Baltimore Bustle

Since returning to Baltimore from nearly a year living in Palestine, it seems as though my darling wife and I have been racing to catch up on every conceivable benefit of living in Charm City.  The last few weeks have been especially busy and fun and this blog posting will quickly chronicle the highlights.

Roller derby!

The Charm City Roller Girls compete monthly on a flat track in Baltimore’s DuBurns Arena.  We enjoyed their first match of the season a few weeks ago with some friends.  It’s a fast-paced game—not as violent as the movies portray—but much quicker and more complex than I expected.  Above all, though, it is fun.  The competitors are serious on the track, but the overall scene is campy, quirky, and lively, with a lot of tongue-in-cheek entertainment.  Team names include: Junkyard Dolls, Night Terrors, and Fresh Meat.  The players use intimidating names such as I.M. Pain, Trixy Von Doom, Ellie Vation, Slambellina, and Holden Grudges.  And the numbers they use only add to the quirkiness: 415, .45, 1964, 3E, and 1on1.  Announcers provide play-by-play, analysis, commentary, and observation over the blasting music.  See below for a blurred photo and some video from the match we saw.  All in all, it was a fun way to spend a Saturday night.

Charm City Roller Girls do battle!

Skiing

Within two hours of Baltimore are at least three ski hills.  Although we’ve had stretches this year of very un-winterlike conditions, it is still possible to ski thanks to the miracles of snow machines and low standards.  Loyal readers of this blog will recall that in December I hit the slopes for the first time in nearly 15 years while in Kyrgyzstan for a business trip.  Eager to show off my skills to my darling wife and to share the joy of skiing with her, we joined friends on Super Bowl Sunday for a day trip to Liberty Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania.  The buildings at Liberty Mountain were drastically more impressive than those at Karakol in Kyrgyzstan, but the skiing conditions were far less impressive.  The crew at Liberty Mountain is probably doing everything in their power to provide decent conditions, but as seen in the photos below, Mother Nature has not been a willing partner in the efforts to create prime skiing conditions.  Nevertheless, we conquered the slopes and had fun doing it. 

Just a 'chance of snow' on this stretch of Liberty Mountain

Showing off skills on the bunny hill

The Arts

Twice last week and twice this week, we’ve enjoyed the arts in various forms—live theater, live music, and documentary film.

Last week Thursday, we joined friends for dinner and a show, namely, Single Carrot Theater’s production of “MilkMilkLemonade.”  The show was lively, fun, and well crafted to present issues of gender identity, societal norms, commercial agriculture, and urbanization.  It didn’t hurt that a talking chicken performed awkward stand-up comedy half-way through the show and that my darling wife’s verbal show of support for the chicken in face of overwhelming disapproval gave a slightly new dimension to that part of the performance. 

The next night, we saw Baltimore’s Lea Gilmore perform an eclectic show featuring blues, soul, reggae, rock-n-roll, and gospel music and several special guests.  Lea artfully weaved in her viewpoints on a range of social justice issues, making compelling and humanitarian arguments after winning over fans with her entertaining style and beautiful voice.

This week, we have been educated and entertained at two documentary screenings.  On Thursday, we saw a documentary called, “We are Egypt,” which was filmed in the months leading up to last year’s revolution.  The documentarian finished filming and departed Egypt two months before the events of January 25, 2011 that are considered the official start of the revolution.  But her film demonstrates that the roots of the revolution were widely established well before January, although it still took a ‘perfect storm’ of events and efforts for the revolution to find the momentum necessary to unseat Mubarak. 

On Friday night we saw the excellent home grown documentary, “Cafeteria Man.”  The documentary follows Tony Geraci for nearly two years as he fights to bring change to Baltimore City School’s food program in his role as chief of food and nutrition for the city school system that includes nearly 200 schools and 85,000 students.  His frustrations with bureaucracy and his successes bringing urban youth into contact with fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables are presented with humor and thoughtfulness.  In my opinion, the scenes featuring school students—especially hearing them talk about their relationship with food and seeing them interact with food—were the most enlightening and the most fun. 

House hunting

Another thing that Baltimore offers is a large housing stock at a reasonable price.  With interest rates historically low and our house currently being rented out, we decided to take the opportunity to see whether it makes sense to purchase another home.  The search has taken us into new neighborhoods—new to me, at least—and has resulted in some compelling options that require further consideration.  We’re still in ‘hunting’ mode, but things are becoming clearer—at least from the perspective of our priorities and preferences—and it’s not inconceivable that we might make a move in the near future.

One of many houses that we won't be buying...

Although this weekend is starting at a much slower pace, I have a feeling that we will find a way to fill the hours with some collection of fun and fulfilling activities.  Until then, I’m content to watch snow fall lightly outside, enjoy the aroma of pork shoulder simmering in the slow cooker, and blog about life in Charm City in 2012.

One Unspectacular Night in Cairo

Four Americans, two Egyptians, and an Italian walk into a bar... (add your punchline here)

Even an unspectacular night in Cairo is worthy of a blog entry.  A colleague of mine and I met the two other Americans and the Italian at the KFC in Tahrir Square.  This location was selected mainly because it is such a prominent landmark that any cab driver or passerby would easily be able to direct me there.  There’s nothing particularly striking about the KFC that would make it an obvious landmark, but we learned that this location is actually very well known for something other than offering mouth watering chicken that is craved by many Egyptians.  During last year’s revolution, the KFC was shuttered but the sidewalk in front of it became a sort of field hospital for injured protestors.  At some point during the revolution, government officials accused KFC of supporting the protest by providing meals to the revolutionaries (despite the fact that it was closed).  This falsehood added to the appeal of the restaurant among the protesters, and the shuttered metal gates covering the doors of the restaurant were covered with protest art.  That’s right, Colonel Sanders was an unlikely participant in the Egyptian revolution.

Art posted at the Tahrir KFC during the revolution

Col Sanders - an unlikely revolutionary

So, we met our friends at the KFC and then walked down the block to meet the rest of our group.  Just as we left the Tahrir Square area, I noticed a few people fleeing from the general area where we had just been standing.  They were running away from something, but since it was only a few people fleeing—and not the entire population on the streets at the time—I didn’t join them.  Then I heard the sounds of distress behind me and two young men were running in our direction, helping a third man who was bleeding from the head.  Blood was gushing from his head onto the sidewalk and after they stopped running, we passed them as others offered tissues to help him stop the bleeding.  He didn’t seem to be in grave danger and none of us had medical training or supplies, so we continued down the road and quietly wished him speedy recovery, assuming he had been in a fight.

A few short minutes later, we met up with the two Egyptian members of our group and started discussing dinner options.  It was agreed that we would eat “Egyptian” food, even after a short debate about whether an Egyptian menu would contain anything other than ful (pronounced "fool" and consisting of fava beans, olive oil, chopped parsley, garlic, onion, and lemon juice) and koshari, which is a vegetarian dish with rice, macaroni, lentils, chickpeas, garlic, fried onion, and tomato sauce.   

Koshari

We navigated the streets of Cairo to a neighborhood called Imbabah and settled into seats at a busy outdoor restaurant.  Our Egyptian hosts suggested some options, including liver.  I innocently asked from which animal the liver comes.  I didn’t expect the question to spark much conversation, but somehow my question led to the decision that we needed to order a plate of camel liver.  (I wasn’t really interested in liver no matter what the animal, but I was curious because it seemed that chicken liver was quite popular in Palestine and I thought that it might be popular throughout the region.)  In addition to the camel liver, we ordered lamb on the bone, lamb in sauce, rice, and okra soup.  We also had a generous pile of pita bread, small bowls of hummus, and some olives to share.  I stuck with the rice and okra soup—and found that pouring the soup onto the rice helped make both components more interesting.

Eating outside was nice, but the air was cool and the restaurant is built for high traffic rather than leisurely meals.  And it turned out that one of our Egyptian hosts grew up only two blocks from the restaurant, so he invited us to his mother’s house for tea.  So we walked down the block and then piled into his mother’s living room, which was decorated with streamers and colorful balloons from a recent birthday party.  After warming up with tea, we thanked our host and ventured back into the heart of Cairo to finish the night with a drink.

The drive back into downtown Cairo was uneventful, and as we walked the streets to a bar tucked deep into the alley we passed a neighborhood dessert shop.  The Egyptians didn’t want to pass up the opportunity for us to ‘sample’ their sweet treats (even though most of us non-Egyptians had lived in the Middle East and eaten the same desserts many times before).  The sample turned out to be a full plate of sticky sweets, which we carried to the bar.

The bar was a very comfortable lounge—not too loud, not too smoky, not too crowded—and we passed the rest of the night talking politics and religion and sharing travel stories and bits of wisdom and plenty of laughs.  As we left, the waiters asked for the last of the desserts that we didn’t eat.

Altogether, nothing spectacular transpired, but it was just my speed.  A little history at the KFC, a bit of excitement at Tahrir, camel liver at dinner, colorful balloons with tea, and dessert, drinks, and pleasant conversation.  Just another night in Cairo.