Cool Things In Random Places

‘Don’t try.’

This author of this warning soon became known, by some, as ‘the toughest man in New Orleans.’ This scrawling on the front of a boarded-up rug store, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, was intimidating enough: the store went untouched by looters. Updates soon followed:

‘Still here. Woman left Friday. Cooking a pot of dog jumbo.’

This man was Bob Rue, age 59, and owner the Sarouk Oriental rug shop. He, in fact, weathered the chaos after Katrina from his girlfriend’s uptown apartment, and spent his daylight hours painting ‘Looters will be shot’ onto his friends’ properties, and feeding local dogs. His warnings, in fact, were mostly bluster – although he did have a claw hammer.

But on September 4th, the storefront was adorned with one final message:

“You know what it means to miss New Orleans. Y’all come back for carnival. I have my parade spot. Come back Rex, Iris, Zulu, Bacchus, Toth, Proteus, Hermes, Muses, L’etat, Elk, Babylon. Hey, throw me something, mister.”

Camels are amazing creatures. They are the sharks of the deserts, perfectly adapted to their environment: their thick foot pads can withstand the scorching sand of the Sahara, their blood cells can survive wicked dehydration, and their scat is so thoroughly drained of precious water that it can be used as kindling for fires.

And in Turkey, camels wrestle.

Camel wrestlers are the bodybuilders of their species - specially fed so as to be gigantic, and all the more majestic as they’re marched through Turkish villages ever winter. They are often decked out in majestic finery, if not armor. Camels, being camels, appear to take it all in stride. Camels always seem to be smiling, probably because humanity amuses them.

The wrestling itself is less like UFC, and more like Curly and Moe. More often than not, these gentle creatures simply lean into each other, quite half-heartedly, as villagers cheer them on. The real action, however, is when one turns and flees: weighing nearly a ton, bystanders have to leap out of their way before being crushed underneath a panicked dromedary.

The Sahara is not well-known for its foliage.

But one tree did exist: the Tree of Ténéré. It was the last surviving member of the forest that once inhabited the region, and served as a landmark for travelers – the only landmark, really, in this vast swath of northeast Niger.

The tree was obviously getting water from somewhere, and so locals dug a well. Travelers began to come and go, and in the bustle the tree did manage to lose a limb: a truck backed into it sometime in the 1930s or 40s, knocking off one of its two main branches, and mangling its distinctive ‘Y’-shape.

But that was an accident. No one would think of intentionally harming the tree, the only one within hundreds of miles. And even another accident was nearly unthinkable – lightning couldn’t possibly strike twice.

In 1973, a drunk driver knocked over the tree once and for all. He lost control of his truck, and veering out of control in the sandy, barren desert, ran into the one and only thing there.

The tree has since been replaced with a metal pole.

In Zurich, they burn Old Man Winter in effigy.

His name is Böögg (from “Bogey”), and this is Sechselauten, the Six Ringing Festival, a Swiss holiday created in order to celebrate the Spring Equinox. Built on a wooden frame and stuffed with explosives, Frosty is carried into the Bellevue Platz, overlooking the lake, while getting solidly derided by jeering townspeople and professional jesters. This condemned snowman is then left to await his fate, hanging above an unlit bonfire, until six o’clock the next morning.

The next day, a cheering procession of craftsmen march into town, holding aloft symbols of their trade – like barbers’ scissors, or meat cleavers. Bankers are especially generous, and hat makers wear their finest headgear. To the tune of lively bands, the snowman’s pyre is set alight.

As he burns, four housemen run circles around him to prevent his escape. And the firecrackers inside him explode, sending fiery bits of winter flying in every direction. The crowd cheers. And if the head explodes quickly, tradition has it that the summer to come will be truly beautiful.

A saltwater aquarium in Berlin employs two full-time divers to clean it.

You cannot buy the world’s largest aquarium at your local pet store. The outer cylinder was assembled, on site at the Radisson SAS Hotel, in four separate pieces, while the interior cylinder was delivered ready-made. The AquaDom is also the largest acrylic cylinder in the world, cost 12.8 million Euros, and sits on a concrete foundation nine meters thick.

Rising through its center is a transparent elevator, which you can ride to the sightseeing deck while ogling 2600 fish of fifty-six different species swimming all around you. If you are actually staying in one of the hotel’s interior rooms, looking out from your balcony can give you the odd impression that you are somehow shacking up in an episode of Sealab 2020.

This aquarium weighs in at 900,000 liters. That’s as much alcohol as all of Cuba distilled in a year, and as much gasoline as Tehran burns in a single day.

A zorb is a hamster ball for people.

Because people are more concerned than rodents about life and limb, a zorb is actually made up of two soft plastic spheres, one inside the other, like a bubble boy nesting doll. The outer layer takes all the impact, while the smaller, internal sphere protects the precious human cargo.

After you have hopped inside, someone then pushes you down a hill. Zorbing hails from New Zealand, which had no shortage of hills to tear down. It made its first international appearance on an early season of The Real World, to mixed results: it was all fun and games until one zorb hit a rock at a funny angle and bounced twenty feet into the air, only to come crashing back down, hard. All the cushioning in the world can only do so much.

For extra absurdity, just add water. If you pour a bucket of water into the interior sphere, you spend the entire ride gliding about in your own miniature wave pool. Hamsters are missing out.

New Zealand couldn’t keep zorbing a secret for long (obviously). It is now also available in Japan, and the Rocky Mountains.

Yuri Gagarin left the earth in 1961, from the middle of the Kazakh desert.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome was the Russian capital of space travel: 6717 square kilometers, dozens of launch pads, and a 1500-kilometer rocket test range. Spaceship parts would arrive by train. Nowadays, although still in service, the Russian space program is surrounded by acres upon acres of discarded and forgotten equipment. A lack of funds means that most of the area has been abandoned, with newborn capitalists making off with tons of unguarded scrap.

When the Buran program – the Soviet counterpoint to the space shuttle – was canceled in 1993, stray material was traded off to Kazakhstan to pay the bills. In 2002, a badly-maintained hanger housing collapsed onto a Buran orbiter, destroying it. The collapse also killed eight people.

At Cape Canaveral, the booster rockets fall into the Atlantic and get towed back to shore. But this is Kazakhstan, land of crude oil, beautiful horses and curious Kazakh children. The ground is littered with fallen rocket parts, turning the middle of nowhere into a spaceship graveyard.

Russia pays Kazakhstan a hefty $115 million a year for this place. The deal lasts until 2050.

The Eighth Wonder of the World has been built by a 57-year old former insurance broker.

This man had childhood visions of his past life in a lost civilization, and swore to rebuild what he saw. He first dug a trial tunnel under his own parents house to better understand the science of excavation, and later bought a home on a remote hillside in northern Italy. And from 1978 and on, an international stream of volunteers took to the earth with pickaxes.

The resulting “Temple of Mankind” is twenty times the size of Big Ben. There are nine temples on five levels bedecked with murals, statues, and elaborate stained glass. Sculpted columns reach eight meters high, and are wreathed in gold leaf. When the police finally discovered the temple (by threatening to blow up the hillside with dynamite), they seized it for the government.

The government has since approved everything. The “Damanhurians,” as they are known, now run their own university, supermarkets, and ecovillages. Multiple Damanhurian centers exist throughout Italy, and have chapters as far away as Japan, Slovenia, and Iceland.

Right hook to left jaw. Checkmate.

Proponents describe chessboxing as the ultimate fusion sport for the body and the mind. For up to eleven rounds, a chessboxing match alternates between three-minute rounds of uppercuts and jabs, and four-minute rounds of studious, deliberate protection of your king.

Chessboxing is not a game for amateurs. Participants are required to have boxed in at least twenty matches, be less than thirty-five years old, and an ELO rating (used for measuring chess skill) of no less than 1800. If not sparring, training often involves running laps or hitting a sandbag, and then sitting down for blitz rounds of pawns, bishops and knights.

The world capitol of the chessboxing world sits firmly in Berlin: the 2007 Light-Heavyweight World Champion was none other than German Frank ‘Anti-Terror’ Stoldt. The Chess Boxing Club Berlin has been active since 2005, and since 2006 there have opened two schools who offer chessboxing programs to children. But moves are being made to expand into Russia and the Ukraine, where there apparently reside legions of experienced chessboxers.

In Bolivia’s San Pedro Prison, you rent your cell.

They can be quite nice, if you have the money. Well-off prisoners can enjoy televisions, private bathrooms, and kitchenettes. One drug baron, Barbachoca (‘Redbeard’) added a second story so that he could see the mountains – although poorer inmates often live six to a room. In your off-hours, perhaps you can play on the local football team, which is sponsored by Coca-Cola.

You can also run businesses, offering anything from photographic studios to groceries to tourism. San Pedro Prison actually become a hopping tourist destination, thanks to both its unique system, and its reputation for top-notch cocaine. In many respects, this tiny prison is no different than Bolivia at large: fueled by drugs, corruption, and a strong sense of family.

If you happen to have a family, they can live with you – they can hardly afford to live outside. Children come and go to school during the day, and are really quite safe. Like most prisons, any new inmates who have hurt or abused children are quickly killed by an angry mob. Here in San Pedro, they are often drowned in ‘the pool,’ a pit of stagnant water in the local courtyard.