AUTHORIAL EX-CAPADES
Last spring, my buddy and I roadtripped the Balkans. Two travel writers, two very different tales and forty packets of grapefruit gum...
He said: "Hatboy, 
Amanda's beau, had run off with a backpacker sporting a diamond tooth. My job as best friend had clearly been to drop everything at my Alaska home and join Amanda for a Balkan road trip—the cure of wander, she explained, to recover from lust. On whim and a bad map, we mini-golfed in Slovenia, drank wormwood wine at truck stops, and stared down an alpaca grazing a castle lawn. Nervous at the war-scarred Bosnian frontier, Amanda punched me: "Lunch? You told the guards we only came for lunch?"
Read Edward's full story in "National Geographic Traveler" (May/June, p 137)
She said: “Where, exactly, are the ladies?” Edward asked, as we surveyed an overgrown Roman ruin. “You promised chicks,” he complained days later, as we hiked along the Plitvica Jezera, a cascading chain of peacock-colored lakes. “Maybe that Black Madonna icon could send me just one gorgeous woman?” he suggested at the famous pilgrimage church of Marija Bistrica.
"And finally, in a fit of exasperation – and to distract from the bomb craters and old tank barricades on the Bosnian border – “What type of wingwoman are you anyway? I fly 5,000 miles and you can’t produce a single babe?”
Read my version in "Road and Travel".
Hatboy – formerly known as the Inappropriate Beau – said: A diamond tooth is hot, f*cking hot.
Read HB's spirited defense of bling in the grill.
For the record, she did promise babes. None appeared.
ReplyDeleteAnd she booked us into a hotel that was once a prison.
And she failed to meet me at the train station after I had flown halfway around the world to bail her out.
Now, which one of us is more likely to give an accurate account of events?
Excuse me: Eve was under wraps – NOT my fault – and you sniffed at the porn teasers.
ReplyDeleteAs for the hostel-prison, well, you'll dine out on that for YEARS. Not to mention the train station story (I arrived 20 minutes after ERH; we'd agreed to wait 15 each, then retire to said prison, since we were "both adults and travel writers").
Edward, I have just one word for this: KRAPINA!
And sign your name already: click "other" instead of anonymous (you don't have to provide links).
ReplyDeleteShould we let the world know just how much that alpaca hated you?
ReplyDeleteAnd I was at that bloody prison for at least an hour before you showed up. Of course, by then, the whole problem of you making reservations for the wrong night had been resolved.
You might also want to remember that I have that blackmail picture of you at a particular restaurant in Lub, too.
As things are getting juicy, she sits back, arms crossed and waits for the drama to develop.
ReplyDeleteAnyone have any popcorn?
ReplyDeleteAren't beer and peanuts more typical at a bareknuckle fight?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: you impersonate ERH well, but I'm not convinced. He'd call it "Lubjubblie," for starters. Please do your homework and try again, because we all know I am the Mother friggin' Teresa of the camelid world!
Now ask her to tell about the hotel she chose where the wedding band played "glory, glory halleluja" until 4 am.
ReplyDeleteThe camels in Jordan did seem to like her fine, so maye it's not all camelids. But that alpaca was ready to come through the fence and
--I'll leave it to Amanda to insert a gratuitous classical reference here--
Do not try this at home. We're highly trained professionals. And we were both having one of the best trips of our lives.
Oi! The Celica Hostel just made Rough Guide's "Ultimate Experiences: 25 Places to Stay" book!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gadling.com/2007/05/22/one-for-the-road-review-rough-guides-25/
I'm sure the squeezebox joint is not far behind, what with the Soviet missile in the front yard and the especially good fried cheese...