One generation

October 18, 2010 • Photography

World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Home

My father died in late 2005. He had been in Iran for some 26 years, while I wasn’t, only occasionally having been in contact over that period. Because I was born in Iran, though having a Dutch passport, my Iranian legal status was a bit murky. As this specifically related to my potentially having to enlist in the army, upon entering the country without the proper paperwork in place, ‘just’ going over for a visit wasn’t much of an option.
I started getting the paperwork in order a few years before my father died. This required, first, having a pre-revolution Iranian birth certificate converted to a modern one, then acquiring Iranian identity papers, which then allowed me to get the right papers for visiting Iran, minimizing the risk of being detained upon arrival or, indeed, having to enlist.
After I was set to go, having planned my trip for January 2006, my father’s aunt called me in November 2005, saying my father had fallen ill and had been admitted to hospital. I bought a plane ticket and went to Iran, arriving a few days after said call. My father died the day before I arrived and I effectively went over to bury him, which was probably the most emotional event in my life.
During this period and for a while after, I wrote a series of letters to my father, in Dutch.

Amongst my father’s few possessions were a few hundred photos, almost all rather old, dating back at least to his own military service, with a few possibly even older. Most of the photos were shot during the 1960s, though there were probably quite a few shot during the 1970s. A lot of the photos I uploaded together with the ‘letters to my father’. Additionally, I also added the photos I took myself during my four week visit in 2005.
The photos from 2005 I have now, finally, moved to Flickr (or rather, my current slow internet connection allows me to upload a few per day), complementing some of the first photos I ever put up on Flickr, being pictures from my second trip to Iran in 2006. Almost all the photos my dad had I have now incorporated into the matrix you see at the top.

Asking the few people I could, it was rather impossible to make heads or tails of my father’s eclectic collection of pictures, though quite a few of them contain identifiable landmarks and some contain recognizable individuals. Most of the pictures were slides, with many of the slides never having been put into a frame. The quality of many of the slides had deteriorated significantly.

For the matrix of photos on this page, I took the collection of pictures and constructed something of a narrative, putting the photos in rough chronological order, starting with, what I think is, my father’s time at school, or perhaps university, followed by his military service, being greeted by Shah Reza Pahlavi. This is followed, first by some photos of my father’s sisters and then by a large series of group photos. This is followed by pictures from some kind of world fair in Iran and touristic images of Persepolis and Esfahan.
The focus then shifts to work-related images. My father was a civil engineer, and several of the images relate to waterworks, seemingly both in Iran and, probably, in the Netherlands. Then, images of my father with, what might have been, a Dutch love interest, not my mom, taken in, probably, Rotterdam and, perhaps, de Keukenhof. This is followed by photos of my mom and dad at Madurodam.
After this, there’s a series of images taken on what seems to have been touristic outings to Scandinavia, Hamburg, Berlin, Saarbruecken and London, before the story returns to Delft.
Most of the last row is taken up by photos of myself as a kid, pictures sent to my father after my parents’ divorce. The last photo was taken in Saarbruecken. Next to me are one of my father’s brothers, his wife and their kid.

The 484 photos, from start to finish, roughly run through one generation. Starting with my dad and finishing with myself, both roughly at the same age when the first and last photos were taken.

A challenging soccer match

October 11, 2010 • Blog

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World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » National Stadium

The South African newspaper Business Day has a lovely article on that countries soccer team's trip to Freetown to play a qualifier for the African Cup of Nations against Sierra Leone, last Sunday. Niamh had been wanting to see a soccer match, here, for a while, so I figured this would be the best and, really, only, reasonable opportunity, to see a match of any quality. We got tickets through a colleague of Niamh's and went with half a dozen or so to see the match. The same match Mninawa Ntloko talks about in said article.

Ntloko being South African and his paper's sports editor, would be expected to be familiar with more typical African hardships, but even he, as he documents in the article, was horrified by both the exasperating journey to get here, the struggle to get from the airport to town, and the quality of the Bintumani hotel, one of the better ones in town (though that's very relative) which they were put up in.
Even though he uses a bit too much hyperbole, the article captures what it's like, for an outsider to arrive in Sierra Leone, quite well.

We didn't get to see the match. Even though tickets were sold at a premium, and ours, not even the most expensive, cost what, on average, a Sierra Leonean has available to spend every 10 days, for the 42000 or so seats, a neat 60000 tickets had actually been sold. We arrived around 3pm for the match which was to start at 430. Already then, the stadium was so packed that it was literally impossible to get onto the stands. People were climbing the light towers surrounding the stadium and trying to get in through the basement, occasionally being beaten off by soldiers using their belts to lash out.

Deciding to abandon the match, we went home in the hope we'd be able to catch the match on television. Not so, and not even SABC aired the match.

The field, pot holes filled with stand, is part of a stadium that has been banned by FIFA several times and they warned the national sports authority that overselling of tickets would result in a ban for the Sierra Leonean team. I doubt it but we will see.
The game ended in a draw, which Ntloko thankfully welcomed. His opinion seems to be the consensus, with other reporters thinking the same.
Bafana currently hold the top spot in their pool.

Is that a camel in your goody bag, or…

October 04, 2010 • Blog

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World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Freetown Central Mosque

There's no accurate census information available, but it's generally estimated that 60% of the people in Sierra Leone are muslim, though it's likely to be less in the coastal areas, where much of the population originally consisted of former slaves returning from oversees, Krios, almost all of them being Christian.
At the same time, the Christian religion in Sierra Leone is heavily fragmented, with, besides the more common denominations, a host of smaller splinter groups making up the religious landscape. My favorite is probably The Flaming Bible Church. I mean, seriously?

With Islam not as much fragmented, except perhaps into the few common streams, it's Islam which is often the more prominently visible religion in the country. There are plenty of buildings operating as churches, but the mosques are just a tad more… present.

Up till recently, Freetown's most prominent mosque was on the edge of of the peninsula in downtown Freetown.
However, in the middle of last year, Europe's favorite dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, was responsible for opening the Freetown Central (even though it's way out of town) Mosque. Not too overwhelming, but probably also the largest mosque in the country. Information is scant, but it seems that the World Islamic Call Society which is headed by Gaddafi, sponsored the building of the mosque, as well as some associated facilities. The word on the street is that, besides the financial impetus, Gadaffi also donated a bunch of camels.

When we visited the mosque on Saturday, it took us four hours to get there and back, while it's perhaps only 10 kilometers away, as the crow flies.
We did not see any camels.

Trying to discover more information on the mosque, to little effect, I did stumble upon older news reports which mentioned the Sierra Leonean minister of defense. This, in relation to Gaddafi. His name being the surprising Paulo Conteh, not to be confused with the Italian singer Paulo Conte. (The name Conte derives from 'count', whereas Conteh is 'African'.)
Conteh at some point was the country's 400m sprint record holder. Perhaps, then, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise the man showed up at the Hash, running like a pro.

UNICEF and the stone age

Last week, I applied for a vacancy at UNICEF. Not only is their application procedure a huge pain, which requires the recruit to fill in form after form in an archaic, unfriendly, slow, and bordering on the counter intuitive, online environment, what's worse, which took me a while to realise, is that the system was designed for Internet Explorer for Windows, something which was confirmed in a subsequent email conversation with their IT department.
The online environment does not mention this to its users, which is extremely bad form and, I'm sure, puts a sizable portion of their potential recruits off from trying to finalize an application.

The worst of the application is its use of pop ups. Some get through the pop up blocker, but some don't. Because the way the javascript has been coded, Chrome and Safari don't even mention popups are blocked while Firefox, for a fraction of a second, does display a warning. For so short a time, however, that the message is unreadable. 
Though enough to get me on the road to a solution, I'm probably also more persistent than most, looking for a solution.

One would think that an organization like UNICEF would have the resources available to develop an online system which is cross browser and cross platform compatible. Apparently, not so.

Death

September 20, 2010 • Blog

World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Chez Nous

Last Friday, Goal staff and many others, including myself, attended a memorial service for a Kenyan expat who passed away a good week earlier. The service was pretty bad, with the minister, during the service, advertising the church’s services, listing various options for renting out the venue, as well as their individual cost.

Contrary to popular opinion, Sierra Leone is extremely safe, as far as crime and violence go. It’s diseases which kill people left right and center. Naomi, the Kenyan expat, hadn’t felt too great for a few weeks, though doctors here weren’t able to diagnose the problem. She went back to Kenya on sick leave, only to be admitted to intensive care upon arrival, where she passed away a week later, still, as far as I know, undiagnosed.
Naomi’s wasn’t the only death in our vicinity since my arrival a good month ago. Since entering the country, it’s come to my attention that…

+ The wife of one of the Goal driver’s died.
+ The son of one of the house guards died.
+ An German expat intern, an acquaintance of the head of the Goal office in Kenema, though not working for Goal, died.
+ Naomi passed away.
+ A friend of the partner of one of the Goal expats died.
+ A Goal expat was helping out a young couple with HIV/AIDS and a kid. The husband of the couple died.
+ The father of a friend of the partners of two Goal expats died.
+ The brother of a hasher died.

The only ‘natural’ death was the last in the list, a man in his seventies dying of cancer. The only other death for which, as far as I know, the cause was known, was the man who died of the consequences of HIV/AIDS.
All the other deaths were of unknown cause.

So many young people dying for unknown reasons is what I find worrying. If you’re in your thirties, say, you’re not supposed to die. You’re supposed to live to a ripe old age.
Of course, that’s me looking at the world through the eyes of a privileged first worlder, which is exactly the reason I’m worrying in the first place. And it’s perhaps also because death is so common here that few seemed to take offense at the minister hawking his services during his service. Downcast as the expats were at the death, the locals see it every day. Or at least, much more often.

Case in point being the following. The infant mortality rate in Sierra Leone is around 80 per 1000 live births, among the highest in the world. With about 40 births per 1000 people and a population of about 5 million, there are about 200.000 births per year and, hence 16.000 children dying per year, or some 50 per day. To compensate, the country’s fertility rate is 5 births per woman.
Life expectancy is amongst the lowest in the world, at some 55 years, though this is still significantly higher than countries like Zimbabwe or Swaziland, where it’s 45 and 48 respectively.

It’s a good thing that the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is so very low here, well relatively to other sub Saharan African countries, estimated at under 2%, with less than 60.000 people living with HIV/AIDS. With the low quality of healthcare, a higher prevalence rate would surely kill of large portions of the population very quickly.

Upswing

On a more positive note, Niamh and I celebrated at the Freetown’s hash annual posh nosh, more commonly known at other hashes as the AGPU, the Annual Grand (or General) Piss Up. Decent food, decent drinks, dancing and lots of fun. And an overly friendly (read: grabby) Lebanese cook.

Rebuild

After Disqus stopped working properly for most posts on my site, I figured it was time for another upgrade. For the initiated, I started using the Smarty templating engine. Extremely useful as it also allowed me to seriously tone down on the amount of code I need to maintain myself.
The amount of work needed was minimal, perhaps one full day’s work. Unfortunately, though surfing the web, on most days, here in Sierra Leone, is barely doable, actually uploading files to a server is almost always an impossibility. As a result, it has taken me a few weeks to get the work done.

As a bonus, Facebook likes now seem to work properly again as well.

Beachfront property

September 12, 2010 • Blog

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World » Sierra Leone » Sussex » Florence’s restaurant

Florence’s is one of the better places to spend your time at in Sierra Leone. Though not even 15 kilometers away from Freetown, the roads down to Sussex beach are so bad it takes an hour to get there. If you’re lucky. Once upon a time, the coast road was tarred and, in places, remnants still exist, though these are now more annoying than helpful.
Florence lends her name to both a restaurant and a hotel, her Italian husband Franco lends his name to the diving school and is the inspiration for what rolls out of the kitchen. Started in 1992, the place was raided (only?) twice during the war and seems to be doing well enough, though what the place reminded me off was a better kept version of the Bagamoyo Beach Resort north of Dar es Salaam.

The rooms, in a building which literally has its foundations in the sea, are large and have, not a given in this country, rather good mattresses, a good shower and 24 hour electricity. The food is good and excellent value for money and includes pastas that taste like they were made in Italy (minus the time it would take to transport them here), fish carpaccio, lobster and much more.
The fish carpaccio was delightful and came from a fish so big, we saw one of the cooks prepare a portion through an open kitchen window, it looked fake. Perhaps 80cm long and 40cm high, but not even 10cm wide.

On the property, cute puppies were frolicking all over the place, while a bunch of cats only seemed to be annoyed with the presence of all these humans.

All in all, the two days out of town on one of Sierra Leone’s Bounty beaches, drinking decent beer and nibbling good food was an extremely welcome and relaxing break from the bustle and challenges of town.

Recently, sales tax was introduced in Sierra Leone. Much needed, as the government is making very little money. The downside being that not all restaurants include the sales tax in the advertised price. Florence’s doesn’t either. Not that the place is expensive, the NGO peeps from Freetown need to have a reason to get down to the beach, but it’s always an unwelcome surprise to discover your bill is nearly 20% higher as expected.

Some of the resorts south of Freetown have their own private beach. The beach directly in front of the small resort, currently with only half a dozen of rooms, is private, but directly beyond the small beach are, first, a sand bank, followed by a fast flowing stream with, on the other side, a sandbank so big it’s practically an island.
So, it’s tempting to go for a walk, at low tide, or fight the current at high tide, to get to the furthest sandbank and enjoy the sea proper. Then again, if you’re white, or not Franco, immediately after leaving the small private beach, you’ll be followed around by perhaps half a dozen of local kids trying to get something from you. Perhaps only a chat, but possibly some sort of contribution.
The hassle is not exactly annoying, and it’s easy to ignore, but you won’t be left alone. It did mean that Niamh and I refrained from going out to sea a second time on our second day there.

In two weeks, we will return for the monthly Sunday hash.

Kitty

We got a Kitty. Her name is Tash. And she’s got her own mind.

iPad, so I still iz

Zain’s mobile internet in Sierra Leone is so bad, it’s most certainly not worth the frustration if you need it for professional reasons. The connection quality is so bad and unreliable, you feel you only end up with the appearance of having a connection.
Comium’s mobile internet is said to be better, but requires a 200USD modem. Niamh’s NGO, Goal, has one, but it’s not the most recent model and perhaps the software is outdated, as I haven’t been able to get it to work on four different computers with three different operating systems.

So, I cut up my Zain sim card to have it fit my iPad. I suddenly can share the scores I achieve on games, check Twitter and whatnot and occasionally request a web page. The iPad being an entertainment device, in stead of a professional tool, the internet connection is suddenly much less crucial, resulting in less frustration with it.

Now I only need to find a way to work.

In the field, in Kenema

September 03, 2010 • Blog

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World » Sierra Leone » Kenema » Goal residence

The third largest city of Sierra Leone is Kenema, with an estimated 165000 inhabitants. This is after the nearby city of Bo, with some 215000 people and Freetown, with an approximate million. Kenema is a major diamond trading center and every second building on the one main street in the city is a diamond trader, though most do other stuff on the side too. Bike repair, for example.

Diamonds were discovered here in 1931, but the town was already doing well enough before that, having reasonably developed logging and carpentry industries, which were the reasons the Sierra Leone train line ran from Kenema to Freetown, until it was discontinued in the early 1970s.
Due to the city's economic activity, it's no surprise it has the country's second largest Lebanese population.

The city is about 300km from Freetown, but the main road from city to city is in an exceptionally good state. Apparently built by the Chinese in little spurts over the last few years, I'm wondering if the road will also be kept up to par. Also because traffic was minimal, which allowed us to race from door to door in five hours. And that was including the first hour or so, where we took Spur Road to avoid traffic on the main road out of town. Though a quiet road, it is also in horrible shape.

To keep things interesting, the city, like Bo, is in the middle of an area where Lassa fever is endemic. Lassa fever, a highly contagious tropical hemorragic fever, infects about half a million people yearly and results in some 5000 deaths annually. Kenema hospital admits some 500 cases yearly.
Just the week before we arrived in Kenema, a German girl had quite suddenly died, possibly of Lassa fever, though only malaria was diagnosed.

There's very, very little to see in town. A few feeble monuments commemorate war dead and important sons of the city. A clock tower, built by Pakistani UN soldiers a few years back is the best the town has to offer. And it's locked.

Don’t worry it’s safe to browse the web in Sierra Leone

August 29, 2010 • Blog

World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Home

Antivirus producer AVG recently released a report which revealed that seven of the ten safest countries to surf the web in are in Africa, with Sierra Leone being the safest of them all. The numbers seem impressive, with the chance of being attacked in Sierra Leone a meagre 0.14%, a far cry from Turkey, which tops the overal list with a chance of being attacked at 10%. AVG didn’t put a time frame on these chances, but one of their bloggers implies that these are the chances on any given day.

More impressive numbers reveal that 127 million computers were monitored in 144 countries. Depending on how you count, however, there are some 193 sovereign states, meaning that some 50 were not included in AVG’s research.
Judging from the pretty infographic below (available here), countries not part of the report include several countries in central Africa, as well as Myanmar and Mongolia. I can understand leaving out, say, Myanmar or North Korea, but not including Mongolia makes very little sense. And nor does touting Sierra Leone as a safe country when multiple significantly richer African countries are not even included.

But what’s more is that a current estimate for the number of internet users in Sierra Leone is only some 15000, the only country in Africa with fewer users, but marginally so, being Equatorial Guinea, where the population is just above a tenth of the population of Sierra Leone.

With a chance of about 0.14% of being attacked on any given day, even if we assume that all these 15000 users use the internet every day on their own computer, only some 20 users a day are under attack. With AVG commanding less then 10% of the antivirus market share, all this means that we have to thank AVG for their insight into the safety of Sierra Leonan internet use based on about 2 measured attacks per day over a period of one week.

Indeed, this is hardly reliable.

On a related note, the quality of internet access is so bad and so expensive here, it’s no wonder internet use is so low in this country.

Apes, not monkeys

August 21, 2010 • Blog

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World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Tacugama chimpanzee reserve

We visited the Tacugama chimpanzee reserve, in the hills of Freetown. Started in 1995, during the civil war, to safeguard the survival of the small chimpanzee population in Sierra Leone, the reserve is currently a safe haven for some 100 chimps.
Quite commendable an undertaking. Strapped for cash, the reserve survives on charging entry fees as well as NGO grants. Major sponsors include the European Union, USAID and the cosmetics manufacturer Lush.

And the sponsorships are needed, the reserve claiming that feeding one chimp for one year costs 1000 USD, making the daily cost of feeding all the chimps a cool 300 USD or so. It also means that feeding one chimp for one year costs about as much as three times the GDP per capita for Sierra Leone.

In the evening, at a going away party for Niamh's country director, we found that the average age of the expats in Sierra Leone is surprisingly low.

Things are not what they seem

August 17, 2010 • Blog

World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Zain head office

Pretty much every day in Africa, you’re forced to realise that *everything* is more difficult. At the same time, it’s often hard to really convey what that means in practice, to those who haven’t experienced it, but here’s an example.

I need internet access to be able to work. There’s a few internet cafes here and there, but it’s inconvenient to use that as my main source of access. They’re not too expensive, about a euro or so per hour, but access quality varies.
The obvious choice is to use 3G, or whatever passes for 3G in this neck of the woods.

Niamh, through her country director’s boyfriend, learnt of cellphone company Comium offering internet access. She was told access is with a device colloquially called ‘bunny ears’, which would mean I would have to buy extra hardware to go online. Inconvenient, but nevertheless potentially worth it.
The Comium office is a bit down the road, so yesterday I walked over. At the main entrance, no less than three receptionists stared at me as I walked in. I was standing right in front of their desk, but after the staring I was also conveniently ignored. “Hello”, I said.
“Hello sir.” Pause.
“How do you offer internet access?”
“You have to go next door.”

So I went next door. Walking in, a large office with counters, of which some were staffed. Nothing happened for a minute or two, until, seemingly nothing having changed, one staff member said “Yes?”
I walked over: “How do you offer internet access?”
“You have to ask the guy at the end.”
So I went over to the other end of the row of counters.
“How do you offer internet access?”
“I will call someone for you.” And she yelled someone’s name.
“Ok. In the meantime, can you tell me whether the service you offer is 3G?”
“No, it is not.”

The guy walked over.
“Hello sir.” Pause.
“How do you offer internet access?”
Writing things down on a piece of paper, the guy started to explain to me what the cost were of their different services. The deal isn’t great, but isn’t bad either. Downside being that using one of their modems was a requirement. The modem, incidentally, which didn’t even remotely look like a set of bunny ears.
“So what service do you offer? Is it 3G?”
“Let me ask our technician.”
The technician came over.

“Hello.” I said. Pause.
“Is the service you offer 3G?”
“Yes it is.” the technician said.
“No it is not 3G.” The earlier person reiterating it was not.
“Is it 3G?” I asked again.
“Yes, it is 3G.” The technician responded.
“So, I can use my own 3G modem?”
“No you can’t. You have to use ours.”
“But why? If it is 3G, I should be able to use my own 3G modem, no?” Upon which the technician feigned hearing someone calling his name, after which he walked away, not to return.

The modem they require you to buy is 200 USD.

So, today, I went over to the Zain offices. Zain is a huge, originally Middle Eastern, network provider. Their African division was recently bought by the Indian Airtel. Niamh managed to discover their head office is on a particular street in the middle of town. She also managed to get me a bike, many cudos to her, even before my arrival, so I was off, biking into town today.
Halfway there, close to Niamh’s office, I checked my map to see where I was exactly. Then, not on the map, but on the road sign right in front of me, I spotted the name of the street the Zain office was supposed to be on, some 5 kilometers away from the street with the exact same name in the middle of town.
Puzzled, standing on a street corner, some army recruit walked by, with a huge smile on his face, and started chatting to me, first saying my ‘parking’ was very inconvenient. At first not sure whether he was just being chatty friendly or about to slap some cuffs on me, I remained a bit aloof at first, but, deciding it was the former, I asked if he knew the Goal offices.
“Ah, my goal!” Upon which he started to tell me where he was going.
This took several minutes, but halfway through his story he added that “… and then I walk past the Zain office…”, which was unexpected, but valuable information.
I was gonna go down that road too, even though it was steeper than the Mont Ventoux.

Struggling up, giving up, and walking the rest, I did indeed, covered in sweat, reach the Zain head office. There, reception claiming there was a sales office, they called down some bloke for me who first set up internet access on my phone.
An hour later, when I was about to head out, I discovered that although internet was working, the Java apps were not able to access the web.
The boy was called down again to help me out. But he seemingly had no idea as to how to solve the problem.
“We are doing our utmost to solve this issue.”
“So you know what the problem is?”
“It might be something with the Java settings.”
“Might? Like what? What settings?”
“I’m not really working on this. I’m now doing other things.”
“Ok, so how do I contact support. What’s the number of your helpdesk.”
“The helpdesk is not able to deal with things like these.”
“Ok, so whom do I contact about this.”
“There’s Alvin, at the store downtown…”
“That’s great that you have a guy downtown, but can I call support? That would be easier for me than going downtown.”
“Let me give you his number.”
“You’re saying that in the whole of Sierra Leone, Zain has one guy who’s responsible for connectivity issues on cellphones?”
“Well, I used to be…”
“But you are no longer working on this, right? So you have only one person who’s responsible in the whole of Sierra Leone?”
No response.
Needless to say, my java apps still can’t get online.

Before the above happened, the same bloke gave me a printed list of fees for using their mobile internet service. They’re very clever in not calling it 3G, as it’s EDGE, like the stone age of mobile internet access, but does allow you to go online with a typical 3G modem.
When purchasing their 2GB package (to be used within one month, or lose it), I asked three times if I needed to do anything to actually use the service. Each time, I was told that, no, it should work straight away, that is, it would take maybe an hour to start working, but I wouldn’t have to do anything. Just put the sim card in my modem and that would be it.

So, when I got home, three hours later, it didn’t work. In fact, the sim card didn’t even register on the network, meaning the sim card wasn’t just not activated for mobile internet, it wasn’t even possible to use the cellphone network with it.
I called the guy who ‘helped’ me at the Zain office.
“Ah, you see, that’s why I told you to come in with the modem.”
“Listen, I’m getting a ‘registration denied’ message. The sim card hasn’t been activated.”
“You need to come in with the modem.”
“How can the problem be the modem? There is no network available. When it says ‘registration denied’, doesn’t it mean the sim card can’t register on the network.”
“Can you come in with the modem?”
“Can you at least check if the sim card has been activated?”
“Ah. Ok.”
“Great. How long do you need for this?”
“Maybe 20 or 30 minutes.”
“Will you call me back when you’ve found out?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”

Two hours later, I still hadn’t heard from him. And his phone was turned off.

So I called the Zain helpdesk. Who gave me another number to call. Where no one picked up the phone until the 3rd time I tried, some 20 minutes later.
“You need to take the sim from the modem and put it in your cellphone and text ‘100MB’ to 800.”
“But I already paid for 2GB. I don’t want 100MB, I want 2GB.”
“This is how it works here in Sierra Leone, you need to text ‘100MB’ to 800.”
“Listen. 2GB is 2000MB. I already paid for 2000MB. I don’t want 100MB.”
“Ah. 2GB is 2000MB?”
“And on top of that, I’m getting a ‘registration denied’ message, which to me means that the sim card hasn’t been activated.”
“Ah. I see.”
After which back and forth of details followed which Lance was going to use to trace down the details of the sim.

Lance called me back twice, asking for more details, until he finally managed to speak to the person who sold me the sim card in the first place.
“Take the sim from the modem and put it in your cellphone.”
“And…?”
” I was told the sim will be registered today. It should happen in the next 30 minutes.”

It took another 14 hours. Then I had to get the settings right.
Luckily I’m not dumb, at least not too much, so some experimenting later, I was online. With a glorious 3kb per second, well, when lucky, I was now able to utilize the information superhighway to my benefit.
For those less tech savvy, this is like going back to the days of dialup. It seems that the only remotely reasonable internet service available in Sierra Leone is vsat, a satellite dish on the roof, costing exorbitant amounts of money.
Zain, for their mobile internet service, offers packages of up to 5GB per month. That’s a bit like opening a restaurant and offering all-you-can-eat stale hamburgers for the price of 10 Big Mac menus.

The end result is that, instead of using the Zain modem, I’m going online in one of the city’s internet cafes. Zain’s service is not practically usable, except for perhaps browsing WAP enabled sites on your cellphone. And even there, connections time out regularly.

When I was in Ireland for two weeks, I walked into a Vodafone store, talked to the clerk for less than 5 minutes, walked out with a sim card which the clerk had preloaded with 5GB. At home, I inserted the sim card in my modem and started using it straight away. No hassles.

Arrival in Freetown

August 15, 2010 • Blog

World » Sierra Leone » Freetown » Home

Flying in to Lungi, Sierra Leone’s airport and the only commercially operating airport in the country, treats a window seater to stunning views. Well, if you’re lucky enough to sit on the correct side of the plane.
The airport and town are on the two sides of the bay of Sierra Leone, which also is the third largest natural harbour in the world. Not that that’s in any way convenient, because to get to or from the airport, you’ll have to cross the bay, somehow. Choppers, at 80 USD for a one way trip, are an often used mode of transport (and have known to fall from the skies), but the best balance between cost and speed are the speedboats, which put you across for a still pricey 40 USD. Slower and cheaper options are available, but they can take many, many hours to see through.

Nevertheless, all this, as well as Freetown’s still challenged state of affairs, can’t be seen from the plane. The north of the bay, which holds the airport, is an oasis of meandering rivers in between lush vegetation, while the south side of the bay sees the town sprawling on the slopes of a mountain range literally crashing into the sea. Indeed, not at all unlike Cape Town, though the built up areas are smaller, here, and the mountains are closer to the sea.

Niamh has been put up in one of the Goal houses, in the slightly posher part of town, not far from the nightlife Mecca that is Aberdeen. We’re sharing a ground floor, still from which we can see the sea in the distance, but with a bit of luck we’ll upgrade to the first floor, where we’ll have a nice big balcony to see more of the sea from. We. Will see.

In order to avoid the extortionist cost of flying into Freetown from Europe, my crabwalk allowed me to see a few loved and lovely locations, as well as save on the overall cost of the flight. One of the passengers on my Arik flight from Dakar, through Banjul to Freetown had hopped on in Banjul, the capital of Gambia, where he flown to using Viking, a Scandinavian low cost airline, which had brought him from London to Banjul for 250 pounds. Adding to that the significantly cheaper flight from Banjul to Freetown, around 125 USD over my 250 USD from Dakar, a mere 20 minutes away from Banjul, the total cost of his flight from Europe to Freetown was in fact a tad cheaper.
But he didn’t get to see either Hungary, Serbia or Italy.

Sierra Leone, being the back arse of nowhere, is the international air travel’s black hole. Airlines go out of their way to make it hard for their customers to book flights to Freetown, to the extent where some don’t even mention it on their website, like Royal Air Maroc.
It means that getting in or out is both expensive and a hassle.

It’s time for the African renaissance

August 14, 2010 • Blog

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World » Senegal » Dakar » African Renaissance monument

The flight to Senegal had about 98% Africans, all traveling with, what seemed to be, way too much baggage. Then again, it seemed they knew what they were doing, as the MeridianaFly lady who was checking carry on luggage at the gate, didn’t pick out anyone I noticed.

The Meridiana flight to Dakar leaves at the ungodly time of six in the morning. My eticket didn’t mention it, but checking the carrier’s website, specifically this flight was said to have its check in desks closed no later than 75 minutes before departure.
I had planned to take an airport shuttle in the middle in the night, going to bed early and catching some sleep. But as I still wasn’t snoozing at 12 midnight, I figured, hell, why not take an earlier shuttle and hang out at the airport. At least there, if I’d fall into a deep sleep, I would probably still not miss my flight.

Getting on the shuttle bus, leaving at 1230 from the central train station, felt like getting on local bus transport in Africa. Way too many people were trying to get on, all pushing and shoving at the entrance. A good thing the conductor gave preference to those already having purchased a ticket. I got on, but many didn’t. Though I suspect Malpensa shuttle chartered a second bus from somewhere later on.

At Malpensa airport, wifi was expensive, though I accidentally bumped in to an open network which. While charging my devices, downloading torrents and watching House, three Tunisian Frenchies came up to me, asking if I could pull up a YouTube video from a mate of theirs, from their banlieu in Paris.
A bit of a challenge, everyone left happily a few minutes later. “Thank you, Apple man!”
Flying MeridianaFly was my first intercontinental budget flight. Food was limited to the type of Sandwich regular airlines serve on short hauls, but legroom was fine. On another up, they also do a Freetown – Banjul (The Gambia) return for 250 USD. If we fail to make it to Morocco for Christmas, for reasonable money, then perhaps…

The Gambian renaissance

Flying into Dakar, the one major landmark, the Renaissance Monument, is easily spotted, having been built right next to the airport. Celebrating African independence (from their colonial overlords), it was built by North Koreans for no less than 30 million USD. And to show what the new Africa is about, the country’s president requires a third of the proceeds to go into his pocket because of him claiming to own intellectual property rights.

Not that any proceeds are yet being taken. A guard at the site told me the monument won’t actually open until December, when visitors will be able to take an escalator to the top of the creation, which is higher than the Statue of Liberty.
I did get a glimpse of the insides. I was puffing away, in the shade, next to the entrance, when, what was later claimed to be the ‘owner’ (though he was white and seemed to be Spanish), went in to show some peeps around. What I assumed was a North Korean was guarding the door on the inside.

Oddly, the flags in front of the monument have all been ripped to shreds. And why is it pointed almost, if not exactly, due west?

Besides the monument, there really isn’t very much to see in Dakar. It’s just another African city. Though more interesting than some. The layout and style are more similar to other African coastal cities like Maputo or Dar, more interesting than out of the way places like Lusaka or Gabarone.
And, surprisingly, there’s quite a bit of public art in and around the city, the culmination of this of course being the African Renaissance monument.

In the city, the downtown area being very active, the few main streets have plenty of more proper shops, including nice enough restaurants, bakeries, cafes and clothing and shoe stores. It seemed that many, if not all, of the more upmarket ones, were ran by either Frenchies or, perhaps, north Africans.
Unfortunately, due to Ramadan just having started, many of the eateries have adjusted their opening times.

Capes

After visiting the monument, I hobbled over to the the African continent’s western cape. The tip of this peninsula is actually occupied by a Club Med, meaning that you can only see the tip, not go there, having to settle for nearly the western tip of the African continent. True, the southern tip also isn’t very inspiring, but at least you can check it out. Without being harassed by local traders who play the pity card.
Originally expecting these two visits to cost me the better part of the day, still early, I headed into the downtown area, where, after walking around for a bit, I ended up sipping beers at the Savana hotel, near the southern tip of the Dakar peninsula. Afterwards, I discovered that most of the tip is occupied by one of the many urban ruins in town, a former, but still quite impressive, army barracks.

Zigzagging through town, I ended up at yet another remnant of the horrible colonial past. Though Senegal’s government, that is, its president, feel it proper to spend 30 million USD on a piece of painted and cemented bronze, the art nouveau facade of the Dakar train station is still standing, yet the rail link with Mali was discontinued over thirty years ago. Of course, the TAZARA’s only reason it still exists is because of China’s economic interest. The SA to Mozambique rail link suffered the same fate as the Mali – Senegal connection. And then there are the defunct or nearly defunct SA – Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe – Zambia and Kenya – Tanzania connections. And the Sierra Leone railways also defaulted over thirty years ago.
Perhaps these people simply enjoy being packed like sardines in crappy busses to travel along potholed roads. Ah, the mysteries of Africa.

Another touristy site is the Lac Rose, or Pink Lake, quite a bit out of town. Because of certain algae deposits, the lake has turned an odd shape of pink. I had wanted to go, but after realising the distance from town as well as checking out some of the photographs, I’m not as impressed.

Once were slaves

Which leaves a visit to the island of Goree. The Dutchies might catch it, indeed, named after the Dutch island of Goeree, after the Netherlands took over the island from the Portuguese, some 400 years back.
The island, some 2k from the Dakar shore, was a very minor slave trading outpost and is a UNESCO world heritage site. A pity the island’s main buildings are all in ruins.

On the boat over, two locals tried to curry my favor for business. One woman selling jewelry, one gentleman wanting to be my guide. However, the island is so small, guides aren’t really necessary. Plus, overhearing one guide to a few of his tourists, it sounded like he was significantly overstating the slave trading history of the island.
It’s generally more fun to explore on your own anyway, though that also typically means you get to fend off more gold diggers.

It’s intriguing that Dakar’s main cultural sights are all remnants of a past that’s not pur sang Senegalese. The renaissance monument was built by Koreans, the western cape has been appropriated by Club Med, the island of Goree is a dilapidated colonial outpost and much of downtown was built by the French.
That’s not to say the Senegalese are not building. In fact, much of Dakar seems to be one huge construction site, plenty of private construction going on, as well as a few government funded creations.

Some sources claim that Dakar has 300.000 street kids. An awful lot, as the population is estimated as between 1 and 2 million. However, there are quite a few about. These, as well as plenty of others, make a point of talking to anyone who’s considered to be a walking wallet, so I’ve already heard a number of times that Senegal and Iran have a great connection.
I’m not too well versed in the political links between Senegal and Iran but, for one, many of the taxis are actually, surprisingly enough, Iranian.

And what’s with the horses and horse carts? Not something I’ve seen in other African countries.

Photographing the photographer

August 11, 2010 • Photography

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World » Italy » Milano » Il Duomo

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy is Il Duomo and the square right in front of it, in Milan. Tourists fall over each other to take pictures of the church’s facade as well as themselves on the square, with the church in the background. However, the sheer size of the edifice makes it rather hard to shoot a picture that’s both nice to look at while doing justice to the building itself.
Of course, by far most tourists are only interested in snapshots, which reinforces the culture of these people happily snapping away at anything that strikes their fancy.

Not long ago, Eric Fischer created a gorgeous set of maps, comparing what tourists and locals take pictures of, in major touristic destinations all over the world, using Flickr and some magic as a base. One of the maps is actually of Milan.
What Fischer’s match don’t show is what direction photos are taken in. 

For the set of photos related to this post, I put the tourists themselves on the spot. Shooting themselves, their friends or other tourists, upon request, next to Il Duomo, I photographed the photographers. In the same location as these tourists, my camera was pointed in the exact opposite direction. Not focusing on the tourist attraction, but making the tourists themselves the attraction.
For Fischer’s maps, my photos are an anomaly, taken in the same location as the regular tourist snapshots, but of completely different subjects, while being taken by, what Fischer defines as a tourist, that is, someone who hasn’t been taken pictures in the city being mapped for over a month.

Meanwhile, realising the sheer number of photos shot on an average day of tourists at Il Duomo makes shooting any additional photo an act of folly. All these photos are so similar, creating one more becomes almost pointless. Yet it isn’t, as everyone wants to be able to show they’ve seen the church and its facade, remembering it not being enough.

Milan and Monza

August 10, 2010 • Blog

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World » Italy » Monza » Parco di Monza

Milan on a Sunday morning in august is more dead than all species of dinosaurs put together.

The decoration of at least some of the McDonalds’ is exactly the same as in Ireland. Burgers are priced similarly, but coffee is good and very affordable.

Strangely, whole contingents of central and southern Americans seem to have been let loose on the city.
Only later on my first day, on my why back to my hostel, did i discover the reason. The consulate of Ecuador was sponsoring a major event on the edge of the public gardens, live music, flag waving Ecuadorians and all.
One banner read: “we are all migrants”.

Checking out the sights of Milan on my computer, the night before my arrival, it turns out that i have seen most of these the previous time i was here.
Also, this being a Sunday in august, the city as a whole might be dead, the square in front of the Duomo felt like a chicken pen full of tourists. This prompted me to create…

Taking pictures

Check out the whole set of photographers.

Perhaps as a reward, later, in front of the Duomo, nearing sunset, an older Italian lady sang me several arias, before she was scolded by her minder, who reiterated I didn’t understand her because of my lack of Italian.

Also, the square in front of the Duomo feels overrun by Africans selling crappy bracelets and necklaces. My shooting pictures indiscrimently prompted a few to angrily ask me why I was taking pictures of them. In staccato Italian, suggesting to me they were from French speaking Africa.

Meanwhile, at the train station, gypsies are running a scam I’m not getting and Indians sell kid’s toys.

Monza

Monday was marginally busier in Milan and, even better, in the evening, I even found several bars serving aperitivo, that Milanese thing where an expensive drink comes with free and good snacks. Not all is lost.

The day I spent in nearby Monza, known for its race track. The track is part of the Parco di Monza, which is huge and also houses the Italian Schoenbrunn, the Vila Reale built in the late 1700s, which is currently in less than a great state.
The town itself was even sleepier than Milan, but does have a few nice sights, including its own Duomo, a smaller version of the one in Milan.

A museum

The Brera museum was not too bad, but also not what i expected, with too many religious, though impressive, paintings from the late middle ages through the renaissance to the late 1800s.

In the evening, I tried sleeping early, to get out of bed in the middle of the night to get to airport for my 6am flight, but was not successful. I left the hostel at 12 to get the 1230 shuttle. Surprisingly it was packed at the train station, a horde of people trying to get on the shuttle bus, and only because I had pre arranged my ticket did i get preferential treatment and got on board fairly easily.

The hostel, hotel San Tomaso, was a bit odd, Friendly Chinese staff, a cheap and reasonable breakfast, but the oddity was its clientele. A few backpackers, mostly Italians and then some Africans.

More culture in Budapest

August 07, 2010 • Blog

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World » Hungary » Budapest » National museum

My last two nights in Budapest were surprisingly fresh. August in the capital of Hungary should be toasty. Not so, even to the extend where i was almost freezing my ass off, sitting outside at BarLadino Saturday night (which gives a free beer to the FourSquare mayor for BarLadino every day).

During the day, Benno and i lounged at muzeum cukrazda, followed by a visit to the National museum itself. An exhibition on historical treasures contained the cloak worn by St. Stephen at his coronation over 1000 years ago, while what I found was the most interesting bit was a series of photos from Budapest in the 1920s and 30s.

Some of the exhibitions were bilingual, some weren’t. And some that were had explanations in English that were wrought with spelling and grammar errors. It made me aware of a much more holistic method for providing information to museum patrons.
The museum could install a restricted wifi network, so that visitors with smart phones and other portable devices would be able to access information on any object in their language of choice. This could be done by typing in the object number, for example, but also through the use of QR codes, for those devices that have a camera.
The beauty of this is, of course, that the descriptions will always be up to date. Also, these descriptions could be made part of an online version of the museum’s collection, opening up a museum’s collection to the world. And, through automatic online translation services, the texts will be available, to some extent, in all common languages of the world.
With the proliferation of smart phones and now the introduction of the iPad, soon to be followed by the introduction of the android tablet, this will be the way to go for museums to satisfy their customers.
What’s even more special about this solution is that it allows the museum to build an interactive connected web of it’s objects, suitable for visitors to follow a trail on the subjects of their choosing and liking.

We went to bed early. Benno and Marleen were going to drop me off at the airport. We had to getup at 4 in the morning.

We be hangin’

August 06, 2010 • Blog

World » Serbia » Subotica » Train station

Getting back from Belgrade almost was a breeze. The train left half an hour late, but managed to arrive exactly on time. But we almost had a cross border incident.

Immigration, or perhaps customs, it’s always hard to keep them apart in slightly more bureaucratic societies, asked us for our passports shortly before crossing the border. Then they asked us for proof of lodging for the past few days. Which we didn’t have.

When we arrived at our hostel, we swapped our passports for registration cards, which isn’t uncommon in countries which once belonged to the eastern bloc. However, as is also more and more common, these registration cards carry less and less weight, in most places to the point where they serve no function at all, but being the remnant of a fading flavor of bureaucracy.

When we checked out of the hostel, on the morning of our departure, we received our passports again and we took out the registration cards. I asked the boy at reception if we still needed the cards, to which his response was “nah”, after which he shrugged his shoulders and zoned off.
I asked for a dustbin, ripped up the cards and gave the shreds to the guy, which he threw away for us.

And then, a few hours later, we had customs ask us for the very same cards.

Sure, the burden of being familiar with the law lies with us, tourists, but explicitly being given very wrong information after a straightforward question makes it rather impossible to do the right thing.
Meanwhile, we were being told we had committed an offense. The cards were for registration, which was common in all countries, or so we were told. In Serbia, registration had to happen within one day, in Italy within three days, in Croatia within three weeks.
We were told we had to join the officers, getting off at the next stop, where we would have to go to court, where a judge would hear our case. And fine us.

Extremely annoyed with our hostel, but staying friendly towards the officers, we explained what the situation was and why we didn’t have the cards.
The first officer was then joined by a second, who told us roughly the same story, all in English, shortly after which a third officer showed up, possibly a superior, who told us the same story yet again. We had to open up our luggage for them to see what was inside, after which more explaining followed. Again, luckily, all in English, and all very civilized.
Then,the first of the three mentioned that the fine which would follow was not going to be cheap, expensive, in fact. I assumed this allowed them to give us an opener to offer bribes. Yet I was not going to do any such thing unless explicitly asked for in case I’d misread the nonverbal communication.

The third guy asked once more: “So you had those cards in Belgrade?” and i explained the situation yet again. “And you said this was your first time in Serbia?” which i affirmed.
“Next time, make sure you keep your registration card with you.” after which we were handed our passports back.

Still, not everyone was as lucky. One unlucky backpacker we saw walking off the train with the three officers.
Nonetheless, one stop down the line, perhaps 30 minutes later or so, he climbed back on the train again. Seemingly having complied with whatever penalty he was presented with.

Overall, I was impressed with the officers speaking English very well, responding reasonably and seemingly also being very efficient. Hurrah for Serbia. But not for its receptionists.

It’s a jungle out there, a zoo in here

August 05, 2010 • Blog

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World » Serbia » Belgrade » Zoo

Learning of its existence only after arriving in Serbia, what might be what should be the country’s prime attraction is the Iron Gate. Part of the Danube’s passage through Serbia, it’s a narrow stretch of river, where both sides are flanked by steep banks and, judging from the pictures, a rather impressive sight.
It seems that only one outfit schedules excursions to the Gate, but only does so roughly once per month. We weren’t lucky enough and had no chance of going. Sure, we could have rented a car and gotten there ourselves, but not only would that have been rather pricey, we would not have had a guarantee of actually being able to see the passage from the river proper. Obviously, we had not planned for this excursion, but it still meant our last day was going to be more mellow, all primary places of interest already having been visited.

We started with the Bajrakli mosque, the only mosque in the city already active at the time of Ottoman occupation, following that up with a visit to the zoo. Not too unattractive, we were specifically surprised by the rather trivial barrier between the big cats and their audience. Waiting around for some pretty spectacle, we were rather disappointed, however.
Taking it easy at a local hotspot, we then followed up our lounging behavior with a visit to the botanical gardens. Though they sported a Japanese garden and a rather pretty greenhouse, overall the venue wasn’t too impressive. We derived more pleasure from sipping beers and vodkas at the pub next to the entrance. Though one unique selling point was the itty bitty kitteh committee residing in the gardens.

Almost struggling to move on, we decided to once more act upon the possibilities Wikitravel was offering us for dining out in the city, though again this meant visiting the edge of town on not much more but a whim.
Nevertheless, again, this time restaurant Daco, turned out to be an excellent find. And one, yet again, where staff spoke passable English for our convenience.

Heading back, Katarina, unfortunately, had left her bar in charge with her grumpier sister. An early night it was.

Malls and jews on the Danube

August 04, 2010 • Blog

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World » Serbia » Zemun » Gardos tower

After doing what felt like multiple marathon over the previous few days we took it easy by taking the short walk across the Sava to visit the site of the former Sajmiste concentration camp. There’s not much left of it, nothing in fact, except a statue, without any explanation, somehow commemorating the fact that most Serbian jews were killed on this spot.
Nearby is the museum of contemporary art. In 2007, 8 million USD was committed to refurbishing the venue. Now, it was not yet open to the public, and no one seemed to be working on it either.

The country seems to have a bit of an issue with museums in general. The Nikola Tesla museum was amazingly small, the 25th of May museum was closed, and the National Museum also is also suffering from a renovation, although, there, they actually seem to be working on it.

Our fourth try at visiting a mall was more successful. The rather sterile, but quite large Usce mall, not far from the contemporary art museum which once was, has all the fancy schmanzy shops you can wish for, with a surprisingly large sprinkling of shops catering for babies.

Running out of places to visit, we went over to Zemun, the Szentendre of Belgrade, from where the views of Belgrade aren’t half bad.

Going up Avala mountain

August 03, 2010 • Blog

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World » Serbia » Belgrade » Avala tower

Benno and I truly deserve a Delft Blue plate for walking as much as we're doing it. We started off by giving ourselves an easy time, taking a bus to the museum of the 25th of May which, incidentally, was closed. The star attraction there, however, is not the museum, but the mausoleum of Tito, or Josip Broz, one that's, for a change, quite a bit more timid, as opposed to some.
Also, even though the man died only in 1980, at the extremely respectable age of 88, the honorary guard was removed from the site as early as ten years later. The whole thing is still a very reasonable affair, but clearly not as intimidating or revered as some other founding father mausoleums around the world.

We followed this up by a walk towards the Sava cathedral which, under today's sunny blue skies, had a much more favorable appeal. Our objective was to get a tram or bus to Avala, a 511 meter high mountain outside of the city which has a 200 meter television tower on its peak. The mountain, hills are apparently considered mountains when they're over 500 meters high, or rather the base of it, turned out to be a whole 15 kilometers from town. Then, we still had to endure the two kilometer trek up the hill.
The television tower is actually on a false peak, the actual peak being occupied by the tomb for the unknown hero. Reasonably impressive but primarily beautifully located, the black granite creation and the square around it was already degrading, also clearly no longer receiving the respect it did at some point in the monument's past.
It made me wonder about oddly similar monuments in places like Thailand and Cambodia, where temples on top of hilltops also were slowly left to degrade, leaving us with the remains of an impressive history. Perhaps this tomb will be left a similar fate in maybe as little as a few decades time?
Also, the tomb carried the inscription "1912 – 1918". What kind of first world war was that?

Arriving at the bottom of the hill, which supposedly is a proper tourist destination for Belgrade, we started with a coffee and cakes at the bakery in the row of shops awaiting visitors. It turned out that it was Benno and myself who were the actual sights to be seen, the girl who was selling her buns going out of her way to try and talk to these odd apparitions in her shop. Her English being unsatisfactory, a chance visitor to her little queendom turned out to speak decent French, allowing the four of us to chitchat about trivial things.
Surprisingly, Sandra, as she was called, never had visited the television tower herself, a mere two kilometers away.

Carrying my iPad around, I'm trying to fine tune solutions for using the device and its abilities as an alternative to carrying around a Lonely Planet. Not so much to save money, more so for the potential increase in convenience it can bring.
For one, Google Earth nicely caches visited maps, including embedded Wikipedia and other articles, but still requires an internet connection when doing searches. Belgrade has quite a fair share of cafes with free wifi connections, but is still not the most convenient if you're visiting a location where you don't have easy access to 3G. When entering the country, my mobile phone provider told me that 1MB of roaming data would cost me about 4.5 euros. Horrid.

As mentioned earlier, with Evernote, I made notes of relevant webpages, related to Belgrade, before heading out to Serbia. However, it seems that Evernote for the iPad only properly works when an internet connection is present. Exactly when you're in the middle of nowhere, having to find out what's to do where, typically when you're without an internet connection, this is obviously a rather impressive bug.
Alternatively, the PocketTrav app which specifically was designed to read Wikitravel articles on a mobile device is quite excellent, also caching visited pages, meaning that, in my case, all pages related to Belgrade are at my disposal, any time I need them. Of course, even though Wikitravel's Belgrade pages are quite reasonable, it is no Lonely Planet.
A related application, though one that also doesn't work smoothly without a connection is Wikihood, which tells you nearby sights using Wikipedia articles which have been outfitted with a GPS location. Also, it mashes up all locations, many of which won't be of interest to a tourist, like a school or a nearby district. Lonely Planet offers their Serbia section of the Lonely Planet eastern Europe as a payable download. It's a PDF, meaning that, really, you just get a digital version of the pages in their paper based guide.
The price is too high though, at 5 euros for the chapter. Given that the Lonely Planet eastern Europe has perhaps 15 chapters in it and sells for something like 20 euros, selling each country's chapter for 5 is really too much.
Additionally, you don't get the bonus that digital media would allow you to have access to. I still won't be able to click a restaurant in the food section to see where it's located on the included map. Better yet, I should be able to click the restaurant and get directions to the place using Google Maps.
Lonely Planet also sells proper digital versions of some of their guidebooks. I have no idea how they incorporate the possibilities of these new platforms for these titles, if at all, as the two locations I was interested in, Serbia and Sierra Leone, are not available as digital downloads.

Anyway, one venue for food which was listed in Wikitravel was Malo Korso, which according to the guide was both cheap and serving huge portions. Located on the city's longest street, at some 7.5 kilometers long, it was going to be anyone's guess how far down the road number 468 was going to be.
Indeed, this uncovers a major flaw with Wikitravel, the typical absence of an accompanying map very much limiting the usefulness of the incorporated information. It took us about an hour to trek to said venue, by which time I had started to doubt the validity of the crowdsourced information.
My doubts were unfounded, and the place, decked out as a more upmarket restaurant while playing early 80s pop music, was empty but did exist. Regularly priced, the portions were exceptionally large and the food was quite decent. Recommended, even though it was way, way out of town.
We of course took a bus back.

Our last stop of the day was the Kalemegdan, the site of the Belgrade fort at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. Somewhere on its grounds, BELEF, one of Belgrade's summer festivals, was organizing a showing of alternative shorts, movies.
A bit of a challenge to actually discover the location, we wandered in just before the 40 minute introduction of speeches came to an end. Excellent.

The movies shown were…

+ El Empleo, an animated short about people working as utilitarian implements for others.
+ Budka, a Russian short about the meaning of people working from booths in the Russian inner cities. Oddly, this short was cut short, leaving us without an ending.
+ A short by blublu.org, where animations were, using stop motion, advancing along graffiti walls.
+ The sound of silence, about an industrial worker searching for quiet after a day's work, finding it in sleep.
+ Ghosts, about a refugee center in Tempere, Finland.
+ Alter Ego, a French short set in a park, where a pretty girl, waiting for her internet date, discovers that her eloquent and educated date is actually someone completely different. By far, it was this short which was the most impressive, having an excellent script, decent production value and some good acting. Plus it questioned implicit cultural assumptions, by design questioning who we are as viewers.

We finished off with a night cap at the bar next to our hostel where the lovely Katarina has been serving us dupla palinkovac for the last three days.

Fun in the sun

August 02, 2010 • Blog

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World » Serbia » Belgrade » Ada Ciganlija

After a mere two days in Belgrade it seems safe to say that the city's, perhaps the country's, unique selling point, is its people's excellent mood. Every single cafe, bar, restaurant and snack bar (do you notice a day's progression here?) we visited, we were met by the most friendliest of owners, waiters, cashiers and servers, to the extent where one even ended up tipping us, instead of the other way around. And that was even without providing any service from our end.

Belgrade has a seaside, well, beach, which is probably the most popular recreational destination in the country, reportedly serving as many as 300000 visitors on a weekend. And though yesterday temperatures only started to rise in the late afternoon, today's forecast saw predictions run as high as 36 degrees. We had to get to the beach.
Besides the views, coffee, palinka and vinyak provided pleasant reasons to spend the bulk of the morning as well as the start of the afternoon. We followed up our sunny visit with a walk the length of which should have been reason enough for us to be awarded handsomely.

From Belgrade beach, we walked along the banks of the Sava river, towards the Danube, to cross on the first available, but fourth passed, bridge, only to try and satisfy our curiosity as to what the insides of a mall in Serbia would look like.
We failed miserably. Our 7km walk, resulted in us visiting the Sava Centar, what looked like a proper mall, and was listed as such, on the map we had picked up the day before at the train station. Not so, more resembling a communist show piece, with fancy little shops all over, but without shoppers.
We followed this up with yummy sandwiches, salads and pasta at a nearby hole in the wall. We needed the reward, underscoring the fact by taking a short walk towards the abandoned looking Belgrade Arena, which will see the arrival of Guns 'n' Roses in the near future, where we had a lovely set of espressos at a tiny, but rather cosy bar, called Obelix.

Bar, arena and the mall with an identity crisis are all located in what is called New Belgrade, something of a socialist planner's paradise. Part 60s housing show piece, part modern office tower nirvana, it also contains the Palace of Serbia, a rather drab 60s idea of what a cool construction should look like but also something that didn't compare well with the more modern constructions seemingly closing in on it.
We finished our day at the excellent Red Bar, on Skadarlija, which is in an area lovingly nicknamed Monmartre and indeed does have some resemblance, cobbled streets and all, and also hasn't been spoiled yet, sporting extremely reasonable prices, good restaurants and, again, very friendly staff.

A wedding in Belgrade

August 01, 2010 • Blog

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World » Serbia » Belgrade » Crkva svetog Marka

We started our first day in Belgrade with an unreasonable dosage of rain. Just after visiting what is claimed to be the largest orthodox cathedral in the world, the St. Sava cathedral, it felt like being submitted to a typical African monsoon. Sheltering under an overhanging roof only partially solved our predicament, and only for a while, and the rush, which followed, to the nearest coffee shop, Coffee & Factory, saw us getting pretty much drenched.
Excellent coffee and sandwiches later, though, the sun started to regain control of the skies and we were able to head out to our next destination, the Nicola Tesla museum.

Which was a bit of a disappointment.
Tesla’s genius is a bit of a vehicle for adoration by geeks the world over, so visiting the country which adopted him as its own, he was born in what was then the Austria-Hungary dual monarchy, meant we also had to visit the museum dedicated to his life and works. Or so it was claimed to be.
The museum is a very small affair, where English speaking girl guides rush through a presentation of several of his inventions, before showing the sphere which contains Tesla’s remains.
On the upside, the girl doing our tour was not half unattractive. From behind. In fact, we soon realised that, in Serbia, girls look disproportionally good from the back. It seems to be a strong leitmotif amongst the Serbs.

Our best experience of the day followed soon after. Slowly making our way to the site of the National Assembly, we passed by the Crkva Sv. Marka, the church of St. Mark, which turned out to be the place to get married. Inside, the Serbian orthodox ceremony took ages, with a small choir alternating with the priest taking the vows, both continuously singing. This was followed by pictures and well-wishing on the steps of the church, where several klezmer bands were competing for the most attention, hoping for spare change for their efforts.
It was here that our earlier suspicions related to Serbian girls were confirmed.

We were then hoping to continue our experience of Serbian weddings by, on a hunch, heading to where the Sava and Danube rivers meet each other, expecting that very spot to be the best place to take wedding pics after a music-infused ceremony.
Unsuccessful, we ended up sipping local brandies and vinjaks while appreciating the views. The Danube, being downstream from Budapest, being even more impressive than in the Hungarian capital.

Strangely enough, the city is really only developed on one side of the Danube, though the other side of the Sava is as much part of the city as downtown Belgrade is.

Dinner was had at ?. That is not a typo, the restaurant is called ?, the question mark. The food was excellent, and to our surprise, sitting in the restaurant’s courtyard, we were treated to the aftermath of a wedding, live music and all. After a day of militant tourism, my first impression of Belgrade was that it’s not as interesting a city as Budapest, perhaps, but quite pleasant nonetheless. Architecturally, the city seems to have bloomed after the second world war, much of the architecture being done in a 50s and 60s slightly drab functional style. Nevertheless, the city’s cafe culture is obvious, the streets are clean and quite well kept, prices are reasonable and, most important of all, people are friendly.

On another note, I’m trying to use my iPad as a replacement for a more standard travel guide, like a Lonely Planet. I cached tourist information from Wikitravel, partially by saving pages to Evernote, but completely through the app PocketTrav. On top of that, by looking at the area with the Google Earth app, maps of the area, including embedded Wikipedia articles were also cached on my device.
A good start, as I don’t have continuous internet access, but also containing one flaw, by design. I can not use Wikitravel, combined with offline Google Earth, to find where specific sights, restaurants or bars are located. I still need an indexed street map, which is inconvenient.
On top of that, I wouldn’t mind a short list of useful phrases, like “I am really appreciative of your assets”.
A Lonely Planet for Belgrade, or even Serbia, might indeed be available for the iPad, but for my upcoming visit to Senegal, the Lonely Planet for western Africa most certainly is not. And the information, on line, for Sierra Leone, both on Wikitravel and Google Earth, is near abysmal.
Perhaps I just found myself something to do while in Freetown.

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