My Favorite Places

Lately, a lot of people have been asking me about places I’ve been and, particularly, which places and countries I like the best.

It should first be noted that I go to a lot of the same places a lot of the time and therefore haven’t picked up any special worldly knowledge. I haven’t been to Africa or the Middle East and my travels to Asia are a bit suspect (I had a bewildered taxi driver take me a few feet into the Asian section of Istanbul so I could rightly say I’d been to Asia). I have been to nearly 50 countries and there were a lot of dull ones among them like Luxembourg, Albania, and Canada.

I don’t know which country or countries I prefer. I suppose I like certain things about all of them just as I like certain things about the U.S. New Zealand and Scotland have by far the friendliest people. France has the snootiest people but make up for it with good wine, warm baguettes and croissants, and the best drivers driving in reverse on the planet.

The Germans have surprisingly good food and very unfriendly people, especially if you don’t take the time to learn their language (and why would you want to take the time to use words twice as long in German as in English?).

I have a couple of good memories in Munich; one at a Kriskrendlemart (sp.), a holiday craft show where someone scooped a cup into a big bucket of simmering wine and spices and gave me something called Glühwein. It will cure what ails you, especially on a cold winter day. The other memory is of a solitary violinist playing a Handel piece in an alley off the main shopping road. It was beautiful as the music bounced off the ancient walls of the shops above him. It all came to an abrupt end when a group of inebriated soccer hooligans came charging through the alley, knocking the violinist and his music to the ground as sort of an instant critical review of the concert. Apparently Glühwein and Handel don’t mix well.

Speaking of inebriation, Ireland is the country with the most drunks, although Sweden comes in a close second. Walking near any bar or restaurant in any town or city in Ireland requires the walker to be sober and have a nimble gait less he step in the many puddles of vomit along the sidewalk. And what keeps the average Irish drinker on the sidewalk, you ask? The clever Irish have placed side rails along the busier roads to keep the drinkers and socializers from stumbling into oncoming traffic (or French vacationers driving in reverse).

As for the Swedes, it has come to the attention of the Swedish Government’s Alcoholic Consumption and Warnings Your Mother Gave You but You Ignored Department that Swedes drink too much. They actually have a government agency that tracks the amount of alcohol each Swede consumes. You drink too much and you get a visit and a stern letter from an agency busybody. The Swedish solution? Denmark is only a short drive or ferry away and no such busybodyness exists in Denmark so they take the quick jaunt and drink it up, crashing cars and breaking curios and such. It should be noted the Danes have disliked the Swedes outside of their public drunkeness. Apparently, I was told, the Swedish King said something unpolite to the Danish Queen in 1206 and things haven’t been right between the two neighbors since. What has followed is a bunch of loud Swedes and annoyed Danes; entertainment you can’t get at home at any price.

I have gotten to know some places better than others by either living there for a while or because the host government was foolish enough to give me a multiple-entry visa. The foolishness went both ways as I chose to spend a great deal of time in Russia and its nearby republics, now countries that had the good sense to leave Russia when the same good sense escaped me. Nobody had a gun to my head when I domiciled in Romania for six months either. The two countries share this much: they make you appreciate capitalism and some semblance of Democracy a great deal more. Kissing the passport control floor at LAX is not uncommon for returning travelers to these countries.

The biggest mistake we all made about Russia was in thinking they just wanted to be like us. They didn’t. They wanted to be like the Swedes (except for the strict alcohol consumption codes) because they had bought into the whole “cradle to grave” society. They didn’t want to have to work or give up potatoes and Vodka, they simply wanted to be able to get their cranky government off their back and travel whenever they wanted just to reinforce the world view of Russians.

I once asked the obvious question to a woman about why the Soviet Union fell. We were standing near the entry of the “Hammer Center,” a hotel and restaurant complex that was a shrine to free marketers but off limits to the average Russian. She talked about how frustrating it was to see all the goodies the West had to offer through the window of the Hammer Center but no right to take part in spending $400 for a pair of shoes. So the Russians had a revolution to buy uncomfortable footwear and a $60 steak. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, you could buy a pizza at a place called Pizza Hat. I guess there was a revolution just because some entrepreneur needed to buy a vowel.

Since Romania and Russia were Communists countries, they had a few things in common: an overabundance of moles, poor dental care and astonishingly ugly sofas. I have no inside information on the moles but the high degree of tooth decay and gingivitis comes from a rational fear of the dentist. Since the trademark of all Communist countries is for all workers in the Worker’s Paradise to be employed by the State, there was no need to be a better, more caring dentist than the next. Imagine dental care by the Department of Motor Vehicles and you have imagined a Soviet dentist. The offshoot is that Novocain costs the State money and is therefore superfluous. Without the Novocain, surprisingly few people filled out those silly tooth-shaped postcards to remind them of their next dental appointment, which was good for the State since the lack of repeat business further lowered costs so there was more money to keep Lenin looking green in his tomb.

I also can’t explain the prevalence of the astonishingly ugly sofa. It seems the ideal sofa in former Communist countries has a tree-full of carving and gilt and is upholstered in plush, petit point, plaid, and paisley as if Donald Trump, Madame Pompadour, Queen Victoria and the Doors had gotten together to start a decorating firm. You see the astonishingly ugly sofa everywhere. In the homes of the well-off and otherwise; hotel lobbies; office reception areas; furniture-store windows (of course) and, most spectacularly, on local sitcoms. One actor sits down and makes an exasperated face while the other actors gesticulate comically. I couldn’t understand what was going on in these sitcoms, but I could tell it was a lot more charming than Oprah.

Bad driving on bad and very wide roads also seems to be a consistent theme in formerly Communist countries. Whether in Moscow, Warsaw, Bucharest or Kiev, crossing a major intersection alive takes bravery and guile, or blindness, since the only way I was willing to act as a pedestrian is with my eyes closed. The traffic is too scary otherwise. I was taught in high school that it was good to be an aggressive driver. I think drivers in Eastern Europe and Russia are taught to drive angry. If you try to cross a major street in Russia or Romania, you will note quite quickly that drivers, without expression, speed up and aim for you. A simple street crossing reminds one of that old video game “Frogger.” Except you get across the street more often on the computer.

Not all is bad in these countries. Moscow has become as fashionable and trendy as any city in the world. Housing prices have skyrocketed and the rich have been buying up apartment buildings and huge houses with astonishingly ugly sofas like hotcakes. And they buy it all in cash; which has the upside of cutting down on receiving 30 letters each day explaining how they’re paying too much for their mortgage. I once asked someone, “who can afford these places,” and I was told, “Officials and prostitutes.” “Aren’t they one and the same?” I asked.

I was in Kiev during the start of the so-called Orange Revolution. The Revolution’s spontaneity couldn’t have been better planned. Before the results of the elections were announced, there suddenly appeared 200,000 people with orange scarves and the secret code to show up at the right time in Independence Square. Also, someone just happened to have a couple of Jumbo Trons in their trunk so angry speechmakers could make angry speeches. The best part is that the rubes in the world press bought the spontaneity angle so the newly anointed Ukrainian government decided it needed to keep the joke going and tried to run a government. Governments are difficult enough to run but when your whole plan revolves around calling the former government all sorts of bad names, trouble is on the horizon. The new government was able to get the “Own a Black Mercedes and BMWs on $400-Per-Month-Scheme” in place before the country tanked, so they had that going for them.

Albania may be the sorriest of a lot of sorry former Communist states. If wealth was measured in dust, Albania would be the Beverly Hills of the world. I don’t know where the dust comes from or where it settles, but it is constantly coming from somewhere and apparently never settling. Albania is the only country that decided to exit a Communist economy and dip its toe in capitalism by creating a massive, country-wide pyramid scheme. When it predictably collapsed, the entire country went on a looting spree, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down including the astonishingly ugly sofas (fortunately for future generations of Albanians, dust can’t be nailed down). After a while, the looting came to an end. When asked why the people stopped, one Albanian man simply said, “We were done.”

On the other side of the world, I was able to spend 10 delightful weeks in New Zealand. New Zealand is the Bigfoot of countries; hiding behind rocks and trees in fear of being discovered. Kiwis (as people from New Zealand are known) live in this tormented contradiction of enjoying their isolation but, at the same time, wondering if the world knows they’re still alive. When I mentioned I enjoyed the movie The Whale Rider, the Kiwis couldn’t believe I had seen it. They still can’t believe they are interesting enough for a busy American to take the time to notice.

Kellen and I were working on the elections in New Zealand. Besides the obvious side show that is politics, we were amused by the dire predictions of a country headed to hell by the opposition government (our client and still in opposition). If Americans only had to worry about the minor annoyances of the kind of government that angers the Kiwis, all the fun would go out of politics. Since there are only 2.8 million voters in New Zealand, the government is run like one large condo association with the same amount of general goofiness consistent with a Landscape Committee. But it still runs better than Congress

All the same, I found the mix of unrivaled natural beauty, every season available within a one-hour plane ride, friendly natives, and the availability of all the creature comforts of home in New Zealand to be the perfect blend to the best place to live or visit. Scotland comes in a close second with summer in Sweden not far behind. All of which is to say I spent a lot of time writing about places not to go and far too little time discussing nice places to visit.

However, I have come to believe that “nice” isn’t always the best reason to travel somewhere. I prefer interesting places with long histories where the locals feel the need to do something extra to keep you from going to Euro Disney. I also tend to like smaller cities. With that in mind, my favorite places are:

Krakow, Poland
Bruges, Belgium
San Sebastian, Spain
Wellington, New Zealand
Sibiu, Romania
Koblenz, Germany
Galway, Ireland
Avallon/Vezaly, France

But there is no place like home.