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Random Observations #1.3

Here I will list random observations, stunning revelations, and other random things going through my head lately. They may or may not have anything to do with traveling.

- I have a hard time reading French so I think I may have washed myself with bubble bath soap this morning, and possibly used actual body wash as shampoo. It all looks the same to me but at least I smell good. I am too lazy to google the terms and educate myself on what I am using, for now. It makes shower time mysterious!

- Aside from attempting to communicate with my wife and others, my sole motivation in trying to learn French is so that when I buy kebabs, I don't get ripped off. When I am, I want to be able to argue in French. This has happened to me so don't you dare tell me that it is unlikely, I got ripped off by Tunisians and I'm angry god damn it.

- I just Googled "michelle obama nude" even though I knew it would return nothing. I also am not attracted to her. I felt compelled. I don't know, just felt I needed to share that. I did find this, though. (Not work safe)

Kebabs, shawarma, and all things Godly

So in my previous post I mentioned how my main motivation for saving funds, aside from living a happy and stable life, is to buy kebabs. Or "shawarma" as some like to call it.

What I said is true and it is because, until you have tasted the pure bliss of a galette-style kebab with "Samourai saus" and fries, you have not lived. Without having previously eaten Shawarma you don't know what real food is, it is like trying to picture a fourth dimension.

Don't believe me? Well think about this: I have hated mostly all green vegetables for the majority of my adolescent and adult life. I even hated some vegetables of other colors. I was a vegetable racist. I sustained myself with meat, perhaps some ketchup or other sauce, and potatoes. I need not mention how fried and battered vegetables aren't really vegetables, cause if they were, then I could have practically been called a vegetarian. Instead, I was mostly a carnivore, sticking my nose up at anything remotely healthy and calling it rabbit food. Until I met my wife, and kebab.

To impress my wife and make her not think that I was another fat American scumbag, I ate salads she and her mother made, prepared with vinaigrette (those were actually pretty good despite having to chew on something green)... I ate any vegetable she threw at me, even leek. Which was a mistake. But the point is, I broadened my horizons and was willing to try things, willing to endure the horrific and unnatural taste of fresh vegetables on my pallet IF there was a taste involved that could counter balance the situation. That is, I started to eat like a normal human being.

The first step after all of that was a local Shawarma restaurant in Brussels. We were sitting in a bar one night having a drink and I noticed that a lot of the local population, mainly of Arab descent, were walking up to this restaurant and ordering lots of food (which was mainly a food stand with a big window, the kitchen in front of you consisting of about 4 by 12 feet of room to move around). I was curious and asked my wife if she knew what it was all about and why it was so popular.

She didn't know, but after hooking up with the likes of me she was also opening her mind to new and disgusting things, so we headed over to try it out. For 2.50 EUR we got a giant galette kebab filled with salad, meat, and samurai sauce. I was still hesitant about the salad but I forged ahead knowing I was going to at least be eating some form of meat. I also didn't know what samurai sauce was, all I knew was that it was supposedly "hot", as in spicy hot, and that sounded nice. For a few days on my obsessive return trips to the Shawarma, I even mispronounced it as "sam-why" because that's how the French seem to pronounce it. Only later did I realize it was named Samurai after the noble Japanese warriors. And it lives up to its name. It is one of the most noble sauces I have encountered, aside from perhaps Heinz Ketchup, which holds-fast a position in my heart.

In the end, it is possible that the combination of my wife and kebabs saved my life. At the very least, it saved me from nutrient deficiency, which is also one of my utmost concerns.

As a tribute to the world of kebab, I suggested to my wife that we name our first born child Kebab. The second will be named Penguin after our obsession with the book publisher Penguin. Penguin and Kebab - noble samurai names that no one could make fun of at school.

I also intend on opening a kebab shop in the US, primarily in the south, where the meal has yet to be properly introduced (the greek just fuck it up with their gyros and lack of samurai sauce). I will be rich and will eat kebab at my leisure. Interesting facts I found while researching for my endeavor:

United States: Shawarma is usually found in regions and localities that host a concentration of Arab or Jewish population, such asDetroit, Baltimore, Chicago, South Florida, California, Washington DC, and New York City. An almost direct result of the conflict in the Middle East, shawarma is also popular among American soldiers when returning home.

So in conclusion, I intend to make myself rich off of the food that I love and that has treated me so well, by exploiting American veterans from the south.

editor's note: it turns out that after continued research it is estimated that kebab has not been treating me well, but that it has instead been poisoning me slowly with an extremely high calorie diet. I feel betrayed, and yet I remain as loyal as ever.

Bones and stones

Right now I'm in Long-Pres Les Corps Saints, France, staying with my father in law and his wife.

The only way for me to accurately describe this town is "French" which, I am aware, is not a good description at all. But it's French, as in, perfect stereotype of a French village, exactly what you'd see in the movies (as an American) and the type of place you want to get away to when you actually think of France. The bread baker is next door, a bell chimes in the town center every hour, five chimes for 5pm, etc, you can walk to the doctor, tailor, pub, post office. I like it a lot, although there isn't much going on. I'm still not sure what the hell the kids around here do for fun, actually, aside from driving their god damned loud scooters through the town non-stop. If this were a small American town I would take the usual guess as to their nightlife and say it's probably lots of premarital screwing and getting plastered, but if that's what they do I'm not seeing it. Then again I didn't see much of it when I was a teenager either. I'll never be a cool kid.

The weird thing about observing the area is that I don't see any poor, druggie looking people walking around, which is strange to me as an American. When I first got to Belgium and France, walking around at night I constantly had my guard up, waiting for some sort of fight or something. But it doesn't normally work like that over here. It's relaxed.

This place, though -- it's as quiet and innocent as you're going to get. I've been in small Mayberry towns before but there seems to always be some seedy rednecks around addicted to [whatever] who are trashy and loud and uneducated and have a litter of kids following them around in dirty diapers. That's life... except not here, apparently. The houses are beautiful, the people look happy, the women are hot (I'll leave it at that), and the area itself has beautiful rolling hills, little forests, babbling brooks. Yes, I actually saw a "babbling brook" running through the town with a cute little bridge running over it, don't gimme any crap.

And of course, everything in France is historical. Outside of my window is a fairly ancient church, and by fairly ancient I mean it is older than my own native country. The other day I found bones laying in the yard where workers had dug a hole to put in a gas line. There was a human femur and clavicle lying in the pile of dirt. It's Europe, you know, there are lots of bones. So what do they do? They throw it in the dirt pile and leave them to throw back in the hole later. I got to check out the old bones and snap a photo, because I found it all pretty neat. I can't see something like that happening in the States or Canada, though. If you find bones there it's either "sacred" Indian remains, a murder victim, or someone's grandpa. People would tell you to fuck right off and leave them alone for the "authorities" to take care of.

Speaking of historic areas, today I was helping cut wood for winter in a little forest owned by Marine's dad. In those woods there are multiple trenches, one of which I got to dig up last time I was here. Over the years the trenches were filled in, but you can still see the indentation in the gruond. When you're digging them you come across very light colored soil which means you've hit the walls where they stopped digging. Makes it easy to recreate the thing and look for artifacts. I found some metal crap, looked like a tin for food, etc. It was very interesting for a WWII geek like me. That's the type of stuff I dreamt about doing years ago when I was planning a trip to Europe. Now it happens when I have no intentions of looking for it. There are still huge holes in the ground from artillery and maybe stuka bombs - it's pretty rad. Marine's dad once found a couple tins of food out there that were unopened. He was curious one day and made the mistake of opening one. Apparently it wasn't a nice smell, but the meat was still inside. Disgusting, reeking ZOMBIE NAZI MEAT.

Anyway, it turns out a regiment of Senegalese infantry under French command fought in those woods, thusly the trenches and such. Rommel had attacked with panzers, of which 12 or so got knocked out, before the Germans captured the woods.

Next to the woods is a town called Airaines - I had a beer there today while we took a break and watched horse races. It's odd casually sipping a beer in a small town that you know was completely obliterated in WW2 - everything except the church which looks old as balls (and coincidentally is old as balls) - which was used as an infirmary for both sides. A Gabonese officer was executed by the Germans and there is a monument for him in the town. For those interested:

When World War II broke out, he came out of retirement and took command of a battalion of Gabonese volunteers at Bordeaux, then later was captain of a company in the Infanterie Coloniale Mixte Sénégalaise, which fought Germans on the Somme River. After three days of resistance, the company was left with only ten Africans and five Europeans, and they surrendered near Amiens. But the German officer would not treat N'Tchoréré as an officer, and when N'Tchoréré refused to fall in line with the black enlisted soldiers, the German shot him.

N'Tchoréré's son Jean-Baptiste was killed in action in the same area a week later.

Charles N'Tchoréré has a memorial in Airaines, and in 1962 he was honored on a postage stamp of Gabon

Horse races... gotta explain that one. The French fucking love horse races. It makes me feel like I'm back in the 40s or something, the idea of sipping a beer at the local pub with the townfolk, everyone nervously waiting to hear that their horse as won . It seems pretty confusing, though, what with keeping track of the numbers and this and that. They have races in the day, in the night, and then they have more, bigger races on the weekend. They're all about bettin' on those horses. If I had any money to burn I'd probably try it just to say I've done it, but I have to stop myself and think: What's 1 Euro? The answer is: 1 euro saved is 1 euro closer to a kebab with samurai sauce and that's more important to me than any horse. My kebab addiction is all consuming, but I'll cover that one later.