Beef-A-Rama

The first thing I saw was a majestic white-tail deer with a beautiful rack of antlers springing into motion in the crisp autumn air. The beast had a terrified look in his eyes. From behind I saw a large bear, probably a grizzly, growling with bared teeth. It stood on its hind legs with forelegs outstretched, claws ready to tear into the deer's flesh. It was an exhilarating moment: would the deer escape the clutches of death or would the bear get a decent meal?

I never found out the answer because these animals were dead and stuffed--perpetually stuck in a game of the hunter and the hunted. These were among the dozens of dead animals that adorned the hotel in Minocqua, Wisconsin, where I just spent a long weekend for my nephew's wedding. There were many antlered-heads on the walls of the hotel lobby: deer and moose, mostly. Many fish were also to be found collecting dust. On the mantle piece of the great stone fireplace was an interesting collage of five trouts swimming vertically up a piece of drift wood! The hotel was slightly reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel and I was afraid I might meet Jack Nicholson carrying an ax in the corridor.

Minocqua is a picturesque resort town situated on an island in a lake surrounded by many other lakes. The German restaurants and bars downtown tell of the heavy German ancestry in the area. And the above average real estate prices tell of moneyed folks from Milwaukee and Chicago who own second homes on the area's lakes.

In addition to my nephew's wedding, the big do of the weekend in Minocqua was the 44th Annual Beef-A-Rama--a major street festival and celebration of...well...beef. The restaurateurs of the town grill meat right on main street. Some of the events that I tragically missed included a "Beef Eating" contest at Culver's Restaurant, the Rump Roast Run, the "MOOnocqua" Moo Calling Contest and the Famous "Parade of Beef."

On Saturday morning a bunch of us went to Paul Bunyan's Restaurant for the all-you-can-eat "Logging Camp" breakfast. For a fixed price you get platters of hearty breakfast food served family style at your table. You eat off of tin plates, just like the old lumberjacks. The logging camp decor was even more rustic than the hotel.

As for the wedding, the bride was very beautiful and radiant, and my nephew didn't look too shabby, either. The party they threw for us was memorable and I wasn't making too much sense by the end of it. I was happy that all six of my siblings could be together in the Wisconsin woods, however briefly. That doesn't happen too often anymore.

New York Bound

I'm off this afternoon for New York, Minnesota and the hinterlands for two weeks. A nephew is getting married and the family beckons.

I'll be back in London in early October.

Stay tuned...

The West Country: Aquae Sulis and Beyond

A word to the wise: don't try driving out of London at rush hour on a Friday evening. We did, and my left ankle is still sore from all the clutching. The A40, M4 and roads in-between were all stop-and-go. A trip of 119 miles from London to Bristol that should have taken a little over two hours took four. But eventually we reached our hotel in Bristol and all was well.

John and I realized that in the months we've been living in London we hadn't really seen much of England outside the big city. So we decided to spend a weekend in the West Country. The gods must have smiled on us because we were very fortunate with the weather: sunny skies and mild temperatures.

Some of the highlights of our weekend in the West Country included:

A visit to the city of Bath, called Aquae Sulis by the Romans, was wonderful. I had not been there in many, many twenty-some years and John had never seen this Georgian city made of pale golden stone. Visiting the old Roman baths is a trip back in time.

Getting to know the city of Bristol a bit. We didn't get to see all the things in Bristol we wanted to do. There was a half marathon going on one day which closed a good deal of the town to us. But we found some good restaurants and visited a 16th-century pub called the King's Head (a very popular pub name).

Driving through the beautiful English countryside to the mystical city of Glastonbury and the city of Wells. We arrived at the Wells Cathedral late in the afternoon and evensong was being sung in the choir. It's a beautiful building. It has unique double pointed inverted arches in the crossing (to help support the tower). I found the effect to be beguiling.

A return visit to Avebury and the ancient sites around this remarkable place. We viewed Silbury Hill, the largest man-made earthen mound in Europe. It's purpose is still a mystery. The stone circle at Avebury is ever fascinating: it's older than Stonehenge and there are many theories about its purpose.

And we planted our feet in a village called Fyfield. Enough said.

Booze Britain

If you have read this blog before, or if we have spoken in the past few months, you will know that we have both been shocked by the public drunkenness and overall alcohol consumption here in the UK. Back in March, we spent a long weekend in Edinburgh and witnessed 17-year-olds drinking pitchers of green booze at 11:00 AM on a Saturday morning, and in July we were stunned by the folks at a street festival being so inebriated at 1 PM that they couldn't stand. In London we live on a street with two pubs and are nightly serenaded by a combination of thousands of bottles being dumped in recycling bins as well as drunk revelers talking on cell phones, getting into arguments and flirting both with each other and disaster.

Overall we have thought this pretty amusing. It didn't stress us out--it was just part of the local character. We watch a TV show here called Booze Britain where the camera follows groups of Brits out on the town drinking to excess. Imagine starting out your evening at home with a few cases of beer washed down with some Smirnoff vodka. Then hitting the pubs with your "lads" or "ladettes" challenging each other to drink dozens of shots of black Sambuca, super-chilled Jägermeister or some other ungodly concoction. This inevitably leads to public displays of rowdiness, urination, vomiting and some really unmentionable behavior. But it's all captured by the camera. We assumed that people on Booze Britain were encouraged somewhat by the presence of the camera to indulge in over-the-top behavior. Well, we were wrong.

We just returned from a weekend in the West Country, having deposited ourselves in the city of Bristol. On Friday night we were walking back to our hotel from dinner and a visit to a great 17th century pub named for Charles II. It was after 11 PM when we rounded the corner near our hotel. Lying flat on his back on the pavement was a man in his 40s wearing a tuxedo (dinner suit to the locals). We didn't know what to do, and certainly didn't want to risk moving him and causing injury. His breathing was shallow and there were no apparent cuts or bruises. Had he had a stroke? A heart attack? We didn't know. Amazingly this man had keeled over in full view of the night watchman of a nearby building, but we had to tap on the glass and get the guard to call the emergency services (999). We waited, not for a police car or an ambulance, but for an emergency response car purpose built to handle drunks on the street. The dead man came alive when the medical technician touched his neck to get a pulse. He was able to get the man to sit upright, at least briefly. The medic asked if he had been drinking. The man said yes. No drugs, only drink. He admitted to drinking since 7:00 PM. In 4 hours he drank himself into a state so he didn't know where he was, how he got there or how he would get home. He could easily have died on the pavement that night. Booze Britain isn't so funny anymore.

(Creative credit: John and Peter)

Back in the Land of Smurfs, Waffles, French...er...Fries and Beer

Flashback to August 1983: I was a nerdy teenager who went to Belgium to live for a year with a family whom I had never met. The family's name was Dupuis and they lived in Waterloo. There was a maman, a papa, a son and three daughters--a close-knit family that laughed often.

Fast forward to August 2008: La famille Dupuis has grown as families do over the years. The children are adults with homes and lives of their own. There are grandchildren for the bonne maman and bon papa to dote upon. But they are still close and laugh a lot when they get together. Their smiles and laughter are infectious even if one doesn't always get the joke's punch line as it speeds past one's ears in rapid French. It's been a quarter of a century and I still feel like part of the family.

I "flew" from London and Brussels on the new Eurostar train; the trip lasts just two hours. It used to take the good part of a day to travel by train and ferry boat between the two countries. The Eurostar speeds along at 186 mph and goes right under the English Channel in the Channel Tunnel. Twenty minutes under ground and you barely notice you're moving. Amazing!

My first night I stayed with my Belgian brother X and his wife and sons. They live in a small rural village in the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant in an old farm house that they've renovated largely themselves. I enjoy spending time with this family, talking over old times and new situations. I've seen their sons, now teenagers, grow up during my sporadic visits to Belgium. It was fun to hang out with them a bit. They are fans of the American TV show Desperate Housewives and we whiled away a few hours watching some episodes on DVD dubbed into French. The youngest boy also went with me on a walking tour of the university city of Louvain-la-Neuve where I spent 1987-88 studying and sharing an apartment with two Belgian guys.

The rest of my nights were spent at the home of M. and Mme. Dupuis in the Walloon community of Braine-l'Alleud, not far from Waterloo where they'd raised their family. They built their retirement house about ten years ago amid farm fields and pastures; the backyard looks out onto corrales with four horses. There's something very calming about watching these beautiful animals in the distance all day.

Mme. Dupuis is an amazing cook and I probably gained 5 lbs eating her food. There is almost always a soup course, a delicious main course and some dessert that she just whipped up. It was good to spend some quality time with the parents again. We visited a museum dedicated to the works of the late Belgian artist, Jean-Michel Folon, and attended an interesting outdoor concert at a beautiful 18th-century château near their home. And they hosted two family dinners so that I could see everyone again.

Where Charles Lost His Head

John and I have been making the most of a membership in the Historic Royal Palaces. It gives us unlimited access to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace. It also gives us royal intrigue, infidelity, marriages, death and executions until we're blue in the face.

We visited the Banqueting House and Kensington Palace one weekend recently. Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House is the only remnant of the Palace of Whitehall that was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698. Before most of it was destroyed by fire it had grown to be the largest palace in Europe, with over 1,500 rooms.

As you can see from the photo on the right the most amazing thing in the Banqueting House are the ceiling paintings done by Peter Paul Rubens in the 1600s. Charles I hired the Flemish master to immortalize his father, James I, as a god. And, indeed, one sees King James floating around the stratosphere with classical gods, cherubs and the like on several of the major panels. And why not? I asked myself. James and Charles both believed they had a divine right from God to rule over Great Britain.

The problem was Charles I really put the Divine Right of Kings to the test when he tried to rule without the consent of Parliament, came out on the losing side in the English Civil War, was tried and found guilty of high treason and was sentenced to death. In January 1649 he was beheaded (ironically and ignominiously) on a scaffold erected outside the Banqueting Hall he loved so much.

Our visit to Kensington Palace on the western edge of Hyde Park was a different experience. Much of that royal palace is off limits to the general public because it houses the offices and private apartments of a number of members of the Royal Family. We did tour the Royal Apartments used by Stuart and Hanoverian monarchs. One room I found particularly interesting was Queen Victoria's childhood bedroom; it was here that she learned early one morning that she was queen.

In the former apartments of the late Princess Margaret there's a borderline camp exhibit on the last debutante season of 1958. Ball gowns, cut-aways, dance and etiquette lessons and just how to curtsy. The amount of detail about this right of passage for young aristocratic women was staggering.

Naturally it's difficult to go to Kensington Palace and not think of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lived there from the time she married Prince Charles until her death in 1997. There's an exhibit of about a dozen of her designer dresses as well as reminders of the public outpouring of grief at her accidental death. John recalled flying to London on the day of her funeral for business, driving by the Palace and seeing the million bouquets of flowers left at the gates.