Szirine: Social Map

Santa’s Gifts for American Children

This holiday season New Yorkers are saying goodbye to a very special part of their childhood. The most famous toy store in New York City, FAO Schwarz on 5th Avenue, is going out of business in 2003. The store gained national fame when it appeared in the film Big, and Tom Hanks played the giant ground piano in the store. FAO Schwarz is a playground rising three stories high, an interactive fantasy world for children and their parents.

When you enter the store stuffed animals from the floor to the ceiling greet you, then whole sections are dedicated to children’s worlds like G.I. Joe, Barbie, Willy Wonka, World of Magic, The Cat in the Hat, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter and the not forgotten Madeline. But while Americans went to FAO Schwarz for adventure, they would actually buy their toys at discount stores such as Walmart. Despite its high prices, FAO Scwharz allowed everyone to enter its doors and at least look and feel, even if you couldn’t afford the goodies. It gained a special place on the tourist route in New York City. Read the rest of this entry →

Casino Moscow

Moscow’s Mafia Culture in a Snapshot

Casino Moscow
Author: Matthew Brzezinski
Publisher: Touchstone
Paperback: June 2002, $12.60 at Barnes and Noble

In Casino Moscow, Matthew Brzezinski gives a colorful, although superficial, snapshot of Russia’s corrupt business environment in which a handful of oligarchs and thugs stole much of the country’­s wealth during the post-Soviet high rolling years, pre-1998 market crash. Brzezinski was serving as a Wall Street Journal reporter in Moscow during 1997-8, and was fortunate to witness the most crucial years in Russia by which limitless corruption, banditry, contract killings, graft, political favor and personal greed came to define the workings of Russia’s new economy.

Through manifold details and anecdotes, Brzezinski’s story Read the rest of this entry →

Hiram Bingham and his Discovery of Machu Picchu

Hiram Bingham wrote in his book Lost City of the Incas,  It will be remembered that it was in July 1911, that I began the search for the last Inca capital.

The place he was referring to was not called Machu Picchu, but Vilcabamba. There, the last Inca ruler Manco built a fortress to rebel against the invading Spaniards. He chose a location deep in the jungle of the Andes, inaccessible by Spanish horses. Manco’s men shot arrows through any Spaniard trying to attack Vilcabamba by foot.

The Inca’s Great Rebellion lasted until 1572, when the Spaniards captured Manco’­s third ruling son, Tupac Amaru. They brought him to the main square of Cusco, the great Inca city besieged by Spaniards, and beheaded him. Don Francisco de Toledo, the Viceroy of Peru ordered that Tupac Amaru’­s body be dismembered to bring fear to the remaining Incas and to suppress any future uprisings.  Thus ended the Inca civilization in Peru. Read the rest of this entry →

Coffee Culture in the US

It wasn’t until I moved to the US that I started drinking coffee regularly and became what they call in the Netherlands a ‘koffieleut’, which translates literally into ‘coffee socialite.’ Although the average European drinks more coffee per year than the average American, the cultural importance and its effects on the average European seems to me smaller than that on the average American. After all, coffee is a cultural obsession in the United States.

Chains with thousands of branches like Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks dominate US daily street life. Especially in the morning (90% of coffee consumed in the US is in the morning), millions of white foamy cups with boldly imprinted pink and orange logos bob across the streets in morning rush hour and on the train. Coffee drive-ins are a saving grace for the rushing army of helmeted and tattooed construction workers. During lunch break, men and women in savvy business suits duck into coffee shops. Students chill out from early afternoon till late evening on comfy couches at coffee lounges around campus. Police officers clutch coffee cups while guarding road construction sites on the highway. In short, coffee drinkers in the United States can be found just about anywhere you go. Read the rest of this entry →

Jan Amos Comenius: The Way of Light

The Netherlands is a country known for its religious, ideological and ethnical tolerance. But what is perhaps less known is that it is also a country religiously divided into a northern part dominated by a culture of Calvinism and a southern part, which is predominantly Catholic. Today, when people speak of ‘below the rivers’ they refer to the Catholic provinces and when they talk about ‘above the rivers’ they are pointing to the Calvinist provinces north of the geographical border of the rivers Maas, Waal and Rhine, which roughly run parallel to this historical and cultural border.

When the Netherlands declared independence from Spain in 1579 by the Union of Utrecht and were recognized by the peace agreement with Spain by the signing of the Treaty of Munster in 1648, ‘the Low Lands’ (as the Netherlands is literally translated), did not include the southern provinces. Only with the defeat of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 were these provinces included, and not until 1831 when Belgium gained independence were the borders constituted that comprise the Netherlands as we know it. Culturally though, the southern provinces and especially the province of Limburg (the hind leg of the Dutch lion) where I grew up belonged to the Catholic sphere of influence. Even in present day the Netherlands, it makes a huge difference in attitude and perspective on life if you are from above or from below the rivers. Read the rest of this entry →