Visiting the Big City

Last weekend we descended the 2,000 or so meters and made the 1-hour bus-ride to Tuxtla, to visit G’s family and friends. While Sancris is colorful and airy and stone-built, Tuxtla is haphazard and hot and concrete. Not to say it wasn’t fun, but, all in all, this is where I’d rather be.

While we were away, we spent an afternoon with G’s niece and nephew, taking them for the most beautiful handmade popsicles I’ve ever seen. On a galavanting, meandering night with G’s friends, we went to a couple of a certain type of party, where people our age fill the front courtyard of a house with plastic tables and chairs and serve food and drink a lot of alcohol. Pretty bad reggae-tone music at the first, awful karaoke at another.

For lunch one day, we ate what is pictured above. In a “snack” bar with impossibly loud music and then a mariachi band, and all sorts of men singing along and everyone drinking, we feasted on a plate of slow cooked meat in adobo sauce, amazing black beans and fresh, hearty flour tortillas to go with. Before that we had a plate of fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and onion, as well as dried shrimp. Too salty for my taste. All washed down with a few shared pitchers of Sol doctored with lime and chili.

At amazing restaurant, G’s friends put one of the flip-flops he’d casually slipped off his feet into a crate of beer bottles on the ground. When we realized it was missing as we got ready to go, it was nowhere to be found. Shoeless, G took me to the home of some friends of his, a married couple who have shared a house for thirty years. From the street it looks like a concrete wall with graffiti, like a forgotten place, but inside it was filled with art and plants and books. They were nice.

G’s parents took us to one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, Mexican style. We were resistant but it was pretty damn good. I recall a past when I could do three or four plates at an occasion like that, but this time only managed one and a half.

Other than that, some insane cab rides, amazing street art, and finally seeing marimba park, a place full of people dancing G has always told me about. But we missed the people dancing part. We got there when they were milling about, but the gazebo in the center was cool, all the ancient benches lined up and facing it, like sun’s rays. Maybe next time.

More pics of our Tuxtla weekend here.

All of a sudden my bike is bad-ass (and other exciting news)

My most exciting thing to report is that I switched out my drop-down handlebars on my happy bicycle for cruiser-type bars, and so now I sit more upright and feel taller instead of crouching down over the slightly-too-small frame. Such a huge change, let me tell you! AND! My friend A brought me the incredible gift of a Brooks Saddle, which is this cool leather seat that will, like a pair of leather shoes, mold to me. Got some Bike Kitchen and some Critical Mass this past week, which is without-fail-always fun.

And what else? All anyone seems to be able to talk about is how cold it is in San Francisco these days and yes it is cold but seriously 50 degrees is nothing to go on and on about. I'm kind of into the bundling up, not so into the numb fingers and toes.

And last night I went to dinner with my friend K. Hadn't gone out to a special restaurant for a while and so we treated ourselves to Weird Fish, and hipster-y little spot on a somewhat desolate stretch of Mission Street. We split a coupla things: spicy, flavorful tortilla soup; edamame salad with sesame and cold noodles; an appetizer layered with spinach, tofu, goat cheese, and grilled yam; and fish and chips (fried tilapia with almost-perfect french fries including three kinds of potatoes, as far as I could tell). The fried stuff was done in such a way that didn't make us feel coated with oil and everything was delish! Our charming/cool waiter even brought us a forkful of the dessert special (some kind of banana cream decadence) because we were too full to order it. Then we went to a bar we always go to because it's chill and nice, and it started out that way but soon enough got packed with a crowd of coiffed saturday-night-blazer-wearing people that seemed Marina-ish. Then we left.

Istanbul is Absurd

...but in a (mostly) good way. Here is a list of the top absurdities I've encountered since arriving last Monday.

TRAINS
We were the first people standing on an empty tram platform our first afternoon here. Within five minutes, hundreds of people swarmed around us and there was no where to move. As people negotiated their way on and off trains, they did what they had to do. Not a single frustrated word or angry look...

TRASH
I was stunned by our first walk on Istiklal Street. The street is lined with eateries, small shops, and international retailers. At parts, cars run across it and a "nostalgic" streetcar runs down it, but otherwise it's a pedestrian thoroughfare. And you see every kind of person you could imagine. I had just finished drinking a bottle of water and eating a simit (a kind of sesame coated bread ring they sell on the street here) and so had an empty bottle and paper wrapper to throw away, but could not find a trashcan anywhere. I was even more perplexed that I didn't see any trash on the street either. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. I got rid of my trash by leaving it on the table of an excellent pudding shop we had coffee and dessert at. And later that night as we walked around some back streets, we found all the trash. There were horrific piles of it at the edges of the empty streets and the occasional passerby would go on without a second glance. I guess somebody or something comes along in the night and deals with it. I saw a man sweeping a pile out of an alley, a cat going through some, and last night there was a young man rapidly sorting a pile almost as tall as he was into a big plastic sack.

RICE IN A MUSSEL
Walking by the water near the Galata Bridge one evening, I was excited by all the food vendors
since dinner was a few hours away and I was hungry. I went towards a man selling mussels out of a box and pointed at the big ones, paying one lira (70 cents) for two. He made a show of popping each one open, and as I ate I realized there was spiced rice stuffed inside the tasty bites of meat. How did that happen?

SHOE SHINE
Getting off the tram one day, my dad picked up the fallen brush of the shoe shine man who was walking in front of him. Upon exiting the station, my dad told us to hold up since the shoe shine man said he wanted to do him a favor for giving him his brush and proceeded to give my dad a quick shoe shine. My father asked us all if we had any small change and we managed to scare up a few coins. In the meantime, the shoe shine guy was quickly working on someone else who promptly gave him twenty lira (18 dollars). My dad produced his three lira, and the guy got upset and then regaled him with a story about how his daughter was in the hospital and asked for twenty, indicating his previous customer. We all walked away and the shoe shine man exclaimed into the air, probably cursing.

DUSTBUSTER
Our first dinner here was at a restaurant we'd wandered to after many twists and turns. It was an alright place, with padded chairs, cold beer, mediocre food, and terrible though charming service. After all our plates had been cleared, I saw the (hot) busboy coming towards our table with a dustbuster in hand. I knew what was going to happen next but couldn't believe it when he stopped at our table, turned the thing on, and dragged it across our table cloth, specifically targeting a pile of rice that had fallen off of my sister's plate. I couldn't believe it, but I looked across the table at her and she kept a straight face. When he came around the table and dustbusted a little bit more, my sister finally began to laugh and then of course I had to laugh too, and my dad, stoic that he is, kept a straight face.

CLEANING ME
Istanbul is currently packed with tourists and, consequently, at most restaurants, bazaars, and stores that cater to them/us there are men standing outside trying to tempt them/us in. A lot of times they are young and/or attractive and they say the damnedest things. They call us angels, ask if we are married, and constantly ask where we are from, try to shake our hands. It's unnerving to a certain extent and only fun when a certain element of the insincerity of these gestures is obvious. Last night, we walked back to our hotel down a street where most of the stores were closed. We passed by one shopkeeper who was moving some wares from the sidewalk into his store. I made eye contact and he enthusiastically said, "Hi!" We were waiting for the requisite follow-up but instead got: "I will clean you with this!" and he smiled, indicating the duster in his hand.

Bashar's Party

This year, American Memorial Day fell on the day of Syria's presidential election. Bashar al-Asad was elected to another 7-year presidential term, selected by a resounding 99.9% of the electorate. We arrive in Damascus the following day. Our Lebanese driver finds us a Syrian taxi on the highway. As we drive into the city and are swallowed into the traffic of tiny Eastern European cars and ramshackle micro-buses, we stat to notice pictures of Bashar everywhere. Small portraits on car windows--often two or three per car--larger ones in storefronts, and billboards hanging on the sides of buildings. We get stuck at a traffic light. It changes three times from green to red three times and our driver tells us there is a parade, for Bashar. Later we are walking near our hotel and encounter another parade. There are people dancing in the streets and playing instruments, and holding up posters of Bashar. Even away from the dreary Cold War-era architecture of modern Damascus, in the shaded, twisty, cobbled lanes of the Old City, Bashar is everywhere. He is hanging near ancient roman columns, declaring his love for his people from the sides of food carts, and smiling at us above the doorways of quaint little cafes. The man is good-looking in a shirt-and-tie-and-moustache kind of way and in these portraits he's got eyes that follow you everywhere you go. Heading back to our hotel that first night, we hear nearby explosions. They are fireworks and all of a sudden they are all around us and light up the sky. We pass a busy street corner where fireworks are being launched in a small patch of grass. The colors explode dangerously low to the ground and we can't help but turn towards them, watch the colors explode and the light reflect of the largest portrait we've seen of Bashar yet. We walk on under a concrete awning with ten uniform pillars, each pasted with a photo of Bashar. We flip to Syrian tv in our hotel the next morning and there is Bashar, walking through various crowds of various people in various places. There he is followed by his pretty wife. There he is, holding up a baby, dripping medicine into the baby's eyes. Over dinner, Dad tells us he was trained as a dentist or an eye doctor, or something. We are the only ones in the restaurant, happily feasting on the many plates of savories in front of us, and we only notice after it's been going on for nearly half an hour that we are listening to a song, which must be on repeat. It has an electric rock beat and in constant repetition, with minor variation, a chorus of male voices sings, "We love you." They love Bashar, of course. And we joke about if one of us had our face everywhere, like that. And we wonder the same then for our own president, the infamous George W. Bush. But this isn't as funny because we almost think it would somehow be a more honest reality than the one he has created for our country now.

(Or at least it would be a more straightforward dishonesty, or something...But don't get us wrong, we are happy to be American and we enjoyed getting to know Bashar.)