I don't have a whole lot of new cultural perceptions to relate today. I put in a little downtime and got ready for going to Oran tomorrow, took a nap in the afternoon, &c. It's just about the halfway point of this trip, so as good a time as any to regroup.
This morning after breakfast, I wrote all of my postcards, then killed two birds with one stone by sending them and touring the grande poste all at once. From there, I headed generally in the direction of the basilica notre dame d'afrique, but I didn’t have extremely high hopes since it's far enough away not to be mentioned on any of my maps and the guy at the hotel kept telling me about different things and mumbling 'you should take a taxi,' so I just shot from the hip. I walked out to Bab El-Oued and started climbing the mountain. I was talking about wanting to spend more time outside of Algiers, and this really did the trick. Once I was into the hills, the streets were less crowded and the air felt noticeable clearer, but I think it was probably just an effect of not being between buildings and people and piles of rotting garbage and cars. Not that the road up the mountain lacked its fair share of rotting garbage. I took the road, then cut through on some stairs, then took the road some more and then I saw an old man picking his way up a path through the underbrush. I followed and ended up at the summit (the road went there too, just not as directly). It was a great view on the harbor and the back side of el-aurassi. I realized how far I was from my hotel when I saw that I'd come around the promontory of Algiers at sea level and gone up another mountain altogether. From the top I could see notre dame d'afrique, so I headed back down the road. On the way down, a lot of the houses on the mountain were ready to grow. Almost all of them had a skeleton extra story, with empty window holes and no roof. I guess when you want to add on, there's no need to add a roof, just put a ceiling on the next level and put up some new walls. There was an organic/industrial feel to the place. Not too many people sitting around, and a lot of people working on the houses. On one otherwise empty stretch of street there was a fat little kid blowing on a harmonica. Later, another kid was doing some work on a house with some men. He'd pick up a hammer, throw it against the wall from a couple feet out, walk up, pick up the hammer and do it again.
When I got to the church it was closed. I didn't really mind, cause the goal was just to get there. Given the path I took, I don’t blame the guy at the hotel for not wanting to describe the way to me either. I came back down the mountain very tired. I stopped by the hotel and ate some things, then made arrangements for my two-night absence. They're letting me leave my big suitcase here. I'll just bring my backpack. I checked the train station, which was a good thing since it wasn't where I thought it was, and bought my ticket for tomorrow. I don't have a hotel in Oran yet, but that's mostly how I roll anyways.
I forgot to mention, the Berber security guy at Tipasa told me about a joke he made. He said before the French elections a French couple came by and were asking about some pottery for sale by the entrance. The woman asked what one was for and he said 'couscous royale." The man, a supporter of Sarkozy, asked if there was anything for him. He assented and pointed to the cemetery "les sarkophages." I thought it was pretty good.
Another random note: there are very few blacks here. I've only seen four or five that I've noticed. It's not that interesting of a thing to mention, other than that, as a city, Algiers seems really un-diverse up to Arabs and Berbers. Also, it helps me make the point that you can't be politically correct and call people with dark skin 'African' or 'African-American,' cause everyone here's African and Dave Matthews is an African American. And thus ends my moment of moral superiority.
Anyways, I'm off to Quick for dinner. I'm actually really excited slash nervous for this, cause it's the Algerian version of a French fast food, which in itself is a McDonald's pastiche. McDonalds is an interesting low quality experience of its own, and Quick in France is a pretty weak imitation (for that matter, McDonald's in France is a pretty weak imitation). Also, I've had an Algerian cheeseburger, and it was served on a pita with fries inside and shredded cheese. I guess we'll see. Could be like Chinese KFC, which was a decided improvement on the original. I'm not counting on it, though (French KFC was bizarre at best, anyways).
My report: the food was mostly unexceptional. The cheeseburger was sub par beef (or overcooked or something), with white cheese, ketchup, mustard (maybe?) and onion bits. The bun was slightly different from what one would find stateside but tasted pretty much the same. The fries were fine, served of course with ketchup and mayonnaise on the side, which I like, and the coke tasted like coke. The atmosphere was funny in the way that people were acting much like one would in a McDonalds in America, but it wasn't America. A woman scolded one of her children for taking two balloons, kids were excited to see what toy was in their 'magic box'. At one point a girl working there came up to me and asked if I was a student (she was handing out a special student card). I said yes, she asked where, I told her, she was surprised slash amused and didn't give me the card. In an unusual turn, everyone in there was speaking French.
This isn't something I noticed at Quick, but generally, the Algerian concept of waiting in a line is ridiculous. Even in very official settings (banks, post office), there's no queue, and people pretty much just crowd around the desk until someone pays attention to them. If someone's going through a complicated operation at the bank, you can go up to that teller and they'll start serving you too at the same time. I've never been in a crowd trying to do that, though I'm sure it would be very interesting, as long as it's not important. For example, I think I'll start punching babies if my flight out of here gets cancelled and I have to deal with that kind of line at customer service.
Also in the same vein, an Algerian woman cut the line at security in the airport in Paris, saying she was late and that someone told her to do it. She kept saying, 'It's not my fault, they told me to do it'. She was clearly lying, since I was on her flight and it wasn't boarding for another hour. Also, it was a pretty futile gesture, since the plane wasn't getting there any faster either way. That kind of shortsighted rudeness and trickery (She cut in front of a couple with three kids who were kind of in a hurry to board their flight to Budapest) tends to excite my baby punching impulse as well. I'm just hoping it doesn't come down to that.
In Quick I saw a man with his tie tied basically sideways, with a distended knot and the skinny end hanging down next to the fat end, which was at and angle outside of his jacket. Either he didn't notice or he didn't care. Yesterday, here at the hotel, one of the clerks had his tie tied ridiculously short. In a pretty weak showing, he'd tucked the long, skinny end into his waistband. At the bank, the director didn't have a tie on when I came in, so he quickly reached into his drawer and put one on. It was pre-tied, all he did was loosen it, put it on his neck and retighten it. It wasn't straight but not a terrible result all in all. These are just a few examples of unusual neckwear decisions. I'd say at least half of all ties I see here are noticeably mistied in one form or another. I'm kinda curious about the phenomenon. Is that the equivalent of leaving your shirt untucked—a little messy but often acceptable, even a sign of relaxation? I have no idea. I have trouble believing that that many people can't tell the difference or are too rushed to do anything about it. Maybe if that clerk is here tomorrow morning I'll ask him.
Something cool that's happened is that I've ceased to feel different from the people here. The first couple of days when I was walking around, I was constantly aware of being different from everyone else (and it's not even like in China, where everyone just stares at you). I was clearly just being self conscious, because for the most part, everyone takes me in stride. I sometimes wonder how obvious it is I'm foreign. Probably more so because of what I'm wearing than my face, but maybe not so much there either. As long as I keep my mouth shut and don't take pictures I'm pretty anonymous. Even when I'm talking, I have no idea what they make of my accent. No one's called me out on it directly, and everyone here speaks accented French in the first place. The dead giveaway that I'm not from here is that I don't speak Arabic, but nothing in that says I'm not Dutch or German or Swiss or something. Even at that, no one who I've told I'm American has seemed put off by it.
Here's the million-dollar question: which city has more Algerian beggars. Algiers or Paris?
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