Upon arrival in Iguazu, I checked in the first hostel I saw and booked a tourist-rip-off trip for 90 pesos called gran aventura which of course turned out to be a dull truck ride followed by a boat ride underneath the big waterfall that got us really wet. On the plus side, ran into a friendly couple that promised me to send me some pictures from their camera by email since my own camera had broken. But I will to that tour tomorrow. Today, I relaxed in the small pile (piscina) talking about the hummingbirds.
I walked around in Iguazu a little afterwards. A guy ran into me on the street and brought me to a place where I was offered a free caipirinha. He told me he had been working as a tourist "guide" since he was a kid. He receives provision from bars, restaurtants and hostel every time he brings someone there. He told me this story... he was 23 and he had become father for the first time that morning at 5am but his girlfriend had a problem with her pecho she couldn't breastfeed the baby so he needed some money to buy milk in the supermarket and asked me for it the hospital where his girlfriend stayed was twenty blocks away yes he said she is very young a couple of years ago all fifteen year old girls were pregnant around here we had some empanadas and I gave hime some milkmoney he said thank you you are a "good man" now he could do me a favour he knew a few girls that were willing to sleep with foreign men if they invite them for dinner one of them was his cousin I said well thank you I mean it sounded tempting.
In the hostel, I spoke Spanish with a small Swiss girl called Emily who constantly smiled and told me she was going to study something social in Geneva. We slept with the fan on.
Showing posts with label hostel. Show all posts.
February 6.
Consumption and religion. If you buy a cup of coffee or a Patéis de Lisboa, you just put your coins on the counter without any other emotion than the great taste of this combination. It's my reason (in fact, one of my reasons) to be here in Lisbon and write in the February sun. But if you buy bigger things you know you can't afford to buy just as you please, if you realize the money you buy that thing with is finite, you think it over, you ask questions about the quality of the product. You wait until they convince you to buy it. Until you really believe in it. The act of paying is like a little prayer. Yes, there you tied yourself to your finite being again, you bought some specific product and not another one. That product is charged with meaning now. It is almost electrified with meaning. The money, the abstract Number has become product. You have taken a step in life, you climbed the stairs. The product has delivered you. when I bought my camera, this feeling did not really arouse me. There where but a few remnants of it that still made me euphoric and I wrote more pages than I normally do. So with that new camera I promise I will take pictures and exhibit them here.
Because I must take that travel thing seriously. I don't want to consume, living off what I have piled up in the past years, burning away my earnings, not earning anything new. Must not all newness be deflowered by the price tag society puts on it? I need labels. It doesn't matter how good or bad the narrative is, how good you reader find the metaphores, or the anecdotes. It only matters that it has a label, a price tag. Eleven ninetynine, that's the highest bid till date. Anybody offers any more? I felt I had to write to earn my camera back. At least to provide some justification of my being entitled to it. Because at birth we were entitled to nothing, and we are not entitled to anything we didn't explicitly suffer for, as the Calvinist mantra goes. At the same time, the clurgy is entitled to everything. But let's say I'm not entitled to it. So what?
That night in the hostel I was offered the very last bed they had available. It's always like this. It's doesn't frighten me, all the luck. It gets boring, I get used to it. I shrug my shoul
ders, take it for granted. I can squeeze little meaning out of it, and I know one day it will dry out. All the luck in the world, all the most improbable coincidences combined, the angelic gestures of all the selfless beings that by coincidence unheard of cross my path will then not be able to produce meaning. At the end of a lived life there awaits us only dullness, only shades of grey that leave us unmoved, detached from the sweating cycle of life itself. It will dry out at the end of our days. But it is juicy still, o yes don't you worry. So a woman with wonderful curls in her black hair enters the hostel room and asks me for a pen. Yes I say you're lucky you asked a writer and I pull out a pen while I say that, handing it to her. A writer she asks interested, how nice! O yes, and I travel in order to gather some inspiration. How nice! by the way, my name is Verity. Like truth? Yes, like truth.
February 2. Hostel World.
I was taken care of once more. On the day I left, they took me to the bus station in Oliveira. Sixteen euros to get straight back to Lisbon. I dozed in the bus, let a lot of thoughts pass my inner eye. Where would I go? South America? India? Which country would be next - and how about my writing. Would it be recognized, do I need that? I was tired when I arrived in Lisbon,
and I went to the same cafe I had been in 2007 and the memory made me very happy. 2007 is a long time ago, I was a child then. The coffee was good, as everywhere in Portugal. The main reason to stay here for a while and write like hell. The spirit of total freedom. It's a shame the Iraq war was waged under the banner of freedom. Freedom that imprints itself too much in the earth's crest is suspect. My freedom is a shadow with a pen.
It was already dark when I started looking for a Couchsurfer. None available. After a while, I found an hostel that offered affordable beds for the nights. Breakfast included. A German guy, Klaus, worked there. He was a philosopher like me, planning to write his PhD in the philosophy of
mind. He didn't like namedropping, he worked systematically about the gap between experience and knowledge. That takes a lot of Geist. The people her were all so young, and all on planned,
carefully scheduled trips. At home, a life awaited them, a life of being a mechanic, a textile designer, a photographer, a medic, anything. It must be a good feeling when a life awaits you.
and I went to the same cafe I had been in 2007 and the memory made me very happy. 2007 is a long time ago, I was a child then. The coffee was good, as everywhere in Portugal. The main reason to stay here for a while and write like hell. The spirit of total freedom. It's a shame the Iraq war was waged under the banner of freedom. Freedom that imprints itself too much in the earth's crest is suspect. My freedom is a shadow with a pen.
It was already dark when I started looking for a Couchsurfer. None available. After a while, I found an hostel that offered affordable beds for the nights. Breakfast included. A German guy, Klaus, worked there. He was a philosopher like me, planning to write his PhD in the philosophy of
mind. He didn't like namedropping, he worked systematically about the gap between experience and knowledge. That takes a lot of Geist. The people her were all so young, and all on planned,
carefully scheduled trips. At home, a life awaited them, a life of being a mechanic, a textile designer, a photographer, a medic, anything. It must be a good feeling when a life awaits you.
Moscow. Puh-ha!
I arrived savely in Moscow. And met many nice Russians.
The first night I stayed in a hostel, for a change. Ann had given me the adress, and it was - for Moscovian measures - very cheap (650 rubles). I took a good shower and had some coffee, before walking around in the center. Ann showed me a luxurious shopping mall, the Red Square and the Kreml, from there I walked through the park, where I saw the monument of a soldier with an eternal flame and very stiff guards. In a supermarket I bought some cheap dry Russian bread because my roubles had gone out, and biting on it I crossed a bridge over the Moskva, with a view of the Kreml on the right, and the most important Russian Orthodox church on the other side. I walked on, shared my bread with a beggar on the way, passed the Bolshoi theater opposite Revolution Square, and went back to the hostel. Enough for a first impression of this giant metropole.
There was a German guy who started talking about dubious business deals of selling Champion's League tickets on the black market and erotic affairs he had with a girl in Russia. He kept talking and talking about it, and I kept nodding dimly. I wish I had the presence of mind to look him straight in the eyes and say something like "yes and yes and I have been in a brothel too where they offered me booze and coke and pussy all for free o yes so what is the big deal tough guy tell me you think yur something yo i'm not yur daddy" but I don't have that type of presence of mind. Anyway, there also was a Nigerian man who was a relieve because he was silent and made a serious impression.
I got a little bit hungry and cooked myself some couscous other guests had left there, and put in chopped black olives, salt, pepper, soy sauce, sugar, dried persil. And it actually tasted pretty good. @Survival Manual: how to cook something out of nothing, a recommendation for philosophers because a) they tend to think about nothingness and b) they tend to see nothingness when they open their wallet, if they have one.
That night I updated this blog and saw on the internet (cnn.com) what had happenend in Mumbai. I kept staring at the live coverage, in a remembrance of 9/11 until 4 am. Then I went to bed.
The first night I stayed in a hostel, for a change. Ann had given me the adress, and it was - for Moscovian measures - very cheap (650 rubles). I took a good shower and had some coffee, before walking around in the center. Ann showed me a luxurious shopping mall, the Red Square and the Kreml, from there I walked through the park, where I saw the monument of a soldier with an eternal flame and very stiff guards. In a supermarket I bought some cheap dry Russian bread because my roubles had gone out, and biting on it I crossed a bridge over the Moskva, with a view of the Kreml on the right, and the most important Russian Orthodox church on the other side. I walked on, shared my bread with a beggar on the way, passed the Bolshoi theater opposite Revolution Square, and went back to the hostel. Enough for a first impression of this giant metropole.
There was a German guy who started talking about dubious business deals of selling Champion's League tickets on the black market and erotic affairs he had with a girl in Russia. He kept talking and talking about it, and I kept nodding dimly. I wish I had the presence of mind to look him straight in the eyes and say something like "yes and yes and I have been in a brothel too where they offered me booze and coke and pussy all for free o yes so what is the big deal tough guy tell me you think yur something yo i'm not yur daddy" but I don't have that type of presence of mind. Anyway, there also was a Nigerian man who was a relieve because he was silent and made a serious impression.
I got a little bit hungry and cooked myself some couscous other guests had left there, and put in chopped black olives, salt, pepper, soy sauce, sugar, dried persil. And it actually tasted pretty good. @Survival Manual: how to cook something out of nothing, a recommendation for philosophers because a) they tend to think about nothingness and b) they tend to see nothingness when they open their wallet, if they have one.
That night I updated this blog and saw on the internet (cnn.com) what had happenend in Mumbai. I kept staring at the live coverage, in a remembrance of 9/11 until 4 am. Then I went to bed.
Working days until Moscow.
The next couple of days are not so interesting for the reader, I guess. I just wrote and wrote. In the morning at the kitchen table, in the afternoon in a cafe, and the last day in a huge bookstore. That is a nice story though. Max helped me to buy a train ticket to Moscow online. The train left late at night, and I had to spend my last day in St Petersburg waiting.
But just as if some angels from a Hermitage canvas had followed me, there was a 24 hour bookstore at the other side of the street, with a cloakroom, with good coffee, and with a live music act. This was a promotion concert and an interview with a electric violin player, who really got some tough electronic beats from a drum computer and he let his fiddle howl through my reading of Hemingway. Not exactly my pair of shoes, but I enjoyed the experience. My writings grew a few pages that night, and I was content when I fell asleep on the night-train to Moscow.
One more thing. On that train I met a group of football supporters, who were on their way back from St Petersburg where they were at a game between Juventus Torino and Zenith St. Petersburg. They were supporters of Juventus, and members of its Russian fanclub. O how they loved Italy and the handsome football players. I sent an old Laura Pausini song, la solitudine, via bluetooth to a mobile phone.
But just as if some angels from a Hermitage canvas had followed me, there was a 24 hour bookstore at the other side of the street, with a cloakroom, with good coffee, and with a live music act. This was a promotion concert and an interview with a electric violin player, who really got some tough electronic beats from a drum computer and he let his fiddle howl through my reading of Hemingway. Not exactly my pair of shoes, but I enjoyed the experience. My writings grew a few pages that night, and I was content when I fell asleep on the night-train to Moscow.
One more thing. On that train I met a group of football supporters, who were on their way back from St Petersburg where they were at a game between Juventus Torino and Zenith St. Petersburg. They were supporters of Juventus, and members of its Russian fanclub. O how they loved Italy and the handsome football players. I sent an old Laura Pausini song, la solitudine, via bluetooth to a mobile phone.
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