The morning was rushed and urgent. It was a Sunday morning, and we failed to account for the dramatically reduced subway schedule on Sundays. This made us a little late getting to the main Düsseldorf train station. We concluded that it would be a bad gamble to try to make it the rest of the way to the airport via connecting subway train. We got a cab, and told him where to go. The cab was a minivan, and the driver drive it like it was a NASCAR race. We feared for our lives, but made it to the airport an hour before our flight left.
We checked our bags with a short-lived feeling of relief and satisfaction. As the woman at the desk checked in my wife’s bag, she asked how we’d like to pay the overweight surcharge for her bag. It was six pounds over the weight limit. The surcharge was 50 Euros. My wife didn’t want to pay it, so she took out one of the Belgian beer samplers and put it in her carry-on. The crisis was seemingly averted.
Moments later at the security desk, they went through my wife’s carry-on and explained to her that she couldn’t bring liquids on the plane. She was frantic. I was already through security, waiting for her and pissed off. She asked if she could go back to the luggage desk and check in her carry-on. They said that she could, and so she did. My wife is a woman, and thus her carry-on bag was actually a bag of bags. She simply put the Belgian beer sampler in its own bag, and took that back to the woman at the desk. They were kind enough to jump her to the front of the line, and she got the bag checked. She returned to security to an ovation from the whole staff. She smiled and I wanted to choke her. We raced off toward our terminal with barely sufficient time to stop at a vendor and eat a croissant before boarding our flight.
The return flight was much nicer than the initial flight. Given that it was in broad daylight, I was able to look out the window at the ocean and various land masses as we passed them. I took pictures and read my Leonard Cohen book. It felt good to be on my way home.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
August 9, 2008
At 6am we got a text message from my wife’s cousin. She had successfully met up with her friends and was going to crash with them. All was well. We slept in until about 8:30am, and got up to prepare for our last day in Germany. It was good to know that she was okay.
The hotel breakfast was good and very comprehensive. By this point we had gotten accustomed to the giant continental breakfasts. My wife and I checked out, leaving our bags with the attendant.
Our primary objectives for the day were The Ramones museum and the Berlin Wall. In two short free subway trips we made our way to the Ramones musem. We found it easily, though unfortunately it was closed. There was a hair salon next door. The door was open and the stylist woman saw us poking around dejectedly. She said, “Sorry, they closed back in January.” We were crushed. Fortunately we had seen quite a few cool record stores on the way there, so we just went back to them.
It wasn’t difficult getting to the Berlin Wall. It was a cool thing to see. Since the wall has come down, they’ve erected a facsimile of Checkpoint Charlie. There were two actors, playing the parts of American and Soviet, soldiers standing in front of it. The checkpoint was in the middle of the street like it would have been during the Cold War. Even though it wasn’t the real checkpoint, it was an intense thing to see. We walked down an adjoining street to see a section of the wall that had been put back up for tourists. We walked around and saw all that there was to see.
At one point my wife had to pee. We found another museum nearby that had free public restrooms. She went in while I stood out front and took more pictures of statues and other things that looked historically relevant. A young Middle Eastern-looking man came up to me and asked me something in German. I laughed and said, “Sorry man, I only speak English.” He laughed and said, “You’re an American?” I confirmed with a smile and a nod. He said, “I’m from Iraq.” The United States had been forcibly occupying Iraq since March 20, 2003. I winced and exclaimed, “Jesus! Sorry about that! How do you feel about...” I paused to think of a polite word for “rape,” and he mercifully finished my thought for me by replying, “…the situation?” I was grateful. I said, “Yes.” To my surprise, he said, “It’s good. Much better. Things were very bad up until 2006, but since then things have improved. There are many fewer explosions and bombings. Things are much more stable. I’ve been going to medical school here in Berlin for a good portion of the occupation, but I’ve stayed in touch with my family and visited a few times. Things are definitely improving.” I said that I was glad to hear it. It was one of those rare occasions upon which I have no words. I really didn’t know what to say, and I’m sure he could sense that. I wanted badly to apologize. It was the only time on the trip that I had honestly wanted to apologize for being an American. I wanted to clarify that I hadn’t voted for George W. Bush either time. I was glad that the war in Iraq seemed to sit well with him, but I wanted to make clear that I understood that we Americans had no right or even a good reason to invade and occupy his country. I was sorry that it had happened that way, but I had nothing to do with it. It seemed like it could be the beginning of a long, heavy conversation, and I don’t think that either one of us wanted that. He was incredibly friendly and good-natured. My wife emerged from the museum, so I shook his hand and said that it had been a pleasure to meet him, but I had to be going. We wished each other well, and went our separate ways. I felt terrible and great all at once. I hadn’t had any plans of experiencing anything that heavy when I’d gotten up that morning.
After a pleasant lunch, we headed back towards the main Berlin train station.
My wife’s cousin hijacked our plans to make a swift, safe return however. She talked us into a brief stop at a Vietnamese café to have some cocktails with some friends of hers. She had talked about wanting to see them, which she could have easily done on her own time. It’s not that we didn’t want to meet them. We just had other priorities. We conceded to meet them, and they were great. They were a married couple. She was very pregnant and German. He was a tall lanky Italian from a small town just outside of Venice. We made small talk, and my wife and I began to get nervous about making the train back to Düsseldorf. They re-assured us that they’d give us a ride, which they did. We all piled into their BMW 3 series convertible and took off like a rocket across Berlin. It was late afternoon, and everything was beautiful. We made it to the train station, raced for our platform, and boarded our train with two minutes to spare before it pulled away. My wife, her cousin and I spent the first two hours of the return trip in the dining car, drinking beers. We spend the second half of the ride in first class. My wife slept, and I read. Expecting that I would finish Crime and Punishment before the trip ended, I had also packed a book of Leonard Cohen’s lyrics and poetry. I read that with my headphones on, occasionally looking up to watch the sun descend over the German countryside. It was beautiful. We weren’t home yet, but the adventure was over.That evening back at my wife’s cousin’s apartment, we packed up all of our things. We went to sleep early so that we’d be ready for our early morning trip back to the airport. My wife had the foresight to leave room in her luggage for the things that she knew we’d buy. Her one oversight was that she failed to account for the weight of the things that we’d buy. Our souvenirs primarily consisted of beer. Beer is heavy.
The hotel breakfast was good and very comprehensive. By this point we had gotten accustomed to the giant continental breakfasts. My wife and I checked out, leaving our bags with the attendant.
Our primary objectives for the day were The Ramones museum and the Berlin Wall. In two short free subway trips we made our way to the Ramones musem. We found it easily, though unfortunately it was closed. There was a hair salon next door. The door was open and the stylist woman saw us poking around dejectedly. She said, “Sorry, they closed back in January.” We were crushed. Fortunately we had seen quite a few cool record stores on the way there, so we just went back to them.
It wasn’t difficult getting to the Berlin Wall. It was a cool thing to see. Since the wall has come down, they’ve erected a facsimile of Checkpoint Charlie. There were two actors, playing the parts of American and Soviet, soldiers standing in front of it. The checkpoint was in the middle of the street like it would have been during the Cold War. Even though it wasn’t the real checkpoint, it was an intense thing to see. We walked down an adjoining street to see a section of the wall that had been put back up for tourists. We walked around and saw all that there was to see.
At one point my wife had to pee. We found another museum nearby that had free public restrooms. She went in while I stood out front and took more pictures of statues and other things that looked historically relevant. A young Middle Eastern-looking man came up to me and asked me something in German. I laughed and said, “Sorry man, I only speak English.” He laughed and said, “You’re an American?” I confirmed with a smile and a nod. He said, “I’m from Iraq.” The United States had been forcibly occupying Iraq since March 20, 2003. I winced and exclaimed, “Jesus! Sorry about that! How do you feel about...” I paused to think of a polite word for “rape,” and he mercifully finished my thought for me by replying, “…the situation?” I was grateful. I said, “Yes.” To my surprise, he said, “It’s good. Much better. Things were very bad up until 2006, but since then things have improved. There are many fewer explosions and bombings. Things are much more stable. I’ve been going to medical school here in Berlin for a good portion of the occupation, but I’ve stayed in touch with my family and visited a few times. Things are definitely improving.” I said that I was glad to hear it. It was one of those rare occasions upon which I have no words. I really didn’t know what to say, and I’m sure he could sense that. I wanted badly to apologize. It was the only time on the trip that I had honestly wanted to apologize for being an American. I wanted to clarify that I hadn’t voted for George W. Bush either time. I was glad that the war in Iraq seemed to sit well with him, but I wanted to make clear that I understood that we Americans had no right or even a good reason to invade and occupy his country. I was sorry that it had happened that way, but I had nothing to do with it. It seemed like it could be the beginning of a long, heavy conversation, and I don’t think that either one of us wanted that. He was incredibly friendly and good-natured. My wife emerged from the museum, so I shook his hand and said that it had been a pleasure to meet him, but I had to be going. We wished each other well, and went our separate ways. I felt terrible and great all at once. I hadn’t had any plans of experiencing anything that heavy when I’d gotten up that morning.
After a pleasant lunch, we headed back towards the main Berlin train station.
My wife’s cousin hijacked our plans to make a swift, safe return however. She talked us into a brief stop at a Vietnamese café to have some cocktails with some friends of hers. She had talked about wanting to see them, which she could have easily done on her own time. It’s not that we didn’t want to meet them. We just had other priorities. We conceded to meet them, and they were great. They were a married couple. She was very pregnant and German. He was a tall lanky Italian from a small town just outside of Venice. We made small talk, and my wife and I began to get nervous about making the train back to Düsseldorf. They re-assured us that they’d give us a ride, which they did. We all piled into their BMW 3 series convertible and took off like a rocket across Berlin. It was late afternoon, and everything was beautiful. We made it to the train station, raced for our platform, and boarded our train with two minutes to spare before it pulled away. My wife, her cousin and I spent the first two hours of the return trip in the dining car, drinking beers. We spend the second half of the ride in first class. My wife slept, and I read. Expecting that I would finish Crime and Punishment before the trip ended, I had also packed a book of Leonard Cohen’s lyrics and poetry. I read that with my headphones on, occasionally looking up to watch the sun descend over the German countryside. It was beautiful. We weren’t home yet, but the adventure was over.That evening back at my wife’s cousin’s apartment, we packed up all of our things. We went to sleep early so that we’d be ready for our early morning trip back to the airport. My wife had the foresight to leave room in her luggage for the things that she knew we’d buy. Her one oversight was that she failed to account for the weight of the things that we’d buy. Our souvenirs primarily consisted of beer. Beer is heavy.
Friday, May 21, 2010
August 8, 2008
Berlin is a four hour train ride from Düsseldorf. Trains for Berlin leave just about once an hour. We really didn’t want to squander much time in the morning, so we woke up early to catch the earliest reasonable train possible. My wife’s cousin had to work up until lunch time, so she would be catching a separate train and meeting us there.
The train ride wasn’t unpleasant, though it stopped frequently. Berlin is the capital and thus a very popular city. Many people want to go there. I suspect the train ride wouldn’t have taken nearly so long if it hadn’t had to stop every ten minutes to let more people on.
When we arrived at the main train station in Berlin, we were immediately terrified at its complexity and vertiginous height. There were at least 100 floors. I don’t understand how they had trains coming in that high up, but they certainly did. Some trains arrived on raised tracks. The escalators that took you up and down from one floor to the next traversed the main atrium. You could see straight to the bottom all the way up from the top. It was terrifying and difficult to find the platform for our connecting subway train. Our hotel was very decidedly not within walking distance of the train station. We found the right platform and started moving.
There was a second connecting subway train that we had to take, which we did. Once we got off that one, we still had about half a mile to walk to our hotel. As it turns out there were other public transportation options that could have gotten us closer to our final destination, but we were out of patience with public transit. We walked.
The sun and heat were terrible. We arrived at the hotel in a terrible, exhausted mood. The man at the desk spoke good English and the hotel was nice. We really didn’t care, though. It was mid-afternoon, and we had to get moving.
My wife had assembled a plan. After one tram ride and two subway trains, we’d be in the particular part of the city that we wanted to explore. Her plan worked without flaws.
The first thing we did was hit a couple of art galleries. They had some big names on display. Richard Serra was one of them. The place was full of really good contemporary avant-garde stuff. There were even some smaller galleries near it. We hit a couple of those too. Most were crap. There was one really compelling installation at one of them, however, involving a very elaborate dress with dripping candles hung over it, dripping wax down onto it. There were a few cool-looking stores around, and we found a nice shirt to bring back for my sister at one of them. We also found an absinthe shop, and bought a small bottle (not for my sister) to bring back home. We had our quick fill of art and shopping, and decided that dinner and alcohol were next.
In the travel guide, my wife had found a place called White Trash Fast Food that we really wanted to hit. The previous evening, my wife and her cousin had been discussing it. Her cousin has been to Berlin numerous times, and was familiar with the place. She was continually trying to discourage us from going there, claiming that it wasn’t nearly as cool as it used to be. My wife and I are very stubborn people. We’re not easily swayed by the admonishments of other people. Our fortitude was richly rewarded. White Trash Fast Food is owned by expatriate New Yorkers. Likely this was why my wife’s cousin didn’t think it was cool. It wasn’t authentically German enough for her cultured palate. We’re not cultured though, so we thought it was great. With the exception of two guys who seemed to be the owners or managers, and did in fact have New York accents, everybody else working there was German. The place looked like it used to be a very ornate Chinese place that had been ransacked by tacky Americans who broke stuff and filled it up with junk. The restaurant was Germany’s loving critique of American white trash culture. The food was all excellent greasy diner food. They had Guinness. The music playing was generally good. The patrons were all very young and tattooed. There was a band setting up. We actually felt very at home.
My wife’s cousin met us there. She had caught all the right trains, dropped her bags off at the hotel, and found her way to the restaurant pretty quickly. We had already finished eating, and sat and drank more while she ordered and ate. It was just nice to be someplace trashy with loud music, good beer, and good food. It was nice to be somewhere that I didn’t feel like I stuck out.
When we finished eating and drinking there, it was time to start bar-crawling up the street. Apparently a bunch of my wife’s cousin’s favorite Berlin bars were on that street. There was a place that she raved about just down the street. I don’t recall its name, but it was apparently owned and run by Italian anarchist punks. Once inside, it looked like a cross between a beer hall and an Italian villa. The place was packed. We sat down at a long table. There was a “Reserved” tag on it, and we just pushed it down to the other end of the table. There were only three of us, and the table looked like it could easily accommodate a dozen people. The irony of anarchists running a restaurant that accepted reservations wasn’t lost on me. Anarchists are always funny for exactly that reason. They always talk about their spite for laws and other forms of social control, but they like paved roads and the ability to make reservations at a restaurant. Funny. We waited patiently for a server to find us. After ten minutes had gone by, my wife’s cousin managed to get the attention of one of them. She was a lean, tall, beautiful Italian woman who looked to be in her early 30s. I was excited. My wife’s cousin tried to ask for menus, and she replied, “No English.” We tried again, and got a nastier, “No English!” My wife and I decided that it was time to leave. We got up and walked out with my wife’s cousin following, trying to convince us to give the place a chance. Nope. In Germany (and the rest of Europe too, it seems), servers get paid a regular living wage and don’t depend on tips the way they do back in America. Thus there’s no incentive for them to serve you well. It’s nice because you’re only supposed to tip 10%, but the service often sucks. I believe that our way is superior. Regardless, we weren’t about to sit around this place any longer. The crowd looked lame. It was a bar with an identity crisis, and I didn’t feel like participating in it.
Less than a quarter of a mile up the road, we found a nice quiet outdoor café, and we all sat around a table and had beers there. It was relaxing and easy to talk. My wife’s cousin had been using her iPhone relentlessly the whole time we were with her. It seems like most people with iPhones are utterly addicted to them and flagrantly obnoxious and pretentious about showing them off. I don’t even know what she was doing with it, most likely searching for more bars in the area, checking her email, or blogging about something. I don’t know or care. I’m not really a Luddite, but I took the opportunity to argue from that side of the fence. I really enjoy being contrary and argumentative sometimes, and this seemed like a great opportunity. Oddly, my wife’s cousin has really taken web technology to heart and believes in the wild proliferation of media and social networking sites that have choked our world with self-consciousness and vanity. It was fun to get her ire up. I love arguing. I don’t really hate the Internet at all, quite the contrary. I just think that it became lame and pointless as soon as big business got their hands on it and turned it into a commodity. Big money and advertising make things stupid almost 100% of the time. I blasted away, and she defended these strange, intangible, imprecise, abstract notions about people connecting and sharing ideas with technology. I explained that really brilliant ideas tend to come from individuals, not groups. I said that people in groups are how wars get started. I know it’s a wild over-generalization, but I just wanted to frustrate her. It worked. My wife watched in amusement, and occasionally chimed in to add weight to my side of the argument. At that point the argument ceased to be about technology and became about “the individual” versus “the group.” I really enjoy being drawn into these sorts of ideological debates. I don’t believe that individuals should have the power to control, dominate, or take advantage of large swathes of people. At the same time, I don’t believe in peoples’ collective right (as a society) to dictate the rights of an individual, as long as that individual isn’t hurting anybody. The objective of a civilized society is achieving the correct balance of rights for the “individual” and society as a whole. It seems like a very moderate stance to me. Essentially, I argued from this perspective. She took a far left stance, and argued on behalf of all things communal. The argument ended when I said that I was a big fan of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and asked if she had ever read it or any of her other books. She hadn’t.
Next, we hit a place called 8mm. It looked cool and had a slightly older, more sophisticated crowd. There was a DJ playing loud, uninteresting music that I didn’t love, hate, or recognize. Their beer selection was pitiful. I don’t recall seeing any women who excited my fancy. The place was very okay, not bad but not great. Fashionably, mildly raw, yet thoroughly safe. It seemed to be the sort of place that a slightly more intellectual, mature, cultured, literate, yet still mildly gritty, counterculture liberal crowd would hang out. It seemed like a place for very cerebral degenerates to hang out without fear of being mugged. I love these kinds of people as I’m essentially one of them. However, they’re not the liveliest bunch on earth. My wife and her cousin started talking about something, and I couldn’t hear any of it. I pretended to listen. I nodded a lot. It was tiresome. If I’d have been able to talk to somebody I’m sure I could have loved the place. It wasn’t meant to be. We moved on.
Around 11pm my wife saw a place that looked like exactly her cup of tea. It was called Last Cathedral. There was a faux finish all over the front of it that made it look like it was made out of stone. They even had a wrought iron gate. It was immediately apparent that my wife would need to go in. She loves these kinds of places. It was overflowing with the obligatory goofy-looking goth kids. They’re not a bad bunch, just kind of sad and predictable. I wasn’t exactly psyched, but we proceeded.
The place was packed, and seating was very limited. Remarkably, a table opened up, and we laid claim to it quickly. I said that I’d hold the table while my wife and her cousin went to the bar to get the drinks. Almost immediately, the two pretty young girls at the table behind me spun around and introduced themselves to me. Things were looking up. It was clear by their accents that they were Irish. That excited me. It seems like, when traveling abroad, people who speak English natively seem to band together. It’s always easy to identify people who speak the language naturally. They both looked good, and were sisters. That excited me even more. I was beginning to feel the effects of a long evening of drinking. I don’t recall exactly how many beers I had consumed at that point, but it was substantial. I told them I was an American, though I knew it was an unnecessary thing to formally declare. I explained that my wife and I were on our first trip to Europe, visiting her cousin. One of them asked me how we had liked Germany so far. I think I said something like, “Baby, we should have gone to your country.” I explained that many of my favorite things in this world come from Ireland. I could see their bullshit reflex was, understandably, triggered. I immediately qualified my statement with a list of awesome fucking things that came from Ireland: Thin Lizzy, The Pogues, Guinness (and thick stout beer in general, which likely made me visibly weepy), Bushmills (and blended Irish whisky in general, which was a mild fib as I prefer bourbon), shepherd’s pie, and my mother’s mother. I think I was counting on my fingers as I listed these things, and I laughed at myself for doing so. They laughed at me too. I topped off my display of Irish-itude by declaring, “…but fuck Bono!” I had it locked up. In that moment I knew that I was about to bed the two of them, my wife, and her cousin. The ensuing depraved orgy would be legendary. Things were looking good.
My wife and her cousin returned to the table. My wife was overjoyed that I’d made some new friends. I introduced everybody. Apparently my wife was carded at the bar. My wife is 29, but doesn’t look a day over 12. The drinking age in Germany is 16. She was complaining about this to the group, and the Irish girls laughed. The older Irish girl was 26. Her younger sister was only 17. I was a little startled and almost felt badly for having such lascivious thoughts about a 17 year old. It passed quickly. The age of consent in Ireland is 17, and in Germany it’s only 14. I was in thoroughly safe legal/moral territory by either standard, and she seemed like a very mature young woman. If you’d told me she was 21, I wouldn’t have doubted you. The younger Irish girl had been carded too. She explained that the drinking age in Ireland is 18, and she can’t drink in bars back home in Ireland. I was shocked, and queried, “There’s a drinking age in Ireland?” They laughed.
Things took a somewhat different turn as all of the women started talking and cackling in turns. Apparently they both had boyfriends back home. I couldn’t really hear most of the conversation. The music was generally terrible. My buzz was beginning to fail and I didn’t feel like fighting my way up to the bar for another pint of light fizzy German beer. I just didn’t feel like spending money on it or drinking the calories.
The three guys from Denmark must have seen that there was a table of four good-looking women and only one man, so they came over to talk. They all appeared to be in their late 30s. Unas was the leader. There was also a guy named Pietro, and an Asian guy whose name I don’t recall. They were all from Denmark and desperately trying to get laid. They had made the Denmark part explicit, but not the getting laid part. None of them looked like anything my wife would be interested in. She immediately clung to my arm, and explained that she was married to me. The Irish girls each produced cell phones with pictures of their boyfriends from back home on them. It didn’t seem like either of them were into the Danish guys either, though it seemed funny to me that pictures of boyfriends from far away adequately discouraged these guys. My wife’s cousin had no such easily available excuse, though she generally kept quiet and hid behind the rest of us. It was easy to see the three guys from Denmark recalculating their odds. They were all very drunk, and eventually they all ended up talking to me. They seemed like really good, intelligent guys. I could easily identify with them and their plight. Unas gently began in on a various cultural indictments against America. He was right on all accounts, so I offered no resistance. I verbally agreed with him, and at that point he decided that we were indeed brothers. Eventually I ended up talking to Pietro. The Asian guy whispered something to him that seemed to alarm him. Pietro abruptly said, “What?” The Asian guy repeated more loudly, “What Unas is saying is that we should leave all of the women with Jay.” Pietro smiled. The Asian guy laughed. Unas laughed. So did I. They told us what bar they were headed to next, and departed. We all waved. It was 2:30am, and I clearly wasn’t getting anywhere. My wife and I decided to leave. The Irish girls laughed and said we had better get to bed. All of the women exchanged email addresses, and posed for a group picture. After taking the picture, we went upstairs to leave, and my wife’s cousin resolved herself to stay out later. She said that she was going back to 8mm and not to wait up for her. We asked her if she was sure, and she said, “Yeah. I’m going to try to meet up with some friends.” Fair enough. She’s a grown woman, and I don’t think that Berlin has much violent crime. We weren’t really all that concerned. We felt somewhat lame going back to bed so early when there was still fun to be had. However, we only had half a day to spend in Berlin the next day. We didn’t want to have to spend it sleeping. Returning to the hotel to sleep was clearly the right thing to do. We walked back, and went to sleep pretty quickly. Her cousin never came back.
The train ride wasn’t unpleasant, though it stopped frequently. Berlin is the capital and thus a very popular city. Many people want to go there. I suspect the train ride wouldn’t have taken nearly so long if it hadn’t had to stop every ten minutes to let more people on.
When we arrived at the main train station in Berlin, we were immediately terrified at its complexity and vertiginous height. There were at least 100 floors. I don’t understand how they had trains coming in that high up, but they certainly did. Some trains arrived on raised tracks. The escalators that took you up and down from one floor to the next traversed the main atrium. You could see straight to the bottom all the way up from the top. It was terrifying and difficult to find the platform for our connecting subway train. Our hotel was very decidedly not within walking distance of the train station. We found the right platform and started moving.
There was a second connecting subway train that we had to take, which we did. Once we got off that one, we still had about half a mile to walk to our hotel. As it turns out there were other public transportation options that could have gotten us closer to our final destination, but we were out of patience with public transit. We walked.
The sun and heat were terrible. We arrived at the hotel in a terrible, exhausted mood. The man at the desk spoke good English and the hotel was nice. We really didn’t care, though. It was mid-afternoon, and we had to get moving.
My wife had assembled a plan. After one tram ride and two subway trains, we’d be in the particular part of the city that we wanted to explore. Her plan worked without flaws.
The first thing we did was hit a couple of art galleries. They had some big names on display. Richard Serra was one of them. The place was full of really good contemporary avant-garde stuff. There were even some smaller galleries near it. We hit a couple of those too. Most were crap. There was one really compelling installation at one of them, however, involving a very elaborate dress with dripping candles hung over it, dripping wax down onto it. There were a few cool-looking stores around, and we found a nice shirt to bring back for my sister at one of them. We also found an absinthe shop, and bought a small bottle (not for my sister) to bring back home. We had our quick fill of art and shopping, and decided that dinner and alcohol were next.
In the travel guide, my wife had found a place called White Trash Fast Food that we really wanted to hit. The previous evening, my wife and her cousin had been discussing it. Her cousin has been to Berlin numerous times, and was familiar with the place. She was continually trying to discourage us from going there, claiming that it wasn’t nearly as cool as it used to be. My wife and I are very stubborn people. We’re not easily swayed by the admonishments of other people. Our fortitude was richly rewarded. White Trash Fast Food is owned by expatriate New Yorkers. Likely this was why my wife’s cousin didn’t think it was cool. It wasn’t authentically German enough for her cultured palate. We’re not cultured though, so we thought it was great. With the exception of two guys who seemed to be the owners or managers, and did in fact have New York accents, everybody else working there was German. The place looked like it used to be a very ornate Chinese place that had been ransacked by tacky Americans who broke stuff and filled it up with junk. The restaurant was Germany’s loving critique of American white trash culture. The food was all excellent greasy diner food. They had Guinness. The music playing was generally good. The patrons were all very young and tattooed. There was a band setting up. We actually felt very at home.
My wife’s cousin met us there. She had caught all the right trains, dropped her bags off at the hotel, and found her way to the restaurant pretty quickly. We had already finished eating, and sat and drank more while she ordered and ate. It was just nice to be someplace trashy with loud music, good beer, and good food. It was nice to be somewhere that I didn’t feel like I stuck out.
When we finished eating and drinking there, it was time to start bar-crawling up the street. Apparently a bunch of my wife’s cousin’s favorite Berlin bars were on that street. There was a place that she raved about just down the street. I don’t recall its name, but it was apparently owned and run by Italian anarchist punks. Once inside, it looked like a cross between a beer hall and an Italian villa. The place was packed. We sat down at a long table. There was a “Reserved” tag on it, and we just pushed it down to the other end of the table. There were only three of us, and the table looked like it could easily accommodate a dozen people. The irony of anarchists running a restaurant that accepted reservations wasn’t lost on me. Anarchists are always funny for exactly that reason. They always talk about their spite for laws and other forms of social control, but they like paved roads and the ability to make reservations at a restaurant. Funny. We waited patiently for a server to find us. After ten minutes had gone by, my wife’s cousin managed to get the attention of one of them. She was a lean, tall, beautiful Italian woman who looked to be in her early 30s. I was excited. My wife’s cousin tried to ask for menus, and she replied, “No English.” We tried again, and got a nastier, “No English!” My wife and I decided that it was time to leave. We got up and walked out with my wife’s cousin following, trying to convince us to give the place a chance. Nope. In Germany (and the rest of Europe too, it seems), servers get paid a regular living wage and don’t depend on tips the way they do back in America. Thus there’s no incentive for them to serve you well. It’s nice because you’re only supposed to tip 10%, but the service often sucks. I believe that our way is superior. Regardless, we weren’t about to sit around this place any longer. The crowd looked lame. It was a bar with an identity crisis, and I didn’t feel like participating in it.
Less than a quarter of a mile up the road, we found a nice quiet outdoor café, and we all sat around a table and had beers there. It was relaxing and easy to talk. My wife’s cousin had been using her iPhone relentlessly the whole time we were with her. It seems like most people with iPhones are utterly addicted to them and flagrantly obnoxious and pretentious about showing them off. I don’t even know what she was doing with it, most likely searching for more bars in the area, checking her email, or blogging about something. I don’t know or care. I’m not really a Luddite, but I took the opportunity to argue from that side of the fence. I really enjoy being contrary and argumentative sometimes, and this seemed like a great opportunity. Oddly, my wife’s cousin has really taken web technology to heart and believes in the wild proliferation of media and social networking sites that have choked our world with self-consciousness and vanity. It was fun to get her ire up. I love arguing. I don’t really hate the Internet at all, quite the contrary. I just think that it became lame and pointless as soon as big business got their hands on it and turned it into a commodity. Big money and advertising make things stupid almost 100% of the time. I blasted away, and she defended these strange, intangible, imprecise, abstract notions about people connecting and sharing ideas with technology. I explained that really brilliant ideas tend to come from individuals, not groups. I said that people in groups are how wars get started. I know it’s a wild over-generalization, but I just wanted to frustrate her. It worked. My wife watched in amusement, and occasionally chimed in to add weight to my side of the argument. At that point the argument ceased to be about technology and became about “the individual” versus “the group.” I really enjoy being drawn into these sorts of ideological debates. I don’t believe that individuals should have the power to control, dominate, or take advantage of large swathes of people. At the same time, I don’t believe in peoples’ collective right (as a society) to dictate the rights of an individual, as long as that individual isn’t hurting anybody. The objective of a civilized society is achieving the correct balance of rights for the “individual” and society as a whole. It seems like a very moderate stance to me. Essentially, I argued from this perspective. She took a far left stance, and argued on behalf of all things communal. The argument ended when I said that I was a big fan of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and asked if she had ever read it or any of her other books. She hadn’t.
Next, we hit a place called 8mm. It looked cool and had a slightly older, more sophisticated crowd. There was a DJ playing loud, uninteresting music that I didn’t love, hate, or recognize. Their beer selection was pitiful. I don’t recall seeing any women who excited my fancy. The place was very okay, not bad but not great. Fashionably, mildly raw, yet thoroughly safe. It seemed to be the sort of place that a slightly more intellectual, mature, cultured, literate, yet still mildly gritty, counterculture liberal crowd would hang out. It seemed like a place for very cerebral degenerates to hang out without fear of being mugged. I love these kinds of people as I’m essentially one of them. However, they’re not the liveliest bunch on earth. My wife and her cousin started talking about something, and I couldn’t hear any of it. I pretended to listen. I nodded a lot. It was tiresome. If I’d have been able to talk to somebody I’m sure I could have loved the place. It wasn’t meant to be. We moved on.
Around 11pm my wife saw a place that looked like exactly her cup of tea. It was called Last Cathedral. There was a faux finish all over the front of it that made it look like it was made out of stone. They even had a wrought iron gate. It was immediately apparent that my wife would need to go in. She loves these kinds of places. It was overflowing with the obligatory goofy-looking goth kids. They’re not a bad bunch, just kind of sad and predictable. I wasn’t exactly psyched, but we proceeded.
The place was packed, and seating was very limited. Remarkably, a table opened up, and we laid claim to it quickly. I said that I’d hold the table while my wife and her cousin went to the bar to get the drinks. Almost immediately, the two pretty young girls at the table behind me spun around and introduced themselves to me. Things were looking up. It was clear by their accents that they were Irish. That excited me. It seems like, when traveling abroad, people who speak English natively seem to band together. It’s always easy to identify people who speak the language naturally. They both looked good, and were sisters. That excited me even more. I was beginning to feel the effects of a long evening of drinking. I don’t recall exactly how many beers I had consumed at that point, but it was substantial. I told them I was an American, though I knew it was an unnecessary thing to formally declare. I explained that my wife and I were on our first trip to Europe, visiting her cousin. One of them asked me how we had liked Germany so far. I think I said something like, “Baby, we should have gone to your country.” I explained that many of my favorite things in this world come from Ireland. I could see their bullshit reflex was, understandably, triggered. I immediately qualified my statement with a list of awesome fucking things that came from Ireland: Thin Lizzy, The Pogues, Guinness (and thick stout beer in general, which likely made me visibly weepy), Bushmills (and blended Irish whisky in general, which was a mild fib as I prefer bourbon), shepherd’s pie, and my mother’s mother. I think I was counting on my fingers as I listed these things, and I laughed at myself for doing so. They laughed at me too. I topped off my display of Irish-itude by declaring, “…but fuck Bono!” I had it locked up. In that moment I knew that I was about to bed the two of them, my wife, and her cousin. The ensuing depraved orgy would be legendary. Things were looking good.
My wife and her cousin returned to the table. My wife was overjoyed that I’d made some new friends. I introduced everybody. Apparently my wife was carded at the bar. My wife is 29, but doesn’t look a day over 12. The drinking age in Germany is 16. She was complaining about this to the group, and the Irish girls laughed. The older Irish girl was 26. Her younger sister was only 17. I was a little startled and almost felt badly for having such lascivious thoughts about a 17 year old. It passed quickly. The age of consent in Ireland is 17, and in Germany it’s only 14. I was in thoroughly safe legal/moral territory by either standard, and she seemed like a very mature young woman. If you’d told me she was 21, I wouldn’t have doubted you. The younger Irish girl had been carded too. She explained that the drinking age in Ireland is 18, and she can’t drink in bars back home in Ireland. I was shocked, and queried, “There’s a drinking age in Ireland?” They laughed.
Things took a somewhat different turn as all of the women started talking and cackling in turns. Apparently they both had boyfriends back home. I couldn’t really hear most of the conversation. The music was generally terrible. My buzz was beginning to fail and I didn’t feel like fighting my way up to the bar for another pint of light fizzy German beer. I just didn’t feel like spending money on it or drinking the calories.
The three guys from Denmark must have seen that there was a table of four good-looking women and only one man, so they came over to talk. They all appeared to be in their late 30s. Unas was the leader. There was also a guy named Pietro, and an Asian guy whose name I don’t recall. They were all from Denmark and desperately trying to get laid. They had made the Denmark part explicit, but not the getting laid part. None of them looked like anything my wife would be interested in. She immediately clung to my arm, and explained that she was married to me. The Irish girls each produced cell phones with pictures of their boyfriends from back home on them. It didn’t seem like either of them were into the Danish guys either, though it seemed funny to me that pictures of boyfriends from far away adequately discouraged these guys. My wife’s cousin had no such easily available excuse, though she generally kept quiet and hid behind the rest of us. It was easy to see the three guys from Denmark recalculating their odds. They were all very drunk, and eventually they all ended up talking to me. They seemed like really good, intelligent guys. I could easily identify with them and their plight. Unas gently began in on a various cultural indictments against America. He was right on all accounts, so I offered no resistance. I verbally agreed with him, and at that point he decided that we were indeed brothers. Eventually I ended up talking to Pietro. The Asian guy whispered something to him that seemed to alarm him. Pietro abruptly said, “What?” The Asian guy repeated more loudly, “What Unas is saying is that we should leave all of the women with Jay.” Pietro smiled. The Asian guy laughed. Unas laughed. So did I. They told us what bar they were headed to next, and departed. We all waved. It was 2:30am, and I clearly wasn’t getting anywhere. My wife and I decided to leave. The Irish girls laughed and said we had better get to bed. All of the women exchanged email addresses, and posed for a group picture. After taking the picture, we went upstairs to leave, and my wife’s cousin resolved herself to stay out later. She said that she was going back to 8mm and not to wait up for her. We asked her if she was sure, and she said, “Yeah. I’m going to try to meet up with some friends.” Fair enough. She’s a grown woman, and I don’t think that Berlin has much violent crime. We weren’t really all that concerned. We felt somewhat lame going back to bed so early when there was still fun to be had. However, we only had half a day to spend in Berlin the next day. We didn’t want to have to spend it sleeping. Returning to the hotel to sleep was clearly the right thing to do. We walked back, and went to sleep pretty quickly. Her cousin never came back.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
August 7, 2008
When we awoke my wife was feeling much better, though we knew that it couldn’t possibly be over completely. We speculated at the causes, and determined that it must have had something to do with the steady intake of alcohol, perhaps all of the weed in Amsterdam, and the lack of water or fruit juice. Neither one of us had actually drunk much other than beer the past few days. As a result, my wife resolved not to drink any more beer that day. We went downstairs to the hotel’s free breakfast and ate well. They had plenty of orange and apple juice, though no cranberry. We got another bottle of water from the vending machine before leaving the hotel.
We resigned ourselves to the fact that our Brussels experience was kind of lame, and headed back to the train station. We took a different route back to it than we had initially taken when we arrived. Our gamble was rewarded as we found a lovely pocket of stores selling Belgian chocolates and beers. We bought a substantial volume of expensive chocolate and a small sampler of various excellent beers. Once back at the train station, we were excited to board our train and get the fuck out of Brussels.
Once we returned to Düsseldorf and back to my wife’s cousin’s apartment, my wife wanted to rest some more. Her cousin was still at work. So I sat and read. By the time I had finished Crime and Punishment, my wife was ready to head out into Düsseldorf for another evening of light shopping, gallery hopping and dinner.The last stop on our trip was going to be Berlin. We were headed there first thing Friday morning, and we’d be returning Saturday. Sunday morning our flight back to the States would be leaving. My wife’s cousin is very fond of Berlin, and decided to use half a vacation day on Friday to accompany us to Berlin.
We resigned ourselves to the fact that our Brussels experience was kind of lame, and headed back to the train station. We took a different route back to it than we had initially taken when we arrived. Our gamble was rewarded as we found a lovely pocket of stores selling Belgian chocolates and beers. We bought a substantial volume of expensive chocolate and a small sampler of various excellent beers. Once back at the train station, we were excited to board our train and get the fuck out of Brussels.
Once we returned to Düsseldorf and back to my wife’s cousin’s apartment, my wife wanted to rest some more. Her cousin was still at work. So I sat and read. By the time I had finished Crime and Punishment, my wife was ready to head out into Düsseldorf for another evening of light shopping, gallery hopping and dinner.The last stop on our trip was going to be Berlin. We were headed there first thing Friday morning, and we’d be returning Saturday. Sunday morning our flight back to the States would be leaving. My wife’s cousin is very fond of Berlin, and decided to use half a vacation day on Friday to accompany us to Berlin.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
August 6, 2008
Brussels is approximately the same distance from Düsseldorf as Amsterdam. They’re each about a 2 or 2.5 hour train ride. Much like our departure for Amsterdam, we got up early, prepared and left quickly. We each grabbed breakfast in the form of a cookie and a coffee at a Starbucks which was on our way to the train. It was our understanding that there was only one train that would be able to take us to Brussels.
As we stood on the platform, we saw another train boarding and ready to pull out that looked like it was headed to another city just beyond Brussels. It seemed safe to assume that it would make a stop in Brussels. So we considered boarding it in a hurry, though we hesitated for fear of the potential mess that deviating from our plans could entail. The attendants all blew their whistles, indicating that the train would be leaving imminently. Hearing that whistle meant that if you were going to board you should have done so by the time you heard it, though they’d still let you on if you moved quickly. My wife panicked and ran up to one of the attendants. He was a slightly older-looking gentleman. She immediately began pelting him with questions in English. “Is this train going to stop in Brussels? Is it too late to get on? Do we need reservations?” He really did not like this. His expression turned angry in an instant, and he fired back, “This is Germany! We are Germans!” What my wife did was rude, no doubt. The whole time we were in Europe, I was careful to politely ask people if they spoke English before speaking to them in it. If they agreed, I would proceed with the fevered question asking. In her haste, my wife had skipped the first step. It was easily understandable, given our generally sleep-deprived state. Though I could understand his irritation, it seemed to me that the hostility of his response was disproportionate to my wife’s transgression. He had to know that by lecturing my wife on the etiquette of speaking the native tongue of a place when you’re visiting it, he was making us miss the train. My wife is never one to back away from a verbal exchange. As she was gearing up to shout, “Fuck you! And Fuck your country!” back at him (I can read her mind), I pulled her away by her right arm, and we disappeared into the crowd. It’s one of the reasons I love her. I generally don’t mind it, as she often saves me the trouble of getting shitty with people by doing it for me, but in this particular situation it didn’t seem like a good idea. She can be a fiery woman, and it’s charming even when she’s wrong, as in this case. My heart smiled.
Fuck him and his country, indeed. I had generally liked what I’d seen of Germany thus far, and hitherto I hadn’t met a German whom I hadn’t liked. They’d all been very kind and helpful. This guy was just a passive-aggressive redneck. We have them at home too. They’re the same people who don’t want Spanish taught or spoken in Florida or California, and they have “These Colors Don’t Run” stickers with American flags on their pickup trucks. Germans don’t like excitement. They don’t like it when the polite and efficient habitual social patterns fail. They get unhinged easily. Days ago, when I’d sat on the concrete lion, the guard had lost his cool, as if I could have somehow hurt the concrete lion by sitting on it. If you had dropped me out of a plane onto the concrete lion, I couldn’t have hurt it. The train attendant blowing his whistle and guarding the door obviously spoke English, as evidenced by the fact that he was able to lecture my wife in it. Germans just don’t know how to handle commotion. Then again, we may have been assholes for bringing our uniquely poisonous brand of American dysfunction with us across the Atlantic to infect the land that had given the world the Third Reich, light fizzy beer and extremely well-engineered cars. The fact that we were spending our American tourist dollars in his local economy quickly assuaged any feelings of guilt that I had almost felt. Yes. She was right. Fuck him and his oversensitive country. Off to Belgium!
When the train that we had planned on taking arrived, we boarded it. Our passes were first class, and we ran to the first available private room that we could find and sat in it. These rooms are one of the nicest aspects of the high speed trains that run around all over Europe. They’re well worth the extra expense. Each room generally contains four or six plush leather recliners, all positioned around a heavy wooden table, all enclosed by two heavy sliding glass doors. We threw our bags down and sat in the opposing window seats of the first room we found. It is somewhat wasteful that two people should be the only ones occupying a room made to accommodate six, but nothing prevents anybody else from coming into your room and sitting with you. They’re equally entitled to it. Shortly after we had settled in, a family of three came in and sat with us. There were two females and one male. I couldn’t tell if they were all siblings or if the eldest female was the mother. She was, however, clearly the one in charge of their little group. Once we heard them speak it, was clear that they were very English. I know that there are subtle dialects and variations of English accents, though I’m not familiar with them. All I could tell is that it was English. We all started talking. They were great people, and it was refreshing to speak comfortably with strangers without being concerned about speaking too fast for them. My wife retold the story about the angry train attendant, and the lead English woman exclaimed, “That cheeky bastard!” I laughed hard, and nearly blurted out, “Holy shit! You people really say that!” I restrained myself as I feared that it might be taken the wrong way. I was somewhat delirious from my lingering jet lag and mild sleep deprivation. They left the train before we did. We wished them well, and they returned the gesture. Wonderful people can be found anywhere.
We arrived in Brussels early in the afternoon and it was ungodly hot. I had arrived in Brussels possessed of the irrational notion that it was slightly north of our point of origin and thus would be of slightly cooler temperature. I was very wrong. It felt no different than August back home.
We began our 45 minute walk to the hotel. The man at the front desk of our hotel spoke excellent English, and got us squared away with a deluxe room very quickly. All of the rooms in the hotel were themed for different countries all over the world. We got the India room. It was really incredible, and not very expensive, considering the ornate interior. The closet door was hand-carved with images from the Kama Sutra. I took pictures. We left our bags and headed right back out in search of our first destination in Brussels.
The Cantillon Brewery makes a variety of very specialized beers in very traditional Belgian styles. These people have elevated the production of beer to a level of sophistication rivaling fine wines. There was an old man at the desk who spoke decent English and gave us a brief explanation of how the self-guided tour works. We paid him. He gave us a sheet of paper with information to be read at each stop on the tour, and he sent us on our way though the brewery. My wife played tour guide. Breweries are cool. We’ve toured a bunch of them back home, and this one wasn’t very different except for the fact that it was much older. It struck us as funny that the tour was conducted without supervision. Aside from the potential risk of us stealing trade secrets, the legal liability of turning people loose seemed egregious. We could have easily fallen off of the ancient spiral staircase and mangled ourselves. It seemed apparent that Belgians must not be nearly as litigious as Americans. They probably have a more common-sense legal system that wouldn’t tolerate those sorts of shitty, opportunistic lawsuits aimed at nothing but extracting money for irresponsible personal behavior. Good for them. We were careful to use the railings and not touch anything. The brewery was beautiful and old. At the end of the tour, the old man brought us samples of their beer and it was incredible. Whereas I don’t really enjoy fruit beer very much, my wife does. She loved it. I didn’t love it, but it was markedly better than any fruit beers that I had tried at home. We bought a small sampler containing a variety of the different styles they made there.
After we left the Cantillon Brewery, the trouble began. Neither one of us was drunk, but we hadn’t eaten in quite a while. We were very hungry. The extreme dry heat amplified this. I don’t know exactly what part of Brussels we were in, but it was like a ghost town. Just about everything was closed, and there weren’t people around anywhere. We made an effort to look for a food place that seemed worthwhile and authentic. Quickly we realized that this was out of the question. We found a small quaint-looking deli that had sandwiches and beer. It was family run. We cautiously asked the woman at the counter if she spoke English. Not a word of it. She didn’t even know how to say “No.” She just smiled bashfully and shook her head. My bullshit meter is pretty sensitive, and I could tell that she wasn’t lying. She did, however, motion for her son to come over. He looked to be about 13, and he did speak a little English. We had no cash, and he explained, thankfully before we ordered, that they don’t take credit cards. Thus started our next hunt: we had to find an ATM. This took a good half hour. It would have been impossible if not for our GPS. Once we had money we returned to the deli, ordered, ate, and each had an excellent Belgian beer. Belgian beer is arguably the best in the world, and in Belgium it really is cheaper than water. The food was good, but not incredible. We didn’t care.
Once lunch was over, we embarked upon our next adventure, still limping from the first one. We were headed for the main art museum in Brussels. I love art museums. We hunted vigorously, and even took a subway to save ourselves some of the trouble of walking a great distance. The subways in Brussels run on the same honor system that they do in Germany, and once again lacking honor, we rode for free. Thanks, Brussels. Strangely, the subway trains all smelled like horse manure. I didn’t exactly understand how that was possible, since horse manure is a specific and unmistakable scent. It didn’t seem likely that anybody had brought any horses or their waste onto the trains. There wasn’t much time to wonder about it. After some mild navigational difficulties, we made it to the museum, just in time for it to close. We were utterly out of patience, and just decided to return to our hotel room to regroup. When we got to our room, we both fell asleep on the bed for a solid two hours.
After our nap, my wife prepared herself for an evening out. We planned on taking it easy, as she was beginning to feel unwell. I was beginning to get paranoid about all of the stealing of public transportation that we were doing. I determined that we should get subway passes. We went down into the station and over to the kiosk. I asked if he spoke English. He replied, “No.” He was lying, but I didn’t care. I held up two fingers, and asked for two passes. He responded in French, the official language in Belgium, with the total money we owed for them. I didn’t understand. My wife actually had four years of French in high school and a semester of it in college. She quickly interjected that she spoke a little French, but could he please slow down a little. He repeated himself with the same cadence he had the first time, only just a little bit louder and more annunciated. My wife still couldn’t understand him. He could tell this immediately, and he began counting on his fingers in French. He made it to the number nine. Then he repeated it, and said something else afterwards that must have been the change. I gave him a ten euro note, and he gave me some small change in return.
There was one particular bar my wife had really wanted to find to eat dinner in. After riding the train to the correct part of town, we began looking for it. We failed, but persisted for a while in looking. We must have been in the very touristy part of town, because there were tons of restaurants. Each one had a maître d’ standing out front, calling to passersby, and they were all extremely loud and pushy. Eventually we gave up searching for the bar and began walking through the maze of restaurants and cafés, looking for something suitable. There were lots of places selling crepes. We like crepes. So we picked one. The crepes were good. My wife’s situation was beginning to worsen, though. She was feeling sicker, and suspected that she was developing a urinary tract infection. We resigned ourselves to just head back to the room after finding some cranberry juice.
This proved impossible. Apparently cranberries aren’t very readily available or popular in Europe. We even looked for a pharmacy, where we hoped to find something that might be helpful. We failed and just went back to the room. There was a vending machine in the hotel lobby where we would be able to get my wife plenty of water. That would have to be enough.
The gracious man at the front desk was no longer there. Instead there was a very attractive-looking woman who looked to be in hear early 40s. I considered making a comment to my wife on that point but decided against it. We approached her and explained my wife’s problem. As it turns out, her English was every bit as good as that of the man who had been there earlier. She understood completely. She had a remedy for it that she kept at her home, but didn’t have handy. She said that she would call her husband. He would drive it over, and she’d send him up with it when he arrived. She was easily the nicest, most helpful person we met the whole time we were in Europe. He brought a few tablets of something that looked like a simple over-the-counter medication and provided instructions for taking it. We thanked them both profusely. My wife took the tablets as instructed. We spent the evening in the room watching TV and eventually went to sleep early.
As we stood on the platform, we saw another train boarding and ready to pull out that looked like it was headed to another city just beyond Brussels. It seemed safe to assume that it would make a stop in Brussels. So we considered boarding it in a hurry, though we hesitated for fear of the potential mess that deviating from our plans could entail. The attendants all blew their whistles, indicating that the train would be leaving imminently. Hearing that whistle meant that if you were going to board you should have done so by the time you heard it, though they’d still let you on if you moved quickly. My wife panicked and ran up to one of the attendants. He was a slightly older-looking gentleman. She immediately began pelting him with questions in English. “Is this train going to stop in Brussels? Is it too late to get on? Do we need reservations?” He really did not like this. His expression turned angry in an instant, and he fired back, “This is Germany! We are Germans!” What my wife did was rude, no doubt. The whole time we were in Europe, I was careful to politely ask people if they spoke English before speaking to them in it. If they agreed, I would proceed with the fevered question asking. In her haste, my wife had skipped the first step. It was easily understandable, given our generally sleep-deprived state. Though I could understand his irritation, it seemed to me that the hostility of his response was disproportionate to my wife’s transgression. He had to know that by lecturing my wife on the etiquette of speaking the native tongue of a place when you’re visiting it, he was making us miss the train. My wife is never one to back away from a verbal exchange. As she was gearing up to shout, “Fuck you! And Fuck your country!” back at him (I can read her mind), I pulled her away by her right arm, and we disappeared into the crowd. It’s one of the reasons I love her. I generally don’t mind it, as she often saves me the trouble of getting shitty with people by doing it for me, but in this particular situation it didn’t seem like a good idea. She can be a fiery woman, and it’s charming even when she’s wrong, as in this case. My heart smiled.
Fuck him and his country, indeed. I had generally liked what I’d seen of Germany thus far, and hitherto I hadn’t met a German whom I hadn’t liked. They’d all been very kind and helpful. This guy was just a passive-aggressive redneck. We have them at home too. They’re the same people who don’t want Spanish taught or spoken in Florida or California, and they have “These Colors Don’t Run” stickers with American flags on their pickup trucks. Germans don’t like excitement. They don’t like it when the polite and efficient habitual social patterns fail. They get unhinged easily. Days ago, when I’d sat on the concrete lion, the guard had lost his cool, as if I could have somehow hurt the concrete lion by sitting on it. If you had dropped me out of a plane onto the concrete lion, I couldn’t have hurt it. The train attendant blowing his whistle and guarding the door obviously spoke English, as evidenced by the fact that he was able to lecture my wife in it. Germans just don’t know how to handle commotion. Then again, we may have been assholes for bringing our uniquely poisonous brand of American dysfunction with us across the Atlantic to infect the land that had given the world the Third Reich, light fizzy beer and extremely well-engineered cars. The fact that we were spending our American tourist dollars in his local economy quickly assuaged any feelings of guilt that I had almost felt. Yes. She was right. Fuck him and his oversensitive country. Off to Belgium!
When the train that we had planned on taking arrived, we boarded it. Our passes were first class, and we ran to the first available private room that we could find and sat in it. These rooms are one of the nicest aspects of the high speed trains that run around all over Europe. They’re well worth the extra expense. Each room generally contains four or six plush leather recliners, all positioned around a heavy wooden table, all enclosed by two heavy sliding glass doors. We threw our bags down and sat in the opposing window seats of the first room we found. It is somewhat wasteful that two people should be the only ones occupying a room made to accommodate six, but nothing prevents anybody else from coming into your room and sitting with you. They’re equally entitled to it. Shortly after we had settled in, a family of three came in and sat with us. There were two females and one male. I couldn’t tell if they were all siblings or if the eldest female was the mother. She was, however, clearly the one in charge of their little group. Once we heard them speak it, was clear that they were very English. I know that there are subtle dialects and variations of English accents, though I’m not familiar with them. All I could tell is that it was English. We all started talking. They were great people, and it was refreshing to speak comfortably with strangers without being concerned about speaking too fast for them. My wife retold the story about the angry train attendant, and the lead English woman exclaimed, “That cheeky bastard!” I laughed hard, and nearly blurted out, “Holy shit! You people really say that!” I restrained myself as I feared that it might be taken the wrong way. I was somewhat delirious from my lingering jet lag and mild sleep deprivation. They left the train before we did. We wished them well, and they returned the gesture. Wonderful people can be found anywhere.
We arrived in Brussels early in the afternoon and it was ungodly hot. I had arrived in Brussels possessed of the irrational notion that it was slightly north of our point of origin and thus would be of slightly cooler temperature. I was very wrong. It felt no different than August back home.
We began our 45 minute walk to the hotel. The man at the front desk of our hotel spoke excellent English, and got us squared away with a deluxe room very quickly. All of the rooms in the hotel were themed for different countries all over the world. We got the India room. It was really incredible, and not very expensive, considering the ornate interior. The closet door was hand-carved with images from the Kama Sutra. I took pictures. We left our bags and headed right back out in search of our first destination in Brussels.
The Cantillon Brewery makes a variety of very specialized beers in very traditional Belgian styles. These people have elevated the production of beer to a level of sophistication rivaling fine wines. There was an old man at the desk who spoke decent English and gave us a brief explanation of how the self-guided tour works. We paid him. He gave us a sheet of paper with information to be read at each stop on the tour, and he sent us on our way though the brewery. My wife played tour guide. Breweries are cool. We’ve toured a bunch of them back home, and this one wasn’t very different except for the fact that it was much older. It struck us as funny that the tour was conducted without supervision. Aside from the potential risk of us stealing trade secrets, the legal liability of turning people loose seemed egregious. We could have easily fallen off of the ancient spiral staircase and mangled ourselves. It seemed apparent that Belgians must not be nearly as litigious as Americans. They probably have a more common-sense legal system that wouldn’t tolerate those sorts of shitty, opportunistic lawsuits aimed at nothing but extracting money for irresponsible personal behavior. Good for them. We were careful to use the railings and not touch anything. The brewery was beautiful and old. At the end of the tour, the old man brought us samples of their beer and it was incredible. Whereas I don’t really enjoy fruit beer very much, my wife does. She loved it. I didn’t love it, but it was markedly better than any fruit beers that I had tried at home. We bought a small sampler containing a variety of the different styles they made there.
After we left the Cantillon Brewery, the trouble began. Neither one of us was drunk, but we hadn’t eaten in quite a while. We were very hungry. The extreme dry heat amplified this. I don’t know exactly what part of Brussels we were in, but it was like a ghost town. Just about everything was closed, and there weren’t people around anywhere. We made an effort to look for a food place that seemed worthwhile and authentic. Quickly we realized that this was out of the question. We found a small quaint-looking deli that had sandwiches and beer. It was family run. We cautiously asked the woman at the counter if she spoke English. Not a word of it. She didn’t even know how to say “No.” She just smiled bashfully and shook her head. My bullshit meter is pretty sensitive, and I could tell that she wasn’t lying. She did, however, motion for her son to come over. He looked to be about 13, and he did speak a little English. We had no cash, and he explained, thankfully before we ordered, that they don’t take credit cards. Thus started our next hunt: we had to find an ATM. This took a good half hour. It would have been impossible if not for our GPS. Once we had money we returned to the deli, ordered, ate, and each had an excellent Belgian beer. Belgian beer is arguably the best in the world, and in Belgium it really is cheaper than water. The food was good, but not incredible. We didn’t care.
Once lunch was over, we embarked upon our next adventure, still limping from the first one. We were headed for the main art museum in Brussels. I love art museums. We hunted vigorously, and even took a subway to save ourselves some of the trouble of walking a great distance. The subways in Brussels run on the same honor system that they do in Germany, and once again lacking honor, we rode for free. Thanks, Brussels. Strangely, the subway trains all smelled like horse manure. I didn’t exactly understand how that was possible, since horse manure is a specific and unmistakable scent. It didn’t seem likely that anybody had brought any horses or their waste onto the trains. There wasn’t much time to wonder about it. After some mild navigational difficulties, we made it to the museum, just in time for it to close. We were utterly out of patience, and just decided to return to our hotel room to regroup. When we got to our room, we both fell asleep on the bed for a solid two hours.
After our nap, my wife prepared herself for an evening out. We planned on taking it easy, as she was beginning to feel unwell. I was beginning to get paranoid about all of the stealing of public transportation that we were doing. I determined that we should get subway passes. We went down into the station and over to the kiosk. I asked if he spoke English. He replied, “No.” He was lying, but I didn’t care. I held up two fingers, and asked for two passes. He responded in French, the official language in Belgium, with the total money we owed for them. I didn’t understand. My wife actually had four years of French in high school and a semester of it in college. She quickly interjected that she spoke a little French, but could he please slow down a little. He repeated himself with the same cadence he had the first time, only just a little bit louder and more annunciated. My wife still couldn’t understand him. He could tell this immediately, and he began counting on his fingers in French. He made it to the number nine. Then he repeated it, and said something else afterwards that must have been the change. I gave him a ten euro note, and he gave me some small change in return.
There was one particular bar my wife had really wanted to find to eat dinner in. After riding the train to the correct part of town, we began looking for it. We failed, but persisted for a while in looking. We must have been in the very touristy part of town, because there were tons of restaurants. Each one had a maître d’ standing out front, calling to passersby, and they were all extremely loud and pushy. Eventually we gave up searching for the bar and began walking through the maze of restaurants and cafés, looking for something suitable. There were lots of places selling crepes. We like crepes. So we picked one. The crepes were good. My wife’s situation was beginning to worsen, though. She was feeling sicker, and suspected that she was developing a urinary tract infection. We resigned ourselves to just head back to the room after finding some cranberry juice.
This proved impossible. Apparently cranberries aren’t very readily available or popular in Europe. We even looked for a pharmacy, where we hoped to find something that might be helpful. We failed and just went back to the room. There was a vending machine in the hotel lobby where we would be able to get my wife plenty of water. That would have to be enough.
The gracious man at the front desk was no longer there. Instead there was a very attractive-looking woman who looked to be in hear early 40s. I considered making a comment to my wife on that point but decided against it. We approached her and explained my wife’s problem. As it turns out, her English was every bit as good as that of the man who had been there earlier. She understood completely. She had a remedy for it that she kept at her home, but didn’t have handy. She said that she would call her husband. He would drive it over, and she’d send him up with it when he arrived. She was easily the nicest, most helpful person we met the whole time we were in Europe. He brought a few tablets of something that looked like a simple over-the-counter medication and provided instructions for taking it. We thanked them both profusely. My wife took the tablets as instructed. We spent the evening in the room watching TV and eventually went to sleep early.
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