Posts

Humanitarians Must Minimize the Pompousness of Their “Selflessness”

Sitting in the city center of Sarajevo, right in front of the bustling main bus and train stations, is one of the most massive gated compounds one could ever imagine in the middle of a city. Surrounded by tall white walls and patrolling armed guards in military uniforms, the compound consisting of three well-maintained concrete towers stretched well over two and a half standard street blocks on what must be some of the most expensive real estate in town. In front of the big entry gate, the golden letters marked “EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” One would normally be awed by the sheer size of the buildings, especially considering that this is Bosnia, a country where there is barely any presence of American citizens outside the few, like myself, who drops by from nearby countries to check out the well-preserved ancient townscapes of Sarajevo. But the American representation here in Bosnia is nothing compared to the grand residence of UN and NATO representatives in downtown Pr

The Value of Patience...and Good Judgment

Being on the road, the traveler often comes across situations where his own decision-making. And when the wrong decision is taken, the cost is unbelievably high in monetary terms (not to mention damages to self-confidence)...but it is those wrong decisions that tend to be, ultimately, the most memorable ones. And the same wrong decisions, by pure "virtue" of their being incredibly BAD decisions, lead to the greatest adventures ...but at the end, with the wallet all beat up, the traveler has to realize where is that fine line between "adventure at all costs" and "sound financing while on the road." Yesterday was that sort of day. The traveler planned to travel from Pristina, Kosovo to Dubrovnik, Croatia by transferring once at Podgorica, Montenegro. When the bus from Pristina arrived in Podgorica at 2am local time, the traveler, to his dismay, realized that the daily bus between Podgorica and Dubrovnik, becomes once every two days during winter times, a

Emigrants, be Proud of Your Homelands!

When I first arrived in America as a young 12-year-old boy, my family lived in a mostly immigrant neighborhood in southern part of Boston. The neighborhood school was filled with immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially the Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia, and Serbia. As fellow students of ESL classes, I spent years with them, earning American culture, English language, and talking about the homelands we left behind. And talked we always had about our homelands, with bit nostalgia, and plenty of gratefulness that we all got out. Once the Albanian told me about the view of America people had back home. He said with a certain degree of cynicism, “back there, everyone thought America is a land where money grows on trees and the roads are paved with gold...I mean, literally.” The naiveté of the comment had such a huge impact on me that six years later, it became the first sentence of a college application essay that got me into Yale. The optimism with which new immigrants appro

Celebrating Xmas: Commercialism or Culture?

Being used to the heavy Xmas decorations and cheesy seasonal songs being blasted everywhere, the traveler feels a little empty moving through Turkey and Greece in the past couple of days. Over in Istanbul, it was just another day at work, everything operated as if nothing special is happening, save for extra-busy working conditions dealing with hordes of (mostly Asian) tourists. Over in Athens, the main sights are closed for the two-day Xmas holidays, but as for everything else, the cafes, the souvenir shops, and indeed the daily routines of the common people, operated in completely normal ways. Yes, in this corner of the world, there was absolutely no catering to the Xmas celebrations happening elsewhere. No Xmas songs, no Xmas lights, not even a word of "Merry Xmas" from the locals. The reason seems rather plain and simple: Muslim Turks (obviously) do not celebrate Xmas, and for the Orthodox Greeks, their Xmas falls on Jan 7th (a fact that I did not know until I was tol

Three Things the Guidebooks Don’t Tell You about Eastern Europe’s All-around Sketchiness

Sitting in the waiting room of the Sofia main bus station, the traveler gets solicited by another suspicious middle-aged man with dodgy English and even more dodgy purpose. He asks me where I am from, jot down something on a piece of paper, then walks away. Great, just great: another day in Eastern Europe, another day of being targeted for who-knows what scams the locals can dream up. The sketchiness of some locals is just too apparent, but still simply too commonplace a problem for travel guides to NOT address them more carefully to hapless, inexperienced, innocent-thinking tourists. (1) The first kind is the most straightforward: locals squeeze foreign-looking people for money. But the methods are, from personal experiences, quite innovative. There are semi-legitimate exchange booths advertising deceptively attractive rates only to charge hidden fees (e.g. in Chisinau, every third shop on the main thoroughfare, one cannot help but wonder how many of them are legitimate, and how m

Misguided Eastern Pride and Vanity of Quickly Joining the West

On the overnight bus from Chisinau to Bucharest, the traveler started talking to a Romanian who went to visit (unsuccessfully) his love interest in Moldova. Quickly, revealing his frustration that the girl's father was against his (second) meetup with the girl, he went on a tirade against the Moldovans, who he describes as "pretty empty in the head because they are still communist over there." He went on to describe Moldova as a country "that has nothing positive except beautiful women." Yes, he is a little bit biased with heightened emotional tensions, but his sentiment, at least here in Romania, is surprisingly common. To be specific, it is a sentiment of "we" against "them," a wholehearted attempt for locals here to separate themselves from the other former Soviet bloc countries up north, even though technically, Romanians and Moldovans practically share the same language, culture, and are of the same genetic makeup. Part of the sentim