Hive Mind Travels

Justine Lafaye

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:36:00 +0000

I'm not sure if anyone's reading this anymore, our trip is over, but don't know quite where else to write.

We found out today that Justine, the sweet woman we stayed with when we arrived in Paris in October, died in an accident on February the 6th.

Justine was the perfect beginning to that chapter in our lives. Suddenly materialized in a country where everything was a puzzle to us, the language, the food in the grocery stores and the geography and the manners, she provided a calm and upbeat entree into not just our vacation and France, but our traveling culture. She introduced us to her friends, walked the city us, poked into art galleries with us, cooked with us, taught us French, let us teach her English, and, that rarest of things in a new friend, was comfortable being silent with us.

She had a simple bravery (example: inviting two perfect strangers to live in her apartment), a demure passion, an unassuming openness.

Nothing about grief is easy, but I feel especially adrift in mourning her, because of the way she passed through our lives and we through hers. To their eternal loss, no one here in Seattle knew her, so we have nobody to remember her with, no one to shoulder the sadness with us.

We lit a candle in Seattle for you. And we will miss you.

More pictures of Justine here. Our blog posts about her here here, and here.

Homeward

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:15:00 +0000

Could be the last post from abroad. We're spending the night in Barcelona. Tomorrow we'll stock up on books and food for the plane, then fly Barcelona -> London -> (drum roll please) Seattle.

Sprechen Sie Espagnol?

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:27:00 +0000

Quote of the Day

The police came and burned my cave. But it's OK, they didn't burn my guitar or my kevlar.

My understanding is that it is rude to mention the The War to the Germans, so I am striving to avoid insinuating invasion, connoting conquering and certainly blurting "blitzkrieg", but it is hard, I tell you, hard, when, in the furthest reach of Spain, a small island off the coast of Africa, I am surrounded by men and women calling after their tow-headed little ones in the guttural chop of Deutsche. We have been here close to a week and have yet to meet another North American.

Yes, La Gomera is La Germanita. Ernst, we need you! As a vacation spot for sun-starved Europeans, the Canary Islands make brilliant sense. By far the southernmost reach of the EU, this sub-tropical volcanic archipelago is perennially warm, rarely dipping below 60°F on winter nights. Why the Germans in particular have made it their haus away from haus, you'll have to ask the blond, leather-skinned hippies living in the hills.

Probably, though, it has something to do with the mountains. While the jungle-like laurel forest is unique, the towering peaks and diving valleys must remind them of their beloved Bavaria. La Gomera is ringed with sharp-rocked cliffs and has only a handful of swimmable beaches (one of which we have settled ourselves 100 m from, and on which I type these words), but the center is an alpine roller coaster. Every day, the streets and hills are filled with Germans, young and old, in boots and backpacks, collapsible walking poles wrapped around wrists.

Our hike Thursday, for example, started us in the cloud-clenched mountain-top of Parque Nacional de Garajonay in the midst of a forest that would, with its lush wet greens, make the Hoh Valley seem like Sahara (which, by the way, has spared us the choking clouds of dust it occasionally sends this way). The Canary Islands have the last bit of laurel forest that covered the Mediterranean up until the last ice age and La Gomera's is the biggest, and it is choke full of species found nowhere else, notably succulents.

Descending from the forest, you move through many different ecosystems in just a few hours: moss-wet laurel gives way to low, dry scrub gives way to banana palm clad coast as your legs tire of down, down, down. Old, stone houses dot the paths and goats, chickens and sheep wander freely.

The town we're staying in, Valle Gran Rey, is small and charming, as well. The living is cheap and easy, and rolling a close second in population to the Germans are the hippies (albeit often German hippies) that have made the beaches their home. In a delightful surprise, theft seems virtually unknown and there is no panhandling or hawking. With food cheap and the beaches comfortable for sleeping, not much is needed. Instead, days are spent bodysurfing and lounging and the evenings are filled with juggling, music, and laughter.

We've met a few folks, since we arrived last week. Some hikers we fell in with on our walks or whom we picked up hitchhiking, as well as Marchello, a talented self-taught (from watching videos on YouTube!) firespinner (who had never heard of Burning Man, we were shocked to learn).

Marchello has been living on the island off and on for a few years, and until last year lived, along with a large community of hippies, in caves on the south coast. Apparently, though, a criminal (not from the community) tried to use it as a place to hide, and the police decided to clear it out, so after decades of living, the caves were emptied and destroyed. He seemed sanguine about the whole experience, though, thankful they chose not to burn his guitar or poi.

(PS A little bit more about the forest over at the Bee Blog)

Arrivederci Florence

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:09:00 +0000

Somehow, a month has slipped by us here in Florence, and it's time to leave. We wrapped up our stay by hosting an American-style Sunday brunch for the friends we've made while here. Michelle made french toast with real maple syrup and scrambled eggs with basil, mushrooms, peppers and feta, we had mimosas and coffee and tea and a pile of Italian cookies and pastries and other yummies. Fifteen or twenty folks came and frolicked, some braving the rare snowfall that had drifted down into the hills outside of Florence. All in all, it was just the best send off two homesick travelers from the States could have asked for. Thank you to all our Italian friends, looking forward to seeing you when we meet again!

Next, we head to La Gomera in the Canary Islands, off the Northwest coast of Africa, where it's warm, warm, warm. Here's what Google Earth says the little town we'll be staying in looks like. Our only problem is that we didn't expect to go anywhere this warm, so we're a bit underprepared in the clothing department. Ah well, such problems are good ones to have.

And then...home!

What DOESN'T Venice have?

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:13:00 +0000

We popped up to Venice for the day and found it very, very refreshing. Of course, you see the Grand Canal as you walk out of the train station, so there's that, but as we walked around the city, down the big touristy streets and through the maze of little side ways, there was something else different. There was a peacefulness about it even where it was crowded, something that made it feel a bit more ageless, less hectic.

Michelle eventually figured it out: no cars.

It's obvious if you think about it, but I guess we hadn't. A whole city without a single car in it. Imagine how nice that's going to feel.

Sure, there are boats of this kind and other, but they're mostly on the one main Grand Canal that snakes through the city. All the sideways and byways are dead-ends, where gondolas and motor boats are quietly parked until needed.

It was so serene, it makes me want to flood Seattle.

Pisa Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:27:00 +0000

Last week, Michelle, Jen and I took the train over to Pisa. It was a gorgeous, warm, blue sky day and the tower, as advertised, was leaning. Easily the most entertaining aspect of it, however, was watching hundreds of people do what seemed to be tai chi poses so they would appear to be holding up the tower in their snapshots. We had fun taking pictures of them from the wrong angle. Enjoy the slideshow!

Honey is hot

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:56:00 +0000

Best as I can tell, every man, woman and child in Europe keeps bees.

No really, I just can't get over how every store, every market, every roadside stand is loaded with twenty different kinds of locally produced honey, propolis, beeswax and what have you.

Let's take an example. Yesterday, Michelle and I were getting ready to dunk in Terme Di Petrioloi, some splendid hot springs (or terme, in Italian) a half hour south of Siena when a shabby looking guy comes ambling up to us with a basket full of...you guess it...his own honey and propolis for sale. We laughed and tried to explain in our broken Italian that no, we don't want to buy any honey because we have our own hives and we are from the United States. He is puzzled because by "broken Italian", I mostly mean "speaking in simplified English and gesturing", so I hand him one of our Hive Mind black-and-silver stickers and point back and forth between it and us.

He's excited about the sticker (it's pretty striking, kind of like a Batman - Dark Knight feel to it, if I do say so myself) and then I notice that the conversation has piqued the interest of the dreadlocked guy standing by a van right across from us. He looks curious about the stickers, so I pull another couple out for him and his girlfriend and try again, by waving back and forth between it and me, to explain that we are beekeepers.

Well, wouldn't you know it, but he's a beekeeper, too (that's his card to the left). I know! His partner, Frederica, spoke English well enough to facilitate our conversation, and it turns out that they have 35 hives over on the Adriatic coast of Italy, and have just popped over for a few days to enjoy the terme. They're sleeping in their van and plan to head back the next day.

I didn't get to taste their honey (who brings honey with them to hot springs?) but I did get to taste some their home made grappa, and if that's anything to go by, I'm sure their honey was splendid.

The terme, too, was splendid. Rushing, clean, hot, hot water with a few different pools deep enough to submerge in. The rock was coated with greenish-white build-up of sulphur and other minerals which was odd to rub, because it had a porcelain-like smoothness to it, but at the same time, had a slightly soft, gripping quality of rubber. The smell was strong, but less like rotten eggs and more like burnt matches.

In any case, despite seeing honey everywhere, I've resisted buying a bunch to bring back. I've only bought about five jars of various kinds of tasting (forest, wildflower, acacia, etc.) and received one jar (with saffron) as a gift from the beekeeper we bought the other small jars from when he found out we were beekeepers, too. The International Brotherhood of the Beekeeper lives!

Ars Electronica

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:14:00 +0000

A few days ago, I mentioned that Michelle and I had seen an interesting piece of art at the Palazzo Strozzi, Christian Nold's "Emotion Mapping Greenwich Village", in which he'd created a mood map of Greenwich Village by hooking up perspiration sensors and a GPS to people as they walked that section of New York. I said I thought the concept was great but the aesthetic execution weak.

As if to underline the point, we saw an awesome exhibit today that showed how to do great electronic art that is really, truly art.

The pieces we saw were part of the Florence Biennale 2007, a slightly weird but vast collection of art from all over the world. The show is sponsored by the U.N., and has the artists come with three of their works, where they are displayed one next to the other next to the other in a vast, sterile feeling exhibit hall.

Most of the work was really, really good and incredibly diverse, but the puzzle was "what's in it for the artists?" Many of them sat uncomfortably in plastic chairs next to their pieces waiting to talk to anyone who came by, but, at least while we were there, there were very few attendees. As most of the artists began by asking us if we were exhibiting our work there, I got the sense it was mostly just them. It was a shame that the production value of the exhibit hall and the advertising was so below the quality of the art being displayed.

Given that there were 840 artists and over 2,500 works of art, I could go on for ages about all the different pieces we saw, but I'll try to stick the point I started on and focus on the electronic art.

Awesome!

There were seven pieces under the umbrella of Ars Electonica, an Austrian-based group supporting the digital arts.

The most impressive piece was Se Mi Sei Vicino ("if you are close to me"), by Sonia Cillari, Steven Pickles and Tobias Grewenig. From the blurb:

A core element of the work is a sensor floor on which a performer is standing, functioning as a human antenna; when coming close to or being touched by members of the audience, the body movements are registered as electromagnetic activity. Surrounding the floor are large projections showing real-time algorithmic organisms connected to audio compositions, which change form according to fluctuations in the electromagnetic field.

Here you can see it in action:

Video: Se Mi Sei Vicino

Beautiful, isn't it? I mean, it's one thing to rig an an electromagnetic sensor that can detect distance between bodies and render that onto a computer screen (one really big thing, honestly), but it's yet another to make it aesthetically compelling, beautiful. These guys pull it off. That it involves you, as the audience, becoming a participant is pure gold bonus.

Another "audience participation" piece was Noise and Voice by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman (calling themselves Tmema). Here there were two large projection screens that created visualizations based on input from two microphones. Again, what impressed me most about this one was not just seeing my voice realized in color and motion, but how attractively (and whimsically) they'd manage to render it. It's difficult to see in the (shaky) video, but the objects they create have a very warm, old time woodcut feeling to them, while at the same time moving and undulating with an authentically organic motion:

Video: Noise and Voice

The last piece I loved mostly because of my previously mentioned fascination with sundials. Watchful Portrait by John Gerrard had two 3-D renderings of a woman's face, each rotating slowly over the course of the day to face the sun and the moon, respectively.

There were four other pieces that were all equally cool. Instead of describing them, I'll just invite you to come to Florence and check them out!

Affectionately Yours

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:08:00 +0000

Our return to the States is still a bit over three weeks away, but a shift as big as this takes some time to prepare for, so I've already begun to plan. Specifically, I'm trying to decide which European habits and customs I should affect when back in the States to constantly remind people who may have forgotten that I've just spent three months in Europe.

I'm sure you know what I mean. Suppose, for example, that it's 6 p.m., I'm talking with some friends, and one of them should demonstrate that he has forgotten that I've just spent three months in Europe by saying something inconsiderate like "anyone want to grab some dinner?"

Obviously, this would be an perfect time for me to remind people that I've just spent three months in Europe by saying something like "Dinner? It's only six o'clock! Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot how early Americans eat. You see, in Europe, we don't even think about dinner until 9 or 10 in the evening!"

Now, under ordinary circumstances, affecting an English accent would be the no-brainer solution to my problem. Asking for a "spot of tea", then exclaiming "bloody hell, I could murder a lorrie of it" when refused is a simple and direct way to communicate that I've been overseas to people who may have forgotten.

The problem, in my case, of course, is that we were only in England for a few days at the beginning of our trip (roughly three months ago, if you must know), and so it seems like it might invite a certain speck of ridicule to begin lilting like a limey. Moreover, asking if anyone's got a fag, in the wrong circumstances, could just get me punched.

Affecting an Italian accent is out, as well, as it would be difficult to explain how being around people speaking a completely different language should change how I pronounce my own. This isn't a deal-breaker, mind you, but it shuffles the accent lower in the list.

More credible is simply shuffling some Italian, Spanish or French phrases into my everyday speech. For example, when my phone rings, I could answer "Pronto!" Then, after waiting for the appropriate baffled pause to play out, I could laugh and explain "oh, sorry, I mean 'hello'! You see, in Italy, where I've been living, that's how we answer the phone. It means 'ready'."

Unfortunately, this one will only work when my phone rings, leaving me high and dry in those long spells in between when my phone is not ringing.

For those times, I have considered eating with my fork held in my left hand, tines down, while using the knife in my right to maneuver food onto the back. However, I'm afraid this may be too subtle. I would hate to have to draw attention to it by repeatedly asking people things like "could you please hand the salt to my right hand, because my left hand is occupied with my fork, tines down as we do in Europe!" A bit of mouthful, if you'll excuse the pun.

I'm really at a loss here. Affecting coffee snobbery (e.g., "oh, I don't know how you Americans can drink this...black water!") is right out, as well, seeing as I'll be returning to Seattle. It would be like acting stuck up about coal in Newcastle, which would be dumb for several reasons.

Wait, I've got it! I'll just greet people by kissing them on both cheeks. This has the advantage of being clearly European, frequent (once per interaction per person!), and virtually impossible to overlook. Spot on!

So get ready America, because next time I see you: kissy-kissy!

Mood Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:41:00 +0000

Fellow couchsurfer Francesco tipped us off late last week to the opening of the Strozzina Centro di Cultura Contemporanea, the Center for Contemporary Culture at the Palazzo Strozzi.

The Palazzo Strozzi dates to the late 1400's, when it was built as the home of the Strozzi family, (doomed) arch-rivals of the Medici's (lesson: don't be arch-rivals of the Medici's).

The courtyard was filled when we arrived with well-heeled Italians in high Italian fashion, young and hip as well as older and well-to-do. The swishing of fur was entirely drowned by a good techno-ambient DJ playing behind two large screens with trippy projections, and the Renaissance feel was cheerfully updated by the shifting violet, blue and yellow wash lights. Free champagne flowed along with a tasty, dry cheddar, olives, and tangelos. Good fun.

The art, though, was a bit disappointing. The show, Emotional Systems: Contemporary Art Between Emotion and Reason, promised:

to investigate the topic of emotions, proposing a reinterpretation of the correlation between the contemporary artist, the work of art and the user, in the light of the latest discoveries in the neurological sciences about the human brain and its effects on the emotions.

And, as you entered the cave-like basement exhibition, there were a series of quotes culminating with the could-you-raise-the-bar-any-higher statement

Remember how you feel right now. This exhibit may change how you think about emotion forever.

I dunno, call me an dullard, but after witnessing a concrete pile spraypainted a rainbow of colors and a CGI video of killer whales, I found myself regarding emotion in much the same way I had.

There were two exceptions. Bill Viola had a moving high-definition, hyper-slow motion video of a line of people in grief, apparently viewing a casket (entitled "Observance"). The glacial unfolding of their reactions seemed to resonate with my own muscle memory of pain, creating a disquieting empathy.

The other interesting piece was Christian Nold's "Emotional Mapping Greenwich Village". Nold wired up a perspiration sensor to a GPS and had over 1,000 people wear it over a period of years as they walked Greenwich Village, NYC. The result was an "emotional map" of the area, a visualization of how different areas made people feel.

The concept, I thought, was brilliant and I tip my hat grandly to him for pulling it off. That said, the actual visualizations, lacked aesthetic quality. They seemed like the kind of maps that a computer geek would come up with, the result more of mathematics and limited tools then something worthy of an artistic study of affect.

Still, beat the pants off the room filled with emotional words hand-scrawled on a wall.

Nicer Now

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:33:00 +0000

Michelle worried that the pictures in the La Vida Firenze post made our apartment look dreary, which it is not. I therefore present to you the results of her improved photo shoot:

Now isn't that nicerer?

I Hope The Whale Doesn't Shit

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:35:00 +0000

We've been learning bits of idiomatic Italian, both verbal and physical, from the people we've been meeting. For example, you know we say "break a leg" in English to mean "good luck"? Well, Italians have the same superstition that wishing someone well can jinx it, so they also say something negative to mean something positive. In Italian, though, they say:

In bocca al lupo

or "into the mouth of a wolf" (i.e., "I wish you to be eaten by a wolf"). The response is "Crepi!" or "May it die!"

A fun variant, apparently, is

In culo alla balena!

or "Into the ass of a whale!" The response to this is "speriamo che non caghi" or "Let's hope it doesn't shit". Indeed, let's.

Physical communication is as rich and interesting. Everybody knows "Italians talk with their hands", but we're getting a big kick out of the specifics. It's not just wild gesturing and shaking of pinched fingers.

To begin with, let us review the Italian gesture for communicating "I am very hungry". It is demonstrated here by our housemate Jen, and is accomplished by flattening one's hand, placing it horizontal to the ground and bumping it quickly against the area just below the lowest rib.

Next, should you enjoy the meal you have just had, you may wish to indicate it by extending your forefinger horizontally and pressing directly into your cheek, as our own Michelle demonstrates.

However, if the meal is truly, truly stunning and you wish to exclaim greatly its wonder, you will wave your hand in slow circles to your side, as our friend Luigi demonstrates in the video below.

Video: Mmmm Mmmm Good

Luigi, by the way, is a "cool guy". I shall indicate to you that this is the case by making a loose fist of my right hand with the thumb slightly extended, then drawing the thumb down my cheek.

Luigi, may you end up in the ass of a whale!

La Vida Firenze

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:36:00 +0000

We've been living in Florence for just over a week now and are settling into the pleasant rhythms of our days. We've rented a spacious and warm two bedroom apartment in the heart of the city (right here on the map, and photos of it and the view from our window below). The second bedroom belongs to Jen, a refugee from a dissolving Michigan marriage whom we met at the hostel we stayed in initially. Her no-bullshit, perennially upbeat attitude and quick and easy laugh were perfect for us and we've felt as old friends quickly.

Mornings, Michelle spends half an hour with a series of yoga poses while I stretch sleep out as long as I can. Breakfast is eggs with cheese, vegetables and bread bought fresh at the market the day before alongside espresso made inexpertly (and often unpalatably) in a Bialletti Moka stove top espresso maker (or muesli and yogurt, if we're lazy).

We spend some time with our books or checking e-mail (keeping in touch with y'all, and trying to get our house rented out for December) and then meander out into Florence. Days are wiled away poking at markets, riding a bike into the countryside (or, occasionally, failing to find the countryside and riding in circles in the city), reading books, wine tasting, visiting a museum, walking in a park or attending to the many errands that will pop up if given the chance (finding running shoes, swapping for a new paperback, restocking biscotti, to name a few). It's a bit too chilly to describe our days as languid, but they have that peaceful simplicity to them that we craved. (Photos below are having lunch and tasting wine with Lucca, a friend we met through couchsurfing)

I should say too that the art around Florence is absolutely amazing. Sure, there's Michaelangelo's David and a score of paintings by Renaissance masters in the museums, but what leaves me agog day after day is all sculpture and art in the streets. Here's just a sample what we walk by everyday, just sitting out there.

Evenings we are alternating between cooking up some of the fresh pasta made at the little shop next door (same owner, location and machinery since just after the war, we're told) and trying out the many trattoria that are sprinkled around and throughout the city. The food in Italy is all that you've heard and more. (A few nights, we've filled up on the free buffets that are offered with a glass of wine at bars all over the city, but we've found that, in general, you get what you pay for.)

Later, we've been making our way to Libreria La Cite, a great little bookshop / coffee shop / wine bar we found just on the other side of the Arno, near Santo Spirito. The walls are lined with an odd assortment of books, ranging from radical politics to radical comics to radical children's books (as best we can tell, of course, as 95% of them are in Italian), as well as bright and odd paintings. The second floor is a loft overlooking the first, peopled with odd furniture and tables and chairs and a chessboard (unused, thus far, by me), and that's generally where we make our home, glasses of wine, laptop and books before us. (Photos below are from a Couchsurfing meeting there last Friday)

Being the types we are, we're finding projects for ourselves, as well, of course: Michelle is talking to the owners of the building we're staying in (hundreds of years old and in the family for at least three generations) about helping them design several of the apartments they're renovating, and I've contacted the local English-language paper about freelance writing, spent some time preparing for the inevitable return to the working world (prototyping, reading, and sketching ideas), and created a couchsurfer's map of Florence, so it's not all frittering and flaneuring, but it does feel indulgent.

Deliciously so.

Home, Sweet Florence

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:50:00 +0000

I hope this doesn't sound corny or anything, cuz it's just true. Moments after we stepped off the train into Florence, we both immediately felt we had found the place we were looking for, somewhere we could settle down for a while, instead of packing and moving, packing and moving, touristing, touristing, touristing. We gave it a day to make sure it felt right, and it felt righter and righter, so we'll be settling down here in Florence for at least the next few weeks, maybe until we return to the States at the end of December.

Home, sweet home.

Terme di Saturnia

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:17:00 +0000

Best...Hot Springs...Ever!

What's usually wrong with hot springs? Lots! Par example:

Crowded
Pools to shallow, you have to contort yourself to actually submerge
Water flow inadequate, stagnates with the slough of a hundred people's acne and eczema
Stench of rotten eggs
Creepy guy wearing only dreamcatcher necklace offers to give all the girls back rubs

What's right about Terme di Saturnia, a couple hours north of Rome? Lots! Par example:

Tons of room
Some pools deep enough that you can do the stroke
Pounding waterfall of hot water
Mild aroma of sulfur
No creepy guys, no dreamcatchers

Seriously awesome. Just down the road from the Terme di Saturnia resort and spa ($20 / day, herbal perfumed four hand massage, probably something with cucumbers) is the free Saturnia hot springs, in use since the Roman times.

Who needs to pay for a massage when the beating of the hot waterfall on your back is enough to knock you down the river?

It wasn't perfect of course: the water was pleasantly warm, but not really hot (about 98°), there were mysterious clumps of toilet paper on the far bank and the aforementioned sulfur smell stuck with us for literally days, surviving multiple showers, but it was mild and not unpleasant. And really, what a nice reminder to smell Michelle's hair and think "ah, Saturnia!"

Tomba del Faggeto

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:31:00 +0000

Gunfire popped in the trees around us and the clamor of the dog pack was clearly drawing closer. Ordinarily under such circumstances (if there are any ordinary circumstances that involve being caught in a cross fire), the thought of a tomb would be considered grim, but for us, it was the closest thing to a foxhole going, and thus welcome shelter. I flashed Michelle my best "but you still love me smile, " (because this was clearly My Fault), and was gratified at her forgiving chuckle. Then she told me my head was up over the ledge and I better duck lower if I didn't want to get hit.

How did two mild mannered Seattleites end up taking cover from hunters in a two thousand year old Etruscan tomb in the hills of Umbria?

The problem was, we were bored of "medieval hilltop villages". I know how it sounds, like we're taking it for granted or we're burnt on travel, and maybe they're both a bit true, but seriously: you poke around the streets of thousand-plus year old villages perched on cliff-ringed hilltops, with their impossibly narrow, tiny, twisting stone streets, random arches, mysterious plaques, hidden courtyards, patchwork repairs, three-legged dogs, and one-eyed cats for a few days (or weeks), and pretty soon, they all start to look the same. Delightfully, charmingly the same.

So, you want something different.

The freezing rain was soaking through our hats and shoes as we tromped through the medieval hilltop town of Perugia. Cold, wet, frustrated, and, at the risk of repeating myself, cold, we ducked into the tourist office in the hopes of finding Something Different, or, at the very least, Something Dry. In addition to the usual propaganda extolling the town's churches and museums, we got a little guide entitled "Archaeological Itineraries".

It was filled with information about the various ancient sites within Perugia: the Hypogeum of the Volumni, the Roman Amphitheatre, and, tucked away on the last page, this little gem:

The Faggeto Tomb

Exiting the north part of the city and going through Elce, San Marco and Cenerente, we come to Colle Umberto...From here, after taking the provincial road for Umbertide and then an unmarked route up the slopes of Mount Tezio, it is a 30- or 40-minute walk to the summit of Cresta della Fornace...Just past a small clearing, there is a narrow trail. From here, it is an easy five minute walk to the Faggeto tomb, which is visible inside a small enclosure circled by young cypress tress. It was discovered by chance in 1920 on an estate that is private even today... A corridor flanked by two walls leads to the door, composed of a heavy rectangular slab of sandstone still set on hinges in the architrave and threshold...On the sides there are traces of a platform, where a travertine cinerary urn was discovered...The tomb is datable to the second half of the second century BC.

A 2,200 year old tomb, discovered by accident, tucked away in the hills down an unmarked trail? We're in!

The problem was, you know, the "unmarked trail" part. There's a reason that we usually go down marked trails. It's the markings that let us find them. Without the markings, they're just spots in a large, undifferentiated wood.

Woods that, in this case, were filled with men with guns.

We spent a bit of time with the man in the tourist office determining where, exactly, this "unmarked trail" was, but he clearly thought the whole enterprise was a Bad Idea (or at least that's what I think his constant repeating of "very difficult" meant) and also, he didn't exactly know where it was. Also, he spoke only a smattering of English.

Armed with the word "cemetery", the phrase "two roads" and a photocopy of a topo map, we made our way the next morning out of Perugia north, down XXXX, YYY, and ZZZ. We overshot, doubled back, overshot in a new and different way and then returned to the last town we had passed through to ask at the only shop.

The shopkeeper, needless to say, spoke no English, nor based on the puzzled look on his face, had he ever heard of the tomb.

Still, we showed him the map and the instructions in Italian, and he pointed us towards the correct road (literally "pointed us", in the sense that he walked out of his shop, out to the road and pointed).

Awesome, we're on track! Nothing between us and that tomb but an unmarked trail!

About 2 or 3 kilometers up a winding, dirt road we found what we thought was the trailhead. Cars parked, a trail, we're almost there!

About 300 m up the trail, we came across an empty field. Empty except for the guy with the gun in it.

Hunting, cool. He's wearing an orange safety vest, and we're wearing mostly green and black, thus rendering us mostly indistinguishable from the forest and his quarry (wild boar, it later turned out).

We slowly back down the path. Wrong turn, we're pretty sure.

This is where we get brilliant.

Remember I said I had that pocket GPS? Well, it doesn't have a screen, but I can hook it up to my laptop and download the log, and use LOCR to convert that to something Google Earth can lay out on a map. And I've set up Google Earth to cache maps so I can look at them when I'm not on-line. And (oh man, I am BRILLIANT) I took the precaution the previous night of scanning the whole area while on-line with Google Maps, so I've got a good cache ready.

Presto, next thing we know, we're looking at a map of where we drove and walked (mostly totally wrong) right next to the photocopied topo map of where we're supposed to be (not that far away).

A short, bumpy ride up some rough dirt roads and we're...well, as far as we can drive.

At this point, it would have been optimistic to say that we had found an unmarked trail. Rather, I would have said that there was certainly no marked trail, so, in that sense, it was an unmarked trail.

Still, we were optimistic, so we tromped into the woods...right past the next guy with the gun. Actually, two of them, on either side of a field.

Michelle, who spent many a summer in upstate New York, felt that the wisest course of action would be to turn around, since walking through the woods in green clothing during hunting season is just plum foolish. She explained it clearly and forcefully.

Obviously, I'd have none of that.

We'd come this far. Twists, turns, language barriers, rocky roads, the brilliance, BRILLIANCE of the GPS, and then turn around? Pah!

I offered her the car keys and promised to be back shortly. When faced with the choice of having to find my bleeding body later in the woods, or being on hand to administer first aid, she chose to stand by her man, and we headed into a break in the trees, which could arguably be construed as an unmarked trail.

We found it.

I know, it sounds like a lot of build up and then we find the trail and then find the tomb, but believe me, it was a bit more harrowing. First, there was the constant sound of gunfire in the opposite hills. And the disappearing trail that later reappeared. And the hunter's blinds.

Ultimately, though, just as we were about to give up and turn around, I spotted some cypress trees through the woods and we found a little sign and tomb.

Sooo cool. The door still swung on its stone hinge after sitting in the woods for over two millenia! Didn't even need WD-40! We scampered about it and inspected it and tried to imagine who was here in the woods two thousand years ago making it and looking at the chip marks and imagining what it must have been like to discover it by accident in 1920...

When the gunfire started. Really close. All around. And the dogs yapping and barking and chasing...something.

Fortunately, as you can see in the pictures, the tomb provides a perfect foxhole-like setting to wait out gunfire. We could see at least one hunter through the woods, but felt that given the language barrier and our lack of orange clothing, jumping up and shouting "hey, please don't shoot this way" probably wasn't advisable.

Instead, we just decided to hunker down and wait it out.

And then it began to snow.

I flashed Michelle my best "but you still love me smile, " (because this was clearly My Fault), and was gratified at her forgiving chuckle. Then she told me my head was up over the ledge and I better duck lower if I didn't want to get hit.

Olive Oyl

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:42:00 +0000

Picking olives, we thought, was a bit like milking a tree. You start by spreading a large mesh cloth beneath the tree on all sides. This is not the "like milking" part, this is just the "like picking olives" part. The "like milking" part is what you do with your hands: you grasp each branch and work thumb and fingers down it rhythmically, popping off the olives as you go, then grasp again a new branch or the same again higher when you reach the bottom, as if you were massaging an udder. The olives rustle through the leaves and bounce into the cloth at your feet.

Do not think you can snack on them, by the way. Olives straight from the tree have a gaggingly strong bitter taste that will have you trying to spit your tongue out of your mouth. Really, I know.

We had the pleasure of assisting in the harvest of the trees of the owners of our bed and breakfast, Letizia and Luigi, two of the 70 year round residents of the ancient little town of Montasolo, just an hour or so outside of Rome, but centuries away from the motorscooter and tour bus bustle of that capital.

To find it, we scoured "bed and breakfast" listings on the Internet from Berlin, but were put off by one "little apartment in the city" after the other. We realized we had landed on our goal, Montepiano Cassalini, when we punched the address into Google Earth and saw this beautiful sight: just a tiny little hilltop amidst farms, fields and forest. Paradise found!

We are the only guests in town (Letizia and Luigi are the only ones with rooms to let), and though there are 70 residents, we can only attest to a dozen or so, as that's all we've seen so far on our walks through the clot of narrows lanes that tangle over the hilltop. Though we've found nobody outside of Letizia and her friend Marina (including Luigi) who speaks a word of English, there is an open friendliness and trust about everyone: the keys left in front doors up and down the cobbled streets speak volumes.

The town is shaped like an oval, or buttonhole, from which it derives its name: an "asolo" is the hole a toga corner is drawn through to stay it, and is completely surrounded by a wall, outside of which all the cars must be parked, as the streets are much to narrow to accommodate even the smallest of vehicles. The ancient etymology of the name attests to its age: there is mention of it in a stone found from 200 B.C.E, and it appears to have been quietly chugging along ever since.

The lack of motor vehicles and the isolation of the town in general makes for a stunning, quiet peace. As I type this on our terrace, the wind is carrying up the clank of cowbells, braying of donkeys and the occasional bark of dogs, but it is otherwise silent.

And the view. Oh, the view.

The landscape rolls along a mishmash patchwork quilt of pale and deep green fields, vineyards, olive groves, autumn-tinged forest, red-roofed villas, hilltop clusters of stone walled towns, stretching up and down and on and on to the horizon, where you can just see the Basilica of St. Peter, Rome. I could stare at it all day.

I think I will.

Berlin

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:48:00 +0000

Coming from the Spanishness of Barcelona, Berlin seemed so much like home that Michelle and I kept finding ourselves surprised that people weren't speaking English. It was, it seemed, a very American city.

Well, not in all ways.

For example, you know clubs in the States will try to get people in the doors early by saying "free admission before 10 pm"? Well, Berlin clubs do the same, except it's "free admission before 3 am".

3 am!

They don't even open their doors until 11:30 (or 23'30, as they say here) or midnight. When do they sleep?

And the squats are worth a mention: leftovers from when Berlin was divided East and West, there are buildings and plazas and whole blocks occupied by squatters. The police wouldn't dare try to kick them out, for fear of the protests that would follow, Ernst, our couchsurfing German friend told us. Some are converted into artist live / work spaces, some just live spaces (including at least one tree house...ah, my dream). We went to a late night dub party (again, with the fantastic Ernst) in one such space, which was a good time, though I must say reggae parties are the same pretty much everywhere you go (except Jamaica...I imagine they'd be different there): hippy / punkish white guys with dreadlocks and old Jamaican men smoking waaaay too much for their own good.

And, of course, there's the Wall. We spent many a day just rolling the reality of it around and around in our heads: at the end of WWII, the Americans, British, French and Soviets divided Germany up and agreed to jointly administrate it. They drew lines through it, with the western part of Germany going to the U.S., Britain and France, and the eastern part to the Soviet Union, and Berlin, the capital, divided the same way.

Except that Berlin was deep, deep in the middle of the Eastern part.

That meant you had a pocket of capitalist West Germany stuck hundreds of miles in the middle of East Germany.

Naturally, as economic and cultural conditions began to deteriorate under Soviet leadership, folks on the eastern side of the city started to move to the western side. The Soviets built a wall around West Berlin, not to keep people from getting out of the wall, but to keep people from getting into the wall. And it stood that way until 1989.

It just all seems backwards.

There is a museum just a block from Checkpoint Charlie that's been there for decades (all during the period the wall stood), detailing the various lengths Germans went through to make their way out of Soviet-controlled East Germany to West Berlin: packed inside suitcases, in home made hot air balloons, home made submarines, home made scuba gear...We stood mesmerized in front of the pictures of it all, including those from November 11th, 1989, when they finally opened the gates and let everyone through.

Oh, what a party that must have been. They say champagne and tears flowed in the streets.

East Berlin, which was a destitute, Soviet wasteland, has been transformed in just 18 years into the hip, up and coming section of town. New buildings and construction are everywhere, there's a baby boom amongst the young professionals and galleries and boutiques are the flowers growing in all the cracks.

The weather was cold while we were there (it dipped down to 32° one night), which hampered our exploring a bit, but the food was much better than we expected. Unlike Barcelona and Paris, where it was a struggle to find food that wasn't designed for tourists, Berlin was full of yummy, affordable restaurants: Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Indian...oh, and I suppose German, though we just dabbled in that fare: a currywurst (sausage with ketchup and curry poweder) here, a piece of schnitzel (fried, flattened pork) there.

All that, plus the best transit system of scene, anywhere, make it the most livable city we've visited.

If only we spoke German.

We also hung out with Brady, Toby and Brooke while we there. They tried the unconventional approach of not bothering to change their internal clocks. Mixed success, according to their blog.

Rappin' MACBA

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:29:00 +0000

Mark and I came across a group of kids rapping and beatboxing in a circle in front of MACBA one night in Barcelona. It sounded awesome.

Video: MACBA rapper

The Dreaded Mullet

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:53:00 +0000

Oddest fashion item from Barcelona: the dreadlock mullet. Mullets in general abound, sharp cropped and flat, shaggy and curly, but over and over we see it: long dreadlocks party in the back and a short, practical business crop in the front: the classic mullet, reggae style. My initial theory was that you earn enough cred from dreadlocks that you can afford to spend some dork dollars on a mullet, but there are enough mullets in other forms wandering the streets of Barcelona that I wonder.

And I worry. Is the mullet on its way back in?

I've held off getting my hair cut, front or back, just in case.

Pintxos and tapas, oh yum!

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:54:00 +0000

Food in Barcelona has been a big step up from France, although we still rely heavily on bread and cheese as our staples (and, consequently, I may need to staple my stomach when I get home if things continue as they are).

One of our favorite styles is pintxos, a Basque version of tapas, in which you pluck little open-faced sandwiches, each with a toothpick through it, from plates on a counter, somewhat like the conveyor belt sushi at Blue C in Fremont. When you're done, you just hand them your plate, they count the toothpicks and you've got your bill.

I've also been enjoying the varieties of prosciutto available, sliced right from the pig's leg when you buy it. Wrapped around a fig or a date, and it's a sweet, fat, savory treat!

The chocolate shops of Europe are famous for good reason, and we've done our fair bit of indulging, including a snack on deep-fried churros dipped in hot chocolate at an old-school churroria that, we were told by Monica and Ivan, friends of the women staying in our house back in Seattle, has a line stretching down the block every Christmas morning.

Absinthe

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 12:48:00 +0000

Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands...It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family... - Barnaby Conrad III (via Wikipedia)

Outlawed in the early 1900's due to it's supposed deleterious and hallucinogenic effects, absinthe (pronounced "absenta" in Catalan) is back and legal in much of Europe.

Apparently, the art of absinthe manufacture was all but lost, and the distillers had to reverse engineer aspects of the process by chemically analyzing the residue of old casks, but they appear to have nailed it. Mark Linneman and I enjoyed several glasses at a small pub near our flat. (We spent a couple great days and nights hanging out with our friends from home, Mark and Kelly, who only semi-coincidentally were in Barcelona at the same time as we.)

Absinthe fills the glass clear, pale green when served, and comes over ice with a spoon, a sugar cube and a small bottle of water. We dipped the sugar cube in the absinthe, set spoon and soaked cube across the mouth of the glass and lit the cube on fire. In the rosy gloom and hum of the pub, the small, steady blue flame of the absinthe and caramelizing sugar was hypnotizing.

When it burnt completely, we dropped the cube down into the glass, added a few splashes of water (which turned the drink from clear to milky) and enjoyed. The flavor was like a strong, alcoholic licorice (fennel and licorice are the two main ingredients, along with grande wormwood, source of the supposed hallucinogenic and neurotoxic chemicals).

The quality of the drunk was definitely different. It's hard to characterize precisely. It's a strong drink, ringing in around 120 - 150 proof, so there's certainly a fair amount of just plain old drunkenness at work, but it's not like a beer drunk or a wine drunk. There was a loose giddiness about it, and conversation and laughter came quick and easy.

I wouldn't say it was hallucinogenic, but walking the street afterwards, things seemed a bit off-kilter and surreal. Of course, the streets of Barcelona at night can feel that way stone cold sober, so who's to say.

Graffiti

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:37:00 +0000

Awesome, awesome graffiti in Barcelona. There are two types I've been enjoying: shop door and paste on.

All the shops of roll down metal door and, in an apparent attempt to discourage would be artless taggers, the owners have hired artful artists to spray quality designs on the doors. They are on nearly every door, it seems, and they're all very beautiful.

The second kind we saw in France, a bit, as well, and I guess it's not technically graffiti. Rather, it's pre-printed art that is cut out and glued to surfaces. Check it out.

Dali

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:32:00 +0000

Visits to the Dali museum in Figueres and to Dali's house in Cadaques grew my appreciation for the artist. Previously, I'd regarded him as a bit of a niche artist, darling of the acid-trippers, but otherwise a one-trick pony.

So wrong.

Some of the standouts:

The many works he's done in which he copies (parodies?) the styles of other artists. Perhaps it was practice and educational for him to try each style, but to see paintings in the style of Picasso, Matisse, Bosch, Van Gogh, Serat, Escher, rooms in the style of Versailles, all with a slightly surrealist twist seemed instead to say "I could do that!"
The optical illusions and stereopticons were a joy. Kneeling down and staring into a mirror that allowed you to merge two nearly identical paintings into a third, or standing 3 meters and 9 meters away from a giant abstraction and see it melt into a tiger or "3 Lenins disguised as Chinese" or the paintings that were made to be viewed as a reflection in a round, silver bottle all positively made me giggle.
The diversity of his work: paintings, drawings, kinetic sculptures, jewelry, holograms, and on and on...
The room (not by Dali himself, but in homage) in which you walked to the top of a staircase and looked down and suddenly the couch and paintings and other furniture merged into a perfect face (of Mae West), framed by a gigantic wig.
At his house, we saw that he always painted sitting down, and had rigged an easel that allowed him to lower a painting into the floor so he could reach the top.

The stroll to Dali's house through the old, peaceful little sea town of Cadaques (where we stayed for a couple days) was a warm, relaxing morning and put us in the mood to have to have a bit of fun once there. See if you can spot it.

Yay Dali! Yay Dali!

Barcelona

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:21:00 +0000

If you've been to Barcelona, it's changed since you were here. Really. Even if you were here last week.

Of course, the old town is still an ant farm of twisting, impossibly narrow alley-like streets, a warren of canyons threading through leaning towers of laundry-filled balconies, gothic and baroque facades, grinning and snarling gargoyles, centuries-old walls, tiny, mysteriously misshapen plazas and each turn still leaves you delightfully lost, dismayed and bewildered.

The shops, though, are increasingly new. Where there used to be seed stores and butchers and mattress shops mixed in amongst the boutiques, galleries, cafes and restaurants, increasingly there are world-wide recognizable brand-names in the windows: H&M, Diesel, Levi's, Zara, and their European equivalents, Desigual, Springfield, C&A. Gelato shops have popped up by the dozens, high-end chocolate ("xocolati") shops crowd churro fryers, and the inevitable Starbucks has planted its flag.

I really don't mean to be one of those "it was cooler before it was discovered" hipsters, and I'm not. Barcelona is lively and awesome and we're having a great time. We gape in amazement at the doorways preemptively graffiti-ed with fantastic designs and scenes to ward off the taggers, thrill at the profusion of tiny, independent little shops crammed into every hole in the wall, stuff ourselves with the pintxos, tapas and bocadillos and simply wile away the days getting lost in the meandering bustle.

Burnt on the constant moving we did through France, we were enormously relieved to settle down in Barcelona. We spent one night when we first arrived with couchsurfing hosts, the affable, excitable Sven and Sybille, but have since spent seven days relaxed in our own studio flat, complete with our own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room area, balcony, washer / dryer, all for a very reasonable 50€ / day.

The location is excellent. We're in the old section of town just 50m or so from the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA, en Catalan), and an apparent mecca for skateboarders. At all hours of the night and day (more on that later), the square is filled with kids, ranging from barely old enough to walk to teenagers to thirty-somethings flipping their boards and twisting their bodies on the giant slate plaza.

It's been a source of great entertainment for us, always good for a brief watch on our way in and out. As a bonus, I'm able to cadge an open wifi network in one corner of the square, so it makes for good background while I check my e-mail in the evening.