Alright I'm back

So I'm back. Surprisingly I'm not too jet lagged. I was able to stay up until 9:00 PM (I specifically stayed up the last few nights late and slept in so it wouldn't be so bad when I got in), and now I'm up about 6:00 AM. Man it's weird to be back. I was walking through London Heathrow and I still have German drinking songs running through my head. It's even weirder to be doing it at home. I click on the TV, watch the same shows, get caught up on my Jeopardies and my Daily Shows, and it's just weird. To suddenly be jetted across the country from something so completely foreign to something so completely familiar. And yet not. I spend 8 days in places where very few people speak English. It's weird not to have to think about what someone's saying, it just naturally. Hell, it's even weird to hear people speak English with an American accent, instead of British or Scottish or Irish. And they all do. Weird. More on that in a bit.

So where was I. Ah yes, the Musee D'Orsay. So I wasn't at all feeling very well. I did find out the French word for "Wrong bathroom." :-) I went to use the lieu and in the Musee, they just use the international symbols on the bathrooms. Thing is, being French, instead of the symbol for the women's having a large flowing dress, it's more of a little mini skirt type thing. Side by side, it's obvious which one means men's and which one means women's, but apparently by itself when you're not thinking about it it's not so obvious. So I accidentally walked into the wrong bathroom and the attendant says "Misseur, misseur!" I realize my error, startle myself, profess my incredible apologies at such a guffaw, cover my eyes from the annoyed Parisians and scuttle out. The thing I find funny is that in Paris it's just a "Oops, silly me." In prudish America, where an accidental bare breast brings a federal inquiry, I'm sure they'd make a federal case about it. On the plane ride out (British Airways), I was thumbing through the movie selections. One of the movies was Open Water. In an opening scene, the couple is in bed talking about their upcoming trip. The women has a bare breast, and eventually gets out, completely naked. I immediately changed the channel as not to offend anyone else around me, when I realized it was actually the airline that was showing it. The paper guide has an adult warning, but the actual airing has none, not even a "PG-13" type warning, other than the movie was modified to fit on the screen. An US airline would have also added "modified for content", probably editing out such an offending display, one the Europeans found so innocent. Silly Americans. :-)

So back to the Musee. The Musee did have a couple incredible pieces, most notably a model replica of about a 8 block square section of the Opera District of Paris. It's size is about 20 feet square and it took one man 14 years to build. The pictures are on the website.

So I walked back across the Seine to the gardens in front of the Louvre. It was actually really nice. I just sat amongst the statues and escaped a little bit from the incredible overwhelmingness of Paris. Paris is like New York times two and in a different language. It's really overwhelming. The Metro is enormous (my god, how far do I have to walk to get to the train?), and subterranean city all its own. There's people everywhere, and I didn't understand any of them. It was nice just to take a break from it.

I walked back towards the hotel along the Rue du Rivoli, a huge shopping street in Paris. At the recommendation of my coworker Gloria, I went to Angelina, a world famous chocolateur. I had a light, very Parisian snack of a croissant, a bottle of Pellegrino and the house specialty, the Africain, an extremely decadent and thick hot chocolate. I'm not a big chocolate fan, but man it was decadent and awesome. I highly recommend. :-)

So I walked along the little shops, stopping in them occasionally. I went back to the hotel and dropped my stuff off. I managed to make it over to the Eiffel Tower. It's very beautiful at night. I got some amazing pictures. The area reminded me much of parts of San Francisco, because like the Palace of Fine Arts, the Eiffel Tower was built for one of the world expositions, so it's surrounded by ponds and parks and gardens and such. It was really cool.

I woke up about 3:00 in the morning, wide awake. My room had been running on the warm side so I opened up the window. It was eerily silent. You could hear the occasional person scuttle along, but that was about it. No cars, no trucks, nothing. Unlike a New York or San Francisco, there's very few cars, and I was a block and a half from where there might be any at that hour. It was quite beautiful. :-)

I managed to get back to bed and sleep for a few more hours. I finally woke up started my last full day in Paris. Recovered from both the jet lag and the Quatre Cent Coup, I was really hitting my stride by this point. I could do most transactions without a lick of a English, and I was feeling good about it. Other instincts came back into play. I compared learning another language to learning to ride a motorcycle. There's the mechanical part of going through the motions. Then you become comfortable with it. The you start to use the other skills you already know. By far, I'm by no means a master, but I just became much more comfortable about it. It's so true, immersion does do that to you. When it's your only way of communicating with the outside world, you learn fast because you're motivated. You have to really. So other skills came to play, like picking a restaurant. I was absolutely starving, and like living in San Francisco, I don't let that get in the way of picking a decent restaurant. I must have walked by 30 cafes before I found one that I thought I'd like. (Like San Francisco, that doesn't mean walking far, so you can afford to be choosy, so be choosy!) I picked this little cafe full of locals, right on a corner. The waiter and I talked back and forth in French, except for explaining the Plat du Jour. There's a big difference between being helpful and being condescending. He was being helpful. :-) I watched Parisian traffic, a four-way intersection staggered, so one of streets when you cross you have to go immediately left and then immediately right again. Of course there's no lights or stop signs. Traffic manages nonetheless. Mopeds and motorcycles dart around buses, and everyone just gets along. As an American, I was fascinated. :-)

So I walked over to the Louvre. It was my big day for that. I had scheduled most of the day for it, and I found out I would need it. It's huge. Enormous. It has most every style of art you'd ever be interested in (except perhaps 20th century art). But they had Renaissance, rooms and rooms of Rembrandts, Van Dycks, Da Vinci, all the masters. I saw God. No, really, I saw God. They had rooms and rooms of paintings of God. :-) And Christ as a boy, performing miracles, carrying his cross, being hung by it then ascending to heaven. My feet were killing me at this point (I lost about 5 pounds walking around so much and wore a hole in my shoe). So I'd get off my feet, sit in front a painting I liked and just stare for about 10 minutes. It was absolutely beautiful. And walking back through, I'd think I'd have enough when I would see another hall I'd just absolutely have to see. Amazing.

I walked back to the hotel and did a bit more shopping. Paris is an amazing city for shopping. I walked into one store and bought a shirt. The clerk asked me a question in French I didn't understand. "Excusez-moi?" I said. He asked, "Are you... American?" "Yes," I responded. "Are you from San Francisco?" I totally froze. "Uh.... yeah." He recognized my shirt as a Paul Frank (the guy does work in a clothing store in Paris) and went on to explain that's it's popular among people from California and from England, but there's only one place in the world someone would where a Paul Frank shirt and Carhartt pants ("those kind" of pants, he said... he didn't know what brand they were but recognized them). I said, "You know what? Snaps for you, because you're absolutely right." He smiled. That was weird. :-)

So I went back to the hotel and laid down for a bit. Later on, I walked around trying to find that Internet cafe I found the other night. I never did find it. I ended up stopping into the Bears Den for a bit. My comrades from the other night were not there. I ended up talking to some very nice locals for a bit who did speak English and were happy to do so with me. I also met a couple who was from Vienna. They too were on their way to Cologne, actually on the same train the next day I'd be on. We chatted for a bit. I was able to spend more time with them in Cologne. A very nice couple. I hopped around to a couple other bars. It was my last night in Paris so I wanted to enjoy it so I did. I ran into a guy from San Francisco (it's apparently a very popular week for Americans in Europe, with the long holiday and such). I met him before, but didn't really know him. Everyone in San Francisco has these strange, semi-intersecting social circles. He grew up French Canadian so he knew a bit of French. We started talking to a guy from South Africa. We (like we would so many times on this trip) got into a political discussion about Bush and Iraq. He was all for it actually. We were playing the opposite side. He said the US is the last superpower and at least someone was left and willing to take a stand against tyranny. It was weird. No one ever blamed me specifically. In fact, I said, you know, most any American who visits abroad would ever have voted for Bush because we see the rest of the world and what our policies do. They understood that. They also understood we were divided and while we voted for Bush, nearly half of us hate that. Anyways, I wasn't expecting to take an opposing view. It was weird.

The two of us started talking to another guy from Morocco. This was weird. This guy's father's house was bombed by the British during WWII, and so his father forbade him from learning English. But he knew French and German. Okay, I knew German, and my friend knew French, but there was no common language between us. So I would have to say something to him in German, and then either translate to my friend in English. Likewise, if my friend said something in French, he'd have to translate to me in English, and if the guy said something to my friend in French, he'd translate to me in German. Strangely it worked. And you know what. I totally don't even remember what we were talking about because I was just so impressed. :-)

So my friend and I hopped to a few other bars, getting lost in the night. Eventually I ended up closing out a bar across the street from my hotel. (I eventually found out it was a male strip bar, although no one was performing when I was there.) I had discovered a new life form, apparently one that subsists only on nicotine and alcohol. :-) A drunk Parisian tried to make a new friend of me. "Oh sorry, I don't speak French" came in so handy at this point. :-) Someone else came to my rescue and started chatting with me. The bar was closing so we stood outside just chatting away until the drunk boy finally left. Safe to return to my hotel, we parted and I walked up to the hotel. I reach to open the door. It's locked. The hotel has a strange policy of you have to leave the key at the desk. As far as I knew it was open all night. They had a night man on duty before, and I had returned later the previous night without problem. Oh my god. I look in and see no one, but a single light in the hallway. I knock. No one. I knock some more. No one. I run out to see if the guy I was talking to was still there. I can't find him anywhere. Crap, crap, crap, crap. What the hell am I gonna do in the middle of Paris in the middle of the night? I walk back to the hotel and try and jury rig the door open. Finally after about 15 minutes a sleepy night watchman walks up to the door. "All you had to do was knock," he said. I'm like, yeah I tried that to no avail. You could have at least put a sign up to knock or a buzzer or something. I was so pissed! Man! I went up to the room and headed to sleep.

My train for Cologne headed out at noon. I was running late so I checked out and hopped into a taxi for the Gare du Nord. I managed to get there just minutes before my train took off. The trains there are extraordinarily punctual. I noted in Germany one of the trains was leaving at 10:02. The second hand would click up toward the hour... 56, 57, 58, 59... as soon as it hit the minute, slam, the doors would shut hard and the train would take off. Not exactly Muni. :-) I got into my seat, got comfortable, read a bit of my book. I was then served my Thanksgiving dinner... Bison terrine, onion compote, salmon with cabbage and mirabelle plums in honey, served with a French Bordeaux Blanc. Okay, not exactly traditional, but they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe. :-) I watch Mean Girls on my DVD player and read a bit of my book. A couple seats away a couple Americans were bantering away. At Brussels the car was mostly empty except for the me and the two guys. I walked up to them and in my best French accent I say "You Americans are all the same!" I then laughed and introduced myself. "I'm just kidding. Yeah I'm from San Francisco." They were from Miami and Atlanta. They also had been in Paris and were headed to Berlin. They were traveling through Europe and had been to Amsterdam before. "All the party towns huh?" I explained I was on my way to Cologne. We chatted the whole rest of the ride to Cologne. They considered stopping off in Cologne, but they had a long train ride ahead of them. We drank far too much Beaujolais Noveau (sp). We practiced our German (one was in the German club in high school, also his first trip to Germany). It was just great fun.

So I get to Cologne. The weather had turned nicer. It was a beautiful day riding through France and Germany. There was a bit of snow on the ground in places in Germany. It was now sunny. France had volleyed between light drizzle and nice. It was cool but not cold. Germany was sunny but definitely on the cold side. I got to the hotel and met up with my friends. I was happy to be amongst trusted compardres. :-)

We spent the night mostly just getting situated. My friend Pete barely slept on the flight, so he spent a few hours napping. I went across the street and got a gyro. (A Durum Donner they called it in Germany... I didn't realize I'd have to translate Mediterranean cuisine into German.) Kabob (Kebop im Deutsche) places were everywhere. It was explained to me the Turks are kind of the Mexicans of Germany. Likewise, Kabob places are about as predominate as burrito places are in San Francisco. We ate a lot of Mediterranean. :-)

So the first night we just went out to a few places. A lot of people asked me, Okay, I understand Paris, but Cologne? As I would find out, Cologne is like the gay capital of Germany. There's like 60 gay bars in Cologne. I had no idea. And there was a large gay event going on. It would definitely be interesting. So we did do some tourists things. We checked out the Weinnachtmarkt (Christmas market). They really go all out for Christmas in Cologne. It's like the Christmas capital of Germany as well. They have outdoor cafes, you could get milled wine (Shulwein), and performances. My friend Pete laughed during one performance a German woman comes out and said "During the performance, there will be no movement, there will be no talking, there will be no clinking of glasses and there will be no movement!" She was very, very serious about this. That's the German's for you.

I'll go into more of Germany in a future episode. I gotta run for now. If you made it this far, good for you. :-)

How I survived the Quatre Cent Coup

Well, I sit here in London Heathrow awaiting my flight back to San Francisco. I only have about thirty minutes, so there's no way I can tell you everything, at least in this email.

First off, Paris was amazing, Germany was amazing, Europe was amazing. Ask me how it was and you'll get that dull "processing... processing.... processing..." stare I'm so famous for when my mind starts racing wondering how in the hell I can sum up 8 amazing days. (Jonathan, Daniel, Kevin, you know exactly what I'm talking about.) I just have to go over it day by day.

First off, Paris was amazing. My hotel was so incredibly close to everything. I bought a "carnet" (kar-nay, a set of 10 Metro tickets) and only used three. I walked everywhere. I lost about 5 pounds on this trip. I walked and walked and walked. I walked through shops, around Quatres (neighborhoods), from pub to pub, through museums, and walked and walked and walked. After I left you last, I went off to have my first meal in Paris. It was a horrifying experience. Knowing such little French, I walked into a restaurant unbenown to me that catered to Americans. As soon as I stumbled on the question "fumar or nonfumar" (smoking or nonsmoking, which I had been told there are no nonsmoking restaurants in Paris, unless it's for tourists, which living in SF, I know to go where the locals go). The waiter handed me an English menu. I felt like I'd just been handed a kiddie menu. I may not speak a lot of French, but I certainly can read it. There's a huge difference between being helpful and being condescending, and this was exactly that. (This story gets way way better.) He asked me every question in English. It was a lovely dinner anyway, but I felt every bit of studying French I crammed in the weeks leading up to my trip failed me 100%. I felt awful.

So I walked shortly over to the Bear's Den. I needed a beer bad. Sadly I walked up to the bar and said "un verre beer, sil vous plait". Waiting for my order the person next to me turned his head 180 degrees, looking at me and said: "You're from San Francisco!" I was startled at 1: The question was in English and 2: Uh, yeah! It turns out he recognized my face from when he used to live in SF. He was visiting from New York, and was there with several friends from Chicago. I had never been so glad to hear the English language in all my life. We sat around being obnoxious Americans, talking way too loud and annoying the Parisians with our rambutious American ways. Ya know, it's a stereotype, but "je suis mais je suis": I am what I am. We laughed, we were obnoxious, and that's what we were. I had never felt more American in my entire life, and I felt good about it. Oddly, the bar had English shows (Friends and French & Saunders). The sound was off, but they had French subtitles. Ya know, something really gets lost in the translation every time Phoebe said "Oh my god!" and the French subtitles say "Mon dieu!" It totally just isn't the same. :-)

So we went off into the night. We hopped from bar to bar, accumulating Americans along the way until we were a force to be reconned with. We walked into a late night Greek deli. Someone wanted french fries. ("Pommes frites" I translated for him.) "What French for mayonaise?" "Um, I think the word mayonaise -is- French," I said. We looked around for Rue du Jour street (my little joke: get it, "Rue the day".... it killed at 3 AM with way too many beers in us :-) ). We closed out 3 different bars. At 4:30, we finally headed back to our respective hotels. (Mind you 4:30 AM is about 7:30 PM San Francisco time.) The French have a saying: "Le Quatre Cent Coup". ("luh kat san koo") It's an idiom. It literally translates to "The 400 blows", but it basically means paint the town red. And that's exactly what we did to Paris.

The next day, I hit a wall. Too many beers and jet lag and too little sleep finally hit its toll. The maid woke me up at the bright hour 2:00 in the afternoon. At this point, how to say "15 minutes!" in French failed me. I did go to a nice little cafe, ate an omlette and a cafe au lait. I managed to hit the Musee D'Orsay. A beautiful museum, but I was just slightly underwhelmed. It's not that large, and two of the collections were American, one from the New York Museum of Modern Art, and a Georgia O'Keefe collection. Several other pieces I had already seen on loan to other museums I'd been to.

Anyways, I gotta run and catch my flight. More later. Man, amazing, amazing, amazing.

Bienvenue! Wilkommen!

So 2 continents, 5 countries, 9 timezones, 2 planes, 3 trains later, 48 hours later (only 8 of it sleep), je suis à Paris! If you're lucky enough to get this, I'm pecking away on a French keyboard (like the a and q are switched, the numbers are all shifted and none of the punctuation is in the same place) in the middle of Paris. I'm totally jet lagged, I'm running purely on cafè au lait and gummibaren, and I couldn't be having more fun. Once I left the flughapfen (airport), I left British Airways and English behind. I will say I will never ever ever think poorly of anyone who doesn't speak English again. Actually people have been parfait (perfect). After being seriously cut down to size by ein Farhkartenautomat (Train ticket machine. Können Ihren Karte nicht gelesen? Oh, couldn't read your card.), some questions came out of nowhere and simple questions were difficult. (Mein Name? Joe... Jay Ooo Eee, Carlin, um, Say Aay Ray Lay Eye Nay... they pronounce the alphabet different. Klein oder Grosse? Oh, duh, big or small.) Oh yeah, and my dictionary turned out to be wrong. (Ich möchte einschreiben. Oh, einchecken? Duh, check in, einchecken, DUH.) And then some people just look at me and start speaking English. (Do I look obviously that American? As it turns out, of all things my jeans gave me away. Carhartt's are made and sold only the US and the color was a dead giveaway too. (It wasn't bad, just made me easy to figure I'm American. That's okay. When I didn't understand someone's French question today, his next question was Si habla Espanol? I've never been confused for Spanish before!) So I was so happy to get into my room and the TV was on. It said: Hertzliche Wilkommen im Köln Herr Carlin! Gloria: surprisingly I did use your tip. In Cologne a women almost slipped on the sidewalk so I said Achtung! (She said vielen Dank!) I went out last night and talked for an hour with a guy who was in the same boat as me, just the reverse. He grew up in Germany and only had two years English and only used it once on a trip to America. (Subsitute Germany, English and Amercia with America, German and Germany and you have me.) So I would say something im Deutsche und ir werdt answer back in English. I had a serious hangover this morning from all the bier. Soon enough es alles kommt zuruck zu mich. (It all comes back to me.) I had the best time. There's just something so powerful about being in a foreign country and speaking a foreign language. Not fluent by far, but I realized something: Gay men everywhere always talk about the same thing. It's like going to the Opera. Know that select vocabulary and you'll do just fine. Oh yeah, I learned a bunch of word Frau Sundin never taught me. One guy even said he thought it was so sexy when Americans speak German. I felt very Welcome. :-)

So this morning I boarded a train for Paris. The weirdest thing happen. I'm sitting in Erste Klasse and everyone around me is speaking German. We cross the border and guess what happens? Everyone starts speaking French. I mean the -same- people. It was like Amityville Horror when that kid walks around the house singing and everytime he goes into a room, he goes silent. When he walks out, he picks up right where he left off. It was just like that, but instead of going silent, everyone starts speaking a different language. So I broke out my very broken French and a cute attendant says "au Anglias?" I said "No no no I gotta practice" and he laughed. I was out and about when my camera battery died. I went into a store with a little old lady behind the counter. "Bon jour! Allez vous batteries?" I asked. She asked what type. "Deux A" She grabbed them, "çe?" "Oui" "Trois Euro quatre-vignt-cinq, sil vous plait." I hand her a 10 Euro. "six, cinqze" as she handed out the change "Merci!" "Merci beaucoup, au revior!" "Au revoir!" I walked out with fresh batteries and a huge sense of empowerment that that little old lady had no idea I was from the land of 59 million idiots. :-) (I've already joked that's why I escaped to Europe.)

So I continued on taking pictures. And as Madonna once brilliantly said, nothing cheers a girl quite like shopping. She said that in Paris too. And I know why. I walked in a shop and picked up the cutest shirt. I tried it on, and I had to have it. (Holy crap those French boys are skinny, not like those European cut shirts.) I totally pulled a Will. (On Will & Grace, Will goes to Paris and comes back with a fabulous pair of jeans, only to find out their actually women's jeans.) So either French men's shirts zipper on the other side or it was a women's shirt. I didn't care. 25 Euros and c'est magnifique! I totally got it, gender be dammed. :-)

So anyways, I'm outta here. I'm gonna go take a nap before checking out the nightlife. Mehr später!

FYI, if I log into the work email from Paris, why is it coming up au François? :-) (I'm totally not kidding.)