A new game's afoot!

To all my brilliant computer programmer and gamer friends: As I was standing in the train station in Prague trying to figure out which track my train was going to leave from, I started thinking about what kind of training a "World Traveler" should have. Of course, the first thing I thought of was that a world traveler should be able to arrive in a city in a foreign country where she does not speak or read the language, buy the correct fare ticket, locate and board the cheapest public transportation, and get off at her hotel stop. I got to thinking that you could get double points if you used a machine that didn't have an English screen to buy your ticket. You lose points if you board the subway going the wrong direction.

So fare, five different countries, five different currencies, five different languages, and three different alphabets! And that doesn't include landing in Japan to change planes, a month in Thailand, or a stop-over in Abu Dhabi. Three more languages, currencies, and alphabets!

Entering Romania. Don't forget the game has to include large armed men collecting your passport and returning it half an hour later while you wait on the train.

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Wow! It would almost be like a game. Play "World Traveler" today! You have a budget of $100 per day to visit Nerdavania for a week. You must, exchange currency (learn where and how to get the best rates), find lodging, get transportation, read a menu and order food, visit the top attractions of Geekout, Nerdavania, and never EVER be without your passport. But don't worry! Your host will speak English and you will actually understand every fifth word that is spoken! In the expert edition, you get only $50 per day.

Lodging can be acquired after you arrive or just before you embark on your adventure, but the cost has to be included in your daily allowance--including the extra day's fee that the website charges for the convenience. You have to balance cost of lodging against the safety factors and convenience. If you have to pay $10 a day for transportation from lodging to anything else, you will lose money. And is there someplace reasonable to eat nearby?

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I'm sure someone out there could make a really cool game out of this. It would be packed with maps from Microsoft so you will never know if what you are seeing is true. (Nor is there a key or scale of miles or any other cartographic information that is actually standard on a map. But you can see where you are within fifty meters from a satellite view.) Your cell phone won't work unless you invest in a local tourist SIM (after you find a store that sells local tourist SIMs). And "Free WiFi" traps abound! We could start having the timid World Traveler go from the U.S. to Canada. Advanced Travelers could go to hostile countries or to countries that lack the infrastructure that we have in the U.S. and Europe. What happens if you get sick? And in "Extreme World Traveler" you get to be kidnapped or even killed. Where will you rest in peace? (The game continues as getting your body back could bankrupt your family!)

What will you eat? On a budget. A $5 meal (above) could easily turn into a $30 meal (below) if you forget what the currency exchange rate is.

Where the food is can be just as important as what it is or how much it costs. Don't forget that if you go out for a meal at 8:00 p.m. (a common time for dinner in Europe) that you will be coming home in the dark. Can you find your way? Is it safe? Are you too drunk to know?

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I'm too old to program manage this, but I'll be happy to test and research. I'm sure you can see the possibilities. The big benefit, of course, is that it might get some Americans who successfully play the game to get up off their duffs and go visit someplace besides the local bar or church.

Finding a bathroom can be a challenge. Are the only choices for skinny men and fat women? Is a toilet, WC, toalet, banya, salle de bain? And don't forget that you might need local currency to pay the bathroom attendant. 150HUF in Budapest and he handed me my toilet paper allotment.

No matter how liberal the bathroom laws are as you travel, this is frowned upon almost everywhere. However, at my cabin in Hawaii the instructions were to "pee in the yard and poop in the bucket."

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I just think there are a world of possibilities here (so to speak). I've even come up with a concept for a U.S. version because traveling from state to state and city to city in the U.S. has many of the same problems. Is this the state where the speed limit is enforced at exactly what is posted? Can I pump my own gas? Can I smoke pot? And what was it that Yankee, West Virginian, Texan, or Valley Girl said? Is this really the way to San Jose? 

What do you think?

Why Americans Won't Colonize Space—Part 3

It’s my stuff!

I recently reread George Carlin’s great routine about ‘stuff.’ I especially love two lines in the routine. “Ever notice that other people’s stuff is their shit and your shit is stuff?” Or, “A house is a big box to keep your stuff in.”

Here’s a rundown on my stuff. I used to own a house. Shared. Think about how much stuff is in your house. Start with the big things like the antique mohair sofa (500 pounds), the recliner chair (200 pounds), your bed, springs, and mattress (800 pounds). Then there are little things like your kitchenware. My set of layered steel pots and pans that I bought just before my daughter was born weighed close to 250 pounds! And did you know that your china weighs a ton? And your silverware? And all the gadgets like the 30-pound VitaMix. Of course, there are the lightweight items. Your clothes probably only weigh 300-400 pounds. Your artwork, photos, CDs, DVDs, video tapes, LP records and all the devices you need to play or record them are another half-ton.

I left on August 10, 2013 with just what I could carry in the back of the truck and in my little trailer. And my daughter. She doesn't weigh anything!

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When I began paring down my stuff in order to travel three years ago, I determined that I could only carry an extra 750 pounds in addition to the weight of my trailer and water. The very first thing I did was throw out nearly 500 pounds of paper! These weren’t books. This was just paper that I had collected—some of it for forty years—that included drafts of things I had written over the years, samples of projects I’d done, training manuals I’d written for products that don’t even exist any longer, old catalogs, magazines that I intended to read an article in one day, and Christmas cards from twenty years ago. My wife and I once joked that humans were ants who instead of moving grains of sand around, moved pieces of paper from one place to another. It seemed like it was our life’s purpose. I stopped carrying paper. Mostly.

Back in '91, we had a leak in our house and the closet where all my writing was stored got drenched. The insurance paid to have everything dried out. But, while the pages were all dry, nearly all of them were blank. Water soluble ink and pencil. I was storing boxes of smelly blank pages!

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That brings me to books. If you are a book lover, you could summarize the entire ‘stuff’ argument by pointing at your library. Children’s books from when you were little through college textbooks, technical manuals for your electronics through bestsellers and beloved novels you plan to read again. And for me, it included volumes of ‘rare books’ from the nineteenth century that I’d lovingly collected for years. Hundreds—thousands—of pounds of books. What do I take in my allotted 750 pounds?

In Budapest, I have seen more bookstores and more street vendors of used books than anyplace I have traveled. I write books. I shouldn't be talking about getting rid of them, should I? What sacrilege!

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But pioneers are different, right? The pioneers of the old west loaded a wagon and hitched their oxen.

They traveled light.

Wagon ruts of the Santa Fe Trail, sometimes so deep you couldn't have seen the heads of the oxen and mules pulling the wagons.

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Not so. I’ve seen the ruts of the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail. They shattered my image of wagon wheel ruts worn a few inches into the soil and still visible. We are talking about ruts eight feet deep through dirt and stone, the center worn by the feet of the oxen and scraping the bottom of the wagon against the ground. The weight that six oxen pulled across the continent was measured in tons! That bed with the walnut headboard that is six feet tall? The matching chest of drawers and wardrobe? All the pots and pans and even a cast iron stove that you would need to cook meals? Saddles, harnesses, tools, a plowshare, clothes, precious heirlooms, a truly rare book. The pioneers did not travel light. And thus, bits and pieces of households were scattered across the continent because they needed to lighten their load.

I got my life down to 750 pounds. Except for some things in storage that I couldn’t get rid of. Ten boxes of genealogical research and source material. Said rare books. Glassware that I couldn’t sell. Artwork that is worth thousands when you buy it as an investment but is nearly worthless when you try to sell it. It was not stuff that I didn’t want to get rid of. It was stuff that no one else wanted either!

Stuff.

When I decided to spend four months in Hawaii, I emptied my trailer into storage, packed a single suitcase (the size of a camping backpack) and a computer size backpack. That was what I took with me. When I left Hawaii to spend four more months continuing around the world, I eliminated more stuff and shipped some back to storage in Seattle. My suitcase weighs about 50 pounds. The backpack (since I had to add another computer to it) weighs about 25. I’m down to 75 pounds. I just bought a shirt because I didn’t have anything long-sleeved and it’s cold here in Europe. Now I’m looking at my suitcase to decide what gets left behind that I’m replacing with that shirt.

I didn't actually take the cat, but that's about everything else that I have been traveling with for the past six months!

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But when I talk to people about traveling, the most common comment I here is “Oh, I want to do that!” My answer is “No you don’t. You want to dream about doing that.” Because it's hard. You have to leave stuff behind.

And that is my opinion about space travel and colonizing the distant stars. Every space movie that comes out has an even bigger spaceship or deathstar in it. Because we can’t imagine going off to colonize space in something as small as a Conestoga wagon per family. We’d never get our stuff into it. And we certainly couldn’t leave our stuff behind. What would we do with grandma’s collection of salt and pepper shakers?

As often happens, I looked up a reference in The Book of Wesley (CC128) that I confess to having written some 35 years ago. “128. It is most frequently seen that the “saviors” (those who seem to live outside the realm of physical law) have no possessions and are possessed by no one.” (http://bookofwesley.blogspot.com/2013/10/cxxx.html)

Space is even bigger than the ocean. Never lose your towel.

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And so are those who would colonize space. If we would go, we will have to leave everything we know and all our stuff behind. I think we will have to look to those who have nothing for volunteers.

Why Americans Won't Colonize Space--Part 2

Because socks are more important than underwear.

I can almost hear expressions of "Eww!" and "Yuck!" from all the way across the ocean. No underwear? How can I say such a thing?

Not sure what this church is, but I loved the eye over the lintel.

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I have had to pack, repack, unpack, and discard things from my one suitcase for several months now. One suitcase for eight months, and it's not much bigger than a regular backpack. Even has straps if I need to carry it that way. I would never consider throwing out a pair of socks. Underwear? Meh.

Let me go back a couple years. I was camped in Espanola, New Mexico and needed to do laundry. My laundry that week would have filled my suitcase twice over. Of course, I had sheets and towels. But one thing I had never skimped on was socks. Since I get aggravated with sorting socks, I'd bought fifteen pair of Cabela's socks. Easy peasy. So as I'm pulling my laundry out of the dryers, a couple people walked into the laundry who looked like they were homeless. They each had a rolling suitcase and I'd passed them walking on the highway a mile out of town. The guy looked at my pile of laundry and said, "Can I buy a pair of socks from you?" My automatic response was "No." Sometimes I want to shoot that automatic responder. Here I was with fifteen matched pair of Cabela socks and another several pair that were more difficult to sort and pair up. I didn't even like them, but I was going to not let this guy have any? I grabbed three pair of the ones that I didn't really like and turned to the guy and said, "Here. You can have these if you'd like them." His smile was brilliant! He knew the value of socks.

Romania's Arc d' Triumph,  honoring the soldiers of World War I. They knew the value of socks, too!

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Since coming on this trip, I've done a lot of hiking. I've got a lot of new callouses. And one thing I've learned is that you don't go exploring without good socks.

Sure, but you have to have underwear, right?

Why?

Let's start out by ruling out modesty. If your underwear is worn correctly, no one knows you have it on. When Q was about 13, I took her and her girlfriend shopping for school clothes. What were their mothers thinking? They loved the fact that I would sit around while they selected the finest that Fred Meyer had to offer and run off to try it on. For hours. I gave them one rule: If it looks like underwear, it has to be worn under. Not straps showing, not panties that come above the waist of the jeans, not bra-tops. I have to say, they each got quite a nice school wardrobe!

The next is hygiene. Unless you are wearing your pants up in your crotch--and how uncomfortable is that?--you have less contact with anything unsanitary than when you are wearing underwear. And for many people, that's the cleanest part of their bodies anyway. And if you are wearing those pants that conform to every wrinkle in your butt, then your underwear is going to be visible anyway.

Romanians have figured out the secret of Easter Island. Those colossal heads sticking up are actually monuments to their famous authors. In this park, there were dozens of big heads of authors sticking up out of the ground.

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The truth of the matter is that we wear underwear because Americans are obsessed with genitals. I went into Starbucks today. Yes, they're even here in Bucharest. I just wanted a cup of coffee and a bathroom. They had both. I mean coffee and A BATHROOM. You walk in the door of the bathroom and there are sinks. There are cabinets in one room with private toilets. Around the corner there are urinals. There are no markings for women and men. Because no one pays attention to other people's toilet habits! It's remarkable.

In fact, I find people have very little concern about policing other people's genitals. And I believe that will be a requisite for colonizing space. People will travel light years from our planet and do you think there are going to be separate luxurious bathrooms on those little spacecraft? You've watched too many Star Trek and Star Wars movies. In the flat I am sharing in Bucharest, four men and a woman share a bathroom that is not much bigger than the one in my trailer. The sink is actually in the shower, which makes a lot of sense. There is no lock on the door because you don't open the bathroom door if it's closed unless you verify that it is unoccupied.

Americans will never let go of their genital obsession long enough to go into space.

This is a really beautiful memorial to the Romanian airmen of World War II. Unfortunately, it is in the middle of a very busy traffic circle, but I was able to snap a pic between cars.

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I've often wondered what it is about the American God that makes him so ashamed of what he created.

Why Americans Won’t Colonize Space—Part 1

I was thinking about things to write in my blog. You see, I don’t like to just write about travel. I went here or there. The pictures tell that story. So I’ll tell a different one.

Why am I out here?

I was really surprised when my host in Bucharest told me the memorial to the rebirth of the nation through the struggles of the people in the 1989 revolution against communism (Memorialul Renaşterii) looked like a potato on a stick. Okay.

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I listen to the conversations around me and I don’t understand a word that is being said. In Greece, I knew the majority of the letters in the alphabet from back when I was in college. In Bulgaria, my host took the time to instruct me on what each Cyrillic character was.  With that knowledge, I could sound out words and there were remarkable similarities with English. Here in Romania, they have mostly abandoned Cyrillic characters, but their language is even less familiar.

I am out of my comfort zone.

The Royal Palace and a horse's patootie. Of course, Romania is no longer a monarchy, either, so the palace is now the National Museum of Art of Romania.

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And I’m beginning to be a junkie for it. I quickly memorize maps to where I want to go and simply take off. I look at key words on menus and recognize “porc”. I learn how to order wine. A waitress asked me yesterday if I spoke German and we finished our conversation in a second language for both of us. Neither of us were fluent.

I’m almost ready to risk going to Turkey. But the State Department says it is dangerous!

The Stavropoleos Church, built in 1724, is a monastery for nuns with a large collection of artifacts and manuscripts. Many were collected from churches that were destroyed during the communist regime.

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How affected were you by the last shooting in America? Was it yesterday? This afternoon? How did you respond? Horrified. Sad. Angry. Frightened. Europeans think America is a very dangerous place. We think Greece and Turkey are dangerous.

The world is not safe, no matter what country you are in. We have delusions that we are supposed to be safe.

Wrong. We are not supposed to be safe. We are supposed to be vigilant and experience new things. We are supposed to be places where we don’t understand the language. Where getting a meal and a glass of wine requires finding common ground.

If we did that, we wouldn’t be so scared all the time. We’d be used to talking to people we don’t understand and wouldn’t be cursing them for not speaking English. We might even learn a new language.

That’s one of the reasons I don't think Americans will ever colonize space. We’re too scared. The way America is today, we couldn’t even win the West. We're too fucking scared.

The Cișmigiu Gardens are a place of peace and family gatherings, especially on Sunday afternoon when everyone is there. It was created in 1843 and designed by a German horticulturist.

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The television will tell us what to be scared of and make it into the boogey man. Daersch. Illegal aliens. Loss of Social Security. Communism. Socialism. Naziism. 1%. Black. White. Police. Transsexuals. The National Debt. We’ll vote for the person who promises to make us safe. But they’ll keep us scared. Way too scared to think about going into space. That’s really scary!

A young boy attempted to teach me how to cross myself when I sat to take a picture of Ort Alba Church. This church escaped destruction under the communists.

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I’m going to think about other reasons we won't colonize space. In fact, I’ve already thought of a few. I bet there’ll be more. And after all, colonizing space is a lot safer to talk about than voting in this year's election, right?

But the issues are the same.

And there will still be pretty pictures.

A trip to an Art Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria

I have been walking around Sofia, Bulgaria for three days and have one more long walking tour I plan to make tomorrow. The city is beautiful, though my first impression was less positive. The train station is under reconstruction and a lot of businesses are closed. Had trouble finding my way around at first and, of course, walked several miles tugging my suitcase behind me over rough and broken sidewalks.

Then I found food and beer.

That helped things along a lot and I had a nice introduction to my host here in Sofia, Teodora, about nine at night. We talked for a couple of hours and she even explained the Cyrillic alphabet to me. At least I have Greek as a bridge to Cyrillic. I'm still working on identifying the letters and pronouncing them.

She even took me to her place of work the next morning and gave me coffee and a place to do some writing and editing for the morning. Then we went out to lunch and she treated me as her guest. I believe I am in her debt and have gotten flowers for her for her birthday coming up on Sunday, right after I leave.

Of course, none of that is what this blog post is about. It is about my walking tour today. The short story is "amazing." I walked to the National Gallery and began my day by touring the art exhibits. I admit that I skipped the Asian and African exhibits and stuck to the European and Bulgarian. It is a very large museum and some very nice art pieces are on display.

I noticed, however, that the artwork, like much of the fifteenth to nineteenth art of the world, is very dark. There's a lot of war themes, poverty, peasant life. I begin to understand what that phrase means. Even the colorful pieces of the late 20th century and the pseudo-Picassoan portraiture seems in many ways to be bleak, whether it is a man being mauled by a tiger, or an odd collection of bits of wood arranged in a circle.

But then I walked into a room of late-19th century Bulgarian artists and immediately saw a scene of men in a tavern dancing. It actually brought a smile to my face immediately. The painting is by a famous Bulgarian artist named Ivan Mrkvicka in 1894 titled, "Rachenitsa Dance."

This image courtesy of Wikipedia and is deemed to be in the public domain in both Bulgaria and the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Mrkvi%C4%8Dka#/media/File:Ivan_Mrkvi%C4%8Dka_-_Rachenitsa.jpg

By Ivan Mrkvička (1856-1938) (http://www.nationalartgallerybg.org/upl/img/72.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I couldn't just walk by this image. It drew me and I actually went to get my journal from the cloak room so I could sit and write my impressions as I looked at it. There is a lot of action, both direction and misdirection in the positions of the dancers and the audience. It is the national dance of Bulgaria and you can find examples on YouTube, though I only found women dancing. It's named after the handkerchief that you can see the dancer on the right holding over his head. It's lively and it's fun.

Then I looked closer. There are two men dancing and fifteen others in the taverna. One of the fifteen is headed out to use the toilet. Among the fifteen faces that are visible, there is not a single smile. That got me thinking once again of all the brutality and hardship that people suffered. Was it so much that even when they danced or listened and watched, they could not enjoy it?

I probably sat in front of this piece for fifteen minutes. You'll see that most of the men sitting around have a drink in a clear bottle. Some are smoking, though the room seems quite clear. The musicians are on the left, one with a recorder and one with a whistle as far as I can tell. There seems to be an intense argument going on directly behind the dancers. Two men on the right joined in a casual conversation. The guy back by the door looks like he's about to fall asleep.

But eventually, my eyes came to rest on the guy between the musicians and the fellow going to sleep. Just to the left of the dancer. Of all the men in the room, he is neither looking at another person in the room, nor at the dancers. He holds a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other and he looks directly into the eyes of the artist. I can almost hear him saying, "Why did you leave me here?"

None of this particularly means anything, but it has left me thinking all day long.

Decisions, Decisions

I was relieved when I realized that today is only 5 April and I have two more nights here in Kastraki. This area is so incredibly beautiful. But the real reason I was relieved is that I have no idea where I'm headed to next. So, I've been playing with possible destinations and decided to update the old First Exit background and design. Since it is always half hidden by the posts, here's the background that shows where I'm journeying around the world.

That gap through Europe represents three months of train travel between Athens and Amsterdam. So, right at the moment, I'm trying to decide where to next. I have loved the Meteora. I have hiked more in the past two days than in the past year. It's a little chilly today and I'm working on a less rigorous day today. Might stay wrapped in a blanket and write for most of the day.

This seems to be everyone's favorite picture that I've taken here in the Meteora. It is Varlaam Monastery. What's important to realize, though, is that I took the photo from Great Meteoron monastery and am looking DOWN at Varlaam. Of course, in order to get there, I had to go down to the base and climb up again.

This is the village of Kastraki where I'm staying. I love all the white buildings and red tile roofs. And the area is pretty much enchanted. It is beautiful!

But the question remains: Where to from here? I have two or three options which all seem to start about 5:30 Thursday evening when the only train leaves Kalampaka. Option one is to return to Athens and then either find a way out to one of the islands for a few days or continue to Patra and catch a ferry to Italy. Both are appealing, though the islands sound expensive. Option two is to head north via Thessaloniki and go to Sofia, Bulgaria. Every one I've spoken to has indicated that this is one of the most beautiful places I will visit on my journey. Even if I left by way of Italy, I would eventually come back to Sophia.

The gray line is the northern route. You can see that either way I go, I'll see many of the same places. I might even zig-zag more and head from Sofia to Zagreb and Sarajevo before I come back to Romania and Hungary. Based on advice from many people, I am planning several days in Budapest. The question remains as to whether I will be able to visit Turkey. The State Department has a travelers' advisory out saying to stay out of Turkey at the moment. Damn!

There will be more ruminations and more aborted decisions before I finally board that train Thursday evening. I currently have no idea where I'm going! Ain't life great?

Prophecy

I wrote a book. It was called, Behind the Ivory Veil. It hasn't been published yet. I only wrote it 35 years ago. But this summer, I am rewriting and preparing the manuscript for publication. Even though it has little eroticism in it, it will be published under the author name Devon Layne since the next book has already been published under his name (The Props Master 1: Ritual Reality).

Here's the rub. I was very big into mythology when I was in my 20s and 30s. I wrote about a myth that 'could fit' within the body of Greek mythology, but that crosses over into some of the British Isles mythology. A large part of the series of books was based on Keat's poem, "Hyperion." I set part of the story in northern England (The Lake District) and part of it in the Meteora of Greece. (Of course, there was the mandatory part set in Indianapolis.) I'd visited the Lakes, but had never been to Greece. But oh, how I researched! This was in the days before the Internet and my mother, who had been to Greece, wanted to know when I had visited Greece as she recognized every landmark. It was all libraries.

I swore that one day, I would visit this magical place.

Today, I was blown away when I actually saw the cliffs of Meteora. I'd been prepared for cliffs a hundred or two hundred feet high. 300-400 meters? Oh, my God! I have never seen anything so majestic and awe-inspiring!

Tomorrow, the seven remaining monasteries are all open to visitors and I plan to attempt the full ten kilometer circuit that connects them. Lots of elevation gain. Some of it is pretty steep.

But that brings me to the subject of this little post. The prophecy.

I've always been willing (maybe pushy) to talk about what I was writing. Back in the late 70s, I met a woman from Greece. I don't remember her name. Our conversation was one of those that take place suddenly with deep intensity between two people who never see each other again. I told her about the story. She knew the area well. She told me about how difficult it was after the war when children were being kidnapped by the communists to be raised in the true way. They were fleeing their homes and hiding in the rocky slopes to escape. And the women would gather at the well and weep for their children and their lost husbands and their country.

I wrote a lot of that into the next draft of the book. (I've written fourteen drafts of that one because I kept learning how to write better.)

Then she spoke the prophecy, which I had forgotten until I actually got to Greece this week. I don't have the exact words, of course, but this is what I remember.

"You will go to Greece one day. Not soon, but one day. You will go to Kastraki in the Meteora and sip Retsina with the old men at the taverna. It will not be until you have known great love and great sorrow. That is when you will go to the well and weep. And you will understand."

I asked the desk clerk at my little hotel if there were some old well somewhere. She (in her 20s) shook her head and said, "No. There is nothing like that." Ah well. So to speak. I went out to find food and wine. And I reached the church in the central square of Kastraki.

 This might not be the well she spoke of. But sitting here, looking at the Meteora and the monasteries perched on their summits, it was easy to let the tears flow. I will return here each day of my visit and wait for the understanding.