A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Airports

A soul in tension that’s learning to fly/Condition grounded, but determined to try/Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies/Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I – Pink Floyd, “Learning to Fly”

Broaching bureaucratic bafflegab with puffed-up, pimply little popinjays with fancy epaulettes on their uniforms or with similar, sterner authoritarian figures whose first language isn’t English is beyond futile; pointless semantics, even though liquids and gels are very different from pastes, lotions and ointments. Just bag it in order to move forward with ongoing clarity.

Flying ignites my inherent misanthropy. I won’t inflame that statement with any snotty remarks about body mass, armrests and manners. No, this is about raising cabin pressure, pushing the envelope of perceived entitlement with a Tetris stack of carry-on worthy of an employed bearer. How did it all get beyond the gate and the jetway, let alone past security (not to be confused with a Peter Gabriel album)?

Canada’s airport security agency is known by the acronym CATSA. I think of it as CATSASS. TSA is the American one and that sounds like a Canadian income tax form, one of those slips you’re missing when you file. The European Union’s open borders Schengen Area is an entirely different kettle of monkeys. Time is your enemy should you be travelling with a Canadian passport and intent on making a tight connection through Brussels: a stifling bureaucracy exists outside of its dimension. Proud to say I’d never been fingerprinted before. Thank you, Osama bin Laden, your legacy endures.

Airport security screenings are different the world over. In Canada they’re like a legacy family recipe no ever thought to write down. Federal regulations somehow receive an interpretive twist between provinces, cities and airports; regional attitude and size are factors. What amuses me is the inconsistent application of stern standards at the same airport on a different day.

Unheeded warnings, I thought I’d thought of everything…

My personal carry-on tote is a blue nylon knapsack that fits beneath the seat in front of mine. It always contains a pouch of wet wipes because airplane cabins rate with public toilets for cleanliness. A sandwich baggie of Kleenex pairs nicely with the wipes because there’s some sort of unnatural relationship between canned air and the viscous fluid sloshing around in my head. There’s a book, always a book, but never a hardcover, they weigh too much. The other standard item is a miniature iPad. Its operating system is MS-DOS. The only application that still functions is Boy Howdy Solitaire (the “hard” levels of Forty Thieves and Spider are going to be the death of me). This electronic item once required its own grey tub at a security checkpoint. These days it’s ignored; it might as well be a brass telegraph key. Or it was until I turned up at Flughafen Wien to board an Austrian Airlines flight to Brussels.

The woman who unpacked my knapsack at security was tall. I wasn’t surprised, everybody on the streets of Vienna was taller than me. She was very attractive and her grey uniform added a certain je ne sais Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS quoi. She was an archeologist, examining my iPad mini like the relic it is. I tried to explain: “In Canada, nobody cares about…” And for once my faulty oral filter was tripped, mouth flange, because I didn’t ask her if, perhaps, I deserved some punishment? I wasn’t dying for it, more like wishing and hoping. Besides, she was okay with my ankle boots.

Trips are about arrival and departure and the generally happy space in between. Winter travel skews more fraught, you need proper footwear to walk the unguided walk. I favour shoes by Clarks. And I think the coolest shoes ever created are desert boots. I have three pairs. My red suede ones are just beyond. I have a winter pair too, rough brown leather, well-oiled and lined in a houndstooth pattern. “Tundra” boots, I guess. They passed muster in Vienna; I didn’t have to undo the red double-knotted laces to remove them. Canada was another story: CATSASS consternation.

Edmonton International Airport (YEG) is a long way from many places. No hub. Ann and I decided to segment our journey to Vienna. We spent a couple of nights in Montreal with my sister and her husband before the four us carried on to the Continent. For our return trip I booked a night’s stay for us at Montreal’s in-terminal hotel, a Marriot (I still think of YUL as “Dorval” and not Trudeau). We did this for the benefit of our backs and knees and because we’ve learned that we both might become a little tetchy when the hours between cigarettes reach double digits. (Aside: I’m convinced air rage incidents would be halved if smokers could conveniently light up inside airports. I mean, emotional support ratdogs and their dangerously fragile shepherds are granted better facilities, piss pads, Astroturf and rubber rooms. Fuck me.)

There’s no sensation to compare to this…

My Clarks tundra boots were an issue departing Edmonton. I was ordered to remove them, but at least the floor was dry. Nobody remarked on my boots in Montreal en route to Europe. That indifference, that hunky doriness, that sensible laissez-faire attitude proved to be a pop-up, gatecrasher oversight or a CATSASS rookie mistake. Flying home from Montreal to Edmonton my winter boots in a winter country at winter’s onset were suspect this time. I took my boots off. They’d be maybe four or five grey tubs behind the knapsack carrying my pathetic iPad mini. And my belt. I couldn’t hang myself then and there. At least the floor was dry.

"Ooh, they were never as good after Syd flipped out." "They're a non-entity sans Roger." A bit Floyd formulaic perhaps, but still worthy of headphones and hashish.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Viennese Victuals

Fretting the exchange rate of a Canadian dollar against the euro is a pointless exercise. Especially for math-challenged people like me. While cash is kaiser in Vienna, baby, Ann figured out that for any electronic transaction we were better off deferring the conversion rate to our Canadian bank or credit card provider rather than obeying the instant skimming prompts of an Austrian ATM or handheld device. My sister Anne’s philosophy was much simpler for me to grasp: “A euro equals a dollar. It is what it is.” Her attitude led to my heartbreak. Bushmills Irish whiskey was on sale in every grocery store we ventured into, less than twenty euros. Trouble was our stay in Vienna was nine or ten nights and it takes me nine or ten months to work my way through a 750 mL bottle.

Leisure travel is paradoxical. You splurge for the trip well aware you will splurge on the trip and yet you try to economize. Once Ann and I settle in to our accommodation, we source the location of the nearest grocery store (and newspaper and tobacco shop). Our go-to was a SPAR Gourmet on Fleischmarkt; so proximate to our hotel there wasn’t time enough for me to enjoy an entire cigarette between doors.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company paid for my university education. The last ad agency I worked for specialized in everyday retail. “Busy mom (who’s active, fit and cares deeply about her family) is the gatekeeper” in the jargon of a boardroom brief. I’m always curious in foreign grocery stores, their shelf alignment and the brands – some local, some intriguing and some distressingly familiar. I was surprised to find Driscoll raspberries in SPAR, their provenance Morocco rather than Mexico. Made sense. A daily stroll to a grocer is very civilized, you buy what you need and leave the rest. Of course, hotel rooms aren’t living quarters, merely comfort havens.

Social media is something of a scourge. One of its mixed blessings is the “absolute must” designation on some travel site or toddler attention span app. Edmonton Ann and I and our brother-in-law Al and Montreal Anne refuse to queue with digitized sheep. And the four of us were mystified by the prevalence of Starbucks cafes in Vienna, a city renowned for its coffee. Was it American corporate hubris or idiocy? We found a proper refuge that suited us.

The only acknowledgment of modernity in the Café Hawelka are dates, but you have to know where to look. Some of the theatre posters on the wall by the foyer are relatively recent. The other visible dates warmed my heart. The mastheads of some of the world’s most famous dailies draped majestically from a rack of slotted wooden library poles. World news on a stick as long as a pool cue. Like the curtain discreetly concealing the water closets, the Café Hawelka is draped in atmosphere. The establishment opened for business in 1939, the year following the Nazi-engineered Anschluss. Whether you request a demi-tasse of high-octane coffee, a bottle of pilsner, a plate of strudel or a bowl of goulash, the formally attired waiter presents your order on a silver tray slightly larger than the dimensions of a hardcover book. All that’s missing is a low hanging cloud of blue tobacco smoke. You long to be part of a bygone intelligentsia and earnestly discuss philosophy, politics and psychoanalysis; sausages, waltzes and whiskers on kittens. Some topics will drive you to drink.

Ann and I patronized Loo’s American Bar (cash only) twice; we’d stumbled across a local watering hole. Both times we sat outside on a narrow rectangular terrasse. The awning was black canvas, the suspended electric heaters were white, their filaments orange. The faux fur rugs draped over our black stools were grey. The ashtrays were silver. The pilsner was gold. The soda citron was clear. The regulars, about seven of them, granted us suspicious sideways glances the first time. A few of them made eye contact on our second visit. My penchant to listen in on other peoples’ conversations was stymied by the language barrier. What were they talking about? They watched the street and their conversation struck me as running commentary. Had our time permitted a third respite at Loo’s, I like to think Ann and I would’ve warranted curt nods of vague recognition. Maybe as far as tourists went, we weren’t so bad. I almost literally bumped into one of the regulars in the tiny, geometrically awkward space outside the water closets and he was visibly stunned when I gave way, made myself small against the wall. He said, “You are so mannered.”

Old Vienna is quaint in an imperialistic way, an architecturally stunning reminder that empires and the dynastic families who created them inevitably must fall. Proximate to Stephansdom is a fine example of latter day quaint. Steffl is an actual department store. Given the area, it’s necessarily a purveyor of “luxury lifestyle” – whatever that may mean to shallow, aspirational acquisitors. A social media photo op? Anyway…. the top storey, the seventh floor, hosts Sky bar, famed for its cocktails. It promises a panoramic view of the city’s First District provided its expansive terrasse is open in late November and it’s not dark out. Very swish.

Edmonton Ann and Montreal Anne ordered Cosmopolitans. Al ordered a Vieux Carre. I, not seeing a Corpse Reviver No. 2 on the menu, followed his lead. Al is a master toxicologist, an autodidactic bartender. He’s got the books, the utensils, the vessels, the glasses and all those other obscure and essential ingredients in his kitchen bar. “Pale Hecate” has patiently summoned some wondrous improvised concoctions in ours too. A Vieux Carre is essentially whiskey, brandy and vermouth further flavoured by an array of accents, stuff Ann and I don’t stock in our fridge or pantry. Al pronounced Sky’s Vieux Carre the best he’s ever had; they’re in his repertoire and he’s savoured them in their birth city of New Orleans. Cocktail tumblers aren’t bottomless. You begin by sipping a Vieux Carre before allowing it to evolve into a great a novel, you slow down because you don’t want it to end. Then again, I’m the type of fellow who rereads his favourite books.

Austrian food is dense, deliciously so. So much so that you’re inclined to sit with it afterward. When our quartet went out for supper, we’d turn up somewhere shortly after six without a reservation. Restaurant margins are slim and the key to profitability is turnover. Viennese waiters possess extrasensory perception. Our meals arrived before we’d time to close our menus. Our waiters had already moved onto seating and serving the next party who’d yet to arrive. If you’re ever in Vienna and planning to break some heavy news over dinner and expecting earnest, lengthy discussion, don’t.

Twelve Apostles was the most memorable restaurant. It wasn’t the food although, like every other place, its specialties fell within “good” to “very good” parameters. No, it was the setting. A deep subterranean network of brick-vaulted chambers whose primary foundations likely date from Roman times. Medieval mortar. And a fine mid-twentieth century air raid shelter. The four of us wished to linger. Our waiter grudgingly acquiesced to a second bottle of wine and a second beer for me. We were on his clock.

Should your palate be a tad more sophisticated than mine, you will sneer, but I’m no schoolboy and I know what I like. There is a hot dog stand on Schwedenplatz, a transit hub, at the foot of a bridge over the Donaukanal. It was there I ate a fiery red bratwurst rammed into a reamed-out baguette. A neat and elegant delivery system. The condiments were Dijon mustard and curry ketchup. Ketchup on a hot dog is normally a felony, a capital crime. But on this damp, chilly evening by the water, the mildness of the curry combined with the spicy heat of the sausage and the tang of the mustard strived for the sublime. Had my timing been better, by forty years, say, I would’ve inhaled two of them.

Holidays in their way, as memorable as they are, are reliable sources of regret. I don’t mean inflated credit card statements; I mean things left undone. It’s New Year’s Day in Edmonton, the snow is falling down as is the temperature, and I’m thinking about that kebab stand beside the hot dog stand. I never did get there.                                                                                              

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

A Pint of Faith to Get By

All you can think is: “The Romans were. They knew how to build roads. Straight ones. These streets must lead somewhere?”

To a Lindt chocolate shop. There are three in Old Vienna, the city’s historic First District. Possibly six. Poor suggestions for a pre-arranged rendezvous.

And you wander this ersatz grid painfully aware that other tourists have it figured and know the way to wherever they’re going. You end up on Stephansplatz, lost amid a gently stampeding crowd. Your wallet in front pocket, hand on, your purse is clutched to your tummy like a football. The staggeringly gorgeous and fussily ornate gothic cathedral, its craftsmanship divinely inspired, looms over cartoony Asian girls with pink pigtail hair and white miniskirts and go-go boots, shooting frames of selfies. Stephansdom is cosplay backdrop scrim, solid as it may be. Barefooted vagrants, slumped on the plaza’s cobbles, somnolent against walls, beg. There is a substantial dollop of human shit and one discarded sock in the lee of the church (also begging from visitors although “seeking donations” might be more dignified parlance as the clergy has a nicer house than all the homeless combined). The revolting pile is a tad too close to a street food vendor’s operation for some tastes.

You must turn away from it all. Look up in another direction. Marring the architecture of the Hapsburg dynasty are signs: HERMES, DIOR, LOUIS VUITTON. And signs of times, ROLEX and PATEK PHILIPPE: You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation. Fuck off. Everywhere, blissed out shoppers suffering from a birth defect – devoid of that crucial self-awareness gene – stop ABRUPTLY! anywhere to photograph the designer logo on their gusseted, rope-handled paper bags. Gauche and tacky social media and MasterCard credit to their shallowness. A swampy nadir.

You’ve got to shoulder your way away from it all. There’s not enough air. There’s not enough space. You hurry down a side street that may or may not lead you elsewhere. You encounter an armed Austrian soldier, warm in winter kit, forest camouflage, guarding what? A museum and Holocaust memorial on Judenplatz. You pause. The computations take a second. You think: “Still?” But you already know the answer: “Always.” And then you have your Vicktor Frankl moment: “Why?”

The Stephansdom spire is the wayfarer’s compass needle. But like a magician’s trick, it has disappeared from the ashen sky. Poof! Just like that. You’re desperate to return to your hotel for a break, to scour away your disgust and despair. You turn this way and that. After a few more wrong turns you find yourself lost yet again but standing outside an Irish pub. A perfectly adequate Plan B refuge. And you smile because a theorem has been proved: Anywhere you go in the rich world, there will be an Irish pub. Ipso facto slainte. Depend on it.

You’ve no idea who Molly Darcy is, was or if she even ever existed. But right now, she’s the woman of your dreams. She’s open for business. There’s a short stack of international editions of The New York Times, yesterday’s papers of peculiar dimension, but so what. There’s a New York Yankees banner on the wall and a New York Rangers pennant too. Curious. There’s no Smithwick’s on tap, but a pint of Kilkenny will do.

All you can think is: “It’s been a shitty morning, but the rest of the day, the rest of the holiday, need not be this way.” The music inside Molly Darcy is soothing. Strictly Memphis and Detroit, Stax/Volt and Motown-Tamla, not the usual Emerald Isle-themed Spotify list as much as you may appreciate Van Morrison. Marvin Gaye is singing “What’s Going On?” and you wonder if the whole wide world has maybe just been having a shitty morning of late. It’s coming on Christmas and the only minor miracle on offer is that it won’t fall on a Monday this year. Faint hope flickers.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential and Of Course You Did are still out there languishing in multiple formats. Nothing says "I love you" at Christmastime like a couple of skinny books by a woefully obscure Canadian author. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer.

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Michal and the Black Mercedes Van

Slovakia has yet to qualify for the upcoming FIFA World Cup. The Repre is looking ahead to two qualifiers scheduled for its home ground in late March 2026. I never imagined I’d expend a single neuron on the state of Slovak football. Then again, I never imagined I’d be standing in a shop in Bratislava’s historic Old Town advising my brother-in-law Al on the taste quotient of Repre jerseys and scarves. “The national crest shows off better against the white.” “Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. I like it.”

Edmonton Ann and I travel well with my sister Montreal Anne and Al. We get along without being in the others’ pockets. Ann and I tend to be laissez-faire while my sister prefers some semblance of structure, a partial schedule at least. Our participation is always optional. Ann and I never worry about disjointing noses nor even skinning them. Our quartet booked our trip to Vienna, Austria about a year ago. Once the details were finalized, Montreal Anne proposed a day trip to Salzburg. The four of us would split the cost of a private car, a private tour. Edmonton Ann and I agreed immediately. I thought, “No herding, no chatty strangers in close quarters; worth the cost.”

Well, I did not welcome Michal and the black Mercedes van outside the Hotel Karnterhof before dawn. I suffer from a self-diagnosed ailment: Irrational Bowel Syndrome. I mean, all of my lower plumbing functions, but I like a firm schedule and, my oh my, overseas night flights are terribly disruptive. Salzburg was distant, about three and a half hours away. As we climbed into the rear seats of the van Ann whispered to me, “We could drive to Jasper (from Edmonton).” That far. I was filled with something more than trepidation because despite three deliciously strong black Viennese coffees and a few cigarettes, my metabolic clock wasn’t meshing with our tour’s timing.

I’m a poor judge of age. I guessed Michal was as close to 60 as I am to 70, or thereabouts. A well-built fellow and very gracious – if a bit gregarious. The four of us learned about his ongoing divorce proceedings and his abrupt change of career. “Art therapy” was proving very helpful. He enjoyed ballroom dancing and photography was a passion, but most of all, he loved people and he loved to hear other people’s stories. And weren’t four Canadians just locked in his van? His mien was that of some ersatz encounter group leader whose area of expertise is “feelings” and inspirational platitudes and I thought, “Oh, God,” for a few reasons.

I generally enjoy hearing other people’s stories and I’m always careful not to draw out a windbag. What I truly enjoy is overhearing other people’s day-to-day private discussions in public places; good material. When my turn came to speak, I wasn’t particularly forthcoming. This fast drive through sleet and snow, and walled in by sound barriers on both sides of the highway – it felt like we were in a slick trench – did not constitute a therapy session. However, Michal did establish that I follow hockey. He said he was acquainted with Peter Stasny, a former Quebec Nordique (and later in his life, a respected Slovak parliamentarian). I said that I hated Peter and his brothers Marian and Anton because they were very good and didn’t play for Montreal. Michal said his current favourite player wears number 20 for les Canadiens: Juraj Slafkovsky (20 points and plus 2 in 32 games at this writing). I began to warm up to Michal.      

Salzburg is renowned for sound (and salt). The city, near the German border at the base of the Alps, is the birthplace of Mozart who, like Elvis, will forever be known by a single name. Red and blue shifts are not mere political gerrymandering in the United States: Christian Doppler, born across the street from Mozart’s home some fifty years after his death, described them as fundamental characteristics of sound waves. They come and go. You can hear it. What refuses to fade in Salzburg are songs about lonely goatherds and one problematic nun named Maria; the famous von Krapps.

Michal said that only North American tourists are enamored by the film location of what Canadian co-star Christopher Plummer derided as “The Sound of Mucous.” Michal said he’s tried to watch the movie but keeps falling asleep. I warmed up to him a little more. Mirabell Palace is that glimmering white edifice with the extensive gardens and fountain, fit for a singing and dancing brood of snotty brats. He insisted on taking pictures of our group there as we shivered in the rain. The joint is essentially an architectural attempt to reaffirm the Roman Catholic Church’s status in the wake of Martin Luther’s cataclysmic Reformation. The monk had some nerve lifting the veil on doctrine by translating the Bible into the vernacular. What struck me about the Archbishop of Salzburg’s palace was its grandeur and size. A lovely and elaborate space for an unnaturally large number of nieces and nephews.

Michal allowed us half an hour in Salzburg’s Altstadt. The city’s centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The cobbles were slippery to walk on. Tourist trap shop windows were eye level. Ann and I paused to grossly overpay for two mouthfuls of coffee. I ordered mine straight up. The woman serving us promised that mine would be as black as her soul. I laughed; she wasn’t kidding. High on a hill, above all the Baroque flourishes was a medieval fort. There was no time to get up to where I really wished to go. Salzburg is something like a monumental novel in a university literature course: either touched on in context to a lesser work by the same author or demanding an immersive semester of exclusive devotion.

As we drove out of Salzburg my thoughts turned to the water closet in our room at the Hotel Karntnerhof. Michal announced our next stop, a little detour up into the Alps, just another hour and a half. Destination Hallstatt, the most scenic place in all of Austria, Michal promised. I thought, “Oh, God.” He added that the local populace, numbering fewer than a thousand, hates tourists. I whispered to Ann, “Oh, Christ. This should be fun. Swell.”

The isolated village of stone and brick is grafted on to a sheer mountain face. Visitors must be able and fit. Ancient crooked stairs. The view from Hallstatt is picturesque: a placid alpine lake in a granite basin – although nothing out of the ordinary in a Canadian Rocky Mountain national park. Half the hook is the impractical, jerry-built quirkiness of the homes, churches and businesses. Hallstatt’s ailment is celluloid rapidly metastasizing into Instagram selfie idiocy. Hallstatt was used as a location for a popular Korean romance and inspired the backdrop of Frozen, an animated Disney film every young parent I know is utterly sick of. Our time in Hallstatt was short, but the place is awfully small and the weather was miserable.

Talkers talk. Expert ones ask questions. Michal learned our next planned excursion was to Bratislava. The Slovakian capital is on the Danube, about 50 kilometres west of Vienna. Bratislava was Michal’s hometown; he still lived there; his daughters and estranged wife resided in the United States – for now, things being what they are down there south of 49. Al’s mother was from Bratislava. Nellie emigrated to Canada in advance of the Russian “liberation” at the close of the Second World War. Nellie had a window and she went through it. Al still had relatives in Bratislava, first cousins he’d never met. The barrier wasn’t merely time and distance, but language too. Still, he wished to finally meet them.

Michal offered to be our driver, tourist guide, translator and facilitator. There were strings attached of course, cash preferred. And our own plans required modifications. I’d been looking forward to the train ride from Vienna to Bratislava. I love trains, but not in an unhealthy track gauge, locomotive number kind of away. They are metaphors, symbols, plot devices and compelling images in music, film and literature. While Michal, Montreal Anne and Al hammered out details inside the van in front of our hotel, I realized my steel wheel rides this trip would be confined to the subway. I was cool with that; subways are equally enticing. What was not cool was a too long a day of seatbelt confinement. I retrieved our room key from Edmonton Ann and hurriedly excused myself, teeth gritted politely, my colon as agitated as I was.

We left Vienna for Bratislava about an hour later than we did for Salzburg. The schedule wasn’t a perfect fit, but still something of a relief. Michal took the long way, secondary roads. The weather was clear. Very little traffic. I was content in the rear of the black Mercedes van. There was something new to see through every window. This was more like it. This was the only way to go.

My Oxford Atlas of the World is out of date. While it reflects the amiable breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993 in the wake of the parted Iron Curtain, neither nascent republic has yet to tighten up its respective nationalist monicker. I’ve always perceived Slovakia as more of a region of Eastern Europe than an actual country with a dominant race of people. Frankly, my old atlas and my morning newspaper are filled with information about too many places on the planet that rarely, if ever, cross my mind. Travel is, and should be, as illuminating as formal education.

Everyone on Earth shares its history, it’s just that some civilizations left more evidence and kept better records. All of what comes to light, often uncontextualized, can be messy. Human. From Bratislava Castle on a plateau above the Danube and overlooking the Old Town to an ultramodern “luxury” shopping mall complete with a “luxury” hotel, the city’s architecture is a dizzying kaleidoscope of varying styles. History writ in building styles and materials. There is medieval, there is Baroque, there is Soviet Brutalism. Romans, Mongols, Ottomans, Hungarians, Hapsburgs, Nazis, even Allied bomber crews, and Stalinists have all left their traces behind. It’s complicated.

Michal picked the restaurant and tended to the arrangements for Al’s lunch meeting with his relatives. Flagship Restaurant Bratislava. A beer-brewing medieval monastery long ago, heavy stone, heavy wood. Dark. Chilly. The massive space was converted into a cinema during the Communist era. The current occupants, restauranteurs who are very aware of university students (and their limited budgets), micro-brew beer on site. The vats are consecrated. Our group occupied a long table. Al sat at the head with his cousins and Michal. I don’t believe any nuances were lost in translation. I could see Michal concentrating intently. I warmed up to him again; he cared as much about Al’s experience as the rest of our group. They took a while up there. Edmonton Ann, Montreal Anne and I chatted down at the opposite end. The food was basic, cabbage, sausage and dough, very hearty, very tasty, reasonably priced and possibly unhealthy (the queue to be seated when we eventually left was two-wide and far too long for my patience had Michal not made prior arrangements). The beer was divine. And the toilets, an unnervingly frequent destination for me (aging is a fussy business), were a well-scrubbed blessing, homey. And, mercy me, the Hotel Karntnerhof wasn’t much more than an hour away.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!