“Would you like the uncovering of your bed?”


Guten tag, mon freres. And a hardy howdy-do, as well. I’m one week into my jaunt, and here is what I have learned so far (some on my own, some with the help of Rick Steve’s Europe through the Back Door, even though I’ve been very much going through the front door on all occasions.) Fact is, I’m so homesick that even though I’m staying in this upscale Munich hotel, I ordered a hamburger from room service (topped off with a nice Weiss-bier and a mousse du chocolat, just to be fair to the chef).


1. Everyone – and I mean everyone – hates George Bush. Especially in the UK, where he is slated to deliver some pandering talk this week. From his position on Iraq, to the tariffs on imported steel, disgust with this guy is as vocal as it is ubiquitous. Not too surprising, but still. Doesn't have much impact on me in my travels except that it is noteworthy. I haven't yet needed to take Eddie Izzard's advice ("Tell them you're Canadian") and so far everyone has been delightfully friendly and willing to help. Maybe it's sympathy.


2. Everyone speaks with an accent. Which means, of course, that everyone speaks at least one more language than I do. This may seem like a trivially obvious statement, but it hit me as more than that during day 2 in Birmingham, England. Not all English speakers speak with English accents; our moderator there, who is Spanish by birth, speaks British English with a decidedly Spanish flair, and it still amazed me that her grammar is better than people I encounter every day back home.


3. If you manage just a few words in the native tongue, you will be given much more than the benefit of the doubt. The attempt is rewarded joyously in almost every circumstance. In fact, asking if someone speaks English and then trying in my broken French or German often resulted in them “admitting” that their English is better than they let on. It’s probably important, and related to point 1. You can get very far abroad being American if you aren’t an ugly American. And that means not expecting everyone you meet to speak English. Because most of them do, but being arrogant about it won’t get them to fess up. Which leads me to my fourth learning, which is:


4. A year of high school French will get you farther than you ever thought possible. Mais bien sur! I’m two hours in Paris and, quite unbidden, little dialogues I memorized during sophomore year are coming back to me (tes Americains sont encore la! – The Americans are still here!) which are useless in most practical situations, although not so much these days (see again point 1) but hey it’s better than scrambling for the phrase book every two seconds (see me in Germany, for example). The headline is an example of the perfectly passing English from the housekeeper who knocked just a few moments ago. I couldn’t put a German sentence together with that level of sophistication if you held a Luger to my head. Luckily it hasn’t come to that yet.


I’m working like a dog, so I have not had much time to view the surrounds. Paris went by in a blink, but I had an extended stay in Lyons so I’ve actually got some pictures of (what else?) a basilica there. However, two days plus in each country has afforded a thumbnail portrait of each one. Here’s how it seems to me.

Britain is like a dreary, friendly, wet Labrador retriever. Familiar and mostly eager to please. You enjoy having the little guy around, because you understand Labs so well and they are refreshing and help ease the homesickness, but wet dogs have that smell…It rained from morning til night, and the sky is perpetually gray and close and hovering. Food is plentiful but uninspired. And everything is different there (including the left-hand driving and the British pound).


France is an exotic performance artist who has invited you into her darkened parlor though you aren’t quite sure why you’re there. Wearing sleek shimmery fabric and tantalizing perfume. Everything was just a bit more. And nobody explains what to do. I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant (four stars on that puppy, holy cow) and even though I ordered from the “cheap” menu, the food just kept coming and coming. I learned in Italy that dinner is a dish best served in phases, but I was not expecting this in France. Each dish was tiny and intricately arranged, and although I ordered from the English menu most of the time I didn’t know what I was eating when it finally arrived. This is partly because each course had several sub-courses. There was a pre-appetizer (little stuffed cherry tomatoes and sushi) then my appetizer (a mouthful of broth and a spoonful of fois gras) then the post-appetizer pre-meal, etc. Dessert was supposed to be chocolate ice-cream (I think), but it was preceded by a cream and jam kind of dish, a scoop of sorbet and a tiny two-tiered tray of chocolate cookies. I actually stopped the waiter when he brought the Main Dessert – “I don’t think I ordered that.” I was dizzy. And let’s not even talk about the wine. Below is Mont Blanc seen from business class:




Germany is your loud bosomy aunt who pulls you into her lap to let you sip her beer when Mom isn’t looking, teaching you dirty limericks that you half-understand, except that you know you shouldn’t repeat them. All of these perceptions are largely predicated on the meals I’ve eaten. I am currently staying in a way-too-upscale hotel that is populated with every high-end store you can imagine down on the ground floor. But tucked away there in the basement is Palais Keller, which is an old salt warehouse from the mid 1400s that has been restored and now houses a great authentic Bavarian restaurant. Homemade pretzels in the bread basket. Fifteen different kinds of sausage, on the menu, along with some other things that perhaps are better left unseen (The grilled calf’s sweetbread spleen sausage served with potato salad comes to mind. I mean, really, potato salad? Cholesterol, anyone?? Seriously, though, vegetarians may want to take a big detour around Germany’s borders.) And lawdy lawdy the beer! Mmmmmmmm…..beer.

So that’s it so far. Not bad for a week. Seven days, three countries. Munich and Berlin this week, followed by Barcelona and Madrid. And then on to Roma and Milan and finally home to my bride whom I am just aching to see again. I can’t wait.

posted by MT at 11:13 AM |

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I have been finding some strange and unusual shit out there lately. Let me tell you about it.

The headline comes from a report that was sent to me. From the "If You Are Blind, Don't Read This" files. The last page was intentionally left blank, the report said. So of course, it wasn't. A more accurate statement might have been, "This Page (except for, you know, this line) Intentionally Left Blank". I can't understand why a) you would need filler at the end of a report like that and b) you would want to tell me about it. If you worry that your reader is flipping through, frantic that some critical component of the report has been truncated, leaving a blank-page-that-isn't-blank as a placeholder seems like an odd solution.

OH! Speaking of truncated, here is, as Dave Barry says, the best use of this word in a news headline: Elephant erection truncated. It works on so many levels! Elephant erections trunk-ated? Wink wink nudge nudge, what? They must have been slapping backs around the editors desk at that one.

HOOORAY! Mimi Smartypants and Nora are back in country. Go here and repeat after me: awwwww...

ITEM: A billboard we passed Wednesday on the way back from a client meeting was advertising a local furrier, with the simple headline "Beautiful previously-owned furs." To which, I wondered immediately and out loud, "isn't all fur previously owned?" I ask you.

MORE BILLBOARD FUN. Those wacky Europeans. What they won't do to sell...whatever it is they're selling here (clothing or furniture, I think). Saw this on Capri.



Speaking of Europe, I am heading out on Sunday for a two-and-a-half week jaunt through G5 -- UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Luckily I have lots of Euros left from the honeymoon. I just picked up my phone adapter kit from the IT boys, and I'm all squared away. Rather than sending postcards, I will simply take photos and email them out to everyone. I'll post the nifty ones here as well.

Wacky religious news part 1: You can have my marriage when you pry it from my cold dead fingers...
The oddly-named "Marriage Protection Week " came and went last month.

Did you know? The glorious God-given sanctity of traditional, missionary-position marriage is under savage attack. The GOP is openly terrified that gays are galloping into the cultural consciousness on sequined horseback, lovers are shunning traditional weddings in favor of incense and anal sex and taiko drumming, children are weeping in the streets, neglected and confused and reading Harry Potter backward, wondering why Mommy scours the nerve.com personals while Daddy is off visiting his "sisters" in Bangkok.

(snip)

This is the BushCo way. This is the neoconservative creed. Invent a bogus threat, inject black smears of fear, hint that something church approved and "family friendly" is in danger and that wee innocent children and cute puppies are about to be tattooed and/or made to wear lots of leather chaps and eyeliner, and if we don't stand up to the Big Bad Evil, society as we know it will, very literally, crumble.

(Point of order: while our nontraditional wedding did in fact feature incense, there were few sequins, no horseback, and no backdoor action that I was aware of. )

I occasionally listen to a local fundie radio station in the morning when I haven't had enough coffee to get my blood going, and they were talking about this very thing. And I listened for longer than I usually will because they decided to forego their scriptural decrees favoring white-bread missionary-style marriage, and instead appealed to the psychological and sociological evidence that favors one-man/one-woman marriages over all other flavors and varieties. (Ignoring for the moment that the concept of a platonic "marriage" ideal is absurd on the face of it). And the summary, as near as I could tell without reviewing the literature directly was a confusion of cause and effect. Citing evidence that traditional two-parent homes have higher income, kids who go on to college and become better consumers, evidence less abuse, violence, criminal behavior in their children and so on, what they succeeded in convicing me of was simply this: when societies are geared to support one familial structure over others, those structures will obviously flourish. "Traditional" marriage is a heavily funded industry (see previous rants about THE KNOT DOT COM), and there exist numerous social reinforcements for choosing to join this particular club. These data strongly argue in favor of the very thing that the same-sex marriage crowd, for example, is fighting for: give us the same financial, social and cultural advantages when we marry, and our children will do very well indeed. [Naturally, the argument against same-sex marriages grows even thinner when children are no longer part of the equation].

Fun.


Wacky religious news part 2: The Ten Commandments.
It still grinds my teeth to hear the whole ten commandments-as-cornerstone-to-American-jurisprudence argument bandied about. Such hooey. The ancient Roman system has more to do with the way our courts operate than Moses and his burning bushes. And I found this analysis which tickled me as well. Take out killing (murder or manslaughter), bearing false witness (perjury, libel) and theft, and what is left that can be tied to sensible laws that are considered the bedrock of US legal code? Worshipping one god? Blue laws? Prohibitions against coveting your neighbor's wife or goods? (George Carlin does a lovely rant on this: "Coveting is what keeps the economy going. Your neighbor buys a vibrator that plays "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," suddenly you want one too. Coveting creates jobs. Leave it alone.") The current administration might want to control our thoughts, but they haven't figured out how. Yet.

Fun.


Wacky religious news part 3: Mother Theresa, Threat or Menace?
Boy, just when you think you've heard it all. Go here and here to read why Mother Theresa may not have been the consummate force for good many believe her to be. And in other news, puppies aren't as cute as you think they are! No, they are NOT.


Wacky religious news part 4: Copenhagen's Cult of Personality
Link via The Raving Atheist: Norse mythology is recognized as a religion in Denmark. I especially like the comments on this one:

"...wouldn't it be cool to go to a hotel someplace, plop down on the bed, open the nightstand thingy, and flip through a stack of Thor comics looking for something to read?

Would beat the hell out of what they got now.

posted by MT at 2:01 PM |