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Posts Tagged ‘funny travel’

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Yuri Gets Flamingo Fever


2010
07.25

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Posted in Yuri's Travels | No Comments »

yuri-overworked-accountant-clipartThis weekend, I go to Florida. I am very, very excited, because ever since I was boy, I want to see pink flamingo stand on one foot.

Moldova not have pink flamingo, especially pink flamingo that stand on one foot. It is not that I not love my pet rat, My pet rat is wonderful. But I want to see pink flamingo too.

So I go to Florida, only I am not lucky. Never lucky. I go to Puerto Rico, I see hurricane. I go to get award at work, I get stuck in lift. I come to Florida, I get dengue fever from mosquito.

Harvey say, "This not me!"

Harvey say, "This not me!"

So Harvey tell me when he read this that I have to tell you that he does not give dengue fever, that it is other type of mosquito that give dengue fever, that it is not fault of Harvey. I think it is very funny that I have dengue and my boss is mosquito. Ha ha. But Harvey not laughing. So I tell you, and I tell you the truth, that Harvey is not dengue mosquito. But don’t stand too close anyway, just in case.

I saw pink flamingo on one leg!

I saw pink flamingo on one leg!

But you no care about Harvey, yes? You want to hear about Florida and pink flamingo. At my hotel, there is pink flamingo, but I never meet pink flamingo. I see pink flamingo from my bedroom. He is in pool area. He stand on one foot! But I stay in bedroom the whole time I am in Florida, which is more than weekend, because I am so sick with Harvey fever, I cannot go home.

I move my eyes, they hurt. I move my legs, they hurt. I move my neck, it hurt.

But doctor come visit. She is pretty doctor. I not understand doctor well when she talk to me. I not understand her #A because my head hurt too much to hear well. #B, she have Florida accent. #C, she very pretty, so I prefer to look and not hear.

But I do hear when she say dengue is also called break dance fever. I think it is that. Yes, I am sure. It is good name, very good name. Because I am very broken.

You know what really funny thing is? Break dance fever is not popular in United States. It is new here. Very, very, very, very few people get it. Just me, and very few other people. So I am what you call “early adopted,” yes?

And I have rash. Itchy, red rash, so maybe I am lucky, yes? I not meet the pink flamingo, I become pink flamingo instead.

I try to stand on one foot, like pink flamingo down in the pool area, but I fall, or maybe it is break dance.

Dengue rash is really pink!

Cheese!

Finally the last day in Florida, I feel better. I have to go to airport, but before I go, I take camera. I want to take picture of pink flamingo. The only picture of pink flamingo I have so far is of me.

So I go to pool. Yes, you already know what happen, because you know me, and I am unlucky.

The pink flamingo is gone. Maybe he die from dengue break dance fever too?

So I ask at desk. “Where is pink flamingo?” I hold my camera up in air so clerk know why I want to see pink flamingo.

The clerk no say anything for second, then says, “Excuse me?”

Where is flamingo?

Where is flamingo?

“The pink flamingo,” I say, really slow and loud, because I have tiny accent and maybe clerk not understand. Then to make really clear which pink flamingo I mean, I try to stand on one leg.

Bad idea. I am still really weak from dengue “Harvey” fever, so I almost fall. “There is pink flamingo in the pool area, yes?”

The clerk shakes head. “Uh, no sir, there are no flamingos at this hotel, pink or otherwise.”

“Oh,” I say. Then I laugh, because maybe clerk think I am crazy. “Ha ha. Okay, I go home now.”

And I do, very fast, because the clerk, he look at me funny.

So I go to Florida. Maybe I am lucky. Okay, I don’t get tan, but I do get color.  And I do see flamingo, even though he is not there.  But maybe that is good enough.

I have to ask Harvey if he do break dance. But not in person. But I will telephone. Just in case.  I don’t want to get more dengue and see flamingo in Moldova.  In Florida, is okay.  In Moldova, is crazy.

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Yuri Tackles Tax Time


2010
04.14

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Want me to fill out taxes? I fill out taxes!

Want me to fill out taxes? I fill out taxes!

So now I am in Alabama. Normally I travel weekends, but not this week. This week, I take April 14 off, and 15 too.

So now I am in Alabama. At airport. Waiting for airplane to take me to Georgia. People always say southerners in U.S. are friendly and cheerful, but many today not look happy. Why? April is Spring. They should be happy, no?

Then I hear pretty stewardess talk to other pretty stewardess. She looks stressed. She says “I hate the arse.”

I am surprised. I see her arse (I not look. I just see. I promise.) Pretty stewardess’ arse is nice.

“Down with the arse,” says pretty stewardess number 2.

Funny. I thought pretty ladies liked arses…how you say? Perky.

“Ill have to fill out the dang forms tonight after my flight,” says pretty stewardess number 1. So many pretty stewardesses in America. In Moldova, stewardesses look angry. “I hope I get a better rebate than last year.”

Arse? Fill out? Get rebate for fill out arse?

Variety is spice of life. And I.R.S. has variety of tax forms.

Variety is spice of life. And I.R.S. has variety of tax forms.

Oh! Ha ha ha. I feel so stupid, I giggle out loud. Ha ha. Of course. I.R.S., not arse. April 15 is tomorrow.

I still feel so stupid, I say in loud voice to pretty stewardesses 1 and 2, “I.R.S., not arse. You have to do taxes!”

Stewardesses number 1 and 2 look at me, look surprised. Stewardess number 1 says, “Sweetie, I don’t get half of what you’re sayin’, but, yes. I have to do my taxes. And the I.R.S. is an arse.”

No, I think she understands me real good.

“I am accountant,” I say. I point at my face in case my accent is hard to, how she put it? “get”. “I can do taxes. Want me to do taxes?”

Stewardness number 2 smile real big. “Why, honey, that is the sweetest, most darling pick-up line I have ever heard. Of course you can do my taxes.”

Pick-up line? What is that? I smile and pretty stewardesses 1 and 2 sit next to me, one on right, and one on left, only number 2 was on right, and number 1 was on left, okay?

They pull messy papers from bag. This will be fun!

“Where are you from, sweetie?” pretty stewardess number 1 says.

“I am from Moldova but I take seminar on U.S. tax forms.”

They look at me funny.

“Moldova? You sure you know how to fill out these forms?” says stewardess number 2.

“Yes! I take seminar. For fun.”

They look confused, but stewardess number 2 gives papers.

Muffled crying.

Muffled crying.

“Well, sweetie, as long as you can do ‘em better’n me. And anyone can do them better’n me,” says stewardess number 2. Or maybe stewardess number 1. Now I am confused. “Our flight leaves in an hour. Will that be enough time for you?”

“One hour. Yes. Plenty,” I say. “Why you not do taxes sooner? It is fun.”

“Honeycakes, I’m glad you think so,” says stewardess number…pretty.

So I finish taxes. Very easy. American taxes are fun. When I give papers to pretty stewardesses, old lady near us looks at me.

“”Excuse me, young man,” she says.

“You can call me honeycakes,” I say. Old lady looks surprised. “Or sweetie.” Still surprised. It is okay. I am more southern than she is maybe.

“I overheard you were an accountant,” old lady says.

“Yes, yes! I do your taxes?”

“Thank you so much. I left it till the last minute. I was going to do them on the plane, but I hate doing taxes.”

“No, no. Taxes, they are fun.”

Old lady looked surprised again, then she smiles. “I hate to ask this, but would you mind terribly helping my daugher with hers too?”

“Yes!” America in springtime! I come more in Spring from now on.

“Leigh Ann!” old lady screams loud. “This fine young man can help you do your taxes.”

Suddenly, no one is talking. Everyone look at me. I’m famous. I smile. “Make line. I do taxes.”

The more the happier!

The more the happier!

Southern Americans are very friendly. Grandmothers kissed me and gave me food. And almost everyone wanted to pay me! For filling out paper! Pay me to have fun! I say no. I can not accept , but they insist.

One problem. There is saying my grandmother used to say: “Have fun, and time will kick you in the arse.”

Or, in this case, the I.R.S.

This expression means that taxes were so fun, I did not see time. I did not hear stewardess call my name. I did not see airplane go bye bye.

Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Yes! I have so much fun, I miss airplane.

But it is okay. I meet many nice people. They call me “honey,” and “sweetcakes,” and “sweetie.” Old ladies want to marry me. They give me food. And put money in my pocket.

So much, I can stay in hotel. Tomorrow, I take airplane.

Do you not love April 15?

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Harvey Flea Goes Wine Bombing


2010
03.21

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Posted in Harvey's Adventures | 3 Comments »

Off to wine tasting!

Off to wine tasting!

Imagine yourself hovering over a vast land, an island continent in the Pacific. Its dry landscape belies the happiness that bubbles in its people. One day - one day soon - it would become one of the most important wine exporters. There is just one itsy, bitsy problem.  It has no grapes.

Oops.

I am thankful that Australia solved this oversight before my flight landed. After all, it’s kind of hard to tour wine country if there is no…well, wine. Problem solved when grapes were shipped off to Australia in the 1800’s. So Australia eventually had both grapes and prisoners. I wonder if the prisoners took some comfort in the thought.

Sunset over New South Wales

Sunset over New South Wales

Here I am, on my recuperative stay in Australia before I head for Nauru. (Airline travel is so exhausting). And the name of the game is wineries.

This might be a good time to mention my book The Bathtub Winery. I’m writing a book by that title. Feel free to buy a copy when it comes out. Or two copies. Or more.

I’ve decided to visit the Mudgee region in New South Wales. It’s a bit of a trek from Sydney, where my plane landed, but the region caught my attention. Why? you ask. Was it the fruity reds? The nurturing effect of clay earth on grapes? The lush hills?

No, I just like the name. Mudgee. Kind of like budgie, but funnier.

Wake up and smell the tannins.

Wake up and smell the tannins.

Likewise I chose Frog Rock Wines because I like the name. Its shows a sense of humor. People think wine is supposed to be stuffy. It‘s not. It’s supposed to bring us joy.

So how does a connoisseur like moi approach wine tasting?

Let’s just say I really get into it.

I stand off a bit while my group starts tasting wine. Once I see they are getting a bit looser, happier and less observant, I get right above the first open bottle I can find. I tuck in my wings and my muscular legs and…

Wheeeeeeeee! Down I plummet into the bottle. The key then is to lean forward a few degrees so that my lips are face down. Once I get close enough, out pop my wings and I hover over the wine like a parachutist whose parachute has stopped his fall. The I take a sip.

Aaaaah! How refreshing. I dive bomb from bottle to bottle, shrieking “wheeeeeee!” every time because it’s just so much fun to hear how the “wheeeeeee!” sounds different depending on the density of glass, the fullness of the bottle, and how much wine I have plugging up my ears.

Although I try to stay as dry as possible until my last dive so that the wines don’t mix. Then, once I’ve tasted from all the bottles, I let myself do a flying forward one-and-a-half somersaults, pike position, into the wine.

Once I did a belly flop in a Romane Conti 2001. That was fun.

The other part about wine tasting that I love is that as I bounce from bottle to bottle, I get to see the looks on my fellow wine tasters’ faces. The good thing is that at Rock Frog Wines, the wine tasters were mostly fun-loving Australians. Which meant I could let my guard down. They seemed to enjoy watching a mosquito “wheeeeeeee!” from bottle to bottle. I think they maybe even wanted to join in.

Not like that time in Paris when…well, that’s another story. Why whine about the past?

Wheeeeeee!

Wheeeeeee!

I’m afraid I let Australia’s laid-back attitude sink in too much, though. As I was floating in Rock Frog’s Cabernet Merlot (only $15 a bottle!), I felt the hints of red currant and black cherry tip beneath me as - oh, no! - the bottle was pouring me out into someone’s glass. Down I went on a vibrant red wave with purple hues!

“Hey, look! There’s that mosquito swimming in my wine,” I hear a lady say. I think it might be the cute redhead.

I never flew faster out of a glass of wine in my life. I looked the lady in her bright green eyes and gave her my most charming smile and winked.

I swear she winked back.

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Archibald Chops’ World Travel Tip #47: Forget the Local Fare


2010
03.21

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My favorite gourmet restaurant in Paris

My favorite gourmet restaurant in Paris

The other day I was catching the Greyhound bus from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to my next destination when a very talkative woman eased herself into the seat next to me.  In ten minutes she had given me every small detail of her life, how old all of her seventeen grandchildren were (along with photographs of them drawn from her handbag), related her three divorces, and otherwise told me far too much about her rather colourless self.  Including the fact that she was an erstwhile self-published author and “artist.”  

Then came the inevitable, very American question: ‘So, I looooooove your accent.  What do you do?’

‘I’m a travel writer’, I told her.

‘Oh, really!’ she shrieked. ‘What is your favorite part of the world?’

‘As a point of fact, madam’, I said, struggling to remain civil, ‘I just returned from Paris’.

At this, her eyes took on a dreamy artistic hue.  ’Ah, Pareeeeee’, she cooed, affecting a French accent and sounding more the glottal German in the process.  ’I just love that city.  Tell me about the food.  What did you have?  Where did you eat?  Did you take in some five-star restaurants’?

Opening a packet of crisps, I slipped the corner of one into my mouth and bit slowly.  I was going to drag this one out a bit.  ’Actually, I mostly ate at McDonald’s and Burger King.’

‘Oh’, she said, and dismissed me.  Just like that, I was able to retreat from the conversation and be back alone with my thoughts, with the music from my iPod, and my anonymity.  

Nothing, I have found, nothing in this world will deflect attention from one faster than claiming that one is a bloody pillock when it comes to gourmet food.  When one is knackered of questions about the native foods of the areas one visits, it will shut one’s auditors right up.  So perhaps I had gone a bit far.  Yes, I do in fact sample many of the native foods along the way.  But that is a sidelight to the main show, and I don’t care for food enough to talk about it.

Take for example the time I spent in South America.  I am glad to have found that video clip below, because it taught me how to say the one thing I needed most to say whenever I went to a roadside stand and someone did a bodge job of my food.  

 But ultimately, what is so wrong with traveling for the fun of the trip, with being less than adventurous with the foods one encounters?  Why risk bloody indigestion and who knows what else when there is a handy Subway along the way?  We live in a world far too enamoured with the new, the different, the exotic, in my opinion.  But if the plain and simple were not after all the best, why have all the American fast food companies taken over the world?  They have made it very easy for one to eat well no matter where one is.  And as for me, food is my last thought.  I rarely eat more than once a day, if at all.  I find eating to be a colossal bore.

It puts me in mind of the Internet and writing, as these travel musings often do.  One of my very favorite websites in the world is The Dullest Blog in the World.  This site bears no presumptions, makes no claim to be more than what it is.  I believe that we had just better have it out right now, admitting that most of us do in fact live plain lives in which ‘A window was slightly open. I decided that I did not need it to continue to be so. I closed it and securing it using the window handles.’  That entry alone garnered 146 comments so far.  So do not tell me that I am the only person living in this world with a philosphy of life so coloured.

In short, I travel for the love of it.  But since I am travelling for the love of the move and not for the love of the food, I prefer to restrict my comestible perenigrations to the occasional noshing on normal food.

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Holland: Stopping World Hunger One Pancake at a Time


2010
01.25

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Posted in Harvey's Adventures | No Comments »

 

I knew I was in for a special treat ...

I knew I was in for a special treat ...

The waiter almost crushed me as I walked into the bustling restaurant, De Nieuwe Karmeliet in Haarlem, Holland.  No, he wasn’t trying to uphold Dutch health regulations against mosquitoes.  Rather, he couldn’t see me as all his attention was focused on lugging six plates of Holland’s signature food: pannenkoeken, or pancakes.

In terms of size, pannenkoeken aren’t just food; they’re landing pads.  While they are thinner than American pancakes, they make up for slenderness with runway room.  They are also infinitely more versatile: You can keep them simple, with a touch of sugar or syrup, or you can pile on cheese, ham, bacon, apples, or your favorite F-150.

My stomach might be tiny, but my appetite is colossal.  When I found out my travels were going to take me to Holland, I knew I had to come and experience the ultimate pancake experience.

This is how I came to De Nieuwe Karmeliet, to risk life and limb for one of my favorite extreme sports: Breakfast.  Thankfully, I was able to stay under the radar: The restaurant staff was too busy trying not to drop two-ton plates, and happy diners quickly went into a stupor as blood from their brains assisted in emergency digestion contingencies.  A quick reconnaissance flight from the ceiling told me exactly what tables I wanted to target.

I started with the basics: a pannenkoek with sugar.  My dining companion, a businessman by the way he was dressed, was busy talking to his table buddies, so I snuck in by the edge of the plate.  He generously sprinkled the powdered sugar on the pancake, on the plate, on the table, and - most important - on me.  Thus camouflaged, I would be virtually undetectable.

He then took a bite.  His eyes closed.  His chewing became slow, almost comatose.  He was in a dream state, and I went for my target.

I immediately knew this mission was a dangerous one.  One bite dulled my senses, as all I could take in was the fluffy sweetness. It was heavenly.  Had I truly survived without these pancakes before?  Survived, maybe.  Lived - thrived -  absolutely not.  Today, I had some recipes to steal.

I dodged behind coffee cups to plate number two.  This pancake was being subjected to a generous application of stroop, or syrup.  It’s dark, it’s thick, it’s mesmerizing.  I took a bite of the pancake.  Sticky.  Very sticky, the stroop is.  I tugged against the food to extricate myself.  Just as the burn in my leg muscles was at boiling point, and a fork was about to bury me in the most delicious but deadly grave I can imagine, I popped forth and slammed into a coffee cup.  I was covered in powdered sugar.  I was covered in stroop.  My butt was burned.  I had never been happier.

My meet and greet with the coffee cup had thankfully woken up my senses.  I was ready for mission number three: A savory pannenkoek.  My target was on the neighboring table: A pancake covered in a layer of ham and Gouda cheese.  My Gosh.  It looked more like the Sahara Desert than the Sahara Desert itself did.  (Would that make a pannenkoek covered in apples a Sahara Dessert?  Ha ha.  I kill myself sometimes.)  Half of it was still left, and the diner was totally distracted, looking up for the waiter, asking for the check.  My moment had come.  I turbo-speeded to the pancake and took a bite.  And then another.  And another.  I had to take three just to get all the ingredients in.  My jaws may never recover, but it was worth it.  Sweet meets salty meat and smooth cheese.  Can it get any better?

The waiter arrived and took the remains of the pannenkoek, with me nestled comfortably in it, to the kitchen.  As much as I wanted to take go home with my new friend, I knew my time was up.  I needed a nap.  Camouflaged in cheese, sugar, stroop and crumbs, I made my way out the door.  I was so comatose, I had forgotten to steal the recipe.  It would have to wait.

One of my favorite parts of traveling has always been the moment when the airplane touches ground.  Holland has replaced that favorite moment with a new runway: the pannenkoek.  I will be returning for more, that is, if I am ever able to stand up again.