My first adventures to foreign land were just across the Mason-Dixon, down into the steamy or frozen red-brick metropolis known as Baltimore. To a bookish little boy growing up in the country, I leapt at any chance to be in the bustling places of the world. For a life initimate with only a tiny Pennsylvanian town known only for its sleepy antique stores, a place like Baltimore might as well have been New York or London. So whenever Dad had borrow the Y van (which he named it the "silver bullet") to pick up brochures for work at a printing shop in Baltimore, he'd have riding shotgun: a grinning, thoroughly enthralled six year-old riding companion already prematurely stricken with irreparable wanderlust.
It might have felt like it then, but my Pennsylvania hometown was in no way far from Baltimore. In fact, I later came to realize that if home was not then a defacto suburb of Baltimore; with its Ocean City-going vacationers, multiple crab-shacks and Orioles fans, than it most certainly is now. One might even imagine Governor Rendell declaring lower York and Adams Counties under threat of forsaking a portion of their Pennsylvanianess. Having lived out in the eastern portion of the State I can readily say that there doesn't seem to be the same problem with New Jersey.
And then there was my family. Both of parents, and the sum of my relatives are Marylanders. Visits with aunts, uncles and cousins were spent at pools in the northern suburbs of Baltimore with Mom's family, and rowdy holdidays down in the row home cliffs of Dundalk on the eastern side of the city with Dad's family.
By the 1980's Baltimore had transformed its inner harbor into a Cheasepeake-side tourist destination, complete with a marvelous aquarium and science center, and for a short while, decent harborside restaurants and hotels. Then a light rail came to lasso the weekend pocket money of those who had fled to the suburbs, followed by the construction of the best modern baseball park in America, Camden Yards, and even a new football team to replace those runaway Colts.
So, buried under paperwork in my tiny cubicle, I got the bright idea to organize a weekend excursion to the land of Poe as a 24 hr getaway. DC isn't that far away, but when you live in the city, it's hard both logistically and existentially to leave it. I invited a few friends from Peace Corps Ukraine (all above except for two on the right), some from grad school (the two on the right), and one from both (Megan!) and we carpooled the long, long, ....45 minutes north.
First, we hit up the Ukrainian festival taking place in Patterson Park. It had at least two of three necessary ingredients; great Ukrainian beer (Obolon's come out with a wheat beer!) and decent Ukrainian music and dancing. Unfortunately, the food was much to be desired. But at least the lines were quite long to get the food, and that is all very authentic. That and a diaspora kid holding a football.
Then, the company embarked on a ghost tour of historic Fell's Point planned by my awesome Aunt Sue (that's not actually her real name, but my paternal grandfather unilaterally changed her name. My maternal grandfather did the same to another aunt).
I'd done a ghost tour before about a decade ago in Gettysburg. Ghost tours really aren't ghost tours, more like history lessons led by some overly sassy, over-educated waitress (ie grad student), dressed up in period garb, who takes great relish in insulting other people's intelligence. But it's enjoyable because all intelligent people enjoy well-designed deprecation, and love to learn a thing or two about the place they visit, or more about the place they live.
It was an interesting stroll around a marvelously-preserved Colonial district. Fell's Point reminded me suddenly of the outskirts of Amsterdam. Like the Dutch, Baltimorians cut their teeth building ships and taking the piss out of the British. The guide spoke with melancholy of many sad tales of rich girls becoming hookers and throwing themselves out of windows and a father who mistook his daughter for her lover in the dark and shot her. Ah, never more.
The wench leading the ghost tour kept cawking away with a faux British accent - but I guess that's what an 19th century American wench sounds like. She was also flirting with my friend Marshall the entire time. So unbeknownst to Marshall, Greg had the idea of slipping Marshall's phone number in with the tour tips. It certainly was a great big fish barrel of laughs at the time. Then the wench called Marshall's ye olde cell phone on Sunday. Sorry Marshall.
We retired for a bit to eat mussels (see pic - courtesy of Megan) at Bertha's Mussels - well, not me because I had been poisoned by a tuna fish sandwich earlier in the week at the Department of Commerce. Not a big fish barrel of laughs, but a very small one of a very different sort. Fifth worst food posioning ever.
A pub crawl in Fell's Point topped off the night. My cousin Lance and his girlfriend Danell showed us Max's Taphouse. Max's had hands-down one of the finest German beer selections I have ever seen outside Duetsche-phone Europe. What sudsy heaven.
And then Marshall's long-lost twin showed up. Holy blonde cow! They looked exactly alike. They even had the same color of shirt on! How freakin' weird! A total stranger who shows up one night in a bar and is dressed just like you! Geez!
We retired to a nearby hotel ...and to dreams of boot-clad Ukrainian dancers, evil twin brothers and somehwere down on Thames Street... ...terrified pirates running from desperately mad wenches in period garb.
