Timo stops: "Aren't you guys getting any beers?"
Sometimes I really miss Germany. It's not just the drinking, though the beer and wine are great — it's also the bakeries and ice cream shops and the supermarket itself, which brought back a lot of memories from my term abroad. Cheap jam, strange meats and cheeses.
It's the delightful, tentative way so many Germans use English, as if they're holding each word in front of them with calipers. It's the cobblestones, and the trains that can take you almost anywhere. It's the döner stands, even though the place in Reutlingen uses an inferior garlic sauce.
I really didn't expect to come back to Europe so soon, only three years after my last visit. In all honesty, I don't have many contacts there — partially because my refusal to speak English with most Germans often resulted in my not speaking at all — but luckily I had Graham, skilled people person, to latch onto.
Pilot fish. That's the word I was looking for. Seems like a less sinister metaphor.
Graham. It shook my concept of friendship to find/remember that yes, if I spend more than a little bit of time with Graham he becomes a real person, with faults and idiosyncrasies, some of them either new to me or only now perceivable with my enhanced (+2) evil eye. These people are supposed to be immune to my judgmental side...
My first night was the definition of low-key. Graham, Timo, and I played a few rounds of Lunch Money, a simple card game with complicated rules, before I prematurely drifted off. I was stuck between time zones for most of the break, falling asleep at 10 instead of 2 and waking up at dawn unable to continue sleeping.
Embarrassing. Maybe if I'd stayed up later that first night...
Then, travel. I spent three days in Amsterdam hanging out in bars and "brown cafes" and coffeeshops, drinking a lot of hot chocolate and abstaining (for a number of good reasons) from the Netherland's most famous pseudo-legal attraction.
Not that the coffeeshops aren't cool though: I'm generally in favor of any institution that can magically transform "sitting around and talking" into a valid social activity rather than a disappointing nothing. In terms of comfortable surroundings alone (again, I can't speak for the wares), a place called Abraxas was my favorite.
I'd vowed that if people were getting high I would be drinking and not twiddling my thumbs, but ne'er the twain shall meet in Amsterdam, apparently.
We ducked into an Irish pub on the first night — though it turned out to be a St. Patrick's Day special, I still think that bars could profit by offering free stew to lure customers — but it was crowded and somewhat expensive. Partially due to some lingering prejudice against the ubiquitous brown cafes, the quest for a good bar became a lingering theme of the trip.
On Saturday we toured the Heineken Brewery and learned next to nothing about brewing. But it was entertaining, and the price of admission (about $12.50) entitled us to a bunch of free stuff. See Malin and Our Bold Hero at the end of the tour:
Graham and Gabi, sitting opposite:
Mere moments later, Graham successfully balanced a full glass on his head.
Later that night, when our group was a bit bigger, we went to a place called The Last Watering Hole, which our hotel manager had recommended. It was a great bar, large and smoky with the biggest coasters in the world, and I think we could have sat there all night, directly under the gigantic framed picture of Rod Stewart, if not for the loud and incompetent playing of some band whose name I already forget.
Doubtless it will come to me later, like pilot fish. I woke up days after one conversation this break finally remembering the word "rickshaw." It was glorious.
We finally got a bit of culture on Sunday, when like the Lord coming from on high a guy named Jordan came and showed us Amsterdam, taking upon himself most of the duties I'd assumed as the de facto astronaut wrangler. We met at the Van Gogh Museum, which I didn't like much due to its high admission, crowds, limited selection and (shocking for someone used to the Smithsonian) no-photo policy.
After some traditional snacks and a tour of the red light district (and that was weird, very weird), Jordan led the guys off somewhere or other while the girls and I journeyed to Amsterdam's Modern Art museum.
All the famous modern art was elsewhere, but the exhibits they had were decent enough. Here's a piece I liked from the Eberhard Havekost exhibit, part of his "Destiny" series. Finding solemnity in the everyday.
Biggest disappointment: the video games as art exhibit, which had a great concept, some good art, and... a lot of crap. They'd hung a video of someone playing Katamari on the wall; that worked well.
That night, we stumbled upon the best bar we went to, Cafe Hotel Cornerhouse near Abraxas. Read that name again, seriously. More pictures, this time Aryn and Sean:
And Jordan and Graham. Jordan has one of those delicious dark trappist beers.
We left Amsterdam the next day, somewhat fitfully. We were stranded for a while at Amsterdam-Sloterdijk "by order of the police," who stopped the trains coming and going from the nearby airport after a conductor spotted workmen inside one of the tunnels. They didn't tell us all this stuff about workmen at the time, however. Graham started spinning tales of bird flu at the airport while I tried to spot any undercover cops patrolling the area in search of the escaping terrorist.
After a quick tour of the Hague, we ended up in Deventer, still in the Netherlands, where Jordan lives and works with his boss. We sat up talking that night, about politics of various kinds for the most part. It was the first of many times I felt like the only libertarian in all of Europe.
Luckily I can still criticize Bush on many of the same issues as liberals, with no one the wiser.
In the morning I continued to read Daemonomania, which I'd bought in the Hague. I could have done without the weird, early sex scenes — the book felt a bit disorganized, frankly — but Crowley has a way with words that you may find me emulating. Occasional lyric mysticism, pregnant sentence fragments ending in prepositions.
The next adventure was Brussels, where we met up with a girl Graham knows and her go-go twenty-something friends. Drinking again (ten days in a row, this break: spring break!) and then tapas. Tapas is a ripoff, btw.
Funny to hear that for people in Brussels even the choice of language can be very political.
I slept at a friend of a friend of a friend's house, and that morning Graham and I walked around the city. We looked at some church and I managed to coax (read: push) Graham into a modern art museum. Good stuff: a Max Ernst, a lot of Magritte, Hiroshige: a lot of great art.
That night, our last before the final push back to Reutlingen, was split between two opposites, Nils in Trier (where we ate dinner; I had a great pizza with white asparagus and two kinds of salami) and Thorsten in Saarbrucken (where we went dancing). One was efficient and studious, the other all flash and jive.
Not quite opposites, really, but they were framed as roughly that and I ended up conceiving of them as such. The burden fell more heavily on Thorsten, who as the second one I met was forced into the archetypal role of the "anti-Nils."
Here's Nils, listening as I try to refute his crazy "games are a waste of time" theory.
Our first night back in Reutlingen was the first night of "Schwabishe Wochle," three days celebrating all things schwabish. Mainly... in fact, exclusively... the food.
The three of us saw V for Vendetta and liked it. I'd just read the graphic novel and found the two pretty similar by movie adaptation standards, but I disliked the easy morality and oversimplification of the movie version.
Saturday, after buying booze at Walmart and preparing enough spaetzle for twenty Germans, we had a bunch of people over for a party. We played King's Cup, and I'm afraid that I may have soured my Reutlingen legacy by trying to "run" a game with too many people at the table using an amalgamation of three different rule sets. It wasn't a great game, but apparently people had fun. I nodded off toward the end of the night and had what I assume were crazy dreams.
Sunday, everything was closed. Ah, German blue laws, I even missed you. We ended up playing Die Siedler with Hannes and Tanni, Arno's friend and gf respectively. Good game... so close to winning...
Risk, afterwards... I didn't stand much of a chance. Here's Hannes about ten minutes before he completed his special goal: destroying me.
Monday we (Timo, Graham, and I again) met briefly with Arno at the airport, and in the airport Burger King, Arno and I made plans to meet again in three years or so. It's been roughly the plan so far.
So, in summation: Whoo!
