Dental drama

I've been having sensitivity in my teeth for about six weeks: the root is exposed on tooth #30 (lower right) from overeager brushing, a filling in tooth #3 (upper right) had gone bad after 24 years, and a cavity was forming where teeth #2 and 3 met. Four weeks ago I started going to a dentist who was recommended by a friend from the British embassy.* The office was very clean, the equipment very high-tech, etc., but after four visits the dentist still hadn't been able to resolve the problems, and in some respects had made them worse; so I got a dentist recommendation from our own medical unit and visited there today. The new dentist poked at the lower tooth and found a spot where nothing had been treated - the torture scene from Marathon Man obviously came to mind - so he undid the work the first dentist had done on my lower tooth to remove an amalgam that had been placed at the root, in order to put down a coating of some kind, and he then restored the amalgam. There's still some work that needs to be done on it, so it actually feels a bit worse than it had, but he'll finish up on Wednesday and then work on the top teeth.

The worst of it, however, was that he injected me with a lot of novocaine, and it made my lip swell a bit after I left the dentist's office even as the numbing effect grew stronger. I sat down for lunch with a swollen inner lip and no sensation in the right side of my jaw, and thus began consuming the inside of my lower lip along with my doner sandwich. It has not been a good day.

*My friend actually has nice teeth, but the irony is not lost on me.

More on the dog project

Our group had its second meeting last night. We discussed some strategy and next steps, and - based on a conversation that I and my Albanian counterpart, Mimi, had had with a local attorney - I explained how to incorporate: that we needed to name a board of directors and an executive director, and draft and file the necessary papers (and pay the attorney for her services). I was the only one to volunteer then and there to serve either as one of the directors or as the executive. This was strange, considering that I'm not even the most ardent of the advocates for stray dogs. (The German woman, Edith, who'd had the same idea to start a movement that I did is kind of nuts about the cause, but not even she raised her hand.)

Granted, this is not a light undertaking; and some people have concern about possible unintended legal obligations; and we have to make sure we find the right people for the various jobs, and not just find people who are more enthusiastic than capable; still, I'd expected a fight for leadership positions, not a backing-away. I remember going to a swimming pool when I was around 12 years old and being very excited to jump off the 10-foot board, until I climbed up the ladder and stood on the suddenly very narrow, very flimsy plank. I ended up climbing back down the ladder; but that was then, and I didn't expect a tableful of committed adults to do the same thing now.

Edith also told us that the city had culled dogs in the Park. Abby and I had noticed that one of the dozen or so dogs that we "know" had what looked like a bullet wound in her leg, and Edith, who regularly feeds the dogs, said that many of them no longer came around for food. She and I talked about the different dogs that we both know, and I realized that half of Cooper's "friends" could have been shot, since I hadn't seen them for a few days either. It was a very painful night, but fortunately, four of them turned up this morning, and the other two may be around somewhere. Yet even if it was a false alarm after all, it's clear we have a lot of work to do, so anyone who can help us fund-raise is more than welcome to do so.

Dog projects

I'm home from work this fine Wednesday afternoon, partly because there is not much to do until we receive the draft reports from our national teams on Community Social Responsibility in their respective countries; but mostly because my shoulder hurts from working, to the point that I'm starting some physical therapy with a local American. I'd had a desk and computer at the office until our program assistant returned; after that, I typed on my laptop; but then we moved into a new, cramped office with lousy desk space. Bottom line: bad ergonomics = shoulder and hand problems. I'm only giving this post about 10 minutes, and then I take a break.

Cooper has become a much more affectionate dog after a period of ignoring us. He had been food-obsessed, even stealing food off the counter. He was at his worst during his walks in the park: once off the leash, he'd run in search of picnickers' bones or poo*. He ignored other dogs, and he wouldn't come when called; all he wanted to do was eat. Finally, about two weeks ago, he stole a piece of chicken from my plate at dinner, and when I tried to wrestle it out of his mouth (not to eat it myself, but for principle's sake), he tried so hard to gobble it down before I could take it from him that he bit me through the finger nail, drawing blood. I smacked him hard and banished him to another room, and wouldn't let him back in for about an hour. The next day, Abby and I let him off the leash at the park as always, and then proceeded with our walk, and after three minutes we realized that Cooper was gone. We called, we searched, and finally some passers-by told us they'd seen him running back the way we came, out of the park; Abby climbed a hill and sure enough, she saw him standing in the traffic square outside the park. I can only guess he'd decided to find a piece of byrek or shishqebab at one of the eateries on the border of the park and had became confused; but our hearts stopped to see him standing in the middle of the street. Fortunately, rush hour hadn't quite picked up yet, so I was able to get him out of traffic unharmed.

Since then, he's been more attentive to us, and he has started playing with the park dogs again; and we've also started using food rewards to get him to come every time we call, as Abby's pet guru, Victoria Schade, has recommended. (Abby met Victoria online by writing to Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post after he'd written about his dog and dog training in his live chat; we were considering flying her out to Albania at one point, when Cooper was in his biting phase.) This may be one of the reasons he's more playful, but it beats having a jerk around the house.

Meanwhile, the dog of one of Abby's colleagues was fatally poisoned in the park about a week ago. We still don't know if he happened upon rat poison, or if cyanide-laced food had been left out by the lake as part of the city's dog culling efforts. Abby and I spread the warning to other dog owners we know whom we see in the park, and many of us are worried about this. Last night, however, I held the first meeting with a group of people whom I hope will form the nucleus of a stray dog population control program. (The dog poisoning wasn't the cause of this effort - I'd spoken to an Albanian friend about this weeks ago - but it was certainly a reminder of how important this project is.) We have three Albanians, including the director of the veterinary research institute, two Americans, and a German couple, with other Albanians and expatriates interested in joining on. Our goal is to create a trap-neuter/vaccinate-release program, an educational program about dog care, and a puppy adoption program. This will take a lot of research and fundraising, of course, but we already have a commitment from the Institute to use its facilities for the operations; and all of us are sickened by the current population control methods and realize that something needs to be done. My job with UNDP ends in mid-June, and so while it's possible that the USAID position will come through, I'm now not sure whether I want it or whether I want to devote myself to the dog project full time.

*Do I mean animal poo or picnickers' poo? Po-ta-to, po-tah-to ...

Goats

Last week, I spent three days in Shkodër, north of Tirana, with a local dairy owner and an Italian dairy consultant. Our goal was to see whether we could develop the goat milk market for the production of goat cheese for export. Goat cheese is a high-value item in Europe; Albania has a lot of goats, but farmers mostly raise goats for meat, so much of the milk is wasted. Our initial investigation was to understand how the goats are kept, to see to what extent the milking procedures meet the necessary hygiene standards to produce raw milk of sufficient quality, to begin the value chain.

The first two days were spent tromping around goat farms. The farmers were friendly, and receptive to the consultant's advice, and they kept offering us raki that we had to keep refusing until the second day when the farmer had the glasses and bottle in hand, thank goodness - but they didn't have a lot of interest in producing milk for cheese-making. They noted (rightly) that they don't have the infrastructure to keep the milk from spoiling; there's little available veterinarian care to combat diseases such as mastitis, an inflammation of the udders - as you can imagine, I learned a bit about goat milk in three days; there is no centralized cooling center to store the milk until it's collected; and the roads are so bad that it takes an hour to make what should be a 20-minute trip. We held a training on the last day which was reasonably well attended, but it seems pretty clear that without significant infrastructural investment, goat cheese-making is not a strong option at the moment.

The trip itself was a lot of fun, however. The hills outside Shkodër are beautiful, and goats are good-looking animals. The kids in particular are really cute, especially when there are about 40 of them running in a herd. But there's a reason that when people say "You smell like a goat," they don't mean it as a compliment.

Hills in the village of Kalmët; kid goats running; an arty shot of abandoned farm machinery at one of the farms.

This week was part two of the project, where we went to Kukes and Has, two of the northern-most provinces of Albania, to investigate the goat situation there. I didn't bring the digital camera, so I can only describe the scenery as Alpine and fantastic: green mountains, vibrant fields, and clear lakes. The town of Kukes is a fairly quiet place with nothing to do at night, but it is great for sight-seeing in the surrounding area during the day. The drive to Kukes, however, is not for those prone to motion sickness. The road winds up and through the mountains, at elevations ranging from roughly 1200 to 3400 feet. I can't get a picture of the roads from Google Earth, so just imagine that you are effectively reversing direction every 20 minutes for the last three hours of the drive; I've followed a straighter trajectory on a Tilt-a-Whirl.

As an aside, I'll note that the ride home was even worse, at least for the first hour, because the staffer who had the front seat tuned the radio to a Kosovo station that was playing modern traditional music (as opposed to pop). Traditional Albanian music is heavily but monotonously percussive, and usually features some combination of concertina, horn, and whining clarinet. It's still popular today; in fact, many of the pop songs essentially feature a Christina Aguilera-type singer backed by traditional instruments and rhythms. At its best - after a few glasses of raki and a plate of grilled lamb - it is festive dance music. However, at its worst, it sounds like the product of a methamphetamine-addicted klezmer musician playing a bagpipe stuffed with accordians and cats.

Back to the subject at hand: the trip a success for the most part. The officials in Kukes were helpful, and the farmers in Has were very interested in developing a goat cheese production facility. They even are interested in working cooperatively - a pleasant surprise given that the word "cooperative" can raise unwelcome connotations of collectivization. Has is even more remote than Kukes, but the farmers were sure they could find a market since they sell goat meat in the south of the country. (I can't imagine how the meat stays refrigerated for the 6-8 hour trip down, and it probably doesn't.)

Still, the Has farmers too complained about the lack of the necessary infrastructure, so the basic obstacles remain. In fact, the meeting put me in the difficult position of trying to be encouraging and agree that we needed to develop a concrete plan, while not being able to promise anything more than a conversation with my boss, since I command zero resources at UNDP. I do want to see something happen up here since there is a lot of potential for development, but I don't think the prospects are good. The state continues to neglect the area apart from a significant road construction project - albeit one that appears to have been tendered corruptly - while the rest of the work is being done by aid agencies like UNDP, and I doubt that my boss will be able to change the approved work plan that is currently underway, or that she will be able to broker any private investment in the two months she has left under her contract. (UNDP does everything by annual contract, which makes continuity and personal investment difficult.)

Actually, overall, I've been disappointed with my work experience, since we don't seem to get very much done. We seem to be taking a scattershot approach at a real problem of underinvestment in small business, nor are we doing much to promote the Global Compact. I think we face some combination of poor program design and management from HQ, a lack of focused local management interest, and my boss's inability to create sustained value in the face of these other obstacles (to put it kindly). I don't know if the USAID job will come through, but if it's anything like my current project, I might be better off focusing on photography and the Gallery.

Bratislava (Part 2)

Next to the Old Town Hall was the Primate's Palace, built between 1778 and 1781, which has a Hall of Mirrors and some beautiful 17th century English tapestries, as well as period furnishings. The Hall of Mirrors was underwhelming, but the rest was beautiful enough for me to take a photo despite it's being verboten. After the palace, we dashed up to a photography exhibition which was more pretentious than it was anything else, but it gave me the idea for a photo series of my own, "The secret lives of bridal gown mannequins", the first of which is reproduced below.

Even with all of this touring, it still was only 3.30 in the afternoon, so I went to the Bratislava City Gallery, which Abby had seen the day before, while she went window-shopping. The Bratislava City Gallery was, in a minor way, spectacular. The Slovak modernists, such as Peter Palffy, did some amazing work. There was also a painting of Orpheus and Eurydice that was truly brilliant and haunting. (I'm kicking myself because I did not write down the name of the artist - it was no one I'd ever heard of, but I had to go back and look at it three times. Truly outstanding.) There was also an installation of books in which you walked through a narrow passage with books stacked to the sides, and mirrors were positioned on the ceilings, the floors, and the walls in front of and behind the books (from your direction) to reflect them so that it looked as though you were walking through an endless hallway of books. Here is a photo of it from the gallery.

From there, I went to have a beer in a comfortable pub across the street from the U.S. Embassy while I waited for Abby, and I realized that the nice thing about the bars and cafes in Bratislava is that they have women in them and aren't just full of 20-to-60-year-old unemployed men who are drinking coffee all day long.

Dinner that night was a strange experience - we couldn't get into the restaurant we wanted, and we couldn't find anything else that looked appealing, so we finally chose one near the main square. We thought there were other people in the restaurant, but it turned out just to be a hen party in the back room, and the only other couple in the main dining room were eating from a McDonald's bag and chatting (loudly) with the waitstaff. For some reason, we ordered anyway, trying to make the best of the situation, but the restaurant had almost none of the bottles on its wine list. At this point we were resigned to a disappointing experience, when the male of the couple unfolded himself from table, sat down at the piano in the front of the room, and began to play lovely dinner music. The food, when it came, wasn't bad; and more diners entered the restaurant about halfway through our meal, so the place livened up some.

On Sunday, we met our guide, Roman, and piled into his car for a trip out to the Small Carpathians. He was an interesting enough guy, happy to talk about Slovakia and the effects of the Communist regime, so the conversation was lively. Červený Kameň castle was worth seeing, although the tour was conducted in Slovakian with Roman doing some translation (but he'd also given us an English-language flyer describing the castle rooms). The castle cellars are the deepest in Europe, for those of you who are impressed by such things. We then stopped in at a pottery shop, saw how traditional pottery is made (just the same way it is made everywhere else), and bought a plate.

Then it was on to the wine tasting. Basically, we were let loose for 45 minutes in a room full of about 70 open bottles for however much we wanted to taste.* We had a great time and tasted some pretty wonderful wines (and also some pretty awful ones). The wine is fairly inexpensive, so we bought five bottles before heading back to town, ate an early dinner, and took the bus back to Vienna.

Here are some other photos from the trip:

A view of the castle from an alley; me being grumpy a gargoyle; Abby atop St. Michael's Gate; Communist-era Bratislava across the river.

And my first bridal series photo:

*Abby noted that this was not unlike the dinner we had at Cafe Bouley in New York City, where I met Abby's parents for the first time over a paired tasting dinner at which the waiter left the bottles on the table, until he saw how much I was enjoying the wine in various bottles. I asked him why he had left the bottles on the table during the earlier courses if he hadn't wanted us to drink our fill from them and he said, "Because some of the customers like to read the label" - as if they were cereal boxes or something. This time, I only sipped.

Fine times in the Hague

Blogger won't let me upload my photos for part 2 of the Bratislava trip, so I'll interrupt the blog to say that while we were in the Netherlands last weekend, we had what may have been the best meal I've had in years: we were in the Hague, at a restaurant called It Rains Fishes, and we had a paired five course menu. We started with two pieces of tekkamaki encrusted with sesame seeds and a lobster and seaweed salad, followed by prawns, then lightly braised scallops, then an incredible halibut with bok choy and black-and-white noodles in a truffle sauce - each paired with variously white wines - and we ended with a trio of chocolate desserts that was paired with a Pedro Jimenez sherry that was out of this world. Truly fabulous.

The rest of the trip was great as well. Apart from dinner, the highlight was a visit to the Mauritshaus, which is a small but excellent collection of Dutch painting also in the Hague. Anyway, as soon as Blogger gets back to normal, I'll finish the Bratislava story, and then it's on to a story about goats.

Bratislava (Part 1)

Bratislava, 45 km from Vienna. Bratislava, former capitol of the Hungarian empire. Braaa-ti-slava where the wind comes sweepin' down the ... never mind, Bratislava is where Abby and I were on 3-6 April - I for a conference, Abby to play the accompanying spouse for once. As it goes, Bratislava is a nice place to visit for a weekend - a small Old City, Hapsburg-era architecture, beautiful cathedrals, good food and wine. Another thing the city is known for is whimsical statuary.

We arrived Thursday afternoon, checked into a pretty nice hotel, and then started walking through the city. We came upon the Philharmonia concert hall and bought tickets for the program, which included a Brahms violin concerto and Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. It was a capable performance, but not brilliant; and at the end, the audience applauded but didn't give a standing ovation, as they would have done in the U.S. This struck me because it always surprises me when audiences stand up for even a completely average symphonic or theatrical program, as if the spectators had to act as though they'd just seen an amazing performance or else the night would have been a disappointment. If standing ovations are so common, how are we supposed to celebrate a truly excellent performance - by sacrificing a virgin to the first violinist? But I digress.

Friday, I sat in a conference room and listened to my U.N. colleagues talk about the future of the Growing Sustainable Business Initiative (which is not looking particularly bright, since the funding runs out on June 30) and supply chain analysis while Abby toured the city. She'll have to fill you in on what she saw; but we then all met up and went to a tapas restaurant in the Old City and had a great dinner. The Slovakian red was better than the Spanish red, and that's saying something. Abby and I then stopped in a nice music bar on the way home - the live music wraps up by 11.00 PM in Bratislava, but the crowds were still lively - for one last drink.

We started Saturday morning with a visit to the tourist agency, where the woman behind the desk made it clear that she could think of one hundred better things to do with her time than provide information to tourists. We left with no new information, but a man followed us out and asked if we'd asked about a wine tour. We had, we answered, and he handed us a pamphlet for his company, which offered just such a tour along with a visit to Červený Kameň castle in the Small Carpathian mountains. We agreed to think about it (and ultimately went; see below).

From there, we took a look inside the Jesuit cathedral and then went up to the gothic-style St. Martin's Cathedral, where the Hungarian kings used to be coronated. The stained glass windows were spectacular, and the cathedral also had an extensive crypt. On walking in, it briefly reminded me of the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, which makes sense - tunnels, dim lights, dead people.

After the cathedral, we walked to Bratislava Castle, which was a bit of a trick, since we had to find a way across the highway that the Communists had driven right through that part of the Old City, and the footbridge marked on the map was closed for construction. After a little circumnavigation, we found it. Abby had learned that the castle for a while had been used as a monastery and then as a barracks before being returned to use for tourism, and that in both these uses much of the glitter had been stripped away. Our tourist guide has this to say about the Castle:

The national cultural monument of Bratislava castle is both the symbol and the dominant feature of the city. The first traces of settlement originate from the end of the late stone age, and there are relics here from the ages of the Roman to the Great Movavian empire. The castle has undergone gothic and renaissance reconstructions. Following the battle at Moháč in 1526, when the Turks defeated the Hungarian armies, the castle became the seat of the Hapsburg emperor Ferdinand I (accompanied by castle reconstruction). The most fundamental alterations were made during the reign of Marie Theresa (1740-1780). On 28 May 1811 a great fire broke out in the castle, and for 150 years the castle existed as a ruin. Reconstructions had to wait until after World War II. Part of the premises today serves for representative purposes of the Slovak National Council. The castle complex also houses exhibitions of the Slovak National Museum. The former chapel is the location of a concert hall. Legend has it that when empress Marie Theresa learned of the conspiracies of the nobles who did not want to be governed by a woman, she invited them to the castle and organised a banquet, at which witches turned them to stone. The stones were thrown into the castle well, thus forever blocking the secret passages which led from here.

At least, this is what the tourist guide says. The castle buildings were closed for renovation, so all we could do was walk the castle grounds. In fact took us 10 minutes just to find a sign directing us to the toilets. The grounds were pretty, however, so we enjoyed those, and then went back toward the Old City.

The castle; view of St. Martin's from the park; nice things in the park.

The first stop on the way back was the Clock Museum, which was three floors of a narrow house filled with 18th and 19th century clocks of not-very-interesting provenance. Nearly as ancient as the clocks were the little old ladies who sat in the museum and followed us around to make sure we didn't cause any trouble. There were a surprising number of tourists who arrived while we were there (this seemed to be a theme of the day - our getting in someplace just before a larger crowd), but thanks to the little old ladies, none of us ... I don't know, peed in the corners or whatever they thought we might have otherwise done. The next stop was St. Michael's Gate, the only remaining gatehouse into the Old City. It had a relatively interesting weapons museum in its upper floors, so we climbed our way through that and out to look over the rooftops.

Views from the top of St. Michael's Gate

From there, we visited the Old Town Hall, which contains artifacts from Bratislava's past, stretching back from the Stone Age through to the 20th century. In all, the artifacts were interesting but pretty innocuous - until we were directed down a flight of stairs to the dungeon. There we saw manacles, cells and torture instruments, while the walls of the main room itself were decorated with enlargements of the most gruesome medieval etchings I've seen in a long time - hangings, impalings, disembowelings, the rack, a man hung by his legs and being sawn down the middle, someone else having his eyes poked out, etc. etc. We came back up and were immediately directed into a reproduction of an early 20th century middle-class Bratislavan apartment (Abby said, "Hey, this looks like my grandmother's apartment!") which was really well done, but it was hard for me to forget the drawing I had just seen of a man's feet being held over a fire until the fat ran. It was a good museum overall, but I might have arranged the exhibitions in a slightly different order.

Part 2 to come ...