Dispatch from the Fatherland

The flight was even longer than the last time I flew abroad, which meant that upon arriving my butt was even more sore than it was in Tokyo and my back was even more twisted and gnarled from trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in while sitting in those horrible Boeing 777 seats. One day, when I'm an old man, I'll look back on my travels and remember them only by the amount of discomfort I experienced getting there. "Ah, yes, Düsseldorf," I'll say to the young ones, when they reach that time in their lives when they naturally have questions about Düsseldorf. "That was the trip where I spent the entire flight with the reclined seat in front of me wedged between my knees, and the flatulent hillbilly behind me violently shuffled his cards on the tray table attached to the back of my seat."

Actually, the flight from San Francisco to Washington, DC wasn't bad. It lasted only five hours, which is the maximum amount of time I can spend traveling on a plane or in a car before my sanity starts slipping away. I got off the plane at Dulles, did a quick look around for the King of Prussia (who once said he was going to kill me) and after deeming the coast clear I strolled on down to the international terminal.

I stopped in the duty free shop, hoping that they'd sell Jack Daniels in the tiny bottles. I didn't want to show up in Germany empty-handed, and from what I understand, Jack Daniels is expensive and highly regarded there. They only had Jack in the 750ml. bottles. I needed gifts for five people. I figured it'd be better to show up empty-handed than spend so much on gifts and make everyone feel weird and uncomfortable when I arrived. Also I am cheap.

I boarded my flight, and soon the plane was off. Over Maine we flew; Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands -- all of these we sailed over during our nine hours of spirit-crushing agony. To ease the discomfort of 9 hours crammed in a tiny seat with no foot/knee/leg/elbow/arm room and having to share an arm rest with a large, linebackeresque German woman, I was provided with some choice Hollywood offerings such as The Time Machine [Note: Do not watch this movie. HG Wells is vomiting uncontrollably in his grave.] and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

I used to think that the moviegoing public was just getting stupider and stupider. Now I'm beginning to suspect that movies like this are funded by airlines and travel agencies around the world, in order to make your flying experience just a little less pleasant so when you get off the plane, you're glad to be there, wherever you are. Remember those "Come To Ireland" commercials they ran for a while that depicted someone dancing a jig on a rocky bluff overlooking an angry, angry ocean? Remember how it gave you no desire at all to visit Ireland? Well you'd probably be glad to be there if you'd spent the last 9 hours cramped in an airplane with crap movies playing over and over on the TV screen in front of you. In fact, you were probably watching that commercial because something like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was on the other channel.

There are no words sweeter than "Flight attendants, prepare for landing." They'll extract a bigger sigh of relief from a person than "Not guilty" or "It was benign" or "The stick didn't change color." I was excited, this being my first time in Europe. As soon as the plane came to the continent, I'd been trying to peek out the window and see something, but it was too cloudy. We passed over the Netherlands seeing nothing but white. As the plane descended, I got more and more excited, expecting to break through the clouds any second and see fascinating things. European things. Things that I, an American, could not even comprehend or have dreamed about. But I couldn't see jack. The more we descended, the cloudier it got. I was watching the plane's altitude on the TV screen. 1000 meters. 500 meters. Now, I may not "know the metric system." I may not "be a mathologist." But I think that's pretty close to the ground. But it just kept getting foggier. Eventually I couldn't even see the wing anymore. I've been in airplanes that had to circle the airport at San Francisco for 20 minutes due to fog less severe than this. They fly bravely in the Fatherland.

We landed, and I was through customs and had claimed my baggage in no time. Düsseldorf international airport is very futuristic looking. Everything is metal and gray. All the doors open automatically, and do so in time for you to walk through them without slowing down, stopping, and flailing your arms at the sensor like you have to do in America.

I had two options to get to my hotel in the neighboring city: train, or taxi. Germany is one of those countries that actually has efficient, useful public transit. Being from the bay area where transportation is expensive, slow, and almost non-existent at night, this is the most disorienting thing for me. And the most exciting. Despite knowing no German at all other than the usual meat products and breeds of dogs, I was determined to take the train all by myself like a big kid. All I knew was that the underground trains were the U-bahns, the above-ground trains where the S-bahns, and I needed to take the S7 line. No sooner had I changed my dollars to euros than I saw a sign directing me to the S7.

It directed me straight into a closed-off corridor. A uniformed man told me that if I wanted to take the train I needed to "get on zee shuttle bus." I boarded the shuttle bus. It took me to a train terminal. For the S1 line. I needed S7. I looked at a map. S7 was back at the airport, where the train platform was closed off. Sean confused.

I decided to try and take the S1 to another station and just transfer there to the S7. I walked confidently into the station, approached one of the automated ticket vendors, selected the little British flag to make it stop using the funny talk on me, and chose my destination. The machine - in proper king's English - requested that I insert my payment card into its slot. Visa was listed as being one of the accepted payments. I put my credit card in the slot, and it came back with an error reading it. Repeat four or five times. The machine didn't take cash. I took the shuttle back to the airport and got a taxi.

The taxi driver, unfortunately, did not have one of those little buttons you can push for English. At least, none that I could see; I wasn't going to go exploring. I showed him the written-down address of my hotel, and he sped off to the autobahn.

Some of you may think there's only one autobahn in Germany, and it's the highway with no speed limit. Some of you are probably also, as us sophisticated euro-folk say, stupid gits. Fact of the matter, pal, is that there are many autobahns without speed limits. I peeked at the driver's speedometer periodically and saw a constant speed of 180km/hour, which, for those of you who don't know that there are 13 feet in a meter and 2.4 Imperial hours in one metric hour, works out to approximately 400 mph.

When we got to the city my hotel was in, he pulled over. "Oh God", I thought. "Oh Jesus, here it comes. Time to fleece the foreigner." The streets were dead. All the stores were closed, and nobody was out. Apparently, things completely shut down on Sundays in Germany. By the time I explained to the polizei what had happened, he'd be long gone. But instead of puling out a weapon and/or his cock, he pulled out a map. He didn't know where my hotel's street was.

After a few minutes of intense map consultation, he laughed out loud, said something to me which sounded (as all German does) like "auch der schweissleblecherhausterhoffen!" and waved his hand, which I took to mean that the hotel was just up ahead. I laughed with him, and shook my head in a "will we never learn?" gesture, and off the taxi raced. And raced. And raced, until we'd gone too far that it couldn't have been that the hotel was just ahead. The driver pulled up to the sidewalk, unrolled the window, and shouted something to a single lonely pedestrian. All I caught was the name of my hotel. The window went up and then off we raced again, pulled a tight U-turn at speed which took us up onto the sidewalk, and went back the other way, until we found another pedestrian and he stopped and asked him for directions. They chatted for a minute, and then once again we were off, until finally we were on the proper street.

Although I'm a stranger in a strange land, I figured that finding the place would be easy once we were on the right street. The address was 22. The numbers on the buildings were increasing. Yet at the speed we were going, we flew right through the 20s, and I didn't have time to look for the hotel. Why, exactly, we were not stopping at 22 I didn't understand. But, hey, it's my first day in Europe, this guy not only lives here but is also an experienced professional people-mover. Who am I to question him?

He pulled over to another pedestrian. Another goddamn pedestrian. Maybe he was getting no useful information at all form the others, and was searching for one that could help. Maybe he hadn't even noticed we were on the right street for the hotel. This pedestrian was an old woman, who shouted something very angrily at him as soon as he began speaking. The cabbie turned the car around and sped off before she finished, and then pulled down a side alley. In this alley, was a billboard saying that parking for the hotel was allowed there. I said that this would do, paid the man, and got out, thinking that I'd just walk back to the correct street and find 22 on my own. The driver got out, but instead of opening the trunk so I could get my suitcase, he ran up to the apartment building in front of which we had stopped. He ran up to the darkened office and tried to open the door, which was locked. He came back laughing. I had no idea what the hell was going on with this guy. He indicated that I should go to the building that he just verified was closed, and I indicated that I'd like my luggage. Maybe he'd given up on finding my hotel and just wanted to get rid of me. That was fine. We completed our transaction, and I walked down the alley to the main street, walked to number 22, and wouldn't you fucking know it there was my hotel.

You will remain tuned for the next Dispatch from the Fatherland.