Strangers (yelling) in a Strange Land

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woke up late, because we had limited plans for the day, and we had to do preliminary research on getting health insurance for next year, cause the army cut me loose the day my DD214 was good.

Its pretty shiesty that the army doesnt even finish out the calendar month, or offer any kind of affordable extension coverage while you look for a new job. If you electively seperate from the army at the end of your contract you get nothing, at 0000 or midnight on the day you seperate, you are flapping in the wind without coverage.

Anyways we did some of that and headed out walking. Going for Ramen about a mile away from the hotel, it was very good. The spicy Tan Tan styled ramen, not as good as that fist place in Ueno, but pretty good, laura and i got basically the same thing, i just had more lettuce, and some little dried shimps.

Then we went to another department store, originally because they had more hobby stuff, but turns out they have a bunch of natural and organic cosmetics, so laura was excited. Identifying stuff that she would actually want to purchase we took note and continued on our walk.

We went to a clothing shipping distrct, hunting for a colder weather jacket for laura, the main second hand store didnt have anything that worked, her arms are too long to fit properly in all the

cute

japanese jackets. Damn physiological differences due to Japans homogeneity...

We then went to a craft beer price with supposedly decent prices, only to learn that Tuesdays are their new day off (today is tuesday). Disappointed we settled on a british pub styled restaurant, drank some well priced FULL PINTS of beer, we decided on dinner.

I wanted Okonomiyaki or Sobeyaki, so I found a place close to home and we set off.

The place was small, and empty, we walked in, and almost immediately started getting berated by the proprietor, in Japanse. I am still not sure what he was yelling about. He didnt offer us a seat, he kinda just yelled at us. I think it was something along the lines of "This isnt like all the other Okonomiyaki places tourists go to, if you want the shit you can get there go there, i make it the way i make it. Im sick of tourists coming in here expecting it to be the way they read about online, and ordering like three or four things, and not liking it and not eating it. if you want that you can go!"

I did my best to assure him that ANYTHING he serves us we will eat. At that point i had been on the recieving end of his excitedness for too long to bail. He was almost entirely focused on me, laura was there, but not getting yelled at, she tried to smile and make eye contact with the wife/sous chef, and communicate that we are sorry, and we just want to eat the food.

So he calmed down, i google translated "whatever you recommend, we will eat" and he finally invited us to sit down, and he started making food.

he made an okonomiyaki and soba yaki. he made it how he wanted, and it was delicious, THe okonomiyaki was the egg battered vegetables that we were expecting, if a bit more vegetabl-y than egg-y that he tossed more of those little dried shimps into. And the noodles were fried up, liberally doused in the traditional sauce, and made extra special with what im guessing was cow intestines, that he fried up on the grill with the noodles.

Ultimately the meal was ENTIRELY worth getting yelled at for 5 minutes, and struggling through the language barrier. I would NOT recommend this to someone that isnt willing to work for their food, to embrace the cultural divide and attempt to overcome it.

my pessimism is showing

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slept in fantastically late, it was great, me and mike made our way to that same market we went to the first week after the cemetery, to meet up with some of the other people, and wander around. luckily i love shopping, and especially shopping for tourist garbage, so i had a great time, after wandering around for a few hours, we decided to find a bar that was inexpensive, and had the Olympics on tv, ultimately we settled on an expensive restaurant, that had crappy music videos on tv.

yeah, we went to the hardrock cafe Buenos Aires, in the hopes that they are "International" enough to have the Olympics on, and they only had it on at the bar, which we couldnt sit at, and they had more crappy beer for way to many Peso. so it was kinda shitty.

we broke for a nap and dinner before going out. we decided to go to the bar we found last weekend, the Congo place, with the outdoor-ness and the firepits. i was mad tired, so i sat watching the crowds and nursing a beer for much of the evening.

im looking forward to just sitting around the hotel and drinking in Patagonia, because we can start that at like 8, have 5 hrs of drunken shenanigans and still get to sleep before 5am. the bar scene here doesnt pick up till like midnight, and goes till sun up.

our party split up, a bunch of girls, and my roomate wanted to go clubbing, while the rest of us went home (i went home at least, i dun really care bout everyone else). apparently mike had a bunch of fun at the club, there were fewer creepy assholes at this place than the last place, so he wasnt stuck fighting off douchebags the entire night. i vaguely recall him coming home, but i was sleeping very hard.

so yeah, this weekend was aright, i PROMISE when we hit Patagonia ill have interesting shit to talk about, glaciers and nature n shit. this dialogue is just alot less culturally exciting than my previous ones. my post-dialogue writeup will be very long, i just need some time for all this shit to coalesce, between my bias towards Europe, this being the very end of my undergrad career, and my obstinate anti-grammar nature, this dialogue will leave me with things to say beyond character analysis of the girls around me.

slow days

29512 squat, we did squat today, we had class and thats about it. the class didnt fall into my area of interest, but i see the pertinence to the history. the class was led by a Charles University professor that had a rather eclectic collection of degrees under his belt, but he gave us the rundown of the History of the Jewish people in central Europe from the early modern to modern times. much of the stuff we went through we had gotten bits and pieces of on our wanderings and guided tours through the Jewish sections of the cities we have been to, the special clothes they had to wear to be marked out, the development and institutionalization of the ghettos, the kings always relying on the Jews for revenue. he also talked about how the thirty years war and the development of the nation-state made being a Jew harder, cause of the rise of nationalism, and the abolition of the autonomy the Jewish communities had. by the modern era, monarchs began to realize they could better exploit the Jewish population by letting them take up new professions and go to school n whatnot, but things didnt necessarily get better. The discussion kinda petered out before getting past 1900, so we didn’t talk about the modern nationalism and racism stuff, but then again, that is something we (I atleast) have gotten lots of before. after said class, i went home and napped, for like 3 hours, woke up, ate a lil bit, a handful of us wanted to go find food at a place that was closed again, we then walked back to our neighborhood to try a place that wasnt taking anymore costumers, so i came home, and did this, will work on my paper now. tomorrow we are seeing stuff, so there will be pictures and discussion n whatnot.

Monday 25711

another relatively early morning, went to visit the constitutional courthouse to speak with various people, one lady was involved in public relations, and gave us an overvew of how everything works, the next lady was speaking on prosecutorial procedure, and finally we spoke to two international judges, from the US.

it was very interesting to see the cousin office to the Serbian special prosecutors office, and get to see the differences. this office seems to have much more public support, which makes sense, as the largest of warcrimes/crimes against humanity was committed by Serbs, therefore Serbia isnt entirely happy with the trials, and Bosnia would love them. it was nice to hear from Americans on the issue, they were lawyers in the States, and then went on to work with the ICTY and followed through into the more local courts that will be taking over for the ICTY when it is "finished"

also this is the first major taste of non-serbian perceptions which is also interesting.

the highlight of my day was the talk that Mladen organized with a friend he met in Boston. this guy, i believe is name was Azan was a Bosnian Muslim, served his time in the JNA, and as the political spectrum became more radical after the break up of Yugoslavia, he began to prepare his neighborhood and friends to defend themselves from the Yugoslav national army which was slowly becoming more dominated by Serb nationalists. when war broke out with Slovenia those preparations were kicked into overdrive, and when the war broke out in Croatia, Azan went to join the Croatian army to fight off the Serbs, and as hostilities were on the horizon in Bosnia, he returned home to defend his friends and family.

he organized them into fighting units and served as an impromptu commander. he described how in the beginning of hostilities all the Bosnian forces were independent fighting units that would have to convince eachother to work together. he had cool battle stories, i got his email, ill try to get some more out of him, maybe visit his restaurant in Boston and get some more stories out of him.

at the same time a documentarian was present to throw in his statements, apparently this man documented the battle that Azan took part in, he had interesting things to say, though overall not that much to say, i think the translation he needed and Azan didnt, kinda detracted from his participation, ima try to dig up that documentary.

weather is still crappy and rainy here, but i still think its better than the 100+ degree days of Belgrade. we are supposed to be going out to dinner with one of the judges we met early today, so ill either double post, or add that to tomorrow.