We hear that the weather is soooo hot that flights might get cancelled going out of Phoenix for the wheels exploding on the rubber-popping lava temp tarmac.
We don't even call because we don't even care.
We're fucking going.
Greyhound's an unsurprising low-income parade of gangster-be dazzle shorts, hicksters, obesity, and fellow Mexicans. Of course getting to Phoenix for $15 (as opposed to the shuttle's $65) plus the bottom-tier sideshow makes for a better deal.
We walk a half-mile from the bus station to Sky Harbor in near 100-degree sun to find ourselves sweatboxed & a hint pink after jumping two low fences with entrances and carry-on. Looking deceptively close on GoogleMaps, it's the property line that's only nearby, but the concourse of Sky Harbor's at least a mile away, which given the unshaded asphalt desert of endless parking lot and obstacle course walls, is unreasonably far. We find a golf cart tram driver, and soon after, airport nachos con carnitas never tasted so good.
My wife Michelle militantly insists on holding onto her luggage after hearing about my luggage limbo travails on my way to Iceland last year, but we check-in separately, and in the hot minute it takes for her to come get her boarding pass from me and back to her end of the counter, the lady has efficiently tagged and sent her bag through the door-of-no-return in the back wall. Her shoulders slump with worry, but I point out the extra unwanted attention TSA gives the larger bags and people trying to cram their rollies in the unforgivably cramped storage compartments above the seats, and she realizes that maybe being tricked out of her cumbersome luggage isn't a such a bad thing.
My wife's first ever plane ride at 31 goes swimmingly. She's a power lifter & martial artist with federal enforcement aspirations, so some escape velocity g-force is exciting to her, for which I'm glad.
Minneapolis-St Paul airport's far more swank than when I encountered it in the early Aughts. Electronics tablets with card readers at every chair & table so one can order any selection from all the various concourse eateries, and matching charging stations for your portable device of choice. Our fancy noodleshop udon & sushi dinner ran $50+ so one can see where the funding came from for all those improvements.
Wife's second flight goes for quite awhile crossing the dateline. The coach seats rob us of a night's sleep, each of us maybe getting a hour. At some point during the duration, Michelle asks, "Are these seats meant to inflict insomnia?!?"
"Maybe. But I'm more comfortable saving our hundreds for the actual destination as opposed to being passively pressured by an airline into their faux first class." And then we snuggle in for the duration.
Day 1: Dutch treats?
Amsterdam's airport's a modern labyrinth of chrome & continuous hallways, while the WiFi's certificate spookiness actually scares my smartphone into making me change my email password.
Brutal toilet paper, probably made from reclaimed sheet rock. Don't use the bathrooms if you can help it.
We slap the round red longship emblem stickers on our chests and backs, and sally forth into the arrival area.
Enthusiastic Viking employee Antonio Guillermo drives the Mercedes van like a weapon, making it slit openings in traffic and nearly peeling rinds of paint off adjacent cars, while warning us about the menace of weaving cyclists that plague the libertine capital's streets. I tip him two euros: one for being so amicable, & the second for not killing us.
The barge-like riverboat's a little less than expected from the outside, but the opulence & decor of the inside totally exceeds.
Marble paneled floor & stairway in a central double mezzanine, huge leather seated lounge with a bar, scandi-cubbied library with modern titles of local interest travel & wine guides (an abandoned Grisham & Patterson somehow snuck into the catalog quite uninvited), and viking-themed giclée prints, the crowning glory of which rests at the top of the stairs: A photoshopped Katheryn Winnick of "Vikings" TV series fame stands next to a wooden jarl's throne amongst a riot of pink & orange colours.
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| ["Hlin" by Roy Christian Lauritsen.] |
She's also the ship's namesake, Hlin, one of the Valkyries.
The stateroom's snug but not in a bad way, more efficiency than stingy, and the lights dial down to sexy, which later turns out to be perfect for the belated honeymoon.
While exhausted, we realize that if we don't catch a shuttle into Amsterdam proper, we'll miss out seeing it at all as the ship casts off at midnight.
Michelle's beat but agrees after two coffees that it's now or never: The Red Light District awaits!
The last shuttle in features a gaggle of seniors experiencing their second adolescent delinquency as they're all giggling about going into town to get high at one of the many "coffeehouses". My experienced wife cautions them on what type to get ("You want Sativa -- it's a happy high") and dosage ("You just need a hit or two at most, so you can all just share one joint") and an equally enthusiastic set of irresponsible 20-somethings agree to lead them down the hazy purple path.
It only points out how little difference the intervening decades can make in people's lives, really.
Amsterdam's larger & more populous than I remember. M' & I love the well-thought modern buildings somehow complimenting the 300+-year old Dutch verticals lining the smaller carriage-path cobblestone streets.
But it's the red light girls in the windows we came to see, and in their live sex mannequin poses they don't disappoint. From asians rocking the double braids, to thigh-tattooed vixens, bikini clad yet bookish 20-somethings in big glasses (awwww, yeah!), to milkshake thick, ebony lovely, glossy lip injected, top over-proportionate barbies. Throngs of men & women are window shopping just like us, most just to ogle, but a certain percentage to buy a good time.
My wife & I trade approving looks.
"At least half of these girls I'd be enthusiastic about getting with in this context or outside of it."
"No kidding!", M' agrees. "You know, it should be like this everywhere -- celebrated not stigmatized."
We make our way back out of the rose-lit streets, impressed at the more than marginal old world enlightenment on display.
We cautiously get back to the bus early, and in the wait find out our Dutch bus driver who took us for our peepshow's actually Mormon (what an awful fit for an Amsterdam bus driver).
We wander off instead of waiting and spot Grand Hotel Amrâth, a gorgeous art deco hotel with brooding angular sculpture & ormolu wrought iron gothic fencing & metal accents all over. It was like the Watchers from "Dark City" grew it, otherworldly yet remarkably familiar.
Back on the bus the seniors, especially the lady from New York, are louder than humanly sensible, baked out of their gourds, howling at everything, whether funny or not (mostly not). Their younger counterparts are no less obnoxious.
Back at the boat we dim the lights and have a better night than anyone else on, or off, that boat.
Day 2: We're on a Boat!
I wake in the small hours to look out the water level window to see trees, tall & primordial sliding by, a slow procession in the mist.
It takes a long while to fall back asleep, thinking about the giant woods just outside.
Today the boat stopped at Kinderdijk, but we'd committed to post-lag sleep over windmills, which I'd already seen where here last in the 1990s, while Michelle needed the rest & didn't care.
There was also a cheese-making excursion which was optional for an extra $100 (!), and we certainly weren't going to get rooked by that nonsense. I mean a c-note could buy way more cheese by itself, yeah?
The rain overtakes us today with a slow, constant drizzle.
Over late breakfast we analyze the muzak: It's all covers designed for the young to recognize but inoffensively rendered so as not to raise objections from the older set of passengers. It's meant to appeal to both but instead in its gutlessly neutered way loses on both counts. No septuagenarian would even recognize U2's "Desire", nor would any well-off Gen Xers want anything to do with a powerless merengue latin version of that song. It doesn't even work on a self-parody level.
Given my retail veteranship I can tune it out, but M's far more helpless to such inane pipings, and we find ourselves beating a retreat where possible.
Despite 190 passengers plus crew, we can find quiet, isolated seats most of the time, which is good since there are insane amounts of worthless chit-chat to match the muzak.
Perhaps all that sounds antisocial & negative, but we're actually having a great time. Aside from being on an escape to the other side of the world, the cool weather's great compared with the record heats of 110°+ back home, and the rolling scenery's a magic of no small order. The green, wild cows, giant war horses, mystery buildings, passing scows & birds -- it's a constant amazement. (Honestly, I can't believe I'm stopping to write this in lieu of watching.) It's all exciting & evocative to see unroll before our eyes. This afternoon the ruin of a Dutch castle tower appeared in a grove out of nowhere.
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| [The Jotun display their giant marshmallows of territorial warning along the bank.] |
The herring's been great. So missed it from Iceland.
In all, shipboard passenger life's pretty lux.
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| [The Norse goddess of love lends her name to this swanky shipboard vanity set of soaps & lotions. Note that she's just as much a goddess of battle too, so she'd likely be using these products to rinse the entrails of her enemies out of her hair.] |
We watch scenery scroll by until it's all silhouettes in the gloaming.
Day 3: Take off that Cologne.
We're told it will be sunny but thankfully skies of steel prevail.
Walking over one of the city's three main bridges, we go downstairs onto a spur of land housing the three-floor Chocolate Museum. Aztec & Mayan drinking vessels, fancy chocolatiere sets from Renaissance Europe, adverts, cocoa tins of startling mansion-portion dimensions, wrappers & ephemera.
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| [Krampus never looked so ... sweet?] |
You find out that the fun-sized bars you get with your €9 admission are made on an assembly line inside where machines conch, pour, mold, cool, and wrap the small miracle that you've probably taken for granted since your first effortless Halloween score.
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| [Crunky?!? A matcha bar for the Japanese Hip-Hop market?] |
Our concierge Stasha of Croatia emphatically recommended a long respected, locally attended beer garden & house pub in Cologne's Old Town, Peter's Brauhaus. While we'd explicitly asked as beer snobs if they had many taps, to which she emphatically nodded, "Yes! Many, many!", we got there to discover that in truth they only have Cologne's renowned city style Kolsch. Having tasted various Kolsch's back home, I'd long ago decided it wasn't really for me, but we'd already seated ourselves too far inside the dark wood paneled & bench lined maze to retreat from the waiter's kindly attentions, so Kolsch it was. And maybe here in the city at supposedly the best brauhaus our opinion would change.
But, no.
Kolsch is the Miller Lite of Germany. You have been warned.
After tolerating the eight ounces of meh and listening to the semi-ignorant tourist bombast of Clark W. Griswold at the next bench over for an endless 20 minutes, we find another place with dunkel pints & some delicious currywurst, and there for a time we are happy.
We seek out the recommended L-shaped line-up of shoppes downtown. The lady at the Montblanc store plays dumb at our asking to try out the pens. Normally a pen shop will be delighted to have you sit down and produce some writing samples with their pens because direct experience is what sells a product. With Montblanc, it's the smoothness of their nibs. We know fountain pens, both of us write with them daily, and I'd wanted Michelle to get a chance to try out Germany's most renowned manufacturer of FPs. Apparently this lady thought that instead it was their name alone, which for most luxury shoppers, is what sells. Apparently they don't work on commission.
Very quickly after leaving the pen shop, our situational awareness alarm goes off, Michelle's quite distraught and goes into shieldmaiden mode.
Shambling around us, it seems we're surrounded by graduates from the Fagin School of Theft. Beggars sit next to luxury stores, while random thieves in purposefully baggy clothes and sunglasses linger in front, casing shoppers going by as possible marks. The energy is menacing. "It's like walking down a dangerous Rodeo Drive", Michelle declared after we'd risked the gauntlet of what proved to be a glorified shopping strip of stores mostly found back home. There were some standout watch shops with a lot of wristporn in the window, but suspect our later stops in Switzerland'll offer even more.
The Dom, Cologne's monstrous cathedral, is impressive (but less winning than Westminster's gothic coziness). But there's an invisible organist up in the clerestory doing dark & dire dirges, full-on classic horror movie soundtracks, and they're amazing. By contrast the people trying to pray in the pews seem shaken out of the serenity they came here for, and Michelle laughs. We walk around looking for the cask containing the heads of the three wise men, but by the time we exhaust all the possibilities except for one, a red-robed clergyman's locking the apse, so we can only see it from afar on top of a dais through the bars. They must have had large heads to contain all that Zoroastrian wisdom as the reliquary's huge. We head off to the shuttle.
Across the bridge as we pull in front of the boat, a kid's trying desperately to landskate using a small parasail -- right along the riverbank. We realize that at any moment the board could drag him over the guardrail as fodder for Father Rhine or into a cyclist or ped if he catches the wind at the wrong angle. Luckily for him it's not working out, but he takes his helmet off and continues to try and court death anyhow.
Day 4: Castle Robbed!
And the day arrives that I'd wanted this whole trip for in the first place -- Castle Day!!!
Bussed downstream to Braubach, the bus climbs through single lane thick forest roads up a mountain to the only remaining medieval castle along the Rhine, Schloss Marksburg.
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| [Inside the castle: Possibly the most evocative doors in Germany.] |
The castle's run by the German Castle Association [Deutsche Burgenvereinigung], and lived in by two original families, one who resides above the inner gatehouse. The insides are wonderfully chilly, the masterbed the size of a modern twin, wood lined wall nooks for eating, chess games (some tourist seems to have made off with a knight and bishop), or conversations, a painted vaulted chapel room with suspiciously pagan faces in the corners, ornate iron hinges on most doors, skinny stairways, banded strongboxes, kitchen with enough room to spit whole cows, a loom room, and an armory. I suspect there's more we areas we aren't privy to, but even so, the space is internal, confined but safe in a world where adversaries were only over the next rise.
On the switchbacks returning we spot a playground hidden in the trees. A metal slide the likes of which hasn't been allowed in the states since lawsuits made parks not fun. That it's here in the middle of a hillside forest makes it even more magical.
Back on the boat the passengers begin to mob the upper deck, an area Michelle and I frequented the previous three days to get away from them all, but with today's Middle Rhine survey of the castles, they're up here in droves for the first-time. But M' & I're smarter than them, grabbing two chairs and placing them at the front of the deck in the foremost bit of shade for comfort and the best unobstructed view of the castle parade.
And the castles perched on the sides of the valley are amazing, one after the other, the program director on the PA telling us the stories of the Cat & Mouse castles, the side-by-side castles of the brothers who hated each other, the castle turned hotel, the one owned by a Japanese businessman slated to become a resort, and all the individual tales of those who would be Lords of the Rhine.
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| [Castle Schönburg in Oberwesel.] |
Unlike U.S. Highway 1 on the West Coast, unless you take a train that follows alongside the Rhine, the Autobahn goes too far inland to see the rest of the castles we're supposed to see.
On the road one observes that Euro cars are almost all new and universally boring. Which is why when we spot a clean red superbeetle waiting for the ferry, we get way too overexcited about it. By trip's end, it'll be only one of five we see in Germany, which is a sad legacy given they're from here and they made 17 million of them. Michelle tells me that new cars signify status here, which is why the bug isn't to be spotted. Alas, no slug bug sore arms for German kinders.
The bus ride's a grueling three and a half hours long before we get to the next boat where a meeting's been set up to explain how our new location changes the itinerary. The lounge isn't made for 190 people and we're standing in a doorway betwixt the lounge and terrace.
Suddenly I'm side poked by old goat. "Hey, you're blocking the view."
I'm still equal parts aghast and angry with disbelief that someone actually just jabbed me with their finger before I can reply, "It's full in there, or hadn't you noticed?"
"You need to move out of the way."
There's an automatic sliding door exactly where we're standing with nothing to keep it open. "We're keeping the door open so we can all hear the meeting."
"They can fix it so it stays open," he insists.
At this point I'm through talking, the incredulity taking my face completely over. I give him a stern look, and raise my hand into his face to give him the royal wave away before turning to listen to the meeting. I would imagine most people would've chosen that moment to hit him, as opposed to dismiss him.
The lowdown? A slideshow who's first frame says, "The Year Father Rhine Woke Up!" Yet it seems this sudden powerpoint presentation was all too readily at hand. Buried deep within the apologetics and acts of gods appeals for understanding, acceptance, and resignation due to this unforeseen turn of events, Program Director Elizabeth says, "Just this year we've had 500 deviations of schedule so far."
What?!?
But she quickly hands out hope that the weather could change, and the Rhine levels could wane, and the locks could then open ... . The boat could also sprout wings and fly like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but most of the audience seems to accept her slim optimisms.
As it stands now, our long bus ride has placed us docked two days ahead of itinerary in location. Due to said geographical changes, there'll be a bus back to Heidelberg, but no excursion to Speyer (which sweeps the legs out from those with a WW2 sightseeing agenda as that's pretty much the big stop for them -- now they know how those of us who got castle-robbed feel).
But hey, because of all this there's an open bar tomorrow night. "I want the most expensive top shelf booze they've got on this floating palace of disappointments," Michelle says, revenge drinking blooming darkly in her black heart. Frankly, I can't blame her.
In the wake of this awkward passenger transition, the Kara's staff seems less sincere than the Hlin's. It's just by degrees, but it's there. Maybe the guests before us must've been right bastards and wore away their margin of patience, but instead of having a whole trip to impress tips out of a group of people with tipping percentages inspired by conservatism of The Great Depression, they now only have half a trip to do so.
During dinner, Michelle has another insight: "People on board here are trying to behave like the people in the cruise line videos, all chummy with the useless small talk, introducing themselves to travelers they'll never actually see again once this is over, and wouldn't normally introduce themselves to outside of this boat." And she's right.
The golden age of travel is what's being sold here, a camaraderie that maybe never even was, the idea that travelers on a cruise or train or zeppelin in the Victorian era through the 1940s strike up great friendships, that gents & ladies get along in course of a journey taken together over prime rib in a dining car or cocktails in a ship's lounge or whilst drawing on cigars & brandy snifters in a special fire equipped airship room (true!), making connections with each other.
Yet it's more likely that in leaving the security of home behind, modern people who aren't usually so adventuresome at all, nervously search for company in order to assert their identity to stave off anxiety at not being in control of their transitory situation, yammering who they are and what they do at the captive audience haplessly safety belted in the seat next to them, and maybe that's the truth underlying the art deco poster veneer of the golden age of travel.
It makes one question if any of what's being marketed is real or authentic at all, and the weirdness my wife's observed is that they are trying to behave as if it really is so.
Day 5: Heidelburg's Existential Barrel.
First morning on the new boat reveals a major difference in the terrace's breakfast menu: Smoked ham! Now these plates of cold cuts only have 12 slices each, and it's an act of will not to bogart all of them, so I respectfully settled for 8.
The day starts way hotter than expected, making the hour and a half bus ride with its weak a/c just grueling enough. I'm a patient and experienced traveler, willing to accept changes and find the good in nearly all situations. Yet we came to Germany to escape the 118-degree impossibility that is Tucson. We didn't sign up for sweltering cloying humidity and yellow daggers of sweat inducing sunshine. The locals are so stoked, which makes the unplanned for heat of Heidelburg that much more annoying, so if you're coming to the Rhineland for cooler climes maybe put it off until September.
After Schloss Marksburg's classic defensive simplicity yesterday, Heidelburg Castle seems overwrought. The original red sandstone block construction's cool, but later added palatial portions are dressed up with classical statues like an overfrosted cake that looks good but you know won't taste good.
Under these ornamented walls of indulgence sits the bombastic world's largest wine barrel. One hundred and thirty trees were felled for this monstrosity that lives in the cellar. But "lives" isn't correct -- after only three uses they let it dry out, after which it cracked and is now no good for anything but attracting tourists. Heidelburg, call your cooper and fix that useless thing so you can sell some wine out of it. Quit pretending you've got something special. You don't, you have an empty, an absence of anything special.
There's a moment where the tour guide mentions "The Student Prince", finds someone who doesn't know it (easy, that -- I barely remembered) and begins to croon in the middle of the castle's courtyard in a spot where he'll get the most acoustic reflection that can be mustered. "Drink! Drink! Drink!" The nearby students beginning to sway, a few even singing along with him. It's unexpected and especially Germanic.
We're given a cursory walkabout, some black slate roofed churches are pointed at, a nifty oldest building having something to do with Saint George, and are lastly placed outside a darkened two level restaurant. The program director's totally on about this place, but after passing so many other promising locales, losing the time there doesn't strike us as worth a free lunch, and we book it.
The watches & pens draw us into the fancy Zeitreise gift shop, and the proprietor behind the counter makes Michelle an espresso and let's us try out all the new metal-bodied Kaweco fountain pens, including his own machined brass model, the Supra. (Take that, Montblanc lady!) Unlike all the stalls in the squares and on corners that sport kitsch like the lederhosened decorated BBQ apron or steins no one would be caught dead drinking out of in Germany, Zeitreise carries nice stuff someone might actually appreciate getting.
Down the same cobbled street we locate the crazy pastry shop with merengues the size of a human head, pretzels one could strap on their back and could glide with, and beautiful tarts that seem miraculous perfections. Of course, we buy stuff and it does not disappoint.
Boasting the world's heaviest gravity black beer and a chandelier constructed of hop blossoms, Vetter Brauhaus is a Heidelburg institution. The staff needs beckoning, but we'd read that in Europe servers must be requested as opposed to expected.
I order weisswurst and my first truly german pretzel. Sure, I've had bigger back home, but there's a satisfying locality in the flavour of this one, and it compliments the beer perfectly.
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| [Chandelier made of hops at Vetter!] |
Compared to the hour and a half visit, the total bus ride outweighs it at three hours. Across the aisle Alabama resident Elizabeth proves to be a world record holding chatty cathy. She's sweet but all the yammy yammy about back home, especially when people have flown to another continent to get away from all that for awhile proves pretty taxing.
Finally back at the boat, a bus-tired Michelle asks with a gleam of spiteful vengeance in her eyes, "What do you think is the most top shelf liquor they've got?"
"Bet it's an old Scotch." And so it is, a 16 year bottle full of smoke & peaty smack-you-in-the-face goodness. The Russian bartender refers to the bottle of Lagavulin as "his baby". I have the gauche to ask for rocks to open it up but he passively refuses, handing us the ice scoop with a stingy two cubes each, making us put them in the glass ourselves. "I never commit a crime," he says. The glasses are a quad-pour, and Michelle coughs at the first quaff.
We head off to the library to write on the eight awesome castle postcards we bought in Marksburg, and by the third sip they're turning out to be the most ridiculous short form correspondence we've ever sent, plus I keep breaking the mechanical lead on my way to the signature. Thanks, cheeky bartender.
Day 6: Africa hot.
The heat is holding. Weather app says it's 82 degrees, but it feels more like 100. We may just stay on the boat and forgo Strasbourg. The room a/c is cranked down to 65, so who could blame us?
Two PM rolls around and no clouds have rolled in.
"I'm going to go take a nap in our icebox room," Michelle says. Can't blame her, really. We came for Germanic doom & gloom weather, so creating it via a/c's the only option the day's left us.
I hang in the lounge, making some decent headway in my copy of The Heimskringla. I wonder a bit about missing our first of two French city stops, but it quickly disappears in the harsh northern cold and swordclash of the kings' saga I'm reading.
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| [One of the reasons to hang on the boat: The miraculous complimentary coffee & tea maker with its awesome runic takeaway cups!] |
Day 7: Blazing The Black Forest.
Have wanted to go to the Black Forest ever since I was a child reading about the dwarves & svartalfar who are supposed to inhabit it. We also read up yesterday on what to do in case we run into one of the brown bears that lives there. On the bus just now I've had the realization that my breath and left hand smell like the smoked ham I've had for breakfast, so odds may be against me in avoiding a possible bear wrestling match.
The bus eventually climbs through green hills, revealing panoramas of farmhouses with centuries of age on them, and lush lands skirting large forestlands, and we pick up a tour guide at an intersection in this unexpected nowhere. She's wearing a woven straw hat with big red pom poms of yarn piled on top -- the Bollenhut. Depending which side of the head you wear this fashion statement on, it indicates whether you're single or taken, and if you're wearing a hat with black pom poms instead, it means you're married. (One might think the resemblance of these poms to cherries, a Black Forest staple, can't be ignored, but the virginity slang came from the US a century after these hats. [Aren't we clever pundits.])
At the apex of the bus trip we arrive at Hofgut Sternen, a medieval carriage station tucked near the top of Falkenstein valley, famed not only for its age, but for the notable visit of Marie Antoinette passing through from Austria on the way to her marriage in France. And once our feet hit the ground, we must run to see anything for we only have half-an-hour, thanks again to the stupid bus.
Of course everyone heads to the bathrooms, but we decide against, and head up to see the famed authentic Black Forest cuckoo clocks. And that fame costs, anywhere from $300 to $22,000 USD. Young bucks do a speech on a headset, holding up traditional woodcarving tools, and showing the different layers of construction around prefab works that have complications added to them and different sized bellows that get compressed to cuckoo in higher & lower chirps, depending on which is installed. It's solely the front panel's size that decides how ornate a design the clock can afford, so more wood, more details, otherwise the clocks in most other aspects all have the same construction, which is both revealing ... and disappointing (as a watch enthusiast). While it's understood that you're paying for a consistency of a working tradition, it's like as if all cars we're made with the same engine, so it doesn't matter if one buys a Ferrari or a Yugo.
Still, the woodcarving on many of them's astonishingly skillful, and although the motifs are repeated with consistency (birds/gabled roof/pinecone weights/etc), their aesthetic execution is varied and worth admiration & respect.
We run downstairs to try and catch the Black Forest Cake demonstration, but it's just ended since it (insensibly) was running at the same time as the clock demo. We pay five euro each and grab a slice of the famous cake & a coffee, setting ourselves down next to the abandoned demonstration table.
On the first fork full, we realize the cake, which we thought is supposed to have a healthy soaking of cherry liquor, is wayyyy dry, and I look around to see if we missed the bottle that it was meant to be doused with. On the demonstration table there's a 750ml bottle, and looking around to see if anyone's watching, I grab the kirschwasser and pour a more than generous dose on our cake. The demonstrator shows up as I'm whisking it back to his table, and he looks totally cross with Germanic disapproval. I don't make eye contact and we shovel alcohol soaked gateau into our gobs and run off to try and catch the far too closely scheduled Black Forest walk, feeling a little wonky for the liquor and pleased with our aggressive touristy selves.
Mountainfrau dressed tour guide Vanessa's already meters away from the start and we play catch up.
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| [She knows it's touristy, we know it's touristy, but dang she looks cute.] |
The forest is a darker green and by night must actually be impermiably black as its name. It's dense and filled with all sorts of different flora. Nooks by the brook hide under tree root systems, ghostly pale shapes peer out from below eroded hollows in the rocks in the half-light. It could be nothing, it could be landvettir, it could be both at once. There is a simultaneous isolation and presence granted by all the life dwarfing our egos that mean nothing against the scale of the trees. We enter a different context where we must pause in awe at the beauty and threat that is the realm of the svartalfar, and I feel if I only had enough time I could find them and learn their dark secrets.
And the shame of the trip is that we only get 15 minutes in and out to experience it. It's tragic, even moreso when we later look at the map on the bus and note that if we'd just headed a bit further in we'd have gotten to see a waterfall.
Thinking we'd be heading to a restaurant, we find ourselves at Fallerhof, a caterer's rental hall for glorified cafeteria food. It's fair, and we get to try the local brewery's Ganter Weissbier, which is also just fair. Unlike the boat, we can't escape sitting at a table with other passengers, and get pelted with questions about who we are and what we do, suspecting they must have exhausted each other's answers over the last seven days already, and need to informationally vampire us too. My wife quickly lets them have it with ugly classroom teaching stories, which from their expressions, they didn't expect brutal honesty, only sanitized pleasantries. Serves their inquiring minds right, really.
Next stop Colmar, which gets France off the Eurotravel checklist. At its center is a colourful medieval city that is distinctly Alsatian, a people trapped geographically & culturally between historically uncertain frenemies France & Germany. Nowadays it's their cuisine that distinguishes them from either/or. My wife notes a joire de vivre above what we've witnessed in Germany, but it's a weekend in a historical district, so whether this holds outside these 20 blocks or so is uncertain. The buildings are colourful, the streets cobbled, the air filled with the mesmerizing small of baked goods and fermenting rounds of cheese.
On our way in and out of the area, there's a total nerdcore gaming store that we have to stop in. It's the usual assortment of sexy anime figures for horny adolescents and overpriced cartridge games, but there's an international reassurance that otakus live here too.
We have a fair amount of time in Colmar, which leaves me to question why we got so little at the Black Forest stop. Something superlame like bus parking limitations, maybe?
Returning to the ship, on the terrace a guest Michelle's nicknamed "Mr. Privilege" sweeps through from the dining room to scoop up the flatbread that he probably already ate all of downstairs. Only this time around he starts talking with this argumentative Southern couple who're busy sharking around the serving table for shrimp. They all begin loading their plates with shrimp as we wait for the server to get back to the room and serve us, since we're seated and the terrace is not a dinner buffet.
The lady with the bowl cut next table over begins to get really irate just watching them, but what they don't know is that the shrimp they've been loading their plates with is raw.
"Don't tell them," I say within earshot of just the tables. "I want to see this happen." As their plates fill higher and higher with grey uncooked shrimp, our mischievous smiles get broader, and the two men are too greedy and busy aggrandizing themselves to notice, but the Southern wife catches it. Then, even more presumingly, starts to drop the shrimp in the boiler herself. We watch for her to burn herself or perhaps drunkenly knock the scalding pot over into her husband's groin, but the server then shows up to save them from the looming self-inflicted poisoning and second-degree burns.
Rats.
Day 8: Get On The Bus, Get on the Bus Bus!
At this point Michelle believes that the guest/staff charade's over. The staff knows that the insurmountable difficulties of the not-moving-cruise have made the guests irrevocably unhappy, and since that will inevitably effect the total payment of gratuities, they only have the thinnest veneer of civility left to offer before our far too early departure times this morning. And there's something in their demeanor that indicates they're not sorry to see us go. Seeing how most people behaved on the cruise, I can't say I blame them. They seem trapped between their company's inabilities to deliver and guests' expectations, and thus collaterally suffer for it.
Ending the half-cruise with a two-and-a-half hour bus ride as opposed to majestically pulling into a final cityside port's disappointing, since more time on a bus is the last thing any of us relished, but that's just how it all shakes out.
Basel's train station's huge, sporting multilevels, and semi-inscrutable ticket vending machines. And we find that train travel's expensive, which is the trade off for such a highly effective mode of transportation.
To stave off the trainfusion we grab our smartphones and try to log on to get sorted -- but to log on you need to submit a working phone number so the server can text you back an access code to log in with, and of course most people don't have international service, so we can't log on! (Yes, be warned of this catch-22 WiFi, fellow travelers.)
We go old school and wait in line to speak to a human ticketing agent, who totally explains everything to us, and even converts our Euros into Swiss Francs while she's at it.
Having some time before our easy-peasy direct train to Winterthur arrives, we hit the nice selection of in-station shops. Läderach doesn't fake jax like Godiva. This chocolatier offers varied slabs of delicious dark chocolate with various ingredients mixed in, sold by the weight. While not as high end or exceptional as some of the London chocolatiers, the price to quality ratio provides a great experience with far less financial impact. We also find a neat bulk candy store and buy up all the weird black licorice we can lay our hands on. Finally we realize we haven't eaten anything real since the boat, so we grab some iced jasmine teas and I make the hungry man error of buying a pretzel as big as my backpack, the leftovers of which will last the next three days. Do not mistake the soft & welcoming shopping mall pretzel for the large dry hard bread pretzel you see in the window, dear consumer. Know thy pretzels.
A top-heavy Austrian bottle blonde strikes up a conversation with us, and we find out that her impromptu German holiday was beset by her car being totaled, which her insurance didn't cover since she wasn't in Austria, plus she may have thousands in legal fines on top of her automotive expenses. "Always take the train," she advised, somehow still smiling.
We arrive at Winterthur, Switzerland's sixth largest city, prime real estate for those commuting into Zurich for work. The train station's less complex than Basel, but still having no smartphone access, we can't inform my expat-by-marriage longtime high school friend Jeremy where to meet us exactly, and leave a fumbling "we're here somewhere in the station" voicemail from a payphone using neat-o huge Swiss coins, the likes of which I've not spent since Canada.
Following an earlier foreign vacation panic situation, we duck into a Starbucks and take a seat to stop and think what to do next, if anything.
As if hearing our mental distress beacon, Jeremy wanders into the Starbucks. "Hey there, you."
"Jeremy! How did you think to find us here?"
"Starbucks is like the American Embassy here. It only makes sense."
Ridiculous answer, and ridiculously true.
I order comfort coffees for Michelle & I since we're there anyhow, and Michelle gets the secret code to use the bathroom.
"So you want to ask my about my hot wife while she's out of the room, but you don't want to ask me so directly, right?"
"Well, yes."
And I do the impossible task of telling him how cool my awesome wife is in under three minutes before she gets back before finishing, "But you totally beat me to the marriage certificate with your Swiss Missus years ago, so you totally get it." He smiles, and the five years we haven't seen each other fall away like nothing.
Across the street the annual Albani Fest celebrating the immigrant Albanian transplants in Winterthur is going on, featuring food stalls, vendors, performers, and dangerous looking fair rides, plus the mascot of the whole affair is a headless bishop carrying his own cranium. No, Jeremy doesn't know the gory details of the horrific miracle, but we can probably guess martyrdom's somehow involved (but there's obviously Norse Lore living head references [i.e. Mimir] that have been syncretized and carried forward).
We enter a courtyard dominated by the Disco Labyrinth, a classical greek-style carnival structure fronted by laser lights and a disco ball. "Is there a child eating white polyester suited Minotaur dancing at the center of that thing?"
"I hope not, my kids are in there," Jeremy shoots back.
We guffaw, and wait for his daughters Paloma & Viola to finish dodging the funhouse man-bull in his maze of mirrors.
At one point walking around the fair, we come upon a double spider spinning ride that swings its devil may care victims up over some rooftops, then back down into the street, narrowly missing buildings by what seems inches. It's a beautiful disaster just waiting to happen. "Whoa. We should move along," Jeremy cautions, as impressed & disturbed as we are, passing under the dubious arc of the ride.
Driving out of town and up a hill to Jeremy & Diana's home, it's like we've passed into an exoburb futuretopia. I'd seen pictures online of his new digs, but the reality far outstrips any digital capture. It was like the concrete modernism in Fahrenheit 451 but without the fear, and cars discreetly hidden in an underground bunker. Modernist doesn't cover it; modularity & clean lines on nude-tone wood flooring, and the centrality of a TV replaced with a projection unit near the ceiling. It's all ahead of the curve, and the far too nostalgic world will never catch up to it. Many were the afternoons where I'd get out of university and shoot the words with Jeremy on played out living room furniture about why the world hadn't advanced to the futuristic levels of dopeness we wanted. And it seems that he's living the dream of pushbutton fully automated Blade Runner window blinds that are truly the dopeness.
Yet he explains that there's an expense involved: The costs of being in Switzerland. This mountain stronghold of anonymous bank accounts takes a more than fair amount of money or debt management to stay, otherwise economic forces excommunicate you. On the drive over we didn't see the usual vagrants pushing shopping carts full of collected rubbish, nor streetcorner spangers holding cardboard signs with dubious sob stories on them, and the cost of living is why. Such unfairness has made Switzerland a nice place to live. "And the flag is a plus!", jests Jeremy.
We talk about high school people, which our wives politely listen to, and later we project Twin Peaks on the wall and time travel back to our late teens with David Lynch's ladies before retiring.
Day 9: A day out with Jeremy.
Kindly taking a day off work, Jeremy asks what we'd like to see. "Castles!" I yell immediately, wondering why anyone would bother with anything else.
"Okey-Dokey", Jeremy replies.
Twenty minutes later we pull up to Monet Fortress, a ring shaped structure that's been guarding the Rhine since the 1500s. Once across a bridge and into the rotunda, the interior dims into a near black hallway, then opens up into a huge subterranean-like vault with pools of light spearing down from the ceiling.
One could store carriages and a group of cavalry in this room alone, but it is bare with nothing but the smell of a slightly damp coolness.
A nicely carved stone spiral staircase leads up to a locked tower door (yes, I tried opening it) and a round crenelated roof complete with a view of the river and a set of fine cannons with rampant rams cast on them.
The roof also has a small stage and long bench seating radiating out from the center. A schedule sits by the door for events held up here, along with a flyer, for all things, a salsa night.
We drive down into the town of Schaffhausen, walking by an interesting "Vikingbar", the window etched with Thor's Hammer.
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| [Dang, it wasn't open yet or we'd've gotten some mead and warhammer practice!] |
In the medieval street of statues and fountains, we stop for a coffee, people watching ladies walking their infants in prams, and various men strolling on by.
Michelle pelts Jeremy with questions about Swiss society and dialect, and I begin to notice my friend ending his sentences with the phrase, "... or something like this." Which is his brain scrabbling across both languages for approximations of what he means to describe, in this case knowing it more easily in Swiss (specifically Swisserdeutch) and lexically translating it out into English for us. It's a cognitive peculiarity and way admirable, considering by comparison I should probably know Spanish by now, and just haven't bothered so much, whereas my clever wife is using an app to learn it.
We stop at a fancy baked goods shop and decide on some chocolates shaped like bundles of yarn with needles for M's mom, and a round shortbread cake that we'll end up eating on M's birthday back home, which turns out to be a pecan-honey filled joy.
Heading out again, we drive into the river valley revealing a panorama of the pounding Rhine Falls, Europe's largest falls, topped by Schloss Laufen, a huge cliff top castle. After getting down and walking for a bit, Jeremy realizes, "Um, the castle's on the other side of the river." That sinks in, then we laugh and go enjoy the falls instead. There's a walkway with a mill and some public sculpture, and we get a great view of the castle from there anyhow.
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| [Rhine Falls with Schloss Laufen at right.] |
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| [Swiss Doughnuts are also a plus.] |
Back at our home away from home, we find Diana ranting at the soccer game on the television, while Jeremy attempts to "Sweetie" her back into the kitchen for help. About this: Jeremy & Diana have a marked case of "Sweetie" syndrome. Before directing or correcting one another there's a buffering preface of "Sweetie" that allows them to take a measure of imperative with each other. It's not always nice but it's a working verbal roadsign that allows them to team parent two rowdy girls, to decide who gets groceries, to pick at each other when they haven't thought things through, to be an extra chef in the kitchen, and to love one another, both despite and for their beautiful humanity. Being in the room when this dance of words occurs is unequally awkward and entertaining to see unfold. It's the minutia of individual will combined with problem solving, a rough kiss delivered with words. The lesson might be if you can't always be nice, at least be functional. Both have massed years of experience leading teams of people professionally, and I suspect this is some of that methodology taken home.
But back to sports: In Switzerland there's a disturbing amount of red shoes being worn. At least one-fifth of the populace sports red trainers. An American might guess that the LA Piru Bloods had a foreign membership drive? No, it turns out that they're all rabid soccer fans. At the time of our visit the adspaces were all pasted with huge mugs of contorted faces with national flags facepainted on them. All had a look of unabashed insanity radiating from their eyes, mouths in a frozen scream of overzealous excitement. "And they wonder why hooliganism such a prevalent problem?", Michelle laughs. It's the displacement of long-held deadly national conflicts into competitive sports, but it's funny to see a country so renowned for its neutrality swept up into the fray.
After dinner, Diana invites us out for a walk in the woods. A crossbow shot behind their row of houses is a field surrounded by a stand of trees that roll up the hillside. The sun's going down, and by the time we're 15-minutes in, I'm glad I brought my flashlight because it starts to feel like all Blair Witch/X-Files out there.
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| [Spooky spooky! Black as night.] |
Michelle's uncanny naturalist knack for spotting wildlife kicks in and she draws our attention to the droves of slugs, some toads, and we even find an injured bird on the path. Diana begins to shudder anxiously, but I'm rather thrilled at being out in the woods for way too long after dark, which is something I've not done since I was a child. It makes me long for different climes outside of the desert I grew up with.
I so want to stay for a few more days, but my work's extreme understaffing restricts its time off policy, so it's time to begin our return tomorrow. Jeremy & Diana help us get the bus & train schedules back to Basel sorted before we go to sleep.
Day 10: The plane, the plane.
Paris arguably has the most mid-century modern airport, the concourse looking like you're inside of a Little Debbie Swiss Roll made of gently curving wood, but it was built for smaller planes in early decades. Today this means modern passenger loads don't have enough seats for waiting travelers, leaving college students and other less dignified ticketholders sprawled out in the aisles, blocking traffic, and speedbumping people with their rollerbags. Yet I've never actually seen a dedicated Hennessey outlet anywhere but here, which might take the edge off the overpopulated airport ... if they only sold it in the airplane-sized vest bottles. But, no.
To sort of make up for this, the attendants on the long, long Air France flight offer a complimentary cognac. Somewhere mid-drink, Michelle smiles at me while saying, "I don't think I like traveling." I kiss her and tell her we'll be back home sooner than she thinks, and I know that after it's over she'll remember some of this trip as fondly as I will.
Overall:
Firstly, the cruise ... .
• Fibs and damage control: There's a margin of lying by omission that Viking River Cruises employs as a standing operating procedure of salesmanship. Once on the boat and after something happens to mess up the schedule, it's mentioned that 500 deviations occurred just this year. At the pricepoint Viking asks, that degree of uncertainty's probably unacceptable for most working people who've scraped together +$5K for a maybe.
I buffer expectations everyday because I work for an employer that people frequently expect more of than they actually deliver, but I do it before, during, and after the experience to ensure custies know exactly what they're getting.
Viking Cruises: Be honest about who you are and what you can and cannot do. People will respect you more for it.
• The excursions: Some tourists are independent travelers, others just want to be shown highlights. The cruise company is the latter, yet promises many out of the way exclusive sights with time to enjoy them, but that's not what we got. This could've been because the docklocked boat forced us onto buses and cut that promised time down to a fast people mover pace, but the times for many things was inadequate, which is a crime given how expensive it is to get to the other side of the world and see them, probably for the one and only time you will ever get to. That's fucked up. Period.
• Staff rocks: They are an exemplary lesson in customer service. From old men with dementia asking for one thing one second then realizing they mean another, to kids & uncouth adults grabbing stuff off a non-self-serve buffet. If you do one of these cruises, tip your people hard because they work hard and have the a mastery of patience most people will never achieve. Props to the crew!
• The Cabin: We went with the bottom tier economical "stateroom" as we figured we'd instead be on deck looking at the passing countries or out on excursion most of the time, but our room was immaculate from beginning to end. The cabin steward must have been up in our space three, maybe four times a day with new toiletries and towels, even putting some nice complimentary bookmarks in our books!
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| [The Hávamál's actually the advice & wisdom of Odin, but any bookmark with quotes from this is a winner.] |
We began to wonder if there was a hidden camera, or if he was a supernatural entity hiding under the bathroom counter, only coming out when we weren't looking. Amazing service.
• The Passengers: Cruises, as you may have guessed, are not a young person's game. Which I'm okay with. I miss my grandparents greatly, and thought perhaps by proxy I'd get to see some of their qualities in being mostly surrounded by elders. Also maybe a chance to network with the affluent might occur, and a career/business opportunity would hopefully arise. (See The Golden Age of Travel passage above in Day 4's entry.) As usual, the human condition disappoints, and people when taken out of their comfort zones behave like children no matter what their age. The solution is to ignore them, and instead meditate on your experience and what you're getting out of it.
• Germany: I expected more. More leiderhosen. More Bavarian cultural signifiers. Steins that actually might've been cool. Maybe that's a stereotypical mindset to bring with me, like people coming to the Southwest expecting frybread, cowboy hats, buckskin fringe jackets, and gila monsters meeting you at the airport, but it's actually there in small doses all the same. I wanted some black leiderhosen, but no, Germany, I only saw one pair -- on a fair worker in Switzerland.
Switzerland:
Emotionally this was the best part of the trip. My friends Jeremy & Diana were terrific hosts, and I expect we brought both a little of what they missed in the States, and at the same time re-affirmed their decision to set up their lives elsewhere, possibly somewhere better in some ways.
Coda:
Watching and being with my wife in Europe is what's made this experience a win, honeymoon/anniversary expectations notwithstanding. Travel is one of the ultimate tests of compatibility and seeing how this week-and-a-half went, we more than have what it takes to spend a lifetime together, whether in our home, stuck on a bus, or on a fancy boat. Despite the stated & solid vacation criticisms, I'm glad we went on this trip as we shared some great times that we can always look back on and say, "Yeah, we did that together." And that honeymoon's just the beginning of our love affair with the world as an experience and with each other.
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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.
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