travel to south italy

rolled into rome i knew it was time to visit my old favorite park and make a bed among the trees and feel the deep rolling peaceful vibrations which roll among the trees that rise tall and strong into the night air.  the next day i am picking the topmost leaves of the pathside nettles with a view to making an onion and garlic and nettle sauce with pasta over a fire up in the woods up over there when eva stops with her little white poodle dog and asks if the nettles do not sting and whatever response i give her makes her wonder if i am from spain, with my slight tendency to use spanish vocabulary.  she tells me that everybody behaves like robots and is, in fact, robots, didn't you know? aliens came and mixed their DNA with the DNA of apes, and made us. some of us have more ape DNA than others and we feel stronger the connection to the earth.  i am shirtless and shoeless and picking nettles and it reminds eva of the life in costa rica where people live freely in nature and not like the robots here who go to work clocking in at a certain hour then clocking out then going home and watching the telly or taking a beer until the next day going to work clocking in and out and so on.  They have fear of us who are free and can think for ourselves.  you know that only about 30% of us have souls?  that is what they want to steal from us - our souls.  if they ever come and ask you to come with them, say no!  just sit still and meditate.  the earth is your home.  they want to control us more and more.  soon they will implant a microchip next to people's skulls. we must remain free. just keep doing what you are doing.  ciao.   i didn't quite know what response to give to this, but now, looking back, i wished i had asked her how she knew all these things, at least to have expressed to her my doubting stance, but anyway, i thought she was right about people behaving like robots while walking through the streets of rome the next day, observing the men walking hurridly in elegantly cut suits while talking irritatedly into mobile phones.  i wondered if it was indeed inevitable destiny that intelligent ape had wanted to continue making life more and more comfortable with new technological know-how and had thus resulted in this modern civilisation with its intricate network of motorway tarmac nodes and service stations where hurried motorists stride into the shop and do not have time or sociability to listen to tall bearded man who wants to get a lift to italy.  i detected a fear in their evasive eyes.  not a real fear, but a complete unwillingness to engage with a stranger, with something unknown, it is inevitable that i shave my beard off and cleanly-shaven, meet the chilean lorry driver who is happy to give lifts as long as the person is able to speak spanish.  a good honest simple chilean lorry driver to whom i could make comments like que hermosa la luna llena grande y bianca que se alza por encima del mare, he thought europe was alright for making money but now when it comes to openness towards your neighbours, each one returning home to remain enclosed within their own house.  the piece of advise he gave to me was to find a wife sometime soonish, because travelling around like you do is okay for a while, but there is nothing worse than growing old alone.  the cyprus trees rising into the sky like powerful peaceful shooting green flames and soft pastel colours everywhere welcomed me to the mediterranean climate, the warm air, the fashionably dressed young men driving past and waving to the young women with shiny fashionably flirting long hair.
it is now the time of the olive, time to extend the nets beneath the beautiful old olive trees and comb the branches with a long little rake and make all the olives fall, both the mature black and the young green ones, they will go to the frantoio olive presser and be pressed into green fresh fragrant new olive oil to be poured over pasta with a tomato and basil paste, accompanied by a fresh new red wine, young and youthful and fresh and red and containing the joy of life.  olives, the south of italy, the warm october sun releases the thick perfume from the minty herbs, ah, the misty peaceful moon hanging recently risen over the shining silver midnight sea, finlay playing the guitar gently in the room while buon appetito ragazzi, the pasta is ready. soft and steaming and bathed in new olive oil, its tomato sauce, washed down with new young fresh wine.

abundant automnal romania

it is autumn in romania and nature is giving abundantly.  nature gives and gives and gives and people take the cue from her; the neighbours stop by alina's garden gate bearing squash and mushrooms and alina laughs and adds the mushrooms to the already large pile from our own woodland excursion.  that evening we eat with relish a pan full of moist softened salty seasoned mushrooms.  we ask the apple tree if we can pluck some of her red apples from her bending branches; she laughs and throws them rolling across the grass and we dedicate the day to eating them, sliced with honey or softened and sugared into compot or soft and halved and boiled and the water spiced with cloves and cinnamon and drunk with honey with gusto, with gusto and honey, with honeyed gusto.  gypsy boys from the gypsy village come riding horses and make their horses turn round and round in circles, then gallop off.  their fearless voices and laughter ring throughout the woods.  they hang around us, asking us questions directly and unabashedly.   they ask if i am a priest and call me parinte - father - because of my monkish beard.  one gypsy in the street in bucharest had asked me if i was jesus, "you look just like jesus" he insisted, with big open honest eyes; "i believe that you are jesus," he declared, and asked ioana: "do you believe that he is jesus?"  "if you really believe that then it is so," said ioana, while i bowed to him regally.  cip tells me that for many years gypsies were despised and trodden upon and actually used as slaves by the romanians, before being attempted to be exterminated in the second world war.  "these days it is a big question: how to integrate the gypsies into mainstream society?" cip tells me. "they do not want to belong to society.  if any problem arises among them, they will deal with it themselves rather than calling the police."  it is a question.  many people call it a problem, and several people grimly admited to me that they hated the gypsies.  all they do is steal and beg, and they are chronically dishonest.  the barrier of wariness and distrust can be read clearly in their eyes.   of course all groups of people share differences as well as similarities.  what cip admires in the gypsies is their freedom, their unalloyed fidelity to a life of freedom outwith the bounds of mainstream society.  "i think that the gypsies lead happier lives than most of us" says cip.  ioana tells me about the film latcho drom, a purely artistic film, without any dialogue or linear storyline as such, simply showing images from groups of gypsies in india, turkey, romania, czech, france, spain, and, particularly, showing the beautiful music they make.  each shot has been composed with a big focus on aesthetic appeal.  ioana says that when she went to rajastan, she understood instantly that the people there shared the same roots as the gypsies in romania.  one night we watched this youtube version of the film, despite it being kinda jumpy between scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYhYy5u26Y  cip asks the gypsy boys to sing a song for him and one of them does so with real feeling, sitting on the grass holding his heart.  afterwards cip gives him a coin.  the other boy stands apart and remains cocky.  he sings a little song but with a tone of aloof mocking in his voice.  cip gives him a lesser coin.   the boy stands there cracking walnuts open and popping them in his mouth.  it is the first time that i see walnuts growing on the tree.  they are enveloped in a hard green shell which i thought was an apple when i first saw them.  as the days go by, the shell dries up and splits open and the walnuts fall onto the ground.  ioana and i spend hours beneath one stately walnut tree near aurora, filipa and claudian's new place; up in the wild and wooded sweeping rolling countryside south of hunedoara.  filipa envisages winter hours sitting by the fire cracking them open.  she says that during winter it is natural for us to slow down and rest and reduce our activities.  i climb up and shake all the branches and we fill three big potato sacks; hundreds of walnuts, probably thousands which the tree gives and gives year after year. he gives thoughtlessly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, shrugging the walnuts negligently from his shoulders, he gives wantonly, abundantly, laughing silently at the wanton abundance of it all.  what wealth!   how fortunate is the person who wanders beneath those boughs at that time of year.  i have the distinct impression that romania is a blessed land where nature prepares extra specially rich things amidst her peaceful old woods.  one thing is true about romania, ioana says, :the people eat well.  nature is the source of all food and so if she is healthy and happy then the food will be good.



a comment we sometimes heard while hitchhiking was: yes, romania is a beautiful country.  it is just a pity that it is inhabited by romanians.  a corrupt government, corruption part of many institutions, the cheapest road company is contracted to make the roads; they make them cheaply, yes, and shoddily, so that in three years they will have to come back and remake them and be repaid.  it is autumn in romania.  we arrived a little too late in the season to be able to wander around the glacial lakes near the transalpina - the high winding mountain road which traverses part of the southern carpathian mountains and, with the pass above 2,000m, making it the highest road in romania.  a vehicle with open space at the back stops and tells we can climb on if we really want.  "it is cold you know, there is snow at the top of the pass"  we are happy just to be moving and feeling the wind around us.  it is raining and we cover ourselves with my plastic sheet.  as the vehicle winds uphill, the rain turns to sleet.  the famous beauty of the transalpina: all we can see is swirling mist; my toes and hands feel incrementally colder.  "are you still okay there?" the driver stops and asks.  we laugh because we are cold and because all we see of the famous beauty is the swirling mist and because we are travelling on the back of somebody's car.  as we go down the other side we feel incrementally warmer and we smile because of the mist parting and revealing the beautiful steep conifer clad hillslopes.  it begins to really rain; it turns out that it is not really the day for being outside in the beautiful mountains.  we allow our lift-giver to buy us some sweet swirling bread, coated in sugar and spices and baked around rotating bars suspended above the embers by a laughing woman under the shelter of her roadside shelter.  it is a traditional hungerian thing.  it reminds ioana of the way i make bread wrapped around sticks held over the embers.  our lift-giver turns out to be a generous laid-back easy-going easy to be with type who owns lots of local land and who is saluted as "domnul preşedinte" by the sellers of mushrooms and the other people we pass at the side of the road.  it is really raining and mr president becomes happy to make space for us inside his car.  he is showing his two friends - a happy equally easy-going couple from bucharest - the area, and we end up joining the tour, taking photos of each other next to the big abandoned hotel overlooking the rainy lake and the rainy forest.  we end up sharing a meal with them at a rural pensiune owned by a friend of mr president.  the owner eats with us too.  he is mystified by ioana"s vegetarian choice.  i eat the steak and the chips and the local speciality of plump little beef sausages eaten with mustard sauce, while a big plate of fried mushrooms is prepared for ioana.  we all drink the local zuica - a clear sweet spirit distilled from fruits - and more than one bottle of wine is opened.  we sit around as evening steals over the wooded slopes outside the window.  a big noisette icing covered cake is brought out and we say many happy returns to the woman from bucharest, whose birthday will be that monday.  in the end we tell mr president that we will be happy to put the tent up somewhere in the woods, that we are used to doing that, but he shows us to a nice room with a nice hot shower and we all shake hands and wave as they drive off.  we would have been happy to sleep in the woods, but that hotel room came as a pretty nice surprise.  spontaneously offered unto us by the road and the generosity of its travellers.  ample scope for good feelings,there, abetted by the funky reggae music, as long as it is done for the love of music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX0VjtwBRM8

uniţi, salvam roşia montana

that night we were going to go leave bucharest in cip's car, but in the end we went round to see cynthia's new garden and ended up staying there with her parent's and her ninety year old grandmother and eating from a table spread with garden salad and something called galuşte cu prune - a speciality of cynthia's father - made by first boiling potatoes, then mashing them, then mixing them with flour, then covering plums with the resultant paste, cooking the resultant plum balls in boiling water and, finally, coating them with fried breadcrumbs and eating them with blueberry jam ay que interesante.

in the end

we heard there were 15, 000 protesters that day who had been marching round the streets of central bucureşti since four pm.  later that evening we cycled there to check it out.  a big central roundabout had been completely occupied by milling grinning young people, some walking around, others sitting down, some playing the bongos, others dancing.   for me, the protest belonged to the new experience of being in bucureşti, which was new in its entirety to me, but cynthia told me how unique such a protest was, how overwhelmed she felt by the fact that so many people had come out to occupy the streets.  it is a protest against the upcoming roşia montana mine, but it is more than that.  it is a gesture of solidarity, connecting the people who do not want to accept whatever the government and the media and the corporate voices say, people who want an alternative way of doing society.  

see how almost everyone is young, desirous of breaking moulds, seekers of alternative ways?  ioana says 80% of the mainstream media is controlled by corporations in romania.  so on the same day the protesters turned out in such large numbers, one news channel made no mention of it, but instead gave half an hour's coverage to the football match that day between hungary and romania.  everybody makes protest plans via facebook.  that sunday it was said that everybody should bring a parent along to the protest.  

the protest.  a novel experience for everyone.  lots of people walking around with cameras, snapping photos left and right, here and there.  people are on the street, playing drums.  the rhythm is bold, unmistakably one of protest.  after a few hours, the rhythm has been internalised, and one nods one's head in time.  one looks at other people shaking plastics bottle filled with pennies, people grin to each other, reinforcing our united stance of wanting to save roşia montana.  sometime after midnight the police surround us and slowly slowly advance, asking us firmly but respectfully - the voice of reason - to move over there a little bit; finally cars begin to circulate again.  to the very end, when all others have all but gone, there remains one ecstatic man standing on the road waving a huge romanian flag in the air, lost in the swaying glee of the task.

bucurești

this is the casa poporolui - the house of the people - built by the communist leader ceaușescu, the biggest building we have in bucurești, with hundreds of rooms, most of them unused for anything besides the political party's uses.  it is said to be impossible to capture on any one photo; round the other side it has a completely different aspect.  one little part of the building is used for a museum of modern art - we can go and visit it if you want - and sometimes they hold parties there.

later we join the protest against the government's decision to allow a mining company to dig for gold and destroy an area covering four mountains in transylvania, evicting the tenants and using inordinate quantities of cyanide in the process.  romania came out of fifty years of communism only in 1989 and romanians are still learning how to protest.  there is a wall of policemen, preventing us from leaving the piatsa universitati and occupying the streets.  they all look so young, so open-eyed, as if they don't know what will come next or what they will do about it.  there are young people milling everywhere, speaking on mobile phones, coordinating encounters; the ferment of action is in the air.  people are chanting protests, holding up slogans, waving big romanian flags, hitting plastic bottles against the ground.  someone has brought a bongo drum.   i feel somewhat bewildered by the milling energy.  ioana says it always takes her a few days for her energy to adapt to the city after a period away.  i like to see the women looking determined and decisive and participating boldly in public life.  people are milling with intent while i feel as tired as a dog.  lets cycle back.  the city air smells of pastries from bakeries and exhaust fumes being belched on the street and cigarette smoke in the park and cooking meat and oil from the apartments.

the next night there is reggae in the piața which turns out to be a man making noises into a microphone and hands being raised.  none too impressive.  lets stay with the protesters.  one street has been occupied now by hundreds of chanting protesters, those spinning about on bikes, those sitting down peacefully.   when we try and leave the piața, every exit is blocked by a line of policemen.  they have prevented us from spilling onto the bigger streets by trapping us in this one confined street.   it is getting late and we want to head back and how can they prevent the free movement of people in the city like this?  well, actually, it was us the protesters who wanted to disturb the free movement of the streets.  yes  but we want to go home now.  the policemen blocks my passage, looks at me defiantly and asks: unde vrei sa mergi?  i return their determined looks.  ioana tells them that she needs to use the toilet and that she lives far from here, and they let us past.  mulțumesc!  they are actually pretty decent, those policemen.   it is like a game of cat and mouse, each one trying to foresee and outwit the others's tactics.   now on the big avenue in front of the imposing casa poporului others have gathered and occupied the street.  police cars now direct the traffic elsewhere.  they cannot drive on this street because a large crowd is sitting on it.  let us sit with them for a while.  uniți, salvam, roșia montana.  others on their bikes spin round and round, the chant goes round and round and unites everyone, binding everyone in solidarity in their protest.  there is a good atmosphere, people are together on the street which is normally reserved for traffic.  people raise their free voices.  some people are dancing. united we will save roșia montana we chant - even though the governement has already given the mining company permission.   we want to voice our protest all the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhBW7k-4zIA

sunny beach

turkey is a nation - from what i can see - full of expansive open balanced fun-loving helpful individuals.    even the old men are fun-loving; you can see it on their calm amused smiles as they sit in the shade drinking tea as you walk past with your rucksack.  it is possibly the ideal place in which to be a foreigner.   maybe, as shokouh remarked, the turks are not particularly deep thinkers.  perhaps many don't have a flagrant reflective element to their personalities, but that does not matter because they are friendly and will bring you a coffee when they see you making a sign saying BULGRISTAN at the petrol station, and the locals and the loggers will stop and take you most of the way to the border.  the fields give open expansive views to everywhere, fields covered with bending tall sunflowers, which yield lot of little black seeds which you can push out with your thumb.  an open and empty landscape, road animated only by the occasional black car swishing past with german or austrian numberplates.  no honking buses, ragged pedestrians, men on bicycles or overloaded carts - that has all been left behind in india.  just a silent moon who rises at dusk and oversees the calm cool expanse of fields.
i wanted to learn some bulgarian - at least enough to say:  hello, i am going to burgas.  but there was no need to say anything, nobody wanted to stop for me anyway, all i had to do was pay the man on the bus that eventually swung past my shaded spot at the side of the road   everyone has come to the beaches that line the black sea here - a place called sunny beach: big hotels and beach restaurants and cafes and bars.  women walking everywhere in a scanty state of undress that would shock any indian.  a woman's sexual attractiveness is solely to be beheld by her husband, so why does she parade publically like that?  women are sexually liberated here.  the menfolk know this and do not pay any attention to her sexual liberty as she passes.  maybe the men throw an all-encompassing glance, but they know that to linger with their gazes would be inappropriate.  look, she is all but naked there on the beach.  yes, but also here there is a fine nudity line which should not be crossed. she does not want to excite men's attention, she only wants to be free, to feel the sun on her skin, like any liberated inhabitant of the planet who loves to feel the sun on his skin.  ioana and i said:  lets meet at isolated iralkli beach.  when?  3 or 4 or 5 days time?  okay.  if you are not there after a few days, i will wait a few days more.  okay, i will be there.  i have a pot for cooking, and coconut oil.  okay, i will bring food.   see you on the beach!  what satisfying terms for an encounter; it is thither i now repair.

the release of something pent up

all the suffering inside the people, the uncertainty over whether i would make it back to the embassy in time to pick up my emergency passport before it closed, and still have time to make up julia's package and send it successfully to russia before the post office closed, lying at night in a dismal delhi hostel room with a splitting headache, prostrate in viplove's flat with restless, sleepless fever while he drinks and carouses in the room next door with his mates, drinking excessively, too excess, his tales of drink driving, getting caught by cops - all you need to do is plead and protest your own poverty and give bribe and they'll only give ye a few days in prison, the hopeless corruption of indian society, the indian falseness, the fluidity of the meaning of their words, stripped of their meaning, their only purpose is to persuade - please sir, come inside my shop i have very good quality, the guy at the hostel denying me a two minute use of shower next morning because i had checked out the night before, even though i had paid for that night, the desire for money overriding any warmth or empathy with others, the guy at the internet place letting me use the internet and his phone for free and giving me a real genuine warm beautiful smile, the tragijoyous story of life, the glistening gemstones lying in the mud, the shiny stone floors of the airport, having to pass through the duty free to see premium products placed on pedestals - altars to the gods of consumption, pandering to the human desire for pomp and prestige and showy shiny shiny showy, being a hippy traveller and feeling very at odds with the bulk of the world, drinking from and old beat up water bottle, shouldering an old worn rucksack, holding a desire for simplicity and close contact with nature, my affinity with the pulse of life on the indian street, so many making do with whatever does the job, buying a tasty spicy samosa at the side of the street for five rupees, the staring looks of incomprehension from the indians who cannot see why i have chosen to come to their county to walk about barefoot disrespecting their unwritten laws on hygiene, the needless planet-screwing pollution of the air industry which nobody realises or cares about, the beauty of the clouds from the plane window, the beauty of nick drake's songs, the fever and headache and pain and stress of the last few days which had been building up but which i hadn't really been aware of, didn't want to be aware of, only wanted to accept whatever is, anichaa, anichaa, accept whatever is, accept whatever is: some of the possible reasons why i began to cry when i got on the flight and only stopped when the flight was a good way underway.

man proposes, god disposes

i went to the pakistan embassy and asked for a visa but they told me i could only get one in london.

difficult to leave india without flying

it was a hot day and i went under the shade of a tree to take a little nap.  a hot day.  rather stifling.  after a while it clouded over and then warm fat drops of water began to fall from the sky.  soon it turned into a downpour of impressive dimensions.  flashes of lightning and booming cracks of thunder.  groups of people were huddled under building eaves and bus shelters were crowded with people who had been caught out on the street; nobody wanted to be out in such conditions.  a minute was enough to become thoroughly drenched.   i was thrilled to be out surrounded by all that water.  i would quickly dry when it stopped.  the roads became little rippling rivers several inches deep.  i wandered slowly, appreciatively, along the wide, tree-lined avenues which are in that part of delhi, all the way back to the metro station.   dripping wet.

a few days later i took out my passport and saw that the photo had become one unrecognisable blur.

now the only way i can leave india is with an emergency travel document.

the iranian high commission say i need to have a valid passport before they will let me into their country.  so now i've booked a flight to istanbul, and it leaves tomorrow.