Dave Fox's Outbursts!

Hasty Rambling Before I Miss My Airplane

I have not blogged in many a day, which is due to the fact that my insane life has been insane in a supersized kind of way this past week. Don’t take it personally, faithful readers. I have been thinking about you, and as we all know, it’s the thought that counts.

Here are the things I have been thinking about blogging about. I shall now blog about them, albeit several days after the fact, which I realize is a little like learning how to speak intelligent English after you no longer are president of the United States, but hey, let this blog entry show that there is hope for everyone.

Cold War II
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that recent US military behavior is inciting other countries to produce nuclear weapons to defend themselves against an “almost uncontained use of military force.”

Possible presidential contender, Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, lashed back, saying Putin’s remarks were, "the most aggressive speech from a Russian leader since the end of the Cold War."

Way to go, Senator McCain! Let’s accuse the Russians of war-mongering! Yeah! That’s it!

Obama Makes it Official
After months of speculation, Senator Barak Obama, D-Illinois, announced he will run for US president in 2008. Obama said the first priority of the United States should be to withdraw its military from Iraq.

Immediately following Obama’s announcement came a barrage of criticism from... George W. Bush? No. Hillary Clinton? No.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Teehee! How cute! If I were in Australia right now, I would pat the prime minister on his head.

Howard said Obama’s desire to pull troops out of Iraq will “encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory."

To Prime Minister Howard, I have just one word to say:

Ha!

Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! AAAHHHHHAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.... HAAAA!!!

Okay. I suppose that technically counts as 27 words.

Mr. Prime Minister. I’ll tell you what. You want a military force in Iraq? How about you send 20,000+ Australians to Iraq to fix things instead of whining the US isn’t doing enough? Because seriously, your 1,500-or-so non-combat troops who are presently there really are not living up to their full potential.

World Domination
With all this international rhetoric flying around, one wonders who is really in charge of the planet. One wonders who the real world power is. Is it the Great Nation of Russia? No. Is it the Great Nation of the United States of America? No. Is it the Great Nation of Australia? Teehee. Nope. It is the great nation of... Microsoft!

Yes! All hail Bill Gates! Microsoft has unveiled its new Vista operating system, its most secure system ever.

Oh, except for six security flaws reported in yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And maybe some others. But that’s beside the point. Microsoft is still going to take over the world, one person at a time.

Case in point: Aleksandr Ponosov.

Ponosov is a school principal in the rural village of Sepych, Russia. When Ponosov purchased 16 computers for his not-exactly-wealthy school in rural Russia, he didn’t know a lot about computers. He didn’t know they came with pre-installed software. He didn’t realize that in not-always-totally-ethical Russia (as opposed to always completely ethical America), computers sometimes come with pre-installed software that might have been installed without a license.

Well!

You and I both know what has to be done. Bill Gates is a self-respecting billionaire, which is why his company is doing what the company of any self-respecting billionaire should do. They are hauling Mr. Posonov into court. Posonov is now facing a 10,000 dollar fine and five years in Siberian labor camps.

Serves him right to try to educate people in poor, rural villages! Especially Russians! They’re trying to re-ignite the Cold War!

Go Bill Gates! This is almost as cool as the time when you threatened to sue Canadian teenager Mike Rowe for registering the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com.

Get Me Out of Here!
And on that note... I feel a need to leave. I feel a need to bail out of this country for a while... just for a week, to collect my thoughts and flee from my telephone. What should an overworked, overstressed freelance writer do when he has a massive pile of work on his desk? He should go to Norway.

So in a matter of minutes, I am off to the airport. Stay tuned for bloggage from fjord country.

A Tip to Avoid Rip-Offs

Split, Croatia

My bill arrives after dinner, and included on it are two coffees I did not order. I'm not sure if it's an honest mistake or not, but I'm suspicious.

I flash back to another trip, when I sat at an outdoor cafe in Lagos, Portugal, and watched as neary every person in the restaurant was finding a few "extras" on their bill. The waiters were all very cordial, and removed the charges right away.

Then there was the time I was working in Venice, Italy, and at the end of a big lunch of salad, pasta, wine, coffee, and tiramisu, my bill arrived, charging me for everything I had eaten, plus four gargantuan six-scoop ice creams with a price tag of roughly six US dollars each.

"Excuse me," I said to the waiter. "I hate to be a bother, but could you take a look at my bill? I did not order 24 scoops of ice cream to wash down my tiramisu."

"Are you sure?" the waiter replied.

"We would both know if I ate 24 scoops of ice cream," I said. "It wouldn't be pretty. I'm lactose intolerant."

The waiter shrugged and fixed my bill.

So the two coffees here in Split -- have they been added intentionally? I'm not sure, but the waiter apologizes and tells me he'll correct the bill.

"You'll probably want to," I tell him, handing him some cash for my meal. "Your tip's included here. It's your money."

The Pulley and the Complicated Lobster

Korčula, Croatia

While I was napping this afternoon, my friend Pat was out taking photos. He returned an hour later with important news: He had located the coolest bar in all of Korčula. It was at the top of a tower. The tower, he said, was so tall and skinny, the waitress couldn't carry drinks from the bar to the seats upstairs, so instead, bartender sent the drinks up the outside of the tower with a pulley system.

You might not know this about me, but I am so fascinated by pulley systems that when I hear one is in use, I will go to the top of a tower and order multiple Long Island Iced Teas, for the sole purpose of watching the drinks go up and down the pulleys over and over and over.

So that was my agenda.

We arrived at the tower, climbed the stairs to the first level, where we came to a room with a ladder that led up onto the roof of the tower. I could hear people laughing up top, partying, getting really, really into the pulley system.

As I climbed the ladder, I couldn't help but think that such an establishment would not fly in America. Someone would become so enthralled by the pulley system, ordering adult beverage after adult beverage, just to see the pulley in action. Then, he or she would tumble down the ladder and sue the owner of the tower.

That's one of the nice things about southern Europe. There is uneven pavement, and holes to fall through, and if you hurt yourself because you are not watching where you were going, it is your own stinking fault.

So Pat and I climbed the ladder and each had a Long Island Iced Tea. We were so impressed with the pulley system that we ordered a second round.

After that, we braved the climb down the ladder and went for dinner to a fish restaurant. I struggled to decide between shrimp, lobster, and calamari. I settled on the calamari because it was the only thing I was certain would not come with shells that needed to be wrestled with.

"After two Long Island Iced Teas," I said to Pat, "I just can't deal with complicated lobster right now."

We decided "Complicated Lobster" would be a cool name for a rock band. Also, I think that complicatedlobster.com just might be the only .com domain name that is still available, although now that I have written this, it will probably be a new porn site in a matter of hours.

Not Your Mama's Tuna

Korčula, Croatia

To say I was a picky eater as a child would be kind of like stating that Bill Gates has a little bit of money. I dreaded meal times. Whatever was being served, I did not like.

In an effort to prevent me from starving to death, my parents made me eat, which I resented them greatly for. Sunday afternoon always seemed to be tuna day. I'm not sure why, but lunch on Sundays was nearly always tuna sandwiches.

Please note (even though this has nothing to do with where I am going with this) that I did not say "tuna fish sandwiches." I have never understood why people have the need to refer to tuna as "tuna fish." We do not do this with other fish. We do not say "trout fish" or "salmon fish" or "mahi mahi fish." Nor is there any kind of tuna that is not fish. There is no such thing as a tuna cow, or a tuna cat, or a tuna walrus.

But I digress.

Sunday afternoons seemed to bring a higher likelihood that tuna sandwiches would be served for lunch. And while I did not like any food very much, tuna was a food that I especially did not like.

My parents would ask me if I wanted lettuce on my sandwich. I would say yes because the lettuce would provide a bit of relief from the tuna-ness of the sandwich, and it made the sandwich a little bit crunchy, which made it more aesthetically pleasing. Then one day, I had a brainstorm. I discovered that if I put Doritos on my sandwich – lifted up the top layer of Wonder Bread and stuck a Dorito or two right in the sandwich – that it made the tuna extra crunchy, and then it became almost tasty.

What does any of this have to do with the fact that I am currently on vacation on an island in Croatia? Excellent question. Thank you for asking.

Now that I am an adult (or at least can fake it at times), I have gotten over my picky eater ways. I spend about three months each year working overseas, and I have had to learn to eat many different things, sometimes not even knowing what they are.

The other night at dinner, a basket of bread was brought to my table, along with a small bread plate that contained a goopy sort of spread. I did not order the goop. It just came, compliments of the chef. I am nowhere near the picky eater I was at age seven, but every now and then, I find myself confronted with something I do not want to eat, and I experience childhood flashbacks.

So, there I was, staring at this mystery spread, thinking it was probably some sort of goose spleen paté or something. I did not want to eat it, but it was included with the meal, and I thought I should at least be polite and taste it. So I did. It did not taste good, but I got it down.

"This goose spleen paté isn't so bad," I told myself, and forced down another couple of bites.

That was two nights ago.

Tonight when I ordered dinner, a plate of the same mystery spread was put before me. I eyed it, thinking it hadn't exactly been enjoyable two nights earlier, but maybe that was all in my mind. Maybe it wasn't actually spleen of goose. If I knew that it wasn't, maybe I would enjoy it more.

"Tuna for your bread," the waiter said as he put the plate before me.

"Wow," I thought. "Tuna." I hadn't eaten tuna in years. I had never seen tuna so artistically presented. It was creamy – not because it had been mixed with globs of mayonnaise, as was the case back in my childhood Sunday afternoons, but because it had been whipped into a creaminess I did not know one could achieve with tuna.

Knowing what it was now, knowing that at least it was not spleen, I ate it all – on the little pieces of bread provided. It wasn't bad.

It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad, and I finished it out of politeness.

I'm thinking I might actually have enjoyed it, if only the restaurant had served Doritos.

It isn't Kansas, Toto! Get Over It!

Korčula, Croatia

I'm having lunch at an outdoor café on a little Croatian island off the Dalmatian Coast, when I hear a tourist mutter, "Hey, this reminds me of Lake Tahoe!"

Huh?!

I have never been to Lake Tahoe, but I am fairly certain that Korčula, Croatia, is not like Lake Tahoe.

This is a common phenomenon, however. Guiding tours in Scandinavia, I have heard the landscape there compared many times to Minnesota, Maine, and Tuscaloosa.

Okay, not Tuscaloosa. I have never heard that one.

Yet.

Nevertheless, I am struggling.

I am struggling to understand why people fly halfway around the planet, spend thousands of dollars to do so, and feel a need when they get there to equate their surroundings to someplace near home that they could have visited for a quarter of the price or less. If you want to see Lake Tahoe, don't go to Croatia. Go to Lake Tahoe. The flight is cheaper and there is no jetlag.

So, as an extremely helpful public service to Americans visiting Korčula, Croatia, who think they are in Lake Tahoe, I have compiled the following list of Ten Things that Korčula, Croatia, Has That I Am Pretty Sure Lake Tahoe Does Not Have:

1) Croatian folk music at every restaurant.

2) An army of 9,726 stray cats. (I counted.)

3) Beer with a view for 20 kuna a pint.

4) 20 kuna.

5) Enough scantily-clad German and Italian tourists to outnumber the local population.

6) An entire radio dial with not a single station that carries Rush Limbaugh.

7) The letter "č."

8) Men wearing 3/4-length Capri pants.

9) Businesses where they do not speak English or accept American dollars.

10) Waiters who will let you linger at a table for two hours after you are finished eating, without ever asking if you would like your bill.

The comforting news, in all of this, is that this affliction of needing to compare foreign places to other places is not just something that plagues Americans. A couple of years ago, my Norwegian host parents, Per and Tordis, from the family with whom I lived as an exchange student years ago, came to visit me in Seattle. It was their first major trip out of Norway since a vacation a couple of years earlier in Malaysia. I picked them up at SeaTac Airport. As we drove north on Aurora toward my condo in Greenwood, Tordis looked up at the skyscrapers and said, "Seattle reminds me of Kuala Lumpur."

Catpack

Dubrovnik, Croatia

It's our last night in Dubrovnik, and my friend Pat and I are nursing one final beer before moving on to the Dalmatian Coast islands in the morning. But it's late now. It's time to go.

I reach down for my backpack. That is when I experience one of the most creepy sensations I have ever experienced.

My backpack is made of nylon, but at this moment, it feels fleshy. It conjures up a horror movie scene in which somebody goes into a closet for a soccer ball and comes out with a human head that is still sort of wriggling.

I look down at my backpack, which is supposed to be black. Right now, my backpack looks milky white. I squint in the darkness. Finally it registers that in attempting to grab my backpack, I have instead grabbed the stomach of a stray cat who has staked his claim, going to sleep on top of my bag.

The cat is curled up in a ball. He has not flinched at my accidental groping of his stomach. He's settled in for the night to the Dave's Backpack Cat Hotel. Toilet probably included if I don't act fast.

"Ummm," I say to the cat, "excuse me?"

The cat looks up at me with the sort of indifferent glance one sometimes gets in the Mediterranean.

"Ummm... I am terribly sorry to bother you, but...."

The cat yawns, and turns away.

"I'm sorry," I say. "Do you speak English?"

The cat does not answer. He just stares at me.

Pat is standing now. He is waiting for me. I look at him helplessly. "I'm not sure what to do," I say. "I don't think the cat understands me."

English or no English, Pat wants to go. He kicks my backpack.

Not "kicks it" kicks it. He just gives it one of those gentle "scooch over, Cat" nudges that is sometimes necessary if one does not want to be held hostage by a cat until sunrise.

"Meow!" the cat hisses.

"AHA!!" I shriek. "So you do speak English!"

The cat rolls his eyes at me.

"Look, cat, I know my backpack is cozy and all, but it's mine. You need to move."

The cat does not move.

I look up at Pat. He looks more annoyed with me than the cat looks.

"What?!" I say to Pat.

He does not answer. Instead, he reaches down, and slowly lifts my backpack, evicting the feline from his hotel.

Eventually we make it back to our hotel and crash. But in the morning, I notice my backpack is covered in white cat hair.

Personal note to the SeaTac Airport customs officials: I promise the cat hair will be gone before I return home. I know how testy you guys get about people importing animal products.

Vegetarian Veal

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Walking through Dubrovnik's old town, I stumble across a restaurant with outdoor tables and people eating scrumptious-looking food.

"Vegetarijanski Restoran" says the menu, in Croatian.

My knowledge of the Croatian language is roughly equivalent to my knowledge of advanced pediatric brain surgery, so I am not entirely certain that I understand what that means. But sticking my neck out, I deduce that "Vegetarijanski Restoran" means "Vegetarian Restaurant."

Groovy. I'm not vegetarian, but hey, but a little eggplant never hurt anyone, so I find a table and open the menu to the English section, where it confirms that "Vegetarijanski Restoran" really does mean what I think it means.

Beneath the words "Vegetarian Restaurant" are a list of options. They start with salads. Green salad, mixed vegetable salad, shrimp salad, chicken salad....

Ummm... forgive my cultural insensitivities, but where I come from, chickens become highly irritable when you call them "vegetables."

My eyes wander further, into the main courses, where, among other vegetarian delights, one can order two different kinds of grilled shrimp, or chicken, or "rump steak," "Steak on the grill," "steak in mushroom sauce," or my own personal vegetarijanski favorite, "veal medallions with truffles."

I end up having shrimp, and a "mixed salad," which consists of lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes in equal proportions. I am deeply disappointed with the oil-and-vinegar salad dressing. I was hoping for some sort of meat sauce.

A Deeper Kind of Laughter

Dubrovnik, Croatia

I'm sitting at an outdoor café, nursing a beer. Kenny Loggins is belting out "Footloose" on a local radio station, but other than that, life is pretty good here.

The sun is sweltering, pounding down through humid air. I like heat and humidity. It's as if the air is giving you one of those smothering hugs you received as a child from some eccentric, over-perfumed relative. Down below me, the Adriatic Sea is spooning a dry, tree-cluttered coastline.

This feels idyllic. And I feel confused.

I feel confused because I'm a humor writer – and specifically, a travel humor writer whenever possible. I'm sitting in this idyllic place, unable to shake from my head the thought that 15 years ago, bombs were raining down upon this town that today feels innocent and safe.

I'm confused because I have learned over the years that humor is born out of incongruities. Squish two ideas together that don't really fit, create surprise and confusion, and voilà! People laugh. But I'm feeling massive incongruity here, between the war that happened, and the serenity today, and I can't find humor in it.

I will say this: I feel happy here. I feel happy because logically, I get what happened a decade and a half ago, but after a night and a morning in this vacation town, I'm not seeing evidence of the war. Two-thirds of the buildings in Dubrovnik were damaged when the Serbs attacked in 1991, but there is little evidence today, other than a lot of construction and the occasional building scarred by what might or might not be bullet holes. If you look harder, you can find more evidence; the tiles on the roofs are all brand new. But the people of Dubrovnik have done an amazing job of rebuilding, recovering, and moving on.

At first glance, it's hard for a naïve outsider like me to understand why anyone would attack Dubrovnik. According to my taxi driver yesterday, only 47,000 people live here. According to my guidebook, the Serbs attacked to cripple the tourism industry – to sting economically and emotionally by striking at what my part-time employer, Rick Steves, describes as Croatia's "proudest, most historic, and most beautiful city, the tourist capital of a nation dependent on tourism."

At first glance, it is difficult to find humor in incongruity here. But I'm finding something better. I am finding smiles, and laughter – not laughter at snarky jokes like the kind I tend to come up with, but deeper, alive laughter among the people who live here, who seem once again happy. Today in Dubrovnik, the only source of oppression is an overzealous sun. Life as it should be has returned.

It would be naïve and insensitive of me to think there are no emotional scars, from a complex war in which innocent civilians on all sides were hurt. But people around me seem calm and content once again – proof that people can and do bounce back from traumas.

Fifteen years later, Dubrovnik is again a vibrant city, a place where life is again celebrated. It gives me hope that innocent civilians in current war zones might also laugh again one day.

---

(Okay… this concludes my non-snarkified first impression of Croatia. My opportunities to upload blog posts are sporadic here, but stay tuned this week, as technology allows, for less serious ranting from a country where I feel far more lost than anywhere else I've been this year.)

Wish I had thought of this when I was in elementary school...

A group of school boys in central Serbia is in trouble after they allegedly stole a steamroller Tuesday and smashed it through the entrance of their school.

While road workers took shelter from the rain, the boys allegedly snagged the keys, which were hidden under the seat, started up the steamroller, and took off on a little joy ride.

Fair enough. Boys will be boys, and if you ask me, its the construction workers who should be in trouble. They left their keys unattended. Haven't they ever heard of The Club?

But according to the Associated Press, local officials say the boys didn't actually mean to damage their school. That part was an accident. The boys lost control of the steamroller, hopped off, and watched (in horror, I'm sure) as the machine trashed their beloved house o' learning.

Oh, come on, guys! You are not going to fall for the old "We had only peaceful intentions when we hijacked your steamroller" line, are you?

Eastern Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, (and Cuter) Customs Inspectors

Warnemünde, Germany

The last time I was in Eastern Germany, the Berlin Wall was still an ugly divider. East Germany and West Germany were two frightfully different countries. Passing through Checkpoint Charlie was a lengthy and spooky ordeal.

Tonight, though, in the carefree Eastern port town of Warnemünde, my brother and I swaggered to the customs checkpoint after an evening of tasty beers and boisterous street musicians. The innards of a couple of crèpes were dripping down our arms.

An ultra-cute, 20-something soldier smiled as we approached the customs inspection area at the ship terminal. I offered her my passport. She didn’t want to see it. She wanted to sniff my crèpe.

There was Amaretto in it. She nodded with approval. I offered her a bite. She said no thanks, though not without hesitating for a moment. I suppose even in a free Germany, customs agents really shouldn’t have Amaretto on their breath.

I still remember how intimidated I felt in the presence of East German customs agents in 1989. I never imagined that 16 years later, I’d be flirting with them.