Monthly Archive for March, 2009

White Russians & Chili Peppers In Dresden

On March 27, 2009 from Germany. 3 Comments.

Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.
—Kurt Vonnegut

It was snowing when I came into Dresden, but the city was nice. The Altdstadt on the south side of the Elbe has all the pre-war fire-blazed buildings, and the Neustadt is a mishmash of ugly modern, ugly Soviet, and cool old buildings, 200 of which are bars, most of which have awesome themes.

Play has old 8-tracks and tape decks wedged like bricks into the bar and the tables. The Living Room is all couches and coffee tables and dim lighting. Lebowski has a mural of the Dude and the Stranger painted on the wall in front of bowling lanes, and I got a White Russian there.

Every once in a while I like to make a big meal myself. Since the hostel kitchens aren’t much, this is usually pasta. I found a market hall in Dresden with a nice grocery store, a butcher, a baker, and all that and got some pasta, sauce, mushrooms, and onions, and found some spicy sausage and four red chili peppers. German stuff can’t possibly be as hot as the American equivalent.

I cut up the onion and tossed the bad core. Whenever you buy a bunch of onions there’s always one bad one. I sauteed what was left with garlic, added the ripped up sausage, diced and threw in two of the red peppers (which I found by experimenting were kind of hot), then put in the cut up mushrooms and the sauce.

“That looks good,” said Yo from Thailand.

“Yeah,” I said. It did look good. After I served it, a big plate of pasta and the chunky, spicy sauce, with a little plate of bread and Brie and a glass of black Dresden beer, it looked so damn good I took a picture. I started eating it. Jesus, it was hot. I kept eating it.

I thought of the New Zealander I met in Edinburgh. His dinner was pasta, plain spaghetti sauce, and a bunch of Jalapeño pepper slices from a jar. He didn’t even have anything to drink with it. Just kept spooning it in, red-faced and crying.

Pretty soon that’s what I was doing only I was sniffling too. I always liked how hot stuff cleans out your sinuses.

“It’s good for you,” said the German physicist. “It kills all the bacteria in your stomach.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s definitely killing something.”

I decided not to make the joke about bacterial genocide, since I was still in Germany.

When it was all eaten, I sat back, finished my beer, ate an orange and some chocolate, and relishing the hot coals of indigestion in my stomach I thought, That was good. Next time I’ll need more peppers.

Berlin’s Somber Zeitgeist

On March 23, 2009 from Germany. 0 Comments.

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.
—Charles Dickens

German people are kind of fascists. They have so many rules and are dead serious about every one. “Wear your bag on the front.” “You can’t bring that bottle in here.” “That bag is too big.” “You can’t carry your coat in here. Put it back on.” “You have to ask before you use that sink.” “You can’t lean against that wall.” “You can’t drink that beer in my Millennium Bar.”

They yell at you, and then if they ever catch sight of you again, they glare at you. And this is in Berlin. To be fair, it’s really only the security guards and bartenders that are part-time Gestapo. Everyone else is really nice, although they will not ever cross the street until the light says it’s okay, no matter how empty the street is. One of my professors once told me, “Before they protest, the Germans ask the police if it’s not too much trouble.”

Everything in the city is so nice and new, with space age modern architecture alongside old buildings rebuilt after the war. There’s a vibrant art scene, high-tech industry, and a lot going on. It’s dead quiet though. Everyone but the tourists keep their heads down, and even on weekend nights things stay pretty well sedated — except on Saint Patrick’s day, now as riotous everywhere as it is in America. FACT: Ireland used to prohibit drinking on Saint Patty’s holy day, only letting up when they saw how much fun the Americans were having.

I walked around the Tiergarten, saw the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Tor. The Berlin Wall still stands along the winding River Spree alongside industrial streets and disheveled construction yards. Graffiti murals cover each side of every concrete segment. On a cloudy day I visited the Pergamon Museum. The huge collection of transplanted Greek and Babylonian architecture, including the Pergamon altar and the Ishtar Gate, miraculously escaped bombing during the war.

On Wednesday I went to the Berlin Zoo, famous for panda porn and baby polar bears. For a while, the sun was out. The elephants were wrestling, the wolves howling, the rhinos rolling in the wet top soil, the tiger and Knut the polar bear pacing back and forth on the rocks, the lion growling at tourists, and the monkeys shaking their branches. Then the clouds came back and everything went and hid in the corner like you’d expect them to do in wintry Germany. The sagely bison, as tall as I am and ten times as heavy, didn’t move a muscle even when birds started pulling out his hair for a nest.

Food in Berlin is the best. Beer is cheap, and so is the döner. This Turkish import is the Mexican food of Germany, and little restaurants mark every corner. They shave chicken or lamb off a huge kebab roast rotating in front of an oven, and put that in a pita with sauce and salad. It’s kind of like a gyro, kind of like schawarma, and really, really good.

Two Days In Cologne

On March 13, 2009 from Germany. 2 Comments.

Each day I go outside and sniff the air and say, ‘That way smells bad,’ and that’s where I go.
—Some firefighter from Canada

I have free access to a computer in Cologne, so I thought I’d write more specifically about what I’m doing for once.

I took a train from Amsterdam to Cologne and got in late Thursday afternoon. At the station they told me there was a backpacker’s hostel right around the corner, and it was. I could see the trains come in from my room on the fourth floor, and the wind carried German announcements fom the station floor. The hostel has a sign next to the window that says not to throw things at the restaraunteurs below, and they set up a net like the one at a driving range just in case people forget.

After I checked in I found a donor kebab restaraunt and ate there. I went back to the bar at the hostel and talked to some people from Japan who spoke a little English and something that no one could mistake for German. You meet strange people in hostel bars.

I met a student from Frankfurt named Adrian, a translator from Paris named Audrey working on her German, a food chemist from Munich named Niclas, and a firefighter from Montreal who spoke five languages and got a six month vacation after a house fell on him. He went to the airport and said, “Give me a ticket. I don’t care where it’s going. Just give me a ticket somewhere. Do you speak English? I said give me a ticket!” and ended up with a ticket to Frankfurt.

On Friday I did laundry in the sink, secured my bed for another night at the front desk, and got a pastry and coffee from Back Werk down the street plus a sandwich for lunch. I wandered around Cologne, using the spires of the cathedral as a reference point. It’s a huge gothic mess of buttressed terror that you see right as you come out of the central station. I walked around the shopping streets and the market squares, then went to the Museum Ludwig of modern art and tried to understand the Picasso paintings and the ones that are just solid colors with a line through them.

The clouds cleared late in the afternoon, so I walked around the parks on the Rhine. On my way back to the hostel I watched a street show by a German jackass named Theo Teabag, who after a ten-minute buildup demonstrated his talent by juggling torches on a unicycle while the German punks behind tried to topple him by popping balloons. I made dinner in the hostel kitchen and ate with a cute Bulgarian couple, Christine and Martine.

Yesterday Adrian of Frankfurt invited everyone to an electro club in downtown Cologne. Niclas wanted to leave at 10, but Adrian said he had to sleep until at least 11 if he wanted to party until 5 am. So tonight I’m going to check out the German techno. You really have to play it by ear when you travel this way.

Red Lights of Amsterdam

On March 12, 2009 from Netherlands. 2 Comments.

Say what is that?
An iPod.
Does it just do music?
Yeah, I’m old fashioned. I don’t need a phone or video or anything like on the iPhone.
Oh wow. I’ll have to swipe me one of those later. Hee hee hee.
—Man on the Amsterdam tram

In Europe I’ve talked to more homeless people than I ever thought I would. Eating street food alone on a bench or a wall is the best way to draw them out. It also helps to appear poor with a hint of disshevelment. If you can manage all that, so many homeless people will try to talk to you that you’ll wish you brought your tin foil hat.

They come up and candidly tell you things you never wanted to know ever and never asked about, and they help you with things you did not need help with until you feel like you’re pals, and then they spring the question — “Do you have any change” — and you feel bad if you don’t and taken advantage of if you do, like if a girl shows you a good time and then asks for a check, only the girl is a man with no teeth and never more than a dozen long hairs on his chin.

My favorite homeless people are the ones who practice Shakespeare, or something like that. They walk onto a subway car or stop still in the street like the Devil is taking hold and then belt out a fiery harangue that makes Mussolini look like Don Corleone. I never know what they say since it’s in French or Dutch or German, but it always sounds really impressive. I would probably put money in a cup if they had one out. When their vituperation is finished, these preachers of a ragged order just turn and leave, and nobody but me says a word or looks at them or even claps.

Amsterdam lies between Bruges and Las Vegas on at least several spectrums, but to see them all you’d have to take everything on the Smart Shop menu, from ’shrooms to sleeping pills. It’s more adult than Vegas, with fewer restrictions and less family-friendly frosting on the cake of debauchery. Yeah, there’s pot. Yeah, there’s hookers. Yeah, those twenty Danes are singing and pounding the table with their fists. Who cares?

Every Amsterdam local is totally chill with the whole business of their city, and they will talk to you about anything at the drop of a hat — a mellow disposition at odds with the grating number of tourists and the sometimes wild streets.

Most cobblestone avenues lack lanes, painted lines, and sidewalks, so the only way cars can move is to barrel through pedestrians like bowling balls. On these streets rove packs of feral frat boys — the same no matter what country they come from — especially in the alleys around the Red Light district and the nearby Warmoesstrat of weed cafe “coffee shops,” Irish pubs, shantytown hostels, and the ivory storefront of Condomerie that sells exactly what you think it does.

I liked Amsterdam. I skipped the museums and tried to see as much of the city as I could. Houseboats tied up and half-sunk on the canals between the streets. Sunny flower and flea markets and book stands. Seedy bars and alleyways. Wood-paneled coffee shop hot boxes that share the same playlist: Bob Marley and Air.

Today I came to Cologne, on the Rhine in Germany. I’ll stay here a few days before going across the country to Berlin, then Bavaria (Deutschland’s Texas). I was going to visit Hamburg, but vivid tales of the three mile-long street of strip clubs deterred that plan.

Other Things I Saw On the Way

On March 9, 2009 from Belgium. 0 Comments.

Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.
—George Carlin

I forgot to mention a few things:

Between Paris and Brussels I stopped to visit a friend in Lille, right on the border of Belgium and France. There are cannonballs stuck in the walls of the Flemish apartments, and the city boasts that its museum’s collection is the largest in France after the Louvre (though I don’t think anyone knows how many facts are bent to make that claim).

My friend’s parents showered me with Italian hospitality, even though their English was rusty and he had to translate both ways. I tried to learn a few words like “Grazie” to help out. They opened two bottles of wine to accompany a big Italian dinner, then invited me to help start a resort in their hometown of Acquapendente in Latium, Italy, which must be the nicest place in the world.

My last day in Paris was also very gratifying. I walked up to the top of Montmarte, a nice neighborhood and the tallest point in the city. From under the Sacre Coeur I could kind of make out the Eiffel tower against the glare. It was a sunny Saturday, and an American jazz ensemble played “Georgia On My Mind” in a square next to a carousel while all the Parisians clapped.

The city’s surly inhabitants came out en masse to enjoy what was probably their first nice weather weekend all winter. They packed the lawns of the Jardin des Tuilerios under the Louvre and didn’t mind having to leave their coats on.