Category: Travails of a Guidebook Author

Guidebooks–Good or Evil?

I’ve been home so long, and gotten all domesticated and out of the loop, you probably forgot I’m a guidebook author. I think I did for a little while.

But I just read a post on Killing Batteries, a blog by a fellow LP author, Leif Pettersen: Don’t leave home without your Lonely Planet.

He’s addressing the trend among bad-ass backpackers to chuck the guidebook and tramp around on instinct alone. And usually be arrogant, more-authentic-than-thou assholes about it in the process.

As much as I’d like to keep myself in business, I’ve got to say that you can get by without a guidebook if you’ve got enough travel experience.

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Cairo 1966

Someone posted her dad’s slides on Flickr. Look how dapper people are! And how empty the streets…

The one by the pyramids is interesting because it doesn’t look very dated at first. But the building in the background is the old police station, which is no longer used. It’s done in this faux-Pharaonic style, and now when you go to the Pyramids, there are always tourism police lurking around there asking for tips to show you around this “ruin.”

Love Bites: Meet the Maker

Long ago, I started an email correspondence with a man who wanted me to taste his balls.

I know, these guys are a dime a dozen on the web, but this one was special–it was the estimable Chef Thorwald Voss, one of the founders of the Supperclub. I’ve written about him before, but on this last Amsterdam trip, I finally got to meet the man in question. And taste those lovely, lovely balls. (Peter wasn’t in town yet.)

I biked down to Chef Thor’s workspace, a big industrial kitchen/dining room in the former Sportlife gum factory, which has now been turned into a sort of hip food/design office block. I’d always wanted to go in the Sportlife factory, but now this is the closest I will have ever come.

When I got there, Chef Thor was in the middle of devising a new falafel-inspired Love Bite.

Exotic Eastern Love Bites in the lab
Exotic Eastern Love Bites in the lab

I can’t tell you what’s in there–it’s proprietary. But one of the cool things about Love Bites–that I admit I didn’t really appreciate at first–is that they’re totally vegetarian. Apparently, a lot of Dutch vegetarians are very tortured over standard bitterballen, because, I mean, c’mon, they are the ideal snack to go with beer…but they always have weird little bits of meat in them, vaguely. Basically, not enough meat to really identify, but enough to doom your veggie convictions. Anyway, the falafel-ish Love Bite has a Mid East vibe, but is still very distinctly a Dutch bitterbal.

(If you have no idea what a bitterbal is, it’s just a mini-croquette. If you have no idea why a whole nation would get so excited about such a thing, well, I can’t help you. Just try one yourself. But let them cool off a bit after they come out of the fryer. The goo in the middle can be extremely dangerous.)

I also got to see the end product: Love Bites in their little freezer boxes, ready for dispensing to caterers and bars. Seeing how I first heard of Chef Thor from a hand-scrawled flyer advertising his Wonka-like croquettes, I really had no idea the guy was running such a slick operation now. The Bites are all made in a factory kitchen somewhere that starts with a G (I cannot find my damn notebook–I’m working completely on the details of the day that were seared on my brain!).

Chef Thor pulls it out.
Chef Thor pulls it out.

Even more fascinating: Love Bites are constructed largely from prefab products. Did you know that there are crumbs made just for coating bitterballen, available in bags big enough to hold several small children? I did not.

Chef Thor dropped a selection of Love Bites in the deep-fryer, which just happened to be one of the most adorable appliances I’ve ever seen. Chef Thor said he found the old gal (brand name: Princess) on the street. Doesn’t she look like the maid in the Jetsons?

World's cutest deep-fryer
World's cutest deep-fryer

Sadly, I was too busy eating the molten-lava-love of the Bites to take any photos. I think I like the spinach-and-cheese ones best, although that ginger-teriyaki combo was pretty savory as well. This sounds nouvelle, but the genius of them, as with the falafel flavor, is that they are still deep down a bitterbal, a blob of goo surrounded by a shattering crust–the epitome of the crispy-on-the-outside-soft-in-the-middle model for pretty much all delicious food.

Chef Thor samples the goods.
Chef Thor samples the goods.

I don’t know how he does it, as he must surely have reached his lifetime allotment of bitterballen by now, but Chef Thor managed to sample a couple of the LBs, with relish.

Maybe that’s because Chef Thor’s ultimate vision is to serve people nothing but balls: all round snacky food of all sorts, all easily munchable while strolling around. No need to sit still and be served–be dynamic instead! Spread love! Spread food! Taste the balls! Basically, all profits from the Love Bites are going to fund Chef Thor’s next project, which will involve a traveling bus, lots of love and lots of balls.

Meanwhile, in the background, Chef Thor’s pal was getting down with some clay. Whereas Thor is very into future food, little prefab morsels, all streamlined, his cohort was more into the spirit of starting with a whole live animal, breaking it down and serving it on plates you’ve made yourself.

Chef Thor's sometimes partner in crime makes some dinnerware.
Kneading

We debated the various philosophies for a bit, talked a little shop about the old Supperclub, pre-corporatization. “That was some of the worst food I ever ate in my life,” said Thor, of Supperclub’s early years, “but also some of the best and most creative. It was a space where you could try anything.”

Amsterdam in the early 1990s was this sweet spot of cheap rent and loads of creativity. Now most of the big squats have been shut down, and regular market forces have been brought to bear on restaurants, which now have to balance their books just like everyone else.

I’m rooting for Chef Thor’s magic all-ball bus–it might bring back a taste of those good years. In the meantime, I’ll settle for some tasty Love Bites.

FEBO

Even though this web page is one of the most frightening on the whole Internet, I’m still putting FEBO in the guidebook.

That web page may depict FEBO’s shocking catalog of deep-fried morsels, which make me both recoil in horror and gawp in fascination (what is frikadel?!). But FEBO is a Dutch cultural institution! And it has automat windows, which are simply the coolest. Who cares if what they sell might kill you?

Besides, the guy who started FEBO died recently. Turns out FEBO (short for FErdinand BOlstraat, where he had a bakery job–I did not know that) prided itself on providing fresh, not frozen, product to all its franchises. Heartwarming.

Or heart-stopping. You decide–I’m giving addresses, phone numbers, opening times and nearest tram stops.

Status Report

Still working on the Amsterdam book. The good news is that I’m two-thirds done. The bad news is that I’ve used up about 95 percent of my stamina, working seven days a week, about 14 hours a day.

At one point last week, while taking a shower at the end of the night, I realized this is what those mysterious “consultants'” lives are like–you know, all those people in the financial sector. Those people you were friends with in college, and then they took these jobs, and you pretty much never saw them again. Fortunately, I can go to work in the same pair of shorts every day–and no summer subway trauma for me.

One day soon, I may have a social life again. In fact, August 10 I go to Baltimore for the annual crab feast. That is a goal worth working toward.

Back in NYC

Ha–I was in Amsterdam so long, I’d forgotten that summer was actually supposed to be hot! This is very confusing, this sweating thing.

As if to make up for my death trek over to Amsterdam, the airline gods smiled upon me and I was bumped up to business on my way back. I’d basically despaired of this ever happening to me (well, it did happen once before, but it was on Malev, so that only meant I got a different-color seat and more orange juice), especially now that I know there’s a whole, vast world of people pulling extremely complex maneuvers to get upgraded (see FlyerTalk). My so-called “Premier” status on United gets me just about jack shit.

But yesterday, I think I got upgraded just for being nice. Poor woman at the counter had made a call for volunteers to be bumped. She got swarmed as soon as she said “600 euros in cash.” I put my name in, and then went and sat quietly and politely off to the side, and read my book. The rest of the volunteers stood in front of the desk, slowly inching forward like a group of menacing zombies and trying desperately to catch the woman’s eye. It was creepy to watch, and I wasn’t even in their sight line. Finally, she said I didn’t need to get bumped, but she was putting me in biz class because I’d waited so patiently. Really, that’s all that I wanted, and some of those volunteer zombies probably needed 600 euros more than I did (holy shit, though, that’s a lot of cash! I studiously avoided doing the exchange rate, or even calculating how I might spend it, just to avoid disappointment).

And now…back to work on the Amsterdam book. Last night I had a travel-guide research nightmare: People were telling me about some exceptionally delicious bakery, way off in some distant area. I was adding it to my list and mapping it out about the time I realized I was no longer in Amsterdam and the window for research was closed.

For the record, I did eat at some good bakeries, so I feel like I got that covered. But it was touch and go in the final hours, when I stopped at Puccini for some bonbons, allegedly the best in the city, and I discovered they were utterly disgusting. I can’t even express how gross they were.

They tasted absolutely nothing like rhubarb, raspberry or coffee, respectively. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except for the fact that they were monstrously huge, like the size of a baby’s fist. Vegetarian Duck points out a certain tendency in Dutch cuisine toward both abundance and blandness. Puccini almost fit in there, except they went beyond bland, toward abominable. I took one bite of each, and threw them away. (A guy watched me do this, standing in an alley around the corner from the store. He looked horrified.)

The upshot of all this was terror, on my part: If Puccini sucked so badly, then what if all the other chocolate shops in town that people raved about were also terrible? So, in the name of research, I did a frantic afternoon of biking around town eating chocolates, in the last hour before the shops all closed, the day before I left. I am relieved to report that both Pompadour and Unlimited Delicious are quite good, and I can actually heartily recommend Unlimited Delicious, though the rosemary-salt chocolate does not quite hang together in the way I would like.

See, I take all kinds of bullets for you, my guidebook readers. And I’ve got the proof: My legs and butt might be tastefully toned from daily bicycling, but my gut is flabbier than it’s ever been. I think I even see that bite of rhubarb bonbon poking out there on the left. Bleh.

Amsterdam Wrap-up

Maybe a little premature, since I don’t leave till Friday a.m., but barring disaster (cue ominous music), here’s a handy summary:

Number of days in Amsterdam: 30
Number of days riding bicycle: 30
Number of times I encountered a car blocking the bike path: 3 (in NYC, it’s at least 3X/day)
Number of times I clumsily got on or off my omafiets (granny bike) and then looked around to see if anyone was watching: 876
Number of days when I felt like I’d gotten the hang of getting on my omafiets: 1 (today)
Number of days when I felt like gotten the hang of getting off it: 0
Number of frites stands visited: 5
Number of culinary epiphanies: 6

1) Basil ice cream is good (I’m a little behind the times on this one).
2) Pom–a food I never even knew existed until this trip, but see explanation here.
3) Van Dobben, the famous old-fashioned vendor of kroketten (croquettes), is heartbreakingly wonderful. All this time I thought it was just for drunk people.
4) Bitterballen (basically, little round croquettes) signify a great cultural gap between me and Dutch people. I mean, sure, I like them, but it’s just not the same.
5) Intestines can be good. After my tragic andouillette incident in Lyon, I’ve been leery of the chitlins. But Tjon’s food stand at Kwakoe, the Surinamese fest, did me right.
6) Most important: Frites should be done at 150 C/302 F, then 170 C/338 F. I can’t believe all the American cookbooks I’ve read that say to fry everything at 365 F. (For the record, I was told by the master that croquettes are perfect at 180 F/356 F.)

Number of times I thought, “This place is so beautiful!”: 30–basically, every evening as the sun fades away, my heart just plops out on the street. (By contrast, I’ve had that thought in Queens only about 5 times in 10 years, and 2 of those times were provoked by the steam from the power-plant towers, which hardly counts.)

Essay Section:

High point: Talking to all the people I did “Local Voices” interviews with: a rad tour guide in the red-light district, a cool girl who knows a lot about the theater scene here and had a lot to say on post-Theo van Gogh Amsterdam, a smart woman who taught me a lot about Dutch food and some inspiring bike freaks. Anyone who read my earlier post about this trip knows that I hate talking to strangers. But part of my assignment is to find people with an interesting POV on the city and interview them. When I had to do this for the Cairo job, it caused me no end of stress–and then turned out to be fun. But could I remember that lesson this time around? Of course not. It’s just like how, while I’m drinking, I can never remember that drinking too much is bad for me–but with a positive twist.

Secondary, literally high point: Late Sunday night, I was walking along a street in the center. I was a bit stoned–I’d been doing my coffeeshop research, and entertaining a visiting friend of a friend (if you can call staring at the wallpaper in the coffeeshop and smiling thoughtfully “entertaining”). I’d just dropped him off at the train station, and the air was balmy, and I was enjoying walking in the beautiful night. Until some dude next me said, “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” “Grumble” replied my defensive brain. I smiled wanly and nodded. Dude kept talking, and, whaddya know, he turned out to be nice. He just genuinely wanted to share what a nice night it was with someone. We got to the end of the pedestrian zone and biked our separate ways, and I was smiling thoughtfully again. (The fact that the guy was Moroccan somehow makes sense–I have never gotten that “let’s just share the joy of being on this earth!” kind of human contact in the First World, except from people on drugs, and sometimes at home in Astoria.)

Maybe high/maybe low point: I tried to get frites at the Eiburgh Snackbar, allegedly the best in the city, but people probably say that because it’s in the middle of nowhere by a gas station. Sour grapes? Maybe. Just as I rolled up, a crowd of Dutch rockabilly rednecks swarmed out of their beat-up muscle car, all tattoos, sleeveless shirts and mullets and yelling, “Stop, Elvis!” at their jumpy dog. They ordered about 80 fried snacks each. The counter woman, who was wearing a T-shirt that said “Fuck You!” on it, had to stack all the frozen bricks of kroketten, kaassouffle and frikandel (creepy sausage) on the counter to keep track of them. And the rednecks all kept saying, “…met mayo!” (with mayo) at the end of their orders. I turned around and left because I saw the grease would go cold before my frites got in. I would’ve been grumpier, if it hadn’t been such a culture/food train wreck.

Low point, pretty literally: the day when, due to poor planning and lack of food, I slumped down so far in my cafe seat that the end of my braid fell in my coffee. Sadder still: I didn’t even realize this until hours later, when I noticed my hair was hard and globbed together with milk foam and sugar.

Which, all things considered, is not bad at all.

Erm–now I just have to write the book…

Reader, I went to jail for you!

OK, not really–but I was locked in, and the cops were involved.

Monday night, I’m out biking around the north side of Amsterdam, on my way to a friend’s for a birthday party, starting around 8pm. I’m running late, but I happen to be right near a restaurant I wanted to check out. So I make a small detour over to this Aambeeldstraat on the map, only to find the “straat” is actually a big warehouse zone, right on the water.

So I bike in and scope out the restaurant. It’s closed. It looks cool, though. I take a couple of photos of the harbor, because the light is nice. Then I bike back out.

Or almost. A gate–which I hadn’t even noticed when I came in–is locked in front of me.

While I’m poking around, inspecting the realness of this gate and the true degree of its lockedness, two dudes amble up.

“Hey, the Hotel de Goudfazant–is it in there?” one asks.

“Uh, yeah. But it’s closed. And I seem to be locked in here,” I reply.

“Huh,” they say, politely wrinkling their brows with faux concern, and amble off.

I spend the next 15 minutes inspecting the perimeter: barbed wire all the way around, except for the water. I contemplate climbing up a big stack of pallets and jumping over the fence–but that only leads into another locked-looking zone. I contemplate clambering around the fence where it hits the water–but of course it’s protected with a vertical line of nasty metal spikes, just a bit farther out than the length of my arms. I wave hopefully at the security cameras. I also contemplate the teeny-tiny sign–way inside the gate–that mentions the closing time of 8pm on Mondays. And I call the number on the sign, but no one answers.

I call my party hosts.

“Happy birthday! Oh, and, see, I’m going to be a little late…”

I explain my situation, hoping they might be able to come grab me with a boat–if I were committed to swimming out, I could just jump in the harbor and go. But they’re wrapped up with the party, so they give me the non-emergency number for the police.

Guess what? It’s an 0900 number–meaning it costs 10 cents a minute to place the call! Hilarious. I guess it really cuts down on kids calling and asking the operator if his refrigerator is running.

The operator warns me that “it’s a busy time” (has a gang war erupted in Amsterdam? are 800 cats stuck in trees all over the city?), but the cops will come.

The sun starts to sink in the waaaay southwest. The wind is getting chilly. I’m wondering why I actively took those bananas out of my bag, why I wore such impractical shoes today, why I always feel compelled to get one last thing done before getting to any appointment. I take a few melancholy photos of my golden-hour prison, and look wistfully at a tugboat chugging by, just far enough away that I can’t see the pilot and mime-plead with him to rescue me.

Finally, the cops arrive, a young guy and an older woman, in a tiny, efficient car. They are amused and concerned.

“You present a bit of a problem,” the young guy says.

“Yes,” says the woman. “It’s not just you, but also your bicycle.”

I suggest I can leave my bike behind. They look stern and serious. Maybe they think it will be stolen (from behind the locked gate?), or that I am violating a Dutch code of honor. Abandoning a bike is Just Not Done. They declare that we will come out as a package.

Meanwhile, the operator has been rustling up the owner of the restaurant. After I make a bit of small talk with the cops, the operator radios in to say someone is coming over with the keys. More small talk, and then another tiny, efficient car arrives. Out jumps a man covered in plaster dust.

I apologize profusely, the gate is unlocked and the crisis is over. Time elapsed: one hour, 22 minutes.

So, once again, I nobly took a hit for guidebook research. Now I know the number to call for police help in non-life-threatening situations–though I’m not exactly sure that’s something an average tourist will need. But you can bet I’ll be expensing that 50 euro cents I spent on my own call.