Dougga Thugga

Last Friday our friends in Tunis drove us out to Dougga, an ancient Roman city built on top of a pre-roman settlement (Thugga). 

Wow. 

Now, They have a little different attitude in Tunisia towards ruins- instead of being preserved, they are slowly being rebuilt. It’s somebody’s job is to stack the ancient rocks back up again, and put the mosaics back together one tiny tile at a time.  But this was probably the coolest set of ruins we have seen- it was absolutely huge, with several buildings that would have been worth admission all on their own.  And it was in a beautiful setting.

culture

 

I have a few assorted things to say about culture.  Sorry there are no pictures to spice up this post.

1) A lot of stereotypes are largely true.  Austrians really do wait in lines much better than Italians.  Same-sex physical contact really is more common outside of North America and so on and so forth.

Really though, it’s probably only appropriate for me to write about Americans…  Over the last three months many people have mentioned to us the perception that Americans are hyper concerned about safety.  For example we load knives point-down in the dishwasher because we are worried about falling and impaling ourselves.  I don’t know about that scenario, but I generally fit this stereotype perfectly – bike helmets, seatbelts, not smoking, you name it. 

Oh and, in case this wasn’t already clear, I would never dangle from a moving train or climb around on top of it like the kids in Tunis do.  That was hard to watch. 

2) We have spent a few weeks now in places where prices are often not marked, and as I expected, bartering is rough and exhausting.  It can be sort of fun, but only if the item you want is available at stall after stall and it’s not something you really need. 

I’ll admit to a bit of recreational shopping during our time in Boston and I can tell you that having to haggle puts a stop to that desire.  Not only is paying in cash more painful than paying with plastic, but the amount of attention and discussion and pressure and mental math pretty much sucks the joy out of acquiring something new.  It also makes you think about how much something is really worth. 

3) Everyone wants our money and here people are much more direct about it.  Of course there are beggars (no more than in Boston, though) but lately we’ve encountered people who worm their way into a situation where they give us information in order to ask for money.   Now you might say, that sounds fair, why are you complaining?  I’ll tell you.

Here’s what happens.  You’re walking along looking totally American or at least definitely foreign and a guy (always) swoops down on you and begins a continuous stream of polite speech such that you cannot extricate yourself.  You’re following convention and also being polite so you look at him when he speaks to you, answer questions and maybe even walk with him a little a bit because it feels so rude not to when he’s talking to you so nicely.

< BAM  >

You are in his store smelling essences or 5 minutes further into the labyrinth of the medina or aware of two new obvious facts (e.g. this mosaic was made by Romans with marble).  From your perspective you were just being polite by not harshly shutting down a conversation.  From his perspective he just gave you a tour and now you owe him money.

This might sound like an obvious thing that should be easy to avoid, but I’m still having trouble.  Taxi drivers that constantly offer rides are easy.  They are asking you a question and waiting for an answer.  Saying no is easy.  It’s the people who give you something you don’t want that you accidently accept out of courtesy who get me.  In Tunis this happened to us with a museum security guard who showed us a glimpse of a closed portion of the museum.  I was slow to glom on because we were within the ticketed sanctity of a museum, where I thought I knew how things worked.

It’s like a social version of the flower pushers in places like Rome who see a couple and swoop in offering a rose with a flowery gesture, meant to make it seem like a gift.  I need to learn the verbal equivalent of keeping my hands in my pocket to foil these guys.  Right now the two strategies I can think of, which are completely ignoring other human beings or I forcefully interrupting them to say I am not interested, both make me feel like a jerk.

There must be a gracefully way avoid these traps.  From what I have heard, Marrakech, Morocco (tomorrow’s destination) will provide plenty of opportunities to practice.

FORTUNATELY a handful (15%) of the people who have struck up conversations with us have genuinely just been sociable.  I also know it’s not fair to judge a whole culture by the heavily biased selection of people we’ve met.

Casablanca, our current location, is a bit of a break because it is more industrial than touristy.   The majority of people we passed, especially in richer neighborhoods just ignored us, which was great.

One more thing, we’re back to a French speaking country where I contribute some language skills to Team Jack and Cari.  However, Jack’s contributions are possibly more important.  By being a man, he makes things a lot easier for me (from what I read and hear) and he is way quicker to recognize the kind of situations I’ve described AND way less concerned about being polite.  Go team!

to Morocco in the morning

 

This is a quick post to say that we’ve had a wonderful week here in Carthage, Tunisia and that we’re off to Casablanca in the morning (Sunday). 

We’ll post more about Tunisia, but here are a few pictures to hold you over!

BELOW: at the Bardo museum in Tunis, in Sidi Bou Said, a nearby town

BELOW: the fabulous Roman ruins of Dogga (pronounced DUgah)

Boston on the Bosporus

Last Saturday, on our last day in Istanbul, we walked up to Ortakoy, a neighborhood with wonderful views of the Bosporus and a (reportedly) beautiful mosque- unfortunately closed for renovation.  The food stalls there were completely different from the rest of the city- Ortakoy is the place to go if you want toppings.  We had a giant waffle wrapped up with 2 different kinds of chocolate syrup, bananas, kiwis, pomegranate, sprinkles, nuts… just about everything and then a giant baked potato with all sorts of savory toppings. There were a few waffle places elsewhere in Istanbul, but I never saw another baked potato stand (there must have been 30 in Ortakoy).

We also ran into quite a few things that reminded us of Boston in Ortakoy, which has a fairly large university right along the water.  The first strange thing we noticed was the “Upper Crust” pizzeria, which is the same name as a very good chain in Boston.  I have seen other Upper Crusts around, but the logo for this one was- nearly- the exact same one.  In Boston the butler rides a bicycle and faces left.  In Turkey they have cropped the bicycle off and he faces right.  Not sure what that means.

Later on, we went to a yogurt shop that is a dead ringer for Berryline, another favorite Boston shop where you have yogurt with … lots of toppings.

The next day, we flew from Istanbul to Tunis and the Air France magazine had an article on their top ten reasons to visit Boston.  We were amused to see article but shocked to recognize our friend, Aviva, striding across Harvard Yard in the picture.  It’s definitely her because it turns out some Air France photographers asked permission to take pictures of the summer class she was teaching.

Istanbul, in fact

 

Istanbul is, in fact, great.  Hearing the call to prayer, especially from multiple mosques at once (even from the two continents at once) is exotic.  The Haggia/Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque are incredible.  And of course, Turkish food is scrumptuous.

The Blue Mosque (below) was originally built as a mosque and still functions as such.

The Haggia Sofia (below) was built three times as a church, then become a mosque and is now a museum.  This cat is called “Obama’s cat” I hear, because the president petted hi on a recent visit.

The Grand Bazaar (4000 different covered stores) and the spice market and dozens of other markets are impressive as well.  The food markets would put the Pike Place Market to shame (as would many of the markets we’ve seen on this trip) except that they haven’t started the crowd-pleasing tradition of throwing fish. 

Oh and Turkish delight is pretty good, though I can’t for the life of me tell what it is made from.

So, you might ask, what is surprising about this town? 

There are more cats that I can believe – on roofs, swarming the parks, in mosques, restaurants, the tourist info,  the train stations, you name it.  Bucharest was overrun by stray dogs, most of whom were friendly, but one followed us and unnerved me.  Cats are preferable.  Here, I think they help keep the pigeons at bay and they manage to not crap all over the sidewalks.

The other thing is the prices of tourist attractions (start the violins).  The Haggia Sofia was 20 lira (11 USD) – expensive but worthwhile.  One of the Ottoman palaces here (Topkapi) charges 20 lira to get in, 15 to get in to the harem and another 15 for the audio guide.  Too much!

Budapest, Hungary

 

Being a tourist in the fall is great.  Beautiful cabbages, leaves and birds are everywhere and we’ve had excellent weather, for the most part.  We got a good look at the Danube, which we followed down from Vienna and then crossed again on the way into Bulgaria.

We went to our first real bathhouse (unlike Golden Gardens, where we got married).  The building was beautiful and enormous.  There were saunas and pools at a range of temperatures, but the highlight was the large outdoor pools.  You can just make out Jack’s face in the circular part of the large pool, where strong jets periodically turned on making a really fast current.  Imagine about 20 unknown adults flying around in a circle, laughing.

beyond the eurozone

 

A week ago we left the eurozone, leaving behind the more familiar countries and the places I have visited before.  We took the train (about 2.5 hrs) from Vienna to Budapest, where we spent two nights.  That was a speedy (180 km/hr) and comfortable train.

From there we took an overnight train (15 hrs) to Bucharest, where we spent another two nights.  Then we took yet another overnight train (24 hrs, with a 3 hr delay) to Istanbul, where we arrived at noon today.  We also took an overnight train from Venice to Vienna, so I put that on this map.

The sleeping compartments of the trains have been pretty much the same.  The seats fold to make 6 berths, though we usually have not had full compartments.  With such a long ride, it is important to bring enough water and food.  We slept but not too well.  On the trip to Istanbul, our passports were checked and stamped no less than 5 times and our tickets about another 5 (separate) times.

We’ve viewed the last few days as a slow trip to Istanbul, rather than a really fast trip to Eastern Europe, so we didn’t really do much reading or planning for Budapest or Bucharest.  Getting the right amount of a new currency for just two days in a country is kind of a pain.  It certainly made us appreciate the convenience of a single currency for the 3 months we spent in western Europe. 

Speaking of euro, we enjoyed spending our last 15 “bucks” on lunch and snacks at the naschmarket in Vienna.  They give out sooo many samples!  Also, we had the best kebab yet.

Schengen Shoulda-known

Fun fact: The Schengen agreement between most European countries means that Americans can visit the whole Schengen zone for 90 days without a visa.  We learned this when we entered Iceland, which is a Schengen country.  We had planned to spend about 100-110 days in Europe until that moment.  Read the passage below from the US state department page about entry requirements for France.

U.S. citizens may enter France for up to 90 days for tourist or business purposes without a visa. France is a party to the Schengen Agreement, which allows for visa-free travel between member countries.

I think if you don’t already know what the Schengen agreement entails, it sounds like you can visit France for 90 days and then Italy for 90 days and then Greece etc.  No such luck!

Anyhow, this marks a new stage of the trip.  More bartering and less complementary tourist maps.  We’re stepping out.

fun and games

One of the highlights of our week in Vienna was playing games with my friend and her partner (and some with the kids as well). We played the European Ticket to Ride (called Zug um Zug in German) which has tunnels and ferries routes, Carcassonne, Bohnanza and Settlers of Catan. 

Reni is really good at Carcassonne.  We played so much in Lausanne 7 years ago – it was great to play again.

Jack’s plan of earning bricks and taking them to port was foiled by a long long string where no 6’s were rolled.  His frustration was great fun.


The food was also fun.  Some of the particularly Viennese or Austrian things were homemade sachertorte and sweet dumplings, blood sausage, weiner schnitzel, and some good sauer kraut and cabbage salads (with caraway seeds, I learned).

Venice is the Venice of Italy

Last week we spent a very enjoyable two days staying in Venice between the olive wwoof farm and our 6 days in Vienna.  After doing Florence thoroughly (1 week) and Rome aggressively (3 days) several weeks earlier, we had a different plan for Venice: no research beforehand, just walking around, and nothing that required paying for admission.  It turned out to be a good city for this kind of lazy plan. 
With no cars or scooters on the islands, walking around was a pleasure.  It has to be the only city where every 4ft wide alley shows up on the map as a street of its own.  And there were plenty of  beautiful and free churches to sit in when we needed a break from walking.  The old medieval island itself was small enough that by the end of two days we started stumbling upon places that we had already been and actually knowing which 4 ft “street” to take without consulting a map.

In a city completely served by boats, Cari and I managed somehow to not set foot in a boat one time- we stayed exclusively on dry ground (and bridges).  We saw garbage boats, mover’s boats, DHL mailboats, and ambulance boats (after which we decided it would be better not to have a medical emergency right then).  We learned from a Venice guide podcast that the city is experiencing rapid depopulation and may soon cease to be a city at all- it will just be a place for tourists to come and ogle.  But I think it could be a great place to live, provided someone started a ‘zipboat’ boat sharing company

One strange thing we noticed among all the alleys was that, contrary to our expectations, the city smelled… good.  The water looked clean and you could always smell the sea, of course. No matter how dark and twisted the alley, there was never once a pee or garbage smell - we actually noticed bakery and restaurant smells wafting out of the back doors more often.  The garden of the museum on the North side of the Accademia bridge (we had to walk by it many times, there are only 4 bridges across the Grand Canal) smelled like roses at all times.  And with the tourist/local ratio all out of whack, there was much less smoking than in all the other Italian cities.

Ha, made you look!

 

The baby in this stroller is our friends’ 3 month old daughter, *not* ours.

That said, I might just have to move here (Europe) for the parental perks.  In the case of Austria this includes 2 years of paid maternity leave, 8 months of paid paternity leave, free daycare, and eventually affordable university tuition.  Whew!

Anyway… before I get in to politics, I’ll tell you what we’ve been doing.

We spent the week Vienna with my friend and her family.  It is by far the most time I’ve spent around little kids (3 months and 3 years old) in many years and I think my friends makes it look easier than it is :)

She is a civil engineer and Vienna has a lot of architectural energy, if you will, so we’ve looked at a lot of buildings, in addition to several very good museums. 

BELOW: our friends’ church, called the Wotrubakirche and the Gloriette of Schönbrunn Palace

BELOW: some art nouveau and us at Hundertwasser House

We’ve also eaten well and brushed up on some board games.  More on that in the next post.

wedding pictures!

I made a public google+ album that you can find at https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/103133114606549134761/albums/5672378876542167329

learning how to use the camera

 

I have been attempting to use the cameras manual mode some lately- previously, about all I ever did was force the flash to ‘off’ all the time.  Mostly, this has been useful in low-light situations, and we even bought one of those little tripods that they sell to tourists to try and get some better shots. 

Someday soon I will be ready for a wildly expensive camera, clearly.