Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

I write my last post for True/Slant a bit worn out from a full day of kayaking yesterday. It was easy river kayaking, mainly, with just one madly technical section of Class 2 stuff, but a full day of paddling and some porting in the sun saps you a bit.

The sights and experiences were very nice: Osprey and kingfishers working the water. The boughs of huge sycamores whispering in the breeze. A shore nap of 15 minutes that felt like an hour full of dreams. A dash of adrenaline while being spun in the rapids.

Thanks for reading the Beaufinn blog. It was fun. If you would like to continue along, this blog will migrate to www.beaufinn.com/blog (or some iteration of that; Google the name) by mid-August. Web designers really slow down in the heat, don’t they?

What’s next for me? Working two contract writing jobs (corporate stuff), teaching at The College of New Jersey this fall, and staying on the ever-present quest, along with my agent, to sell one or all of the novels. Beyond that, I’d like to finally put some serious effort into the kind of mountain climbing/trekking I’d like to do. I might start in the Shawangunks, in the Catskills. I should, however, set some summiting goals for the next decade.

I have two requests of you, Beaufinn reader:

1. (Re)Read Deliverance: Yeah, yeah — macho white guys in canoes, etc. etc. Having studied with the man who write this magnificently original American narrative, I was always galled by the fact that in popular memory the story boiled down to Ned Beatty and some banjo playing (popular memory = didn’t read the novel and can’t remember much about the film).

This story is powerfully sublime; what lurks under the obvious physical action is moving and troubling, and stays in the mind for weeks after reading. Dickey wrote a very straight story in a time of postmodern literary experimentation, but the story is anything but easy. It is one of those novels you must read to understand a bit about America, particularly at a certain time (the early 1970s).

Also, read it for the wonderful owl scene, which occurs early in the action. This scene is not in the film version, but it is the strongest symbolic connector to Dickey’s poetry in the whole novel.

After that, if you can tackle the novel Dickey wrote after Deliverance, a tome called Alnilam, you’re ready for your PhD.

2. Once a week, disappear for half an hour: That’s a tough one for parents and people with demanding jobs. Maybe cut that to 15 minutes, but for that 15 minutes, belong to your own country — a one-person country located in a wholly unspecified place. Maybe you already do this, and can swing it for an hour. That’s good — now try for two hours.

Get free of the beeps, bings, pings, bongs, shouts, and the “Hey, where are you?” Leave the cell phone or PDA in the car or under a rock, give away your GPS unit, and go someplace that only you know, and only you know where you are.

Go off the grid, just for a short time. Clear your mind of the digital flotsam. You’ll be back “in network” soon enough.

You won’t need a map. Good luck.

# # #

It’s just after 1pm in Budapest, which I suppose means around 7am in New York city, and another 18 hours before… what? I’m not really sure. Does the site just disappear offline with a trace? It seems hard to believe.

Curmudgeonly old bastard that I am and so rusty in these forms of expression, I would still like to say thank you to Lewis, Coates, Andrea and Michael and of course to all the other contributors, for making this site a great temporary home for my twisted rantings and ravings.

They’re all such smart and capable people and it’s probably not that often such a disreputable, flotsam and jetsam bar-fly hack like me comes into their orbit. I’ve tried not to be too much of a pain in the arse. I suppose it is possible that my repeated demands to have my name at the top of the masthead in neon, and my weekly letters demanding a dramatic increase in salary, backdated to my first post may have got on their assembled nerves just occasionally.

Thank you for putting up with me guys, and for giving a voice in the wilderness a chance to gain an audience. Not quite sure I’ll be blogging anywhere near as regularly at this site, but I guess occasionally, and the archives will be there in all their obscure glory.

So that’s it, I may even add a few bits and pieces to the site, but this not that, is the last time I’ll say an actual goodbye. Bon voyage everyone.

And to leave you, hopefully, with a twisted smile on your face, I present an episode from my 26 episode series, Space Cadets. It’s one in a series of what were wordless French animations jazzed up with some comedic after-narration. All things being equal, they should be coming soon to a late night cable television station near you.

So one way or another, I hope we’ll meet again. If not, we’ll always have True/Slant.

Image by Lincolnian (Brian) via Flickr

Retirement village? Assisted living? Co-housing? Age-restricted or aging-in-place communities? Inter-generational cooperative? This space has explored many of the growing varieties of housing choices for boomers and elders when the time comes to downsize, rightsize, clear out or economize. Here’s a new one that’s making the news: think global.

Even with (and sometimes because of) today’s grim economy, increasing numbers of Americans are choosing senior housing overseas. Some are returning to former homes in countries with lower costs or better health care, some are finding bargain housing in inexpensive areas where they have friends or a support community.

But many are just making housing in another country life’s last great adventure.

According to Boomers Abroad, an ambitious online community/social network, the number of Americans and Canadians living abroad, already about 7 million, is expected to double and then some within the next 10 years — and you’re invited to join them. The site links to the top five locales listed in the just-released September/October issue of  AARP The Magazine the best of what Mexico, France, Panama, Portugal and Italy have to offer—”castles, palm trees, rain forests, grilled lobster—in their unique and unparalleled retirement experiences. ”

In November 2008, this so-called Jet-Set Hobo was in Buenos Aires when he filed his first story for True/Slant. It was called ‘From Argentina with Love’, and was in some way concerned with what was the new James Bond movie, ‘A Portion of Condolence’.  If there was any actual film reviewing going on, I think it would have betrayed some disappointment. But greater disappointments were to come.

There could still be ‘A Scintilla of Comfort’. But you’ll have to read/scroll until the end of the piece for that.

For one thing, troubles at MGM indicate that after ‘A Quantum of Solace’ the James Bond series of movies has been suspended …indefinitely! As assiduous followers of this blog can tell you, one of my great, unfulfilled ambitions was to play a villain in a James Bond movie. Any villain. Naturally I would have preferred to be the doomed evil mastermind, but anyone of his windswept and interesting henchman would have sufficed.

This has been true ever since I used to go to the cinema as a toddler back in the 1960s with my rather glamorous mother, who I somehow sensed – even back then – wouldn’t have minded a certain former Edinburgh milkman slipping his JB monogrammed velvet slippers under her bed one fateful night.

It must have been jealousy on my part, but I wanted to turn the tables on Bond, or more literally, feed him to a shark tank, or slice him in two with a laser beam, or pull the levers on him in a remote controlled helicopter on a collision course with a mashing machine – anything to get rid of that infernal Queen & Country prat.

With the combined ages of Messers Connery and Moore now at 163, more recently I’d set my heart on little Daniel Craig. But now even that seems to be in doubt.

Ah, but back in those far-off, heady days of 2008, and at the tender age of just 42, I had other, equally romantic ideas about blogging, and what it might do for what I sometimes laughingly refer to as my career. That is, when I’m absolutely determined to burst the seams of trousers.  These ideas were about the “vision of a contributor and community driven news and opinion websites that would forever change the face of journalism”. And I misquote. Because actually, these weren’t so much ideas as warm, mushy feelings engendered by reading online interviews with our CEO, COO, CTO and all the other chiefs. The guys in the backroom who stop the frurckendeiser from being mixmitized, as I like to put it. I like to put it that way because I can’t be arsed getting to grips with the jargonology. Anyhoo, it all sounded so gee whiz this is straight out of the lab, let’s see what it does, it might change everything.

Like Kim Jong Il, who may not understand precisely how all this nuclear technology works, but sure-as-hell knows he’d like to use it, well, that for me was the blogosphere. I wasn’t quite sure how blogging for True/Slant was going to finally catapult my diabolical alter ego ‘The Jet-Set Hobo’ to literary fame, but I felt it had some part to play.

So, for nearly two years, in fits and starts but fairly regular great bursts of activity, I’ve thrown a lot of stuff at the wall here to see if it would stick. Travel stories straight and twisted, from the high and low end of the social scale; from Florentine restaurant reviews and Budapest’s little Hollywood all the way to gangsters in Belgrade and an assassination in Beirut.

I have regularly cast a rueful eye over the English Channel to comment on the degrading spectacle that British public life seems to have become in the last 15 or 20 years. I’m not a Republican, out to eviscerate the Royal Family, neither am I a toadying colonial.

From time to time, I’ve held forth on what might be called modern manners; such as what to wear when you’re abroad or how to conduct a foreign affair.  Perhaps I should have done a bit more of this sort of material, after all, no offence intended, but take a look around at some of the baseball cap and sweatpants wearing, Cheeto eating contributors and I assume consumers of this site who could certainly use an overhaul, please -nobody-say-makeover.

There’s been my Fiction, which I started to publish late in the game here, just after we all knew the end was nigh. Some of which it must be owed, such as Krakow Nights, is fairly dark matter. They’re all stories that have been told to me, I swear! Your correspondent has always lived a life of blameless domesticity which is why he is also able to turn out work such as his as-if-Jean Cocteau-wrote-a-children’s-book over-a-couple-of-afternoons minor masterpiece, The Wild Cats of Piran.

You see, now we really are getting to the crux of the matter. The Jet-Set Hobo has both literally and figuratively been all over the map since this blog began. Not enough focus, and I suppose if I do return in some shape or form it will be with a tighter focus. But can you blame me, entirely? Since I began this blog in November 08 I’ve lived in and filed reports from Buenos Aires, Auckland, Beirut, London and Budapest.

But wait, there’s more.

From time to time, I’ve even posted some of my weird little movies online, which must really throw readers who come to True/Slant looking for either, broadly speaking, policy wonks discussing health care reform or otherwise smart people discussing articles with headlines like “Can sex with Dakota Fanning make Bela Lugosi hot again?” (Okay, I’m mixing it up a little there, but a headline like that would be more fun.)

Which brings us neatly to my final ‘beat’. When I’ve had enough of it, I’ve also vented against the mind-dumbing fatuity of celebrity culture. Yet some of my most popular posts have been about celebrities, so I can’t help but think I have failed in some way. I don’t just mean as a writer, but as a person. Because I can’t help watching and commenting on the tawdry parade of low life distraction that it is. For the record, I’m Team Oksana, all the way. So what if she is manipulative and a gold digger, (which I suppose she must be), you can see a train when it’s coming, can’t you? Besides, I never cared much for Mel Gibson and that was cemented for me by his revisionist historical movies. For example, painting the Brits of the War of Revolution as if they were the Gestapo. Plus I used to cringe whenever you’d see his co-stars talking with forced smiles about what a pranky prankster the Gibster was on set. But I digress as I am so wont to do. I’ve said that before too.

Perhaps it’s time for the Rogue Bond movie. Remember the Australian Bond, George Lazenby? Well, imagine him enjoying his sunset years at Strangways health farm, puttering about in a wheelchair, trying to get it on with the nurses. Along I come at the wheel of lawn tractor and crash straight into bank of rhododendrons. Later while recuperating, my character strikes up an unlikely friendship with the octogenarian secret agent, finally getting close enough to strangle him with a stethoscope, or his tie-your-0wn bow-tie. That’d truly be a happy end, for this fantasist at least. But I jest, I’m just jealous.

So anyway, a happy ending for my real future in the virtual sphere? I don’t know. I’ve migrated most of the stuff filed here over to another site, and I’ll be sure to post there when I have the energy and stamina for it. Like about once every five years.

I’m thinking of cancelling my facebook account too incidentally. All these people, putting all their junk out in public, affairs going toxic, surrendering all their personal data to a 26 year old fratboy. Hmm. When did we ever think that was a good idea? Privacy. It’s the new luxury. Besides, it’s occured to me many times how much like high school Facebook is, and I never particularly cared for that either.

So, we’re going to wrap this up, because it’s already 1200 words or so, and I think a good blog post is seldom no more than a thousand, just like eight hours is as long as you ever really can enjoy sitting in a plane, no matter how good the service. This isn’t quite goodbye however. It’s my understanding some of the True/Slant team are going to be asked to stay on in some new, transmogrified version of this site, and I’d quite like to be one of them …so you never know. Hmmm.

Besides, it’s not midnight EST on July 31st just yet, so we’ve time for a few more laughs and some goodbyes.

Stay tuned.

-Koyen

“We have a new Luxury Lifestyle mag launching in January and are looking for a travel writer who focuses on the luxury end of the market. If you are interested drop me an email to xxxxxxxxx”

Despite Dawson’s request for direct emails, at least one member of the second group started asking questions in the forum itself. This prompted Dawson to post this followup:

First off I am not going to post all the commercially sensitive information about our new launch here on an internet board – that is why I asked people to drop me an email so it can be discussed in private.

Secondly – I am travelling a lot and posted my post on here before I went off on a trip. I am not in here all the time so posting questions on here and then saying did anyone hear from Ned yet when you didnt follow instructions, isnt a great first impression.

For those who did send me an email I am now back home and will start going through them all. I have about 50 to go through so dont need anymore thanks.

Enjoy your day everyone.

Which does sound a bit pissy, if not quite rude. But since travel writers spend more time at their computers than on the road (believe me), it didn’t take long for someone to take exception to Dawson’s tone:

“Ouch. We get that you’re a boss-man, Mr. Dawson, but must you be so high-and-mighty, so cold, and so grammatically incorrect? It pains me to see. It really does.”

Prompting this fiery retort from Dawson:

Well since you seem to be the mouthpiece for this group who have turned around and attacked me when all I was doing was providing some possible employment for a number of you, you can take your smart ass comment above and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

And to all the other members of the group who sent me emails, I will be deleting ALL of them because I refuse to hire anyone who is a part of this same group that this vulgar individual is from, and Lena if you don’t like my grammar, tough bloody luck.

Have a nice day everyone and we will source our writers from somewhere else.

And that’s why I never join conversations online. Someone, eventually, is going to start shit. But having the last word on a LinkedIn forum wasn’t enough for Ned Dawson. On Monday morning, his assistant sent the following email to everyone who had dared reply to the boss’ original query:

“Thanks for your reply but unfortunately due to the personal attack on our Publisher by a certain member of the LinkedIn group where the invitation for writers was made, he has made the decision that we will source writers from elsewhere.”

And you still want to be a travel writer? Please reconsider. It’s an industry filled with twats and mediocre talents.

Why Klingon? Apparently, an episode of Star Trek: TNG featured a ship named USS Jenolan. Don’t the tongue of Worf? Fear not. The tours will also be offered in ten “more commonly-spoken languages.”

Crossposted at Caveat Viator

One of my vacation reads. Loved it!!! Cover of Come, Thou Tortoise

There are couples who boast that they have never spent a night apart.  Cue violins!

I think: Shoot me. Just shoot me.

I think every long-term couple needs serious time apart. Granted, this is much more difficult if you have kids, especially  very small ones, when time without another person’s labor can feel like drudgery.

I am home now in NY after 14 days away from the sweetie. He couldn’t pick me up at the airport because he was working, but I came home to flowers and, while away, to a half-bottle of champagne sent to my hotel room.

My Vancouver room, at the Sylvia (go!), was barely 150 square feet, but bright, airy, quiet — perfect for one person. The beach was, literally, across the street. (And, of course, turned out my grandmother lived there when it was still an apartment building; built in 1911, it’s a Vancouver landmark.)

While away, I did a variety of things I love to do, some of which he hates. (And vice versa.)

He hates crowds so, last night, alone, I sat for 5.5 hours (yes, really) on the beach awaiting the U.S. entry in Vancouver’s annual fireworks festival. I wanted a good spot; by the time it began at 10:00 p.m., some 200,000 people had joined me. I read, slept, listened to music, read, slept, watched all the people around me.

I sat still. I don’t think I’ve ever just sat anywhere in New York, ever, for 5.5 hours without moving. Or, more to the point, feeling restless or bored or that I should be doing something. Vancouver is a city jammed with slim, blond, lithe folk. I saw no one one obese and few over 30. Everyone’s in spandex or on a bike or roller-blading. And, even mid-week, many people were on the beach.

Doing a lot of nothing productive, for once, meant I fit in right in. Whew. I can’t wait to go back and do a lot of nothing again, soon.

I spent six days with my Mom; as her only child, she likes my undivided attention. She whipped me at gin rummy; I beat her at Scrabble. Competitive, us?

Instead of reading three papers a day and listening to the radio and TV, I listened to music and scanned a few papers. I read three lovely novels: Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin, The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald (a Canadian writer) and Come, Thou Tortoise by Newfoundland writer Jessica Grant.

I liked “Brooklyn”, and loved the others. As a Canadian, I really enjoyed the many references that resonated for me, whether the name of a colored pencil set or landscapes I know well.

I went out for dinner with Colin Horgan, a fellow True/Slant writer whom I’d never met before, a brave move on both of our parts — what if we were bored? Or awful in person? We had a terrific Indian meal and a great time.  Solo vacations are all about adventure and meeting new people without the easy out and familiar comfort of your partner.

The sweetie played a lot of golf and watched the Golf channel uninterrupted and worked hard and caught up with his friends. We spoke  and emailed — and missed one another.

When you’re partnered, do you go away on your own? Do you enjoy it?

Sandhamn, Sweden. Photo by Sue Frause.

I must be one of the few readers who has yet to pick up Stieg Larsson’s series of crime novels: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl Who Played With Fire; and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. No surprise that the first two have morphed into popular movies, also.

But I have been to Stockholm, one of the main locales of the books, and it’s one of my favorite European cities. Although my roots are Norwegian, I have more of an affinity for how the Swedes live and play (plus like the Norskes, they have royalty).

Stieg Larsson’s three best-sellers revolve around journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, who lived and worked in Stockholm. The city has become such a popular destination with fans of the book that the Stockholm City Museum now conducts twice-weekly Stieg Larsson-Millennium Tours in English: Wednesdays at 6 PM and Saturdays at 11 AM. Or you can do the tour on your own by purchasing a map at the Stockholm Tourist Centre.

Another locale in the Millennium crime trilogy is Sandhamn, a resort island in the Stockholm archipelago. My hubby and I took a day trip there, and it’s beautiful. There are a number of ferries that sail from Stockholm to the island; we booked passage on one that featured an English-speaking narrator. Along the way we saw Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg’s family home, along with a cabin where Greta Garbo used to stay. Plus all that lush landscape.

Now you can enter to win a trip to Sweden. The 2010 Larsson’s Sweden Sweepstakes includes round-trip air for two via SAS to Stockholm; passes to explore Larsson’s Stockholm; three nights in the Sheraton Stockholm Hotel; and one night in the Seglarhotellet in Sandhamn.

The contest is open to residents of the 48 states and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.  The deadline is Oct. 1, 2010.

Seglarhotellet. Sue Frause photo.

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Image via Wikipedia

I usually have such good luck.

Not tonight. It was the end of the fireworks — 200,000 happy Vancouverites having thronged the beaches to watch them from a barge in the harbor. I sidled up to my hotel bar and found myself next to the most boring person I have ever met.

Ever.

“I can’t believe how hot it is here,” he said; he being a contractor from a suburb of San Francisco. “I thought Canada had perpetual winter.”

Normally, I smile indulgently. Not this time.

“You’re kidding, right?”

He went on to rave about the novels of James Michener and how great they are, like “Hawaii.”

And, sue me, I hate it when men ask your name right away. Lively conversation first, ask name later. It’s the price of admission.

I make it a point to sit at the bar most of the time, especially when eating alone. It’s usually a lot more fun than reading or watching people read (please) their emails.

Earlier this week I met Homa and Babak, an Iranian couple, and had a great conversation — I had no idea Tehran has a ski hill. (Homa showed me a photo on her Iphone.) Then chatted with a young Australian girl who’s just moved here.

In Atlanta last fall, I sat in a great old dive bar and had an hour-long chat with a terrific local guy, so when it works, it works well.

Do you sit at the bar and talk to strangers?

It’s an MGM-produced travelogue video from 1932, probably meant to be shown in the newsreel segment ahead of feature films. It shows Buenos Aires, and Argentina, as it was in the early 1930s. This was still fat-cat Argentina, with wealthy estancieros and businessmen lounging by their riverside estates, at the Hippodrome, etc. As a porteño (native of Buenos Aires), I couldn’t help but share it.

There is one thought I had on how much Buenos Aires has changed in the decades since the film was made. The fountain shown towards the beginning, with the sirens and water gurgling here and there, today is surrounded by an eight foot wall of Plexiglass, hockey rink-style, to keep away vandals, looters (who often plunder Buenos Aires monuments for bronze), and opportunistic bathers. The Plexiglass is an eyesore, but Buenos Aires is no longer in its Belle Époque; instead it’s limping along in its sort of 80-year-long post-boom hangover. As my friend and I mused in an email exchange, Argentina and its capital kind of froze after 1930, when the Great Depression (and a military coup that same year) began to catch up with its once-prosperous democracy and ushered in a long fall from grace, still ongoing.

The old school facets of Buenos Aires that charm the many gringo expats who have taken up residence there (birdcage elevators, art deco and art nouveau buildings, ultra-retro signage, bad plumbing, etc.) are all evidence that things didn’t change all too much once the Depression punctured its for-export beef, grain, and wool economy.

Anyways, enjoy:

Rice field in Ubud, Bali. Sue Frause photo.

The Eat Pray Love packages started rolling out soon after Elizabeth Gilbert’s book of the same name was featured on Oprah.

And now with the Julia Roberts’ movie coming out on August 13, hotels/resorts/tour companies are really cashing in on the EPL phenomenon.

Here are just a few of the EPL packages that will help you to let yourself go (the tagline of the movie):

Eat, Pray & Love Bali (Spiritual Tours)

Bali, Pray, Love package (Four Seasons)

Eat, Pray, Love Package (Peter Island – BVI)

Eat, Pray, Love Weekend Package (Sonesta Bayfront Hotel, Coconut Grove, FL)

Where to Eat, Pray, Love in San Antonio (Texas)

According to USA TODAY, you can Eat, Pray, Love — everywhere!

And even Lonely Planet is jumping into the mix, launching a special page on its website devoted to EPL.

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The MEC Vancouver store. Image via Wikipedia

I’m finishing up a two-week vacation in Canada, two days in my native Toronto and the rest in British Columbia: Vancouver, Victoria and Kamloops. In June I spent five days in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, just south of Montreal.

From this trip, I’m carrying home a new strategy for gin rummy (thanks, Mom!), some new clothes and shoes, two Olympics hats. Nothing fancy. But I know where to shop and what I can’t (yes, really) find in New York City.

I grew up in Canada and go back several times a year, stocking up on favorite items, some of which we natives know all about, but visitors might not.

Some you might find fun or useful:

222s. It sounds like ammunition, and in sense, it is — a powerful headache pill that contains codeine. They are not sold on the drugstore shelf but you have to ask the pharmacist for them. They really do the trick.

Beer. While you can find some Canadian beers in the U.S., there are many great microbreweries. We love the apricot-flavored beer we find in Quebec. Sleeman’s is another favorite. After you’ve tried some of our best, weak dreck like Coors or Budweiser will never cross your lips again.

MEC. It stands for Mountain Equipment Co-Op, and there is one in every major Canadian city; similar to an REI or EMS, offering everything you might need for outdoor adventures. Their duffel bags and backpacks are well made, good-looking and affordable. I always know someone’s from Canada if I see them in NY or Europe with an MEC pack. It’s a co-operative, which keeps prices low, and you can join it too. They also have a full-time executive charged with ethical sourcing.

Something Mountie-related. They’re everywhere…T-shirts, mugs, caps. They are a 137-year-old mythical part of Canada’s history and unique in this respect — Americans don’t wear FBI T-shirts or buy FBI bears or drink from FBI mugs, but Mounties are well-loved. I especially like them because they saved my Mom’s life, busting in her door when she lived alone in a small town and needed rescue. (This is part of what they do, filling in for local or provincial police.)

Voltaren. I took it as an oral steroid for my arthritic hip but in Canada (not the U.S.) it comes in a tube as a topical cream, also something you have to ask a pharmacist for.

Algemarin. My favorite product, ever — a German-made, dark blue, sea-smelling bath gel that turns your bath into a grotto. I’ve never found it in the States.

Canadian candy. Crunchie, Aero, Big Turk, Crispy Crunch, Macintosh Toffee. All are amazing. The chocolate is much smoother and sweeter than anything made by Hershey. Try it once and you’ll be hooked for life.

Miss Vickie’s chips. The best potato chips ever.

Butter tarts. Not made of butter. A sort of molasses/raisin filling, so gooey they can’t be eaten tidily. So good!

Tuques. A simple wool pull-on hat, the type you can tuck into your purse or pocket. I snagged two Vancouver 2010 Olympic ones on sale at a rest stop.

Peameal bacon. Americans call it Canadian bacon; we call it back bacon or peameal bacon. If you get to Toronto, go to the St. Lawrence Market and have a peameal bacon sandwich.

Aboriginal art, sculpture or jewelry. It might be Indian or Eskimo (the correct word is Inuit, pronounced In-weet), but there are many lovely examples to be found, whether lithographs, silkscreen prints, soapstone or bone sculptures, scarves, silver jewelry. I grew up surrounded by Inuit prints and sculpture and love it; a small soapstone bear, so tiny he fits into my palm, sits on my bedside table, a gift when I was a child.

A U of T T-shirt or cap. OK, it’s my alma mater — but Malcolm Gladwell went there too. It’s Canada’s Harvard. Americans have only heard of McGill, but U of T kicks its butt. (That’s U of Toronto.)

A maple leaf sticker, badge, luggage tag or decal. If you plan to travel in parts of the world where Americans are unwelcome, this is a standard trick — look like a Canadian.

A newfound taste for Canadian media. Pick up The Globe and Mail or The National Post, or magazines Macleans (newsweekly) or The Walrus or Maisonneuve (sort of Harper’s-ish) or Adbusters or Azure, the shelter magazine. Listen to CBC Radio, especially and see how differently (or not) stories are conceptualized and reported. You’ll never find Canadian magazines in the U.S. (except for a few libraries) and if you like the radio you hear, you can keep up with it on-line.

A loonie and a toonie. Our $1 and $2 coins, good souvenirs.

Appreciation of a nation with cradle-to-grave government-supplied and run healthcare for everyone and $5,000 a year tuition at the nation’s best universities. That’s where the new, dreaded HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) and all those taxes on liquor and gas and stamps goes. Payback!

A Roots or M0851 bag. Both are made of gorgeous leather in a small but simple/cool array of styles. Both have their own stores in many Canadian cities, selling everything from a tiny change or makeup purse to weekend duffels and dopp kits. Tough to resist. (They sell leather jackets, too.)

A Holt’s bag. They’re now bright fuchsia. Holt Renfrew is Canada’s (only) answer to Saks/Neiman-Marcus/Barney’s/Bergdorf. Even if you just buy a pair of socks or a lipstick, it’s worth a visit to their elegant stores. The Toronto one has a lovely quiet cafe on the top floor. The Montreal store has terrific period Art Deco doors. (Their accessories department is small but offers excellent, European options — I saw Keira Knightley there a few years back, and admired her Chanel sandals.) Holt’s is in several Canadian cities.

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Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Score!

As readers of this blog know, I am crazy for car design and happened to be in Victoria, BC this week, just in time for the three days of an event that only happens every three years, and in the summer, on this, my first summer visit.

Nine hundred (!) vintage cars came from all across North America, and were parked downtown at the harbor where 50,000 people — including me — stopped by to admire them. Free.

I saw a 1927 Ford Model T. A 1941 Graham Hollywood, a car and make I had never before heard of. Dozens of 1932 models. One was gloriously un-restored, a car I dream of owning — a dark blue 1949 Ford pickup truck. It was a riot of curves and chrome and rumble seats and running boards. I was in automotive heaven.

Not to mention the hallucinatory effect of seeing so many of these amazing vehicles driven through the city’s streets along with the econo-boxes and tour buses and city buses.

Before I came out here, I emailed a writer who lives here, a woman I have never met, but who, as I do, loves to sail; she generously took me to lunch at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club (where my parents were once members, early in their marriage.)

My final night of vacation, splurging to stay at the Sylvia Hotel (where, it turns out, my maternal grandmother lived for years), turns out to be the first night of Vancouver’s annual four-week fireworks display, one a week. I’ll be right on the beach where the fireworks are happening. I had no idea.

I love this sort of dumb luck. I love to travel but am not one to book tickets to something years or months or even weeks in advance. I like to stumble into discoveries when I’ve already arrived somewhere.

What’s been your most serendipitous travel experience?

The New European Environment – starring my brother Craig Young

An Emotional weather report

So, as usual after coffee and various salves I began my day with a check of the headlines and see Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called a snap election which she’ll probably win. Speaking of woman premieres, it seems Margaret Thatcher’s family are appalled by the idea of Meryl Streep playing Mrs T in a movie.

Speaking of …ecological disasters BP think they might have finally put a cap on the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But I see also an oil pipeline has exploded in China and is keeping 2000 firefighters busy, which sounds like a pretty big blaze to me. The phrase “It’s a wonder these kind of things don’t happen more often” is fast becoming redundant. We’re all going to have to be brave to make it in this scary new world. Meanwhile, the environmental update from the Hungarian capital is that it’s hot… How hot? Well, it was 85 degrees Fahrenheit last night at 11pm in Budapest and this evening it is, as I like to say in a voice like Sam Elliott’s, still “hotter than a snake’s hide in a wagon rut” now at 7pm CET.

And I’m sitting here in the living room of this rather suitable-for-one apartment, trying to write with the television on. Christ, the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. CNN is the only English language channel I can get in my otherwise well equipped and well appointed gentleman’s quarterings in the 7th district, the oh-so boho old Jewish quarter of Budapest. Well, I can’t complain but sometimes I still do. I go to sleep every night in a bed fit for a Transylvanian Prince, in a heavy, antique furniture filled and airy apartment, equidistant to practically everything I need.

Finding gainful employment has been as slow as Continental drift, but that all seems to change around September, when the weather will also be agreeably cooler. Tomorrow, at least according to Wunderground, Budapest has a chance to cool down in the wake of a few welcome rainstorms that’ll wash the streets clean(ish) and give us all some relief. The so-called Jet-Set Hobo (might be time to hang up those spurs) is not cut out for this kind of heat – Not unless I’m near a beach with a pile of good books and someone nice to rub in the sun screen lotion. The position is open by the way, so if you’re glamorous and amorous, drop me a line. I make a good dry martini, I’m a good conversationalist and er, well that’s about it really I suppose.

*

‘At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.’

George Orwell

Lunched today with my friend Kiki today and not quite all we could talk about was the Mel Gibson affair. Ms Gregoriova must be quite a piece of work herself if she handed those tapes over to the Radar website before giving them to the cops. But whatever sort of schemer she may or may not be it doesn’t really matter. Mel Gibson is now on display for the kind of tasteless, raging monster of mullet-wearing vulgarity and rage I’d long suspected him to be. In my view, he’s played fast and loose with history with every film he’s made and yes, of course he is anti-semitic and everything else. It’s obvious for instance that he loathes the English too. In his risible movie The Patriot he has a Nazi prototype English officer having civilians burned in barns, the kind of thing for which there is no record. I guess the revolutionary war just wasn’t violent enough for Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson. I haven’t seen Apocalypto, but I suppose if anyone could up the ante on the brutality of Mayan society, it would be him.

The tapes make for an uncomfortable listen. Gibson sounds like Hitler with an X-rated mouth, or the ultimate potty mouthed spoiled infant, a roaring furnace of anger. After you have heard Gibson shrieking at the top of his voice that he wants oral sex, it becomes difficult to imagine seeing him in any romantic roles ever again.

Anyway, according to Wunderground the temperature has dropped a couple of degrees in the last hour and it’s not going to get over 80 degrees between tonight and Thursday. Time for everybody to chill, and not just Mel Gibson.

And time to change the subject. I have other things on my mind – which include organising a Hallowe’en Party and doing some location scouting in Transylvania the better to breathe in some fresh mountain air.  I’ll report back soon, but right now I’m going to lie down on that almost ridiculously comfortable bed with a cold compress on my forehead and quietly enjoy the feel of the temperature slowly falling.

As Lightnin’ Hopkins used to sing, “I’m going down slow”…

Image via Wikipedia

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France — Even in this country of wine and romance, a little practical sense can make your vacation a lot more fun.  Or, to put it another way, why drop $4 on a Coke when you can save it for a concert or great meal instead?

I hope my earlier posts (scroll down on this blog) have given you a sense of the personality and poetry of Provence. This one is for the purely practically minded.  Here are some tips on making your money go further:

1. When you sit down for a meal or glass of wine, ask for a “carafe d’eau.”  That’s a pitcher of tap water, and it’s free.  If you ask for a bottle of water, you’ll pay several dollars, whether it’s carbonated or flat.  And Cokes do cost nearly $4 at most cafes, the same, if not more, than as a glass of house wine.  The heat of summer builds a big thirst here, and the cost of all those carbonated drinks can add up.

2. Whether you’re eating a big meal at midday or in the evening, consider the plat du jour. It’s often the freshest dish on the menu and it’s considerably less money and considerably better on your waistline than the three-course menus.

3. If you’re planning on a big evening spread, buy your own bread and cheese at lunch. French cheese is divine. The bread is baked daily. Buy a baquette and a slap of something like tome, our favorite cheese (it comes in multiple varieties), and you’ve got a hearty lunch in minutes, complemented perhaps by a plump tomato or whatever fruit is freshest in the region.  You’ll also have spent about $10 for two, perhaps 40 percent what you’d pay for a couple of large salads in a restaurant.

4. Don’t eat breakfast in hotels. There, you’ll routinely be charged $12 to $14 for coffee, juice, bread and jam. If instead, you go to an outdoor cafe, you can get a yummy croissant oozing butter and and an espresso for about $3.

5. Speaking of coffee, that espresso costs less than half of an American coffee (with cream).  We’ve found that French espresso is, in any case, not just strong, but sweeter and tastier than what you’ll get in the States with the same order.

6. Get regional wine by the pitcher rather than buying by the bottle. Unless you’re a serious wine snob, the wine, typically from the local wine cooperatives, that is served in the open carafes tastes just fine. We found it comparatively better, for example, than what you’d pick up at your local liquor store for about $8 or $10 a bottle.  It usually costs less than half the cheapest bottle on the menu.

7. If you go the marketplace, don’t buy at the first stall. Comparison shop. Whether buying cheese for lunch or apricots straight from the tree, prices vary substantially. (If you stay somewhere for awhile, as we did in Aix-en-Provence in 2007, you’ll soon zero in on your favorite vendors.)

8. If you are traveling around France, look for hotels that bear the logo of Logis de France.  Most of these seem to be two-star hotels, clean, comfortable and typically — even in tourist areas — under $100 a night, sometimes substantially under.

9. Use your feet. Walking is the best way to see France’s towns and villages.

10. OK, everyone needs to splurge sometimes. These were our two favorite splurges:

a. For Provencal food, make a lunchtime reservation at La Closerie in Ansouis, about an hour from Aix-en-Provence. This charming restaurant prepares the best food we’ve eaten — anywhere. Yes, ANYWHERE. At lunch, a three-course meal costs $60 for two minus whatever you choose to drink. The quality of that meal rivals the $200 meal we ate a decade ago in New York for Kathy’s 50th birthday. It’s that good. We’ve eaten at La Closerie twice, once three years ago, again last week. Both times it was simply amazing. This time the noontime meal was a rabbit terrine, a cut of lamb on a bed of polenta, and a strawberry soup for dessert. The presentation matched to food. And even in the heat of July, the setting was shaded and cool enough to relax and enjoy.

b. Want to stay in a Provencal Mas or farmhouse?  We would recommend Mas Perreal, just outside St. Saturnin-les-Apt. Beautiful rooms, sumptuous breakfasts and a pool on the fringe of vineyards and beside several shade trees. The place is run by Kevin, an American, and his French wife Elisabeth. They are low-key and casual, but they also have a clear idea of how to make guests comfortable at a first-class bed and breakfast. At about $170 a night, however, the Mas is a splurge.

Bon voyage.

Cheval was in every way the perfect subject to create his work of outsider art. He had not stepped anywhere near the famous art academies; he had no contact with famous artists when he began his building his visionary structure. He was simply a local postal worker in Hauterives, who had only gone to school until the age of 13 before starting work at a bakery. Each day he would deliver the mail to the residents in the town and the surrounding area, walking long distances on his route. As he walked, he would glance at the magazines and postcards he was delivering to the residents. Inside the magazines he saw images of foreign, exotic locales that he kept in his mind. He saw early Indian buildings decorated with Hindu gods and goddesses. he saw the monuments in Washington, D.C., the primitive buildings of Polynesian peoples.

These images remained in his head until one day on his route when Cheval stumbled upon an unusual rock that caught his eye. He began collecting these unusual rocks, finding more of them at the same location. These rocks serve as the first building elements of Le Palais Idéal. With them Cheval decided he would spend his nights working by oil lamp and creating what in his mind was the perfect architectural style, a combination of all he had seen in the magazines and postcards he delivered. This project, which soon incorporated cement, lime and mortar took Cheval 33 years and all the work occurred without his neighbors noticing. Cheval completed Le Palais Idéal in 1912, adn not long after he began work on his tomb, an equally elaborate but smaller structure in the same town that took 8 years for Cheval to complete. He died in 1924, shortly after completing his grave.

In the final stages of Le Palais Idéal’s construction, Cheval began to garner the interest of big profile artists of the period. Picasso, then the biggest artist in all of Europe, was inspired by the palace, along with Andre Breton, the father of Surrealism and

Postman Cheval’s Ideal Palace

Image via Wikipedia

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France — The only bad thing about vacations is that they eventually end. But what better grand finale than Bastille Day, France’s July 4, complete with a real-life general, an oompah band,  20 minutes of fireworks set to classical music, and a disco-pop-rock orchestra  accompanied by go-go girls gyrating beneath the statue of King Rene,  who led Provence in the 15h century.

You really had to be there.

The official festivities began at 5 p.m. with a few speeches and a “parade,” consisting of a few fire trucks; the general, who was driven off in a small truck he climbed into on portable steps wheeled to its side,  and several dozen well-armed, marching representatives of the French military.

An upbeat old-fashioned band, dressed  in white and wearing straw hats, sat nearby, adding a bit of luster. It continued to play after the pomp and circumstance had ended — or at least tried.

By then it was 6:15 p.m.  Up the street, by the statue,  the evening’s rock band (Orchestre XL, according to the logo on its trucks) was setting up, its horn players blasting  wicked riffs through powerful amplifiers.  Down the street, city workers banged around disassembling the metal gates put up for crowd control.  And through the clatter and cacaphony, the band played on.

“Who’s in charge here?” Kathy asked.

This being the South of France, the answer seemed pretty obvious: No one discernible.

Let’s put it this way. The British form neat queues and wait patiently. American lines are somewhat less orderly. In France, whether approaching a ski lift or a concert hall, people form flying wedges that somehow resolve themselves with a certain vigilant grace.

The same could be said of the clashing bands, which eventually took turns.

At 10 p.m., the fireworks began, interspersing the usual sizzles and starbursts with quiet arcs of silver intersecting in the sky to a Strauss waltz. The yellow lab beside us shrank from the noise. So when the last glitter fell from the sky, his owner let him dive into one of the city’s fountains in the middle of its much-photographed, tree-lined Cours Mirabeau.

And then Orchestre XL got down to business: five horns (three saxes, trumpet and trombone), five singers, bass, guitarist, synthesizer keyboardist, drummer …. and two dancers.

First the dancers appeared fully clothed in white, angel wings aflutter through a most unusual rendition of the theme song for the musical Mamma Mia.

Next, as the music turned to a harder-edged rock, they appeared in black leather, scooped to the waist in the back and leaving awfully little to the imagination in the front. As the light show flashed even brighter and smoke rose from the floor of the three-level stage, they re-appeared, this time slmost as scantily clad as the dancers in Paris’ infamous Moulin Rouge (just before they dive into the tank with the snakes, but that’s a story from long ago).

Orchestre XL’s program was itself  … eclectic. First, lots of disco (“burnin’). Then atonal rock (‘90s, I think).  Then  the schmaltzy standby Volare, kicked off a more Spanish than Italian medley, during which one of the dancers walked onstage dressed as a matador. Later, when the lead singer launched into a song whose chorus seemed to start with “in America,”  both were back, this time bedecked in American flag bathing suits, caps and capes.

The French don’t much like American politics. But they clearly love our culture — even if the version of it celebrated here is a bit dated.  At one point, much of the crowd joined in the Bus Stop, a line dance we did with friends at New Year’s Eve parties at my parents’ Vermont house a long, long time ago.

Response singing was big, too, last night, though it was sometimes difficult to decipher, what with the challenges of language as the band sang one American song after another (one audience response was, “I say the la,” which my intrepid wife interprets as “I see the light.”)

We tired after awhile and sat down on a bench next to a pleasant-looking woman about our age. That’s when Kathy felt hot breath on her arm. Something touched her. She turned abruptly to discover that the woman’s French mop (a little dog with lots of hair drooping over its eyes) had taken a liking to her and rested a paw on her leg.

Ah, yes. All vacations must end. At 12:40, Kathy bade dog and owner goodnight. We lingered for a few more songs and  headed to our hotel, just as the band launched into “we will, we will rock you.”

I can’t imagine what came next.

A little bit closer to my home in Budapest, and I submit for your attention, Kristyna Koci, Chief Negotiator for the Czech Republic’s ruling political party, the Public Affairs party.

I kid you not. The photograph is taken from a just released 2011 calendar put out by the Czech Public Affairs party. Certainly it’ll be in the stores well in time for Christmas, (which the Czechs don’t particularly believe in, a majority registering themselves as atheist in census polls – whatever you may have heard about Good King Wenceslas on the feast of Stephen.) “Women’s political influence is growing. Why not show we are women who aren’t afraid of being sexy?” said Marketa Reedova, the party’s candidate for Mayor of Prague.

Following on from my last post, it must seem like the Jet-Set Hobo has sex on the brain. Well hey, no more than usual. It’s not like I’m inventing this stuff, it is just what flits across my radar. Anyway, it might be too sweeping a generalisation to say the women of Central and European Europe are, how shall we say, tres formidable, but there you go. One would have to be blind or deliberately obtuse not to notice how many drop dead gorgeous women there are in places like Prague, Budapest, Kiev, Warsaw and so on. But as traditionally feminine as they may be in their dress and often rather demure manner, don’t let that fool you. It seems to me – and please accept that these are broad sweeping generalisations – that women fared better than men during both communism and in its aftermath. While so many of the menfolk are still today sitting in darkened rooms drinking vodka in front of the TV and watching reruns of Starsky and Hutch, Eastern European gals are out there wrestling the bear of life with all they’ve got, and winning. If there’s a lesson or moral to be drawn from this, I’m not quite sure what it is. But here on the ground, it’s certainly hard to ignore.