--Thursday, 01 June 00--
The Travails of Travel
I hate traveling. Why do I do so much of it? Like the chicken who crossed
the road, I have to get to the other side. Being there, on the other side,
I like. It is just that everything you have to go through before you can
"be there" is hardship and misery. Travel consists of lines,
deadlines, cramped quarters, fitful dozing, and wretched food. But until
they perfect the "beam me up Scotty" machine, there is no alternative
to extended stays in crowded airports and air tight airplanes. Oh, and
airports and airplanes are great places to catch colds and god knows what
else.
It was rainy when the A330 took off on yesterday afternoon. After banking,
it headed east over Lake Michigan in the clear air between two layers
of clouds. I looked south and I could see the tops of the John Hancock
and the Sears Tower poking through the puffy white clouds that were raining
on the city below. It was an eerie view, like a scale model being packed
in cotton batting for storage. Certainly my life in Chicago was on hold,
everything, that is, except the rent checks.
I checked on a To Do list I had written just before returning to the States.
Of the nine items listed, I had accomplished only two, to buy a lug for
a watch and to have my newspapers restarted. And the latter I reversed
just before I left.
When is midnight? No, that is not a dumb question. When you are traveling
overnight, is midnight when it's midnight in the city you left (probably
the time on your watch)? Or is it midnight when it's midnight at your
place of arrival? Or is it midnight when it's midnight on the ground below
your plane (the one time they only tell you on the newer models of aircraft)?
I asked this because I know you worry about important things too.
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I can't understand these travel people. For my return flight I was explicitly told that you cannot get from Skopje to Chicago in one day so I had to overnight in Vienna. When I picked up my ticket in Skopje, the travel agent casually remarked that the Macedonian national airline (having a national airline is one of the ways you reassure yourself that you ARE a country) had an early morning flight to Vienna that connected with the United flight to Chicago -- and that my ticket was issued in a fashion that made any change impossible.
For my return tickets to Skopje, I made sure that I
would be able to take the one day trip to Chicago and they booked me through
Zurich to Skopje. They told me that I would have a three hour wait in
Zurich and I assumed that that was necessary. However, during my tedious
three hour layover in Zurich, I watched as two flights left for Prishtina
and two left for Skopje. Why couldn't I have been on one of them? If I
had been on the Prishtina flight, I could have left about two hours earlier
than my flight to Skopje and then avoided the two and a half hour drive
to Prishtina. This would have gotten me to the Grand Hotel almost four
hours earlier. The answers to such questions are not to be found on this
earth -- or at least in this travel agency.
At the duty free shops in Chicago and Zurich I shopped for Grand Marnier
which from my extensive research appears to be completely unavailable
in Kosovo and Macedonia and perhaps elsewhere in the Balkans. At the duty
free shop in Chicago I saw a bottle for $37 which happens to be MORE than
the price I pay at a local liquor store near my apartment so passed it
by, hoping for better luck in Zurich where, as it turned out, I got a
$21 liter for myself and some fancy cigars for George. This marks one
of the rare times that I got a good buy in a duty free shop.
The flight to Skopje was as mundane as it was short and I was picked up
without difficulty and driven to the Grand Hotel. The road to Prishtina
seemed far less exotic and only slightly more potholed than the first
time I rode it last March.
When I arrived at the Grand, I discovered that Mother Theresa street was
now one way between the Government Building and the Grand Hotel. Wow,
a change! And it had only taken a year. Maybe there is hope.
--Friday, 02 June 00--
Slept well until 5:30 and then I was wide awake. The weather was clear
and crisp, very invigorating. I would need all that vigor for the work
that lay in the weeks ahead.
I went to office and met George, Tony, Alan and the local staff. It was
a pleasure to see them -- or perhaps it was just jet lag.
George, Tony and I walked to the Barents meeting in the Library of the
Government Building.
Tonight Smile and I visited an apartment that I might rent. I had asked
Smile to look for an apartment for me and he had come up with a nice possibility.
The only drawback that I could see was that there was no bed per se but
couches that pulled down to turn into beds. How comfortable are they?
The real drawback is that the owners have offered the apartment to two
women who won't answer until tomorrow so I don't really know if it is
available at all.
There is an interesting problem in renting here. Is the apartment Serb
or Albanian owned? Due to the departure of many Serbians, empty buildings
sometimes have squatters. Does the owner approve? I doubt anyone is asking
the question or cares about the answer.
Apparently many Albanian families live in this ambiguous condition. The
destruction of apartment and homes (primarily in the villages) makes housing
in Prishtina extremely valuable.
Smile and I had dinner at Edi of pepperoni pizza -- and fairly good pepperoni
at that. Smile told me that tomorrow he would be on a bus tour with his
students. They would spend the day and some part of the evening visiting
all the major cities of Kosovo. "Our students have never seen their
country before," he said. It sounded like a good trip for the kids.
More Menu Items You May Not Want to Order
Cheateaubriand on Horse
Gordon blue - Cream cheese, beef ham, prickles
Frighten Yellow Cheese
Well, I am back in the thick of the food struggles again.
Joe
A Virtual Tour of Kosovo |
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