Turkey (and Beef and Lamb and Chicken and Pork) Day

Thursday was one of those rambling, not-quite-surreal kind of days that I suspect can only really happen when you’re in college or someplace like it and your schedule is thrown out of whack. It was very good, but wholly incomparable to past Thanksgivings because of how different it was. The cast of characters was completely different than normal, there was no sit-down meal around a turkey, and it involved no less than four cab rides, a DVD of a sort of Brazilian version of MTV Unplugged called Multishow, and a packed Yugoslavian party at a restaurant called Sabur.

It all started out at lunch in Quincy House, where I ate with Uroš, Mihalis, Dave, and Dave and Mihalis’s friend Sylvia. I had planned to go to lunch, head back to my room to work on the facebook (which is thisclose to being done), and then eventually mosey on down to the kitchen where Uroš and Mihalis were going to be cooking dinner. But as we were finishing up lunch, it was suggested that we all go grocery shopping. We set out toward Whole Foods (myself about two strides in front of everyone else; after walking all over Cambridge with Sam this summer, apparently I walk too fast), but as we arrived, they were locking the doors. We then tried Trader Joe’s, the Harvest Co-op, and Star Market: all closed, or closing as we tried to walk in. We didn’t mind the walk, though; the weather was unseasonably warm, and I was wearing just a t-shirt with a cardigan and a pink scarf that ended up around Uroš’s neck for most of the walk anyway.

Mihalis had one last hope, a Greek restaurant beyond Kendall that might sell him the ingredients he needed, so we went from Central to MIT, past the Stata Center and on beyond Kendall, all the way to Lechmere, to the Desfina Restaurant. But it was closed too, so we decided that we’d just go out to eat.

But first, a movie!

We took our first cab of the day downtown to the Common, and just as we pulled up to the theater, hundreds of people began spilling out into the street—the theater was being evacuated because of a fire next door. After a little while, they let everyone back inside, and we went to see Alexander. Alexander is atrociously bad. The only movie I can think of where I’ve left the theater for twenty minutes to wander around the hallway in order to avoid the film. Everyone is miscast (how on Earth can Angelina Jolie credibly play Colin Farrell’s mother? They’re the same age!) and the dialogue is just awful.

After the movie, we had a discussion about what to do for dinner. I put my foot down: no Indian, no Chinese—it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving. I suggested we head to Inman Square; there are lots of restaurants there, so something would be sure to be open. So, we took a second cab to Inman, and started down the row. Punjabi Dhaba was open, but I had said no Indian, so we passed it by. The next place open was Bukowski (a grill and bar kind of place) but only the bar was open there. Finally, at the very end, we found the Midwest Grill, a Brazilian churrascaria. I had been there once before, for my friend Eugen’s birthday. If you’ve never been to a churrascaria, there is only one thing you need to know about it: MEAT. Lots and lots of MEAT. Waiters bring around big hunks of different kinds of meat (beef, lamb, pork, chicken, etc.) on swords and cut off pieces for you. They keep coming and coming every few minutes until you can’t possibly eat any more. We had a table at the back, in the bar, and it was very cozy. Uroš had brought along Aristotle’s Politics, and Aristotle was given his own seat at the table. Multishow, as mentioned earlier, was projected on a screen next to us (the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special was muted on a TV in the corner), and it was like having our own private concert of really good Brazilian music. I found one singer I really liked, Jorge Vercilo. I’m going to try to find his album, Livre, at some point.

When we were done with dinner, we stepped outside to find that the temperature had dropped precipitously, so we hailed another cab to take us back to Dunster. The cabbie misheard us, however, and took us to Harvard Square, so we still had to walk for about ten minutes in the cold. At Dunster, I put on some warmer clothes, and then Uroš and Mihalis and I went up to Davis Square to a Bosnian restaurant called Sabur for a Yugoslavian party. Uroš went around the incredibly packed room, talking to everyone there in Serbian, and Mihalis and I sat and discussed national identity, applying to colleges, the impossibility of becoming Japanese in the same way that one can become American, and things like that. Around 12:30, the party broke up, and I went to grab my coat from the rack only to find that my pink scarf was missing. A man spoke to me in Serbian, but the only word I could catch was problema so I said, “I can’t find my scarf.” “Oh,” he said, switching to English, “you should have put it in the sleeve of your coat. That’s what I do.” It had never occurred to me to do that (I explained that I was from Alabama and hadn’t even owned a scarf until my freshman year of college), but I will from now on. Luckily, the scarf was found before we left (after another person tried to speak to me in Serbian to explain what had happened), and we went out to the street to wait on the fourth and final cab of the night.

This cabbie was great—he knew right where Cowperthwaite Street was, and took us directly home. I went over to Dave and Max and Loren’s room, and fell asleep on their futon as Max played his guitar, singing lullabyes.

A very good Thanksgiving.