Please Tell Your Friends We Do Not Hate Them

This is what a guy in Old Cairo told me yesterday. He had struck up a conversation with the usual, "Where are you from," and, when I said I was from America, he asked if I liked Egypt and whether I found people to be friendly. I said that the people are extremely friendly. That's when he asked that I tell this to people in America.

"Tell them we do not hate them," he said. "I will be honest with you; we hate Bush. But we do not hate American people."

So today, the last day of my trip, that is what I'm doing. People of America, know this; the people of Egypt do not hate you.

I have had countless random people on the street tell me some variation of this. We hate Bush, but you are welcome to Egypt.

Egypt really is unbelievably friendly. Some of the friendliness morphs into hustle, particularly in Cairo, where your new friend is often trying to get you to visit his papyrus painting shop or craft store.

In Alexandria, however, the hospitality is nearly always genuine, and so omnipresent that I literally would not have had the time to accept each offer.

I was walking by an old tea shop along the Corniche in front of Alexandria's Eastern Harbor, when an old man sitting by the window yelled, "Hello! Where are you from?"

I responded.

"Ah," he said, "America! I have been to Boston, to New York, to Charleston. Come inside."

I hesitated a moment.

"Come inside!" he ordered, obviously impatient with my vacillating.

I went into the tea shop, a large, wood-paneled room with high ceilings, overhead fans, and big, open windows looking out on the harbor. It was full of old Egyptian men drinking tea, telling stories, arguing, smoking bubbling sheesha water pipes, or, often, just quietly gazing out at the water.

My host introduced himself as Captain Sayeed, a retired sailor in the Egyptian merchant marine. He had sailed to ports all around the world, but loved his time in the USA - a beautiful country he said, with wonderful people.

Captain Sayeed had the posture and manner of a man accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. But he also listened intently to every word that I said when we were speaking. We sat and drank tea for well over an hour. Whenever something struck him as funny, or when he felt that he had made a particularly trenchant comment, he would throw back his head and laugh a loud, hoarse laugh.

When I finally graciously took my leave, Captain Sayeed demanded that I return the next day. He sat in that spot, in that cafe, every day from about 9am to 2pm. I could find him there. I agreed, and as I am a man of my word, I showed up for more tea the next day. Though, truth be told, my morning tea with the Captain was the highlight of my Alexandrian day. There's no way I would have missed it.

Mohammed Cramps My Bargaining Style

I was having some trouble finding my seat on the bus from Nuweiba to Cairo. The numbers were only in Arabic, which takes me a moment or two to puzzle out, and in my moment of puzzling, a young Egyptian guy with lots of curly hair stepped forward to help me. (This happens all the time - people here are always ready to help a dumb foreigner figure stuff out.)

My seat, however, appeared to already be occupied by some guy's sweater and water bottle. In Arabic, the kid who was helping me told the guy, (I'm assuming here) something along the lines of, "This is the dumb foreigner's seat. Can you move your sweater and water bottle?"

The guy said something which could only have been an answer in the negative, and then turned back to his window. There was more discussion, with a couple of other passengers throwing in their two cents, and the guy giving curt answers and turning back to the window. Maybe he had a friend who wanted to sit there. Maybe he just didn't want to sit next to the foreigner. I may never know.

I glanced back to look for open seats. Two different guys gestured to the open seats next to them. The one I ended up sitting next to was named Mohammed - but he said to call him Moe.

Moe works in Saudi Arabia as the communications manager for a Saudi prince who wants to set up a TV station. He was on his way back to Cairo to visit his family. But the main thing he wanted to talk about was, of all things, his time spent working in Dahab (q.v. my post Dahab and the Egyptian Mafia). This mostly involved detailed stories of his many foreign girlfriends, and his love of tearing around the Sinai in a fast car with a bottle of whiskey and at least one beautiful girl.

As we rolled into Cairo, I asked Moe how much I should pay for a taxi from the bus station to my hotel. An old technique - if you don't want to get ripped off, ask a local how much they would pay.

He said, "I don't know, probably a lot. You're a tourist, so you'll probably have to pay fifty."

Fifty Egyptian Pounds for a cab ride anywhere in Cairo is extortion. A ridiculously high rate. (Nevermind that it's under ten bucks.)

"But," Moe said, "I will help you get a taxi."

We got off the bus, he greeted his family, I gathered my luggage. As per usual, I was beset by offers of taxis. Of course, the first guy wanted fifty.

"Twenty," I said.

"No, no very far away!" It wasn't far away. It was less than 6km. I started to walk to the next guy.

"Okay, thirty-five." Progress.

"Okay, twenty-five," I said.

"Let's go."

Then Moe walked up. He pat me on the back, said how much he enjoyed my company, gave me his cell phone number and said to call if I needed anything in Cairo. He helped me carry my backpack to a different taxi.

"This guy will take you. I've worked it all out for you," Moe said.

I thanked him profusely, and got in the car.

"Okay, you can pay this man fifty when you get to the hotel. See you later!"

And the car tore off into the vicious hurly-burly of Cairo traffic. Moe had just assumed that, as a tourist, I would have to pay tourist rates. I don't know what is the morally right thing to do in this situation. Suck it down and pay many times what a local would, because I'm from a rich country? (An Egyptian guy at my hotel said he would have paid ten, fifteen tops.) Should I try to get the dirt cheapest price I can? Is there, perhaps, a happy medium? I don't know. All I know is that my cabbie, who had overheard my bargaining, was grinning like a madman for the entire drive.

Dahab and the Egyptian Mafia

When we checked into our hotel in Dahab, a Sinai beach town with a hippyish backpacker feel, there were three young Egyptian guys behind the counter screwing around. One turned to us, grinned and introduced himself and his friends. They were the Egyptian Mafia - the guy at the end of the line, tall, with curly hair and a cell phone in his hand was the Drug Dealer. Then next one, wearing a slick, Ben Shermanesque shirt with three buttons open, was the Killer.

"And me, I'm the Don."

They all laughed. More general screwing around ensued, jokes flying from all sides, in English and Arabic, and they got us checked in at a leisurely pace.

The restaurant at the Sphinx hotel is called the Funny Mummy. This is where Lee and I eat breakfast every day, facing the Gulf of Aqaba, sitting on comfy cushions on the floor. This is how we were welcomed to the Funny Mummy on our first day:

A guy with a mustache, who we had not yet met, came casually over to the table with a couple of menus, and said, "Good morning my friends! Where you come from?"

I said, "California." I usually say California rather than America. Everybody has heard of California, and it seems somehow hipper.

"Ah, Americans! You are welcome. Fuck Bush." He gave a sardonic yet friendly half-way grin and walked off to get us some coffee. Then one of the Mafia came over and sat next to us.

He said, "Good morning," and leaned way back on the cushions, checking his cell phone. He looked tired.

"Too much party last night." As he typed out a text message with his thumb, he explained that he had stayed out late at a club, and had to work this morning at 7am.

We've now been in Dahab for four days, and have gotten to know by sight and brief repartee a number of the guys who stand in front of bars and restaurants and try to rope in tourists. Their lines vary from, "Please come see the menu," to "Did you hear the joke about the hippy and the nun?" It's a form of the Hustle, which is pretty much omnipresent in the parts of Egypt tourists frequent, but this hustle is always done with an easygoing sense of fun.

Last night, Saturday night, we went to a party at the Tota Bar, the front of which resembles an old clipper, complete with portholes and a rigged mast. Crunchy, thumping Trance filled the bar, and tourists danced in the middle. Out back people hung out around fires, and drank beer. The bar/restaurant hustlers mingled, played pool, and put their verbal skills to use hitting on the foreign girls. Working in Dahab must be many a swinging young Egyptian's dream.

The Last Remaining Wonder of the Ancient World

Yesterday we went to the Giza plateau, 30 km from downtown Cairo, and spent the day in the presence the pyramids of Khufu, Kafre and Menkaure. They have been visited, and written about, by travelers from Herodotus to Mark Twain, so it is a bit daunting to attempt say something about them. Here are a few observations:

• At 4000 years old, the Great Pyramid of Khufu is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - nearly two millenia older than its nearest competitor, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It is also the only Wonder that is still in existence.
• The Giza Plateau is full of tourists and persistent hustlers offering horse and camel rides, tours, and sovenirs. The pyramids are still one of the most awesome things I have ever seen.
• The Cairo suburb of Giza comes right up to the foot of the Giza Plateau. If you look one direction from the pyramids, you see desert. If you look the other, you see the smog and sprawl of a city with 20 million inhabitants.
• There is a KFC at the bottom of the plateau. The Sphinx's inscrutable gaze appears to be locked with that of the grinning Colonel.

Again With the Hustle

We met Omar on the train from Meknes to Fes. He struck up a conversation with the usual, "Where are you from," and then told us about his family in Fes, and his job at the Roman ruins of Volubilis, near Meknes. We told him about our lives and families. His English was great, and he had us break out our Lonely Planet so he could show us his favorite places in Fes. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice kept asking, "Are we being hustled?"

The Hustle is everywhere in Morocco. Walk into the medina of any city, and suddenly you are the center of attention. Where are you from? Welcome to my country. Would you like some tea? Do you need a guide? A carpet? Hashish? Would you like to give me 5 dirham? The answers to these questions is almost invariably no, but still they are asked by men or boys (they are always male) from the ages of 6 to 60, with the median somewhere in the late teens/early twenties.

It is, I would imagine, something like being a hot girl at a club. The fact that I make eye contact, or smile, does not mean I necessarily want what you are offering. I'm just trying to be polite, but maybe I can't do that.

But Omar didn't ask us for anything. He seemed to genuinely want us to have a good time in Morocco. He talked about how important tourism is for his country's economy, which is why he wants tourists like us to have a good experience - so we can recommend it to our friends. He warned us against using the "faux guides" - kids who hang out in the medina, and give tourists a quick, often inaccurate tour. If we wanted a guide, he had a friend who was an official, government-licensed tour guide, and an former Art History professor. But there was no pressure - he gave us a phone number, and said, "Call if you like." Then he said goodbye, shook our hands, and went on his way in Fez.

This is how I want interactions to go, but I'm not sure that's fair of me. I am from a rich country, and I am traveling around a poor country just for fun. Do I also have the right to expect that these interactions be free from any economic dimension? Does the fact that money is involved necessarily polute the relationship, rendering it somehow "inauthentic?" I don't know...

We called Omar's friend that day (yesterday). Today, he showed up at our hotel in his spiffy new Fiat and took us on a brief tour of the old Jewish quarter of Fes, a couple of mosques, and a view point outside the medina. His English was also great, and he knew plenty of interesting details and stories.

Then he took us on a rather extensive tour of handicraft workshops and showrooms - ceramics, brassware, leather, and, of course, carpets. The pressure to buy was generally light and quite decorous, but the tour of shops continued until we said we were through.

Was that a hustle? Wafa Lo (Omar's friend) almost certainly got a kickback for the sizeable collection of leather goods Lee ended up purchasing. Did some of that find its way back to Omar too? Who knows? And I'm not even sure that's the right question to ask. All I know is that Fes has been great, and I'm hereby recommending it to all my friends.

Insider/Outsider

Last night, the night of our arrival in Tangier was not only grey and rainy. It was also Eid al-Fitr. As of today, Ramadan is officially over, and good muslims are once again free to eat, drink, smoke, and have sex during the daylight hours. Eid al-Fitr - the Feast of Breaking the Fast - begins at sundown on the last day of Ramadan.

The Feast is not a big, crazy-go-nuts, party-in-the-street type of feast - something which became quite obvious to Lee and I as we wandered the rainy, deserted streets of Tangier in search of dinner last night. We had umbrellas, but by the time we found a place that was both open and sold food, we drenched below the knees and damp below the shoulders. The only other occupants of the restaurant were a quiet German couple, and a couple of old Moroccan men who didn't eat, but just sat at a table and chatted with the waiter. It had the languid, vaguely melancholy vibe of a restaurant on Christmas Eve.

Late into the night, from the house below our hotel, we heard the sound of people laughing and shouting, all to the soundtrack of Justin Timberlake and Moroccan pop music. Early the next morning, with the skies clearing slightly, we heard, from far off, the sound of a horn being blown, and of drums, and of a muezzin singing the extended version of Allah hu Akbar. We wandered around quite a bit, but everything was closed, nobody was on the street, and we didn't have an in.

* * * * * *

Covaleda was unseasonbly sunny when we were there. My uncle Antonio, who was born in the small Castillian village near Soria, and aunt Tab, who was born in California and married Antonio twenty-some years ago, both commented on how lucky we were that it wasn't freezing cold and rainy. It had been drizzling constantly until we got there.

The rain was good for the mushrooms, though, and that's why we were there - to pick and cook and eat the wild mushrooms that grow in the forest around Covaleda. (The forest, incedentaly, was a gift from a Spanish king to the people of Covaleda to show his appreciation for a lovely hunting trip he had enjoyed in it. That was several hundred years ago, and the forest is still collectively owned by the people of Covaleda.)

The family house in Covaleda has roughly twenty bedrooms, a glazed tile roof, a tower, and a generations-long history of intrigue - full of blackmail, disinheritance, lost fortunes, and great one-liners with all makings of a sweeping epic novel.

Days at the house were spent cleaning mushrooms, hearing stories, and eating more than I ever considered possible in a single day. Here is an example of a one day's eating schedule:

11am - Breakfast of pastries and cafe con leche
2pm - Afternoon beer, tapas and socializing at at least two bars
4pm - Lunch. First potato and fresh mushroom stew. Then grilled lamb chops. Then pork chops. Then industrial strenght aguardiente and patxaran, a sweet, basque liquer.
5:30 - Nap. Direly needed.
8pm - Evening beers and tapas, again at no fewer than two bars.
Midnight - Dinner of baked chicken and bean-and-ham stew.

I was informed by Tab, and by my uncle's sister Pili, that this is in no way considered excessive.

For two days of the Virgen del Pilar holiday weekend, we ate and drank and picked mushrooms, and heard stories, and then we headed out of Covaleda back to my aunt and uncle's flat in Madrid. This was my first trip to Covaleda since I was a child traveling with my parents, and I certainly hope I don't have to wait another 20 years before I go back again.

Covaleda, I have been told, is like any of hundreds of other small towns that you pass through on busses and trains in Europe. It's not even on of the prettiest or quaintest. But its the town where I have an in, and that makes all the difference.

The Pillars of Hercules

We have bid farewell to Europe.

Lee and I caught a before-dawn train from Granada to Algeciras - this requires a herculean effort in a country where the dinner hour begins at 10pm - and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in the cocktail lounge of a huge, once-luxurious ferry boat.

We have now arrived in grey, rainy Tangiers, and checked into the Hotel El-Muniria. It was in room #9 of the El-Muniria, in about 1958, that William S. Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch.

I will write more later - after a week spent with my aunt, uncle and cousins hanging out in Madrid and in Covaleda, the small Castillian village where my uncle was born, there are many stories to tell.

But right now, I'm tired, and I'm having some dificulty navigating this bizarre French keyboard. So you'll all just have to wait.

I Am An Idiot, and I'm Okay With That

I wrote a decently long, and, might I say, quite insightful entry about guidebooks, and when I do and do not trust them, but I just accidentally deleted it, because I didn't know the Spanish word for 'delete.'

Yet another moment of stupidity on the road.

I have come to the conclusion that the greatest skill any traveler can have is comfort with being an idiot. Because, while traveling, you will invariably be an idiot at some point or another. Just shrug, and give a goofy smile to indicate, 'I'm sorry, I am foreign and dumb.'

A few nights ago, in San Sebastian, we figured we had the tapas thing down. You just take what you want from the food sitting on the bar, then you tell the bartender how many you had when it's time to leave. No problem. But then we went to a bar with little signs on all the tapas (aka pintxos) to indicate what each one was. Christian, a Hawaiian ship navigator we had been hanging out with, took one and began to eat, when the bartender yelled at him.

"No, these are hot! I make these!" He used English because, apparently, it was obvious we were tourists.

The bartender took the pintxo and heated it up. Lee realized that it had something to do with the color of the sign, so he confidently took another one.

"No! Top row are hot. I make these!"

Aha. Top row. We're idiots.

I could go on with a hundred other examples from other trips, but this should suffice. I often feel, while I'm on the road, that I am acting like recently defrosted caveman.

Oktoberfest & the Wisdom of Cabbies

After my post about fumbling for my travel groove, I got a number of comments & emails containing a wealth of advice. Thanks to you all for your words of wisdom on subjects ranging from Tangiers to Big Macs. One piece of advice, from the esteemed Mr Kevin Carr, I managed to accidentally follow before receiving it. He said something along the lines of, "even cabbies can provied a entry point to the local culture." Here is what happened exactly one day before his email: Lee, Justin & I were staying at the only hostel in Munich which had open beds when I booked a month ago. It was 100-bed barn of a building called The Tent, and it was, without a doubt, the dumpiest dump-hole in town. I will let these two details suffice to illustrate my point 1. At about 4am, someone stumbled into the dorm and peed directly on a (thankfully unoccupied) bed 2. In the morning, every one of the bathrooms was rendered unusable by the profusion of vomit. I am now 28, and I have come to the inexplicably unsettling realization that being surrounded by loud, drunken, vomiting, bed-peeing teenagers is not appealing to me. In our cab on the way to the hostel, the cabbie asked us where we were from - sort of a universal way in which people to say, "I speak English, and I'd like to talk to you." It always feels like a bit of a gift when people do that, and I'm almost always greatful. His English was great, and the conversation naturally turned towards Oktoberfest. The cabbie was a proud Bavarian - not German, but Bavarian. He never once mentioned Germany, but went on at great length about how Oktoberfest is supposed to be a festival of Bavarian culture, and Bavarian food, and Bavarian hospitality. But now, he said with no small amount of disgust, it was full of young people acting stupid. It was, tragically, full of young Italians. Feeling honored that he considered us to be groovy enough to share this opinion, despite the fact the he was driving us to drunken teenager ground zero, I asked which tents he liked at Oktoberfest, and which ones we should go to. He immediately said, "The Augustiner Tent. And you should go by noon, and then leave by 4pm before all the kids show up. The food is very good; you can eat schweinbraten - it is a very good roast made from swine. And drink two or three beers-" the beers are massive 1-liter mugs "-and no more. These people, they drink 5 beers, 6 beers. It is not good. I can drink 5 beers if I want, but I don't do this anymore. I don't need to prove to anyone that I can drink 5 liters of beer." And, friends, that's exactly what we did. Checked out of the Tent a day early, went to the Augustiner Tent, drank three beers, ate the food, which was indeed fantastic, and listened to the Oom-Pah band rock a house jammed with laughing, singing Bavarians. By 5pm, we were on a train bound for France, and I don't regret it one bit. Yes, there is some faint voice inside of me which says, "You're old, and you really wish you could be partying like those kids." But there is another voice, which, while it may not be louder, speaks in a more self-assured tone, and this is what that voice says: "Ignore the first voice because it has always been kind of an idiot. And listen to the cabbie."

As Promised, the Hoff

You wanted it, now you got it. Credit for this goes to the esteemed Mr. Leeroy Dunteman!

Scotland is Also Full of Dead People

The next day was Edinburg - great castle, old buildings, and, thanks again to the tingle of Travel Sense, a fantastic old churchyard, in the middle of the city, but sunken below street level, and completely silent. The oldest headstone we saw was dated 1717 - not too long after the Pilgrims came to America.

Scotland is Full of 15-Year-Olds

Glasgow has a good vibe. There is a certain feeling that just sort of permeates the air of a really great city - it's hard to describe exactly what it is, but it's what makes this whole travel thing worthwhile. And all my favorite cities have it, from San Francisco to Chiang Mai.

We arrived in Glasgow on a Saturday morning Ryanair flight (about 40 bucks, including all taxes), parked our bags at the hotel, and commenced with poking around. Glasgow, a former industrial center, does not have the sheer volume of historical buildings of a place like London or Edinburgh, so it is not instantly recognizable as a fun place for tourists. But the streets were full of people just strolling around and hanging out. We passed by an intersection and I felt my travel sense tingling. So we hung a left onto Buchannan Street.

Buchannan Street has been completely converted into a pedestrian-only zone, and it was packed of shops, local people, bagpipers and other buskers, and just a few scattered tourists like us. This was not Covent Garden, given completely over to the tourist business - it was alive, energetic, and living on its own terms. And as Saturday afternoon progressed into Saturday evening and eventually Saturday Night, it began to fill up. With 15-year-olds.

Glasgow has a club scene, a bar scene, and a live music scene (which gave the world Franz Ferdinand, amongst others), and they were all rocking on Saturday. But the bulk of the patrons, in their finest clubwear and hipster clothing, seemed to be mostly teenagers. Old people like Lee and myself, while present, were in the minority.

We had a few drinks at cowboy-themed bar, complete with potted cactus, and then caught a rocking show by a band from Dundee called Mercury Tilt Switch.

I Shit You Not, I Totally Saw David Hasslehoff

Yesterday was our final day in London, and it was a weird one. We went to a pub for our nightly pint (or three) and saw a small car accident occur across the street. Then, inside, there was thumping house music, and it was full of 19-year-olds, but outside the music was inaudible, and everywhere there were grown-ups hanging out, drinking beer, and talking. We leaned on lamposts to sip our ale and talk (no such thing as open-container laws here - when the pub fills up, people simply flow out into the street with their drinks).

We heard a small commotion, and looked up to see what appeared to be a man getting mauled by a Doberman Pinscher. The dog kept growling and leaping up to bite his arm, but he seemed strangely unperturbed. He definitely did not have the 'Holy shit, I'm being mauled by a dog' expression on his face, so everyone at the pub just watched as he nonchalantly walked away, the Doberman still biting the crap out his jacketed arm.

Then Lee took out his camera so we could look at the Greatest Picture in the World Ever.

Here's where the story cuts back to earlier that afternoon.

Lee and I had been walking around, trying to find the Egyptian embassy to work on visa issues for that leg of our trip, and had realized that we were near Harrods - London's classic uber-department store. We strolled around it for a bit, checked out the grand eating hall, and then walked out to continue our travel planning. But when we got to the corner, we saw a small mob of people gathered around the other entrance to Harrod's. A large red double-decker bus sat opposite the door. We were mildly interested and stepped a bit closer to see if anything exciting was going on. We had concluded that nothing interesting was happening, and were about to leave, when I noticed the banner on the side of the bus. It bore the tanned, dashing image of David Hasselhoff.

David Hasselhoff was in Harrod's signing his new autobiography. We checked the banner. It said he was signing from noon to 4pm. My watch read 3:57. Holy crap. We had to wait and take a picture of David Hasselhoff.

So we joined the crowd and waited. Everytime the doorman opened the door, we switched on our digital cameras and leaned forward. And every time, someone other than the star of Nightrider, Bay Watch, and countless German music videos stepped out. We waited some more.

I looked at my watch again and it showed 4:13pm. We had been waiting to see David Hasselhoff for over 15 minutes. I was not sure I liked what that said about me. How long is too long to wait for a glimpse of David Hasselhoff? I don't know.

But then a security guard came out, and then another, and then there he was. David Hasselhoff. His tan really was magnificent. He smiled and waved, and we snapped pictures. In my first one, his back was turned. I re-framed, and as he turned back, pushed the shutter button. But it was another picture of his back. Then he got on the bus. I snapped through the window, but the auto-focus chose the window instead of David, and his face was blurred. I focused carefully and snapped again, and his face was again obuscured, this time by a crack in the window. And then I realized two things:

1. David Hasselhoff is like Sasquatch - he is nearly impossible to capture on film.
2. I now had more pictures of blurry David Hasslehoff than I had of anything else from my 4 days in London.

And then like that - poof! - he was gone. But although I failed, Lee did not. Lee had some how managed to push to the front and snap the World's Great Picture of All Time Ever. And I swear to you, gentle reader, that I will post that picture just as soon as we figure out how to plug Lee's camera into a computer over here.

Out of the Groove

For the past few days, my intrepid traveling companion Lee and I have mostly wandered arouind the streets of London and battled jet lag. We have not yet hit our travel stride. We've enjoyed the pubs, yes. We had a good doner kebab. Saw the British Museum and the Tower of London - the medieval weapons collections were heaven for avowed geeks like ourselves. But we are still not really in the groove.

We have been spending like sailors, too, but living like hobos. My (considerable) travel skills were mainly honed in places like Thailand, India, and West Africa, which are, in some ways, difficult places to travel, but are, in others, really easy. The difficulties you can probably imagine, but the easy thing about traveling in the 'Third World' is that, quite simply, I'm rich there, and things are easier when you're rich. I can take taxis wherever I please. I eat at whatever restaurant I want. No national treasure requires such a steep admission that I think, 'I could miss that.' I just pay the four bucks and see the Emerald Buddha, or the Red Fort, or Ankor Wat. But the Tower of London - $30 to get in?! I'm not sure...

I'm also not quite sure how I feel about the fact that I love traveling in places where I'm rich. I feel like much tourism in poorer countries is grounded in a nostalgia for colonialism, where the foreigners lived like kings, and the natives existed to be their servants. Is that why I like traveling in Thailand, or in Ghana? I don't think so... I like those places because the people are so friendly, and the culture seems so much more accessible to a traveler like me. Right?

It's hard to say. All I know is that I'm looking forward to Morocco and Egypt. And I'm not completely sure why.

It's For Real

Well, now it's for real. I have tickets. I have a Eurail Pass. I have reservations. Fucking reservations! I never thought it would happen to me. My previous travel experience - Thailand, India, West Africa, Central America &c. - did not generally require such things. Well, the tickets, yes, but the other things seemed like the extravagant domain of bourgeois neo-colonial tourists. Not PomoBohoHobos like myself. But here I am, with two whole hotels reserved before my departure. I don't know about this.

I've never traveled in Europe. I went there as a kid with my family, and I spent three days in Paris en route to Benin, but I've never traveled there. This experience will be interesting. And goddamn expensive. But how can one claim to be a Traveler, an Adventurer, or a Man of the World if one is not intimately familiar with the backstreets of Pigalle or the tapas joints of San Sebastian in the Basque Country. Impossible.

So, on Monday I will set off. Wish me luck.

Great Intrepidation

I begin this trip and this post with great intrepidation.