Part 1/2: Prologue

Part 1: New York LaGuardia (LGA) to Washington National on US Airways

Part 2: Washington Dulles (IAD) to Frankfurt (FRA) on United

Part 3: FRA – Vienna (VIE) – Skopje (SKP) on Austrian

Part 4: Arrival in Skopje, and Day 1 in Skopje

Part 5: Day 2 in Skopje

Part 6: A bit more Skopje

Part 7: Daytrip to Pristina, Kosovo

Part 8: SKP – Zagreb (ZAG) – VIE on Croatian Airlines

Part 9: VIE – Erbil, Iraq (EBL) on Austrian

Part 10: Erbil, Iraq

Part 11: EBL – VIE on Austrian

Part 12: Hilton Vienna Stadtpark

Part 13: VIE – Zurich (ZRH) – JFK on Swiss International Air Lines

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Update, 03/01/10 (More Added!):

I’ve added some of the second segment of the Erbil, Iraq section of the trip report, within the original post. If you have already read Part I of this original post, simply scroll down to the (hopefully) clearly-labeled beginning of Part II! Thanks for reading.

(Part II encompasses the remainder of my first day in Erbil (in a somewhat piecewise fashion). Part III will run down my day exploring the city, and the fun/danger of returning to the airport in a sandstorm).

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(N.B.: I realized this section is so damn long/and there existed life time constraints and did not want to overwhelm readers and force them to drop off because of something of Tolstoyan proportions. I am, therefore, dividing this section into the first day/night, and the second day. I hope breaking the the report makes it just a touch easier to read).

Part 10, Part I (For Now)

One thing’s for sure: they don’t lie about the heat here.

As I descended the airstairs from the Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 to the apron, the heat clamped down like a shop vice, in almost buffeting, billowing waves of sheer thermal energy, almost certainly overwhelming my synapses that had never felt such a heat before. I almost expected the rubber soles of my shoes to melt as they hit they baked concrete, and I would leave a trail of rubbery footprints as I tugged my suitcase to the entrance to the terminal. The heat, combined with the austere look of the sand-colored landscape, the piercing whine of the airplane’s auxiliary power unit, and the fact that I found myself in a country with absolutely no plans, and no idea where to go, crescendoed to an intense sensory experience.

I walked towards the terminal, where a doctor in scrubs with a stethoscope slung around his neck, silently twisted my Boston Red Sox cap from my head (remember – I really liked the logo of this particular Sox cap! I’m in no way wearing the cap because I am a Sox fan, or a huge tool, like 95% of the people who wear Red Sox caps), and pressed a thermal strip thermometer to my forehead, ostensibly to assess whether I had a fever. With the heat of a kiln outside, though, I’m not really sure how he could’ve taken an accurate reading. Nevertheless, I was apparently temperate enough to pass the health inspection, and I continued to passport control, through a much cooler, boxy, slightly utilitarian terminal building with slick floors, more reminiscent of a neighborhood rec center than an arrivals hall.

Passport control proceeded uneventfully, almost anticlimactically, for the last step before my official foray into Iraq. An immigration officer, a woman, I was intrigued to note, silently scanned by passport, and stamped it with a red admonishment that I must register my address and obtain a visa within ten days, and then, stamped it with the official “Republic of Iraq” stamp, a long, elegant, rectangular stamp that I was pleased to note occupied two entire boxes on a passport page. I stopped to admire the stamp, and made sure to let the ink dry (I can’t tell you how many passport stamps I’ve marred because I’ve snapped my passport closed before the stamp has fully dried) . I felt as if I had accomplished something already, simply by having an Iraq stamp in my American passport.

And then, I stepped out of immigration, into the official arrivals hall, suddenly confronted with the immediate reality that I had cleared a health inspection, cleared immigration, and now, found myself, actually, in the country, free from constraints of airport security, and, well, free from someone guiding me, and telling me where to stand, and which line to occupy. As I had many times before on this larger trip, replete with lack of preparation, I found myself standing, autonomous, forced to make a move.

Actually, for this part of the trip, I had planned significantly more than I had Skopje or Kosovo – by which I mean, I had read a blog post from ultra-hip-and-high-on-life writer/blogger/subversive Chris Guillebeau (who, incidentally I might add, once followed me on Twitter, I was quite pleased to note, but, then sadly stopped, probably because my posts didn’t always sound as if they are written by someone on a constant IV drip of MDMA) about his 48 hours in Erbil, from where I learned of a hotel at which to stay, and perhaps more importantly, after the debacle taxi ride from the airport in Skopje, the name of the taxi company that would ferry me from the airport to the main part of the city.

The arrivals hall at Erbil is quite small, with a few advertisements on the walls, an unoccupied tourist information booth, a rather sorry-looking snack bar, and a few benches. I spotted an advertisement for the one taxi company from the airport, “Hello Taxi!” This time, I was certainly prepared to pay the 25 bucks it would cost to take me from the airport to the city, except I had no cash in my wallet. A perpetual bad habit of mine is not to carry cash, because I spend it relentlessly. Instead, I rely on plastic, which gives the impression/illusion/false perception that my spending is more controlled. If I need cash, I reckon, I can always find someplace to use my ATM card and obtain cash back, or find an ATM machine. Perhaps it was my American ethnocentrism, but, I assumed with today’s almost universal connectivity, that I would certainly find an ATM machine in the arrivals hall of the airport. That dream ended quickly.

I was almost immediately approached by an enthusiastic guy from Hello Taxi! asking me if I need a ride into the city, and to where. Another ethnocentric fault that sometimes ethnocentric fault that sometimes plagues me – I assume that everyone in a foreign city knows the location of everything within their city, quite a stupid assumption, I know, because I often realize in San Francisco, I can barely communicate to people names of streets and routes because, I, myself, do not know names of all the streets, and instead, know routes by sight. After telling the driver I wanted to head to the Hotel Shahan (another Chris Guillibeau recommendation!), he really seemed as if he had no idea where to find it. I whipped out my laptop to show him a copy of the image of the hotel I had found on another website, and after conferring with some other taxi drivers, seemed to know where to go.  A larger problem, however, loomed prominently – my lack of cash. Apparently, another guy translated, the driver would not take me into the city without seeing the money first.

“Okay,” I responded. “Are you willing to take me to an ATM” – then, I remember that ATM is a distinctly American term and I must be clearer – “a machine to get money? I’ll most certainly pay you in town – I just don’t have any money on me now.”

The drivers conferred for a moment.

“No,” one said. “He is concerned that that machine will not be working, and that he will have to pay the owner of the company out of his own pocket.”

I try once more – saying, I really, really promise to pay the money, but my attempt is refused, to which a burly Australian man in sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, standing with a cellphone took an amused noticed.

“Who are you with?” he asks, a question I would hear about a million more times over the next 24 hours. Everyone assumes visitors to Erbil work for a military contractor, or for the UN.

“Oh, I’m not with anyone,” I reply sheepishly. “I’m just here for tourism. I thought it’d be a cool place to check out.”

“You just came here,” he replies, leaning coolly on a table next to the exit.

“No, I’m on a larger trip through Eastern Europe, and thought I’d pop of to Iraq.” Yup, I thought, just like that – I’m just a casual traveler who decides to head to Iraq.

“How long do you have here,” the man asks.

“24 hours,” I reply.

He shakes his head. “That’s too bad. I think about three days would’ve been perfect. Where are you trying to go?”

I tell him that with no ATM, the taxi company didn’t want to risk taking me into town, and that I needed to head to the Hotel Shahan.

He doesn’t seem to know the hotel either, but a guy standing next to him, a shorter, bearded Iraqi guy, after repeating the name to himself a few times, said he knew where it was.

The Australian guy was still clearly amused. “You should always have a bit of cash on you,” he chides nonchalantly.

“I know, I know,” I say contritely. “I should’ve gotten some before leaving Vienna.”

“By the way,” the Australian guy asks, “Did you happen to see three African guys on the plane?”

Actually, I had, boarding in Vienna, but told them that they may have left already.

“Hmmm,” the guy says. “Those are who I”m waiting for.” In the midst of our entire conversation, the man kept checking with the Iraqi guy next to him, who I found out was the driver, discussing, in seemingly cryptic language, pick-ups, drop-offs, which vehicle would rendezvous where, and most scintillatingly, where the dogs were. I found myself utterly mystified by the conversation, wondering who the hell were these guys, and just for whom were they waiting at the airport.

I stepped outside for a moment, into the pounding heat, just to see if there were any other taxi options, or shuttle options, outside. From Chris’ blog post, I knew no other taxi company in Erbil, for some reason, could legally drive up to the airport, and thought I might find a larger taxi stand, or some sort of shuttle away from the exit to the arrivals hall. Nothing. Nothing at all. At that point, I considered trying to walk into town, or, well, perhaps, spending the next 24 hours camped at the airport. I re-entered the arrivals hall, and, well, stood around, wondering what the hell I should I do.

The two guys were still standing around the table by the exit. I decided to try my last possible option. “Could I pay you guys to take me into town?” I ask, essentially using the line, once again, that I promise I will head to an ATM and pull money. The burly Australian man, still waiting for the African guys, tells me to hang tight for a moment, and that they should be able to accommodate me. I take a seat on the bench, and wait, still wondering just who these guys are, and what they are doing.

Eventually, three tall, lanky African guys appear from immigration. I stand up an head back over to the table, where I find myself whisked into a world of cryptic language, jargon, and codewords, as if I am missing some much larger message. The Australian man is looking at papers, asking when the dogs should arrive, and seemingly coordinating some sort of lodging situation. He also tells his driver to pick up one SUV, and for the driver to tell another driver to bring another vehicle around the front of the airport. Then, still confused, the three African men, and I, all have a seat on the benches. “We’re going to take you,” the Australian man says, and introduces himself to me as Shane, and his driver as Ali. “If you don’t mind running a few stops.” Sure, I think, besides the fact that I have absolutely no idea what is going on, with the dropoffs, and the dogs, and that I am about to jump into an SUV with people I don’t know at all, I found myself extremely excited. The danger/adventure seeking traveler loved the idea of jumping into a random SUV in Iraq for a ride, and the unprepared/previously-shit-outta-luck traveler loved the idea that I had secured a ride into the city!

We waited for a bit longer, and finally, Shane motions for us to head out. I step into the heat towards a white Toyota Land Cruiser. Ali and Shane head to the front, and one of the African guys sits in the back. Shane tells me to toss my suitcase in the back, apologizing for the smell of diesel, saying he had spilled some in the back a few days ago. Not a problem, at all. Heading into a random SUV, with random folks, about to drive through the streets of Iraq, with a vehicle redolent of spilled diesel, welled my excitement even more, and made me think that I was, just perhaps, the most hardcore individual on the planet, and away from the cushy world of elite status, reserved lines, and hotel loyalty programs, doing perhaps the most badass thing anyone could ever do, if not, perhaps, the most stupid. I absolutely loved the moment. I couldn’t believe the absolute serendipity, the gravity of the situation, and its colossal momentousness. Situations like these, I thought, was the travel high I wanted to chase – away from comfort, protection, maps, and direction – simply relying on instinct, a bit of luck, and flexibility. Why the hell not?

With still more talk about where who would be staying where coming from the front, I finally asked Shane what exactly what the hell was going on, and what exactly he did. While I thought I may be heading out with a team of gun runners to make a delivery, with Shane about to hand me an M-16, asking me to cover him, and inquiring, “Do you know how to lay suppressive fire,” he was a security coordinator on an oil field in Northern Iraq, and managed the hiring, living arrangements, and coordination of security personnel on the oil field.  He had been in Erbil for three years. The African guys were dog handlers, roaming the grounds with the bomb sniffing dogs to inspect vehicles entering the field. Now, we were on our way to the housing developments where the Africans would stay. With the uncloaked mystery, I  still couldn’t believe how cool it was to be riding into town with an Iraqi security team.

After a short ride in the SUV out of the airport,and onto a dusty roadway, we stopped at a strip of staggeringly-western looking apartment buildings, and pulled into a small parking lot paved in fresh-looking asphalt, and surrounded by extremely precisely manicured grounds and hedges. These, Shane said, were the living quarters for the security workers on the oil field. He told me to leave my stuff in the car, and come on up for a look, if I wanted. The group rode an extremely modern elevator up to an extremely well-appointed apartment that appeared as if it had been transported from an Ikea catalog. Not exactly, I must say, what I had envisioned when landing in Iraq.

While Shane and the others discussed various pieces of business, and finalized pickup times for the workers the next day, I asked the building manager if I might have a look around. The building manager gleefully responded by showing me around himself, clearly proud of the new development, modern furnishings, and louche appointments. He also offered me a beverage from a huge refrigerator several dozen times, and encouraged me to photograph everything, including the bathroom. I have to say – in a developing country, these buildings were much nicer than any apartment in which I have ever lived in the United States, especially my junior and senior year of college apartment in Berkeley, which featured a group of crack dealers living under our back stairs, a homeless woman who camped in our garage, several robberies, and whose architecture can best be described as bombed-out Motel 6. I would later find out that renting or owning one of these apartments contains prices that match the aesthetics – close to 5,000 bucks a month, rendering it all but impossible that any Iraqi, I was told, could rent such a place, and keeping them fully reserved for oil, defense, and security company business. I guess gentrification takes hold in the most unexpected of ways.

We returned to the parking lot, where Shane, Ali, and I waited for Chris to arrive. Chris, as Shane explained, was another member of the security team, and tonight was his last night in Erbil, where he worked for three month stretches before returning home.

Chris was a slight, wiry, sandy-haired Brit dressed in quasi-camo with large Gilligan hat and sunglasses. I immediately found out he was a former SAS paratrooper, who now worked for three month stretches in Erbil, managing security on the oilfields. Based on his terse demeanor, and clipped phrasing, I’m guessing Chris saw a lot of action and probably killed a lot of people in his day.  I would not mess with this guy at all – even with his slight stature. Chris, moreover, was the only person I have ever heard use the phrase, “I’m not at liberty to say” – and actually mean it – when I asked him about how many dog handlers patrolled the oil fields. Every time he mentioned a time for something, as well, such as the departure of his flight early that morning, he referred to the event with Zulu time, such as “I’ll be at the airport at oh-three-fifty.” His main advice to me: “I’d stay out of federal Iraqi territory, if I were you.” He then proudly recited that Kurdistan, in terms of terrorist attacks, statistically, was safer than Spain at the current time, a fact that, no doubt, I’m sure, his hardcore security measures helped bring to fruition. It was Chris’ last night in Erbil, where he would return home to the Canary Islands, where he went scuba diving, and said his ex-girlfriend watched and took care of his house while he’s away. “Oh, that’s nice!” I said in response. “Yeah, it’s a great arrangement,” he said wistfully. I thought about asking him whether he still got to sleep with her, but kept my mouth shut. Knowing Christ, upon hearing such a lascivious question, he’d have me in a sleeper hold within seconds, with a Ka-Bar poking into one of my carotid arteries.

Ali dropped Chris at his apartment. Before dropping Shane at his apartment, he and Ali gave me a quick tour of the area, which, again didn’t feel very Iraqi, mostly, because it was the predominantly Christian area, Shane said.  Shane also pointed out a great expat bar/restaurant where, for 20 US dollars, you could drive racecars around a track. Normally, I cannot stand expat bars – usually filled with drunken, foul-mouthed Irish people, kids from Villanova for whom this particular study abroad program was the only one that had no language requirement  and whose lax scholarly requirements provided an opportunity to drink nonstop, one creepy old Dutch guy with a turtleneck under his blazer, who tries to talk to much, much younger girls, and convince them he knows the location of a much superior party. For some reason, there is always one such drunk guy. But – with racecars, and being in Iraq, this expat bar intrigued me. We also stopped at a hotel, where Shane inquired at the price for a room for me. Upon hearing the response of 180 dollars per night, Shane narrowed his eyes, furrowing his bald pate in incredulous response, asking what on earth for what 180 bucks paid. “Wireless internet,” the suit-clad man at the front desk responded proudly. Shaking his head, Shane muttered, “too expensive,” and we left.

We then drove to Shane’s apartment in the Christian district, where he was picking up his car, to meet his wife, and later everyone would join for dinner. Shane said I could tour the building, but was not allowed inside, because of security purposes. He told Ali to make sure he gave me his cell phone number, in case of emergencies, told me to sit up front in the SUV, and pulled the seatbelt down for me, before bidding goodbye. I thanked him profusely – the man had, after all, saved me from camping in the bushes by the airport. One of the nicest people I have ever met – unassuming, casual, and in his mild amusement for my unprepared traveler predicament, strong in his efforts to make sure I had a ride, knew where I was going, and even that I had things to do in the evening.

It was then me and Ali, he piloting the manual transmission Toyota, and me, in the passenger seat, cruising the streets of Erbil, Iraq, just like I do every day. We began chatting, freely, easily, at first, about school. Like most everyone seems to be, I stunned Ali with the cost of my premedical program, and almost caused him to drive off the road when I told him the cost of an American medical school. In Iraq, university, and medical school, are mostly paid by the government, amounting to a cost of maybe 2,000 dollars a year. We soon stopped for gas.

As I stepped out of the Toyota into the fierce evening heat, I couldn’t tell if it was slightly ironic, or not, to be getting gas in Iraq – such a pressurized epicenter of oil controversy of the previous years. I couldn’t stifle my chuckle when I asked Ali where this particular gas came from. “Turkey,” he said. Mulling the irony soon disspated when I had a moment of existential simplicity – holy shit, I thought. I’m getting gas in Iraq. As I’ve mentioned in previous trip reports, while I love the siteseeing, museum going, and popular-route walking, I have a particular love for fitting into the everyday and quotidian. As I’ve said before, the richest and most profound travel experiences come from when I get to sample the everyday life of a citizen – where do I purchase my office supplies? A spark plug? An industrial-sized tin of cocktail sauce?  Those experiences make me feel as if I am truly there, and not just some temporary itinerant with a passport and a hotel reservation. Now, I was purchasing gas (well, standing around while Ali fueled the car) in Iraq. Goodness gracious.

Now fueled, we returned to the car, and continued our conversation. Ali, only 26, had a degree in hotel management, and had before working for Shane’s security company, had a job translating for the US Army in Bagdhad. His parents still lived in Basra, which, he assured me, had become much safer since the outset of the war.

Ah, I knew we would most likely get to the war at some point. I told Ali that I was a senior in high school when the war began, and we, as students, had attended war protests and walkouts, and marched like a bunch of quasi-hippies up the main streets in San Francisco, waving peace signs, blocking cars, interrupting the flow of traffic, and evading walls of riot police. “Yes,” Ali said with an earnest smile. “I remember seeing all the protests in the United States on television.” Here, Ali said, Bagdhad was getting better in terms of safety, government, and infrastructure, but was still quite dangerous. To compound the issues, he said, Americans, once greeted as liberators, were no viewed as simply having an aimless direction for the country, as placing federal Iraqi territory into a state of stagnation, with little progress over the past years. Again, I had to confront myself with a moment of existential lucidity – I was now discussing a war, literally happening just a few hours down the road, with a lifelong inhabitant of the country.

There were, of course, constant reminders of just how close the war stood to our position:

With just a few turns, one could be in Baghdad in four hours from Erbil. To me, that reality seemed truly eerie and simultaneously impossible – as if it simply couldn’t be true that I had parked myself in the north of a country whose south remained embroiled in battle, a battle I had only ever watched from 8,000 miles away, in the US, in the media. The roadsigns for Bagdhad almost seemed just pieces of phantasmagoric imagery.

The talk shifted to the perceptions of Erbil. Ali drove, pointing out the massive pockets of developments in the new, modern, western style apartments, reminding me that only security and defense personnel could ever afford such a place. Most people in Erbil, lived in modest apartments, with rent closer to 400 dollars a month, with decent chunk going towards utilities and internet, leaving little to save. ATMs, Ali said, as we drove towards one of the few machines in town, were just only starting to catch on as a viable method of currency storage and transfer. Most all transactions, still, Ali said, were conducted in cash.

And, sadly, we will end abruptly there for the night. My sincere apologies – have to do a ton more tonight to get ready for the next week of traveling, and then have to be up early for a busy day tomorrow. Stay tuned for the next sections.

Part II Begins Here!

We continued to speed towards another higher-end hotel, at which Ali said I could find a working ATM. With our already loose and easy conversation, I decided to raise the fact, a bit triumphantly, about how friends and family expressed skepticism at my desire to travel to Iraq, and worried even further at my insouciance with any ostensible safety concerns over traveling to Iraq. People warned me in a varitey of ways, from empassioned (if even a bit angry) text messages imploring me not to travel to Iraq, to Facebook messages advising me not to become decapitated. While I concede I had moments where I questioned my decision to travel to Iraq, not in a manner where I would actually considering canceling my trip, but simply shaking my head in a stunned fashion at the somewhat, uh, unorthodox travel decision. Overall, though, I admit I wasn’t too worried about safety – especially with Chris Guillibeau’s article I read shortly before departure on travel to more tumultuous countries. On Erbil, he said, and forgive me if I paraphrase just a touch, “No one will bother you, and you will be perfectly safe. ” It seemed, I told Ali, that people almost overreacted to my travel plans, and simply would not be consoled by the idea that I planned to visit the Kurdish region, and area not involved in the war since the first week.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “When people from the company visit, they want armed guards, and armored cars.” He shook is head. There existed absolutely no need for such alarm and caution, he said. Moreover, the Kurds are very proud of their country, president, and safety record, and just how little their region has been involved in the fighting. Erbil, as he mentioned before, is slowly growing with outside commerce, bussiness, and visitors to match the demeanor of its populace, with housing complexes, companies, and neighborhoods proliferating more highly than ever before in the past years. The country just hasn’t, however, really embraced the concept of the ATM. I was about to visit one ATM machine of about two in the entire city.

In the late afternoon light and elongated shadows, we pulled off a main road into quite-full parking lot of a glistening hotel, a sparkling piece of evidence of recent development. Its modern, if not too aesthetically pleasing, design reminded me of the Intercontinental Hotel in Tashkent, another recently built hotel in a developing country, the edifice seemingly trying to just promote a pastiche of Westernism and globalization, while at the same time exhbiting all of the cheer and architectual prowess of an interstate office park. The lobby of the Erbil hotel  felt the same as the Intercontintal in Tashkent. After passing through a metal detector (which, no one seemed to be manning or monitoring), I stepped into a high-ceilinged, slighly dimly-lit, and densely furnished lobby, that seemed quite obviously bereft of soul, and as if every appointment was simply selected out of a pre-determined set in a catalogue and installed like a row of tract houses. In both lobbies, it felt as if everything, from the rugs, to the couches, to the plants, was coated in plastic, or perhaps, Teflon, to try to preserve an upscale-shiny-sheen that apparently the hotel needs to manifest to cater to UN contractors and security specialists willing to fork over 350 dollars a night for the apparent air of safety (read: unmanned metal detector) and the palliative feeling that so many unadventurous travelers need as a reminder that no matter how far they travel from home, and no matter how different a culture, hotels can still look the same and provide the same insipid sterility that they seek, thousands of miles away.

Luckily, the ATM worked – one machine quickly giving me that oh-so-wonderful fright that I suddenly have no money in my bank account (hey, a little money is still some money), when its screen reported severely that it could not dispense American dollars. Luckily, the machine dispensing in the local currency spat out a few crisp bills. I only pulled about 80 bucks, seemingly quite sufficient for just about a 24-hour stay in Erbil. I did not want to pull too much, and risk having to leave the country with my precious American dollars tied up in a surplus of local currency, and have the person working the currency exchange window laugh or pretend to be asleep when I tried to change money to American dollars (the experience of the uprorious cackles and paroxysms of derisive laughter from the person working the currency exchange booth at the airport is still vivid ihen trying to change my remaining stack of Uzbek Soum in Tashkent back into ten US dollars last spring). Ali assured me I could change money in the bazaar, as if even my asking of such a question of currency exchange location was so utterly simplistic and obvious. Where? I thought? Were there stands? A currency exchange office? Where in the bazaar? And, most importantly, where the fuck was the bazaar? I made a note to ask later.

We pulled out of the hotel into slighly heavier evening traffic, the Toyota SUV chugging in and out of lines of cars. As we drove, I tried to ask about offering some money to Ali or Shane, or at least paying for gas. Ali shook his head, almost offended that I had even asked, claiming any payment was supremely uncessary. “Well, you’ve been so helpful, you and Shane, I’d be stuck at the airport without you,” I stammered again. Ali shook me off once more. “You’re a guest in this country. And now, you can say you have friends here.”

Frankly, when I travel through more developing or rebuilding countries, I’m always so damn impressed by people’s relentless and unabashed altruism, and always so damn ashamed at my inadvertent skepticism. Yes, of course, in developing and rebuilding coutnties, there exist hordes of people happy to screw and scam you with what appears to be relentless and unabashed altruism, but in some of my favorite and most meaningful of interactions, there have been times where I have met people, most notably in Erbil, and in Romania, that simply give without attachement, pretense, or thought of receiving something in return. In traveling through Romania in early 2007, my friend, Ryan, and I, met a group of social workers with whom we became fast friends, and with whom we spent most of our time in Bucharest. One night, they offered to take us to dinner. Ryan and I refused at first, bawking at their offer, and tried to fork over money for our share. In turn, our Romanian friends seemed to take umbrage that we, apparently, would refuse their kind gesture, and at that point, questioned our refusal. Inadvertent skepticism, I reason. This idea that someone would never, ever, ever simply offer something, or give something away sans conditions or stipulations simply does not exist in America. If someone seems too nice, one immediately wonders where one will be screwed, scammed, or possibly thrown in the trunk of a car, robbed, and left for dead in a ditch. We’ve become so cautious, as a people in first world countries. Now, I realize my examples aren’t always so extreme, but they seem to manifest themselves in this fashion that I should always expect to pay for a service abroad. I wasn’t skeptical of Ali, Shane, or company, but then again, I wasn’t expecting to receive anything for free, either. But, no. True generosity does exist. Once again, I found myself incredulous at how much my new friends seemed to care for my safety, well-being, and favorable impressions of the country.

And, again, it never fails to impress me, either, how people somehow mistake the servile and obseqious attitudes of some hotel and airline employees, working for wages in the name of customer service guidelines detailed in a corporate handbook to pander to those with elite status, as authentic manifestations of human kindness. Take a chance, and find an authentic interaction.

As we continued to drive, we talked openly about our potential futures and aspirations, with Ali telling me he’d like to use his hotel managment degree to open a five-star restaurant and hotel. “You should do it!” I cried enthusastically, my eyes widening at the prospect. Ali did not share my overly-apple-pie-laced sense of America can-do optimism, of simply taking charge and, though it sounds cliche, following a true aspiration (I guess I felt something similar, myself, when I shed my former life as an English major to study pre-med in a post-graduate program in New York). “How?” he replied. He continued to explain – practicality and financial considerations constrained practicality and optimism like a vice. I shut my glib mouth for a moment, and let the lesson fueled by my own ignorance steep for a bit. Soon, we found the wending city center, packed with people and traffic, and Ali began explaining some of Erbil’s layouts, pointing out a neighborhood only filled (and I mean filled) with doctors’ offices, main government buildings, the direction to museums, how to catch a taxi, and finally, after some circling, and asking for direction, the main citadel across the street from my hotel.

Part II will continue!