I had jet lag before I even got to the airport.

Up until 3 the night before at the Ablärm/Icos/Discarga show at Mainusch, nervous as fuck, chain smoking, babbling about the places I’d be seeing in the next five weeks, trying to explain how far away from Baltimore Chicago and Colorado really are, taking requests for presents.

We got up at 7:30, and I hastily repacked my bag, hoping the wagon-chaos wouldn’t reclaim any of my things before I got them back into my little gray backpack. Then a coffee, a train ride, goodbyes, and off into the labyrinth of airport waiting rooms.

Airports are a strange perversion of purgatory, the people in them herded like cattle from one holding pen to the next, and finally into an enormous metal tube, floating thousands of feet above the earth (44, 387 feet right this very second, the screen on the far wall tells me). Time spent in planes remains outside of time and between it. The place you’ve left fades slowly into the stratosphere, while the place you are going doesn’t yet exist outside of your imagination. We are nowhere, and it is now.

On the first leg of my trip—from Frankfurt to Rome—there is a camera crew who appear to be filming some sort of wedding reality television show. The cast switch between Italian and German, and I, startled at the sight of the bright lights and cameras a few rows in front of me, think for the thousandth time about how little reality television has to do with reality. Then I think about how little this trip seems to have to do with reality, and I go back to sewing up the hole in my skirt. Handcrafts are calming, I hear.

The second leg of the trip—from Rome to New York City—is quiet: a tasteless vegan meal, several failed attempts to kill time with one of ten equally bland and mindless movies, a few hours sleep, a few chapters of Rant by Chuck Pala-Nobody-Knows-How-to-Pronounce-Your Damn-Name-Anyway-hniuk, the time between spent fruitlessly spent trying to imagine how it will feel to step off the plane in New York.

At customs I rush past the baggage claim—I’ve only brought a carry-on—and on through customs.

“What is the purpose of your trip?” The bored-looking man behind the desk asks me.

“Visiting my family,” I tell him. I can feel my skin beginning to glow with excitement. I am really here. Holy shit, I’m really here. This is surreal. Am I dreaming? Am I really here? Holy holy shit.

“Visiting family in Rome?” he asks skeptically.

“No, no,” I say quickly, pointing to the line on the entry form that lists country of residence, “I live in Germany. I’m in the States to visit my family.” He looks at my passport, then at me, and nods.

“Alright, then, have a nice trip.”

I rush out the last set of doors, and into New York.

“Americans are always afraid of coming home,” said Karabekian, “with good reason, may I say.” “They used to have good reason,” said Beatrice, “but not anymore. The past has been rendered harmless. I would tell any wandering American now, ‘Of course you can go home again, and as often as you please. It’s just a motel.’” Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

“Coming home.” Home. Home? It’s a word I no longer associate with America. America stopped being capital “H” home after I’d been away for over a year. After my friends and family scattered themselves across the country making trip planning complicated and visiting everyone I’d like to see impossible. Once I started thinking of it as that far away place across the sea where the letters and emails come from and where there’s no good bread.

Coming home. Home is where the heart is? Home is where I hang my hat? No, no. For nomadic gorillas, home is in the eyes and arms of the people called friends, even when those friends are living in cities we’ve never visited in apartments we’ve never seen with flat mates and friends we’ve never met. It means no matter where I am, home is always nearby. It also means that no matter where I am, there’s always someone that I miss.

Afraid of coming home? Yes. Excited? Yes yes yes. Cartwheel-excited, trembling-nervous, drunk-giddy, by night having nightmares about missing my flight because I never am quite sure what day it is, by day obsessively trying to imagine what it will feel like to get out of a plane in New York City after two years sans visit. Will there be rolling tobacco anywhere? Will there be good bread? Will I accidentally open a beer on the street out of habit? Will I be allowed to smoke anywhere? Will my friends recognize me? Will I recognize them? Has the past really been rendered harmless?

“I’m leaving for America soon!” I’ve been chirping at friends all week.

They smile and ask me about where I’ll be going and what I’ll do while I’m there. Not many people I know have been to the states themselves, so I draw maps of my travel plans in the dirt. “Ok, so if that stone is New York, then this one is Baltimore. And see that stick over there? That’s Chicago, and that tree over there is Colorado. Saratoga is over there above the stone that’s New York.”

Nods, then sometimes, a nervous smile: “But you’re coming back, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be back. I already have my return ticket, I get back into Frankfurt at the end of July.”

I suppose in high-security, anti-chaos, pro-status-quo circles it’s common sense, but it came to me as a surprise.  In Germany (and presumably everywhere where there are corporations cutting down trees and activists who prefer clean air and environmental stability to corporate profit), there is a special police force that is trained to deal with the removal of activists from trees.

Imagine that.  “So what do you do?”  “Oh, well, I specialize in removing dirty hippies from treehouses.”  “Ummm, right.  And how’s that working out for you?”  Dirty work, any way you look at it.

While I was living in Dresden, activists squatted a several-hundred-year-old tree in one last attempt to stop the construction of a very ugly multi-lane bridge over a very beautiful, untouched stretch of river.  Under the name of Robin Wood—an environmental activist collective—a group of people squatted the tree itself, housing several activists on a makeshift platform and populating the grounds below.  The activist-tree-removal-special-police’s first attempt at removing the tree dwellers was unsuccessful due to the hundreds of protesters gathered below, but by and by public interest dwindled, and eventually the police were able to move their equipment close enough to remove the pesky tree huggers by force.  The tree is long since cut, and bridge construction has begun.

Capitalism: 9,876,458,700, Activists: 0.  Once again.  (Insert loud collective, cynical sigh of disillusioned discontent here.)

Last night the flyers came in: the Kelsterbach Forest has been squatted.  Kelsterbach—a small town on the Main west of Frankfurt— was, until recently, the finding place of Europe’s earliest anatomically modern humans through the discovery of a Cro-Magnum skull dubbed “the Lady from Kelsterbach.”  What you can’t find out on wikipedia, eh?!

Now, due to the VERY highly intelligent decisions of the Lady from Kelsterbach’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (and so on) grandchildren, the forest is due to be clearcut to make way for an additional runway and terminal for the Frankfurt Airport.  Good job Fraport.  Old Mama Kelsterbach would be glad to know that you’re doing such a swimming job blindly prioritizing your over-blown monopoly game over the well-being of the environment which makes your lives possible.  Not to mention the quality of life for the people already living in the area.  Here here.  Crack the champagne.  We’re going to need more than a few bottles before we start feeling good about this one.

This isn’t the first time Fraport has had to deal with protests against proposed expansion.  In the 80s thousands, yes, thousands(!), of people occupied the Flörsheim Forest in an attempt to hinder the Startbahn West expansion project.  A small city sprung up in the forest and lasted for approximately two years before it was finally, permenantly cleared.  The protests—the largest of which is said to have included upwards of 10,000 protestors—culminated in the usual black blocks, police-activist clashes, rubber bullets, water canons and all the other demonstration banalities we’ve all come to know and love.  The squatted city was forcibly evicted, and construction of Startbahn West was completed in 1984.

When I first heard about the latest expansion project, I used it as a debate topic in my advanced English classes.   “It’s good for the economy,” one Postbank employee told our class.  Most of the other students nodded in agreement.  “And what about the pollution?” I prodded.  It’s easy to play devil’s advocate when you already disagree.  “And all of the people whose homes are going to shake with the roar of landing planes every ten minutes?”  They made intelligent arguments against expansion, but, except for one student who had been involved with the protests, each argument ended with a shrug of defeat and apathy.

Fraport says that the new runway is good for the entire region.  (Oh business people.  They never seem to tire of that line.)  Not only is the expansion good, they claim, it’s completely unavoidable.  Written in the stars even.  Bitteschön.

In their own words,  “…demand for takeoff and landing slots at Frankfurt is strong. For this reason alone, rapid expansion of our airport is essential. In addition, air traffic will continue to grow. If FRA is to maintain its present significance in world air transportation, there is no alternative to the planned capacity expansion.”  There’s demand!  If we don’t expand Munich will, and we’ll lose our reputation as Germany’s biggest, bestest, fastest airport!  We will create 100,000 new minimum wage jobs!  Well yipee-ki-yi-yeah, doesn’t that sound like just what we need.

As for the environmental harm expansion will inevitably cause, well, Fraport has a quippy little answer for that one too:

“The operation of a major airport is inevitably associated with environmental burdens. Our company’s goal is strongly to reduce such burdens. Our environmental management system has been validated against the world’s most stringent standard, EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) and, beyond meeting the legal and official requirements, achieves far more in terms of environmental conservation. This commitment has meanwhile also been publicly recognized: The “Institute for Market – Environment – Society” in Hanover and the “Ethical Investment Research Service” in London both rate Fraport AG’s environmental management as exceptionally good. Such ratings are important, above all, to portfolio managers who decide on the acquisition of Fraport shares.

Protecting the environment while expanding means for us to minimize all burdens such as noise, loss of natural land and air pollution.”

They say it clearly enough themselves: “such ratings are important, above all, to portfolio managers who decide on the acquisition of Fraport shares.”  Implied: such ratings are not important to those whose backyards will be cut or poisoned by plane exhaust.  To those whose houses will rattle as planes approach overhead.  Mine already does.  I imagine it sounds something like it sounded just before your house got bombed in World War II.  I hate to break it to you Fraport, but when you are sitting in a shaking house, when you have to stop conversations to wait for the noise form a passing plane to die down, those environmental certificates you have don’t mean shit.  I’m pretty sure they don’t mean shit to the melting ice caps either, but I suppose you’d like to be able to sleep nights, huh?

The Kelsterbach tree squatters hope to be able to hold out against Fraport, the police, and the government long enough to force Fraport to back down.  A proxy for Mayor Ockel visited the site on the first day of occupation and announced that the occupation would be tolerated until June 1.  June 1 being a Sunday, eviction will probably begin in earnest tomorrow (June 2).

If you’d like to help, the Kelsterbachers are seeking donations of wood, polypropylene rope (10mm and 14mm), (vegan) groceries, tools, paper, and office materials.  If you read this in time, you can stop by today (June 1st) for coffee and cake and find out more yourself.  Donations can be transfered to the “Spendung and Aktion” account number 92881806 at the Volksbank Mittelhessen (BLZ 513 900 00), Subject: Waldbesetzung.

Forest telephone: 0175 833 59 58.  Email: waldbesetzung (AT) riseup (DOT) net.  Directions: The squatted trees are near the huts in the Kelsterbach forest.  Drive to Kelsterbach, follow the b43 (Rüsselsheimer Straße) and turn onto the K152 (Okrifteler Straße).  At the first parking lot (Mönchwaldsee) go through the forest.

Word on the street is that Click Clack Gorilla is writing a travel guide. It’s about Germany. Having recently escaped near financial ruin at the hands of a sinister, yet (conveniently) easily flustered ticket controller, I am posting a piece of the section on (free)riding the German rails in celebration. Here here. Break out the champagne already.

die Bahn

Schwarzfahren—in literal English, “riding black,” or, in English English, the practice of riding public transportation without a ticket—carries two risks: getting thrown out of the train in a potentially inconvenient place and/or a 40€ fine. Urban legend has it that schwarzfahren is statistically proven to be the smartest financial option. I don’t make this shit up. The people on the news do. Having done a little math I reckon it’s true. But it all depends on the train.

RE (regional), IC (Intercity), and ICE (Intercity Express) trains are checked uncomfortably thoroughly and often. It is not impossible to ride these trains without a ticket, but requires a high level of concentration, creativity, or the patience to lock yourself in a small hot bathroom for hours at a time. One variation: Purchase the sort of ticket that allows you five trips across Germany dress like a businessperson, and see if you can’t sleep through the entire ride without being shaken awake by a ticket-checking conductor. As long as no date is recorded on the ticket, it can be used again. Buying tickets to cheaper destinations that lie along your route is also rumored to be effective.

Public transportation companies within German cities employ plainclothes men and women to conduct random ticket checks. (The conductors on REs and ICEs wear blue uniforms and snappy little hats.) Possible signs that you are trapped in a car with one of them: He remains standing as the train starts in preparation for beginning the check, she is carrying what looks like a portable credit card machine, or she is with a uniformed railway security duder, recognizable by his own snappy little red tam. They tend to come in twos and there tends to be something about them that just doesn’t look quite right. But maybe that’s just urban schwarzfahrer’s legend. If you see a snappy little tam though, don’t panic. Most of these in are false alarms—duders waiting for a ticket checker in another car or doing security duty. Each city has its “hot” routes and times. Learn them, heed them, and get the fuck off the train if you smell a rat. Multiple offenses can lead to much higher fines and harsher penalties. If you pay with cash, they won’t record your name, and no one will be counting, so if you can afford it, consider keeping a 40 tucked into your wallet. Or there’s always that fake ID you used in high school to buy 40s, but don’t come crying to me when you get arrested for falsifying documents.

Signs within the train cars will attempt to guilt you into seeing your failure to purchase a ticket as a grave social offense and before the train system was privatized, I might have agreed. You, being an American taught to like the taste of corporate cum and to despise all social programs as communist propaganda, will be immune to their social guilt. Consider buying a ticket once in a while to appease the direct action cods, and your own guilt at having refused to pay your share of an already underpaid driver’s salary. Also consider the thoughts of your travel companions. There is a certain breed of Germans—fuck it there is a certain breed of people—who have a general tendency to take corpor-ehem-I mean social responsibility and abiding by the rules rather seriously.

If asked for a ticket there are several approaches you can take to attempt to avoid the fine. There is the Oh Shit I’m a Slow Witted Tourist from Am-eer-e-ca approach. There is the I’m an Exchange Student Just Starting (note: the new semester usually begins in October and March) and I Don’t Have My Student ID Yet (students ride local transport for free) maneuver. There is the Ticket From Earlier in the Day tactic (tickets are usually only valid for two hours, but some employees are not detail-oriented and look only at the date and not the time). There is the Quickly Flashed Ticket From Yesterday scam. And if you’re dressed right, there is the slightly more involved Oh My God I’m SO Scatter-Brained Can You Believe It I Lost My Ticket Oh Dear Look at These Tears of Sorrow Shining in My Eyes (I’d Like to Thank the Academy) double whammy get out of jail free card. Or you could just run. Most Bahn employees have big Bahn bellies, and most will take you off of the train, right out into freedom, in order to collect your information.

This just in: The Agency would like to notify all citizens that on the night before moving yourself six hours across the country, you should at all costs avoid drinking a half a liter of vodka with your ex-boyfriend. You will feel sad, and hungover. Thank you for your time.

—

There are two lesser known ways to make a city look more beautiful. Most people would just redecorate. A new building here, a new paint job there. I leave.

Of course, as soon as you’ve decided to leave, the whole bothering with wanting to make the place more appealing becomes rather silly, but life is just one big monkey barrel full of paradoxes now isn’t it?

The day I decided to leave Dresden rays of sunshine descended from the heavens like choirs of angels, drab buildings did their make-up and put up their hair, and everyone I passed on the street started smiling at me shyly like we were about to become friends, or lovers. Potential started bubbling up between the cracks in the pavement and quickly hardened into missed opportunities.

Moving away is almost as good as first arriving. I highly recommend it, though the moving costs tend to add up after a few tries.

In the last weeks before a move, everything teams suddenly with heightened significance. This isn’t just a shower or breakfast. This is my LAST shower in this apartment, and my LAST breakfast in this kitchen. This is the last sentence in a chapter, and the first sentence in a new one. Banal daily events become Transitions, New Beginnings, and New Ends.

The day I decided to leave I went down to visit the Altstadt skyline to refill her glass of wine and see if she wouldn’t let me give her a little kiss. How many dates does it take to get a girl in bed these days? I smiled at her dumbly across the river, and she sipped her wine slowly smiling at me contemplatively with a look that said ‘I knew you’d leave me for that grimy little bitch but you can give me a little kiss all the same.’

My last weeks were a blur of new-crush butterflies and energy and excitement. I ran around trying to finish the Dresden section of my guidebook. I stayed up late typing chapters of the novel, racing my calendar to happily ever after. I drank too much coffee and wandered around Neustadt over and over again, sipping in all the details that I would inevitably miss.

On my last night Markus came over to say goodbye, and we went out for One Last Neustadt Beer. Which turned into Quite a Few Last Neustadt Beers and an almost-pub crawl to say goodbye to all the nooks and crannies I’d become smitten with over the past six months. This is where the two-ton hangover, the five paracetamol, and the gallon of coffee entered the scene. I had only slept for a few hours when my headache woke me up, and I twitched over to the train station to pick up the rental van (which turned out to be more like a big huge metal box), threw everything I own into the back, headed in the direction of the train station again, and clipped another van’s side mirror right fucking off.

The word “clipped” may be something of an understatement. “Crushed,” “obliterated,” or “completely annihilated” might be more appropriate terms. The angry owners of the damaged van did not grasp the irony of the situation—they were driving the exact van that I had hoped to rent, and the only reason I was on that street in the first place was because of an ill-fated wrong turn—and were standing in the middle of the street and watching me do one of the worst parking jobs of all time with mouths trout-wide open in shock and anger.

Then I slid out of the high driver’s seat, and they both laughed.

“A tiny girl like you in a big car like that? Well, that doesn’t match at all.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied, hoping their jovial good mood would inspire them to forget all about the smashed mirror, pay me, and drive off into the sunset laughing and waving. But as they weren’t even sitting in the car and their mirror was still lying in pieces in plain view, we filled out the accident report form from the rental company and made a few phone calls. I finally managed to battle the “I think I may, in fact, burst into tears at any moment” look off of my face when they fixed my own bent mirror for me so that the van would still be safe to drive on the autobahn.

“Don’t worry,” the fat one told me, “It happens. No big deal.”

Is this how car accidents usually go? I sure hope so, but somehow I think I got lucky.

I was a half an hour late to pick up my ride share passenger from the train station where she was waiting with her husband in the cold.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I told them. “I umm, had a little trouble with the mirror.”

I had been hoping for someone with a head full of interesting tales, old hitch hiking adventures or strange family histories, or maybe even ghosts, yeah a head full of creepy ghost stories and a knack for spooky voices. That would keep me awake.

“I lived in America for 20 years,” she told me after a few minutes of banal small talk. “I lived in Alabama and Kentucky. I miss it so much. Especially the weather. Oh give me an Alabama winter anytime.” She spoke English with a bizarre combination of deep-south twang and we-learned-Brittish-English-in-school twug. It had just started to snow. “What I miss the most though is being able to shop 24 hours a day. You ever miss that?”

“Well, it took a while to get used to the shops’ hours here, yeah, but I don’t mind it anymore,” I told her, making awkward slow turns and hesistant lane changes with the van.

“Oo-wee. Just being able to go over to Walmart after work to go grocery shopping. And the spicy sausages! You ever had a spicy sausage?”

“No, I haven’t actually,” I told her, “But then again, I don’t eat meat.” I also didn’t and don’t have any idea what spicy sausage she could possibly have been talking about. The only sausages I had ever seen in America had either been German or Italian. Unless you count hot dogs, and considering the fact that hot can mean both spicy or a high temperature, maybe that is what she was talking about.

She was quiet for a while, Walmart-hot-dog-stand franks smothered in ketchup and mustard sparkling in her eyes. “Well, the next time you get back to the states you’ve got to try you one of them spicy sausages.”

This time I answered in German. “Ja, klingt gut. Aber ich esse kein Fleisch.” (Sounds good, but I don’t eat meat.)

“Oh and you should probably heat them up in the microwave,” she went on, oblivious that I had done more than nod. “They’re even spicier when they’re hot. Or chicken wings,” (relentless bitch) “Nobody here makes chicken wings like in America. You should have some of those too.”

That was the end of our conversation and my cue to turn up the music. She quickly fell asleep, and I quietly rasped along to Tom Waits, the rhythm of the highway getting back into my fingers and toes.

As you ride north on Königsbrücker the city begins to unravel, buildings slowly becoming sparser, spreading themselves out between abandoned lots until the trees are growing on the buildings themselves and you find yourself in a tiny city, mostly abandoned: the industrial district. To get inside you can climb over fences from the front, or up a hill and through apocalyptic-looking piles of rubble from the Heide behind. Some of the buildings remain in use, while the rest form a labyrinth of architectural corpses, innards gutted and removed, a horror-film-soundtrack dripdroping to the offbeat meow of a lost alley cat, the last echo of a black-shuttered death rattle.

There’s enough empty real estate here to house an army of squatters. An army of squatters! I think to myself. If we all showed up on the same day, they could never arrest us all! I imagined hoards of people pouring in on freight trains and bikes, in caravans of red and blue wagons. The smell of dumpstered vegetables roasting over pallet bonfires. Patched pants. Tough wiry dogs with their tough wiry owners. Squatters swinging Tarzan-style between windows of the 15-story (former) army barracks…

Many of the buildings show signs of having been squatted already: an arrow topped “N” scrawled on a roof, curling yellowed theater advertisements, a blackboard to-do list—”1. locks 2. phone numbers 3. plan 4. suicide” read the headings—blue-tinged cut-outs of naked women pinned in neat rows along the wall, empty spray paint cans, damp shoes waiting to be claimed by every rag-tag Cinderella in the valley.

Further north along Königsbrücker, past blocks of human filing cabinets and chinzy motels you’ll find Klotzsche.

Klotzsche has never been mentioned in a travel guide or featured in one of those “Travel’s Best Kept Secrets” articles. No one will ever recommend that you go there, and unless you happen to fly from the Dresden airport, you probably never will.

A name like a slap in the face—Klotzsche!—a word you’d expect to find exploding over Adam West’s head in an old episode of Batman—and a town like a limp-wristed slap. One of its few redeeming qualities are the supermarkets, or rather, the dumpsters behind them. Unless you don’t have a car. In which case, you might actually be burning more calories getting there than you gain in remaindered cucumbers and bell peppers. Dresden is in a valley, and that means that everything outside of it is uphill.

And therein lies Klotzsche’s other redeeming quality: on a bike the entire ride home is down.

Bzzzzzz. Tzzzzzz. Bpfiiif! The little-kid-on-christmas-eve feeling that’s crowding my head right now, and making it impossible to accomplish anything except running around my apartment in circles in between half-read paragraphs of Despite Everything.Well, ok, I also washed a dish. Maybe even two. I’m not too keen on having the fruit flies squat my place while I’m gone. And I’m sure as hell not going to have time to wash dishes tomorrow. I’ll be on the way to Karlsruhe where I’m meeting Mr.-Someone-or-Other Jochem (if I disappear, find him and kill him) who’s driving me to Amsterdam. (Pray he doesn’t force me to listen to top ten radio techno. Yes god damn it, get down on your knees and take one for the team.) From Amsterdam it’s one more train to the Hague, and then two weeks of a whole lot of things that I should have been doing this whole time. Exploring new dumpsters. Finishing that zine. Biking biking biking. Climbing around rooftops. Reading in the sun. Plotting mass chaos and international world takeover. You know. Vacation stuff.

And then! Yes then! I’ll be on a plane to Dublin to play with bikes and drink frothy stout for another week. I get the feeling that a messenger championship will be a lot more fun when I don’t have to wake my three-days-worth-of-exponentially- multiplying-hangover-just-slept-on-a-concrete-slab-by-the-river-bank- after-taking-some-really-bad-drugs ass up to work at the beer tent at 11 am. (Don’t be fooled. I loved every second.) Anyone know anything about squats and such in Ireland? Google’s telling me there hasn’t been anything since Leeson Street got evicted in, what, 2004? I don’t buy it. Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

There’s one more week of vacation after that too, but I’m leaving that one up to the weather gods, the hitchhiking gods, the dumpster gods, the gods of indecisive anti-planners, all those rad cats who always seem to be looking out for me. I like to think of it as something like a surprise party, except a vacation. And if I’m real dedicated, and yer real lucky, I’ll come out of it all with a few finished zines, and a whole bunch of purdy new graffiti pictures. Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

Why is it I haven’t felt this alive in months? This energetic? Oh right. Work.

I like my job, yeah. I usually like it a lot. It’s an endless story-mill, that’s for damn sure. But anything that takes place at 6 am besides finally going to bed’s still got that soul sucking corporate death leech feel sometimes, you know? Still leaves Queen Hypochondriac’s wondering if chronic fatigue syndrome is actually the reason why she doesn’t have enough energy to do a damn thing but take four naps a day. Still leaves room for the wrong kind of dread, for actually having to think about whether not patching that hole in the knee of my pants or never, ever brushing my hair really matters, for paperwork, for having to pretend I’m in a really really good mood even when I’d rather just give everyone a big paper cut and run screaming out of the room.

I guess vacation got here just in time. Whew.

Everyone has a fantasy, right? Marriage, puppies, orgies, the lottery. As for me, well, lately I’ve been imagining lovingly piling all my books into a few cardboard boxes while wildly throwing clothes I don’t need out the fifth story window. Leaving everything else in a pile on the street to join the urban tumbleweed. Locking the door and never looking back.I never get to the part where I go somewhere else afterwards. To the part where I need somewhere to put the boxes. To the part where it’s still a little cold at night to be sleeping on the street. To the part where I have to make a thousand appointments to visit a thousand WGs. And a thousand more appointments and paint purchases and nail holes in new walls before a different room on a different street starts feeling like something like home.

My typewriter problem is certainly not going to make it any easier. (Herman, umm, let’s just say ’sprouted’ two friends.)

It’s a thought I’ve been kicking around for the last few weeks. Brewing. Fermenting. Not yet articulatable. That’s where the emergency vacation came in. Better get the hell out, I thought, before my nerves snap into a thousand tiny peices that I’ll never be able to figure out how to peice together again.

And Holland, Holland was the perfect choice. As fucked as any other country with a government and a couple thousand conservative fucks, but with the right people, in just the right light, it’s the land of milk and honey. (That’s soy milk, and the stroopwaffel honey, mind you.)

I’d been sitting on the train station steps for exactly three minutes when the pretty punk girl with the bike and the double lip peircing asked me if I needed a place to stay. The first inkling of magic after two nights without sleep and a hazy three-hour recovery train ride. Naw, I told her, I’m waiting for someone. But thanks. Thanks a lot.

Turned out that she was staying at the farmhouse squat in Lent, and that’d we’d meet again the next day on a trampoline at the squatted villa with the empty swimming pool.

B turned up a few minutes later with a pur-dy old maroon racing bike. We recognized each other from the pictures and the stories. Friends of friends. Friends of friends who happened to have sent us both the same patch. The same patch which we were both wearing, hastily stichted to the back of our shirts. Friends of friends with the same bracelet and the same god damn glow in the dark Clear Channel My Ass underwear. Oh North Carolina, you wiley dog you.

We spent the day wandering Nijmegen, looking at stencils, sharing music and stories, dipping peices of chocolate in soy yogurt on some bustling green in some bustling square. Watching a couple of macho types flaunt their urban gymnastic flips to squealing 14-year-old girls poured into too-tight pants. The usual suspects. Getting mind fucked by the new David Lynch film while trying to quietly chew paprika crisps. Falling asleep to Bonnie Prince Billy and the faint scent of lavender.

Everything about Nijmegen was magic, I reckon. The peaceful vacation feeling of being suspending in time and space, of being far far away from problems and grocery shopping and time-to-go-to-works. Holland is just so god damn wholesome. At least it is when you’re staying at a beautiful once-squatted, now-owned house in the middle of town with six other silly funny vegan types, hypnotized by the strange almost-familiar sound of Dutch.

Maybe the word wholesome never would have occured to me if it hadn’t been for the little blond boy at the fleamarket. I was sitting on the steps, old steps leading into a building suspisiosly resembling something out of Harry Potter. I had been waiting for D and listlessly eyeing a basket of mismatched knitting needles when the very small, very curly-haired little blonde boy in very red rubber boots walked straight up to me, put his soft little hands on my cheeks, and kissed me right on the lips.

First the nanosecond of American-style panic: Where’s his mother, and is she going to sue me for child molestation?

Then, awe. I tried to talk to him in German, but he just giggled at me in Dutch, so I gave him a little plastic Nemo until D showed up and asked him how old he was. Five years old, he told her.

See what I mean? The land of fucking milk and honey.

Today I’m in den Hague, full of Thai food, and hiding from the impending end of the spell in the little guest house above my parents’ old college friends’ garage. But the dull ache just below my hip bones keeps reminding me that I have every reason to panic. I’d turn to rituals for comfort, if I had any rituals left, but I guess there just wasn’t any room for them what with Recipes for Disaster and grandpa’s old winter coat hogging all the room in my suitcase. There’s no reason to worry, there never really is, I’ll get off the train in Frankfurt with a feeling of home. I’ll move out of my apartment. I’ll teach my Saturday class. I’ll return those borrowed dishes and find that lost key. I’ll ride my bike to the river and I’ll watch the refletion of the sun setting on the skyline. Hell man, it’s only a ride.