26. Travellers.

I've never been a very good traveller, but I've learnt to embrace tourism in all its tacky glory:

Along the way, I've also been fortunate enough to meet some true travellers and hear their stories.

In Istanbul, I ran into a group of cyclists. They hadn't started their journey together; they'd all met in Turkey and hit it off so well they decided to continue together. They told me how different cycling was from travelling by any other means. A young Australian had cycled across South America, relying on people offering him a place to stay in remote areas. He'd been travelling for several years on several continents and made his living by running a website related to his travels. He had a daily budget of three Australian dollars, and kept a roster of all his expenses to enable him to keep travelling on no money. Another one in the group, a young girl, had travelled around Iran. She'd made friends with local youngsters and had seen how Iranian girls party it up inside the safety of their houses. When asked about the dangers of travelling as a lone woman, she always said, "The likelihood of me getting my ass grabbed is far greater in Canada than in Iran." She was hoping to become a writer for travel books and always carried a notebook with her.

In Rome, I met an American named Scott. He hadn' t been much of a traveller, either. He refused to travel to countries whose language he didn't know for fear of intruding on the locals. At university, he decided to start studying Italian and got an internship in Naples. I met him on his holiday in Rome and crushed on him like virgin girls abroad alone for the first time crush on gay guys. Five years later, I still remember him clear as day.

He was offered a career in Broadway musicals, but decided to study Biochemistry instead when he realized he could imagine a life without music and dance. He contemplated becoming a practising Buddhist, and had ten shots once a week with his unimates. He tanned easily and worried about his hair. He loved Michelangelo's Pieta (one of them, I suppose) and marvelled at Bernini with me. He was endlessly curious about other cultures and hated Americanization. He was robbed twice in three months in Naples, but still thought it a lovely city. He seemed like one of the kindest and genuinely present people I've ever met with an endless thirst for people's stories.

I hope he is well and out there, exploring the world.

25. The Reader.

Beware of spoilers for the film (and novel) 'The Reader'!

How much can be forgiven? How much should be forgiven? How do we reconcile the good and evil in people? (And I do mean evil.) What role does literacy play in people's ethics and behaviour?

'The Reader' made me cry, but it also made me think. The questions it posed about forgiveness are too difficult for me to tackle head-on, but I really want to read the German novel now to see how it portrays Hanna (a former SS guard and lover of the main character) towards the end. In the film, she seems like a slightly simple, confused woman who was a victim to the system but curiously enough doesn't seem to feel guilt for massacring 300 women and children even when she's forced to face her actions. (When Michael asks her, she says, "Before the trial, I didn't think about it. I didn't need to." - I paraphrase.) According to Wikipedia, in the novel she reads books written by Holocaust survivors before her suicide. In the film, she just seems frightened of Michael not being there for her.

From what I've gathered, both the film and the novel have been welcomed and enjoyed by people in various countries including Germany. I wonder if I was the only one left wondering about where we are in terms of the stigma and taboo of the Holocaust. In the past few years, some films made from the viewpoint of the Nazis have been made. We can acknowledge that there are no moral or immoral films, only good and bad ones, and acknowledge that the value of art is to make us think outside the box and put ourselves in the shoes of others. But I still think the development from complete taboo to wallowing in the misery of the victims of the Holocaust (lest we forget...) to showing kind and sympathetic former Nazis is an interesting one. Is it a sign that we're forgetting? Is it a sign that generations that had nothing to do with the Holocaust are finally shedding some of the stifling collective guilt? I don't know. But it is interesting.

I found the theme of literacy a beautiful one, a bright spark in dark times. The connection and forgiveness that is passed on along with Michael's tapes to Hanna, and the hope that manifests in Hanna teaching herself to read and trying to reach out to Michael, and finally failing. I truly do believe literacy makes a huge difference in how you perceive the world and what tools you have to judge information you're given. At the same time, Hanna's enjoyment of hearing stories read out loud made me wonder how bound to paper I am.

More superficially, I was slightly surprised Kate Winslet won the Oscar for leading role in this one. She does a wonderful job, no doubt about it, but to me the story is about Michael. Hanna motivates him and casts an ever-present shadow over his life, but the film is about his reactions, his experiences.

24. Maps.

I love maps. There's a bitter irony here because I am appalingly bad at reading them, and equally bad at drawing plans:


It makes no difference, though, because maps are beautiful. The most gleeful I've ever been was when I managed to snag a copy of a stone-by-stone plan of an archaeological site. To this day, I don't know which site it was, but boy, was it beautiful.

Also, maps are useful. I like having maps on my walls so whenever I'm reading about a place I can turn my head to the side and see where the place in question is. It's useful when I'm planning trips, but also when I'm studying. A good map provides an abundance of information for the historian or archaeologist (as long as geographical changes are taken into account, of course): the newly-formed delta near Thessaloniki still shows up as a green spot on a map of Greece and cuts off exactly where the ancient city of Pella used to lie - on the coast, but now inland. In many places, modern roads lie on top of ancient ones, showing where old trade routes used to run. Sometimes, terrain is much more important than distance: even with the shiny and new extention of the Via Egnatia, it's still tricky and slow to cross over to Epirus. In Scotland, the difference in terrain influenced livelihoods, social structures, and created a divide between the Lowlands and Highlands that didn't exist, say, between the mainland and the Isles or Ireland. Early maps often contain valuable information about farms, estates, family income and social divisions - as well as looking fantastic. Alas, I don't have any 17th-century maps, but I'll settle for what I can get:

23. Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North.

It's a tyrannosaurus rex who talks philosophy and wants to be a novelist! There isn't really anything else I can say.

He is also very concerned with being PC:

These and more can be found at: qwantz.com