Fifteen Is My Limit On Schnitzengruben.

A word about German food. I don't know why people always say German food is so bad. Walking around downtown last night I noticed plenty of good looking German food including Italian, French, Thai and Greek. True, I also saw an English pub but just because English food is awful is no reason to turn up your nose at all German food.

According to der phrase book, lunch is the big meal in Germany. I don't know where these people are eating their lunch. I'm eating at a Sodhexo cafeteria.

Yesterday at lunch, I chose what to eat based on it appearing edible and it having the shortest line. That would be the Turkish pizza. "What's that," you ask? Well, think of a Gyro and take away the meat and replace it with some orange grease. My CW also chose the same. As the cafeteria worker was putting them together, she eventually asked us "mit brflgugenssuytemwnem". She repeated and pointed at the two bowls of identical white sauces next to her. We assumed she was asking if we wanted sauce. "Yah," we said. She then pointed to one bowl and then the other, the universal sign for "Which sauce, dummy?" My CW pointed at the bowl closer to us. She still didn't get it. By now a line had formed behind us and a starving worker intervened and told us she wanted to know if we wanted sauce with garlic or without. We said "with", he told her "mit" and we were on our way.

Dinner the first night was in the hotel as we were too exhausted to go anywhere. The prices seemed quite reasonable for a hotel until the food arrived. I ordered some kind of chicken farfluggen (don't look that up, it's not the real word) with herbed baked potato. What I got was a chicken breast as small as a pigeon's (a normal pigeon, not a New York pigeon) and a small baked potato in a foil swan. When I finished two bites later, I was wishing I had got a small baked swan wrapped in a foil potato. At 3 that morning I ate one of my emergency nutrition bars.

Breakfast is great. It consists of eggs, bacon, sausage, two kinds of potatoes, squeeze your own OJ, cold cuts, assorted fruits and melons, yogurts, lox, brie and other cheeses. After trying all those I also had a bowl of cereal.

Dinner last night was fish. After sitting and being handed a menu, the host heard us say something and said, "Oh, English menu?" He took our menus and returned with the English ones. As I read it I wondered what delicacies we were missing out on, just like when you go to a Chinese restaurant with some who speaks the language. They order all these wonderful dishes and when you return the next week, those dishes are surely not on your English menu.

I debated between the "sea bars" and the Frankenstein fish (it was a word close to Frankenstein and apparently untranslatable). My CW went for the "salon trout". I decided on the path less traveled but when I asked the waiter (who spoke German, English and Italian) about Frank I did not get a glowing review. I asked for his suggestion and he recommended the three fillet special which was great.

My manager's manager was in town today and took me and my CW to dinner at a place he'd been to before. They had English menus (sans typos). I ordered the "Sausage and freshly slaughtered pig platter." While my adventuresome colleagues had ribs and a big leg of pork (probably slaughtered many days ago). We ordered a round of beers (which came in 1/4 liter glasses, ~8.5 oz. for you lazy Americans).

There were 6 types of meat on my platter. One looked like uncooked ham. One looked like a hot dog. One looked like a small Kielbasa. One looked like a small green turd. And the other two were a light and dark pair of very mushy, metal pinched ended, cylinders of Ipecac. I tasted each one and then ate enough mashed potatoes to plaster a bulimic's stomach. The turd won the battle of "best taste to looks ratio".

They tally your beers with a pencil mark on one of your coasters. In the end we had 29 tics (3 or 4 for me and the rest split between MM and CW, plus 2 rounds of Schnapps (which tasted like root beer syrup in alcohol).

After dinner, we were walking around and I made a joke along the lines of "The German word for venereal disease is Keipudihkotovit* (hey, imagine hearing it after 13 beers). My co-workers at home will need to remind me to tell them the rest of this story (it would not be funny to anyone else).

Must sleep....apologies for spelling/grammar errors. I'm shpent.

* - pronounced "keep you dick out of it" with a German accent

German eins nul eins

I can highly recommend that you don't get Barron's German At A Glance phrase book which boasts "thousands of expressions you need to travel".

Here are some of the things you'll never need to know how to say on any trip to anywhere:

Schachmatt! [1] Unless you find yourself in a spontaneous chess match.
Ich habe eine Geschlechtskrankeit. [2] Unless you are in sales.
Ich vertrage keine Nusse. [3] Unless you are a manager.

Downtown is a short 15 minute ride on the Straßenbahn (street car). I'm happy to report it only took us an hour and a half to get there. After reviewing the map and deciding we needed tram 715 we waited a bit and hopped on when it arrived.

Me: Are we going the right way?
CW: I'm not sure.
Me: There's no map on the train that I see.
CW: No list of stops either...only the end of the line.

We also could not figure out how to get our tickets as there was no machine apparent. After hearing that my co-worker got fined 40 Swiss Francs last year for failing to have a 1 SFranc ride last year, I thought it wise to get off, figure out which way we need to go and how to get tickets. We jumped off at the next stop.

I walked over to someone waitting at the stop, opened my phrase book and pointed at "Wo kann ich eine Farhkarte kaufen?" (Where can I buy a ticket?) It seemed more likely she would know how to read than understand my butchering of her language. She immediately asked me a question in German {blink}. She pointed at something and spoke some more. Something about an automat (I didn't ask for food, I want a ticket!) and I should go to Strassen-something. I took the wisest strategy...I stared blankly. I held out a piece of paper which had our destination written on it. We walked over to the map and she pointed to the center and the station was close enough to sounding like what I thought she said. I thought that seemed pretty ridiculous to need to ride the tram without a ticket to a station further than we wanted to go (we found that station on the map) just to get a ticket. Her tram came (the 707) and she left. Everyone waiting at the stop got on except us.

We slowly deciphered (with no help from der phrase book) the signs at the stop. We had been on the right tram going the right way. Damn. Still we had no idea how to get tickets. We waited and another tram finally appeared. 707. We needed the 715. We checked the tables again.

CW: What time is it?
Me: 8:15
CW: The next 715 is, uh...The 715 stops running at 7:52.
Me: Scheiße

We then determined we could still get where we wanted but would need to take two trams. The first was the only tram still running on the line we were at...the 707, two of which had already passed.

We got the next one (8:32) and walked to the front to ask the driver the following question in my best German accent: "Ticket?" I said, holding up 2 Euros. He said something and mercifully pointed backward. We walked slowly toward the back of the tram looking for what was clearly a clevery disguised place to get tickets. Maybe a person? Maybe a machine? We were at the back of the tram when we found it. A machine. Un Automat! What the tickets said, we didn't know. We bought the ones that were 2 Euros as CW's manager had told him that's how much it cost to ride the tram. Then it dawned on me. The automat was not at the station that lady had pointed to. She was probably pointing to our destination (poorly but she was short and it was a high map). The automat was on the Straßenbahn! (ß is pronounced "ss") That's what she said. We got to our stop, switched trams and arrived at our destination near 9.

As we ate dinner in front of a restaurant, a clown was performing. By clown I mean a guy with a little white make-up and a red rubber nose. His act consisted of the following: hugging/grabbing people walking by, imitating people walking by (mainly those with sour expressions or "strange" walks) and jumping in front of every Asian person, holding his hands stiffly straight in a Karate pose and yelling "HeeeYaaaaah!" Yes in Germany, Asians are the new Jews and clowns are the new Nazis. I'll bet most of those Asians are staying in non-air conditioned hotels!

We did much better on the return. When we switched trams we got on the wrong direction. Luckily my CW was paying attention and after only 10 or so stops we go off, walked across the road and waited, for the last time for a tram cutting our 15 minute trip down to only 30 or so minutes!

[1] Checkmate!
[2] I have a venereal disease.
[3] I can't have any nuts.

Wenn einer eine Reise macht, so kahn er 'was erzahlen.

My German phrase book tells me how to say "My room is too cold" or "There is no heat". Oh, how I wish I needed to use those phrases.

The person on duty did not understand when I said it was too hot. Finally this:

Me: It's like an oven in there!
Her: (blank stare)
Me: Oven!
Her: (confused)
Me: Like Auschwitz! [I turned and pointed to my nose.]
Her: (aghast)

I wake in a pool of sweat. It is only midnight. The blanket is tiny but thick and covered in a duvet. I remove the blanket and just use the duvet. Still too hot. I open the window. No help. Oh, what I wouldn't give to be in a Motel 6 in the good ole US. With a giant air conditioner right in your room. The kind that causes global warming, requiring enough energy to melt 10 cubic yards of the polar icecap to lower your room temperature 1 degree. The kind that uses so much energy it warps space and time when it turns on. The kind so loud it would drown out the sounds of jets taking off right outside my now open window.

My plan for tomorrow is to take all the beer from the mini-bar, wrap it in a towel and sleep with it...placing it back in the morning. Is it dangerous to sleep in a bathtub filled with water?

You May Ask Yourself, "How Did I Get Here?"

How did I end up in Dusseldorf?

Travel tip: If your flight does not give you enough time to sleep, you can watch "Fun with Dick and Jane" and extend your trip by what will seem like several more hours...hours that you will never get back, no matter how long you live.

Auf Wiedersehen!

At Least They Don't Make Hemorrhoid Cream

Head On. Apply directly to the forehead. [1]
Head On. Apply directly to the forehead.
Head On. Apply directly to the forehead. [2]
Head On. Shoot me directly in the forehead.


1 - the actual ad
2 - not [1]

Jesus' Hands Are At 9 And 3, Not 10 And 2

Driving back from North Carolina, I took a different route than I did getting there. Lombard St. in San Fran might hold the record for curviest street but I'd nominate 194 between Banner Elk and Valle Crucis in NC as it is much longer and not just a tourist attraction. There are signs telling trucks and buses to turn around and take a different route. The speed limit ranges from 25 to 35 and it is difficult to reach that speed except for a couple short bursts. There were several times that I was in first gear and still needed to brake in order to get around a turn. In addition to the "curvy road" signs there were also warnings spray painted on the road like "Dangerous S" and "8% Grade, 2 miles, Check Brakes!" I think those hand-painted warnings for cyclists in a local race but who knows. The road almost made me sick even though I was driving. This would be a great place to test new antiemetics.

A little further into my travels I passed through Historic Unincorporated Trade, TN. Woohoo! Unincorporated! Take that globalization!

Lastly, I did an anecdotal survey of poor drivers. I mentally noted as many factors as I could about vehicles and drivers every time I saw something unsafe, a**hole-ish or just plain stupid. Tallying these up, I believe the highest correlation with poor driving is not age, sex, race or even vehicle type. What correlated most highly with poor driving was "number of bumper stickers on the vehicle". A couple examples:

There was a lady with some campaign sticker. I can't remember who it was for. I'll assume they were a Socialist as the lady drove slowly in left lane forcing about a dozen cars to pass on her right. I'll note that the road was fairly empty as that's how many I saw pass until I lost sight of her.

And there was the trucker from Covenant Transport. His sticker said "It's not a choice, it's a child" (I believe they have that sticker on all their trucks). Maybe he should check his mirrors before he runs over someone's car (as he nearly did) or their rights. Upon passing him I thought "It's not a choice, it's a risky f**king gamble".

I should note that most of the stickers I saw were religious. That could skew my results as these people are hoping to die to go to a better place. Why bother with learning how to drive?

I'm Thor

There is one thin bar between me and civilization. We'll see if it holds long enough for me to post.

Arrived in the mountains on Saturday, went for a run Sunday, walked Monday, golfed Tuesday, sore Wednesday.

I just finished reading Naked by David Sedaris. Funny, quick read. For whatever reason, my library only had it in LARGE PRINT which made it seem like an even quicker read. What if a book I want to read is available in both regular and LARGE print? Is checking out the LARGE PRINT book more like using the roomy handicapped stall in the men's room or more like parking in a handicapped spot? These are the issues that keep me up at night.