"Where are you from?"
"Australia."
"But you speak German?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
I am very aware that it is unusual for both to be true simultaneously, especially for someone who doesn’t have a German Opa or Austrian Oma. I was one of only two such students in the advanced German program at my university, and this classmate and I bonded so well over our shared lack of German-speaking ancestry in the department that we’ve now been good friends for the better part of a decade.
The point where she and I met is already ten years into my German experience, so let me go back to the start of the story, of how I came to be fluent in German. This is after all an answer to the question I am asked the most by strangers when they first discover my linguistic abilities, so I feel I should tell the story properly, and start at the very beginning… a very good place to start.
1992. I was nine, and in my own personal hell, otherwise known as grade five at a Melbourne primary school. I loved learning, but my female classmates made my life a misery. Halfway through the year, my mum and dad sat me down at the family room table one afternoon, for a conversation that changed my life. I knew I would be able to escape primary school at the end of the following year and start high school – a P-12 school, the same school my grandmother had attended, and most importantly, a school that none of my vindictive classmates would be going to. That afternoon however, my parents offered me the option of starting there a year early - at the start of grade 6 - and I grabbed the opportunity with both hands.
At this school, language instruction began at early primary level; each year learned either German or French, which not only enabled but encouraged continuity into the senior levels – a rare example of excellent language teaching policy.
In early February 1993, I had my first German lesson. Everyone else in my class had between one and six years up on me, but I managed to pick up on everything they’d covered previously in a few months, and by the end of the year, I was winning maths races, singing songs, describing pictures, and introducing myself, all in German. This gave me a significant advantage over all of the newcomers at the start of year 7, and by the end of the year I was really enjoying it – not just German, but learning a language. At the start of year eight, we had the chance to choose electives: to keep German alone, to add either Japanese or French to the mix, to trade German for one of the other two, or to drop languages completely. I tried to convince my teachers to let me keep German and add French and Japanese, to no avail, and had to settle for German and French.
I continued with both throughout high school, and did well, both in class and in various regional and state level competitions. When the topic of VCE (A Levels) subjects came up, German and French were always a part of the discussion. At the end of year 11, I travelled to Germany for the first time, and spent six weeks in Kiel over Christmas in 1998. That trip warrants its own post, but by the time I returned to Melbourne (despite begging my mum to let me do my senior year in Germany), I took on year 12 German with a vengeance, well enough to get me into my number one university course at Monash University. I transferred into the languages program and traded French for Italian after the first year, and graduated with a double major in German and Linguistics in 2004.
From September 2004, I spent a year as a foreign language assistant at a high school in rural south-west Germany, which again warrants its own posts, and this is where I learned to truly love German. Living in the community and speaking it every day – with colleagues, with my landlord and his wife and with everyone else in the town enabled me to transition from German skills learned from a book to fluent German, and I’ve never looked back. A little over two years after I returned from that trip, and with a teaching degree in German and ESL under my belt, I bought myself a one-way ticket to Berlin, and have been living here ever since, with no immediate plans to return to Australia.
And that is how I am both Australian and fluent in German with no germanophone heritage to speak of.
Questions, comments?
Ghosts
Last Sunday, I met a few friends for brunch in Friedrichshain, an area of Berlin I don't usually go to - specifically the area bordered by the S-Bahn and Ringbahn lines and thoroughfares Warschauer Straße and Frankfurter Allee. From where I live, it takes longer and more changes to get to Friedrichshain than almost anywhere else in the city, and I always get lost trying to find addresses. Usually I'm a navigational doyenne, but Friedrichshain's a rabbit warren to me.
There is another reason I don't usually go there. Someone I used to know. We'll leave it at that for the moment. Someone I used to know, and don't particularly want to see again. I know they live and spend a lot of time in this area of Friedrichshain. It's not just that I don't want to go back there because I don't want to see them again, but also that I don't enjoy going back to places which remind me of negative experiences.
After brunch, I walked home from Friedrichshain through Kreuzberg and passed another place I used to visit all the time - an apartment, where I used to spend many a Tuesday evening devouring movies and caramel popcorn with a diverse group of friends. My memories of this place aren't negative - they're positive... but being there makes me a little sad. Several key people within that group have left Berlin, either temporarily or permanently, including the host, and while I enjoy going to that area, my reason for going to that apartment is gone.
There are other areas. An apartment near Sonnenallee - a place I used to spend a lot of time, since a good friend used to live there - someone I used to know. Gropiusstadt and Rudow, suburbs in far south Berlin where I used to teach and live for the first year I lived here. In this case, I don't have to avoid the area - Rudow is so far south that I'm seldom there more than once a year, but even if it were closer, I wouldn't go there.
In the twenty-odd years I lived in Melbourne, it seems I've only acquired a handful of ghosts - mostly around my old high school. But here in Berlin, I have a lot more. More than anything this is a reflection of the difference between life in Melbourne, in my home city, and life in Berlin, as an expat. People come and go here - you develop a good group of friends, then suddenly, two or three move on to other countries or back to their home country, and you have to start over. It can be difficult, but it's something you get used to. It's part of being an expat.
It has its perks though - you have accommodation offers in cities all over the world! :)
There is another reason I don't usually go there. Someone I used to know. We'll leave it at that for the moment. Someone I used to know, and don't particularly want to see again. I know they live and spend a lot of time in this area of Friedrichshain. It's not just that I don't want to go back there because I don't want to see them again, but also that I don't enjoy going back to places which remind me of negative experiences.
After brunch, I walked home from Friedrichshain through Kreuzberg and passed another place I used to visit all the time - an apartment, where I used to spend many a Tuesday evening devouring movies and caramel popcorn with a diverse group of friends. My memories of this place aren't negative - they're positive... but being there makes me a little sad. Several key people within that group have left Berlin, either temporarily or permanently, including the host, and while I enjoy going to that area, my reason for going to that apartment is gone.
There are other areas. An apartment near Sonnenallee - a place I used to spend a lot of time, since a good friend used to live there - someone I used to know. Gropiusstadt and Rudow, suburbs in far south Berlin where I used to teach and live for the first year I lived here. In this case, I don't have to avoid the area - Rudow is so far south that I'm seldom there more than once a year, but even if it were closer, I wouldn't go there.
In the twenty-odd years I lived in Melbourne, it seems I've only acquired a handful of ghosts - mostly around my old high school. But here in Berlin, I have a lot more. More than anything this is a reflection of the difference between life in Melbourne, in my home city, and life in Berlin, as an expat. People come and go here - you develop a good group of friends, then suddenly, two or three move on to other countries or back to their home country, and you have to start over. It can be difficult, but it's something you get used to. It's part of being an expat.
It has its perks though - you have accommodation offers in cities all over the world! :)
Lazy Sunday Afternoon
This weekend is the second of two long weekends in a row in Germany, and as is tradition for Pentecost weekend, the Karneval der Kulturen parade took over western Kreuzberg, from Hermannplatz to Mehringdamm and the surrounding streets. For the last three years, I've watched this parade with various friends, taking photos of the outlandish floats and the dancers in feathered and glittered costumes, drinking capihirinas and strawberry punch all afternoon in the sunshine. This year though, especially since almost all of the friends I had previously visited the festival with had left Berlin, I decided to forgo the crowds of teenagers in skinny jeans and Ray Bans and families trying to push strollers through the hordes of people, and went up to Mauerpark for a spot of karaoke instead.
I've been working on a post on Bearpit Karaoke for a while, but the short version is that between April and November, Dubliner Joe Hatchiban loads his laptop and amplifiers onto his cargo bike and cycles over to the stone amphitheatre in Prenzlauer Berg's Mauerpark for several hours every Sunday afternoon, where Berlin's residents and visitors alike take to the stage and belt out all manner of karaoke classics. From tongue-in-cheek 80s number to Idol wannabes showing off what they can (or can't) do with Whitney and Mariah tracks, and rockers who don't care if they can't sing getting everyone singing along to Queen, AC/DC, Aerosmith and the Stones, there's something for everyone.
In the last few weeks, the fun police known as Berlin's city council has decided that karaoke should be restricted to a mere twelve Sundays per year, rather than every weekend. (There are plenty of German-language articles on it - this is one of the few English-language ones). Either way, watching and paticipating are completely free of charge, and it is one of my favourite ways to while away a Sunday in the sun. Considering this Sunday was one of the rare pre-announced karaoke dates, I had to go.
And that is how I spent my afternoon - in the sunshine at Mauerpark, with a Tyskie in one hand and a pen in the other, listening to Australians, Dutch, Germans and a surprising number of French singing all manner of songs. No one cared if they were in tune - as long as the crowd knew the song and the performer put in some effort, they were unanimously well received.
Toward the end, as people began to leave, I noticed that my favourite seat in the house had become vacant. A hill runs along one side of the park, and along with this being the location of the amphitheatre and a great place to toboggan in winter, there are also several large stand-alone swings along the path, one of which is directly behind the amphitheatre.
These were my favourite moments of yesterday, and possibly of the weekend: swinging high above Mauerpark, the golden sun sinking slowly into the northwest horizon, the sweet smell of heather and shisha on the breeze and the sound of someone belting out "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the stage below.
Bliss.
I've been working on a post on Bearpit Karaoke for a while, but the short version is that between April and November, Dubliner Joe Hatchiban loads his laptop and amplifiers onto his cargo bike and cycles over to the stone amphitheatre in Prenzlauer Berg's Mauerpark for several hours every Sunday afternoon, where Berlin's residents and visitors alike take to the stage and belt out all manner of karaoke classics. From tongue-in-cheek 80s number to Idol wannabes showing off what they can (or can't) do with Whitney and Mariah tracks, and rockers who don't care if they can't sing getting everyone singing along to Queen, AC/DC, Aerosmith and the Stones, there's something for everyone.
In the last few weeks, the fun police known as Berlin's city council has decided that karaoke should be restricted to a mere twelve Sundays per year, rather than every weekend. (There are plenty of German-language articles on it - this is one of the few English-language ones). Either way, watching and paticipating are completely free of charge, and it is one of my favourite ways to while away a Sunday in the sun. Considering this Sunday was one of the rare pre-announced karaoke dates, I had to go.
And that is how I spent my afternoon - in the sunshine at Mauerpark, with a Tyskie in one hand and a pen in the other, listening to Australians, Dutch, Germans and a surprising number of French singing all manner of songs. No one cared if they were in tune - as long as the crowd knew the song and the performer put in some effort, they were unanimously well received.
Toward the end, as people began to leave, I noticed that my favourite seat in the house had become vacant. A hill runs along one side of the park, and along with this being the location of the amphitheatre and a great place to toboggan in winter, there are also several large stand-alone swings along the path, one of which is directly behind the amphitheatre.
These were my favourite moments of yesterday, and possibly of the weekend: swinging high above Mauerpark, the golden sun sinking slowly into the northwest horizon, the sweet smell of heather and shisha on the breeze and the sound of someone belting out "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the stage below.
Bliss.
Bruno Mars and I are now friends
This has never happened to me before. Well, ok, it has, but never in such a short time period.
About a month ago, I posted the following on a social networking site: first, a link to the Bruno Mars track "Marry You" (check it out here), then several comments expressing my disdain and extreme dislike of the song - the idiotic lyrics, the irritating catchiness, my disappointment in the artist for releasing a track like this considering most of his others were tolerable, if not enjoyable. I made it very clear that there was nothing I liked about it. At all.
It was played repeatedly on radio stations in Berlin, which annoyed me no end, and even when I travelled to Australia for my sister's wedding, I could not escape it. Bruno Mars had the local radio stations in the palm of his hand, and this song seemed to be by far the most popular. It drove me up the wall.
Gradually I reached the point where resistance was futile. This has happened before, especially with songs that suit multiple radio stations' playlists. Examples include Nickelback, U2, Snow Patrol, and others. Their music suits the cheesiness of Mix1011, can be played on Fox or Nova (only within the first week of release), are also rock enough to suit TripleM's blokey playlist, and in the case of U2, they have been around long enough to be classified as a "golden oldie".
[Disclaimer: I am in no way admitting to being a Nickelback fan.] Bruno Mars wasn't getting airtime on Triple M or Gold, but Nova, Mix and Fox were playing not only this track but also umpteen others often enough to more than make up for it.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I'd reached a place where I could listen to the entire song without diving for the tuner dial or preset button on the radio, or even lowering the volume. We were civil with each other.
Then came my sister's wedding. The meal was over, the cake had been cut, everyone had had a few drinks and the cheesy dance tracks were coming thick and fast from my sister's iPod playlist. Footloose, various Kylie tracks, stuff I didn't know... then it happened. Bruno Mars. Suddenly it seemed to fit. Everyone was up there: my sister grooving away in her stunning gown, my mum, my cousin carrying her little boy, my other three cousins in their heels and short dresses, and even my aunts and uncles. It had to be done. I knew the melody. I definitely knew the words (from all those forced listenings). I found myself striding in the direction of the dancefloor and before I knew it, I was grooving away and singing along to Bruno Mars "Marry You" like it was my favourite song, having the time of my life, and having conveniently forgotten my previous comments.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I found myself listening to his album for hours on end on the plane ride back, while competing in an in-flight tetris tournament with someone in 13A. Somehow, within the space of a month, I have become a Bruno Mars fan. Ugh... :)
*By the way, I'm back. :)
About a month ago, I posted the following on a social networking site: first, a link to the Bruno Mars track "Marry You" (check it out here), then several comments expressing my disdain and extreme dislike of the song - the idiotic lyrics, the irritating catchiness, my disappointment in the artist for releasing a track like this considering most of his others were tolerable, if not enjoyable. I made it very clear that there was nothing I liked about it. At all.
It was played repeatedly on radio stations in Berlin, which annoyed me no end, and even when I travelled to Australia for my sister's wedding, I could not escape it. Bruno Mars had the local radio stations in the palm of his hand, and this song seemed to be by far the most popular. It drove me up the wall.
Gradually I reached the point where resistance was futile. This has happened before, especially with songs that suit multiple radio stations' playlists. Examples include Nickelback, U2, Snow Patrol, and others. Their music suits the cheesiness of Mix1011, can be played on Fox or Nova (only within the first week of release), are also rock enough to suit TripleM's blokey playlist, and in the case of U2, they have been around long enough to be classified as a "golden oldie".
[Disclaimer: I am in no way admitting to being a Nickelback fan.] Bruno Mars wasn't getting airtime on Triple M or Gold, but Nova, Mix and Fox were playing not only this track but also umpteen others often enough to more than make up for it.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I'd reached a place where I could listen to the entire song without diving for the tuner dial or preset button on the radio, or even lowering the volume. We were civil with each other.
Then came my sister's wedding. The meal was over, the cake had been cut, everyone had had a few drinks and the cheesy dance tracks were coming thick and fast from my sister's iPod playlist. Footloose, various Kylie tracks, stuff I didn't know... then it happened. Bruno Mars. Suddenly it seemed to fit. Everyone was up there: my sister grooving away in her stunning gown, my mum, my cousin carrying her little boy, my other three cousins in their heels and short dresses, and even my aunts and uncles. It had to be done. I knew the melody. I definitely knew the words (from all those forced listenings). I found myself striding in the direction of the dancefloor and before I knew it, I was grooving away and singing along to Bruno Mars "Marry You" like it was my favourite song, having the time of my life, and having conveniently forgotten my previous comments.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I found myself listening to his album for hours on end on the plane ride back, while competing in an in-flight tetris tournament with someone in 13A. Somehow, within the space of a month, I have become a Bruno Mars fan. Ugh... :)
*By the way, I'm back. :)
To be continued...
The time has come.
Kangaroos in Deutschland is going on temporary hiatus.
My decision has nothing to do with creative inspiration or motivation to write: I have at least five or six half-written posts and ideas for a further eight or nine - four of those from the last week alone - and the temptation to curl up on my bed with a mug of tea and a biscuit is very strong. But one thing is preventing me from doing that.
That issue is time. Until about a month ago, I had a lot of it. I worked part-time, and could fill in the rest of the week tutoring, translating, teaching myself Turkish, being a tourist when I wanted to, and writing until my heart was content.
In August however, I applied for a place in a Master's course in linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin. I was accepted, passed a German language test, and two weeks ago, I started classes. The number of contact hours is relatively low, but the preparation required for each class is enormous. On top of that, it's in German, and my linguistics terminology is not only in English, but also pretty rusty, since I finished my studies in 2004. This means more preparation and revision time.
Considering that I'm still working twenty hours a week at the English language school, I don't have a lot of time left over. I've had to stop the weekly voluntary tutoring I was doing at a local library, helping school kids (primarily with Turkish and Lebanese background) with their English and German homework. I've also had to stop tutoring a friend's son on Saturdays: I miss the cash, and the tutoring itself, but I just don't have the time for the travel or the tutoring.
The ideas will keep coming, and I'll keep writing them down, storing them up for the Christmas holidays and the semester break in March, but until then, they're going to have to remain ideas, and I'll do my very best to resist the urge to flesh them out until I can justify spending the time on something other than university work.
I just hope it's possible to snap-freeze creative motivation... and that it doesn't have a defrost-by-date. Guess we'll find out.
Until then...
Kangaroos in Deutschland is going on temporary hiatus.
My decision has nothing to do with creative inspiration or motivation to write: I have at least five or six half-written posts and ideas for a further eight or nine - four of those from the last week alone - and the temptation to curl up on my bed with a mug of tea and a biscuit is very strong. But one thing is preventing me from doing that.
That issue is time. Until about a month ago, I had a lot of it. I worked part-time, and could fill in the rest of the week tutoring, translating, teaching myself Turkish, being a tourist when I wanted to, and writing until my heart was content.
In August however, I applied for a place in a Master's course in linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin. I was accepted, passed a German language test, and two weeks ago, I started classes. The number of contact hours is relatively low, but the preparation required for each class is enormous. On top of that, it's in German, and my linguistics terminology is not only in English, but also pretty rusty, since I finished my studies in 2004. This means more preparation and revision time.
Considering that I'm still working twenty hours a week at the English language school, I don't have a lot of time left over. I've had to stop the weekly voluntary tutoring I was doing at a local library, helping school kids (primarily with Turkish and Lebanese background) with their English and German homework. I've also had to stop tutoring a friend's son on Saturdays: I miss the cash, and the tutoring itself, but I just don't have the time for the travel or the tutoring.
The ideas will keep coming, and I'll keep writing them down, storing them up for the Christmas holidays and the semester break in March, but until then, they're going to have to remain ideas, and I'll do my very best to resist the urge to flesh them out until I can justify spending the time on something other than university work.
I just hope it's possible to snap-freeze creative motivation... and that it doesn't have a defrost-by-date. Guess we'll find out.
Until then...
The Paradox of the Holy Grail
Hello, my name's Australis, and I'm a science geek. Well, kinda.
At high school, I was an A or B student in almost everything. English, maths, geography, history, German, French, IT. Everything except science. I liked it - I just wasn't all that good at it... Ok, I was terrible at it. Despite my father being a chemical engineer and both of his parents scientists or science teachers, I just couldn't get my head around the theory of it. I liked learning about the origins of the chemical symbols (I guess that's the linguist in me - I still remember that the chemical symbol for lead is Pb because the Latin term is "plumbum"). I found genetics and the human body fascinating in biology. I enjoyed learning about the practical effects and application of the laws of physics. I just never got the grades for it, and eventually dropped science at the end of year 9 after getting horrible grades two years running, despite my best efforts.
As a child though, many weekends and school holidays were spent in the company of my paternal grandmother at various museums in Melbourne. The Museum of Victoria was my favourite. I still remember walking around in the darkened minerals exhibit as a seven- and eight-year-old, awestruck by the black-lit glow of various precious and semi-precious stones, and looking at all kinds of skeletons and geological exhibits. That is, until the mid 90s when Scienceworks opened.
Scienceworks was my absolute favourite place to go in Melbourne as a kid. I think even my grandmother got sick of taking me there at one point. Every school holidays for as long as I could remember, we'd drive across the Westgate Bridge in their blue Honda to Spotswood, and spend the afternoon playing with the pulley exhibits, figuring out spinning pictures, learning about aerodynamics, space exploration, our galaxy and a whole host of other activities. Occasionally we'd go into the Planetarium in the city; sitting there underneath the dome, watching the constellations zoom across the screen above us, then being taken on a guided tour of the solar system and beyond into the rest of our galaxy entranced me. To this day, I remain in love with astronomy. I therefore amend my previous statement: I'm a science geek, with a major in astronomy.
Going to those museums as a child though, I remember seeing that some of the exhibits had plaques next to them, acknowledging their temporary status due to them being on loan from somewhere called Smithsonian. Over the years, this name, "Smithsonian", kept coming up - not just at museums in Melbourne or even Australia, but in the natural history museums I visited overseas, and in all kinds of books: this or that was on loan from the Smithsonian, or on display in the Smithsonian. This "Smithsonian" place attained a status with me as the holy grail of museums, and it was never a question of whether or not I would go there, but when.
So when I ventured to the States for the first time to meet up with my sister and her boyfriend in New York for a few days in July 2010, it was a given that I would go to Washington D.C., with the goal of finally visiting the hallowed halls of the Smithsonian Museum - where apparently everything of any value in natural history was stored. The Apollo shuttle. The Hope Diamond. And much more.
I was like a kid on her first day of school. The alarm went off at 5.30am; by 7am, I was on a train pulling slowly out of Penn station. Four hours later, I arrived in DC. First stop was a tourist information stand, where I found out to my surprise that the Smithsonian wasn't a museum. It was a complex of museums, known as the Smithsonian Institute, comprising natural history, art, scuplture, Native American and African American museums, to name just a few. And the holy grail of holy grails for me - the National Air and Space Museum (NASM). First was a brief bus tour of the city, then I hightailed it for the NASM.
I remember exactly how I felt when I first walked through those hallowed (to me, anyway) doors. Absolute amazement. No, that's not expressive enough. I was dumbstruck. Literally speechless. And completely overwhelmed. I could not stop smiling in awe and disbelief at what I saw before me. The silver-haired man behind the information desk was watching me with a small smile - I had stopped in my tracks about ten metres into the lobby, and was simply staring up at the rockets, shuttles and planes hanging from the ceiling high above me and at the photographs of planets and constellations adorning the walls, oblivious to the hordes of people swarming around me.
Eventually I broke out of my trance and approached the man at the information desk to find out exactly what was on display here. He told me about some of the best exhibits, some of the most popular displays, and his personal favourite, the Ole Miss. Then he pointed out the Apollo 11 lunar module and the landing capsule about 100m away. I grinned, giddy with disbelief and excitement, and he smiled back at me, enjoying my first-timer's reaction to the museum. Like I said, I'm an astronomy geek. And I was in astronomy geek heaven.
Suffice to say the two hour time bracket I'd allocated was never going to be sufficient. I think I had known that even before I got to DC. Sure, I could see everything I wanted to see, but in a whirlwind, not stopping at one display for more than a few minutes before moving onto the next, the time ticking away in the back of my mind. It was very different to how I had imagined my Smithsonian experience - spending an entire day there, or a few hours one day, then a few more the next, absorbing the history, the trivia, the scientific discoveries of the past, present and future. But I would much rather have had two hours there than nothing at all. And those two hours - wow.
The temptation to stay longer was enormous, but while I was enraptured with the NASM and everything in it, I was also in DC, which had a lot more to offer than just the NASM. So after two hours, I reluctantly made my way back to the lobby, bought a souvenir patch, thanked my good friend at the information stand for his tips, and ventured back out into the 37°C heat of the DC summer. The same day, I managed to cram in the Natural History Museum and a few others - not half as much as I wanted to, but an incredible lot, considering I was only in DC for a total of nine hours.
Three months later, on a Saturday afternoon in Berlin, I heard that the German Natural History Museum was commemorating its 200th anniversary with free entrance for a weekend. I'd wanted to go for ages, but a combination of time availability and wanting to explore Berlin's free museums first had put it far down on my priorities. But since it was free, how could I refuse?
After about twenty minutes though, my initial curiosity and wonder customary to a first-time visit to a museum was replaced with a strange feeling. While interesting, all of the displays and artefacts seemed somewhat lacklustre, as if somehow the entire museum had been painted in a matte finish. Everything was interesting, but that's where it ended. Not mesmerising, not fascinating, not enthralling. Just...interesting. And mildly disappointing. The astronomy display was where I noticed it the most. It seemed so small, as if half the exhibits had been removed for cleaning or restoration. And the exhibits that were there appeared to have lost their glow - as if a thin veil had been lowered over everything.
Then I noticed a small sign on one of the displays of moon rocks. "On loan from the NASM, Smithsonian Institute. Washington DC."
The penny dropped. That's why everything was different. This was the first museum I'd visited since I'd experienced the Smithsonian Institute. And the effect was phenomenal. The visit to my holy grail of museums had apparently forever changed the way I would experience museums as a visitor. The aura was gone. The almost childlike curiosity I used to get when I walked into the foyer of a museum, the excitement at being on the brink of learning unknown facts about long extinct animals, geographical phenomena and stars and planets that no living human will ever reach had been extinguished. The standard of exhibits, especially in the space exhibits, had been set so high that it was completely out of reach for any other museum.
This revelation made me sad. Fulfilling my childhood mission of visiting the hallowed Smithsonian, land of all that is sacred and most important in the area of Natural History and Astronomy (in my eyes, at least) had simultaneously apparently forever destroyed my future museum experiences.
I'm not sure if this is something that can be worked around; if now that I know that I'll never get that Smithsonian feeling anywhere except DC will enable me to lower my standards and enjoy other cities' natural history museums for what they are. I'm not sure. I guess only time will tell. In the meantime, I can be forever happy knowing that I have made the pilgrimage to the Smithsonian; that I have seen the landing module that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins landed on the moon in, and the landing capsule that brought them safely back to Earth again, both first hand, and that the two hours spent there were worth every single second of the eight hour return train trip from DC to NYC.
At high school, I was an A or B student in almost everything. English, maths, geography, history, German, French, IT. Everything except science. I liked it - I just wasn't all that good at it... Ok, I was terrible at it. Despite my father being a chemical engineer and both of his parents scientists or science teachers, I just couldn't get my head around the theory of it. I liked learning about the origins of the chemical symbols (I guess that's the linguist in me - I still remember that the chemical symbol for lead is Pb because the Latin term is "plumbum"). I found genetics and the human body fascinating in biology. I enjoyed learning about the practical effects and application of the laws of physics. I just never got the grades for it, and eventually dropped science at the end of year 9 after getting horrible grades two years running, despite my best efforts.
As a child though, many weekends and school holidays were spent in the company of my paternal grandmother at various museums in Melbourne. The Museum of Victoria was my favourite. I still remember walking around in the darkened minerals exhibit as a seven- and eight-year-old, awestruck by the black-lit glow of various precious and semi-precious stones, and looking at all kinds of skeletons and geological exhibits. That is, until the mid 90s when Scienceworks opened.
Scienceworks was my absolute favourite place to go in Melbourne as a kid. I think even my grandmother got sick of taking me there at one point. Every school holidays for as long as I could remember, we'd drive across the Westgate Bridge in their blue Honda to Spotswood, and spend the afternoon playing with the pulley exhibits, figuring out spinning pictures, learning about aerodynamics, space exploration, our galaxy and a whole host of other activities. Occasionally we'd go into the Planetarium in the city; sitting there underneath the dome, watching the constellations zoom across the screen above us, then being taken on a guided tour of the solar system and beyond into the rest of our galaxy entranced me. To this day, I remain in love with astronomy. I therefore amend my previous statement: I'm a science geek, with a major in astronomy.
Going to those museums as a child though, I remember seeing that some of the exhibits had plaques next to them, acknowledging their temporary status due to them being on loan from somewhere called Smithsonian. Over the years, this name, "Smithsonian", kept coming up - not just at museums in Melbourne or even Australia, but in the natural history museums I visited overseas, and in all kinds of books: this or that was on loan from the Smithsonian, or on display in the Smithsonian. This "Smithsonian" place attained a status with me as the holy grail of museums, and it was never a question of whether or not I would go there, but when.
So when I ventured to the States for the first time to meet up with my sister and her boyfriend in New York for a few days in July 2010, it was a given that I would go to Washington D.C., with the goal of finally visiting the hallowed halls of the Smithsonian Museum - where apparently everything of any value in natural history was stored. The Apollo shuttle. The Hope Diamond. And much more.
I was like a kid on her first day of school. The alarm went off at 5.30am; by 7am, I was on a train pulling slowly out of Penn station. Four hours later, I arrived in DC. First stop was a tourist information stand, where I found out to my surprise that the Smithsonian wasn't a museum. It was a complex of museums, known as the Smithsonian Institute, comprising natural history, art, scuplture, Native American and African American museums, to name just a few. And the holy grail of holy grails for me - the National Air and Space Museum (NASM). First was a brief bus tour of the city, then I hightailed it for the NASM.
I remember exactly how I felt when I first walked through those hallowed (to me, anyway) doors. Absolute amazement. No, that's not expressive enough. I was dumbstruck. Literally speechless. And completely overwhelmed. I could not stop smiling in awe and disbelief at what I saw before me. The silver-haired man behind the information desk was watching me with a small smile - I had stopped in my tracks about ten metres into the lobby, and was simply staring up at the rockets, shuttles and planes hanging from the ceiling high above me and at the photographs of planets and constellations adorning the walls, oblivious to the hordes of people swarming around me.
Eventually I broke out of my trance and approached the man at the information desk to find out exactly what was on display here. He told me about some of the best exhibits, some of the most popular displays, and his personal favourite, the Ole Miss. Then he pointed out the Apollo 11 lunar module and the landing capsule about 100m away. I grinned, giddy with disbelief and excitement, and he smiled back at me, enjoying my first-timer's reaction to the museum. Like I said, I'm an astronomy geek. And I was in astronomy geek heaven.
Suffice to say the two hour time bracket I'd allocated was never going to be sufficient. I think I had known that even before I got to DC. Sure, I could see everything I wanted to see, but in a whirlwind, not stopping at one display for more than a few minutes before moving onto the next, the time ticking away in the back of my mind. It was very different to how I had imagined my Smithsonian experience - spending an entire day there, or a few hours one day, then a few more the next, absorbing the history, the trivia, the scientific discoveries of the past, present and future. But I would much rather have had two hours there than nothing at all. And those two hours - wow.
The temptation to stay longer was enormous, but while I was enraptured with the NASM and everything in it, I was also in DC, which had a lot more to offer than just the NASM. So after two hours, I reluctantly made my way back to the lobby, bought a souvenir patch, thanked my good friend at the information stand for his tips, and ventured back out into the 37°C heat of the DC summer. The same day, I managed to cram in the Natural History Museum and a few others - not half as much as I wanted to, but an incredible lot, considering I was only in DC for a total of nine hours.
Three months later, on a Saturday afternoon in Berlin, I heard that the German Natural History Museum was commemorating its 200th anniversary with free entrance for a weekend. I'd wanted to go for ages, but a combination of time availability and wanting to explore Berlin's free museums first had put it far down on my priorities. But since it was free, how could I refuse?
After about twenty minutes though, my initial curiosity and wonder customary to a first-time visit to a museum was replaced with a strange feeling. While interesting, all of the displays and artefacts seemed somewhat lacklustre, as if somehow the entire museum had been painted in a matte finish. Everything was interesting, but that's where it ended. Not mesmerising, not fascinating, not enthralling. Just...interesting. And mildly disappointing. The astronomy display was where I noticed it the most. It seemed so small, as if half the exhibits had been removed for cleaning or restoration. And the exhibits that were there appeared to have lost their glow - as if a thin veil had been lowered over everything.
Then I noticed a small sign on one of the displays of moon rocks. "On loan from the NASM, Smithsonian Institute. Washington DC."
The penny dropped. That's why everything was different. This was the first museum I'd visited since I'd experienced the Smithsonian Institute. And the effect was phenomenal. The visit to my holy grail of museums had apparently forever changed the way I would experience museums as a visitor. The aura was gone. The almost childlike curiosity I used to get when I walked into the foyer of a museum, the excitement at being on the brink of learning unknown facts about long extinct animals, geographical phenomena and stars and planets that no living human will ever reach had been extinguished. The standard of exhibits, especially in the space exhibits, had been set so high that it was completely out of reach for any other museum.
This revelation made me sad. Fulfilling my childhood mission of visiting the hallowed Smithsonian, land of all that is sacred and most important in the area of Natural History and Astronomy (in my eyes, at least) had simultaneously apparently forever destroyed my future museum experiences.
I'm not sure if this is something that can be worked around; if now that I know that I'll never get that Smithsonian feeling anywhere except DC will enable me to lower my standards and enjoy other cities' natural history museums for what they are. I'm not sure. I guess only time will tell. In the meantime, I can be forever happy knowing that I have made the pilgrimage to the Smithsonian; that I have seen the landing module that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins landed on the moon in, and the landing capsule that brought them safely back to Earth again, both first hand, and that the two hours spent there were worth every single second of the eight hour return train trip from DC to NYC.
A is for Apple
This was in the Australian news a month or so ago.
"Buy buy mummy: iPad toddler's spending spree" - The Age, 15th September, 2010.
The story of three-year-old Sienna Leigh of Sydney, who ran up a AUD$50 bill on her mother's credit card in the online Apple store buying iPad applications. Her mother didn't notice until she saw the emailed receipts for Sienna's shopping spree after the little one had gone to sleep.
The kid has skills with technology - I'll give her that. I'm 28, and I'm not sure I could do much with an iPad beyond turn it on without being shown how, let alone find the Apple store and purchase applications. This little girl is only three - she can't yet read or write her own name, but she can go shopping online on her mum's tab.
But while the article seemed to almost jovially research how Sienna managed her feat, and detailed how to disable iPad access to the Apple store for other parents, I found myself asking a more fundamental question.
Why the hell does a three-year-old have an iPad of her own? Following on from that, why does she spend a few hours a day obviously unsupervised with an incredibly expensive and sophisticated piece of technology, which also happens to have access to the internet?
For those of you less in the know, or who like me don't champ at the bit every time Steve Jobs releases another "must have" Apple product, the iPad is just like an iPhone - only bigger. Six times bigger, to be exact. Touch screen display, huge internal memory, internet, access to all kinds of applications ranging in levels of usefulness, practicality, entertainment and idiocy. Oh, and you can also make phone calls with it. iPads retail at AUD$629 in Australia for the most basic model, and over AUD$1,000 for the top of the range version. (€499 - €799 on the German Apple website for those not familiar with the Aussie dollar.)
With those prices in mind, it seems like a good time to repeat my previous question. Why the hell does a three-year-old have an iPad of her own, regardless of whether or not she shares it with her siblings (as is mentioned in the article)?
There are so many issues I have with this. I'm going to stick with just three though. The first is the price of the thing. AUD$629. It's a lot of money. I've only spent anywhere near that amount of money on two purchases (flights aside). A car, and my current digital camera. I could possibly understand an adult spending that much money on a piece of technology for themselves, especially if he or she is an Apple fanatic.
I cannot understand spending that much money on one non-essential item for a child, regardless of what it is, how old they are, or whether or not they are going to share it. Aside from still not understanding why exactly a three-year-old needs an iPad (or for that matter, a computer of any kind), giving a toddler something, half of which happens to be made of glass, is asking for trouble. iPads are easily broken by adult users as it is - just google "broken iPad" if you don't believe me. The screen is glass, the back casing is smooth metal, and there's nowhere for hands, large or small, to get a good grip. In short, it's pretty easy for it to just slip out of your hands and crash onto the floor. The LCD is also prone to distortion, and could easily be put out of action by an energetic poke from enthusiastic little fingers. Game over. At least until it's fixed or replaced.
My major beef though wasn't so much what it was spent on, but what it wasn't spent on.
Take that wad of fifty dollar notes. Here are some alternatives to lining Steve Jobs' pocket with it.
1. Save it. Put it in a trust fund - a savings account, term deposit - whatever. If you want to get a little something on the way back from the bank, grab a stack of colouring books and a pack of crayons. There'd still be over AUD$600 left. $200 per kid in a savings account. Not bad.
2. If the urge to spend is that strong, round up the kids and let them loose in the local toy store with the cash. Think of the number of books, Lego sets, bats and balls, dolls, crayons, board games, and action figures you could get for the same amount of money!! Instead of taking turns with an iPad (or anything else for that matter) which invariably leads to bickering and fighting (and let's face it, who needs more of that?!), all of the kids could use these toys simultaneously and further their development in the process. Get them to hone their fine motor skills and thinking processes, broaden their imagination, learn hand-eye coordination, learn their ABCs while turning real pages of real books, and best of all, run around outside in the fresh air, playing with each other and getting some exercise (considering the rising obesity rates around the world, who can argue with that?), rather plonking them alone on the couch with a touch-screen computer as a high-tech babysitter.
Sure, Apple might have games and applications suitable or even designed for children, but at the end of the day, it's still a computer.
(NB: I originally wrote this on the 16th of September, but never got around to posting it. That is, until I noticed this in the New York Times.
"Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone" - New York Times, 15th October, 2010.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one alarmed by the increasing role of technology in childhood, and its ramifications. -A)
"Buy buy mummy: iPad toddler's spending spree" - The Age, 15th September, 2010.
The story of three-year-old Sienna Leigh of Sydney, who ran up a AUD$50 bill on her mother's credit card in the online Apple store buying iPad applications. Her mother didn't notice until she saw the emailed receipts for Sienna's shopping spree after the little one had gone to sleep.
The kid has skills with technology - I'll give her that. I'm 28, and I'm not sure I could do much with an iPad beyond turn it on without being shown how, let alone find the Apple store and purchase applications. This little girl is only three - she can't yet read or write her own name, but she can go shopping online on her mum's tab.
But while the article seemed to almost jovially research how Sienna managed her feat, and detailed how to disable iPad access to the Apple store for other parents, I found myself asking a more fundamental question.
Why the hell does a three-year-old have an iPad of her own? Following on from that, why does she spend a few hours a day obviously unsupervised with an incredibly expensive and sophisticated piece of technology, which also happens to have access to the internet?
For those of you less in the know, or who like me don't champ at the bit every time Steve Jobs releases another "must have" Apple product, the iPad is just like an iPhone - only bigger. Six times bigger, to be exact. Touch screen display, huge internal memory, internet, access to all kinds of applications ranging in levels of usefulness, practicality, entertainment and idiocy. Oh, and you can also make phone calls with it. iPads retail at AUD$629 in Australia for the most basic model, and over AUD$1,000 for the top of the range version. (€499 - €799 on the German Apple website for those not familiar with the Aussie dollar.)
With those prices in mind, it seems like a good time to repeat my previous question. Why the hell does a three-year-old have an iPad of her own, regardless of whether or not she shares it with her siblings (as is mentioned in the article)?
There are so many issues I have with this. I'm going to stick with just three though. The first is the price of the thing. AUD$629. It's a lot of money. I've only spent anywhere near that amount of money on two purchases (flights aside). A car, and my current digital camera. I could possibly understand an adult spending that much money on a piece of technology for themselves, especially if he or she is an Apple fanatic.
I cannot understand spending that much money on one non-essential item for a child, regardless of what it is, how old they are, or whether or not they are going to share it. Aside from still not understanding why exactly a three-year-old needs an iPad (or for that matter, a computer of any kind), giving a toddler something, half of which happens to be made of glass, is asking for trouble. iPads are easily broken by adult users as it is - just google "broken iPad" if you don't believe me. The screen is glass, the back casing is smooth metal, and there's nowhere for hands, large or small, to get a good grip. In short, it's pretty easy for it to just slip out of your hands and crash onto the floor. The LCD is also prone to distortion, and could easily be put out of action by an energetic poke from enthusiastic little fingers. Game over. At least until it's fixed or replaced.
My major beef though wasn't so much what it was spent on, but what it wasn't spent on.
Take that wad of fifty dollar notes. Here are some alternatives to lining Steve Jobs' pocket with it.
1. Save it. Put it in a trust fund - a savings account, term deposit - whatever. If you want to get a little something on the way back from the bank, grab a stack of colouring books and a pack of crayons. There'd still be over AUD$600 left. $200 per kid in a savings account. Not bad.
2. If the urge to spend is that strong, round up the kids and let them loose in the local toy store with the cash. Think of the number of books, Lego sets, bats and balls, dolls, crayons, board games, and action figures you could get for the same amount of money!! Instead of taking turns with an iPad (or anything else for that matter) which invariably leads to bickering and fighting (and let's face it, who needs more of that?!), all of the kids could use these toys simultaneously and further their development in the process. Get them to hone their fine motor skills and thinking processes, broaden their imagination, learn hand-eye coordination, learn their ABCs while turning real pages of real books, and best of all, run around outside in the fresh air, playing with each other and getting some exercise (considering the rising obesity rates around the world, who can argue with that?), rather plonking them alone on the couch with a touch-screen computer as a high-tech babysitter.
Sure, Apple might have games and applications suitable or even designed for children, but at the end of the day, it's still a computer.
(NB: I originally wrote this on the 16th of September, but never got around to posting it. That is, until I noticed this in the New York Times.
"Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone" - New York Times, 15th October, 2010.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one alarmed by the increasing role of technology in childhood, and its ramifications. -A)
Berlin to Newcastle... via Paris... and Amsterdam... (or "Why I Hate Charles de Gaulle Airport")
I've been on a few flights. Around Australia, across and within Europe, to the States, and let's not forget the 24hr odyssey between Australia and Europe via Asia a couple of times. Fifteen at last count. That's a few. But somehow I have never found myself in the unfortunate situation of missing a flight. Lost luggage? Definitely. Had delays and stopovers lasting hour after hour in all kinds of airports with expensive food, stale air, smelly co-travellers, uncomfortable seats and little or nothing to do? More times than I care to remember.
But never missed a flight. Came close in Vienna a couple of years ago; fell asleep at the gate, but fortunately Austrian Airlines don't leave checked-in passengers behind, and chose instead to mangle my name over the PA and give me five minutes to get my act together.
Made up for all of those years of good fortune a few weekends ago. One of my best friends lives in Newcastle, England, and I don't get to see her nearly often enough, so when I got a few unexpected days off work, I researched flights. There are no direct flights between Newcastle and Berlin. Last time, I flew to Edinburgh with RyanAir and got the train down. That was the first time I'd flown with RyanAir, and god I hope it's the last. The alternative? AirFrance + KLM, via Paris on the way there, Amsterdam on the way back. Done. I just wouldn't check any luggage (experience with AirFrance taught me that the hard way).
First flight, Berlin to Paris. Slight delay, but I figured if I can make it from David Jones to K-Mart in ten minutes in Boxing Day crowds at Chaddy, I could make a one hour connection at Charles de Gaulle.
Or not. The problem wasn't the spaghetti junction of gates and corridors and confusing signs. The problem was getting through customs in under half an hour. Showing the obnoxious guard at the entrance to customs my boarding pass for a flight departing in less than thirty minutes from a gate I still was yet to locate didn't help an iota. Actually, it had exactly the opposite effect. He reinforced my steadfast belief that France would be a fantastic country if it weren't for the French. He refused to let me through the express lane, designed exactly for passengers in my situation, instead demanding that I join the back of the queue; he seemed to be enjoying my rising stress levels as the departure time ticked closer. Sadistic bugger.
Got through eventually, ran another ten minutes to the gate, and made it five minutes before departure. I could see people still walking down the gangway to the plane. Exhale. Sweet. Made it.
Spoke too soon. An AirFrance employee, who seemed to find just as much pleasure in my misfortune as the customs guy had, told me "Ze flight 'as left." Excuse me? "Ze flight 'as left." No, I understood you the first time. But how have I missed the flight if the plane is still at the gate and passengers are still boarding? All this guy had to do was to scan my boarding pass and let me through. Problem solved.
No such luck. The next flight? In an hour, and already full. His solution? A five Euro food voucher that might get me a small dishwatery coffee if I was lucky, and a connection to Newcastle... via Amsterdam. In five hours. And all of this with the trace of a smile. Sadistic bugger. I'm sure the etymology of "Schadenfreude" can be traced back to French somehow.
Five hours later, I'm at the gate, ready to get on the flight to Amsterdam, right on time. Bored out of my mind, sick of hearing Français, and desperate for some actual coffee and decent food, but right on time. Well, I'm on time. The flight's not. A forty minute delay. My connection time in Amsterdam? Ninety minutes. Oh yay. Let's hope Schiphol Airport isn't as much of a mess as Charles de Gaulle, and that it's not remotely interesting, because I'm going to have to run through it.
Left Paris, flew to Amsterdam. Sure enough, the ninety minute connection became forty minutes, and I legged it through Schiphol. Fortunately the Dutch seem to have more in common with the Germans than the French when it comes to airport design; Schiphol airport is not only more organised, but better signposted. Security was shorter, travelators were used exclusively by courteous fellow travellers who either walk or move aside, Dutch security is less anal than French, and I was actually permitted to use the express lane at customs for the purpose for which it was implemented. I felt like I'd just run a marathon as I took off various metal items to go through security at the gate, but I made the flight. Two hours later, I was in Newcastle, and had an absolutely fantastic four days with Squishy and co. in the English sunshine.
What I didn't know at the time... that was just the preview. Believe it or not, my Charles de Gaulle experience was nothing compared to the return trip four days later. Stay tuned...
But never missed a flight. Came close in Vienna a couple of years ago; fell asleep at the gate, but fortunately Austrian Airlines don't leave checked-in passengers behind, and chose instead to mangle my name over the PA and give me five minutes to get my act together.
Made up for all of those years of good fortune a few weekends ago. One of my best friends lives in Newcastle, England, and I don't get to see her nearly often enough, so when I got a few unexpected days off work, I researched flights. There are no direct flights between Newcastle and Berlin. Last time, I flew to Edinburgh with RyanAir and got the train down. That was the first time I'd flown with RyanAir, and god I hope it's the last. The alternative? AirFrance + KLM, via Paris on the way there, Amsterdam on the way back. Done. I just wouldn't check any luggage (experience with AirFrance taught me that the hard way).
First flight, Berlin to Paris. Slight delay, but I figured if I can make it from David Jones to K-Mart in ten minutes in Boxing Day crowds at Chaddy, I could make a one hour connection at Charles de Gaulle.
Or not. The problem wasn't the spaghetti junction of gates and corridors and confusing signs. The problem was getting through customs in under half an hour. Showing the obnoxious guard at the entrance to customs my boarding pass for a flight departing in less than thirty minutes from a gate I still was yet to locate didn't help an iota. Actually, it had exactly the opposite effect. He reinforced my steadfast belief that France would be a fantastic country if it weren't for the French. He refused to let me through the express lane, designed exactly for passengers in my situation, instead demanding that I join the back of the queue; he seemed to be enjoying my rising stress levels as the departure time ticked closer. Sadistic bugger.
Got through eventually, ran another ten minutes to the gate, and made it five minutes before departure. I could see people still walking down the gangway to the plane. Exhale. Sweet. Made it.
Spoke too soon. An AirFrance employee, who seemed to find just as much pleasure in my misfortune as the customs guy had, told me "Ze flight 'as left." Excuse me? "Ze flight 'as left." No, I understood you the first time. But how have I missed the flight if the plane is still at the gate and passengers are still boarding? All this guy had to do was to scan my boarding pass and let me through. Problem solved.
No such luck. The next flight? In an hour, and already full. His solution? A five Euro food voucher that might get me a small dishwatery coffee if I was lucky, and a connection to Newcastle... via Amsterdam. In five hours. And all of this with the trace of a smile. Sadistic bugger. I'm sure the etymology of "Schadenfreude" can be traced back to French somehow.
Five hours later, I'm at the gate, ready to get on the flight to Amsterdam, right on time. Bored out of my mind, sick of hearing Français, and desperate for some actual coffee and decent food, but right on time. Well, I'm on time. The flight's not. A forty minute delay. My connection time in Amsterdam? Ninety minutes. Oh yay. Let's hope Schiphol Airport isn't as much of a mess as Charles de Gaulle, and that it's not remotely interesting, because I'm going to have to run through it.
Left Paris, flew to Amsterdam. Sure enough, the ninety minute connection became forty minutes, and I legged it through Schiphol. Fortunately the Dutch seem to have more in common with the Germans than the French when it comes to airport design; Schiphol airport is not only more organised, but better signposted. Security was shorter, travelators were used exclusively by courteous fellow travellers who either walk or move aside, Dutch security is less anal than French, and I was actually permitted to use the express lane at customs for the purpose for which it was implemented. I felt like I'd just run a marathon as I took off various metal items to go through security at the gate, but I made the flight. Two hours later, I was in Newcastle, and had an absolutely fantastic four days with Squishy and co. in the English sunshine.
What I didn't know at the time... that was just the preview. Believe it or not, my Charles de Gaulle experience was nothing compared to the return trip four days later. Stay tuned...
Notes From The Road: Wooden shacks and silver castles
31st of March, 2010. Gjirokaster, southern Albania.
Right now from where I'm sitting astride the high stone wall of Kalaja e Gjirokastrës (Gjirokaster Castle), my view is nothing short of spectacular. I'm looking north along the wide Drino river valley hundreds of metres below me, the sun is slowly descending behind the Gjerë mountains to my left and is casting a golden glow over the snow-covered mountain peaks to my right on the opposite side of the valley.
Somewhere off in the distance, cowbells are clanging, sheep are bleating, and a group of children are laughing and calling to one another on their way home. A little further down the hillside, a plume of smoke is rising from a wooden shack, and if I closed my eyes, I would swear that I was standing outside the restaurant I was at in Tirana a few nights ago - whatever is being cooked on that open wood fire smells absolutely divine.
A spectacular view.
Gjirokaster is small - a lot smaller than I expected. Well, that's not entirely true. I hardly expected a thriving metropolis in the quiet hills of southern Albania. One feature that cannot be disputed is its unique topography.
While the tourists come for the picturesque old town, the majority of the 43,000 inhabitants live downtown in the modern lower area. In Gjirokaster, going downtown literally means travelling a good few kilometres down. The city is built into the steep sloping valley wall, and the old town is not only significantly smaller than the newer part, but also about 200 metres higher. The bitumen streets leading up from the petrol stations, schools and supermarkets of modern Gjirokaster are relatively flat for the first 100m in from the main highway running along the river, but the further you venture, the steeper the streets become, and the next few kilometres are uphill all the way, the gradient nearing 40degrees at times, until the bitumen turns to cobblestone and you reach the grey slate buildings of UNESCO World Heritage listed Gjirokaster. Here, rather than continue straight up the slope, most of the streets follow the contours of the mountain like waves, gently rising and falling every fifty or so metres. The only way you can continue your journey up the mountainside is on foot, using the steep old stone staircases, or by winding around for a kilometre in one direction, slowing to a crawl for a hairpin turn, then doubling back on yourself on a road running parallel to the first but about ten metres higher.
I very quickly realised that the 2EUR for the fifteen minute taxi ride to my hostel in the old town was definitely a good investment. In most places, especially smaller towns and villages, I rely on my feet to get me around, but the topography of Gjirokaster doesn't exactly lend itself to exploring the town on foot. I'd considered wandering down through the streets to the lower part earlier this evening, but since I only have one night here, I instead chose to stay up here in the ancient Minas Tirith-esque grey cobblestone old town and just enjoy the view.
Settlement in Gjirokaster has been traced back to ancient Greece - the name Gjirokaster comes from the Greek argyro (silver) and kastro (castle) - but there's nothing left now of anything from that time. The oldest remnants of Gjirokaster's history are the city walls I'm sitting on, which date back to the 3rd century AD. The majority of the old town isn't actually all that old, having been constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries when the area was under Ottoman rule - its status as a "rare example of a well-preserved Ottoman town" is what earned its UNESCO recognition in 2005.
Although I don't like to think about it, there's only one more stop left on this trip before I go back to Skopje to catch the flight north to Germany, which means leaving these quaint stone towns and the rural atmosphere behind until I next venture into the Balkans.
This trip has been so different to the other two though - to my Magical Mystery Tour around the Balkans in July and August 2007, and the Estonia/Latvia trip for Easter 2009. Maybe it's because Albania's tourism industry is relatively underdeveloped, in comparison to the rest of the Balkans, and especially in comparison to the rest of Europe. Maybe it's because travelling in off-season means I've had private rooms or the only occupied bunk in an entire hostel, and the owners at my beck and call, for most of the trip. Or maybe it's because Albania, unlike many of the other Balkan countries, was never part of Yugoslavia: Albania remained an ally of the USSR, but retained its independence. I don't know.
What I do know is that I absolutely love this country. I could quite happily spend another few weeks travelling around here - and would, if I didn't have this pesky thing called "work" calling me back to Berlin. In its own way, Albania is so incredibly beautiful. Maybe in the north it's different, but the south at least, Albania seems like it may be the Balkans as it once was, or even the Adriatic Coast as it once was - a few hotels here and there in the larger towns, but for the most part small fishing villages every few kilometres along white sandy beaches; further inland, jagged mountain peaks, sweeping valleys and isolated shacks dotted along the winding roads. As I said, I would love to accidentally on purpose forget about my flight home and roam around here awhile longer.
But watching Albania and its people and landscape from the window of a bus, or listening to roosters crow, sheep bleat and cowbells clang from up here on the fortress wall, I can't help thinking that while it's a beautiful country, I'm amazed that a country like Albania can still exist within the borders of today's Europe.
Life here must be so incredibly hard. I can see it on the faces of the people who live here. The people I see walking down the street, the men and women in the shops and marketplaces. The kids riding around dusty villages and along dirty littered city back lanes, stains all over their worn hand-me-down clothes, looking at me and my camera like I'm from outer space. Although being a female who most definitely is neither local nor married tends to raise some eyebrows around here anyway.
I've spoken to a couple of locals here in the last few days - Burim the young bus driver in Prizren whose German was better than his English, Miri the student from Korca who insisted he pay for my bus fare in Tirana and accompany me to within sight of the cable car station I was looking for, the taxi driver in Tirana who lived in London for a few years to earn money to send back to his family here, and the guide in the bus down from Tirana whose name I still can't remember who redefined hospitality. Coincidentally, all males. The majority of locals on the streets in Albania are males, or females in the company of males. From what I've read and been told, this is apparently partly due to the dominance of Islam in Albania. Either way, it makes me stand out like a sore thumb.
But aside from that, all of them told me a very similar story. Every single one of them was either working as many hours as they could physically handle in whatever job they had managed to find to get themselves and their family out of Albania, had worked outside Albania for several years and sent money back to their families, or like Burim, were dreaming of leaving Albania to follow their families who had already managed to leave, but unfortunately were themselves years of work away from getting their hands on the paperwork they needed to join them, much less the money to pay for the travel.
Writing that and rereading it, I realise how strange it sounds - to say that life in Albania is hard, when the two books I've read on this trip are set in much more challenging conditions. One is "The Poisonwood Bible", set in the Congolese jungle in the 1950s, the other is "A Thousand Splendid Suns", set in 1960s Kabul.
I think the difference here is that both of those locations - Congo and Afghanistan - are almost synonymous with some of the most horrible living conditions you could think of. Poverty. Famine. Civil war. Drought.
Albania's not quite in the same league as Africa or Afghanistan, but it's definitely well below the living standards you'd expect from most countries in Europe. Ramshackle houses, grotty little kids roaming the streets and toothless old men and women selling their wares in the marketplaces are something you could well expect to be confronted with in various African countries. It goes with the territory.
You don't expect to see that in Europe. If I turn around and look south from my vantage point on the citadel wall, about twenty kilometres in the distance is the Greek border. Greece - a member of the EU, of the Eurozone, of Schengen. If I turn to look directly west into the Gjerë mountains, my back to the valley, the other side of those mountains is the Adriatic Coast; 60km west of the Albanian beach is the south-eastern tip of the Italian mainland. EU. Eurozone. Schengen.
Travelling around the country, every so often I feel so sad that living conditions like this exist within the borders of the European Union. And every single time, I wish there was something I could do - anything - to help these people and their country. But short of what I'm already doing in supporting their local tourist industry and enthusiastically recommending other like-minded backpackers or explorers to do the same, there's not a whole lot I can do.
Apparently Albania applied for EU membership last year. Travelling around here, I can't envisage that happening in the next ten years. Maybe one day though.
And here's where I pass the baton to you. Take the plunge and venture to somewhere off the beaten track. France and Spain and Portugal are always going to be there. Scandinavia and Austria and Italy won't change all that dramatically in the next ten years. But Albania - I don't know how long this sense of having travelled back in time will linger once it gets out that Albania is worth the adventure. So don't just take my word for it. If you're in Europe and are even mildly interested in seeing first-hand what I've just described, including the magnificent view from up here on the stone wall of Kalaja e Gjirokastrës, explore the Balkans on your next holiday. Albania. Bosnia. Macedonia. Ok, Croatia and Slovenia if you're not quite as adventurous and insatiably curious as me. But go there, and go soon. Explore, relax, escape. Support the local tourism industry, spread the word, and help the Albanian and Balkan economies get on their feet.
Right now from where I'm sitting astride the high stone wall of Kalaja e Gjirokastrës (Gjirokaster Castle), my view is nothing short of spectacular. I'm looking north along the wide Drino river valley hundreds of metres below me, the sun is slowly descending behind the Gjerë mountains to my left and is casting a golden glow over the snow-covered mountain peaks to my right on the opposite side of the valley.
Somewhere off in the distance, cowbells are clanging, sheep are bleating, and a group of children are laughing and calling to one another on their way home. A little further down the hillside, a plume of smoke is rising from a wooden shack, and if I closed my eyes, I would swear that I was standing outside the restaurant I was at in Tirana a few nights ago - whatever is being cooked on that open wood fire smells absolutely divine.
A spectacular view.
Gjirokaster is small - a lot smaller than I expected. Well, that's not entirely true. I hardly expected a thriving metropolis in the quiet hills of southern Albania. One feature that cannot be disputed is its unique topography.
While the tourists come for the picturesque old town, the majority of the 43,000 inhabitants live downtown in the modern lower area. In Gjirokaster, going downtown literally means travelling a good few kilometres down. The city is built into the steep sloping valley wall, and the old town is not only significantly smaller than the newer part, but also about 200 metres higher. The bitumen streets leading up from the petrol stations, schools and supermarkets of modern Gjirokaster are relatively flat for the first 100m in from the main highway running along the river, but the further you venture, the steeper the streets become, and the next few kilometres are uphill all the way, the gradient nearing 40degrees at times, until the bitumen turns to cobblestone and you reach the grey slate buildings of UNESCO World Heritage listed Gjirokaster. Here, rather than continue straight up the slope, most of the streets follow the contours of the mountain like waves, gently rising and falling every fifty or so metres. The only way you can continue your journey up the mountainside is on foot, using the steep old stone staircases, or by winding around for a kilometre in one direction, slowing to a crawl for a hairpin turn, then doubling back on yourself on a road running parallel to the first but about ten metres higher.
I very quickly realised that the 2EUR for the fifteen minute taxi ride to my hostel in the old town was definitely a good investment. In most places, especially smaller towns and villages, I rely on my feet to get me around, but the topography of Gjirokaster doesn't exactly lend itself to exploring the town on foot. I'd considered wandering down through the streets to the lower part earlier this evening, but since I only have one night here, I instead chose to stay up here in the ancient Minas Tirith-esque grey cobblestone old town and just enjoy the view.
Settlement in Gjirokaster has been traced back to ancient Greece - the name Gjirokaster comes from the Greek argyro (silver) and kastro (castle) - but there's nothing left now of anything from that time. The oldest remnants of Gjirokaster's history are the city walls I'm sitting on, which date back to the 3rd century AD. The majority of the old town isn't actually all that old, having been constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries when the area was under Ottoman rule - its status as a "rare example of a well-preserved Ottoman town" is what earned its UNESCO recognition in 2005.
Although I don't like to think about it, there's only one more stop left on this trip before I go back to Skopje to catch the flight north to Germany, which means leaving these quaint stone towns and the rural atmosphere behind until I next venture into the Balkans.
This trip has been so different to the other two though - to my Magical Mystery Tour around the Balkans in July and August 2007, and the Estonia/Latvia trip for Easter 2009. Maybe it's because Albania's tourism industry is relatively underdeveloped, in comparison to the rest of the Balkans, and especially in comparison to the rest of Europe. Maybe it's because travelling in off-season means I've had private rooms or the only occupied bunk in an entire hostel, and the owners at my beck and call, for most of the trip. Or maybe it's because Albania, unlike many of the other Balkan countries, was never part of Yugoslavia: Albania remained an ally of the USSR, but retained its independence. I don't know.
What I do know is that I absolutely love this country. I could quite happily spend another few weeks travelling around here - and would, if I didn't have this pesky thing called "work" calling me back to Berlin. In its own way, Albania is so incredibly beautiful. Maybe in the north it's different, but the south at least, Albania seems like it may be the Balkans as it once was, or even the Adriatic Coast as it once was - a few hotels here and there in the larger towns, but for the most part small fishing villages every few kilometres along white sandy beaches; further inland, jagged mountain peaks, sweeping valleys and isolated shacks dotted along the winding roads. As I said, I would love to accidentally on purpose forget about my flight home and roam around here awhile longer.
But watching Albania and its people and landscape from the window of a bus, or listening to roosters crow, sheep bleat and cowbells clang from up here on the fortress wall, I can't help thinking that while it's a beautiful country, I'm amazed that a country like Albania can still exist within the borders of today's Europe.
Life here must be so incredibly hard. I can see it on the faces of the people who live here. The people I see walking down the street, the men and women in the shops and marketplaces. The kids riding around dusty villages and along dirty littered city back lanes, stains all over their worn hand-me-down clothes, looking at me and my camera like I'm from outer space. Although being a female who most definitely is neither local nor married tends to raise some eyebrows around here anyway.
I've spoken to a couple of locals here in the last few days - Burim the young bus driver in Prizren whose German was better than his English, Miri the student from Korca who insisted he pay for my bus fare in Tirana and accompany me to within sight of the cable car station I was looking for, the taxi driver in Tirana who lived in London for a few years to earn money to send back to his family here, and the guide in the bus down from Tirana whose name I still can't remember who redefined hospitality. Coincidentally, all males. The majority of locals on the streets in Albania are males, or females in the company of males. From what I've read and been told, this is apparently partly due to the dominance of Islam in Albania. Either way, it makes me stand out like a sore thumb.
But aside from that, all of them told me a very similar story. Every single one of them was either working as many hours as they could physically handle in whatever job they had managed to find to get themselves and their family out of Albania, had worked outside Albania for several years and sent money back to their families, or like Burim, were dreaming of leaving Albania to follow their families who had already managed to leave, but unfortunately were themselves years of work away from getting their hands on the paperwork they needed to join them, much less the money to pay for the travel.
Writing that and rereading it, I realise how strange it sounds - to say that life in Albania is hard, when the two books I've read on this trip are set in much more challenging conditions. One is "The Poisonwood Bible", set in the Congolese jungle in the 1950s, the other is "A Thousand Splendid Suns", set in 1960s Kabul.
I think the difference here is that both of those locations - Congo and Afghanistan - are almost synonymous with some of the most horrible living conditions you could think of. Poverty. Famine. Civil war. Drought.
Albania's not quite in the same league as Africa or Afghanistan, but it's definitely well below the living standards you'd expect from most countries in Europe. Ramshackle houses, grotty little kids roaming the streets and toothless old men and women selling their wares in the marketplaces are something you could well expect to be confronted with in various African countries. It goes with the territory.
You don't expect to see that in Europe. If I turn around and look south from my vantage point on the citadel wall, about twenty kilometres in the distance is the Greek border. Greece - a member of the EU, of the Eurozone, of Schengen. If I turn to look directly west into the Gjerë mountains, my back to the valley, the other side of those mountains is the Adriatic Coast; 60km west of the Albanian beach is the south-eastern tip of the Italian mainland. EU. Eurozone. Schengen.
Travelling around the country, every so often I feel so sad that living conditions like this exist within the borders of the European Union. And every single time, I wish there was something I could do - anything - to help these people and their country. But short of what I'm already doing in supporting their local tourist industry and enthusiastically recommending other like-minded backpackers or explorers to do the same, there's not a whole lot I can do.
Apparently Albania applied for EU membership last year. Travelling around here, I can't envisage that happening in the next ten years. Maybe one day though.
And here's where I pass the baton to you. Take the plunge and venture to somewhere off the beaten track. France and Spain and Portugal are always going to be there. Scandinavia and Austria and Italy won't change all that dramatically in the next ten years. But Albania - I don't know how long this sense of having travelled back in time will linger once it gets out that Albania is worth the adventure. So don't just take my word for it. If you're in Europe and are even mildly interested in seeing first-hand what I've just described, including the magnificent view from up here on the stone wall of Kalaja e Gjirokastrës, explore the Balkans on your next holiday. Albania. Bosnia. Macedonia. Ok, Croatia and Slovenia if you're not quite as adventurous and insatiably curious as me. But go there, and go soon. Explore, relax, escape. Support the local tourism industry, spread the word, and help the Albanian and Balkan economies get on their feet.
Notes From The Road: Liberty Street & Church Street, NY 10006
26th of July, 2010. Lower Manhattan, New York City.
There are some places on this beautiful planet of ours that are quite simply breathtaking. They're rare, and they encompass all landscapes, climates, countries and continents, but the one thing they have in common is that they are awesome. Not awesome as it is commonly used today by anyone under thirty as a synonym for cool. Awesome as in commands the visitor to stand before it in awe. They demand respect. They literally take your breath away.
Most of them are breathtakingly beautiful. They inspire writers to wax lyrical over colour hues, artists to spend hours at the site with oils and watercolours and tourists to take cheesy snapshots of themselves with said wonder in the background - just to prove to family and friends back home that they were there.
This place is breathtaking, but it is not beautiful. There are no painters here. The writers write, but their stories are of tragedy and death, chaos and destruction, tears, lost loved ones and fallen heroes. Even the tourists don't linger - they come, they wander awhile, trying to imagine what used to be here. They take a few photos of what remains, then they leave the shadows and windswept emptiness in favour of sunshine and light.
Behind me is the Cortland Street subway station. In front of me is an immense construction site. Ten years ago, it looked very different. There used to be five tall office buildings and two immense skyscrapers here. Together, the seven buildings were known as the World Trade Center, the heart of the New York Financial District.
The eleventh of September, 2001, changed all that.
Ground Zero - actually being here - is strange. Like the other tourists visiting New York for the first time, I too am trying to imagine that this huge crater in lower Manhattan was once occupied by two of the tallest buildings ever built, and am finding it a little difficult, to say the least. Some guy flogging an A4 photo book with "Tragedy 9/11" scrawled in red across the cover told me as part of his sales pitch that if you want to get a sense of scale here, double the height of the tallest remaining building in the area, and you're getting close to the height of one of the twin towers.
You can't see much of the site - well, of the ground anyway. All that's visible are the umpteen cranes, each with the stars and stripes proudly, resolutely, defiantly fluttering in the breeze from the topmost point. The two-metre cyclone fencing barricading the area is completely covered with a long plastic banner advertising the visitors' centre, which I had no intention of visiting.
I remember waking up the morning of the 12th of September in Australia - it happened at about 11pm local time in Melbourne. A Tuesday. I watched Rove, then turned the TV off before Sandra Sully's face popped up on screen with the late night news so I could get some sleep and make it to my Italian class at 9am the following morning. My mum woke me up long before my alarm though - she said something, a strange look on her face, then turned the TV on in my room. Like so many people, I thought at first it was a new action movie, then I saw the CNN logo in the corner of the screen, and the footage of the second plane. The coverage had been going all night, and there was no escaping it during the next few hours, days, weeks and months.
That was more than enough opportunity to hear all I ever wanted or needed to know about what happened. Not only does the visitors centre have a photo display and various other informative resources, but they also coordinate guided tours of the site run by volunteers - living victims: people who experienced it firsthand, or who lost their partner, sibling, parent or child that day. There was no way I was going to do that. I wanted to visit Ground Zero, to see the area, see what's left, try to imagine what used to be there. Then I wanted to leave the area and not return. If I wanted to know more from someone who was there, I could listen to one of the hundreds of interviews, read one of the many written accounts or watch one of the several documentaries or feature films. To see the look on someone's face as they talk about their memories of the buildings coming down around them, or as they remembered someone they lost that day, someone they dearly loved and sorely miss... I couldn't do it.
So I didn't. I sat on the steps outside one of the buildings around the outside. For an hour or so. I just sat there, thinking, writing, remembering, imagining. At one point, a fire engine roared past, sirens blaring, lights flashing, and a spectacular American flag emblazoned all the way down the side. I took a deep breath. Listened to the sirens fade into the noise of the city. Then I left.
If you happen to be in New York and can handle an intensely negative experience, go down there. Walk around. See the memorials. Pay your respects. Experience the site. It's worth a visit. But I won't go back.
There are some places on this beautiful planet of ours that are quite simply breathtaking. They're rare, and they encompass all landscapes, climates, countries and continents, but the one thing they have in common is that they are awesome. Not awesome as it is commonly used today by anyone under thirty as a synonym for cool. Awesome as in commands the visitor to stand before it in awe. They demand respect. They literally take your breath away.
Most of them are breathtakingly beautiful. They inspire writers to wax lyrical over colour hues, artists to spend hours at the site with oils and watercolours and tourists to take cheesy snapshots of themselves with said wonder in the background - just to prove to family and friends back home that they were there.
This place is breathtaking, but it is not beautiful. There are no painters here. The writers write, but their stories are of tragedy and death, chaos and destruction, tears, lost loved ones and fallen heroes. Even the tourists don't linger - they come, they wander awhile, trying to imagine what used to be here. They take a few photos of what remains, then they leave the shadows and windswept emptiness in favour of sunshine and light.
Behind me is the Cortland Street subway station. In front of me is an immense construction site. Ten years ago, it looked very different. There used to be five tall office buildings and two immense skyscrapers here. Together, the seven buildings were known as the World Trade Center, the heart of the New York Financial District.
The eleventh of September, 2001, changed all that.
Ground Zero - actually being here - is strange. Like the other tourists visiting New York for the first time, I too am trying to imagine that this huge crater in lower Manhattan was once occupied by two of the tallest buildings ever built, and am finding it a little difficult, to say the least. Some guy flogging an A4 photo book with "Tragedy 9/11" scrawled in red across the cover told me as part of his sales pitch that if you want to get a sense of scale here, double the height of the tallest remaining building in the area, and you're getting close to the height of one of the twin towers.
You can't see much of the site - well, of the ground anyway. All that's visible are the umpteen cranes, each with the stars and stripes proudly, resolutely, defiantly fluttering in the breeze from the topmost point. The two-metre cyclone fencing barricading the area is completely covered with a long plastic banner advertising the visitors' centre, which I had no intention of visiting.
I remember waking up the morning of the 12th of September in Australia - it happened at about 11pm local time in Melbourne. A Tuesday. I watched Rove, then turned the TV off before Sandra Sully's face popped up on screen with the late night news so I could get some sleep and make it to my Italian class at 9am the following morning. My mum woke me up long before my alarm though - she said something, a strange look on her face, then turned the TV on in my room. Like so many people, I thought at first it was a new action movie, then I saw the CNN logo in the corner of the screen, and the footage of the second plane. The coverage had been going all night, and there was no escaping it during the next few hours, days, weeks and months.
That was more than enough opportunity to hear all I ever wanted or needed to know about what happened. Not only does the visitors centre have a photo display and various other informative resources, but they also coordinate guided tours of the site run by volunteers - living victims: people who experienced it firsthand, or who lost their partner, sibling, parent or child that day. There was no way I was going to do that. I wanted to visit Ground Zero, to see the area, see what's left, try to imagine what used to be there. Then I wanted to leave the area and not return. If I wanted to know more from someone who was there, I could listen to one of the hundreds of interviews, read one of the many written accounts or watch one of the several documentaries or feature films. To see the look on someone's face as they talk about their memories of the buildings coming down around them, or as they remembered someone they lost that day, someone they dearly loved and sorely miss... I couldn't do it.
So I didn't. I sat on the steps outside one of the buildings around the outside. For an hour or so. I just sat there, thinking, writing, remembering, imagining. At one point, a fire engine roared past, sirens blaring, lights flashing, and a spectacular American flag emblazoned all the way down the side. I took a deep breath. Listened to the sirens fade into the noise of the city. Then I left.
If you happen to be in New York and can handle an intensely negative experience, go down there. Walk around. See the memorials. Pay your respects. Experience the site. It's worth a visit. But I won't go back.
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