Nothin' like New York

There's my sister! The one looking at the camera, of course. Though I also really felt close to the Big Green Goddess by the time we left. Kyna had never been to New York, and I'd never been to see the Statue of Liberty. We took a few days between her posts and went to soak up some American-ness.

The statue is more than I ever thought it would be. The site is exhilarating - set apart from the city but looking squarely over it, pulling in people and beliefs and countries for a century, then putting them out on the streets of the U.S., asking them to get along and get things done.

The folds in her dress - that's metal, folks. It looks like gently draping cloth, but it reveals itself as mastery when you get close up. The image of a woman is one of the most important linkages we have as a society. We all believe in her. She just stands there, or rather strides, looking like she's ready to take on anything. Powerful and moving.

She's seriously got thighs that could crack walnuts, too. When I say she looks like she could take on anything, I mean the whole world. It's easy to believe in America when you're staring up at her.

And it's easy to believe in commerce in Times Square. Kyna and I rented a room on the 75634th floor of an enormous Marriott next to this photo. You know those 7 billion people we have in the world? They would all come pouring out of that place right before the Broadway shows were about to start. Kyna and I got tickets for Billy Elliott, which was cutesy and fun but nothing like the Addams Family would have been. Sorry, Kee.

Fortunately we found the best Mexican restaurant in the city, or at least the one with the most alcohol. This guy is filling up tankards with expensive tequila and jalapenos. When you take a drink of the resulting infusion, your eyes bug out of your head and your ears leak blood. The only remedy is copious guacamole applied orally. It was great luck that they happened to have some.

Father's Day in Amecameca, Mexico

Oh, Mexico. You never know what you'll find. We had rabbit tacos at a roadside restaurant, and outside this car was sprouting... something.

I had had a PERFECTLY AWFUL experience at a conference in a nearby city, and returned to the capital with my mood gloomy and my ego fair bruised. Luckily, a Mexican friend had invited me to spend the day with her family to celebrate Father's Day in Amecameca - familiar to one and all as the starting-off point for my brother's long-past ascent of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. These are two mountains, volcanoes really, that sit next to each other south of Mexico City. There is a legend about them, with Izta the sleeping woman awaiting awakening by Popo, the warrior. Something like that. Anyway, Kyle climbed them back in 1987 or so, and set a record for speed (probably because he then skiied back down.) He was with his friend Larry, and once they got back to Amecameca, a party with homemade ("bathtub") tequila was waiting for them. I hear that was the last time Kyle had tequila.

And this is Popocatepetl. Iztaccihuatl hid behind the clouds this Father's Day.


Anyway, on with the 2011 story! Gaby and her daughter and husband picked me up, dusted me off, and took me out of the city. We had another soul in the car: Gaby's father-in-law, Delfino.

Me and Delfino.

He is a retired barman from one of the old Cabaret clubs in Mexico City. He knew we'd want margaritas at the parrilla (barbecue) so he made sure we had all the ingredients. We also picked up some fruit - like these crazy red rambutan.

We stopped for a quick look at the church in Amecameca, and Jorge, Gaby's husband, explained the different motifs. He's a serious history buff, and loves to share his love of Mexico. That's not uncommon, I think, in Mexico: there's something that's like patriotism but resonates more with culture and the milennia this country has weathered.

 There's so much still here to see, from those early cultures. It seems to me that Mexicans have a lot to be proud of. Mexicans, also, are survivors. They take the good and the bad and they don't differentiate - both are valuable, both give us something.

So, enough philosophizing and waxing poetic about Mexico. It's time to eat. I am drinking the best margarita I've ever had, made by the master (Delfino) himself. The cooking bit is just for the camera.

 Tacos. Tacos!!!! This was the best lunch ever.

 A passel of adorable little ones regaled us with a talent show. Here they are rehearsing:

And in full voice:

Guess who didn't think about work, or stupid politics, or anything but sunshine, hammocks, tacos, kids and margaritas? Best antidote ever.

Pristina Kosovo

I spent all day in the hotel yesterday, Sunday, working like a madwoman.  Today is Memorial Day and I'll also work all day. Poor me! It's not the most exciting work, either - the skill sets one uses to create a Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Plan hover at the lower levels of intellectual development, like counting and pleasing clients. Hopefully someday soon I'll get to head into the more advanced activities at work - planning a real evaluation, training data collectors, getting into the field, cleaning data, analyzing, writing. I'm bored!

Kosovo is not as I expected - it's very modern, very European, and has advanced from the days of war (at least in the limited parts of Pristina I've seen so far.) The hotel, food, coffee, services, beer, that sort of thing - all very nice. They're big fans of America here, and especially of Bill Clinton:

The weather has been absolutely ideal - sunny with cool breezes, maybe 75 degrees - and people flood the streets to sit in cafes and have coffee. "Macchiato" is the very common coffee drink, kind of a mellow cappuccino (without the foam and nutmeg and attitude.)

The other drink is raki. I scared the bejeezus out of this guy when I sat down and asked if I could take a picture with him and his drink:

As I've come at the beginning of a project here, I'm watching my colleagues set up an office.  They know what they're doing, but it's a million-and-one small decisions (what color and when to paint the walls of the office, how much phone credit to give staff, how to hide the computer cables so the place looks nice...)  I opened a project office in Zambia last year for three people, though, and it nearly killed me - so many details.  It was my first time, so there are lots of mistakes I wouldn't make again (like trying to do everything myself, and relying on bankers).  Still, I have a ton of respect for the chief of party here, who will have a staff of a dozen and all the attendant office-related challenges and headaches. Here's the team, looking busy:

As many good things as there are in such a position (I'm sure the perks are nice, plus Kosovo seems a lovely place to live), they will pay for it with hours and hours of work outside of a 9-5 schedule.

I'm learning more about The Law than I ever knew existed.  It takes so much work to bring a case to trial, and so many people.  Another thing about the U.S. that I have always taken for granted - if I needed a court, a lawyer, and a judge to hear me, it's all going to be provided. (Yeah, I know nothing's perfect.) But here, and in many places, it's a luxury they don't afford.

This was my parting meal in Pristina. It's a hard boiled egg, wrapped in chicken, rolled in corn flakes, and deep fried. You don't get something like this just anywhere. I think it's called a Chicken Egg Roll.

Sensorium - special blog edition

We are here for one reason only, to awaken the senses as they've never been awakened before.

I'm at the Sensorium DC dinner, in a newly erected geodesic dome in Southeast DC.  It's a pop-up dining experience, a twelve-course meal accompanied by a wacky stage routine - not dinner theater, not mimes, but something in between.  Kind of strange and inexplicable and European - a not-quite-as-contortiony Cirque du Soleil.

Sensorium comes from Bryon Brown, who I'd surely never have heard of had he not been married to a friend and colleague of mine.  His previous dinners were titled Artisa, one of the muses.  Tonight, in this weird dome with strange actors in odd hats, they tell me that Artisa is in my fork.

We start with the Amuse bouche course: kir royal grape with magic crystals from outer space. We are being instructed how to eat it. There are seven steps. Yummy flavor... explosion.  Yeah, it's pop rocks.  People have been talking about this in all the press accounts, so I don't feel too bad doing the spoiler here.

Kir Royal Grape with "Magic Dust from Outer Space."

Salmon tartare is course two. Small dice, with dill sprigs on top.  The wine is something very light and lemony, and it's going with this course and a couple more, I think.

Then: Corzetti pasta with pistachio brittle is on the way.

Corzetti pasta turns out to be a disk of pasta, and it's served underneath crumbles of sweet pistachio brittle. It's very al dente, and has a pattern stamped in it. It looks like a wet cookie.

Then: Cold beet gazpacho with iced goat cheese. Nice.  Beet anything is so pretty.

Red wine makes an appearance now - an Argentine Malbec called Cava Negra.  Absolutely delicious - the best of the wines.  There's a potato gratin with asparagus, cherry tomato, and balsamic. And a song about food chemistry!  This place never ceases to amaze.

Next up was an oyster thing on a salt bed - which I couldn't eat:

But Sensorium had checked with each of us about food allergies, so I was served this little tomato:

Fried eggplant with honey and thyme, served with a Syrah.  Light and delicious, and the little sprigs of thyme looked like they had been hand-selected for their perfection.

Next course: Chicken roulades with chestnuts and spaghetti squash.  Actually, I don't remember when this one came out - I just have a photo of it so I know I ate it.  The courses start to get muddled up in my head now, because of the great wines.

This was really nice - but all around the table I heard people saying "I could eat an entire chicken breast like this."  The small courses are adorable, but I was dining with three hungry men.

Next there was an oxtail something on a crispy ricotta something else - this and the eggplant got top nods from our table. 

We got magic tricks while we waited on one course:

Tony reaching for the three of clubs.  Maybe the whole deck was threes of clubs?

This pork belly one was great, and beautifully presented.  Mine came with a solid 5cm by 5cm cube of pork fat, which was more pork fat than I've eaten in the last ten years.  I just had a nibble and then abandoned the rest.

The best part was the green onion.  Or maybe the wee potato. 

Some wacky contraption was wheeled around to each table, looking like something from a mad scientist's lab.  It deep froze the palate cleanser, which was served to us on toothpicks.  Very entertaining.

The dessert course was fantastic - a blonde cake with fruit, sounds simple, but it was so dense and vanilla-rich, it made the night for me.  I haven't enjoyed a dessert so much in I don't know how long.

Then we were given this weird plate with just a pill in it:

When you reach for the pill, it's not there - some sort of weird imagey mirror thing projects the picture of this pill up on the top of this plate, when in reality it's down inside.  Some sort of tongue prepper, it makes tangy things sweet.  We got a taste of key limes after that perfectly illustrated how it worked.

It was truly a bizarre night, very tasty.  Combining the experience and the food and the very good wines, it keeps you interested and charmed.  I have to throw in two recommendations: The nicer-than-average portable restrooms ran out of water, which was a drag for all concerned.  And they REALLY need to have something there for non-drinkers.  There was a non-drinker in our party and he got water all night (while the rest of us got "spring sangria" at the entry and wine all evening.)  Even just a nice juice or sparkling water or something would have done the job.

Filmfest DC!

Waiting for the bus is disconcertingly normal after being transported to Buenos Aires this evening. I'm outside the Avalon theater in Washington, DC, but just exiting the theater means I was just "somewhere else."  A good movie can steal you from time and place and fully implant you in another. This one was called "Hostage of Illusions" and I've just lived through the main characters' torrid affair, in which an aging writer finds paradisiacal youth outside his marriage.

Hostage of Illusions

Then he finds out his young lover has her own secrets.  The filmmaker insinuates that perhaps the lover is one of the children taken from the desparecidos (disappeared) - those lost to the dictatorship - and placed in loyal families' households.  Eerie, troubling, beautiful, and human. 

Loose Cannons

The film is part of Filmfest DC, one of six I've seen so far.  The first night, I went to Italy to hang out with a traditional family that owns a pasta factory, in a movie called "Loose Cannons." Well, they're sort of traditional - I can't spoil the twist but the family really entertains.  There's a grandma who has lived her share of life - she's made some compromises but lived to the fullest anyway - and a nutty auntie who's rebelling against the old maid label.  The family has to come to terms with the contemporary world in one swell foop, and it's not easy - when it starts, the patriarch has an almost immediate heart attack.  But they find a way to move forward.  I guess that's what we all do.

Lope

Next we leap into the end of the 16th century in Madrid - for "Lope" which tells a fictionalized version of the writing heyday of Lope de Vega.  The city has that pre-plumbing squalor down just right, but there's a city view in one shot that makes me wonder - how did they excise out all the modern skyscrapers from the skyline?  It's beautiful.  The lead male actor has a certain spunkiness that is endearing as he tries to get his plays read by the mercantile controllers of the theater "industry" of the time.  The female lead is lovely and devoted to him, though from a modern perspective I'd have to ask why - as she has plenty of knowledge of his amorous misdeeds.  Anyway, it's a fun romp, sort of "good old filmmaking" with a logical plot line and tried and true denouement. 

The Man from Nowhere

Sunday I saw one of DC Filmfest's featured South Korean films, The Man from Nowhere.  It is captivating, with very strong performances.  It starts with a double-cross and takes off from a point where no one trusts anyone, including a little girl.  Very intense.  As the tricks and deceptions unravel, the filmmakers premiere some really clever writing and surprises; I did feel, though, that some of the clichés of action flicks kicked into gear later in the script.  Nevertheless, it kept me riveted, and the finale is spectacular - bloody, tense, beautifully choreographed.  I gave it a lot of stars, and not only because the lead character has the most attractive torso I've ever seen.  Which he does.

Then there was "Octubre" (October) from Peru.  A taciturn loan shark - I think he has Aspergers, actually - has his life disrupted when a baby is left on his doorstep.  It's probably his, from one of the prostitutes he frequents.  The way he acts is like uber-man - all the worst stereotypes about men not being able to communicate, and not having or sharing feelings - it's 10X worse.

Octubre

There's a side story about an elderly guy who is saving his pension to escape from Lima, and he "rescues" his comatose elderly girlfriend from a state hospital.  He just sort of rolls her around town.  "I'm going to all this trouble because she's my girlfriend," he answers when someone finally asks.

Today I volunteered for the Cinema for Seniors event, back at the Avalon.  A couple hundred or more elderly people came from centers all over the city.  I did almost nothing, except hold my umbrella over some of them when it started sprinkling out (and some of them move kind of slow.)  But I watched the movie with them - a documentary on the history of gospel music called "Rejoice and Shout." You won't find a movie that's better pitched for that crowd if you try for the rest of your life.  Everyone was enraptured, even when they were making their way to the bathroom.  The film was lively, historically bound, beautifully filmed, moving. 

More soon!  Five movies left on my roster, plus maybe closing night?  Haven't decided yet... we'll see!

Steamed up in Tbilisi, Georgia

The stonework tops of the Persian Baths, Tbilisi

Persian Baths.  What does that sound like to you?  I thought of mosaic tiles and cave-like walls, steam floating between me and several dozen other silent bathers, the drip of water from the ceiling to the tile...  It sounded exotic and heavenly to me.

One of the archways inside

I descended into the waiting room to enjoy a halting conversation with the attendant at an indistinct midpoint between English, Georgian, Russian and Sign Language.  After reassuring myself that I knew how much it all cost, I was sent to a space that looked like someone’s living room, complete with a brown leather sofa and chairs, coffee table, ashtray, and a box of unexplained Q-tips.  The attendant left me a packet of Head and Shoulders shampoo, spoke a few unintelligible things while gesturing toward the clock, the door, and somewhere off in the middle distance.  O---kayyyyy.

At eye level, the room looked normal enough, but it’s underground.  The rolling brick and stone bubbles I saw from the street are the rounded roofs of these little rooms.  When you look up, the dome peaks at the top with a little stained-glass window “nipple”:

– not unlike the tip of the Khinkali dumplings (eaten not half an hour ago.)

  

 

It’s not like I’ve never been in a spa before.  I knew enough to get naked.  What would happen after that was mildly mysterious, but not frightening – more like intriguing.  Off the back of the living room a clangy metal door led me to the water room, with a marble slab and a pool of steam.  The water ran lazily over the sides of the rectangular pool, slowly but constantly,  a constant inflow of natural spring water.  Hot sulphur smell was part of the ambience, but not overwhelming.

DON’T look at the water, I kept telling myself as I lowered myself in, slowly, slowly, getting used to the heat.  Yeah, there are some floaties.  I don't... know... what... they... were.  This might gross me out in the U.S., but damn, seventy quadrillion Georgians throughout history can’t be wrong.  Not to mention the Persians, Turks, Russians, and everyone else who ever took advantage of steaming mineraly water coming out of the ground.  Just rest, breathe and rest.

I came out ten or fifteen minutes later, showered off a bit, and cooled off in what I’d named the Sofa Room.  Nana knocked for Phase II of the Persian bath – massage and skin scrubbing.  She took me back in the water room and laid me on the marble slab, giggling at my attempts to speak Russian.  She filled a bland little kitchen bucket with the steaming spring water and poured, poured, poured it over me.  Then she got out a scratchy mitt and scrubbed the crap out of me.  I worried about my skin – it turns REALLY red with something like this, and I didn’t want her to worry.  Then I realized – me and my white, indoor, sensitive skin – that was probably normal here!  All those Slavs and the like?  They probably all turn the color of beets just from brushing up against their clothes.  I belong!

Next it was soap.  Nana took what looked like an old, narrow pillow case and put some kind of soap in it – from the smell, I would swear it was Joy.  Anyway, she then blows into the pillow case, knots the top, and shakes and squeezes it till it makes an ungodly amount of foam.  She scrubs me down again with that, repeating the whole pillowcase-shaky-foam business a few times.  I don’t quite get it, but it’s making me laugh. No pictures - couldn't get the camera wet, sorry.

Then, oh, massage.  Brusquer and shorter than the lay-on-a-cushy-table-in-Vail-while-all-your-minute-aches-are-surveyed-by-someone-with-more-degrees-than-you massages I’m accustomed to (and lots cheaper), it still has the effect of loosening me up and cracking my back.  Wonderful.  Finally, with a resounding pair of thwacks on my shoulders, she states, “Finish.”  Then she pours another ocean of that hot, hot water on me, while I’m laying down, after standing me up, and as I try to walk toward the shower – throwing the bucketfuls at me from across the water room. 

In the guidebook Ali and Shane loaned me, there’s an essay about this place from a couple centuries ago, stating that, come what may, pay for the tea to end your bath.  “Sell your white stockings if you must, but have your tea!” it states, fervently.  So I did.  (Have my tea, that is.  I have no white stockings.)  A perfectly Russian little teapot and teacup, at least 600 cubes of sugar (you know, just in case), slices of bitter orange, and me.  I sat there a good twenty minutes before the attendant came back to see why I hadn’t left yet.  “One hour?” she asked, pleasant but bothered.  I got my ducks back in a row and went out into the cold night.

Entrance to the Persian Baths, at night

All I do is Eat (Georgia, continued)

What a lovely day.  I spent the first several hours of it just reading a novel, sitting on the front patio of the hotel.  It felt so indulgent and extravagant.  At about 3:00 I finished my book, changed into sneakers and a t-shirt, and hiked up the mountain behind the hotel.  At the top of the mountain is an asymmetrical tower - the Georgian Eiffel:

A spaghetti bowl of paths weave up and across the mountain; lots of individuals, families and couples were traipsing up or down as I climbed.  It took less than an hour - maybe I should call it a hill instead of a mountain? - but it was lovely to see the city from so high up.

 
I felt rejuvenated after the hike and walked back to the old city in Tbilisi for more sight seeing.  Lucky I did!  Because the first time I went to the old city, yesterday, apparently I never made it!  I was off by a few blocks.  So this time, today, I went a little farther... lost myself a bit more convincingly... and found amazing sights.  Each one made me think of a friend or family member, like the Barselona Totalizator sign (which made me think of Kyna, when we watched the Barcelona game together...) or the Absinthe Bar sign, which made me think of Shane and meeting an absinthe drinker on H St NW.  Or the Simpsons donut kiosk sign, which of course made me think of (my niece) Lauren and (my brother) Kyle, who love the Simpsons like I love M*A*S*H:

And everything about the city reminds me of Ali, all the things he told me about this place.  How beautiful it is, how cultured, how much they're into food and wine. 

I studied Russian so avidly as a kid.  It was like I wanted to BE Russian, not to say Soviet.  Now only a fragment of the language remains.  But I unearthed some of it in Dom Vina, a wine store I happened upon.  The elderly shopowner drew me in with a warm greeting, and we spoke for twenty minutes or so.  He didn't speak any English nor I any Georgian, so whatever was communicated, came through in Russian.  He was a mechanical engineer, many patents to his name, and multiple science awards to his credit - they were all hung along the back of the shop.  He hadn't worked in Irkutsk (home of the Soviet scientocracy) but he was impressed that I'd been there.

Alexander Kurdadze is his name - if anyone googles him, let me know what you find out.  There were even a couple of books about him in the shop.  Okay, so that's a little vain, but hey - if wine sales taper off, maybe he could get one or two book sales to keep him going.  Anyway, he was cool, and gave me an excellent glass of dry red saperavi wine.  I asked to buy the bottle, and it was only about $4.  Of course it came in a one-liter plastic bottle with a screw top, but whatever.  It tastes pretty good!

This is me at dinner later that night.  I'm on a balcony and it's getting pretty chilly - but the restaurant lays blankets over every chair, so you can sit out comfortably and watch people.  I had the best salad EVER - lots of spicy things over arugula - and Georgian red wine, plus the pretty cappuccino you can see in the pic.  What a lovely night.  The taxi ride back to my hotel was cheaper even than the bottle of wine.  Gotta love Georgia...