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Home to Mifflintown, PA

2010-06-13T00:42:00.006+02:00

We had a lot of catching up to do at the start of our final day in VA. However, we needed to start out with a nourishing meal, in this case, at Mancini's down the street. We don't frequently go for breakfast because it's crowded on weekends, but on this weekday we had the place almost to ourselves. We bought a copy of the local paper (some obscure rag called "The Washington Post") and sipped on some locally roasted coffee while we ate.

Once we were satisfied, we hit the road. We decided to try to remain in the spirit of the trip even though we weren't on Route 11 at the time. To that end we took Route 50 most of the way out to the junction with 11 at Winchester. The morning traffic had mostly subsided so it was an uneventful yet pleasant journey through horse country.

At Winchester we took a hard right and started heading north again. We squeaked through WV and MD at a rapid clip, passing Martinsburg and Hagerstown on the way to the PA border. In PA we were going to try and see J&C, who lived not too far off the path. To that end we found ourselves with some time to kill in Chambersburg, PA, which was at the crossroads of 11 and another US Route, the Lincoln Highway (US 30).

We parked the car at the circle in the dead center of town and found our way to a small Latin American grocery, where we bought drinks and pastries. (I also accidentally acquired a not-very-appealing looking guava drink that I carried around for several days). We sat on some nice benches in the shade by the Franklin County Courthouse and had our snacks, where we later observed large "no loitering" signs. Why would they put out benches that invite one to linger and then specifically prohibit lingering?

The Chambersburg Heritage center was across the street and, although we mostly went in to use the bathroom, we decided to peek in the museum part. We were immediately accosted by a teenage guide and led into the museum, where she recited the facts about the town in a seemingly pre-recorded patter. The most interesting points were that, (1) given its preeminence as a crossroads for two major thoroughfares, it was invaded three times by the Confederates during the Civil War and burned to the ground once, and (2) they possess a giant, gold-leafed, rotating statue of Benjamin Franklin. The statue rotates excruciatingly slowly, it turns out, but at least it operates by remote control. The guide reverently showed us how old Ben could face the interior of the museum during the day, but is turned to look out the window in the evening. Disappointingly, she wouldn't let us play with it.

On our way out of town we did a drive-by of one of those wacky Roadside America type things, which was a miniature village in someone's yard. Since we didn't have time to have a long conversation with an old dude with nothing but time on his hands, we couldn't stop. It was then that I made my fatal error in navigation, taking us off on the entirely wrong direction on one of those open-jaw shaped roads. I couldn't figure out why none of the town names were making sense, but eventually it became clear that we were heading SW instead of NW. What's more, our friends were waiting for us and we were in a place with no cell phone reception. Argh!

We let the GPS take over at some point and eventually found ourselves in Lewistown, having completely missed our friends' dinner hour with our roundabout route. After having our waitress explain what OIP meant (original Italian pizza), we ordered some pizza and beers. Somehow Jack's Corona was like $5 but I got a tastier brew for 1/10th of the price. Sadly, the beer was necessary to wash down the sub-edible pizza. Not sure what the OIP designation is supposed to refer to (there were several places in the town that had it), but it was a cruel misnomer since it certainly had nothing to do with authenticity.

Given the lateness of the hour, when we finally did meet up with J&C, they were gracious enough to let us stay the night. We caught up with them on all the goings-on of the kids and watched "Snoopy's Reunion", which was full of plot twists the way the kids got into it. C, however, was not so impressed and kept pointing out holes in the continuity, much to J's chagrin and our delight. It was a great way to end the evening on what had otherwise been a pretty solitary trip.

Greeneville to home

2010-06-12T18:44:00.000+02:00

There is a point in each journey when the tide turns. Something changes and sets the tone for the rest of the trip. For us, it was the sudden realization that the tables in the back of the car weren't going anywhere unless we took 'em, and we were falling behind. If we continued at the current rate, we'd never make it to the end.

We started our morning in song, unable to resist humming the strains of Elton John as we ate breakfast in The Tiny Diner attached to our motel. We perused the morning's news (which happened to be from the previous week since the paper was only published that frequently) over our meal. We contemplated but ultimately did not get the vengeance omelet, featuring chicken AND egg, just to report back to SIL, who is skeezed out by such things.

After passing Pal's, a local fast food chain with an eye-catching design, we made our way towards Bristol, a town which straddles the TN/VA line, and is known for being the birthplace of modern country music, recording Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family and many others over a period of only a few days. Presently it seemed a bit run down, trying to reinvent itself as an antiques shopping hub. We browsed a little but didn't find any gems.

As we entered VA we began to see more and more old roadside signs for motels, restaurants, drive-ins, garages and the like. Not sure what the uptick was due to--maybe the more southerly part of Route 11 was cobbled together later from more minor roads, whereas this portion was legitimately part of the historical driving route of the early 20th century. At any rate, it broke up the monotony some. We also began to travel more through the centers of towns at some point, which both slowed us down and kept our eyes busy.

Our next stop was to the Dip Dogs stand. We were getting into the territory that I had researched at this point, and naturally my investigations led me to food. Now what differentiates a Dip Dog from a regular corn dog? I couldn't rightfully say, except I think there was less of an emphasis on corn in the batter. I wasn't particularly hungry but had to try one in the name of Science. It was good. I'd stop there again, although I'd be more inclined if they had a public restroom.

And from then on, we careened up the road and then got on the highway, stopping only for a sub-par early dinner in Staunton. It was sad having to leave the route for an extended period, but much of 11 through VA was already known to us so I didn't feel that bad about it, although I did miss out on my Route 11 potato chips in Mt. Jackson, one of the reasons we had gone on the trip in the first place. We got home at some late hour, surely alarming the neighbors who had presumed us out of town for another several days (but not enough for them to call the cops, thankfully).

But the tables were out of the car. That was the important bit.

Chattanooga to Greeneville

2010-02-15T21:30:00.009+01:00

We were once again struck by the quiet of the traincar when we woke up. I guess most modes of transportation are built to be insulated from outside noise when they're moving, but one is not usually aware of this fact because one is not usually in a non-moving conveyance for any length of time. Our morning's repast was bagels and coffee and a newspaper in a small cafe across the street. (We had been perusing newspapers over breakfast at each of our stops in order to gauge the quality of journalism in the various locales. The Times Free Press wasn't half bad.)

By this point in our journey we were starting to fall behind. Since we didn't have a set itinerary it wasn't really possible to miss out on engagements or anything, but if we didn't start making some progress we would end up having some long highway drives towards the end of our trip. Given that that would defeat the point, it took us a while to decide to stick around town long enough for the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum to open, but ultimately we were glad we did.

The museum was situated out in the outskirts of town in an industrial district. We parked and took a look at the sculpture/fountain outside, which depicted a tow truck operator retrieving a man and child from a vehicle that was mostly submerged in the deep blue pool of water below. Very dramatic. If they've memorialized it in sculptural form, it must've happened, right? We then went in, paid our admission fee, watched a video about those hard-working, valiant men and women that are so often taken for granted. After the film we were allowed into the room that held the old trucks and various memorabilia. There were toy tow trucks, dioramas, tow truck-themed quilts, etc., etc., etc. The Hall of Fame was a literal hall, a corridor filled with pictures of the homliest group of people you ever did see. Next up was the gift shop, where I got some nice postcards featuring an ad for the very first tow truck.

From there we went to Dayton, where the Scopes Monkey Trial was held. The courthouse there had a small museum in the basement. The guy working there was elderly and animated and was having nothing to do with this so-called evolution. Fortunately he buttonholed another group of people in there and was lecturing them, so he mostly left us alone. Once they disappeared we fled to the second story courtroom where the trial was held. It was a toss-up between marveling over the events that took place there inside vs. watching them taking down a large old oak tree that had probably been there when the trial took place outside. The tree won.

There was a farmer's market going on outside, and although we weren't yet in mid-summer-full-on-produce mode yet, they did have a decent selection of items. We got a pound of raw peanuts and some South Carolina peaches. I wasn't quite sure whether the peanuts could be eaten raw or not, but once I tasted one I didn't have any qualms about digging into the rest. They were chewier and sweeter than the dry roasted ones, and very pleasant. So good, in fact, that I might have to try to grow them myself.

Lunch was fried clam boats and sweet tea on the shores of a nearby waterway. Then we continued back towards 11, crossing into Meigs County (surely named after my favorite Quartermaster General of the US Army). For an afternoon snack, we went on a tour of the Mayfield Dairy in Athens, where they bottle milk and make ice cream. We were separated by glass from the production lines, but nevertheless we all had to wear silly hairnets. I guess there's a lot of corporate espionage in the dairy industry, as we weren't allowed to take photos. Strangely, we stopped in front of a glass-enclosed office at one point to have a Q&A with our guide, and sitting out on the desk was the list of companies that they provide store-brand ice cream to. Surely that's no secret, but I would've thought that they'd prefer their customers to think that Mayfield was an exclusive brand commanding a higher price. The ice cream itself (purchased at the end of the tour) was okay, but not great. I wasn't sure what the fuss was all about, but perhaps it's just a good place to take your kids in the summer when they've about run through all your patience.

As the afternoon wore on, we continued to wend our way through eastern Tennessee, stopping at Knoxville to visit the site of the 1982 World's Fair, which figured prominently in my youth. The (surprisingly small!) fairgrounds are mostly empty aside from landscaping at this point, with the only remaining major landmark being the Sunsphere. Fortunately the Sunsphere was open for business, so we stopped in for a beer and watched the city below.

Dusk was approaching as we made our way to the tiny town of Greeneville, electing to stay at the Charray Inn. We were greeted by a most enthusiastic staff member, who seemed elated that we chose to stay there.

Greeneville had signs pointing to the historic center, so we went to check it out as dusk fell. There was the usual assortment of Civil War sites, homes of former Presidents, and so on, but the most striking item was a historical marker that had to do with the lost State of Franklin, the capital of which was situated in Greeneville (the reconstructed capitol building is shown). After the Revolutionary War North Carolina donated some of its land to the feds to help get it out of hock, but the landowners in the area were not terribly pleased by this idea. They elected to secede and become Franklin, an independent state, which lasted for all of 4 years. Greeneville itself hadn't fared much better, becoming a quaint backwater bypassed by the highway. That suited us just fine, though.

Tuscaloosa to Chattanooga

2010-02-12T19:55:00.000+01:00

Our clean chemical dreams were shattered in the morning when we awoke to find bedbug bites on our bodies. Fortunately we each only had a few--we must not have tasted very good. Unfortunately there was not much we could do to avoid bringing them with us in our luggage if they decided to hitch a ride. (Thankfully there were no repeat incidents or home infestations.)

Breakfast was Waffle House on the way out of Tuscaloosa to Moundville Archaeological Park. We spent the morning wandering around the curious manmade hills and coming up with explanations for their existence. I favored the theory that they were built by the CCC in the 30s to bring some tourism dollars to a place that didn't have much going for it. We didn't find any artifacts, but we did see what appeared to be a boletus mushroom growing in the sandy bank of the Black Warrior River, and also some lifelike displays of the peoples who were supposed to have inhabited the area before the Europeans came and mucked everything up. It was hot, and I took every opportunity to drink from water fountains sprinkled about the property.

This was the day we were changing our car. I had grown quite attached to our spacious sedan and its Louisiana plates, but Birmingham awaited us with a vehicle that had a working outlet for the GPS. As we made our way into town, I couldn't stop saying "ain't no ham like Birmingham!" in a high, wheedling tone, in imitation of one of those oldey timey singers on the "Orange Blossom Special". We decided to take a look at the giant Vulcan statue situated there. He was sculpted to symbolize the growing industrial might of the city back around the turn of the previous century. He commanded a good view of the city on his overlook, but we declined to pay the admission fee to go up.

We rode on from there to the car rental place, where, after a really long time and many consultations, they gave us a massive red Chevy HHR, which I imagined would bring on speeding tickets like flies to cane syrup, especially once we got out of state (actually, we had yet to see a cop on the roads). I signed the paperwork even though it specified that drivers were not allowed in the state of NY.

We had a late lunch in a cozy cafe in Trussville, then headed on up the road. Our next destination was the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, where luggage from the airline industry made its way after being irreparably separated from its owner. I imagined that it would be a treasure trove of exotic items, but it was mostly like a thrift store that had slightly less worn stuff. All the really interesting stuff was in their museum, but that too was sparse. Jack managed to find a few reasonably-priced shirts, and I overpaid for a pair of shorts. Since I desperately needed shorts, though, I suppose I didn't overpay by too much.

We meandered our way back towards 11 and then spent a couple minutes in Georgia, a place where Jack had never been (aside from the ATL airport). He didn't feel like he spent a sufficient amount of time there after this excursion to add it to his list. Somewhere on this stretch he got it in his head that the only thing to do was to stop in Chatanooga and spend the night in a train car.
I called up the hotel and asked if they had any last minute discounts, and they did for regular rooms but none for the cars. We decided to spring for it, thinking it would make a nice contrast to the previous night. We rolled into town right around sunset, and entered the beautiful old train station to check in. Once they told us how to find our berth on the sprawling campus, we parked and entered the world of train geeks.

The train geeks were almost exclusively male and of any age, from about 3 to 85. They were giddy with the fact of being there, even if they weren't sleeping in a car (not a lot of people were).
Once we got in our own and got ourselves situated, we checked out the eating options. This was almost a mini-amusement park unto itself, with different eating experiences at different price levels. We opted to go off-site, to the old train hotel that had been converted to a microbrewery/restaurant, the Terminal Brewhouse, next door. We sat on their outdoor patio having some very nice beers and pizzas as the last of the sunlight left the sky. We had a great view of Lookout Mountain in one direction and the awesome "CHOO-CHOO" sign for the hotel in the other. And for once, we were not suffocatingly hot.

After we walked around the neighborhood a bit and saw a small slice of town that appeared to be simultaneously giving in to decay and resurrecting itself, we retreated to our private car for a very peaceful night.

For the cartographically inclined

2010-01-21T02:16:00.003+01:00

Approximate daily routing.

Hattiesburg to Tuscaloosa

2010-01-20T20:00:00.002+01:00

Due to the previous evening's cruising, we had already picked out the spot for the morning meal: Shipley Do-nuts, which caught our eye due to the appealing, donut-shaped sign. Once inside we ordered coffee and another delicious fried breakfast. We asked how long it had been open as we marveled about the open floor plan which allowed full view of the frying operations. They had been there about 30 years. We sat down to consume our treats as some of the early Sunday morning traffic trickled in.

One gentleman, clearly well-known to the staff, ordered a donut and a carton of milk and sat down near us, all the time speaking loudly and cheerily about various Jesus-related things. He proceeded to cut his donut into 1/6ths with a plastic knife and then eat it with a fork. I guess that's one way to savor your food for a bit longer, but it just seemed wrong.

After eating we took one last pass through town, mainly to see if the Coney Island Cafe had opened up, as they were advertising blueberries for sale on their window. It wasn't, and as we were stopped at a stop light on our way out, a truck full of what looked like construction debris pulled up next to our car and the guy motioned to Jack to roll down his window. He said "I got shit flying off my trailer all over the road, man; I really need a cigarette!" Jack was sad to have to disappoint him. We should probably carry cigarettes around with us at all times so we can spread good will wherever we go. You never know when they'll help you out of a jam.

As luck would have it, we encountered a fruit stand/market not too far out of town. We got some blueberries there as well as some "cane syrup", the purpose of which is unknown to us but it looks like light-colored molasses. Due to my reprehensible diet over the past few days I immediately launch into berry eating when we get back in the car and stain my tongue a deep bluish-purple.

The problem with looking at maps is that you get intrigued by places simply because of their names. It was thus with Hot Coffee, so we detoured off the route to check it out. The town was nothing more than a crossroads with some houses, a shuttered grocery (which, according to the sign, was in "Downtown Hot Coffee", and a general store advertising that they were the welcome center for the town. Obviously the path to Hot Coffee was more well-traveled than I had anticipated, judging by the guest book that showed visitors from as far away as Japan. As Jack took a look at the merchandise I cornered one of the two women working there and asked her about the "hoop cheese". She generously gave us a thin slice to try, and it was mild, cheddar-like and tasty. I would've bought some if I had had any means of keeping it cool. Jack did get a t-shirt and mug, and I got some recipes that included cane syrup as an ingredient, so all was good. And since I know you'll ask, they did look like they were set up to serve free coffee to visitors, but the pot wasn't brewing when we were there.

Up the road a piece we stopped off at Dunn's Falls.
The mill seemed to have a termite issue so it felt a little treacherous walking around in there, perched high on a bluff over the Chunky River. We hiked around a bit in the withering midday heat and I took off my shoes and dipped my toes in the cool water, but it was hot enough that we were looking forward to getting back in the car to take advantage of the AC.

Jack's spotty memory of things he had written down to do on the trip included this intriguing tidbit: that the Queen of the Gypsies was buried in Meridian. It was a good stopping point for lunch anyway, so after we grabbed some Mexican food we cruised around a bit until we found what we thought was the right cemetery. Given that there was no one else around we parked on the main road through the final resting place, and headed off in separate directions to try and find it, shouting back to each other when we encountered something interesting. In the end, though, we couldn't have missed it: it was covered in beads, photos, dead candles and other detritus. In what was a major sacrifice for Jack, he allowed me to take the fruit pie purchased a day earlier in LA to give to the Queen, in hopes that she would make the rest of our trip as interesting as it had been thus far.

A little while later we crossed over into Alabama and through the town of Eutaw, the town square for which contained a massive yet empty turn of the century municipal building. Not too much further along we encountered an abandoned schoolhouse buried in the scrub by the side of the road and decided to check it out. We wandered around among the rotting furniture, broken glass and collapsing roof, enjoying the eerie sensation of a place where something bad must've happened, or they would've salvaged more of the stuff out of it. Anyway, that's how I chose to interpret it. We didn't explore the basement, which I'm sure would've held even more treasures.

We arrived in Tuscaloosa near dusk. We took a couple loops around the city evaluating our motel options and eventually settled on the Masters Inn for a very cheap price. The room was clean and quiet and smelled of a recent chemical bath, all reassuring signs for a place of this price. We drifted off to sleep to the aromas of Pine-Sol and bleach.

NOLA to Hattiesburg

2009-08-07T04:39:00.007+02:00

New Orleans was in the grips of a rainless month in June, although the humidity was quite high. All the Spanish moss had shriveled up back onto the branches of the oak trees, resembling the arm hairs of a hirsute 70s porn star. While our room was nicely conditioned, it was a bit of a shock to leave the building early in the morning and find it so hot and sunny. We asked the person at the front desk if he could recommend another coffee and beignet place that was not the madhouse at Cafe du Monde, and he suggested a more low-key competitor. The beignets were hot, fresh, and delicious, and we subbed the normal cafe au lait with the iced version. The one sour note was that, in spite of it being in a courtyard that really only served the restaurant, it still smelled like stale vomit. The French Quarter gets up in my nose when I go there and won't let go till I leave the neighborhood. We walked down to the nearly shadeless waterfront park to say hi to the Miss-sipp, then went to go check out and hit the road to start our epic journey. Shortly in we discovered that our GPS unit didn't work, most likely because there was a blown fuse for the electrical hookup.

Not having a destination except for Burlington in 10 days made it a little tricky to decide when to stop, but we pretty much stopped everywhere that looked interesting. It was too early to get po' boys, but we kept our eyes open for some place that might have them as we drove. (For some reason all the Asian places we passed referred to them as "poor boys".) Our first stop was the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. There was a little parking lot with some interpretive signs and a boardwalk out over the water. We saw some cool birds and dragonflies and stuff. Back in the car, Jack got a shot of the sign as we started our Route 11 journey a few miles down the road.

A mile or so further on, we passed through Irish Bayou, a community that amounts to a strip of land bordering either side of the road, and water beyond. It was apparently almost entirely destroyed during Katrina, but seemed to be back in operation by the time we drove by. The one thing that was undamaged was the castle house, which looked like it probably ate hurricanes for breakfast. We stopped at a gas station for water, a LA map and a convenience store lemon pie.

Next we crossed Lake Pontchartrain and sang all the songs we knew about it (1), then headed into Slidell and sang all the songs we knew about it (also 1). We cut away from 11 to head towards Abita Springs, thinking it would be cool if we capped both ends of our trip with brewery tours. The brew pub was pretty much the only game in town, judging by the throngs of people inside waiting for a table, but the actual brewery sits far outside of town. Before we headed out there we stopped by the town museum, situated in a former train station, and hit the water park fountain.

Parking was nearly impossible at the brewery, but eventually we scored one of the last spots. Once we had been given wristbands which cleared us for drinking and were issued our plastic cups, we got in line for the freeeee beer from the taps behind the bar. Since we were so late for the tour, we only got a single beer which we drank while watching the introductory movie, but there were people who were pouring themselves a brew and immediately getting to the back of the line, so some must've managed to get down three or more before we went down onto the factory floor. I bet the tour was a regular thing for some locals--cheaper than a drive-thru daiquiri.

The tour was terrible--the woman was speaking through a megaphone and was almost entirely incomprehensible and she was also reading from a piece of paper. It was almost like she wanted to admit that people were on the tour as a courtesy and really wished they could just get back to the free beer. Which, before too long, they did, but not before I noted that they were using some Sharples centrifuges in there. There was a sign over the water fountain that it had pure spring water piped into it, so I filled up my cup and weaved my way through the people who were back in line and headed for the open road again.

Before too long we had crossed the border into Mississippi and were thinking about where to stay.
At Hattiesburg we bought MS and AL maps and went to the very nice train station. It was obviously a large junction point for freight, but at that hour there were only some idled cars with graffiti and a rusting engine. We thought they'd have tourist information, but the station was shut tight, as was the most of the rest of downtown on this Saturday afternoon. We came up with some Plan Bs for places to spend the night and eat and then settled on the Western Motel and Brownstones, respectively. The former was out by the strip malls, but the price was good and the room was quiet. The young woman at the front desk reminded me of the columnist Jean Teasdale from The Onion--I could just see her going home to her apartment cluttered with cats and her wacky earring collection. She was trying to ignore the skinny, nervous guy pacing in the lobby who didn't seem to have anywhere else to go.

We headed out for an okay meal with local beer at Brownstones, and then watched part of a really long train pass by down the street. We returned to the hotel and took a walk in the dark down some quiet residential streets and then got some Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan ale for drinkin'. Although there didn't seem to be much going on in the city since college was not in session, after dark there were a fair number of people cruising in their shiny vehicles, playing loud music and looking at each other.

None of that for us, though. It was time to rest and get refreshed for another day on the road.

DCA to NOLA

2009-07-22T22:03:00.000+02:00

If that Myers-Briggsish seminar we took at work recently confirmed one critical component of my personality, it's that I'm not good at planning vacations. I'm content to skim a guidebook and turn down the corners of a couple pages containing the highlights of a given place, which I may or may not get to depending on how interesting wandering the streets is.

Jack had some illness of lethargy which prevented him from conducting his normal amount of research. I was getting over a sickness myself, and was a few days ahead of Jack in terms of recovery. My main goal for the first day of the trip was not to cough so much upon boarding the plane that they kicked me off and stranded me at home. Everything else was a bonus. Jack had prepared a good set of notes on MS and AL, and I wrote down a couple of things about NY. We were bringing a book about TN, too. My major preparation effort was going to the Roadside America site and coming up with a list of every wacky thing within 30 miles of Rte. 11. We decided to forgo purchasing maps, since we could pick them up at welcome centers or tourist information centers.

Up until the minute the cab arrived we were throwing stuff in bags and getting ourselves ready in the most disorganized manner possible. Generally speaking I'm of a mind that as long as one has a credit card (and a passport if one is going overseas) then everything will ultimately be fine. It wasn't long after we got to the airport, however, that we discovered that we (I) had somehow inadvertently left Jack's detailed notes at home. That deflated a bit of our anticipatory excitement, although he did manage to remember some highlights.

We got off the plane, got our rental car, and asked one of the staff where she thought we might get a good breakfast nearby. She suggested driving the non-highway route into New Orleans. The road was peppered with various edge-area sights: box stores, vacant lots, decaying older strip malls. This one had a difference, though; every so often we'd pass a drive-thru daiquiri joint. It was thus dubbed the "Drinkin' and Drivin' Highway".

A pancake house with a good sign beckoned us from the side of the road. We went in and got seated at a booth. Our waitress was very friendly in the Southern manner. I asked her what she suggested off the menu and we finally arrived at a Belgian waffle with pecans. Whoever heard of such a thing?? Jack got pigs in blankets: pancakes wrapped around breakfast sausages. I got the better of the two. Very fresh pecans both in the batter and on top of the waffle. It was excellent.

Knowing we were too early to check into the hotel, we took a bit of a roundabout route to get there. On the way, we happened to see an estate sale sign. It was a Friday, and frequently the best pickings can be found before the weekend hordes descend. We made a snap decision to stop in to see what kinds of things people down south kept. We parked and then Jack was asked to move the car back by an elderly woman who had apparently never street-parked in her life, since you could easily fit a Shriner car in the space between the two vehicles.

The house was an upstairs-downstairs duplex and we wandered the lower floor looking at the years of accumulated stuff which was remarkably similar to the stuff you find in NoVA. The last room had they holy grail: Heywood-Wakefield end tables at a price unheard of up here. We did one of those "I-don't-know-what-to-do" agonizing dances for a minute, and then decided that if they could fit in our rental car we should take them. We announced this to the salesperson and she emphasized what a great deal we were getting. She offered to throw in a couple of books for free, which was a bonus since we had planned on getting books on the road.

They fit in the car, and so we made off with them and then went to the hotel to check in. Our room wasn't ready yet so we left our bags and drove back towards the Garden District for a wander. It was midday and very hot. Fortunately, the shops beckoned with open doors and icily blasting AC, so we got some breaks once in a while. After stopping for drinks at a bar, we made our way back in the direction we came via side streets, which were quiet and still. Katrina's impact was still evident: some houses were marked with the symbols that emergency responders used in the aftermath, some were left to rot, and others were being slowly consumed by vines. It was sad that such a beautiful neighborhood was still so visibly suffering.

Once back at the hotel we got our room and had a siesta before turning our thoughts to dinner. We decided to go back to Herbsaint, where we had gone last time we were in town. I don't know whether it was because there was no large conference town or because of summer torpor or the slow recovery, but we had no problem getting a table during prime time at this award-winning restaurant.

We both got cocktails, Jack a sazerac and me a Pimms cup. Jack got a dish of gumbo and a plate of pan-fried gnocci with ham and asparagus, and I got a tomato and burrata salad and pork belly with creamed corn. The waiter "didn't take [me] for a pork belly type." I wonder what he would've picked out for me? It was all very satisfying, but Jack won this round.

After that we took a stroll around the French Quarter. I realize why the French Quarter exists, and that people like it, but it is just not my thing. There were fewer people there as well, which meant fewer bands playing music. We stopped into the TI for a map of LA but they didn't have one, although they did have ghost tours aplenty. We walked over to the Faubourg Marigny and nothing of interest caught our ear, so we headed back towards the hotel. We stopped in Jackson Square for a bit, took in the sight of the punk teens and the palm readers, and then called it a night.

God bless America.

2009-07-06T21:34:00.000+02:00

"I love your Americana decor, and the wagonwheel table just screams 'western euthanasia'!"

Who can we blame for this typo? The loss of good copyeditors at newspapers? Poor spellers who rely too heavily on spell checkers who also don't notice when their second letter is obviously incorrect? Bill Gates? All of the above?

Points south

2009-03-09T23:46:00.010+01:00

Five p.m. on Friday we were informed that a guest house was available on Saturday. We had been wanting to get out of town and all the parks' cabins were full or far away, so we jumped at the opportunity to spend the night in Spottsylvania County.

Saturday morning we got up, made coffee and egg and brie sandwiches on rye, packed up, then started heading south. The drive on 95 was a dream--no one seemed to be up yet, or something, because we encountered no slow-downs. Our first stop was the Fredericksburg Tourist Information office to pick up some maps and pamphlets. We wandered towards the river, where there were masses of boxelder bugs hanging out on all the structures. They looked harmless enough, but I think opening up my screen door one fine spring morning and discovering the wall on either side coated with these things would still give me the heebie-jeebies.

10 a.m. on a Saturday in a college town is a great thing. Students are busy working off the previous night's drunk, and the streets are relatively free from their element. We walked back up to the shopping drag, which contained antique shops and not much else. Jack was hoping to buy a magazine, but we didn't encounter any normal stores that would carry such an item. We did manage to acquire a piece of a chocolate-covered digestive biscuit, though.

As the town began to retreat from its somnolence, we headed south and sought out the Blue and Gray Brewing Company, which was in an industrial park that upon entry was an exact replica of the one where Old Dominion did its thing, with the exception of one of the facilities having a Mary statue in front of it. The older part was where the brewery was actually located, however, and that section looked like it had been there for a good while.

It was a fairly warm morning, causing me to regret at intervals having worn a long-sleeve shirt when a breeze wasn't going, but the temperature dropped 15-20 degrees when we entered the dank, cavernous red-brick historic warehouse space where the brewery set up shop. There was a small bar for tastings and we got to try all of their standard beers plus an oak-barrel pale ale, which had an intense buttery-caramel-y aroma. We then took a tour that went around the inner perimeter where all the tanks were located and got a couple more samples right out of the tanks. We were bummed that we were going to miss the St. Patrick's Day parade that the brewers put on every year in the industrial park the following week...can't imagine who all would come out for that.

On the way out of the park, which was crisscrossed by train tracks, we saw some people in an open boxcar doing something with model trains. I, being me, pulled over and asked if we could take a look. Perhaps a mistake, given that it took us nearly a half hour to get back out again due to an enthusiastic soliloquist from the Rappahannock Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (Current Chapter priority #1: to get an address from the county!). They too were getting ready for the biggest event of their year--next week's parade at the brewery, at which they'd put out a whole slew of model trains and open up some of the other train cars to the public, as well as have small trains to ride on. ("Do you know any kids? They might want to come!") Jack got in the only non-train-related question, which was if they knew what industry formerly occupied the site. It was a manufacturer of cellophane, we were informed, which closed in the 70s. Then it was more train talk, about themes of models and the speed of setting them up and how they're operated ("We stand back here and work the buttons!"). By this point we were famished and all full o' train information, and started backing towards the boxcar steps to escape. It was tough, but we managed to extricate ourselves. It was all I could do not to peel out of the lot.

Lunch found us in Spotsylvania Courthouse, the county seat and not much more than a crossroads road surrounded by outsized justice-related buildings. We had lunch at the Courthouse Cafe, which was uncrowded except for a couple winding up their meal over coffee and smokes and a young man unrequitedly hitting on the teen-age waitress. We both had a tasty patty melt as we perused sections of the Free Lance-Star and as the waitresses hung tacky St. Patrick's Day decorations around.

We then crossed the street and went to the Spotsylvania County Museum, housed in a gothic revival church. It contained a motley collection of gewgaws from county residents, including some dumbbells manufactured in the 21st century in a case next to some artifacts from area Indian tribes and the last cellophane manufactured at the aforementioned factory. Anything goes, apparently. The museum minder sat behind her desk and scolded her daughter repeatedly while we were there: "Serenity, get out of there!" while her son Autumn sat on her lap. We thanked her for staying open for us and picked up some pamphlets of area attractions, then walked back across the street to check out the old jail, with its three-foot thick walls, next to the new detention center. We failed to find the old Confederate graveyard due to the map being not to scale, but I'm sure we looked suspicious to all the justices of the peace and whatever in all the many buildings as we slowly walked around the campus.

Heading west, we crossed Lake Anna and then crossed it again on our way to our destination. When we got there, not having received any specific instructions from our host, we parked at the Big House where our hosts lived and went to the back door, which appeared to be the main point of entry. We ascended to the screened-in porch and rang the bell and waited. After a minute or so, the owners, a couple with widely disparate ages, came around the side of the house to meet us--apparently they had been waiting for us at the cottage. Oops! We drove back over to our driveway and re-parked. The husband told us about the 18th century homestead we were staying in and took us on a quick tour of the tiny upstairs, which was normally roped off. The house had been disassembled in Louisa County, moved to this location, and reassembled on the spot of a previous dwelling. The wife, quiet throughout the tour, pointed out the possessions that were owned by her family, who had lived on the property generations ago. This reed-thin woman, swimming in the sport coat she was wearing and dwarfing her husband by a good six inches or more (not including her Fundamentalist-Mormon-chic hairstyle which added another 2 or 3), seemed supremely uncomfortable around us, not really the welcoming hostess one expects at a B&B. But we were just happy to be there to soak up the fresh country air and sunshine, so her aloofness didn't affect us.

Gentry that we now were, we took a tour of the grounds to visit our small stand of grape vines, the headless fake owl that guards the corner of the property, the cows across the pasture, and the lawn tennis court. Back at the cottage, we reviewed the many magazines and pamphlets at our disposal. There was a louvered closet door in our room that was locked, and it seemed that occasionally a small ticking noise would emanate from inside. This added to the weirdness factor of the hosts, and made me imagine we were being spied on. Sunset came and went, and at twilight Jack looked out the window at the Big House. He noted that the only lights that were on over there were in the basement, and just then, lights started flashing on and off upstairs, as if someone had heard us and was trying to show that they were doing things other than paying attention to our every move. Yikes!

We decided to head back towards the lake for a casual dinner. This restaurant was also gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, counting down the days on a dry-erase board. Nothing special food-wise, though, and the lake was invisible in the darkness beyond the plate-glass windows. Back at the house, the mystery about our hosts deepened when Jack found the old guest book in a drawer. The woman's name in this book was not the name of the current hostess. In 2006 there was a gap of a few months in which people addressed their comments only to him, then the new wife's name appeared. I had assumed that since her relations had lived on the property she had had some ongoing connection with the place, but apparently she somehow just got in good with the current owner and was able to return to her ancestral home.

We began a game of Scrabble and opened our Belgian Ale, which resembled a coarse lambic more than anything else due to its unrefined sour bite. Not a favorite. I got oodles of vowels and Jack got an overdose of consonants, such that he was suggesting that I put down some Hawaiian words, and I recommended that he try for "Mxyzptlk" (the rule against proper names notwithstanding). It was a long and thoughtful game. I eventually won only because Jack still had a Q in his pew when I went out.

The next morning dawned warm again, with a thin scrim of clouds moderating the intensity of the sun on our winter-pale skin. I made us some tea while we waited for our breakfast to be carried over from the Big House. We brought the Washington Post Sunday supplement with us, so I read the magazine while Jack did the sudoko. The hosts brought us breakfast consisting of orange juice, coffee, fruit salad, Betty Crocker blueberry muffins and biscuits stuffed with seriously salty ham. It wasn't a very exciting meal, but we were glad for some sustenance before we headed out into the world.

Our next stop was at Montpelier, the former home of members of the du Pont family. And before that, it was owned by some president. The guided tour of the virtually empty house was pretty interesting, but I think it would've been better with at least one room up with a full complement of furnishings, which Jack informs me is indeed the plan. After the tour we visited the ice house/temple, the wood (which included historically-accurate junked cars), the graveyards of the Madisons and the slaves they owned, and the formal du Pont-installed garden, which was still mostly in its winter hibernation mode. The large boxwoods around were wonderfully aromatic, though.

Finally, it was getting on towards mid-afternoon-starvation time so we started off in the direction of home. We had a pleasant lunch on the front porch of a restaurant in Culpeper, enjoying the passing pedestrian traffic and the sounds of people cranking up their car stereo systems with open windows for the first time this year. Jack got a tasty Starr Hill beer from Charlottesville to go with his tasty bison. We took 28 up to Manassas and saw a silo painted as a giant ear of corn on the way.

Crazy is as crazy does

2008-12-01T19:00:00.000+01:00

As I wait for the bus home from work, I often think of my Morning Friend and Afternoon Friend from when I last used to take that route. My Morning Friend has moved to Fairfax and, while my Afternoon Friend has the same job as before, I now take a later bus than she does so we rarely see one another.

My Morning Friend came from a conservative culture and had many problems with her husband, most of which could have been solved if it wasn't her duty to be subservient to him. Things were sort of working out when Jack and I moved to Brussels, as she had started a job (against his wishes) that would supplement the family income and allow them to be more stable financially. She was disappointed that I was moving to Belgium, because France was so much more cosmopolitan.

My Afternoon Friend was...different. She was an African-American acrophobic lesbian who seemed to have been raised in a culture that didn't tolerate differences very well. She had an unusual world view that included neither George Washington or Native Americans. She was being courted by the Jehovah's Witnesses but seemed to be playing them for the attention and free food it afforded. She would get agitated when the bus wouldn't come in a timely manner and begin cursing. She was, it must be said, a little bit out there. Crazy would not be too far a stretch.

I was thinking about them the other evening while waiting for my bus. It was dark, and there were three others waiting with me, all wrapped up in themselves, one using her cell phone, one smoking. I found the scrap of paper I had used to take down JW's phone number in the morning in my pants pocket, and so I eased past the woman on her phone to put it in the recycling can. She scooted half a foot to the right to accommodate me and then returned to her original spot. A minute or so later I put my hands in my coat pocket and discovered an empty seltzer water can that I had been sipping on at a meeting and kept with me because I didn't know where the recycling containers were in the building. I walked over to the recycling again and put the can in, again forcing the woman to move out of my way. I then decided to discover if there was anything else I could throw away. I came up with a receipt from the post office, which was on that thermal fax-like paper, so I went back to the trash can to throw it out (NB: apparently this may actually be recyclable). By this point the cell phone talker had vacated the immediate vicinity so I had no problems. I felt around some more and came up with a shopping list from the previous week on a Post-it and chucked it in the recycling.

At this point I realize I've just been pacing back and forth between my spot and the recycling/trash four times over five to six minutes. I begin thinking how bizarre, how CRAZY, that must look to the three other people, and then. Then I start giggling uncontrollably. I turn my back to the others so that they won't see that I am laughing. And can't stop. It was funny to think other people might think that I was crazy. And then I thought to myself, maybe this is what all crazy people think: the hilarity of others' interpretations of their actions, which to them are totally rational. Could it be that I'm going down that slippery slope? How wonderfully freeing it would be.

Here are some photos that I am reliably informed amply demonstrate my crazitude.

Jack makes the grade

2008-11-17T18:13:00.000+01:00

His Flickr photo of a church facade detail in Federal Hill was included in this on-line guide to Baltimore.

2008-08-29T15:46:00.010+02:00

Our time in the Eastern Hemisphere was running short. There was so much left to do and see, and we had squandered our days doing mundane things like visiting the police station and going to the movies. The weather was just starting to get nice, so we alternated between states of denial and panic as we tried to simultaneously take advantage of our remaining time and get done all the things we needed to do before we left.

We definitely needed to test more chocolates. I went out to Uccle and picked up a brand that we hadn't tried before called Galler. The shopkeeper was very nice and even gave me an extra free piece (for a total of two) after we bonded over the fact that we both weren't keen on lapsang souchong (which was one of their flavors). It was very good stuff. My other motivation for going there was to get a photo of a sign we had seen that amused us greatly what with our juvenile senses of humor. It being on the door to a school I felt a bit strange trying to get a shot of the "Retards" ("late ones") sign, but no one seemed to notice or care.

We needed to visit more of the parks encircling the city. This one had a pond, benches and grassy areas, really hairy cows, and an area cut up into tiny plots for either a garden or livestock. We took the long way back, dipping into the Flemish region for a few blocks, checking out a couple of cemeteries (one with a free bathroom, almost unheard of in this country), an old church of Roman origin, and some sheep grazing in an otherwise empty city block surrounded by buildings on all sides.

And of course we needed to eat at all the restaurants we had seen in the neighborhood and said "we should go there sometime" and then never did. This was complicated by the fact that people were also wanting to feed us as a goodbye gesture AND we were trying to use up what food we could in the time remaining. We did manage to do some good eating, though. I was happy with both Notos, a high-end modern Greek restaurant that we visited with friends, and Chumadia, a Slavic place.

Since we had tried to get into on a weekend one time in the past and it was full, we went to Chumadia on a weekday this time but they were still unable to seat us right away, so we got cocktails and retired to the back garden/storage space and hung out with the resident cat. Once we finally got in, though, we figured out what all the hubbub was about: massive portions of grilled meats for rock-bottom prices. If I recall correctly I made the mistake of getting an appetizer as well, having never seen platters of that size served in Belgium. It was all very tasty, and I was sad to see some chevapchichi left on my plate when I could finally eat no more. Jack tried to order the horse, but without success. Although it's on the standing menu, they apparently only get it in occasionally.

We had a party to get rid of food items and to guilt our guests into taking pantry and household items home with them, which was sadly only marginally successful, forcing us to force bags filled with half-used sacks of salt and lentils and so on on people when they were in no position to refuse. At the last minute, Jack's new Australian coworker was able to come to an arrangement with our landlord where she would rent the apartment and be able to keep all of our furniture in spite of the fact that he wanted to put down parquet flooring between tenants. I'm not sure how that all worked out, but it was a relief to not have to worry about it anymore.

I was having some issues with my caga tio, who seemed to be harboring a pest that was making ticking sounds that I could only hear when the house was totally silent. Not wanting to be the person who brought an insect to the US that decimated the oak population, I researched methods of eliminating it. (I initially decided that it was a death watch beetle, but after a while I realized that the light in my eyes wasn't slowly dimming, so I researched other insects.) The standard means is to heat the wood to a certain temperature for a certain time. I didn't want to damage the little guy, though, so I removed his cheery hat and smile before baking him. He looked so naked and pathetic in there, like he couldn't understand why he was being subjected to this torture. This stopped the ticking long enough for it to be shipped to the US without customs destroying it, and then it started back up again. I then went for the irradiating power of the microwave, which proved to be a more permanent solution after the second attempt.

We moved into a B&B for three nights after we gave our bed away. It was a single room in a house-behind-a-house one block over from our place. The woman renting it was a doctor of some sort who would put on her leather bomber jacket and drive off on her scooter in the mornings. She would set out breads and cheeses and fruit and yogurt and juice for us in the morning and we'd consume it at the dining table in the front house as the tenants made their way off to work on the other side of the frosted glass doors. After seeing innumerable Nespresso commercials at the movie theaters featuring George Clooney as an idiot who assumes these hot women are talking about him but really they're discussing their beverage, we had an opportunity to try it at the B&B. I guess it's okay for pod coffee, but it creates an annoying amount of waste.

We went to the commune to de-register. Surprisingly, we learned that the de-registration is done in a different building a half a mile from the registration place. As chaotic as that place always was, the new one seemed worse because the windows handled a bizarre array of issues and everyone seemed to be in a great hurry. Since there was once again no line or numbers, you had to keep an eye on everyone else to keep them honest. We paid them something like €20 each to legally leave the country, and then went to the post office and forked over a similar amount of cash to have our mail forwarded to Jack's office (entirely a waste of money since it seemed to be ineffective).

Finally, at long last, came moving day. I called my contact at the moving company in the US on Thursday and Friday to find out what time we could expect the movers on Monday, but heard nothing back. So we arrived at the house on Monday morning not knowing what to expect and discovered the painters were trying to get in, but no movers. We called the local firm and they had no record of a move scheduled for us. Panic set in at this point, yet we couldn't really do anything until the workday started in the US at 2 p.m. Brussels time. It was a very frustrating few hours. Fortunately, the local company was willing to tentatively schedule a move for the next day pending confirmation of our contract with the US company. So in the end we ended up needing that extra day of cushion that we had built in, but it all worked out. I was even able to rustle up some takeout coffee for the first time ever for the movers when they showed up on Tuesday, although carrying it over the bumpy cobblestones was no easy task.

Since we had accomplished all our administrative tasks, we had Tuesday afternoon free. We went on a tour of the Hotel de Ville in Brussels, something we had always wanted to do but the English tour was usually full up on weekends. We managed to get advance tickets due to the fact that I had to go to the bathroom, so they allowed us to purchase the tickets in advance which gained me admission to the facilities. We went over to Martyr's Square and sat in the brilliant sunshine and had our last beer and croque monsieurs at a cafe there.

Looked around for the last time, a bit wistfully, and then went home.

RoI end

2008-08-17T17:24:00.000+02:00

Our last day of our last European trip dawned dry and breezy. We had breakfast, made our picnic lunch, and returned the key to our hostess and said our farewells. The woman advised us that it'd take us about the same amount of time to get back to Dublin whether we took the highway or not.

We got on the road to seek out a cave and a holy well in town. The first, the Poll a Wee cave, was on an unnamed back road on the edge of town. Having no map with us, we had to rely on instinct and the memory of having passed such a road in the vicinity the previous day. The directions on the map we had researched the previous day said you could reach it by crossing a stile and entering someone's field, which we assumed would be okay since they told us how to get there. We drove down the road till it ended in a muddy rut by a farm, and turned around. There was no sign of a gap in a wall for pedestrian access, so we had to give up on it. The well was a bit easier to find, since it was on the main road just past the castle. It was overgrown and under-visited, just a cross sticking out of a patch of ivy surrounded by high grass, but it was our last chance for such holiness so we took it. I felt compelled to at least attempt to cut the grass with a conveniently-located mower.

Then we got on our way in earnest, passing the shores of Lough Rea and any number of small towns, and stopping briefly in Bullaun to see the rather disappointing Turoe Stone, which was practically invisible inside its unlit plywood shack. Fortunately, Turoe Farm and Leisure Park, which shares space with the stone, wasn't open for the season yet, or I would've felt strange tramping around their property looking for a large stone phallic symbol.

We got on the highway for a while, then got off again once it ended (the east-west thoroughfare is still under construction). After a fashion we found ourselves in the town of Kilbeggan (Ireland has more great town names per square mile than even one of them crazy southern states, I reckon). We passed another distillery and, having time to kill, decided to check it out. We paid our entrance fee for the self-guided tour of Locke's whiskey distillery. They don't actually produce any whiskey there, but when the place closed in the 1950s they left everything in place, as if just going on vacation for a few weeks. So everything is ancient and grime-covered and just waiting for it all to be resurrected. The self-guided tour was actually quite entertaining, as it went into the day-to-day conditions of the plant, down to the fact that workers apparently devised a lot of ways to secretly steal alcohol from the place. It was the main livelihood that supported the town, and when things would break the citizens would band together to pay for repairs so they could keep collecting a paycheck. They are currently storing and maturing whiskeys there, so we got to taste a sample given to us by a woman who clearly wanted to get back to chatting with the woman at the front desk. I got one question in before she abandoned us. Probably we should've gone around to the other side of the bar and helped ourselves to additional drinks to spite her.

Helpfully, there was an attached cafe which allowed us to ignore our picnic lunch. It was after the midday rush of tourists and there were just a few straggling locals at that point. The food was fairly standard and we didn't linger too long, having places to be. Back on the road to Dublin we picked up another section of actual highway, and listened to the afternoon shock jocks convincing one of their coworkers to go into an office building across the street from theirs, get past the lax security and make herself a cup of coffee. Titillating! Then it was two times 'round the airport to get to the gas station they clearly don't want you to use to fill up your car before returning it, as the place can only be entered while exiting the airport grounds. We checked in in plenty of time, had our last Irish Guinnesses, hopped on the plane and went home. For dinner: picnic sandwiches.

They Call Me Baby Driver

2008-08-04T14:53:00.000+02:00

The next day started out with a pleasant breakfast of eggs, brown bread toast with Irish butter, orange slices, and Irish breakfast tea. Not quite as artery-clogging as the previous days, but one can't eat that way all the time. We researched the day's activities, which mostly consisted of driving around the Burren area and looking at ruined abbeys and the like.

I was thinking of putting together a route map to more accurately depict our day's travels. We did so much circling around and back-tracking and dithering that I can't remember all of it, although if I had it would've looked pretty spectacularly random. Suffice it to say that we spent a lot of time on the back roads of a relatively small area of the country, as we lost our way and corrected our route and stopped places and just drove around. I DO know that we saw the following:

+ Corcomroe Abbey (in ruins)
+ Poulnabrone megalithic tomb (which had fallen down recently but they found another slab rock to prop it up with)
+ Hillsides of the Burren free from any vegetation more than a couple inches high, thanks to cattle grazing that keeps the area tidy
+ Gravestones written in Gaelic
+ A Sheela na Gig near the town of Killinaboy
+ High cross of Kilfenora
+ Lots of ill-proportioned religious scenes carved in stone

We were denied having lunch in the Ailwee Cave because we felt it was wrong that they made you pay to park. After driving through the three roads of Ballyvaughan several times in an effort to find a place to eat, we took the back way round to Lisdoonvarna and traveled all three of THEIR roads, squeezing on such narrow thoroughfares that at one point I clipped the mirror of a parked car with my own. Fortunately in other countries the mirrors readily fold in for just such a reason, so no damage was done. We found ourselves at the Roadside Tavern, which specialized in smoked fish dishes. Having had quite a demanding morning, we grabbed a table next to the cheery coal fire and each ordered a Guinness.

A table of Australians across the way from us were just finishing their meal. For some reason they felt the need to complain about the fact that grocery stores are open on Sundays there. I had to resist the urge to go over and shake them by the shoulders and tell them that they didn't know how good they had it. I just sighed resignedly and ordered a smoked salmon dish. Jack got the smoked fish plate, which contained a variety of species. Both were very good, just the thing to ready us for the afternoon of more driving around. We lingered a bit after the meal, enjoying the quiet coziness of the place. At one point the proprietor came around and tsked himself for letting the fire dwindle, but he had a new pail of coal to toss on at the ready and it soon resumed its former strength.

Eventually we headed in the direction of the park containing the Cliffs of Moher, one of those things you have to see if you're in the area. We drove to the cliff's edge outside of the park and then looped back around on the Liscannor Bay side to come at it from the other direction. On the way, we happened by St. Bridget's Well, a cemetery and spring-fed pond featuring a life-sized statue of the saint encased in glass. A tunnel covered from floor to ceiling with rosaries, pictures, notes and statues led to a man-made pool where people go to get healed or whatever they do at places with supposedly mystical properties. All that needy hopefulness was kind of creepy. How many dreams were dashed after a visit here?

After that, we were ready for some unbridled scenery so we hit the cliffs. After an extensive, award-winning renovation, the cliffs are now essentially walled off and completely lacking in danger, giving this formerly wild place the air of a tourist-trappy attraction. It's a very pretty wall, for sure, but still I found it to be a real let-down. You could take photos of yourself and email them to your friends, but a gaggle of teens were using it so we didn't partake. The only exciting thing about it was the high winds, which forced us to walk at an angle at times. It was like being in a hurricane, except there was only a little spitting rain. We had a warm-up tea in the welcome center/museum/gift shop and then hit the road again, but not before the guy at the parking lot cashier's booth told us that the winds were quite normal, not anywhere near the extremes they sometimes see.

We returned to Kinvara to regroup for dinner. On the way back we bought some gas at a station on the other side of town. I went inside to pay. "Just the gas." "What kind?" "Oh, I don't know, whatever it was on that pump over there." [Gestures towards the car.] "Oh, I thought you said 'cigars'!"

Weatherwise it was another intermittently rainy, blustery day, and not really much fun being out. As the day drew to a close I walked to the grocery in town to forage for food for the next day. I thought we'd picnic on our way back to Dublin to save some time and money, rather than going to a restaurant. I got some tomatoes, cheese, a tube of English mustard, and some pastries for breakfast the next day. I also bought a bottle of Bulmers hard cider that we had seen advertised around but hadn't tried yet. The store wasn't very busy, and the cashier asked me where I was from (Washington) and whether they got snow there this winter (yyyyesss). I didn't want to get into the whole Belgian thing. Sometimes it's just too much for people to handle.

As night came on and the rain and wind picked up, it became clear that we were in no mood to venture out again. We made a meal of what we had on hand and drank the cider, which was good. Our host had this crazy hand-drawn map of the town showing all the ruins and various other items of note in minute detail. The map was printed in the 80s and falling apart, and we wished we could take it around with us because it had every street, alley and footpath noted on it, along with the locations of ruins, cemeteries, holy wells, caves, and other items of interest. But we made a mental note of a couple key features and hoped we might come across them in the morning on our way out of town.

Side note

2008-07-30T17:09:00.000+02:00

You hear a lot about Irish people saying "how's the craic" as the starting point to a conversation about the latest news or gossip or whatnot. This phrase not being one that naturally rolls off the tongue, we gave our NI hosts a laugh by saying "what's the craic" or various other permutations as we tried to perfect our nonchalance. We never actually heard the phrase uttered, though, and were beginning to think that it was some kind of legend, until we were walking down the streets of Donegal, and a teenage girl uttered the phrase as a form of greeting instead of "hi" when she encountered some friends on the sidewalk. I was, frankly, astonished that people would adopt something so much more complicated when a simple one-syllable sound would suffice.

Donegal breaks the Brigadoon curse

2008-07-22T17:30:00.000+02:00

After another poor night's sleep (although nothing could compete with the previous one) and another enormous breakfast, we got back in the car for the ride to County Galway. We mostly stuck to the larger roads, since it takes longer to get from place to place than you think it will on this island. This was compounded by the fact that we stopped a lot--to look at crumbling ruins, to step into charmed prehistoric circles of standing stones while sheep watched warily from the next field over, and to visit the town of Donegal, which is much more attractive than its namesake in PA.

Donegal was our lunch destination. We strolled past the obligatory castle, around the market square, which was bustling with the buying and selling of cheap food and merchandise, and then walked right out of town in an effort to get some hunger going. The town was small enough that this wasn't particularly difficult. We saw another graveyard on the grounds of a ruined abbey and stopped in to survey the inhabitants. There was a good range of headstone styles and ages, which made for some interesting looking. Some overlooked the water, a pleasant place for a final repose if there ever was one (although decaying bodies may negatively impact water quality when placed in a location with so little buffer).

The lunch places recommended in the book were all closed, so we selected a big barn of a place nearby that seemed popular with the locals. We got sandwiches in the pub part, opting not to sit in the wee snug for fear of being overlooked by the wait staff. (Turns out that they know to look in there--go figure.) The food was pretty standard, but the scene was lively, with a bustle not unlike the typical American after-church meal.

With our appetites satisfied, we navigated the narrow roads out of town and continued heading southwest. We passed Ballyshannon, Sligo, and the outskirts of Galway. Listening to the radio is one of our pastimes of driving vacations, and Ireland's stations were a mixed bag of dreck and entertainment. Some stations were in Gaelic, and at first I thought we were picking up a signal from the Netherlands, as the guttural sound of some letters tricked me. Given that we were driving in and out of An Ghaeltacht, as the Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland are called, it should have come as no surprise. (What was surprising was the fact that, in spite of the warnings in guidebooks that one might have problems with signage in this area, everything was in both Gaelic and English so it was fine.) As afternoon wore on, the announcer on a station playing traditional music came on to recite the obituaries. This went on for about 10 minutes and covered several recently-departed individuals. We eventually switched to another station and discovered that they, too, were reading the obits. While passing through Galway around rush hour, we listened to a broadcast were the young DJ had an old man on the phone, clearly trying to get a rise out of him with an eye towards getting him to say something non-P.C. The old guy had that throaty Irish chuckle you hear Lucky the Leprechaun do on sugared cereal commercials. After staring at each other in disbelief that people actually did that here, we couldn't help but laugh ourselves.

We arrived in Kinvara about 6 p.m., parking our car in the small gravel lot by the house and converted barn owned by our host. She came out to greet us and took us into her place to get the keys, where she was knitting a spectacularly colorful array of baby clothes. She asked us if we had heard about her place on NPR, as one of their reporters comes there every summer and did a piece on it. She also said that John Prine summered in town with his family, sometimes jamming at the musical evenings that crop up so frequently around there. She then showed us to the barn where we'd be sleeping. It was thatched, with uneven whitewashed walls a foot or more thick, and filled with books and art. I thought to myself, I'll have no problems sleeping HERE, even though the barn is practically sitting in the road. Although the barn was supposed to be self-catering, she had stocked the fridge with breakfast supplies, earning our eternal gratitude.

After puttering around a bit in our cozy space, we made our way out to explore the Dunguaire castle across the street. This place has tours and medieval-style banquets in the more temperate months, so we just skirted around the outside on a slim, muddy track that gave way to the bay below. After a fashion it was time to decide about dinner, so we walked into the town proper and scoped things out. Let's see, should we go to the one nice restaurant with pricey food that was recommended? Or the self-dubbed "best food and music in town"? Or the other best food in town place, with free music nightly? It was awful difficult to discern between one place and the next there, and all of them seemed pretty quiet at that hour. We ended up at Keogh's, which had some stickers of various travel publications on the door, and sat in the pub area. Another so-so meal passed, as we listened to two very authentic looking old guys chatting at the bar and drinking endless cups of coffee. There was an acoustic guitar case propped up against the bar, a good sign, and a guy who would alternate between checking on it and having a shouted conversation with another person in the restaurant area. Eventually he left with his possessions, and after dawdling as much as we thought humanly possible, we exited as well and took another slow cruise around town, listening carefully for any distant strains of a violin or crooning, but all was still. We entered another bar, this one nearly barren of ornament and seemingly populated exclusively by locals. I got a couple beers at the bar and we had a sit at one of the tables, ignored by the rather boisterous group of varying ages (although women were heavily outnumbered). We sipped our way through the beers, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did so we went back to our place. We researched the next day's activities and called it a night.

(The title of the post references the fact that I fervently believe that stopping in Donegal somehow created the karmic connection that allowed us to find the elusive Maggie's on the Pike in Donegal, PA, last time we drove the PA turnpike. I've wanted to go there for years, and we actually tried one time but failed to find it. I referred to the place as the Brigadoon of Donegal, appearing every so often out of the mists so that mortals can visit it and sup on its vegetarian cuisine, and then disappearing again without a trace. Now the curse is broken. But given the fact that it's a ways off the turnpike and that it was a bit pricey, I doubt we'll be dropping in with any regularity.)

NI, day 2

2008-07-07T22:30:00.000+02:00

Time and a decent breakfast make up for most, if not all, injustices perpetrated in the night, so after some grumbling and in-room tea, we descended the stairs for the morning's repast. The cheery husband served as waiter, and seemed befuddled when we came down, as he had apparently not been informed by the missus that we'd be dining at that hour. The buffet consisted of the usual B&B stuff (cereal, OJ, yogurt (including rhubarb!), caffeinated beverages), and then the guy brought out the Ulster fry: fried soda bread, fried eggs, bacon, really good sausage, fried tomato, and fried potato bread. Every bit of it delicious, and not a bit of it going to waste in spite of its immense proportions. Wikipedia informs me that it is traditionally all fried in lard. Loverly.

With that under our belts we hit the road back to Portstewart, having already told our hosts the day before what we would like to see. We all crammed into their Continental style van that they rented in France (with the steering wheel on the wrong wrong side) and made our way to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, a tourist attraction that connects some scenic cliffs with a tiny island. It was mighty windy on the narrow trail leading to the bridge, which was protected from the cliff's edge by a thick, thorny hedge of vigorously blooming whin (gorse). Once we started out it began to rain lightly. H. managed to make it across the scarily-jouncy bridge in spite of her fear of heights. The views were beautiful and the sea a lovely deep greeny-blue, but it was not an ideal day for hanging out. We lingered on the island a bit and then made our way back to the car, once again damp.

Our next stop was the Bushmill's distillery for the whiskey tour, paying a dear price for the privilege. We waited about a half hour for the tour to start, discovering in the meantime that the bathrooms had won an annual prize for nicest facilities in NI (although our hosts told us that nearly everyone has won it). We then had to trudge through the rain again to get to a connecting building. It was not all that interesting of a tour, primarily because there wasn't much to see aside from the giant copper distilling vessels and oak maturing barrels. And the bottling facility wasn't operating because it was a weekend, so we got shown a video instead. But our tour guide was nice and endlessly patient while answering all the questions she had answered a million times before, such as the fact that the water they use comes directly out of the stream outside the complex, but the triple-distillation process removes all the impurities and then the high-proof liquor is diluted to the proper strength with tap water. She informed us that Bushmill's had created a new whiskey for the distillery's 400th anniversary that was made with crystallized malts, giving it a distinctly different flavor than the others in their line. Once the tour was over we received one sample each of the whiskey of our choosing, although the new whiskey wasn't among the choices. The tour guide came around and chatted us up and I asked her about it, and she said she could give us a wee dram due to our specialness. I wasn't crazy about my first sample, but this one was very pleasant. I resolved to ask strangers more questions from then on, thinking that at least some of the time it would result in interesting things happening. That lasted about a week before I annoyed myself out of it.

When we concluded the tour after a look around the gift shop, the sun was peeking out and we ate lunch vagabond-style in the back of the van. We were well-provisioned with cheeses, crackers, strawberries, watermelon, and other delights. I had some special ANZAC biscuits that I had made at home and was carrying around in the unlikely event that I needed a snack, so I shared those as well. It was a nice light meal after such a heavy breakfast. Our next stop on the grand tour was to the Giant's Causeway, an unusual geologic formation made up of hexagonally-shaped stone columns rising out of the water. At £5 per car, it was a relative bargain when compared with Bushmill's. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, and in contrast to the reverential air of most such places, people were scrambling all over the rocks and having a good ol' time. Young couples were testing their bravery by getting their pictures taken while the water sprayed up behind them after hitting the rocks. Once we got our fill, we took the long way back past an organ pipe rock formation and up the hillside, gamely crawling under the "trail closed" barrier and scrambling over the not-at-all dangerous miniature landslide blocking the path, to enjoy the scenic views from on high.

Later we stopped off in the town of Bushmills for a pint while we waited for the dinner hour to arrive. We learned that the room we were in, which had space for about 8 people, was too big to be considered a "snug". We learned that we were pronouncing "Smithwick's" properly. We learned that C. was well on his way to becoming Irishified, with all his talk of "sweets" (candy) and "football pitches" (soccer fields) and "chips" (fries) and "crisps" (chips).

After a reasonable amount of time, we headed over to Portrush, Portstewart's tourist-trappy next-door neighbor. The arcades and rides gave it an Ocean City vibe, but this was March, when all the OC stuff would still be shuttered. In Ireland, though, the first day of spring is on February 1, so they were well into the season by the time we showed up. In spite of the hokiness, they did have some decent dining options there, and on this day everyone and their mother was trying to get into the Harbour Bistro, just like us. We put our names in the queue and then went to wait upstairs in their ample lounge. An hour later they called our names and we went down.

The system was similar to the one we encountered in London, where you peruse the menu at the table and then order up front. I got a nice piece of salmon with caramelized fennel and cep (porcini) foam. Jack got an amazing dish of mac & cheese with a side of garlic fries. Everything was well worth the wait, and if you forgot to convert the currency it even seemed to be reasonably priced.

Knowing we'd have a drive ahead of us the next day and given the previous night's lack of quality sleep, we headed back to the B&B after taking in Portstewart's nightlife of people eating ice cream in their cars, taxis waiting outside of the nightclub, and teens who wanted to be hooligans but weren't brave enough to act out in front of the cops cruising slowly down the strip. (All the police stations in NI look like prisons--high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire.) We were sad to have to leave after such a short visit, but it was time to head south.

Good for what ails ya

2008-06-17T14:21:00.001+02:00

Our last trip of our European lives was to visit Jack's brother's family in Northern Ireland for a long weekend. This was way back in March, which according to some weather site or another, is the least precipitous month of the year. Right on! We were going to be driving, and to that end we had picked up a map of the Irish Isles when we were in Lille at the biggest bookstore in the known universe. (Thankfully the map section was right in front or else we would have been in there for hours.)

We flew into Dublin and went to the car rental place, where we picked up our automatic car, having learned from the experience in France that it is better to pay more than to have Jack do all the driving on a manual. I had been doing some mental imaging of driving on the wrong side so that I'd be prepared when we got here. Somehow, though, it didn't really stick till we were out on the roads. Jack drove first, and I was talking him through each turn, roundabout and lane change for his benefit and mine. It never quite became second nature, but after a bit of practice it wasn't so bad. Neither of us ever got the hang of the wipers or turn signals. It's probably a dead giveaway that people are tourists when they're constantly turning on their wipers in dry weather when exiting roundabouts.

We stopped in the mid-sized town of Drogheda for lunch on our drive north. We picked out the spot because there was a recommended eatery and because there was a saint's head on view in a church there. We enjoyed sandwiches and Smithwick's ale while overlooking the landscaped backyard of this upscale tavern. We paid close attention to the waitress when she pronounced the beer as "Smithick's", so we called it that the rest of the trip, hoping fervently that it was correct and not that our waitress had some kind of mental imbalance which prevented her from pronouncing the W sound. It was great being in an English-speaking country. Even better that we didn't have to immediately get some money, since the Republic uses euros.

We drove into the town proper and followed our less-than-adequate street map to get to the church. St. Peter's RC church sits diagonally across from St. Peter's Protestant, and you're just supposed to know which is which. We entered the first one we came to and were pleased to discover the head of St. Oliver Plunkett in residence. This wasn't one of those miraculous heads that haven't decayed with the passage of time--this looked like one you'd find on a post somewhere, serving as a warning to others who might think about crossing the inhabitants. I think we may have annoyed a couple of the devout people in the church, but really, what do they expect when they have a shrunken head on display?

After getting caught in a brief shower on our way back to the car that left us damp and cold, we drove to the nearby Monasterboice, an old ruined abbey filled with graves and celtic crosses. While this place was particularly well-known for the intricately-carved "cartoon" crosses they had there, we discovered that having a cemetery on the grounds of an old abbey was by no means unique--I suppose they figured that the land was already consecrated so it shouldn't go to waste. Besides the florid testimonials to the dearly departed, the headstones frequently told you who had erected them, which I found to be extremely prideful for dutiful Catholics.

Back on the road, we crossed over the border to Northern Ireland without any warning, aside from a couple of pieces of graffiti of a political nature. Shortly thereafter the highway became a two-lane road and we were caught in a backup on the road to Belfast. We made a quick decision to take the slightly less-direct route to the west of Lough Neagh, after which it was smooth sailing. Occasionally we'd end up behind a truck hauling hay or something, and they would courteously pull over 3/4 of the way onto the generous shoulder to allow people to pass while they continued driving at the same pokey speed. I had a good time trying to pronounce all the town names as we drove towards Coleraine, emphasizing what I had decided was a guttural "g" sound in Armagh, Maghera, Garvagh, and so on. We stopped and got some Northern Irish pounds in a small market town since we managed to forget our own British pounds at home.

We got to our B&B a bit after 6, parked and tried to check in. The downstairs was full of children who ignored the doorbell. Eventually I wandered into what was clearly the private part of the house, caught a kid's eye and she reluctantly left her rambunctiousness to go get her mam, who came out after a fashion looking a bit harried. Once we got our room we went back out to meet the family in Portstewart.

Having seen them just a few weeks prior, there was no tearful yet joyful reunion this time. We took in their labyrinthine flat, which had approximately the same square footage of hallways and blind alleys as it did rooms, and then headed out for a walk along the waterfront. It was windy and cool, but we had it almost all to ourselves at that hour. We then went into Coleraine for dinner at an Indian place. The food was tasty, the sauces all very rich and creamy. Mine was supposed to be really hot, given that it had 3 out of 4 stars, but it was fairly mild with just a bit of heat. K won the prize for the best line of the evening: "Dad, do 5-star restaurants only serve really spicy foods?"

Once back in Portstewart, we returned to the B&B for an early night of TV watching. Naturally there was nothing on, and Jack fell asleep right away. In the room next door, which seemed to be separated from ours by a thin scrim of paper, they sounded as if they were rearranging furniture. This went on for quite some time, but eventually I drifted off only to be woken at 2 a.m. by the doorbell ringing. Over and over again. A half hour or so elapses in this manner, and the guests finally gain entry and quiet down. In the morning I wake up early and unrefreshed to the sounds of kids thudding around and screaming. Sigh.

Lille-puttering

2008-05-21T09:34:00.000+02:00

Lille was like being in Flanders yet speaking French. Lots of the typical architecture and Belgian-like food. It was also incredibly cheap and quick--you get to ride the Eurostar heading towards the chunnel and London, so anyone who just wants to go to Lille is a bonus for them. The weird thing is that since the majority of passengers are going to London, you have to pass through British immigration enforcement within the Brussels train station.

Upon arrival and orienting ourselves (which went something like "building shaped like massive ski boot behind us: check; giant psychedelic tulips in front: check"), we went to the tourist office, which is housed in a medieval building that used to be the residence of a count or something, by a most circuitous route, and bought a pamphlet of walks around town then went upstairs to their minuscule museum. They had some great stained glass up there, including this one of this guy calmly holding his own head while a fountain of blood shoots from his neck, and photos by kids in one of their sister cities.

Lunch was decent, Belgian-seeming cuisine with good beers in a nice old cafe. I believe I had rabbit in kriek sauce.

Following a visit to the old Bourse where we procured some vintage postcards from Alsace, we discovered that the opera house across the street was having an open day, so we wandered around in there a bit. The set on the stage was fantastic, but we were too antsy to stay for any of the programmed entertainment. More wandering ensued, leading us to the Cathedral anchoring the center of town. The church has a relatively new facade. At first I was put off by the monolithic look of the thing from the outside, all chunky black doors and white/grey paneling. But. Then you go inside. It is the most amazing transformative effect imaginable, as the dull paneling turns out to be marble which glows in the sunshine, and the black doors are textured glass that becomes translucent inside (the black arch on the door in the photo above corresponds to the one at the bottom of the photo below; there are a lot of better pictures of this on the web if you look for "Lille Cathedral"). I was hoping to come back after nightfall and see it lit from within but it was not meant to be.

Young people are always being hazed in Europe. Or at least that's how it appears to the untrained eye, anyway. Having to dress up in shapeless coveralls, kiss strangers while wearing a sandwich board, smash eggs on their heads for party money, or drink to excess and strip down to their skivvies and swim to a duck island in the middle of a pond. The skivvies were removed after this photo was taken. There was quite the amused/bemused audience watching this scene including one person in a gorilla costume. Oh, you crazy Lillois.

We crossed a canal and headed towards the military fortifications created by our 17th century nemesis, Vauban. The earthworks now enclose a military academy which is surrounded by a scummy moat that a reasonably fit person could hop over, which is in turn ringed by a jogging path. Being a nice day for March, many users were vying for space on the trail. We took a leisurely lap around and then dipped back into the main area of town. Through "Three Eels Passage", where we noticed one entrance led to a karate school. Over to the Hall of Sugars, which was noted on our map but sadly failed to be of any interest.

As it began to grow dark and spit rain, we made our way to a tarte flambee restaurant we had seen earlier. We hadn't encountered anything like that since we left Alsace, and despaired ever tasting that homey delicacy again, so we were pretty excited. We went inside and heard the dreaded words: "Vous avez une reservation?" Sadly, no. A mournful shake of the head let us know there was no space. Dang! We wandered the streets in a daze, wanting something exciting, something different, and ended up after a fashion at Buffalo Bill's for burgers. I thought it was going to be all American tourists in there, but everyone around us was speaking either French or British English. The burgers were decent but not exceptional.

2008-04-18T11:03:00.001+02:00

No time to update right now, sadly, but there are a few of our favorite recent things on the flickr page.

And THEN...

2008-04-15T15:08:00.000+02:00

The fabulous W. family came. It had been a while since we had any guests to show around, so it was nice. We had a great time riding the public transportation, eating waffles (Brussels AND Liege styles), tasting beers, and checking out all the hot spots:

The flea market at Place Jeu de Balle (where Jack conducted some actual haggling and H. bought a surprise birthday gift for R. that she managed to conceal for the entire rest of the trip), the Atomium, the Manneken and Jeanneke, the Grand Place, the Military Museum (surprisingly popular with the kids, and where the once-a-month market meant that you could find rare books interspersed with the planes) and the view from the top of the arch.

K. and C. each stayed with us one night, and they were the perfect guests, going to sleep early and never waking once (not really surprising since we walked them around till their feet were bloody stumps). K. was on a tear of finding stuff, first plucking a €5 note out of the gutter, then a picking a painting with two slices in it off a sidewalk. C. was brave enough to try some snails that H. got from a street vendor--not every day you see a kid doing that.

In the news

2008-04-04T16:28:00.005+02:00

The travelers (or at least 1400 of them, probably mostly Americans) have spoken: Brussels is the most boring city to visit in Europe.

Brussels new North wastewater treatment plants opens to rave reviews from the birds. Look at the clarity of that effluent! At notorious "bad plant" Blue Plains, you can see a plume of clean water entering the turbid Potomac from the air. I think Aquiris needs to fine-tune their processes and at least get rid of that embarrassing trail of foam.

As soon as it hit spring we were treated to 5 days of intermittent flurries and snow. One day there were the biggest flakes ever. Jack wanted to compare them with 7 cotton balls in size, but I made him change it to 6.

London end game

2008-04-03T22:23:00.001+02:00

The next morning we got up, checked out, and hit the pavement. Somehow I got it in my head that the Brick Lane neighborhood, the center of Bengali life in London, was the place to be on a Sunday morning, when the markets were in full swing.

We hopped on the subway and headed east. The southern end of Brick Lane, where we started, was churchday-quiet. Yet a number of shops were open, putting out delicious aromas of exotic sweets. As we headed north, though, we found that the markets of vendors of secondhand and homemade indie goods were just getting going, blessedly free of hipsters wearing their Sunday morning hangovers like a mantle. We picked out baked goods at one stall and fresh-pressed ginger-carrot-orange-apple juice at another. We breakfasted while looking at graphic tees and handmade purses and funny ties in the former Truman brewery. Across the way at another, nearly-identical market we got a coffee and perused stalls of the same stuff. The t-shirt about how dolphins are gay sharks was funny, but not funny enough to buy and wear around. I guess we're just getting too old for that sort of stuff.

Further north the flea market vibe reigned, with blankets set out with all kinds of junk spread on the sidewalks. A few blocks on it changed again--cheap but new clothes, electronics, food and housewares. I believe one could literally get anything one wanted without entering a store, as long as quality wasn't a consideration. Jack bought a winter hat for a quid and a CD for 100 pence. The actual storefronts contained vintage goods (we wandered into one of the larger ones and Jack walked away with a midnight blue corduroy blazer for £5) and fashionable clothes and products (I looked wistfully at the cool but too expensive items). As we were saving ourselves for lunch, we skipped the famous beigel (like a bagel) shop, much to my eternal regret. I have no idea why I decided it wasn't worth it to bring some home.

The street market petered out on one of the offshoot lanes and it was back to quiet Sunday again. We walked off the map to return back to the main drag, passing by a farm-park with a variety of depressed-looking animals. Apparently there is a lot of bad Bengali food to be had in Brick Lane these days and you have to know where to go to get something decent. A side street brought us to Meraz for Handi-style Indian cooking, with hot tea to stave off the chill. We both got the specials, fish balls for Jack and lamb for me, which hit the spot. It was pretty dead in the restaurant, but everyone who entered (mostly to chat or get takeout) was well-known to the proprietor, who seemed to be an activist in addition to a restaurateur, if the conversation was any guide. After we ate the cook came out to make sure that we liked everything. Awesome.

Leaving our leisurely lunch spot, we visited the larger, more established-looking Old Spitalfields Market and got some postcards. A green spot on our map that we tried to get to was in reality a military academy, so we ended up in the small Bunhill Fields Cemetery next door that held the remains of William Blake in addition to a variety of nice old stones. At this point we were mostly killing time till we had to be at the airport, since there wasn't really anything we could delve deeply into before we had to go.

We headed through the Barbican complex, a large and depressing area of apartment and office towers done in the Brutalist style using a lot of concrete. It had skyways connecting the buildings one story off street level, reminding me of Rosslyn on a much larger scale. It housed the Museum of London, though, which was free, so we bided our time there until we needed to head for the train.

Once at Liverpool station we returned our Oyster cards for cash (tip: if you plan on doing this, make sure you give yourself about 15 minutes extra time) and hopped on the train. We dined at the airport and in the bathroom I saw those powerful hand dryers again. Last time I had been afraid to use them but this time I took the plunge. It looked like my hands were in that James Bond flick where he's in the centrifuge going out of control--the skin was being pushed backwards off my palms. It certainly dried my hands in a jiffy.

London Pt. 2

2008-03-25T10:45:00.001+01:00

The night before we had spied a place not too far from the hotel that offered a cheap breakfast: free croissant with a coffee, or something along those lines. So we went there and got the special along with a fruit salad to counteract the previous days' emphasis on fried foods, and breakfasted while perusing our free copy of the Times with other early risers. We needed to be up and on our way at a reasonable hour to get to the half-price theater ticket window before it opened to be assured decent seats. Once we got there we realized they didn't have anything we were really excited about seeing--all the half price tickets for shows we wanted to catch were sold elsewhere. So after dithering for a bit we gave up and left.

We then went to the place where Billy Elliot was showing and didn't get tickets there, as the only ones left were obscured view seats. The woman at the counter leaned waaaay over to show us exactly how we'd have to sit in order to see the stage well. Not interested. We crossed over to the south side again to check out one more place that might be viable, taking a nice stroll along the waterfront to get there (affording the opportunity for Jack's shot of Parliament), but they had standing room only. Oh well--another of Jack's dreams dashed.

Fortunately, by this time and with this amount of wandering, we were well-placed and hungry enough to go to one of the restaurants we had picked out, a modern Polish joint called Baltic in the middle of nowhere. The streets were quiet with very little foot or car traffic, perhaps because the area was presided over by the teetotalers, who don't stand for a lot of guff.

There was hardly anyone in the place when we got there, and the white walls and skylights of the former coach house made it seem even emptier. We were seated at a cozy table and ordered some beverages and appetizers. I got a mushroom soup and Jack got some kind of eggplant-goat cheese deliciousness. The soup was very tasty--lots of chewy, flavorful mushrooms in a base that I couldn't stop sopping up with the fresh rye bread I had selected from the giant basket we could pick from. (This is after I had cleaned out the little pot of beet/horseradish spread they provided with the bread.) Jack's thing was good, but I was too busy with my soup to notice it much. For our mains I got pirogies filled with cheese and mashed potatoes and Jack got the blini sampler plate, which came with caviar and smoked fish and other delicacies. The service was respectful, the setting pleasant, the food well-executed, and all in all it was a great experience.

Happily floating towards our next destination, we made our way to the Tower Bridge, crossed and entered the Tower itself. The Tower, it turns out, is not a literal tower, but a complex of buildings that acted as a prison, detaining people who were out of favor with whichever royal family was in power at various points in time. We opted to get the audio tour, which allowed us to learn some interesting facts that we otherwise wouldn't have. Did you know that Sir Walter Raleigh, one of those guys you vaguely remember from history books as having something to do with the English colonization of America, was incarcerated in the Tower THREE TIMES, and was eventually beheaded there? This in addition to all his trips to the Americas. The man got around. (Note: this is not on the audio tour. But the desk where he did much of his writing is in one of the rooms, and one makes a mental note to find out why he was there. They do talk about two young princes who were murdered nearby for some reason having to do with the shifting tides of power.)

We arrived at the Tower towards the end of the afternoon and thus didn't get to examine everything as closely as we would have liked. We did get to see ravens and fake diamonds and real diamonds and this room where people appeared to have been confined for quite some time, if the depth and intricacy of their etching on the walls was any indication.

Having successfully made it through two meals without any fried foods, we rewarded ourselves with fish and chips for dinner at a place called Rock and Sole Plaice. This was supposed to be the oldest fish and chips place in London, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense given their name. Did a simple description of what they sold accidentally turn into a bad pun over the years as new forms of music were invented? We may never know. After we figured out there was table service in the basement, as opposed to the unruly scrum ordering takeout upstairs, we managed to squeeze through the kitchen and descend the stairs to grab the last spot. The walls depicted an elaborate aquatic mural, giving the room an air of a deep-sea dive. We ordered the...um, fish and chips (there was also chicken on the menu, but why?) and Greek beer. The food was very good--light and crispy batter and fresh fish within. We each got a different fish, but I couldn't tell the difference between the two. The chips were also tasty, and the tartar sauce was homemade and pleasantly dilly.

We had scoured the listings in Time Out to discover if there were any evening options for us, and after striking out at the free jazz place we went to the £5 jazz place, which was actually a restaurant with a stage and a large bar area. It was crowded as sin, but after procuring some (very large) glasses of wine some people left and we got one of the bar tables. The band started and played some nice but not all that compelling standards. We slowly sipped our wine and enjoyed watching the stories play out in the dining area in front of us, which was almost like a second stage.

We must've looked like we were not that committed to staying, because I noticed people eying our seats, keeping track of our every shift that might indicate we were leaving. We did end up going after an hour or so, and I offered the chairs to some people next to us who had been enjoying themselves and ignoring us. As soon as we got up, though, a guy accosted Jack and asked whether we would give him and his lady friend our seats, and we had to turn them down. Tough luck, dude.

London revisited

2008-03-21T09:51:00.000+01:00

You will recall, no doubt, the tragedy that was our last visit to London in 2000, me with a badly sprained ankle from our Cotswolds journey. Riding the tourist buses back and forth through town. Limping through the British Museum. Jack's dream of visiting the Tower of London deferred. The flaming Greek cheese, which was pretty much the highlight of the whole thing. And the really bad Chinese liquor.

This time was going to be different. We were both in reasonably good health for once. This time we were going to walk till our feet were bloody stumps and come home hobbled. On purpose!

Jack and I have different approaches to traveling: he likes to come up with a list of things to do and see, of which we actually get to some percentage. I'm happy to go just about anywhere and look at anything, so it doesn't really matter if I'm in a museum or in a litter-strewn sidestreet. (He is, too, but likes to have a more defined structure beforehand. Usually we'll go to see something famous and then see that the line is too long and decide to head for the nearest litter-strewn sidestreet.) He asked me what I want to do before we left and I said "eel pie!" That was it. I read about them several years ago in a Washington Post travel article. I just wanted an eel pie. Upon further research I discovered that the eel pie place had closed since the article was written so I had nothing.

We got cheap tickets from Ryanair, meaning we were flying out of Brussels Charleroi airport for the first time. Our flight was very early so we hopped on the bus at the Brussels train station for the 45-minute trip and got to the airport before dawn (which is no great feat in January).

Charleroi airport is known for being up until recently the exclusive domain of Ryanair, the granddaddy of cheap European carriers. It's dingy and small and not anywhere you'd want to spend much time--more like a bus station than an airport. There was a cafe at one end and we managed to get an decent cup of coffee there to wake us out of our morning fog since the check-in counter wasn't yet open. The guy operating the coffee machine was also working the cash register, so he'd serve a handful of people and then go around to the other side of the U and ring up the same handful of people, waiting impatiently to complete their transaction.

After we checked in I bought some snack mix at the small shop they had there, which is hands down the nicest space in the building. The woman who sold it to me asked me what my destination was. I forgot that "London" was a different word in French (Londres), so I just said "London" with a French accent which caused her to switch to English. I'll never get the hang of this crazy language.

Upon arrival at Stansted, which was much bigger and cleaner than our departure airport, and which had the most powerful hand dryers known to man, we got on the train to the center of town. We were delayed by some track issue halfway through our journey (I found the announcer more difficult to understand than the ones speaking French on the Belgian rail due to a combination of his accent and the crappy PA system), and in the interval Jack saw an Asian mini-deer flit by in the adjoining marshland. Apparently they're taking over the island and pushing out native species while eating everything in sight. But by god if they aren't the cutest things.

Even with the time change in our favor, it was nearly lunchtime by the time we got into Liverpool station (our flight was also late leaving). We took our time wending our way through the financial district to our selected lunch spot, and we got there at a reasonable time but early enough to avoid the rush.

The restaurant was located down a back alley and was staffed entirely by elderly women. One asked us if we had a reservation and then told us to sit anywhere we liked. We chose a spot that was like a booth cut in half--a wall on one side and three seats facing a wooden divider. Another elderly woman brought us beers. Jack ordered the "chump chop". The waitress asked, "Would you like a side of sausage with that?" Jack readily agreed. How could he pass up a side of sausage? Jack's chosen vegetable was (British) chips. I had a "beef and real ale pie" with pickled red cabbage. The food was just so-so, but the ambiance was lovely. The place began to fill up with hearty laughers and nearly-identical young men in fancy suits. The last unoccupied seat was the one next to Jack, and eventually it was taken by a cheery man who enjoyed visiting every few weeks. He also got the side of sausage, and told us that the people who frequented the establishment were all in the insurance business.

By the time we excused ourselves from our table the place was filled with those waiting for space, and more smoking in the alley outside. It seemed like they were all ready to get their Friday on even at this early hour. Their carbon-copy appearance was really quite disturbing. The only difference seemed to be the hues of their outrageously-colored ties.

We headed back out onto the streets and crossed over to the south side of the Thames via London Bridge. There was a really extensive food market exuding delicious aromas nearby, and we thought about deciding that this would've been a better lunch option, but between the beer and the atmosphere and the sitting at the first place, I think we made the right choice.

Our next stop was the Globe Theater. We paid our money and were told that the next tour would be starting in so many minutes. So we took our time on the exhibit space, which we thought was rather small, but when they rang the bell for the tour we saw that we had only covered a third of it, the talky boring part rather than the mannequin-laden re-creation part. Ah well. The guide was great and seemed to enjoy being there, which really made for a pleasant experience. While we were on the top level, a group of teenage dramatists came out on the stage. Their guide asked them to split up between girls and boys and recite a line, probably from Romeo and Juliet, in unison. First the girls approached and turned away, and the boys responded. It was amusing to be the private audience for what was surely an embarrassing spectacle for some of them.

We went back to the north side on the Millennium Bridge and made our way to our hotel. After checking in and having a little sit, we rushed back out again to try to catch evensong at Westminster Abbey. We hadn't had the opportunity to ride the Underground last time we were there due to my infirmity, so Jack was interested in checking that out. Conveniently, the subway is also a way to quickly get from one place to another. We got some rechargeable Oyster cards from the guy in the booth and were on our way.

We got to the church in time to get seats that were not in the choir stalls themselves but with a good view of them. I didn't really know what to expect--I thought maybe the boys would sing for a bit and then it'd be over. In reality it was an entire service with readings and the like. Some guy from the Australian Embassy was invited to the pulpit in honor of the impending Australia Day. The music was sublime. I wondered how much work the kids had to do on a weekly basis to be able to sing like that. I certainly wouldn't have stuck with it, but then again, I'm generally known to be lazy. On the way out we noted the tombs of the famous dead people such as Newton and Darwin as we passed. They didn't really want you eying stuff since you had to pay admission during the day, so we felt good about sneaking some looks in for free.

On the way back to the hotel to develop dinner plans, we decided to pop into a pub for a brewski. Every bar was packed with young people spilling out onto the sidewalks and streets. These people were practicing TGIF as if it was a religion and that day was the final judgment. I'm sure there was some snogging going on at some of these places. Where there's agglomerations of young Brits and alcohol, you can be certain that snogging will follow. We managed to find a place celebrating Australia Day that was slightly less full than the rest and I wiggled my way past the bodies to the bar and procured a couple of beers. I had little faith that I'd be able to locate Jack AND not spill anything at the same time, but he had miraculously found a table and was standing on the foot rungs of the chair waving his arms so I'd see him from across the room. Brilliant, as they say.

Thus restored we eventually decided on a dinner spot in a neighborhood of dinner spots on the northern end of Soho. We ended up at a fancy burger joint. Jack is always researching the perfect non-American burger--he finds that other countries don't get the bun-to-meat ratio right most of the time. When a burger is eaten with a knife and fork, as most uncivilized cultures are wont to do, the ratio doesn't matter that much, but picking it up is the true test of its mettle. The system at the restaurant was complicated--you were led to your table at the back, you looked at the menu, then you went back up to the front and ordered, having memorized your selections AND your meat temperature AND your table number. And the chips were called fries. I had the buffalo burger, which may very well have become the new king of the Most Expensive Burger, as it was something like £12 without any sides. But it was tasty and it was London and I was converting from euros and not dollars so I wasn't complaining.

On the way back we passed an open Roman Catholic church which featured this sign in the vestibule. There seems to be a lack of faith that one's neighbors will do the right thing. I'm glad they managed to get the very proper English word "whilst" in there--that's how you know they're not messing around.

Alst u blieft.

2008-03-11T22:15:00.004+01:00

"Ghent is like Bruges, except bigger and it doesn't survive primarily off tourism," we were told. It was also reputed to be Belgium's design and fashion capital. After a year and a half, we had managed to never get there. But our determination finally won out in the end and we went in mid-January.

It was a surprisingly long haul from the train station to the historical center, so by the time we got there (on foot, not wanting to miss any of the charm that the suckers on the tram wouldn't see, although it turns out there wasn't any in that area) we were already half-dead. We briefly oohed and aahed over the neat buildings in the main square and then decided we had to procure some food. We found a nice canal-side establishment called Chez Leontine that couldn't seat the group of eight ahead of us, but managed to find a spot for two next to a wall of tchotchkes that allowed me to take this cool photo of our neighbors. We got a couple of local brews that were produced for the bar next door (and our waiter had to go outside to retrieve them from there), including the closest thing to an IPA that I had tasted in Belgium: Gandavum Dry Hopping. Crisp, hoppy, refreshing. I ordered a passable vol-au-vent and Jack got a delicious seafood version of the traditional Belgian waterzooi.

Towards the end of the meal I went upstairs to use the restroom. Having conducted my business I went to find the flushing mechanism and...all I have to say it was a lucky thing I wasn't trying to snort cocaine.

Thus fortified, we did some more gawking and then went to the Gravensteen Castle, initially the home of a count, then used as a factory for spinning cotton, and at some other point a prison before being forgotten about and falling into disrepair. Since its initial restoration over 100 years ago it has become a popular tourist attraction. There were some lovely views from the top, but the interpretation of the site was limited and I didn't get much out of the visit.

There was no question that Ghent was an interesting town, and the little details one would encounter on random streets would bolster this impression of quirkiness. There's a museum of outsider art housed in a former psychiatric institute that we were hoping to get to, but sadly there just wasn't enough time for that and all the wandering and gawking we needed to do (the giant space that I can't seem to get rid of just heightens the excitement!):

by canals,

in shop windows,

up alleys,

down sidestreets,

through beguinages,

in churches*,

and so on.

Later we stopped for a beer in a little bar off the market square. The waiter didn't remember my order so had to ask me again, and chided me for not understanding his question in Dutch. He said he didn't go to London and attempt to speak Dutch there, so my identity as a stupid American was protected. I attempted to apologize in Dutch ("het spijt me"), but my pronunciation must have been so far off that he didn't recognize that I was speaking to him. Later he said he had been kidding, but I wished he was able to realize that I had given it a try.

*I finally discovered on Wikipedia why St. Nicholas is always shown with a washtub full of naked kids. Check it out--quite gruesome, and some say the inspiration for Sweeney Todd.

Favorite coffee icon

2008-03-10T11:46:00.000+01:00

Too bad Santos Palace is mostly geared towards providing coffee to the restaurant trade and the clerk in their tiny retail shop wasn't interested in helping me pick out something good.

There is also a short Belgian movie about a waitress called "Santos Palace", but I haven't seen it.

Brave New 2008

2008-02-18T10:22:00.004+01:00

The critics rave about Deus beer--all notes of this and nuances of that. Deus is the "champagne of beers", as it is fermented in the champagne style. Although it's a Belgian beer, the bottles are taken to France at some point in the process and something mysterious happens to them there.

We bought a bottle of Deus for New Year's eve. We chilled it, cracked it open, and poured it into champagne flutes. I was expecting something light, crisp, and hoppy, essentially a dry champagne character with a little bitterness thrown in, or something. But this "champagne" was fruity. Sweet, almost. I don't object to beers with a little sweetness to them, but somehow it didn't work for me here, probably due to the mismatch between my expectations and reality. Since it seems to be second only to Westvleteren in retail price of non-vintage beer (and Westvleteren is not supposed to be resold--you go to hell if you do), it should save us some cash.

New Year's Eve was a dinner party at Jack's coworker's house, since the fireworks on the Grand Place had been canceled due to the threat of terrorism (which has also caused them to seal off all the trash cans in the Metro stations). This was followed by an American-style brunch at our place on New Year's day. We had homemade English muffins and biscuits and baked eggs and fruit salad and quinoa-tahini salad. No one wanted mimosas so we ended up with a lot of leftover sparkling wine. Some kind of unspoken conspiracy caused everyone to bring dessert so there was Portuguese flan and Polish prunes covered in dark chocolate (surprisingly delicious) and German stollen and Spanish torron that we brought back from our trip. We ate like kings for the next several days.

2008-02-17T11:30:00.000+01:00

The sea was calmer on the way back to Tarifa, thankfully, making for some smooth sailing. Once back in town we had about three hours to kill before the bus came, time enough for some lunching and wandering. Once again we weren't hungry, so we took a stroll to kill some time. We checked out some castle ruins, visited the southernmost civilian point in Europe (there was a crumbling military base on an island that we couldn't get access to that was the actual southernmost point), and generally enjoyed the bright sunshine with the other promenaders who were taking advantage of it. We found a Plan B restaurant and the went to check out the one that the guidebook had recommended: a healthy breakfast-all-day type place which I assumed would be closed for the season, but they weren't!

Jack got an enormous bowl of yogurt, granola, and fruits of all types. I got a miniature sandwich, which was fine. We each ordered a smoothie to go with our meal. It could've been one of those lengthy affairs had the newspapers been in English, but no. I ordered a lovely piece of homemade energy bar/oatmeal cookie thing for the journey back to Seville.

After lunch we went over towards the bullfighting ring, an area of town which seemed to house most of the non-seasonal residents as well as some the city's more monumental public works projects, such as a long boardwalk festooned with graffiti along the Atlantic-side beach, and a wind-swept plaza on a hillside that served no apparent function and was falling into ruin. Once we knocked that off our list we had literally seen everything even remotely worth seeing. So we headed to the bus stop to wait. The bus was on time, and the ride back uneventful.

Once we checked into our hotel in Seville Jack did some texting with a coworker who was visiting her family nearby and was in town doing some Christmas shopping. We met up with her at a tapas bar for a drink, and were subsequently joined by her sister and friend. We had to do the triple-kiss greeting to these strangers, the first time I had to kiss someone on the initial meeting. Jack's coworker talked about things on the menu that people ate at home, and we got some bean and ham combo at her suggestion. It was not very delicious, sadly.

After she left to take the bus home, we went to see a fabulous belen that I had read about the last time we were there. It was entirely crafted from ice. There was some kind of eco-theme to it, and it was traveling the countryside to make Spaniards more environmentally aware, but the message wasn't overt and you just walked into the semi trailer, took a gander, and walked out.

More wandering commenced, and after visiting the remains of the old city wall and some Roman columns in a pit in the backyard of an apartment building that we came across by chance even though we had gone looking for them in the past, we returned to the hotel.

The next morning all we had to do was check out and get to the airport. Since we had some time, we decided to fortify ourselves with churros and hot chocolate before hauling our luggage around. The churros place had just opened for the day and we may have received the reheated leftovers from the previous day, so I was a bit disappointed that this Christmas eve treat was a bit lacking, but it was fun sitting in the park and chowing down on the crispy nuggets while taking sips of the hot chocolate, which was a lot thinner (and therefore more easily drinkable) than the previous one we had.

The bus ride to the airport was uneventful aside from the fact that the bus driver appeared to be insane, conversating with other bus drivers on the route through closed windows.

Then it was back home for a memorable Brussels Christmas with our Spanish treasures.

2008-02-07T09:00:00.000+01:00

On the trip over to Tangier, which was somewhat rough but not as nauseating as the ferry to Capri, I kept having flashbacks to our last trip to Tangier--Tangier Island in VA that is. In 2004, the ferry failed to return for us the next day in spite of their promises and assurances, and we had to hire a crabbing boat that was lashed by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan as the captain navigated across the Chesapeake Bay to take us back. What if we got trapped again?

Once we showed evidence that they had already collected our ticket stub we were allowed to exit the boat and made the long stroll to the end of the dock. A. was waiting for us with a sign with my name on it. He greeted us enthusiastically and led us to his car.

We chose to book a tour guide for our Tangier visit because it was cheap and because we had heard stories of people being led to a carpet merchant's shop and essentially being held hostage until they bought something. Since we had only allocated a day for the trip, we didn't have time to do the normal wander-until-you-stumble-across-it method that we prefer to use to see the sights and we wanted to make the most of our time there.

A.'s car was a beat-up old clunker that needed to be restarted at every light--a far cry from the air-conditioned van that had been described. But in it we felt less obvious than we would've in a larger vehicle full of tourists, and I got to ask A. unlimited questions from my front seat vantage point. Everything was green and lush from the recent rainy spells, delighting farmers but disappointing people like us who wanted to move around without fear of being drenched.

We wended our way up the hillside overlooking the town and went through a neighborhood nicknamed California where the streets were lined with eucalyptus, and then higher to the palaces of the very wealthy. Apparently all Arab nations are required to supply at least one prince to the area during the summer months, and they all live in a row on this one hillside, the guards for the prince of Qatar going next door to the guards for the prince of Oman to see if their royal can spare a cup of sugar. Or something like that.

At the summit we came to Cape Spartel, where the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea meet. Mixing isn't thorough due to differences in temperature, salt content, and so on, and you could clearly see the variously-hued blue-greeny waters moving past one another far below.

After that we drove to the Cave of Hercules, an aperture in the rock that allows great crashing spumes of ocean water to spray into the cave. This is where Hercules stayed while he was resting up before undertaking his 12 labors. The hole is also, if you cross your eyes and squint, a mirror image of the continent of Africa. While that part was formed by water, there was another portion of the cave that was created by Berbers carving millstones out of the rock. Semi-circular concavities crept up to the ceiling.
Returning aboveground, we were sad to see that the adjacent cafe was closed for the season, but there were still camels patiently awaiting riders in the parking lot. They looked very out of place amongst all the greenery and wetness, not to mention pathetic for sitting on pavement.

Next we drove to a hotel nearby where A. had friends. They were enduring the off-season doldrums as well, and there were a lot of staff standing around doing next to nothing. They had some beautifully appointed rooms and we got to pretend we were famous and hiding out from the world for a few minutes.

We headed back towards the city by a larger road. Occasionally we would veer into the oncoming lanes to avoid some nasty potholes as A. described the economy of the city and various other topics. Once in a while he'd take on a weird tone, as if he were a recording of himself, clearly going into auto-pilot mode. But I asked an incredibly large quantity of questions so he couldn't phone it in very often. We talked about Moroccan industries. Cultural vs. religious aspects of Islam. Schools. Arabic writing. Did you know that although writing in Arabic is from right to left, the numbers appear correctly to speakers of European-based languages because they start with the lowest digit and proceed to the highest?

We stopped at the entrance to the Casbah and he led us down an alley to a restaurant, deposited us on the cushions at a table, and left. The place was simply riotous with colors and patterns. We were the only ones in the restaurant aside from the staff, yet moments after we arrived a band struck up. Clearly a favorite tourist-dropping point. The staff was festooning the walls with garlands, adding even more color to the mix. A French family who knew the owner came in soon after we got there.

In spite of the emptiness and touristiness, the food was quite good: harira soup to warm us up followed by a chicken tagine with preserved lemons for me, and amazing pastilla for Jack. This dish was minced chicken and spices and other good things in a phyllo dough crust, topped with cinnamon and powdered sugar. You bring a bite to your mouth and the sweet aromas get there first, so you get a mental image about what you're about to consume, and then you bite in and your brain does a double-take. Somehow it works deliciously. I usually don't regret my order, but this was one of those times.

We finished the meal with real Moroccan mint tea and almond cookies. The band played on. A drenched-looking couple came in, complaining that some guy off the street had led them to the restaurant, and wanting to know if he was being paid by the management. How they could be upset about ending up at such a place, I have no idea.

A. came back from having lunch with his family. We paid the bill in euros, since that currency was given on the menu, and it caused a commotion. Eventually we received our change in dirhams, the Moroccan currency.

Then we went into the Casbah, driving through the city gate and then parking off to the side on a narrow street for the walking tour. I would guess that the Casbah in the rain, with rivers of dirty water and trash rushing down the narrow pedestrian streets, is not the same experience as the Casbah on a dry day. But I don't really know. It was hard to follow everything A. was telling us, since one was constantly trying to not bump others with one's umbrella, hopping over the murky rivers, take pictures without dampening one's camera, ogling everything, and listening.

A. pointed out all the locations where the "Bourne Ultimatum" was filmed. I'm not sure what he would have talked about if they hadn't made that movie--the tour would've been much shorter without it. He also informed us that Morocco was the first country to recognize the U.S. as a country, and we established our first diplomatic outpost there. He advised Jack what pictures to take of the building.

We did end up visiting a rug shop at one point, but it was low-pressure. They brought out all the different types to show us, then left us to think about it. As we wandered around I hissed to Jack, "Don't touch anything!" because I had been told that if you showed the slightest interest they would crank up the sales pitch. He whispered back, "I already did!" But it was okay, and we left without buying anything. I thought about getting a lovely summer-weight bedspread, but I was afraid to ask about the price for fear that it would be way more than I was willing to spend, and then having to say no and disappoint the guy, even after haggling.

Once it stopped raining, the people trying to sell on the streets came out. Most didn't bother us because they recognized A., but there was one I remember. I don't recall what he was selling, but he approached us and very quickly said, "Thirty euros okay for you 20 euros." As if we were actively engaged in some kind of negotiation process, and he had dropped the price because he liked us. It was like a customer service rep reading from a script and missing out on all the proper inflections--he seemed to have very little invested in what he was saying.

At any rate, the Casbah was an interesting yet bewildering place, and I don't feel like I really even scratched the surface. Eventually we exited after a harrowing drive in reverse up a steep, one-lane, two-way street. There was quite a traffic jam getting through the city gate when we were leaving--one car at a time would pass through, and it was impossible to see if there were any others waiting behind, so we would creep up (in forward gear at this point) and then have to glide back down the hill in neutral and wait some more. After about 8 cars we finally had our chance.

As the sun finally peeked through the clouds and a rainbow appeared, we visited some Etruscan graves overlooking the sea. We reached them by heading down a narrow dead-end street. A small park was carved out of what would have probably been someone's backyard. Sheep were grazing in the grass, unpenned. We walked around on the grave pits carved in the rocks, admiring the view.

Then A. dropped us off at our hotel, made sure we were checked in properly, and then left. Although we had been led to believe the place would be shabby-chic in a 40s-glamor sort of way, our room was mostly just shabby. Our hotel reservation included half board, so we were all set for dinner. Since we weren't at all hungry after our extravagant lunch, we took to the streets following our siesta. Not having procured a map we didn't want to get lost, so we stuck to the neighborhood in the vicinity of the hotel. The sidewalks were full of young people, mostly groups of males but also couples, promenading on Saturday night. The tea houses were full of older men, which was surprising given Morocco's relatively liberal interpretation of Islamic law. The quick bite restaurants were mixed, though, and full of what appeared to be students. We found a shop selling postcards and stamps that had an English-speaking proprietor, so we spent about 30 dirhams on that.

We headed to the restaurant with pretty low expectations, leading us to be pleasantly surprised that the food turned out to be decent. It was continental, so nothing Moroccan about it aside from the Tangier-produced beers. The one cause of friction was that when we told the waiter our room number, "305," he repeated back to us "503." "No, 305." "Are you sure?" We pulled out the key to show him. He left for a while and eventually came back with our food. Once we finished the meal we went to the front desk to make sure everything was in order and we were told that Expedia-booked hotels didn't usually come with the half-board, hence the confusion. It was then that we concluded that the third floor was the discount ghetto floor, and that the ones above were probably in better shape than the one we stayed in.

The next morning we had our generous buffet breakfast, with olives among the other culinary delights (I thought they were particularly large raisins), checked out of the hotel (€60 for the room, meals and supplementary drinks) and then took the long walk down to the pier. Sunday was quiet and things were just starting to open up. Eventually we got on the boat where we discovered, much to our chagrin, that you could only spend euros there. But the 20 dirham note (about €2) we had left is a lovely shade of purple with so we will keep it for decorative purposes.

2008-01-31T20:00:00.000+01:00

[The man's perspective.]

The bus trip to Tarifa was two and a half hours of gloomy rain, punctuated by windmills and the occasional sighting of a giant silhouette of a bull.

The mile-long walk from the bus stop to the old center of Tarifa was lined with a lot of beach/surfer shops and hangouts that had that beach-town-in-January look about them. Things looked pretty dead on this particular windy, rainy Friday. We entered the old part of the town through a Moorish-looking gate on the town wall that featured this charming gentleman:

After we had settled in to our hotel and rested up a bit the rain decided to let up so we decided to take a walk around the town before heading to the seafood place that the hippy-ish woman at the front desk recommended for us. We made our way to the edge of the sea and from the old fortifications we were amazed to see the lights of a power plant in Africa twinkling at us across the water--looking not much farther away than Maryland is from Virginia south of Alexandria.

Continuing to wander around the small town we stumbled across the best belen display we saw on the entire trip. There was a small sign pointing us into what looked like a vacant building. We poked our heads in diffidently, mindful of the false belen experience in Seville. But we were eagerly beckoned to enter and they pointed out that we should go into an adjacent room. There we saw, not just a simple manger scene, but in fact an entire series of elaborate dioramas depicting Bethlehem and the Christmas story. In fact it turned out that we were just in the first of three separate rooms filled with such displays.

We finally arrived at the restaurant (which was in fact just around the corner form the hotel). We were determined to get some nice wholesome salads to balance out all of the rich and heavy foods we had been eating. Perhaps we were a bit too enthusiastic while ordering them because we were presented with two plates --platters really-- mounded up with what had to have been half a head of iceberg lettuce a piece, along with some carrots and tomatoes thrown in for color. I gave up on mine pretty quickly, but S. was determined to make a serious dent in hers. But it was taking such a long time that she was worried that the waiter would call it all off and take the plates away, especially since I had put my fork down. As a result I agreed to pretend to be enthusiastically be digging into my salad whenever the waiter came our way. The ruse lasted for a while, but eventually our main course came out and that was the end of it even though we still had enough lettuce left on our plates to fuel a small army of vegans. But it was all for the best because we needed ample room in our bellies to accommodate the delicious paella-like fish and rice dish we got.

First thing the next day we caught our ferry to Tangier. The boat was pretty large and seemed pretty nice. Handily they had a Morrocan customs official right on board to stamp your passports on the way over. The staff of the boat however seemed to have no idea what they were doing. Was this there first time doing this or what? About halfway across they realized that they forgot to check people's tickets as they were getting on the boat. So the entire staff fanned out and tried to catch everybody on the boat--maybe a couple hundred people. They eventually abandoned that and instead came up with the idea of checking everyone as they got off the boat.

--Jack

Europe -->

<-- Africa

2008-01-22T09:14:00.000+01:00

The next day Jack decided to rally, no doubt because of the previous night's dinner. We decided to save some scratch by heading off-site for breakfast. The place we went had the toast smeared with tomato and topped with olive oil as a breakfast option, so I got that along with Iberian ham and a coffee. As we sat in the window at our tiny table, a pack of teenage girls dressed as Santa, a blond-bearded guy, and a bunch of people (Arabs?) in blackface strode by on the street. Jack and I both whipped out our cameras, which got the attention of the girls, who came over to our window to pose.

Many European countries have the tradition of painting a white person's face in heavy, dark makeup and making them part of the Christmas festivities. In Belgium, and particularly in the Flemish regions, Santa is accompanied by Black Peter. Black Peter's terrifying visage appears in advertising circulars around the holiday season in Brussels, grinning maniacally from the page. I find these images quite disturbing, naturally, but (white) people here are indifferent them. I was quite surprised as well when we discovered that our hotel in Malta had a framed photo of what appeared to be a KKK rally in the hall (really a Holy Week procession), so that just goes to show that America hasn't permeated all aspects of European culture, pooping Dubya caganers aside.

So anyway, that was breakfast. We then went to take in the scene at the Alcazares Reales. This is a general term for royal palaces with Moorish influences that can be found throughout Spain. The one in Seville was built in the 14th century for Pedro the Cruel (or the Just, depending on whom you ask) using Moorish artisans. It was amazing. Everywhere you looked your eyes were greeted with richly detailed surfaces--floors, doors, walls, ceilings, windows. The place was brimming with people gawking and taking pictures.

After spending a while wandering through the warren of rooms, we checked out the gardens behind, which were very nice and for some reason almost devoid of people. There was a small cafe overlooking the garden where Jack had a coffee and I tried to order a horchata, which is prepared from different ingredients in Spain than it is in the Americas (chufa AKA tiger nut being the primary one). The woman indicated that they didn't have any and suggested I have a batido instead. Naturally I said yes, although I didn't know what it was. She opened a bottle and poured a creamy yellowish drink into a glass. I took the beverages back to our table with some trepidation.

There was nothing to fear, though--the batido tasted like good-quality vanilla ice cream thinned with milk to make a drink so it was refreshing rather than overly heavy. I later discovered that batido just means "shake" in Spanish, and you can get these things all over the place. I like to think I discovered something distinctive and delicious, though.

Once we were through looking at the gardens, which included ducks drinking from a channel inlaid in a path, fountains, ponds, grottoes, a pecan tree in the "English garden", and small buildings scattered about, including one with the most powerful hand dryer in the world, it was once again time to find food. We went to another spot recommended by the hotel for tapas. We got marinated artichokes topped with smoked salmon, goat cheese with a drizzle of flavored oil , potato salad, a tortilla with almond sauce, and "bull tail". It was all very tasty, although the tail was a bit too graphic-looking for my sensibilities, sliced into cross-sections as it was. Almond sauce is supposed to be a specialty of the area, and although I found it to be bland and not very almond-y, you really can't go wrong with the Spanish tortilla.

Jack was continuing to bear up well so we went to see Seville's bull ring. We didn't pay to enter, so there wasn't much to see, but it took us to an area of the city we hadn't been before. On the way back to our hotel we came across a building containing crafts, mostly hand-made pottery created by artisans who worked on the premises. There were lots of tiles with Moorish designs that I had my eye on, and we thought it might be fun to have ceramic numbers for our house in Alexandria, but 222 is a little dull. In the end, we purchased a green bowl with handles and a lid, and the elaborate design was created both by the glaze and by cut-out patterns in the clay. The woman who retrieved it for us took off the price tag, which also contained the name of the item. I wish I knew--it's got an unglazed 3-pronged thingy embedded in the side of the interior (like one of those things they use to keep the box from touching the top of your moltenly cheesy pizza), so it seems like it's supposed to be functional. It's great with a candle in there, though.

Our afternoon siesta was interrupted by a rock band playing loudly directly behind our building, but it didn't prevent us from chilling for a while. Later we ventured out once again to see the Christmas market. Again not taking any chances with Jack's still-fragile health, we made our way more or less directly over there to find it bustling, full of people and music. Choruses singing Christmas songs accompanied by guitar and percussion (castanets, tambourine, clay jug and stick, and glass bottle with bumpy exterior rasped by stick) greeted our ears. A woman was dancing with a young girl in a flamenco dress. The belen was lit. Very festive. The stalls were inhabited by craftspeople selling everything from leather goods to stained glass to kids' toys. All nice-looking, but not particularly Spanish, so we just window-shopped.

It was dark by this point yet still early, so we continued meandering around, encountering a piece of Roman aqueduct in a median strip, a roast chicken place that we made note of in case we needed something later, and other diverse sights. We followed signs for a belen that was mysteriously absent even though it had only closed 2 minutes before and had been replaced by some guys who stared at us and an old man playing acoustic guitar very poignantly. Every third building in the old quarter seemed to be a church with a sad-faced Mary that was slightly different from the next church's sad-faced Mary, a convent, or a monastery.

We then ducked into a flamenco joint called La Carboneria recommended by a Sevillian coworker of Jack's. In addition to a nod from a local, it had the additional benefit of being free, whereas other area places were charging nearly €20. We passed through a lovely brick-faced bar area with couches and a crackling fire and entered a nearly-empty cavernous shed protected by corrugated fiberglass roofing. A bit of a let down, but hey, they used to store coal there. We ordered the cheap local beer on tap and found a seat, not knowing what to expect. There were two large parties of people in their 20s at the back, obviously locals who were singing and shouting and...dancing the flamenco. I was surprised that the young people were carrying on the traditions by their own volition--they were clearly doing it for their own entertainment rather than putting on a show. Two other tables were occupied by tourist couples like us. So we sat, snuck glances at the party behind us, and nursed our beers.

Eventually the group started breaking up, off to their next Thursday night adventure. It was about 10 o'clock. Other touristy folks began drifting in and occupying the tables next to the stage, better-informed than we were about the start time of the real show. Or had the real-real show just exited by the front door and they had missed it? I ordered a couple tapas: ensaladilla and migas. I was under the distinct impression that I knew what migas was, being certain I had heard the term before. It was a turnover of some sort. But no, turns out it's fried seasoned breadcrumbs that had been pre-dampened so that they were slightly chewy. Jack proclaimed, "Even stuffing can be a tapa!" There was a lot of good action at the food counter while I waited: a young boy had to carry scalding hot chocolate care-ful-ly back to his table after the woman behind the counter tried to teach him to give her the appropriate amount of money from the coins he held in his hand, and an Asian girl was told that she could under no circumstances heat up her father's instant noodles in their microwave, even if he refused to eat anything on the menu (the girl herself seemed to survive on a diet of Nestle's ice cream bars and cigarettes). Health code and all. She'd have to bring it up with the stonily-silent stout woman behind the bar.

Finally, two men mounted the stage around 11:30. By this point the place was packed to the gills. One man asked for silence and began speaking about the performance to come. He refused to raise his voice when people began talking, so it was nearly impossible to hear (in addition to being in Spanish). The second man had a guitar, which he began to play. The softspoken man opened his mouth and began belting out a plumb pitiful tune, surprising indeed given his quiet speaking voice. The dancer appeared on stage looking grim and sat next to the singer. The two of them began clapping out an elaborate rhythm along with the guitar, not seeming to notice or care about the audience. Suddenly, the dancer flew out of her chair as if possessed by demons and started stomping, throwing her arms up and twirling. It really had the air of an improvised performance, as if she danced only when the spirit moved her. The singer also stood at times, putting his hand over his heart and singing as if his life depended on it. It was a very moving performance, and over too soon for those of us who needed a bit of extra rest.

The next morning we prepared to leave on the next leg of our journey. We left our bags at the bus station, got some breakfast and then pondered how to spend the next few hours. I suggested the archeology museum, but the currents were taking us in the opposite direction because Jack wanted to get an umbrella. So we wandered down to the shopping district and found the local branch of El Corte Ingles and bought one. We saw a nativity scene in a candy shop window that had chocolate for a backdrop. We wandered through the Archives of the Americas, which houses Columbus' papers and is free and exceptionally boring. It began to rain just as we entered the grounds of the University, which is located in a former cigar-making factory. We sat on one of the benches in the interior courtyard out of the rain, and a gaggle of girls passed us, handing us each a sweet and saying "Happy Christmas!" Girls there are just wild about Christmas, for some reason.

Having a bit more time to kill, we took an alternate route back to the bus terminal. Unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, once again my navigational skills were put to the test and I failed, so we ended up getting totally turned around, walking in the wrong direction and having to hustle to get there before the bus pulled out. It turns out we needn't have worried so much, because even as the bus waited for the light to change at the intersection after leaving the terminal, people were still pounding on the door to be let in. The driver scolded them all like a mother hen, but still allowed them to board. And then we were Tarifa bound.

2008-01-14T17:00:00.000+01:00

Jack was still feeling a bit poorly as we made our way back to the airport for our flight to Seville. After a breakfast of coffee, breakfast rolls, and the worst OJ ever (it tasted like it had been cut with water and lemon juice), he napped in the airport, which was blessedly quiet that day, and again on the plane. I was fascinated by the in-flight magazine of Vueling, which was in Spanish and English (but not always both for each article), and contained very little that would make it comparable to other magazines of the same genre. There was an article where people talked about their dreams, and one where hand-written essays by random people in Amsterdam's Vondelpark were printed. A lot of content seemed to have been written by non-professionals, but the art and layout were great. It's produced by some uber-hip company named Le Cool, appropriately enough.

We touched down in Seville and caught the bus into town. It was sunny and about 10 degrees warmer than in Barcelona, feeling somewhat Floridian. We had a map in the guidebook with the hotel marked on it, but I still thought we were lucky to find it as quickly as we did, because it was located in the old town amongst the maze of tiny streets. I think that was the only time while we were there that we ended up where we wanted to be without a lot of backtracking.

We checked into the hotel Amadeus, a very nice place with a classical music theme, and got some suggestions of eating places from the woman at the front desk. As we were heading to the elevator to go to our room, a couple walked up to the desk and asked if they were still serving breakfast. Sadly, the answer was no. It was 2 p.m.

The first order of business was to procure some grub. Since one of the woman's suggestions was close to the hotel, we made our way there. To take advantage of the pleasant weather we grabbed a table in the plaza fronting the establishment . Without asking to be seated. Big mistake. In Brussels you seat yourself unless you're at a restaurant where you made reservations. Usually the staff is so busy that they just wave you in the general direction of open tables with a slightly exasperated air. There didn't seem to be any proper procedure in Barcelona, and since the approximately four staff people standing around at this Seville restaurant were ignoring us when we tried to make eye contact to get a table, we just picked one out and sat. And sat. After what seemed like enough time to melt a glacier, one guy took pity on us and gave us menus, taking our order within a reasonable timeframe.

It being lunch, we got beers and appetizers and entrees. Jack ordered fried potatoes with eggs and chorizo followed by fried fresh anchovies. I got a cold octopus salad with boiled potatoes, and then taquitos made with bacalao (rehydrated salt cod). Jack's first course was pretty good, but I thought my octopus was a bit slimy in places and underseasoned. I kept stealing the fried potatoes off Jack's plate. When the entrees arrived I was surprised to discover a plate full of nothing but cubes of battered and fried cod, with a small garnish of battered and fried eggplant. What IS a taquito, anyway? We may never know. Jack had a large plate of anchovies prepared the same way. They were both very delicious, but suffered from a lack of anything to break up the monotony. The bacalao had meatier, firmer texture than fresh fish, and the residual salt gave it a pleasant but not overly salty flavor. I definitely need to try that at home.

It soon clouded over and we thought about regretting sitting outside. We decided against it for the following reasons:
+ the lottery ticket guy, who made his way past us twice, chanting his spiel as if it was a one-note song (these guys (and occasionally women) were all over the city, we later discovered)
+ the cat with the short corkscrew tail, who could readily identify the weak spot at the tables and would place his paws on a patron's leg to try to get some food
+ the security guy standing in front of the garage next to the restaurant, occasionally giving someone a menacing glare, but mostly chatting amicably with the wait staff
+ the shoeshine guy, looking worse for the wear, who was employed by someone at a neighboring table
+ the cognac guy, who had a tower of ice, liquor bottles and snifters arranged just so, and who would approach people that were finishing their meal and offer them a sample, which he would provide without messing up the gleaming tower
+ the cognac guy giving the shoeshine guy a sample, and the latter sitting on a tree planter sipping from his snifter contentedly

We got coffees to jazz ourselves up for an afternoon of wandering, but by that time the cognac guy was on his break and/or studiously ignoring the tourists who were obviously not in his demographic target, so we didn't get to taste it. Oh well.

And so we were off to the races. Seville is much more compact than Barcelona, and in fact they have just this year installed a single tram line that extends for all of 1.4 km to supplement the bus-only transportation network. I can't imagine under what circumstances people would be compelled to use it, but they were. They are also planning on reopening their subway in the near future, which was abandoned for 25 years. But for our purposes it was easy enough to walk to where we wanted to go.

We gawked at the cathedral, the Giralda tower (left, from later in the day) and the Alcazares Reales across the street. Seville is rife with Moorish-influenced architecture, so its appearance is quite different from that of Barcelona, which has mostly stuffy classically-inspired buildings punctuated with the occasional Modernisme structure. Not wanting to visit these sites so late in the afternoon, we headed towards a green space on the map, which when we got close enough we found was interspersed with some buildings visible through the trees that looked interesting. We ended up at the semi-circular Plaza de España, which was built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition (and is apparently featured in the Star Wars II movie). A lot of national pride when into the building, which featured ceramic tile maps of all the provinces of Spain including their primary cities and products. Above the open-air passageway were the heads of famous Spaniards, none of whom I recognized except for El Cid. There was some kind of fancy belen set up in a large tent in the center of the plaza, but I was getting a weird vibe from it like they would try to convert us if we went inside, so we skipped it.

We exited the park and crossed the Guadalquivir River to see what we could see. We didn't spend much time in the Triana district west of the river, but it was a pleasant stroll. By this point Jack was running on fumes and talking about his skin hurting, so it was time for a break. Once he had rested up for a few hours, we set out again for a short walk to take in some of the sights under the cover of darkness.

The map and street signage being what they were, several missteps later we ended up at our destination, Plaza Nueva, the site of a Christmas market that had been closed for an hour by the time we showed up. We took our time walking back to the hotel, passing by the cathedral and getting some good night shots of the Giralda tower. We also saw the sister restaurant to one in DC, Taberna del Alabadero, that had a lunch menu posted featuring something in tobacco-flavored sauce and another item with prunes and pork dewlap. We filed away the location in case we needed something later in the week.

We stopped into a cerveseria for some beer and tapas for those of us who were in need of nourishment. It was a little after 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, yet we felt like we were closing the place down! A very different vibe than Barcelona. Since we had had a large lunch, we weren't in need of much, but my mushroom quiche-like concoction, topped with a thin slice of bacalao, was delicious.

The next day Jack hadn't improved much. We breakfasted in the hotel, in what used to be the building's courtyard but had been converted to the cozy lobby. We were presented with another strangely bad glass of orange juice along with our rolls and caffeinated beverages. Both times the orange juice appeared to be fresh-squeezed and tasted unspoiled, so I think they were just using bad oranges, perhaps from the ubiquitous street trees that were thoroughly laden with citrus, looking like vibrant Christmas ornaments. But it was enough food to get us started.

We made our way down the street to the cathedral, which Wikipedia informs me is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the world (but not necessarily the largest RC church). The site had originally contained a mosque, complete with a high tower that was used to sound the call to prayer. Only the tower remained, now topped by a belfry. And while the interior was clearly that of a wealthy church, Moorish craftsmen had been used, so it had a different feel than other Christian places of worship (a rear entryway leading onto the courtyard and the main building of the church in the background at left). The vaulted ceilings were festooned with intricately carved details, the doorways had that characteristic Islamic architectural shape, and so on. The church also contained the grave of Christopher Columbus, who was interred there a little over a hundred years ago, when his bones were moved there after having crisscrossed the high seas a few times on their journey between the old and new worlds and back again. There were some precious items laden with gold on view in the treasury, including this crown that looked for all the world like it had been purchased in some dollar store.

After touring the cathedral it was time to tackle the Giralda tower. Instead of stairs, the tower contained a series of ramps so that it could be ascended on horseback. Sadly, no horses were present during our climb, but we were nevertheless glad for the relative ease of climbing the ramps afforded. There were some excellent views from the top, and we were happy that it didn't strike the hour while we were up there, so we only had to endure a handful of very loud chimes for the quarter hour.

The church is one of those places that one imagines is always cold, and particularly so when the winter solstice is approaching and the sun isn't strong enough to radiate some heat through the thick walls. Upon exiting we were in need of some warming up so we went to Cafe de Indias, feeling that since we were in the spot where the whole caffeinated beverage craze began, they'd have some good stuff. Both of us opted to get hot chocolate, forgetting that in Spain hot chocolate is something that is traditionally eaten with a spoon because it is very thick. It was delicious, though, and defrosted our bones a bit.

More wandering eventually led us back to the hotel, where Jack was down for the count. Using the guide of activities for December provided by the hotel, I made my plans for the evening assuming Jack wouldn't want to go out. There was a free organ concert in the cathedral that night that I decided to check out, followed by a flamenco dancing spot if I was still antsy. So I hit the streets again.

The cathedral's cavernous interior was nearly unlit aside from the center spot, flanked on one side by the enclosed choir stall and on the other by the royal chapel, both guarded by wrought-iron gates. It was even cooler in the church by this time, and visitors who took off their coats soon realized their mistake and put them back on again. The concert by a German organist was lovely, and attracted an interesting variety of locals, students and tourists. The organ pipes were divided on either side of the choir stall and set high up, close to the ceiling. It seemed that the sound from the two sides was reaching my ears at slightly different times, which made it somewhat disharmonious, but after a while I was able to ignore it and just focus on the music.

Towards the end my mind began to wander to the topic of sustenance. I decided that if he was up to eating, Jack might appreciate some comfort food, so I went to the Irish pub across the street to see if they could handle some takeout. They could, so I ordered a cheeseburger and fries and a ladylike half pint of Guinness while I waited.

The guy sitting next to me watching Chelsea play someone on the TV struck up a conversation after a fashion, inevitably razzing me about Americans' improper use of the word "football". He was a Scotch-English merchant seaman who was vacationing in Seville. In spite of his profession, he admitted to never having been to the US, which I thought was strange.

Having procured the burger I hustled back to the hotel so it could be eaten warm. I was careful not to take any shortcuts, which I had learned inevitably would lead to another part of town and take twice as much time to correct. Jack and I ended up splitting the food and calling it an early night, which by this point was around 11, so really only early by Spain standards.

Next: Will the curative effects of the burger and fries be proven?

2008-01-04T14:18:00.000+01:00

We arrived in Barcelona on the afternoon of the 14th, having taken the airport bus to the stop near our hotel. With the confirmation printout from the website we used to make the reservation, we walked up Gran Via to the specified address, only to discover that it was the location of a private apartment building. We were not at this Hotel Gran Via, where I thought we were staying, nor were we at this Hotel Gran Via, where Jack thought we were staying. There was no sign to indicate rooms for rent inside. While we were reviewing the information on the paper, a guy walked up to us and asked us if we were staying there. He was the front desk clerk, conveniently positioned in a sidewalk seat of the bar next door to interpret the confused looks of people who make their way to that address. He took us upstairs in the tiny elevator that resembled one of those vacuum pods they use at banks much more than a modern elevator. With the luggage and 3 people, you may have been able to fit a couple of crisp Euro notes between us, but not much else.

He checked us in and showed us to our room. As indicated by the interrupted pattern of the floor tiles, it had obviously been carved out of a much larger space, but it was still enormous: two balconies, a turret-like sunroom, a separate sitting room with an extra bed, and hardly a right angle to be found anywhere. The winter sun shone brightly into the room throughout the day. Since it was around siesta time at that point we hung out in the room for a bit and plotted our next move, which ended up being walking around, as is so often the case.

We were a bit further from the center of the action than we thought we would be, which made for some nice strolling but also some tiring walks. It was also a wee bit nippy out there, which was something we hadn't planned for. While day temperatures were generally in the low 50s, it cooled down much more than it does in Brussels at night, probably due to the lack of a stationary cloud cover from November to March. We made our way down to Las Ramblas, which is a pedestrian-oriented shopping street where all the tourists go. We then ducked into the narrow streets of the old city, wending our way through the maze of streets in no particular direction. Eventually we came face-to-face with our first tapas eating opportunity.

Everyone tells you that no one in Spain eats dinner before 9 or 10 at night, which causes a lot of fretting amongst those of us who get cranky if we don't eat when we're hungry. What they don't say is that, although dinner is late, eating opportunities abound throughout the day, so it's not worth worrying about. Tapas are served anytime. It was about 7 or 8 at this point, and we ended up at a very friendly establishment where we ordered 4 plates of deliciousness. Employing my nearly flawless Spanish hit a snag when the waiter said something incomprehensible after we had ordered. "Do you want toast with tomato?" he translated. Ah yes--they take a piece of bread, toast it, and smear half a fresh tomato over the top with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Of course we want that! We had to order two more glasses of wine to wash it all down.

Subsequently we made our way over to the cathedral, where they were hosting a large Christmas market. Now, many of you have already heard Jack or me excitedly describing our discoveries regarding the Catalan Christmas celebrations: caga tio and the caganers.

Caga tio is a log with a smile. Traditionally, one would go into the forest in early December, chop off a tree limb, bring it home, decorate it, cover it with a blanket to keep it warm, feed it scraps from the kitchen, generally coddling it into a good mood before the holidays commence. On Christmas eve or day, you'd bring it into your living room and shuffle your kids out of the room for a bit. You'd stuff small presents underneath (bigger ones are reserved for the Epiphany), and then bring the children back out and give them sticks. The kids beat caga tio, singing something like "caga tio, [defecate] us some presents, and don't [defecate] us any cod." Salt-cured cod or a hard-boiled egg is the Catalan equivalent of coal. As far as we can tell, they're really saying "[defecate]" and not some euphemistic term like "poop".

The Spanish all take their nativity scenes (belenes) very seriously. There were homemade signs all over the places we visited pointing you down a street or in a door to show the way to a belen. Catalonia once again does something a bit different: they include a figure of someone pooping, called a caganer, in their nativity scenes. It seems that the Man has cracked down on official displays in Barcelona in recent years, removing the caganers. But they are still quite popular in home displays, and can be purchased in the likeness of your favorite current Pope, for example, pop star or football great, or even the current American president.

So aside from the usual accouterments for the nativity display, such as mangers, animals, waterfalls, animatronic figures chopping wood or sewing clothes, mini electric fires burning cheerily in hearths, paper printed like granite, moss, tiny loaves of bread, and on and on, you could also pick up your caganers and caga tios at this market. A good portion of the booths carried one or the other, but never both. We bought one caga tio and 2 caganers for the road.

After the market we continued to wander and ended up in some streets not wide enough for a car where open houses were being hosted in several hipper-than-thou art galleries and clothing shops--the kind that has cable-knit sweaters with bulges in strange places that would make anyone but a model look terrible. We stopped in a few of the galleries, but they mostly seemed to be parties amongst friends, and no one was doing any buying. In one, we ended up in the back where two children excitedly spied us and tried to make toast for us, but we declined, much to their disappointment.

Then it was back to our room to rest up for another big day. The apartment building did not have any sort of climate control aside from natural ventilation, so they provided an electric heater/air conditioner for our convenience. As the windows did not close well, having approximately 100 years worth of paint on them, the heater was a necessity. When you turned it on, a window in the front provided a view of fake glowing orange coals. So soothing.

The next day, after procuring breakfast (Jack ended up with a tuna sandwich) and farecards for the subway (at 68 cents each for 10 rides, one of the best deals anywhere), we took the metro out of the heart of the city to check out the Horta gardens. Even though Barcelona was big into Modernisme architecture, an untamed style that was concurrent with Art Nouveau, there didn't seem to be any connection between the gardens and the architect of the same name from Brussels. Nevertheless, it was supposed to be a lovely walk in the park, so to speak.

Once we got there we discovered the hedge maze was closed, making it not really worth the €2.05 entry fee, but we figured that we'd have the place virtually to ourselves under those circumstances, and we were right. There were grottoes and waterfalls and palm trees--all in all, very much like being in a belen. Sadly, what had been billed as a "fake cemetery" in our guidebook turned out to be just a contemplative seating area reached by going down a few steps with the door to a fake hermit's cabin built into one side of the retaining wall.

Next, using my excellent map, I decided we would walk to the Parc Guell, designed by Gaudi. It appeared to be about 3 km; no problem. The map didn't include topograpy, however, and it turned out that there was a sharp ridge between us and our destination. On our walk we encountered an awesome Claes Oldenburg construction of a flipped-open matchbook. It was more dynamic than most of his stuff, as there were several detached, partially-burned matches scattered around, some across the street from the matchbook, looking like they had been tossed there by a bored giant. Just on some random street in some random neighborhood. It wasn't even pictographically shown on the map the hotel gave us, unlike a floating octopus sculpture by some no-name we saw later.

The floating octopus was just over the apex of the hill. Not quite to Parc Guell yet. I was exhausted and starving and dehydrated by that point (there have been so many subsequent ilnesses since then that I forget whether I was feeling poorly already or not). We decided to keep pushing forward, knowing that there'd be something to eat and drink at the park. What we didn't know was that the front side of the park, facing the sea, was another hill away. We approached it from the back, which is nice and woodsy, but that's not why anyone goes there. After we scaled the hill within the park, we decided to follow the ridgeline to a good view spot, further delaying food acquisition but allowing for some rest. The best views can be had from a rock cairn that has three crosses on top, meant to represent Calvary, where Jesus and the two other dudes were crucified. There was a guy playing acoustic guitar on the spot, which tempered the annoyance of teenagers scrambling all over the place. I tossed €2 in his open case while his back was turned, which naturally led me to think about that Seinfeld episode where George tries to fish his tip out of the jar so he could be seen putting it in. Thankfully I had the strength to stop myself from doing the same.

Finally we worked our way down to the cafe that was carved into the hillside. We got beer and sandwiches--Jack's was a Spanish tortilla (eggs binding potatoes) on a roll, which was surprisingly delicious. The pigeons were fat and happy there, bumping against shoes as they searched underfoot for crumbs, and hopping up on any table that someone had glanced away from--you had to be vigilant at all times. Having been pooped on numerous times in my life, everytime a flock flew over I would shrink down and cover my head, which I think caused a bit of mass hysteria, because it seemed like other women around my age were following suit. Sorry, ladies!

Thus restored, we explored the more interesting side of the park, with the curvaceous walls and the elaborate mosaics and the organic yet unnatural shapes everywhere. Given that it's one of the few Gaudi sites in the area you can access for free, there were people overrunning the entire thing. Summer must be terrible. It was pretty exhilarating, though, to be in the middle of it all.

We returned to the hotel for our siesta and later set out to see some more sights and find dinner. The Magic Fountain near our hotel was supposed to put on a show set to music on weekends, so we went over there first to check it out. There was no music, unfortunately, but the lights playing over the water were pretty danged impressive nonetheless--they did this misty thing that really soaked up the colors well. After loitering around there a bit, we got on the metro and went back into the center to view some more Modernisme architecture by night on Passeig de Gracia. There were two Gaudis and two other Modernisme buildings in close succession, all of which were mysteriously lit at that hour. We then ended up at a friendly yet middling vegetarian place where I accidentally got a glass of non-alcoholic wine--why are vegetarian restaurants so frequently teetotaling? It ain't right.

We started out the next day at the best department store ever--El Corte Ingles. Ten floors of everything you could ever want under one roof. Foie gras? Grand Theft Auto III? Lingere? Milk? Watch repair? Lottery tickets? Bonsai? No problem. On the top floor there was a self-service restaurant right next to the full-service restaurant, so we helped ourselves to rolls, juice and coffee and enjoyed a leisurely Sunday breakfast as I perused the store's lifestyle magazine (do you know they have a combo food processor/cooker now? I'm so hopelessly out of touch). The view from the wraparound windows was amazing.

We lit out for the chilly, narrow streets to go on the walking tour in the guidebook. We were using Lonely Planet this time, and they pointed out various things as we went along, but really didn't give the level of detail I would like (as in Michelin Green Guides). But we saw some stuff we wouldn't have otherwise encountered, so it was all good. In front of the cathedral the festivities were in full swing, with a Cobla band playing energetically, a pick-up group performing Catalonia's indigenous style of dance, the Sardana. There was a giant head walking around projecting candy out of its mouth. And there was the market.

Jack had mentioned to me that there was a bagel shop in the old quarter, so we attempted to go there for lunch only to discover they were closed. In a valiant effort to stave off my disappointment, Jack located the oldest restaurant in Barcelona and we went there for instead. We were a bit on the early side (2 p.m.-ish), I suppose, which was fortunate because they were able to seat us right away. The place was seemingly overloaded with staff members in their 40s and up, and for some reason I expected them to be short with us, but they were all very nice. Since we had heard that lunch was the big meal in Spain, we went with the flow and ordered appetizers and a bottle of wine and entrees. I got sauteed spinach with pine nuts and raisins to start, which is something I enjoy at home and was pleased to find on a menu, but it was an enormous quantity. Jack had a cold mushroom mousse in a spicy sauce. I had been contemplating wild boar for my entree but ended up ordering goose with baked apples, floating in a dish of thin gravy. Jack had a sausage with some of the most flavorful beans I'd ever tasted. We both couldn't get enough of the gravy, and we kept eating it long after we were both stuffed. There was such a performance going on in there with the staff bustling about, people coming and going (and eventually being turned away at the door), and other patrons enjoying their Sunday dinner that it was difficult to tear ourselves away, so we ordered coffees to make it less obvious that we were loitering in order to gawk. A couple of the older staff members were being kept on for some reason, despite their advanced age and resulting dotage. They were mostly getting in the way, but the rest of the workers treated them with patience and respect. We got to interact with the old woman briefly when she attempted to bring us someone else's change. Eventually our time came and we left the restaurant to continue on our walking tour, with stops to check out the Cathedral interior, the triumphal arch, and the Palace of Catalonian Music, the latter being another Modernisme favorite.

We knew we weren't going to be hungry for any kind of dinner so the evening concluded with us back at El Corte Ingles buying chorizo, manchego and wine in case we decided on a snack later on.

The next morning, after grabbing a quick bite, we headed to the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi church notorious for having been under construction forever. It was strange to pay money to go into the middle of an active construction site, with people preparing plaster molds and driving forklifts and so on. And the church itself is a very interesting place. Anarchists destroyed most of the plans for the church during the Spanish Civil War, so all they have to go on are some vague sketches about how it should be completed. The new architects haven't tried to mimic Gaudi's work but rather make it their own, which has resulted in one side looking like a melting sand castle and the other like a nightmare of robots and storm troopers. But whatever. It's one of the most original structures of its size that I've seen and I look forward to when it's completed in 2026.

Jack was feeling poorly so we took the rest of the day off to chill in the room--a nice change from the frenetic pace of the last few days. I snacked on our provisions and read a novel as he slept. I picked out a dinner place and a backup dinner place, the first of which was impossibly crowded and the second of which was closed. Sigh. So we trudged around for much longer than we had anticipated and finally ended up at this restaurant that serves only one dish: steak with special sauce. It was really a great alternative to too many choices, although not particularly Spanish. It came with fries and a salad, and they serve the steak at two times in an effort to keep the second half warm while you're eating the first, not that it works. They do bring out fresh fries, though, which were great for sopping up the sauce.

That was Barcelona. It's a huge city and impossible to come close to doing everything in that amount of time--we didn't go to the beach or take in the view from Tibidabo, much less get outside of town to see any of the surrounding sights. December was a great time to to because it wasn't crazy with tourists and there was a heightened excitement in the air due to the impending holidays. But it was colder than we thought it would be and it rained periodically throughout our stay, and virtually nothing was in bloom. One can't have everything, though.

2007-12-11T11:18:00.000+01:00

Compare and contrast the sewer museums of Brussels (left hand photos) and Paris (right).

The Brussels sewer museum recently reopened after having been closed for the entire time we had been there, to my eternal chagrin. (They failed to publicize the date of completion of renovations, which is probably wise because they would most likely fail to meet their advertised projections--everything is late here.) Once they took down the big sign announcing the work, we knew they were back in business. Information on the web was pretty scant, but I determined it was open every day but Monday. Not true, actually--it turns out it's open every weekday but Monday, so our trip out there on a Saturday was a bust. We managed to make the best of it, checking out some other stuff in the area and visiting this willow tree that hangs out over the street, its curtain of leaves forming a perfect arch for VW vans to pass underneath.

So it was up to me to check it out on a weekday by myself. Contrast: at the Paris sewer museum, which is open on weekends, the tickets are purchased in an above-ground kiosk and then you immediately descend into the underworld. In Brussels, you enter a beautiful neoclassical temple that faces a matching one across the street and buy your tickets from an actual sewer worker. An exhibit on the undergrounding of the Senne is presented on the ground floor. Contrast: while Paris was ready for their English-speaking fans, Brussels was not. But there were a lot of good pictures and models and memorabilia, so you could fairly easily follow along.

Compare: both felt the need to address the rat question. Paris chose to display their rats frolicking in a forested setting, as if rats are ever found in unpopulated areas. Brussels put theirs in a box with a piece of pipe and a bar of soap or air freshener or something. Both locations allowed you to commune with actual sewers with actual sewage running through them. Brussels included a hand washing station after you had left the dirty areas.

Contrast: unlike the popular Paris attraction, I had the Brussels museum to myself for the entire duration, and I lingered there for longer than I probably would have if there were other people around. Once you got down in the main tunnel, which had a walkway and a railing separating you from the poop-filled Senne, it was a little creepy. Anything could happen down there. I half-wished I was involved in some kind of criminal enterprise and needed to dispose of evidence, because it was the perfect opportunity. Even if they were watching you on cameras from above, they couldn't make it down there in time to stop you from dropping something in the water. Of course, assuming it was a gun or something, it would probably sink right to the bottom, in which case they could dredge it back out. Unless you had planned ahead and somehow made it neutrally buoyant. One should probably experiment in one's own bathtub before undertaking such an endeavor.

Compare: both cities explored water quality challenges in general, although Paris focused on the health of the Seine River whereas Brussels tackled both the local and global situation. Brussels began fully treating their wastewater in...2007. Their first treatment facility came on line in...2000. Shocking yet true. Locally things can only get better. Maybe someday they'll stop using the Senne as a means of wastewater conveyance (yes, that is a photo of the river--contrast it to Paris' Seine on the right) and get rid of the sparsely used boulevards that cover it, returning a bit of pseudo-naturalism to the city. It would be positively enlightened.

Contrast: Brussels' sewers were never the turn of the century tourist attraction that Paris' were.

2007-11-30T10:27:00.000+01:00

Various goings on.

Our best intentions of visiting the Museum of Central Africa (above; click on the photo to see the parade of elephants in front) were dashed when we ended up spending the day wandering the adjacent town of Tervuren and strolling about the grounds. The tram ride out to the museum takes you through wealthy suburbs and tree-lined avenues, and drops you some distance away from the entrance, so you have an easy excuse to get distracted when your eye catches on something closer. I've always had kind of an uneasy feeling about the museum, because the story of Belgium and its relationship with the Congo region is not a happy one, and apparently the museum does a poor job of describing it. But I thought I should visit it to be able to better understand Brussels and its environs. Once we alighted from the tram and walked a short distance towards our destination, our eyes lit upon a fountain containing a sculpture of animals playing band instruments, then an abandoned church, then fliers for a pancake fest occurring that day, and on and on until we got further and further away from the museum.

After failing to find the location for the pancake fest, we ended up having lunch at a tea room in Tervuren and then looking around the grounds in which the museum is situated, which comprise the tail end of the Foret de Soignes. There was a string of stagnant ponds putting out a sulfurous stench, some people riding horses, and these mushrooms with caps that appeared to be melting. They do everything so crazy in Europe. Maybe someday when the weather is truly miserable we'll find our way back to the museum.

We went to the Dieweg Cemetery earlier this month. While smaller than most, this eternal rest stop got its notoriety from the fact that "perpetual care" means something different than in most places. I'm actually not sure what it means at Dieweg. Some of the stones did have that phrase carved on them, but the evidence suggests that someone scarpered with the money. The cemetery is being allowed to revert to its natural state, and as the sign out front informs us, many lichens, butterflies, and native species have been found there. There were more crumbling, toppled headstones, overgrown shrubs, and perilous pathways than the other cemeteries around here, which is not to say that those items are lacking elsewhere. It's just done on a grander, more unified scale in this case. The author of the Tintin books is buried here. His grave is a pleasantly groomed oasis in the midst of the chaos.

A couple weekends later we went with one of Jack's coworkers to Leuven, the university town outside of the Brussels conurbation. She wanted to do some shopping and we hadn't yet been there, so we tagged along. The town is known for the schism of the Catholic University of Leuven that occurred in the 60s, when the Dutch and French-speaking groups split. The francophones set up a new school in a new town down the road a piece, which they named Louvain-la-Neuve ("New Leuven"). The virtually flavorless (by Belgian standards) beer Stella Artois is made in Leuven.

We wandered around a bit and discovered that the town had a lot of great old-school architecture in the center, like a mini Brussels. There were some interesting pieces of public art strewn about, the favorite of which is a bug stabbed on a pin, upside down and hugely magnified. This was done by Jan Fabre, who is the same guy who did the ceiling covered with beetle carapaces in the royal palace in Brussels.

We had some lunch, Jack bought a best of Ike and Tina collection (the later years of the relationship were a really bad time for them musically as well as personally, it turns out), and we purchased some waffles from a boy scout. Then it was back to Brussels for a night at the Toone theater. We entered through the bar on the ground floor, made our way up two narrow flights of stairs, and arrived at the theater in the attic, and looking up into the eaves you saw nothing but a forest of miniature legs.

The Toone puts on plays using marionettes. That evening's production was of El Cid. Although the show was in Bruxellois, which is a hybrid language of French and Dutch that almost no one actually speaks anymore, we thought we'd be okay because we rented the video the day before and because we can understand some French. It was not to be. The dialogue was impossible to follow, partially due to the dialect and partially due to the fact that one guy does all the voices and his falsetto for the females was a further hindrance to understanding. Also, the plot was an extremely pared down version of what we had seen the previous night and didn't seem to jibe well with the movie. Nevertheless, we had a good time. It was fascinating, and the characters were all very amusing. The atmosphere in the crowd was convivial, and at the intermission the guy who ran the place and did the voices and took the tickets (but did not operate the puppets) served reasonably-priced beer in the tiny museum on the floor below. There's a great history to the theater and I'm really glad that it exists and is able to keep people coming. Apparently the bar on the ground floor is a good hangout spot even if you're not attending a show, but we've saved that for another day.

On Thanksgiving while Jack went to work I visited the botanical gardens, which is in Flemish Brabant and right outside of the Brussels Region. Their outdoor collections were by this point almost devoid of any leaves, but it was a sunny day and nice to walk around the grounds, and I almost had the place to myself. The grounds were centered on the Bouchout Castle, where Leopold II's sister Charlotte retreated after her husband was executed for attempting to become the Emperor of Mexico.

After wandering the meandering paths I went into the greenhouses for some lush, humid warmth. Making my way through the groups of adolescents was a drag, but they had some interesting plants that I had never seen the likes of, including succulents that resembled tarantulas, bell-shaped peppers, and water plants that looked like floating, velvety lettuces. At the end of my tour I went to the town next door to find something to eat. There were some colorful chickens crossing the road. Why? I think we all know the answer to that.

2007-11-16T11:59:00.000+01:00

Prior to a recent showing of "Michael Clayton", we were rather surprised to discover that our mutualité (basic health insurance) had a strip tease commercial in which a woman gets down to her briefs. We went with Mutualité Neutre on the advice of Jack's office manager, because they aren't affiliated with a political or religious organization (socalists, christians, etc.; they're neutral, you know?) and because they have an office right down the street from us. It didn't occur to us to research their position on soft porn when signing up. When I saw the ad I shrank down in my seat, as if everyone could tell that I was a member and they were glaring at me disapprovingly. Fortunately for you, I have found it on the web!! (WARNING: this site has an audio track and boobs. So probably not appropriate for the work environment. Click "Skip Intro" and then on "Le spot cinéma")

2007-11-09T11:08:00.000+01:00

A pictorial review of our trip to the US.

Sunrise at Dulles airport.

Steakhouse in Williams, AZ. Jack ordered the "Lady's Cut" of beef.

Grand Canyon viewed with and without sunglasses.

Italians. As Jack's mom predicted based on her road trip experience 15 or so years ago, there were a lot of European visitors to the Grand Canyon.

Organ pipes, Scottsdale, AZ.

The 3-hour wait for the best pizza ever, Phoenix. We finally gave up and left.

Desert Winos Motel. Next door to the restaurant we ate at in Blythe, CA, which I believe was called "Steak and Cake". The cakes in question were of the pan variety. (Jack says, "Everybody knows what kind of cakes they are.")

Pacific Ocean.

Deer in its natural habitat of pipe trees, Youngstown, OH.

Glen Echo at twilight.

Op Corn, Glen Echo.

Hockey.

World's tiniest public park, Portland, OR.

Rattlesnake Lake, WA.

Seattle tree.

Pug, Arlington, VA.

2007-11-05T14:02:00.000+01:00

August was such a busy month that for September we decided to lay low and drink beer. The first beer event was the annual Belgian Beer Weekend, in the Grand Place. Jack was away that time the previous year, and I went by to check it out but the thought of drinking beer in such a public spot by myself just depressed me, and I left.

The fest seemed to be mostly about groups of frat boys getting their drunk on, as the beers were generally cheaper than you can find elsewhere. I think we managed to try a couple things we hadn't had before, so it all worked out. The house on the square owned by the brewers was open, so we took a tour of it (in French). It was really rather mundane inside--institutional carpeting everywhere, and a large, dull conference room overlooking the Place. The highlight was the collection of beer steins and taps they had on display, which were astonishing in their variety.

The next weekend was the Bruxellensis fest, a much smaller to-do featuring "characterful beers" from around the world. It was totally full of beer nerds--either wearing t-shirts describing the other nerdy events they had been to, or scanning the crowd for their nerdy friends. Some were even taking notes on their tastings. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We tried some lovely brews from Germany, England, Finland and the good ol' US of A. This one was held inside a former ice warehouse in the commune next to ours, so very convenient. The price per beer was about the same as the larger one, but this gathering was much less crowded and more convivial. And it came with a keeper glass.

The next weekend Jack was off to the US and I was primed to go to the Grape Fest in the town where one of his coworkers lived. Two municipalities on the outskirts of Brussels, Hoeilaart and Overijse, have a grape rivalry going on, each having their fest a few weeks apart from the other's. Although each town has a long history of grape production, neither uses theirs for wine-making, just table grapes. Over breakfast I was plotting my weekend's activities when I discovered that it was Brussels' weekend of open houses. This is when many private structures open their doors to the public, frequently offering tours. I saw that one place around the corner from us was offering a tour within the next 15 minutes, so I dashed out of the house like a wild woman, not bothering to make myself presentable or gather any necessary items.

People were already standing in line, and my chances of getting in were slim, but I kept my place and was one of the last ones to squeak by. Hotel Wielemans is an Art Deco gem in an area that is dominated by Art Nouveau (you can take a virtual tour at the website--the pictures are much better than my own). The stucco facade intrigued us, but it is owned by the Generali Company in the skyscraper next door and only open for private events. Originally the home of the beer baron Leon Wieleman, whose Art Deco brewery in a nearby commune has recently been turned into an art center, the interior was done in a southern Spanish style that had Moorish influences, with lots of terra cotta and hand-made tiles and white walls in the airy great room at the center of the house. The tour was in French, but I managed to note that the "lady's boudoir" on the first floor contained a prayer niche in a wall that was brought back from Spain. The actual bedroom, which was on the second floor, was completely covered in aluminum leaf, which I thought looked pretty cool. (The website says silver, but I'm almost positive the woman said aluminum on the tour; besides, wouldn't silver become tarnished?) The bathroom was notable in that it had an "American-style" tub and shower arrangement, which was apparently all the rage amongst the well-to-do in the 20s. It looked like a regular tub/shower to me. Funny to think that some of the most prosaic things in life were once modern and fashionable. There was probably some old codger still taking baths in a tin tub with water that was heated on a stove thinking "it'll all blow over soon."

After the visit I went back to our place to get all my ducks in a row for an afternoon of touring around. All thoughts of the grape fest were banished from my mind. My next stop was a house that was curiously built into a municipal park, having no neighbors on either side for the length of the block. It was the Pelgrim house, which has been owned by the St. Gilles commune for many years and showed obvious signs of municipal neglect. The park in the back apparently used to be the owner's back yard. It was obvious that the building had been very beautiful when it was a private home, but aside from the one room that was kept up and the peeling crimson wallpaper in the stairwell, it was virtually empty and very utilitarian.

Next it was across town to the Van Eetvelde residence by Horta. Also owned by a private company, I believe the open doors day is the only time the public can view it. The long line was intimidating and barely creeping along. They promised that they were conducting tours in English in addition to French and Dutch, but those who were waiting for English got left high and dry, since they kept getting passed over. This place was more about the amazing Art Nouveau architecture than anything else, and although I went on the French tour, I can't recollect anything that was said. Our guide was too polite to tell us more than once not to take pictures, and most people ignored her after a decent interval. None of the other groups were taking pictures. Towards the end of the tour a cop snapped at some people and got them to stop, but by then the damage was done and we had all stolen our fill of images.

The house was simply amazing. From the mosaic floors to the railings to the painted walls to the windows to the light fixtures to the stained glass dome--everything was Art Nouveau-y. Almost too much, if that's possible. It seemed like it didn't get much use these days, which is a shame, but I must say if I was attending a work function in one of the rooms I'd have to take in everything and digest it before I could pay attention, so perhaps it's for the best.

After that, I went to an old printshop that had been turned into a local art center. A bit different than the rest of the things I had seen that day, but pretty cool nonetheless, particularly since they had a wide range of printing presses from the last 150 years. Upstairs was a drawing studio where the class had pinned up their studies of hair. Most had concentrated on the model, but in the mix was a drawing of Leopold II's famous beard.

That was Saturday. Sunday was more of the same. I made it just in time for a tour (in French) of Tour and Taxis, the decaying but partially rehabbed old train yard we wandered around last year. It was two hours long. Many of the people were older, and it was long even for those of us who were more sprightly, so I'm sure some of them were hurting. The best part was that some of the old folks were long-time Brussels residents, and they corrected the tour guide (who was originally from Germany) when he made some inaccurate comments about the industrial past of the city. There was also a civil engineer in the group who spoke about the construction of wide-span roofs with no center supports. I learned that the cluster of skyscrapers north of the center of town is called "petit Manhattan". And that the biggest and second-biggest structures (in terms of the land they occupied) in the city were located on the site, both of which were former train depots. And other things too numerous to mention.

The good thing about all this touring is that, even though I didn't understand but a fraction of what was being said, it caused me to think outside of my normal rutted patterns of French interactions: ordering food, buying stuff, and giving directions. Someone mentioned a "pousse-cafe" in one of the lines I waited in, which I remembered vaguely from one of the various sources we use. I looked it up when I got home, and discovered that it is an informal way of saying "liqueur". When I first heard that phrase I assumed that no one actually said it, but now I know better. Learning!

(Our usual method of determining which phrases are actually used by normal people is to have Jack repeat it to the French woman at his office. He can usually tell just by looking at her facial expression whether it's a go or no-go.)

After edging out of the Tour and Taxis visit a few minutes early, I headed up in the direction of the royal residence to take in the Museum of Funerary Arts, another place that was not regularly open to the public. It was across the street from the Notre Dame du Laeken where the royal family members are buried. I rushed in about a half hour before closing and immediately acted like I didn't know any pertinent language, for fear that the guy at the front desk was telling people photos were not allowed. It was a small museum, dedicated to showcasing the work of 3 generations of sculptors from the Salu family, who had been making monuments for the Laeken cemetery for 100 years up until the 1980s and whose workshop it was. It was strangely frozen in time, as if the tools set aside for just a moment until another generation of Salus took up the hammer and chisel. I'm not really sure what the point of the place was, but we had peered in the windows with curiosity the times we had been in the area, so I'm glad I got an opportunity to check it out.

On the way to the tram stop I saw an African woman dressed in her Sunday best bent over in front of a mail slot in a door, alternately shouting in it and stabbing in it with a stick. What could have possibly been on the other side? At the tram stop itself, two children were trying to get into an apartment by pounding on the front door to the building and shouting up to the second floor windows to no avail, followed by the younger girl crying and the older boy playing with a soccer ball. An older relative eventually came down the street, soothed them and let them in.

2007-10-26T16:41:00.000+02:00

Three American products you can find on store shelves.

Sure, America is everywhere. But there's less infiltration into the grocery store market here than you might think. At a regular-sized store (meaning covering a similar area to one at home) you can find sodas and some sugar cereals and snack foods, of course, but beyond that, not much. Culinarily speaking, the US isn't all that. Every once in a while, though, something familiar will catch your eye and remind you that we have contributed a word or two to the international dialogue that is food:

Ocean Spray Cranberries; always around this time of year

Tabasco brand tabasco sauce (although I bought Louisiana brand because it was like 2 cents cheaper--totally not worth it)

Philadelphia cream cheese, which seems to be on some kind of astonishingly thorough marketing campaign, such that a variety of the quicky sandwich shops (even the non-chain ones) have "Philadelphia" sandwiches. I just noticed the packages in the grocery store for the first time the other day, although the sandwiches have been advertised for at least 6 months. I tried fromage blanc on my bagels the one time we made them, and it just wasn't the same (the texture wasn't creamy enough), so I'm looking forward to some real cream cheese next time.

Also of note is the fact that small children speaking French is just about the cutest thing ever.

2007-10-23T14:33:00.000+02:00

Oy vey. So very behind.

We went to the Netherlands in August, a few weeks after returning from Germany. We had planned on staying in Amsterdam, but since we were only a couple days away from our departure date when we made our plans, everything within reason was already taken. We ended up in Haarlem, a 15-minute train ride outside of town, which was considerably cheaper. The train cost €6, which I believe was round-trip, but if you get a ticket that's valid for the whole weekend and they don't stamp it, then you can reuse it. Not that we would advocate this sort of behavior.

We got to Amsterdam on Friday around noon and, after having lunch in a charming restaurant called First Class in the train station, just wandered around all day. As we walked, I discovered that my mental geography of the city was significantly different than how it was actually laid out. It's good that we didn't rely on my memory. Later we had a beer at a lovely cafe by one of the canals. We got a good spot outdoors for people-watching, and later discovered that it was mentioned by our guidebook--the first time we've ended up at a recommended place by chance.

By late afternoon we were ready to kick back for a while, so we took the train to Haarlem and checked into our place. After a decent but extremely slow meal at an Italian place that seemed to favor the better-dressed patrons on the ground floor to us schlubs upstairs, we walked the dark streets of the quiet little town for a bit.

We spent the next morning exploring the hofjes in Haarlem. Hofjes are enclosed courtyards with small dwellings surrounding them. Most are open to the public but semi-private in nature in that you generally have to open a door and go through a passage to get to them, and can only see them during visiting hours. There always seem to be older women sunning themselves in them, and they always seem to find some task in their homes that requires their immediate attention when outsiders arrive.

We also checked out the grander of the two St. Bavo churches in town. It was full of interesting little touches throughout. Our favorite was the dog beaters' chapel. They had problems back in the day that people in this modern age can't conceive of, such as dogs attacking patrons of churches or perhaps coming inside and disrupting services. So they hired dog beaters to keep them at bay. So grateful were the people of St. Bavo's that they built the guys a chapel of their own, decorated by carvings of men beating dogs.

Built into the sides of the church were squat cottages containing shops. We checked out the old fish market where they were hosting a free art exhibit. The artist had taken white batting and placed it throughout the building to give the appearance of snow drifts. We put on booties and walked around in the softness and pretended to be cold. There was also an upside-down replica of the church rendered in lace hanging from the ceiling (behind Jack in the photo) and some fake bodies covered in shrouds, but it was all about the snow for us.

We then made our way into Amsterdam to check out the Van Gogh museum. Having printed out our tickets in advance, we avoided the lines of about 5 people deep at the admission booth. All our saved time was subsequently lost since the ticket reader couldn't get the hang of the UPCs we printed out on the ink jet printer. The museum was really crowded, but there was some interesting stuff I hadn't seen before.

After that we took the free ferry across to the other part of Amsterdam across the Ij. It was not at all touristy or canal-y, and therefore interesting in its normalcy (a mosque at left). At the port for the return journey was a fabulous Italian snack shop that I'm totally going to again if I'm ever in the area.

We crossed back and went to a small museum in one of the canal houses. The upper story of this home contained a Catholic church. Apparently, back in the day, being Catholic in the Netherlands was frowned upon, so they had to worship in secret. In this case it was a pretty open secret, as the churchgoers would all assemble at this guy's house at a certain time on Sundays. Many people also had prayer corners in their own homes designed for easy hiding. And some built elaborate religious scenes in bottles--much better than ships, if you ask me.

We found a bar overlooking a canal crossroads and watched the early evening traffic go by. There was a blind corner there, but no collisions occurred. There were occasional traffic jams, however. It was a great people watching opportunity--the solitary couple having cocktails on the much-too-large wood-paneled boat piloted by a dapper captain, the party boats playing thumping music and cruising the waters for members of the opposite (or same) sex, the penny-pinching boaters in their aluminum launches with a cooler of beer, the loungers with glasses of wine and a boat full of pillows. Also a boat with a guy painting a portrait of another person on board, advertising an open house at a school.

More wandering commenced, ending in dinner. Having had a pretty small lunch we were psyched to try the Indonesian rice table. Amazingly, one of the places in our guidebook actually had available tables, so we sat ourselves down and got ready for a feast. A rice table is composed of rice and a dozen or more different dishes. We concluded that we were in for a LOT of food, as we ordered the one with like 20 dishes. Once they arrived, we discovered that each was only a couple of bites of food, and although it was still more than we could finish, there wasn't a ton left as I thought there might be. Perfect for a grazer. Delicious and satisfying.

Having done the full-on tourist thing that day, we decided to complete the evening by going on a canal cruise. We succeeded in taking an awful lot of blurry night shots and having a lovely time.

Sunday, the day of rest, we rented bikes at the Haarlem train station and rode west. The bikes were old beaters that cost us €6 each to rent. They had coaster brakes and for the life of me I just could not get the hang of them--I think my normal foot position when I come to rest has to be modified. We wanted to go to the seaside, but the rental guy didn't have any maps and the Tourist Information center was closed. So we just...followed the signs. No problem. I would like to say we got some exercise, but it's about a 5 km ride to the water, nearly all flat. We took a lot of photos while biking to prove that we did it and to add some danger to the ride.

After taking in the North Sea we traveled down to Zandvoort, a lovely resort town. The beach was populated by small vacation shacks that I'm assuming didn't contain indoor plumbing as well as a number of bar/restaurants with various themes, one of which was Brussels. Ours had a weathered Caribbean shack look to it, and it was adjacent to the Cuban place. There didn't seem to be much variation on the menus, surprisingly. All the establishments had wind breaks, and some formed a warren of glassed-in rooms that people were tanning nakedly in. I'm not sure why health codes wouldn't prevent such a thing, but hey.

Following lunch it was time to conclude our trip, so we took the other way around back to Haarlem. Once in town we stopped by the other St. Bavo church, which was an Art Deco building that, although free to the visiting public (the first St. Bavo was €2), was virtually empty aside from us and the 3 old men who were staffing the information desk. Then we rode around a bit more, delaying the inevitable, went into the main square for beers and bitterballen (which were surprisingly not bitter), returned the bikes, hopped on the train, and headed home, towards new adventures yet to be realized.

2007-09-14T12:08:00.000+02:00

Jack's birthday greetings announced by a bevy of frogs that surrounded the bird blind in which we were sitting last May. At first I thought we had discovered the mating call of some rare bird, and then eventually I spotted one of the culprits. The close listener will be rewarded by hearing Jack say "ribbit" about midway through. I can't hold the camera still because I'm giggling too much.

2007-09-10T14:10:00.000+02:00

The next day, a Sunday, was another beautiful one. We went down for breakfast and were greeted by an astonishingly large buffet. Just as we were concluding our meal, D and T popped into the breakfast room. How do they do that??

We decided to check out the palace situated at the center of the wheel that is Karlsruhe--concentric streets connected by spoke streets running towards the palace. The grounds behind the palace were taken up by a lovely park. Shortly after arriving I realized there was a mini-train, and by gum if I didn't make it my mission to be on it. Once it opened for the day I went to buy tickets. The guy sized us up and told me he'd give me a group discount if I kept my friends in line. As if we were a bunch of hoodlum kids! Well, we WERE the only ones on the train without children, so naturally we must be up to no good. In reality, I just like me a mini-train.

This was no ordinary mini-train; it was wood-fired. As we cruised around, I waved to almost everyone we passed (except those tanning), and people responded with mostly blank stares. D and T took all this in with good grace, and didn't immediately conclude that I was insane, which was nice. Upon exiting, I wanted to pitch a fit and make them go around again, but sense got the better of me.

We then visited a fountain that contained polyp-like sculptural rock formations protruding from the ground. Water was mostly cascading down the sides of it, and walking between the polyps, like a cleaner shrimp out for its daily constitutional, provided a refreshing respite from the sun due to the light precipitation falling within. We continued on our stroll until we reached a playground. There was a zipwire we all had a go on, and I took too long a spin on a barfinator, causing me some serious queasiness. There was a small pool with an island in the center, and kids were paddling around on rafts using large sticks that seemed to have been collected from the nearby forest. Kids love water, and they all looked like they were having a good time. Our litigious American society has largely caused such pastimes to to disappear, sadly.

Once we milked all the enjoyment out of the palace grounds, we crossed it off our list, said "Done!", and went to have some sausage sandwiches. We sauntered our way back to the train station for the ride back to Cologne, taking our time and getting some ice cream on the way (I got a pretzel, which was called a "brezel", one "t" away from the French spelling). D and T saw us to our train, and then went to spend the afternoon at the zoo. We, on the other hand, had a rather dull 3-hour ride ahead of us.

About a half hour into the ride things started to get interesting. Instead of the more direct north-south route that we took on the way there, we began following the west bank of the Rhine. At first this was merely pleasant, because it was different than the ride down, but then we began seeing large castles dotting the hillsides of the opposite bank. Lots and lots of castles. Some were in a state of disrepair, but others were in good upkeep and appeared to be in use. It was pretty amazing to think that that many royals lived in such close proximity to one another at one time--perhaps they were all part of a large extended family or something. It was a hot day, and sunny on our side, so we had the window open and the shade down, and everytime a train came by going the opposite way, the window would snap shut. After about the fifth time of reopening it, Jack gave up with a shrug. You think you know wind currents until something like this happens.

We got to Cologne in the early evening, checked into our hotel, and set about getting our bearings and finding something to eat. Cologne has very few surviving buildings from the pre-WWII era, so aside from the cathedral there's not much to see charm-wise. But the town is nice anyway, people are friendly and used to tourists, and they put out a decent beer called Kölsch. We found ourselves a lovely spot on a terrace close to the river, had a nice meal, and continued meandering through the streets. Once the sun started setting, we positioned ourselves on the opposite bank of the Rhine to catch the light dying behind the cathedral, and took a lot of blurry pictures.

The next day, after a breakfast that left a lot to be desired compared with the previous day's feast, we checked out and promised ourselves that we would make the most of the day before heading back. The first stop was the cathedral. The tower had just opened for the day and we decided to make the climb. It was indeed a climb. There were none of the stopping off points like in the Bruges tower until you got to the belfry. Lawdy, it was a haul. At the next stop there was a lovely kiosk built into the center of the tower, which at this height was open to the air. I assume that it was staffed to assist any visitors who were feeling faint, but I imagine it would be an odd place to work, so far removed from your colleagues. You'd have to be in pretty good shape, as well. Maybe there was a secret elevator behind one of the unmarked doors we passed on the way up. From there, a short staircase led us to the top. There were great views of the city and the river, and there was a LOT of graffiti. We saw an American family encouraging their children to write on the church. What is up with that?

On our way back down there were a lot more people huffing their way up than there was a half hour before, so we congratulated ourselves for our decision (which was in reality pretty much happenstance) to go up early, before the heat set in. The interior of the church, as T had warned us, was nothing special, just extremely big.

Our next stop was an hour-long cruise on the river. This was a steal at under €7. The tinny, inaudible tape recording in several languages put a damper on the educational aspect of the cruise, so we mostly just sat there and baked under the midday sun. The lowlight of the tour was the "beach" on the bank that was entirely given over to old nude sunbathers. The highlight was...well, there was no highlight, really. It was just nice to be out there enjoying the sun and breeze and stuff. And there was an interesting mushroom-shaped building on the bank at one point, perhaps a closed revolving restaurant. I waved to people on shore.

Then came lunch: a delicious sausage platter for both of us while sitting by an open doorway in a shady restaurant. It was nice to hear the German burble around us as we ate our tubed meats and drank Kölsch from tiny glasses. I later discovered that the 0.2 liter glasses are the traditional size for serving Kölsch. You end up ordering a lot of beer this way, especially on a warm day. But such is life. You've gotta go with the flow.

Cologne had a lot of churches that were lovingly refurbished to their original appearance after the war, so we looked at some of those. We wandered in the old but renovated city hall (which features a statue graphically mooning passersby below from a squatting position) and watched an older couple exiting after having been married, grinning goofily and surrounded by family.

That was about it, really.

2007-09-07T10:46:00.000+02:00

From the vault...

This was taken by M last September in the secret park on our street.

2007-09-02T22:02:00.000+02:00

Two weeks later, we went to Karlsruhe to see D and meet his creation, which I am hereby naming Hal. We took the train, transferred in Cologne, and arrived an hour later than we thought we would. We were supposed to meet D at his place of work, but because of our lateness and the fact that we didn't have a phone number for him, we were worried about whether he'd still be there. As we exited the train station and got our bearings, he and his wife T were walking towards us! This was not the last time that D displayed an uncanny ability to meet up with us. He and Jack must have some kind of special bond, forged in the early days of their youth in the gritty underworld of Steeltown, USA.

As Jack and I hadn't eaten, we visited a small cafe/bakery nearby. For under €10, the four of us ordered the following:
3 Oranginas
1 Coke
2 meat sandwiches on freshly-made rolls with a (perhaps overly) generous schmear of butter
1 slice of fruit tart

We were flabbergasted by the reasonable prices of things. It was a world away from Brussels. In spite of the deliciousness of everything, the best part of the bakery was the bathroom. All the auxiliary stuff had names: Polly Dolly for the toilet bowl brush holder, Jacky Paper for the paper towel dispenser, and Lady Killer for the container for the Lady Bag shown at left. (If you click on the photo you can see that the graphic at the top is a revolver.)

After that, they went with us to check into our hotel, which we had picked out on the strength of the decent prices and the absolutely insane architecture. We arrived and got up to our room, which wasn't in the crazy part as those were much more expensive, but afforded us a great view of it. There were a number of helpful signs around to direct us to the beergarden, and so we headed down in search of some refreshment after our walk through town. Did I mention that despite D's prediction, it was not rainy and cool, but in the 80s and sunny? Probably one of the hottest periods all summer, which has largely been a bust weatherwise.

D and Jack ordered beers randomly off the menu. I queried waiter for suggestions and he picked out a brown beer for me. He asked if I wanted a small and I agreed. He did not ask the men-folk what size beer they wanted. They got half-liter glass steins, whereas I got something I could more easily wrap my delicate hands around. Sexism! The beer, it turns out, was made by the in-house brewery, and was quite good. The more we saw of the hotel, the more we realized it was some kind of massive complex of interconnected businesses, not all of which were in operation at the time (we saw a sign by the parking garage advertising electric cars, for example, and the four trampolines set into the ground (which was the ceiling of the underground garage) were in a state of disuse). D and T had to leave to go get Hal started up for the evening's festivities, but not before D had consumed all of his beer (as well as a taste of Jack's and mine) in about 20 minutes. Not quite as impressive as that time HHH, a known non-drinker, bet me $5 that he could finish a can of beer in 2 minutes and then he swallowed the thing down like water in about 15 seconds, leaving me feeling like a chump, but pretty good nonetheless. Jack and I finished our brews at a more leisurely pace, observing the other denizens of the garden and the architectural oddities.

Later we went to ZKM to visit Hal and meet up with D and T. D met us at the door, and claimed to have seen us approaching from a window one story above. Again, uncanny. The entrance space featured chandeliers that swung in various patterns and a spotlight that would follow patrons around and whisper words that they alone could hear. The piece in the background at left was a spiraling tower of Babel made of books. Hal spent the evening learning from the people who stopped by to see it, making sounds and projecting patterns on a screen based on the input it received. Later that evening, it was speaking Russian and discussing computational fluid dynamics with passersby. The saddest part was when it discovered that it couldn't understand why people cried.

After making sure Hal wasn't going to crash, we went out to dinner. We found a quiet spot nearby with a great waitress--the latter being another rarity in Brussels. The food was cheap enough that I suspected that quality would be sub-par, but we ended up getting good dark beer and delicious wiener schnitzel with heaping portions of spaetzel or fries. There was some discussion about how T can't drink much because she gets very giggly, which is why she mostly stuck to tea except for a few sips of the bubbly stuff. D helped her out with her beer, thankfully.

Back at ZKM, we decided to spend some time touring around. Being a multimedia museum gave it an interesting perspective that made it more "fun" than more traditional museums, where you look at something and perhaps someone more knowledgeable than you provides some interpretation in a writeup. There were many audio-visual displays, some of which you could interact with. One exhibit was entirely made up of video games that people could play using the original consoles. They had that same robot arm from the 1982 World's Fair, and this time it was writing out the entire bible on a long scroll in elaborate Gothic calligraphy. In one exhibit, 2 people (in this case Jack and I) entered a small room with 3 red walls and one made of glass. After a few moments, the lights came up behind the glass to reveal a small stage with furniture on it, and people were projected onto the glass panel in such a way that it looked like they were on the same plane as the furniture. Our images were also reflected on the glass, so we could "interact" with the characters. Which we did, although I don't remember how. Hopefully nothing lewd. Once we exited, we were greeted with applause: a TV monitor was embedded in the exterior wall of the box, and a camera had captured our gestures while a small crowd watched. I took a bow in front of my adoring fans.

There were two other museums attached to ZKM, and the one focusing on modern art was entirely given over to up-and-coming artists from Asia. Some of the works stretched the boundaries of what a large, publicly-funded museum would feature (in my experience): one room had water cascading from the ceiling onto a desk below, upon which a mouldering book sat open. Some of it was gimmicky, but most pieces were thoughtful. I found the whole thing to be an interesting experience, and much more lively than a lot of museums I've been to. We hung around until the guards kicked us out at closing time, 1 a.m.

Before leaving, D had to shut down Hal. It was just in time, too, because it had somehow tapped into the Red Phone and was trying to convince POTUS to push the button and annihilate the USSR (Hal was a few years behind the times in his history, but POTUS didn't notice the error).

2007-08-22T21:12:00.000+02:00

As everyone knows, D was on a top-secret mission to Germany to create an AI thingy for ZKM. Sadly, he was even more isolated than we are--in a relatively small town, not-quite-passable language skills, not many people interested in socializing, and a lot of work. His weekends were his own, though, and so he awoke before dawn one Friday and took the train up to see us on the weekend of National Day.

That day we did the usual: picked him up at the train station, took him around to see the major sights. Since he didn't know much about the city in advance of arriving, it was all a revelation to him. His one goal for the weekend was to eat some sausage. There's definitely something to be said for not over-researching a place before going so you can form opinions about it without outside influences. We went to the city museum, which we hadn't been to before, which contained artifacts from old buildings, a fascinating set of maps from various points in the city's history, and a selection of the Mannekin Pis' many outfits. Later we had dinner at a beer restaurant and introduced him to gueuze. Unlike most initiates D took a liking to the gueuze right away.

The next day we went to check out the National Day scene, which we had missed last year due to having gone to Luxembourg. We got the impression that there was going to be some kind of street festival and a parade, but we were surprised by the scope of it all. We got to look around inside the Palace of Justice, which is almost as intimidating inside as it is outside. I hope I can avoid committing a federal offense for the remainder of my stay. In the square in front of the building, every police and military unit had a tent. There wasn't much of interest to us except a zip wire extending from the top of one of the buildings to the cobblestones below, but Vivaqua and the Red Cross were both handing out free water, in Tetrapaks and square plastic bags, respectively. We took advantage of that, since we didn't bring any of our own.

As we walked down the street towards the palace, we took in the sights going on around us: bands playing, games for kids, people wearing inflatable crowns that looked like brain-sucking spiders, a newspaper from that same day encased in a block of ice, public works machinery, and on and on. The crowd was excited but not rowdy-excited. We stopped at the Sablon and watched a group perform folk dances while we dined on sausage sandwiches, beer and churros. We got free masks on a stick of the king and queen, and I immediately began employing Albert II's head as a fan.

We continued up the street and D bought some dried sausages at a stall, and we stopped in the park across from the palace to take in some shade and eat them. People were already gathering for the parade, which was still a couple hours off at that point. Once we exited the park we discovered that the Belgian Parliament building was open, so we got in line for that.

The building was quite nice, with green carpet representing the Chamber of Representatives one one side of the building and red for the Senate on the other. They had some nice art and antiquities strewn liberally about, including busts of the Prime Ministers on the Senate side. In the center was a connecting passageway that contained life-sized paintings of the royal family through the years. I made the mistake of referring to the current queen as Fabiola (who is the widow of the last king) instead of Paola, and in front of me a man whipped his head around so fast that I knew I had made a critical error.

After the tour, we found a spot to wait for the parade to begin. We were aware that it was more of a review of the troops for the king, who was sitting in a grandstand on the other side of the park from us, so we were undecided about whether it was worth hanging around for. The crowd didn't seem very enthusiastic, but there were a fair number of people. We stuck it out, and were treated to horses with checkered butts, jeeps dressed up like those mop dogs, and many, many marching people whose outfits were slightly different than the outfits of the people in the groups before and after them. Overhead, the entire contingent of military aircraft screamed by, for a grand total of about 10 planes (which we were later told were almost all leased from other countries). Oh, the mighty Belgian forces!

On our way back home to rest up and decide what to do for dinner, we noticed a number of Secret Service-like security agents by the Palace of Justice, and an expectant crowd was beginning to form. We knew it had to be something good, so we found a spot and waited. A tour bus that tried to get through was shooed quickly away. One agent informed another: "twee minuten" (two minutes). A cadre of black Beamers pulled up directly in front of us and...some people in summery formalwear got out. Who else wears hats except royalty?!?? We were titillated by our brush with fame, even though, even though, who cares, you know? They're just people. They just happened to be born into a class system that's overstayed its welcome by a couple hundred years. (For the record, it appeared to be Prince Philippe, Princess Mathilde, Princess Astrid. They met up with another person who arrived separately, perhaps a royal from another country, and it looked like they were placing flowers on one of the many statues to the dead of various wars that surround the square.)

We had some chili at home from one of J's packets, went to the Atomium at sunset as the top ball was open for free that day, then back to the park for fireworks. We got a seat that was only slightly obscured (there's just no good places to watch in a city that doesn't have either large open spaces or major waterways) and enjoyed the show.

Sunday began with coffee and croissants, proceeded to the Musical Instrument Museum, and ended with lunch and chocolates. We got D to his train and saw him off, and he was never heard from again.

Or was he??

2007-08-15T11:48:00.000+02:00

Jack and I went to the Ommegang pageant in July. Last year we went to the parade part, which was simultaneously fascinating and lame, aside from the fact that they gave the onlookers beer, which was just plain great. We had heard that the pageant was something to see, so we got tickets (which was another story in and of itself, albeit a less interesting one).

On the day of the show there was some weather brewing, so we prepared ourselves with rain gear, warm layers, and schnapps. We got to the Grand Place in plenty of time to find our seats and watch the performers limbering up, in the case of the acrobats, or promenading and greeting one another, in the case of the nobility. (Thankfully we had paid for the program, which gave a blow-by-blow accounting of the events in English, and we discovered that many of the people dressed up as nobility were, in fact, actual nobility.)

The whole point of the show was to reenact a procession in which Charles V came to Brussels in 1549 to much fanfare. So about half of it consisted of people in a variety of costumes entering the arena and slowly making their way up to the grandstand set up for the royal party. Everyone's outfit was described in meticulous detail in the program. ("Christine of Denmark, Duchess of Lorraine, blue and gold brocade dress with sumptuous fur wristbands.") It also related, with the benefit of 458 years of hindsight, some of the intrigue going on behind the scenes. You have to pity those who saw it the first time around, because they probably wouldn't have known any of this stuff. Charles V eventually came, and we were informed that the actor was wearing a prosthetic chin crafted for the event. The chin, thought to be a result of inbreeding amongst the Habsburg line, was covered by a beard, so there wasn't much to see.

Interspersed with the nobles, we got to see a horseman carrying the flag of America, back when America was part of the Spanish empire. It was too busy with symbols for my liking. Much better was the flag of Grenada, which featured a lovely watermelon, and the flag of the Indies, jaundice-yellow polka dots on a white field. In fact, there was a ton of flags to represent just about everything: the 7 gates of the city of Brussels, the European nations (modern and ancient), the prominent families of Brussels, and so on. Some of these were tossed in the air by flag corps to break up the monotony of the procession a bit.

The second half came as twilight receded and the rain began. There was a virgin on a litter, some giants, a dragon, a wheel of fortune, and peasants who performed some peasant dances. The beer guys came by, and also a cake lady this time, but we were too far in the middle of the stands to get any. Also popular were the two men in costume who had the job of cleaning up the horse poop. The jester began heckling some Asian people in front of us, although he was speaking in English and disparaging English-speaking tourists. (There were surprisingly few of these--most people around us seemed to speak French.) As the rain continued, many people abandoned their seats for drier pastures. We took sips of the schnapps and hunkered down.

Then came the stilt walkers of all sizes. After they had tromped around a bit the most real and therefore one of the most entertaining parts of the evening commenced: stilt fighting. A bunch of kids on stilts about 4 feet high, trying to knock each other down to the slippery cobblestones below. Yikes. I don't think anyone was seriously injured, but I bet there were some nasty bruises the next day.

At the very end, after the magician had disappeared himself and after the red flares were lit, causing the arena to fill with smoke and a hellacious glow, all the costumed revelers entered the square and began dancing. The ones that most particularly caught my eye were the Gilles of Binche, which had silly puffed-up costumes covered in cryptic symbols. They wore serious expressions and bells and clogs and white skullcaps with jaw straps as they walked rhythmically and held an upside-down basket aloft. Who could not be attracted towards such strangeness? This was followed by a laser show, probably not part of the original.

Then the king left and it was all over. Was it worth the €30? We had a good time, although I could've done with less rain and more beer. But I have my memories as well as a whole passel of blurry photos to document the event.

2007-08-09T11:15:00.000+02:00

Jack went off to the US at the end of June for work and to visit family and I set about keeping myself busy any way I could. Anyone who knows me probably realizes I'm not terribly good at entertaining myself, but I'm trying to be better. I went to the movies ("The Maltese Falcon") by myself for the first time since freshman year of high school, when Allison F. stood me up at the Tyson's Corner movie theater when we were supposed to see "The Last Emperor" for an assignment for history class. I painted a design on our glass-top coffee table. I watched a cat in the backyard play with a dead bird for way too long. I probably cooked some good meals. I went to a cemetery and got locked in after closing hours. And I went to the Schaerbeek Cherry Festival.

The penultimate event was part of my efforts to visit all 19 of the communes that make up the Brussels Capital Region. This is like going to, say, Waldorf and Fairfax City for no other reason than to say one has been there, because as in the case of Evere I don't know of anything of note that would cause one to want to go (especially since the museum to the Belgian endive has closed). Many of the older communes have cemeteries that are outside of the locality--presumably at the time they were created they were waaaay out in the country, but now they've been surrounded by the 'burbs. Evere hosts Central Brussels' cemetery, I noted on my map. So I packed myself a snack and hopped on a tram.

The cemetery was great--very park-like with more open space and rabbits than graves. There was a woman talking with a military-looking guy at the entrance and I didn't want to get turned away so I tried to keep my head down and look purposeful when I passed through the gate. Row upon row of Brussels' top governmental officials from the 19th century greeted me, including many of the luminaries that the streets around town were named for. Sprinkled throughout were massive tributes from the French to the Belgians, the Bruxelloise to the "victims of want", whatever that means, and so on. Most graves were old, and many seemed to be in a state of neglect for lack of perpetual care, but the place was definitely still in use. The lightest possible rain began to fall while I was there, cooling the air slightly and shrouding the place in a decorous gloom that seemed more appropriate than the earlier sunny brilliance. There was an area for those who wanted to spread their loved one's ashes, and several graveyards containing war dead: one for the Germans, one for the Belgians, and one for the Allies. One section off in a corner of the property appeared to contain gravestones that had been rejected for some reason, jumbled together at odd angles with weeds poking up through them, nameplates and photos still attached in some cases. Then there was the mysterious building near the back--it looked more like an old school or office building than something one would associate with the disposal of mortal remains--the undertaker's quarters? At one point during my peregrinations I thought I saw a cop car go by out of the corner of my eye, but again I acted nonchalant and was left unbothered. According to my map, there was supposed to be a back entrance that led to another cemetery. Once I determined that this was not the case and wandered back towards the entrance, I discovered that I was locked in: separated from the outer world by a 12-foot high wrought-iron fence. Great.

I knew it was a few minutes to 5, but I didn't have any idea what time the cemetery closed until a guy got out of his car on the other side of the fence and informed me that the sign said the gate was locked at 4:30. The same sign I had neglected to check out because I was too busy looking like I was supposed to be there. He said that he and his wife were in town for their grandson's birthday party but had some time to kill before it started and thought they'd visit the cemetery, only to find it closed. Another onlooker appeared, this one clearly local given the fact that he had advice about where to scale the high brick wall surrounding the property to get out. I started to walk around the perimeter, and at a low point in the wall saw a guy in his back yard power-washing his patio. I thought if I could just get his attention I'd be able to walk out through his front door, but he didn't hear me. I got called back to the front entrance, as the couple had walked across the way where two cops were having a sit in a cafe, and told them of my predicament. After a while they came out, assessed the situation, and the older guy apparently made a joke about me being in there for 20 more years rather than 20 minutes, helpfully translated by my guardian angels.

They waited with me, and we went over the situation, how I'd heard a bell at an odd time that seemed to go on for a long while, which was probably the bell I was currently standing next to, rung to let people know that closing time was approaching. How the cop car went by but didn't stop to tell me to leave. How the fence almost looked like it was designed to be scaled from the inside, probably just for this reason, but I probably shouldn't try it since the police were now on the job. How there were plenty of nice overgrown shrubs under which one could curl up and nest comfortably on a mild evening such as the one that was approaching. We discussed the events of the day, how there was a naked bike ride for peace/the environment/whatever other cause you chose to espouse that was probably causing the traffic issues they encountered, and how the Cherry Festival was the next day. The man said the cherries were likely from Poland, which was where the Oud Beersel Brewery people told us they were getting cherries for their kriek gueuze. At one point the man tried to pick the lock with a grocery store savings card to no avail. It was a long 20 minutes. I kept telling them they could go, but they waited it out with me, perhaps because they had time to kill and it was more entertaining than nothing. They eventually lit upon the idea of taking my picture, and that was what we were doing when the cops got back to unlock the gate.

I thanked everyone profusely in any and all useful languages, and the policemen didn't seem to be at all put out by having to interrupt their low-crime Saturday afternoon reverie to deal with such a chore. So there the 5 of us stood, perhaps not ready to break the strange camaraderie that had developed, and the older cop said, "Do you speak French?" I replied, "A little," meaning "not very much at all but I'm not going to run the risk of offending you." He launched into "My colleage...", and the rest was lost to me, but everytime I looked at the younger guy, who was taking quick nips on his cigarette, he'd cast his eyes to the ground and smile a thin, pained smile of embarrassment. I have no idea what was said, but the other three laughed at the end so I smiled generally while the young guy continued to look like something shameful had been revealed. The couple didn't translate it for me. At this our little group dispersed, and I promised myself that I needn't return to Evere to potentially feel the wrath of the young cop who had been humiliated in front of everyone.

Upon further reflection but absolutely no supporting evidence, I decided that the cop had said "My colleague saw you when we were driving around clearing out the cemetery, and he decided you were hot, so he thought it would be a great way to meet you if you were 'accidentally' locked in." I still got it, baby!

The next day was the Schaerbeek Cherry Festival, which really isn't worth mentioning at all due to its lameness, aside from the fact that I learned that Schaerbeek and Evere share a police force, and so now there's two communes I can never go back to.

2007-08-03T09:12:00.000+02:00

We had a day visit from J shortly after returning from France (I know, I know, I'm still 1.5 months behind). He greeted us with bountiful supply of Cincinnati chili mix packets. Just add meat and tomato paste (and cheese and hot sauce and sour cream and spaghetti and beans...) mmmm! He had been touring the countryside (he was adopted by a contingent from the New Belgium Brewery at one point) and sampling some of Belgium's finest beers, and was interested in exploring some breweries near the capital. The place he was targeting was just outside of town, in Beersel, far enough so the Brussels transit system didn't go there but too close to get there by train without having to take one out and then a second one to get closer in. So we took a tram to the end of the line and then hoofed it the remaining way. It was a beautiful day, perfect for this sort of thing.

...Until about five minutes after we hit the pavement, at which point it started pouring rain. We hid in a bus shelter until it tapered off, then went on our way again, tailed a few minutes later by another bout of rain. By this time we had arrived at the town and so we ducked into someone's recessed doorway. We must've made too much noise because it wasn't long before a light came on and we heard some voices on the other side of the door, so we got out of there before they could call the cops. Thankfully that was the end of the rain for the time being.

Oud Beersel Brewery is only open to the public on weekends, as it is run by people who have full-time jobs. There was a guy from Annapolis there, although we both claimed to be from Washington, D.C. when asked. Small world. We noted on our brief tour that the brewery was full of musty old charm, since it's been around a while. The previous owner retired a few years ago and shut the place down, only to have it restarted by two younger men passionate about beer. The retiree lives in the adjoining building, so he is there frequently to offer his good counsel.

After seeing the place, they offered us a taste of their three beers. The Old Gueuze really hit the spot, but after the samples we were all beginning to feel the effects due to our empty stomachs. Fortunately, the small town contains not one but two breweries, and the second had a restaurant, so we bought some beer and made our way back to the Drie Fonteinen for some grub. We got a pitcher of on-tap lambic to share. The pitchers were in a traditional style, grey with blue patterns, that beer has been served in since time immemorial. While the rain again let loose, J ordered a dessert with Schaerbeek cherries, which were used to make kriek beer before Schaerbeek became built up and they began importing them from Poland, and told us about his hopes of opening a brewpub in Cincinnati someday.

Once the rain let up we hit the store, bought some more beer, and went to see the castle after which the city was named. In contrast to the French piles of rocks we were accustomed to seeing, this one appeared to be in relatively decent shape. We picked up another dog on the way there, a shaggy golden retriever, who we declined to name in the hopes that he wouldn't latch onto us. He did, and after paying the admission fee we had to deny to the gatekeeper that we knew anything about him.

The castle was totally cool and afforded tons of stair climbing opportunities. Also you could pretend you were bombing the tourists with flaming tar waaay down below. The only off-note was that the moat was empty. One could hardly be expected to keep the angry hordes at bay when all they had to do was step through a couple feet of icky muckiness.

After tramping all through the castle and looking in all the nooks and crannies, we decided it was time to head back into town. We took the Flemish region bus line this time, paying more but walking much less. We took a brief breather at our house, then headed out to sample more beer. Michael Jackson directed us to this hole in the wall right off the Grand Place for lambic that they still sweeten in the old fashioned manner. We shared a pitcher of it over dinner.

For a digestive, we went to another bar that's hard to find and contains a strange combination of locals and those who seek it out. We had a beer, reminisced about all our good times together, and then went to aNOTHer, more popular spot, Delirium Tremens, which is a place that everyone who ever visited Belgium is always telling us to go to, but we had never braved the tourist throngs before. There we found the New Belgium crew that J had met up with earlier in his trip. They seemed like a nice bunch, and I'm glad that (a) the company supports their staff to the extent that they send 5-year employees to Europe and (b) they're making Belgian-style beer with a good reputation in the U.S.

After sharing a beer with Jack and noting that, for whatever reason, the Jennekin Pis was actually turned on for once, we took J back to his hotel. Sadly, we missed the last metro by that point (the cops who were standing at the entrance to the station flapping their jaws didn't point this out and let us go down there, validate our tickets, then figure it out), so we walked back home with our super-full bladders.

You may be under the impression at this point that the three of us are raging drunks for all the beer we consumed, but I'd like to point out that it was over a period of 12 or 13 hours and we studiously avoided driving any vehicles. Also, most of them were lighter lambic-based beers.

2007-07-26T22:01:00.001+02:00

HAH-hah!

I could tell you tell you that we got to the theater the day after it opened and only 10 minutes before the start time and still got good seats, but I won't, because I'm nice.

2007-07-25T19:13:00.000+02:00

Okay, lets wrap up this France trip so we can get on to more current events shall we? Driving back up north we stopped in Nancy and were blinded by what was either the glaring white stone of the main square, or perhaps the surface of the sun. We probably ate lunch somewhere--I forget.

Anyhow, our last night was in Sedan which is near the Belgian border. We stayed in a castle--the Chateau Fort. It was a bargain we found on the internet probably because Sedan is kind of a crappy town. The woman at the front desk gave us our key and told us we were on the top floor. We were surprised when we got off the elevator and we immediately greeted by a flight of steps. We joked how it was a good thing we were able bodied and not lugging a bunch of bags. Then we opened the door to our room only to see...more steps. These went up to the, ahem, first floor of our room then up another level to the actual bedroom. After going back down to the courtyard we realized that our room was actually like a tiny house perched on the very top of the castle. Not too shabby for under €100.

On the way back to Brussels we made one last stop in Dinant, Belgium which is home of the Leffe abbey and this cool onion-domed church.

-Jack

2007-07-16T22:38:00.000+02:00

The next morning we went south to Riquewihr. Depending on which guidebook you looked at, either Riquewihr or Ribeauville held the title for most touristy, but I think Riquewihr wins (Jack disagrees, however). It was smaller, so the same amount of tourists were crammed into tighter quarters. And there didn't seem to be any activities not associated with tourism. And there were more purveyors of macaroons, wafting their magically delicious aromas to tempt passersby.

Riquewihr was about 2.5 miles away because the road wasn't very direct. Shortly before we left Hunawihr and got into the vineyards, a black lab came out to greet us. He was friendly and accompanied us for a time. We named him "Chouette" (pronounced "schwet"), which means "female owl" and "cool" or "awesome" in French. Once we got about halfway there, the vineyards stopped and forest began, and we decided it was time for Chouette to go home. Only he wouldn't agree to those terms. The only thing that made him pause, momentarily, was when Jack said "Arrete!" But it didn't last. Finally we lost track of him at the city gate, merrily acquainting himself with a Jack Russel terrier.

By this point, all the towns started blending together in my brain. I believe there were homes built directly in the city wall, there were barn swallows flitting from their mud nests under the eaves and pooping all over the place, some charm I would guess, and tarte flambees for lunch at a place called La Dime in an old tithing house--get it, tithing, dimes, 10%?? Riquewihr had the neatest coat of arms of all the ones we saw, primarily because it looked more homemade than most.

The guidebook suggested a nearby restaurant called St. Alexis as hard to find, but worth the trip. Given that there was only one road exiting town to the west, which was the one we had walked on, we thought our chances of getting there were nil without help. We asked at the tourist office, and they gave us some vague directions that didn't exactly inspire confidence.

After lunch we returned to Hunawihr to pick up the car and go on another driving tour. Had Jack and I learned anything from our last drive? Not much more than trying not to carp when things didn't go as planned. We set off from Ribeauville and stopped at the summit of a mountain for a short hike to a view spot. I'll be danged if there weren't five trails originating from the starting point. The book said "to the right of the gravestone"--there were two! So we picked one.

Right off the bat things started to get weird when we encountered a partially buried bunker facing inwards towards France. The book didn't say nothin' about no bunkers. Raggedy trenches, larger bunkers and manmade caverns followed. At the top of the mountain was a picnic table with a view, although not the one we were supposed to see, and some I-beams sticking up out of a semicircle of masonry. It was all very strange. What we wouldn't have given for a flashlight to explore the dark recesses more thoroughly!

We meandered through more charming little towns on the way back to home base. As we were passing Riquewihr we decided to see if we could find the way to the hidden restaurant. We found a narrow, rain-slicked road that we hadn't seen by the route we took on foot. It climbed steeply up the mountainside. There was no room for error and really no room for a car coming the other direction--would we have to back down the hill if we encountered another vehicle? Finally the road opened up a bit and a sign directed us onto a muddy track descending into the woods. We questioned whether we'd be able to get back up if we went down. We paused on the verge of the road for a bit, weighing the pros and cons, and decided to go for it.

At the bottom the trees opened up to a clearing consisting of a church, the ivy-clad restaurant, and another building in the back. They were connected by a lovely large kitchen garden growing a variety of colorful herbs. The terrace looked inviting, or it would have been if it hadn't been damp and cool. A hiking trail ran through the clearing, and it looked like a fabulous place to rest one's feet in the midst of a strenuous excursion.

Although it was billed as a popular place, we discovered only one other table full on that Thursday evening. There was one cozy room complete with a tiled fireplace and kitchy items on the walls. There were a variety of set menus available ranging in price and number of courses. Jack and I each picked one, and got some wine to share. The first course arrived: a tureen of soup for us to each ladle into our bowls. Very comforting. Jack's next course was a meat pie surrounded by lightly pickled shredded vegetables, followed by a plate of hams. I got the choucroute garni, sausages and hams on a bed of sauerkraut. One of them was The. Most. Delicious. Sausage. Ever. I don't know what was up with it--I kept thinking at the time that it tasted caramelized, but that's not exactly right. It had a crispy skin, a medium-coarse texture, and a well-balanced flavor. Thinking back, perhaps it was slathered in butter or some other flavorful fat and then baked or something. I don't know. It was danged near perfect, though.

Then, dessert of two tarts each: one bearing a passing resemblance to a cheescake, and the other consisting of green rhubarb in a custard. That rhubarb pie just topped things off perfectly . While we were there, the one couple left and another entered. A slow night, surely brought on by the bad weather. If I lived in the area, I'd eat there all the time. Did I mention that all this food was for under €20 per person? I didn't think I'd ever eat again.

Another rainy day presented itself to us on Friday. Fortunately, we had anticipated this and come up with a list of small museums in the area we'd like to visit. Our first stop was to Selestat for the Bread Museum. The concept was interesting: the local breadmakers funded the museum, housed in the building that formerly held the guildhall. It didn't seem to be that old, and we enjoyed the informative displays that showed us how 4" tall women in sexy cavemen bikinis ground grain to make bread thousands of years ago (they used stones and stuck their butts out). We learned how much bread people in various countries ate, how bread is actually healthier than most other foods, and so on. A lot of it was propaganda, but it was interesting (as much as we could glean from the French, anyway). Did you know a loaf of bread painted the Mona Lisa? Or that the talking bread on the Muppet Show was originally wild, but was broken and taught to speak by wranglers out West? The original post and beam from one of the larger rooms was still in place, and it featured carved scenes from bakers' work. Their symbol was the bretzel. With all that knowledge packed in our brains, we went back down to the starting point and sampled some breads and then purchased various starched-based goods (including a bretzel, naturally) to get us through the next 1.5 days. I don't think the cookie lasted more than about five minutes, just long enough for the "window to deliciousness", as Jack called it, to develop on the paper bag. The woman who rang us up complimented my French. I don't know what kind of crack she was smoking.

We killed some time in Kaysersburg before heading to our next destination, the Museum of Wine and Winemaking in Kientzheim. The highlight of Kaysersburg was a small graveyard that looked like a neglected sculpture park and the adjacent ossuary in the basement of a chapel. The pastry-wrapped sausage we bought nearby was too cold to be tasty, although the truffles we got at the same place were amazing. Perhaps the store owner should have specialized in one or the other, but not both.

The wine making museum was pretty interesting as well, but not as hands-on as I would have liked (no samples). The museum was run by the organization that tastes the Alsatian wines and determines their quality. They get together periodically and wear outfits like they're old-school academics: black and red robes and giant hats. A few years ago they met for an anniversary and opened some wine that had been in their cellar for more than a century. Does wine that old even taste good? Or is it just the prestige of owning it, like any other antique? And if it was bad, would I have the guts to speak up? They had old-school grape processing equipment; a letter from an 18th century wine manager, noting what a horrible winter it had been, causing cellars to get cold enough to freeze the wine and resulting in numerous deaths of wealthy people who had been on route to buy wine in their horse-drawn carriages when a storm came up and trapped them; and photos of happy young women with huge cans of poison on their backs, ready to start another day of pesticide spraying. But still--the museum was a bit dry. Not as lively as the bread place.

Our last stop of the day was to Lapoutroie to visit the Eau de Vie museum. It was free, and as you entered, they made a brief attempt to show how liquor is made. That was quickly abandoned, and the rest of the place was packed to the gills with tiny bottles. Virtually anything that wasn't beer and wine qualified as eau de vie, if the displays were any indication. It was kind of fun, as it was clearly an attempt to get you in there to buy the house brand, but there was a lot to look at before they gave you the soft sell. We eventually made our way into the tasting room and marveled at the varieties on offer. One thing we had seen before in the grocery store in Wissembourg and been intrigued with was a liquor made of hops. It was nas-tay! We tried a couple of other things and settled on a bottle of ginger liqueur, sweet but with bite, and a bottle of absinthe.

It was our last night in Hunawihr and we felt an obligation to do what we came here to do before we left: taste and buy some wine in a rigorous fashion. So we parked the car at our place and walked up the hill to the wine cooperative. The woman manning the counter looked seriously displeased to see us at 15 minutes to closing time, and really wasn't very interested in helping us select anything, since we clearly didn't look like we were going to buy a gross of Grand Cru. But we tasted a handful of varieties and picked out a few to take back.

We had dinner at the local winstub, Suzel. Another good, hearty, Alsatian-charm-y, pork-filled meal at a place with friendly staff. After we ordered a large pack of Germans entered and proceeded to put tables together to accommodate their multitude. They pretty much walled us off from the rest of the restaurant. They joked to us (in English--how did they know?) that they hoped were weren't planning to leave. They were having a good time though--lots of toasts were made--and generally created a convivial atmosphere. We took the long way back to our place and Jack captured this lovely photo.

2007-07-06T10:27:00.000+02:00

Ribeauville was our charming neighbor about 1.5 miles to the north. We visited the town briefly and then left to go visit the castle ruins visible from our bedroom.

The first point of interest on the route was life-sized stations of the cross, colorfully painted and in high relief, nearly leaping out of their backgrounds. We kept encountering groups of young kids as we climbed the mountainside, and we discovered at the top that they were on a pilgrimage to the Notre Dame de Dusenbach church there. We had to squeeze around groups of singing schoolchildren to check out what that they were venerating: a statue of Mary and Jesus where Mary actually looks her matronly age.

We continued further up, now completely alone on the way to the first castle, Haut-Ribeaupierre (named, like the town of Ribeauville, after the founding family; on the top of the mountain in the photo from the previous entry). It was mostly rubble, but rubble you could climb around on if you ignored the no trespassing signs posted around. We cut across the earthworks that rippled the landscape in front of the castle to exit the area. We had to do some bushwhacking through an area full of rocks that formerly belonged to the castle walls hidden in the underbrush. About when we were ready to despair, and I was testing out the blueberries (or whatever they were) to see if they were ripe enough to survive on until we were rescued, we found a short, steep drop that lead back to the trail.

Chateau St. Ulrich (to the left in the photo in the previous post) was not far off, and was in much better condition. Although there were signs saying something to the effect of "enter at your own risk", it was clearly well kept up. The high tower at the top afforded great views of the surrounding countryside. This castle I could see being defensible, at least from the southeastern direction towards the Alsatian plain. There were some architectural elements remaining such as decorative stone window frames that gave it a more castle-y appearance than the other ones we had visited.

We returned to Ribeauville, toured around the town for a bit, came across a place that specialized in beers and stopped in for a drink. The nice thing about living in Belgium is that we've tried all the Belgian beers that restaurants and bars typically offer, which allows us to concentrate on other brews that would normally be overshadowed by the Belgians.

Eventually we made our way towards the other end of town in the direction of the restaurants. We had overheard some English folk earlier talking about a restaurant that their hotel had recommended, so we went there. I got a salad with 3 kinds of baked cheese: chevre, real Munster and one named after the first family, Ribeaupierre. The Munster was so different from the Muenster which is served in the US that I didn't know which one it was. (NB: It turns out they're not the same cheese.)

We each got a glass of local wine selected by our waiter to accompany our main course: trout almandine for me and beef cheeks for Jack. But wait--don't fish have cheeks, too? Why yes, they do, and they're reputed to be the tastiest bit of the fish. I scooped mine out to test them, and my verdict was that they tasted exactly like the rest of the fish. It was an all-cheek meal, and quite tasty to boot. Thanks, English dudes!

Our bellies full, we headed back towards Hunawihr, passing a stork lovingly tending to its brood as dusk fell. Jack took this awesome shot that also shows the two castles we visited earlier in the day.

2007-07-04T10:00:00.000+02:00

We checked out of our hotel Tuesday morning for the drive south. The staff didn't seem to like us for some reason (perhaps because of the communication barrier), but it was an interesting place to stay nonetheless because it seemed to be a gathering point for the community, so there was always something going on. During the breakfast hour, citizens would be sipping a coffee at the bar. At dinner, the outside tables would fill with locals and passersby would stop to converse. We felt like we were in the midst of a vibrant small town, somehow defying the odds in that it was neither dying or completely relying on tourism. Good ol' Wissey.

Because the German border was right there, we decided to take the long way round to our next destination via Baden-Baden. Jack and I had both gotten the mistaken impression that this was an industrial center, but in reality its history going back to Roman times was as a resort town, even taking its name from the baths located there. We drove east from Alsatian charm to Black Forest charm.

We gave up on a driving tour of the principal sights of the city due to bad signage (and possibly a short stint through a pedestrian thoroughfare). It had been raining off and on, and I was frustrated with the demands of navigating, so we parked and went to find someplace to have lunch. We entered a car-free zone of high-end shops near the baths, and we despaired finding any quality cheap eats. It was then that we encountered the Löwenbräu lion.

What could me more German than a beergarden? It looked a little fakey, like it was going to be the equivalent of a Cracker Barrel, but we couldn't resist. The food was very tasty, the staff pleasant, and the beers not at all resembling that crappy brew in the States. These were full-bodied and flavorful, and hit the spot after a morning of driving in the rain. They were also enormous. Jack got beef kidney meatballs with sauerkraut for lunch. The meatballs didn't really disguise the fact that one was eating beef kidney, so they didn't do the trick for me. I had beer soup with fried garlic croutons on top and some cheese spaetzel. We also split a bretzel. Healthy!

We had some walking around to do to work some of the beer out of our systems before we could start our driving again. We strolled around the shopping area, checked out the steep streets connected to each other by staircases running up the hillside, took in the views of the River Oos that flowed through town (Jack commented that it looked like a foamy beer as it passed over a small dam--the water was an unappealing brown). Nearby was a loggia called the Trinkhalle filled with murals depicting various allegorical scenes, one of which was being repaired by a couple of painters. It really was an attractive little town.

We went back to the shopping district and decided to buy some cake for the road. They wrapped the slices (one of which was Black Forest cake) carefully for our trip. I took advantage of a nearby piece of scenery to get my groove on, then we headed out.

The plain spreading out below the Black Forest had the advantage of facing west, so whereas things were just starting to come to fruition in Alsace, it was the height of cherry season in the state of Baden. There were numerous stands selling them as we made our way south and then west back towards France.

We got to Hunawihr in the late afternoon and checked into our place. It was owned by a vintner, as were many of the lodgings in the area. For future reference: I can't imagine a time of year when you wouldn't be able to find a place to stay here. This town of around 600 souls had numerous establishments listed on signs throughout town, and I'm sure there were more available if you knew who to ask. Being the people that we are, though, we like to make reservations. And the place we ended up with was nice, although not quite what we expected.

Hunawihr is one of the many towns on the Route des Vins, which winds through the foothills of the Vosges south of Strasbourg. It's not very long from end to end, but if you visit each town en route you could spend days or weeks there. We didn't have much of a plan for the route aside from knowing we liked wine. I picked a locale about halfway along so we could do some touring up and down the road, but as so often happens, reality intervened. At any rate, Hunawihr was a sleepy little town, a better option than the more touristy ones directly north and south of us.

We got to our room and found it to be enormous, with a bed area, toilet room, separate sink/showering room, couch, dining room table, microwave, fridge, private patio and a panoramic view to the north with vineyards covering the hills in the foreground and three castle ruins providing the backdrop on the mountainside. It was very lovely.

After getting settled, we puttered around the small town a bit. It was mostly residential, sprinkled with a more than a few vintners, but other than a couple restaurants there was no commerce. A well-fortified church sat on a hillside overlooking the town, and we went up there and took in the view (the church is on the left in the photo below). The church was used for Catholic and Protestant services and was therefore fairly plain compared with some of the ones we'd seen, but Jack did manage to gain entrance to the pulpit and do some speechifying.

We then got it in our minds that we should get some wine, as that's just kind of what you do there. Most places were already closed since it was almost 7 p.m., but one place was still open. We walked into the courtyard and then through the doorway on the other side, and there was a guy putting the plastic sleeves on the necks of bottles using a machine. He went off to get the proprietor/salesperson, who was able to communicate with us a little bit and gave us a taste of some of their wines. We got a Gewurtzraminer and a Cremant d'Alsace, the former being a sweet and fruity white and the latter a dry sparkling white. For dinner we had Cremant and cake. We watched a little CNN (Jack was disappointed about the TV options...he thought the German stations would not dub like the French ones do) and then hit the sack.

2007-06-29T18:02:00.000+02:00

-Intermission-

Admit it: you're danged tired of hearing about our fantastic travels.

If Doug McKelway doesn't look like the spawn of satan in this picture, I don't know who does. My mom sent this to me--I think it was from the DC Examiner. I couldn't figure out if it was this photo or the article on the reverse that she wanted me to look at, and finally decided the photo was the more compelling of the two. The crease running from his eye was added at a later date, and although it does add to his creepiness, it isn't a hideously disfiguring scar (or a retro monocle) as it appears. Mostly the photo frightens me because the man has no pupils. The scan doesn't really do justice to his icy-blue, soulless peepers, but c'est la vie.

The real question is how in the heck can his co-anchor be so placid? Fox News needs to investigate.

2007-06-27T14:12:00.000+02:00

Where was I? Oh yes, the bretzel. Buttery, knot-shaped, remarkably similar to the American "pretzel", but more Alsatian-y. Most bakeries seemed to carry them, so we took advantage multiple times on the trip with varying amounts of success.

Monday, the Pentecost, we went to Strasbourg, which houses a number of the European government buildings. Every so often, the whole Parliament moves from Brussels 4 hours to the southeast, an incredible waste of time, energy, and money. Almost everyone objects to this process, aside from possibly the French. We carefully scheduled our trip to France so as to miss this migration, because traffic expands, prices shoot skyward, and Strasbourg generally becomes much more uptight.

We had only two things to tick off our list: the cathedral and the Petite-France, which is the name of the historic district. Having seen pink sandstone churches and Alsatian charm over the past several days, I can confidently say that there's no real reason to go there. But it was another gloomy day and we wanted plenty of ducking in options, and cities are good for that.

After parking and getting to the touristy area of town, we found a lunch spot and got out of the drizzle. It was unremarkable restaurant aside from the fact that they brewed their own beer. Jack got a tarte flambee. Thus fortified, Jack was hell-bent on getting a rain jacket, having forgotten his at home and never having liked it in the first place, although it served him well on past trips. Remarkably, the first store we went in was a camping store having a sale, and he managed to find a jacket that was reasonably-priced and nice-looking (as much as rain jackets can be). The brand name was "fusalp", and there was a small tag on the exterior with rubbery raised letters. By the end of the day the border and three of the letters fell off, and only "usa" remained. Coincidence???

The church was quite nice, though, and it contained a lot of fancy stuff, such as this elaborately-carved base of the pulpit. They had this amazing clock in the cathedral that knows the date, time, position of the sun and moon in real time, which week on the ecclesiastical calendar it was, when the next Easter will be, and much, much more. Besides this, there's all kinds of moving figures. We got to see some of them wheel around and death strike a hammer to a drum-shaped bell to mark the hour. But don't set your watch by it; for some reason it's 15 minutes slow. I believe there is some kind of technical explanation for this discrepancy, but probably what really happened some young priest was trying to set it for daylight savings time and saner heads prevailed upon him to stop, and they've never adjusted it back for fear of breaking the thing. Naturally they had the friar excommunicated for his offense.

Vauban, that genius of military engineering whose handiwork we encountered in Luxembourg, decided that what Strasbourg really needed in order to be protected was the ability to quickly shut off the Ill River's flow through the city thereby flooding the surrounding lowlands to, presumably, drown attackers. How could this have possibly worked? At any rate, because of this there were a number of interesting bridges built over the four channels that the river flowed through to enter town, and buildings on the thin strips of land between them. And there was a quaint old town area. We had hoped to go to the Alsatian Museum to look at some traditional items and get out of the weather, but much to our surprise there was a line out the door. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had the idea of checking out a sleepy museum on a rainy day.

We stepped into a tiny tea shop to enjoy a warm-up. The place had no more than a dozen seats on two floors, so we were lucky to get a spot. We took our time sipping our tea: mine a Russian caravan, and Jack's gunpowder.

Eventually it was time to head back to Wissembourg. When we arrived around dinnertime, we found that most restaurants were closed for the holiday, and those that were open were full. The one place I had wanted to check out was shuttered, so it was looking like we were going to stuck eating gyros at the carnival. On the way there I saw a place that looked friendly and generally unoccupied, so we stopped in. It ended up being a bad choice, and everyone else in the world (the three happy beer drinkers excepted) seemed to know not to go there. My tarte flambee crust came out of a cellophane packet. We should have just called it off right then, but we bravely held on. Eventually we got out of there, full but not satisfied, and grumbled our way over to the big finale of the festival: the son et lumiere.

It began to rain. We hung around with all the other chumps under soggy skies and damp umbrellas for the thing to start. The organizers seemed to be waiting for a break in the weather to begin, so we were tortured with almost an entire album of Phil Collins live. It did let up a bit at one point, so they called in the choir, who were to perform on a stage set up over a branch of the Lauter. Naturally it began coming down again as they got ready, and I thought for sure someone was going to get electrocuted.

And then...the son! The lumiere! There was music flowing from the speakers all around us as lights danced on the buildings and fireworks lit the sky. I didn't even think you could do fireworks in the rain--why on earth do they put it off in the US on account of weather? Perhaps because during the summer it's frequently accompanied by lightning. But no matter...My mood was rapidly improving, although I did manage to fire off a sarcastic comment to Jack instructing him to take some pictures of fireworks. He always does this, and they always turn out terribly. But he dutifully complied, and he got some lovely shots.

And so the Wissembourg portion of our journey came to a close with a bang, if I may be permitted to use the cliche.

2007-06-23T12:36:00.000+02:00

Sunday we spent mostly driving around the Vosges mountains in the rain. The Vosges are similar to the Appalachians, in that they are tree-covered and relatively short when compared to the Rockies and Alps and so forth. I think the highest altitude we attained was something like 800 meters.

Before we set out on the Michelin-suggested driving tour, we went to look for the spot where the Gutlouthof used to stand. Driving south for about 2 km, we saw nothing but knee-high corn. Not even a slight depression in the earth that would indicate settling of the soil over time in the spot where a building with a basement once stood. The only features of the area that suggested a different use were a short tree-lined patch of paving off the main road where a smaller road or driveway might have once been, and a small underpass that went under the train tracks, totally unnecessary today because a nearby road goes over the rails.

Once we got on our driving tour we quickly discovered that Michelin, while having fine maps, is not so good at directions. The guidebook will say something like "turn right after you enter town", not specifying the street name, the closest address, whether it's the first turn or the third. I think they're deliberately vague to get you out of your car to ask directions and talk to the local populace, but when you're antisocial you don't do those sorts of things unless you're totally lost beyond redemption. And we always knew where we were, just not how to get where we were going.

Our first stop was a short hike off the road to a spot overlooking Wissembourg. Brimming with confidence as usual, I failed to note which path we were supposed to take when we left the car. So we wound up and up, and it began to sprinkle on us. Then it began to rain. Then pour. We took shelter under a patch of scrubby pines planted in rows. We kept deciding that the tree a few feet away would be an improvement over the current one, but then it turned out to be the same. We kept moving, looking for that illusory dry spot. Eventually the rain let up a bit, and we headed back down, damp and chilled.

Once in the car we cranked up the heat and lit out for our next destination. We missed our turn due to the aforementioned ambiguousness, then I tried to get us back on track at the next town without turning around, and then all the roads looked too narrow to possibly be the way forward. We went from Wingen to Petit Wingen to Wingen and finally back to Petit Wingen. Every town had a helpful map if you bothered to park and look at it, which we eventually did, and the road we were supposed to go on was one of the ones that looked like it would just dead-end in someone's driveway. Eventually we got to where we were going, but ended up skipping a chunk of the tour and one of the stops we were hoping to see: a ruined castle. The place we ended up at turned out not to be a town, but a restaurant/hotel complex on a mountaintop.

As we were cranky and hungry by this point, we decided to stop for lunch. We parked and discovered that the castle we were trying to get to was visible in the distance, seemingly miles away. The restaurant was homey and family-oriented. The waitress warned me against the lasagna, noting that it took a long time to cook, so I ordered what turned out to be an extremely bland pasta with vegetables dish. Jack got trout in cream sauce, one of the Alsatian seasonal specialties, which was heavenly. We ordered a light and refreshing bottle of local hard cider to accompany it.

I was suffering a bit of despondency after lunch, but we decided to brave the intermittent rain squalls to hike in the general direction of the Chateau Fleckenstein ruins. Our path was littered with interpretive displays about how charcoal was made back in the day. The area was actually closer than it appeared, and we got to the base of the promontory on which the ruins were built, paid our admission and were given free rein to clamber about on the site. It was a bit cheesy, as they had added a number of things for the kids, such as spooky sounds and lights in a staircase carved through the rock that was referred to as the "troglodyte passage", but interesting nonetheless. Someday I hope to receive an in-depth explanation of why in the heck people built these huge fortresses high up on rock outcroppings, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Sure, they would be extremely difficult to capture, but what would you be protecting other than the small band of people living inside the walls? You could keep an eye out for troops approaching from any direction, but who would you notify? As far as the eye could see were trees and more trees. Standing on top of the ruins you could see the hotel/restaurant where we ate in one direction and an RV camp in another, but no towns, farms, or other signs of life in the rolling foothills.

After we had gotten our fill of the chateau, we returned to the car. We walked back by a muddy, rutted road that steeply climbed the hillside, and as we walked up it we realized this is the way we would have driven had we followed the directions correctly. No thank you.

Since we were finally going the right way, we continued on with the driving tour. We saw more Alsatian charm, vestiges of the Maginot Line (a dismal failure of French military defenses in WWII), and plenty of roadside memorials to war dead, since heavy fighting occurred in the area a number of times.

We detoured from the tour to visit Keffenach and Drachenbronn, the two towns where the Flicks came from before arriving in Altenstadt. Keffenach was a sleepy town with two churches and absolutely no commerce, and one small boy with enough bravery to taunt the strangers. Since there's no conceivable reason for tourists to stop there, I can only imagine that we were being watched by more than one set of eyes behind curtains.

Drachenbronn, where Jack's earliest-identified ancestor was from, was also home to a legend about a dragon coming down from the mountains and drinking water from the town fountain. We parked and walked from one edge of town to the other, greeted the local populace out for their early evening constitutionals, and talked to a politician from a nearby town who was running in the regional elections and putting up signs. He was a pretty young guy and sported a Donegal beard, so we decided we would vote for him. We visited the graveyard, bordered on one side by curious goats.

We returned to Wissembourg for our evening's repast, and the festival was in full swing. An all-accordion band was entertaining people in the square. After dumping our belongings we were lured back down to the plaza by the smell of grilling meats. We picked ourselves up a large sausage sandwich and a beer to share. Funny thing is, when your French pronunciation is bad, they switch over to German. If you're not French, then naturally you're German, right? So Jack ordered his sausage, and the guy said "mit?" meaning "with". Moutarde, what else? After we sat down to eat, we saw people walking around with these delicious-looking biscuity things with a side of apple sauce. Dampfnudel: some kind of biscuit dough that is shallow-fried in butter to arrive at a browned and crisp crust on both sides. They were 2 for €3, but for some reason the lady gave us 3. We must've looked emaciated to her pleasantly plump self. It came with a side of "compote" made of cooked apples. A satisfying meal indeed.

2007-06-15T23:04:00.000+02:00

The next day, Saturday, we went out to explore Jack's heritage in the next town over, Altenstadt, about a mile away from our hotel via the main road. Fortunately for us, we didn't have any of the problems associated with the journey of Dr. Flick.

As we walked down the road, which had a variety of establishments not typically associated with Alsatian charm, such as gas stations, warehouses, and large grocery stores, our eyes were relieved to light upon a stork sitting on the top of a chimney. For some reason, they have storks here. It's kind of cool, as they build giant nests up on top of precarious spots (admittedly, some with platforms that have been added to attract them), and the ma and pa take turns staying with the young-uns and venturing out for food. You can always see at least one parent in the nest, carefully tending to a batch of hatchlings.

But I digress: Altenstadt. There's not much to it, just a tiny main street with an elementary school, post office, mini grocery store and a restaurant, and many residences in the traditional style, some looking worse for wear. It seems like it hasn't changed too much since the Flicks left for America in 1830. The church that Jack's ancestors got married, St. Ulrich, seemed to be the community center as well (a woman was putting up signs for a cake sale on the gates while we were there). We entered to empty pews and the sounds of the organ rolling around us. The practicing organist seemed to be unperturbed by two people scrutinizing everything and taking a lot of pictures.

In the year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Eight, the tenth day of the month of November, the banns having been proclaimed as is customary in my church, three times, three proximate Sundays having passed and in succession, and no impediments having been found, I the undersigned pastor in Altenstadt, in my church, at ten o'clock in the forenoon interrogated Joseph Flick, twenty-seven years old, son of Joseph Flick, a citizen of Drachenbroon, and the deceased Elizabeth Keller, therefore married, on account of residing in my parish and on account of having been born in the parish of Keffenach from where transmissorial documents have been furnished me and which are in my possession, and Anna Mary Huber, about twenty years old, daughter of Peter Huber Citizen of Altenstadt and Tenant of the community farm (Gutlouten) and of the deceased Magdalen Metzler, heretofore married in my parish: with their mutual consent given and assured on the word of those present...the bride having declared she does not know how to write, makes a sign, after this I have blessed them in accordance with the custom of Holy Mother Church.

--Translated from Latin, St. Ulrich Church records

We didn't find any Flicks in the graveyard, perhaps on account of the soft sandstone used had caused all traces of writing on some of the older markers to be worn away, perhaps because names weren't of a standard spelling back then (there were some names that were close to Flick), or perhaps everyone moved on before passing. Joseph worked at the community farm outside of town called Gutlouthof ("good leper house," we are told, the former site of a hospital) in some respect (perhaps as a maker of textiles), where he lived with his wife Anna. He had a son, Peter George, a stonecutter, who immigrated to the US along with his brother, wife and children. The stone baptismal font in the church dated from 1755, and perhaps this is where Peter had his head dipped on a dismal February day in 1789. We picked out a respectable-looking house where we decided Peter may have plied his trade before he set sail.

We hung around for a bit, daring anyone to come up and ask us why we were loitering so we could press them for information, but no one did. The organist escaped while we were behind the church looking at the graves. We walked down the remainder of the main street out of town. And just like that, we were in Germany. A whole other country! We continued walking a handful of paces and were in Neuhof, a cluster of maybe 3 houses. We crested a small rise covered with vineyards on either side, and took in the view. On our way back down into France, Jack noticed that one of the houses had a sign up for schnapps. With a load of gumption, he went up and rang their doorbell. A large, sweaty man in a white t-shirt and suspenders answered the door, and Jack somehow communicated what he wanted, and the guy indicated we needed to go around the house to the other side. So we did. There were no schnapps in evidence. No one was around. As we were getting ready to give up, a garage door opened, and the same man appeared behind it.

There was a tiny table set up surrounded by crates of liquor. He gestured for us to sit, and began speaking to us in German. Mere steps from the border, and he spoke absolutely no French. I think the only thing we managed to get across was that we were from "USA". We tasted a few of the various flavors such as cherry and plum, and they in no way resembled schnapps I'd had before--these were hard liquor (50% alcohol!) with a little fruity aroma to them, but otherwise no sweetness. This made me a bit nervous--what if we were buying some kind of product adulterated with methanol from an amateur distiller that's going to make us blind? [Turns out this is what legitimate schnapps taste like--the ones available in the US are fake. At any rate, we haven't gone blind yet.] After a couple of minutes, the wife came down. She left again and returned with a young man who spoke some English. Jack told him how he was researching his heritage in Altenstadt, and he dutifully transmitted the information, but they were merely polite rather than interested in sharing any stories. We had settled on a 4-pack of small bottles of different flavors, given that we didn't have the capacity to carry a ton of stuff with us on foot, and yet they urged more samples on us. Having not eaten lunch yet, we had to beg off lest we no longer be able to walk.

We went back into town and stopped in at the only restaurant. It was much too fancy for us, full of people celebrating special days, but it was the only game in town. A local Riesling, nicely chilled on such a warm day, went well with Jack's chicken in mushroom sauce with a side of buttery spaetzel, and my duck breast with potato gratin. The most astonishing thing about the place was the bathroom, which was done up in late-80s or early-90s decor, with lots of chunky colors and sponge-painted walls. A huge contrast to the muted interior of the rest of the place.

As we lingered over coffees and sweets, Jack asked our waitress about the community farm Gutlouthof. Had she heard of it? Yes! She had an uncle who worked there. It was damaged beyond repair in "the war" and then razed. No traces of it remained. It had been about 2 km south of town on the main road, she said. This corresponded well with the information we had from another source about the location. So that was something.

We walked around town a bit more, saw two girls washing a pony in the street like it was a car, and then headed back in the direction of Wissembourg via a bike path that followed the Lauter into town. We went back to our hotel room to digest our food and experiences, and listened while a band played on the traffic island on the street below. When they completed their set, they hopped on the mini-train to take their tunes to the rest of the town.

After our rest we went out exploring again. We visited the interior of the church, which featured a giant painting of a saint on one wall. Having checked that off the list, we re-entered the main square to find traditional dancing occurring. Now, everyone knows that Alsatian traditional costumes feature enormous red or black hair bows for the women. These women were wearing long scarves that covered their heads, so clearly they weren't Alsatian. They were...Romanian? Or Romany? The pamphlet for the Pentecost Fest indicated that it was one or the other, but it was difficult to translate the word accurately from the French. But anyway, it was a lively group of men and women yipping, whistling, and trilling, dancing in a semi-circle. As we watched, it began to rain, and the troupe crowded into our hotel and into a second-floor overflow room with a bar. The rain didn't stop them from carrying on the festivities--a peek in the door later on revealed that they had gotten a number of tourists to join in the dancing.

When the weather cleared up a bit, we went to find our evening meal. We ended up at a lively place that appeared to be mostly locals, as it was somewhat off the tourist track (although that's hard to do in such a small town) and filled with non-charming things such as creepy dolls. We availed ourselves of the tarte flambees, served unceremoniously on a board. The wafer-thin crispy crust was topped with layers of cream, onions and ham bits. Delicious. Frankly, I wish I was eating one right now.

When we eventually wandered back to the hotel, the traditional dancers were still going strong. We mentally wished them godspeed and went to bed.

2007-06-13T15:41:00.000+02:00

I got to Weissenburg at about 12 o'clock. I inquired where I could get a conveyance to Alstadt from the man who apparently was a porter. He told me that Alstadt was far away and that I would have to take a train. He said it was not called Alstadt now, but Rabistadt. He took me to a man in uniform, who apparently confirmed what had been told me, and I was informed that I could get a train in about an hour. I visited Weissenburg and came back in one hour. I took the train for a place called Sels where I went to get the stage for Alstadt. In the car I got into conversation with a gentleman and told him where I was going. He was from Weissenburg and well acquainted there. He informed me that Alstadt was ten minutes walk from Weissenburg and that I would have to return to Weissenburg. I got out and waited for a train to Weissenburg. It was nearly six o'clock when I got back and it was quite dark. I got a train hand to accompany me with his lantern and visited Fr. Harding Fischer, pastor of Alstadt...I did not get home until after ten o'clock and as I had had no dinner and had tramped about in the mud a great deal I was very tired and hungry.

--Lawrence Flick, November 25, 1902

(excerpted from the book "Beloved Crusader: Lawrence F. Flick, Physician," by Ella M. E. Flick, 1944)

2007-06-10T22:03:00.000+02:00

Ah, France. Country of wine, cheese and mystery.

We rented a car to travel to Alsace in May, home of one branch of Jack's ancestors and various white wines. Having personally never learned to drive a manual, Jack had to take this on himself with me navigating. Not exactly a fair division of labor, but navigating is not as easy as you might think, since the route numbers are rarely shown on street signs and you have to guess which upcoming cities they will refer to at each roundabout. Really keeps you on your toes.

So we made our way out of the city using a wonderfully detailed hand-drawn map from one of Jack's coworkers. And then we started flying on the 411. It seems that they only tell you the speed limits (a) when it changes or (b) when you enter a new country, so we were just trying to keep pace with the slower lot of cars. It still seems pretty fast, though, when the speedometer says 120.

After getting the hang of the big road I attempted to take us on some of the smaller byways that paralleled the highway so we could take in some local color. Every single turn was wrong. Every single one. I kept reviewing the map, taking in landmarks such as towns and railroad tracks, and thinking I knew where we were, and then, surprise! We'd end up somewhere else. We drove through the lovely beer town of Ciney, though, so it made it sort of worth it. The second time through the main part of town wasn't nearly as nice, however. A little too reminiscent of "National Lampoon's European Vacation": "Look, Jack, the church from the Ciney label!" So we followed the signs back to the motorway and stuck with that as long as we could.

Everyone told us to buy gas in Luxembourg because it was cheap there, so we did. Keep in mind that we were driving a VW Polo, about the equivalent of a Golf, not a Hummer. The tank was a little less than half full at that point, and it cost us...€33! [That's approximately $44 for those of you watching at home.] These Europeans have no clue what cheap gas is.

When we breezed past the French border, I was able to switch to the higher-quality map I had of the region (shout out to Michelin!), which made getting to Wissembourg an uneventful affair once we left the main road. Our French teacher told us that in France you either had toll roads or speed traps, so they get money out of you one way or another (at least I think that's what she was saying). At one point on the highway we saw two cops pointing a radar gun at traffic while sitting placidly on an overpass.

We cruised into Wissembourg on late Friday afternoon on the first day of their Pentecost festival. We didn't get into our first choice hotel, but it turns out that the place we reserved was right across the street and, unlike the original place, had an unobscured view of the main square in town, perfect for viewing the festivities.

Wissembourg is a small town surrounded by major fortifications in the terms of ramparts, a moat on the north side, and a river to the south. It is adjacent to the German border, and, while tiny, still bigger than most of the towns in the vicinity. The ousted king of Poland, Stanislas, whose daughter would later become the queen of France, spent some time there. Alsace changed hands several times, yielding a distinctive Germanic dialect and a heavy, pork-based cuisine.

We wandered around the streets for a while taking in the Alsatian charm of the half-timbered houses painted in a variety of soothing colors. The River Lauter branches off in several directions as it reaches the town, giving it the appearance of a mini, non-navigable Venice, and offering plenty of pretty views. We stopped for a beer in the shadow of the Maison du Sel, constructed in the 15th century and sporting such a wavy roofline that it's amazing the whole thing hasn't collapsed in on itself. It was there that we first saw a chef, cooking outdoors, slather a flat bread with what appeared to be a creamy white cheese, top it with onions and ham (of course), and pop it in a wood-fired oven for a few minutes. We had discovered the pizza of the region: flammenkuchen or tarte flambee. But it wasn't yet dinner time, so we wandered around some more.

Our ramble took us past the Catholic church in town, featuring sandstone construction in a soft pink. We marveled at the astounding variety of graffiti etched in the walls, dating from the 1700s onwards. Then we were ready to eat. Having earlier perused the menu at our hotel and finding it satisfactory, we decided to eat there. We grabbed a sidewalk table and enjoyed the oncoming coolness of evening. I got the in-season specialty meal of white asparagus. The first course, creamy asparagus soup, was heavenly. Then, a giant plateful of asparagus with three sauces. All the sauces were okay, but not very interesting. I was pretty content just eating the spears plain. Although I would have guessed it would be a vegetarian option, it came with a side of cured meats. Jack had the choucroute garnie, one of the few Alsatian dishes to gain a reputation outside of the area: sauerkraut with assorted meats. There were a few sausages, a few pieces of pork, and a giant heap of sauerkraut. All good. We washed it all down with a local beer (in addition to wine, Alsace makes much of the French beer).

As night fell, the town seemed to become overrun with teens. They were all heading towards the fair, a feast of glowing lights, cheap toys and bored carnies. We checked out the scene, but after a long day of driving and other excitement, it was time to hit the hay. The fact that our only window opened up onto the square didn't always make for ideal sleeping conditions, but the location made up for it in other ways.

2007-06-09T13:50:00.000+02:00

Investigating the entire spectrum so you don't have to:

I forgot to mention that when my parents were here and they went to the grocery store, they brought back a 1-liter bottle of Delhaize brown table beer. We tried it one evening before going out to eat somewhere, and the "beer" bore more resemblance to Diet Coke than to other beers I had tasted: artificially colored and sweetened (I forget with what, perhaps sorbitol), fakey-feeling carbonation, and a wimpy 1.5% alcohol. It's amazing to me that in a country like Belgium such a product could get away with that type of trickery.