The Doosy

What follows is a doosy, (Webster’s dictionary defines Doosy: a days worth of writing). I wouldn’t expect anyone to have time to read it. I put headers in bold. At the end are some more philosophical tangents recent experience obliged me to explore when I couldn’t sleep at night. Putting all of this on the internet often seems a bit self-important. I don’t really know what to take out though as this is what I have been up to lately. Ella’s more recent post is far more concise and relevant than any of this, check that out here.

The last few days of travel have been dominated by a personality of a fellow traveler. Rather than try to explain or analyze the goings on piece by piece, I will sketch him with my keyboard.

“Joe”

“Joe” is 25. His name is Volva, a Russian name. But for Anglos, it’s Joe. He speaks English excellently but not precisely. He is fluent but makes many mistakes while speaking. His accent is Eastern European. Beyond that, however, it is enigmatic. Is forced to guess, people generally go for something unfamiliar and a bit obscure, like Finnish or Hungarian. Six feet tall he is strong but slender, a kick-boxer but out-of-practice. His hair is almost bleach blond and his eyes the lightest blue, a tint common to Russians. He had short hair, just longer than a buzz cut. He wore sunglasses, a tight undershirt, a leather jacket, tight jeans (by American standards) factory bleached in various placed. His collar, whether on a jacket or buttoning shirt, was always popped.

He graduated from Ohio with a degree in business, especially real estate. His interests in studies were then and today remain completely overshadowed by his interest in meeting people. He finances his travels by collecting rent on properties in Columbus, Ohio and Moscow and some kind of Ebay business.

Our conversation started as soon as I sat down on the bus. He never hesitates at to approach anyone. No nervous salesman, he drives the conversation unhurryingly. He was born in Ohio and has the, no a, passport to prove it. It is one of many. He has been living and traveling for three or four months in Eastern Europe, mostly the Balkans. He lived a month in Skopje (Skope-ia, like Sofia), a month and a half in Beograd (Belgrade) and has otherwise been traveling to Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia/Herzagovina, Dubrovnik in Croatia, Kotor and Budva in Montenegro, Ohrid in Macedonia, and Sofia and the Black Sea Coast in Bulgaria.

He has a sound grasp of the (Belo)Russian language, his vocabulary and ease of speaking is exponentially higher than mine but his grammar is far worse. His father was from Minsk and he spent years there growing up. His mother is from Prague. His comfort with Slavic languages and diving into conversation has allowed him to pick up enough Serbo-croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian to be conversational. Paradoxically, Joe’s lack of hyper-fluency in any one language is in many ways a great strength. Lacking a rigid linguistic structure, Joe’s personality transcends any language barrier.

He regales me with stories about how he helped a Scotsman he traveled with in Montenegro steer clear of being ripped-off, how many girlfriends he dabble with in each city where he lingered, and how he got great deals on accommodation all over former Yugoslavia.

He shows me camera and all of the lovely places he has been. In each picture he is standing before a lovely background, left foot six inches ahead of the right, his torso and shoulders slightly facing right but his head always square. He is not smiling in any of the picture. He has perhaps 50 pictures of this variety to show me. Two are of the scenery alone, “it was so shitty outside that no one was there to take my picture.”

“Ahh.”

We are in Albania and headed to Triana, the capital. He suggests that we split a room. I accept. I haven’t been very social since Beograd and cheap hostels do not exist in Triana. It is a bit too off the tourist track.

After traveling with Joe for three days, I came to admire him. I admire that he fearlessly approaches anyone. I admire that his personality is not contingent (or limited) by language. I admire his ability to bring a smile to the face of a complete stranger in mere seconds. In this regard, his ability to read people and communicate is almost telepathic. I came also to find him distasteful. I do not think I ever felt at ease around him. He would befriend a taxi driver, waiter, or whoever ran our lodgings one minute and critique them venomously the next. He was very impressed with his language abilities and charisma but never really listened and tried to understand what other people were trying to tell him. He would decry generalizations about nationalities or ethnicities and proclaim them in the same sentence. These irritations brought out of me a combination of jealousy and scorn. I was enchanted by his ability to be anything to anybody and repulsed by his inability to hold down a steady identity.

The reality of his personality is, of course, more delicate and subtle than the generalizations I must employ to understand him (and my reaction to him). But there is enough truth in them to catch a glimpse of him, opaque though the lens may be.

Albania

Up until my run in with Joe, my trip between Albanian had been typical of my traveling experiences. I was knowingly overcharged, but not absurdly so, and passed off from one random extraction artist to another. Taxi drivers dominated the day because right now there is no bus between Montenegro and Albania. Five hours in a bus costs about the same as 10 minutes in a taxi. Such situations are what they are. Indignity will only make it worse. My Montenegran chauffer tried hard to make conversation in English. His vocabulary was limited. Pizza, Triana, Podgorica, and Audis were all “beautifool.” Country-side, Kosovo and Croatians were all “not beautifool.”

Glad to have that straightened out.

He yelled at a man standing next to a car with Albanian plates. After a conversation in Serbo-Croatian he became my driver once I crossed the border. My caravan made it to the very highly policed yet very chaotic border. Horns honked in futile and irritating expression of exasperation. The police remained gruff but indifferent. Somehow they kept things moving remarkably slowly despite undertaking no more than superficial inspections of persons, documents and vehicles. With a handshake, my passport was stamped. I have never shaken hands with border police before. Albanians, in general, like Americans.

Entering Albania is to enter a whole different world. It is a destitute country complete with potholes large enough to wreck a truck, businesses peddling goods I cannot imagine anyone wanting, and rusting equipment. On the whole the infrastructure spans the full range of quality, from relics better suited for a museum or kitchy antique store to most contemporary of microwave transmitters for telecoms. Piles of mud, garbage and broken contrete formed a fairly consistent mound along side the road. These piles of waste never fail to bother me. What better way to reduce the quality of life than to live amongst yesterday’s refuse?

We passed several sights that stuck me as odd: a man driving a minature steam roller on our dirt road, herds of goats (blocking the road), dead tree telephone poles and carts being pulled by mules being passed by brand new Mecerdes SUVs.

The rural areas of Albania are dotted with miniature mushroom-shaped bunkers built by the Communist regime. The were used for practicing emergency drills to prepare for wars with imaginary enemies (while relations between states in this part of the world are usually cordial at best, the benefits of attacking Albania are dubious).

Entering Triana, the capital, reminded me of the first glimpses of cities in poor regions of South America like El Alto near La Paz, Iquitos or Julianna on Titicaca. Every building outside of the center of the capital was built with concrete. The new buildings were poured; the old ones, cinder blocks.

The center could have been most any part of any European city. A brief spell of wandering confirmed that there was little fun to be had doing that outside of voyeuristically marveling at the poverty outside of the center. Joe talked with several pretty women, none of whom could show us around that night.

A concert in the central square had some folk music and dancing followed by Turbo-folk. This is an eclectic melding of folk and techno/crap hip-hop. The event was sponsored by some organization for Southern European unity. Their trucks bore the flags of all nations South or East of Croatia and Serbia. Kosovo’s flag was marked identically to Albania’s. The Turkish flag was first and larger than the others. They gave away free meals before the concert. Turbo-folk is typical of Turkey and I would not be surprised if this was an effort to boost Turkey’s cultural influence in the area. Many large governments, including our own, have cultural departments in their foreign offices to oversee the spread of cultural influence and recognition. We walked around that night and early the next morning to play the tourist game and boarded a bus for Skopje. Joe constantly discussed women, “is she good looking? And that one? What about her?” When he works a woman he devotes all of his considerable energy and talent into charming them. I would consider shameless. As soon as the woman is out of ear shot, he reassure me that it is all just a bunch of fun and that she was not really great for one reason or another. I got the feeling Joe enjoyed telling people what they wanted to hear.

And hear they must, for while Joe asks for an response or a appraisal of his statement, he never left a question open ended. As a result, though we were in one another’s company almost every waking hour for three days, our conversation rarely dipped beneath the superficial. Almost paradoxically, he seemed at times to both want to treat me like a naïve person needing his expert traveling skills and simultaneously craved my approval. Perhaps his lack of placement has him searching for belonging in unusual places.

Bus Ride

We got on the 9am bus to Skopje, an eight hour ride. Joe’s assessment of Albania was almost entire negative until the bus ride. He asked me at least eight times, “Do you know what I like about this country?”

“What?”

“Nothing!” But on the bus a couple of young ladies smiled broadly at us as we walked to our seats. Joe put his bag in a seat and immediately went back to start a conversation with them. I watched from further back. Then I moved closer. I Realized that I was behaving very awkwardly. Having the benefit of experience, I knew that awkwardness does not diminish on its own with time. It takes some effort, usually very little. So I worked to dig myself out of my anti-social hole and soon we were all sitting around a small table on the bus. Joe took to smothering the girls, especially the older “prettier” one by his estimation with unending flattery and flirtation. It was shameless and made me a bit uncomfortable but it made the ladies laugh, me grimace (close enough, right?) and never failed to keep the conversation alive (or at least undead).

Joe turned the conversation to the kind of guys the girls like. Their preference was for a combination of traditional male-subordination and comtemporary equality. A sort of limited equality. Joe pushed the flirtation hard the entire time. And much to my chagrin the rejection he first encountered softened and as we disembarked his efforts were rewarded with a kiss.

Women.

The girls were really interesting and had to work hard to make it as Albanians. Albanians can pretty much only work in Macedonia and Turkey, as other richer countries do not want large populations of impoverished minorities driving down the living standard. It would be very frustrating to be smart and educated and Albanian. They spoke almost perfect English but could hardly travel anywhere. They had a hard time understanding how I could travel not for work. (Joe claimed that he had “worked” in Macedonia and Serbia, in reality he had considered buying property but decided it to be too corrupt).

Macedonians don’t think much of Albanians. The relationship is probably not dissimilar to the stigma of many Latinos in the states.

The countryside in the East of Albania was more pleasant than the north. It was cleaner and things seemed less chaotic. A river that would have been suitable for a weekend of whitewater ran alongside the road.

We got off the bus earlier than we originally planned as the bus went very near Ohrid, a town I wanted to see. He wanted to show me around and had nothing to do in Skopje (the girls lived a family and would not be going out that night). I had hoped that by changing my plans without much consultation, we would part ways. I still had much to learn from my companion, however.

Ohrid

Getting settled in Macedonia involved a couple of cab rides and negotiations with homeowners that supplement their income by renting rooms to travelers, like in Kotor. As with women, Joe approached all of these transactions with suave-ity, pigeon-Macedonian, and undeniable charm. I was advised not to speak. It bothered me, but I could relate to his desire to get as chummy as possible to save money. He never failed to establish himself as more than the average tourist-traveler. He saved us 50% on the 30 minute ride from the town where the bus dropped us off to Ohrid. He would not let me tip the driver. I felt bad, I think the driver may have lost out on the deal.

Joe’s opinion of himself as exceptional dominated the first day in Ohrid. He complained loudly of any attempts, past or present, to “rip [him] off.”

Locals constantly milk you for all the Euros, dinars or pesos they can get out of you. I accept is as my roll. To get upset each time would be too indulgent in a combative siege mentality. I travel to open my mind to the world, not build mental barriers against all I meet.

The constant game of trying to charm people with far fewer opportunities to make money than myself feels manipulative. This perpective may be moderately elitist. It shortens and simplifies my interactions but it also makes me feel more open towards strangers and helps me sleep better at night even though I can earn in a month what an experienced professional might earn in a year.

Joe’s mentality of buddying up and then complaining about any possible extra-costs strikes me as hypocritical. He befriends others to make them feel comfortable and trusting but always remains suspicious of their true motives. I worry more about Joe’s motives than the taxi drivers. Is he not “ripping off” locals as he sets the price to the rock bottom in poor countries when he could afford to pay more? If getting ripped off is paying double the normal fare, bring to total for a taxi ride or a private room to a whopping $10 dollars, than isn’t it better just to get a little “ripped off” in the hope that that money makes a nominal difference in someone’s weekly income? It sure as hell doesn’t make a difference in my income. I don’t consider this to be wasting money.

Ohrid sits on a beautiful lake. It is hilly country. The hill of the old town is home to a 1,500 year old monestary. It is a beautiful structure with a grand view of the lush sparsely populated hills and the lake. Low clouds have given the scene a hint of Avalon. On the shore, 12ft small boats sit belly up revealing bright paintjobs.

Love Horny Boat Captain

As we finish a brief walk around the more beautiful and historic portions of the city, a middle aged man wearing an old captain’s hat approaches me. He starts a conversation along general lines before moving on to his sales pitch. He does boat tours on the lake. Joe at first wanted nothing more than to keep going but I wanted to listen to the guy’s spiel. Joe made some comment about women in Macedonia and how he “understands Macedonian” and the captain fell in love with my companion. He invited us aboard his boat, opened up a two-liter bottle of beer and listened with remarkable gusto as Joe recounted stories and strategies for picking up women.

The captain declared their minds to first be 99% and then 100% the same. In truth they were very similar, both clearly learned languages with great flexibility if little discipline or attention to detail. And despite their love of language, I suspect both would have been hard pressed to finish a book. (Joe could speak Slavic languages like Russian, Serbian, Macedonian, Czech and Bulgarian but couldn’t really read the Cyrillic script.) Both loved the ideal of seducing women and moving on. Both were smooth talkers. And the more they talked, the less I said and the more I convinced myself that they must be lonely. The old man made remarks along the lines of how intelligent and wise Joe was. He would then include me too for politeness. But I remained quiet and subdued. The gift of gab was not mine that night and that talent was held in high-esteem by this captain who prided himself on getting on well with people from all over the world.

As the conversation about girls became more and more involved, the captain offered to call a good looking 19 year old to show us around that night. Joe consulted me before accepting. I was unenthusiastic but I didn’t want to play the roll of morale mother-superior all of the time and told him I didn’t care. As soon as I said it I was asking myself why a fifty year old guy had a 19 year old’s number… none of the conclusions I could come up with were very soothing and I became quite uncomfortable as her arrival drew near. The captain also became more concerned about tactfully articulating that she probably could only spend a limited amount of time in our company and that she would like for us to spend some money on her dinner and maybe help her to buy something she would like. The sketchiness of the situation was causing tension.

She was petite, with darker skin than most Macedonians. She spoke no English and her Macedonian was discernibly cadenced. I thought she was likely a Roma, and I was right. She was friendly and easy enough for Joe to talk to with the captain translating. I got up to use the WC after a minute or two and thus missed much of the conversation. As she left the boat, the captain helped her off. His back turned, Joe tapped my knee and mouthed something along the lines of “what the hell was with that?”

“Yeah…” I forced a smile. But I was thinking that “that” was an unnecessarily unpleasant situation I would never have gotten myself into and the fruit of Joe’s labors. I didn’t say anything critical but I couldn’t hide my unhappiness. He told me not to be so worked up… nothing bad resulted from the experience.

The captain though was crestfallen by Joe’s obvious disinterested attitude in the girl he thought would make us so happy. When Joe excused himself for the WC I tried to diffuse the situation explaining that Joe likes blonds or something. The captain struggled to say that she was not a professional prostitute but just a modern free spirited girl that would want any man she was with to provide her with a little spending money. He thought this to be like any other male-female relation. I tried to just to reassure him that it didn’t matter to me. Up to that point I had been little more than an observer, so I just tried to reassure the captain that Joe and I didn’t think less or him or something.

After that I knew I had to get back to being on my own. No matter what the next night I would not be hanging out with Joe.

So-Long Joe

The steady rain of the next day made Joe determined to move on. It was a simple matter to stay even though there was “nothing to do.” I journaled at least 20 pages, and typed 9, read another section of the Koran, sent a couple of emails and now feel centered again among other mundane chores.

Before he left we shared some drinks with our host family. Joe jumped right into inter-ethnic relations in the Balkans and proceeded to tell it like it was. Our hosts would have been justified in decking him then and there, but they just told him that you don’t talk about such things. Joe told me they said something about the Albanians. I actually think Joe’s comprehension of Macedonian was lower than he believed. They smiled politely but I do not think they saw Joe as “getting it.” Joe then tried to dominate a conversation about earlier-Macedonian history with a friend of the family that sat with us to practice his English. If he would have shut up, he and I would have learned a lot more. He never really listened though, just tried to express his ideas.

I thought this was very arrogant. One should never preach history or politics to an acquaintance in their country. And to do it in former-Yugoslavia… I as taken-aback even after 3 days of being taken-aback.

After our final meal together I looked for my visa to withdraw some money. It was gone. I don’t know how I could have lost it. Joe was the only person who could have taken it. On the one hand, I wouldn’t put it past him. But I think he is smarter than that. Visa’s are not as useful for making purchases in newly democratic countries. Almost the only thing you can do with them is withdraw money. For that you need a pin. The card is also easily cancelled. I don’t think he would be that stupid. But it put a bit of a sour note on his departure. The situation was worked out quite favorably after getting on the phone with Visa and my dad.

I will pick up a new card to be ‘Fed-Ex’ed from home after Visa rush delivers is there. It should be in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria by Friday. The world is a quickly shrinking place. I had to ask for some money to be wired, which hurt my pride a bit. But working things out with my dad on the phone (focusing on resolving the problem), getting prompt offers to help from Greg (my friend currently in Munich on the Watson), and a timely online chat with Peters in Guatemala put me in a great mood.

I slept better that night than I had since meeting up with Joe.

Listening to Joe for 3 days gave me much to say. He probably sees me as self-sheltered, naïve and cold. I learned a lot form him in our short time together but like hard class with a unapproachable professor, I am happy to put the class behind me. Our objectives in wandering the Balkans are probably quite distinct and incompatible after a short period. I tend to travel quietly and reflectively, in many ways a contrast to life at home. Like wilderness trips, it is distinct tool for to see my life, friends, and opportunities from a new perspective. It also lets me put world events into a more palpable context. In other words, it is impermanent. Perhaps for Joe it is quite more a way of life.

Center

Night of October, 6^th – Skopje

Right now I do not feel I am living my own life. This experience has allowed me to see how this style of traveling with another is unsatisfying. This has clarified what I want, how I want to live.

I foremost feel uncentered: stretched and pulled in directions, down detours not meant for me. Being centered is more than the symmetry of opposite extremes. Opposite extremes do not cancel each other out. A healthy bout of college depressive reflection revealed that years ago. Rather a sort of concentration, a tighter weave of symmetry and an exfoliation of useless motional, physical and spiritual mass is the essence of being centered that I have come to pursue.

When this is well accomplished a sense of purpose, inherent and inalienable, fills my life. Purpose gives guidance and guidance gives determination and vision necessary for further centering. So is born a positive cycle of reinforcement. So to find center is not the arrival at a constant but rather a process of steady adaptive change and reform.

Religion

Western societies are caught is a spiritual crisis. Many religious people say that the people have become lost: without faith, without purpose and without values. I do not think it is because people have abandoned religion. Religion has always thrived so long as it has helped people to adapt to their reality. Rather, religion no longer answers questions relevant for today’s Western societies. The dominant Western religions (Judeism, Christianity and Islam) cannot reconcile the all controlling nature of a deity with modern physics.

An aside: Why trust physics and not religion? I cannot see, hear or feel an electron, nor have I had an encounter with God. So both are taken as faith? Wrong. When I flick a light switch, the light comes on. This can be explained by understanding the nature of electrons. God can never be explained, his actions (never reactions, for a timeless, all-knowing, all-powerful being to react would be absurd) cannot be predicted. Explanation and prediction give me reason to believe what I cannot directly perceive.

Back inside: Our universal understanding moved towards absolutist truths under the study of classical physics, but relativity, quantum physics and the Uncertainty Principle tells us our reality is far more subjective.

Computers run on principles of quantum physics. The peace-preaching believers of the same God continue to kill each other in the same holyland.

Truth, truth vs. relevance

Truth is not subjective and seemingly opposite and exclusive things can be and are both true. For example, life is short and people imperfect. One should thus not allow guilt to paralyze a person from pursuing good actions. On the other hand, actions have great impact all around, both passively and actively. You must seek to behave then as compassionately and virtuously as possible. To pursue the latter and accept the former is the mark of wise living.

If truth is subjective then perhaps one must not obsess over truth, but relevance. If something has predictive powers, helps us to better live, then it is relevant. This may very from person to person but the very variety of relevance is its strength. Whereas truth seeks to provide an objective answer, relevance sees a goal and asks how to de get there? Even regarding arithmetic like 1 + 1 = 2 we may view it not as “this must be” but rather, if we accept this idea then we have a powerful tool for explaining and predicting our universe. Such a perspective may do well to reconcile religion and secularism. Different tools for different problems. Such a perspective is, however, unlikely to satisfy analytical human minds which, for better and worse, seek concrete understanding of the causes of all we see.