Best Biker Bar In The World (Or How To Have A Devil Of A Good Time)

It's said the caves were once used to shelter fleeing religious refugees...


... and a Nazi weapons factory during World War II.

For my 50th birthday, I rode my motorcycle inside a cave. And no, I'm not prematurely senile.

If that wasn't enough, the cave is so large that it has its own roundabout. Oh, and it's also got a bar, where you can ride your motorcycle right up and order a drink.

Allen Harris, the chief of the Expat Bikers Club, had arranged a trip on April 24 to Pekelne Doly (Hell's Mines), in the Český ráj (Czech Paradise) area, north of Prague, between the hamlets of Svitava and Velenice. I think it was around 90 kilometers or so from Prague. You can see the exact location on Google below:


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It was a gloriously sunny day, but not too hot to make wearing the leathers a chore. We had a fantastic ride through the Czech countryside on winding backroads. You can watch a cool video of the ride, with me and my biking buddies, below. It was filmed and edited by Allen:



We didn't quite know what to expect once we got to the cave. In fact, at first, we passed right by it, since it's not exactly well signposted and sits well up off the road.

The day we visited, it was packed with bikers and bikes of all shapes and sizes. Everyone was as seemingly tickled as we were to have arrived at such a playground.

As Allen says, "This is the holy grail of pubs and all bikers must visit it once to call themselves a biker. This place is addictive and the trip will be repeated many times."

Inside, there are sofas and chairs and even a few mattresses thrown on the floor, if you want to spend the night, I guess. (Or maybe do other things.)

According to this website, the caves were used as shelter by fleeing religious refugees in the 17th century, and then later used for sand mining for a nearby mirror factory. It says the area also housed a Nazi weapons factory.

What's funny, though, is that we're all dressed in leather and sporting tattoos and beards and skull rings and such, and we're in the most amazing biker bar imaginable, but most of us are drinking coffee or soda or nonalcoholic beer, since there's zero tolerance in the Czech Republic for drinking and driving. And even if there wasn't, motorcycle riding in the Czech Republic is dangerous enough without having had a few.

It was a great ride and a wonderful way to spend part of my birthday. Thanks to Allen, Sam, Hayden, and Andy for letting me tag along.


Hayden Murray (left), Sam Graham, Andy Schofield, and I soak up some rays at the outdoor tables. It was just too nice to sit inside.


Allen enjoys a tall, cool half-liter ... of nonalcoholic Birell.


Sam remembers the one that got away.


Bikers can drive inside the cave, which features its own roundabout (above).


The bar, in the distance, surrounded in the cave by comfy sofas and chairs.


My Honda Shadow, getting some serious cave time in.

Best Coast -- Eating Well And Sleeping Well In Whitstable, England

Jonathan Swift said, "It was a brave man who first ate an oyster." Anyone who believes that has never eaten an oyster.

I was trying to think of a fun trip to take in honor of my 50th birthday, on April 24. My first thought was Ireland (I'm one-quarter Irish, and I dearly love the place) but I couldn't find any direct flights to Dublin that fit my schedule.

Then I remembered Whitstable.

A travel story that ran in "The New York Times" a few years ago had made a lasting impression. It was about the village of Whitstable, on England's southeast coast, and it was famous for its oysters. Which was the reason the article stayed with me, because I -- as well as Daisy -- love oysters, especially on the half-shell, she with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, me, neat.

As if the presence of tasty local shellfish wasn't enough, the village also boasts a Michelin-star gastro-pub called The Sportsman, which also left a lasting impression, because the photos of The Sportsman in "The New York Times" impressed me as much for the restaurant's utter unpretentiousness as for the food.


One of the great pleasures of Whitstable was ordering a half-dozen oysters from a shack on the beach, watching as they were shucked, and then taking them to the beach to enjoy. Emma has yet to discover the pleasure of the oyster.


Shucked while you wait.


Hard to beat the price -- about $6.50 for a half-dozen.

We -- me, Daisy, Emma, and Robin, Daisy's mom -- booked a flight to London/Luton on Hungary's Wizz Air, rented a car, and headed to Whitstable, which is about an hour and a half outside of London proper.

I can't recommend it enough.

We had glorious weather, the oysters were succulent, the locals friendly, the village full of cute shops, and the hotel -- the Hotel Continental -- unique.


Two of the fishermen's huts, converted into comfortable accommodation.


The view from the bedroom in our hut -- just steps from the beach.


One of the more comfortable beds I've ever slept in.

We splurged on one of the converted fisherman's huts -- small two-story shacks right on the beach that have been converted from stinky storage sheds into fairly posh accommodations. The bed was one of the most comfortable I've ever slept in, and it was always a thrill to peek out of the tiny upstairs window in the morning and see the sea and the fishing boats right there.

We shopped and ate oysters and mussels and drank bottles of white wine and pints of Guinness and walked along the beachfront and just basically had a wonderful time.


Robin Sindelar, Emma, Daisy, and me in Whitstable.

Oh, and The Sportsman. I'd made reservations weeks ahead of time, and then set out in our rental, the GPS programmed accordingly. But I guess there must be another restaurant called The Sportsman, for we ended up in nearby Canterbury and I thought for certain that we had missed our meal.


The Sportsman gastro-pub in Whitstable -- as unpretentious as it is delicious.

By the time I'd found The Sportsman, situated in the proverbial middle of nowhere next to the sea outside of town, it was 7:45. Our reservations had been for 7, and I felt certain that we'd blown it, so popular is The Sportsman. I would have given up on me.

I rushed through the door, expecting the worst, but the staff could not have been nicer. They had been holding our table for us all along, offered us a drink at the bar, and said our table would be ready momentarily, becalming my frazzled nerves.

I had not wanted to miss that meal, and I am so glad I didn't. I would say it ranks among the Top 5 meals of my life. I have never had such exquisite food, served in such a relaxed, unpretentious setting, by such lovely wait staff. A meal to remember, truly.

The Sportsman is reason enough to make a return trip to Whitstable.

The grand total for a three-course dinner for four, including a bottle of lovely Delta Pinot Noir from New Zealand, came to just over $250, minus tip. Money well spent.

I'll publish some photos of the food at The Sportsman on this post, and perhaps a few more pictures of Whitstable a bit later.

Go there. Now.


The offerings on the night we visited.


Poached rock oysters with pickled cucumber and avruga caviar.


Poached egg, asparagus and home-cured ham.


Chilled asparagus soup.


Braised turbot fillet with a crab bisque sauce.


Roast saddle of Monkshill farm lamb with mint sauce.


Roast pork belly with crackling and apple sauce.


Crispy duck with smoked chili salsa and sour cream.


The "pudding" board on our visit.


Cream cheese ice cream, pear puree, meringue and crumble crumbs.


Rhubarb sorbet made with Pop Rocks, believe it or not, and burnt cream, along with some simple vanilla ice cream and melted chocolate for Emma.


Warm chocolate mousse with salted caramel and milk sorbet.

At The Mountains Of Nerdness With H.P. Lovecraft

I used to be obsessed with horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft, who died in 1937 at the age of 46, is perhaps most famous for a series of interwoven tales centered on a cosmic entity known as Cthulhu.

It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.

No less than Joyce Carol Oates has said Lovecraft exerted an "incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction," while Stephen King called him the "20th century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."

While I don't read Lovecraft anymore, I still have a soft spot for his overwrought prose.

For some reason, I committed the following passage from "The Hound" to memory when I was a kid and still remember it to this day:

"For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a closepacked nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom."

That really impresses the girls, let me tell you.

In high school (yes, that's me in 10th grade), I wrote reams of horror and science fiction stories in a style that -- unfortunately for my reader(s) -- owed an all-too-obvious debt to the worst excesses of Lovecraft.

Sometimes I'd get one of these stories published in my high school literary magazine, and in some cases I actually sent a few off to legitimate magazines in the hope that an editor would recognize a budding literary genius. (None ever did.)

I also shot a few 8mm horror movies that owed their own debt to Lovecraft.

So it was with great interest that I came across a fascinating profile of film director Guillermo Del Toro -- he of "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Hell Boy" -- in a recent issue of "The New Yorker." Del Toro discussed his efforts (ultimately unsuccessful) to bring a famous Lovecraft story, "At the Mountains of Madness," to the big screen. (There's also a video of some of Del Toro's inspired images for the film.)

Which led me to thinking about my über-nerdy youth, both as a Lovecraft disciple and a stamp collector. And how I managed to combine both of those obsessions by delving into the arcane world of "local posts" in the late 1970s.

Local posts are a kind of micro-mail service. In the most extreme cases, they serve as a surrogate to the national post office, issuing their own stamps and delivering mail in a limited geographic area.


The idea was taken up by some industrious stamp collectors who started their own "local posts." They printed their own postage stamps and often used unusual methods -- boats, balloons, rockets, etc. -- to "deliver" the mail. These envelopes -- with the local postage stamps affixed -- are known as "covers" and are prized by many collectors.

I used to collect "covers" when I was in high school, starting with classic "First Day of Issue" covers of U.S. postage stamps and then evolving into local posts.

And then, in what is perhaps the crowing achievement of my teenage nerdhood, I began my own local post. I called it Pyramid Local Post, both because of my interest in the occult and because I could easily carve a pyramid-shaped postmark out of a cork.

And my one and only stamp issue honored -- you guessed it -- H.P. Lovecraft.


I drew a crude silhouette of Lovecraft and fashioned a postage stamp and my father took my creation to a local printing shop in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, where we were living at the time. The shop printed up a neat little packet of about 50 stamps, with adhesive backs to boot.

I advertised my Pyramid Local Post in "Linn's Stamp News," the philatelist's bible (or at least it was then), and other collectors would send me 50 cents or so (I can't quite recall) to pay for the stamp and return postage. I would affix my Lovecraft label, cancel it with my snazzy cork stamp, and send it back to them.

I wasn't overwhelmed with requests, as I recall. But I did receive a few dozen, turning each trip to the mailbox at the end of our country driveway into a little thrill.

I no longer read Lovecraft, and my stamp collection lays moldering in a box in the basement.

When I look back at my adolescence, I am amazed at my seemingly boundless energy and lack of self-doubt, and shocked that I spent so many hours alone in my room, reading Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and "Chariots of the Gods," and writing awful short stories that amused only me and my best friend, when I should have been taking girls to the movies and trying out for the football team.

And So It Begins

The first gins and tonic of the season somehow taste sweeter. And a BBQ to boot. We survived another winter.

Check Out 'The Blender' Podcast

I'm hosting a podcast, along with a small group of other folks, including my wife, Daisy, over at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

You should check it out.

It's called "The Blender," and it presents the best of RFE/RL -- features from our far-flung bureaus, interviews with newsmakers and correspondents, reports on language, music, and culture, even a little humor now and again.

A new episode is posted every Friday.

Here's a link to the latest episode on "The Blender" blog. You can find earlier episodes here.

We'd really appreciate your support. You can download it at our website, or go to iTunes and subscribe.

Feedback is welcome, either here or send it to podcast@rferl.org.

Thanks, everybody!

-- Grant

My Friend, Mustafa Sarwar

At the airport in Kabul, before boarding our small prop for Mustafa's first-ever airplane ride. Turned out we were the only passengers. It was like having a private jet fly us across Afghanistan.

I recently had the pleasure of eating a gourmet Afghan dinner at the Prague home of my dear friend, Mustafa Sarwar. (You can see photos of the meal below.)

I first met Mustafa in November 2002 at the Kabul Bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I'd been sent by RFE/RL to cover the situation in Afghanistan one year after the fall of the Taliban. I'd spend a month in the country and would need a "fixer" -- someone who spoke English as well as Pashto and Dari, someone who knew the chaotic city and could help me set up interviews, translate interiews, and generally steer me in the right direction.

Mustafa was that man.

I spent every day of that month with Mustafa. I could not have asked for a smarter, more capable or more sociable companion. Any reporting successes I enjoyed in Afghanistan I owe entirely to Mustafa. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

One of my fondest memories was being able to arrange Mustafa's first airplane ride. We needed to get to the western city of Herat, and driving was not an option. We booked passage on a charter airline used primarily by UN and NGO workers. I think the prop plane sat about eight people, but when we showed up for our flight at Kabul airport, we discovered that we would be the only passengers.


Somewhere over central Afghanistan.


Mustafa sees his vast country from the air for the first time.

We marveled at the view as we cruised just above the snow-upholstered mountains of the Hindu Kush, tiny settlements -- effectively cut off from civilization -- just visible in the nooks and crannies of the valleys and mountainsides.

At some point, Mustafa turned to me and said, "You know, I'd always heard people describe Afghanistan as mountainous, or talk about how difficult it is to get food and supplies to some of the remote Afghan villages, but I never really knew what they meant. Now I know."

I left Afghanistan, exhausted and exhilarated.

Mustafa remained to continue his medical studies at Kabul University. We kept in touch, and Mustafa's career eventually led him away from medicine and toward journalism. He became a famous anchorman on Tolo TV, Afghanistan's most popular television station, becoming the "Afghan Dan Rather," as I heard him described -- a celebrity regularly recognized on the streets of the Afghan capital.

To make a long story short, he was eventually hired full-time by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan a few years ago to work as a journalist at our Prague headquarters. And he married a lovely Afghan woman named Bahar, who somehow found time to prepare the lavish meal Daisy and I enjoyed a few weeks back, while also keeping an eye on their two young sons -- Solomon, who's 4, and Arsalan, who's 9 months old.

I don't think I have ever eaten so much or enjoyed it more.

It was amazing to peek into Mustafa's new life in Prague and to think about all that had happened since we first met. He's even studying in Prague for a master's degree in professional communication and public relations from La Salle University.

I'm so happy for Mustafa -- for his new life, for his new wife and children, for his successful journalism career, and for all the new friends he's made.

All the best, my friend.


While I was in Afghanistan, I was the guest of honor when Mustafa invited me to his home in Kabul. It was another memorable meal. I'm pictured here with Mustafa's father, Mohmmad Sarwar Siddiqi (on the right), Mustafa's uncle, Mohammed Karim, who served as our driver (on the left), and Mustafa (second from left).


Mustafa in November 2002, offering me dessert. How could I refuse?


Mustafa and I just after our arrival in the western Afghan city of Herat, at that time ruled by Ismail Khan as his personal fiefdom.


The amazing chef, Bahar, Mustafa's wife. Lucky man!


The honey-soaked dessert called Gulab Jaman.


Homemade sweets.


Afghan rice pudding. So simple and delicious.


More homemade Afghan sweets. This is called shirpera.


Spinach. Not usually my favorite, but this was truly amazing


Minced meat patties called kufta.


Chicken Kurma.


Marinated lamb with herbs and spices, called Kabab-e-Degi.


Homemade Nan-e-Tandoori.


Saffron rice cooked with lamb and garnished with sweet carrots, raisins and nuts. It's called Qabeli Palaw.