Three Last Thoughts on Rwanda

I don't pretend to be able to summarize in a few pithy words what my/our trip to Rwanda was like. Actually, I can easily pretend to be able to do it, I just don't feel like it. Enough internet ink has been spilled on this site about the trip to Rwanda, I think: this post will bring me over 14,000 words. So anybody who is reading this and cares about what my overall impressions on the trip were should be able to pull something together based on the seven (including this one) posts and all that is contained therein.

At the same time, I want to write one more post about Rwanda. Not only because I promised it in the first post on Rwanda (more to myself than to anyone else), but because there is more I can say. And more I want to tell. So in lieu of any grand conclusions about the trip or huge statements, I give to you three little snapshots, events from the trip that encapsulated much of what happened as a whole, while also providing some entertainment. These events are not in chronological order.

Live at Gisenyi

Lake Kivu the morning after the storm.

The trip was harrowing; twice I have mentioned the thundering rains that could have ended our trip prematurely. We rode 10 passengers in a van designed to carry 14 passengers max in theory, but a van with bulky but thin cushions that did little to hide the feel of the steel bars beneath, a van with seats too close together so that there was no leg room even for the midgets like me, a van that had a multi-colored lamp inside that could do the disco rotation as needed, and a van that came from Dubai, where it was apparently the van for a hair salon. Riding in the van for four hours already that day (with stops), we were worn out as it was, and in no condition to weather the storm peacefully. We were saved by the steady driving of our main man Pascal, a driver who switched on to our group with the new van and who, on his first day, wore a bowling shirt with the name "Baker Hughes" stitched on the back. Maybe a code name? Or his bowling nickname, ala The Jesus?

In any case, the trip was harrowing. It led to our only night out of Kigali, a small hotel on a hill overlooking Lake Kivu, a Great Lake (Africa style, obviously) on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. We arrived shortly after dusk and, after divvying up rooms and unpacking, a few of us went out on the porch and talked and watched the lightning storm. I brought my guitar out and provided quiet and (I hoped) non-intrusive background music to the more serious conversations around me.There was an uneasy beauty of the moment.

We went to a relatively lame hotel restaurant by the water, mosquitoes infiltrating the overpriced dining hall, but our bonds were tight and the chocolate mousse cake I ordered (for dinner) good. Indeed, though I was weary from the car ride and the trip in general, hitting its 11th and 12th days, and though this trip marked the final high water mark before travel and group fatigue wore on my experience, we were at a high water mark at that restaurant, and the glow of our mzingu bubble on Kivu preserved that positive feeling.

We returned to the hotel just shy of midnight. I was most interested in going to sleep, but there was a general clamor for some music. And so I pulled out my guitar and played some tunes, pulling from the back catalog of hits ("Barcelona," "Ain't No Minivan Mama"), the fruitful summer of 2010 writing I had done ("Cellulite", "Stuck at the Start"), and the two Rwandan-inspired tunes I had written ("Any Given Day," "Hey, Mzingu", and yes, I did just cite a bunch of my own songs that most people have never heard. It's my blog, roll with it). My lovely audience that I would have liked to take home supported and enjoyed cigars, waragi, tequila, and the company, as well as the scenic backdrop, one of the nicest I will ever play in front of in my amateur musician career. The beauty here was easier, more exhausted, but joyous, a true cap on the high water experience.

An hour and a half later, I woke up in my bed in the hotel room to the evil sound of a nearby buzzing mosquito. My roommate was not on anti-malaria pills and had avoided vaccinations and in general was doing things all naturally to protect his body (we enjoyed watching him put together his herbal cocktail each morning at breakfast). No problem; I had all the respect in the world. And when we roomed together in Gisenyi, with two beds but only one mosquito net, I said, "No problem, you take it. Mosquitoes don't like me much anyway." My macho stubbornness striking again, as you see.

So when the mosquito woke me, I lay still for a few minutes, thinking I could wait it out. I slapped at the air aimlessly as well, or not aimlessly since I could hear him, but with very poor accuracy. The quiet desperation of hearing a mosquito buzzing around you and knowing there is nothing you can do to stop her, and knowing that the noise (definitely the noise and not so much the fact that she will bite you) would not let you sleep, and that sleep is the thing you most need to preserve your calm, your patience, and your sanity, this quiet desperation set in for me.

My roommate, fortunately, is a good sleeper. Fortunate, because my solution was to turn on the lights, sit as still as possible in a poor lotus position, and kill as many mosquitoes as necessary to allow me to sleep. There is always the illusion, after all, that it's only one mosquito that is buzzing around your head; their buzzes sound the same. I killed one mosquito. A buzz returned. I was not fooled. I killed another mosquito. I swung and missed at a few more. Somehow, my roommate stirred but did not wake. I imagined myself to be a modern day Mr. Miyagi with a lower hit-rate. Much lower.

In the end, I killed about 10 mosquitoes over 20-30 minutes, turned out the lights, and pulled the sheet over my head. I slept soundly if incompletely until the morning.

The World's (or at least Rwanda's) finest football pitch (Or backdrop)

A group photo of the memorable pitch.

East Rwanda, on one of the rare spaces in the country flat enough and big enough for a football (i.e. soccer) pitch, with 25 some-odd (we played about 13 v 13) boys aged from 16-24 or so who were ostensibly sophomores in high school, all orphaned or made vulnerable by the genocide, in the sunny but fading late afternoon light, with a beautiful vista to the east that suffered not at all for the fact that we wouldn't be able to see the sunset over it.

That was the scene. We were visiting the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, and as part of our visit, we got to play football with the kids (or basketball, or volleyball, but I chose the footie). The village is an oasis, of sorts, for the aforementioned vulnerable and/or orphaned population of Rwanda, operating as a high school for these kids. So far they have 250 students, admitting a new freshman class of 125 students each year to hit a maximum of 500 students in two more years.

But enough about the technicalities. On the pitch, the kids are about what you would expect them to be: talented, able, but lacking savvy, teamwork, or foresight that comes with coaching and paying attention to sports. Understandable, of course, considering they have a lot more important things to deal with than being good at football; this isn't a factory or even a competitive high school. It's just a place for kids to play the game.

So a couple of us joined in the game, running up and down, making a couple plays here and there and getting frustrated from time to time. I learned the appropriate words to call for the ball, "Karibu" (meaning "welcome") and "he-he" (short e's; the word means "here"), and called for the ball plenty, but didn't really get many touches - there were a couple sweet crosses I made that didn't lead to goals, but ah well, I screwed up plenty times too. Meanwhile, the light grew hazier and the beauty rose to match it.

And then we had to leave. The game was still going, and we had to leave. My unfortunate response was to fall into "Cheese Fries or nothing" mode*. I ignored the first several calls. Then I turned in and gave up, gathering my t-shirt, walking sulkily off the field and probably spitting to the side a few times more than necessary. I entered the car and, making sure to voice my frustration, said, "Tha's some bullshit."

After a pause, somebody asked what this so-called "bullshit" was.

I hemmed and hawed as I got the words out, then said, "When will we ever get a chance to play on a field like that in a setting like that? We can eat in Mzingu restaurants for the rest of our life," in reference to our rush back to Kigali.

Well then.

Another lost temper. Another blown fuse. And though I won the battle this time - I got the cheese fries, so to speak - I lost the war, failing to make it two weeks without losing my cool. Haval, as we would say. Haval.

But it was a good line. And a pretty place.

Our Redemption From the Children

The scene as I first saw it.

I sat in Nyamata church, the second of two churches on the day. We had been to the Nyabarongo River earlier, where genocidal killers dumped their victims' bodies to "send them back to Ethiopia", via Lake Victoria. We had been to Ntarama church, of the bloodied Sunday school wall of the previous post. Whatever one might say about the reasons for our trip, the futile nature of it, the inability we faced in plumbing the depths of our or others' trauma, it can at least be conceded that we had not had the most pleasant day.

After writing a poem in my journal and sitting inside the church on my own for a few minutes, I heard a harmonica play. Evan was blowing out a tune; "Love Me Do" it sounded like. In an otherwise solitary and silent moment, it made for a pleasant break. I went outside to see where he was.

When I got outside, I found that Evan was not just playing on his harmonica, but playing on his harmonica for twenty or more schoolchildren. Others from our group were out there dancing and smiling and talking to the kids, taking pictures and then showing the kids their image on the camera. No better balm in this world did God invent than the smile and laughter of a curious child.

We spent the next hour walking around the village, chasing after different groups of schoolchildren and picking them out, spinning them around, hugging them, and laughing with them. We drank over-sugared Coke and broke into sprints after the over-cute kids. We alternately terrorized and brightened everyone's day. On my trip in Europe,

Ben made the point, in Hamburg, that no matter how unsuccessful we were in achieving our objectives, or how annoying our requests might have been, we certainly made everyone's day a little bit more unusual and, dare I say it while trying to avoid sounding arrogant, more special. Well, that was at least ten times as true in Rwanda, and even more true in Nyamata village.

But we, of course, were the bigger beneficiaries. I talked about the dissonance between visiting terrible sites and experiencing beautiful people and scenery: this was the greatest dissonance we felt, and the loveliest. It was the most special moment we had on the trip, I feel, and I doubt my companions would protest too much.


Ah hell, one more bonus note from Rwanda - the last night


Our going away party featured a long round of speeches from everybody we managed to rope into our goodbye circle from our friends in Rwanda - potential sugar daddies, sons of reggae stars, good friends we had met in Israel, our friendly hostel security guard, our guides, friends from our blog we weren't as close to - and from us. Then I played on my creaky guitar, loud enough over the roar of the fire to bother the other guests in the hostel and lead us to leave the hostel and go to a nearby traffic circle. Where, after waking up the guard on duty sleeping in the fountain itself (no running water), we proceeded to run through a few more songs. Then a few more goodbyes. Then a giddy, solemn march back to the hostel, I on an improvise-ready little riff with Evan accompanying on his harmonica to a little ditty while the others reveled in the beautiful possibility and sadness of Kigali's night sky, together for the last time. The trip was everything it was supposed to be, even when it wasn't. It was every happiness we could hope for even when we were sad, every calm realization we sought even when we (I) lost our cool. It was certainly a success, a victory, an experience, and something to remember. And, almost a month later, I can still say with certainty that I don't think it'll be a last time, either in Africa or Rwanda. No, one way or another, this was just a beginning.







The Chorus of the other Rwanda related song I wrote, by the bonfire.

Great Unexpectations in Denmark

Another reason to travel is to shock the soul and body out of routine. Go away for a few days, a week, two weeks, longer, and force yourself to adapt to new realities, locales, customs, and situations. A traveling routine is often established, and often quickly, but this routine in its essence has to make room for the unexpected and the unplanned, more so than in our day-to-day lives.

That isn't to say that there are no expected moments on a trip, though even these stretch towards surprise in the context of traveling. In Denmark we could expect colder climes and a preponderance of what a receptionist in our first hotel called "boring weather", but that doesn't mean it was not surprising that both Amy and I got sick at some point on the trip. We went to see the movie Salt knowing it would be bad but having no other options; we were still surprised with how bad it was, to the point where I was in such a giddy state that I had a laughing fit in the cab back to our hotel when our cordial Danish cab driver started rattling off facts about the weather and the castles in the country, before concluding that Salt was only made because Angelina Jolie is pretty.

There are unexpected moments that, once adjusted to, set up new expectations, which those original unexpected moments, now expected, subvert. If that syntax was twisted, an example: we adjusted to the "relaxed" (i.e. slow) wait service and the do it yourself nature of certain eateries, but then were pleased when a waiter at Cafe G was not only attentive and quick to help but also a rollie-polie ball of energy, cracking jokes about ninjas and screaming to the high heavens when I dared to try my 8 digit pin code on my card after my 4 digit one didn't work twice. "NOOOOO! What are you DOING?! You can't put in 8...oh, it worked." In that case, we should have known by his closely cropped mohawk. Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality bathrooms on the Danish trains; that adjustment let me to be less pleasantly surprised when I peered in the toilet and saw the unexpected present the elderly gentleman who last used the bathroom left me.

These were all minor moments where the novelty and surprise of the road led to either positive or negative (or in the train toilet situation, both) feelings that enriched our traveling experience one way or another. The success of our stumbling upon Cafe Paludan, a cafe amidst a book store near Copenhagen University, was tempered by the realization that, yes indeed, this was a popular place not only for students, but for American students wielding Macbooks and providing no sense of escape. Ah well. We had more significant experiences of surprises for the better or the worse in Denmark, and I would like to explore those experiences here. Shall we?

A real Hippie's Paradise Gone Awry (-)

Christianshaven is a peninsula in Copenhagen across the canal from the main part of town. The area is replete with art nouveau red and orange splashed buildings, idyllic canal scenes, and several tourist attractions. Among these attractions is the neighborhood of Christiana.

Christiana, from what I gathered based on a guidebook or two, is meant to be something of an idyllic escape from the city, a community where residents can create art, live freely, and bond. And smoke pot. There are funky colors painted on the walls, t-shirt shops that go unattended, and symbols of a needle being broken to show that hard drugs are a no. And, presumably, pot smokers. Ben compared Christiana to the Wire's "Hamsterdam."

Fine, fine, we were already in Amsterdam, and had seen some of this movie before. Amsterdam had pot generally condoned and legalized, but also an island for the hipster community called NDSM wert. MTV's Europe headquarters were there, there was a skate park, and funky cars and tents and stuff. It was all very cliched, but whatever. Ben and I thought we should check out another, similar scene, and since it was a day before Amy came, it seemed like an appropriate time to do it (get all the drugs in before the girl comes, right?)



Our good vibes lasted until the point depicted above. About 15 seconds later, a large man approached Ben and told him it was not allowed to take photos here, so would he please comply. Ben agreed, a little put off I think, being an avid photographer. We strolled around then, wondering at this and at the attendant-less t-shirt shop, the unlikely mix of commercialism and supposed hippie ideals, and whether the vibrant colors made anything else work it. As we strolled down Pusher Street (thus named for those who formerly pushed drugs), we found another, gruffer gentleman to greet us.

"What are you, stupid?" he politely inquired of Ben. "Put the camera away, there's no taking pictures here." For Ben had his camera still draped around his neck, you see.

That combined with the touristy commercialism was enough to make this surprise a negative one. Christiana: proof that those on the "fringe" are no more tolerant than those in the middle.

ChristiansHaven's narrowing spiral (+)



Not far from Christiana was the Church of Our Saviour. There was not much to the church. You pay 25 Kroner (just over $5) to climb the church. It is 95 meters high. After a brief outdoor platform at about the 60 meter mark, you ascend a flight of stairs that is outdoors and spiraling, gradually narrowing as it reaches the top. There is a chest high (maybe waist-high on normal people, or else shoulder-high on me) yellow guard rail outside you, and gusty winds near the top. At some point, you can not ascend any higher, because the steps are too narrow. The views are appropriately scenic.

The view from the spire to the main part of Copenhagen.

For Ben and me, this experience brought some unexpected exhilaration. Ben feared for his camera and his life amidst the high winds; I wisely took off my broken glasses, knowing that the one earpiece-frame might not stay to my face, and that a 95 meter drop might lead to greater damage. There was little to do but cling to the rails when climbing. Traffic jams were inevitable, as only one person at a time could ascend or descend. I have climbed my fair share of tall churches and towers in Europe (Eiffel tower, a church in Prague, and the cathedral in Sevilla stand out at the moment), but I cannot remember any where the highest point was a stair and not a platform. So for a short experience, this was definitely a positive.

And then some tourists willfully cause huge traffic jams. Jerks.

The wrong day to visit Odense (-)

Traveling for longer than a few days, there is no avoiding the stops and starts of regular life in your visiting place. As great as it would be for all the museums, shops, restaurants, and sights to be open 24/7, there comes a time where a sight, a store, and sometimes even a city shuts down. This time might be weekly. It might be Mondays in Odense. Amy and I may have arrived in Odense for our only day there on Monday. This happens.

Odense is the third-largest city in Denmark, the largest city on the central island of Funen, and the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danes' most famous literary and cultural product. We thought (I should say Amy thought, since she did the planning, but in my relinquishing of planning rights, I suppose I do not relinquish responsibility) that Odense would be a nice one-day stop, a place where we could see the HCA house, relax in a nice hotel room, and enjoy a break from Copenhagen. We even thought we might do laundry (and fatefully did not, as you will see below).


Odense proved as head scratching as this HCA statue of him barefoot, and with his head replicated on a stick.

Instead, we found the Hans Christian Andersen house to be closed. We found several shops, such as a dainty looking chocolate store, to be closed. It looked like the art museum was closed. And we didn't even bother to do our laundry.

Not even the Odense Bulldogs were in action on Mandag (Monday).

So Odense ended up being a middling way stop. We made the most of it, of course: Amy found a few stores open that satisfied her shopping curiosity, I rested and read, we posed with two strange statues, found another dainty chocolate shop open, and each enjoyed a smørrebrød (an open-faced sandwich, one of Denmark's specialty). We also probably could have done our research to know that Monday would be a rough day to see anything in Odense. That said, this one has to go in the minus column.

Well, there was at least one plus walking around Odense...

Bob Dylan doing something besides playing music? (+)

It just so happened that our time in Copenhagen coincided with Bob Dylan's second ever public art exhibition. This exhibit was called The Brazil Series. Being as I am a big Dylan fan, Amy a big Brazil fan, and Ben generally artsy, this seemed like an appropriate visit for the three of us to make. So we strolled on over, past FrederiksBorg (a Castle) and through a couple of gardens, and attended the art museum. There was enough modern art to make me want to rock out, Dylan's exhibit was quality, Ben and Amy loaded up on souvenirs, and we even found out there is an artist named Richard Mortensen, who happens to be lucky enough to share the name with Amy's grandfather. All in all, a plus.

The missing Little Mermaid (-)

In Israel, Amy and I have a Danish-Israeli colleague. I saw him recently and told him we were going to Copenhagen. "Don't see the Little Mermaid," he said. "They've stolen her about nine times and there's no need to see her." He was smiling. I didn't know any better. I reported this conversation to Amy, and she said that she had to see the Little Mermaid. "It was on all of my grandmother's china. I don't care if it's touristy. And my mom wants me to see it." Well then.

Amy's guide book had a little walk of Copenhagen plotted out, and it conveniently ended with the Little Mermaid. So we strolled along the Strøget (the pedestrian shopping area, apparently one of the first of its kind), past a couple imposing churches, a touristy section of the harbor known as Nyhaven, and the Danish Resistance Museum regarding WWII, which was worth it. This led us to the fringe of the Kastellet and the Little Mermaid, whither we intended all along to go.

One of our stops on the self-guided tour. Mmm.

Now, as was mentioned in several guide books, including Amy's, the Little Mermaid wasn't actually going to be there. She had been taken to Shanghai for the 2010 World Expo. I was aware of this. For whatever reason, Amy was not. I, knowing how important seeing the Little Mermaid was, and hoping there might be a replica and no signs indicating that it was a replica in place of the original, kept this information from Amy.

This was not the replica of the Little Mermaid. It could have been, though.

We walked along the path, following our guide book, to the bend on the shore line where the Little Mermaid was supposed to rest. As we rounded the bend, we noticed no statue where the Little Mermaid was to be, but instead a screen. Slowly, surprise dawned on Amy's face as she saw the lack of any emblem from her grandmother's china. She turned to me, expecting to find the same surprise on my face. Not finding it, she pried: "You knew?" I admitted I had. "You knew this whole time and didn't tell me?" This was, perhaps, not the happiest surprise for her. But we laughed. It turned out that the screen showed the Little Mermaid on display at the World Expo. There was no little humor in all of this. And then we walked around the Kastellet, a former military base still used as a barracks which was beautiful and serene, and it was all worth it. So even though officially I call this a minus, these pictures may give lie to that rating. (Eventually, we found the replica of the LM in the gardens of Tivoli. It was unspectacular).

Kastellet: obviously the place to be.

And isn't this purdy?

And after Dylan must come the Beatles, right? (+)

The other of our one day stops was in Kolding, a city on the mainland peninsula of Denmark, Jutland. Kolding's most notable quality for our purposes was as the city many of Amy's ancestors came from. The city also possessed a quaint center, a charming lake or fjord in the middle of it, a place to see a movie (even if it is only Salt), and the ability to do laundry (more on which in a second).

Upon arrival, we walked from our hotel through a nice park (home to "Crazy Golf" in the summer, apparently) and down to that lake. After the dullness of Odense, we were quite charmed by the green grass, the smooth lake, and the old-fashioned houses of the town. We joked about settling in Kolding someday (this was before Amy got a cold, and remember that we (read: she) struggled with the weather and it was only September). In walking around the lake, we decided to visit the town castle, overlooking the lake and known as the KoldingHus.

A Lake Vista.

Much to our surprise, the brick castle had modernized into an exhibition hall. Further to our surprise, the main exhibit when we arrived was on the Beatles and youth in the 60s, in Denmark and elsewhere. Not sure what else to do, we went in.



There weren't many new delights for Beatles fans; John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to Denmark at some point in early 1970, ok; there was a very nice live version of the Zombies' "Care of Cell 44" on one of the listening booth playlists ("Songs influenced by the Beatles", which I might dispute in this instance); and the exhibit as a whole was very well done. There were also some interesting tidbits on Danish youth of the 60's and the culture around them. Did you know that Denmark was the first country to legalize pornographic images, or that popular Danish sex manuals for teens in the 60's came with full photographic visuals of masturbation? Uhh, me neither.

But yes, on a journey where you don't always know what you're getting, a well-done and familiar cultural touchstone can provide entertainment, edification, and erudite enjoyment, and this is a good thing.

And a last word on the expensive side of things (-)

Copenhagen and Denmark as a whole are expensive. When we first arrived in the country, Ben spun me a yarn about a tennis pro he knows who spent a couple years in Denmark and appreciated the expense because it came with a high level of public services. This may be the case. Tourists get very few of these public services. I'm not meaning to complain but stating a fact.

Further, my levels of traveling shift based on my companion. With Ben, we have matured to the point of appreciating our own room and certain basic creature comforts of travel, but at the same time, both having earned our living for only a few years, we appreciate the need to be thrifty. So there is a middle ground we've forged, involving low-budget private rooms, a nice meal a day, and reasonable travel accommodations.

With Amy, the traveling gets upped a notch. Which is fine and understandable; due to age, experience, gender (I presume), and independence, Amy is less interested in the low-budget form of travel. This doesn't mean we are extravagant when we travel together, but we stay in nice hotels or pensions; Amy did not partake in any pølse meals (hot dog or sausage stands on the streets) but we did generally stick to only one nice meal a day (not really eating a second meal); and shopping is a significantly larger portion of our traveling than it is with Ben (though Ben too shops a little bit more than me, I should add).

That said, when you travel with the same person for a while, you learn how to adapt to their ways; you have to adapt if you're to continue traveling with them. With Ben, I have a book ready at all times and know that sometimes he will trail behind me taking photos, which is ok. He adjusts to me in ways I can't say (though they probably include an acceptance of foul smells). With Amy, we have a system: she goes shopping somewhere, I sit in a cafe or pleasant reading place nearby, so that she can come and check in. Similarly, she picks out the clothes, and I wear the clothes. This doesn't always work, but the mutual adjustments make a big difference in smoothing out the traveling experience.

But back to the expenses for a second. Both Amy and I have earned and received the money over our varying professional careers to be able to take a trip like this to an expensive place like Denmark. We are aware of the blessed natures of our lives. We accept this and mean to pay back the world in some way (I hope the subject of future blog posts this "school" year), and hope we have done ok so far. So if Denmark is expensive and that's where we're vacationing, so be it.

I still, more than she, feel the need to draw the line somewhere. And that line, on this trip, was laundry costs>$100.

You see, when we were in Kolding, we asked our hotel if they had a laundry service. I had many dirty clothes from my week in Amsterdam/Germany preceding Denmark, as well as the Copenhagen/Odense part of our trip in Denmark. Amy had a thing or two she wanted to wash as well. In my conception, they would throw these clothes in a washing machine, then dry them, and then return them to us folded. It seemed like a simple thing. They said that they could do it but that we needed to give them the clothes now, because the guy taking those clothes was coming soon. Not asking for a price list or questioning why they had to outsource their laundry service, we agreed to do so, and brought a bag full of clothes that needed essential washing(jeans, socks) and not so much (shirts). The only complication we could think of was that the clothes might not be ready when we wanted to leave.

The next day, I went to the front desk to pay for our room and inquire about the laundry. After paying for the room, I asked about the laundry. "Oh, it's here. I didn't charge you for that, so let's do that separately," the kind receptionist told me. She then pulled out the stack of our clothes, neatly folded, and placed them on the desk. The bill came with it. 530 Kroners. This equals $93. (N.b. I thought this actually equaled about $120. It turns out that my idea that the kroner was 4.82 to the dollar was about a kroner off: it's more like 5.68. I should have prepared better for this trip).

Regardless, this seemed like an astronomical amount to me. What did I know? I huffed at the desk, asked to speak to a supervisor, tried to remain polite but was clearly a little perplexed and irate. I left the laundry on the desk and went to speak with my partner in the room.

"The good news is that our laundry is here," I reported to her on returning to our room.

"Oh, good. Now we can go," she said, not picking up on my hint about the bad news.

"You know how much it costs?" I said. I didn't wait for an answer. I reported the price, interrupting the number with an expletive.

"I thought about that. We should have asked for the price. That was our mistake."

"Our mistake? They should have told us the price!" I said, though in slightly less polite language.

I continued to exhaust my anger for the next five minutes, kicking the air and swearing and acting out my, as Amy puts it, mad hornet mode. At last, calmed and cowed, I went back to the hotel lobby, apologized, paid, and we moved on from Kolding, the incident more a humorous episode than a blemish. Another learning experience. Another unexpected moment that could throw the most experienced traveler for a loop. And while it was a minus in and of itself, it's part of the broader plus of shocking the system, of challenging the self, of traveling.


Needless to say, this was a brighter part of Kolding (taken inside the KoldingHus).

A little bit of cultural difference

I wasn't exactly backed into coaching the Beit Dany Greco Roman team at the Cup of Israel last weekend. After all, I was planning to go watch anyway, and I knew I'd have to do a little bit of coaching to help out. Still, it was only Thursday night that Boris told me I'd be coaching the team, as he'd be busy reffing. Also, I learned that the tournament would be a team event, a dual meet tournament, rather than an individual contest. "It'll be done by two or three," he told me, sounding a reassuring note. A hollow one, but ne'ertheless reassuring. I received instructions to show up in my team-issued black warmup suit at 10, when the tournament was slated to start.

This blog is about a big difference between Israeli and American wrestling mentalities, but it should first be noted what we share in common. It seems no matter where a wrestling tournament takes place, certain rules will hold in place: 1. The tournament will start late. The greco roman mat did not kick in until 11 am, and considering there were only two mats and twice as many greco teams as freestyle teams, this was a nuisance. On a related note, 2. The bracketing and scheduling will be awkward. Beit Dany was in a pool of five teams, while the other pool had four teams. As such we'd have two extra rounds. Logic dictates that our pool should have been the first to wrestle. Logic was ignored. 3. Wrestlers will be jogging around the mat and half-heartedly warming up with headphones in their cauliflower-inflated ears and a mildly tough look on their face. This was a little toned down here but still refreshing to see. 4. There will be only a few women at the tournament, and they will look disproportionally attractive due to the ratio of males to females. Here they looked more Russian than in America (though obviously not than in Russia), but all the same held true to the rule.

The tournament was officially run in Hebrew, but whenever the announcer really wanted to get a coach's attention, she knew to speak in Russian. Most of the yelling from the stands, the cheering, the berating of referees, and the coaching was done in Russian. Veritably, the wrestling community in Israel is founded on Russian (and some Georgian) immigrants, and as such is bound to certain linguistic and stylistic issues.

Ahh, but the wrestling itself? Just fine. Beit Dany showed off with Assa Beersheeva first. Our lineup was a fortified one - Boris's two sons, former national champs, gave us a guaranteed two wins at 74 and 84 KGs, our 55 KG wrestler Ithiel had his biggest battle with the scale, as he received forfeits in all of our pool matches. That meant we had to win one of the other four weight classes (there are only seven in total). Against Assa, a forfeit at 60 KG was enough, but we had another card to play: our American heavyweight.

Dusty first showed up to our club in the middle of October. On the phone he kind of sounded like a pud, and I wasn't expecting much from him; likely, he was just a kid who made aliyah that had wrestled in high school or something. As I waited for him during that practice, the same day that we had received physicals, I wondered if he would be worth my missing out on warmups.

The first thing that impressed me about Dusty was his size; nearly six feet and quite wide. It's not all sculpted at this point, but at the very least, Dusty wasn't a pipsqueak. Considering that at most practices to date I was the biggest guy in the room, at the least he'd provide a new, big partner for me. At just over 100 KG, he had about 60-70 pounds on me.

He filled out some paperwork and we made small talk. "Did you go to Duke?" he asked, noticing the ubiquitous logo on my shorts (or my t-shirt, and it could have been one of five different pairs or t-shirts - ahh, the perks of college athletics). I answered that I did, and he said he went to UNC, and confirmed that he wrestled there, and all of a sudden I put it together: in the 2002-2003 season, he had a back and forth with a teammate of mine, Tom Cass. Cass, a 5th year senior who I as a true freshman palled around with and to some degree looked up to at the time, scored a memorable 7-3 decision over Dusty at the dual meet. The match was notable for Tom scoring back points off a move we had just worked on in practice that week (a sit-out counter involving a crossface pancake - basically, Tom threw his bicep into Dusty's face and flattened him).

I mentioned this match to Dusty. For some strange reason, his recollection of the match was fuzzy; instead, he first recalled beating Tom 7-1 at the ACC tournament later that year. Funny. Dusty also didn't recall that we beat UNC the next time, our only dual meet win over UNC since 1973 - Dusty left the team earlier that year. (Also, I later remembered that Dusty avenged another loss at the tournament and went on to be the OW of the tournament. So I guess that explains it...)

Anyway, Dusty started coming to practice regularly. It had been five years since he wrestled, but with some Duke-UNC camaraderie (can I mention here that I was 7-2 career against UNC, and both losses were to one kid my 4th year? Or 9-0 against my rivals in high school? And that I'm awesome? Ok, thanks), he learned how to handle greco and worked himself back into shape. Boris realized his opportunity and signed Dusty, an Israeli citizen, up for the oncoming cup. There was a slight problem involving Dusty's plans to go home for the winter, but after some ticket juggling and $175, everything was all set, and the Beit Dany lineup had a trump card.

Now, that digression was a vital one to explain and defend my actions to follow. We sent Dusty out against Assa to make sure he got a match in, and he did well, winning something like 4-0, 2-1. I've gone into detail about the rules in freestyle vs. folkstyle, and greco is even more confusing, but I got a feel for it here. Basically, each period is divided into two: one minute in neutral (i.e. standing) and one minute in par terre (on the mat). The second minute is also divided in two, so that each guy gets a turn on top. There's a set of tiebreakers and rules to ensure that no more time is needed. I had it figured out by the end of the day.

Seeing as I was still learning the specifics of the rules, however, it may not be surprising that my "coaching" duties consisted mostly toweling our wrestler off in between periods. I would yell in Russian or English, pending the wrestler and his command of each language. Probably, I was yelling out foolish or simple terms when I coached in Russian, things like, "Behind, behind!"

Still, we kept winning. Assa Beersheeva was an easy 6-1 triumph in matches won. Hapoel Beersheeva tested us a little bit more, but we clinched a 4-2 win before deciding not to send Dusty out. We were resting him for later, I presumed. Next we romped through a thin Akko team, and when Nazareth decided they'd rather go home than wrestle us, we were all set for an easy berth in the finals against the favored squad from Rehovot.

Nazareth's forfeit and the scheduling quirks meant we had to wait about an hour or two before the finals. It was 3:30, which wasn't so late, but signified a large chunk of our day in anticipating this final. Rehovot was the team to beat, but surely Hapoel Beit Dany (our full name), the little team that could, would offer up a strong fight. Right?

Ithiel wrestled his first match of the day. He had to run all night before to make the weight class, 57 KG (with a +2 KG allowance from 55), and was quite fat, happy, and relaxed by the time this match rolled around. His was a vital match to win, a toss-up that we needed to poach to have a good shot at the dual meet.

So naturally, it didn't go so well. In the first period he went scoreless on his feet but lost in the par terre position handily. The second period didn't even go that well: he gave up points on his feet that limited his chances of making the comeback. And so, we started off the match down 1-0. Surely a base from which to launch that strong fight, right?

Well, except Boris had other ideas. Convinced we had no shot at the dual meet - our 66 and 96 were either not very good or somewhat hurt, 60 was a toss up, and their HVY was considered a monster - Boris decided to forfeit the rest of the way. "Our task was completed," he said before the match, and I only now realized to what degree he meant it.

Now, I've never been confused for a super-intense, win-at-all-costs, winning is all there is type. At least not among wrestling people. I'm competitive, but a lifetime of competing, winning, and losing has shown me that there is more to winning, that winning doesn't solve everything, and that you can't always win. Basically, life has taught me platitudes.

Still, given a chance to wrestle, and a berth in the finals, and the noble duty of fair competition that we were meant to rise to, throwing in the towel would be an atrocious move. Or so I thought. And this time, instead of keeping my thoughts to myself, I started to share my thoughts. With increasing volume.

"Why isn't Jacob wrestling?" I demanded to know of Boris.
"He's injured, his leg hurts," Boris said with a smile, unaware of the fury he was about to unleash.
"Injury? Are you kidding, what injury? He should wrestle!"
Needless to say, my line of persuasion was not very effective. We forfeited at Jacob's weight, and then at the next four weights. Faced with an unresponsive audience, I took the only path I saw left to ensure that at least Dusty, after a great hassle to enter the tournament and rejigger his winter schedule and everything, would get to wrestle a second match. I raised my voice.

"This is cowardly! This is pathetic, this is terrible!" I started yelling.
"Why should he wrestle?" Boris responded. "He'll get hurt, he'll embarrass himself in front of his girlfriend."
"But he's leaving tomorrow, let him wrestle! I'm ashamed to do this!"
"He won't win, why should he wrestle? What shame?"

This dialog went on in the center of the gym, in loud tones. No more wrestling was to be done that day, so around us people started to pick up the mats and wrap up the tournament. And there I was, in black warm up pants and a red shirt the senior director of Israel wrestling had given me, with a fu manchu gracing my face and long hair atop my head, screaming in accented Russian at my coach, calling him a coward. I would have called him worse things too, but I had presence of mind to avoid swearing. Also, I wasn't quite sure how to say, "You're a pussy" in Russian. My curse word knowledge isn't that exact, and I feared I'd hit too high or too low in level.

The argument drew in more than just Boris. His sons explained to me in English that I didn't understand how things worked here. I countered in Russian that Israel was tiny and America huge, and as such our wrestlers are better, and that their mentality was screwy. I started making outlandish claims about how Dusty would win the match. I pulled very few punches.

Our prospective opponent heard our arguing and, being a sportsmen and on the appearance a nice guy, he was more than willing to wrestle Dusty. Their team had no problem with it. A ref had no problem with it. And all of a sudden, over the protests of Boris and that senior director, we started the match.

I've worn egg on my face, proverbially and literally, many times before. It's not a new feeling for me, although that doesn't keep it from being unpleasant. And while I'm sure that my stand was the right one, I wore just a little bit of egg on my face in the corner for that match.

Dusty's opponent appeared legit: a head taller and a good deal wider and stronger, the big man from Rehovot could move, and was a greco guy by specialty, not one month of training. Dusty, meanwhile, brought his American can-do attitude, the frame of a 184 pounder (to translate, 84 KG, and while Dusty weighed around 100 KG, the weight class went up to 120 KG, meaning he was giving up around 40 pounds), and some mildly poofy hair to the proceedings. So while he fought ok on his feet, he conceded points in both periods, meaning he had to go on the bottom in par terre first both times. And both times, par terre involved the following sequence: 1. Dusty goes on hands and knees in a table position. 2. Opponent stands besides Dusty, leans over, and locks his hands around Dusty's waist in a reverse gut wrench lock (such that the two were facing opposite directions). 3. Referee blows whistle as soon as opponent locks. 4. As soon as referee blows whistle, opponent lifts Dusty and throws him over his own head, resulting in five points. 5. Period ends by dual criteria of five point move and six point lead.

So yes, Dusty lost. Quite handily. And on one of those big throws, I worried about him getting hurt, and how maybe he didn't really want to wrestle in this match and I backed him into it, and his girlfriend didn't see why he should wrestle, and I'd just stained my reputation in the Israel wrestling community, and oy-voy-voy, what a balagan! But then he landed, and things were ok.

In fact, while it was a weird and tense situation, no harm ultimately was done (well, maybe to my reputation, but we'll see). We stood on the podium for second proudly, took a bunch of pictures at the next few practices, and made up. Ok, Boris did call me out at the beginning of Sunday's practice, saying, "Ze lo tov, ze balagan," or in translation, "That was no good, that was a mess." When the coach reprimands you in a language you don't really speak, it's not great. But, I argued with him again and we moved on. And Ithiel and another guy agreed that the lesson taught was a bad one. So maybe not all of Israel is lost under this pragmatic mentality, and I've just effected a change that will turn the country around. Or maybe I just looked silly again.


p.s. I should also add that Saturday night, after thinking I had let off all my steam, I attended our school's holiday party. I had a great time, but then we went to an Irish bar* in Herzliya (which I again refer to as possessing the feel of a New England 'burb with San Diego weather), and I got all antsy and pouty** and proceeded to go into the mall where the bar was at and buy two CDs*** from Tower Records****. So some steam still there, until we went to a dance club in Tel Aviv and danced off the anxiety, to video performances of "Hung Up On You," and "Sexy Back", the latter of which prompted my favorite male colleague to remark that, "Say what you want about him; Justin Timberlake gets a lot of good pussy." Fun times.

*Want to know what Israel, America, Moscow, China, Madrid, and just about every other place in the world have in common? They have Irish bars. Wonder why I didn't want to go to one?

** I didn't share any stories from Madrid, mainly because there weren't any great ones: it was mostly a time of resting and catching up with Ben. But for Thanksgiving, Ben and Liz hosted a party Friday night. The party was fine (I worked on my bad Spanish), but notable because I was designated wine bottle opener early on, until I broke the third bottle. How? As I successfully opened it, I tugged with such force that the wine bottle flew out of my hand. It fell on the floor. It broke. Sigh.
But also, this footnote is to mention that some of the time at the party, I went into Ben's room and read essays by Borges from Labyrinths. I got a little tired of the Wii-centered party, especially when it was conducted in Spanish and devolved to creating Wii characters for each person at the party.
Liz was concerned about my behavior and implored Ben to talk to me or entertain me. "Don't worry," he said, recalling perhaps my Great Gatsby reading during grad parties on Long Island, or perhaps my D. H. Lawrence browsing at a New Year's party last year in an uber-ritzy Columbus Circle penthouse apartment. "That's what Dan does at parties."

*** Bjork's Debut, which I know, and Lou Reed's Berlin, which I've only heard about. 90 shekels, which is about $23 these days.

**** Bankrupt in the U.S., still around in pricey suburban Israeli malls and Istanbul's airport.