Don’t read this on an empty stomach…- cb

If Paris was Hemingway’s moveable feast then I’ve decided Biarritz is going to be my stationary one for as long as I’m lucky enough to be parked here. And I’m already asking myself how I’ll ever go back to shopping at Safeway again.

Just back from my first visit to the weekend market down the street, and the offerings blew me away. This is why I’m here. This is what I love about living in Europe. And I’m not just talking about the fabulous French food. I’m talking about doing my morning chores and feeling like it’s a lesson in learning. And in France, more often than not, that lesson is bound to be a crash course in good living, too.

The grannies were out with their pull-behind trolleys, overflowing with veggies and the requisite baguette antenna. Inside Les Halles, young families posted up at the tapas bars, where you can take a break from your shopping with a noisette coffee and a bocadillo sandwich (Spanish influence is strong in the Basque Country).

Is this their Starbucks? I do believe.

How is it that the thinnest slice of Serrano ham on a crispy white baguette can fill your mouth with such flavor? When I first saw a bocadillo, the American in me was tempted to fret, “But where are the fixins!?” Then I took my first bite. Just meat and grains. Simple is best.

The options are tantalizing. It’s like stumbling upon free sample day at Whole Foods when you’re used to slumming it at Winn-Dixie – but the prices are fair, and most everything is sourced from nearby. The platters of freshly shucked oysters, glistening over ice in the seafood hall, come from up the coast near Bordeaux. There are perfectly poised langoustines, looking like no crustacean I’ve seen before – a cross between a shrimp and lobster, curled into perfect pink question marks awaiting a sure fate in the pot. And vendors who drive in from the countryside bring their fois gras, canned confit du canard and Basque cheese.

In the end the choices overwhelmed me. I wanted it all. So I sat for a coffee to mull things over, and ended up leaving with two frilly heads of lettuce, a bunch of those oddly cylindrical French radishes and a bundle of dark green spinach.

Bizarre picks considering all the options – that adage about shopping on an empty stomach must apply here as much as it does at home.

– by Terry Ward

I blame Kerouac for giving the term “road trip” it’s whimsical gravitas. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the power of the open road, the rush of adrenaline when you’re going 75 miles per hour in the opposite direction of familiarity. But, invariably, you’ll hit the Jersey Turnpike. Stopped dead in a sea of overheating cars, you can’t help but think that familiarity has its perks.

I was on the road to a wedding in Maryland. Google maps told me it was only 220 miles. I did the math. Driving the way Long Island conditioned me to drive, as though you might win money for reaching your destination five minutes sooner than the person in front of you, that should only take 3 hours. Leaving at 11:00 for a 6:30 wedding would even leave time for lunch and a dip in the hotel pool. I love road trips.

I picked up the couple we were driving with at 11:00. We stopped for Starbucks at 11:15. The line was pretty long, but fuel was necessary. I bet Kerouac never waited for an iced soy mocha.

Traffic in the city was bad. Apparently we weren’t the only ones looking to leave Manhattan on a beautiful Saturday morning. Go figure. Half the world is trying to move here (trust me, I’ve been apartment hunting) yet the sun comes out and everyone’s ready to leave. It’s like the world’s biggest commuter college.

We are through the Lincoln Tunnel by noon. There was a hold-up due to 50,000 cars trying to fit through a two lane opening. Go figure. Still, the open road was ahead.

In case of rip current, swim parallel to shore. I should have known this at 19, but for some reason it was never covered in any swim class I had ever taken. One summer in college, I had tagged along on a trip my then-boyfriend (let’s call him T) and his family was taking to Hawaii. Apparently everyone else knew this fun fact about ocean safety, but forgot to share it with me.

We had plunked our towels and beach gear down on the sand. The ocean was unusually calm, the waves not large or consistent enough for surfing. T’s three teenage sisters decided to spend the day tanning, and his mother curled up in a beach chair with the latest thousand-page Harry Potter. T and I were more restless and decided to swim out without boogie boards. After a few minutes, I noticed that waves got bigger and T was nowhere to be found. I turned back and realized I was much farther from the shore than I thought. As I was trying to judge the distance, a wave crashed over my head.

The waves, which seemed like gentle rolls in the distance, became much larger and fiercer up close. Panicking, I tried to swim back to shore, but every stroke forward pushed me 10 feet back. Still no sign of T, and his family was now just tiny dots on the faraway sun-drenched shore. Tanning and reading about child wizards on the beach didn’t seem like such a bad idea now. More waves crashed over my head. I gulped about 5 lung-fulls of sea water. I considered yelling for help, but knew my calls would be drowned out by the roar of the ocean.

Even if I hadn’t been told about this idea of saudade – a feeling of longing or melancholy mixed with hope for finding what is lost that permeates the Portuguese personality – I would have felt it still.

My friend Gabriela, who I visited in Porto, was the first to tell me about it. She said that I would see. That there’s a certain sense of longing that permeates the Portuguese personality that I would eventually sense – despite the cerulean skies, the merrily flapping laundry in the wind and the typically European conviviality around the dinner table.

When I asked her where she thought this longing came from, she said that perhaps it’s because the Portuguese were always travelers. Always explorers in search of something better – or at least something different – on foreign shores.

I certainly sensed her saudade.

When I first met Gabriela in Morocco, she was traveling. Abuzz at the overwhelming sounds, sights and smells of the medina in Marrakech. Visiting her at home in Porto, I found her back to normal life. There were stresses at work, pressure from friends, and above all, a deep longing to return to New Zealand, where she had lived for a year.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt the weight of my own saudade in Portugal.

Perhaps it was the quietness of the cafes in the mornings, where couples sit side by side and speak in low voices as if not to disturb their neighbors. Even at a touristy seaside overlook near Lisbon, it was a busload of Spanish tourists that were gabbing away excitedly and bubbling about, injecting life into what was otherwise just a postcard perfect backdrop.

There is an overall quietness to life here that makes you reflect.

All I do is travel. My mother has always called me a seeker, and it unsettles her to some degree. She wishes I would just find what I’m looking for already, get a proper job – with benefits – and settle down.

The thing is, I don’t really know what I am looking for.

I am just looking around to see what there is, trying to learn a little of everything, and the more I look the more I get lost about where it is that I ultimately want to settle – in fact, the more I wonder if I can settle at all.

In a way, I suppose, it is melancholic, this saudade. Never being fully content where I am.

And there is longing, to be sure – always wondering if perhaps the grass is a shade greener over there. But it is what keeps things interesting to me. Never knowing what I will find over there. Even when the grass isn’t greener, well, at least I know.

- by Terry Ward

I’m in Kigali, writing on a French keyboard that makes typing seem like a game of hit-and-miss, like trying to play poker while looking through a chicken.

Overview: Kenya is full of guns. In colonial days, they tried to exterminate the elephants (whose populations are now on the rise, thankfully); today, the good guys have guns, the bad guys have guns, and pretty much every building or parking lot has a guard with a semi-automatic rifle. This includes all the little villages, not just Nairobi. Guns are everywhere in Kenya. The government seems to have just enough money for security and corruption with nothing left over.

Uganda is in slightly better shape (i actually saw a Lexus dealership, which puts it above Kenya), but ALL roads there are Jeep trails, including the main ones that look like tarmac on the map. Driving in Uganda is a contact sport – dodging potholes that are always as deep as they are long while dodging trucks that are NOT trying to dodge you.

Rwanda is France compared to the other two, though there isn’t a single movie theater in the entire country. There are smooth paved roads everywhere, as though Bill Clinton could show up at any time and there would be hell to pay if his Mercedes bumped his latte.

It’s interesting how different cultures respond to fear.

If my recent flight from Ireland back to Biarritz is any indication, certain European nationalities seem to greet life-threatening circumstances with a hearty dose of whooping laughter.

My flight had been full of mostly Spanish travelers returning from St. Patrick’s Day in the Emerald Isle. As we descended into Biarritz, the rolling mosslike landscape out the plane window took a sudden, ominous turn – namely it started rocking violently in and out of my line of sight as the plane prepared to land and the ground shot toward us in a decidedly abnormal fashion.

A few feet before we would have touched (and I use that word loosely) down, the pilot aborted the landing. I imagined him flooring it, or however that works in the cockpit, as the plane shot pretty much straight back up – engines roaring – and my seatmate gave me a weary look that translates in any dialect to ‘oh, crap.’

Then, competing with the roar of the engine, there erupted a similarly exuberant and determine drone – the low roar of scores of Spaniards hooting and hollering and patting each other on the backs as if they had just survived the first big drop on Space Mountain.

As we screamed noseward into the heavens, then leveled off and circled over an ocean that was whipped into a frenzy by the gale force winds, the hooting only quieted for a few brief moments – when the pilot came over the PA system to announce ‘There were some high winds on the ground in Biarritz, as you can see from looking out the window at the ocean, and we’ll be attempting to land again in a few minutes.’

My legs turned to jelly as it hit me just how squarely my fate was out of my hands. But nearly ever face I turned to for solace was busy swiveling on its neck, smiling at its neighbor, and, much to my awe, giggling away the fear.

When we came in, we came in hard.

There was a moment when the plane shuddered and pitched in a strong, sudden gust and I thought, right, this is the end.

It was seriously scary stuff, but what surprised me the most was how I just sort of let my eyes glaze over and rolled with the punches. Looking back, I’d have to say it was because everyone around me was just sort of rolling with the punches, too, albeit in a far more boisterous manner.

Finally the wings caught a comforting angle. The ground was right there. And a split second before we landed, I had the relief of knowing we were going to be fine.

The cheer that erupted at that moment would have competed with that in any World Cup stadium, I assure you.

And I was right there along with the rest of my fellow passengers, hooting and hollering and screaming my head off in joy that we had won.

- by Terry Ward

By Ian MacKenzie. Courtesy of Brave New Traveler.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I boarded the plane at Vancouver International Airport, on our way to Costa Rica. I was flipping through the in-flight magazine, she was watching other passengers mill about, until everyone was in their seats.

The flight attendants closed the doors, checked all overhead compartments, and our plane geared up to pull out of the gate. We made it about 10 feet before the electrical system died.

Yes, died.

The plane hushed and came to a stop. The passengers glanced at each other with obvious surprise. A moment later the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom:

“Uh, yes, it seems our electrical system has conked out on us. But don’t worry folks, this is actually our secondary system, which we only use to taxi in and out of the gate. We don’t use this system in-flight. We’ll just restart the engine and be on our way.”

My wife reached over and clamped her hand around mine. Needless to say, our comfort towards flying did not increase.

Runaway Anxiety

I used to be okay with flying. There was a bit of nausea during takeoff and landing, but otherwise, I never quite let the cold, clammy fingernails of terror trickle down my spine.

But the incident above was not the only one during our trip. All four of our flights experienced complications: from the air-conditioning malfunctioning, to electrical storms, to closed airports, to emergency diversions for refueling.

Could it be we just have bad luck? Not so, I realized, considering Rolf Pott’s described a similar situation in a recent World Hum post:

We started flying in circles. Then the pilot kept coming back on saying, “Another 20 minutes.” Then he said we were running out of fuel so we were going to have to land in Baltimore. In this day and age, when you get these cryptic messages from your pilot, you get a little nervous. We were coming in for a landing in Baltimore and were about 10 feet off the ground when we pulled up again. That was a little freaky.

And consider this sobering statistic reported by Chris Elliot:

Buried in the latest government figures about the airline industry is one number that is bound to fill every air traveler with dread: Complaints are up an eye-popping 77 percent from a year ago.

“In April, the Department received 1,246 complaints from consumers about airline service, up 76.7 percent from the 705 complaints received in April 2006,” it says. “But 4.9 percent fewer than the 1,310 filed in March 2007.”

Flying really has gotten worse…

Read the entire post at Brave New Traveler

After a week in Scandinavia, I am in love. Not with a tall, blond Swede, mind you, but with the bike culture here. Coming from New York, where cyclists risk their lives every day dodging manic cab and truck drivers, I was thrilled to escape to Stockholm and Copenhagen. Here, drivers actually stop at stop signs. They also refrain from honking when cyclists and pedestrians cross and intersection. Every major street has wide bike lanes, and most of the time they are painted blue or are slightly elevated to distinguish them even more.

In Copenhagen, cyclists even get their own traffic lights. On almost every street there are lines of parked bikes, since about half the population rides on a given day. Subway stations need to have a section of elevated bike parking to meet demand.

Dressed in everyday clothes, I don’t feel like a fish out of water like I do in the US. Here, people don’t believe they must dress in sweatpants or spandex outfits like Tour de France racers just to ride a bike. For Scandinavians, bikes are primarily a mode of transportation, not a mode of weight loss. Young moms pedal toddlers around in stylish jeans and wool coats. Businessmen wear their suits and plop briefcases in a bike basket. Ladies-who-lunch types ride cruisers with heels on, dangling purses from handlebars. When you spend as much time riding Scandinavians do, why not look good while you’re at it?

Maybe having such a high rate of alternative transportation is why the cities have crisp, fresh air. And why even at the height of rush hour the city centers have almost no congestion. And why Americans like me wonder how easy it would be to become expats here.

- by Diana Kuan of Indietrekker fame

In the US, when you complain and send back food in restaurant, you can expect (at best) a meal discount, or (at worst) a disgruntled waitress spitting in your replacement entree. In Shanghai, it can lead to a shouting match.

On our last night in Shanghai, my boyfriend and I stopped in restaurant near the train station serving Shanghainese and Hangzhou cuisine. We were famished, and ordered a wide assortment from the glossy picture menu: fish in vinegar, sliced pork, braised mushrooms with greens. There was also an odd section for Japanese food at the end of the menu, and my boyfriend started salivating over a picture of the “fresh sushi platter”, piled high with gleaming sashimi. Without thinking, we committed a cardinal sin: ordering Japanese food at a Chinese restaurant.

The dishes came out one by one. The appetizer was good. The fish was tasty. The pork was juicy. Then came the sushi platter, arranged on a tiered tray as though the fish were wedding hor d’ouevres. From afar, it looked great. Upclose, I saw little icicles on the salmon and tuna. The other fish were equally rock hard. It seemed that the kitchen had simply taken the fish out of the freezer and plopped it on the platter without even bringing it to room temperature. So much for “fresh.”

I called the waiter over and, in shaky Mandarin, told him that the fish wasn’t fresh, and asked if we could please send it back and choose something else.

“What do you mean it isn’t fresh?” he countered. “This fish isn’t fresh,” I said. “It’s been frozen, and is still so frozen it’s inedible.”

The waiter called a more senior waiter over. I repeated myself. The second waiter shrugged and said there was nothing he could do. I asked to see the manager. Both waiters disappeared. We waited for 15 minutes, staring at our pile of frozen fish and picking at our other entrees, before the manager made his way over.

I repeated myself for a third time, saying that we could either return the entree or switch it for another.

“Our fish is fresh,” the manager assured me. “We received it freshly frozen from Japan.”

I tried to make it clear that if something is frozen, that means it’s not fresh. Either way, we couldn’t eat sashimi that still had icicles on it. Could we please have it taken off the bill?

“No,” grunted the manager. “This fish is still fresh, so we can’t take it back.”

I raised my voice. He raised his voice. Other diners stopped eating and stared. We went back and forth debating the semantics of “fresh,” until he raised his hands, and grumbled something in his Walkie-Talkie. He carried the platter into the kitchen, and came back with the same platter, the icicle fish removed but the other fish remaining, which had now congealed into a mushy mess. He also gave us the bill, which took off about 10% to reflect the fish that was removed. “There. All fixed,” the manager said proudly.

We gave up, paid, and left. I resolved to never to do 3 things again: 1. Get into a shouting match over $15. 2. Forget that the Chinese, more than most people, absolutely hate to lose face. 3. Think that the definition for “fresh” is universal.

- by Diana Kuan of Indietrekker fame

I hadn’t planned on going to Tombouctou. My goal was to get to Dogon Country and maximize my time there. But when I found myself in Mopti with extra days and my stomach recovered from ‘Les Galettes de Dogon,’ I figured I probably wouldn’t get a better chance. Now or never.

I could fly, in which case I’d have a day there, or I could hire a 4WD and a driver and stay as long as I want. The bus takes 2-4 days, depending on weather and breakdowns. The boat takes 3 days. The 4WD takes 7.5 hours with a normal driver, but 7 hours flat if you go with Cargo, the Mopti driving machine. I should say 7 hours, including the flat tire we got. Also, with a driver, you don’t have to pull over to the side of the road to pray, as you do with the buses here.

We sped North to Tombouctou on Wednesday, virtually floating over the dusty red washboard hardpack, passing Pelle cowherders, who walk with their cows and drink their milk. Aside from a few days every couple months in town to sell their cows, these people walk and sleep with their herd, and cows milk as their only food. They wear cone-shaped hats that make them easy to identify, but they don’t make these hats. We passed by the village of another tribe that makes the hats for them. It’s similar to the shoe situation. Everyone in Africa wears either Flip Flops or leather shoes of some kind, and you would think there would be shoe factories here, but those are in China. I even saw a pair of NIKEs for sale in Bamako.

Cargo got his name from riding on top of his father’s truck all over Northern Mali as a kid. His right foot is 5” shorter than his left – everyone can recognize him at a distance. He seems to know everyone in every town and always has a smile on his face. We talked in French on the drive. I’m fond of telling people about the Earth, stars, the Universe, and evolution – things they know nothing about. I told Cargo the Earth was 4 billion years old, and he thought about that for a while. Then he said, “That means, next year the Earth will be 4 billion and one?”

We crossed the Niger river on the ferry and arrived Tombouctou by 4pm. Cargo got me a Tuareg guide, who took me on an evening camel (Dromedary, actually) ride into the Sahara to visit some Tuaregs. I kept expecting to see Omar Sharif ride up on his camel. I sat and had tea with the Tuareg family. They had many questions about my watch, which has a GPS. They hadn’t heard of GPS, so I explained how it worked, and they were amazed. They told me about the salt caravans to the desert and how they navigate by the stars, but also by the smell of the sand.