At a section of the Berlin Wall, we encountered a blind man being guided by his friend -- both of them wearing t-shirts from the Berlin marathon which, presumably, they had run the day before. The friend would read extensively from the exhibition kiosks before leading his buddy to the remains of the wall, guard tower and apartment blocks so together they could feel them. As I watched, it occurred to me we need an alternative term for how a blind person experiences the wonders of the world, since "sight" "seeing" clearly doesn't cut it. Any suggestions? If you thought Berlin was reborn on October 3rd, 1990, with reunification, you were mistaken. Berlin is being reborn daily, as you can see documented here. Construction absolutely everywhere -- above ground and underground. The blue pipes that snake through the historic district are carrying away water from the excavations. According to our rickshaw tour guide, Berlin means "swamp." Very interesting. I've just spent three days in Bicycle Heaven. Amsterdam. It's the city every other city tries to copy, with varying degrees of success. The sheer number of bikes in the city center was eye-popping. And if I were to venture a guess, I'd say the ratio of two-wheelers to people was 2:1. No, I didn't make a mistake there. I DO mean two bikes to every person. They were literally everywhere. Most were parked for the day by commuters in dense but orderly fashion. But plenty were in motion on the canals and on boulevard bike lanes. And if you're wondering who rules the roads in Amsterdam: bicycles do. They stop for no one, weaving and dodging and sailing through stop signs and red lights. My fellow travelers and I found it quite intimidating -- even frightening -- though the locals seemed unfazed. I wanted to rent bikes and join in the fray, thinking of my successful experiences in Paris and New York. But, alas, I got outvoted -- probably due to the lady lying in the middle of the bike lane moaning loudly while being loaded onto a stretcher.
Nonetheless, we logged lots of miles in this amazing city on foot, which enabled me to better document the bike scene, resulting in the slide show below. Oh, and btw, absolutely no one wears helmets in Amsterdam. Check out the New York Times opinion piece in today's paper pondering the question of whether American cities should follow the Europeans and ditch the helmet requirement. How do you stand on that one? Arriving in Paris after four days in Moscow, what was the most discernable difference between the two cities at first glance? The size of the vehicles people drive. In Paris bicycles, motorcycles and Smart Cars seem to be multiplying overnight. In Moscow, the same can be said of large, flashy sedans. True, at $8 a gallon, gas in Paris was double the price in Moscow. You would think crippling traffic would be incentive enough to downsize, but Russians don't seem to be feeling the pain. Maybe the explanation is as simple as the difference between a European society that's in a tight economic squeeze and a Russian society that's sowing its wild oats in the post-Communist era. Maybe it's the difference between a culture that believes in austerity in the name of the environment and one that won't worry itself about such things until every oil well is sucked dry. Or maybe it's both. Whatever the explanation, my husband Jeff observed there seems to be a simple inverse relationship between the size of people's apartments and the size of their vehicles in these two locales. According to his calculus, Muscovites have tiny apartments and big cars; Parisians have big apartments, tiny cars. I'll go with the Parisian model anytime. After all, what good is a big car if it's stuck in traffic all the time? Jeff's Unscientific List of Popular Cars:For more on traveling in Russia, click here
How weird is this? I hadn't seen any snow since the October shocker here in New York. And then last weekend I went to Seattle to visit friends. There, the city, accustomed to being sodden with winter drizzle, came to a virtual standstill with the accumulation of a mere two inches of snow. Over a two-day period, I saw only a couple of snow plows, both of them on major highways. Beyond that, it was up to the intrepid among us to negotiate the slushy and rutted hills that define the city by the bay. Jeff and I slipped and slid our way downtown on Saturday afternoon to check out some sights and were wowed by the Seattle Central Public Library building designed by the brilliant Rem Koolhaas (who has the awesomest name for an architect I could ever imagine). As for the breathtaking design, I'll let the accompanying pictures speak for themselves. But as for the function, let me say that Seattle has managed to redefine the metropolitan library as a place where people of all walks of life can seek both knowledge and refuge. Inside the soaring, light-filled space, we found the usual bookworms and students and tourists like us. But the frigid temperatures and snow clearly had motivated all kinds of nomads to come inside. Overflowing hikers' backpacks defined the Occupy Movement protestors; stuffed shopping bags and ragged overcoats defined the homeless; paint-spackled workclothes defined the day laborers, speaking mostly Spanish. They weren't just hanging around. They found seats at the hundreds of public computers -- provided for them, whether they had paid the taxes to build the municipal library or not. On the third floor -- or whatever floor it was you got to after taking two of the longest escalators I've ever seen -- there was a job resource center with a staffed help desk and hundreds more computers -- all of them in use. The library was as hushed and serious as any. But its colorful decor was a perfect backdrop for the diversity of its patrons, who seemed right at home taking shelter from the storm. credit: Sanjib Das I didn't think it was possible, but I was just transported back to India for 98 minutes via an incredibly vivid, complex and emotionally wrenching documentary called Marathon Boy, screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jeff and I were transfixed by this real-life "Slumdog Millionaire" story, told brilliantly in cinema verite style, about a 4-year-old boy plucked from the depths of poverty by a coach who trains him to be a champion marathon runner with the potential to one day fulfill India's Olympic dreams. But what starts out as a tale of redemption for both the boy and his financially impoverished mentor, devolves into a messy struggle among promoters, politicians, petty bureaucrats, thugs and family members who all want a piece of the boy's legacy for their own selfish reasons. In an interview, the director, Gemma Atwal, said she initially was driven to explore the psychological and spiritual relationship between the guru and his disciple. But as the story unfolded over five years of filming, it began to resemble "a Bollywood movie scripted by Dickens." In a discussion after the movie, she said even she was shocked at the twists and turns that eventually tore the characters apart, revealing the very raw underbelly of Indian society. And she remains unsure how to judge the actions and motivations of the coach who walked the fine line between saint and sinner -- which is just how we felt at the end of the movie. Editing her 300 hours of film into 98 minutes, the director was masterful in capturing the flavor of the India Jeff and I remembered from our brief two-week trip there earlier this year (click here for . The intensity of the politics, the ubiquity of the media, the tenacity of the bureaucracy, the vibrancy of the street scenes, the crushing poverty, the filth -- it was all there in sharp focus. And the passion of the people -- their way with words, their expressive eyes, their ingenuity -- that came alive, too. If you want a brief trip to India, try and see this film. The movie was partially underwritten by HBO and therefore won't have a theatrical release anytime soon. (Still, I predict an Oscar nomination.) And there's no air date yet for the film on TV. So if you're in the New York area, do yourself a favor and see one of the three remaining screenings between now and Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival. There are still tickets available to all three. Look here. I was on the streets of New York City during the Friday evening rush yesterday and was struck by the relative quiet around me. The sensation was like the one you have when emerging from a loud rock concert and feeling like you've got cotton in your ears or like you're in a scene where the soundtrack is missing. Here's a sample of what we've been listening to constantly in India for the past two weeks. It's not an exaggeration. Trucks bear signs on their rear ends imploring tailgaters to honk. It seems to be the only rule of the road that is universally obeyed. By far, the most modern and impressive buildings along the main roads here in northern India are not the tire, farm machinery and electrical equipment factories, they are the schools. Education is big here and it is serious business. Between Delhi and Agra, interspersed between farms and giant plants, we saw at least a dozen for-profit universities, each offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in, you guessed it, business, engineering and computer science. The students come from the grimy, bustling towns nearby and after graduation, many must feed directly into the factories right along the way, but I imagine many also move on to other sections of the country and beyond. The other morning I watched students, all of them young men by the way, sitting on the back of motorized rickshaws careening down the road in near-freezing weather with text books open. As we passed by them in our van, I could see them looking over math and engineering problems.
Take the Sri Venkateswara Group of Educational Institutions. Its motto, which I read in one of the regional business magazines routinely supplied in our hotel rooms, is "Come, Learn, Flourish." (I wonder what that is in Latin.) Like all of those I've seen, the school boasts accreditations by various state and national boards that mean nothing to me but must mean something to them and the school's students. And like all the factories here, Sri Venkateswara also advertises that it strictly adheres to international quality standards, including those famously administered by the International Standards Organization, headquartered in Norway. "ISO 9000 certification" is supposed to confirm that an organization, after many labors, has perfected its processes and zealously reviews them to weed out quality problems on an ongoing basis. In the educational context here, it is surely intended to connote pedagogical perfection -- though almost certainly through devotion to rote learning. This is not all bad, as many education reformers in the US, concerned about curriculum consistency and teacher training, will tell you. But, as you know from reading Susan's entries, most things here in India are rough not only on the surface but also below it; to wit: the magazine ad for Sri Venkatewara proudly announces that the university is ISO 9000 "ceretified." Oops! (Note: click on "Previous" below for earlier posts.) It's hard to know where to begin. But my overwhelming impression is one I've heard mentioned again and again with regard to India: the contrasts in this country are startling. Rich and poor, squalor and grandeur, graciousness and indignity. It all hits you full force after only a short exposure. I've been in many crowded spaces in my life -- Times Square during holidays, Japan, China, and New York City subways -- and I've seen my share of vehicular traffic. But there was an orderliness to those spaces that doesn't seem to exist here. Yes, people will line up in neat queues to file into a monument, but on the streets there seem to be no rules of personal space. Humans and animals rush in every which direction; cars, rickshaws, trucks buses and bicycles wander all over the road in a chaotic rush like particles in entropy looking for order. Everyone surely gets to where they're trying to go, but at the same time they appear to be going nowhere.
At this time of year, the landscape is dull and dry, the skies mostly gray, but the women are wrapped in rainbow colored scarves and the men in bright sweaters and hats , which gives almost every scene a vibrancy that can put a smile on your face. Still, nothing can take away from the grimness of the conditions here. In the city it's filth and want for even the most basic things. In the 40-degree nights, people go barefoot and lack shelter. They sleep under tarps and in their rickshaws. Everywhere you go, you see the smoke from small campfires along the roadsides, men and dogs huddled around them in tight circles. These fires fill the air with a smog that spreads far and wide and reaches into your throat as a constant reminder of the poverty that is everywhere. But the people are resourceful, piling 18 to a rickshaw that comfortably seats six, and four to a scooter. They collect cow dung, dry it and fashion it into bricks for their huts. And they sell you whatever services they can: a chance to take a picture of their monkey or the offer of shooing away the people crowding the background of your family picture at the Taj Mahal. It can be heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. That's India in a nutshell. Before I try to say anything else about our travels, let me say this: what we are seeing here so far is indescribable, in words or even in pictures. The depth of the humanity here -- the sheer numbers -- doesn't relate to anything I've experienced ever before. It reminds me of trying to wrap my brain around the idea that there are billions of universes that are out there in the vastness of space. You just can't imagine it. But I'll do my best to translate the experience here in this blog. In the end, though, you'll have to come here and see it for yourself, if you're not faint of heart. And if you do, we have a great guide in New Delhi. His name is Manoj.
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