All Aboard

Come on Nancy put your best dress on
Come on Nancy ’fore the steamer’s gone
Everybody’s headed for the Chesapeake Bay
All aboard for Baltimore! If you’re late we’ll all be sore!
Come on Captain let us catch that boat
’Cause we can’t swim, no mister, we can’t float
Banjo ringin’ a good old tune, Up on deck there’s a place to spoon
Settle down folks ’neath the silvery moon
Sailing-down-the-Ches-a-peake,
All aboard for Chesapeake,
Sailing down the Chesapeake Bay!
- Red Clay Ramblers



That pretty little thing there's the Shorn Lamb, my uncle's fine, 42-foot Island Packet schooner, in her berth at the North Point Marina in Rock Hall, Maryland. Last weekend, Uncle Andrew, took his girlfriend Diane, me, my cousin Leo Fitzwilliam McPherson Whelan, the Shorn Lamb's Chief Mate, a jolly stock trader from Wilmington called Rob Sidell, for a four-and-a-half day cruise on the Chesapeake. We started from the Eastern Shore, and headed directly South on a Thursday, below the Bay Bridge and up into the Magothy River (one of 48 that drain into the Chesapeake). We didn't sail a bit our first day, because the winds were no good, but it was still a pretty sunset...



That there's the Baltimore Light, at the mouth of the Magothy, and this here's me and Will:



She's a pretty little beacon...



However, the fact that we were underway with the motor the entire first day, may have in fact been the fault of the Chief Mate, pictured below...


Because if I remember correctly, when he was asked in the morning about the state of the winds for the day, he pretended to check the forecast in the Mariner, a free magazine that touts itself as "the beacon of the Bay," but he was, in actuality, looking at this.

I arrived with unsuitable footwear for the voyage. All I brought were my new, and totally ill, lime-green Starburys, but I was told that the soles would scuff up the poop deck, so I had to buy these, admittedly also pretty ill, West Marine top-siders:



We laid chain in a faire gunkhole somewheres round Swan Cove our first night, in view of a few good-lookin' waterfront mansions. The cocktail hour was observed, with some aged Dalmore and a fairly decent pate. After rations, which I assure ye weren't no hard-tack-n-grog, we smoked cheroots with the Chief Mate on the deck. Quite pleasant.



Our harbor, a mansion...



Day two took us back across to the Eastern Shore and under the bridge at Knapp's Narrows, a route that allows a sailor to navigate southeast towards the Choptank River without having to sail all the way around Tilghman Island. The Chief Mate remarked that the Tilghman Island boys are notoriously rough on landlubbers, and that we made quite an admirable decision in limiting our congress with them. We passed through them straits in just a few minutes. Even saw a few half-naked ladies sunbathing aforedecks.



Knapps Narrows is a-brimmin' with dilapidated trawlers...



And the Bay's finest skipjacks, what whose days of dredgin' the clay for world-class arsters have passed 'em by, god bless 'em...



The red markers, where ospreys make their homes...



And one of many JFK shots of me with Diane. And yes, that's seersucker.



Here's the Captain puttering about up near the mainsail. He was preparing to hoist the foresail in this shot, if my memory serves me. The second day was when the wind picked up and we finally did some knots.



El Capitan...



The mighty mast:



But things didn't get really awesome until we unleased the Jenniker, a sail that can only be used in leisurely waters, but with a good headwind. In races, mavericks often blow these things out, which is easy to do because they're not affixed to the mast or the boom the same way the more traditional sheets are. The design on this particular sail was chosen by Uncle Andrew's kids, Clare and Christian. The jenniker:



And as evening descending, Will on the bow:



Next port of call: Oxford, MD, home of the nation's oldest continuously operating ferry!

Český Krumlov

"Really, Český Krumlov thrust itself upon me. There, one learns to appreciate the world from above."

- Egon Schiele, 1911

The town of Český Krumlov, pictured and described above, is really beautiful. It was about a 4-hour train ride from Prague, populated by about 15,000 South Bohemians, and home to a very pretty old medieval castle. The real reason it's famous, though, is because of this guy:



That's the painter Egon Schiele, and yes, I'm working on a hairstyle like his. He spent most of his time in Vienna studying with Gustav Klimt and painting with the other members of the Vienna Secession, until he died of Spanish Flu at age 28, but his mother was a Czech from Český Krumlov, and for a year or two in his career, he lived there doing landscape paintings and living, quite scandalously, with a 15-year-old model called Wally, who he later married. He was run outta town by the locals because he used to paint Wally naked in the garden all the time, which was pretty unacceptable, I suppose. He also painted creepy erotic portraits of her like this one.

After this trip, and after seeing his work at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, I'm a huge fan of Schiele, and it was cool to see his ancestral town, including, the Cafe Fink, where he used to drink and soak in the Bohemianness:



Here's me, soaking it in, too:



When we arrived at the train station, we saw a sign advertising free lodging in return for work, pinned to the station wall. We called the number and it turned out to be an American transplant called Bryce, who was totally hilarious. He picked us up from the station, and asked me what my mandolin was (my case was slung over my shoulder). When I told him, he said, "Dude, I've got some Grisman on in the car right now!" and we sped off to his 16th century farmhouse, just outside the town, where we spent 3 days hauling huge trashpiles of broken concrete, cleaning out store rooms, and burning brush so that he could get the place in working order. It looked like this:





We only worked in the mornings, then explored in the afternoons. It was a beautiful town. Here are some images.

A yellow house on the canal:



The chimney above the bicycle factory:



An old Catholic shrine, obviously torn out by vicious, godless, bloodthirsty Soviets of the bygone days:



The Hodinarstvi:



The castle, the Lord:



When we left, Bryce, who had been smoking a lot all week, said to us, "Yeah guys, go on, don't worry about it... The cycle must continue." We nodded our heads. It was the truth. Then we drifted down to Vienna.

Prague of a Good Time

I had been to Prague before, and wasn't wildly impressed, because when I was there it was summer and absolutely flooded with tourists. The Charles Bridge looked nice, I guess, but you couldn't see a single cobble stone for all the foot traffic. So this time, after Marmar and I conveniently missed our flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Bratislava -- a flight we booked 100% because of its low price tag -- because we went to an Eintracht Frankfurt soccer game, we sort of had to go somewhere, and an overnight bus to the capital of Bohemia was really the only option.

The story of the missed flight is this: We arrived at the train station in Frankfurt and noticed that everyone was wearing jerseys and scarves. Upon inquiry we found that this particular Saturday was a big grudge match -- Eintracht versus the East German team Energie Cottbus. We figured it would be scrappy. Cottbus won. We missed our flight because it turns out that RyanAir's crappy discount airport is 2 and a half hours outside of Frankfurt and there's only one bus. Word to the wise: never fly RyanAir out of Frankfurt.

Long story short is that the same thing sort of happened in Prague. We heard that Sparta, the local (and probably best Czech) hockey club was in a playoff game that day (I don't remember the name of th other team), but Czech hockey is totally ridiculous. For starters, you can take a look at the above picture, which shows some guy, most likely just a fan who they plucked from the beer garden outside, getting ready to sing the national anthem while surrounded by kneeling Spartans, in full battle regalia, making a wall of shields and spears around him. They kept showing scenes from that movie 300 on the Jumbotron. And the guy sang the entire national anthem with his microphone switched off.

It's a bit difficult to see here (even though that's sorta the point), but the ice was so covered with sponsor logos that you really couldn't see the puck at all. The same goes for the uniforms. You have to be a walking advertisment for like, Cserezky Roofing Co., if you wanna wear a Sparta jersey.



This is how close we were. Notice the Skoda logo. On the other side of the rink, there was an actual Skoda car, set up on risers, right next to the boards, blocking the view of an entire half-section of fans.



Oh, yeah, and there were cheerleaders. Who were made to sit in the aisles and get up and move whenever someone came back from the food stands with a large sausage and a beer.



And then there were the girls in mini skirts that had to sweep the ice between face-offs. Sort of a cut-rate zamboni. I liked this.



Cheerleaders danced at every whistle or stoppage of play.



And oh yeah, we saw all those regular Prague landmarks too. The astrological clock...



Casa de Kafka...



Casa de Mucha...

Haarlem World

Marmar and I decided during one of our days in Amsterdam that we wanted to see the real thing -- the place where hip-hop began, home of Puff Daddy, Langston Hughes, and recently, Bill Clinton. So we hopped on our bikes and rode southwest outta Amsterdam, along the canals and past a few honest-to-goodness windmills...



When we got to Haarlem, we were totally shocked. Where were the drug-corners? The drive-bys? Where was the Danger Zone that Big L used to talk about, with bitches, hos, and pimed-out rides? All we saw was gorgeous neo-classical architecture, clean streets, and people dressed in freshly-pressed Lacoste!



We rolled up to the club, expecting to get crunk, or at least a little hyphy, but found only craft wheat beers and portraits by Flemish masters...



Marmar got a little crunk, anyway, to liven up the bikeride home...



Where was the fried chicken? All we found were smoked herring sandwiches. And yes, Lunzaat's herring was in a class apart, but we were looking to suck on some marrow with our 40s. Shee-yit.



What a weird, confusing trip.

Utrecht

After a few days at Gutman Villa, we felt we had worn out our welcome, so Marmar and I skipped over the Utrecht, a banking/student town about 25 minutes' train ride away, for a visit with the ridiculous Rogier Jacobse, of Rickshaw Run fame. Utrecht is in some ways more beautiful than Amsterdam, because the embankments that run down to the canals aren't just walls that you bump your boat into when you dock. They have restaurants, shops, and promenades. Which means the canal-pathways of Utrecht are both two-levelled and twice as wide. To illustrate:




I'm not going to lie, I spent most of my time in Utrecht drinking and playing guitar while Rogier made silly and misogynistic R&B songs (most of which were variations on Akon's subtle, yet classic "I Wanna F*%k You"...). I did take in a few things, however. First of all, it is tulip season, as you all saw above, and here's the word "tulip" in Dutch:



This is the archway of the 15th century church. It was surrounded by outdoor cafes and pubs, thankfully, which made it a worthwhile thing to sit next to while drinking...



Oh, and Rogier illustrated to us, in no uncertain terms, the mediocrity of Dutch cuisine, by ordering this dish for dinner one night -- an appetizer platter of kroketten brood (Dutch croquettes), liver, and some other sausages...



Mmmmm, look at dat liver!



And then, the weirdest thing. Many of my Baltimore readers might recognize this sculpture from the BMA sculpture garden called "Large Boxing Hare on Anvil" (if you've never been to that particular sculpture garden -- go; it's got amazing work by this guy and by one of my favorite sculptors, Pablo Gargallo). Well anyway, this weird but awesome sculpture is by this dude called Barry Flanagan, and one of my days in Utrecht, we were walking down the street, and I saw a large bronze rabbit thinking, like the Thinker, with its paw under its chin.


[Large Boxing Hare on Anvil]


It looked like this:



Turns out Barry Flanagan makes weirdo sculpture of hares doing odd things like kicking and thinking and boxing, all over the world. There's one in the middle of Dublin, I hear. Anyway, "Thinking Hare," was an excellent piece, and I've decided to buy a Flanagan for my future front lawn. I'll commission it specially. It will be disco-dancing.

Whattaya think about that, Rogier?



Nevermind, he's not paying attention.