When you watch the trailer for Everest,
you may well get the feeling that you have seen it all before: the mountains, the snow, the storm, the helicopter, the drama, the danger, the good-looking tough guy risking his life for an adventure.
And if you are a devoted reader of my blog, you remember correctly:
So, this is what they mean with “based on a true story”.
Where we find water: on Mars, between 34 and 250 million miles away
Where we can’t provide safe drinking water to around 750 million people: our own planet
Sorry, poor people, but this whole space thing is much more exciting.
Researching for my trip to South America, I came across this little country that I knew nothing about – Suriname – and its capital city – Paramaribo – which I couldn’t have named before. And then I saw this photo of a synagogue next to a mosque (there are also Christian churches and Hindu temples in town) and I got a feeling that Suriname might become one of the most interesting countries on my tour.
Might this country in the South American jungle with its Indian, Creole, Indonesian, Maroon, Amerindian, Chinese and Dutch population who are Christian, Hindu, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, traditional African believers and hopefully also a few Atheists provide some lessons for Europe at a time of increased immigration and diversity? It sounds like multiculturalism is nothing new and the “waves” of immigrants coming to Europe are tiny compared with those absorbed by other continents at other times, including immigrants from Europe. If small South American countries can do it, why shouldn’t Europe be able to benefit from this mix of cultures, languages and religions?
I will hopefully find out in 2016!
The airport (“aerodrom”) in Podgorica, Montenegro:
Ok, this is not the airport, but it is the train station for the airport. Unfortunately, I only found out about it later. When I arrived, I asked the lady at the airport information desk if there are any buses or trains into town. She said – incorrectly – that there are none. The taxi cost 15 € (Montenegro doesn’t have its own currency), for which I could have taken the train through the whole country several times.
Yes, you need to get off here for the airport.
On the website of the Montenegrin Railway (English version available), you can find the schedule. The stop is about 1 km west of the airport exit, on the other side of the highway. The train to Podgorica costs 1.20 €.
Dear refugees,
I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart!
With your help, it has become very easy over the past few weeks to tell who of my friends, acquaintances, colleagues and relatives are xenophobes, racists and inhumane assholes. Without your help, it would have taken me years to discover that with some of them, and a few might even have slipped the net undetected.
It’s just sad that so many of you had to die for this.
“Cabin crew, prepare for landing,” the command came through the public-address system, filling the silent cabin of the early-morning flight from Belgrade to Podgorica. “Landing where??” I wondered, for I had only seen dramatic mountains, partially covered in snow, and some lakes.
The short flight from Serbia’s to Montenegro’s capital was more of a scenic flight than a means of transport. The sun broke through the clouds only intermittently, putting the mountains in a dark, eerie light. Whenever the sun had prevailed, it didn’t take long for the mountains to forcefully pull back their cloudy cover, asking for another thirty minutes of sleep. Now I understood where the name came from: Montenegro, the black mountains.
Even the little airport had the feeling of a mountain resort to it. In a country like this, it must have been easy to decide on the location of the airport. You pick the only flat part of land that you can find and expropriate the farmer who owns it. The airport code TGD is a reminder of the Yugoslav past: Titograd.
Unfortunately for you, I like to check in all my luggage, including my camera, because I prefer boarding the plane with nothing more than a book, so I could only take a photo after leaving the airport. Needless to say, I regretted my decision.
On the return flight from Tivat to Belgrade I took the camera on board, but on that day it was too cloudy.
Any walk in Belgrade will sooner or later end up at Kalemegdan Park, the seat of the fortress.
The guy on top of the column is Pobednik, the Victor, and he calls himself that because he just won World War I against the Ottoman Empire and Austria (with some help from the Allied Powers).
When it’s not cloudy, you can watch the sunset behind the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube.
You know that a country is going through an economic crisis when your friends from Brazil don’t begin their days by posting photos of their morning coffee, but by commenting on the exchange rate between the Brazilian real and the US dollar. When more people know the exchange rate of their country’s currency than the league position of EC Bahia, it’s a sure sign that the currency is tanking (although both of them are doing equally bad).
And indeed: Since I so cleverly made the decision to move to Brazil half a year ago, the Brazilian real has continued its downward trend. Compared to a year ago, it lost almost half its value.
I am currently using the Lonely Planet South America guidebook to plan my upcoming move to Brazil, and it lists the exchange rate as 1 euro = 2.69 reals. That was in August 2013. Now, one euro buys 4.6 reals. What euro crisis, I wonder?
For someone like me, who earns in EUR and USD, this means that Brazil is becoming more affordable. Granted, some of these gains are eaten up by inflation, but as long as inflation is lower than the loss of the currency’s value, I will be fine. I won’t need to purchase any imported goods, so I won’t be hit by the reduced international purchasing power of the real either.
Maybe, just maybe, I might even be able to rent an apartment and won’t need to sleep in parks and train stations. What a luxurious thought, thanks to Brazil’s economic policy!
When you invite your friends to a birthday party and nobody shows up.
Photographed at the Kalemegdan fortress in Belgrade, Serbia.
Romanians are really crazy about their flag. The blue-yellow-red banner hangs from every lamppost, in front of every building, in bakeries, doctor’s practices and in liquor stores. Because that is not enough, there is even a public holiday to celebrate the flag.
With all this pomp, I should have guessed that the real purpose is to hide something else, something bigger, something sinister. In the typical convoluted Romanian way of thinking, the constant display of oversized flags is supposed to prevent people from wondering about the origin of the flag. Because the sad truth is that the Romanian flag was stolen.
In the late 19th century, the King of Romania kept being reminded by his British and German royal and imperial cousins, friends and girlfriends that his kingdom was the only one in Europe without colonies. “Even tiny Holland has colonies,” Emperor Wilhelm used to tease King Carol, who was a rather mild-mannered man and wasn’t really interested in conquering other countries. Also, “Bessarabia” sounded exotic enough, so what did he need places like Sumatra or Madagascar for?
There was no need to go after resources either. Romania had gold, silver and salt mines. It had enough timber that even the Austrians came across the border to cut down the forests illegally in order to supply wood to the Schweighofer piano factory in Vienna. (Back then it was easy for Austrians to cross the border because the fence-building nation of Hungary was still an Austrian colony, although the Austrians in an untypically canny move made the Hungarians believe that they had their own country.)
Unique among European nations, Romania even had slavery. Perhaps out of ingenuity, perhaps out of lack of sea-faring skills, Romania hadn’t gone to other continents to enslave Africans or Indios, but had simply used part of its own population.
All in all, there was really no economic need for colonialism. Yet, the constant prodding finally convinced the king to give in and to dispatch a small military contingent of 120 soldiers deep into the heart of Africa. It took the troops a few months to get to Africa because due to lack of funds, Romanians only travel by hitch-hiking (examples in defense against possible allegations of stereotyping are Dumitru Dan and Timotei Rad). The problem (and the allure) of hitch-hiking is that you sometimes end up where you didn’t want to go, and the Romanian soldiers found themselves in Chad.
Tasked with taking whatever they could find, the colonial force began to look around, but found only sand (hard to carry back home) and camps full of Sudanese refugees. Less in a conquering and more in a humanitarian mood, the Romanians asked the Sudanese if they wanted to come to Romania with them. “Romania? No, no, no!” the refugees exclaimed in horror. (The Sudanese had a feeling that Romania would not enter the Schengen zone anytime soon and were hoping to be colonized by Germany, not having heard of the Hereros’ fate.)
So, things dragged on, the Romanians got drunk, they got into fights with the Chadians (about women, of course), and, as always happens in these stories, one day one of the Romanian officers killed the son of the Chadian Prime Minister. At that time, Africans were used to a lot of mistreatment by Europeans, but that murder was the straw which broke the camel’s back (this figure of speech may only be used legitimately in stories set in Africa). The government of Chad gave the Romanian force an ultimatum to leave the country by sunset the next day.
Suddenly in big haste, the soldiers remembered their king’s orders to “bring home as many exotic and colorful items as you can carry”. They grabbed a hapless elephant for the zoo in Târgu Mureș, but because it was grey, they still had to find something colorful. So they ran up and down the main boulevard and removed all the flags from the buildings. The flag of Chad is blue-yellow-red.
And that’s how Romania got its national symbol. The next time you walk past the tri-colored flag, you won’t just ignore it, but you will remember your country’s history, from slavery to almost-in-Schengen and everything in between. Or at least you will remember this story. And if you ever make it to Chad, please return one of the many flags to them.
“We won’t even put up real flags anymore. We are afraid the Romanians will steal them.”
The Happy Hermit 