We awoke without difficulty or hangovers, got dressed, and found our way down to the street. There were street-cleaners power-washing the streets. They moved slowly down the street and sidewalks, pushing a small wave of litter and fluids in front of them. Men with push brooms swept up the material that was missed by the street-cleaners. It felt good to be alive. I was proud of myself. I had had exactly enough fun. We had spent a night in Amsterdam, and I hadn’t done anything that could have potentially infected me with any diseases or otherwise gotten me killed. We still had loads of time to spend in Europe, and our spirits were high. Our hotel had a free breakfast buffet in the bar. We went down and ate our fill. Then we smoked a little more and went out into the streets to casually explore a bit more before heading back to the train station. We almost bought really bad touristy tee shirts and other goofy souvenirs, but did not. We did get one more pot brownie, which we shared before heading back to the train station.
Prior to the trip, some friends had warned us not to try to bring any drugs back from Amsterdam onto the train. On our way back to the station we realized that we had a surplus of weed and some herbal ecstasy capsules remaining. Given that I was raised Catholic, I have a very strong reflex that prevents me from wasting anything potentially useful. My wife wanted no part of any of the remaining material. She needed to stay straight to ensure that we successfully made it onto the correct train and found our way back to her cousin’s place. So I ate everything that we had left, which entailed just about a gram of weed and eight capsules of herbal ecstasy. It wasn’t unpleasant. When you eat weed it affects you more slowly and gently than when you smoke it, but for a longer period of time. It was a nice way to ride the train.
When we got back to Düsseldorf it was late afternoon. We dropped off all of our things in her cousin’s apartment and headed out. We didn’t have any really strong plans. We just went to walk around the shopping and drinking area. We weren’t licking our wounds, we were just gathering energy and strength for Brussels, Belgium. That was the next day’s destination.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
August 4, 2008
Amsterdam is about a 2.5 hour ride from Düsseldorf via ICE train. We awoke, readied ourselves, grabbed some pastries from a cart in the train station, and hopped the train to Amsterdam without incident. The ride was very picturesque and uneventful, like every train ride that we took during our trip.
Once we had arrived, we immediately checked in at a hotel. High Times had rated it very well, and we had selected it as our first choice based upon that. We lacked reservations, but didn’t suspect that we’d need them on a Monday. We were correct in that assumption. The place was called The Greenhouse Effect. It was on a small street in the red light district. There were actually three separate places that all comprised The Greenhouse Effect. They had a bar, a hotel, and a coffee shop where they sold weed and hash. The various rooms of the hotel all had unique names. I forget what ours was called. If the stairs leading up to it had been any steeper, they would have been a ladder. Fear seized upon me as I thought about what it would be like negotiating those stairs later, when I wouldn’t be nearly so sharp. The walls in our room were blue and orange and had those strange Dutch wooden shoes nailed to them. Conveniently, the coffee shop portion of the hotel offered a discount on weed and hash (I forget the percentage) if you showed your room key.
The first thing we did was go to the coffee shop, split a pot brownie, and buy a gram of weed to carry us pleasantly through the afternoon. It was cheap and fresh, and the quality was very good. Another wonderful convenience was the menu. All of the various strains of weed and hash were broken down by type, and explanatory text outlining the different properties of the various strains was provided. This was especially useful given the fact that back home, this degree of specificity is entirely unavailable unless you’re growing your own. Back home you’re lucky if you can find any at all of decent quality. Regardless, we made our selection. They had free rolling papers just lying around. So we made our purchase and were on our way very quickly.
Amsterdam is tacky, and makes no illusions otherwise. It’s relatively small and quaint, but almost entirely neon-lit and overflowing with souvenir shops. Everybody speaks English here, because there’s such a large volume of American and English tourists. After a quick look around, we stopped into an Argentine beef restaurant for lunch.
After lunch was finished, we went straight back into the red light district to see a sex show. We decided that we had to do this with the full knowledge that it would be an overpriced let down. My wife and I have had our share of group sex, so we’re quite familiar with the site of two people fucking in front of us. However, we had never seen paid professionals do it. The prospect of seeing something unusual or learning something new was sufficient to snare us. Moreover, seeing it done on a stage would likely be kind of surreal. In the broad afternoon daylight, we canvassed every street in the red light district. Most of the prostitutes weren’t out yet. There were just a few in the windows who looked like they were getting started early. The sex shows all looked the same from the street. They each had a carny of sorts in front of the entrance trying to gather people and free them of their money.
I believe that we paid 30 euros for the show that we saw. It was comprised of three parts. First there was a stripper. She wasn’t what I’d call “fat,” but she was above my weight limit. I wasn’t really turned on at all, but being a connoisseur of strippers, I was curious to see what she was going to do to distinguish this from any other strip routine that you’d find anywhere else in the world. It was generally uninspiring until she went down into the audience and grabbed a young man who appeared to be about 20 years old. He was with friend, wearing sweatpants, and obviously not aroused. Sweatpants betray that sort of thing very completely. She walked him up to the stage, and made him put on a strap-on dildo over his pants. Then she ordered him to lay on his back. He did all of this without objection. Then she squatted above him leaving her gaping vagina vulnerable about six inches above the tip. She instructed him to thrust up into her. He did this. The dildo must have been nearly as big around as a pop can, and it went in without any visible resistance. After the head and about half of the shaft was inside her, she stood up a little, and he courteously descended back down to a resting position. She raised herself about another six inches and requested that he penetrate her again. He did this, albeit with a little more effort, given her increased height. At the same depth of penetration she raised herself another six inches, and again he descended. This repeated a couple times until she was standing at her full height and he could not reach any longer by simply arching his back.
The second stripper was in much better shape. Her routine was much the same as the first, except at the end of it. As her routine was ending, she sat on the edge of the stage with her legs spread wide, and began pulling out the string of beads that had been up inside her the whole time, one bead at a time.
The couple came out right after the second stripper finished. The female half of the couple was the first stripper. The male was an older guy. Surprisingly, their routine started out with a slightly theatrical bent. They were standing at the center of the stage. He was dressed like a monk of some sort, and she was dressed as a nun. Almost immediately, she got down and began idly sucking his dick. Eventually all clothes were shed. They didn’t go through many positions, and the show ended with him laying on his back with his feet towards the audience, with her sitting on top of him, riding him. At no point was any of it sexy.
The sex show had been a let down. We had known it would be, so it wasn’t a shock. It was, however, disappointing. The whole thing must have been about half an hour long. So far our arrival in Amsterdam had entailed a pot brownie and some weed, a few beers, a tour of all the prostitutes, a sex show, and a few of the goofy novelty shops. We decided to go back to the hotel room and do a bit of screwing of our own to work off the energy. We did this, though I’m not sure that it did anything to release tension. To the contrary, I think it amplified it.
When we emerged, we went down into the hotel coffee shop and ate another pot brownie each. Immediately afterwards we went into one of the head shops and bought some packets of herbal ecstasy. Real ecstasy is illegal in Amsterdam, along with other hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. The herbal formulas that roughly approximate it are legal, however. They were actually easily available in the US until some point in the mid-1990s. I’m not 100% certain whether or not it’s currently legal in the US, but it’s impossible to find back home. It’s relatively safe, unless you’re allergic to any of the ingredients. Basically it provides a mild euphoria and energy rush. So we gobbled it all up and went on our way, looking for dinner. The weed high from the brownies and the early effects of the herbal ecstasy were gently creeping up. Though we were still fully functional, we weren’t exactly thinking clearly. All of the food options in Amsterdam seemed unacceptable, and it came into our heads that we needed to find an Irish pub. We scoured Amsterdam for one for a good hour, walking briskly. Eventually we got lost and gave up. A decent-looking pizza place presented itself, so we went in and ate.
A good smoking session was in order immediately following dinner. We did that, and decided to just spend the rest of the evening strolling the red light district, looking in the windows at the prostitutes. They were out in much larger numbers than they had been earlier that afternoon. With daylight gone, all of their windows were lit up red. Given the physical characteristics of the performers in the sex show we had seen earlier that day, I had assumed that the vast majority of the prostitutes in the windows at night would not be all that appealing. I was wrong. Just about all of them were gorgeous. They came in all varieties of race, age, shape, and size. We were both kind of shocked. We had seen a few out in the afternoon, and they generally looked good. These ones were actually somewhat amazing. Also surprising was the sort of vaudeville performance quality of the experience. There were legions of tourists and a whole lot of prostitutes in bright red windows. The windows were actually doors and generally very standardized. They were all lit red, of course, and led into a room that appeared to be about ten feet deep and maybe eight feet wide. It was like a winding parade or a giant coiling snake of tourists strolling casually around, admiring the women. None were nude. They almost all wore extremely skimpy bikinis, but they were all covered. I never saw so much as an errant nipple. They would occasionally open their windows and step out onto the street to shout things into the crowd. One shouted to us, “I do couples!” with a big grin. As we walked away she shouted, “Where are you going?” and laughed. There was a lot of this sort of thing going on. Sometimes they would pretend to bicker back and forth with each other. Many of the male tourists got out cameras and tried to photograph them. This was not allowed, and the prostitutes each had their own ways of dealing with it. First they would try waving a finger in disapproval. Then if the guy persisted in setting up his shot, they would simply pull their curtains shut or duck back behind the wall in their window space. On only one occasion did I actually see a girl come out of her window and start yelling at the guy in the street. We didn’t see many men actually approach the girls. When this happened, the guy would walk up to the window. The girl would open it, and they would presumably discuss business. Surprisingly, it seemed like the whole transaction and sex act took place in the window. Each window had a padded table in it, and a curtain that could be pulled shut. My wife really wanted me to fuck one. She kept pointing out ones that she knew I would like. My palate is pretty broad, and I can appreciate most persuasions of women. My wife is very in tune with the subtle things that I especially like, however. She was completely willing to spend the money on it. She just really felt like watching me fuck one. It was a tempting proposition. The prospect of fucking an attractive stranger behind a curtain in a street-level window, and then leaving without strings, was an appealing prospect. I don’t really get hung up about money, but it just didn’t seem like a good idea. Diseases are one of my phobias. I expressed this to my wife and she conceded, though she persisted that perhaps I should “just buy a blow job?” She tried to assure me, “Certainly that must be safer?” She was pretty high, and she can be remarkably persistent when she’s in that state and aroused. The final surprise point pertaining to the neon and red light parade of red windows, girls, sex shows, porn stores, and coffee shops was all of the drug dealers in the streets. Shady guys would dart out between buildings and approach random tourists muttering, “You need something?” Many were so forward as to just name the drugs they were selling: “E? Coke?” Despite Amsterdam’s general tolerance of most mild, naturally occurring drugs such as weed, hash, mushrooms and such things, hard drugs are still not legal there. So they can’t sell them openly in the stores or coffee shops. I don’t know just how illegal those things are, but I wasn’t about to find out. I really didn’t need to get arrested on drug charges while on vacation on the other side of the Atlantic. Beyond that, I have no experience with such substances and wasn’t in the mood to engage in any dangerous experimentation. We managed to find our way back to our hotel room without me fucking a prostitute or buying any hard drugs. I don’t recall what time it was. We fucked furiously on the bed and passed out.
Once we had arrived, we immediately checked in at a hotel. High Times had rated it very well, and we had selected it as our first choice based upon that. We lacked reservations, but didn’t suspect that we’d need them on a Monday. We were correct in that assumption. The place was called The Greenhouse Effect. It was on a small street in the red light district. There were actually three separate places that all comprised The Greenhouse Effect. They had a bar, a hotel, and a coffee shop where they sold weed and hash. The various rooms of the hotel all had unique names. I forget what ours was called. If the stairs leading up to it had been any steeper, they would have been a ladder. Fear seized upon me as I thought about what it would be like negotiating those stairs later, when I wouldn’t be nearly so sharp. The walls in our room were blue and orange and had those strange Dutch wooden shoes nailed to them. Conveniently, the coffee shop portion of the hotel offered a discount on weed and hash (I forget the percentage) if you showed your room key.
The first thing we did was go to the coffee shop, split a pot brownie, and buy a gram of weed to carry us pleasantly through the afternoon. It was cheap and fresh, and the quality was very good. Another wonderful convenience was the menu. All of the various strains of weed and hash were broken down by type, and explanatory text outlining the different properties of the various strains was provided. This was especially useful given the fact that back home, this degree of specificity is entirely unavailable unless you’re growing your own. Back home you’re lucky if you can find any at all of decent quality. Regardless, we made our selection. They had free rolling papers just lying around. So we made our purchase and were on our way very quickly.
Amsterdam is tacky, and makes no illusions otherwise. It’s relatively small and quaint, but almost entirely neon-lit and overflowing with souvenir shops. Everybody speaks English here, because there’s such a large volume of American and English tourists. After a quick look around, we stopped into an Argentine beef restaurant for lunch.
After lunch was finished, we went straight back into the red light district to see a sex show. We decided that we had to do this with the full knowledge that it would be an overpriced let down. My wife and I have had our share of group sex, so we’re quite familiar with the site of two people fucking in front of us. However, we had never seen paid professionals do it. The prospect of seeing something unusual or learning something new was sufficient to snare us. Moreover, seeing it done on a stage would likely be kind of surreal. In the broad afternoon daylight, we canvassed every street in the red light district. Most of the prostitutes weren’t out yet. There were just a few in the windows who looked like they were getting started early. The sex shows all looked the same from the street. They each had a carny of sorts in front of the entrance trying to gather people and free them of their money.
I believe that we paid 30 euros for the show that we saw. It was comprised of three parts. First there was a stripper. She wasn’t what I’d call “fat,” but she was above my weight limit. I wasn’t really turned on at all, but being a connoisseur of strippers, I was curious to see what she was going to do to distinguish this from any other strip routine that you’d find anywhere else in the world. It was generally uninspiring until she went down into the audience and grabbed a young man who appeared to be about 20 years old. He was with friend, wearing sweatpants, and obviously not aroused. Sweatpants betray that sort of thing very completely. She walked him up to the stage, and made him put on a strap-on dildo over his pants. Then she ordered him to lay on his back. He did all of this without objection. Then she squatted above him leaving her gaping vagina vulnerable about six inches above the tip. She instructed him to thrust up into her. He did this. The dildo must have been nearly as big around as a pop can, and it went in without any visible resistance. After the head and about half of the shaft was inside her, she stood up a little, and he courteously descended back down to a resting position. She raised herself about another six inches and requested that he penetrate her again. He did this, albeit with a little more effort, given her increased height. At the same depth of penetration she raised herself another six inches, and again he descended. This repeated a couple times until she was standing at her full height and he could not reach any longer by simply arching his back.
The second stripper was in much better shape. Her routine was much the same as the first, except at the end of it. As her routine was ending, she sat on the edge of the stage with her legs spread wide, and began pulling out the string of beads that had been up inside her the whole time, one bead at a time.
The couple came out right after the second stripper finished. The female half of the couple was the first stripper. The male was an older guy. Surprisingly, their routine started out with a slightly theatrical bent. They were standing at the center of the stage. He was dressed like a monk of some sort, and she was dressed as a nun. Almost immediately, she got down and began idly sucking his dick. Eventually all clothes were shed. They didn’t go through many positions, and the show ended with him laying on his back with his feet towards the audience, with her sitting on top of him, riding him. At no point was any of it sexy.
The sex show had been a let down. We had known it would be, so it wasn’t a shock. It was, however, disappointing. The whole thing must have been about half an hour long. So far our arrival in Amsterdam had entailed a pot brownie and some weed, a few beers, a tour of all the prostitutes, a sex show, and a few of the goofy novelty shops. We decided to go back to the hotel room and do a bit of screwing of our own to work off the energy. We did this, though I’m not sure that it did anything to release tension. To the contrary, I think it amplified it.
When we emerged, we went down into the hotel coffee shop and ate another pot brownie each. Immediately afterwards we went into one of the head shops and bought some packets of herbal ecstasy. Real ecstasy is illegal in Amsterdam, along with other hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. The herbal formulas that roughly approximate it are legal, however. They were actually easily available in the US until some point in the mid-1990s. I’m not 100% certain whether or not it’s currently legal in the US, but it’s impossible to find back home. It’s relatively safe, unless you’re allergic to any of the ingredients. Basically it provides a mild euphoria and energy rush. So we gobbled it all up and went on our way, looking for dinner. The weed high from the brownies and the early effects of the herbal ecstasy were gently creeping up. Though we were still fully functional, we weren’t exactly thinking clearly. All of the food options in Amsterdam seemed unacceptable, and it came into our heads that we needed to find an Irish pub. We scoured Amsterdam for one for a good hour, walking briskly. Eventually we got lost and gave up. A decent-looking pizza place presented itself, so we went in and ate.
A good smoking session was in order immediately following dinner. We did that, and decided to just spend the rest of the evening strolling the red light district, looking in the windows at the prostitutes. They were out in much larger numbers than they had been earlier that afternoon. With daylight gone, all of their windows were lit up red. Given the physical characteristics of the performers in the sex show we had seen earlier that day, I had assumed that the vast majority of the prostitutes in the windows at night would not be all that appealing. I was wrong. Just about all of them were gorgeous. They came in all varieties of race, age, shape, and size. We were both kind of shocked. We had seen a few out in the afternoon, and they generally looked good. These ones were actually somewhat amazing. Also surprising was the sort of vaudeville performance quality of the experience. There were legions of tourists and a whole lot of prostitutes in bright red windows. The windows were actually doors and generally very standardized. They were all lit red, of course, and led into a room that appeared to be about ten feet deep and maybe eight feet wide. It was like a winding parade or a giant coiling snake of tourists strolling casually around, admiring the women. None were nude. They almost all wore extremely skimpy bikinis, but they were all covered. I never saw so much as an errant nipple. They would occasionally open their windows and step out onto the street to shout things into the crowd. One shouted to us, “I do couples!” with a big grin. As we walked away she shouted, “Where are you going?” and laughed. There was a lot of this sort of thing going on. Sometimes they would pretend to bicker back and forth with each other. Many of the male tourists got out cameras and tried to photograph them. This was not allowed, and the prostitutes each had their own ways of dealing with it. First they would try waving a finger in disapproval. Then if the guy persisted in setting up his shot, they would simply pull their curtains shut or duck back behind the wall in their window space. On only one occasion did I actually see a girl come out of her window and start yelling at the guy in the street. We didn’t see many men actually approach the girls. When this happened, the guy would walk up to the window. The girl would open it, and they would presumably discuss business. Surprisingly, it seemed like the whole transaction and sex act took place in the window. Each window had a padded table in it, and a curtain that could be pulled shut. My wife really wanted me to fuck one. She kept pointing out ones that she knew I would like. My palate is pretty broad, and I can appreciate most persuasions of women. My wife is very in tune with the subtle things that I especially like, however. She was completely willing to spend the money on it. She just really felt like watching me fuck one. It was a tempting proposition. The prospect of fucking an attractive stranger behind a curtain in a street-level window, and then leaving without strings, was an appealing prospect. I don’t really get hung up about money, but it just didn’t seem like a good idea. Diseases are one of my phobias. I expressed this to my wife and she conceded, though she persisted that perhaps I should “just buy a blow job?” She tried to assure me, “Certainly that must be safer?” She was pretty high, and she can be remarkably persistent when she’s in that state and aroused. The final surprise point pertaining to the neon and red light parade of red windows, girls, sex shows, porn stores, and coffee shops was all of the drug dealers in the streets. Shady guys would dart out between buildings and approach random tourists muttering, “You need something?” Many were so forward as to just name the drugs they were selling: “E? Coke?” Despite Amsterdam’s general tolerance of most mild, naturally occurring drugs such as weed, hash, mushrooms and such things, hard drugs are still not legal there. So they can’t sell them openly in the stores or coffee shops. I don’t know just how illegal those things are, but I wasn’t about to find out. I really didn’t need to get arrested on drug charges while on vacation on the other side of the Atlantic. Beyond that, I have no experience with such substances and wasn’t in the mood to engage in any dangerous experimentation. We managed to find our way back to our hotel room without me fucking a prostitute or buying any hard drugs. I don’t recall what time it was. We fucked furiously on the bed and passed out.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
August 3, 2008
The next morning, I awoke feeling generally rested but still a little out of sorts. This day was planned as a recovery day. We were going to take it easy and not stray from Düsseldorf. In the afternoon, we were going to hit a local beer festival.
We got breakfast in a small café. Knowing that we’d end up drinking a lot that day, my wife and I both decided that we’d get the healthiest thing possible for breakfast to diminish the caloric damage done by all of the impending drinking in the afternoon and evening.
After walking around and exploring Düsseldorf for about an hour or so, we began to head towards the beer festival. It was a subway ride and short tram ride away from my wife’s cousin’s apartment and where we had eaten breakfast. The festival was very similar to some that we had attended back home. These were a little more family friendly. There was less variety of beers, and more variety of foods available. After a while, we wandered out towards downtown Düsseldorf.
On our way we saw a goofy-looking mansion. It looked incredibly out of place in Germany. It was pink, very ornate, and had beveled edges on its roof. Germans only make things stoic, gray, and with perfect right angles. So this place stood out like a drag queen in a redneck bar. I later learned that it was one of Napoleon’s homes. Other people were wandering over in droves to look at it, so we went along with them. At the top of the front steps there was a pair of concrete lions flanking the steps. I immediately climbed up onto one, sat down on it, and raised a fist victoriously over my head while my wife’s cousin took a picture. From a healthy distance, a security guard yelled something at me in German. I got down immediately and he lost interest. We wandered around the mansion some more, posing with things and taking pictures. Once it had ceased to be funny, we left.
The bar scene in Düsseldorf is amusing, to say the least. Germany has no open container laws at all, so you can drink in the streets without being concerned about any legal repercussions. However, you’re not allowed to smoke in any bar. Bars have gotten around this by handing out waivers at the door. You can’t get into the bar without signing the waiver to allow other patrons to smoke in your presence. Good shit. Very funny. Likely that’s where things are headed back at home anyway. So my wife’s cousin took us to one of her favorite local bars. She said it was the nearest thing to a punker bar that they have. We entered, sat down, and puzzled at the music playing over the stereo. It was some very bad 1980s cock rock, and the décor looked very country-western. A server came to our table with our waivers. We signed them and ordered. There were only two options. This bar really reinforced my theory that Düsseldorf is in fact just a satellite of Pittsburgh. Oddly, the server kept track of our orders by making tick marks with a pen on a cardboard coaster. This was another comical expression of the honor system at work in Rheinland. Nothing prevented us from throwing out the coaster, taking a new one off the pile, and making our own tick marks- in substantially lesser quantity. We didn’t do this, tempting as it was. Eventually we moved on to other bars, dinner, and more bars. We planned the next day, which would be Amsterdam.
We got breakfast in a small café. Knowing that we’d end up drinking a lot that day, my wife and I both decided that we’d get the healthiest thing possible for breakfast to diminish the caloric damage done by all of the impending drinking in the afternoon and evening.
After walking around and exploring Düsseldorf for about an hour or so, we began to head towards the beer festival. It was a subway ride and short tram ride away from my wife’s cousin’s apartment and where we had eaten breakfast. The festival was very similar to some that we had attended back home. These were a little more family friendly. There was less variety of beers, and more variety of foods available. After a while, we wandered out towards downtown Düsseldorf.
On our way we saw a goofy-looking mansion. It looked incredibly out of place in Germany. It was pink, very ornate, and had beveled edges on its roof. Germans only make things stoic, gray, and with perfect right angles. So this place stood out like a drag queen in a redneck bar. I later learned that it was one of Napoleon’s homes. Other people were wandering over in droves to look at it, so we went along with them. At the top of the front steps there was a pair of concrete lions flanking the steps. I immediately climbed up onto one, sat down on it, and raised a fist victoriously over my head while my wife’s cousin took a picture. From a healthy distance, a security guard yelled something at me in German. I got down immediately and he lost interest. We wandered around the mansion some more, posing with things and taking pictures. Once it had ceased to be funny, we left.
The bar scene in Düsseldorf is amusing, to say the least. Germany has no open container laws at all, so you can drink in the streets without being concerned about any legal repercussions. However, you’re not allowed to smoke in any bar. Bars have gotten around this by handing out waivers at the door. You can’t get into the bar without signing the waiver to allow other patrons to smoke in your presence. Good shit. Very funny. Likely that’s where things are headed back at home anyway. So my wife’s cousin took us to one of her favorite local bars. She said it was the nearest thing to a punker bar that they have. We entered, sat down, and puzzled at the music playing over the stereo. It was some very bad 1980s cock rock, and the décor looked very country-western. A server came to our table with our waivers. We signed them and ordered. There were only two options. This bar really reinforced my theory that Düsseldorf is in fact just a satellite of Pittsburgh. Oddly, the server kept track of our orders by making tick marks with a pen on a cardboard coaster. This was another comical expression of the honor system at work in Rheinland. Nothing prevented us from throwing out the coaster, taking a new one off the pile, and making our own tick marks- in substantially lesser quantity. We didn’t do this, tempting as it was. Eventually we moved on to other bars, dinner, and more bars. We planned the next day, which would be Amsterdam.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
August 2, 2008
To our amazement, our bags had made it across the Atlantic with us. Everything was there. The fact that we heard no English being spoken anywhere in the airport was immediately unsettling, though most people whom we had bothered with questions had spoken very good English without objection. We had made firm plans to call her cousin from the airport upon our arrival. We did this from a pay phone, and weren’t at all surprised when she failed to answer. My wife left her a cheerful message announcing our arrival. We knew that we needed to get to Düsseldorf Hbf (the main train station in Düsseldorf), where we were supposed to meet her cousin. From there, she was supposed to guide us back to her apartment. We found our way through the airport to the subway platform and boarded the correct train, planning on trying to phone her again from the train station. We made certain that we bought subway passes for our ten-minute subway ride to Düsseldorf Hbf. We were a little confused to find nobody there to take or check our tickets, but we paid no mind.
Once at Düsseldorf Hbf, we were utterly terrified and confused. There were lots of trains (both subway trains and large high-speed ICE trains), leaving from a variety of platforms, headed for lots of different places. There were screens with up-to-the-minute train schedules on them, with not a word of English anywhere. My wife was rested from her sleep, but I hadn’t slept a wink and was groggy and irritable. We bought a very cheap cell phone and loaded it up with a few prepaid minutes. Before leaving on the trip, my wife had confirmed with our phone company back home that our phones wouldn’t work in Europe. We tried her cousin again on our new cell phone, without luck, and walked out of the train station, where we saw a field of trams with different numbers running up and down different streets. My wife recognized the number on one of them as being the number that her cousin had mentioned that we’d need to take. The tram traveled in two directions. Her cousin had mentioned something about one direction going to a University, and said that we’d need to go the other direction. We did this. Once on the tram, we were again baffled to find nobody to pay and nobody to check our tickets. This tram was supposed to drop us off right in front of her apartment, a few short blocks away. All we knew was that her apartment was above a pharmacy. So we each kept our eyes peeled. When we saw a pharmacy that resembled her cousin’s description, we got out and called again from our new phone, with a reasonable degree of anxiety. Success! Her cousin answered. She had just awakened. We informed her that we weren’t at the airport or train station any longer and were in fact standing in front of her apartment. Within a few short moments she came down to greet us and guide us up to her place to unload all of our bags, which I had been carrying.
Düsseldorf in August has almost exactly the same weather as Pittsburgh in August, just about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Coincidentally, it’s a very similar city. It’s certainly a real city, though not a very major one. I believe it also used to be similarly industrial. So in a strange way, my wife and I had just flown 12 hours from Pittsburgh to Pittsburgh. I felt pretty gross, as I had sweated completely through my clothes from carrying the luggage in the heat, and it was a new day despite the fact that I hadn’t slept. I was still wearing the same things that I had worn the previous day. So I showered and changed into a fresh t-shirt and shorts. While my wife freshened up and hatched plans with her cousin, I napped. It lasted about half an hour.
We left the apartment to go eat lunch and catch a train headed for Fulda. It’s a small and somewhat remote town in Germany, about two hours away from Düsseldorf by ICE train. There we would see the band In Extremo performing in the courtyard of a 200 year old castle. They’re one of my wife’s favorite bands, and they never play in the States. So our time in Germany would be the perfect opportunity to see them live. She had planned it months in advance of the trip. Before boarding the train to Fulda, we got lunch at a nice restaurant with café-style outdoor seating. It was very nice, and her cousin brought us up to speed on a few important things. Nobody uses credit cards anywhere in Germany for anything. They operate almost strictly on cash unless you’re buying a car or a house. The subways in Germany aren’t free, but they operate on the honor system. Since we’re Americans and thus lack honor or morals, they were effectively free for us. We laughed riotously at the notion of such a system being implemented in New York City. My wife's cousin said that in the year that she’d been living in Düsseldorf, she had only ever seen people checking tickets on three occasions. She said that the ticket checkers are very conspicuous, and there are automated machines on all of the trains. So when you see the ticket checkers approach, you can just rush over and buy a ticket. On all three occasions she was able to do this and avoid being fined. We made note. Lunch was excellent. We all had beers, which were oddly very small. They were also very cheap, cheaper than water actually. Refills came very quickly. Lunch itself was pretty great. My wife ordered the blood sausage, because she’s occasionally given to fits of insanity. Oddly it was very good, though very bloody, as you could imagine. I tried a little, and she ate most of it. The potatoes were awesome. We were paid cash and left for the Düsseldorf Hbf via the subway. There we would catch a train to Fulda.
We had six days’ worth of “all you can ride” first-classs ICE train passes. They were very big, expensive, complex train tickets that required you to show your passport each time you used them. Unlike the subway trains, the ICE trains had abundant attendants. They did not operate on the honor system. However, the attendants didn’t check your tickets until you were already on the train, and it was moving. Apparently, if you get caught riding without a pass you would be given a hefty fine. We had no desire to find out. We rode in a dining car for most of the two hour train ride to Fulda. We all had beers on the train. Once we arrived in Fulda we explored a little bit, though there wasn’t much to see. We killed some time exploring, and it was time to eat again. So we did. I had pizza and more beer. The beer in Germany is all of excellent quality, though Germans are incredibly narrow in the variety of beers they have. Essentially they like pilsners, hefeweisen (wheat beer), and something called ‘alt-bier.’ I still don’t know exactly what alt-bier is, but it tastes like a pilsner, only slightly maltier. Germans basically like their beer light and fizzy. They don’t enjoy or tolerate any sort of stout, porter, ale, or barley wine.
Dinner was good, and the show was good. We’ve seen tons of shows in our time, and they’re not really any different in Germany than they are back home. The evening was essentially uneventful except for the crushing fatigue that began to seize upon me. I nearly fell asleep standing upright a few times. Once the show ended we raced back to the train station to catch the very last train out of Fulda that day. We caught it by mere seconds. The ticket checker took a look at our ticket and stamped it. No problem.
At about 1am we arrived back at the apartment, and I slept like I was dead.
Once at Düsseldorf Hbf, we were utterly terrified and confused. There were lots of trains (both subway trains and large high-speed ICE trains), leaving from a variety of platforms, headed for lots of different places. There were screens with up-to-the-minute train schedules on them, with not a word of English anywhere. My wife was rested from her sleep, but I hadn’t slept a wink and was groggy and irritable. We bought a very cheap cell phone and loaded it up with a few prepaid minutes. Before leaving on the trip, my wife had confirmed with our phone company back home that our phones wouldn’t work in Europe. We tried her cousin again on our new cell phone, without luck, and walked out of the train station, where we saw a field of trams with different numbers running up and down different streets. My wife recognized the number on one of them as being the number that her cousin had mentioned that we’d need to take. The tram traveled in two directions. Her cousin had mentioned something about one direction going to a University, and said that we’d need to go the other direction. We did this. Once on the tram, we were again baffled to find nobody to pay and nobody to check our tickets. This tram was supposed to drop us off right in front of her apartment, a few short blocks away. All we knew was that her apartment was above a pharmacy. So we each kept our eyes peeled. When we saw a pharmacy that resembled her cousin’s description, we got out and called again from our new phone, with a reasonable degree of anxiety. Success! Her cousin answered. She had just awakened. We informed her that we weren’t at the airport or train station any longer and were in fact standing in front of her apartment. Within a few short moments she came down to greet us and guide us up to her place to unload all of our bags, which I had been carrying.
Düsseldorf in August has almost exactly the same weather as Pittsburgh in August, just about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Coincidentally, it’s a very similar city. It’s certainly a real city, though not a very major one. I believe it also used to be similarly industrial. So in a strange way, my wife and I had just flown 12 hours from Pittsburgh to Pittsburgh. I felt pretty gross, as I had sweated completely through my clothes from carrying the luggage in the heat, and it was a new day despite the fact that I hadn’t slept. I was still wearing the same things that I had worn the previous day. So I showered and changed into a fresh t-shirt and shorts. While my wife freshened up and hatched plans with her cousin, I napped. It lasted about half an hour.
We left the apartment to go eat lunch and catch a train headed for Fulda. It’s a small and somewhat remote town in Germany, about two hours away from Düsseldorf by ICE train. There we would see the band In Extremo performing in the courtyard of a 200 year old castle. They’re one of my wife’s favorite bands, and they never play in the States. So our time in Germany would be the perfect opportunity to see them live. She had planned it months in advance of the trip. Before boarding the train to Fulda, we got lunch at a nice restaurant with café-style outdoor seating. It was very nice, and her cousin brought us up to speed on a few important things. Nobody uses credit cards anywhere in Germany for anything. They operate almost strictly on cash unless you’re buying a car or a house. The subways in Germany aren’t free, but they operate on the honor system. Since we’re Americans and thus lack honor or morals, they were effectively free for us. We laughed riotously at the notion of such a system being implemented in New York City. My wife's cousin said that in the year that she’d been living in Düsseldorf, she had only ever seen people checking tickets on three occasions. She said that the ticket checkers are very conspicuous, and there are automated machines on all of the trains. So when you see the ticket checkers approach, you can just rush over and buy a ticket. On all three occasions she was able to do this and avoid being fined. We made note. Lunch was excellent. We all had beers, which were oddly very small. They were also very cheap, cheaper than water actually. Refills came very quickly. Lunch itself was pretty great. My wife ordered the blood sausage, because she’s occasionally given to fits of insanity. Oddly it was very good, though very bloody, as you could imagine. I tried a little, and she ate most of it. The potatoes were awesome. We were paid cash and left for the Düsseldorf Hbf via the subway. There we would catch a train to Fulda.
We had six days’ worth of “all you can ride” first-classs ICE train passes. They were very big, expensive, complex train tickets that required you to show your passport each time you used them. Unlike the subway trains, the ICE trains had abundant attendants. They did not operate on the honor system. However, the attendants didn’t check your tickets until you were already on the train, and it was moving. Apparently, if you get caught riding without a pass you would be given a hefty fine. We had no desire to find out. We rode in a dining car for most of the two hour train ride to Fulda. We all had beers on the train. Once we arrived in Fulda we explored a little bit, though there wasn’t much to see. We killed some time exploring, and it was time to eat again. So we did. I had pizza and more beer. The beer in Germany is all of excellent quality, though Germans are incredibly narrow in the variety of beers they have. Essentially they like pilsners, hefeweisen (wheat beer), and something called ‘alt-bier.’ I still don’t know exactly what alt-bier is, but it tastes like a pilsner, only slightly maltier. Germans basically like their beer light and fizzy. They don’t enjoy or tolerate any sort of stout, porter, ale, or barley wine.
Dinner was good, and the show was good. We’ve seen tons of shows in our time, and they’re not really any different in Germany than they are back home. The evening was essentially uneventful except for the crushing fatigue that began to seize upon me. I nearly fell asleep standing upright a few times. Once the show ended we raced back to the train station to catch the very last train out of Fulda that day. We caught it by mere seconds. The ticket checker took a look at our ticket and stamped it. No problem.
At about 1am we arrived back at the apartment, and I slept like I was dead.
Friday, May 14, 2010
August 1, 2008
I woke up 30 years old at 7am and hurriedly jumped into the shower. Our flight was leaving the airport at 12:40, and we’d been told to be there at least two hours early to account for the all the security and lines. We only live about ten minutes away from Pittsburgh International Airport. However, my wife requires no less than two hours to go from ‘fresh out of bed’ to ‘ready-to-go.’ There’s lots of personal maintenance involved, and though I ridicule her for it relentlessly, it never seems to make a sufficient impression upon her to cause her to reduce the duration of her morning ritual. So we just plan for it in our timing. At about 9:40, my mom arrived at our house to drive us to the airport. She dropped us off. We checked our bags and got our boarding passes and got through security, all in less than half an hour. We had time to kill. We walked around a bunch, and ended up at the bar at TGI Fridays at around 11am. We had beers, toasted my birthday, and talked about all the awesome shit we were about to do to Europe. We boarded the plane and flew to Atlanta without incident, at which point we boarded our connecting flight to Düsseldorf.
The flight from Atalanta to Düsseldorf was long and cramped. In front of me sat the only motherfucker on the whole plane who felt like he needed to recline back as far as his seat would allow. He was German. I was already pissed off with the locals and I wasn’t even there yet. I’m 6’ 2” and thus I scarcely fit in most plane seats anyway. My knees were thoroughly crushed when this inconsiderate jackass reclined completely. My wife had secured a prescription from her doctor for some sort of sedative to knock her out for the flight. She took one, and it worked. She clocked out almost immediately. I got out Crime and Punishment, put on my headphones, and started reading. The flight went without any real incident, and we arrived in Düsseldorf at 7:20am local time. The total time spent from our departure in Pittsburgh to our arrival in Düsseldorf was about 12 hours, and we lost 6 hours to time zones. 18 hours total.
The flight from Atalanta to Düsseldorf was long and cramped. In front of me sat the only motherfucker on the whole plane who felt like he needed to recline back as far as his seat would allow. He was German. I was already pissed off with the locals and I wasn’t even there yet. I’m 6’ 2” and thus I scarcely fit in most plane seats anyway. My knees were thoroughly crushed when this inconsiderate jackass reclined completely. My wife had secured a prescription from her doctor for some sort of sedative to knock her out for the flight. She took one, and it worked. She clocked out almost immediately. I got out Crime and Punishment, put on my headphones, and started reading. The flight went without any real incident, and we arrived in Düsseldorf at 7:20am local time. The total time spent from our departure in Pittsburgh to our arrival in Düsseldorf was about 12 hours, and we lost 6 hours to time zones. 18 hours total.
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