From Africa To Russia

Get up and hike through Niederrad, catch the metro and wait for the train at the station. I drink a big dark beer at a bar there. A gay train worker sits down next to me, he is decked out in wristbands and rings and earrings and things. I wish I was gay; they all seem so friendly. I drink and stare at my morose self in the mirror. A vague feeling of despair comes over me, I walk to another bar and have another beer. I write a few poems in the notebook, the train comes after a while and I go. A few hours on the train, and I am in Brussels. Brussels is a maze. The streets intersect in all manner of odd angles, no street keeps the same name for more than one block, and all the streets have names that are about seven words and a million characters long. To compound this, none of my four maps bears any resemblance to reality whatsoever – I cannot find one single street that matches a name on any map. Many of the street corners just omit street signs entirely, so I am left to guess. After completely circling the North station once and making no progress (passing a street full of scantily-clad dancing girls in the window booths along the way), I give up and ask a young student couple where the hell I am. Not only do they tell me, they physically walk me to the intersection I need to be at. They may speak French, but the Belgians appear to be a major upgrade from les Francais. I find them to be relaxed, casual, friendly, carefree. No superiority complexes in evidence at all. The city is fascinating, it has cobblestone streets and parks and sharp-angled streets. Grand Place is a huge square walled in on all four sides with magnificent gothic buildings. In the center of it this evening, a full scale symphony orchestra is performing an opera for the general public, free of charge. I walk to the Parc du Bruxelles, a sprawling park off to one side of Grand Place. A free concert is being held in a plaza there as well, it is a hip hop act with rappers and a trumpeter, the trumpeter is pretty good. It is the alternative crowd out in force. The beer is affordable and quite good. Yet another understatedly great city that practically no one ever talks about. Go where the tourist hordes aren’t, I say. Even though pot is not legal in Belgium, it appears that it is at least tolerated or perhaps ignored, because the smell of weed floats around the parks and spills into the streets. Given the proximity to Amsterdam, it isn’t really surprising. The Dutch have the right idea. Free pot, prostitution, gambling, the whole works, America the Free my ass, I come from a police state, the government should be there to protect you from others, not from yourself. Well, tomorrow is Amsterdam, the red lights will be on for two nights. I’m not sure what will happen when I get there. It is not sex I want, it is something even sillier than that. But the urge has been building for some time now. Wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of some hysterical French woman running up and down the hall outside the room, yelling that she will call the police. I don’t know what has happened, but I hear a man’s voice as well. Every so often she disappears, then comes back making even more noise then before. It sounds like she is talking to herself. Finally, I have had enough and get up to investigate, but she has moved down into the lobby on the first floor now to give the reception guy an earful. She looks on the older side, is using a cane of some sort, and sounds quite insane. She keeps this routine up for hours.

Head out in the morning on the metro into Frankfurt, once again nicer than expectations, a la Madrid. Whenever a lot of people talk a place down, I am almost always subsequently impressed. The Romerburg is a charming little square, as are the buildings and churches that surround it. A little brass band plays a tune as I walk through. Earlier in the day, I had stopped to grab a sausage (the Europeans often eat on the street standing around tall tables). A little kid rushes by with a pack on his back, and gets a strap caught in a truck door. I have to disentangle him before he is on his way again. It is a humorous little episode. I walk up and see the Eschenheimer tower (cool, but out of place there rising up out of the road), walk down the Zeil and see the shops and touristy stuff. I get another dizzy spell where my head swims and I have to sit down and rest. I have a little cup of beer and some potatoes at a stand and get scammed once again on the euros. Walk back along the river, and then up to the train station, on one particular street the girls come out of doorways, “Want a massage?” Across the river on the metro, then back to the motel to rest and recharge, watch a little World Cup (for a change). Am reading my way through ‘Big Sur’ now – Kerouac was goddamn brilliant. His hunger for life inspires me. Walking back, I pass the ‘shanty town’ again from last night. A kid is pruning the hedge, I ask him about it. He tells me it is actually a vacation spot of sorts, where people come to live simply for a while, plant gardens and relax.

Wake up, pack up, head to the train station, catch the train to Frankfurt (with a transfer at Basel). The fellow selling beer and sandwiches on the train is annoyed when I try to pay him in Swiss francs. No ... [Continue reading this entry]