Dumbledore going to Baku?

These recent statements by Azerbaijan's Minister of Culture and Tourism have me wondering if the government there is cooking up some kind of Hogwart's magic to prepare the country for Eurovision 2012. Baku is a shell city, and i mean vast tracts of multi-story stone and cement building frames which changed not a bit in the six months i was just living there. It boggles the mind to hear an official claim they are going to be fully prepared for the kind of foreign onslaught Eurovision is sure to bring. Everyone in Baku get your wands ready, because meeting the Minister's goals is going to require one massive wave of transformative power!

One of the more cynical Azeri businessmen i know suggested that the first thing they'll need to do is create a special 'Eurovision visa', because as things now stand, getting a tourist visa for Azerbaijan is both expensive and unpredictable. They'll collect your money, but there's no guarantee you'll actually get the visa. This is going to be especially true for young EU budget travellers, who will have to negotiate via the internet in Azeri to find tourist companies who can provide them with invitations. There are no buses to and from the airport, nothing even remotely like a European hostel to accommodate those who prefer Teva's or other non-heeled footwear, no bus maps and no tourist information centers. But hey, don't worry, be happy! If you do get a visa and find an affordable place to stay, you'll have a great time in Baku. People are friendly and poroskis are cheap. Just remember to be careful if you blog about your experiences: censors rule the day and Eurovision may be a welcome spectacle, but Eurosensibility has the potential to get you deported. Maybe bring a broomstick along, just in case.

Taxi to the Port Side

Nobody likes a pissed off, angry taxi driver, let alone an entire fleet of them, except for - evidently - the euro-prostrate Greek government. For the past several days, the taxi drivers of Thessaly have been enforcing a strike while futilely communicating their demands to members of parliament, PASOK and whichever Ministry governs them (Culture and Tourism? Transportation? Malfeasance?). Where do reasonable people go when the leftist party they once supported has completely violated its principles and consequently, their trust? They go further portside - figuratively and literally - which was exactly what i found them doing in the city of Volos on day three of their strike.

A spirited march of approximately 150 men and women made its way through the city's main financial /shopping district to the port facility, where a lively debate ensued regarding whether or not to blockade cars from getting onto the next ferry. In spite of a very meager police presence, easily subverted, in the end the blockade did not take place. However, patience was wearing thin and it seems the pro-blockade contigent has been growing every day. If the government does not deal with this sector of transportation workers soon, we shouldn't be surprised to see them blocking not only the ferries in Volos, but in other Greek ports as well. It was clear from the honking of horns and general public approval towards the marchers that while the government may not be on their side, the people certainly are. Everyone cheered when bottles of water were tossed at the local PASOK headquarters.

What decisions, aka austerity measures, are these drivers contesting? The government has already put them at a disadvantage compared to their peers throughout the European Union (EU), because EU regulations place a limit of 2 drivers per 1000 inhabitants, whereas in Greece the government currently allows 3. Now the austerity faux planners are further sticking it to the drivers with a plan to completely deregulate the taxi industry so that debt prioritization can liberally run its course. According to a Volos driver named Konstantinos, anyone who wants to call their vehicle a taxi will now be able to do so, which means competition for fares is going to dramatically increase while rates (per km) will naturally decrease. Arthuro and his fellow driver, Kristos, both from Larissa (Thessaly's capital) believe that mafioso-like operatives will come in, buy a fleet of 200 cars and put the 'real drivers' out of business. They said the drivers had come from four different cities and represented about 50.000 people (the number of family members who depend on taxis to keep them fed and clothed). Arthuro just bought his taxi last year and like everyone i've met in Greece this month, is distressed about not being able to pay off the accrued debt if the new (non)regulations go into effect.

Once they reached the port, it was interesting to watch the megaphone change hands as the debate about whether to carry out the blockade unfolded; there were clearly several diverse, equally passionate opinions being expressed. Given the potential havoc that would ensue if a blockade had occurred and the fact that these were local people addressing the current crisis in an organized way, it was surprising to me that there were no media in attendance - nope, not a one, except ostensibly yours truly ("Gentleman, today I am your media coverage!") which is a pretty sad situation, given the fact i'm working without internet backup and hence couldn't even get this posted until 3 days after the fact. When i asked them WHY there were no media present, they rightfully accused the media of only being interested in Athens, because that's where the sex & violence rating requirements can be met. A friend later told me he had seen a TV report the previous night on two drivers attacking a third, who thought he could get away with earning a fare or two, which would seem to support the drivers' claim regarding lack of media interest in a peaceful march. They could have thrown molotovs at PASOK to get some attention (certainly the police response would've merited at least one tv camera?) but these were frappe-drinking guys and gals looking for respect, not vengence. The relevant Minister and local MPs have alternated between giving them a total run-around on negotiations and outright lying about their intentions. Fed up, they insist they are not going to take it anymore. If you want to follow their next moves, here's a website for Eurotaxi Larissa (Greek and English pages). As it stands today, "We ask sincerely apologize to our passengers that we will not be able to meet the transport needs, due to the strike."

Advantageous in covering a demonstration of taxi drivers is that most of them speak at least some English, so it wasn't very hard to find people able to explain what was happening. However, willingness to do so was a different matter, as many refused to say anything to me beyond expressing their disdain for America. One could easily thank neo-liberal extraordinaire Hilary Clinton for that, but her recent appearance in Athens to hold Papandreou's hand (or threaten him?) was little more than icing on a heavily corrupted cake in which America represents one thick central layer. Many think the ultimate problem they're dealing with is economic globalization and no country is more responsible for THAT than the United States.

At any rate, the answer i continuously received regarding the content of the various statements being made on the issue of whether to hold a blockade was, "in Greece you are seeing real democracy". Period.... but also parenthetically, since democracy (theoretically) includes an investiture of decision-making power and in Greece today, those invested with this power are in no way, shape or form the people marching in the streets - more like those hiding from the marchers. Hilary Clinton and company should do us all a favor and stop railing about democracy because in fact, what we're seeing here is banktocracy - the new legacy that American, IMF and EU finance barons are spreading up and down the Aegean. When Chinese companies own every taxi and ferry serving these ports, i suppose we'll see which side of the political spectrum this legacy really falls on: port or starboard? sink or swim?

Declaration from Thessaloniki's resistance camp

Hopefully in the very near future i'll have time to write a longer piece about the Indignados resistance camp in Thessaloniki - for now, i'm doing as promised and publishing English and Spanish versions of their most recent declaration. The activists have a website of their own which is mostly in Greek, but you can find some English, Spanish and German translations there as well.

Words cannot properly convey the level outrage i've encountered about the level of police violence in Athens. i'm waiting to receive some video links to post here - most of the street media is being done by Greeks, in Greek, so while there's a ton of it on youtube, it's also hard to navigate if one doesn't speak the language and is short on time. The worst and most shocking stories have been about the repeated gasing of people inside the metro stations, evidently with expired gas canisters, so who knows what chemicals the good citizens of Athens have been exposed to? Teargas cocktails are definitely not for the meek or asthmatic! Horrific, truly. i've not seen any of the Terminator films, but everyone seems to think in order to fully appreciate what's going on here now, it would be a good idea if i did.

i've also been told that MPs are being stalked, hounded and pelted with the odd tomato , egg, etc. wherever they go: from the time they step out of their door to the point where they're able to escape public access to their persons. People are cynical to the extreme at this point and Greece is definitely going to see a huge brain drain in the coming months because professionals and recent university graduates see no future for themselves in this country, at least in the short- and medium-term. i spoke with one young woman who has one more year of university left and she's committed to staying here to resist the government and its repressive measures, but without a large collective pooling of resources, it's hard to say how long encampments and organizers are going to survive the economics of full-time resistance... more thoughts on this point at a later date.

Anyway, that's a little insight into the situation as seen from the White Tower (Lefkos Pyrgos) of Thessaloniki. Here's the declaration; if it's too difficult to read in blogspot size, try clicking on it to get a large image. And if you're reading this in Thessaloniki or any other town in Greece, please stop going to Starbucks for your afternoon frappes. This company is exemplary of the larger economic theft in the country and you would do much better supporting you local kafe owner whose business has nothing to do with maximizing stockholder returns. If the argument is that they alone offer fair trade coffee, then it's time to change that situation and i'm betting that given the current anti-corporate sentiment throughout Greece, this wouldn't be an impossible thing to accomplish.

Impressions of Thrace, where my life suddenly became Greece in a microcosm

In a rare occurrence of travel daring (or maybe just circumstance), i've actually got a fun story to tell about the day i entered Greece. However, blogging on the road has been riddled with problems, on top of which i didn't come here to spend all day or night on a computer. So: have written out the full title of this post-in-progress in the hope you'll be enticed enough to come back in a couple days to read it. As consolation, i did manage to get a selection of photos up on Picasso. Finding interesting ways to chronicle a travel experience continues to be a great challenge for someone with my limited imagination - look forward to any comments/ideas you may have regarding this set.

Resurrecting Santa Ana

This is too distorted to pass comment on. ABC [US] continues to excel in what corporate media does best, which is telling Americans their problems are inevitably caused by someone else - in this case, Mexico.

Mexico's border with California — the birthplace of the 649-mile-long border fence being built by the USA— resembles a demilitarized zone.

In highly populated areas south of San Diego, U.S. Border Patrol vehicles patrol dirt roads between 18-foot-high fences. Cameras monitor hard-to-reach valleys, and drivers must idle through Border Patrol checkpoints that sit 4,000 feet above sea level along Interstate 8 in the Jacumba Mountains.

Did Mexico erect a fence on the border? No. Is La Migra patrolling on Mexican soil? No. Yet ABC clearly implies that the North Korean-like conditions on America's southern frontier are Mexico's doing and not its own. This is just bogus reporting. It would be like the Jerusalem Post writing a story with the headline 'Palestinian security barrier prevents Israelis from seeing the sunrise'. Come on folks, if you think the fence and associated controls are so essential, why shy away from the fact that they are all happening on California's border with Mexico? In fact, that would even intensify the message that American's are suffering at the hands of Mexican drug lords, etc. If ABC really wanted to rile people up, they should have called this piece 'Remember the Alamo', because there's nothing an embattled, embittered population likes better than the resurrection of an old evil in order the justify the promotion of a new one.

A story like too many others (not really mine to tell yet tell it i must)

They came in the night and left in the light. Alas, the symbology does not assure a luminous ending. If that were the case, love that runs deepest would never hurt and families in flight would glide effortlessly towards aeries of refuge. Not so in Fortress Europe and not so in Afghanistan, the two opposing corners of the framework within which this snapshot of a much longer and endlessly replicating story occurs. No moral is intended except (perhaps) that some human messes are impossible to clean up or even contain, when that happens hold onto who you've got and hope that everyone comes out of the abyss without having forgotten how to breathe. Or maybe the lesson is simpler: be thankful you are not one of the millions of refugees in the world today.

As alluded to, this family's story began in Afghanistan and i can't even begin to imagine the chapters lived between the day they departed their village and the evening they appeared on the sidewalk beneath my balcony window in Alexandroupoli. i watched them drift across the square, about ten people: 3 men, one petite young woman and several children ranging from a few months to a few years in age. To be honest, i wondered at first if they were Roma because of all the kids, but there was a fretfulness about them that struck me as decidedly non-Roma, a sense of vulnerability that came from the clinging to each other, the constant swinging around of heads as though making sure they hadn't been followed. There was one small suitcase., secured with rope. When they had all regrouped on the sidewalk, a contentious discussion ensued, clearly about where to go next since there was a lot of directional pointing and the voices grew louder, more frenzied. Their language had a bit of that birdlike melodiousness i've come to associate with South Asia; they might have been speaking Urdu, Tamil or Bengali. i watched their debate for a couple of minutes, then left the balcony to do other things.

About 15 minutes later, i walked out of my room and there they all were in the pension, two men seated and talking with the proprietress, one pacing around with a cigarette, the wide-eyed children (one holding the baby) watching the adults, their backs pressed against the hexagonal corners of the room as if they were trying to be invisible or to steel themselves in case of suddenly being instructed RUN. The woman emerged from the toilet, obviously surprised by my presence and the sudden eye contact. She touched hand to heart (a typically Muslim reflex), looked down and flitted to where the children were. She was wearing normal European street cloths, a sheer floral scarf wrapped round the neck and tossed over the head, but her eyes were what ultimately answered the question of origin for me - those shimmering blue, thousand year old eyes that could only have come from the Baluchi-Afghani-Waziristan part of the world.

One of the men was speaking Greek with the pension owner, who was becoming somewhat agitated in a distressful sort of way. Finally she announced 'OK, OK, OK' and started urging mother and brood into the bathroom. The Greek speaker spoke with the pacer, who then spoke to the woman and then the men went downstairs. When i came out of the WC, there were sounds of splashing and lilted, childish screams. As the proprietress later told me, evidently the kids were unfamiliar with running water and reacted to the shower head with a little terror. But she had insisted they at least wash their feet and a couple emerged with wet hair, so she was more successful in getting them cleaned up than she'd at first anticipated. The last i saw of them was very early the next morning. The men were conferring again with the owner, the woman and children filed out of a room and quickly down the stairs, eyes cast downward - again that aura of desired invisibility. One of the men looked up at me and i offered a 'Salaam Aleikum,' he returned the greeting with a nod, but that was all. Too much worry, no risking a change in focus. Whatever they were doing next, it was not going to be easy.

Afterwards, here's what i learned about them. The father was a doctor who spoke some English and wanted to take the family to Germany, where someone from his village lived and had assured him he could find work. They came from Afghanistan, travelling without passports. The father claimed he had a lot of money (somewhere) but that it had also been very expensive to get as far as Greece. The Greek speaker with them was also from their village and had evidently brought them across the Turkish border, where they were given documents by Greek immigration officials that allowed them to stay 30 days. They were headed next to Athens, but the father didn't foresee being able to pay for the whole family to fly north (would they even be allowed on a plane?) so in all likelihood, the next balcony window they'd be standing under is probably in Piraeus, or some other port town where they might find a boat to take them - where? Through Gibralter and up to the Baltic Sea, dropping them in northern Germany? The mind boggles at how this was all going to be managed: how to decide who to trust, how much to pay, what living/stowaway conditions would be acceptable. Thousands are doing do this and how it will end for them... all i've got is a big bold chain of ????

According to the Greeks i was out with last night here in Thessaloniki, there is a lot of tension between these northern European countries and Greece because when the refugees are stopped, this is where Germany, France, et al. send them back to. In general, it's fair to say that people are generous mostly - or only - when they can afford to be; we all know that right now, Greece can afford little more than tear gas and well-catered debt and privatization negotiations. According to UNHCR's 2010 data, the largest number of refugees worldwide are coming from Afghanistan (1.6 million) and although rates of refugee return have been decreasing globally, the number of statistically stateless persons has been doing the opposite. Afghans whose refugee claims are being recognized was at 53% last year, which means that roughly 800,000 were either refused status or still waiting for a decision at the time the data was collected. Obviously this is an enormous topic which, if i'm actually going to post this story tonight, i can't afford to investigate too deeply at the moment. One thing i will add is that in Thrace, northern Greece, people of all stripes expressed a great deal more concern about illegal immigrants, refugees and sex trafficking than they did the economic crisis, which struck me as quite telling. Here's a video report on Daily Motion that tells other Afghan stories in the context of the Greek refugee crisis and includes interviews with immigration lawyers.

It's a harsh, sad tale of displacement, suffering and bureaucracy. We can read it as either one epic story or millions of short, seemingly inconsequential ones. Sometimes one can only see the forest by starting with individual trees and sometimes the forest is simply too dense to see anything. The story i've told here - the snapshot, as it were - reflects little more than this fact and as i've said, it's not even my story to tell. People travel for many different reasons; typically, reporting on other people's hardships is not one of them. i could just as readily have written about the woes of an Aegean fisherman i met, and maybe at some point i will. It really comes down to who the writer decides s/he wants to make visible, even if making total sense of that person(s) and/or their situation is untenable. The following afternoon, i noticed this new graffiti on the train station and ultimately, it is responsible for my decision to write about this family. No matter how common their story may be, to ignore it altogether would seem to subvert my own intentions for being here. Greece may be a 'timeless' place, but as a traveler, i can only see it in the time that i have. Day or night, looking for the light.

Travel in the 21st Century

The extent that digital technologies are shaping - or at least infiltrating - my travel experience has totally caught me off-guard. The advance online hotel and ticket booking systems have been standard protocol for a while, and it certainly eased things to know where i was going to keep my stuff, sleep and shower the first few days of this trip, enabling me to fully focus on reawakening my traveller's mojo (what's left of it). What i'm talking about is the ubiquitous presence of wifi and myriad hand-held devices everyone is now using to moderate interactions and design their daily itineraries. Truly, a new age is dawning (has dawned!). Feigning impartiality, i can only say that while i miss the physical immediacy of a handwritten journal, sweat-stained paper maps, that simplicity if you will of old school travelling, the options for enhancing personal communication and sharing information now are just fantastic - maybe even a little fantastical.

i had a small taste of the digital traveler's syndrome a couple years ago in Amsterdam, where i met some friends from the states who initiated their daily 'down time' by firing up notepads and kindles to write facebook updates and keep abreast of events as reported in the NY Times. There were also more immediate practical uses, like checking movie times and restaurant locales. Since i was with Americans, it felt very much like a catch up session on where Silicon Valley and Seattle software designers were taking people who can afford to indulge in their newest toys; Amsterdam of course always cutting edge.

Then i get to Turkey and discover this is all much more internationalized than i'd suspected and that i am much farther behind the technology curve than i'm comfortable admitting. Some examples. Sitting on the wall along Istanbul's Marmara shoreline to watch the sunset, i was joined by a guy hawking picture books for tourists who took it upon himself to instruct me on where all the great Istanbul area beaches are located. Initially, he used the age old method of pointing to towns on the other side of the water, but that was all just too indistinct, so out came the Samsung and in less than a minute, we're squinting at Google maps and he's detailing which buses will take me to which plots of sandy beach. The following day on the bus to Cannakale, i sat next to a young woman who spoke as much English as i do Turkish, so to subvert the language barrier she pulls out her phone, logs into Google and brings up Zargan, an online Turkish-English translator.... away we go, no word or phrase off limits.

i’ve just spent 6 days in Turkey and these are thing things i learned how to say:

Thanks

Thank you very much (formal version)

rudimentary counting, especially currency denominations (not so hard because of similarities to Azeri)

milk (for coffee)

no sugar (ditto)

stuffed mussels

garlic

wind turbine

wine

smile (imperative form, for picture taking)

population/inhabitants

young male camel (don’t even try to guess)

seafront

Inevitably there were other words figured out in the context of specific interactions, but i couldn’t say now what they were and anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that with so many people carrying around Bluetooth and most cities now full of wifi networks, i didn’t need a large working vocabulary to discuss anything - from water sources at Troy to the best temperature for storing Turkish delight. Of course all of those conversations were grammatical nightmares, but since i don’t really speak Turkish and the people keying words into Zargan didn’t actually speak English, who noticed (or cared about) the grammatical inadequacies? One significant impact of this technological (r)evolution is that people seem more intent on conveying ideas or bits of information which more deeply reflect who they are, how or what they think. Another tourist at Troy used his phone to bring up the word ‘accompany’ when suggesting we go to the bat cave together. He was a bit creepy so i had to decline, but at least i got a different message than ‘invite’ or ‘take’ would have implied.

As far as the young male camel goes, this is probably my favorite technotale to relate. On a ferry crossing the Dardenelle Straights one evening, an extended family sat down around me and i had to ask about the hat one of the boys was wearing. His name is Bura (our young ship of the desert), he spoke a little English but his dad spoke quite a bit and turned out to be a professional soldier, stationed way out in Anatolia to guard the border with Iran. i didn’t recognize the name of the town, but Bura happened to have his little GPS device in tow – ‘I LOVE GPS’ he tells me – and with myself and even more awestruck mother-in-law looking over his shoulder, in about 30 seconds dad had zeroed in on where his guard post is located (within about 10 km). FYI that’s him on the left, aptly attired for messing with the minds of his Iranian counterparts.

As i’ve frequently admitted, i am a total technoweenie when it comes to things like synchronization, proxy servers and the like. i’ve little doubt these stories create the impression that i also live in a time bubble, utterly naïve/out of touch with 21^st century technology. Closer to reality is that i’m just a person living in a constant state of working poverty and why self-inflict depression by window shopping electronic devices i’ll never be able to afford? More importantly, do i really need these things to manage my life in any way? Well, the answer is apparently ‘yes and no’.

Online mobility today has become what business cards were in the ‘80s and ‘90s: a form of legitimization, of ascertaining and securing one’s PRESENCE. The number of Facebook users may be slacking in the US, but in this part of the world, talk with anyone 40 and under for any length of time and they will inevitably want to know if they can find you and ‘friend’ you, maybe even skype you. Some do, some don’t, but the main thing i’m finding on this trip is that ‘Are you connected?’ has replaced ‘What do you do?’ in most casual introductory cross-cultural conversations.

This seems overall like a positive development although, like any other communicative and technological opportunity, it all depends on what one does with it. With digital dictionaries, maps and other such applications, people have a tool through which to moderate interactions they might otherwise forego due to shyness, lack of communicative/language ability and so on. Also a good thing so long as we don’t lose perspective on who is ultimately responsible for successful communication, i.e. ourselves.

An old friend of mine and cyber scholar is in Egypt now to learn about how these technological platforms are influencing the politics of activists and others in that country; it will be interesting to get his assessments on how they (the platforms) are helping and hindering substantive socio-political change there. i may be naïve about many of the technologies or how easy it is now to access them, but i want to think i’m smart enough to know the difference between political tools and political movement. Caveat emptor: we are not what we tweet. i look forward to being further impressed by it all making my way around anarchist-ridden Greece. Old habits die hard, i still use a Lonely Planet, but it’s great experiencing what this century is bring to travel and perhaps by my next trip, i’ll have shaped up into a modern digitized woman. There’s gotta be a grant somewhere for that, right? Better start googling. Good thing this city provides free wifi :-)

On The Road, 'cuz i'm an american and this is my independence day goddammit!

Before i say anything directly relevant to this post's title, i first want to thank my lurking yet diverse, international readership for taking the time to read however much you have of these pages since i started writing again this spring. Recently someone in Kenya found the blog, which set my little swahili meter all aflutter (Habari gani, rafiki?). Can't imagine how s/he ended up here, such is the nature of gratuitous search engines... In general i have a hard time wrapping my brain around the immensity and intensity of our global-in-scope digitized communication networks and often feel like Kobo Abe's character in The Box Man, looking out looking in seeing not being seen. Nowhere close to being a real journalist, the only thing i have to offer is a view of the world based on how i, personally, perceive and experience it. It's honestly amazing that people i've never met, in countries i've never been to, find what i share here even the slightest bit worth their/your time - again, thanks a lot whomever you are, making me always want to do better at whatever it is, exactly, that i'm doing in this space.

Today is the 4th of July, it's 6:00 the sun is rising over the Caspian Sea and i am about to go on the road for while, starting in Istanbul and then to some as yet undetermined place(s) on the Balkan peninsula. Towards the end of August, i'll be writing from Mongolia (yet another peculiar locale for an aging renegade american anarchist). Choosing this date of departure was my attempt to tap into the karmic American freedom thing, enjoying my independence after being ruled over for the past 6 months by a readily arrogant & tyrannical, conventionally paranoid Brit, someone who apparently believes that empire is part of his national genetic heritage. It's been a long, long time since i've been able to venture out into new, unknown territory without a set plan, open (within reason) to total spontaneity. A real trip, a little taste of freedom for freedom's sake. Obviously this means a bunch of travelogue is in store, but since every hostel and hotel in Europe advertises free wifi these days, i expect to stay more or less abreast of Qadhafi's European conquest, unrelenting zionist mayhem in the Med, bursting pipelines, sinking reactors, etc etc etc whatever my friends on facebook tell me by acclaim is important at any given moment (4 people posting the same story moves alert status to red).

Otherwise re my blog, i've been putting together a couple slide shows to add here (the Picasso interface is time consuming + likes to freeze my computer), have started checking/updating all the links and streamlining the tags because they've gotten out of control to the point of meaninglessness. If you, dear reader, happen to have your own blog or other type of website, i'm more than happy to put up a link to it here.

So, that's all for now. Farewell Azerbaijan: the ridiculous high heels, relentless honking of horns and my oh-so-patient neighborhood merchants, still unsure what language i speak except that it's definitely not theirs. Onward to the new Ottomans and the old school Greeks! Instead of telling people i'm an English teacher, now i can say i'm not a taxpayer (for a while, anyway). If that strategy backfires, i'll say that i'm a blogger and if that comes across as opportunistic and self-aggrandizing, there's always the ultimate fallback: human. Have independence, will travel.