November 5. Bus to Beirut.

The other charities I was to support in Aleppo need bureaucracy, and that makes me sad. A friendly couchsurfer knew a couple of them but this is what they needed. They need some official writing of my government telling them that is has an agreement with Syria. My government! The government of the country that issued my passport? What does that help them? Does it make my dollars any cleaner? I do not want to help them. I curse bureaucracy once more, knowing that I will live only in this world, that is so absolutely drenched in it, knowing that it will kill me in the end. That could be a nice t-shirt slogan by the way, "bureaucracy will kill me in the end". But until that day, I will stand up against it, and I hope you stand up with me. And so I take the bus to Beirut, where I hope to find a more accessible ways of donating some money to the needy. A Dutch couchsurfer suggested I could work together with Hezbollah. Would create a nice shocker, and perhaps even an argument why you should after all be interested in my amazing adventure.
On a dusty afternoon, I leave from Aleppo and the bus radio is playing compelling Arab rhythms. As the bus zips along the outskirts of Aleppo, I try to imagine what life is like for the people living here. I see endless rows of beige concrete buildings, and they are expanding the city, which has already far over one million people into the dessert.  Houses that are inhabited are recognizabel by the rusty satellite dishes on top of them. If there is any universal thing about our species, we find it in the ingeniuous ways we have invented to fight boredom. All over the world, where boredom can no longer be avoided by strict religious ruling there is an inevitable need for something we know as entertainment, and that stretches from all varieties of story-telling to more direct ways of getting the right hormone cocktail auto-injected in our veins. Name one institution that doesn't exist essentially to conquer boredom. When I have time again, and access to a library, I promise to write more on the anthropology of boredom, perhaps as an hommage to Levi-Strauss who died a few years ago, age 100. I assume he has lived a very exciting life.

We cross the border, I only need a twelve dollar exit card. On the tv screen I see beautiful Arab women swining their heads in a way that is best described as headbanging, showing as much as possible of their shiny black hair. It was the absolute opposite of their completely veiled counterparts I had seen in some conservative areas of Aleppo.

In the darkness we drive along the main road, and I feel happy as we pass "Alu Saab pret a porter", "shoe avenue", "white city boutique", and "wooden bakery". Those smooth American slogans...

I go to a café in downtown Beirut and work a little bit. I contact my host and get lucky: she can pick me up on the way since she is taking a taxi home. So I wait in front of the blue dome mosque until a woman's hand waves at me from a taxi. A very pretty woman welcomes me to Beirut and we introduce ourselves as the taxi takes us home. Mona is working for a UN project working on rural development project throughout the Arab world. We have a short conversation introducing ourselves, switching to French at a certain point. I have a good night on the couch.

October 10. At the Nigerian embassy.

At the Nigerian Embassy I wait to apply for a visa. Theire is no "blond" on the form for hair color. Applicants are instructed to fill in "black" for the hair and "brown" for the skin. People smile. Their smiles all resemble each other from my perspective. I will make my payment online and talk to the  consul. He tells me he needs more than a week since he is on a trip. They don't even have a person to handle issuing of visas. So I sit there on that leather couch in the highly secured Nigerian embassy and decide to speak my mind. My dear consul, I say, in that case I think my money is better spent in Kenya. They sell visas at the border. You should consider that. As you wish, sir, as you wish. There are more reasons why I say no to Nigeria. I think two months in the Kenya region are definitely not too much. And I need this blow from bureaucracy. It is a well-known fact that bureaucracy will kill me in the end, but until then, I want to stick as many voodoo needles through her skin as I can, to make the imaginary evil body causing all the coldness suffer. And I train to stay very calm, like that too. So as I ask my appliances back and stride out of the consulate, I start to sing

sickening system has done it again
bureaucracy strikes me a blow today
she knows how to hurt in a terrible way
but it will make me stronger
stronger in the end, yes i know i know
it will make me stronger, then
it will make me a better man
to feel how much i hate inhuman bureaucrats
to despise them like contagious sewer rats
to feel it, feel it, and then to conquer it
to be larger than it 
and to smile...

August 24. Burrocracy.

Berlin and getting organized. There are some things to do like issueing a new passport, getting some visa, establishing contacts, dealing with stuff. It's the sameness that beats the brimbram drum inside my ears, it's the sameness of the man walking on the Alexanderplatz again, yet again. Jumping high, jumping low, talking to people on the street, reading the newspaper in the sun over a delicious capucchino, descending into a new dancebar that is just opening and celebrating with anonymous youth sipping a flute of sekt, making unfunny remarks to the hookers that attack you in the Oranienburgerstraße like "there are two things I'd like to keep in my pants tonight and one of it is my wallet", meeting a good friend and eating icecream together, all those highs and then, the feeling lonely, walking the crowded streets alone, dwelling in memories of a failed past, getting into stressful situations due to social awkwardness, being identified by my best friends still as the computer person I am not, being not myself yet loving this city, jumping high, jumping low, something is making my stomach turn around when I stay in Berlin. I need superhuman power to be happy in this city, whereas happiness sleeps under my pillow when I'm traveling. Those issues are hard to address, and they don't make much fun. And I know I'm wrong. A whole city can't be the sole source of depression. And still. There is something in that city that rips my heart out.

Bureaucracy will kill the bunny in me. I use to call it "burrocracy". I am making a prediction here. One day, one sunny day, a bureaucrat will come with a lot of paperwork and stamps and seals and validations and forms and allowances and official documents and legalizations and notary reports and bills and diplomas and certificates and cards and booklets and social security numbers and enough! enough! that burrocrat will come one day, and despite everything I say and all the gestures I make with my tanned arms and despited how deep I look into his absent blue holes with my darkened eyes who have experienced life, that burrocrat will smile at me and with a stroke of his pen he will kill the bunny in me. Just a prediction. So I'm gonna make sure the bunny has a good life, and that I'll drop by that burrocrat at Christmas time.