How Long the Lonely Road

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 a...

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind. —Charles Dickens German people are kind of fascists. They have so many rules and are dead serious about every one. "Wear your bag on the front." "You can't bring that bottle in here." "That bag is too big." "You can't carry your coat in here. Put it back on." "You have to ask before you use that sink." "You can't lean against that wall." "You can't drink that beer in my Millennium Bar ." They yell at you, and then if they ever catch sight of you again, they glare at you. And this is in Berlin. To be fair, it's really only the security guards and bartenders that are part-time Gestapo. Everyone else is really nice, although they will not ever cross the street until the light says it's okay, no matter how empty the street is. One of my professors once told me, "Before they protest, the Germans ask the police if it's not to...

Each day I go outside and sniff the air and say, 'That way smells bad,' and that's where I go. —Some firefighter from Canada I have free access to a computer in Cologne, so I thought I'd write more specifically about what I'm doing for once. I took a train from Amsterdam to Cologne and got in late Thursday afternoon. At the station they told me there was a backpacker's hostel right around the corner, and it was. I could see the trains come in from my room on the fourth floor, and the wind carried German announcements form the station floor. The hostel has a sign next to the window that says not to throw things at the restaurateurs below, and they set up a net like the one at a driving range just in case people forget. After I checked in I found a donor kebab restaurant and ate there. I went back to the bar at the hostel and talked to some people from Japan who spoke a little English and something that no one could mistake for German. You meet strange people in h...