Last night some friends and I drove 100 miles to Bucyrus, Ohio to partake of the great Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival. The local Bucyrus brats we sampled, Carle’s (est. 1929), were really good. I think the secret is the caraways seeds. It’s served on a rye bun with optional sides. I liked the grilled peppers and onions with a splash of hot mustard, although the sauerkraut side wasn’t bad either.

Here, my friend Chris and I bite into our first Bucyrus brat.

This past spring, for a number of reasons, I decided to plant a garden. So now, at long last, after 2 1/2 months of watering, weeding, and daily inspection and monitoring, I get to enjoy the first taste of food that I had a hand in growing.

For dinner this evening, I boiled a gigantic vat of water and dropped into it 2 fresh-off-the-stalk ears of corn, the greatest vegetable on this here God’s green earth, in my humble opinion. From picking to water was about 5 minutes. Then, a generous slathering of butter and the result is the tastiest corn-on-the-cob I’ve ever had in my life, as well as the freshest.

Now if only I can salvage about 4 or 5 more ears before the squirrels/deer/racoons/birds or whatever other animal it is that’s found a 24-hour buffet in my modest backyard garden returns. (More than 3/4 of the ears have been pealed back and eaten!)

Just look at that yellow, corn goodness…

Beginning today, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington, opens a show of nude and erotic photography by local photographer Herb Ascherman Jr. I’ve known Herb going way back and I’m really jazzed for him and this show.

You can read an interview I did with Herb that’s in this month’s Northern Ohio Live magazine here.

And still adjusting to the time change. Which means convincing my body that 6 PM is not bed time.

At the end of the day, I ended up visiting 5 countries in 4 weeks and logged over 30,000 miles and about 65 hours in the air. That’s some serious frequent flyer mileage.

I’m slowly making my way home. I’m spending a night in Paris and so have just enough time to see the main tourist attractions. Although when I arrived, the on-again, off-again rain showers/thunderstorms had me not only soaked but also wondering if I was going to be able to see anything at all. I ducked inside of a small restaurant in the Latin quarter where I had a simple but delicious dinner (noodles!) while watching the downpour.

Luckily, bad weather usually means great lighting.

Some signs I spotted on a morning walk.

Most of the Koreans I’ve talked to speak English pretty well. Still, sometimes it can be hard to understand them. But what’s even more strange is the way they use English in signs and ads. That is, the English has the tendency to be either incorrect or it reads like a slight non sequitur. For instance, I’ve seen signs that read “A Familly Place” or a children’s play area that is billed as “Learning Center for the Children” and that sort of thing. This is really more common than it should be and has me thinking I could make a small fortune as a proofreader here in Asia.

But not all the English I’ve seen is like that. A teenage girl in a McDonald’s wore a t-shirt that read “You’ve been very naughty. Go straight to my room.” That’s a pretty clear message anywhere in the world.

Ever since the mid 90s when a skyscraper in China became the tallest building in the world for a few years, I’ve thought that in order to really understand the 21st century and this post-modern world we live in, you must see and experience Asia. (Right now, 8 of the 10 tallest buildings in the world are in Asia. The other 2 are the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building.)

And Seoul is a good representation of the incredible dynamism of Asia, as well as its frighteing level of consumerism. Case in point, today I roamed around the Yongsan electronics market in Seoul. (It’s the blue and grey buildings as well as street level shops you can’t see in the photo.) Imagine stacking Best Buys five high and spread out over five city blocks and you get some idea of what this place is like. It’s just mind boggling. Too bad I don’t have any pressing electronic product needs, because this place, the largest electronics market in the world, would surely be the place to get it. Prices here can be 20 to 50% less than in other stores in Seoul, and where prices aren’t posted, you’re expected to haggle.

Cities like Seoul and even Beijing and Shanghai make New York and L.A. look like small towns.

At the conference I signed up for a tour of the DMZ, the demilitirized zone that seperates North and South Korea. It’s only about 50km north of Seoul, which is about 35 miles or so. It was a bizarre time in many ways. Luckily, I hooked up with some Danish philosophers and a Chinese philosopher who shared my sense of humor, so we had a good time while navigating the oddities of this last outpost of the Cold War.

Our first stop was an amusement park(!) 1km from the DMZ. There, we saw the Freedom Bridge, where after the Korean war ended in 1953 there were a series of POW exchanges. Today, the bridge is closed and these strange cartoon characters stand guard. (That’s something none of us could understand, Koreans, and Asians in general, and their fascination with these cartoon figures.)

Next, we passed through a checkpoint where we had to hold open our passports so a South Korean military policeman could inspect them. The kid, who couldn’t have been more than 21, glanced at the passports, bowed as he exited the bus, and we were on our way. And this was only for crossing a bridge into a zone just before the DMZ.

Next stop was the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. Our guide tells us that in 1978, a tunnel was discovered that was dug by the North Koreans to invade the South. Four such tunnels have been discovered to date, and the South thinks there are at least 20 or more. Just the existence of these tunnels tells you that some brass in the North thought that this might be a good idea. Anyway, we walked about 1,500 feet down an incline tunnel to get to the actual tunnel which is 200+ feet underground. No pictures allowed, although I did see a Swede sneak a photo when we got to the bottom at a steel barrier beyond which the South had planted land mines just in case the North decided to try going through to the South.

At the bottom of the tunnel where we were is actually inside the DMZ and only about 450 feet from the border of North Korea, the closest we’d get to the border.

Next stop was the Dora Observatory. Here we were told that we could only take photos behind a yellow “photo line.” Otherwise, if we violated this rule, we might be sent to a “re-education camp” or some such adventure. (Actually, that’s what the Danes and I came up with, the tour guide didn’t actually say this…)

Here, in the background, is North Korea. Or, as Bush Jr. refers to it, one point of the Axis of Evil.

Towering over the landscape to the left is the tallest flagpole in the world. Back in the 80s, the South Koreans built a flag pole that was 300+ feet tall. Well, the North wouldn’t stand for this, so they built a taller flagpole, 525 feet tall. And thus you have the tallest flagpole in the world! (The logic of warring factions…)

So after all this excitement, passport checking, military and war history, where do we go next? An “amethyst factory.” Or so it was billed. (Mind you, this wasn’t on the program nor part of the tour.) So we get back to the city and arrive in a ritzy part of town where our tour guide tells us you can see actresses and actors walking about and park our bus in front of an office building.

At this point we’re all thoroughly puzzled. Up to the third floor, a woman gives us a brief explanation of how amethyst is mined and polished etc, and then she opens a door and we’re herded into a showroom floor(!) with barking sales clerks holding up amethyst jewelry all around us. The Danes start laughing furiously. None of us can believe it. Why the hell would you take a bunch of philosophers (who aren’t very materialistic to begin with) to an amethyst showroom??? We stood around cracking jokes at this surreal scene. If you took us to a rare bookstore, we could understand. But jewelry?

No sightings of Kim Jong-Il, sorry to say…