Trip to the Southern US, part 2 - New Orleans

After my brief stay in Fort Lauderdale, it was off to the Big Easy - New Orleans. This was undoubtedly the most anticipated part of the trip for me, mostly because of all the stories I had heard about the place. I had a vision of it in my head, and I wanted to see if the real thing matched what I came up with.

It didn't. It was even better.

After connecting through Tampa and finally getting to my hotel, I was amused pretty much immediately. The hotel is so big that it has a weird elevator system. Instead of just pushing a button, everyone getting on, and stopping 10 times before you get to your floor to let everyone else off, you go up to the big computer and punch in your floor number. It dispatches you an elevator, and voila - non-stop service to your desired floor. It sounds odd, but in practice it worked really well. It was probably the coolest part of a pretty underwhelming hotel overall.

After getting settled, I immediately set out to find a sports bar. This just happened to be the day of the Euro 2012 final between Spain and Italy, and there was no fucking way I was missing it no matter where I was. Luckily for me, New Orleans isn't exactly short on bars. In fact, that might be the understatement of the fucking century.

I found a bar just a couple of blocks into the French Quarter with a simple sign that "Soccer - back". Okay then. I went to the back, and...there was no one there. 'Well this is lame' I thought. Whatever, they had beer and the game. Who gives a shit if I'm the only one there, right?

As soon as I sat down at the bar, the cute bartender chick (a soulless ginger) from behind the counter said "You're not from around here, are you?" with a Fargo-type accent. I responded with "you don't sound like you are either". She laughed and said she had just moved there last week. We went on BSing for a bit while I drank my first Nawlins beer, an Abita Amber (awesome, for those that care).

I asked her why there was no one in the bar except me and one Italian couple, and she told me that it'd fill up for sure because a party of 30 had reserved a bunch of tables (the place probably only seated 45). Sure enough, right before kickoff they showed up. And they were all Spaniards. And they were all pretty drunk already. The Italian guy and his girlfriend looked like they were going to puke. It was great.

If you care about soccer at all, you likely remember the result - Spain absolutely blew Italy out 4-0. For the first two goals the crowd was going bonkers, but they were still pretty respectful towards the Italian couple, They couldn't help themselves after goal three though. At least 10 of them jumped up, joined hands, and danced around their table while singing some sort of celebration song. Finally the Italian guy lost it and stormed out, while all 30 of them chanted at him. It was fucking hilarious. I wanted Spain to win anyway, so I was having a great time. Two of them even ended up buying me a beer, which was very nice of them. I've learned this many times over the years, but drunk Spaniards rule.

After the game, I ventured further into the Quarter. It's about 9 blocks long and maybe 12 blocks wide. And there are HUNDREDS of bars, of all shapes and sizes. While Bourbon St. is the most recognizable area to most, I didn't really like it. It's really gaudy and over the top. Neon, touts, the whole deal. It was like the West End in San Antonio in Ibiza. I was already half cut and in no mood to be harassed by people of all shapes and sizes, so I checked out some other streets instead. At first I was a tad worried about security since NO is known as a dodgy city, but the Quarter was perfectly fine. I spent most of the night meandering between different bars and just walking around, taking in the atmosphere. It was loud, amusing, and didn't feel threatening. There were so many people everywhere that it would have been pretty hard to get robbed or anything.

After a good sleep, I set off to explore more of the city the next day. I went down to the water (Mississippi river) and walked along the banks a bit. Checked out the Harrah's casino. Walked up and down Canal St (the border between the Quarter and the Business District) and into the CBD a bit. All nice and chill. Then I decided I was going to go to a cemetery.

I know that sounds odd, but Nawlins might have the coolest cemeteries in the world for one reason - the city is below sea level. They can't bury coffins because they just get pushed back up above the ground (imagine the first person to figure that out - yikes). So all the coffins are above ground, set in massive crypts with crazy decorations and headstones and shit. I wanted to see a good example of one, so I asked my hotel concierge to direct me to the closest one. He told me the hotel had tours to Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, just across Rampart from the Quarter. And the tour was 'the only safe way to go there'. 40 bucks. It was 5 blocks from my hotel. Fuck that, concierge. Turns out the place was really nice. Not unsafe. And free.

Later that night, I decided to check out a couple of bars behind my hotel. The same concierge from earlier told me that the food was pretty good at a couple of them, as long as I didn't "look too hard". I assumed he meant that the places were easy to find. He didn't mean that. At. Fucking. All.

I headed to the end of the street and popped into a bar on the corner. I didn't really look around since there were people on either side of me, but I ordered a beer (2 bucks) and a pizza (6 bucks off the menu). The bartender chick then took off to my right, which caused me to look in that direction.

And I immediately thought "Holy shit. I'm in fucking Cambodia".

I was looking into the "kitchen". Which wasn't a kitchen at all, it was just some big ovens with stuff hanging all over them, and a big counter full of all sorts of foodstuff. It was separated from the bar's front door by a flimsy cubicle wall. I have no idea how I missed it coming in. But I couldn't miss the cook as he walked past the bartender into this den of depravity. He was a little black dude with an apron, and he was singing. As loud as he possibly could.

I had two choices at this point - cancel the order and fuck off, or drink as many beers as possible until my food came and hope that might kill all the diseases on my pizza. My decision was made a lot easier by the bartender chick, who saw me staring into the kitchen and mainlining my beer. She came back and said "Food falls into two categories here - 'Are you willing to risk food poisoning?' or 'Are you a pussy?"." And walked away before I could respond.

That settled the point pretty damn well. The pizza turned out to be pretty good too. Not long after I finished it though, I finally clued into what the concierge said. He didn't mean "don't look too hard to find a place to eat". He meant "don't look too hard AT the place you're getting the food from". I followed that advice for the rest of my stay in New Orleans, ate some really good stuff, and I'm still alive. Go figure.

After seeing all the stuff I wanted to see in two days, I just spent the rest of the time in the Quarter or the bars and restaurants around the hotel. The French Quarter in New Orleans is, pound-for-pound, the most interesting place in the world to talk to people. Whether they're from there or not, they always have a story to tell and everyone's pretty...unique. To say the least.

After having lunch at a cool bar (gumbo? Awesome. Po' Boys? Fucking subway sandwiches with too much shit shoved into them), I headed to a bar someone told me about. He said it was an "Irish Dive bar", whatever that meant. Cool. When I got there, there was only one couple in there. I sat down and quickly laughed at the bartender, because he was pouring a shitload of Jamesons into his own coffee. Take a big gulp, pour. Gulp, pour.

"Rough night," he said at my laughter. "Want some?"

"Fuck no. Can I just get an Amber?"

"Suit yourself."

He talked to me a bit about Katrina and the other bars he worked at. He also kept screwing up the order of the only other couple there because he was already shitfaced. "Wine? You wanted wine right? No? Vodka seven? Wow, I was way off."

That went on for a while before a couple of dudes came in and immediately blew the place up. A black dude in his late 20's, and a white dude in his late 30's. The black dude was singing and dancing before he even got to the bar, while the white guy was telling an animated story to his oblivious friend with spastic hand movements and even some jumping up and down. And of course, they sat down right next to me.

"Awwww snap! We needs some jager bombs! My boy here's going to the UFC!"

Say what?

I couldn't help myself and had to ask if he was telling the truth. The white dude looked too old and too skinny to knock a table over, much less fight professionally.

"Man, it's great. I'm on my way! I finally got signed up for this kickass fight gym in Kenner today. Took like six months for me to get the bread together! Now I'm gonna train and fight in the UFC!"

The whole time he's saying this, the black guy is shadowboxing behind him, and ducking and diving behind his back and popping up over each shoulder, making faces at me. He was either the funniest dude I had seen in a while, or he was reaaaally high.

"He's gonna be the world champ! Awwww snap! And I'm his manager!"

"Yup, Tyron's got my sponsors and shit. He's the brains, I'm the...uh...fighter guy!"

I quickly found out that Tyron was from Guyana and was either a drug dealer or a "professional playa". And he started every sentence with "Awww snap!"

"Aww snap! You gotta take that back to Canada wit you, boy. That's how a playa talks!" I didn't have the heart to tell him that's how playas talked in 1989 and he was a tad bit behind the times.

And it turns out that Joe was his personal cab driver. He drove cab for a real company and all that, but was at Tyron's beck and call and would ignore dispatch requests if he was doing something for him. Since Tyron paid better. I can't see many cab companies being big fans of their drivers ignoring dispatches, but whatever.

After a while of bullshitting with these two characters, Tyron saw my tablet that I had brought with me. After asking me 10 times whether it was a phone, ("That bitch is bigger than the phone that white kid had on Saved by the Bell!") He snatched it away from me and proceeded to do about seven improv skits with it. It was a phone while he talked to his mama. Then it was a tray (he even put drinks on it, much to my dismay). Then it was the world's biggest pager ("Pagers for big bitches!"). I really thought he was gonna break the thing, but it was so fucking funny that I didn't care at that point.

I didn't think he could top that, but he managed to. In the midst of telling me and the bartender a story about living in Jamaica (he went from Guyana to Jamaica to the US apparently), he just stopped dead and turned his back on us in the middle of a sentence. The bartender and I just looked at each other with a WTF face, then heard noises coming from the door.

Four African-American ladies had entered the premises.

Joe tried to say something to him, but he just whispered "Shut the fuck up Joe! You don't know me! Don't look at me!" under his breath. Then moved down a couple of stools. It took me a few seconds, but I finally clued in - he didn't want to be seen by the black chicks hanging with a bunch of goofy, drunk white guys. And right as I came to that realization, he popped out of his seat, walked over, and went to work.

"Ladies! Mmhmm, some beautiful sistas up in here now! How are you this fine evening? Tyron would like to buys yous some drinks!" They turned him down cold. But like any good salesman, Tyron was persistent.

"Tyron doesn't take no for an answer when they ladies are this beautiful! You, barman! These ladies would like shots of your finest tequila!"

"They're 13 bucks a shot, Tyron."

Without missing a beat, he replied, "Barman! These ladies would like your finest jager bomb!"

Everyone in the place, including the ladies, were laughing at him by this point. So they graciously took his shot, and he sat there and worked his game for a while. We could overhear everything he said, and my stomach hurt so bad from trying not to laugh out loud because it was so fucking ridiculous. Finally after they got up and left, he came back to the bar, sullen and defeated. "Hoo-ers!" he yelled in a terrible English accent. Which cracked everyone up again.

I spent a while there getting more drunk with these three goofs until Joe decided they were gonna go. "There are 250 bars in the Quarter right? Tyron, I think we should go to every single one of them tonight."

"Aww snap! Let's do this! You're not driving though. Hey Saved By The Bell, you comin' or what?"

These guys were pretty wasted by this point, so I figured it'd probably be better to start over somewhere else with a saner crowd. After giving me shit for give minutes about the tablet again, we went outside and outta nowhere, Tyron ran up for a horse-drawn carriage and jumped in. Joe quickly ran after him. "Grab your own Saved by the Bell, they're ain't room for you in my chariot!"

I just laughed and shook my head and walked back towards my hotel. I thought I was free. But Tyron had other ideas. After five minutes or so, I hear clopclopclop and "Awwww snap! Saved by the Bell! We gonna follow you!" Fuck. The white chick driving the think just looked at me and shook her head, which made me laugh. They continued to yell at me until the end of the block, when they turned left and finally took off.

Just another night in New Orleans.

Trip to the Southern US, part 1 - Florida

As usual, I only get my travel blogging when I'm traveling. Right now I'm in the airport in Riga, Latvia, waiting to connect to Zurich. But I need to catch up on the rest of 2012 before I can write about this trip, so let's get started.

I originally had a flight booked to Santiago, Chile that was due to leave on July 5th. I booked that flight with the idealist stance that South America could be done on the cheap and I'd have the necessary money to spend three weeks in Chile and Argentina. Unfortunately, it was one of those times where I jumped the gun on a flight before doing the necessary research. And I wasn't gonna have the coin for such a trip. Go Tim.

It was easy enough to switch the flight to a trip to Europe for Christmas instead (the very trip I'm on right now), but I still had time off in July and nothing to do. What could kill 11 days and still fit into my budget?

How about the Southern US?

I know that kind of flies in the face of everything I'm all about when traveling. I like cold, not heat. I was planning on going to South America in their winter (seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere). Instead I was heading to Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina? What the fuck was wrong with me?

I'm not sure. But I went anyway, and it wasn't half bad.

My first stop was Miami. Honestly, there was very little about Miami that appealed to me. I'm not a beach person (there's a whale joke here if you want it) and there's not really anything of note to see. So while I flew into Miami, I just decided to stay the night and immediately head for Fort Lauderdale in the morning. It seemed to be more interesting. That turned out to be at least partially true.

Flights were easy, and I arrived in Miami around 9pm. Obviously my goal was to hit my hotel bar ASAP. The hotel was on a golf course with a few different buildings, and as I headed off towards the bar from mine, I saw a sign:

"Beware of alligators and poisonous snakes on the path"

Tim's thought process as he walked - "Yeaaaah right. This is a path between two buildings in the middle of a fucking hotel. An alligator would have to be pretty fucking adventurous to make it all the way up here from the golf course way over there. And a snake? Really? Sure guys, funny sign to scare the gues....HOLY FUCK THAT'S A FUCKING SNAKE."

I shit you not, a snake slithered right across the path about 15 feet in front of me. And I did what I always do when encountering wild animals (all of which seem to hate me).

I screamed like a girl and ran away.

After taking the long way around to the bar, I sat down and was a little out of it. I'd been in Florida for 20 minutes and almost got eaten by a snake. This place is dangerous! I was immediately distracted by that though, because this bar was hilarious pretty much right away.

Picture the scene - on my left are a black dude and fat white dude, talking about football. Black dude's accent was pretty easy to figure out - he was from Philly. I'd never heard anything like fatty's accent before, but it was clearly from somewhere in the south. On my right are two businessmen arguing in Spanish, acting out each sentence with hand movements and almost hitting me a few times. And my bartender is a dead ringer for Manny, Tony Montana's best friend in Scarface. The first Cuban I see in Miami looks exactly like a dude from the only movie about Cubans I've ever seen! Was Steven Bauer even Cuban? I have no idea. Here's a hint for future Miami travelers though - never tell a Cuban dude he looks like a guy from Scarface. Apparently they don't like that.

Anyway, the fat white dude quickly starts talking to me because I'm wearing a Hines Ward jersey. Tom was from North Texas, right on the border of Oklahoma. Jerry (black dude) was indeed from Philly. We talked football for a bit, I told them about the snake (they laughed and said they always walked around), then it started to get amusing.

Tom told me about trying to golf on the course surrounding the hotel the day before, but an alligator was just chillin on a green in the middle of the course. The caddies tried to scare it away, but it wasn't having any of that. So he didn't finish with a real score because he had to skip two holes (the green was right next to the tee box for the next hole). He was very animated while telling the story, and said flat-out that he wasn't going near the thing because he was too fat to run away if it got mad. But he said the people behind him just played the hole anyway, putting like 20 feet away from the fucking thing!

Then he started talking about noodling. It's a form of fishing that's very popular in Oklahoma and the areas around it. Basically you just stick your whole arm in a catfish hole, and the fish try to swallow your arm. You pull it out, and voila, you have a huge catfish. I thought he was full of shit, but it's legit. There's even a TV show about it (Hillbilly Handfishin). A lot of dudes have stuck their hands in the wrong holes though (calm down, jokesters), and been bitten by beavers, otters, or worse. The shit is insane. Jerry knew what it was too, and was laughing at it. Then Tom started using some of his (apparent) North Texas slang that made the record screech to a stop for me.

"Those hillbillies are crazy! They're a bunch of coonasses! Crazy fucking coonasses!"

Now where I'm from, that's pretty racist. And Jerry from Philly just happened to be sitting right next to him. I sorta stopped and looked at Jerry. He just looked back, looked at Tom, shook his head, and laughed his ass off. So I did the same. In astonishment. I guess it's just a slang term for Cajuns. Jerry also called me a rougarou after that, which made absolutely no sense to me until I looked it up. Go ahead, look it up yourself. Tell me if he's right or not.

Eventually the bar closed and everyone went off their own way, but it was certainly an entertaining opening night of the trip.

The next day, it was off to Fort Lauderdale. My hotel was super nice - right on a marina, and across from the ocean. Fort Lauderdale is kind of like Venice, with a ton of canals and stuff. Water taxis take you everywhere. The nice chick from Vancouver upgraded me when I arrived, and gave me a room overlooking the marina. I literally had a million-dollar boat right below my window. It was pretty sweet.

I didn't really do a lot for those two days. My hotel was great, but it was a long way to walk to anything. I checked out a few bars and walked along the beach a bit. The first day, it was all people playing volleyball and shit, hot women everywhere. The next day was weird though. I guess Sunday is either BBQ Day or Homeless Day in FL, because the entire beach was taken over by families setting up huge tarps and tents and shit. It looked super ghetto, and was the total opposite of the day before. I just walked by in amusement, watching families BBQing and...well, being ghetto.

I ended up in the hotel bar (obviously), and it was almost as amusing as Miami. A dude was just blowing up the place, telling loud stories and amusing everyone. Turned out he's the brother of Steve Howe (former Dodgers/Yankees pitcher who died in 2006 after crashing his car while high on meth), and Steve's son was getting married that night. The reception was in the hotel. So all sorts of people were coming and going, all shitfaced. Made for an entertaining evening.

After my two days in FL, I was off to a place that I've wanted to hit ever since I started traveling - New Orleans. And what a fucking trip that place is. I'll save that for the next blog.

11 Days in Europe, September 2011

I try to go to Europe a lot. I don't say that to be a dick..."hey look at fat boy, he's bragging again". I say it because it's true. I love Europe. 40 countries in an area less than the size of my own country. So much diversity. So much shit to check out. I keep going back for more, and I will until I've seen it all. Twice. For my October 2011 trip, I only had 11 days. My original plan was to hit countries I'd never been to before. It didn't really work out that way, but a good time was had nonetheless.

If you read many of these things (god bless you, someone has to), you probably know that my brother Terry lives in England. Leeds, to be exact. He's awesome, as are his girlfriend Shell and son Ryan, so I try to visit whenever I can. I started my trip there this time, after going through the usual Seattle and Iceland and Manchester to get there. I hadn't been in a while, so it was great to see everyone again. Somehow I managed to stay up for something like 47 hours straight, which is my second-longest streak ever. We managed to drink every night until 3 or 4 am, and had some good times and laughs as usual. I even ended up going back just two months later, but that's a story for another blog.

Alas, my family time was up way too quickly and I had to skip town. My next destination was Prague. I had been to the Czech Republic the year before when my hotel concierge in Vienna begged me to go there (Brno) instead of Slovakia. I hadn't been to Prague yet though. And to be honest, I was pretty underwhelmed.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a bit, but I promise it relates back to Prague being underwhelming. Bear with me here.

I started today in Charlotte, and am currently on a flight from Chicago to home. Jess is in Rome, after a comedy of errors led to him not going to Russia. Rome is one of my favorite cities in Europe, but he's pretty meh about it. "There's no culture. It's all tourists," he said. "The sites are pretty nice, but it feels like London. Or Dublin". That might sound stupid, and I thought so too at first, but he has a point.

I'm paraphrasing with what he said, but we had been to both (London and Dublin) in 2004 and weren't exactly enamored with either because they just felt like big American cities. No substance, just sights. Nothing made them really unique. He felt Rome fit into that category as well. I disagreed at first, but looking back at it...he's right. I spent three weeks in Italy, and it's the least Italian place I went. The sites are amazing, and totally worth seeing. But after traveling so much, you need more than statues and buildings and museums sometimes. You want to feel like you're checking out something truly unique, not something everyone and his dog has seen by now.

I never relayed this to Jess during our conversation because it never even occurred to me until now, but that's EXACTLY how I felt about Prague. He loves Prague because it was the second major European city he went to after London. Rome was mine after London (other than Nice. Fuck Nice, hills and poodles suck). I have all these amazing memories of Rome, as I'm sure he does of Prague. But looking back on it, there was no substance there, in either. They're both tourist commercialism at their finest.

I spent four days in Prague and loved the architecture, but felt like I was in a theme park. Everyone's just looking to bleed you dry. You're a mark. I probably could have gotten off the beaten path to find something uniquely Czech, but I feel like I did that already in Brno. THAT was Czech. When I went to Budapest, it felt authentic. It didn't feel like you were experiencing Hungary through a filter. Prague felt like that to me. Much like Rome feels like that to Jess. I get that now.

Tangent over. I hope that made sense. I'm not trying to dissuade any of you from going to Prague, or Rome, or London, or Dublin. They're all beautiful in their own way (except Dublin). It just amazes me how many variables affect how you look at the places you've been.

Anyway, after Prague I flew up to Copenhagen. I've already been there and enjoyed it, but decided to take the train in the other direction from the airport this time and went to CPH's sister city - Malmo, Sweden. It's only like a half hour from Copenhagen, but worlds away in terms of pace. Copenhagen is cosmopolitan and up-tempo. Malmo is laid back and sleepy. It was exactly what I needed after frenetic Prague.

Malmo is one of the bigger cities in Sweden, but you'd never know it when you get there. It has a picture-perfect central core with great architecture, immaculate streets devoid of traffic, and a great park that runs along the river to the castle. Chill is the best word I can think of to describe it. I cruised around for most of the day, past people just going about their daily lives. I walked all the way along the river to the castle, exploring the place all by myself. Swedes aren't exactly all that outgoing in general, so I was left alone in the pub as well, but I expected that and was fine with it. I fell asleep a happy man, knowing that that are still respites from the chaos of European tourism. I highly recommend a trip to Malmo if you're ever in Copenhagen. It'll be one of the most illuminating days of your trip.

I only had one day there though, and then it was onto Estonia. Estonia doesn't exactly sound cool, but the capital Tallinn is really nice. I stayed in the old walled city for two days, and enjoyed the shit out of it. It was a lot of fun to just get lost, checking out the odd mix of ancient and modern, Russian and European. Tallinn is WAY more European than Riga, the other Baltic city I had visited a couple of years before that, but that was fine with me. It took a lot of the hassles out of your regular off-the-beaten-track place. And there was a bar that offered a 15 euro all-you-can-drink special around the corner from my hotel. I don't really remember coming back from the place, but it was awesome nonetheless.

With my last two days, I took a catamaran over to Helsinki, Finland. The price difference kicked in right away and it was a bit jarring. I was paying 2 euros (like 2.50) for a beer in Tallinn. 10 minutes later on the Finnish catamaran, the same beer was 6 euros (7.50). Ouch. The ride was really nice though, and docking in the port of Helsinki is great. There are a ton of cool boats and ferries on all sides to check out, a big market right on the water, and a bunch of statues and stuff. My hotel was on the other side of the port, so I walked all the way around and took it in on the way there. So far, so good.

My hotel was really nice, easily the best I had stayed at during the trip. I immediately went exploring and found out that Helsinki is pretty nice. The coolest thing was a huge church near my hotel called Upenski Cathedral. It was Russian Orthodox style, and one of the most amazing buildings I had ever seen. The Helsinki cathedral is down the hill from there and really nice as well.

The city has a ton of nice buildings, but it lacks culture to a degree. It kind of goes back to my tangent from earlier - it's really nice, modern, and efficient. I think I'd enjoy living there. But as a tourist, it's not like you're missing a lot by never going there. I only had two days and didn't get the chance to check out the fortress or do any side trips, but I doubt I'd go back again unless I was on my way to St. Petersburg.

I thought I might be turning into a travel snob by even thinking that at the time. I got the impression on the way home that this might be the case, and promised myself I wouldn't take it so easy on my next trip. I'd go to places where everyone didn't speak English (yes, everyone spoke English in Tallinn and Malmo). Where it was going to be a little tougher to explore and get to the bottom of what makes that place tick. Where it might not be full of beautiful buildings and nice people, things I was starting to take for granted.

So what did I do?

I went back to England/Netherlands in December. Hawaii in April. And the Southern US in July. All three of those were more of the same - comfortable, relaxing, and nice. I clearly hadn't learned my lesson. So after a brief sojourn to Sacramento in October to catch an MMA event, I will be returning to Europe in December, and I'm going to venture out of my comfort zone again. I'm not 100% sure where yet, but at least one destination will be a WTF? place. That's how I feel like I made my bones traveling, and I've really gotten away from it.

It's time for me to stop being a pussy and go find some fucking adventure again.

Tim's Mexican Vacation, Part 2 - Campeche and Merida

This is a continuation of the my brief sojourn to Mexico in April 2011. I'm currently on a flight between Charlotte and Chicago and got got hooked up with an exit row seat, so it seemed like a good time to finish this up. The first part covered my time in a Mayan Riviera resort with Mikey and Shannon. This part will cover my solo trip through the Yucatan to Campeche and Merida. Both were brutally hot, but interesting in their own way.

First thing's first - Mexican buses rule. You're not doing the whole greyhound thing when you're cruising between towns in Mexico if you have any sort of money whatsoever. The primera class and ejecutivo buses have big, lazyboy-like seats with your own personal video system and tons of leg room. After heading down to Playa del Carmen, I boarded one of these bad boys to head about six hours away to Campeche, the capital of a state called...Campeche. Go figure.

I was all sorts of confused at the bus station, but eventually got it sorted out despite my shitty Spanish. The ride there was entirely devoid of entertainment - it was just bush on either side of the road for the entire time, other than than going by a huge prison right outside of the city that didn't exactly inspire feelings of safety.

My first night there was game seven of the Canucks/Hawks series. The Canucks had been up 3-0, but pissed away the series and were down to the wire. I wasn't about to miss that game, so I headed over to the Oxxo (best store ever) to grab some beer. But...Oxxo's in Campeche don't sell beer. What the hell? They do everywhere else. I went back to my hotel and asked where to grab beer, and they pointed at the restaurant across the street.

"Uh, no...I want to buy some to drink in my room?"
*blank stares*

Well fuck. I guess I was doing this sober, because the game started in 15 minutes. It's fucking Mexico though - you can usually get beer from just about anywhere. What the hell? I was surprised the concierge wasn't selling them out of a cooler in the fucking lobby along with t-shirts and sunglasses. But nope. Sober hockey it is.

The Canucks were up 1-0 for most of the game, but gave up a goal late to go to OT. When Burrows scored in overtime, I completely lost my shit, knocked my netbook onto the floor (almost breaking it) and ran around my hotel room screaming like a retard. Sober. About a minute later, there was a loud knock on my door that killed my euphoria. I answered it, and there was a big (well, Mexican big - so like 5'6) security guard standing there, asking me questions in Spanish that I didn't understand. I guess I was a little louder than I thought.

"I'm sorry...uh, lo siento? That's right isn't it? Uh, I'm sorry. Hockey, me very happy."
*blank stare*

He came into the room and looked around, like there was gonna be 12 other people in there. I  just pointed at my netbook on the floor. He didn't get it. So I pointed at myself and made the universal shhh sign with my finger to my lips. He said "SI SENOR!" and rattled off some other shit I couldn't understand. Then left, shaking his head. I didn't give a shit though, the Canucks finally put away the Hawks!

I went out exploring after that, waving at the security guard as I passed through the lobby. He just gave me the "I have cramps" look that most women give me when I try to talk to them. It was still really hot, but Campeche is really nice, especially at night. It's an old walled city on the water (the walls were built to defend against pirates) with narrow, picturesque streets and a pretty laid back pace. The malecon (beach walk) was amazingly nice, and devoid of people. No beaches, but still cool. There were also a lot of funky buildings along with the old walls themselves to check out.

After cooking in the heat for a while, I retired to the restaurant across from the hotel (where they spoke English! Huzzah!) and grabbed some killer food and a few pacificos. The next day was exactly the same, minus the hockey. Just chilled, wandered around, went to the Oxxo for snacks and the restaurant for dinner, and enjoyed the ambiance of  a non-touristy Mexican city on the water.

The next day, I headed north to Merida. It's only about 2 hours away, but I still took the fancy bus because it was about four dollars more than the regular one. This is when I came across something known as the first-class waiting room. Apparently all bigger Mexican bus stations have one, but I didn't see it in PDC. And folks, they fucking rule.

Instead of dealing with the oppressive heat out in the station with everyone else, you can go chill in an air-conditioned room with TV, free drinks, newspapers, the whole deal. It was 39 celsius in Campeche that day, so I'm sure you can imagine how happy this fat kid was when I figured that out. The best part is that it was only separated by a glass window, so all the people dying in the heat sit there and stare at you, basking in AC and drinking a Corona, and seethe with anger. Sorry homie, I guess I got Juan up on you this time. Aaaand that's my shitty joke out of the way for this blog.

Merida turned out to be even hotter than Campeche. Like, unbearable can't-go-outside-or-you'll-die hot. I think it was 42 one day and 43 the next. I explored as much as I could, but only in short spurts. None of the bars or restaurants had AC and even Mexicans were all "why did you come here in April? Are you retarded?" when they'd talk to me. In English. Tons of people in Merida spoke English, which surprised me. It was a bigger tourist destination than I thought, apparently.

After checking out the zocalo (second-nicest I had seen in Mexico so far behind Puebla) and having a few beers here and there, I went for a walk though the area where all the colonial houses were. It wasn't the type of architecture I expected to see in the Yucatan, but the buildings were really cool. And the city was quite affluent by Mexican standards. I was impressed, except for the heat.

Shit got weird back at my hotel though. As I was walking through the main corridor that separated the lobby from the back of the hotel, I had to step in between some dudes that were on both sides of the hallway. I didn't touch any of them, or do anything in particular that could have pissed them off, but one of them yelled out "Fuck gringo! Fuck you!" after I passed by. I just ignored him and continued walking, thinking he was just drunk or something. It turns out he wasn't drunk, just fucking crazy. I wouldn't find that out until the next day though.

After getting up early and going for another long walk before it got really hot out, I headed to the lobby of the hotel to grab some lunch. It was basically a a big square, probably 100 feet on each side with tables scattered throughout and a covered roof with a bunch of birds chillin on the inside, swooping down to steal any food they could. I'd never really seen anything like it in a hotel, but it was cool nonetheless. At 34 bucks a night, it's tough to argue with oddities like this place.

Anyway, I sat off to the side where I could plug in my laptop and was busy writing about some UFC event and mainlining coronas. I was pretty oblivious to everything going on around me, until I got splashed with a shitload of water and saw a cone cup land on the table beside me. The fuck? I look up, and see the angry vato from the night before walking by. Not stopping, not looking at me, but yelling "Fuck you gringo! Fuck you!" while heading for the exit. There was a dude walking beside him, presumably a friend of his, looking at him but pointing at me with the universal WTF look on his face. He then looked at me and gave me the universal "I'm sorry!" face, but fuck that. I wanted to know what this kid's fucking problem was.

"Hey!" I yelled as I stood up, with everyone looking at me. "What is your fucking problem?"

I guess he had been waiting for me to respond, because he immediately stopped at the sound of my voice and turned around. "Fuck you, you fucking gringo! Get out of of here or you gonna get fucked up!"

Now I'm a big dude, but I'm hardly the kind of guy that goes looking for confrontations. I have a big mouth that frequently gets me into trouble, but I can usually either talk my way right back out of it or just stand up and look scary. That works 99% of the time.  This time though, I was fucking pissed off because I didn't do a god damned thing to make this guy mad. That, and I had about 10 coronas before 2pm. I lost my temper, which almost never happens, but I never even got out of the angry starting gate. His friend took care of that quite nicely for me.

By slapping his buddy in the back of the head, as hard as he could.

The bitchslap echoed through the square, and everyone went from looking at me to looking at them. Like, in unison. It was like a tennis match where the ball got hit across the court and the entire crowd's eyes followed. That snapped me out of seeing red as fast as I had seen it in the first place, and I started to laugh. It was quite similar to a kid that says something stupid and his mom swats him for embarrassing her. But it was two adult males. It was too ridiculous not to laugh at. And if defused everything.

The slapper pushed the idiot through the lobby door and came right back to me, giving me the prayer signal that signified apology the whole way. Once he got over to me, he was extremely apologetic and explained that his buddy was, in his own words, "angry a lot". He said that I had pissed him off by walking by the night before without excusing myself, as he had been in the middle of a conversation. I apologized for that and said I had no idea. He brushed that off and said his buddy was just constantly looking for a fight, and anything set him off.

"Especially white people. He usually picks smaller ones though," he said with a laugh.

I laughed my ass off at that. Before I could say anything else, he flagged down the waitress, ordered me two coronas and paid for them, then apologized once again. He introduced himself as Javier, shook my hand, told me there wouldn't be any more trouble, and left. Nice dude. Every crazy dude should have a handler like that. It totally reminded me of when the crazy Latvian guy wanted to kill me in the Stockholm airport just for wearing an Alex Ovechkin jersey, but his buddy came to the rescue.

Not much happened after that. I headed back to Cancun for a night before I flew home. Staying in town is 100 times better than out in the hotel zone. I had a kickass huge room for 40 bucks a night, right in the middle of the more authentic action. I took a pass on that and watched UFC 129 on my netbook in my room though. I got all pissed off when the wifi cut out right before the main event, then started watching TV out of frustration...and the show was on a Mexican channel! For free! I could have been watching the whole time on a 46 inch TV but noooo. At least I got to see GSP beat Shields.

The day after this event, I wrote something for BE that people liked and by the time I got back to Vancouver, I had been tentatively hired as a staff writer. And I've been there ever since. Most people would remember a trip to Mexico for drunken antics. I remember it for most getting a writing job. Strange how that works.

Tim's Mexican Vacation, Part 1 - Mayan Riviera with Mikey and Shannon!

So I'm gonna try and catch up on some older trips, just to get things rolling again. I'm sitting in a hotel bar in Atlanta right now, trying to drink off the July 4th hangover I acquired in New Orleans. NO is a great place, by the way. Once I get through all these, I can write about that. So let's go back - back through time. To April of last year.

I had a trip planned to China (seriously), flight booked and everything. I was kinda iffy about it though, since the visa looked like it was gonna be a bitch and I already work in in little China as it is. When my homie Mike Daly called me up and inquired whether I'd like to go to Cancun with him, his wife Shannon, and two of their friends, I quickly brushed off the suggestion. I already had a trip to go on. Turns out Air China has a good refund system though, so shit got flipturned upside down and I had Coronas in my new future, not Tsingtaos (and cholera).

I didn't really want to sit in a resort for a week though, and I actually had 12 days off, so I figured I could check out some other places. I decided upon four days at their resort, and six more days checking out the other two Yucatan capitals, Merida and Campeche. I should have probably checked the fucking weather reports before I did that though. Who knew the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula might be kinda warm in April?

Soon came travel day, and I scheduled a night in Phoenix on my way to Cancun, just cuz. It turned out to be an interesting night. The Canucks were playing the Hawks in game five of their first-round series, and I went down to the hotel bar to watch. The bartender had to search for Versus for a while, but he eventually found it. What I suddenly found around me was terrible though - a shitload of people from Chicago. And the Canucks blew that night.

1-0 and 2-0 got cheers from the Windy City faithful. 3-0 too. The 4-0 goal almost made me cry, and actually got some condolences from my newfound "friends". At 5-0 (a few minutes into the second period), a dude actually felt so bad for me that he bought me a shot of tequila "to make the pain go away". The game was terrible for many reasons, but the people were pretty damn cool. i went to bed sad, but oddly content (and shitcanned).

Anyway, it was onto Mexico. Land of the short, home of the lazy. Just kidding Mexicans, I love your country more than you probably do. Once I'm there I never want to leave, and all y'all would do anything to escape.

I met Mikey (my best friend for 29 years, for those that don't know the goof) and his buddy Ray at the front desk, where they greeted me with a beer. The guy who let me out of the shuttle had already greeted me with champagne, so I was double-fisting after approximately 25 seconds at my resort. I was obviously a fan. After dropping my shit off it was drinking time. We met up with the ladies on the beach, drank some beers, ate some dinner, the usual resorty stuff. Normally there wouldn't be a lot to write about at a resort trip, but there were a few humorous moments over the four days that are worth sharing.

First up was Mikey and I getting in trouble. His wife Shanny's awesome and I love her, but she knows what Mikey and I are generally like when we hang out (liquor in face!) and she can usually sniff out our BS pretty quickly. I think she overestimates our intelligence sometimes though!

She sent us off to Ray and Monica's room to return something she had borrowed (I think) before going out for dinner, but we couldn't find their building. You gotta understand, the resort is like 30 three-story buildings set out all over a huge property. They're numbered, but the maps suck. We were admittedly unsober, but we legitimately got lost trying to find their place and didn't come back for a long time, like close to an hour. Turns out the place was like 45 seconds away. Oops.

She obviously suspected that we ran off to the bar and guzzled a bunch of beers before dinner, and told us so, but we were just legitimately lost. She was just about to buy our (true!) story when Mikey accidentally dropped his bottle on the tiled floor of their room, smashing it into a million pieces. Any shred of legitimacy we had smashed with that bottle. We just looked at each other and said the same thing in unison - "Aww crap." You ever tell the truth and still fuck it up? Welcome to the Mike D and Tim B show. It was all laughed off quickly though, as usual.

The next night we all got pretty sloppy drunk (except Monica). Mikey had met a French Canadian kid named Alex before I got there, and he hung out with us in the lobby bar drinking. When he was sober, he made complete sense. But when he was drunk, all the Quebecois came out and he didn't make any sense at all, to any of us. He was hilarious though.

He ordered us a bunch of tequila shots, then had the foresight (?) to see that Ray was way too drunk for tequila...after the shots were already there. As Ray came back to the table, instead of doing his shot or hiding it, Alex panicked and threw it in this big candle thing on the table. The candle responded with a big fiery whoosh, then darkness. Everyone sitting in the area looked over at us. Ray couldn't figure out why we were laughing so hard and probably thought we were laughing at him, but we weren't - it was Alex.

Alex continued to entertain us over the last couple of days. We'd be sitting in the nightclub, shitfaced, and he'd lean over and yell over the music - "Tim, man, you my friends right?" "Sure man, what's up?" "If you my friends, you don't lets me go over dose girls over tere. Dat big one likes me. Promise you keeps me 'way from tem. I'm drunk man!" Then, he'd order shots for everyone at the bar and sneak off over to them while we were drinking. And look back at us with a shrug, like it was inevitable. Between that and Mikey's infamous dance moves, the "nightclub" was an entertaining place to be at night.

My favorite part of the four days was our trip to Tulum. Mikey and Shannon rented a car, and we headed the two hours south down to one of the nicest archaeological sites in Mexico. It was hot as hell but the site is amazing. Gigantic iguanas are just chillin everywhere, and the big temples are on a cliff overlooking an awesome section of the Caribbean Sea. After checking out everything  we walked out and around to the beach, which was the nicest I've seen in Mexico thus far.

I'll save my solo travels to Merida and Campeche for another blog, but my time in Cancun with Mikey, Shannon, Ray and Monica (and Alex) was great. I'm not really a resorty kinda guy (which should be pretty obvious by now), but this place was super fun and laid back and I had a really good time. Thanks for inviting me guys!

Middle East - The Long Overdue Finale

I went on this trip 18 months ago. 18 fucking months. I'm generally lazy about writing these things, but I've never come close to being this bad. Ever since I got a writing job (BE represent!) last May I've been slacking majorly with my blogs and the only time I ever get inspired to write them is - go figure - when I'm traveling again. Well, I'm in the Fort Lauderdale airport right now waiting to board my way-too-early flight to New Orleans (via Tampa), so I'm gonna finish this sumbitch up. And then try to catch up on the 4 or 5 other trips I've been on since then. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it too.

The last you heard from us, I woke up still drunk on January 2nd in Jerusalem. Jess was pretty hungover as well. We had a very late flight (1:30am) to Stockholm through Riga, and no hotel room to sleep off our hangovers in. We did still have a rental car though, which we decided to keep for an extra day and head back to Tel Aviv to hang out for the day. I hit a wall a couple of hours after I woke up and spend the rest of the day hurtin' for certain. Nothing eventful happened all day, we just hung out in bars or on the beach with my trying to put the boots to a massive hangover with all sorts of shit (and failing miserably). The trip to Sweden WAS eventful though.

On the way to the airport, we had to fill up the car with gas. We finally found a gas station, where the guy kept telling Jess he "love love loved him" as he filled up. Apparently it was the only thing he knew in English. Then we got to the craziness known as Ben Gurion Airport.

First off, everyone has all their bags scanned and searched before you can even check in. The chicks doing it were really frustrating, just picking people out of a line who seemed like the least work. Even though I was at the front of the line, the girls picked a person behind me four times before begrudgingly letting me come forward. After a 10-minute search, I was actually escorted to drop my checked bag off, then escorted to the check-in counter. Next was security. The "immigrant" line (gooo racial profiling) was long and right when Jess and I got near the front, the machine broke. But they wouldn't let us out of that line to join another, we had to stay in that one because it was the immigrant line. When one guy flipped out and tried to go to another line, everyone with guns went bonkers and he was forcibly returned to the back of the bus with us.

It took over an hour for them to fix the machine, then we had to actually go through. They screened my bag (which had already been searched before) and took every single thing out of it to screen in a smaller machine. It took about 15 minutes per passenger. Two and a half hours after we arrived at the airport, we were finally allowed to go to our gate. Thank fuck we got there early. To top that off, I was somehow issued a window seat for our five hour flight, which was not happening. I tried to sit in it but fuck that, there was no room at all. I was quickly moved to a comfy aisle seat next to a cute girl, which made things better. So did the double screwdriver I ordered from the flight attendant, who actually laughed at my request since almost everyone else was already asleep and I was the only one who asked for anything at all on the entire flight.

Our day in Sweden was mostly uneventful other than the usual - cold weather and really hot women. And a huge stuffed Swedish moose, which made us laugh for some reason. We ate in a Boston-themed bar and watched a Canucks/Avs game on tape delay, even though we wanted to watch the Sweden/US world juniors game. It just wasn't on anywhere. Other than that we just checked out the old town for most of the day. Jess was flying home the next morning, so I grabbed as many pics as possible from him at the airport before he left. I still had four more days, which I was using to take a jaunt to Austria. After laughing at the pics on the flight while downing some 2 euro beers (Air Berlin bitches), I arrived in Vienna.

Vienna was a trip. I had always avoided it because I didn't think it was all that great. I was totally wrong. The city has always been rich as hell (the center of the Habsburg Empire) and it's a beautiful place, full of amazing architecture and huge buildings. I was staying right on the edge of the Innere Stadt, or center of the city where all the cool shit was. It had food stands all along the river near my hotel, and they sold beer! I was kinda disappointed at the lack of pubs since it's more of a coffee culture, but I still definitely enjoyed my two days of exploration. I had one more full day to kill and figured I had seen everything, so I thought I'd go to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, which was about an hour away. My hotel concierge dissuaded me from that though.

"You don't want to go there. Slovakia is not a nice place. Bratislava is the biggest not nice place there. If you want nice, go to Brno. It's in the Czech Republic, about two hours by train. Very nice. Many cheap beers!"

Sold!

Vienna has the best metro system I've come across in Europe so far. It's super efficient, comfy, and cheap. After taking it to the train station and typically getting lost trying to find the damn thing (it was on the floor above the metro station dammit - that was a 10 block walk for nothing), I was headed for(the backwaters of) a new country. The train was empty, and the skirts of Brno looked pretty shitty. Once we arrived though, I was impressed. Walking around and checking out the cool architecture only enhanced that. After a pub stop where beers were a stupendous 1.20 Canadian for a 20 ounce pint, I was pretty much ready to move there. I had taken out around 50 dollars in Czech currency for my 6 hours there, and struggled to spend 9 dollars. Seriously. I went to 3 bars, had lunch, bought a tourist book, and got a red bull at the train station. 9 dollars. Total. If there were more than 3 people in the city that spoke English, I never would have left. I still have 41 dollars in Czech Korunas at home though because I can't fucking exchange them anywhere. And I've been back to the Czech Republic since then too, I just forgot to take them. Go Tim.

My train back was delayed and I was a bit worried since I couldn't read the big board and none of the announcements were in English, but I figured it out. After returning to the hotel, the concierge was shocked that I walked a whole 1km back from the metro. He told me I could have changed lines and come out right beside the hotel. I told him I didn't mind the walk. He said I was "Canadian crazy". Uh, okay.

*side note - I'm in the Tampa airport right now. They have Yeungling on tap here. That's all sorts of cool.*

The next day I took the train to the Alpine city of Salzburg. The train station was hilarious - as I sat waiting to leave, I watched an old man waiting beside the next track with a kid running around up the way a bit. I couldn't figure out what the kid was doing at first, but it because obvious quickly - he was chasing pigeons. He managed to scare one enough for it to fly directly into the back of the old man's head, which scared the bejesus out of him and led to him yelling at either the bird or the kid. Or both. I couldn't really tell which one because I was laughing so hard. The lady sitting across from me saw it too and was laughing. Everyone else on the train thought we were crazy.

The train ride was amazing though. Cruising through the center of Austrian mountains in winter is highly recommended, even if I was a bit snowblind by the end. I was staying about a half hour walk from the Old Town, which was great going downhill but sucked coming back uphill. It's compact, but definitely one of the nicest Old Towns I've seen in Europe. It's basically set right at the bottom of a massive mountain, and full of character. I really liked it.

Aaaaand that was pretty much it. I had one more night back in Stockholm, where I stayed in the airport hotel. It's like, IN the airport. You come down the stairs and blam, you're standing in the middle of terminal 4. It was typically pricey, but I liked it. Blondes everywhere. I watched the Seahawks playoff game until like 4am, then passed out a happy man. This was one of the best trips of my life. I really fell into road life on this one, and it was very, very hard to adjust back to the real world when I got home. I did though, and have gone on a bunch of trips since. Perhaps I'll write about them someday. If I had a longer connection and more Yeungling, I could probably write about them all right now. But the insanity of New Orleans awaits.

Middle East, Part 8 - New Years in J-Town

Shabbat is the stupidest thing of all time. I've mentioned this in previous blogs (that I wrote like a year ago - fuck off, I'm slow) that New Years Eve happened to fall on Shabbat so we weren't even sure if anything would be open. Earlier that day, we got kicked out of a bar at 4pm for the start of this crap and it didn't end until sundown the next day. Not much was open for NYE, but Dublin's was. That's the Irish bar that was up the street from our hotel. And it was certainly one of the more memorable NYE's of my life.

We got there really early since we figured it was gonna get busy. It didn't for a long time though so it was basically us and a cute, big-nosed bartender. We were ordering jager on the rocks for some weird reason (I think it was on special), but it was pretty good. A drunken Santa showed up and started dancing on the bar and singing which annoyed the shit out of us, except for the fact that all the waitresses were dancing as well. We were watching the world juniors on Bitch's phone which somehow got the attention of a Brazillian Jewy chick whose name I still can't spell to this day. They talked about all sorts of stuff while I talked to the bartender girl and stuffed various Israeli beers in my face.

By the end of the night we were completely blasted as expected and the bar was packed. Things ended strangely though. Our bill was like 200 bucks, twice what we thought it would be. After the bartender flipped out when we dared to question her, we found out that she had been giving us DOUBLE jagers all night. Ohhhhh. That explained the bill. And us sacking up enough to challenge her on it.

I didn't have enough coin on me so I had to go to the bank machine outside. For some reason, two tiny Jewy guys decided to not let me out of the bar. It was absolutely packed so I had to try and push past them, but they combined resources to block my way for no apparent reason. And they wanted to fight, which was hilarious. They were both about 5'3, and even though I explained I just needed to get money, they wanted to go. I ended up getting tired of their shit and just pushed them outta the way and walked out. The bouncers stopped them from coming after me outside, which was welcome. Problem was...I had to come back.

When I did get back with my money, they were still there, and still angry. I had two choices - fight my way back in and back out, or tell a (different) doorman what the deal was. I chose the latter, and watched the dude (who was smaller than me) swat them outta the way like flies and glare at them until I came back out. Jess was with me by this point, but had no idea what the deal was. He just followed me and my escort out of the bar. And went to the Old Town shitfaced for some reason, with that Brazillian jewy girl. I was too pissed off to follow though, so I tried to buy more beer at the store. It's right there on the shelf, but you can't purchase it after 11pm. Fucking fuck. So I just went and passed out.

The next day featured mild hangovers, but nothing too bad. We decided to go check out Masada, an old fortress on top of a cliff. You get up there by cable car. Jess was planning on going all along, but I'm a big baby about heights so the whole cable car thing scared the shit out of me. I ended up tagging along, which led to a couple of humorous situations.

The GPS was wonky once again, but we basically knew where we were going. After stopping at a gas station featuring a dude offering camel rides in the parking lot (camels rule), we got down there. We were waved into the parking lot without getting our car searched because we were white, and we paid up and got on the cable car. It wasn't so bad for me until the very top, when it arrived with a big thud and you had to step out on this little precarious platform that featured a 500 foot drop on every side. I involuntarily blurted out "JESUS CHRIST!" to which Jess replied "They don't like him here man." That got a chuckle out of a few people on the cable car at least, and me.

It was very cool to check out though, other than a walkway up to the site against a rock face that featured a huge dropoff on the other side. I stuck to the wall like glue while Jess made fun of me. Bitch ended up taking a bunch of pics and turning them into this massive panorama that's on his wall in his new place.

On the way back we stopped at a beach where Jess paid a shitload of money to go float in the Dead Sea, and played with the camels again back at the gas station (the like fries - go figure), then headed straight to the bar since the dastardly Shabbat was finally over. It was called Mike's Bar, a pseudo-American place (same franchise as the one in Tel Aviv), and we soon made friends with the customers and barman. A dude from Manchester who sounded just like Michael Bisping; a South African/jewy bartender named Barry; and various American members of the Israeli army and Air Force. And these dudes were about as racist as possible, which was seemingly good to go in Israel. Or at least they said so. "It's okay here!" was their mantra.

The air force dude just kept saying "You can't trust Arabs!" while the military police guy told us he was raised Irish Catholic in the southern US  until he was 14, when his dad suddenly came home one day and said "We're moving to Israel for my work. We're jewish now." He told us all about the battles between the "ragheads" and the "penguins" that were the worst to deal with. We had no fucking clue what a penguin was, and discussed it while he went to the can to no avail. Finally we asked Barry. "They're the ultraorthodox jews, the ones that hate everything, even us. They're called that because they wear all black and waddle around town. They look like penguins." Jess and I laughed at that for the rest of our trip.

We ended up staying there all night and getting totally blasted with this crazy cast of characters. The last thing I remember was Barry making me an MP, which he said contained 5 types of alcohol in a big glass. It was blue. I asked what the mix was, he said "Curacao". I said no, the mix...like, juice, pop? He said "Curacao". No wonder it's the last thing I remembered that night. Jess said I just took off on him and left him there with the group, which now included his Brazillian Jewy chick friend who was a former employee of that bar and had stopped by. I woke up just as hammered as I was when I went to sleep. That's only happened to me a few times in my life, but I was still flying.

I'll finally finish up this thing with one more blog covering out last day in Israel, one day in Stockholm, and my three days in Austria.