White Russians & Chili Peppers In Dresden

Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.
—Kurt Vonnegut

It was snowing when I came into Dresden, but the city was nice. The Altdstadt on the south side of the Elbe has all the pre-war fire-blazed buildings, and the Neustadt is a mishmash of ugly modern, ugly Soviet, and cool old buildings, 200 of which are bars, most of which have awesome themes.

Play has old 8-tracks and tape decks wedged like bricks into the bar and the tables. The Living Room is all couches and coffee tables and dim lighting. Lebowski has a mural of the Dude and the Stranger painted on the wall in front of bowling lanes, and I got a White Russian there.

Every once in a while I like to make a big meal myself. Since the hostel kitchens aren't much, this is usually pasta. I found a market hall in Dresden with a nice grocery store, a butcher, a baker, and all that and got some pasta, sauce, mushrooms, and onions, and found some spicy sausage and four red chili peppers. German stuff can't possibly be as hot as the American equivalent.

I cut up the onion and tossed the bad core. Whenever you buy a bunch of onions there's always one bad one. I sauteed what was left with garlic, added the ripped up sausage, diced and threw in two of the red peppers (which I found by experimenting were kind of hot), then put in the cut up mushrooms and the sauce.

"That looks good," said Yo from Thailand.

"Yeah," I said. It did look good. After I served it, a big plate of pasta and the chunky, spicy sauce, with a little plate of bread and Brie and a glass of black Dresden beer, it looked so damn good I took a picture. I started eating it. Jesus, it was hot. I kept eating it.

I thought of the New Zealander I met in Edinburgh. His dinner was pasta, plain spaghetti sauce, and a bunch of Jalapeño pepper slices from a jar. He didn't even have anything to drink with it. Just kept spooning it in, red-faced and crying.

Pretty soon that's what I was doing only I was sniffling too. I always liked how hot stuff cleans out your sinuses.

"It's good for you," said the German physicist. "It kills all the bacteria in your stomach."

"Yeah," I said. "It's definitely killing something."

I decided not to make the joke about bacterial genocide, since I was still in Germany.

When it was all eaten, I sat back, finished my beer, ate an orange and some chocolate, and relishing the hot coals of indigestion in my stomach I thought, That was good. Next time I'll need more peppers.