I don't care what the police report says...

I have no idea how that fire in the library got started. Kidding. Thanks to everyone who attended "An Evening With AMP". We had ~30 in attendance and I didn't hear any snoring so I think everyone enjoyed it.

Postponed...

"An Evening With AMP" has been postponed due to the snowstorm and will be rescheduled, likely in early January.

My bad...

I have been informed that the Belgrade Public Library does not actually serve drinks and doesn't even have a liquor license. Therefore, alcoholic beverages will, regrettably, be unavailable during "An Evening With AMP". Honestly, sometimes I wonder what my taxes are actually paying for...I will try to be entertaining nevertheless so come see the show anyway...

-AMP

FRIDAY! FRIDAY! FRIDAY!

Marmot Power Productions Presents...

"An Evening With AMP"


Live from the Belgrade Public Library at the Center
for All Seasons in scenic Belgrade Lakes.

Friday, December 9th at 7:00PM AMP will present a selection of his travel photos and discuss his trip. One night only!! Tickets available at the box office on the night of the show.

No Cover Charge! (Two drink minimum...)

Free Parking!

Proper Attire Required.

My travel photos are now online

Photos from my trip are here, linked from my main travel site (still under construction and mostly intended for my own personal use but I've put it online for your bemusement...) I've removed a handful of photos either because a) I wanted to protect the subjects' privacy for various reasons, or, more frequently b) they were particularly stupid looking photos of me that my traveling companions at the time insisted on taking, usually over my objections...

Billions and billions 3093

It only seems like I took several billion pictures on this trip but the actual number is 3093. Ask me how I know... I am about 1/3 done renaming the photo files and about 1/4 done putting them all into photo galleries and about 0% done writing the captions. While you're waiting for my epic transcontinental narrative to appear go read my friends Kevin and Solenes' travel blog. It's bilingual and everything!

-AMP, experiencing mild carpal tunnel syndrome from renumbering all his pictures...

Home

So I'm finally home after an epic slog comprising 2 days on the train through Western Europe (Barcelona to Lyon and Lyon to Frankfurt), the ~7 hour flight from Frankfurt to Montreal and finally the ~8 hour drive from Montreal to (central Maine). I've spent today unpacking, burning the rest of my photos to CD, cleaning my pack, screwing around with Blogger and RSS, and just generally recovering. I'm happy to stop moving.. It's cold and really rainy here in Maine, but as I spent many days sweltering in the heat this summer I'm going to enjoy being cold for a while. Once the jet lag has worn off and I have had a few days to reflect on my (mis) adventures I will start rewriting and reorganizing the blog, that is if I can make any sense of the 360 kB of notes I took on my PDA.

I'm pretty pleased with myself and have sated my wanderlust (for now -I figure the satiety will last about a month...) I visited11 new countries (the Vatican does so count as a country!) and I got to see several places like Svaneti and Nagorno-Karabakh that are well off the beaten path for most travelers. Over 5 months I managed to avoid any serious mishaps and I only lost two items, my Leatherman Pocket Tool which I either left in Georgia or was stolen by the Baku Metro Police (I suspect the latter but can't prove it...) and a gray t-shirt from Armenia which I left behind in Gibraltar - one of the Barbary apes is probably wearing it by now...

The highlights of the trip were definitely Turkey and Georgia. I liked Armenia and would visit it again but it wasn't quite as compelling as Georgia, N-K notwithstanding. Morocco was interesting but next time I would like to get further into the Sahara or the Atlas mountains, and my lack of language skills in Morocco meant I didn't have as rich an experience as I did in Turkey or the Caucasus. I also found most Moroccans relatively indifferent to travelers which is probably because they get so many tourists from France. Italy (Rome) and Spain were interesting but I think it would have been more fun to travel in those countries with someone else, and in those places I mostly just saw the things I wanted to see and didn't have as many (mis) adventures. Western Europe is so touristy and easy to travel in that I found it a bit...dull at times, despite all the cool architecture. The big disappointment was obviously Azerbaijan but I will give it another chance in 5-7 years to see if the petty corruption and government suspicion have dissipated.

I'm still pissed off about the whole Iran visa thing... (although I suppose I can't complain too much because if I'd gone to Iran I wouldn't have been on that bus from Ankara to Istanbul...)

Barcelona

So I´m in Barcalounger, Barcelona (I´ll be recovering on the Barcalounger in a few days...) The city is larger than I thought it would be and it has a sprawling metro and tram system which makes it easy to get to all the cool and bizarre architecture by Gaudi. Yesterday I visited the iconic La Sagrada Familia, his ginormous modernist cathedral which was started in 1882 and is only about 50% finished. Orwell thought it was hideous and in Homage to Catalonia (which you should read if you haven´t, as it´s a much more important book than 1984 or Animal Farm...) lamented the fact that it wasn´t destroyed in the Spanish Civil War but I thought it was cool. Today I saw La Pedrera and Parc Guell, the latter distinguished by Gaudi´s giant mosaic chameleon. This evening I also poked my head into Barcelona´s huge gothic cathedral, which for some reason houses a bunch of noisy white geese. I´m not entirely sure what I´ll be seeing tomorrow although there are several more Gaudi buildings that are worth exploring, such as Casa Batllo. Why don´t we have cool looking buildings like that in America?

Andalusia

Keeping with my vague travel theme of Moorish culture, I´m in Andalusia (Granada, at this particular moment...) after having crossed over from Morocco on the ferry from Tangier to Algeciras (which I quickly learned is pronounced like and means the same thing as "Al-Jazeeras", Arabic for peninsula). I spent a night in Gibraltar, which was a bit surreal in its tidy Britishness after the relative chaos of Tangier. The highlight of Gibraltar was seeing the Barbary Apes (actually macaqes, not apes) which pretty much have the run of the entire upper mountain and which are the only wild non-human primates in Europe.

In Andalusia they grow some cotton in the flatter areas but the primary agricultural product is olives. Lots and lots of olives. There are millions billions and billions of olive trees in tidy rows on the hills. In Andalusia I have travelled to Seville, Cordoba, and Granada. In Seville I saw the ginormous gothic cathedral, as well as the Alcazar, a Moorish palace. In Cordoba I had a mild cold for about 36 hours so I wasn´t feeling very energetic but I went to see the huge Mezquita mosque with its very cool red and white striped arches. Here in Granada I got myself out of bed very early to see the famous Alhambra Palace, (it was still dark when I got to the entrance gate and already there were about 200 people in front of me waiting to get in...) The interior architecture and decoration of the Alcazar in Seville and the palace at the Alhambra are very similar to that found in the palaces in the imperial cities in Morocco (Fes, Meknes, and Marrakesh) - very impressive but becoming somewhat repetitive at this point, although I can see how people who had never been to Morocco would be impressed with them. I was really amazed at the Mezquita in Cordoba, however. It was a huge mosque to begin with and then after they reconquered Cordoba the Christians went and stuck a cathedral in the middle of it while leaving most of the mosque intact - bizarre....

Spain is (more or less) interesting and easy to travel in, although I have to say my energy is waning at this point. I´m heading to Valencia tomorrow and then on to Barcelona, where I am looking forward to seeing all of Gaudi´s kookiness. Then I´ll sprint across France and back to Frankfurt, whence I will fly home. (And yes, then I will be rewriting the entire blog in excrutiating day-by-day detail complete with pictures, thousands and thousands of pictures, although probably not very many of me, so Don´t Get Excited...) (Unfamiliar with Graham Parker? What the hell is wrong with you?!!)

Morocco: miscellana

I'm in Chefchaouen which is a small city in the Rif Mountains. The terrain in the other parts of Morocco I've visited is mostly treeless except for occasional orchards and shrubs - a lot of stubbly fields and, um, dirt, so it's nice to be a heavily forested area for the first time in a while. I'm here for one night before heading to Tangier tomorrow. Since my last update I've been to the following places: Rabat was suprisingly interesting - I ran around all day and just barely got to see everything I wanted to. Meknes was worth a stop but not very compelling compared to the other imperial cities - I spent most of my time doing laundry and following the Patriots-Steelers game from an internet cafe. When I was in Meknes the king was in town, so there was a lot of security everywhere - on the main street of the medina section there were police officers spaced every 20 feet. I note that I wandered around unmolested with no security hassles, in stark contrast to my experiencess in a certain Caucasian nation I could mention with an extremely uptight government, whose humorless, navel-gazing citizens continue to make impolite, if revealing, remarks in my comments section. In Fes I actually hired a faux guide (an acquaintance of the people I stayed with) to lead me around the labyrinthine medina so I could actually see the highlights without wasting half the day trying to find them. I could have probably spent another day there but I've had about enough of medinas for now - they tend to make me a bit claustrophobic and I can only endure so much trudging around, dodging donkeys, touts, and pedestrians, and gawking at exotic foods, spices, and crafts before I find myself wishing I was somwhere quiet and calm.

Morocco has been interesting and I'd like to come back in a few years to do some treking in the Atlas Mountains and head down into the Sahara desert and through Western Sahara into Mauritania, but I've seen about enough of it for now. The parts I've seen don't have as interesting terrain as Turkey does, and the cities are becoming repetitive. Turkey had more interesting and better preserved architecture and monuments, and unfortunately in Morocco you can't visit most of the mosques (which is the case in most Muslim countries I think, Turkey being a notable exception). (Note to the Muslim world - the rest of us might be a little more sympathetic and interested in understanding your religion if you'd cut us some slack and let us visit your mosques when it's not time for prayer...)

I'm looking forward to Spain, and hopefully my ATM card will decide to start working again as it has refused to give me any money when challenged with Morocco's third world ok fine second-world banking system.

Marrakesh

After spending yesterday in Essaouira I am now in Marrakesh. Essaouira was pleasant enough -it's a resort town which attracts a lot of surfers and para-sailers. I spent part of yesterday walking along the beach and soaking my feet in the Atlantic Ocean. This morning I took the bus to Marrakesh (having the stupid Graham Nash song in my head the entire way...) I have to say that bus travel in Morocco is nowhere near as efficient or pleasant as it is in Turkey, no tea service and the bus companies don't seem to be very well organized. The buses don't necessarily leave on time, and often there aren't assigned seats. This morning I was booked for a 10:30 bus and I snuck onto the 9:15 one - the ticket guy didn't seem to care either way and we left at 9:50 so I managed to split the difference. I'm eating reasonably well in Morocco and I am enjoying the change in cuisine from Turkish/Caucasian food and the surfeit of gelato and mozzarella in Rome, but I rather prefer Turkish black tea to Moroccan mint tea which is served too sweet. And I make a better couscous (which some of you have been lucky enough to experience...) than any I've eaten here...

Marrakesh is sufficiently exotic to entertain me for a few days but it's not as exotic or overwhelming as I thought it would be (at least not right now - I may change my story tomorrow when I'm craving silence and personal space after spending all day in the souks...) I'm staying in the medina area, in the the Djemma el Fna, which is a large square surrounded by markets and souks. In the evening it turns into a gi-normous open air bizarre bazaar with juice carts, food stalls, street musicians, acrobats, storytellers, henna artists, and snake "charmers" who serenade lethargic cobras and adders. In the souks and markets there are all sorts of goods for sale including spices of every kind (most of which I can't begin to identify), leather goods, perfume, incense, jewelry, rugs and carpets, cloth, wood carvings, metalwork, etc., as well as lizards and turtles which are apparently used in certain medicinal applications. It gets crowded in the evening and one has to be alert not to get run over by people on bicycles or scooters.

Morocco has considerable poverty and un/underemployment and along with blind and crippled beggars there are many touts who try to cadge money for providing trivial services like pointing out the hotel 10 meters down the street whose sign you can obviously see with your own eyes. Some are freelancers hoping for a quick handout - I saw one get verbally abused and nearly beaten by the hotel desk clerk today, while others work actually work for the hotel and get a comission for every tourist they bring in, which doesn't stop them from asking you for a tip as well, so they're getting paid on both ends.

Both Essaouira and Marrakesh are crawling with tourists/travelers (and yes, I'm one of the latter...), most of whom are French, which reduces the exoticism/novelty of Morocco for me somewhat, but in addition to the markets and souks it's interesting to see the different types of clothing worn in the street by native Moroccans. The younger people tend to wear pseudo-western clothing (jeans, t-shirts, slacks, etc.) but middle aged and older people often wear more traditional dress including long loose-fitting things (I forgot what these are called) that sort of look like bathrobes or lab coats (or, less charitably, the garments worn by residents of mental institutions), or burnooses, which are cloaks with pointy hoods that look like the costumes used in Lord of the Rings. Many of the older men wear turbans or skull caps, and many women wear the hijab, some with face covered with a niqab, which is rare in most parts of Turkey. However many women, especially younger women, do not wear any head covering at all.

So anyway, Morocco is holding my interest for now, but as I can't speak more than 3 words of Arabic and only know survival French (most notably "non", as in "Non, merci", I don't need your help and I don't have any spare change to give you anyway so please go away...), my interactions with Moroccans are limited, which is unfortunate. On the whole I think I like Turkey better and all things being equal would rather be in Istanbul at the moment...

Casablanca

Marmot Power would like to take the opportunity to say hello to doctoral candidates at Marmara University who are hopefully getting their publications written.

Today I flew to Casablanca from Rome - so far it's interesting but Casablanca itself doesn't have a lot to see compared with the rest of Morocco and it's reasonably cosmopolitan. Nevertheless I have walked around downtown and the medina today - not too many touts or hassles but no doubt they will be worse elsewhere. I know all of two words of Arabic and about a dozen useful phrases in French so extensive communication with the locals is pretty much out the window. Casa is a bit grungier and more "exotic" than the average Turkish city but not particularly overwhelming, although it took me a while to get to my hotel due to poor street signage and Lonely Planet's criminally inept cartography. (My pack is getting heavier these days...) Anyway - I'm in Casa for another day, then down to Essaouira and Marrakesh before heading back north. Trying to type on this stupid French/Arabic keyboard which has 25% of the letters in different places is driving me crazy so enough for now.

Rome II

(Note my impressive mastery of Roman numerals in the post title...)

For anyone visiting Rome for the first time, I think the best thing to do is just wander around randomly, fortified by generous amounts of gelatto. There's so much cool stuff to look at that if you follow any street you're pretty much guaranteed to wander into some palazzo or piazza with some kind of spectacular architectural thingy, be it a cathedral, fountain, or just interesting building facades. Speaking of architecture, I know a lot of things about a lot of things that are worth knowing about, but being in a city like Rome makes me realize how little I actually know about architecture. I don't know the difference between a plinth and a portico, so someday I should probably take my head out of my apse (sorry...) and learn some basic architectural terms. My friends over at Fragrant Vagrants (hi Kevin and Solene!!!) are both architects so they probably appreciated Rome on a much more refined level than I can, I just like looking at all the cool buildings.

Other Roman miscellana: I forgot to mention yesterday that I hadn't been off the train from the airport for more than 30 seconds when I saw a young Italian couple engaged in one of those crotch-grinding, ass-grabbing displays of public affection that are so stereotypically Italian, so I had to laugh.

The future of urban motor transport can be seen in Rome where half the population goes around on motor scooters or smaller motorcycles (bigger than mopeds, smaller than a Harley-Davidson). When gas hits $5.00 a gallon, and it will, I suspect we'll start seeing a lot more of them in dense urban areas in America - they are fast and easy to park and in here in Rome one sees them being ridden by people in formal business attire to commute to and from work.

Today I wandered over to the Vatican (shut up, it does so count as a new country!) to see St. Peter's Basilica, which is gi-normous. There's a lot of (that fancy architectural stuff that I don't have the vocabulary to describe) inside - lots of carved marble and mosaics and paintings. It's a bit much in my opinion, if I was trying to worship there I think I'd get distracted and visually overstimulated. In this regard I rather prefer mosques which usually strike a more sensible balance between austerity and decoration. I hauled myself up to the cupola, from which there are nice views of the rest of the Vatican and Rome, but it was crowded with tourists so I didn't linger there. The Basilica is in St. Peter's Square, which is bounded by two huge arcs of columns supporting a roof thingy with statues on top, again impressive to look at but a bit over the top. Tomorrow I'm going to try to get in to see the Cysteine Sistine Chapel (so very, very sorry...) and after that I'm not sure - maybe a museum or maybe I'll just wander around some more.

I was hoping for a private audience with the new pope so I could talk some sense into him regarding birth control and the whole therapeutic cloning thing, but he wasn't in. Hopefully his people will call my people and we'll do lunch before I have to leave Rome...

Other things I saw today included the Spanish Steps, the Largo di Torre Argentina, which is basically a large cat sanctuary - there were dozens, if not hundreds of cats lounging around on the ancient ruins, the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli i dei Martiri, and, um, some other interesting church which I can no longer find on the cartographical nightmare that Lonely Planet calls a city map. Plus half a dozen other piazzas with interesting buildings that I couldn't begin to identify.

Ok, the free cappuccino kindly provided by the nice lady who runs the internet cafe I'm at is wearing off so enough for now.

-AMP

Rome

Marmot Power extends a warm welcome to all new readers on the staff of Yeditepe University in Istanbul :-)

So I've left Turkey for good this time (at least until I return there someday...) I spent about 55 days there and I saw a huge swath of the country, and I think I had a pretty good exposue to Turkish people and Turkish culture - by the time I got back from the Caucasus travelling in Turkey was second nature to me and I felt quite comfortable there. I was a bit sad to leave for several reasons...

I'm now in Rome, where I am going to crash for a few days before heading on to Morocco and then back through Spain. I flew Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to Rome and I have to say that their service on the two hour flight was probably better than you would get on any American airline flying from Boston to San Francisco. After I got in today I walked around a bit. There may be a few actual Italians living in Rome, but I haven't seen many of them for all the tourist/traveller hordes (of which I am one...) The Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II is...well it's big. And ornate. Big and ornate. It's not a subtle, understated edifice. The Colosseum needs cleaning and looks smaller in real life than it does in pictures (a lot of famous monuments are like that, Mount Rushmore, for example...) The Trevi Fountain was cool (to look at - I didn't actually splash around in it as I suspect they frown on that sort of thing...) Tomorrow I'm heading over to the Vatican (which counts as another country visited as they actually have a seat at the UN, although they don't get to vote...)

-AMP

P.S. My Iranian travel company today emailed me to tell me that they had successfully gotten other Americans visas so the Iranian Foreign Ministry specifically rejected ME (although I was not told the specific reason why...) Maybe it was my passport picture - the "beardo" look has been drawing scrutiny from confused immigration officials all summer. Or maybe they felt that my doctoral thesis on budding yeast made me a likely threat to state security. Feh - that's what I get for being truthful - the next time I apply for an Iranian visa I am just going to lie shamelessly.

Westward to Barbary

(Much swearing edited out although the other patrons of this internet cafe got to hear it...) Damn it...I just found out (four months later) that my Iranian visa application got rejected. I'm not surprised, just really disappointed as I was hoping to finish my trip there. Oh well, I will get there someday, maybe when both our respective governments start acting like adults towards each other. I'm trying to get some more info from the Iranian travel company about why I was rejected, whether it was something specific about my application (I had to send them a resume) or whether Iran is simply rejecting all American visa application requests this time (I have heard anecdotal evidence from other travellers this summer that suggests this might be the case...)

So on to Plan B - which is Westwards to Barbary. [sulk] I bet the Iranian Foreign Ministry would have given a visa to Robert D. Kaplan [/sulk]. I'm heading back to Istanbul, and from there I will somehow get myself up to Italy, probably on a ferry across the Adriatic from Greece. Then I'll fly to Morocco and spend two weeks there, crossing over to Western Europe at Gibralter and focusing on Islamic Spain as I make my way back to Frankfort.

-AMP, in Amasya (an entirely pleasant little Anatolian town) trying to convince himself that Andorra will be just as cool as Isfahan would have been...