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.”

“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.

I met Joey at the Tuesday Fischladen Vokü. He was standing outside, smoking. I was early, and awkwardly looking for a way to break the ice.

“You have a light?” I asked him. He did. I rolled us both cigarettes, and we sat at a table outside making small talk and drinking one-euro beers while waiting for our food.

Anyone else would have noticed that Joey was crazy within the first couple of minutes. I suppose I must have noticed, but considering that I often come across as being a few cards short of the deck, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Besides, most “crazies” usually turn out to be a lot more rational and interesting than the rest of us.

Continued on Young Germany.

“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.

“Das ist sau komisch.”

Literal translation: “That is pig strange.”

What I would have said in English in the same situation: “That is really f@–ing strange.”

And therein lies the entire problem of translation. The itch that can never quite be scratched. The photo that just won’t hang straight. It’s not just the (impossibly imprecise) art of translating culture- or language-specific idioms that get my panties in a bunch. It’s the (impossibly complicated) translation of what a certain person with a certain personality would say in a certain situation. It’s an issue that goes beyond the realm of words and accuracy and into the realm of identity. Of personal propaganda. Since moving to Germany I have often found myself posing the rather confounding question: Am I a different person in every language that I speak?

Continued on my debut Young Germany blog.

Alternatively, the entire problem of translation can be explained by and through Zero Wing. That’s right. I went there.

The best thing about teaching business executives English is that they’re usually too busy to actually attend entire lessons.

“Excuse me, I have to take this call,” the executive secretary tells me as she rushes out of the room. Later an accountant apologetically begs to end class fifteen minutes early and the Siemens executive sings “Traffic again!” at me as he arrives half an hour late for the fifteenth week in a row.

I sit at their dreary gray tables in their bland gray meeting rooms (the meeting rooms are always gray) and smile and nod. “Don’t worry about it,” I say. I’ve been daydreaming, I think. Or writing. Or reading. And you’ve been paying me for every minute. Come late, talk on the phone, don’t come at all! Because my students’ firms are paying the bills, it rarely occurs to them that they are throwing away almost a euro a minute on their phone calls and traffic jams.

When students need to leave early, they always try to break the news gently, as if I will be offended or angry with them for cutting the lesson short. “Nikki, we’re really sorry,” a delegate from one of my classes once told me gingerly. “But we have to end a half hour early today. There is an important meeting this afternoon, and we all need to be there. We’re really really sorry.” I almost laughed right in her face. Sorry?! I’m not! Have fun at your meeting! I’ll be laughing all the way to the park, where I’ll sit in the sun and drink beer with my friends, and get paid for it.

In the realm of private language schools the roles of “student” and “teacher” are becoming more and more irrelevant. This is not high school history class. There are no tests, no grades, and no detentions. You don’t need a hall pass, and no one is going to publicly humiliate you if you don’t do your homework. In part this is a positive step for education. More self-directed. More mature. But in part private language training skips over classic educational roles in favor of their capitalistic cousins. We are no longer student and teacher, we’re paying customer and service provider. And until my students notice, they’ll keep being too busy for class, and I’ll keep getting paid to take the afternoon off. It’s not a bad gig if you can stand the suits.

I don’t recall enjoying Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn when they were forced upon me at the ripe old age of 14. I don’t remember laughing out loud or even thinking that Twain was a particularly funny guy. Actually, I don’t recall ever reading them at all, though I know that I must have what with the 12 years of American school and the degree in English literature.

Rewind one year. A friend gives me A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain. I attempt to read it. I fail. I attempt again. I make it almost to the end of the first chapter. Fast forward back to now. Someone offers to pay me to read it, and I manage it in a few long and grueling weeks.

Painful first chapter and grueling epic satirical nonsense aside, I’d recommend A Tramp Abroad for one important reason: after the first few chapters it’s brimming with the kind of mean-hearted, cynical humor that only a chain-smoking nihilist could love. It’s morbid, and sarcastic, and includes heaps of jokes about the sudden and satisfyingly painful death of tourists and small children.

Read my (edited, eHEM) review on Brave New Traveler.