| Booze & Grub | Movies | Music | Books | Diary | Randomness |
| Hipster Diary -- Archive 16 |
| I have a lot on my mind. Sometimes it causes insomnia. Maybe this will help. |
|
Archive Archive 16 |
Diaries: prague amsterdam world's worst car names product test: pretzel m&ms the dominican republic Prague is a place I've wanted to visit for years. It had that Eastern Block tinge, plus a brutal and medieval history reflected in its architecture and grand austerity. I pictured snow-swept empty squares like the kind I imagined in Moscow, spies around every narrow corner and underground bars filled with dudes in tweed smoking foreign-smelling cigarettes and drinking exotic elixirs made by bent-back old farmer ladies. It turns out there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about Prague--most of which I bought into.  #1 - "Oh man, you're gonna have such awesome beers while you're there. You're gonna drink yourself silly." Verdict: Not true and true. The city, like a lot of Europe from what I gather seems to be controlled by one or two breweries. Essentially every bar has a Pilsner Urquell sign outside, and that is the beer they serve. We ran into a couple places that served Budvar (Czech predecessor to Budweiser) and a giant brewpub that served some sort of light and dark beer that was either brewed there or was like Pilsner Urquell's no-name brand. I had a couple other homemade beers and something called Staropramen Skvely and Bernard Pivo and Krusovice, but those were mostly indiscernible from the other pilsners. The brewpub, U Fleku, was packed to the gills with completely destroyed people--none of whom fell for the "hey, you want a shot?" scam that added like thousands of korunas to our bill. Apparently they make booze out of dodo shit in Prague. Regardless, that was a good time, and stumbling back across the city to our hotel afterwards proved even more fun. We hit all sorts of bars while we were there, including some clearly local joints filled with students (high school by the look of them), bohemian writer/singer types and one underground joint that was pretty much completely filled with cigarette smoke even though we were mostly alone for the first half hour (while the bar filled with Czech locals upstairs rocked). The weird thing we did notice is that most of th bars that we did hang out in were completely too bright. Subtle lighting apparently hasn't made it to Eastern Europe quite yet.  #2 - There will be mysterious deserted streets with spies lurking in darkened doorways. Verdict: True and not true Not unless you count a giant pack of Asian tourists following some dude with a flag or a giant Swiss family and their babbling children mysterious and spy-like. I've clearly watched too many Bourne and MI movies, but nothing could prepare me for the sheer number of tourists snaking through the narrow streets and squares. Granted, this was low season, so the crowds were way less than what they could be. Not to say once night fell that we turned down alleys and streets (which were built way before automobiles and in some cases are barely wide enough to walk down shoulder to shoulder) and encountered nothing but nothingness. It was cold and apparently the hordes of tourists went to bed early, because there were periods walking back from bar-searching wanderings without seeing another human for minutes. In retrospect, the New Yorker Spidey sense in us clearly didn't tingle even when heading down narrow completely dark alleys and streets. Ancient darkness is somehow darker than New York dark. Who knows if that was stupid, but I'm writing this so clearly the spies and shadowy men were inside warming themselves by the fire. And then again the day came and the crowds surged. Strange. #3 - The city was and is a center of culture and liberal thinking Verdict: False. One day we decided (completely against the norm) to take a walking tour or Prague. I had visions of us and a bunch of gawking French freaks craning our necks at every spire and gothic window frame as others launched and pointed at the lame tourists. Beside that fact everyone there seemed to be a tourist, we lucked out and ended up with a tour guide and just one freakish Canadian woman. She honestly wouldn't shut the fuck up, and our guide, who turned out to be absolutely awesome, looked at times like he wanted to punch her in her national-health-care-havin' face. Apparently a sense of humor doesn't come standard on the middle-aged (probably gay) Czech tour guide. Granted, when she left us before we entered the Jewish quarter (she had paid only for a 3/4 tour), we were relieved to be rid of her know-it-all exuberance. And that brings us to Prague's history, which seemed to be full of Protestants and Catholics putting each other's heads on stakes and throwing each other from government building windows and bridges. All the while the Jews toiled away in a ghetto and then came the Nazis. Apparently, and very interestingly, the Czech made a deal with Hitler--thus the sparing of Prague during WWII, one of the few cities not to be shelled by the Germans. Essentially Hitler told the Czech that he really dug Prague. He loved it so much that he promised not to bomb it if they just layed down their arms and didn't resist and also helped him a little with his "Jew" problem. This involved helping to conspire to fool the Red Cross and others that, by using Prague's Jews (and gays and cripples) in an elaborate ruse, he could use them to put on a fake show that he was treating them well and not in fact subjecting them to concentration camps, twisted experimentation, starvation and ovens. The Czechs agreed in order to save their city. Makes sense, I suppose. What they didn't know--and why you should never trust a Nazi--is that Hitler actually planned to eventually move his lovely German citizens into Prague and ship out all of the real residents to a gulag in Siberia. What a guy! So hundreds upon hundreds of years of religious intolerance and murder ended with conspiring with an evil regime so they wouldn't bomb the pretty buildings. And today there are like 47 Jews in the city and we get a tour of the bridge where dudes' heads sat dripping blood and churches where Catholics crushed Protestants and vice versa and everyone loves Saint Wenceslaus.  #4 - The architecture is pretty damn cool Verdict: True. We stayed in a hotel that dates back to like 1319. From the outside it wasn't much. From the inside it was pretty sweet, but not the ancient castle-y thing you'd expect, but when you consider the shitty hotels and motels that dot the country in the US, you realize it's pretty damn cool. My sense of architectural timing is also a little dicey, so I don't recall exactly when things are actually medieval and Gothic or actually romance or if they're "revival," but the city is stuffed with crazy looking gothic churches and towers and all sorts of nutty palatial pomp. It's just not the kind of thing you see in the US, and makes my 1912 house look like a crappy condo from the 80s. Granted, on our somewhat long journey from the airport, we passed all those magnificent Soviet era cinderblock apartment building complexes, which couldn't be more depressing if there were dead puppies hanging from them. The Russians certainly know how to fuck up a landscape.  # 5 - You'll definitely need more than a few days there. Verdict: False. We were there for three days, which was more than enough. The city, in relation to NYC, is absolutely minuscule. You can walk from one end to the other in like 20 minutes and cover almost every street in a couple nights. After being in Amsterdam, where there are 20 bars on every block, we had to search for places in Prague, and after searching high and low, I feel like we hit at least half of them. Not true, of course, but it certainly felt that way. Any more time there and we might have circled the blocks around our hotel one too many times and had the secret police on our ass – or would have died of goulash poisoning. #6 – This is not the place one goes for good food Verdict: True. The first night we were there we went to a giant two-story restaurant and bar called U Vejvodu that had pretzels at the table, served beers, potato soup and spicy goulash and dumplings. That was probably the best meal we had there. It was heavy and peppery and hit the spot on a chilly night. Once was enough. Pretty much every restaurant we encountered from there on out would serve some amalgam of Italian or non-descript European fare, but would always have goulash and dumplings, which were labeled “traditional Czech food.” It would be the equivalent of every American restaurant having pizza and burgers on their menu regardless of the main cuisine in an attempt to sell to the tourist mobs. I had goulash at least one or two more times, but the dumplings, which are basically boiled bread, were always too heavy, the gravy too thin or the meat too tough. All in all the food was pretty terrible once you got beyond the traditional food in an actual traditional place.  So, in conclusion, Prague is a beautiful, mysterious city with a violent intolerant history, and is not full of spies or lots of exotic booze and the food kinda sucks. I have never seen so many white guys with dreads as
I did in Amsterdam. It felt like one extended Spin
Doctors concert! And, yeah, dudes, you don't have to prove to
us you're Rastas so you can smoke weed without getting harassed
by the fuzz--it's legal here. While dreads are a fashion statement
better left to Jimmy
Cliff and Bob
Forrest, the majority of roving gangs of dudes wore their hair
short and, well, really short. What I took to be packs of British
football hooligans or German Germans, we were later told were "Polish."
That's Polish with a capital 'P' from the country of Poland, not
some Cockney rhyming slang term for thugs. Of course we were told
this by a Johnny
Rotten-looking ex-Brit who had lived in Amsterdam for 10 years,
and had clearly lived it up in that time. He saw the confusion on
our faces immediately (the confusion not aimed at his incoherent
"old lady" who was sliding off her barstool into a blathering puddle
on the ground) as it didn't seem to us that Poland was a big exporter
of tourists, let alone endless gangs of shaved-head dudes in track
jackets. He quickly cleared his throat, straightened his back and
in his best broadcaster voice (complete with sarcastic air quotes)
said, "Soooory, not Polish exactly--I believe the PC term is (here
came the brutal crooked fingers) "Eastern Block." He then went on
to tell us that the Amsterdam had no government and that the Hells
Angels controlled all the pot cafes and hooker windows all up and
down the red light district. Hells Angels? Like the dudes with the
leather chaps, swastika tattoos and handlebar mustaches? The same.
We're still not sure what that was all about. He turned out to be
the most interesting dude we talked to all week. 
Amsterdam is not only drinking and whoring, though. We stayed in a lovely boutique hotel right off one of Amsterdam's many canals. Crafted from a five-story building built somewhere in the 1580's, our hosts at the The Mauro Mansion, Barry and Marcel, were wonderful hosts and seemed to find us endlessly amusing. Well, Barry did. I think Marcel, whose English wasn't as strong, just found us confusing. Three days into our trip and we were still asking directions to stuff. We seemed confounded by the difference between coffee and espresso and we clearly kept odd hours. Despite this they (or rather one of the most adorable blonde girls I've ever seen in my life, whom they must have hired so they could actually enjoy a night out) recommended an awesome local joint called Eetcafe Van Beeren, into which we strutted and were spoken to in Dutch as if we were locals! Now, you've never seen the missus and me but neither of us would or could possibly pass for what would typically be a Netherlander. Granted, Anne Frank did at some juncture live in the city, so maybe I could have passed back in 1938, but now I just look like a Jew from LA who needs a haircut. Anyway, the waitress soon realized we had no clue what she was saying and seamlessly slipped into English, the default language spoken by just about everyone there if Dutch isn't in the picture. It must kill the French that they are forced to speak that low language when ordering their toasties. Hadn't the place been filled with European lookin' folks speaking gobbledygook, this could have been a terrific neighborhood bistro in the East Village. Next they suggested Cafe Bern (what was with all the bear places?), where we had gnarly fondue and yet another joint called De Haven van Texel that, sadly, was one of the only joints in the entire city that had microbrew beer. The rest of the places we visited had only Amstel and Heineken and the occasional Wieckse or Leffe. Kinda disappointing on the beer front, but it certainly didn't stop me from imbibing on a nightly basis--several tens of times.  We did do a few touristy things while we were there, including going to the Anne Frank House (which I recommend highly) and the Van Gogh Museum (which was disappointing), but the majority of the time was spent drinking, people watching and wandering around semi-lost. It seems there is still a bit of the old 60s vibe hanging around, as kids pour in and out of hostels and patchouli hasn't yet been outlawed. In fact the entire city, at least around the red light district near where we stayed, smelled of a combination of stale beer, pee, weed and canal water. It's honestly not as bad as it sounds, but there is this weird public urinal thing that basically exposes wieners to the passers-by and empties the output right into the street. Despite this the city sanitation workers do a nice job of washing down the streets, sweeping up the tons of broken bottles and other trash to prep for another night of marauding European dudes. Quite efficient all things considered. Oh, did I mention the fat, Mexican hookers down the street from our hotel? Apparently working on the outskirts of the district is truly the scut shift, and every day and night we walked by these ladies' windows. These poor, poor ladies. What they were doing in Amsterdam is anybody's guess, but they certainly didn't seem to be making a living. The whole prostitute thing in general mystified us, but that's a whatever for another day.  All in all, Amsterdam is a party town full of party people. I'd say three or four nights is about all any red-blooded American boy might need in the second city of sin. Okay, maybe five or six if he's single and willing to shell out some dough for what would otherwise be illegal in the USofA. There have been many silly and asinine car names over
the years. Some that come to mind are the Renault Le Car, the AMC
Gremlin, the Mercury Zephyr, and, well, the Hummer. I figured that
these days, with all the millions of marketing dollars, market research
and branding firms that charge more to make a Nike swoosh rip-off
than 20 of me earn in a year, that they'd be better these days.
Pulling out of my train station, I was sitting waiting to make a
left and noticed the name of the car in front of me. Honda Fit.
Seriously? What the fuck is that? Economy of letters for an economy
car? Nope, I feel like they may have just mailed that one in. That
led me to start looking around to see if I could find the dumbest
car names of vehicles currently in production. Here are the top
ones I found in no particular order of awfulness:
I've admitted on multiple occasions
that I'm a sucker for new products--usually of the edible kind.
I think I even tried some soda shit called Bawls
at some point and some other Special
K twiggy chocolate bar that was like eating a cocoa-flavored
squirrel's nest. My experience with Pretzel
M&Ms, I'm happy to say, was much more pleasant.  After seeing one of those dumb ads with the giant animated candies--and fulfills the creepy factor of having food you're supposed to enjoy eating talking in commercials--I told myself that if I love Peanut M&Ms (which I do), I'm going to have to loooove Pretzel M&Ms. After all, if they made chocolate covered salt, I'd probably buy it. So I made it my mission to find these things. But it seemed the folks at Mars were going to make me work for it. I looked at every store I walked into. The CVS down the street has Peanut Butter M&Ms, Almond M&Ms, Dark Chocolate M&Ms and fucking Coconut M&Ms (fucking coconut!), but no damn pretzels. I started to think that maybe this was a pre-launch tease or some sort of targeted release that unfortunately wasn't available in the Tri-state area. To this day, I've still never seen a small bag of the things. But I did finally come across a medium-sized and large-sized bag at a place mere blocks from my house. I swear my adrenaline spiked. It was like I was Indiana Jones puling that damn golden head off the pedestal. I got the thing home (totally forgetting Ms. Hipster's prescription) and threw the bag down on the counter like a conquering hero. I believe I said something cool like, "Fuckin'-a, right!" I tore at the bag like a wild animal and popped the first if what would be many candies into my piehole. The outside is much like a typical M&M, with its brightly colored candy coated shell, providing that familiar snap for which they are so famous. Then you get the Mars chocolate layer and finally the peach pit, if you will, of pretzelness. The whole thing is a perfect synthesis of texture, salty & sweet and happy colors. Ms. Hipster soon hovered, and after threatening her to back off with one of those giant bbq forks, I rationed the candies in a "one for you, ten for me" manner and called it even. Unfortunately she's a sneaky one, and infiltrated my sophisticated baby latch system the night of and redistributed the M&Ms in a way she found more Democratic and caloric for herself. Needless to say, the bag disappeared quickly and I have yet to replenish my stash. So if you're ever to invite Mr. Hipster to a party, be forewarned that I will brining with me (because it's the perfect excuse), one of the more addictive pre-package snacks that I've experienced in my adult life. Granted, my former addiction was Peanut M&Ms, so this is like going from coke to crack. Thanks cartoon douches.  So we roll into the airport in
The Dominican Republic, four adults and three children all told. The
tarmac onto which we descend was probably not unlike an angel falling
from the pillowy clouds of heaven to the smoldering cinders of the
bad place. My shirt caught fire and dropped from my pale shoulders
in a melted mass of poly-cotton sludge.
 Walking into the thatched hut (past the beautiful ladies with their Polaroid cameras, giant smiles and visions of cashola dancing in their chestnut eyes) that subbed for a terminal in these parts granted us little reprise. It turns out mammoth fans mounted akimbo on hut ceilings do little more than blow sweltering humidity to and fro in a quite wasteful and useless manner. We posed for the family portrait--to be collected upon our departure from said hut on our way back to the lush Garden State--and tried our hardest not to look like the bedraggled heaving tourists that we were. Several lines and passport revealings later we boarded our waiting minivan and embarked on our journey to the resort we would call home for the next five nights and six days. I was seated up front with the driver because it was decided my six years of high school and one year of college Spanish made me the most qualified and experienced Spanish speaker in our crew. It turns out my five-year-old son would have been better suited to the task, but I managed to pigeon-speak my way through a 40-minute ride with a driver who spoke literally not a word of English. Not a word. It turns out if one nods, furrows one's brow and combines it with some guttural noises that resemble "uh-huh" and "si" and "aye" that it can easily be substituted for comprehension and make others in one's company believe he or she is actually contributing to a dialogue about (at least what I believe was) the beauty and history of the Dominican Republic. Having been booked solely by Ms. Hipster and the wife in the other couple, I had little to no understanding of the topography, annual mean income, racial makeup or general lifestyle of our host country. It turns out that it looks much like the small villages and towns in Mexico, but on what seemed like a smaller scale, and mixed with some Caribbean cultural references that give it a colonial flavor that's missing (thankfully) on the Yucatán Peninsula. And why wouldn't it be, you clueless ethnocentric douche (I say in my internal voice), the two cultures are totally different, have different ancestral lines and are not even geographically close? And then, after wending our way through dusty towns, bumpy roads, signage straight out of the 1950s and folks who honestly looked like they could use some of our tourist dollars, we came upon the guard booth, surrounded by high walls and backed by the visage of lush greenery, whizzing golf carts, pale European legs and the smell of chlorined loveliness. And this is the last of the outside world we'd see until our same driver chauffeured us from the gates on our way back to the thatched airport. Once sequestered behind the inviting walls of Paradisus Punta Cana, the rain rolled in. Yet there we stood ankle deep in the kiddie pools, wrapped in soaking towels and finally getting to the bottom of that Vietnam-era myth of it raining up. Hell, we were on vacation, paying through the nose for our accommodations and at the mercy of children impervious to pruning and a bone-chilling soak. We would spend a lot of time at that pool in the coming week, though not in such a downpour. And, being the parents of the year, we abandoned our children to a random babysitter (supplied by the hotel) the first night in The D.R. to go eat at one of the less than promising all-you-can-eat restaurants on campus. The young sitter, as it turned out, beguiled and delighted the boys with her easy smile, shy demeanor and good looks that the resort clearly recruited from the throngs of beauties that seem to be in endless supply in the surrounding villages, towns and cities. Where else and how else would a local make a comfortable living other than watching the children of Europeans and Americans wealthy enough to afford that Jacuzzi tub and double marble sink? We bid the kids adieu and crossed our fingers that we wouldn't come back to absolute chaos (or a ransom note) and headed downstairs to check out our options for dinner. And this, as it stood, was what became a running joke—in a trying-not-to-cry sense—our entire visit. It turns out that the food at all-inclusives is not the draw. Granted, when left alone in my adult years, I make myself what was termed a ‘banana-eggy' back when I was five and consists of a cup of milk, a banana, a table spoon of peanut butter, a raw egg (now skipped in my smarter, non-70s recipe) and occasionally some frozen yogurt or ice cubes if I'm feeling bloated that day. So food is all relative to me. We chose from the twelve restaurants available to us, salivating at the thought of all those options. The common wisdom, as noted, started to make all too much sense as we ran across dishes like “discus of cilantroed bull spleen” and “rhombus hare jacketed in cabbage spears,” along with “cylinders of green chicken” and “beefy pasta spirals in a suze of jackal.” Our hopes started to fade. We threw a dart at the book and landed on the steak joint. I won't harp on the food too badly, but suffice it to say that while my steak was fine, the salad bar was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. There were gelatinous piles of stuff, sweaty cheese, and unfortunate misspellings and/or namings of some of the items on the bar. Apparently, even in a country where our babysitter spoke perfect English, the restaurant staff couldn't think that they might want someone to double check that “roast of beast" wasn't gonna sound so good to their paying guests. And so went the week in food. TO BE CONTINUED...
|
The shittiest party ever.
| More on Mr. Hipster |
 Hipster Movie ReviewsEnjoy the rantings as Mr. Hipster proves he slept through his film criticism courses in college. |
 Hipster Book ReviewsThis much ignorance about literature can only lead to hurt feelings and a whole lot of nonsense. |
 MusicCheck out the albums that have left Mr. H with permanent hearing loss in his left ear, but a song in his heart |
| Booze & Grub | Movies | Music | Books | Diary | Randomness |