Seat of Our Pants » Martin

The World Cup from Over Here

Martin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:48:19 +0000

I’ve had the privilege of watching the World Cup from a number of different locations. The most memorable one was in a backpacker hostel in Broome, Australia. The place was packed with people from all over the world, and a whole bunch of us decided that it would be a good idea to hole up for a month and watch as many games as we could stomach. Eight years later, I’m still in touch with several of those guys. That’s the power of idle sports watching for ya.

Curious cop catches a bit of the action in NYC

For this cup, we’ve found ourselves touring across the US, staying with friends and squeezing in a game here and there. We were at a sports bar on Manhattan when the home team played England to a draw. We watched Germany cut Australia to shreds together with a Hoboken, NJ family. With sadness, we watched Mexico get outgunned by Argentina at a Mexican restaurant in San Diego’s Old Town.

How does watching the cup in America stack up against other places? Well, the average sports fan in the US is generally more interested and knowledgeable than I would have guessed. Sometimes, you get the odd cheer for something that’s not traditionally cheerable (an offside by the opposing team, or a nice throw by the goaltender), but that’s just charming. People are interested in the game, they like to criticize tactics and applaud great efforts.

This is a contrast to many other places – in some locations Football has been the one true source of entertainment for generations – like the other day at the Mexican cantina. People were so fired up that they roared with nervous excitement every time their team took ball possession. It’d be tempting to chalk that up to their passionate Latin heritage, but no. I’ve seen similar behavior in Sweden and Germany.

Looking forward to 2014

As for the rest of the cup, well, my team didn’t even make it, and Jaime’s has been eliminated for a week now. Still, the World Cup is just fantastic entertainment. We can’t wait to see the last games. It will be four long years before it comes along again.

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Bacon Puts his Hoof Down!

Martin — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 03:25:23 +0000

Since no one else is stepping up to the plate, Bacon asked if he could put a post together for the betterment of this blog. Unfortunately, his paws are not fit to type on a keyboard, so I’ve volunteered to help the little oinker out.

First of all, Bacon thinks we’re doing a lousy job at blogging these days. I concur. We’ve been busy. Busy celebrating our re-entry to the US, busy overcoming the hangovers from celebrating our re-entry into the US, dealing with immigration paperwork, smogging the car, watching True Blood on HBO, picking up work, doing laundry, joining a gym, chewing gum, making DMV appointments and so on. You know – all that stuff people have to do after a thirteen month trip around the world.

At this point, Bacon says “I want posts, not excuses!”. He also snarls like only a 5 ounce cloth pig with no mouth can snarl. I guess we have to bow to his wishes. To tell the truth, we’ve missed our blogging habits a lot – not only the practice of daily writing, but also the interaction with you guys, our readers.

Expect the blog posts to resume at regular intervals from now on. We have lots of stuff to tell you about, and we have a lot of fun adventures to look forward to in the near future.

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The Sunny Center of the Free World

Martin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:43:38 +0000

The Forum Romanum, Trafalgar Square and the National Mall in Washington, DC. These are all big stacks of monuments, gathered together to impress visitors to each capital. The white marble monuments speak of warlike efforts, of heroism in the face of danger and of the self-glorification of the ruling people.

What makes the Mall stand out from the others is the fact that it is still a work in progress. New monuments, such as the World War II memorial, are still being added. It is also an active place of mourning and devotion – we found the Vietnam war memorial especially gripping: a place where people leave flags and flowers for their fallen loved ones.

Other than that, it is a pleasant, sunny expanse – the perfect place for a stroll with an ice cream in hand. If this fails to entertain you, you can always go check out the Lincoln Memorial. Isn’t Lincoln’s head just strangely Frankensteinish?

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Not What We Thought We’d Have to Fear

Martin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:48:04 +0000

I think food is half the journey. I love trying new things, experiencing new flavors and making mental notes on how I’ll enrich my cooking once I come home. There’s also that element of fear involved: will my stomach be able to handle this stuff? Are deep-fried bamboo worms really safe to eat?

Coming back, we supposed that the stomach adventure was over. Food safety standards and pasteurized products would keep us safe from Delhi belly and the Rangoon two-step. Imagine our surprise when we realized that we had a hard time digesting American restaurant food. All those processed items like fluffy white bread, sausages, cheese and god knows what they do to meat over here – almost ended up making us sick.

Thankfully, our friends have been treating us to home-cooked food, made with love and good produce. Meanwhile, I’m not sure if I want to eat a cream cheese bagel or have a Starbucks latte ever again. Funny how things work out sometimes.

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Cheers to CKO Kickboxing!

Martin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:43:31 +0000

One thing we’ve been missing throughout most of our trip is regular work-outs. The muscle groups used in long-term backpacking are surprisingly few: mostly a bit of shoulder work (for carrying those 80 lb backpacks) and some stamina-enhancing rushes between connecting buses. Throw in the odd 8 oz arm curl (aka beer drinking) and you pretty much get the picture.

So the other day, our friends at CKO Kickboxing in Whippany, NJ, treated us to a good old-fashioned kickboxing session. Kickboxing as an exercise form is completely new for me but not to my wife (she’s the Muscles in this relationship). The verdict? This is a great way to work out. The first 10 minutes are awful, I felt like I was about to throw my lungs up through my nostrils. After that, endorphins kicked in and I slowly began to feel better. A tough 45 minutes later and I couldn’t help but feel rejuvenated and happy.

This was a great way to start working out again. I wouldn’t mind if the soreness in my upper body was a little less intense, but then again I only have myself to blame.

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Hagia Sofia

Martin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:28:57 +0000

There are very few buildings and architectural monuments that manage to move me emotionally. Istanbul’s ancient Hagia Sofia is a clear exception: a place where history, architecture and religion have clashed over and over again. It is a defining building for this part of the world, and a beautiful one at that.

The current Hagia Sofia dates back to the 6^th century, even though there has been a Hagia Sofia at this site since 350 AD. It is famous not so much for its exterior as for the interior – the way the central dome is constructed represents a revolution in architecture. Walking in, you get the sense of being inside a giant hall in a separate universe, completely apart from the outside world. It was the main church for the Byzantine empire: a central place in the first thousand years of Christian history.

In 1453, the city fell (or was liberated, depending on how you look at it) to the Turks, and Hagia Sofia was converted into a mosque. I have mixed emotions about this: the black and golden shields that hang in there so obviously do not belong in that space (they were added in the 19^th century), and the Arabic script painted inside the main dome look clumsy and out of place. Ironically, the conversion into a mosque probably saved Hagia Sofia, as the church had fallen into a state of serious dilapidation during the last decades of the Byzantian empire. In 1935, the government declared it to be a museum, and I believe this is the best solution for this incredible building. If you want to see an actual example of Islamic architecture, the stunning Blue Mosque is just across the street.

Hagia Sofia is a stunner.

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Hagia Sofia Walk-through

Martin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:19:54 +0000

Sometimes, a picture says more than a thousand words. At other times, it may be necessary to use video to convey our messages. Check out this video below: it’s a walk around the upper gallery of the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.

This video is from the ground floor of the same building.

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Turkish Wine Tasting

Martin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:29:56 +0000

The key to happy traveling is to enjoy a variety of different activities. After seeing the architectural and commercial (and seriously tourist-infested) Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia and the Grand Bazaar, it was time to mix in something completely different. Luck had it that we stumbled upon a newly opened wine and cheese tasting room in Beyoglu, Istanbul.

After sampling their house wine (a pretty obvious Bordeaux copy that didn’t inspire much appreciation), we decided to try eight wines, four each of the Bogazkere and the Ökuzgözu varietals.

Generally speaking, the Ökuzgözu wines are fruity and nice, with lots of flavors. Bogazkere wines presents more structure and are ideal companions to meat. Both are unexpectedly acidic. Turkish wine makers often blend the two, creating really quite excellent wines.

We were surprised at the range of characteristics displayed by each grape. One of the Ökuzgözu wines felt like a Russian River pinot noir, you know the kind you can drink a bucket of before you tire. Another was incredibly fruity, while a third was so acidic that we instantly hated it. I would easily have mistaken two of the Bogazkere for something nice from Bordeaux – excellent beef or lamb chop wines.

Turkish wine is definitely something we’ll keep an eye out for in our local wine store – where ever that will be!

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Turkey: a Quick Beer Review

Martin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:04:19 +0000

Eastern Turkey is a lot of things. What it’s not is a beer lover’s paradise. Licensed restaurants are far in between, and not all towns have a store that sells it. In the name of reader service we did however sample the local brews that we could find. They were all of the same brand: Efes; each pretty much indistinguishable from each other.

Indeed, Efes is the most sold beer in Turkey. It actually ranks as one of Europe’s top 10 selling beer brands. We found it in a number of varieties: bottles, cans, Efes Ice, Efes draft etc.

The taste? It’s like any other international style lager – pretty predictable, with a balanced make-up and just enough hops to make it interesting. A problem in Eastern Turkey was that the beers have often been kept in ice cold conditions for long periods of time, alternating with times of very warm temperatures. Hence, some bottles were a bit on the flat side.

Still, a very enjoyable acquaintance, perfect for washing down the travel dust after a bout with the Anatolian roads.

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Digital Guidebooks vs. Paper Guidebooks

Martin — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:56:17 +0000

We all know that traveling isn’t what it used to be five, ten or fifty years ago. A lot of things have changed, some for the better, and some things are perhaps not the great improvements we once thought they’d be. Good things such as Skype (no more hyper expensive collect calls) and internet research (a mixed blessing but Google is handier than lugging around an encyclopedia) stand against things such as lightning speed proliferation of popular places (thereby flooding them with tourists) and the ability to be reached anywhere on your holiday.

Many things have gone digital and more will: the next product in line seems to be travel guidebooks. For a while now, Lonely Planet has been selling their guidebooks online on a chapter by chapter basis. Since we decided to travel to Georgia on a whim, we didn’t have time to buy a guidebook nor do much research, so we opted to buy the online chapter.

The pros are these: it’s nice to be able to buy and instantly use something that you need. It also saves weight. The cons are more plentiful: it is a total pain in the neck to access information on the fly. Try sitting on a hot park bench and start up a laptop, squinting madly at the screen to try to read it just because you haven’t memorized the street name of your next guesthouse. The pdf format is awfully slow to scroll through as well – you don’t really use a guidebook like you use a book, you want to flip back and forth between maps, glossaries and place descriptions. This doesn’t work with a pdf file. The obvious solution would be to print the pdf guides, but who wants to lug around a wad of loose leaves?

So here’s the seatofourpants.com verdict: pdf guides may be a decent emergency option, but until they develop them into something better and more useable, old fashioned guide books are worth their weight. Go books!

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