Missing Tidbits, Pizza Related Existential Crises, & the Norwegian Cinema Industry
Jumping ahead in the narrative a bit to find the most Veteran's-Day-related picture from my Turkey adventures, here's a representation of where, at Bomb Ridge, during the WWI Gallipoli campaign the Turkish and ANZAC trenches were a mere 20 ft apart.
And jumping back out of order, two things worth mentioning earlier that I forgot to include:
(1) While in Istanbul: there's one website upon which you can order any kind of fast food (be it kebab or pide or Burger King or probably even Chinese). I believe it actually works for all of Turkey though I'd imagine your options would be more limited in many places.
On the subject of pide, pide is basically pizza, though it comes out in a boat shape. And causes one a sudden existential crisis when one realizes it's just holding a place in a continuum between "pita" and "pizza," between which one suddenly realizes there's not much etymological difference! Blew my fricken mind!
(2) Among the big group of backpackers I met and hung out with in Olympos I almost forgot that there were two who were in the midst of intercontinental bike rides. One had, if I recall correctly, started out somewhere in India and took a roundabout route through Pakistan, Iran, up to Georgia (through either Armenia or Azerbaijan?), and then across Turkey to Olympos, eventually planning on biking across Europe to England! The other I think may have _only_ started at the other end of Turkey but was also planning on biking to the western end of Europe.
In completely unrelated news last night I watched the Norwegian film Into the White (2012) and rather liked it. The film takes place in WWII, with a German bomber crashing in a remote Norwegian ice field after downing a British fighter. The survivors of both crews must overcome their initial hostility and learn to work together to survive. Also there's breathtaking Norwegian landscapes.
I really like this theme, where people are forced to work together despite coming from political circumstances where they would be expected to kill eachother.
Another movie in a similar vein is No Man's Land (2001), a Bosnian film about soldiers from opposing sides that get stuck together in the trenches between the lines in the Bosnian civil war. Another movie I rather liked, which despite its serious bent had an almost dark-comedy aspect to it with for example UN Peacekeepers visiting the men in the trench but being unable to help them due to their very specific mandate and eventually leaving with the men still pinned down together.
And unrelated to that theme but on the subject of the Norwegian cinema industry, last year I watched Headhunters (2011). A Norwegian language film about a headhunter (in the finding people employment sense) who is also an art thief, and severe shenanigans ensue.
I wasn't much of a fan of the previous generation of Scandinavian cinema, a la depressing and slow Ingmar Bergman films, but both these movies were entertaining and well-put-together movies at least as good as anything Hollywood has churned out lately.