Tales of Timor-Leste - Part 3

Going East: Dili --> Baucau --> Com --> Walu Beach --> Com --> Dili




Early Monday morning (meaning: noon) we headed out on a five-day tour of Timor, armed with our much beloved white diesel tank, nine litres of water, various kinds of food and drink calculated to last a day or so, a minisucle map of Timor-Leste in our guidebook, and some vague recommendations of where to go and what to do.

The drive out of Dili is the same we had taken to the beach a few days earlier: after heading towards Jesus, you pass the “strip” of beach restaurants, wave happily at the Bangladeshi UN soldiers in dashing beige and robin’s-egg-blue camouflage uniforms guarding Ramos Horta’s house (though I can’t imagine what landscape they wanted to blend into with those babies), put your car in first gear to inch up the steep slope behind several massive trucks covered in people like a giant human chia pet, and you’re on your way. It’s got to be one of the more beautiful drives I’ve done in a very long time: a winding narrow road is cut into the hillside, threading its way through emerald hills. Above, the mountains are shrouded in mists; below, the ocean glistens off to the horizon in the deepest blue. White beaches are visible here and there, and the traffic isn’t heavy. I’m driving the first leg, which means that, per our agreement, I’ll likely only be able to appreciate the scenery on the way back, as this time I am so concentrated on the road that every second I take to steal a glimpse at this astounding beauty is the one second likely to lead me into a pothole at speed, or be the one second I find a massive truck barreling down at me. The road is pretty good, but a perfect surface can easily become a massive hole, a complete missing section, or the tricky gaps which seem to lurk in the shadows. Holes in the shadows are almost impossible to see unless you’re barely moving. Then there is oncoming traffic, goats, cows, chickens, and water buffalo on the road. It’s an obstacle course in some areas and a breeze in others. I drive only as fast as I can see, which hits a maximum of 80 kph, mostly hunched over the steering wheel to peer under the tinted section which I suspect was intended to supplant sunglasses, but mostly just obstructs our vision.


On the road


The coastal road is interspersed with stretches directed inward, through dusty villages, banana trees and mangrove swamps supposedly hiding crocodiles. We climb and sink, like giant breaths gaining and losing altitude. For ten kilometers the road is an arrow: straight and smooth. Shortly afterwards it becomes linguini noodle, thin and twisted, and we become James Bond’s martini: shaken, not stirred.

Somewhere before Baucau (130 km from Dili), we notice the engine is acting weird. Occasionally the power steering goes out, usually around steep corners. Shortly thereafter, this loss of power steering is accompanied by three idiot lights of unknown meaning and various colors. At least it’s not the oil light, but they remain a mystery. A kind of rattling commences at some point, followed later by a high-pitched whine, almost as if our horn were stuck (think Little Miss Sunshine). We call home and try to limp on into Baucau, which we are able to without further incident and only moderately worsening symptoms, where we are supposed to be looking for the workshop of the Bishop of the Diocese. Since we have zero Tetum abilities, we cruise around a bit cluelessly, our car rattling along, taking a few moments to sit and contemplate and plot our further progress. We turn to Peace Dividend Trust, an NGO who makes it its business to know everyone’s business-es, that is. They compile business directories and also provide matching services, so if you need 100 kg of soybeans in Los Palos or a goat in Viqueque, you can call them and they will find someone who has that. More pertinent for us, they know who does or sells what in Baucau, and they will either know our shop or know a different one, so we find their office on the main drag and they helpfully provide us with directions to a guesthouse and an informative map.

Despite the map and everyone’s best intentions, we never end up finding the workshop of the Diocese, instead landing at a shop of a tiny but competent man. M. explained our problem in Portuñol, and thankfully the symptoms were easily evident upon the mechanic giving our ride a go himself. He climbed barefoot up onto the bumper and more or less completely into the engine compartment, where he sets about busily dismantling something. M. goes in search of a cola and I ensconce myself in the trunk, waving at schoolkids as they pass and hoping nothing serious is the matter. Finally, the guy comes grinning back to us, holding up what is quite evidently a broken screw, which he had fished out of the depths of our engine compartment; somehow, he had known where to look. His enthusiastic dismemberment and reconstruction of or enginy bits cost the grand total of eleven dollars, the amount a white person would reasonably spend on a meal in Dili. Our host said we were gouged. Oh well.

Glad to get that checked off our list. Driving away, it was clear that the problems with the power steering, the rattling and the idiot lights had been alleviated, so we settled down for dinner and bed. Early in the morning we headed down to the beach in Baucau, which is not in Baucau but rather quite a bit outside and below it. There was, of course, barely a soul as we got down there, and we spent a good bit of time splashing around in the clear waters. Driving back up the hill, however, we were confronted again with the persistent whine from the day before. Thankfully we’re still in Baucau and can go see our mini mechanic if need be. We park the car in front of the house and lift the hood experimentally, leaving the engine running, but it’s hard to tell where the sound is coming from. But after we killed the engine we realized the whistling was coming from the radiator, and after we let it cool off we were able to refill the poor thing, which desperately needed it, and were able to be on our way, and the whistling was n’er to be heard again.

From the terrace of our little café where we had brunch, we had a good view over the old town of Baucau. Much built by the Portuguese, Baucau bosts a long street lined with shops, cafés and a market, upon which our mechanic and our café were both located. On one side is the former Mercado Municipal, a giant construction in (I guess) sort of neo Romanesque style, reminding me of the tomb of the unknown soldier in Rome, but much much smaller. And also, sadly, burned and dilapidated; the structure, cutting a handsome silhouette and gracing the cover of our map, had seen better days. Below the Mercado were the former gardens and their former fountains, and all of this a bittersweet memory of other days, yet beautiful still.

From Baucau we headed out to Com, which is pretty much the end of the road. It’s a hamlet boasting a handful of guesthouses and a giant shiny resort with overpriced rooms but (thankfully) cold beer. I hope the place fills on weekends, because we were the only white people there. We settled on one little guesthouse boasting a two-room bungalow (of which we had one), a broad porch with several chairs, and a location directly at the water. Hordes of screaming kids were perched like birds on a wire on a big driftwood log, and the occasional family of pigs would wander by on the beach. Fishers came and went. As soon as I went in the water I was surrounded by a pack of little girls, Agnès, Angelina, Maria, Dora. They take turns trying out my snorkel (failing utterly to grasp the concept, instead diving too deep and filling the snorkel with water), asking me questions in Tetum. We counted to ten in English together. Whatever I did or said, they did or said.

In the evening, sitting at the seawall and reading, they came again. They’d been enthralled by M., spending a good half hour hiding behind the fence, watching his every move and giggling furiously every time he glanced in their direction. Shyly they gave him a giant shell as a gift. Recognizing one of the little girls from before I played the pied piper, walking in patterns or along the wall with a string of little girls in my wake. They serenaded me with songs and generally had a good time.

The next morning we headed out to the beach behind Tutuala, which involved taking the coastal road up into the hills beyond Com. It looked like a road that went absolutely nowhere, but in a land with so few roads, the fact that one existed meant that something had to be on the other end. We were less sure, however, when the paved track gave out and left us with a muddy two-track seemingly leading into more nothing than before. We passed a couple of the traditional houses, narrow and on stilts, almost like a tree house in size and form. We couldn’t figure out how anyone got into them. The roofs carried a necklace of shells; it seemed like the houses themselves were like tall sentinels, not necessarily sentient but nevertheless present.


A traditional house

“You remember how to change a tire?” M. asks me. Somewhere between Lospalos and Tutuala, a gentle fwap-fwap-fwap-fwap told us we had a flat, so we pulled over in the middle of the village and set about finding the tire iron, the jack and the handle. We get the spare off the back, but as soon as we make a go for jacking up the car, the entire village, it seemed, had assembled, and a few of the stout and stalwart young guys appropriated our tools and set about changing the tire. First the jack wasn’t sufficient to get the car up high enough, leading to a creative construction involving beams of wood and rocks to support the undercarriage enough for them to figure out how to jack it up higher. Removing the lug nuts was also not simple, and at first they were turning in the wrong direction, but soon all was sorted out and fixed, with an entire assembly of small kids watching the process. When we looked like we might be getting out money or something to thank them with, the “leader” held up his hand, saying only, “no” and shooing us on our way.

Tutuala is a tiny town perched on a hillside, overlooking the sea. On top of the hill, where we thought the road continued on down to the beach, we instead found a kind of villa. It looked abandoned, and the outbuildings were actually abandoned, giving the place a haunted feel. Dilapidated gardens spoke of better times, and tethered horses grazed where once there was topiary. Why did no one live here? Who owned this place? It had, with no exaggeration, a million-dollar view: behind, the tree-covered hills and mist-covered mountains; before, in 270-degree panorama, views of the sea and distant Indonesian islands. Not that Timor-Leste really needs rich foreigners, but the spot was perfect for a luxury villa, and easily reachable if one adds a helipad.

With the strong sense that we could count on the locals in case of any further problems, we set off to Walu beach. The only problems with counting on this aid were the twin facts that (a) we were driving out of civilization into an even more sparsely inhabited area, meaning the odds of someone running across us was slim, and (b) we had just used our only spare tire, which belonged to the few remedies available to our immediate disposal. And to top it off, the “road” down to Walu beach should not be called a road. It’s basically a strip lacking in trees and undergrowth, hugely rutted and covered in rocks. It’s even slower going than the road to Hatubilico, and at 8km, it took us a jolting good half hour to cover the distance, and all the while as we are bouncing up and down so much that you’d want to cling to the “oh shit handles,” (as my family affectionately terms the handles in the car) to avoid concussing your head on the ceiling. It’s hard to give an adequate report of how terrible this road is. Some people have reportedly gotten out and walked because they couldn’t handle the ride up or down. The last stretch was relatively smooth and straight, which I enthusiastically bounced down before coming to a complete halt before the tree which had fallen across the road, blocking it completely. Someone had helpfully beat back the undergrowth enough that we could drive around the tree, but no one had bothered—or had wanted—to cut the tree itself.

Down to the good stuff: Walu beach. Imagine white sands four or five meters deep, picturesque rocks jutting out of deep blue and turquoise water, cliffs or rocks or shoreline gracing the edge. Close your eyes and really imagine it. Then take a look at the pictures and realize it isn’t just hyperbole. It was beautiful, spotless, untouched—and empty. Paradise for us alone. We found our “eco-resort,” which, contrary to our expectations, did promise to be able to feed us, and made off for the beach. M. took a nap so I was on my own for a bit, splashing about in the surf before finding a suitable rock to lizard on. Somewhere off to my left, a big darkish thing was in the water a few meters from the shore, which I initially assumed to be a log—until it moved. I was too far away to really see properly what it was, but I had heard quite a bit about Timorese crocodiles, of which there are both salt- and freshwater varieties, so I wasn’t too keen on finding out what it was. When M. eventually showed up and went for a walk, his first order of business was taking a closer look at our moving log. So he sets off down the beach, and I watch. When he gets somewhat near to whatever it is, he quickly turns around and begins jogging back, looking over his shoulder every now and then. What IS that thing?

An ox.

There was an ox, or a water buffalo or however you want to call it, wallowing in the cool waters near the shore. A perfect beach, and the only bather is an ox.


Walu beach near Tutuala

It turns out that the eco-resort, or this area in particular, also boasts a few lovely and huge caves, so after breakfast the next morning we arrange to go visit them. Accompanied by our two machete-wielding guides, we reach the mouth of the cave after a brief climb, and they ask me for a dollar, which they place at the entrance. The caves are almost invisible from afar, appearing as cliff faces more than anything. The flora in this area consist of trees, low, scrubby bushes, but not a lot of thick growth. Still, it’s good there’s a trail there, which was not always easy to see amid the dead leaves. The caves themselves were a good three meters or more at the entrance, opening up in the back to five or six meters in height. Near the cave mouth are some petroglyphs dating back at least 500 years. Heading into the main cavern with a weak torch, I was able to illuminate only my next step and not much more. Every time I swept my feeble beam across the ceiling, a kind of trembling followed the path of the beam, and the air seemed to vibrate with the bats disturbed by the light.

The road back to Com seemed to take half the time of the road there, but that seemed to be the norm on our trip. We stayed one last night in Com and left early the next morning to return to Dili. Our wheels were still on, our engine still running, and the scenery still beautiful.

On the road again - Thailand part 6

On the road again

I thought I was sleeping, but even despite the pounding rain I could hear the collective gasp and feel the van tense as we braked suddenly, and swerved. A dog. The rain was coming down in sheets and I wondered how the driver could even see, much less brake for all of the curves he was taking at speed. I alternated between trying to sleep and not focus on my potentially imminent demise and staring nervously out the front windshield, but it was clear that there was nothing I could do at this point, and my fate was in the hands of what I hoped was a competent driver. Competent or no, the van a 15-passanger vehicule, the kind my parents didn't want me even riding in when I was younger because of their propensity to tip over, it had no seatbelts, it was 4 AM and pouring rain. At least the 4-AM part was to our advantage; traffic in Thailand is often more of an obstacle course than a path to a destinaiton, and the fact that we were not sharing the road with an armada of scooters and motorcycles contributed to our safety. Still, I can't pretend I wasn't nervous, but as I tell myself frequently, whether I die or not is determined by forces beyond my control, and worrying about it won't change it. During the daytime, traffic is barely controlled chaos. It seems like there are twice as many motorcycles as inhabitants, yet you constantly see entire families piled onto one machine. Stopping at a traffic light in Chiang Mai, you see a flock of literally hundreds of motorcycles, many of them with an additional person perched pillion-style on the back. Sometimes an old lady clings on feebly behind, or you see a woman returning from the markets with double her width in bags and baggage. There are also the sidecar varieties, though for many it's a kind of mobile shop, with things that dangle and rattle as the vehicle moves. The motorcyclists weave in and out of traffic, the shuttle busses stop suddenly in many places, and wherever there is a market it seems to spill out into the street. In the more rural areas you'd see, for example, a younger guy clinging to the back of the load of a pickup truck - at highway speeds (okay, most things only go 40 kph anyways, but still) - or a load almost three times the height of the truck, ballooning out over the sides and taking on almost comical proportions. And at some places there are cows on the road, which certainly contribute to the mayhem. This morning, the van was left swerving from the shoulder over two or three lanes towards the median (of an almost completely empty road) to avoid potholes large enough to serve as a watering hole.

We had all piled out of the house at 3 AM. It was strange to see everyone dressed and wandering around, looking sleepy and excited at the same time. We were off to Bangkok by van to meet the princess; a 10-ish hour drive. Eventually the rain must have let up and/or I must have relaxed, as I was able to more or less sleep for a few hours and awoke to a vision of verdant, mist-shrouded hills flanking some body of water, and I struggled between being awake and asleep. Mostly I was trying to decide if I was cold or if my legs were cramped; I'm not small and not usually dressed for air conditioning.

I feel you can judge a place quite a bit by its coffee; strangely, some of the best coffee producing regions seem to drink the most terrible coffee anywhere. Sumatra is not far away from here, yet most people drink 3-in-1 instant coffee, which I find drinkable under duress but not particularly good. Egypt was a mixture: Nescafe was widely available, and somewhat less so turkish coffee. But in Turkey: no Turkish coffee to be found, just cay (tea). In Europe, where no coffee is produced, they make fantastic drinks, which are exported elsewhere but otherwise horrendously overpriced. American coffee, much disparged, is at least mostly made with actual coffee grounds, and with the gentrification of coffee even that is quite drinkable. Thankfully Singapore has adopted the chinese Kopi, made from actual coffee beans, poured from the height of about a foot and a half (half a meter) and mixed with condensed milk.

All of that was a prelude to saying the coffee we had for breakfast was simply terrible, with an aftertaste of coffee filter and a strong actual flavor of some kind of spice. Or old coffee grounds, who knows. My friend ordered an ice coffee, which was also terrible but in a different fashion, with its own unique and terrible taste. Still, as anyone who knows me knows, I'm functionally retarded until after my first cup of coffee, so you can bet your buttons I drank the stuff. And wonders of wonders, I am now awake.

Despite the traffic and despite the terrible coffee, we made it alive to Bangkok, though the old guy was carsick towards the end, and we were again welcomed at the singer’s home where we had stayed the first night. They, of course, welcomed us with all manner of hospitality, which included an apparently famous and expensive dessert. Now, I’m not in general a big fan of jelly desserts and things made of strange wobbly gelatin, so I wasn’t too keen on the bowl of clear jelly surrounded by some kind of viscous clear liquid. I, ever curious, wanted to know what it was. The grandpa wasn’t really having much of anything to eat on account of his fragile stomache and general weakness, so Jun, the singer’s brother, told him it was good for health: “The last time I had it,” Jun said, “my wife couldn’t sleep for four nights.” I tasted it and didn’t like it, and it was happily lapped up by another family member. The dessert? As near as I could tell from the explanation, it was made from the saliva of seagulls, used in making their nests. Or something like that.

Mes vacances à Genève

Let me preface my story, as fractured as it is, by saying that I packed incorrectly. Usually, I travel light. Somehow, however, I managed to fill up my huge backpack with 2 Kg of apples (approximately 4 and a half pounds), books, running gear, one pair of pants, one sweater, one pair of shorts, and one skirt. Somehow this quantity of stuff filled the whole thing, was huge and cumbersome and strangely heavy. And incorrect; instead of the pair of comfortable loafers I should have brought hipwaders; instead of the sweater and raincoat I should have brought foul-weather sailing gear à la America's Cup (which Switzerland just won, by the way). Not to impunge the honor of my trusty raincoat; it actually held up perfectly well under several utter downpours. The stuff in the pockets did not, I repeat, did not get wet. My shoes and my single and reduntantly solitary pair of jeans, however, were not encased in raincoat and were only cursorialy protected by the waste of plastic which is my pathetic excuse for an umbrella, whose flimsy supporting rods make it look somwhat of an injured yellow bird with the water resistant qualities of a leaky bucket.

You may extrapolate from this that it rained on my trip. It did. Quite a bit, but only three days, and not the entirety of three days. There was quite a bit of sunshine and it was quite enjoyable, I just haven't been properly dry since saturday.

With no further ado, I present to you the mixed-up snippets of tripness, in no particular order and with no promise of relevance whatsoever:

1. Bookstores are good places to hide when it rains, particularly ones with CDs to listen to.

2. Breakfast on the train is fantastic; there is nothing better than enjoying fresh rolls, strawberry cream cheese and a newspaper when you're on the road.


Tchoukball at Geneva Beach 2007

3. There is such a thing as Tchoukball. It is sort of a cross between volleyball, lacrosse, basketball, and....other stuff. It has five players on a team, and involves bouncing a ball off of a net, and depending on whether the other team catches the rebound, you score a point. I spent two entire evenings watching this, watching the Taiwanese cream the Swiss and the canadians. I had to move once, though, because I was sitting in the Taiwanese cheering section, and the cheerleaders (players from the women's team cheering on the men) left me deaf on the left side. The ref, standing directly in front of them, wasn't too thrilled either.

4. Do not try to be smarter than the train company, especially if you're me and try to be clever. Me trying to be clever left me sitting in Basel for two hours until I could take the correct train. Es lebe die Deutsche Bahn.


Le Festival du Jazz

5. The jazz festival au Parc de Croppettes was really cool, even if it took forever to find. A row of bands played, including one with two fantastic duelling tap dancers á la Fred Astaire (even did a number with a cane!



6. My (very white) room shared with a Japonese ballet dancer had an incredible view of the harbor. I think my french may have been better than hers, and she's lived there a year and a half. I had to move later, though, to something more approximating a dungeon to compensate for the fortituousness I received here...

7. I am spoiled by German bike routes, where everything is signed and marked and there are lots of paths through fields and woods. Geneva has bike paths, I think four different routes, which are mostly nonexistent, or pointing in the wrong direction. I stopped to look at the map, for the fiftieth time. Except I didn't really have a map, just a general sketch of where the towns were. The route was supposed to be marked, but...wasn't. Sporadically. I wanted a bike tour, not a scavenger hunt...



8. The contemporary art museum is housed in an old factory, and has very strange installation exhibitions. No, we don't want your jackson pollock, just give us a ping pong table out of concrete that's built crooked...

9. Next to the University there is a park where you can play chess and checkers. The pieces go up to your knee.

10. I managed to mistake the WTO for a library. I kept not understanding why the words WTO were stencilled on the doors.

11. The HEI administrative building is housed in a former villa. The institute is located in a park on the shore, up near the UN buildigns. THe Leage of Nations tried to buy up all of the parks (there are four or five private estates with villas which are now parks) but one widow refused to sell. So, the City of Geneva offered to swap the LoN property for the Ariana park, where the UN is now located, and the former grounds are now parks. The villas house museums or Institute administrative buildings.

12. I visited the United Naitons. I tried to go in the delegate's entrance. They didn't let me. "Oú est-ce que vous voulez? C'est l'entrée pour les delegués" Ups... Across from the UN is....a giant chair...which is missing a leg. The symbolism is beyond me.

13. Walking at night, alone and female, didn't bother me. Except everywhere I went, the guys sitting on benches: "Bonsoir madame, ca va? Ca va bien?" followed by some stupid comment when I wouldn't answer.

14. But sitting on a park bench seems to be an invitation.... twice in one day I had someone sit down and start talking to me, eventually inviting me out for the evening. The first guy was Turkish, with quite good French (much better than mine, but I got by). His opening line: "Il fait beau aujourd'hui", and my stunningly clever response: "ah, oui, ca va. Euh, c'est meilleur que la semaine dernière...." Cool, weather talk. Fun. The second guy was from the Gambia (they speak English. He speaks English, Spanish, French, and whatever language he spoke to someone on the phone in) who asked me for a cigarette, than later says he doesn't smoke and just used that as a tactic to talk to me. Do I exude some sort of "please talk to me! I am desperately lonels!" scent? And I lied to any personal questions; in the span of several minutes I managed to create a separate false identity for myself. Usually I say I'm German, my name is Kati, and I'm meeting friends later.



15. While checking my email at the university, a guy in his forties comes up to me and starts talking to me, which turns out to be an entire speech on love, bread, and happiness based on the pretext of asking me a question (which he never did). He spoke decent German, so I got to have a Brot oder Liebe tirade until my ears turned blue and my smile fixed to my face as if glued by a four year old (sloppily, and only a matter of time till it falls off). Why me??

16. I spent a rather restless train ride from Basel to Freiburg. I passed on the first compartment cause it smelled funny, moved into the second where I was stuck with a really irritating older couple, one who states the obvious and ends every sentence with "gel?", a regional accent which just gets on my nerves. So I go back to the first compartment, sit down, and realize that the reason it smelled funny was because it was the smoking section, so I move into the second compartment, having forgotten why I left. The old woman spent the entirety of the ride plaguing her husband with inane comments in a desperate attempt at communication, leaving her fending off her fifteenth inquiry as to their arrival with the resignation of a tired traveller on a well-worn road. "Do you have the tickets" Yes, I have them. Pause. "Well, when do we get there?" At 9 55, like I told you. "oh." Silence. "You know what I find interesting?" No. "The clouds there, how they are light and dark" Mmmhh. "But you know, not really dark. What do you think?" They're clouds. "But they're dark! They're different!" (AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!)



17. Le pain, le pain, le pain non plus : My meals consisted almost invariably out of bread, yoghurt, raw carrotes, a zucchini, and perhaps a bit of cheese or an apple. Yummy, yes, but after four days I was desperate for anything cooked, anything hot, and anything that wasn't any of the above. The bread was good, yes, and better in France, but after your eighth meal of white bread and some kind of cheese (or even dry) you start dreaming of alternatives.

Meet the parents/Murphy

(one of the small castles)

Despite signs of fatigue, a lack of sleep and coffee, and an hour and a half of French I made it to the appointed place at the appointed time, locked my bike, stowed my baggage, and wedged myself into the sardine-can that would be my home for the next six hours. The car was a Renault convertable, new, shiny, and small, with all the modern comforts available in a 3 x 6 space. I sat in the back with another friend, preparing myself to have a deep and very personal relationship with my knees. We passed the time reading newspapers and books, talkig, listening to the radio, and eating cookies. Except for the declining usefulness of my legs the drive was quite enjoyable, and as my fellow backseat companion departed in Siegen (one of the ugliest cities I have had the misfortune to visit), even this became much more pleasant.

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Destination: Mümster, a city in Northern Rhine-Westfalia, known as the site of the Anabaptist rebellion (the cages are still hanging on the church!) and of the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 (Kegley and Raymond, do your best!). There is a beautiful cathedral, but because the citizens didn't like the bishop they built their shops (now the Prinzipialmarkt) facing away from the cathedral. Münster is also the site of one of Germany's largest universities, and is renowned for its bicycle-usage.

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We picked Saturday as our bike trip day, having taken the bus on friday but trusting the predictions and the sunshine. We toured two of the hundreds of small castles and forts in the region, each built with moats as defense in this hill-less landscape. Saturday was the opening of the exhitibion Skulptur projekte Münster 2007, happening every ten years, featuring large installations throughout the city. We were inteding to tour them by bike, but just as we arrived at the first one it began to rain and then to pour. We huddled in a parking garage, wet in our rain capes, and waited for it to abate before going on our way. Except it started again, and harder, and this time we were caught huddled under the trees where our rain capes promptly capitulated under the unrelenting torrential rainfall. Rivers washed around our ankles as we stood, helpless and miserable, waiting for it to let up enough for us to make it to the library, where we hung up our things, huddled barefoot in the garderobe with our cappuccinos and hot chocolates, as we decide whether or not to call in a rescue team. We eventually decide for the latter option (for reasons of comfort and convenience, and due to the uncertainty of the weather and the fact that we were scheduled to make dinner). And of course, it doesn't rain for the rest of the day.


(the first installation in the rain. I am the yellow-clad midget.)


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"He who can hear butterflies laugh knows the taste of clouds," boyfriend whispers in my ear, leaning over and wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. I give him a look, the thought crossing my mind that someone could have spiked his spaghetti with capers. "I always wanted to say something like that," he continues, pointing to the sign on the wall from which he had read the phrase. I raise my camera to take a picture; the guys at the table between us and said sign think I am taking a picture of them. I don't disabuse them of the notion. We had discovered the nifty restaurant, an Italian place, after a walking tour of town, or of parts of it. The place had an interesting business model, somewhat like Noodles & Co or Tokyo Joe's (for my American audience!). You receive a card upon entry, which you present at the counter where you order, depending on if you want appetizers, pizza, pasta, or dessert. As for the pasta, it is then cooked right in front of you, with ingredients you choose, and the price is charged on your card. Pizza lovers are given a buzzer to alert them when their pizza is finished. You find your own table to sit at, collect your drinks at the bar, and bus service keeps the place looking spiffy. Complemented by modern architechture, large picture windows and contemporary furnishings, the place was quite good and not particularly expensive.

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My friend H. who had moved to Cologne some monts previously was able to come down to the track meet on Sunday, where Boyfriend was running (he came in 8th in the Collegiate Championships) and I was accompanying. I wish she hadn't moved away.

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Münster has really cool botanical gardens. They are part of the university, free, open to the public, and have all sorts of different rain forest, desert, and other exhibits as well as a large english-style garden with paths, a small lake, and interesting plants to accompany the small palace now being used for University administration.



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There is a bar in Münster, in the Arkaden, which serves tomato juice with tobasco sauce for me and two glasses of fresh whole milk for Boyfriend. Your typical partying college kids we are not.

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I had forgotten how nice it is to have a garden, where things grow and you can pick your breakfast yourself. I appreciated the extra space a house provides; not only the comforts of a large room, a large bed, and properly chosen furniture, but also just the sheer space one is afforded, with more than the default options of (1) bedroom or (2) kitchen.

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They taught me a card game, called Set!. Cards with one to three figures of one of three shapes, colors, and patterns, are laid in a grid on the floor. The point is to find a set of cards with all attributes consistant (same color, shape, pattern, but varying in number of figures) or with all attributes differing (each card a different color, with a different shape, number, and pattern,). It was fun, better than watching TV. And I won.