germany is a nice place, parts 4 and 5

In which we went to Cologne and Aachen.

We slipped out of Bochum like thieves in the early morning, boarding our train bound for Cologne with a certain mad excitement.  I had been informed, you see, that Cologne is the number one tourist destination in Germany for Germans.  That's the kind of cultural intimacy I was looking for!  If I'm going to be a tourist in Germany, at least let me act like a German tourist.

Still, I think I gave it away when I stepped out of the train station and was confronted with the most awe-inspiring sight of my life.

This was a different time of day, hence the new color.

These pictures doesn't really do the cathedral justice.  When you leave the train station, it takes up your entire view, and it holds your attention like nothing else.  The sense of scale is just awesome -- it may be a lot shorter than a skyscraper, but no highrise has ever made me feel insignificantly tiny like the Cologne Cathedral did.  The reason for that is how incredibly detailed it is.  Every square inch of this cathedral is covered in some sort of engraving, gilding, carving, or other magnificent decoration.  Your eyes can't just sweep over it quickly; there's always another subtle detail to arrest your gaze.  I think that's why it impresses me so much more than any 100-story building could.  There's no uniformity, or even continuity, to the architecture.  It just goes, and goes, and goes, taking up your entire world.

The inside is pretty spectacular as well:

You go, St. George!

Skulls:  a popular motif

That's right.  It was so awesome that I don't even have any stupid jokes to tell.

After (reluctantly) leaving the cathedral, we took a walk across the city to the LINDT CHOCOLATE MUSEUM!

Which was closed.

Then we took another long walk and made our way to the Hohenzollern Bridge.  This bridge is a place where people leave locks on stuff to show that they're in love.  There are a lot of locks.

No, I mean A LOT.

They stretch the entire length of the bridge, and some on the other side.

 Apparently, the train company that operates the bridge grew concerned that the weight of the locks was causing structural instability.  They tried to remove some of them, but the public outcry was too great, and they were forced to relent.  So...we didn't stay on the bridge too long.

After that, we took a trip out to the Cologne Zoo!...but it was too expensive for us to be willing to go in.  However, right next door was the absolutely free Cologne Botanical Gardens!!!

You know, Germany has a lot of cranes

We saw an honest-to-goodness frog on a lily pad!

Greetings, feral cat!

After that, we went back to the hostel and just chillaxed.  I did notice the hostel's board game collection, however!

The next day, we frittered away our time, stared at the cathedral, then headed out for AACHEN!

Aachen, to those of you who are putzes, is where Charlemagne came from.  They are pretty proud of that.  The second coolest thing I saw there was this dog:

Aachen has a cathedral of its own, but it's a lot less impressive.  It's just where Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III, critically altering the future of European and world history.  No big deal.

We also saw Charlemagne's bones, so that was cool.

Would you believe that we also ate ice cream in Aachen?

Focus deliberate.  I have my priorities in order.

Oh, and we had currywurst.  That...that was the best.

PANORAMA OF AACHEN TOWN SQUARE

Can you see the most beautiful flower?  Yes, that's my wife.

The town hall, pictured in the last shot above, was really the best part of Aachen; it had an original meeting hall with a lot of Charlemagne stuff, and it was just really, really cool.  OK, it was still the second best part, actually.  The best part was this crazy German guy who lived in our hostel and told us about his time in the RAF flying F-16s around Lake Tahoe, and how his job know is making LASER TANKS (no kidding!).  He was awesome, and told us tons of jokes about how Germans have no sense of humor.

Then we left Aachen for good, heading to our true destination...a WEDDING at SAARBRÜCKEN!

germany is a nice place, part 3

Düsseldorf is considered one of the five major cities of Germany, but we went there on a Sunday, and Germans treat Sunday like an unloved relative, awkwardly acknowledging it when necessary but really avoiding interacting with it whenever possible.

But that didn't detract at all from its prettiness:

We wandered through the commercial and Japanese districts of the city and had a nice lunch at a Japanese restaurant, where I was able to finally communicate in a language I understand.  We wanted to check out more of the Japanese district, but it was Sunday in Germany, so...you know.  Not really an option.  So instead, we went to the harbor!

The walk to the harbor was...enlightening.  I saw things I never thought I'd see.

Not Pictured:  A bevy of middle-aged German ladies drinking schnapps

A shopping bonanza!

We also passed a brass band making a nuisance of themselves, a crazy circular eight-seater bike designed solely for bachelorette parties, and about nine hundred ice cream cafes.

Then we got to the harbor!

Proof.

Well, the actual harbor is a little more impressive.

We walked up and down the...wharf?  quay?..a ways, then killed some time eating ice cream:

Why is the tower twisted?!

Then hopped aboard the RHINE RIVER TOUR!!!

This is actually when we got off the boat, but never mind that.

We had a lovely, scenic cruise down the Rhine, during which I drank tons of apfelschorle and took almost no pictures.  It was unlimited drinks, you see, and I wasn't about to pass that up.  I mean, there was beer too, but who wants that when there's apfelschorle around?

So after cruisin' down the Rhine, we landed at KAISERSWERTH, a sleepy town whose main feature is a castle built by none other than FREDERICK BARBAROSSA!

Awwww yisssssss this guy

And what a castle it was:

It was originally a customs collection point, so they needed a castle to...scare smugglers I guess?

The wife was keeping an eye out for smugglers...I only had eyes for her.

Then we hit the town proper, which was home to some terrifying restaurant that made my eyes bleed from the nightmarish decorations in its bathroom (we did not eat there; no human soul can eat there and keep any food down).  I didn't get any pictures, either, because I was too afraid and merely needed to escape.

The town was cute, though.  Not terrifying in the slightest.

Then we hit up a palace, Schloss Benrath!  A pleasure palace!  With rococo!

People, experiencing pleasure.

Geese, experiencing pleasure.

A lion, experiencing HEY WAIT A MINUTE

I do not envy the groundskeepers.

Then we scampered down a winding forest pathway, only to come upon the most unsettling sight I witnessed while abroad:

Germany, everybody.

Then we saw a swan attack a few people, then we went BACK through the woods, and found something particularly fascinating.

People have been carving their initials in these trees for decades -- you can see here a carving from 1931.  What's really interesting about this is that the carving pictured is well above eye level; in fact, it's actually grown upwards with the tree.

Consider it -- what you might consider a transitory marker of infatuation could become part of someone else's story nearly a century later.  With every year the tree grows taller, the record of your love reaches closer and closer to the sky.  Hella romantic.

Then we saw Cinderella doing a photo shoot at the palace.  A family walked by, and the husband asked if Cinderella wouldn't mind taking a picture with him.  She said sure, so he climbed the steps to stand next to her, at which point his wife called out "No touching!"

NO TOUCHING.

Then we went back and got dinner!  And, more importantly, we got more apfelschorle!

THAT'S THE STUFF

Then we said farewell to Düsseldorf, farewell to Danielle, and farewell to Bochum (in that order).  Onward to Cologne, the most magnificent stop of our grand tour of the western part of Germany!

germany is a nice place, part 2

My second calendar day in Germany began auspiciously, with the sounds of drunken revelry echoing through the night into my dark and peaceful room.  Apparently, Bochum becomes a pretty wild place when the lights go out; I guess Starlight Express throws really wild after-parties.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping due to the jet lag and having slept on the plane, so I tried to let myself be lulled into slumber by the melodies of a man vomiting uproariously for fifteen minutes straight directly beneath my window.  It didn't work!  Finally, his internal organs splayed across the pavement, he relented; a few minutes later, the lilting strains of "Happy Birthday" drifted through the night, and I was able to sleep (but not before filing a copyright infringement claim with the Bundesverfassungsgericht).

So then I got to eat my FIRST GERMAN BREAKFAST!

Delicious bread, raspberry jam in a waffle cup, hardboiled eggs, various cold cuts, cheese, yogurt, MULTISAFT (that's mixed juice), and...liverwurst.

German breakfast is amazing, but don't eat liverwurst.

After breakfast, our friend Danielle came to meet us to begin our wonderful guided tour of Bochum!

We saw a lovely park:

(Photo not representative of size of entire park)

We ate some french fries with forks and flavored mayonnaise:

Mayos:  Curry, Saffron, Hot Chili, Mango
Forks:  Yellow, White

We ate bratwurst!  We went to an art museum that featured sketches of exhibits too large to fit in that museum!

After that, we pretty much ran out of things to do in Bochum, so we headed for the littler (but cooler) town of Hattingen.

Hattingen is located on the river Ruhr, which is a pretty sweet river:

I did my best not to take a picture of the naked child who was scampering on the other side of the shore.  I just wanted a pretty picture of the wife, darn it!

And where there are rivers, there are COWS!

I wanted to hang with these guys, but they were having none of it.

We also got some ice cream.  Or...was it pasta?  You decide:

And we saw a bunch of really old buildings, and a really old church with oddly-placed really old gravestones!

Then we hit Haus Kemnade, an old...house...that kind of feels like it wanted to be a fortress, but didn't have the guts:

And I tried to pick a fight with a goose, but he, too, was having none of it.

(Goose not pictured...or is it?)

Oh, and this one's for you, 57:

Love you, man

Then, Danielle cooked us a delicious dinner at her place, and her Dutch friend Berend came over and told us all the dirt on the Netherlands, and why Amsterdam is full of sucky traitors.  He also listened to me talk about Crusader Kings 2 for, like, an hour, so mad props to him.

After dinner, we played an awesome game called Anno Domini, a card game all about trying to guess what relative year certain events happened.  For example, you might get three cards:

• First record of German beer brewing
• Konrad Adenauer [first post-war chancellor of Germany, you putz] is first elected as Burgermeister [vice-mayor, you putz]
• Leopold the Mouse's show first airs after the evening news [I made that one up]

And then you have to decide the order in which they happened.  Except, other players have cards, and they're inserting their own cards as you go, and it's a giant game of chicken before somebody declares that somebody else has made an error.  And the wife and I don't understand German, so Danielle and Berend had to translate all the cards for us.  And we don't know anything about German popular culture, or the finer details of German history.  But this game has some really fine details, so it was ok.  And being able to describe our rationale for our terrible decisions was hilariously good times!

All in all, a lovely evening.  I only wish Anno Domini existed in English!  There's an America version, but...that's in German, too.  So we stole a ride on the train back to the hostel (by accident, we couldn't figure out how to pay before we arrived at our step), went to sleep, and prepared for our first real adventure the next day:  DÜSSELDORF.

germany is a nice place, part 1

Germany.  What can I say?  I'll let a picture of my wife do the talking:

It was just that great.

Ok, I guess I'll do some talking.  It was a fantastic trip.

(Oh, up there, we're in a cable car riding up to see a monument to German unification, circa 1873).

So, we flew Lufthansa, which was awesome.  Unlimited free beverages!  I tried the beer, and I actually enjoyed it, which is basically unheard of for beers containing less than 10% fruit juice.  And the food was awesome:

Pictured:  Fine German Pepperidge Farm products

Some other highlights from the flight:

The in-flight movie crashed.  Curse you, Windows CE!

The wife always gets the window seat.

But she still let me take a pic.  Catan-land, everybody!  (note:  that's not a real place)

So we touched down in Frankfurt, and I had my first impression of Germany:

BREAD.  SO MUCH BREAD.

This was my first meal over there, courtesy of a little coffee shop in the airport:

From there, we went to catch our train to take us to our first stop, Bochum.  And I had my first encounter with the legendary efficiency of the German train system!  So perfect, so punctual, so--



OK, so our first train was late, which caused us to miss our connecting train, so we almost didn't make it to Bochum.  And Bochum is a town/experience that you cannot afford to miss even one second of!

Just kidding.  When we got to our hostel in Bochum, the receptionist was absolutely shocked that foreigners had come to his sleepy little city.  Apparently, only Germans ever go there, and only for one reason:  Starlight Express!

This is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that has been running non-stop in Bochum for 25 years.

We had no plans to see Starlight Express.  Upon hearing that, the receptionist went into a panic.  He begged us -- begged us -- not to let Bochum be the only city we visited in Germany.  He pleaded with us to tell him that we had plans to go to some other city that actually has things to do (things that don't involve singing, rollerblading robots).  He entreated that we go somewhere like Cologne, ANYWHERE really, as long as it wasn't just Bochum!

We did have plans to see Cologne, so he relaxed.  But this was kind of a weird introduction to the city where we'd be spending the next couple days.  We finished checking in, and found that we were lucky enough to have our own bathroom with a shower, and a TV, and a window if we got too hot!

Yeah, that's something I should mention...our time in Germany corresponded with the hottest weather they've seen in a long while.  It was at least 90 degrees every day, and not much cooler at night.  In fact, I got a really nice tan, which is amazing for a country where everybody acts surprised when the sun bothers to show up.  I have to say, though, for all the things that are wonderful about that country, this next fact is just a deal-breaker, ladies:  they don't believe in air conditioning.  I can't fathom the reasons, but the entire duration of my stay, I only saw one solitary air conditioner!  It was like my worst nightmares come to life.  Germany, get with the times.

After a few minutes standing in my hostel room, I got a funny feeling, like someone was watching me.  I spun around, rapidly searching for the source of my anxiousness; I tore the room apart, and finally found the culprit, hidden slyly in the top drawer of our wardrobe:

How far do I have to run?!

We spent the rest of the day meandering about the city on our own, accidentally ordering the wrong things at eateries.  And then we found our first major cultural difference:

Silly Germans!  If you name your beverages, it makes it that much harder when it comes time to drink them!

We saw some cool stuff just wandering around town, despite the receptionist's protests:

The wife just can't resist putting her feet in stuff.

I have no idea what this is or what it is for.

Then we went to bed!

This is a lot to take in, I know.  That's why I'm going to stretch it out...not quite limited to one post per day of the trip, but not much more than that, either.  That way you're guaranteed to be kept on the edge of your seat!

Oh, the suspense!  Oh, the drama!  Oh happy readers, that you can experience such a vibrant palette of emotions.  You're welcome, dear readers.  Tschüss!

shining, shimmering, splendid

Some days are for dwelling on the past.  Some are for preparing for the future.  And some are for leaving.

Tomorrow, I'm going to Germany.  I'll be there for 12 days, exploring places like Düsseldorf, Aachen, Saarbrücken, and Bochum.  I'll go to a wedding.  I'll go on a boat tour.  I'll visit various UNESCO World Heritage sites by bus.  I will see beautiful art and architecture.  I will see places that have been emblazoned across the annals of history.  I will eat delicious food, and spend time with awesome friends.  This will be my first time in Europe, and I'm extremely excited.

I doubt that I'll be doing much posting from Europe; I'm not bringing a computer, so I'll just have my phone as a wifi device to access the internet.  But rest assured that I will be taking a fair number of photos, and definitely subjecting you to them on my return.

This trip has me thinking a lot about my last (and only other) international excursion (not counting Canada, of course; who would?):  Japan.  Now, I was in Japan for four solid months, so there aren't really a lot of comparisons.  But I went back and looked at some pictures from my time in Japan, and it completely blew me away to see how much I've changed.  That was six years ago, but it feels almost like looking at a completely different person.  Even the facial expressions I see myself making -- I don't think I can do those anymore.  Some pieces of me that I carried for so long, just left behind somewhere along the way...

The most major difference, though, is in my self-perception.  Back then, I would have told you I was quite a loud person, and I was; I talked all the time, I talked to anybody, and I talked freely about my opinions.  I wasn't quite as ear-puncturing in volume as some people I've known, but I was a loudmouth.  Nowadays, I will tell you that I'm a quiet person.  That absolutely isn't true, but it's how I feel about myself.

My wife says that it isn't actually that I'm quiet; instead, she thinks I'm wiser now, and less prone to shooting my mouth off just for the attention.  And yes, the histrionics have largely ceased.  But oh, how I miss them.  I used to believe, in my heart of hearts, that any attention was good attention.  This caused, I am sure, several people to grow tired of my company.  But did that attitude, at the same time, grant me the courage to reach out and make even more friends than it may have cost?  Then again, would those friends simply be less discriminating, and I'm the worse off for permitting myself to have associated with them?!?!

It doesn't matter now.  The Japanese have a saying:  the nail that stands out will be hammered down.  But Japan didn't obliterate my desire to be noticed; that personality change happened in law school.  Law school is a place you should go if you are good at not being noticed, I think, because evading the piercing gaze of the professors as they pitch their impossible questions at you will be the skill you develop the most if you decide to attend.  Law schools claim to celebrate their outstanding students; in reality, nothing is celebrated.  The ego exists merely to be broken down.

And so it was with me.  Any self-confidence I possessed was shattered upon my arrival in that new place.  My youthful, eager heart was torn out, replaced with an empty, mechanical organ that nourishes the body, but never the soul.

I looked at those pictures of myself from Japan -- a boy with a face that was designed to draw people in, intended to convey all the exciting things I wanted to talk about with you -- and I wondered if there was a way to get that feeling back.  I don't want to go back in time; I don't want to be cursed with that pathological drive to be the center of attention.  But maybe there's some way to want it without needing it.

So I looked at those pictures, then I looked in a mirror and started practicing expressions.  I'm going to Germany, you see, and I'm going to gather some amazing stories to share with people.  I want to be able to see in the eyes of my listeners that I've taken them with me, that I've managed to get across some small part of what made the trip truly special (as I'm sure it will be).  I'm going to smile, and put that twinkle in my eyes, and you'll all be carried away.

in vesania, veritas

The brain boils.

I don't mean from the heat (although it is horrendously hot).  Sometimes, my mind reaches a point where it stirs itself into a frenzy of misery-thought, and I'm left to deal with the consequences.  There are a few common causes for such a state:  an acrimonious argument with someone I'm close to, a realization or reminder of a personal failing of mine, an acknowledgment of life's inherent unfairness, and being forced to listen to hypocrites compliment themselves are frequent catalysts for a descent into unutterable moodiness.  But that's odd, because I woke up feeling fine, and I didn't experience any of the above today.  It was, all in all, a lovely and relaxing day, with a few significant victories.  And yet.

When I get like this, the primary effect is that my brain refuses to allow me to go to sleep.  It's not that I'm miserable; it's just that I'm so mentally fixated on whatever problem has presented itself that I'm unable to slow down my consciousness.  This is different, though, from the kinds of challenges I talked about before.  These aren't challenges; they're conundra, and the essential difference is that I don't believe they have solutions.  Focusing all of your mental energy on problems that don't have solutions is not a recipe for mental happy times!  And yet.

For that reason, I'm trying to put a lot of thought into what constitutes escapism for me.  All of us have little hobbies or distractions that pull us away from our stressors long enough for us to recuperate a bit.  I'm just not sure what mine are anymore.  If you had asked me a few years ago, I would happily have answered that I like to play video games and read to relax.  And that's still true, to an extent, but now I try to limit myself to games and books that are deeply challenging.  To be challenged while consuming media requires that you're going to be uncomfortable, and discomfort doesn't make for very good escapism.

I guess the kind of thing I'm looking for would be considered a guilty pleasure, something that asks very little of me, something mindless.  But I find such things infinitely boring!  Who wants to be mindless?

My mom often tells me that my brain is always busy, that I don't have any idea how to truly relax.  She says it as though it's a character flaw, something I need to fix about myself before I can be fully happy.  And she might be right, because there are certainly times when I'm not happy.  All of us have those times, I'm sure, but how many of us lose an entire night's sleep when they roll around?

I can't count how many times I've stared at the dark ceiling for hours, only to have my sleepless repose ended by the morning chirps of avian alarm clocks.  It's a terrible feeling every time, especially because you know those dang birds just got a good night's sleep.

Now, it's not like I have chronic insomnia.  This doesn't really happen more than once every couple of months (although, depending on how upset I am, it can last for several days).  And there are certain advantages to being freed from the all-consuming tendrils of sleep:  it gives your subconscious the opportunity to run rampant, expressing itself in all its madness in the waking world for a time.  For example, here's a sheet of paper I scribbled on during one such night recently:

I'd just read Cat's Cradle, so I scrawled Ice-9 in there.  And the little sketches of the man and the stylized bird's head are purely incidental.  Everything else, and I mean everything else on that page (other than the pen marks in the corner) is intimately connected and a fully honest manifestation of my stream of consciousness as I sat on the porch at 2am, stared at the street, and tried to find some way to quiet my maddeningly busy mind.

I know what it all means, but I'm not about to tell you.  The fun is in the guessing.  The last time I felt this way, I scribbled all over that sheet of paper.  This time, I'm scribbling all over this one.  Be my guests, friends.   In a sense, it helped me sleep.  I wish it could help me now.


go home to your wife and family

freedom has fees, but failure frees

Like many cold-blooded Americans, I'm spending this week at the beach.  My particular beach of choice would be Ocean City, NJ; I've been coming here for at least one week every summer since I was a wee lad.  I've made an expert study of its surface, and none whatsoever of its substance.  In a sense, I vacation in a fantasy Ocean City, and we never need to learn each other's foibles.  I am the consummate happy vacationer, and she, the city, is the perfect destination.

Of course, I'm surrounded by family.  The crazy ballet of transportation, food, and sleeping arrangements send my sanity into frequent tailspins, but it's still a whole lot of fun.  My siblings' and cousins' kids are running around all over the place with the frenetic energy reserved to those below the age of reason, flinging open every closed door without so much as a how-do-you-do.  Although my wife and I are lucky enough to have our own room, we need to be constantly vigilant with the door lock, lest an impressionable four-year-old in an Iron Man costume catch us in media res.

Which has led me to consider, given the sheer quantity of families arrayed in similar circumstances this week every year, just how many poor children are hideously scarred for life by being forced into such unfamiliar proximity with their relatives as part of a simple holiday celebration.  Personally, I can't recall ever stumbling across such an unknowable tableaux in my youth (though I had plenty else to scar me), although it's always possible I could simply have blocked it out of my memory!  But still, I am forced to go through life with the sad certainty that I have never seen what should not have been seen.

Today, my wife took my second cousins to cavort in the waves, and I took some time to watch them repeat the eternal cycle of being knocked down by the bigger waves, then getting up just in time to be knocked over again.  I recalled how much I enjoyed the same when I was younger (and admittedly, would still enjoy it today, if I could find anybody willing to enjoy it alongside me [my wife being unwilling to approach any waves tall enough to actually knock either of us over]); there was just something so gratifying in allowing myself to be felled, only to rise again, stronger and more able to withstand the next onslaught.  Nothing in the water ever delighted me so much as pitching myself against the great forces of nature embodied by the towering crests, and little has ever made me feel as alive as dragging myself back up from the sea floor to await the next crushing swell.

Is that what living means?  To lose your footing, to be knocked under, to flirt with the sweetly grasping claws of suffocation, only to reject it all, plant your feet firmly once more, and to stand tall, laughing as the water runs from you?

That seems to jive with my experience.  When I don't feel particularly challenged -- when I'm lacking any sense of a struggle -- life loses all its vim.  I find myself whiling away the days miserably, trying to figure out what's missing.  Then, as soon as a problem, adventure, or challenge presents itself, all of my energy is restored in an instant.  Without the potential for failure, I lose all sense of success.  When I'm comfortable, you could give me a million years, and I wouldn't produce anything sharing with a kindergarten class.  When I'm struggling, there aren't enough hours for me to find an outlet for all of the creative energy I have.  And that's in excess of the excitement and energy I devote simply to solving the primary problem, whatever it might be.

Even now that I'm grown, as I stand on the shore and watch the myriad swirls of clouds of sand beneath the water, I still long for those waves to come and knock me down.  And sure, the idea that struggle gives life meaning isn't a new one.  But I think life is just a series of failures -- of waves that knock us down -- and it's impossible for us to become strong enough that we can't be pulled under.  But sometimes, we rise, and for whatever reason, we're given a brief reprieve before the next wave comes along -- and we call that a success.

Don't spend your life hoping not to fail, or yearning for successes.  Spend your life cherishing your failures and doing your best to keep on your feet, and you might learn that success oftentimes finds you.



used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that