Fluffy

I had trouble accessing my blog for a while, thus the delay in posting.

Anyway, I was at the commissary last week or so and there was a sprog that sounded exactly like a foghorn.  I am not joking around here.  The little brat kept leaning forward in its gargantuan stroller and opened its mouth and repeating made foghorn noises.  Perhaps it had just discovered that a widely opened mouth and lots of air is a great way to give fellow shoppers a monster headache.  Foghorn Sprog was in the produce section and I could still hear it in the toiletries aisle.  Nice eh?

So at work the following day, I decided to browse some of my favorite childfree websites to relieve some of the annoyment caused by previously mentioned Foghorn Sprog.  Well, apparently SrA ProudToBeAMommy who administers the firewall decided that childfree websites must be blocked.  However, I did stumble onto a site called “Above Rubies”.  I’m nervous to post the link because I really don’t want these people mad at me.

Allow me to describe them: they would be the uber overinvolved soccer moms, the ones that not only get offended by my favorite radio station, but would also burn it down while singing contemporary praise hyms.

They get their name from a Bible verse that says something to the effect of a good woman having a value above rubies.  Their definition of a “good woman” is quite different than mine; they feel that a woman’s place is the home, that God is the boss of the husband, and the husband is the boss of the wife.  Mkay.  Women are encouraged to have as many children as possible, and the site is full of “testimonials” from people who delete their (kinda paltry) life savings to have vasectomies and tubal litigations reversed, often with financial assistance from their churches.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t it be a better idea for a couple who regretted sterilization to lovingly adopt a child that needed a home?  And what kind of parishioner donates money to a “cause” such as sterilization reversal?

Anyway, the gist of their website was that if women submit to their husbands, have as many children as biology allows, eat a vegan diet with at least 60% raw foods, and take a crap at least 3 times a day, then those women will indeed be above rubies.  The website gave me a good laugh, but unfortunately a “how to deal with the stresses of motherhood” story destroyed my fondness for peanut butter.

In other news, I am going to write some more travel posts about recent trips, and try to put more useful info them like hotel, public trans, etc.  I’ll still post a trip report full of the usual misadventures.

So, I am working on a trip for my sister and best friend this October.  Previous suggestions were Bucharest/Transylvania (Romania), Madrid (Spain), and Istanbul (Turkey).  And the big winner is…drumroll please….

Vienna (Austria) and Bratislava (Slovakia).

Yeah, none of our original choices panned out.  Romania is too complicated at this time of year, neither of them were especially interested in Spain (too similar to Italy), and Turkey just got bombed in many tourist hot spots so methinks we should stay clear for a while.

Vienna is a stunning city and Bratislava is the “new Prague”.  [Prague used to be a hotspot for fans of the former eastern bloc, cheap beer, and the real Bohemia, but it was rather disappointing when I went.  I want to go to Bratislava before it too gets overrun.]

I went to a travel agent last night to inquire about train tickets.  I was estimating around 120 Euros (about $155) for round trip tickets, but there was some freakish summer promotion special that offered me round trip tickets for 58 Euros.  Score!  It was so nice to finally get a break in ultra-expensive Europe.  Of course, the hotel won’t be cheap but with the hugely discounted train tickets, all should be okay.

In other news, I read on some news webpage that overhyped, uber-dumb former POW Jessica Lynch is pregnant.  Okay, so her convoy takes a wrong turn in Iraq and all of the attention is focused on her.  A ridiculous “homecoming” parade is sponsored for her, complete with aircraft rides, all at taxpayer expense.  Do all former POWs get such treatment?  I think not.  Anyway, she gets medically retired and a full range of VA benefits, which come out of taxpayer pockets.  These benefits are nothing to be sneezed at and based on the fact that she obtained her injuries while in the Armed Forces, she is entitled to them.  I have no problem with that.

However, it’s aggravating that she is too stupid to use birth control (it’s even free for her!) and then has a “publicist” announce to the world that she’s knocked up.  The father is a “boyfriend”.  Sort of makes her live up to every stereotype about white trash from Appalachia.  I’m not trying to be mean but that kind of stuff really annoys me when taxpayers must pay for her mistakes. 

For example, there is a young troop at my office who just popped out a kid.  This child was not planned.  Supposedly she is “engaged” but doesn’t appear to be in any rush.  She just got back from 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, in addition to 9 months of paid leave for medical appointments.  Based on her low rank, she is also entitled to WIC handouts.  Based on the fact that she now has a child, the military must pay her more cost-of-living allowance (COLA) each month, an increase of several hundred dollars.  As a single parent, she is entitled to priority at military-run daycare facilities, with subsidized fees.  I don’t have a problem with the military providing promised benefits, which are mostly taxpayer funded, but again it is very annoying when people receive these benefits because they were irresponsible in the first place.  Grrrr.

Last night at the COOP (local grocery store), I made a run for butter, aranciata (a delicious orange soda), and tofu.  Can I rant quickly about how the commissary rarely stocks tofu and Italians don’t even know what it is?  So much for my planned menus this week. 

Anyway, a beautiful little girl near the cheese aisle said exuberantly “Buona Sera, Signorina!” and started talking to me.  Using all 4 words of Italian that I speak, I told her I only spoke a little Italian.  I figured she was trying to sell something and I had no idea how to say something like “I’m allergic to Girl Scout cookies” or “My oven’s on fire”.  She kept saying things and eventually I realized she was asking for permission to take a photo of me with her new camera cell phone.  Of course, I said.  I was so amused, and smiled sweetly for her to take a photo.  She showed it to me afterwards and asked if I liked it.  I assured her I did.  She thanked me profusely, then skipped off to the produce aisle.  I ran into her in the check-out line and either told her “Pleased to meet you” or “The pleasure was mine”.  Those sentences are similar in Italian so Lord knows what I actually said.  I asked her how old she was, and she started to tell me, then began quietly counting in English before saying “Eight!”. 

See, kids are okay in small doses.  I just can’t handle an entire church full of them.

Since I first took the wheel, I have always been amused by the number of men who drive with their left arms hanging out of the driver’s window.  Not just hanging, but with their left hands stuck up as if to wave, or say “How, white man” in the sure-to-be-offensive these days Indian speak.  I tried driving with my arm out of the window on a few occasions to see what all of the fuss was about.  It sucked.  The noise of the wind is bad enough, your left arm gets tired, it’s harder to steer (and forget about driving stickshift), plus if you are as pale as I am, you get a serious case of sunburned wrist.

In Budapest, I pointed out to CE Boy #2 that the entire line of cars in front of our taxi had drivers with their left arms hanging out of the window.  I was amused by the sight of it.  He informed me that by hanging an arm out of the window, the driver is therefore able to direct the flow of air into the car.  Or poor man’s air conditioner.  He’s correct, because on another recent occasion, my three male passengers said the same thing.

Mystery solved.  And I feel like a bit of a bonehead for never figuring it out on my own.

There is an Army guy who works near my office.  He comes by frequently to say hello to my coworker (all of the guys here love her) and occasionally he will acknowledge my existence with a small conversation, such as motorcycles.  In early June, he suddenly started coming by more to talk to me and shared rather personal info, such as his divorce, his children, former girlfriends, etc.  I enjoyed talking to him though.  He surprised me by emailing me in a somewhat flirty way, hinting at maybe hanging out sometime.

But it quit quite abruptly so I figured he lost interest or something.  No big deal. 

Well, my coworker was talking about him yesterday and mentioned his wife.  Yes, his wife.  Apparently the guy is definitely married.  I don’t know if he married her between June and now, or if he was married when hitting on me, but I just thought I would add that to the pile of weirdness that is my (lack of) love life.

Thought this was amusing. About 2 1/2 or 3 years ago, I was living in Korea.  I decided I needed a new backpack to use for my walk to work each day.  My free-with-ROTC-scholarship Jansport backpack, complete with embroidered Auburn ROTC logo and a large Gatorade stain just wasn’t cutting it.  I remember going downtown and pointing to a nice blue backpack with heavy cushioning.  I wasn’t in the mood to bargain, so I showed her my wallet of around $23 and the clerk agreed.

Well, flash forward a few years, and people start commenting “Hey, nice backpack”.  Eventually I figured out why when one guy half-jokingly asked if he could buy it from me. 

It’s a freaking fake Oakley backpack.

All along, I thought the large silver “O” on the top was some sort of goofy hook or loop.  I had no idea I’d purchased a knockoff Oakley backpack.  I didn’t even know that Oakley made backpacks.  CE Boy #2 recently informed me that Oakley also makes clothes and sure enough, he wore an Oakley shirt (and looked quite handsome in it too, but he’d look good in a Chick-Fil-A uniform too).

So yup, that’s me, the accidental knock-off purchaser.  Now I must admit, I did stock up on some purses of questionable authenticity, but those were for my sister and mom.

I am open to suggestions for this one.

In October, my best friend and little sister are scheduled to come out for about 10 days.  I want to take them on a side trip for maybe 3-4 days.  My only criteria is that the location be some place fairly warm (Europe gets cold in October but not many hotels are yet willing to turn on the heat) and a place none of us have ever visited.  Here are some ideas I have been contemplating.

1. Spain - Madrid or Barcellona

2. Turkey -  in particular, Istanbul, and possibly include Antalya

3. Romania - fly in via Bucharest and arrange a 2 or 3 day tour of Transylvania

4. Any other suggestions?

Go ahead and give me your thoughts and I promise to write an informative post about wherever we go.  I still need to put together one for Slovenia and a more detailed one for Hungary.  Coming soon, I just need a faster Internet connection.

Okay, so I’m not really out there for sympathy, but a couple of developments recently have been too puzzling not to share with the Internet.

For starters, let’s consider Jim #3.  I go weeks without a word from him, and then he finally wrote me an email to thank me for a package I mailed him containing photos from our trips.  He said he doesn’t have a reason for being so hush.  I replied and said it was okay, that I can handle the fact that some people will not spend 30 seconds every so often to say hello.  I meant it as sort of a so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish-and-be-smarter-next-time email, but instead it has prompted him to now write me at least once, if not twice a day.  And he sent a package with photos and a 1FCK soccer ball.

[Yes, I know what 1FCK looks like.  It's simply the logo for the Kaiserslautern Soccer Club but for English speakers, it looks quite different.  I have always wanted something with the 1FCK logo for laughs.]

Along with the package was a sort-of apology and an open invitation to continue traveling together in the future.  Yikes, I wasn’t searching for an apology or peace offering, but the gesture was nice.  I’m not interested in him as anything other than a traveling friend, so I guess we are okay.

I also was not upset because I met a really nice fellow at work about 2 weeks ago.  He was walking by my office and asked if I lived above a hairdresser.  Turns out he noticed me when he was getting a car stereo installed (the car stereo place is next to the salon).  So we wind up chatting for apparently an hour or at least 45 minutes, and I end up with a quasi-invitation to meet up that Saturday at a pub.  Only problem is that I did not know his name, though I told him mine.

I took my mom to Slovenia that morning, and we toured the Skojanske (sp?) caves and stopped at a Lipizaner horse stud farm to pet the mares and their foals.  We both wound up with intense pressure headaches and got home feeling completely awful.  Eventually, we decided dinner would be a good idea, so we walked to a restaurant.  I passed the pub on the way and gave a half-hearted glance, but did not see No Name Guy.  Had a lovely dinner and bless them, the restaurant owners decided to run the air conditioning for a change.  By now it was 9pm and on the way home, I told Mom I needed to stop by the pub quickly.  Sure enough, No Name Guy was there.  If he was surprised I brought my mother along, he hid it well and was extremely nice to her.  So the three of us had a lovely evening together (and both of our headaches went away).

Pleased with a nice evening with a cute guy who was also a gentleman to my mother, I went into work Monday dressed up a bit more than usual, hoping to run into him again.  Sure enough, I did.  No Name Guy (by this time I’d figured out his name from the tag on the door) walked by again and I worked up the nerve to ask him to lunch.  We had a lovely lunch off-base, during which he mentioned a 10  year old son.  Okay, I thought, kids are not an automatic disqualifier.   He must be divorced.  Divorce is okay, just a sad fact of life.

He emailed me later that day to suggest we meet up for a beer.  He felt it was a crime for me to have lived almost half of my life in Germany having never tasted weisen beer.  Since he was deploying for 8 months in a few days, we had to act fast.  He came over that night and I reheated some dinner for him while Mom read a book in the guest bedroom.  We had a wonderful time and when he left, he made a point to walk into the guest room to say goodnight to Mom.  Again, major bonus points.

But is Fluffy a happy camper?

No.

At some point that evening, he slowly revealed that he is still married and has 3 children.

Yep, I know how to reel ‘em in all right.  A guy who is obsessed with Star Wars and wants to hold hands like 3rd graders all over Europe but can’t find 30 seconds to type the word “hello”, and another guy with more baggage than O’Hare Airport.

Suffice it to say, it made it really nice to see CE Boy #2 again after so much time apart.  But it also really bites because seeing someone after so long does revive old feelings.

So, those are my woes.  I’ll try to post something more interesting next time around or maybe figure out how to get some pics loaded.

And having a wonderful time.  I think this trip is going to take over the number one spot in my list of best trips.

Today, CE Boy 2 and I got a late start and stopped in the stunning St. Stephen’s bascilica.  There is a small side temple called the Temple of the Holy Right Hand, or something like that, because the true St. Stephen’s hand was miraculously preserved.  The artistry alone in the cathedral merits a visit and it is free, as it should be.  It really bothers me when churches charge for admission.  Some churches charge a euro or two and call it a donation, which is acceptable to me, though I feel it should be optional.  If so, most people leave a larger donation.  But the 20 dollar admissions to St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey were shameful.  Are you listening London, hmmm.

After St Stephen’s, we mosied to the Great Market Hall.  Tons of fresh fruit stalls, butchers, and varieties of the special Hungarian paprika so highly tauted in many of my cookbooks.  I only bought a bunch of grapes and 2 luscious peaches, for a whopping 1.50 dollars, as we still had not found a place to have lunch.  Restaurants do not seem as plentiful as they do in other cities, but each one we have eaten at was excellent and reasonably priced.  For example, once we finally had lunch today, it came to a grand total of about 24 dollars.  That’s for 2 people with drinks, appetizers, alcohol, salad, main course, and dessert, including tax and tip.  While I think the good ole days of getting a bargain in eastern Europe are mostly gone, Budapest is certainly the most reasonable city I have encountered thus far.  And it’s not yet on the stupid euro, whew.

Anyway, I digress.  This Hungarian keyboard and a severe lack of sleep, no thanks to the extreme heat and extreme noise outside.  It was too hot to close the double paned windows, but unbearably noisy for me with them open.  I”m a motorcycle rider but do I go riding down side streets at 3am revving my engine, heck no.

So after the market, we went to another church that is built inside of a cave and quite charming, as well as a relief from the heat.  It reminds me of the underground level of a cathedral in Seoul, South Korea, that I visited a little over 2 years ago.

By this point, we were starving so found the previously mentioned restaurant.  Then we went to one of the Budapest thermal baths, the Szechenyi Spa Baths.  They are kind of plain compared to the other ones, but it’s open to men and women at the same time and CE Boy 2 did not want to go alone.  There were a variety of thermal water pools, including a freezing cold one that I would sit in for a minute or two, then dash into the hottest of water I have ever immersed myself in.  The steam room was nice too and the steam was so hot I had to cover my nose and close my eyes because it hurt.  Then I discovered a large outdoor pool and the water felt lovely.  Suddenly, it began to rain and about half of the bathers yelped like little girls and went running for the inside pools.  WTF?  Were they afraid of getting wet?  Heck they were in a swimming pool for crying out loud.  The best part was a pool we nicknamed the roundabout.  See, you enter this ring shaped pool, about the size of 4 standard hot tubs, and the current of water is flowing counterclockwise.  If you push yourself to the edge and just float, the current quickly floats you along like a message in a bottle.  Very fun but kind of hard to get out of.  You have to kick hard to get out of the pool into the adjacent regular pool, and on multiple occasions I had to pull a “Look kids, it’s Big Ben and Parliament” trick.

Okay, I’m zonked and about to go to sleep.  It rained very heavily on us right afte we left the spa but at least it cooled things off here.  Anyway, Budapest is a terrific trip so far.

The bottom line: a good trip.  I recommend it to others looking for a nice, educational experience.

Forthcoming post: the dangers of flying Ryanair.

Friday - left for the airport with plenty of time, parked, checked-in, and then heard the announcement that my flight would be over 2 hours late.  Ryanair doesn’t provide any food vouchers or niceties when they inconvenience customers.  So the wait was hellish in that crappy Treviso terminal, surrounded by bored passengers who spent the time drinking beer and watching another stupid world cup game.  Poor Jim #3 was kind enough to wait for me at Stansted airport (vicinity of London) until I showed up around 2:30am.  By the time we got a taxi to the B&B and settled in, it was close to 4am. 

Sat - left around 9am to pick up the car.  Beautiful day.  Really freaky trying to drive stickshift on the left side of the road from the right side of the car.  Got lost trying to bypass Oxford and wound up driving straight thru it.  Sucked.  Eventually got to RAF Fairford to check into lodging.  Nice place by the way.  The drive was also very pretty, thru a region of England called the Cotswolds, full of stone cottages and tiny villages with hyphens in the names.

I suggested half jokingly that we should drive to Wales since it was not too far away.  Jim #3 jumped on that idea so off we went to Cardiff.  I longed desperately to stop at Tintern Abbey on the way to the border (we studied that poem junior year in high school), but we did not have time.  Wales was a hoot as all of the signs are in English and Welsh.  Welsh looks like this:  gwycchdth tiehtttdddff ccthprydlldd.  Apparently, the invention of the vowel is not yet familiar there.

We walked around downtown Cardiff and had a quick snack, also stopped by a Toys R Us.  Then we had to high-tail it back to England and down towards Salisbury for…

 Stonehenge. 

We had a special tour reserved that allows you to enter the stone circle, but were running late and showed up 10 minutes late.  Gunshy after too many Ryanair flights, I was crushed, thinking we’d missed it.  As luck would have it, I asked the parking lot attendent if we could still join and he said “Oh sure” and let us in.   WHEW.  The stones were awesome and it was neat to be able to touch them and wander thru.  An hour is more than enough though, so I spent some of the time chatting with the guard, who was cool and funny.  He said Summer Solstice is a real good time, and that the strangest thing he’s seen was 2 people getting it on smack in the center of the circle with 14,000 people surrounding them.

We left before the rest of the crowd so that we could get first dibs on the restrooms, or “loo” as they call it there.  You learn this trick after traveling a bit.  Anyhoo, I got to drive this time around.  We stopped in a village called Marlborough for dinner but alas nearly everything was closed, or at least not serving food, despite signs that said “Food served all day”.  You see, England had lost their soccer game and the entire country was depressed.  Seriously.  People were dragging their feet, driving slowly, and too bummed to drown their sorrows in ale.  One sad fellow recommended an Indian restaurant.  There were only 2 other people there and the owners were very glad for the business.  Even gave us free drinks, so I had my first gin and tonic in over 2 years.  Wheee.  Anyway, we enjoyed chatting with the other couple, who were from Swindon.  I told them I’d read much about Swindon in a book series (Thursday Next) and they were delighted. 

After finishing the drinks and eating a hot pepper that I thought was a green bean (OUCH), we headed back to RAF Fairford.  It seemed like every journey we took wound up being twice as long as predicted, so it was very late by the time we got back.

Sunday - Slept in a bit, then checked out of lodging and drove to the nearest Tesco, a large grocery store.  Had a pretty good breakfast at their cafeteria.  Was forced to witness one of the dirtiest children I’ve seen in my life eat its breakfast as well, bang on the table with a spoon, and smashed beans into its face.  This sprog was old enough to do cartwheels so no excuses for its mess.  I don’t think that scored me any points with Jim #3, who pointed out a very cute little girl who later sat down, neatly folded her napkin, and proceeded to eat with her knife and fork, exuding good manners from the tips of her sweet pigtails to the soles of her pink Mary Janes.  He said “That’d be your kid, wouldn’t it”.  Ouch again.

I bought a box of Farley’s Rusks, a product I have always been curious about.  Turns out that they are a baby cookie, sort of a vitamin cracker designed to teach kids how to chew.  However, they’re delicious for 27 year olds who have no intention of sharing the rusks with children as well.

We drove thru the Cotswolds, including a town called Bourton-on-the-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold, where we took a nice hour long hike and walked thru an old cemetary.  On the way towards London, I gently hinted that I would like to drive thru Banbury.  This is to satisfy my curiosity over the lovely nursery rhyme.

“Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross

To see a fine lady upon a white horse

Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes

Music shall follow wherever she goes”

Well folks, there really is a fine lady in Banbury Cross!  It’s a statue exactly as the nursery rhyme says.  Got the pics to prove it too.

Anyway, it took forever to get back to the airport to turn in the car, what with traffic and loads of construction, so we had a picnic in the car.  At one point, a car crammed with children in the backseat passed us and the kid closest to the window was bobbing his head.  I started bobbing mine as well and he just seemed thrilled, pointing to the other kids in the car.  So it turned into this bizarre game of headbanging as each of our cars passed one another in the bumper to bumper slow traffic.  Fun stuff.  Stupid kids.

Turned in the car, took the bus to London, and had a lovely catnap on the way.  Weird dreams though and sore  neck afterwards.  We eventually got to our orange paradise, the Easyhotel.  OMG.  The “reception” was little more than a large closet and the hallways were so narrow that Jim #3 couldn’t turn around while wearing his backpack.  I walked into the door and if I’d tripped, I could have fallen right into the bed.  We had a 3×4 foot space to put our stuff and the bed, which is fitted exactly into the walls.  I  put extra stuff between the mattress and the wall to save space, which shows how small it was, considering how lightly we were packed.  The walls were also thin and when the lights were out, we could see light shining in from the neighbors’ room.  Too funny, but for $70 a night, I’m not complaining.

Monday: slept in a bit but you can’t blame us since there were no windows or alarm clock.  Ate a late breakfast and then began riding the busses towards the Tower of London.  It was 2pm by the time we got there and let me tell you, if you want to waste $30, be bored out of your mind, and spend your precious holiday time doing so, then the Tower of London is for you.  I will probably post a more detailed entry later.  I’m trying to post travel tips that will hopefully help people along the way.

Anyway, after the stupid Tower, it was 4pm so we walked a few miles along the River Thames, checking out Tower Bridge and London Bridge along the way.  London Bridge is no longer falling down by the way.  We wandered thru Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, where we heard teenage girls shrieking.  Turns out that the movie theatre there was premiering the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and Johnny Depp was there.  There was a huge crowd so we couldn’t see but we certainly could hear them.  Never understood the attraction to Johnny Depp.  He looks like he would have a serious B.O. problem.

Anyhoo, I digress.  Rode around on the bus for fun just to look at sites, grabbed some to-go food but the parks were closed so we had to have a picnic on a bench somewhere.

Tuesday: slept in again.  Went to the British Museum to view the Rosetta Stone, library galleries to see the Magna Carta and original “Alice in Wonderland” script, and the Science Museum to see the toilet exhibit.  Did you know that the modern toilet was invented by Sir Thomas Crapper?  Seriously.   His name was Crapper.  Poor guy never knew that his name would one day be part of American slang.  By the time we finished laughing at the toilet exhibit, it was time to head back to the airport.

The Left Luggage area at Victoria Station was scary because the employee was yelling at people and being ridiculously rude.  I later emailed the company to complain about him, thinking nothing would come of it (given European standards of customer service).  I was stunned when a customer service rep wrote me back and said they’d look thru security camera footage to investigate the incident!  Oh crap what have I gotten myself into.

Eventually got back to the airport, said a sweet goodbye to Jim #3, and boarded my plane, which was an hour late this time.  Thank goodness for small favors.

So it was a good trip.  I learned about people taking complaints seriously, the toilet, slept in a large box, ate one piece of fish & chips and will never do so again, was the focus of a joke by a Beefeater security guard/tour guide at the Tower of London, set foot in Wales, and drove on the left hand side of the road.  Of course, it’s now been 2 weeks since I have heard from Jim #3.  So much for his sweet goodbye.  Maybe he really meant goodbye.  But at least I can check off London on my things to do list.