Now like us all I have my preconceptions of Cuba, their Fifties classic cars, rumba, cigars and Castro.
And my friends have been urged by all I know who tell me I must continue my Caribbeaneducation there.
Unmistakably Havana
And with my projected next destinations, the Czech Republic and Switzerland (doncha just know it?) now made pariah states by the UK it’s time for a rethink.
I’m reminded too that I have got close to Havana in that I visited San Cristobal de La Laguna in Tenerife on which Havana was based.
Happy World Friendship Day and this post is dedicated to the friends we make around the world on our travels.
And whom we’re all missing so much.
Winnie the Pooh is the patron of World Friendship Day.
And who better than the silly willy-nilly old bear all stuffed with fluff.
I’m forever indebted to Mississippian Zach who looked after me (and the rest of the group but mostly me).
On the second leg of my American Odyssey in the Deep South.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King and honouring the two other Kings, Elvis and BB King.
Hit the road Zach
If it had been left to me it would have been more Tragical than Magical Mystery Tour.
With me leaving my mobile phone back in Cleveland, 124 miles from state capital Jackson.
Zach keeping an eye on me
Where we were assembling for the opening of the Two Mississippi Museums, the Museum of Mississippi and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Zach only organised for a friend who he said was travelling up to the opening himself, but who may very well have been enlisted to help this dopey Scotsman, to take the mobile with him.
The story doesn’t end there though.
And when I put my phone down in the huge hall in the convention centre in Denver Zach appeared to warn me:
’We’re not getting someone to travel 100 miles if you forget your mobile phone this time!’
Geraldine, my Soca friend
We binge-watched American sitcoms when the children were younger (whaddya mean? we still do).
And that meant following the misfortunes of old divil Arthur who had to be walked by his daughter Carrie’s friend Holly.
I’m obviously too young for any of that only I’m not.
And Geraldine walked me and my new Virginian friend Patsy when I went in search of Rihanna at Club Barbados in Barbados
As well as being a reason for getting up early Geraldine went the extra mile for me.
When I showed an interest in Soca music by singing King Bubba tunes.
And on the last day of my trip a CD of her favourite Soca music was waiting for me at reception.
Ich bin ein Dresdener
If only I’d had Ingrid as my teacher when I was young.
Ingrid took us on a walk through Dresden and Saxon history at the German Travel Mart.
Her grandmother had talked to her about the Red Heaven firestorm that set alight their city at the end of the Second World War.
And told us of life under Communist rule. So good I went back for the same tour after my booze cruise on the River Elbe.
I wear the wrist band pass for the tour to this day.
And also others from my Travels which includes Denver, Los Angeles, the Czech Republic and Portugal.
And if you’ve felt too silly to ask what it is, the food that gives its name to Liverpudlians as in Liverpool scouse, this week’s Hungry and Thursday is all about Liverpool scouse and stews around the world.
Scousers have been getting their voices heard (and what’s new there?) these past few weeks, culminating in their fireworks party as they lifted the Premier League title at Anfield yesterday.
But seeing this is a food and drink post, and I already give you a sporting post, My Sporting Weekend every weekend, I’ll stick to scouse.
In a Stew
Which will stick to you teeth or in them. Because it’s really just stew with extras.
Ally in red, naturally
I first had myself a plate of scouse in Albert Dock, Liverpool, as I waited for my interview at the Liverpool Daily Post back in the 1990s.
I had pulled a sickie to attend and was to go on and stare inside the studio where the British morning magazine programme This Morning was televised, only for the camera to turn on me.
Just the job
Which is when I got a shiver down my back as I thought of my boss’s wife watching from up in Aberdeen and reporting to Jim that I was really down on Merseyside when I should have been at my desk.
Still, I got the job so it wouldn’t have mattered.
Back to the scouse and the word derives from ‘lobscouse’ which was a Scandinavian and Northern German stew brought to Liverpool by sailors.
The Liverpudlians, of course, reciprocated and sent exports of their own to these parts… The Beatles. And you can hear all about that in the city they made their home, Hamburg.
Hamburgers… and stew
On Stefanie Hempell’s Beatles tour (and you won’t get better).
While scouse isn’t the only comfort food that the Hamburgers have exported with great success. See Hamburgers and ships.
A Star in Hamburg
So what’s in Scouse?
Scouse consists of mutton, lamb (often neck), or beef with vegetables, typically potatoes, carrots, and onions. Serve with pickled beetroot or pickled red cabbage and bread.
Ethiopia and the world
While I leave my Liverpool-born son to make his way back from the festivities to Scotland, or indeed the phone call to bail him out of jail, I’ll take you on a gristlestop tour around the world of stew.
With the queen of Ethiopia, Meseret
Meat of Africa
Ethiopian chicken stew: And I’ll miss those Ethiopian New Years in Dublin which I shared with my friends Carole, Lorcan, Tony and my Queen of Ethiopia Meseret.
Because Enkutatash runs to the old calendar which means that you actually lose time. I, of course, lose all sense of time when the wine starts flowing which I only do to soak up the Ethiopian stew which you eat with your hands soaking it up with bread.
And you can get a fancy dish too
Balkan bellies
Bosanski Ionac, Bosnia & Herzegovina: And they love their homely food in the Balkans and it unites the different cultures and traditions.
Carbonnade, Flanders, Belgium: And the brave soldiers who went to the Front in the First World War would take their pleasures where they could.
So that meant wine, women and song… or in Ieper, dark beer (there’s lots of it in this dish), women (they’re the same the world over) and drinking shanties. All right up a Tommy’s street and the best people to go with are GTI Travel and Visit Flanders.
Load your plate up with shellfish and don’t be liberal with the squids and octopus.
You’ll need a rich base of onions, white wine, olive oil, and tomatoes, and season with a variety of fresh herbs and spices such as saffron and nutmeg.
They’ll be the dumplings then
Cesky goulash: Not to be mistaken for Hungarian goulash. All right, it is quite similar. Mop it up with the obligatory Czech dumplings and sauerkraut.
And, of course, Pilsener Urquell.
They had a big post-lockdown feast on the Charles Bridge in BohemianPrague recently and I[m hoping there were leftovers!
And with apologies to Irish stew and other meaty greats from around the world.
Heck for fear of being force-fed vegetarian I’ll return to this subject.
Rainy Days And Songdays goes all classical this week.
With a nod to Ludwig Van Beethoven on the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Not growing up in a musical family we had limited exposure to Classical music with one accidental exception.
The Jewel
Fur Elise would play out a couple of times a week from my Mum and Dad’s bedroom.
Not because my Dad was a secret fan of Ludwig but because it was the music on my Mum’s jewellery box.
All of which allowed me to look all sophisticated.
When I drew my Travel companion Elise’s attention to the synergy of our staying in a hotel, the Beethoven Spa https://www.lazneteplice.cz/ in February.
I dare say The Great Man’s name proliferates on hotels, bars and cafes all over Central Europe.
Ring of truth
But our Hotel Beethoven in Lazne Teplice in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire but now Czech Republic has a ring of authenticity.
Because Ludwig actually stayed here and the good people of the Spa and medical town even helped him.
With that delicate problem of his… his hearing!
The Hotel Beethoven boasts a gallery of Beethoven artefacts on its walls on the way to its baths and saunas.
Including pictures of a number of ear horns and creepily the life mask he had made here.
Chocolate heaven
If you ask too you can be taken to the ornate door of the room where he stayed.
And I dare say you can work on a price with them.
And then there’s the Cafe Beethoven where they play his music (obvs) and you can sit at the piano and pretend to be him.
Did I mention they have a glass cabinet of home baking with a carousel of the most calorific chocolate cakes?
Go the full hog, you’re on holiday after all, and pair it with a Hot Chocolate.
Ludwig’s birthday coming in December means that there are possibilities that some of the events planned in his name may go ahead.
One Liberty, Philadelphia: The cityscape of Philly reveals this buzzing metropolis in its best light.
But it is as much the story behind One Liberty that is as enthralling.
It revolves around the Curse of Billy Penn.
Which was placed on Philly’s Big Four Teams after One Liberty Hall was built, higher than the-then tallest building which houses a statue of the founder of Pennsylvania.
Only one thing for it, put Billy back in his rightful spot on a beam on the Comcast Building, higher than anybody in Philly.
He approved and the tams started winning again. And I saw all their achievements in an exhibition too.
All joking aside about Zlatan ‘The Ego’ Ibramovich being cut down to size.
But is it right that the Sweden soccer superstar should befall the same fate as Edward Colston in Bristol, Lord Nelson in Dublin and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad?
A little big woman: Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi
Sometimes it’s the design that catches you and stops you in your tracks.
And so it is with this remarkable little woman,
The President of the USA, Lydon Baines, Johnson took extraordinary measures in stopping her saying her piece at the Democratic Convention by having television change its schedule.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s life was extraordinary, born into a sharecropping family and picking cotton from the age of six, she was later forced out of her home, threatened with her very life and beaten.
All because she wanted to sign on on the voting register.
She summed up her struggle in the Civil Rights Movement thus, and of course nobody could say it better: ‘I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.’
Us journalists like to think of ourselves as hard-bitten but I had to choke back the tears walking through the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam…. http://www.annefrank.org.
The audio narrative dwelt on a passage in her diary where she mentions that she wants to become a journalist when she’s older.
And what a journalist she would have been… ethical (yes, some of us are), prying and fearless.
Amsterdam is one of the world’s great cities and Anne one of history’s greatest figures… http://www.iamsterdam.com.
Statues should be provocative and the Czechs have this one down to a T.
‘Piss’ is the good people of Prague’s commentary on the politicians who have urinated all over their country.
You’ll not see it here but once the water gets flowing they pee all over the map of the country.
The Czechs as well as being the world’s biggest lager drinkers, per population, with some of the world’s best beers, are wonderfully anti-establishmentarian.
There are statues to musical giants all over the world but while former Thin Lizzy lead singer Phil Lynott isn’t the best or most famous singer of them all, try telling that to Dubliners.
It is a tradition now for visitors to Dublin to have their photo taken outside Philo’s statue off the main Grafton Street shopping thoroughfare.
That other statue, the Tart with the Cart, Molly Malone? Well you can leave that to the uninitiated.
Martin Luther stood as a defiant symbol of Dresdeners refusal to see their city disappear after the Allies’ firebombing at the end of the Second World War.
Dresden was known as the Florence of the Elbe and it is one of the great architectural stories of our age, or any age, to see how the Dresdeners have rebuilt their city to the same grandeur of its renaissance days.
Yes, the Little Mermaid is more visited, but personally I prefer the top-hatted Hans in the heart of Copenhagen.
Hans was an eccentric all right and once decamped on Charles Dickens, walked around the house in the starkers, and made it difficult for Charlie to show him the door.
Nelson Mandela Voting Line, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
March to Freedom: In Port Elizabeth
Statues shouldn’t just stand there. No, really. And this is a moving symbolic Voting Line which sums up South African democracy.
This is our host Sisseko and beside him a kid as he would have been back in 1995 when South Africa had its historic vote.
It is also immersive and you don’t have to climb up a plinth to get next to it as they do in Glasgow when they put police cones on the Duke of Wellington.
It is the way I should imagine that Nelson, a native of the Eastern Cape, would have wanted it.
All of which came back to me today with the fifth anniversary of Ireland becoming the first country in the world to pass a referendum to legalise gay marriage.
So to celebrate the glorious day, here are five great destinations, Ireland included, to tie the knot.
A plush ballroom where celebs including Chris De Burgh’s daughter, the former Miss World Rosanna Davison, got married to slot machine heir Wesley Quirke.
The gardens and estate are a favourite location for movie producers but the biggest star of all is Powerscourt’s redoubtable matriarch Sarah Slazenger.
They’ll put flowers in your bedroom, tulips of course and more on this king of flower in Pictures of Amsterdam.
And you’ll have a concierge to look after your every need and plan itineraries for you while there is also the invaluable city card http://www.iamsterdam.com.
As well, as of course, caviar in the Vinkeles restaurant. Well, it is your honeymoon.
Greek gods
And the bride wore white: In Kythera
Where all the men look like Zeus and I could easily have been turned.
If you want the Athens experience then you’ll want to take in the Athens Riviera http://www.athensattica.com where all the Beautiful People hang out.
While the Greek islands have always drawn us there.
With some even forgetting to go back like Dutch walking tour leader Frank and his partner who have settled down in Kythera.
Acting all goofy in Orlando
And this drink Becherovka is a healing potion
And a swim will relax the muscles
Sweat off the rum and food
