Around The World And Back Again

Over the last 90 days I have had the opportunity visit several of the world's cities built by colonialism and trade; Singpore, Hong Kong and Panama City. Perhaps the most remarkable thing I have to report is that they are generally unremarkable. Uniformly consisting of tall buildings of glass, oceanfront views, traffic congestion and upscale shopping, they were all a welcome relief from my usual travel fare. However, I could have stayed home and experienced the same thing?

Perhaps the most interesting part of my most recent travel was that I flew around the world. To the Flat Earth Society, I thumb my nose. Raleigh--New York--Hong Kong--Singapore--London--Raleigh is not quite a full circumfurential route, but 20,000 miles later I count it as close enough. (The Earth's circumference is 24,901.55 miles at the equator.)

Of the three cities Singapore was perhaps the most interesting. I loved its blend of cultures and people. A majority of its population is Chinese, with substantial Malay and Indian minorities. Its British colonial founders gave it the gift of English as a national language which makes it convenient for the Chinese- and Malay-challenged traveler like me. While the heat was oppresive, the fresh tropical foods were a pleasant change from my usual fare of overcooked (safe) meat and French fries. I took the opportunity to learn about its history and that of neighboring Hong Kong in between snoozes on the long flight over by reading an excellent history titled Empire's End by John Keay which a good friend had given me many years before.

With its fusion of Asian cultures, Singapore provided excellent one-stop exposure to the people of the region. I had the opportunity to visit the Asian Civilizations Museum which had exhibits on each of the peoples of South East Asia. There was even a special travelling exhibit from the People's Republic of China on the Kangxi Emperor (1662-1722) with fascinating examples of the Mandarin civil service exam, silk textiles and arms and armor of the Emporer with a distinctly Central Asian flair. I was particularly struck by the signature stamps, which I had only read about previously and seen on some artwork. I topped this off with a visit to a Mahayana Buddhist temple and shopping in Chinatown for silk garments from Shanghai. In all a whirlwind cross-cultural experience.

However, I can honestly say that our family vacation to Hilton Head Island upon my return was infinitely more enjoyable; mostly because of the time I spent with my family. Imagine travelling around the planet only to find that there is "no place like home," or at least a nearby beach.

Albanian Connections

Over the last several months I have spent a number of days in Tirana, Albania. It is not a place I ever imagined I would find myself, so I was surprised by how pleasant it is. It is a small town with a city center that can be walked from any point to any other. Lots of trees, green spaces and modest high rise buildings compliment a quaint atmosphere.

In fact, it reminded me much of Chisinau. Moldova and Albania share the unfortunate distinction of being the two of the three poorest countries in Europe (per capita GDP). So prices for almost everything are low and there is little exotic to be had. The basics are all available in abundance. Just few high priced ticket items or entertainment outlets. A nice place to raise children would be a good assessment. Not too flashy, yet wholesome. Kind of like the kids on the gas-powered ATVs driving the downtown center square.

Like the Moldovans, the Albanians take pride in the little they do have; primarily their history and culture. In learning about it, I was struck by how often I continue to find relationships between events and places which you would think have no bearing on one another.

Consider, for example, that the hotel where I stay when in Cairo is a converted palace built by the son of Ottoman ruler who conquered Egypt and created its modern national identity. I had no idea Mehmet Ali was an Albanian. You certainly can't tell from the palace design.

Or consider Albanian languages. I understand Albania has a Vlach minority. I had hoped to test my Romanian on these speakers of a different form of the language while wandering the countryside, but it did not happen. I was however able to read some Albanian, as some of the vocabulary is from Turkish as is some Romanian.

Simiarly, some Albanian-speaking Roma in Albania called themselves Egyptians and claim to originate in Egypt. It is odd that the Egyptian connection should surface again on the shores of the Adriatic. I saw some "Egyptians" at a cafe in Tirana one afternoon. They are indeed strikingly different, though they do not look like any Egyptians I have ever seen.

Fortunately, I was able to handle the menus because they were in Italian. The Italian puppet state under King Zog in Albania, and then Fascist Italian occupation of Albania, left a mark on cuisine and urban life in Tirana which remains to this day. The Italians rebuilt the main street of the city in a distinctly Roman style and all the major restaurants serve Italian food. Lucky for me, as I can read and order from an Italian menu. English is a rarity in Albania. Italian and French are far more common second languages.

As if this isn't coincidence enough, then there are the Bektashi. Bektashi is a gnostic form of Islamic faith in Albania based on variety of sufism. As if by design, I happen to be reading a book on the origins of Gnosticism in Central Asia at the time and was able to slip into this important element of Albanian national identity fairly easily.

Where Old School Buses Go To Die

I have made several trips to Haiti over recent years. Given the country's desparate poverty and rampant kidnapping activity, I don't get out much while I'm there. Most of what I have seen has been from behind the locked doors of an SUV, or wandering a quiet back street of a rural village.

However, I have seen enough. Haiti has a per capita annual GDP of USD 1316, making it one of the poorest places on Earth. It has been stripped bare of vegetation for consumption and fuel and the Haitians have resorted to digging chalk out of hillsides on the side of the road to thin construction cement to make it go further. Some of the poorest Haitians make a dish which is essentially cookies made of mud which they sell on the street.

Consider for example this map of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which I took from my hotel room at the Villa Creole. The seashore is on the left. As you move to the right, or uphill, the roads simply end in a giant blank area. This would be where the core of the city lives. Houses are built of whatever material is at hand and roads are unpaved tracks which cannot be mapped.

Until you arrive on the right-hand side of the map, which is Petionville. While we see pictures of starving children, mud cookies and schools buried in mudslides due to deforestation, what we do not hear about is the 5% of the Haitian population which lives very comfortably in relative wealth in Petionville on the mountainsides. These are the educated elite, often with relatives in the United States or France.

For most Haitians though, daily life is difficult. Use of public transportation is common, generally consisting of tap-taps, shiny tricked out vehicles painted with religious slogans very much like the Jeepney used in the Philippines. Where tap-taps aren't available, almost anything imaginable gets pressed into service. Seeing large trucks with people piled on top careening down the street is not uncommon.

This includes our old schoolbuses which are pressed into service as mass transit vehicles. Who knows how their old bones arrive on this impoverished island, along with all the other 10-20 year old cars of US manufacture. But there they are, with their Haitian routes painted on their doors next to their original cities of US ownership. I remember pulling up to my first one and seeing "Petionville-Centreville" and "W. Berlin, NJ" juxtaposed on the same panel. Their drivers make good use of the flashing signals at night; they simply leave them running as they drive as there are no street lights in Haiti.

Haitians are nothing if not enterprising. They have to be to survive. On my last trip I was hustled by a taxi driver at the airport who was looking for a fare. When the airport security guards came to push him out the door, he kept asking if he could have the "blanc" fare; "blanc" being the lone white man in the airport (me). I understand enough French (or Creole) to have figured that one out.

Driving down a street in Port-au-Prince, or over the 6 hour mountain road to Jacmel, is never dull. It is usually a riot of open air markets blocking the road, grade school children in uniforms skipping about, burning trash, tap-taps loaded with bodies, chickens, goats and graves. I have yet to see any signs of voodoo, but I know its practiced by 60% of the population from my survey work. Perhaps next time?

Eight Hours In Rome

I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a 8 hour layover in Rome. Rome is a big place, so I picked something to see which could be thoroughly covered in 8 hours minus taxi time. St Peter's Basilica and the Castel St. Angelo were the selections of the day.

St. Peter's sits at the heart of the Vatican City; independent country, seat of the Pope and heart of the Catholic Church. The city, in turn, sits in the middle of the city of Rome. It has been independent of Rome and Italy since 1929. It is the smallest country in the world, by any measure.

The Vatican City consists of far more than just St. Peter's Basilica and Square. There are delicious museums, well manicured gardens, an art gallery and of course offices of the various bodies of the Holy See. But the Basilica and Square are the heart of it all.

St. Peter's Square, in front of the Basilica, is by tradition the site of the crucifixion and burial of St. Peter in 64 A.D. Interestingly, at the time it was a Roman circus, Nero's Circus, of which the stolen Egyptian obelisk from Heliopolis still remains as the focal point. More recently, the actual burial site of St. Peter has been unearthed north of the circus in a pre-Constantinian necropolis. I intend to visit him on my next opportunity.

St Peter's Basilica itself is immense. It is the second Basilica, having been built on top of the original which Emperor Constantine consecrated in 329 A.D. The interior of the building itself is magnificent. It is hard to grasp just how big it really is, even when standing inside the dome and looking down.

Constantine's original basilica was built over the traditional tomb of St. Peter. For me, the tomb of Pope John Paul II in the grottos under the Basilica was perhaps the most moving moment of the visit. While I can remember the Pope and his moral leadership in life, I was struck by the emotional reverance of a Filipino man who was kneeling in tears, praying in front of the tomb. He was surrounded by a shuffling, oblivious crowd of tourists who parted around him as they passed. This man was however so committed, so absorbed by his passion, that he had closed his eyes and blocked these hundreds from his mind. It was moving just to see him.


The Catholic Church has of course not survived for 2000 years on faith alone. The Pope has a personal bodyguard of 134 Pontifical Swiss Guards. Since 1506, the Guards have been recruited from Catholic males with prior service in the Swiss military to provide personal protection for the Pope. To this day the Guards continue in this tradition, wearing the uniforms and carrying the weapons of the 16th century.

The guards played a role in protecting the Pope at the Castel St. Angelo. The Castel is attached to the Vatican City via a raised fortified passage over the streets along an old city wall. The Castel itself was originally the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian. It became a virtually impregnable fortress from the later Roman period onwards. I had the good fortune to arrive during a festival week of Roman culture and history, so the Castel was open late and free of charge. Wandering the tunnels and chambers, I could see the complexity of an assault.

For those who are opera lovers, the final scenes of Puccini's Tosca should come to mind. The Castel had come to have a reputation for torture and political imprisonment at the time of the opera's setting. Those final scenes are set on the ramparts of the Castel and the opera closes with Tosca throwing herself from the battements to her death on the rocks below.

The St. Angelo bridge in front of the Castel was built in 239 A.D. across the river Tiber to lead from the city of Rome to the tomb. It was originally called the Elian Bridge. Apparently in later periods, its statues were added depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ and were adorned with the heads of prisoners executed in the Castel, hung to serve as reminders to the living.

Greek and Egyptian

I continue to be fascinated by the many faces of Egypt. On my last trip I had the opportunity to return to Alexandria on the shore of the Mediterranean and explore some of its history.

The city of Alexandria was established on by Alexander the Great on the site of a smaller Egyptian coastal town after he conquered Egypt. First under the Greeks, then the Romans, and finally the Byzantines, it served as the capital of Egypt and home to the Ptolomaic Pharohs, including Cleopatra. As such, it is distinctly different from Arabic Cairo with a Graeco-Roman, Christian foundation overlaid with a modern Islamic, Mediterranean facing society I find fascinating.

Alexandria was the home to 2 of the 7 wonders of the ancient world; the Pharos Lighthouse and the ancient Library of Alexandria. The lighthouse apparently stood from the time of the ancient Greeks through the Crusades and was eventually brought low by an earthquake. Its remains have recently been discovered in the water off a jetty.

If you stand on that jetty where the tower once stood and look back across the bay, you see the post-modern Library of Alexandria. Very much a modern library and museum, it stands in the middle of the old Greek city.

The ancient Library was the home of some of the greatest minds of antiquity. It was as much a university, or Museum, as it was a library. It was originally founded by students of Aristotle, which included Alexander the Great. Great innovations included hydraulics, mathematical map-making, Euclidian geometry, Archimedes discovery of pi, spherical geometry, as well as innovations in anatomy and astronomy.

The Ptolomaic Pharohs also created a strange combination of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and eventually Christian religions in an attempt to bring together Greek and Egyptian subjects. This included the worship of Serapis, who was at once Osiris, Pluto or Hades, and eventually also Jesus.

This is perhaps most evident in burial sites. I had the opportuity to explore a extensive underground catacomb burial in Alexandria called the Catacombs of Kom el-Shuqafa.It is a fascinating and very elaborate underground cemetery. I had images of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure as I was wandering around the chambers and staircases. The walls bore images of Serapis's Apis bull with a sun disk we all know so well from Charles Heston's The Ten Commandments.

I look forward to my next visit to Alexandria. Perhaps I will be able to reach the El Alamein battle ground which is accessed via a road from the city.

Sachertorte, Scotch and Mamaliga

I recently had the treat of returning to Moldova. My firm has won a contract to support creating a local television network in the country, in part based on my previous work experience in the country. Who would have ever have guessed Romanian language skills and experience living in Moldova would yield again?

Moldova is one of those few countries left where the government is still run by freely elected post-Soviet Communists (think Cuba and Belrus). It also still has a cold combat zone where the ex-Soviet cum Russian-speaking 14th Army sits on one side of the Dniester river and rejects the authority of the Romanian-speaking Moldovan government based on the other. All this in a country the size of Maryland.

When I lived there 12 years ago, the capital was a provincial center of concrete-built Soviet architecure. There were few street lights. The heat didn't work in the winter. Black outs were common. You bought gasoline from petrol truck parked on the side of the road and rode the bus next to a chicken. The village was right out of the 16th century, except for eletricity and television, complete with a common well.

Today, Moldova is in the midst of the free-wheeling capitalization changes Moscow experienced 5-10 years ago. The streets of Chisinau are brightly lit and lined by high-end storefronts. Hotels with Western amenities are available. Grocery stores and casinos abound. Underneath it all however is the old Moldova; streets thronged with fashionably-dressed people chatting with neighbors, small shops and restaurants selling the basics for almost nothing, and the atmosphere of a small, French provicial capital made of concrete.

I had several excellent meals with the growing family of an old friend from my previous days in Moldova. Placenta (pla-chen-ta), mamaliga and the ever excellent Moldovan wines were laid out on the lace-covered table. It is a diplomatic family now, last living in Berlin. I enjoyed chatting with the son in German and Romanian and the grown ups in English. The placenta were excellent, coming from the Opera House where I used to spend my Saturday evenings many years ago. My old comrade and I also shared a lunch in an excellent ethnic Moldovan restaurant under the image of the Moldovan icon Saint Stephen the Great.

As frosting on the experience, I transited through the airport in Vienna to and from the country. You can't get to Moldova direct from anywhere. Though the time was short, it was a joy to use my German on some natives along the way. Of course, some Sachertorte, apple strudel and soft pretzels were obligatory.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with the people around me from Washington to Chisinau and back. On each leg of the journey were combinations of German, English, Romanian and Russian speakers. It is a completely different experience when you know the languages of the people on every step of your journey. I don't get that opportunity very often. The Austrian was quaint.

The Scotchman was the exception.

For the first time in my many travels, I was seated next to the proverbial passenger who won't stop talking. It was the brief flight from Vienna to Chisinau, which was fortunate. Though he was speaking English, I could not understand a word he was saying. And he wouldn't stop.

He also kept showing up. Chisinau is a small place, even smaller for those who don't speak the languages. I ran into him in the hotel elevator. As soon appeared, he would start talking incomprehensibly. I passed him a breakfast and he stood by table, or sat down at it uninvited, and started talking. I quickly learned to avoid public spaces at the hotel.

I look forward to going back soon. Perhaps I will return to the largest wine cellar in the world on my next trip; Milestii Mici. I'll just pray my airplane seatmates speak a language I understand, or don't speak at all.

Food & Fragrance

Tourism is a major industry in Egypt; home of the Pyramids. It is such a dominant force in the economy that Egypt has national Tourism Police who guard sites, tourists and hotels. Despite the drop in revenue as a consequence of political violence, tourism remains a significant contributor to Egypt's economy and the premier source of its foreign exchange earnings.

The majority of visitors to Egypt, almost 61 percent, come from Western and Southern Europe. Tourists from other parts of the Middle East, especially from the Arab Gulf region, account for 19 percent of the total number, while Americans and Eastern Europeans each represent 6 percent of the total, and Asian visitors make up 5 percent.

Part of the reason for the low numbers of Americans may be the difficulty in getting there. My flights to Egypt are regularly 20-24 hour affairs with multiple legs. The shortest routings I have found are through London or New York. No matter how you slice it though, its a long time to sit in economy class. Fortunately, the carriers are almost always foreign (British or Egypt Air) and wine is therefore usually available for free to spice up the meals.

Given the role of tourism in the economy, Egypt is a unique place where Arab culture and a service industry catering to Western visitors mix in unique ways. In no other Middle Eastern country have I haggled with Arab street vendors over unwritten prices in English. Drivers get kickbacks for dropping tourists off at start or end-points co-located with various tourism businesses, so you are inevitably "invited" to visit a papyrus-making shop or a perfume maker on every trip you take. Even hotel cars will drop you at prearranged pick-up points for carriage rides and shops whose vendors will follow you down the street to get your business.

The perfume shops are especially interesting. They are all the same, pitching their version of knock-offs of designer brands. They shamelessly sell them this way too. "This perfume is the same as ......" They have decidedly Egyptian names like Secrets of Egypt, Essence of Eucalyptus, Siwa Oasis with extract from 52 flowers, Lotus Flower, as well as frankincense and myrrh. Of course, they try to sell you 4 bottles for price of 3....

Despite the badgering and haggling, the experience has its own charms. Carriage rides amongst the Pyramids, smelling spices in the shadow of a camel, and eating roasted pigeon in a fine hotel restaurant are just a few of them. As a classic example of the fusion that is Egypt, some of the best Italian food I've ever had is served inside the Marriott hotel I use, which used to be a royal Egyptian palace. It is place to visit with a pocket full of cash, infinite patience, your best negotiating skills, and a tolerance for people trying to take your money at every turn.