Things German (Part 1)

Okay, here are some of the photos from Hamburg. First, because I don't have enough of these in most of my postings, I've included some photos of Abby and me. These are taken in the plaza near the Rathaus, the town hall.

The Rathaus dates from 1860. Swantje's mother had noted that much of the old town had not survived "the catastrophes", which Abby and I had assumed was an embarrassed reference to the bombing during World War II, but we subsequently learned that large parts of Hamburg had been destroyed by fire throughout the city's history, the last time in 1842, which resulted in the clearance of the plaza and the construction of the Rathaus. You'll note the canals behind us: Hamburg is called "the Venice of Germany", and the canals lead to the Elba River and on to the North Sea. The waterways transformed Hamburg into a major trading city, but they also enabled floods which destroyed parts of the old town that the fires didn't consume. The most recent one was in 1962. (My description of Hamburg's history is painfully inadequate, so please check out Wikipedia, Yahoo!'s travel guide, or really, just about anything else if you're curious. For instance, did you know that the world's first organized club for social and family nudism was formed in Hamburg, in 1903? I didn't.) Here are some photos of the Rathaus.

Hamburg also has cathedrals. The cathedral tower to your right is the tower of St. Nikolai, which served as a beacon for British bombers during WWII. The British preserved the spire itself, however, because it had been designed by an Englishman. The site now serves as a peace memorial. We also have the view from the top of St. Michael's, Hamburg's now most-prominent church. In particular, you can see the spire of St. Nikolai and also some of the shipyards. Finally, we have the poster from the Kaiserkellar, where the Beatles got their start. Not a cathedral, but a pilgrimage site for some.

Interesting thing about the neighborhood around the Kaiserkellar - it's in the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's (as many guide books say) "notorious" red-light district. Whatever it was in its early days, today it's flashy and tawdry, with neon-lined sex shops blazing their wares (videos, fantasy wear, and impossibly complicated rubber goods) onto the street. Frommer's has a good write-up on the area. The most intriguing stretch of the Reeperbahn is the Herbertstrasse, a one-block road that is sealed at both ends with solid red metal gates that are set up so you can't see into the street from outside. Signs posted on the gates forbid men younger than 18 or women from entering the area. The Herbertstrasse, you see, is where the prostitutes work. Men under 18 aren't allowed in because it's illegal for them to use prostitutes, and women aren't allowed in presumably because they'd inhibit the men, or the prostitutes don't want the competition.

One enters the gates, and to the right and left are lines of windows with chairs behind them - probably about 60 stretching down both sides of the street, although only about 10 of them were filled at 6:30 PM when I walked in to do my research. The women sit in the chairs, dressed in negligees, and they open the tops of the windows to lean out to talk to potential customers. It takes only about four sentences to get from "Hello" in German to "Do you want to come inside for a good time?" in whatever language you happen to speak. I visited the Herbertstrasse on Abby's recommendation, since she wanted me to have the full Hamburg experience. She was waiting for me at the end of the block, however; apparently, there's the full Hamburg experience and then there's the full Hamburg experience. Sadly, I have no photos of this tourist attraction.

Next: the Kunsthalle and the Albanian premiere of Beethoven's opera "Fidelio"

Swantje and Thomas's wedding

The challenge of blogging, at least for me, is the work of sorting out the interesting observations and details from the rest of the mass, which is meaningless to anyone besides me. Unlike a diarist, who records every thought and experience privately for later reflection - with an eye to posterity, or not - the blogger has to write for an audience with different tastes, one that is just a mouse-click away from the stock ticker or YouTube. So rather than go into the details, I'll just say that it was a beautiful wedding, on a sunny day after two days of clouds, with romantic touches like the arch of long-stem roses that we formed to escort the couple from the church to the afternoon reception; that the black-tie reception that evening was beyond elegant; and that Hamburg is a fantastic city. (More about Hamburg later.) Also that there were so many speeches that the dancing didn't begin until after midnight, but no one minded at all. If you want more than this, send Abby or me an e-mail.

This leads to another aspect of the weekend, that of being in Germany. Abby has some functional German, so we could get around Hamburg, and most of the guests spoke English, but it really was like having a rug pulled out from under my feet whenever they switched into German. It's a fascinating language to listen to (except when someone is shouting, in which case I begin to look for police dogs), but not something you can pick up in a weekend.

It's World Contraception Day!

Actually, it was yesterday. The poster says "Live your life before you start another".

Too bad it's not also written in canine.

A Walk in the Park

Abby and I have started taking Cooper to the Parku i Madh, the big park, in town. It's a bit overgrown, with lots of footpaths and hills and a lake - a great place for the dog to run. (Yesterday we met a few other dog owners, and once we saw them let their dogs of their leashes, we followed suit, and learned that Cooper does come when called.) The one worrying thing is that many wild dogs live in the park, and while most of them are relatively friendly, some aren't, and one of them bit Cooper today. Fortunately, there was no permanent harm done. Although it might sound harsh, for me this is just another lesson in socialization that Cooper has to learn.

One of the park sections contains the burial grounds of a group of British soldiers killed in Albania during World War II. It was a bit moving, especially on a cold grey morning, and I was surprised to come across it. I then walked a few steps further and found a burial grounds for a group of German soldiers also killed in Albania during World War II. At least neither side feels left out.

Back to the Gallery, and other updates

Abby and I have just come back from Hamburg, Germany, where we attended the wedding of Abby's childhood friend Swantje. The wedding was beautiful, and it was nice to be in a city where people obey traffic signals and there isn't dust everywhere. I'll describe the trip in a subsequent blog entry after I sort through the photos.

In the meantime, right before we left, I attended a meeting of the Special Friends of the National Gallery. The Special Friends group is a support group for the National Gallery, an institution which I described in an August 26th blog entry. The meeting began at 6:30 PM with some wine and crackers, which were followed almost immediately by one of the museum staff having what she thought was a heart attack. Mild panic ensued as we realized that none of us had the proper telephone number for the ambulance and, when we found the emergency number, it was busy. In the end, however, someone reached the ambulance, and shortly thereafter the attack - which may or may not have been heart-related - subsided, the woman's husband came, and she left (rather than go to the hospital, as we urged).

Everything seemed to turn out okay, so once we let out a collective sigh of relief, we started the meeting. The Special Friends group is dedicated to advancing the interests of the National Gallery and creating more interest in the arts within Tirana, especially among young professionals who are most likely to support the arts. It is not yet a membership organization, rather more of a collection of interested individuals - Americans, Albanians, Italians, as well as some of the museum staff themselves, and while there were 11 of us at the meeting, the number of people on the mailing list is closer to 30. As a loose group, they haven't formed an actual board. All this is a long way of saying that there is precious little organization in the group. One Albanian is chairwoman, and another is in charge of graphics, and an American woman seems to drive the organization forward on all the other agenda items, but - for those of you who'll understand the reference - imagine a Hexagon Board meeting with a fair amount of mutual respect but without the titles, delineations of responsibility, experience, or agenda, and you'll have a good idea of what the meeting was like. Still, the group has a program of six evening events planned for the year - wine tastings, lectures, etc. - and they should be pleasant.

I haven't found work yet, so I offered to do a lot of organizational work for the group. (With my Hexagon Board experience, I hopefully will know what to avoid.) However, I've also started interviewing international organizations in town to learn the lay of the land. So far, I've met with the U.N. Development Program and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and from these I have developed a few more leads to pursue. By November, I may have something to do besides watching the dog ignore me when I try to teach him to "heel" and "stay".

What It's Like (Part 1)

I see that O.J. Simpson is back in the news. How nice that must be for all of you back in the States. Funnily enough, when I saw the Yahoo! headline Goldmans to Seek Simpson Memorabilia, I assumed they were collecting memorabilia from the movie. Like figurines of Homer or Spiderpig. At any rate, the papers here are filled with stories related to the arrest of the Vice-minister of Transportation and Telecommunications and eight others on charges of fraud, bribery, and misuse of power. I'm pleased to see that major cases of corruption are being reported on, but as the Albanians say, Ma nishtana.

So far, I've tried to share with all of you what it is like to be in Tirana. The photos from my earliest postings show you some of the architecture; and if you've ever played baseball in the summer in a sun-burned field, you probably know the sensation that we enjoy of hot, still air combined with the smell of dust; but what does being in Tirana sound like? This is the sound of downtown Tirana at 6:00 PM on a weekend:

 - or - .

And the small ones are relatively quiet. When the generators for the houses on our block start up, you could think you were in the truckers' lot outside a Cracker Barrel.

As I've become more familiar with Tirana, I've begun to notice more things. For instance, there are grapes everywhere. People make their own raki, which oftentimes is better than anything you'd find in a bar.

Another interesting aspect to Tirana is the mixture, basically, of modern, state-of-the-art housing and shopping with abysmal infrastructure. For example, in the middle row you can see a fairly decent home furnishings shop, fronting an unpaved road and the overflowing garbage cans that serve as the central pick-up point for the neighborhood, and the modern-looking apartment building on an unpaved, trash-strewn street. Equally typical is this entrance to a less-than-modern-looking apartment building in the bottom row, which ironically leads onto a paved street. And, to complete the tableau, here is a less-than-modern neighborhood grocery, too, which is kind of charming, and the new Euromax Express grocery down the street hasn't put it out of business yet.

By the way, feel free to leave comments.

A Less-Than-Happy Start to the New Year

Wednesday night was erev Rosh Hashanah, and Abby had agreed to host a potluck for what turned out to be 11 guests. Two additional guests had cancelled, which is a good thing, since we were pressed for space around the table as it was. Apart from our friends Mindy and Melissa, the other guests were Israelis - one of them a Jewish Albanian who had moved to Israel, the rest full-on Israelis. (Apparently there are still a few Jews in Albania; I have no idea how they make a minyan.)

The evening began well, but for Abby and me, the evening took a sour turn when one of the guests (I was out of the room at the time, so this is according to Abby) begged Abby to take Cooper out of the room. Cooper had started out being sociable - far more so than I'd expected him to be - but he'd gotten riled up by the attention paid to him by one of the children, and finally the guest became frightened of him. Now, when I'm allergic to a cat at a party, I'm always grateful when the hosts shut the cat away for the evening, but I also take my medicine in advance, or I just don't show up. We'd warned everyone in advance that we had a puppy, so as a "parent" here, this didn't sit well with me. But we moved him upstairs, and just kept an eye on him from time to time.

When it was time to sit down, we asked for a volunteer to say the hamotzi over the bread, and no one came forward. Perhaps the Israelis were being gracious - saving the honor for the host - but we asked again, and still no one said anything. So I did it. The irony was lost everyone but Abby.

The meal itself was very good (after a last minute complaint about the lack of salad dressing, made by the woman who'd brought the salad - a situation that Abby quickly remedied using oil, lemon juice and garlic to make a delicious dressing - ed.). However, the Israelis largely spoke Hebrew to each other throughout whole meal and acknowledged us only when we initiated conversation ourselves. Abby and I felt a bit like innkeepers who'd happened to sit down with the paying guests. Fortunately, as soon as the meal was over, they left en masse. In fact, they cleared out so abruptly that one of them didn't even take his baking dish back with him. You'd have thought we'd suggested putting on some Palestinian folk songs, or at least a Hexagon DVD.

I left shortly thereafter, but only to the bar-cafe down the street because the Albanian football team was playing Holland in the European cup. It turned out to be a bad night for the kuq e zi - the red and black - as well. Albania scored an early point when Holland scored an own goal, but it was called back because of a foul. Then, in the 88th minute of play, one of the Albanian players got ejected for overreacting to a Holland player who himself had just gotten a yellow card for a foul. Four minutes later, Holland scored, and time ran out. Still, Holland had been expected to win, and Albania played far better than was expected. This being neither Detroit nor College Park, MD, no one set anything on fire after the loss. I also saw that McDonald's was advertising on the sidelines, which is not a good sign.

In the next day's aftermath of the meal, I emptied the dishwasher, which we'd had to have the Embassy replace because it wasn't cleaning anything well, and I marveled to Abby about how clean everything was! I'm really becoming a housewife: my next thought was "The dishes are so clean, I have more time to vacuum the drapes!" While I have begun the job search, I've had no solid leads so far. I'm not discouraged, but my networking attempts have had some strange results. We met a friend for a coffee yesterday; he is the husband of one of our language instructors, and a travel agent here in Albania. I told him I was looking for work in policy and explained my background. He said that his friend at Albanian Airlines had expressed the need for a manager, and asked us to go up to meet him. This seems to be a very Albanian thing - you need a job, I have a connection, it's not in your field, but so what? - so to be polite we went along. We all had a nice chat about the airline industry and Albanian work mores (he's Greek) and picked up some corporate swag, but it was all very silly. Still, if anyone wants an Albanian Airlines key chain, let me know.