Rockville, Indiana

Posted on August 19, 2025 by admin

Now I’ve seen it: the grave of Batman.

George W. Batman, that is, who died in 1897, so he never lived to see his surname put to the other uses we all know so well. Variants of his name include Bateman, Battman and Baitman, meaning that Batman really isn’t that odd. Except it does look odd on that large stone, but only because of recent conditioning by a particularly successful fictional character. George W. happens to repose at Rockville Cemetery in Rockville, Indiana, and I happened to visit early one Sunday morning in late July.

A pleasant graveyard, founded in 1824 — same year as the town itself — and well marked by upright stones, but not overly landscaped.

A few memorials reach upward, but not that far.

A few mausoleums denote formerly big fish in the small pond that is Rockville, seat of Parke County.

Mostly modest stones populate the cemetery, presumably for regular folks of the past.

It isn’t too often that you see veterans of the War of 1812 (but not never).

Numerically speaking, there just weren’t that many compared to later, greater wars, and probably many of their graves aren’t marked as such. Nathan was near the other Adamsons, and indeed two of them (per Find-A-Grave) are his children.

Not too many blocks from the cemetery is the Parke County Courthouse. We encountered it on Saturday afternoon, soon after arriving in Rockville (pop. about 2,600), when temps were about as high as they would be that day. Sweaty 90s.

The courthouse is a grand Second Empire pile with some Beaux Arts added to the mix, completed in 1882, during the golden age of U.S. courthouses. Designed by T.J. and Brentwood Tolan, a father and son team. They did a lot of courthouses.

The giant dartboard isn’t something you see too often on courthouse grounds. Could it be the Dartboard of Justice? That’s how sentencing is done for crimes that call for one to 20 years in the jug; a toss by the judge, or the jury foreman.

No, a small street festival was being set up at that moment, though not up and running yet. It was too hot for that anyway. But not for a quick look at some of the buildings ringing the courthouse, most in good shape and mostly tenanted.

G&M Variety has the soul of a five-and-dime, but a more accurate classification these days would be a five-and-ten dollar store: a step above a dollar store, the love child of a convenience store and a standard grocery store, with a souvenir shop added to the mix. Roaming around its aisles was pleasant, for a look at the sometimes unusual merchandise, and the AC.

Drinks on sale that made me recollect sodas from my mid-60s childhood.

Frostie! Nehi! Triple XXX! Dang? We didn’t have Dang. Butterscotch root beer?

Pangs of nostalgia weren’t enough for me to spend $2.49 for an ordinary-sized soda, though I was a little thirsty.

More courthouse square.

The Old Jail Inn & Drunk Tank, now a B&B.

I returned to the square on Sunday morning, after the cemetery, for a further look when it wasn’t so hot.

Memorial Presbyterian Church and its freestanding bell tower.

It isn’t a Presbyterian church any more — its cross conspicuous in its absence — though a Presbyterian congregation meets there sometimes. These days it counts as an event space, with music performances, recitals, meetings, and other gatherings there, according to Billie Creek Village, more about which later.

Next to the former church.

Museum? I’m a little skeptical.

Southern Road Food ’25

Posted on August 12, 2025 by admin

I’m no Guy Fieri, but I don’t really need to be to find road food. Besides, he has a staff. I just have Google Maps and my experience and instincts, which sometimes fail me, but more often guide me to cheap, local and delicious. That and word-of-mouth recommendations have led me to a lot of tasty dishes over the years.

On my recent Southern jaunt, I arrived in Sumter, SC, around lunchtime, and found my way to Korner Shack II. Not that you could tell the name from the sign over the cinder block shack.

I’d happened on a Southern chicken joint, true to that tradition, take out only, and during the few minutes I waited for my order as people came and went — for it was a popular place — I noted I was the palest customer. I ordered a box of chicken livers and fries that I ate partly in a nearby park, and partly in my room that evening. Mildly spiced and well fried, the boxed livers reminded me of the satisfying livers that a Chicago-area Harold’s Chicken would serve. Korner Shack sold me one of the best meals of the trip.

Back in Myrtle Beach, Yuriko and I breakfasted one morning at Winna’s Kitchen, who offers patrons some sunny advice on the wall.

That, and really good food. I had the Whistler – “crispy sausage or bacon, sharp coastal cheddar, a fried egg & lemony-dressed arugula on a homemade bun,” the menu said. With a side of grits.

Superb. Even the buttery grits. At home I usually douse my grits with honey, but butter will do. Experience has taught me that restaurants aren’t always good with grits, but when they are, they can be really good. Winna’s served up some of those really good grits, complementing its really good breakfast sando, though not quite as memorable as the cheese grits I enjoyed at a place in Mexico Beach, Florida, that I believe was washed away by a hurricane some years after I visited in the 2000s.

Also in Myrtle Beach: seafood in bulk.

Not the best I’ve ever had, and a little expensive, but satisfying – especially Yuriko’s desire for seafood during a visit anywhere near the sea, true to her Japanese upbringing.

Didn’t have barbecue in MB, but I liked this sign.

Didn’t eat here either. Call it Schrödinger’s restaurant.

I found barbecue in Georgia. Specifically, Dahlonega. North Georgia Barbecue Co. is a stone’s throw from the Gold Museum and its best advertisement is out front of the restaurant. Good eats inside.

While it’s well and good to support local joints, I’m not a snob when it comes to fast food on the road. Otherwise, how would I know the joy of Mos Burger or have experience with how different cultures interpret something as distinctively American as fast food?

Not long after arriving in Athens, Ga., I spotted a place I associate with Texas. I took a drive-thru order back to the room.

I checked, and the large majority of Whataburger locations are indeed in Texas, but there are others in 16 other states, including 35 in Georgia.

Finally, an old friend among Nashville places: Brown’s Diner.

My friends Stephanie and Wendall treated me to a wonderful homemade meal at their house, so later I treated them to a meal at Brown’s, deep in the heart of Nashville. It is a storied place nearly 100 years old, though expanded since I knew it. I enjoyed a fair number of burgers at Brown’s in the 1980s, but not since, and was a little surprised that it has survived to the present, but glad. I had a Brown’s burger and it all came back to me; and I understood the joint’s longevity.

Tryon Palace

Posted on July 20, 2025 by admin

Talk much about colonial North Carolina and Blackbeard is going to come up – at least when talking with my old friend Dan, who had a fascination with the buccaneer even back in college. An artful storyteller, which surely helped him in his former career as an ad man, Dan can regale you with Blackbeard stories, detailing his short but colorful pirate career, including the fiery display he made of his person to scare onlookers witless. A pirate needs to be known for more than mere thievery on the high seas.

“In battle [Edward] Teach would have a sling over his shoulders that held at least three flintlock pistols and would often stick lit matches under his hat to give a smokey and fearsome appearance,” the Golden Age of Pirates explains, though without the Dan’s storytelling gusto, illustrating Blackbeard’s pyrotechnical flair with gestures all his own.

Dan and his wife Pam recently moved to New Bern, NC, very near Blackbeard’s haunts, including the site of his swashbuckler’s death in action off Okracoke Island. I don’t believe their retirement move from Alabama was to be near Blackbeard, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt during site selection. On the first evening of my visit to New Bern, Dan and I spent had a fine time out on his deck, perched near a small inlet ultimately connected to the wider ocean, watching the stars slowly emerge and talking of old times and newer things but not, at that moment, about Blackbeard.

That was the next day, as we toured Tryon Palace, even though the original structure was built many decades after Blackbeard’s newly severed head wound up tied to the bowsprit of the sloop Jane, put there by pirate hunter Robert Maynard. One colonial subject leads to another.

Tryon Palace is crown jewel of historic sites in New Bern, except that it’s actually a recreation of the 20th century. Somehow that doesn’t take away from its historic appeal.

When you stand in front of it, you’re peering not only back to 1770, when the colonial government of North Carolina completed, at great expense, a structure that looked like this one. You’re also looking at a building completed within living memory, in 1959, which is considered a faithful restoration of the one that NC Gov. William Tryon had erected.

“When the colonial Assembly convened in [New Bern] on 8 Nov. 1766, Tryon presented a request for an appropriation with which to construct a grand building that would serve as the house of colonial government as well as the governor’s residence,” says the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.

“Less than a month later, the Assembly acceded to the governor’s wishes by earmarking £5,000 for the purchase of land and the commencement of construction. The appropriated sum was borrowed from a fund that had been established for the construction of public schools. To replenish the depleted school fund, a poll tax and a levy on alcoholic beverages were imposed.”

Just about the worst kind of taxes when it came to irritating the non-coastal non-elites of the colony, a discontent that eventually erupted as the Regulator Rebellion. Ultimately Gov. Tryon, in personal command of the colony’s militia, crushed the Regulators – untrained men who seem to have been foolish enough to meet Tryon’s trained men in an open field at the Battle of Alamance in 1771. (Which isn’t entirely forgotten.)

We took an early afternoon tour of Tryon Palace, guided by a woman in period costume. She told us about Tryon – no mention of Alamance, however – and his successor, Josiah Martin, the only other royal governor to use the palace. Gov. Martin spent more on furnishing the place, only to be obliged to skedaddle come the Revolution. We also heard about architect and master builder John Hawks (d. 1790), who came to North Carolina from England to build the palace which, of course, is only a palace by canebrake standards of the colony. It is a stately manor house, however.

The colonial legislature and the new state legislature both used the palace for a while, so it counts as the first capitol of North Carolina. That meant I was visiting yet another state capitol, without realizing it at first. A former capitol, that is, including ones I’ve seen in Illinois, Texas (counting Washington-on-the-Brazos as such), Virginia, Florida and Iowa. Abandoned as a government building after the NC capital left New Bern, fire consumed most of Tryon Palace just before the end of the 18th century. Its west wing survived for other uses over the next century-plus.

In the 20th century, along came Maude Moore Latham, a wealthy local woman with a taste for historic restoration. If much of colonial Williamsburg up in Virginia could be restored, so could colonial New Bern in North Carolina. Despite the fact that a road and houses had been built on the site of old Tryon Palace, she eventually facilitated the restoration, made possible (or at least more accurate) by the fact that John Hawks’ plans for the building had survived.

Also restored: The gardens of Tryon Palace, flower and vegetable. Despite the heat, we couldn’t miss that.

After our sweaty visit to the palace and gardens, Dan and I repaired to the restaurant in the nearby North Carolina History Center, called Lawson’s On The Creek, for refreshing beverages and more talk of Blackbeard and many other things. We closed the joint down over beer, at 4 p.m.

Downing a beer was just the thing. That was our homage to those days of yore. In colonial America, beer was no mere refreshing beverage, but an essential one.

RTW ’25 Leftovers

Posted on June 12, 2025 by admin

Summertime, and the living’s not bad. Pretty good, really. But those aren’t as catchy as the actual lyric. Time to pause posting for the summer holiday string: Flag Day, Juneteenth, Canada Day, Independence Day and Nunavut Day. Come to think of it, that’s an exceptionally representative run of holidays for North America. Back around July 13.

The flight from Chicago to Tokyo took us far north, as that flight path usually does. There was more light than I thought there would be, looking down at this moment on the February snows of the Yukon or Alaska; I’ll never know which. I could have been eying the border, for all I know, which suggests that borders are a gossamer fiction at these latitudes.

Japan

It was a happy moment when we ate at Mos Burger. One of these days, I’m going to dig out my paper copy of an article I wrote for Kansai Time Out in 1993 about four varieties of Western-style fast food chains founded in Japan, and post it. Today isn’t that day. But I can say that Mos Burger was the best of them.

As good as I remember it from 25+ years ago, the last time I went to one.

In Enoshima, near the ocean, this fellow hawks soft serve ice cream. Goo goo g’joob. Look but don’t touch.

The handsome Osaka City Central Public Hall, completed in 1918. Amazing that it survived the war and urban renewal 20 years later, those forces that generally gave modern urban Japan the boxy concrete character it enjoys today.

India

A monumental monument in New Delhi: India Gate, which honors more than 74,100 soldiers of the Indian Army who died during the Great War, and a number more in the Third Afghan War a few years later. They did their part. One of the larger relics of the Raj, unless you count things better described as legacies, such as railroad lines, parliamentary government, and the bitter feud between India and Pakistan.

While we were looking at India Gate, a group of about a dozen uniformed schoolboys, who had detached themselves from a larger group, approached me and asked where I was from. They were gleeful to hear “America,” a reaction I didn’t know anyone would have anymore, but I suppose they’ve seen a lot of our movies. A middle-aged male chaperon appeared in short order and shooed them away, while giving me a sidelong glance with a hairy eyeball, though I hadn’t precipitated the encounter in any way. I was just a suspicious foreigner, I guess.

The Taj Mahal has a fair amount of parkland around it. That means a population of monkeys, too. I spotted more monkeys in urban India than I would have anticipated. These didn’t seem to be bothered by the men, the dogs or the motorcycle.

On display at the Ghandi Museum: a Marconigram. I don’t know that I’d ever seen one of those before. Or maybe there was one on display at the Titanic Museum in Branson. Anyway, that’s one good reason to go to museums: for things once common, now curiosities. Safia Zaghloul was an Egyptian political activist of the time.

United Arab Emirates

In Dubai it seemed like there were more men at work sweeping, mopping and other cleaning of floors and other flat places, per square meter, than anywhere else I’ve ever been. There are worse things to do with cheap labor.

Not sure exactly where this was, except somewhere out on Palm Jumeirah. Must have been a wall, or like a wall, in one of the posh retail corridors winding through one of the posh resort properties amid the poshness of the island.

Note: White on green is common indeed around the world.

Desert flowers. Of course, sprinklers water that bit of terrain at regular intervals.

Germany

What’s Berlin without currywurst? They say it came into style soon after the city was divided.

What would Germany be without Ritter Sport? A giant stack of them can be seen, in their great variety, at the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin. Later, I bought about 10 squares of RS at a discount price at a Netto grocery store near our hotel. Think Aldi or Lidl, but more cluttered.

Views of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, near the Tiergarten in Berlin. It wasn’t there in 1983.

Czech Republic

Not calling it Czechia. Or, if it ever comes to it, not calling India Bharat, either.

St. George’s Basilica. I admired the nearby St. Vitus Cathedral. That’s a grand edifice. But St. George’s has that human scale, and echoes of an even earlier time. It was completed during the time of Good King Wenceslaus.

Vladislav Hall. The site of centuries of Bohemian parties, banquets and balls, me boys. That and affairs of state.

The Dancing House. We rode a streetcar line out of our way to see it, though not that far. It wasn’t there in 1994.

A sidewalk golem in the old Jewish Quarter of Prague. The Sidewalk Golems was a relatively obscure band who sometimes toured with Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys.

This could have been over Spain or Portugal.

The last image of thousands that I took, a staggering number in any context except digital images that take practically no time or effort to make.

Japanese Food

Posted on June 2, 2025 by admin

Take a pork cutlet, a nice thin one but not too thin, dredge a bit in flour, dip in beaten egg, coat with panko, and deep fry in light oil. Serve sliced so that the pieces are easier to manage with chopsticks, and with a brown Worcestershire-y sauce (but better, I think). Add a bed of lettuce, and sides of rice, miso and Japanese pickles.

A modest dish, but there’s nothing quite like a good tonkatsu. It is an example of salaryman food. Of course, other people eat it – a lot in my case, since the happy day sometime in 1990 when I had it for the first time. But in the lunchtime domain of male office workers in dense Osaka, the Kitchen of Japan, tonkatsu is a familiar regular (and in other parts of the country, too). They are little works of fragrant and delicious art whose purpose is to be eaten for the pocket money that their wives allow them for lunches.

Naturally, I sought it out during my recent days in Japan. This one is before the application of sauce. It’s the legacy of a Japanese adaptation of a European, specifically French dish, back in the 19th century. A detail from the Meiji era.

Another popular adaptation in Japan, spotted among the office towers near Osaka Castle. Doughnuts have long had a home in Japan.

Yes. It was time.

Another day, during a solo wander in the streets near Midosuji Blvd., I took rest at a small coffee shop, part of a large chain.

Doutor Coffee has some 1,200 locations in East Asia, with a concentration of 900 or so in Japan and others in Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. I expect most of them are franchised locations, and many are along underground pedestrian ways near subways or train stations. Mine was so close to a subway station entrance, you could hear the soft beeping of the electronic tickets and the slightly louder clank of the turnstiles if you decided to pay attention.

Mostly, the place was quiet, with people setting themselves in front of their laptops or fiddling with their phones. I joined the laptop users, pecking out emails or parts of whatever article was due next.

Considering the strong dollar (in February, anyway), the tab for milk tea and a warm chocolate croissant came in less than double digits in US dollar terms. But a refreshing beverage and a tasty snack are only part of the deal: you’re also renting a place to sit.

But not a place to smoke anymore. I was a little surprised, considering how consistently tobacco smoke used to linger, or sometimes billow and swirl, in public spaces in Japan 30+ years ago. That shift oddly reminded me of visits to Preservation Hall in 1981 and 1989 (minus the jazz, of course). The first time, the jazzmen played in a room lightly clouded with smoke. Eight years later, the air was clear.

ISU Family Stroll

Posted on May 12, 2025 by admin

There was some grumbling about the fact that the ISU graduation ceremony, at least the part that involved Ann, had been scheduled for the evening. Old timers, that is me, remembered the fine spring Friday the 13th in Tennessee long ago when VU held its graduation, and its late morning start.

But ISU’s schedule had an upside. The four of us stayed in a hotel room in Normal that night, which was an extra expense, but also enjoyed a leisurely Saturday morning in our room and at the hotel’s no-extra-charge breakfast, which wasn’t bad. Leaving just before noon, we got a look around the property, whose theme seemed to be faux chateau.

How about making it look like a cake? One of those square multi-layer ones, with some French accents. That may have been the thinking during the design phase. And don’t forget bronze lions.

Ann wanted to spend some time on campus taking pictures at specific spots where she has fond memories, so that’s what we did. A few sites were inside a few of the buildings. We also spent some time, under a very warm sun, at the ISU Quad. Not our first time there.

I did what I do, wandering off for quick looks at this and that. Cook Hall is an old favorite.

In front of Cook Hall is “Ruins IV.”

“Ruins IV was created by Nita Sunderland, an art professor from Bradley University,” notes the ISU web site. “The Ruins IV sculpture reflects stylized medieval imagery and is part of a series that Sunderland said stands as ‘a statement about our relationship with history and former societies,’ as well as the importance of learning from mistakes and experiments of the past.”

If you say so, Nita. Is it ever just enough to say, this sculpture’s got some really cool shapes?

No one else approached the plaque-on-rock memorial to William Saunders (d. 1900), the horticulturalist who designed the lawn, but I did. Nice work, Bill.

Of course we had to visit the Old Main Bell.

All together, our ISU amble took about an hour. Then it was time for brunch at some distance from campus, but still in the greater Bloomington-Normal metroplex. We enjoyed some of the following wonders and more, at middle-class prices.

What a fine day.

Indian Food

Posted on May 5, 2025 by admin

“Stop for tea? Food?” our driver said partly through the longish drive from Jaipur to Delhi, on out last full day in the country. I’m sure he had a list, probably in his head, of places he would earn a bit of baksheesh for delivering us.

This wasn’t an issue. That’s how the game is played, and besides, after nearly a week in India, we’d had some pretty good Indian food as a result, mostly the sort of north Indian specialties also available in the United States during the last 30 years or so: curries, dals, samosas, biryani, chicken tikka masala, lots of good naan, lassi, and so forth. Also, corn flakes at breakfast sometimes with warm milk.

His best suggestion was a roadside pullout zone some miles outside metro Delhi sporting an agglomeration of small food stalls, with long benches for common seating under the shadow of a large shed roof, and stand-up eating tables outside in the late February warmth. Indian roads are well traveled by private cars now, and the place had a healthy crowd, though not overwhelming, enough to create a hum of ambient conversation and kid squeals. The ambient smell: ah, Indian spices. Or, as I expect they call them, spices.

We bought tea in small earthen cups with the assistance of a boy of about 10, surely related to the proprietor, who earned a few rupees from me for his trouble. We downed it standing up at a table. But I don’t want to idealize the stop: trucks belched smoke into the air nearby, small mounds of debris – such as pieces of brick or cinderblock, along with some trash – dotted the grounds near the parking lot, which was also home to a few mangy dogs. Still, it was a lively place, and the well-spiced chai went down well.

Our driver’s second-best suggestion was the one between Jaipur and Delhi. We weren’t especially hungry, but had light sandwiches.

The humble grilled cheese sandwich. Imagine my surprise when I took a first bite and the cheese focused me completely on eating the rest of the sandwich with the same gusto. Why is the cheese so good? What kind of cheese, anyway? None I could identify right away. I put these questions out of my mind and enjoyed the cheese, but now I’m thinking about them again.

Happy cows? That seems like an oversimplification, but it is true that in India cows are on that list that every society unconsciously draws up of most favored animals, such as dogs and cats in North America. So less stress for bovines, better-tasting milk products. But that seems a little hippy-dippy and without a scientific basis. On the other hand —

The last night in Delhi we walked the short distance to a small branch of a very large international organization and had dinner. In a place without beef, chicken is the star.

Some observations (I’m working on a coffee table book, McDonald’s Around the World.)*

As I was slowly carrying my tray up a flight of stairs, a young employee came to help, taking the tray to our table. She didn’t wait around for a tip, though I would have given her one.
I didn’t make exact notes of the price, but accounting for the relative strength of the dollar (at the time), I’d say the food was a discount to domestic McDonald’s, though it has been a good many months since I’ve been to a U.S McD’s. Maybe 20 to 30 percent less, as a guesstimate.
The food was… McDonald’s. Not bad, in other words, with the French fries hewing exactly to the formula.
The paper place mat was, alas, not distinctive to India, unlike in some places and times. My idea of a souvenir is the paper place mat I got in ’90s Moscow, at the only McDonald’s I’ve seen with bouncers.

The place was busy, and clearly popular with those under 30. I might have been the oldest person in the place, though that happens more and more to me. I’ve seen it before: McDonald’s in Japan in the 1990s, which attracted few of Yuriko’s parents’ generation. I didn’t visit a McDonald’s in Japan this time around, but my money would be on finding people of Yuriko’s generation well represented.

* No I’m not.

Dotonburi & Hozenji Temple, Osaka

Posted on April 21, 2025 by admin

There he is, Glico Man.

A lot of people want to emulate Glico Man.

Or at least acknowledge him.

Gilco Man may be a mascot for the Japanese food conglomerate of that name – the Osaka food conglomerate, maker of Pocky sticks – but he’s pretty much a one-trick pony on the sign at least, exuberant at his racing victory. Still, everyone in Osaka knows him, since the sign in one form or another — LED these days, neon before — has been displayed for 90 years over Ebisu Bridge (Ebisubashi) where it crosses the Dotonbori Canal.

Dotonburi is the name of the canal, which is an early Edo period (17th century) enlargement of a river, but it is also the name of the district. A packed place even by Japanese standards, replete with restaurants, bars and other small business, many of whom advertise themselves in highly visual ways. When photographers, pro and casual, want to take flashy nighttime images of Osaka, with walls of neon and LED advertising and crowds filling the pedestrian avenues, Dotonburi is where they go.

We were there during the day, joining the crowds, both on the bridge and on Dotonburi’s side streets.

Nice view from the bridge.

Something I wouldn’t have expected in February, but we did see something similar in December.

When enthusiastic fans of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team really want to celebrate, they jump into the canal. Forty years ago during an especially exuberant moment, they found a life-sized advertising statue of Col. Sanders at a nearby KFC and dropped that into the canal, where it was unrecovered until 2009. The Tigers were pretty much a doormat team during the period when the Colonel was lost – mere coincidence?

A sort of Ferris wheel, looking out over the canal. It wasn’t there in the 1990s. We considered a ride, but it looked like it was moving awfully slow.

One of my favorite features of Dotonburi is the 3D restaurant advertising.

Hidden away in the nearby streets mostly too small for vehicles but well adorned with odd things —

— is Hozenji Temple.

“Built in 1637, Hozenji Temple pays homage to Fudo Myoo, one of five guardians of Buddhism,” notes Travel Japan. “During the 1600s, Namba and the surrounding area of Dotonbori were blossoming as a center for entertainment, with dramatic performances of kabuki and bunraku taking place throughout the district. Even the temple catered to the performing arts, with traditional rakugo storytelling and stage plays performed on site.”

One depiction of the Buddha.

But the temple is better known for its statue of Fudo Myoo.

Covered with moss, he is.

Because the thing to do is toss water on the statue. Keeps him hydrated. I took a turn myself, because who I am to deny Fudo Myoo a nice cup of water?

Lazy Monkey Chocolate

Posted on April 9, 2025 by admin

Usually it’s my brother Jim who asks me about my favorite meals on a trip, and he might yet, but this time Lilly did first. I had to think about it. There were a good many good meals along the way, but the best was hard to pin down. As for my favorite food, I knew at once: Lazy Monkey Pistachio & Kunafa Chocolate, which I bought at Emirates Cooperative Society, a mid-sized Dubai grocery store near my hotel, where I sourced a number of meals.

Lazy Monkey is a product of the UAE, though using Belgian chocolate. One might think of oil and tourism when it comes to the UAE economy, and one would be right, but food processing is part of the mix.

As for the selection at the grocery store, UAE products were an important component, but I also saw or bought items from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, India and other Middle East or Indian Ocean places. The Lebanese bread in bags was soft and just chewy enough, and a good platform of peanut butter made in India and hummus made in Jordan. For its part, Saudi Arabia produces good chocolate too, some of which I tried, but carelessly didn’t make note of any names.

Anyway, Lazy Monkey was better. The chocolate itself was excellent, raised to wonderful by the generous pistachio filling, and then to extraordinary by the slightly crunchy texture. That might have been the pistachio, but there’s also the matter of kunafa, which I had to look up. There are many variations around the Middle East, with a basis of crispy dough, cheese and syrup.

Even better, Lazy Monkey is available only in the UAE, even if you order it on line – which, at 29 dirhams, is much more expensive than at the store – though the web site promises it will be exported to other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council before long. You can’t find it on Amazon, which has other kinds of UAE pistachio chocolate confections available at similarly high prices.

All that adds to Lazy Monkey’s after-the-trip appeal, the sort everyday exoticism that Ritter Sport had when it wasn’t sold in the United States, or for that matter, Ghirardelli had when it wasn’t available everywhere from Podunk Hollow to East Jesus.

The Balloon-Blowing Couple on Their Way to Ústí nad Labem, Tokyo Banana World & Three Major Train Stations

Posted on April 8, 2025 by admin

On the afternoon of March 12, a gray, chilly day, Jay and I arrived at the Main Railway Station in Prague (Praha hlavní nádraží) to catch the EC 170 back to Berlin, leaving at 4:28 pm. We were early, and had time to look around the station.

A grand edifice. “One of the final glories of the dying empire,” notes the 2002 Rough Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics, though perhaps “ramshackle empire” might have been more apt, since who knew the catastrophe of WWI would play out quite the way it did.

“It was designed by Joseph Fanta and officially opened in 1909 as the Franz Josef Station,” the guide book continues. “Arriving in the subterranean modern section, it’s easy to miss the station’s surviving Art Nouveau parts. The original entrance on the Wilsonova still exudes imperial confidence, with its wrought iron canopy and naked figurines clinging to the sides of the towers.”

The grand hall interior is grand indeed.

But largely empty. The crowds were at the more modern lower level, where a long tunnel connects all the train platforms, ticket offices and a fair amount of retail. We boarded our train without any problem and found that our car was nearly empty too. Not many people were headed for Berlin that Wednesday evening.

At one of the suburban stations, however, a young man and young woman got on and sat across the aisle in our car. They had that contemporary Euro-look: casually dressed, visible tattoos here and there, a few studs and earrings for both, and the mandatory beard for the man. They were in a merry mood. Not obnoxiously loud, but making happy-sounding conversations in what I assume was Czech, complete with the universal language of giggling; clearly a couple headed somewhere for some fun. Someone’s wedding, or maybe just a few days off work.

None of that was unusual. Then the woman removed a small air cylinder from her backpack and started using it to blow up balloons, which she and the man proceeded to swat around the car. I’ve been on a lot of trains in a lot of places, but I have to say, that was a first.

That didn’t last long. Soon they got off the train at the last station before the border with Germany, Ústí nad Labem, and the car got quiet again. I hope they continued to have a good time in that town.

On the trip down to Prague on the 10th, in a mostly full car, we had passed the same way going the opposite direction, and it was still daytime. So we got a good look at the hilly territory of the Elbe River Valley south of Dresden, where the train mostly follows the river. A picturesque spot, even in winter.

As for the German-Czech frontier, crossing was perfunctory. Hardly worth calling it a border. No officious or menacing border guards roamed the cars demanding Papers! (Reisepass?) Not in the 21st-century Schengen Area. We were on an Evening Train to Berlin, not a Night Train to Munich. The only indication of entering a new country (either way) was that after crossing each time, our tickets were checked again, electronically, by fairly laid-back workers of the respective railway companies on either side of the line.

The 175-mile trip to Prague began and ended at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, a massive station that didn’t exist the first time I went to Berlin. A predecessor station on the site had been badly damaged during the war, and the new station wasn’t developed until the 2000s, as Berlin’s fancy new main multi-modal transit center. Besides intercity trains, Berlin S-bahn and U-bahn trains go there, along with a lot of buses. There is also enough retail at the station to qualify as its own mall.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof isn’t an old style, but it is impressive.

One more impressive rail hub on this trip was a continent away: Tokyo Station, the busiest one in passenger numbers in that urban agglomeration, which is saying something. It too is a multi-modal facility, with various intercity rail lines meeting there, along with subways and buses. The Shinkansen from Osaka goes there, which is how we arrived. The structure dates from 1914 and amazingly survived war in the 1940s – and just as threatening – urban renewal in the 1960s. In more recent years, the station was restored to close to its original design.

Under the main dome.

Plenty of retail at Tokyo Station as well. Including some places I’d never seen before. We should have stopped to get something from Tokyo Banana World.

Per Time Out: “Tokyo Banana opened its flagship store called Tokyo Bananas inside Tokyo Station on December 8 [2022], and it’s stocked with exclusive goods. Two of the exclusive products are the Legendary Curry Bread and Cream and Red Bean Paste Doughnut — and yes, banana is the hidden ingredient for both.”

Ex Nippon semper aliquid novi, eh?

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Food & Beverage