Seventy-Five Arabian Nights

Egypt protests

2008-04-11T16:12:00.003+03:00

This blog is officially over, but if anyone has any interest in recent events here in Cairo (strikes, riots and protests on the streets) feel free to check out a piece I wrote for the Guardian here.
Jack

The Final Curtain

2008-04-01T23:10:00.010+02:00

Berlin

Buda Hills

Downtown Budapest

Belgrade Citadel

Fethiye

Aleppo

Palmyra

Beirut University Campus

West Bank

Dead Sea

Amman to Aqaba road

Ferry to Nuweiba

Downtown Cairo

The End.

rant's end

2008-03-30T00:32:00.005+02:00

To soothe my bleeding-heart pinko-commie liberal conscience--and to do justice to the last week's experiences--here's the rant's end and the beginning of an ode to Cairo.

Contrary to southern Egypt's tourist economy, Cairo is a real city full of real people many of whom are remarkably eager to take time to help confused foreigners. Advice or directions are almost invariably followed by an "ahlan wa sahlan, welcome to Egypt" and if you've been chatting to someone for a while, they may insist on buying you a tea/coffee/bus ticket, refusing any attempt to pay them with the explanation that such a purchase involves only "small money"--never mind that a normal teacher's salary of 300 EL (ca. 40 Euro) will seem like "small money" to Europeans.

Moloch that it is, Cairo is doubtlessly one of the world's great metropolises. A city whose beating pulse you feel as you walk down its jam-packed bustling streets, it has the raw energy and the critical mass to offer sheer endless sights, sounds, and 24-hour mayhem.

Its size is mindboggling. You can easily spend an hour in the car driving from one "central" neighbourhood to another and never get anywhere near the city's perimeter. Indeed, from where I am sitting now it is difficult to imagine it ends anywhere. Even out at Giza, Cairo surges around the ancient monuments, leaving only a long strip of desert to connect the Pyramids to their "natural" habitat.

Its pollution deserves similar superlatives. The second most polluted city in the world, Cairo is working hard to snatch that title from Mexico City. International organisations are so concerned by pollution, that some--such as the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung--give its employees in Cairo additional holidays during which they are expectedm to leave Cairo and--quite literally--get a breath of fresh air. With its perennial traffic jams, smog, dust and smoke, spending a day outdoors in Cairo is supposed to be equivalent to smoking more than a pack of cigarettes. Add to that the fact that it can seem as though most people in Cairo do smoke at least a pack of cigarettes every day and you have one of the highest rates of respiratory disease worldwide.

But both of those things are almost invariably forgotten when you walk down one of Cairo's bustling streets, marvelling at the incredible range of neighbourhoods, people, and encounters that make up this city.

Conquering Cairo

2008-03-28T13:57:00.006+02:00

After four-thousand miles, hundreds of questionable-quality kebabs, scores of hostel rooms where cleaning was a biennial affair, dozens of buses blaring Islamic dirges day and night, four problematic encounters with military and police forces, three forceful ejections from means of transportation in the backstreets of nowhere, two direct experiences of fervent political uprisings, and one overly-intimate session with an Arab ‘masseur’ (Josh is yet to reveal the full traumatic details), the journey is at an end. Cairo – whose name in Arabic translates as ‘The Conqueror’ – has been occupied in triumph by these weary and quite frankly filthy pair of travellers, and thus our adventures draw to a close.

It is not for me to cast a nostalgic eye back over the past three months: the thrills, the chaos and the moments (of worrying frequency) of pure madness. I’ll leave that to the as yet unseen photos which will grace our final blog post. But I will take a nauseatingly self-satisfied minute to reflect on my new apartment in downtown Cairo, from the balcony of which I am writing now.

Finding a long-term place to live in this city requires a heady mix of excessive patience, a high tolerance threshold for sweet tea, and a gracious slice of divine intervention. One can, in theory, contact ‘simsars’ – local rent brokers who maintain lists of available accommodation – in order to track down a flat. Light-years ahead of their corporate European counterparts, Cairo’s simsars are very much advocates of the paperless economy, in the sense that many of them appear to have never set eyes on a leaf of paper, never mind utilised one for business purposes. A typical encounter with a simsar, of which I have enjoyed many in recent days, follows a fairly predictable path. One turns up in a promising neighbourhood and begins asking the ‘bawaabs’ (doormen) of each building if they know of any free apartments. This immediately prompts a long and animated discussion in colloquial Arabic between the doormen, the local grocery store owner, a passing delivery-man and, invariably, a couple of young boys who appear to be hanging around for the fun of it all, all punctuated with violent gesticulations. At some well-defined but utterly random moment, obvious to all present except yourself, the whole coterie will lapse into silence as everyone takes the opportunity to earnestly smoke a cigarette. No explanation as to the substance of the previous conversation, or indeed the availability of accommodation in the area, is offered at any point. At this juncture one of the young boys will fetch some tea for you and lead you to a different group of doormen where your plight will be explained. This new set of characters will nod sympathetically, call over the local grocery-store owner, and start the whole charade again. This will be repeated several times.

At some point in proceedings, usually after about the eighth or ninth group of bawaabs and the eighth or ninth cup of tea, you will be given the name of a local simsar who might just be able to help. Enquiries as to the whereabouts of this simsar are met with incredulous laughter, as he is inevitably to be found sitting on his own in the corner of the local coffeeshop, puffing away on a shisha pipe. He will solemnly order you a cup of tea before handing you his business card and ordering you to call him tomorrow. The business card will have four numbers on it. These will all be in Arabic. All of them will be defunct.

If you are ever lucky enough to be actually shown the inside of an apartment, the fun really gets going. Bawaabs are experts at glossing over the flaws of their building and promoting its charms. Before you have even had a chance to look at the place, taps will be eagerly turned to prove they work (they nearly always don’t), satellite TV will be switched on and all 400 channels will be displayed one by one, and the four pieces of rusting metal balanced precariously in the corner of the bathroom will be optimistically pointed out to you as the washing machine. If the landlord is present, he will aggressively try and dissuade you from discovering the apartment’s negative features. In one flat I checked out, which was ‘in need of a bit of a clean’ according to the bawaab (a master of understatement), the owner actually leapt across the room to physically prevent me from opening the fridge door.

Yet despite its potential to be soul-destroying, house-hunting here actually gives you a fascinating insight into Cairene life and showcases a lot of what is most compelling about this pulsating metropolis. Social networks are incredibly strong and informal – everyone knows everyone else, and everything is conducted through word of mouth. Cairenes love spending time together and have a rich sense of humour, and watching them draw together to help you discover a place to live gives a flavour of how intensely personal and friendly this urban world of 20 million people can be. The process is fraught with difficulties but amongst the trials and tribulations, everyone is always laughing, always smoking, always drinking yet more tea and, overall, making you – a foreigner – feel very welcome. Once I’d finally found somewhere and completed the tortuous lease negotiations with the landlady, I realised that I’d enjoyed the whole thing far more than I thought I had at the time.

And the flat itself? It sits at the end of a bustling backstreet which leads down to the ruins of an old palace. In the shadows of this crumbling edifice are a scattering of coffee shops where old men smoke nargilehs and play backgammon. The building around the apartment has three entrances and three elevators, only one of which is working at any given time (which particular one changes by the hour, leading to a merry exchange of pleasantries between bemused neighbours constantly walking in and out of each entrance in confusion). The flat itself is resplendent in kitsch furniture and has a consistent lurid/dirty yellow scheme throughout. The balcony looks out through the back of a pair of giant metal advertising hoardings onto the Nile. The whole set-up is, in other words, wonderfully beautiful and anarchic, and therefore a fitting conclusion to the last three months.

My rant

2008-03-27T10:59:00.004+02:00

Egypt is a good place to come to strengthen and/or develop negative stereotypes about "Arabs." For anyone who is into that sort of thing, I recommend a visit. Nothing is simple in Egypt. Nothing is easy. If Tunisia prides itself in being a "country that works," Egypt is a country that doesn't--and where nothing does. Consequently, it is easy after what is almost invariably a string of bad experiences, to become fundamentally distrustful of Egyptians as a tourist.

Not only is there no such thing as a free lunch in Egypt, there is no such thing as a free smile. Especially in the south of the country, where tourism is the mainstay of the economy, it can seem as though everyone is out to rip you off. Let me amend that statement. It doesn't seem as though everyone is trying to rip you off. Almost everyone is.
Take the policeman who--quite unecessarily--"helped" me to buy a train ticket and then invited me for coffee. "Nice of him," I thought as he got up to go to the toilet. He never returned, leaving me with the inflated bill he had negotiated with the cafe for his and my drink.
Take the tea I was offered on the bus to Cairo (every bus in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan included free refreshments) that then came with the price tag of 25 Egyptian Pounds--more than 20x the going rate in a cafe.
Take any of countless examples that grow increasingly tedious... Just as every traveller in Syria has a story of out of the ordinary kindness and hospitality, every traveller you meet in Egypt has a story of ridiculous, blatant and wilful extortion--not to mention the dreary and endless encounters with touts, baksheesh collectors, and "guides" from whom one expects no less than single-minded, duplicitous pursuit of cash.

In Egypt, if something seems too good to be true. It probably is.
If something seems reasonable. It's probably too good to be true.
Adopt this dictum as a mantra (written as a sign upon your hand, doorpost and wherever else was available).

In Pictures: The West Bank

2008-03-17T10:24:00.005+02:00

It all feels rather sick; at the beginning of the week we were crisping ourselves in the salt of the Dead Sea and hitchhiking with spliff-passing, beer-drinking Jordanian rich boys. Now we’re reclining in sleek Tel Aviv bars and cafes, sipping coffee and reading papers; the scary thing is how easy it is for the injustices and oppression we saw in the West Bank to slip the mind once you re-enter a comfort zone. For what it’s worth, here are a few images taken over the last few days – together with the ‘Palestine Burning’ post below, they offer a unsatisfactory, but possibly interesting insight into life in occupied Palestine.

Farmer protesting at Deir Al Ghusun

Checkpoint north of Nablus

Martyrs' posters, Balata refugee camp

Children playing in the main road, Balata

PFLP martyr's home, Balata

Typical alleyway, Balata - some residents complain of skin conditions resulting from lack of access to natural sunlight

IDF soldiers take up position at a protest, Bi'lin

Palestinian protester, Bi'lin

An IDF soldier loses patience at a small-scale checkpoint demonstration near Nablus

Young children hold up pictures of family members imprisoned in Israel, Nablus

Palestine burning

2008-03-16T21:34:00.010+02:00

Tear-gas rains down on protesters, Bi'lin

As with so many things in occupied Palestine, what began as mere routine quickly gave way to ruthless humiliation. In a ramshackle yellow service taxi we had soared into the West Bank’s fertile green hills, leaving Jericho behind us. The Israeli controlled highways are fast and smooth, effortlessly slicing through a rural patchwork of valuable farmland (often walled off from its Palestinian owners), and Jewish settlements, where columns of drab pre-fabricated suburbia stare down at the cars below. Only when you veer off towards ‘Area A’, Palestine’s nominally PA-controlled network of urban communities, viciously severed from each other by chains of IDF-monitored checkpoints, does the reality of your surroundings begin to impose itself.

At this particular roadblock, a pair of young army conscripts barked at the driver to pull over and switch his engine off. We were ordered out of the creaking vehicle and lined up at gunpoint by the side of the road. Plucked out at random by the glaring soldiers, I was told to unpack the boot. Sweating in the midday sun, they continued to spit angry instructions at me in Hebrew even after it became obvious that I couldn’t understand what was being said. Our motley crew of fellow travellers, including an elderly Palestinian lady and a teenage child, watched on helplessly as I was made to virtually dismantle the back of the taxi. With the bags on the ground, struggling to simultaneously hold up the door and pull out the spare tyre, I appealed to one the Israeli men for help, but was met with an angry dismissal. Then, with a contemptuous nod, he demanded that the baggage be reloaded. As the other passengers, now released from their open-air military line-up, came to help me, an Israeli van – distinguishable by its yellow number plates – roared up to the checkpoint, horn tooting and music blaring. The door swung open to reveal a gang of tanked-up Israeli youths returning from a day-trip to the Dead Sea, beer cans in hand. Laughing raucously they waved at the soldiers, who ran over with smiles on their faces and greeted them cheerfully. A teenager proffered a camera, and one of our weapon-toting subjugators obligingly snapped away before grinningly bidding the boys farewell. Behind him, our own Nablus-born teenager, of a similar age but a different universe, looked on incredulously before climbing back into the car. Under the glares of the soldiers, we rattled off.

After three days in Palestine – the briefest and most unsatisfactory of glimpses into this multi-layered world – the one thing that struck me more forcefully than anything else was the relentless banality of military occupation. In Balata refugee camp in Nablus, a key centre of the armed resistance to Israel, I sat sipping tea in the family home of a local PFLP 'martyr', assassinated during an IDF incursion into the city only a fortnight before. In Nablus city centre, I watched a mournful demonstration by local mothers, as quietly dignified as they were smouldering with anger, holding up framed photographs of sons currently locked away in high-security prisons beyond the 1948 border. Many of them were struggling under the weight of three or more such pictures, each of a different child. And in the northern town of Azzoun, I saw men and women who live half their lives under military curfew, incarcerated in their own houses and terrified of opening their own front doors, lest a bullet from a sniper or a rocket from a helicopter gunship be dispatched without warning towards them. Yet despite being confronted with these moments of high-intensity trauma – a trauma ingrained so widely and deeply throughout the Palestinian community, a trauma which consequently finds no natural outlet through the sympathy of those around you (who can effectively comfort you when a family member is killed, if everybody else has already gone through a similar wearying experience?) – the real shock, from an outsider’s perspective, is the grinding, ceaseless small-scale degradation and inconvenience of daily life in occupied Palestine.

Martyr's poster, Balata refugee camp

The checkpoints, subjecting Palestinians to hours of queuing each day simply in order to move around in their own land, constantly under remorseless and unfriendly scrutiny by Israeli soldiers, are just one example. The stranglehold they have inflicted upon Palestine’s economic hubs, of which Nablus was once the most prominent, has forced unemployment to spiral out of control; in some parts of the old city, the figure is as high as 80%. But they are only the tip of the iceberg, and it is only by being here that one can appreciate how extensively the brutality of Israeli policy stretches into people’s day to day existence, and consequently how multi-faceted the resistance to the occupation really is. There is not just one struggle for liberation, but rather hundreds and thousands, being played out every day by everybody from armed brigades to groups of shopkeepers, from trade unions to tired and desperate individuals.

A single day can provide a typical snapshot. On Thursday, near Qalqilya, over four hundred protesters gathered to oppose the demolition of a children’s playground on Palestinian land, which had only just been completed two years ago when the Israeli bulldozers moved in. At the same time, in the village of Deir Al Ghusun, locals assembled at the ‘security’ fence that runs like an ugly scar through this land and, here, cuts off village farmers from their own fields. Farmers have to apply to Israel for permits to access one of three agricultural gates in the fence, which open thrice-daily for an hour at a time; despite repeatedly submitting applications, the majority of farmers have seen their requests for permits rejected without explanation, depriving them of their only source of income. And in the nearby town of Tulkarim, an Israeli chemical factory was pointed out to me. Originally built in Israel proper, the factory’s neighbours petitioned the courts to shut it down as its fumes were destroying their land and poisoning their air. The courts complied, and the factory has now been rebuilt on the outskirts of Tulkarim, the judges of this democratic nation having given their de facto consent to the choking of Palestinians instead. Play areas, fields and factories; beyond the smoke-trails of the Qassam rockets that dominate Western media coverage of this region, Palestinian civilians struggle ceaselessly day-in, day-out against the encroachment of the occupation into every corner of their lives.

Shebab, Bi'lin

On Friday I witnessed a more direct illustration of the violent nature of the occupation, this time at a regular action in the village of Bil’in. Palestinians and local villagers march ever week here to the concrete wall that divides Palestine from Israel, swooping off from the 1967 Green Line into the former to scoop up the most valuable land and reliable water supplies for the latter. The demonstration is an interesting one because it highlights the complex tiers of the mass resistance to Israel. On the one hand, it is one of the most high-profile scheduled protests, often attracting a high level of support and media coverage (not least because it regularly provokes an aggressive response from IDF soldiers). On the other hand, some feel the protest has been hijacked on two fronts – the first by ‘resistance tourists’ eager for their own taste of tear gas (the day I attended, international activists easily outnumbered Palestinians), and the second by the local municipal elite, who use the demo as a fundraising exercise to extract money from foreign donors. Consequently some committed campaigners spurn it altogether, evidence that internal contradictions within the struggle extend far beyond the much publicised divisions between Fatah, Hamas and other organised factions.

Aside from all of this, my experience of Bi’lin showed me simply how institutionalised a culture of violence has become within the Israeli military, which, it must be remembered, constitutes an illegal occupation force and as such has both judicial and moral obligations to those it is suppressing in Palestine. The protest was small by recent standards; some believe that the non-violent resistance movement has slipped to its lowest ebb just as the realities of occupation have reached their fiercest, a state of affairs which, if genuine, represents a worrying vortex of despair amongst Palestinians and suggests there is little hope for a stable outcome to the latest rounds of peace talks. As we marched towards the fence with Palestinian flags held aloft, we could see IDF soldiers bunkered up in their positions through the wire. Protesters spread out along the perimeter, forcing the army forces to do likewise, and they begun to shout warnings in Hebrew. The shebab – young boys who throw stones across the fence – launched a volley from their slingshots and, in response, the Israelis unleashed hell. Canister after canister of tear gas screamed over the fence, scattering the crowds, followed by rounds of ammunition – rubber bullets – being fired through mesh. Another attempt was made to get close to the gate dividing the Palestinians from the Israelis; the IDF responded by charging through the narrow militarised strip and into the olive groves where we were huddled, firing at will and setting off sound bombs. One protester was hit in the head and retreated behind a tree, blood pouring down his face. Another was maced in the eyes; a third shot at close range in the leg, gouging out a huge chunk of flesh from his thigh. An international activist was set upon and dragged back to the Israeli side, certain to face deportation; several more were nastily beaten up trying to stop the arrest.

IDF soldiers storm the fence to make arrests, Bi'lin

As with the non-violent struggles described above, the shock for me came not in the details of what happened, but in the ways in which these details have become such a jaded part of life here, such an essence of Palestinian existence. And with it, a depressing realisation that a generation of Israelis and Palestinians are growing up with no experience of each other except through the prism of violence, hate and condescension. Young Palestinians are faced with gunshots and abuse from their tormentors, verbal and physical; young Israeli conscripts at Bi’lin are confronted with a simmering rage against them that erupts in a hail of rocks. This is not to propose any moral parity between the two – the Israelis are annihilating this land with advanced technological weaponry, and its occupants are resisting in self-defence in whatever ways they can (I refer to those struggling against Israeli incursions into their territory, not those who travel into 'Israel proper' to attack civilians). But it does suggest that a particularly dangerous path lies ahead if – or perhaps when – the current attempts to mediate between the two sides fail.

Which, finally, brings my point to a close. Under the grim blanket of occupation, the machinations of high politics – Abbas and Olmert, Haniyeh and Barak – seem strangely distant. But one thing is clear – any peace reached through the Annapolis talks will have no legitimacy on the streets of Nablus or elsewhere in Palestine if the PA continues doing its utmost to sideline those who command the respect, albeit often grudging, of huge swathes of the Palestinian population (through their rejection of Hamas and effective condoning of Israeli repression of the Hamas government – and the civilian population – in Gaza), and equally if the Israeli government does it best to brush away the last crumbs of credibility Abbas is still clinging on to by undermining him at every opportunity. And if the 'peace' has no legitimacy amongst those who crave it most, the PA will never be able to deliver the security guarantees Israel is demanding from an independent Palestinian state, with the result that the infrastructure of occupation will continue to blight this land. Hence the irrelevancy one attaches to the peace talks at the checkpoints, the farmland and the playgrounds. This occupation is not just about Al-Aqsa 'martyrs', Islamic Jihad missiles, and huge military incursions. It encompasses a far greater sphere of penetration into Palestinian society than anybody, including myself before I came, can comprehend without visiting this place first hand. And yet whilst politicians fiddle, Palestine is ablaze – not always with the pyres of violence, but rather with the flickering flames of daily, banal repression. Those at the top seem to be showing little interest in quenching these flames; if the current talks continue to remain so fraudulent, they too are liable to get burned.

A mother holds up a picture of her imprisoned son, Nablus

Beirut

2008-03-10T16:55:00.004+02:00

Downtown Beirut is marked by the intersection of six broad, clean, well-lit boulevards, lined by cafes, upmarket boutiques and bars and eerily deserted, its lifeless sidewalks and tables controlled from barb-wired checkpoints by armored personnel carriers and men with machine guns. The once-upon-a-time diva of the Middle East is still an amazing city, two civil wars, one Syrian and two Israeli occupations down the line.

There is still much that is "American" about Beirut. Although the city once hailed as the Paris of the Middle East now seems more like its second Jerusalem. The mix of "western" shops, American diners, and Falafel joints is strongly reminiscent of Israel with its crowds of young students and security checkpoints, barriers, random violence and highly visible, machine-gun toting police and army officers. All too often, the view from the diner, bar or seaside cafe offers a cityscape of bullet-scarred facades: Constant reminders of a violent past--and indeed a violent present--of pervasive sectarian infighting.

The divisions running through Beirut and Lebanon have taken different forms over the years, the Sunni-Maronite conflict of Lebanon's founding years eclipsed by the influx of largely Shi'ite Palestinian refugees after Jordan's "black September" and the concomitant erosion of the sectarian checks and balances written into the country's political system. These days, political violence has regrouped around two symbolic dates. The March 8th coalition commemorates the Syrian national holiday (when Hafez, once upon a time, dispatched his Baathist competitors) and the Hizbullah rally held on its anniversary in 2005 asking the Syrians to stay in Lebanon. The March 14 coalittion takes as its namesake the counter-rally that sparked the Cedar Revolution.

The eights and the fourteens, as they are affectionately known in Lebanon, agree about very little. This, apparently, is the problem. Even the fourteens, amongst themselves, have their share of political differences. At least, however, they can agree that they are Lebanese--something March 8 with their pro-Syrian orientation and the strong Palestinian identity of many of its backers--cannot.

Guns and tea in the Axis of Evil

2008-03-03T14:03:00.003+02:00

Syria welcomed us with moustachioed bureaucracy and heart-warming hospitality. In Palmyra, we had somehow managed to acquire a pair of creaking Chinese motorbikes from a man who owned a grocery store and headed out into the sand. Nothing lay between us and the Iraqi border except a hundred miles of empty dunes and a few scattered Bedouin encampments. Naturally high on our customary sense of self-congratulation, we sped off down a single strip of tarmac that led into a completely empty expanse of yellow wilderness. As we’d already established, the Syrians are a friendly lot, and so we weren’t surprised when a distant figure on the horizon waved over to us and we quickly turned towards him, looking forward to the delicious spread of mezze and hot drinks this rustic sheep-farmer would no doubt lay on for us.

The fact that he was carrying an AK47 did not immediately trouble our elated minds – after all, the desert is no doubt a dangerous place at night with wild dogs and man-eating geckos and god knows what else. It did seem slightly strange, however, that he was clad in military fatigues. “Army surplus”, Josh whispered to me reassuringly as we drew near. “It’s all they can afford.” As we came to a stop our affable companion unceremoniously pointed his gun at us and, in an unexpected move, demanded our passports. This, we reluctantly accepted, was not the standard behaviour of lone sheep-herders. Only when a further soldier came over and ordered us off the bikes with a moody scowl, gesturing with his weapon that we should stand back whilst he removed the keys, did the situation stop being pleasantly amusing, and instead took on a rather alarming tone. Without a word of explanation the first soldier drove off with one of the bikes, leaving the other to guard us under the baking heat of the mid-day sun.

Miles from any other human habitation, it appeared that we had unwittingly stumbled across a Syrian army base. Although I have long expressed a strong wish to experience all facets of Middle Eastern society first-hand, I had to grudgingly acknowledge that this was not an ideal introduction to the military forces of one of the world’s supposedly most dangerous states. Matters took a turn for the worse when we attempted to utilise our pidgin Arabic and engage our captor in conversation. Clearly well-trained in resisting subtle psychological subversions by foreign spies like us, he refused to answer any questions. Nor would he have one of our cigarettes, which he looked down on with a mixture of suspicion and contempt before lighting one of his own. The weather was scorching. Our phones didn’t work. Our passports and means of transport had gone. A man with a gun was holding it angrily towards us. All in all, our circumstances left a lot to be desired.

After a good hour, the first soldier returned with a higher ranking officer. Delighted that we would have a chance to explain our case to someone senior and offer our apologies to the Syrian armed forces for trespassing on their secret nuclear facility/desert gulag, we surged towards him. However, he too was not in the mood for polite discussion, and promptly confiscated our phones and camera before disappearing again. I tentatively suggested to Josh that we make a break for it and flee towards the Iraqi border in the hope we would be picked up by some kindly American marines. Josh didn’t dignify that with an answer and we relapsed into apprehensive silence. I decided that if I was going to be summarily executed in the middle of the desert, I would do so with the national anthem on my lips, as a last defiant act of patriotism. Then I remembered that I was unaware of the words of the national anthem, and depression engulfed me again. I turned to Josh for some consolation but the poor chap was lying on the floor playing with some dung beetles, and had obviously given up all hope.

Finally, the ‘general’ returned again, this time with a veritable platoon of footsoldiers. Rather improbably, he was carrying a kettle. By gum, we thought, is this how they kill prisoners in these godforsaken wastelands? He then produced some cups, and swiftly poured us several cups of tea. We sipped them hesitantly, but they did not appear to be laced. A few moments later, our passports and electronic equipment (with photos wiped) was handed back, along with the keys to the bikes, and all the soldiers gathered around us jovially, wishing us well. We will never know which impenetrable layer of army bureaucracy had deemed us, with good reason, to be idiotic tourists and not a major threat to national security, but wherever he is we thank him from the bottom of our hearts. With cheerful waves the whole gang bade us farewell; we drove sharpish back to Palmyra and pondered a valuable lesson. It seems that even when pointing guns at you, these lovely people can’t help but offer you some tea.

---

P.S. Apologies for the lack of updates recently – the Syrian government periodically blocks access to a load of websites they deem dangerous, and our blog, apparently, is one of them. Hence we have to do a lot of funky technical wizardry to get on to it…
P.P.S. Shout out to Nabeel.

4 pm and all

2008-02-21T19:46:00.001+02:00

Friday, Fetiye, that`s right bitches

Sunday, Göreme, 5:45am

Tuesday, Ürgüp, Satan and friends

Thursday, Şanliurfa, Castle

Heathens in Caves

2008-02-21T19:40:00.000+02:00

The good people of Cappadocia never saw it coming. Later, the owner of the gas station on the outskirts of Ugrup would claim he had had premonitions from the moment two shadowy figures set up camp across from him on the intersection at 5:30 on a cold Sunday morning. In the early morning light, he said, they radiated a faint, but menacing, red aura. Although this claim has never been substantiated and, like the museum attendant’s claim that he was shown the picture of a vampire on a ghoulish press pass, is dismissed by the region’s more sober inhabitants, it is undeniable that something odd was afoot. If, dear reader, you will bear with me, I will try to reconstruct, from interviews, local records, and the official report of the exorcists called in to re-consecrate all mosques and churches, those cursed, fateful days that turned fairy chimneys into Satan’s furnaces.

We now know that the two shadowy figures at the gas station were foreign travellers of unknown origin. One is described consistently as bearded, with two small horns protruding from his matted mass of shaggy hair, the other as being of a gaunt, Vampire-like aspect with sideburns as pointy as his fangs. Both were first seen at the Ugrup gas station. At dawn that same day, they were observed engaging in some strange pagan ritual near Goreme, involving chants in strange tongues, spirits, both ephemeral and alcoholic, and disturbing, mirthless laughter, staccato ha-ha’s, which, in the words of one witness, “made all the hairs on my neck stand on end.” At sunset, they were seen, smoke rising from their arms and heads, emerging from an ancient cave dwelling in Rose Valley. Police investigations revealed evidence of a fire and unearthed the charred bones of a young child, thus sketching the disturbing outlines of a grotesque human sacrifice in preparation for the next days’ activities, for the worst was still to come.

On Tuesday, four figures were seen ascending Ugrup castle. The aforementioned two unsightly strangers had been joined by two young women, described by an old man who witnessed all from behind a rocky outcropping nearby, as cat-like, dark-haired witches. These four erected a monumental pagan idol overlooking the village. It gazed down malevolently on minarets, homes, and shops, its horns glinting in the sunlight, its exposed breasts mocking the modesty of the town’s God-fearing inhabitants. From this point forward the chronicles of strange and disturbing events multiply. Temperatures fell dramatically mid-day, 13 villagers died in a freak cave-in, and wolf-dogs began running the streets. Haddj Mustapha Beyoglu had to watch, horror-stricken, as one of these creatures made off with his hand, leaving him to helplessly wave his bloody stump.

On Wednesday things went from bad to worse. Suleiman Ahmad, the farmer who, alerted by the red glow of fire in an ancient church, went to investigate and lived to tell the tale tells us the following: “In the morning these evil creatures, their ranks swelled to six, lit a crackling bonfire in the ancient church of the temptation. Whirling and dancing around it like deranged dervishes, they only interrupted their crazed cavorting to erect a grotesque idol, a sphinx to guard their freakish frolicking.” Then the black madness began in earnest. As four went off to roll snow boulders on the unsuspecting town below, two proceeded to consummate the black mass on the Altar of Temptation. That evening, the sun set blood-red on Goreme as the call to prayer was replaced by howls that turned husband against wife and brother against brother. In the Church of Temptation, the six sat smoking glowing hookah, boasting of their wicked exploits. Where they are now, nobody knows. But they will be up to no good.

Gonzo-Göreme

2008-02-17T21:31:00.000+02:00

I’d been revelling in madness’ throes all day. The last night in Fethiye was one of those insanely depressing, disconcertingly comforting kind of nights, a microcosm for everything and nothing. Sipping Efes in an empty bar, watching an empty game of football – mid-table Germans bashing each other with mind-numbing mediocrity – we’d been to the so-called ‘ghost town’ earlier but this was the real fucking thing. Not a tourist attraction, not a clump of ruins on a daisy hillside, but a real fucking town with a real fucking dearth of people. I wanted to go to Club Bananas, god knows why. Josh vetoed it, which proved wise when we strolled past, bottle of vodka in hand – a deserted barn, with a sprinkling of greasy cruisers dotted round the entrance, preening to nobody. I was frustrated that there was nowhere to go, and frustrated that I was frustrated, a double dose of self-loathing that always stemmed from the same thing. I had texted her the previous night, when I was bubbling and raging and crying, and now I was empty as well.

It looked like it was going to be another night of spliffs and Portishead, dancing around our freezing room yelling platitudes from the Goo Goo Dolls and other teenage memory-jerkers. But Josh hauled himself up on the gangplank of some vessel and we kotched there, whilst he tried to unsuccessfully persuade me to tightrope walk across the bay. He was wavering on the right end of the drunk-introspection spectrum, nudging the border affectionately. This was after we got thrown out of the hotel courtyard, and before we finished the bottle. I knew the next day would be hellish.

And of course it was. The bus ride seemed standard enough – snow and dark and Johnny Cash and dollops of Mahfouz and salami – but fourteen hours is enough to wear anyone down. I spent one particularly unnecessary stop prowling about in the falling ice, chasing after a pack of stray dogs. Times like that I know I’m falling into my own personal depressive-hedonistic hell, which has become a home from home, but fuck it, the groove is too worn down to escape from. So when we left dog-white middle-of-nowhere-ville I finally fell asleep in the back of bus, dreaming of her.

Josh woke me at 5.30am, announcing with measured concern that we were being ejected from the vehicle. Of course we were, the one time we take the only ‘reliable’ bus company in the country they dump us in some frozen back-corner of Cappadocia in the early-morning light, shivering our arses off. We didn’t even know what fucking village we were in as the behemoth sped off, taking my hat – the last refuge of my addled mind, the one adornment that gave me the veneer of the man I wanted to be, not the shit I’ve become – with it. All I had left to stave off pneumonia was my bloody beanie, a woven joke that Josh said made me look like a cross between a four-year-old and a condom. A dozen dickheads passed our flailing arms before one kind soul drove us a few kilometres towards Göreme. Even so, it was too far to walk with our bags, and the sun was coming up and the snow was falling harder, and we were by the side of the road in the middle of the Anatolian wilderness, and I knew by Josh’s face – and the fact he had begun to belt out Maccabee drinking songs – that he was on the elevator down to his personal hell as well. So we did the logical thing – cracked open the 12-year old malt whiskey that she had given me, and lit some cigarettes. I wandered off to some cliff-top to piss and sight-see through the haze. Josh carried on singing.

Fast-forward ten hours and we’re warm, but gluttons for punishment. So we head off to the tuff, the phallus-shaped fairy chimneys of Volcanic ash and cave-holes. I’ve got frostbite on the right foot, and Josh is harbouring delusions of spending the night in one of these troglodyte-relics, so we climb into one and start a fire, choking on our own fumes as we sing Third Eye Blind and sigh over a semi-charmed kind of life. And now we’re playing it again, while silent restaurant-boy shags his fit girlfriend in the room next door and Josh ponders the patriarchal-significance of squat toilets. And talks to the dog. And now restaurant-boy is back to answer his phone and check we’re not nicking beers, and he has a self-satisfied post-coital glow. And there’s nothing left to do but write and think and dream and squall.

Fethiye, motorbike style

2008-02-16T13:52:00.000+02:00

An engine, two wheels, brakes. The motoring experience reduced to its essentials. Wind in hair, wheels rolling, winding serpentine tarmac, loose change clatter of the two-cycle engine. The freedom of the open road. Breathtaking vistas. Sand, aquamarine ocean, secluded bays, vertigo-inducing cliff faces, terraced fields, not a soul in sight. Silence. Sun, olive trees and spring grass. Conveying the experience requires more narrative power than I can muster on the best of days. Words fail me. Silence.

The Epic of Ephesus

2008-02-14T12:00:00.000+02:00

Istanbul came and went. After the bleakness of Sofia, Turkey’s cultural capital was a veritable riot – turbofolk rooftop raves, goal-frenzied Galatasaray matches and the celebration of Bob Marley’s birthday at ‘Babylon’ (Istanbul’s finest live music venue, boasting that evening a smorgasbord of the country’s “finest reggae connoisseurs”). Not to mention the haunting minarets rising up over the city’s hills, the breathtaking scope of the Bosphorous, and the steady diet of three doner kebaps per day. Our two heroes – modest, affable chaps – could have stayed there forever, coasting along most pleasantly. But what can one do? Such simple fun isn’t conducive to the rip-roaring travel anecdote; unfortunately no-one is interested in hearing about an agreeable afternoon spent in a nargileh cafe, whiling away the hours with a novel. You want the drama of catastrophe, tales of near (or, better still, actual) disaster. So reluctantly the pair dragged themselves out of their comfort zone, and headed forth to Ephesus.

Ephesus, now the scattered remains of a once-stunning classical city on the banks of the Aegean, has seen its fair share of cataclysmic ruin in its two and a half thousand year history. Today it’s a more sedate affair, especially in the winter when the tourist buses rolling in and out of the site are few and far between. The adjacent town of Selcuk is small and sleepy; any visitor looking for trouble here really has to go out of his way to find it.

Thankfully, find it our heroes did. Things began uneventfully enough, with a stroll into the nearby mountains. After negotiating their way – in no particular order – through an orange grove, an airstrip and several fields of cotton, all baking under the midday sun, the pair emerged high above the countryside. The views were awe-inspiring, a patchwork of gleaming ocean, dense forest and speckled stones, many of which made up the outer perimeter of the ancient walled city. Congratulating each other on their success, the intrepid couple boldly struck out amongst the clouds.

Looking back now, when the dust has settled on the whole affair – recriminations exhausted, horrors abated – it is hard to recall the first warning-signs. Certainly there was no panic when the sun began its graceful descent over the horizon several hours later; nor was there much consternation when the last sesame-seed husks had been washed down with the last dregs of water. After all, the lights of Selcuk were still faintly visible in the distance, and anyway, our two warriors were hardy souls, unperturbed by such irrelevancies as the onrushing blanket of darkness in the sky, or the lack of essential supplies in their bag.

What can be said with confidence is that by the time the first wolf howl echoed through the twilight peaks, our protagonists were experiencing their first wave of self-doubt. The rocky outposts that had been guiding their way back to civilisation suddenly looked confused; the acres of woodland that had looked picturesque when stretched out in every direction in the afternoon sunshine now appeared terrible and foreboding in the evening light. Thousands of metres in the air, miles from any other human life forms; our heroes shared their now-starlit prison with none save the small cluster of vultures circling them silently overhead.

At this point in proceedings, hero number one (for the sake of propriety he shall remain anonymous, known only as ‘JR’) decided that as the pair’s predicament (near-certain death by starvation and cold on a remote mountain-top) was not quite exciting enough, the most sensible way forward at this stage would be to resurrect his long-term knee complaint, which reduces this otherwise immaculate specimen of a man into a pale and fragile geriatric, incapable of taking more than a few steps an hour. This transformation was accompanied by an appropriately loud yelp of pain, which reverberated endlessly through the black valleys below.

Shivering and groping blindly through the darkness, hero number two briefly pondered abandoning hero number one to his fate. However he admirably rejected this course of action after realising that hero number one would be a useful source of meat or wolf bait as the hours dragged on. Our duo duly staggered on: lame, tired and hungry, fighting their way through thorny thickets, plunging off unseen parapets, they knew they were not long for this world.

In the end, it was two things that saved these young crusaders. One was an inner fortitude, obvious in both. No matter how icy the wind blew around them, or how terrifyingly the rocky slopes gave way under their weight, they retained a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts. The other was the discovery of a path down to the bottom. Thus did our two heroes emerge triumphantly back into the world of men, and thus does the epic of Ephesus end.

4pm photos

2008-02-14T11:50:00.000+02:00

Monday, Istanbul

Tuesday, Istanbul

Wednesday, Istanbul

Thursday, Istanbul

Friday, Istanbul

Saturday, Istanbul

Sunday, Sea of Marmara

Serbia writing on the web...

2008-02-09T15:04:00.000+02:00

Just in case you're eager for more of our insights into the political turmoil in Belgrade (or rather, more of the same), you can check out versions of our original article which have been published in the Guardian (British newspaper) and on Hackwriters (an international writers website).

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jack_shenker/2008/02/vote_of_self-confidence.html
http://www.hackwriters.com/SerbiaElects.htm

How we spent our last dinar: Election day looms in Belgrade

2008-02-02T00:54:00.000+02:00

Belgrade has straddled the border between East and West since the 4^th century, when the Roman Empire was torn apart by a schism that would last over a thousand years. Today the city’s fume-choked streets are bearing witness to another clash between Europe and Asia, as two opposing visions of Serbia’s future are placed before a volatile electorate. The outcome will have decisive ramifications, both local and global.

This, at least, is the angle taken by much of the Western media as Serbia goes to the polls this Sunday to elect its next president. Incumbent Boris Tadic, a pro-Western moderate feted as a progressive democrat by the West, is facing the hardline Serb nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, who is standing in for his party’s official leader, currently on trial for alleged war crimes in The Hague. Overshadowing the two contenders is the question of Kosovo’s independence, due to be announced unilaterally by the territory’s ethnic Albanian leadership within the next few weeks. Tadic preaches moderation and negotiation on this sensitive topic; Nikolic has promised not to “sit back” and let it happen and has threatened military intervention. No less important is the question of European integration, which has led to the EU and the USA virtually bankrolling Tadic’s campaign.

On the ground in the nation’s capital, where every inch of barren concrete is plastered with the candidates’ smiling faces, it is hard to argue with the notion that a fundamentally divided Serbian society is preparing to cast its ballot. But speak to those that will make the crucial decision – evening shoppers on Republic Square, students eating their lunch outside the university campus, or party activists cheering at the final rallies – and the picture becomes far more confused.

Take Alexandra Bozic. Four days before the poll, she found herself on the fringes of one of Tadic’s meticulously-planned, dramatically-executed public meetings at the heart of the city centre. A 19 year old, English-speaking student who dreams of hassle-free trips to Paris and London, she is the archetypal Democratic Party supporter, rejecting the narrow nationalism of the past and embracing a peaceful, neo-liberal Western future. But Alexandra hadn’t planned to be at this rally; she stumbled across it whilst shopping for shoes and is slightly nonplussed by the thunderous speakers and garish floodlights. “I don’t support anyone,” she declared stubbornly, wrinkling her nose at the East vs. West paradigm that is being tirelessly imposed on this country. “I will vote for Tadic on Sunday because I want easy travel to Europe, nothing more.” Those nearby echoed her apathy; Tadic is seen by many young people as tired and corrupt, but he represents their passport to modernity. Hence this reluctant band of democrats will back him on Sunday, not out of any deep-seated alignment with West over East, but rather out of self-centred necessity.

The same contradictions were on display a few miles across town, at the Belgrade Arena. In the city’s biggest venue, the Serbian Radical Party pulled out all the stops at the Nikolic rally. With folksongs celebrating Serbian Kosovo, thunderous chants of “Serbia, Serbia,” shaved heads aplenty, and beer flowing freely, it is easy to dismiss Nikolic support as a backwards-looking longing for ‘Greater Serbia’. Yet for many people present, Nikolic is first and foremost the non-Tadic: a promise of change and a break with a president perceived as crooked and unconcerned by the economic troubles of the ‘common man’. “Who doesn’t,” in the words of one anti-Tadic demonstrator “care about the Serbian woman, who is reduced to begging?” Some, like 54 year old, small-time entrepreneur Boris Ristic, stressed their admiration for Europe and their opposition to Milosevic, only to declare their support for Nikolic as the lesser of two evils.

Beyond the cynics and the sceptics, gloriously sandwiched in the middle of this bitter contest, lie the opportunists – as baffled by the militia-cap sporting Nikolic supporters and the bohemian-looking Tadic enthusiasts as they are excited by the financial possibilities these figures represent. One such character patrolled the corridors of the Belgrade Arena, flogging large clocks adorned with the hand-painted likeness of Nikolic set against the immutable borders of Greater Serbia. When these correspondents enquired as to whether the hands of the clock – set dramatically to five minutes before midnight – were a symbolic expression of the final hour of Serbian consciousness as election day looms, they were assured that, on the contrary, the batteries on the clock had merely run out and would be replaced shortly.

A far cry from the stereotypes proffered by many observers of this election, the real choice lies in the hands of the largely apathetic majority, concerned not with a fundamental struggle between East and West, but rather with the day to day minutiae of jobs and travel. The people of Belgrade are not divided into two irreconcilable camps; a vote for Nikolic is not a rejection of the West, nor is a vote for Tadic an unreserved endorsement of ‘modern’ European values. Whilst the rest of the world looks on, Serbians see this as primarily a vote about domestic politics; mundane or not, the world will have to live with the result.

By Jack and Josh.

Musings

2008-02-01T20:49:00.001+02:00

Prague seems to be turning into/back into? Vienna writ Czech. A city centre full of cafes harking back to a coffee house tradition now more concerned with the height of the whipped cream than any sort of bohemian dynamism. This does not detract from Prague’s undoubted beauty, vistas of alleyways and illuminated arches, balustrades, columns, breathtaking vistas from the Petrin, the Castle. Yet the city thus looked down upon seems at times strangely lifeless, bustling, but with nowhere to go, just tourists turning the same circles gazing wide-eyed and fresh-faced at a city that itself has become too fresh, too new; brightly painted facades replacing the layered whitewashes and crumbling stucco that made Prague, like Rome, a site of monumental, glorious decay and faded glory. I, for one, prefer my Empires a posteriori—or medium-rare.

These musings apply only to the city centre, searching for cafes and Zion in Zizkov and bits of the Kleinseite are quite a different affair: bohemian, at times gritty, small cafes and real people. Of course it is people like us, looking for the “real,” that lead every last corner of the city to be overrun by lonely-planet clutching backpackers, eager for “authentic” experience.

If Prague is turning into staid Vienna, then Budapest is moving out of the shadows of both. Too big and too alive to be run-over by tourists, it is a bustling, crumbling, grand, cool, ode to joy, where it is possible to wander for hours doing little more than wondering at Gruenderzeit and art nouveau facades, the monstrous, neo-gothic Parliament, the imposing, if slightly jumbled Basilica, the Opera, the castle, the churches, striking statues. Cafes in ruins, minimalist interiors in clubs like underground caverns, dramatic statues, the glorious, steaming baths...

Memory

2008-02-01T20:38:00.001+02:00

Memory is a tricky thing and that is all the more true for national memories, the constructed recollections of collectivities somehow to share a common fate, in which the depersonalized memories of defining moments—or rather those we have come to think of in that way—are collated into narratives of linear development, new beginnings, moments that shook the world or turned it upside down. “Where were you when you found out the second plane hit the World Trade Centre?”

The memorialisation of recent history in the countries we are passing through has been a persistent theme, watching the building of post-communist nations through contesting what communism meant. All this is discussed from my point of view, which should not be confused with any claim of “no point of view” objectivity. I hope the following won’t be monumentally boring. If it is, watch this space for a fast-paced article about a wild night of gonzo journalism covering the final rallies in the lead-up to the Serbian presidential elections.

The ramble of national narratives and sites of memorialisation began in Berlin at the recently opened Deutsches historisches Museum. The German national narrative showcased there is very much a product of 50 odd years of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung, strongly infused by western debates, intent on drawing a rich and varied image of the “national past,” with heroes whose shadowy sides are drawn out (Bismarck) and avoiding the temptation of mythologizing and externalising the Nazi past. Yet when it comes to Communism, it is a memory fixated on West Germany victorious against the East, of a united narrative divided where West Germany is the truer Germany.

In Prague there is no museum of national history, but Prague does boast a museum of Communism, a sad, misnamed private affair about the inter- and post-war history of the Czech Republic, devoid of any exhibits of note and illustrating a narrative cooked up by amateur historians attempting a desperate undergraduate all-nighter with scarcely Wikipedia for support. Keen to remember Marx as a “failed poet,” Lenin for being a German agent, and the 1948 communist victory to have been a result only of agitation and intimidation, it made up for its tendentious tone through its poor translations. In perhaps the only Central European country that had a strong domestic communist movement, the Museum is eager to remember Communism as a Soviet import, alien to Czech sensibilities.

The same externalisation is evident in Hungary, where the controversial terrorhaza is a celebration of victimisation. Commissioned by the centre-right government under Orbán and opened in December 2002, it is a memorial to Catholic memory triumphant. Sadly, the sculpture of Cardinal Mindszenty, martyred on the Cross of the Twentieth Century (a Swastika superimposed on a hammer and sickle), which most radically sums up the fundamental thesis of the Museum, is not yet on display there, to be found instead in the Budapest Basilica near St. Istvan’s shrivelled right hand. From the outset, the terrorhaza is eager to remember the Nazis as interchangeable with the domestic Arrow Cross movement and essentially identical to Soviet Communism. Both Fascism and Communism are portrayed as foreign imports and invasions, Hungary caught helpless between German and Soviet aggression. For a country with its own revisionist axes to grind after the Treaty Of Trianon and where the Arrow Cross movement was the second largest party in the 1939 elections, this is a daring line of argumentation. Thankfully, the national museum has a far subtler story to tell, yet it too has striking silences. The denial of any positive interaction and development under Ottoman rule (conveniently summed up as “150 years of destruction”), the stress placed on Hungary being pulled against its will into two world wars and the denial of any Hungarian agency under communism (aside from Imre Nagy, we hear very little about Hungarian communists) all seem oddly simplistic.

more 4pm-ish photos

2008-02-01T20:02:00.001+02:00

Saturday, Budapest, Maisha's apartment

Sunday, Budapest, Margaret Island

Monday, Budapest, National Gallery

Wednesday, Belgrade, Castle

Thursday, Belgrade, Tadic Rally

Friday, Sofia, Rila Monastery

On the perils of shoestring travel

2008-01-31T15:45:00.000+02:00

I hate to complain. After all, travelling on a budget – abandoning every last vestige of comfort and dignity, throwing yourself to the merciless winds of cheap supermarket leftovers and brothel/crack-den based accommodation – can be an endearing experience. Certainly, it beats cruising from one city to the next in air-conditioned, plexiglass opulence, dining on predictably fine food and wine and staying only in the most drearily luxurious of hotels. Yet as with all human beings, I have a tolerance threshold, and after recent events this threshold is rapidly in danger of being breached.

Do not think me some kind of thin-skinned, lily-livered moaning minnie. I said nothing when, rather than throw away the last few shavings of salami we had in our possession after a hearty Serbian breakfast, we hid them in a disused locker in the foyer of the Economics Faculty of the University of Belgrade, which was conveniently located nearby. Nor did I wrinkle my nose when we returned a day later to collect our package, by which point the corridors of this hallowed institution were smelling a tad pungent. And I emitted not a peep of discontent after a Belgrade barber, after an hour of careful attention to my scalp, left me looking like a young Bob Dylan who, somewhat improbably, had signed himself up as a cadre in the Serbian nationalist movement. Yes, I could have gone to a hairdresser whose English skills extended beyond the occasional muffled obscenity, but that would have cost at least two pounds more. So I was happy with my lot, despite the looks of contempt and horror I now receive when walking past young children on the streets.

No, my real concerns lie – as ever – with my travelling companion, whose fortitude and temperament are, sadly, no match for mine. I am fearful that the lack of creature comforts and enforced hardship our journey is inflicting upon us is beginning to addle his fragile mind. An isolated example: desperate to avoid spending any money on water whilst out and about, we generally carry around a bottle full of cloudy, chlorine-soaked tap swill with us to sate our thirst. To pass the time we are prone to throwing this bottle around in a playful manner, perhaps even attempting a few slightly audacious ‘tricks’ with it. Yesterday, however, in the midst of such japes, Josh proceeded – with no word of warning – to hurl this heavy bottle over the walls of the venerable ruined citadel that overlooks the city. There was no word of warning, only a grunt of mania. His victims included, but were not limited to, an elderly Serbian woman who was making her gentle way up the steps below us, and several local cats. At such moments of crisis, our true character shines through, and so it was with me. I did the honourable thing and hid behind a pillar whilst Josh attempted to reacquire the battled bottle and apologise to the now comatose grandmother.

Despite this early display of neurosis on Josh’s part, the alarm bells only really started ringing later that night. Once again in the interests of a healthy bank balance, we have turned our back on taxis, buses, trams and indeed any form of transportation that might involve handing over a few dinars. Instead we tend to let our feet do the work, which would be fine if we were equipped with either a map or a guidebook to direct us. Needless to say, these amenities have also been sacrificed on the altar of prudence. The result is that most nights we can be found, slightly drunk, wandering incomprehensibly through the dark suburbs of any number of central European cities, pleading in vain with passers-by for sympathy. To date, these nocturnal rambles have passed in thoughtful silence, each of us calmly brooding in our own private hells. Recently, however, Josh has begun to view these periods as an opportunity to showcase his not inconsiderable talents at gangsta rap. For those that know Josh, this may come as a surprise but I kid you not – there was more than one moment at 4am last night when I felt the physical and spiritual presence of Jay-Z beside me as we stumbled back from a club. The problems only arise in the presence of innocent bystanders that are helpfully telling us the way home. In such circumstances Josh generally feels it necessary not just to continue his lyrical odyssey, but to intensify it, with the result that the directions are regularly drowned out by strains of “99 problems”.

For all these reasons, I am reluctantly staging an intervention. The era of budget travel and second-rate hip-hop is over. Should anybody need to contact us, they will henceforth find us in the Presidential Suite of the Hilton-Marriott in Sofia.

2008-01-25T01:29:00.000+02:00

the old Euro City trains' compartments contain what can only be described as two long red high-backed benches, each scarcely twenty centimetres wide. They can be slept on, but not very well. My slightest movement or even the train accelerating invariably resulted in my sleeping-bag clad body rolling off the "seat" and onto the floor, where it landed with a painful thud. If falling to the floor punctuated my dozing in the eerie half light of the compartment and contributed to a growing certainty that the world was a horrible place, this insight was confirmed at 5:03 when the conductor entered the compartment, his face threateningly lit from below by the glow of his ticketing device. An unpleasantly high-pitched, whiny voice issued from the thin lips an unkind creator had streaked across his doughy face. The stream of Slovak, German and English words issuing from his mouth seemed to imply that we had done something horribly wrong. Our ticket wasn't valid. We had stumbled unwittingly onto the wrong train. We were lucky he didn't kill us on the spot, but we would have to transfer at 5:40 in Bratislava to the 8:43 train to Budapest. The small man grew increasingly agitated as he spoke and in his eyes glowed profound empathy with our unfortunate situation. When after a moment of silence he began speaking again, the sweet honey of temptation dripped from every word. If we paid him for an additional reservation to cover our Bratislava to Budapest journey in the train we were already on, this problem could easily be resolved. After angrily dismissing our suggestion that we pay him with the two beers we had bought in Prague, the conductor insisted we get off the train in Bratislava. Sleep deprived, ill tempered, we began packing and disembarked red-eyed, dry-skinned and cursing. In a moment of genius Jack set off on wild dash down the Bratislava station to a different part of the train where a kinder conductor welcomed us heartily. And so we arrived in Budapest.

The 4pm photo

2008-01-24T13:39:00.000+02:00

Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, every day. Almost.

Sunday, Dresden

Monday, Prague

Tuesday, Prague

Wednesday, Budapest

In search of Zion

2008-01-23T00:26:00.000+02:00

"(From the darkest corners of the web): Zion is the greenest, dirtiest, smallest, rasta-reggae bar this side of what once was the Iron Curtain. No place in Prague is smaller, more comfortable, more ratty, more personal, more rundown..."

Through book-dust and ivory
I went in search of Zion

Through eight by eight fields of marble
Where wizened warriors locked horns

Through silently mugged glances at fellow drinkers
Mazy tenticles groping their way
Across a cigarette haze dank with Leska

And up, up through Zizoskvy
Basking in the concrete-glow of cloud-dicing towers

Eyes poring, brain fumbling
Ligaments rubbered and taught
We pounded those streets.

Wading through urban jinns,
Hovering in pools of neon-shot blackness
Watching as we sought our own realities
Out of the old and the new
Jostling each other in the frost

Through silence and song
Through solitude and company
(But he was grizzled, and drunk, and lost)
Under stern balconies and winking balustrades

We only found a Zion-shaped hole
Shivering in the Vinohrady night

Prague. or: skillful nighttime illumination of monuments will invariably attract masses of offensive britons

2008-01-21T00:11:00.000+02:00

after Jack gracefully reduced the rich tapestry of our Berlin experiences to three commonplaces about Teutonic efficiency, militarism, kinky sex, and poor taste in music, I'll try to similarly encapsulate the first step of the journey for me.
The Brandenburg countryside unfolded dreamscapes of orange fields and purple broccoli trees through the strangely tinted window of our Euro-City: it began, the sky lourding low, weighing down forest and towns and electricity lines running overland along long cleared pathways, buzzing with the low hum of high voltage, powering our electric steam engine; twitching frog legs.
It's good to be on the road, beginning to trace our trail on an imagined map, red lines straight out of Indiana Jones criss-crossing terrain that blends from the familiar imperceptibly into the mysterious, undulations of unknown coastlines and towns bristling with consonants.
With Saxony came the hills, vineyards, baroque residences on hilltops overlooking terraced slopes, with Prague arrival in the industrial outliers of Holesovice.
Wearied by the last night's discussions with Polish dissidents in White Trash, the alarming lack of beautiful people in the Rote Salon, and the presence of Hackney youths in Berlin's seedier parks, Prague came on slowly like an energy saving lightbulb. After headcheese and pivo you find me typing here. \goodnight.

If we had push-pins...

2008-01-19T14:52:00.001+02:00

Berlin

2008-01-19T14:15:00.000+02:00

When a city so ruthlessly conforms to its own bone-weary stereotypes, the discerning travel writer is made somewhat redundant. All he can do is offer a few meaningful snapshots, couched in a haze of superfluous language. And so...

Prenzlauer Berg, Wednesday, 10pm

We begin our epic journey as we mean to go on: in a darkened alleyway, slammed up against the glass of a gloomily deserted cafe, being assiduously groped by several representatives of the local police force. The reason for our sudden incarceration in this godforsaken corner of the Holy Roman Empire is not clear, and – despite several stammered protestations as to my British nationality – no explanation seems to be forthcoming. Josh and his friend Mortiz, both being German natives, have the distinct advantage of being able to understand the chief police officer’s barked orders to us. I, in the meantime, basking in blissful ignorance of this most soft and loving of languages, am left trying to decipher our fate from the twisted expression on our captor’s face. He may have been reciting Disney quotations for all I know, but from the sounds of the words coming out of his mouth, a night in some hitherto anonymous Stasi torturing-chamber awaits us. After an overly-optimistic attempt at escape on my part ends in predictable humiliation, Moritz grudgingly hands over a pile of weed from his pocket to our uniformed friends. With smiles on our faces, a song in our hearts and a 24hr banning order from the local area in our pockets, we are sent on our merry way.

Mitte, Thursday 4am

My first real flirtation with the Berlin transport system ends acrimoniously. Night-buses in London are glorious affairs, crammed to the rafters with the dregs of society puking and shagging and shouting all over each other at the back, all riding for free because the terrified driver dare not step out of the safety of his glass capsule and challenge the outdated-travelcard wielding hordes. Moreover the night-bus connoisseur, once aboard the vehicle, is assured of a refreshingly swift journey home, as a minimum speed of 60mph is assiduously observed by the aforementioned terrified driver, desperate to get home as quickly as possible. Sadly, early morning travel in Germany is of an altogether different hue. Immaculate double-deckers glide seamlessly across autobahns, radiating order and cleanliness; unshakeably methodical metro trains criss-cross the city powered by little more than their own sense of insufferable rectitude. We board a bus home; with empty streets around us, by any normal measure of common sense it should take us no more than twenty minutes to complete the journey. But this is a land where common sense has become bastardised by rule-making. And the rules in this case state that, as the bus timetable stipulates a daytime journey on this bus should normally take an hour (due to the traffic), a journey at night must do exactly the same, even though the roads are now devoid of traffic. Accordingly we crawl our way from bus stop to bus stop, slavishly waiting for several minutes at each, staring groggily at the completely deserted vista around us, at the mercy of a driver intent on making his own personal contribution to the regulated discipline of the Fourth Reich. It makes one long for the N73 from Tottenham Court Road.

Kreuzberg, Friday, 1am

With twenty minutes to spare before the dreaded night-bus returns to ruin my mood for the second consecutive night, we retire to the reassuring climes of a nearby bar. It is not our wisest decision. Although the vast numbers of vampire and ghoul-like plastic sculptures littering the doorway should have set alarm-bells ringing, the first real harbinger of the terrors to come is the lifesize painting hanging on the far wall of the establishment, which features what appears to be some sort of troll, giving a blow-job to what appears to be some sort of motorcycle-riding lizard. Mildly concerned, we retreat with our beers to the safety of the pool room, to pass our time in wholesome fun. It quickly emerges, however, that for the punters of this particular watering-hole, the dusty pool table is not the key attraction of the pool room. That honour belongs to the benches around us, which are at present occupied by two hideous-looking leather-clad individuals having sex. Upon our entrance, the pair considerately remove themselves to the toilets and resume normal service in there. Our game of pool is played with haste.

Police brutality, excruciatingly painstaking efficiency, Goth-fuelled orgies. It’s everything I expected and feared. Bring on the next stop.