december-2009

DECEMBER 2009 | UNITED.COM
24 dispatches
Buenos Aires
DRIVE, SHE SAID
Layne Mosler, a 35-year-old
Californian, has no idea
where her next meal is
coming from, and she likes
it that way. Her cult blog,
Taxi Gourmet, records the
adventures that ensue from
the order she gives every
time she climbs into a cab
in the evening: “Take me to
your favorite restaurant.”
Mosler began the practice
in 2007, a year after moving
to Buenos Aires. “I was
dancing tango and taking
cabs regularly,” she says.
“After a few months of
chatting with drivers, I
realized they were teaching
me more about their city
than anyone else. So I
decided to combine my
interest in them with my
obsession for fi nding
restaurants off the radar.”
And fi nd them she does.
The resultant vignettes read
like a tourist guidebook
written by Anthony
Bourdain under the
infl uence of early Kerouac.
Homemade pasta in gas
station cafés, chitterlings in
tumbledown steakhouses,
homely empanada joints,
melancholy pizza parlors…
Buenos Aires’ “underbelly”
has rarely been evoked so
well, and never so literally.
But it’s the vivid literary
portraits of her drivers
that make Mosler’s work
remarkable. Meet, for
example, sixtysomething
Roque, an evangelical
pastor whose love of a
specifi c empanada verges
on religious. Or Fernando,
who croons a tango while
spiriting her to the “best
sausage-sandwich stall in
town.” Mosler has a degree in
anthropology and a decade
and a half of experience in
the restaurant trade—and
it’s not always clear which
skill set is more useful to her
current endeavor.
Not everything goes
according to recipe,
as illustrated by some
strange-tasting bits in an
otherwise excellent feijoada.
But Mosler’s adventurous
appetite is undimmed. After
recently moving back to the
states to develop a TV series
and get a cab license of her
own, she hopes to extend
her serendipitous adventures
to more cities, including
Beirut, Naples, Istanbul and
even Tehran.
She also plans to expand
her website to accommodate
the stories of fellow food
pilgrims from around the
globe. Her advice to wannabe
taxi gourmets? “Let go of the
map.” —MATT CHESTERTON
Stockholm
Enter the
Dragon
A group of 40 booklovers
gather around petite Pia
Hallberg, the Stockholm City
Museum tour guide. It’s an
unseasonably warm autumn
day in this Scandinavian
capital, so no one’s in any
hurry. Hallberg points to the top fl oor of a handsome
building overlooking Riddarfjaerden Canal in the
Södermalm district.
“This is Mikael Blomkvist’s home,” Hallberg says.
Of course, it’s not really, because Blomkvist is a fi ctional
character, an invention of the late Swedish mystery
author Stieg Larsson. But no matter. Where New York
has its Sex and the City tour, New Jersey its Sopranos
tour and Paris its Da Vinci Code tour, the tour du jour
in Stockholm is based on the runaway international hit
novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (Another tour
covers the fi rst sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire.)
Dragon Tattoo tells the story of Blomkvist, a
journalist who unravels a 40-year-old murder mystery
while trying to clear his name. The book and its two
sequels have sold 12 million copies worldwide. (In
Sweden, a population of only nine million has devoured
3.5 million copies.) The tours are offered in eight
languages and have long waiting lists on weekends.
In August, Jose Luis Zapatero, the prime minister of
Spain and a Dragon Tattoo fanatic, took the tour with
his wife and daughters.
Participants are invited to see with their own
eyes the building where computer hacker Lisbeth
Salander (who happens to have a large tattoo of a
dragon on her back) bought her 21-room apartment
with stolen money; the Mellqvist Coffee Bar, where
Blomkvist bought his java; and the offi ces of his
magazine, Millennium. (They won’t, however,
get a look at the prison where Blomkvist spends
three months.)
At the Mellqvist, Hallberg points out that Larsson
wrote much of the series here. The author died of a
heart attack in 2004, a year before Dragon Tattoo was
published, but, says Hallberg, “I bet he’d have enjoyed
the tour.”—MARKUS WILHELMSON