Hiking by hitch

The cops and courts reporter I replaced at the Rio Grande SUN, as our style has it, moved on to North Dakota. With seemingly all that free time, he’s started writing again. He’s The Feral Scribe (www.theferalscribe.com) and his is a site I read when its updated, which is, as of late, often.

He writes what I strive to write here and elsewhere when I’m not on work time: observations, dispatches, anecdotes, a meaningful log of life, thrumming with a little bit of power, of the human experience, of something greater than itself.

I do try to reign myself in, reign my expectations in. Each web property I have, whether it’s Fat Grey Tom’s Cider, Cooking with Wheeler or Wheeler C. Photography,  has its own purpose. Brewing, cooking column with cooking videos, photography portfolio. Even this blog has its own purpose: spillover. No greatness: striven for or attained. It’s a blog, after all, not articles or dispatches or meditations. Often, it is a spillway from my life. Other times, a spillover from my cooking. A log. Sometimes more.

Sadly, pen pals can only absorb so much of the human experience, when there’s more to express, more to tell. I try to use pen pals to bear some of the force of the human experience, to use that chance to connect and describe the world around. Alas, even one reliable pen pal is never enough. Two, three, four, reliable pen pals. That is enough. Maybe.

Which brings me to something The Feral Scribe had told me about: hitchhikers. Pick them up, he said. Often, they would drop stories on him as he ferried men and women to and fro, a legitimate form of transportation here.

When I lived in Reno, I rarely saw hitchhikers and if I did, I usually spotted them long after I could safely stop, pull into the right lane, or I wasn’t going anywhere, just to another part of town to get groceries. Even if I were in the right lane spotted them, going slow enough and with enough room for one, two three people, rarely would there be a net progress or movement to an ingress or egress. There would be no point for them to get a ride.

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Notes on a south-east drive

I and a few of my faithful friends cleared out my place on Friday, July 5. I packed all of my belongings into the back of my car and drove the next day to Las Vegas and stayed with one of the aforementioned friend’s parents. From there, I drove to Santa Fe, where I dumped my trash bags of clothes onto the floor of a room inside a semi-converted warehouse.

I did not move across the country, that much is clear. I only drove for two days, although by the end of the second day, I was very fatigued.

All that being written, here are the brief notes from my journey:

  1. Arizona’s Interstate 40, with a few exceptions, is speed limited to 75 mph, which meant I cruised controlled at 80 MPH. Which is fantastically fast enough.
  2. Highway 95 between Reno and Las Vegas was amazingly easy. I only almost crashed  head-on while passing once (but I damn well accelerated my way out of that.) The daytime headlight zones really do need daytime headlights. Hard to judge distances without.
  3. Having a peppy vehicle makes for almost breathlessly easy passing. Having a manual makes it that much seemingly safer and fun.
  4. There is nothing between Hawthorne and Vegas. So, stop in Hawthorne for food, drink, etc. I confirmed this with the aforementioned mother of the aforementioned friend.
  5. The state police presence is, I found, nearly non-existent.

That is all.

Sunsets and clouds at my former place in Santa Fe.

Sunsets and clouds at my former place in Santa Fe.

Ruminating on travels long past

I’ve just finished reading Abbey’s Road by the namesake, Edward Abbey. The first half is travelogue, a travelogue done much better, I think, than the Scot Rory Stewart.

The second half is polemics and reflections. Abbey reflects on his time working for the National Park Service and gives insight to what became the narrative for his novel, Black Sun, a book well worth reading.

The travelogue, his journeys in Australia and elsewhere, can be beautiful. The contrast Abbey sees in his Australian counterparts is fascinating: seemingly an entire continent that is much like the American west.

Much of the latter half of the book (none of the articles are dated, which is a shame, considering how he applies his present at the time of writing to the narrative — which wife he was with, or wasn’t, how old he was at the time) was written while he worked as a fire look out. Then the raunchy, the sex-crazed Abbey comes out, possibly as a younger man. No, that’s not true. Abbey held true to his love of women throughout his life. It appears is writing about the constant obsession is more apparent when he was working as a lonely fire lookout.

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Getting your angry on

Note: This post originally ran on my blog from many years ago, wheeleringermany.blogspot.com. I posted to and updated it during some of my tenure as an au pair in Dresden, Germany.

I thought I’d post that picture, of one of the Communist statues in the post-Soviet statue park, outside of Budapest. Seen during my first visit to Budapest.

To the potatoes: Ferdinand degenerated during the latter-half of the day, after the parents had left (a little past 7) to go to a birthday party. We fought a little, I thought everything was OK. I asked him to start working on cleaning his room while I got ready to make a little something for dinner.
I came in and started working on cleaning his room, while he just sat there and moped. He had done very little whilst I was in the other room and had said he was done — not that he was put-a-fork-in done but rather he’d completed his work.
He seemed to sour before my eyes. I think this happened:
He formed an idea in his head, started repeating it and then started believing it, until he fully did. He told me he was upset because he’d thought he’d got to do NO fun things the entire day — that the whole day was consumed by un-fun things. He then proceeded to sulk and was pissy for the rest of the night. I think he even tried a mini hunger strike. He refused to eat more than one egg for dinner.
He proceeded to not talk to me for the rest of the night, at his dinner alone in his room, read in the room. I cooked dinner for myself, went upstairs and listened to Talk of the Nation. He came up around 8:10 and started to watch TV, not uttering a word to me. At nine, I asked him to go brush his teeth and get ready for bed. He turned off the TV, threw the remote down onto the chair and stomped down the stairs. He slammed the bathroom door. He came out after awhile (I was washing dishes) and slammed his door.
One should know: we’d play-fought for quite a bit, he’d talked with his mom and otherwise not done too many productive things for a large part of the day (he came home at 2:45 or so.) It was a huge struggle to get him to unpack and repack his backpack and he took a long, luxurious bath once he got home from soccer practice, at about 6:45.

Life is tough, isn’t it?

I really think he worked himself into a froth. I think he wanted to be pissy and angry and frothed.

As William Goldman wrote for the Princess Bride movie:

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

To round it out, a picture of a house in Denmark. From the sailing trip with the Kretzschmar family.

One-liners

Note: This post originally ran on my blog from many years ago, wheeleringermany.blogspot.com. I posted to and updated it during some of my tenure as an au pair in Dresden, Germany.

The below post outlines why I have a problem with writing such short posts. Because I feel the reader is owed more content. Because I feel a one-liner does not do the reader justice. However, I’m a human. Which means that I’m not always consistent about what I feel.
And I feel that what my host father, André, said about music deserves to be written down. And, I figure, to fluff it out I’ll write about the night.
Nothing spectacular, nothing involving recipes. Sad. Maybe I’ll write the cookies recipe down soon, with pictures! And maybe I’ll do the snicker doodle recipe too.

He (André) said 50 cent, the rapper, has created many perfect songs.

That is all.

The night and day:
After a fight with the boy over cleaning his room, he cleaned his room, played computer for an hour as I went out to get bread and read the economist.
He contested that whenever I tell him to do X Y or Z before he may play the computer, I increase the workload or trick him and seemingly don’t allow him to play at all.
I said no, all I’m asking you to do is clean/tidy your room and when you don’t do it fully, me telling you to finish cleaning it is NOT me making more or new work up. It’s the same work he hasn’t yet finished.
I then said, arguing for me for 30 minutes merely detracts from the amount of time he’ll ultimately have to play on the computer.
I then (being the mature adult I am) suggested to him things he could do to finish tidying up his room, emphasizing that what I was suggesting was neither all he should do nor some kind of binding contract.
When Anja came home, she was happily surprised at how clean or tidy his room was. I punched him lightly in the back and said “Told you so!”

On buying bread: because everything’s closed on Saturday, I was asked to go buy bread. I did, however, the normal baker was out of bread. (It was also manned by a new-to-me employee with a slightly tepid attitude.) I went to the baker down the street in the Netto shopping complex. I walked back home and I saw Nadia on my way back, waiting for her bus with her two au pair kids.
We hugged, we talked. Life is apparently better with her, she’s taking free German classes (I don’t get how it works) and looking into doing a year of civil service here in Germany. We talked until her bus came — we said bye and I walked home.

After the parents came home, we got our cold weather clothes on and went to the Bio-Dad and his partner’s house for dinner. Theo, Ferdi’s half-bro and his mom (the partner) were there hosting us. We talked, drank wine, Theo showed me his (awesome) model train set. We ate, we drank espresso, I drove us home. I couldn’t really see out of the window for the first few minutes to to condescension.

We got home, after I had trouble parking (I have a hard time backing up in the dark when I can’t see out my rear window) and found the cat waiting for us. Ferdinand proceeded into some sort of pseudo-crying fit over his new bedroom furniture. Anja had suggested in the car that Ferdinand get their old bed — the parents are getting a new one becuase Anja had trouble sleeping on the old one. Mind you, it’s just Anja, but Ferdinand has the idea that this bed isn’t good enough for him. I think. But, it was past midnight and past midnight is not a good time to discuss anything with Ferdinand — he just needs to sleep and discuss in the morning.

Such is life.
And, because I round out posts, here’s a picture of a poster found in Tulcea, Romania:

A note on alcohol in Germany

Note: This post originally ran on my blog from many years ago, wheeleringermany.blogspot.com. I posted to and updated it during some of my tenure as an au pair in Dresden, Germany.

A feeling of obligation exists at the onset of each blog posting. Or the beginning of each written work. The trepidation is engendered between the inception of the idea and the moment the writer sits down to write, or, while he is writing. It is often times so much that the written work is never started for fear of not finishing, for fear of lacking the content should the work be written.
What a bastard, this feeling of obligation is.
I should write here about my summer travels, or, about my fall travels. Or about something important, something interesting, something other than mundane or vaguely alcoholic. Alas, this is not my way. For:

A sense of amazement and relief swept over me on Wednesday evening after I’d settled in at the bar the English club was meeting in. After I’d checked to make sure no clubbers had arrived yet, I went to the bar, checked the menu written in chalk and decided that I was going to have a .4 liter Budweiser. Not a Budweiser we know in the states but rather the Czech Budweiser, (Booed-vy-ser.)
It was from the tap. It was only two euros. I knew I was back in Dresden, that I was back in Germany, that I was back in a place I love to be. And, that the beer is affordable and cold here in Dresden. And that I love that.

And then, in club, when I said how nice was it was to only pay two Euros for a beer, I was told that you only pay one Euro in the Czech Republic.
Still. It’s nice to be back in Dresden and to have a decent, cold beer at a price I can afford.

But, to round out the post, here’s a picture from the mud volcanoes I visited in Romania. And these were the mud volcanoes I did not pay to see but rather hiked to.

Euro Summer Vaca 2009 — Introductions

Note: This post originally ran on my blog from many years ago, wheeleringermany.blogspot.com. I posted to and updated it during some of my tenure as an au pair in Dresden, Germany.

I left my home in Dresden for four weeks — doesn’t seem like a long time.

I kept a travel log. On the last day, I had reached day 32. In all reality, it was about 32 days and a quarter — I arrived in Dresden on the morning of day 33.

The days creeped up. But with the count of actual days, it centimetered up faster and faster. The day count wound up the four weeks — wound up the passing of time into a micro fever pitch. The finale of the pitch was a sigh.

I vomited into a trashcan at a tram stop in Budapest. Right before starting to retch, I checked my watch. I had about 20 minutes until my train left to Dresden.
Four weeks started to feel like a long time.

When I retching turned to vomiting, the sigh became a plea to get home. On the upside, I’d had crepes (which I maintain, for all you non-American speakers out there, are not pancakes) filled with cinnamon sugar.

Always got to look on the bright side of life.


In this post, I will recount the basics of the trip, the wheres and with who’s and the accounts of who these people are. I will not start recounting the trip yet — that will begin in the next post. However, at the end of the next post, I will transcribe what I wrote in my travel log in an Obama administration fashion. To break with the government style, I will merely not transcript parts rather than blacking out what’s there. I’ll transcribe each day as it gets covered.

I traveled, in a dedicated fashion, with four people over the course of two weeks. For the first week and a half I tramped with my guest-sister Johanne and her roommate Alexander. She’s from Dresden and he from Berlin.
For the end of the second week I traveled solely with Johanne. For two days or so I went by myself.


The other two weeks, or so, I spent with a friend of Johanne (the guest sister) named Enikő. Enikő and Johanne had been in Belgium together in Highschool on exchange and had since not talked too much. Both, after meeting again, seemed to not know each other very well anymore. This meeting occurs later in the log.

Rounding out the group of four was Áron. Áron is the cousin of one of Enikő’s very good friends.

Here’s literal travel log:
Dresden to Krakow, Poland
Krakow to Budapest, Hungary
Budapest to Brasov, Romania
Brasov to Vulcani Noroiosi, Romania
Vulcani Noroiosi to Basau, Romania
Basau to Braila, Romania
Braila to Galeti, Romania
Galeti to Tulcea, Romania
Tulcea to Medgidia, Romania
Medgidia to Bucharest, Romania
Bucharest to Bourgas, Bulgaria
Bourgas to Dublin, Ireland
Dublin to Rome, Italy
Rome to Vienna, Austria
Vienna to Győr, Hungary
Győr to Budapest, Hungary
Budapest to Belgrade, Serbia
Belgrade to Podogrica, Montenegro
Podogrica to Kotor, Montenegro
Kotor to Podogrica to Sarajevo, Bosnia
Sarajevo to Mostar, Bosnia to Sarajevo
Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia
Belgrade to Budapest, Hungary
Budapest to Dresden, Germany

Sorry for the taste. It’ll get more interesting soon — I promise.

As for the pictures, here’s the album links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/wheeler.vacation.2009

12 full days and counting

Note: This post originally ran on my blog from many years ago, wheeleringermany.blogspot.com. I posted to and updated it during some of my tenure as an au pair in Dresden, Germany.
It’s hard to believe.

Twelve full days in Germany. More specific, Saxony. More specific still Dresden, the capital of Saxony.

The people here are proud of their state, their city and their people. Kind of like Nevadans.

The cat, (in the top picture, who I and the family call Katzu, pronounced more like Katza) and I presume most cats here, sleeps on the radiator. This radiator is the predominant heating system found in both homes and businesses and civic buildings. There’s a knob on the going from five, the hottest setting, downward.

The people here seem, and this is with 12 full days and counting, to be very deeply, profoundly, spiritually and civically affected by two things:

The Russian occupation of East Germany, which they refer to as the time during the GDR, or the German Democratic Republic

(Thanks history teachers for not teaching us about the fall of the Berlin wall, the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the USSR. I really appreciate that the Carson educational system so thoroughly trained us instead in the Renaissance and the Renaissance art and the Renaissance sculptors and the miners and the Renaissance architecture and the Renaissance inventors, painters, tinkerers, founders and funders. I love moving to a foreign country that has a deep and rich history, the contemporary history just as enthralling as the centuries before, a first world country and one of the most powerful in the world, and only knowing about the Italian Renaissance, nothing more about Europe. Thanks for not teaching me about the Russian occupation or the dissolution of the USSR. I love America!)

The firebombing of Dresden

The Germans, especially the Dresdeners, were and are deeply hurt by the firebombing.

It’s not a sore. The firebombing got deep into their psyche. Their city was, the for most part destroyed. As may be seen in some of the pictures attached, or glossed over, is that the city was firebombed.

The statues and buildings standing after the bombing really show it. Their black. The sandstone of most of the buildings is black as charcoal.

Few buildings or statues survived the bombing. Few people, too.

I went with Andre (with an accent over the e I can’t reproduce on an American keyboard,) to the panoramic showing of Dresden before the seven year war with the Prussians, in 1773 or so. Or 1783. Somewhere in there.

He pointed at row upon row upon row of five and six story buildings. “All destroyed in the bombing” he said.

When we were driving back home from the panorama display we took the scenic route. He pointed out new-ish looking housing building after building. “Constructed in the 60s” he said.

The new, fancy rebuilt church that tourists flock to? Opened mere years ago after it was rebuilt. It collapsed days after the bombing.

The firebombing really got to the Dresdeners. It still gets them.

I have lots more to say. Volumes! I’ve written six letters by hand, this online and one email and it’s not even close to the amount of writing that I still need to do.

Here’s a link to the Picasa web album of my first trip alone into Old Town Dresden.

It’s my third our fourth visit to the old town.

Plus, I took the tram all by myself. That being said, good working public transportation is an incredible thing. A very, very incredible thing. It should bring all westerners to their knees in tears.

There’s so much we could do!

That being said, my host family still loves their cars. Nothing wrong with loving cars. I love cars.

“We need to go to the market, 4 blocks away”
“Let’s drive!”

“We need to go to the butcher down the street.”
“Let’s drive and then try very hard to find a parking place!”

I kid, I kid. Sort of.

I’ve done the impossible here. I’ve driven on the Autobahn. With a six-speed manual wagon Renault, none the less. The Renault is a French car. By no means bad. Could use some good old fashioned four wheel drive though for the snow.

The snow here sticks. It stays. It gets on the streets and never leaves. It means getting your car unstuck one out of five times. It means sliding on the street.
It’s very good for teaching one to come to peace with the fact you’re sliding.

The German streets are a little insane. But, they make sense.

That being said, German drivers are impatient and can be really crazy. Just as crazy and stupid as American drivers.

That person going too slow through town? Well, because German roads, depending, let you, pass them! On the two lane road! Like it’s the middle of some deserted Nevada valley!

Those stereotypes about Germans being quiet people? That’s a up and up lie. Just a lie. A dirty, dirty lie. Germans are boisterous and fun-loving and full of life.

Plus, the food here can be great. Too many choices for sausage. Too many choices for cheeses. More wursts than you can count.

Germany has taught me many things in my 12 days here. One of them is that I love meat paste. Just love the stuff. So do the Germans! On toast for breakfast, on toast for lunch, on toast for dinner, it works any time. And, it’s delicious.

My host family is great. I think I my luck wheel, landed on perfect, and negated any chances for luck for the next 50 years. The house is great, the parents are great, although they have moments, the relatives I’ve met are great, and the son (my charge) is very smart. If not motivated. It’s a challenge! Along with learning German. A challenge in which I must succeed, and find new and novel ways to.

Hopefully it’s not too late. At least, that’s what everyone tells me.

Here I go, I try to write small, and I write a story for the New Yorker, as Andre just told me. (I’ve been typing away while the German equivalent of CSI runs.)

 

Below is a link to the web album. Captions on a couple. I’ll try to take more pictures when I get a chance and the time.

I start German classes on the 26th, accompanied by an hour tram ride. I’ll be studying at the VHS, the adult college. Of which I cannot pronounce or spell the name.

Just a few more little tidbits: Little league soccer tournaments can have their moments. these 15 minute moments, or 30 second moments, are diluted by the 6 hours spent at them. I go to support

Ferdi, the boy. I go because that’s what an Au Pair who cares does. He goes to the games. But six hours? Pushes it a little.

Some of the wines here are, frankly, incredible.

Also, the whole being able to drink and not be 21 thing is nice. For once I find myself being treated like an adult. What a novel concept!

To think I could go to a dinner party and be treated like an adult! To be treated like a peer and an equal! I was floored and elated.

The flip side of the drinking coin is dripping in vomit, spilled alcohol and a little blood. On the tram home there was a group of five or six high schoolers, with open containers, drinking away and acting like all drunk high schoolers do.

Open containers are perfectly acceptable, even on the tram.

The system has its problems. But, the 21 and up system has many more.

Even better, Germany, I’m told, has a problem of welfare (equivalent) for the kids who don’t have jobs or still go to school but instead drink and take drugs.

And, they broke the higher ed system.

Poor college kids. But, their college is free.

I explained how much my tuition fees are at a dinner party with a family with two boys my age (at which I realized Europe and America have many of the same archetypes and stereotypes of people, young and old. Good little eye opener.) and the family was, quite frankly, aghast. At my in state tuition. In dollars.

Ha.

That’s all for now. Here’s the much promised web album link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/wheeleringermany/DresdenOldTown#

Guten tag. Cia! Cheers! Chews!