Author: zora

Reader, I went to jail for you!

OK, not really–but I was locked in, and the cops were involved.

Monday night, I’m out biking around the north side of Amsterdam, on my way to a friend’s for a birthday party, starting around 8pm. I’m running late, but I happen to be right near a restaurant I wanted to check out. So I make a small detour over to this Aambeeldstraat on the map, only to find the “straat” is actually a big warehouse zone, right on the water.

So I bike in and scope out the restaurant. It’s closed. It looks cool, though. I take a couple of photos of the harbor, because the light is nice. Then I bike back out.

Or almost. A gate–which I hadn’t even noticed when I came in–is locked in front of me.

While I’m poking around, inspecting the realness of this gate and the true degree of its lockedness, two dudes amble up.

“Hey, the Hotel de Goudfazant–is it in there?” one asks.

“Uh, yeah. But it’s closed. And I seem to be locked in here,” I reply.

“Huh,” they say, politely wrinkling their brows with faux concern, and amble off.

I spend the next 15 minutes inspecting the perimeter: barbed wire all the way around, except for the water. I contemplate climbing up a big stack of pallets and jumping over the fence–but that only leads into another locked-looking zone. I contemplate clambering around the fence where it hits the water–but of course it’s protected with a vertical line of nasty metal spikes, just a bit farther out than the length of my arms. I wave hopefully at the security cameras. I also contemplate the teeny-tiny sign–way inside the gate–that mentions the closing time of 8pm on Mondays. And I call the number on the sign, but no one answers.

I call my party hosts.

“Happy birthday! Oh, and, see, I’m going to be a little late…”

I explain my situation, hoping they might be able to come grab me with a boat–if I were committed to swimming out, I could just jump in the harbor and go. But they’re wrapped up with the party, so they give me the non-emergency number for the police.

Guess what? It’s an 0900 number–meaning it costs 10 cents a minute to place the call! Hilarious. I guess it really cuts down on kids calling and asking the operator if his refrigerator is running.

The operator warns me that “it’s a busy time” (has a gang war erupted in Amsterdam? are 800 cats stuck in trees all over the city?), but the cops will come.

The sun starts to sink in the waaaay southwest. The wind is getting chilly. I’m wondering why I actively took those bananas out of my bag, why I wore such impractical shoes today, why I always feel compelled to get one last thing done before getting to any appointment. I take a few melancholy photos of my golden-hour prison, and look wistfully at a tugboat chugging by, just far enough away that I can’t see the pilot and mime-plead with him to rescue me.

Finally, the cops arrive, a young guy and an older woman, in a tiny, efficient car. They are amused and concerned.

“You present a bit of a problem,” the young guy says.

“Yes,” says the woman. “It’s not just you, but also your bicycle.”

I suggest I can leave my bike behind. They look stern and serious. Maybe they think it will be stolen (from behind the locked gate?), or that I am violating a Dutch code of honor. Abandoning a bike is Just Not Done. They declare that we will come out as a package.

Meanwhile, the operator has been rustling up the owner of the restaurant. After I make a bit of small talk with the cops, the operator radios in to say someone is coming over with the keys. More small talk, and then another tiny, efficient car arrives. Out jumps a man covered in plaster dust.

I apologize profusely, the gate is unlocked and the crisis is over. Time elapsed: one hour, 22 minutes.

So, once again, I nobly took a hit for guidebook research. Now I know the number to call for police help in non-life-threatening situations–though I’m not exactly sure that’s something an average tourist will need. But you can bet I’ll be expensing that 50 euro cents I spent on my own call.

Reader, I went to the hospital for you!

Today, in the name of research, I went to the hospital.

I guess I could’ve waited till Monday–or just not gone at all–but I really was curious what a tourist is supposed to do in a non-emergency medical situation. (My situation: constant sensation of vague rocking, and a pain in my ear. Every house I’m in feels like a houseboat.) Funny, the previous editions of the guide don’t mention this in any concrete way. But the truth is, when you’re writing a guide, these details are in the back, the last thing you get to, and you dig up the addresses of a few hospitals and call it done.

Turns out there’s this nifty phone line here in Amsterdam that you can call before going to the hospital–they’ll tell you which place is closest to your house, and put your name in a file so the staff is waiting for you when you get there. Actually, I didn’t really know this last part, so there was a bit more of a wait at the hospital than there probably should’ve been, while the staff finished eating their dinner. “Can it wait till morning?” one woman said, not grumpily, between bites of her sandwich. I said I’d prefer not to, she shrugged, and I went to sit in the waiting room. Everything was pretty and pleasant, and the hospital was handily located on one of the main canals.

Just a bit later, after the sandwich woman saw my name was in the system, she apologized, and took me into the doctor’s office. The doc shook my hand, looked in my ear and throat and pronounced it viral. Nothing to be done but wait a few days. As someone said later, if this had been the US, they would’ve given me a prescription for something, just to placate me.

I felt a bit like a hypochondriac, and was tempted to tell her about my job, but figured that would look just as bad, in terms of interrupting everyone’s dinner.

Oddly, the way I got on the right path to the hospital was a Google search that dropped me at a blog called Dutch Word of the Day. In a post about watje (a cotton wad) was the following aside:

Note that the emergency ward was previously called “Eerste Hulp” (“First Aid”). The name was changed to “spoedeisende hulp” (lit.: speed demanding help) . Since the Dutch health system includes general practitioners (“huisartsen”), people should only go to the “spoedeisende hulp” when there is an emergency. If not, they should visit their general practitioner. Many hospitals have a general practitioner’s ward (“huisartsenpost”) and a emergency ward (“spoedeisende hulp post”) to prevent people with non-emergency complaints to get in the way of patients that need emergency aid.)

From there, more Googling (while mentally commending the Dutch for their genius system, and saying the word spoedeisende several times, to really test its silliness) got me a whole site about the huisartsenpost system, and a number to call. Brilliant.

I came out of the hospital 80 euros (80 expensable euros!) poorer, but so enriched in terms of knowledge. Score for the guidebook!

Who Says the Dutch Aren’t Friendly?

I may’ve mentioned before, the Dutch never seem excited to meet me in other countries–even if, or maybe especially when, Peter or I try to speak Dutch to them. Also, they tend to barrel right into you in crowds on the tram; the Dutch word for “excuse me” is “sorry,” etymological evidence it’s a foreign concept to be considerate of people around you. And, to further perpetuate stereotypes, a lot of them are quite tall, and it feels sometimes like I can’t even see their eyes.

As a result, I often bike around this city thinking Dutch people are just not happy to see me.

But last night, Peter and I were staring into someone’s apartment admiring the handsome, handsome cats that were perched on the also handsome furniture. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly a friendly gesture to not put curtains in your windows, but it’s at least superficially welcoming, and it certainly makes the city a nice place to walk around at night.

So Peter and I are gawking, and maybe even pointing at the fatter cat, when an older, sharp-dressed woman down the sidewalk says, “That’s my place! Do you like it?” (I guess only tourists actually stop and look in people’s curtainless windows, so she said this in English.) So busted! We told her we’d been admiring her cats, she told us she had four of them, and we–including her friend who’d been down at the cafe with her, probably also enjoying a glass of sweet white wine–all laughed merrily. “If that’s a model for being a crazy cat lady,” I told Peter, “it’s not so bad at all.”

Bundle this episode up with the flat-out cheerful and lovely waitresses at Eetcafe Loetje, who never turned surly despite the presence of two young children, spilled milk and a broken champagne glass, and who even squirted whipped cream directly in one of our mouths. (Awk construct, but just wanted to make it clear it was someone at our table, not some regular at the joint with a long-standing whipped-cream relationship with the ladies.) Throw in all the people who’ve offered assistance to my friends (maybe having two kids helps). Mix with a smidge of incidents I can’t exactly remember now. Sure, the Netherlands is no Syria–but what ever will be, on the kindness scale?–and basically I’m feeling a bit more wanted in this city.

Guidebook research continues apace. Having friends visiting with kids has been illuminating. I realized the previous guide has plenty of recommendations of stuff to do with kids (hell, I even wrote a magazine article on the topic a few years ago), but zero recommendations for restaurants where they’ll be tolerated. Having friends visiting who don’t ride bikes has also been illuminating. I realized I’m a terrible judge of how long it takes to walk anywhere. Normal NYC walking speed does not apply, what with bumpy brick streets, crowds of stoned people to navigate around and through, and of course lots of windows to stop and peer into. And I don’t know shit about taking the tram anywhere but my house.

These are pretty obvious holes in my research that I’ve fortunately been able to correct. Ah, blessings in disguise. I think I might go reward my genius research strategies with a chocolate croissant…

Two Quality Blogs (and a bonus)

It was a good day browsing. I found:

Vegetarian Duck, by Mark Morse, who lives in Amsterdam and happens to be writing about not only the kind of food I like to eat when I go out (and would like to add more of to the guide I’m working on), but also what I’d like to be cooking in my own kitchen here in A’dam, but am a bit too uninspired by Albert Heijn to pull off

Mexico Cooks!, which I found through Veg Duck, and which I haven’t burrowed into yet, but looks super-enticing

Actually, there’s a third good one, but only in Dutch: Klary Koopman’s Alles Over Eten. This will be the blog I subscribe to to keep my Dutch reading skills up…

Nice to have new troves of info on two of my guidebook beats… Now I’m off to cook myself dinner with my Albert Heijn groceries. Damn–I’d been looking at tinned sardines in the store, and for some reason didn’t get them–and here’s Veg Duck’s perfect reason.

Developing Freebie Calluses: Suggested Training for New Travel Writers

When the Macedonian was stalking me, we talked a little about that endless knotty issue that travel writers deal with: freebies. And I had a small brainstorm.

As I’ve said before, I’m marginally pro-freebie, in that often it’s the only practical way to find out if a hotel is any good. But just as often a free hotel stay is more trouble than it’s worth, if you have PR breathing down your neck, your schedule is tight, the place turns out to suck and so on.

But that’s jaded me talking. What about someone who just got hired as a travel guide writer, and is a little excited about the prospect of being lavished with free crap? It can be pretty exciting, I admit, being treated like you have a real legit job where you might do someone some favors. Fruit baskets! Meetings! Free drinks!

Here’s what I think Lonely Planet–and any other guidebook publisher who’s concerned about its writers being unduly swayed by free crap–should do:

As part of “training” (which, to my knowledge, only LP does anything remotely like), newbie writers should get sent on press trips. Not press trips to the countries they’ll be covering, because that could get messy, but to anywhere else in the world–whatever random press trips that get offered up by PR people calling the publisher’s offices.

Only by going on a press trip will a writer realize what a pain in the ass these things can actually be. Your hours are all fully accounted for. Your luggage gets jammed with useless press kits. You have to smile nicely and make conversation with people you might not really click with, all while thinking, How is this relevant to the people I’ll be writing for? (To be honest, I’ve never even been on a multiday press trip–I’m only extrapolating from hotel stays and tours up the wazoo.)

At the same time, press trips can be very practical training grounds for newbie writers to evaluate luxury hotels and services. I don’t know about you, but until pretty recently, my idea of a fancy hotel was the Albuquerque Marriott, where my parents would occasionally escape for the weekend. Or we’d go to the cafe there for roast-beef croissant sandwiches–oh, the 80s-cuisine decadence!

So send those new writers off on their PR-sponsored trips with checklists for what a luxury hotel should and shouldn’t do. That’s the homework: Is there dust behind the toilet? Does every staff member greet you? Did you get turndown every night? You really have to stay in only a few luxury hotels to notice the subtleties. Pretty quickly, these writers will know the difference between business-class pretenders and the real luxe deal.

Then, in return for the press junket, the newbie writers will comment to the larger LP/other publisher community: They will dump their impressions into a file labeled with the country name, and post that file somewhere accessible to other authors, so they can refer to it when they’re preparing for their own research trips. This satisfies PR demands that the experience gleaned on the press trip goes toward a larger project.

More important, though, it gives the writer the experience of commenting critically and honestly without repercussion–something they’ve surely been doing for friends or they wouldn’t have gotten this job. But when you suddenly do it for a larger public, there’s a subtle shift in dynamic.

Looking back on some of my hotel and restaurant reviews from my first trip to the Yucatan, I was reminded a little of the process of writing record reviews for my college radio station. The first few albums that got thrown my way, I was very excited: “My opinion is valuable–I will express myself in great detail and with a generally positive attitude!” Also present was this thought: “And I don’t want to say anything too negative, because what if it turns out I just didn’t have the knowledge to appreciate a work of genius?” I wrote some fatuous crap on those first few albums, and even stuck some in the high-rotation section, because I didn’t quite have the experience to accurately compare what I was listening to with better stuff. And I tended to give things the benefit of the doubt when they didn’t deserve it.

By writing their impressions of their trip in a private forum, though, newbie writers can better replicate the process of making recommendations to a friend–no reprisals from PR people, no mentally making allowances for some random person who might like this experience. They can write as much or as little as they want–this doesn’t have to be a succinct, punchy 30-word review. In the process, they’ll learn better what it feels like to write an honest review that really reflects their opinion. What was genuinely good on a press trip will come out, just as what was genuinely hideous and a waste of time.

And, finally, the thrilling bonus: The writer gets a free trip! I’m not even being sarcastic. There’s something a little dispiriting about this job, in which every time someone finds out what I do, they say, “Cool! So that means you get to stay in all these awesome places for free?!” And I say, “Well, actually, not really.” And then the other person looks both crestfallen and pitying–like I’ve disillusioned them and revealed what a loser I am for not somehow getting in on all the corporate waste going around.

So…what do you think?

(That’s rhetorical–I know my comments are still broken. Yahoo, you suck. In fact, I would probably compromise all my ethics and guarantee positive coverage to anyone who will take charge of moving my blog and website to a new host. I don’t have time because I’m busy writing travel guides.)

I’m being followed!

OK, so there’s this running gag that I’m a CIA operative. Hilarious–unless you get me started on the idiocy of the CIA and its failure to hire Arabic speakers. Otherwise, though, it turns out double-agent entendre is almost as easy to pull off as sexual innuendo. I kind of enjoy accidentally sounding like I’m spending a month undercover here in Amsterdam, meeting some contacts, doing a little research in the Oost (where all the Muslims live–of course!).

What’s adding to the intrigue is that I actually am meeting with strangers–or one, anyway–and spending a lot of time traipsing around with her. She’s Macedonian, and if that doesn’t sound suspect in a totally imprecise way, I don’t know what does.

In fact, though, this woman is a grad student who’s writing her dissertation about the production and consumption of guidebooks. She’s following me around for a few days to see how I do my job.

Well, that’s embarrassing.

Now she knows that I “do my job” by spending an inordinate amount of time shopping for underwear at Hema. That I cannot hold onto a pen for more than a day. That I actually hate talking to strangers. That I prefer to spend at least half the day not talking to anyone. That I spend a lot of time pulling U-turns–much easier on foot than on my clunky Dutch bike, which is too tall for me to reach the ground with my feet when I stop. It would be nice if people weren’t looking at me when I have to mount and dismount. In fact, these all read suspiciously like disqualifications for my job.

Also, after I show off my totally rad notebook, which I’ve bragged about here several times before but I’ll describe again briefly in parens (behold: hand-size single-sided reprint of old guide, spiral bound with two pockets made out of manila folders, colored post-it tabs to flip between sections and an elastic band to hold it all together), there’s really not much else to tell someone about how I do my job.

How do I know whether I want to include a shop? Well, it just looks cool. How do I know whether I’ll include a bar? If it’s cool, I suppose. The only revelation I had on further questioning was that a bar with multicolor glass votive holders (rather than clear ones) is tacky, and will not even be investigated. I didn’t know I had this prejudice, but there you go. You have to draw the line somewhere–much the same way I will never even enter a hotel in Mexico that’s painted baby-shit brown. It helps narrow the immense field just a little.

I also realized I need to recalibrate my restaurant radar (ooops! Someone has that trademarked, and I’m not supposed to use the phrase–well, I took the caps off, so that had better damn well cover it) for Amsterdam. A few years ago, I realized that I had to adjust my image of restaurants in Mexico, when an Italian place where the waiters wore togas actually turned out to be good.

Here in Amsterdam, my aperture for restaurants is currently too wide. I’m a sucker for a place with candles on the table.

But guess what? Every restaurant in Amsterdam has candles on the table! It’s actually a huge part of restaurant reviews when a place doesn’t have them.

So obviously I need to build up some critical calluses. Last night, I got a little tough love from a budget restaurant that looked great–all historic outside, all whitewashed and airy inside, little tealights on the table, a menu that had basic Dutch stuff and a little Greek and Asian-what-have-you.

But I’d forgotten about Dutch service! In fact, my restaurant experiences here have never been all that bad, and I dismiss most comments about bad service as bougie American whining. It was sort of a bad sign that we had to light our candle ourselves. And then my Macedonian fellow-agent and I had perhaps one of the most miserable servers in the whole Western Hemisphere, who sent great daggers of irritation from her eyes (when she could be bothered to look at us), and actually said “No, you’ve had enough” when we asked for another glass of water. Now that’s comedy!

It’s also a gen-u-ine cultural experience, and the place is wholeheartedly going in the guidebook. Fine, whatever, with a warning about the service. But the place made me feel like I was in a different country, and I appreciated that every bit as much as my 8.50 euro three-course set menu, the main dish of which involved two big round scoops of mashed potatoes-and-veg and a big round meatball. Soothing and nourishing, those orbs of food.

I’ve got one more day of information-sharing with the Macedonian, and then it’s on to solo investigation. [Leer.]

In Amsterdam

Arrived in Amsterdam today for the last guidebook gig in a while–I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or I could if I weren’t so exhausted. I am too old to still be flying economy, especially in a seat that doesn’t recline all the way because it’s mashed against a pointless section divider.

I’ll spare you the litany of other small travel indignities I suffered, but I will mention they involved having to depart from a different airport (JFK, not convenient LGA), on a different airline (without the comfy seats my “status” entitles me to), and with the world’s longest layover in Frankfurt, with a departure at the world’s farthest gate…oh, but wait, no, they changed to the gate to one on the complete other end of the terminal! So even though I had five hours to kill (and killed part of them in the McCafe, what will be McD’s totally failed attempt to compete with Starbucks, at least based on witnessed inefficiency at a single outlet–lady! Gimme that stupid whipped-cream can, so at least I can do whippets while you’re taking _so_damn_long_ with my coffee!), I still had to run for my flight.

Oops. Whined anyway. Done. I swear.

I was so shattered when I arrived in Amsterdam that I derived zero joy from being in Europe. Normally, my heart thrills to the tiny odd details–Dutch accents! Goofy public art! The dividers in the bathroom stalls go all the way down to the floor…and up to the ceiling! And what nice, utilitarian rolls of toilet paper!–but today I just sneered, groused, grumbled.

It’s so stupid and clean here, I thought, on my endless walk to the baggage claim. So organized, blah blah blah. Except for that clusterfuck at the McCafe. They think they’ve got it together, but they don’t. And why is everyone so damn tall?

Only now, after a nap, do I realize: My attitude, I think, comes from having spent an awful lot of time in Mexico recently.

Overheard in Whole Foods

Not by me, but by Peter, who’s in Santa Monica right now:

I was in the produce section and some packs of carrots fell about 5 feet behind me. I went to help the worker pick them up, and he said, “That happens, because this stuff is alive. Over there in the junk food, stuff never moves. Not on the shelves. Not in your body.”

Ha. Even better is that it wasn’t some standard California wheatgrass-drinking hippie who said this, but a middle-aged, not-hippie black guy.

Mayo, the Gateway Drug

A few months ago, Marla Garla tipped me off to Elyse Sewell’s LiveJournal, which has now become my guilty-pleasure blog. I only call it a guilty pleasure when I’m recommending it to someone, because it sounds bad to say you’re reading the blog of someone who was on America’s Next Top Model. But hey, I also kind of enjoy working at Us Weekly–I’m not proud. And she was the smart one on ANTM, so there.

But never mind the modeling. What is fucking fantastic about this blog is that this woman takes pictures of all the bizarro stuff she sees in grocery stores in Asia, and of all the sometimes-alarming stuff she eats on the street. This is great, because it’s exactly what I do when I travel–anthropological insights on Aisle 9. But since I still haven’t been anywhere in Asia, it’s all completely new, and it only stokes my mental image of the other side of the globe as this dazzlingly strange alternate universe.

What’s finally making me link to her blog is this post: Bourgetto. The horrific pastry detailed in this post made me laugh out loud.

And it also made me ponder the universal appeal of that magical substance we call mayonnaise. In so many cultures, mayonnaise appears to be the first baby step toward “Western” food and culture–and once people get a taste of that lovely white goo, there’s just no going back. Next thing you know, you’re hankering for meatloaf, and then pretty soon you’re test-driving SUVs. (I’m not making the meatloaf thing up: documented instance of meatloaf being seen as “exotic” in Mexico–scroll down.)

I have previously documented the Mexican fixation with mayo (here and here, to start), and the Japanese are total converts (mmm, okonomiyaki), but I wonder how mayo plays in, say, Kenya, or on the steppes of Mongolia? (Tell me in the comments! Oh, sorry, no–still broken. F***ing Yahoo.) I know it’s an integral ingredient in salads at “fancy” dinners in Cairo–it’s just a matter of time before it trickles down.

I am extremely pro-mayo, so I find this delightful: “See? It makes your sandwich/taco/bun/peas-and-carrots slide down your throat like nothing at all!” I feel like saying to everyone I meet in other countries. My father, on the other hand, probably has the allover heebie-jeebies at the thought of mayonnaise infiltrating the deepest Amazon rain forest.

All that said, I don’t know if I’d be able to handle Elyse’s nightmarish “blueberry streusel brioche with a filling of mayonnaise, tomatoes, cucumbers, and raw onions.” (She forgets to mention the corn kernels–also hilariously European, like a crappy Dutch salad.) Here I thought I had to worry about fertilized duck eggs in Asia, but now I see I’m going to have to deal with some far more insidious flavors.

I think I’m strong enough…

(Oh, what’s also genius about Elyse Sewell and her blog: she’s from Albuquerque too. Between her and Neil Patrick Harris–with whom I went to theater camp, let me just name-drop–the Duke City has some real celeb cred.)

I feel dirty.

I am so not cut out to be a vegetarian. I spent this whole week eating super-delicious leftovers from last weekend’s all-veggie Indian feast. When I got tired of that, I had an awesome salad with hot boiled potatoes, grape tomatoes and tuna. I made myself a very satisfying lunch one day of leftover salad, some buttery carrots, hummus, wasa bread and olives.

I’m saying all this to emphasize that I was truly enjoying my almost entirely vegetarian food this whole week.

But last night as I was biking home, I started thinking about hamburgers. And I remembered Aces, on 36th Avenue, which serves a good one. I also toyed with getting manti at Mundo, rounded out with veggie sides, but once I gave myself over to the burger idea (Tamara by that time had agreed to meet me for dinner, selecting Aces from among three options), I was really in a rut.

Once at Aces, Tamara and I were completely spooked by the fact that this place clearly does not cater to a normal dinner crowd anymore–we were the only people there on a Friday. All signs pointed to major dinner failure, but I still would not give up the burger dream.

“Uh, I can’t hack this,” Tamara hissed at me while we sipped our mojitos and looked nervously at the kitchen–we hadn’t eaten here for many months, and the place had gotten substantially more marginal-feeling. “After last weekend, I can’t take this risk.”

Last weekend, Tamara had a hideous allergic reaction to something she’d eaten–but she’s not sure what. She’s understandably a little jumpy.

I think she even went so far as to say, “Please don’t make me eat here.”

But the more of my mojito I drank, the more I realized manti at Mundo were not going to cut it. I had to have the burger. I twisted Tamara’s arm. We ordered the meat, and extra drinks, for sterilization. The meat was delicious–big, crusty burgers on quickly grease-laden English muffins, nice medium fries. We did not become ill.

But even though I ate every little bite of this enormous thing, it still didn’t quite satisfy me. This morning, I was salivating over the idea of chicken-fried steak brunch at Hill Country (thanks for the tip, Homesick Texan!), and I just now I caught myself ogling burger porn online, and calculating my next trip to the Corner Bistro.

Maybe I have a meat debt to pay off–like a sleep debt, but more delicious?