100 Books I Keep Keeping... 8 Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry
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Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry by Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner (2004)
Because it is simply the best travel guide ever. Albeit for all the wrong reasons...
Obviously, this is a fake guide to a fake ex-Eastern bloc country: the style is a perfect, deadpan pastiche of 'serious' travel guides, a relentless (and very funny) sendup of travel guides themselves, but also of the popular cliches about said countries...
A good mid-priced option is the recently opened Vja Zac. The rooms here are plain and simple, as are most of the staff, and there are good stand-by rates if you're prepared to wait for a cancellation or a sudden death. Being so close to the centre of town, traffic noise in some rooms can be rather intrusive when the windows are open, but fortunately this is not a major problem as very few of the windows actually open.
No visit to this part of Molvania would be complete without popping into the Old Lublova Gaol [Torturak] on the western outskirts of town. Here you can take a guided tour through one of Medieval Europe's most gruesome places of punishment, where you can see stocks and torture chambers, execution yards and holding cells. The displays are all very realistic due, no doubt, to the fact that the gaol still operates as a penal facility. Because of this, visitors should be prepared for a quite thorough strip-search on the way in.
The best way to sample authentic Sjerezo-style cuisine is by visiting a tavernja such as the bustling Mdejazcic, just off the city's main square. Here you can feast on such local delicacies as jgormzca [meat roasted on a spit] and nzemji [meat roasted in spit]. A gypsey band plays every evening from 7 p m until whenever local authorities manage to movie them on.
The impressively po-faced jokes come fast and furious (the authors were standup comedians, I believe, and it fits), so it's better for dipping into than just reading straight, but most of it is pretty hysterical. Someone ought to do a TV 'travel show' mockumentary based on it, methinks... or maybe not. Maybe it's just better left to the imagination...
There were two sequels, to the SE Asian Phaîc Tan (Sunstroke on a Shoestring) and San Sombrero (A Land of Carnivals, Cocktails and Coups) in South America (or not:), both funny but predictably not the equal of the first, and an offshoot, Traditional Molvanian Baby Names: With Meanings, Derivations And Probable Pronunciations...
Dempanjisa - fascinated by aniseed
Glakjala - she of the icy smile
Geskrobladye - weak of bladder
Nevuniybro - possessor of one eyebrow
Oberjynyka - eater of eggplants
Noknejnorgonka - knock-kneed but busty
Zatszpoksz - giver of chickenpox
... okay, it is probably pushing the joke too far but - being the nomenclature nut I am - I adore it :)