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In the “Countrie” — Day #0

Published on by MikaLeave a comment

UPDATED October 25th, 2019 — this is a dispatch from my cycle tour of Ukraine and surroundings this past Summer with my partner Nastia, an open project on an Autumn/Winter hiatus — check out the project page more information, and sign up for my newsletter if you would like to be notified when it resumes 🙂

Alright!

As you read this, i’m officially back on the road — and one day earlier than my latest projected departure! I’m nailing this :p

Nastia is starting tomorrow — hitchhiking — we’ll meet in Poland in a couple of days to pick up her bicycle, strap her backpack onto it, then head back to Ukraine to get the rest of our luggage and begin our exploration of the country. The working title i’m giving to this project is the intentionally mistaken translation of “у країні” (meaning, in the country), a play on words with “Україна” (Ukraine) — unfortunately, declensions in English and Ukrainian don’t quite map into each other, so i had to take some liberty 😉 (UPDATED October 12th, 2019 — as i traveled through “the country” and experienced a few of its multitudes, trials, and uncertainties, i decided to relax the definite article, settling on “In a Countrie” for the eventual project title, and leaving this post otherwise unchanged for “historical” reasons)

I have much to thank Nastia for the push to leave today — “Go” — “It’s OK, i can leave tomorrow and help you a bit more” — “Go — you wanted this so much, and now you’re ready — i’ll have plenty of time to catch up with you, i’m hitchhiking.”

It’s fitting that our journey together will start like this, and i’m curious about this little experiment — i anticipate some anxiety about whether she found a ride already — is she safe? — has she managed to cross the border? — has she even left home or is she still looking for a place to dump our last bucket of organic waste — and somebody interested in adopting the homeless container?

I believe Nastia will also be nervous — “has he been hit by a truck? — is he eating well? — is he paralyzed endlessly re-editing this newsletter at a gas station along his way?”

I’m indeed overthinking, but not at a gas station — i’m at Liubomyr and Anastasiia’s, in Drohobych!

Liubomyr was riding in the opposite direction — recreationally — “I’m retired,” he later told me. We waved at each other. This always puts a smile on my face — in Ukraine, roads are still monopolized by motorized vehicles, and i believe cyclists of any appetite are some of the few to notice each other.

While i rode the next 10km, Liubomyr rode the 30 between where we met, his turning point, and where he eventually caught back up with me. (Sorry, i should have mentioned at the beginning that you might want to have a pen and paper handy for this one.)

I was at first disquieted by the little space between him and the edge of the road. That being my first day back on the road, my cycle touring rig and i were not yet one — it will probably take a couple of riding/sleeping cycles before i’ve once again internalized the classical mechanics and fluid dynamics of a heavily — and somewhat unevenly — loaded bicycle.

It didn’t take much for that to develop into my present circumstances. I managed to explain i needed a bit more space, and a conversation started. “What’s your goal for today?” — “Somewhere between Drohobych and Sambir — i’ll look for a place to pitch my tent by the river” — “Do you have friends there?” — “No” — “It’s going to rain” — “How much time do you think i have before it comes?” — “Maybe a couple of hours?”

Should i ask this guy if i could spend the night at his place? I’m going to ask him if i can spend the night at his place. “Can i spend the night at your place?” He wasn’t quite expecting that — “Hm, let me think.” It was a longshot — “Sure — it will be better than your tent.”

Anastasiia happens to be a cycling coach. We chatted in fellowship to the limits of my Ukrainian and her English over the meal and beer they offered. I was impressed with Liubomyr’s patience to follow my pace given that he can seemingly ride at least three times faster — when we said goodnight, i learned he’s is planning to ride with me again on my way out tomorrow morning.

I couldn’t think of a more serendipitously privileged way to start a tour than this — even without my partner Nastia, i’m still not alone.

My plan for the next few weeks/months is to share weekly updates from the road on my newsletter — call it delaygram, if you like 😉 I’m not quite sure what shape this will take though. I’ll try to find time to cross post it here on the website as well, so it’s easier for those of you who may want to share it, but the priority will be the newsletter. You’re invited to sign up for it if you would like to follow it more regularly 🙂

Whatever develops, i hope you’ll enjoy it, and feel welcome to share your reaction by commenting below or writing directly to me — i’ll read and eventually respond to all of it, and possibly even incorporate some of that into my process!

It’s bedtime now — have a great week and remember to breathe!

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Featured photo: moving out!

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Blocked

Published on by NastiaLeave a comment

A guest post by my partner and, sometimes, also travel companion Nastia.

“Parô, parô, parô!! Where are you going?! STOP, NOW! You’re not crossing the blockade!” – we’re stopped by a group of angry truckers soon after we finally leave Rio.

“I just need to see my friend who’s running out of supplies on the other end. I am not going to cross the blockade,” calmy says our driver Luis.

“I don’t give a fuck. Tell him to come here. Nobody’s passing,” they demand.

Somehow, he persuades this bunch of his good intentions. But there are another four kilometers of the blockade, and we are stopped every few hundred meters “Encosta aê!” Luis calmly repeats the same thing he said to the other men before, but this one wouldn’t listen – “Encosta aê, caralho!” – the man’s eyes start filling with blood, and a hand is reaching out for a gun. “Please, just stop somewhere,” I’m begging our driver in my mind.

The night before leaving Rio de Janeiro my husband Mika and I learn that truckers went on a strike over gasoline prices and blocked major roads throughout Brazil. This caused a massive disruption because the country relies on trucks to transport everything – from food to fuel, making it difficult to hitchhike. But Mika has to be back home in Brasilia, a thousand kilometers away to give a presentation about his travels in a week. We don’t have a choice except to trust the gods of hitchhiking and kindness of the few drivers left on the road.

After several local rides, we get out of Rio and eventually find a truck who isn’t on strike (yet). He’s going where we want to arrive today. Naive of him. Soon we’re stopped by a group of enraged truckers. But Luis convinces all of them to let him get to his friend. “How?!” – “I simply knew what I was doing, and that it was right.” Unbelievable! It’s like in those movies – a cool cop calmly facing down an angry or scared young man pointing a gun at the cop. “You just need to know what you’re doing and confiar em yourself that this is the right thing to do.” Just trust yourself . . .

Luis and his friend share their food and “home” giving us some space in the cargo compartment where we set camp for the night. However, there’s one issue – I’m the only female among a mob of angry truckers, and I’m afraid to go pee. But our driver being a protective host reassures us “We won’t let them hurt her,” pointing to his machete, “And I also have something more, in case this won’t be enough,” implying a gun.

Yes, just about every trucker carries a gun because they’re often robbed. That’s why they’re not allowed to give rides and have trackers indicating a passenger in the car. But those who want to help travelers find a way to trick the system, risking their jobs and even lives. Hitchhiking in Brazil is quite challenging – people don’t trust strangers. Nevertheless, sometimes after we nearly begged for the ride, the drivers were holding back tears when goodbying.

Along our way, we have encountered so many helpful and kind people – they trusted to let us in their homes, they cooked for us, both they and we shed tears when leaving. After all this kindness, we wanted to pay back to the world somehow.

And the opportunity presents itself the morning after we arrived home. A shabby-looking man with the skin revealing that he works a lot in the sun rings the doorbell asking for a bag and some food. He says he knows Mika’s grandmother who’s out for some time. We decide to do something Mika would never have thought of before this journey. We invite him to sit with us for breakfast and ask to get some bread with our money. Not only he comes back with the bread, but also gives back the change. He was very humble and almost didn’t speak, and we were shy to ask his story watching him being clumsy with the fork and knife. The man was very grateful for the breakfast and sandwiches we give him for lunch. And we feel like this is the smallest but not the last thing we could do to give back what we received from the world.

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Featured photo: a kilometers-long line of trucks picketing near Juiz de Fora, MG where we spent the night in Luis’ cargo compartment (Brazil, May ’18)

Long before we met, Nastia was already a devoted traveler, having hitchhiked around much of Eastern Europe and Germany. Besides exploring the world, she’s also interested in education (she’s an English teacher), the environment, and femininity, about all of which she reflects regularly on her blog — mostly in Ukrainian, sometimes in English. After we got married, we traveled together for several months in 2018 visiting friends and family across Europe and around Brazil. This is one of the many pieces Nastia wrote in reaction to her experience in my home country, adapted and translated into English for a travel writing scholarship application.

If you’d also like to be featured on the Not Mad Yet website, i’m open for contributions! The first step (if you haven’t taken it already) is to sign up for my weekly newsletter, where you’ll become familiar with my work and find out whether you actually want to be associated with it 😉

To contact me, simply reply to any of my emails, and we’ll take it from there 🙂

Guest articles: Nastia MF; hitchhiking; Brazil

Of Pisco and Peru: Introduction

Published on by Randy DukeLeave a comment

A guest post by Las Vegas-based world traveler and writer Randy Duke.

It’s the edge of midnight and he’s losing it. The thick, flesh-filled folds twitch on the back of our driver’s neck as he fidgets with his Panama hat. Wiping the pouring sweat from his forehead, he peers past the fog roiling around the bus, out into the gloom.

And here I am, my thoughts skipping beats like a Ritalin-addicted ferret. “Not again!”

He chuckles and we’re instantly slaloming into the oncoming lane for a better angle of attack on the next S-curve, Isle of Man Race-style.   

I close my eyes and press my head against the seat in front of me. I’m the sole, conspicuous gringo in a bus crammed beyond capacity, creasing mile after stomach-churning mile through the Andes.

With each soul-crippling curve, the bus lurches violently, provoking an outburst of frenzied Spanish from the tortured voices quailing from the back.

But hey, I saved an extra 150 soles.

The mind’s constantly screaming, “Do something!”

But the body’s glued here, trapped to this seat. So I’m stuck here, basking in the joys of travel.

What is travel, after all, but fleeing from life’s normalcies? Why does my electric razor start smoking when I plug it in? What’s a Delta-Wye transformer? What IS the cross currency exchange rate between the moose jaw centennial and a rai stone from the island of Yap? For that matter, what is the proper etiquette for hailing a cab in Mongolia? How does one get a wifi password in logographic kanji? How did my luggage make it to the other side of the earth without me? Hola. Excusez vous but vas linguaggio naar je sprechening? Oh, and why am I straddling a freshly dug pit swatting away tropical sand fleas when I could be seated on a post-1851-style toilet with all its newfangled technologies, like rolled toilet paper? WHY?

And what’s this oversized ladle for?

Where am I?

My stomach tightens. Bodies twist from the torque of another S-curve.

What’s that smell?

I tuck in my arms and do the calculations. Five hours walking at altitude bookended by a full day’s worth of jitney shuffles on planes, trains, and now what quasi-officially counts as an automobile. The tourist trifecta. Did I shower today?

None of this fazes the Peruvian sleeping beauty draped on the seat to my left, head burrowed deep in her red traveling jacket. A strand of spittle vibrates on her tucked chin as she snores, blissfully unaware of the mass psychotic breakdown afflicting the passengers still awake.

The driver exchanges glances with his thick-jowled wingman, who flashes a devious smile. Suddenly, ear splitting Andean flute opera cranks up from the battered boombox perched lazily on his lap.

High-pitched screams from the back.

Now what?

The playlist instantly shuffles to fare from ABBA, Journey, The Beatles, and some Phil Collins thrown in for good measure.

What’s going on?

I look back just in time to see an old lady slap some young guy so hard his chullo flies off.

Maybe he got too handsy?

The brim of a cowboy hat pokes the back of my head, and a wrinkled face juts past me, mottled lines creased with age. A spastic finger shakes circular jabs at the driver’s back, driving home some urgent point.

Is this normal?

Wait! Calm down. This is my fault. I should have known better than to wake up one morning, take a hard look in the mirror, then head to the first place picked at random by a drunk at my favorite dive bar. Voila! Instant lifestyle switch.

Now I’m a world traveler. Sounds so exotic. Never mind that dead-end job I ghosted. That’s so yesterday’s non-news. Now I’m an expat. Worldly. Cultured. Cosmopolitan. Really? How will this play out? Me posing in a blazer and khakis at far-flung cocktail parties drinking wine spritzers, telling most interesting man in the world travel snob stories?

No house. No pension, but hey, I’ve been to Mumbai. Every year still zipping off to far-flung countries in search of . . . what? Maybe I should go run with the bulls before I need that artificial hip?

Everybody hates travel stories. Especially the insipid details and insignificant incidents, such as, for instance, falling off a precipice sometime after midnight from over a mile up in the Andes.

Our driver could take us straight off this cliff yawning out beyond his windshield and he might not even care. Anything to quell this mutiny behind him. A little zigging when he should have been zagging, then a fleeting, final nanosecond of wide-eyed, doomed clarity. The wheezing sound of thirty sphincters puckering in unison as we crash against the escarpment, churning into an eggbeater of dashed dreams, bashed brains, crunched bones, and ripped arteries. Then, a final banshee’s shriek in our collective psyches as our bodies break apart all set to the beat of Sussudio.

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Featured photo: the quintessential Machu Picchu shot (Peru ’16)

Randy Duke is the pen name of Doug Tesch, an avid traveler based in Las Vegas, where he lives with his Peruvian “sleeping beauty” wife Magda. He’s written dozens of short stories, teleplays, screenplays, and is now trying his hand at a book — a travelogue of his wife’s homeland, where they also plan to travel again soon. Doug hangs out online on Scribophile, where he interacts with amateur and professional writers sharing drafts of their work and feedback, and can also be reached on Messenger or via email — he is eager to hear your impressions about his work!

If you’d also like to be featured on the Not Mad Yet website, i’m open for contributions! The first step (if you haven’t taken it already) is to sign up for my weekly newsletter, where you’ll become familiar with my work and find out whether you actually want to be associated with it 😉

To contact me, simply reply to any of my emails, and we’ll take it from there 🙂

Guest articles: Randy Duke; Peru

The Other Side of the Fence

Published on by MikaLeave a comment

A conversation with long-term traveler Rico Noack.

I’ve been feeling a bit worn out by my own stories lately — perhaps also a bit pressured (even if just internally) to keep churning them out.

I feel like it is once again time to surrender to the present — and because i want to keep up with my weekly newsletter output, i decided this would be a good opportunity to try something different: to share stories from other travelers’ perspectives!

The first one is a conversation with Rico Noack, a Couchsurfer from Germany who stayed with us for one night with his friend Kristin back in January. Rico and Kristin were especially energic guests. While we were sharing travel stories over dinner, i felt inspired to revisit an idea i had first considered a couple of years ago — to record and share conversations with fellow long-term travelers talking about their experience on the road 🙂

After they left, Rico and i kept corresponding, and eventually had a couple of calls during which we recorded the conversation below:

The Other Side of the Fence – A conversation with long-term traveler Rico Noack

If you prefer, you may also download the audio.

In our conversation, Rico told me in more detail about how his travels evolved, from typical family holidays while growing up, to his first independent trip to visit a friend in Bulgaria (and also first time Couchsurfing) in 2012, his time living, traveling in and falling love with Romania between 2014 and 2015, and finally his half a year cycle touring and backpacking from Azerbaijan to Georgia, then around Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, and back to Azerbaijan in 2017. This last adventure is where we spent the majority of our time talking.

We also talked about his process documenting his journeys, which started as a method to manage sensorial overflow and developed into an ethical duty to share the experience with others back home, as well as where he traveled. Rico has written a chronicle of his 2015 trip to Romania, Moldova, and Italy, and is now in the process of composing another book — developing from his journals from his 2017 expedition in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and enriched with passages by Kurban Said and Chinghiz Aitmatow. He told me (via email) that “[s]haring these experiences, promoting those countries ([in] written or [spoken form]) is a way to stay in touch with them for me. And to give something back.”

Here’s a more detailed index:

  • 0:00:00 Preamble: Some words about my intention with this experiment;
  • 0:04:47 “Who’s Rico”: Introduction, and first travel experiences on the other side of the fence;
  • 0:14:51 “You should start working and make some money”: Or maybe not — arriving, staying, and falling in love with Romania;
  • 0:21:20 “I have to write this down, otherwise [my head] will explode!”: From managing sensorial overflow to an ethical duty to share;
  • 0:24:02 “And then I had the feeling that everything started”: Azerbaijani hospitality, from strangers to friends;
  • 0:38:15 “To German and Georgian friendship!”: Experiencing (literally) a different flavor of hospitality, and pondering its meaning and sources;
  • 0:45:34 “in Georgia, you always have your tent in a really beautiful place”: Everyday life on the bicycle;
  • 0:54:51 “Oh come on these mountains are just too high to cycle them!”: Backpacking in Central Asia, starting in Kyrgyzstan;
  • 1:00:30 “It’s a really cool concept I think”: Volunteering at the Community-Based Tourism in Sary Mogol, Kyrgyzstan;
  • 1:05:33 “She was hitchhiking alone to whole Tajikistan”: Getting curious about the country;
  • 1:19:22 “Dog sticks and baking soda”: Some of Rico’s practical solutions for dogs, personal hygiene, and other practical matters.

It’s flattering that i can help him fulfill this duty! Truth be told, editing the audio was more challenging than i anticipated, but i enjoyed our conversation very much and learned a lot from the whole process. I hope you will also enjoy listening to it!

Questions and feedback to Rico may be addressed directly to him via email: riconoack1 [at] hotmail [dot] de.

More about Rico

Rico is a 29-year old social worker from Germany. He currently works part-time counseling refugees and people with disabilities for an NGO in Leipzig. Parallel to that, Rico is writing a Master’s thesis on the circumstances of disabled refugees in Germany, aiming to give the topic more exposure in the academic community. He was featured in an article (in German) on ADZ-online about Social Work in Romania, where he spent eight months as a volunteer (http://www.adz.ro/artikel/artikel/der-aufbruch-der-rumaenischen-sozialarbeit/).

When Rico is not working or writing, he enjoys cycling small dusty roads and forest trails in the countryside, spending time with his flatmates, friends, and family, as well as playing his guitar or harmonica. He invites you to listen to some of his recordings on soundcloud.

References

Some books, opportunities and resources mentioned in our conversation:

  • If you can read German, he will be happy to send you the chronicles from his five weeks traveling in Romania, Moldova, and Italy in 2015 — just send him an email!

Annotated maps of Rico’s travels in the Caucasus and Central Asia:

Some photos from Rico’s travels (click for full view):

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Featured photo:Rico, sunburned in a Kakhetian vineyard (Georgia ’17)

Enjoyed this interview? I plan to make more like it in the near future and will announce them on my newsletter whenever they go live — if you don’t want to miss it, then subscribe!

Interviews: cycle touring, hitchhiking, hiking; Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia;
Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Poland, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan

Fuji & Mika #16 — BONUS: Stubborn Face Together

Published on by Mika1 Comment

My friend, artist and supporter Fuji [website, vimeo] and i challenged each other throughout the month of October to experiment with different habits and create something new every week. We made videos describing our process and results, and shared our dialog here on my blog: fiction_Extract_test1.0, The Stubborn Face of Matter, Haikus from Borzhava, Infinity + 1, “Failure” Is just a Story and Collagenge.

Fuji edited a flattering video to accompany The Stubborn Face of Matter — the song i made for the first challenge. As i said then, the words for the tune came to me during my Copenhagen–Istanbul cycle tour in Fall ’16. I asked him to add some clips from my journey to it, and really like the result! So, i’m sharing it as some sort of post-closure bonus:

See you on the next creative challenge, Fuji!

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Experiments: Creative October Challenge; Fuji & Mika