A Non-Theological Review of Fate (and our ability to do anything about it)

As stated in the title, this is not about Religion. I've been round and round with the Christian concepts of Predestination, the conflict of Free Will in a universe created by an Omniscient God, and all of Neitzsche's fun theorums about a malevolent overlord. I'm talking about personal fate, the degree to which we can (or cannot) affect the course of our own lives. Big concept, Right? Well I haven't had much time to think intentionally about things recently, but there are a lot of riddles rattling around in my skull while I'm out busying myself with other details, and sometimes it just takes the right trigger to coalesce into coherence. In this case, it was a utter train Fiasco on the way out of Prague. here's the short version.

Get on a train. Pull out of station. Train Stops to switch engines. Engines break down. No problem, we'll get another. Back to the station, wait 90 minutes. Wait, all engines stopped working? It's ok, just wait another 70 minutes. What, the entire train station stopped working? No, the entire Prague rail system is suffering major electrical problems, stranding all trains at all 4 Prague stations. Oh shit. What now? Wait 20 minutes. now, get on a bus. If we get out of Prague one stop, the trains can still go, right? Sure. What's everyone else doing (from all trains at all stations?) the same thing? Super. New station, new Train, new destination, no seats. At least we're moving in the right direction, we'll get this all sorted out in Germany. Bingo.

During all of this, especially the long waits followed by the slow trickle of information disseminated (exclusively in Czech) by the train conductors, Shelley was in a bad situation. Not only is she still only a few days out of the states, where things seem to make more sense, or at least are adequately explained and planned for, but this is also her first train trip. Ever. So she wants to know what's going on, she wants to know what the plan is, and she wants to know why I'm not doing anything about it.

Now this sounds a bit harsh, so let me say that she was not in any way out of bounds in these requests. These were rational questions, and in fact what little information I did know was due to her going around and asking the few Czech-to-German-to-English speakers who could translate all the hubub. So in short, she was doing all that could be done, and I was sitting there like a lump on a log. And Why? Because I've been thinking a lot about situations beyond our control, and a FUBAR like this one - full shut down of the entire West-bound train traffic out of Prague - was not something I could solve, circumvent, or in any way defray. It was a unnatural disaster, we were caught in the middle of it, and my plan was to weather the storm as best I could, and eventually see what options arose. I resigned myself (ourselves in this case, which is where the friction came from) to being in a situation in which I had no control, not even much hope of control, and no better choice tha tto wait and see.

And this got me thinking about Communism.

Not actual Communism - not the theory of worker solidarity, the renaissance of the proletariat, communal resources, or hypothetical universal equality - but specifically Stalinism. The awesome scope, inflexibility, seriousness, and finality of the 1940s and early 1950s in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe through the evolving sphere of Soviet ideology and influence.
Why? Many of my travels have been through former "occupied" Communist states (Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Czech, Serbia, East Berlin), and many of these had monuments, exhibits and museums dedicated either to the repressive conquest of Sovietism, or the long (and eventually successful) stuggle to overthrow it.
In addition to this, I've spent many hours investigating remnants and memorials concerning the Holocaust (concentration camps, synagogues, abandoned Jewish Quarters, etc), and while for political or religious reasons it may be uncouth to lump these two world events together, the ideology and socialogical concept of totalitarianism, xenophobia, dehumanism, anti-intellectualism, bigotry, and subjectivism these both exemplified fuses them together irrevocably in my mind. The scope doesn't hurt either. Anytime you talk about mass murder on a scale of millions so large, you aren't even sure what the final count was (between 10-100 million in the case of the original Soviet purges), it's hard not to classify it with other multi-million-member-murder clubs.
Finally, I must admit that a big motivator of this thought process is a book I'm reading by the respected (and unfortunately dead) Polish world journalist Rysard Kapuscinski, in which he travel-logues his journeys through the Soviet Republics in the 1960s and again in the turbulent years of 1989-1993, discussing not large political theorems, but hte eyewitness accounts and memoirs from people he met along the way, describing both their current dispositions and past conditions. He throws in a good chunk of his own cutting observations and analysis to produce a very good read called Imperium, and I strongly recommend it.

So picture this: It's 1939, or 42, or 48, or 51, and you're living in a not-so-small city in Poland, or Hungary, or the Ukraine, or Trajikistan. You're learning Russian, you're learning not to ask questions, you're probably very very hungry, and no matter how you go about living your life (quietly obedient, secretly subversive, enthusiastically Soviet), there is always a chance, a pretty decent one in fact, that any given night you could be forcibly taken captive and sent (with your entire family) by train or foot on a journey of thousands, tens of thousands, or kilometers to a work camp in Siberia. There, after perhaps a year of traveling, you would live out a miserable existence until cold, hunger, torture or fatigue finally killed you, and if you're a 20-30 something man, that means you'll be the last to die of your entire family - unless you look cunning or slightly angry, in which case you'll be the first.

the state is all-powerful, it cannot be resisted, and it is all-knowing thanks to the fearful reports and gossip provided by your friends, neighbors, and even family members. you could escape - maybe into the woods during a march, or off into the tundra at a train stop - but that's just a small act of destiny, choosing your method of suicide, not actual salvation.

So what do you do? What could you possibly do? Ask the hurricane to stop? Take a step to the left so the Tornado doesn't hit you? Put on SPF 50 underneath Vesuvius?

or wait and see? Bide your time, suffer your humiliations, the death of your pride and many acquaintances, all the evils you can endure because someday, maybe, just maybe it will be different.

Fight! you say? "Tis Always Nobler to Fight." To the death. This Far and No Farther. Remember the Alamo. Et cetera, et cetera. But where would that put us today? Eastern Europe suffered a population loss of... 20-30% maybe more? Obviously this was not a mechanism that balked at volume. Nazism was obsessed with efficiency, if it took 3 days to kill and cremate 1200 people, that wasn't good enough, so rather than build more inefficient crematoriums, they went back to the drawing board and redesigned their systems. The Soviets just made more bullets, or devised cheaper, less evidenciary methods. Hunger, starvation, exposure. these leave very little evidence to be destroyed later, and almost no blue prints to vilify the accused. If 10,000 people revolt, a good Soviet kills the top 1,000 organizers, and sends 9,000 people to the camps. If 100,000 people revolt, kill 10,000. In my experience, simple math is key to totalitarianism.

It's hard - no, it's chilling, to the bone, to contemplate the scenario in which millions - Hundreds of Millions - of people found themselves confronted. It has been said that Communism is one of the greatest (here meaning most ambitious) experiments in human history. I'll say that it's one of the most fascinating. A moral Litmus test (Fight the evil and die, or condone it and perhaps live another day, another week) in which no one can pass, implemented on a grand scale across the largest country on Earth and every diverse landscape and culture that it borders.

So I don't know much about Communism, living under Stalin or how it compares to the ages of Kruschev, Brezhnev, or today, an dI don't know abou tht ehard moral choices, irrational charges and instantaneous death, but for a few long hours at the Praha Smichov train station I glanced what it is to be the subject of forces beyond your control, to be stuck in the current for lack of a better option, to feel grudgingly... European? A serf, the reality of my fate no business of my own. and I didn't much like it, but I'm willing to wager that whatever sense I usually operate under that convinces me this is not my situation as well, that I do control my life, my fate, my deathe ror even my transportation destination, that this is most likely an illusion as well, and the greatest luxury I enjoy as an American (aside from Mountain Dew that tastes the way nature intended) is th eability to keep up the charade. I can drive my car where I want, live in the city I choose, say what I want in the appropriate circumstances (No "Fire" in the Theatre, you see), etc.

And that's good enough. This is freedom as much as it can be guaranteed by the powers of men - that it will not be systematically oppressed by men. And so in asking so little - the absence of aggressive repression - we ask too much, for such a state is historically so rare, and even today is not guaranteed or even readily available but for a small percentage of this globe's surface. In fact, spin a globe, close your eyes, and see where your finger stops. It is with only this much destiny that each of us are born into our fate, and with only this much control that we will depart it. I was not born under Stalin, nor did I fall under his influence at any time during my still-young life, but I didn't have any say in that; I can't take any credit and I can't feel anything but guilt for getting such an easy bill while millions - bordering on billions - of others got stuck with a tab too heavy for me to imagine.

And that's fate: it's not about religion, and it's not about Free Will or cosmic luck. It's just fate (for my uncle Marc, "location, location, location"), and you can thank your lucky stars or curse the day of your birth, and it won't matter one stick.

Is this depressing? That depends. not if you have a good fate. And if you have a bad one? Well, you can moan about it, you can check out early, or you can resign yourself to the course of things beyond your control and see if things ever get better. But just don't count on it, because that Could be depressing.

Cheers and all that.

Weber (on the Lamb)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Florenc (metro stop)

I bumped into someone I knew yesterday in downtown Prague. Yeah, seriously, what are the odds? Well, first, let me say that the odds of finding someone who knows you is very small, while the odds of finding someone you know are actually not so bad.

Think about this. You've met people all your life, but how many of them actually remember you, or what you look like now 5-10-20 years later? How many of them could spot you on a crowded street in Prague wearing lord knows what and looking a bit confused? Now think of all the people you know. Not just friends and family, I'm talking about presidents, luminaries, actors... Ah yes, actors, those people we get to watch from every angle and in a variety of costumes over a series of years. How hard would it be to spot one of them? In a pair of cargo shorts, a long-sleeve blue T and a silly blue bandana. How hard when they have just a touch of white scruff and a pair of wire-rim glasses? Not so tough when you're only as far apart as their traditional close-up shot.

And that's how I met Tim Robbins.

A word about Tim.
Not only is he in four movies I consider masterpieces (for different reasons): Shawshank Redemption, High Fidelity, Hudsucker Proxy, Cradle Will Rock, he also happens to be a good friend of my beloved John Cusack, and is credited with "discovering" Jack Black and giving him his first movie role.

He's also an avid member of the Green Party, "partner" of Susan Sarandon, and he's been on the Colbert Report (and if you saw that episode, you know how awesome that is).

And I was standing there, pretending to look equally confused at my map while he did the same, both of us lost Americans on St. Wencelas street in Prague. I could have said something, "Hiya Tim..." but what would have been the point? I know who he is, he doesn't know anything about me, and other than a slap on the back, what could I gain from such a ploy? A photo op? I'll pass. It doesn't hurt that 2 seconds after I confirm the ID and move off, another American stumbles up, "... uh, excuse me, are you Tim Robbins...?"

SO there's my brush with celebrity in Prague. It's not the first time I've seen a celebrity, and it won't be the last. Tim Robbins probably isn't even the most exciting person I've gotten to "witness" (though given my current fascination with the novel High Fidelity, it's plenty relevant). I'm not one to worship celebrities (ok, except John Stewart, underneath whose feet bloom the fragrant golden blossoms of all that is worth hoping for), so why get all excited about this? I dunno, because it's out of the ordinary.

And there's a point in that. I'm traveling Europe, I spend almost every night in a different bed, a different city, a different country. I speak no languages, I am a foreigner, alone and among thousands, out on the dynamic journey I call the Lamb. And yet even this, after an adequate amount of time can assume a certain mantle of normality. How do I know this? Because I did get excited about seeing Tim Robbins. If you're sky diving, and you happen to see Airforce One in the distance, you don't get excited about the proximity. you make damn sure to stay focused on the dive, because that's exciting enough not to get distracted by stupid things like celebrity.

So I'm getting settled, getting accustomed, getting... restless? with all this moving around. A few more weeks of fun with Shelley should be a great way to zap my attention back on key, and after that a whirlwind move up to New York, new challenges, new people. I'll keep myself busy for awhile, and maybe I won't ruin my shorts if I pass Mr. Stewart in a bagel store. Or maybe I will. Sure would get his attention.

Anyway, that's the story of me and Tim Robbins, both equals, both lost in Prague. He of course eventually found his ridiculously posh hotel, and I found my way back to my hovel/hostel. Equal for one moment, but of course, I'm the only one who will remember it, so "equal" here is tenuous at best.

Celebrity, it's not just an American fascination, but maybe we do take it too far? Maybe? you think?

But come on, Tim Robbins... he was "Merlin" in Top Gun! He was the Public TV gangleader in Anchorman!

what's not to get excited about?

Weber (on the Lamb)

More (quick) Updates

I still have more big and boring posts to put up, but I just wanted to quickly mention that I have now added more photos (with captions) to the Picasa album, and added a new Google Map of my various sites in Berlin.

If you are Really curious.

Also, I wanted to somehow commemorate today as the official 2 month mark for my time in Europe. No big deal really, but it just struck me today how long I ve been gone and how accustomed I ve become to this style of living.

Very odd, and I m sure there s much to further analyze here, but lets take a rain check on that one. Thanks for bearing with me for 2 months and you should expect a bit of a reprieve these next 2 weeks as I get to spend time with Shelley who is joining me in Prague. I will still post, but her company will keep them much more... brief, which I think will be good for all of us.

Weber (on the lamb)

Truth in Architecture

I wish I knew more about Architecture. Actually, I wish I just knew more in general, but let's start with the specifics. Architecture seems to me especially interesting as it combines elements of mathematics and aesthetics in the very precise implementation of advanced engineering and three-dimensional sculpture all with an inverse scale of practicality and beauty, with generic square office buildings on one end, and uselessly radical curvaceous art museums on the other.
Now I'm not suggesting that I actually want to become an architect, to understand the respective stress values of common and uncommon construction materials or the principles of urban planning or mass population ergonomics.
Yuck.
But I would like to look at a building of a particular design and understand one or two things about why it is the way that it is. I'm at a stage in my travels when it's becoming apparent that not only do I not have the answers to the questions that confront me, I don't even have the tools, the vocabulary, the language, in which to go about searching for the answers. This isn't a new situation, just a final realization that no matter how many museums I visit or how bright I might think I am, some things are just beyond my conceptual grasp, and no amount of raw thinking is going to change that. It's a bit depressing actually, I'd really rather believe that if I spent long enough, I could come up with the answer to anything, like how to understand the prevalent anti-German hatred I keep seeing, or the rationale behind lingering racism in a post-Holocaust Europe.

At least with Architecture I have a chance - my eyes still work. Gothic vs. Classical. Catholic vs Orthodox traditions. Old, New, Old trying to look New and New trying to look Old. Spires, domes, towers, buttresses, minarets and steeples. Gotcha. So I'm an amateur, and not much of one at that, but I like to think I have at least a handle on basic structures and forms. I can from memory or imagination draw several different examples of Churches, or maybe two or three types of Mosques, but what's really stumping me is annoyingly simple. Try this exercise with me. Close your eyes. Ok, Not yet smartass. Read to the end of the paragraph then close your eyes. Now I want you to picture a synagogue. In your head. From memory or imagination, I don't care, but if you've already got a tab open for Wikipedia I will kill you.

Now draw it. Yeah, you're not getting off the hook that easily. Draw whatever you want, the main worship room, the Torah Ark, the table, the building's facade, whatever.

How's that coming?

OK, maybe you're more clever than I, and if put to the test, sure, I could come up with something. I went many times to Temple B'Nai Israel with my friend Davey while growing up, but to be honest, I don't recall much about it that made it stand apart from any other 1970s era semi-New Age small office buildings (sorry Davey).

So what the hell does a synagogue look like? Well, you might think Eastern Europe would be a good place to find out, and you'd be somewhat correct.

While taking a walking tour of Subotica, Serbia, we passed a large run-down building of red and yellow brick with a distinct, glossy green and yellow tiled roof. It was incredible, but didn't have any of the markings I'd come to know to look for in a church, a mosque, a train station, a town square, an armoury, or any other building of public use. So I asked the tour guide, "Hey, what's this?"
He managed not to look at me like I was the stupidest person he'd ever met, and instead replied almost politely, "well, it's a synagogue, of course. see the 6-sided stars?"

And you know what, I had seen those, but in my brain Judiasm used a 6-sided star comprised of two equal inverted triangles (the Star of David). This was like an asterix (*) six points thrust acutely away from each other, and apparently it also had Jewish connotations.

But what else, oh tour guide master? What else marks this as a synagogue? "Nothing, that's Hungarian architecture, and this is the only synagogue in the world with that style of roof."

Great, progress. I just happened upon a synagogue that is unique, that's no help in understanding the basic forms.

So I went to Budapest, and cleverly booked a hostel just around the corner from the second largest synagogue in the world (first is in New York - sorry Jerusalem). the Dohany Synagogue (literally, "Great Synagogue") is truly a marvel wrapped inside a conundrum, or the other way around, to abuse a phrase. When I first walked past I was struck first by how cool it looked, and immediately thereafter by the fact that I had no reference point within which to place it. It's like when you taste something for the first time that has no similarity to anything else you've ever tasted before. Imagine eating shrimp after growing up on a diet of beef and potatoes. It's good, but your brain kicks into hyperdrive trying to categorize it. Sure, it's meaty, but also fishy, and a little sweet, but not, you know, sugar sweet, more like... fruit? No that's not right...

So there I stood, blessedly with my mouth closed, looking at this magnificent structure I couldn't categorize, and I thought, "OK, so This is what a synagogue looks like." And I started taking it all in. The bricks, the floor plan, the two black spheres on top of the towers with gold hebrew lettering around their equators, even the horseshoes-turned clover pattern on the windows. Surely it all had meaning in some ancient, Jewish connection to mysticism or practicality.

The experience demanded a return and a more thorough inspection, so my companion Marta and I kicked in for the full tour (go go gadget student discount), and I prepared for an education.

Well I got one all right. We're about 30 seconds into the tour when the guide essentially says, "Hey, notice all this bizarre architecture? Well I'm gonna tell you really interesting, useful stuff about it, but you should just know that it isn't actually Jewish in origin at all."

That's right, another red herring (is this the right phrase? I'm an Okie, so marine metaphors have always confused me). It wasn't an archetype of Jewish architecture, in fact it was brilliantly designed by a German Catholic to accommodate the religios needs of the local Jewish community while incorporating as many Christian and Muslim elements as possible to better assimilate the structure into the fabric of Budapest. Catholic pews, Orthodox pulpits, even a full pipe organ, to go along with the baroque chandeliers and Moorish floor tiles.

so where does this leave me? Well first, I must strongly recommend that you visit the Dohany Synagogue if ever you are in Budapest. It's freakin awesome, and I wish I could tell you that all synagogues were somehow similar to its brilliant and unique synthesis. But otherwise, essentially at a dead end. There are other synagogues in Budapest, and I walked past them, but they have practically nothing in common either.

From this I can draw all sorts of conclusions, about the necessity of minority Jewish cultures in Europe to blend in, but that doesn't hold water, for if it did Yiddish and other outward delineations would have been phased out as well. I can think and think, but I can't find the answer. maybe one of you knows the answer, maybe most of you think you know the answer. For me, the basic question of synagogue architecture is my unicorn. Maybe the answer isn't even out there at all, or maybe it's stalking behind me and poking me with its horn when I'm not looking. I don't know, but with the vast amount of things I just don't know, I very much doubt it will be the last unicorn I need to hunt down, and I would certainly feel a lot better if I could start with getting one or two of those frisky fellows mounted on the wall. Apologies to my Unicorn-Loving readers, but I do have family members engaged in taxidermy, and I think the prospect of mounting a one-point doe is something they'd be into.

So happy hunting to all of you on your various quests for knowledge, send in your comments on Jewish architecture or the futility of any great quest for understanding, and otherwise I'll look forward to seeing you all again soon enough wherever the Lamb takes me.

Weber

(Please note: I will be posting pictures soon. My hostel CPU doesn't like USB drives, but when I hit an internet cafe I'll get up several visuals to illustrate my points)

Quick Update

Woah! It's been a long time since I last posted. Sorry for the delay, I have no convenient excuse like being trapped in the Serbian backwoods or being kidnapped by gypsies. To catch you up to speed briefly, I went from Serbia to Budapest where I had the good fortune to meet up with Marta, a friend from my Estonia work camp in transit to Romania. We spent a few days together, had a particularly fine time in a city I originally didn't care for one iota (Budapest, you should know, brought me nothing but trouble for the first 3 days I interacted with it, so to have this opinion reversed after just 2 more days is a decent feat), and then continued our respective travels.

I wound up in Berlin, where I have now been for a few days and have accomplished very little in terms of sight seeing, deep thinking, or even resting up. I'm at a tough point in my traveling when seeing new things doesn't feel as... new, as it used to. As a result I'm getting a little worn and haggered in strictly mental ways (yes mom, I'm still brushing my teeth and occasionally taking a shower), but I'm resolutely not letting this set back my attitude. So what if I'm in Berlin on a Saturday night and decide I just want to stay in? Sure, it's a crime against humanity not to take advantage of perhaps one of the best night lifes in the world, but if I don't feel like it, and I don't have anyone to share it with, nor the motivation to find someone, the to hell with it. I'll not be made to feel bad about a choice I could just as easily have made the other way to my own misery.

so that's what I've been doing: not much.

Luckily, doing little rarely keeps me from having much to talk about, so I'll be getting more blogs up shortly.

As always, thanks for your patience and patronage.

Cheers,

Weber (on the Lamb)

Happy Birthday to Me

How long do we spend planning important, meaningful things to say and do just in anticipation of an appropriate occasion to use them? How many famous quotes were conceived days, weeks, years earlier, only to be released publicly at the opportune moment?

The Gettysburg address was famously written almost stream-of-consciousness as proof of its profound sincerity, etc. Other quotes, like addages and other sayings, are the result of not only years, but generations of bright people refining them into just the perfect bite of text. A Russian saying I just learned goes thus, "What is Beer without Vodka."

Right on.
5 words, lots of context, and the wisdom of an entire culture to back it up.

I guess what I'm wondering is, do we come up with special thoughts, and then wait for a special moment, or do they really spring forth from our minds in their pure brilliance upon the occasion that warrants them?

I don't have any answers. If you're looking for answers, you've come to the wrong blog. Try the one to your left. Or right. whatever.

What's got me thinking about this is that today is my birthday, and while for 99.999% of the world (I credit myself here more than is due, not even 0.001% of the world's population actually cares that today is my birthday), this day is meaningless, just another mid-July day that is either too hot or too cold for most of us. But for me it's special, just as I'll bet you think your birthday is special too (well sorry, but it's not).

And on a special occasion, I'd like to have something special to say, to think, to do... to wear for pete's sake. whatever. But I just don't. Because our lives aren't constructed conveniently or logically, and that's not so bad. I'm having a good day: I went out and drove posts into the ground in sweltering 36 degree celcius heat (I can get away with pretending this is as hot as I want, since none of you can place exactly where this falls on the F-scale, right?). After that it was a lunch of meatballs-turned-hamburgers and a guided tour of historic Subotica, Serbia, which is neither especially historical, nor particularly Serbian (90% Hungarian population). Then I got to write a blog.

So what I'm saying is that, while in the back of my head, I feel like I should be doing something special - watching egregiously horrible b-movies, gorging myself on junk food, skydiving, whatever - I'm just not, and I don't have a brilliant excuse for it, nor even a sizeable amount of regret that I'm not doing it. I just didn't plan for it, and having no plan, I just accept it as another day, another birthday, with no more fanfare than the three days after christmas, or two days before New Year's.

There is a tradition here in Europe - I don't know how common - to give other people a present on your birthday. Interesting flip, and certainly easier on everyone else. They don't have to remember the dates of all their friends birthdays, because they know when the time comes around, their friend will be bringing in a large pile of candy, and that's much easier to get excited about.

So, as a particularly poor substitute for High-Fructose-Corn Syrup-laced goodies, I just wanted to say a very sincere thank you to all of you who have continued to wade through this silly little blog I keep blathering on about. I don't have a hit counter, and I'm not tracking IP addresses, so I don't know who's been coming, how often they've been here, or what they really thought (aside from the over-generous comments). Some of my posts have been mundane - VERY mundane - others a bit more exciting. As a result, there are now some people reading that I didn't originally invite, perhaps some people I don't even know. Well, OK, but that must be weird for you. Whatever floats your boat. I'm happy to be a curiosity, but only for the extra-curious.

But whoever you are, my closest of friends, my most distant of relatives, or someone I wouldn't even recognize on the street, let me just say thanks for being here for me. Sure, the emotional attachment I have to you is just misdirected from the webserver on which Blogger allows me to record my little travel diary, but it is sincere, and knowing (or even pretending) that you're out there has kept me much more balanced in my travels than I would be otherwise. It hasn't hurt my typing skills either, and the boost to my brainpower by having a need to be creative is pretty incredible as well.

You've cleaned out my cobwebs, you've given me a purpose, and I've given you post after post of self-indulgent drivel and largely pointless anecdotes, and of course I love you for it all.

so thanks, and happy birthday to you as well, whenever it is. You've probably told me, but I don't remember.

Isn't that just the way it is.

Weber (on the lamb)

Shits & Giggles

Warning: this blog entry contains explicit, gross, and somewhat distrubingly personal insights. Skip it. Serious, just skip it. Ok, who are you to listen to me, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Have you ever been in a bathroom - not your comfy, warm, private toilet next to your own bedroom - I mean a public bathroom, like a stall in a tiled echo chamber with nothing separating you from a dozen perfect strangers except a 1/2" divider and the mores of common decency?

Sure you have, we all have, but have you even been in one when your bowels decided to surprise you with an especially violent eruption? I'm talking a true come-to-God, Thunder & Lightening (very-very-frightening), dumping-a-gallon-of-corn-into-a-vat-of-warm-jello kind of release?

Odds are good you probably have, though maybe you didn't find it an especially thought-provoking experience. Point of fact, I don't know how you react, and unless you start an uber-honest blog of your own, I probably never will. But I do know what happens to me, and on one not especially important evening in Serbia, it occurred to me that perhaps my reaction had greater implications abot my character, my future, than I had ever imagined.

I won't go into the gory details (ok, not the Really gory stuff), but the gist of it is this: if you've ever been in the bathroom with me when something especially graphic occurs, the next thing you hear after my last grunt, plop, or squooze (*invented for this occasion)... will be the sound of me laughing.

Not laughing, really, but not chuckling either. More like giggling. Yes, giggling unlike any little school girl you've ever heard. It's deep, sincere, a little jeuvenile, but decidedly masculine, if I do say so myself. It's a sound I'm sure my family is very familiar with, not only because we all grew up in the same household, but because such giggling is a trademark for when the youngest generation of Webers find themselves in a particularly stupid situation. I don't think it's genetic, though I can't imagine where we would have learned it from (and at this point I'll quit speaking on behalf of my brothers Brad and Duff to save them any possible remaining face), but I'm pretty sure we all do this.

So what's going on? Shouldn't I just be mortified into silence, or perhaps cleverly devising a distraction or a way to shift the guilt... "Gee Davey, I told you that Chicken was still pink..."

Well maybe I should, and perhaps you do, but when I rip off a loaf of destruction in the undeniable presence of others, i just can't help myself - I giggle. Is this merely a sign of prolonged adolescent potty humor, or something more, and if so what? While I won't - Can't - deny getting a chuckle now and again from some particularly crass Adam Sandler flick, by and large my tastes have evolved, matured, and refined to the point where it takes more to genuinely entertain me than a swift kick to some poor schmuck's schlong (thank you Yiddish University of Reubensteinium).
See Mom - Progress!

So why does the real-deal, mother nature's whoopie cushion, still catch my funny bone at just the right angle for instant humorification? What occurred to me (after, you know... occurring to me) on my 2nd day at the Serbia camp, with almost my entire team standing a few feet away, was first that I should be embarrassed, second that I was embarrassed, and third that personal humiliation was the source of my eternal amusement.

In my opinion, anyone who wants to write anything autobiographical (blogs, novels, technical manuals or binary) must be able to look at their life and discern just how silly and funny it must seem to everyone else. I had a similiar thought in Estonia while watching a Doberman Pincher pop a squat. That's a fierce dog, but his hind legs don't bend right for proper squatting, so instead he just leans back and hopes he doesn't fall over. I'm sure there are pictures on the internet, but trust me, it turns the worlds scariest guard dog into the most laughable critter on this green earth.

And let me say this as well, self-depricating humor isn't all that hard to pull off, and it usually does satisfy an audience (case in point - this blog!). But self-deprication usually implies recognizing and laughing at your previous errors and misfortunes, often years later and in very distant hindsight. What I feel has kept me (or is trying to keep me) vibrant in life and almost eternally optimistic has been an acute, but surely not rare, inclination to stand outside myself and laugh - heartily - at my own misfortunes, embarrassments, discomforts, self-induced pains, and miseries, all in the real-time present.

Now I'm not saying I always do this, or that it's some special life mechanism I've developed
and cultivated over the years to become a better person. Quite the contrary. This isn't a "how-to" blog, it's a self-discovery blog, and I'm learning about the ways I deal with what happens to me in this wide world. Presumably you're reading this to see what we have in common, or just how strange is this person you've known for (__) months or years. I don't know why I developed this reaction, where I got the idea it would help or if it even does, but the more I think about it, the more traces of "the giggle reflex" I see in more complex parts of my life. Psychology majors, I'm sure, have written theses on this stupid thing, so please forgive my floundering about. I'm just a bad classicist or an amateur radio-ist, so cut me some slack.

You see, there's just so much to laugh at. I've been a right royal twit with some regularity, but I can't help feeling a touch more enlightened, more adult, maybe even happier, not because I feel that these innocuous and not-so-innocuous incidents are helping me become a smarter, less-twitty person, but precisely because I know with the certainty of Moses that that aren't. If shoving feathers up your ass doesn't make you a peacock, then I can assure you that pissing you pants in Athens at the age of 26 does NOT make you a smarter 27 year old. I may be more cautious (paranoid even) about keeping a weather eye for the WC, but I will still meander aimlessly into other equally (ok, almost equally) inane situations in the near, if not immediate future.

So how does my little epiphany help, and why the hell are you still reading this?

Well, to be honest, I don't know if this will help you at all. I struggled to find some sort of brilliant insight, some nugget of wisdom, any reason at all why I should share this with you for the benefit of anything other than my own self-indulgence, and I've come up wanting. The point, for me, is the realization that my eventual "happiness" or "development" may be dependent not on me getting any wiser - which may or may not happen - but on my ability to accept whatever happens to me with a giggle, and then move on with my life. Spilt milk, and all that, but with poo in this case.

Now please don't take this as the Gospel according to Weber, I'm only messing about with some thoughts in my head which is half as likely to have any useful information as I'm sure yours is (see, self-deprication), but these are the things one thinks about between uncontrollable giggles on a tiolet in a Serbia wildlife reservation.

Maybe not anyone, me, and that's as much as I can hope to understand - someday. I'm not saying we should all laugh at our lives, and I'm not suggesting I don't get royally upset, frustrated, grumpy, stark-raving mad. Sure, that all happens, shit happens, as the saying goes, but for me there's a certain breaking point, an embarrassment point of no return afterwhich whatever hardship I'm traversing transmogrifies into pure absurdity, and I guess I just realized how lucky I am to recognize it.

Because really, if we can't savor the absurdity of our lives, what does that leave us to enjoy? Adam Sandler?

fuck that.

Weber (on the lamb)

Serbian Work Camp

First of all, despite my oh-so-dramatic title, life in Hajdukovo (the tiny village in which you'll find the Ludas Lake Special Nature Reserve) isn't so bad. We wake up every morning at 7, have a very light breakfast of bread, water, and cheese (and sometimes not so much cheese), then proceed to the worksite.

Now on our 4th day, I finally understand what we're doing and why. We started making a bridge, a series of posts driven into the mud of a shallow reed lake, and then putting two rows of boards along them to make what looks like an enormous 4-wheeler ramp into the middle of nowhere. As it turns out, we were building the "deck" out to a swampy island, and all along the stucture the local camp rangers will be putting up live-catch bird traps. They capture them, measure & weigh them, tag them, and then release in the span of about 9 minutes per bird.

So yeah, instead of just hauling odd-shaped lumber and wading through disgusting swamp water for the fun of it for 3 days, it turns out we may actually be doing some good. Who knew?

This is a very different camp experience than my time in Estonia for a variety of reasons. First, the group is larger (15 compared to 8), Second the group is multi-gendered (50/50 split compared to my first camp where I proudly possessed the only Y chromosome), Thirdly the work is more braun than brain, and Finally, it's in the middle of freakin' nowhere.

How nowhere? Well, not only does Google Earth not have pictures of the place (this is actually very common on Eastern Europe and I assume elsewhere), no, Google Maps doesn't even list the village as a tiny dot, just vast grey emptiness. They should visit, then they'd know it's actually vast green emptiness.

We can walk into "the village" a collection of 1 bakery, 1 church, 2 convenience stores and 1 pub in about 15 minutes. Or we can drive by car 20 minutes and get to something that more fully resembles civilization.

But I'm not unaccustomed to this, in general. I spent 4 summers working in an even more remote part of Oklahoma - and loving it. And here it's much the same. I love the work, getting my hands dirty, figuring out which lumber to use and what order to do things in, slamming nails into 2x12's when everyone else gets tired. I'm good at this stuff - both the work itself and the teamwork required to spread around the work and keep the enthusiasm up. This is why I always liked my Boy Scout Summer Camp job, and something I've always struggled to explain to the vast majority of my friends who didn't know anything about that side of me.

I liked my time at KRTU, and I think I could hold my own as an office manager, though I certainly wasn't anything special. But as an in-the-field problem solver, a group manager, a team leader - I can claim to do a pretty fine job without risking too much my sense of humility. This is something I'm good at, but I can only find ways to do it that are short term, temporary, non-careers.

Well, that's something to think about further anyway, especially as I get ready to embark on a very expensive 2 year academic process that doesn't lead me closer to this sort of thing.

But yeah, camp is Ok, my team is fun enough, if less diverse than it could be, and we're all getting along.

The food is it's own blog, but since the camp has no internet - let me say that again - NO INTERNET ACCESS WHATSOEVER WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE - I'll content myself to make a quickie post on it now:

I don't know what passes for "traditional fare" in Serbia, but I know that what I'm eating isn't it. I know this because I recognize every ingredient in every meal, the only odd thing, and it's a doozy, is what and how they decide to combine things.

Let's look at dinner last night, shall we?

Pasta - mother nature's carbs-in-a-hurry masterpiece. The meal I most often cook at home because there's just no way to mess it up.

So what do we do with Pasta in Serbia? Are we a Marinara, Cream, or Pesto kind of people?
Guess again, and no, it's not Ketchup (but good guess, these Europeans put it on everything!).
Nope, the winner is..... Big Globs of Sour Cream!


with Cocoa!

no, you didn't misread. You see, the sour cream allows you to imagine you're not just devouring large chunks of pasta, while the Cocoa helps cut the sour flavor, and add that oh-so-desirable sandy-tongue texture that regular pasta has been missing.

Now let me say, clearly and loudly, that none of this stopped me from finishing my plate - from having seconds in fact - because 1) I'm really damn hungry and 2) it's not as bad as you'd think. Quite. It's not Quite as bad as you'd think.

So go ahead, try it at home or let me make it for you on a Monday night when I return, your choice. There are other examples, most of them less ridiculous of course, but you get the idea. My Serbian team leader looks at dinner every day and mutters something like, "I've never seen this before in my life," then we all wait to see who will foolishly go first. Someone does, we hold our breath, and usually by the time they've had their second bite we're all in on it. usually.

So that's my Serbian work camp. More to say, but no time to say it, and what in life is worth this much detail anyway?

Much Love to you all.

Weber (on the lamb)

Hard to be Optimitic in Auschwitz

Though it wasn't on my original Europe itinerary, and I wasn't especially inclined to go out of my way for it even once in Poland, a few days ago I visited the Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camp grounds and museum.

Now this is a place of obvious importance, reverence, and terrible history. I'm sure many people leave with a newfound awareness of what happened, appreciation of the scope, etc. I'm not sure exactly what I took away from the place, but I wanted to pass along some of my observations on this blog as a way to sort out my own muddled thoughts on the issue.
If you're looking for brilliance, you've come to the wrong place.

Also please note that the museum has a 14+ age limit due to the graphic nature of the facts, then it proceeds to show very little graphic pictures, video, etc. In fact, for the most part, the camp and its guides mostly rely on innuendo and euphemisms to talk about the severity of what happened here, but i found that all very confusing and misleading. So in this blog I intend to speak very directly about very gruesome things. Please take my word that I don't do so to be insensative or disrespectful, but my (semi-whitewashed) tour convinced me of the dangers of glossing over the gruesome "fine print" of the final solution.

First, a very brief background of facts which i was only partially aware before visiting: Auschwitz was originally a small Polish army base, really just a kitchen and a series of barracks, before the dual invasions of Germany and Russia in 1939. Shortly after the fall of Poland, Germany needed a place to put the intellectuals, politicians, and revolutionaries that were a huge part of Polish social resistance, and so they put up a fence and made a small base into an equally small prison. And thus it remained, with the eventual inclusion of Soviet POWs and more Polish political prisoners until 1942. During this time, the SS converted the old ammo bunker on the base into an experimental crematorium, with a rudimentary gas chamber and three furnaces. I cannot stress enough how eerie it was walking through this site, still largely intact, or how confusing it was to learn that Only about 1,000 people actually perished here.

You see, this experimental unit wasn't very efficient. It couldn't kill very many people at a time, and the furnaces took over 2 days to dispose of the bodies. This is all very grim, but please stay with me.

Due to these problems, coupled with the relative success of the now "field-tested" cyclon-b gas, Nazi command decided to upgrade Auschwitz, and started sending prisoner work crews to construct the "Auschwitz II - Birkenau" camp about 3 km away. Completed in 1943, Birkenau is where the horror happened, where over 1 million people were systematically executed and cremated, with thousands more dying of sub-human conditions, summary executions, medical experiments, etc. And it all happened in about 18 months. Birkenau effectively closed down in November 1944, the SS began dismantling and hiding their crimes as the Soviets advanced, and finally captured the camp in January 1945.

So there's the history lesson, but here's the context behind it: A couple things become clear from looking around Birkenau. First, this was now temporary construction. The layout of the barracks, the emergency stations, the fences, and especially the railroad leading directly to the primary crematorium buildings, all bare witness to the fact that the Nazis had every intention of using this camp, at full capacity, for the foreseeable future. In 18 months they eliminated from existence 1 million people, but the stone works and infrastructure suggests this camp was designed to fulfill its purpose for at least 5, and maybe as many as 20 years at that same pace. And that's why, for me, the Nazis always seemed the worst sorts of villians. Atrocities happen elsewhere, and I don't mean to belittle them in anyway. But to my mind, taking 10,000 or even 100,000 people out into the woods and shooting them just cannot compare with the construction of a site designed to so specifically to wipe out human existence, no matter how many or few people actually perish. It's the terrible audacity of the intention that I just can't get over.

And that was the first thing that struck me as terrifying. I felt a little cold and inhuman since the tragedy of the actual genocide didn't affect me as deeply as I felt it should have, but the realization of just how far the Nazis were prepared to go, not just ideologically, but logistically and practically, was and remains very scary to me. The logic, the rationale, and the skill with which they designed and implemented their terrible plans make it impossible, for me, to continue on the myth that Nazis were crazed monsters and mad men. These were people; smart, rationale, probably even moral, people. And they conceived this place in the same way that we now build airports and skyscrapers. OK, building an airport is nothing like engineering mass genocide, but that fact that the same rules (and tools) of industry and efficiency applied i find really chilling.

There is much more I'd like to express, but I'm still wrestling with it. The Holocaust is a powerful and terrible part of our modern history, but its existence and details are also widely known. This wasn't like my trip to the Wielczka salt mine, where I learned more about salt than i could ever hope to forget. Most of the facts I learned at Auschwitz I already knew, and in some ways that did make it less impressive, like the murder of millions was somehow old hat, but the experience of witnessing the magnitude and brutal decisiveness of it is something i don't know how to convey.

The museum loves conveying the magnitude, though. In over a dozen exhibits they have piled up the personal belongings collected from the dead before cremation. "Waste not, want not," must be a German addage, because they saved, stockpiled, and re-used everything. Not a very good poster child for recycling, but the same idea. Gold teeth are an obvious choice, but the mountain of shoes, the piles of glasses, the avalanche of tooth brushes - over and over these help clarify the sheer number of people we're talking about, and magnify the effect. The most shocking had to be the room of hair, where they shaved the hair off the women (usually after death) and then sold it to German textile companies for making blankets, etc. A couple vintage textile items on display with chemical traces of cyclon-B (from the deceased's hair) in their fibers is even more gruesome in retrospect than it seemed at the time.

Anyway, it's a hard place to talk about because there's so much tragedy, so much guilt, and so little justice for it all. I'll admit i felt uncomfortable when I was passed by a German-speaking tour group, though certainly they had no more direct connection to this place than i did. Or what about the latent Polish racism that turned a blind eye to it all? I spoke with one young Polish girl who, very embarrased, confessed that her grandmother continues to believe that in some way the jewish deserved what they got after decades of financial supremacy and abuses of their polish neighbors.

I'm not suggesting any of this is a good representation of all Poles, all Germans, or any universal reaction to the events at Auschwitz or elsewhere. I'm just struggling to understand how even one of the most evil and tragic movements of the past... 200 years? more? how even it can be more than a black-and-white issue. We all like to blame the Nazis, mostly because they aren't around any more. They make good TV villians for the same reason. But what created the fanatical hatred of Nazism, and also what allowed others to ignore its beastly actions, are all part of what we've become as individuals and as modern societies. And that's why the holocaust is so white-washed. It happened, it happened within living memory, and not only did we as a race not jump up to stop it, we have to admit that under the right circumtances it could happen again. We cannot deny that human nature allows for this level of evil, and I guarantee when it comes back around the efficiency of the 21st century will be exponentially more devastating than that of 1942.

and that just scares the crap out of me.

weber (on the lamb)

This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse

Something very odd has happened to me while in Europe. I don't feel like I've "changed" as a person, or had some monumental alteration of my world-view, but for reasons I feel are beyond my control, I suddenly find myself enjoying beer more than Mountain Dew.

Now for some of you this may seem quite mundane, and truthfully it is, but in my world one of the primary reasons I drink so little alcohol is that I just don't find it very tasty, and the primary reason I am constantly over-caffeinated is that I find MD to be absolutely delectable.

So what the heck?

Well, for starters it is clear that the average quality of even the cheapest beers in Europe (ok, at least the places I've been - Greece, Turkey, Estonia & Poland) are substantially superior to their American equivalents, here laughably over-priced and sold as exotic imports.

The second factor is local sweeteners. One clever thing about the soda industry (and many others), is that they know the best way to appeal to a new (foreign) market is to approach it from a familiar direction. It's a lesson US foreign policy continues to disregard, but whenever they do figure it out, expect it to be called the Coca-Cola Doctrine. Basically, you have a product, and you need to make new people enjoy it. But your product is so different than everything they're accustomed to, how to bridge the gap? Answer: find a local ingredient that is similiar, and substitute. Best part, the local ingredient will be cheaper than shipping the original over seas, and this allows you to do your bottling locally as well, creating more jobs, positive sentiments, and above all, higher profits.

It works out well for Coke here and many other places, where the use of actual sugar from natural sources results in an arguably "healthier," but definitely tastier beverage.

But woe is Pepsi, because while it mimics the same brilliant strategy, it suffers adverse results. Apparently the "secret ingredient" that makes Mountain Dew so tasty, zingy, and chemically addictive doesn't translate well into Polish. I couldn't find the drink in Greece, turkey or elsewhere, though presumably it crops up where they can establish a market. But in Poland, at least, it is occasionally available and horribly disappointing. Somewhere amidst all the other chemicals, I can taste the faint hint of the Dew I recall, but it's 95% a new drink, and without the key ingredient, quite unappealing even to me.

So I guess my point is that while generally speaking, many things are the better for the inclusion of indigenous ideas or ingredients, some things are so specifically the product (and preferrence) of a specific location or culture that any attempts to "adapt" it will fail, and in doing so bring to light just how perverse the original obsession is.

So yeah, in Poland at least, I'd rather have a beer than a Mountain Dew. That's not going to do my guy any favors, though it is probably giving my kidneys a much-needed respite.

Weber (on the lamb)

Indiana Jones and the Palace of Culture & Science

Now that would actually be a movie worth watching! allow me to explain:

We all (presumably) know Indiana Jones, the rugged individual who's book smart with a bow tie, but packs a mean right hook and a leather jacket. He's a man's man, a lady's man, but also tragically flawed in his intense fear of snakes. He's so handsome, so brave, so tenacious, so... Gosh Darn American!

But what is the Palace of Culture and Science? Is it a lost Mayan ruin? The key to an ancient oriental numerological cult? Perhaps the final resting place of Jesus Christ's abacus? No friends, but good guesses. To borrow a line, "No one can be told what the Palace of Culture and Science is..."

but what the heck, I'll try.

the Palace of Culture and Science is an enormous - wait, what's bigger than enormous? - Meganormous structure thrust into the heart of downtown Warsaw. Built from 1952-55 as a sign of friendship (and or total cultural domination) by the Soviet Union, it is a classification of structure for which I have no frame of reference. For now, let's call it a Soviet Super Scraper. Architecturally it combines elements of ancient greek temples, russian palaces, and more traditional western skyscrapers with unequivocating Soviet motifs (the column staturary in the shape of a steel worker holding a book by Engels is a good example) and an overwhelming sense of power-eternal. For the majority of its considerable height, it's just a skyscraper. Sure, it has megolomaniacal ornamentation, but still, it's mostly straight up. But at the base! It has four rectagular "temples" on each corner, with a half-circle enclosed promenade alone the West side, and a couple Obelisks guarding the obliques of the whole thing. I can go on and on, and the pictures just won't do it justice. I'll bet it even looks ridiculous from space (or at least on Google Maps). Much more info about the structure (including about the 1967 Rolling Stones concert it hosted) on Wikipedia (linked to title).

so what does the Palace of Culture and Science have to do with All-American Indy? Well, that's where the story really picks up. Following the Soviet collapse, the Polish people had a problem: In all of their downtown, they only had one skyscraper, and it was an overt symbol of their now-hated oppressor. But it was just so freakin' huge! so what do you do? Well, first you start re-tasking its hundreds of office spaces and display areas. Several museums moved in, and in truely wonderful Polish fashion, so did several active (and very good) theatres. And then something odd happened. I don't know when or why, but somehow they got the idea to carve into the very center of the ground floor a series of movie theatres, called KinoTeka.

And that's where I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in the cold, dead, but still useful heart of a detested but useful Soviet edifice. Now the movie was nothing to write home about (but of course I did - see the comments of this blog for my full review), but the experience of watching Indy duke it out with ridiculous Soviet/Russian stereotypes while surrounded by Poles who were much better educated about the realities of the Soviet army (and Soviet history - "Stalin's favorite pupil," as the villian is described, would have been hard-pressed to find any friends, much less a full detachment of soldiers when the movie takes places in 1957, after Stalin died in 1953 and the "Great Thaw" ended Soviet extremalism in 1956).

So read the review if you like, but know this before going on: It's a bad movie. not only is the plot bad, the characters are shallow, the script is ridiculous, and there's enough ham stuffed into this turkey to make Madden proud. But it's not an unusual movie, by which I mean to say that as over-blown and disappointing as it was, it wasn't the worst movie that Hollywood (or even the Lucas-Spielberg Consortium) has cranked out.

Honestly, I was hoping for more, but when the full force of the Indy-Idiocy sunk in (about the time the Aliens showed up), it occurred to me that I was at a special time and a special place. Deep within a staggering monument designed to proclaim the eternal progress and righteousness of the (now deceased) International Soviet Movement, I was watching a movie supposedly symbolize all the greatness of American character (and commercialism), but which in fact best accomplished the task of presaging the downfall of US culture.

In fairness to our Soviet predecessors, at least their ridiculous artifice has the potential to serve a useful purpose. All we can be proud of as Americans is that we've given Lucas-Spielberg the financial ammo they need to nuke us all over again.

But if they do ever make Indiana Jones and the Palace of Culture & Science, I'll be the first one camping out for tickets.

So speakest Weber (on the lamb)

Observations on Eating in Estonia

While in Tallinn I've enjoyed a great number of... memorable culinary insights. Each of these I could expand on into a lengthy series of food-related blogs, but let's face it, I'm not a gourmet chef, and we both have better things to do than waste all our time bemoaning (and celebrating) one country's particularly quirky local fare.

Kompressor - or How I Learned to Love Shrimp and Cheese Pancakes.
in an analysis of traditional estonian foodstuffs, i thought it would be fun to start with this local oddity. Kompressor is the very hip place to eat in Tallinn's Old Town, serving up pancakes of both the more accepted French crepe style with fruits and ice cream, or in the opposite direction with "savory" pancakes. The grilled chicken is reputably very good, and i would have tried the Tuna if it wasn't all gone, but instead I got the shrimp pancakes. Imagine a shrimp enchilada, stuffed with cheese and a cream sauce, now inflate the tortilla into a folder buttermilk pancake twice the size of your face. That's a Kompressor, and while it may not be internationally as hip and adventurous as the Estonias think it is, I do have to hand it to them for follow-through. At no point in time did I doubt what I was eating - a shrimp pancake - but neither did i mind.

Boiled Cabbage - The Great Equalizer.
There are many addages to drive home the point that all people share something in common. "put on my pants one leg at a time," "prick me do I not bleed," etc. For me, it was the ever-present boiled cabbage, constant without being popular, among the several different "traditional" restaurants, and present in what little home cooking I observed. The only food more likely to be seen on a plate was of course potatoes, but since most people like potatoes (and I love them), that's not much of a shared hardship to rally around. but cabbage; nice, soft, barely flavored and yet still bitter cabbage, now there's a crux upon which to build a nation.

Don't Call it Kool-Aid.
nope, the mainstay of mass-consumption drinking products is called "Siirup Water" and I'll resolve the mystery for you - it's made by pouring a thick red syrup (sic) into a large jug, then diluting it until the final mixture is a translucent light pink. Compared with the grape seed water, it's a triumph, but I could blissfully endure more of it with better marketing and a less honest title.

Juust Eat it.
Little more than a clever pun, Juust (Yew-st) is Estonian for cheese, and while the more exotic french varieties will cost you a spare arm, the local varient, "Eesti Juust" is simple, hardy, and very cheap. Good chow for saving a few Kroons, but don't expect to see many locals chewing on the small blocks at snack time.

There's Always room (in the budget) for Selga.
Another cheap-o fave, Selga are square biscuits/cookies popular in Estonia, Latvia, and who knows where else. In no way a meal substitute, Selga packs (translate to Bacta Tanks for my nerdier readers) got me through some long gaps when even the prospect of a cabbage lunch seemed promising.

Good Luck Pronouncing Koom Becherovka.
It looks easy now, but just try deciphering this tongue twister on a friend's recommendation in a lively pub. Becherovka is a herb-based liquor, which sounds all polite and eco-friendly at first, but in fact it is a dangerous ally. The "Koom" decribs how to drink it, hot and mixed with maybe orange flavoring? Anyway, the first glass is delightful, the second a little unnerving, and after that proceed at your own risk. A similiar Estonian liquor is called Vana Tallinn, though it is most often consumed with coffee or milk. Interestingly, everyone i know who discussed it all agreed it should not be consumed directly, and yet against recommendations they had all tried.

Wonders of Modern Technology
there are two inventions which from my travel observations i can only assume are among the most important social adancements in the recent history of Europe: Ketchup and straws. Seriously, this is not limited to Estonia or even Eastern Europe. Everywhere i go, people put ketchup on everything, and not a little ketchup, but mounds of it. This isn't the same vinegar and corn syrup recipe we have at home, but when did tomato paste and sugar turn into human catnip. and the straws! i swear if there wasn't such a physical concept as surface tension i'm not sure Europeans would be able to stave off dehydration. Alcoholic beverages are the one exception, but otherwise if it comes in a can, a bottle, or even a glass, expect someone at the table to use a bendy. There's a sanitary issue involved, and i get that, but come on, adults don't need a sippy-cup. (with apologies to my European friends - notice how my American sensabilities crumbled at the lack of a mere fork).

Huevos a la Lamb
On an evening off, thoroughly tired of potatoes, cabbage, cuccumber, tomatoes and carrots, the 5 basic food groups of Estonia, I decided to cook myself dinner. Having already made a not-especially successful pasta a few days earlier, i went back to basics for some Texas-style scrambled eggs. The main ingredient was easy to locate of course, as was the necessary onion. I even found a very affordable orange "Holland" pepper , which is apparently so named for it's country of hydroponic origin not it's dutch coloration. the lynchpin ingedient, salsa, turned out to be no problem at all, and i still don't know why. In London, my brother Duff remarked that the only place to get salsa was at a specialty American store, while here in Tallinn it was readily available. I never saw an actual Estonian grab any off the shelf, and i couldn't find any flatmates interested in chips and salsa during a football match, but one must assume it is popular enough to be stocked.
Anyway, I cooked myself some eggs just like back home, photo documented the entire experience, and felt much better for the return to normalcy - the cooking process and the taste. There certainly are many things you "can't take with you," but as every traveler knows, it only has to be close to familiar to start feeling a lot like home.

Cheers,
Weber (on the lamb)

Tallinn School vol. 3: The Students

According to the on-line work camp description, i signed up to work with "English-language students, ages 10-12, from the minority Russian population." From this, i made certain assumptions, like that the students were in need of quality english instruction, that they were in fact 10-12 years old, and (for whatever reason) that because of their minority status, they would be in some way socially or economically disadvantaged. I wasn't the only one in my program to make this assumption, but it couldn't have been further from the truth.

As it turns out, they already speak wonderful English, the age range was 9-13, and our camp was populated exclusively by the Russian minority, which just happens to be socially dominant throughout Estonian thanks to very controversial Soviet repopulation, or "Russification," efforts. Additionally, many students came from the priviledged upper echelons of Tallinn society, one good example being an 11 year old with an iPhone.

So ok, abandon all sense of social benvolence ye who enter hear, but kids are kids, and while they didn't need us to explain grammatical concepts or even present much vocab, they did need to be entertained while their parents were at work, and what better way to do so than to practice their english.

It is against this backdrop, where the reality is much less noble than the concept, but the challenges just as real and demanding as any other work with children, that i had the following experiences/thought processes:

1 - Sunlight is my friend.
I didn't feel this way when i was getting baked alive on the mediterranean coast, but suddenly the presence of the sun was a direct determinent of how hard my day would become. the school is in a small vertical building split into 9 classrooms with no gathering space larger than the entry hallway. we were allowed to use only 4 of these small (15' x 20') rooms for 40 kids. so obviously we needed to get outside whenever possible. no problem in Sunny Tallinn, right? Apparently June is the "wet month" by which i mean it rains at least a little every day or two, with larger downpours about once per week. Since the weather was also unpredictable, trying to plan for even the next day became problematic. I know rain plans are a good idea in theory, but realize that when you start planning tomorrow 30 minutes after you just got rid of the kids, anything that effectively doubles your workload is not going to be welcome. I won't say that I drifted all the way toward the paganism of the past, but I did whisper a few short prayers for dryness to whatever god would listen, and i gained a new appreciation for the plight of anyone who's life more substantially relied upon the good fortunes of weather to survive.

2 - Learning about Teaching vicariously does not work.
I have been in orbit of teachers now for a good 6 years, and not just tertially aware of their training and profession, but deeply involved in their discussions of theories, frustrations, solutions, etc. And now that it was my turn to be a teacher, i must say all that surface awareness, without the actual skills and experience necessary to implement it, was as much a curse as a blessing. I knew what methods would undercut my authority and discipline in the classroom, but i couldn't figure out what alternatives to use, or why my attempts kept failing. I know many of my teacher friends are thinking, "yeah, now you respect what we go through," but no. i already respected what you go through, what you know and how you're able to use it, now i'm just pissed that all those years of listening and trying to learn from your experiences has proven so limited in its usefulness. in fact, the real curse is that if i didn't know better, i could have ignorantly assumed that we were doing a great job, maybe even as good as anyone else could. but instead i was faced with the realization that none of us were real teachers, and while we may have done the best we could as amateurs, by any professional standard it was mediocre, and bordering at times on catastrophe.

3 - Poly-Lingualism is awesome and belittling to behold.
And it's everywhere. among the camp leaders, I was the only native English speaker, making everyone around me at least bi-lingual, often with one or two other languages they were learning, or at least understood. This is an important facet of modern european society, but it never stops amazing me. my teammates would comment about how unsettling it was to use their english with a native speaker, I had all the advantages of a nuanced vocabulary and definitive awareness of any mistakes, but their english was so refined and comfortable that I regularly forgot it was their 2nd or thrid language, until they'd make a phone call or bump into someone on the street. then it was my turn to feel uncomfortable, and frankly a bit stupid. I even had one Estonian ask me what it was like living in America where everyone learned only Spanish and French, to which i had to correct her that in America people might learn Spanish or French, but more often didn't learn either to any useful extent. The real topper was in speaking with the students. This camp was for practicing English, but the same school runs French and other language camps as well, with some repetition of students. So yes, i met a 12 year old who spoke, functionally, English, Russian, German, French, and was working on Spanish. In fact, even as i write this blog (now in Poland) I've eavesdropping on a spanish conversation between a Catalonian and a Finn about... something about why they don't like speaking French in Quebec.
Amazing.

i could go on longer, i'm leaving a lot out, but Tallinn is behind me, and much of what i learned from working there are the same worn out lessons I watched so many friends go through in their initial teaching experiences. I did leave with an odd sense of the universality of children, these russian youth were identical in behavior, mischief, and cuteness to their counterparts back home, but i think more diverse traveling might dispell that assumption. but i'm not rushing off to teach English in Thailand just to check.

nope, camp was fun, but what I got most out of the experience was the chance to meet and get to know other travellers, Europeans of diverse nationalities and opinions, and hopefully a couple friends i can hang onto as time and distance return us to our normal lives.

Time will tell, but now i must be getting back up on the lamb.

Weber