So, for me, his sculptures act as a kind of mirror, reflecting my own faults. In this way they are healthy reminders of the way I can treat others, especially those with whom I interact most closely; this includes family and friends, and colleagues I see daily.
As I have written before, one of the keys to enjoying myself on trips, especially in the food department, is to go with what the locals suggest. This nearly always works out extremely well, with the food being much more interesting, and on average (because local and thus fresh products are involved), tastier than what I get when traveling in the U.S. Also, the food that is ingested outside the borders of the States would rarely seem strange to anyone from the U.S. with even a minimal amount of imagination. There have, however, been some notable exceptions to this rule.
“Are you certain you want to know?” This was the response Frances and I received when we asked someone at a banquet held in a hut/restaurant in rural China what a particularly tasty dish was that came wrapped in a banana leaf. The consistency was soft without being mushy and the flavor a wonderful mixture of herbs with a solid spicy after-burn. “Yes, we really would like to know”, was our answer, followed quickly by his reply – "pig’s brains." So much for my resolve to never eat the nervous system of any animal, thereby eliminating the possibility of prion infection that would eventually lead to some variant of ‘mad-cow disease’.
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“Oh man, we are feeding off an endangered species!” This was said as we continued to ravenously devour the curried meat dish handed to us by the villager who had been so kind to notice that we looked like we were starving to death. We had been in the tropical forest area, less than a degree of latitude from the equator, in the South American country of Suriname for nearly a week. We had been living off of cheap freeze dried food and rice, as we sweated and swore through long days and nights trapping mammals for the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The revelation that we were contributing somewhat to the demise of a rare life form came when we asked Leo our guide to enquire with the bearer of this wonderful gift what the meat was. She answered in the local dialect – that none of us understood – and then Leo turned to us and said “It’s armadillo.” We knew enough of the local fauna to realize that the only form of armadillo in this region was very rare, and therefore listed as endangered, apparently at least partially because of hungry scientists.
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“I wonder if you would like to try a local delicacy?” Wen said this with what seemed to me to be a bit of a sly smile, but then all us round-eyes know that all Chinese are inscrutable so who can tell? Our answer, of “Why not?” was met with a torrent of Mandarin between Wen and the waiter. As an after thought we asked what the delicacy was – “Insects” was his answer. O.K. inscrutable or not, maybe we should have enquired before the ordering began. When asked what kind of insects (like we were going to be able to compare these insects to the insects we usually had at home) we were told that they would be fried bamboo larvae and wasp pupae. Great, at least we would have a choice. The amazing thing, Frances and I loved these fried morsels, though I was more partial to the larvae and Frances to the pupae. Go figure, men and women differ in their preferred bug cuisines.
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The final (at least for now) adventure in culinary oddities occurred in far western Papua New Guinea, only 30 kms (about 20 miles) from Irian Jaya. Once again, it involved famished scientists and a gracious villager with food. But, unlike the armadillo incident, this was one of the worst food-related episodes of my life. As we walked into the remote village, marked by houses on stilts and naked children, we were greeted by a host of smiling faces and the offer, communicated through our local guide, to sit down in the shade of a tree. We had been walking for hours so we gratefully collapsed on the ground, pulled out our water bottles and gulped the lukewarm liquid. As we did this we noticed a set of women ladling some off-white substance into plates. They approached us, bowed slightly and handed us the dish. We asked our guide what we were holding and he said ‘boiled yams.’ Our first bite revealed the serious situation in which we found ourselves. The yams had the consistency and flavor of wood glue (the flavor by the way recalled from childhood experiments). I swallowed the mouthful whole, and it slowly slid down my gullet and landed in my stomach like a bag of nickels. Evidently my body and brain were convinced that they were being poisoned because on the way down the mass caused my gag-reflex to kick in. I glanced at my companion and saw by the grimace on his face that he was suffering from the same bodily reaction. I grabbed my water bottle and took another gulp. Looking up, I smiled wanly at the ladies hovering around us, and performed what I consider to be one of the bravest acts ever accomplished by humankind, I took another large spoonful and shoved it in my mouth. This time I did not wait for my reflexes to try and reject the mush, and immediately took another slug of water. Miraculously the water in my bottle held out until the plate was clean. With grey faces, sweating foreheads and painfully distended stomachs, we limped out of the village hoping to make it out of sight before we were violently ill.
For me, when it comes to enjoying museums, public buildings, art galleries, etc., size really matters, with my mantra being “the smaller the better.”
So, give me Dickens' home (London), Rodin’s home (Paris),
The Alamo (San Antonio), The Scottish Parliament House (Edinburgh), Jervaulx Abbey (Yorkshire, England), Peneda Monastery (near Porto, Portugal), Kesava Temple (Somnathpur, India), Pantheon (Rome)
and you can keep The Vatican, St. Peter’s, The Louvre, or the inside of any of the large buildings in Florence, Italy. I know the latter are celebrated by all and sundry as being the best-of-the-best, but I just find them repetitious and, dare I say, boring. I am not passing judgment on those who enjoy these sites, they’re just not for me.
But, even more than the small museums etc, I am captivated by those special events and places that surprise us – that we just happen upon. These include the silkworm processing building in which Indian women in their beautiful saris sat cross-legged while sorting and cleaning the cocoons to be sent to the silk factories.
Or the small, private museum near Chiang Mai, Thailand, that we found accidentally while looking for the toilet; this museum was not normally open to the public, but the owner of the coffee/tea shop at which we stopped was gracious enough to show the white guys his pride and joy.
And of course the elderly musician and his small friend that we discovered unexpectedly as we rounded a backstreet corner in Kunming, China.
And, finally, the wedding-photo shoot on the island of Ischia, Italy – with the members of the party and the photographers all taking turns to arrange the bride’s and groom’s clothes, posture and attitude.
In other words, I love most of all witnessing slices of real life, involving real people.
I should finish by saying that even when I find myself in one of the huge ‘sites’, I poke around to see if I can locate one of those, nearly-always-there, hidden and wonderful nooks and crannies. For example, I was pretty underwhelmed by the St. Francis cathedral in Assisi (just another overblown church to me). But, by descending into the lower levels I found myself watching, and listening to, a wonderful, intimate mass being given for young people. The singing and the low-keyed attitude, along with the small size of this inner chapel stopped me in my tracks. I could not understand the Italian lyrics, but the ‘feel’ was both peaceful and comforting – even though I was surrounded by the completely overstated grandeur of the rest of the church.
I have found that one of the keys to quickly adjusting to new time zones – whether I am arriving in Europe, South Asia or Australia – is to keep moving the first day until night has fallen. Most importantly, I have found that I need to stay outside, stay vertical and if at all possible do something that involves physical and mental activity. I avoid like the plague opportunities to retire to a hotel room, a conference room, a movie theatre, etc. A perfect opportunity to apply my rule came recently when my friend, Ole Seehausen, told me that he would like to take me to see the highest train station in all of Europe, located in the small village at Jungfraujoch (billed as the ‘Top of Europe’). But to catch the last train to Jungfraujoch, we would have to leave almost as soon as I arrived in the village of Brienz where my chalet was located. He asked whether I would instead rather prefer to take a shower and have a nap. I told him that I really needed to stay active this first day, and besides I did not want to miss seeing the highest train station (and according to the Jungfraujoch PR department, the highest post office) in Europe. By making this choice, I unwittingly put myself in the position of experiencing a dream trip – one involving seeing, walking on, and photographing some of the most famous mountaineering peaks in the Alps, including the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.
Ole, his 4-year-old daughter Maisha, and I slowly traveled by multiple trains from an elevation of 1000 feet to a final altitude of around 11,000 feet at Jungfraujoch. As we climbed, I watched more and more alpine skiers board the trains. I took nearly 200 photos of the rugged grey/black and white peaks that penetrated the crystal clear, azure-colored sky. The various trains took us through tunnels cut through the bowels of the Eiger and Mönch mountains. We stopped to look out of enormous glass viewing ports cut into the sides of both peaks, ports located near doors used as escape routes for climbers who find themselves in emergency situations and also as the starting point for missions by alpine rescue teams.
We finally arrived in the underground station at Jungfraujoch below the saddle between the Mönch and Jungfrau. I refused the option of taking the elevator and so, as we climbed the several flights of stairs, I came to realize that the signs scattered around the walls warning of the possibility of effects from the extreme altitude should be taken seriously. Though I never felt really ill, I was definitely experiencing something like the effect of three glasses (or so) of wine. However, the biggest shock to my physical being occurred when we emerged from the underground cavern into the subzero air temperature and strong wind on the “plateau”. The air temperature, with the accompanying windchill, left my hands and face numb in seconds. Ole and Maisha were definitely constructed of sturdier stuff than I as evidenced by their trudging up to the topmost lookout where they proceeded to romp and take photos. I, on the other hand, raised my camera only a few times, instead choosing to spend most of my time cowering near the entrance to the cavern.
Hardy souls that they were, when Ole and Maisha finally made their way back inside the tunnel, they suggested that we explore the “Ice Palace”. The name indicated exactly what this was, and thus the Ice Palace was not an extension of the blissfully warm tunnel in which I had been taking refuge from the wind. Instead, said Palace, was a series of rooms and corridors cut directly through the glacier that had its origin at Jungfraujoch. Surprisingly, though my feet were cold from standing on the glass-like ice floor, and even though I was always in danger of having both feet fly out from under me, this ice cavern was a place that I would have hated to miss. Filled full of ice sculptures of bears and igloos and mother seals floating on their backs with their babies reclining on their stomachs, it was a winter wonderland that beat any of the cheesy, “Santa’s workshop” displays that I had ever encountered in the States. But then, as far as I know, Santa doesn’t work inside a glacier.
Step 1: Find an elephant. From what we observed, this is not really very difficult given their size and their ability to identify people who want to provide them food.
Step 2: Prepare food. This is likely going to be the most complicated portion of the exercise given that you need to know about elephant likes and dislikes. I assume that it will be catastrophic for the human if they give the elephant something particularly unpalatable. The food preparation therefore needs to be a careful, even painstaking, process involving cooking, mixing and finally constructing what might best be described as elephant balls.
Step 3: Proceed to feeding area holding the elephant’s balls. Wait for the elephant to approach (hopefully stopping before standing on top of you). Once elephant is in position, insert ball. Quickly withdraw hand being careful to not drop the ball.
Step 4: Repeat procedure until the elephant is satisfied. Like the food preparation, I assume that the accurate diagnosis of when an elephant is full will be learnt by painful experience, with premature termination resulting in extremely negative feedback.
There you have it. Now go find and feed an elephant.
