Photos from France and Bulgaria

I’m not sure if anyone still reads my blog but if you’re out there, here’s a bunch of new photos from France and Bulgaria.

GPS

My buddy Kal is also a techie so when I mentioned not bringing my GPS, he said I could use his. Google Maps doesn’t show much for Bulgaria, but at least you can get an idea of where we are in Eastern Europe.

Central Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, sits in a large valley ringed by mountains on all sides. Both the heat and scenery remind me of the one that holds Salt Lake City in Utah. The brightness, dryness, and vegetation remind me of the south of France near the Mediterranean.

Lindsay and I flew in on an Air France flight direct from Paris. It was only slightly delayed due to a scare at the airport which ened in the Police-led explosion of an unattened briefcase, according to the late passengers who sat behind us. I saw a number of US passports in line and was two for two talking to Americans seated near us.

The passport stamp you get when entering Bulgaria looks just like the other EU ones (they want to join as full members) with stars surrounding the Latin character abbreviation (why is this word so long?) of the country, in this case BG. The airport name is also given in Latin characters, Sofia. (My Blackberry can’t write the equivalent in Cyrillic, so I’ll let you figure out what they are.)

The Cyrillic overload gently began at the airport with all of the normal airport signs being in Latin (English) and Cyrillic (Bulgarian). The Cyrillic alphabet lesson I took last summer with my grandmother in Russia slowly came back giving me a slight feeling of comfort. Of course I’ve forgotten most of it and at best sound like a 4 year old trying to make the sounds corresponding to the somewhat foreign shapes. The taxi was about the same with both languages, except the driver didn’t speak English, but did understand Bus Terminal (Kal emailed me the English spelling of the word in Bulgarian). We were greeted with a taste of home as our taxi driver enjoyed a frequent export of the US, pop radio.

The overload kicked in full force as the doors to the newly constructed bus terminal slid open. We were greeted by a waiting area and ticket sales bonanza. There were slots for 40 companies to sell tickets for their buses under small plastic banners and all with laser printed city names taped to the sides of the windows. I took it as a good sign to see about 35 in use. Apparently Latin character using passengers are rare because all of the signs were completely in Cyrillic, and I didn’t recognize our destination, <a href="http://maps.google.com/xhtml?q=gabrovo+bulgaria&site=local#query">Gabrovo</a>. I had to curse Saint Cyril for a moment before Lindsay pointed out that the Departures monitors had magically switched to English, for a moment I felt like I had the Babelfish from "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" in my ear. We figured out that there was a bus to Gabrovo at 4, but had been warned of a not so nice company running at that time.

When I saw Information written in English and two pretty girls, I ambled over and began to ask for Gabrovo. I was ready to have to awkwardly repeat my destination to a blank stare with the eventual recognition and cracking of a smile that often follows an interchange of two people without a common language. Instead I was met by a shaking finger, like you would at a bad dog or child, and a stern "No". Apparently I had interrupted some important reading. Both girls returned to their reading as if I wasn’t there at all. It was almost as if they were just passengers who managed to get behind the giant Information sign. My text message to Kal must have gone through; he appeared at an opportune moment on Google Talk and offered the guidance I needed. It turns out that Union is a good line, so I made a peace sign for two tickets and got the locals price, about $10/person after a little confusion.

We walked out to Sektor 39 to find a brand new bus already cooling in the shade. Once we got moving the flip-down LCDs started an American movie that I don’t recognize with Bulgarian subtitles about some rappers and their exploits. I wander what the rap audience is like here? Even though I can’t hear it at all, I can tell it’s in the good old USA. I’m now sitting on the bus looking out the window at the undulating hills of the countryside.

Looking out the window it’s interesting to see the foreign brands with their regular logos and colors. We passed a street in Sofia that appeared dedicated to car repair because the storefronts were all covered with giant logos of popular European and Japanese brands. I wonder if the ones with dozens of duplicates are the place to go? I say service because there were no shiny new cars in sight, these were just small store fronts. Shell seems to have a strong presence too with a number of stores on both sides of the road.

I’m really excited to set out and see a country that has thousands of years of history.

New Wave still rocks

Over the weekend Lindsay and I went to a real French wedding. Bertrand, my high school exchange student, married Marie, a fellow French professor from Nantes. We had heard that French weddings were a big to-do, experiencing one in person confirmed it.

The wedding took place in the very large and very old Gothic-style church about 3 blocks from Bert’s house. The nearly 2 hour service began at precisely 3 pm. The first half was devoted to the actual marriage, which seemed to follow the same pattern as an American wedding with the typical "I do" replaced by a series of "oui" questions. After several readings, some singing, and a point where the bride and groom left the stage with the priest, the ceremony turned into a regular Eucharist, which reminded me of the ones I used to attend in elementary school. Since I’m not a frequent church go-er, I was surprised by the cute boys who carried baskets by each row jingling them whenever someone put change in. I heard a wise person point out once that people tend to give more when everyone’s watching, hence open baskets.

After the ceremony the newly weds greeted the waiting crowd under a clear sky that had, at the beginning of the ceremony, threatened rain. The array of vibrant colors was great. I felt right at home with my bright blue bowtie and belt.

From the reception a loose-knit caravan of cars, including the vintage Daimler limo that carried Bert and Marie, made its way to the center of the Muscadet wine area. We all met for cocktails under a broad leafed tree in a courtyard of a beautiful chateau. I was surprised that they didn’t call the little snacks that went around "hors d'oeuvres" although I didn’t catch their name.

After everyone had a chance to drink several glasses of champagne, we moved into the hall where the tables had literary terms for names (very appropriate for French professors). We found ourselves at the table Metonmy (referring to a part to represent the whole) amidst a sea of other important terms. We dined with a number of other people our age including two of Bertrand’s classmates who also came to Jacksonville in 1999. Dinner only lasted about 3 hours starting with a seafood salad, continuing with magret de canard, pausing on a cheese plate, finishing on an assorted dessert plate with coffee to re-energize everyone for the impending dancing. Between the courses there were a number of toasts with a variety of presentations ranging from a simple speech to a homemade video projected on the wall to a remake of Yellow Submarine with appropriate characters added performed with a live guitar and about 10 singers. The cake was a traditional pastry creation standing about 4 feet tall composed of at least a hundred brown-colored, tennis ball sized spheres with a light cream inside.

Starting at 11 music and flashing lights emerged from the adjacent room that I hadn’t noticed. After dinner someone asked "do you dance the rock?" (Dansez-vous le rock?), to which I responded "yes" (oui) and thought, is there a real style of "rock" dancing? It turns out there is. Imagine an amalgamation of various dance moves like an evolution of the dances our (grand)parents did. There was plenty of what in a photograph would look like old fashioned dancing which in reality was turning, twisting, spinning, and smiling. All of the movement was helped by the low lighting and flowing champagne. Not having fun would have been difficult.

When I heard the music go off at 3 I was totally surprised that the wedding and party had actually lasted the alloted 12 hours.

IPhone

While in New York, Lindsay and I stopped at the main Apple Store to play with the new iPhone. No, I didn't buy one on the spot, as a number of you may have expected. I do however think it has some fantastic new features.

Design-wise the iPhone is a beautiful machine. It has hand-friendly corners, the biggest display I've seen on a phone, a unique interface, and a good weight. After writing this and a number of other posts on my trusty Blackberry, the touch screen keyboard lacked the feedback a real keyboard offers. I'm not quite to the touch typing level with the BB, but I'm pretty close, which I'm not sure how a screen keyboard would compare. There was a suggestion feature that tried to guess the correct word from the letters used. Perhaps the click feedback of a button could be mimicked by a slight vibration, like a video game.

The ability to view entire webpages with zoom is nice. That is to say, the phone loads whole web pages zoomed out so you can see the whole page, to read the text you zoom in by drawing two fingers together over the part you want. To compare the web browsers of the iPhone and Blackberry is like comparing the Gopher browser on the original AOL and the newest version of Safari. Both do use the Internet, but in a completely different way.

I certainly see myself as a candidate, so it's more of a when question than an if question. I'm composing this message while listening to my iPod Nano. Having one less thing to carry, charge, and worry about is valuable to a frequent traveller.

The iPhone also has the ability to use 802.11, increasing the speed when WiFi is available. I wonder how long it'll take someone to write a VoIP client (lSkype, maybe) to bypass the cellular (and much more expensive) network when there's a WiFi signal.

Lemonade

On the way to Paris Lindsay and I spent almost as much time in airports as in the air. From Jacksonville we had a three hour delay causing us to miss our connection to Paris, which put us a day behind. Continental’s flights leave at night so we had a day to kill. We took the train into NYC, found a place to stay, and made a few calls.

I stopped at Viand, my favorite 10 minute breakfast spot, with my cousin to catch up on his recent departure from a family business.

Almost everyone I know in NY has a day job so finding people to visit proved interesting. After being totally moved by the Richard Serra pieces I saw with Matt at DIA:Beacon and with Andrew in Seattle, I knew I was going to see his solo MoMA exhibition by hook or crook. I called my aunt with whom I regularly visit the museum to see if she could break away. She found an hour in her schedule and met us there to catch up in an ever-changing, unique, beautiful, pristine space.

In my usual compressed time fashion we bolted downtown to meet Zach and Nina for a coffee before they disappeared into the kitchen working on the city’s best meals of the night. Zach described the heat of working in on of the top rated restaurants. Even with a professional culinary degree and amazing talent he makes less than two times minimum wage in one of the countries most expensive cities. Along side him are a number of volunteers who work for free just to be able to add this restaurant to their resume. Talk about supply and demand, with free workers it’s easy to pay the ones who need to eat peanuts.

Continuing the art experience we followed the High Line (which will be a beautiful park in a few years) from the start up through Chelsea stopping in the high-tech, new-media gallery Eye Beam. I played a reprogrammed original Nintendo with a game called I Shot Andy Warhol, you can guess why it had the Duck Hunt gun. We walked into a few more galleries before stopping to see a fellow CC alumnus at the James Cohan Gallery. They were taking down an old show and putting up a new one, so the gallery wasn’t in its usual state. In the back Laurie showed us several binders with photos of works that had passed through since I last visited. She suggested we visited the Roxy Paine tree in Madison Square garden on 25th, so we let her finish her lunch and walked cross town to see the life-sized stainless steel trees. The sculpture garden I mentioned above in Seattle with Andrew also had one of these trees, so I knew it was worth the walk.

We worked our way back to the airport only to find our flight to France delayed an hour to start. After the delay put the pushback later than the next flight out, we decided to take our carry-on only luggage and jump ship. We had to wait as Standby passengers which I thought meant they’d be happy to give us two middle seats between either fat people or babies, maybe both, after everyone else got on. Once the waiting area cleared we got our seats to my surprise, A and B, and aisle and window. When we got to the exit row bulkhead, I thought it was too good to be true. Not only did we have an aisle and a window, but we also had extra legroom and no one in front of us.

All-in-all we squeezed the lemons of the delay into lemonade.

Easternmost Point in the US

Easternmost Point in the US

Here’s a photo of the 4th corner, the Easternmost point in the US, Quoddy Head, Lubec, Maine.

17,000 miles:
4 corners of the US
3 months,
2 wheels
and one big smile.

The Miracle Mile + Gold Coast

After the lecture, I met my friend Peter in Millennium Park next to the affectionately named "bean." We were planning to get a snack and walk north up Michigan Avenue towards the Gold Coast, but an intense afternoon thunderstorm forced us into the Art Institute.

As we were walking up the stairs for the main entrance, a lightning bolt flashed, immediately followed by the crash of an entire drum ensemble. There was no time between the two, indicating a very close strike. Even though I didn’t see the bolt, the loud sound and impending storm made me go up the stairs all the faster. The Art Institute has a great collection, but the Contemporary section was down, to my chagrin, for reworking. The Jeff Wall exhibit I saw at MoMA was being installed to open on Friday. I would have enjoyed another pass by his giant back-lit photographs.

After we left the Art Institute we took a stroll up the famous Michigan Avenue taking a moment to see the giant iPhone in the window of the Apple store.

The next stop was Rosebud’s Carmine on Rush for the best bolognese sauce I’ve ever had. The last two times I visited Chicago I made my pilgrimage complete by stopping and enjoying. Although I have tried many times to imitate it and developed a tasty sauce of my own, their’s is top notch. The bottle of Chianti we split definitely heightened the party for my taste buds.

We finished the walk with a stroll up to Division, passing the Canterbury Court where I stayed while taking the class with Marcia and John in 2005. Just around the corner from the all-night strip of bars and the too-good, greasy-spoon Five Faces, we picked up the El for the return to Wilmette.

Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

In another stroke of luck, I was able to join a lecture by a preëminent psychoanalyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.

When I was in Colorado Springs, I stopped by John and Marcia’s offices hoping to catch up a bit. On John’s door I found a flyer for a class in Chicago. I sent them an email asking if we could have lunch or dinner. I heard back a couple of days later and in the interim remembered how much I enjoyed their classes, so I asked if I could sit in.

It turns out the day I was there was the second day of the summer block (a one month college course). I joined the hour or so introduction, went to lunch with John, Marcia, and a few students, and then enjoyed the lecture on "self" creation and the relevence of Freud today.

The best news was the guest lecture by noted object relations psychoanalyst Dr Frank Summers, not because class with John and Marcia isn’t excellent, but because it was unexpected. The hour for the lecture was only enough time to scratch the surface and the few sentences here can at best mention some of the vocabulary. I vigorously took notes, which even after a week I’ve yet to digest, but regardless the discussion came at a very good time. I liked his comments on a healthy self being able to regulate and assimilate its experience. I found the clinical distinction between trauma and difficult experience enlightening, that is to say, trauma is caused when the psyche is unable to manage and process difficult experiences often leading to symptoms later on. All psyches go through difficult experiences; the important part is how the experiences are dealt with. The third detail I found particularly interesting came in the following the question, "Does the way you live express who you are?" He asked whether the motivation to do something came from anxiety (from without, from defenses) or from authenticity (from within, from the self), postulating that the motivation is what’s important (for the therapist) over the content. Understanding what drives one to do a thing or act a certain way can be very enlightening. For me it helped formulate answers to a few questions I’ve been pondering; why did I shake up my world, take a giant motorcycle trip, and decide to go to graduate school?

It’s been a great 3 months

I’m going to write more about when I get a chance, I just wanted to put up a picture of my route.