Cycling in Bogota

February 02, 2015 • Blog

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World » Colombia » Bogota » Cerro de Monserrate

The thing to do on a Sunday in Bogota is to climb Monserrate, one of the two mountains towering over the city. The climb can be done any day of the week, with on weekdays the path guarded by police every few dozens of meters, but the crowds on Sunday resemble an exodus. Thousands upon thousands spend the hour or so it takes to get to the church on the summit,

Worth spending time and money on is the Bogota bike tour. Afterwards, I had a horrid alcoholic beverage with two young dutchees. Both, during the tour and while having the drink, they were constantly on their phone, Tindering.
We drank chicha, which in Colombia is a mildly alchoholic fermented fruit drink. It reminded me of west African palm wine gone bad.

By now, I couldn't escape the Latin remake of Breaking Bad, on television seemingly everywhere. Walter White is almost an exact copy, with much of the series replicated scene by scene.

Lonely planet points out that Colombia is one of the most unequal countries on the continent, with the wealthiest 10% controlling about 45% of the country's wealth.
Be that as it may, research recently showed that, worldwide, the wealthiest 1% controls 50% of the world's wealth. Colombia might be unequal, but it pales in comparison to the inequality of the world.

Food, hippos and the hills of Medellin

January 29, 2015 • Blog

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World » Colombia » Medellin » Cementerio San Pedro

A more than passing resemblance exists between the layouts of the cities of Medellin and La Paz. Both, sprawling cities surrounded by mountains, edged by slums accessible by cable cars.
But, Medellin has lost virtually all its colonial architecture and feels much more affluent. It's also one of the few cities on the continent and the only one in Colombia that has a metro. Or, sky train, mostly, which also brings up similarities with some south East Asian cities, the level of development appearing comparable. And, this is somewhat reinforced by the Asiatic ethnic features of some of the Colombians.

Medellin aspires to greatness and claims to be built on seven hills. Also interesting is that the region, Paisaland, was originally primarily occupied by two groups. One of Basque origin, the other Jews. Years of mixing has eradicated those origins.
Medellin's metropolitan cathedral is a huge church made of brick. Apparently, it's one of the largest brick churches in the world. (The biggest is in Gdansk.) For the 2008 edition of the Lonely Planet, a lazy author only called around for info on updating the guide and ended up being misinformed, listing the church as the largest in the world.

Downtown Medellin gives off a feel of reclaimed inner city, similar to Johannesburg, say, or perhaps also São Paolo. But, this is hardly surprising as, specifically after the killing of Pablo Escobar and the subsequent Uribe presidency, Colombia in general and Medellin in particular, completely turned their safety and security records around.

In Medellin, in part, this was done by refurbishing large parts of the city's favelas, as well as connecting them to a city wide public transport grid. Medellin pioneered the concept of using cable cars for public transport to connect the slums on the city's crowded mountain sides. With that also came the creation and maintenance of public spaces and the initiation of public cultural centers, within the favelas. People living in houses that had to make way for providing this connectivity were relocated by the state with the objective of not disturbing the social cohesion of the groups involved.
Personal drug use, including cocaine, was decriminalized.

The concepts, after proving successful, were copied by a myriad of other cities with similar problems, most notably Rio de Janeiro.
And, taking one of the cable cars in to the favelas, with the now well maintained roads, the functional and usable public spaces, it's hard not to notice the apparent mellowness now dominating the favelas, though, it also appears, the slums as I saw them in Rio tend to be significantly poorer. The favela I stayed in, for three weeks in Rio, saw multiple daily military police patrols, with shots being fired nearly every day.

But, also in Medellin, not everything is as it seems. There's a lovely park on the outskirts of town. One of the cable cars that goes into one of the favelas connects to another cable car that's outside of the regular public transport system. The long ride takes you to the middle of the huge park where in a large service area a host of well trained staff try to make you feel comfortable. Several free daily tours take you around the area, with a mandatory guide, and mounted police follow you around.
A butterfly farm is nearby and I asked how long the walk would be.
"Oh, you can't walk there! You have to take the free bus."
"Why can't I walk?"
"Well, it's not safe."
"Safe? Why is it not safe?"
"Well, there are many people that will try to hurt you." With which she was mimicking a stabbing motion.

Close to Medellin, 40 to 50 hippos are said to roam around in the wild as a consequence of two of them breaking out of Pablo Escobar's private zoo.

Two foods worth eating are chocolate with cheese, and a sugary caramel-like substance called melocha. The latter is prepared like dough, around pegs tied to a pole (say a telephone pole) on the street.

Swimming in the volcano

January 25, 2015 • Blog

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World » Colombia » El Totumo

Not all volcanoes spew lava. Some bubble up mud. One of those is a 12 meter high hillock some 50 kilometers from Cartagena. If you don't take one of the overpriced tours, getting there is a bit of a chore, but, you're rewarded with a float in very dense warm mud where, if you so wish, local staff can give you a rubbing over while you bob in the grayish slime.
It's a popular destination, the queue around the pit doesn't disappear for hours on end, and the visit is worth it. Bring a go-pro into the pit for stunning group portraits.

Not wanting to visit any of the overly touristic sites in Cartagena, including the beaches, I also set out for the botanical gardens, on the outskirts of town. Another challenge to get to, the entrance fee was, like for many of the museums in town, unreasonably high. The gardens are pleasant, but bot outstanding. But, I also spotted monkeys, iguanas, colorful squirrels and a host of birds.
Almost alone in the park, a sudden screaming repeated itself every few seconds. Coming from somewhere higher up, it sounded like a cross between the grunts of a hippo and the screaming of a big ape. Perhaps, a wounded large cat.
I started making sure I was continuously in reach of a tree I could climb up in, and slowly advanced, but never found the source of the sound. At some point. On the edge of the gardens, the sound started to resemble the noise a cart in a roller coaster could make, screeching through the tracks. Fooled!

Near the center of Cartagena, a 400 year old monastery sits atop a 150 meter high hill, overlooking the city. On the road that snakes up, the hill, there is so much police presence, you're never out of sight of an officer. Whether that made me feel safer or more worried, I'm not sure. Later, I found this setup is not uncommon in Colombia.
The grounds of the monastery used to have a sloth you could pet.

Cartagena is pretty and cool and knows it. Prices are up, but it also seems this has not yet resulted in quality of service going down. At least not too much.
The old town is said to be the prettiest in the country. Founded as early as 1533, the city is part of a string of towns on the southern Caribbean coast founded shortly after the discovery of the Americas. Cartagena is still Colombia's most important port and flourished from very early on.
Several raids in the 16th century prompted the building of thick stone walls, which took two centuries to construct and reminded me of the city of St. Melo, in France.

On a side note, regular ferries now run between Cartagena and Colon, next to Panama City, in Panama, through Ferry Xpress.

Into Colombia via Barranquilla

January 21, 2015 • Blog

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World » Colombia » Barranquilla » Museo do Caribe

Barranquilla doesn't get much tourist love. Yet, it's currently one of the only two cities Inselair, the national airline of the Curacao, flies to in Colombia. Barranquilla is the fourth largest town in a country of 45 million and is an industrial hub, right on the Caribbean coast.

Where the 10 hour flight from Amsterdam to Curacao cost me a mere 300 euros, the cheapest, and only way to get from Curacao to the South American mainland is to fly to Colombia. A 60 minute flight at a painful 175 USD. But, adding insult to injury, I had to pay an on-the-spot airport tax of 39 USD.
Thankfully, Colombia, specifically Barranquilla, not catering to the tourist dollar, is pleasantly cheap.

After arriving at my hotel, I strolled around town, ending up on a sizable square, fronted by a largish curvaceous and modern church with inverted pyramidal purple stained glass windows. On the square, some 5 or 6 groups, ranging from 15 to some 50 people, were practicing their upcoming carnival parades, complete with marry bands setting the rhythm and style. Spectators numbered in the hundreds.
In one corner, a dozen or so male couples were cuddling.
Barranquilla hosts one of the biggest carnivals in the world.

On the way back, I stopped at one of the overly brightly lit bars that double as mini markets. for a beer. The television was showing a Latin American soap opera and several aged couples were engrossed in the unfolding drama. When the episode ended, the TV was shut off and loud samba music was put on. As if on queue, several all-male parties walked in and ordered copious amounts of beer, arguing even louder to be heard above the salsa rhythms.
The fascination for the soapies is widespread. Streetside burger joints have a television out in the open were passersby can get their fill.

Elsewhere in town, the museum of the Caribbean almost gets its use of QR codes exactly right. There's a free and open WiFi network at the museum, giving access to a local network; virtually all the exhibits, explanations of which are in Spanish only, have a QR code next to them which points to an address on the local network, where the same information, very well presented, is available in English, the online information comes complete with audio guide; and it's free.
But, a few of the QR codes are incorrectly placed, randomly around some of the rooms, and some just don't work. They also don't list the URL each code is supposed to point to, so, in case that reading the code fails, or you don't have a QR code reader, you can't enter the URL in your browser yourself.

But, the museum is worth a visit, highlighting the many different peoples and cultures that make up Colombia and, by extension, parts of the Caribbean.
Many of the displays have an innovative multimedia aspect to them, though it also seems that some were done on too low a budget, not being in the best of states.
The ground floor has a lovely multi-video life-size display on Colombian music. About a dozen or so projectors show life-size images of individuals, part of a large musical ensemble performing a range of Colombian musical genres, influenced by indigenous, African, Spanish and, in relation to the two islands that are Colombian and in the heart of the Caribbean, English styles.
But, besides the show being entertaining and impressive, it also had a bit of a creepiness to it. The life size video projections, with the human figures the only thing showing against a black background, the feeling I could not shake was a certain post-apocalyptic vision of a time capsule triggered by arrival of humanoids in a far of future, stumbling upon a cave built with the specific intention of preserving human culture long after civilization was ground to dust.

Ode to Mandela

January 20, 2015 • Blog

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World » Curacao » Klein Curacao

Transition is a magazine founded in 1961, in Uganda, quickly establishing itself as a tough-minded and critical periodical. Now, issue 116 having been published late last year as a long eulogy on the life of Mandela, the magazine is maintained by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

For this edition, I was asked to contribute, and, my mosaic of Madiba made the cut. Other contributors include heavyweights such as Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, who only survived Mandela by mere months, and Paul Theroux.

Talk about being humbled.

Taking it easy on Curacao

January 19, 2015 • Blog

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World » Curacao » Willemstad » Koningin Emmabrug

Mostly independent within The kingdom of The Netherlands, Curaçao is small, with only some 130000 inhabitants. Over 600000 visit yearly by cruise, making it the most popular cruise destination in the Caribbean, with an additional 2 million coming in by plane.
After its discovery in 1499, ownership switched multiple times between the Dutch, Spanish and English, before finally reverting to the Dutch after the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century.
Lacking gold, the island didn't demand much attention at first. Plantations brought in some money, but the first profitable industry on the island was actually salt mining. Then, oil was discovered, and now the inlet, with access through a natural channel splitting up the capital, is home to an island-dominating refinery which is currently being run by the Venezuelan state oil company. At night, when driving around the inlet, as I had to do to get to where I was staying, there would be an occasional Blade Runner-esque feeling to my nightly trips.
The refinery needs work, though. The island is the second largest producer of carbon monoxide per capita.

The official language of administration is Dutch, but English and the local Portuguese creole, Papiamento, are both also official. With the large influx of American tourists, English is widely understood.

The centre of Willemstad architecturally feels a bit like small town Holland in the Caribbean, undoubtedly why the island is popular with Dutch tourists.
A pontoon bridge connects the two sides of the town. The bridge can be opened, allowing traffic for the refinery to come and go, by disconnecting one end and, in a wide arc, putting the bridge aside.

Though public transport travels most of the island, outside the main routes connections are very infrequent. Most of the beaches are only accessible if you've got your own car. Bikes are difficult to rent and very expensive, coming close to the cost of renting a car.

But, the island is also moving with the times. Soon, Curaçao will be host to a spaceport, sending one tourist at a time to above 100km above the surface of the earth to experience a four minute free fall.
Meanwhile, connections to the region are bad. Aruba, Bonaire and the Venezuelan coast are all under 100km away, yet, all can only be reached by plane. Perhaps, with the newly opened ferry from Colombia to Panama, there's hope. But, I wouldn't bet on it.

One day, I climbed the highest hill on the island, also the third highest hill in the Kingdom of the Netherlands Netherlands. Inside an overpriced reserve, I arrived late, finding no one at the boom.
On the way up, I past a German couple that never made it to the top, me being the last to reach the summit for the day. Then, leaving, as I reached the exit gate, I was just overtaken by a patrol car who, with me just having overtaken the patrol car again, closed the gate and the park for the day. What if I had only been five minutes later?

Winding down in Fez

January 06, 2015 • Blog

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World » Morocco » Fez » Cafe Ferdous

Fez doesn't get the stellar reception Marrakech does, but the one big advantage Fez has over Marrakech is that while Marrakech's medina is almost completely targeted to tourists, Fez is a real working city. Yes, you still have to deal with the occasional tout, and some restaurants live almost only on tourism, but these are the exception. Most everyone else just goes about their own business.
Fez is often said to be the best-preserved old town in the Arab world. And it's big. In fact, it's he largest car-free urban zone in the world.

And, the old town might indeed be the best place in the world to see a funky old medina in all its splendour. It's amazing the little shops have survived for so long, in the face of western-style pervasive shopping empires. Of course, there's a certain charm to the little stores, not just for tourists, but the same applied to the many little butchers and greengrocers all around suburban Europe that were replaced in the 1990s by ever bigger supermarkets and malls.
But, modernity is creeping in, here, too. Between the new and old towns, there's a Carrefour hypermarket and your usual plethora of American fast food chains. I don't remember the mall being there four years ago.
Still, as long as it lasts, you can find plenty of tiny cafes, both in the new and old town, and watch the world go by. You can enjoy life, as it is. Well, mostly.
My hostel was one of the higher buildings in the old town. From its roof, overlooking the city in the faded light of a mist covered sun, the connected jumble of houses showed itself to be the perfect playground for scores of kittens.

The best parts of town, still, are those that see the fewest tourists. At the city's bus station, the bustle is energetic. A huge variety of foods is on sale, men hang around, seemingly their only purpose being to sniff tobacco resting between a thumb and forefinger.
Kittens roam the departure hall. If you sit down for a snack or a drink, you might get one jumping on your lap.

Something's afoot

When traveling by ferry from Algeciras, in Spain, to Tanger Med, Moroccan immigration is handled on the boat. It was a quiet ride, so only a few dozen passengers lined up.
When it was my turn, I was asked for my origins.
"today?"
"No, no."
"This trip?"
"No, no. Your origin!"
"Iran?"

It wasn't clear why this was relevant, but of the dozen or so who went before me and whose process I had been able to observe, I was the first one of whom fingerprints were taken.

Then, when entering Ceuta from Morocco, the queue was packed and long.
When it was my turn, three of the civil servants behind the immigration desk went into an extensive debate, which clearly was about what they were supposed to do with me. In the end, I was told to come around the side. I had to follow one of them to another office, a few hundred meters away.

The other office turned out to be the border control for entering Morocco. I asked what the problem was.
"We are only doing our job. We are border control."
Someone was called in from nearby, unlocked a cupboard, took out a computer and fingerprint scanning gear, and went ahead and scanned my fingerprints.

Then, when they were happy with their findings, one of them wrote something on the back of my little immigration declaration paper and told me to go back to the first office to get my stamp. There, I was motioned into the office.
While I was waiting, I could see the information these guys had of me, on file. The computer screen listed my passport as German. As German. These people were following up on some unspoken threat, afraid that some Iranian on a European passport might be illegally trying to get into Europe, or whatever, and not one of them noticed that the information they had taken down themselves , on me, was wrong.

The only Europe in Africa

January 04, 2015 • Blog

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World » Spain » Ceuta » Hercules statue

First passing from Carthaginians to Romans to Vandals to Visigoths, Tariq, the one who started conquering Spain by landing in Gibraltar, used Ceuta as a staging ground to cross the straits. Later, the area changed hands multiple times after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, before Ceuta was conquered by the Portuguese in 1415. At the end of the 16th century, Portugal, including Ceuta, for a while was ruled by Spanish kings. When Portugal regained its independence in 1640, Ceuta was the only city in the Portuguese empire that sided with Spain, which was formalized in 1668 with the Treaty of Lisbon.
Now, Ceuta, together with Melilla, a while to the east, are the only pieces of Europe on the African mainland.

The border between Ceuta and Morocco is formed by seven hills, called the seven brothers, Septem Frates in Latin or Hepta Adelphoi in Greek, probably the etymological source of Ceuta, Cebta in Arabic.
The border is formed by a wall of Israelite proportions, trying to keep aspiring Africans out. With that, Moroccans moving back and forth legally seem to facilitate much of the Ceuta economy. Taking a shared taxi from Tanger to Fnideq, from where it's a short walk to Ceuta, the car passed several dozen black Africans on the highway, all in small groups and all wrapped up in padded winter coats. I can't but imagine that, somehow, their plan was to get into Ceuta and the European Union.

The Ceuta tourist office tries hard to attract tourists and position the exclave as a destination in its own right, promoting the city as a place where all religions live together in harmony. I more found Ceuta a place that has a hard time forging an identity for itself. Yes, it's in Spain, but walking around, I heard more Arabic than Spanish on the streets. Parking guards are all black and the few beggars are all Moroccan women. The area around the port is a conglomerate of large shopping outlets, including a huge Lidl, because of the city being a tax-free zone. Plenty of restaurants serve tapas, but as many serve kebabs. The owner of my hotel spoke French, Spanish and Arabic. Some shops put up signs saying they don't accept Dirham, Morocco's currency, implying that there are others that do.

Police state?

Out of character for both morocco and Spain is that all cars are keen on letting pedestrians cross, being overly courteous even. How did that happen?

Ceuta does have a few bums on the street, at night sleeping in one of the few nooks and cranny on the peninsula. But, it seems, they are purposely left alone.
On Sunday afternoon. As I was strolling through the town's high street, a bum, wearing his sleeping bag as a cape and having his few possessions scattered about him, was put on the spot by two policemen pouring out of a police car. The police asked questions, showed disdain, while the bum responded loudly in a raspy voice and, eventually handed over a piece of paper. I stood and watched to see how the drama would unfold, just as when a broad shouldered training suit and sunglasses wearing goon sat down on steps close to me. After a minute he got up and asked me what I was doing.
"I'm looking at how this unfolds. What are you doing?"
He turned out to be Guarda Civil, in plainclothes, asked for my ID and had it checked.
Later, after I had gotten my ID back, he thanked me and walked off, together with what was another plainclothesman. The police eventually left the bum alone, who, after a while, put on a felt hat, slung his sleeping bag around him as a satchel, picked up his few belongings and walked off.

Both on Gibraltar and in Ceuta, I stumbled upon young adults and kids playing war games. Kids with very real looking machine guns were circling each other at a distance over difficult terrain in order to achieve, literally, the high ground. In Gibraltar, some of them were wearing army fatigues, first confusing me into thinking the game was real, soldiers trying to prevent armed teenagers from entering the peninsula.

Black face

In Ceuta, strolling through town, I was passed by an overweight man dressed like, well, a bishop, or perhaps a king, as he seemed to be wearing a crown. Then, later, heading to my hotel, I stumbled upon a get together, lots of families with young kids, crowding around a big band which started playing as I walked past.
Checking them out, I noticed a dressed up trio at the front of the parade. Two looked fairly identical, crowns, big white beards, long tunics, the third would have resembled a Moor, and was made up with black face. They were throwing candy around, taking it from a bag they were holding, kids scrambling for the sweet prizes flying through the air.
Resembling the Dutch/Belgian Sinterklaas celebrations, these were actually the three kings. Yet, as Sinterklaas, these three were bringing gifts for kids, here not Christmas Day, but January 6, three kings, being the day kids get their presents at these end-of-year celebrations.

Home of the greatest traveler

January 02, 2015 • Blog

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World » Morocco » Tanger » The tomb of Ibn Battuta

Home to the grave of Ibn Batuta, you're welcomed, coming in by ferry from Algeciras, by a huge text written in the side of a mountain: God, kingdom, home (or fatherland?).

The easy journey is to take the ferry straight into Tanger, but a considerable discount can be had if you're willing to head to Tanger Med, the shiny new port some 40k away from town. Touts used to walk over unsuspecting foreigners here, but now, the whole place feels like an abandoned airport.
From Tanger Med, a train travels a few times a day to town, but busses are more frequent, if little is signposted, requiring to ask around. French is still an asset, though I found that, often, English or Spanish were more useful.

The old town of Tanger is not nearly as attractive as, say, Fez, but still has something of a charm. Relatively few foreign tourists visit, suggested by only the occasional cafe or restaurant catering to tourists, even though there's a large number of hotels (mine had two tortoises walking around on the roof). But, it seems, outside the two market streets, much of the old town is primarily a jumble of living quarters. Fairly modern, fairly run down.

The star attraction of Tanger is the tomb of Ibn Battuta. Born in the 14th century, he traveled extensively in the then thoroughly connected Muslim world, and beyond, making him the first widely traveled tourist. Sure, Marco Polo beat him to China, but he was traveling as a merchant.
I paid my respects at the small tomb, which still has a caretaker, an old, nearly blind man. I was allowed inside to contemplate my traveled existence, while a lady who passed by and saw me paying my respects, started chattering to me in Arabic.
For travelers, visiting Battuta's tomb should be like paying respects to the patron saint of globetrotters. It's amazing the tomb is not only still there, after nearly 700 years, but is actually actively maintained.

Afterwards, I enjoyed the sunset from the ramparts of the medina. The sun setting on one side, Tarifa, on the south coast of Spain, on the other.

Strangely, I've seen several, what appeared to be locals, with dogs as pets.

On the Friday, as all the mosques were calling the faithful to prayer, I walked over to the 'thieves market' to see what would be on sale.
Most of the shops were closed for prayer, but a few of the food stalls were serving. I ended up wedged between a dozen or so traders who had closed their shops but seemingly had foregone a visit to one of the nearby mosques, scooping up a mix of salads with fresh bread, topping it off with freshly fried small fish. Delicious, and at a fraction of the cost of a meal in the old town, where sit down restaurants seem to primarily cater to tourists.
Later, I stopped at a Senegalese restaurant for dinner. They had a menu, but where serving only one dish.

There's a noticeable Dutch presence in Tanger. A seaside Cafe serves Croque Hollandaise, explaining them be uitsmijters, for the initiated, and several of the beach side clubs have names that betray a Dutch connection.

Gibberish

December 31, 2014 • Blog

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World » Gibraltar » Top of the rock

Crossing the border from Spain into Gibraltar recalls crossing between EU member and non member states in the early nineties. There's a discernible but unspoken sense of unease, money changers are everywhere, grubby cafes sell crappy food and uncommon nationalities hang out a stone's throw away from the border crossing, just doing nothing but smoking and looking around somewhat feverishly.

Passports are checked upon entry. Gibraltar, like the UK, is not part of Schengen. And, on an average day, the meager population of 30000 is augmented by the same number in visitors. Some come in on the occasional cruise, docking in Gibraltar, but most just cross the border from Spain, wanting to check out this modern anomaly, or needing to shop for dirt cheap alcohol, bottles of vodka going for as little as 2.5 pounds.

After the passport check, there's no option but to cross the runway of the tiny airport, constructed parallel to the border. When planes land or take off, booms come down and entry and exit to the little enclave is temporarily suspended.

There's little to see in Gibraltar. Except for Africa, or, supposedly, the southernmost pub in mainland Europe. And the rock with the only wild colony of monkeys In Europe.
The rock is very windy. Much of the coastline is half heartedly blocked from easy access, though a few beaches are being cultivated. When you make it to the top of the rock, you might just pick up Moroccan cell phone services.

At only 7 square kilometers, Gibraltar was ceded by the Spanish to the British as recent as 1713. The rock's name is a bastardization of Jabal Tariq, the rock of Tariq. Tariq was the governor of Tangier, who landed in Gibraltar in 711 to start the Moorish conquest of the Iberian peninsula.
The name stuck.

The term gibberish refers to a mix of languages somewhat commonplace in Gibraltar, people mixing up specifically English and Spanish in what's called Llanito.

While hiking the rock, I talked to a local girl who was playing with a young puppy. With a very cockney accent, I asked her were she was from.
"Oh, I'm just from here. Very boring, really."
Perhaps so, but with the pitch black hair, piercing dark eyes and light skin, she could have easily been either Spanish or Moroccan. Not so much typically British.

Picasso in Malaga

December 28, 2014 • Blog

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World » Spain » Malaga » Picasso museum

Birthplace of Picasso, the city is mostly modern. And, the connection with Picasso is a bit farcical; even though there's a Picasso museum that's worth visiting, the maestro left Malaga when he was 10 and never returned after turning 19.

Like many of the cities in the region, Malaga was founded by the Phoenicians. The basement of the Picasso museum is also the site of Phoenician archeological remains.
Originally called Malaka, the city produced royal, Tyrian, purple. Control shifted to the Punics, of Hannibal and Carthage, but became Roman in the third century BC, when Rome defeated Carthage in the second Punic war.

Geocaching in Sevilla

December 26, 2014 • Blog

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World » Spain » Sevilla » Alcazar

It's less than 500k from Lisbon, but Sevilla is not easy to get to. There is no train connection and though there is the occasional direct bus, I found them booked up several weeks before my trip.
Instead, I had to struggle to get to the right train station in Lisbon, take a train to Faro, switch to a train to the border and from there take a bus to Sevilla. On the up, I shared my first train compartment with a girl who was carrying around in her backpack a small inquisitive terrier, curiously poking his head out and investigating everything around him.

Back when travelhog.net was competing for travelers' eyeballs, that is, more than a decade ago, I was discussing the possibilities of a partnership with the gents behind geocaching.com. In the end, the partnership didn't happen, but its psychogeographic tendencies never failed to interest me.
Now, on Christmas Day, with virtually everything in Sevilla closed, I got around, finally, to doing a few caches myself, while enjoying the midwinter sun.
Where caches, the objective of what's effectively a type of treasure hunt, used to be containers with gifts, where you'd take one out and put another in upon finding it, now, they're typically tiny magnetic containers with minuscule logbooks to mark your achievement.

After Dérive app, I'm now working on a mobile exploration app that has some overlap with both geocaching and the dérive. The geocaching app is very decent for facilitating exploration, but fails in one aspect. Like the dérive, geocaching is about exploration, yet, the app provides a map of your area, which invites the user to take the shortest route to the cache currently set as the destination, instead of allowing the user to slowly drift to his objective.
Also, the app, or perhaps it's a consequence of the online interface, doesn't deal well with content in multiple languages. Mostly, information on caches, when providing information in more than one language, is jumbled up and hard to sift through.
A very well designed aspect of the app is that an Internet connection is not a necessity for using it. When connected, the app will download information on a bunch of nearby caches which is then available after disconnecting.

I seem to recall that, in the past, finding caches was typically done through the decoding of a series of tasks or instructions, slowly directing the user to a destination and the physical cache, with wayfaring, using the user's current position, as an essential part of the discovery. A bit like doing a dérive on Dérive app, but with a tangible objective.
However, the caches that I did in Seville, as well as the ones I later did elsewhere, where all very straightforward, all being just a destination with a story attached, with at the destination a cache with a logbook.

I figure that, instead of using magnetic caches and little logbooks, finding caches could be made more interactive if the caches are in fact QR-codes pointing to a URL that's not made public elsewhere. Or, better still, if the geocaching app would have an integrated QR-code reader that would integrate the logging and commenting system.
Then, as I was walking around in the gardens close to the Plaza de España, one of the must-sees in Sevilla, I fired up the geocaching app again. No detailed information on nearby caches were downloaded to be available offline, except for their locations. The one cache I pursued actually made me find a hidden QR-code. However, this turned out to be, perhaps a geocache, but specifically the objective of a hunt for the similar app Munzee.

A few things on Sevilla

The south of the Iberian peninsula for a long term was under Muslim control. This has left a clear and significant influence on the Spanish language as well as Spanish culture, even though it's also quite amazing how different Spain and, say, Morocco, are, basically the two countries that started to diverge when the Spanish completed the Reconquista at the end of the 15th century.
All Spanish words that start with 'al-' derive from an Arabic counterpart, the Spanish 'Olé' might derive from 'Allah' and a lot of typical Andalusian architecture is essentially repurposed Moorish architecture.

Earlier, it was the Phoenicians, specifically the Carthaginians, who kicked out the Tartessians to found the city of Spal, which was then romanized to Hispalis, from which the country derives its name.
Under the Moors, the place name ending -is was Arabised to -iya, which later resulted in the English Seville and the Spanish Sevilla.

Besides the scores of tapas and the overkill of street sellers panhandling chestnuts, the thing to eat in Sevilla appears to be thick hot chocolate with churros. I thought churros were Brazilian, but it turns out the Portuguese might have brought them with them from China, after becoming intermediaries between east Asia and Europe.

The cathedral of Sevilla holds, most probably, the body of Columbus. Amazingly, though it's generally accepted the man was from Genoa, it's not at all sure. There's some suggestive proof he could have been Portuguese, Greek, Polish and even… Scottish.

Remnants of a golden age

December 23, 2014 • Blog

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World » Portugal » Lisbon » Cristo Rei

Turkey occasionally gets hit by earthquakes but having them in Istanbul is rare. Even rarer are major earthquakes anywhere else on the European continent. One of the very few exceptions is the earthquake that levelled Lisbon in 1755. Much of the city, except one suburb built on a rocky outcrop, was raised to the ground. Now, as a consequence, most of the city is no more than some 250 years old, even though the town was formally founded by Phoenicians as a trading outpost already some 3000 years ago.

The city rebounded quickly after the earthquake, because of the fabulous Brazilian riches that poured into to country. Where the Spanish were bleeding modern day Bolivia dry in Potosi, Portugal was getting its wealth from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, specifically the mines around Ouro Preto. Both in some of the former colonial strongholds in Brazil, as well as in Lisbon, some of the elaborately decorated catholic churches are plastered, on the inside, with gold from Brazil.

The vast amounts of money combined with the late renaissance sense of beauty quickly made Lisbon into a very pretty city, with some very impressive baroque architecture.
Like Rome, Istanbul, Kampala and others, Lisbon claims to be built on seven hills. Combined with sights, such as the Ponte 25 de Abril (the day in 1974 of the Carnation Revolution, when Portugal shook off the shekels of dictatorial yoke), which is a near carbon copy of the Golden Gate in San Francisco (and producing a constant drone from the many cars crossing), and the remnants of the Portuguese golden age, the age of discovery, make Lisbon an worthwhile place to discover. If perhaps a bit too popular, at least over the holidays.
In fact, Porto's compactness, combined with its lower profile, make that the more pleasant of the two, even if Lisbon experiences the warmest winters of all capitals on the European mainland (only Valetta is warmer).

I had been to Lisbon before, but I wanted to visit the suburb of Belém, again. Meaning Bethlehem, the place represents the Portuguese desire to conquer the spice trade, first, and, through that, the world. Now, the two most prominent spots are the Torre de Belém and the Monument to the Discoveries. Still, on the banks of the wide river Tagus, they both feel a bit small, insufficient.
Sure, Columbus was first turned down by the Portuguese king, before sailing to the Americas in the name of the Spanish queen, but it was the Portuguese who claimed the spice trade first, as well as the Orient and with that the European discovery of much of the African coast. A feat like that, deserves a monument of, well, monumental proportions.
The marble edifice that is the Monument to the Discoveries is nice enough and simply faces the other side of the mouth of the river, as opposed to looking out at sea. Or maybe it's looking towards Africa?
The tower, a short walk away, in its gothic grandeur, is a leftover of a bygone era.

Later, walking somewhat off the beaten path in Belém, in the area around he train station from where I would head back to Lisbon, I got an inkling of how the Portuguese economy might be suffering. Downtown Lisbon and Porto are in great shape. But here, grubby streets and facades, street sellers without a stand trying to peddle bundles of socks, I was welcomed by overweight, early old people in shabby clothes. Just a coincidence, or was this Portugal outside of its main economic centers?

The Tagus river is immense, more like a huge bay with the river, where it enters the bay, not much more than a sizeable stream. So, it's perhaps not too surprising that, when Portuguese explorers found a huge bay off the coast of Brazil, they thought that was also the mouth of river, calling it the Rio de Janeiro.

In an unusual reverse role play, Lisbon copies what is the most iconic image of Rio. In the 1940s, eventually as proof of god's grace for keeping Portugal out of the Second World War, Lisbon got its own version of the towering statue of Christ the Redeemer. Here called Christ the King, it's on the other side of the bay from downtown Lisbon and stands, with huge plinth, some hundred meters tall. Visible from everywhere on the Lisbon shore, it receives very few visitors.

Food and drink in Porto

December 19, 2014 • Blog

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World » Portugal » Porto » Ponte Luis I

It’s easy to forget that as little as 40 years ago, several Southern European countries, including Spain and Portugal, were still suffering from military dictatorships. Holding on to its colonies for significantly longer than the Brits and French, the Portuguese let go of its lands in Africa when military control of the country faded, only in 1974.
The Museum of Serralves had an exhibition on SAAL, the collectives of architects and citizens building dozens of suburbs directly after the dictatorship. With the people, instead of just for the people. It’s fascinating to see how much of the imagery, both the activist posters and the many photos which documented the movement, which wanted to replace the slums, essentially European favelas, with proper housing, resemble the imagery of the anti-dictatorship movement in South America, which happened roughly at the same time. Brazil, for one, replacing its dictatorial rule with a civilian a good decade later.
Or is it that all demonstrations, in the 1970s/80s look alike and here it’s just an ethnic similarity which struck me?

Food

On my meanderings through Porto, I was pleasantly surprised at how affordable Portugal is. Cheaper than São Paulo, for one, while, with both Porto and Lisbon being much more compact, the culinary variety is much easier to take in.

One local dish is the Francesinha, based on the French croque-monsieur. It dates from the 1960s, when a native of Porto returned to his city after having spent some time in France and Belgium, from where he brought back the idea of the toasty, adapting it to local tastes, by adding more meat and a spicy sauce on top.
This happened at the time the French started visiting Portugal as tourists. The French girls, baking on the beaches of Portugal, showed more skin than the more conservative Portuguese women did. So the dish, naturally perhaps, became associated with the French girls, both being hot and spicy; ‘Francesinha’ means ‘little French girl’.
The quality and style of the francesinha varies a lot from place to place. I asked around for a good recommendation.

Another local favorite is tripe. This dates back to the 15th century, when the Portuguese fleet that was to conquer Ceuta in North Africa in 1415, left from Porto, taking all the meat provisions from the region with them, leaving those that stayed behind only tripe to eat.
Tripe is so much associated with Porto that the Portuguese call those from Porto tripeiros, tripe peoples. I’m not a fan.

From the greater region also comes feijoada à transmontana, a bean stew somewhat similar to the archetypical Brazilian dish feijoada. I was under the impression (as are Brazilians) that the Brazilian feijoada originated with African slaves, introducing West African cuisine to South America. The Portuguese disagree.
It’s of course possible some type of reverse osmosis occurred, from Africa to South America to Portugal. Or feijoada is simply the printing press of culinary feats.

Drink

Many of the names of the popular brands of port are foreign, primarily English, with a few Dutch exceptions. This dates back to the end of the 17th century. Port became very popular in England after 1703, when merchants were permitted to import it at a low duty, while war with France deprived English wine drinkers of French wine. Earlier, in 1678, a Liverpool wine merchant had sent two of his men to a region north of Porto, to learn the wine trade. But, while on a vacation in the Douro, the region where all Port comes from, the two men visited an abbot who so impressed them with the wine he served them, the men bought the abbot’s complete supply, triggering a prolonged English interest in port.

Several of the port houses give reasonably priced tours, which include port tastings. The portions are small, but the quality is good.

Of Hastings and London

December 05, 2014 • Blog

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World » United Kingdom » Hastings » Hastings Castle

My end-of-the-year trip to Europe started in Brighton. Royal Air Maroc flew cheaply to the UK from Brazil, even if they bait-and-switched my airports from Gatwick to Heathrow.

Struggling to adapt to the European weather, I mostly stayed in-doors, though I allowed myself to suffer through a run of the Brighton hash, running, in the dark, in The Downs, the countryside, around the cute little town of Lewes.

It was a doctor from Lewes who first prescribed the curative powers of a seaside stay and a 'seawater cure' to his clients, which resulted in the boom of Brighton, as well as nearby Hastings.
Brighton, cute, and home to the likes of Nick Cave, Fat Boy Slim and a host of other big names, is still very popular and something of London-by-the-sea, particularly on weekends. Hastings perhaps a bit less so, is famous for the seminal Battle of Hastings in 1066, which actually happened a few kilometres to the north, near the aptly called village of Battle.

Now, at the end of autumn, Hastings was waiting for the spring to arrive, though at least one of the town's funiculars was still in operation. I found Hastings Castle, dating back to 1070, closed, while the Hastings pier, which burned down in 2010, was closed and being repaired.

Hastings has the oldest fishing fleet in the UK launching from the beach. And it has the decent Jerwood Gallery which was hosting an exhibition by Jake and Dinos Chapman, whose exhibition included a painting by Hitler, for which you had to bow down to see it and before realising it's Hitler's, as well as an awesome series of repurposed 18th/19th century portrait paintings.

On the way to Holland, I spent a day in London and, braving the near-freezing cold, took refuge in the Tate Britain. Here, I attended a short talk on the painting Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match, set in Calcutta, which was commissioned by the first governor of Bengal and India, Warren Hastings. Hastings, the man, had no real connection with the town on the English coast. However, towns in New Zealand and Australia were named after the former governor.
According to the speaker, cock fighting was introduced into Bengal, where the painting was set, by the British. But, that seems to have been conjecture. Cock fighting is thousands of years old, with the, ehm, sport, being explicitly mentioned in Tamil (Indian) documents over 2000 years old.

The painter, Johann Zoffany, of Bohemian/German origin, left for India after accruing the anger of the queen of England. Zoffany had been commissioned to paint an interior piece of a space in Florence. When finished, identifiable individuals in the painting turned out to be local princes and counts, who had paid Zoffany to be in the painting, on top of his hefty queenly sum.

Getting from London to Rotterdam, I took Megabus. Cheap, but no match for the qualitatively much higher bus services in large parts of South America.

The British were coming

November 23, 2014 • Blog

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World » Brazil » Paranapiacaba » The old train station

The Brits once ran the São Paulo Railway, transporting both people and goods from downtown São Paulo to the coast at Santos. Railway travel in Brazil is, now, the bastard child of public transport; an envisioned high speed rail connection between Rio and São Paulo which was supposed to be operating in time for the World Cup Soccer this year has not yet materialized and seems to be in development hell. But, decades ago, plans to connect the furthest regions of the country, from the far north to deep in the Amazon were very much on the table.
Now, a tourist train once a week still plies the route between São Paulo and Paranapiacaba, halfway to Santos, and once the headquarters of the British railway company. But, the regular suburban train network comes within 10 kilometers or so of the village, several times each hour, the last few kilometers easily traveled by local bus.

Paranapiacaba was built at the end of the 19th century as a company town, with the city design resembling a panopticon, originally envisioned as an ideal layout for prisons, with the wardens at the center being able to see everything around them. However, though purposely designed as such by Jeremy Bentham, who coined the concept of the panopticon, it almost feels the town's design resembling the panopticon is more a coincidence, as the middle of the small town, currently with about 1200 inhabitants, is simply a small hill, on which, not surprisingly, the lead-engineer's house was built. As a result, in theory, the whole village can be surveyed from the top of the hill, though in practice a sizeable portion of the town is out of sight due to trees blocking the view.

The city saw its population dwindle with the labor-intensive funicular, which was located between Paranapiacaba and Santos and was used to bridge the steep slopes towards the sea, was replaced with an automated process. Then, in 1982, the last steam train traveled between São Paulo and Paranapiacaba, damning the town to obscurity.

The old train station, inaccessible to tourists, contains a clock tower modeled after Big Ben and, with the Brits keen on soccer, the town is home to what might be the oldest soccer field, of official proportions, in Brazil. Amazing that, for the World Cup, this was not at all exploited.
But, perhaps this was due to the only recent restoration of the village as a tourist destination. Much of the town was still in private hands until the start of the 21st century, and mostly off-limits to outsiders as well as in generally bad shape, with tourism only recently picking up. The very few pousadas in town are overpriced, though there's a slowly growing but cute restaurant and cafe scene.

The name of the town, Paranapiacaba, means 'where you will find the sea' in an Indian language and, supposedly, if you climb one of the nearby hills, it should be possible to spot the sea in the distance.
Paranapiacaba is also on an old Indian route connection the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.

Portreat.com: Rebelião Jornalistica

November 15, 2014 • Photography

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World » Brazil » Sao Paulo » Madame Underground Club

Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.

Ouro Preto and Tiradentes

November 01, 2014 • Blog

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World » Brazil » Ouro Preto » Praca Tiradentes

Natalia was invited to speak at the Forum das Letras, a yearly week long literature event in Ouro Preto. Sponsored by a series of big companies, I was allowed to tag along, resulting in a relaxed week of fine dining interspersed with the occasional debate, play or presentation. Quite Brazil-centric, with sessions related to the role of journalism and literature during the rougher dictatorship years being among the more interesting events, no information was available in anything but Portuguese. Almost an exception were two panels related to ICORN and PEN, two organizations facilitating persecuted writers. ICORN does this by partnering with cities who provide a refuge for persecuted writers for a period of up to two years. Run by a Norwegian and bringing in an Iranian and Mexican writer, they required some on-the-spot translation, but only to facilitate the Portuguese speaking audience.
ICORN, fairly small with about 45 partnered cities, is in the process of adding Ouro Preto to their list. During the event, an apartment was offered to ICORN for future visiting writers by an American who has lived in Brazil for the last few decades. This turned out to be the owner of the hostel I stayed at last time I was in Ouro Preto.

On this visit to Minas Gerais, the second most populous state in Brazil and, according to much of the press, the state that was responsible for Dilma Rousseff's recent win in the presidential elections, I also wanted to visit nearby Tiradentes, another colonial town that benefited from the mining craze in the 17th century.
Tiradentes was the birthplace of the leader, Tiradentes, of the Inconfidência Mineira, an 18th century separatist movement, and, though cute, pleasant and beautifully situated, also is tiny, with only some 6000 inhabitants, completely dependent on tourists. Apparently, it has the largest collection of starred restaurants in Brazil.

I visited Tiradentes on a sleepy, sunny, Monday. Those relying on tourism for their livelihoods were mostly lounging in the sun, the cobbled streets were empty and mules and horses were roaming the streets in search for the few patches of grass.
Not unpleasant, I think I preferred less pretentious and nearby Sao Joao del Rei.

Weekend in Paraty

September 08, 2014 • Blog

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World » Brazil » Paraty » Jabaquara beach

Paraty rose to importance in the beginning of the 18th century, after the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais, the Brazilian province north of Sao Paulo and Rio. The mined gold was shipped to Portugal from Paraty and fuelled the economic boom of the very pretty colonial town, now very popular with both foreign and Brazilian tourists.
The town only revived its economic prospects in the 1970s, when, at last, a paved road connected Paraty with Sao Paulo.

Now, the town and area are more known as a source of cachaca, the Brazilian liquor essential to every Brazlian's favorite drink: caipirinha, as well as for its great beaches and very decent cuisine. Paraty has become something of an artists' colony.

We spent a weekend on Jabaquara beach, next door to Paraty, to celebrate my successful completion of yet another revolution around the sun.

A visit to Cordoba

August 10, 2014 • Blog

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World » Argentina » Cordoba » Sarmiento Park

Not nearly as colonial as the guidebooks make it out to be, the 200.000 students who are based in Cordoba make for a very pleasant and reasonably priced city, with a host of lovely bits and bobs spread out over the city.

Nearby, several smaller villages have their own colonial histories, much of which, though not all, has been supplanted by modernity.

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