"Hey, where are you going?"
"Another Place"
...ah, ok, so...well, not so nice, you go to another place and you wont tell me...so you don't want me to join you...oh, ah, ok...I was thinking we were friends...
I was new in Lhasa, my English was poor, I was young.
I was alone.
I was living in an hotel. No foreigner is allowed to rent an apartment in Tibetan Autonomous Region (so called TAR).
In the same hotel, the Tashi Norta, was a group of Spanish. Volunteers.
Nice people, active, bad English also.
Cozy. They invited me for dinner.
After dinner they decided to go for 'una copa'.
Going clubbing, in Lhasa. Cool.
"Where are you going?"
"Another place"
"Well, so fuck you all", I though, but what I said sounded like "Ah, good, anyway I'm tired and... I have to call me ma and...dry my laundry with the hairdryer of the hotel..."
"Really?", they looked at me as a prick Mormon.
'Another Place' was the best bar ever. And it was in Lhasa.
One small entrance and then a tiny room with few couches or just Tibetan mattresses on the floor, old army wooden box as tables, candles, a yak stool stove fighting the Tibetan winter passing through the window's holes, and a box full of yak dry stools like breads.
And a flamenco CD was always playing, present of one of the Spanish.
The owner was a Chinese lady teaching English in the university, the waitress a young Tibetan teenager called 'La guapa'.
I've met there travelers around since more than five years by bike, by foot, by whoever care. English violinist and Mexican widows.
I challenged and won two Irish guys on who was able to drink more beer in that bar.
I've been watching pictures in a tourist camera and discover that, after the monks there was Alex Mc Dowell, Bono and Salma Hayek, discovering he was one of the best photographer ever.
I felt in love and I cried in that bar.
Part of the Chinese plan to delete Tibetan culture forever, is to raze to ground all old building in Tibet and build them again, shining new.
Also Another Place building.
Because I've lived in Lhasa more than two years and because Chinese build fast, I've the chance to see the new Another Place.
The owner and the Guapa were the same, and the mattresses and the stove. But the walls were white and straight. And bikers and backpackers, at that time were wiped out by the riots of 2008.
They added pineapple pizza in the menu, but something more was missing.
Now I'm not new in Lhasa anymore, if I'll have the chance to come back, my English is not Shakespearean yet but improved, and I'm not young anymore.
I've met the person I've married and whit whom I've made a baby in that bar.
Many things have changed, but the old Another Place stays the best bar ever. When is raining, when is snowing, when is springtime and when you are burned out.
But it's not existing anymore, like many and many and many other things in China.
This make me feel so old.
"Another Place"
...ah, ok, so...well, not so nice, you go to another place and you wont tell me...so you don't want me to join you...oh, ah, ok...I was thinking we were friends...
I was new in Lhasa, my English was poor, I was young.
I was alone.
I was living in an hotel. No foreigner is allowed to rent an apartment in Tibetan Autonomous Region (so called TAR).
In the same hotel, the Tashi Norta, was a group of Spanish. Volunteers.
Nice people, active, bad English also.
Cozy. They invited me for dinner.
After dinner they decided to go for 'una copa'.
Going clubbing, in Lhasa. Cool.
"Where are you going?"
"Another place"
"Well, so fuck you all", I though, but what I said sounded like "Ah, good, anyway I'm tired and... I have to call me ma and...dry my laundry with the hairdryer of the hotel..."
"Really?", they looked at me as a prick Mormon.
'Another Place' was the best bar ever. And it was in Lhasa.
One small entrance and then a tiny room with few couches or just Tibetan mattresses on the floor, old army wooden box as tables, candles, a yak stool stove fighting the Tibetan winter passing through the window's holes, and a box full of yak dry stools like breads.
And a flamenco CD was always playing, present of one of the Spanish.
The owner was a Chinese lady teaching English in the university, the waitress a young Tibetan teenager called 'La guapa'.
I've met there travelers around since more than five years by bike, by foot, by whoever care. English violinist and Mexican widows.
I challenged and won two Irish guys on who was able to drink more beer in that bar.
I've been watching pictures in a tourist camera and discover that, after the monks there was Alex Mc Dowell, Bono and Salma Hayek, discovering he was one of the best photographer ever.
I felt in love and I cried in that bar.
Part of the Chinese plan to delete Tibetan culture forever, is to raze to ground all old building in Tibet and build them again, shining new.
Also Another Place building.
Because I've lived in Lhasa more than two years and because Chinese build fast, I've the chance to see the new Another Place.
The owner and the Guapa were the same, and the mattresses and the stove. But the walls were white and straight. And bikers and backpackers, at that time were wiped out by the riots of 2008.
They added pineapple pizza in the menu, but something more was missing.
Now I'm not new in Lhasa anymore, if I'll have the chance to come back, my English is not Shakespearean yet but improved, and I'm not young anymore.
I've met the person I've married and whit whom I've made a baby in that bar.
Many things have changed, but the old Another Place stays the best bar ever. When is raining, when is snowing, when is springtime and when you are burned out.
But it's not existing anymore, like many and many and many other things in China.
This make me feel so old.
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