Come December, New York City becomes a veritable mecca of holiday shops, festivals and bazaars. Most tourists are familiar with the classic gift emporiums at Grand Central, Bryant Park and Union Square. But those markets tend to turn off the newer, younger, more independent brands with their hefty vendor fees and multi-week commitments.
For a different scene, check out some of the city’s newer holiday markets, which offer food, drinks, workshops, art exhibitions and, of course, innumerable gift ideas from some of the city’s hottest up-and-coming brands. Here are five of the most buzz-worthy.
The Brooklyn Night Bazaar The scene: A Williamsburg warehouse is transformed into a month-long hipster spectacular of art, music, food, drink and holiday shopping. Weekend nights feature concerts curated by Fader, Hype Machine, Gothamist and other musical tastemakers. Gift ideas: Handprinted iPhone cases from Blissful Case, artisan soaps from Ebb & Flow, reclaimed wooden cutting boards from Grain. When: Fridays and Saturdays, November 23 to December 22, 6 p.m. to midnight Where: 45 N. 5th St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn Admission: FreeGIVE GOOD Market* The scene: A two-day market featuring close to 40 socially conscious businesses owned by women, along with a full lineup of DIY craft workshops, film screenings, musical performances, art exhibitions and a panel on the role of entrepreneurship in women’s empowerment. Gift ideas: Reclaimed leather handbags from Shannon South, contemporary cow horn jewelry from Kora, hand-knitted hoop scarves from Indego Africa. When: November 30 to December 1, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Where: Starrett Lehigh Building, 601 W. 26th St., Chelsea, Manhattan Admission: Free
Bust Magazine Holiday Craftacular and Food Fair The scene: A kick-ass selection of more than 200 vendors, selling handmade craft items, artisan foods and craft beers over two days. Arrive early; the first 300 shoppers each day get a free goodie bag. Gift ideas: Artisan cosmetics from The Elixery, shibori-dyed pillows from Eighty8Percent, Hipster Bingo. When: December 1 to 2, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Where: 82 Mercer St., SoHo, Manhattan Admission: $3
Hester Holiday Market The scene: More than 40 gift and food vendors take over a historic Nolita building in this holiday shopping event from the organizers of the Hester Street Fair. Opening day on December 1 will feature a tree-lighting ceremony, animated light show and Christmas carolers. Gift ideas: Upcycled charm bracelets from Tillydoro, handprinted socks from Strathcona Stockings, hand-blended looseleaf teas from Not Just Tea. When: December 1 to 2, 8 to 9, and 15-23, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Where: 233 Mott St., Nolita, Manhattan Admission: Free
Brooklyn Craft Central Annual Holiday Market The scene: This two-weekend event features a curated selection of (mostly) Brooklyn-based crafters and designers. Holiday cocktails and spicy pupusas will also be on tap. Gift ideas: Hardwood wine holders from Gowanus Furniture, quirky tees from The Fencing & Archery Printing Co., whimsical jewelry from Virginie Millefiori When: December 15 to 16 and 22 to 23, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Where: Littlefield Art Space, 622 DeGraw St., Park Slope/Gowanus, Brooklyn Admission: Free
*Disclaimer: The author of this post is on the organizing committee for this event – another reason to check it out!
This Iraqi policeman is busy texting at one of the great archaeological sites of his country – Assur, the first capital of the Assyrian Empire.
Assur was founded at least as early as 2400 B.C., but it wasn’t until the reign of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad (ruled 1809-1776 B.C.) that it became the capital of a true empire. Shamshi-Adad’s armies took over the bulk of Mesopotamia, as well as Syria and Asia Minor.
By then Assur was a magnificent place, having had centuries of kings lavishing it with attention. Several large temples dominated the site, including one for the goddess Ishtar and another for the city’s god Assur, who rose to become one of the most important gods in the Assyrian pantheon thanks to the city’s fortunes. Rising above all was a ziggurat, a stepped pyramid atop which once stood a temple. Shamshi-Adad’s conquests weren’t to last and the empire soon fell to the Babylonians. The Assyrian Empire had to be rebuilt by later kings.
Like with many Mesopotamian sites, Assur is in a sad state today. The land has very little stone, so most buildings were constructed with mud brick, which has a bad habit of melting away in the rain, even the sparse rain of Mesopotamia. Thus the ziggurat looks like a big lumpy hill, and we can only see the foundations of the temples and palaces thanks to the meticulous excavations of generations of archaeologists. Despite the poor preservation, there’s still a magical quality to the place with the Tigris River flowing lazily by and so much history underfoot.
%Gallery-171929%Another important Assyrian site is Nimrud, established as the imperial capital by King Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883-859 B.C.). His palace was decorated with lively bas-reliefs showing him hunting, vanquishing his enemies. This site has more to see thanks to the intact stone carvings and several reconstructed buildings. A pair of giant, winged bulls flank the entrance, and several important carvings still line the walls. Sadly, one that showed the king standing before a sacred tree with the god Assur hovering above was smashed and parts of it stolen during the looting that took place during the 2003 invasion.
The Assyrians have the reputation of being the bullies of the ancient world, always ready to lay waste to a city, salt the fields, and flay their enemies. This is partially due to their unsympathetic treatment in the Bible and partially to the magnificent bas-reliefs they carved to show off the bloody results of their conquests. The Assyrians were great warriors, but they were no more cruel than any other ancient empire and they achieved a high level of artistic development.
They also valued learning. At Nineveh, another Assyrian site in Iraq, archaeologists discovered a vast library filled with texts on astronomy, medicine, geography and history, as well as the day-to-day functioning of the empire. Ancient classics such as “The Epic of Gilgamesh” were copied and read, and new works were written. Far more than simple thugs, the Assyrians were one of the great empires of the ancient world.
If you can’t make it to Iraq, several museums in the West have excellent Assyrian collections, including the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the Met in New York City.
Don’t miss the rest of my series, “Destination: Iraq,” chronicling my 17-day journey across this strife-ridden country in search of adventure, archaeology and AK-47s.
Coming up next: “Visiting Ur, Ctesiphon, and Babylon!”
Sweden has a strange relationship with alcohol. After going through a period of prohibition in the early 20th century, booze officially resurfaced but under strict government control. Today, for example, you can only find three brands of vodka on store shelves: Absolut, Good ol’ Sailor, and Explorer. If you want a more high-end variety – say, Karlsson or Purity – you’d have to find it in a bar or order it online.
Whatever the case, you might need a bit of vodka before visiting the new Spirit Museum, or as it’s officially written, Spiritmuseum, in Stockholm. This is not a place dedicated to the ghoulish and ghostly; it’s all about alcohol. You won’t, though, learn much about the history of booze in Sweden. You won’t learn, for example, that Swedish Protestants played a large role in implementing Prohibition in the United States. Or that in Sweden, a “bar,” as we know it cannot exist: the establishment has to serve food. Or even that in the 1950s the Swedish government had ration books that kept track of how many bottles of booze you were purchasingInstead, you’ll enter a bizarre booze-themed fantasyland, created by someone who most certainly was under the influence of a Swedish spirit. The bi-level space is separated by seasons and guests are given a packet of spirits and to drink at each the season. In spring, I tasted an orange liquor. Summer was elderflower, late summer was caraway and dill, and autumn was wormwood. And each room/season had a particular theme: spring had fake trees and the summer room contained two campers, like the kind you pull behind your car – the back windows of each showed videos of people singing Swedish drinking songs.
Upstairs there’s a “hangover room,” a small space bedecked to look like someone’s apartment. As soon you shut the door, a recording of a hung-over woman begins. She’s talking to herself about how crappy she feels until the recording culminates with the woman vomiting. In the next room, you’re encouraged to lounge on a cozy banquette and watch a video of a guy’s night out. The show takes us on a journey through his inebriation, labeling each stage: sober, tipsy, loaded, hammered and wrecked. By the time we get to “gone,” he’s passed out in the snow.
It’s admirable they don’t necessarily romanticize alcohol. But neither does the museum seem to make much sense.
Fittingly, there’s a bar inside the museum as well (one that, of course, serves food). Of the cocktails on the list, I was intrigued by the Brooklyn Cocktail: Four Roses single barrel, Amer Picon, and Dolin vermouth. As I was contemplating getting one – maybe it would have helped me understand what I had just experienced – I met the museum director, Helen Ericsson.
Did I like the museum? Um … yes, I did. “It’s not about the production of spirits,” she told me. “It’s about the human experience with alcohol.”
And then she added: “Next year we’re taking a step back and adding more about the history of spirits. People now think the museum is a little strange.”
I’m way too old to be a Belieber but there I was on a snowy Saturday afternoon driving slowly up towards Justin Bieber’s boyhood home in Stratford, Ontario. I’ve never bothered to investigate the legacy of musicians that I actually like, so why was I paying homage to a kid whose fan base wasn’t even born when I graduated from college? Call me crazy, or worse, but how can you not be curious about an 18-year-old who has earned well over $50 million and has 7 million more Twitter followers than the President of the United States?
%Gallery-171875% Stratford is a prim, artsy town in Western Ontario that, until Bieber burst into the popular culture, was known as the home of the Stratford Festival, one of North America’s premier venues to see live Shakespeare productions at five area theaters. But these days, legions of tween and teen girls from all over the world descend on the place to walk in the footsteps of their hero. Two years ago, tourism officials in the town teamed up with Bieber’s grandparents to create a “Bieber-iffic” map with 24 of the lad’s local haunts.
But the home that Bieber grew up in with his mom, who became pregnant with him at 17, and his grandparents, wasn’t on the map, so I Googled it and made plans to hit the Bieber Trail on the way home from a Thanksgiving visit to Buffalo. Stratford is a lovely town with an impeccably preserved historic core, full of appealing shops and restaurants and nice old Victorian homes.
But the Bieber home people flock to is a couple miles outside the tourist friendly zone on a nondescript, working class street behind a strip with chain restaurants and some big box stores. As soon as I stepped out of the car and snapped a photo of the home, I felt like a stalker and furtively ducked back into the car.
If I was a 12-year-old girl, my mission would have been perfectly understandable, but as a middle-aged guy, I felt ridiculous. Still, as we drove away, I wanted to know if Bieber’s family still lived in the house, so I pulled over and asked a pair of teens who were walking on the slushy street.
“Oh no, they moved,” said the girl, who was probably about 14.
“Well are they still in Stratford or did they leave town?” I asked, as my wife swatted me in the stomach.
The girl had no idea and as we drove off, my wife, who was blissfully unaware of what a large detour I had taken us on to follow in Bieber’s footsteps, lost what little interest she had in the crusade.
“This is so embarrassing,” she complained. “You’re a grown man asking teenagers on the street about where Justin Bieber’s grandparents live? People are going to wonder what’s wrong with you. “
If only my sons, who are 3 and 5, were a bit older we could have plausibly claimed we were visiting the Bieber Trail on their behalf, but alas they were too young to serve the purpose. Around the corner from the Bieber house on a typically suburban stretch of strip malls and fast foot outlets, we pulled into the parking lot of King’s Buffet, a “Chinese & Canadian” buffet, where young Justin apparently spilled spaghetti and meatballs all over himself on his first ever date.
My wife refused to come in with me and as I approached the maître d’s podium, I couldn’t decide if I should simply ask about Bieber’s first date or explain that I was writing a story about the Bieber Trail.
“I read that Justin Bieber had his first date here,” I blurted out, sheepishly, thankful that the place was almost completely empty. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Sure, we get groups of young girls coming in here all the time for that,” said a young man with spiky hair who was dressed in black.
“Really? What do they say?” I asked.
“They just come in and start giggling and squealing,” he said. “Most of them want to know where he sat, who was the girl, what did they order. But unfortunately we don’t know any of the details.”
Hoping to find someone with a bit more information on Bieber’s connection to the town, I went to Stratford’s Visitor’s Information office and struck up a conversation with Aaron Wybrow. He told me that the two most popular stops on the trail were City Hall, where Justin performed his first ever recorded song and the Avon Theatre, where Justin supposedly used to make upwards of $200 per night as a busker. (A bronze star honoring Him is now emblazoned on the sidewalk in honor of this legacy.)
Wybrow is often the first person that Beliebers meet in Stratford, so I was curious to know what it was like to encounter these ferociously loyal, some would say psychotic, young women.
“They’re hard to control and hard to talk to,” he said, standing next to a display case with an autographed Justin Bieber guitar. “They want to see everything about Justin so they’re asking every question under the sun and before you can answer, it’s another question.”
As we were talking one of his colleagues, who was manning a visitor’s information desk the city had set up at a regional girls pee-wee hockey tournament, stopped in to restock his supply of Justin Bieber maps. The demand was so great that it was his third reload of the day. (The visitor’s center has distributed more than 20,000 Justin maps since they were produced in 2010.)
Wybrow explained that the Beiber Trail had been created in consultation with Justin’s grandparents, who had just one condition for their cooperation: that their home address wouldn’t be listed as one of the stops. They have since moved to a neighboring town, but the visitor’s information office still won’t tell people where Justin lived because they don’t want stalkers, like me, to trample the place.
Wybrow mentioned that when Beiber returned to Stratford last summer with girlfriend Selena Gomez there was a media feeding frenzy.
“And there’s a rumor going around now that Justin’s in town right now,” he said. “But I don’t know if it’s true.”
That nugget added another delicious little element to my quest. Perhaps we’d meet Justin. Who knows, maybe we’d run into Him at one of His old haunts or perhaps He’d play an impromptu gig somewhere in town or busk at the Avon Theatre for old time’s sake?
“Tell me, am I the only guy who has ever come in to ask about Justin Bieber sites?” I asked.
“We have had guys come in,” Wybow said. “But they always say they’re just asking for their girlfriends. I’d say that about 98 or 99% of the people who came in to ask about Justin are girls.”
Feeling very much like a member of the 1%, we repaired to the Café 10, where Ana Staffen, a 16-year-old girl, waitress and cashier served us some great food and even better Bieber gossip. The restaurant isn’t listed on that Bieber Trail but she still fields plenty of inquiries from Beliebers.
“When I tell them that I live right near Ryan, who’s like Justin’s best friend, they just start screaming and freaking out,” she said. “One time, I was telling one of them that I had once been to a party that Justin was at and she just started shaking and, like convulsing like she was going to collapse. Then she wanted to take my picture.”
Ana was keen to tell us everything she knew or had heard about Bieber. She claimed that he’d transferred schools after just one semester in high school because he was being bullied. A few of his best friends still live in the town and some of them thought that being a member of the Bieber entourage made them like royalty.
During Bieber’s visit to Stratford last summer, Ana and a group of about 30 other teens gathered in front of his grandparent’s residence and sang and chanted for hours, hoping to coax Bieber out of the house.
“He came to the window and looked at us, but he never came outside,” said Ana, who said she saw Bieber’s movie three times even though she doesn’t really care for his music. “But eventually Kenny Hamilton, his bodyguard, who is also pretty famous, just because he’s Justin’s bodyguard, came out and everyone wanted his autograph and their photo with him.”
After a few hours, the vigil was broken up when a neighbor called the police, who came and dispersed the crowd.
One of Ana’s male colleagues said that “not many” people in Stratford were fond of Bieber, though few could deny that his popularity was a boon to the city’s tourism industry.
“He went to meet the Prime Minister and he wore overalls,” he said, explaining his disdain for Bieber. “Who does that?”
Over at Long & McQuade, the music shop where Bieber used to rent guitars, Aimee Jesso didn’t seem surprised when I asked her about the store’s Bieber connection.
“We’re stop number six on the map,” she said. “We get all kinds of Beliebers in here.”
“Tell me about them,” I asked.
“They scream,” she said. “They scream. They cry. They ask questions.”
“They cry?” I asked.
“They cry!” she insisted. “I mean full out tears.”
Jesso said that the Beliebers want to know if HE touched anything in the store, if she had ever met Him, when was the last time He came to the store, and just about anything else you could imagine. The store has an autographed guitar that Justin once rented but it’s kept on a ledge about 15 feet off the ground for very good reason.
I asked Jesso if the rumors that Bieber was in town were true and she had no idea but gave us a clue of what to look for.
“You’ll definitely know his car when it’s parked out along the street,” she said. “It’s like a Batmobile.”
We spent a few hours wandering around Stratford’s atmospheric streets, taking in some of Justin’s old haunts, but saw no sign of Him or his Batmobile. But His smiling visage was in all the shops. A bookstore had an entire shelf full of books about him. A gift shop had a whole corner of the store devoted to Bieber-related products, and even the town hardware store had a whole section of Bieber items, including cups, plates, bags and pillows bearing His likeness.
We left town without ever having seen Him, but walking in His footsteps somehow didn’t seem that creepy or shameful by the time we reached the border crossing just outside Sarnia, Ontario.
“Where are you going?” asked the U.S. border patrol agent, who barely looked away from his computer screen to see who we were despite the fact that it was late in the evening and no one else was in line to cross into the U.S.
“We’re heading back home to Chicago after a visit to my parents in Buffalo,” I said.
“So you just transited through Canada then, you didn’t stop?” he asked.
“Well, we went to Stratford just to see Justin Bieber’s hometown,” I said, betraying no shame whatsoever.
“No you didn’t,” he countered, jerking his head away from his computer screen to get a better look at me.
“We were passing through anyways,” my wife interjected defensively, perhaps fearful that we were about to be denied entry back into the U.S. “We didn’t go to Canada just to see Justin Bieber’s hometown.”
I didn’t mention that the Bieber trail had actually been a major detour. No one in their right mind drives from Buffalo to Chicago via Stratford, Ontario.
“Are you sure you’re Americans?” the agent asked shaking his head, half kidding and half serious, before waving us back in.
Back home in Chicago, it occurred to me that I’d never actually heard a Justin Bieber song, or if I had, I didn’t know it was Him. I felt about 99.9% certain that I wouldn’t like the young man’s music, but I hadn’t even given Him a chance. After traveling in His footsteps, I owed him that.
And so, on Sunday afternoon as we put up our Christmas tree, I dialed up his latest album and some tracks from his Christmas album on Spotify, which spares one the indignity of having to actually pay to hear the kind of music you’d be ashamed to be caught with in a shop.
The verdict? Spending time in Bieber’s hometown hadn’t turned me into a Belieber despite my wife’s claims to the contrary. Listening to his work confirmed that it wasn’t my cup of tea. But when I listened to his rendition of “Silent Night,” I had to admit it was good. Not good enough that I’d be sent into a convulsive fit if in the presence of someone who once stood near Him, but pretty, pretty good.
There comes a time in every trip when the honeymoon ends. The initial romance of being in a new place wears off and you begin to notice the pushy vendors and the dirty hotel rooms. The first blush of love fades like a flower in autumn, hit by the cold winter wind of reality.
My honeymoon with Iraq didn’t end with tourist hucksters or filthy hotel rooms – so far we’d had none of those. My honeymoon with Iraq ended when I saw the crater in front of my hotel in Nasiriyah.
“Car bomb last month,” the guard explained as he sat in his metal folding chair outside the front door, Kalashnikov resting in his lap. “It kill two men and two babies. One man a teacher.”
We had just come out of our hotel to meet a squad of policemen, all wearing Kevlar and toting the ubiquitous AK-47. Our tour leader, Geoff, came up to me.
“This is our escort,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk around town.”
Yeah, let’s do that.
Nasiriyah, a city of half a million people on the Euphrates River 225 miles southeast of Baghdad, has been through a lot in the past 20 years. It shows. Many buildings, like the old cinema shown above, are pockmarked by small arms fire. The bridges that spanned the river were destroyed during the invasion and replaced with pontoon bridges. Blast walls and barbed wire are even more common here than the rest of Iraq.
There were only four of us on the tour now, the other six had opted for the shorter tour and were now safely home. With half a dozen police, two guards from the Interior Ministry, and a translator, our little band of foreigners looked far more important than we were. I didn’t like that. Important people are targets. That’s why the bomber set off his explosives in front of our hotel – it’s the nicest in town.
%Gallery-171836%The streets of Iraq all look pretty much the same – concrete buildings and blast walls. Some municipalities have gussied up the sidewalks with potted plants and colored bricks, but most places just have the same grim gray surfaces. We walked through this dreary landscape, the police forming a large circle around us and keeping a tense eye on every passerby.
Suddenly an iron gate opened across the street and a crowd of teenage schoolgirls came out, all neatly dressed in blue uniforms and matching headscarves. They were headed in our direction and as they paced us on the opposite side of the street we got a lot of sidelong glances and giggles. I was even graced with a smile. Maybe Nasiriyah wasn’t such a bad place after all.
One thoughtless member of our group snapped a photo of them and got frowns in return. Idiot. Do you take photos of schoolgirls back home in England? Luckily for him no irate Muslim father came over to defend the family honor. That would have been fun to see.
The police hustled us into a busy market and their tension ratcheted up noticeably. There were few smiles or welcomes here. People gave us hard looks or long, studying stares. It reminded me of the Sunni Triangle. The Sunnis had suffered the worst under the invasion and after the change of Iraq’s power structure in favor of the Shia. Nasiriyah, however, was mostly Shia.
So why the hostility? Perhaps it was the heavy losses the local Shias took when they rebelled against Saddam and the West did nothing to help. The city was also the scene of a hard-fought battle in the 2003 invasion over the control of those long-gone bridges. Maybe it was the police escort that soured people to us. Maybe it was that we were being hustled along and didn’t have the opportunity to break the ice.
That opportunity came in the middle of the marketplace. Our guide ushered us into a shop as the cops guarded the door. I took one look at the shelves and decided to join the cops on the street. The shop was filled with tourist dreck – cheap tin ashtrays sporting the Iraqi flag and plastic minarets of Samarra. Who sells tourist trash when there are no tourists?
I stepped back onto the sidewalk and one of the cops gave me a dubious look before swiveling around to scan the crowd. From an alley a few steps to my right, a little boy peeked at me. Another little boy peeked around him, and then another. Big brown eyes studied me. Unlike the adults on the street, who gave the half-circle of policemen a wide berth, the kids didn’t seem to notice my escort at all.
They ducked back out of sight. I could hear them calling to their friends and in a second a whole crowd of kids burst out of the alley. They stared at me, blinking, unsure, and then one of them pushed another up to me. That one laughed, spun back around, and pushed his friend toward me. In a second, the whole lot of them descended into a giggling riot in miniature, each one trying to push another up to the strange apparition in their street.
I picked one, knelt down in front of him and said, “Hello.”
The kid fled to the back of the crowd. One of the braver ones came up to me.
“Nasiriya is my home. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Canada. What’s your name?”
That’s all it took. Suddenly I was giving an English lesson to a dozen entranced children. The passersby gave me amused glances. One guy came up with his little girl in his arms and asked me to take a photo. Even the cops eased up a little.
As we talked I noticed a couple of the kids standing in front of the alley were looking up and shouting angrily. I looked around the corner. A young boy, maybe 10 years old, sat on the roof two stories above. He extended his arm over the narrow ally, a bottle held in his little hand. He looked me right in the eye, the corners of his mouth turned upwards. But he wasn’t smiling.
“Is that for me?” I asked.
His expression didn’t change.
In another time and another place I might have stepped into the alley and called his bluff. I decided to stay in the street. I wasn’t sure people bluffed here.
Little hands tugged me away from the alley.
“Photo! Photo!” the gaggle of kids demanded. I raised my camera and snapped a shot, then showed them the picture as they squealed with glee.
“One more! One more!”
My travel companions came out of the shop and I said a quick goodbye to my little buddies as the cops hustled us down the street. Soon a tug of war developed between us. The police wanted us to hurry, but I and the others kept slowing down to look in windows and talk with shopkeepers. I peered into one storefront and spotted walls covered in artwork. That stopped me in my tracks. An artist’s studio? Here?
I entered, greeting the three men inside. One sat behind a desk sketching a group of galloping horses. He looked up and smiled.
“Welcome! Come in,” he rose and shook my hand. “Wait!”
He sat down again and made a few more strokes of his pencil. When the picture was done to his satisfaction he tore it from the sketch pad and offered it to me with a flourish.
“For you. To remember Iraq.”
We all started talking. He was a prominent local artist and invited me to his exhibition opening the next morning. One of his friends was an artist too, the other a teacher. We talked of his paintings, which ranged in style from Daliesque surrealism to sharp-eyed realism, and the conversation expanded to a dozen different subjects.
And for a moment everything was OK. I’d found one of those oases that exist in every city, no matter what the people have been through, a place where art and culture and books have value and meaning. A place where people who share no religion or heritage or life experiences in common can be fast friends because of their mutual love for those precious things that separate civilization from savagery.
I’d found the exact place in Iraq I wanted to be. The conversation soared, both sides eager to connect, and I thought back on the other places like this I’d found. At a Bulgarian university and an Ethiopian birtcha. At late-night Madrid literary bars and hick towns in Missouri. In fact, I’d found them everywhere. The only difference was that in some places it took a little longer.
A policeman trudged into the studio, looking as out of place as a grenade in a sack of Easter eggs. He gestured for me to follow him. He’d been doing that for the past five minutes but now he really meant it.
It was time to go. I would not be attending that art opening. That hadn’t been pre-approved and stamped and filed and scheduled by the local authorities.
There comes a time in every trip when the honeymoon ends. The champagne has been drunk, the cake is all gone, and it’s time to return the keys to the bridal suite. Now comes the long, tough reality of learning just what you’ve signed up for. Like with marriage it isn’t always easy, but getting to know a country for what it is, not what you hoped it would be, can be a lot more rewarding.
Don’t miss the rest of my series, “Destination: Iraq,” chronicling my 17-day journey across this strife-ridden country in search of adventure, archaeology and AK-47s.
Coming up next: “Visiting The Great Ancient Sites Of Iraq!”