Beyond Stockholm Syndrome: 10 Cities
Landed Stockholm and went straight from Arlanda to Viggsö aka “Abba Island”
Somehow I'm right outside ABBA’s hit-writing cottage on the island. Over the course of days I got subsumed by the breakdown of Björn and Agnetha’s marriage, as documented in ‘The winner takes it all’
After 3 straight days of listening on repeat, the reductive zero-sum nature of the winner taking it all meaning that the loser *has* to fall weighed me down to exhaustion and I left Sweden, never to return.
Stockholm set off a bizarre mix of city-syndromes in my travels
Beirut, Lebanon: Guns pointed at my head at a Hezbollah checkpoint near the airport after arrival and I developed some kind of fatalistic swagger, as if death could come at any time and I’d be just fine. So I pushed it. I went to the Bekaa Valley on the Syrian border with an American lady I met in a Beirut lesbian bar. I survived (everything), despite accidentally nudging a soldier’s Kalashnikov on the way to fly out.
Medellin, Colombia: 24 hours in I began to suffer Netflix-induced delusions that I knew more about the #rise #fall of Pablo Escobar than anyone, including locals who actually knew him. I’d casually hang around the [since] demolished house where he was killed on December 2, 1993 and offer visiting tourists free guidance to the rest of Pablo’s Medellin. All but 3 refused me.
Seoul, South Korea: Apart from the DMZ, all I really wanted to do in Seoul was to consume lots of nakji-bokkeum (super-spicy stir-fried octopus dish). Developing quickly into a tentacle-eating obsession in every form and for every meal. Within 24 hours of my first octopus dish I left my luxury Gangnam hotel and started sleeping rough at the Noryangjin fish market, focused on eating Sannajki (live octopus) as it came off the boats. Hallucinations and misunderstandings followed in that order and I hurriedly flew out of Incheon.
Melbourne, Australia: Obsessing crossing the Yarra river, repeatedly (crossing not obsessing). It’s not the Yangtze or the Mississippi but after a few days of hearing about the massive logistical challenges of “crossing the river”, I began to plot out a journey from one end to the other. Also sought out easier crossing points, knowing the stress that these people seem to have about “crossing”. I biked across every bridge crossing from Princes Bridge to the Johnston street bridge in Abbotsford. Not a single friend appeared interested in my views on where and how to cross the river. So I stopped obsessing and left for Sydney.
Tashkent, Ubzbekistan: Modernist architecture I know. Behren’s 1909 AEG factory in Berlin, Corbusier’s 1928 Villa Savoye in France and the Guggenheim here in NYC (guess the year) I’ve all seen. So arriving in Tashkent en route to a road trip around the Aral Sea and the former Soviet chemical weapons testing center on Vozrozhdeniya Island was just transiting. Abrubtly, a parallel world of Tashkent Modernism beckoned. Simple geometric shapes fused with large slabs of reinforced concrete. The exquisite latticework of the State Museum of History and then I checked into something even better from 1974: The Hotel Uzbekistan. I stayed until I ran out of funds and was deported back to Russia.
Granada, Spain: Uncovering what’s underneath; that was the obsession. Specifically what’s underneath the Christian surface and digging (figuratively) into Granada's rich Islamic and Jewish past. Not just the obvious like the churches built over mosques, but the origins of what locals say. Like when they talk about going to barrio de los greñúos they actually are referring to the Realejo neighborhood with greñúo possibly being a reference to Jewish curls. Alas my few friends here got bored with my obsession with the underneath. One in particular caused me to leave town immediately when she suggested that Stranger Things would be a more appropriate place for me to visit The Upside Down.
Memphis, Tennessee: From aspiring vegetarian and practicing atheist it took only 3 days to become obsessed with meat and megachurches (M&Ms). A meat dish was not enough, I wanted my meat to be coated in meat sauce with a side of meat. And then the possibilities of horizontal integration hit me - everyone you meet in Memphis eventually tells you that their Grandma makes the best fried chicken you’ve ever had. So of course I ended up cruising megachurches and being inadvertently invited back to suburban Sunday fried chicken lunches cooked by real life grannies. Not nearly as creepy as it may sound and I remain generally welcome there to this day.
Johannesburg, South Africa: A sudden deep and abiding passion for security and for planning escape routes/rooms. Plotting out safe routes through town and excessive thinking about how to respond to carjacking attempts - do we floor the car when AK47s are pointed at us or do we immediately go limp and say ‘take whatever you want just leave us alone’. Asking in advance about where the safe room is seemed reasonable to me but some locals seemed to think I was overthinking. And then I was carjacked in mid-morning traffic and my continuous thought during the ensuing 24 minute firefight was 'I told you so'.
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: A day trip from joint city El Paso ended up as a days long foray into excessive medical tourism. I’d never really loved my chubby cheeks and really wanted a chiseled sculptured face, so day one ended up under that knife. I’d planned to walk across the Texas border back to El Paso but I spotted a street advertisement for a $100 nose job. That’s less than a boozy lunch so I tried that. Day 3 involved a $800 tummy tuck ($9,500 cheaper than NYC) and a breast augmentation ‘taster’ (don’t ask). I look good.
