A blog 20 years in the making.

I had an idea the other day, the solution to weekend blogging. Generally I can't be bothered on the weekends to produce anything new, and why should I, since it's purely for my own purposes and not for pay? In any case, I have hundreds of pages of already written material, mainly old letters and diaries. So I will select and post them slightly edited, as befitting my profession.

In June 1983, my friends Steve and Rich and I crossed the English Channel. Fl. = Florin, the money the Dutch used to use.

June 3, 1983.

Woke and had a good breakfast at our Harvich [England] B&B, and after some confusion caught a bus to the Parkeston Quay, where we had no trouble boarding a huge ferry, the Prinz Oberton. It had five decks, with shops and restaurants for the elite, a cafeteria for the masses. We ate in the cafeteria -- I had some industrial white fish -- and then watched a sweet and sour Bert Reynolds movie, Best Friends, in the ship's tiny moviehouse. As usual, Bert Reynolds can't act.

Afterward Rich and I had a talk with a 10-year-old English boy named John, who knew all sorts of dirty jokes, and told us them. He had his Dutch mother with him, who habitually closed one eye when she talked, which was mostly about the perils of Amsterdam. Things aren't what they used to be, everybody's nasty now, etc.

We disembarked and went through customs without a hitch and caught a train to Amsterdam. As soon as we stepped off the train, touts selling hotel rooms encircled us like mosquitoes. The two most persistent ones gave us flyers for the Hotel California and the Orca. Without any better information, and believing the hostel would be full already (it was getting late), we headed for the Hotel California -- a sinister hotel name if I've ever heard one, but easy to remember.

En route to the hotel, Rich stepped on a plate of glass covering a cheap etching, one of many a cheap-etching salesman had put on display on the sidewalk, and broke the glass. Rich owns this etching now, cost fl. 10. We found the Hotel California without too much trouble. Fl. 35 per person, for three bunks in a four-bunk room. We thought we had bought the room, but in fact we'd bought only our spots on the bunk beds. Very late in the night a fellow came in to claim the fourth spot. For a moment, we were sure he had come to rob us.

But that was later. Our fl. 35 also bought a "free drink" at the hotel bar. There we met the hotel concierge, a brown-haired British girl, and the bartender, another British girl, dark-complexioned, who reminded me of [a girl I knew in high school]. The "free drink" reminded me of water.

Out to seek dinner at 11 p.m. We found a small kebob place not far away. "What you like?" said the manager, a dark fellow with an enormous mustache.

"Three falafel specials," Steve said. Rich and I agreed. We'd seen it on the menu, for fl. 7.

"OK," said the manager. "You want mixed meat? Mixed meat?"

Huh? This didn't precisely register. But we said, "Sure!" vaguely thinking it a variety of falafel or something.

Shortly he brought us each a large plate of meat and rice, and we were so hungry that we started eating right away, and didn't say much till we were practically done. At that point, the proprietor brought us a slip of paper, our check, which totaled fl. 17.50 for each of us. We protested; the proprietor angrily said, "You eat mixed meat"; and then Steve said, "We didn’t eat falafels, did we?" We had to admit that we hadn't, and that mixed meat -- which we now noticed on the menu high on the wall -- was indeed fl. 17.50, the most expensive thing.

Postscript, 2003: For the rest of the time we were in Europe, among the three of us the inquiry, "Is this a mixed-meat place?" would usually get a laugh.