Here On Earth

A Turkish Wedding

2013-09-28T07:34:00.001-07:00

I prefer to call it my best suit instead of my only suit. Both labels are true but one seems much less sad than the other. And I cherish any opportunity to make things sound better than they are without actually lying.

We see each other through the parade crowd and our eyes share the same expression: What are you doing in Berlin? I make my way upstream and see her standing on the sidewalk. Drunk men and women stumble around her like autumn leaves kicked up by passing cars. She looks like she did when I last saw her, a few years ago in school.

We talk and discuss the odd circumstances of us both being in Berlin and in the middle she asks a question I’m not yet familiar with being a part of small talk.

“Yeah. Oh! Have you met my fiancé?”

The most German man I’ve ever seen turns towards me, seemingly from nowhere. His name is Jan pronounced with a Y or Hans pronounced with an F or something else impossibly German. I don’t know. I forget immediately and feel sort of bad about it. What I do know is that I feel about four feet tall and my chest even more caved in than usual. I make the conscious decision to let booze run the show instead of my insecurities and in an instant I feel the blood change direction in my veins. I shake his hand a little too heartily and introduce myself.

“You’re coming to the wedding then, ja?”

“What wedding?”

“Oh my God.” my friend says. “Josh, did you bring a suit to Berlin?

Nothing makes my head feel bigger than when I tie a half windsor knot around the base of it but that’s exactly what I do and when I get to the hotel lobby all I can think about is how everyone’s knots are better, heads are smaller, and suits seem to actually have been picked out of a larger selection of other suits.

Naturally I’m early which means the few people I vaguely know, the ones purposefully invited from America, the old classmates who are making the trip from America exclusively for the wedding (and not the ones who happen to have run into the bride on the street) are not here yet. I fidget in the bathroom and try to turn my half windsor into a full windsor, thinking maybe that will make a difference. It doesn’t. My head is big, my arms are short and my hands are small, making me a real-life caricature of Boy In A Suit, surrounded by tall Germans who seem to have been sewn directly into theirs.

I drink a lot of champagne and wander around the hotel for an hour before I see the other Americans arrive. At this point I’m drunk enough to fully ingratiate myself into their party and after they get some champagne in them as well, I’m an old friend, their best friend, a new companion with no emotional baggage but all the same collegiate reference points and experiences. Wasn’t Ritter Hall filthy? Didn’t Professor Ham-Hands have the hammiest hands? I can do this. Actually, after some champagne, I’m great at this. They love me and I love them, at least for the evening. What’s not to love?

Then the Turkish wedding reception starts and I am blindsided by the crazy. We haven’t been invited to the ceremony. This is just the party. Men in black and white striped outfits start an odd dance with fishing poles and high kicks. It’s all in German or, more likely, Turkish, but I can’t tell and I can’t afford to care. I’m getting too much material out of it, which I’m using in my conversation with the blonde next to me. She thinks I’m funny and jokes are more important than the fit of your suit as long as you’re sitting down.

There’s a belly dancer and a limbo contest where people go over the pole instead of under it and then, after the bread and the quail and the raspberry cake, the MC cuts the music and makes an announcement in broken English, the true universal language in the room. I watch as guests reach into their jackets and pull out envelopes. I know this part. I was warned about this part.

The normal gift at a Turkish wedding is money. I was warned ahead of time, which is good because it prevented me from buying a toaster or blender or some other kitchen appliance. I’m confident and prepared. I have a hand-written note and a 50 euro bill stuffed into an envelope that I snagged from my office’s supply room. I’m ready. Then, the horror. Everyone takes their envelopes and gets up to stand in line. What line? A line forms in front of the bride and groom, who have by now positioned themselves at the front of the room. The bride, my friend, is wearing a sash around her neck, and as guests approach the front, the MC announces who they are, where they’re from and how much they’ve given. Then the guest pins their money to the bride’s sash. It’s a modern-day dowry, mixed with all the potential breast-poking shenanigans of pre-prom corsage adornment. The last time I wore this suit I stabbed some poor girl in the chest with a safety pin and it looks like I am destined for that fate once again.

I’m fourth from the front when things go from bad to worse.

“Ibrahim from Istanbul. 500 euro!” Jesus Ibrahim, relax.

“Didem from Berlin. 350 euro!” Didem. You’re killing me.

“Ali from Ankara. 1000 euro!” OK. I want to die. I approach the DJ and he asks my name, where I’m from and what I’ve given. I panic and forget how much classier it will sound if I say Berlin and I say Boston instead.

“George from Boston. 50 euro!” The crowd goes silent. Actually, I’m sure the crowd stays the same but I get a sort of tunnel vision in my ears comparable to what I assume pitchers experience on the mound when they’re tuning out the crowd. Except I’m not tuning anyone out. I’m drowning in embarrassment. Now it sounds like I’ve travelled all the way from Boston to give the bride 50 euros. I stand in front of her with my money and a safety pin.

“George?”

“Yeah. Germans seem to have a tough time pronouncing Josh.” She laughs.

"Thanks for coming. It means a lot to me that you're here." She says it and she seems to mean it and maybe it’s the wedding glow on her cheeks or that I want to believe anything good right now, but I believe her and I’m happy to be there, too. I avoid stabbing her in the heart with the safety pin and I go back to my chair and quickly sink into my suit jacket and another glass of champagne. I picture what it would look like if I never received her last minute message. I picture her standing up there with a sash full of money and a toaster in her arms, cradled like an aluminum baby. It could be worse, I guess.

I realize that the girl I‘ve been chatting up is no longer at my table and I can’t help but think she's made a good choice. I look around and see that she’s found a taller German with a smaller head and longer arms. And his suit? It’s perfect. It’s clearly his best suit.

Red Lights & Green Leaves

2013-08-06T11:38:00.001-07:00

I was in Amsterdam for three blurry days four years ago. I travelled with friends from my study abroad program and the clearest memory I have is getting awesomely high and deciding as a group that whoever was in front would lead the way for the rest of us. We all began to walk slower and slower until no one was moving. No one wanted to make a decision or be responsible for any sort of purposeful thought. So we stood in the street, the five of us paralyzed and American to our bones, until a bicyclist rang his bell and we all nearly jumped in the canal.

I was there again for an afternoon a month ago. My grandparents were starting a two-week arctic circle cruise that left from Amsterdam Centraal (is there anything more grandparently?) and on my way back to Berlin from Prague I stopped off to spend the day before their ship sailed. It should be clear by now that I have never owned a map. I spent the afternoon smelling tulips, eating calamari strips and later, once the relatives were sleeping, getting high and walking around.

I'm dumb.

When I went back this past weekend I was looking forward to a few more days of the same. Fried food, simple drugs, sunshine. I got that. What I didn’t realize was that this past weekend was also Amsterdam’s Gay Pride Parade. And that my hotel was wandering distance from De Wallen, Amsterdam’s red light district. So there's that, too.

On Saturday afternoon boats filled the Singel Canal carrying men and women in various stages of drunk and undressed. There were dancers and DJs and confetti-cannons. The streets were crowded with people participating in a parade that by name was meant to celebrate homosexuality but in reality was celebrating the simple joy of being alive on a sunny day. It was easy to have a great time. And as I’ve said before, being able to walk along a canal with a beer in your hand makes everything better.

De Wallen is a different story. The red light district is unequal parts exciting, unnerving, and sad. And walking through it at night made me realize how completely susceptible I am to a smile. Even when I know it’s the woman’s job, I can’t help but feel a little pride or bashfulness when a grin or wink comes my way. And it all vaguely reminded me of an eager hostess standing in the doorway of a restaurant. Come on in. Try the linguine. We have something special for you tonight. Except now the hostess is also the chef, the waitress, and the linguine. And there’s nothing special about tonight.

But there was more to the circus than the women in neon lingerie inviting me inside. The people on my side of the window were also part of the spectacle. And a quick survey revealed three distinct groups: window shoppers, actual shoppers, and those still working through the fact that you can shop for people.

So when a man finally approached a window to find out how much it all cost, everyone stopped to watch what would happen next. What did they think would happen? The guy went behind a red velvet curtain and had sex with a stranger in exchange for money. But we as a group had formed an unspoken agreement that this was all just an entertaining tourist attraction. And of course none of us would ever participate in such a thing. So to see someone transform from observer to customer flipped the table that was supposed to be supporting everyone’s moral code, throwing all concept of right and wrong into the air, where it mingled with the marijuana smoke and fried food fumes. It was people-watching at its finest.

Still no word on if the carpets match the drapes.

The women talking on their cell phones where what threw me off the most. It added a sense of normalcy to a completely abnormal situation. They were bored at work. I’ve been there. I can relate. But what is it I’m relating to? Suddenly the women weren’t toys in a display case but employees trying to get through another night’s shift. One woman had the same iPhone case as me. That's all it took. She stopped being a caricature of sex and instead became a lady in a bikini with a personality and a past. It made it all real. Too real.

There was another problem. I was entirely too high for all of this. Marijuana is the least helpful drug to be legalized alongside prostitution. I don’t like being around anyone when I’m high, except for the people I just got high with. Sometimes even they are too much to handle. So to pile on the additional pressure of mostly naked and entirely strange women inviting me into rooms that look like a doctor’s office with darkroom lighting is enough to make my freshly high brain eat itself.

But here's what is great. It doesn’t need to eat itself. Because outside of De Wallen, Amsterdam Center looks like Willy Wonka’s imagination room designed by Homer Simpson. Every storefront and window display is filled with doughnuts and pizza and french fries and candy and french fries and steak and french fries and beer. Maybe there isn’t much variety but what the neighborhood lacks in options it make up for in quantity. Under the food lamps everything glows with grease and salt and if you take a step back you realize that this is the stoner’s true red light district. This is where you can let your inhibitions run wild, guilt-free until tomorrow morning.

On every corner only a thin glass window separates you from a pile of french fries so high, so fresh, and so bad for you, that it’s simultaneously the only thing you’ve ever wanted and the last thing you’d ever admit to needing. You’re embarrassed at your own insatiable appetite. Is this how you’ve always felt about food? And not just food but the cheap, bad food your mother warned you about, the type that only satisfies right now and leaves you feeling sick and full of regret later. After tonight you’ll look at yourself in the mirror differently, unable to ignore what you now know about your true self.

Here’s the truly crazy part. This madness, this overwhelming amount of available debauchery, from the sex shows and marijuana shops to the glazed doughnuts and most likely equally glazed prostitution booths, all fits into 1.6 acres of land. That’s the West Village. That’s a small farm. That’s nothing.

But that’s what I love most about Amsterdam. The city center is small but manages to have a wide range of communities living side by side in peaceful opposition. There’s De Wallen and the Stoner’s Paradise I’ve already described. But two blocks over is a quiet string of homes that seem largely unaffected by the infinite bacchanal just down the street. Around the corner from the club advertising a show starring a woman and her fruit basket is Tales and Spirits, an upscale restaurant where I ordered off a menu that featured side dishes like avocado ice cream. And you know a restaurant is fancy when they combine two unlike things into one delicious thing.

Even the parade, immense spectacle that it was, confined itself to one long canal and the streets that ran along either side of it. It was easy to wander off the parade route and find Vondelpark (equal in size to the red light district) and the Rijks Museum, both beautiful and different yet still somehow in the same few square miles as everything else I’d experienced.

From the city’s center, Amsterdam sprawls out into the north, south, and west. To the east is the IJmeer Lake, a body of water so nice it's earned the right to be spelled with two capital letters in a row. I didn’t see most of the city. But the part I did see is the part most tourists experience and I was surprised by how much diversity it packs into the space. It offers a full spectrum, from the loud and smoky bars to the peaceful row houses that inspire thoughts of an idyllic summer getaway or a drastically improved daily life. And on top of that, almost everyone has waterfront property.

I recommend going into a coffee shop that has a marijuana menu with descriptions of how each leaf is going to make you feel. Energetic. Giggly. Sleepy. Then order the feeling you want. I recommend the Van Gogh Museum if you like Van Gogh and the Rijks Museum if you like Rembrandt or Vermeer. I recommend the Anne Frank House and then, after, when you are full of hope and sadness, go to the Japanese Pancake World across the street. I recommend that you order a Japanese pancake and then eat it. Once you’ve done all that, go back to your hotel and take a nap. Chances are good that you haven’t walked more than a few miles all day but somehow you’ll still be exhausted. Why is that? Don't coffee shops usually have the opposite effect?

Wiener Bread & White Bananas

2013-07-05T06:41:00.001-07:00

“I’ll have a danish,” I said to the tall blonde man behind the counter.

“A what?”

“A—oh, yes—uh, that puffy bread thing right there.” I pointed to the puffy bread thing.

“It is a wienerbrød. I am Danish.”

“Right. Sorry. I’m American.”

“I know.”

Welcome to Copenhagen. They don’t call pastries danishes. They call them wienerbrød, which literally means Viennese bread. This makes sense, because the food originated in Vienna before becoming a specialty in Denmark. It’s also popular in France where they call it a viennoiserie. Viennoiserie is French for ‘fancy cakes’ but at least it has ‘Vienna’ in the word itself. Americans are the only ones who got the entire country wrong. But we’ve done that before. I can picture it now:

“Hans, these things are delicious. My buddies back home are gonna love them. The Danish really know what they’re doing.”

“Actually it is a Viennese specialty.”

“Viennese? Nah. That sounds like an infection. No one wants to eat that for breakfast. We’ll call it a danish.”

“What? No. I am Danish. That is a—”

“Ha! You sure are, Hans. Thanks for the danish. I’m outta here.”

We’re dumb. Apologies, tall blonde man behind the counter. But when you’re travelling alone, mistakes will be made. Sometimes you confuse a human being with a puff pastry. Sometimes you walk around all day with bits of that puff pastry in your beard because you haven’t interacted with anyone long enough for them to tell you. Sometimes things happen.

A Danish woman among danishes, courtesy of a Google Image search for 'Danish'

I like Copenhagen. The city is small and bicycle-friendly. But that doesn’t mean the cyclists themselves are friendly. Wide bicycle lanes and bicycle-specific traffic lights make it easy but the sheer volume of cyclists can be uncomfortable if you’re not used to it. It’s also more fun to get lost on foot. My first afternoon was spent riding past random curiosities and convincing myself that they weren’t that great so I didn’t have to stop and lock up my bike. I was probably wrong.

I quickly ditched the bike and found the Stroget. The Stroget is a tourist-centric street in the middle of the city. Cars aren’t allowed and there are enough people that the cyclists find it difficult to navigate, too. The interesting part isn’t the stores, mostly souvenir stands selling the same predictable mess, or the restaurants, fast food chains from the US, but that this is how the Danish have chosen to cater to their tourists.

The Stroget connects some of the city’s most famous landmarks. On the west end is City Hall, the City Hall Square, and Tivoli Gardens. On the east is the King’s Garden and the Royal Danish Theatre. This is where the tourists go. The Stroget connects Tourist Attraction A to Tourist Attraction B, naturally becoming C. And it has three McDonald’s. What’s worse is that it’s successful. The Danish didn’t fill the street with local cuisine and crafts to give their visitors a taste of the culture. They gave the people what they want, which is fast food and dumb toys. And it’s almost exclusively American wares, from the McDonalds to the ‘Cool Story Bro Tell It Again’ tank tops.

It was weird. Like my being there was condoning this unnervingly accurate indictment of my country’s brand of consumerism. It felt like a duty free shop. Like I was still in the airport. So I got on a boat instead.

I love boat tours. They offer all the benefits of sightseeing combined with all the benefits of sitting there. Does that sentence negate all my criticism of the Fat American Tourist? So be it. Our guide alternated between Danish and English as she casually explained the evolution of Copenhagen as a port city. Ports brought the sailors. Sailors brought the bars. Bars brought the prostitutes. Everyone nodded knowingly. Sure, yes. Sensible. There were also a lot of fires. Copenhagen burned down. They re-built it. It burnt down again, etc. As a result, there is architecture as old as the fifteenth century, with some structures being used and reused over again throughout the evolution of the city.

On certain parts of the tour the guide told us she wasn't allowed to speak into the microphone out of respect for the residential areas we were nearing. But what was this we were passing now? An old torpedo hanger turned into a luxury apartment building. A waterfront community living in an old explosive warhead storage unit.

Woah.

Copenhagen is small but it doesn’t waste space. I can’t tell if I noticed because the friend I stayed with is an urban planner or simply because he’s right, but the city does a lot with a little and it does it well. It’s easy not to notice the achievements because they’re so seamlessly integrated that they can be overlooked. But don’t overlook them. Or you won’t find yourself playing ping pong on a large median in the middle of the street at 9pm, where it’s still light because you’re so far north that in the summer it never gets dark, just dim.

It’s silly to say a city has a lot of design. It’s like saying a city has a lot of culture, or personality. But I’m tempted to say it. Many of Copenhagen’s structures stand out from one another and at times it feels like you’re parading through the world’s largest experimental architecture diorama. The Royal Library has a sheer black glass side that faces the water and catches the rising sun in its reflection. The Danish Playhouse is across the bay from the Opera House, both of which have received numerous awards and are achievements in their own right. Farther down the harbor is the headquarters of a shipping and oil company, but I don’t care. What I do care about is that the tour guide told us everyone calls it the House With 1000 Blue Eyes and it’s easy to see why.

The House With 162 Eyes, though accurate, was not as catchy.

But it’s not just the new architecture that’s interesting. After the tour I climbed the 400 steps to the top of Our Saviour’s Church, the last 150 of which are on the outside. You wrap around the gilded spire, your circles and the width of each stair becoming smaller until you're wedged in between the railing and the side of the building. The staircase never really ended. It just become so narrow I was unable to continue. And after I couldn't go any farther I looked around and realized hey, this is the top! And hey, isn’t that Sweden? It was. And even though Sweden is only 5 miles across the water it’s still always cool to see one country from another country.

After I came back down I realized a funeral had been going on in the portion of the church that is still used as a church and that it was ending as I entered the courtyard. This was not a normal funeral crowd. This looked like the saddest group of carnival jugglers I’d ever seen. It looked like someone had just cancelled a music festival. This is how people dressed for a funeral? A hearse that looked like it was built out of cardboard boxes led the parade of sad jugglers down the street and hundreds of people came out of side alleys to follow.

“Who died?” I asked the man next to me. You normally don't ask that when you pass a funeral. But when you travel alone, things happen.

“Someone from in there,” the man said, pointing towards Christiania.

Christiania is a “self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood.” Nothing sounds as awesome as that. It essentially means: We're doing it our way and you can’t stop us so eat it. It started in 1971 as an occupation of a former military barrack and quickly turned into a free society based on ideals similar to collectivism, anarchism and the squatter's movement. There are about 850 year-round residents. And while they’ve banned hard drugs, you can buy weed or a brick of hash in almost any shape or size imaginable. Between the hippie culture, alternative societal structure, and drug laws, Christiania is one of Copenhagen’s biggest tourist attractions. And while I was there one of the founding members died.

Everyone dispersed once we were inside the boundaries of the neighborhood. I explored and saw some things I wasn’t allowed to take photos of and I drank a beer in the sun while two men on my left played backgammon and a woman on my right rolled the largest spliff I've ever seen. It looked like a straight white banana. That’s right. It kind of looked like a penis.

My debut experimental jazz album

Copenhagen has some great eats, too. All the guidebooks are right. Get the hot dogs and the smørrebrød and drink Faxe Kondi. Smørrebrød is a sandwich where they forgot the other piece of bread that goes on top and Faxe Kondi is like a mixture of Sprite and 7-Up but with more caffeine. Coming from land-locked Berlin, I was excited about the seafood, too. I also didn’t realize how much I missed IPAs until I had one. Germany has great wheat beer, but that’s it. Hops, I missed you. Denmark's all about Carlsberg, but I'll take an ale from the Mikkeller Brewery any day.

Other thoughts: They've suspended their street lights so they hang in the middle of the street. You know, where the light belongs? There isn’t a lamppost on either side of the road. Just one light in the middle. And there are bike gutters on a lot of the stairwells, so your bike doesn’t bounce off every step. It's obvious. Let's all do this, OK?

And Danish Krones are crazy. 7.5 DKK is 1 EU and 1 EU is 1.39 US. It's a lot of math and doing math is the worst way to spend a vacation. In the end it was nice to take money out of the bank and then abandon all concept of how much things cost. I knew that once I had no money left, I had spent all my money. That was the extent of my math and my concerns. In situations like that you don't fret over how much things cost. You just do them.

You don't need to go to Copenhagen with a lot of plans. It’s easy to get around and there’s enough to do that by the third day of sight-seeing, when you're comfortable with the geography and you’ve realized you're not going to do it all anyway, you can find a bar with outdoor seating and order a beer and a wienerbrød. Any city that makes such simple comforts that easy to come by is OK by me.

Cobblestones & Goulash Bowls

2013-06-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

Prague is the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s where Count Chocula was raised but it’s not where he’s from. The national symbol is a canary-yellow bat hanging upside down with a sprig of juniper in its mouth. And I think it’s the capital of Athens. I don’t know a lot about Prague but that’s part of why I went. Now I know a little more, but I still think it has a skyline straight out of Walt Disney’s wet dreams.

It turns out that Prague feels a lot like Florence. Cobblestone streets run like veins between buildings that have been standing longer than America has been America. The city is split in half by a river and connected again by bridges that are as interesting as the sights on either side. Tourists from around the world take photos without actually looking at anything and it doesn’t take long to realize that the biggest attraction is not the cathedrals or museums but the city itself.

I took these photos.

And if it feels like the city is a museum that’s because it is. The Historic Centre of Prague is on UNESCO’s World Heritage list and that centre covers an area large enough to satisfy four days worth of wandering. So I wandered, along with five other Americans who were equally happy to have no idea where they were going. And by the end of it my favorite part wasn’t the food (thrice daily goulash served in a bread bowl) or specific attractions (Kafka’s house, St. Vitus Cathedral) or even the culture (it seemed hard to find a genuine local between all the tourists and those catering to them). The best part was getting lost and not trying to find a way back for four days.

Anything over 400 years old seems important, which is why you can walk through Prague and feel like you’re really seeing something ‘historical’ and ‘valuable’. And you are. There’s a bridge and a church and a castle and that thing with the other thing on top that was built when the guy did that stuff. But I didn’t go to Prague for that. I actually didn’t go to Prague for any reason other than that it was there and I hadn’t been. Which means I accomplished my goals the moment I arrived. You can go there with an itinerary if you want. But given the city’s extreme walkability and the likelihood that wherever you’re standing will provide something interesting for at least one of your senses, Prague is a perfect place for dicking around.

That being said, you can’t help but want to learn. Everything is so dense with history that you are constantly wondering if the Velvet Revolution really was named after the Velvet Underground (it was, in part) or if there was a big argument over who got to be called the Czech and who got to be called the Slovakians when Czechoslovakia split apart (can you imagine an alternate post-Civil War America that was split into the Amers and the Icans?) or how if Bohemia was a real place where the hell was it and why do we use it to describe free spirits or people with a bunch of bracelets?

Pictured: A Bohemian, according to Google Images

You’re not going to figure all of that out. You’re only visiting a few days. And this drive to accomplish only starts to feel silly when you realize you’ve put a surprising amount of effort into learning the geography and history and local please-and-thank-you’s of a city you’re basically passing through, and that this level of focus and dedication to using your time wisely has never been applied to the city you’re from (or, ahem, the city you’ve just moved to).

It rained most of the time. The four-hour train ride took six as we rolled through southern German towns that were still recovering from or experiencing the flooding that had only recently moved north out of Prague. We passed through riverbank communities where only treetops and telephone poles peaked out of the water like buoys. No people. No dogs. Only high water marks and a current steadily moving underneath train tracks that normally stood high above town.

We arrived to find a wet Prague full of tourists largely unaffected by the rain. So after dropping our things at the apartment we decided to join the herd and walked over the Charles Bridge towards the Prague Castle, safely weaving through umbrella-brandishing strangers in a way that only those who have commuted to work in a major city can.

The bridge is impressive. Not just in age but in scale. The statues decorating the sides are enormous and old but more than anything violent. There's a theme of one powerful figure thrusting another smaller figure into his crotch. There’s a lot of homoerotic muscle flexing as well as the simple violence of Man killing Lion while wearing a different lion’s pelt. It’s beautiful work but an interesting way to frame 15th century Prague’s equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Prague Castle looks like every Disney princess pooled their resources to create an architectural smorgasbord of gargoyles and spires. It’s over 1100 years old and parts of it have been worked on, added to, or renovated as recently as the 1930s. There’s a cathedral and a basilica and a view oh my god the view. If you want to see every part of Prague without, you know, actually setting foot in most of it, climb up the hill to the entrance of the castle, turn around and there’s Prague. But then turn back around because this whole Castle thing is pretty great, too.

The Prague Castle

Inside the castle is St. Vitus Cathedral and it only takes walking in the front door to understand why someone would come here to worship a higher power. You walk in and are immediately overwhelmed by the insane perspective, immense detail, gorgeous stained glass, and a vertiginous feeling of being on top of something really high when in fact you’re only looking down something really long. The arches loop back and forth and everything is so great and epic and other-worldly. It would be amazing if someone built this today but it’s even more impressive when you realize it was built over a thousand years ago. And I’ve seen some stuff. I've seen taller and I've seen older. But chances are good that Random Joe Catholic from 1322 hadn’t seen much outside his hometown, so the cathedral must have been even more of a punch to the part of the brain that limits what you think is possible. You walk in and you don’t question. You’re in awe. And whatever you’re being asked to believe, you believe.

OK. I don’t believe it. Stained glass doesn’t mean God is listening. But the fact that people could make this—can still make this—and that they can make it from nothing is enough for me. That’s something I can revere without questioning its authenticity. And there’s no need to prove or disprove it because it’s right there on top of the hill in Prague. Call it God or call it marble and sweat but it’s still pretty great. I even put a coin in the little donation box.

We went back to the apartment. We napped. We ate. These are the little things that really make it a vacation. Napping at 3pm on a Monday. Eating when you're hungry and sleeping when you're tired. When the rain stopped later that evening I walked around and stumbled into the Old Town Square. This is on every guidebook’s to-do list for a reason, but the best way to experience it is by accident. Ideally, you’re aimlessly taking rights and lefts through the city to see where it will bring you. And chances are if you do that long enough it will bring you here.

Thin spires pepper the skyline and your eyes are forced to climb the sides of each one as you try to see every part of what looks like ancient sand castles that have been impossibly dripped together. Those spires lead you into a royal blue night sky so saturated it feels photo-shopped. You forget all about the crowded square full of pickpockets and you settle into the evening. Then the Astronomical Clock chimes ten and you marvel at how it’s so late and still dusk. The bells echo from that deep blue heavenly forever stretched out above you and it takes six or seven chimes for you to snap out of it and realize that those bells are actually just coming from the world’s single oldest clock still in working order, a mechanical feat that has been churning through the hours and weeks and centuries for over half a millennia. And then you question if there’s really any difference between the movie-montage-like splendor you were feeling at first and the actual reality of the situation. Hopefully at this point you still have your wallet.

Astronomical Clock in the Town Square

I walked back. I took my shoes off. I picked up the book of Kafka short stories I bought earlier that day in the shop that was advertised as operating out of the same room where Kafka wrote those short stories. I did the type of reading where your eyes trace the letters but your brain is somewhere else and when you turn the page, you realize you haven’t read a single word. I was still thinking about the view from the castle, my thoughts skipping across the patchwork of red roofs that make a canopy across Prague and cause you to think that somewhere between the clay tiles is the solution to all your problems.

I'm thinking Hey, I could live here. I can settle in right there on that patio and finally start that novel. I can start wearing leather jackets and leather pants and leather hats. I can do it all! This happens whenever I go somewhere that is untainted by my having had any actual experiences there. The feeling of I’m Here and The Time Is Now. The death of He Who Doesn't and the birth of He Who Can And Will. A new place provides a physical reset and offers a sensible opportunity for a mental one. But the red roofs aren’t the answer and I'm fairly certain that I’d still be me if I moved to Prague, just with more goulash.

On the last night everyone went to bed early. Walking around for three days on a bread bowl and absinthe diet can be exhausting. I realized I managed to get a sunburn during one of the rainier vacations I've ever taken. I realized that the castles don't look like Disney Land but that it's probably the other way around. And later on, when I was finally able to focus, I realized it has nothing to do with how distracted I am; I'm just not big on Kafka. I do like Prague, though. You should check it out.

My Bicycle

2013-06-02T14:20:00.001-07:00

The rain guards were exciting. It had rained almost everyday since I arrived and too many shirts had already been ruined in America from that rooster tail of water that always spins off the back wheel. The lights were built in as well, designed to shine only when the bike was moving. A small device translated the kinetic energy of the wheel’s rotations into light.Don’t think I didn’t Wikipedia that. I’m still fairly sure that kinetics is that toy you played with when you couldn’t find your LEGOs. Whatever it was, the lights worked. It even had a bell. All of this distracted me from the how crappy a bike it was long enough to overpay for it.

I’m terrible at haggling. Or, I might be. I don’t know because I’ve never tried. It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like it. It means I only buy things I really want or really need. It means I don’t have a lot of things from flea markets and the things I do have were probably too expensive.

I bought the bike when it was raining. I thought this was a good sign. I thought, If it runs well in the rain, it’s sure to be fine the rest of the time. Clearly, I think a lot of thoughts. And a lot of them are just smart enough to distract me from how dumb I am until I wake up with a crappy bike. The next morning the chain wouldn’t stay on the teeth and the brakes were only working half the time. Suddenly the seat was uncomfortable and I had the turning radius of a fire engine. Fuck me, right?

pictured: me and my bike

This was Saturday. On Tuesday I left work after lunch to go to the bank because details are important when you’re telling a story. Since buying the bike, two friends had been in separate car-related biking accidents. One was hit by a Smart car and the other by an ambulance. Only now that I’m writing this do I realize the drastic size difference but similarly ironic models of the vehicles involved. So there was some bad vibes in the air, if that’s something you can still have in Berlin.

I’ve learned that it’s a crosswalk-or-death-by-embarrassment culture so when I reached a lane of traffic on my way to the bank I waited for the light instead of weaving through the cars like usual. And when I reached the other side I hopped forward, still straddling the bike but with both feet on the ground, and began to pull my bike over the lip of the curb. My front wheel was up when the traffic light turned green and a car in the lane closest to me hit the gas like a metaphor that makes sense. He hit my back tire and in that moment I somehow gained all the reflexes and coordination that has eluded me my entire life up to that point. I lifted my right leg and the bike was pushed out from underneath me before spinning onto the sidewalk. The driver kept going.

I was fine. My bike, which had yet to be named, a bad omen I only partly attribute to it getting hit, was a bit fucked. The back wheel was warped and couldn’t make a full rotation within the confines of those exciting rain guards. Pissed off and stranded an equally inconvenient distance from both the bank and work, I locked my bike to the closest post and started back to the office. Then it started raining.

Fast forward through all my complaining to anyone who would listen about essentially everything I’ve just complained about here and suddenly it’s Sunday five days later and I want to pick up my bike to see if it will be cheaper to repair or buy a new one that doesn’t suck to begin with. And when I get to the post the bike is gone. Worse, I can’t tell for a few minutes if I’ve forgotten where I've left it or if it’s really gone. I had only owned the bike for a few days. In five days I had already been away from it longer than I had been with it. Was I sure this was where it should be? Yes, yes I was sure. Someone had put the effort into stealing a bike they couldn’t even ride away with.

So now I need to start the whole process over again. Maybe I'll get a bike with exciting rain guards and kinetic bike lights. Maybe I'll get a skateboard. Maybe I'll walk. Whatever I chose, I should probably wear a helmet either way. In a city where the ambulances hit you and the bicycle thieves don't care if your bicycle even works, I'll take all the protection I can get.

Berlin: Week 1

2013-05-21T05:44:00.001-07:00

Berlin is the worst. The subways are clean. The beer is cheap and you can drink it on the street. Everyone speaks English and is happy to help you through your daily struggles with the language barrier. Most people will even apologize for their poor English, usually while providing flawless directions to Weinerschnitzel Circle or wherever it is you’re heading, and they appear genuinely appreciative that you’ve attempted to speak their language at all. The sun sets later every day and the night sky always has a deep blue tint. Who runs this place? It’s terrible.

There are a lot of little things Berliners do that seem so obvious and better that it’s silly the rest of the world hasn’t followed suit. By the rest of the world, I mean America. Europe is crazy and diverse and I can’t yet generalize it as comfortably as I can with America’s craziness and diversity. (I am also becoming painfully aware of how ignorant I am to the politics and cultures of the rest of the world, and worse, that this ignorance is expected from Americans. But I'll save that blow to the ego for another time.)

The windows open two ways. Insignificant? No. Most of the windows are designed to swing open completely as well as tilt inward slightly from above, providing the perfect sized crack of air. It’s like setting your window to Medium. Not right now, Window. Today I want you operating at 30%. It’s a great thing.

Like I mentioned before, you can drink in the street. You can drink in the subway and you can drink in the movie theatre. Much of Europe is like this, the UK being a major exception. As it’s been explained to me, they, like Americans, would too often get hammered and start lighting strangers on fire.

Drinking a beer while walking down a canal is no simple pleasure when you’re in a new place and are still baffled by things as simple as Enter and Exit. Beer tastes the same in every language and drinking one in the sun always feels like a pivotal scene in the daily movie of your life. This is where it changes and you, the hero, figure it all out.

Another small nicety is the practice of leaving empty beer bottles on the ground. The same people who go around collecting glass bottles to redeem the recycling money don't need to root through the trash. Their treasures await them on every corner, propped up against walls or lampposts so as to not be accidentally kicked over. It’s even considered impolite to throw your empty bottle in the garbage. It’s a middle-finger to the recyclers whose efforts are providing you with your next clean bottle. Yes. They recycle, wash, and reuse the bottles. Which is why your brand new beer has scuffmarks on the glass.

There are also a lot of bizarre little things I can't quite get a handle on. I’m trying to imagine what a foreigner would find crazy when walking around New York but I might be too culturally integrated to think of anything good. The crazy amount we pay for rent? The unexplained love of brunch but distinct lack of proper love for brinner?

First crazy thing: There are assigned seats in movie theatres. You have a specific row and seat number and it adds an odd level of class to the movie-going experience, even if that is quickly cancelled out by the bottle of whisky you've brought in with you. Part of this is brilliant. It means you’ll never worry about finding a seat next to the person you’re with and if you go to the bathroom during the previews your seat will be there when you get back. But the benefits of assigned seating only work when the theatre is crowded. When the theatre is empty, like it was when I went to see Iron Man 3 at 2pm on my first jet-lagged brain-dead day in the city, the assigned seating can get awkward.

Here’s how your seat is determined. The cashier asks if you want a seat in the front, middle, or back section, and then the rest is random. I hope it’s random. If not, the cashier smelled America on me and didn’t like it. Because five minutes after I sat down in the empty theatre two men sat directly beside me, despite the completely open rows and seats all around us. To anyone else, we looked like three friends enjoying a movie. To me, it looked like anxiety and hell. The worst part? No one wants to move and risk sitting in someone else’s assigned seat or, worse, feel like they're insulting the stranger they're moving away from. The result? My two new friends and I enjoyed Iron Man 3 in unnecessarily close quarters and it was lovely.

Another thing: There are no smoke detectors. Anywhere. Not in your apartment, office, or local fire station. Which is good, I guess, because everyone is smoking everywhere all of the time. But what happens when there’s a fire? Most buildings are made of stone, so that’s good. But the people? The people are still made of the same stuff as in America, right? Unless—oh my God. Germans are fireproof.

Also: Jaywalking is strongly discouraged. I don’t know if this is a result of the German fondness for order or a new-found concern for the safety of others, but it is very different from my Boston upbringing where crosswalks are oft-ignored suggestions and hit-and-runs include punching the hood of an oncoming Audi before continuing your evening jog across Route 9.

Learning new customs and adapting your lifestyle to fit the place you’re in is part of what travelling is all about. So these small things add up to the whole experience, in a way. And while certain daily things conflict with how I’d normally act (jaywalking, etc.), Berlin itself seems conflicted in a way unlike any other city I’ve been to. It’s old and new at the same time and history is sandwiched next to modernity with the same obliging comfort as me and that fat guy in the seat next to me on my flight over here. (I’m sorry, Saul. You were a delight but also enormous.)

As a result of the war, a large majority of the infrastructure is less than 60 years old. Any building older than that is pockmarked with bullet holes and bears the scars of a city with a violent past. It’s aware of its own history and its residents are taught to feel guilt and shame for it, sometimes even on behalf of still-living family members. The past isn’t ignored or erased but it isn’t embraced either. Instead it sits full of bullet holes between the H&M and the Starbucks. It’s weird.

Cranes and billboards poke through the skyline around the Reichstag. Detailed graffiti art and hastily done tags fight for space, abruptly stopping in reverence for Brandenburg Gate or the Holocaust Memorial. Sections of the Berlin Wall are scattered around the city like a constant reminder for people who haven’t forgotten.

When you think you’re getting a hang of the history lesson that a city like this can’t avoid teaching, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church comes from around a corner and sucker-punches your children. Even if you don’t have any children it’s so raw that it sucker-punches your future children. Timmy is going to be born with a black eye. The Church was built in 1891 and bombed in 1943. The remains were left to stand as a symbol of the ravages of war and as a symbol it’s fairly successful. It looks like it was bombed yesterday and the church built next to it in the 1960s only accentuates the destruction. It’s all the old and new you can handle in one architecturally intense moment and it takes remembering that you can drink outside for you to be happy again.

I'm still not sure which of my experiences were one-offs, unique to the theatre I was sitting in or street I was jogging across. Berlin is big and fragmented and every neighborhood feels like a new city. A unifying factor has been how truly nice everyone has been, despite my terrible language skills or ability to remember that I, in fact, am the immigrant. It's easy to forget when everyone keeps apologizing for not knowing the right word in English mid-conversation. It's interesting to realize how completely different we handle foreigners or immigrants in America and how quickly we are frustrated when they don't speak our language. And it's been an important reminder of how grateful I need to be that the only language I speak is the one most people need to learn if they want to be able to communicate with anyone outside of their own country.

Oh. I was also exposed to Eurovision. And like the bard once said, that shit cray.

On Leaving

2013-05-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

My neck hurts and my throat is sore and my back is tight and my wallet is empty and I’m tired. Emotionally, physically, spiritually. I’m drained. I’ve poured everything I’ve had into the past few weeks and it’s made me love everyone and everything in my life that much more. The only thing left in my bedroom is a mattress, a desk, and three coat hangers, all of which I’m giving to the guy who moves in May 1st. Everything else I have is packed in three suitcases and one backpack that sit by the door waiting to be put in the trunk of the cab that is taking me to JFK where I, along with it, will travel 9 hours to Berlin, Germany, my new home for the next who knows how long. What are you doing this week?

I’m looking up. My head is against the wall in my Bushwick living room. The ceiling is cracked and stained yellow from the water damage we had during Hurricane Sandy. I had two friends in town for Halloween and they ended up staying almost until Thanksgiving because public transportation shut down. When our power went out and both of my roommates and I were told we had to work from home, the five of us ate tacos in the living room and drank whisky on the fire escape. Do they have tacos in Berlin? If not, I’m setting up a truck. BYOTortillas.

I have friends here. Ex-girlfriends and bike routes and regrets and open tabs. I’m even a regular at this one restaurant, a goal I’ve had from long before I moved to New York. Tina knows how I like my eggs and I don’t need to say a thing. You can’t buy that. That type of relationship takes time. I know the subway routes and the feeling of running into a turnstile when you swipe your card and your pass has expired. I’ve been poked in the eye by an umbrella and I’ve given secret passwords to get into bars. I’ve paid 12 dollars for french fries. I accidentally accosted Elvis Costello on the street. And it’s only been two years. Less. It would be two years in August. What’s a year in Berlin going to do?

It’s scary. Anything this new and exciting is supposed to be scary. It would be insincere to say I am completely comfortable with it. But I’m doing it because it’s an opportunity and a chance of a lifetime and because people keep telling me that it’s an opportunity and a chance of a lifetime. And that I’m only young once. People say that a lot. Young people, too. Young people who think they are old. Young 29-year-olds who are neurotic enough to see the top of the hill and assume they are already over it. Young 55-year-olds who have actually been over a few hills and know that this is just one of them. Young 78-year-olds who walked uphill both ways when they were my age and know that this will be a life changing experience. But aren’t all experiences life-changing?

(Thinking is the worst, isn’t it? No matter how good you are at it, at the end of the day all you end up with is your thoughts and what good did those ever do anyone who’s trying to make a big decision?)

I’m nervous and excited and anxious and only just starting to get comfortable with the notion that I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s a freedom in the ocean of possibilities I’m about to be dropped into but it’s as paralyzing as it is motivating. It’s an amplified version of the way I feel in every bookstore. I want to read it all and I don’t want to choose anything. I just want it all in me. I’m overwhelmed by my own interests and I don’t want to waste a single moment of it. But it quickly becomes too much and I buy the Calvin & Hobbes flipbook instead. That’s just the fiction aisle in my local shop. What am I going to do with Europe at my disposal?

No one else knows the answer, either. I know that. But I still like advice, so I ask and I listen to what people have to say even if, historically, people are full of shit. We’ll see.

Here’s what I know. I know I want to live in Europe. I know that having a job provides me with the opportunity to live abroad with a stability I wouldn’t have otherwise. But who goes to Europe for stability? I have that here. Part of why I’m leaving is for the unstable nature of it. For the romance. So I can live like all those old dead white guys I enjoy reading and so I can finally see what all the fuss is about. I can call myself an expat, which still seems like the coolest thing to be called. I can be an American when it’s convenient; on the 4th of July or when someone has an opinion about New York. And I can write out everything longhand and drink wine and pretend I’m important. Isn’t that why people go to Europe?

I’m already thinking about not coming back for a while. It’s a fantasy now but I also know how easily it could become a reality and it’s scary because of how much I like it here. I like it a lot. And the thought of leaving fosters insecurities over the strength of my relationships that have never been tested by distance before. I’ve had close relationships dissolve over nothing more than distance in the past. Negligible distance. Different boroughs, even. And the advice I give to other people in this situation is that the good relationships last. The ones that are worth it will stick around, no matter where you are. And that’s a nice thought. It could be true, too. But I don’t want to find out who matters that way. I want it to stay the same.

That’s not how it works. Things change. Even if I stayed here, things would change. And they’re supposed to. But as much as I’m excited for what lies ahead, I’m scared and I’m sad.

I’m not used to heading off for the next adventure when I’m still enjoying the current one. I usually make sure to burn everything into ground before sifting through the ashes, picking out the pieces worth saving, and moving on to the next thing. So it makes leaving New York a new experience. I love it here. I’m not ready to go. I feel like I just lit this motherfucker. These past 6 months? Some of my best. I even got a new haircut. I’ve spent the past few weeks drinking in my life as heavily as possible and I’m full and happy and everything is the best it’s ever been, making it, I realize, the perfect time to pull a George Costanza and leave on a high note.

So now what? Now I do the thing I do. I'll write about it. This is the first entry in my new blog. It’s like the old blog, except everything is different. New city, new people, new language. New continent. New me. Old me, too. I’ll update when I have something to say or when I want to say something anyway. And I’ll think about a lot of you a lot of the time. Visit, or don’t. Write, or don’t. You do you, I’ll do me, and I’ll see you when I see you. By then I hope you’ll have some good stories for me. If not, make some up. It makes the conversation more fun.