Groovin’ in Latin with the Pope - Merry Christmas 2007! (updated - photos)

As I arrived to Rome on December 24th, I chose a small hotel near the Vatican City. I was planning on attending the Christmas mass on St. Peter Square, outside the Basilica where the Pope will be holding the mass, watching it on the giant screens installed for this purpose.

For those wondering: No, I’m not catholic and no, I have no intention to convert or anything of the sort! :). I simply thought it would be an interesting experience - both sociologically and spiritually. Plus, I staunchly believe it’s the same God/Allah/(insert other names here) after all, and any celebration in His name is, in a sense, one that I can cheer for.

So after getting lost a couple of times in the horribly unmarked Italian regional train system, I made it to the Vatican where I decided to stop by the square on the way to my hostel. And at 4pm, I was stunned to see people queuing by the entrance of the Basilica (like, a couple hundred people!). I learned that some have started queuing at 2 pm - and these were the people who actually had tickets to go INSIDE the Basilica, and were queuing TEN HOURS before the midnight mass to find a good seat.
I knew that people did this for the Rolling Stones reunion concert, but I didn’t know a Papal concert had the same effect on people... oh well. I shook my head and moved on, my back was starting to beg for mercy from the giant backpack I've been carrying around across three countries for the past half day.

Anyways, so I checked in my hotel (which I recommend, btw), went for a long and very enjoyable stroll in town, I made my way back to the hostel for a cup of tea and email check before heading to the Square.

I got there at about 2230 (the event begins at 2300) and found thousands of people standing in a phenomenal spiral queue that circled the square multiple times (I’ll upload the photos, promise!!). And it’s then that I wanted to join - to be inside, to do the real thing. Christmas mass in the Vatican, with the Pope himself as MC.
Let’s face it - I’ll never have the chance to do it again.

And soon enough, Hurray, Hurray! I managed to get a ticket (from a woman who got a stack of extra tickets from a group of young priests who travelled for the mass), sneaked into the line in the company of a super religious father and son from Florida (I had to fight the urge to curse them for the 2000 elections...) and was soon enough ushered into the Saint Peter Basilica.

If you’ve seen the Basilica, you know that ‘Wow’ is a huge understatement. It’s a gorgeous piece of architecture, truly grandiose.
I was surrounded mainly by people dressed to the nines, while I was in ripped jeans and sneakers (well I wasn’t expecting to get in, was I!). The mass was pretty interesting. Lots of Latin, courtesy of pope Benedict XVI who led the mass and changed hats a bunch of times throughout the two hours of the event.
While I did my best to actively participate - sing (we were given the texts), kneel, etc (well I did go to a catholic school after all) - I skipped the Communion, worry not :)

Well, now that I’ve joined the Pope in singing in Latin - yep, quite a bonding method indeed, which I highly recommend for your company team-building meetings - and being blessed by him, I think I’m going to Catholic heaven. Not too bad for a Muslim, heh? :-D

Joke aside - it was quite an experience. I hope my Catholic readers won’t see in this any sort of disrespect, and that my other readers will find in themselves a desire to maybe reach into other religions and learn a thing or two!
Merry Christmas to all and happy new year!

Italia, il truly Bel Paese

Let’s put it this way: I’ve decided that I’ll be back in Rome for a couple of months one summer, and learn Italian.
I don’t recall having been as impressed by a place as I have by Rome. Maybe I’m still in the vacation mood and that feeling will wear off, but until then...
It’s Europe with a Mediterranean feel - let’s say, cars halt at the red light but they stop right on the zebra crossing. They pay their speeding tickets but think that going on 150 in a 110 km/h area is totally normal. And Italian men are probably the most metrosexual I’ve seen - and Italian women are, well, Italian women. Mamma mia.

I traded the harsh winter of Kosova for the nice winter of Italy. Started with 3 days in Rome, then went off to Pisa which was fun but I had a nasty problem at the hostel - I arrived AFTER the receptionist had left so I had to sleep on a chair, then Florence - unimpressive, I think - and am now in Modena, where I stayed at a friend’s - Diego - who, despite being a new friend, has been a fantastic host and has shown me around Modena, Bologna and we spent the day in San Marino (which is a lovely micro country by the Adriatic sea).

Next stop: Venice. Weird to think that I’ll be going to Venice alone - you know, Venice being romantic and all that - but it’s worth it! And no more relationship nostalgia!
Should be back in Vienna by New Year's eve. Anything has any suggestions for anything to do in Vienna (or neighbouring countries) for New Year's?

Greetings from soon-to-be-independent Kosova!!

At the very kind and generous invitation of my excellent friend and old roommate Tony, I spent Eid in Kosova!

The trip to Prishtina was fairly uneventful - a jam-packed flight full of Kosovars going home for the holidays. (I flew in on the 19th of Dec - the eve of Eid (aka Bajram, as they say in Albanian).
Interestingly, I didn’t need a visa: Kosova is not independent yet - hence, no embassies; but it’s no longer a part of Serbia either and is fully administered by the United Nations. In Kosova, Big Brother has a name: UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo). Bottom line, no visas. Yey!
I did have to lie though ‘— twice in Vienna: I said I was going for UN work and had to flash (yeah right) my Vienna UN ID. Never thought that would come handy one day!! I guess this consultancy wasn’t such a lousy idea after all :)

I am met at the airport by Tony, who takes me on a quick ride through Prishtina and onwards to Gjilan, his hometown, which is 50km away from Prishtina and where we spend the next two days and a half... well, feasting, visiting family, enjoying the warmth inside in a -7 degrees weather.
So unlike myself, yes - instead of the military-style tourism I impose on myself, this lazying around was very relaxing and extremely enjoyable. Who’d have known... :)
Plus we did go out; besides the family and friends visits (an unavoidable custom for Bajram) and the litres of juice and tea and the tons of cake I ate, we went to a couple of pubs and clubs, and even attended a concert by this big singer - Sinan Vilasaliu!. And I can tell you - it’s impressive to see young people in a relatively remote small town in Kosova wording the lyrics to some REM song that was playing. Music is so cross-boundary! (and we’re so globalised!!)

Day 4 was in Prishtina - a small town, not very interesting for a tourist - you can really ‘do’ the city in half a day - but it’s very interesting to witness its evolution into the embryo of a national capital. Some monuments from the Yougoslav era - such as the frankly hilarious “Unity and Brotherhood” monument that it supposed to symbolise the good relations between Serbs, Albanians, and Turks (sad joke, huh?), a number of mosques from the Ottoman era. Then the UNMIK HQ, the various KFOR (NATO forces in Kosovo) cars and uniforms, the new government institutions, etc.

Day 5 was quite something. We were supposed to go tour Kosova, Tony was to show me some of the main sights of the war (with Serbia, during which the Serbs attempted to ethnically cleanse (can we say genocide?) the Albanians and which ended by the US bombing Belgrade) but then we got a change of plan.

Next post :)
I’ll be putting up photos in the coming week or so. Generally, photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/traveller.within so keep checking!

(and FYI: Kosova is the Albanian - local - name of the country (the region, for now). Kosovo is the Serbian name for it. While Kosovars themselves may use Kosovo when speaking in English, they appreciate if you do the effort of saying the country's name correctly.)

Eid Post (bonus post!): Prophet Mohammad was a cowboy

...Said a new friend in Kosova.

For a second I thought it was a joke; then I started to wonder what attributes cowboys have that would warrant the comparison…
Until he said, very seriously: “Prophet Mohammad was looking after cows when he was young, yes? So he is a cowboy”.

I couldn’t help but nod (with adding that it was sheep not cows, but well...)

I hope everyone had a great Eid/Bajram! Mine was great - I was in Kosova! More on that in the next post (which I’ll probably write in a minute anyway).

Taxi wisdom - Kosova

Cab Driver: Where you from, Pakistan, Afghanistan?
Me: Egypt
CD: Ah, Egypt! Hosni Moubarak!
Me (laughing - and sighing): Yes, Hosni Moubarak.
CD: Hosni Moubarak gut president?
Me: Hosni Moubarak president 26 yahre.
CD: Scheisse...

Eid post: God is Great -- and pretty cool, too.

I don’t really believe in miracles and I think that people claiming to see apparitions of the Virgin or some dude finding ‘Allah’ written inside a tomato are but pranksters looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

However I do think that there’s a God out there - and he’s there for us, giving that occasional push, some sort of a divine wink if you wish, in moments like the one told in this quote taken from this book I’m currently reading - “Shake hands with the Devil” by Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire (who’s neither a Muslim nor a religious zealot of any kind - he was actually the leader of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1994), talking about a fellow officer from Senegal, Major Diagne:

“One evening as he sat at his desk transcribing, he felt the sudden need of prayer and slid off his chair to his knees on his prayer carpet, his head towards Mecca, as required by his Islamic faith. At that exact moment, a huge piece of shrapnel smashed through his window from a mortar explosion, flying through the space he had just vacated, bouncing off the wall and landing still red-hot near his feet. He came within a hair’s breadth of certain death. Always dignified and composed, Diagne reported the damage to his window and then returned to his desk to complete his tedious but essential transcribing.”

Happy Eid El Adha / Bairam / Bajram to all!! :-D

Vienna Update: Making the most out of a lousy decision

Sooooooooooo… I had promised more stories about my work here. I’ve actually been avoiding writing anything about work because I’d have been too negative, but I now feel quite better about it overall...

Anyways. I’m an underpaid consultant for a Vienna-headquartered UN organisation. I took that underpaid 2 months gig because

a) I wanted to see Vienna

b) I needed to go to Paris to pick up my winter clothes

c) I didn’t want to be stuck in Cairo until January and this thing came at the right time.

Overall - bad reasons to take a job. Lousy reasons, actually.

The job itself is incredibly uninteresting - and besides the ‘intellectual’ content being kinda boring, I’m wasting a decent chunk of my time designing the publications (as well as writing the content - but the design is taking too much time, especially for someone who has never used Quark Xpress before...)

My boss, in a word, is a hateful manic dickhead (ok, that’s 3 words) and his name is hilariously appropriate for that last description (can’t write it down though - potential defamation lawsuit). And the secretary is a hostile bitch. I’ll leave it to that, but overall it’s the worst possible work environment one can hope for.

Vienna is good fun though. I’ve moved downtown after 2 weeks in the suburbs, and after successfully dodging an offer to rent the living-room of a maniac who wanted a curfew at 11:30 pm, and another very cheap offer from an Indian lady who, living with her teenage son, was clearly looking for some adult conversation and a shag (for those who know me: yes, she’s THAT desperate), I’m now in the 3^rd district, sharing with 2 young Austrians, a guy and a girl. Coming home from work in a suit, I really feel like their uncle or something. Aging is dreadful.

Anyhow... So I’m getting to do a lot of tourist stuff, museums - lots of museums, Christmas markets (Austrians have a weird weird tradition which requires them to go freeze their toes outdoors to drink a hot wine. Seriously, what’s the point??) are a lot of fun and I’m happily buying into this toe-freezing tradition.

I also hang out frequently - mostly - with my fellow consultants and interns who are quite the merry bunch. Nothing like the spirit we had at the European Commission, but a nice bunch nevertheless.

What else. I got to see an old Austrian friend of mine, one whom I care for greatly (which is, well, complicated).

What else. We had the Organisation’s party last Friday, and I got to chat a bit with the Director General who’s from Sierra Leone (Africa rocks!!) and quite a cool and madly dynamic guy. And we took a photo.

And he called me “the leader of the future”. Very nice for my ego.

So now, I’m less than a week away from leaving. Christmas holidays, and subsequent destination unconfirmed.

To tell you the truth -- I already miss Vienna. My lovely friend Sabrina says that I'll be back - we'll see. Will keep you posted.

Moving Forward, like it or not

My telephone just died -- just like that.

Now that I'm trying to reconstruct my telephone directory, which I was foolish enough not to back up (I'm an idiot. Idiot!!) I realise how many numbers were there and, more importantly, from whom. I had a ton of numbers on there which I knew were no longer in use -- many american numbers of my friends from Cambridge who went back to their home country, for instance.
So it's kinda pointless to ask these people for their phone number. Heck, it's almost pointless to ask my UN friends here for their phone numbers because I'm leaving so soon.

Yet it feels weird -- a strange kind of closure. Phases of my life that were recorded on that phone's memory - France, US, even last summer working in Indonesia - behind for good. While I wasn't really ready for that.
It was familiar seeing these numbers. Even the number labeled "girl at the Fairmont bar" (I honestly can't remember her name and I actually never called her) made me laugh. Plus it was very useful -- the other day I couldn't remember Eugenio's last name so I searched it on my phone.
Now I'm kinda forced to move beyond all these phases. I know, it's silly but I never pretended to be otherwise, did I...

Oh, and a conclusion word: fuck motorola. Seriously.

The Country that cried Wolf

When the US would stick claims of terrorism to anyone they don't like, we shout that it's an obvious case of racism. We also shout, however, that the US is taking advantage of the climate of fear (which it is itself behind) to label anyone as a 'terrorist' which would justify them doing whatever they may wish.

They can do this because, well, the American public isn't really the most acute in the world, and the authorities can take advantage of the ambient ignorance to push that forward.

Yet for some reason all this doesn't make me as sick as when it happens in Cairo.
A new report shows that the State security apparatus has made a number of arrests in 2006, claiming they brought down a terrorist network by the name of "al-Taifa al-Mansoura" - "The Victorious sect".

HRW - an organisation I'm not really fond of, but whatever - has published a report (found here) that shows that this whole story was made up.
There was no evidence of anything.
There were mainly third party testimonies - and everyone knows that informants are very likely to tell on a random guy just because they beat them at backgammon or something.
Plus a few testimonies of the arrested - which were taken, of course, under torture.

There was no "Victorious Sect" whatsoever.

I am reading through the HRW report and trying to make up an idea of who the arrested people are - and why they were arrested.
It seems that the common pattern is that they're average blokes, overall religious, who hang out in mosques and prayer locations. And they may have had a couple of theology books in their houses.
That's essentially it.

This is just nauseating. I feel I'm gonna get sick.

Ouch

Man cuts off penis in restaurant.

The irony here, which french speakers will appreciate, is the name of the restaurant in question:


BBC News was keen on confirming that "The man was then taken to hospital in south London where his condition is stable. It is understood surgeons were unable to reattach his penis."

('zizi' is actually baby talk in french for penis. Hence the joke.)

Stoned Gaza

The Gazan authorities have confiscated $4 million worth of smuggled drugs and decided to destroy them.
So far, so good.
But instead of doing that in a controlled environment they decided to burn the drugs in an open location.
Result: "Sending plumes of smoke over Gaza City". Which everyone can freely inhale.

Hilarious. Hamas has discovered the way to keep Gazans happy, despite the occupation, the 70% youth unemployment, the 60% living under the poverty line: get them stoned.

I'm so moving there...

Gods and animals in court

In Greece, a parrot is going to court for a $650 fine.

In India, two Gods are summoned to court, and it seems that mail sent to them has bounced back to the court. So the Judge has issued adverts in the newspapers to request the gods to "appear before the court personally".

I used to think that only smart people made it to law school...


Ok, what's next? Post-mortem summons in court?

Journalist jealousy

I know the word ‘bitch’ means female dog but is seldom used as such because of its overwhelming pejorative connotation... And in this BBC Article I can really smell the resentment of a poor underpaid journalist :-)

(2nd paragraph...)

If the whole United Nations thing doesn't work out...

... then at least I know I can open a falafel business. And it even comes with online troubleshooting.

Hugo C, the Best Of!

There would be a lot to say about the latest Venezuelan referendum, which would have, among other things, removed the cap on the number of presidential mandates a person can run for (and incidentally increased a mandate from 6 to 7 years.. why??) and which Chavez lost by a close 51-49 vote.
But i'll leave that to the Latin America pundits -- and instead, will give you this video with some of the greatest "Raw Chavez" you can ever see. The man is hilarious.

Chavez to Bush: "You are a Donkey, Mr. Danger". PRICELESS.