A visit to Andorra

September 27, 2012 • Blog

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World » Andora » Andorra la Vella » Pyrenees

Andorra, though pretty, is also a bit boring. There’s little to do but to ski and shop. And there’s little skiing in summer.
With no, or virtually no, sales tax, pretty much all products are, by default, some 20% cheaper than elsewhere in Europe. And with pleasure tax being significantly lower, alcohol, and to a lesser extent cigarettes, are ridiculously cheap.
On the other hand, accommodation isn’t cheap at all. And with space at a premium, the country basically consisting of three narrow valleys, you’ll have to park your car in the mountains to park for free.

Though Madrid is often cited as the highest capital in Europe, it is in fact Andorra la Vella, the old, some 400 meters higher than the capital of Spain.

Andorra started life as a principality back in the 13th century, when the papal representative in Urgell signed an agreement with the count of Foix, both becoming the heads of state for the newly formed principality. The current papal representative is still one of the co-princes. The other, through a series of successions, reverted to the current president of France.
Due to its small size, Andorra has mostly lived outside of the mainstream history of Europe. Though the country declared war on imperial Germany in the first world war, it was not included in the treaty of Versailles, which meant the two countries were officially at war until 1957.

Since the second world war, Andorra has focussed on tourism. Partially through its excellently developed skiing facilities, partially as a tax haven. The country is not part of the EU, which amongst other things means that you can still smoke in bars and restaurants, though the de facto currency is the euro. The 85000 inhabitants entertain about 10 million tourists yearly.
The country only joined the UN in 1993, when it formally adopted a constitution.

The official language of the country is Catalan, also the most popular language, closely followed by Spanish. Surprisingly, there are three times more Portuguese speakers in Andorra as there are French speakers.

At last, at LAST!

Andorra was the last country in Europe I had not yet visited. At least until Kosovo loses its de-facto independence and exchanges it for a de-jure one. Or until, who knows, Catalunya, receives independence.

Liverpool it is

September 23, 2012 • Blog

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World » United Kingdom » Wallasey » Leasowe castle

Niamh’s oldest brother is getting married. Also finding his luck across the waters, he’s hooked on an English lass and marrying in the home of the Fab Four. Or rather, on the other side of the Mersey from the Cavern Club, in Wallasey.
We’re staying in a Travelodge, a chain of hotels a meager step up from your regular Formule1, but pricier.
In the newly developed complex in New Brighton, named after Brighton as the strip once had its own promenade and pier to rival the gay capital of the UK, there are a bunch of affordable and not bad restaurants, a large cinema, a casino, and a rather cheap supermarket. At least to my untrained Uganda-influenced eyes.

But, Liverpool, y u so cold?

Mostly horrid

August 31, 2012 • Blog

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World » Tanzania » Kigoma » Sun City

Depending on the route, Lusaka to Kampala is between 2500 and 3500 kilometers, overland. If you're not going through Dar, which is the longest route, only the first 1000 or so can be done with the fairly comfortable TAZARA, where you have to get off in Mbeya, a village, really, of 300000 in the southwest of Tanzania. From there, it's a string of overcrowded busses on dirt roads, heading almost due north.
With it being Ill advised to travel at night, crappy roads, crappy drivers and crappy vehicles, the trip takes 7 days of travel, from end to end and takes you through a series of mellow enough, if rather uninteresting, towns.

Particularly the leg from Sumbawanga, which sounds like a Hollywood invention, to the backwater that is Mpenda, was rather unpleasant and possibly my least agreeable bus ride, yet. The track is all dirt road, while the driver thinks he is Michael Schumacher in a bus that should have been retired 20 years ago. Literally, bits and pieces were falling of the bus as it moved, my seat came loose, during the ride, as did my neighbour's, and one of the luggage racks came undone at two of its suspension points, the thing ominously and more and more bouncing up and down due to Michael's antics, the trip was like being shaken around by a Powerplate gone berserk.
Several times I was propelled off my site so hard that my head hit the up and down bobbing luggage rack.
Sarcastically, the back of the cabin read "all these are the blessings of Allah". What a bastard.

As I managed to get the last seat on the bus from Sumbawanga to Mpanda, I figured booking immediately for my next day's trip was paramount. But I was already too late, even standing seats no longer being available.
Somehow, some 10 minutes later, I could get a standing seat, which wasn't really something I was looking forward to on this 12 hour journey. But, lucky, I somehow ended up on the conductor's seat, with an armed guard next to me. "You know, for robbers."
The bus was packed tighter than a can of sardines.

What to presume?

Kigoma is really the only place between Lusaka and Kampala worth stopping, if only just. Sure, there are some national parks along the way, and Masaka, in Uganda, is probably bigger, but it's Kigoma that, as a town, actually isn't totally disagreeable.

And, on the outskirts of town, there is actually something to see that is not nature.

Back in 1871, it was in Ujiji, a few kilometers south-east of Kigoma, where Stanley uttered those now famous words, after the world presumed Livingstone had to have been dead for years. The government more recently built a proper tourist trap close to the original site, a memorial and a, seemingly empty, museum, where entrance, per person, is significantly more expensive than a double room, for two, with private facilities, in Kigoma. Foreigners pay ten times the price Tanzanians pay. "But maybe you can pay student price", a steal at only five times the regular Tanzanian rate (but ten times the Tanzanian student rate).
I laughed it off and strolled to the nearby beach, where smugglers are transporting goods between Tanzania and the DRC across the water.

South of Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, on the northern edge of the lake, there is a memorial to the exact same event, Stanley meeting Livingstone for the first time. The two men did visit this location, but a few weeks after having met for the first time.

So, travel in africa is cheap, if you are willing to suffer. The whole nearly 3000 km cost me about 80 USD, under 120 USD if you include accommodation. And this was for a full week on the road.

A Zambian wedding

August 18, 2012 • Blog

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World » Zambia » Kitwe » Moba hotel

The bride's parents living in Kitwe, in Zambia's Copperbelt, my arrival in Lusaka was followed by a six hour bus ride north. Leaving an hour late, the bus service itself wasn't half bad, great even, at African standards. Well serviced busses, good seats, no overselling and, on the way back, LCD screens in the backs of seats and handouts of good headsets. Sadly, the screens were showing Tom and Jerry cartoons on all six channels.

Lucy and Hussain met in early 2008, shortly before I met them when visiting the country. Niamh and I became proper friends with them when we lived in Lusaka in 2009/10 and maneuvered them through some rocky patches. We ended up being best man, me sort of representing Hussain's family, and matron, sort of like first bridesmaid. Sadly, the high cost of flying and limited holidays for Niamh meant that I was the only one, of us two, to attend.

The wedding was pretty darn decent.
Lucy and Hussain had already gone through a civil ceremony in December and were set to do the traditional/public wedding in March, when Hussain's mom suddenly fell sick and, shortly after, died. Hussain spent time in India, where he hails from, coming back a few weeks before the date of the rescheduled wedding.

The morning saw a ceremony in the garden of an overpriced hotel on the edge of Kitwe, where I had a role to play as best man. This was followed by a photoshoot and, in the evening, a dinner at the same hotel with about 160 guests.
A Zambian wedding is quite similar to a European or American wedding, though a few things are notably different:

+ The bridal party wear matching clothes. The best man and supporting men wear the same suits, the bridesmaids wear matching dresses. This is more common in the US and perhaps the UK, but not in Europe.
+ An MC presided over the whole evening, moving from program point to program point.
+ The wedding party comes in late, after pretty much everyone else has arrived. When everyone else is 'in', the bridesmaids and supporting men, but not the matron and best man, come in dancing, African style. In this case, the three boys and girls had been training, with a choreographer, for some six weeks prior to the wedding, to get the routine exactly right. They come in and leave the room after a few minutes, dancing, in a way announcing the arrival of what is to be the center of attention.
+ This is followed by the entrance of the kids, in our case three, throwing rose petals on the path to the high table, in preparation for the wedding couple. Directly behind them are the matron and the best man, together shaking their booty, African style, celebrating the future arrival of the wedded couple. The latter drop off the kids at the high table, before heading out again, dancing.
+ Next are the newlyweds themselves, who have to come in, somewhat dancing, directly followed by the matron and the best man, also dancing, until they arrive in the middle of the room, where the wedded couple do a bit of a slow dance, in this case Hussain strutting some Bollywood stuff, before the four head to the high table.
+ Lastly, the supporting girls and guys come back in again, dancing, to take their place at the high table.
+ After dinner, the cake is cut by a knife brought in by one of the supporting guys or gals. In this case, the six had designed a dance routine, where the knife was passed on from person to person until it arrived with Lucy and Hussain. Then, the cake is cut by the wedding couple, together with the matron and best man.
+ Or not. The cake isn't cut at all, but a small, precut, piece of cake is stabbed at, followed by the wedding couple feeding each other with the pieces. Then, the best man takes one of the layers of cake and the four slowly walk up to the parents of the bride. All four kneel down, the best man presents the cake to the wedded couple, who present it to the parents.
+ The cake is prepared starting six months in advance and can be kept for years. It's not eaten at the wedding. One layer each goes to each family, one layer is kept for the firstborn to be old enough to appreciate the meaning of the cake, indeed, which can take years, while the last layer is for those that weren't present.

As best man, I was told I had to put together a speech on Thursday. I, and the wedding couple, we're lucky in that August 18 has been a busy day in history. The basis for my speech is below.

Its been a bit of a rocky road for these two, but, slowly slowly, they've been getting their stuff together, to the extent that, after a few false starts and some sad personal drama, we are now sitting here, ready to, finally, and properly, congratulate Lucy and Hussein on their wedding day.

And it's an auspicious day. In 1587, on this day, the first immigrant child was born in the Americas. Helium was discovered in 1868, on this day, [the Martian moon Phobos is discovered in 1877, on this day,] women get the vote in the US in 1920, [in 1958 the first Asian, from Bangladesh, swam across the English channel] and in 1942, 5 years before independence, Indian freedom fighters hoisted the Indian flag in Mohammadabad.

I first met Lucy and Hussein in April 2008. Lucy was still working for Health and Development Networks, as was I, she as country coordinator in Lusaka, and her and Hussain had not yet been together long.
After a long few days of work, Lucy and I partied at the Dutch ambassador's residence, in celebration of the Dutch queen's birthday, and, amongst other bigshots, got to hang out with Kenneth Kaunda. Then, our taxi broke down and Hussain came and rescued us. We had a few drinks, as well as cigars, at the hostel I was staying at.
When Lucy went to powder her noise, Hussein confided in me that he knew from the moment he saw Lucy that he was going to marry her. Now, the rest is history.

[Or rather, the last 4.5 years were history. Now it's a new beginning.]

Also on this day, Patrick Swayze was born in 1952, Robert Redfort in 1936, Roman Polanski in 1933 and, somewhat earlier, in 1414, the Persian poet Jami, considered to be the last great classical Persian poet, first saw the light of day.

Jami's most favorite work is a rendition of the love story of Yusuf and Zulaikha, lifted from the Quran, but also, in a shorter version, found in the bible. Zulaikha was the daughter of the Mauritanian king, who dreams of this extraordinary man, Yusuf, or Joseph in the old testament.

So, here is a piece of Jami's work. It's Zuleikha who is speaking about Yusuf. And as with other classical Persian poets, there's a lot about love.

O joy too great! —O hour too blest!
He comes—they hail him—now, more near,
His eager courser's feet I hear. Oh heart! be hushed within my breast,
Burst not with rapture!
Can it be? The idol of my life—divine,
All radiant, clothed in mystery,
And loving me as I adore,
As none dared ever love before,
Shall be—nay, is—even now, is mine!

[…]

"The one sole wish of my heart," [she replied,]
"Is still to be near thee, to sit by" thy side;
To have thee by day in my happy sight,
And to lay my cheek on thy foot at night;
To lie in the shade of the cypress and sip
The sugar that lies on thy ruby lip;
To my wounded heart this soft balm to lay;
For naught beyond this can I wish or pray.
The streams of thy love will new life bestow
On the dry thirsty field where its sweet waters flow."

The poet was born in the town of Jam. It can mean both 'twins', or 'cup', or even chalice, like a "wine goblet", the poets name, then, meaning "of the wine goblet". So I rest my case.

Since this morning's ceremony, we know what the most important pillar of marriage is. And It's said that mixed marriages produce the most beautiful babies. So here's to a productive future!

To the newlyweds!

At the end of the wedding, Lucy threw her bouquet of flowers into a crowd of single girls. An attractive woman on stilts, not surprisingly, caught the flowers. Hussain, being cheeky, told the MC that the best man wanted to dance with the lucky girl. Laughs were had all around as I continued to make a fool of myself.

Back in Zambia

August 17, 2012 • Blog

World » Zambia » Lusaka » Kalulu backpackers

The road from Lusaka’s airport to town has seen a spate of new buildings pop up or improved, most notably Manda Hill shopping mall, which has been upgraded from a dingy 70s style shopping dungeon to a hypermodern, South African style, two floor mall, with all the obligatory South African chains, as well as a few local favorites. And a two story car park, and now two food courts.

When Niamh and Iived in Lusaka in 2009/10, Lucy and Hussain did/not/did/not/did stay together, first to get married in early 2012. Then, due to a sad family incident on Hussain’s side, back in India, their wedding was postponed to August 2012. Niamh and I were to be best man and bridesmaid, though not in that order. I was originally going to merge a business trip to Dar with my visit to Lusaka, which would make the cost for Niamh to fly in from Kampala more palatable.
Then, when we checked for flights connecting in August, the going rate for an economy round trip ended up being 850 USD. With a round trip from Kampala to Joburg being a mere 550 USD and over 1000km further along (1500km by road!), this was too absurd to be acceptable. I was likely to go alone.

Though, since Niamh and I left Lusaka, several long distance airlines have expanded their network to also fly to Lusaka, regional airlines to Lusaka are still a minority. Ethiopian and Kenya fly, but at fairly extortionist rates. Zambia airways went bankrupt years ago, shortly followed by their phoenix Zambian airways, this year followed by *their* phoenix Zambezi airways. Recently, Precision Air, a regional airline trying to be something of a pricefighter, started flying to Lusaka from Dar, with a stopover in Lubumbashi, DRC. It brings, to my knowledge, the count of regional airlines flying to Lusaka to four, SAA being the fourth.
Still, there are a few lower cost airlines operating in east Africa, though they’re not yet heading to Lusaka, technically not in east Africa, mostly, focusing on the east African market proper. I predict Rwandair will be the competent airline that will bring prices down in the region over the next few years, though a strong competitor will be fly540, recently bought by an EasyJet subsidiary.

I expect to travel back to Kampala overland, a staccato journey, almost due north, of over 2500 kilometers.

Niamh and I once took the train from Kapiri Mposhi, two hours north of Lusaka, to Dar. built by the Chinese as the result of a communist promise and with the aim to easily export copper from Zambia, through Dar, to China, the ride takes about two days and is not too inconvenient, even though, as a couple, you have to either rent a whole cabin, or accept traveling in same sex compartments.
Gross mismanagement has meant the railway line has tethered on the brink of bankruptcy for years. The Chinese were, two years ago, ready to pump in over 105 million Dollars, on the condition that indigenous management would be replaced by Chinese expats.
Nothing ever came off it. The railway line is making losses, simply because too many bigshots siphon off too much money.
Currently, three shipments of goods trains are stuck along the TAZARA railway line for running out of diesel and personnel hasn’t been paid for two months.

More long distance airlines flying in to Zambia, and Zimbabwe still being a bit of a mess, has seen the tourism sector in Zambia grow. Most notably, the two backpackers on the edge of downtown are now five, with the one I’m staying in, Kalulu, being a near facsimile of the former favorite, Lusaka Backpackers. Complete with rowdy young tourists, local middle class party goers, overly loud drum and bass, an outside bar with somewhat overpriced food and drinks and a reasonable pool.

But, escaping after a night only, I’m heading off to Kitwe, in the Copperbelt, where I need to be taught a dance before I can attend the wedding.

The Copperbelt is the economic heart of the country. Mining is the word, international business is the game. However, as the mining industry is very much facing outwards, the companies foreign, the high ranking managers expat, perhaps that is why Ndola is littered with huge billboards that are all empty, advertising the possibility to advertise, making it appear that there is no real local market.

No corkscrew

July 30, 2012 • Blog

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World » Uganda » Lake Bunyonyi » Byoona Amagara

Driving around in an ancient Volkswagen van, 8 of us, plus driver, spent the weekend in the far south west of the country, in, on and around lake Bonyonyi. The Volkswagen came courtesy of Kombitours, which organises tours around Uganda in Volkswagen kombis. Their biggest draw being the seating, two benches opposite each other with a table in the middle.

The weekend was excellent, though it seems that expat life has driven most of us to become alcoholics, at least part time. Kabale hasn't changed much since last time, though Edirisa was a good find. On the island, Byoona Amagara is still decent, though the food wasn't always that great and served way, way too slow.

One of our group is a reporter, currently hot on the trail of what's happening in the eastern DRC. Another is a photographer who decided, last minute, to head out to the frontline on the way back from Bonyonyi. Current status: unknown.

And, no, this time we didn't try to embarrass ourselves by landing in the mzungu corkscrew. We simply didn't even try.

Comparing derive apps

July 16, 2012 • Blog

World » Uganda » Kampala » GOAL apartments

After earlier talking about dérive and psychogeography, I'll compare three apps that work on iOS for doing an actual dérive. A dérive, if you haven't been following, is something of an assisted random meandering, typically in an urban area. Because, a dérive doesn't depend on your actual surroundings and requires you to focus on specific, often banal, aspects of your locale, a dérive allows you to experience your environment in a completely different way, whether you're in your hometown, Paris or Kinshasa.

I'm comparing deriveapp, which is web based, and the two iOS apps Serendipitor and Drift. None of these apps were built for Android devices, though deriveapp obviously will work on them. With psychogeography being a project of 1950s European Urbanism, and something that's got quite a following amongst architects and artists, this shouldn't be too much of a surprise; 'these people' don't own Android phones, they own iPhones.

I compare the three apps on a number of features I believe the perfect dérive app should have. For each of these features, I give each app 0, 1 or 2 points, after which I declare an overall winner by adding up the individual scores. Comments are very welcome, including suggestions on features I missed.

Device independence

The app should work on the widest range of devices possible.

deriveapp resolves this by being web based. However, because the cards with tasks are images, and are designed to fit on a small iOS screen, this device independence only goes so far. Still, compared to Serendipitor and Drift, deriveapp will indeed work on a wider range of devices.

deriveapp: 1
Serendipitor: 0
Drift: 0

No internet connection required

Though you might use a dérive app in your hometown or in your own country, chances are you'll use it while on holiday. There's a possibility you'll have internet access through a roaming agreement, or perhaps you didn't cross your country's borders, or decided to plug in a local sim card, but, most likely, you won't have easy, or cheap, access to the internet. Therefore, the ideal dérive app should not require an internet connection.

deriveapp, web based, completely fails, here, but the other two apps don't do any better. Serendipitor uses an online map to show where it wants you to go and requires a connection to plot you a route, while Drift tries to upload the photos you take after every step. With the latter unable to start up without an internet connection, all three apps, in the end, do equally bad.

deriveapp: 0
Serendipitor: 0
Drift: 0

Language independence

Not all of us speak English, so either having language independence built in, offering multiple languages within the app, or allowing for third parties to contribute content in other languages would make for a better experience.

Serendipitor and Drift are locked down, but deriveapp's open architecture allows for anyone to contribute. In fact, the basic packs of tasks come with the tasks in three languages. Sadly, because these cards are pure images, it's not text that can easily be translated or adapted.

deriveapp: 1
Serendipitor: 0
Drift: 0

Tasks need to be skippable

Though a dérive's individual tasks are typically generic, it's still quite possible that your next task doesn't make any sense in your context. Serendipitor can require you to find a fire hydrant. I've never seen one in Kampala (where I currently am).

Both deriveapp and Serendipitor allow you to skip to the next task, while Drift allows you to perform the tasks in any order, which somewhat defies the point of the concept.

deriveapp: 2
Serendipitor: 2
Drift: 1

Allow for expandable sets of tasks

Being able to build your own set of tasks not only frees you from the whims of the app's author, it specifically allows you to build a set of tasks perfectly fit to your current, or your chosen, locale. Also, this allows for a potentially vibrant user community to contribute in unimaginable ways, which in turn reinforces the random nature of the dérive.

deriveapp is the only app that's expandable without interference from the app author. In fact, as the underlying code is freely available, hosting your own dérive server and adding to it to your liking is very straightforward.

deriveapp: 2
Serendipitor: 0
Drift: 0

Allow for including and importing photos

A dérive typically includes documenting your experiences through photography. A photographer won't be happy with just snapping a few photos and, at least, will want to be able to edit photos, taken as part of the dérive, with his device's built in manipulation tools. Additionally, perhaps, putting together the results of his meander through an online interface, he might want to include photos shot with an external camera.

deriveapp doesn't store anything, and is not an actual mobile app, meaning that imports are not an option. Serendipitor and Drift only allow for shooting photos from within the app.

deriveapp: 0
Serendipitor: 1
Drift: 1

Store results locally

After having done a dérive, it's fun to browse through your meander, mapped (if possible because of your internet connection), with tasks and photos.

deriveapp does not store any progress. Serendipitor does, but only shows this at the end of your dérive, when it's ready to send an email to its servers. Drift lists your tasks with their photos, catalogued for your pleasure, but leaves out the locations.

deriveapp: 0
Serendipitor: 1
Drift: 1

Stores results on the web and allows for sharing

Having access to your trips locally is nice, but being able to see them online and sharing them with others is what allows you to store your trips for posterity. Additionally, this has the power to foster a community. The result should include the route you walked, the tasks you were given and the photos you took. It could even be possible to include third party services like foursquare or Instagram.

deriveapp does not store any progress, let alone showing the results of your dérive online. Serendipitor does show the results online, even though the online interface leaves room for improvement. Drift uploads the photos, but there's (currently) no private or public place for users' past dérives. After a few photos, all contributions 'fall off the page'.

deriveapp: 0
Serendipitor: 2
Drift: 1

Have an API

I should be able to export the results of a dérive, to use in whatever application I see fit.

deriveapp doesn't store anything, while Drift is locked down. Serendipitor sends the results of your meander to its servers by email (for which you actively have to push a 'send' button inside your device's email app), which means it's possible to send the results to an alternate email address, where a script could deconstruct your meander. This is obviously not ideal, but it would work to some extent.

deriveapp: 0
Serendipitor: 1
Drift: 0

Provide gamification

A collaborative dérive app is perfectly suited to be gamified, providing batches for achievements in similar fashion that foursquare and many other location based services do.

deriveapp: 0
Serendipitor: 0
Drift: 0

No map needed

A true dérive does not rely on a map. The randomness and unexpected encounters being part of the meander is what makes a dérive interesting. And, anyway, with the apps all running on smartphones, mapping apps are already on the device itself. That said, having a map also isn't in itself a bad thing (unless it prevents the app from working). So, no scoring on this feature.

Conclusion

Serendipitor wins with a small lead, deriveapp narrowly taking second place:

deriveapp: 6
Serendipitor: 7
Drift: 4

Off the three, deriveapp is by far the prettiest, but also misses some key functionality that Serendipitor provides, due to its inability to store any progress. Serendipitor could be an excellent app if it borrowed a few things from deriveapp and would make itself work without internet access.

What's next

I'm considering designing and building a web based dérive app which would work in concert with one of the few trip recording apps such as HipGeo. After that, perhaps it would be time to design and build an actual mobile app.

Quickly through Rwanda

July 15, 2012 • Blog

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World » Rwanda » Kigali » Kigali International Airport

Sometimes good does come from the bad. A major national disaster can allow a country to take a step back and evaluate its purpose and, perhaps, destiny, on a national level.
One such example is Rwanda. After the horrific genocide of the early nineties, Rwanda is emerging as one of the fastest changing, and growing, economies of east Africa, currently third in Africa as far as year on year real GDP growth goes. Sure, a lot of that is due to the somewhat iron fist of Kagame, who slowly is is displaying more and more dictatorial traits, but Rwanda after the genocide is also a nation of people who realized a more heavy hand was needed to get everyone more aligned to work on a more prosperous, and shared, future.

Rwanda aims to become the ICT hub of east Africa, has an organized public transport system, no mean feat in africa, and is amongst the most open governments in Africa.
And, so it seems, the national carrier, RwandAir, eyes up its chances of becoming a regional, if not continental, player, by offering what probably are the lowest prices on many of the routes it operates on.
My Entebbe to Dar flight is under 320 USD for a round trip, Entebbe to Jo'burg can be had for 550. A pity that they don't fly to Lusaka, where I need to be in August. The cheapest connection between Entebbe and Lusaka is a surprising 640 USD, for a journey that is some 800km shorter compared to going to Jo'burg, each way.

However, though RwandAir is slowly expanding its reach, Kigali airport isn't yet ready for the future onslaught of passengers in transit. The airport is tiny, has only three gates, with only one operating, with two tax free 'shops' operating from the open plan of the departure lounge, simply for lack of space. Interestingly, they sell chilled, boxed, wine, for a mere three USD per liter.

My personal east African empire is expanding, working on a website which aims to be the primary source on land issues in Tanzania. This, for ActionAid.

Psychogeography apps

July 08, 2012 • Blog

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World » Uganda » Kampala » GOAL apartments

So I did a write up on dérives a few days ago, a dérive being an assisted random wandering around an urban area. The term and concept date from the 1950s, when ideas about psychogeography, the study of how a person’s environment effects his experience, were starting to take shape in Europe.
I now looked at the possibilities of expanding or rebuilding the interesting, but technically limited, deriveapp and did more of a background search. Turns out, psychogeography has an active following, not in the least because a few prominent writers, such as Will Self, have a particular interest in the field.

The blog The Pop-Up City (run by Dutchees), which looks at what will shape the city of the future, had a nice writeup on psychogeography in January this year, listing several massively interesting recent psychogeographical projects.

The blog posts mentions the very interesting iOS app Serendipitor, which is close in functionality as what I envisioned in my previous post. Serendipitor, a creation of Mark Shepard, claims inspiration from the analog Drift Deck, as well as the Fluxus movement *and* Yoko Ono (though I would argue Ono never left Fluxus).

The Serendipitor assists you in a dérive, similar to the dériveapp, but shows an actual map, and still, for the map, relies on an internet connection. The tasks of the two apps are similar, though Serendipitor sticks to plain text, while the tasks are a bit more akin to those that showed up in the analog Drift Deck.
Before you agree to a randomly generated route, you can specify you want a longer or shorter journey.

Then at the end of your journey, the app can send an email with your dérive to the Serendipitor website, where your dérive is stored for posterity, complete with tasks, route and photos. Sadly, almost annoyingly, the app only *almost* gets it exactly right: the meander is stored as an image, while neither the geographic locations of your photos, nor where you fulfilled your tasks, are stored, or at least, not displayed. Just a little bit of extra information would have made the app perfectly hackable, automatically creating the lovely maps Eduardo Cachucho put together based on the deriveapp.
It’s quite possible Serendipitor mails the photos with the geotags intact, meaning that hacking the app’s output might be somewhat possible.
Interestingly, not many people seem to be using the app, with on average 2 or so trips being posted to the site per month.

Drift, by Justin Langlois, helps you to ‘get lost in familiar places’. The app feels a bit buggy, but works. Like Serendipitor, photos have to be taken from within the app, meaning you can’t edit or adjust the photos you take. Drift also immediately uploads the photos you take, though it isn’t immediately clear where the uploaded photos go. Only after registering within the app and getting an email confirmation do you get mailed a link to a webpage, which really only contains a short blurb. In the app’s settings, you can specify your pics to be made public, but it took me contacting the author to learn where the resulting photos are shared. Still, individual or trip pages are not generated, meaning that your photos soon disappear into an unclear void.

One draw of deriveapp over both Serendipitor and Drift is that it’s very easy to change the cards/tasks. Particularly because some of the tasks used are very western-centric, being able to change them is useful for using the apps in out of the way locales. Serendipitor requires you at some point to find a fire hydrant. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, here in Kampala. It also at some point requires you to ask someone to draw a map of his childhood. A request totally out of place, here.

Wanderlust stories takes a different approach, using scripted stories, transplanted to your locale through known foursquare locations, to give you a unique experience. It’s a web app and, obviously, becomes less interesting the more you use it, as the content doesn’t change, while it works better with a higher density of foursquare locations.
On the up, the authors allow for user submissions of stories, though this doesn’t appear to happen much, if at all.

The movie Inception came with an app which uses soundscapes related to your current surroundings and their state to, perhaps, induce lucid dreaming. Interesting for its use of sound levels and weather to determine what soundscape to play, but by no means a tool for a dérive.
The creators of the app, RjDj, followed this up with the app Dimensions, which effectively gamifies the Inception App, making it something of an immersive soundscaping experience, using location and ambient sounds as part of the gameplay. More promising than it seems to be able to deliver, another app by the same guys, simply RjDj mixes ambient tracks with ambient sound around you, resulting in an ever changing soundtrack to, well, your life. And it’s perhaps this least pretentious app which is the most successful of the three.

With some similarities to Dimensions, Shadow Cities is a location based multiplayer role playing game. Quite well executed and intriguing, I’ve played the game for a bit, but I’m not sure whether the fascination I have for the game is genuine or based on the game cleverly feeding the user a limited drip of information as the game progresses, constantly resulting in small surprises to retain interest.

Update: I forget to mention what perhaps is the mother of all dérive implementations: geocaching, which has a nice enough, if expensive, app. Geocaching is a GPS assisted treasure hunt. Originally done with a standalone GPS receiver and pen and paper, the hunt moved to smartphones a few years ago and has a strong following.
Though the resulting journey of one geocache is very much in line with a typical dérive, it’s impossible to partake without someone first having created a cache close to where you are. In built up areas in ‘the west’, this is less of a problem, but in other places, you might have to travel dozens, if not sometimes hundreds, of kilometers, to find a nearby cache. And, once you’ve done one cache, you can’t have another one be magically auto-generated. Geocaches, by design, rely on their exact location.

Update (October 2015): I stumbled upon another related app: Zufall (August 2020: No longer available).

Not exactly psychogeography material, but related in the same way that a photomarathon is, is InstaCC, which gives you, after selecting a group of tasks, a subject a day, for you to find a matching photo.
My biggest gripe with InstaCC is that, though well done, you’re required to pay for each individual list of assignments.

Three years ago, Ryan Raffa converted his own meanderings through New York City into sound, using latitude, longitude, speed and elevation as parameters for creating piano pieces. Care for an example.
Raffa used gpsed.com to track his dérives, for example with this trip. gpsed.com is an excellent resource for tracking trips, mapping both route and photos taken. On the downside, the website looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2002 and, though there is an app for iOS, there isn’t one for Android.
The iOS app works well in that it keeps track of your route, allows you to set waypoints and allows you to add photos. Here, too, though, the photos are made within the app and can’t be picked up from your camera roll. Though gpsed apparently allows for adding photos to the track later, from services like Flickr or Picasa.

Karl Heinz Jeron created an audio guide of Brussels, where he seems to have used the Gutenberg project as an intermediary to introduce a randomized aspect to the walk.

A somewhat dated post over at futureeverything.org lists a few other apps with links to psychogeography. A few more interesting, and less obvious, ones are…

+ WalkBrighton. If only I knew when I was there in March.
+ Glow. This records and shows users’ moods, overlaid on a map. Cute, but because it only uses the app as a data source, or so it seems, and not, for example, moods based on Tweets, the data is very limited.
+ A data logger from Pachube.

Next up: comparing the three dérive apps I’m now aware of, deriveapp, Drift and Serendipitor, and musings on what a dérive app should be able to do.

The image accompanying this post is a composite of images from WalkBrighton, Glow, InstaCC and Serendipitor.

Derive, a meandering around

July 05, 2012 • Blog

World » Uganda » Kampala » GOAL apartments

A while back, a good friend of mine (who’s also very lax in updating his website, even though he’s doing all sorts of interesting stuff) introduced me to a digitized version of the Drift Deck, a seemingly somewhat tongue in cheek method for meandering around a city.

The Drift Deck is based on the concept of dérive, French for ‘drift’, which was defined in the late 1950s by a French Marxist as “[An exercise where] one or more persons […] drop their usual […] activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there”.

In other words, a dérive is a meandering around town.

The concept of dérive has its origins with the Situationist International, a group of self-styled revolutionaries, founded in 1957, reaching its peak of influence in the general strike of May 1968 in France.
With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiences of life, alternative to those typical within a capitalist system, for the fulfillment of human desires. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the “construction of situations” or more specifically, the creation of an environment favorable to the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study, including unitary urbanism and psychogeography.
The objective of unitary urbanism is for the (urban) surroundings to be blended in such a way that one cannot identify where function ends and play begins. The resulting society, while it caters to fundamental needs, does so in an atmosphere of continual exploration, leisure, and stimulating ambience.

Psychogeography is the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that modernist Neoism has some roots in the psychogeography of the 1950s.
In the late 1950s, the concepts behind psychogeography produced the idea of the dérive.

In a way, more recent alternate and augmented reality games, games that superimpose an alternate world on physical reality, typically, but not always, using modern technology to achieve this, also have their roots in psychogeography. One very good example, using more directed tasks but in many ways similar to the use of the Drift Deck, is SF0, an alternate reality game based in San Franciso.
In fact, the recent resurgence of psychogeography has resulted in an annual festival in New York (though I’m not convinced this year will see a continuation of the event).

The analogue Drift Deck, a stack of cards with simple instructions to aid the user in his random move around town was put together by Julian Bleecker, and was the inspiration for the digital version which I saw last year. Now, this digital version has somewhat evolved into a collaborative digital project to make dérive ‘packs’ for multiple cities. Based on a post on efrcdesign.com, it could be concluded that the person behind this is Eduardo Cachucho (who at least updates his website regularly).

I travel regularly (and never enough), and find that, over time, what I draw my satisfaction from when traveling has changed. More and more, it’s the smaller attractions, let’s say the ‘hidden gems’ or the little chance encounters, the small surprises, which are much more interesting than the major sights, those which every tourist makes a point of visiting. Nor surprisingly, visiting a new place and only doing the latter results in an experience that’s no longer unique. This is no longer the time of the Grand Tour, everyone and their brother has visited the Pyramids.
So, to make a visit unique, or to look at an oft-visited location afresh, a dérive is an excellent concept.

Indeed, there are parallels between a dérive and urban exploration, often of urban ruins. That, however, needs preparation and in itself requires direction, whereas a dérive is a random, perhaps assisted, but not actively, meander.

Back in 2004, I created a dynamic and customizable cell phone based city tour of Delft, using the typical tourist venues of Delft as locations. In 2009, I expanded on this with j-walk, which uses QR-codes sprinkled around town, at highlighted venues, to allow for customized walking tours, both on the web and through a mobile device. J-walk stores the user’s meanderings, the result being available for download after finishing the walk.
I first created j-walk together with Ismail Farouk for Johannesburg, after which I also built a version for Chiang Mai before converting my original city tour of Delft into a j-walk tour.

Dérive, in a way, is turning j-walk on its head. Instead of allowing for a flexible platform that will allow the user to visit a number of fixed locations around town, there’s instead a clearly defined platform that opens up the city, to the user, focusing on the interactions, instead of the locations.

I also realized that my appreciation of photomarathons is also because, for participants, they effectively constitute a psychogeographical walk around town.

No surprise then, that I’ve been toying with the idea of building a mobile app that presents the dérive cards to the user, while recording the user’s meandering, plotting any photos taken on a map, together with the tasks drawn from the deck of cards.
A few available apps that facilitate some of this come to mind. Recording a journey could be done by something like RunKeeper, while an iOS device (and I suspect an Android device as well) geotags photos by default. An app that’s limited, but records your meanderings, storing your location and any photos you take, is HipGeo. Annoyingly, their default standalone mapping features need some design magic. On the up, they’ve got an API through which it seems to be possible to do the trick of nicely mixing up the dérive with a recorded track and photos.
Update: I’ve since found a few other apps that are very similar: MobilyTrip looks and feels very nice, but doesn’t appear to have an API. The same goes for TripColor, though this app appears a bit less slick, as compared to MobilyTrip. Tripline doesn’t come with a mobile app, but can tie together several mobile services to create a browsable online map. Strangely, it still caters for the long defunct Gowalla and doesn’t allow for Flickr imports (but does for Instagram). Travellerspoint is similar. Trippy is another solution that’s similar, primarily focussing on the online experience, but also offering a mobile app.
Also, Google Earth now allows for recording multimedia tours.

As a tourist, you might not be in a region where your smartphone has internet access without excessive roaming fees. The app, therefore, should ideally not have to rely on an online connection

The dérive ‘app’ available over at the aptly named deriveapp.com is a nice step forward form what I saw last year, but is lacking in several ways:

+ It’s not really an app, but a website optimized for mobile use. Internet connection required.
+ There’s no integrated tracking of the route traversed.
+ Photos are not stored as part of the app.

Still, there are two dérives, nicely mapped, on the deriveapp website, and I talked with the author on how he managed this. He used maps+, not too dissimilar from RunKeeper in its functionality, and put the whole thing together using a custom Google Map.
A bit cumbersome, but workable. Except that he somehow needed to record which cards he drew from the digital deck, at what time, which requires quite the effor, particularly if you’re not familiar with the location where you’re doing the dérive. An online log of cards drawn at what time could solve that problem, I suppose via a spreadsheet and an import into Google Maps. Or at least some matching magic with the app tracking your location.

The dérive author is cool in releasing the code for hosting the ‘app’ under a cc-a license. A quick glance does reveal some room for improvement:

+ All the cards appear to be pictures, text and all. This makes making changes to the cards quite cumbersome. Also, this means a much higher demand on bandwidth.
+ There isn’t any logic behind the cards being presented. Nice for the randomness in the spirit of the concept of dérive, but annoying when you draw a card like ‘take a ride on the metro’ several times in close succession. Assuming there is a metro in your location in the first place.
+ There’s no logging of cards drawn.

And a bit more nitpicky:

+ The code comes with Google Analytics code included, presumably of the deriveapp.com website.
+ Not all the code included is released under a cc-a license, though that’s not obvious from the package itself.
+ Not only is there no separation of logic and design, there’s also no templating, with some CSS being hardcoded in the HTML, some in the headers of pages, some in actual CSS files.

So, I’m putting some thought in how to take this to the next level. Probably first as a web-based ‘app’, similar to the current one, but with some added functionality, and assisted by a tool such as HipGeo. Then, if it turns out that doing a dérive is actually fun, perhaps as an actual app.

Watch this space.

The photo accompanying this article is a collage of a HipGeo screenshot, an image from the deriveapp website and a photo of the artists/revolutionists attending the Situationist International, taken from Wikipedia.

27 photos of 27 days in the Caucasus

June 26, 2012 • Blog

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World » Uganda » Kampala » GOAL apartments

I came back from a good four weeks in Turkey and the Caucasus just last week. Here are the photographic highlights of my stay in the Caucasus. Technically only three countries, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Caucasus effectively is home to six. Besides the three internationally recognized countries, there’s also Nagorno-Karabakh (NKR) (technically in Azerbaijan) and Abkhazia and South Ossetia (both technically in Georgia). Then Dagestan (technically in Russia) sees occasional flashes of separatism.

I visited Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and NKR, with quite a bit of back and forth between the individual countries, as several of the borders are closed. Azerbaijan and Armenia can’t get along because of Armenia’s support for NKR’s fight for independence from Azerbaijan. And Turkey and Armenia don’t like each other much, due to Turkey’s inability to recognize the mass killing of Armenians in the late 1910s as a genocide.

Day 1: A braai in Baku

I arrived in Baku the night before, staying with an old friend from my university days. It being close to the end of the school season, the parents of the local international school had come together to throw a braai (bbq) in preparation for the start of the summer. Coming home not too late, it was the first of many nights where my friend’s homebrew kept us going till late.

Day 2: Baku’s flame towers

My Caucasus visit was triggered by Baku’s hosting the Eurovision Song Conest. In the evening, we attended a private party where some of the contestants were performing at an outside venue on Baku’s boulevard, but during the day, we checked out some of the sights of Baku, which saw its property development sped up in preparation for Eurovision, while a lot of the city was cleaned up for exactly the same reason. More on my first impressions and more on what Azerbaijan did in preparation for Eurovision.
One very impressive construction are the flame towers, three towers with a host of LEDs on their facades, which come alive at night, displaying all sorts of imagery. Indeed, from ‘regular’ flames, to flag waving individuals.

Day 3: The loneliest church in Azerbaijan

During and after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, pretty much all Armenians either got out or were kicked out of Azerbaijan. On Baku’s Fountain square, you can find an Armenian church which hasn’t been used for some 20 years, that is, since the conflict. Though sealed off from the public, the Azeri government so far has had the sense not to knock it down.

Day 4: First Eurovision semi final

With so many countries wanting to participate in Eurovision, specifically after the fall of the wall and the break ups of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the contest consists of two semi finals and the resulting finals. The ‘big five’, the five countries ponying up most of the money for Eurovision, don’t have to qualify for the final, and neither does the previous year’s winner. Also, one of the Eurovision rules is that, every year, the shows have to start at exactly the same time. But with Azerbaijan being a few time zones ahead, Baku is further east than Baghdad, it meant we only saw the start of the show at 12 midnight.
Typically, countries either take their entry too serious, or send some campy act, often with hot babes or boys. Interestingly, it’s always very hard to predict which countries will do well and which won’t, striking the right cord at the right time being very important. More on my Eurovision impression.

Day 5: On a fact finding mission to Sumgayit

Azerbaijan lacks both political and press freedom, which means it’s hard to uncover facts. The general story on the street was that all improvements to Baku were only superficial and done solely because of Eurovision. So we decided to check out the nearby town of Sumgayit, a industrial hotbed under Soviet communism and, supposedly, a sad backwater now.
The industrial graveyards apparently still exists, but we found that the city and the surrounding area is quickly being refurbished. As tourism was obviously not common in this little town, clearly, these upgrades were not being done specifically for Eurovision. More on what to see and do in and around Baku.

Day 6: The Dutch Indian

The second Eurovision semi final saw the Dutch entry, Joan Franka, perform. Dressed up like an American Indian, I met her during the private party the weekend before, where I told her that I thought her outfit would cost her a place in the finals. Perhaps that was the reason, but she indeed didn’t make it.
This evening also saw Sweden, the later winner, perform, as well as Turkey, easily the campiest act of this year’s Eurovision. The crowd went totally apeshit for Turkey, Azerbaijan being a, mostly, Turkic country, which is intriguing, as homosexuality is very much disapproved of in the country. More on my Eurovision impression.

Day 7: Talking to the Azeri opposition

Earlier, enjoying a beer in one of Baku’s pleasant garden cafes, we were accosted by representatives of the pro-democracy movement Sing for Democracy, immediately after which they were kicked out. We met up with them again later, strangely, in the exact same cafe they were kicked out from, to get a better understanding as to what their views were on press and political freedom, Eurovision and whatnot. The talk was interesting, though the language barrier was tough. More on the Azeri opposition. 

Day 8: On the streets of Baku

Sweden easily beat Russia at the evening’s finals at Eurovision, though the popular vote was a tight race, the professional jury widening the gap between first and second place. During the day, I explored more of Baku, where the weather brought out the best in, mostly, the young women.
I also stumbled upon a large billboard using rage faces to promote a cell phone service.

Day 9: Taking the train to Sheki

As with mosts former Soviet republics, the train network in Azerbaijan is still cheap and pretty decent. A sleeper train, where I had a whole compartment to myself, was going to bring me to the town of Sheki, in the north of the country, in the foothills of the Caucasus. Trains are not so popular anymore in the Caucasian countries, primarily because, though cheaper and much more comfortable than busses, they also tend to be significantly slower. And, for some strange reason, you’ll occasionally find that a city’s train station can be kilometers away from the actual town.

Day 10: Of Norway and Azerbaijan

Just north of Sheki, even closer to the Russian border, there’s the village of Kish, which hosts an important, and ancient, church, said to be the first church in the Caucasus. Thor Heyerdahl came here several times to do explorations and concluded that there had to be an ancient connection between his native Norway and the people of Azerbaijan. Perhaps far fetched, it’s not total conjecture, but still speculation, at best. More on the Azerbaijan-Norway connection.

Day 11: A trek to Tbilisi

With the Azeri rail network going through Sheki doesn’t go onwards to Tbilisi in Georgia, I either had to backtrack or take road transport to get to Georgia. I chose the latter, which meant I had to travel the 275 kilometers in six stages, which took the majority of the day. Perhaps the strangest experience I had was after crossing the river separating the two countries at the Matsimi border crossing, when suddenly I became aware of hordes of birds happily chirping away. Weren’t there any birds on the Azeri side?
Tbilisi was rainy and gloomy, but the sunset over Peace Park was impressive.

Day 12: What seperates Europe from Asia

Technically, the whole of the Caucasus is in Europe, but I’d say that the cultural boundary between the two countries runs right through it. Azerbaijan has bidet showers (bum guns) installed in all of its showers, as does Armenia in most, whereas Georgia has none. QED. Note that, with Georgia and Armenia being Christian, and the oldest Christian nations on earth at that, this divide is not along religious lines.
Tbilisi is a nice enough city, but on my first few days, I found the fabled Georgian hospitality a bit lacking. Not that it was bad, it simply didn’t match up to the stories. More on Tbilisi.

Day 13: Where Stalin became a man

Near to Tbilisi is the town of Gori, where Stalin grew up. The slum neighborhood he was born into has long been leveled, though the house he lived in as a boy still stands, with its own mausoleum covering it. Behind this construction, the Stalin museum is slowly changing from purely celebrating the former dictator to dealing with a slightly more complex image of the man who was personally responsible for defeating Hitler and murdering millions of Soviets. More on my visit to Gori.

Day 14: Taking the bus to Yerevan

With trains only going once every two days, I was forced to take a bus through the gorgeous landscape of Armenia. Intertwined with Armenia’s identity is the mountain Ararat. Said to be where Noah crashed his ark after the flood, both Armenians and Georgians claim being descendents from Noah through his great-grandsons. Sadly, with Ararat completely being in Turkish territory and with the political issues between the two countries, Armenians can see the mountain every day, looming on the horizon, without ever being able to visit. Or rather, only being able to visit by having to go through Georgia first. More on my trip to Yerevan.

Day 15: The sights of Yerevan

I felt Yerevan was less pretentious and more friendly than both Tbilisi and Baku, probably helped by the fact that three old acquaintances, now friends, were showing me the sights of both the city and the surrounding area.
Armenia being the first country that adopted Christianity as a state religion, it’s particularly this that instills a lot of pride with Armenians. Also, the Armenian churches are the source for how both European churches and mosques look. More on Yerevan.

Day 16: Ancient Christianity

Perhaps because Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity, the religion here is infused with more pagan aspects than elsewhere, the stone crosses, khatchkar, being one example, the Armenian ‘eternity symbol’, part of Armenian iconography, but essentially a sun, is another. Also, before Christianity was adopted just after 300 AD, the Greeks were already enjoying the spoils of the country, one leftover being the gorgeously situated Garni temple, just outside of Yerevan.

Day 17: Going to the most remote European capital

Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t recognized as a country by most, so Stepanakert (Xankendi to Azeris) is really only the most remote provincial capital, but still. With the train network, coming in from Baku, no longer running due to the province having declared independence from Azerbaijan, the only way to get in is by bus from Yerevan.
The journey is slow, but gorgeous. Though our two hour delay due to a breakdown was really unnecesary. More on my trip to Stepanakert.

Day 18: Inside Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno-Karabakh is said to be an excellent destination for hikers, and the country certainly is very pretty, but besides nature, it also doesn’t have too much to offer. Stepanakert is pleasant, but also very quiet. What once was the cradle of both Azeri and Armenian culture, the nearby town of Shusha, was all but annihilated during the Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Though effectively being governed as a province of Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh does issue its own visas. And if you have one in your passport, forget about entering Azerbaijan. On the visa, you’ll find the symbol of Nagorno-Karabakh, the statue of grandmother and grandfather, just outside of Stepanakert. More on Stepanakert and the sights around the city.

Day 19: The caves of Goris

Back in Armenia, the town of Goris is known for its caves, ‘old Goris’, where the locals used to live before settling in the actual town. A cute but sleepy lttle town, the city was designed by a German architect, meaning the streets are neatly laid out on a grid.
A nearby megalithic structure, funnily enough called Stonehenge, is believed by some to be as much as 7500 years old. More on my visit to Goris.

Day 20: Tatev monastery

With Armenia’s dramatic landscapes and early adoption of Christianity, there are plenty of monasteries in scenic locations. Tatev, now mostly only a tourist attraction, is one of them, perched on the edge of a ravine.
Tatev was an important medieval university and was built on the site of an ancient church. More on my visit to Goris.

Day 21: Perhaps the best brandy in Europe

One of the things Armenia is internationally renowned for is its Ararat brandy, the factory now being owned by Pernod-Ricard. They do tours of the facilities on weekdays and I was lucky enough to arrive just in time to attend the last tour of the week. Or rather, to stumble into the tour just before the tasting started, the best part of the tour anyway.
Being very affordable, I brought home a few bottles, only to finish one off with my host, later in Batumi.

Day 22: An easy day in Yerevan

With trains to Tbilisi only going every second day, I had an easy day in which I could shelter from the dust storm covering the city. To chill, I spent a few hours in the lovely Yellowstreet restaurant, where a yoghurt soup was one of the courses that kept my inner Babak a happy man.
Armenia, though tiny, has two distinct cultural regions, east and west. Not only do these regions’ dialect differ, also their foods are different, with the west being more mediterranean, while the east is more middle eastern.

Day 23: Older than Rome

Yerevan is about as old as Rome, and officially even a bit older, though you wouldn’t know it from the way the city presents itself, there being very little ancient architecture around, very much unlike Rome. The old fortress of Erebuni, the original Yerevan, where the city was founded nearly 3000 years ago, is just outside the town proper and clearly shows the strong historical and cultural links with ancient Persia.

Day 24: Modern dance in Tbilisi

Having to stop in Tbilisi before my onward travels to the coastal town of Batumi, I attended a modern dance performance at a cute little theater in Tbilisi’s old town.
Just like in other former communist countries, performing arts are still an important, and affordable, form of entertainment. The show wasn’t too bad, I suppose, although watching modern dance isn’t my favorite passtime. More on my inbetween days in Tbilisi and Yerevan.

Day 25: The gorgeous National Gallery

I skipped Georgia’s museums during my first visit to Tbilisi, so I went and explored several now, the best one easily being the National Gallery, hosting several photographic exhibitions and a cute, if pricey, cafe overlooking the museum’s gardens.
Most exhibitions had a link with Georgia, several specifically with the Black sea.

Day 26: Georgia is looking west

Back in the day, it was Jason who arrived on Georgia’s Black Sea coast in search for the Golden Fleece, which he managed to obtain with the help of Medea, whom he later married. Particularly Batumi, the town on the Black Sea coast facing west, has taken this as the excuse to put Georgia firmly in Europe, thanking Medea for her actions by putting up a statue of her in the town’s square.

Day 27: East meeting west

Shortly before the second world war, the Azeri Kurban Said wrote the excellent Ali and Nino, a love story between a muslim boy and a Georgian princess. Set during the first Azeri oil boom, it’s the perfect love story where east meets west and recognized all over the Caucasus. Baku has a bookstore called Ali and Nino on its main square, but Batumi goes one step further, having a moving statue on its sea front. The statue has Ali and Nino who, seemingly move towards each other and then through each other, uniting and separating every day. More on Batumi.

The next day, I took a bus for Trabzon, from where I flew to Istanbul to get back home. Adieu for now, pretty Caucasus.

Into Asia

June 16, 2012 • Blog

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World » Turkey » Trabzon » Bulvar Palas

Batumi is only 24 kilometers away from the border with Turkey and only about 250 from Trabzon. The roads, particularly in Turkey, are excellent, but still it took four hours fom our scheduled departure, for me to walk into the door of my hotel.
In part, this was due to a Georgian smuggler having to distribute his many ciagerettes throughout the nooks and crannies of the bus I was traveling in. And although customs stopped us some 10km into Turkey, he got away with it.

The industrious little city of Trabzon hasn’t got too much to offer for tourists, let alone something I missed six years ago. But it’s an active little town, not in the least for its popularity with shopping Georgians across the border or because of its role as the gateway to the Caucasus.
Also, where Georgia is more expensive than Armenia, Turkey is more expensive still, not even considering the cost of that forbidden fruit, beer.

Walking around downtown Trabzon is like going shopping in a Rotterdam suburb popular with Turkish immigrants, but with the shops and streets in better shape and the Muslim overtones being much less present. Virtually no tourists, but plenty of well dressed men and women.

Coastal Georgia

June 14, 2012 • Blog

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World » Georgia » Batumi » Ali and Nino sculpture

Once, I suspect, similar to the many other tourist destinations on the Black Sea, Batumi differs at least in that, according to wikitravel, kissing on the seaside bulvar is fined with 50 Lari, about 25 euros.
But also, the city is being metamorphosed into a city wide palace, on the verge of Disney kitch, though so far just stopping short. Which probably means there ain’t too many Russian tourists coming down to Batumi… Yet.
The city faintly reminds me of Baku; the old buildings have been refurbished, while obscure new ones have been thrown in their midst.
It would be interesting to see how Sochi has changed since I visited 13 years ago.

The city’s main square, still half unfinished, contains a pillar with, on top, Medea holding the golden fleece. That’s right, Jason and his Argonauts came to the Black sea coast of Georgia to try and wrestle the golden fleece away from a never sleeping dragon. Medea, daughter to the local king, promised to help Jason on the condition that he would marry her afterwards.

Historians have suggested a heap of real-world explanations for what this fleece represented. One of the explanations refers to the fact that fleeces, a sheepskin or rams skin, we’re used at least as early as the 5th century bc, in the Batumi region, to sift nuggets and dust of gold from mountain streams, by letting water run through them. After collection, the fleeces would be hung out to dry and, then, combed.

But what is this Caucasian fascination with musical fountains? Batumi alone apparently has three.

Nice bonus in Batumi: A cute Ali and Nino sculpture.

The inbetween days

June 11, 2012 • Blog

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World » Georgia » Tbilisi » National Gallery

Starting to relax somewhat on the touristy front, picking up on the work front, my two more days in Yerevan included picking up some of the sights I had missed out on my earlier stop. This included the genocide museum, which seriously lacks in providing context, as well as a tour of the Ararat brandy company. A visit to the surrealist Paradjanov museum was a nice surprise.

The museum and ruins of Erebuni, the original site and name of Yerevan, we're nice enough, and showed strong connections with ancient Persia, not a surprise as Erebuni was settled in the middle of the 8th century BC, in a time of Medes and Assyrians, making it about as old as Rome (where the official founding date puts it at a few years older than Rome.)

Onwards to Tbilisi

Not wanting to get mentally fried from a double journey, first to Tbilisi, then to Batumi, on the Black Sea coast, I decided to stop over for one night in the Georgian capital. Sadly, it being a Monday, most sights were duly closed.
I did enjoy some experimental dance at the very cute Royal District Theatre.

My second day in Tbilisi, I stopped by the National Gallery, which showcased several really excellent photography exhibitions. The somewhat generically called Museum of Arts, also called Fine Arts Museum, has a treasury, which I didn't visit, but also a few photo exhibitions. These were nice enough, but a bit too pretentious.
In the evening, I took in more culture, attending the play Do we look like refugees?! performed by Georgians, but originally directed by a Brit and based on stories he encountered on a one week visit to a Chechnyan refugee camp.
I was told the play would be in English and Georgian, but very little was in English. But I was also told translations were going to be projected on the theatre's back wall. Yes, well, only for the English parts.

Trains are of varying quality in the Caucasus. I've taken three trains, all second class. The first, from Baku to Sheki, was what I expected; Soviet style, decent enough shape, clean, four to a cabin (though mine only occupied by me).
The train from Yerevan to Tbilisi was a bit of a surprise. Third class Soviet trains have no compartments and sleep six per section, roughly the size of a second class cabin. This second class train was a third class wagon that slept only four to a section. Like a regular second class sleeper, but without a door to close your cabin. And with the third bed on each side of each section, at the top, unused.
The train from Tbilisi to Batumi was fancy. Air conditioned, but still four to a cabin, and a flat screen tv in every cabin.

Always can do one more

June 07, 2012 • Blog

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World » Armenia » Tatev » Tatev monastery

The little town of Goris in the south east of Armenia, gateway to both Nagorno-Karabakh and Iran, is cute enough, with it's German designed grid structure and reasonably well kept stone houses.
Sadly, the ancient history museum was nowhere to be found, until I did find it, minutes before leaving the town. Sad, because it supposedly contained a stone sculpture dating back some 4000 years. But the city does have, like every itself respecting former Soviet backwater, a children's park, with brightly colored, if somewhat fading, rides. Weirdly, the merry go round occasionally blared out Butterfly, a DDR classic.

The thing to see while in Goris is the Tatev monastery, some 30 kilometers from the town. Yet another church and monastery, dramatically situated on the edge of a ravine, it's location is gorgeous, even though I'm starting to get my fill of Armenian churches and monasteries.

Another interesting nearby site, also some 30km away, but in another direction, is the Armenian Stonehenge, often called Karahunj, not to be confused with the nearby town of Karahunj, found in yet another direction from Goris.
Generally accepted to be, at most, up to 5000 years old, some put its age at around 7500 years and claim it to be built by the mother of all civilizations.

As fast as lightning

June 05, 2012 • Blog

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World » Nagorno-Karabakh » Vank » Gandzasar monastery

Nagorno-Karabakh, as much as Armenia, if not even more so, is gorgeous in its alpine pristineness. However, there’s also quite little to see if you are not a nature freak. It’s pleasant to walk around Stepanakert, but it’s hardly a thriving metropolis, with even some spots almost next to the main thoroughfare where urban farming is practiced. And though the central square is quite attractive, particularly for the buzz of the hordes of teenagers and twentysomethings floating back and forth, presumably because there is very little else to do in town, on the whole, Stepanakert does, ehm, somewhat, lack in attractions.

Perhaps the most interesting site is Agdam, billed by some sources as the ‘Heroshima of NKR’, it’s right on the border between Azerbaijan and NKR and has been, first, completely shelled and, then, utterly abandoned. However, it’s not too clear whether the city is off limits or not. It most certainly was a few years ago.

Still, some of that feeling can easily be had in what once was one of the most important towns in the Caucasus, Shushi, just 9km from Stepanakert and considered, once, a hub of both Azeri and Armenian culture.
The town was severely shelled during the NKR war twenty years ago, and the city center is still mostly a collection of destitute, bombed out buildings. Though a few apartment blocks have been rebuilt, a nice new hotel has been put up and two lovely little churches are nicely refurbished, it’s still mostly a very sad little town.

Also somewhat underwhelming is the seat of the Artsakh (NKR’s name for itself) archbishop just outside the town of Vank, in the monastery of Gandzasar. Some 40km out of Stepanakert, to get there you can choose between your own taxi, hitching, or the 9am bus. There’s also a 4pm bus and, in fact, a rather nice hotel, shaped like a boat, in Vank, so I suppose you really have four options. I took the bus, but that also means you have to slog the remaining 2.5km uphill to the monastery.

Doing the latter, a good sense of achievement later, the views from the hilltop where very nice, but the church wasnt too extraordinary.

Just outside of Stepanakert you can find what is generally considered the symbol of NKR, two large heads peering out from behind a hill, as if two giants are standing just behind the clearing, checking to see whether you are actually behaving yourself.
Looking quite good on postcards and tshirts, the actual sight of them was a bit of an anticlimax. Much smaller than I expected, they are also currently being renovated, wrapped up in cranes, sheets and scaffolding.

A bit further on, the now disused train station that once served the province lies in dilapidated state. The line connects to Yevlakh, in Azerbaijan, where I passed through a good week ago, on my way from Baku to Sheki, where the line splits between going north, to Sheki, and west, to Tbilisi. And, once, south, to Xankendi.
There is a train line which connects Yerevan to Iran, though I don’t think there are any passenger services. And it dives into Iran shortly after leaving the Armenian capital, meaning it leaves the whole of the south east of the country for what it is, with no chance of Stepanakert ever being hooked up. At least not until Armenia and Azerbaijan get their shit together, which, incidentally, would also probably do wonders for the NKR economy.

One reason why NKR fascinated me was the name of its capital. Stepanakert obviously consists of two parts, the first being a reference to Stephan, while the second part, ‘kert’ means ‘garden’ in Hungarian. I was hoping for an obscure Ugric, Hungarian, connection.
Not so. Armenian is an Indo Eropean language and derives from the Hurro-Urartian language group, which has its roots in Anatolia, modern day Turkey, and its, most likely, closest neighbour is Greek. ‘kert’, in Armenian, is an old word for ‘construct’. More likely, there *is* an etymological connection with the Farsi word for ‘work’, ‘kar’.

I find Armenian a difficult language to hear, very foreign to the ears, and occasionally do think it has audible connections to Greek, but also to Hebrew, a member of the totally distinct Afroasian language family. Particularly western Armenia is said to have multiple connections, not in the least in its cuisine, with the Levant.

Remnants of Soviet times

When traveling by train through Azerbaijan, you have to buy your ticket with your passport. Taking the bus in Nagorno-Karabakh, you can also only buy your ticket with your passport. If you are going to the town of Vank. But not if you are going to Shushi. Or if you are leaving the country.
Getting a visa for NKR is easy, a formality. But you do have to specify where in the country you will be going and, when leaving the country, you have to hand over an accreditation note you received when getting the visa.

The most remote capital of Europe

June 04, 2012 • Blog

World » Nagorno-Karabakh » Stepanakert » Ella and Hamlet Guesthouse

Stepanakert, also called Xankendi, is the most remote capital in Europe. Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is the easternmost, being even further east than Baghdad and nearly as far east as Tehran. Stepanakert is the capital of NKR, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and it’s the most cumbersome to reach.
Though Stepankert’s international airport was recently completed, flights have not yet commenced, in part because of Azerbaijan’s fierce rhetoric on allowing what they consider enemy planes in their airspace. So, the only way to get in is by road.
In fact, just the day after I left NKR, border clashes between NKR and Azerbaijan left several dead.

The Nagorno-Karabakh region is considered to be something of the cultural heartland of both Azerbaijan and Armenia. An enclave inside Azerbaijan, the shit started to hit the fan at the end of the 80s, when Gorbachov declared glasnost and the Soviet Union was falling apart. The whole Caucasus has seen territorial spats for thousands of years, particularly Russians, Turks and Persians fighting over who would control what part of the region, but the internal conflicts specifically started coming to a head after the first world war, when the Ottoman Empire reassessed its sphere of influence and, eventually, let Russia run away with the spoils in the Caucasus.
Then, when Gorbachov allowed more dissent, the Nagorno-Karabakh province, inside Azerbaijan, voted for unification with very nearby Armenia. The results, from roughly 1988 to 1994, included about a million displaced persons, all out war and, eventually, an ethnically pure Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh, with Armenia in control of the province as well as about 9% of Azerbaijan’s territory outside of the enclave, which includes a road corridor between Armenia and NKR, the NKR’s only link with the outside world, as well as the enclave of Tigranashen, Karki to Azeris, through which you pass on your way from Yerevan to Goris, close to the NKR border.
A cease fire was signed in 1994, but the tensions are still there. The border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is closed, Azerbaijan consistently refers to Armenia as The Enemy Nation, even in a magazine by and for expats, and you can only get into NKR from Armenia.
And because you can get into Armenia only through Georgia or Iran, both Azeri and Turkish borders being closed, Stepanakert is Europe’s most remote capital.

But is it a capital? NKR is still, de jure, a part of Azerbaijan. However, it is not administered by Azerbaijan which, de facto, makes it independent, though, in practice, much of its affairs are run by Armenia. It’s currency is the Armenian Dram, it’s cars have Armenian license plates, it’s language is Armenian. They keep Armenian time (which my Apple products don’t seem to understand, thinking that Yerevan time is one hour ahead of Tbilisi time).

Yerevan to Stepanakert is about 330km and can be done in 5 to 6 hours, depending on how often you stop. It took us close to eight, with a driver who put the pedal to the metal as often as possible, the reason for our delay being a breakdown. But not our own. For unfathomable reasons, our driver drove in convoy with another minibus, and it was that minibus that gave up the ghost, and our driver refused to leave his friend’s side, meaning that 32 travelers were stuck in the middle of nowhere. Twice, as twice the second bus was replaced with a minibus that had to be driven in from somewhere. On the up, the drive takes you through gorgeous landscapes.
First a prolonged view of Ararat and its sister peak, from as close as you can get without being shot at by Turkish border guards. Then the fantastic gorges, mountains and green hills of southern Armenia and NKR. Also, though it’s already early June, the drive took us so high up that we could see snow. Below us. And then there were the men on horseback, and the hundreds of sheep and cows that were migrating, using some of the roads as their tracks.

The most pleasant Caucasian capital

June 03, 2012 • Blog

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World » Armenia » Yerevan » Cascade

As far as first impressions go, Yerevan easily beats Tbilisi and Baku to first place for being most pleasant. The city radiates a friendly air, It’s (mostly) warm and dry with clear blue skies, surrounded by mountains, relatively small, packed with museums, street cafes and art, it’s cheap, the girls are quite gorgeous and people appear to be very friendly and talkative. On the whole, Yerevan appears to be friendlier, more genuine and less pretentious than its two neighboring capitals.
Downtown Yerevan is in reasonably good shape, while there’s still quite a bit of refurbishing going on, though not nearly as much as in Tbilisi. However, driving into town from the provinces, it does seem like there’s very little economic activity outside of the capital, which is probably related to the estimate of MicroSoft’s representive to Armenia’s estimate that about 2.5 billion USD gets remitted to Armenia every year, on a budget of about 18 billion. 

Sure, my appreciation for Yerevan is helped by an excellent host in my hostel, as well as the outstanding welcome I received from a friend of an old acquaintance.
But also, the three nights I have scheduled in Yerevan will not be enough to see the minimum of sights I want to see in and directly around Yerevan. The city seems to have more to offer than its Caucasian neighboring capitals.

In the field

Susan, her husband Hayk and their business partner Arman took me out for the day into the gorgeous countryside outside Yerevan. We saw a host of impressive churches as well as a few monasteries.
Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as it’s state religion and prides itself in its Christian tradition. Also, the Sunday we were out being some particular saint’s commemoration day, most of the churches saw elaborate services, overrun with Armenians and, seemingly, all the foreign tourists in the country, not too many in itself, which meant a lot of chanting, including impressive call and response singing by male and female choirs.

One typical Armenian manifestation of Armenian Christianity are khachkar, stone stele, typically bearing a cross and other Christian iconography. Apparently, khachkar only started appearing in the ninth century, even though I can’t shake off the thought that there might be a connection with Turkic stele, or, simply, gravestones in general. As in, if you have a bunch of Turkic stele lying around, and you’ve just shaken off Muslim control over your little country, perhaps you’d want to add insult to injury by reappropriating their grave stones.
It’s not complete conjecture, the Lonely Planet briefly mentions khatchkars’ pagan origins, but I can’t find anything about this online.

An often recurring motif in Armenian Christian art is a facetted circle which, I’m told, represents eternity. Sure, but it’s obviously pagan in origin, having no parallel in conventional Christianity, I suspect representing the sun as the eternal ‘center of the universe’ and the earth’s movement around it, a leftover from an earlier heliocentric religion, perhaps Armenian’s adoption of the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda as Aramazd as the father of all gods.

Interestingly, Armenians celebrate Vartavar (roughly translated as ‘rising of roses’), around the time of the summer solstice. Derived from a pagan holiday, kids,and teenagers sprinkle water on as many people as they can. Songkran, Thai new year, obviously comes to mind.
There might be a connection between Armenia’s and Thailand’s festivals, and it’s not even too much of a stretch, at least on the surface of things. Vartavar, celebrating the new harvest, is associated with the pagan fertility god Astghik. predating the introduction of the Hellenic and, later, Christian, pantheon to Armenia. Her name means ‘little star’. The festival is currently celebrated 98 days after easter, but that’s obviously a Christian superposition.
The word ‘Songkran’ derives from the Sanskrit Sankranthi, referring to the transmigration of the sun from one zodiac sign to another. Celebrating the new year with Songkran, now in April, the festival is a derivative of the Indian Makar Sankranti, celebrating the sun’s transition from Sagittarius to Capricorn, roughly the 21st of December, and with that, harvest time, at least in some parts of India.
Perhaps the splashing eachother of water is to commemorate that the water isn’t needed for the land, because it’s harvest time?

To Yerevan

June 01, 2012 • Blog

World » Georgia » Tbilisi » Train station

Trains from Tbilisi to Yerevan only run roughly every second day, and take more than twice as long as a bus does, mostly because the train trip is an overnight journey. I would have preferred the train, but it didn’t work out for going to Yerevan.
Busses leave from several locations in town, the most convenient one being from in front of the main train station. Leaving at 11, all travelers were foreign, none from the Caucasus. Two were even an Iranian couple, who, another group of Iranian tourists which I met earlier told me, apparently don’t need a visa to travel to Georgia. Georgia, then, is one of the very few countries where Americans and Iranians can meet without having to extensively apply for a visa.

When I crossed the stream demarcating the border between Azerbaijan and Georgia, one thing I noticed was the cacophony of birds which welcomed me after going through immigration. It’s hard to believe the birds weren’t on the Azeri side, but it did seem so.
Armenia, the first country adopting Christianity as a state religion at the start of the fourth century, beating Georgia and Ethiopia by 2 decades and Rome by 8, shares the gorgeous plains and mountain ranges with its neighbors and here, too, birds are everywhere.
As, obviously, are churches. Dotting the landscape, both the circular domes and cross shaped floor plans are said to have originated in Armenia, eventually being brought to Europe by plundering crusaders.

It’s also obvious from the shapes of these early churches that both mosques and churches once shared the exact same designs, probably most typically exemplified in isranbul’s Hagia Sophia, which was a church before the Ottomen conquered Comstantinople.
Also, I noticed later, some of the Armenian churches even, somewhat suprisingly, contain vaulted ceilings so typical of many mosques (like this one in Iran).

Driving from Tbilisi to Yerevan is quite the spectacular ride. Besides the marshrutka driver thinking he’s a genuine Michael Schumacher, meaning you’re constantly and literally only inches away from death by crashing into the ravine right next to the road, it’s the scenery that’s as close to breathtaking as it gets.
First, shortly after passing through the efficient border post, where visas for Armenia now turn out only to cost a mere 6 euros, the rocky gorge you drive through is littered with defunct Soviet heavy industry, slowly but surely falling apart.
Then, leaving the gorge and entering the rolling hills towards Yerevan, it’s first mount Aragat and then Ararat, jutting up from the plains, both of which are truly a site to behold.

Ararat, intertwined with the Armenian identity, is actually completely outside of the country, even though the mountain starts only a few kilometers south-west of Yerevan. Furthermore, the closed border between Armenia and Turkey means that the very symbol of Armenia is off limits to Armenians.
Six years ago, I was on the other side of the mountain, in Dogubeyazit, a mere 60 kilometers away from Yerevan, as the crow flies. But to get to Dogubeyazit from Yerevan, you either have to travel up through Georgia, into Turkey, and then down to Dogubeyazit, or east into Iran, around Nakchivan province, a part of Azerbaijan which is also off limits to Armenians, then back into Turkey.

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