David Gessel
Tesla and Zagreb
Zagreb seems to particularly honor Nikola Tesla. He’s got a very nice street named after him in downtown Zagreb and an attractive plaque. Visit Sunny Croatia!
Zagreb Restoran Dvorisce
We had a wonderful meal at the Restoran Dvorisce. The local Croatian wine was very good and the food excellent: Carolyn had the spaghetti with crab and I had swordfish. The restaurant is stylish and clean and the service was excellent.
The night before we ate at Masklin I Lata, a cute little local homestyle restaurant with a great selection of local brandies. I had vegetable farina soup, Carolyn tomato rice. She had seafood risotto and I seafood spaghetti. All excellent.
Zagreb Strip Club
We went to a strip club in Zagreb on Andreje Hebranga Street at Ulica Gajeva. The club was stylish and upscale with very attractive women. Carolyn and I asked one of the very polite attendants what the process was and he helpfully explained:
A group of one or more men come in, and are charged an entry fee of 100 Kuna each (about $20 US at the moment). About two girls per guy sit around them and chit chat and smile and flirt (they don’t for a couple – they’re not quite that progressive yet). Eventually they ask you’d buy them a drink. The girls “drink only champagne” and while the rest of the drinks are very reasonable for a strip club (about 40 Kuna, but fairly light on the alcohol) Champagne is expensive: the menu lists 12 liters of champagne for 60,000 Kuna. Clearly the drink is a small part of the deal – the Champagne is not for the guest. If you want champagne, a strip club is not the place to go. They also list table dances (about 350 Kuna) and lap dances (about 500).
We had a few regular drinks, watched the girls go through their routines for a bit and then left. The wiki travel page seems a bit timid about strip clubs in the Balkans, but the whole process was straight-forward enough and while not a bargain compared to US standards, not a rip off either.
The sex shop with the funny icons was close to another restaurant we went to. The strip club was minimally marked on the outside and we just happened to walk by the first night we were there.
Lufthansa @ Bologna
Due to some bizarre construction at the Bologna airport (take an immediate illegal U-turn when you come up out of the underpass rather than driving half way around the airport to the rotary and save 5 minutes) we arrived at check in for our BLQ-FRA flight about 30 seconds after the agent had closed it.
As we walked up she said curtly, “the flight is closed.” We asked how much we had missed it by and she said “the flight is closed.” We asked if we could get on the next flight at 18:10 and she said “Maybe, I will get to you in a few minutes.”
So we stand around pleasantly and wait. Eventually she takes our passports and swipes them, a few seconds later she gives us a big smile and says she’s sorry and she will make a call and thinks we can get on the plane after all…
And after all that, the plane was 20 minutes late. .
Guca Golden Trumpet Festival…
Carolyn and I were on a night train from Zagreb to Venice last night and our cabin mate was on his way from Belgrade and told us that the most amazing experience of his life was the Guca Golden Trumpet Festival, especially the finale where the hills around the town are wired with dynamite charges, one for ever of the 47 years of the festival.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXR6v1d2ZVg[/youtube]
Zagreb to Venice
On the night train… Our cabin mate is coming from belgrade. This should be fun….
Emergency cock
It seems small to me but I suppose it is just for emergencies.
Snow Storm
Carolyn and Vera and Zolly and I went skiing in Tahoe; they stayed at Donner Peak and I spent the day running up and down Granite Chief at Squaw, the only part of the mountain no being blasted by enough wind to blow you backwards uphill. The snow got pretty heavy at times and it was very pretty.
Unfortunately the day before at (ahem) Boreal (ahem) I fell going pretty fast down their “black diamond” slope and bent my thumb back on the ice. The colors had faded by today and it is starting to move again.
I really want to make a “sports” personal GPS, something with an indestructible over the jacket/on the wrist/on the handlebar wireless display and a remote back mountable patch antenna on some kind of shoulder strap and a data recorder with heart rate monitor. My GPS showed a max speed of 40.6 mph, but it can’t really get the fast parts because I’m bent over then and it is hard to mount it where it can see the sky.
Town Car
Totally randomly Hertz gave me a Lincoln Town Car instead of the Taurus I rented. Why? I do not know, but as I was wearing a long black coat and leather gloves for the weather, everyone assumed I was Carolyn’s driver. The car is really set up for a driver – the back has more room than the front, the door release button locks and unlocks on the back doors and there are no cup holders. And the engine sounds like Bender wheezing in that episode where Farnsworth made him human…
