MCC Marine. “Fear God, act justly and dread no one.”
Philadeliphia – Antwerp (10 days), late August 2009.

Espana – Madrid, Toledo, Sevilla

On July 24 and 25, 2007 New York state bar examination will take place. Soon after this date, I am planning a bicycle tour from Palermo, Sicily, driving along the coast, crossing to the mainland, and visiting Napoli (Pompeii and Herculanum), zigzagging to Rome and Umbria. We will take about two months to explore Italy by bike. In preparation for it, I will post updates of our plans, background information of our travels, and of course updates of our Giro d’Italia itself.

John sighed. Mary sat as always during this hour of the day at the top of the hill between the cypresses on the rock she always used to sit on, pondering it seemed, judging by the stale stares at the descending distant sun. John did not speak to her while she glared at the horizon, afraid he was of a mother’s tears. The sun beat down on his face, a drop of sweat ran over his forehead. After weeks on foot, one morning Mary had refused to travel further without apparent reason. She had laid her hand on John’s face and said: ‘No further, dear child, no further. Here is where we will find peace.’
John had protested: the swamp, the city inhabited with hostile enemies, eager to throw another stone at them. But Mary insisted: ‘Fear not, John, we are home at last.’

The first two nights they slept under the tarpaulin that John had tightened between the trunks of two small cypresses. They were sheltered by a heavy rock on the backside. He was convinced that Mary would change her mind again once she had rested enough, then they would pick up their belongings and catch a boat to one of the small Islands before the coast. They would be isolated from the mainland spread of uproar of the local population and the suspicious scrutiny of soldiers trying to root out any hostilities of the indiginous population. But on the third day, Mary again had called upon John, and solemnly spoke: ‘John, my son has come home.” At those words John felt as if he actually had arrived at these settings, not as by miracle, but simply by foot. There and then he would pop up from around a bush and smile at them with the same tranquil expression on his face as always. But of course, that was impossible. “It is time for us to prepare ourselves for our own reckoning. Here we will prepare our home,’ she continued and he understood she was of course speaking metaphorically.

It had been months now, almost a year, since they had left Palestine. They had been chased out of Jerusalem practically: ‘False prophets! Blasphemous dogs!’ And no one had paid a higher price than Mary’s son, whom they had tortured, humiliated and nailed to the cross among common criminals, betrayed by his own people, these Philistine goldseekers. They had split up, each to go their own path, this was safer they had decided, John would look after Mary. They had headed up North, to the great city of Ephesos, and from there they would head out for the Aegean isles, of which there were too many for people to search for them in pursuit of a few gold coins. But the road was far and brought not much more than hardship for forlorn immigrants, refugees that is they were! Without land, without a people, without his brothers! (more…)

Apollon felt entrapped, enclosed, yes caged here in the street where he could walk freely, where everybody passed him by, disregarding him, and yet, this multiplied indifference, like the carelessness of the hunter for its prey, that stared at him from every angle he turned, not just stared, but negated him, denied him what made him free, his thoughts, this very same freedom had him trapped. It was cold and drizzling, it was already June however. Hundreds of free people, that is free of autocratic rule, because looked at each individual closely, none of them were actually free, free, freedom, this word, this abstraction, did it ever really exist? Who invented this word anyway, what was it suppose to represent, free, being unbound, without obligations, attachments, expectations, that is absolutely lonely, deserted? Yes, he was free in a sense, in the absence of meaning of the word, if you didn’t think about what you actually meant it was easy enough for him to say: I am a free person, I could go wherever whenever I want to go. But the reality of the fact was, he didn’t, he just stood there, thinking, but his thoughts had no real purpose. No purpose, that is, his thoughts were free, without meaning, without thought, barely perceiving the entrance of the Park Kultury station, behind those odd lost souls standing without purpose as if waiting for someone before the rounded facade. Soap bubbles appeared and splashed apart. A densely clothed woman, throwing her arms back and forth, busying herself demonstrating colorful soap bubbles toys in the form of pistols, pistols, as if to threaten him, but before they could wound him, they splashed in thousand parts and dissolved into the air, soap bubble particles must be everywhere. (more…)

So finally, we are connected to the world wide web: Priviet Mir! During in my stay in Berlin I already discovered that apparently simple matters always have odd hooks and bolts attached to them. These oddities are so evident at home that there’s not a second lost in worrying about them. In Berlin, you need a bank account in order to get an Internet connection, but for a bank account you need to register at the local municipality, both requiring an advanced level of German in order to wrestle yourself through the bureaucracy. And in the US you will be able to do practically anything with a line of credit, id est a credit card, thanks (?) to the highly developed banking system. Well, given that in Russia there was no such thing for a long time and the current system has its limitations, I was amused to find however that cash does the talking here, and gets you everything.

A car, satellite television, Internet and … what else. Consumer loans are becoming a hot commodity very fast. 2006 Is the year of car loans, credit lines that are available within thirty minutes, and shopping loans are the driving force behind the growth of Russian private banks. But private banks are highly monolithic with small branch networks, and most foreign corporations depend on foreign banks complying with international banking standards. And because risk is high and consumer banking underdeveloped, cash is the bullet that allows you pay without risk, meaning you buy services prepaid. The system is actually pretty user friendly and it will be interesting to see if there prepaid services will hold once the consumer banking system establishes itself more firmly. (more…)