Bourgeois Dilemma #6: We will never have a lunch this good again

For those of you who didn't have the time to read dilemma # 19, I have decided to dedicate the dreary snow bound days of late jan and early feb to a travelogue of sorts. today, our honeymoon continues. well, by that I mean that I will write some more about our honeymoon trip.

we continued from the german/greek island of samos across to the western coast of turkey. travelling by ferry we crossed the aegean sea to the turkish port of kusadsi. here, we instantly realized that without even my sweet husband's few greek phrases like Θα ήθελα μια κρύα μπύρα, we were in over our heads. our go to side splitter when faced with phrases like Adam çit ötesinde kaplanlar doğuya doğru yönelme, girmeyin was

i dunno, it's greek to me.

but we made our way along merrily, lugging our bags to the car rental place easily located near the ferry terminal on a small side street. if you are imaging an avis with it's own gas pump, let me stop you right there. if you know anyone who has been a tourist in turkey in the last 20 years or so, it's quite likely that if their itinerary called for motor travel of any significance, they found a driver with his own high end car to take them. there are many reasons for this: the language, the roads. and the roads. but for the same reason that my sweet husband thought it would be a reasonable adventure to travel by truck in rwanda with one bag in 1988, he decided that getting a car and driver for his honeymoon in turkey would be gauche.

so after some pantomime with the fellow in the upstairs office at the "car rental" establishment, we mounted up the Sahim 5 litre, tossing our bags in the trunk. Naturally, the car had it's own lucky rabbit foot hanging around the rear view mirror which looked like a good thing until I noticed that there were hand written notes and some chap stick in the glove box. clearly, this wasn't really a rental car. it was the guy's brother in law's car. before we started, MSH went to the trunk and moved our bags, accompanied by the strong scent of gasoline, to the back seat. I asked why and he responded it will just be easier to get what we need that way. which is honeymoon code for well honey, I noticed that the gas tank was visible in the trunk of the car and I'm not sure if you were really tracking that little issue with the ford Pinto back when you were just a little girl, but it's my idea that this little trip is the beginning of our lovely life together, not that we go up in flames somewhere near pamukkale.

We set off to see Ephesus, one of the most amazing structures in antiquity where you too can capture an image of your spouse sitting on the oldest flush toilet in the world holding a copy of the international herald tribune sports page. It is a site of quite unparalleled splendor, if even back then in 1994, a little over touristed. Our afternoon plan involved a visit to a more remote and much less travelled site of priene. Should you ever find yourself in turkey, please visit this wonderful place. Chugging along in the sahim 5 ltire, narrowly missing only one accident (who knew that a right turn signal, when made from a tractor with a grandmother dangling off of the back actually means that you are going to swing left and cut off the road completely - perhaps another point in support of the driver), we came upon a little villa with some men playing backgammon out front. A terraced garden had a few tables and it seemed like a good idea to stop and get some lunch so we pulled in. naturally, as I was wearing my "too cute not to buy for your honeymoon" pink seersucker above the knee dress, we got some attention as we walked on to the terrace. It was mid afternoon and there was no one in sight other that the backgammon players. We sat down and MSH put forth his few recently learned phrases in turkish. one of the backgammon players hopped up and brought us some cokes and we managed to indicate that we wanted food. there was no menu, so we were directed back to the kitchen where pot lids were raised and food was stirred so that we could see what was cooking. we pointed and smiled, and returned to our table. amazingly, we were served one of the most delicious meals I have ever had in my life. we smiled and beamed and made it clear that we loved this food to the great joy of our hosts. by the end they were laughing and talking to us in turkish and we were talking to them in english - they even poured warm lemon scented water on our hands before we left, smiling and waving along the road to priene. now that was a day on your honeymoon to remember.

especially when, the next day, after a night in a huge, tacky modern hotel, we set out to go to the salt bath spa of pamukkele. Along the road, as we ventured further away from some of the more traveled destinations, we found a nameless side of the road side site where the archaeologist himself showed us what he was dusting off. to this day, you can ask our children about our honeymoon and they are likely to come back with a verbatim of that moment along the lines of and then there was the place where they stopped and actually met the archaeologist who was still discovering what was there. After that, we were thrust along a series of roads with the steepest drop off I have seen since I made the mistake of going to corsica with my italian friend and her crazy boyfriend for a week of "camping" at the age of 18. as a survival mechanism, I clutched the inside door handle of the sahim 5 litre and read aloud from the book of turkish history so as to avoid looking out the window at the ravine soaring away from underneath the right tires.

In about 2000 BC Asia Minor was in the hands of the Hittites, who migrated from the area east of the Black Sea. Their civilization rivaled that of the Egyptians and Babylonians. In the 12th century BC their empire fell to the Assyrians. Small seaboard states grew up, only to fall to the Greeks, OH SHIT SLOW DOWN WE ARE GOING TO GO OVER THE CLIFF OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT.....

this trick only worked so well and soon enough the concentration it was taking my sweet husband to drive with his new wife on the verge of tears and mania, and the self control it was taking me not to push him out of the way and take the wheel so that I could pilot the car at a safer speed meant that we were both extremely hungry. confident that we would be able to find an oasis like the one we had discovered near priene, we refused to stop at just any roadside spot. it had to be right, with a terrace overhung by trees and a friendly but not too much so group of men rattling the dice and clicking backgammon men as they drank their turkish coffee.

our first attempt at recreating the lunchtime eden was downright ominous. the roadside inn had all of the earmarks of success. well, it had some men playing backgammon. in fact, it had a large number of men playing backgammon and they weren't all that interested in being joined by a couple of blonds including a 20 something young woman in a skirt. we hopped back in to the sahim 5 litre and moseyed on down the road. well, along and around and up and down. maybe these 16 odd years later it's a little different there on the inner road from ephesus to antalya, but back then there wasn't much to be seen. a few three wheeler skoda trucks, early stage turkish entrepreneurs on mobile phones in big mercedes, and us in the sahim. perhaps everyone else had a bag lunched packed by their mom. MSH sought that lunch just as hard as he had sought the pristine beach on samos. to no avail.

at long last, we were just starving and potentially delirious. a roadside structure emerged as in a mirage and a small haunch of meat being grilled on a vertical spit - now familiar to most NYers as the roadside gyros that is more or less untouchable except in the most extreme emergency. MSH pulled the sahim in and gassed up at the pump then went and ordered up a couple of plates of the special of the day. always one to make the best of it, he exclaimed as we sat at the listing plastic picnic table shouting over the grinding gears of the trucks as they passed - isn't it amazing that you can pull in to a little place like this and get such an amazing meal. Something was not right, but I didn't have the heart to break it to him so instead just picked at the pita bread and pushed the meat around without eating it, as any well intentioned newlywed would have done at that moment. I would love to remember this and be able to tell you that everything was fine after that. But my sweet husband, for all of his exotic and death defying globe trotting, possesses a singular combination of a tricky stomach and a grim determination to avoid any over the counter medication of any form. We lived in memory of that rancid meat (lamb, cow, goat, what was it exactly?) for several days and for many months thereafter I affixed to our fridge a photo of MSH looking particularly miserable on a poolside chaise lounge at the very first proper hotel of the trip.

thank god, after a few days of white rice and coke he was recovered to the point where we were able to enjoy one of our all time favorites: order everything and anything on the menu that is prepared table-side, preferably involving flames: Cesar salad, steak diane and baked alaska. Now, what they were doing serving baked alaska in a hotel restaurant on the southern coast of turkey is really beyond me.

Must have been the Disney Cruise ship that had just docked in the bay.

Bourgeois Dilemma #19: This beach is too crowded

Sitting here in my hotel room while my children screech at each other over possession of a hand me down iphone 3G and its few apps (we have spent a lovely few days skiing - lots of snow but toe numbing cold), it seems like a good idea to mount an armchair travelogue of sorts for the cold winter months.

Travel is a main feature of our life though the algorithm of diminished bank accounts and increasing family size and work means that it's not as frequent, far ranging or luxurious as i would personally prefer. so we hearken back to a simpler time and recall highlights from some of our most memorable vacations.

Every young couple dreams and plans for their honeymoon, that mythological trip where husband and wife get to know each other in the luminous moments after their union. My sweet husband, naturally, had the class not only to propose to me on bended knee but also to plan our honeymoon more or less on his own. He has and always will be the better traveler of the two of us, adventurous and organized at the same time perhaps as a result of a gap year spent working and traveling around the world and generating stories enough for years and years to come and then there was the time when I ended up in norway and the farmer's daughter mother told me: "Lotte is on the pill". Since he had spent some time in a youth hostel on crete, and the only art history slide I could recall to this date is the porch of the maidens, we decided to go to greece and tack on some time in turkey on the end.

We had a mere two weeks as my big ad agency career was waiting so we chose to go to athens to see the porch, and then on to a greek island just off the coast of turkey to save time. Everything went swimmingly until we arrived on the island and noted that the airstrip seemed a bit large. and there was an airberlin 747 parked on the tarmac. we arrived at the hotel with the heart sinking realization that it was not the white washed beach side taverna of my sweet husbands fond memories, but a massive development mainly populated with pasty and large berliners. the room was fine and gave out onto a terrace overlooking the beach. stepping over a large snoring man in a bikini to find our way to the water wasn't really what we had in mind but it was dinner time so we made our way to the dining room. Thursday night: GREEK NIGHT proclaimed the sign at the tray pick up in the cafeteria line and that was when my sweet husband went over the edge. The tricky part of addressing that urge was that this was 1994. no cell phone, no internet, no way to quickly and easily find the right place to stay.

MSH: We have got to get out of here. I am going to go to town to find another place to stay.

ME: Honey, really, it's ok - the bed is comfortable, let's just ask the concierge for a rental car so we can just sleep here.

MSH: can they even do that?

ME: yes, hotel concierges can do anything. and look, we can exchange our dinner voucher for a lunch basket and go where we want, when we want.

MSH: ok, i guess that will work.

The next morning, we set out with a plan to find a beach featured in a book a friend had given us called trekking in greece. easily found, we were the only ones there for the whole day and experienced a perfect blue lagoon kind of honey moon day complete with the addition of a picnic basket that would feed a large family of germans. that evening we had a lovely dinner in the nearby town at a marina and it seemed that things were back on the right track. the next and final day on the island, had it been up to me I would have returned to the same beach but my sweet husband feels the need to forge a new path each day on holiday so we took the road across the other side of the island.

Now, I am hard wired to get to the beach and have a built in radar for good beach spotting from the roadside. there's no magic, you just look for the spots along the road with a few not too many cars parked - enough people to mean that its worth stopping, not so many that it will be crowded. better if the cars are open top jeeps and the like. more chance of cute surfers, not that I needed to be looking for those at this particular juncture, but it's good to know. As we drove along, there were several good looking spots like that but at each juncture, MSH said no, I think if we go a bit further we can find one where we are on our own . . . I want to find one like yesterday. So we drove and when the road turned from asphalt to dirt, we kept driving. and as the track got smaller and the grade more steep, we kept going. in fact, we kept going until all i could see out of the windshield was sky at which point i freaked out and screamed STOPTHECAROHMYGODWEAREGOINGTODRIVEOFFACLIFFSTOPTHECARRRRR.

He did, of course and we were perched on top of a hill with a small footpath leading down to a village and a crescent of a beach beyond. grinning, msh pulled the picnic basket out of the car and we started our way down the path to the beat of the ponk ponk ponk of a fisherman repairing the boat anchored in front of the beach. worth the death defying drive for sure. we got down to the beach ready to settle in for the day but needed to clear off a little debris in order to find a place to sit. somehow, this little slice of paradise was littered with a combination of tangled fish nets, rubbish and a few dead fish. no matter, the view was lovely, the sand soft and the lapping of the waves and the plinging hammer were a nice musical background for a honeymooning couple. so we spread our towel and laid out the ham, hard boiled eggs and wiener schitzel provided by the gasthof. it was going to be fine until we were swarmed by something i have yet to see again: a combination between a bee, a wasp, a dragonfly that came in the size of a hummingbird.

our decision to get out of there was instantaneous and mutual. we scrabbled together our things and beat a retreat up the footpath checking behingd to make sure that the bug bird things were not swarming behind like the bees that take the life of one of the poor campers in the excellent horror 1983 horror flick sleep away camp. I noted on one of these glances that the fisherman was coming in off his boat and registered relief that we wouldn't have to add buying our way out of trespassing to the itemized expenses from the trip. As we made our way along he came up the path after us and my ever chipper, ever sweet husband called out KALIMERA! the response came back in perfect if accented english oh, are you americans.

Hmm. Not even greek. Turns out he was a dutch businessman who had purchased the entire village off of an ad in his local newspaper. So much for the quaint greek fishing village. and so much for using your parent's travel agent to book your honeymoon.

not to worry, we went back and finished out the day quite happily in one of the previously scouted beaches along the road and since it was high noon by the time we arrived, the other beach goers had retreated to the shade or an intelligent nap inside. more beach for us.

up next: honeymoon part two, turkey and its its roadside cuisine.

Bourgeois Dilemma #48: Santa Claus is coming to town

It's January 1 and some of you (john) will be happy to know that my new year's resolution is to get back into the rhythm of posting every other week or so.

For me, surviving the slide from Thanksgiving through to New Year's day always feels like something of an accomplishment. i am not alone in this I know and while i pride myself on being particularly organized even I am prone to a certain last minute nature when it comes to the sourcing and organizing of holiday gifts and the ever important delivery of SANTA's list. The Christmases I remember from my childhood were simple. Starting at the age of about 9, i decorated my family's christmas tree more or less on my own. we would start out as a group, but I tend to have ideas about the layering of the lights, the placement of each ornament and the regulation interval of tinsel (strand by strand in a most delicate fashion). It is unclear to me where my obsession with the decor arose as my dear mother at the first chance would have opted for a table top tree and a christmas meal at the club, if I had let her. One by one the other members of my childhood family would be driven away by my necessary adjustments (who puts the wooden ornaments on before the balls?) and I would be left quite happily trimming the tree. we always attended the annual christmas sing at the club where three ex whiffenpoofs would sing the parts of the three kings and lester the jolly old tennis pro would dress as santa and hand out candy canes from a big red sack to all the kids. christmas morning the living room would be cordoned off but we would be able to rip through our stockings with abandon to find dental floss, toothpaste and other such necessities as well as some candy and a specialty fruit of choice. mine was always a pomegranite. how my mother found a pomegranite in connecticut in the 1970's is beyond me. we'd get a few presents from santa and my grandparents would come for lunch and that was that.

in many ways my life as a parent at christmas is the same. one by one, my sweet husband and children and now even the dog retreat from the living room as I adjust their inadequate ornament placement. I relish the fact that left to our own devices, we allow our children to gut their christmas stockings with abandon and eat chocolate before breakfast. but like many other things in our lives as parents versus our lives as children, we are focused on making up for those things that we remember as lacking (who on earth puts dental floss in a christmas stocking?). with the benefit of catalogue mailings, the internet and cable tv advertising, our kids are able to come up with micro targeted christmas lists that would make santa's eyes bleed.

two years ago we failed in a major way to live up to santa's reputation.

the issue was a wish list item of an american girl doll colonial carriage for the governor's ball. living in nyc, the home of the mall of america sized american girl place, it never occurred to me that i needed to procure the carriage any earlier than december 23rd. i braced myself and pushed my way through the hoards of grandmothers, mothers, girls clutching their "dressed like me" dolls and mounted the escalator to the historical doll section to visit the felicity and elizabeth area. no sign of the carriage. a request to the women behind the desk turned up blank stares so I got out of dodge and went home to look on line.

discontinued.

shit.

e-bay seemed a good idea and bingo: american girl doll colonial carriage. $500. hmmm. I love her, but, really? Plan B: a tea table and chairs. just as special. until on christmas eve as she carefully dressed the "girls" in their christmas ball outfits and left them propped up against their horse next to the tree, awaiting the carriage. santa left a letter explaining that not enough children had asked for the carriage to make it worthwhile for his factory to make it any more (supply and demand economics, honey?) and my big girl furrowed her brow but somehow swallowed it and went along. my heart was pounding. but we got through or so it seemed at that moment. but the fissure created in the carefully tended image of santa and his magic was real and it cracked wide open when she asked point blank several months later: mom, are the parents really santa? tragic.

prior to that santa had never let her down, even if it came at some personal cost. like the year that her heart's true desire was a playchool mansion dollhouse. a fantastic victorian house complete with flower boxes furniture and all the trimmings. a little girl's dream. we were spending christmas in washington, dc that year with the in-laws and even though I had an 8 week old newborn baby, I had it together enough to have the dollhouse sent to dc and the in laws stowed it away out of sight. to say that it was not my best christmas would be an understatement. the idea was that the newborn would happily sleep away in the heirloom family bassinet on a sun porch while we enjoyed the family festivities. instead, it was my job to sit on a chair otherwise occupied by a hirsute cat and hold the newborn just so in the hopes that she would sleep for at least a half hour. as the in laws had downsized to an apartment, we were staying in a hotel up the road. the "no smoking" label on the door of our room seemed to mean that we were not smoking in it but did not apply to the previous several guests as the musty odor of cigarette and possible cigar smoke fairly well permeated the room. somewhere around 10 pm each night, my sweet husband would steal away to join his brother and sister-in-law to drink from the mini bar and laugh uproariously as they watched 40 year old virgin for the fourth time while I wrastled down an overexerted 8 week old to sleep. somehow the combination of the cat, the smoke and postpartum stress caused my face to break out in a rash along the lines of poison sumac.

so when, on christmas eve at about 4:30 PM, I visited the storage bin at the in-laws to inspect the dollhouse and realized that there were somewhere in excess of 1,000 small plastic pieces that needed to be assembled, I was so tired that it didn't even matter to me. there was not a thought in my mind that I would be involved in any way with the assembly of the special santa present. that's what fathers are for. with the newborn in a baby bjorn we mounted the stairs together and I explained what needed to be done

all you have to do is unpack these various boxes and put the dollhouse together so that it looks like this picture

what? that is absurd. santa will just leave the boxes under the tree and we can put it together on christmas day.

no way. that is not what santa would do. he would have it all set up under the tree so that there's that amazing "tada" moment.

uh. I guess I will stay home from church tonight and do it.

no problem, I will be over at the hotel putting the baby to sleep.

I was not there, but my husband's lovely sister, as yet without children of her own, stayed by his side to assist him and reported that in between swigs of scotch he grunted as he attached the flower petals on by one to the stems for the lovely window boxes fuck santa he is bullshit.

but bless him he pulled through and with enough coffee was able to enjoy the amazed look on his little girl's face when the sheet was pulled off to reveal that dollhouse. no mind that it had to be dismantled and sent back to nyc, re-assembled and then ultimately was given away to our nanny's granddaughter as our girl and her friends had remarkably little interest.

live and learn. this year, the big girl asked for a tempurpedic pillow, a bow and arrow and a diary. no big deal. her sister, convinced that santa requires the list to extend the length of the page came up with a remarkable list of made up items including "ice skates what are gold" (spray paint) and the ever mysterious "the place"described as the place where people go while her hands move around her face.

a salon?

no mama, the place

what happens at the place?

santa knows.

naturally the response to the guaranteed non-delivery of the place is to be sure that every other item is under that tree and it was. to add a certain je ne sais quois to the christmas mood, I decided that something truly surprising was called for and my sweet husband went for it as well. a mini christmas tree with colored lights, fluffy fake snow and a lionel train running around the bottom would appear with their stockings in their bedroom in the morning.

thank god, lionel knows how to make a simple round of track that actually snaps together with ease. the curb side tree seller is more than happy to unload a small tree complete with a stand for $20 at 10pm on christmas eve. and the plan worked. those girls were both over the moon with excitement on christmas morning. and so were we.

long live santa.