Friday, June 30, 2000

192-Part Guide To The World: Equatorial Guinea


192-Part Guide To The World: Equatorial Guinea

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 30 June 2000

Official name: Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
Official name: Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
Location: On the west coast of Africa, between Cameroon and Gabon, in the Gulf of Guinea. One of only two non-island countries whose capital city is located on an off-shore island; the other is Denmark.
Size: 28,100 square kilometres, which makes it only slightly smaller than Belgium.Population: No exact figures but probably not greater than 400,000. About a third of the population fled the country during the despotism of the late 1970s and few have returned.
Language: Officially Spanish, but various Bantu languages are spoken. On the mainland, where the Fang people predominate, Ntumi is spoken to the north of the Rio Benito and Okak to the south. On the island of Bioko - formerly known as Fernando Poo - Bubi people speak their own Bantu dialects.
National dish: Various fish dishes, though this diet was severely jeopardised after President Macias Nguema confiscated the nation's canoes in order to prevent citizens from fleeing his dictatorial rule.
Best monument: The capital Bata, formerly Santa Isabel, which is mainly crumbling Spanish colonial architecture, including a cathedral built in 1916.
Most famous citizen: Former president Macias Nguema Biyogo Negue Ndong - dictator for 10 years until 1979 - isn't famous, but after his execution he was memorably described by his nephew as "an envoy of the devil and president of sorcerers".
Best moment in history: Perhaps the most riveting was the allegation made in some British papers that the novelist Frederick Forsyth had attempted a coup against President Macias Nguema in 1970, on the supposition that 12 mercenaries and 50 soldiers from Biafra would suffice to control the country. The coup failed, but Forsyth's novel on the subject, The Dogs of War, was a bestseller.
Worst moment in history: When independence from Spain in 1968 was promptly followed by a 10-year reign of terror and economic chaos under Macias Nguema.
Essential accessory: An umbrella. Parts of the country receive more than 4,600mm of rain per year.
What not to do: Ask the locals what sort of art movement "Nguemism" is. It refers to the use of violence, torture, terror, rape and murder by the ruling Nguema family.
Official name: Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
Location: On the west coast of Africa, between Cameroon and Gabon, in the Gulf of Guinea. One of only two non-island countries whose capital city is located on an off-shore island; the other is Denmark.
Size: 28,100 square kilometres, which makes it only slightly smaller than Belgium.
Population: No exact figures but probably not greater than 400,000. About a third of the population fled the country during the despotism of the late 1970s and few have returned.
Language: Officially Spanish, but various Bantu languages are spoken. On the mainland, where the Fang people predominate, Ntumi is spoken to the north of the Rio Benito and Okak to the south. On the island of Bioko - formerly known as Fernando Poo - Bubi people speak their own Bantu dialects.
National dish: Various fish dishes, though this diet was severely jeopardised after President Macias Nguema confiscated the nation's canoes in order to prevent citizens from fleeing his dictatorial rule.
Best monument: The capital Bata, formerly Santa Isabel, which is mainly crumbling Spanish colonial architecture, including a cathedral built in 1916.
Most famous citizen: Former president Macias Nguema Biyogo Negue Ndong - dictator for 10 years until 1979 - isn't famous, but after his execution he was memorably described by his nephew as "an envoy of the devil and president of sorcerers".
Best moment in history: Perhaps the most riveting was the allegation made in some British papers that the novelist Frederick Forsyth had attempted a coup against President Macias Nguema in 1970, on the supposition that 12 mercenaries and 50 soldiers from Biafra would suffice to control the country. The coup failed, but Forsyth's novel on the subject, The Dogs of War, was a bestseller.
Worst moment in history: When independence from Spain in 1968 was promptly followed by a 10-year reign of terror and economic chaos under Macias Nguema.
Essential accessory: An umbrella. Parts of the country receive more than 4,600mm of rain per year.
What not to do: Ask the locals what sort of art movement "Nguemism" is. It refers to the use of violence, torture, terror, rape and murder by the ruling Nguema family.

Sunday, June 11, 2000

The spies who came in from the cold


The spies who came in from the cold

Now that Russia has an ex-KGB boss as President, Jeremy Atiyah visits the Lubyanka while it's still a museum

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 11 June 2000

If, 30 years from now, my grandchildren ask me to tell them stories of the KGB, I know where I would like to take them in Moscow. South across the bridge by Gorky Park, behind the arts centre Tsentralny Dom Khudozhnikov, I'll show them a bizarre little park known as the Graveyard of Fallen Monuments. There, in wintry sunshine, they will see statues in dark metal of men with arms like machines and heads like anvils. A Communist theme park for children? There is old Uncle Joe in pink granite with his nose missing. Behind him, hundreds of shattered stone faces are packed, jumbled together inside a wire cage - a nameless memorial to the victims of the gulags.

Further in, under the trees, stand numerous diminutive Lenins, a Kalinin, a Sverdlov. But dwarfing them all, towering in a great green coat at the back of the park, like a race-horse out to grass, looms the shadowy figure of one Felix Dzerzhinsky: the founder of the KGB.

Face-to-face with Dzerzhinsky under the chestnut trees last month, I tried to guess which Moscow square this awesome statue had originally dominated.

Certainly not Red Square, sacrosanct to Lenin, or Gorky Street, home to statues of Pushkin and Mayakovsky. Where then? As any Russian will tell you, in a hushed voice: Dzerzhinsky belonged to Lubyanka Square, where the old headquarters of the KGB is still located, and which - some 70 years ago - came to be eternally associated with the terror of Stalin's purges.

I visited it on a cold May morning this year, with an arctic wind spitting snowflakes. In such conditions, Lubyanka still musters a certain bleakness. "Lubyanka? Oh, the name itself sounds sweet, actually," a Russian friend assures me. "Maybe it has some connection with lyubov, meaning 'love'. " But the bowels of this great granite block, with its wire-covered windows, once resounded to the screams of the ideologically incorrect.

Odd, then, that guided visits to the so-called "demonstration hall" of the Russian secret services, right next door, have been possible for some years, even for foreign tourists. This is the new Russia; even the secret services are in need of a few bob. And there's the question of PR to consider. At the demise of the USSR, the secret services dropped the old name "KGB", with its sinister connotations, and renamed itself the FSB ("Federal Service of Security"). They have even produced a glossy coffee-table book entitled Lubyanka2, costing 500 roubles and (allegedly) sold out.

There is no plaque saying "museum" - only a smiling, beautiful interpreter in her fifties, standing in the street on time for our appointment. My fellow visitors are mostly middle-aged Americans. Our guide, who will refer to himself and to all his colleagues as "professionals", gives his name as Valery. Is this his real name? His eyebrows are so thick and bushy that I suspect they can double as a moustache in a crisis.

"Nothing really secret gets said here," he explains jovially. He reminds me of Mikhail Gorbachev, short and unexpectedly human, cracking jokes about the hell that was 20th-century Russia, for the interpreter to explain. "Thank God they stopped shooting us," she translates, in merriment, after reeling off the names of a string of KGB bosses murdered by Stalin. The last boss but one was, of course, Vladimir Putin - now very much alive as the newly elected Russian President.

The first issue Valery wants to clarify concerns the statue of Dzerzhinsky, the founder of his organisation and hence a Good Thing. "Had he lived in the 1930s, he would have been shot," he exclaims, in his defence. "He wanted to introduce market reforms. He tried to abolish the death penalty. Last year, the Russian parliament voted to return his statue to Lubyanka Square - but the Moscow city council have opposed this." He adds, with perhaps a trace of bitterness, that they are going to get a White Russian general instead.

The museum was first opened in 1984 by Yuri Andropov, who was chief of the KGB for 15 years. "At that time," Valery explains, "it was strictly an internal affair. We never dreamt that foreign guests would ever be permitted." But then came glasnost, and soon the museum was welcoming not only "fellow professionals from foreign intelligence services" but even plain old tourists.

Visitors have included Robert de Niro, who came in search of inspiration for a possible role as a KGB officer. "He asked me about the uniforms," explains Valery, "until I reminded him that secret service professionals do not wear uniforms." One less probable visitor was the "professional" who now works as the director of the Cold War museum in Los Angeles, but who was born the son of Gary Powers - the American spy shot down and captured during a secret flight over Russia in 1962. No hard feelings, then? "Oh no," smiles Valery. "He brought a picture of the rug woven from potato-sack thread by his father during the years he was a guest in our jails."

The collections of photographs and espionage bric-a-brac are not so much the attractions as the stories that pour from the mouth of this entertaining little man. We hear about Philby, Maclean et al ("they did little damage to Britain but saved the lives of thousands during the Second World War"). We also hear about Sydney O'Reilly, the British spy captured in Russia in 1924 who "shared much interesting information with us before being shot". Valery concedes that O'Reilly was a skilful spy, but that he made one crucial mistake: daring to enter the USSR in the 1920s.

Another outstanding character who emerges is one Bistroletov, one of the greatest "professionals" ever to have worked for the Russian secret services, who spoke 22 languages, and at various times passed himself off successfully as a Chicago gangster, a Brazilian businessman, a Hungarian count and a Greek grocer. Strictly in the interests of his profession he married an Italian countess while - for the same reasons - his (real) wife was busy marrying a German colonel.

The examples of James Bond-style gadgetry on display are less sensational than the stories. Inside glass cases we see the usual tree branches with radio cables inside them, tape recorders in briefcases, hiding places for agents inside rubbish containers, false moustaches, hidden cameras etc. I ask Valery how the challenges facing his organisation have changed in recent years. "Before, we had the USA and UK as enemies. Now, it's the whole world. We have arrested agents from 68 different countries in the last three years." Small fry, no doubt, beside the colossal struggles of the past. When the tour is over I step outside into the square once overlooked by Felix Dzerzhinsky. Today, the only clue as to Lubyanka's nefarious past is a small monument across the road: a rough, uncut block of stone taken from the remote Solovetsky camp in Siberia, beside a simple inscription: "For the victims of totalitarianism". A single pink carnation taped to the stone flutters in the icy wind.


Getting there
Jeremy Atiyah travelled as a guest of Interchange (tel: 020 8681 3612), which specialises in tailor-made packages to the former Soviet Union.


Where to stay
Three nights b&b at the Hotel Rossia, including return flights and transfers, costs £ 459 per person, based on two sharing.


Lubyanka tour
Tours take place twice a month, on non-specific days. Booking is essential, through Patriarshy Dom Tours (tel: 007 0957950927). Show up on the day at the tour office round the corner from the Lubyanka and pay $15.


Visas
Interchange can obtain your visa for you, but at least two weeks' notice is required. If applying in person, get to the embassy by 9am to avoid long queues, and make sure your paperwork is in order. For a £ 30 fee, you will collect your visa five days later; for £ 100, you can collect the same morning. Russian Embassy, 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 (tel: 0900 117 1271, premium rate number).


Books: 'The Rough Guide to Moscow', £ 9.99.

Sunday, June 4, 2000

A snobs' guide to holidaying with class


A snobs' guide to holidaying with class

Want to avoid the plebs? Jeremy Atiyah knows all the right spots, like Knokke-Heist. Never heard of it? Exactly.

Published: 04 June 2000

Would you pay a premium to stay in a resort that John Travolta once stayed in? Would you pay a bigger premium to stay in the same resort where the King of Spain is staying at the moment? If so, the holiday season must be a worrying time for you. Because your choice of destination is going to reveal the truth - about you, your finances, and your social profile (or lack of it).

As always, the Mediterranean looks risky this year. Booking into an "exclusive" resort such as Marbella, Monte Carlo, Cannes or Capri may enable you to catch a glimpse of some minor Grimaldi but will also compel you to mingle with the nouveaux riches - millions of them.

You might insist on Antibes or Portofino on the grounds of extreme expense if nothing else (try buying a holiday home in one of them), but beaches with a guarantee of absolutely no plebs at all, ever? Very hard to find. Punta Ala on the Tuscan coast, which contains a beach strip you cannot access unless you are staying in one of the resort's five-star hotels - and where all the sun-loungers are pre-assigned - is a possibility, as is Cap Ferat on the Cote d'Azur.

For a safer bet, but still in the Med, this year I am advising people to book something grand in a place nobody else has heard of. Your friends cannot be certain that these areas contain no Porsches. Spain? Find a parador in the Jaen region, with its olive-clad rolling hills and rambling farmsteads. Italy? A palazzo in the Salentine Peninsula with its cliffs and rugged coves. Just don't give the game away by talking about the "new Tuscany" (implying that you would be in Tuscany if only you could afford it).

A slight variant on the above is to follow a new fashion emerging this year, namely to participate in very expensive touristic activities while dressed as scruffy American college kids. Flying to expensive places on cut-price airlines is extremely trendy for this reason, and taking Ryanair to Brescia in order to attend the Verona opera festival is a perfect example. "We find that lots of young people are saving money on the air fare in order to spend it at the opera," Ethel Power, the head of communications for Ryanair, tells me.

Similar examples include flying another Ryanair route to Alghero in Sardinia, to reach the Aga Khan's Costa Smeralda resort, or using Go's route to Naples as a means of reaching Positano.

Another gambit I recommend for this summer is to seek out the resorts known to be exclusive and glamorous by the locals, but not generally popular outside their native areas. Examples of this include a small, windy town on the Belgian North Sea coast, which serves as a resort for the ultra-rich of the Benelux and Ruhr valley regions. Never before heard of Knokke-Heist? You have now. Follow signs to Le Zoute, an area of town which "makes Monte Carlo look like Bognor" (according to the afficionado I spoke to). The Dutch, Germans and Belgians who run European industry drive their Ferraris and Lambourginis to eat in three-rosette Michelin restaurants here. Why not join them this summer.

Failing all this you will have to look outside Europe and, in fact, a City banker has suggested to me one powerful reason for doing so this summer: "People who count their money will all be taking their holiday in Euroland this year because it is so cheap," he says. "Which makes this the perfect time to rent a house in New England rather than in Tuscany." Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, as ever, will be the places to take your family holiday if you want to rub shoulders with Spike Lee and the Clintons.

But as a select group of British class snobs are already aware, Latin America - with its excellent traditions of wealth-inequality- can offer even better opportunities than the USA. Try an estancia near Buenos Aires in Argentina, for example, or even better, in neighbouring Uruguay (which retains a pleasing exclusivity). The brochure from Journey Latin America describes the estancia accommodation thus: "An elegant country mansion shaded by whispering colonnades of poplars; landscape gardens viewed from oak-panelled drawing rooms..." Tennis, croquet and polo are among the available jollities.

But if you are not tempted by the thought of scones in La Pampa, you obviously need to get down to Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of the Baha peninsula in Mexico instead. This is where deep-sea fishing and an end-of-world feeling have tempted both Madonna and Sylvester Stallone to build their holiday houses into the cliff-face behind the fishing village.

Looking ahead to next winter, the options for serious wealth snobs remain the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. In the Caribbean, the Turks and Caicos Islands look to be a particularly good bet: recent or forthcoming visitors, I am assured, include Prince Andrew and Nigel Mansell. Just make sure you don't get fobbed off with some second-class island (Providenciales or Parrot Cay should be okay).

Down in the Indian Ocean, meanwhile, Fregate Island on the Seychelles is not to be snorted at. The entire island, reachable by private charter plane, contains only 16 private villas, each of which have their own bit of coast and beach, though the risk is that you would not see Nigel Mansell even if he was staying in the next villa. And think about choosing Mauritius instead if you want any chance of being served with a half-decent bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape before dinner.


Australasia might not sound like promising territory for any kind of snob I can think of, though Queensland's Hayman Island is the name to drop if you want to see an Aussie turn deferential (they can't help it). For similar reasons, if you are planning to be in Sydney for the Olympics, the only civilised place to stay will be the Lilianfels Country House Hotel, very British, and 90 minutes out of the city in the Blue Mountains.

Finally, I am told that over in New Zealand Lenny Henry and Dawn French have bought a house on Waiheki island, just outside Auckland, the new "Stockholm of the south". If that isn't a reason to get down there as fast as possible, you are obviously reading the wrong story.