Tapas and a birth certificate

January 22, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Barcellos restaurant

Had dinner with my parents and Betsy today at a Portuguese restaurant serving tapas. Dinner was *very* good and not all that expensive (just over a 100 euros for four). Afterwards, we had a couple of drinks at our place and tried push-ups with someone sitting on your back. Hard.

Earlier, I picked up my Iranian birth certificate. A good thing, since I’ve been waiting for that for over five months. Not only do I need it for Zimbabwe, I also need it to get an Iranian passport, with which I’ll be allowed to enter the country.
So this awfully nice guy at the embassy helped me out, filling in the right forms since they’re in Farsi (I neither read nor speak the language) but to no avail. I was sent home, having to find the passport my mom traveled from Iran to the Netherlands with… back in 1977! They need it as proof for my leaving Iran. Great. I’m happy to see there’s still a bit of bureaucracy left in the world.
Turns out, my mom doesn’t have the passport anymore (what a surprise!) so now I have to get proof of my starting to live in Delft, which was sometime back in 1978.

When I arrived at the embassy, 10-ish, it was already crowded and I had to wait for close to an hour before I could request my birth certificate. When I finally *could* ask, the guy behind the desk kept on insisting it wasn’t there. Vahid, the nice guy from before, had called me earlier in the week, saying that it actually had arrived, so I *knew* it was there, but the man was very sure he didn’t have it. Luckily, Vahid helped me out again and the man was able to produce my birth certificate. ‘He thought you said FakhImzadeh…’
So at the next desk, handing over the papers to start the process of obtaining my passport, I had to produce proof of entering the Netherlands as well as three addresses of family or friends in Iran.
I almost started to believe there was some conspiracy going on, trying to keep me from entering the country.

Great news!

January 21, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Two minutes ago, I received the best news this year so far. And I’ll think it’ll go a LONG way: My birth certificate arrived at the Iranian embassy.
I need the birth certificate for my upcoming trip to Zimbabwe. For some reason those people need a translated and certified copy. But what’s much, MUCH, more is that, with my birth certificate, I’ll be able to pick up an Iranian passport, with which I’ll be able to visit Iran! Woohooooo!

I visited the Iranian embassy in The Hague in August. With my old birth certificate (from before the revolution), I wanted to pick up a passport. The birth certificate had to be renewed first, which, they said, would take three to four months. It took five.
Over the past months, when people asked, I reassured them that, surely, it would arrive sooner or later, although the one who needed reassurance the most was myself. Without a birth certificate, you’re technically a non-entity and I didn’t feel comfortable keeping this in mind.

So, if, for any reason, Zimbabwe is postponed even more, it seems I’ll have a nice trip up ahead.

Dinner with Martijn

January 20, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Martijn and Riika. Martijn I know from Budapest, although we studied at the same university in Delft, we happened to graduate in Budapest around the same time. Riika is his Finnish girlfriend.
Today, Betsy and I stopped by, after not having seen them for over a year, and had dinner. A good deal of fun, although it was a good thing police didn’t stop us. Vilmos, Tokaj, vino…

Short trip to Belgium

January 18, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Vaals » Drie landen punt

Betsy and I drove down to Eygelshoven yesterday, of all places, in the far south of Limburg. A friend of Betsy’s recently moved there from Rijswijk and it was time for us to place a visit.
Mostly, we chilled, having dinner at a Greek restaurant and drinking at the local pub.

Today we spent the day at Moresnet, a small village in Belgium where the local monks put together a bunch of statues depicting Jesus’ trip to the cross. Not too bad.
What’s more interesting, is that the point in Vaals where Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany meet, used to be the point where four countries met. The neutral region of Moresnet existed for just over a hundred years but was added to Belgium under the treaty of Versailles in 1919. The region, only 11 acres with some 256 people, truly was a micro-state.

A day at the Efteling

January 11, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Kaatsheuvel » de Efteling

It’s been years since I visited de Efteling, a theme park not totally unlike Disney’s, but more cosy. De Efteling came into existence in the early 50s and has grown more popular every year. Over the last couple of years, they also opened up during a couple of days in winter.

We had a nice day on the rides and in the fairy tale forest, which brought back quite a couple of memories. And we only had rain for about 30 minutes during the day. Then again, it wasn’t just rain, it was a major torrent.
One good thing about going to the Efteling in winter is that the queues are much, much shorter.

A curling morning

January 10, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Utrecht » IJshal ‘de Vechtsebanen’

Every month, my former student organisation Veto organises some sort of activity. Although this quite often ends up being nothing but a couple of drinks at the local pub, today we went curling in Utrecht. You know, like bowles or petanque on ice.

Although it was quite expensive, 25 euros per person for a two hour session, it was also quite a bit of fun. However, I wasn’t really happy with the 8:45 starting time, on a Saturday morning.
Afterwards, we had a bagel brunch at Bagels & zo. Nice.

Driving back, just before dropping Jim off at home, he was called by Dillip, a Surinamese friend of his. He was stuck somewhere on the edge of Rotterdam with a can of gas, where his van only took diesel. We had to stop by and I had to poor the gas into my car so that he could re-use the can to get diesel at the nearby gas station.
As we were waiting, another car stopped with another friend of Dillip’s. There we were, standing on the side of a busy road with three cars, minding our own business. For a couple of seconds, I felt like being in Suriname.

Dinner and more

January 08, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Rotterdam » Restaurant Bazar

Today was a good day for filming. That is, the weather was terrible, but I shot a total of 11 interviews today, so I’m a happy man.

In the evening, I had dinner with Betsy and Duco Hoogland at Bazar in Rotterdam. It’s been a while since I ate here. Last time, some years ago, the food was mediocre at best but this night, it was truly fabulous. The food is Middle Eastern and the place is run by an Iranian, although it’s owned by those people from Dudok.

Afterwards, we stopped by Club Math, where former director of National Dutch Television (NOS) has started something of a club with a difference. He was happy to do an on-camera interview although he seemed to walk the fine line between brilliance and crazyness.

Betsy went home for the final leg of the day, but together with Duco and two of his friends we stopped by ‘de beurs’, a student cafe/disco where the average age and the number of girls would have been welcomed by my friends Data and Jimbo.
Although many of the girls were cute, I was surprised to see too many of them wear ugly jeans skirts (although, positively, they were quite short). I also realised that, although the bulk of these youngsters still looked smart, promising, energetic and in control of their lives, in only a couple of years, most of them will have physically bloated and ended up in dead end jobs with neither control or a future.

Chinese snack

January 04, 2004 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Woerden » Wong’s restaurant

We didn’t stay in Bled the day before to have a bigger chance of driving home quickly during what was expected to be a traffic-jam filled weekend. As it turned out, we did have some snow, but no bad traffic so we drove home quickly.

After Chinese dinner in Utrecht, Wong needed to stop at his sister’s restaurant where his father was in order to say goodbye. His father was to leave for Hong Kong for no less than six months.

We continued and I wondered when would be the next time I’d see Budapest again. And already I couldn’t wait.

Sparkling Ljubljana

January 02, 2004 • Blog

World » Slovenia » Ljubljana » Over the Ljubljanica

We drove down to Ljubljana today and although the European Union is paying for quite a couple of good highways on the stretch from Budapest, through Croatia, to Ljubljana, most of the roads were still byways and we arrived just before darkness fell.

Ljubljana is lovely, and with the whole town in lights, as they apparently do each Christmas, it’s more than beautiful.
We ate at Sokol where a grumpy waiter made mistake after mistake and the pizza baker was still sick from his new year’s celebrations. Jimbo finally got his wish of visiting a club but we had a hard time steering him clear of the children’s disco next to ‘Papillon’, where we eventually ended up.

Wong, Betsy and I mostly remained seated around one of the tables. Data and Jimbo, however, almost constantly, for hours, surveyed the room. I couldn’t help be reminded of this one time in 1992, when I visited Prague for the first time.
It still wasn’t easy to find good bars and clubs and we had ended up at this ‘pit’, where most of the clientele were locals getting drunk quickly on cheap beer and licquor. Most of the guests were young students and most particularly the girls were easy targets for anyeone with a bit of cash.
Standing against the walls were older men, over 40, who just waited for anyone of the young girls to have drunken enough to start offering them more before asking them home.

Nyugati New Year

January 01, 2004 • Blog

World » Hungary » Budapest » Nyugati train station

The day started with Jimbo covered in Champagne, muchos fireworks, many granulations and, after all that, Jimbo trying to wish a ‘Boldog új évet’ to as many girls as possible. He only got into a fight almost once.

After Jimbo fell asleep on Liszt Ferenc tér, we went to bed way to early to rise and visit the Gellert, probably the most beautiful bathing house in the world. Unfortunately, annoying Italians seemed to have taken over. You could literally walk on the heads of these people.

On the banks of the Danube

December 31, 2003 • Blog

World » Hungary » Budapest » Next to the Gellert

Jimbo had been pressing for a night of clubbing from day one and on this New Year’s Eve he finally could have gotten what he wanted. That is, if he wouldn’t have fallen asleep in a pub we stopped at for a drink, around 2am.

Hungarians have a thing for spending New Year’s Eve outdoors. Either on the streets or at a pub/club/restaurant. Since we wanted to be able to move form one place to the next, we had a hard time finding a restaurant we could actually eat at without having to pay an exorbitant entry fee. We ended up eating pizza before heading out to Nyugati, the train station designed and built by a Mr. Eiffel himself. The area around Nyugati functions as Hungary’s Time’s Square and several tens of thousands of people had gathered to celebrate the new year together.

Jimbo had brought several bottles of real champagne (and a bottle of kids’ champagne for Data) and couldn’t help soaking himself with it just seconds before the new year, before peeing in the bottle, missing liberally.

On the town

December 30, 2003 • Blog

World » Hungary » Budapest » Backpackers hostel

As Betsy, Jimbo and I enjoyed a classical concert, Data and Wong spent several hours getting a police report for their insurance companies. Data’s car was broken into the previous night and a small bag was stolen form the car. It contained two glasses and a pair of trousers(?).

While we were visiting the more interesting sights of the city, Data kept on phoning his insurance company and several Renault dealers to try and find a garage that could install a new window in his car. In the end, his only option was to get a replacement plastic window in Ljubljana on the 2nd of January.

By now, it was already clear to me that Budapest wasn’t the city anymore I lived in some years ago. True, outer appearences were still quite he same, but the city has ‘Europeanized’ a lot over the years. In fact, it will join the European Union in only a couple of months and the plan is to introduce the Euro in 2007. Progress… progress.

Car trouble

December 29, 2003 • Blog

World » Hungary » Budapest » Backpackers hostel

I booked our hostels through HostelWorld.com and, as I expected, it wasn’t that easy since most locations were either closed or fully booked. In Budapest, we ended up in a hostel, a looong way from downtown, that, during university terms, doubled as a dorm. The five of us slept in a room where normally three girls spend their days.
The address I received upon booking was quite wrong, with a non existing street in the wrong district. Still, we managed to find the location rather quickly with the help of a tourist office we stumbled upon when driving into the city.

As we learned later, the hostel was actually closed when we arrived, meaning I had to deal with Hungarian speaking grandmothers running the front desk. My Hungarian was put to the test, but I survived.

Being so far from the city center, we parked our car close to one of the metro stops to eat pancakes and visit the castle district overlooking the city. After that, we had a drink at the Irish Cat Pub, where Jimbo probably embarked on his most fantastic experience to date, almost 9 years ago.
When we took the metro back home, I had a vision our car would have been broken into. It was. A side window was smashed and we drove around to find cops to report the crime to. They pointed us to a nearby police station which turned out to be closed, so we ended up with a makeshift plastic window put together at the next door gas station.

Strolling around Bratislava

December 28, 2003 • Blog

World » Slovakia » Bratislava » Somewhere downtown

It’s been a while since I visited Bratislava and although what was beyond a doubt the best sandwich shop in eastern Europe now has disappeared, the city has changed a lot for the better.
Intriguingly, the powers that be seem to have decided Bratislava should be an artistic capital and everywhere in the downtown area, you can find statues in odd poses.

Since the city is so close to Vienna and Budapest, many tourists seem to skip Bratislava for either of both of these nearby capitals. However, the tourists that do show up seem to be more genuinely interested in the town itself.

What surprised me is that the city, considering it was the capital of Hungary for several hundred years during Turkish occupation, is so relatively small. At the same time, that smallness probably also is the city’s main attraction.

Party in Budapest

December 27, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Gas station near Arnhem

It had been unclear for too long who would join, resulting in difficulties with arranging beds in the places I wanted to go to around new year. In the end, Data, Jimbo, Wong, Betsy and myself left on the 27th for a trip that would eventually bring us to Passau, Bratislava, Budapest, Ljubljana, Bled and Munich. Also, our car would be broken into and Jimbo was to be showered in champagne.

I had scheduled the new year’s party to be in Budapest, the city I lived in for close to a year during 96/97. I really looked forward to visiting this beautiful city once more, only months before it would join the European union.

Originally, I wanted to leave for eastern Europe before Christmas, as to avoid the obligatory Christmas visits, but that didn’t work out. At first, Hogo wanted to join but he couldn’t leave before the 27th. This meant that Jimbo could also join, so when Hogo suddenly canceled, I couldn’t set our departure date back to the day before Christmas.
Nevertheless, the trip was long enough, although I would have preferred a bit more time on our way to and from Budapest. Due to the working class of our group wanting to be back early on Sunday, we weren’t able to chill in Bled, arguably the most beautiful island in Europe.

Luckily, we left relatively early on Saturday so we were able to stop for the night and keep our driving time reasonable. We stopped for the night at Passau, where the youth hostel, quite expensive, is located on top of a rock in the middle of the town, allowing for fantastic views of the city. Passau, right on the German/Austrian border, is the meeting point for the Inn, Ilz and Danube rivers and has a lovely authentic city center.
As one does, we had a good schnitzel in a local pub and played Jenga until our waitress joined. She lost terribly. After dinner, we enjoyed a good water pipe at a rather lovely Arabic bar.

Christmas dinner

December 19, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Rotterdam » Winterplein

Today was the last day of training in preparation for Zimbabwe. Today’s training was aimed at improving knowledge transfer skills, specifically in developing countries. However, normally it’s a two-day course and now they tried to fit into one day. Not good. They left out most of the ‘developing countries’ part and focused mainly on the ‘skills transfer’ part. I can teach and train, and was interested in tricks of the trade I could use in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn many.

The evening was spent at Christmas dinner with ITpreneurs at Winterplein in Rotterdam where we had four types of ‘stamppot’ and were ablet to do some ice skating. After that, we had to hurry to the Hague, were the people from the European Patent Office were having a big Caribbean party with lots of almost-naked girls running around. Terrible, really.

Too tired to work

December 18, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Couldn’t get myself to do much today. After having had training for over three weeks, I got home last night and was dead tired. Nevertheless, I only went to bed after 3am, helping out a client of mine in Hawaii (hey, how many people can say they did that?). Today, spent a lot of time not doing much; listening to new music, watching 24 and some movies. As these things go…

Still, I’ll be going back to Utrecht once more tomorrow morning to do a one-day course on knowledge transfer in developing countries. Should be mildly interesting. Could be very interesting.

Meanwhile, my trip to Zimbabwe still isn’t cast in stone. We’re waiting for a ‘terms of reference’ from my counterpart over there and he doesn’t appear to have many ants in his pants.

The hardest part is over

December 14, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Delft » Home

Last Friday, we were finally given our certificates for completing the ‘uitburgerings cursus’ at the HKI. All participants, as something of a jest, were given titles in relation to their personal characteristics. This, as it seems, is something they do every time a course finishes and this time they had chosen the theme of ‘Duurzaam Bouwen’, or Sustainable Constuction. Betsy got to be cork, I got to be titanium. I liked that.

In honor of our two facilitators, we decided on giving them a small present. This ended up being a birthday calender I constructed over the weekend. The entry at BabakFakhamzadeh.com with all the pictures from that calendar can be found here.

Although the course was interesting, 9 hours a day for three weeks tends to get tiring. I’m happy that next week I only have three more days to go, each only some 6-7 hours long.

BBC… almost?

December 10, 2003 • Blog

World » Netherlands » Utrecht » HKI

Darn it! Seems I could have made it to BBC radio today. I got a call on my cellphone during training this afternoon in relation to a piece on Zimbabwe that ‘Africa Live’ is airing tonight. Of course, my phone was off so they left a message, saying they might call later on. Haven’t heard from them yet, however…
I did make it to the relevant page on the BBC website.

Yesterday evening, we had a session on the role of ‘the’ Dutch development worker abroad. Although the subject wasn’t all that enlighting, the way it was discussed, was. The style is called ‘Open Space’ and allows for any topic to be discussed at any time by anyone who’s interested.
With basic rules (like “the people you talk to are the right people”, “it’s over when it’s over”, “whatever you discuss is the right subject”, etc.) it creates an environment where you end up talking about subjects you’re actually interested in, without having to listen to or participate in discussions you don’t want to hear anything about.
A reasonable overview of Open Space can be found here.

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