London Bombings   Having just come back from London and having just ridden the Underground for the first time in years, it was of particular interest to me when hearing about the London bombings to see where the four attacks had taken place, and where the four failed attacks took place some time later. I’ll refer to two in the first group and two in the second.

A year ago, Beverly and I spent what turned out to be our last night together at the refurbished Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street Station, where I had been looking forward to staying for some time. We not only toured the hotel, we went into the railway station to see how it had been redone, and also the neighborhood. With the wheelchair we of course did not access the Liverpool Street Underground station below, where three lines cross. This year in July, one of the bombs went off after an Underground train on one of these lines had just left this station, where we had been walking last summer in the street above.

I talked about finally using the Underground extensively this June, and going up to North London to Kings Cross station to see it and St Pancras station next door. There are several Underground lines converging here, and one of the bombs that went off was on a train leaving Kings Cross on the Piccadilly Line between it and the next stop, Russell Square. When I left Kings Cross, this was not the line I took as it turns out. I had taken the Victoria line out of Kings Cross, where the next stop is Warren Street. But it was here approaching the Warren Street station where one of the four later bombs fizzled and did not go off.

A couple of hours earlier riding the Underground on my day pass I had made connections in South London to the Northern Line, where one of the stations along the route was named Oval. The name stuck in my mind for my having passed there because it’s such an unusually short, blunt name for a station. It was at Oval where another of the failed bombs sputtered but did not go off.

Wordsmithing   Wordsmithing I’ve played around cobbling words together quite a bit, such as talking about a Euramerican outlook, or being a Travelanguist. Of course, I’m not the only one who enjoys doing this, which was brought to home at dinner one evening coming home on the QM2 a few weeks ago.

Bob is a gentleman who lives in Minnesota and takes quite an interest in both railroads and words, as I do. I’ll be talking more about him in the near future regarding railroads. At any rate, he gave out his business card to three of us at the table, which described his railroad interest with a word of his own invention. It said he was a ferroequinologist. The two other people he gave his card to just stared at it, but I burst out laughing. Do you get it?

I think it’s quite cute. Ferro- means iron (once again, think “ferrous”), equine refers to a horse, so the word is telling you that Bob’s an Iron Horse Specialist. I liked it, but wanted a word to go in a different direction. As to my likes, trains themselves are all right, but it’s the routes of the trains across the countryside (and around the world) that fascinate me. Railroad museums showing old trains are of mild historic interest to me, but where those antique trains WENT, and modern trains GO is the thing as far as I’m concerned. So ferroequinologist might describe Bob’s interests, but it doesn’t cut it for me. So at dinner, this is what the two of us came up with. To me it’s not a matter of the Iron Horse as much as it’s the Iron Road. Latin for road is “iter”. You knew that already if you know the word reiterate (re-iter-ate), which means to repeat, simply because it means literally “to go down the same road again”. Also, “-ologist” implies a knowledge, but the Greek “-phile” means “lover”, which again describes my interest more. So we came up with “ferroiterophile” for an Iron Road Lover. I like it. I probably won’t use it much, but I like it.

When I got home, it struck me that from June 14 to July 2, a period of just 19 days, I had ridden six different subways, those of Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London, and New York. This, too, clearly required a new word. It’s foolishly long, but fun. I came up with “subterroferroiterophile”, or a bit longer if you wish, “subterraneoferroiterophile” for “Under-Ground Iron Road Lover”.

New York Comfort Food   Coming back to New York after an extended trip is cause to settle down again in many ways, including food-wise. I restarted the flow of my morning supply of bagels, and have had bagels-and-lox for dinner a couple of times. I’ve said in the past that a lot of types of food might not be what one thinks. Pizza and lots of dishes one gets in many Italian restaurants in the US are much more Italian-American than what one gets in Italy. It’s similar with what is often served in Chinese restaurants being more Chinese-American than Chinese. I read not so long ago that they’ve finally introduced fortune cookies in China, imported from the US. But some of the most interesting New York comfort food is of Jewish origin, and again, sometimes surprisingly Jewish-American rather than Eastern European Jewish.

Knishes   If the knish has traveled around the country to any extent, it’s more for the benefit of expatriate New Yorkers that I could possibly be found in supermarkets rather than for too many locals. It’s essentialy peppered mashed potatoes wrapped in a crisp doughy crust, the crisper, the better. You always have to salt it, and sometimes, a bit more pepper is good, too. The pronunciation of the name is also quirky.

English words long ago lost the first sound in KN- and GN-, even though it’s still shown in the spelling. Yes, people really used to say k-nee and g-nome. Therefore, if you come across a German name like the publisher Knopf or a Yiddish word like knish, you have to consciously work at making sure the K is really there. English speakers end up with two pronunciations. Some actually say k-nish and K-nopf, but most people end up making two syllables out of it, saying kuh-nish and Kuh-nopf. That’s just the way it is.

Bagels   A Jewish friend of mine in high school once told me about guests saying “I enjoyed the bagels and lox, but tell me—which is the bagel and which is the lox?” I don’t know if that’s true or not, or just a good story, but nowadays these two items have spread out of New York to a considerable extent, especially bagels, and I can’t imagine too many people confusing the two.

I do believe the bagel was brought to New York from Eastern Europe. I’ve heard several explanations for the name, some of which seem nonsensical to me. My take on it is this: the root BEUG- in German means “bend”; -EL is a diminuitive; the Yiddish word implying “little bent thing”, based on German BEUG-el, was apparently pronounced something like BY-gel, which became bagel.

The oddity about bagel preparation is that it’s boiled, unusual for a bread. When the dough is formed, it’s put into boiling water for a bit, and only then is it baked. That’s what gives the bagel its distinctive chewiness and nicely tough crust. Authentic bagels can be found outside New York, but one has to be careful. Far too often, purported bagels are soft, hardly more then round pieces of bread. If that’s what you’re looking for, then buy bread. Bagels are chewy, almost by definition. If it’s not chewy, please don’t call it a bagel.

Bagels have grown in size in my lifetime. I remember that when I was growing up, normal bagels were maybe three inches across. I haven’t seen any that size in years. Most are now easily four inches, if not more. That’s OK. Of course, they now also make mini-bagels for cocktail parties. That’s OK, too.

Bagels have now made the round trip back to Europe. I’ve seen them on buffet tables with cream cheese nearby, such as at Le Grand Hotel in Paris this last trip. To me it’s like the time years ago when Beverly and I saw that Italian-American pizza had made it back to Italy, when we saw Pizza Americana advertised.

Bagels in their simplest form are served with a “schmier”, which is a smearing of (plain) cream cheese. Of course, nowadays we have the flavored cream cheeses, as well.

I’m not sure why people order plain bagels. Other people must agree with me, because in the supermarket late in the day, most of the good bagels will be sold out, and plenty of plain ones are often still available. The best of the traditional savory bagels have sesame seeds or poppy seeds. Onion bagels then became popular, and garlic bagels. The best of all these worlds is now the “everything” bagel, with all these items on it. I don’t like to go too far beyond that, although I’ve enjoyed sun-dried-tomato bagels, pesto bagels, and even jalapeño bagels. I absolutely draw the line at any kind of sweet bagels, such as blueberry, strawberry, and even chocolate. The mere thought is an abomination.

Lox   Here the worthy reader may be in for a surprise, but first some background. The English word “lox”, derived from Yiddish, refers to salmon only when it’s used as a preserved food, since we have the word “salmon” to describe the fish itself. The German word Lachs and the Swedish word lax (as in gravlax) are pronounced exactly the same way, but refer to both the fish itself, as well as the food. English speakers reading German are sometimes startled to read about a Lachs swimming upstream to spawn.

Now, for the surprise. Lox is quintessentially Jewish-Eastern European, right? The Jews brought lox over on the boat, right? That’s completely wrong. Lox as we know it is totally American (or Jewish-American), and more specifically, totally New York-ish.

Think of the logic of it. Salmon is an ocean fish, and from cold waters, at that. Salmon is found off the waters of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, or in the Atlantic, you hear of Nova Scotia salmon, or Scottish salmon, or Norwegian salmon. Regarding salmon, think: ocean; cold water; North. What has that to do with Eastern Europe?

Another point of logic is that the Jews of Eastern Europe that immigrated came from poor, impoverished areas. Salmon is an expensive fish. How would they have afforded it? If you want the proper image of poverty-stricken shtetl life in Eastern Europe, think of Anatevka in “Fiddler on the Roof”? (By the way, the German name of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” is just that: “Anatevka”.)

So what was it that happened? The Jews did bring to New York with them plenty of experience in preserving fish. To this day, in Jewish delicatessens, you can get smoked whitefish, and other kinds of preserved fish. Then, in the late 1800’s, at the height of Jewish immigration, the railroads started being able to transport fresh salmon quickly from the Pacific Northwest to the East. When the delicatessen owners came across this “new” fish, they applied the knowledge they had brought with them to the art of preserving it, and lox as we know it was born. Strictly speaking, if you call it lox it has to be preserved in brine, and will be rather salty. The alternative way of preserving it is, of course, to smoke it, and then you call it smoked salmon. In other words, “lox” and “smoked salmon” are not synonymous. It should be also noted that the Swedes preserve salmon in a marinade, and that’s the gravlax served in Swedish and other restaurants as an appetizer.

When combining the two, bagels and lox, you always use a schmier of cream cheese as well. That is however minimal. There are two other ingredients that it is an absolute crime to deprive yourself of: a nice slice of raw onion, and a smattering of capers on the cream cheese.

The Egg Cream   A few weeks ago, sailing back on the Mary, I spent a lot of time in the cabin working on the laptop, writing up from Berlin and Paris for publishing on the website when I got home. Finally, on the last full day on board, I felt I had to go to Afternoon Tea in the Queen’s Room. It had already started when I got there, and no more tables were available. A couple showed up next to me, we chatted, and when a table became free, the three of us took it. Along with the tea and finger sandwiches that day, it turns out they were serving scones, with little side dishes of the traditional strawberry jam and clotted cream, so it was particularly delightful. They were from Chicago, and lived right near downtown as I did in New York, so we had that in common. It turns out, though, they were originally from New York. I forget where in New York City she was from, but he and I were both from Brooklyn. He was from East Flatbush, and I said I grew up in East New York. We even named some streets we knew in common.

Putting some clotted cream on my scone, a felt it was time to slyly ask a question, a question that’s almost like the secret handshake of some secret societies. I asked: “So I suppose you know what an egg cream is?”

Well, of course he did, so we knew we “belonged to the same club”.

For the uninitiated, an egg cream is the nectar of hot summer days. It is charming in its simplicity. In a tall glass, pour one finger of chocolate syrup, one finger of milk, fill with seltzer and stir. That’s it. In a pinch, club soda can be used, but I believe club soda has some salt in it, so it would vary the taste somewhat.

The astute worthy reader will already have noticed a charming discrepancy. The egg cream contains neither eggs nor cream.

He tested me with the first standard backup question: “What kind of chocolate syrup is the only one to use?” Why, Fox’s U-Bet, of course. So I asked the usual: “And whose picture’s on the Fox’s label?” Shirley Temple’s, naturally.

I will re-emphasize that this ultra-New York conversation took place with scone and tea in hand. In the Queen’s Room. On the Queen Mary 2.

Now I have to confess that the typically New York egg cream might be in trouble. Actually, I haven’t had one in quite a while. Then, a recent article in the New York Times on that very subject pointed out that it’s usually New Yorkers of a certain age—ahem—that remember it best, but did point out the name of a place in the East Village that’s been making them for years, and is famous for them. The article also suggested a possible basis for the name. It said that at this one place, they had a stirring technique to make the egg cream particularly frothy on top. To extend their thought, then, perhaps a really good frothy head on an egg cream would look like creamy beaten egg whites? It may be a stretch, but I haven’t heard any better explanation for the unusual name.