Where in the World is Markmen Radtkiego?

they’re kicking me out of the library, so this is quick: I picked up a power converter (220 VAC -> 110) when I was leaving Germany. Of course, they have different outlets in Switzerland, so I had to borrow one from the hostel. Don’t tell Prof. Lee, they’ll strip me of my MSEE.

Guten tag. I’ve been in Konstanz, a lakeside resort town on the Swiss boarder. Part of the town is in Switzerland, and I’ve accidentally crossed the boarder a few times without knowing it. The only sign that you’ve entered another country is that the prices start appearing in Swiss Francs (CHF).

This is quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been. The lake is a milky blue color, and the town is full of well-kept buildings that are well over 500 years old. There are walking and biking paths all around the lake, and yesterday I walked several km to the NE (into Germany). Check out Google Maps for a visual. I walked from the bridge at the center of the screen (crossing the Rhine before it feeds into the lake) around the tip that juts into the lake.

I spent Frietag nacht walking around trying to understand German food. In Paris and Amsterdam, I was able to guess at most of the dishes, but German is such a different language that I realized I would just have to take the plunge and order something. I walked into the next bar I found and ordered ‘schnitzel.’ I had no idea what I was going to get, but I knew that schnitzel was traditional and German. I was pleasantly surprised by the meal (I won’t give away what ‘schnitzel’ is — just don’t order it if you’re Muslim), and I ended up hanging out in the bar. It filled up with about half a dozen locals who seemed like regulars. We drank Rappenger’s beer (local — brewed with lake water) and tried to communicate. About 75% of my time there was spent guessing at the German jokes, the rest of the time they were trying to use the little English they knew.

It’s raining today, and a lot of shops are closed, which is kind of a bummer. Tomorrow I’m headed for Zürich (gotta love keyboards with a ‘ü’ key), but I will never forget this town. If I learned a little German, I could see myself spending a week or two here.

And, a reminder: if you want to get a postcard, make sure you fill out the online form, or send me an email.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Konstanz, Germany. It’s a resort town in the very south of the country. It’s on a lake which is shared with Switzerland (and, I think, Austria). I’m going to spend a few days hanging out at the beach, and then it’s on the Switzerland. I’ll probably finish my book by then, so I’m accepting suggestions for future reading. Something set in one of the countries I have yet to visit (Switzerland, Italy or London) would be preferred.

I had the option of taking a slow night train (sleeping cars, holla) or a fast train during the daytime. I kind of wish I had chosen the night train, but, oh well.

Here are some thoughts I’ve had on Amsterdam:
1) It combines Old World charm with New World sin.
2) Maps are useless. The best way to learn the city is by landmarks. Leave your hotel or hostel and travel in a spiral outwards from there. Don’t be afraid to backtrack, because you won’t learn it the first time. The city’s roads don’t map to Cartesian geometry, and can only be understood as points on a sphere.

Just a quick post to let my fans know that the chaos in London today hasn’t affected the sinfulness of this wicked city. I am alive and well, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for Osama. It’s really terrible that this would happen the day after they got the Olympic bid and just before the G8 meets. It will be interesting to see if Bush uses this to derail the attempts at Africa reforms in favor of stronger “anti-terror” measures. If anything, this should serve to remind us that terrorism is a tactic and not a movement, and it’s important for us to eliminate the causes of terrorism (such as poverty, lack of education and oppression) instead of dealing with the effects of it (anti-Western sentiment). I can only wonder what may have happened had New York won the bid.

Here’s a quote from the book I’m reading, A Soldier of The Great War by Mark Helprin. It’s really quite excellent.

Never in his life had Alessandro had to squint in starlight, but now the stars were so bright that at times he had to cover his eyes, and when they burned too brilliantly for keeping still, they sometimes shot across the sky in short bursts. Though these quiet illuminations vanished almost as soon as they had started, they lingered in the eye’s inexact memory of their luminescent paths. Perhaps had they been stronger and more constant, and hung in a dull white line, Alessandro’s heart would not have risen each time he saw them. They were less than little puffs of smoke, their tracks thinner than a hair, the bursts of light mainly a matter of memory.

In Europe, the government has taken more drastic steps to curb smoking. Packages of cigarrettes, signs advertising tabacco shops, and every other reference to tabacco that I’ve seen all contain large, very blunt warnings about what tabacco will do to you. Not the “The Surgeon General thinks smoking might contribute to lung cancer, but our official policy is highly influenced by Big Tabacco and so we’ll take as soft as stance as we can” warnings that you see if you squint to read the fine print in magazine ads in the states. No, one common warning in Britain is (if I’m remembering correctly) “Smoking will kill you and those around you.” In addition to these warnings, I understand that there are big taxes and tariffs on tabacco, comparable to New York City. And yet everyone, everywhere seems to be smoking.

Anyway, the reason I mention all this is because I find the warning in Dutch to be very funny. It’s something like “Roken es derbonden,” which I guess means “Smoking is deadly.” I think it would be great on t-shirts. White text on a black field. Sherwin, do you want to draw up some prototypes?

Today I’m making plans to leave Amsterdam. I’m in a hostel for the next two nights, then I’m going to head to south-west Germany. I’d like to go to Constantine, which shares a lake with Switzerland. I could ferry across the lake and be a short train ride from Zurich. Now I’ve just got to find a place to stay.

One thing that bugs me about Amsterdam: you almost always have to be paying to sit down. There are very few benches in public areas. Right now, behind my monitor, is a sign that says “Notice: It is not allowed to bring your own drinks. Drinks are compulsory. Management” (emphasis in original). My tea’s almost done, so I’m off to the train station to reserve my ticket.

Yesterday was my first Forth of July in a foreign country. The weather was lousy all day, intermittant heavy rain. I spent the day going between bars and my hotel room. I can’t remember, off the top of my head, a rainier 4th. Even if there had been fireworks you wouldn’t have been able to see them. I suppose the U.S. and The Netherlands have some kind of treaty where The Netherlands takes all the bad weather on the 4th, so that the party can go on. I’m sure Independence Day (or Queen Beatrix’s birthday or whatever they do here) has great weather, and the U.S. gets a blizzard. I’ll never understand international politics.

I spent an hour and a half in a bar named “The Doors” and they didn’t play a single song by The Doors. The only Doors song I heard was when they played “The End” at last call. I guess that’s a nice gimick.

This keyboard (although thankfully a qwerty layout) is very tough to type on, so that’s all I’m gonna say for now. I hope you all had a happy holiday.

Saw the Catacombs. Gruesome stuff. A family in front of me thought it would be a good place to take their 3- or 4-year-old. Needless to say, the child was terrified. I guess it builds character — besides, he’ll need something to talk to his therapist about. Leaving for Amsterdam in the morning by way of Brussels. I’ll probably have some pictures up this time tomorrow, but that depends on what Internet cafes are like in The Netherlands.

The first batch of post cards are in the mail, so if I like you a lot you should expect your’s to arrive in 5-10 days. Don’t worry if you don’t get one this round, there will be more. I never realized how tough it could be to get stamps in this country. My first attempt was to go to the post office. Unfortunately, the French seem to have some kind of bizarre socialist postal system where everyone can send a certain amount of mail every hour, because everyone just was just standing around inside the post office, and there was no detectable beginning or end of the line. I decided I’d take my chances elsewhere. I went downtown (by the Latin Quarter and Luxembourg Palace — Chalson, I couldn’t find L’Atlas); I assumed that one of the many copy centers or general stores/tabacco shops would sell stamps. A few of the stores politely said ‘Non,’ but at least two of them said something to the effect of ‘French or no sale.’ The moral of the story is that you are about to recieve the greatest postcards ever.

At least they drive on the right side of the road. (Did I mention that already?)

Oh, and to explain the title of this post: when I was eating dinner the music was switching back and forth between some French music and older American pop. A French song played for a while, and when the chorus came around the second time, I realized I’d heard the song before. It turns out it was Rush, but in French. That got me thinking that maybe Rush wrote all their songs in French, and translated them to English for an American audience. Are there any Rush fans out there who are 1) willing to publically admit that they’re Rush fans, and 2) able to answer the question?

When I was un petit garçon, mon papa tried to teach mon frère and I some French (or maybe he was trying to learn it — I’m sure he’ll post soon, so he can fill in the details). However, besides the few simple phrases posted earlier, none of it stuck. There was one sentence that he taught me that no 10-year-old boy could forget. The phrase, of course, is “Who cut the cheese?”, or “Qui a coupé le fromage?”

Now, I’m sure the idiom doesn’t translate, but every moment I’ve been in France I’ve been waiting for the chance to use it. Alas, my research has revealed that either A) the French do not fart or, B) the country of France has some kind of odor that is difficult to detect but somehow masks the smell of farts.

From this we can conclude that the French have no need for the concept of a fart, let alone a way for children to ask one another who farted. In addition, it can be inferred that French custom does not acknowledge “Whoever (WHOMever?) smelt it, dealt it.” (Perhaps the storming of the Bastille would have gone differently…) This is probably also why the French think their shit doesn’t stink. There is more work to be done to prove that it does indeed stink; but I’ll leave that research up to an unlucky undergrad (FROPpers, holla).

Q.E.D.

P.S. – I didn’t think it was possible to be polite and completely unhelpful at the same time.

Also, I promise there will be no more fart-related posts.

(Forgive any typos in this entry, I’m not typing on a qwerty keyboard. The only way I could describe it would be ‘azerty’.)

I’ve been in Paris for about 48 hours, and things couldn’t be going better, considering that my grasp of the language consists of ‘yes’ ‘no’ ‘please’ ‘thank you’ and ‘pardon.’ Needless to say, it’s very hard to be anything less than polite. I’ve found that some people (particularly waiters) give me a look that manages to say, “You’re not fooling anybody… let’s just try and do this in English, shall we?”

Went to the Louvre yesterday for a few hours. I got lost in the Egyptian section for a while; after my earlier visit to the British Museum, the Louvre’s collection of artifacts (artefacts) wasn’t nearly as impressive. I only have a certain tolerance for black-top redware (as I’m sure Bill can appreciate). Once I found my way to the wing with the Italian masters, I was quite impressed. Who would have thought you could paint Jesus in so many different situations? The poor guy must not have had time for anything else. (“And for my next miracle, I’ll turn water into funk.”) Obviously, I visited the Mona Lisa; the room wasn’t anything like The Da Vinci Code said it would be. (Damn you and your lies, Dan Brown!) Hundreds of people were crowding around the painting trying to take pictures of it. Why anyone would take a low-quality shot (some people even had the flash on!) of the most famous and easiest-to-download painting in the world is beyond me.

Overall, the Louvre’s paintings and sculpture weren’t as impressive as the building itself. If am am ever installed as the king of France, my first order of business will be to move 90% of the paintings to another museum and turn the building back into a palace.

Today I’m going to find Jim Morrison’s grave. Then, who knows. Maybe I’ll have a baguette.