Ethan’s trip to the S.A.

Originally uploaded by ethanlindsey.

Here’s the first in what promises to be a lengthy series of photo updates from my week in South Africa.

This is sort of a medley of different places and different days.

I felt like leading with the penguins would, of course, be the natural thing to do.

Also, these are in fact commonly known as “jackass penguins” — I didn’t come up with that name.

Visiting Greece is everything you’ve heard, and more. Especially the oodles of stray, (possibly-)rabid dogs. Seriously, there are lots of them.

I saw one woman petting one at the Acropolis. And no, I don’t mean on the hike to the top.

I mean, standing in front of the Parthenon and listening to a tour guide talk, a middle-aged woman wearing an American flag-emblazoned shirt was petting a dirty, lost dog of undetermined breed.

And Athens wasn’t especially clean either. Although I wouldn’t really complain about that. In fact, the grime and hardscrabble side of the city made me miss Berlin. Especially all the tagging and graffiti, like this shot I took of a tagged wall that overlooked what I remember was called “Tritons’ Square”, or something similar.

Fans of the Netherlands soccer team, on their way to Germany for the ‘06 World Cup, printed thousands of t-shirts that read, “Give me back my bike.”

The Dutch are known bike fanatics, and my time in Amsterdam over the past weekend, did nothing to disprove that preconception. But the fan t-shirts were in reference to the indelible history of Europe.

For after WWII ended, and the Germans were retreating from the Netherlands back to Germany, to get home quicker, many German soldiers stole Dutch bicycles.

It’s estimated that tens-of-thousands of bikes were taken this way, and the Netherlands won’t let Germany forget it. Fans were especially excited for a possible Netherlands-Germany match where they would be able chant a famous Netherlands’ cheer.

The cheer is, in Dutch, “Give us back our bicycles. Give us back our bicycles.”

The two teams didn’t get to play each other.

But that didn’t stop the Dutch from behaving, well, badly, in Germany.

(Second flickr link thx: maxbisschop.)

The Tallinn, Estonia airport has a speedy and stable wireless Internet network that reaches all the way from the terminal entrance to the individual airport gates. But the airport isn’t much bigger than a regular-sized Safeway in the United States. It’s this dichotomy that defines much of what I’ve experienced in the city of Tallinn – and country of Estonia – in the past three days.

Three days is not enough time to really “experience” a place. But it can be enough to get a good feel for a location – and enjoy your time while doing it.

When I booked my flight to this, the northernmost country of the former Soviet Baltic states, I immediately started hearing two things about the country:

• It’s become a party haven for young people from the wealthier parts of Europe, ever since the discount airlines such as EasyJet started flying here a couple years ago.
• It’s cold. Damn cold.

And in my three days here, I’ve learned that both of those things are true, except when they aren’t.

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