Accept good luck. As a student, in the mid-1970s, driving back to England through Luxembourg, we had enough money for petrol or a meal. We decided to eat. We finished and waited for our bill. “Please, you leave now,” the waitress said. We looked at each other; we hadn’t paid. The system in many European countries is for the bill to be torn when settled. She showed us the torn bill. We looked at each other and pondered if we should argue we hadn’t paid, which we couldn’t prove! We left. We got petrol before loading onto the ferry to head to England. Both needs satisfied. 🙏🏾👍🏾
I’ve a soft spot for Switzerland, where I learned to ski and had several memorable and enjoyable trips. It’s true the Swiss love precision. But, that goes to having some strict rules. I recall being told in Geneva that I was not allowed to sit on the grass, I had to sit on a bench. 😳🤣
I’ve written before about dealing with life in the former Soviet Union in the mid-1990s. I still chortle about being told that our official hotel reservation in Moscow, Russia, for a team of six people meant that we had to share rooms.
Similarly, in Moscow. We were taken aback often at restaurants when the choices were really limited. The menu showed ‘meat’ and ‘chicken’, but every dish we tried to order was met with “We don’t have it.” In the end, the honest answer was that only cabbage and potatoes were available and we could have the potatoes done however we liked. It was back to the hotel to eat the very expensive food or bread and cheese. We soon learned that options included a McDonald’s (opened in 1990); it’s where I ate my first Big Mac 🙂
In Guinea, we always enjoyed our trips outside the capital, not least at the weekend. Fast food meant something different when you saw it racing around the grounds. If you ordered chicken, the first thing that had to happen was one of the staff had to catch it; food was prepared freshly. It’s called ‘bicycle chicken’ (poulet bicyclette) for good reason.
I first went to Athens, Greece, as a university student in the 1970s; it was travel around Europe on a tight budget. In the heat of summer, we arrived at a youth hostel and asked for lodging for the night. We were offered a ‘premium’ price to sleep on the upper floors. We thought it would nice to enjoy some ‘luxury’. We climbed the stairs with our backpacks, and continued climbing to the door that led out onto the roof. There we say others already in their ‘rooms’—sleeping bags on the floor. We were on the upper floors—the roof was the coolest place to sleep on hot Greek nights! 🙂
I don’t like meetings much. But, my views on meetings were tested when I was invited to have them in a sauna in Estonia. The basic principle is that people’s level of honesty is somehow higher when they are seated naked together. 🙂 I loved it, though it took some getting used to plunging into the ice bath every few minutes. No complaints about the vodka and peanuts, though.
Superstition and sport often go hand in hand. But, it’s one thing to rub your lucky rabbit’s foot as opposed to having a sacrifice performed before the match. So, it was as we were inaugurating a new soccer field in Conakry, Guinea.
When you’re travelling, finding good road food is part of the rich experience of discovery. I was playing football in Malawi and we had to make a stop. Young boys raced up to our bus with skewered ‘meat’ on sticks. They were yelling in a local language and we didn’t understand. Our host bought handfuls for us and passed them around. “What is it?” many of our team asked. “You’ll like it; it’s rat.” It was tasty. Why does everything taste like chicken?
The world is full of kind people. I had a great train journey in the late-1970s, through Yugoslavia, from Greece, when the ticket inspection shared his food with us—poor students, who’d never asked but weren’t eating during the journey.
Experience shapes us. Camping isn’t for everyone. I spent many nights sleeping in a tent as a Boy Scout. I got used to strange sounds at night and being scared in the dark, especially after a night hike that included ghost stories. I’ve woken to water in the tent and a soaked sleeping bag. As an adult, I was wakened during a bad storm and has to abandon a night in the tent because the weather was too bad. We took refuge in the house of friends in whose garden we were sleeping, in Cornwall. We woke the next morning to see our tent dangling from overhead power lines 👀😳😩 What else should we have expected during summer in England?
During a driving holiday in France, my college friends and I made a rest stop in a village in France. Having been on the road a while, we were in need of a nature break. As we found toilets, we discovered for the first time so-called ‘Turkish’ toilets, which are pedestals, used by both genders. A friend found her cubicle and was soon letting out a scream. She explained that her wallet had fallen out of her jeans and gone down the hole. We soon realized that the her personal belongings were now in the sewer system. It was an embarrassing time going to a police station to explain the loss and hope that somehow the wallet would be handed in. It never was, as far as we know. 🙂
Many odd things can and do happen when you’re a competitive athlete. I raced in many places in the UK and played football all over the UK and in several countries. I lived in Wales for a while and loved playing in remote villages around the northern part of the Principality. I never enjoyed playing in Bala, in the north west; it had far more sheep than people, and the people were hostile to outsiders. Our matches were always memorable for the sense of danger from the time we arrived to find the pitch being cleared of sheep till the end of our matches, where locals came in numbers to watch. Our biggest threat came from stray feet and hands that interfered with us as we played close to the touch line. No one liked taking throw-ins, during which we were heckled and physically harassed. Basic rule was arrive as late as possible and depart for home as soon as we could.
My vegetarian friends should look away. Meat lovers must make a beeline for places like Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya. Its claim to fame is serving all kinds of game, which can include zebra, crocodile, rabbit, antelope or whatever. I don’t feel you need to go more than once, which we did during our honeymoon travels in 2002.
Jamaica: Political Economy 