Golf and Papaya Juice

Temple at Lotus Lake.  Wikimedia sourced image by Benjiho

Anyone for golf?  In two smiling rows they stood, on the steps into the vestibule from the port-cochère.  The mini-bus stopped at the exact point where the uniformed employees made a human gate.  As we walked between them they cheerfully applauded: I’m not sure what they were happy about. 

Of glass and wood the building was modern and grand, and as porters attended to luggage waiters moved about serving complimentary juice.  I believe it was papaya.  All the staff members were Filipinos; the guests Taiwanese.  I stood in bemused bewilderment that I was, by luxurious accident, there.  I’d never been on a Taiwanese golfing tour before.  There was nothing to do but sip papaya juice.

It was perhaps a basic matter of wu-wei.  In the Chinese religion of Daoism wu-wei is the concept of non-action.  Surrendering one’s will for action aligns oneself with the world’s natural ‘dao’ or path: the recipe for harmony. 

It’d taken a week to move from Taipei along the island’s east coast to Kaohsiung, the city in Taiwan’s south.  There’d been traditional towns like Suao and a stop at some hot springs.  Taiwan is a mountainous island of some beauty and everything had progressed satisfactorily except the budget.  In Kaohsiung I wondered how my finances would last for ten more days before my return flight to Bangladesh.

Taiwan was remarkable for its English schools.  There were billboards everywhere and book-carrying students seemed to make their way to coaching centres at all hours until late in the evenings.  I had no intention of teaching.  I already missed Bangladesh.  So when the middle-aged guest house manager pulled me aside to ask slyly if I wanted to teach and stay for free, the vision that came to mind was not money in my pocket but a subsequent police raid in search of undocumented foreign workers.  No, the budgetary dilemma made me think rather of the Luzon Strait, the water body to Taiwan’s south.

It’s not for a lack of courses that I’m not a golfer: in Sydney there’s more than a few golf links.  When I was at school some of my friends had an interest in it, and against my better judgement they persuaded me to try.  When Phillip invited me to Lane Cove Golf Course, a significant challenge had been to actually hit the ball.  More often it was a clump of dirt that went flying.  The most difficult hole required the ball to be hit across a small gully onto the fairway.  It was a hopeless endeavour.  Each golf ball I hit duly took its place in the scrub.  I gave up and took a stroke penalty, restarting on the far side.

The Luzon Strait was like that gully.  On the other side wasn’t Phillip but the Philippines, a much cheaper destination than Taiwan.  I had happy memories of slow and dreamy Tagalog songs and easygoing people.  Was it not possible to fly from Kaohsiung to Laoag City in Luzon’s north?  I’d been to Laoag before. 

Globally speaking, the Luzon Strait is a modest stretch of water.  Perhaps as at Lane Cove I could simply take a stroke penalty and start again in the Philippines, this time for the sake of the budget? 

I saw a Kaohsiung travel agency advertising Laoag flights but only the destinations were written in English.  There could be no harm in asking.  The girl behind the counter spoke no English but was very cheerful.  When all I could do was point at Laoag written on the wall she wrote a price on a piece of paper and with a calendar we pointed at dates.  She called a friend who had a little English for me to speak to over the phone.  ‘Come back tomorrow evening,’ I was told.

The next day I visited Lotus Lake, one of Kaohsiung’s attractions.  It features Chinese style pagodas and a number of temples.  In Buddhism the lotus symbolises purity and Confucian scholar Zhou Dunyi wrote, ‘I love the lotus because while growing from mud it is unstained.’  There were the tiger and dragon pavilions set out on the water, the pagodas of autumn and spring and a Confucian temple on the northern shore. 

Taiwan is interesting for its several religions.  Often they intersect inside the same temple and the Taiwanese have no qualms about believing in all of them at the same time, although their teachings must contradict.  Perhaps it’s the Chinese expression of religion that best conveys even to outsiders the universal quality of spirituality and the strength of peaceful coexistence.

Yet for this tourist the day at Lotus Lake was marked by a different question: what was going to happen about the Laoag flight?

It was so sweet what she did, so helpful.  She’d written a small letter in Chinese and with her friend translated it into English.  I was presented with a very neat script that evening explaining the details.  One thing that puzzled was her written insistence on re-confirming the date of the return flight beforehand.  I imagined searching for a Filipino phone and trying to figure out how to use one, so at some pains I made her understand I would not be doing that unless I wanted to change the return date.  I wondered why it was an issue.  I handed over the fare and she wrote up the ticket by hand.

It was the other passengers’ clothes that first raised the prospect that the flight to Laoag wasn’t ordinary.  There appeared to be an over-representation of tweed and tartan patterns among the chosen apparel.  There was tartan in some of the carry-on luggage; and while there was no reason to be concerned about too much tartan, it’s not exactly Taiwan’s image.  There was also a young and not unattractive Taiwanese lady, travelling alone, who kept glancing my way.  I was unaware she may have been imagining leisurely walks together around the golf course.

The reality of the situation fully dawned on me when from the plane window I noticed that in the luggage being lifted into the undercarriage were a number of golf club sets.  Taiwan is heavily populated.  The Philippines is cheaper, plus northern Luzon has the available land for golf courses.  It was a charter flight.  I’d become a golf tourist! 

The Philippines didn’t disappoint.  Even within the terminal the laid back disposition of the immigration officials, that hammock-swinging version of English accent they have, the heat, the lack of rush: it was as I remembered.  But there was a problem.  Laoag Airport isn’t in Laoag and there wasn’t any public transport into town.  In the car park was only a white mini-bus from the resort in wait for the latest flock of Taiwanese golfers.  I was really just standing there considering what to do when the hand of a mini-bus attendant grabbed my luggage.  He was very efficient.  Before I could say anything he’d loaded it into the mini-bus.  I thought that perhaps the bus might pass the town on the way to the resort.  So I got in, and that young woman kept glancing towards my seat. 

The resort vestibule was spacious and along the right hand side was the reception counter.  After finishing their papaya juice each of the Taiwanese guests made their way to the desk to collect the keys to their rooms.  I went there too, to say, ‘Excuse me, but is there any transport from here into Laoag City?’ 

They said there wasn’t but someone from the resort might be going into town for supplies in a few minutes.  I could get a lift. 

And I wondered about the East Asian sentiment, renowned as they are for their wish to travel in groups.  The particular horror they show at the mention of travelling alone: their fear of loneliness.  By contrast, for the western traveller, for the real travelling travellers, going solo is probably the best circumstance there can be; because travel is about wu-wei and following the dao.  Because the world’s way will arrange the elements of daily life better than any human ever could.   Sometimes the dao is a luxurious accident; sometimes it’s golf and papaya juice.

Kaohsiung Harbour.  Wikimedia sourced photo.

Of course the wu-wei doesn't only go on in Taiwan.  There's a bit of the old wu-wei, surely, in the toss of a coin for a cow, in the sweet misfortunes of a villager come to the city, in Transylvanian knitwear, and even in the way people think...

We Met Over Coffee

                                                                                                                  We met amidst the unwashed

                                                                                             dishes in an Eritrean sink, in the aqua-coloured 

                                                                             shed situated to one side of the expanse of yard.  It was 

                                                           at the time of siesta.  Between the trees there was no grass but from 

                                  people constantly shuffling about only mud, although there was nobody shuffling about 

there at that time of the day.  The corrugated metal gates were shut.  There were tables, well spaced here and there and there was the area that in the evenings became a dance floor, a simple continuation of the mud, marked solely by a lack of tables.  It’s the dishes that pushed our acquaintance towards early friendship, when I picked up whatever cloth was there and began to clean them.

She was a good few years older than me, neither fat nor too thin, she was tall and gracious.  She had a fine rounded face that always seemed to smile and yet there was something traumatic she’d been through, I would guess.  It lurked about her smile somehow, some kind of unseeable scarring.  

Perhaps her life hadn’t been easy but it’s not for me to speculate.  

Her life belongs to her.

                                                               
We met amidst the heady days in the 
lead up to international conflict.  No doubt each 
side was busy stationing troops and guns closer to the border 
in anticipation of what the other might do.  But it was all in secret.  There was 
a new currency, the nacfa, and the Ethiopians didn’t like it much; they’d closed the 
border in protest and for a port town like Assab that meant a lot.  The 
Ethiopians  must’ve wagered they could rely solely 
on Djibouti for access to the sea.

Another early sign that things weren’t right was the shortage of coca cola.  I’m unsure if all of Eritrea’s coca cola was shipped across in trucks from Ethiopia to be paid for, until the launch of the nacfa, in Ethiopian birr, but in Assab it was so.  Indeed it was the coca cola supply disruption that led to the meeting with Astor.  She still had a stash of cola at her restaurant and it was just across the road.

We met when I was stranded, having taken the plane from Asmara several hundred kilometres to the south, along Eritrea’s Red Sea dog leg that finally ends with Assab port and the Djiboutian border.  It’s an alien country down that way: from the plane I could see the massive blackened hulks of volcanoes amongst the thorny and dry scrubland of the coast.  It’s the country of the Afars tribesmen who seemed to keep apart from the Tigrigna speaking townspeople with a good sprinkling of Arabs and Ethiopians amongst them.  It’s a country of empty, pristine beaches of blond sand where the Red Sea as a jewel glimmers off towards the horizon and Yemen.

I had no return ticket.  

I’d planned to spend a few days in a jeep, 

following the coast northwards to the old Ottoman port of Massawa where 

the main Asmara highway leads to the sea.  It would’ve been a desert and volcano journey

involving camping and negotiating the way with the local Afars and hoping not to meet bandits en route.  But the night sky surely would’ve been radiant and there surely would’ve been an evening campfire. 

I had no transport organised and although I was clear that there was no bus service or public jeep that followed the dusty coast road I’d held some hope of hitching up with a convoy of some sort.  People said it was the UN trucks that plied the route mostly, and I’d asked around, but my time was too precise and there just wasn’t anything going when I needed it to.  So I had to give up on the radiant night skies, the campfires and the niggling risk of bandits.

I almost would’ve chosen to continue on to Djibouti but there was no consulate to issue a visa, and the Ethiopian consulate was there but they couldn’t issue a visa so the road to Addis, besides the border being closed, was out of the question.  Still, the consular officials had taken the time to show me the cover of an Ethiopian magazine with the picture of their president on it and a headline that called him a thief.  ‘We have a free media in Ethiopia,’ they said.  ‘And if I decided to live in Ethiopia, would you give citizenship?’ I asked.  Yes, they said, after a few years that would be possible.  It was nice to know but didn’t solve the lack of transport out of Assab.

I considered the ships.  It wasn’t far to Yemen but what would I do when I got there?  No, it was better to be sensible.  It was better to turn to the Eritrean Airlines office and organise a return flight to the Eritrean capital.  I like Eritrean Airlines.  It remains one of the most memorable of all of the airlines but not for any orthodox reason.  It was a new entity at that time and they’d just opened a rather plush office on one of Asmara’s boulevards, what had enticed me onto the Assab flight in the first place.  They had the usual tourist pictures and neatly dressed staff: my mind says they wore light blue but I’m not sure.  There was a spotless counter. 

They had everything.  Their uniforms read ‘Eritrean Airlines’ and the ticket read ‘Eritrean Airlines’ and the stairs that got wheeled out onto the tarmac to meet the plane read ‘Eritrean Airlines.’  They had everything apart from a plane.  I suppose they were in the process of buying one but in the meantime the new airline was borrowing one from Ethiopia.  I suppose that didn’t continue once the war reignited.

I found the airline office, it wasn’t difficult in Assab.  The town’s not so big.  But there was a problem.  ‘I’m sorry, sir, we have no seat available for at least a week.’  It left me in the midst of the Afars country and the coca cola shortage on a standby list.  It led me to Astor.

We met because of Emmanuel.  It’s a simple fact.  Along with Sammy he worked as a waiter at Astor’s place and he’d come to the hotel reception asking for something, I don’t recall what it was, another something that was in shortage due to the closed border.  He overheard me asking the hotel manager where I could buy coca cola.  I was thirsty.  ‘We have some,’ he said.

It all sounded a bit convenient and I was wary as I followed him over what was more of a dirt track than a road, and into the back of the shed.  But it was true.  There was coca cola.  I’m sure about that because I drank one.  ‘Where are all the customers?’ I asked, noticing the entire yard empty.  ‘We’re closed in the middle of the day,’ he said.  But he said I was welcome to stay: during the noon break Astor was in the habit of making coffee.

                                           We met over coffee and in Eritrea coffee

                             isn’t simply coffee.  There’s a whole ceremony about

                        it, and it starts with a small fire of coals.  Astor was 

                 crouching, tending the fire soon enough, in the back part of 

           the shed that might’ve been a storeroom.  Sammy was there too  

      along with the cook.  Coffee is made in rounded clay pots in Eritrea with a long straight spout to them and a clay handle.  Those pots look a little art deco with their straightened spouts.  They look historical once blackened by the coffee making process.  As the base is rounded a pot holder is also required, shaped something like an hourglass although of course much larger, and often brightly painted in designs of African geometry, in black and blue, yellow, red, green or white.  The holder holds not only the pot but the coals.  And yet before the coffee reaches the pot it needs to be cooked. 

Starting with 

the green beans in a 

small pan Astor began roasting 

them.  I’m not sure how long it took as 

we sat about chatting as best we could in 

English while the coffee roasted, and eventually a 

certain amount of smoke began wafting up from the pan.  

We sat in a circle on small stools about her, and she lifted the pan 

and held it out towards each of us in turn.  I did what the others did, as the pan came my way, waving my hands about, guiding the coffee-smoke towards my nostrils like an insane conductor might conduct his orchestra.  To breathe in the coffee smoke, to smell the fresh coffee smell, was a kind of blessing, Sammy said.

                                                                            It was after that the 

                                                            water was added and the coffee 

                                                became a brew in the pot, the spout of 

                            which was stuffed shut with straw for a time such that 

the coffee could draw.  The cups were of the small Lebanese variety, the coffee black, thick and strong.  There were rules about the coffee drinking in Eritrea: you could have one small cup but not two, three or seven but not four, although the exact numbers that were 

allowable and those that would bring bad 

luck I do not recall.

Emmanuel had once been a ship hand, he told me, and he’d travelled the seas as far as Perth in Australia and to New Zealand.  ‘New Zealand is the best country I saw,’ he said, ‘When we stopped in Auckland I should’ve run away and stayed there.’

Some time after the coffee, after a small lunch and a bit of a nap, things began to stir.  The first afternoon customers were banging on the closed gate and Emmanuel let them in.  The cook was busy in the kitchen as Sammy and Emmanuel began taking orders and Astor was occupied organising something or other.  And there were the dishes in the sink that needed cleaning.

They were surprised to see me get to work; so was I.  It’s not that I couldn’t have left and met up with them again when they were less busy but I suppose I felt comfortable there.  Maybe it was Astor.  Perhaps it was the coffee ceremony.  Whatever it was, one thing led to another and shortly thereafter I was waiting on tables.  Fortunately the menu was rather short and wholly oral so the few dishes they’d order in Tigrigna I could remember in the telling to the cook.

After some time 

Astor hurried over with 

a worried look on her face.  ‘You know 

I can’t pay you,’ she said.  It made me laugh and I tried to convert what might be the minimum wage in Australia into nacfa, which was surely on the astronomical side in Eritrea, to explain to her just how much she couldn’t afford me.  But the funny

                                                                 thing is they did pay me in a way, with some shared meals over 

                                                     the course of the three or four days I took to waiting tables there, waiting 

                                   for my standby seat on the plane.  I especially enjoyed the spicy goat dish.  And the 

          benefit of not being on a formal wage was that my shifts were flexible, between visits to the beach and seeing the town.  In the evenings in particular, when the dance floor came to life, I took to relaxing at one of the tables under a tree, chatting to Sammy, Emmanuel and Astor in moments when they weren’t busy, and watching all the goings on.

But there was yet another payment for my little job, the sort of thing no amount of nacfa could buy: the reaction of the customers.  In Eritrea to gain the attention of a waiter it’s quite normal to put your hands up and clap them together.  From a western perspective however it seemed a little rude; and so I used to have a little joke with them.  On taking their food and drinks to the table I would put them down just as the local waiters did, but not remove my hands.  ‘Yekenyelei!’ I would say in a stern voice, ‘Thank you!’  To this gesture the customers without exception repeated, ‘thank you, thank you, thank you!’  They had an ocean of sincerity about them and a small inlet of shock.

They were quite 

surprised at the experience of an 

Australian waiter, the customers, and after 

their shyness and sudden politeness were overcome 

there used to be laughter.  Once there were two young women as customers, and they were visibly frightened as I walked to their table, before they understood I’d come to take their order.  It was something no doubt they’d be talking about for quite some time.  Astor’s place was busy in those days; perhaps I played a part in that as word 

got around.  I recall in the evenings people would come 

and clap their hands and when Sammy or Emmanuel 

went to them they’d say, ‘no, no, we want the white waiter!’  

It was novelty.  ‘He doesn’t work the night shift,’ 

they’d be told.

And down on the main street in a shop I was greeted with an enormous smile and hearty handshake from a gentleman who said, ‘I go to Astor’s place sometimes.’  There were many customers.  How to remember all of them?

It came to pass that Eritrean Airlines found me a seat on whatever plane they’d borrowed and it was the plane that led to my farewell with Astor, Sammy and Emmanuel in the little Red Sea port of Assab in the Afars country in the dog leg of Eritrea’s south. 

At the airport, while boarding the plane there was another unexpected greeting.  It turned out to be the Ethiopian consular official, also on his way to Asmara.  I wonder: did he make it back to Assab before all the coca cola was gone, before tragically, the war proper started?  In that war the Ethiopians, more than half the town’s population, left Assab. 

                                                                           In Asmara I made a point of buying a clay coffee pot, with 

                                                                              a brightly painted stand in the shape of an hourglass.  

                                                                                             After all, we met over coffee.

But why discriminate against other beverages?  It's not as though you can't socialise over a cup of quite gruesome tea, not as though you can't make cheap wine friends on a bus or maybe it's just as well to go and live with the kangaroos.  

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: We Met Over Coffee

Rodent Tourism

She had a dainty nose, small and pointed; her eyes were chocolate brown and shaped as watermelon seeds.  Through the brown silk of her hair could be seen the pink flesh of her small, rounded ears.  Her body was a little plump, overweight; but she was loved.  As she flitted about, like a bridal party attending to its bride it followed her: that long earthworm of a tail.

I’ve never had any particular affection for rats, but this one was the pet of some friends of a friend, many years past in that town of islands, Kristiansund in Norway.  She had free run of the house, the rat, and they seemed not to mind as she scurried up their arm or circumnavigated their necks.  Rats only live for a year or two, they said; so a life-long friendship for a rat is but several seasons.

People are never alone in this world: naturally enough there are other rat admirers amongst us, people enamoured of rodents.  This article is for them, for should one find oneself desirous of rodent-company whilst on holiday, there are options.

Entrance gate to the Kani Mata Temple, Deshnoke, Rajasthan

Deshnoke is a small town of around 15,000 people about thirty kilometres from Bikaner in Rajasthan.  It’s not a town that’d attract much attention, being not dissimilar to any of the other small towns in the brush country of the Thar Desert, if were not for the Karni Mata Temple.

Born in 1387, Karni Mata was a mystic believed to be a reincarnation of Durga; it is said she performed many miracles.  When her stepson Laxman drowned while attempting to take a drink from a tank, Karni Mata urged the god of death Yama to bring him back to life. 

Yama initially refused, but later allowed all of Karni Mata’s male children to be reincarnated as rats.  Alternatively, the 20,000 mostly brown rats that are fed, protected and worshipped at the temple are said to hold the souls of traditional bards called Charans.  Karni Mata is said to have been 151 years old when she died.

Removing one's shoes at the grand silver gates that mark the entrance, it's quite a novel experience to wander a courtyard populated by rats.  At the altar it's possible to seek Karni Mata's blessing, consuming Prasad, the edible offerings shared by the rodents.

The temple is said to reinforce a simple truth: all life is sacred, even rats. 

It is auspicious to see a white rat.  It is auspicious if a rat runs across your foot.  And as I was once told, when bubonic plague caused many human deaths in the towns of Rajasthan, in Deshnoke not a single person died, thanks to the blessings of Karni Mata and her temple of rats.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel, St. Lucia

Across the world in the Caribbean, and it may not be there now for there were plans for it to close, there is or was a budget hotel set amongst a lovely rat garden.  It’s a beautiful establishment in the lush subtropical hills above Castries, the quaint capital of St. Lucia.  The rooms are clean and spacious, food delightful, particularly as the reception area and dining table doubled as the living room of Cherie and her family, the local hoteliers.

A laid back French St. Lucian, there was no question Cherie had a soft spot for animals.  The multiple dogs and cats wandering about were additional family members, so the rats should have come as no surprise.  It was while sitting on the balcony enjoying breakfast, with the paradise of the St. Lucian Caribbean spread out like a blanket beneath, with views all the way to the horizon, Martinique, that they could be seen scurrying about in the garden immediately below: large, well-fed and clean.  ‘People said I should poison them,’ Cherie said, ‘but I didn’t have the heart to.’  If St. Lucia is paradisiacal for human beings, Cherie’s garden is the equivalent for the rats.

And if the St. Lucian pedigree of rat, significantly larger than the Deshnoke and Norwegian varieties, proves insufficient, then far to the south of St. Lucia can be found the capybaras, the world’s largest rodents.

View from the Rat Garden Hotel to Martinique

The Argentine wetland of Estero del Ibera abounds with wildlife, monkeys, deer, caimans, which are an alligator relative; and for me the star attraction: the capybara.  As large as a small goat and tail-less, even for the rat-non-lover this marsh-dwelling rodent is something special.

Capybara wades

As usual I’d imagined hours of weary search and maybe slight danger in the quest to locate the species; in the hope of the sort of fleeting glance that would more than satisfy the visitor to the Sundarbans in search of tigers.  Safaris should be like that, but it wasn’t.

It’s possible to hire a boat from the small town of Colonia Pellegrini to navigate the short distance across the lake to the Ranger Station, headquarters of the National Park.  The boat comes with a guide, who with some luck could be named Gaston, for Gaston makes his living that way.

After not more than several minutes, stepping off at the wharf by the Ranger Station, the expedition was done.  There on the grassy lawn was a capybara.  The creature didn’t bother to look up as we walked close enough to punch its broad flat nose; it was terribly busy doing nothing, what capybaras do best; an almost-statue but for the odd grind of the teeth.  It ruminated on grass as an elderly mother-in-law in a Bangladeshi village might chew paan or betel leaf.

Capybara chews

That capybara was seriously so unfazed by human presence I thought it might be a fraud: that some ranger had tamed one to impress the tourists, that it’s probably called Antonio and sleeps at the end of the ranger’s bed.  I wanted a real, wild, useless capybara.

Soon back on the water, after checking-in at the Ranger Station, with the silence of an oar Gaston sidled the dinghy to within inches of a caiman, the crocodilian as long as the boat.  It floated as though dead: but its eye moved.

‘Australian crocodiles can run as fast as horses on land over short distances,’ I told Gaston.  Actually I’ve no idea if its true but I think I might have heard that on TV once.  He was suitably impressed.

Continuing through the reeds two things became apparent.  At Estero del Ibera there were seemingly-lifeless caimans all over the place, their hardy scaled bodies and jagged long jaws floating about here and there, the reptiles completely fearless of the boat.  And there were genuine wild capybaras, different sizes but inevitably fat, and completely fearless of the boat.  It was incredible.  Giant rat swims, giant rat chews something, giant rat does nothing much in particular: all could be seen at incredibly close range.

Capybara wallows

Completely satisfied with my capybara encounters, I was in a better position to enjoy the overactive river otters and the bird life, the most impressive bird being the ungainly southern screamer, something of a cross between vulture and turkey that nested in reed clumps and though I didn’t hear it, must be in the habit of screaming now and then, presumably in a southerly direction. 

A swamp deer watched with this, ‘yeah, whatever’ look, as we paddled close.  What was it with these Argentine animals?  None had the least fear; had they not met humans before?

Capybara does nothing much at all

The great thing about Gaston was his genuine interest.  He must have done that tour every day and probably still does, but he really seemed to love those wetlands, his backyard.  I imagined his life with slight envy, how tranquil it would be if the most stressful event in your workday was a caiman closing an eyelid, or maybe that gets to you after a while?

For rodent enthusiasts and those who are not, the Estero del Ibera experience can only impress.  There must be few safaris in the world where contact with wild animals is so easy, where you could just about reach out and touch them; and its surprising really, because while it’s illegal to eat capybaras in Argentina, so I was told, they are hunted for their leather: capybaras sometimes become the belts worn by the gauchos, the Argentine cowboys.

Capybara, king of the rodents

Of course there's more to the Caribbean than rats.  And for more adventure, tracking rodents can't compare with tracking fearsome, wild beasts in Eastern Europe or wondering if the wolves will come...

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