22 March 2007

Nouruz Piruz!

Happy 1386 to everyone!

Today we had a lovely outing to the Hotel Intercontinental and Bagh-e Bala. The Intercon is an old building which dominates a hill west of the city. It was built in 1969 and this is evident in its exterior. You feel like on the set of Spielberg's Munich (an awesome movie which captures the political ambiance 70s excellently as well as questioning Israel's right to exist by making the protagonist choose between being Jewish and Israeli) or one of the 'before' pictures of Beirut dating to 1973 hung up by a nostalgic Lebanese restauranteur. Rather unfortunately, the interior seems to have been recently renovated, making it less than shocking. I've still seen a big hulking hotel in Damascus where even the furniture is absolutely unchanged. We walked around Bagh-e Bala which is the big park next the hotel and filled with thousands of picknickers. There was lots of good snacks around too, including masala french fries and fresh sugar cane and sugar cane juice.

Otherwise it's a quiet new year's, with me and Saurabh more or less left to our own devices. The various components of my gang/family are out of town, including Nathan, Sahar, Lorenzo, and Khwaga. My productivity is up in any rate, so I can work on my own regular schedule--that despite even the latest bout of diarrhoea. The press conference seems to have gone well--We got an interview with one of the top journalists at Le Monde, and BBC, Reuters, AP, AFP etc. came out to hear us. I participated in a radio discussion--in Farsi (yikes) and gave an interview to Radio Netherlands myself.

Also exciting is that Neda is now adding herself to the list of people interested in Kabul. It looks like I just might bring DC here. All I need now is Angelo and a franchise of Mixtec with their excellent Margaritas.

1 comment:

CaraMae said...

I'm not sure Kabul is ready for Mixtec margs...are you Scott? :)