Taking the Tri' to the East Side

When I was young, I wanted to be (a) a U.S. senator, (b) a novelist, or (c) a TriMet bus driver.

My affinity for Portland's buses was directly correlated to the amount of time I spent on them: just getting home from my summer camp at age 10 took three buses and about 1.5 hours. But kids don't mind killing time, and true to form, I used the gaps between connections to indulge in a daily food ritual (pork hum bao from an early downtown food cart, corn dogs from the Burlingame Fred Meyer's - I was not a svelte child).

The last bus on my daily journey - the 39 - only came every half hour and took even longer to reach my house, and its only riders were those like me who had all the time in the world. I always sat in the front seats, legs dangling, corn dog in hand, giant sweating fountain drink between my knees, so I could listen to the bus driver chat with the other passengers. Buses are still pretty friendly around here. Riders greet the driver and say "thank you" when they disembark, and drivers and riders are prone to striking up long and usually random conversations (which make great dinner table stories in the retelling).

Portland's bus mall and Bud Clark's muse.

Mushroom bus shelter-turned-coffee shop.

My TriMet heyday in the late '80s was the era of the original downtown "bus mall": two streets dedicated to public transit, with two bus stops per block and lots of 1970s public art installations to which our mayor Bud Clark famously exposed himself. The bus shelters were brown-and-glass mushroom-like capsules with honkin' television monitors that displayed, in shaky type like in airport terminals of old, the arrival time of the next buses (which was a-MAAAA-zing in 1988). One of these old stops has been left as a relic, turned into a coffee stand; the new shelters are all sleek and glassy, with flat screen monitors and no real protection from the rain.

Today it's the MAX light rail and the little streetcar that get all the attention (and the funding), but the buses still do most of the serious work. Don't be fooled if you come to town sans car: other than getting to and from the airport, the MAX and the streetcar are pretty much useless. You want the buses.

Granted, buses are not as tourist-friendly. But in Portland, you really can ask the bus driver for help identifying your stop or where you want to go. Plus TriMet has a decent trip planner, which is also integrated into Google maps, and there are more than 50 apps (as collected by TriMet) that provide real-time tracking of the buses.

Alas, due to serious budget shortfalls (and, imho, over-spending on extending the MAX and streetcar lines), TriMet has recently cut back bus service even further. What this means is that locals can't get cross-town quickly (say, from SE to NE Portland) - but it is still super-easy to get just about anywhere from downtown. And for tourists, that is likely what matters most.

The new shelters: sleek, yes; rainproof, not so much.

OK, so let's say you are staying at a hotel downtown, which also means you probably don't have a car, but you have an extra day to kill and you want to check out this "East Side" you keep hearing about (which is really, truth be told, where you find the heart of Portland these days). What do you do?

Pick a line, ride across the river, and hit up one of East Side's distinct neighborhoods. Roughly from south to north, your best neighborhood bets are:

PDX Brews: the Micro, the Macro, and the Nano

My mom has always been ahead of the times. She moved to Portland in the '70s - way before it was hip  - and, when I was a kid, would take us to the city's first brewpub: McMenamin's Hillsdale Pub. Lyza and I liked it because if you were a rube enough to order a "large," the thinly cut fries (skin still on) would come out heaped on a baking sheet. Tee-hee. Mom liked it because she could bring along a Ball jar to fill with fresh beer to take home (a growler before we called them growlers).

Today McMenamin's is a huge chain; their food is rather mediocre and their beer quality rather spotty. A micro-to-macro growing pain, I suppose. But they have a thing and they do it well - see, for example, my notes on the Kennedy School. McMenamin's is still a stalwart of old Portland, as are the other early pioneers of the Oregon microbrew scene: Bridgeport (Portland 1984), Widmer (Portland 1984), Deschutes (Bend 1988), Rogue (Ashland/Newport 1988).

Joe, our beer guru, with tasters at the Commons Brewery.

So if you're visiting Portland for the first time, know that all of these breweries have large, welcoming brewpubs with full menus and (for the most part) family-friendly atmospheres. For a great, old-school beer crawl right downtown, start at McMenamin's Ringler's Annex (1223 SW Stark) and then work your way through the Pearl district - past Rogue (1339 NW Flanders), then Deschutes (210 NW 11th), and ending at Bridgeport (1313 NW Marshall).

You might have a sensed theme, though, in my PDX posts: as a native Portlander, I can't help but view Portland through an "old Portland/new Portland" prism. Let's say you have a beer-savvy friend coming to town, and you want to impress her with a more "new Portland" (hip/edgy/small batch) brewery experience. You're in luck: in the last few years, there's been an explosion of "nano-breweries" around town. As I've said before, I'm no beer expert, but I know what I like - and this stuff is good.

Cheap Eats Japan, Part II

Where was I? Ah, yes: noodles.  Plentiful, delicious, cheap -- but also just the tip of the Japanese convenience food iceberg. And so we move on to that second major Japanese food group, fried.

Fried food on sticks:  

Kushiage (which I think literally translates to "fried food on sticks") is exactly what it sounds like.  Any kind of vegetable and almost any kind of animal product is panko-crusted and deep fried to order, served with shredded cabbage and a sweet dipping sauce (in which you should never double dip).  As the Japanese know well, fried food goes best with beer, and it's the beer that will run up your tab in such places - each skewer on its own costs less than $2.  Greatest novelty: frying quail eggs turns them into squishy eye balls with the most amazing gooey yolk when you bite into them.

Lotus root has a most distinctive shape.

Okonomiyaki: 

Though kushiage could give it a run for its money, I would have to say Japan's premier drunk food is okonomiyaki.  Seriously, I don't understand why every college town doesn't have an okonomiyaki hole-in-the-wall diner, or why Portland appears still to be lacking an okonomiyaki food cart (Note to Portland: Get on it).

Okonomi-mura

One of the best cities for okononomiyaki is Hiroshima, where there is an entire building downtown (Okonomi-mura) made up of tiny okonomiyaki stalls. It's a little tricky to find the internal staircase that winds up through five or six floors of okonomiyaki paradise, and once you do, it's hard to differentiate one from another.  

We picked one on the fourth floor that seemed like it had been around for a while, was hosting three middle-aged Japanese business men, and was staffed by an older man with a yellow towel tied around his head who looked entirely displeased to see us sit down before his grill.

A Perfect Day: Krakow, August 2011

It's been nine months, but I really have to post something about Krakow. In reality, our time in Krakow was split up over three or four days, but in my head, we had one perfect day in Krakow. That perfect day went something like this:

From the train station, our short walk to the old town takes us across the planty for the first time. The planty is a park (yes, the plant-y is a park) that encircles the old town where the city's medieval walls once stood. Shade trees line tidy paths; locals watch passersby from the green benches. There is always something to see in the planty. 

Today it is several hundred young scouts from around Poland, looking homogeneous in their militaristic green and beige uniforms and knee-high socks. It's the 50th anniversary of the country's scouting program, and the President is in town for the occasion. Scout leaders try to corral the kids into scraggly lines while the marching band warms up and the flag bearers smugly congregate in front. I can't help but feel like the towheaded youth are about to storm the castle.

From the planty, it's a quick jaunt through the old town to Market Square, the heart of Krakow. We have timed this perfectly. Only during certain summer months, on certain days, between certain hours can you climb the city watch tower next to St. Mary's Basilica. With even greater temporal precision, we emerge at the top of the tower right before 11 a.m. On the hour, the trumpeter on duty (finishing his 24-hour shift) emerges from his little office and circles the wood-beamed room to play the city's famous hejnał four times - once in each direction.

So there we are on a beautiful summer morning, looking out over Krakow's old town and the bustling Market Square, and right next to us is one of Krakow's (and Poland's) greatest symbols, playing the same short melody that has been played here every hour, every day, for centuries. Awesome.

Munich and the Biergarten Time Warp

Thinking about Munich makes me hungry. I suspect this is because all I did with my three days in Munich was eat (and drink).

Sausage. Pretzels. Beer. Repeat. Oh, Munich! How I miss you!

Virtualeinmarkt in August

Trust me, it could happen to you. You think you're going to explore Munich's old town, tour a palace or two - but you never make it past the Viktualeinmarkt. It's a warm August afternoon, the communal tables under the chestnut trees are packed with ruddy-faced men in lederhosen and friends catching up over a shared pretzel, the cold beer makes time slow down and imparts an instant nostalgic glow: next thing you know, it's dusk.

In the midst of the English Garden

You think you're just going to check out Munich's giant English Garden (think Central Park), with its naked sunbathers and babbling brooks, but instead you wile away another afternoon at one of the park's renowned beer gardens. August midday, the famous Chinesischer Turm seems painfully hot and dusty; much more pleasant is the Seehaus, with shaded tables directly on the shore of the Kleinhesseloher See. 

You have every intent of taking a day trip from Munich, but on your way to the train station, you're side-tracked by Augustiner, the largest beer garden in Munich. 

In the courtyard of the Ratshaus

You plan to watch the daily dance of the glockenspiel at the Neues Rathaus (the "new" town hall), but the sea of packed tourists in the Marienplatz rattles you - and instead you veer left, into the courtyard of the town hall for a beer at the Ratskellar. 

You mean to step inside the giant red Frauenkirche cathedral, but the terrace seating of Andechser am Dom is just too dreamy. 

(OK, so these last two are not technically beer gardens - you can't opt to bring in your own food, and it's not self-serve - but MAN. We liked Andescher am Dom so much, we had dinner there twice. Plus I really like Andechs beer.)

Yes, there are museums and palaces in Munich that one might visit. We did spend a morning in the neighborhood just east of the river, poking through shops on Sedanstrasse - but my memory of this is pretty hazy, probably due to sausage-and-pretzel withdrawal. 

Yet despite my unbalanced approach to site-seeing in Munich, I do not think I went wrong. Beer gardens have it all: superior people watching; quality beer; self-serve sausages, sauerkraut, and big doughy pretzels; some sun, some shade, some gentle communing with nature; and absolutely no pretension. What's not to love?

(I recently came across this site, a wiki of Munich beer gardens, which seems worthy of a plug. So many gartens, so little time.)

Top 10 Den Haag Experiences

For a friend's visit earlier this summer, I compiled a list of our favorite Den Haag experiences.  As we leave The Hague for more American pastures, it seems a fitting adieu to our year of going Dutch*:

1. Classic tourism, Hague-style

By which I mean, an hour in the Mauritshuis (The Hague's world-class museum), followed by a walk around the Binnenhof (the Dutch parliament buildings).

The Binnenhof. Photo Credit: Lyza D. Gardner

2. An afternoon in Delft 

Take the tram, or better yet, ride a bike down to Delft, a condensed version of all that is charming about Dutch towns: canals with narrow streets and white-railed bridges, churches with tilting towers, big squares and little squares and a thriving market on Saturdays. If the weather's nice, have a beer in the Beestenmarkt, a smaller square lined with cafes and full of Dutch people hanging out under leafy trees. No matter what, have a meal at Rossio - our most favorite restaurant in all of the Netherlands.

Beer on the Beestenmarkt

3. Scheveningen in the summer

Dozens of these temporary cafes line the beach during summer.

 The  Hague's beach along the North Sea, Scheveningen is a surprisingly popular destination for German tourists, who like to dig holes in the sand.  (Not only is this in fact a stereotype that Dutch people harbor against Germans, it also appears, based on our limited observations, to be true.) The most fun aspect of the beach scene - even more fun than watching Germans dig holes - is the seasonal bars and cafes that pop up along the sand during the summer months.  These are neither permanent structures nor make-shift encampments, but full-on restaurants with stylish outdoor lounge seating that magically appear sometime in May and then magically disappear - entirely - sometime in September.  You have to see it to believe it.

Feeling peaceful yet?

4. A tour of the Peace Palace

Andrew Carnegie's gift to the world, the Vredespalais is stunning on the outside and full of equally stunning treasures on the inside, presents from grateful countries around the world. The Palace is the seat of the UN's court, the International Court of Justice, which peacefully resolves border disputes, fishery fights, and other heated arguments between countries.  We take it for granted these days, but it if weren't for the ICJ, countries would still be going to war every year over the shifting courses of river boundaries and over-depletion of cod stocks.  Unfortunately, the Peace Palace is largely closed to the public, but if you plan in advance (or know someone who knows someone), you can schedule a tour.

5. Biking in the Wassenaar dunes

This activity combines two ultimate Dutch experiences: bikes and the sea.  An awesome bike path leads north from Scheveningen; at the top of the tallest dunes, you can look back at The Hague in the hazy distance.

(Already missing our Dutch bikes...)

6. Coffee at Zebedeus and/or ice cream at Florencia 

Florencia is an institution in The Hague, serving cheap coffee and cheaper ice cream to pensioners, motorcycle gangs, children, and everyone in between for something like 40 years.  It has the interior decoration of a smoke-filled Italian cafeteria from the 1980s, but any aesthetic doubts are quickly soothed by the 70-cent icecream cones. Based on a significant sample set ;-), I can strongly recommend the caneel (cinnamon), gember (ginger) and stroopwafel.  

Hanging out like Dutch pensioners at Florencia. 
Photo Credit: Lyza D. Gardner

As for their coffee, you're much better off going down the street to Zebedeus, which serves - we have officially concluded - the best coffee in town. Plus it's built into the side of The Hague's Grote Kerk (literally, "Big Church"), which is kind of cool. Zebedeus also has very good food - indeed, it's my favorite restaurant in The Hague.

7. Beer in the Grote Markt 

Particularly recommended for a sunny afternoon, when the square is packed with people sunning themselves.  We are particularly fond of De Zwarte Ruiter, which has an atmospheric interior for those colder, darker days of winter.

At the height of summer, the tables are twice as thick. 
Photo Credit: Lyza D. Gardner

8. An off-beat museum

If you've made it this far down the list, it's probably time for some more cultural amusements. Among The Hague's more unusual museums, I particularly like the Panorama Mesdag and the Museum Meermanno (a.k.a., the Museum of the Book). (I've previously described both here.) 

9. Shopping at the Turkish Market 

A massive open-air market that runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, De Haagse Markt (it's actual name) is what we call "a slice of life."  (See also my brief description here.)

10. Lunch or dinner at Simonis

Hit up the main branch of this local institution, amongst the unromantic docks of the Scheveningen port, for the freshest seafood in a no-frills setting and at surprisingly reasonable prices.  (The Dutch like a good value.)  In fact, their raw herring is so good, I had to revise my initial opinion of that ultimate Dutch delicacy.

Photo Credit: Lyza D. Gardner

 * Yes, Dutch couples really do split the bill on dates.

Looking for more Hague ideas? Check out my map of all our favorite places: Our Hague.

Utrecht Journal: Learning to Travel Solo

This is a story about making myself proud.  

I was convinced, after pathetic days spent alone in London and Amsterdam pre-law school, that I do not travel well by myself.  This has cramped my traveling style in the years since, and also made me feel bad about myself.  But after the partial success of my Morocco challenges, I decided it was time to try again.  My self-imposed challenge: a day-trip to Utrecht, solo.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

8:58 a.m., Utrecht Central Station: Half-hour train ride passed too quickly in whirl of anxiety, both general and specific.  Stumbling onto train platform amidst flow of passengers, uncertain what to do first - go straight to the museum? Find a cafe for second breakfast?  On escalator up to the station hall, notice the lights above create a cool effect in the escalator shaft. Hesitate as escalator comes to an end.  Step back onto down-escalator while digging camera from backpack.  Spend 10 minutes riding escalator back and forth, taking pointless pictures of the light.

Note the yellow train, which I heart.

9:22 a.m., Utrecht Central Station (still): Pointless escalator picture-taking is oddly liberating.  Understand that I should head straight to the city center to find an atmospheric cafe full of university students.  Thinking what I really want is a "misto" at the Starbucks in the unremarkable train station.  Realize the power of choice is entirely in my hands.  

Portland or Den Haag?

In recent months, Jeff has made no secret of his growing love affair with The Hague - a sentiment, it should be noted, that is so unusual amongst the expat set that it draws suspicion bordering on outright hostility.  This state of affairs has led me to adopt a line of argument that can be roughly paraphrased as "Portland-is-just-like-The-Hague-only-not-in-Europe."

There is actually quite a bit of truth to this argument.  Both are gray-weather cities full of white people who like to think they are more liberal than they actually are, where bicyclists have privileged status and pot smoking is (more or less) tolerated.  In the spirit of my Dutch vs. Danish musings (albeit without the fun alliteration), I present Round 2: Portland or Den Haag?

Daytrippin to Antwerpen

Antwerp made the New York Time's 41 Places to Go in 2011 for its "fashion buzz" and "destination-worthy concept stores" (see also this recent article); countless airline magazines I have thumbed through this year have agreed. Antwerp must have some good marketers.

I like Antwerp, but I would not build a travel itinerary around it. Rather, Antwerpen (as the Flemish/Dutch like to say) makes an excellent casual day trip from The Hague - or Rotterdam, Brugge, Brussels, perhaps even Amsterdam. Akin to Portland, it's a city with few major attractions other than a chill and arty vibe. There's some history, some cafes, some shopping, and some museums, enough to fill a quiet day of touring, but mostly it seems to be the sort of place you would want to live.

Waiting not-so-patiently

The old center, close to the river, is full of pedestrianized cobblestone streets lined with European chain stores. In other words, it's only quaint if you have not already visited a lot of other northern European cities. But the center encompasses at least one gem: Goossen's, an institution of a bakery, located in a tiny storefront that is easily identifiable by the line forming outside its door (Korte Gasthuisstraat 31). The soft danishes incorporate chunks of whole fruit, but the real treat is the sugar bread, a dry and delicate loaf with raisins and a marzipan center, topped with a thin crust dusted with granulated sugar. (They will slice the loaf for you into very thin pieces, perfect for tea or coffee. Not that a single slice of our loaf lasted our return to The Hague.)

Grote Markt and the Cathedral

From Goossen's, one could wander up to the Grote Markt, the city's main square, or a few blocks west to the river, where there's an abbreviated promenade and a partial view of Antwerp's massive port. The center is dominated by the somber town hall and the soaring belfry of the cathedral, which is visible from just about any location in the city. But the old center may be the least interesting part of Antwerp.

Even for the fashion unconscious (like us), it's worth strolling through the two main shopping streets of Antwerp, Nationalestraat and Kloosterstraat, which run roughly parallel to each other heading south from the center. Both are refreshingly unpretentious, with shops that seem welcoming to hipsters and plebeians alike.

Queen Beatrix kicks Kate Middleton's a**: Queen's Day 2011

Jeff and I knew we would like it here when we learned that the Dutch celebrate both of our birthdays with national holidays. But while I get stuck with St. Discrimination-klaus, Jeff gets street parties, music festivals, fun fairs, public drinking, party boats, and an entrepreneurial free-for-all.

One of the great mysteries of life is why no one seems to know about Queen's Day outside of the Netherlands: This should rank up there with Munich's Oktoberfest or St. Patrick's Day in Dublin.

First, you have to love a Queen who sacrificed a celebration of her actual birthday -- which inconveniently occurs on January 31 -- to continue the annual celebration of her mother's birthday, a much more pleasant April 30.

Germany Redux

(This post was originally intended to be published the week of February 14)

If you had asked my last year if I had ever been to Germany, I would have responded dismissively, "yeah [as in "duh"], of course I have - I mean, I've like done Germany." But upon further reflection, I realized I really hadn't. My only experience in Germany heretofore were two nights we spent at a family friend's house outside of Munich (the day in between we spent in Austria), and a long drive down the autobahn back to the Netherlands. My only memories are of my amusement over the spelling of "Munchen" on the road signs, and how a coffee machine at a gas station had an option for "extra hell". Seeing as I was twelve at the time, beer didn't really hold much interest for me.

As a result, our 36-hour trip last weekend to Koln (Cologne) and Bonn was spectacular because it all felt much more new than I had anticipated. To wit:

• German beer halls are awesome. Which raises the question why we have we not yet achieved their full importation into the U.S. (cf. taquerias and pinkberry)
• Relatedly, bars are much more fun when everyone is drinking the same thing.
• Cheesy movie stereotypes aside, German people are remarkably nice.
• German does not sound like Dutch (though it often looks like it).
• Whatever. You had me at sausage.

From the above list, it will be obvious that we spent about 40% of our time in eating establishments. I can now report that, up to this point in my life, I have seriously underestimated German beer halls.

First, you have communal tables in a cozy environment, which is - when mixed with lots and lots of beer - a recipe for conviviality. American efforts to reconstruct German beer halls typically fail at this fundamental level: they are cavernous rooms that always feel cold and impersonal, not human-scale spaces with low ceilings and colored glass windows and sawdust on the floor. The latter is much more conducive to dancing between the tables, or swaying with your arm over your neighbor's shoulder while singing a song you might or might not know.

Second, you get to assume everyone only wants to drink one thing (in Koln, this would be Kolsch). This allows the waiters to walk around with trays full of beers, handing them out to whoever wants one and marking the tally on your coaster - which in turn makes paying a heck of a lot easier. The efficiency is stellar: dirty glasses (kolsch glasses are skinny and small, holding about a third of a pint) are dunked into sudsy water, rinsed in running water, and fitted back into circular trays, which are then spun under taps of kolsch that are pretty much always running before being handed back to the waiters rushing by.

The rest seems less important: the sausage and egg and potato laden menus (easy to make fun of, but actually quite delicious); the jovial German manly men waiters always dressed in blue shirts and long blue aprons; the quick tallying of your bill at your table with the waiter ready to settle it on the spot (none of this waiting for the change nonsense). No, you marketers out there, take it from me: the recipe for an awesome German beer hall is (1) communal tables, (2) a small and cozy space, (3) only one beer on tap, (4) but very good beer, and (5) a snazzy yet efficient way to serve it.

In fact, I liked Germany so much that I would now not say I had "done" Germany - not (at the very least) until I have seen the beer halls of Munich and Berlin, too.

Anyone up for Oktoberfest?

(If you happen to find yourself in Koln and looking for a good beer hall, we very much enjoyed Paffgen (Friesenstrasse 64-66) and Schreckenskammer (Ursulagartenstrasse 11-15).)