“You have a tattoo on your arm?”

At first I hadn’t realized he’d spoken to me in English. He had a thick Indian accent, a pink polo shirt, and awkward looking khakis that topped white Reebok’s.

“Yeah, it is,” I replied, briefly rubbing the letters on my wrist with my left forefinger.

“Is it old?”

I shrugged. “Maybe five, six years. Something like that.” The math between now and my junior year in college has become too complicated for bank-line conversation.

“Oh, well, that’s probably good because you know many diseases can be transmitted in this way.”

On a top-five list of strange things that people have said to me in my lifetime, I’d have to say that a stranger telling me (ever so politely!) that I probably have an infectious disease rates just under “Can I photograph your feet?” and “The bags under your eyes looks so beautiful when you smile.” And I thought I was socially awkward.

I frowned. “Why are you telling me this?” What possesses a person to choose infectious diseases as a topic for bank-line small talk with strangers? Was he screening me for a date? Did he have a bottle of spray disinfectant in his bag ready to disarm me? Are there other people who ask strangers this question? Are there people who like it?

I waited for an explanation, but my tone had disarmed him; apparently he didn’t know why he had asked that either. When the teller called him up to the counter he scuttled away from me, relieved.

The Dresdner Bank is a strange place. The kind of place that always leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling that I’ve just had an encounter with a strange and highly illogical alien race.

When I first opened my account I had just come from teaching, and I suppose in my black turtleneck dress I must have looked respectable. The teller was friendly and polite; I suppose as far as she knew I was a rich American heiress here to flit through Frankfurt’s cosmopolitan nightlife drinking cosmos and flirting with wealthy businessmen.

But one night at the atm in ripped fishnets, boots, and a patched and fraying hoodie, three business people—two men and a women in long black dress coats and shiny black shoes—came in behind me and started to laugh. I turned to see what they were laughing at. Oh. They’re laughing at me. Laughing and pointing. I looked at them in disbelief. They continued to laugh. Perhaps on their planet anyone dressed in ripped clothing couldn’t possibly have a job, let alone an account at the same snotty institution that safe-guarded their money and managed their investments. I shoved my money into my wallet and headed out into the night feeling like I’d just had a close encounter of the third kind.

Later, in my teacher disguise again, and with a lost atm card, tellers at several branches gave me cash without asking for any ID at all, once when I didn’t even have my account number with me. Several weeks later, this time in a dirty t-shirt and cut off shorts, a teller in Mainz refused to give me cash because, according to her, American driver’s licenses are not a valid form of identification. Picture or not. Wallet full of other picture IDs, credit cards, library cards, frequent buyer cards or not. No, I’m very sorry, but unless the person who is in charge of your account knows you personally and approves the withdraw, I can’t help you.

Can someone please explain to me why I need to have anything to do with a company that treats me differently depending on how I am dressed?  Bank account what? Fuck it, from here on out it’s hidden compartments and pirate chests for me.

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.

“You, umm, how do I say this? It’s always a rather awkward topic.”

I was sitting in the grayish office of The Woman Formerly Known as My Boss. When I had called to say I would be back in Frankfurt and available to work, Former Boss had called brimming with artificial niceties and the suggestion that we meet up for a “little chat” before I started working again.

I had wondered how bad it would be. “Little chat,” after all, is business speak for stern conversation about what you’ve done wrong. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming, so I just sat back with the relaxed smile of someone who’s just spent six months doing just exactly what she wants and watched her try to squirm her criticism out in a polite way. Too bad politeness so often gets in the way of honesty.

“Well, it’s about dress code,” she finally said, choosing her words slowly and running a finger across the edge of the plastic-gray table. “I’ve been cracking down on people about dress code lately.”

Uh-huh. Cracking down on “people.” Ladies and gentleman, I would like to introduce our new prototype. So polite! So kind! So diplomatic! An expert at talking around blame and unpleasantness! Some may call her an artificial coward but we call it state-of-the-art anti-unpleasantness. We’ve dubbed her the Modern Boss. Don’t wait! Place your orders today!

I personally would prefer conversations like this to be loud and honest. Maybe some yelling followed by a gladiator-style battle where we could bash our frustration and aggression out on each other with foam bats and go home friends. At least then we’d all know where we stood. Directness, after all, might lead to negative feelings and decreased productivity. It’s not personal. It’s never personal. It’s just business.

“You sometimes wore,” she went on, drawing out the “o” to buy time to search the database for more neutrally negative adjectives, “combinations that I was a little uncomfortable with.” Translation: You dress like a slob. There are sometimes holes in your pants. You don’t iron. I almost laughed. This had been coming for a long time. The only real surprise was that it had taken her so long to get around to it.

“You don’t have to wear a suit or anything,” she rushed on. “Just business casual. What you have on today is fine. You really don’t have to wear a suit, just because I do. I mean, I personally love suits.”

“Really?” I was incredulous. There can’t really be people who love suits, can there? Oh what people will do for fashion. Including looking like idiots, hookers, and penguins.

“Yeah. I really love them. And besides, I never know when I’ll have to meet a client.” I have never been good at determining when English people are being sincere and when they’re being ironic. Apparently I didn’t watch enough Monty Python as a kid. But doubt aside, I’m fairly sure I’ve never witnessed an authentic moment with this woman. Usually we exchange the banal forced small talk of office inmates and go our separate ways. Could this really be an authentic endorsement of the business suit? I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. She did, after all, meet her husband in church, and I have trouble taking people seriously who believe that a thousands-of-years-old slavery-endorsing pseudo-hippy is going to come back in a ball of fire and brimstone and lead us all to the promised land. I apologize to any Christians reading this. It’s just that we’re from different planets.

The worst of the criticism over, she went on in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Oh god,” she laughed. Her blue pants suit couldn’t manage a laugh and just hung sternly at her side. “I still remember that day you came in with the bruise on your neck from that chain you used wear. Oh my.” She shook her head in bewilderment at the memory.

The previous year I had almost always had the chain on. It was a heavy thick-linked number, fastened at the back with a safety pin. One day I had come into work and Former Boss had passed by with her usual pre-recorded pleasantries. But this time as her eyes wandered to my neck, a look of horror had spread across her face. “Nikki! Oh my god! You have a terrible bruise on your neck! What is that from? Oh my god, it’s from that chain! You shouldn’t sleep in that thing! You could suffocate!” Uh-huh. Suffocation. Neck bruise. Right.

Ever since she’s brought up the subject once every few months, as if she still can’t shake her horror at the thought. I nod and chuckle, wondering if she secretly thinks that bruise is part of some kinky asphixiation fetish.

I’ve never had the heart to tell her it was just dirt.

“What are those kids doing?” I ask. It’s raining and two girls are standing in the middle of the street below the apartment, wearing aprons and carrying rolling pins. Every time a car comes along, they stretch a colorful rope across the street in an attempt to stop them. Most of the cars avoid the girls completely, slipping quickly around them. Some stop and give the girls candy and money.

“Ah, Faschingszoll. Carnival toll. Begging for candy basically.”

I’d been watching people in costumes stroll past the window all weekend. Witches and cows. Cowboys and Indians. Bright sparkley wigs and soft red noses. All on their way to parades and costume parties and all-night binge drinking extravaganzas.

Carnival in Germany technically begins in November (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month), but the real party starts on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday when a bunch of ruffians, probably still drunk from the night before, symbolically occupy city halls everywhere, which mayors everywhere symbolically hand over, signaling the start of a preordained chaos that lasts until Rose Monday. Women cut off men’s ties (Altweiberfastnacht, the first day of Fasching), decent people are permitted to start drinking at breakfast, and you can pinch the cute new chippy from shipping’s ass without fear of a sexual harassment suit.

Köln, Düsseldorf, and Mainz have come to be the three kings of the season. There Carnival is taken with a religious seriousness and beer is downed like it was the piss of Jesus Christ himself. The tradition cemented itself so firmly in the Rhine area because of it’s origins as an expression of anti-Prussian and anti-French occupation sentiments. Protest through parody and mockery. Here here, I’ll drink to that.

In recent years, however, Fasching has morphed from an act of protest to an act of hedonistic surplus, a time when you are allowed to (warning: tired cliche incoming) “let down your hair,” drink until your eyes cross, wear a red foam nose, sleep with your secretary, and not lose an ounce of dignity in the process.

Television broadcasts live from the center of it all kill any lingering curiosity about the event I may have once had. The newscaster is dressed as a clown, and is clearly drunk. Crowds of other drunken clowns, make-up already starting to smear, line long beer garden tables and listen to unbearable, never-ending comedy acts, and this comes eerily close to my idea of hell.

Fasching, a friend of mine tells me, is supposed to be the one time of year when you are allowed to completely be yourself and to do what you really want. It makes instinctive sense in Rio. In Germany it begs the question: is who we really are a bunch of alcoholic circus clowns with smeared make-up?

Needless to say I didn’t participate this year. I would next year, but I’ll probably have to clean my refrigerator. I prefer to act like an idiot 365 days a year. At least it keeps the hangovers manageable.

(from the Gogol Bordello show, December 19, 2005, Bucovina Club, Frankfurt am Main)

They showed up in town with no warning. Even the woman at the ticket counter wasn’t sure who was playing. Inside, they stirred the crowd into a frenzy with the bow of a fiddle, and then they were gone, the ashes of a bonfire, a broken bottle of moonshine, and a few crumpled, rustling set lists the only evidence that they had been there at all.

Gogol Bordello and their gypsy punk revolution and their Nordic-ly tall bass drummer and their old gray-haired fiddler showed up in Frankfurt on Thursday. It wasn’t exactly unannounced, but it wasn’t exactly advertised either. The Gogol site mentioned a Frankfurt date, but never bothered to say where. The Bucovina Club site said there would be a show, but they never bothered to say who would be playing. And still the damn thing was sold out before we even arrived. But that doesn’t stop an American and a Bulgarian from getting inside.

At first Maria and I just settled into a bench and a beer, hoping that a few of the reserved ticket holders wouldn’t show up, but other scavengers were starting to gather so I said, hey, let’s go talk to some people, see if we can’t finds some tickets, or the back door.

Turns out that we didn’t need to find the back door. Turns out that at the Bucovina Club, the front door works just as well as the back door for sneaking into concerts. And we didn’t even mean to sneak in. It was just that I had drank two beers and had to pee, and the bathroom was inside. So we went in and when we came out of the bathroom, this guy came up to us and was like, excuse me, you just came in without paying. Oh, we just wanted to use the bathroom, I told him, I’m so sorry, really, we didn’t mean to sneak in, oh we’re sorry, should we leave?

After talking to him for a few minutes and singing our sad ticket-less plight, he had a conversation with his boss, and we came to an agreement. We would pay him a little bribe, 10 euros each, and he would let us stay. And really. I’d like to take a moment of silence to appreciate the fact that two days ago I bribed someone in order to see a bunch of crazy gypsies playing accordions and fiddles and fire buckets. It made the show even better, because it was no longer just a show, it was another improbable adventure.

We bought beer, pushed our way to the front of the crowd, and danced and danced and danced. And then Eugene Hütz had my face in his hands and was fucking singing, singing to me. Imagine it. The shirtless eastern European man in tight black pants with one of those jingly silver-spangled shawls wrapped around his waist and the most ridiculous handlebar mustache on any side of any ocean, just reaches down from the stage and starts caressing your face. And some people think a sold out show is a reason to go home disappointed.

Set List (You know you were curious.)

1. Immy Punk
2. Sally
3. Never Young
4. Not a Crime
5. Purple (Long Intro)
6. East Infection
7. Mussolini Vs Stalin
8. Dogs Were Barking
9. Bulo Bulo
10. Passport
11. Think Locally
12. Underdog World
13. Darling
Punk Rock Paranda
Illumination
Baro Foro

My worst nightmare probably involves some combination of hairy spiders, AIDS, and a brigade of machete-wielding circus clowns. But being trapped in a small room with a born again christian for three hours every day for a week might come in close second.

When I asked him what he did for a living, he told me he was “work free.” Sounded pretty good. Not wanting to ask if he had quit or been fired, I asked him what he wanted to do next. “Well, in the fall I will go to bible school. And then I will go to Egypt to teach people about Jesus.”

Uh-oh.  It’s not that I don’t like Jesus.  Maybe if he and I had met we would have really hit it off.  What with him preaching love and turning over the tables at the market and all.  It’s more like I don’t like extremist Christians telling me that I am, in fact, going to burn in eternal damnation.

“And what made you decide to do that?”

“It’s God’s will. He needs me in Egypt.”

Warning! Warning! Alien vessel at 6 o’clock. Keep him on the radar Scotty. We’ll try to make contact, but these fuckers are unpredictable, and I don’t want to risk an attack.

Sometimes teaching requires a level of diplomacy I never knew I was capable of.

For the first hour, it was easy to keep the conversation to less potentially explosive subjects. What do you NEED to use English for? What do you LIKE DOING in your free time.” The usual blah blah blah small talk stuff that turns English teachers into therapists and intensive training courses, at worst, into nightmares.

“What WOULD you do IF an elephant walked into the room right now?”

“If an elephant walked into the room right now, I would sit on him.”

“Would you sit on him?  Or would you ride him?”

“Oh yes, ride him. Into the city.”

A student with a bit of an imagination is a language teacher’s best friend. Especially considering I’ve already asked this question at least fifteen times this week.

“What WOULD happen, IF you didn’t eat for a week?”

“I would be very happy.”

Well that’s a new one. He’s a normal sized guy, so despite a slight fear of an impending “well I throw up all my food anyways” response, I abandon tact and ask why.

He pauses, folding his hands. “When I first find my faith, I not eat for 23 days.”

“When you first FOUND your faith, you DIDN’T eat for 23 days?”

“Yes, I didn’t eat for 23 days. I was very happy.”

Ok. I suppose I can understand that. I hear fasting can have that effect. Besides, he tells me, you’re only hungry for the first two or three days.

But it wasn’t until we got to “might” that the real trouble started. Since he’s not working, I skip over the “Do you think we’ll have a meeting tomorrow? Well, we might…” prompts and start asking him what he thinks might happen with transportation/fashion/government/the environment in the year 2100.

“I think we might have flying cars.”

“I think we might have better health care.”

So far, so good.

Then, almost at the bottom of the prompt list, “What do you think MIGHT happen with family structures? Marriage, divorce, children, that sort of thing,” I ask.

“Well, I think they might be righter.”

Scotty, we’re going to have to raise that alert from orange to red.

Where do you begin correcting a sentence that has thrown both tact and grammar to the wind? With the grammatical structure? With the subjectivity of a right or a wrong when it comes to family structures? Teach him how to say “In accordance with Christian beliefs”? It was obvious where this was going, but I thought, hell, his English isn’t that great, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

“What do you mean exactly by ‘righter’?” I ask, thanking my lucky stars that Jesus needed him in Egypt and not in my English class for the next six months.

“Righter. For example, homosexual marriage is wrong. I think in the year 2100, it might be righter.”

Damn it Ensen, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be an opportunity for peaceful contact. Scotty! Launch the missiles, we’re under attack.

It’s rained every Monday since I started going to the Ostenbergers house. But today was magical. Not only was I not tired, not only was the sun shining, but I stepped off of the train to come face to face with…an elephant.

Ober Ursel, this sleepy little suburb of Frankfurt, is really, really the last place I’d ever expect to meet an elephant. A wealthy business person commuting into the city, sure. Old women waiting for their U-Bahn, check. Obnoxious kids on their way to school holding the train door open so we cant leave the mother fucking station, every fucking time. That pretty girl with the dyed black hair and her bicycle or the two Thai women gabbing at each other on their way to work, absolutely, but an elephant?

I don’t know what his name was. But I imagined it was Herbert.

The circus lost it’s appeal somewhere around the time I turned 13. It became disgusting somewhere around the time I went vegan. And more than any performance could be, this was the magic of the circus. The quick glance behind the curtain. The scattered caravans in a muddy fields, without lights, without music, without the cries of win this here just a dollar!!! or see the smallest horse in the world!! The performers still asleep in their caravans. Me eye-ing their caravans enviously and wondering how the hell I’m going to find one so I can finally move to Borsig. The rusty still-folded-up rides. The elephant.

It was the least bitter walk up the path through the woods and to the architects’ house I’d ever had. It was the most relaxed I’d ever felt on a Monday morning. And on the way home: a giraffe. I have a feeling this week is going to be full of surprises.