Change In Plans

This short post records some observations we have made in Istanbul in our first three days here. It is too early to develop any themes, or draw any conclusions about Turkey, but I thought these were interesting.

• When I drew cash at an ATM, the screen asked the standard “do you want a receipt for this transaction?” question. The choices were illustrated on screen by a cartoon of a thriving forest (next to the “no receipt” option) and a cartoon of a deforested and eroded hillside next to the “yes, give me a receipt” option.

• There is an ornamental gate at the hotel restaurant. The four handles are identical little bronze statues of a chef preparing to strangle a live chicken. Definitely weird, but I bet the chicken is fresh.

• There are manned metal detectors at the doors of most museums, hotels, restaurants, and public buildings. Given Turkey’s challenges this might make sense, but the guards don’t seem to react when someone sets off the detector. There is no search or wanding or second pass through.

• Ramadan (or Ramasan, as the Turks call it) does not seem to be observed anywhere near as widely or strictly in Istanbul as in Morocco or Tunisia. Adults are eating during the day all around us, which was a very uncommon in the last three weeks. We have even seen many adults drinking alcohol during the day in Istanbul, and not just tourists!

• My favorite: Turkey has been an official “candidate state” for EU membership since 1999, and in political circles there is no greater objective than becoming a full member. Turkish automobile license plates are like ones you would see in any European country. They are about 30 inches wide and 6-7 inches high, white with black numbers and letters. The leftmost 3 inches are a blue rectangle, with small letters “TR” in gold capitals on the bottom half of the rectangle. In every EU country, the top half of that same blue rectangle has a circle of connected stars, representing the EU itself. On Turkish license plates there is just a lonely and forlorn empty blue space. The plea to the EU member coutries for acceptance, for validation, cries out from every single license plate.

We are having a great time in Turkey. Our sightseeing in the old city (Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Cisterns, Grand Bazaar) has been spectacular. I will post something more structured and coherent after we have been here for a few more days.

This post is about the Fenerbahce vs. Genclerbirligi football match that Zola and I went to watch this evening.

Turkey has gotten very good at football, making it to the semi-finals of this year’s Euro Cup, and beating Germany along the way. They have taken the sport seriously for a long time, and have a well developed domestic premier league, with old clubs and established rivalries.

Tonight, Zola and I went to see Fenerbahce play. Fenerbahce (which I think is pronounced “fen-ur-BAH-chay”) is one of the famous Turkish football teams, founded in 1907. Even though Fenerbahce was not playing one of its big rivals (Genclerbigligi from Ankara), and the game was a 3-0 blowout, it was a special experience for us both, and it was a great father-son evening. Zola was particularly excited because the stadium is across the Bosphorus, on the Asian side of Istanbul, and it represented his first trip to Asia. He has now been to five continents at the age of eight.

Because the game started so late (9pm), India stayed at the hotel with Tallulah, watching our newly acquired Elmo DVD in Turkish on her computer, and filling in a Turkish Strawberry Shortcake sticker book.

This was the first time that either Zola or I had been to a big-league soccer match, much less one in Turkey. We were surprised by many things:

1. The security/police presence was very heavy. Zola and I went through metal detectors, and were body searched at all four of the gates we entered (I didn’t understand the tickets, and we ended up walking all the way around the stadium to find the right place. Minor Dingle on my part). Zola was particularly interested in the dozens of guys with riot shields. Every officer was armed, and we saw hundreds. They don’t appear to have much of a hooligan problem now, if they ever did have one.
2. Observation #1 notwithstanding, the whole experience was very wholesome and family oriented. Roughly 75% of the fans were wearing Fenerbahce shirts and/or jackets and/or scarves, and there were loads of kids in the crowd. Everyone seemed to participate: cheering good plays (from both teams), booing bad referee amd linesman calls. Without a trace of irony, the fans sang and chanted and waved scarves throughout the game. Zola and I had a grand time singing along, although we had no idea what the words and shouts meant.
3. The only refreshments available were bags of sunflower seeds and cups of spring water. (note to Fenerbahce management, there may be a revenue-enhancement opportunity there). At halftime, as people got up around us, Zola asked, “Where are they going? There is nothing to buy.” When we bought two cups of water they gave Zola a free candy bar, which was good, because we hadn’t gotten dinner before we went to the game.
4. Turkey is rich enough, and its football is big-time enough, that it attracts professionals from other countries to play here. Fenerbahce’s first goal was scored by a Brazilian forward (one of three players named “De Souza” on the team). Overall, there appear to be 11 non-Turks (of 27 players) playing for Fenerbahce, and 9 non-Turks playing for Genclerbirligi.
5. We could see essentially the whole stadium, and aside from Zola and me, no one left the game early. When we ran for the taxi stand after 82 minutes of play, everyone was still singing and clapping and chanting.

More about our first days in Turkey in a later post. This was a great experience for Zola and me.

This post is about our final days in Tunisia and our trip onward to Istanbul, with some extraneous Carthaginian history thrown in.

Our time in Tunisia was short, but sweet. We had intended mostly to spend our three days on the beach, decompressing from Morocco, and letting the kids have some purely kid time. The beaches were beautiful from a distance, but were deserted and very dirty and neglected when we saw them up close. Apparently the “tourist beach” was about 6km away from us, in La Marsa, but we didn’t make it down there.

So we changed plans and spent a lot of time exploring the ruins of ancient Carthage, walking the streets, and catching up on school work.

The Tunisian government has done a great job in preserving and presenting the ruins of Carthage. By wandering the physical ruins, and looking at the drawings of what they believe the structures look like, we got a sense of what the city might have looked like as the Romans’ African capital.

The history of Carthage itself is incredibly interesting. It was founded by Queen Dido of Tyre (Lebanon) in about 800 BC, as she fled her murderous younger brother. Apparently, after only seven years, they had created the city, and set about building a great empire.

By the 3rd Century BC, the Carthaginian Empire controlled about half of the circumference of the Mediterranean, Sardinia and Corsica, the Balearic Islands, and a big piece of the Iberian Peninsula. The Carthaginians had the best navy in the world (and a great geographic position for controlling Mediterranean commerce), and had pioneered efficient production methods for shipbuilding.

The rise of the Roman Empire led to the first Punic War, which knocked the Carthaginians back. Led by Hannibal, 70,000 Carthaginian troops took the fight to the Romans in the Second Punic War, invading overland (famously on elephants through the Alps) from 218 BC. They occupied a lot of Italy for 15 years, before being beaten back to Carthage in 203 BC.

By 186BC, at the conclusion of the Third Punic War, Scipio Africanus burned the Carthaginian fleet in the harbor, razed and burned Carthage itself, and enslaved 50,000 of its citizens. This was before the Geneva Convention, I guess. Reading the story of Carthage aloud from my BlackBerry (thanks Wikipedia) , as we stood amidst the ruins, looking out at the harbor where the fleet was actually burned, was an amazing “history comes to life” moment.

The Romans created their African capital in Utica, about 30 miles from Carthage, at the mouth of Majardah River. Top-soil unfriendly farming practices in the mountains caused the river and the harbor to become choked with silt, and the Romans moved the capital back to Carthage. It may be a stretch to call it an historical coincidence, but Carthage, Tennessee (ancestral home of the Al Gore family) owes its recent prominence to another man-made environmental disaster of global warming.

The Romans rebuilt Carthage into the second-largest city in the western empire, with about 500,000 residents by the 2nd century AD. African agriculture and trade were acore part of the empire’s strength. Most of the ruins and mosaics that we saw are from this period. Finally, after Vandals and Goths had ended the Roman empire, Islamic invaders captured and (once again) destroyed Carthage in 698 AD.

Aside from the history, we had a relaxing time at the Dar Said pool, reading in the gardens, and walking in the streets of Sidi Bou Said and Carthage. I wish we had gone into Tunis proper, but we ran out of time.

Yesterday morning we packed up again, took a taxi to the airport, and flew to Istanbul. Zola was delighted that we got upgraded to business class.

The plane was absolutely packed with about 250 silent, elderly people in long white robes trimmed with yellow. The strangeness of this was reinforced by the expressions of other Tunisian and Turkish passengers who were not with this group, as they came into the departure lounge in Tunis. To a person, they went to the desk and asked, “Is this really the flight to Istanbul?” Eventually we figured out that this was a group of Algerian pilgrims, en route to Mecca. Apparently they had to change planes in Istanbul for Jeddah.

We arrived in Istanbul at rush hour on a Friday during Ramadan, and the traffic was horrendous. It took nearly two hours to get to our hotel from the airport.

Now, however, we are seated on our balcony, looking out at the ships on the Bosphorous, and at Asia only about a mile away. We are off to explore Istanbul.

This long post is about “the paradox of Spain.”

For a brief, golden period in the first half of the 16th century, Spain was the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Completing the “reconquista,” Spanish Catholics pushed the Moors fully out of Spain. Empire building through marriage gave control over large parts of Europe, and the colonization of the Americas (a much bigger and more impressive event) created a source of fantastic new wealth.

Almost immediately, however, Spain began a 400-year period of slumbering decline relative to the rest of Europe, seeming only to awaken after Franco’s death in 1976.

Spain’s progress in the last 30 years has been impressive, and the country now seems firmly on the right track.

At the great risk of sounding like a “2 x 4 expert” (two weeks and four books), Spain’s history seems to illustrate some universal and intertwined impediments to success:

Impediment #1 – strong role for the monarchy, but weak monarchs. Although the crown had almost complete authority, the history books describe reign after reign of weak, highly conservative, physically frail, and frequently unstable Spanish monarchs. (Thanks, inbreeding!) One of my favorite descriptions was of a 17th century crown prince who died of “excessive debauchery” at the age of 17. Given the perpetual power vacuum on the throne, even when new royal families took over, many chronic problems (eg, bloated and tax-advantaged aristocracy, desertification) and structural tensions (eg, wildly different economic growth rates by region) went unresolved for centuries. In some cases, the monarch made incredibly bad decisions (eg, invade England in 1588), but most of the sins were of omission. Without leadership, Spain was unable to adapt to the changing world. This is conservatism at its worst.

Impediment #2 – unchecked conservative influences, in this case the Catholic Church and the aristocracy. The Church seemed to resist all forms of constructive change to Spanish society, and also discouraged broadbased non-religious learning. With weak monarchs, frequently the king’s or queen’s confessor emerged as the most powerful person in the country.

Impediment #3 – limited cohesion as a nation-state. The country grew up as a set of autonomous kingdoms, each with different economies and societal structures. Although the crown was generally unified since 1489, Spain still feels like a confederacy of small, semi-autonomous nations, governed by the Castilians from Madrid. The Basques and the Catalonians get the most attention for their separate languages and desires for autonomy, but Mallorcans still write their street signs in Mallorquin, and the Andalusians are heavily influenced by their Moorish heritage. Sports now unify the nation to a certain extent, (particularly football and Rafael Nadal), but national identity still seems loose. Most successful nation states act aggressively to unify the people through language, culture, national mythology, and shared experience.

Impediment #4 – social rigidity and lack of opportunity. Spain’s aristocrats were never put under pressure to give up their (highly tax-advantaged) economic and social privileges. Generation after generation had wonderful lives without having to do much. At the other end of the spectrum, there were very few avenues for talented, ambitious, entrepreneurial Spaniards to improve their lots in life. The major exception (ie, the biggest opportunity) was to go to the American colonies, which many of the best did, creating Spain’s greatest successes.

Impediment #5 – the “dog that didn’t bark”. It isn’t clear why Spain never had a reformation or a full-on revolution during the 400-year slumber. Maybe the pressures for change never became acute because the decline was so slow, the Church and the monarchy/aristocracy acted as stabilizing forces, and there was not a significant class of intellectuals to get the masses stirred up with Locke and Rousseau (or Marx and Engels). When the rush for change came, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it was too much and too fast, and provoked the Franco backlash. Another 40 years of stagnation followed.

Since Franco’s death, Spain seems to have addressed a lot of the long-standing problems and weaknesses in the Spanish economy/culture with remarkable speed. Joining the EU, reforming the constitution, deregulating and liberating economic assets, introducing flexibility into labor markets have all combined to accelerate growth while accentuating Spain’s positive characteristics.

After such a long delay, Spain seems to be poised for decades of growth, prosperity, and freedom, slowly regaining its position near the pinnacle of the world.

This is an exciting time in Spanish history.

This post is about the fun things we did while we were in Morocco.

Reading back through my posts, it sounds as though we spent our entire time there tromping humorlessly through the medinas, dodging mopeds, and fretting about economic development. Actually, we had a wonderful time overall, and did a lot of fun stuff.

Here are some of the highlights:

1- Camping and riding camels in the Sahara desert. We were in the “Erg Chebbi,” which means the Chebbi Sand Dunes, down near the Morocco-Algeria border. On the afternoon that we arrived, we basically tumbled out of the 4×4, sat on the camel saddles, hung on while the camels stood up (not easy) and rode off into the dunes. As Zola said at the time, “There are three reasons [McKinsey partner's kid!] that this is awesome: I am riding on a camel, I am in the Sahara desert, and I am only eight years old”

On the second day of desert camping, we got up before dawn, and rode the camels up into the dunes to watch a spectacular sun rise. Although we look cold in the picture, it was warm and pleasant in the evenings (and unbelievably hot during the day).

2- Staying at Dar Ahlam hotel near Ouarzazate. Dar Ahlam may be the best hotel I have ever stayed in. They gave us a villa which was bigger and more comfortable than our last apartment in New York (probably 2,200 square feet) with its own pool. The food was amazingly great - simple, but subtle, and made primarily with organic vegetables grown on the property. The service could not have been better - having a staff to guest ratio of about 5 (particularly when we were the only guests on our first night) made it easy for them to lavish attention on us. More important, everyone there seemed to love the kids, and to really enjoy their jobs. India and I celebrated our 14th anniversary with dinner under the stars, while the staff took care the kids. What a great place.

They had loads of board games, a great swimming pool, and they organized bicycles and donkey rides for us in the afternoons. Because Zola and I rode so much together over the summer (~200 miles) we immediately slipped back into a familiar and comfortable bicycle discussion. He treated me to a 45-minute two-part monologue on Pokemon and on airsoft rifles. It was wonderful.

3- Riad roofs. At both of the riads where we stayed (Riad Fes in Fes, and Riad Anayela in Marrakech) we spent a lot of time on the roof decks of the hotels. That is where we did our school work, ate most of our meals, dried off in the sun after swimming, played Pokemon, and looked out over the respective medinas. In both places, we felt privileged to be up there, seeing the old cities spread beneath us, listening to the calls to prayer, and enjoying being together as a family.

4- Talking to Khalid. We were fortunate to have an excellent professional guide for six days while we were in Morocco. He organized our desert excursion, stayed with us in Ouarzazate, and showed us the sights in between. Because he knows everything about Morocco, and is an impassioned advocate for his country, Khalid was the perfect person to talk to for hours. His insights and knowledge and companionship made the trip a lot more fun.

Overall, Morocco is a somewhat tough place for a family vacation with small kids, particularly staying in riads in the medinas. If we were to do it again, we might spend time on the beaches (eg, Essaouira), and would definitely spend more time at Dar Ahlam.

This long post is a summary of what we learned about daily life, as a family, during our nearly three weeks in Spain.

Overall, Spain is a beautiful, interesting, safe, and enjoyable place for a family to visit. As a country, Spain seems confident and energized. We are trying to figure out where to spend 2-3 months living at the end of our travels, and are considering Barcelona and Madrid seriously. Spain seems quite different from the rest of Europe, for a variety of deep and long-standing reasons.

Here are some observations:

1. The rhythms of Spanish life are definitely different from those in the rest of Europe.
   · Business day starts 9-10am (closer to 10)
   · Lunch starting 1-2 pm
   · Still a long afternoon siesta in many places (definitely outside of the big cities)
   · Business comes back to life at 4-5pm, and continues through to about 8pm.
   · Dinner starting 9-10pm,
   · Bed at 12-1

   Some of this rhythm is geography: Spain is far west in the Central European time zone, and the sun comes up late and goes down late.

   Some is also weather-related: it makes sense to sleep in the heat of the day. The rhythm of daily life seems unlikely to change quickly, even if it is has become impractical (ie, homes and jobs are far apart) and inconvenient.

2. Observation #1 notwithstanding, things in Spain run on time. Every train, ferry, bus, dinner, car, appointment started and finished exactly when it was scheduled. My uninformed prejudice was that Spain had a “mañana, mañana” culture, and that everything would be delayed. Not true in our observation.
3. The Spanish way of eating (late meals, tapas, café society) seem well suited to the daily rhythm of life. The food and wine are generally great. Eating and drinking as a social event seem deeply rooted in the culture.
4. Spanish adults seemed generally less warm and friendly, even toward children, than I would have expected in a Mediterranean culture. In this regard, the culture seems more like Northern Europeans (ie, a little haughty and distant) and less like other Mediterraneans (ie, warm and effusive). On the other hand, maybe people just didn’t like our kids.
5. Spanish art and architecture are distinctive and outstanding. In addition to the globally known giants (Gaudi, Picasso, Miro, Dali, etc.), it seemed that everywhere we looked we saw beautiful workmanship, style, innovation. Some of this may be attributable to Moorish influence. We heard also beautiful live music, saw great street performances, and had the sense of being in a highly cultured environment. Appreciation for refined art and beauty seems to be deeply rooted in the culture.

   Overall, the quality of life in Spain is excellent, almost independent of location and income level. This may or may not lead to complacency, but it is not surprising that Spain ranks highly on “happiness” and “well being” indicators, as well as the composite Human Development Index. Daily life in Spain is good.

This short post is about walking in the medinas of Fes and Marrakech.

If walking in the Fes medina were a game, it would be a maze, written on dusty ancient parchment, and worked through with an old quill pen. It would be played in a room that was 105 degrees, but shady. It would be pleasant, but frustrating.

If walking in the Marrakech medina were a game, it would be the old video game, Frogger. In Frogger, the player controlled a frog that was trying to cross a stream by jumping from log to log. The logs are all moving at different speeds, and in both directions.

The streets in the Marrakech medina are generally twice as wide (or more) than the streets in Fes. This means that they are generally 15-20 feet wide. In the marketplaces, the streets tend to be narrower, and to have shops on both sides, spilling out into the public space.

In Fes, there are no cars at all, and very few motor scooters or mopeds. The biggest traffic hazard is the donkeys and donkey carts, which force everyone to the sides with shouts of “Belek! Belek!” Having so many pedestrians crammed into small space slows down the pace of walking, but it is subdued and civil.

In Marrakech, the streets are complete chaos. In addition to the pedestrians and the donkey carts (fewer), there are thousands of motor scooters and bicycles, plus the occasional small car or truck. In any given minute, walking in the center of the medina, we would:

• Pass 20-30 people sitting on the sides of the street
• Pass 10-20 people walking slowly or standing and chatting
• Be passed by 40-50 people walking int he opposite direction
• Be passed by 3-5 donkeys and/or donkey carts and 5-10 bicycles
• Be passed by 20-30 mopeds and motor scooters, going in either direction, at speeds ranging from 5-30 miles per hour. Many of these vehicels are carrying two or three passengers.
• Be passed by the occasional car (one every 5 minutes or so)

As you can imagine, this much motion creates collisions and near-misses all over the place. All of the two-stroke and diesel engines also spew exhaust which hangs in the air. Young men (in particular) rev and skid and rev and skid their motor scooters through the traffic, seeming to revel in the video-game aspect of it.

We only saw two real accidents (one bad one), and within the family, Zola was the only one to have a vehicle make contact with his body. A huge, slow-moving wheelbarrow cart full of pastries knocked him into a shop in the shoe market. There were no injuries.

Marrakech is vibrant and alive, and full of people eager to get from someplace to someplace else. Our walks through the old city have been very stimulating, except for Tallulah, who is incredibly casual about it all. This afternoon, she fell asleep in the stroller for over an hour as we walked over the cobblestones. Amazing.