Southern shenanigans

Israel might have been on the schedule, as well as Jordan and Egypt... Months would be spent in the arid Middle East, two-tyredly discovering the secrets of the desert.. until I decided to ditch my bike. Last week I landed in Johannesburg.

The arrival in the known-unknown of that Southern cradle of humankind, dustbin of ethical constraints, carrybag full with gratuitous smiles and mosaic of multitudes went with a familiar awe at the stories in the news. This time the main feature was drug smuggling, but with a typical African twist. Carrying 1,5 kg coke hidden in your dreadlocks is not only a feat of incredible ingenuity, it also takes a similar dose of stupidity, certainly when you decide to sport your opiate hairstyle in Thailand. It seems, however, proudly South African these days to be caught in East Asia with enough incriminating goodies on you to see your future vanish with the speed of Bruce Lee's flying fists, as another drug mule was made an ass of by being executed last week in China. Not ayoba.

Easing back into South African life goes with a surprising smoothness only stirred by sudden jolts of physical recollection and paired awareness: I am here! I was not here, I was somewhere else entirely... yet now I am here again! Within minutes after arriving I had purchased a working SIM card with the best rates, found out how to get to my destination and was on my way, thinking relieved about the spared energy those simple steps would have cost me in Turkey.

Rain is pouring down in the Cape, which is a very strange occurrence in December, but it allows for drowsy herb-scented indoor gatherings where words like "umbrero" can be coined, when friends envisioned a cross between an umbrella and a sombrero. The concept quite soon proved to be problematic, as a sombrero is known for its erect sides and in a fierce torrent of Cape proportions would cause someone (not completely untraditional) to balance a tub of water on their heads. The creativity, however, certainly earned them enough kudos for the next round of "Word Play", where they will meet with fellow contender Jonathan Lewis, author of the phrase: "'Turkish breakfast' sounds like something they would do in Guantanamo bay".

Sometimes I think of my bike, that I so roughly and abruptly parked in a cold and dark garage in the soggy part of Europe, and wonder if she misses me. Or if she might be happy not have her slender frame weighed down every day by my stout figure. But the thoughts halt after a while, when I must admit to myself that I cannot know what a bike thinks. At first because I'm not a bike, and secondly because I don't exclude the possibility that bikes just don't think at all. But then I send her happy thoughts, whispering in her handlebar that now she can rest and one day, one day when the sun is out, we will ride together again. And I'm sure at that point, hardly noticeable, somewhere far away, in a cosy box, a bikesmile passes the spokes of a content machine.

Life's a beach, and then you die

It turns out that, after all, Turkey is a banana republic. The proof is hidden on the roughest bit of coastal road between Fethiye and Antalya. As if something to be ashamed of, the crops are only witnessed in the secluded valleys on the mountainous route.

The fact that I crossed this feat of nature in a bus has a long history, but the mechanized transport almost made me scream with joy, as the coastal path mirrored the Croatian one: no curb, no fencing to prevent a minimal 10 meter drop, and way too much traffic. But this time with four times the change in elevation and hundred percent more rain. The thunder outside mixed smoothly with the new age birds in my ears, at the courtesy of the bus company’s inride entertainment system.

In matters that concern the nose, Turkey is the country of masquerade. Colognes are offered after a long bus ride, perfume applied before leaving the house and several automatic stench covers are set up in houses, restaurants and bathrooms just under the ceiling. Unlucky as I am with my height sometimes, it appears that every now and again I will receive such a cosmetic payload right in my unwarned eyes.

After crossing the small seaside town for a second time in 24 hours, it became hard to believe that I had been here before. Not a single building, restaurant or feature begged recognition. If I was told that I had spent my holiday years ago at a completely different location I would have believed it.

The Turkish road knows many hazards, but the most serious might be the high way reverser. Often with a phone glued to their ear, drivers who have missed a turn might drive kilometres backwards on the curb of the high way in the backward direction. I am normally not one for prescriptive judgements, but in my view this behaviour should not be considered morally defendable anywhere in the world.

But finally, I had found the sun I was looking for so long. And so I mused, as I saw the big red ball drop for the last time on Turkish territory. With my feet in the sand I realized I knew the saying, but had spelled it wrong the whole time: life’s a beach, and then you die.

You can peel an orange, but you can't peel a blue

The morning on the West coast of Turkey is chilly, but even the November sun has the power to the day up quickly. Doused in Bob Ross's bright autumn palette, the trees and bushes flank the ever green-grey olive trees weighed down by their load of green, red and black specks. The numerous hotels are currently hosting only the owners and their family, some of them carrying out small chores on the terrain. The delivery of the bread truck arriving at the seaside restaurant consist of only two loafs.

What's a male beer called in Israel? A He Brew. The sun is back, the fun is back. Red in the face is the way to go. And I've seen my first dead horse on the side of the road. Another thing that caught my eye are the numerous stray caps, possibly because of this particularly windy patch. But when I have the wind in my back its only a annoying me when I'm standing still.

For a while it looked like it was done with fruit picked on the way, and even the olive trees were not going to be of help, as it turned out that they need to be prepared. I discussed this nuisance with my fellow travellers. One started of hopefully: "My parents make them... but since I avoid spending time with them I don't have an idea." The other one topped this by declaring: "my father told me once... but I didn't listen". My idea to look it up online was frustrated by the lack of internet in the breezy olive orchard where we had set up camp, so we peeled another wild tangerine and looked out over the Aegean Sea.

Bridging the border

What is a border more than a line on the map, a sign on the road and a change of language or currency? In Schengen Europ,e borders are quickly fading away in their assertion of power, being relegated as reminders of political situations in the past. Between Austria and the Czech Republic a monument reminds us of the iron curtain, but the boom gates have been removed a long time ago. On my last day in the European union I crossed another border that only vaguely resembled cold war conditions: between Bulgaria and Greece a handful of smiling guards wave through the cars.

How different was the situation on the border between Greece and Turkey. I would have happily showed you the sanitary cordon on the Turkish side, but several signs strongly pointed out to me that photography would be a bad idea. Several machine guns and a battalion of recruits guarded the customs house, but I guess you have to station all those boys in military service somewhere. Finally again annoyed officials were barking at me in a language I didn't understand, sending me from desk to desk in a ritual dance in which each person attending has their part, from the fat stagnant chief to the slow moustachioed old man with cane.

And not only the border itself showed a marked difference: quite soon road rules disappeared, as well as clear lanes or road signs indicating destinations. Hooting increased suddenly, regional roads were nowhere to be found. And evenly sudden waned the English language. People proved very keen to speak with me, but a common language was hard to find. All the Slavic words I had piled up over the countries were at once worthless, so the only thing left to do was learn Turkish and train my miming in the meantime.

And Istanbul is huge. With the sun out again after some horrible Dutch November days, the Eurasian onion is waiting to be peeled in more agreeable conditions. The bike is parked for a few days until I get to the heart of it.

Bonnet bees

Where the national Serbian basketball team was a let down to the nation when they lost to the Russians in the quarter final of the recent Eurobasket the popularity of tennis courts is rising since all kids want to be Djokovic.

The following section mainly originates from personal frustration. It seems, nevertheless, that frustration can be a fruitful source for comedy, or otherwise, sympathy. You can decide for yourself how the following fits in.

Here’s to the wasp that stung me right in the heart. Up yours, mate! When you find that dogs are chasing you, don’t speed up, but slow down and start barking back. This will prevent them from biting your shoe and/or the water bottle used for defensive purposes. It not only saves you from having to replace those items, but it also serves as a ventilation for anger management issues caused by all the inhaled diesel fumes.

Many of you know the Fleet Foxes, but is all of the red traffic victims on my way were given an instrument, one could imagine the Flat Foxes as a 32-member symphonic orchestra.

Holes in the road are a bitch, but the problem is worsened by rainfall. If you can normally measure the depth of the potholes and change your speed accordingly, full and muddy holes in the road offer a new form of excitement and adventure in an increased risk of broken material and bones. But since you need to get from A to B, peddle on hoping that the universe is behind your plans.

Another challenge, invented to circumvent natural barriers but a barrier in itself, are the numerous tunnels. Judging by the strewn bodies and bike skeletons it looks like Im not the first cyclist who has tried to cross the kingdom of Moria on two wheels, but the next time I will bring a fire torch. The first meters are ok, but then the fun starts as the light quickly vanishes and the next colon of truck hoping to get to Istanbul by nightfall thunders past, adrenaline is free of charge.

Oh, and one other thing. Let me here and now put an end to a very current, yet completely irrelevant debate. It is often heard that when focusing on feline traffic victims, there is on the one hand the ‘flat cat’ and on the other the ‘splatter cat’. Usually the flat cat is described as being reduced to a merely two-dimensional status. Splatter cat, on the other hand, is believed to have remained a fair percentage of its original shape, yet on the point of contact with vehicle has some inner body parts now exterior to its body. Some claim that flat cats can have comical features, like the resemblance with the Tom and Jerry cartoon where Jerry, when driven over by a (stoomwals) has only his ears sticking out from the floor. In the same understanding of the flat/splatter binary, the splatter cat is associated with negative feelings that range from nausea to a grasp of the temporary and cruel nature of existence. However, this binary is in my view unproductive and leads attention away from the real issues that currently plague ‘road kill studies’.
For one, flat and splatter don’t exclude each other. Some splatter cats are flat and some flat cats are splattered. If there is such a thing as adivision, it is on a sliding scale. Secondly, flat cats can bring about negative connotations too and even the gory splatter cat can be amusing to some. And thirdly, and most importantly: both splatter and flat cats are dead cats. If we want to come to productive results we need to focus on the similarities of these supposed strains of theory instead of polarizing, or road kill studies itself will become the victim of the never calm motorway of current day academics.

Apartman and other local favourites

Nothing beats the smell of three week flat roadkill wafting on a sizzling afternoon. Well, maybe the smell of my Teva’s after a day on the bike. Zadarian Boris confided in me that due to all the cycling his knees are like those of professional basketball players. Luckily enough for my knees I have never wanted to pursue a career in either two sports.

Every country has its own heroes and its good for the traveller to keep an eye out for these figures: they will tell you a lot about the place you’re visiting. In Croatia there are a couple of local favourites: first there is the recently convicted army general, and then there is a local super hero better known as Apartman. His name appears in all regions of Croatia, but his cult is strongest in the seaside towns, where his name is displayed on signs that are sometimes even carried or have people guarding it. His name is often accompanied by any number of stars, and in the local folklore Apartman is aided by his trusted companion, the German shepherd “Zimmer Frei”. The super powers of this hospitality oriented myth include: providing instant room dividers, dropping and rising rates at will and speaking random phrases in all the languages of the earth.

As a regular camper, and by now possibly some sort of expert, I have observed that there are several types of camp sites. Here I will shortly describe the two extremes.

At one kind the busy owner, helped out by a multitude of notes indicating rules, opening times and advertisements for services offered, will not leave a single thing unattended. Handling reservation, check in’s and the buffet all by him/herself, you see the inability in their faces to leave even the smallest detail up to another person, or pay them for it. They are the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave. I always hope that they have a nice hobby to pursue when the camping season is over.

Then there is the type of camp site where you will wonder if there even is an owner and if he cares at all. All crucial positions are left to be filled in by 15-year-old city girls flown in for the season and unable to respond even to the smallest question. When you really need something, you feel as lost as they are.

Something to try for the connoisseurs, and maybe even sell on the better farmers markets, are bush dried raspberries. The pomegranates are ripening on the trees as promises for the future. And if you like fresh figs from the tree, don’t come to Croatia, because I finished them all today.

Shortcutting

Some cities cannot be exited by anything other than a car. But the no-bike signed road in Hungary is a sliding scale and once you find out that the minimal safety requirements cannot be met, your often too far in, kilometres away from a turn-off and sweating profusely while trying to stay away from either falling off the curb to your right or getting sucked into the wooshing flow of heavy traffic on the left. Its a miracle we're still ok.

But then again, its also a miracle that almost ever single night we effectively meet marvellous people who put us up, often feed us and share with us parts of their lives that would be unreachable in any other scenario. These stories often unravel slowly, are sprinkled with misunderstandings due to gaps in the storyline and impractical translation but are woven in their totality into a wide array of the daily life so appealing to a stranger like me.

Sometimes it’s a household of architects who funnily enough have a shower installed under the slanted roof that needs the opening of the window to allow enough space for me. Another time it’s a retired Dutch couple that have moved permanently to the Hungarian countryside and live their lives like one continuous holiday.

One thing that is definitely not lacking in these late summer days is the sound of lawn mowers and grass cutters. Not one day has passed in the last week that our rest was not disturbed by trigger happy government officials of the green department. So if we end up getting driven off the road eventually, at least we will crash in a neatly kept slope.

Ups and downs

Where there once was an iron curtain, now there is nothing besides to debilitated border control buildings a few meters away from each other. In Austria the asphalt roads are flawless, but the German spoken is not really discernible from Czech, a language that even after a few weeks of hearing it on a daily basis still amazes me with the variety of unpronounceable consonants. The Republic has been a colouring picture for me, as I knew Havel, Kundera, Kafka and Dvorak, but never connected them to this par2ticular geographical area. The history book of Cesky has both its colourful and dark pages: oppression from fascism and communism in a long stretch communism are not easily forgotten or forgiven.

Maurice predicted that after our trip we will have had so many repairs that end up with completely different bikes from the ones we set out with. I have so far changed two tubes, a back tyre, a chain and the back blades and procured a new pump. Maurice has had less tyre trouble, has a continuing and ominous squeak around the front blades and also experienced a broken chain, but this time on the bottom of a hill, having to push the bike up 10 kilometre to find a fire fighter on holiday with construction worker's cleavage willing to help with a temporary solution. After two hours all the bikes in the vicinity had come apart, we had moved to his fathers tool shed and upon leaving the old man had shown his gold medal from a 1960 motorcycle race with tears in his eyes.

Other people that have proven to be of mayor help this trip are engineers: three in Germany and one more in the Czech Republic have hosted us. Old ladies have a similar knack to be of help: sitting in front of their house they gladly provide the odd travellers with a bit of water or a place to camp in the garden. Couchsurfing has since Berlin served us with a handful of surprisingly positive experiences as generous hosts have opened their homes and lives to us for the time of our stay.In the flat stretches of the Netherlands, wind was a factor to take into account, but since we entered our third country its all about elevation and we have noticed a certain upward mobility, definitely stretching into Austria as well. But vineyards and a very quaffable young white announced arrival at the Donau, and on its way to Vienna the river doesnt climb any maountains', so we're sticking close to it today.

A good match, for a women's game...

In German football speak, the word for 'extra time' is 'verlaengerung', not only meaning extension being an extended word at the same time. But word extension is common in German, especially when it comes women's football. Female players are called 'fussballerinen', the referee is a 'schiedsrichterin', the Americans are the 'Amerikanerinnen'; the only word missing a female touch is the ball, which could be aptly called a 'ballin'.

It seems that I am not the only one who still hits some hiccups in adapting to watching female soccer. At some point I literally heard the commentator say "that was a good shot for a woman"! Regardless if there was a little pause between the two sentence parts or not, it is a rather high-handed remark.

The final of the World Cup yesterday once again made clear the changed landscape of a sport that is primarily designed these days to be consumed via the television screen. The depiction of women in sports differs a lot from the average portrayal of the caring and patient lover cum child bearer that television inherited from the 1950s in the US. The football players (or playerinnen) are muscled and confident warriors striding around the pitch, commanding and colliding. The only thing missing from the average league play was the excessive nose blowing so often portrayed.

Watching the game with a group of guys, we found ourselves drawn tot he practice of rating the looks of the players and googling the names of the favourites for extra foto material and background info, until one of us exclaimed: "but guys, this is how women usually watch football!". And from that moment the long absence of women's football on tv felt like an undefendable flaw in the system. You have it all: the exciting execution of high level sports and female beauty as a bonus.

And yes, I could be banished tot he ranks of reactionaries for this type of reasoning, but I would like to argue that the heightened succes of women's football is at the same time a result of an emancipation a long time in the making. The fact that I find myself in the position to be dazzled by skill and appearance speaks for not only the visibility but also the agency of the women competing for the cup. Were the adoring female football fans until now the epitome of a male dominated sport, that role will in the future belong to me when I will discuss all the players on the field with my friends and sympathize with their tears when they lose, while a big Nike Hope Solo poster is hanging from my bedroom wall.

"Der Weg ist das Ziel"

Whoever thought cycling hundreds of kilometer along a canal would be boring couldn’t be more wrong. But if this excitement is a positive feature lies in the eye of the beholder.

A few clichés about cycling rehashed: you see a lot you don’t see when you take train or car. And this is true. But many of the things you pass would be better left unseen. On a train you close your eyes near the Dutch-Belgian border and wake up in France. But if you hit the first bits of urban sprawl of Hannover, you know you’ll have to claw your way through a fair bit of ugliness.

There is more prettiness in the rural bits of Germany that feel like one big propaganda film for German production capacity ranging from farms to energy and from steel to recycling. But all is encapsulated in vast stretches of woods and fields that are in full bloom. If at the end of the day you have stains on your clothes from three different types of wild fruit, you’ve done well for yourself and the enjoyment of what the countryside has to offer.

Being used to the fail free system of bike paths and directions in the Netherlands, the East has some tricks up its sleave. When another indicated cycling path ends on a large industrial pavement, a few guys handling heavy machinery look up only for a second, and you have to start guessing whether or not at the end of the wharf a fence closes off further thoroughfare and a detour around another bit of industrial area needs to be undertaken. So another cliché is apt: many roads lead to Rome, or in this case Berlin. But similarly truee: there is not one single road that will get you there.

Five nights in we've gotten past Hannover on the Mittellandkanal, and weve stayed at all possible places. Fist night we were treated to a guest room in a self sustaining commune off the grid, the second night we stayed at an official campsite, third night we camped near the canal in a clearing in the bush, the fourth night we were allowed to pitch the tents on a little terrace overlooking fields with five or six different types of wheat and a massive orange sun descending and last night we were offerd a spot in the garden of a machine builder and his wife but were upgraded to a room when the beers and Lithuanian berry wodka had made the light vannish unnoticed.

Today will be slow, our heads a little heavy and legs nice and sore. Today I prefer working a bit more on my sandal tan lines.

Reminithings

Wading through all my belongings for the fourth time since returning from abroad, I am delighted to note that the amount of stuff I own has been drastically reduced. Bags of unworn clothes, unwieldly souvenirs or habitually carried around pieces of furniture have not survived one of my moves lately, and packing up my belongings once again for a longer period, I am confident that before Wednesday the merciless cheese slicer of my new found and self-induced material simplicity has shaved off another reasonable chunk of junk.

But how to assess what should stay or go? It seems a task that should not be carried out lightly. With their intricate connection to past events, all possessions seem to inherit emotional value tying them to particular moods, periods, people and locations. Would a lack of tact in ditching leave a feeling comparable to memory loss?

In my personal experience, irretrievable items can cause a trauma that isn't easily overcome. My wonderfully comfy brown woollen sweater was nicked in a rowdy Barney's in Port Elizabeth right when it seemed that North-Korea was able to pull a stunt against Brazil. Its loss manifested itself several times during the freezing winter week, but also afterwards, when my return to the North had asserted its climatic consequences. I still miss that sweater.

That said, this item was one that was taken from me without my consent. Departing from an item on my own accord seems a different matter altogether. It might have to do with the time given to prepare for the final goodbye, or it might simply be that the chucked items up till now have been considered carefully on their emotional impact, but I cannot recall now one single item I regret having binned.

With the sheer unlimited digital storage space, we no longer have to throw away photographs or physically keep them, which has left my photo book collection a constant. Furthermore I have discovered the merits of digitizing paperwork, so all my old university reader have been scanned and stored on year, course and author: way easier to go through and far less bulky and heavy.

Furniture can be bought and resold easily via the popular websites, which leaves only two main groups of possessions that will fill the lions share of the storage needed for my gear: clothes and books. My clothing collection has gone through some critical reviews over the years and even though new items are purchased every now and again, slims through the years.

The only items I cant seem to approach light-heartedly or rationally is my 3-box set of books. There must over a 100 books in there that, from the moment I moved out, have witnessed every bookshelf I have had, without ever being read. There are books in there that I loved reading, will not read again for the next 20 years, and will not lend to friends since they're too precious to me.

But that's the sacrifice I'm willing to make for art. Their presence soothes me when on a grey day I lose faith in mankind or when I can fall asleep on a warm summer night. Then I glance over the covers with names that bring back worlds: spending
Christmas with Vikram Seth, simultaneously lounging on a Cambodian beach and crossing a flooded street in Bengal during the monsoons. Or to experience a Parisian pre-spring in a municipal bus with Mark Haddon's poem putting to words the always unconsciously felt truth that the life of a tree is superior to my own.

If words on covers release such power of focused reminiscence, the promise of much more of those words is enough for me to cherish them. So, with an ever-growing book collection, my further minimalism might be in vain. Or, more functionally put, it might well simply be a necessity.

Rear Window Intimacy

In the shopping street where I live they're taking down the Christmas lights, which in a way makes it winter without the holiday perks. Even the weather has become a boring subject to whine about since it's been shit for such a long time now, original superlatives are running thin.

On Sunday evening me and my neighbours are asked to place next to the street the trash that doesn't fit the black bag container, and I'm not exaggerating to say that with what I saw in the 200 meters of the street behind me I looked in, that you could furnish a one-bedroom apartment with the things left to their own devices on the side walk. I gather that some people would prefer a first hand mattress, but bed bases, couches, storage boxes, tables, seats, cupboards and even a baby chair are all for the taking as we speak.

The view from my rear window seems to directly reference Hitchcock's film with that exact title. After sitting behind my computer overlooking the neighbours for weeks in a row in the process of finalizing my thesis, I have come to know many a thing about them without ever meeting in person.

I know how many people live in an apartment, what their sleeping patterns are (working, housewives, free on Wednesdays). I know when they are on holiday (bicycles on the balcony), how hight they put the heater (steam from the geyser air vent, and the amount of clothes on them). I am not sure if I should be entirely comfortable about this intimacy, if only because I know they will know me as the neighbour in his dressing gown behind his computer 24-hours a day.