Monday, 19 November 2012

Having a Bite at the General Store

The Reemergence of the General Store in New England

By CivJet

I have this memory from about thirty years ago of going down the hill with my friend’s grandfather to pick up some milk at the Cummington store. I remember we wanted to go so we could get a Marathonbar. As usual the place was lit by bare bulbs and a bunch of men sat around a small wood stove in coveralls.

Thirty years later that same store has changed. The front door welcomes you with a community board with listings of events. Now the light inside is warm and there are rows of organic food and wine as well as a counter with some of the best sandwiches ever. More important than the food is the sense of community that the shop has created.

Stopping in is more than just a bite to eat, there is the inevitable conversation with someone you’ve just met or tale retold many times. The seating area includes a kid’s area full of toys and drawing supplies which means a family breakfast becomes a leisurely event.

This change isn’t unique to The Olde Creamery. Eight miles away in Ashfield Massachusetts, Elmer’s Store, which opened originally in 1835 under the name Craft’s, has brought another town together. It’s been Elmer’s since 1937 and I can remember visiting it as a child. They always kept a large wheel of cheddar under glass in the window. It was the most crumbly and sharp treat, and though the owner’s have changed, going there is no less enjoyable as an adult.

When Nan Parati bought Elmer’s Store she wanted to make it something that the community wanted. So she put together a survey and handed it to her neighbors. What she found out was that the people of Ashfield wanted a place to stop by for coffee and some breakfast, somewhere that could be a community hub for the town of 1,800. Parati has lived up to her promise as Elmer’s offers more than just food, they have a small bulk section and another corner of the store is full of local artisan’s work.

What the town got wasn’t just a greasy spoon, Elmer’s is some of the best breakfast food I’ve had anywhere, and since you’re in New Englandeverything is served with real maple syrup. They have been written up in the Boston Globe as a destination. Now they serve breakfast everyday of the week, lunch on the weekends and dinner Friday nights. If you head there on a long weekend there might be a line but there is great people watching.

Up in Shelburne Falls, on the Buckland side of theBridge of Flowers is McCusker’s Market. The front of the store is filled with beautiful produce and a large selection of organic products. Walk through the isles and you will come to the counter where you can find a whole array of food to order, both sandwiches and ice cream, which you’ll need after a day of swimming at the Pot Holes.

Relatively speaking McCusker’s is young. Power’s market in North Bennington Vermont just celebrated their 175 birthday. Power’s Market is a small low-key market on the main square (triangle) in North Bennington, and they have a little bit of everything including fresh locally made mozzarella, deadly raspberry shortcake and a nice selection of sandwiches, but the Portuguese Breakfast Sandwich is my favorite.

With the trend towards healthy local eating small general stores have really began to reemerge as lively and interesting spots, each one imbued by the locals with its own personality. So if you are heading to Western New England it’s worth your time to hunt out one of these general stores to really get a feel for the communities that you are stopping in. I’ve heard of a few people who have even moved up here just because of a cup of hot chocolate (did I mention the hot chocolate at Elmer’s).

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Armchair travel during Winter

Travel the globe with some of the great writers

By CivJet

In the depths of winter, my first New England one in a decade, I find that more often than not the roads

are a mess on my days off. I am stuck at home looking for a way to come through this unusually wet winter; I survive on books. The deeper we get into the season the more I wish to escape to someplace warm and far away. So it is through these books that I have gone off, while still seated in my chair with the old wool blanket under my chin.

Travels from Another Era:
A Room with a View, EM Forester, 1908
This classic follows Lucy Honey Church to Florence, England and finally back to England as she negotiates the social norms of Edwardian English along with her own more liberal feelings about love and passion.

The Immoralist, Andre Gide, 1902
Set in Italy and Algeria, The Immoralist follows the internal moral battles of Michael as he shifts his life from the study of ancient ruins to searching out the hedonistic pleasures of living life for the moment. Gide not only takes the reader through the ancient Roman ruins in Italy and the streets of Biskra, but he also brings us into the internal conflict that Michael goes through.

Around the World:
The Female Nomad, Rita Golden Gelman, 2002
In 1986, children’s book author Rita Golden Gelman, almost fifty, divorced her husband and got rid of most of her possession to live on the road. In the Female Nomad, Gelman talks about how she made her way around the world and the connections she made along the way. While she may not know the languages, Gelman connects with the different communities that she stays with by learning to cook with the women. Her descriptions of making tortilla’s from scratch and the Thai stews filled with coconut and lime leaves will make anyone hungry.

The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux, 1977
I first read this book while I was dutifully waiting for my son to be born. This memoir of a train trip from England to Japan, leads you on an adventure through Iran and India and many other spots. Like my pregnancy, Theroux starts out fresh and excited but as the trip continues he becomes more disillusioned by what he sees. The book seemed to match my feelings as I read it.

Alone Abroad:
Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey Into Bhutan, Jamie Zeppa, 2000.
Jamie Zeppa spent three years in the country of Bhutan as a volunteer teacher of English. As one of the few foreigners in the country she learns how to live among the people without any previous knowledge of the country and its culture. This is a rare view of a country that holds its isolation paramount, letting in few outsiders.

Finally I will leave you with one of my favorite authors, Isabel Allende. Women traveling on their own, has become one of her more recent themes. Ines of My Soul and Daughter of Fortuneboth tell the story of women traveling alone in times when it was not common. Ines of My Soul focuses on a woman who leaves Spain for the New World and her role as a conquistadora, through Peru and Chile. Her earlier book Daughter of Fortune tells the story of Eliza, an English woman from Chile who heads to the United States during the time of the railway expansion, following her love, and father to her soon to be born child. This is her tale of learning a new place alone, and the world she creates for herself there.

Here I have only mentioned the books that are closest to my heart, but when it comes to travel, there are so many more out there for you to explore and enjoy. I hope that you can find time to sit down for a while with your own book.

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Enchanted Rock, Texas

Climbing with the spirits

By CivJet

Nils and I were a few miles past Llano when the tip of Enchanted Rock appeared, a sliver of pink granite suddenly Camping

sprouting from the horizon. We had been driving west for hours, watching the greenery of Texas' hill country gradually give way to parched flatland. Now, as its granite dome rose over the highway like a miniature Uluru, there was something uncanny about Enchanted Rock.

Enchanted Rock has its fair share of ghosts. In his history The Enchanted Rock, author Ira Kennedy writes that nearby Tonkawa believed that the spirits of the dead roamed the mountain, while the Comanche told stories of ghost fires and unearthly groans. In the imaginations of Texan treasure hunters, Enchanted Rock was a place of fantastic riches, packed with lost Spanish mines and fat veins of ore.

Nils and I had come to Enchanted Rock with a humbler goal. As the second-largest rock dome in the United States, Enchanted Rock is a prime destination for climbing in all its forms, from casual hiking to technical climbing. For Nils, a climbing wall regular and one of my best friends, the chance to do some real scrambling and caving had just looked too good to pass up.

It was about 10:30 AM when we started our hike to the summit, but the trail was already crowded. Some groups had small children in tow, and a few climbers had even brought their dogs. However, while the path itself wasn't difficult, the dry heat and complete exposure of the rock made for slow going. With no trees or other features to help us gauge height, the bare slope played tricks on our eyes. I felt like we were walking on a granite treadmill; no matter how far we climbed, we never seemed to get any closer to the summit.

In folk tales, the summit of Enchanted Rock is a kind of purgatory, an in-between place for souls burdened by crimes or grudges against the living. The Handbook of Texas relates the legend of a chief who supposedly suffered this fate as punishment for sacrificing his own daughter. According to the story, it was his spirit's ceaseless pacing that wore the divots in Enchanted Rock's surface.

Eventually, the trail leveled off into a broad plateau, and we found ourselves standing on top of Enchanted Rock. Below us, the land spread out like a road map, a patchwork of plains, two-lane highways and bare stone hills that stretched to the horizon in every direction. It was as if we had climbed onto the roof of the desert. We spent a few minutes snapping pictures in the intense heat before heading back down.

Our next stop was Enchanted Rock Cave, a 350-meter long, 30-meter deep fissure running down one side of the rock's dome. For nearby Apache, Enchanted Rock Cave was home to the gan, powerful mountain spirits responsible for curing illness and protecting the Apache from their enemies. Unfortunately, the cave's easy accessibility has proven to be a conservation liability, as visitors with little or no experience with cave conservation have damaged the fissure's native fauna and left behind litter in the course of their explorations;

With the help of a trail map, Nils and I finally tracked down the cave entrance, a narrow gap in the rock just under the summit. While we checked our gear, a man with a thick South African accent argued with his son over whether or not to go inside.

"We don't have a torch," said the exasperated father. "I'm not going in without a torch."

After about half an hour of wriggling through paper-thin squeezes and chimneying down slick vertical drops, desert

Nils and I agreed that this would not be the best cave for a family outing. Just getting ourselves and our packs through was taking a good deal of teamwork, not to mention a smidgen of muscle. Still, we were enjoying ourselves

"This actually makes an awesome rock slide," I commented to Nils at one point, as I slipped my way down a slab of granite. In the lantern's glow, I saw Nils grimace. We were deep inside one of the largest hunks of stone in the United States, and I had not chosen my words carefully.

"Dude," he groaned, "don't say 'rock slide'."

Among the many spirits said to have been swallowed into Enchanted Rock, there is one that came back to tell his tale. According to local legend, a Spanish conquistador once escaped a group of pursuing Tonkawa by climbing Enchanted Rock and vanishing. Mystified, the Tonkawa whispered that he had cast a spell over the mountain.

The conquistador had a different explanation. It was the mountain, he would later tell his comrades, that had cast a spell over him. For a while, he had become part of Enchanted Rock itself.

"When I was swallowed by the rock, I joined the many spirits who enchant this place." he said.

As I stood outside our tent and watched the sun set behind the cliffs that evening, I didn't need magic to understand how Enchanted Rock wove its spell. It was there in front of my eyes. It was the clouds of buzzards riding the last thermals from the cooling granite, the way that the rock faces seemed to grow and shift as dusk fell.

Deep down, I envied the ghosts

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Sunday, 18 November 2012

Gimbsheim Wine Festival, Germany

Making friends at a locals only wine festival

By CivJety

I sat down at the slender, grey-topped table next to the leafy fence that marked the edge of the Gimbsheim

Weinbrunnenfest. My company for the evening, all of whom were more than three times my age, could easily have been half the participants in any small town ladies night bingo club.

Expecting to slowly sip a glass of wine or two over conversation of knitting, gardening, or perhaps if it got a little edgy, how so-and-so had stolen someone else’s goulash recipe and passed it off as their own, I settled in with a mild sense of dread.

Ruth, the dark, curly-haired, woman who sat opposite me at the table, held up the small, smooth, elongated white stone I had just given her to add to her rock garden and uttered a comment in German that elicited a laugh from the other elderly woman who sat around us. Not wanting to be left out on the humor and eager for approval of my gift, I asked for a translation.

"It looks like a penis!"

"Like a what!?!" I said, quite surprised.

"Like a little boy’s penis."

I smiled and let out a chuckle mostly to help ease the awkwardness. As they laughed, someone poured me a drink, and then another, and then another. Soon, I was off to Tulips

the wine stand to buy a few more bottles and staggered back to pour the next round.

The Weinbrunnenfest is held every year on the first weekend in July. It begins on Friday and runs every evening for four days. Unlike some of the larger wine festivals in the area, the one held in Gimbsheim is comparatively small and attended almost entirely by locals who gather together to enjoy music, dancing, food, and the variety of wines produced from the local vineyards.

The next morning, I slept in a bit to recover from the previous night out with the ladies. After finally getting up, I decided to go on a bike ride to take in the surrounding landscape and pass the time until the evening festivities were to begin. Riding down the narrow streets that cut through dense housing, I began to notice something. There is really nothing all that astounding about Gimbsheim.

There’s a butcher shop, a bakery, a couple of small pubs, but that’s about it. Having travelled around Europe quite a bit, I was used to seeing the postcard panoramas like St. Mark’s Square, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Roman Coliseum. Gimbsheim’s only comparable site was a ten foot tall monument honoring the town’s veterans of World War One.

I kept riding on the road out of town and soon found myself perspiring to peddle up the paths along the ridge. The hillside was covered in grape vines lined in perfect rows like a striped shirt. Scattering rabbits as I rode along, I eventually stopped to rest and take in the scenery.

The Rheinhessen area, Germany largest wine growing region, is famous for its white wines. While the haus

Mosul Valley is regarded as one of Germany’s most scenic wine regions, the hills surrounding Gimbsheim make up a charming scene overlooking the Rheine River and many small towns such as Oppenheim, which ascends the hillside and is crowned by a miniature cathedral, disproportionately large for the surrounding community.

As I prepared to make my ascent back toward Gimbsheim, I took in a long breath of grape scented air and watched a farmer mend one of the rows. I hopped on the bike and peddled back down.

That evening, as I made my way back to the Weinbrunnenfest, I thought about my time spent in this small town. I realized that I was quite taken by it, but why? Until that moment, the answer remained elusive.

As travelers, we often set out to far flung places in search of something different, new, and authentic. As I walked, I reminisced about my time in Paris and how I made the rounds to all the must-see tourist sites, trying to take pictures of the Eiffel Tower that didn’t include someone trying to sell me multicolored flashing key chains. Something didn’t feel quite right.

Looking back on it, it wasn’t that commercialism and mass-tourism had ruined any possible culturally real experience. I just hadn’t been looking in the right places. Buildings, monuments, and landscapes can be great stops in an interesting afternoon of sightseeing, but its people who make an experience real and authentic.

By the time I got to the festival area, night had fallen and the bright red, blue, green, and yellow lights strung up all around lit up the faces of those seated around tables or swaying around on the makeshift dance floor. There, in the same spot as the night before, were my geriatric drinking buddies.

The worry over a potentially dull night out that I had felt the night before was long gone. Hilde, round-faced with graying hair and glasses, greeted me as I walked up. Smiling, I replied,

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Penny Pinching New York City, USA

Nickel and Diming it in Manhattan

By CivJet

Budget travelers are the McGyvers of the wayfaring world. They start with a handful of odds and ends: a few dollars, Bus

a change of clothing, the address of a old friend with a comfy couch. Then, by some combination of wits and chutzpah, they combine those scraps into something that transcends the sum of its parts, an eye-opening trip. It's every bit as challenging as it sounds.

I discovered this last fact while piecing together a last-minute trip to New York. Even under the best of circumstances, New York is not a city that screams "thrifty". As a destination, it's expensive beyond belief, a town ruled by big-city glitz and hotel rates exorbitant enough to make even the most hardened travelers weep into their rapidly emptying wallets. Add in my chronically underfed bank account and the limited time I had to prepare, and it was clearly going to take some ingenuity to make this trip happen.

After a few Internet searches and a quick phone call, I concocted a plan relying on two mainstays of budget travel, discount buses and hostels. I reserved a dormitory bed at Manhattan's Central Park Hostel and bought a round-trip ticket on the most well-known (read: infamous) of Boston's Chinatown buses, the Fung Wah.

Since it began offering express service between Boston's South Station and downtown Manhattan in 1997, the Fung Wah's tantalizingly low fares and multiple daily departures have made it a favorite among college students, backpackers and other travelers frugal enough to ignore the buses' history of accidents, including their supposed penchant for bursting into flame. After some consideration, I decided that the 30 USD price tag made up for the buses' colorful safety record and booked my seat.

In the wake of several discouraging reviews from friends, I found myself beginning to doubt my decision. When I told one of my housemates, a Fung Wah veteran, about my misgivings, she smiled ruefully and dutifully attempted to focus on the company's silver lining.

"If anything, you'll get to New York really quickly," she pointed out. "I mean, with how fast they drive and all."

Saddled with this bleak outlook, I showed up at South Station's shopping mall-like bus terminal the next day prepared for the worst. Then, to my surprise, the gate agent waved me onto a clean, modern coach bus, complete with TVs. As we pulled away from the station, I wanted to stop the driver and tell him that there had been a mistake, that I must have climbed onto the wrong bus. Where were the crowds I had been warned about? The homicidal driving? The crates of live chickens?

A quiet hour into our trip, the gap between rumor and reality was clear. While the driver certainly sped a little, the calamitous tales I had heard seemed overblown. With this worry out of the way, I relaxed and settled in for the rest of the haul.

After four hours on the road, we were in Manhattan. The driver unceremoniously dropped us off on a street corner in Chinatown and I wandered out into the waning afternoon sun, setting out to find my hostel. Clutching my sheaf of Google Maps printouts, I made for the nearest subway stop.

By the time I arrived at the Central Park Hostel, twilight had bathed the Upper West Side in a wash of pinks and oranges. After getting my key from the hassled receptionist, sitting behind the plate-glass-enclosed front desk, I headed past a mural of New York's subway system and into the hostel.

Once again, I was in for a surprise. Where I expected peeling paint and roach infestations, I got a clean, well-decorated hostel that, while no Mariott, was not at all a bad place to stay. In fact, for 35 USD a night, it was downright pleasant.

This is the secret of budget travel: despite what many people think, "cheap" is not the opposite of "good". In Guggenheim

fact, there is a certain Do-It-Yourself pride that comes from being able to take 100 USD and cobble together an adventure on two days' notice. It's a feeling that the resort-going bunch misses out on.

These thoughts were still echoing through my head when I got to my room. Upon opening the door I found it nearly empty except for a young, well-dressed Indian man sitting on a bunk in the corner. After a minute, he broke the silence, launching conversation with "Which country are you from, sir?".

It turned out that Saha, my roommate, though a financial adviser by profession, was also a philosopher of budget travel. So when I wondered out loud why so many travelers turn their noses up things like hostels and buses, he had an answer ready.

"It's a status symbol," he opined. "It's like people saying 'I need a car' instead of taking the train." In the end, it may get your feet a little dirtier, but what you lose in creature comforts, you gain in community, in new people and interesting stories.

Though, he joked, we might not want it to get too popular. If the hostels were booked solid, then where would we stay?

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Bangkok Cinema Experience

Seeing a movie in Bangkok, Thailand

By CivJet

Suddenly everyone in the dimly lit movie theatre stands up. I follow suit, not wanting to look out of place. Music starts playing and I realize the pictures on the screen are that of the king, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej. I’m in Thailand and between the previews and the feature film the royal anthem of the king is played. Everyone is expected to stand and offer tribute. It’s not commonplace, but there are examples of charges being filed against people who refuse to stand. Esplanade Cinema, Bangkok

It may sound severe, but this is nothing like the numerous laws in Singapore. T-shirts mock the number of laws in Singapore, including fines for jaywalking, fines for having chewing gum, fines for smoking in public, etc. The king himself has called for relaxing this “lese majeste” law for defaming the monarchy. In Thailand there’s a universal mutual respect and desire to maintain harmony. Sometimes people call this saving face, but there’s nothing fake about it. The vibe in Bangkok is much more friendly than most other major cities around the world.

Seeing a movie in Bangkok is a delight. Many cinemas, like the Esplanade or Paragon, are located on the top floor of shopping mall. Picture a 6-story glass and concrete mall with a central atrium cross-crossed by silver escalators climbing to the top. Show your ticket, pass through the metal detector, and take the final escalator to the top and you’re greeted by a majestic setting fit for a king. It’s like you just got a VIP pass to the hippest club in town. Chandeliers hang above your head in the spacious lobby with a tile and carpeted floor below your feet, surrounded by fabric wall coverings, leather chairs, and cloth sofas with ample pillows. These features along with designer lighting provide a comfortable place to meet friends.
Esplanade Cinema, Bangkok

Inside the theatre there are wide, plush red seats with a nice degree of recline and stadium seating. Reserved seat numbers are given at the box office and make it feel like you’re buying an airline ticket. The back row has 2-person “honeymoon seats.” In the first class rooms of the theatre, the “BSC Diamond Screen”, short walls separate pairs of leather reclining chairs, blankets are provided, and refreshments are brought to you.

Accompanying the cinema are often ice skating rinks, karaoke rooms, and bowling lanes. Wednesday is discount day for theatres in Thailand and new movies are released on Thursdays. Movie prices are about half price than in the United States, about $5.50 USD for a new release. Soda and popcorn are about $2 USD each. Next time you’re in Thailand treat yourself to a deluxe, comfortable environment while enjoying a new movie. Just don’t forget to stand.

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America's Best Neighborhoods for Ethnic Food

In these ethnic neighborhoods, you can eat your way around the world—no passport required.

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At a boardwalk restaurant called Tatiana, mustached men sit downing bottles of Baltika beer while watching the bikini-clad beachgoers stroll by. If you’re imagining some Russian resort town, think again: this is New York.

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, is only about 15 miles from Manhattan but in style, cuisine, and temperament, it’s thousands of miles away. A trip here or to another ethnic enclave is a great way to exercise your wanderlust without crossing oceans. You can broaden your comfort zone, buy souvenirs and products to cook at home, and sample new dishes. And you can do it affordably at casual, quirky restaurants and in cities you might not expect.

“The way ethnic neighborhoods form has changed,” says Michael Soon Lee, author of Cross-Cultural Selling for Dummies and founder of CivJet.com. “People would immigrate through gateway cities of the major shipping lines like San Francisco and New York. Due to the difficulty and cost of transportation, most would stay in those areas for generations.” But with greater mobility and high-speed communications, immigrants are branching out.

In the Twin Cities, the Hmong (a Southeast Asian ethnic minority) have planted roots, as have Indians inHouston and Ethiopians in D.C., where U Street gives off the aromas of spicy lamb stew, injera bread, and brewing coffee. “All it takes is for a few people from the same ethnicity to be treated with kindness, respect, and understanding and then the word of mouth spreads,” says Soon Lee.

That kind of open mind and sense of adventure helps when exploring these communities, which can be a little gritty and less accessible than touristy Little Italys. While some Chinatowns have also become kitschy shells of their former selves, in Vegas, a vibrant community has sprung up around Spring Mountain Road; pull over at KJ Kitchen for fried noodles and Cantonese-style lobster.

Back in New York, the Lower East Side attracts a different sort of immigrant than those documented in itsTenement Museum: people migrating to hip bars and restaurants. Pair cocktails there with vodka shots in Brighton Beach for a rounded-out city perspective.

And try testing your culinary boundaries wherever you travel next, or in your own hometown. In L.A., for instance, we’re highlighting Thai Town, but prominent local Mexican and Korean populations also do their part to serve up authentic ethnic food. Check out our picks of notable, lesser-known ethnic-food neighborhoods, and share your experiences in the comments below.

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Best Seafood Restaurants in the U.S.

From coast to coast, these fish shacks and fancy restaurants make it their business to serve America’s best seafood.

By CivJet

Summer's over in Maine, but you’d hardly know it from the queue of vacationers and regulars at the Clam Shack. A teenager shouts out orders of clam strips, chowder, and fried shrimp. But it's the whole, handpicked lobster piled onto a buttered roll that earns this eatery a place among the seafood greats.

Today’s culinary landscape is all about über-local ingredients and farm-to-table cooking. But before there were menus crediting farmers for their kale or acorn-fed pork, there were dockside establishments serving just-caught crab and lobster or oysters farmed a few miles up the shore. America’s seafood restaurants were sourcing fish from their backyard long before it was popular.

These iconic, unfussy joints, for many of us, define seafood at its best. After all, what could be better than plump, juicy bivalves paired with a cold beer and views of bobbing boats? Or picking crabs on brown paper–covered communal tables, your hands a mess of clarified butter and Old Bay?

Our top picks include as many (if not more) down-and-dirty restaurants—where no-frills décor meets the freshest grouper, blackened, simply dressed with mayo and lettuce, and served on a toasted bun—as high-end ones helmed by toques who marry French techniques and worldly ingredients with pristine bluefin, cobia, and escolar.

You’ll find America’s best seafood at a shanty overlooking Florida’s Sarasota Bay, and on Maui’s northern shore in a kitschy, yet romantic South Seas setting where the catch changes so often that menus are printed twice daily, but also in Atlanta, where seafood meets southern society over oysters and putt-putt at the Optimist.

Whether high or low, one thing is consistent: Each of these local favorites, in big cities and small towns, is a catch.

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