The Center of Democracy!

Alrighty!  Am in Athens now and love the city.  My hotel is in the old section and I can walk to all "ancient" settings.  Thankfully this morning I bothered to look at my itinerary - I thought for some reason my flight was at 6:20pm but when I looked it was actually 10:30am - hustled out of there and was actually up at 7am so I made it in time.  Two totally different settings - really enjoyed Istanbul, but am loving Athens.  Tired, but when I arrived I still managed to walk for several hours and at least tour the Temple of Zeus (right across from my hotel) and drink some wine and hang out in the Plaka district which is the old section and right around the corner.  Enjoyed some Greek wine, bought a few gifts and then had a mushroom risotto on top of the hotel with a spectacular view of the city and the Acropolis!

So I get here, upack (room is fabulous) and walk across the street to see Hadrian's Gate and the temple of Zeus - turn around and Snap! The Acropolis is right behind me - LOVE when that happens - I didn't even see it until I turned around! While I was in Istanbul, I purposefully just started walking and was literally lost in the city.  Walked for hours and started to smell spices - turned the corner and walked into the middle of the Egyptian Spice Market - where I wanted to end up.  I love being lost!  It's the best way to discover a city - keep the map handy, but just follow your instincts and see all the things hidden in the alleyways.

I am totally whipped tonight and hope to get a good night's sleep.  One thing about living in Afghanistan is that when you leave is when you realize how exhausting it is to live there.  Although you get used to all the rockets, mortars and gunfire you tend to forget that it causes not very much restful sleep. Tomorrow I am spending the day hiking the Acropolis, Mars Hill, etc - certain to be a cruel mistress, but I can't wait.  I have spent so many years reading and studying ancient Greece that to finally see it - up close and personal - is at least a two-pantie-shield experience!  I'm laying on my bed now and can see the columns of the Zeus Temple from the bed - this is really fantastic.  A travel companion would be perfect - as you travel much differently when alone - but I'm still enjoying the hell out of myself!  The Jewbilee should be here with me...

Acropolis

My hotel is between the sets of columns on the left

This is a Roman Bath in a ditch on the street

My first meal here in the Plaka District

Ruins in front of an ancient Greek church - there is a cat in there on the ledge

Hadrian's Gate on my way back to hotel

Drinks of the day - Greek wine, tea and cappuccino - I totally forgot to steal an espresso cup from Turkey which means i will have to lift two from Greece to add to the collection.

It's the Journey

Blue Mosque

Blue Mosque

Hagia Sophia

Topkapi Palace Park

Ancient wall within park and old architectural artifacts

Kitties are everywhere!

Wow - what an adventure it's been so far since I left KAF!  Currently in Istanbul and am absolutely loving it.  My hotel is in the old section and walking distance from the Blue Mosque, bazaar, spice market and tons of outdoor cafes and street markets.  I have currently been awake for about 40 hours straight due to my travels, but will hopefully sleep like a rock tonight. 

There's a huge park - Topkapi Park- down the street from where I am staying.  Within the park are many museums and the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque are on the edges of the park - absolutely beautiful and interesting to see.  Maybe I can write off my trip as "research" for park planning in another Muslim country - hmmm...  Just been walking and walking today, listening to the prayer chants over speakers while enjoying the sites - totally unreal!  Tonight I am headed down the street - which is pedestrian only by my hotel - to enjoy a Hookah bar and some more Turkish food which I'm loving.  Tomorrow will be the spice market, cisterns and Grand Bazaar and then off to Athens for a few days.  This is really becoming the trip of a lifetime.  After Athens, I head to London to visit one of my old friends, then Bruge, Amsterdam, Munich and back to Dubai before I return to KAF to begin my new job.

OK, now for the awful start to my trip - which will soon become humorous, but not quite yet as it's too fresh of an experience. I flew out of KAF on a C-17 without much incident - still happy and footloose!  Get to Manas AB that evening, go through in-processing and then discover that they did not load my luggage on the plane.  They promise to do the next day, but don't and I wait until 4 hours before my flight out of there before it finally arrives on the last flight of the day.  During this time of no showers, I am issued linens and sent to a huge clam shell tent to sleep on a bunk bed with another 100 or so women AND the lights never go off.  The added bonus is that the latrines right across from the tent are overflowing and backed up - did find much better ones the next day.  This begins my stretch of no sleep.  I did meet a ton of fun people at the bar/hangout on base to enjoy the two beers a day you were allowed to consume.  That was a plus!  I also had an $8 dollar manicure and an $11 haircut at the salon on base.  It looks like an $11 haircut too, but anything was in improvement.  I had my second hair salon experience with a stylist I was barely able to communicate with because of language barriers.  This became readily apparent while she was washing my hair and I noticed a spider crawling in hers - I tell her (also because I'm scared to death it will drop on me) and she replies with a smile..."yes, yes" and then the water temp is changed from warm to scalding, leading me to believe she does not have the slightest clue what I have said - and it certainly wasn't "please burn my scalp off with the water temperature".  Finally, one of her co-workers tells her because she did overhear me and the poor gal almost had a heart attack - which is the appropriate response to one being informed there is a spider in your hair.  All in all, nice ladies and an interesting mix of the typical Kyrgyzstan citizen - either Asian or Russian -  and all Russian speaking.


So I leave for the Bishkek airport at 1am on Monday morning to fly to Istanbul.  Am dropped off at the loading dock in the back of a truly dilapidated, Soviet era airport building and escorted through the basement (that had so much mold everyone was coughing their guts outs when we finally got out of there) to the check-in.  I'm with one other military guy who is flying home.  Make it through the ticket processing and my bag is checked for the flight.  Then I go through passport control.  This is where it gets really *&!#$@ stressful.  This other guy and I are the only Americans and nobody speaks English except for maybe a few other passengers - it's still not that fluent.  They split me off from the military guy and let him go through - I am then detained and held in a holding area because of "passport issues" - which was either the only English term they knew or the only term they wanted my to know they knew.  It is basically communicated to me that i am not boarding my flight or allowed to leave because of my passport issue.  My bag - which I've only had in my possession for a few hours - is on it's way to Turkey without me.  They stand around, won't let me stand up, approach the desk or basically move/interact with anyone for about 2 hours.  Every time I do one of these things - which I continued to do frequently - the military police would run over to subdue me to keep me seated.  No explanation, no idea what's happening, no longer have my passport because they took it - sense a really bad situation.  Needless to say, I am privately freaking out, have nobody to call because now I'm off base, am fighting back tears of rage and frustration.  I'm also exhausted and trying to keep the Irish temper at bay so that I don't make a bad situation worse and end up in jail - I can only imagine what that would be like considering the condition of everything else there.  Finally, about 15 minutes before my plane leaves, they bring some guy over to translate their demands which was basically about $100 in a cash "fee" (bribe where you and I are from) for them to approve my passport.  I couldn't cough up that money fast enough.  So basically, they held me and my bag hostage until right before the plane took off to get money from me - and as the gentlemen who translated informed me... "not to make issue of it".  I had 2 hours of the most intense stress on top of being sleep deprived, filthy and contained in a shit hole. I will not return to Bishkek anytime soon.  Being tossed out in front of the Afghan airport - outside the wire - when I returned to KAF from Thailand was much more preferable than this experience.  Maybe the message here is to avoid traveling in any country that includes a "-stan" in its name.

However, all is good now and I'm finally beginning to relax!  It's all part of the adventure and will be an interesting story to tell in a bar at some point in the future.  Certainly taking adventures on your own in foreign countries has its challenges, but still worth the experience!  I have excellent internet now too so I plan to post on the blog much more frequently while on my travels.  Hope you all have an excellent start to your week!

Drink of the day/night - wine, Turkish tea, wine, Turkish coffee, wine ... you get it...

The Final Week

Let me tell you, I have had some pretty long days this past week and they will only become longer this upcoming week - my final week working here planning military bases.  Not only has the worked slowed in general - thanks to us being so good at it - but my personal workload is non-existent because I am OUTTA HERE!  On or around the 18th, I out-process at Manas AB in lovely Bishkek and then hopefully can spend a few days in Turkey (or somewhere) before I end up in London where one of my besties has lived for the past two years.  I've never been to either place and much fun awaits in London with a friend I've had since my wild 20s - we were once housemates, then neighbors and then stopped living in packs - I have a whole collection of fun memories with this particular buddy and I cannot wait to see her in her own habitat.  Let me put it this way - neither of us could probably ever run for a political office due to the amount of fun we had in "olden times".  I am very much looking forward to this mini-break before heading back to begin the new position with a totally new company.

As for the new job, as usual I am driving myself crazy wondering what it will be like, where exactly I will live and how I can impact the project in the best possible way.  This has resulted in me being antsy, checked out, impatient (I had visions of homicide this morning watching people not wash their hands before headed into the DFAC - something we are required to do to keep the ick at bay) and lost in the whimsy of upcoming travel adventures.  In short, I cannot wait to get the hell out of here and escape living with a mass of people - the majority who appear to be listless functioning idiots,  or dopey man-childs - for just a little bit.  Seriously, I don't know where the Army did it's most recent recruiting, but they are totally dragging the bottom of the barrel at this point (markedly different than other Army units that seemed just fine in times passed).   Since this most recent group showed up the base is a trash bin, common areas reek of body odor and they seem to have no clue - just shuffling down the middle of the road, throwing their garbage down and apparently unaware of the purpose of showers and deodorant.  I might add, the majority of these people live on, and will never leave, the base - it's not as if they've been out in the field for days, etc.  It's amazing how much your tolerance drops when you are so close to leaving here.

So - the leaving also means packing up my things.  I cannot believe how much I have accumulated in a 8 x 10 foot space, but it's looking like 5 storage boxes and then some random trash bags filled with loose items.  In my defense, things like blankets and pillows are space hogs but coveted at the same time - so are shoes.  I also apparently have another mouse, or seven, being that I found a good deal of mouse droppings which were not present two weeks ago.  That would be explained by the fact that I could have driven a truck over my mousetraps and they still wouldn't have gone off.  They somehow became pretty much stuck in the "set" position and therefore ineffective.  So now I don't even care - they can run all over the place, nuzzle me in my sleep, set up a circus - they are on their own to do as mice will.  One. More. Week. ... of living in a tent.

Well the new job is making me a little nervous at this point - something I just need to get over.  Jitters are common with new positions, but working here adds a whole different dimension - the safety factor or at least perceived safety factor.  While I become pretty used to helicopter rides, errant gunfire and rocket and missile attacks, I will now have to get used to what will most likely be frequent convoys in up-armored Toyotas, foot patrols through my parks and to an occasional village to meet with community leaders, and working off of base with the local Afghan government.  These are all things that literally 1000s of people do throughout Afghanistan on a daily basis and without much concern.  Seriously, there are so many civilians working over here directly with the Afghan people and government - it would amaze you.  So I try to keep that in mind when I consider what I've read in the news reports the past few weeks concerning assassinations of local government officials and the very sad story of the abduction and subsequent murder of the Scottish aid worker from DAI.  I think I am paying way too much attention to things like that and need to get refocused - fear is not your friend here as it can make you react badly to situations you are confronted with on a pretty regular basis.  I have also not been afraid since I arrived here and now is now time to start.  I think most of what is driving this is the new job, the change in duties and who I will be working with.   I know my company is not well served by putting us in extreme danger.   I will also have military escorts or private security and they will most likely greatly reduce our time in the field if things are too dicey - just like they do here as we've all been on a travel ban the past 8 - 10 days because it's getting pretty violent out there.  This new position will simply become my new "normal" and will take some time to adjust - like anything else would. 

Speaking of nastiness and war - there is often an upside to the crazy.  Last night I sat outside on top of a bunker and watched all of the flares being set off to mark positions.  We fired several missiles from base at something and then the jets were just screeching around - fast and low.  The overall effect was simply beautiful and a weird contrast because you knew what was happening but it all looked so choreographed and pretty.  In addition to the stunning night skies we get over here, it was also a crystal clear night so you could see the outlines of the errant desert mountains from the light of the flares.  Just amazingly cool to see.  It's the little things, right?

Well I am hoping that when I wake up tomorrow that I've somehow redeemed myself with my Fantasy Football scores - I have been creamed the last two weeks and need to turn it around.  I'd also like to wish my brother and his wife a Happy 11th Anniversary - their wedding in Key West was a blast!  My niece has a birthday in 11 days and I think the rest of them are having successful school, sport and friend experiences so far this year.  Go kids!  Hope the rest of you all have - or are having - a great weekend!  Can the Bengals redeem themselves after losing to Cleveland last week???

Drink of the Day - Hot Cocoa - it's a brisk 82 here today!

A Special Place in Hell

I just couldn't resist a quick commentary on three people so totally disgusting that I had to create a "special place in hell" post because I can't stop thinking of either situation.  The first involves Pastor Eddie Long, who took such a hateful stance in preaching about the vile nature of homosexuals and how all were condemned to hell is now accused of taking sexual advantage of young men in his parish - after years of grooming them - and convincing them that he was their "spiritual daddy".  Apparently the ticket to heaven involved massages and sex - what an asshole.  Way to use the concept of God as your bully pulpit.

This is yet another "man of God" condemning a way of life that they themselves practice secretly and in a most despicable and predatory manner.  People like Pastor "spiritual daddy" Long add to the prejudice and misinformation that continues to make gays a victim of violence and ridicule and to suffer the denial of basic rights and recognition.

Take candidates #2 and #3 who thought it would be funny to secretly videotape a gay roommate's sexual encounter - who by all accounts was an extremely shy and private person - and then broadcast it on the internet.  They actually tried to do it a second time as well. Tyler Clementi committed suicide three days later.  Why anyone would think something like that was an innocent prank or couldn't possibly end up the way it did is beyond me.  I know that those I mentioned are innocent until proven guilty and that there is more information than what was made available in the news, but I still cannot contain my contempt and total disgust of these three individuals - who, by the way, all appear to be members of minority groups themselves.  You would hope that those who have probably suffered personally from ignorance and prejudice would have the capacity for compassion or at least the restraint from behaving like assholes and hypocrites.

I do not intend to make the Hillbilly Wino blog political, but i was so disgusted as I followed these stories on the news this week that I simply had to mention them.  I also think everyone has the right to their opinions and feelings on the subject - these are simply mine.

Let's hope we don't have to have too many "Special Place in Hell" posts in the future, but in my opinion, these three should get front row seats - in the heated section.

I'm going back to my Sobe water now - Out!

A tree grows in Afghanistinkistan ... and Pomegranates

NYT Article on Arghandab District

Arghandab District

Hello fools!  The Hillbilly is in an extremely good mood this week because I am now officially beginning a new job at the end of the month.  One that appears will be vastly more interesting with a company that does all kinds of things all over the world.  This is a happy moment and I plan on enjoying it!  I am set to begin at the end of October.  Many, many things will change here for me including what I do, where I do it and potentially where I'm living.  If you recall, I currently live in a tent inside the compound where I work which resemble a construction storage yard - our planning team is attached to an engineering and construction Air Force unit, so that's not so shocking but it is dirty and loud.  My tent is also directly under a rocket and attack siren - this all equates to not much sleep and a paralyzing fear of whatever you imagined touched or crawled on you in the middle of the night - and of course there's the mice...  However - cue the Jefferson's theme song - the Wino is "moving on up" to at least a fancy container, with a window and a bath and shower inside the same building - can I get an "Ah-men-nah"- it is Sunday here after all. 

I will be working in the Arghandab District of Kandahar Province assisting them in planning their parks.  I attached a pretty good article I found at the top of the page.  The State Department, USAID and my new company - which is funded by USAID for the projects here - all work basically on the same projects together.  From what I've been told, I will be working with the Afghan District Mayor and local community leaders on this project.  Should be very interesting as they would like me to try to do some minimal economic development within the parks in hope of generating some income to support the maintenance and upkeep.  One of them has a huge pomegranate orchard and a shrine. I really like pomegranates but have never quite mastered eating them.  They get all over the place and are a lot of work for the few seeds that I'm able to get out of it.  I am probably doing it incorrectly - I digress. Apparently there is a river that runs through this region where the Taliban control one side and the parks are on the other.  To date, the Taliban have left the parks alone since so many citizens like to gather there and I'm hoping it stays that way.  I have no idea if I will be expected to wear a burka or cover my head, but "when in Rome..." - I will do whatever lessens my chance of a negative outcome and increases my safety - clothing wise that is.

If I am assigned to work from KAF, I will be living at the lovely Hotel Kandahar pictured here - "Ho" is a key part of the term here because I understand this hotel also does a pretty lively prostitution business - isn't that fantastic!  Anyone who knows me well knows I have a continual fascination with prostitutes and wanted to write my dissertation - which I never did - on research based upon the classification of prostitution hierarchies and using those as neighborhood indicators for redevelopment.  Great idea! Well, I never did that so instead I get to potentially live in a hotel where they apparently do a thriving business.  I will make certain to bring the mattress cover my dear old Mom sent me -  you can count on that!  The hotel is constructed of many RLB containers that have been arranged to form a building and finished out so that they resemble rooms.  I once saw drywall in one and it was pretty nice.  It is also above the Dutch PX which is full of Bose equipment and other fun electronics which have been a weakness of mine for years.  The British compound is around the corner and it's right next the the Afghan Bazaar where I go to purchase my collection of pirated DVDs - so it's pretty much heaven compared to where I am right now.

So it's either living on KAF at the Ho-tel and working right off base at a small ANA(Afghan National Army) compound OR living at Camp Nathan Smith - which I have oddly been planning - in Kandahar City and working at the Arghandab District Offices with the Mayor every day.  I have also included a lovely courtyard picture of CNS which does have a small greenhouse and orchard that the Afghans living there built and maintain - Green Thumbs!

 CNS also happens to be the place where they have a weird little swimming pool that they use to dually enjoy swimming and pump water for the fire station.  We have corrected the smoking and bubbling sewage leak and removed the incinerator that I am convinced also burned bodies while the Taliban had a prison there (previous blog post).  They also have good ice cream and that's a plus.  This is where the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) is also headquartered of which my little project is a weird part.  Apparently in the future, they are planning to rebuild and resettle us back in a private compound within Kandahar City - the last house there blew up (thanks to a truck loaded with explosives) in April and caused everyone to spill their drinks that evening while they were knocked to the ground.  I'm guessing they will greatly improve the compound the next time around so that this little event doesn't repeat itself.  It will only be of interest to me if my new contract is extended or they put me on the PRT team after my contract it complete.  SO! That's all I know at this point, but I'm all about it.

So that's my news!  Other than that, it's Sunday here and I'm enjoying the day.  We had a Commander's Call last night that included a nice cookout and they gave me a very nice send-off which I though was quite cool of them.  I also listened to the new commander's speech which was incredibly motivating. It did remind me that I have been part of something very unique and unusual and that I'm part of making these outpost safe and operational for the missions to succeed.  I'm not so much into the war, but I am into at least supporting those who are here having to deal with this mess - I didn't come here because I was "pro" anything, but now that everyone here is smelling the proverbial "shit" I will at least try to get the stink out.  As for the topic of poo - congrats to my brother and sister-in-law for what sounds like a successful potty training of my nephew - who, I might add, congratulates himself and yells "we did it" after each success (when he's by himself) - then waves good-bye.  A true gentleman in the making.  I have been doubled over laughing reading about it.  On that note, I'm off to enjoy a day of reading and endless DVDs, with a few iPad games thrown in.  I hope everyone has a happy and safe weekend!  Go Bengals and I hope to redeem myself this week in Fantasy Football!

Drink of the Day - the Wino's going to go out and have a milkshake!