The Great Navigation Age of the Girls in the second year of Middle School-- traveling around the Mediterranean for 60 days
See myself clearly with the world as a mirror
on the 60th day, when I was taking a farewell photo with my friend, I couldn't help running back to the cabin. I burst into tears and stood in the doorway crying silently, startled the friend who followed me.
before every trip, I will tell myself, cherish it, time will pass away before you have time to find it. In the examination and port as the coordinate timing system, all the scenery is retreating at a strange speed, and we can only see it at a dizzying pace. When I said goodbye, all I left was suntanned skin, a few daily conversations in various Mediterranean languages, souvenirs and photos of a few gigabytes on my hard drive.
1980s prom dresses is definitely the perfect choice you will always cherish. Your dream garment is just a mouse click away.
so when I talk about this voyage to the Mediterranean, what am I going to talk about?
two.
Portugal
on the 52nd day, I drank free shots and a glass of tequilla at a nightclub under the da Gama Bridge in Lisbon. My friends laughed at me and sat by the side of the road to sober up with me, beware of local men passing by shouting "China China, beautiful beautiful". The night was as cold as water, and I leaned my head against my companion, looking at the halo of the dim street lamp.
ridiculously, quite a part of my complex for sailing comes from the game "the Age of Great Navigation", and Lisbon is the first port in the main plot. Walking down an alley with white walls and red tiles, I remember buying saffron from Lisbon in the game and trading with North African spices. But only here did I know that the glorious city had been destroyed by a big Earthquake in the 18th century, and the port in my dream was no longer what it used to be.
under the Da Gama Bridge, there is an Oriental Museum, most of which are Chinese cultural relics "collected" by Portugal from Macao that year. Looking at those beautiful porcelain and clothes, I felt angry on one side and poignant on the other-the glory of the empire is nothing more than this now. I can only write a faint sentence on the introduction of the exhibits: the former colony, Macao.
on the nautical monument in the harbor, the hand in the sculpture holds a compass and drawings, pointing to the land and gold of the New World, with no blood, war, disease and death in his eyes. History is just a woman who can be dressed up. If you reverse a perspective, the story will be completely different. The snuff bottle in the Oriental Museum is meticulous and exquisite that I have never seen before. Which empire did they swallow hundreds of years ago?
exhibits from Lisbon Oriental Museum
III. On the 48th day of Morocco
on the 48th day, I sat in front of the train from Casablanca to Marrakech for 20 seconds, before crawling back to my seat. On the return train, I had a big fight with the Moroccan man who broke into the box while we Rest.
as a non-Muslim woman walking on the street, she can feel uneasy even if she is wearing a headscarf. Surrounded by the obscene eyes of men all the time, he was sexually harassed by strange men while watching the show, and when he asked for directions, he was almost mistaken for 20 euros. The taxi driver's false quotation could only throw him money to jump out of the car. When we got back to the boat and drove the post-port reflection, we knew that we were lucky. Some students were brazenly robbed, and the brave backpackers were thrown on the door by each other. In this poor third World country, deception seems to have become a natural means of survival. Sitting in the shed where free food was given out in Ramadan, drinking my long-lost peppermint tea, I remembered my 15-year-old Moroccan host family, in Denmark and remembered the boy in the documentary who said, "everyone knows there is no hope in this country" and can only be silent.
until Casablanca came here late at night on the streets
, I knew almost nothing about the city except that there was a movie of the same name in Casablanca. The heavy industrial port we moored was full of dust and sand, there was a thick finger of contaminated grease floating on the water, and all the security crew had to work in masks and sunglasses. The water on the beach is full of rubbish, and ten meters away are people frolicking and swimming, all men. The roadside buildings are low sheds, lined up one after another, just like slums.
but can you believe it, there is the most luxurious shopping mall I have ever seen in my life. Any luxury brand you can see in Europe and the United States is gathered. The English and French versions of "the Dark Knight" are shown in IMAX cinemas the next day, as well as a huge two-story aquarium with a variety of fish and even a few blacktip reef sharks. On the ground floor of the aquarium is an aquarium with all the dirty organs. A group of us had just come from the dusty old city, and it felt as if we had crossed in a group. I was dumbfounded.
the old romantic black-and-white film of Western centralism is shown over and over again in the Rick Cafe.
Moroccan elderly
four. Turkey
on the 37th day, my companion and I were invited to our home by the couple we had just met at the Blue Mosque, overlooking the night of Golden Horn from their balcony over tea, only to find a sudden power outage in the whole neighborhood. the mosque across the bay in the dark is brightly lit.
the mosque in the twilight
We talked from midnight to three o'clock in the morning, until the drummers woke people up from sleep to eat the last meal before sunrise in Ramadan. Her husband Ahmet talked eloquently about Islam to us, while his beautiful wife, Zehra, just sat quietly, smiling at us, trying to listen to our English conversation.
Father and son on Eid al-Fitr
when we don't talk about religion and culture, we talk about the love affair between sons and daughters. Like ordinary Muslim couples, they are introduced by their families and have not even held hands during their four-month relationship, but just take a walk on the beach of Bos Bruce. Both of them are in love for the first time. 'when you walk into a rose garden, why do you keep looking for more beautiful flowers in your imagination? 'says Ahmet. When you lookWhen it comes to the first beautiful flower, she should be picked. I said, and the way we fall in love is like buying clothes, try on one beautiful dress when you see it, buy it if it fits, and take it off for another one if it doesn't fit. We really want to buy it when we try, and we will be disappointed and sad if it is not suitable. Hearing this, Zehra frowned and said with worry: "It is difficult."
she is still a freshman in college, but she is two months pregnant and is now out of school at home. She said that after giving birth to the baby, she still wanted to continue to study and go out to work. Ahmet smiled and said, "I agree with her to work, but I must be in a place where I will not come into contact with any men, because I will be jealous." As a matter of fact, she doesn't need to work at all. I can support her. " Zehra complained angrily, "but this is my business!" I want to work!
she wears a heavy black trench coat and a pink headscarf in the 40-degree weather, keeping out the sight of passers-by even on the balcony of her home. I asked her if she would be hot, and she frowned and had a small nose. Seriously, it was hot, but hell was hotter.
Blue Mosque (Islam requires gender separation, Muslim women pray in their own areas)
I hope she never knows what the outside world is like, doesn't understand feminism, doesn't think about freedom. Don't be infected by Western values, so that she can always live in the little world of ordinary Turkish girls, have husbands and raise children, and be happy all the time.
five. Greece
on the 33rd day, when I was chatting with the jewelry store owner at the Plaka market in Athens until 11:00 in the evening, the Greek uncle looked me in the eye and said, son, we will only live once, and even if there is an afterlife, we will forget the things in this life-this life is our heaven, and this life is our hell. At that time, I couldn't help but have a sore nose, and it was not easy to hold back the tears.
in that shabby so-called Chinatown, I met a couple who had smuggled all the way from Fujian. They run the only ramen shop in Greece, and because they can't afford a license, they hide in residential buildings and do underground business known only to the Chinese. They promised to let me make a short documentary about their story, but when I sat in the store and wanted to chat before the interview, I felt like I wanted to talk. I asked why the store had cameras to observe the streets outside, and they said that because the neighborhood was unsafe, they were afraid of drug addicts; they asked me how much it cost to go to school in the United States and what kind of program it was to travel in Europe, and I didn't know what to answer.
in those two days, when I was walking and filming alone in the alley with equipment on my back, and was stared at by all kinds of suspicious people, I could only keep a straight face and pretend that I was a local Chinese who was familiar with the environment. I was not afraid of anything.
Acropolis
on the last day of Athens, I climbed the Acropolis in the scorching sun and stood in front of the Parthenon looking down at the ruins of Agora. When I was a child, I loved to play a game called "Zeus" to build ancient Greek cities in the virtual world. The ruins in front of me look so similar to those in the game, but they are already full of devastation. In modern cities not far from the monuments, bungalows line upon row, crowds of protesters gather in the square, buses are often suspended because of strikes, and groups of hooligans grab passengers' bags in subway stations in the early hours of the morning.
the owner of the ramen shop came to Greece a year and a half ago from Turkey with his wife, but happened to be hit by the European economic crisis. He smiled helplessly at the camera and said, "there is nothing we can do about the situation in the country."
six. Croatia
on the 25th day, the low fever that began in Rome finally reached its peak in Dubrovnik, and bad luck followed. Field lab, who dragged the sick body to marine biology, when others happily observed the fish in the water, I could only hold the heart that was about to jump out of my chest and stay on the shore, and my eyes with sunscreen burst into tears at the sight of the light. It is conceivable that I can only spend the next few days lying on my back on the boat.
it was not until the last night that I was able to get up and go out with my friends to see the folk song and dance performance of the local music festival. On the castle terrace by the sea, men and women dress up and dance, singing like a continuous silver thread, flying out of the cliff into the depths of the night.
Croatian Port
before I came to Croatia, I knew next to nothing about the country of the former Yugoslavia. I just came across an article during my voyage. it tells the story of a Bosnian civilian who protected himself and his family with bullets and knowledge during the civil war. In the case of STHF, where the city is surrounded by water, electricity and food, and money is turned into waste paper, "everything has gone back to prehistoric times." In addition to endless violence, people die just because they drink unclean water, and desperate mothers can be pushed around for hours for a canned corn beef. You can't trust anything but family and weapons.
and I look at the cheerful crowd singing and dancing in the light-twenty years later, what kind of people have survived without losing their enthusiasm for singing and dancing?
on the other side of the War Memorial Museum, well-dressed local girls are handing out small cards from strip clubs to tourists.
on the way back, the whole Old Town suddenly lost power, and the world suddenly fell into darkness, leaving only faint starlight. After a brief moment of panic and silence, everyone cheered as if it were the best thing that had ever happened in a day.
seven. Italy
on the 20th day, at a seafood restaurant in the alley of Naples, the owner ran out of Sing with a guitar in the middle of our meal. Although we can't understand the language, we can still communicate with music and body language. The boss tried to teach us chords, and we played a few songs on his guitar. Before leaving, a lady from the Japanese tour group at the next table chased out and said that we sang very well.Listen and ask us which country we are from.
there is always something that can span regions and times. Not far from Naples is the site of the ancient city of Pompeii, an ancient Roman city that was buried in volcanic ash for 2000 years before it reappeared in the world. In order to protect the ruins, all the objects that can be moved have been moved to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. When I walked into the museum, I couldn't help but be surprised at the exquisite and intact degree of the exhibits. The colors of the mosaics are still bright and there is no defect in a single piece of porcelain. How modern their style is! Some are as lifelike as impressionist works, while others are as weird and perverse as caricatures. The pitcher picked by the old man in the market contained two heads. The old woman selling chickens cursed the street angrily, and stray artists danced; a portrait of a woman looked like the Mona Lisa, and another decorative painting was a black-and-white skeleton cartoon. Can not help but sigh, thousands of years of artistic development, personnel changes, as if solidified in this moment.
A corner of the Vatican
when I returned to the ship through customs, my camera was already full of photos of exhibits taken in the museum. Unfortunately, in addition to mosaics, Pompeii is also famous for its brothel culture and sexual decoration. It is said that when Johns entered the room, they could indicate what kind of service they wanted through different murals on the wall. The customs officer asked to turn on my camera, flipped through a few pictures, and smiled at me knowingly: "what have you photographed?" I took the camera back with --
Oh, I know you did it on purpose, Italian man.
eight
on the 18th day, my companion and I missed the station when we came back from Rome. it took two hours to take the return train back to the port, and the guard on duty gave us the wrong instructions. We ran through the harbor but couldn't find our boat. But I remember that the dusk I saw that day when I was panting and anxious was one of the most beautiful days on the voyage.
I don't know what to say about Rome, which has been repeated and interpreted so many times that everyone is familiar with the legends of the mouth of Truth, the Spanish steps and the Trevi Fountain. put the same smile on the camera at different attractions. In addition to the busy tourists in the streets and alleys, they are locals who depend on the tourism industry for a living. Today's Rome is like a city built on the corpses of history, the traces of the empire are stacked layer by layer, allowing the gold paint to peel off, revealing the desolate background, and then let today's people apply new paint layer by layer and become a sparkling commodity.
the streets of Rome
Romantic ancient Roman religions have long been classified as pagans, and Rome, which borders the Vatican, is the center of Catholicism. The moment I walked into the pantheon, I looked forward to Jupiter and Venus, only to see the huge statue of Notre Dame on the wall, as if poured down by a basin of cold water. Legend has it that if you throw three coins over the shoulder with your back to the wishing pool, you will one day return to Rome. But do I really want to go back to Rome?
nine. Spain
on the 12th day, the European Cup final between Spain and Italy, we just came out from watching Flamingo in Barcelona and heard that Spain had won. A group of girls screamed and ran on La Rambla Street. I grabbed my companions and said, come on and join them! With that, he opened his arms and shouted that he ran crazier than they did, and everyone looked back. In the night sky, cheap toys ejected from the sky glowed blue and whirled in the treetops.
Quill Park (Barcelona, Spain)
I have always stubbornly believed that I should be Hispanic, warm, romantic and unreliable. Maybe that's why I feel like my nature has been completely released in Spain? Riding a bike through the streets, asking the locals for directions in a little Spanish, nodding happily even if they didn't understand the answer; after a whole day of running around, he still dragged his collapsed body to climb the mountain to Guier Park for a long time, watching the sunset silently by himself.?. Laugh presumptuously, wear bright red lipstick, try anything new, as the whole city doesn't sleep until the wee hours of the morning.
Spanish ham shop
the Iberian ham I bought could not be brought on board. I resolutely brought it back to the market and wanted to return, only to find that the butcher shop had closed early. Because we didn't want to waste the delicacies, we ran into the Dunkin' Coffee, next door and asked the clerk to keep it for me for one night, but he said yes. We tried to communicate in broken language and sketches until everyone was lying on the counter laughing. When I went back to get it the next day, he took the ham out of the fridge in the store and asked us to go to the nightclub at night-something that may only happen in Spain.
We are obviously exhausted and our hair is glued with sweat, but we are in high spirits in every picture. At the top of the magic fountain, I sat on the edge of the stone fence and shouted to Mr. Jack Dawson at the foot of the mountain, "I'm the king of the World!" As soon as the words fell, the fountain suddenly rose with the grand music, and at that moment, I felt like I was on top of the world.
the old port of Barcelona where we stopped was where Columbus set sail for America. In the square of the harbor stood a monument to his bronze statue, pointing to the west, as if to say the last sentence of every article in his log book: "Let's move on!"
postscript:
there is a concept in anthropology called liminality, that refers to the intermediate state of an individual in the transition between social states, neither one nor the other. The people in the middle of the journey are in such a state that they have set out and have not yet arrived, and they do not belong here or there. I think what I love is these lonely and free moments, when the waves are Pound on the side of the ship, and we play the guitar on the deck and lie down to look at the stars. As far as the eyes can see, there is only the darkness of the sea and the sky, and we are the only island that shakes.
it takes seven hours for a plane to cross the Pacific Ocean and a ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.It will take six days. Our voyage lasted two months, the phone and Internet were all restricted, and my computer broke down for several weeks. As I get used to waiting on the road, boredom, lonely lethargy, cold or dry heat, or even dizziness, long-distance travel has become a mixture of complex states. In the end, the meaning of travel is to be divorced from reality, so that I can see myself clearly with the world as a mirror.