American Brat

See anything wrong with this picture? I'm in Sagres, Portugal, and there's this hot dog stand selling bratwursts. American bratwursts. Soo, let me get this straight...an American take on a German foodstuff with a Portugeuse salespitch? Good? Who knows? I opted for some grilled sardines caught that morning only twenty yards away from this crazy stand.

Specks of Spain

One day in Bilbao and one day in Madrid do not an understanding of a country or culture make. For that matter neither does one month, one year, or one lifetime. Let's just say I wouldn't mind going back. Maybe it would inspire more Bob Marley parodies.

The big green monster

No, we're not talking Red Sox. Looks like someone forgot to hedge...on purpose. If they were really clever, they would have 'gardened' some pixelated images like these.

Don't look down

Ouch. This is from my room on the top floor of this building, the biggest hostel I've ever seen (or at least the tallest.)

Can you imagine being able to open a window like this in the states? I doubt you could even build one even if you wanted to. And no, it wasn't just big enough for my hand and the camera. This window was large enough to chuck out the whole bunk bed.

LudiCris Rating of 3

Three Little Pigs

¯Three little pigs
On my butcher block
A'waiting the deft blow
A chop that's swift and true
Saying ''This is my message to you-hou-hou...

Don't worry
About a thing.
'Cause every little bit's
Gonna be quite tasty now.''¯

And tasty it was. I bought three different types of chorizo, some manchego cheese and a crusty loaf for dinner my one night in Bilbao. Emeril had one thing right...

...pork fat rules!

4 Slurrps

Special thanks to Bob Marley for the melody for this post.

Guggenheim

Some people like Gehry, some people don't. Personally, I feel his firm's designs are hit or miss. The Guggenheim Bilbao is an unquestionable hit. The reason this building is so striking, so beautiful, so utterly breathtaking - it's the perfect design for the space. The curves of the building match the arc in the river match the way the panels bend light, time, and imagination.

Eye on England

1 - Look kids! Big Ben, Parliament. Going on foot sure makes getting oneself lost a lot more difficult to achieve. Bus #88 for the win!
2 - So many beers...so little variety? There are a few gems, though. If you get a chance, try the Hobgoblin. (warning: link requires age disclosure)
3 - London is ridiculously expensive. I mean like ridiculously ridiculous. Off the ludiCris scale, even. This isn't news to anyone, but the blunt force trauma to the wallet certainly doesn't help make it easier to take.

The Millingtons

Met this lively bunch walking down the Portsmouth shore. One of them saw me carrying my full pack and implored me to come sit down at the Spice Island pub and have a pint with them. In need of a rest, some interesting company AND a beer, I happily obliged. It happened to be a happy occasion. Pearl, on the right, was celebrating the third anniversary of her husband's death. The rest are pretty much her blood, by marriage, and 'adopted' children. Every one was a character and a half. Pearl, the ringleader, was telling wartime stories of how she used to fill up American soldiers' helmets with beer, and in return they used to fill up her skirt...wait for it...with cigarettes, gum, and chocolate from their rations. She also was singing at the top of her lungs (wonderful voice) any number of British, Irish, or American folk songs. What great fun!

One and a quarter pints later we all got kicked out. It will be debated for all time why exactly this happened. The prevailing theory is that Sharky (on the left...no I'm not making that name up) said something insulting to the manager. The official word was that the group had had too much to drink. I'm sure there will be a few conspiracy theorists who will publish a more in-depth account, so I'll skip the details of the investigation into the matter. Turns out there was a very similar bar across the street. We got up to move, in low spirits. As it turns out, though, all the Spice Island patrons overheard what happened and moved en masse with us! Solidarity, my brothers. Long story shorter, one of the clan put me up for the night on a very comfortable pull-out cot. I woke up the next morning refreshed and energized from another great adventure.

Cheers Pearl!

LudiCris Rating of 5

Cajuns in JOE

Jolly Olde England, London to be specific, Clapham Common to be exact. Pictured are Dave, a great friend of mine from high school, and his lovely and hospitable wife Mandy. They put up with me and a mutual high school friend, Kevin (famous for his fish 'n' chip reviews), in their flat for nearly a week. If you want to stop by and see just how gracious they are for yourself, do so soon. They are moving back home to Louisiana in June. On second thought, you might as well wait. You'll save a lot of money and eat better.

World's Tastiest Doorstop

The best root beer in the world just got better. (What?! Step away from the comment button, haters. This includes Stewarts, IBC, A&W, Mug, Hires, etc.) Did you know Barq's can be used as a doorstop as well? So versitile! I had no idea British shopkeepers were so creative.

Fish 'n' Chips, Take 2

Hi, I'm not Troy McClure, and you might remember this dish from such places as Manly Beach. Any English foodie worth their salt and ketchup will certainly tell you that you have not had fish and chips until you've had some in Jolly Olde. Here testing this assertion is my good friend Kevin Z. His take? With enough grease, salt, and red-colored corn syrup, how can you go wrong? "Mmm, sustenance."

Full English Breakfast

Bangers (sausage), rashers of bacon (ham), mushrooms, toast, and a sunny-side up egg = a delicious breakfast. Then why go and ruin it with these?...

Would someone please call my cardiologist and pass me some flatulence pads?

4 -1 = 3 Slurrps

Bits of Belgium

1 - Beer!

2 - Beer!!

3 - Beer!!!

4 - I heard there are good mussels, waffles, and fries, but I never bothered to investigate. S'maybe after the bext round of neer...*hiccup*.

Mmm, boiled snails!

6 pieces of escargot for only 2€. I found these from a vendor at a local Sunday morning market. They were prepared in a spicy, but simple vegetable broth.

4 Slurrps
LudiCris Rating of 3

Manneken Pis

What is the deal with the statue of the little boy pissing? I kept wondering why myself and a few hundred others were there. Posing, taking pictures, making pee pee jokes, getting fleeced by the waffle stands...because one person a hundred years ago decided it would be worth seeing and everyone just followed suit? There are hundreds of beautifully carved statues within walking distance of this sculpture - that's completely covered up! It boggles the mind, but hey, you should go and pose for a picture, maybe even buy a waffle ;)

Pommes frites

Chips, Frites, Potato fries, french fries, (pomme frites take one pic)
Freedom fries (gimme a break), or whatever you prefer to call them, they are delicious and come with your choice of anywhere from 6 to 15 dipping sauce choices, depending on the pomme frites purveyor. And what else are you going to wash them down with while in Belgium? C'mon, really now.

4 Slurrps

I thought it was New Jersey?

I am not one to argue with Jon Bon Jovi, so if he says Brussels, then Brussels it is. I wonder if he asked David Lynch about it, though?

Fun Facts of France

1 - You have to love a country that eats bread with every meal and it's perfectly normal to just munch on a freshly baked, plain baguette for lunch.

2 - I won't say all the bad things people say about the French people are wrong, but let's just say there are more extremely friendly people here than the reverse.

3 - You can buy wonderful, expensive French cheeses for not-so-expensive prices.

4 - If you combine 1 and 2 you have a cheap and delicious lunch (or dinner, or breakfast).

Café au lait?

My favorite coffee drink in the world, and I found it in a vending machine. It tasted surprisingly good for a coffee dispenser, but not quite right. So I wiki'd it. No wonder why I've had such a hard time finding good café au lait outside of the N.O.

Les cocktails de bière

Sacreligious! I mean sacre bleu! Why are they desecrating all that good beer? If beer had nine lives, they've found a way to bury it. Strange as it may seem, these are GOOD, homebrewed beers. I saw a very similar thing in Germany - mixing lemonade or cola with some of the beers. Bad juju, I tell you. Nothing good can come of this. First the German purity laws, now lemonade...what next?

I know what's next...Belgium and its unmolested Belgian ales!

Pizza and a beer...

...or something like that. Sure looks like it, but looks are deceptive, as Sherlock Holmes once said...or something like that. The beer, masquerading as an ordinary 1/2 liter of swill, was in fact a very fine handcrafted specimen of white beer at the brewpub 'Au Brasseur'. The pizza, obviously of similar origin, was not in fact a pizza at all, but a tarte flambé, a regional specialty. Sure tasted like an oven-fired thin pizza with ham, onions, and cheese, but don't tell anyone I said that. Besides, have you ever met a pizza you didn't like? (That was rhetorical folks. The answer is obviously NO.)

3 Slurrps

Best tap location ever

Do I smell a project a'brewin'? Pun soo intended. These run directly from these.

I can feel the collective tear of joy from those beer lovers in the audience. Amen, brethern, amen.

LudiCris Rating of 4

Generalizations of Germany

1 - Every so often (usually when I spotted a thin man walking around in a tight black shirt, wire-rimmed spectacles, and slicked back hair) I wanted to shout out ''Now is the time on Shprokets when we dance!''

2 - Pretty much every beer you'll meet is good, but you'll meet very few great ones. I recommend most of the weisses and dunkel weisses.

3 - Germans really know their way around a snausage. I think I saw about a dozen different styles of bratwurst alone.

4 - You have to respect a place that measures beer in terms of liters (or litres). Standard unit was 1 liter. One liter? That's 2.75 beers. And that's only volume-wise...

Bundesliga

I know this is kiling my data budget for the blog, but it's worth it. FC Bayern-Munchen vs Dortmund. Bayern (Munich's home team) eventually won 5 to nothing. This was the third or fourth post-goal celebration.

A note of apology

To anyone who's visited this site more than once, I am sorry. To those of you who are regulars (thanks Mom!), I humbly beg your forgiveness. Believe it or not, I've actually been writing blog entries. Some of you must have noticed there are very few entries without pictures (Bonus to any of you who know the actual number. To those who know the actual percentage, y'all are nerds...and I love you for it.). Hey, it's a visual world these days. Anyway, I haven't been able to find a computer where the operating system is in English. Why is that important, you ask? To keep a chronological blog, I need the date the picture was taken. Try finding that setting in Greek! (or Arabic, or German for that matter). Ok, so to stop backpedalling on my apology, I could have just posted them with incorrect or made-up dates, but 1) I am sure you, diligent reader, would have caught these inconsistencies and 2) my brain isn't coordinated enough to go backwards and corrrectly piece through the right sequences.

Hang tight, and if it's any consolation, I may kidnap a German and make them translate for me tomorrow. Failing that, I arrive in London on April 24th. I hear they speak a bastardiszed version of American there.

Matjesfilet fischsemmel (pic of same name) (link)

How can you go wrong with about $50 worth of sushi on a bun for about 4€? Now that's fresh street food. It would have been a 5 but the raw onion hunk was a bit much. I would have rathered seen some shaved bits of onion mixed with one or two fresh herbs (parsley and dill anyone?), but whom am I to change hundreds of years of German tradition?

4 Slurrps

Lunch in the mountains

Mysteriously there was a restaurant exactly 6 km into the hike that happened to be open. You couldn't appear to get there by car, as the road was closed to vehicles, but it was open for hikers who walked the 6k (that's just there mind you, not round trip). Can you imagine how many people would make it to eat there in the U.S.? All of none? Even more mysterious was the menu item I chose. Sausage salad. A salad with diced cold sausage on top? Maybe a salad of field greens with a warm sausage vinegarette? Perhaps even a cold sandwich spread like tuna salad or ham salad? Nay, it was none of those things.


Sliced bologna in vinegar and onions. Refreshingly light, as German food goes, I expect. Still, a solid...

...3 Slurrps

Geschlossen!

I've never seen the world used so many times in so little space. Poor Jeff puts up a brave smile here, but was fairly devestated at the lack of skiing. I was too, especially since we'd gotten up early and travelled over two hours by train, bus, and foot just to be there when the slopes opened. Turns out it had closed four days prior. The whole town was dead, in fact. We couldn't even get a coffee. The day was not a waste, though. Our bus driver told us about a 6 km hike through the mountains for a 'panoramic view', so we did that and saw things like this...

Gems of Greece

1 - I'll bet the Pantheon and the rest of the Acropolis are really stunning under all those layers of metal scaffolding and cranes.
2 - If you like dairy, you'll never find richer, more delicious yogurt...or less healthy, for that matter. I think they're pretty much one and the same in this case.
3 - Speaking of which, I'm not sure the Greeks have a translation for the word 'healthy'. I must have gained 10 pounds, and that's not including what I added to my beer gut. I guess it's like the freshman five, but instead it's the European ten. The three basic food groups here are pork, feta, and olive oil (which the locals call just 'oil' because, honestly, what other oil can exist?).
4 - Stay away from the frappes if you're hypersensitive to caffeine unless you really like to act like Cornhulio. It's basically powdered caffeine mixed with sugar and a little water to bind it into a paste. The trucker's dream, really.
5 - Every mountain is spectacular enough to look like Mt. Olympus, especially in the brilliantly orange sunsets that seem to trickle ambrosia down into the olive orchards and vineyards below. I was like a little kid asking ''Are we there yet?'' but substituting ''Do you think that one is Mt. Olympus?''

20th Century Blog

Jeff and his old-fashioned ways. Here he is making a post in his 20th century blog without the benefit of his 19th century beard.