Category: Travel Log

My wife and I wandered around downtown Tokyo, shuffling through our jetlag. It was Saturday night and it felt like mid-afternoon. 2pm? But it wasn’t the jetlag. And it wasn’t that siesta effect you get in super hot-time-in-the-summer cities — midnight and the locals and tourists out in search of gelato in paper cups. It wasn’t the brightness of the streets, though they were bright — lit by white signs sporting watch faces and serifed logos.

It was more of a feeling things thing. A knowing things thing. A nameless mystery. A turn-but-you-can’t-quite-spot-him sensation. It was night. But it was also day. And still partly night, though somewhat not.

And then we realized: It was the babies.

There were babies everywhere. I started snapping pictures — left, right, spinning around. Too many babies? Or just enough? What were these babies doing up? Smiling babies. Sleepy babies. Sleepy smiling parents. And even jaunty parents, I’m pretty sure, popping soft wheelies because why not.

There was a baby parade going on, strolled by moms, by dads, stopped waiting on corners for little red men to turn green. And it beat back the night, this baby parade. Because it couldn’t be night in our hearts, we realized, no matter how late or how dark, with all these babies on the move.

Minneapolis, 2017

So I’ve always heard that Las Vegas was known for having something for everybody. Harley Davidson-brand pedicures? Check. A shadow-puppet show featuring the songs of Hugo Chavez? Check. Guys who wear blue face paint and speak in pig latin? I’m telling you, it’s all here.
One example, though, I found kinda gross. Frankly.
I get off the plane yesterday, and there’s this poster with a bunch of half-naked guys on it — “The Thunder from Down Under.” It’s a troupe of — and I’m not making this up — lactose-intolerant Australian male strippers.
I don’t like to judge but that’s just weird.

Here’s a travel tip that works for me and might work great for you too!
When I’m away from home, sometimes I’ll see somebody on a cab line or in the hotel lobby who looks like my friend Dave. And I’ll go up to them and I’ll say: “Dave. Dave. Dave. Dave.” And they’ll say something like, “I’m sorry, you’ve mistaken me for somebody else.” And I’ll say: “Dave.” And they’ll say, “Can you step back a few feet? You’re standing too close to me.”
And I’ll keep saying: “Dave. Dave. Dave. Dave.” until eventually, through force of will, I cause them to transmute at the molecular level into my friend Dave. With Dave’s scruffy beard. Dave’s John Lennon glasses.
“Dave!” I’ll say. “Yes, I am Dave,” they’ll say. Dave!

I flew into Chicago on Sunday. When I got off the plane I was greeted by a sign that said, “We’re happy you’re here.” Just like that — in quotes. And I’ll admit it, the quote marks stung. I thought boy, I hope it’s not some kind of dig. As in, “oh, we’re soooo happy you’re here.”
I’m tired. I’ve come a long way. I don’t need the grief.
A few minutes later I saw another sign that said We’re happy you’re here — no quote marks this time. And I thought great! It’s just a slogan! And I was happy to be there too.
Then, as my cab pulled away from the airport, I saw a sign that read “We’re happy you’re here” — it’s more than a slogan.
And I thought what the hell? Does that mean it’s both a slogan and a dig?
Are they happy I’m here or not?!

I spend so much time with my own tribe nowadays. You just get used to it, being around your own tribe.
So it was a good, healthy shock to the system to go inside Raleigh’s today in Berkeley and find this other tribe. There were lots of Cal people there in yellow. Lots of folks from Tennessee in yellow too — a slightly different yellow, I’m guessing. All of them ready for the big Cal, Tennessee game.
The men were thicker than me. Most of them a few inches taller than me, and I’m just shy of six foot. They were clean-shaved and younger than me. Much younger, most of them. But somehow they looked a little older than me. The women were suspiciously tan for Northern Californian and Tennessean peeps. Steely eyed.
They really wanted Cal to win, these people. Or Tennessee. When one group in yellow started singing some sort of enthusiastic song, the other group in yellow began to boo. Nobody got punched and I was excited about that.
It’s not that I don’t like sports. If you know me, you know I love my Golden State Warriors. But this was a different sort of sport-oriented good-times. Something a bit more profound. More than anything, it reminded me of a Grateful Dead show I went to back in the early ’90s. It had that same feeling of a landless nation that periodically swarmed together, only to break apart, only to swarm back together.
I enjoyed the novelty of it all, and they appeared to tolerate my lack of school colors. I wished I had a phrase dictionary, so I could talk with them in their own language. “What time is the game?” I would have asked. “I hope the team you are rooting for is successful!”

I have a few notes from our trip that didn’t make it into the heart of the travel log. I’ll be posting them here over the next few days because, quite frankly, these are important observations, too important for me to keep to myself.
For example, here’s one:
Is it possible that the wall of traffic we hit when we entered Luxembourg was part of a coordinated effort by Luxembourgians to give travelers the impression that Luxembourg is a really really big country (that is, one that takes a long time to drive across), when in fact it’s quite tiny?
Could it be that they’re under state orders to take to the road at 9 am and drive slowly until 5 pm before returning to their extremely tiny homes? I mean, is there any chance at all that this is exactly what’s going on?
Because, if so, that would be crazy.

We’re back in the States now, and I realize I nearly forgot to mention the time I came this close to getting into a fist fight with a Belgian chocolatier. We were buying truffles and, having already bought a bag of ten or so, I asked her if I could buy two more. “That’s not the baby-style chocolates,” she said, with what I thought was a pretty haughty tone.
“Are you kidding me?” I thought. And, “Who are you calling a purchaser of baby-style chocolates?” Against my will, I started to tighten my left fist (or “Mjolnir,” as I like to call it) into a hammer-like ball of pride-protecting thunder.
Fortunately, my lizard brain kicked in right about then and re-processed what she’d said, which turned out to be “That’s not the way we sell chocolates.” (They sell them in 100 gram increments, or so she claimed.)
OK. More reasonable. Or at least less flat-out insulting. I relaxed Mjolnir until it was more like a hand-type thing again, and I went outside to cool off with a heavily sugared pastry treat and some mayonnaise.
Anyways, for the rest of the trip, that became the phrase we used for everything that was a little different than the way we roll state-side. For example:
Baby-style: Can I have my espresso to-go?
Euro-style: Cool your jets, you big baby. No paper cups. Take a seat. Or are you too much of a baby to have your espresso here?
Baby-style: Soda with ice, please.
Euro-style: This drink is cold enough. Who needs ice? What, are you afraid you might actually taste something, Mr. Baby Man?
Baby-style: Um, would you mind not tailgating me at 140 kmh?
Euro-style: I will tailgate you across three countries if that’s what it takes to get you to get out of my way, you gigantic American baby person.

We spent a swell morning in the town of Gouda today, where my 9-year-old daughter offered up this memorable quote:

Daddy? I forget. Oh wait — I remember. Daddy — compared to Gouda, American cheese is vomit.

And I say, if that’s all she’s learned, this trip has been a huge success.
The longer we’re in Europe, the clearer it is that Walt Disney owes all of these countries like a bajillion dollars in copyright violations. For example…

…this lovely townhall (stadhuis) built some 600 years ago (plus or minus) all but demands to have Tinkerbell fly over the top and smack it with a sparkle-pop.
In addition to great food and beautiful buildings (and some incredible stained glass from the 1500s), Gouda reminded me that one of the best parts of revisiting spots from your childhood is finding things you didn’t even know you were looking for. I was heading back to our car to pay for another hour of parking when I came across this:

As a kid, I just loved these Dutch street organs, which we routinely found at the mall in downtown Den Haag, with someone shaking a cup of change in time to the music. I haven’t seen or heard or thought of one in decades.
Hello, old chum.

When I was seven, my folks moved our family to Holland where we lived for the next five years. A big motivator for this trip has been my longstanding desire to make that return to wooded Wassenaar with my wife and kids — a little journey back to Narnia, to smell old smells and eat old treats.
Because I was a kid back in those days, almost all of my key food memories are snacks, and ever since we entered Belgium, I’ve been knocking items off my list like some revenge-driven dude in a Clint Eastwood flick.

Frites met (fries with mayonnaise): check.

Meat croquettes (“What’s in them? What’s in them? We don’t know!” laughed our waitress who confessed she never ate the stuff): check.

Cassis soda: check. (OK, seven Cassis sodas: check)

Poffertjes (micro-pancakes with powerdered sugar): check.
Pankoeken (crepes-like macro-pancakes): check. Stropwaffles (molasses ‘n waffel/cookie treat): check. No photos for either of these, unfortunately — they went too fast to capture.
Just about all that’s left is jonge (young) Gouda — you can get Gouda cheese in the States but it’s almost always smoked, with all the Gouda (pronounced with a Yiddish-esque “chhhh”-ouda)-ness blown out. Jonge Gouda’s a whole different taste sensation. If heaven was made of cheese, it would be thin-sliced jonge Gouda.
Jonge Gouda, I’m coming for ya….
Addendum….

Jonge Gouda: check.
Addendum to addendum…

A slower-moving stropwaffle.

Likewise, this pankoeken with kiwi was eaten in 14 seconds rather than the usual 10, giving us just enough time to snap a quick pic.