by Mark Leigh
Capital city: Baku
The old Inner City area is described as beguiling, but an abundance of narrow streets and alleyways is enticing only if you’re a pickpocket. The newer downtown area is where you’ll find the hotels and tourist attractions including the world’s third tallest flagpole and the Flame Towers, which sounds exciting but it’s just a skyscraper housing offices and apartments. There’s also the State Carpet Museum where for about £15 you can wear a traditional Azerbaijan costume and have your photo taken against a backdrop of carpets. Whoopee shit.
MONTENEGRO
Being surrounded by Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, and Bosnia & Herzegovina meant that travel to Montenegro in the 1990s used to be a minefield. Literally. The Yugoslav wars decimated the tourist industry and it’s only since its independence from Serbia in 2006 that Montenegro has managed to regain its reputation as the place to visit if every other southern European resort is fully booked. What it lacks in style and sophistication it more than makes up for with uncomfortably hot summer temperatures, overcrowded beaches, ubiquitous loud Eurobeat music, countless stalls selling knock-off Louis Vuitton, and simmering resentment between the two states.
Promoting its beaches, mountains and night life, the government of Montenegro is committed to making its country an ‘elite tourist destination’ and in 2010 Yahoo! Travel listed Montenegro as one of the 10 Top Hot Spots to visit, although I assume this was a typo. The tourist board claim that the country’s reputation as a truly fashionable destination was sealed in Casino Royale when Daniel Craig’s James Bond played a high-stakes poker tournament at Montenegro’s Hotel Splendid. What they forget to point out is that the filmmakers decided to shoot the whole scene in the Czech Republic.
Those flying into the country’s two international airports should be reassured that they’ll be reunited with their luggage within 72 hours.
Capital city: Podgorica
Characterised by brutal Communist-era architecture, Podgorica pays homage to a glut of ugly fortress-like concrete structures and creates an impression of a sterile, dismal, cold, depressing hell-hole… it’s difficult to think of a more perfect place to commit suicide. However, for those who do decide to carry on living, the city’s stunning attractions include a monument to honour the famous Russian poet, writer, theatre and film actor, Vladimir Vysotsky, plus a puppet theatre and a nightclub called Mr Cool.
BELARUS
Visitors here tend to fall into three categories: people retracing their roots, human rights workers and those who have got lost. Of course, if you don’t fall into any of these groups there’s nothing to stop you enjoying a trip to Belarus, apart from overwhelming boredom and a high probability of getting picked up by the secret police. Although Belarus achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 there’s still an air of despondency throughout the country, fuelled by the legacy of massacres and purges by both the Red Army and the Nazis, and more recently, by a failing economy and a tyrannical, authoritarian regime.
There’s also the aftermath of Chernobyl in neighbouring Ukraine; after the 1986 disaster 25 per cent of what is now Belarus was exposed to significant radiation. So, if a repressive government and nuclear contamination don’t put you off, a trip here offers many things for the intrepid traveller including a cuisine that assimilates a mix of influences from surrounding countries. However, you need to bear in mind that Belarus’s neighbours are Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia – countries that are far better at manufacturing tractors than they are at creating fine food.
Capital city: Minsk
If you really want to experience what Moscow was like in the Cold War, visit Minsk. Rebuilt after being obliterated in the Second World War, the best that can be said about the architecture is that the buildings are foreboding and grim. Wide empty streets teem with a constant police and military presence while obedient locals go about their business with a fear that their every move is being monitored. It is.
Telecommunications are stuck in the 1960s and most attractions are closed, suspended or under reconstruction. Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Minsk for a while. No wonder he shot Kennedy.
Cricket: God’s Own Game
‘I don’t like cricket, I love it.’
Every time I hear 10cc’s ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ I find myself singing along, nodding in agreement and saying, ‘Yeah mon’. People criticised the ‘UKIP Calypso’ when it came out, but if you listen to the 10cc song you can see that Mike Read’s Caribbean accent is really authentic. But why do I and so many UKIP members love cricket?
Well, it’s civilised and civilising. When we conquered lots of the countries in Bongo Bongo land we introduced cricket and slavery and it’s good to see at least one of them is still popular. In some of these countries cricket is almost seen as a religion, and even here it’s known rather jokingly as God’s Own Game. Except it’s not really a joke when you consider how the sport was created in one of the alternative versions of Genesis.
(NB In my eyes the ECB will be first and foremost the England Cricket Board – not the European Central Bank).
The Creation of Cricket
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was void and without sport so he created a pitch with boundaries and it was long.*
And darkness was upon the pitch so God said, Let there be light.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And to play the sport he created Day in the Night, and God called this floodlights.
And God made marks upon on the pitch that divided the batsman from the bowler and God called them creases, and it was so.
And God said let the players defend wooden stumps surmounted by wooden cross pieces and this was the wicket, and it was good.
And God brought forth a willow staff and a red orb in order that the staff would strike the orb and send it into the firmament.
And during the flight of the red orb, it was deemed that batsmen would hurry the length of the pitch exchanging positions to score points.
And God said that the orb touching the ground before reaching the boundary shall bring forth four points, and the orb crossing the boundary without touching the ground shall bring forth six points. And God called these points runs.
And God said if the orb is held captive while in flight or projected at the wooden stumps before the batsman takes shelter then he is declared out and God said, Howzat!
And God created more regulations and these were abundant and became the sanctified laws of the game which God called Cricket, and it was good.
And after he created Cricket God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let him compete.
And God created two and twenty men and blessed them and God said unto them I have given you the pitch and the means and the laws. Go unto your crease and seek gratification in this sport.
And God saw everything that he had made, and he watched the play and behold, it was joyous.
And on the Seventh Day it rained and God called this a draw.
*44 cubits to be precise.
European Cuisine
Not So Much Food – Just Ways of Using Waste Animal Parts
Give me good old English grub any day of the week. It’s decent honest food for decent honest people. Granted, it might not be the most exciting food in the world, and at times it can be quite stodgy and dreary, but at least you know what’s in it – which is more than you can say about most European cuisine. In fact the reason Europeans call their cooking ‘cuisine’ is just an attempt to make their dishes sound interesting and glamorous, and to disguise what’s really in them: parts of animals that even the Koreans would frown upon.
Like most of my countrymen I like a flutter every now and then. A fiver each way on the Grand National or a tenner on a nose at the Derby – which is why we British find eating horsemeat repugnant (especially if it’s in mislabeled ready meals). It can of course be found in most French supermarkets, sold alongside pink veal, but t
hen that probably doesn’t surprise you. However eating horsemeat seems positively normal compared to other food that’s popular across the continent.
Take, for example, something called Head Cheese, a dish popular in many European countries. This has nothing to do with cheese but everything to do with boiling the flesh of a sheep, pig or cow’s head until it falls off, and then letting the whole mixture congeal into a gelatinous solid which is then served with a salad or in a sandwich. Think of it as a sort of primordial spam, but even less appealing.
And if you think that’s bad, the worst chain pub steak and kidney pie tastes a million times better than some of these other foreign abominations…
Real European Dishes That Certainly Justify the Term ‘Foreign Muck’
NAME Beuschel
WHERE TO FIND IT Austria
DESCRIPTION This traditional dish from Vienna is better known as Lung Stew and is usually made with veal lungs and heart.
COMMENTS With a recipe that usually begins ‘separate the veal lung from the windpipe and gullet’, is there any need to say more?
NAME Casu marzu
WHERE TO FIND IT Sardinia
DESCRIPTION Sheep’s milk cheese containing live maggots to help break down the cheese fats, soften it and imbue it with an unique flavour. The insect larvae are eaten with the cheese.
COMMENTS Not so much a food as a biological weapon.
NAME Beef tartare
WHERE TO FIND IT Austria, Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany
DESCRIPTION A patty of raw beef or horsemeat garnished with a raw egg.
COMMENTS If you have a high resistance towards E. coli, Salmonella or vomiting, then this is the dish for you.
NAME Véres hurka
WHERE TO FIND IT Hungary
DESCRIPTION Sausage usually made by boiling pig or cattle blood until it’s congealed and then adding boiled and minced pig’s organs and rice.
COMMENTS Formerly looked upon as a meal of the poor, the dish should nowadays be looked upon as a meal for the desperate.
NAME Blood eggs
WHERE TO FIND IT Hungary
DESCRIPTION Just what it is with the Hungarians and appalling food? Another of their traditional dishes, this one involves cooking scrambled eggs in pig’s blood – traditionally, blood from the first pig killed that season.
COMMENTS The slaughtered pig is considered more fortunate than those having to eat the actual meal.
NAME Lutefisk
WHERE TO FIND IT Denmark, Finland and Sweden
DESCRIPTION An aged whitefish described as being ‘glutinous in texture’ and having a ‘pungent, offensive odour’. If that wasn’t bad enough, Lutefisk is often described as being ‘infamously unpleasant’.
COMMENTS Those experiencing the Lutefisk aroma for the first time have compared the sensation as like ‘being hit with CS gas’.
NAME Criadillas
WHERE TO FIND IT Spain
DESCRIPTION Fried testicles of prize bulls sometimes presented on a Spanish menu under the dish’s more innocuous name, ‘bull fries’.
COMMENTS Not many chefs get past the first line of the recipe: ‘Remove the membrane from the testicles by gently cutting it.’ NB Some Spaniards think that eating the testicles of prized bulls makes you brave and more masculine. In reality it just makes you unsettled and more nauseous.
NAME Polšja obara
WHERE TO FIND IT Slovenia
DESCRIPTION A thick dormice soup or stew made with potatoes, spices, apple vinegar and, of course, dormice.
COMMENTS There are few dormice in Slovenia. Not because of efficient pest control or deforestation, but because the locals find them so damned tasty.
NAME Lappkok
WHERE TO FIND IT Sweden and Finland
DESCRIPTION Dumplings made from reindeer blood, and mixed with wheat or rye flour.
COMMENTS The genius who came up with this dish probably wondered if it were still possible to make it any more abhorrent. The answer was a resounding ‘yes’, which is why it’s traditionally served with reindeer bone marrow.
NAME Cockscomb
WHERE TO FIND IT Italy
DESCRIPTION Cockscombs are the floppy red fleshy things on top of roosters’ heads that look like weird upside down gloves. Why anyone would have a) ever wondered what they tasted like and b) decided they should be an important component of Italian stews and a sauce for tagliatelle defies belief.
COMMENTS The tips of the cockscomb are described as ‘slightly gelatinous, with hints of delicate frog-leg flavour’.
UKIP and Dating
Research has shown that UKIP members and supporters tend to enjoy long marriages. They might be loveless and unfulfilling after the children leave home – when you and your wife realise the only thing you have in common is having nothing in common – but nonetheless, they are long. Very long.
Sometimes, however, your partner gets the bit between their teeth and, influenced by what she reads in weekly celebrity magazines or by completing Facebook quizzes like ‘So You Think You’re Happy?’ or ‘Could You Do Better?’, she decides to leave. In most cases, when a UKIPer gets divorced it’s usually because of what’s called ‘irreconcilable differences’. In non-legal terms this is when your wife accuses you of being a ‘unrelenting bore’, spending too much of your time bell-ringing, glass blowing, brass rubbing, collecting Star Wars figures or Nazi memorabilia, re-enacting English Civil War battles, or constructing 1:72 scale models of Second World War armoured fighting vehicles. Occasionally, though, you’ll just find yourself replaced by someone taller, fitter and usually slightly swarthier and younger, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Enrique Inglesias and who, you’re told, ‘knows how to fulfil my womanly needs’.
Whatever the reason for separating, you’ll find it traumatic and a time of mixed emotions. On the one hand, it’s good to have newfound freedom – no one to tell you what to do, what to wear, or to constantly point out every single one of your many flaws – but on the other hand, even UKIPers need company; someone to look after them, cook for them and accompany them to Beer Festivals or Genesis reunion concerts.
The Best Places For UKIPers To Meet Women
Beer festivals
For: You’ll automatically have something in common.
Against: She’ll probably be dumpy, unkempt and look like she was an extra in The Hobbit.
Science-fiction conventions
For: She might resemble Number Six from Battlestar Galactica.
Against: She’ll inevitably resemble Emperor Palpatine from Return of the Jedi.
A pub or bar
For: There’s a chance an attractive, normal woman will find you fascinating, charming, interesting and enigmatically handsome.
Against: This will never happen.
A fashionable club or disco
For: Any woman you meet is likely to be young, sexy and really fit.
Against: You think you’ll be allowed past the velvet rope?
A DIY superstore
For: Women wandering the aisles alone are likely to be single and your friendly, helpful advice on caulking or grouting can be a good conversation opener.
Against: Loitering for half a day in the drill bits aisle is likely to get you arrested or at least thrown out.
Art gallery
For: Many single women visit galleries to admire or study the beauty of the paintings. You can impress them with your knowledge of Old Dutch masters.
Against: The chances are you’ll get Van Gogh mixed up with Van Halen.
At work
For: You’ve probably already met all the contenders for a possible relationship.
Against: They’ve already met you.
Introduction by a friend
For: Your potential partner will have already been pre-vetted and qualified.
Against: You’ll need to have a friend.
Party
For: Alcohol, music, mystery and wildness… all the ingredients for a successful evening.
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Against: When was the last time someone invited you to a party?
Party conference
For: Prejudice, right-wing leanings and being socially awkward… you’ll have so much in common!
Against: Seriously. Have you seen the women at UKIP party conferences?
Understanding Online Dating
Where UKIPers have found some success in meeting new partners is in online dating. The biggest advantage over old-style Lonely Hearts newspaper ads is that you can see your prospective partner before you start entering into a conversation. The biggest disadvantage however is that she can do the same (which is an issue if you bear more than a passing resemblance to David Mellor). And similar to Lonely Hearts ads, you’ll be entering a world of strange shorthand and acronyms, so it’s vital you understand the right ‘trigger’ phrases to attract a like-minded soul mate.
Useful acronyms for UKIPers to use in their ads
SUKIPBDJM Single UKIPer but don’t judge me
IDTM Is desperate to meet
IRRDTM Is really, really desperate to meet