Let’s talk about food. We’ve talked about grub from around the world — the flat bread of Georgia (the republic, not the state; the state’s flat bread is cornbread), smoked sturgeon in Russia, Mexican food, stuff like that. But what about the good ol’ US of A? Having driven most of America’s Interstate Highway system, it’s time to get out the highlight pen and make note of a few things.
The quality varies widely, unlike uniformly dull places like eastern Russia. Take, for example, the hot roast beef sandwich at a rest-stop cafe on I-80 in western Ohio. Take it as far away from me as you can. A poor ol’ waitress brought it unsmilingly (neither she nor the beef was happy) and set it before me. I felt like she was a gulag prisoner and I was a guard. Maybe she was dying. The roast beef had certainly died, and a long, long time ago at that. I raked some of the gravy off the top of the meat and checked it for parasites.
The color was . . . strange, for an animal product. It was somewhat gray, as I recall. Maybe sand-colored? The color of dust? Looking back, it resembled dog meat that I found in my soup in northwest China. We were there with some crass Santa Barbara City College students and the fellas had confused the waitress, I think with all the barking and howling noise they were making.
Back in Ohio, I cut off a small piece of “beef” and chewed thoughtfully. What I was thinking about was cardboard. I wondered if you soaked cardboard in hot water and salted it, would it taste like Ohio beef?
I filled up on mashed potatoes and “gravy,” and rushed back to the car before something bad happened. I don’t remember what Sharon had for lunch; it wasn’t memorable. Mine was.

In all fairness, I should point out that the Ohio beef debacle wasn’t as horrific as the (I just shuddered) “pot roast” I was served in the Denny’s outlet in Tucumcari, New Mexico one weary evening. Gawd. I think it was Denny’s. Chain joints are all you can find in towns like Tucumcari. They should have had a big sign on it out front: WARNING! CHAIN CAFE FOOD. it might have been safer to go hungry. Or find something salty that was sealed in plastic. And a Coke.
What got me about this piece of (expletive deleted) one warm June night was the worst pot roast of all time. A piece of animal parts floating in a slimy mass of brown, brackish liquid. It looked like the aftermath of a horrible war, with strips of quivery flubber surrounding the few small strips of actual beef. (I guess it was beef. Who knows.) I picked at it for a while and gave up. The steamed veggies with it were harmless, except that they might have been left over from the Korean War years. I always figure it’s hard to get sick on boiled stuff, especially inert vegetable matter. And as my oldest daughter used to say about MY cooking, “It will sustain human life.”
I found myself longing for a good old-fashioned diner, like one which offered a passable cheeseburger, out yonder somewhere in the cornfields of Illinois. You know the type; they’re all over the place. What you first notice when you enter is a row of fat ol’ boys in overalls and John Deere hats. These guys don’t work, evidently. They’re gentleman farmers and hire peasants to drive their tractors while they drink cup after cup of coffee and leave miserly tips. I know those guys. My daughter was a waitress.
But the food is OK. There are the other kinds, the emergency stops that Ohio seems to have a corner on.

(To be continued. It gets more palatable.)

DIGITAL FOR DUMMIES

Del writes: I was having a grand time printing snapshots on my new photo printer when I got near the bottom of the envelope of 5×7 paper and noticed a sheet with printing on it. I read it; it was called “Loading Support Sheet,” and you’re supposed to read it before printing. That sheet goes in the machine behind the sheet of paper you’re going to print on.
Oh.
I used it on the last sheet of paper in the package, and it worked fine.
Then forgot to load more paper (because I didn’t have any left) and printed the next picture all over the instruction sheet, which loaded itself, lacking paper in front of it. You can still read the instructions, but it’s hard because of the Ganges River scene that is now printed over the words.
Oh well, as long as it works. . .

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE

An hour later, I remembered that I had gone downstairs to check something on the internet, but had forgot what it was by the time I got there.
So I went downstairs a second time and remembered (it was to find out what a couple of downtown films were about), but only after nearly forgetting again while I wrote this. And I can’t remember the entire title of one of the movies.
But I can always Google it.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

All the way to the audiologist’s office to pick up my new hearing aid, I had that feeling that I’d forgotten something. As soon as I stopped the car I realized that it was my reading glasses. Damn.
I managed to see the little button on the thingie for aiming the hearing aid, and to sign the Visa bill by using my outdated bifocal sunglasses (for driving the truck), and it worked out.
Got into the truck to drive home, leaned back and felt something poking me between the shoulder blades. It was my reading glasses, which dangled behind me from the granny string I wear them on.
Problem 1: wearing the glasses that way to start with;
2: tossing the glasses there because you have to irrigate a plugged ear;
3. Forget that you’re wearing them;
4: Needing a hearing aid.
Now: Why didn’t the woman selling the aid see a suspicious black cord around my neck, or my glasses dangling down my back when I left? Maybe she was too busy laughing. She’s a young squirt of about 55.

THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN

A younger person, on the receiving end of senior behavior, writes:
I went to mom’s to see how she was doing. She was telling me about her knee and that she had water on it. “Do you want to see?” So she pulls her waist string and drops her PJ’s to her ankles. I said as a young man I tried for years to get women to do that, but not my mom at age 83. There are just some things your son should not see and this is one of them.
So I hand her the hand-held grabber tool to pick up her pants and get whacked with the tool! At that point I told her she would have to pull up her own pants because there are also some things a son should not have to do. I asked if I should call her neighbor George (another geezer) to look at her knee and I got whacked again. The hell with it, I went home.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER CONFUSION

Got up at 5 this morning, for various reasons, one of which being a big
mockingbird singing his fool brains out, and varied my routine.
Went to the computer before coffee. Then went out to the back of the driveway for the paper. It wasn’t there. Nuts. Trudged out to the street and saw two papers lying in the neighbor’s yard. There’s normally only one there, so I figured that Miguel, the hardworking immigrant delivery man, had called in sick and the substitute driver was confused. Easy to get that way with our driveway setup.
Took one of the papers back in the house and found OUR paper lying on the stairs in the house, where I had put it when I went to turn on the computer AFTER picking up the paper. I forgot that I had got it and dropped it on the stairs.
Left it there to take back to the neighbor’s when we went swimming at 7:30.
Trudged upstairs, put coffee water on and opened the paper. It was yesterday’s.
Apparently the neighbor was away and hadn’t picked it up.
Wondering ONCE AGAIN about my poor brain’s condition, I trudged back
downstairs, picked our paper up from the stair step, trudged back up and finally got some coffee and a little awareness of the world around me.
I read the damn thing in about 5 minutes, wondering once again why I bother.
Thus dawned another day here in Teetering-on-the-Brink.
Sigh. . .

SENIOR TENNIS SCORING

Player 1: “OK, that’s 30-40.”
Player 2: “Nope. It’s 40-30. We’re ahead.”
Player 3: Are you sure it isn’t deuce?”
Player 4: “No, it’s our ad.”
Player 1: “No, it’s OUR ad.”
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

A LA CART

Al reports:
So I’m pushing my basket around the supermarket and walk away from it to seach for tuna, or something, and then walk back to resume shopping. Couldn’t find the tuna.
Next thing I know, one of the young guys stocking shelves asks me: “Sir! (I hate it when they  do that) Do you realize you are pushing our cardboard basket?”
I looked down and sure enough, I was pushing a basket full of collapsed cardboard boxes.
At least it was an easy mistake to straighten out. I got the guy’s mind off it by asking him where the hell was the tuna, anyway? He told me and I hurried off.

ROUGH NIGHT

I was already disgruntled at dinner out with friends. I had forgotten to put on my hearing aids, and occasions like this one, in a noisy restaurant, were exactly the reason I had bought the blamed things!
Then I leaned over the table a little to spear some lettuce and my close-up half-glasses slid off my nose and into the salad. I hadn’t worn my usual granny-cord with dangling glasses because I wanted to look cool.
And of course, cleaning bleu cheese off glasses lenses is impossible when you can’t see because your glasses have fallen into the salad. At this point I REALLY didn’t look cool.
Once again, my wife came to the rescue and order was restored.
– ANON.

# # #

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

My arthritic knee continued to hurt during our two-month trip around Europe, and by the end of two days of hiking all over Salzburg it was really annoying me. The “Hillbilly Heroin” Vicodin mix I brought helped, but the trouble was that we had 11 days of riding the rails and hiking to go, but only half a dozen pills. I forgot to get a backup Rx from my doc in SB and I was worried.

So I limped into the Salzburg Krankenhaus (krank means sick, and is the source of our word “cranky,” which I was also getting). Went to the emergency room to ask for more pills, armed with my prescription on the bottle and my US insurance card. I told the receptionist, who spoke English, about my problem. She dialed an extension, talked briefly and told me to go down the hall to “Not” (pronounced “note”) something-or-other, “Not” meaning need, including urgent care, which I wanted. As I entered an open space filled with wheelchairs but only one patient, with his arm in a cast, I was greeted by a tall, pleasant woman of 35 to 40, Dr. Birgit Regensmann. Also fluent in English, she listened to my sad story as we stood in the hall, said “Just a moment” and took my card and prescription bottle down the hall. She returned shortly with a prescription for a codeine compound —  Vicodin, a mixture, not being available. She directed me to the pharmacy down the lane and we shook hands happily, like new best friends.

Nothing happier than an old crip with a new bottle of drugs. The dozen pills cost me 4 euros, or about $6 US. Not bad for a non-resident. The consultation cost me nothing. Compare this to what it cost me to have an abscess lanced at Santa Barbara’s Cottage Hospital one crowded weekend: $200 “copay” and ten (10) tedious hours of my life of lying in wait. I’m not saying we should adopt Europe’s ways, but . . . Maybe some of our folderol and expense is due to the shadowy menace of lawyers lurking in the background? Cross examination: “So you gave this elderly cripple some narcotics without even listening to his heartbeat? A-HAH!”

By the time we got to Norway (I love the sound of that…) I felt better, with ample access to lightweight narcotics, but I decided that what I really needed was a shot of cortisone, right in the knee. We dropped into the “sykehus” (pronounced Seek Huse, as in Sick House, as in Krankenhaus) in Bergen one rainy (surprise!) afternoon. I explained my problem to a tall nurse, who looked remarkably like Santa Barbara’s Rep. Lois Capps, and she insisted on wheelchairing me into the depths of this really beat-up hospital (upgrading work was in progress all around, I’m glad to say). We landed in a ratty, drafty hallway and waited as long for the Norwegian doctor as we usually wait in Santa Barbara.

We were about to give up when young Dr. Brigite Lindemann, another tall brunette, came in smiling and prescribed a nice big batch of codeine pills, costing $15 US. She said I could take them as needed,  but if I took too much I would get sleepy and uh… “Stoned?” I asked, flopping my head to one side. “Yes,” she laughed. No worries. If the old goat wants to go nighty-night a little early, what’s the problem. I wasn’t pregnant, didn’t drink alcohol at the time and wasn’t going to operate any heavy machinery.

But what I still really wanted was a shot of cortisone. “For that you have to go to the clinic,” Brigite said, and gave us directions. The clinic was jammed with about 30 exhausted-looking people, but Sharon managed to get me in after only a half-hour. The doctor, built like Santa Claus and just as jolly, said smiling that “We don’t use cortisone. It’s bad for the bones.” He saw my expression sag and added quickly, “But I can give you some codeine pills. No charge.” OK.  I said, smiling at the prospect of free drugs. I said,  “I guess just don’t take too many,” and made tipping-over gestures. He laughed again and said “Yes! Don’t fall down!”

So there I was in Norway, carrying almost as much drugs as an American college student. Let’s just say I arrived home two weeks later a little off-balance, but oddly happy. The trip was a success, pills and all.

KRAKOW — (I like the “krakov” pronunciation better.) So — zum Krakov wir gehen,
aus Prag. Day-long ride for about 60 bucks .. about 2,000 zlotys. Funny word,
“zloty,” and funny money: It’s worth about $.03 US.
The towns looked a little boring and battered through E. Czech that a.m.
Nice looking farms though. Turned down an English-teaching job here one time.
Killer smog in the “eastern Bohemia brown coal basin.” In some towns they needed
car lights on all day.
A definite chill overcame us when we realized we were passing the Auschwitz
area. For how many thousands was this train ride their last? We’d seen several
concentration camps on an earlier trip and had no desire to find this one.
You know you’re in Poland when:
– The signs say so and when things get really battered and it reminds you more
and more of Russia. Po’folks, poor-looking housing. . .
– Two huge women shove their kids through the train car door and yell at
you in rapid fire staccato sounds.
– You give a WC woman at a rural train station some copper Czech coins
(korunas) and she practically throws them back at you, with more staccato
sounds. This is the land of zlotyz. The poor woman didn’t know a deal when she was offered one.
– The girls have suddenly gotten  bigger, but not more stylish. Just
long-legged and . . . well . . . Polish.
– A tall handsome black youth swaggers into the train car with his
dressed-up blonde and, like a cowboy entering a hostile barroom and drawing his
six-shooter, pulls his cellphone from his pocket and is ready for a showdown.
Hey, the train is ONE MINUTE LATE; let’s get the show on the road! On to Krakow!
– Your first-class train seats are 2nd class at best, a bit tattered and
stained, and not as soft as I’d like.
But at mid-afternoon, we arrived. Krakov is fine! Some luvly old buildings, and
it’s much cleaner than what we saw of Poland on the way in. Not even much
graffiti. (Have I mentioned that Euro cities are as bad as L.A. in that regard?
Maybe worse. BIG colorful stuff, like cartoons, less like the gangbanger
printing in Santa Barbara. It’s hopeless. The dummies win.)
The following day, we worked hard to find the Jewish quarter and finally did,
with the magic appearance of a Jewish woman from New Mexico looking for her
roots. She found us lost at a bus stop on the wrong side of the city and got us to Szeroka Street,
which features restaurants with klezmer music (very old Jewish folk music), so
there was the evening’s entertainment — excellent music and fine dining.
Complete with a taxi ride, since gramps was too beat up to walk much more that day.
In the HUGE new three-story shopping mall (prosperity coming to Krakov?) next to the train station, we were
having  coffee in  McDonald’s after SD changed some money. We were approached
by an elderly, poor-looking woman muttering in German. She reached for my coffee
and I withdrew, then, since most of it was gone, offered it to her.
“Nein, nein,” she said, and pointed at the side of the cup. Thereupon was a
little sticker which, she explained, showing me a card she carried with a couple
of rows of the same sticker pasted on, would entitle her to a free cup if she
had one more — MY sticker.
Her fingernails were dirty and she was a bit tattered, but I liked her attitude
and handed her the cup. She scraped off my sticker and pasted it to her card.
Everybody was happy.
As we were getting ready to leave, she came back and handed us a small
bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley, a May Day tradition in Europe. They were, like
her, kind of tattered; she’d probably found them in the trash, but . . . it’s
the thought that counts,
isn’t it.
Yeah, Krakov was a good stop.
I got an excellent haircut for 5 bucks from an old gal at the train station who
could speak a little Russian and really knew how to cut men’s hair the
old-fashioned way, with a razor around the edges. We saw some outstanding art at
a
major museum, got our laundry done, and topped off our stay in Krakow with a
Chopin concert!         Our favorite composer was a Pole. It was a treat to hear
Chopin in his native land. I mean, of course, a local pianist playing Chopin’s etudes and preludes; Chopin himself hasn’t played anything since 1849.
Krakow was a good stop. Very good stop.

“Sargent Shriver said early on, ‘there is no perfect Volunteer, unless you believe in the hazy concept of a perfect American.’”
Well, he was wrong. I was the perfect volunteer (Russian Far East, 1996-98). I drank lots of imported beer and yet still managed to teach some English to people only marginally interested in learning it.
I only got into two vodka episodes, which created no problems.
I’m still friends with some of my russki druzhia.
How can anyone top this?
–Ivan Makaffertov

PORTUGAL: Help! Thief!
We’d been warned about thievery aboard bottom-class night trains, but didn’t
have much choice if we wanted
to exit Portugal and visit the Normandy Coast in general, and St. Malo and Mont
St. Michel specifically. So we set out late in the day
and enjoyed
the scenery… Portugal is a rather empty country between Lisbon and the France
border, but truly rustic. There are farms, trees that were
new to me, rolling grassy hills. . . Very pleasant, if lonely looking.
Joining us in our compartment were a happy young couple and a dour young man
who looked more like a Russian prison escapee than
a tourist. Handsome, with a light brown butch haircut, couple of nondescript
tattoos, constant frown. . . he didn’t

seem to speak any language,
and Sharon wondered later, “Why no luggage?”

We got the answer about 3:30 a.m. Hunkered down in the corner with my bag
secure below me, I woke up around
midnight
to find him apparently departed. Good. I stretched out, reasonably comfortable,
but woke up about 3 to see the
him standing in the walkway, staring out into the passing night. He turned and
looked through the door window at me, and
I waved slowly. Don’t know why I did that.
I thought I’d better stay awake, but I didn’t. Woke up shortly after,
thought “OMIGAWD!” and felt below the
seat for my
bag. Gone!
This was followed by the loudest and most obscene shouting I’d ever
screamed and cursed in my fairly long
life. Worse language than a pro football fan. Things like “The +++++++ got the
camera, the computer, my pills! WE’ll have to go home! ****! That ****!”
HELP! THIEF!
I’m glad I don’t know my blood pressure reading at that point. “Your money or
your life” came to mind. Along
with murder, revenge . . . But both were impossible, the swine was gone. “That
*****ing **** of a *****!” I pounded on
the walls outside and raged up and down the hall. No one came to my aid. There
was no cop, no conductor, nobody but me,
An Enraged, Crazed Victim.
Then an elderly gentleman approached me slowly and cautiously from the toilet
end of
the car and asked in accented but clear English
if my bag was missing. “YES!” I inadvertently shouted at him. He made
Quiet-Calm-Down gestures and motioned
for me to follow. He led me to the toilet room, opened the
door and there was my stuff
on the grimy floor, black bag wide open, computer, camera outside, pill bottles
on the bottom. . . Everything
was there!
Nearly in tears of joy, I returned to the compartment and hugged both the bag
and Sharon. I went from the
depths of anger to the height of happiness and relief.
Moments later, the car now quiet after my scene, I heard an elderly
woman’s wail: “MY SAC!” (pronounced sock),
“MY SAC! The poor, pudgy old woman was weaving her way toward our end of the
car, where a pair of officials had finally appeared. Apparently they had to
have coffee before responding to my yelling. They didn’t look overly
concerned.
Nothing was going to help. The miserable ******* had taken everything the
old lady had and apparently
got off at a whistle stop.
Now our joy was tempered by pity for that poor woman. And a little
sadness over the lowest elements of the human condition.

Moral: If you must travel on such a train, sleep sitting upright with your bag
tied to your ankle.

After prowling around the famous Riviera and spending an idyllic several days in Provence with Americans Frank and Mandy Frost, a crude Americaine would say, “Le merde mettait le ventilateur!”

It started as soon as Mandy dropped us off in Avignon. We’d had a wonderful, restful (luckily) time with her and Frank, in their charmant seasonal digs in the little Provence town of Murs. But she had no sooner driven off than we found that the train from Avignon to our target city of St. Malo, on the Normandy coast, was “fully booked,” a term you really come to hate.

Heavy sigh (another thing you do a lot of) . . . what to do . . .

We decided to head way over to Paris to turn around, booked seats and were soon on our way. But when we arrived in the huge Gare du Nord station — later in the afternoon than planned owing to an auto crash on the tracks somewhere up ahead —  we found that trains to the coast were “fully booked.” The booking clerk du Nord, luckily for us, was a happy, helpful young man who suggested we zoom over to the Gare Montparnasse, where we could get a train to somewhere near the coast.

Being late, we had to hurry. We’d spent a lot of time in Paree and knew the Metro system, so we got to Montparnasse probably about as fast as humanly possible. Panting, we rushed to a ticket window and were relieved to get tix to Bordeaux. We decided to head for Spain instead of St. Malo. We’d go back “up” there later.

There were no assigned seats this time, the train being a rusty old commuter model headed generally for the coast. We flopped into a seat and across the table a nice-looking young guy looked at us like “Aw merde, pourquois moi?” We probably looked like a pair of escapees from a mental hospital. I couldn’t get my hand loose from the tangle of two bag straps and a cane, and began to curse as I thought I was breaking my fingers. Sharon helped untangle me while I yelled at her to check the tix and see if we were in the right car. She confirmed that it didn’t matter, and order was finally restored.

In Bordeaux we stumbled into a good hotel deal we’d found elsewhere, the Ibis chain, which offers reasonable prices in exchange for staying out in the ‘burbs. And this one was only a few blocks from the train station. You turn right on Rue Wino, left on Place Derelict and you’re home.

Bordeaux ain’t much, including the countryside. Ya seen one vineyard ya seen ‘em all. BUT there are a couple of good museums there, and almost worth a trip in itself was possibly the best croissant/pastry shop we’ve found. Ever. I’ve lost the name, but it’s only two blocks to the right, out of the train station. LOVED that place.

On to Barcelona. . .

(Or as ol’ Arnie the Gov would say, Kahlifohnia)

BIRTHDAY TRIP HIGHLIGHTS:

(We took a pleasant 5-day drive from Santa Barbara to Oakland to Placerville to Lake Tahoe to the Bristlecone Pine

Forest to Santa Barbara. The occasion: old L.A. Times friend Al Perrin turned 90.)

–Sharon ate half of my chicken pot pie instead of just the crusty edges. It was really tasty, cooked by Z Pie cafe in

Placerville, CA. Owners got the idea, they said, from being in New Zealand “where they have pot pies like we have

hamburgers.”

–In Salinas, I asked a lovely little Japanese waitress for rye bread on my pastrami sandwich. She said very plainly, I

swear, “We no have lye bled.” Best example of the L-R confusion I’ve heard.

–Between Salinas and San Jose there is a hamlet named “Aromas.” What were the founding parents thinking? Or what were they

smelling that could cause this?

–Sharon put on her leather jacket for the first time since our Europe trip last spring and pulled out the “Kompakt” map –

the rail/bus/tram map of Frankfurt, Germany. Ye gods, no wonder we had a little trouble finding the delightful neighborhood

known as Die Sachsenhausen (the Saxons’ houses). Most confusing map I’ve seen. Too many lines, too many colors.

–The John Steinbeck museum in Salinas, CA, is well worth a stop. For some reason, I was surprised. I guess I never expected

ANYthing in Salinas, thinking it was just another Calif. farm town.

–Hard to believe that the bristlecone pines 10,000 ft. above the valley east of Mt. Whitney in California’s  Sierra Nevada

are 1,500 years old! Amazing. Yes, they look it. Beautiful in a strange way.

–Sixty bucks will get you a room in towns like Lone Pine, CA, and as an added attraction you get to go back in time about 50

years, judging from the general deterioration. But comfortable enough, and like almost every motel I’ve seen in recent years

it is owned by a bored Indian (India, not Amerind).

Delays happen in air travel, and our worst was in China, so it sort of doesn’t count, since China is often a

ridiculous place (details on request). Back in ‘90 we and old friend Ron Rose spent TEN AND A HALF (10.5) hours in the

Beijing airport waiting for rain to stop in Shanghai, our destination.
There were almost no chairs, so much of the time we sat leaning against the wall or wandering around, with nothing

much in their old airport to see (have heard the new one is a monster, in the Chinese manner). Had to be careful where we

sat, as little kids peed indiscriminately. Their mothers unbutton the little flaps under their rears, spread their little

legs and let’er rip. My favorite example was outside a restaurant in Kunming. First the tiny kid made doo-doo, and then Mom

whupped out her boobs and filled a bottle for the next baby meal. How earthy.
Meanwhile, back in the airport: All that saves you in these long waits is that you don’t know how long it’s going to

be. If someone had told us 10 hours, we might have asked for a refund and gone home.
But as it was we kept looking at our watches and listening for the magic word, “Shanghai.”
Time passed, as time will do. We sat as comfortably as possible and talked and napped. As I recall, we didn’t have

anything to read, so we got a lot of talking done, Ron and Sharon and I.
We watched the locals’ children cavort, observed people passing and what they looked like, as they observed us — a

rare opportunity to see a Big Nose up close. They also referred to us privately as “Lao Fan” — Old Outsider.
Interesting: We talked with another pair of Big Noses, these a college administrator from Oklahoma and his secretary

(Hmmmm). They had reported in a few minutes after the deadline for showing up and found that their tickets home had been sold

out from under them! You don’t like that? Whaddya gonna do about it?
So they were transferred to a much later plane. The Chinese are not the kind of folks to discuss things. They just

make announcements, and if you’re screwed, you’re screwed. It probably means more money for the Chinese, and less for you.
But at last the announcement came! Oh joy! No problem that we would fly through the wee hours and arrive exhausted.

We were on the way!
And Ron gave us a good laugh as we left: He was behind some slowpokes in line and had to shove to get in the door of

the plane. That left his huge backpack sticking out the doors, which closed on the pack, lifting him somewhat off his feet

and squirming like a turtle inside the plane.
Good ol’ Ron — always something funny going on, even after a paralyzing wait on the concrete floor of Beijing’s

miserable airport.
Things like this are really fun — to look back on.
#  #  #

Finding your way around a strange town is always somewhat problematical, but a few searches will stand out.

“Remember walking all over Cordoba?”

“Oh gawd yes. . .”

We “only” had five bad-trip days, but they stand out in the memory. Cordoba didn’t seem like a big city. We were to take a bus from the train station to “downtown,” where we expected hotels to appear.

Except we missed downtown and got off the bus in a suburb, and it was a bigger city than we had thought. We walked for miles, run together, I don’t know how far. It was hot.

We melted down and cursed signs with arrows pointing to “HOTEL.” They seemed to be a cruel practical joke. We kept following the signs and finally collapsed in a tourist office, fortunately open late, at about 6 p.m.

Without it . . . I don’t know what would have happened. The office was delightfully air-conditioned, and I told the woman behind the desk that if she couldn’t find a room I wasn’t leaving. I would sleep on her floor. She thought I was joking.

A few phone calls later a pleasant hotel owner came to the door and assured us that we were almost there, and he had one vacant room, and it was “only” 65 euros. We could have kissed him.

We were soon cooling off in a pleasant room in an old mansion, and were only steps from Cordoba’s interesting old Jewish Quarter.

Prague presented another walking torture. This time the guilty party was the young woman in charge at the hostel. We got off the tram at the stop she had named.

It was the wrong stop. Then we walked a circle of many blocks in the wrong direction. Never would have found it but for a pleasant shopper at the grocery along the way. She said she didn’t know the street, but had a map in her car.

“Oh fun!” she said excitedly, pointing at the map. “You’re nearly there! Turn left on this street,” pointing to the corner, “then right on the next street for two streets and there it is!” Bless her heart, she saved me. (Sharon was in better condition for these marathons.)

We arrived at last. I pointed out to the hostel gal that her directions were way wrong.

“Oh gee,” she said grinning. “Oh well, mistakes happen.”

I swore revenge, but forgave her later when she and another woman helped us get through a telephone maze to cancel my pickpocketed credit card.

And we had such a good time in Prague back in ‘92, I think it was.

Heidelberg street numbers were a joke, leading to another insanely long walk.

We simply got mixed up in Lisbon, Portugal, and walked in several long and ever expanding circles to our hotel, eventually homing in on it. (Our best hotel deal, a three-star joint at a one-star price, made it worth the walk for Mr. Cheap.)

Barcelona’s Hotel Ibis (a chain throughout Europe, and a good deal generally) gave funny directions, in retrospect. At the time, it seemed like a disaster.

Ibis hotels are often located in the suburbs so they offer good prices, but at the end of a weary day we had to navigate two metro systems in this huge city and got off the metro after dark. We noticed two things that posed a problem: There were very few street lights out in the ‘burbs, and in the European manner, there were no street signs. So the humorous street name of Albert Einstein Place was completely useless. What to do?

We saw there was one lighted building, that of a bar/restaurant. We inquired and one server knew of the Ibis.

(Hooray! we would return and leave him a nice tip!) He took us outside and pointed up the dark street: “See that stoplight? You go to the NEXT light, and turn right. There is the Ibis.” He seemed on the level, and what choice did we have?

We got to the light in question and looked right. . . nothing but more darkened buildings and an empty street. “So,” I said, with just a hint of sadness in my voice, “we have a 50-50 chance. Right or Left.”

Sharon, sensing impending disaster, said “Look, I’ll go down to that corner (barely visible in the darkness) and see if I can see anything. I’ll yell.”

“OK,” I said, relieved. “Yell HELP! and somebody gets beaten to death with my cane.”

But soon she yelled “YEA! THERE IT IS! I could see her pointing at the green and orange Ibis neon high above a building. the long two and half blocks around and into the place discouraged me, but I recovered and felt really good when I badgered the clerk into free Wi-Fi for the night, which had been shortened by their bad directions, etc.

Berlin was a sad stop the first time. Again, we got flawed directions with street numbers that didn’t make any sense.

Our bus driver out of Berlin’s magnificent train station — has to be the finest train station in the world, or at least in Europe — tried to be helpful and even got off the bus to point us to the street we wanted.

Unfortunately, this street was “Kleine-whatever,” a walk street with a name similar to the street the hotel was on. Again, we sought help and a young woman at a very expensive hotel took us outside and pointed us toward Main-whatever, and we completed another beastly long walk, culminating in a dump in which the Wi-Fi didn’t work and when I tried to complain, I found that the phones didn’t work, and there was no one there after 6 p.m.

I gave brief thought to trashing the place, but settled for a nice Greek dinner in the only restaurant open in sight, this being Sunday.

Were we having fun yet? Damn right, and it was a breeze finding hotels in Berlin in a later visit, and in Madrid, Krakov and Bordeaux, for instance. The Bruges hostel only involved a short walk.

St. Malo, one of our best stops altogether, was the slickest transition. We simply took a cab for 10 euros, and a couple of miles later were grateful we hadn’t tried to walk. We took deep breaths of the North Atlantic atmosphere and had a lovely night’s sleep.

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