Next Weekend In Zion

Inspired by true events

Boring. Expensive. Sub-par grocery selection. Say what you will about Geneva, but one major advantage of the Swiss paradise where I lay my dopp kit is that it's incredibly easy to get to the airport from anywhere in town, and incredibly easy to fly around Europe and the Middle East without having to suffer crushing jet lag. For this reason, I decided to spend my hard earned birthday money on a quick puddle jumper over to Tel Aviv to hang out with my little bro. The gluttonous over-indulgence of pita and hummus was a happy bonus, but believe you me I was looking forward to some good ol' fashioned family throw-down.

My last trip to Israel was about three years ago on the ever-famous and ubiquitously brainwashy Birthright experience. Needless to say, the shiny chaperoned charade that is Birthright was a slightly different experience than crashing with my brother and his six housemates in the relative ghetto of Ramla, about twenty minutes and a thousand gunshots away from Tel Aviv proper. I had received some prep info from my globe-trotting sibling, eight years my junior and a chiseled physique my superior, but as soon as I stepped off the plane I knew I was in over my head.

I was warned that the cab drivers were going to try to screw me on the ride into Ramla, but I had no idea that they would do it through carefully lodged guilt trips and excessively convoluted mind tricks. The jedi behind the wheel of my late model sedan talked to me of family, of past and future, of love and learning. He asked me my opinions on the world and why I was not already living in the homeland. He questioned the status quo and engaged me in thoughtful discourse. Then he demanded three times the going fare for the airport trip, name dropped his kids at home, and reminded me that the quoted price "did not include gratuity".

Good start so far.

Even though he screwed me out of a few bucks, the cab driver had in fact brought me directly to my brother's place so I hopped out and got the grand tour of my new crash pad. The triple occupancy boys bedroom smelled exactly like you think it would, and the triple occupancy girls bedroom appeared full of laughter, hair dryers and dirty talk - exactly like you think it should. Kitchen sink full of dirty dishes and front room stacked with beater couches and food scraps, I dropped my bag, kicked up my feet and lavished in the dorm-style simplicity of my weekend chalet. It took nearly ten whole minutes to see that my brother was in fact living in the functional equivalent of The Real World house, replete with passive aggression, chore assignments ignored and unwashed shot glasses. Truly this was my homeland.

Figuring that I had a few days to help my lil bro live it up Eric-style, we wasted no time in heading straight to the local market to pick up snacks and grab some brews for the evening. Thanks to a favorable exchange rate and a currency value that I had no chance or desire to fully grasp, I was makin it rain shekels on the shook and we got out of there with a messiah's bounty of pita, hummus, halvah, peppers, avocados, and pomegranate juice that would serve as our breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next three days.

It lasted two hours.

Undeterred but slightly tired, we decided to make it a home evening and convinced some of my brother's friends to hang at the Real World house with us and share in some Goldstars and cheap arrack. One Real World roommate decided to try to best me in a drinking contest and passed out by 11:30. Much like how the NFL requires rookies to be at least two years out of high school before competing with the big boys, I will henceforth require all would-be challengers to have at least two years of college drinking experience before letting them into the ring with me. Otherwise it's just dangerous. Luckily I was able to rabble rouse a bit and me and little bro had an awesome time catching up. After participating in a relatively raucous match of "never have I ever" it was determined that my brother and I have led far more interesting lives than the other players, or at least more debaucherous ones anyway. We hung out until the wee hours and my brother said I was in "24-year-old Eric form". Eric - 1, growing old gracefully - 0.

We capped the evening off with some late night Futurama as we retired to the triple occupancy stink hole of a bedroom I was blessed with for the evening and passed out before the opening credit's stopped rolling. All in all, it was looking like a good start to my triumphant return to Israel.


For all the fans out there mad that I took like ten days to get a new post up, I can only say that it's been a big week here for a lot of crazy reasons which you will see unfold over the next few posts. But, it would appear that I owe everyone a soda pop cause (drum roll please) we topped 10,000 page views this week! That means that people have looked at the various posts, pictures and rants on Dear Lonely Planet 10,000 times...or, realistically, like 7,000 times aside from my own personal hits. But whatever I'm counting it.

And They Say That Romance Is Dead...

Old school spam message

It's here! The most romantic day of the year! It's the day that everyone stresses about for weeks, either due to the frustration of planning the perfect evening or the sadness of lamenting having no perfect evening to plan. Although Cupid's pungent pheromones know no geography and his arrow flies true even across the greatest of distances, this year was a Valentine's spent alone for the great and wonderful me. And while there wasn't a lot of open hostility being thrown around, tensions felt higher than the street hookers here in darling ol' Geneva.

The day began as any other, with me oversleeping my snooze alarm by a good half hour and rushing through my morning to try to make up for lost time. After breezing through my morning shower, including only falling into the wall half asleep twice, I slowed down only to wipe up the spilt soy yogurt that splattered on my laptop while I was trying to catch up on NFL lockout news. Unable to clean up after myself, I left the container on the 2 x 2 IKEA side table I use as my dining room / living room / study / desk / footrest and raced to the office. I kept busy all day, biding my time for my hot date that evening. I came to the office prepared to take care of business and really get my hands dirty. Yup, my evening plans were way overdue, and you have no idea how excited I was.

I was gonna do laundry. Now, I'm a gentleman, and a gentleman never tells how long it has been since he last did laundry, but I'm willing to admit it was at least two standard deviations from the "statistically acceptable" median. Needless to say, this laundry had to get done in a bad way.

This isn't a euphemism. I really really had to do my friggin wash, but I realized only after scoping out the laundry places near my office, conveniently located in the middle of the red light district and surrounded by hash dealers and prostitutes, that it probably wasn't safe to leave my stuff in the dryer and trust that it would be there when I got back. My laundry card for my building was outta cash though, and only my landlady could fill it back up...I was in trouble.

Then, as it has so many times before, I was saved by pub trivia. Yes, a random 5pm email from a coworker informed me that instead of sitting in a laundrette in sin city, I could "rock out with my reading glasses out" at pub trivia. As some of you know, I've often been the least effective member of many championship pub trivia teams, so off I went, dirty socks and all, in order to woo the ladies with my incredible knowledge of useless crap. After a few rounds, my team was still hanging tough, but by round 8 we had dropped back far enough behind the leader to know we couldn't possibly win. I don't take pub trivia too personally, so I was OK with us falling apart at the seems and figured we could skate by on clever answers and overpriced Magners.

But oh how wrong I was. I guess the Valentine's spirits brought out the edge in people! Everyone's humor seemed a bit more pointed, everyone's tongues slightly sharper. The hostess spoke is such a rapid fire English-dock-worker accent that all we could make out were her plaintive invectives against the loud revelers at the bar. "Wouldyashutupandbequietsotheregularscanplaytrivia!" she'd belt repeatedly. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping quiet during pub trivia, but cmon - it's Valentine's day and they're all wearing suits, let them have a goddam party at a goddam bar if they want. And perhaps worst of all, when the trivia wrapped up, everyone just got up quietly and shuffled away. The place turned into a ghost town! What about all the ladies I would impress with my mediocre skills?

Defeated once again, I closed up shop at the bar and downed the rest of my drink with the scragglers. Not the worst Valentine's ever, I thought to myself, recalling the sniveling pity party I threw myself 2L year when I had the flu and was still getting over a break-up, then recalling further every single Valentine's I ever had before the age of 19. My night was over, but I was mostly OK with it.

So I marched my way to the tram, stopping only for two shots of rail whiskey and a late night falafel. Hey, even if I didn't have a real date, at least I know how to show myself a good time.

Train Train Go Away

Pushing is ok if you have an official looking hat on

Commuting sucks. You can have all the ebooks you want and pretend like its great "me time" to peacefully listen to the same Shins album you've had on your favorites list since 2007, but if it were up to me I'd much rather not be stuck standing next to an emphysematous octegenarian who's making goo goo faces at the bleating infant across the aisle. Knowing that twice a day I have to sardine-pack myself into a throng of potential pickpockets and gropers drives me near to madness, which is why when I was asked to commute out to Bern earlier this week I thought I was in for an extended viewing of my nightmares come to life.

My mission was simple - get out to the Chinese embassy to pick up a visa. Totes mcdoable, I thought to myself as I turned to the internets to find a train schedule. The last time I took a train was in Sri Lanka and it didn't quite go as smoothly as I had hoped, so I approached the trip with cautious optimism. The Swiss rail website lacked the idiot button marked "Schedule" that was going to make my research easy, so it took about half an hour to find out that I was going to have to get the 745am train. This meant a wake up time of 630. I was not pleased.

But I'm a trooper and I thought it might be cool to get out to see Bern, even if only for a few hours. So, after a brief battle with the snooze function on my phone alarm, I made it to the shower and out the door relatively on time. To reward myself for completing the simple task of waking up, I deserved a treat for breakfast - some o.j. and a croissant, methoughts. Ducking quickly into the news stand area I grabbed a bottle of overpriced orangensaft and made my way to the bakery. The second I turned around of course I found a counter with fresh squeezed juices for the same damn price. I was perturbed, but I continued on.

The bakery I was hoping for was actually closed, but off in the distance I saw a sandwich shop type establishment and figured they would have something tasty as well. The guilt of butter ingestion due to my new found veganism proved to be too much, and I couldn't bring myself to break the rules either this early in the morning or this early in the week. As I scanned the options I noticed a theme...every single item had cheese or meat on it! Luckily I'm crafty, so I got the ham sandwich fully intending to remove said ham. Mmmm! Bread! As I headed back to catch my train, I noticed that in the four seconds it took me to get the meat bread, the nice bakery had opened up. I loosed an audible "oh cmon!" and trudged forward angrily.

As I approached the platform, I was struck by how clean, organized, safe and quiet the whole station was. In other words, the complete opposite of Sri Lanka. And, as an added reminder that we were indeed in Europe, there was a small enclosed room marked No Smoking in the middle of the platform. Apparently the rest of the country is a Smoking zone.

Right on time, the train rolled up and I tucked myself into a corner seat to enjoy my meat bread and o.j. The ride was quiet and straightforward. There were no screaming babies and at no point did I fear flying off the tracks. It was, in a single word, uneventful. Granted in a day to day existence, this is exactly the kind of ride you hope for in the morning, but it doesn't exactly make for good television. Such is the problem with Geneva in general - its pretty and boring, just like your downstairs neighbor that always shows up at dinner parties a bit too early. It's definitely a nice reprieve from the insanity of Sri Lanka but it gets old after a while. I suppose when you really think about it, maybe it is in fact better to die of malaria than of boredom.

Are You Ready For Some Futbol?

Stand beside her...and guide her...through the night with the light from aboooove...

Being abroad for the past few months, I've had to deal with some really watered down versions of big important moments back home. My Thanksgiving was extremely odd - not once did I get the chance to lay down on my cousin's floor and sip Miller Lite through a straw that I made my brother bring me because I had eaten enough sweet potato casserole to kill a goat and could no longer sit up. I missed the birth of my nephew and thus far have only been able to watch his smudgy little face over a rather shaky Skype connection. And now, worst of all, I'm missing the Superbowl!

There's something you should know about me. I. Love. The Superbowl. Historically it was always close to my birthday parties, so often the two would be joined to form one amazing Birthday/Football fiasco. It's a holiday designed around making too much food and drinking cheap beer and hanging out with all of your friends. It's about screaming at the television at full volume and not having anyone tell you that you're overreacting.

Appropriate time to yell at the television

And it's about the commercials. OH the glorious commercials! I remember the first Superbowl party I ever went to like it was yesterday, which is impressive cause these days I actually don't remember a lot about my yesterdays. I got to hang out with Star Wars toys and Wolf 3-D in my friend Anthony's basement, checking out the Skins putting it to the Bills on a tiny black and white portable tv and laughing at, without truly understanding, the groundbreaking In Living Color half time show. I ate Doritos without parental supervision. I drank like thirty five sodas. It was glorious, and it really set the tone for the years to come. Since then I've had pizza parties, chili parties, nacho parties, and even holy-crap-we-just-make-twenty-pounds-of-buffalo-wings parties, but they've all been Superbowl parties.

Until I tried to watch it in Geneva. This ex-pst spot up the street called Mr. Pickwick did in fact have the game on the big screen, but kick-off wasn't until like midnight local time. As a result of it stretching until 4 or so in the morning, I had a bear of a time convincing any of my friends to actually come watch with me. Undeterred but somewhat dismayed, I hung tough and went on my own. "Conspire as you might, fates, you shant blow this ship off course!" I screamed to the heavens, daring the furies to stop my celebration, and they responded with a cold and ominous wind to warn me against hubris. This cold and ominous wind took the form of my Sky Sports Satellite Network telecast crew, with in-depth analysis by Jay Schroeder and Cecil Martin. Don't worry, loyal readers, if you're scratching your head and thinking, "I'm not a sports guy, I don't know who those people are," you're not alone. The former a one-time champion Redskins quarterback from the late 80s and the latter a little known fullback who had a short stint with the Eagles in the early 00s, the two hardly formed the powerhouse commentary and hi-def menswear normally exhibited by the crew of Troy Aikman and Joe Buck. This did not bode well for me.

Things started slipping away more rapidly though when I became flanked on the left by drunk 18-year-old Swiss hooligans, the right by drunk 20-year-old Swiss hooligans, and directly ahead by drunk 24-year-old Swiss hooligans who looked like trained MMA fighters. In the distance I heard an echo of hope...the soft and dulcet bitchings of an American accent. Hark! Heed the siren song! I ran headlong to the table of middle aged businessmen discussing the Packers and invited them immediately to join me at my table. In order to de-creepify the situation though, I opened with a larf - "hey fellas, you sound American and I can't imagine a more crushing Superbowl than to watch it over at that table alone listening to French all god damn night, so I was wondering if you might wanna hang out with me so I don't have to throw beer bottles for entertainment." Worked like a charm.

Next step - ordering wings. I went over to the bar dedicated on breaking veganism for this all-important event and satisfied in the knowledge that my 50 year old compatriots would watch my coat for me, and right away I ordered a dozen wings. "26 franc!" yelled the bartender. "Ha I'm sorry, it's loud in here, I thought you just tried to charge me thirty dollars US for a dozen deep fried wings with ketchup and no buffalo sauce, what was that that you said there?"

"26 franc." Fine, if that's how homie wants to play it, gimme a dozen wings for thirty dollars US. I don't care. I waited for my wings, grabbed my beer and joined the boys back at the table to talk about their sons who are about my age and about how football is different than it used to be. There was very little screaming at the television, but I was happy. Hell I'd say I was downright giddy when kick off hit, and then right after the return I was ready to check out all the new awesome...commer..cial..s... wait a minute... Lloyds TSB? Citroen? Oh god, the British network coopted all the ad time! I was going to miss every single new commercial! I was about to become completely out of touch with the memes that would define a generation (for three weeks)!

Needless to say, I was despondent. The wings were overpriced and the commentators terrible. The halftime show in no way stacked up to Men On Football. The company was great to have but it wasn't the same as watching with my friends back home. And the ads? Well, let's just say I reconsidered my plan to throw beer bottles at the screen after the second spot focusing on Barclays commercial reinsurance division. At about halftime, my body started to give out on me but I pushed through as best I could. In preparation for this fantastic event, I continued my normal streak of well intentioned but incredibly misguided attempts to get into game shape, with the following tracking my bedtimes for the days leading up to Superbowl:

Wednesday - 2am, Thursday - 2am, Friday - 4am, Saturday - 6am

By the end of the third quarter I fell apart, yawning openly and closing my eyes for a minute or two at a time, unsure if I could re-open them again. I was imploding faster than a condemned Vegas casino and I had to get to sleep. I excused myself from the table and took off into the night in search of another overpriced taxi.

In hindsight, I clearly picked the worst time of year to leave the country. I've missed a lot of key moments that normally highlight my year...but for the most part, I'm a lot happier with where I'm heading on an everyday basis, so the escapism isn't as necessary. I'm less in need of the big Superbowl party to make me forget the work week - I actually don't mind the work week right now at all.

That having been said though, you're gonna have to work pretty hard to get me to leave the states during Superbowl XLVI.

The Good Times Are Killing Me

"There is an hour wherein a man might be happy all his life, could he find it."

~ George Herbert ~

Happy hour. It separates the men from the boys, and the boys with fake IDs from the boys who are too afraid to get a fake ID when they're only 17 because they're worried about disappointing their parents but act like it's a respect for the law sorta thing. Happy hour dares you to get all liquored up on a school night when you have a lot to do the next day. Happy hour brings you to the brink, forcing you to put off dinner and do shots with coworkers on an empty stomach. Yup, it's where legends are made and champions crowned.

Now that I've returned to civilization, I'm finally able to get back to the happy hour culture I love so dearly and once again lead a life of self-damage as a form of social interaction. So last night when I was invited to head out with my work friends to grab a cheap 'rita at Geneva's ever so authentic Mexican joint Mananas, I wasn't about to pass it up. Verily, I was back in the saddle again.

Picking your poison at happy hour is key - it requires the perfect balance of cost-effective drink selection balanced against the ever important "if I drink too much of this will I fall down" issue. I noted that the price tag on the Long Island Iced Tea was a mere 11 franc, which still seemed high for happy hour. Quizzically I asked the bartender, "so are drinks like half price or something until 9?" She crooked her head to the left and answered, "No...this is the happy hour menu. Those are the discounted prices." I can't remember if I blurted out "SON OF A BITCH!" or if I just thought it to myself, but given the scurry-step saunter at which the suds-seller escaped suggested that it was out loud, and angrily so. Another ten minutes of waiting passed before we realized she wasn't coming back and we were gonna have to go get our drinks at the bar.

I charged forth and decided quickly that I still wanted that LI Iced Tea, even if it wasn't half price. What was delivered to me was a glass larger than an diesel engine filled with a tincture twice as powerful. Rum, vodka, tequila and gin coalesced, and the familiar rainfall of cola seeped slowly south as I eyed my prize. This molotov cocktail was sure to wreak havoc on my system, but it was, as previously mentioned, the most cost effective order on the menu. Oft have I heard tell of a prior volunteer who once downed four of these monstrosities before dinner time, so the bar was set pretty high for me to compete. But you know what? Quitters never win, and winners die of alcohol poisoning in a hotel bathroom, so I brought my A-game and got to work.

I polished off the first Long Island and ordered up a second one, and damn it I felt like I was doing pretty good so far. About an hour had passed and I was 1.5 death cocktails in, but it seemed to garner me little respect from the crowd. Apparently by this time, the other volunteer was already three deep and planning on his next dinner order, whereas I was barely keeping pace with my fast-mounting self-doubt! Am I tipped beyond the edge of my insatiable liver barbarism? Are my best drinking days behind me? Where once confidence lived now concern took up residence, so I excused myself to collect my thoughts and get some air. My attempt to drunk-dial in some reserve interns who would've supported me emotionally fell short and I was left to face my ineptitude a solo.

So back to the bar I went to take my lumps. I'm a big man and I can admit when I'm defeated. Once the mantle of greatness had been removed from my shoulders though I found it much easier to sip through and enjoy the evening. After all was said and done, I did end up getting through four Long Island Iced Teas, and a few extra drinks for good measure, but not until well after dinner time. Champion of happy hour? Perhaps not. But I can guarantee you it was quite a happy hour nonetheless.