Happy New Year from London, world headquarters of resistance to the Euro. I'm sitting in a little shop off Hogarth street, typing this on a PowerMac 7100 which has apparently been dredged up from the Thames after a near-fatal bus accident. Please bear with me if the keyboard seizes up unexpectedly.

We're heading off to dinner in about an hour and then to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company's rendition of all of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets in 97 minutes. Then off to Trafalgar Square to witness fireworks, gunfire, unruly crowds, pickpockets, fistfights and the birth of the New Year. If all goes as planned, we'll be returning tomorrow to the U.S. with no casualties.

And now some highlights from the trip:

We spent the day yesterday visiting the Tower of London, where all sorts of things happened, but are difficult to find out about unless you buy the audio tour for a mere three quid. We opted to save the three quid to buy smog filters and wander around the Tower ourselves, which led to a hilarious misunderstanding when we rappelled down into the chamber containing the Crown Jewels. After a stint at the local constabulary, we headed for the National Gallery, where the masterworks of just about everyone are on display in a cavernous museum run entirely by donation. It was quite impressive and well-worth the cost of a flight to Europe.

Before arriving here, we spent almost a week in the Netherlands, staying with Steve and Nina, who are friends of Jake's and also extremely good cooks. We enjoyed a monstrous feast on Christmas, followed by two varieties of Croatian moonshine, either of which could blow the doors off a '72 Mustang convertible if you put it in your gas tank. We also took the measure of Indonesian cuisine, which is excellent, and a wide range of patat, the quality of which varies in inverse proportion to its proximity to Amsterdam's red light district. Patat is an approximation of American French fries in the same sense that Chicken Kiev is similar to McNuggets. Patat is fried twice: once at a lower temperature for several minutes to cook the inside and a second time just before serving, at a very high temperature to crisp the skin. It is then served with any number of condiments: mayonnaise, ketchup, peanut sauce, mustard relish, nitroglycerine or what have you. In perusing my dictionary, I find that we have no word in English to adequately convey the delectability of these über-fries after a long day of walking about the crowded canals of Delft and Amsterdam.

France was a blur, athough we certainly ate well: snails in garlic butter, broiled frogs with lemon, duck au jus, grilled lamb brochettes, beef in red wine and pepper sauce, salmon pate, fish mousse, lasagna Bolognese, mussels in cream sauce, goat cheese, fresh pineapple, sorbet, chocolate mousse, creme brulee, assorted pastries and a staggering amount of French bread, which is perhaps the one credible argument in favor of French culture. The baguettes in Paris are consistently worth the price of admission, despite their tendency to induce Captain Crunch-mouth in subjects who have failed to build up an immunity before jetting recklessly overseas.

We were a little worried about making it through Swiss customs with our cargo of thermonuclear Dijonnaise mustard and French pastries, but the Swiss, like the French, appear to follow the same security procedures as the six items or less line at Cub Foods. We encountered little resistance.

In Switzerland we stayed on a farm outside of Basel, certainly the highlight of the trip. Everything we ate was made on the premises, including the cheese, potatoes, milk and bacon. We had a wonderful dish called racklette, which is melted cheese over potatoes with pickled onions and paprika. We also managed to get out of the country with a sizeable percentage of the gross national output of chocolate.

We'll be returning with pictures, stories, bruises, blisters and an unfortunate amount of credit card debt. Hope the van has recovered and my car and apartment have not been destroyed by another act of God. Have a great New Year and we'll see you tomorrow.

Chip Howland
howland@skypoint.com