Tirana's Gotta Tirana

As a parent, one does not always succeed. But we have our moments. I know one of my mother's success moments had to do with a birthday card. She likes to retell the story, so it must be a success moment. She got me a birthday card and on the front it said, "Son, when they made you, they broke the mold." It shows a picture of a mold being broken by a man with tools. Then you flipped it open and it says "And beat the hell out of the mold maker." The corresponding picture of the man with tools is not so good for the man with tools.

It was an amazing birthday card. Score one for my mom.

What holds those projecting parts up?

Alrica and I have visited Tirana, Albania before. But this is the first time we are staying for a longer stretch. This gives me a chance to walk the city and explore. And I have to tell you, Tirana is breaking the mold.

I feel loved.

When you visit European capital cities, they often have their own character. London is the ultimate in cosmopolitan. Paris is groomed and artistic. Rome is ancient and haughty. Vienna is a showcase of Austro-Hungarian grandeur. Sarajevo is resilient and functional. But what is Tirana? Or maybe the better question is this: What is Tirana aspring to become?

Good thing he has cling powers, or that head would flip him over

Best answer I can come up with: quirky.

I wasn't expecting to see Spidey again so soon.

There is so much construction going on in Tirana. But why build something that's just a boring rectangular prism when you can build something that isn't? The architecture of the city plays with shapes, colors, and structure. Many of these buildings are still going up and it will be interesting to see them when they are complete.

Like its wrapping its big arms around you

Architecture is just one feature of Tirana that feels different, weird, but in a fun and friendly way. The murals are youthful and surprising. The store names are often puns (and there are a surprising number of puns in English.) It is almost like the city is serious about not being too serious.

I guess this is an English/Latin pun

I walked across bridges over the river where some vendor had laid out thousands of books on the railings. They were in Shqip, so I wasn't in the market, but hey, you have a bridge here, why not use it for something else?

Building not interesting enough? I have an idea, stripes!

I think what best encapsulates this serious about not serious vibe is the sign I saw prohibiting a particular activity. Not only is it not allowed, they make it clear what they plan to do if you violate the rule.

What if you're really trying to become a YouTube sensation?

I think that, like my mother's birthday card, this will lead to a success for Tirana. And maybe this time the mold maker might escape unscathed.

Unexpected Nonexistence

René Descartes walks into a bar. He asks for a beer, but the bartender says, "Wouldn't you rather have an appletini?" To this, Descartes replies, "I think not." And he disappears.

This joke kills at philosophy conferences. René Descartes is a famous mathematician who gave us the Cartesian coordinate system, most of the notation we use today, and a variety of other mathematical ideas. He is also the reason we call the imaginary numbers imaginary. He thought the idea of square roots of negative numbers was stupid. So he called them imaginary as opposed to the numbers he liked which he called real. This is unfortunate because many people then think that imaginary numbers don't exist while real numbers do. But that's not the case. Imaginary numbers are no less real than real numbers and real number are no less imaginary than imaginary numbers.

Setting all of that aside, Descartes is also famous as a philosopher. His best known quote is "Cogito ergo sum" or, in English, "I think, therefore I am." This was a thought experiment in which Descartes wanted to ask what does he really know to be true. Imagine that you can't trust your senses, what you see may be false, what you touch may be false. Can you make any conclusions? Descartes did, he concluded that the very fact that he could ask this question, that he could doubt his own existence meant that he must exist in some form. Maybe his body was fake, but there had to be some mind, something capable of thinking. So he did exist.

The joke plays on "I think, therefore I am." Though, it is logically flawed because it is then accepting "I think not, therefore I am not." That's the inverse of Descartes's original statement and the inverse of a proposition may not have the same truth value as the statement. The philosophers know this, but somehow they still find it funny.

Alrica and I ran into our own question of existence, though not our personal existence. We arrived in Tirana, Albania on Tuesday night. It was a slow bus trip from the airport to the city because of an accident on the highway. But eventually we made it. And we got to the place we are staying.

On the way to our place, we walked down the Rruga Him Kolli. (Rruga is the Albanian word for street or road. Him Kolli is the name of the street.) Much of it was deserted and dim, though there is a Spar grocery store and a pizza place. But the next day we went out while the sun was shining. And this nocturnally dim, empty street is super non-empty in the day. There are fruit and vegetable stands lining both sides of the road. We are living right off of fruit street! One thing I love about many other places is the availability of low-cost, high-quality produce. You can't get everything at every time of year, only what's ripe now. But it is so fresh and delicious and good for you.

We also bought a fruit with which we are not very familiar. It looks like a big pear but with bulges in the pear shape. We asked the woman at the produce market what it was called, though she didn't understand us. So I pointed to bananas and said "banane" and then to tomatoes and said "domate" and then to this fruit. She understood and told us it is called "ftui". I don't know the first thing about eating ftui, so I looked it up. This is a quince, in English, rhymes with wince. In Spanish, the word quince means fifteen, it isn't a fruit, and it rhymes with mean say. But we are taking about the fruit here, not the number. Turns out, you have to cook a quince before you eat it or it is so astringent you won't enjoy it. (Sadly, the cook time is NOT fifteen minutes, which would be such a beautiful convergence of coincidences, I might have to doubt my existence.) I might cook a quince today!

Look, a fifteen! No, no, that's the fruit version of quince.

But the quince being a fruit and not a number (neither real or imaginary) is not the existence problem. We continued our shopping for essentials. We stopped at more than just fruit and vegetable markets. We bought bread at a local bakery. We bought cheese and butter at a dairy store. And we bought some regular groceries (and things like toothpaste) at the Spar, which as I mentioned, is a grocery store. One of the things we picked up off the shelf was a vinaigrette dressing. We had purchased tomatoes at the produce market, purchased feta cheese at the dairy market, and Alrica makes a fantastic tomato and feta salad that uses, (I bet you can guess,) vinaigrette. But when we got to the checkout counter, our cashier had a problem. She scanned the vinaigrette and it didn't scan. She tried again and again. She typed in the barcode number. But it wouldn't go through.

Our cashier did know some English and she told us, while holding up the bottle, "This does not exist." Obviously, she is of the Descartes school of though. Even though she can feel it in her hand, and she can see it in front of her, that doesn't prove its existence. It is kind of a modern day "I think, therefore I am." But this one is "The computer doesn't know this product, therefore it isn't."

Alrica solved this by darting back to the shelves and buying a different brand of vinaigrette that happily does exist. (We ate the salad last night, and so I also have my sense of taste to back up my senses of sight and touch.) But I wonder this: Couldn't I have just taken the non-existent vinaigrette without paying for it? It's not theft if the item doesn't exist, right?

Don't worry, I didn't test my hypothesis. Because if I were wrong my ultimate conclusion would be "I am imprisoned, therefore the vinaigrette exists." And even Descartes would agree that's not worth it. Assuming he existed.

Wet Cookies and the At Key

Sometimes adventure comes in the everyday things. That's not to say it doesn't also come in the new, the extraordinary, and the spectacular. Just saying that's not always the source.

We are in Hamburg, Germany, only for a day. Our flight got in on Monday afternoon and our flight goes out on Tuesday afternoon. So yeah, day in Hamburg. Hooray!

This is Speicherstadt. Say hello, Speicherstadt.

By the time we landed in Hamburg, got tickets for the S-Bahn (a subway), rode into the city, and walked to our hotel, it was after 3 PM. My stomach was having words with me. So our first order of business was to get lunch. We went to a traditional German restaurant across from Central Station. There I had Nuremberg Bratwurst which included six narrow sausages served over sauerkraut with a side of potatoes. Alrica had Labskaus which was very different. It was ground up corned beef mixed with ground up beets, and it was excellent. It came with a side of pickled herring, a pickled pickle, a non-pickled salad with a mustard dressing, and a fried egg on top (also not pickled.)

Central Station

We then visited Speicherstadt; this literally translates to Warehouse City. This is a UNESCO world heritage site with this striking red brick, tall buildings built in lanes with canals between them. Of course, these were designed to be warehouses, though they are surprisingly intricate in their architecture. Today, they are used for many other activities and include several museums.

More Speicherstadt. Now you can say hello back.

But the big adventure was that night. We were in the hotel room and I wanted some dessert. There was a grocery store only a block away, so I told Alrica I planned to go there and get cookies. Her reply was, "I'm not excited about dry cookies." I said, "So you want me to get wet cookies?"

So now I am on a quest for wet cookies, or fluid biscuits if you're British. But I also had a second task, not exactly a side quest, more of a simultaneous quest. I needed to get something printed for the next day, something that confirms our transport from the airport in Tirana into the city. But hey, the hotel has a business center. I can print it there.

First, to the market where I must find wet cookies. Quest completed! I found these cookies that have a soft cake layer topped by an orange curd and then the entire thing is dipped in chocolate. But curd in the cookie makes it wet, right?

If there's curd in the cookie, then the cookie won't be dry.
Cause the curd in the cookie is the key.
Put some curd in the cookie and you'll giggle and you'll sigh
Saying fork that box of cookies over now to me.

Where I had more trouble was in printing the document. I went to the business center, and there is a printer. But there doesn't seem to be anyway to connect a USB drive to the printer. No problem, I can connect it to a computer in the business center. But the computers in the business center won't let you just open up File Explorer to see the contents of my USB drive. So I can't send anything to the printer.

The business center is on the ground floor as is reception. So I go to reception and the man at the desk tells me to email it to a particular address of the hotel and he will print it for me. Great. So I go back to the business center to log into my email. I can't do it from my phone, because I don't have the file on my phone, it is on a USB drive. That's when I realize I am not dealing with the keyboard I have come to know and... maybe not love, but at least get used to. Many of the keys are in the same place, but I quickly realized the Y and Z are switched, along with a few others.

Can you see my key problem?

This is not a big deal, I just have to be looking down at the keyboard as I type. This is when I hit my roadblock.

If you are planning to send an email, there is one key you must be able to use. You can't put in an email address without the @ key. For you and I, you hold down Shift and press 2, and you get @. But that is not where the @ key is on a German keyboard.

Hopefully you can see it in the picture. It is with the Q key, but not written above it, rather below it. So I am trying keystroke after keystroke to get an @ into the email address and each time I either get q or Q.

Finally I gave up on guess and check. I went to the internet and searched "How to use a German keyboard" and the first result that popped up was "how to type @ on a German keyboard." I feel better knowing I am not the only person who ever had this problem.

In case you ever find yourself with this particular conundrum, here is what I learned. You hold down the Alt Gr key (which is different from the Alt key) and you then press the Q key.

I successfully completed both of my simultaneous quests. Does this mean I go up in level? Or get an upgrade? Rocket shoes would be cool, but maybe the ability to understand more languages (and their keyboards) would be more practical. Or at the very least, could I hear trumpets, see confetti, and have the words "Quest Complete" scroll across the sky please. That's a modest request, right? Certainly more modest than wet cookies.

Not the Hobbit

We are in Bilbao, which is in Spain, but it's really in the Basque country. There is a part of Spain and France in the Pyrenees Mountains inhabited by the Basque people, a group with their own culture and their own language. It is actually a very fascinating language because it is unlike any other language spoken on Earth. And there's a reason for that.

Colorful

Long, long ago, before the time of writing, there were many groups of people living throughout Europe. Those distinct groups were geographically isolated from one another and they all established their own languages. But then in some eon or age, migrants from India and Asia Minor came to Europe and brought with them their early languages. Over the course of the next centuries, these new migrants wiped out all the previously spoken languages of Europe, all except one, Basque.

That's City Hall

Why did Basque alone survive? No one knows for sure, but the ruggedness of their lands in the Pyrenees likely had something to do with it. However it happened, Basque is the most ancient still-spoken language of Europe and possibly of the world. Note though, the Basque people don't call themselves the Basque, nor do they call their language Basque. They say Euskara. No one knows the origins of the word Euskara. No one knows the origins of the word Basque either.

Mural Beneath a Bridge

Bilbao, in Euskara, is called Bilbo, but not Bilbo Baggins, just Bilbo. It was called that long before any hobbits were ever named. And it is a fascinating city. There is a mix of architectural styles in the buildings, some very modern, some very classical, few, if any, dull. Historically, Bilbao was important as an iron working city. Iron was mined in nearby mountains and sent to the foundries of Bilbao. Then it was transported down the Bilbao River and across the Bay of Biscay.

The Guggenheim Museum

One thing I found interesting, and maybe a bit disappointing, was the complete lack of fire hydrants in the city. I stopped at a tourist information bureau and asked about it. Apparently, the fire department carries something like a hydrant with them. There are panels in the street (or maybe sidewalk, I was unclear on that) which can be lifted and the access to the water is there. I've looked for these panels. There are many panels, many are unlabeled, but none that are labeled indicate they are for fire fighting. This is not entirely new to me though. There was a similar system in parts of Australia. I asked what happens when it snows. I was told it rarely does that here, and when it does, the snow doesn't last in the city center for any appreciable length of time.

A pig. In a hat. Wearing a skirt with a pig. In a hat.

Perhaps the most fun aspect of our visit is a result of dumb luck. It just so happens that this is the week of Carnivale, the week before Lent begins. Spain, being a Catholic country, celebrates Carnivale. And Bilbao has all kinds of strange and wild traditions surrounding it.

Fly my lovelies, fly!

My favorite is the costumes. Bilbao, on the Saturday of Carnivale, is like Halloween in the United States. But in other ways it isn't like Halloween. First, adults dress up, even if they aren't with children. Second, large group themed costumes are very common. You can often tell who is with whom based on what they are dressed as.

Big head creature. Is it an owl? A donkey? A cross between them?

There are concerts and dance shows going on. There are children's activities. There is an actual carnival on the side of the Bilbao River, a Carnivale carnival. And there's the sardine.

I don't know why children would want to be anywhere near this

Sardine? What does a sardine have to do with Carnivale? Apparently, this is a Spanish thing. On the last day of Carnivale, Fat Tuesday (or Mardi Gras in French), you hold a funeral for the Sardine. And then you burn it. How this tradition began is debated. There are hypotheses, but not enough strong evidence to justify any one of them. But it must be at least partly symbolic. You have just had a six day feast and festival, and then you have the ritual Burial of the Sardine (which isn't a burial, it's a cremation.) In some way you are saying goodbye to gluttony and accepting the more somber tone of Lent and its period of self-denial.

At one time, actual fish were burned. These days, it is a papier mâché model of a fish that gets burned. But you can get your picture with it before it goes up in flames!

Just the two of us and a sardine who will burn on Tuesday.

Saturday was the height of the festivities, but we are still in the midst of a six-day party with schools closed and pirates and superheroes (and many people dressed as sardines) walking the streets.

I think the hobbits would approve wholeheartedly.

Ocean Deep Thoughts

I mentioned, in my last post, how Alrica and I visited Oceanário, the aquarium in Lisbon, Portugal. While that was a fun and fascinating experience, it led to some deep thoughts, which were not thoughts of the deep.

Now we are in Bilboa, Spain. I did an bit of exploration on my own this morning and it led to more deep thoughts, different from the first set of deep thoughts. In fact, the two sets are disjoint. (Non-mathematicians, don't worry about it, you'll get it from context.)

Don't misunderstand. I am having a great time seeing the world. But a big part of seeing the world is to broaden your mind. And sometimes as it broadens and swells, it forms eddies, swirling vortices of "huh." Now, I experienced two such vortices this week, and I thought I'd share.

At the Oceanário, there was a lot to learn. Many of the panels didn't just talk about the animals or plants, but about the threats posed to them. As you can imagine, a high proportion of those threats are caused by humans. It got me thinking about my career path, my choices.

As a young man, I had a good mind for science. But I didn't choose to go into biology or oceanography or ecology or chemistry. In those fields, one could perhaps deal with major environmental issues like climate change, microplastics, plastics that aren't micro, pollution, or medical breakthroughs. Instead, I went into mathematics. Don't get me wrong, I love mathematics. But mathematics, or at least pure mathematics which is more my side of it, is, to say the least, abstract. Often the things we consider and study have nothing to do with the real world. I shouldn't say that. Maybe in fifty years or three-hundred fifty years someone will take theorems of today, esoteric branches of mathematics of the present, and use them to model phenomena they are studying in the future. That would be great, but honestly, mathematicians would say "Who cares?" Mathematics is studied and expanded, growing in our imagination and our journals, until maybe it reaches the limit of human ingenuity. Or maybe there is no such limit and it can continue to expand indefinitely (or at least until there are no more humans left to appreciate the expansion.)

This thought in my mind is really only a flicker of wonder, a smidgen of doubt, a slight blemish on the unbridled beauty that is a world of abstraction. I don't regret what I've done with my career. I've always worked in educational settings: science museums and universities. I'm helping to pass knowledge on to future generations with the hope that one day some of them will surpass me. I'm sure many will. I'm sure many have already.

So maybe I'm not solving these crises of the world. This isn't to say it was my task to do so, but if I had been capable, should I have made it my task? Maybe, indirectly, I did. Maybe one day someone who learned to love science a bit more because of my work in a museum, or someone who learned a new mathematical skill because of a class I taught, will be part of a team that does address these major issues. And then I played a part, right?

And if that doesn't happen, no student of mine ever works on any of these problems our society faces, I still opened up the potential for it to happen. I guess, for me, that is going to have to count as enough.

That was the deep thought of two days hence. For the deep thought of today, let me tell you about one of my destinations in my ramble. I walked to the Old Town of Bilbao. From there, one can go up to the Basilica de Begoña. When I say up, I literally mean up. You start at the bottom of a long stone staircase. Each set of stairs is only seven or eight steps, but there are dozens of these sets. I looked it up, it's a total of 311 steps.

The start of what would be a long journey

It was actually quite interesting, because there are apartment buildings that have their door along this rising slope. Some people have to walk some portion of these steps everyday just to come home or leave home. (I suppose both.)

The Basilica from the front

I reached the Basilica de Begoña. It is a pretty building, and I walked around it, seeing it from all its sides. Then I went inside. I didn't take pictures inside, this is a place of worship, and that felt disrespectful. I sat in one of the pews and looked at the detailed stone work of the ceiling, the many paintings depicting religious scenes, and the colored windows. That's when the deep thoughts started.

All of this splendor must have cost quite a sum of money: the architecture, the materials, the art. And it must cost a lot of money to maintain. Mind you, the Basilica de Begoña was hardly the most decorated or ostentatious place of worship I've seen of late. You can look back at my post about St. Sava in Belgrade or way back to when, while traveling with the kids, we visited the Vatican. There is so much money tied up in these buildings. These churches represent a huge investment. And all of that money isn't going to educate the ignorant, to improve the prospects of the poor, to find cures for the sick, or to combat the hatred of the intolerant. It's going into a building, into things.

I'm personally in favor of art. I think artists provide a wonderful service to society and they should be paid for their work. But if that work is going to be cloistered away, hidden from the eyes of most people, then doesn't it lose its true value? (This, by the way, got me thinking about another thought. You know how writing is protected by copyright, but eventually it goes into the public domain. Why can't visual arts do the same? If an artist makes a work and a collector, or the church, wants to buy it, great. The artist makes a living and the collector has a new treasure. But after some period, some time after the purchaser dies or the artist dies or just so many years after the completion of the work, it becomes public. It goes to a museum, somewhere that the people can see it. And it goes to the museum for free, or maybe the museum pays for shipping. But the point is that because the art comes for free, it is also put on display for free. Even the indigent can go see amazing, beautiful works because they belong to the people.)

That was a tangent. (Or maybe a secant as it wasn't entirely tangential, but again, for the non-mathematicians, just ignore this parenthetical statement.) My main point is that maybe religious organizations should spend less on the houses of worship and more on the missions espoused by their scriptures and teachings. I'm sure expensive architecture and art can heighten the spirituality of the moment. But if parishioners can't get into a worshipful frame of mind without a 20,000 dollar painting hanging at the side of the room, maybe the problem is the piety and not the property.

I don't mean to call out the Catholic Church as the primary offender on this front. Though, once you've seen the troves of Roman artifacts, statuary, and gold at the Vatican, you realize they probably are the primary offender. Still, they are not the only offender. I've visited churches, synagogues, mosques, Hindu temples, and Buddhist wats that must have cost eye raising sums to raise in some impressive and barely accessible locations, to then be stuffed with a unfair plethora of decoration, ornamentation, and the good stuff.

I also recognize that me, Erich, calling this out is, not hypocritical, but maybe... I can't find a single word for it, but I mean this: I'm an outsider in this society of religions, not part of the community being served. I don't believe in any supernatural beings, and when, as a child, I accepted the existence of some divinity merely on the word of an older generation without any evidence or critical thinking on my part, that divinity was not Christ. I'm saying, as an outsider, maybe I will never, at a guttural level, understand why an ostentatious display of wealth is necessary to commune with the divine. Maybe it is needed by true believers, their prayers may seem meaningless without shimmering golden cups on the altar. I don't know, and I'm never going to experience that particular emotion or sensation.

Or maybe an outsider is exactly who can ask the question. Someone who can say to the believers, "Why?" Why is such expenditure needed for the building where you pray? Why can't that same money be spent in the community, doing the work that your prophets called upon you to do? Maybe an insider is so inured into the culture of their church, so inside, that it just seems natural. They don't question it because that's how it has always been.

Either way, I am the one asking the question. I don't expect an answer. But I would like other people to think about it, or at least ask the question along with me.

I know, we're already asking ourselves so many meaningful, unanswerable questions. Can we really handle one more? Or is it just a drop in that proverbial deep thought ocean?