Haggling for Socks

In Reno, I would often make pizza, homemade, from scratch. I made a fantastic red sauce and also a pretty good garlic ranch sauce. The toppings were easy to make and, of course, cheese was easy to scatter about. But the one thing that I could not master was making the pizza dough. When I made the dough, it never came out round. It was in these weird oblong bent shapes that our family referred to as tectonic plates, or continental pizza.

I remember one time that we had homemade pizza and the pizzas were so nice and round. My son, trying hard to be kind, complimented me on how beautifully round the pizza dough was this time. And I had to admit, "That's because your sister made the dough." So let's just say pizza dough is not my strength, unless you like geological landmass shapes. And who doesn't? (Well, maybe not for pizza.)

We have now gone from one geological landmass shape (let's call it Europe) to another (and why not name that one Africa). But before I tell you about that trip, I have one more Balkan mystery for you.

Okay, maybe, maybe, I could see how this means the Women's Bathroom

But in what way does this indicate a Men's Bathroom?

We left Belgrade on Thursday, super early in the morning. Syarra flew to Copenhagen and then from there back to New York, as today is the first day of her semester. Alrica and I flew to Barcelona, Spain where we had a one day layover.

Did we see amazing sites? Did we have incredible adventures? No. The reason why we lacked any noteworthy accomplishments was that I frittered away much of the day napping. After all the activity in the Balkans, the early morning awakening to get to our flight, and the journey, I was exhausted. In my defense, I could argue that I was actually becoming culturally acclimated to the Spanish tradition of siesta.

On Friday, we flew Morocco. We landed in Rabat and then took a train to Marrakech. (So here, I have to decide which spelling to use for Marrakech. In pronunciation, it is Mare-a-kesh and so maybe Marrakesh is the way to go. Certainly the spell checker wants me to use Marrakesh. The Arabic language doesn't have a "ch" sound, but it does have a "sh" sound. So to truly anglicize the name, it should be Marrakesh. But the English weren't the ones who first translated the name from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. That was the French. And in French, the "sh" sound comes from the "ch" spelling. Think of Charlemagne or champagne or nouveau riche. That's where the Marrakech spelling comes from and that's the one you see on maps or even here in Morocco when it is written in Latin characters. So I will go with Marrakech.)

That was a massive proportion of the previous paragraph inside the parentheses. Are there rules about how much of a paragraph can be inside parentheses? Who enforces those rules? If convicted, what are the possible sentences. (Sentences! See what I did there?)

We have been to Marrakech before, when we traveled with the kids. It was almost exactly nine years ago that we came here. But it is a wonderful place. The people are very friendly to foreigners, appreciative if I know any Arabic at all (and I know only a little), and also communicative in French (which I know a bit more of than Arabic). But actually our lack of Arabic skills helped Alrica pull off a spectacular bit of haggling.

I needed socks. I left the United States with five pairs of these small black socks which are great in that they dry fast, but also being so small and thin, and me having such flat feet, I was ripping through them. After five months, I had thrown out seven of the ten socks, and I arrived in Marrakesh with one more that exposed my entire heel and would need to go. So I was really down to one pair.

We passed a man who was selling various articles of clothing on the sidewalk, you know, like you do. And one thing he had was socks. It was a pack of three pairs of similar small socks to what I already owned. He barely spoke any English, and one thing I do not know in Arabic is numbers. I did look them over once, but they are hard to remember. I can count to one: wahid. Okay, we've exhausted my knowledge. The names of the numbers are so different than any other language and so many of them are long words.

I held up the socks and asked, "Dirham?" That is the name of the Moroccan currency. And in English he said "Forty." That is about four dollars and I was going to pass on that price, so I set them down and prepared to leave. There were other places to buy socks, it wasn't a big deal. But the man didn't want to lose a sale, so he asked something that we understood to mean how much would we be willing to pay.

Alrica replied "thirty" but he didn't apparently know what "thirty" meant, so his next bid was "twenty". So I bought the socks for twenty dirham, half what I had originally been asked. Of course, if he had understood thirty, I would have paid thirty, but sometimes you get lucky. (I recognize that when he was so willing to go down to twenty, that means the socks are probably worth ten, but I'm happy with them so far.)

On another note, they do have pizza here. And it's round much like you would expect. So no one is going to hire me as a pizza chef in Marrakech. Not that I was looking for culinary employment. But it's nice to know your limits.

What about Elevensies?

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Pippin asks about eating breakfast and is told by Aragorn they already had it. He asks about second breakfast and Merry tells him, "I don't think he knows about second breakfast." Hobbit culture is very different than any culture that Aragorn is used to.

I posted a couple weeks ago about how I enjoyed being in Sarajevo for Christmas Day because the city is still open. Being a place of many religions and cultures, not everything shuts down. In doing so, I spoke too soon, or blogged too soon. I guess I was the Aragorn of the story. Because now I am in Belgrade, Serbia, and today is "Second Christmas." In the Serbian Orthodox religion, Christmas is celebrated on January 7, not on December 25. And here, everything does shut down because this city is big time majority Serbian Orthodox. So I get to live the nothing open on Christmas experience after all.

St. Sava's Cathedral

Belgrade is an interesting city, a mix of very bland architecture and then in parts some beautiful architecture as well. If you are ever here, the one site you must visit is the Cathedral of St. Sava. The building is impressive as a huge domed structure that was modeled after the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. But beyond the engineering marvel of it, stepping inside is magical.

The rules of the cathedral say no cell phones, so I didn't take pictures of the inside. But almost every surface is decorated. There are carvings along the arches, beautiful marble pillars, stands coated in gold which hold portraits of saints. And the walls, ceiling, almost any available surface is a work of art. There are paintings and mosaics everywhere. They depict characters and events from Christian history, which is not my forté. Many of the characters shown have words above their heads that say who they are, but this is written in the Cyrillic script used in Serbia and with the Serbian names of those characters. I was able to work out a few of them, like St. George, and the Virgin Mary, and Jesus himself. But many of the names weren't recognizable to me.

They built the stage in Republic Square around the statue of King Mihaelo

We visited the National Museum in Republic Square. We went on a Sunday and the museum is free on Sundays. That was nice. The ground floor, which they called floor zero, has an archaeological exhibit that starts 300,000 years ago and traces hominid and human activity in the area of present day Serbia. There were many artifacts like chipped axe heads and small blades and eventually pottery. The timeline goes on and on up to more modern times, but abruptly ends in the 1800s.

The walls don't have eyes, but the poles do

One floor up from that, the first floor, has paintings from medieval times onward that were painted by Serbian artists and mainly for the Serbian Orthodox church (or on those themes.) And the second floor houses their collection of other European artists. There were works by some famous names like Picasso, Gaughin, Degas, and more.

We also visited the Historical Museum of Serbia. This museum really made me think about teaching. As a teacher, you have to decide how to present topics. Do you group them thematically, chronologically, or in some way that involves foundational lessons and then extensions. With mathematics, you primarily want to do the last of these, make sure you have covered foundational ideas, and then move into the more advanced topics that use those foundations. But even then, the order of some topics could be arranged in several ways.

That says Starbucks in Cyrillic

Why did the Historical Museum of Serbia remind me of this pedagogical question? You enter in the center front of the museum. The exhibits are in the front left room, the front right room, and the back room. And museum goers follow a path, first to the front left, then through the back room, and end in the front right room. It's much like going through IKEA.

This museum is very wordy, most everything is just panels with written information in both Serbian and English. There are a few artifacts, though most of the crowns and scepters of various kings are not original but rather recreations. So already this museum was hard, lots of reading, tons of names of this royal person and that royal person, many of whom have the same name as their grandfather so you have to keep track of which Alexander or Peter you are thinking of. But what I found most strange was the choice of what to put where.

The Crest of Belgrade (literally "the white city")

The two front rooms dealt with Serbian royal families in the 19th century. There were two families, the Karadžordžević family, and the Obrenović family. Chronologically, the crown bounces back and forth between the two families as one gets ousted and the other takes its place. This back and forth happens several times. But the museum doesn't choose to present this chronologically. Instead, in the front left room, the first one you enter, you learn only about the Karadžordžević family. So there are gaps between this king and then next king, and it mentions that someone took over from the Obrenović family. I kept looking back, thinking, wait, but that king wasn't mentioned. There's nothing about him here. But in the front right room, the last room you come to, that room tells you all about the Obrenović family. So the museum made the choice that, rather than present things chronologically, it would be better to group the rooms based on which family they were talking about.

The Crest of Belgrade on the back of a fire hydrant

In their defense, perhaps if I were already versed in 19th century Serbian history, I would have understood better. Maybe kids here learn all about this in school, so a trip to the museum makes sense to them. But remember that back room I mentioned. Well, the back room covers Serbian history from the 10th century to the 15th century.

So I am reading about lots of Alexander Karadžordževićs and Peter Karadžordževićs and I finally reach the 1900s and step through an archway to the next room. Suddenly, I have gone back by a millennium and I am learning about kings in the 900s. By the time I reach the front right room, I've lost the Karadžordžević thread entirely, but now I am back in the 19th century learning about Obrenovićs (which does include an Alexander, but we've added several men named Milan and Mihaelo as well.)

The point is that I got next to nothing out of this museum. It was static, it was dull, and it was arranged in such a way that I couldn't retain any of the narrative of Serbian history. And it also stopped telling tales at the beginning of the 20th century. That's interesting, because Serbia's 20th century history is much more controversial. And the sense here is that none of the controversial things actually happened. Or at least, they don't get mentioned.

But there is some controversy which is being mentioned. Just this past fall, on November 1, 2024, a tragedy occurred in Novi Sad. That's the second largest city in Serbia. The concrete canopy of the train station there collapsed and fell on people who were sitting in benches underneath. A rescue began, but it took time to get people out. Fourteen were found dead, three injured, and one of those three later died of her injuries. Of course, the Serbian government is investigating what happened. But many Serbians are furious with their government. They claim the system is corrupt, inspections are not performed, officials are bribed to let things slide by. There have been protests in Novi Sad and in Belgrade.

These posters mean you have blood on your hands

Then, at the end of December, a week or so before we arrived, some graffiti went up over many buildings in Belgrade which reads 1.11.2024. Zoran Kesić Show Must Go On! You see it all over central Belgrade. I didn't understand it, so I did some research.

The graffiti I mentioned

Zoran Kesić is one of the most influential satirists of the region. He is a Jon Stewart or Jimmy Kimmel of the Balkans. And like most satirists, he is often critical of the government. He was doing a show in Sarajevo on November 1 (which is 1.11.2024 because in most of the world the day comes before the month.) During the show, he referenced the tragedy and talked about how the government must be held accountable. He did use the phrase "The show must go on" while talking about it.

And I still don't know what the graffiti artist intends with this graffiti. Is it agreeing with Kesić and saying the Serbian government must be held accountable? Is it angry with Kesić for going on with his show when something terrible had occurred earlier in the day? I'm not sure. It might be neither of those.

I don't have enough context to make out what it means. It may be very understandable to the people of Serbia. And that's interesting. I see the same thing they see. I read the news articles and do some research to find out the backstory. But I just don't know the character of the people here. And it makes me wonder how often we misinterpret things we read, especially those things written for an audience of another culture or time or place.

When I read Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, I enjoy them. I understand they are also commenting on modern society. But how much am I missing? I'm not British, I don't know London culture. What extra meaning would I understand if I did? Or when I read Don Quixote, not only was I even further removed from the time and place, that was a translation. I don't know what Cervantes wrote in his native language, nor what elements of his society he was satirizing. Or even worse, when we read a book of the Bible, how much of our interpretation is correct? That's like Don Quixote taken to the nth power. This is something written thousands of years ago for a completely different audience with a wildly different worldview, and I'm likely reading a translation of a translation of a translation. How can I have any context to know what the author meant? How can I interpret the imagery that author used, imagery that could have meant something very different to the people of the author's time than it does to people of my time and my culture?

So here I am again, feeling like Aragorn trying to fathom the ways of Hobbits. Don't even start on Elevensies.

Whistling in the Dark

We are now in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. This requires that we somehow traveled from Podgorica to Belgrade. You know the saying: Getting there is half the fun. It's pretty close to true. Getting here was fun. Was it half? I'm not sure of the exact fraction (it could even be irrational), but it was fun.

We took a train. This train starts in Bar, Montenegro and then comes to Podgorica, from where we embarked, and then travels through Montenegro and Serbia (and for a few kilometers the train is in Bosnia, but it never stops there). The Bar to Belgrade train is considered one of the most beautiful, most scenic train routes in all of Europe. Poems could be composed about the lofty mountains and the graceful valleys. And we got to ride this magical path.

Was it beautiful?

I don't know.

Why don't I know?

In the off-season, which includes the winter, the train only runs at night. It leaves Podgorica at 9:20 PM and you sleep on the train, arriving into Belgrade somewhere around 7:00 AM. So those mountains may have been as lofty as tales claim, the valleys could have possessed even greater grace than words can impart. But I didn't get to see to any of that because of the awkward orientation of the Earth, placing its bulk between myself and the major light source.

And still it was fun. We got a sleeper car which slept three people. This was a tiny little cabin. There were three beds, one above the other above the other. Syarra generously took the top bunk, which isn't a full length bed. Somewhere around the thigh, it changes from bed mattress to metal rack, but there is a cushion you can place under your ankles and feet to keep them above the metal. I had the middle, which is full length. Alrica had the bottom which is easiest to use, but has the least space above you. Also with the ladder in place which allowed Syarra and I ingress and egress, it became something of an obstacle to Alrica's easy access in and out of her bed.

Our Sleeper Cabin

And still it was fun. The train rocked and moved, and when it hit a curve, you could feel the curve. Einstein would explain that throughout the trip, you knew you weren't in an unaccelerated frame. Most of the journey, I slept. Though I did have to wake for border control when we were leaving Montenegro. I expected to be awakened a second time for border control in Serbia, but that never happened. I'm not sure what this will mean when I try to leave Serbia in less than a week, but I suspect they won't stop me from going away. Plus any border control officers will be able to see the stamp that tells them when I left Montenegro. So that should establish I haven't been in Serbia for longer than is allowed.

I'm not entirely sure what made this journey fun. It wasn't the WC (the bathroom) which was passable but not pristine. It wasn't the mattresses or the pillows, both of which were passable but not plush. It wasn't the corridor outside the cabin which was passable, but you had to squeeze to pass others. It wasn't the interaction with my fellow passengers as there wasn't any such interaction. I guess it was just the adventure.

I would love to redo this trip someday in the summer, when one could ride in the day and see some of the spectacle. But even at night, it was novel for me to sleep on the train. Wow, did that rocking lead to some crazy dreams. I can't really remember many of them in detail. I recall that one of them involved Melissa Taylor directing Murder on the Orient Express, an ancient Greek pillar which had fallen over, and an announcer voice-over, but I can't piece together how those things connected. I can only assume that the train experience led to the Orient Express reference, and who knows how brains work from there.

On a less enjoyable note, we left Podgorica on January 2. But on January 1, there was a mass shooting in another city in Montenegro, a city called Cetinje. This was a tragedy on a national scale. It was unprecedented, even though Montenegro has a huge proportion of gun owners. It shocked the nation.

Both January 1 and January 2 are national holidays in Montenegro. This is perhaps their biggest holiday of the year. It's secular, so all the various religious groups can enjoy it together. But after the tragedy, Montenegro declared a three-day period of mourning. The super festive Podgorica New Years Bazaar (Montenegro's version of a Christmas Market) was shuttered and a makeshift memorial for those who died was erected in its place. Even though this was one of their most celebratory times, the country cut the party short and mourned.

Being a holiday, Parliament was not in session, but immediately some of the politicians spoke about enacting some sort of gun control. As I said, Montenegro has a lot of gun owners, they are ranked third for the proportion of the population who own a gun. Yet, after one mass shooting, they are considering what to do to assure it never happens again.

The U.S.A. is ranked first for the proportion of the population who own a gun. If we declared a three-day period of mourning after each mass shooting in our country, we would probably be in a continual mourning state. And we never enact anything to try to keep it from happening again.

I don't know what the solution to gun violence in America is. But becoming so used to it that we merely shrug and say, "Just another Wednesday" is not a solution. Have we become so inured to the deaths of innocents, the deaths of children? Maybe we have.

Just declaring that America is the safest, the best, the most exceptional land in the world, well, that's somewhat like saying I experienced the most beautiful train route in Europe. I don't really have the evidence to back that up.

We're all, like a night train, just whistling in the dark.

You Only Get One

Welcome to your one and only perfect square year. We have entered 2025 which is 45 squared. It is, for most of us, the only time we will ever live through a year that is a perfect square. It is your once in a lifetime event.

The last time it happened was 89 years ago, in the year 1936. So unless you are already 88 or older (turning 89 or older this year) you haven't reached your second of these rare events.

It will happen again in 91 years, in the year 2116, and most of us aren't going to live to see that occur. Maybe some preschoolers now will, but I suspect preschoolers aren't members of my reading audience.

The thing is it has probably been a once-in-lifetime event for most people throughout history. Perhaps you are saying: hold on, Erich, what about in the first few centuries. I mean between the year 1 and the year 4, there were only 3 years. And from 4 to 9 is only 5, surely lots of people lived for that long.

That's true, but in the year 1, they were not using the Anno Domini designation of years. It wouldn't be invented for centuries. In those times, usually years were marked based on when the current ruler became the current ruler. So the year might be the eleventh year of the reign of Emperor Penguin the Second, or whatever the ruler's name was. But eventually scribes and the educated found this annoying. It was pretty hard to figure out how long ago things happened when you kept restarting at 1 each time your king died or your land was conquered. The intelligentsia wanted some sort of fixed system that would just keep counting.

In sixth century Christian Europe, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus wanted to figure out what day Easter would fall on in the upcoming years. So he decided to set up a numbering system for years based on something having to do with Jesus. Today we think of it as being when Jesus was born, but it isn't clear that this is what Dionysius was considering. It may have been the conception of Jesus or some other event in the early life of Jesus or the life of Mary slightly before the birth. Anyway, according to the system invented by Dionysius, this was in the year 525.

It's also not clear that Dionysius was the first to do so, nor that it was his system which eventually spread and became the one used today. It's all murky. Where there are sufficient records, we know that somewhere in the 8th or 9th century, monks in England were using AD to denote the year. Still no one knows exactly when in the 8th or 9th century this began.

But let's be generous. The first perfect square in the 8th century would have been the year 729 (which is 27 squared.) Let's assume that this system was being used at that time. Then the following perfect square would have occurred 55 years later in 784. So yes, some people probably did live through both of those years, though average life expectancy was much much lower than this (probably somewhere around 24 years.) But keep in mind that is the average, and it is brought down by the fact that so many people died of childhood ailments. So the ones who did make it to adulthood, some of those could have reached ripe old ages like 60.

Still, it wouldn't have been most of them. It would have still been rare to live through two perfect square years, even back when they were closer together.

Because perfect squares get further and further apart in a predictable way. If you want to know how long between two consecutive perfect squares, you can just add the two numbers they are square of. Like today is 45 squared and the next perfect square is 46 squared. But 45 + 46 = 91, and that is the distance between those perfect squares. The distance between 27 squared (729) and 28 squared (784) is 27 + 28 = 55. Another way to think of it is that the nth perfect square is just the sum of the first n odd numbers.

I am not, in general, a big time New Years' Resolutioner (or Resolutionary, maybe?) If I really want to resolve to do something, there is no reason that January is the best time. In some ways, it is the worst time, because I would only be making a resolution because I felt like I was supposed to make one and not because I wanted to accomplish it.

That being said, maybe I should reconsider that this year. After all, this is the only perfect square year I will ever see. So join me: let's embrace this year, this rare event, this moment we are lucky to live through. Let's make 2025 a signature year for each of us. Let's accomplish our most square deal in this most square year. Let the rarity of this moment remind us all that life only gives us so many opportunities. It's certainly a lesson I need to take to heart.