Poland (09/02 – 14/02)

My experience in Poland has been mixed, ecclectical one can say, surely short but unequal.

This was my first time in this country and sinceresly I had never been before because there wasn’t anything in it that attracted me especially.

Anyway, I was pretty excited getting at last into a unknown country for the first time in my Asian trip (and I’m still in Europe, yes).

The thing is that I hadn’t prepared anything about Poland, as I do before every trip, and with that I mean informing myself a bit about its history, culture, society, learning the basics of the language and reading about what to see in some of its cities.

But given that Poland was going to be only a temporary destination I didn't make the effort at all.

I had my train ticket from Berlin to Warsaw before I knew that my visa to Belarus had been denied, so I had no choice but going there.

The fastest route to Moscow was clearly Paris > Berlin > Warsaw > Minsk, and that was what I was planning to do.

Incidentally I made up my mind to visit Krakow, because everyone was telling me that I couldn’t miss it if I went to Poland (most of them also told me NOT to go to Warszawa).

When I found out that Ukraine was going to be my route to Moscow then Krakow was a compulsory stop strategically located. Inmediatly afterwards I realized that Slovakia is so close that I couldn’t miss it before I quit Europe.

As I wrote on the previous post the chilly wind was one of the first highlights in Poland. Apparently, I had had pretty mild temperatures even in Berlin (where it was blissfully sunny) but I had the full winter’s blow in Warsaw. I had to quickly adjust my clothing habits to work against it.

I confessed that I wasn’t interested in Poland, but in the end I found it quite appealing.

As soon as I got on the train in Berlin I was confined to a compartment with 5 Poles, not understading a word of what they were saying.

Two of this guys had a menacing appearance, weighing many more kilos than what they ought to, skinheads, and hiddenly drinking vodka on board. One of them had a sweater that said “Zero Toleransji”.

Somehow I could tell when we crossed the border because the nature seemed a bit more lifeless (?) than what winter weather causes. These borderlands looked very unhospitable, but finally we stopped by the industrial Poznan.

Later on, Polish people told me that the Poles who live close to Germany still feel someone will come and claim these territories, for they were relocated after WWII with people from Eastern Poland.

We arrived later than expected to Warsaw and because I couldn’t see any sign showing that that was Warszawa Centralna, I had to ask to be sure I wasn’t hopping off at some distant outskirt’s station.

I found myself in the middle of an underground web of corridors, with occasional stairways to the surface. I tried one of those and the daylight blinded me and all I could see was a concrete street and lots of cars on a wide alley. It didn’t look anything like any central point of reference to me so I got downstairs again. Back there I had to go with the flow, for thousands of people seemed very aware of their destinations and walked fast in these underground corridors.

Boardsigns in Polish didn’t let me know much.

I was hungry so I ordered a kebab but when I paid with Euro they told me that not so much was necessary for prices were in zloty.

Great. I had no idea Poland still had a strange currency.

I had supposed that Poland was going to be a little more in accordance to its location in Northern Central Europe, but I had thought wrong, and despite of where it is and that Slavs elsewhere consider themselves Central Europe (in Czech Republic, Slovakia or Slovenia, for instance), Poland is an Eastern European country with social and economical problems.

Beggars asked me openly for zloty in Polish on the street, which is very unusual in my hometown, to say.

Once I got upstairs and I saw the high Stalinist skyscraper in the middle of the Warsawian Centrum and thought it was beautiful. They illuminate it with greens, purples and yellows by night.

I was taught later that locals hate it because it was built by Stalin and because it was chosen among other projects that could have benefitted more the general population.

It was freezing cold outside soI headed to a modernist shopping mall nearby, where I could wait in the warm and commercial atmosphere till I could meet my CS host in Warsaw.

My host lived in a far from the centre (20 minutes by metro) new neighbourhood, full of recently constructed residental areas surrounded by high metal fences and watched by security guards. You even had to type codes twice on a numeric keypad. I just wondered what was so scary outside to be isolated from it.

My host took me to a cool gaming bar (people were playing board and card games there) and I had the chance to try a delicious ale with chocolate and coffee syrup. Not to forget the popular beer with honey. There I met a couple of two other couchsurfers: a girl from Vienna who studied History of Art, and a French IT from the Pacific colony of New Caledonia.

I thought that I had travelled pretty fast and intensely between Bilbao, Paris and Berlin, and I needed to slow down and relax, and enjoy the experience now that I was finally in a new country. And so did I.

Next morning, I didn’t bother to wake up early to visit Warsaw, and started writing and publishing to my blogs instead.

When I got finally to the centre I walked to the rebuilt Old Town. This part of Warsaw was completely destroyed during the WWII so the Communist Regime had to reconstruct it entirely, in an appraising effort to restore the history of the capital. The whole nation contributed and in the end the outcome is impressive. They based the reconstruction on 17th and 18th centuries paintings, so it is not the exact appearance of the place before the war.

In front of the Old Town, across the Vistula river, is the quarter called Praga, the same name of the Czech capital, were the Russian troops were stationed before the liberated the city from the Nazis.

There is a statue of these soldiers in front of an Orthodox Church there. Locals call this statue the Sleeping Soldiers, because Russians first forced the Poles to rebel against the Nazis before grabbing the city themselves.

Later that night I attended a kitchen party of a couple of friends of my host, who had just come from a trip in Vietnam, so I was able to learn a bit about what they saw, and their opinion about the country, some pictures, etc.

I felt lazier next day because the day was quite gloomy and rainy, so I only had like a couple of hours of sunlight in the city, which I used to walk in the southern part of it, including the Royal Park.

The best thing of the day was the pierogi I had for dinner at a cosy and traditional place.

They had an English menu for these dumplings but they didn’t speak any English. I ate a Russian one and a sweet one made of apples.

There was a Japanese girl who was a lone traveller too and barely spoke English. I had to communicate with her using my poor Japanese. She told me that she had done the opposite trip from Vladivostok to Moscow.

Saturday morning held an unpleasant surprise for me.

Snow covered the streets early in the morning, but it was quickly melting away under the sun.

I knew that a train was departing at 10:20 to Krakow but what I hadn’t realized is that the ticket I had bought previously was unnumbered, so I could have taken any train.

The problem was that the most convenient for me was that one in the morning, and loads of people had had the same idea. So the platform was crowded and we had to fight to get into the train. Many people were heading to the Southern mountains of Poland (Zakopane), with skiing and snowboarding stuff.

I was about to be left behind at the station, but finally I pushed myself into the train.

I had to stand with my backpack by the door of the wagon for nearly 4 hours, and side by side with a multitude that filled up every possible space inside (as far as I could see, the train’s seats were occupied when it arrived to Warsaw).

Everybody was having a hard time because when it arrived finally there was a loud applause from the travellers.

It was bad, and I couldn’t avoid getting angry for a while, but I forgot about it when I got to Krakow.

For the first time since I started I got no CS host, so I stood alone in Krakow, but thanks to CS I met this girl named Asia and had some chatting over Polish beers in the Jewish quarter.

I took my time in Warsaw, but because of the lack of CS contact in Krakow I regained speed, so I just spent one day and a half there.

Mainly promenading around the beautifully preserved Old Town, all surrounded by gardens and above it the castle of Wawel and its Cathedral.

It was sunny during the day, but at night the cold was hard.

Sunday was quite a lonely day and I didn’t do anything special. It was probably the lowest day so far in the trip.

I didn’t want to stay out in the cold so as soon as it got dark I stayed indoors at a local mall near the station. My thought that afternoon was that Poland was “Western enough to be hateable but not Eastern enough to be exotic”. It was unfair but I was kind of pissed off, and in a way it was positive as I still felt like near home (thanks to things I don’t like as commercialism, catholicism, etc.).

I had my train to Bratislava late at night on Sunday, which meant that it was going to drop me at an unknown station at 5:40 in the morning.

(I doubt I will be able to write with this level of detail further on, but will keep on trying!)

First leg: Bilbao – Paris – Berlin – Warsaw (04/02 – 09/02)

Here goes the first post on the road!
This first part of the journey that will take me to the Far East started in Southwestern Europe, where Bilbao is located.

My first destination was of course Paris, where I had already been with my father when I was younger.
I had quite an intense stay in Paris, full of activities and sights, thanks to my great host Gorka, a mate from Bilbao who lives there since 4 years ago.









I survived a night train with no bed from Paris to Berlin that took around 12 hours of journey, which I did on purpose so I can start getting used to spending long times in trains.

Berlin was a much more recent visit for me, even if it was in 2009 it seemed like yesterday. I had no trouble in walking around the places I easily took as already known and familiar.







These stays in Central European cities have much in common with my previous stay in London in January: big capitals, already seen, new perspectives, reunions with friends, etc. so the London trip can be considered a prologue to the Asian trip.


Warsaw was then the first unknown place I was getting to. And I really had a strange arrival, feeling totally lost in an underground corridor with lots of people going in every direction.

I didn't even know that there was no Euro in Poland so when I first ordered some food I thought prices were in Euro! But in fact one zloty is about ¼ of Euro.

Not knowing the language is another handicap I am not used to cope with, because normally I learn at least the basics so I can ask things and say hello, thank you and so, but I didn't take the time to do it in Polish, so I feel concerned that I force people to talk to me in English.


But I felt great walking around on my own, discovering the layout of a city I had never been to.
I will talk more extensively about Poland in a different post.



Cold! A little warning for what awaits me further East.
I found it very unpleasant, despite it is only 1 or 2 minus zero. But anyway, I could walk for many hours without getting indoors at any time and I endured this coldness. In any case, I am not using everything I brought against the freezing winter.

I cannot enter Russia till the 21st, so I must make time around. I am going South, to Krakow, which everybody says it's the most beautiful place in Poland, and then, given that Slovakia is next door, I am visiting Bratislava.

Vienna will also be added to the Western capitals that I have already been to and which I will visit before I leave Europe, especially to meet friends again :)

I have been meeting awesome people and old acquaintances on the way, so I can't complain.

Foreign Passport

When last week I received my passport back, together with the Russian and Chinese visas, I realized that something was missing: There is not a single word in Basque language on it.

That wouldn’t be such a failure if it wasn’t for the more than 20 other languages in which it is written.

Including not only the “bigger” ones like English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish or Italian, but also less “important” ones like Portuguese, Danish, Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Romanian or Bulgarian, and finally “stranger” ones like Hungarian, Finnish, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Estonian or Irish, some of them actually even less spoken than Basque.

My Spanish identity card has in fact all text translated into both Spanish and Basque, but when I get abroad with my passport I am forced to pretend that I am as Spanish as anyone. I mean, I don’t mind, not everyone has to know anything about the place you come from, and explaining takes time, but that is just plainly false, I don’t mind pretending I come from a uniformily homogeneous country, but that’s deceptive at least.

If Switzerland was in the European Union I am sure that Romansch (Swiss co-official language, with a few thousands of speaker) will be another EU official language, but hey, Spain is not Switzerland! Spain is a sort of a big Castile, Spanish monolingual state, looking from the outside, not a confederation of peoples who want to stay together (as is the case of Switzerland). In opposition to Switzerland, there is clearly one culture/language imposing itself above the others in Spain.

What could I do? I just travel with a foreign passport that doesn’t show my real nationality.

Last arrangements

I know that I haven't written a single word here for the whole month of January, but I have plenty of excuses... I was busy quitting my job, travelling to London and meeting cool people there, moving all my things out of my rented flat...

This will be my last post here before I depart on Friday (February 4th), heading to Paris.

After that I expect to post frequently about my whereabouts, since I bought a netbook to take with me, especially to be able to blog while travelling.

So be patient and keep on following new updates here.

For all of you who happen to know Basque too, I will be writing on a Basque language blog on BERRIA newspaper's website here:
http://www.berria.info/blogak/asiatik

Starting today I have a new haircut, a very short one for that matter, because long ago I thought it very convenient having a comfortably short hair to travel for months abroad.

Besides, I finally got today my Russian and Chinese visas, so the borders in my itinerary are open for me now, till August at least.

Talking about the itinerary, I had to change it when I was told that in order to get into Belarus I needed a real hotel reservation vouch signed and sent from Minsk, so fortunately, I am now getting from Poland to Moscow through Ukraine, that doesn't need any visa, and which I deem more interesting.

Apart from that, I have realized that I only have a two entry visa to China, each of which allows me to spend 30 days there, so I have a maximun of 60 days there, but I can only have 30 days every time I enter. This might rearrange a bit my sighting tour in China, because I will use one entry when I get from South Korea, and the second one most probably when I get back from Mongolia (after Beijing), so that won't allow me to visit Hong Kong if I don't apply for a new visa in China.

I had the last dosis of the necessary vaccines last week, and I emptied my flat (a great task), but not before I packed everything in my backpack, and I am so happy that everything I wanted to carry fitted inside!

I am going to say good-bye telling you that I already have Couchsurfing hosts in Paris and Berlin, in the first case a fellow expatriate from Bilbao and an American friend of him, and in Germany (where I will only spend one night before I take a train to Warsaw) a former host and guest.

Some dreams come true

When one year ago I decided to start writing here, this project was terribly uncertain and hypothetical.
Now, exactly one year later, I have been diligently taking every necessary step and I am about to embark on this great adventure, with only a few things to do yet before it.

I remember dreaming about this kind of trip since at least 8 years ago, while I cannot deny that Asia and many of its several cultures have exerted a powerful attraction on me since I was a child.

I am on the edge of a change in my life.

Many people have asked me some detailed explanation on the route that I will follow.
Here it is:

On the 4th of February (incidentally, the first day after the Chinese New Year in 2011) I will take a train at a local station in Bilbao, and for the first time I will travel by train to San Sebastian, a journey that takes almost 3 hours, just to enjoy the landscapes of my homeland for the last time before I leave.

Another train will take on that same day to Paris, where I will stay for the weekend, immersed in the Parisian belle vie.
Then I will head to Berlin, where I was last year for 5 days, the gate to the formerly known as Eastern Bloc.

Poland will await me then, for the first time in life, and I will indulge myself some days in Warsaw before I enter Belarus and spend some time in Minsk, capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States (including Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan), what remains of the USSR.

Yet again by train, I will reach Moscow at the end of February, and hopefully on time for the Maslenitsa (Russian Carnival).
I will meet some friends there, and stay for a week or so, and I will try to visit some of the jewels of the Golden Ring (ancient Rus towns surrounding Moscow).

Most importantly, I will then depart on the eastbound Transsiberian route, but first of all, I will stop at Nizhny Novgorod.
Some miles after that I will cross the invisible line between Europe and Asia, in March.

I will halt in Irkutsk, on the shore of Lake Baikal, but I'm not sure if I will make any other stop till I get to Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast (I am currently reading the Transsiberian travel guide and pondering options).

A ferry will take me to Fushiki in Japan (Takaoka, Toyama prefecture), on the West coast of Honshu (Japan's main island). It takes two nights to get there from Vladivostok.

I am really excited about getting to Japan, so I don't know what I will exactly do there, but I want to see as much as possible and stay possibly as long as one month there, despite it will surely be the most expensive country I will visit.
I will go to Tokyo first, and then other places in Honshu, like Osaka, Kyoto, Nara etc.
It will be the time of hanami when I get to Japan, the sakura (cherry tree) blossom, a greatly revered celebration for the Japanese (March/April).
I want to go further north, to Hokkaido island, a place of awesome wilderness and natural wonders, home to the Ainu minority.

Besides, I would like to taste the real countryside Japan somewhere, like Shikoku island, maybe.

I will leave Japan probably from Kyushu (the southern island), after visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, taking a ferry to South Korea.

In South Korea, I will travel from the South to the North (Seoul), and then take another ferry to China (Tianjin).

If North Korea allows, indeed, for there are increasing threats of war in Korean waters.


Tianjin is the closest port to Beijing, so that will be my next destination, I will land there probably at the beginning of May.

The unavoidable Great Wall will be one of my sights too, but then I will stay mainly in the North of China, Manchuria (city of Harbin) and Inner Mongolia before I get into Mongolia proper.

In the Republic of Mongolia I will try to find out what to do in Ulaanbaatar and see if there is an easy way to adventure myself into the Steppe.


After Mongolia I will return to China to see the East coast (Shanghai and so) and the cradle of Chinese civilisation, between Yellow and Yangtze rivers (Xian and so).

Going southwards, I will arrive to Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

I will finally leave China from Southern Yunnan province.
There is a boat that will take me from Jinghong (Yunnan) to Chiang Saen in Thailand, through Mekong river.
Once in Thailand (visa obtainable on arrival), I will ask the visas for other countries in Bangkok, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and India.

So far till June 2011... I won't anticipate more for the time being :)

Step by step... towards departure

This has been a decisive week, in which I am fastly reaching the point of no return before the trip.

Many progresses have been done.

I have applied for the work leave at my company (but I have yet to get an answer), starting in mid-January, when I will leave to England for some days before I start the final arrangements at home.

Besides, I have asked for the Belarussian and Russian visas at a local travel agency (Blue Planet), very expensively for there is no Belarussian embassy in Spain, and most probably I will receive them in the beginning of January.
Then, I will have to buy a new health insurance for the period May-January (9 months) and see what kind of Chinese visa I can get (I will need a multiple-entry tourist visa of 3 months length, if I can obtain it).
I have already decided to get all the other visas on my way, hopping from one border to another.


And, finally, I have bought the ticket of the train trip to Paris (only 19 €), on the 4th of February, definitely the departure day towards my Asian adventure.


On the not so positive side... I have found out that tuberculosis is widespread in Belarus, and I haven't been vaccined against that... I also read that there is no effective vaccine against pulmonary tuberculosis in adults, so I don't know, I will ask.

In fact, next Wednesday I will have to go back to Sanidad Exterior for my second vaccination against the Japanese Encephalitis.



In a few days this blog, that I started with the clear purpose of focusing myself on this trip, will be 1 year old, so happy birthday in advance!

Bordeaux, passé et avenir

I came to Bordeaux this weekend in order to find something I was looking for.
Not sure what it was, anyway.

It's not my first time here, I had already been in the capital of Aquitaine 6 years ago, within my first solo travelling.

It's strange how things can change so much in 6 years; not really the places, but ourselves, the way we see and think.
Earlier this week, while talking with members of the Basque Geographical Society, we came to the conclusion that you yourself are half of the trip, the other half being the place and the people.

The place and the people only fill half of your travelling glass, the other half is left empty for you to fill with your own thoughts, feelings, knowledge, choices and mood. Those change greatly over the time, so you always have new experiences.

I'd fancy to think that 6 years ago I was somehow a very different person, there were still many things I had to do and many thoughts I had yet to reach.

I didn't like Bordeaux that much back then.


For instance, I didn't know French.
I could manage with the basics but I was kind of isolated while travelling in France.
I support English as international language, but that doesn't mean you are going to get any further if you don't know the local language, which is unavoidable to grasp the real personality of the place and the people.

On my first trip to Bordeaux (after wandering in Brittany for some days) I met an American guy at the youth hostel, and I felt that we could share much more than what I had with locals previously.

That really struck me and I promised to myself to jump over that barrier, to break those artificial borders that separate my hometown from France.
Bordeaux is as close to Bilbao as Zaragoza is, and much nearer than Madrid.

We don't have to live back to back, and in any case, if Spain and Spaniards want to keep on ignoring France, we Basque shouldn't, because we already live at both sides of the fictional border and the cultural continuum between us and Garonne river is uninterrupted.

In short, that's what State centralism and modern globalisation carries, feeling apart from your neighbours while sharing random modern traits with people that live miles and miles and oceans away.

Knowing languages helps against that, but what could we ask anyone if mastering English is still a great challenge for many people.



This time I have met this Swedish guy whose main ability was to rap, and had a couple mind-blowing stories to tell.
He had done really nothing in life but travelling, because when he started travelling at 18 years old (now he's 28) he met so amazing travellers that got rapted by wanderlust.

He had many plans for his life onwards, like building an all-terrain vehicle with his bike where he could sleep and travel and satisfy his vital needs.


I felt like being critic with this kind of attitude (at least for the time being) because I still have a view of life in which I should be doing something productive, but something I really love and something at which I am good and feels natural to me, and besides it gives some cultural or social value to mankind.

I don't want to fall into purposelessness myself, of which I'm afraid, but I have nothing against that philosophy of travelling; I admire it, in fact, but still I think that freedom junkies are self-centered.



There is something I could completely agree with him.
That cities can be considered museums of people, and we find great pleasure from just beholding people passing on the street, doing their daily duties. It's one side of the trip discovery.

I have spent most of the Saturday doing that, promenading through Bordeaux, taking nice pictures both with my mind and my camera, so in a sense that was my task there.

The climate was colder but sunnier, more Continental than the mostly Atlantic I am used to.
It rained almost everyday for the last two months in Bilbao and I was really fed up with wet coldness.
You could see pure bliss on my face while I was walking, so much liking of what I was seeing.
I think I had a smile on my lips for the whole day.


I loved the positive mood poured out of the bleached white walls and people's laughter.
But Christmas is getting closer too, and I suppose that that cheered up a lot.

Bordeaux had a monumental and elegant air, a city of long history and self-esteem, with a hint of Britishness into it too.

Anyhow, I felt eager to integrate myself in the French ambiance.

I know there are hidden corners I'd like to discover, but I'm in no hurry, I will have time if fate provides.

I wanted to feel the city, to perceive how it breathes, and finally I did it. Short but intense.
And I like what I saw. Nothing else has to be said.



If we all learned to see everyday life through traveller's eyes, we would live in an enhanced reality... our imagination would complement what we see and every day would be an adventure.
Here's a proper way to live.

Stay healthy (if you can!)

Finally, I have disentangled myself from burocracy's (buro-crazy) net and come out victorious through my own odyssey to secure a healthy passage to next year's trip.

I knew I had to start vaccination in advance before the departure, because it takes time, and you cannot have all vaccines and dosis at the same time, but spacing.

So two months now to day D, I have taken my first vaccines.

Two weeks ago I had set an appointment at the Basque public health system, in the afternoon, so I didn't miss work time.

The place I had to go is my usual ambulatory, an eerily clean and aseptic new box-shaped building in pastel colours, where an old beer brewery used to stand when I was a child (there were plans to keep the original building as it was declared a site of historical value, but they 'mistakenly' demolished it anyway).

When I entered the doctor's office he was surprised to learn that what I wanted was to ask for some travel vaccines, because he had nothing to do with it.
So he misled me to a red-brick building that had been closed long ago and its offices emptied, despite his sincere belief that it was the place I truly had to go (it might have been once).

Then I was told that whatever the purpose (in the Basque health system) of the red-brick building had been, it was now fulfilled by a new modernist one, with a glass-and-metal surface in a state-of-the-art architecture style (pictured below).


I was informed there that vaccination before travelling abroad was a matter of 'Sanidad Exterior' (not related to 'sanity', though), a branch of the Spanish health system.

Spanish State's Health System's Foreign Office only worked in the morning, of course.

Last week I asked for a free day at work so I could go there and they would advice me on everything related to staying healthy abroad and most probably they would inject me the needed antibodies.

I went there.
It was centrally located in a beautiful 19th century palace (pictured below) on the main street of Bilbao and beside a park, but inside it had a damp odour and all was in a neglected state, dust covered and unfashionable, with Francoist-styled signboards and unhappy state workers.

One of those let me know that I needed an appointment with their doctor to go any further.

Which is why I went back there today.


I also asked them about where I could ask for public insurance cover in Asian countries, but they redirected me to a different office building, belonging to the Basque health system, on the main street, almost in front of this one.
After waiting on the queue there, they told that there were no agreements with Asian countries, only European ones, so I needed a private travelling insurance.

Some blocks away, I walked to my usual private health insurance building, only to find out that they cover me for 3 months outside EU, with a 4 months maximum if I pay 500 €, not extendable.

Hopeless, I asked at Blue Planet travel agency, and fortunately there is a private insurance that covers one whole year for around 200 €.

***

No compulsory vaccination was required for any of the countries I will go, but anyway they recommended me to travel quite protected against any unexpected (but common) illnesses in Asia.

This includes Japanese Encephalitis, Tetanus, Diphteria, Hepatitis A, Typhoid Fever and Cholera.

I am supposed to be already immune to more common European viruses plus Hepatitis B and Hepatitis A+B.

The doctor there and I had a long conversation about hygiene and staying healthy in Southeast Asia, pointing to me the most dangerous areas regarding diseases.

For instance, since there is no vaccine against Malaria, just for safety I will have to take with me some pills that have effect against it, but not 100%.
He narrated me the whole procedure in case I thought I had been infected with Malaria, pointing out that cerebral Malaria causes delirium and coma quite fast.

He asked me also to avoid all contact with toothed animals, for Rabies is widespread, and adviced me severely against mosquitoes bites, to prevent them at all costs.

Mosquitoes can transmit diseases like Dengue or Chikungunya, that cannot be vaccinated.
Besides, Dengue could be fatal if different varieties come together, through more than one mosquite bite.

After the scary talk they said I could be vaccinated against Japanese Encephalitis right then, if I paid a tax.

So did I, and they gave me my first dosis against that one; the 2nd and last one, I will have to take it on the 22nd of December.

Vaccines against Typhoid Fever and Cholera are available at pharmacies, and they're regular oral medicines, that I will have to buy and administer myself in a period of time.
The good thing about it, the doctor told me, is that the vaccine against Cholera also prevents most cases of Traveller's Diarrhea.

***

In the end, I went back to the beginning, the new ambulatory, but instead of going to the 2nd floor, where the doctor's office is, vaccination takes place on the ground floor.

There I had vaccines against Hepatitis A (1st dosis, 2nd one in 6 months, but I won't be here, so it will have to be when I get back from the trip, and then the protection lasts lifelong) and Tetanus-Diphteria (I was supposed to have been given for sure the 3 first dosis through school life, but then two more are needed, every 10 years, to complete the treatment).

They didn't want to inject me so many things on the same day, so I will have to take this last vaccine next week's Monday, in the afternoon.

Good news from Myanmar

I have been attentively following the news of all the countries I plan to visit next year.

Some months ago I was worried about the increasing instability in Central Asia or Thailand, for instance.

But just recently things seem to get better in Myanmar, little by little.

Myanmar has been suffering a military dictatorship for a long time but last week supposedly democractical elections were held.
The main opposition party boycotted the event, though.



Now we're surprised by the release of the main opposition leader, the pro-democracy fighter and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.



Changes for good, we will see their outcome.

Surely it will be easier to travel there now that the situation seems to improve, despite long steps are yet to be taken in that regard.
Many people were against travelling to Myanmar while the dictatorship lasted, because that would have been helping them economically.



Myanmar is definitely one of the countries in Asia that I cannot avoid visiting, for I have been longing to see its marvels and taste its language & culture since many years ago.

Thoughts from the West (2nd part)

As I said before, there were a couple more of mind threads to talk about after the experience in Morocco.

The Arab-East connection
I realized that in order to have a cohesive vision of the European peoples one has to take into account all our neighbours, including North African.
I have a wide view of Europe as a cultural continuum to Asia, but the abyss between Spain and Morocco is wider than expected (probably because Iberian peoples rejected all things Moroccan centuries ago and have tried to counteract them since).

But on the other hand, I reckon that it will be difficult to understand many peoples of Asia ignoring the Arab-muslim influence on them.
Turkic and Persian ones, prominently, which are spread all along the Silk Route between Turkey and China, passing through Iran, that long-desired road filled with myths and echoes, and whose cultures along are the object of my attraction more than others.

I had deliberately chosen to ignore Arabs, and had in fact chosen not to go through any Arab country on my way back from the Far East (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Emirates, Dubai, Syria, Libanon, Egypt, etc.), but from now on I will keep an eye on their culture.

Anyway, even Arabs are not Arabs, given that most people in Morocco are originally Berber-Amazigh (and a sizable population still speak the language), and elsewhere they come from other related ethnic-cultural groups that have been assimilated in different degrees, like Egyptians, Syriac and so.
It's as if we said that people in Italy, France, England, Spain, Ireland, Portugal etc. are all Latins, which it's partially true due to the Roman inspiration of the Western European countries, but one cannot leave aside the multiple local sources for these cultures in the shaping of their nowaday's psyche.


One other thing that struck me was that there are some traits of the Arab achitecture that are shared with the Chinese, Indian and Persian traditional ones (which accidentally all once belonged to the same Mongolian empire).
Seemingly, the ties between Middle East and Far East have proved stronger (trading routes, etc.) than the ones between Asia and Europe, and it arrives till Morocco somehow, this Far East influence, as if Magreb was just another piece of the Asian continent.
A side consecuence of the cohesiveness of the Arab world, probably (of which Europe lacks).


Tourism
One last thought (two in fact) I had in mind has to do with the people that travel in Morocco.

My impression was that independent travellers there become mainstream package tourists, or maybe just that every tourist is downgraded to a backpacker there, or a self-fashioned version of a backpacker anyway.

There is no medium class, people can either choose between cheap hosting & transport or top-end (riads and so), and I don't mean that cheap hostels are crappy there, for many are clean and functional (Morocco depends greatly on tourism).
The thing is that many people go to Morocco looking for a bit of adventure just next door to Europe, and these same people would never travel on the cheap side in Europe if they can avoid it.

In the end, it was not so easy to get in contact with fellow travellers.
I felt quite apart from them, an outsider to both sides, I couldn't identify myself nor with the local population neither with the tourists.


Another thing yet, it's the fact that I have travelled through a country where I didn't understand a word of what people were saying.
I didn't bothered myself much in learning even the basics, but I could read some of the words (my Arabic script was rusty).
However, it felt uncomfortable that locals spoke to me in my native language, I felt exposed all the time, but Moroccans like to speak to everyone in their own languages.
I suppose they consider that mean travellers from Western countries despise their local language.


Not understading what people say in a foreign country misleads many travellers into thinking that natives are crazy and extremely different from them.
We tend to consider that people behave oddly when we don't understand their language and so don't have a clue of what they're saying in a social situation.
But that's only the way our mind works, we tend to associate the feelings of safety and normality with the social environment we know, and so our mind plays tricks on us when we don't understand what people say.
Try looking TV (especially advertisements) and turning the sound off, and you'll see people doing strange things you didn't realize before.

Thoughts from the West*

Back from Morocco I am and for the very first time touched by the realization of the big gap that, culturally and socially speaking, the strait of Gibraltar is, narrow in measure, though.

It has been my first piece of travelling outside Europe & USA, what it is commonly known as the Western World, despite differences that may be in the East and South of Europe (my beloved Balkans).

First of all, I feel my desires to the Asian trip greatly renewed, but at the same time deeper thoughts have rooted, ones that make me doubt about my own way of viewing the world.

I have always considered that I had a fairly neutral point of view (I'm not Christian, for instance) regarding some aspects of cultural identity, but now I feel ashamed of having let myself too much into the Western mainstream, whose main focus and pulling engine is of course USA.

I have been trying to develop a common European identity, but if I fail to understand the societies of our very Islam-Arab neighbours, I'm afraid that this effort is condemned to have no success at all in setting it apart from the American way of life.

I have been trying to understand the American criollos too, sure, and this obssesive tendence of Europeans to imitate them, creating a worldwide whirpool that actively seeks to achieve what the USA has, everywhere regardless of their own root cultures.

Sometimes I feel that we Basque people are just Western citizens playing to be indigenous people, but in the end we're just too deep into the civilization mud.

Anyway, I have had some adventures in this trip, but not big ones, and what disturbs me the most is seeing myself as just another mean rich westerner walking through the mazing streets of the Third World, given that what I really appreciate are people's cultures and not their economical status which I deem in no way related to their way of life, but to other socio-economical pressures and historical international affairs (post-colonialism).

How could we improve the welfare of people everywhere without spoiling the local culture, and getting people anywhere to know that every culture is equally worth, no one is better or worse solely based on its monetary achievements.


Talking about the US, it's customary actually that I meet US travellers anywhere I go, and needless to say, they're awesome individuals (maybe especially the ones that travel far and alone).
I met a guy from Florida, of Sardinian descent, and I told him about my plans in Asia, then he said 'wow, man, you should write a book'.
Even such an experienced traveller acknowledged that what I will have to say could be worth printing.

I had a couple of threads more to write here (about muslim culture and travellers in Morocco), but I choose to write them down on a next post.



Post-Scriptum

After I wrote most of this on the bus from Marrakesh to Ouarzazate, I was conned and then food poisoned for more than one day, so the end of the trip was a bit more tricky, but fortunately I was restored just hours after the "con", and the TD "only" lasted some 24 hours, but anyway they're warnings of what I can expect in underdeveloped countries next year.

By the way, I finished reading the last book of Stephen King's Dark Tower saga, and once again I was taught that taking oneself too seriously can lead to disastrous consecuences.

* Morocco in Arabic is called Al-Maghrib, which means "the West".

A closer approach

Time's getting short and summer is almost over now.

There are new aspects in my life these last months before the trip.
Notably, I decided to rent a spare room in the flat where I'm living since February (and that I will quit just before I start travelling), because I thought that that could enrich my life experience; so in short, now I have a flatmate.

This month I signed up for several language certificates examinations, Basque, French and English... just in case, I think they can be valuable when I return (to find a job or whatever, not sure what I am going to do afterwards).

I will start Russian lessons soon, in the beginning of October, and I'm looking forward to it.

In October too, I will travel to Morocco for over 9 days, looking for new adventures closely similar to the ones I will possibly have in Asia. I won't take any plane to go there either, just buses, train and ferry, in the same fashion of the Asian quest.

When I come back from this, greatly refreshed, I will initiate the arrangements for the great trip to Asia. That will inevitably take me to Madrid some days, applying for visas. (Russia first, China second).

I have been lately thinking about getting a health insurance for the trip, but I have no idea of it works, so most probably I will ask in a travel agency (like Blue Planet).
It is very likely that I'll fall sick in one year of travelling so it's a safe bet.
Also, my flatmate reminded me that in many countries tap water is not a very healthy drink.
A friend of mine just came from Hawaii and he suggested me to use some cleaning pills that they used to obtain drinkable water from waterfalls and rivers there.


The political situation in my country is changing very fast recently, so it may be very different when I come back. This reinforces the idea that you never go back to where you started in this kind of travel.

I have almost entirely decided already to take two years of work leave instead of just one, this way I will have time to think things more all over, and search for new perspectives in life after the big trip.

One of the things I have yet to do is to contact both Berria newspaper, in order to offer them my Basque blog about the Asian trip, and Basque radio network, just in case they're interested in knowing about my whereabouts during the trip.

Jump Into The Abyss

The feeling of derailing one's life increases as the date approaches.

I am of course currently enjoying a perfectly fine summer full of activities here in the surroundings of my homeland, but I realize too that this will be my last summer here in a long time.
The unpredictability of the changes that may happen to my life after the Asian trip provokes me a feeling of an ending of the things "as I used to know them", so now it's like I am living the last true days of my current life, and whatever changes may occur, they will change everything forever, like the course of a river that alters its path once and then the stream never returns to the former.
One said that the end is the only thing that gives meaning to something, so now that is the way I feel, immersed in meaningful events.

And it is not a dark sensation, no, not at all.
Now the sun shines high, days are pleasant and enjoyable and the routine is bearable.
It's the time to have fun, to do what you have always been doing these estival days for the whole span of your life.
But summer too will end pretty soon, and autumn will mark the no returning point up to the beginning of my trip, when I will start asking visas, looking for medical insurances and spreading the new of my depart among my beloved ones that still don't know it (and won't like it a bit).

One whole year (at least) of travelling, not being a mainstream worker as I am now, is a big deal, and I know it will not always be sunny mornings and happily warm days, there will be loads of raining afternoons, sadly cold nights and lonely passages too.
I think too much about it, anyway, and most probably these matters must be faced from the heart.

This is not only the much feared jump-into-the-abyss but also the enticing walk-through-the-threshold, the gate to a different world, and once you cross it, there is no come back.

Lagman

I have been talking perhaps too much about Couchsurfing in this blog, but nonetheless it truly has given me so much, so many experiences related to travelling, that I cannot avoid referencing it here.

For instance, I could say (thinking about my last post) that Couchsurfing provides a way to exchange non-monetary values.
Because Couchsurfing doesn't use money; you never pay in cash for your hosting by this system, neither can a host ask for it.

But Couchsurfing is not free about free hosting, of course it is not.
One way or another, both host and guest pay an invisible fee for its services.
And this fee is the desired exchange of cultures, languages, travels, adventures, ideas, thoughts...

You may show the place where you live but at the same time you're learning new things of this place and from the place where your guest comes from.

It not only allows you to see your homeland through foreigner eyes (and question what you see, then), but also to observe distant places while you stay at home, imagining them as your guest narrates them to you.

Of course, in this stream of travellers going from one destination to another, stopping by your place briefly, you may catch a tip or a valuable piece of advice for your own next trip.


Sometimes, you even get a hint of taste from a far-away country you wish to visit.

This was my case yesterday, quite literally.




These days I am hosting a young photographer from Kyrgyzstan which currently lives in Dubai.
She is of Russian descent (third generation), and according to what she told me, Russian is still a very common language all over Central Asian countries (so I reassert myself in my intention of learning it).

Last night she cooked a traditional Kyrgyz dinner.

She called it lagman, but I found out that it is also spelled laghman or la mian (in Chinese), being originally a recipe from China, especially of those peoples on the Silk Road (Hui and Uighur), and it is considered a national dish in Kyrgyzstan.

It was a kind of a stew of beef or lamb, with vegetables and noodles. Definitely yummy.

I thought I could almost relish the Central Asian steppes, the dust-covered paths through the Tian Shan mountains, the craggy shapes over the Taklamakan desert, and the green meadows where horses stomp their hooves on the grass.


Also, she told me that most Kyrgyz people cross the border to Kazakhstan when heading to China, so it would be wiser going from Ürümqi to Almaty by train, and then crossing to Kyrgyzstan than my original plan trying to get through Irqeshtam pass or somewhere between these countries.

The final depart to Asia seems to draw nearer every day.

Value

I think that one of the things I love about travelling is its pure non-monetary value.

We live in a society that values mainly physical goods, that judges one person's achievements by the money s/he got, and infers related abstractions (power, wealth, sympathy, prowess, triumph, leadership...) out of the things people have, people buy, people want badly to acquire and people are told that they need.

Knowledge, skills, relationships, tales cannot be seen, because they're invisible values that require hard work to obtain, a lot of time and effort, but they're nonetheless more permanent than any of the expiring products we're constantly offered.

Things are not important... the real value lies in what we do with them, so if you don't use something it's because you don't need it anymore.
For instance, books are only containers of knowledge, their physical attributes not being important. Once I read them, I like giving them away, so this knowledge keeps on moving.

We cannot pay to get the abstractions that we want to have in our lives. We have to live in order to get them.

I know that this all sounds like antisocial chitchat, because everyone out there has thought about this, and has come to the same conclusions.
Then s/he resumed his/her daily routine.

A single minute lived within a trip worths a whole life of everyday 's shades of gray; so intense, so new all that surrounds you (smells, colours, sounds...)... it makes our brains work harder to capture every sensorial piece of this foreign world, thus effectively enlarging our memories, slowing the (perceived) pace of time and widening our understanding.

I read that too, somewhere, that the only way to make our lives longer is living new experiences. They may not be longer in actual time, but they are for our minds.

Whatever learnt by travelling is never forgotten.

Every cent spent in travelling is invaluable.

Languages

Languages, I love languages, indeed.
They're my only true everlasting love and lifelong lovers will they be.

I like learning them, writing them, listening them, reading them, speaking them.
I don't master several at all, but I like learning bits of many of them.

I hide a comforting pleasure everytime I learn a new word or comprehend a grammatical structure.

These cherished abstractions are a useful tool too. Especially when travelling abroad.

Even nowadays I make many mistakes anytime I write or speak in English, and sometimes don't grab instantly the meaning of what people are saying, but English has been so far the longest standing language in my life (apart from my mother tongue, of course).

Basque language too has been here and there all over my life, sometimes nearer, others further (now currently I'm at the peak of it).

Latin at school came afterwards. An old, ancient language which provoked me new feelings and rewarding learning.

Soon after that I started creating my first own conlangs, based on the knowledge I had of English, Basque and Latin, which in turn led me to other Indoeuropean languages (Germanic and Celtic branches, and then Sanskrit and Old Indoeuropean).
I learned some Quenya too, of course, during my Tolkien-fan years (that spanned a long time, actually).

I had also one year of French at the end of high school, but wasn't very profitable.

The quest for the origin of Basque language took me to the Finnic languages (I learned some Hungarian while travelling there with my father, and Finnish has been a favourite language for some time now), and as far as ancient Sumerian and Altaic languages (we're talking about my early youth now).

When I started university (Computer Sciences) I learned to write and read in Greek and Cyrillic alphabet, an acquired knowledge I have never lost.

Further on (still at university) I started German classes for 3 years (and managed to get an intermediate level at some point) and Japanese with a hired native teacher (the lessons were at her flat).

I did even continue studying Japanese when I went on my Erasmus to Bath (England, where I got back my ability to move around easily in English), at the local university there, and eventually I passed the exam of the lowest of the 4 Nôken Japanese Language Degrees.


In my last year in the university I took one term-long Classical Hebrew lessons, which was the most exotical (of the scarce offer) one they offered. I had never really been into Semitic languages, but it was cool enough.


When I started to work I quitted all of this. On the other hand I began seriously to improve my Basque language and marked a kind of start to my solo trips all around Europe.

In the meantime I also assisted a short course of Arabic script, but I don't keep in mind much of it.

Catalan and Gascon (Occitan languages) got my attention too, Catalan since childhood when I used to watch TV in Catalan during my summer holidays on the Mediterranean, and Gascon since I (recently) discovered that was not a dead tongue.

Last year I resumed my French learning and now I can somehow express myself in this language, but haven't mastered it yet, sure.

Apart from all of this, I have read books about the grammar of many other languages, but just for fun, no real skill gained.

Lately, last year travelling in Bulgaria I managed to ask questions, read signs and understand some of the language, and this year in Greece I prepared myself before going there reading about its grammar (which proved handy).

Now I have just registered myself in a basic Russian course in the language school here (A2 level), so I can grasp a bit of it before I depart to Asia next year (I will take these classes, roughly from October till January).

I consider it will be extremely useful in Russia, given that many people there are not very fond of English.
Besides, a workable knowledge of it will be able to help me through Central Asian countries, where it still works as a secondary language (instead of English).


But sure enough I will have to go back to what I knew of Japanese and deepen into Chinese, to easen my trip thoroughly and make it more rich and enjoyable.



Couchsurfing too has helped me a lot in keeping fresh some of my language abilities, which I greatly thank.