But anyway, just some final reflections for now, before I close this up again for another while.
On Nowa Huta:
My first reaction to finding out about Nowa Huta was one of nerdish delight. After all, I work in a town, Eisenhüttenstadt, which not only also has a steel plant owned by arcelormittal, it is also a socialist newtown dating from the 1950's. How would this compare? And would it remind me too much of 'home', of the weekly grind, the day in day out labour of language training. Armed with a pamphlet and small map, I jumped on the tram and thought - let fate throw at me what it will. I'll just go and experience. What I found was a very strange kind of surprise. You see it was not the buildings that were the surprise - the architecture for the most part looked like central Hüttenstadt with a polish renaissance twist. It was the fact that anyone occupied them that surprised me. To see cafes that actually have people in them. Streets with young family walking on them. Brightly coloured shop fronts. Ice cream sellers. Old folk in the park. SUVs. Life, real, contemporary, ordinary life. It made me realise how drained of life Hüttenstadt is. It is suffering a slow, withering death, both literal and metaphorical. Nowa Huta gave me some understanding of what it may have looked like way back when, when anyone actually lived there.
On the road home:
I concluded my stay in Krakow as I started it, with a wander and a bowl of mushroom soup. It really is good stuff, that, to be recommended. Sat down with a book and a tea. Prepared some rolls for the road. Said goodbye to the hostel staff. Slept. Steeled out as soundlessly as I could manage at six thirty. Boarded the train to Hamburg Altona. Krakow vanished behind me. I ate and and drank some train coffee. Leaning my head against the window, gazing out, somewhere after Katowice I was gone. By the time I awoke again we were somewhere approaching Wrocklow. The journey was uneventful until Legnica. Pulling into the station, seeing the name, some folk memory that my students have no doubt transmitted to me was triggered, and I remembered that this is the place the germans would call 'Liegnitz'. At the station, and older german couple, who seemed to me to be definitively in their seventies, perhaps older, got on the train. They puzzled over the seat numbering, and I, having taken the time to figure it out earlier, took it upon myself to share my wisdom. In german of course. Satisfied, they asked the young man who was occupying one of their reserved seats to move, and sat down. What struck me was that the older man did they asking, and he did the asking in fairly convincing polish. Later I heard him translate sections of the polish rail magazine into german for his wife. Still later, a few stations from the border I heard him say something about a factory that had stood somewhere near there. I was bubbling with questions. How had he learned polish? Had he lived here as a boy? Is that how he learned it? Was he here visiting family that stayed behind? Was he looking(as some of my students have) for an ancestral home in Silesia? Or had he learned polish for some other strange iron curtain reason? So many questions and I asked none. We pulled across the border, the sun blazing in. He started pulling down the blind, turned for my approval, asked me. In polish. Despite the fact that I had already talked to him in German. Force of habit? Or was it because I simply do not look or sound German? Some questions here will inevitably have to go unanswered. Sometimes the borders between people simply have to be respected, and I left the border between him and my questions where it was. The time will come some other time.
Windmills return to the landscape. I ponder the bilingual signs in German and Sorbian at Cottbus station. The Deutsche Bahn woman makes woeful English language announcements about our eight minute delay. A teenage couple, curled together since Krakow, joke with each other about it in German. We pass by Ikea at Südkreuz. Look! says curling teen 1. We're home! Indeed we were.
And so I am. With about 18 zloty still in my pocket, enough to do some more extensive research about price of beer in Slubice as compared with Krakow someday on the way home from work......
Whenever wanderlust hits again, I'll let you know ......
Til then, fare thee well ....
On the road home remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>On krakow and poland:
Visually my first impression of Krakow was that it had a vaguely Italian feel to it. I still get that sensation walking around, perhaps it the sundrenched, simple and elegant buildings. Whatever it is, there seems to be an ease, a grace to this place. The way the poles here dress and move has also arrested me: walking around on weekdays you see remarkably sharply tailored men, wearing suits that define the body and add character. The women here dress elegantly, again in body defining dresses and tiny perilous shoes. This certainly ain't no berlin. Observing couples dancing in clubs as well, this elegance and definition comes to the fore: dancing here is not simply some kind of rhythmical stumbling. Bodies arch backwards, feet move with purpose. Again all of this has surprised me.
On the germans and the poles:
Perhaps the reason that this has all suprised me is not because I had had no contact at all with poland. Rather it was because i do have so much regular contact with 'Poland' as seen through the eyes of my students, who live and work on the germany-poland border. So many times I have gazed across and wondered what lay on the other side. Rumours of some kind of uncivilised, wild place with crazy drivers, unkempt roads, impoverished, undesirable came to me. What I found provides a contrast. Not only have a found a place that is civilised and elegant in a way that Germany never is, I have been surprised by how, in many respects german standards of civilisation are also valid here. Traffic behaviour for example has been as predictable here as it ever is Germany. Coming here has been a revelation to one who only ever saw Poland through this distorted border mirror.
On Auschwitz:
I was prepared for the room of hair, of eye glasses, the models of gas chambers: I had seen it all in documentaries over the years. I was not prepared for the suitcases with names and adresses painted clearly. Names of towns and cities in germany, mixtures of german and traditional jewish names, locations that are recognisable and familiar to me. These clearly are the places they thought they belonged in. This is what saddened and shocked me in a quite unexpected way: that a country that many of these people thought they belonged to in some way tortured and exterminated them. I cannot even begin to grasp or understand the hatred that produced this, and it is an experience I will carry with me and process for some time to come. It may take me years to even begin to understand the implications.
On gay clubs, clubs and music:
Another thing I had heard, looking through the distorted mirror of poland through germany, was that poland has a major problem with homophobia. I'm sure that there is some truth to this: different standards of public morality do seem to apply here - the professional was apparently shot many a dirty look walking around krakow with the craftsman on a sunday morning in what were clearly last night's clothes. I was cheered, therefore, by the scene in the more gay friendly than gay club we danced in on friday and saturday: those who were out were out and unapologetic. The value of tolerance, and the importance of the struggle to achieve it cannot be underestimated. On a lighter note I was surprised by the music in all the clubs we danced in: it appears to be stuck somewhere not later than 1998. Having experienced 1998 the first time round this was a source of joy to me. Curious, though, very curious.
On friends:
Friends are the best, and mine rule. I love you all.
On home:
On my first full day here, I found myself unearthed and missing Berlin. Now it is one day before I am due to return and the idea fills me with dismay. Isn't it ever thus?
Off to Nowa Huta today, perhaps I will write more after.....
Reflections remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Last thursday night was the last evening when any kind of normality reigned. Feeling the need to fill the space of the evening with something, I went to a concert of Jewish music, music with a kind of intensity that should be experienced with eyes closed. I wandered back up through the city, pausing to watch the cheesy music on the stage that is showcasing Ukranian music as a gesture of polish-ukranian friendship. I retired to the hostel, read some Max Goldt, chatted with a fascinating American woman and wound into sleep sometime after midnight. Breakfast the next morning proceeded as normal, with coffee to be drunk and conversation to be had, this time with a sweet German girl and a sparky chick from Hong Kong. I sat, read my book, did some casual browsing. And waited for the storm to hit. The storm being my dear old friend, the professional.
The professional and I, friends since university, are in many respects at the opposite end of the spectrum, of weath, opinion, lifestyle. In those late nineties university summers, while I drifted from waitressing job to waitressing job she was building a CV. I live in the world of ideas, she a pragamatist. I am happy to wander in two dollar flip flops for days, she has an impressive and dangerous looking collection of stillettos. We share, though, a certain intensity, and a regard for each other that has survived more than a decade; the kind of complicated and dear friendships that we do not plan and that nonetheless sustain us.
That shared intensity made for a weekend of blinding experience. Some flashes: An introductory glass of wine on the market square was followed by a hike up the town hall tower which we felt in our right leg muscles for the day to come. A wander up to the castle, past marrying couples in churches in the jewish district, rain and revelations and poor quality food in Szeroka. A bar at Plac Nowy. Tips from longer term residents and locals lead us to a club, gay friendly and kitch. Spinning and dancing, and wandering. Back to the room for four hours sleep. Boom. The world returns, time for piecemeal breakfast. Time to stumble through the rain looking for a tour company that will bring us to Auschwitz. A rainy bus ride. A solemn couple of hours. Private reflection. Not knowing what to say. Exhaustion. Off into private space. Sore limbs. An unsure heart. Under the shower. On with the heels, do the make-up, drink the sparkly wine. Go.
Dinner in a wonderful restaurant. A wander through bars and clubs looking for fresh experience. Heated discussion of movies. Disappointment in the quest for the new. A return to the old. Back to kitch. Dancing and joy, and impassioned singing and swinging. Impressive couples, whose female halves can bend back elegantly, arching their backs in the arms of their partners. Provocative t-shirts. Virtually no music released after 2000 played. Smooth criminal, simply the best, cotton eye joe, tub thumper. Hours of dancing, talking, all body and joy. Sometime after six am the professional disappears with a companion, the craftsman. I notice a while after, notice that their swinging flowing bodies have left the floor. Walking out into the coridor I catch a glimpse of the inevitable intimacies, they are dancing in front of a deserted door, then kissing. I leave them to it, until my aching feet can stand no more, beg for rest. And we the night warriors walk through the krakow early morning, barefoot, past squares, past the early stirrings of the market square. And they marvel. And I record it, with my camera and my eyes. The little miracles. Back in the door of the hostel, the same gentleman that saw us out the previous night gently laughs and chides us for a return home so late. I crawl, showered into bed. My feet, legs, all is tingle, all is unearthly, detached from my body. The professional pops back out to bid the craftsman farewell. And I drift off into my customary four hours of sleep.
Having missed breakfast, we begin by enquiring from the gentleman as to where we could dine in a brunch like fashion. Nowhere, he responds. Aparently Krakow has not yet discovered the all day brunch. An overpriced panini on the market square, too lazy to travel futher afield. A wander. A grassy seat by the river. Overheared conversations. A glass of mineral water, beautiful, cold, in enveloping sunshine. Shower. Dinner. Impassioned disagreement. The search for jazz rewarded by two tunes. An incongruous discovery; a club with dark clad people, and rotating blond hair and silver chains. Rage against the machine, tori amos, joy division. Almost about to leave, pulled back by the sisters of mercy. Finally out by three. Dancing on the street. Amazed that we are still dancing, three days later. Swinging in front of a cafe to "We built this city on rock and roll". Siezing life. Swatting flies before sleeping, waking. The professional rises and departs. Over breakfast the gentleman laughs and enquires as to the state of my feet. And I recuperate and filter and settle, wait until all the grains have fallen to the bottom before sipping....
Reflections on same tommorow.....that's it for me today. The sunlight still beckons..
Filtering remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>All of this has induced mindblowing exhaustion....have had so many experiences and thoughts to share, and sadly no coherent sentances in which to share them.....
I will hopefully return with thoughts when I have regained to power to formulate them.
Till then...
Mindblowing exhaustion remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>It is not that I have been stationary since my last travels. I have, in the call of 'duty'(corporate language training), been flung on occasions for eisenhuettenstadt to erlangen, to huettenstadt, to erlangen and back again. This is in a way its own kind of travel and given that few would travel of their own free will to either of these places, one spends a good deal more time talking to the locals in say a 24 hour period that I have done talking to the locals in Krakow. Of course there is the fact that I can speak german, but not polish to reckon with here. Perhaps it has equipt me with enough of a knowledge of what it means to be mittel or osteuraeisch to see things on my journeys that other people do not. Who knows...
I took a train, apparently leaving Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 9.35. By the time we actually pulled out it was past ten. A perfect opportunity for germans to mecker, to complain, moan, dramatise, blame poland for all of their ills. This even despite the fact that we experienced no unscheduled delays on the polish side of the border. One pulls out of berlin, through villages in brandenburg mark spotted with windmills, motorways and allotments. One pulls into the strange interzone, that exists around the german polish border, intensified now that the schengen border has fallen. On the german side of the border at cottbus, I find bilingual signs in german and polish. We pass through the emptiness and, truth be told, grimness that exists just leading up to a border that was almost as impenetrable for many. And suddenly we have a new wagon, new announcers. We are over.
About ten minutes past the border, the police and border guards arrive in our carraige. Now that the border no longer officially exists, they cannot pasport check everyone. So the poles, mirroring their german counterparts on the other side, ask anyone who obviously, physically, looks non european, for identification. One guy, an african man does not have it, and after extensive pleading on his part he is 'escorted' off, with no money or ticket, at some impossibly rural station and is informed that he will have to find his own way back to Germany. God help him.
Pulling through western poland takes hours, and it is empty, rural, at times a disconcerting mix of stalinist and 19th century village architecture. Spending as much time as I do in Eisenhuettenstadt, right up at the border on the german side I am familiar with the 'end of the worldness' that proximity to that border brings. The endness breeds emptiness. For some reason it never occured to me that this strange emptiness would be mirrored on the other side. It is a gentle surprise. Otherwise the scenery is punctuated by a distinct lack of the windmills that follow you throughout eastern germany. There are wetlands, and harvesting farmers, empty and rundown stations, and forests without end. I spend my time contemplating this place, the stories I have heard from students, ethnic germans whose families upped and fled from this part of the world when the third reich collapsed. Students with strange slavic sounding names, that end in ska. I ruminate on the history that lies in these strange fields and farm houses.
I drink viciously strong coffee in a 1970s dining carraige. And wonder how the poles manage to stomach this stuff. And continue to ruminate.
Somewhere around Wroklaw civilisation appears to return. Late afternoon has also arrived, and so do shopping malls, cinemas, and strangely enough, branches of the store Rossmann. I am back into an industrial belt, cargo train after coal carrying cargo train pulls past me, on its way to eastern germany and god knows where else. Just before sunset I arrive in Krakow and am arrested by the prices of everything(at least double what you pay in Slubice, on the polish side of the germany/poland border), and by the way in which Krakow resembles Sienna.
More again soon ....
On the road again remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>About one hour or so before I landed in london, I asked the airhostess about my connection to berlin.... I had only one hour to make my connection, I said.... would this be ok... I asked... looking vaguely, but not overly concerned she replied that I would most likely not make the flight, but not to worry, that I would be on the first flight out of london the following morning.... fuck that, I thought... come hell or high water I am going back to berlin...I asked to be moved to somewhere near the door and prepared to run as fast as my legs could possibly could to make the flight....upon half an hour late this looked less and less likely, but I still ran to the transfer desk as fast as i possibly could..... deranged, I told the transfer lady of my delayed flight, tight transfer time and all the rest of the sorry story..... 'i know it might not be possible', I said, 'but I am desperate, desperate to make it back to berlin'.... smiling, she told me that the flight had been delayed by and hour... more sprinting and bus transfers later, and i made it to the gate ten minutes before the flight closed....sitting at the gate, surrounded by extravagently dressed gay men and club kids, i felt immediately like i had found my home city..... when I arrived, my dear friend the writer was there to greet me, and furnish me with warm clothes.... 'welcome home' he said.... indeed I was home....
Spent the last two days almost out of it with exhaustion and excitment, looking wild eyed, bedecked with scarves and jewels....this morning I awoke at 6.30, having finally shook off my jetlag... it was still dark at seven thirty, but I was awake, and so I went on a walk, wandering past the early stirrings of the turkish market, on to Görlizer Park, where the sun rose all red and cold over Poland.... amidst the grafitti, stray dogs and cold sunshine, I looked over this place where I have made my life.....It wasn't all that bad....I even still find it kinda beautiful.....
Not a bad thought to end any trip on.....and this indeed is the end of my trip and the end of my writing on this blog for the moment....meanwhile, check out my brunch quest at
http://berlinbrunching.blogspot.com/
Join the Couchsurfing project and surf my couch
http://www.couchsurfing.com/profile.html?id=1HCM61F
Whenever the travelling sociologist rides again you will all be the first to know...
till then
lots of love
R
Return to Berlin remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Have spent a fitful night drifting in and out of sleep here at the airport, reading, adjusting to the idea that in less than 24 hours I will be back in Berlin, adjusting to the fact that little more than 24 hours ago I was in goa.....here is a little account...
Events:
Spent the last evening hanging out with beach friends.....listening to their plans, making a few of my own... grabbed a couple of hours sleep....woke at 4 am, wandered down to meet my taxi driver... while waiting for him in front of the cafe/bar that I had been hanging out in the suave mystic passed by.... I was accompanied by the swede at the time, and the mystic mentioned to him the urgent pursuit of some woman or other.... after a brief hug i sent him off on his quest.... he walked a little.... spun around..... anounced to the still murmering beach 'when i am drunk i can do anything', and with that he and my goan beach life pretty much disappeared.... the murmers and chuckles of the gujarati boys drifted faintly out of some beach hut or other, but it drifted, like me, into the night....i was gone.....
All the evening the sense of an ending pervaded everything.... the fear and loathing boys, along with a couple of accomplices had spent the day acquiring drugs and music in true Hunter S Thompson style.... some kind of fear and loathing in kerela awaits them all in the new year.....
as for me, berlin awaits..... part of me is sorry not to have a chance to wander on now..... but i feel sure that now is not the time for me to wander on..... besides, I will definitely be back, of that I am pretty sure.....
Final conclusions and thoughts will follow when I am firmly back in Berlin..... for now, though, this is my final report from indian soil.....
lots of love to all
R
Conclusions Part 2 remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Greetings from my last day in goa....slowly I can feel my life returning to me, in less than 24 hours I will be on a train to mumbai, and unless amazing and reasonably priced accomodation literally falls onto my lap, I'm planning to go to the airport early and just wait it out.....spent yesterday being driven through goa and bargaining with sellers at anjuna market, spent the night hanging out, today so far has been spent feeling sorrowful and happy at the same time, at the prospect of returning to berlin...here are just a few thoughts, a few conclusions on the trip, while I think of them....
Thoughts:
Calcutta/Kolkata:
Not ever having been to Kolkata before, I can be forgiven for having mistaken it for india..... an intense mad place if ever I saw one, one had the feeling of really being on the edge....having spent a mere week and a half there, i am still too much of a calcutta newbie to judge, but i actually get the feeling that somewhere in the madness there is something I like very much...
Indian Trains:
These absolutely rock....At the wedding I was advised by all and sundry to fly, that taking the train was some kind of living hell, and upon my arrival in the station at Kolkata I temporarily agreed...we actually had to break into our own train carraige before boarding.... every thing after that, though, was fabulous, the people i met, the train chai i drank, standing at the open door, watching india pass by, waking up and wondering where you were...all for 9 euros from kolkata to mumbai....
Mumbai:
Go with another person....this city is just too much to process alone....i'm leaving this one for another time.....
Goan Beach Society:
Lies somewhere between a standard beach resort and a rest home for the temporarily insane....a strange mix of short-termers seeking a baterry recharge, a slighly different way of hanging out on the beach and long term travellers burned out on travel, on their travelling companions, on life before travel, life since travel.....add some lovers with complicated travel based relationships and the set is complete..... here are some of the characters that have livened up my experience....
The Swedish 'Swami': Formerly a punkish drifter, now a comitted yogi, albeit a yogi that feeds his unenlighted side with booze, cigarettes and spliffs for a couple of week each year on palolem....after the new year party ends each year he gets on the road and hits the ashrams, and returns to purity and the search for enlightenment....never mentions very much about his 'secret' palolem life while hanging with yoga friends, and sure as hell doesn't seem to do any yoga here. A night porter and trainee yoga teacher in real life...
Lawyer in the desert: The lawyer is in his mid thirties, based in london,a passionate and engaged guy.... I still do not know what happened to him, what drove him on this mission he is on, but he is certainly on some kind of mission...he has spent the last five months driving across from sweden to india on a motor bike, filming everything, acompanied by one friend..... his arrival in palolem seemed to prompt the release of all sorts of tensions....either from his life before, or from the journey..... spent at least 2 weeks going truly crazy...drinking gin and tonics from 10am till late, babbling insanities, retelling the same stories over and over again.... wandering round in midday sun on the beach, turning redder and redder, his hair sticking up..... he appeared to me, as if he were some kind of shamen on a quest for truth in a desert, speaking to things that were not there....searching for a resolution..... a couple of days ago he seemed to return to sanity.... a sense of calm engagement that i had not detected before came upon him.... he no longer babbled.... he left the gin and tonic to one side, and i got the feeling that whatever he was searching for, he found....
The fear and loathing crew:
Consisting of a few israeli musicians in their early 30's, a french man that drifts in and out like some kind of suave mystic, and an engaging brazilian these guys have seriously been on some kind of altered state of mind quest..... ran into a real problem the other evening when they were all on lsd, as they tried to translate things from french, hebrew and portuguese into english..... as they tried to put their ineffable experiences into words in a shared second language.... some parts of this crew are off to kerela to ride the backwaters on mescaline....
The gujarati boys:
The gujarati boys, quite apart from being extremely funny are also a sociological gem..... thing is, the 'gujarati' boys are actually londoners with, if memory serves, gujarati parents, and they really are as london as you can get.... it is fascinating for me to watch them negotiating india pretty much as europeans with indian faces....they face the same problems with food, digestion, they view india with pretty much the same strange eyes.....like all good north europeans they secretly miss the rain(did a straw poll last night, pretty much all of us from the north of europe do...)....yet for them india is also does not have the same cast that it does for the standard north european.... what is fascinating, deeply true and enlightening for the swedish 'swami' simply gets a snort of derision and a 'that sounds exactly like something my grandfather would say' from GB1, the same guy who once jokingly pondered whether he could get his family to arrange casual sex for him under the auspices of trying to introduce him to suitable marraigable women..... GB2 is quieter, more reflective, and is possibly ready to wander further... I do wonder how he will get on.....
both the GB's try to remember some of what stuart hall wrote on identity.... may chase it up later....
loads more thoughts, but i'm not going to miss this opportunity to catch some of the last goan sunrays i have....
love and greetings
R
Conclusions, Part I remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Disappeared so thoroughly into goan and karnatakan beach life that I did not notice time passing....looked at a calander yesterday in gokarna and noticed that I only had one week left....how did any of this happen....let me try to explain....
Arrived by night, spent the day alone, wandering.... swam and wandered up the beach by sunset, looking for connections....saw a group of people, looking energetic, rough round the edges what I usually look for and decided to sit down beside them.....was invited to join...talked with them....returned the following day and the day after that for sunset, food, songs....I have somehow ended up in a kind of family here....have acquired some kind of goan beach life yet i have no idea who these people are in there other lives....it is also totally irrelevant in a sense....all that matters is what exists on a beach in india..... decided to go travelling a little further south with one, to gokarna in karnataka....a hindu holy place and with quiet beaches on the brink of discovery nearby.....spent a day discovering the quiet beaches, and another walking into the town, encountering a swami, looking at temples, eating great vegetarian food, being immersed in india again....now back in palolem again for a christmas with this new makeshift family before contemplating a little and moving on again.....
Thoughts:
On beach life and identity:
Was wondering previously how one could characterise travelling life, the travelling experience, how it forms identity.....I suppose I was thinking when i wrote this about how this compares with the bohemian experience of being an exile within ones home society, travelling in a sense without moving, orientalising the european without perhaps going to the orient..... after a week of hanging round with long term habitual travellers i have come to see that they are quite different experiences.....in both cases one is trying to become, or becomes some kind of different versions of the self, however, in terms of the intensity of struggle they are really quite different experiences.... for the traveller, the posession of self comes from that sense of being very far away from old identity and struggle, the sense that it can all go, float away into the ocean and picked up at some other time....all really quite meditative.... bohemian life, on the other hand, because of the intensity and conflict that are necessary when one adopts a different identity, philosophy from others in a society in which one still lives is not an easy letting go at all, rather it is a life full of struggle.... as one seems to have replaced the other in western europe(bohemian life is on the decline, traveller life in the ascendent) it would be interesting to compare the two types of life course these two different phenomena involve.....
On travelling with a man:
Went down to gokarna with a guy.....an interesting experience from many perspectives.....from the feminist one i noticed this..... being attached to a man has immediately rendered me unproblematic and completely invisible..... in the hotel the staff spoke only to him, this morning in a restaurant the staff looked for him to order for me.... some girls at a table opposite us looked at me with astonishment when i put down the money to pay for us both....
thats all from me for the moment....
A happy and safe christmas to all....
love roisin
On disappearing remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>It takes some effort to remember what day it is here, how long ago I arrived....all the days, actions, people seem to blend into each other.... by the time i awake for my first swim it is already ten, by the time breakfast is over it is twelve....another swim or two, a few conversations, some haggling over jewelery with beach traders or a massage and the it is time to join the other solo travellers down by the beachside of food and drink while the sun sets, for conversation and songs and spliffs before the sun sets again. Somewhere between eleven and midnight we all drift back to our beach huts, drift off to sleep before blending back to light sometime the next morning and doing it all again....
Thoughts:
This is not really the place for thoughts..... more reflections when I leave...
On Palolem Beach..... remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Thoughts:
On travel:
I was accopanied on my 12 hour train journey to the south by a bunch of israelis, newly released from the army and in the grip of the travel bug..... 'i'm sure i'll see you treking around somewhere in india next year', said one of them..... 'once the travel bug gets you you will keep going'.... I replied that i could definitely see the appeal of just being on the way somewhere without any general destination, without any permence...but that had not done this travel thing before in this way(i.e. short term, exotic, cheap) before because my life in my early to mid twenties had enough of a sense of impermenace, of being constantly on the road with no general destination and no idea of who your travelling companions are going to be, in and of itself, and that that was not necessarily a pleasant thing. This comes back to some thoughts of mine that have been going through my head for a number of years, a thought roughly hegelian in character, that one needs the thesis before one seeks or needs the antithesis.....that one needs stability and a sense of permenance of a 'home place' in order to really desire and enjoy impermenance of 'away and exotic' ..... the question i am asking myself this morning is whether this is really true... or whether this thought is just something i have used to protect myself against adventure.... more on this later
still more on sexism:
Some old adage somewhere states that 'sexism hurts men as much as women'..... cannot remember the reasoning or the precise counter arguments at this point, but had an interesting conversation on the train with an indian born canadian citizen in his mid 20's...... having left india at the age of 7 to go to the middle east, and then on to canada when he was 14, he is virtually as non indian as any of us temporary travellers and too experiences this country as a 'stranger'....he asked me for my impressions of this country, and i did express my frustration at how the perceptions of women hampered me in my daily interactions in this country.... i noted that while a man can walk down the street and banter with men, with me such banter would be percieved as sexual looseness..... he agreed and responded that he could also not talk to women in the way he was accustomed, as to simply strike up an innocent conversation with an unknown women would be percieved as a sexual advance on his part.....
right, thats it from me..... i'm off to try and buy a copy of hemmingway's 'the sun also rises' that i saw second hand and vastly overpriced down the road.... if i can get them down to 50 rupees, the that is my afternoon sorted......love to all, R
Among the backpackers remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>An urban person I may be but sometimes even I reach my cracking point. Yesterday was the day that I reached it - I retired to my uninspiring hotel room at 8pm last night, unable to cope with any more of the insane traffic, and intense hassle that staying in the tourist quarter of this city brings....and so i decided to get a good sleep and then to arrange my passage out of this city and onward to goa as soon as humanly possible....did that this morning, i'm off on a train tomorrow at 6.55 in the morning, should be in goa by evening, and am looking forward to a few days chill time, a space to gather my thoughts away from the chaos of this place...very glad i made that decision...now that i have my train ticket and reservation i feel greatly at ease, and have spent the day since wandering the streets, through bazzars and markets, getting lost, finding my way again, playing truth or dare with 16 year old girls on chowpatty beach and feeling 100% more at ease with myself than i did before.... i think perhaps mumbai is a city best explored with someone else, someone with whom you can face the chaos and enjoy the cosmopolitan character with... it is absolutely not a place to hook up with other travellers, though, in my experience...I have seen other solo travellers here, we peek at each other over our lonely planets but we all wander alone, don't reach across the table to talk.... it seems the force of this city serves to keep the already separate even more separate....perhaps not the place for me right now....lets see what the next few days bring...
Thoughts:
Colonialism: Having said all that, i do think that mumbai would be a fantastic place to explore some time with someone else to buffer me.... it is the most bizarre mix of colonialism and 'oriental' street market culture i have ever experienced and i keep drifting from place that remind me of edinburgh(and there really are a surprising number of places in india that remind me of edinburgh) to places that remind me of the arabian nights(wrong part of the world i know, but that is what it reminds me of). Looking at the colonial buildings i cannot help but wonder about those people who designed and built them, to wonder why they did as they did, how they imagined their ideal bombay....so i've been walking around, pondering the colonial imagination....it has also made me think that i should pick up some post colonial indian writing to remind me of how indians responded....any suggestions anyone....
Feminism: Was wandering round a bookstore earlier looking for some inspiration....noticed the section that was marked 'womens studies'....knowing the strong indian feminist tradition i went hopefully to have a look..... was really appauled to find that the shelf was filled with cookery, health and child-rearing books...more incredulity re: my unmarried status followed with the 16 year old girls on the beach..... my journeys may be young but i cannot still help but be surprised by it all....
So much for the city remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Events:
I travelled second class, three tier, a three bunks on top of each other, bring your own blankets, sleep on your luggage, hugging your valuables type of experience... what a fantastic experience, though... my companions on this journey were mainly twelve year old convent maharashtrian school girls .... who stayed with me from Kolkata, pretty much all the way to Mumbai(getting off just a few hours earlier than me). I had forgotton what it was like to be that age, how important having a notebook, and getting people to write in it, collecting mementos, coins, buying gifts for other people, sharing enthusiastic. I spent my hours with these girls doing all these things, comparing and even swopping jewlery, writing in their notebooks, getting them to write in mine, showing them and giving them my euro coins, showing them where i come from and where i live on the fifty euro note, learning to count from one to ten in hindi, comparing make-up. Hanging round with them I understood why adults find growing up mourn the loss of the younger child as the teenager takes her place. Watching these girls I could not help but think that in a couple of years the desire to be the most beautiful, popular, etc would take over and that this pure good spirited would be lost forever, but even I am not so naive or so cynical as to believe that 12 year olds are really pure and good spirited all the time, or that older people cannot possess gentleness, enthusiasm and caring....perhaps it just takes a little more work to find it...
Arrived in Mumbai at 6 am, went to my hotel, slept till noon, wandered for a few hours.... Mumbai, like Kolkata, is an overwhelming city, and my urge is now to get out, to leave and go to some more peaceful place, something i plan to do in a day or two.....unless i find something really arresting and special here I fear that I am all citied out at the moment, and that quieter places beckon....I'll keep you all posted...
Thoughts:
Women, Feminism etc:
Can't get away from this theme, the fact that I am a woman alone, without a husband in my home country is really marking my experience here... what it means to be a woman here is something that I have become intensely aware of here....
I have spoken to western women who traveled alone here before i came.... all assured me that what i was doing was fine, really quite safe, that occasional hassle was to be expected but that firmness, and if necessary making a scene was all that was necessary. On the other hand, Indians I have talked to and encountered, especially men seem be really quite concerned for my safety....more than one has commented that what I am doing is brave, has been eager to help, escort protect me. Were I in Europe , the fact that I was travelling alone would hardly merit comment and offers of help are rare. I get the feeling that being a woman alone here is considered problematic, and has become as a consequence problematic in a very real way... feminist theory keeps rushing back at me, as i said before it has never seemed so real and relevant.
more experiences on the train that led me to reflect on 'being a woman' - the 12 year old girls first questions, when they came to talk to me individually were always about whether i was married or not....when i say that i am 28 and unmarried it always comes as a surprised and i have found myself quite pointedly explaining that in my culture a woman does not need to marry, that the act of marrying is less important than it is in india. On a related note, the girls are already impressively female, their 12 year old makeup bags almost rival my own, they have better perfumes and are far more concerned with jewlery.... perhaps I was also like that at 12, perhaps this is just something universal to twelve year old girls but i distinctly got the sense that the knowledge about beauty and the concern for marraige were part of the same socialisation process that would turn these girls into brides, making sure that they avoid becoming a 'problematic' woman alone....
Just one more thing related to this theme that struck me on the train - sitting on my upper bunk with one of the 12 year olds we were approached by loud, boistrous and agressive women, who held out their hand to me and banged on my bed rail....they attempted to address me in hindi, i spoke back in english which they didn't understand, my 12 year old companion told them in hindi to go awa y and refused to translate their requests for money into english(claiming she did not speak it); eventually they looked incredulous and turned away.... when they had gone, my companion explained that these were 'sixers'. I asked what they were and was told that 'they are not men or women', that they steal from your house when you are gone due to a marriage or some other event, that their mouths are filled will diamonds when they die, and that a sixer is born, the result of a curse, when a woman pregnant with a girl leaves the house during a full or half moon. Couldn't figure out what they were, wasn't sure whether they were prostitutes or common or garden theives or both or neither but it again threw into sharp relief for me the ways in which woman are problematic....
poverty:
poverty is overwhelming here, outside the world of the kolkata bourgeoisie it acompanies me across every street with an open hand....no thoughts really, no way of making sense of it really...
Epic remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Finally, a chance to draw breath, and record as much of what has happened here as I can remember before I leave here(I'm out of here at 20.15 tonight on a 30 hour, 9 euro train to bombay) and it all becomes a little to dreamlike....so here goes....
Saturday... friday night was spent having some indian food, and later at a gig for amit's brother avinash and his band.....3 more people joined our party in the early hours of saturday morning, davids mum clare, his brother matt and juliet connected to the extended family in ways to complicated to explain now....
there was little chance for anyone to really get any kind of decent rest, before some other dehli based friends of sanhita picked us up and whisked us away on a sari shopping extravaganza.... purchasing the actual sari itself was really quite straightforward.... one stands in front of a counter, while fabric is thrown in front of you, and eventually you either get sick of it all, of happen to actually like one. Luckily the latter happened to me and it was all done and dusted pretty promptly. Having purchased our saris so late, however, we did not have time to get tops custom made, so had to buy one from a street stall....common practise here it would seem..... in practise what this meant was that about 7 of us girls were left standing at a street corner in amidst the din and energy of kolkata, trying on blouses over our tops, and getting interested looks from the locals... we swept on to another shop, where i bought bangles to go with my sari, the girls bought salwar suits and boys were busy getting sherwanis, appropriate for men to wear to a wedding.....back in our hotel later we pracised our range of scottish/irish/east european songs and tunes in anticipation of the cultural evening to be held on the monday
Sunday:
Mehindi.....spent day round sanhita's hanging out and getting to know the other girls in the brides party..... some time in the afternoon, the mehindi(henna) women came and decorated our hand, with beautiful paterns that were a surprisingly intense brown for a couple of days, but which have now faded and are going slightly orangy.....we had to manage not to touch anything for 2 hours, and could not wash our hands till the next day.... it was worth it, though, and garners good favor from all here
Monday:
The first official day of the wedding, cultural performance evening.... after more shoe shopping to complete my wedding outfits, and some frantic last minute practising of our act we prepared ourselves to brave the stage at the cultural performance evening..... members of the groom and brides family are both expected to give some sort of performance..... on the grooms side we were treated to a range of traditional dancing and singing.... on the brides side there was a recital of a famous bengali poem, and well, us........ with our rendition of the scottish traditional air 'Mhairi's wedding'(changed for the occasion to San San's wedding), some traditional scottish dancing from me and five others(more or less indistinguishable from irish dancing so not that much of a leap) and some tin whistle and fiddle playing..... we went down a storm but went home to get an early night in preparation for what awaited us the next day....
Tuesday
The wedding itself....
will come back to this later... but in brief it included... 3 of us girls(elly, emily and myself) round sanhita's from 9 am onwards... ritual... conch blowing....turmeric paste being delivered from one house to another by important family members....sari wearing for beginners....amit arriving to the wedding on a horse.... ritual fire.... marriage....and sanhita looking like a spirit goddess...
Wednesday
Went to the indian coffee house, a place i think might be something of a spiritual home should i spend longer in kolkata...
the reception....with a suprising lack of dancing ... this marked the return of the sanhita we all know and love from the spirit plane she appeared to inhabit the previous day to the earthly realm....
Thursday
Recovery and preparation for my onward journey
Thoughts:
too many thoughts to get into here, but will record them later... thinking bout various themes including multilingualism in india, how shopping here resembles more the shopping in europe before the department store, the kolkata bourgeoise, feminism, tradition and the wedding ceremony and many more things.... will post some more thought when i get a chance...
lots of love
Roisin
San San's wedding remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Day before yesterday was my last day before more guests arrived.....spent the afternoon hanging out on the balcony of sanhitas dadu(grandad)'s place, while san took some much needed sleep. Then we hit the shops.... first jewelery stores, then clothing stores where I acquired salwar kameez suits and indian cotton tops suitable for travelling. All in all it was quite an overwhelming experience.... I do not have any sense for what looks good or bad, what is expensive of inexpensive in a salwar kameez, how one should acessorise, what is fashionable or not.... plus it is not a case of simply rooting through shelves at your leisure and walking into roomy changing rooms.... security guards guard the doors, and about 5 assistants search for colours and styles that they think would suit you....for me this is perhaps a little too much attention.... for san this seems to be normality.... yesterday, due to a political controversy in Bengal there was a 12 hour 'strike', with no taxis or other transport running, and no shops open...dave and the others had just arrived, so i used the time of the strike to catch up with them...
Thoughts:
I've realised just how much I appreciate my adopted home city berlin, its freedom and tolerance with regard to gender, sexuality etc. Adjusting to a situation where men do not look me in the eyes, do not take me seriously when a man is present, being required to remain 'modest' all the time, not feeling comfortable doing things that dave does with ease.... never before have i been so thankful for what my feminist foremothers achieved in making the life i live possible....
Shopping remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Thoughts: Tradition, modernity & Globalisation
Virtually all the knowledge i have garnered about India in the last month comes not from travel guides, but from some of my english language students, whose company has just been taken over by a huge Indian steel company. One guy I talked to, who had grown up in an era of russian domination in eastern bloc, and who had learned fluent russian as a result said he would be advising his daughter to get very familiar with the culture of the east, to get to know India, to learn Chinese perhaps. 'In my day' he said, the russians were rising.... now it's the east'.... all of this was very clear to me almost the moment I stepped off the plane...
All the roads here.... though still a bit rough around the edges are new... within 24 hours of arrival I had a new simcard for my phone.... this internet cafe is indistinguishable from the ones where I live.... the people i hung out with last night do pretty much exactly the same as I do, just with a slight twist.... they go to elegant restaurants with impecable service for business meetings.... the grooms younger brother, who has just graduated from college, plays in a band, hangs out with a mixed sex group of people... they go out, get drunk, go clubbing, and swing by roadside food stalls afterwards for tea and food....they hang hang out on rooves drinking beer and getting stoned.....hell, i used to do exactly the same thing when I was 23. My first thought then was the Kolkata is not so strange at all.... hanging out with the middle classes I can relate very well. Their lives are not strange, they are familiar. The search for a traditional world should not bring you to a modern Indian city....the world here is not traditional, rather it is in many essentials hyper-modern. In fact, in some respects, the world I have come from, living among the turkish community in berlin Kreuzberg may be more traditional than many places here. Case in point, the honour killing in of a Turkish woman in Berlin 2 or so years ago. When I mentioned this to Amit, stitting on the party roof, he mentioned that he had heard of nothing like this in Kolkata in 10 years at least..... such are my thoughts so far....
First impressions of an India innocent remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>My first proper entry in this blog...perhaps I should start by answering some questions, about where I am, what I am doing, and how the hell I ended up here in the first place.
As for where I am, I am in Kolkata(formerly Calcutta) in India, sitting in an internet cafe in lake view road. This cafe is not at all unlike the internet cafes i've been using in my Berlin neighbourhood, Kreuzberg, so I feel right at home....
How did I end up here? The genesis of this trip lies within a previous one, and within a complicated web of friendships and visits that all have their genesis in York. It was York that I met both Sanhita and Dave....Sanhita rang me in July to tell me that she was getting married, and while I thought about going even then it did not at all seem like any kind of real possibility. I did want to take a holiday that summer, though, and Dave was in Rome preparing apparently, to depart imminently for Kenya to work for the UN(in true UN Style, however, he is still in Rome). During my visit then, Dave told how much Sanhita would love to see me at her wedding, and we really started talking about going....I arrived back...looked at my post Italy finances and despite the fact that they were looking pretty devastated I thought, what the fuck and booked anyway...the flight cost me over 800 euros(damn berlin for not being connected to anywhere by air) and I did want to see more of India so I booked for the longest possible time I could manage, 1 month....for all of those in Dublin, yes this does mean that I will not be home for christmas....
Where will I be, then..... wedding related events stretch on for the next week and a bit or so, and after that I'm off across the country by train, possibly stopping in a place or two before hitting Bombay and Goa....
From when I booked mid october, till my departure now at the end of november I also worked as many hours as karen, my boss could possibly give me, over 120 hours in november alone of standing in front of people, teaching... along with my other side projects, this has kept me more that occupied in the last couple of months... this also meant that I thought little about India before coming here. I did little research, did not think too deeply about what awaited me here and while I did listen to others advice I have come here pretty much as an innocent as far as India is concerned..... in my next entry I'll tell you all about the first impressions of an India innocent....
Arrival remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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]]>Still in Berlin remains copyright of the author roisinc, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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