Village to Castle

I get a pretty good view of the port from the terrace of the Glycines, and I can’t help but think about the sailors aboard those container ships that come in. How many are there per boat? A whole crew? And what’s it like coming into port these days? I think it is leagues from “comin’ into port” in my imagination, one fed by Pynchon novels and Tom Waits.



Shore leave probably has completely different connotations than it used to (or at least different from the way that Waits presents it in various songs on Rain Dogs/Bone Machine/etc. and Pynchon tells it in V and Mason & Dixon). I bet the degree is further removed when the port is Algiers instead of Singapore or Malta. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve been down by the port and not seen any bars or brothels or tattooed sailors or dwarfs or talking dogs. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough.



I also got a chance to go to the Embassy of the United States of America, just up the road a bit on Embassy Lane. That is one secure compound, my friends. There are “gardens” with marble 4 foot high marble walls around the whole compound, the security section is at least 20 yards from the road, the whole thing is raised off the road, there are no direct driveways into the compound, and there is an army of guards with nothing to do but watch you walk on the winding (marble-walled) path to the security gate.



Then you get to security, where they take five minutes to inspect your passport, take another ID in exchange for an entrance badge, and send you over to the entrance. As with every door in the whole compound, you pull on it and it doesn’t move, then someone behind the tinted glass determines you are ok and unlocks the door. Once inside there is not only a metal detector and x-ray, but a pat-down and search of all your bags. They keep all cell-phones while you are in the compound.



After security there is a single path, once again littered with marble blocks and with what I am sure the communications department would call a “railing” but is more accurately described as a fence. Did I mention there are guards everywhere? Once again you go through the door dance, and upon being let into the consular section you sit in a highly air-conditioned room and wait upon your bureaucratic masters.



Again obscure, but for the record all the police/guards (not the military guys in camouflage but the other guys/ladies in blue) are shod in Adidas GSG9 Tactical Boots. For what its worth.



What this all really means is that tomorrow I get to start slogging through the Weberian nightmare that is the Algerian bureaucracy, as I have my lettres d’attestation and can now apply for a residency card. We’ll see if they actually make me get an x-ray to prove that I don’t have consumption. Let’s just hope I don’t develop a cough before then.