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  We had ours one hot afternoon after leaving the Park Güell, Gaudi’s weirdly wonderful garden on a hill overlooking the city. We left the park around 4 P.M., famished, and could find no other place willing to serve lunch; the kitchens were closed. But not the microwaves at the place near the trinket shop. There they offered several versions of traditional foods—various tapas and raciónes and, of course, my fateful paella. I placed my order, and in the kitchen, out of sight, someone slipped it into the microwave. Several minutes later, my Spanish meal was served.

  What possessed me to order it? A desire to have something indigenous, I suppose. But there was nothing indigenous about the substance on the steaming plate before me: it was a solid clump of mushy rice punctuated with dubious chunks of sausage and a few world-weary prawns.

  I should have gone with the hot dog.

  MICHAEL POLLAN is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

  Before heading to Barcelona, my parents and I had received lists from many esteemed culinary minds as to where to spend each bite in the tapas capital of the world. But these lists did us no good when, walking back to the Metro from Park Güell, the three of us were simultaneously struck by pangs of late-afternoon hunger. I knew what this meant: far from any foodie destination, we would have to venture into a restaurant unexplored by our gourmand guides. There would be no Alice Waters in the back of our heads recommending the “ever-

  so-simple” tomato breads and the Iberico ham, or Dan Barber advising us to try the fried artichokes with the lemon aioli, or even my grandmother suggesting the Pimientos de Padrón. We were truly on our own.

  The restaurant we found was so bland that it didn’t even have a name. And yet this was our only choice; it was siesta, and the other shops we passed were closed. Except, of course, for this anonymous hole in the wall, which we staggered into upon spying paella on the crookedly taped menu in the front window.

  As we entered we were quickly greeted and ushered to a table that was squeezed so tightly into a corner that it reminded me of a Tetris piece. I sat down and immediately noticed three ominous things: the tableware and chairs (all plastic), the fact that there was not a single Spaniard in the entire establishment, and the bathroom. Oh, the bathroom. It wasn’t politely located down the hall or in the back; no, it sat in the corner across from our table, in the dining room itself. Consisting of three small walls erected to form a box the size of a small airport bathroom stall, it leaked both smells and sounds.

  But despite all of this, the actual items on the menu did not seem too nauseating. My parents, emboldened by their hunger, ordered the surf and turf paellas. I stuck to the strictly turf. After placing our order with a middle-aged and chipper man, we waited for five, ten, twenty minutes, our stomachs growling louder and louder until I was sure the entire restaurant could hear the symphony of our gastric tracts. Then, finally, the food arrived, delivered in three matching oval plastic plates with slightly elevated walls.

  I stared, crestfallen at the sight of my dish. It was a large lump of brown-black gooeyness, with indecipherable chunks jutting out from the sludge. Upon the first bite, which required me to cram my plastic fork as hard as possible into the slightly crusty edges of the dish, I came to the conclusion that my paella had been frozen for a very, very long time. Perhaps the delay in service was due to the time it took our server to find an ice pick to extricate the dish from the bottom of his freezer.

  But while disgusting, no one could accuse my paella of being simple. After a top note of freezer burn came the lovely astringent taste of gamy meat and mushy carrot. The rice was even more complex: clumped and congealed, certain bites were reminiscent of leather-hard slabs of clay. Others were mushy beyond recognition, saturated with a drool-like substance released from the meat that created an effect of heavily burnt oatmeal.

  I’ve never seen my father so happy to pay the bill.

  —ISAAC POLLAN

  Chapter 16

  Wall Drug

  If you’ve taken a cross-country road trip, chances are you’ve seen the signs. At its peak in the 1960s, Wall Drug—a roadside attraction in South Dakota that has become synonymous with American kitsch—was advertised on over three thousand billboards around the country. HAVE YOU DUG WALL DRUG? FREE COFFEE AND DONUT FOR VETERANS: WALL DRUG. T-REX: WALL DRUG.

  The signs were so relentless that Wall Drug became a tautology of a tourist trap: a place worth visiting only because of the billboards claiming it was worth visiting. Adding to the circularity, the advertisements themselves are now considered campy artifacts in their own right, and have sprung up in places as far away from South Dakota as Moscow, the Taj Mahal, Afghanistan, and even the South Pole.

  These days the actual Wall Drug advertises itself as a “76,000 square foot wonderland of free attractions” including both a life-size tyrannosaurus rex head and the world’s second-largest fiberglass jackalope. But it wasn’t always this glamorous: when the original Wall Drug opened in 1931, Wall was a tiny prairie town with fewer than four hundred residents. Wall Drug’s founders, Ted Hustead and his wife, Dorothy, liked the town because it had a drugstore for sale and a Catholic church. Their families, however, were not as easily convinced, and insisted on having a prayer circle to see if it was really a good idea. Luckily for lovers of American roadside attractions, God approved.

  It takes a while, though, to go from a small family-run pharmacy to an internationally known destination, and for a while, business was slow—really slow. So slow that even five years after they’d opened—Dorothy and Ted’s self-imposed deadline to turn things around—it still was virtually nonexistent. And then one hot summer day Dorothy, watching passing carloads of sweaty travelers, stumbled upon a gimmick that, in retrospect, was genius: Wall Drug should give away free ice water.

  Dorothy even came up with a slogan: “Get a soda… Get a root beer… Turn next corner… Just as near… To Highway 16 & 14… Free Ice Water… Wall Drug.” Skeptical but supportive, Ted got a kid to help him paint the slogan on a bunch of wooden signs, then spent a weekend nailing them up on the side of the road, spaced out so that travelers could read them sequentially as they drove. According to legend, by the time he got back to the store, people were already lining up for ice water.

  Julie Mangin

  That Wall Drug still exists is a testament to how few manmade tourist attractions there are in South Dakota (cf., Mount Rushmore, p. 92). But it’s also a testament to clever advertising and ice cubes. Seventy-something years since Ted and Dorothy opened their shop, Wall Drug now is a sprawling cowboy-themed mall with restaurants, gift shops, a chapel, an art museum, and attractions that include a

  piano-playing gorilla and an eighty-foot-tall apatosaurus. You can buy boot spurs or a “freedom pistol,” watch some singing cowboy dolls, or take a photo of your kids on the jackalope. Wall Drug still offers free ice water and 5-cent cups of coffee, but that’s about all that is recognizable from the original tiny store. It’s grown so large that it is no longer simply an attraction—Wall Drug has swallowed the town.

  Chapter 17

  Bart

  Let’s start with the carpet. Why would Bay Area Rapid Transit, one of the country’s busiest commuter rail systems, decide it was a good idea to upholster the floor?

  The result is Eau de BART, the stomach-turning scent that hits you in the face every time you board a train to San Francisco. It’s a blend of spilled coffee, greasy hair, body odor left by vagrants who take naps on its blue cloth seats, and the aroma that arises from substances trapped on thousands of commuters’ shoes. Thankfully, there’s a movement afoot to rip up the rug from some of the cars, but this still leaves the question of the fabric seats unresolved. Perhaps my allegiance to the New York subway system makes me biased, but I believe that all public transportation systems should be built with materials that can be hosed down with bleach.

  BART was honored as one of the Top Ten Public Works Projects of
the Century by the American Public Works Association. But despite this accolade, its problems don’t end with its odor—or with the questionable decision to refer to a major public transportation system with an acronym that rhymes with “fart.” BART is the main transit link between the East Bay and San Francisco, and yet its trains don’t run between 12 and 4 A.M. Berkeley residents looking for a night on the town therefore find themselves in a public transportation version of Cinderella—except when the clock strikes midnight, BART doesn’t turn into a pumpkin; it disappears entirely.

  If you do manage to get on a train, be prepared to ponder several engineering questions such as: why did no one predict that thanks to some unfortunate confluence of acoustics and friction, BART cars would emit an ear-piercing shriek for their entire 3.6-mile passage underneath the water through the Transbay Tube? Or, alternatively, what would happen in an earthquake? The BART Earthquake Safety Program has identified areas that are particularly vulnerable if the ground starts to shake: the Transbay Tube, the stations, and the aerial guideways that prop up the tracks when the train emerges above ground. In other words, pretty much all of it. One can only hope that if and when the big one comes, it does so between the hours of midnight and 4 A.M.

  Chapter 18

  A Stop on Carry Nation’s Hatchetation Tour

  Born in 1846, Carry Nation didn’t come from the stablest of backgrounds. Her maternal grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin all had dementia, and her mother suffered from delusions that she was Queen Victoria. Not to be outdone, Nation directed her own mental energy toward religion; she claimed to have frequent chats with Jesus.

  Apparently, Jesus had a lot to say about alcohol. After her first husband drank himself to death, Nation remarried and joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which closed all liquor-selling establishments in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, except for one stubborn drugstore. The other women considered this a success, but it wasn’t enough for Nation, who grabbed a sledgehammer, stormed into the shop, and smashed a keg of whiskey. The druggist, terrified, left soon thereafter, and Nation had found herself a cause.

  After following a voice in her head that told her to destroy saloons in nearby Kiowa, Nation returned to Medicine Lodge and bought a hatchet. She then began what she called a “hatchetation” tour across the eastern half of the United States, bursting into saloons and destroying bottles with an enthusiastic chant of “Smash! Smash! For Jesus’ sake, smash!” Nation soon developed such a formidable reputation that when she arrived in New York City, bartenders locked their doors. Who could blame them? The woman was nearly six feet tall, a muscular 175 pounds, armed, and crazy.

  Luckily, Nation kept her rampages focused on inanimate objects like bottles, kegs, and cash registers; her reign of terror ended when she ran out of money and was reduced to supporting herself by selling souvenir hatchets and reenacting saloon smashes at local carnivals. But her legacy lived on—and across the United States, bartenders posted signs in her honor. ALL NATIONS SERVED, they said. EXCEPT CARRY.

  Carry Nation with bible, hatchet

  Wikipedia Commons

  Chapter 19

  The Third Infiltration Tunnel at the DMZ

  Advertised by tourist brochures as the “most fortified border on Earth that only Korea can offer,” the demilitarized zone is anthropologically fascinating, not to mention one of the world’s only active battle lines to have its own gift shop. (Sample souvenirs: DMZ key chains, child-size camouflage suits, duty-free alcohol.) There is a welcome center; there is a movie theater. Concerned about providing fodder for North Korean propaganda photos, the DMZ even has its own dress code; visitors are forbidden from wearing flip-flops, tank tops, or shorts that “expose the buttocks.” It is not entirely clear what the people who wrote the dress code have against leather riding chaps, but they’re not kidding: wear the wrong thing, and you’re not going on the tour.

  Providing that your pants meet protocol, you’ll sign a release acknowledging that you could get shot, watch a slideshow presentation and briefing, and eventually be led to the Joint Security Area, which is the only area in the DMZ where North and South Korean troops stand face-to-face.

  The border in this section is less Berlin Wall than it is sidewalk curb: a half foot tall and straddled by a group of squat, powder-blue UN buildings. These were originally designed as neutral spots for negotiations. But since visitors are allowed to go inside, most of the negotiations going on these days are among members of large tour groups figuring out where in the building they need to stand to get a picture of themselves in what is technically North Korea. Like most of the DMZ tour, this comes highly recommended. But do not bother with the Third Infiltration Tunnel.

  That’s not because it is uninteresting. The Third Infiltration Tunnel—or the Third Tunnel of Aggression, as it’s more poetically known—is the third discovered underground passageway (of an estimated dozen or so) that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il ordered to be blasted from North to South Korea in preparation for a potential invasion. When South Korea found this particular tunnel in 1978, North Korea claimed that it was merely a coal mine—even going so far as to have part of the granite walls painted black. Unconvinced, the South blocked the tunnel with three barricades and then, as a capitalist “screw you,” opened it as a tourist site.

  The resulting experience is not for claustrophobics, people prone to panic attacks, or anyone with an aversion to being buried alive. First, you’re led to a train platform and told to put all your belongings into a small cubby. Next, you’re given a hard hat and herded onto a small trolley. That’s probably the part where you should start asking questions, like: why are you on a train? Or, more important, where are you going? But most tourists, lulled into complacence by the

  trolley’s similarity to those in Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World,” don’t think to be inquisitive.

  Instead, the claustrophobic visitor will experience an unexpected rush of terror as the train begins a 240-foot descent underground through a narrow tunnel blasted out of solid rock. As your little train chugs lower and lower, you wonder how the giggling tourists around you can seem so oblivious to the lack of emergency exits and escape hatches built into the suffocating walls pushing in on you from all sides. Several horrible minutes later, the trolley finally reaches the bottom and you’re given several minutes to walk to the tunnel’s main attraction—the barricade between North and South Korea. (Spoiler alert: it looks like a wall.) The good part about the tunnel is that, at 6½ by 6½ feet, it’s slightly less oppressive than the train ride, but the extra headroom isn’t worth the panic attack it took to get

  there.

  Chapter 20

  Rush Hour on a Samoan Bus

  Your opinion toward bus travel in Samoa is likely to depend on one important variable: whether or not you mind being close with strangers. And when I say close, I’m not talking about having your face smushed into people’s armpits during rush hour. I’m talking about sitting on their laps.

  In Samoa, buses are small, seating is limited, and nobody’s supposed to stand. So drivers are left with two options: leave people in the road, or assume the passengers will find a place for them to sit. Etiquette dictates the latter, and so whenever a bus picks up

  someone—which could be anywhere, since Samoa has few predetermined bus stops—the passengers engage in a round of quiet shuffling to make space on someone’s lap for the new arrival. Whose lap you sit on depends on your status in the social hierarchy—elderly people get the front, then come women with children, then women with no children, and finally a throng of men at the back.

  If you have a loose definition of personal boundaries, this lap sitting can actually be a fun cultural experience, not to mention provide a welcome layer of padding on rough roads. But be careful: according to the World Health Organization, in Samoan urban areas, over 75 percent of adults are obese. Ending up on the wrong side of a lap could mean a very painful ride.

  Also worth noting: After years of driving on the
right, Samoans recently were forced to start driving on the left, a transition that not only increases the risk of head-on collisions, but means that many bus doors now open directly into oncoming traffic.

  MARY ROACH

  The Tupperware Museum

  America has an enduring passion for highly specific and unnecessary food storage receptacles. It was created, almost single handedly, by Earl Tupper, the man whose Orlando empire has given us, over the years, the Garlic Keeper and the specially designed pickle storage container, never minding that the Vlasic jar has a screwable lid. I once wrote a magazine article about Tupperware, partly because I was fascinated by Mr. Tupper and his wares, but also because I had long harbored a desire, unfathomable even to me, to visit the Tupperware Museum of Historical Food Containers. Could anything be duller? (Possibly. There’s a Needle Museum somewhere in England.)

  As the afternoon at Tupperware HQ wound down and my host from the public relations office began moving us toward the door, I asked to be directed to the museum. She replied that it had closed some years back and that the contents were—are you ready?—in storage.

  Years later, I found a photograph of the museum. Its dullness surpassed even my imagination: brown carpeting and case after case of drab, unimaginatively displayed crockery, amphoras, vats. It appeared that the whole point of the museum had been to make pre-Tupperware food storage seem sad and boring, to foster a yearning for festively colored Wonderlier bowls and stackable sandwich-fixings holders. Nonetheless, my disappointment lingers, as though for all these years it had been stored in a virtually airtight, just-right Disappointment Keeper.