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Been There, Done That… Nairobi, Kenya

April 16, 2014 / posted in Been There, Done That, Travel / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Nairobi, Kenya…December 1993. Sande and I had been living in London for just over a year when we decided to embark on the first of what would be many holiday adventures beyond Europe. Over the coming years, these would include the faraway wonders of China, India, South Africa, Mongolia, Nepal, Morocco, Russia, and Oman, among others. The fact that we started in Africa—or frankly, that we started at all—is noteworthy given that Sande’s idea of a “travel adventure” was being in a hotel without hairdryers and my previous experience with “roughing it” was to leave Boy Scout camp several days early with a bad case of stomach cramps owing to my inability to cross the threshold of the odious outhouse, much less take a seat inside. (Thousand leggers crawling, flies swarming, bats hanging, and the smell—ugh!) Nonetheless, at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning 1993, Sande and I landed in Nairobi to go “On Safari.”

Over the next twelve days, we would track big game in Samburu, straddle the equator atop Mt. Kenya, camp on the vast plains of the Masai Mara, and snorkel in the Indian Ocean off the coastal town of Mombasa—a town we were quite fortunate to reach alive! But that is a New Year’s Eve story. »Read More

Been There, Done That… Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

March 19, 2014 / posted in Been There, Done That, Travel / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Riyadh (& Jeddah), Saudi Arabia…1995-1997. Its culture diametrically opposed to my own and its appeal, well, there wasn’t much of that, despite my first-hand look at the opulence of life inside the walled residence of the scion of a family whose patriarch was a highly placed member of King Fahd’s Council of Ministers.

The chauffeur-driven limousine picked me up at my hotel at about seven that evening for the twenty-minute drive to the residence. Surrounded by desert and twelve-foot-high walls the color of sand, the house itself came into view only when guards opened the heavy wooden gates to a courtyard where several more men stood. Even then, with few exterior lights suggesting grandeur, I was not overly impressed. Then I stepped inside.

The foyer was massive; its polished marble floors seeming to rise up to meet the moonlight filtering through a sky-high stained glass cupola as impressive as many I’d seen in European cathedrals. Ahead to my left, a doublewide marble stairway curved itself to a higher floor, while straightaway beyond was the Library where I would meet my reason for being there. I tried to act like this was all normal fare for me. Yeah, right! »Read More

Been There, Done That… Krakow, Poland

February 4, 2014 / posted in Been There, Done That, Travel / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Krakow, Poland…February 1996. I don’t handle cold weather very well. Poor circulation is undoubtedly to blame. That, and the fact that I never seem to have (or remember to bring) the proper cold weather gear, made my client’s desire to “take some air” on a brutally cold February night on the Eastern Front a real pain in the ass.

I was in Krakow with one of my client counterparts from British Petroleum. Michel, a Belgian with a heavy French accent and a ready wit, was the Marketing Manager for BP Europe—a position akin to herding cats, given the European mindset that our country’s problems and needs are different from all the others. For that reason, it was important to periodically visit with the local country managers and discuss their particular issues.

BP Europe was just one piece in my agency’s BP Global portfolio, but it was a crucial piece and Michel was, in turn, an important client contact. Exactly why he cared to put himself through the trials and tribulations of “herding cats” was a mystery to me, as I had it on good authority that Michel was quite wealthy, owing to his family’s success in various Northern European business ventures. A refined and charming bachelor with a penchant for collecting and restoring vintage automobiles, Michel was a delightful travelling companion and, on this particular night when the thermometer was falling precipitously toward single digits, was far better ward-robed for taking some air than was I. Put simply, Michel was dressed like a Russian Cossack, whereas I looked like I belonged in a Miami Vice episode with Crockett and Tubbs. »Read More

Been There, Done That… Tokyo, Japan

January 21, 2014 / posted in Been There, Done That, Travel / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Tokyo, Japan…July 1995. Stepping out through the Rosetta marble columns of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, I found myself thinking of Oddjob, James Bond’s Oriental nemesis in Goldfinger. The hotel’s entrance columns had that same look of squared-off immovability as the squat muscleman with the steel-rimmed bowler…not terribly elegant but damn solid. I was heading out for a late afternoon jog to clear my head and get my bearings.

This was my first time in Tokyo and I had just finished an intense meeting with a Japanese businessman and an interpreter. For all the traveling I had done in recent years, this was only the second time that I had required an interpreter, the other being in Barcelona at a meeting with the head of a small Spanish agency whose Gothic offices overlooked Las Ramblas, the city’s eclectic pedestrian promenade. The Barcelona meeting had been a delightful introduction to the world of language intervention, thanks to the interpreter being an exceptionally pretty young woman who seemed to find everything I said fascinating. In contrast, my translator in Tokyo was an older gentleman, with a kamikaze-like focus on the job at hand. It was a trait I would find repeatedly in my dealings with the Japanese over the next few years.

I had arrived in the land of the rising sun to intermittent bursts of pouring rain that whipped up an impressive level of humidity reminiscent of the Baltimore summers of my youth. I was, however, reasonably acclimatized, thanks to Tokyo being my final stop on a two-week excursion that had already taken me to Kuala Lumpur, Brunei, and Jakarta. »Read More

Been There, Done That… Muscat, Oman

January 15, 2014 / posted in Been There, Done That, Travel / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Muscat, Oman…Christmas 1998 & New Year’s 1999. It seemed like a good idea at the time—to spend Christmas and New Year’s in a Muslim country in the middle of Ramadan.

Perhaps the most sacred month of the Islamic calendar, Ramadan is a period during which Muslims refrain—dawn to sunset—from eating, drinking, smoking, and sexual relations, arguably the perennial Big Four on Sande and my holiday wish list. Nevertheless, on Christmas Eve, we boarded a British Airways flight out of London en route to a destination about which we knew little, a culture that could hardly be more foreign, and a region that, within days, would make worldwide headlines when sixteen tourists in neighboring Yemen were taken hostage by Islamist militants. Four of those hostages and several of the terrorists would subsequently be killed when Yemen government troops stormed the compound where the hostages were being held.

True to form, Sande and I were blissfully ignorant of such dangers as our plane touched down in Muscat. Our concerns were more basic. Had Sande brought enough color-coordinated veils to cover her head whenever we were out in public? And since we could only drink alcohol in the privacy of our hotel room, albeit via a very well stocked mini-bar, how often would we actually be sober enough to make it downstairs for dinner? »Read More

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…BEIJING, CHINA

October 30, 2013 / posted in Been There, Done That / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Beijing, China…May 1998. Notwithstanding the beauty of Paris, the bustle of Tokyo, the nobility of London, or the sheer presence of New York, Beijing is perhaps my favorite city in the world. No other city has ever transported me, both literally and figuratively, to the heights of mental and sensory acuity that I experienced there.

To wander for hours through the centuries old Forbidden City and imagine what it was like to be the last Emperor or for that matter the first, who resided there some 500 years earlier, throngs of followers stretched out in homage before him, concubines and eunuchs attending to his every whim; it is a truly magical place.

Located in the center of Beijing, just around the corner from our hotel, I would jog each morning past the entrance to this city within a city, and consider life outside its walls for the common people who were forbidden to enter the Emperor’s world of secrecy and mystery. Then I look up at the enormous framed portrait of Chairman Mao overhanging the main gate, as workers clad in drab tunic style Mao suits sweep the pre-dawn streets—vivid reminders of China’s communist mindset, still fresh and dominating despite two decades of the country being open to westerners like me.

I continue my jog through Tiananmen Square and am immediately transported to that iconic moment, just nine years earlier, when a lone student stood before a column of 50-ton Chinese military tanks in a protest that would have been inconceivable to generations past, resulted in a massacre of student protestors, and moved China another painful step toward its future.

Later in the day, Sande and I will ride our bikes to the Temple of Confucious before stopping for lunch at McDonald’s, at which point a mild rumble is felt on the ground below our feet, as Confucious, Mao Tse-Tung and every Emperor in China’s thousands-years history undoubtedly turns over in his grave. »Read More

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…MADRID, SPAIN

October 16, 2013 / posted in Been There, Done That / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Madrid, Spain…February 1993. Over the course of my tenure as an international ad man, I visited Madrid many times, but the most noteworthy by far was the weekend Sande and I spent there early on in our life as expatriates. An interesting place to do business, often requiring translators, thanks to Spain’s relatively recent past under the iron-fisted isolationist rule of Generalisimo Franco, and a place of cultural renown, thanks to the treasures of the Prado, the Sofia, and the city’s many magnificent cathedrals and plazas, Madrid was also a city where I would have the most memorable dessert of my life. »Read More

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…MARRAKECH, MOROCCO

July 12, 2013 / posted in Been There, Done That / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Marrakech, Morocco…New Year’s 1996. Notwithstanding being ordered from our car at gunpoint on our way to a tribal village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, or the human feeding frenzy I engendered with an ill-conceived act of kindness toward some Berber children there, Sande and I loved Marrakech.

Had the best mint tea of our lives in a makeshift café on the edge of the walled city, prepared by a happy guy with no front teeth wearing a homemade Moroccan hoodie.  His refreshing recipe: stuff several large mint leaves, straight from the earth, in a small pot of warm water, add a block of sugar the size of a baseball, and have at it. Undoubtedly, his missing teeth owed something to his prodigious consumption of sugar, but he made a damn good cup of tea.

Visited the weekly Berber market, just outside the city walls, where the “parking lot” held not one car but nearly a hundred donkeys. Even more surprising, the pack mules were lined up in almost perfect order, as if some unseen donkey park attendant had organized them. Meanwhile, the only blonde head for miles belonged to Sande, making her impossible to miss and quite popular.

Decided to relax in the hotel steam room one afternoon. Attendant said, “Go in the first room on your right.” Entered a large space the size of a boxcar, lit by a single overhead light, the walls a magnificent mosaic tile, the floor poured concrete with a drain in the middle. To my right lay a hose about six feet long and a wooden bench like prizefighters sit on between rounds.  Turned on the hose; damn near scalded the skin off my feet. Spent the next several minutes effectively assuming the lotus position atop the prizefighter’s bench, steam slowly filling the boxcar. Strangest shvitz I ever had! »Read More

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…DELHI, INDIA

May 1, 2013 / posted in Been There, Done That / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Delhi, India…March 1996. I have always been fascinated by India. Yet, whenever that country comes up in conversation, it is usually met with negative comments about overcrowding, lack of cleanliness or, in more recent times, frustration that the local cable company’s customer service representatives all seem to live there. None of that was on my mind in the spring of 1996 when Sande and I, and two female friends, set off on one of the most fascinating holidays of our lives, at the heart of which was ten days in neighboring Nepal, featuring Himalayan mountain trekking, white water rafting, and the jungle tracking of rhinos and tigers while perched safely (if bumpily) atop an elephant’s back. That Nepalese adventure, and Nepal’s magnificent capital city of Kathmandu, which still houses the “Living Goddess” and its fair share of ‘60s hippies, was indeed extraordinary, but Delhi was its gateway and our days there were no less memorable. While unequivocally reinforcing the negative perceptions of so many, it only reinvigorated the allure of this very foreign land to me personally. »Read More

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT…ROVANIEMI, FINLAND

April 5, 2013 / posted in Been There, Done That / Comments Off

I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth.  Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.

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Rovaniemi, Finland…December 1994. One of several travel routines that Sande and I established while we were living in London was an early December weekend in one of Europe’s wintry wonderlands. Someplace cold, cozy, snowy, and full of the Christmas spirit. This particular year, we decided on Lapland, the unofficial “hometown” of the jolly fat man in the bright red suit, and a place where, in early December, the days provide little more than a dusky gray light from maybe 10 in the morning to around 3 in the afternoon. Everything else is nighttime, in no uncertain terms. Laplanders have, of course, adapted well to these conditions—the prodigious consumption of alcohol and a virtual disregard for the clock being the pillars of their assimilation.

For geographic perspective, Roveniemi is just three miles from the Arctic Circle, and over 400 miles north of Helsinki, a city to which I traveled often during my London-based tenure, and before. In fact, my first trip to Helsinki was in 1991, the year before Sande and I relocated. One of my agency associates and I traveled there from Baltimore to meet with Nokia Communications, at the time one of the most dynamic multinational players in the mobile technology market, headquartered just outside Helsinki. It was a fascinating experience, noteworthy for the deadly serious characters we met at the meeting, the mouth-watering dinner of Bambi steaks we consumed that evening, the money I lost in one of the city’s casinos that night, the vodka I subsequently consumed because of the money I lost, the plane I missed the next morning because of the vodka I consumed, the business meeting I punted in London the next afternoon because of the plane I missed, and the fact that I felt like crap as I then scrambled to reconnect the dots of my binge-busted itinerary. But that’s a different “travel” story. Please pardon the riff. »Read More

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