Explorer of the Everyday

Mada in a snapshot

When people think about Madagascar, they think about cute lemurs and huge baobabs. They imagine an exotic land where tourists feed themselves lavishly on papaya and pineapple for breakfast and treat themselves to coco rum as the sun goes down. They imagine green forests and hidden waterfalls. And they certainly cannot pronounce the name of its capital: Antananarivo.

All of this rhymes indeed with Madagascar. But there is so much more to find there. Here is a crash-course into Madagascar and why it left an indelible mark on me.

Madagascar is the world fourth biggest island and is located in the Indian Ocean off the African South-East coast, at Mozambique level. Its separation from the continent makes it truly unique: because of its isolated position, close to Africa yet surprisingly Asian in many respects, Madagascar is home to species that have developed there and nowhere else in the world. In spite of its abundant diversity, Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on the Planet. Having suffered 90% deforestation, it struggles to preserve its unique wildlife on the one hand and feed its population and provide them with essential resources on the other. It is a challenged land. It is often the doom of beautiful countries to be also needy.

Cherry on the top, the country does not exactly receive support from its government and corruption is the true currency, much stronger than the Malagasy ariary that make you a millionaire when you convert them from dollar or euro. Because of instability, poverty, poor governance and everything that can go wrong in a God forsaken country, Madagascar tends to be less appealing to the ill-informed tourists.

With no reported traffic lights or street names, Tana (short and affectionate for Antananarivo) could give headaches even to a GPS. A European driver would have to navigate on a sea of hens, zebus (local cows), and humans who constantly feel the urge to cross from one side of what we shall call the “road” to the other, which to me looks more like a suicidal desire than anything else. Yes, Tana is the human jungle.

However, have no fear: Madagascar is an amazingly beautiful place, the sole possessor of some of the world’s one-of-a-kind treasures, a country of farmers and hard-working people. If you love nature, discovery, a bit of adventure, if the taste of dust does not frighten you and if you hunger for new, extraordinary experiences, Madagascar can hardly disappoint.

What Madagascar desperately needs is tourism and jobs. With tourism, jobs opportunities are created. Most of the restaurants and hotel owners are still French people, but they do employ locals. An increased awareness that tourism brings in money will hopefully also educate people more on the reforestation programmes that have reportedly started throughout the island.

The reality as I see it is rather simple: no lemur, no tourism. Which means there is no other choice but to battle to keep these species alive (90% of the lemurs – which can only be found in Madagascar and some neighbouring islands – are estimated to vanish forever if urgent action is not taken, aka start planting those bloody trees). Madagascar simply cannot afford to lose this tourism opportunity. Its people depend on it. Hopefully, again, this will also become a governance priority with traceable results. Right now, the country seems to be more kept afloat by the support of dedicated NGOs which, as I imagine, have not only the hard task of righting the wrong, but also fighting the authorities on the way.

Best birthday gift

I have seen some of the most beautiful faces in Madagascar (the Malagasy are an interesting mix of Asian and African genes), trekked canyons and changing landscapes, bathed in crystal blue waterfalls, watched spectacular sunsets, tasted zebu in all its cooked forms, held hands with the locals while dancing by the camp fire, woken up to tens of sparkling rice terraces, went through dust and burning sun and took comfort on the beach, spent my birthday with a lemur on my head (if that is not magic!), enjoyed the local rum, collected hundreds of smiles and memories. Madagascar is no doubt an experience like no other. It is a place of colour and warmth, and above all, an eye-opening destination. I have never been thanked so much for choosing this country over a starred beach resort.

But it is I, the Vazah (white tourist) who am grateful to have witnessed and have been a part of a small fraction of Malagasy life. It is not every day that I get the privilege to wake up in a remote place of the Earth where everything is so different that you’d better forget where you come from and just observe this new universe that develops its wonders in front of you.

Madagascar, you have swept me away with your variety. A much rewarding surprise and nothing short of a treat for the eyes and soul. Merci. Milles fois merci.

Giving Love a Chance

My brain is an awfully selective instrument – breaking news and here here. Somewhere along the way of establishing my reading criteria it decided that books written by female authors displaying the word “Love” in the title were not of a burning interest to me. This is one of the reasons I have been postponing reading “Eat, pray, love” indefinitely, for instance , in spite of some passionate recommendations. Maybe because the storyline is all too familiar to me. Just by looking at the title, I feel that I already know what’s inside the book, and so the time manager side of my brains whispers: why would I invest time into reading something that is not new to me? The “L” word signals that there will be something cheesy, flowery and very girly that I am widely not interested in investing time into. Clearly, I had mentally labelled this type of books and carefully stored them in my own personal category of “Not my thing”. And I was very much convinced that that’s where they would stay.

Luckily, Waterstones (bless them for being open on Sundays) put “Love with a chance of drowning” into the “travel writing” section – my favourite part of their building. Headed for holidays, I decided I could do with a no-brainer, a type of read that wasn’t going to ask much of me. “Funny” – one of the reviews said. In an act of rebellion against my ready-made ideas, I become spontaneous, buy the book and give my too-serious self a kick in the “give me a break” pit. “I want to be girly. It’s my holiday”.

“Love with a chance of drowning”, as it turns out, is an exceptionally well-written book. It is so exciting, fun and vibrant that it drags you into the author’s world of exceptional adventures completely and that is precisely what I appreciate about a good book: the gripping effect. I enjoyed getting lost in those pages so much that the book became my mornings’ delight, a great companion to join me for my 6 a.m. coffee during my time in Ifaty, Madagascar. Caught in the flawless post-card picture that reunites coconut tree with the deep blue of the sky and ocean, the sun dancing gently in my hair, I sipped freshly brewed liquid at Chez Cécile and turned one page after the other. And even though my reality was simply perfect then and there, the book managed to snatch me away.

For this is a book one cannot put down. One that will make you frown at a friend who wants to join you for coffee (and I think I must apologize here if such thing happened) and deter your attention away from the wonderful adventure that Torre and boyfriend are living on the Pacific ocean that makes the pages so alive. One that you will remember, because of the unique, honest and thrilling writing style. This is a true story, a love story, yes, one that is skillfully rendered through a personal mix of words. Torre DeRoche is inspired enough not to exaggerate on the romantic side of the story, but focuses more on the funny and adventurous journey of a girl who is afraid of the Ocean yet ventures into the Pacific to follow her significant other, discover the world and ultimately herself.

A very charming account of a trip of a lifetime experienced first-hand and narrated by a seriously talented writer. Love…all the way and a great travel read.

Check also Torre DeRoche’s blog Fearful Adventurer.

The Changing Face of Europe

Not long ago, merely 13 years, I took a chance: I left my (at that time) non-EU country, Romania, and decided I would be a European citizen living in Belgium. To me, that meant a wide open space of possibilities, diversity, travel and freedom. No borders. Romania was not yet absolved of all the special conditions imposed by the Union on the newly-entered countries when I took the Belgian nationality and embraced my new identity as a European.

Today, this space that I and many others integrated for the benefits and privileges it so alluringly offered has become a place of confusion. This is not what I imagined. Borders are up again. Borders of fear. The freedom that the EU promised looks at us helpless, feet in shackles, caged within walls of prejudice. Schengen seems a blurry dream that is likely to fade away with a strong morning coffee.

I look around: people with shattered lives waiting for confused countries to distribute them among each other like livestock. They don’t get to choose. Their sudden presence forces change upon us, one that, as it turns out, we are not fully prepared for. They challenge our level of tolerance at home, our own private values and capacities for acceptance of the other. And they intimidate, scare and even repel some of us in this new process, us civilized, highly educated and sophisticated inhabitants of Europe. But right now, all they want is to live.

Leaders blink blankly and get more confused over numbers. Of human lives. They act as if they’re playing in a new version of the 4400 series – a crowd of people was kidnapped by extraterrestrials, lobotomized and dispatched back on Planet Europe. But they have no superpowers and they’re not even using the ones they have as they should. Incapable of dealing with war refugees who also happen to have a different colour and religion, and not recognizing their changing surroundings anymore, they resort to racist, xenophobic speeches and gun-protected borders. The refugees are coming. Fear, as it turns out again and again, is a dangerous , disabling disease that spreads like fire among the simple minded and turns any sign of intelligence into ashes.

Looking at good old Europe, with its traditions and values becoming as questionable as its future, I see panicked citizens and impressive levels of leadership incompetence. Europa is giving up on its children. Ignoring needy migrants as they drown at its gates. Putting loads of responsibilities on Italy’s and Greece’s frail shoulders. Then scapegoating Greece. Who believes in the purpose of the EU anymore?

Panicked about a situation it cannot control, one that was nonetheless strikingly obvious and foreseeable, EU decides to share the refugees among the member states. A remarkable thought, no doubt, with the only disadvantage of not being fully functional. Eastern countries and part of the Central European countries do not exactly have a colonial past nor have they historically been much in contact with other cultures. They emerge from a complicated communist past where any minority was condemned and all good things were white and Christian. A non-neglectable detail when you ask them to take in dark-skinned, Muslim people coming from the “Arab countries” that could have played the evil character in bed-time stories. The politics of open-mindedness has not been duly practised in some of these countries for generations, on account of their borders being…closed to the world until not very long ago. It would be naive to expect them to welcome the refugees with arms wide open. This said, this is not an excuse for not putting humans first.

Poor governance in case of crisis is fertile soil for outbursts of nationalism. Multiculturalism is being questioned and presented as threatening. Although no one has come out in the streets to make an official statement, it has become clear lately that the EU project is slightly failing. At many levels. And unforgivably at human level. While common people hurry to provide assistance in support of the refugees all over Europe, politicians come up with the most derisory remarks.

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban suggests that multiculturalism is a threat to the European values. There is nothing more detrimental to our liberties in Europe today than allowing people such as himself to become public influencers. It is bad enough that they go about unpunished. But their words may have a heavy impact on mentalities for years to come and those will be hard to change.

If multiculturalism starts being seen as a danger to Europe, I think many of us should start packing and find another planet to mess up. Because this little community of 28 is by nature multicultural: Romanians, Belgians, Germans – we are NOT the same. But yes, we are white and mainly Christian.

Meanwhile, borders rise up again. Mental borders. Mentalities are closing in. I stand an astounded European citizen who wants Europe and the EU to shake its people off their prejudice and start acting on human principles. Refugees are not a threat, it is the ground-gaining narrow-mindedness and anti-migrant propaganda that threaten our freedom in Europe today. Century-old universities that produced tons of top-of-the-class thinkers and we get to listen to derogatory speeches that install fear of other people? Decisions whether to host them or not on account of their religion? Europe has clearly forgotten where it comes from and how it has achieved so much. Now it solves migration crisis by building walls. This makes no sense.

Tell your children that multiculturalism is beautiful. That without it, there is no Europe. I still want to believe that Europe can be the place where multiculturalism not only happens, but where it thrives.

In the meantime, winter is coming.

In and out of Lima

Lima. 5 a.m. But first I need to pick up my luggage, which causes me a bit of a stress. Before I get off the plane, a Peruvian lady gives extensive explanations to her relatives travelling from Europe that it is rather common for the luggage to be stolen at the airport. She focuses on this topic for a while until I remain convinced, same as she seems to be, that I must kiss my luggage good bye. She’s a local, so I am inclined to believe that her knowledge of the place and customs is genuine. Besides, she is not the only one who expresses concern about the luggage situation, several people join the conversation. I struggle to dismiss the sound of Murphy’s law whispering in my ear “If anything can go wrong, it will” and wait patiently for my luggage to slide down to me on the conveyor belt. I enter the first phase that leads to sheer panic: be trustful and hopeful. Be desperate is patiently waiting in line.

Long, very long minutes pass by during which many people take the conveyor belt by assault. It’s a human fortress that prevents me from even having a sneak preview of what comes on that belt. Approaching that area does not seem realistic unless I start distributing punches which I am too jet lagged to do. I have never seen so many people in an airport reluctant to keep a reasonable distance from that belt and allow other travellers to keep an eye on their belongings as well. Peruvians seemed to have a strong attachment to the airport conveyor belt and everything on it. It’s a space they are not willing to share, as if they’re all suffering from some long-instilled national trauma: the airport luggage theft.

Even if I had managed to catch sight of my luggage (which was still not the case), I would not have been able to collect it without a fist fight. First early morning cultural shock happens. After a while, there’s only me and very few people left to stare at the conveyor belt. It is therefore logically the appropriate moment to start to panic: the Peruvian lady must have been right. This time I was sensible enough to carry half of the important belongings in my day pack which I hug dearly. At long last, critically drained of patience and energy, I spot my luggage and collect it happily. It weighs about 23 kilos, which adds to the 10 kilos that make my hand luggage. I load the whole on my 52 kilo frame and start doing the funny walk towards the exit.

There’s a taxi driver waiting for me. I “booked” him and his driving skills, so I feel slightly VIP-ish. I’m sure he must have had a name, too, but I forgot it completely. I’m deep in evolving jet lag symptoms and I know I will not be concentrating much. The guy looks reliable for a 5 a.m. airport encounter, but hey, doesn’t everyone? I launch a superfluous conversation in Spanish to test his degree of friendliness. He drives me past a deserted and gloomy beach, going through some unwelcoming landscape of a country which doesn’t seem to know what to build where. We reach Miraflores, one the best neighbourhoods by Lima standards, specifically dressed up for tourists – a hub for anyone who can afford it, which technically means no locals. I’m decidedly not impressed by the accumulation of constructions and pray that a strong coffee will fix that. But I arrived in the garúa period, a greyish unfriendly mist which hovers over Lima during winter time, making it look sad and…painfully grey. I am intimately convinced that the city is much prettier under a different light.

The driver is being very kind: he drops me off right in front of my bed & breakfast even though the Police wanted to block his way and declare the road inaccessible. The place I’ll be sleeping in is equipped with a sort of bunker-like security system. Also, hello shabbiness! Yet, the driver insists that this is one of the most luxurious neighbourhoods in Lima. I raise an eyebrow and try not to look overly concerned. It’s 7 o’clock in the morning local time, so I only have the strength to accept things as they come. I go and have breakfast with the intention to rest a bit and explore the city afterwards. But someone is in the mood for engaging me in a conversation: a tour guide; he’s leaving with his group in one hour and thinks I’m one of his. He explains to me loads about the beauties I am about to see and gives me a warm hug: he’s a Quechua – no, not the brand name for the sport clothes, he’s the actual thing, the descendant of the Inca people who occupied that land in the first place. At that early hour and in my semi-conscious condition, I can’t oppose much to this bit of Quechua affection. We would meet about 10 days later and he’d still know my name. Fantastic person.

My room is much less welcoming however: the air is cold and damp and the windows are made in such an original way that they won’t close properly. You can easily push them to open by pressing the upper or lower part, but you will never be able to make them close fully. So I put on some of my warmest clothes (I could have put all of them on, really) and plunge under the blanket, hoping to warm up and have a good sleep that would make me forget I was there.

Lima is not the best place to be jet lagged in. If you are, the chances that you actually see any beauty in it are rather limited. I can reach high peaks of grumpiness when I lack sleep. Or when I wake up after only one hour of sleep and realize it’s still cold and grey. But I pile up my bits of broken motivation and decide to get out of the B&B and go to the city centre: I’m a traveller, my role is to visit. My initial thoughts were to walk there until the receptionist stopped me from doing so.

“No. Taxi,” she said, in a tone that left little room for contradiction.

Taxi it is. She calls one for me that picks me up right in front of the gate and tells me to only take a yellow one to come back. I’m afraid I did not have enough time to accommodate to the reality of the place: these people know what they are doing, hopefully. I’m all about freedom and when I’m given indicators that I can’t openly practice it, I need to take a moment to digest the news. The taxi driver seems to be confused as to why I find myself alone in his car. He repeats “Alone in the city center?” as if he is deaf and not sure he heard the instructions correctly. “Take the boy with you!” and he points to the young man guarding the door to the B&B. “Hum…I think he’s on duty. And I do travel by myself, so this is how it is.” We drive. Before reaching the end of the destination he also points to my camera: “No pictures! Steal camera in city center.” And when he sees other white European tourists walking around the main square, he yells: “Look, go with them! Go!” I’m puzzled as to how to react to this behaviour. Where am I and what have I done?

The first thing I notice while holding on to the bag in which I “hide” my big camera is that everyone else but the few tourists and me looks different: Peruvians are shorter (than me), dark-haired, look strangely similar to one another as if a big family went out for a walk and are modestly dressed. And this is enough conclusions to make me suspect each and every one of them of wanting to rob me of my camera. Talk about standing out of the crowd: I’m the female version of Gulliver and I’ve been stranded in Lilliput!

If I were to be honest with myself, I don’t think that Lima is a nice place to wake up to at all. But then again, it’s easy to get the wrong impression on a place when you’ve only been there for few hours. Maybe Lima did not reveal itself to me at its right value. I won’t be giving the city much credit that day. I am happy to get out of the crowd and look for the taxi place. Yellow they said. My head is too much the mess for me to concentrate on the plate number, so I truly hope the driver I pick is exactly what he pretends to be. I’m lucky, he decides not to kidnap me that day. I run back into my gloomy room (in August, Lima looks worse than Brussels at its greyest) to try and kill my jet lag, which, I end up admitting, is the root cause of the distorted image I have of this very new environment.

Still, I cannot be blamed for my confusion. Imagine this: there are roughly 9 million inhabitants in Lima and there is no metro, subway or train. There’s an estimated number of 300.000 taxis. Which do not really use what is called a taximeter – the price is usually negotiated before you jump in. The yellow one seems to be the most reliable (says a report based on the number of people who actually made it back safe and sound, maybe?). The yellow taxis are the metropolitan ones and are (supposed to be ) licensed. San Isidro, the “chic” district that to me looked like just another pile of buildings, proudly exhibits a 120-metre-high one which Peruvians refer to as a “skyscraper”. Because of the tectonic friction caused by the Nazca Plate working its way underneath the South American Plate, the reasons we have the Andes, Peru is rather exposed to potential devastating seismic activity. This is not a place to compete for the tallest architectural achievement.

The real problem with Lima is that there aren’t an awful lot of things to do. Because the weather improved, I decided to give the Larco Museum a miss, in spite of it being one of the main attractions on account of a collection of Kama Sutra visuals on ceramic pots. What I did is eat (food is exquisitely tasty in Lima – and nothing beats a ceviche) and hang out in El Parque del Amor, for its merit of being close to the (Pacific) Ocean. And this is where I found the one thing that seduced me in Lima: paragliding.

I watched people flying around for few hours until I decided to queue up and try it for myself. But it was not in the cards for me that day (or the very last day when I returned to Lima either) because the wind changed so I was stuck on solid ground. High and dry.

Lima was easy to leave behind. But Peru was only just starting to unveil its true precious self.

Love Letter to South Africa

Who would have thought that I’d fall in love with a country? A place that is not mine by birth, a foreign land. Someone once drew the contour of the South African map for me on a wall and years later I found my way to it. Nor have I ever thought that I would end up missing that dry, reddish earth so much that seeing it again turned into an almost physical necessity. I had been warned: “Careful, it will get under your skin!”

And so it did. During the last 3 years I have been there 3 times. There are reasons why the greatest nations have been fighting for it over the centuries: South Africa is worth fighting for. It is the hardest place to leave behind.

This country is really something else. As this video from the South African Tourism shows (which I personally find exceptionally well done), it is a place whose unique variety awakens all senses.

South Africa has a special way of making me happy. It is here that I fired a gun with real bullets for the first time (and the first one going off scared the hell out of me). It Is here that I fed a giraffe and felt my hands shaking when I saw the immensity of that gentle, walking tower coming towards me. I spent a sensational week with Wild Coast Horse Back Adventures surrounded by free, un-fenced horses (60 of them), riding while chasing warthogs, cantering across fields and the loveliest sand beaches. This is where I did jumping for the first time, fell on my head and went back on horse a happy, though certainly dizzy human. I bathed in waterfalls and burnt my skin like a lobsters in hilarious and impossible patterns, for the South African sun is merciless with a 30 SPF. I woke up in a tent to water buffaloes running madly in the open veld. I’ve listened to storms and wondered at thunders – there’s a different dimension to them out there. The place granted me the privilege to fulfill some of the, yes, wildest dreams.

South Africa taught me difference. Contrast. It is still raw, though sensibly blooming, an interesting society facing the challenges of a mixed, restless environment with a scarred past that cannot heal. My eyes sparkled way too many times not to acknowledge that South Africa has somehow become a part of me. It gave me the wilderness and the freedom. It showed me the simple, pure way of living and how to look at life from different angles.

I blame it on diversity. With 6 colours under one flag and 11 official languages, 3 capital cities, 2 Oceans, uncountable species of animals on land, in the skies and water, literally all land forms, the numerous types of food and millions of people of all provenance, there’s enough variety for anyone to fall in love with. I will keep on travelling to other places, but deep down I know that this is my heaven on the ground.

For those who have miraculously managed to escape a conversation on South Africa with me, here’s a random list of some of SA’s essentials:

Apartheid (racial segregation) ended in South Africa in 1994. It is therefore, a very, very recent event and I’m amazed at how this country has been dealing with its complexities, evolving in such an admirable way (in spite of everything) ever since. Madiba, maybe.
Homo Sapiens, our ancestors, are said to have lived in South Africa (and yes, there’s undeniable DNA evidence that we all come from black people – the San or Bushmen). There’s an interesting archeological site/museum in the Johannesburg area called the Cradle of Humankind which is, I believe, worth a detour.
The three capital cities are: Pretoria (administrative), Cape Town (legislative), Bloemfontein (judicial). However, Johannesburg is the main economic hub.
Nelson Mandela spoke Xhosa, the “click” language, spoken by the first people, the Bushmen (if you’re curious to learn more about the clicks, click here).
If someone tells you to stop at the robot, that means a traffic light and it definitely means you are in South Africa.
Bartolomeu Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. Bloody Portuguese. They arrived the first, the Dutchies only came second in line. Then came the English and the French. Things got messy.
You greet someone with “Howzit?” And everyone is either a brother or a sister.
Goodies: braai, pap’n sous, biltong, potje, boereworst, rusk – they all sound strange but are assuredly lekker, man!
Heritage Day (24^th September) is National Braai Day (everyone’s favourite). Now here’s a nation who believes in barbecue and is proud of it! There is even a braai song.
The Indian and the Atlantic Oceans meet at Cape Agulhas.
Soweto, where Nelson Mandela lived on Vilakazi street for some years, comes from SOuth WEstern TOwnship. The street is reputed for having hosted two Nobel Prize winners: Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
Important: forget everything about those places that produce amazing wine. Chile ranks high, but this is the wine Paradise. Period. Pinotage (cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut/Hermitage) is South Africa’s unique grape variety. Totally braai- and chocolate-friendly!
The Big 5 that you want to be spotting are: the lion, the buffalo, the elephant, the leopard and the rhino.

Some of my favourite SA artists and songs:

Miriam Makeba – everyone knows Pata Pata, but my preference goes to The Click Song.
The Parlotones – Push me to the floor
Freshly Ground – I’d like
Jeremy Loops – Higher stakes

I wanted to mark this Mandela Day by turning my eyes once more towards his country, one that he cherished so much, and show my appreciation as a traveller/tourist for having discovered it myself. I was in South Africa the last year when Mandela was still alive, although in hospital, and went back few months after his death. I’m grateful to have seen the colours of the Rainbow Nation and to carry them in my heart.

It is also my way of saying “thank you” to people, friends, all those human angels who inspired, encouraged, invited me, spent time with me, took me by the hand and explained South Africa to me, drew maps for me, told me the stories and had me listen to the songs that make me go back again and again. You brought richness into my world. And it stays, wherever I may go.

Travel solo, but take a book

Few days back I found myself walking again under –this time – the lighter weight of a familiar load: my blue backpack. Slightly absent minded yet ready to get carried away towards my destination by a habitual combination of metro, bus and plane, something occurred to me for the too many-eth time: I literally started to walk into life with a book in hand. My father insists that this is how I fancied taking my very first steps as a toddler: by furtively grabbing a book and starting off with it in that funny walking fashion that reminds of a rough night at the pub. To give me better balance, dad caught me and put a second book under my other arm. And that was it: walking happened.

Wherever I travel to, trust me to always have a good book for company. I’m one of those people who actually enjoy silence and the possibility of introspection on the road. I like to listen to my thoughts and feed them, cultivate them, let them wander and come back to me deeper than before. During the camping evenings on the Inca Trail in Peru, wrapped up in a sleeping bag, I read “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer in my tiny tent, lighting the pages with a head torch. It felt greatly adventurous under the circumstances if slightly unsettling since it develops on the true story of a young man who discovers the freedom of ultimate solo travel but dies because of it. It is, no doubt here, an amazing read and a ravaging insight into a traveller’s soul that any person who is a wander at heart should dive into, I believe.

In preparation for a travel to Sumatra, Indonesia I started reading “Krakatoa – the Day the World Exploded” by Simon Winchester. Now that enhanced the thrill of the experience I was about to live and gave me a sense of where I was going, if ever my booking left me with any doubts: the Pacific Ring of Fire. The book is a complex account of one of the largest catastrophe’s the world has faced so far – the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, of course – and is sprinkled with a fair amount of local history as well as highlights of the glorious days of the first explorers and colonisers. It is interesting and documented, though rather charmless from a literary point of view. But if you’re headed to Indonesia, you might as well give it a chance.

And ah, South Africa! I first travelled in mind there thanks to the stimulating, romantic and absolutely mind racing stories of one of the best adventure writers alive, Wilbur Smith, and his Courtney series. The man had me dream of this country before I could actually see it. He clearly inspired me to travel there. Or was it Sean Courtney?

Travel mates can be buggers. Sometimes the landscape may not be particularly gratifying and for having counted a long series of leafless trees on a recent trip through the States and Canada I can confirm that watching out the window for long hours will not always leave you breathless. Maybe you’re bored and possibly can’t sleep. In those moments, what you really, really want is to open a book. My personal recommendation is to travel with Bill Bryson.

The first book I read by him was “Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe” and I found myself in the embarrassing circumstance of bursting into laughter in the public transport. So the danger is real and it’s reassuring to know that I was not an isolated case of this new (to me) kind of public embarrassment. As it turns out, there are more of us out there taking the metro with a Bill Bryson book, laughing their heads off and embracing the risk of being mentally labelled as poor innocents: http://bit.ly/1C5P0qL.

Bryson has become a sort of best friend and as it so happens with some best friends who do not live close by, I miss his humour, the enlightened, jovial tone of his stories and his personal travel undertakings which sometimes end in such a wonderfully comic catastrophe. His books are guaranteed to have a gripping, long-lasting effect on me.

I later went on with “Notes from a Small Island” which tells about his discovery and first-hand observations of Britain and Britishness and continued with “Notes from a Big Country” where he wrestles with aspects of American life. Finally, I have just finished “A Walk in the Woods” and found it exceptional and as close to perfection as a book can get. Bryson is unbelievably gifted when it comes to decorticating details and explaining otherwise unfathomable and hard to describe feelings, thoughts and behaviours. How he puts that into such unique and mesmerising English is a source of wonder and makes me read his sentences again and again. Bill is magic. I can’t imagine anyone reading one of his books and not be immediately turned into a fan.

“A walk in the Woods” is about encounters:

I have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the
Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident from the first moment that she was a rarity.

But most of all, it is an invigorating encouragement to go hiking and lose yourself to the nature:

We took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our trousers, and stepped gingerly into the frigid water. The stones on the bottom were all shapes and sizes – flat, egg-shaped, domed – very hard on the feet, and covered with a filmy green slime that was ludicrously slippery. I hadn’t gone three steps when my feet skated and I fell painfully on my ass. I struggled halfway to my feet, but slipped and fell again; struggled up, staggered sideways a yard or two and pitched helplessly forward, breaking my fall with my hands and ending up in the water doggie-style. As I landed, my pack slid forward and my boots, tied to its frame by their laces, were hurled into a kind of contained orbit; they flew round the side of the pack in a long, rather pretty trajectory, and came to a halt against my head, then plunked into the water where they dangled in the current.

Moral of the story: read Bryson and/or travel with a book – it is bound to give you balance.

P.S. Though I firmly believe a book will always fit into a backpack, I might give Kindle a go one of these days to see how quickly I can adjust to modern day travelling. But I do love books in their printed version and what would make me at least as happy as great content is more use of recycled paper in the publishing industry. So that “A Walk in the Woods” can still be possible in years to come.

Interstellar – the sky is not the limit

Interstellar is no doubt the most powerful cinematic experience I’ve had in a while. Between impressive trailers leading systematically to seriously disappointing movies that always lack that little something (like a main topic or an exciting dialogue) that keeps me hooked on the screen, I might have given up on the possibility to find a truly thrilling movie any time soon. Nolan’s Interstellar gave me hope in the cinema again.

Without disclosing anything of the topic, which could not have been more contemporary, I’d say Nolan has created a mind-blowing movie in terms of visuals, beautifully supported by two exceptional actors. Matthew McConaughey who has kept on dazzling me with one exceptional performance after the other lately (from the monumental and practically unforgettable 5 minutes’ appearance in The Wolf of Wall Street to the flawless interpretation of an HIV dying cowboy in Dallas Buyers Club) is pivotal in Nolan’s tale. Jessica Chastain, timidly marketed by Hollywood still, but shining a powerful light in all her roles – I was particularly impressed with her role in Zero Dark Thirty, a movie, that if you asked me, received much less appreciation that it truly deserved (and I’m sure all Kathryn Bigelow fans will agree) – is once more stunningly natural and convincing here. Two absolutely perfect performances delivered in a supremely intelligent movie filled with exciting scenes and dialogue exchanges on the backdrop of uplifting Hans Zimmer music. What more can one ask from a movie?

When Cooper (McConaughey’s character) struggles to breathe at one point, I feel strangely breathless myself. I count the seconds till I breathe again and hope Cooper will keep on breathing, too. Remaining still in one’s chair is impossible. I’ve seen people bending towards the big screen, visibly alert and absorbing the tension in the same way I did, being part of the action.

The movie literally takes hold of you. This because it has all the ingredients that make one live and feel the movie. Nolan embarks us on a powerful sensory journey. He is possibly not of this world himself, so skilled are his endeavours. The details are fascinating and work together like little stars in a wonderfully sparkling galaxy. I’m always fascinated by how coherent the little bits and pieces, the fragmentary action and flashbacks come together under Nolan directions. He cannot make simple movies, there is no A to B flow, there’s X and then there’s T, Y, and then he throws you into A – sequences unfold irregularly but never randomly in front of our eyes; no one can predict what comes next.

Nolan gives me headaches: his scenes are so filled with intelligence, humour, wisdom, emotions, logic, rapidity, possibility, imagination, novelty, that it shakes the whole of you. He can easily give you a ride through a black hole and other places you didn’t suspect. You couldn’t have. It’s his universe, so impeccably architectured that you have no option but to follow and be dazzled. Nolan is difficult because he obliges you to be 100% present, to follow the course of the action which is preferred nonlinear. He commands involvement, mentally and emotionally, which is strenuous. Interstellar is a beautiful, sensitive, spectacular accomplishment of one of the liveliest and most spirited directors of our times.

Looking at the script, some lines have the potential to stay with us for a while. “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends time and space,” says Anne Hathaway in the movie and guess what? It doesn’t sound cliche. Probably because it fits the movie context so well when it is uttered – and time and timing are Nolan’s obsessions and specialties, after all. He knows this is bound to resonate with the audience. Even if the movie reality is mould to be dramatic, Nolan powders it with a great dose of humour. It has great pace and tension. It has logical, meaningful scenes. It has rhythm and exceptional soundtracks. I personally take a bow; Nolan is a tremendously skilled director.

It was about time I remembered what an intense movie was like. About time a movie asked so much of me. Interstellar is clearly my “wow” movie so far this year. I’m running out of words to convince you to go to the cinema and see it. I hope you will, for it is rare to see movies of such exquisite complexity nowadays. Unless they are signed Christopher Nolan, that is.

The right to remain silent

The world stood in shock this 7th January, 2015. Just another working day at a controversial satirical magazine in France, since long under the threat of terrorist attack for its provocative publishing of religious caricatures. Jihadists seeking revenge step into the editorial office and unload their Kalashnikovs all around, killing in cold blood. They will take other souls as well by the end of a mad man hunt that kept us all breathless for hours. Whether at work or in my car, I kept following the live broadcast of the developing events, chewing nervously one M&M after the other. The reporters shout whenever they receive ground-breaking information on the background of ambulance sirens or the sounds of hovering helicopters. Tension at its highest. We’re living exceptional times in terms of media coverage.

The tragedy triggered immediate international reaction and naturally united people in support of the victims and against all forms of terrorism. To which I wholeheartedly adhere. There have been a lot of talks including religious and immigration problems and the inherent responsibility of the States towards their minorities, lack of integration, etc. – in the heat of the moment, sensitive issues come to light. In this need for people to stick together, an idea worth militating for becomes the symbol people rush to hang on to: freedom of speech.

What happened is indescribably unjust, and there’s no discussion about that. But I watched the crowd campaigning for this emerging “Je suis Charlie” ideology and I grew worried. I’m sorry, but I cannot partake in a tendency in which freedom of speech is promoted as the liberty to say whatever, even when it offends and gravely disrespects others. While I express solidarity with all victims and their families and I am as outraged as any that such cruelty should take place, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend that now, all of a sudden, I defend what Charlie Hebdo was publishing under the label of freedom of speech.

Since when is freedom of speech an excuse for insulting people, cultures, religions that are clearly largely misunderstood and disrespected? Since when does the press, a major influencer on people’s minds and reactions nowadays (and by God, not everyone is an intellectual) has the right to provoke gratuitously when it comes to such sensitive topics as religion on the grounds that it is funny? Who of you who were out on the streets defending this kind of freedom of speech has truly laughed at the magazine’s caricatures back in the days? And should the press not better use its overwhelming power by being informative, instructive, meaningful, and let me push it a bit further, naively, maybe even play a role in appeasing racial/religious climate in a country where it is already tensed instead of literally opening a gate towards more conflicts and hatred and add fuel to the fire? Is that what freedom of speech has come down to and is that what people feel the need to defend nowadays?

Sad, if so. I am all for the freedom of speech, but there are also limits that should be self-imposed and that belong to common-sense and sensitivity towards those around us. If we decide to act selfishly and disregard issues that other cultures have deeply at heart by openly holding them up to ridicule, doesn’t it mean that we abuse our access to freedom of speech? Why not harm others with words and images just because we can? I was first taught “relevancy” when I started to write. If there’s a message, make sure it comes across. But what is the underlying purpose of saying that “Le Coran c’est de la merde?” I fear the freedoms that have been passed on to us are being largely misused and misunderstood nowadays and that everyone cries “freedom of speech” far too easily. Offending the other on the grounds of being funny is not something I can be supportive of.

I stand up for free press. The press that understands its power and stops feeding your kids with information they don’t need to see or hear. The press that knows it is strong enough to influence politics and decision-makers. That fights for the right cause not that keeps itself busy spreading fear, chaos, that brainwashes the audience and shows disrespect for the others simply because provocation sells well.

Forgive me, but I do happen to believe that press has a responsibility towards readers, citizens. Hence what you say demands a fair balance of information and reason. Press should not become just another example of cultural ignorance. Freedom of speech should be taken with moderation and respect. Otherwise, paradoxically, the freedoms we have come to acquire will only enhance chaos. I have a friend in China who could tell me a word or two about how precious the right to freedom of speech is. Use it well. Ultimately, maybe an inherent part of the freedom of speech is also the freedom to realize when it’s a good moment to remain silent.

P.S. I’m sure that if we all were to take the streets and march against every single bomb that blows up in other corners of the world as well and against the fact that to date roughly 805 million people struggle with hunger, we would have a much better world.

Two planes till Peru

Keys, money, passport, credit cards, flight ticket…I use all my powers of concentration to do the final check ritual and make sure I have all the vital belongings with me, preferably before I lock the door behind. Previous experiences have shown that, thorough though I may be in some circumstances, when it so happens that I lose my head, I usually go for a remarkable mistake, not just a small, insignificant one.

Before I left to South Africa, for instance, after some hectic days spent in-between work, work-related travels, packing and everything else, I did manage to lock myself out of the apartment with the keys on the inside. Luckily, every time I screw up massively, my guardian angel steps in to save the day. My landlord, who is strategically located three blocks away from me, had a third key (you would have guessed, I had duplicates, but they were on the other side of the door as well). He only answered my calls two hours later, so I had plenty of time to simmer gently in my own guilty consciousness and the extent of my stupidity. Can’t say I’ve learnt my lesson.

Before I board the plane from Brussels to Lima with a first stop in Madrid, I grab the fresh-of-the-day edition of El Pais. My Spanish is not great, but like every decent Romanian who grew up watching telenovelas, I have a passive knowledge of the language, good enough for me to grasp the overall message.

One article in particular gets my attention: it says something about a meeting involving several Latin American countries and taking steps towards an agreement to loosen abortion laws, etc. Here I am, up in the air, finding out that five of the seven remaining countries in the world which ban abortion in all circumstances are in Latin America: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras, Dominican Republic (the other two being Vatican City – no surprise here- and Malta). Here, banned means that the mother is forced by law to deliver her baby even if: 1. The pregnancy is the result of a rape. 2. The pregnancy threatens her own life and 3. It is medically proven that the foetus cannot survive after birth. I’ll be damn!

“You can judge a country by how they treat their women”? If so, then many should hurry into respecting theirs and considering them more than just walking incubators programmed to deliver babies at the expense of their own lives.

To put things into context, I grew up in a country where communism has taken the best part of being a woman: in my mother’s time and way before, there was no access to contraception. Could anyone in developed countries imagine sexual life without pills and condoms nowadays? On top of that, abortion was illegal and consequently practiced illegally on a large scale in dodgy conditions, jeopardising thousands of women’s lives. How many children could a woman breed after all, and what to put on the table? Sex must have been a real nightmare for them. So yes, reading stuff like this does get me out of my system.

I am steaming on the inside, going through paragraphs that take me into how little rights Latin America’s women have over their bodies, lives, health, fate. I turn towards the lady next to me: she’s dozing off peacefully. How can she sleep so carelessly, did she even read this, does she understand that the low consideration of these women makes human rights look like a shameful joke? Is no one up in arms about this? Peace and quiet on the plane. People travel in a relaxed holiday mood.

I, on the contrary, set myself in war mode. I mentally prepare some nice letters intended to the brilliant law- and decision-makers and wish I were granted permission to rewrite some of the Pope’s public speeches. In the Middle Ages, I would have probably been burnt at the stake. But there I was, in this 21^st century crippled by underdeveloped mentalities, landing in Madrid.

At the Madrid airport I have 2 hours to kill. To make time pass quicker, I inadvertently exit a door that takes me out of the airport. I didn’t realize this until I wanted to come back and saw that the only possibility to do so was to go through customs again. I only thought I was doing a tour of the airport but was absent minded and followed the wrong crowd. I must pass through the security check again, only this time I also have to take off my shoes as a bonus.

Luckily, I still have time before catching my connecting flight, so I spend it wondering aimlessly in the duty free shops. I never buy anything, but then I was bored and needed something to entertain myself with. Have you ever noticed just how dull everyone looks in an airport? But my steps and perhaps some subconscious desire lead me to where those small, cute bottles of alcohol are exhibited. It’s my lucky day: there a special promotion, 3 little bottles for the price of two.

I’m usually very bad at striking deals in all aspects of life, but I estimated that I could not go terribly wrong on this one. So there and then I decided to do what any reasonable human being who has an 11-hour night flight ahead should do: get drunk. I therefore acquire the small exhibits, buy a bottle of coke and empty some of the Johnny Walker magic into it.

This marked the first time I have ever stepped into a plane after having a drink. It was a very bumpy ride, I could feel the whole frame shacking from all over, but it didn’t manage to wake me up. From Madrid to Lima, I was sound asleep, the world’s problems hanging somewhere beyond me. Holidays, at last!

Metro ride in Athens

Coming back from Athens, Greece where I attended a TBEX travel bloggers’ event that gave me a fresh insight into the blogging world, I found myself lost and uninspired: what to blog about the city? The doubt was legitimate. I didn’t manage to see Athens. I only went to the Acropolis Museum and had a 2€ espresso with a view on the famous ruins and took a free ride on a hop-on and off bus, courtesy of City of Athens. The rest of the time was spent at the Megaron Athens International Conference Center, either in the conference rooms or in the hallway.

I did finish my journey with a short evening walk in the Acropolis area though, nostalgically retracing the steps of an eleven-year-old kid who was travelling for the first time abroad: me. I did not forget that my teacher had slapped me for having lost myself from the group, an act which I have ever since perfected through regular practice, especially when it comes to hiking on a mountain. The mythical atmosphere of the place must have distracted me to such an extent that I forgot to follow.

Years later, here I was again, jumping from one metro into the other to come and listen to the TBEX speakers , hoping to suck in all their knowledge just by being present. I wasn’t going to stay long in Athens, not enough so as to feel the pulse of the city and be able to blog about it. Writing about Athens didn’t seem realistic. And yet. When I arrived in Brussels, Belgium and had to take the metro back home, weary and sleepy as I was, I found my story angle.

Factually, Athens was for me an accumulation of underground travels this time. As a result, the metro became the only site in Athens that I could give some observation-based feedback on. As I was waiting for my metro connection in Brussels, it became clear as day that the metro stations in Athens were infinitely cleaner, nicer and overall friendlier by comparison. And by clean I mean spotless, which is easy to notice because they are built with white marble walls and granite floors. On the walls, small representations of gods and goddesses remind the travellers of where they are. In Athens, one of the oldest cities in the world, the myth is present, the legend is brand.

So what if the metro is so packed with passengers when it enters the station that some of them are glued face against the window? You’ll squeeze in, everybody does, eventually. The place is so neat it shines. There’s not one single trace of graffiti spray; eating, drinking and smoking in the stations are also forbidden. Some of them even have screens where you can watch the news while waiting. Let’s have a look at the price as well: a five-day ticket costs 10€. Now that’s affordable. And cherry on the top, in Athens the metros run until 2 am on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Brussels metro, on the contrary, welcomed me with a rat hole type of smell that put me off any desire to have breakfast and a general state of uncleanliness – a stain on its status as Europe’s capital city. At the conference in Athens I had a nice conversation with a representative from the Munich Airport about how airports are the business cards of their cities. They are, after all, the first stop on a traveller’s way to somewhere. And first impressions tend to be long-lasting.

The same goes for metros. After the airport, they are most likely what the visitors see next. Or the only thing they see at all, several times a day. Wouldn’t it be interesting, Brussels, to take Athens’ example and clean out a bit the mess that has established itself all too well in your underground world? I would like to come back from my travels to underdeveloped countries and be greeted by clear signs of civilisation, which can hardly be a reality as long as dirt is allowed to pile up with negligence. Shall I remind you that you’re hosting some of the most important European institutions and that it would be interesting to stand out as proud and presentable?

I felt like congratulating the City of Athens on this one. Crisis there may be, but the efforts to maintain a spotless and welcoming underground transportation system have not been affected and this is all to your credit. Next time I will spend more time on the upper level, too.

P.S. And while doing my research, I was pleased to discover that Frommer’s included Athens in the top ten cities with the best subways in the world: http://www.frommers.com/slideshows/818699-the-world-s-best-subways-10-top-cities#slide818700 Well done!

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