Henry's Blague

Turkish Delight

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:43:00 -0500

After hearing about backbreaking massages and scrubbing that leaves people bloody and bruised, my friends and I decided Turkish baths would be a relaxing way to spend our last night in Istanbul. We arrived at a 16th Century bathhouse, split up according to gender and received goody bags with sandals, soap and an oven mitt labeled “scrubber.”

A man handed me a plaid wrap and pointed to a tiny room with a large glass window. “Change,” he said. There was no curtain so I strategically put on the wrap without giving the tourists in the lobby a free show.

Little did I know, I had to walk straight through them, nearly naked, to reach the main room. I avoided eye contact and opened a heavy wooden door. My glasses fogged immediately. With blurry vision I could see twenty large men draped in plaid scattered across an octagonal platform.

An elderly man grabbed my arm and pushed me towards them. I found a spot in the middle and cozied up next to two large and hairy men. My friend Zach arrived, but was quickly summoned to the octagon’s edge for his massage. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them there was nobody in the middle of the octagon. Along the perimeter bodies were being twisted and stretched and I quickly realized I was going to be sacrificed. Having never expected to end in such a Biblical way, I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

A few moments later, someone tapped my foot. “Lie down,” said the mustached man as he pointed to an open spot on the edge. He put the oven mitt on his hand and stared me right in the eye.

“This your first time?” he asked.

I nodded as he violently scrubbed my arms. Suddenly he stopped and leaned over me. “Barack Obama good?” he asked. I carefully considered my answer. The stakes were high: I was nearly naked, seriously disoriented from the heat, virtually blind and he was holding my arm above my head.

“Remember the Wikileaks,” I thought to myself. I know Turkey and America are allies, but those cables were pretty nasty. He did not seem like a news junkie so I banked on him missing The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. “Yes,” I said and held my breath.

“Hillary Clinton good?” he asked. Apparently, I passed and we were now going through the entire cabinet. I nodded and waited to be questioned on Secretary of Agriculture, Interior and Transportation. With a firm push on my side I realized the test was complete and it was time for me to flip over.

My arms and legs got a thorough scrubbing before he sat me up straight and pinched my nose. Before I knew it, he poured a bucket of water over my head. Like a baptism.

After what may have been a religious renewal, he slapped my back and motioned at something on the floor. “Silly Pey,” he said. I stared at him blankly. “Silly Pey! Silly Pey!” I was rather mature through the entire experience so I did not know where this “silliness” accusation came from. Also, who was Pey?

Finally he pointed to my silly peys, my slippers. I put them on and he sat me next to what looked like a toilet. Whatever was next, it seemed like a bit much.

He pushed me closer to it and washed my hair with a bar of soap. “Shower,” he said as he pointed to the bathroom behind him. I nodded and he slapped the palm of his hand and pounded his chest. My blank expression gave away my confusion so he did it again. “You understand?” he asked. “Of course,” I said.

I rinsed off and found Zach sitting next to a washbasin in the main room. “Do you mind if I meditate?” he asked. I gave him the go ahead and he went for it. With crossed legs and both hands doing the “OK” sign he hummed a long note. I poured water over my head and listened to the strangely peaceful sound of my Jewish friend humming a Buddhist tradition in a Muslim country.

Home Sweet Hostels

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:52:00 -0500

“You are friends so just shower with the door open,” said the manager at our Amsterdam hostel. The light was broken in the window-less bathroom and that was his best suggestion. Instead, we turned on my Czech phone’s flashlight and carefully positioned it on top of the toilet. Even with the light source, showering required skill and agility. That’s because this was not so much a shower, as it was a showerhead over a drain. There was no barrier separating you from the sink or toilet. Depending on how you looked at it, this was either a poorly planned bathroom or a luxuriously large shower.

On the second day in this hostel, we met our Italian roommates who were in the midst of tripping on shrooms. We decided against explaining the shower situation because my striped socks captured their full attention. “You have no idea what I am seeing right now, “ said one of them when I took off my shoes. If my socks were that mind-bending, then certainly the concept of showering with a cell phone light would have been too much.

My first hostel experience was two months earlier in Budapest. At Groove Hostel eight of us shared a private room with clean and comfortable beds. The location was excellent, facilities clean and there was free coffee and tea. Upon arriving, the soft-spoken manager pointed out the one exciting aspect of the hostel, a small loft with a beanbag chair and television known as “the barefoot lounge.” The name was really a suggestion more than anything else.

It was not until the British guys in the next room frequented the communal bathroom in their underwear that the divide between hostel and hotel crystallized. The only true inconvenience of the hostel, though, was the limited and clogged showers. After four of us showered, water had seeped under the bathroom door, through the kitchen and turned the lobby into a wading pool. We apologized as the manager began a futile effort to mop up our mess.

The hostel in Barcelona was modern and exceptionally clean. There was a trendy lounge and a rooftop terrace that overlooked the skyline. Our chic room, though, was no larger than a billiards table. It was filled with four Sicilian men who had a strong aversion to wearing clothes during the day. They swung between the bunk beds while swapping their Buddy Holly glasses and fighting over the hairdryer.

In our Krakow hostel we met an Ali G type character while he was deciding which of his bootleg movies to watch. He was apparently having “one ‘ell of a time” traveling through Europe by himself. Every time he left the room, he managed to return with a new, Eastern-inspired tattoo. “I just got this one. It’s Vietnamese and means peace,” he says after returning from what we assumed was just a trip to the bathroom. We looked at the swollen red skin above his nipple and nodded. In the course of three days we watched his body transform into the Rosetta Stone. He picked up some Chinese characters for his arms and a handful of Greek phrases for his back. “You like them?” he asked while lifting pieces of clothing to reveal his inked and bruised skin.

For Brussels, an executive decision was made to split a hotel room. While it was far from the city center, the idea of a private bathroom was too convincing to pass up. After a long walk down a street covered in glass from freshly vandalized cars, we found the hotel.There was no elevator and the uneven staircase resembled the final stages of Jenga. To our surprise, the room had seven twin beds and one queen. Only two beds had sheets and one was covered in suspicious black stains. We showed the manager who shrugged and gave a short and sufficient suggestion, “Just sleep in a different bed, you have enough.”

At less than $20 a night, you get what you pay for with hostels. Beds are provided and usually some sort of breakfast is served. Frequently, though, hostels provide free entertainment that you cannot find at hotels. This comes in the form of bunkmates who eagerly share opinions, stories and all too often, a little skin.

Sleeping With the Enemy

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:50:00 -0400

After weeks of twisting my lacrosse coach’s arm, he promised me studying abroad would not jeopardize my starting position. Unfortunately, my would-be roommate’s coach was not as kind. He had to choose between Prague and lacrosse and at the last minute he went with the latter.

Without my teammate, I took full advantage of my room. One desk for homework and one for breakfast. One closet for clothes and one for food. I took both towels and pillows, but purposely did not move the beds together because doing so would surely push my luck.

The moment the twins became a queen, there would be a new roommate knocking on my door.

“I’m not moving these beds back just because you’re here,” I’d say. “But I will let you decide who is going to be little spoon.”

After six weeks of waiting, though, I did it.

Three days later, I noticed red bumps on my back and feared my greedy actions had attracted the worst roommate of all: bedbugs. Panicked, I consulted Dr. Google MD.

Each page of images brought me further into an inferno of overweight people modeling their bitten backs in front of bathroom mirrors.

I learned the telltale sign of bedbugs is three bites in a row. This is known as the breakfast, lunch and dinner pattern. I, quite literally, started connecting the dots. There was a line of four, meaning one of these greedy bloodsuckers saved room for dessert.

Honza, the building manager, said eliminating bedbugs required nothing short of shock and awe. “You must wash all of your clothes and linens immediately. Then we spray your room which means you can’t be in it for three days.”

This toxic spray has been banned in America for years, but only recently in Europe. “Don’t worry, my guy still has reserves of the good stuff,” said Honza as he checked under my bed for monsters.

If my room were sprayed, I would be quarantined in NYU’s “Emergency Room”. While the chance to experience a Jodie Foster-style panic room was enticing, I decided to be sure I wasn’t turning my room into Area 51 for nothing. Honza agreed and sent me to the doctor.

The doctor’s round face, wide mouth and razor-burn beard gave him the appearance of a man five times his weight. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said while slowly swiveling his chair to face me. “I have bumps on my back and I’m worried they’re from bedbugs,” I said.

After an uncomfortably long pause he decided on a tangent. “I see. So where are you from?”

“The United States. Anyway, I’m worried I have bed bugs.”

“I could tell from you accent!” The doctor’s diagnostic skills were impressive.

The bumps were examined for ten seconds before he asked me about the main differences between America and Prague.

“The food. In America, people eat a salad or sandwich for lunch and here it’s goulash and dumplings.”

“Ha! Salad is for women,” said the man with a medical license.

He took my pulse and made another diagnosis. “You are sportsman, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am sportsman.”

The doctor told me the bumps were a common irritation due to changing weather. I asked once more about bedbugs and got a blank stare. Obviously, bedbug is not a cognate.

I took his prescription and headed for the door feeling slightly relieved. “Salad,” he said again while shaking his head in amusement.

Since the appointment, most of the bumps have faded. Bedbugs or not, in six weeks I am back in New York so I’ll for sure have them in due time. There is no escaping them there.

Bedbugs now rent posh Upper East Side apartments and summer in East Hampton. They go to movies and Christmas shop at Hollister and Bergdorf Goodman. “Recession be damned,” they say while strolling through Soho in Prada shoes and Ray-Bans.

If I do have Czech bedbugs, they probably don’t even want to follow me back to New York because they wouldn’t be caught dead crossing the Atlantic in coach.

Welcome to the Clubs

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:33:00 -0400

Only three days after landing in Prague, I was on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The journey was long, strenuous and daunting. We had to take two trains, a tram and walk for at least six minutes in the slightly breezy night before finding the holy site: a very popular Prague club called Mecca. There is no cover charge on Wednesdays so going is a must. In fact, visiting Mecca is one of the five pillars of NYU in Prague Welcome Week.

The club was already dimly lit, but the cloud of cigarette smoke hovering at eye level put everything in a haze. I wiped off my glasses, rolled up the sleeves on my plaid shirt and tightened the laces on my New Balance shoes. I was ready to “club”.

The dance floor, made visible by bursts of neon lights, was full of small, tight shirts with European men squeezed inside them. Next to – and by next to, I mean on – them were girls in tiny skirts and high heels. The blasting techno may not have been music at all. I think Mecca was actually getting a fax.

Not to be outdone by these women, there are two Mecca dancers in bikinis stationed on top of glowing light boxes. As I walk by, our RA’s friend grabs my arm and screams in my ear. “American women wear too many clothes,” he says with a boyish giggle. He continued, “Unfortunately, not all Czech women wear so little clothes.”

***

I thought I was done with clubbing after Welcome Week. Oh, how naïve. Prague club culture is huge. There are, of course, bars in Prague, but with beer served at breakfast, lunch and dinner sitting down and drinking is less appealing than dancing in a neon haze.

With clubs comes dancing and this is where I run into serious problems.

In this regard, I miss Bar and Bat Mitzvahs because there was a team of bedazzled dancers in vests and bell-bottoms telling me exactly how to move. I always knew just how many “hops this time” and which foot to stomp with. It was The Cha Cha Slide for Dummies and I loved it.

I no longer have a helping Jazz hand to teach me how to dance. I could follow the Mecca ladies, but I think we have different creative strengths and weaknesses.

The only familiar, dare I say reassuring, part about Czech clubs is the American music. It’s everywhere. Lady Gaga always comes through crystal clear.

There is only one European song played in the clubs and it’s appropriately called, “We No Speak No Americano”. It sounds like a truck backing up.

***

After a month of awkwardly dancing and sweating my way through Cross Club, Chapeau Rouge, Radost and Mecca, it was time to visit Karlovy Lázně - “The Biggest Music Club in Central Europe”. It is a five-story club where each level has a different type of music. This is perfect because at clubs I often find myself thinking, this is so much fun, I wish there were four more clubs on top of this.

We paid our $6 cover and saw two of the five floors were closed. This actually upset me. The club hater was suddenly sad – nay, downright indignant – because three clubs was simply not enough club.

We already paid, so we settled with three. The climb began at DJ Hits, we then set up base camp at Techno and trekked up to American Oldies.

By the time we left, I was ready to never come back. Unfortunately, that will not be the case. Apparently, I didn’t have the “real” five-story club experience because everyone’s favorite floor - Black music – was closed.

Soon enough I will climb up to Black music and continue on to Karlovy Lázně’s top floor – The Chill Out Room. At the summit, I will plant my plaid flag.

It is then, and only then, that I can go back to New York victorious. I will return home with a profound victory, lasting memories and cigarette smoke that will never come out of my clothes.

Baritone Symphony

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:47:00 -0400

Two plainclothes officers blew their cover as they incessantly tapped their earpieces like kids with new toys. The double-parked police cars at both ends of the block didn’t help. One of them approaches my friend Ivria and me. “Can I help you?” he asks. We tell him we’re looking for Rosh Hashanah services. He nods and waves us through the large wooden doors behind him.

We enter a small room on the third floor of a 500-year-old synagogue in the heart of Prague’s Jewish Quarter. The rabbi turned to acknowledge us. We expected the typical Czech, “Dobry Den”. Perhaps a “shalom”? If we were lucky, maybe a “shana tova”. Instead, we get an English, “Hey, how you doing?”

We smiled and picked up prayer books. I grabbed a seat next to Marek, a soft-spoken 21 year-old firefighter who tucked his shirt into acid wash jeans.

The room slowly filled with young couples and their crying babies as the rabbi paced the bima stationed in the center of the room. This was Judaism in the round.

After an hour of prayers and songs, the rabbi addressed his small congregation. “We are now going to throw bread into the Vltava River.” This is a Rosh Hashanah tradition where breadcrumbs are thrown into water to represent the dispelling of one’s sins. Also, its the only time Jews can throw away food without their grandmothers telling them to stop wasting. For the health conscious chosen people, this is really a win-win. They dispel their sins and their carbs. Rosh Hashanah - now approved by Dr. Atkins and his bubbie.

Ivria and I exited the synagogue with the rabbi and started some small talk to gain further insight on Jewish life in Prague. “Where are you from?” I asked.

“I’m from Chi-cah-go,” he said.

As it turns out, our rabbi was from the tiny Czech town of Skokie, Illinois. He has family in the Moravian village of - please excuse my spelling here - Northbrook.

***

The congregation gathered at the Vltava to toss our sins and sound the shofar. To the West the sun was setting behind the spires of Prague Castle. To the East, shadows climbed up the pastel walls of Prague’s Old Town. In the immediate vicinity, giggling tourists snapped pictures and pointed at our little hats. With our sins dissolving in the river, or in birds’ stomachs, we walked back to the synagogue for another forty minutes of prayer.

After the arc was closed, the rabbi pulled Ivria and me aside and invited us for dinner at Shumi’s – the head of the congregation.

Shumi’s apartment is across the river in the neighborhood of Mala Strana. His apartment building was originally built to house the town executioner. Here, government jobs don’t kill the economy, they kill people.

***

The walls in Shumi’s home pop out at you. Or, at very least, the myriad marionettes and colorful masks do. His design motif: Circus gift shop.

The first thing you notice on Shumi himself are his red glasses that fit snuggly on his extremely expressive, almost elastic face. He only has front teeth, but they are so large and charismatic that they make up for those he is missing.

Shumi welcomes us with a wide smile and gestures to his table where ten European men are talking. He adjusts his red watch, ties his red apron behind his back and checks on the steaming pots on his stove.

Dinner was a hearty meal of matzah ball soup, challah, a bowl of meat and potatoes and gefilte fish. The man at the end of the table appeared to have some sort of chicken, which he disassembled bone by bone, letting each one roll off his tongue and land in a tangled mess on the table.

After the third course, Shumi stood up and began gesticulating wildly. Within seconds, the men had dropped their silverware, grabbed their wine glasses and harmonized their baritones.

The lyrics were simple, “Lord take me high, take me high, take me higher, Lord take me high, take me high…” you get it. And if you don’t, sing it on repeat for seven minutes. You’ll get it.

The end of the song stretched these men’s voices to the top of their range, but within minutes the group sang again, this time in Hebrew. The chicken man had little time to spit up some more bones and clear his throat before joining his friends.

Ivria and I leaned back in our chairs, held our glasses high and hummed along with the symphony.

The Kindness of Strangers

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:06:00 -0400

If the possibility of being kidnapped and/or murdered is present, then one can be positive, at the very least, things will be interesting. With that in mind, my friend Stephanie and I agreed to meet a stranger in an industrial part of Prague, get in his car and drive to the Czech countryside.

The mohawked 24 year-old behind the wheel – I’ll refer to him as “The Driver” - was not a complete stranger, but our connection to him was distant at best. He worked for a curator named Jan whom we met the previous week at his gallery opening. Jan dresses in black suits and shirts that contrast his short blond hair. He resembles Jack Bauer, but his face is crisscrossed with nicks and wrinkles which place him firmly in Eastern Europe.

Stephanie’s father was introduced to Jan during his visit to Prague a few years ago and sent him a quick email to let him know his daughter would be in town. Jan immediately invited her and a friend (me) to his gallery. After a quick tour around the exhibit, he mentioned an art festival he was curating near his home in the countryside. It would be a weekend of art, music, poetry and food. We thanked him for his invitation, but did not think seriously about the offer.

* * *

Five days later we were speeding away from Prague in the back of his employee’s Audi. Jan seems to be a large presence in the art world here, but during the day, he works in the warehouse business, or as The Driver explains, “logistics”.

Our drive through the rolling countryside ended at The Driver’s parents’ stately home at the top of a hill. After he packed his bags, we sat on his grapevine-covered patio overlooking the many red roofs of his village. Between his chain of cigarettes, The Driver explained his love for the United States, specifically the NHL. We learned he dropped out of university because it “wasn’t for him”. He now works for his father – Jan’s friend. This felt especially American.

The Driver’s father and sister arrived seven cigarettes later. He is a bald and goateed man who said a quick hello and took our bags to his Land Rover. She is a friendly university student with impeccable English. Moments later, we were back in the countryside in a luxury SUV listening to Paul Simon’s Graceland. If we were to be murdered, we were going out in style.

Thanks to Europe’s lack of speed limits we arrived in a town pronounced “Brandees” two hours later. It should have taken about a day.

Our first stop was Jan’s summer house – excuse me, his summer castle which was only accessible by a steep and narrow driveway. Its exterior walls are covered in ivy and tower above the town. Inside, the home is full of world-class art. Modern sculptures and statues grow out of his yard like weeds. The castle, though, was apparently not where we would be staying.

Our accommodation was a tiny bed and breakfast on a nearby cobblestone street. With its flower boxes, thatched roof and resident golden retriever, the only piece this European romantic comedy was missing was a befuddled Hugh Grant.

* * *

The art celebration began shortly after in a community center where Jan unveiled a collection of young artists’ work. While no English was spoken, many of the paintings displayed English words. Actually, it was just “assholes”.

After walking around the exhibit and eating some sort of egg or potato salad sandwich, we joined the crowd in a picturesque church to listen to an excellent guitar and electric cello band.

It was then back to the community center for the poetry reading, or as the Czech people consider it, a rave with a side of poetry. The reading started with Jan and his friends pouring Absinthe into a book as if they were blessing or baptizing it. Either way, that book got super wasted. Throughout the reading, people frequented the bar to pour themselves shots of vodka.

When the reading – excuse me, the rave – ended, it was on to dinner with Jan, the artists, The Driver and his sister. The Driver repeatedly interrupted my meal to try and convince me that Barack Obama is a communist. Quick reminder, the Czech Republic was under communist rule until 1989 so you’d think they’d be the last people to believe Obama is a communist and join the Tea Party express. When he realized I wouldn’t budge, he tried to find some common ground. “We can at least agree that Obama was not born in America,” he said. I shook my head and finished my drink.

Apparently, the night was still young because our next stop was a pub in the woods. There, an old man with a thick white beard heard my English and asked our new friends if they would translate for him. He thanked me for being American, specifically for my involvement in WWII. “You’re welcome,” I said. He moved his beer aside and pulled me in for a hug, apparently unaware that I was born almost a half-century later.

* * *

The next morning, our innkeeper had breakfast waiting for us in the kitchen. After I declined a glass of beer, she handed me a warm bowl of mushroom soup. I took a deep breath and powered through the murky broth. When I finished, I tried to make a break for it. Before I could, I saw the innkeeper pulling something out of a deep fryer. Next up were two pieces of fried dough topped with ketchup and shredded cheese. The Pizza Bagel truism states that, “If you can have pizza on a bagel, you can have pizza any time”, but this meal was really pushing its limits.

After our episode of “Man Vs. Breakfast” we followed the innkeeper to an open field where a highly anticipated sculpture – the jewel of the festival - was to be unveiled. Just when we overcame our fear of being murdered, the innkeeper recommended we first explore the labyrinth. Yes, a real life Shining style labyrinth.

We emerged from the hedges about ten minutes later to see Jan wearing a hooded sweatshirt with two images of Elvis emblazoned on it. He was standing in front of a spherical structure covered in a white sheet. After a short speech, he revealed a beautiful metal orb made of connecting flower pedals.

Pictures were snapped and it was off to lunch near a bandshell situated next to an abandoned communist pool. Even without the algae, the copious amounts of cement would make for a rather sad pool party.

Full with delicious Czech sandwiches and knowing the chances of murder were rapidly diminishing, we walked back to town with Jan’s son who would drive us back to Prague. Back in another luxury SUV, we sped through the Czech countryside. The trip was two hours at a constant speed of 180km/h, or for those playing along at home thespeedofsound mph.