Bunissima

In the twilight of an autumn day with falling leaves,
we went on a train with dark wooden benches,
to and through an unknown territory.

In that Saxon village that had been our final destination
I fell off the bike on a gray,
rainy day,
in the muddy country road.

But it felt good. It felt real.
So were my muddy pants.

Zevia e o băutură răcoritoare relativ nou-apărută pe piața americană, cel puțin în comparație cu Pepsi, Coca-Cola, etc. Inițial Zevia vindea Root Beer, Orange, Ginger Beer (pentru cei care nu știu, e o “bere” din ginger, dar e de fapt o băutură nealcoolică), Lime Twist, Black Cherry. Treptat au apărut Dr Zevia (in loc de Dr Pepper), Cream soda, Grape, Mountain Zevia (da, în loc de Mountain Dew), Cola fără cafeină și Citrus Grapefruit.

Pentru că cineva a avut inspirația să creeze o băutură care nu are doar sirop de porumb și niște chestii acolo, Zevia a devenit populară și recent și-au extins gama de produse. Siropului de porumb sau și mai rău famatului aspartam le-a luat locul Stevia, un îndulcitor natural fără calorii provenit din Stevia Rebaudiana, parte din Chrisantmemum family. În plus, este un îndulcitor care nu afecteaza nivelul de insulină. Zevia conține și erytrol, care este un poliol (zahăr din alcool) natural fără calorii, care de asemenea nu are efect asupra nivelului de insulină și nici controverse implicând efectele acestuia asupra sănătății . În afară de caramel, care este probabil cel mai puțin sănătos (în exces), restul ingredientelor folosite în general sunt acid citric (pentru Lime, Orange și Citrus), uleiuri de fructe, esență de fructe și apă. Așa mai da.

Mmmmmmmmmm
(Framboise Lambic e o bere dulce, și are mai degrabă gust de vin dulce decât bere, cu singura diferență că are bule ca și berea. Pe lângă framboise mai sunt și alte arome: kriek, pear, grape, etc.)

Chocozebra (doh… google it)

Citeam blogurile din feed și când am terminat m-am găsit cu paharul de vin și cu nimic altceva în agendă. Mai ales că aici e ora 11 seara, sau noaptea, Marți, și mai sunt decât doua zile până Vineri, când, se prognozează, va ninge aici (yaaaaaaaaaay!). După ce ieri a fost vară, cu douăj’ de grade și soare dogoritor. În fine. Și m-am gândit să postez niște fotografii din N’Orleans. Especially after cheesing it real good in there and promising I will put some photos. I did take my time, but here I go. Ce oraș! Fața de Houstonul asta plictisitor care a dez-inventat mersul pe jos, New Orleans is the king! Of blues. Yeah! Settle down now!

And be patient. Or get a better internet connection.

Anyway, enjoy.

Me in front of the Backstreet Cultural Musem of new Orleans

Some building in New Orleans

New Orleans architecture

Farmacie și Coca-Cola

Bad bar door

The famous boats of New Orleans

The secrets of the Backstreet Museum: the Bone Gang (but more about the Backstreet Museum in a different post)

Broken window and a security system sticker

Street corner in N’Orleans

The worse restaurant evaaaaaaah

New Orleans architecture

Centrul (downtown)

Cornered house (casa încolțuită) and a school bus

Dat’s Grocery (”Who dat” e o expresie foarte populară în New Orleans, e o poveste lungă, just google it)

A red electricity meter or How to make things more pleasant

A red garbage bin with graffiti or how to camouflage smelly things

Geaux Saints sign, which is the French quasi-phonetic transcription of the English “Go”, care s-ar traduce ca Hai Dinamo, Rapid, Care mai este, sau Tractorul Brașov

Half Moon restaurant while a dude is making some graffiti

New Orleans house, but more of these in the next episode

Meet New Orleans
New Orleans is the third big city I visited here in US. The second one was Seattle. It is understood that the first is the one I live in, Houston. Compared to both of these, New Orleans is absolutely amazing, and pardon my comparative oxymoron, it has no comparison. The architecture that makes you feel at home no matter what part of the world you are from, the night life no matter what age you are of, the art! The art! There’s an art “market” every Saturday in one of the most famous neighborhood of New Orleans - East Carrolton. Let alone all the private expositions in the downtown, the live jazz at pretty much every bar there is, most of them with no entry fee, or the live music right on the street. The food definitely completes the whole experience, it is so amazingly creatively delicious (if you get the right Cajun food, that is) and much more varied than Houston’s inevitable combinations of meat, rice and beans (read Mexican food), which is the default food down here in the good ol’ South.

There are so many things about New Orleans that simply make you want to throw your hands up in the air in an abandoning gesture and say: “I want to move here!” Some other friends have experienced the same feelings upon visiting this amazing city. I will not apologize for abusing the word amazing, because it is not enough to describe this city. Like Eddie Izzard said, “awesome like ten thousand hot dogs, sir”.

Yes, here and there you can still see the marks of Katrina. Yes, people are poor here as well. Yes, they still suffer from it and lots of business have obviously never been able to come back. But as a visitor, and as someone who sees that the world is not perfect in London or Paris or generally anywhere else either, New Orleans is the place where you want to fight for that little piece of world you call yours.

The Marigny
And, before even grasping all these ideas in our minds, after we had just had an amazing time with part of the family that we met there, after meeting one of the world’s cutest and smartest kids we were all on our own and ready to explore the city on our own terms like we always did: walking indefinitely for hours and taking photos of whatever was interesting or fun or new, or so on, you get the point.

So, after a few days spent with the family in one of the shotgun houses in New Orleans, we found ourselves in a less conservative place, The Marigny, which the people, not knowing the French pronunciation, call Marony. Less conservative is very little said, being very openly gay-friendly, and friendly to other things that you might not want to know about.

We transferred our things in the room that was to be our lodging place for the next few days and we were ready for adventure. In contrast to the first place we stayed at, which was an entire house, we found ourselves in a small but cozy hotel room, hotel that also had an indecisively Indian-Cajun restaurant, a laundry, and some other multitasking skills and facilities that I do not recall. Also, later on, it proved to be a good indicator of the kitchen hours, because all the smell would travel from the first floor, where the kitchen was, to the second floor, where our room was located.

How it all began
The adventure began with our cameras. My inspiration was poor and I could not do much but enjoy the place more with my eyes than I did with my camera, although I did take a few poor shots, shied by the grandeur of the place. After a while I was starting to need a restroom. The plot was thickening as we were also getting a bit hungry. After admiring all the houses downtown, the various art expositions and other little stores, while the darkness was slowly setting down over us, we decided it was time to eat someplace. We picked one that had been recommended to us the night before at a different restaurant called Jacques Imo, by a cool waitress whose husband was an actor. She herself was an artist make-up expert.

And how we got trapped
It all started with the drinks. Our waiter, Tony (who despite of his New Jersey accent was all born and raise in N’Orleans) was very happy to help, especially with the drinks suggestion. My companion S. had a Sazerac, a knock-out drink and was already very merry and content by the time we finished our food and were ready for the bill. By contrast, I was very unhappy with my girlie drink that was no better than a coke, which made me feel that I was being cheated and that the alcohol we were going to pay for was not there, no matter how much sugar was there to mask the lack of it.

So we decided to have a little bit more fun and get a hand-grenade each, a very strong cocktail originating of course from New Orleans. The venue we got it from was a bit weird, so we decided to move on. Fortunately, if you buy a certain brand hand-grenade, you can enter other venues affiliated with that brand without having to pay for another drink. We tried a really lame live old country music bar, where we were almost forced into paying our due for watching the last band’s song, in the form of a donation. The participants to this silent play were all very firm, mouths and eyes tightening more intensely, until the player gave up and moved his money bucket to the next table. And out we were.

How the plot thickens
The next place was already shaky, with happy umbrellas at the tables on the second floor’s porch, with a view of the entire famous, splendidly lit Bourbon Street, as if to catch flies, with all its Sunday night life of a November month. It was enough for us to finish our hand grenades, while talking about everything else that came to our minds, of which I haven’t got the slightest bit of memory.

The grenades were empty, but we kept the containers because we knew we can have them as memories or we can get a one dollar discount refill. Meanwhile, we hopped over to a new place, where live music was just about to happen. A band was singing 30’s songs. Their hats, the colors of their faces in the pale bar light, their music, everything was almost excruciating, going all the better with my own sensations. My head was bobbing in the rhythm of my new red cocktail glass, and my grin was just as visible as my companion’s.

How it all got really hazy

At the break, we moved on to the next place, The Funky Pirate, which attracted us with its phosphorescent blue lights. We also moved on to a new hand grenade. The music was heavily appreciated by dancing in a lively, absolutely free style which got the compliments of the band singer. You know how they are.

The last chance to get another hand grenade came up shortly after the band was done singing. Since the opportunity could not be missed, we decided to take the responsibility and buy one more for the way home.

(This is me living the American dream - wearing sunglasses at night while holding the very precious hand grenade:)

How we got lost in the maze
And thus we were on our way home. On the way, we stopped for various reasons, some of which being photography or admiring some really cool cars.

We walked and walked. I could, subconsciously, notice the difference, the depression that was intensifying by the minute due to the wrong turn we had taken and to the things we had never seen before, the deserted and silent street whose light looked as ignominiously yellow as the maze in which we were slowly subsiding.

We officially acknowledged the problem at some street corner. Unfortunately, we could not find our way back home. We felt that we were so close but there was a piece of the puzzle missing and the hand grenades had by then exploded in our minds sufficiently and heavy enough to cloud it as much as to render them as useless as petty amusements, just like everything else that came to us. All the iPhones and their directions could not help us at this point. We were trapped. We were in the twilight zone.

Somewhere there had been a decisive point and us, in our ignorant happiness, had missed it. As we found out the next day, while scouting for evidence of our drunken failure, which also happened when we were sober, we just took the wrong turn. And we truthfully continued to stay on the wrong path.

At some point, while my companion was trying to consult the all mighty oracle Google, I decided to take a rest on the pavement.

Things were getting hazy, tense and weird. We had obviously exited the tourist area. We met one of those real people that you only see as psycho characters in freak movies with unmotivated murderers. We asked him for help but he had no power to help. He was as lost as we were, just for different reasons.

His name was Nick.

I am not sure what he asked of us, but as a mutual response of two parties who were lost at sea, he ended up with my companion’s leftover hand grenade in a plastic glass (I have no idea where that came up from) and my amused chitter-chatter with him. At all costs, I do not remember how or why I had the courage to speak to such a character. I was very amused by his glasses bigger than himself, thick coke-bottle lens poking from under the bill of his hat which was resting on his obscenely white shaved head, all of which made his intense blue glare even more intense.

We had exited the place to show off. We had pretty much exited the place to exist at night, if you were anything else than a gangster or had a gun. Which we neither were nor had. We were in a place to be as invisible as one could. My hat was by no means a way to make myself invisible, as much as I liked it, so I smashed it and shoved it my camera bag (which was also a reason for nervousness, but at least was not as obvious as my hat).

For fear of being too fancy, I also took off my wonderfully fancy scarf that I bought from Paris a few years ago.

I threw the hand grenades containers away, in some garbage bins on the side of the street.

But I realized — despite all the grief of the semi-consciously, zig-zagging thought that we were lost, drunk, in a New Orleans ghetto — that, one way or the other, we’ll make it home, and the hand grenades containers will be a mighty souvenir of that night.

So I took them out of the garbage and we moved on in our quest to find our hotel. And thus we went bravely on. We made a loop around the street we were lost on and came back promptly after seeing the even more deserted homes that promised even more no good-doers, if any decided to show up and greet us with a gun.

We came back to the main street, but with no success. This main street, Elyseum something, would by no means let us get home.

We scouted it a little bit more back and forth. Things were getting serious and so were we, with the empty hand grenades containers hidden in my leather jacket and held as if I was terribly cold.

At that point, discouraged by our inability to read the coded indications from Google maps on how to get home, I was already beginning to mope, half amused at my own fear, thinking that we’ll either end up as the subject of fun of some local malevolent character, sleep on the street, or roam all night until we sobered up and figured our way home. None of these ideas was very luring, but we obstinately kept going as if we had a purpose.

Alas, we were saved!
And that’s when the police car stopped.

With our camera bags hanging heavily off our necks, we were obviously tourists, no matter how much our wannabe cool pose tried to hide it. They asked us if we were sure we were on the right way. My companion promptly answered that we were lost.

They were very clear in their observation: “You are in the really wrong place of town.”

Next thing you know, we were in the back of their car, on our way home, me holding on very tightly to the empty hand grenades containers hidden in my jacket. My companion had a bit of a trouble in getting the name of the street we were supposed to get to, but the cops were silently, reproachingly, understanding.

After a ride that seemed to never end, while I was trying to look really cool and un-drunk while showing, in what I thought to be a very subtle way (who’s to tell?), my gratefulness for being saved, we got back to the comfort and warmth of the front door of our hotel.

My Paris scarf has been missing ever since.

Personaje:

Me, sora cea mare
Her, sora cea mică a lui Me
Diferența de fus orar: 8 ore.
Locație: una la Est și una la Vest, nu se știe exact care unde, depinde de direcție, de cine e care și unde e celălalt unde.

Her: E un nou inceput .. m-am ambiționat si aproape că am ințeles radicalii cea ce e un pas MAAARe =d
Me: Wow, daaaa
Me: radicalii sunt mișto
Me: e simplu
Me: orice are un radical
Me: și dacă nu are, îl faci să aibă
Me: hahahaha
Me: (some type of smiley icon)
Her: pe mine mă cam sperie dar e ok ! sunt puternică și îi fac bucățele pătrate. lol glume cu matematica … întodeauna m-au speriat … de ce? pentru ca proful meu le zice mereu .. mai ales cand găsește vreun prost prin clasă care nu știe tabla înmulțirii :d
Me: hahaha
Me: da, e super mișto să faci glume cu matematica
Me: de exemplu tu acum ar trebui să extragi radicalul din ziua asta si să te duci la culcare
Me: sau să faci suma zilei acesteia și știi că rezultatul e somnul
Me: sau să afli necunoscuta din ziua asta și iți dă vise plăcute
Her: avem niste axiome la matematică și ne-a dat odată test domnu’ din ele și o elevă Icsulescu a scris că un punct este paralel cu un plan =]]
Me: hahahaha
Me: well, depinde de plan
Me: de planul din care vezi lucrurile
Me: dacă le vezi dintr-un plan paralel, așa cum le vede ea
Me: atunci, clar, orice e paralel cu orice

Am găsit o reptilă în casă. A intrat probabil pentru că ușile și geamurile nu au o izolație perfectă și uneori mai las ușa deschisă la verandă. Aici avem reptile din astea mici, păsări și alte viețuitoare pentru că e multă verdeață peste tot, care le permite să crească și să locuiască nestingherite alături de noi, oamenii.

Am poftit-o afară, deși mi-a părut rău, poate începuse să îi placă aici sau poate îi era frig afară noaptea. I-aș fi dat niște lăptuci să mănânce și sa mai stea pe la mine, dar am hotărât că ar prefera să fie liberă. Am aflat ulterior de la o nepoată că lăptucile nu ajută oricum, ea are o reptilă pe care o hrănește cu greieri. Eu prefer greierii cântând, reptila poate așadar să-și facă rost de proprii greieri. Dacă lăptuci nu vrea…

O amică a găsit astă vară un șarpe în casă. V-am zis ca pe aici nu sunt populare termopanele?

În București găseam Dr. Pepper cu 3 lei cutia la un minimarket ascuns la parterul unui bloc din Decebal. Făcusem o obsesie pentru băutura asta care creează o dulce dependență care frizeaza obsesia. Urmăream mereu magazinul pentru a fi siguri că nu se vinde tot înainte de a apuca noi să cumpărăm. Mult mai târziu am realizat că plăteam nu pentru că era importat din US, ci pentru că era Dr. Pepper cu zahăr din trestie. De fapt era importat de undeva din Europa, Franța daca îmi amintesc bine.

Aici se găsește peste tot pentru câțiva cenți, oricând și aproape oriunde, chiar cu ediție specială de halloween. Dar tot aici “normal” e siropul de porumb, un înlocuitor pe cât de ciudat, pe atât de puțin palatabil, mai ales când ai crescut cu zahăr adevărat. Dacă pentru dulciuri face treaba suficient, ca orice înlocuitor (a îndulci nu e extrem de dificil), pentru băuturi e mult prea dulce și siropos. Asta se întâmplă aici, pentru că, în linii mari, una dintre plantele cele mai cultivate este porumbul. Și pentru că e prea mult porumb, se găsesc și moduri de a-l folosi. Majoritatea americanilor nici nu stiu ca ei, locuitorii celei mai mari si tari tari din lume, sunt cei pacaliti de industrie sa consume sirop de porumb in timp ce restul lumii foloseste zahar adevarat.

PS retrospective Happy Halloween! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Sequel la Culmea Economizării:

Să bei ceai verde mâine dar să ai energie de azi.