Saturday, January 29, 2011

Surva - a Bulgarian spectacle

Today was awesome. It was also fully Bulgarian, and this post will not really do it justice, but I need to try. We have a 3-day weekend to cap off our flu-vacation, and we decided to stay local. Shannon is still recovering from the swine flu, and there are some corners of Bulgaria we still want to explore.
The city of Pernik is ugly. Really, really "gosh, I actually need to take a picture of that" ugly. It's an old coal-mining town about a 35 minute drive southwest of campus, and it is known for, among other things, decaying (but not entirely abandoned) industry and power plants.
Rusty "Skybar" in Pernik

Not-totally-abandoned factory (power plant?) in Pernik
Sounds like a great destination for a 3-day weekend, right? Pernik is also home to the annual "Surva" festival of masquerade games. This is the 20th one, andthe tradition goes back to the 1960s (it used to be biannual, but it has grown in popularity so much that now they do it every January). The games come out of pagan history and are a sort of New Year's festival, wishing for a good harvest, fertility, health, etc.The fun part is that people (men, mostly, but more and more women/children) dress up in crazy costumes (supposed to be monsters) to scare away the evil spirits for the new year.Cowbells are very very popular as well, which are supposed to enhance the power of the mask in scaring off the demons. That's the basic story. There is clearly a lot I don't understand, like why some people are dressed like clowns, or bears, or transvestite clowns...it's all a little overwhelming.  Pernik's festival has become the largest in the Balkans, attracting 5000+ participants from all over the Balkans plus random ones from places like Spain and Palestine. People are drinking heavily. It's cold. It's loud. It's weird. It's wonderful. Enjoy the pictures, and for those around Bulgaria next year at the end of January, this spectacle really is a "must-see."
Check out the size of his cowbell. Compensating for something, perhaps?

These girls from the Ukraine just had the biggest grins.


Parts of his mask appear to be made with spray insulation. Awesome.

Shannon, Abby, and Kat with a member of my favorite Surva group, from Bansko. All of their costumes were of this sheepskin, and they danced to make it all shake and sway fantastically.

Shannon with Katerina, a woman she just met 5 minutes before. Katerina was from the Ukraine originally, but now lives in Bulgaria. She offered us hot wine, repeatedly, and rather insistently after she found out that Shannon had the flu. She invited us to her farm this spring. She was very drunk.

Proud Balkan mama and her cute Bansko monster-son.

Part of a town group from Gabarevo, with cannon.



This cross-dresser was really good at shaking his/her hips. I don't understand how they fit into the whole festival tradition, but most dance groups had a few.

Father and son monsters.

Festival poster.

Wolf-monster, taking a smoke break.

Yeah, I'm the butter churn guy.

Oh, did I mention it was loud? Here are two videos, mostly for the sound.


Friday, January 28, 2011

Revolution in Egypt?

I can't pull myself away from the newsfeeds of CNN, BBC, and the NY Times. Watching the mass protests on the streets Egypt, dodging tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, all in Tahrir Square and the bridges over the Nile, it's hard to believe we were in Cairo less than a month ago, trying to dodge cars as we crossed the street.

It's not a surprise that the Egyptians are unhappy with their government. That was evident from within our first hour in the country, as our airport pick-up was acidly describing his "perfect president."  Egypt is a police state. I've never really been somewhere like that before.  You can't drive anywhere in the country without stopping at many police checkpoints. It seems to require about 20 police at any checkpoint: one to look at the driver's papers, one to keep an eye on the guy checking the papers, and 18 guys standing around looking bored and vaguely trigger-happy.  Every town has a billboard or mural welcoming you to town and praising the beneficence of 30-year president Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak is often wearing awesome aviator glasses, and sometimes has a bit of a halo in his rendering. I wanted to get a picture of these signs, but they were often at police checkpoints, and it seemed foolish to wave my camera around too much here. This is the only shot I've got, and it's not great (surreptitiously taken from the back of our van as we were stopped at a checkpoint).
"Welcome to Dahab!" This is a less-ridiculous picture of Mubarak than most, as I think it is probably only a few years old.  But it is clear from the propaganda that all good things must start with the President.
Egypt is one of the top recipients of US aid money, over $1.5 billion a year. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe most of this is an obligation arising out of the Camp David accords to bring peace between Israel and Egypt, as the US apparently bribes both countries to play nice. We also have supported Egypt as one of our key allies in the region in the nothing-is-more-important "global war on terror."  The occasional  repression of the Egyptian people was seen as acceptable collateral damage to keep Islamic Fundamentalists out of power (The conservative Muslim Brotherhood, though outlawed in Egypt, is the most organized political opposition, and would probably win any fair elections in the country. "He may be an S.O.B, but he's our S.O.B"  as the saying goes. To be fair, life would probably be even harder for the Coptic Christian minority if the current regime falls. To also be fair, the fear of terrorism is real. Bombings at the Coptic Church in Alexandria on New Year's 2011, bombings at Dahab in 2006, attacks in Sharm el-Sheik in 2005, and the chilling sniper attacks from the hills around the Queen Hatsepshut temple in Luxor in 1997, among others, show that there is a significant violent minority.

Egpyt has problems. It has a young, educated, under-employed population (80 million) that is growing much too fast for any reasonable hope of providing jobs for the populace. The import half their food. The only fundamental solutions are to "create more land, or fewer Egyptians" as an analyst once said (95% of the population lives in the Nile Valley and Delta, which is only 3% of the land area...there is no more arable land.)  The per-capita GDP is $2270, but because of the rich few at the top, that number is fairly skewed; most people get by on the equivalent of $2 a day or less.  There have been more or less only 3 leaders since Egypt became a republic: Nasser (adored), Sadat (mixed), and Mubarak (reviled, if current protests are any indication). Mubarak has been in power since 1981, and the general consensus in Egypt was that this old man is getting ready to hand off power to his son.
UPDATE: This NY Times article that I found after I originally posted this actually has a very nice summary of most of these problems, and backs me up with data. :)

Our tour guide Ahmed and I had some interesting discussions comparing Bulgaria and Egypt while we were sailing down the Nile. There was a study recently that compared "average national happiness" (measured using some supposedly objective survey) to per-capita GDP. In general, richer countries are happier than poorer ones, on a logarithmic scale.  There are outliers...the US is not nearly as happy as other countries with similar wealth; Denmark is much happier than expected. Bulgaria earned a shout out for being by far the unhappiest country in the survey when income level is considered. People here are about as happy as people in Haiti and Iraq. Ouch.  But that actually seems about right...there is a national depression that things are terrible and will never get better. It's the hopelessness that really is infectious here, unfortunately.
Ahmed seemed to think Egypt was just like Bulgaria in this way, hopeless.

Ahmed is about my age, high-strung, and frustrated. I can't begin to tell you exactly why he's frustrated, but there are many reasons.  I think you'll hear/read the same thing from the protesters taking the streets across the country right now. They are frustrated by being poor.  They are sick of sham elections (last fall the President's party "won" 100% of the seats in the parliamentary elections).  Many young couples can't even get married, as the traditional costs associated with marriage (dowry, etc) are beyond the reach of more and more people.  Interestingly, Ahmed thought things would never change in Egypt. "There have been all these problems, but never enough to push us to revolt. I don't think anything could." He said himself he probably wouldn't join in protests if they ever happened, because he would lose his tourism license and then wouldn't be able to eat and support his father (he sends much of his earnings back to his father, as most traditional Egyptians do). I wonder what he's doing now, now that there are actually people in the streets, fighting, marching, getting killed. I wonder if he's with them? (I can't write and find out, as the government has effectively shut down the entire phone/internet service to Egypt, trying to suppress protesters and keep the story from the media as well.)

So when a newscaster tries to explain how significant it is that people are destroying murals of Mubarak, it really is. People have been imprisoned and/or tortured for much less in Egypt.
To my new Egyptian friends: I'm sorry that much of the tear gas and many of the armored personnel carriers being used to crush protests right now were probably paid for with US tax dollars. But I hope you know that the American people (at least this American person) supports your fight for freedom, for a chance at a better life.
I don't really have any wise insight...we were only there for 2 weeks, mostly enjoying the tourist wonders, mostly taking in ancient Egypt. But modern Egypt is interesting too, and I wish them the best.  Egypt has many likely intractable problems that are unlikely to be solved by any government, democratic or not, and a democratically elected government is quite likely to be less friendly to "US Interests" (whatever those are) than the current one, but Egypt needs the chance to solve Egypt's problems, without meddling from us.  Good luck, and stay safe.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Flu-cation

We interrupt these posts about our amazing trip to Egypt to bring you news from real life.
"Svinski Grip" (свински грип). 
That's what's going around these days. The good ol' H1N1 "Swine Flu."  It's enough of a problem that they canceled all classes in Bulgaria this week.  Our students weren't actually sick (almost no absences), but other schools got it.  Shannon's got it.
I wouldn't recommend it. Swine flu sucks. I've never seen her so sick (I'm also sure I've never personally been that sick myself, thankfully). She's now missed 5 days of work, and has only left the house twice in the last week, both times when I drove her to the doctor's.  Last week (when I decided she really needed to see a doctor) she told me "Every follicle hurts. Everything hurts."  A few times she actually broke down in tears from the pain and misery of it all. She had convinced herself that maybe the excruciating all-over pain was just the remnants of muscle pain from starting a new pre-work morning yoga routine, but she also had a fever of 103, so maybe she was just delirious.


So I've got a really sick wife and no students, but I am still supposed to go to work every day this week. This was supposed to be final exam week. It was going to be a busy week with proctoring, grading, writing comments, etc. Now there's a fair amount of thumb-twiddling. Waiting. Actually, it's been kind of nice. I had a real 2-day weekend. Didn't work at all. Left my sick wife at home (she really wasn't very good company...) and went out to dinner, went dancing, went skiing, practiced for Faculty Follies, slept in. Good stuff.
[I'm really not the heel I sound like here, I swear. I have been taking care of Shannon, but there's really not so much to do when all she wanted to do for most of the last week was sleep.]

So I'm using this flu-cation to my advantage. Catching up on end-of-the-semester grading. Applying for jobs. Getting the car fixed. Going to the pharmacy. I really don't know how I would handle things like getting the car fixed if I were working full-time this week. Well, I do know. I probably wouldn't get it fixed, which is why I just today got around to getting the winter tires installed.

Winter tires? They're required in Bulgaria from November to March, I think. I was pretty skeptical on the whole matter, considering I've only ever used "all-season" tires in Michigan, Montana, Chicago, etc, and did just fine. Well apparently all-season tires are a LOT better than summer tires. At least they're a lot better than MY summer tires. I had to push my car out of my parking spot yesterday because there was a wee bit of snow/ice. I had to reverse down a street a 1/4 mile because I couldn't get up the vaguely slippery hill after leaving the pharmacist. I barely could turn left onto the Ring Road, because my side of the intersection had a slight incline.
OK, so the summer tires had to go. But where are the winter tires? I asked Mike, whom we'd bought the car from (he told us last spring that there were winter tires). "They're in the basement." "Are they the only ones there?" No, but they're the ones straight in there." OK. They didn't really look any different than my current tires, except maybe older. I asked him again "Yeah, those are the ones we used, the ones Ian gave us." OK.

At the shop, the mechanic took one look at my "winter" tires and said "Those are summer tires. 10 years old. Put them in the trash." Awesome.
He did have 3 used winter tires he'd sell me for cheap, but not four, sadly. And he didn't have the equipment to install them, even though I'd called in advance and expressly asked about changing tires. He drew me a nice map to a friend that could install them (I probably drove past 13 other tire-change places en route to his friend, but no matter.)  I got to his friend's shop, but couldn't find the door. Seriously, no door. No glass door with a nice "OPEN" sign. No big garage door. One padlocked shut steel door. One this-can't-really-be-a-door crack in the steel wall. But there were barely visible lights on, so I knocked. Nothing. Knocked again. Wall opens. "Miro?" "Da." Luckily the first mechanic had called ahead, because this one spoke no English, but we communicated acceptably well and for 19 leva I had 2 new-used winter tires installed on the front.
Back to the first shop. Hadn't had a car check-up since Albania in August. "You don't have any brakes." Awesome. Not entirely true (I had been stopping, after all), but still disconcerting. I alredy knew I didn't have any shocks. I could feel that in my ass every time I drove anywhere.
Apparently there is a $30 accessory plastic cover that keeps dirt out of the shocks (I think this is standard in the US), but someone had been cheap and didn't install it, so enough dirt had gotten into the shocks to seize them up completely. "They don't move. It's like you don't have shocks at all." Tell me something I don't know. To fix the brakes and all the shocks would cost (even at dirt-cheap Bulgarian labor prices) 750 leva (about $500), which is about half the value of the car.  Not sure I want to do that, considering we're going to try to sell it in 6 months or less. I'll probably do the brakes and front shocks only, and see how that goes.
On the way home, with my new and improved winter tires ("now with traction!") I decided to try to go back to the pharmacy we visited yesterday to get Shannon's antibiotics. I didn't need any more drugs, just a "faktura," an official invoice that we can use to get reimbursed from our health insurance. They're a big pain in the ass. Whenever I ask for one it takes 10 minutes to fill it out. It's very official, with stamps and everything. Only about 1/2 the time can the pharmacist even give us one. Either they don't have the form, or the right person isn't there, or the special printer isn't working, or they just don't feel like it, I don't know. Yesterday I was told to "come back tomorrow" with my regular receipt, and they would upgrade it to the proper faktura. Today I used my best past-tense Bulgarian (which isn't very good), trying to explain that I was there yesterday and needed a faktura. After some attempts at responding in quick and complex Bulgarian, the flustered pharmacist responded loudly in English, "SIXTEEN-O-CLOCK. TOMORROW."  Sure...

You can't ever go to just one pharmacy in Bulgaria. Nothing like CVS or Wahlgreens or Rite-Aid exists. They are all smaller than an average US kitchen, packed floor-to-ceiling with one of everything. Well one of most things, except the particular brand of Vitamin C that the doctor prescribed you for the flu (yes, he did).The first one we tried yesterday was at our local Hit grocery store. The friendly man explained in English that though they were a pharmacy, they didn't yet have their license to sell prescriptions (they'd only been open a few weeks). So we tried a smaller one across the street. She had the drugs, but no fakturas, and these were expensive (by BG standards) drugs, so she insisted I go somewhere else that could provide me with a faktura. The third place also didn't have the fakturas, but I had a deliriously sick Shannon waiting in the car and at this point I didn't care, so I took her "please come back tomorrow for a faktura" at face value and fled. Or tried to flee, until I couldn't get my summer-tire'd car up the vaguely slippery incline. Which brought me to the car repair shop today, trying to replace my summer tires with even older summer tires.

I'm mighty glad I had several hours to kill today for these adventures in Bulgarian living. I'm also mighty glad I don't work in a Bulgarian car repair place, where it is apparently not standard to heat your work garage. Brr.
So there you have a rambling story from my flu-cation. I'm not really complaining. Campus is beautiful in the snow, skiing was fun, and having time to do grading is a blessing. It's just interesting. Last year we actually got days off of work when they cancelled school for the flu-cation, and we went to Italian Lakes -- amazing. This year...no actual vacation, an actual flu, and car repairs. You win some you lose some.  Get better soon, Shannon!

Egypt Part III: Temples

Part IV: Sailing Down the Nile
Part V: The Red Sea
Part VI: Jeff Climbs a Mountain

Wow, the ancient Egyptians were prolific!  And they knew how to build.  The grandeur of the temples we visited cannot be overstated.  I suspect when the Egyptians threw a party, they THREW A PARTY!  They didn't know how to do anything small.  Every temple we went to required throwing back your head and looking straight up to get the whole picture.  Giant columns and pillars, enormous facades, gargantuan statues, millions and millions of hieroglyphics - some intentionally damaged by other religions of the day.  I wonder how they managed to make "copy after copy" of hieroglyphics that were so exacting in detail.  I really would like to meet an ancient Egyptian scribe.  It would be fascinating to see him (or her) at work.

Anyway, we saw a lot of temples.  Here's the list: Philae Temple, Abu Simbel Temple, Kom Ombo Temple, Edfu Temple, Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple, Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple, and Habu Temple.  We also spent some time in the Valley of the Kings (which was definitely a highlight of the entire trip!).

It would be impossible to tell the story behind every temple we went to, so instead I'll write a brief summary, then throw some pictures up here for you to enjoy...

Both Philae and Abu Simbel temples were actually submerged by Lake Nassar when the Aswan dam was built.  They were subsequently removed piece by piece and put back together in a different (less wet) location.  Philae, Abu Simbel, Kom Ombo, and Edfu temples are in the south of Egypt, the Aswan region.  Luxor, Karnak, Al-Deir Al-Bahari, and Habu temples along with the Valley of the Kings are in Luxor (the city was once known as Thebes).  All of them are huge and in surprisingly good shape considering some were being lived in by farmers (the knees of a Ramses II statue were used as a shelf and other things jutting out of statues as hangers for clothes.  Did people really not realize that these were made by humans and maybe should be shown a degree of respect?  Many of these places were mostly buried by sand but were rediscovered (by said farmers) and dug out so that we tourist can now enjoy climbing in and around them (I guess that means I should ask myself the same question I wanted to ask the farmers...). 

These were all in honor of the gods save the Valley of the Kings which is a burial ground for the pharaohs.  We were unable to take pictures in the Valley of the Kings, so no photos for you.  But, wow.  These tombs were amazing.  Again covered by full-color hieroglyphics.  I could have spent all day there but we were given only a couple of hours.  It's possible that Hanna, Jeff, and I made the whole group run a little late because we just couldn't stop ogling the hieroglyphics.  Simply amazing.  If you google the Valley of the Kings for images, there are some (illicit I'm sure) photos of the hieroglyphics to give you a small taste of how decorated these tombs were.  Definitely one of my favorite places on this trip.

Oh, we got to experience a sand storm at Karnak temple.  Ahmed, who grew up in that area and is around 30, was thrilled to hear thunder and feel the (very) trace precipitation.  He had never hear thunder before, and the trace precip was the first rain in 5 years!

So, without further ado, here are pictures from all our temples.  Enjoy!

PHILAE TEMPLE
 





ABU SIMBEL TEMPLE





KOM OMBO TEMPLE





EDFU TEMPLE




AL-DEIR AL-BAHARI TEMPLE





HADU TEMPLE




KARNAK TEMPLE



LUXOR TEMPLE
 


 

Egypt Part II: Cairo and Pyramids

Part III: Temples
Part IV: Sailing Down the Nile
Part V: The Red Sea
Part VI: Jeff Climbs a Mountain


Cairo is huge.  I mean ginormous.  I mean gargantuan.  I mean there are gazillions of people there.  The population of the region is around 20 million people (with 8 million in the metro area alone).  Where ever you are in Cairo, you see people and cars and buildings and stray animals and trash.  It's crazy to think that this city can survive on the edge of a vast and empty desert.  I'm pretty sure it has reached its carrying capacity, but I don't think there is going to be an exodus of people.  The people of Cairo (and Egypt in general) are, for the most part, not very wealthy.  They are tied to their land and families, and as our guide told us when I asked if he has ever traveled outside of Egypt, "why would I leave when every country comes to me?"  Ahmed is the youngest of 7 children and he is expected to send his earnings to his family who work a farm in the Aswan region of Egypt.  I don't know if he plans to marry - it would probably cost too much for him and his family.  But he seems to like his job as a guide - taking care of us "inept" tourists.  Luckily for Ahmed, this time, the majority of his tour group (12 out of 14) were expats: us four Americans living in Bulgaria, 2 Columbians living in the UK, 2 Scots who lived in Tasmania for 30 years, and an American family living in Hong Kong.  We were all fairly well traveled and pretty good at taking care of ourselves in foreign lands.  So, although Ahmed worried every second of every day about us (I think worrying is part of his slightly high-strung nature), he didn't need to.  We all took to Cairo immediately.  We spent two days there before catching a train to the south.

Cairo Day 1
Our first stop of the day was the "first" pyramid: the step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.  Built by Imhotep - the cursed mummy from the movie - a famous architect, high priest, and physician.  He is apparently one of the few non-pharaohs who was depicted on a pharaoh's statue.  A pretty important dude.



At the step pyramid we got our first taste of the "hard sell."  There were touts for everything: bracelets, scarves, maps, postcards, donkey/camel/horse rides, photographs of forbidden things, etc.  Here is also where we learned not to catch the eye of anyone unless we know we want to start bargaining.  And finally, we got a very distant view of the Pyramids of Giza coming out of the smog of the city.  Giza comes later.

Near the step pyramid are other smaller monuments.  We got to climb inside one of the smaller tombs.  I figured it wouldn't be too claustrophobic, but I was wrong.  When you have around 30 people trying to squeeze through a roughly 3-foot by 3-foot by 40-foot tunnel in both directions, a person with even a minor case of claustrophobia can have a panic attack.  Luckily mine just kept to hyperventilating instead of completely freaking out.  At the end of the tunnel were a couple of crypts with beautiful hieroglyphics in brilliant color.  The ceilings were especially cool - painted dark blue with golden stars over every inch, to represent the night sky.  I had to hold my breath to go back through that tunnel again and unfortunately right after the guide said, "watch your head!" I slammed my head into the top of the tunnel.  Ouch!  Double ouch!  Maybe those weren't painted stars I was seeing.

Our next stop was the Pyramids of Giza.  Everyone has seen pictures of these three famous pyramids and the sphinx.  Now we got to get up close and personal.  In fact, one of the Tourism Police asked us if wanted to run up and touch the Great Pyramid (that was being protected by a roped boundary and said Tourism Police).  Although we did actually want to run up and touch the pyramid, we didn't want to have to pay "baksheesh" to this guard (throughout the trip we learned that ANYTHING is OK as long as you pay for it).



The Great Pyramid is so big and so cool!  The other two pyramids are cool too.  The largest of the three was for Khufu, while the next two were for his son and grandson respectively.  All of them used to be covered by a layer of limestone covered by hieroglyphics.  Standing next to these monstrous monuments in no way helps you comprehend the scope of work done to erect and decorate them.  The manpower used must have been phenomenal!





Well, since we didn't run up and touch the pyramids, we did run across the street and climb around on ancient structures that were probably part of a burial complex for the nobles.  But no rope boundaries or tourism police in this area to tell you that you really shouldn't be climbing on a 5000 year old pillar!  Honestly, actually being in Egypt and seeing how things are (or are not) taken care of, I understand why the Royal British Museum and others refuse to give any of their Egyptian finds back.  If we hadn't been right next to the Pyramids of Giza, these pillars and blocks were were climbing on would be priceless ancient treasures - they actually are priceless ancient treasures!

We visited all three of the pyramids and Jeff even went inside the third and smallest one.  He said it smelled like humanity and had some interesting hieroglyphics.  I was glad I didn't attempt another tomb myself.  Instead I enjoyed the people watching and the tourism police on camels.  I would believe that every language in the world has been spoken at the pyramids.






Our last stop on this day was to see the Sphinx up close and personal.  No climbing on the sphinx!  We just got to see it rise up in front of the pyramids and then we got to watch the sun set over the whole beautiful tableau.



Cairo Day 2 (Merry Christmas)
Today we got a tour around the city including visits to the Hanging Church (purportedly one of the places that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed while in Exile from Herod), the Citadel, a Mosque, a papyrus "museum" (that turned out to be a major tourist trap - all of us fell for it and now are the happy owners of some papyrus artwork, the Khan al Khalili Bazaar, and the Egyptian Museum.  Seriously, if you get a chance to see this museum before they open the new one, you really should.  It's dark.  It's not labeled well.  It's stuffed to the gills with mummies, sarcophagi, statues, enormous statues, pots, ankhs, scarabs, and ancient Egyptian history.  The stuff found in King Tut's tomb is there - and no picture I have ever seen of Tut's head mask does it justice - it is brilliant and amazing, covered in jewels and gold.  The other reason this is worth seeing is that you can practically touch anything (I didn't, of course, for the most part).  I guess that's the thing that surprised me so much about all of our Egypt tour is that these ancient treasures are not preserved and protected in a manner that I expect. 

We didn't pay extra for the mummies room, but we did get to see the animal mummies room.  And later in the trip, Jeff and Pei Pei met the curator of the animal mummies room.  There was a mummified alligator in there (at least 10 feet long).

After two long days of getting on the bus, getting off the bus, walking around a place with our guide, getting back on the bus, getting off the bus, seeing another site with our guide, etc., we were looking forward to the over night train ride to Aswan...