Day One in Milan

I arrived in at the Milan airport with a full day to burn before Seth would arrive from Cairo. After stashing my large backpack in airport baggage storage I headed for the train station and purchased a round trip ticket on the express train into the center of Milan. Before leaving for Italy I had done a bit of research on recommended sights and places of interest as well as printed out a map of the Milan subway system.

The express train was excellent. It was clean and quick, taking just 28 minutes to arrive in the center of town. When I left the station I opted not to go directly on the subway, but to walk along the streets for a bit. I was headed to the Duomo, a massive cathedral that one would think easily spotted from nearby streets.



The subway map print out ended up being my most valuable tool as I had not purchased a city map. I knew the Duomo had a subway stop on the red line and as I walked along the streets I spotted an entrance to a red line station. From there I began walking from station to station gradually sensing my way toward the cathedral. I wandered off course once or twice (“Woops, that’s a green line station. I must have been meant to take the left bend in the road back there.”) and was about to accept the fact that I might not find this monstrosity of a church even though it was surely just around the bend when I spotted a tall spire between two buildings. I was hot on the trail!



There are two main attractions at the Duomo: the interior and the roof. You can access the roof of this cathedral via a narrow twisting staircase of stone, or an elevator. I opted for the manual approach. Once on the roof you are surrounded by buttresses, intricately carved spires and stone railings. There are stone staircases built in to the roof, not as an afterthought for they show signs of weathering and wear that indicate many years of use and exposure. Aside from the view I was most impressed by the incredible detail and attention paid to the carvings in every out of the way corner, railing, banister or windowsill on this roof. Based on the level of detail put in to the roof, you can imagine what the interior of the church was like.



After leaving the church I headed to a sidewalk café for lunch. I was drawn in to one by an animated server who was doing a fantastic job pulling in people off the street and making conversation. I watched as he essentially started a casual conversation with passersby and then pulled out a chair and invited them to sit, placed a menu in their hands and excused himself, apologizing for the fact that he had to go inside to get his order pad. He was a master. These people may have just finished lunch somewhere else but he was so smooth they were about to eat again. I decided to give him my business as well. It turns out he is Brazilian, but has lived in several different countries, including the U.S. He speaks 5 languages and will be leaving Italy in 3 months to return to Brazil and open his own restaurant with the money he has saved while working around the world.





While waiting for my sandwich to arrive I thought I’d order a coffee. I looked over the menu quickly and found an entire page devoted to coffees. When he asked what I would like I ordered a latte.

“Latte?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Just milk?” he clarified.
“Yes, just milk.” I confirmed, thinking he meant only milk with my espresso.
“Would you like it hot?” he asked. This seemed like an odd question.
“Uh, yes. Hot please.”

A few moments later I was brought a small glass of hot milk. Mental note: “latte” is Italian for milk. If you want an espresso with steamed milk you need to order a “café latte” or a “latte machiatto”. Gotcha. I drank my milk like a good little American.

Cherry Blossoms and a Visit

This past weekend my mom and grandma came to visit and we managed to find a few places that they have not seen in the DC area yet. On Friday we went to the Pentagon Memorial for the September 11, 2001 attacks. It is prettier in the summer when the plants are alive, but it was still moving.

Saturday morning we woke up early to head down to the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms before the crowds, and the parking, became insane. Unfortunately this coincided with a cold front and at 8:45 in the morning we were walking through the trees bundled up and warding off mild frostbite.



After 30 minutes or so we had to duck gram into a festival tent that wasn't open yet so she could work on feeling her fingers again while I made a dash for the car. Even with the chilly temps the flowers were beautiful as always.





We headed in to the city for a quick breakfast and then went to the American History Museum, which has been renovated since the last time I was in the area. It was so much fun to watch my gram as she walked through the exhibits and listen to her personal stories as they connected with what we saw.

Sunday was a low key day of brunch in Shirlington before taking them back to the airport. Thank you for making the trip down for a nice visit guys.

Run Fail.

So there I was, about to go out for a much needed run in the desert to help cleanse my head and I get a phone call from work. The phone call pretty much says everyone living in Maadi is being told to take the early ride home, stay home, and stay put. Dangit, what to do. At first we think about ignoring it, because if we had received the phone call 15 minutes later we would have already been in the desert.

But then about 5 minutes later a follow up phone call: a police officer may have shot and killed someone in Maadi. Hrm.. that probably isn't going to play out well. So we bailed and went home. A quick hunt on google turns this up. It's impressive how fast news gets around here. I'm not quite sure when the video was taken, but comments have only been going for an hour.  Twitter is all over it and it's already on Ahram (an Egyptian paper). The other scary thing is a buddy & I had just gone running through this very circle yesterday morning around 6:30am.

When I went by CAC to meet up with some runners there were tons of people out painting the sidewalks. They even had a big pile of brooms and looked like they were organizing to clean up the neighborhood. Did they already know about this and not care?  If they don't know about it, what will happen? Maybe it'll be nothing. Maybe it'll be something. Who knows.

Ugh. I was really looking forward to going for a run today.

Settling Into a New Cairo Norm

Egypt has taken a back seat to many other protests and governmental crises throughout North Africa and the Middle East. In particular the limited news coming out of Tripoli makes me extremely glad that we were in Egypt for this whole thing. I think we all decided to evacuate because we were concerned that the tragedies that are unfolding in Tripoli could have happened here if President Mubarak decided to hold on to power harder. But families were able to evac via plane in relative smoothness. (Getting 2300 people out on a dozen or so chartered jets in 36 hours will never be smooth, but I think Meg will agree it was reasonable.)

Tripoli has a much smaller population of Americans to evacuate, but the number of foreigners there (Egyptians have a HUGE expat population that are fleeing), the limited resources that were already there and are now further complicated have made it harder to get out. (The first efforts to get people onto commercial flights didn't work.) Now, toss in weather and the people staged and ready to get onto a ferry to cross the Mediterranean are told they can't leave because of the 5m swells. All this while the violence continues to escalate. I'm not entirely sure how bad the news in Egypt sounded to the external world, but from my external location in Egypt it sounds like Tripoli is already in a significantly worse condition with a dictator who is borderline (?) insane.

3 weeks ago I would have had a hard time saying it, but we should all count our blessings that we were in Egypt and not someplace else while these historical events unfolded in North Africa.

Here in Egypt, we are settling into what I'm calling the "New Cairo Norm". (Telemark lovers will catch the reference. :) ) Things are not stable here, but they are calmer. There were reports on NPR yesterday about a fire at a Ministry of Interior building, and there are labor protests that seem to be sporadic and widespread. There are still regular calls for protests in Tahrir square, during the week they remain small, but on the weekends they seem to spike. Generally they are very peaceful and very calm. Maybe they'll be tolerated, maybe the government will eventually get tired of them and say their negative impact on Egyptian tourism needs to end. Time will tell.

The Egyptian economy and its tie to security continues to be a concern for me. Banks are back to work now after about a week of protests. (This is a pretty big issue if people can't get money to pay for food or employees.) The Egyptian stock market has been closed for the last month and won't reopen fearing money laundering of blacklisted foreign ministers. This is probably the truth, but it has the convenient side effect of keeping the exchange rate fixed during this crisis. As soon as it reopens what happens? Since they've cleared a good chunk of the unsettled times and Egypt is now off the front page, maybe they won't see the value plummet as bad, but inflation could still be a problem lurking in the future. Couple in the widespread unrest throughout the region and the worldwide economic crisis that has just started to recover and I wonder how much foreign aid will come into the region. If it does come in, from whom? China? Iran? Ultimately, the real economic impact will not be felt for quite some time.

But personally, we are settling in for the long haul. We are now on a 5 days / week work schedule and hours have returned to a more normal number. This is largely enforced by the restrictive transportation issues -- I'm only allowed to go to/from work via an Embassy van, of which there is only one departure time in the morning and 2 in the evening (an 8 hour day or a 10 ish hour day.) Neighborhood security seems to be reasonable, but our policy is that we're not supposed to be moving after dark. If you consider when I get home from work, that ultimately means I'm either stuck at home or stuck at work other than on days off. Finally, the curfew (midnight - 6am) is keeping the Golds Gym from opening until 7:30am. (Have to wait for employees to get the place ready.)

I've started taking Thursdays off as part of my weekend so I can run with some teachers in the desert. It is also a day I can hit the gym and do a double session. On days when the van permits it, I've started running before I go to work which is a nice change. I'm going to try to make a bigger effort in waking up early and getting on the bike trainer before I go to work. Hopefully as things get more stable, the movement policies will become less restrictive and I'll be able to get some more outdoors time. At the moment, I feel like I got to the gym and outdoors more in my time in Baghdad, but I'm working on fixing that.

One day at a time. Things will get better and I'll be that closer to Meg's eventual return.

Videos from Athens

The following video was taken of riot police positioned in front of the Egyptian Embassy to Athens. They were preparing for a local transportation workers strike.

This video shows the view as you approach the entrance to the Acropolis grounds:

This is a view of Zeus's Temple from the Acropolis followed by a pan of the surrounding city:

This Amphitheater was just below the Acropolis, I didn't see what it was called:

A view of a city street in Athens as we walked to lunch:

Athens in a Day

This post is a bit late, but during the evacuation form Cairo our first stop was Athens, Greece. We landed in the Athens airport around 4:30 am and arrived at our hotel downtown around 8:00 am. After 1 hour of quiet time in our rooms and a fabulous hotel breakfast we decided to take advantage of our day in Athens and get out to see some sites.

From our hotel we could walk to the Acropolis. Fortunately the family I was traveling with had been to Athens the previous year for a vacation and were able to remember how to walk to these places. Along the walk we passed by the Egyptian Embassy to Greece as well as a labor strike that was going on that day. Coincidentally the riot police were lined up across the street in front of the Egyptian Embassy. We found it hilarious, in a dark sort of way.

After walking up to and around the Acropolis we headed back into town for a big lunch of Souvlaki, Tzatziki, pita and salad. The mom & SIS (Stand In Spouse) had a beer. Delicious!

"Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're building Egypt."

I have been following the Twitter feed on the BBC website dedicated to therevolution in Egypt. What I appreciate about this feed is that itbringstogether the opinions and ideas of people from all walks of life. Political leaders, journalists, university students and poor citizens are all posting. Some from other countries, some from inside the crowds in Tahrir Square. this morning I found the following posts, which made me pause:

1030: The BBC's Paul Danahar is observing the clean-up in Tahrir Square: "The infrastructure of the revolution is being quickly dismantled," he says. "The angry young men who led this revolution seemed to have been replaced by their mums who are now cleaning up the mess. This is the first revolution I've covered when the people cleaned up after themselves. Perhaps the mark of a people who spawned one of the world's oldest and greatest civilizations."

1055: There's a sense of humor among those still in Tahrir Square this morning. According to the AP some are wearing placards bearing the slogan: "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're building Egypt."

As for my personal response, I was overwhelmed with emotion yesterday. A

fter a deflating speech by Mubarak the night before when he said (I think) that he was not going to resign the office of the presidency I felt as though he had just flipped the bird to his entire country, not to mention stamp my travel orders for at least 6 more months in the U.S.

Then, the following morning, the news came that Mubarak had resigned the office of the presidency and turned control over to the military high council. I was brimming with pride in the Egyptian people. I felt the swell of nationalistic pride, even though I am not Egyptian. I wanted an Egyptian flag. I wanted to run around in the Buffalo snow and shout, "Allahu akbar!" I was amazed.

I felt as though I could finally let out the breath I had been holding since January 27th...only to hold the next breath I took. Now we hold our breath as we hope that the players who bubble up will bring wisdom, empathy, selflessness and a long-range vision to the table. We hold our breath to see what will develop this week, this month and in the long days ahead. This is far from over.