The Two Towers

"Its snowing in Forli," my roommate said, with some surprise. We were standing in our kitchen making lunch, with the tv news on in the background. Forli is about forty minutes from here, farther south and closer to the Adriatic. If it was snowing there, surely it wouldn't be long before the storm reached Bologna.

I'd just finished the last of my exams. The wonderful but nerve-wracking thing about Italian oral exams is that the professor "verbalizes" the grade - i.e. tells you what it is immediately. "26 [of 30]. No wait, if you can tell me how Liszt is related to programmatic music, I'll give 27," to quote my music professor. The point being, I already knew I'd passed everything. I had four days left in Italy, and I didn't have to spend them in my room drinking gallons (liters?) of tea and trying to memorize the entire history of Latin America. What could I do with my freedom?

Washing up, I glanced out the window. Snow. Absolutely no doubt about it. Snow!  "Giulia, sta nevicando! [its snowing]" "Grazie, Anna," my roommate laughed at me, but I didn't care. I wanted to immediately run outside, like a five year old, and spin around in circles in the courtyard.

By the time I'd found my gloves and got outside, though, the sun was back out. But there was just the fainted coating of snow on the cars in the street. I decided there couldn't be a better moment to do the most touristy thing Bologna had to offer. Though I've been here three and a half months, I still hadn't climbed the tower. Le Due Torri, or the two towers, are at the heart of Bologna, and I walked past them almost everyday, but I had never been to the top.

the Torre strung with Christmas Lights

There is a superstition that if a student climbs to the top before they have finished their studies, they won't graduate. Now, I don't usually believe in this kind of thing - I'm pretty sure I stepped on all the "stones one is never supposed to step on" at Yale in the first week of class, before I knew any better (though if I somehow flunk out in my senior year, we'll know why). Nonetheless, I had waited, but now that I was finished with the exams, there was nothing to hold me back.

I'm actually so glad I chose today. Not only did the city look breathtaking with the snow on the roofs, the view was better with familiarity. I could pick out all the streets and buildings I walk by, and even see the smoke rising from the chimney of my palazzo. It was a perfect way to realize just how much I have come to know the city, at the same time that I couldn't believe I'd never seen it from this vantage before. It was truly saving the best for last.

ancient wooden stairs, going up, and up, and up...

Shadow of the tower, and the snow clouds heading north

Piazza Maggiore and San Luca on the hilltop

Bologna la Rossa

Patriotism and Pronouns

Warning: this post may be overly influenced by having read too many essays about constructivism and discourse analysis on too few hours of sleep.

Today I survived the first in a series of end-of-term ordeals: an oral presentation, in front of my entire class, in Italian. Though my attempt to produce an analysis of the European Security and Defense Policy was dogged by many errors of grammar and phrasing, the biggest problem wasn't on account of the language barrier. Actually, I found myself hesitating about how describe Americans - specifically, with which pronoun.

It drove home the point that I was a foreigner, the only non-European in a class on European international relations. Normally I would have said "we provide leadership in NATO" without a second thought, but in this context, there was no "we", only "me" (alone, being judged....cue the gibbering). I certainly wouldn't want to imply personally responsibility for the actions of my government by saying "we", particularly when talking about policies I don't necessarily support. I don't accept it when non-Americans tell me, "you invaded Iraq". No, I didn't: I was 13 at the time, not that it stopped me from protesting angrily.

All the same, it felt wrong to say "they", like it was somehow disloyal, as well as dishonest, to turn my own nation into the Other. What a complicated thing patriotism is! In the end I ducked the tricky questions of collective responsibility by just saying "America" and "it". With that distance in my pronouns I could position myself in a neutral space, belonging to no nation. That's how I feel a lot of the time in Italy - like a citizen of the world, neither native nor foreign. Yet at the same time I never feel so American as when I am abroad. I love and appreciate America more when confronted with the alternatives, but that doesn't mean that all of the comparisons are favorable. I don't wish to be held to account for the actions of my country, perhaps because I already hold myself responsible for everything I would like my country to be. It is the part of me that reflexively wants to say "we". That sense of duty, more than any sense of superiority, tells me that I am a patriot. 

 I've got two more oral exams left, and one written one, but I'm going to celebrate my Americanness by procrastinating and watching How I Met Your Mother. 

Creative Protests

This is one of the best posters I've seen from the anti-Gelmini protests (see my previous post). At the top it says, "We attack the profits/ we gain (our) rights." Then below: "There is money for the University... guess who has it?" The answer, clearly, is Berlusconi and his friends, who are constantly under attack for corruption and cronyism. I love the image of the little fish banding together to eat the big one. It's a classic leftist argument - that there isn't actually a crisis of public funding that requires cuts to services, but the misuse of public funds by mogul-politicians who encourage businesses to avoid paying taxes. Italy does have a growing debt crisis, and does desperately need reform - but that doesn't stop this kind of populism from also being true.

This is a photo I took of another demonstration in Bologna. These protesters are wearing placards made to look like the traditional Italian death announcements, but that read "RIP the Public University".

My absolute favorite banner, though, is this one, protesting Gelmini's cuts to research funding. I saw this online, so I'm not sure what city its from. The banner tells the balding Prime Minister:

BERLUSCONI

If you have any hair

Its only thanks to the research

"Stay on the barricades for a real education"

Taking to the streets, Via Zamboni

I was sitting in class when I first heard the shouts from the courtyard below. A young man with dreadlocks and a bullhorn strode into the lecture hall, opened a window and shouted down "Come up." Within moments, the room had been taken over by more than one hundred student protesters. My professor made no fuss, simply gathered up his notes and sat down in the front row to see what would happen next. The dreadlocked student went up to the microphone. "Prodi thinks he'll be speaking here," he said, referring to the former Italian Prime Minister, scheduled to deliver a lecture from that podium later in the day, "That's what he thinks, but he's not going to be able to do it now." The occupation of the university had begun.

I wrote about the Gelmini reform (named for the sponsoring minister, one of Berlusconi's beautiful young hench-women) in my post on the strike at the beginning of October. On November 30th, the legislation passed in parliament, and in the days leading up to and now following the vote, the educational system went into revolt. Students occupied the Colleseum and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and high schoolers went on strike and took to the streets. The clashes with the police at one protest in Bologna even made the cover of the New York Times (which itself was reported as news on Italian tv). In the political science department, the front gates are drapped with banners, and a desk has been pulled across the entry. Graffiti read, "Stay on the barricades for a real education". Inside its mostly quiet - a few classes still go on, though with fewer students - and the rigged-up speaker system was playing "What If God Were One of Us?", not the most raucous protest anthem. Nonetheless, my classroom that was taken over on Tuesday is still full of sleeping students, and the professor didn't even try to hold lessons for the rest of the week.

My Italian friends are mostly taking a passive role in all of this, but they accept it as normal and legitimate. As an American, though, I can't quite wrap my head around it. I've tried to explain to my friends that we just don't have protests like this. But then how do you make it known when you don't like something, they ask. How do you protest if you don't take to the streets? That's the response I've gotten from everyone, even my friend who just finished his service in the police. When I stop to think about it, its a perfectly reasonable question. Why don't Americans, and American students in particular, ever protest? In the 60s and 70s, American students occupied their universities just like their compatriots in Europe did. Why does it seem so inconceivable now?

One of my professors tried to explain the disparity by reference to the Turner Thesis, (bringing back my memories of cramming for the AP US History exam). Turner argued that the western frontier, and later the idea of mobility that it created in the American imagination, served as an escape valve for social tensions. Unions are weaker in America than in many European countries, my professor proposed, precisely because there is often the sense that rather than staying and fighting to improve conditions, one can always move on and try one's luck elsewhere. Its a classic example of Hirschman's exit/voice correlation - in Italy, the relative lack of class mobility means that its easier to organize collective action around class-based issues. The lack of alternatives to the public university system means that students are willing to fight to preserve its functioning and affordability.

All this makes me wonder if the American perception of opportunity and mobility at times holds us back from seeking real change. I wouldn't want to give it up: the persistence of the American Dream allows our country to continue to reinvent itself; neither do I mean to say that class conflict is a good thing. There's a trade-off between quality and equality, and a reason that the top American universities surpass most European ones. Yet in Italy, university is nearly free: with fees, it might cost at most 1,000 Euros a year, while Yale charges $53,000 and even public universities costs are in the tens of thousands. After Gelmini, Italian universities will be a little poorer, a little less accessible, a little less able to compete globally. But they will still cost much, much less than American ones.

My mother had another explanation for why her generation was willing to protest against the Vietnam war, while my generation hasn't mobilized against Iraq and Afghanistan: the draft. Today, without the threat to make us feel personally involved, its hard to get worked up. Its also been said that young people today aren't apathetic, but post-partisan, that our support for Obama showed that we are more interested in cooperation than confrontation. However, Obama's struggles have shown some of the limits of this type of approach. Access to higher education is an issue of immediate importance to college students. Maybe we should take a little inspiration from our European friends - we don't have to take to the streets, but we could at least speak up to defend our own interests.

And on the 25th day of November, I slip into a food coma and die happy

Normal Italy is good (or bad) enough, but a day that combines Thanksgiving with a city-wide chocolate festival? That should be illegal. On Thursday Piazza Maggiore was crowded with rows of artiginal chocolate shops from all over Italy. There was even one from Belgium. I  saw shoes and scissors and teacups made of chocolate, chocolate "salami" and "cheese"and "kebabs", even a three-foot-long chocolate crocodile. The only thing missing was a good cup of hot chocolate (cioccolatto caldo is more like pudding). I ate the world's biggest truffle - honestly, it was the size of a baseball, and was on a skewer.

The whole day was really like having my holidays backwards: Valentine's Day followed by Christmas and Thanksgiving. This week also marked the beginning of the Christmas season, as the lights started to go up on the shopping streets, and the large church next to the Poli Sci building opened a street fair selling nougat and ornaments and scarves. In America, I hate the consumerism that makes the holiday season start earlier and earlier each year, but without malls or endless repetitions of "Santa Baby", I'm starting to remember how nice it can be.

Thanksgiving of course isn't an Italian holiday, but my program nicely organized dinner in a restaurant for us and our Italian roommates. The Italians may have been more excited than the Americans - like cheerleaders and football, Thanksgiving is one of the things that American movies and TV have shown to the world, but no one quite believes exists in reality. As might be expected, once the Italians got behind the idea, the trattoria managed to cook the best, juiciest turkey I've ever eaten. It wasn't an authentic meal - no cranberries, no mashed potatoes, no pumpkin pie - and the first course was pasta, but it was delicious, and we ate ourselves into a respectable tryptophan-induced stupor.

It was strange to celebrate Thanksgiving away from home for the first time, but this weekend it truly sunk in that I only have three weeks left in Italy, and then this extended adventure will be over. I'll be home in Maine for Christmas, but until then, I can walk home in Bologna, with the snow turning to slush on the cobble stones and the Due Torre covered in strings of golden lights. I'm sad to leave and happy to go -but that's the way its supposed to be.

The professors go on strike; I go to Slovenia

This is being posted a bit late, but Rob kindly produced the necessary photo accompaniment!

Here's a reason to be grateful for the Italian budget crisis. With half the faculty at the University of Bologna on strike to protest a controversial law that would slash funding for the universities, I found myself at the beginning of October with no classes to go to, and an unexpected last week of extended summer vacation. I had been getting itchy feet from staying in one place, and this was the perfect opportunity to take a longer trip. Slovenia was less of a random choice than it might appear. The only surprise is that more people don't go: its easily accesible by train from Italy, yet has a completely different  language, a beautiful landscape and an intriguing culture.

My friend Rob and I started with an afternoon train to Trieste. The upper part of the Adriatic is so tranquil that the clear blue water meets the edge of the land without any barrier. Its possible to sit in the main piazza with the Baroque town hall behind you, and dangle your feet in the ocean a mere step down.  A few minutes walk from our hostel, Castello Miramare, built as a honeymoon getaway for the Hapsburg emperor, is now a charming, slightly overgrown, public park. I felt like I had wandered into a Maxfield Parish Painting, or maybe just Enchanted April.

 There is no direct connection from Trieste to Slovenia, so the plan was to take Italian trains as far as Gorizia, cross into Slovenia, and then pick up another train that would take us into the Julian Alps. The divided town of Gorizia/Nova Gorica was a Cold War frontier (Winston Churchill famously said that the Iron Curtain stretched across Europe, "from Danzig to Trieste"), as well as the site of one of the most brutal battles of World War I. There are few things that give me more hope for progress, considering that history, than crossing today's border. With Slovenia's ascension to the European Union, all that divides the nations is unobtrusive line on the pavement - no guards, no fence, not even a sign. It's more noticeable when you cross from Maine into New Hampshire, and I can't help thinking that somewhere, Kant is smiling. 

The train journey was the most beautiful trip I have ever taken, maybe even surpassing driving over the Himalayas. The sun was shining on the sea, we stopped at idyllic towns with tiny old stations, mountains shaped like gum drops and a turquoise-green river winding alongside. Arriving in Lake Bled, I picked an apple right off the tree as we walked to our campsite by the lakeshore. I was glad to be staying in Bled at the end of the season, since we got all the conveniences of the small resort town, without any of the crowds.

In the morning, mists hid the mountains and the swans gliding on the glass-like surface of the lake. We bought still-warm cheese pastries from a bakery, and climbed to the cliff-top castle for a view of the surrounding valleys as the sun come out. In the afternoon we took row boat out to the picturesque church on the little island in the middle of the lake. In my third boating adventure of the summer, I'm proud to say I rowed more successfully than I punted in Cambridge (and certainly in a more trustworthy boat than the inflatable lotka that almost sank in the middle of Lake Varzob in Tajikistan). 

A three hour bus ride got us to Ljubljana. Our lodging in the capital was Celica, a former jail converted into a hip hostel, where the rooms are "cells" that still have bars. Celica is in the middle of Metalkova, a bizarre alternative-living compound. After independence and the fall of the communist regime, a bunch of artists moved in to the area and transformed the Soviet-style buildings into graffiti masterpieces and a variety of semi-secret clubs and bars.

Ljubljana has a compact old center, with cafes lining both sides of the river, and a castle on a hill in the middle of town. We had a lovely time exploring the side streets, drinking coffee and eating Sacher torte, and visiting the underground market. We found lunch at a Bosnian restaurant; an old house filled with Balkan knickknacks, where the only thing on the menu was sausage with butter and raw onion and delicious bread. In the afternoon, another three hour bus ride got us to Piran, the prettiest town on Slovenia's sliver of a coastline. I climbed to the church with my watercolors and tried to paint the view over the red roofs to the sail boats on the blue-gray sea. In the morning I ignored the damp weather, and went swimming. I have a reputation to uphold after all - for someone used to Maine, the Mediterranean is warm even in October.

As we were informed in Ljubljana, there are two Latvian beers, and they are both made by the same brewery. Whether you prefer Lasko or Union is a matter of some consequence, apparently, but having tried both, I'm a firmly in the Lasko camp. It goes perfectly with a basket of fried calamari, while we had a late lunch and watched a scuba diving lesson.

Unfortunately, our lunch was a bit too late, and caused us to miss the local Piran shuttle bus.  In a "for the want of a nail..." scenario, that meant we lost the regional bus, so that we missed our third connection into Italy. After an extra hour and a half waiting in Trieste, and a bizarre 10 PM to midnight jaunt through Venice, we finally caught the night train to Bologna, arriving at 3 AM, exhausted, but immensely pleased with ourselves, and still completely in love with Slovenia.

Bologna: 8 days a week

Sunday: Giardino Margherita.
 On Sundays, the city shuts down, almost all stores are closed and the streets are empty. Where does everybody go? Giardino Margherita, the large park just outside the city center. Couples spread blankets on the grass, families bring picnics, little kids learn to ride their bikes, and dogs chase each other around the trees. There is a candy cart, and a bouncy castle, a duck pond and quiet places to sit under the trees and read a book. As the year goes on, the oaks are turning brown and the gelato kiosk is starting to sell roast chestnuts. On a foggy October evening, when the joggers have the place to themselves, you can almost forget you are in a city.

Monday: I'm here to be a university student, after all, and even in Italy that means going to class. The political science department takes up a sprawling palazzo in the center. Like much of the University, it is half marble statues looming over the grand staircase and frescos in the lecture halls, and half home-made banners advertising protests and desks covered in fifty years of graffiti. Between classes the courtyard fills with clumps of students smoking and taking advantage of the espresso vending machines. Studying is taken very seriously, but there is always the possibility the teachers will go on strike, and then all bets are off.

Tuesday: Food shopping in Bologna is more of an entertainment than a chore. I start at the Mercato degli Erbi, the daily indoor farmer's market, with produce sold by the kilo (because who would want just one apple?) It also has a fishmonger section, where the prawns are so fresh that they were moving. That may be fresher than I can handle, since I admit I'm not quite up to the complexity of ordering in the butcher's shops. There are more vegetable stands, cheese shops and bakeries in maze of streets behind the main square. Fresh pasta, particularly tortellini, is an institution in Bologna, displayed decoratively in store windows. I return home loaded with purchases, and conveniently hungry.  

Wednesday: Take a walk: Turn right at the end of my block, down Via Farini, window shopping the fashion houses. At the corner with Via Castiglione, there is a pharmacy in a curlicued Art Noveau building. Farini becomes Santo Stefano. The door knocker on this apartment building is shaped like a screaming head. Someone is growing geraniums on their roof. Walk all the way to the edge of the center, where the old city gate stands on a traffic island. Coming back on Strada Maggiore, for a moment there is a clear view all the way to the the Two Towers, before the street twists, and turns into tiny cafes and old-fashioned hardware stores. The portico above the bank building has a fresco. Always look up - just don't get hit by a student franticly biking to class...

Thursday: Gelato gets a whole day to itself in this calender. Everyone has their favorite place, but for me the winner is Gelateria Funivia. Crema Leonardo (toasted pinenuts) and Alice (mascarpone with melted chocolate added to the bottom of the cone). Pear sorbet and dark chocolate. Crema Cavour (caramelized lemon) and pistachio and hazelnut......I want one now.

Friday: Aperitivi: On a warm evening, you are most likely to find an Italian sitting on the cobblestone piazza outside their favorite bar/cafe, with a class of wine or a spritz, and a plate piled high with snacks. Appertivi is bar food elevated to an art, and also a sneaky way to eat a cheap dinner. For a base price (between 2.50 and 7 euro), with your drink you get free reign of a buffet. In the best places, that means things like focaccia, cold pasta dishes, mini sandwiches, sauteed eggplant and zucchini.

Saturday: Day Trip: So far, I've spent Saturdays in Padua, Mantua, Verona, Ravenna, Perugia and Florence, none of which was more than 3 hours away. I am in love with Trenitalia. That may sound odd to anyone who has ever spent so long waiting at a ticket counter that they missed their train (that would include me). Don't complain. I can't help thinking how different life in America would be I could hop on a train to Portsmouth or Rockland or Bethel for less than the price of a dinner out. Where did that mass-transit stimulus money go again?

Sunday: San Luca: It is an act of virtue to make the pilgrimage on foot to this church on a hill above the city. There is a porticoed walkway the entire distance, but I took an especially round-about way during an outing organized by the city government. We climbed a neighboring hill, cutting through backyards and wild patches, and getting a lovely view of the city below. Down the other side, we stopped at an organic farm by the river to sample their wine, and ate our packed lunches while being watched hungrily by goats. Then we climbed San Luca from the back, on a winding path through the woods that passed signs depicting the stations of the cross. The actually church isn't anything so special, but the feeling of accomplishment I got while sitting on the step, eating a crescentina, made it all worthwhile.

Photos

Finally, my pictures are up from Cambridge through Uzbekistan:

http://gallery.me.com/akellar#100067

Additional photo credit to Mari and Dylan

Watermelon/Tarbuj

To quote people across Tajikistan: "Are there tarbuj (watermelon) in America?"

To quote my mother: "There are watermelons in Tajikistan?"

To answer you all: 

Yes, yes there are.

There are watermelons in Latvia

There are more watermelons in Dushanbe

There is watermelon art...

...and art made from watermelons

There are balls painted like melons...

...and melons used like balls

Its a bit like being a modern-day hunter/gatherer

Hunt successful, the prizes are carried home

Refrigeration is very important

But sometimes you just can't wait

and the hunters eat their prey in the wild

Moalem presides at the carving

Nazira likes watermelon

Mari likes watermelon

Sometimes I feel like a harbuza in a pile of tarbuj

*To be followed with a rousing chorus of the watermelon song:

Just plant a watermelon on my grave and let the juice 

 seep through.
Just plant a watermelon on my grave, that's all I ask of you.

Now Southern fried chicken is mighty, mighty fine, 

but all I want is a watermelon vine.
So, plant a watermelon on my grave and let the juice, 

 seep through.

Lessons in Tolerance

 Living abroad, I am constantly reminded of how special America is, because we believe that despite differences in race, religion and origins, we are all Americans, and we are all equal. In so many countries, even liberal democracies like Italy, where I am now, that fundamental equality is not assumed to be true. We know that our country isn't perfect, but as long as we are reaching for that dream of a pluralistic society - for the American dream - we are being true citizens of America.

Mari's op-ed in today's Yale Daily News (YDN - Culture Shock at Home) is an eloquent stand against the current climate of religious intolerance.  As she writes, it is shocking to compare the kindness and generosity of individual Muslims we encountered in Tajikistan with the inflammatory rhetoric about the Islamic community center in New York  and threats of Koran-burning in Florida. We must remember that our values are not threatened from the outside, by Islam or any other ideology, but by the voices of fear and hatred that always lurk within society, and within our own souls.

I Can See Afghanistan From My Car

In which I have more foriegn policy experience than Sarah Palin.

For hour after bumpy, circuitous hour, the road into the Pamir mountains winds along the Amu Darya, the river dividing Tajikistan from Afghanistan. There it was, a literal stone's toss away. I could see women washing clothes and children swimming, haystacks collected in nearly vertical fields, mud houses, processions of donkeys along the parallel cliff side paths. It is hard to reconcile the peaceful vista with the tragedy of the American aid workers who were killed by the Taliban in Afghan Badakhshan. In the Afghan villages there is less new paint, fewer satellite dishes, but I have a slight sense of anti-climax that so much appeared the same between the two countries. I suppose that could make me nervous here, but I can't help feeling slightly more reassured about the Afghan situation instead.

There has been too much rain this year, and the river is muddy brown and racing through the valley. It covers the road in places - drivers get out of vehicles and wade across to test the depth, then drive gamely on. I thought about Alexander the Great ordering his soldiers to stuff their tents with straw and sew up the seams to make boats to cross this river after the retreating Persian army burned the bridges. Upstream the valley widens into the Wakhan, a strip of land tacked on to Afghanistan so that the Russian and British empires wouldn't touch borders. The river there is silver, the mountains purple and capped with snow, the wheat in its carefully hedged and terraced fields is golden and blowing in the wind. The ruins of forts on the hills were built by princes before the coming of Islam. Ignore a power line and it is easy to imagine you are a sentry scanning the horizon for invading horsemen (which made it all the odder to bump into Yale professor Elizabeth Hanson and a group of Americans in a village guest house!)

 Pamiris are proud of their ancient history, and a time when, even in their isolation, they were connected and contributed to the great civilizations. The nostalgia however is mostly for the practical advantages of a relatively recent past, the Soviet era when the electricity worked in winter and everyone had a job. We rode in a jeep that must have also seen better days under the Soviets. When it broke, we sat on a rock and pick apricots, and I learned how to smash open the pits to find the nut inside. Finally, success with the wheel- the cars are old, but they are simpler to put back together - and we rolled on. But I relaxed too soon. 10 km later, it broke again. Another 10 km, again. Gradually it became clear that Ishkashim would be many hours off. Our new friend from the taxi suggested we abandon ship - we were only a few kilometers from the hot spring at Garm Chashma.

Two Americans and a Russian walked along the silent border in the dark, each of us maybe thinking that we were once enemies, and this was our battleground. The ghosts of war and politics don't disappear from places like this, but at the moment the Cold War seemed as distant as Alexander. A car stops for us, stereo blasting Russian pop hits, and two young men drive us up the mountain. From the night emerges a strange sight: a Las Vegas-style hotel, covered in flashing lights the green, white and red of the Tajik flag. Yet when we sit under the bright stars in the warm, sulphurous pool, surrounded by otherworldly mineral formations, the timelessness reemerges. The mountains don't care about borders or empires.

On both sides of the border, the people are Ismaili shiites, a branch of Islam persecuted across much of the world. The Aga Khan, the hereditary leader of the faith, has done much to try to connect his follows across the border. The weekly Afghan bazaar in Ishkashim is one of these tenuous links. Anyone can freely walk through the border crossing on either side, to meet outside an aircraft hanger in the no man's land in the middle of the river. I saw no indication that I couldn't have simply walked on into Afghanistan myself, but, have no fear, I resisted the temptation. The Afghan men were largely bearded and turbaned; I saw one Tajik teenager wearing a tight t-shirt with "Let's Talk About Sex" written across the chest. Tellingly, though, the goods were mostly the same, no matter the origin of the trader. With plastic shoes from China, and canned goods from Iran and Pakistan, the bazaar perhaps lacked the glamour of the silk road of my imagination, but the bargaining and enthusiasm were infectious.

Next time: how to get an Uzbek visa in 10.5 not-so-easy steps.

- Your Car-Window Correspondent.

Men Who Yell At Goats (and Other Stories)

A guest post from "Mehri":

I've promised that this post would include all the memorable "goat quotes" of the past week, which we spent mostly in Vanj. We had an interesting week. The low point, perhaps: stumbling around by our campsite, I stub my toe and yell "Ow! Rocks! Ah! Goat poop! I hate this f--ing country!" I don't mean it, of course. I would never insult my adopted vatan in such a way. And jokes aside, the mountains were beautiful. At night, there were more stars even than I've seen in northern Maine. There was a wonderful, pastoral smell of crushed mint, wild rosemary, and.... yes, goat poop.

"Tajikistan makul shod?" everyone we meet asks us. The correct answer is yes, Tajikistan is fantastic. I mean it, or I wouldn't have come back. Therefore, please excuse the slightly whiny nature of this post. Anna points out that most travel writing in Central Asia falls into two categories: the romanticized, Orientalist type, or the "I will now proceed to complain about everything" genre. We may be guilty of a bit of both. A few nights ago, I sat on a boulder more than 4,000m up and drew a map of the Hazards of Tajikistan, featuring Bears, Small Kids Who Pee Everywhere, Crazy Mashrutka Drives, Sinking Lotkas, and Evil Mosquitoes Probably In the Employ of the KGB. But you know what, the mountains are beautiful, people have been very kind, and the rest we can deal with.

We see a lot of cowpaths. They say the streets in Boston were laid out by cows - well, cows, it turns out, are physically incapable of going straight up hills and take about a thirty degree angle at every hillock of grass. In the end, it looks like the lines of a topographic map have been traced onto the mountain for you.
Our interviews also go a bit like this - roundabout. It's rude to cut too directly to the chase. I heard about one survey in which a researcher with a clipboard went around asking folks "On a scale of 1 to 5, how important is identity to you?" Ay vay. I'm not saying we're doing much better - but we're taking more tea, and more sweet melon, and more time, to ask our questions. Most of the time we haven't been in the mountains, but sitting around a dastarkhan, talking with old ladies about when their family moved to town and whether they'd marry their daughter off to a guy from the next region. (This often gets misinterpreted as our own interest in marriage - see Anna's previous post). We've gotten our share of awkward questions on this trip, usually while stuck in a shared taxi from town to town. "Is it true that the President of America is a black-skinned guy?" "In America, can a black man marry a white woman?" "Why are your families so small?" Maybe our research questions are equally awkward. Wearing Tajik clothes (the last we had clean) and tsumkas, or backpacking packs, we got roundly laughed at by a pair of goatherds near the Gishkun pass.

We were tired by then. We'd gone up to the height of the snow, filtered water running off the glacier, realized we were too tired to push any further, and turned back - and at that moment, the nakhjir appeared. There were two of them, Marco Polo sheep, I think, running across the pass above us as though it were easy. They made my week. Anna, I think, was slightly more excited to get back to camp. She perched on a rock above the pasture, while I found a flat bit of grass to lay out the groundsheet and sleeping bags. As it started to grow dark, I circled back to her: "Marco!" I yelled. "Polo!" she responded. There's Central Asia for you.

Anna after the day's climb, reading Salman Rushdie under the plastic sheeting/tent

An epilogue: We're in Khorog now, home of such luxuries as showers and internet, and the most fantastic sour cherries - spent yesterday making a fruit crisp out of them. Repacking this morning, something fell out of Anna's bag. A cherry pit? I asked hopefully. A stone? Nope, she responded. Goat poop.

In Which I Do Not Stay in the Village and Marry a Nice Tajik Boy

Scene: It is the second Tajik wedding I have crashed in a day. I am sitting on one of the long pillows that makes a ring around the woman's room when another aunt or grandmother enters. My legs are  folded carefully under me to avoid rudely pointing my feet at an elder, and I struggle to rise and go through the routine of greeting. One hand to the chest, the other clutching the newcomer's, one, two, maybe a third kiss on the cheek, repetitions of "soz, soz, narz, khub". All of which words mean good, and eclipse the often unspoken "How are you?". Again the explanation, "We are two students from America" - except I think I just said "I am two students", but no matter, we move on, into further mutually half-understood conversation. Eventually the question comes. Shohar darid? No, I say firmly, I do not have a husband. No, thank you, I do not want a husband. Thank you, but I must go back to America. Yes, I like Tajikistan. No, thank you very much, but I do not want to have a Tajik wedding.

Then the look of confusion, and the gesture toward my eyebrows. Eyebrows? In this case, I am pretty sure my eyebrows are fine, though it is amazing how quickly one becomes aware of an insignificant body part when half the people you meet are fascinated by it. The first woman has now been joined by another and they both tap their own foreheads determinedly. If they are trying to give me fashion advice, I am not sure I want to accept it. The unibrow has many devoted followers in Tajikistan. I look at the small girls dressed up in party clothes that look like fairy princess costumes, girls with a dark line painted above their noses. Though who am I to judge the gold teeth and friends who wear matching print dresses? I, after all, arrived at their wedding with a giant backpack and khaki fishing pants.

My fashion faux paus seems to distress the kind women around me, though it does nothing to diminish their determination to make us dance in the center of the wedding party in front of 200 people. The amazing Tajik generosity springs into action. Somehow I find myself in possession of, first a headscarf, then a borrowed blue velvet dress, then a pair of purple and silver zebra print socks. Finally Mari and I have our positions reversed - now I look Tajik, and she is labelled as Uzbek, Kyrgyz, maybe Kazakh? Walking through town, an awkwardly tall Tajik in a blue dress with shoulder pads, I apparently resemble our host's sister Nozanin, and that's the name everyone in the town of Tavildara adopts for me. Nozanin, why don't you stay here and marry a nice Tavildara boy?

Tajikistan is a surreal country, and maybe I have dwelt too long on the things that seemed bizzare. I have adjusted fairly well - for example, I now own my own Tajik clothing, which is loose and comfortable and extremely practical for travelling (confession: Mari and I wore the same pattern in two colors of blue today). Some differences are good differences. The plain truth is, where else in the world could I turn up on the doorstep of a random house in a strange city -  because our taxi driver took "UNDP guesthouse" to mean "the nearest foreign compound" and took us to the street of the OSCE - and have the family of said random house invite us to stay with them and give us watermelon, hot showers, and a taxi? (This happened in Kulob the night before last. BTW: guidebook fail. The Lonely Planet central Asia doesn't say a word about the entire Khatlan region, and the Pamir book suggested two guesthouses that no longer exist). Just when things seem too strange, too ridiculously bureaucratic, there is someone with a cup of chai and some naan and a friend of a friend who can fix the problem. I think it only fair to warn my parents that if strange Tajiks show up at our house someday, they had better put the kettle on, because my karmic debt is growing faster than the budget deficit.

But to return to the eyebrows for a moment, because the mystery has been solved at last. Two days after the wedding, we met Gulnora and Zarnigor, teenagers from a village higher up the valley. This time, I think mischievously , I will ask the questions first and give them a taste of their own medicine. Shohar darid? They giggle, and say no, and again touch their eyebrows in explanation. Wait....it slowly dawns on us. You don't shape your eyebrows until you get married? Ohhhh....so we'd been giving out conflicting (though probably more appropriate) signals to the matchmakers of Tavildara. Who knows what the drunken gold mine inspectors were thinking about us...but that's a story for another day.

From lovely Kulob, land of cotton and big salt mountains,

Anna (Nozanin)

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Back in the USSR

On nearly opposite sides of the former Soviet Union, Latvia and Tajikistan have many differences, but I couldn't help being struck by the similarities: the same trams (green in Dushanbe, blue in Riga), the same pedestrian underpasses with flower sellers, even fruit markets that sold large quantities of dill. The first two were clearly the Soviet legacy, though the culinary tastes probably go back even further, and may be inexplicable.

Both cities are full of outdoor cafes selling shashliks, beer and fanta (btw, Tajik Fanta is bottled in Afghanistan). There are parks with fountains that light up at night, streets full of scandoulously dressed young women and grandmothers wrapped in long dresses and head scarves. But while Latvia seems to be facing west, ever closer into the embrace of the EU, Tajikistan seems to be doing all it can to reclaim its heritage as part of the Persian world. In Riga, the Soviet period has been lumped together with the German conquest during World War II in a single "Museum of the Occupation." The icon that loomed large over the port city was the Christmas tree ( Latvia's laying claim to having invented it). At this time of year, one large specimen was decked out in sunflowers in recognition of Midsummer's Day.

In Dushanbe, where statues of Stalin and Lenin used to stand, there are now Rudaki, Aini, Ferdowsi - the heroes of Persian literature. The rather terrible monument (see above) that dominates Rudaki avenue is celebrating Ismoil Somani, the greatest king of the Samanids, a dynasty that sprung from central Asia. Its outrageous gold looked rather beautiful in the setting sun today, and even the presidential palace (whose furniture alone cost millions; Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries in Asia) was softened a little by the orange light. Its clear that in both new countries, there is a need to rewrite history, to find a new identity and pride in being independent nations.

All of these grand gestures seem a bit out of place in a hot and crumbling city like Dushanbe, and, aesthetic crimes aside, certainly seem less important that improving, say, health and education. Still, there is something surprisingly friendly and open about Dushanbe. Compared to the cities I visited in India, it is quite clean and quiet, with tree lined streets and rose gardens. In the cooler evenings couples stroll and children rollarblade along Rudaki Avenue. For me, some of the openness comes from the wonderful, and somewhat surprising, fact that I can understand people. That may be the best thing I learned from being in Latvia - having spent some time knowing two words of latvian (lidosta = airport, iela = street) - my halting, formal, Iranian-accented Tajik is serving me quite well here. Most people can't quite figure us out: we are clearly foreigners, yet we speak no Russian. Then we attempt to speak Tajik and the confusion grows, though mostly people are pleasantly surprised.

I've benefited from the amazing generosity of near strangers as I struggled my way through the last few days. After I arrived in Riga with no money (don't ask, someone got a few hundred dollars richer off my stupidity), having almost been arrested by the Latvian traffic police, Ieva took wonderful care of me. She brought me tram tickets, cooked me dinner, took me to the beach, and figured out how to send a fax to America. She is either the best advertisement for couch surfing, or perhaps just the savior of my faith in humanity. (Thank you! I hope the karma comes back to you soon). And here in Dushanbe, the Rakhmatov family have opened their house to Mari and me. Every one should be lucky enough to have a Bibijon to cook them a full breakfast after their plane arrives at 5 AM.

This week I'll be beginning my interviews for my research project, starting with NGO staff in Dushanbe. Then it will be off to the southern plains, and the home village of President Rahmon. It was 99 here today. It gets even hotter there. Wish me luck.

Small islands

I have now taken 7 Subway rides, 3 Buses, 2 Planes, 1 Taxi, 1 Train, and 1 Boat, all to find myself writing from the library of King's College Cambridge, which, by sheer virture of age, must be one of the most sedentary places on Earth.Its a very nice kind of stillness and quiet, an antidote to vibrant - and exhausting  - crowds of London. Not that Cambridge doesn't have its share of tourists. Still, its easier to think kindly toward one's fellow travellers on sunny morning on the river, when everyone is crashing their punts in equal measure. Dylan did a lovely job of taking us up river, while I draped myself langourously in the bow and imagined I was a Victorian in a long white dress and parasol, dangling my hand in the water and thinking about the Lady of Shallot. Then it was my turn to punt, and such romantic notions were quickly dispelled by a heavy pole, an unwelcome wind, the discovery that my canoe skills were a hazier memory than I had supposed. I didn't fall in, which is all that can be said for my short lived attempt to actually do some work in propelling the boat. Perhaps a straw boater would have helped...

***

The last time I was in London, I walked along the embankment, and early morning Soho, and I saw a city of marble and bridges, pidgeons and wet sidewalks. Yesterday there was no time for historic monuments and parks, but I did see a wider variety of London than I knew existed. Riding the tube - which I did excessively - I saw an Italian family trying to teach their children to pronounce the H in Hounslow, business men reading the paper, and a young couple sharing an ipod and singing along in different keys. My host Theresa told me that, statistically, there is one millionaire on every tube train -  and that 1 in 5 of those people will be undocumented. It was thanks to Theresa that I went out to North Islington, and walked down blocks with pubs, kebab shops, a caribbean takeaway, an espresso bar,  an Iranian grocery, and a Malaysian restaurant cheek against jowel. Even more than New York, London wears seems to wear its globalization on its skin.

***

In my ongoing quest to see every country in the world before I die, I have tried to lay down some ground rules, number one being: It doesn't count if you don't leave the airport. Racing through the Munich and Frankfurt airports to make connections does not mean I can put a check next to Germany. But what about Iceland?  In "The Girl in the Cafe", Bill Nighy's character says that everyone knows one fact about Iceland, and only one. So here's the question: can I have been someplace if I learned something I'd only have known by being there? Is it enough that I've walked outside and felt the air (cold and salty). Or must I follow up on Icelandair's annoyingly persistant infomercials and see a glacier?

Tomorrow I'll be heading to Latvia and leaving islands behind...

The day is almost here

As I look at the clouds going by on this beautiful Maine July day, its hard to imagine ever needing to leave my own backyard. But the weeks have been slipping by, a small fortune has been spent on plane tickets, and somehow the time has almost arrived when I'll be picking up my (skillfully and lightly packed) bag, and heading off.

The title of this blog, where I will, internet-cafe dependent, be posting my adventures, comes from one of my favorite poems, Tennyson's Ulysses. I think it sums up the feeling.

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!