Euros Ate My Dollars

“I need a vacation, please.” I demanded for the hundredth time that week.

“Mmm, yeah, that’d be fun.” Ben replied, distractedly.

“NO, you don’t understand.” I grabbed his shoulders and pivoted him away from the TV until he faced me squarely, our noses nearly touching. “Take. Me. On. Vacation.”

Maybe it’s because we haven’t gone much of anywhere all winter. Maybe it was the hint of crazy in my eyes. But somehow, a few weekends ago, I found myself whisked away to Charleston, S.C., for a long weekend.

Ben and I are born-and-bred Richmond, Virginians. As the former capital of the Confederate States, you’d think that Richmond would fiercely identify with its Southern heritage and everything that goes along with that title. And we do. Woo boy, do we ever. But truth be told, Richmond is a land divided. Flanked on one side by the small southern-traditional towns of Southeastern Virginia, and on the other by the D.C.-sprawl of bustling Northern Virginia, we’re torn between our Confederate heritage and our proximity to those damn Yankees that have been creeping their way down to warmer climates ever since the unfortunate conclusion to the War between the States.

But there’s no getting around it in South Carolina: you are in The American South. The rootin’-tootin’, chicken-fryin’, Bible-thumpin’ South. To wit: South Carolinians still spark debates over whether or not to fly a Confederate flag over the capitol building. South Carolina: the answer is no.

Any place where you can revel in balmy temperatures, thick, slow accents and loads of butter is a fine vacation to me.

Charleston has preserved its historic glory more than any place I’ve ever been, despite becoming a tourist hub. Once you step into the famous “below Broad” neighborhood, you are whisked away to the antebellum South: sitting on your porch swing, wearing a corset and sipping your mint juleps. We were walking through the historic district (the second-largest historic district in the world behind Rome!), when I stopped suddenly.

“It’s so..it’s so…quiet.” I said, incredulously. Not even the faint hum of traffic pierced the humid, honeysuckle-scented air.

Of course Ben didn’t respond. He was too distracted. By what, you ask? By this:

Yep. Someone actually lives there. And in the house beside it that’s just as huge and gorgeous. And in the one beside THAT that’s even more huge and gorgeous. And on and on it goes.

Of course, we did a little more than wander around the historic district and take carriage rides while in the heart of the Lowcountry. Okay, we did a lot more. And, let me tell you, it was DELICIOUS.

Oh, sweet, sweet, heavenly Charleston, how I long for thy tasty morsels.

Please, let me take you on a culinary tour of Charleston as I revel in the delicious memories. I’ll be brief.

Cornbread with honey and butter.
Shrimp po’boy.
Basket of pecan fried chicken.
Mac’n'cheese.
Fried okra.
Sweet potato pancakes (best pancakes OF MY LIFE. Get thee to Joseph’s, friend.)
Shrimp and grits.
Grits grits grits.
Fried green tomatoes.
Bacon bacon bacon.
Stuffed french toast.
…
STOP. I must end lest I drool on my keyboard.

In the midst of this shameless weekend-long gluttonfest, while shopping in the open-air market near the waterfront, we ran across a copy of the famed Charleston Receipts for sale at one of the stands.

This ain’t no ordinary cookbook, y’all. This is the original Charleston Junior League cookbook, and the oldest of its kind in print.

It wasn’t until the six-hour car ride home that I got a chance to take a peak inside, and, wow, was I ever in for a treat.

I opened the book up to find an entire chapter devoted to grits (also known as hominy, and apparently, grist):

Please note the line of Gullah that precedes each chapter. Gullah is creole language still spoken by many descendants of slaves in the region. From what I understand, it’s the language that evolved from the combination of English and African dialects. In case you can’t read it:

“Man w’en ‘e hongry, ‘e teck sum egg or cheese an’ ting an’ eat till e’ full. But ‘ooman boun’ fuh meck wuck an’ trouble. ‘E duh cook!”

Translation? “When a man is hungry, he takes some eggs or cheese and things and eats until he is full, but a woman is bound to make work and trouble. She cooks!”

Duh.

WHY is there a whole chapter on grits? How many ways could you possible cook grits, you ask?

Boiled, baked, pressure cooked, fried… and when I turned the page, I discovered, amongst even more grits recipes, a recipe for “Hominy Surprise!”

Please note how all of the women identify themselves by their husband’s name. She’s Mrs. Louis T. Parker! And a proper married girl.

I then flipped to the “game” section. This is the only cookbook I own with a chapter called “Game” that includes yummy recipes like this:

You can tell this book is from a different era. Excuse me? Brush with fat? What fat? Do they sell that at Kroger? How should I preheat my oven? Gravy? Where’s the recipe for the gravy?

It is also the only cookbook I own that gives me instruction on how to properly cook various wild meats. Squirrels, for instance, don’t need to soak, and skinning can wait until cooking.

Possum on the other hand needs to be cleaned as soon as possible after shooting, and hung for 48 hours. Who knew?

I was at first extremely confused by the first ingredient necessary for cooter soup: cooters? preferably female?

What. The. Hell.

I was even more disturbed by the first instruction: “Kill cooter by chopping off its head.”

It wasn’t until I turned to this page:

That I understand that cooter=terrapin=turtle. Ha!

And, finally, who can leave South Carolina without a large dose of…

Alas, we returned to Richmond with heavy hearts and heavier bellies. Here, I don’t keep vats of bacon fat in my cupboard or skin freshly-caught game. Yet.

If you’ve wandered by our site in recent weeks, you’ve probably noticed a strange “sticky” post and a picture of a weird koala-mermaid gracing our homepage. I’ll explain.

A few months ago, the Australian tourism office announced they were conducting a worldwide job search for an “Island Caretaker.” This person would live on the Great Barrier Reef islands for six months, keeping a blog and making videos to promote the islands.

After three people independently emailed me the link to the job, and after I learned that another three people had emailed Ben about it, I became convinced that this was fate. I mean, HELLO? The job involved traveling, sitting on beautiful beaches, and BLOGGING. If you’re not convinced we are the best candidates for such a job, please refer to: this entire website.

We took a risk and applied together, as a couple, rather than as individuals, thinking that our quirky interaction might add a funny element to the video, and might set us apart from the crowd. It could’ve also been what disqualified us, but we’ll never know. We didn’t get the job. BIG MISTAKE, QUEENSLAND. BIG MISTAKE.

So our dreams of making $100,000 for six months of lying on a beach were squelched, and we’re back to the annoying and archaic concept of actually earning our money. Blech.

For your viewing pleasure, I present our audition video. If I post this, I don’t want to hear any, “WTF, of COURSE you didn’t make it, that video is STUPID and terrible and you’re the DUMBEST people alive,” okay? We didn’t make it. No rubbing salt in the wound. Instead, once you watch this video, please comment with: “WOW, Australia really messed up by not hiring you! You’re HILARIOUS. And really attractive! And super smart to boot!”

K? Good.

PS: Shout out to my sister Lindsay for filming us! She was quite patient dealing with our demand for dozens of takes of each shot. Another shout out goes to Allison for her awesome artistic skillz.

Do you know what Brittany and I do when we’re bored?

1. Eat
2. Talk about what we should eat next

But this lazy Sunday afternoon we were pretty full from lunch, and we already knew what we would be having for dinner…so we found ourselves in unusual and unsettling territory. Of course, there do exist rarely employed alternatives for just such emergencies:

3. Talk about the places from our trip that we miss
4. Fight to the death

Oddly, there are no other options. Because I’m afraid of Brittany’s unusual strength, I quickly started asking her which places from our trip she misses the most. Before long, she was beautifully and safely distracted at the computer, reading our old blog posts and breathing sighs of reminiscence. And instead of fighting to the death, we talked about which blog entries are our favorites, now that we have the benefit of hindsight. We each have our own peculiar favorites, but it wasn’t hard to agree on the ones that make us both smile. For those of you who prefer to walk on the CliffsNotes side of life, please enjoy the following short list…our own hand-selected “best of the best.”

In no particular order:

1. Trekking in Thailand with Johnnie Walker
2. An Unexpected Meeting in Cambodia
3. Our Greek Music Video
4. Top 5 Tips for Not Looking Like an American
5. Brittany Gets a Tempting Marriage Proposal in Laos
6. Ben Eludes the Policia in Seville
7. Ben is Caught by the Policia in Barcelona
8. A Photo Journey in Chiang Mai, Thailand
9. Won’t You Take Me to Monkey Town?
10. The Motorcycle Diaries in Vietnam
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Our first week abroad, we made a rookie mistake. We let our dirty laundry pile up. It wasn’t until we were officially out of underwear that the thought occurred to us that, oh yeah, I guess we have to do laundry here. So, naturally, we packed our dirty clothes in plastic bags and hiked over to a laundromat we’d seen in the busy new town of Chania. There, we made the unfortunate realization that the use of their washing machines cost eight euros (12 bucks) per kilo. On our budget, that was the price of about four meals. Yikes.

We were even more dismayed to find, upon our return, that to dry the clothes would cost an additional eight euros per kilo. To put this in perspective, say you wanted to wash and dry five pounds of clothes. It would cost you forty euros or about SIXTY DOLLARS.

Which is why, on one sunny afternoon, we found ourselves heaving bags of soaking wet laundry through Greek city streets, back to our room, where we hung them out to dry.

Obviously, going forward, we adopted the tried-and-true backpacker routine of manually washing our wardrobes. Eventually, we honed our hand-washing skillz to perfection. For the benefit of fellow travelers, I’ve decided to share the process, in ten steps.

Step 1: Pretend that the hostel’s bathroom is clean. Find a sink.

Step 2: Fill the sink (or bathtub or bowl) with water, some sort of soap (laundry detergent is a luxury; it’s far too heavy to cart around. Shampoo or body wash work just as well), and your dirty clothes. You’ll need some sort of sink stopper (you can get a universal stopper at a travel store, though they never work great). A dirty sock works just as well.

Step 3: Walk away. Entertain yourself for about 15 minutes while you let your clothes soak (more, depending on level of stinkiness [FYI, according to spell check, “stinkiness” is not actually a word]). Try not to forget about your clothes until the next morning when you wake up, walk into the bathroom, see your waterlogged wardrobe sitting in a puddle of stagnant water — actually, stagnant red water, thanks to one shirt — and then for the next six months have to wear clothes that all have a pinkish glow about them.

Step 4: Come back. Stare at the sink full of filthy clothes with loathing. Question, not for the last time, why you chose to travel far away from your comfortable home with washing machine.

Step 5: Get your hands dirty. Swish around the clothes for a while. Scrub each item individually, concentrating on Problem Areas (i.e., armpits, stains). Apply additional soap as needed.

Step 6: Rinse! Run each item under the faucet (a shower head is particularly good for this) until the water runs out clean, and not soapy.

Step 7: Wring the excess water out of the item. Now, most proper hand-washers will tell you not to do this, as it stretches or misshapes your clothes. But seriously people, these clothes are going to be ruined by the end of your trip, no matter what you do. Embrace it.

You want to know why I’m pro-wringing? ‘Cause the most annoying part of doing laundry by hand is drying your clothes. That is, they don’t. It can take DAYS for soaked clothes to dry.

But never fear — Brittany’s come to the rescue once again! I have a little trick that hastens the drying process.

Step 8: Spread out a towel on the floor. Place the wet clothing item on top of the towel. Roll up the towel/clothes combo. Whack your boyfriend with it a couple of times. Very important.

Step 9: Wring, squish, squeeze, sit, stomp, have fun! Do whatever you can to that towel burrito to get as much water out of your clothes, and into the towel, as possible. Work out all your aggression! Sing while you do it. Sorry, it’s required.

Step 10: Hang up your clothes, wherever you can. Outside is always best. We brought a portable clothes line with us. If you hang clothes indoors, in a non-air-conditioned, unventilated room, they’ll pretty much never dry. If you can, time it so your clothes can hang out overnight. You’ll be wary of leaving your clothes outside overnight before you realize that no one wants to steal your dirty, hand-washed underwear anyway. Also, get used to wearing damp clothes.

If you’re clothes are still wet by the time you have to pack up and move on, for the love of God, pack them in a separate, plastic bag! They will stink to high heaven otherwise. Oh, borrowed hair dryers also work for emergency drying.

Ta da! You did it! Your clothes are (kind of) clean!

If ever you find yourself in a hostel, scrubbing your unmentionables in a small sink using hand soap instead of detergent, and hanging them to dry on the railing of your bunk bed in a room you share with eight people, you’re officially allowed to call yourself a backpacker. Be thankful that you don’t have to do your laundry in a river, like most rural residents of S.E. Asia.

Important Tips:

• Do NOT, for your own sake, let your dirty clothes pile up. Every couple of days wash a few items. Trust me, it’s much, much better this way. Manually washing an entire load of laundry is not a fun way to spend an entire day.
• Realize that pretty much no matter what you do, you’re going to stink. It’s cool. So does everyone else! Your definition of what’s “acceptable to wear” is far different while traveling than while living at home.
• And as a “treat” to yourself, splurge once a month or so and let someone do your laundry for you in a proper machine, no matter what the cost. ‘Cause, trust me, you’re never going to feel truly clean wearing underwear you hand-washed in a sink.

And finally, two items a traveler should never, EVER be without:

1. Tide stick
   
2. Febreze! For the uninitiated: Febreze is a miracle liquid that eliminates odors in fabrics. It pretty much allowed us to do laundry half as often. I know, disgusting.
   

Sweet, sweet modern luxuries.

All too often during our travels, we often found ourselves stuck on cramped, smelly buses for unusually long stretches of time. And whenever the iPods gave out and motion sickness prevented reading, we turned to entertaining ourselves by constructing “Top 3″ lists. Top 3 countries for natural beauty, Top 3 ice cream joints, Top 3 scam artists… you name it. We continue to create and tweak these lists now that we’re home, but simply arguing with each other over the best choices has grown dull. We’ve reached a harmonic consensus on too many selections, and we know we’ll simply never agree on certain others. Time to shake things up! And what better way to do that than post some of our Top 3 lists right here for your inspection and consideration? So, if you disagree with any of these brilliant selections, we expect to hear about it. Just know that you’re definitely wrong.

Top 3 Places to Build a New Life
1. Chiang Mai, Thailand
2. Aix-en-Provence, France
3. Chania, Crete, Greece

Top 3 Big Cities
1. Rome, Italy
2. Prague, Czech Republic
3. Contested. Brittany says Paris, Ben says Barcelona.

Top 3 Foodie Countries
1. Italy
2. Thailand
3. Greece

Top 3 Beers
1. Kozel Dark! (Czech Republic)
2. Beerlao (Laos)
3. Leffe (Belgium… yeah, we got it in France)

Top 3 Naturally Beautiful Countries
1. Laos
2. Greece
3. Spain (Andalucia clinched it)

Top 3 Most Frustrating Places to Travel (not that we don’t love ya, anyway…)
1. Vietnam
2. Paris
3. London (We spent FIFTY BUCKS on a round-trip metro ride. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?)

Top 3 Street Foods
1. Gyros (Greece)
2. Rotee, aka “pancakes” (SE Asia)
3. Fried bananas (Thailand)

Top 3 Friendliest Peoples
1. Thai
2. Portuguese
3. Australians (And we didn’t even go to Australia. THAT’S friendly.)

Top 3 Best Architecture
1. Barcelona, Spain (this is why. Also this. And the lobster.
2. Rome, Italy
3. Paris, France

Top 3 Ruins
1. Knossos (Crete, Greece)
2. Angkor Wat (Cambodia)
3. Pompeii (Italy)

And finally, some supplementary statistics…

# of times pickpocketed: 0

# of times Brittany got yelled at in a foreign language: 4

# of toilets Ben clogged with his self-proclaimed “giant American poos”: infinity

After the dozenth person told us we needed to attach a Canadian flag to our backpacks while traveling around Europe, I became curious. How bad would it be? Why do I have to pretend I’m not American? Do Europeans really hate us that much?

In short, no. Most people we met were able to separate any feelings they may have towards the American government from their perception of its people. That said, George W. is widely mocked. We rarely introduced ourselves as Americans without getting a comment or two about Dubya – to the point where I wanted to start every conversation with, “Hello, my name is Brittany, I’m from the United States, and I DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM, thankyouverymuch.” (Oh, there was also this guy).

We obstinately refused to wear maple leaves on our luggage, and we had no major problems. Sure, I encountered lots of people that were surprised I wasn’t a gun-toting, lawsuit-happy, Bible-thumping, socially-conservative cowboy. They can’t help it—their media depicts Americans that way. And I was more than happy to assure them that, no, I promise, we’re not all like that.

But there was ONE guy…

During our tour of Halong Bay, our group—a mix of Australians, Canadians, Irish, English, Malaysians and, of course, two awesome Americans—stopped on a beach to have a picnic lunch. The conversation was pleasant and fun, aside from an irritating British man at the other end of the table who would loudly state well-known facts as if he discovered them. “Did you know that the skin is the body’s largest organ?” he’d say proudly. “Yes, I read that in a science journal.”

We largely tuned him out, and talked to the cool Aussies and Canadians around us.

There was one moment, though, when there was a brief lull in conversation. Mr. Science Journal took advantage of this opportunity.

“I mean, I can understand voting Bush into office once, because how could they know?” he said, his voice heavy with condescension. “But the fact that they re-elected him really makes me call into question their intelligence and what kind of people they really are.”

No one said a word. Aware of the presence of two Americans (well, everyone but him, who hadn’t bothered to talk to us), everyone looked down nervously, avoiding our gaze. An awkward silence fell.

Eventually, Ben broke the silence:

“God, I hate Americans,” he said.

The table burst into laughter, with the exception of Mr. Science Journal. In Ben’s words, “I think I succeeded in making an ass out of THAT guy.”

There’s very little you can say about America that will offend me. I have enough of my own criticisms to appreciate that other people might be critical of government as well. But this guy’s personal remarks and unapologetic generalizations rubbed me the wrong way. It was the one instance during our trip that I had to suppress the urge to defend my country.

Before I end this, I want to tell one more anecdote that will leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside about Uncle Sam.

Back on Crete, we met a Danish dude named Nikolaus, who’d spent time in Florida, where he had family. His first impression of the States, he told us, was confusion over the extreme number of rules we have; rules that seemed silly to him. No, you can’t walk here! That would be trespassing. And God forbid you show a beer bottle in public!

“It’s like you fear all the time!” he said. “Americans are scared. What are you afraid of?”

This perception was accentuated when he visited the local Walmart to register for a fishing license. He’d brought his passport, his visa, and several other travel documents and forms of identification. However, because he didn’t specifically have an American driver’s license, the Walmart employee would not issue him a fishing license.

Irritated, Nikolaus argued with and questioned her, but she wouldn’t budge.

“She would not use her brain!” he said, getting annoyed as he remembered it. “She just followed the rules without thinking!”

As he was about to storm out angrily, Nikolaus noticed racks of guns lining the wall. “So I can’t get a fishing license,” he said. “But, if I wanted, could I buy a gun?”

“Well, yeah,” the employee said. “Of course.”