Postcards on the edge. (Or is my dad just being lazy?)

I love getting postcards, although I rarely do these days.  There is something eerily-Victorian about a piece of cardboard plopping on your doormat or being flung into your in-tray (as opposed to inbox) with a photo (or perhaps several) on the front showing where someone else has been recently.

I must confess I only really send them to one person - so how can I expect to receive many, I hear you cry - and that's a fair rebuke.  But my former secretary in Singapore gets one from each new place I venture to - where there is a half-decent postal service.  I assumed that Rwanda fell into this category, but was a bit surprised when the card from my amazing trek with the mountain gorillas took 3 months to arrive.

Even if I don't get postcards through the post, I do still buy them for myself and blu-tack them to my office wall - they're such obvious and immediate reminders of wondrous places I've seen.  

This isn't going to turn into a lament of another analogue-world remnant dying out - without the digital world, I wouldn't be blogging to you all today - but I can't help feeling the memories captured by a view of the promenade, a hazy mountain, a cityscape by night (not the all-black joke postcards you sometimes see) with skyscrapers all lit up beaming back at you, or a tableau of nature in some form or another (mating scenes perhaps excepted) can't be conveyed the same way with an iPhone click and a paste on Facebook.

This all said, the thing that has propelled me to write on this occasion, is the fact that while I haven't received postcards from my parents for a number of years now, something rather momentous happened during their recent trip to France.

Each town or hostelry where my dad could get his hands on a computer and internet access, he duly reported back to me with a snippet of their jaunt around the Gallic countryside.  Thought I'd relay the exchange [with annotations, comments, explanations in square brackets]:

11th July

Title: No title
Dad:  Enjoying France - people nice.  Got your mother eating calamari - told her it was onion rings.

13th July

Title: France
Dad:  Arrived in  Lyon nothing but the best **** Hotel La Roosavelt
After a 5 *Wigan performance 16 / 37

-- 
regards Stan

[They'd been to Perpignan prior to Lyon - that's where my mother had been tricked into culinary tricky waters.  Wigan in this context is the rugby league team - no idea whom they were playing against in this five star match; Dad obviously didn't think the opposition were worth mentioning.]

14th July

Title: France
Dad: Lyon Arrived Sunday every thing closed Monday National Day same but we enjoyed the rest
Love Dad 
Me: Ah yes.  Bastille day.  Revolutionaries !  Still we killed a king way before thy did !!  Love to mam.  She enjoying it?
Dad: No National Day Bastille Day 6 May, no?
Me: Nope.  24 July is Bastille day.  8 may is victory in Europe day - end of WWII .
Dad: What ever. We enjoyed Albert 1WW lot of horrible history but we had a nice time.  We are now in Mons for 2 nights,sale home Sunday stay in Ashford the night up NORTH Monday.  We have had a lovely time great food Good Hotels, I will collapse when the C/C comes.
Love Mam  Dad .

[You notice, my mother gets added to Dad's signature at this point - although he didn't actually answer my enquiry about where my mother was enjoying herself.  The "NORTH" is a reference to the north of England and "C/C" is credit card - just rather glad he wasn't using mine on this occasion.]

[I then send a mail back saying how email is better than postcards - which I didn't really mean - and ask him if he minded if I use his mail trail for my blog.  "NO" came the rather curt reply.  I'm assuming he meant "No, I don't mind." since I'm using it anyway...]

[And then came the most illuminating of all the exchanges.]

19th July

Title: France [Methinks he couldn't quite muster up different titles, and why bother, they were in France I suppose...]
Dad: On our last day in Mons,sitting in the main square watching wedding party's going into the Reg office.  There are some sights!  One was in all white long wedding dress quite nice lifted her dress to walk and she had dirty ... plimsolls on.  Tickled your Mam.  It is rather hot going for a drink, 33c.  Love You
Mam  Dad

[Almost Hemmingway this last one, isn't it.  And not short on embellishment either, for when I spoke with my mother after they reached back home, she claimed not to have even noticed the bride's shabby footwear.  LOL.  Perhaps dad was making his own judgements and perhaps he'd already had one too many cooling beers.]

It was refreshing and comforting to be in contact with my parents as they zipped through a foreign land and while not a substitute for a postcard, it made me smile.  I could hope for a sprinkling of super snaps of their jaunt across the "hexagon" to compensate for the lack of picture on my postcard, too.  

But alas my father tends to be random to say the least in his photography subjects and all I can realistically look forward to is an abandoned crane on the banks of the Rhône, a graffiti-ridden bridge over an autoroute between Dijon & Mons or an out-of-focus shot of my mam (we don't say mum "up north") sipping a frothy cappuccino grimacing back dad for taking the pic in the first place.  That said, if I get any I'll share them and may stick one or two  on my office wall. 

Didn't meet Dracula, but had a few brushes with vampiric forces - Bucharest, a diary.

The imposing Casa Poporului - or Parliament Building

Sitting in the Lavazza coffee lounge at Bucharest airport and thinking back over the last couple of days, I would say on balance I enjoyed by whistle-stop viewing of Romania's capital city.  Sated on carbonara and sipping the remnants of a deliciously strong double espresso, I can't help thinking about the changes this most eastern of European states has gone through since the rather bloody revolution of 1989.

And if the point of revolutions is change and a new order, then Romania is as good an example as any, where it has perhaps surpassed its radicals' and militants' wildest dreams.  Tossed from side to side for two millennia, this crossing point between east and west has been conquered by almost all around it: the Romans came, the Turks occupied and finally the Soviets had the country succumb.  They all left their mark - and none more so than the Romans who graced the rolling plains from Transylvania to Moldavia and then onto the Black Sea with their Latin-based language.  Not that I could really understand anything spoken, but written down there are at least many things you can guess at.  These folk are not Slavic - and they're quick to let you know that.

In terms of leaving a mark, I was expecting the Soviet grayness to be a bit more prevalent and was pleasantly surprised to find that this isn't quite the case - with central Bucharest at least.

The old town is full of narrow winding streets, over-spilling with bars and clubs and some of the majestic monuments to 19th century independence and national pride are still standing.

The one edifice that towers above all the rest, however is the Parliament - also known as Casa Poporului.  Started in 1983 by the infamous and heinous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, it wasn't quite finished in time to receive this bloody tyrant on its purpose-built balcony, when he was strung up along with his not-so-charming wife, Elena, on a neighbouring scaffold.

A 2 tonne chandelier - actually the 2nd largest in the place

The place is a string of superlatives - and a must visit for the tourist in Bucharest:  2nd largest building in the world, 300 000 tonnes of marble used in its great halls, the world's largest chandelier (at 5 tonnes) complete with 500 bulbs and the greatest fact of all, is that no-one actually knows how much it cost to build.  The communist state back then simply commissioned curtains in the north, carpets in the west, pillaged marble from wherever and conscripted the army to build it (20 000 of them worked in 3 shifts 24 hours a day for 6 years).  One investigative journalist, however, attempted to calculate what it could have cost back in 1989 - and he put the bill at a staggering jaw-dropping US$4Bn - all this at a time when the country could hardly feed itself and basked in the ignominious delight of accepting wood from then-called Zaire to carve doors from.  Mobuto Sese Seko rivalled our good friend Ceausescu in his equal prowess for state-kleptomania.

All this said, it was rather eerie to meander through the corridors of this enormous cavern - slogged together from virtual slave labour.  It's now used to house the 2 chamber parliament of Romania, as well as conferences, concerts and even weddings - room rentals apparently start from a modest €3 000 per day (excluding electricity !).  A site on which formerly stood 25 000 houses, 19 churches and 3 hospitals - all razed flat to make room for the Bucharest Project - by which this carnage of construction was known.

View from the balcony.

It seemed a million miles away from the previous evening's laughter and merriment in the old town - where I had the good fortune to stumble on a place serving Transylvanian goulash.  Walking down  Calea Victoriei with Gucci on one side and Max Mara on the other, I felt Romania was now in a completely different world - a free-market, EU- and Nato-belonging, self-confident rightful world.

My goulash.

I only spent time in the city and didn't get chance to visit Bram's Castle or dip my toe in the Black Sea - but I leave Romania (for now) with a very positive view of the place, wishing it well with its continued journey to ever great prosperity.

But remember, please, don't make the mistake Michael Jackson did when standing on that infamous balcony - that old Nicolae didn't quite live long enough to.  It was whence he shouted "Hello Budapest".

It's Bucharest - and I'm glad to have glimpsed it.

The obligatory selfie.

 

The largest hall in all its splendour.

The hideous divine representation of Ceausescu and his wife.

A thunderstorm in Lagos

I’ve been to Lagos more times than I care to mention, but I’d never experienced a Nigerian thunderstorm.

And then this morning the heavens let rip.

The lightening didn’t just flash, it flickered like a faulty fluorescent tube-light; violently, vigorously, almost like it was vomiting out the thunder that predictably followed.

The skies were the most foreboding shade of grey; ominous, prescient; threatening more flashes and more noise; menacing and daring anyone to step outside – at their peril.

After the lightning, the air was pregnant and you could almost feel the shrinking back from the impending clang, even before it happened.

Then it came: the largest boom you’ve ever heard.  

The windows shook, and it even felt as if the floorboards trembled in the wake of the almighty bang.  But not just one bang, a battalion of bangs – almost a mini 1812 Overture in a burst of thunder – the divine canons roared and with them the rain spewed down.

Pelting and pouring, the rain gushed earthwards, taking no prisoners – I was half expecting to see Russell Crow announcing the coming of the second flood, ready to escort us with emergency lighting to the ark’s cargo bay.  But obviously, that didn’t quite materialise.

So I slurped down my last drops of over-brewed coffee and headed back to my hotel room before heading to the office.

As I walked down the corridor, which despite the lighting, was dimmer than a potholer’s cave, a new sense of malevolence came over me and I was instantly reminded of the hotel corridor from the film, The Shining.

I quickened my pace, illogically.  As I walked down the long corridor – I was right at the end ( of course) – the faces of African heroes, whom I’d gazed upon so many times before in this hotel – seem to lose their smiles, and take on grimaces and growls hurrying me on to room 106.

Julius Nyerere, Wole Soyinka, Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda, Obafemi Awolowo, Hugh Masekela, Jomo Kenyatta, Ebenezer Obey….all glaring…..in monochrome solidarity with the turbulence outside.

Their faces leapt from the photo frames and I felt their eyes piercing my back as I scuttled to the sanctuary of my room.

The storm once it passed was only a memory, but one that lingered – and the tinnitus-like ringing from the bangs of thunder and flickering bolts of lightning were kind of still with me.

I knew most things in Nigeria are bigger, bolder, louder than elsewhere - now I can add their thunder storms to the list.