Browse Tag

travelogues

Meat castles

[tombstones]Set in an otherwise quiet residential area of town, Le Tournedos et H. Le Tassigny isn’t the easiest restaurant to find. Not that I think it’s particularly big with the tourists in any case; everyone stares when we walk in, there’s certainly no English being spoken at any other tables, and the English we speak to each other draws a surprised glance from every waitperson that approaches our table.

The name of the game here is meat, and a lot of it. In fact, I can’t imagine wanting to eat here except if in search of the namesake tournedos, which feature on the menu in many, many incarnations. I start with a salade de gésièrs, itself a massive and extremely filling (but excellent) undertaking, and while waiting for my next course I realize I’m really not all that hungry. Oops.

So, when presented with a slab of beef about the size of my head…

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The rites of springbok

[table mountain obscured]The truck shows no signs of stopping. In fact, it might be speeding up. A horn blares. The right wheel is aimed directly at me, the left at Theresa’s glasses, which are still skipping and swirling over the pavement, buffeted by the howling gales that cyclone around us. There’s nothing to be done except save myself, and I leap back onto the sidewalk…just as the glasses are given their most violent wind-whipping yet. They sail skyward, hurdling the truck and crashing to the ground right at my feet. I reach out to grasp them…

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Funky, cold, & Medina

[qantas]It has actually come to this? So many great experiences, so many wonderful people (except for that one), so many unforgettable memories. And yet, New Zealand’s final farewell for us is this: for the second time in three opportunities, Air New Zealand has failed to put our bags on the same plane as us. Even with a three-hour layover in Auckland. How does that happen? Have they employed tuatara to handle luggage and cargo? Three hours is usually enough even for Heathrow, for heaven’s sake, and Auckland’s not exactly the world’s biggest airport.

“They’ll be on the next flight,” assures the man clicking away at a computer with the sleek lines and processing power of the eighties. The early eighties. It’s got a green screen, it’s slower than Air NZ baggage handling, and the printer issuing my lost luggage report is a noisy old dot matrix model. Dot matrix. And yes, the paper is the appropriate relic, which I wasn’t even aware was still produced: alternating green and white stripes with perforated holes down the sides. What sort of bizarre time warp have we entered? Have all the country’s IT consultants gone walkabout?

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Ski patroll

[ski troll]The problems start at the Oslo train station. I’d bought our tickets to Bergen the day before, and we arrive at the station with our bags and plenty of time to spare. But when we finally reach the giant schedule board to figure out where to go, our train is the only one without a departure track. This continues until said departure is close enough that we’re in danger of missing the train should it appear on one of the more distant tracks.

I approach the ticket desk with my questions, but am greeted with possibly the only person in all Oslo who doesn’t speak very much English. Eventually, she writes some things down on a piece of paper and gestures emphatically. If I understand her correctly – and there’s reason to suspect that I don’t – we’re supposed to get on a different train, get off that train and onto a bus, and then get back on the train that was supposed to take us to Bergen all along.

Um, OK.

We head for the indicated track, and seeing our destination town – Asker – mentioned on the side of an arriving train, we board.

It’s not the right train.

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Clivi wonder

[i clivi bottles]We’re sitting around a table, debating politics. Which we’ve been doing for…oh, about four hours now. Technically, we’re having lunch. But it’s quite dark outside, the dinner hour – even the late Italian one – has already arrived for many in the neighborhood, and neither the wine nor a regularly-replenished supply of hearty, crusty bread has stemmed. The crusty remains of a rich, Friulian style bean soup solidify along the interiors of our bowls, long since abandoned and forgotten amidst an occasionally heated conversation.

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The thyme of our lives

[jean-baptiste sénat]“The man in black.” That’s my scribbled-down description of the winemaker we’ve come to visit, and it fits; he is, in fact, dressed head-to-toe in the color of night. Dark clothing, to befit a dark wine.

Minervois is a known name, thanks to a lot of hard work on the part of a relatively small number of dedicated producers, importers, and retailers, but it’s most definitely not a well-known name, and the search for greater affirmation is a long, uphill struggle against the forces of multinational marketing. It doesn’t help that a lot of the wines that carry the name never really rise above mediocrity…though given the lack of acclaim and monetary reward that follows those that do, the desire to put in the necessary work has to come from somewhere other than the hope of remuneration.

The vignoble of Minervois is visually and functionally hardscrabble, and that probably doesn’t help in the elevation of spirits. Staring at a field of rocks from which gnarled vines struggle to emerge and plump up a few angry grapes isn’t like gazing over the verdant plains and hillsides of certain other regions, nor are many vines neatly trained into efficiently-pickable rows. One can see the work that will be necessary, and the heartbreak that sprouts from the earth, and the indifference that droops from the leaves, in every beaten-down vine. And yet the region is absolutely carpeted with vineyards. That’s a lot of despair to crush, press, and ferment. But it’s a way of life, and that’s not easily abandoned.

Thankfully, there are a few producers who put in the necessary work, and their truculent, embittered vines have decided reward the attention with a grudging but admirable harvest of quality. Jean-Baptiste Sénat is one such producer.

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Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you

[simspon statue]Well-stuffed and liberally liquored, we feel ready to brave the winds and head back to the hotel. Or so we think. Just a few blocks from our destination, it feels like a hurricane has arrived. Theresa thinks she sees something blow out of a woman’s bag, and turns to tell her.

“Hurry! Catch it!” The woman is pointing across the road. The abrasion on my eyes is profound, and I can’t quite see what she’s looking at.

Suddenly, Theresa pipes up. “My glasses!”

And there in the middle of a busy street, describing a ten-foot diameter circle in a constantly-swirling cyclone of wind, are her glasses. They skip and glide across the ground, a mere wisp of color against the asphalt. Cars pass over them, uncaring, and still they blow. Seeing a brief break in traffic, I leap out to try and stop them with my foot, but they lift and hurtle skyward…then plummet back to the earth. A truck approaches, honking.

Uh-oh.

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The singing ship, sanguine

[reflection]For a chain hotel not exactly known for its luxury, [this] is more than serviceable, though it’s crawling with businesspeople and has to turn several desperate latecomers away at the front desk. There’s a bar in the lobby, and a really impressive breakfast buffet in the restaurant across the hall. I mean really impressive: six kinds of charcuterie, five kinds of cheese (including the ubiquitous gjetost), various herrings, anchovies, caviar (though only the squeeze-tube kind) pickled vegetables and salad greens, creamy “salads” that only a Scandinavian or Minnesotan could love, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, cut fruit, yogurt, cereals and muesli, fair coffee, fine tea, juices, several kinds of milk, three preparations of (real) eggs, terrific bacon, sausages, meatballs, mini-waffles, jams and spreads, a huge block of excellent salted butter, and an assortment of five or six fresh-that-morning breads (most some variation on whole grain, and many with seeds) that is rather breathtaking in its quality. As a result of this early-morning bounty, at hotel after hotel, I’m able to avoid eating lunch anywhere in Norway…which, given that in some places a bowl of fish soup and a beer can cost nearly $100, is a very, very good thing.

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Farewell to Eden

[sunset]In customs, we’re greeted by our first sarcastic Aussie, something for which I’ve been gearing myself up after five weeks of New Zealand-esque pleasantry.

“Are you bringing any agricultural products into the country?”

“Just some wine.”

(looking up) “Oh, no. No, no. You can’t bring Kiwi wine into Australia.” (looking over his shoulder, yelling) “Jim, we’ve got two for the lockup here!”

And so it goes. There’s non-sarcastic concern about millimeter-sized bore holes in the wooden bowls we purchased in Nelson, however, and for a while it looks like they might not let them through. Eventually, they relent…after much peering and a few waves of some sort of magic electronic wand. We emerge into the baggage claim area at last, eager to get into the city and begin a new stage of our explorations.

So where’s our luggage?

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Flowers in the Adriatic

[piazza dell’unita]It’s a gloomy, rainy morning. And I’ve discovered yet another problem with our hotel: the pillows are rock-hard, and my right ear feels flattened and numb. I look around our cobweb-filled room lit by the dismal grey gloom, decide that dismay is no way to start the day, trudge to the bathroom wrapped in a blanket to keep out the penetrating chill, and turn on the hot water.

It takes about ten minutes to arrive, though when it does, it’s blessedly beyond tepid; at least there’s a heat source somewhere in this hotel. Breakfast is no less dismal; despite a few house-made jams, the selection consists of crusty but flavorless bread, American cereals, bland bolognas (calling them salume would be more than they deserve) and cheeses, and canned fruit. Even the coffee isn’t good. In Italy. We leave the hotel discouraged, our mood as grey and soggy as the weather.

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