The Virtual Nomad is slowly approaching the end of the A territory with its last sovereign entry being Azerbaijan — the other half of the neighbourly tensions with a former Virtual Nomad stop, Armenia. At this stage it is also healthy to acknowledge that the time between  Virtual Nomad stops seem to have increased, as has the amount of text. With this stop we are trying to return to a more compact format, whilst doing justice to the destination by providing the attention it needs, of course.

So, back to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan sits by the world’s largest (saline) lake, the Caspian Sea and has as its neighbours Russia, Iran and Georgia. Its capital is the ancient city of Baku, famous for being the lowest-lying national capital. The exclave of Naxçıvan (Nakhichevan) is bounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey. And then there is of course, Nagorno-Karabakh, that has been the heart of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia since 1988. 

The landscape is varied from lowlands to mountains. Winters are mild and long, summers hot. Azerbaijan has 14 economic districts with the Baku region being the most populated. An interesting fact about Azerbaijan is that about half of the world’s mud volcanoes are found in the Gobustan region of the country. 

Azerbaijan is one of the six Turkic states. The name Azerbaijan was first used officially in 1918 when a short-lived independence was established. The Soviets invaded the area in 1920 and from 1922 until 1991, Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet Union. 

Azerbaijan is mainly a Muslim country (96% in 2010), 75% being Shia and the rest Sunnis. 

90% of the population are Turkic-speaking Azerbaijanis. The Turkic strain is said to have arrived in Azerbaijan in the 11^th century.  The Arabic script was in use until quite recently (20^th century). The Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in 1939 and since 1992, Azerbaijan has had a Roman alphabet as the official orthography. 

The tricolour Azeri flag includes a blue line (symbolises the Turkic heritage), red (progress and social democracy) and green (Islamic civilization). 

Happy cooking

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

The Azerbaijani food services in Sydney are another victim of the global pandemic and this sad fact forces us to prepare the food ourselves. This time I recruit the Virtual Nomad Chief Editor and fellow nomad, my partner Johannesburg Karelia, to help me with the ‘fooding’ as his talents are not limited to proof reading overlong texts. He has an excellent understanding of the order in which ingredients are introduced in cooking. Virtual Nomad Special Advisor (who has been to over 140 countries) Chicago Hannover joins us in the preparation of the Azerbaijani night. 

We reserve a warm autumn Sunday for five delicious dishes from Azerbaijan. Amsterdam (9) is away but Lisboa (16) and Fez Karelia (13) join us for dinner but leave cooking for JK, CH and the non-Master Chef, me.

The menu includes:

• Toyug kebabs
• Lamb pilaf (national food)
• Dark greens with noodles and yoghurt
• Azerbaijani herb-filled pan cakes
• Yoghurt and herb soup 

Preparing the food includes leaving Toyug Kebab meat to marinate overnight. Toyug is made of chicken thigh fillets. The marinade includes lemon, oil, salt, pepper and sugar. I manage to do that and the result looks awesome. 

The preparation for the Azerbaijani night involves a lot of chopping and coordination. While Johannesburg Karelia prepares the lamb pilaf, I make the dough for the noodles and pancakes and CH prepares the chicken skewers. Johannesburg knows how to cut (almost) perfectly shaped noodles so I hand it over to him once the dough is ready and I turn to herb-filled pancakes. I struggle to make the pancakes crispy and thin but am having more success with dark greens. 

Then after a couple of hours of cooking we are ready for dinner. Fez Karelia (13) says that this might be the best Virtual Nomad so far as the meat is so good. As I am the only vegetarian of the group, I cannot verify this statement personally but the rest of the party agrees with Fez Karealia (on the quality of meat, not necessarily on the order of the Virtual Nomad dinners). The lamb dish is particularly well received as are the skewers. Dark greens are very good and have an exotic taste but they are noodle-heavy and the greenness disappears as the floury taste dominates. Nevertheless, the home made noodles are excellent. The least successful dish is the herb-filled pancakes as they are a bit too thick. The traditional Azerbaijani pan cakes are much thinner.

We have another wonderful Virtual Nomad night. Chicago Hannover tells about her four month sole-woman trip along the Silk Road that included Azerbaijan. Her experience of Azerbaijan is a tale of friendly people and an interesting mix of a very modern capital with heavy nightlife and traditional slow-pace life in the countryside. 

We have a second part of the dinner a few nights later as the ingredients for the yoghurt and herb soup are still waiting to be cooked. Fez Karelia (13) and Amsterdam (9) are both away so Johannesburg Karelia, Lisboa (16) and I decide to do two versions of the soup; the traditional one with mince balls and a vegetarian-friendly one for me. The result is a delightful combination of unusual taste that is surprisingly fresh and interesting. This might be my personal favourite of the five Azerbaijani dishes. 

Keeping it in the family

Who were the first people of Azerbaijan? No one seems to know except for the fact that they lived in places like the Azock Cave. There are records of Scythians and Caucasian Albanians living in the area around 8 BC, with the former building the large empire of Scythia. In the area that is today Azerbaijan also lived Persians who left a permanent mark on the culture and gave the area the name Atropatene, named after Aturpat, a ruler who served many military leaders (such as Alexander the Great) and then founded his own kingdom. 

Christian faith became the official religion around the 4^th century. The Arabs invaded the territory in the 7^th century and ruled for some time. Then came the Turkish tribes that brought their language with them. But there were other invaders and rulers as well — Mongols (13^th century, and they were not nice to the locals), Turkish Mongols (14^th century, also not nice), Ottomans, Russians and then Persians again until the Russian rule in the 19^th century. The Russian rulers had a clear preference for Armenians which the Azeri population resented. Economic recession led to violent conflict between the two (Armenians and Azeris, who else.) The 20^th century brought little respite to the country. Following the declaration of independence, Russians came again in 1920 and invaded, attracted by the prospect of oil wealth (Azerbaijan was the world’s biggest provider of petroleum). In 1922, Azerbaijan was incorporated in the Soviet Union and it was not always an easy ride. It became a constituent republic in 1936. Azerbaijan went through economic hardship in the 60s and became an independent state in 1991 —which then led to conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan, that is majoritarian Armenian. 

The market economy made an entrance in the 1990s and oil remained the primary export. The first president, Hyedar Aliyev (ruled from 1993 – 2003) was followed by his son Ilham Aliyev, who was so charming that he decided to get rid of the presidential term limitations in the constitution and limit free speech and the press. The 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018 elections that Ilham won with over 80% of the vote have all been declared fraudulent. The election app in 2013 showed the election results before the election had even taken place. Political corruption is rampant (Transparency International scores Azerbaijan as low as 30) and the Aliyev family has enriched itself with public money and placed it in offshore accounts. Human rights activists are persecuted (such as Anar Mammadli), LGBTQ rights violations are severe and bribing of international politicians and business leaders is standard practice. 

Love across boundaries – books from Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan has an important literary tradition. Nizami Ganjavi is Azerbaijan’s most influential author. Despite the fact that he died 800 years ago, his influence is far reaching in the development of poetry in Azerbaijani, Arabic, Turkish and Persian. His main work is called the Five Treasuries (Khamsa). Part of this masterpiece is the famous story of Layla and Majnun which has been compared to Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, but written a thousand years before. This tragic love story has inspired literature and music for centuries, including the song Layla by the disgraced musician Eric Clapton. 

Another important figure in the Azerbaijani literature is Mikayil Mushfig, father of the new Azerbaijani poetic style in the 1930s.  

I decide to read the most famous novel placed in Azerbaijan and maybe, or maybe not, by an Azerbaijani author. 

Ali and Nino (unknown, 1937)

Ali and Nino is a love story between an Azerbaijani Muslim, Ali, and a Christian girl, Nino, from Georgia. The author, Kurban Said, is a pseudonym whose true identity has never been completely revealed. Different theories attribute the authorship to different people including Austrian Baroness, Elfriede Ehrenfels, who signed the publishing contract. Other potential authors include Muslim-turned Jew, Lev Nussimbaum, Azerbaijani author, Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli, or a Georgian author, Grigol Robakidze.  Published in 1937, the book is now considered a modern classic. It was out of print for three decades. 

Ali and Nino meet at school and fall in love. They are devoted to each other while being products of their religions, customs and traditions – two vastly different worlds that, in the end, provide the underlying landscape of the novel. What makes Ali different is that he falls in love with a girl that “has a soul”. Older Muslim men, including his father, teach him that women are empty vessels for child bearing and they do not have a soul, but Ali wants to marry for love and wants to marry a woman of a different faith. The beginning of their courtship — despite barriers of beliefs and cultures — is fairly carefree as they both come from affluent families and Baku is a city of cultural diversity and has an active culture life. The first interruption is the kidnapping of Nino — an ancient tradition that brings not only shame but also the burden of tradition through blood and sacrifice. Then World War I breaks out and brings uncertainty, worry and hardship. Their world is pushed into turmoil and now includes finding a balance between loyalty and personal freedom, nationalism and security, loss and devotion. War becomes a reality, as does Azerbaijan’s very short independence before forming part of the Soviet Union. 

“if the Russians despise me, Nino will not take me as a husband. But I must marry Nino, even though she is a Christian. Georgian women are the most beautiful in the world. And if she refuses? Well, then I’ll get some gallant men, throw her across my saddle, and off we go over the Persian border to Teheran. There she will give in, what else can she do?”

And then, much later in the book when reality bites…

“then she made plans for the Toy’s future [their child] in great detail, with tennis, Oxford English and French languages courses, all European. I did not say anything, for the Toy was still very small, and there were thirty thousand Russians at Jalama” 

The story is definitely compelling and a wonderful read from the start. The author gently smiles at Ali’s youthful energy and his blossoming masculinity while Nino grows from a girl with big eyes and slender figure — who is a victim of her own gender and therefore always inferior to Ali — into someone of her own mind and desires. Their love and commitment goes through several trials, not only due to their different backgrounds but also their different sense of belonging between the Asian and the European worlds, modernity and tradition. Their worlds and backgrounds clash, not the least regarding the role and place of women but they are able to overcome this through nearly unbreakable love. But the world is changing and challenging around them and that weighs on them both and their destinies. 

In 2010, a Georgian artist, Tamara Kvesitadze, built a kinetic sculpture in the Georgian city of Batumi of a nameless woman and a man. It has been nicknamed Ali and Nino. The statue has the two figures kiss each other every ten minutes only to be torn apart again. The statue is said to symbolise love despite nationality or belief but also the fleeting nature of everything in life. 

A Baku Saga in Four Parts (Rustam Ibragimbekov, 1996)

As the mystery of the authorship of Ali and Nino remains, I decide to read another book by an Azerbaijani author. Ali and Nino finishes with the ending of the Azerbaijani independence in 1918 and the looming Soviet occupation. The book by Rustam Ibragimbekov, an award winning screenplay writer, Solar Plexus: A Baku Saga in Four Parts commences in the 1940s, deep into the time of Soviet rule. The story is told from the perspective of four different characters but they share the same origin — a courtyard where they grew up in Baku. The story spans several decades and generations from the 1940s through challenging times to the dawn of independent Azerbaijan and the violence of the early 1990s. 

It is a long book that is interesting in parts but generally quite uneven. The first part relates to the weight of family pride and sacrifice, and how carrying that family pride can have devastating and life altering consequences. The second part feels like a filler and has very loose connections to the first story, or maybe it just was not compelling or engaging enough for me. The third is interesting again as it returns to some of the events of the first part but from another perspective. The fourth pulls the childhood friends together around a violent event and describes their life stories and destinies. Life in the Soviet Union is not easy and the Soviet rule mixed with traditional manly pride does make the courtyard, and the life after that, a complex place to live. Women in the novel all seem crazy in one way or another and their life purpose is related to the men around them. The societal changes and events push through the story from Stalin’s purges to the war with Armenia in the 1990s. Baku is one of the characters, even more important than some of the five friends (as some of them are more defined than others) and its changing nature from a more multicultural and accepting human landscape into more narrow-minded, exclusive and nationalistic is well portrayed. 

“What made him follow all the others? Certainly not courage, he knew that now. He was probably driven by fear. Not the kind of fear that can be overcome with an effort, but a different kind, more powerful – the fear of losing people’s respect.”

Uneven pairings (movies)

Pomegranate Orchard (Ilgar Najaf, 2017)

Pomegranate Orchard (2017) is said to be one of the most successful movies of independent Azerbaijan, representing the ‘new’ wave of Azerbaijani cinema. Filmed in 2017, the movie was subjected to some censorship in the home front. Directed by Ilgar Najaf, the movie is very hard to find on streaming platforms.  Najaf was born in Armenia but became a refugee in 1988 when his family was expelled and they moved to Azerbaijan. He is winner of two Asian Pacific Screen Awards, one of which was granted for this movie. 

When I finally find it, the movie promises but does not fully deliver. The story is not unusual – a prodigious son who abruptly left 12 years ago returns to his native rural village to meet the family and the wife + son he left behind. His old man is suspicious him while fighting the interest of others to buy him out of his farm surrounded by pomegranate orchards. There is some family trauma, of course. It is the story of the clash of modernity and tradition again, the duty and the free will, the family and the individual, and the little choice that women have when tradition, authority and expected sacrifice hold a hard grip on them. The willingness of the wife (who looks much younger than the husband even if they are meant to be the same age) to forget and forgive no questions asked makes me almost angry. The pace is slow and the resolution somewhat unsatisfactory. There is of course beauty in the rural Azerbaijan and great effort in the symbolism and unspoken dialogue. 

Ali and Nino (Asif Kapadia, 2017)

Due to the fact that I have read Ali and Nino, I decide to watch the movie of the same name, based naturally on the story that I have just read. It does not achieve the magic of its material and falls flat. If a word of advice is allowed, I would not waste time with this movie but would read the book. And yes, one of the producers is the perpetual president’s daughter. 

Steppe Man (Shamil Aliyev, 2012)

I decide to watch another Azerbaijani movie and I am glad that I do. Steppe Man (2012, available on youtube), a fascinating, minimalistic story of a literally nameless young boy/man living in a steppe with his father. They live far away from the civilisation and hold their livelihood by raising camels. The slow rhythm of his life changes at the

sudden apparition of a young woman escaping from her past. The movie is filled with stillness and very little dialogue. The shots are long and the pace is slow but there is certain effectiveness. It is an interesting movie with raw and unfiltered take on human nature and the clash between the life styles and forms of traditional and modern way of living, the innocence and betrayal, the gain and loss of hope. 

Finally, whilst I cannot get hold of a movie Dolls (2010), I place it on my watch list and hope to see it one day. The reviews are very good and the description of the movie states that the “powerful anti-war message was not welcomed by Azeri authorities, who found it embarrassing to depict their soldiers crying. Despite the censorship, however, the film remains a solid portrayal of life in those turbulent years and demonstrates how quickly peaceful relations between different communities can degenerate into awful sectarian violence.”

World heritage and Eurovision 

The Azerbaijani night invites to put on the Spotify playlist of Azerbaijani music but the result is lukewarm and forces us to find Azeri music elsewhere. The Spotify Azerbaijan top 50 (May 2023) is dominated mainly by Russian pop and recent Eurovision entries.

British musician Sami Yusuf has strong Azerbaijani roots. He was born in Teheran in 1980 to Azerbaijani parents – the family left Iran after the Islamic Revolution. His grandparents had left Baku at the dawn of the Soviet rule. His music has strong spiritual and ethereal nature. He plays multiple instruments and sings in Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, Turkish among several other instruments. Here is Ateshgah and his song Azerbaijan. 

Azerbaijani folk music instruments include balaban (cylindrical obie), nagara (drum); tutek (flute); Tulum-zarna (Bagpipe) and zurna (a type of shawm). The folk music styles include Ashiqs, Meykhana and Mukham, all different styles. In 2009, the Ashiqs was declared as part of the UNESCO intangible world heritage. UNESCO describes Ashiqs as:” 

The art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs combines poetry, storytelling, dance and vocal and instrumental music into a traditional performance art that stands as a symbol of Azerbaijani culture. Characterized by the accompaniment of the saz, a stringed musical instrument, the classical repertoire includes 200 songs, 150 literary-musical compositions known as dastans, nearly 2,000 poems in different traditional poetic forms and numerous stories. The regional variations may include other musical instruments, but all are united by a common national language and artistic history. Ashiqs take part in weddings, friendly parties and festive events throughout the Caucasus and appear on concert stages, radio and television, sometimes synthesizing classical melodies with contemporary ones as they continue to recreate their repertoire. Their art is considered an emblem of national identity and the guardian of Azerbaijani language, literature and music. Even as Ashiqs represent the consciousness of a people, they also help to promote cultural exchange and dialogue: Kurds, Lezhins, Talishes, Tats and other ethnic groups living in the country often perform the Ashiqs’ art, and their poems and songs have spread across the region.

Contemporary music includes stars in the domestic market such as Nikki Jamal who is the other part of the duo that won the Eurovision song contest in 2012. 

We finish the stop in Azerbaijan with one of the most beautiful contemporary buildings in the world, the Heidar Aliyev Cultural Centre by the late Zada Hadid. 

Next stop: ‘Bonus A’ 

“Have you ever realised that life itself is all just a memory except for the fleeting moment that is present” (Eric Kandel, Nobel Laureate) 

Once I stood in line for hours to get a new Medicare card and when I finally got to the desk, the woman at the counter told me that she was going to Vienna in Austria in a week’s time and she was so excited because she loves the Sound of Music. I asked her if Vienna was the only destination she was going to visit and she said yes. Then I had to tell her that the Sound of Music takes place in Salzburg, not Vienna. She was not happy. 

Austria is world famous for an American film and then for very unfortunate people that lock their children in the basement for years. And for some other really bad people. And for classical music (think Mozart, Strauss, Schubert and Mahler). And for a bearded lady who won the Eurovision song contest. And for the Terminator. And for the creators of the Oedipus complex and penis envy theories. And for the father of genetics. And also partly for Eric Kandel and his work on memory (see below). 

Austrians also have a persistent reputation of being unfriendly. Recently (2022), Austria ranked as the second least friendly country in the world. What a reputation for a country.  

Austria is a landlocked country in Europe and borders Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy and Liechtenstein. There are 9 million inhabitants and the main language is Austrian German. The hills are alive in Austria with the Alps dominating 75% of the country. The country has nine states, some with familiar names such as Tyrol and Salzburg. 

Photo: Geology.com

A Strange way to serve

There are a few options for Austrian food in Sydney. 

We are moving towards schnitzel and sacher torte territory, we assume. 

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

I have an Austrian friend Tirana Mumbai (a pseudonym) – a very friendly Austrian – in Sydney and she advises against the Austrian Club and instead suggests that we go to Una’s in Darlinghurst. I also have two local friends, Alexandria Atacama and Reykjavik Atacama who lived a few years in Vienna and immersed themselves in the local culture. Alexandria Atacama thinks Una’s might be the best Austrian option available even if still not authentic enough. 

On a windy and chilly winter Friday, once Amsterdam (9) and I have played badminton and then collected Lisboa (15) from theatre, we head to the charming and bubbly Darlinghurst, full of people. Johannesburg Karelia and Fez Karealia (13) are waiting for us at Una’s door. They have not been given a table and they have been asked to step out of the queue and wait outside until the kids and I arrive. Over the phone, I have been told that the restaurant does not take any bookings but when we arrive, we see reserved tables. Johannesburg, who also has lived in Austria (and never in South Africa, just to remind that it’s a pseudonym), comments that this is just the way Austrian customer service works. Not the greatest start. 

The restaurant is full. We get a corner table next to another table with very large people with very large plates. This is heavy cuisine and the portions are very big. 

Most of our party proceeds to get schnitzels – pork schnitzel to be precise – and weisswurst with mashed potatoes. I get a vegetable strudel with mashed potatoes that is ok but not outstanding. As we have observed, the portions are very large and look homemade, which is probably the intention. 

Una’s seems popular with all tables full and most people with very large beers. It reminds us what an Alpine Austrian restaurant would be like and you almost expect the waiters to wear lederhosen. But they don’t – even if most are young, tall and blond. 

The party agrees that the food is ok and quite heavy but not an outstanding culinary experience. 

For food, atmosphere and the (rude) service Una’s gets 6.5/10 from us. 

The Hills are alive

Austria has been inhabited since Palaeolithic times. There was a Celtic Kingdom called Noricum around 400 BC, famous for its Noric steel – cool steel stuff that everyone wanted to have their swords made of. When Noricum peacefully became part of the Roman Empire, the Romans built cities including Vindobona which became Vienna. Later there were German invasions and other tribes dominating parts of the land. In 800 the land joined the Carolingian Empire as the ‘Eastern Kingdom’ – Österreich’. Several combinations followed until Rudolf 1 of Habsburg took over, which led to the Habsburg Dynasty that reigned for over 600 years (and included  marriages between close relatives that resulted in a somewhat problematic genetic inheritance). What followed was plenty of fighting including the Battle of Vienna in 1683 which marked the end of Ottoman Rule in Europe. The legend says the Croissant was invented to commemorate the victory by having Austrians devour the Turkish half moon. 

The Habsburg Dynasty was the most powerful house of Medieval and Renaissance Europe and ruled over a collection of lands from the 13^th century to 1918. The inbred dynasty ruled over vast territories in Europe (and overseas) and extended their tentacles into most of the European royal houses. There were as many as 71 marriages among close relatives. I then read Danubia by Simon Winder (see below) where I learned even more of their strange ways. 

The Habsburgs linked Austria with a large portion of European history from Spain to France to England to The Netherlands to Germany to Hungary to Romania, and so on. It is an unnerving history of endless wards and absolute power in the hands of incompetent people. It all came to an end in 1918. The 20^th century saw the decline of the Habsburg Dynasty and its demise, the atrocities of World War I, the experimentation of the First Republic (1919 to 1934), the annexation by Germany under Hitler, the occupation of the Allies after defeat (1945 to 1955) and then the birth of the new Austria in 1955 by the signing of the Austrian State Duty. This was the same year Austria joined the United Nations. Chancellor Bruno Kreisky dominated the political arena for more than a decade in the 1970s and former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was elected president in 1986. Later it was discovered that Waldheim had lied about his military past as an officer of the German Army, deployed in the Balkans during the Second World War. 

In recent decades –  the last 30 year or so – Austria joined the European Union in 1995 and saw the rise and fall of a flamboyant ultraconservative and very controversial politician, Jörg Heider, up to his death in a high speed drink-driving accident. There was also the heartbreaking case of J.Fritz who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and had numerous children with her. 

The Habsburg Dynasty strikes again (books)

I plan to read the Man without qualities (an unfinished novel from the 1930s/1940s) that dominates “the Best Austrian books” lists and seemingly does not have a well defined plot. But when I found out that it is over 1000 pages, I decide otherwise. 

I turn to Tirana Mumbai, my Austrian friend in Sydney, for advice about literature but she is indecisive, which is completely understandable. I then ask Alexandria Atacama and Reykjavik Atacama, the wonderful couple who lived years in Vienna and are well acquitted with literature. Reykjavik Atacama recommends Danubia by Simon Winder. Even if written by an English author, it deals with the Habsburg Dynasty in a fairly entertaining way.  

Danubia (Simon Winder, 2013)

In Danubia, Simon has done extensive research on these strange and rich monarchs that ruled large tracts of land in Central Europe for centuries. Simon has a true passion for what he is writing about, incorporating personal anecdotes of himself in the text. I learn that he prefers to holiday in the north rather than in the south and, if forced to be in a sun-drenched country, he prefers to stay indoors in a hotel and read. But I also learn about the enormous procession of kings, queens and emperors of the House of Habsburg. There are many Ferdinands and Marias – monarchs with enormous jaws due to intensive inbreeding. 

I learn that Maximilian I (King of the Romans 1459 -1519) was a geek interested in the latest developments in military technology (utilised in many of his unsuccessful battles) but also had a PR team to pour out propaganda about how great he was. He was an inconsistent figure, in the habit of initiating and then dropping projects. He also loved his first wife, Mary of Burgundy, very much, treated her as his equal and was crushed when she died in 1482. Their son, Philip the Handsome, (his good looks seemed to be his primary asset) became the King of Castile and married Juana of Spain (Juana la Loca). She had the reputation of being mentally ill, which may or may not be true. Their son, Charles/Carlos, ruled from east to west, a territory that included Habsburg Austria and its territories, Spain, the Netherlands and southern Italy. But he abdicated in later years to leave Spain to his son Philip and Austria to his brother Ferdinand (who had been born and raised entirely in Spain). He was also not very fond of Protestants –  particularly Martin Luther – and kept himself busy fighting them. 

I also learn that some of the castles had bear moats (yes, bears in them). The Habsburgs fought long and hard for centuries against the Ottomans. Ferdinand’s grandson, Rudolf II, (Holy Roman Emperor 1576 – 1612) was a hoarder who collected exotic animals and other rarities, was partly a recluse interested in the occult and religiously tolerant (or indifferent). He is widely considered pretty ineffectual as an Emperor as the Long Turkish War (1503 -1606) shows. Poor Rudolf just wanted to study and collect ‘stuff’ and was not suited to military action, as was necessary in those times. He died childless and his ambitious brother Matthias, ultimately proved to be a weak Emperor. Matthias was also childless and desperately tried to marry a much younger woman in the hope of producing an offspring and heir, but the poor girl died soon after. The disastrous political movements of both Rudolf and Matthias led to the Thirty Year War (1618 -1648) that has been described as one of the most destructive conflicts in Europe, resulting in the loss of between five and eight million soldiers and civilians. 

The Habsburg continued to intermarry close relatives. One of the daughters of Matthias’ successor Ferdinand II, Cecilia Renata, married her first cousin who was the King of Poland (Wladyslaw IV). Another married her uncle, Maximilian I of Bavaria. Ferdinand’s son (Ferdinand III) married two of his first cousins. Ferdinand II’s granddaughter, Maria Anna, at the tender age of 14 married her maternal uncle, the King of Spain. Then Ferdinand III’s only surviving child (of several children from three different wives), Leopold I, married his Spanish niece and first cousin Margarita Teresa (Maria Anna’s daughter), most of whose siblings had also died. Margarita Teresa is, in fact, the 5-year old child in the very famous painting of Velazquez Las Meninas.

Leopold and Margarita Teresa were not beauties as they both had inherited distinctive features of intensive inbreeding. Our author Simon bluntly states that it does not surprise modern biologists that so many children died. But for our Habsburgs, other people just were not good enough so the best was to marry close family. Ugh. 

Margarita Teresa died in childbirth at the age of 21 and only one of her six children (that she had with her ‘uncle’, as she rightfully called her husband) lived past infancy. The author, Wilder says: “A book could be written which told the Habsburg story just from the point of view of the disregarded queen mothers, the terrified wives, the daughters used as trans-national pawns, the widows and daughters who vanish from history as they are put in convents or into little-frequented palace wings, all those moments of bored irritation when the child being born proved to be merely female and the grant witnessed of the mother’s agonizing labour hurriedly dispersed.” And then there is the story of dead children – only between Ferdinand III and Leopold I there were eleven dead children. 

Habsburg possession in Europe circa 1700 Source: Wikipedia

The burials of the Habsburgs were curious as their bodies were often buried in a different place than their hearts for religious reasons. Leopold I lived quite a long life and most of it was battling Ottomans and having a rivalry with his first cousin Louis XIV, the Sun King and long-lived King of France. Leopold I fought three wars against France and several other wars so he was quite busy on that front during his nearly 47-year rule. He was married three times with two of his wives dying in childbirth. The third one (Eleanora) did not want to marry him, preferring to become a nun, but could not say no to her parents. She brought that religious joy to her court, which was described as quite gloomy and strict. She also gave birth to ten children and did finally manage to live as a nun after her husband’s death.  

A couple of Holy Emperors (as they were termed) followed. Leopold’s eldest son, Joseph I, was Holy Emperor for a mere six years and died of smallpox (after giving his wife a STD that made her sterile). Our author Simon describes Joseph as “startling and inspiring – hard-drinking, reckless, adoring warfare, sexually chaotic – hard to imagine a less Habsburg Habsburg”. Joseph’s only surviving children were girls and therefore his younger brother Charles VI made it to the throne. Charles then loved a man called Michael Joseph and procreated out of duty. He also only had girls but then decided to challenge the traditional male-line succession and became obsessed with issuing the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 (it took him 29 years). This was designed to ensure the Habsburg lands could be inherited by a daughter (he also made clear that his girls were favoured over Joseph’s girls), but also led to multiple wars over the issue of succession in different territories. This made his unprepared daughter, Maria Theresa, (that Charles hardly ever talked to) the ruler, but not without wars and conflicts, and division of territories and hardly anyone recognising her right to rule. She was the last direct Habsburg heir, ruled for 40 years and had 16 children, many of whom died young. Her youngest daughter was a famous woman called Marie Antoinette. 

Maria Theresa’s son, Joseph II, believed in absolute monarchy (enlightened despotism / absolutism) and was described as “over-enthusiastic, announcing so many reforms that had so little support that revolts broke out and his regime became a comedy of errors”. He was followed by his brother Leopold II who, according to our boy Simon (and other historians) was an exceptionally capable ruler – for a Habsburg. Simon says of his 2-year rule that it was “capable, flexible and thoughtful rule without precedent within the family” and that his death basically marked the downfall of the family. “His completely pointless death (ushered in by doctors messing around with him in an unknowingly dirty and infective way) marked him out too as the last ever genuinely shrewd and resourceful (but not disturbing) Hapsburg ruler. His successors were a narrow dullard, a simpleton, a narrow dullard and a non-entity and those four get us to 1918.”  

Leopold II was the first ruler in modern history to oppose capital punishment (which was abolished in Tuscany in 1786 during his rule). He was a supporter of the arts and science, and campaigned for better treatment of the mentally ill. He had 16 children, one of whom burned to death when playing with fireworks. His successor, son Franz II, fought Napoleon, losing almost every time and had to give his attractive 15-year-old teenage daughter, Marie Louise, as a wife to Napoleon (fearing of course the same destiny as his aunt Marie Antoinette.) When asked for her consent, she replied: “I wish only what my duty commands me to wish.” She had a son with Napoleon, outlived her husband, married twice more and died at the age of 56 in Parma. 

Franz’s son, Ferdinand I, (the numbering beginning again) was the next ruler and the result of more awful inbreeding between Franz and his double first cousin. Ferdinand was physically and mentally incapable of ruling, despite being the king for 13 years.  He was followed by Franz Joseph – nowadays probably most well known as Sisi’s devoted husband. Franz Joseph was not a great emperor and not a lucky man. He resisted the growing nationalism of his nearly 70 years of rule, his (highly fictionalised in movies and tv series) wife was assassinated, his brother Maximillian executed, his son Rudolf committed suicide with a young lover and his nephew (that he strongly disliked), Archduke Franz Ferdinand was also famously assassinated. This assassination, of course, was the catalyst for a dreadful and tragic event called World War I. Franz Joseph gave Hungary greater autonomy, created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and died in 1916 – two years before the end of the Hapsburgs and the with world around him in war. The Habsburgs saga came to an end in 1918 under the rule of Franz Joseph’s grandnephew.

I learned all that from Simon’s massive (+500 pages) book (and from further reading). The book is well researched, very detailed, covers a lot of wars, has a critical and sometimes amusing take on things and talks a lot to the ‘reader’. It is a huge effort which is at times extremely interesting and at times tedious. It is not linear enough to be completely clear, but then very detailed and slow in parts. Nevertheless, it offers a huge amount of information that I was only superficially aware of and for that reason it is worth a read. 

In Search of Memory (Eric R Kandel, 2006)

By then I had had quite enough of silly royals and the whole weird system that a monarchy is. Before Virtual Nomad moves on, there is time and space for one more book. Eric R Kandel is an Austrian-born Nobel Laureate in Medicine who was awarded the prestigious prize for his ground-breaking work on memory and neurobiology. Kandel has had a complicated relationship with being born in Vienna (and for a long time identified as Austrian-American rather than Austrian) but has since reconciled with his past. I decide to ‘read’ his book In Search for Memory – the emergency of a new science of mind as an audio book. It is a fascinating blend of autobiography, neuroscience and neurobiology. I learn about Eric’s childhood in Vienna, his parents’ toy store and them fleeing from Nazi Vienna. I learn that bourgeoisie Viennese families used to choose their maids with their teenage boys’ sexual needs in mind. I learn that Eric was an excellent student, a dedicated researcher and an absent father and husband (his wife sacrificed her own scientific interest and career in favour of his). I learn about psychoanalysis, neuroscience, molecules and proteins, brain cells and the origins of mental disorders, genetically modified mice, long-term memory and learning, where thoughts come from and how genetics affect the ways how we memorise and remember things. Eric presents the history of brain science and psychology, the sensory processes and the experiments he and other researchers have done. He laments the greed of many researchers who are not driven by the advancement of knowledge but competition and rivalry. He explains how our conscious actions are affected by the unconscious. Above all, it is about his love for science and his fascination with the brain, with how memories are created and fed. It is a fascinating book that is better read than listened to due to the complexity of concepts, scientific developments and names of researchers. My brain has changed after reading it, as he predicted, and I also understand now why women and men give directions in a different way. 

Vienna (Eva Menasse, 2005)

Ok then. One more book. Some Austrian contemporary literature so that I can at least claim I have really read something from an Austrian author. I end up choosing Vienna by Eva Menasse. It is a tale of a family at the heart of a changing world with its members spread around countries. The story jumps back and forth in time, and several people travel through the pages to the point that it is difficult to keep track of who is who. Its feel the intention is to build a plentiful narrative as in the 100 years of solitude, but this book is a far cry from the magical tale of Macondo.  It is slightly confusing and a bit boring, and the story or the writing style never truly gets off the ground. The people and their motivations are mostly pointless and almost irrelevant, and I struggle to finish the book. The Austrian entry of the Virtual Nomad takes more time than expected for the sole reason that I force myself very slowly through the dense narrative of the nearly 400 pages, and I am relieved when I put the book down. 

Movies from Austria: Old age, silent cruelty, shallow empress, deep connection and hopeless existence.

Michael Haneke is an Austrian filmmaker whose films are often dark and unsettling, and sometimes controversial. I have seen several of his movies that are uncomfortable but fascinating, especially the highly awarded The Piano Teacher and Cache. I have had two other movies on my watchlist for a long time but have postponed them, consciously or unconsciously. With Virtual Nomad now stopping in Austria it is time to face them. 

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)

First, I watch Amour (2012), which to my surprise is an understated and quiet movie about old age, love, commitment and ‘managing the suffering of someone you love’, as the director says himself. Set in France (and in French), it is slow and beautiful and sad at the same time. It is a story of an older couple – the husband becomes the carer of the wife after her stroke, and then she gradually declines. It is a movie about riding not so graciously into the sunset – the path that inevitably we all will take. The actors (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are magnificent. The director had the idea in his mind for a long time and it is loosely based on something that happened in his own family. 

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)

Next on my list is the White Ribbon (2009). Again, not set in Austria but in Germany. I know that this movie is a masterpiece and I have postponed watching it because I also expect that it will be unsettling. I decide to watch it with my partner Johannesburg Karelia (a pseudonym) and I am happy we do. It is a mesmerising movie – much less unsettling than haunting, set in the years before the First World War and about the generation that grew up to be Nazis. In fact, the director has stated that the movie is not only about fascism but also about radicalisation in general. The movie has the subtitle of ‘A German-children’s story” (Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte) but it is only for German audiences that can understand the “roots of Nazism”, whereas the theme itself is universal.

The movie is in black and white, which is effective in its stillness. The viewer is left defenceless with the understanding of where the incidents of cruelty and malice come from. The director states that although the town is fictional, the story is based on real incidents that took place in Austria and Germany in the 1920s-1940s.  

The Empress

Alexandria Atacama and Reykjavik Atacama, the wonderful couple that lived in Vienna and who I happily call my friends, recommend watching The Empress, a German Netflix series about Sisi, the Austrian empress. The series is interesting and intriguing enough and I watch the six episodes in a week. Everyone in the Austrian court seem to be really pretty and dominated by their desires more than political motives, which makes the series reflect human experience. There are many links to the true story even if it is strongly romantised. 

Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)

But what about something in Austria? I make JK watch Before Sunrise, the first part of my all time favourite movie trilogy, set in Vienna. It is not an Austrian movie but an American one with beautiful and mesmerising young Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as leads – two young people who meet on the train and decide to spend one day and night together walking around the streets of Vienna. Vienna is the third main character in this movie and is generously portrayed in this wonderful small movie about connection by Richard Linklater. I have seen the movie several times and again it does not disappoint. 

Import/Export (Ulrich Seidl, 2007)

After two films by an Austrian filmmaker but set elsewhere and an American film set in Austria, I decide to watch an Austrian movie set in Austria and preferably in Austrian German. I decide to go for Import/Export (2007) by Ulrich Seidl whose film Dog Days depicting brutality and humiliation in the Viennese suburbs won the Gran Prix at the Venice film festival. Seidl is known for his harsh and unsettling movies of spiralling lives that depict a cruel and colourless reality of the less fortunate. Import/Export is no exception. It is a dark tale of people trying to find a better life; a Ukrainian nurse involved in low paying sex work and an Austrian security guard at the other end of that sex traffic. One of them heads towards the West and one of the them heads towards the East, each for a better life. Not much light or laughter in this movie, and not much hope of a better future for the exploited and humiliated. 

Ulrich Seidl is also famous for his Paradise trilogy, with the second part winning the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. An interesting fact is that Ulrich Seidl is married to Veronika Franz, a horror movie maker. Their breakfast conversations must be a cradle of joy. 

The sounds of music 

Vienna has been described as the Music Capital of the World, which is probably well deserved when it comes to classical music. Austria was the cradle of great classical maestros; Mozart, Haydn, Mahler, Strauss, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bruckner and several others. Austria has several classical and folk music festivals around the country and highly regarded classical music conservatories. 

When it comes to contemporary music, Falco, an unmistakably 80s-beat musician remains Austria’s most prominent and famous musician. His biggest hits include Rock Me Amadeus (1986) and Der Kommissar (1981, an early non-English rap song). Described as an eccentric, controversial and complex person, Falco died in a car accident in 1998. When his mother was pregnant with him, she was expecting triplets and miscarried the identical twins. While Falco survived, he would later describe how he felt the presence of his deceased siblings.

For other musicians, DJ Parov Stelar is known for his fusion of electric swing. His song All night is inviting whereas The Sun featuring Graham Candy is his biggest hit, together with Booty Swing. The Virtual Nomad playlist also welcomes the Princess, Soul Fever Blues and Black Bird. 

As for other musicians, Wanda is a popular band in Austria but for Virtual Nomads their music is not engaging enough. Experimental art project Soap&Skin is interesting but inconsistent. There also seems to be quite an appetite for metal music, judged by the Austrian music website that lists musicians and their number of monthly listeners. 

While navigating the musical waters of Spotify, Virtual Nomads seem to take a bit of a liking of the sound of some of the songs of an Austrian Indie band Leyya (eg. the song Superego). The conclusion was that they offer a varied musical landscape with some clever and quite nice songs, but nothing extraordinary. 

The Kiss by Klimt 

Virtual Nomad farewells Austria with a painting of Austria’s most famous painter, symbolist Gustav Klimt. The painting is ‘the Kiss’ (1908) – one of the most visited paintings in the world and thought to represent the artist himself with his lover Emilie Flöge. The painting was considered ‘pornographic’ but enthusiastically received by the public and the Austrian government that purchased the painting. It can be visited at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.

Next stop: Azerbaijan 

Thank you Johannesburg Karealia for proof reading the very long Virtual Nomad stop in Austria. 

This is going to be a long entry. 

Before I start, I would like to acknowledge that I am writing this in the land of the Gadigal people and I would like to pay my respect to the traditional custodians of this land. 

Yes, Oz it is. The current homeland, the birthplace of my second child A and a vast, vast continent of its own. Australia, where constellations are different from the northern sky and the flushing toilet water swirls in a different direction. The place we now call home. 

So much to say about Australia. As an immigrant, I admire many things and then there are things that I am not crazy about. But this is not about me. This is about approaching Australia as an experience – there is so much, so it’s hard to decide where to start. 

This is going to be a long entry. 

Everyone knows where Australia is. It is down under, far from everywhere. Australia has 10,000 beaches, more than any other country in the world. That makes a lot of beaches. When visitors come to visit us, we would like to remind them of the charming Australian wildlife

Kangaroo meat and bush food 

Australian cuisine is not famous. Even the kids look at me puzzled and say: “So we will have a barbie [barbecue] and tim tams for dessert?” They omit vegemite, the Australian culinary gift to the world. A black yeast paste that has an indescribable taste – you have to be born to it to like it. There are also Anzac cookies, pavlova but no, there is not really such a thing as an Australian cuisine. 

We should not forget that Australia hosts the oldest living culture, over 60 000 years old. So this is where we turn for an ‘Australian’ cuisine experience. Bush food, also called bush tucker. Bush tucker has been the source of nutrition and medicine for First Nations people in Australia. Bush food consists of animal meat, seafood, vegetables, plants, fruits and spices. 

For the bush tucker lunch, it is just the three of us – my children (here with their pseudonyms) Lisboa Rabat-Lahore (15), Amsterdam Rabat-Lahore (9) and me, Akureyri Lahore . We find an Indigenous-owned café in Glebe that serves bush food from Far North Queensland and has a very good reputation. It is called Lillipad Café, after another Lillipad Café in Cairns.   

We head to the café one busy Saturday morning and pass by the wonderful Glebe markets. The café is full but the incredibly friendly staff finds us a table at the back. We walk past many groups of people and others waiting outside to be seated. The lovely back area is charming, as is the whole restaurant. There is a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait symbolism. The atmosphere is wonderful, accepting and inclusive. 

The food is delicious. Lisboa takes a Wild Country Platter (that has kangaroo salami, chorizo, roasted cauliflower, spices, vegetables and halloumi) and I have a vegetarian plate (that I share with Amsterdam) with bush vegetables and halloumi, and Amsterdam has a pancake with berries. The taste is rich, delicious and fresh. Lillipad gets 10/10 from us for food, service and atmosphere – and we are very likely to be back. 

The world’s oldest living culture 

Australia is a country of many nations and immigrants. More than half of all Australians are first or second-generation migrants. SBS states: “The results of the 2021 Census by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), showed 48.2 per cent of Australians have a parent born overseas, and 27.6 per cent were born outside Australia”

Australia is also a country of nations. There are many different nations of Australian First Nations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait), each with their own unique language. The 2021 Census recorded 167 Aboriginal or Torres Strait languages used at home. The First Nations people form around 3.3% of the current population in Australia. AJATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) has a map of Indigenous Australia that cannot be reproduced without permission. 

As for history…

The story is well known. Australia hosts the most ancient living culture, shared by different nations, clans and around 250 different language groups. These people are thought to have come from East Asia around 60,000 years ago. The Aboriginal storytelling, art and understanding of the environment was developed during thousands of years. The different groups did not always coexist peacefully and clashes were common. 

Image Art by Mirree

The Spanish and Portuguese did some exploration of the northern coast but did not see much of interest and retreated. The Dutch went a bit further and a fellow named Abel Janszoon Tasman ‘discovered’ Tasmania, and called it Van Diemen’s Land after his superior.  

The ones to come with force were of course the Brits. Captain Cook and company did three expeditions, claiming New South Wales for Britain in 1770. Colonisation followed with the First Fleet arriving in 1788. As with colonizers everywhere, many awful things followed. The treatment of the First Nations was atrocious and well documented, and some of that carries on to this day.  

Matthew Flinders gave the vast land a name ‘Australia’ and undertook several expeditions, including circumnavigation. The Brits established several colonies and claimed the land. Wool was a major industry product and in the 1850s gold was found. The colonies united to form a Federation in 1901 with Edmund Barton as the first Prime Minister. Aboriginal people were excluded from different civil and constitutional rights such as vote, maternity allowance, pensions and employment in different institutions such as the post office and Armed Forces. 

The Australian government established in 1901 a charming initiative called the White Australia Policy to keep the country primarily British while expecting the First Nations to slowly die out. The Stolen Generations refers to a policy of forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait descent children from their families to state care between approximately 1869 and 1969. The exact number of removed children is not known but the impact of the forced removals and the intergenerational trauma is still visible today. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders gained the right to vote in 1962. The following decades brought acknowledgement of other rights related to things such as land, native title and deaths in custody. The National Sorry Day to commemorate the Stolen Generations was launched in 1998 (26 May) and has been celebrated ever since. Following events such as Cathy Freeman’s historic Olympic Gold, a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait people – long refused by the conservative party in power – was finally delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Labor party) on 13 February 2008.  

Australia is a country of immigrants and multiculturalism. In 2020, nearly 30% of Australia’s population had been born overseas, representing 7.6 million people. The largest groups are English, Indian and Chinese. Australia is the country with the largest Chinese population outside China (5.5%). The median age of the English immigrant group (58 years) is more than 20 years older than the Indian immigrant group (35 years). The oldest median age is from Latvia (78 years) and the youngest the Cayman Islands (14 years). Western Australia has the highest proportion of overseas born immigrants (35%), whereas Tasmania has the lowest (13%).

Australia has a compulsory voting system and the political landscape has long been dominated by two ruling parties (Liberal and Labor). The current government is a Labor Government (since 2022), headed by Anthony Albanese. Australia has a federal system of government with eight states and territories (New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, and Tasmania.)

A young rapper from Redfern 

So much to say about Australian music. Everyone seems to have an opinion about it, with favourites including Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, AC/DC, Midnight Oil, INXS, Keith Urban, Archie Roach, Savage Garden, Natalia Imbruglia, 5 Seconds of Summer, Sia or the recently passed Olivia Newton-John. These are global Australian imports. Rolling Stone magazine has had its take on the greatest Australian musicians.

There are also other musicians that are very popular in Australia but less known elsewhere – at least in Europe – such as Jimmy Barnes, Yothu Yindi, No Fixed Address, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and Christine Anu. Some of these artists make a distinctly Australian contributions to world music.

But, this time I will focus on one artist only, the one that has been on A’s playlist for months.

In May 2022, I took Amsterdam (a pseudonym) to his very first real concert at the Qudos Arena in Sydney Olympic Park to see the Australian superstar The Kid Laroi. He is an 18 year old from Waterloo/Redfern (inner-city neighbourhood in Sydney famous for flourishing Aboriginal culture) and the first Australian-born male singer to hit the number 1 spot on US Albums Chart and Billboard Hot 100 in 40 years. 

The day we attended the concert was the National Sorry Day and The Kid Laroi – a Kamilaroi man – acknowledged this when he took the stage and shared that his family are members of the stolen generation. The 18 year old sang for a sold-out arena and commanded the stage. He has incredible talent, stage presence and charisma. He also is quite young and that shows in his language with the prolific use of the word  f**k, to the point that the word loses its power. 

It was a wonderful concert and a wonderful experience. People around us were into the music as much as we were. The public was delightfully varied. We sat next to three young men of South-East Asian background and in front of us were a group of six young people – all of different ethnicities; next to us were a young couple of differing skin tones, and behind us a Polynesian dad with his two young kids. Around us, mums and dads were with boys like A – boys that got up and sang their lungs out with The Kid Laroi. He is an incredible stage performer with palpable charisma. The concert was short – just over an hour – but I was not complaining (A did) as it was a good duration for a first concert. 

We make lists of our favourite songs by The Kid Laroi. So Done is our shared favourite but I also love Where Does Your Spirit Go, that he made for the fallen Juice Wrld, who had taken him under his wing. I asked A to put his favourite The Kid Laroi songs on my playlist. I find there are now 179 of them. It would be an understatement to say that I have heard this artist a lot. The importance of the Kid Laroi in my household (and on long drives with the 9-year-old A) is demonstrated by the fact that out of the 621 artists that I listened to on spotify in 2022, the Kid Laroi was number 1 and ‘So Done’ the number one song. 

“The silences are as powerful as the words” (books)

Larissa Behrendt is a Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman from her father’s side. She is the Director of the Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney. She is also the first Aboriginal woman to have graduated from Harvard Law School with a Doctorate in Juridical Science. She is an accomplished scholar (Laureate in 2022 – the highest academic distinction in Australia), highly awarded (Order of Australia 2021, NSW Person of the Year 2011). She is a lawyer, academic, activist, film maker, author and so many other things. She is, in simple terms, an incredibly impressive human. 

What really makes Larissa rise above so many other important people is her connection to people – her connection to country, to community, to people around her. She brims with intelligence, warmth, presence, wisdom, style and knowledge. She is eloquent, charming, incredibly bright and approachable.  She has a palpable charisma that affects everyone around her. I have been in the same room with Larissa, grateful to be able to enjoy the effect she has on those around her. 

I know Larissa through work, so when my daughter Lisboa (a pseudonym) wanted to do a school project about Larissa, I asked if she would be available. Despite being incredibly busy, Larissa found time to be interviewed by a 15-year old. She squeezed in time between important engagements to sit and answer all of L’s questions. She listened attentively and responded with commitment, respect and warmth. These are human attributes you cannot fake. Larissa was probably unaware of the impact that she had on my 15 year old, who has since then embarked on a journey to champion for justice, equality and girls’ right to education. 

For all these reasons and more, I decided to read Larissa’s latest book of fiction, After life (2021). The book is about a difficult relationship between a mother and a daughter, and the phantoms of the past. In the story, a mother (Della) and a daughter (Jasmine) embark on an organised literature trip around England. They not only learn about the heavy weight of English literature but also reflect (each in their own way) on their relationship with each other, their community, the past and the disappearance of Jasmine’s sister Brittany thirty years prior. It is a fascinating book that moves on two levels – the past and present and everything between. What makes it rich is the relationship between the two, the weight of grief, loss and trauma and also the life of the Aboriginal community in a small town.

It takes me a while to get into the book but when it happens, the book crawled under my skin and swallowed me with force. The stories of the past (Della and Jasmine’s) are fascinating from the start but the interaction between the literary tour participants is less engaging. At first, I find myself wanting to skip over the dialogue between the different people taking the tour and the long explanations of the life and creative process of some of the English writers but it all starts to make more sense half way through. In the end I found myself weeping. 

Larissa’s book talks about the strength of being open about trauma. Jasmine says to her mother Della “I guess it made me realise that things happen in families and trauma impacts on one generation to the next. And even if it’s not spoken, it’s still there and it has repercussions. I’m just saying people don’t need to talk about it unless they’re ready, I just mean – we shouldn’t be ashamed. There’s strength in saying things.” I think about how, in recent times, I have coincidently come across people – some very close – who have disclosed traumatic elements from their past, and been brave and courageous by telling their story. This is the strength of saying things.  

Larissa’s book should be sufficient for the Virtual Nomad Australia entry but several people have recommended for me to read Why warriors lie down and die (2000), so I do. 

This is a very different book written by Richard Trudgen. The book focuses on the history of the Yolŋu people in Arnhem Land and the challenges First Nations people face in modern Australia. From the devastating histories of first contact and the loss of land, life and culture to the challenges of poor health, unemployment, low life expectancy and other obstacles to living a fulfilling life with equal opportunities and the chance to prosper (not only in economic terms). This book ties in brilliantly with a movie, Charlie’s country (see below), that is also set in Arnhem Land with the same themes. 

The book talks about the same issue of communication that Larissa’s book does – how things do not translate from one language to another, and that is one of the causes of the Aboriginal health crises. When English is used, a patient might understand the words but not the real meaning behind them. I have always wondered why more Aboriginal languages are not taught at school. I once asked this and got the answer that it is not useful. Hmmm. I have never come across a language that is not useful. The book says: “For readers who don’t speak a second language, it must be said that there is no such thing as literal translation of languages. In other words, a word in one language does not always have a different equivalent in another language.” 

Because – through work – I have been exposed to much material on Indigenous research and culture – a lot of the things in the book do not surprise me. I also find myself longing for a more Indigenous voice – not Indigenous stories told by others. But I do recognise the merits of the book and do understand why it is considered essential reading. But it should not be the only entry to understanding Indigenous realities. There is so much material that is equally important. A good place to start is Jumbunna or AJATSIS. 

Caught in between two realities 

One of my dearest friends in Sydney is Salamanca Amalfi (a pseudonym), a woman in her late 70s who has worked in film all her life and is very well read. SA knows Australian film and literature inside out, she and her husband Nantes Havana, (a pseudonym) love film, art, food and travel. They are people with curious, young and adventurous spirits, and a never-ending thirst for knowing, learning and experience. I have learned so much from Salamanca about Sydney through her childhood and the vivid life of independent media in the 60s and 70s. Her life itself is a book that I would love to read. 

I had a glass of wine with Salamanca Amalfi and Nantes Havana and asked them for their opinion of what other book I should read in addition to these two. She promises to reflect on it and come back to me. In a day or two she provides a list of suggestions that I reproduce here with her permission, but have removed her comments. Many of these have been made into movies. 

1. Careful He Might Hear You, by Sumner Locke Eliot (1963)
2. The Women in Black by Madeleine St John (1993) 
3. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (1901)
4. The Harp in the South by Ruth Park (1948)
5. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967)
6. Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta (1992)
7. Tracks, Robyn Dalton (1980)
8. Come In Spinner (term used in two-up games), Dymphna Cusack and Florence James (1951)
9. Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2001)
10. The Potato Factory by Bruce Courtenay (1995)

I cannot read them all (or the Virtual Nomad journey would be even longer) so I place them on my books to read list and choose to go for number 1 on this list, just because SA made it number 1. 

Sumner Locke Eliot was an Australian novelist and playwright and Careful He Might Hear You is his most famous book, bringing him the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The book is based on his childhood where he was the object of a bitter custody battle between his aunts. 

The book is lovely, and very long. It is a story of a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings within a family, and the conviction of knowing what is the best for others. The main character is a  six year old boy caught in between two aunts fighting for custody. The aunts are the sisters of his mother, who died in childbirth, and both seem to think they know what is best for him. Set in Sydney during the Great Depression, it is a study of family dynamics and urban life through the eyes of the child. I find it very lovely but slow at times.  

An Australian Movie Marathon 

One night I have dinner with some friends and we realise that there are several quintessential Australian movies my eldest child L (15) has not seen. I feel like a bad mother and decide to proceed to correct this error immediately. We draw up a list of some of the heavy weights of Australian cinema – most I have seen, some I have not. Many of the movies are not suitable for my younger child A (9) but some are. I also realise that there are classic movies that I have not seen. That makes me also a bad citizen. 

I also discuss this with Salamanca Amalfi and Nantes Havana who have worked in media and Australian film all their life. They approve of my list and give me a couple of other titles. I also check with GdS, my young colleague who is of Garrwa, Barunggam and Māori descent and gives me a fresh perspective of a First Nations man. After all this consultation, I feel pretty confident the list of movies includes the must-see ones. 

All this leads us to embark on an Australian movie marathon. 

We start with the most essential. 

The Adventures of Priscilla, the Queen of Desert (Stephan Elliot, 1994)

The Adventures of Priscilla, the Queen of Desert by Stephan Elliot (1994) is the first on the list. This is the movie that everyone I know in Europe, if asked to name an Australian movie, would come up with. I have seen it several times but this is the first time for my daughter Lisboa (a pseudonym). Lisboa loves it. It’s colourful, it’s hilarious, it’s thought provoking, it’s inclusive and it is a must see. Apparently, when it came out, people overseas saw it as an important representation of the LGBTIQ+ community in cinema, whereas in Australia it was seen as another movie about the Australian way of life. It is a wonderful movie about tolerance, belonging and community. It also gives homage to the Australian outback, the red centre and the breathtaking scenery. And it of course has Hugo Weaving in drag. Very suitable for Lisboa (15), not yet for A (9) – not because of the drag but for the (very occasional) violence. 

Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)

Next on the list is Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). It was my first Australian movie ever and it had an enduring effect – to the point that I still have the ‘Hanging Rock’ where the movie was filmed on my list of places to visit. It is some 80k north of Melbourne and I intend to finally go there in January 2023. (updated: I did.)

This time around, it was less impactful and less haunting than I had expected. A generation Z person (Lisboa) finds it slow and without a satisfactory resolution. It is a story – mistakenly thought to be based on a true story – of schoolgirls that disappeared on a school picnic trip in 1900s Victoria. It is still considered to be one of the best Australian movies and is one of the first directed by Peter Weir. 

Rabbit Proof Fence (Phillip Noyce, 2002)

Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) by Phillip Noyce (available on Netflix and Youtube) is a difficult but important movie to watch. Set in 1931 Australia, the child removal policy (in use until approximately 1967) authorised the removal of ‘half-caste’ First Nations children from their families into the custody of the state and to ‘educational facilities’.

These people are known as the Stolen Generations. The movie follows the story of three girls removed from their mothers who escape from the Moore River Native Settlement and start a long journey back home (2,400 kilometers) by foot along the rabbit-proof fence to their home in Jigalong. It is based on the true story of the mother of author Doris Pilkington Garimara, Molly Craig, whose real life story is tragic and hard to read. “In spite of himself, the native must be helped”, says the white officer in the movie, the Chief  Protector of Aborigines who becomes the custodian of the stolen children. I first watch it with Lisboa, and then again with Amsterdam. Amsterdam cannot believe that anyone would ever take a child from their mother, and he holds onto me a bit tighter for the rest of the day. 

Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)

Walkabout is a 1971 movie by Nicolas Roeg about two English siblings lost in the Australian outback where they are found by a young Indigenous man on a ‘walkabout’ (an initiation ritual and rite of passage for some young First Nations men, when they might  travel for several months). The movie is strong in symbolism, hidden emotions and suffocated desire, as well as strong repressed sexual longing. David Gulpilil plays the Indigenous boy. His bio states that this is the first time in film that an Aboriginal person was portrayed in film as sexually attractive. It is incredibly multilayered, mesmerising and effective in its stillness, silence and atmosphere. 

Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009)

Another important movie that I have not seen yet is Samson and Delilah (2009) by Warwick Thornton. I watch it by myself. An amazing, disturbing, visually stunning movie that is very difficult to watch. The lighting in the movie is astonishing, all stills are like photographs but the shattering story is unsettling, almost in a good way. The movie deservedly won the first Feature Award Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It is an amazing piece of moviemaking and even if the acting is clearly amateur, the movie is a winner. The strong themes include alienation, isolation, discrimination and racism, but also hope, connection and resilience. Warwick is also famous for his 2017 movie, Sweet Country. Warwick is currently filming ‘The New Boy’ with Cate Blanchett. (update: JK and I saw The New Boy in 2023 at Randwick Ritz – with Cate and Warwick came to present the movie, he was very drunk and she was in save mode. Unfortunately the movie was not good.)

Charlie’s country (Rolf de Heer, 2013)

Charlie’s country (2013) by Rolf de Heer is my third David Gulpilil movie on this marathon. It brought him the best actor award in the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. It is an amazing movie about the loss of culture and feeling disconnected between the past and the present. Filmed in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, the movie is worth watching. Gulpilil is exceptional in it, 44 years after he starred in Walkabout. The movie is loosely based on his life which is a series of challenges, including when he is treated as a child by the white police officers. Dominated by a melancholy undertone and sense of devastating, gripping loss of culture and purpose, it is a powerful message of the value of diversity and deep listening. 

Muriel’s wedding (P.J.Hogan, 1994)

Muriel’s wedding (1994) by P. J. Hogan is considered an iconic and high-quality film. I vaguely remember seeing it and I recall it as being a comedy. This time it feels quite remote from a comedy and unfortunately, both Lisboa (a pseudonym) and I are turned off by it. The movie made us uncomfortable and unable to see the much-hyped value of the story. This is, of course, only our personal opinion and some people I talk to tell me that there might be something wrong with me that I don’t like it. Therefore, no one should take our opinion as a review. Even if we did not like the movie, we still loved Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths. 

Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrman, 1992)

Strictly ballroom (1992) is a sentimental favourite. This movie is suitable for both kids. We actually already watched it during the lockdown but it is still a wonderful pastime. It’s Baz Luhrmann at his best. It razzles and dazzles, is corny, sweet and funny. This movie is for the feel good moments. Lotsa’ dancing, lotsa’ glitter, lotsa’ funny characters, lotsa’ fun. A great family film to watch.

The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2012)

Another feel-good movie is the Sapphires (2012) by Wayne Blair – a highly fictionalised story of an Aboriginal girl band in the 1960s. It has Jessica Mauboy and Deborah Mailman and is a lovely, light romantic comedy.  

Red Dog (Kriv Stenders, 2011)

Red dog (2011) by Kriv Stenders is a movie that I have seen once. Amsterdam (9) has seen it at least three times and loves it. A story about the importance of a dog in a mining town in Western Australia. Loosely based on a true story of a dog in the 1970s who searched for his owner around WA. In the movie, the dog is adopted by the miners and forms a special relationship with one of them. It is an emotional movie about loyalty and connection between people and animals.

Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

Lisboa has not seen Moulin Rouge (2001) so we proceed to watch it as well. What makes the movie Australian is the director, Baz Luhrmann, and the fact that it was filmed in Fox Studios in Sydney. Nicole Kidman is one of Australia’s biggest movie star exports and she shines in this one. It is brilliant, unconventional and an explosion of colour. One critic once described the movie as like being in an elevator with a circus. I have seen it several times but Lisboa has not so we embark on the incredibly jam packed sensorial experience that is Moulin Rouge. Lisboa loved it and later said that she has never seen anything like it. Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor both are insanely beautiful, and good in it. Come what may! 

Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)

Baz Luhrmann has another Australian movie called Australia (2008) which, despite powerhouse names such as Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and David Gulpilil, does not deliver. The scenery is stunning and the movie could easily work as advertising material for the breathtakingly beautiful Northern Australia but the story, the plot and the uneven work of everyone involved makes it inelegant.  

Candy (Neil Armfield, 2006)

An Australian movie marathon without fallen hero Heath Ledger would feel incomplete so I proceed to watch, by myself once the kids are at sleep, Candy (2006) by Neil Armfield. This is a movie about addiction – specifically the addiction of a pretty, young couple in love. Addiction seems to be more glamourous and compelling when people are beautiful and maintain their perfect teeth while on heroin. The movie is not compelling enough to be credible and not harsh enough to be compelling. I struggle to be interested until the end and I congratulate myself for sitting through it. Oh, and it has Geoffrey Rush too in a weird gay professor role that introduces the young lovers to heroin. Duh! 

Penguin Bloom (Glendyn Ivin, 2020)

I include Penguin Bloom (2020) by Glendyn Ivin on the list. It has been a while since we saw it, but it is a great family movie. The main character – played by the always so wonderful Naomi Watts – has an accident and is paralysed from waist down. The family adopts an injured magpie that becomes a symbol of healing for the whole family. It is a lovely movie with a sad undertone but a good film for talking about difficult issues with younger children. 

the Dish (Rob Sitch, 2000)

We watched the Dish (2000) by Rob Sitch a few months ago, before the adventures of the Virtual Nomad began so we can easily add it to the list. It is very loosely based on actual events and the role of the Parkes Observatory in relaying live television footage of the moon landing in 1969. It is sweet and heart-warming – a small movie that is nothing remarkable but still a lovely thing to watch. Fact checking shows the differences between the movie and the real story but it’s still fun to watch.  

Jedda: the Uncivilized (Charles Chauvel, 1955)

At first, I do not know what to think about Jedda, the first Australian film shot in colour by director and scriptwriter Charles Chauvel (1955). This movie was recommended to me by my colleague GdS, a young man of Garrwa, Barunggam and Māori descent. The movie tells the story of a young Aboriginal woman in the Northern Territory whose mother dies in childbirth. She is adopted by a white mother who just lost her baby. The girl finds herself in the crossroads of being educated as a white girl but longing to belong to and know more about her Aboriginal culture. I still don’t know what to think about the movie. I acknowledge the merits of it and that it clearly is a product of its time, but ultimately it is less a movie about understanding identity and cultural belonging and more about the possession and coercive, abusive control of a 16-year-old, as Jedda gets abducted by a man obsessed with her. Her abductor exercises control over her to the point that he feels the right to decide whether she lives or dies. There is nothing romantic, nothing tender, nothing wonderful in their relationship. For me it is not a movie about Jedda’s struggle with cultural identity but a movie about violence against women. 

Opening credits of the movie: (the photo says To cast this picture the producer went to the primitive Aborigine race of Australia and now introduces NARLA KUNOTH as JEDDA, a girl of the Abunta Tribe and ROBERT TUDEWALLI, a man of the Tiwi Tribe as Marbuk. In this film many people of the Northern Territory of Australia are reliving their roles. The story of Jedda is founded on fact”. ) 

The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997)

To finish the Australian movie marathon, we decide on the Castle (1997) by Rob Sitch. None of us (except my partner Johannesburg Karealia, who fully supports the inclusion of this movie as the final one) has seen it so we organise a movie night on a very rainy night. Takeaway food and a cosy sofa for five people. The movie is hilarious. It is one of the most loved Australian movies of all time – people start to smile and make references (“This is going straight to the pool room.”) when talking about the movie. It really does serve as a lovely, hilarious way to finish the movie marathon. 

There are a few movies still on the watchlist that were not available for streaming; Ten Canoes (2006, another David Gulpilik); Sweetie (1989, by Jane Campion), the Dressmaker (2015), Bad Boy Bubby (1993 – well, this one is available but I don’t have the stomach to watch it just yet) and the very highly rated Animal Kingdom (2010) that I still have not managed to see. 

This is probably enough or we will never get to the next stop. 

The sculptures and the colour world 

The colour world of Digby 

My favourite Australian artist is by far Digby Webster (real name). I used to work in the same building as Digby and he would come around every morning to chat with all of us. His art is colourful, emotional and distinctive. When discussing Digby’s art, it is often mentioned that he has a disability but that has nothing to do with his art, that is vibrant and lively. 

Digby is an accomplished visual artist who has exhibited solo and group works in many galleries and events. He is part of the Front Up group – a disability-led Arts and Cultural group. He has also worked in production design and as a performer.

Image: digbywebster.com

Sculpture by the sea

I have lived in Sydney for many years and one of the things I love most is the annual Sculpture by the Sea Exhibition that takes place around November (except during lockdown years). Sculptures are placed by the walking path from Bondi Beach to Tamarama Beach.  

I walk it with Amsterdam (9), my very astute and clever art critic. When we start walking, the first sculpture we find is a woman trying to stay in balance. We learn this because we happen to meet the artist, Sue Corbet. She tells us about her sculpture and she takes pictures of people reacting to her art. She also tells us that this year, the organisation has commissioned four sculptures from artists from Ukraine. Those sculptures have already been sold and the money given to Ukraine (without commission). 

This is the sculpture by the lovely Sue Corbet (with the artist in the background)

And these are the favourite sculptures according to Amsterdam this year, with  the lobster being the absolute favourite. The cherry pie piece is one of the Ukrainian art works.

It has been quite a long visit for Virtual Nomad in Australia. I thank you, very wonderful JK, for proofreading this long entry. Thank you for being part of the journey. 

Next stop: Austria 

Someone tells us that the Kardashians are Armenians. I did not know that, and I honestly do not know much about the Kardashians. We watch an episode of their reality show and lose an hour of our lives to something I do not find a word to describe. This is not the best entry for Armenia and I feel we are not doing the country much justice by starting this way. 

Back to the beginning then. Rewind. 

Armenia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe, bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Iran and Azerbaijan. Its capital is Yerevan, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. For most people, the name Armenia resonates with the Armenian genocide during the First World War. It is also the homeland of a mystical woodwind instrument, the duduk. 

Beautiful frames, disappointing content

Once upon a time, there was a great Armenian restaurant in Sydney called Seraglio. But then the global pandemic forced it to close down and there was no great Armenian restaurant any longer. As an alternative, I find an Armenian-Lebanese restaurant Teta’s in Roseville Chase. The menu has Armenian dishes mixed with Lebanese flavours so that is good enough. For the younger audience in our group the name (Tetas) is a funny one as it means boobies in Spanish. 

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

We are 11 in our party tonight including the Virtual Nomads with a special guest Medellin Montreal from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and his host Elche Bengaluru, a delightful new contact who follows a 90% plant-based vegan diet (and looks fabulous). Medellin Montreal, whom I have known for twenty years, is an exceptional human. He rightly defends his position that his country should be placed in the As, as ‘Scotland’ in Gaelic is called Alba. So this is a trial for Alba/Scotland in its rightful place, as it will take some time to get to S.

The restaurant is more Lebanese than Armenian and a slight disappointment. The atmosphere is beautiful with walls close to the colour of the skin and stunning, friendly waitresses who move around like elegant gazelles, but cannot recommend a dish or answer questions about ingredients. The party has two large plates of grilled meat that include a little bit of everything from the menu. What I get from the meat-eaters is that it is ok but average at best. MM’s friend EB and I share a couple of vegan plates (hummus, tahini, falafel). While the big plates are Armenian, the small ones are clearly Lebanese. 

The biggest disappointment of the night is when we are told that dessert is not available because the dessert person has already left. This is surprising as we have a party of 11 people who very likely were going to order desserts. This is the lowest point of all the Virtual Nomad experiences that we have done so far, even taking into account my atrocious attempts at international cooking. I also feel that we have not done Armenia much justice by choosing an Armenian-Lebanese restaurant, which was not great value.

The food is average at best but the night is saved by the wonderful company. Chicago Hannover again has travel stories to tell and can show her photos from Armenia that are interesting and full of feeling. We chat and laugh, and exchange travel notes. Later when we drive Medellin Montreal and Elche Belgaluru to Elche’s house, we share plans for future Virtual Nomad travels and we bond across the idea. 

Overall, a highly successful night, if less Armenian than we would have liked. 

Unfathomable cruelty 

History – ancient and contemporary – shows that humans are awful to each other, and Armenian history is no exception. Documentaries from Armenia are not an easy piece. The history of Armenia cannot be told without the mention of the genocide in 1915, and ethnic cleansing of approximately 1.5 million people. 

But first, back to the beginning of time. The first Armenian settlement, Urartu, was established around 850 BC. A few hundred years later gave way to the Saltrapy of Armenia. A patriarch called Hayk is mentioned as the founder of Armenia by the historian S. Mouses Khorenatsi. Until Armenia’s conversion to Christianity it was predominantly Zoroastrian, In 301 AD, Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianism as the official religion. 

For centuries, Armenia was the battlefield for different armies and invasions by different parties, predominantly Ottomans and Persians. In 1804, Russia invaded Armenia but the tension with the Turks continued. Hamidian Massacres (1894-96) oversaw the deaths of up to 300,000 Armenian, Greeks and Assyrians. This was just the first act of something much worse that would follow ten years later. 

The Armenian genocide was a systematic massacre of the Armenian population. Due to the failure of Turkish attacks on Russian forces in 1914, the government in Turkey viewed the Armenians as a threat. Armenians were rounded up and forced to march to the Syrian dessert. Around 1.5 million people died either as a result of direct violence (including mass killings) or starvation, heat, deportation and death marches. 

Armenia became part of the Soviet Union in 1920. It achieved its independence in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. Armenia was in a war against Azerbaijan 1988 – 1994, and relations have not been good ever since. 

We watch a BBC document Remembering the Armenian massacres about two women – Lara Petrossians from BBC Persia and Rengin Arian – and learn about Armenian history through their families and the experiences of different Armenian populations around Turkey. The documentary also includes the Turkish perspective on events. 

What else do we learn from Youtube documentaries? We learn that:

• The Armenian flag (adopted in 1990) has three colours (red, blue, orange) and has been interpreted in different ways. The red has been said to symbolise the Armenian Highlands, the Christian faith but also the struggle, survival, independence and freedom of the Armenian people. Blue symbolises the peaceful skies and orange stands for hard work.  
• Mesrop Mastots invented the Armenian alphabet around the year 405. It has 38 different letters (31 consonants and 7 vowels). Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family but uses its own alphabet. Armenian is written horizontally from left to right 

We also learn that: 

• There are around 16 main languages and dialects spoken in Armenia. (97% of the population speaks Armenian) 
• The Armenian language has two main forms: Eastern and Western Armenian 
• It is widely accepted that the Armenian language originates from the ancient Pahlavi language, whose alphabet was derived from Aramaic 
• The Armenian diaspora is quite large – approximately 5-8 million people. 
• Armenia is situated where the Arabian plate abuts against the Eurasian plate making Armenia earthquake prone. 
• The 1988 Earthquake killed up to 50,000 people and injured 130,000
• Armenia has 44 Grand Masters of Chess and is 6^th on the International Chess Federation rankings
• Relations between Armenia and Turkey have been strained for a long time. In January 2022, Armenia lifted its embargo on Turkey 
• Armenia and its neighbour Azerbaijan are not on friendly terms. This is mostly due to the dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the Azeri territory, but inhabited and governed mostly by ethnic Armenians. The First Nagorno-Karabah war (1988 – 1994) was followed by a recent 2020 Nagorno-Karabah conflict. The conflict has also strained Armenia’s relationship with Pakistan. 

Ethereal, mystical duduk and other sounds

Armenian music has a couple of its own genres that are quite interesting and have intriguing backstories.

The Duduk is an ancient Armenian woodwind instrument made of apricot wood, often played in pairs with one person playing the melody and the other a steady drone. The duduk was listed as UNESCO Intangible Heritage in 2008. The sound is quite deep, meditative, and melancholic. The instrument has a 3000 year history and was first mentioned in the ancient manuscripts in Urartu. You can log into several hours of duduk mediation music. The sound is almost unearthly, captivating and mystical. 

Rabiz is a quite different genre of Armenian music that combines Armenian folk with dance music (mainly synthesizers). It emerged in Yerevan in the 1980s as the music of Armenian immigrants from rural areas and cities such as Baku. It is an interesting genre that has clear Middle Eastern influences. There are a few playlists on Youtube and Spotify.

As for Armenian artists, Armenian-Syrian Lena Chamayan has a very clear soprano voice and her music is a fusion of Armenian, Arab and Western Music. She comes from a mixed cultural background and considers herself multicultural and multi-linguistic. 

Carahunge is a prehistoric archaeological site in Armenia but also the name of a beautiful song by the Carahunge band. 

Serj Tankian is a Lebanese-born Armenian-American heavy metal singer of the band System Of A Down. He is also a trained opera singer. Serj is another diaspora Armenian artist who is politically active and outspoken. He campaigned for US recognition of the Armenian genocide that was signed by President Biden in April 2021 (also recognised by 30 other countries). In 2015, he recorded a version of an old Armenian lullaby, Ari Im Sokhag, with Larisa Ryan. It’s melancholic and sorrowful. 

Another melancholic diaspora artist is Apo Sahagian. He has been credited with reviving old dialects and Armenian history. Even if I cannot understand the lyrics, some of the song are harrowfully beautiful.  My favourite is probably a song named:

Իմ Սիրելիս

Grandchildren and grandparents

Every ‘essential’ book of Armenian literature is about the genocide. The books are about generational trauma and how it endures to this day. They demonstrate the impact the genocide has had on the Armenian collective memory, the construction of identity, and the diaspora. 

There are quite a few books about grandchildren discovering the harrowing life stories of their grandparents. Titles in this genre include The Spice Box Letters by Eve Makis (2015), Family of Shadows by Garin K. Hovannisian (2010) and Black Dog of Faith by Peter Balakian (1997). Mostly these are from the Armenian diaspora in America but include some other countries. I decide to read My Grandmother – an Armenian-Turkish memoir. Written by Fethiye Cetin in 2012, Turkish lawyer and human rights activist, it is the story of her grandmother who grew up under a Turkish name. Her original name had been Armenian. It tells of how she (the grandmother) was taken from her Armenian mother during a death march. 

Roughly, half of the book is about Fethiye’s memories of her childhood and her grandparents. Around that time, she was still not aware of her grandmother’s past. Despite facing some terrible challenges (such as losing a parent), there is bliss and beauty in all of it. 

Half way through the book turns grim and becomes difficult to read. Fethiye’s grandmother is stolen from the hands of her mother, never to see her again. Fethiye slowly learns about the atrocities that took place during this time. She also starts to connect the dots from her childhood,  from Armenian songs to unnamed visitors. She then discovers members of her family in unexpected places and learns what happened to them. 

The hard part is, of course, that it is a true story. It is an impactful tale about Fethiye and her grandmother’s relationship, and Fethiye’s decision to tell the truth and bury her grandmother under her real name. It is also a story of connection, growth and healing. 

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian (2012) frequently appears on the list of ‘best’ Armenian books. It is available at the local library so I reserve it, but for some reason it never finds its way to me. A book lost somewhere. Therefore, I turn to Kindle again.

The author, Chris Bohjalian, is an Armenian-American whose grandparents were survivors of the genocide. The book has the same premise as many of the others – grandchildren discovering the secret past lives of their grandparents. 

It is very well written, engaging and captivating. It’s clear why Bohjalian is a bestselling author. What makes it different from Cetin’s book is that it’s fiction, whereas My Grandmother – an Armenian-Turkish memoir is a true story. 

The book moves between two different time zones – the grandparents meeting and falling in love in the midst of the genocide and the grandchild navigating the past and the present. It includes Armenian and Turkish families coming together through their children dating. It is captivating, well written and carries the narrative well. I found it perhaps slightly too long and far more interesting in the parts describing the past than the grandchild in the present. The stories enmesh in surprising ways that, in some cases, are almost too hard to believe. This is, of course, the richness and the limitation of fiction. 

Armenian movies

I’m surprised to discover there are quite a few Armenian movies available. Not so surprisingly, many of the movies are related to the genocide. 

I would like to watch the highly regarded Amerikatsi by Michael A. Goorjian but unfortunately it is not yet available for streaming. There is a nice interview with the director on Youtube however.

Instead, I watch a movie called The Last Inhabitant (2016) by Jivan Avetisyan, set in 1988 during the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. It’s the story of a man who stays behind in enemy lines after losing his home and is waiting to be reunited with his traumatised daughter. It is slow and dark, reflecting relationships between people and friendships that carry beyond enemy lines. It’s a story of loss and cruelty, sacrifice and conflict in which no one is a winner and everyone suffers. The ‘feel-good’ elements are few and far between, with profound sadness and loss dominating. It is harrowing, but also very real. 

Right before closing the entry for Armenia, I happen to meet an Armenian-Lebanese person at work who tells me that The Cut is a movie to watch. RT, my Armenian-Lebanese colleague (of very striking, distinctive beauty), tells me briefly about her visit to Armenia with her dad and the story of her family. She has a surname finishing with -ian, which is an indication of Armenian heritage. It feels like fate as I tell her that I have just finished an Armenian entry for Virtual Nomad. I would rather be educated by RT than the Kardashians, and it is fascinating. 

I decide to watch The Cut before Virtual Nomad moves to its next destination. It is, sadly, not available on any of the streaming channels that I have (and I now have quite a few) so I place it on my watchlist and will return when it is available. There is an extended trailer available on Youtube as well as an interview of the director, Fatih Akin (German director of Turkish parents) where he recognises the genocide also as “his”. I’ve seen several of his movies in the past so I hope The Cut will be accessible at some point. It is a movie about the genocide and a man’s quest to find his missing children. 

Growing numbers 

News tell us that the number of Russians citizens entering Armenia (many escaping from or protesting the war) has increased to more than 300,000 – over 10% of the population in the small country. This has put pressure on housing, increasing rents and feeding inflation. 

Next stop: Australia

proof read by JK

Argentina. Exhilarating, interesting, vibrant, complex, complicated, intriguing Argentina. 

My Virtual Nomad philosophy is to not influence our Virtual Nomad travels with my pre-existing knowledge, particularly if I have visited the country. This is because that is my personal experience and not a shared one, and the objective of Virtual Nomad is not to tell the stories of my past. 

This said, I have been to Argentina so many times I have lost count and when we finally organise a Virtual Nomad Argentinian night, the Virtual Nomad Special Adviser Chicago Hannover, a pseudonym, (who has been to approximately 140 countries) and I are happy to compare travel notes and our experience of the country, and we find out that there is so much to say and share. 

Argentina is famous. The food, the meat, la pampa, tango, the music, Maradona, Lionel Messi, Evita Perón, Buenos Aires, the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the disappeared, the economic crisis of the 1990s, the Falkland/Malvinas war, dulce de leche, Perito Moreno, wine, etc. Argentina is so much, Everyone knows where it is so this Virtual Nomad stop was easy to find. 

Argentina lies in South America. A huge country of 2,780,400km2, it is the 8^th largest country in the world. It has the southernmost city in the world (although there is a town further south of less than 3000 people in Chile called Puerto Williams) and a climatic variety from rainforest to glaciers. 

An Argentinian night 

There is a fairly famous Argentinian restaurant in Sydney but a closer look at its menu does not convince the virtual nomads. I decide to organise an Argentinian night at home and find the ingredients mostly from small local producers. For an Argentinian night to be a success, we will need, at the very least, meat, chimichurri, provoleta, dulce de leche, empanadas, alfajorres and yerba mate. This will all be accompanied by an ordinary salad whose sole objective is to look pretty but be overshadowed by the Argentinian delicatessen.  

I am vegetarian but there is something I have learned from meat-eaters and that is: the best, the very best, meat comes from Argentina. The consumption per capita of red meat is the highest in the world and Argentinians are proud of their asado. 

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

The Argentinian night gathers all the central players of the Virtual Nomad adventure – my children Lisboa (15) and Amsterdam (9), Chicago Hannover (Special Advisor), and my partner Johannesburg Karelia and his child Fez Karelia (13). 

Johannesburg Karealia gets quality meat from a butcher on the North Shore, and then I make a list of what I need for a successful Argentinian night. So exciting. 

Chimichurri is an uncooked sauce that can be used with almost anything. It is prepared mostly of herbs (mainly parsley and cilantro), garlic, vinegar, olive oil and spices. 

I order chimichurri and alfajorres from a wonderful small family business called Sur Direct. They are an absolute delight to deal with, have impeccable customer service, affordable prices and quick delivery in a beautiful paper bag. On top of that, the quality of the products is incredibly high. Sur Direct gets 10/10 from us. I get three types of chimichurri (mild, hot and extra hot, and also Chimichurri spices for future cooking) and beautiful alfajorres – dessert cookies that combine a delicate flour structure with dulce de leche in the middle. 

As for the empanadas, there is an Empanadas Che in Drummoyne that is absolutely fabulous. I put an order in for 10 empanadas of different flavours. When I pick up my order – one rainy morning before work – my order has been lost but the woman working at the counter goes at it and produces ten empanadas in no time. Gotta’ love the Latin attitude. The Café also has authentic Dulce de Leche, so I buy a tub to go with the empanadas. I get ten empanadas of six flavours (chorizo and potato, pollo, carne, gorgonzola with ham, ham and cheese, vegetarian caprese) with criolla sauce and also a ‘choripan’ (chorizo with bread) and the Dulce de Leche. While my order is being prepared, I chat without a customer who comes by weekly and does not mind the wait. 

I get provoleta from Harris Farm Market but I forget to serve it because of all the Argentinian food and desserts from both Argentina and Antigua and Barbuda (see previous entry). Provoleta is an Argentinian cheese that tastes similar to traditional provolone cheese. 

We decide against Yerba Mate, which contains up to 30% caffeine. As none of us are really coffee drinkers, it would probably mean that we would not sleep for a week, But for anyone who would like to know, Yerba Mate is said to be very good for many different health issues (even if there is still very little evidence on that) and a very popular drink in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. 

Chicago Hannover brings excellent Argentinian wine, which will be mostly consumed by me as both Johannesburg Karelia and Chicago Hannover are not heavy drinkers. Chicago Hannover also brings an excellent Chilean wine but we will have to leave it for the future occasion when we get to the Cs in about a ten years time!

We have a wonderful night of great food, great company, great music and a great country trivia for the kids. We learn from the Argentina trivia that: 

• Argentina has both the highest (mount Aconcagua) and lowest point (Laguna del Carbón) in the Southern Hemisphere.  Laguna del Carbón is a salt lake in the Santa Cruz Province and the seventh lowest point on Earth.  
• 88-97% of the Argentinian population has European roots – mostly from Spain or Italy. 
• The first ever (documented) person to be born in Antarctica was Emilio Marcos Palma in 1978. Why his mother was sent to give birth in such a remote place is an interesting story. 
• Argentina has 23 provinces. The capital city Buenos Aires is in the province of Buenos Aires/La Plata (Silver city)
• Argentina is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world with 15 continental zones and four main climate types. 
• Perito Moreno glacier is one of Argentina’s top tourist destinations. 
• Ernesto Che Quevara was a middle-class boy from Rosario who, after receiving a medical degree, decided to join the Cuban revolution under Fidel Castro. 
• The first animated film was made in Argentina in 1917 (El Apostol). 

It takes two to tango 

There is a lot of amazing music that has originated in Argentina. This includes very famous musicians of different genres, such as Mercedes Sosa (probably the most prolific Argentinian singer and famous for opposing the military regime), Facundo Cabral (a harrowing life story and murdered while on tour in Guatemala), Andrés Calamaro ( hybrid musical style mixing different genres), Leon Gieco, Gustavo Santaolalla (who wrote the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack) and a young superstar Paulo Londra.  

But tonight, tango it is. We listen to tango all night from Carlos Gardel to Astor Piazzolla and the Gotan Project. Tango was born in the dance halls of Buenos Aires in the 1880s. Carlos Gardel was probably the most famous tango singer. One of his most famous songs is El día que me quieras, whilst La Cumparsita is probably the most famous tango of all time. My children found the Gotan Project to be especially interesting. 

Many years ago, I learned the basics of tango dancing but never got to the level of Lalibela Rapa Nui (a pseudonym). One of my dearest friends, who now happens to live four hours from me, looked like she hardly touched the floor when she danced tango. 

Argentina in images

What to watch out of everything that there is on offer? I try to be guided by my basic rule: history, geography, people and significant events. My children and I are either native or nearly native Spanish speakers, so diving into the turbulent Argentinean history in the original language is fairly easy. 

The quick histories of Mr History are usually excellent but the Quick History of Argentina does not do justice to the complicated history of the country. It is a confusing set of many events starting from the Palaeolithic era. Something we do learn is that Argentina got its name from the Latin word for ‘silver’ (‘Argentum’). At the time of the Spanish conquest, Argentina had no grand civilisations (like Peru) but rather different tribes living in the territory. Buenos Aires was established in 1580. Argentina was first part of the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru and then the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata. José de San Martin is an important figure in Latin American political history, having liberated a huge portion of the Latin American countries, leading Argentina to become independent in 1816, but then falling into a prolonged civil war. More wars with neighbouring countries followed, as did a succession of presidents. Juan Perón is one of the famous ones, also famous for being the husband of Eva Perón. After Perón resigned in 1955, several other presidents followed until Jorge Videla became the dictator and the dirty war of 1974 -1983 saw thousands of people disappear. Argentina lived through another great recession 1998 – 2003 and the economy finally improved around the time when Néstor Kirchner became president, followed by his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The current president is Alberto Fernández. The Quick History concludes with the words: “despite centuries of social and political conflict, this country still managed to give the world tango, Nobel winning scientists, brilliant writers and sportspeople, and to maintain a very high human development rank.”

But we get it. Argentinian history is complex. 

I have to think through what I should explain to the children about the (contemporary) history of Argentina. We decide that instead of trying to cover it all, I should choose different topics. I think long and hard and then decide to go for these three: 

• Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and children of the disappeared 

During the Argentinian military dictatorship 1976 – 1983, the “dirty war”, an estimated 30.000 people died or disappeared. This is only an estimate and a full list of murdered and disappeared people does not exist. Most of these people were captured for political and religious reasons, many of them were young and a number of the young women were pregnant. There are approximately 500 children that were born to mothers that were captured and then ‘disappeared’. Most of those children were never returned to their biological families but sold or given up for adoption under a different name and identity.

Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo is a human rights organisation founded in 1977 by grandmothers of missing grandchildren, born in captivity to women that were later ‘disappeared’. The objective of the organisation is to connect the stolen children with their biological families through DNA testing and offer awareness, training and counselling. It is work that, of course, is not without its difficulties and controversies. As of 2022, 130 grandchildren have been found

Estela de Carlotto is a human rights activist and the President of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. She became the President of the organisation in 1979 and spent 36 years looking for her grandson – son of her murdered daughter Laura, who was one of the few ‘disappeared’ whose body was delivered to the family. In 2014, Laura’s son and Estela’s grandson was found. The stories of the stolen grandchildren are not simple but have nuances of personal conflict. For Ignacio, being Estela’s grandchild has not been easy, but he still believes in the importance of finding the missing grandchildren. 

There are several testimonies on Youtube from the found grandchildren. My children were able to follow these stories in Spanish but there are also several in English. These stories are dark tales of abduction and theft of identity, confusion and tragedy, but also stories of hope and growth.  

• Who is Evita Perón?

Evita Perón is one of the most prominent figures of Argentinian history, made immortal by the musical and, above all, the iconic song. She was the wife of president Juan Perón and has had a strong impact on the Argentinian collective memory. She died of cervical cancer at the age of 33. 

As with many historical figures, the kids find the musical more interesting than the actual story of Eva Perón. But her life story is quite fascinating and her final resting place is in the Recoleta cemetery. 

• Economic crisis 1998 – 2002 

I chose this theme because explaining the political turbulence and corruption is difficult to place for the kids, who have no prior knowledge. Many people I know were affected by the Argentine great recession, caused by many factors including the Russian and Brazilian financial crises, a partial default of public debt, and an abandonment of the fixed exchange rate. The economy plunged, leaving over 50% of Argentinians living below the poverty line. Many people lost their savings, unemployment rose to unprecedented levels and many who could, left the country. It took the economy several years to recover. 

Short stories and reflection on ‘sexaffective’ relationships

Argentinian literature is famous, varied, abundant and rich. The most famous Argentinian writer is Jorge Luis Borges (author of Ficciones, 1944 and Aleph, 1949). There is Ernesto Sabato and Julio Cortázar. Cortázar is famous for his 1963 book Rayuela (Hopscotch in English). I had a complicated relationship with Rayuela when I read it many moons ago as its open-ended structure drove me crazy. Many of my Latin American friends consider Rayuela a masterpiece. It has a unique structure that allows the reader to read it either in a linear or non-linear mode, but for me it was a book that ‘talks a lot but says very little’. I recognise, now that I am older, that I could enjoy it more and I make a promise to myself to go back to Rayuela one day and give it another try. 

But for now I want something new. Something more contemporary. 

I turn to two very dear Argentinian friends. AS who lives in an ecological community in Uruguay with his wife and MG who is originally from Mar del Plata but has lived in Madrid for many years. When I ask for contemporary Argentinian authors, MG comes back with the message: “I would recommend Samanta Schweblin (narrative, short stories, lives in Berlin), Mariana Enríquez (journalist, innovative, horror genre), Claudia Piňero (politico-social narrative), Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (feminist, activist), María Gainza (art related narrative), and Leila Guerreiro (journalist, short stories, narrative, sharp social focus). 

Well, I think, I should start with these. 

I can’t read all of them so I decide to go with Samanta Schweblin and her book Pájaros en la boca y otros cuentos. It is a collection of short stories and won the Schweblin the Casa de las Americas award in 2008, and then the English translation (Mouthful of Birds, 2019) was nominated for the Mar Brooker International Prize and won the Shirley Jackson Award. 

Samanta lives in Berlin and is considered prodigious in her home country. She has won many prestigious awards and in 2010, she was selected as one of the best writers in Spanish under 35. 

The book (Pájaros en la boca y otros cuentos) leaves me in a state of slight confusion. It could be the format – short stories has never been my favourite genre – or the open-endedness of the stories. The stories in this book are like photographs – little studies of people and human nature, situations without resolution or proper explanation. They have unusual topics that play with themes and images and much is left to the reader. For some, this might be unusual, interesting, mind-blowing and an intriguing way of writing without ready-made formulas and without chewing the content too mushy for the reader – and I get it. But for me, it’s exhausting. I still enjoy the book and the stories – some more than others – but I feel a bit relieved when it’s over. Maybe I am old and I need answers, and when I don’t get them, it frustrates me.“What the hell was that supposed to mean?” is my primary thought after many of the stories. 

Feeling slightly unsatisfied, I decide to read another book. Another friend recommends a book called El Fin del Amor (The end of love) by Tamara Tenenbaum – a young journalist and academic who left the ultra-conservative orthodox Jewish community of her childhood to go to a ‘normal’ high school and university, and to live a ‘normal’ life as a young Latin American woman. That ‘normality’, of course, means a lot of headaches and pondering about heterosexual relationships. 

The book is not what I had expected. I had expected fiction but the book is a study of modern heterosexual ‘sexoaffetive’ relationships in Argentina, tangled with autobiographical anecdotes from

Tamara’s life. The description of the book is: 

“El fin del amor gives us a glimpse of what happens when marriage and the monogamous couple are no longer a life’s objective, and it’s a tool for the creative destruction of romantic love and the principles that sustain it so that from its ashes, a better love – one that makes men and women more free in their relationships – can rise. From the value of friendship to the culture of consent, passing through motherhood as a choice or an imperative, desired and abhorred singlehood, polyamory, open relationships, the workings of the technologies of desire (Happn, Tinder), and with a vast bibliography about these topics, Tamara Tenenbaum talks about everything in order to dive into the universe of affection, celebrate the end of romantic love, and propose the eroticization of consent.”

It is an interesting book and I can imagine how important it can be for young Argentinians and Latin Americans. Every generation seems to think that they have discovered something that the previous generations have not, and that is a bit the approach of Tenenbaum (31 years old), whose youth shines through in some parts of the book. Nevertheless, it is an incredibly well researched book with a lot of ground to cover from the history of marriage to studying the functionality of open relationships, modern understanding of sexual activity, the role of women in (heterosexual) relationships, the modern culture of worshipping youth and beauty, decisions on maternity, building the culture of consent and the examination of sexual violence. It is interesting and I enjoyed reading it. She mixes the themes with autobiographical anecdotes from her own life, and her original cultural group. I also learned  there is a Netflix series drawn from this book. 

Some parts of the book have incredible value, whereas others are slightly preachy. When she writes about sexual violence and building a culture of consent, she is as sharp as a knife. Tamara explains how sexual violence is not an innate characteristic of men (not every man is a ‘potential rapist’) but a product of a culture, which sees male sexuality as an uncontrollable phenomenon and admires power. She talks about women of her generation making hard decisions on career and maternity, the culture of the ‘cult of the physical body’ affecting relationships – sometimes seen as a market of flesh (due to dating apps that she seems not to be in favour of). She also calls for sexual education for young people that focuses on consent, respect and pleasure. 

Tamara says that after researching all these different forms of relationships, she has opted for quite a revolutionary one in which she lives with her boyfriend but her female friends are such an important part of her life that they also have keys to her house and she (Tamara) envisions herself growing old with her girlfriends rather than her partner. It does make me smile as it feels as if Tamara believes she is the first one to discover the value of female friends in life, and also because of her idyllic ideas regarding her vision for her old age. 

Where in the cyberspace are you, moving images?  

Argentinian cinema is famous and abundant. There are many quality films of different genres and there are many movies that I would like to show JK and L who are less acquainted with Argentinian cinema than I am. 

There is a slight problem. 

None of the many, many Argentinian movies I want to show them are available on streaming platforms, at least in Australia. I go through Netflix, Prime Video, Disney, Youtube, Kanopy, SBS, Tubi, Amazon and even try to access them in other ways. I look for DVDs to order from the library or from overseas. No luck. 

So, Lisboa asks, if you would have to choose five Argentinian movies to show us what would you do? 

I think about it long and hard and then decide on a selection that I am not currently able to offer them, but hopefully one day I will. These are not automatically my favourite movies (although I do include the one that is) but a great representation of Argentinian cinema and a good collection for general knowledge: 

• Nine Queens – fast paced movie about two con artists in Buenos Aires with twists and turns. A very clever script that I thought Johannesburg Karelia and Lisboa would appreciate. Could not find it anywhere. Boo. 
• The Official Story – a fictional story of an adoption of a stolen grandchild. A very important movie on this topic mentioned above.
• The secret in their eyes – An award winning thriller that won a swag of awards. There is an American version, but this one is better. 
• A boyfriend for my wife – I also wanted to include a comedy so there you have it. A man wants to divorce his wife but rather than telling her, he hires another man to seduce her. 
• Intimate stories – I loved this small warm-hearted road movie from Patagonia, but it has been a while since I saw it.

As I am unable to show Argentinian movies, I decide to watch one anyway. Something I have not seen before. I select Initials S.G., by Rania Attieh & Daniel A. Garcia (2019) available on SBS. It is described as a dark comedy about a former porn actor who is trying to find a place in the mainstream cinema. It has a 100% tomatometer rating in Rotten Tomatoes. Sounds promising. 

Needless to say, I am not watching this with kids.

…

It was not a movie for me. That is all I will say.

Next stop: Armenia

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

It is important for the Virtual Nomad to give every place the significance it deserves. A tiny island state is no exception. Even if, for food, we group it with the much more well known Argentina (see next entry), we still stop to cherish the landscape, the words, tastes and sounds of the Caribbean island state called Antigua and Barbuda. 

The kids have no idea where Antigua and Barbuda is. The three adults (Johannesburg Karelia, Chicago Hannover and I, Akureyri Lahore) surely know it is somewhere in the Caribbean we all fail to place it. After a while, we hit the right spot. 

Antigua and Barbuda is a young state, independent since 1981. It consists of two major islands (you guessed it – Antigua and Barbuda) and several smaller islands. It is situated in the Caribbean and, like other island states, is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The capital is St John’s and the population is around 120,000. Antigua and Barbuda makes most of its money from tourism. 

With the food we cheat. This time we combine an Argentinian night (next entry) with desserts from Antigua and Barbuda. The reason for this is that the local cuisine relies a lot on fresh fish and the Caribbean types are rare in winter. The dessert selection seems varied and broad enough to gain its own entry. 

I buy fudge and tamarind balls online, and get peanut brittle from Harris Farm Market but decide to prepare coconut sugar cakes myself despite my atrocious attempt with Angolan funge. The result is not amazing but it is good enough. The desserts are yummy and make us think that the people of the Caribbean enjoy their sweets. 

Carnival Rhythms 

The traditional dance of Antigua and Barbuda is the quadrille, 18^th and 19^th century Europe’s gift to the colonies. The Caribbean version is a bit more rhythmic than its stiff European version. 

As for the music, it is influenced by West African slaves. One of the earliest forms of the music is benna. Benna is a calypso-influenced Antigua and Barbudan music style that originally was used as a way of communicating news and gossip. 

MadTguans, a Soca boy band group from Antigua sings about benna in a video with a lot of twerking.  

Other popular types of music in Antigua include the aforementioned soca, with roots in calypso, funk, soul, and other types of music. The Antiguan queen of soca is Claudette Peters. Her song Nasty has clear carnival energy and her 2002 international hit is an upbeat Caribbean soca

Calypso is strongly identified as a Caribbean music of style, first identified in Trinidad but immensely popular around the Caribbean. Originally a means of communication for West African slaves, it quickly spread around the Caribbean. Famous Antiguan Calypso musicians are King Short and King Swallow, an Antiguan icon who passed in 2020 at the age of 78.

Other popular music styles in Antigua and Barbuda include dancehall and, of course, reggae. Causion is the ‘Antigua’s Reggae Ambassador’. His song Antigua Me Come From is a lovely hymn for Antigua on a cold winter morning. He is currently battling colon cancer.

Two big islands and several small ones

Most of the population live on Antigua (97%). The population is largely of African descent and the spoken language is English. 

No one really knows who the first people that inhabited the islands were. The first named people were the Arawak from the beautifully named Orinoco River in Venezuela who were conquered (and possibly eaten) by the cannibalistic Caribs. In 1493, a fella’ named Christopher Columbus arrived and gave Antigua its name. 

Spain saw no value in the islands so the British took over in 1632. The islands were the destination for many African slaves until slavery was abolished in 1834. Antiguan independence has its roots in the fight of a Salvation Army officer, Vere Bird, for better working conditions for the black majority. He became the first Prime Minister in 1981. He was of course, not all good because – as we have seen in other countries so far – power corrupts, makes people greedy and alienates them from their original ideals. 

The flag was created in 1967 by Sir Reginald Samuel. The sun in the flag is the symbol of a new dawning of the new era, the black refers to the black ancestry, white the sand and blue is a symbol of hope and the sea. The red refers to the vibrancy and energy of the people. We also learn that 30% of Antigua is suitable for farming but only 18% is used for farming.

The Internet is full of touristy videos of Antigua and Barbuda beaches and carnivals. Less so about the devastating Hurricane Irma that, in 2017, destroyed most of the island of Barbuda and all inhabitants evacuated to Antigua or the criticism of the Bird family dynasty’s extended stay in power. 

Vere Bird is an(other) interesting political figure who fought for the rights of the working class and then was the Prime Minister for 13 years, followed by his son Lester Bird who was the Prime Minister for ten years. The Birds (including the eldest son Vere Jr) have faced accusations of corruption, connections with Colombian drug carters, arms dealings, use of public funds for private benefit, etc. The current Prime Minister Gaston Browne is married to Lester Bird’s niece Maria Bird-Browne. 

Other interesting facts of Antigua

• The highest point in Antigua, Boggy Peak was called Mount Obama from 2009 to 2016 (yes, named after President Obama). The original name refers to the stories the masters told the slaves about a Boogie Man that lived on the mountain, so that the slaves would not escape. Some people did and established their own settlements on the mountain. It is not that high, a mere 402 metres.
• Antigua and Barbuda has the lowest suicide rate in the world in 2022 (the highest being Lesotho, followed by Guyana and Eswatiti). 
• Hurricane Irma destroyed 95% of all infrastructure of Barbuda leaving 60% of the population homeless.
• Many of Antigua’s smaller islands are owned by very wealthy people. 

Mothers and daughters 

Antigua’s most prominent writer Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American author and Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University. She was born in St John’s (island of Antigua) and now resides in the US. Her books are described as semi-autobiographical, which feels accurate for her first novel, Annie John (1985).  It is a fairly short book (162 pages), primarily a coming-of-age story and a study of a mother-daughter relationship from childhood to early adulthood. 

For me, it is an enjoyable book but there is nothing exceptional about it. The focus is the transformation of the mother-daughter relationship from childhood to separation. Some reviewers have seen it as a study of race, gender and colonialism but for me it’s much more superficial than that – it represents a quite universal story of coming-of-age from a self-centred and predominantly unlikable perspective that at times is very annoying. Some aspects of Caribbean mysticism and magic are included but mostly it is about rebelling, first crushes (even if same-sex, but does not really make a difference) and breaking free from the repressive presence of a mother. The mother does not get a voice and seems to be doing her best in the circumstances, so the growing rejection sounds a bit harsh at times, but probably reflects the author’s relationship with her own family that she stopped talking to for a couple of decades. 

There are delicious colonial jabs such as “The headmistress, Miss Moore. I knew right away that she had come to Antigua from England, for she looked like a prune left out of its jar for a long time and she sounded as if she had borrowed her voice from an owl”. 

No sweet mango

The first feature film from Antigua (2001) is a romantic comedy called the Sweetest Mango, which is about a woman who returns from Canada to her native Antigua. This is all I can gather because the movie is not available for rent, to buy or stream from anywhere other than India. 

Instead, I watch Working Girl (2010) about a schoolgirl’s journey to prostitution due to her mother’s illness. Painfully badly acted and at times comical in its melodramatics, and with an unexpected twist, it still manages to somewhat deliver a universal story about abuse, exploitation and poverty. It is not in any way a remarkable film but it is a rare treat of Caribbean film making. What makes it more interesting than the plot itself is the landscape, settings and language. Written and directed by Antiguan Nigel Trellis, it is filmed in Antigua with an all-Caribbean cast. 

Next stop: Argentina 

“We are eating food from a country I can’t remember the name of,” says my son Amsterdam (a pseudonym) on the phone before we eat dinner, acknowledging mum’s atrocious attempt to cook Angolan food. 

We begin the journey to Angola knowing that Virtual Nomad is live and people have been reacting quite positively. Nearly 500 people have visited Virtual Nomad’s four adventures and the feedback has been wonderful.  It encourages us to continue the journey, and it seems to have inspired others to start theirs. 

So, to our fifth country on the Virtual Nomad journey. 

Where is Angola? The first guess places Angola in the Middle East (sigh) and then in Africa. Amsterdam guesses West Africa and his sister Lisboa (a pseudonym) guesses East Africa. Angola turns out to be so far the most difficult to find and the one they have heard the least about. For both, this is the first time they hear the name Angola. 

Angola is in Central/South Africa, bordered by Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and the Atlantic Ocean (the province of Cabinda is also bordered by the Republic of Congo). 

Angola is famous for its nearly thirty-year civil war, one of the world’s most expensive capital cities (Luanda) and vast mineral resources. It has a rapidly growing economy but uneven distribution of wealth, low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates. The civil war left the country with nearly a million deaths and thousands of antipersonnel landmines distributed around the country. It is in Angola where Princess Diana did her famous landmine walk.

Rich cuisine, poor cooking results

Angolan cuisine is very rich. The diet is based on beans, rice, vegetables, chicken and pork. Funge is a traditional side dish made of cassava flour and water. Funge seems to accompany most Angolan dishes and form the foundation of Angolan cuisine. 

There are a few African restaurants in Sydney but with most, the description of the menu is generic. ‘West African’ does not satisfy our thirst for something specific and it is back to the kitchen and putting my nomad cooking skills into play. Oh, hear the children roar with happiness. 

The result is atrocious. I first try to make funge by combining cassawa flour (found in a local supermarket) and boiling water, but it turns into an inedible mess. All I can produce is a dough, hard as a brick.  There is no way to eat it and I am not quite sure what I have done wrong. I followed the recipe religiously but the result is a disaster. We nibble the stone dry dough and abandon the idea of eating it altogether.

I accompany my too-hard-to-eat funge with Muamba de Galinha, which is described by Taste Atlas as:

Studies have shown its various health benefits – it is rich in antioxidants, helpful in preventing heart disease, and regulates cholesterol. Since Angola was a Portuguese colony for ages, Portuguese gastronomy had a great influence on Angolan cuisine, so as a result, many Angolan dishes are based on meat and palm oil. 

The result is not much better than with funge but at least it is edible. Lisboa says that it is almost good. It does not look like anything in the photos but I trust that the Angolan spirit accompanies it. I make butter chicken out of plant-based ‘chicken’ to accompany the dinner, but that is not great either.

I am afraid I am not doing Angola any justice with my cooking skills. Disculpe, sinto muito Angola.

Music makes you dance

Spotify offers several Angolan playlists and the ‘Angolan Music’ playlist is the one for us. At first, the music does not sound different from other popular music from basically anywhere but then we find ourselves taking dance breaks because the music makes our surprised bodies move from side to side and then get up and boogie on the improvised dance floor that is the living room. We are, in fact, quite surprised about how delightful and hybrid most of the music we are hearing is. 

We hear artists such as Dotorado Pro (Africa House, for example song Marimba Rija, quite hypnotic), Neru Americano -watch the video for the dance alone, Deejay Telio (Que Safoda – probably my favourite), Trx Music Angola, Fildo do Zua (A Saia Del – in the video a boy dreams of a girl of whom you mostly only see the torso and her bottom, but again an interesting video for all the dancing). A lot of Afro House music. Spotify also offers an Angola Afro House list but it is much more repetitive. 

Oil, diamonds and one of the most expensive cities in the world 

The first people to inhabit the lands were Khoi and San – Khoisan (Khoi were cattle keepers and San were hunters) who were mostly kicked out by the Bantu people. Bantu spoke different languages and the word Ngongo (meaning an iron object that symbolises kingship among the Mbundu and Lunda people) is where Angola gets its name. The 500 years of colonisation by the Portuguese started in 1483 when the Portuguese arrived. Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575. During the Portuguese colonisation, more than a million Angolans were sold as slaves. The Atlantic slave trade continued until the independence of Brazil in the 1820s. Slavery was abolished in 1836 and all slaves freed in 1854. Angola finally gained independence in 1975 after the 12 year Independence war and then embarked on a 27 year civil war that left millions of people dead and many injured. 

We learn that Angola has the world’s most expensive city, Luanda. Angola’s flag mirrors the design of the old Soviet flag. 60% of the very important oil reserves are in the Northern part of the country in the disputed area of Cabinda. 

Angola has only two important islands – an oil and gas support island Kwanda and Ilha de Luenda.  99% of the economy revolves around oil and agriculture is a very small sector. Two out of three children suffer from malnutrition and one in six die before the age of six. That number is almost incomprehensible – 1 in 6. 

The forgotten 27-year-civil war 

Then to the more difficult documentaries that again are not for preteens. It is difficult to find a good quality production (mainly regarding audio and visuals) about the Angolan Civil War. It is like the world has forgotten the nearly 30-year war. We find documentaries that feature the Angolan war as part of the Cold War in which Angola is the battlefield for the East-West tension. L and I start watching several documentaries but in most, Angola is secondary in the narrative to the world powers. This leads to me explain the conflict and the recent history of Angola from my perspective to L, and I am not sure if I always get the facts right. That leads to hours of research in the late hours of the night.

In a nutshell there are three main parties: the Communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA); anti-communist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA); and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). They are all backed by foreign powers, predominantly the USA, Cuba and South Africa. Thousands of landmines are used around the country. Millions of people die. Ultimately the MPLA won and has ruled the country ever since. 

Queen’s resistance and the richest woman in Africa

Angolan history and present has two fascinating female figures. Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba and Isabel dos Santos. Queen Nzinga was a ruler in Angola (circa 1581-1663)  when Angola fought against the slave trade and European influence. She was known be a skilled diplomat and an excellent leader of an army who, for 30 years, resisted Portuguese invasion and slave raids. Not a small feat. She is an interesting and polarising character with a fascinating story. 

Isabel dos Santos is the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos who was the President of Angola for nearly 40 years. She used her role as the ‘Princess of Angola’ to gain economic benefits, lucrative deals and licenses because of her connections. Her money comes from involvement in mobile networks, diamonds and construction. She was the chairperson of Angola’s state-owned oil company, Sonangol, while her father was President. When her father finally resigned, she left the Board with a 58 million dollar payment. Her wealth is a striking contrast to the 40-50% of the Angolan population living below the poverty line, despite oil and diamond revenues. She and her husband are accused of embezzling more than one billion dollars of public money. It is quite entertaining to watch some of her interviews in which she claims to be a self-made woman. 

Oil, diamonds, land mines, poverty and more oil 

I looked into recommendations for Angolan literature. There seem to be two books that appear on different lists: Black Dahlia, Black Gold by Daniel Metcalfe (2014) and The Return of the Water Spirit by Pepetela (1995). Both are available on Kindle – one in English and one in Portuguese – so that is where I am heading. 

I start with Black Dahlia, Black Gold. This book is not written by an Angolan author but a British journalist who embarks on a journey in Angola (and also São Tomé and Príncipe, a place I have always, always wanted to visit). It is a fascinating book and written in an entertaining and informative way, even if in a slightly obnoxious (and sometimes ungrateful) way by a privileged outsider. 

I learn more about Angolan history from this book than any of the documentaries I have watched. Daniel has really done his homework and travels the country from one corner to another like ordinary Angolans do, many times hosted by generous locals. I find myself taking notes about people and places – whether the activists he mentions are still alive, what are the distances that he covers, where are the towns he talks about, what are the oil companies he mentions, who are the different leaders of ethnic and political groups, etc. He does an exceptional job describing the backstories of Angolan landmarks and people, but also of prominent contemporary figures. I learn more about Jonas Savimbi (leader of UNITA), Holden Roberto (leader of the FNLA and brother-in-law of Mobuto Sese Seko, a Congolese dictator) and Agistinho Neto (leader of the MPLA and the first president of Angola), He also writes about Elias Isaac, the country director for the Open Society of Initiative of South Africa and the work of the Halo Trust that works in clearing landmines around the country. 

Metcalfe travels around the country with a journalist’s gut and drive. Conversations are detailed and he has a great eye for details and descriptions. He covers the Angolan history in detail, drills deep into the slave trade, visits the most landmined battlefields, talks to everyone and writes down the human stories.  He travels through Luanda and several other cities and regions including landmine-infested Cuito Cuanavale and oil-rich Cabinda. He looks into the culture and history of different ethnic groups. I wish I could read a book like this for every country.  

The Return of the Water Spirit

I also want to read Angolan fiction but that proves to be more difficult than I had imagined. The very interesting Rainy Season by José Eduardo Agualusa, which is about disappeared activist Lidía do Carmo Ferreira, is not available anywhere. Other readers have loved it, which really makes me frustrated. I then turn to search for books by Pepetela, the most prominent Angolan writer. The Return of the Water Spirit has received a lot of praise but it is not available online and ordering it from overseas would not only be costly but also take a lot of time. The best option is to read it in its original language on Kindle. 

Now, my French is not perfect but my Portuguese is worse. By paying a mere $4.71 I get access to this book and its 102 pages, so I decide to give it a try. To my complete surprise, it is fairly easy to follow and an enjoyable reading experience. Even if I could not have a decent conversation in my incredibly rusty Portuguese, I am able to have the pleasure of reading this book.  

Pepetela (Artur Pestana) is an Angolan author and former member of the MPLA during Angola’s Independence guerrilla war. In 1997, he won the Camões Prize, the most important literary award for Lusophone literature. 

The book is about the clash of two worlds. A husband who plays videogames while the world collapses around him and a Marxist militant wife who underneath is a ruthless capitalist. The book mixes mythology with a critical look at the Angolan society after independence and introduces the symbolic destruction of ideals (and built landscape of Luanda) in the form of Kianda – the mysterious water spirit that moves worlds and demands the taken territory back. The book is a satirical, clever tale of the corruptive force of power, betrayal by greedy leaders and the corrosion of ideals after the fight is over. 

A long walk to find what has been taken 

Angolan cinema is a rare treat so it requires quite a lot of digging and research. 

The movie sites on the holy Internet seem to agree that the 1972 movie Sambizanga is the one to watch from Angola. It is not only the best rated Angolan movie but also the one with most views (the last at least on IMDB). Mark Cousins’ ten year old list of 10 best movies from Africa (2012, the Guardian) describes it as “a modern, radical account of a woman going from prison to prison looking for her husband. The setting is Angola, but it was filmed in Congo. Director Sarah Maldoror studied in Moscow, worked on the classic The Battle of Algiers, then grabbed African cinema by the scruff of the neck, forcing it to engage with feminism, loss and movie aesthetics. Wow.”

I am convinced so I will give it a go. 

As said, the movie is directed by Sarah Maldoror whose husband Mário Coelho Pinto de Andrade was the founder of the MPLA (but lived in exile after independence). Sarah died of Covid19 in April 2020 in France. 

The movie was filmed in 1972 in Congo because it was not possible to film in Angola at the time. It has strong Marxist undertones but above all it is a human story. Domingos is a working man and an independence movement activist in Angola in 1961. One day he is dragged away by the secret police. His loving wife Maria (played by a Cape Verdean economist Eliza Andrade) starts a long journey to find him. Maria goes from prison to prison, walks long distances while carrying her infant son on her back. 

For me, the movie is fascinating. For others, it might not be. 

The movie is slow and that might be why it is so effective. The emotion is in long shots of people’s faces. The dialogue is scarce. When Maria starts her long walk, the camera follows her for a long, long time. 

It is not the political message that I find so compelling but the human story. It is a universal story of injustice, longing and loss. This story is about Angola but it could be from any other continent, or country where people try to find their loved ones. A person is captured and tortured, and the ones left behind carry the price of desperation, uncertainty and suffering. It is a story of the big fish eating the small fish, be it from political orientation or whatever. Above all it is a story about loss, longing and the corruptive stench of power, once again. 

Angolan art

Once I have finished the books and the movie. I try to show L and A some Angolan contemporary art. I find interesting sites but contemporary art is no match for Youtube. 

The giant antelope

The giant sable antelope, thought to be extinct since 1982, was rediscovered in Angola in 2006. 

And with that we come to an end of a very long entry for Angola.

Next stop: Antigua and Barbuda 

“I’ll prepare some Andorran food tonight,” I say to a friend. “Is that a real country?” is the answer. Well, duh, it is!

Mountainous, tiny, landlocked Andorra is the only country in the world with Catalan as its official language. I (at least) claim to speak Catalan fluently, so I find myself within my comfort zone.
Andorra is also about three hours by car from where my daughter Lisboa (a pseudonym) was born, which makes it feel simultaneously close, yet worlds away.

Andorra holds boundless beauty and a unique place in history. Less than 50% of the small population of 78,000 has Andorran citizenship. Andorra does not allow dual citizenship and it takes a very long time to gain a citizenship (10-20 years!) if not acquired by birth. Nevertheless, the benefits of living in Andorra include one of the highest life expectancy in the world and one of the best health care systems in the world (in all the different rankings, Andorra places within the top 10). Residency can be obtained with significant investment. For outsiders, the country is famous for skiing and tax free goods. The capital of Andorra is Andorra la Vella.

I have a beautiful friend SV who spent her childhood and part of her youth in Andorra. SV speaks fluent Catalan, Spanish and French as her native languages, on top of many other languages that she has learnt. Currently, SV lives in Paris, and it was the perfect occasion for me to reach out to her so that she can guide me through everything Andorran. Because of our friendship, I do know more about Andorra than most of the people, and it is always lovely to hear from her.

Bread with tomato

We start with food. SV tells me that the Andorran cuisine is of course influenced by its neighbours, especially by the Catalan cuisine. I am overjoyed, as bread with tomato is one of my favourite Catalan dishes. Obviously, Sydney does not have an Andorran restaurant so no matter what we prepare at home, pa amb tomàquet or bread with tomato will be part of that.

Let’s start with that because it is so yummy. For tomato bread, you just need good quality bread (my favourite is Iggy’s in the Eastern Suburbs but any good sourdough works). Spread oil, garlic and tomato with a bit of salt on top over toasted bread. That’s all. It’s beautiful, it’s yummy and it tastes like home.

Andorran national food is escudella but it is so heavy and complicated that I immediately abandon the idea of preparing it. But for anyone interested, it has chicken, pork, ham, ham bones, chick beans, potato. It is serious winter mountain food that simply doesn’t do the trick in Sydney’s rainy winter nights or for a vegetarian like me.

Instead, I prepare Trinxat de la muntanya with a chicory salad. Trinxat de la muntanya is basically mashed potato and cabbage, with bacon if you wish. And some garlic and salt. Incredibly easy, albeit slightly dull. I like it, but L is not thrilled. She still happily eats the bacon, and I find myself putting some more salt on the potato.

The chicory salad (chicory is typical plant of the mountainsides in Andorra) has nuts and parmesan in it. It is not thrilling, but definitely edible. We also have embutits, sort-of sausages for the meat eaters.

For the Andorran night, it is just Lisboa and I, which feels weird. Fellow nomads are unable to join tonight. But Andorra is small and so will our party be tonight. L appreciated my efforts with Catalan food, but it does not really charm her exquisite culinary taste. I am happy and convinced that everything that I have prepared tonight is extraordinary.

The only Andorran music we can find is Andorra’s participation in the Eurovision from 2009, the last time Andorra participated. Andorra stubbornly performs mostly in Catalan. We think it’s cute.

Landlocked beauty

While we eat out deliciously, marvellously prepared dinner, Lisboa and I watch documentaries about Andorra.

Andorra is the world’s 17th smallest country, and the Andorrans get their name from Andosini, pre-Roman people in the Iberian Peninsula. The country has the 2nd oldest parliament in Europe. It’s a quick story of how Andorra “became the place to be for those who want to shop and ski”. In general, compared to many other places, Andorra has had quite peaceful and neutral position, being harboured by France and Spain.

Andorran flag is a combination of French and Spanish flags, and has a shield in the middle with words “Virtus Vinita fortior“, or “United is Stronger”. Travelling to Andorra is tricky by public transport with no trains or airports. Andorra is mountainous, and only 2% of the land is farmable, resulting in the majority of food being imported. Tourism is the main source of income for Andorra. Catalan is the official language, but Spanish, Catalan and French schools co-exist (most people send their kids to a French School – my friend SV went to one). Andorra has a head of state, but the co-heads of state are the President of France and the bishop of Urgell.

Andorra is famous for its natural beauty, so we watch a couple of documentaries about the mountains. 30% of the country is covered by national parks, meaning there is a lot of nature to explore. Andorra is a paradise for hikers in summer and for skiers in winter, and there is a lot of shopping options.

Small market for creatives

SV cannot think of an Andorran book so I turn to my soul brother JB, one of my favourite people in the world – one of those people that are incredibly helpful, generous and whom no one has anything negative to say about. JB lives in Barcelona with his Australian wife and their son. JB takes the task and comes back with a wonderful suggestion.

There is a woman who took part in a legendary postgraduate course in an organisation I was working in many moons ago. Many good things came out of that course, including my friendship with JB. I remember the woman he mentions vaguely, but the Internet tells me more. Since then she has had three children, several degrees (including a PhD in Political Science) and has built an impressive career in international development. She is originally from Andorra and a published author. I do not have her contact information so I cannot ask her for more, but I find some of her poetry online – and I also send her a message through the cyberspace hoping that one day she’ll respond. She has also written a couple of very interesting books, but in most places I look her books are out of stock. Therefore, I read her poetry that I find quite charming. I particularly like one of her poems that translates into pour some more wine to me.

Sometimes a group of extraordinary people get together and create special energy. That particular postgraduate course seems to have done just that and this woman is another example. I am still in contact with four other people from that group and this prompts me to think about what other amazing things the rest of the people have done.

Bad Movies

As for visuals, Andorran film industry is very limited and there basically are no options for further cinematic experiences. I have seen Amor Idiota (2004) by Ventura Pons that is listed as an Andorran/Spanish co-production but I refuse to watch it again. It is disturbingly bad. A woman falls in lust with her stalker. I hated it when I saw it and for sure, I would hate it even more now.

The only other movie available from Andorra is No Pronunciarás el Nombre de Dios en Vano (1999) by Josep Guirao, or “You will not say the name of god in vain”. It is 32 minutes long – the setting is Andorra in the year 2046. A crime lord brings in religious leaders for cross examination to find out how to identify a true Messiah. It was not worth the watch, with such bad quality and in general, just a bad short film that tries to be more than it is. If Andorran movie industry is represented by these two bad films, I find it rather sad.

Hand Solo

To finish Virtual Nomad-ing on a high note, SV (my Andorran friend) gives me an interesting suggestion: a famous Andorran, David Aguilar, aka ‘Hand Solo’ is a lego master who created his own prosthesis with lego, credited by the “Guinness Book of Records” as the first person to do so. An extraordinary person with a background in bioengineering and born with a missing part in his arm, he plans to build better and more affordable prosthetics for people with disabilities. There is also a book available about him which has now become the Andorran book for Virtual Nomad.

The latest Andorra news says that Andorra has no present nor future plans to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. Too bad.

Next stop: Angola

“Algeria sounds like somewhere in Africa” was the correct guess from the kids, but nevertheless, Africa is still quite vast! The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria is the largest country in Africa and is also the 10th largest country in the world. However, Algeria’s size is misleading; more than 90% of the estimated 44+ million people live by the coast and a large portion of the country is sand.

When I think of Algeria, I think of the Sahara.

Home made goodies

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

Algerian cuisine in Sydney is represented merely by a kebab fast food chain that has an Algerian plate and an Algerian falafel dish. While the neighbouring countries Morocco and Tunisia are visible in Sydney’s restaurant landscape, Algeria, well, less so. Google has informed us that the Algerian cuisine is largely similar to other Maghreb countries, and has a variety of vegetables, grains, fruit, meat and several spices. Mm, yummy.

With no Algerian restaurant or any Algerian friends in sight, the task was to prepare an Algerian dish at home. We chose a vegetable couscous, some tabbouleh and falafel (which I bought). I followed an Algerian recipe but am no master chef so the result was passable, but not thrilling. My partner Johannesburg Karelia did a much better job with the couscous itself. It was golden and buttery and held the vegetables nicely. L is happy to try the vegetarian couscous and falafel but tabbouleh was not of her liking. My son Amsterdam on the other hand is not excited about the food, and ends up eating just plain couscous. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the Algerian meal.

Sounds

Spotify provided us with an Algerian music list which then became our soundtrack for the evening. The selection did not raise big passions but generated a reasonably interesting conversation about the musical landscapes we incorporate when growing up, and how less familiar soundscapes may sound stranger to our ears.

Later, my daughter Lisboa and I checked out the most popular Algerian singers today. Souad Massi is a popular Algerian Berber singer. She was part of the political rock band Atakor but had to leave the country following death threats and now lives in France. She sings in many different languages and her style is an interesting combination of Algerian, oriental, fado, western music, among others. A couple of her songs end up on my playlists.

Another singer we listened to is Zaho who is quite well known in France, Canada and Algeria. Kenza Farah is another Algerian musician, a hip hop and R&B artist with success in France – some of her songs are pure pop and some have clear Algerian influence.

Algerian facts

Algerian facts and figures include a lot of sand (the Sahara is the hottest desert in the world), a capital Algiers (“Algiers, the white”- full of white buildings), and the neighbouring countries, which are Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Mali and Niger. Algerian history facts include the Ottoman Empire’s occupation from the 16th century until the French invasion in 1830 that lasted for more than a century, the brutal Algerian war (1954-1962), Algerian independence in 1962, the 1988 riots and a bloody civil war from 1999 to 2002.

A funny fact is that due to a widespread cheating scandal in Algerian schools, in 2018, the government shut down the internet during final exams to make sure the kids had no access to external help.

“A super quick history of Albania” was a fun and easy introduction to Albania’s complex history, so this time we decided to go to Mr History’s youtube channel once again for “A super quick history of Algeria“. It starts with cave paintings and then goes through different ethnic groups, colonisers, wars, French rule for more than a century, independence, civil war and everything in between. The video states that Algeria has had a hectic history but has reached a high human development index. It brushes quite lightly through some of the most turbulent episodes in Algerian history, so it is safe for kids to see.

The video “Geography now” gave us a much needed geography lesson of Algeria. We learnt that only 3% of Algeria’s territory is arable land (suitable for growing crops), which explains the concentration of population in the north (the rest of Algeria is sand). 45% of food comes from imports. We also learnt the symbolism of the Algerian flag (the white represents peace; the green, star, and crescent represent Islam; and the red symbolises the blood of those killed fighting for independence in the Algerian War). The video describes how the majority of the population is Arab-Berber, and that they have built long roads that cross the desert for travel. The Geography now guy has the same concept as we do, and his alphabetical geographical series will come very handy in our future Virtual Nomad journeys. It is an unproblematic format that covers flags, geography, demographics and the ‘friend zone’ (meaning the friendly relationship that countries have, in case of Algeria, its relationship with Morocco is quite infamously tense).

“The biggest country in Africa” is a short 3-minute tourist video by Drew Binsky, (who has been to every country in the world), which is easy to follow and gives a glimpse of the landscape of the capital Algiers and some other sites. According to our boy Drew, Algeria is the friendliest country in Africa.

For the last video we (that is just Lisboa and I, this is no territory for the preadolescent Amsterdam) try to choose something a bit more politically charged, covering aspects that are unsettling and turbulent. The French rule, the war crimes of the Algerian war, the youth uprising in 1988, the civil war, the rise of terrorism. We end up watching several videos from the Foreign Correspondent to Al Jazeera and many in between. They were difficult to watch, and another bitter remainder of what humans are capable of doing to each other.

A confused reading experience

After two distinguished, albeit male authors, I wanted to read a book by a woman. I asked my beautiful friend Surabaya Barcelona (who knows Arab literature much better than I do), but she was not sure whom to recommend so I turn to Internet to look for Algerian authors that are women.

My first choice Samira Bellil (1972 – 2004) reveals a harrowing life story of the author. Her autobiography that is said to have shocked France is not available in Australia or online, so for the moment, I cannot get hold of it. This setback does not keep me from reading more about her and all that she had to endure. Gang-raped several times as a teenager and trying to find an individual path free from traditional family setting, she was brave, compassionate and ground-breaking. She died in 2004 at the age of 31.

Samira Belli’s story is harrowing and upsetting, but it is also a story about immigration and the banlieues of Paris more than Algeria itself. I will need to find someone who represents more the Algerian side of the story.

I then select another female author, Assia Djebar, who has called Algeria “A dream of sand”. She is probably the most known contemporary Algerian author, and according to her biography many of her books focus on the role and place of women in the Algerian society. She is widely praised and studied, and holds an important place in North African and global literature. She was the first author from Maghreb to be elected into the Académie française, a prestigious institution guarding the heritage of French language.

At the local library, I find one of her essay books “The women of Islam” from 1961, not frequently mentioned in her collection of works, which I find interesting. It is not a work of fiction but a long essay accompanied by photos of Muslim women. This certainly sounds promising, and I am sure it will be a very interesting read in regards to women in Algeria with the author’s biography providing a backdrop for the book.

The book left me in a state of slight confusion. It was completely different from what I had expected, far removed from my own thinking. I pushed through even if I was tempted to drop it. I am really puzzled, as everything that I read about Djebar is about giving women a voice, bringing women’s stories to light and defend the progress, emancipation and rights of women in Algeria and the Maghreb. This book does celebrate the woman’s role in Islam, but in a very different way than I had expected. The introduction states that the fundamental place for a woman in Islam is in the private sphere, in the family and shielded from external life. That a man’s most precious possession is his wife who needs to be cherished and protected (in places such as harems). That the western idea of an independent life and career only makes her a slave of a modern society and the fragility of a woman needs to be protected, as she is not suited for external pressures. She does state, though, that the gravest dangers for the ‘modern family’, or the sacred unit, are the marriages of underage girls, polygamy and the unilateral repudiation of a wife by her husband. And she also does celebrate education for girls as progress.

She also states several times that man is superior to woman, and that a woman is part of a man. She says: “Let us not assume that this conception of the family is necessarily a sign of the ascendancy of man over woman. Does it not spring, rather, from the wish to safeguard the security of the woman, to shelter her from too great responsibilities? I feel that there is nothing offensive – quite the contrary – about this recognition, made simply and without fuss, of a woman’s frailty, a frailty that makes her the more precious.” I have such a hard time reading sentences like this and find that there are far too many in a small book with not too many pages.

When I calmed down, I reminded myself that this was written in 1961 when she was 25, and at the time, French rulers gave Algerian women less rights than the traditional Algerian society did, and women were just starting to gain certain rights (such as the right to vote) in several countries in the region, and elsewhere. It is not a reflection of the 2022 world but a time where a woman’s place was quite narrow and potentially the safest place for her to be was managing the family – as the alternative might not be as safe and secure, and allow her to fulfil her potential the way the family environment did.

I am intrigued about Assia Djebar and I take this as a challenge. I read a few studies about her literature and these are interesting studies which seem to cement what I have read previously. She truly is an extraordinary author whose writing about Algerian women have gained widespread praise .
But I need to go back to her writing and see it myself.

After the first book, I was left in a strange state of discomfort and wonder. I needed one more sample because I couldn’t accept that the book I just finished would be the representative of a country for Virtual Nomad. I choose one of Djebar’s most famous books that marked a “turning point” in her career as an author. “Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement” (Women of Algiers in their apartment, 1981) is only available in French on Kindle, but I decided to give it a go even if represents a major challenge for someone like me who has not read in French for a long time. I’m ready for the challenge just to show to myself that I am serious about getting to the bottom of my inquest about Assia Djebar.

The title of the book refers to a painting by Eugène Delacroix from 1833. He visited a harem in Morocco, which then inspired him to paint two versions of the same image, the one from 1833 and another in 1849. For Djebar, it is a setting for stories about women that are sometimes voiceless and longing for freedom, but never figurants and with a rich internal life.

What I understand from Assia Djebar’s book is that she does not want the world to see women as victims of their own fate but give them a voice and a presence, even if they are oppressed and sometimes prisoners of their physical place or state. The book is a collection of stories, long and short, and as fascinating as it is, it’s hard to follow. My confusion could be because I am reading it in the original language which I do not fully command (not even close!) and I’m rushing through the pages rather than stopping to find the linguistic nuances that seem to escape me with my initial read-through.

The language is very rich – that much I do gather – and that is one of the central points of the book. The style is eloquent, poetic stream of consciousness (which in my humble opinion is already very difficult to follow even if you dominate the language). She writes in the language of the colonisers, which from what I have read, seems to be a current theme in her work. She is a very skilful writer and demands the attention and focus from her reader.

The stories are about different women in different moments of Algerian history. The book is divided into two parts; ‘yesterday’ and ‘today’, which touch upon the independent country and the colonial past. It’s about women who are more or less bound to their domestic environments without the option to leave. Women of Algiers in their apartment is also about women who have played an important role in the war but then do not get the recognition they deserve. It is about patriarchy, dependence, and lack of choice.

I am getting a little Assia obsessed, so I also watched her documentary “La Zerda ou les chants d’oubli” (or “the Zerda or the songs of oblivion”) that won Best Historical Film at the 1983 Berlin International Film Festival. It is about the colonial Maghreb between 1912 and 1942. I sit through the 59 minutes of it but I must confess the black and white archives and photos do not do it for me and even if I can understand the historic value of the movie, and as interesting as it is, I’m grateful when it finishes.

Around this time, I also find out that the book to read from Assia is called Fantasia – an Algerian Cavalcade, her highest ranking book by reviewers on different platforms. Alas, I need to leave it for my future reading list that will follow Virtual Nomad in a hundred years time.

I might come back to Assia but after reading two of her books, watching two interviews, reading research papers of her work and the long documentary, I’m ready to move on and explore the next country. My fellow virtual nomads have been patient with me so it is time to leave Djebar behind and travel to the mountains.

We finish the Algerian stop by watching the iconic movie the Battle of Algiers (1966), a masterpiece from the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo. The movie depicts the rebel activity in Algiers that led to the Algerian Independence War (1954 -1962). The main character in the film is Ali La Ponte, a notorious rebel leader. A small scale petty thief, he served some time in prison and was introduced to anti-colonialist rebels. The movie plays almost as a documentary of urban guerrilla warfare. Considered as one of the best movies ever made and filmed in location, it has survived the test of time and still is a fascinating watch. Only the older kids get to see it and especially my daughter Lisboa (15) finds it so interesting, she decides to write an essay for English on it.

Next stop: Andorra

I thank my frequent Virtual Nomads for their patience.

I also thank Lisboa for her lovely editing skills. I did not write this.

Participating Virtual Nomads are presented with city and/or place pseudonyms. The cities selected are random and have nothing to do with the origins of the people themselves.

When I asked the kids where they think Albania is, Lisboa, Amsterdam and Fez all guessed Europe, which was already a small win. A more detailed examination reveals that even my partner Johannesburg Karelia is not sure what the neighbouring countries are. I have a joke running in my head about future dictators who keep their countries sealed and no one knows anything about them ‒ neither the country nor the dictator. But the reality can be too cruel for jokes, so I stay quiet.

Enter Albania.

Growing up in Europe, Albania was a sort of mystery. It was a closed country with a reputation for being agricultural, backwards and traditional ‒ a sealed society living in the past. It was like the North Korea of Europe. Very few of us actually travelled to Albania and those who did, found a charming and almost unspoiled land living under a memory of terror and repression.

Albania is situated in Southeastern Europe with a Mediterranean coastline and has Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Greece as its neighbours. Its capital is Tirana and approximately three million people inhabit its lands. Albania lived 40 years under one of the weirdest – and cruellest ‒ authoritarian regimes in the world. As a result of its 1912 independence and loss of territory, combined with the longstanding authoritarian regime (until 1990), there are now more Albanian descendants living outside Albania than in the country itself.

Currently the most famous person of Albanian descent is Dua Lipa, a Grammy-winning pop artist from England (her family is Kosovo Albanians). You can find Dua Lipa on Youtube speaking Albanian or eating burek ‒ the traditional food of Albania. None of the virtual nomads have a liking for her music but her bio reveals her to be delightfully outspoken and using her celebrity status for all kinds of good deeds.

Other famous people of Albanian descent include Mother Teresa (born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Bebe Rexha, Rita Ora (born in Kosovo) and John Belushi. Who knew!

Burek melts in the mouth

There are no Albanian restaurants in Sydney but the Balkan Oven Bakery Café in Rockdale promises an authentic Albanian burek-experience. Again, as with Bamiyan, Internet reviewers love it so after a particularly early school drop off I decide to drive to Rockdale before work. It is a lovely and sunny but chilly winter morning and Rockdale is quite quiet at that time of the day. I find the café quite easily and while I wait for my turn, I admire the golden bureks straight from the oven, shining together with the winter sun. I am served by a wonderfully chatty, large Balkan woman who tells me about an older man who comes to the café every morning, wipes the tables outside and then chooses one to sit at. I ask her how authentic Albanian the burek is and after a look that tells me that I am stupid, she assures me that people in Albania would surely eat it. I leave with the assurance that culinary purity is unnecessary and that the food I am bringing home is Albanian enough.

I heat the burek just before dinner and serve it hot with some salad. Fez and I opt for the spinach/feta burek while Lisboa and Johannesburg choose the meaty one. A is not interested in burek and when given the opportunity to choose, goes for chips.

This is serious winter food. It is rich and oily, and quite heavy. I would not eat it every day but it is yummy. Google and Dua Lipa reassure us that burek is as Albanian as Albanian cuisine can get. Basically it is layered pastry filled with various ingredients. My new Albanian reference, Dua, says on Youtube that the spinach/cheese is the right one.

While we eat, we listen to Albanian music. First we try ‘Albanian hits’ on Spotify which results in standard easy-listening found everywhere, so we switch back to Spotify’s playlist of Albanian folk music. The sounds are folksy as old folk music generally is, with sad undertones of Balkan music. After some time, all the songs start to sound the same to our novice ears.

Bunkers and a crazy dictator

The Albanian trivia was not a great success so it was back to Youtube for some country facts and figures. We watched four videos. Two of them were suitable for both Lisboa and Amsterdam, but two had content that was too heavy for the preadolescent.

Then we learn about the history of Albania. We learn about the constant conquests, the position of Albanian at the crossroads of early eastern and western Christianity, the word ‘Albanians’ being mentioned for the first time in 1079, Progon the founding father of the first independent state of Albania (lasted until the 1200s) and Skanderbeg who fought the Ottomans for 24 years and united the Albanians. Albania was finally conquered by the Ottomans in 1481 and remained “stuck in the medieval era” until the 20th century. In 1912, Albania was declared independent, but the land distribution resulted in 40% of Albanians being left outside the Albanian borders (including in Kosovo). Ahmed Zogu ruled Albania under the groovy name of ‘King Zog’ until Albania was invaded by Italy in 1939. A schoolteacher, Enver Hoxha, led the communist party to run the country after a civil war and then proceeded to carry out a five year purge of suspected enemies. Albania then formed partnerships with such charming figures as Stalin and, after his death, with Mao’s China. Albania also declared itself the world’s first atheist state in 1967 and the communist party stayed in power until 1992. While Lisboa is aware of the most famous authoritarian rulers in history, the 40 year Enver Hoxha period comes to her as a surprise. “How did I not know about this?” she asks. Well, not many people do.

Let’s learn more about it.

What was life like in Enver Hoxha’s repressed, closed, poor agricultural country? Certainly not great for the average person. Communist Albania: Enver Hoxha’s land of paranoia by Tales from the Road (2021) tells of a paranoid dictator and his 40-year rule of fear and repression in an isolated state. And yes, he ordered the construction of more than 175,000 bunkers around the country to keep enemies away.

A legacy of dictatorship by France24 (2019) examines the methods of persecution of the secret police and the contemporary search for answers for the disappeared. In this documentary, family members reveal mass graves, provide their DNA in the hope of finding their family members and reflect on their life during the forty years of dictatorship. A technician from the secret police reveals how people were monitored. The document tells us that there are 6000 disappeared people, while more than a 100,000 people went through labour camps and around 25,000 executed. In this document the terror, persecution and loss becomes very real. This is only the second country on our virtual nomad journey, but already human nature is proving difficult to stomach.

To finish on a high note we move to Albania: Mountains and immigrants, short report by DV (2021) which is about an environmental activist promoting sustainable farming in the Albanian countryside.

The Doll (the Book)

The book from Albania is by Ismael Kadare ‒ the most famous Albanian author and winner of many international literature awards. Kadare is considered one of the leading literary figures of the 20th century and a “voice against totalitarianism”. I have read Kadare extensively before and although I do not recall the plot in detail, Chronicle in Stone impressed me when I was young. But the book I chose this time is unknown to me: The Doll – The Portrait of My Mother (2015) ‒ the story of Kadare’s mother.

While the Afghan book was about sons and fathers, this one is about sons and mothers. It is a story of a young bride in an arranged marriage who moves into a house she doesn’t love to live with her husband’s family ‒ including a mother-in-law who never warms up to her. It is also the setting of Kadare’s story of growing up to be a writer, first in patriarchal, traditional and then authoritarian Albania, ruled with strict moral codes and traditions. He does not always come through the text as a likable character but he talks about his parents with that amused acceptance and affection that people use when talking about parents that belong to a different era.

The Doll is a lovely book, but coming after the Kite Runner it felt underwhelming. It is a lovely book but not thrilling. For me, it is at its best when reflecting the pre-Hoxha society, its strict rules and the oppression and persecution that followed (but this is not much touched upon). It is still a tale of tradition, the narrow places for girls in a society, arranged marriages and a mother who wants to understand more than she does and feels displaced so many times.

Kodare is a clever writer and there are interesting linguistic images. I screenshot some sentences to send to people who would subscribe to the sentiments, including the following (currently does not apply to me):

Father and Godfather

When searching for Albanian movies I know the movie I want to see: Anna (2021), a short film by Kristina Rushiti that has won several awards but it is not available on any platform I have access to. Instead, I watch a five minute short film from possibly the same director, Viktima, which feels like a clumsy student film about online predators ‒ predictable and badly acted. Next I try to find Aga’s House, but I cannot access that either. None of the ‘10 best movies from Albania’ are available so instead I find Father and Godfather (Dhimitër Anagnosti, 2007) on Youtube ‒ an Albanian film from 2007. I am glad that I did. It is hard to explain why I find this film so fascinating. It starts slowly but then I cannot stop watching it. The basic storyline is that of an Albanian village in the 1930s living a very traditional lifestyle, disconnected from the turbulence of the outside world but dictated by rigid moral codes and questions of honour. A young boy is caught between a strict, authoritarian father and liberal, freethinking godfather who lives in America. Women are figurants in the movie. A poignant moment in the movie is when, after a wedding, a stained sheet is put on display for the village to see and we see the look on the very young bride’s face when the boy asks what it means.

The latest news from Albania is that the new president of the country is a top military official, Bajram Begaj, elected by Albania’s parliament after no candidates were nominated in three rounds of voting.

Next stop: Algeria

I take this opportunity to thank my wonderful Lisboa for her rearranging and editing the blog page