June 17 Kim Jong Illz

Charlie has a dream. Like me, he doesn’t dream often. Maybe it’d be more fitting to say we don’t remember our dreams that often, cause there’s probably always something flicking around behind our eyes at night. After hearing Charlie’s dream, I’m disappointed he doesn’t remember his dreams more often. Maybe I need to sit by his head and send more wayward texts. SO:

Kim Jong Il is hosting the World Cup. The stands are packed and filled with enough fervor to make KJI beam. Rockets and confetti flare as representatives from each participating country start running around the field. KJI announces that a few lucky spectators from the crowd will be hand chosen by him to join the futbol heroes circling the pitch. So of course, Kim Jong Il points directly at James, and says something like “You are Chosen!” James of course, adverse to any sort of physical activity, (and probably confused what he’s even doing at the World Cup), replies with doe-y, dilated eyes “Thanks, but no Thanks.”

Kim Jong Il is not one to be told NO. And so he reaches out WITH HIS MIND, pushing into James’ head to will him onto the field and do KJI’s bidding. James’ mind does not put up a fight. Instead, it welcomes anyone that wants to come and party with it. KJI is quickly horrified by the traumatic incoherence storming about in James’ head. The crowd doesn’t understand why KJI is wailing in pain, beat red, down on his knees, and grabbing his temples as he stares at James. James stares right back with the disinterest of a cow.

And then Charlie unfortunately wakes up. I can’t tell if I’m laughing at Charlie’s dream just because it’s so amazing, or because I’m imaging the entire thing played out by puppets.

And with that running through my head, I step out for a coffee. I know that they do things different here, but all I was hoping to find was a nice little café where people were lounging about, enjoying their beverages, talking to other human beings, reading a book or paper, or working on a laptop. Make the coffee however culture dictates, but that type of atmosphere sounds like it should exist universally. And maybe it does. But every café I found was solely occupied by individual Germen men, each stoically sitting with espressos, their legs crossed as they all clutched on to cigarettes and intently stared glassy-eyed eyed off in some unfocused direction. What are you trying to do there buddy, burn a hole in the wall across the street with your brain lasers?

My café excursion is a bit of a failure. And so I return home. Mrs. Dalloway or Plants vs. Zombies? The correct choice looks quite clear in writing, and my brain doesn’t even seem to consider this a question, and yet, somehow I keep making the wrong choice.

June 16 When in doubt, go to Dachau

I left the house with a spring in my step to go pick up our car. It was raining so hard I ended up taking the train even though the rental office was a measly 2 kilometers way. But whatever rain, I don’t care, we’re getting out of here. But the Fates have other ideas in mind. The car waiting for me is not a VW Passat Wagon, and I don’t know how they can claim that it’s similar, beyond it is a vehicle with four wheels and goes forward. It's a SEAT, and it’s just so small. I was excited for a fleeting moment when the counter girl explained to me that it was like a Mercedes. But when I felt the engine putter to life, I knew this car wouldn’t be with us long. But I go get the band so we can have a good laugh before visiting a couple rental offices to find a bigger car. And after not one, not two, but three rental cars, we are blessed with a Renault Scenic.

I am glad this car works out, because Hans at the service counter looked like he was going to have an aneurysm if I told him in my English devil tongue one more time that the Opel Insignia he was trying to get me to take was just too small. Now, even though I'm happy with the car, what is up with the key card? Really, what is wrong with a good, old fashioned key? We are driving a grocery getter, not a lady killer.

We’re on the road, hell yes. Oh wait, no we’re not.

On the way out of town, the show is cancelled. We pull off onto the side of the road to weigh our options. Go to Koeln anyway? Head back to the purgatorial safety of Munich? Ugh, just going back to where we came from seems like conceding some sort of defeat. So, even though it’s raining, we decide we have to do something. ANYTHING. So we stop by Dachau to see the concentration camp memorial. Might as well make the day as depressing as possible.

My first thought when I walked in was “this should be destroyed”. Yes, we should never forget what happened here, but we should not be retaining and preserving all this space screaming echoes of pain and hatred. Couldn’t this space be used for something that benefits humanity-a school, a human rights nonprofit, a park?

But as I walked though the area of reconstructed bunkhouses and the well-maintained, original building foundations, my thoughts towards the memorial changed, even though my disgust didn’t. The feeling of a vacuum being held up against my mouth persisted as the gravity of the environment started to make sense to me.

People really do need the whole structure, the overwhelming vastness of the site to really hammer home what happened here and how cruel it was. And by maintaining it as a site with homely, approachable buildings constructed of four walls and a roof like any other building there is the unspoken allusion to the fact that the men that ran these camps were men like any other. They were human and they were corruptible, and they were infected by the most horrible perversion of all, believing they were superior to other human beings. Seeing as this type of sadistic sickness persists toady, right now, I realize we need reminders like Dachau. It doesn’t make me feel any better though.

We make our way back to Munich, reflective but not defeated. All in all, we’re lucky, and life is good. Now if it would just stop raining

June 15 Munich Groundhogs Day

So, I’m getting the hang of making sure I use the right country code and the correct number of zeroes and ones in front of all the foreign numbers I get to call. But I inadvertently mess a couple up on the first try. Which leads me to wonder: All those mis-sent text messages around that world that don’t make it to their intended recipients, what happens to all those? Are they just disappearing in to the collective ether and leaking into space to confound ? Causing cancer? I like to think that they’re affecting peoples’ dreams. All those drunk, poorly typed after-bar sexts are turning into surrealist wet dreams, while the 4 AM angry, drunk ones turn into nightmares. I’m pretty sure I’m on to something here.

We try to go culture ourselves despite the rain. Museums, I love you but I don’t have 10 euros for each of you. So we just poke our heads in the lobbies of museums and explore their gift shops.

Honestly, I could spend just as much time in a good museum gift shop as in the museum itself. Sure, a lot of them are just full of schlocky, over priced rubbish, but some of them are filled with just as much creativity as the galleries. Chicago’s MCA gift shop comes to mind. The Pinakothek der Moderne is right up there.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for cheeky postcards, but I love being able to flip through the catalogues for past exhibits and the catalogues for other shows that the curators put in their museum versions of RIYL.

Tonight’s tour task requires settling on a car for the first five-week leg of the tour. We’ve been looking for days and have come up with some ideas, but we need to get moving tomorrow and need to make a decision. I mean, I have to make a decision, that’s why I’m band dad. Everyone likes to throw out ideas, but no one can be bothered with following through with the details of actually getting a vehicle rented. That’s what I’m here for. The band wants a van, but a van seems kind of excessive seeing as everyone in the band is a hobbit. They also want the cheapest thing possible, which is most definitely not a van. But I attempt to fulfill everyone’s desires anywho, which entails me over thinking things and making things a bit more complicated than they need to be. I do the same thing when I’m trying to make ramen more interesting. At about 7PM, I’m staring at a sheet of paper filled with my scribbles and a load of different quotes and I realize there’s just not that much difference between one company and the next. So I close my eyes, flail a finger in the paper’s general direction, and book the one I land on. VW Passat Wagon (or similar). Will it work? We’ll soon see.

I felt a bit funny making nachos the other night. We are in Germany after all. So tonight I make a real deal German feast. I almost go for the mystery meat in pretty cans, but I decide against it. If I was just cooking for myself, I would have gone for it.

Sausages cooked in sauerkraut, blue sauerkraut, spaetzle, roast potatoes. It rules. I want more now.

Oh yeah, and New Zealand scored their first world cup point ever. Three of my four New Zedders don’t care.

June 14- What Happens in Munich when it's not October?

The next three days we get to spend in Munich. The tour is set up around summer festivals, and those tend to go down Thursdays through Sundays, so we have a couple blocks of days off here and there to go exploring and become thoughtful world travelers. Unfortunately, Mother Nature wants no such thing. And so the weather is awful. I was pretty excited to come on this tour for a handful of reasons, and one of them was finding out what those fabled, beautiful European summers are all about. So far, my memories of past Minnesota springs/summers beat out European summers days hands down. And that’s without me being completely romantic about my home town and forgetting about the absolutely unbearable humid summer days that make me want to slit my wrists (which of course I would never do. Obviously, every true Minnesotan knows that on those truly insufferable summer days, that if you slit your wrists, the wall-dense humidity would push moisture into your lacerations instead of letting any blood out, and you’d die of hypertension. Which I hear is no way to go.)

The first day there’s actually an extended break in the rain, so I go on a pretty nice exploratory walk with James. We talk about heavy, soul searching things- Rilke would be proud. Then James gets infatuated with taking pictures of the turtles in the park we’re strolling around. Apparently, there are no wild turtles in New Zealand.

As James is shooting his brains out, I spy a duck-looking bird with a wad-of-gum-looking growth on it’s bill; it’s swimming around like it’s wound up wrong. One of its legs is just kind of flailing about behind it in the water and not really propelling it anywhere. I feel bad that it’s hurt, until I see others doing the exact same. It must just be an attention grabbing technique to make sure onlookers don't pay all their attention to the turtles.

At the end of our stroll through the park, I hit up my first beergarden. I don’t quite get what the raving is all about. There being no-one there probably didn’t help, but really, it’s just a shack that serves beer surrounded by a whole load of tables for people to pound their beers at. Sitting in a parking lot with an OE 800 in a paper bag is about as exciting, if not a little bit more so since I guess I could get a ticket. Sitting in the grass of Chicago’s Millennium Park legally sipping wine and listening to jazz flow from Pritzker pavilion is definitely more enjoyable. Maybe it’s just this particular beergarden. I was planning on giving another one a chance, but it rained for the rest of our stay in Munich.

I haven’t seen any of the amazing graffiti yet that people talk about. Sure, the ghosts and the sign re-appropriating are cool and all, and but not exactly mind blowing.

I was pretty excited to see my first Space Invader piece though-

(and if you haven’t seen “Style Wars” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, get on it yo). The addition of the mustache and diarrhea definitely complete this piece.

I don't know what the artist was thinking leaving them out in the first place. Maybe I can arrange for a little graffiti tour when we’re back in Munich next week. IF THE WEATHER DOESN’T SUCK.

To compensate for the unsavory weather, we cook an awesome nacho dinner. Far as I can tell, there are no cheap Mexican restaurants in Germany. Scratch that, far as I can tell there is no cheap Mexican food or ingredients in Germany. Even finding tortilla chips and beans was a task and required exploring several supermarkets. America, it’s little moments like when I’m in the grocery store desperate for beans and tortilla chips that I truly, deeply, madly miss you. Even Tabasco is 6€ a bottle.

June 13 Bochum to Munich

One thing that frustrates me in Europe is that there’s no mobile phone plan equivalent of the Euro. I can use the Euro in at least 16 countries, but I have to get a different phone plan/sim card in every country I visit if I want to avoid crazy roaming fees. I know, waa waa, poor me. But it’s annoying. I already can’t use my American cell phone over here, so it’d be a nice treat if I didn’t have to travel around with a pocket full of sim cards. I’m starting to feel like Stringer Bell.

Part of me is willing to pay the roaming fees just so I can have the same phone number everywhere I go. But my UK sim card keeps reading “SIM CARD ERROR” every time I insert it. So after some false starts, I end up with a Vodafone sim card. The false starts involved me going to established cellphone service stores (Tmobile, O2, etc) and them telling me my only option was to sign a contract for a year. At least cell phone carriers are keeping the lying-to-your-face style of service consistent across the globe. So I find myself in an electronics store run by some kind Arabs, and my phone is up and running in about 8 minutes. I realize as I watch the dude at the fake mobile store maneuver my phone in his hands that the reason I couldn’t get the UK sim card to work is because I putting it in upside down. Stupid estanger.

And we’re off on our way to Munich. It’s a pretty monster 6 hour drive, but my Midwestern blood enjoys it a little bit. We planned ahead and got an early start so we could get the rental car back in time. But even with time to spare, it turns out that everything in Munich is actually closed on Sundays, including where I want to return the car, so I end up showing up at the airport rental return (the third return location we visit) late. I blame it on flying into an airport an hour farther away than the airport I thought I was flying into, and the desk agent takes pity on me. She agrees it’s dumb that Ryanair says they’re flying to a town they’re not actually in and waives my extra day fee. I would have been on time if I had that extra hour, really. I swear.

And so we start our little respite in Munich. We stock up on some German bum poison at the local grocery store.

We can’t quite bring ourselves to buy pre-dyed eggs to eat for breakfast though.

June 12 SOMEWHERE I DON'T KNOW THE LANGUAGE

So, I wake up in London Stansted. I’m interested to see how the next step goes, seeing as I don’t have a return ticket to the US yet, and the last time I went through UK Customs, they held me for an hour until I could prove I was leaving the country. But this time, nothing. I s’pose it helped a bit that I’m immediately traveling on to Germany, but they also didn’t rifle through my bag at all.

On the other side of Customs, I was greeted with this dumb ass cake at 8:30 in the morning. I guess I’ve heard that people eat cake for breakfast, and hey, why not, it’s not much different than a doughnut. But I’ve been eating airline food for 12 hours and I have no need for dry cookies and cake. I grab some bottles of juice, which of course are confiscated five minutes later for being over 3oz/100mL at the next checkpoint. Annoyed for 1) forgetting about the stupid liquid rule and 2) for needlessly wasting, I tromp around a bit.

I start to get a strange feeling that something’s not quite right. After poking around on the internet for a minute, I realize that the airport I think I’m flying into in Germany and the airport I’m actually flying into in Germany are two different places. Two different places by about an hour. Waa waa. Where I’m actually flying into is nowhere near Dusseldorf, which is where the airline advertised I was flying into. That’s like advertising a flight into Minneapolis and actually landing in Saint Cloud. That’s what I get for flying the budget airline. I don’t really care, other than my car hire pickup is at the airport that I’m not actually flying into. So I land in the town of Weeze (please tell me that residents of this city are knows as Weezers. Please). And so the improvising begins. Luckily, I didn’t get my car from a budget rental agency, so the world behemoth Hertz is able to accommodate my miscalculation with their last unreserved vehicle. Oh Ford Mondeo, you’re a pretty rad station wagon.

I make my 90 Kilometer journey to the airport I thought I was flying into. The band won’t show for an hour, so I go exploring. I don’t quite understand why, but there’s a desolate section at Dusseldorf International called Airport City. It has a dreary post-apocalyptic chill to the place, all the way down to the windows that are smashed out for no apparent reason and green mold growing up slick wet walls. In the hour I wait, I don’t see one person walk out of any of the poured concrete office buildings.

The sad environment is interrupted by HUGS. I find BBE, and they have a hilarious time watching me relearn how to get a car up to 200 kilometers and hour. We get to where we need to be and I’m pretty excited for some German band hospitality at this point. Meals in Germany tend to rule, but tonight we just get money to go fend for ourselves. Which means we end up eating pizza. Pizza dude has a whistle that he toots relentlessly when he needs his peon to pack up pizzas in boxes.

The show is fun and we’re off for the night to a weird apartment. Ah, the free accommodation grab bag, you never now what you’re going to get. The owner of the flat isn’t even there, but he calls up and talks my ear off about what lights not to use (kitchen ceiling, because it doesn’t create a good mood), and that we should sign the ceiling and/or his band book. I don’t know what this dude does to pass the time, but I do know that he has computer printouts of the Scrubs sitcom characters taped up on the wall of his kitchen. I’m rendered speechless and pass out on a mattress.

June 11 FLIGHT TO SOMEWHERE

I’m off on another European tour with my friends Bang Bang Eche. Last time I left the US to meet up with them in Europe, I managed a type of lifestyle clean slate by selling my car. You know, the old optimistic “sell all your worldly possessions and you’ll be released from their hold” kind of thing. Nothing of Siddhartha proportions, but you know, baby steps. This time round, it seems my version of a lifestyle clean slate is accidentally wiping my computer hard drive while reinstalling my OS. It’s actually kind of nice, seeing as I’d amassed so much crap on my computer over the years. I have all my music and writing saved elsewhere, so I feel pretty fresh, ready to re-teach my computer to make my life easier.

A giant, overwhelming heart pang sneaks up on me though, an initial small rumbling in my stomach that becomes a full blown internal quake as I realize it’s implications- I erased all my pictures from the last four years. At first, I figure other people have pictures of me from the last four years, so whatever. But then I start recalling all the little things I’d shot, some things that have already started slipping from my memory. I’m really torn about losing all the stealth, forbidden pictures I snapped in museums across the world of pieces of art I didn’t want to forget. All that brilliant street art in Buenos Aires, the foggy Chilean antiquities, the dramatic galleries painted up blood red and littered with gold frames filled with shipwrecks and disinterested ladies. I’m going to miss all those pieces of art that, for inexplicable reasons, appealed to my soul in some unspoken way.

So, the pictures will begin anew. But before getting to that, I have to get out of the U.S. My schedule to do so includes running around getting last second supplies and staying up all night doing preparation things that I don’t even remember now. I get distracted in Walgreens and wonder what the clearance of Magnum condoms says about the men in the Crocus Hill neighborhood.

I make it to my sister’s high school graduation at 2 PM (yay Beryl!), from which I jump into a cab to the airport. I have a pretty hilarious ride with a cabbie that is pretty sure I am going on the road with a skinhead band since we’re starting the tour in Germany. I have a laugh that turns into a shiver, as the idea pops into my head that this guy might have been a convert to anti-rational thinking after watching ICP’s “Miracles” video and actually believe that Germany is filled to the brim with skinheads. The thought fades and here I am at the airport, whisking through the lines, and I’m at the gate in less than 20 minutes. Hell yeah hardly used Terminal 2.

So my flight to London is on SunCountry’s inaugural flight to London. That’s right, the rickety (at least image-wise) regional airline’s first ever flight to London. I don’t have any fear of flying, so it’s just kind of hilariously exciting to me (if something mechanically grave or weather terrible is going to happen on my plane, then so be it. What am I really going to do about it? Rally up my inner John McClane and jump out of the airplane at the very last second, using the airplane door I popped off first as a parachute and then as a sled as I slide down the snowy Himalayas to safety?) . The gate is done up in pictures of the Queen and the Beatles, there’s tea to be had, and a crown and diamonds that you can wear for a photo op. As some women try on the diamonds, there’s murmurings to their boyfriends “If you really loved me you’d…” Pathetic.

The cookies are good though.

I wander onto the plane ready to pass out. But first I’m greeted by a little gift bag filled with an Elton John BlueRay, a suduko book, a passport protector, and a blue bag. I’m so excited by the booty, it takes me an extra three minutes to fall asleep for the journey. Seriously, couldn’t they have just made my ticket 10 dollars cheaper and just not given me this stuff?

Somewhere down the line, the plane has a stop in ­­­Gander, Canada, which I suppose I get off the plane for, but my mind never quite grasps what’s going on. There’s a bit of a dreamy feeling as I walk down the tube from the plane to the tarmac. As Canada’s brisk cold bites my cheeks, I feel like zombies should be coming out of the dark at the edge of the runway, and we need to fight them off before the plane will start up again, 30 Days of Night style. As I said, I didn’t quite wake up. If it wasn’t for a nice girl, I probably would still be asleep on a bench in the Gander airport.

And back to sleep.