Having passed up the oversized jars of pickled green tomatoes in brine and bought a 3 liter birch juice container instead to use in fermenting the kombucha colony I picked up from a woman spotted sitting on a sidewalk in Brighton Beach by eagle-eyed Nina , the birch juice has been relegated to a series of reusable plastic containers in the fridge.

Returning home from Ossining late last night, Nina came over to pick up her dues, payable in home-brewed kefir (which I had left in the fridge for a slow growth).  And we sampled the kombucha 3 days into its ferment – a bit early, but late enough to give us an idea of its progression.  Nina has clear ideas on how a kombucha should taste, and is very adamant about a certain sweetness and the strength of the tea.  The colony had sunk to the bottom of the jar upon initial insert into the black lychee tea, but was now floating near the top.  The taste was great, not too acidic yet tart, semi-sweet with a hint of carbonation, and a strong but not overbearing smooth tea flavor.  It will presumably be even more delicious in a few days.

We also sampled the kefir, which has already proven itself to be a high-quality culture sustained through the years by Joseph of Bedfordshire, UK.  It produces a smooth-textured, mild-flavored product that thickens quickly, acidifies slowly, and has the one flaw that that it ends up a bit gooey.  One day’s ferment will leave it mild and yogurty.  Two days will give you a strong tang and slight separation of whey and curd, although still smooth.  Unfortunately, I have forgotten one of my two kefir grains up in Westchester, where I traveled with it in tow, and where hopefully its new caretakers will take care.

After Nina left, I popped open a birch juice container and downed a few gulps.  Delicious.  Very subtle.  So subtle that the first time I encountered birch juice sitting on a store shelf, I didn’t understand why anyone would spend money on it.  Crazy Russians with their sweet toothes.  It tasted like dilute sugar water.  But by persevering through the entire bottle, I came to appreciate its very mild, slightly sour palate, and I have enjoyed it regularly ever since.

Judging by the bottled vinegar that passes for a popular kombucha in Whole Foods, the kefir that is actually sterile yogurt, and the birch juice that doesn’t even exist in this country despite the abundance of birch trees, it must be that Americans feel the need to punish and deny themselves such simple unrefined pleasures.

Kombucha in birch juice container

Lo and behold, there is an Uyghur restaurant in Brighton Beach, Cafe Kashkar.  I’d heard about the plight of the Uyghurs in northwestern China, and their position on the endangered species list due to the Chinese policy of ethnic resettlement.  The US has its own policy of resettling Uyghurs to Bermuda, but Cafe Kashkar is, for now, still on Brighton Beach serving delicious food.  So a meal seemed urgent.

The interior of the place has what Nina describes as Uzbeki decorations: colorful flowers and textiles and glitzy ornaments hung from the walls.  She was of the impression that the Uyghurs were Uzbekis, not Chinese.  The wait staff certainly look more Uzbeki than Chinese, and they speak Russian, which explains the restaurant’s location.

Langsai and samsa

After requesting recommended traditional dishes of the waiter, he yelled back to the kitchen, “Hey, I need a translation!” in Russian.  Another waiter explained the situation.  We would start with a pot of excellent green tea while we waited for langsai, a glass noodle salad with cilantro, thinly sliced vegetables and vinegar; this would be followed by samsa, a type of filo pastry filled with lamb and chopped onions;  then another type of bready dough ball with a similar lamb and onion filling; and for the main entree, we would share geiro lagman, spicily sauced thick homemade noodles sauteed with peppers, onions, scallions, green beans, and garlic covering chunky pieces of tender marinated lamb.

Somewhere between the samsa and geiro lagman, I noticed three women huddled together at the table opposite ours, staring intently at the open hand of a plump one dressed in traditional central Asian headdress.  I indicated to Nina to look, and her eyes filled with sudden desire.  The woman was having her palm read by a central Asian diviner, and there are few things Nina loves more than having her future read.

Geiro lagman

The psychic noticed Nina ogling, and an exchange began in Russian, “Oh… I’d like to have my fortune read,” gushed Nina.  To which the woman responded, “You have to pay for that”.  “Oh, I’ll gladly pay!” said Nina leaning forward with anticipation.  The women all chuckled and returned their collective gazes to the plump Uzbeki’s hand.  They had laughed Nina off.  Nina was not being taken seriously, and there are few things Nina dislikes more than not being taken seriously.

She stared at me wide-eyed with astonishment for a few moments, before reuptaking the geiro lagman, clearly preoccupied with thoughts of psychics, possible futures, humiliation, and the great unknown.  Shortly thereafter, the plump Uzbeki with the hand and the headdress and her friend returned to their jobs preparing food in the kitchen, and the psychic turned towards Nina, staring across the restaurant.  “Ok, come, I’ll read your palm,” she said matter-of-factly in proper Russian.  Geiro lagman be damned, Nina ran over and sat beside her at the table.

Never thank a psychic.

Nina and the Uyghur psychic

If it hadn’t been for Yo Yo it would have been a no no.  Nina (not Ananiashvili) and I returned to Lincoln Center on Tuesday for a concert by Yo Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble.  Yo Yo is famous for his cello, and little did I know but the Silk Road Ensemble are his “friends” from “around the globe” who mostly hail from places en route from the Caucasus to Korea, hence their collective moniker.

Taking to the stage, Yo Yo Ma discussed the Tanglewood origins of the ensemble, charming the audience with his superior smile and well-tailored suit.  He repeatedly referred to the other members as “friends”, with such redundant obviousness of emphasis on this word that I began to suspect it served him as a euphemism for something far more sinister that lays behind his enlightened demeanor.

Then the ensemble began the first piece of the Silk Road Suite, “Wandering Winds”, a “musical conversation” among Korea’s Dong-won Kim on jang-go , China’s Wu Tong on bawu, Japan’s Kojiro Umezaki on shakuhachi, with Yo Yo’s cello playing backup riffs to a mildly Persian theme reinforced by his friends jamming on their kim chi teriyaki instruments: Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh, Wu Man on pipa, with even a cursory Indian, Sandeep Das, thrown in on tabla, among others less recognizable.

The rhythm was just noodlingly Persian enough to allow for monotonous nodding of the head while sitting. And so the night went on, with expert musicians masters in their respective genres, performing a lowest-common denominator style of pan-Asian groove music time and again.  A pat on my shoulder from a Chinese girl behind me warned that a trickle of an amber-hued liquid was making its way down the slightly slanted makeshift amphitheater towards my bag.

The rest of the compositions that evening flowed in much the same way, with the understanding among friends clearly visible in the performers’ slow grins and gentle gestures of respect for one another. Conversations with foreigners are always limiting, but the musicians were obviously enjoying themselves, high on the promise of a world of love, the prospect of future endorsements on Wheaties boxes in 13 different languages, and their totally unexpected mutual admiration.  And the audience’s bladders were mostly under control despite the collection of an apt yet abberated puddle under my seat, which continued to pick up new and richer hues as it coalesced.

From the dozens of shades of faces in the ensemble, there were only two stand-out performers:  Wu Man, who performed “White Snow in the Sunny Spring”, a classic pipa solo; and Alim Qasimov, a bona-fide “Living National Treasure” from Azerbaijan, who sang two intensely semi-Azerbaijani pop pieces with his handsome wild-eyed daughter, Fargana Qasimova.

Yo Yo Ma is clearly using his fame to expose artists unknown in the western world.  I suppose serious compositions would just obstruct the flow.

Prior to our viewing of the American Symphony Orchestra’s performance, “Persecution and Hope: Masterworks of Conscience“, Nina and I decided upon a hamburger at PJ Clarke’s across the street from Lincoln Center.  We had in times immemorable sampled the fare at PJ Clarke’s other location in Midtown East and trusted that, given the dearth of remotely palatable places in the near vicinity, we could count on at least a decent hamburger from this mid-scale pub, the kind of place where, at worst, the food is predictably adequate.

As lovers of a good hamburger must, and as a negligent blogger should, we arrived several hours before the performance in order to allow ample time for analysis of the impending hamburger consumption along two axes: immediate flavor impact, and gustation variation over time.  Music-lovers will clearly see the relation between hamburger analysis and earlier notes on the harmony/melody duality of music.

For a hamburger, like a piece of western music, is a multi-faceted thing, ill-treated if considered only in terms of its immediate impact upon one’s sensory receptors.  Variation over time is critical to a modern conception of beauty, as evidenced no more clearly than in the Baptist church, where even gays are beautiful, so long as they’re trying, over time, to change their aberrant ways.  I guess this means that a Baptist homosexual, at any given moment, is like a single dissonant chord.  Put a bunch of dissonant chords together, and you get jazz.

Brussel Sprouts with Bacon at PJ Clarke's

Now I have no idea where that analogy was going, but it definitely was not the reason why I ordered brussel sprouts and fries with the hamburger.  I think that was more a result of the searching eyes of the tall, fresh, young waiter, clearly a by-product of the Mid-West’s dairy industry.  His name was James or Brad or something, and there was no possibility of not ordering a draught beer, brussel sprouts, and fries with the hamburger so long as this blonde Übermensch was asking piercing questions, like, “What will you be ordering today?” and calling me “buddy” as I sat, at least ten years his elder, in my navy blue suit at a picnic tablecloth covered table with my exotic-looking date in full opera getup.

I remembered what I had liked about PJ Clarke’s.  It’s the sort of place where you feel democratized but not compromised.  When Brad brought over the romantic candle to place on our picnic tablecloth, I thanked him, gesturing in Nina’s direction with the words, “Oh, thanks, that’ll do the trick.”  Beautiful Brad, exotic Nina, and I had a good chuckle, and I started to get buzzed.

The hamburgers, draught beer, and brussel sprouts arrived and were of high quality and good.  God, there’s nothing like a brussel sprout to get the beer down.

The hamburger and all the condiments were very good.  If it weren’t for the slightly flavorless beef, I would easily call it a better burger than the Corner Bistro burger.  But flavorless beef being flavorless beef, this hamburger was not better.  I consider that to be a shame because I far prefer the pretentiously casual ambience at PJ Clarke’s to the grimy honest informality of the Corner Bistro.

PJ Clarke's Hamburger with Bacon, Mushrooms, and Swiss Cheese

The fries were as can be expected, and that was exactly what I’d expected.  The pickle on the side was fully sour, which perfectly accompanied the task at hand, despite my usual outspoken preference for its half sour brethren.  Did I mention that the brussel sprouts were cooked to perfection as was the bacon?  The bun, while nondescript, had been lightly toasted on the inside and proved to be a useful force multiplier for handling the entire deliciously oversized package into my mouth.

By the time the mid-level porcelain plates were barren, it was time for the pre-concert lecture by the appreciably dry humoured composer, Richard Wilson.  The lecture proved to be much more engaging than the actual mid-20th century compositions by Luigi Dallapiccola which was thankfully only tangentially its topic.

Across the street, in Alice Tully Hall, Wilson explained the basic concept behind the 12-tone composition technique, something which is so simple, yet so oft misunderstood.  While western classical music has traditionally been “in key”, or tonal, 12-tone compositions are generally not.

Twelve-tone composers pick a theme of 12 non-repeating notes, called a tone row, and use variations upon that theme as a replacement for the affordances that tonality usually offers.  In other words, 12-tone compositions find other ways to make the music interesting over time than the simple techniques of leading notes and cirlcle-of-fifths standard harmonies.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t find atonal music interesting at all.  And Wilson wryly remarked that it may have been better for posterity if Arnold Shoenberg had kept the details of this 12-tone music composition technique in the closet, thus leaving the audience’s focus on the music, not the technique.  How does the music make you feel?

By this point, the hamburger and brussel sprouts had established a solid foundation in my stomach, and judging by my feelings of agility, both mental and physical, the level of quality in the overarching 12-tone hamburger experience was feeling pretty high.  For music, like hamburgers, as I think I’ve mentioned, should be judged along both axes: immediate impact, and variation over time.

It is my firm belief that Luigi Dallapiccola’s operas are not especially interesting in either story or music, but that Richard Wilson is an engaging didact.  The hamburger was great, but the meat could use more flavor.

By the end of the hour, Nina, a girl with no prior musical or culinary instruction, understood perfectly the use of the 12-tone atonal system in contemporary composition and the importance of high quality ingredients.

A thorough comparison of the best hamburgers in the city requires a controlled study in which I methodically order the same, or similar, burgers at each place I deign to visit.  This is not that kind of blog.

With an hour to kill before the showing of Revolutionary Road at BAM Cinematek, it was with great intent and purposefullness that I ordered the Southwestern burger at 67 Burger in Fort Greene.  Why Southwestern? I don’t know, but Nina certainly didn’t approve.  Revolutionary Road?  Because Nina had suffered Defiance, my choice of movies, last week, and I was feeling particularly egalitarian, despite my better instincts.

We are strangers at neither BAM nor 67 Burger.  I usually pick the Parisian burger for myself before our movie dates… and that’s about the extent of my say in the matters at hand.  Nina also goes for the Parisian and the type of subtitled flicks where a gorgeous woman is psychologically abused by her man through no fault of her devoted self; or some poor child is neglected by its domineering parents, undeservedly so considering how sweet and generous it truly is for its tiny not-yet-degenerately-adult sized shape.  We both agree that lately the Parisian is too salty.

Sitting in the back row of the theater, I noisily rustled open the brown paper bag while the trickle of people flooded into the seats in front of us.  I knew they could all hear me unpacking my food, even though they tried not to show it.  Couldn’t they smell it too? Like cockroaches, word spread among the black and white happily integrated cinematek-loving neighborhoodies, and the theater quickly filled up with two toned people removing solid colored winter clothing.

That perceived power over the others’ appatitive senses I felt, added to the anticipation of medium-rare ground beef , really got my blood flowing.  And before I had had a chance to take a photo, a large bite was missing from my burger, as evidenced in photos taken after regaining my composure.

Southwestern burger with a bite missing

My first thought was that it did not taste especially Southwestern.  In fact, it didn’t have much flavor at all.  I had expected chili or some nasty text-mex spice thing for some reason.  Obviously I hadn’t bothered to read the menu.  The only addition that made my burger different from a standard cheeseburger was the use of monterrey jack cheese instead of processed American, whatever that is.  The monterrey jack had pepper embedded in its rubber cement texture, which added a bit of zest, like a handprint in a newly poured sidewalk.

The contents of the burger were, in-fact, relatively standard: bottom bun -> medium rare ground beef -> rubber cement with pepper pieces -> three pickle slices (forming the points of an equilateral triangle) -> a single slice of tomato -> concentric red onion circles -> some sort of menstrual mayonnaise (maybe the pink was a touch of cayenne pepper) -> top bun with a few sesame seeds.

As Nina pointed out after discovering that the Bacon Cheeseburger she had ordered had no bacon, the bun on both our burgers was lightly and nicely toasted, giving them a pleasant soft-but-secure texture.  Her meat patty was covered in melted orange plastic.  67 Burger had been careful enough to choose a cheese that could not easily be identified as American.

Bacon cheeseburger with the bacon missing

The Southwestern burger disappeared very quickly, with no lasting effect on my psyche.  Maybe it was the lack of bacon, but the flavor was pleasant though unremarkable. The monterrey jack cheese with its artificially strong-flavored pepper pieces dominated the palatte, which was not as negative an effect as one would be lead to expect.  Yet, as is not uncommon, Nina was correct: I should undoubtedly have canceled my impulsive order in deference to a regular bacon cheeseburger.

The fact that 67 Burger even offers a Southwestern option may sow the seeds of doubt in the meaty minds of some skittish ground beef gourmands.  But I can tell you that it’s really nothing to worry about.  It’s nothing to even think about.  I’ve forgotten it already.

Every blog must address the hamburger.  Like the blog, the hamburger is cheap, simple, and of the people.  Nina and I periodically discuss our love of the hamburger, whenever we’re not fighting about whether my scarf is adequately covering my neck.  And feeling the need to blog about something, and with the necessity of a sleight-of-hand distraction from GlobalFest, which I was adamant about not attending, we took a short trip to Corner Bistro to sample their burger offerings, rumoured to be some of the best in the city.

Corner Bistro is a cramped little bar serving simple food, which seemingly upholds the meaning of быстро, the Russian word for quick, said to be a possible origin of the word bistro.  But as we waited longer than expected on line for one of the few tables in the back, standing in the narrow bottleneck section of the hourglass-shaped space, it was I, not Nina, who became impatient.  As an anxiety attack began to take hold, I asked Nina repeatedly if we could leave immediately, but she was not to be deterred from her hamburger so easily.  If she was not going to GlobalFest, she was eating a hamburger.

Before I had thoroughly cold-sweated through my clothing, we were seated at a grimy corner wooden table near the back exit, where the door openings and closings by departing diners and the all-Mexican restaurant staff created a cold draft.  I proactively adjusted my scarf.  We ordered Bistro burgers, fries, and a cold draught.  The table had a series of names etched in the wood, but unfortunately I hadn’t brought my knife.

The hamburgers arrived.  At first sight they seemed relatively small.  But what they lacked in girth, they made up for in depth.  Each dish was served on a small plastic plate, with plastic forks, and no napkins.  Nina’s water came with no ice, exactly how she had asked for it.

The hamburgers were split in half, laid with the two sides of the bun facing upward.  On top of one half of the bun lay a few concentric rings of sliced onion, iceburg lettuce and an unabashedly unripe tomato slice.  On the other half of the bun stood the burger patty, barely-melted American cheese, and three pieces of stiff, curly bacon that broke but did not bend.  I ate a bacan piece immediately just to reduce the space it consumed.  Beside the sesame-smattered buns, cramped into the only remaining space on the plate lay three ridge-cut slices of lacklustre vinegar pickle.

Lifting up the burger patty from the bun, I slid in two, and only two, slices of pickle (the third would not have fit on the bun) underneath the patty, placed together the two halves of the burger, and took the first bite.

Sweaty foreboadings aside, the burger was good.  The meat was cooked medium-rare, the way I like it (and the way I had ordered it).  A bit of beef juice driveled down onto the plastic plate.  The first few bites were restricted to the bottom third of the burger, since it was not possible to fit the entire depth of the burger in my mouth at once.  But this situation was quickly remedied, and before Nina and I could thoroughly discuss our objective impressions of the veracity of the positive reviews we’d read online, my burger had become a part of me, integrated into my very being, and as a result, I found myself anxiously shoveling hard, dry french fries down my throat.

As I sit here hours later digesting in the comfort of my home, I come to the conclusion that the Corner Bistro burger is good.  It has the core elements of a hamburger: bun and meat.  The bun is not noteworthy, besides the convenience it proffers of being able to almost grasp the burger neatly in two hands.  The meat is of an acceptable quality, good flavor, and cooked perfectly.  The vegetable garnishes offer more in the way of texture than in flavor, and certainly have little-to-none nutritional value.  The pickle was so forgettable that I am non-linearly adding this sentence hours after initially writing this post, just to be thorough.  The bacon is not freshly cooked, brittle, and with little flavor besides saltiness.  If there were anything resembling cheese on top, I would write about it.

Despite what could be considered shortcomings in both ancillary ingredients and three-dimensional structure of the hamburger, the overall flavor was quite pleasing, and the textures of the components seemlessly integrated.  Corner Bistro burger is a good, solid, standard hamburger with no frills.  I’m sure there is a great hamburger waiting for me somewhere else.

How awkward to be staying in a stranger’s house. When booking a Bed & Breakfast, one keeps an eye open for coziness, cleanliness, positive breakfast reviews, and a benevolent portrait of the preferably harmlessly quirky hosts.  But what you don’t think about as you blithely click to sort your B&B search results by price, popularity, and breakfast rating, are the consequences of your actually being a guest in a stranger’s house.

Whenever you visit someone’s house, the unspoken assumption in polite society is that you will more or less abide by the rules of the house, even if they are not exactly your own.  But how can the hosts know that you will be polite, especially when they are often mom-and-pop businesses that do not have resources for online payment processing, let alone background checks?  And how do you, the strange guest, know that the rules of the house will be acceptable to your norms?  There is a big risk involved in this entire transaction that far outweighs the potential cozy cleanly warm breakfast.

And so it came to pass that Nina and I arrived on the doorstep of La Maison Bourlamaque, the Bed & Breakfast we had reserved based upon it’s #14 out of 52 rankings on TripAdvisor.com, the fact that it had a room available for the days surrounding the new year, the rave reviews of its multi-course breakfasts, and not least of all the fact that the proprietor had a Japanese wife.

From the outside, the house was a nicely built believably historic-looking place with no discernible lights on inside.  I rang the doorbell, and after a few moments – just a few more seconds than was comfortable with, to tell you the truth – Stefan, a pale bald heavyset man in his socks and mid-to-late 30s opened the door with a tee-shirt on.  He looked different than I had expected.

Without much fanfare, we were instructed to remove our shoes.  And without making any effort to help with our luggage, he then showed us to our room.  I hauled both suitcases up the stairs, while Nina carried our smaller bags.  Despite having not had a chance to look around yet, the house felt like someone’s house. The room was big, cozy, and clean, which made Nina happy.  The decorations were austere yet tasteful.  After a bit of prodding, Stefan matter-of-factly gave us the minimum amount of information necessary for our comfort: the location of the bathroom (shared with another room) and the wifi passord.  Once Stefan returned to the dimness downstairs, Nina gushed with happiness.  She slammed doors, threw towels around, and claimed her psychological space as an inhabitant of the house.  As all men know, vacations are about making your girls happy, so I was happy too.  It was a cozy, clean room, and breakfast was only a king bed sized night away.  We did a quick test of the bed, left our scents in the toilet, inspected the closets, confirmed that the wifi signal had sufficient power, and finding everything to our satisfaction, we decided to head out for dinner.

Fortunately, Stefan was sitting with his 15″ PowerBook on the couch in the living room, near the door.  Upon questioning, he indicated that there were several restaurants on avenue Cartier, the next street over.  I brought out a map, which he summarily turned upside down, saying that it was better that way, and following some of his rapid pointing, I began to trace what he suggested be our main route to the old city.  While I was still trying to understand how the map could be better understood upside-down, I absentmindedly punched a hole through it with the pen, jabbing it onto his clean and cozy wall.  Afraid to peer behind the map to see the damage, I continued to converse, eliciting the vaguest possible responses, about places Stefan recommended we go. Apparently there were very few, because before I knew it, he had scribbled a single illegible word and a dot on a street near the old city, folded up the map (which I then resumed possession of), and was looking at me expectantly like the quiet kid at the town dance.  Obviously we leave now, I thought.

Avoiding the awkwardness, we re-shoed, gloved, and Chinese fur hatted, and walked over to avenue Cartier, where we had a hearty meal at Café Krieghoff.  Nina informed me that Stefan had quickly scanned the wall for pen marks as we were leaving.  We mangéd on the table d’hotes, enjoying them thoroughly, and Nina noted how many people were eating alone.  I hadn’t noticed, but she was right – there were 4 or 5 solo eaters.  This obviously must be a good sign – no tourists would eat alone, so this must be a local hangout.  We enjoyed the meal even more.  On the way out, I noticed newspaper clippings near the entrance declaring this place good for solo eaters.  Possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy, what do I know?

As a digestif, we carried on walking through the perfectly shoveled sidewalks on the recommended path all the way to the old city, jumping into the local coffee merchant, talking with the proprietor about Obama and hope in franglais (he seemed excited to talk to Americans).  I curtailed my cynicism in face of his aberrant enthusiasm, and we bought the obligatory beans for Nina’s mom, who is said to love coffee, and carried on trotting, ultimately turning back at the old city gates to return to our B&B for the night.

Re-entering the room, Nina found it too cold for her liking.  Suffering gladly, as is the way of her peoples, she stoically stomped downstairs.  I, being hesitant to begin a confrontation with the man over the insulation of his castle, and fearing Nina’s tendency for directness, had assented to her descent on the condition that she please be nice to him for at least the first day.  She returned triumphantly with the story of her defeat.  Not only had he had told her that, despite her being cold, the house was, in fact, already warm, but that she had asked for tea, and he had said that they do not make the guests tea, but tonight he would do it for her, as if he were doing her a favor.

Stefan knocked on the door a few minutes later with a steeping pot of green tea.  Nina avoided eye contact, and put on a pout.  He put down the tea and cups and gently restated his position that the house was warm.  In a self-contradictory turn, he then began to explain that the house was old, and that the heating was centralized, thereby explaining somehow the lack of heat in the room.  Turning the heat up may make one room warm, he said, while another would be a little colder.  I failed to see the logic in this defense, but I sympathized with his plight.  All he had to do was turn the heat up, and even the colder rooms would get warmer, I thought.

He then asked me if I were cold.  At that moment, I was caught red-handed in a tee shirt, and since I generally enjoy cold temperatures and could not possibly have made the case that I was cold, I responded with the diplomatic truth that I was not cold, but that it was not so hot in the room.  Stefan insisted that he was not trying to be cheap by not turning up the heat, and that it was only because the heat was uneven throughout the house.  He repeated this several times.  Nevertheless, it seemed to us that there were no alternate explanations for his resistance to turning up the heat.

Regardless of the temperature of the room, when a guest is cold, you turn up the heat, right? By my reckoning, we were paying the Maison Bourlamaque enough to justify the expectation that a few simple requests would be satisfied.  Stefan should think of himself as our hired hand, should he not?

Stefan did eventually turn up the heat, making this reduntantly known to me the next morning.  And the combination of heat and no-doubt Japanese green tea made us warm and cozy, feeling clean and looking forward to breakfast.  But isn’t it the charm of a Bed & Breakfast that you are obligated, as a house guest, to suffer kindly the failings of the head of the household?  Shouldn’t Stefan have resisted?  Otherwise, wouldn’t we really have done better to stay in a hotel?