these activities, I spent the next day driving through the Lake District with Rob and Robin (I kid you not) from London (i.e. my room), sampling "Kuchen" in Panguipulli, the fat blackberries at the roadside endlessly tempting ... The air smells of rosin,

Initially I had thought the roses were a particular spleen of Alejandra´s dad, but there are roses everywhere in Chile: it must the national flower or something, in every park, on every corner.

Crossing over the border to Argentina, everything was against me. the bus missed the ferry, the next ferry was 5 hours later, and had no bus connection. I hitched a ride, arrived in a flood of rain, had to waddle through half the town and the rain to find a free bed, got wrong information on busses leaving town.. the ususal, apparently, for now, as I want to go back to chile, public transport keeps hating me: all the busses are full. first there were no busses over the weekend, now one company closed (but the signposts are still there), and the other one is full, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.
but I really want to get away from here, so I´ll try and hitchhike over the border. please keep your fingers crossed for me and my rudimentary spanish. Oh, and this entry´s title is a quote from sweet Buenos-Aires-expatriate (everyone I meet is from BA!) Maria, who took pity on me and me under her wings yesterday, taking me to their "maision dans la foret" where I could revive from my bumpy ride.
Her formulation is somewhat more elegant and optimistic than my acquiescent "sometimes you win, sometimes you loose".. which might make more sense if you consider the list of all my things that have been stolen or gotten lost in the laundry, coz it's kind of ridiculous, really:
- a white blouse
- my green sweater
- a couple of underpants
- towels (twice!)
- my billabong shorts
- two T-Shirts
- my fleece jacket
- numerous toilet articles

... there´s more, but I stopped keeping track. sometimes you win, sometimes you loose. with best zen-wishes...

the dog

2009-02-02T14:35:00.003-08:00

here comes the ... seriously!! how cute is that!

this is at the famous Concho y Torres winery. the tour was a complete joke / a guy who tried to emulate everything that is distasteful about english accents, no information but a 20 minute commercial at the beginning and a half/arsed attempt at local folklore in the end... that said, the wine was good.

again, the winery / not the picture I wanted but you can't be too picky coz I'm getting a headache here with the uploads

old joys - (new zealand)

2009-02-02T14:35:00.001-08:00

perfect bliss

finally, some pics

2009-01-29T17:27:00.000-08:00

the garden, roses, alejandra and the dog

alejandra´s parents´place

For two days, we went to Valpara`iso, a city of bursting colors of "casa loca", that are ascending on hills and accessible via various "ascensores" - high up you have a relaxed walk with a splendid view on the harbor and the city.
But before we left, first my patience and all my German instincts were severely tested. Suffice it to say that I woke myself according to plan, at 8.30am, Alejandra appeared at 10am, and we - Alejandra, Rodrigo, and myself - started for the bus station at 1pm... The parents left with us in a state of excited disarray: a neighbor had called in from her holiday resort, alarmed by yet another neighbor who had been surprised to see some movers relocating /stealing the contents of the house. And Alejandra´s parents decided to go there and see for themselves, armed and all. Ils sont fou ces Chiliens!
In between I was continuously fed by the mother, which by now somehow looses some of its instinctual charme but reminds me of my own grandmother´s habit of perpetual feeding.

alejandra and her brother

But Valparaiso! Ah Valparaiso! Full of colors, there´s art in every corner taken by graffiti, sculptures, colorful walls, graffiti-in-stamps (how do they call this? I can never remember..)
Initially we mistakenly took a bus to "le quartier chaud" in Valparaiso. As Alejandra put it, the guys looked at us "as if they are the wolves and we their prey"... Everybody, including the driver, went like: Don´t get out here! and he didn´t even stop for some guys (as he confirmed later).
In the bus on the way back we met a German expat now living in New Zealand who confirmed by already abysmally bad opinion on the social skills and general personality of geography students (or former geography students).

alejandra in front of one of the colorful windows in Valparaiso

more valparaiso> this was a tiny place where they played sad music and we had coffee and I loved the picture of that woman

la campagne

2009-01-25T12:56:00.000-08:00

There´s definitely a nice vibe here in Santiago, even though the shouting French man skyping at my side - drama baby!- is highly annoying. But it´s definitely a different backpacker scene. I had a wine that was quite agreeable, which I´d grabbed before I had a sense of the exchange rate and it turned out that it´d cost me 2 Euros! Yesterday we went to the Hipodrome for horseracing and got promptly invited to eat, drink, or have basically anything we wanted (a French girl, an Australian-British one and myself). All my horses lost :( therefore I expect LOTS of luck in recompensation! It was pretty cool, and the trip there proved to me once more that I am SO cool when it comes to wandering around in foreign cities (even though I am the only one without any Spanish to speak of). I also acquired a new camera,mainly because my cell phone doesn´t work anymore andI can only deal with a certain number of problems simultaneously... The next day I saw amazingly beautiful pottery at the museum and bought strawberries for 20 cents and finally I went to meet Alejandra, my Chilean friend who I hadn´t seen for five years. by some lucky chance she also just arrived in Chile. On facebook she'd told me to go a certain metro station and call her from there, anytime. I was a bit afraid of how we'd get together, but I did not foresee the chain of bad luck that had me parting at 6 and finally arriving at the house 11 at night... A guy helped me to call Alejandra's parents' house several times but no-one answered. On her French cellphone which I called first from a phone, then from an internet place, "Celia" answered, a repondeur. Skype, for some reason, refuses to send text messages. There was no response to emails or Facebook messages after some hours and now way to reach me, as my phone did not work. I bought a Chilean sim card but my phone was a) dead and then b) did not have reception (and now, still, does not work, even though it's alive and kicking now..). There I was in a mall at a dodgy area of Santiago, it was getting dark and the shops started to close... On the other hand, people were very helpful...

When I got finally picked up and driven to this beautiful place, half an hour outside of Santiago, in Chilean campagne, my French returned miraculously, probably so I wouldn't try and torture people with my pidgin Spanish (which I do anyway). Even though I'm missing out on the whole "bon ben, bref, hein, quoi" spiel that makes the language truly cool, and it IS frustrating to tell a story and to ruin the pointe because one doesn}t remember a basic word like "sick." mais tant pis. My sense of order and perfectionism is having a nervous breakdown, which is probably for the best.

The place is gigantic, more than a hectar of land that the father slowly transforms into a giant garden of labyrinths (5 so far) of wine and roses, trees with automn-red leaves and roses, plans for an amphitheatre, tiny waterways, alleys of eucalyptus trees and roses. The family has suffered under the Pinochet regime; it´s great to see how they've managed to carve out a piece of paradise now. Rodrigo, Alejandra's handsome brother, cooked and showed us his paintings. They have a two funny geese, chicken, self-made marmelade, Chilean food, honey, fresh (scarily warm) milk, eggs etc here (again I realize how much of a city girl I am, almost having had a fit over some chicks) and a tiny puppy that immediately won even my dog-ambivalent heart. I'll post pictures soon, you'll see why... I've almost witnessed the birth of a horse today - bon, the birth was promised to me, but there seem to be complications, anyway the horse is no longer here... I picked a couple of fruits and altogether it was an extremely chilled day with lots of food. I think this week will continue to pass à l'improvisé. I'll try to go with the flow. and check out that horse tomorrow.

hasta luego

2009-01-22T18:49:00.000-08:00

You may congratulate me on my first successfully conducted Spanish sentence! it was "Esta con queso?" (I'm pretty sure this is not how it's written (or said in correct grammar) but the vendeuse got it, and so can you!). The response "no, con pisco" threw me off-track however. pisco? isn't that a drink? Ruling out that one, I thought, fish? piscine, pisces, latin roots etc. I'm pretty sure that's not what I was eventually eating.
Chile, or Santiago, so far is comfortably busy, lively, and scarily flirtatious - what will Argentina be like? I thought the Chileans are the shy ones! Other than that I can't say much, having heroically kept awake for the day but at the price of resorting to zombiesk behavior. The flight was pretty terrible - bad bad Lan! good good BA! The most eventful thing happened at the end of "Horton hears a Who" which I stubbornly watched even though it did not put me to sleep. My perseverance was rewarded by a beautiful rendering of "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore"! The Karaokniks amongst you will appreciate ... well worth watching!
ps
In case you were contemplating the recent lack of pictures in this blog, my camera turned out to be "beyond economical repair." I feel very resentful against "modern technology" right now. First the iPod and the World Adapter, now the camera. a grumpy nike calls it a day now.. finally..!

randomness

2009-01-18T01:13:00.001-08:00

I feel personally persecuted by the radio programming. Obviously this is a narcisstic projection. All of New Zealand must be craving schmalzy songs. Here's some of the recent fare: Do you really want to hurt me / Nothing compares to you / In too deep / waterfalls / The Joker ...

I just finished one of the weirdest books I've ever read: Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge. The most inspiring aspect in this 1960s sex-change, sex-fantasy, man-to-woman-to-man book is the protagonist's attempt to describe any moment in exactitude.
So, I'll try to emulate this and use you as guinea pigs (I admit I'm a little bored right now).

At Coromandel Island:
It is warm, even sunny, showers come and go. (I cannot count the number of times I've heard the hilarious statement that in New Zealand, you have all four seasons in one day.. yawn...) The wind disturbs any serious enterprise, like a kid that keeps trying to play with you long after you've told him you're busy (sorry - metaphors are actually forbidden in this, but it's hard not to..). My skin is dry and scarred from scratched sandfly bites. Altogether I don't feel particularly charming & I'm surprised that people insist on talking to me.
Palm trees. Public toilets that close at 5pm (but free toilets, free water everywhere). No spiders. No rubbish, no noise. Sometimes I think everyone here is on dope. (On the other hand, they all have road rage.) Just think of the endearing explanation on the sheet for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing: "Please do not walk too close to the edge of the Crater because if you fall in you will not come out." What's that about, huh? I do need some more clarification on this point..
Tried to take out a bike, but the chain broke. tried to go to the Hot Water Beach but there is no returning bus. Horserides don't start from Thames, and no treks are leaving. I considered going fishing, except it sounded depressing in my current mood. I wish they had a shooting range here, that is still on my list.
These houses here in little towns and the stories they are telling, stories I can't read. They have palmtrees, but no stones in their walls. The streets are wide, the houses flat, it's a frontier feeling. Architecture like I imagine the American Midwest: Towns made for cars. Big signs, spacious parking, junk food. Nothing invites you to linger. Come to shop, comfortably, and leave quickly please.
Within two minutes outside of town, paradise lies before you.
Like the tiny, tidy bushes and miniature trees of toy trains at my grandmother's attic, grazing sheep and cows blown up, softly undulating hills and mindboggling Greenness and Peace. The sky's grey, and decorative as ever.

Meeting people who also go cruise supermarkets at night. Meeting "Peter Pan", a charismatic brown-eyed, blonde-dreadlocked, androgynous looking and possibly French (the combination!)woman. I lost sight of her in the hassle and before I could further inquire, but her mate gave me a ticket with an untouched account of time on the internet.

Time to-o say good-bye..

2009-01-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

.. or soon it'll be anyway and thus time to draw a resume of New Zealand.
For starters, Kiwis are the nicest people on the planet, period. Notwithstanding age, gender, ethnicity, regional differences

On the christchurch airport today a reddish New Zealander was favorably impressed by what he interpreted as my need for potassum ($1.5 airport bananas baby). I chatted somewhat absent-mindedly with him until I surprised mayself with a timid "Are you a pilot?" Turns out, he was even MY pilot. This made up for Qanas latest rule of harrassment: No hot drinks when boarding the airplane. Guess where they put that sign, befor or after the airport cafe... I think I have spent way too much time in airplanes, pondering questinos such as: Is it psychologically playing to our authoritarian impulses when they say that "the captain" has switched on the fasten seatbelt sign?

About Christchurch I can't say much: As I felt somewhat lowbeat, my main projects were repeated visits to the movies and the Art Galleries. Art is very comforting. There was even a quite hilarious moment when the guide - female, fiftish, determined smile - insisted on questioning people aon a "Rorschach test" painting. To my filthy mind it looked quite obviously like a female netherlands (and had been weaved-painted by two feminist artists of the 1970s). Judging from the general shuffling of feets, clearing of throats and other gestures of compensation, I wasn
t alone with the impression.
In the background, an incomprehensible art work combined a sweet Southern Gospe.l with a "Hello. I'm John Wayne" loop. Oddly comforting as I walked on the "Tasmanian wood", as I'd been illuminated, attempting and failing, to renew my appreciation of the floor, or floor in general. Why the hell does it matter it's TASMANIAN? It really really looked just like wood.

Anyway, New Zealand. Too windy. Most stuff is gluetenfree, there is much diasabled access. Everybody's taken care of, those with special needs, the drug addicts, a diaper changing room. Birds that cannot fly are decidedly funny. "Consent is sexy" on a Wellington toilet. Overall, definitely a place where I could live (and improve my personality). That is, if I'd come to terms with the generally extremely slow pace - that which most BPs find so awesomely charming, so "relaxed" - In all likelihood it'd drive me insane and into depression. Or I'd just get used to it.

Nature Overdose

2009-01-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

all these new humans on earth, how confusing... happy birthday lasse! hoch sollst du leben!!
I am happily hiking in New Zealand's north of the southern Island, from the Golden Bay to Abel Tasman. After a more brutal Queen Charlotte Trek - 30km on day 1, 23 painfully ascending km on day 2, and 28 on the last day -, I seemed to have gotten the true taste of bootcamp rice (with beans on the good days), and chlorine water in the morning ;) seriously, it's just so beautiful!
only my camera decided to stop working altogether at teh beginning of hike 1, which kinda sucks.
The second hike, which I just finished, is one of the Great Walks, in the Abel Tasman National Park, and judging from this Great Walk, it's worth doing them all. Golden beaches, the sea in all kinds of blue, the north island on the horizon, farn and deep forest all around. The watertaxi back showed us baby seals and grown-up ones playing in the water. There are, thankfully, no spiders in NZ to speak of, and generally not much nasty animal life, apart from sandflies. And, of course, the bastard opposum who ate our bread. I screamed at night because I thought it was coming in the tent. they are just totally indifferent to human presence... Much unlike the annoyed Midget Penguin on Trek 1, who hurried back into the bushes upon being discovered and encircled by about four flashlights. At night I was freezing - basically, I discovered there's something wrong with me because I get uncomfortably cold within a minute: from "oh the sun is kinda hot" to "where the fuck is my friggin sweater" in under 40 seconds. And here it's mostly both: lovely sunshine, after misty and mysterious morning greys, beautiful skies all along, but quite a bastard wind.
Now, for refreshment and replenishing, I'm back in the hippie town Takaka. Takaka is close to "pupu springs" and the next town's called mopipi. it's like a four-year-old was allowed to choose the names... It's a very chilled "town." Occasionally you drive past places where they sell fresh fruit - pick your own berries... pick your own seafood... fish your own salmon ...

Yawn

2009-01-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

.. good morning everyone.. Or should I say: Ladies, good evening. Gents, good morning...
well, I had taken all these pretty notes on the landscape of New Zealand, the houses and the stories they tell, patati-patata, but I'm not sure I'm up for that (I'm not sure you wanna hear it ;). therefore, I'll do what I do best: random waffling.
Wellington, where I am now, is windy and famous for its cafes; Mainly, there is one street that doesn't follow the "Gloria Jean" trail. two of their individual and sweet coffeeplace even looked fucked up Berlin-style. I got homesick for our sweet stinky grungy city for the first time.. The newspapers are abysmal. I'm trying to develop a theory on this: is this the secret to Kiwi happiness and their amazing un-aggressiveness? Does that come from being so detached from the rest of the world (after a repeated search, I did find a "world" section), unlike the hyperactively nervous Europeans?
New Zealand is still amazing to me. Every piece of land is tidied and dolled up, the whole COUNTRY looks like a Lenne garden, a romantic English pasture, a Scottish moor. soi wild soi gentle: always beautiful.
In Napier, slow town at the ocean (with a pebbly beach and stunning views) this neatness applied even to the buildings. Napier is part of the NZ winetrail (so you know what I've been doing..); its other tourist attraction are the "old" houses (almost 80 years!) in Art Deco style. Kiwis seem quite proud of this "heritage" thing. The 100-year-old bathing house in Rotorua which is now a museum was intermittendly used as a nightclub, as the guide disdainfully explained. must have been a heck of a nightclub.
The only drawback so far is the fact that theplace is crawling with young narcistic Germans: Man spricht deutsch. people don't evenbother trying to include the sparse non-Germans (mostly Asian chicks with sparse English). Hopefully, our presence won't spoil the insane hospitality here. When the bus back into town (from wineries at the other end of Napier town) failed to stop for me, within five minutes two people had offered me a ride. "Kindness to strangers" fast became a hot contender for my New Year's Resolution Top Five (I'm not done yet). how are yours doing? happy new year...

They Are a Weird Mob

2008-12-20T01:40:00.000-08:00

Okay,nobody will get this subtle allusion : "They Are a Weird Mob" is the title of an australian film of the 1970s that is famous within Australia; it was promoted in accordance with the tourist industry (for whatever reason; the title song is literally "It's a man's world baby" but maybe they only wanted men to come..). The post-movie talkers pointed out that exactly the same thing is happening with the current "Australia" (again, for whatever reason, it's an awful movie).
where was I ? OH yes, the weirdness of things. Firstly, in New Zealand they shut down cafes and espresso machines (only those!) around 4pm on a regular basis! - they made me drink tea instead!
Then, the sushi here - my daily treat, especially auckland is full of Japanese places - does not come in the handy sausage-style rolls like in Australia, but in thick-slices pieces which are inedible without creating a mess. A bit the same concept as in the giant burgers / sandwiches: apparently, the idea is the customers should dislocate their jaws; otherwise it's just not enough.
Then, I bought conditioner and got free condoms with it, handily hidden. (I was gonna go back and check whether or not they come only the conditioner for curly hair...)
Also, the Kiwis do actually say things like "Ta!" on a fairly regular basis and in all earnesty.
I am a bit frightened about the scale of things. Auckland, biggest city and hyped as busy metropolis, is a cozy and clearly arranged, if not to say small, town. B
Now I'm in smelly rotorua, looking at sulphur lakes, washing powder-ignited geysirs, and volcano craters and mudbaths... Merry Christmas everyone!

little chandler is on holiday...

2008-12-19T00:37:00.000-08:00

the last days in australia were sweetened by seeing the half-and-half Oz-Kraut couple katrin and kate, and spending days on Coogie and Bronte Beach (don't you love the names.. I do...) as well as dining like all the royals of the world at a private house party : every guest seemed to show up with their best dinner recipe; except me, admittedly, but I brought wine. (As a former lover once said, everybody does what he does best (don't ask no questions). Surrounded by these beautiful, charismatic, intelligent women, who were moreover sweet and charming towards each other, I felt like in an episode of The L Word...

Now, here, in Auckland, my powers of observation - or my vindictive/spiteful strain - are weakened by the Kiwi's amazing friendliness. People here actually THANK THE BUS DRIVER! repeatedly!!
Considering that the shuttle bus to Sydney airport had first forgotten about me and then rode Thai-style in frenzied speed to the airport, upkeeping his sullen mood, and me having just reignited a loose religious alliance, I am enthralled - the simplicity (every fare is a cheap NZ$1.60, disregarding length of journey, age, gender or status of passenger, leap year etc).

Another example of New Zealander's frightening friendliness: For those of you who didn't know, I'm quite superstitious and a great lover of "signs" (or names). Thus, the fact that my current lovely accomodation is on Franklin Avenue, name sibling of my Brooklyn sanctuary after the rocky beginnings in NYC, is a Great Plus. Secondly, this accomodation was recommended to me by a Scot (good sign), in a French bakery (!), a Scot who looks, moreover, like one of the Beatles (can God be more explicit?!). Climbing up one of Auckland's volcanoes (or so it felt) to reach the place (the Scot wasn't too precise), I asked a young woman about the way. Not a backpacker, not a tourist, not an old lady, not somebody with ulterior motives, just anybody, on a regular Thursday afternoon. And she, apologetically about not knowing for sure, OFERED TO WALK WITH ME! Just a random person!! would you ever, EVER, do that? Well, maybe it's me, but I fear I will soon feel with the NY-Wall Street guy on the sailing trip who told me he found the Japanese politeness "getting to him" during his vacation there, probably because he was just rude. Yes yes, word. (have you all watched "The Wackness" now? Do it!)
Or maybe it's the Christmas spirit. The whole of Franklin Ave is plastered with lights and sleights and other tacky trash, the sidewalks are full of families (apologizing to each other I guess), eating icecream instead of moulded wine. I'm drinking Shiraz in the garden, calming down after the frenzy of Australia. Love to you, my fellow gnomes, elfs and fairies (your choice... )

the one with all the pictures

2008-12-12T03:55:00.000-08:00

okay, I know I'm going overboard with the Uluru pictures. but think of it this way: all the pictures you are looking at now, you don't have to look at later ;)

and the crowning event, our puncture...

great ocean road, london bridge and the 12 Apostels (actually it's 8 or something, depending on your tour guide..)

jump! jump! (I'm an abysmal jumper)in front of a lighthouse that is famous in some british soap...

This is Melbourne
...)

Here I am in a coffee place, binging away at tiny glasses with citron mousse and a hint of mint and strawberry or Nut-fudge vanilla chocolate cakes, when I see... Ian!To prove this, I took pictures of unknown men in public places. here!

signs signs

more signs...female toilet? really??

Alice Springs and Christmas. It's not really doing it for me but it's sweet anyhow.

hand

usually I don't take pictures of random people but after the "experience", I just went along with it. Are the Eighties here or what? Actually I loved that dress on her..

flowers in the desert:

This is King's Canyon and the "beehives"

animal show. everybody's here to see animals. me too, of course. or I go along. anyway, it's fun - as long as it does not involve tracking and daylong "suspension" to see, maybe, eventually, if you looked really sharp but it's already gone, the tail of a half-bird who used to be eaten by the crocodiles who don't live here anymore..
camels

birds

more birds

crocs

cangaroo

an emu

binging

2008-12-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

melbourne - what's not to love?? seriously, if this city didn't exist, it needed to be invented: loads of cosy cute cafes, cake and CHOCOLATE shops, terrific restaurants, bakeries and coffeeshops - both French AND German AND Italian, i.e. all the good nations: those that appreciate bread and coffee! -, cheap sushi everywhere;
at every corner there are cutest Victorian houses (to add something not food related..). The atmosphere is like Berlin back in the days (yes, I feel entitled to say stuff like that) or how london seemed to me when I was fourteen: like a fairy tale come alive
AND there are great cinemas and art related festivals, design shops - I could stay here forever!
- oh yes, moreover, they have seasons, sometimes all four in a day! and you do start to miss a bit of cold after sometime.. yes yes I can see your eyebrows raising all the way up to the sky, but what I MEAN is if it's hot all the time, you need to stay and be in shape all the time.. how exhausting! there's no cover for the belly after all that chocolate...
AND there are wineries all around - I'm going to get bloody wasted in a posh way tomorrow; it's called yarra valley winery tour ;)
--
ah that was one of the best days EVER! getting properly hammered by drinking wine at 10.30 in the morning, that is my thing! I definitely need to repeat this! I didn't mind any stupid people in the group, and finally I understood what all the deal was about with the slurping and the spitting... and I loved the whites, contrary to my drinking habits - so I did learn something! I even bought a bottle of chardonnay that had not been oaked or something (that was at the second to last winery we visited, so things got a bit blurry, but I know it tasted great!)..
then I went to the movies. since I arrived in melbourne I have watched about a movie a day, which greatly improves my mood...
and I'm glad to take the train outta here on saturday, otherwise I'd have to roll myself out, I'm in culinary and olfactory overdrive...

shine on

2008-12-05T23:23:00.000-08:00

yeah; as I said, a place must be New York to keep me if it's hot AND humid -- thus after cap trib's rainforest, arriving in Alice Springs, a hot baking oven, was pretty magic. Pink-bellied clouds greeted me at the airport, reflecting the red earth *I'm not making this up
also, in this sun I could immediately feel the skin cancer growing. (like every THIRD australian!)true outback..
Yet the land was suprisingly green: apparently there had been half the year's average of rainfall shortly before.
The next day the 3-day Uluru full-out adventure outback tour began - and adventure it was...
First things first: I was going to complain thoroughly about the state of the art in music in this post because up till the trip, I had felt trapped in an 80s time loop of American pop I didn't listen to when it was new. Our guide, Ben, changed this however and presented some seriously good stuff. the sunrise over Uluru accompanied by Pink Floyd's The Wall and Harrison's Here Comes the Sun; some heavy opera after the more daunting aspects of the tour - sudden heavy rainfall, night rain and a puncture on the way back -; Jazz and the ALF jingle ! :)) there was also some ecclectic stuff amongst his compilations, like Australian sketches and a fusion of
"is she worth it" song (don't ask me no names and I tell you no lies)and the "land from down under" thingy (same same). weird. I am definitely not a fan of fusion in music.
The rock: red, brown, banale and sublime, sometimes stunning, mind-blowing, its holes like parts of a brain, scarred and wondrous; sometimes, on accord of the rainfall, the landscape was very different from what I had expected - There were flowers, and a rejoicing of colors: red earth, grey-black burnt bush, yellow dried intermediary and achingly fresh plastic-looking green grass on top. King's Canyon was glittering in silver because of the rain, tropical trees growing beside desert trees in the Garden of Eden: It was beautiful.

The situation: the flies unbearably annoying and I invented a couple of devices of sadistically killing them. I mentioned the sun. The first day was really really hot with 42 degrees and somebody told me they measure the temperature in the shadowy parts which they found somewhere apparently.. that meant suicidal stinky beetles on the toilets and deadly exhaustion.
we got up at 3.45am on the second day to watch the sunrise. only there was no really a lot of sunrise to be seen, as the weather remained fickle and difficult: the god's of the desert didn't heed Ben's - our tour guide - brave make-belief that it probaly wouldn't rain as it shouldn't and so it won't, in all likelihood and so on... - I've never met anyone who talked in such a roundabout way, including myself. Ben's assertion that the swags were waterproof also wasn't really true.

About half the about group consisted of German girls - the annoying kind: just after high school, blonde, alike-looking, narcissistic and dependent, constantly and unfairly complaining small-town girls. one of the girls in particularly bloodless, bored-sounding and monotonously speaking whiteblonde stick of size 4, I would have happily strangled. she wanted to wash her "hardly dirty" dishes in the pot I was just cleaning (when she eats, things don't get dirty, I guess.. transcendent princess..) and was a constant buzz in my ear (they were sitting behind me in the bus) with comments mainly revolving around food: "we eat so mudh here" "shall we eat now and not have dinner, deli?" " I have to get tanned.. nobody will believe me that I was in Australia..." "It's awful I just can't look at myself in the mirror today.." (day 3)
The other half of the group was roughly made up of Japanese girl who were idiots in their own way (but I didn't understand their gossip so they didn't get to me as badly): There were brilliant moments like one girl climbing back in the bus while our guide was trying to jack it up; another one smoking a cigarette next to the petrol statin, and the Japanese guy Ken (no he didn't understand jokes about his name), one of the three token males of the group, smashing about 1500 kg of noodles and water on the grill despite Patient Ben's fourth admonition of "no, I don't want the water ken.. ken, without the water..."... How he managed to dress and feed himself all alone every day ...

anyway, our "sleep in" of 5am on the third day wasn't really enough of a boost. Ben's increasingly bootcamp style of giving orders didn't really help to smooth things and by the end of the second day, the girls were close to mutiny.

The puncture almost tipped things and I stayed close to the British couple and a sole English man, moreover a cineaste, to be rescued with or perish with them if anything happened *desert thoughts...* you know, if you die of too much auditive pollution in your ears, at least you'd be in good company...

upon leaving tropical north queensland.. (tiny update)

2008-12-02T03:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not too sad about it. as the beautiful french girl in my hostel put it, the nature is great but it's stress stress stress. to begin with, cairns was all about tourism and young people, positively teeming with this teenage discontent and hormone overload. "there's a crack in your chest" was the joke-on-repeat by one of the local guys (and definitely one of the funnier moments); the whole male section of the table seemed to agree that it would be ok for him to "stick his finger in," seeing that he was gay...

On to sail to the Barrier Reef! This trip was discounted by more than half, so I went; but then we didn't sail for lack of wind. that was a downer somehow... There was an odd melange of people on the boat. The crew consisted of uber-ego skipper Tony was reminiscing his days on Wall Street where he would fire people all year round, the Canadian chubby divemaster tried to make everybody go diving all the time (every spot was her "favorite", kind of lame after the second time), and the cook, who was definitely lowest on the food chain and tony was keeping in shape with her...

Then I was swinging in the ecologically correct "Skyrail" over the tropical, world-heritage protected rainforest around cairns, all the way up to a tiny ex-hippie town called Kurunda. I went there mainly because I liked the name, but the place was disappointing, full of markets with rubbish, rien que de touristes..

Trying to make peace with the incredible expenses adding up. Birds, farns on trees, lush green, a Crocodile Dundee character giving a tour, showing the parasitic fig tree, the smart climbing vines with sticky thorns, the evil heart-shaped stingy plant that will cause you pain for a year. Apparently, when in doubt, "pee on it" is a good guess and advisable more often than not. Undulating hills, birds' and the cabin noises evoked skiing memories which mingled bizarrely with the hot humidity of the rainforest. during the last section of the trip, thunder set in and the cabines stopped moving and in a pleasantly spine-tingling moment, I dangled over an allegedly crocodile-infested coffeebrown river.

Then I went up to Cape Tribulations, a incredibly beautiful scenery in a World Heritage area (again..yawn.. ;)) of the oldest continually growing rainforests on earth (120 million years of uninterrupted growth; they love their superlatives here). The great thing is that the rainforest grows right to the beach, which is stunning and deserted, as it is off-season and you can't swim in the sea where box-jellyfish, crocodiles are awaiting.
there are mad pigs and giant spiders in the jungle, and all kinds of creepy creatures but half of it was probably a lie. The guides love to tell tall tales(and are probably paid for it), they are doing their best to keep up the image of the crazy aussie. All of them were characters in demeanour and appearance.

meeting three great girls up at cape trib much improved the short, humid and overheated stay: after cooling off in the pool we had the most random conversation. my proud input was my sketchy knowledge of porn studies.
The girls had at least seen about a snake and a crocodile each, I only saw a frog. It was a big one, yes, but still...

anyhow. guided tours make you feel Japanese and/or old, and in my case, grumpy. there was a sticky swiss guy in my group who insisted not only on waffling during the driver's (more or less informative) talks but his utterances went along the line of "all-inclusive is just the best." I mean, I did open my mouth (at first. then I just stopped and tried to shake him off and even chose a solitary single seat on the way back). the way up offered beautiful vastness, a drive through sugar cane and banana trees, with mountains all around hugging the horizon and the cloudy sky. entering rainforest territory of the Daintree, the road started to explore all dimensions which resulted in my feeling quite dodgy (or it was the swiss guy). on the way back, there was "croc-spotting" and daintree ice cream (banana is not a good idea, even sugary one makes a a crappy ice cream in my opinion. by the way, my other culinary conviction formed here concerns pies: e3even the contest-winning pies in cairns couldn't convince me; I think steak and gravy and savory stuff has nothing to do with pies).

Apart from the general stress thru too many options (I realized that I am mainly reading commercials) and different and comparatively complicated ways of conducting things, I had moreover troubles with my credit card and the ridiculously low limit as well as a weird charging cycle. They got really nervous and called and I had to call them back from up there - from the wilderness of Cape Trib, where cell phones don't work anymore, where the police didn't go until the 1990s and where "the shop" was 4.5 km away from where I was staying... The latter information is definitely true - I made the stupid mistake of turning my back on the 28AU$ deal of lunch at my flashbacker hostel and instead walked to the shop: when I got back, I was not only exhausted but had eaten all the food I'd bought, probably the equivalent of a whole bread...

more soon, on music, climate, people and too many germans...

they shoot horses (emus) don't they?

2008-11-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

my mouth is dry, either from the dry heat here or from chatting nonstop with the amazing french girl I met here.
There are waaay too many Germans in Sydney, and they are too young; the girls in particular have the habit of crying homesick tears in public payphones. Yesterday it was freezing. waiting to have a drink with the English couple I'd met in Thailand, Chiang Mai, and again here at the local supermarket, I was sitting at "Pie face" (not the only name that reminds you forcibly of the UK and that is simply lovely, what about "hog's breath"?!). this was in the King's Cross area - a formerly sleazy area, now between the Meatpacking district and Camden, sort of. Thus I had time to marvel at Australian girls' resistance to coldness (why isn't it coldity? or coldth? or colth, if you must?). must be a British gene, or the girls were imports for it was truly freezing with a nasty wind, not only in comparison to Thailand.

anyway, the gorgeous and smart French lady and myself enjoyed sydney by treating ourselves to terrific scones and tea in the chinese garden, shopping at paddington markets and fresh seafood at the fish market. Thanks to her I moved, into an area that reminded me of some great places in brooklyn. the hostel is virtually encircled by bakeries. I feel like thanking god on my knees for hot showers every morning. that's what has happened to my "decadence breeds decadence" credo - no aircon, no need for hot shower"...
My first night at Florence's guesthouse was peaceful and soul-soothing: I lay down in the bed which smelled safe and kind and like when I was a kid at my grandmother, and I dreamed of having a fit of laughter with one of you...
strolling around manly beach on the last day, we got some looks - although I got them for my eccentric half-backpacker outfit I think.
now I'm in Cairns, this unprouncable,in-enunciable city and we're back to hot, which my irrational, I-love-to-be-tortured body rejoices in...
to be continued

emus and cangaroos can't walk backwards, they say, that's why..

2008-11-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

sydney today. I'm wandering around with big eyes like a starved orphan - pies!muffins!supermarkets! empty streets, empty sidewalks, GIANT sidewalks, no motorbikes, people walk so fast! They are arrogant and busy!! The heat is so dry I keep putting creme on my skin. It is almost unbelievably CLEAN!
Arrived at 5.30am and am dead tired. I got the plane's prime seat, next to two transsexuals - the one next to me, Bianca, was a sweet person and quite a character. her make-up was the most impeccable I'd ever seen (hello there wedding!), her hair fake blonde curls, fake blue lenses, pumps, and a pink very hole-filled sort of dress from which protruded her fairly large belly. She was impractical and a bit dumb and apparently very warm-hearted and eager to tell me all about her family, boyfriends, operations, when, where, price and degree of pain and sensitivity of the area; nose job, boob job, and now the big change... I was torn between breathless interest and being overwhelmed with all the details... and of course, I didn't get any sleep.

random jumble of observations

2008-11-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

Arrived today in Bangkok at 5.30 (on the plus side, hardly any pestering Tuk-tuks, even on Khao San), and checked in at the guesthouse from last time whose host is sort of a grown-up ladyboy: even though he is correctly dressed in black, he gives off the impression of constantly waving a feathery boa or a tiara... but his English is swell and he writes down instructions in Thai for safety. His name is Pan. How cool is that - second only to the Burma boy in Ko Tao whose name is "Mojo", and I seriously consider naming my first-born thus (dibs!).

Anyway, here are some random observations

All you can eat: Bht 268 for Ladies, Bht 278 for ladyboys and Bht 298 for Men

every thai cafe ONLY AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION plays sugary thai pop. oh, and here's the current "hymn," the one thai song (reggae) that is either ok-bordering-on-good or one has heard it so often that the soul just gives in... kinda like with fashion sometimes. anyway, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAdZzr0ysxg
(title, as far as I can see: job 2 do doo doo doo.. I think actually that pretty much sums it up...)

Things I'm looking forward to : less noise, especially sugary Thai pop, less stink, even in supermarkets; more f-ing VARIETY in supermarkets, damn 7/11! This feels like back in Eastern Europe (says the old lady)! I want rows and rows of cereals and yoghurt and CHEESE for god's sake, and BREAD, not sugary white rolls, not brown-colored sugary white rolls; they have sugar on the table instead of salt and pepper, doesn't that tell you something?
I want to be understood with more subtle wishes or questions; I want showers and WCs where you can hang stuff - seriously, how do Thais do it? is this only for us Falangs?
I'm looking forward to walking down the street without being stared at, without the constant semi-harrassing calls, Hey you, Miss / Lady, ho! hallo!

backpackers who can speak thai are blond, lean, tanned, and never smile back at me.

Having mostly meet party travellers or India-Zen-style people who didn't give a rat's fart for politics, I had been afraid they wouldn't show the electoral results - but yes, they did! OBAMA BABY! I had goosebumps and was reaalz happy! I had thought they would pull something, somebody would pull something... otherwise I'm starving for news. the bangkok post is not really exactly thorough. But I guess I'd notice if there was a bomb or something...

Thai subtitles are a dish, seriously. Things like "we need being to get it"are of the more harmless nonsense sentences, more disturbing is when Morgan Freeman, in The Dark Knight (OMG!) qualifies something as "unethical and dangerous" and the pothead who guessed the subtitles translates this as "Africa dangerous"... more examples would abound, but then I was watching the movie - again, OMG?!! and I had missed the beginning...

a note on bowel movements and their relation to a traveller's mood. Those precious, longed for signs typically come when you are at the least inviting toilet imaginable. Probably some test on how much you really want it.. And we all want it. The good kind, the proper kind.The happy or grumpy looks on fellow travellers often have less to do with getting some,I am sure, than with "leaving some" or whatever would be an appropriate slang term. As the slow Boat Brit put it, after a bout of traveller's affliction: Have you 'passed a solid one' yet? Best feeling in the world...

Cute: On the map given out by the gueshouse in Trat, there were listed under "Daily needs" both a "herbal sauna" and "lawyer"(this one's for you darling :)you are a daily need!)

unholy: In laos, they gave out papers with the correct bus prices, an explanation for them and the comment:"your book is wrong" on the prices because of inflation and rise in gasoline prices...