Coming To This

Column number ten out of twelve has been published in the Exeter News-Letter. It chronicles my brief visit to Azerbaijan, and especially the walk I had around an old tank graveyard with, among others, the incomparable Jamie Maslin.

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A Bit of Rhyming Collocation and Bob's Your Uncle

Cockney rhyming slang might be the most valuable contribution to the English language to ever come out of Britain. I was pleased to discover its existence from the renowned travel writer Jamie Maslin during a shared hiatus in Kazakhstan, but also shocked that a learned scholar such as myself remained ignorant of it for so long.

Rhyming slang phrases are derived from taking an expression which rhymes with a word and then using that expression instead of the word. For example the word "look" rhymes with "butcher's hook". In many cases the rhyming word is omitted - so you won't find too many Londoners having a "bucher's hook" at this site, but you might find a few having a "butcher's".

That's courtesy of cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk. Clearly there is rhyme here, but never any reason. I think that's the beauty of rhyming slang: it's got less sense than an initial glance at that slab of stone pictured a top. That's the Rosetta Stone by the way, they got it at the British Museum. You know, the rock they named the software after? Turns out, it's designed to make sense.

Rhyming slang confused the hell out of me for awhile, but I've started getting it down. I collocate the word in question, and then find a rhyme for the most likely pair, and I usually work it out.

Still don't get it? The Wikipedia page is pretty straight forward.

Sadly, it's just contrived and unnatural when a septic like myself tries to use it. Still it's helpful to understand, just in case rhyming slang gets thrown on the critical language list for the US foreign service. Having a bit of that, along with Korean, would really boost me in the selection process.

Just remember, collocate, rhyme, and Robert's your father's brother.

The Last Hitch

Naturally, the skies turned gray and rain began to fall the closer I got to England. That wasn't so bad though, because at the start of the day I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get close to England at all.

After a couple of hours on public transport to get to the northern fringe of Paris, I approached a gas station to see 6 people already trying to hitch north. There were two British girls heading to London just like me, and a cluster of four Polish guys who'd been waiting overnight.

The girls were gone when I got out of the toilet in the gas station, minutes after I arrived. They'd been waiting only an hour. I wasn't surprised the Polish guys had spent all night at the gas station. They were lazy and slobby and tried to get lifts by waving obnoxiously and calling out. Not the way to get a lift, and being a group of four doesn't ever help. I ran into a group of four Polish girls outside of Madrid who also spent the night at a gas station. If four fine-looking polite girls have a hard time getting a ride, four indolent guys might as well give up.

I wasn't so sure about the whole attempt to get to London anyway. Somehow I'd have to get across on the ferry which seemed like it might've been hard, especially after looking at this forum post which eventually devolves into inanities, misinformation, and pathetic moral posturing.

But there I was, in a truck cab approaching the port. It was my fifth ride, and I had to walk a fair amount to get to decent hitching spots after two well-intentioned lifts had earlier dropped me in very unhelpful places. If I had known better, I might've shaved a couple hours of the 14-hour day between leaving one flat in Paris in the morning, and arriving at my friends flat in London that evening.

At just past 4PM a French truck driver dropped me off by the exit ramp that veered away from the two lanes going toward the Calais port. Lucky for me, a car stopped about two minutes later on the rainy shoulder, before I could even get to the ticket booth and run into any problems getting through customs.

A Brit named Gerard was going back to England with his young son. He brought me through customs - the officer asking stern questions like why was I going to England, how long was I staying, how was I leaving, what boat, and so on - and past the ticket window. Either the girl didn't care that he was registered for two people and had three in the car, or she didn't notice the little boy in the back, caught up in drawings of dinosaurs and dragons.

Gerard wasn't going to London, but the cars soon lined up behind us, and I was able to find a couple heading there quite easily. They told me to meet them once on the boat. Don't believe that terrible forum post above, once through the customs and ticket booths, cars queue up in a huge lot and wait around for awhile, making it possibly the easiest place to find a ride ever.



I won't drag this out. I had some good chats with Gerard, a retired teacher from a hard part of England and we had a couple of pints. I charmed the elderly couple who was to bring me to the edge of London, and I took photos of the white cliffs of Dover sandwiched between the matching gray of the sea and the sky. Bob and Amy regaled me of tales of all the other hitchers they brought to and from the ferry - they had even picked up the same guy on two separate occasions, years apart. The sunset burning deep pink in the sky was stunning as we crested a hill on the M25.

I was left at a suburban train station, found an ATM, caught the train, got change at a fried chicken shack by Seven Sisters, picked up an Oyster Card, and got to Jamie's flat, and we tucked into the wine I had picked up that morning in Paris. The hard part was over, and my trip itself was nearly over.

CouchSurfing

That's Mihai making me breakfast before I set off for Milan from Munich. I stayed over at his place even though we just met the night before via the Internet. Shit, this sounds like it could be an irresponsible homosexual tryst, but it's just an average CouchSurfing story and completely platonic.

I've mentioned CouchSurfing at least a few times on this blog, but don't think I've gone into too much detail about it. It's a simple principle: a website that unites travelers. You stay with people on their couches/floors/spare beds for free and you can host people on your couch/floor/spare bed. I won't get into it much more, it might be boring.

When I recently hitchhiked from Germany to France, I stayed with a couple CS hosts along the way. It's kinda a hassle to organize this when you're hitchhiking without a phone since you don't know when you're going to get into a city you don't know, and you don't know where you will wind up after your last ride, but I made it work twice on really short notice.

This attests more to the great hospitality of the hosts I stayed with more than my resourcefulness. I was lazy and had only about a day to organize myself to stay in both Munich and Milan. I don't think I'd have the patience and endurance to couchsurf and hitchhike all the time like the good man of letters Jamie Maslin, who has done so from one end of the earth to the other.

Anyway, on a windy day in Germany I was sitting in Mihai's temporary apartment thinking about CouchSurfing and it (re-)dawned on me how fantastic the site and community are. There I was in Munich, sitting on a couch with a Romanian kid who just started a new job in a new country, chatting away about traveling and learning a bit about Romanian linguistic history.

I'd really taken CouchSurfing for granted, thinking that it should only be natural that I can meet people who are interested in my travels and would like to help me out with a place to stay and recommendations for things to do around town. That's what I would want to do for travelers, so that's what I expected.

The next night, the Polish truck driver that brought me to a gas station just outside of Milan insisted, without speaking any English at all, that he call up the host that had agreed to let me crash at her place at the last minute, and get her to pick me up so I didn't have to find my own way into town.

Antonella drove up and ferried me away, and brought me directly to one of the best meals of my trip at restaurant and indoor bocce hall that was tucked back off the street in the shade and bordered by train tracks. There was no menu and the meal was just freshly made pasta with a creamy sauce and the meat of some wild bird that was beyond her translation abilities.

It was the sort of place no one would ever find on their own, and it was cheap, atmospheric, and so goddamed tasty. And it was all enjoyed with a chat with someone who lived in the area, who had more to say to me than just how to get to the nearest metro stop, or where the supermarket was, or what time the museum closes.

CouchSurfing is great for saving money alone, but as I see more and more clueless backpacker tourists on the beaten path doing the same mundane shit in the same oblivious state around the "must-see" sites and cities of Europe, I've ceased to simply be appreciative of the hospitality and advice I receive from CS hosts, and am now truly grateful. It's natural to go somewhere and want to meet people who live there - surprisingly hard to do as a tourist - and very fortunate that there is such a website to make it happen.

Thanks to all the people who've hosted me and kept me off the streets, out of hotels, and brought me to places more interesting than museums and souvenir shops.

Cross-Cultural Cursing

This post contains many offensive words, in many languages. Just a warning for all you pussies out there. Also, I generally haven't scoured dictionaries and online forums to back these up, so if you know the languages I refer to and realize I fucked up, gimme a break.

I think curse words and rude sayings are great. I'm a firm believer that anything truly offensive is said not with words but with meaning. Said warmly, "You dumb fucking sonofabitch!" can be much more endearing than "You don't mean anything to anyone" said sincerely.

Traveling, one picks up all sorts of new words that help him get around. I'd tell you some, but I forgot most of them. "Baksheesh" is one that I actually recall, a widely recognized term around central Asia meaning a bribe, basically. That's a good one to smile at and pretend you don't understand when Kazakh train attendants pull you into their compartment to allegedly clear up immigration issues since you're the only foreigner on the train.

But what's most fun is learning words you shouldn't say. Like using the Italian toast chin chin in Japan. You may want to toast to someone's health, but in Japan those words make you wind up raising your glass to cock (by which I mean penis).

If you say the word fanny, as in 'fanny pack', or 'brush off your fanny', in nearly any English-speaking country outside of north America, you're talking about pussy (by which I mean vagina), which really lends those two phrases some interesting interpretations. A British instructor of mine also got a bit of a surprise when another American mentioned giving someone a wet willy. Willy is the male equivalent of fanny, duh. I guess they have a different name for licking your finger and sticking it in someone's ear over the pond.

One terminal station of the subway line I use here in Istanbul is Darüşşafaka. Now that doesn't translate into anything dirty as far as I know, but I like the idea of someone mentioning Darüşşafaka to me, and saying back, "Yeah, well Darüşşafaka you too, asshole!"

A word that can lead to great misunderstandings among black people and Koreans (I'm told the meaning is similar in Chinese, but what do I know?) is 니가 (ni-ga). This means "you" in Korea. It also sounds like "nigger" with a Korean accent. A teacher friend of mine had a middle school student who was up in the mountains with his family, enjoying a weekend hike, singing some song with ni-ga in it, when a black guy confronted him.

"What did you say?" asked the black man.
"Uh, just singing a song," said the Korean boy.
"Did you say 'nigger'?"
"Yeah. That means 'you'."
"What?" roared the black man.
"Not you! 'You!'" the Korean boy feebly explained.

The misunderstanding was cleared up. True story.

Maggie recently told me that Coca-Cola is just called coca everywhere in South America. Except, she found out, in Colombia, where it means what it sounds like. Surprisingly though, her waiter didn't actually bring her cocaine.

Disappointed at how lame all these have been? Well, I've saved the best for last.

Probably my favorite cross-cultural curse of all time is the word for sugar in Kazakh (similar in Azeri). Observe:

There's nothing like starting off your morning with tea and some cunt. In fact, a bit of cunt spread throughout the day can really keep you going, just make sure to constantly resupply yourself with cunt, or else you might find yourself running out of energy and crashing. Remember to always ask politely before taking cunt away from in front of a stranger, or even your friends. Some cunt after dinner is always nice, just don't forget to brush your teeth before you go to bed. Too much cunt can really do you damage after all.

There is no end to the juvenile humor in Kazakhstan as long as you know this wonderful word. Just ask Jamie Maslin, even asking unwitting Kazakh acquaintances how to say 'sugar' in Kazakh doesn't get old.

***update!***

By a happy coincidence, a couple new foreign curse words came up organically in class today. Apparently, if you try to protest something by saying "Yeah, but...", you are basically saying 'fuck' or 'fuck it' in Polish. Nice. Another nice little tip: at a fruit market in Turkey, don't point to a peach and just say 'peach' in English. You'll sound like you're strongly accusing the merchant of being a bastard.

***end update!***

With cultural awareness like this, I don't think anyone can dispute the claim that traveling truly broadens one's mind.