Wandering I

Today I had cheese baguette for breakfast.  Even with coffee the cost only came out to €5.  The cheese smelled funny though, and I’m not sure if I will be able to bring myself to eat it again.

I visited the Louvre Museum today.  Shame on me, but I had forgotten that the Mona Lisa is located at the Louvre.  It didn’t take long for me to figure it out though because there were signs pointing to it’s location all around the grand museum.  The painting is housed in the Denin section, and as I made my way there, a foul stench filled the air.  It smelled like someone had exploded a stink bomb in the stairwell. I tried to fan it away, but to no avail.  I think the smell was a combination of body odor and the odors emanating from the nearby restrooms.  I finally made it to the Mona Lisa, the popularity of which was immediately evident.  A huge crowd was gathered around Da Vinci’s masterpiece.  Despite numerous signs prohibiting photography, everyone’s cameras were out and clicking away.  She, Mona Lisa, must feel like such a celebrity, I thought, and she plays the part well with her smug smile and coy glance.  I remember reading somewhere that people tend to identify one piece or symbol of an entire field as the epitome of the whole.  As in, the Colosseum in Rome may represent all of Roman architecture, Hamlet represents all of literature, etc.  The Mona Lisa, I read, stands as the epitome of art for many people, especially for those who are not very knowledgeable of art.  What a presumptuous honor, I mused.  The crowd jostled to get closer to the painting.  The cameras clicked away.  Mona Lisa smiled smugly from behind her glass panel.

I learned that the Venus de Milo is also located at the Louvre.  I tracked it down to find a crowd gathered around it as well.  For a piece that’s not even whole - it’s missing both arms - it’s quite popular.  There is a certain tension in the body as it twists upward that I did find charming.  Another sculpture that really stood out for me was of a lion attacking a man who is trapped with one hand caught in a crack of a massive, broken tree.  I forget the man’s name, but the story goes that in his old age he tried to prove his strength by breaking the tree apart.  He used to be a renowned athlete, and he could not accept that old age had weakened him.  His hand got stuck, and wild animals devoured him.  The sculpture is very impressive.  The ferocity of the lion with its taught body and unforgiving jaws and the man’s anguish as he twists his body to ward off the hungry beast with one hand are beautifully sculpted.  The piece also conveys a poignant message about the inevitability of old age.  We must all face it eventually.

I checked out the Islamic art exhibit as well, and I found it quite sparse.  The museum had some finely crafted swords and knives with beautiful hilts and blades on display, but not much else of interest.

I made my way through the Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden).  It’s a long stretch of grass, shrubs, and trees adjacent to the Louvre.  I followed the dirt path through the park.  I came across a large fountain in the center of the park where several boys were floating miniature sailboats.  A man stood with a cart of sailboats nearby, renting them out to the kids.  The boys circled the fountain carrying long poles, which they used to prod the boats away from the sides.  Walking further I arrived at the Place de la Concorde where the Egyptian obelisk stands.  I remember learning about this obelisk when I visited Luxor, Egypt in 2006.  Mohammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt at the time, gave it to France in exchange for a clock tower.  The clock never worked, but here it was, that very same missing obelisk.

I took a bus to Champs Elysees earlier tonight.  It is a brighly-lit avenue that is known for its shopping.  It starts at the massive Arc de Triomphe Etoile, which was built by Napolean to commemorate his victories.  Walking down the avenue I came across a throng of people waiting in line outside a Virgin Megastore.  I asked a security guard what was going on, but he didn’t speak English.  He still wanted to help and said hesitatingly, “Arapotre?”  I didn’t understand him, so I asked a girl who was waiting in line.  Turned out they were all waiting for the launch of the next and last book in the Harry Potter series.  Of course.

Paris is as beautiful as I’ve heard. The city is clean, its monuments are well-maintained, and there’s a pervasive sense of authenticity. It doesn’t feel artificial, like a tourist town does. It feels “lived in.”

My attempt to obtain a SIM card failed yet again. I’ve been trying since I arrived in London to get prepaid service for my phone, but for some reason or another, it has fallen through each time. This time, my parlay vous anglais (Do you speak English?) even preceded by a friendly bonjour, monseuir! elicted a cold “No.” I nonetheless pushed on and managed to convey what I wanted through some basic English words and lots of hand gestures. The clerk wasn’t very helpful though, and I gave up. These Parisians really knock the tourist right out of you.

Once again, I found myself ripped off at breakfast. I ordered a banana & chocolate crepe, water, and coffee. The damage? €16! I was dumbfounded. The woman sitting next to me must have noticed my shock, and she advised me to stick to cheese baget, which is simply cheese in a particular type of bread. Point taken.

Ah, the Eiffel Tower. It felt surreal, to stand before the famous monument in person. As monuments go, it’s really nothing extraordinary. There are far more interesting places in Paris. However, the Eiffel Tower has assumed an identity that supersedes its structural or historical importance, and I enjoyed the experience.

As I meandered around the Eiffel Tower neighborhood, I passed a building with a board outside that read: La Banque Postale. I wanted to drop off some mail, and I thought maybe this place would have a mailbox. After all, given the word “Postale” in its name, the building must have something to do with a post office? I walked in, and based on how quickly the security officer leapt out of his chair to intercept me, I figured I must have guessed wrong. As I turned to go, however, the receptionist asked if I spoke English. Happy to find someone else who did, I jumped at the opportunity to have a real conversation. Her name was Julie, aka JuJu. She spoke English very well, and I told her as much. She loved the compliment and, in turn, complimented me on my pronunciation of the few French words that I know. I asked her about places where I could hang out, and she gave me the name and number of a place. Just to make sure I had no trouble, she gave me her own number as well. Such nice people, these French.

I wanted to take a rental bike back to Greg’s apartment, and I went looking for one of the ubiquitous bike rental stands that have popped up in Paris recently. It’s a great system. You can buy a membership card or even just a one-day or weeklong pass to take out a bike at any time from any one of the stands. It’s fully automated. The bikes are heavy-duty bikes that lock electronically to the stands. You unlock a bike by inserting your pass into the nearby machine, and off you go. It only costs €1 to rent a bike for the first 30 minutes. After that, you’re charged a progressively higher amount for every 30 minutes you go over. You can return the bike at any stand in the city as long as there is a spot available to park it. The stands are widely distributed, and I noticed many people riding these rental bikes. Alas, I was disappointed to learn that our American credit cards don’t work at these self-rental machines. The French credit card system utilizes a chip, which is inset into the card. The bike rental machines require one of these cards. I trudged back to the apartment on foot, envious of all the people whizzing past me on their bikes. Yet, I couldn’t help but admire the subtle beauty of the Frenchwomen riding the bikes in their flowery spring dresses. There’s something so refined and charming about it. Paris really is beautiful.

I arrived in Paris late in the afternoon.  As I stepped into the station at Gare du Nord, my first reaction was awe.  There was something about the place, a certain je ne sais quoi*, that made me pause.  The hustle and bustle of the people, the sunlight streaming in from the high arched windows, a faint, familiar smell… Even the people didn’t appear frenzied like New Yorkers.  There was a calm about them even as they hurried to get to their destinations.  I took my time exiting the train platform.  I liked Paris already.

My next reaction was frustration.  Nobody seems to speak English!  I had a terrible time trying to find a restroom.  When I finally found one, I discovered that I had to pay to use it.  I had no Euros on me, and it took another several minutes before I found an ATM and got some cash. When I went to get change, however, I learned that the change machine was out of service. The bathroom attendant tried to explain something to me — in French, of course — but when I failed to understand, she just gestured to a store nearby. I concluded she meant I should get change elsewhere. I waddled next door (Fact: Lugging around a 40lb backpack while needing to urinate can cause you to waddle) and asked for change — sort of. I flashed a €10 and said “combia” or “combie” or something. The man seemed to get it and waved his arms — he couldn’t give me change. At that point I decided I would just purchase my Metro ticket and hope for a Euro in change. I ended up buying a Paris Visite pass, which gave me unlimited travel for three days on the Metro and on city buses, and it also got me my desired €1 coin. Triumphant at last, I marched into the restroom and paid my dues.

I met up with Greg Viscusi at the Bloomberg News office in the heart of Paris. Greg is the son of my mentor from Columbia, and he graciously offered to let me crash with him during my time in Paris. I dropped off my bag at the office and headed off to find a cafe to get some food. I found a quaint place near the Paris Opera and ordered a crepe chocolat (pancake with chocolate) and a Coke. Now, the Coke was not of my choosing. Notwithstanding the loyalty I still feel for Pepsi, I simply did not feel like having a soda. While I struggled with how to say “water,” however, the waiter asserted matter-of-factly, “Coca Cola.” At a loss for what to say, I just nodded. Soda with pancakes? Not so strange for the Parisians, it seems. There were Coke bottles on almost every table, and since then I’ve noticed that it doesn’t seem to matter what time of day or night it is — Parisians really like their soda. My unwanted glass of Coke cost me, at €7.50, a Euro more than the main course. I didn’t even drink it and got a coffee instead. It was a painful hit on my meager budget, but I chalked it up to experience.

Later in the evening, Greg took me for dinner to a restaurant in the Latin Quarters. Contrary to what I had assumed, the Latin Quarters, unlike New York, does not get its name due to a concentration of Latinos or Hispanics. Apparently, it’s known as the Latin Quarters because Latin used to be the language of academia in Paris, and most of the universities were based in this area. So I didn’t hear any salsa or meringue. Greg and I had dinner at a French restaurant. I tried escargot (snail) and foie gras (duck liver) for the first time. The snail tasted quite good, very flavorful. The duck liver, which looked like a chunk of butter and was spread on toast in much the same manner, tasted slightly sweet. I’d recommend both.

*Thanks for the spell check, Sattar.

Londoners have a habit of leaving their newspapers behind when they deboard a carriage on the Tube.  Copies of the Financial Times, the London Daily, People, and many other papers flutter on the seats, their pages spread out, marking, perhaps, the spot where the readers left off.  Then the next batch of commuters streams in and the discarded papers are snatched up, automatically, as if they were expected to be there, left waiting by a diligent paperboy.  The latest market shifts, fresh gossip about Beckham and Posh or Paris Hilton’s shenanigans, the last football (soccer) game’s statistics — all are gleaned from the pages of the assorted papers.

I learned from my copy of the Financial Times that Brits and Americans are not apt to save for a rainy day.  It appears that despite the wide array of financial services available to us, we tend to save less than our Chinese and Canadian counterparts.  Indeed, it appears that the more highly developed the retail financial services of a country, the less that country saves (Canada being an exception).  This paradox is in part explained by the fact that the more diverse our investments, the less we focus on actual savings.  In fact, active financial systems are associated with higher consumption.  Dire analysis, yet not really news.  We Americans are a consumer society.  We make no apologies for buying the latest gadgets the day they become available (iPhone, anyone?) and for spending more than we earn (thank God for credit cards!).

Happily, I contributed to the American national savings rate by not paying for my copy of the Financial Times.  The Tube arrived at my stop, and as a responsible traveler, I left the paper right where I had found it.

A pence saved is two pennies earned.  One thing that is painfully obvious is that London is expensive.  The current exchange rate is above $2 for every £1. It is unbearable to retrieve £50 from an ATM only to have $100+ debited from my account!  I’ve tried to be ultra-thrifty, but with the high cost of travel, entertainment, and food, I find my cash reserves repidly depleted.  I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t had to pay for accommodations and that Walid, a college friend, picked up the tab when we hung out (thanks, buddy!).  Still, I’m looking forward to converting to Euros when I leave England.

Like New York, London is a cosmopolitan city, and like New York, it’s hard to find any locals.  There are many South Asians in London as well as Eastern Europeans.  The Chinese, of course, are everywhere.  Where have the natives gone?  Where are they who built the empire on which the sun never set?

The weather here, as I had been warned, is quite predictable: Expect rain.  Of the five days that I’ve spent here, it has rained at least three.  Luckily, it hasn’t been a constant rain, but it comes and goes at will, often catching us off guard.  It also gets fairly cold here.  I left 90 degree weather in New York to find temperatures as low as in the 40s here.  Fortunately, I brought a jacket.

Yesterday, I visited Big Ben and the House of Parliament.  I felt a peculiar sense of fulfillment.  I remember working on a model of the Big Ben in middle school.  As a child I had ascribed some fantastic qualities to the old monument.  It was a legendary edifice, located in a far away place, which I could only hope to visit some day.  These memories lurched forward as I stood before the clock, and I found myself smiling.

Later Kamran and I attended a play at the Shakespeare Globe Theater.  I had wanted to get the £5 standing tickets, but the show, The Merchant of Venice, was sold out by the time we got there.  We ended up buying £15 tickets from a scalper instead.  I had read the play in college, so I looked forward to seeing it performed at the original location.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Though the accent was a bit difficult to understand at times, the play was well done.  The setting itself is quite extraordinary.  It is an open-air, circular theater, built as a replica of the original theater (which burned down).  I also enjoyed the interactive aspect of the performance.  The players walked amongst the people standing in front of the stage and drew them into the action.  The play itself is a comedy, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

I also visited the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms.  It was a fascinating display of the British war machine during World War II.  It intrigued me to see how the war made a hero out of Winston Churchill.  Generally, he appears to have been a mean-spirited, war-mongering, racist old man, but he’s considered a hero for leading the British through the war effort. I was pleasantly surprised to observe that the US was given pride of place in the exhibit.  It was clear that the British were grateful for America’s involvement in the war and for her friendship.

I had an interesting discussion with Hasan, one of Kamran’s housemates.  He is a skinny fellow who wears low-hanging, fitted jeans, greasy spiked hair, and a days old stubble.  He works part time as a salesman for British Gas.  Apparently his style of dress and living is very much the standard in East London.  He adopted it soon after moving here from Pakistan, much to the chagrine of his cousin in West London.  It comes with a care-free attitude and seems to pose a limit on bathing as well.  In between his chain-smoking, Hasan related an incident when he had met the British-Indian girlfriend of a friend in West London.  After sizing him up — camouflage pants, “I’m a Suicide Bomber” T-shirt, black & white checkered scarf, and generally disheveled look — she turned up her nose and asked with scorn, “Are you a fuckin’ East Londoner mela?”  Mela as in dirty one.  To my bemusement, I’ve noticed a similar reaction when I’ve told people here that I’m staying in East London.

My arrival in London, thankfully, was not as eventful as I had dreaded it would be.  I arrived at Heathrow Airport on the morning of Friday the 13th and contrary to what one might have expected given the unlucky date, I had no problems whatsoever in immigration.  In fact, I had forgotten to take down my cousin’s address where I planned to stay, so I didn’t know it to include it on the landing card.  Fortunately, I sat next to a backpacker on my flight, and I took his youth hostel’s address from him and wrote that in instead.  Even still, I didn’t raise any suspicion.

Kamran, my cousin, just moved to London about nine months ago. He is studying at the East London University. He resides in East Ham in East London.  He shares an apartment with six or seven other guys, all students from Pakistan.  The guys turned out to be a friendly bunch, and we had some interesting conversations.

London has an impressive public transportation network, comprised mainly of the Underground or Tube as they refer to it (subway, as we Americans call it) and buses.  It is a sophisticated, highly developed system.  Given the cost and energy required to maintain our own MTA network in New York, I can only imagine the generous taxpayer support it must require to manage this behemoth.

As impressive as its transportation network, what’s most striking about London is CCTV - Closed Circuit TV.  There are cameras everywhere!  They protrude from street corners, jut from ceilings, and peek from behind pillars.  There were cameras even in a Starbucks on Oxford Street.  It’s a weird feeling, knowing that you’re under observation at all times.  That camera hanging so unassumingly from the ceiling, is it focused on me right now?  Zooming in perhaps to get a closer look at my face?  Catching me pluck my nose hair or pull out wedged underwear?  I’m reminded of the Orwellian “Big Brother” — ever-alert, omnipresent, and presumably benevolent.  I’ve often wondered in America how we get people to obey laws.  Is it simply because everyone agrees to them and fully understands the mutual benefit derived from adhering to the law?  It seems hardly likely.  I think it’s more likely due to the threat of an enforcer, of the cop waiting to pull you over if you run the red light on a deserted road.  Then again, there might be no cop, and you can take the risk of running the light.  In London, however, the enforcer is always watching.  And if Mayor Bloomberg gets his way, we will see a similar network of cameras crop up in lower Manhattan as well.  Does the government have the right to monitor public space in such a manner?

One month shy of my 26th birthday I have left New York to backpack through Western Europe, Turkey, and India for the next two to three months.  I intend to end up in Pakistan where I’m not sure yet how long I will stay.

What made me take this seemingly abrupt and dramatic step?  I resigned from Pepsi, sold most of my belongings, and moved out of my beautiful apartment on City Island.  I have no job for when and if I return to the US, and I am eating into my paltry savings. I believe the key driver of my decision was the mere fact that I can.  I can take off to travel the world because I have very little to tie me down or to hold me back.  I can afford to leave my job because it’s still very early in my career.  I can rely on my savings to hold up because I need very little to survive right now.  I can traverse through Europe because I carry an American passport, which means I don’t need a visa for any of the European countries I plan to visit.  I can, therefore, I am.

For the first time in my life I have taken a major step without knowing what the next step will be. Where will I end up after my trip? What will I do? This is not like school where each year is a step towards the next and the next until high school ends and soon comes graduation from college. Then you join the work force, get married, have kids, rinse, then repeat. This time for your own kids. But I find myself running astray, off this beaten path, and as scary as it is, it’s also thrilling.

My timing, however, could have been better, at least in regards to current world affairs.  This is a very tumultuous time. The American-led “War on Terror” rages on.  Al-Qaeda persists as a dangerous enemy, ever-evolving new, deadly tactics to fight back.  Just recently, there was an attempted dual car bomb attack in London, followed by an attack at Glasgow Airport.  Many of the apprehended suspects are Pakistani men (or of Pakistani origin) between the ages of 17 and 35.  In Pakistan, radical Muslim clerics have declared jihad on President Musharraf and his government due to the recent skirmish at the Red Mosque in Islamabad.  All this has grave implications for me.  As a 25-year-old Muslim male of Pakistani origin, I can’t help but feel like a prime suspect for counterterrorist operations around the world, especially in London, my first destination.  To exacerbate matters, I am traveling on a one-way ticket.  I expect the immigration officers at Heathrow Airport in London will wonder how - if ever - I intend to return home to the US.  It gives them more reason to suspect my intentions.  On the other hand, I am just as much a target of any potential terror attacks as any non-Muslim.  Terrorists kill indiscriminately, and a part of me does fear that I could find myself at the wrong place at the worst time.  I feel like I’m caught between the two sides, smack-dab in the middle of the crossfire.

The fear, however, has not succeeded in quelling my excitement.  I am looking forward to seeing the world (or a bit of it, at least).  My current planned itinerary is as follows:

London, England - July 13 to July 17
Paris, France - July 18 to July 20
Brugge, Belgium - July 21 to July 22
Geneva, Switzerland - July 25 to July 27
Barcelona, Spain - July 29 to August 2
Madrid, Spain - August 3 to August 5
Granada, Spain - August 6 to August 8
Malaga, Spain - August 9 to August 11
Venice, Italy - August 12 to August 15
Cinque Terre, Italy - August 16 to August 18
Florence, Italy - August 19 to August 22
Rome, Italy - August 23 to August 24
Athens, Greece - August 25 to August 27
Sofia, Bulgaria - August 28 to August 31
Istanbul, Turkey - September 1 to September 7
Ephesus, Turkey - September 8 to September 10
Ankara, Turkey - September 11 to September 13
Hyderabad, India - September 15 to September 25
Karachi, Pakistan - September 26 –

The world awaits, and I intend to embrace it.  To see it for what it is and wrap my mind around it.  To partake in its variety, its technology, its rhythm.   To ultimately make it a part of me.