In Which I See a Drag Show and Das Rheingold in 24 Hours

My story starts, where many good stories start, in a parking lot at 9:30 Friday night. One of my friends, A certain Kalila Z, was born twenty years ago this Friday, and in honor a large group of cool people were planning to go to a gay bar in Dayton. Never fear, there was no underage drinking involved: they let people under 21 in, but first they must receive the Black Spot on their hand that marks them as forever dead to all bartenders. But that wasn't such a big deal. Any homophobes who might be reading this: you're missing out. This place was one of the best places I have been since Germany. Good music, more flashing lights than the NYPD, and plenty of space to dance.

But, the real reason we were there was the drag show. I didn't really know what to expect: I had the usual stereotypical image of drag queens: sarcastic, flamboyant, and wearing enough makeup to cover a small zoo of test animals. But I didn't really expect the stereotype to be fulfilled. It was, and then some! The Mistress of Ceremonies, who between dance routines called up those with birthdays, looked like Miss Piggy, talked like a chain smoker, and sparkled like a fiber optic Christmas tree. It was pretty awesome, and sure worth the trip.

Back from that, I was dozing comfortably at 11:00, when my cell phone started vibrating. It was a call from my section leader, asking me where I was and if I wanted to go to Das Rheingold. I had completely forgotten that I was planning to go see that this afternoon! Hastily, I grabbed the nearest pieces of clothing and dashed out the door and across campus to drive back to Dayton. The location of the production was the New York Metropolitan Opera, but a movie theater in Dayton was screening it live in HD on the big screen. It was great: sure, it wasn't truly live, but opera houses tend to frown on eating popcorn during the show.

And Wagner is truly fascinating: For those unfamiliar with the work and unwilling to sit through an uninterrupted three hours of melodramatic German, the plot is as follows:

A German god has a midlife crisis, and takes out a mortgage to build Valhalla, his dream house. But he can't make the payments, and the Giants Repo Men come, and take his daughter as collateral. Meanwhile, a jew gnome steals some gold from three mermaids, and renouncing all love, forges it into The One Ring. He then uses the ring's power to force his fellow jews gnomes to make and hoard gold for him, planing to use it to take over the world. But the portly god finds out about this, and storms down to the underworld, to steal the gold he needs to ransom his daughter back. he captures the jew gnome, and takes the ring along with the rest of the gold, but the jew gnome curses the ring, saying that whoever has it will be forever paranoid, and whoever doesn't will be forever envious. The middle-aged god, of course, poo-pooh's this, and would have kept the ring even at the price of his daughter, were it not for the words of a strange lady who shows up for no discernible reason to warn him against it. In the end, the Repo Giants leave with the cursed ring, and the family of gods is reunited in their happy home.

To be fair, the Met did their best to tone down the antisemitic undertones: Alberich, the gnome, was cast as a black man. However antisemitic Wagner may have been, though, the score and libretto are wonderful: I wasn't able to understand all the german, because there were a lot of archaic and just plain operatically mangled words. But I caught enough to hear the poetry in it. And the staging of this production was... well, check out this video and see for yourself:

All I could say was...wow. If you find yourself in a position to see this, either live or recorded, take it. It's a wonderful show.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and College Students

I still don't know what to do with "David im Deutschland", now that David is no longer on exchange but instead a boring old college student. I feel so self-indulgent writing about myself now, now that my situation is shared by so many other people. Before I was given voice simply by the uniqueness of my situation: bad or good, I was charting a place that had not been explored. Now, my writing is leveled with the masses, open to comparison on its integral merits, and I doubt that comparison is a favorable one.

Not that the college experience suffers from a dearth of writing topics. On exchange, I comforted myself with the image of my return to the states as a worldly and experienced young man, far above such childish things as homesickness and peer pressure. I have never been more disillusioned. College is an entirely different experience from exchange. I arrived in Germany into the arms of a waiting support structure. I lived with families inside their preestablished web of routine and love. Here, there was no such network; instead there was a steaming broth of young adults, with barely preestablished mealtimes to lend order to the chaos. Germany was an exercise in forming connections, breaking routines to try to forge a place for oneself. College, it sometimes seems, is the exact opposite; the nemesis isn't boredom, but overstimulation, not wasted hours but overcommitment. And in this hot soup of people and events, it is even harder than before to make and maintain lasting connections. Some days I get back to my room, exhausted and realize that I did not have a single meaningful interaction with a person I care about.

Those are the worst days. But there are plenty of better ones. College, like exchange, concentrates awesome people. The criteria are different: Less emphasis on an outgoing personality, and more on smarts, obviously. But the effect is similar: the concentration of interesting people reaches a critical mass, where the actions of the group become non-deterministically awesome. Some weekends I party and some I watch nerdy TV and some I don't do anything in particular and it is all intensely fun. Come to think of it, the modifier "Intense" applies to pretty much everything that happens here. And that's intensely awesome.

Anyway, watch this space, I guess. If I have anything I want to write, it'll end up here.

Scotland

I am sure, faithful readers, that you noticed the absence of posts last week. You probably shook your heads like you always do and thought "David's too busy off having fun to write us even a few measly words this week... he probably spent all his time on Facebook chatting with those exchange girls he always talks about and forgot completely to write us poor people back home a few measly words to brighten our lives..." But this week you would only be half correct. True, I was too busy to write anything for your enjoyment, but I wouldn't have been able to post it anyway, because I was in the wilds of darkest Scotland, and didn't have any internet access. So here's how the week went:

Monday:

I got to Köln/Bonn Flughafen at 9 Monday morning. The airport brings to mind a Douglas Adams quote: "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, ‘as pretty as an airport'." It does its job efficiently, though, and in a couple of hours we were on a plane to Edinburgh. I didn't even have to take off my shoes! In Edinburgh, as a non-EU-citizen I had to jump trough a couple of extra hoops: they didn't give out the card with trip length and other information that travelers are supposed to fill out on the plane, because there's barely anyone on a flight from Germany to England that needs one! Germans don't even need a passport to travel in the EU; the Personalausweis that everyone is issued at 16 is enough ID for just about anything.

I have dubbed Edinburgh the City of Chimneys. Everywhere you look, the old stone buildings sprout cylindrical smokestacks, relics of a day when the heating source was coal. the skies of the city must have been disgusting then; but now everything's nice and pretty; the old storefronts are well-preserved and painted brightly, and the only sign of pollution is in the dirty black stone of the old buildings.

My first meal in Scotland was also a memorable one. We were given free time to wander the Old Town, and I looking for something typically Scottish and/or delicious to eat, I saw a pig head in a shop window. The rest of the pig was there too, and available to eat! The shop, cleverly called "Oink", was selling "Scottish hog roast rolls", essentially pulled pork with delicious thyme seasoning in a bun with a piece of "crackling" on top. Crackling is the glazed skin of said pig, a little crunchy square of fatty goodness which, if you are lucky, still has a few bristles sticking out of it! Combined with a ginger beer, it really hit the spot. England may be renowned for its bad food, but its colonies produce some pretty good stuff!

The rest of Monday was a walking tour of Edinburgh and, perhaps the smartest move of the trip, a stop in a used bookstore (I have never seen a German used bookstore. I wonder why...) where I bought for £2 a paperback by Larry Niven that was my primary entertainment for the rest of the trip. I have been starved for science fiction this year, so it was good to sink my nose into a really good work of genre fiction.

Tuesday:

We got up bright and early on Tuesday and met the other class from my school that had decided to come to Edinburgh over breakfast. They had elected to come with a ferry from Holland, and were quite a bit the worse for wear. There was apparently a bar on this ferry, with beer at tax-free prices, and quite a few of them had apparently been keen to exploit the bargain. Pleasantries exchanged, we went our separate ways. Our first stop of the day was Edinburgh Castle, perched on top of an old volcano in the middle of the Old Town. To get there, though, we had to walk a gauntlet of bagpiping tourist shops, selling all varieties of tartan- and kilt-based tourist junk.

While we are on the subject of commerce, let me say right up front that the English pound makes NO SENSE. To start with, there isn't even a common pound note! Some of my classmates, wanting to exchange money before we arrived, were confused when they were presented with a choice between English and Scottish pounds. Apparently there are some from the Bank of England, some from the Bank of Scotland, and a few from something called the Clydesdale Bank, which makes me think of racehorses and wonder what the UK's monetary policy is really based on. All of these notes have different designs. The Clydesdale Bank's look nothing like the other two, don't have the Queen on them, and are far more colorful. The Scottish notes have more Scottish things on them; castles and lochs and stuff, and the whole system is extremely confusing.

Fortunately, there is, as far as I could tell, only one set of coins in the UK. This doesn't mean that things make sense, though. The sizes of the coins seem to have been chosen seemingly at random. The one pence coin is tiny, but the two pence (why do the euro and the pound seem to think that both a one and a two cent coin are necessary?) is the largest coin they have. The one pound coin is really thick and heavy, and the 20 pence and 50 pence coins are not round, but a strange rounded septagon shape. It's pretty much a madhouse trying to figure out what all the coins are all valued.

After our view of the castle, (we didn't get to go in, because it cost money and Germans sometimes out-Scotch the Scotch) we walked down the Royal Mile, back through all the tourist shops, to a museum called The People's Story, which was free. There I learned that, in medieval Edinburgh, there was a guild for everything. Butchers bakers, candlestick makers, even beggars had to be registered, for heaven's sake! We also visited an old churchyard, which was something very special to my teacher; apparent Germany doesn't have any truly old graveyards anymore, because after a few generations they just put new graves over the old ones. Very space-saving, I guess...

From there we walked back up the Royal Mile, provisioned ourselves, and boarded our bus, highland bound! Scotland is renowned for many things, but one of them is definitely not it's efficient road system. It took us three hours to cover the 100-odd kilometers between Edinburgh and our hostel in Aviemore, a tiny little place known as a ski village in winter, and more or less a ghost town in summer.

The next thing on the agenda was to hike a short way though the highlands. I had worked with some of my friends to plan the hike, looking through directories of Scottish hiking paths to try to find one that would be pretty but not try the endurance or patience of my classmates. I had decided on one that appeared good, but upon consultation with the locals, another one was suggested, and we went off in a completely different direction to hike around a small loch. It was a nice flat hike, and pretty, but the only distinguishing feature of the loch was a small island, upon which some crazy Scots had at one point built a mini-castle.

After out highland hike, we went to a nearby pub/restaurant to eat. Here I, with no small amount of trepidation, decided to order haggis. I didn't know anything about the renowned dish, not even what animal was involved in its preparation, but it was archetypically Scottish, and I was in Scotland, and I wasn't going to leave without trying it, dammit! A few minutes later, the waiter brought me a plate of brown ground-up... meat? yes, meat, and it tastes... Hey! it tastes great! Haggis will never win any beauty contests, but, like Scotland, it's simple and hearty, the sort of food that shepherds crave after a cold day in the Highlands.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday's agenda was a visit to Inverness, Callodon battlefield, and a driveby of Loch ness. In Inverness, all the signs were bilingual: in addition to English, Inverness has a small and proud community of Gaelic speakers. This surprised me; I had only associated Gaelic with Ireland, but it makes sense that it didn't stay there.

I spent too long in the museum in Inverness and lost the rest of the group. This wasn't a problem; afterwards was free time anyway, but it meant I was on my own to find lunch. This was also no problem. The Scottish have good specials: I lunched on haggis and mashed potatoes (they seem to call them "tatties" or something) and washed it down with a dram of sherry for just £5. While eating, I heard the table across from me speaking German. No, it wasn't more of my group. German tourists are everywhere!

Callodon Battlefield was a wide flat field; I've never really understood the fascination with and pilgrimage to battlefields; of all the sites of history, they are the ones that show the fewest signs of what took place. Nor was I able to really grasp what this battle was about. Some war of succession or something, I believe. That or a war of Scottish liberation.

I don't have much to say to Loch Ness. We stopped once, to take some pictures. There is a famously ruined castle on one bank. But they want money for it. The owners planted a high hedge to block the view from the parking lot. So we just walked further up the road, to where the view was unobstructed. Take that, hedge.

This evening, we decided to cook for ourselves in the hostel's kitchen in order to save money. This was at first a massive stressful mess, with no one sure how many wanted to or how much to make or who should front the money for ingredients. But once we got back and the cooks got cooking, it turned into quite a delicious pot of spaghetti with tomato sauce, and even though we made way too much, it cost only a fraction of eating out, as well. Our aspirations towards a room party, though, were foiled by the fact that the hostelers kept coming around and telling us that no boys were allowed in the girls room, and by the simple physical fact that a small one-window room containing ten people can quickly become a bit tropical. But a pleasant night was had by all.

Thursday:

There was one thing on Thursday's agenda: whiskey. We went to the Glenlivet distillery, where they showed off the various stills, and, best of all, the aging room. I do not think there is a better smell than that which comes from hundreds of casks of whiskey in one building. I'd wear it as perfume, but then people would think I was a drunkard.

After touring and tasting, we piled back in the bus, and took a very long scenic detour back to Edinburgh, through some very beautiful highlands. I don't think we saw a tree for hours; just low-growing bushes that covered everything, and the occasional sheep. It's an absolutely beautiful country, and I would love to see it from something other than a bus; perhaps a bike or hiking tour across Scotland, one of these years...

Nonetheless, everyone was happy to get back to Edinburgh, and we headed out. I went with a group in a pub nearby to eat some student-price burgers and watch the World cup: France against Mexico. As we came in, we noticed a table in the corner being held down by one girl about our age; we went up to her and asked if we could possibly sher the table. She said sure, but her friends were going to come soon as well, and as we would not then have comfortably fit, we demurred. But the incident stuck in my mind. She seemed friendly, I thought, and I had been in Scotland for a week without actually having a conversation with anyone native. That's no way to see a country, I thought, and at halftime, went over to the three girls and asked if there was room.

As it turned out, they weren't from Edinburgh, but from Paris, students at the Sorbonne up for a weekend. We watched and talked as France played miserably and lost, and then had a round to drown our sorrows and talked some more. In one of those wonderful little coincidences, one of them, Julie, had been in Boston for a semester or so and was also a red sox fan! After a while a band came in and covered a lot of songs we liked, and then we walked home and talked, and all in all it was the best evening of the trip. And before this year, it never would have happened. I would have never gone up to three strangers and said "hey, can I sit with you?" And that is the best thing to come from this exchange; not a new language, not a better understanding of two cultures, but the confidence to jump into perhaps precarious social situations with both feet. It just makes life a blast.

That's SO Germany! issue two: Signs

If there's one thing Germans are known for worldwide, it's being precise. As I have written about before, the German roads reflect this to a stunning degree. At a construction site, where in California a man in an orange vest with a sign saying "go left", and perhaps a row of cones would be the only markers, German highway repairmen construct elaborate systems of new, taped lines on the road to direct traffic, sometimes complete with portable streetlights. On one especially bad section near where my first host family lived, they went so far as to pave massive detour between the fields so that they could rip out the whole street at once!

This exactitude extends to normal street signs too. The most common sign in Germany is round and white, with a red ring, and means "Don't drive here". It's on almost every street, but, confusingly enough, rarely means what it says. Instead, it is almost always modified by a small sign under it saying "Blahdeblahdeblah Frei", which means that a certain type of vehicle or driver can use this road, but the rest of you had better KEEP OUT. This notice can come in basically any form. A common one around here is "Land- und Forstwirtschaftsverkehr Frei", which is a stunning example of the beauty of the German language, and means "Farm and Forestry Traffic allowed". Another common one is "Anlieger Frei", and means that unless you live or have business on that street, you shouldn't drive there. Of course, this is not easy to control, and has caused my host dad to joke that it should be "Anlügner Frei", "Liars Free"

Of course, it doesn't just stop here. There are almost infinite variations on these signs... here are some of the best I could find.

"While we're giving out beer, only residents allowed." You think they'd let just anyone have free beer?

"No Mofas". Some sort of anti-gangster law?

"Green wave"? Okay, Germany, what does this even mean?

Eww... Just ew.

My personal favorite, seen in Dresden:

Because the trains would otherwise never follow the tracks into the station; it'd be against the law!

That's SO Germany! issue one: Schinken

That's so Germany! Is my attempt to make up for being a lazy and neglectful blogger all these months. It takes every week (or so... you know me.) as subject a new thing that's SO uniquely or interestingly German.

Schinken

I was taught in German class all those years ago that "Schinken" was the German word for ham. At the time, I visualized a big baked ham like shown in a cartoons as the object of some poor dog's lust, complete with crisscross pattern and a large anatomically incorrect bone sticking out. Nothing could be further from the truth. That would be a kind of schinken, for sure, but the German word encompasses far more preparations of pig than the measly American "ham".

Though I didn't realize it at the time, one of the first things I ate in Germany was Schinken. My flight got in to Frankfurt at about 7:00 in the morning local time —the middle of the night, according to my circadian rhythm. The first thing my host family did after getting home was to sit down to breakfast, and so I sat myself down for a midnight snack. There are many unusual things about German meals, which I will write about in a further installment, so I just did what everybody else was doing: took a roll, cut it in half, spread butter on it, and put a piece of strange, paper-thin meat on each side. It was really good! Salt, and meat flavor, and fat... all the good things about meat without the mass to chew.

Schinken, as I found out later, is not cooked, simply smoked or salted and then cut really thin. This explains the lack of this delicacy in America: My first reaction to the idea of uncooked meat was disgust. For some reason, we view uncooked meat with extreme suspicion. Everything must be, for German standards, cooked to a cinder before it is declared safe to eat. And keeping meat, raw or cooked, just sitting in the fridge like all my German families? Unthinkable. How have they not all died of salmonella?

But, like most German meat products, the stuff is too good to be grossed out by. Schinken is one of those things I'm going to miss back in the US, for sure.

The Deutschlandreise Files: Koblenz, Bad Ems, Heidelberg.

It's been a long, long time since I last wrote one of these! A number of factors have conspired to keep me off the blog, including fun with other exchangers, orchestra rehearsal, the impending Rotary presentation, and my school's 150th birthday festival. This means that my school here was founded at about the same time Eureka was. There's a reason they call it the "old world", isn't there?

Okay, where was I... right. barreling down the highway back into Germany, then south past where I live and down to the where the Mosel river meets the Rhine. Here in Koblenz, exactly at the point of confluence, there is a massive and puzzling monument. Called the "Deutsches Eck", the "German Corner", it is a paved triangle between the Mosel and Rhine rivers with a giant monument to Wilhelm dem Großen, consisting of a massive statue of him astride a horse, accompanied by winged Victory. It's kind of strange, and really big. Being Exchange students, the first thing we do is take pictures of them. The second thing we do is take pictures of them with our flags. And the third thing we do is climb on them, and have people take pictures of us. Surprisingly, no one told us to get off one of Germany's national treasures. That relief there, though, the one with the eagle and snakes, puzzles me. It would seem more at home in an Aztec ruin. And the writing above: what kind of script is that? It looks nothing like I expected old German to.

Our time to puzzle and photograph is cut short, however, by a sudden shower. We jump back on the bus, and after a couple of hours of driving, some hefty detours to avoid low bridges, and a frighteningly steep ride up and down a mountain, we reach the youth hostel in Bad Ems. Well, not actually in Bad Ems, more like in the middle of nowhere. Well, I guess we won't get to experience the famous Bad Emsian nightlife! What a tragedy! But a bus of 60 exchange students is essentially a rolling party, and we had quite an evening in the hostel's basement bar.

The next morning is an early one: we lever ourselves out of bed, eat a quick breakfast, hide some rolls in our pockets for lunch, and hit the road. First stop: the Marksburg, one of many, many castles ahead of us. It's a pretty typical medieval castle, and I quickly get distracted by some moss between the stones. After that, it's off to Heidelberg, where the primary attractions are the lovely old architecture and Kyleen's girlfriend, who studies there. After another frightening bus ride up the hill to the ruined castle (Hairpins in a double-decker can be extremely hair-raising), we get out and walk down into the old city. Heidelberg was one of the nicest cities I saw on the trip; old, historical architecture, but a population where one in five are students. I think these posters summarize the attraction: where else could you find a poster for dubstep (an electonica subgenre) right next to one for Bach?

After a bit more creative driving (apparently our bus driver "doesn't trust" his satnav...) we found our way to the hostel; a spiffy place, clearly only recently built. The hostels on the trip ranged from serviceable to excellent, and Heidelberg was one of the high points. Of course, having arrived at the hostel, the first thing on our minds was "when are we going out again?" After dinner, the rotex crew made the announcement: we would be getting on a bus back into Heidelberg and spending the evening in a bar that they knew from the last group.

As it turned out they hadn't reserved the place, but it didn't matter: when 60 loud exchange students crowd into a restaurant, it clears pretty quickly on its own. The place was advertising "Bier in Sitefel", that is, a liter-sized, boot-shaped glass. This is, of course, an irresistible photo opportunity for such as us. There was quickly not a boot left on the shelf. Nor beer left in the boots.

One of the few groups who did not flee at our entrance was a pair of buzz-cut, muscled men. It turned out they were Americans, and in Heidelberg for a couple days returning from "a trip in the middle east." They didn't say as much, but I'm pretty certain they were soldiers. in any case, we were happy to have our group or English-speakers increased by two, and a good time was had by all.

All except the poor people who shared the last bus with us on the way home. Having your normally-quiet night commute suddenly filled by tons of loud, foreigners cannot be a pleasant experience. I must say, though, the rotex did an excellent job of getting us home. I don't think any of us had any idea what buses we were taking, or when, but we didn't need to; their people-herding skills were excellent.

This trip home was also the start of what would be come an important diversion in days to come: the invention and singing of songs. It all started with this off-color but extremely topical ditty that Kyleen and I invented on the way from the bus station to the hostel:

Splash splash splash,

I really need to pee.

Splash splash splash,

My bladder's getting full.

It was extremely catchy, I theorize, because it encapsulated perfectly the Zeitgeist of that particular time and place. But even the most wonderful moments must end, and we reached the hostel, snuck as quietly as we could through the halls, and collapsed into our beds, to sleep away the few hours until morning.

The Deutschlandreise Files: Brussels

Alright: First day. I wake up early, barely able to contain my excitement. Everything packed already, I fiddle restlessly with the stuff I am leaving behind. I won't be in this room for much longer anyway; one day after we get back is the third and final host family trade. Final. Even as the days get longer, everything about this year is getting shorter. But I've got two weeks ahead of me; two weeks with my best friends traveling thousands of kilometers around Germany!

Bonn: Around the corner from the bahnhof stands a massive green and white bus, ringed by exchange students. I dodge in, slide my suitcase to the packers, and dash up the tiny staircase. Bingo! I am the first on the bus, and the best seats are ripe for the picking. I take the seat right up front, upstairs, looking right out over the road.

First stop: The Haus Der Geschicte, a museum of German history going from the end of WWII up to today. It's a fascinating museum, but I and most of the others from here have seen it already. We spend the time catching up with each other and making excited plans.

After the quick tour, it's back in the bus for the long drive from Bonn to Brussels. The front seat doesn't prove as useful as I thought it would be; the window is very dirty, and my camera seems to think that's what I want to take pictures of. But it's fun to watch the landscape drift by. From really close to the glass, you can almost make yourself believe you are flying down the Autobahn towards Belgium.

It's easy to miss a border in Europe these days: at first we just thought the town names had gotten really strange. Belgium, though, looks subtly different: somehow, the villages, the fields, the trees are slightly more... Belgian. Brussels, however, is extremely cosmopolitan, almost aggressively so. I lost count of the number of EU flags. Every hotel has an extensive collection of flags over the door.

The old city is a different story altogether. Here, on the Grand Square, the city's medieval and intricately carved town hall rears its distinctive spire. There are some beautiful buildings around it; old guild houses with gilded tools of the trade, palaces, all the architectural treasure that old rich cities seem to collect.

Our tour guide for the day is an old guy who is a little put out by our tendency to favor talking with each other over listening to him. He talks about all 17 times that Brussels has changed hands in the past couple centuries, about the tension between the Dutch-speaking Belgians in the north, and the French-speaking Vallons in the south, and how Brussels is (because of being invaded, natch) a little francophone island in the Dutch-speaking north. He talked at length about Belgian beer, and Belgian kings, and Belgian this and that... I barely knew there was anything other than Belgian waffles!

But you know who else is from Belgium? Tintin! Apparently Hergé was a pen name for Georges Rémi, a Belgian! Brussels is apparently a very important city in European comics history: I saw many murals like this one, depicting other comic characters throughout the city. I think of "comics" as having come from superheroes and a largely American thing; it's weird to think that Europe was developing its own style at the same time!

The hostel is exactly as I expected it would be: bunk beds and a couple of sinks in the room, everything else down the hall. We eat, then quickly freshen up and head downstairs; tonight is our only opportunity to try Belgian beer!

Of course, with 60 people in tow you can't just walk into a bar and order a couple. We do quite a bit of walking before we find a place that can and will take us all. But it's a nice place. Belgian beer is different, and good; we talk and trade each other sips until the Rotex round us up at twelve.

Next morning: The word is up and out: we have a long way to go. I perform the miracle of getting everything back in my suitcase in record time, and am one of the first on the bus. Unfortunately we have to wait for the last; this results in a chill half an hour of miscellaneous exchange student conversation.

Eventually the bus lurches into motion, and we are on our way to the Atomuim, a strange construction built for the 1958 worlds fair. It's recently been restored, so it's shiny, but still covered in zeerust. The old man from yesterday had showed up while we were taking pictures, and he wheezed facts over the bus intercom as we drove around and continued to talk to each other. I felt kinda sorry for him; he did a good tour, but we were far more interested in each other. But we dropped him in the city, and then we hit the road, saying goodbye to Belgium and heading southward to the Mosel... But that's a story for another day.

Wow... I'm amazed how much came out there! I didn't even know I remembered all that! Anyway, there's a lot more to come; I'm not going to do things exactly one day at a time; I'll just cut it how I feel it works best. But if this post is any guide, I'll be writing these until I leave!

Here is my Flickr album, and here is another take on the first day by the inimitable Kaya.