Tuesday, July 5th, 2005
Cheers from England -
So, did everyone know I was in England this summer studying the British and European Union Legal Systems? Yes? Cool.
Friday we traveled anyway - Michael, Ashley, Neel, Chris Buttram and I went to Stonehenge and Salisbury. I went with Michael that afternoon to rent a car and we got a vauxhall corsa. I pondered whether or not renting a car was going to be a good idea when Michael first mentioned it to me a few days prior, and came to the conclusion that no, it was a horrible idea. Riding busses here kind of suck, but they're mostly hassle free - this trip was not hassle free.
First of all, it's really more expensive than it's worth to rent a car - a luxury that I certainly intend on taking when I'm over here on holiday with a paycheck coming in, but not at age 23. Michael feels the same way, but he found a special that would cost only, like, $75 dollars for the weekend. For a guy that has traveled Europe so extensively, I'm continually shocked by his surprise at the extent to which the European economy subsists on hidden charges. This nickel and diming of Michael resulted in a final price of about 125 dollars for the first 450 miles, and about 40 cents per mile after that. This is exclusive of gas - or "petrol" - which costs about 98 pence a litre.
Now, to put this in American terms, there are 3.785 liters in a gallon. At an exchange rate of 1.75 pounds per dollar, we get something like US$6.50 per gallon. I think. I'm no mathematician.
Granted, the Corsa gets some great gas mileage because it has a 1.2 litre engine and weighs 120 pounds. It will still probably require two fill ups of its 40 litre tank for the 450 miles. It gets expensive. Oh, and imagine five people in the car. Comfy, no?
Michael jumped at the deal primarily because it was so much cheaper than any other deal he had seen - because the Corsa is a manual transmission instead of an automatic. He told me his find with great pride, but did not mention that he did not, in fact, really know how to drive a stick-shift. So, once we finally completed all the paperwork and he got behind the wheel, he killed it no less than 4 times getting out of the parking lot, and before pulling out on the actual street during the busiest time of day in Oxford he looks at me and asks: "Hey, when I'm stopped and in gear, does the clutch have to be down?"
The ride after that was a little bit smoother. Nevertheless, as I gently coached him on the subtleties of “accelerator off, clutch in, shift, clutch out as you’re pressing accelerator in, good…“ on our way back to the dorm to pick up our fellow travelers I began to contemplate my own mortality - when you have me teaching someone how to drive stick on the fly in heavy traffic, you’re in trouble.
Luckily, Chris Buttram is both proficient at stick shift and of sufficient age, so Michael allowed her to drive us to Stonehenge instead. Even this was not completely free from adventure and close calls, but eventually proved successful (especially after we figured out, halfway into the trip, how to get the car into reverse - before that Neel, Michael and I had to get out and push the car backwards out of a parking space).
Stonehenge is awesome, and old. Really old. And made out of stone. Those Druids didn't mess around, it's an impressive structure for the 5,000 years ago or whenever they built it (and they had to carry those giant rocks hundreds of miles to do it, too).
After Stonehenge we drove over to Salisbury for dinner - we all wanted to have Salisbury Steak. I've never had Salisbury steak before (I always brought my lunch to school those days), but I figured "hey, when in Salisbury…" This can be a dangerous line of thinking, especially for food (see “when on fear factor”), but nevertheless our mission was set.
Now, can you imagine how hard it is to find "Salisbury steak" in Salisbury? It's hard. We went from takeaway stands to pubs to nice restaurants, and only a couple of places had steak - much less *Salisbury steak*.
This brought up a conundrum for us because there was an outside chance that the people in Salisbury called their Salisbury steak, merely “steak“. This is not atypical - when I bought an English muffin at the local grocer the other day and it was labeled simply "muffin." Or, at breakfast, they serve us "bacon" which, as any good American would recognize, is actually "Canadian bacon.” This can be explained by the fact that Canada is still a dominion of England - well, they still have the Queen on the currency.
Of course, good luck trying to find an actual muffin, or actual bacon. It does not seem to exist here in England, probably because of the international community's bias against the United States (i.e. they do not want to have foods called "American Muffins" or "American Bacon"). Jealous, all of them! They probably still consider the hamburger German (and what would they call a Hamburger in Hamburg?)
I thought it unlikely, however, that Salisburians called Salisbury steak “steak” because “steak” and “Salisbury steak” are, at least I think, too different. I'm not sure what the threshold of difference is to demand different names, but I feel sure that in France, while they might call French fries "fries" they probably do not call French toast "toast," because there's no way that people can live life without simple, toasted bread the way they might be able to get by without "American Muffins" or "American Bacon." But they have croissants there, so I don’t know. Croissants, of course, are available in the United States, but are rather uncommon, probably because (like idiots) we jumped the gun and gave the title “French Bread” to baguettes. Oh, well, hindsight is 20/20.
Eventually we gave up on the steak, although I will say that our search of the city for our ostensibly local food allowed us to see much more of the town that we had originally planned on, including the Salisbury Cathedral, which has the tallest spire in England.
We ended with what may be the official dish of the world - pizza. I tried to visualize little pieces of Salisbury steak as a topping, but since I’ve never had Salisbury steak, I have no idea if I was successful or not. I will say that it tasted delicious.
Interestingly enough, Salisbury Steak has nothing to do with Salisbury. It was actually named after an English/American nutritionist and physician in the 19th century named James H. Salisbury. Salisbury seems to have been a proponent of Atkins before Atkins was cool, and preached against starchy foods and vegetables because as these foods were slowly digested in a human stomach they would ferment to produce vinegar, acid, alcohol and yeast, all of which would wreak havoc on our digestive system. Bet you didn’t know that vegetables can cause heart disease, tumors, mental illness and tuberculosis. Good ol’ Jimmy tried to convey what to him was obvious - humans have “meat teeth” and that our digestive system was designed for just that. Veggies, sugars, fats, fruit and starches must be taken in moderation - never more than a third of the diet. Instead he created a recipe using broiled lean muscle pulp of beef formed into cakes which should be eaten three times a day along with a lot of hot water to rinse. Or, as the Salisbury Fad Diet tagline denoted: Salisbury Steak, Rinse, Repeat.
With theories like this I don’t feel bad about our assumption that Salisbury Steak originated and was still enjoyed primarily in Salisbury. Is there anyone out there that’s truly going to judge me for not knowing the history of James H. Salisbury? In a hundred years, well after it’s found that the Atkins Diet causes sunburn and the South Beach Diet causes bunions, is anyone going to blame the person that doesn’t remember the names of Robert Atkins or Arthur Agatson? Or will, as I expect, anyone making their pilgrimage to Atkins, Iowa or South Beach proclaim ironically that whatever they order off the menu is part of the anachronistic diets of old? If so, I would recommend the Hawaiian Pizza with ham and pineapple. Or, as they call it in Hawaii - “Pizza.”
Tuesday, July 5th, 2005
Tuesday, July 5th, 2005