One down, 49 to go

In an interesting turn of events, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee plowed their way to victory in the Iowa caucus on January 3rd.

This means that, finally, the press has something to actually report on in a presidential candidate so long, the newspaper coverage of it could be used to blot up the Atlantic Ocean.

I’m surprised to find myself rather happy about Obama’s victory. Unlike many of my peers, I wasn’t particularly gung-ho about Mr. Obama - my biggest complaint is his lack of experience - but from what I’ve heard in the few days, he sounds like he just might be the candidate for me. I don’t know too much about what his official policies on the issues are, but at this point, he seems like he’s offering the one thing I believe America needs more than anything at this point:

Hope. 

This country needs hope. Eight years of a fraudulently elected president. Seven years of terrorism hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. Seven years of civil liberties being torn away from us. Years of watching so many things we hold dear as a nation being tossed aside while being offered the barest excuse. Once upon a time, not too long ago, Americans could always take heart in the fact that we usually held the moral high ground: while we certainly made mistakes, we always acted with the best intentions for everyone. We lived in hope, not fear.

Tapping people’s phones without a reason or warrant is not living in hope. 

Imprisoning people indefinitely without trial is not living in hope.

Lying to the populace about the reason for war is not living in hope.

Letting thousands of people drown in their homes while the government sits on its hands is not living in hope.

In fact, there is effectively nothing this  administration has done in the last eight years that deals in hope. George W. Bush, the Republicans, hell, just the government in general has made a policy of dealing in fear. 

And I think we may just be sick of it.

No one wants to live in fear. People want to believe their government is watching out for them, not stalking them. People want hope.

And I think that may be just what Barack Obama has on tap. And that’s why I think a two-year veteran of the U.S. Senate has a solid shot at becoming the first black President of the United States.

I may well be proven wrong. After all, Iowa is only one state out of 50. The next few months may find people swinging back towards the old way of politics. We may well end up with Hillary Clinton facing off against Mitt Romney on the first Tuesday of November this year. After all, we all know politics often tears the optimistic apart and forces the voters to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

But for now, in this moment, we have hope.

Here’s to hope. 

Top Stories of 2007!

With the end of the year comes the usual round up of top ten lists, and among the 10 Best Cars, Movies, Songs, and Crappiest Science Job Lists comes the Associated Press’s Top Stories of the Year. It’s an idea crafted, no doubt, out of the noblest journalistic ideals – the opportunity to write an incredibly easy “news story” about things people already know all about, while simultaneously writing about one’s self. Real important.

This year’s top stories were, in order of the AP’s ranking:

1. The Virginia Tech massacre – 32 people gunned down by a mentally deranged student.

2. The mortgage crisis – the housing market hit a slump so big, you’d think it must have given up juicing. (But it hurt big banks hard, which makes me happy. Call me selfish, but anytime I hear CitiBank is on the skids, I start praying they go under so I don’t have to pay back my college loans.)

3. The Iraq War – while Dubya’s “surge” seemed to reduce violence in the country, the country remains mired in political sewage. Oh, and thousands of people died. Again.

4. Oil Prices Skyrocketed – at one point, brushing $100/barrel. Gas now costs almost half of what Europeans pay. (!) Amazingly, it seems to have actually caused Congress to get off its collective ass and pass a law forcing automakers to boost their vehicles’ overall fuel economy by 10 miles per gallon by 2020.

5. Chinese Exports Recalled – the Chinese are trying to kill our pets and children. (What, 1.5 billion to 300 million not a big enough advantage for you?)

6. Global Warming – There are now only about twelve people left on Earth who still don’t believe global warming is real. Also, Al Gore won both an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize for this. All he must do to fulfill the prophesy now is kill ManBearPig, and the last seven years will be erased.

7. Minneapolis Bridge Collapse – 13 people died and 100 were injured when a section of I-35 fell gave way. Once again, the Justice League did not respond in time.

8. Presidential Campaign – you know what, no, AP. No more. We are all so freaking sick and tired of this shit…I mean, can’t we just have one week…one day where we don’t have to hear about this? Please? I mean, this thing’s already been going for over a year, and we’ve still got eleven months to go…I’d vote for a chimp at this point if it meant this would be over…or worse, Mitt Romney…

9. Immigration Debate – rich white people feel threatened by poor Hispanic families. Also, we continue to chip away at the principles upon which the country was founded. Apparently whatever’s cooking in the melting pot doesn’t involve beans.

10. Iran’s Nuclear Program – Bush says they want nukes. Mahmoud says they don’t. CIA says they haven’t been trying to build them since 2003. Analysts suspect Dubya wants Iran because he’s been trying to win an incomplete game of Tic-Tac-Toe started by Clinton on a map of the Middle East.

But you know what? I’m not very impressed. Anyone can barf back up the news they’ve been fed over the year and sort through it for the most interesting chunks. (Disgusted yet?) It takes a real man to guess the events that will be in the news this time next year. So, coming up next: the Top 10 events of 2008, one year early. Tune in if you want to know who wins the presidency, what celebrity hijacks a train filled with nuclear waste (and which celebrity stops them from killing all of Los Angeles!), how to defeat the Martian invaders, and why you should get your fill of tonic water now…before it’s outlawed forever.

Changing the world, one ignition at a time

Not five minutes ago, I stepped outside to take my dog into the snow for a pee break. (Him, not me.)

As soon as I stepped outside my front door, though, I was hit by a wave of nose-crinkling exhaust fumes generated by the car of our tenant. It was idling, unmanned, in my driveway, ostensibly warming up.

And it really pissed me off.

In this day and age, when global warming is such an important and well-known issue, it just seems irresponsible to turn on the car a few minutes early and let it pump pollutants into the atmosphere just to spare the driver the discomfort of having to drive with his gloves on for, gosh, as much as five minutes!

Perhaps if it was below zero, as it was a couple mornings ago, I could understand. I had to drive under such conditions, and it took half an hour for the windshield to defrost well enough for me to see out without craning my neck. But it’s above freezing outside right now. This is balmy for Vermont. 

But what can an environmentally-conscious citizen do about it, I wondered? Well, the most direct action would be to just turn off the engine myself and go about my life. But I have no right to impose my beliefs on others, and besides, that would just be a dickish thing to do.

We could make it against the law to idle your car when no one is in it. It’s not unprecedented - they have similar regulations in Switzerland - and would probably do some good in urban areas. But then again, people in cities aren’t too likely to leave their cars running unmanned because someone could steal them. In rural areas such as my hometown, on the other hand, police come along so rarely it could literally be weeks before an idling car was spotted and ticketed.And speeding is outlawed, but last time I checked, that doesn’t erase the problem, now does it?

We could equip cars with monitors that don’t allow them to remain on for more than 60 seconds unless there’s someone in the driver’s seat. The technology exists - many cars already have sensors in the passenger seat that deactivate the passenger airbag unless the occupant is over a certain weight threshold. (Not that it does much good for all those fat kids…) It would be easy to hook a similar device to the engine’s computer. Long term, this might be the best step. But by the time it could be made into law (or the automakers otherwise convinced), we might well be running fuel cell cars that emit only delicious water vapor.

In the short term, though, the best course of action is probably saying something to the people who idle their cars. Odds are good most of them will listen. Our tenant is a very nice, reasonable man, and I’m sure he’d be willing to comply if we asked him not to pre-heat his engine except during exceptionally cold days. But therein lies the problem. People hate confrontation.

Case in point: after fuming about the exhaust for several minutes outside, I passed my tenant on my way back into the house. Nice guy he is, he asked if we needed anything at the supermarket. No, I said, but thanks for asking. And that was all I said. 

Reason To Believe

The crowd is getting restless. Many of them have been on their feet for two and a half hours by now, crammed together against one another. But none of them are angry. Annoyed, perhaps, but never mad. Not at him.

Suddenly, the room goes dark, and the people’s anxious murmuring instantly ramps up into a symphony of praise, whoops and screams of every human frequency. In the darkness, dark forms glide onto a raised platform. They move quietly, but they don’t need to - no stomping feet or creaky floorboard could be heard above the croud.

The black figures solemnly raise their tools to their arms, lock themselves into their places. Eleven thousand heartbeats hit the redline as, at the center of the proscenium, one of the men steps forward to a microphone.

He opens his mouth. Some in this room have waited their entire lives for this moment, just to hear this man’s voice, this man’s words with their very own ears. It doesn’t matter whether they understand his tongue. His messages are universal. 

And with a voice as famous as any, he asks one question. 

“Is there anybody alive out there?!?”

A shock wave of affirmation smashes across the hall as everyone replies in unison. In that moment, there is no fear, no pain, no war or hate or evil. Only joy. It is a moment none of those assembled will ever forget.

He asks the question once more. The roar that follows could topple the walls of Jericho.

Satisfied, he lifts his guitar, and magic flows from his fingers.

Any unexpected seismic activity in northern Italy on Wednesday, November 28th could be attributed to my presence at the Bruce Springsteen concert in Milan that night.

When my throat grew too hoarse to bellow, I pounded my palms to the E Street rhythm. When my hands grew too sore, I stomped my feet to the beat of Max Weinberg’s drums. For two and a half hours, I pumped my fists until my arms burned. Every second of it was pure bliss.

I came to Milan from Prague for one reason: as Bruce puts it in “Radio Nowhere,” I just wanted to hear some rhythm. My hopes were admittedly high; the single time I’d seen him in concert before, during the climactic Washington, D.C. show of his 2004 “Vote for Change” tour, I easily rank as one of the ten greatest experiences of my life. 

But that was a couple years ago, in a politically charged concert with 30,000 Americans, united by a desire to change the world - or at least, the tenant in the White House. We might not have given Dubya the boot, but for those seven hours (it was a very long show), it felt like the power of rock and roll could change the very course of history itself.

And the engine driving that crusade that night was Bruce.  He didn’t just sing - he preached, weaving messages of hope and power with messianic fervor between the verses. In the midst of one song, he slid on his knees 20 feet across a wooden stage. It was Springsteen with a purpose, burning hot with the fire of the American dream he’s come to symbolize. 

Three years later, I wasn’t expecting so much righteous fury. The show was in another country, the election was well past, and life had moved on. Still, I hoped there’d still be enough heat in the show to keep the memory alive.

I needn’t have worried. From the get-go, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band delivered everything I could have hoped for.

Interestingly, he didn’t play many of the hits from the era that initially raised him to the heights of popularity he’s reached today. Only a single song from Born in the U.S.A. was to be heard.

Instead, he mixed his newer songs with those from his earlier works. I wasn’t complaining. I’ve often preferred the more optimistic (though no less complex) songs from Springsteen’s earlier works. While Born in the U.S.A. will forever be a classic, I’ll wear out my copy of Born to Run well before I need to replace Bruce’s most famous album.

Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the artist, the concert was as much a commentary on the current state of America as the new album is. “Reason to Believe” did not follow “Magic” by coincidence. Instead, Bruce used the concert to show the world as he sees it: a leader who deceives his people, an unjust war that leaves people emotionally devastated, a nation adrift in apathy in spite of a million reasons not to be.

Perhaps it was these messages – so targeted towards the American land – that kept the Italian audience from reaching the level of enthusiasm I’d hoped for. While their love for the Boss was evident from the moment the gates opened and people sprinted to grab a spot by the stage, there were still quite a few people who remained seated throughout much, if not all, of the show.

(Many of them, in fact, were located in the “guests of the band” section with us. I may have accidentally kneed one unenthusiastic woman in the back a couple times.)

And despite Bruce’s best efforts to clarify the songs’ meanings to the Italian crowd –carefully reading from an Italian version of his usual explanation taped to the floor by his mike – the masses seemed more excited to raise the roof to “Badlands” than to grasp the subtleties of “Livin’ In the Future.”

But with Bruce, despair always comes hand in hand with hope, whether ironic or sincere. “She’s The One” and “I’ll Work For Your Love” spoke to the power of true romance. (“Any lovers out there?” Bruce asked before starting the latter.) “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” was pure old-fashioned Springsteen, celebrating the beauty of the middle of July in his native New Jersey.

Sadly, the concert didn’t feature any of the drawn-out pre-song soliloquies Bruce is known for (see the version of “The River” from the album Live 1975-1985 to see what I mean), perhaps as part of the measure to pare down the concerts from the marathon-length four-hour jam sessions they once were. But that’s understandable – after all, the entire band’s membership is now AARP eligible, and I’d rather see a shorter, tighter show than a drawn-out one.

While every song rocked the house, there were a few worth mentioning specifically. “Reason to Believe,” originally a quiet, acoustic reflection on humanity’s (seemingly foolhardy) optimism, was rebuilt into a rip-roarin’ badass rocker of a number with a George Thorogood beat. “She’s The One,” an underrated favorite of mine, was incredible to hear in concert. And “Last To Die,” a powerful song in its own right, hit ten times harder than it ever did on the album. Live, the song’s fury bursts free, revealing a heart shared with the greatest anti-war protest songs.

It was all I could have asked for.

The Magic tour will be traversing the U.S.A. again come this February for several months. Go. And you’ll find your own reason to believe.

Click a shutter, change the world

Just want to let all (three) of the readers know - my fall break post will be put up sooner or later – I promise. It may not be overly expansive, but there will be at least 500 words or so about what I did at the end of October (jeez, about a month ago) up soon.

On to newer things, then.

On November 12^th, a Czech photographer named Jan Sibik spoke to my travel writing class and showed us some pictures of the places he’s been. Now, considering he’s the preeminent war and tragedy photographer for Reflex (the Czech Republic’s version of Time), he’s pretty much seen it all.

The first place he told us about was North Korea, which he’s had the privelege of visiting not once but twice. What he said was incredible.

-Even in Pyongyang, electricity only works a couple hours a day. Each household is only allowed two lightbulbs, both of which must use less than 100 watts a day.

-All cell phones are collected by the police at the airport upon entering the country, even though there’s no cellular network in the country – the North Koreans are kept in the dark about what cell phones are by the government.

-Every visitor to the country is required to bring a gift to the Museum of Gifts in celebration of the nation’s former dictator Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il. North Koreans often line up for hours to visit the museum just to see the acres of tribute laid there.

-Also, every visitor is required to lay flowers at a 225-foot statue of Kim Il-sung outside the national Communist headquarters.

-To own a radio in North Korea bestows a level of prestige similar to owning a private jet in America. The only way to get a radio is through 15 years of hard work for the Communist Party, at which point you are allowed to purchase a very tiny radio limited to three or four North Korean stations.

Next, he told us about his trips to Iraq. He visited the country not long after the U.S. invasion, in April 2003. To get into the country, he had to lie to a car rental agency in Kuwait about his plans then swap the plates on his SUV at the Iraqi border – then drive 800 km to Baghdad.

A feat, he said, that couldn’t be done today. Back then, Iraq was relatively ‘safe;’ today no foreigner would last a day outside without armed protection.

Four years ago, he said, Iraqis were welcoming in American troops “with open arms,” but after several years of the craptacular mismanagement of their country has left them bitter and angry. More and more of them are willing to kill themselves for their faith every day, he said.

Third on the list was Afghanistan. Sibik said the mission in the ‘stan was doing much more good for the people than the U.S.’s involvement in Iraq. Before the American invasion, many refugees slept in holes in the ground because they didn’t have houses anymore – and after 25 years of war, they didn’t see any purpose in rebuilding anymore.

But not everything America had done was for the best, he said, and any trouble usually boiled down to cultural differences the troops weren’t made aware of. He told a quick anecdote: after a wedding, the Afghanis celebrated (as is their custom) by firing large quantities of bullets into the air. However, an American helicopter was flying by this wedding reception and thought the Afghanis were attacking them – so they opened up with their weapons and killed 40 wedding goers.

Finally, he talked about Liberia. To hear him speak of it, the country is Lord of the Flies meets Thunderdome. Liberia has the second-highest concentration of diamonds in Africa, and is controlled by child armies – few older than 25, most much younger. These boy soldiers rule over the country through sheer terror.

For example, Sibik told us about one shop in Monrovia where the owner decided to stand up to the child soldiers. Normally, the children just walk into any store and take what they want, but in this case, the shop’s owner told them they had to pay for it.

So they shot him, stripped his body down to his underwear and dragged the corpse into the street.

Where it still lay several days later, when Sibik snapped a picture of it.

He showed us pictures of dead bodies being tossed into mass graves – the hospitals have to bury 60 to 70 people a day, and have nowhere else to put them.

He showed us pictures of people walking down the street past rotting bodies, their heads flayed, skulls blood-stained and bare.

He showed us pictures of men and boys, adults and children with limbs sliced from their bodies. In one image, a man held his 2-year-old daughter in his one remaining arm. She, too, was missing a limb from a machete’s bite.

Trash and human remains fill the streets, blood fills the gutters. I saw the pictures with my own eyes. I will never forget them.

People there sometimes drag the dead bodies of children in front of the American embassy in a vain cry for help from the U.S.A. Sibik said the boy soldiers there love America so much, 100 U.S. soldiers could probably make them lay down their arms through sheer respect. 100 soldiers.

He may well be overly optimistic. It might take 10,000, or 100,000 soldiers to set Liberia right. It’s not my place to decide, and to be frank, I’m glad the responsibility isn’t on me. To order hundreds of thousands of people to attack another country and kill people is something I don’t ever want to have to do.

But there must be some way of making things right in places like Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea.

I think that’s the ultimate reason I want to be a journalist. Because whether it’s the subjugation of an entire nation’s population or the story of a homeless veteran who doesn’t know where he’s getting his next meal, the best way to make change for the better in this world is to throw the will of the people into it. And to do that, they have to hear about it. They have to sympathize for those in need and be stirred to make things better.

That’s what I want to do.

The Root of the Problem

(Note: this article was written for my Travel Writing class at NYU in Prague. It appears here for the first time online.)         

A quick laugh

I just wanted to share something with everyone. Make sure you turn up the speakers.

If you want a higher resolution, try it here.

Facebook: More Frightening by the Day

Well, Facebook has taken another shiver-inducting step towards becoming Big Brother, folks.

Just a few hours ago, a news item was pasted on my (and all of the other estimated 50 million-plus Facebook users) News Feed, the creepy log on the welcome screen that tells you all about what your friends have been up to.

“Facebook has launched some new products,” it says. So, ever curious, I clicked. After all, last time it mentioned something about new products, it notified me of the creation of the Video application, which allowed me to finally give my homemade video of elephants parading across Midtown Manhattan to “New York, New York” the exposure it deserved.

But what I saw filled me with a bit of dread. Right near the top, one sentence caught my eye:

“We believe we’ve created a system where ads are more relevant and actually enhance Facebook.”

Uh-oh. Whenever somebody tells me they’ve found a way for advertising to make my life better, I start programming the local NPR affiliate’s pledge drive number into my cell phone.

“Ads will be getting more relevant and more interesting to you,” it went on. “Instead of random messages from advertisers, we’ve launched Social Ads. Social Ads provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site.

“These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring” (if I added The Offspring to my music) or “Justin wrote a review for Sushi Hut” (If Justin wrote this review on the Sushi Hut page). These actions could then be paired with an ad that either The Offspring or Sushi Hut provides.”

So, to simplify: Facebook will now monitor your interests and your actions, then take advantage of your relationships with people to imply your endorsement of a product.

Is it me, or does this seem to be a new level of weirdness even for Facebook?

I’ve never been particularly fond of the way Facebook seems to be trampling down conventional methods of societal interaction among people in my age group. Only ten years ago, meeting one of your friends you hadn’t seen in a while would be a chance to catch up. Now, no matter where your friends might be, you know where they are, what they’re doing, where they’re working, who they’re dating, who wishes they were dating them, what they do on their nights out, their daily fart output, and possibly their medical history.

And hey – you don’t even have to go to the trouble of hunting down your distant friends to find out when things change with them, because Facebook’s “Friends” section automatically brings up those who’ve updated their profiles recently and tells you what they’ve changed!

Easy enough? Of course not! For true ease-of-stalking, the site posts the recent activity of your friends on your home page for whenever you log on. Want to know if someone broke up with her boyfriend? What one friend said to another? What events they’re going to, what movies they’ve discovered, who has a birthday coming up, what political candidates they support? You don’t need to even search for it. Everything you do on Facebook is visible to everyone else.

And with another new creation, everything you do off of it can be seen now, too.

“You now have the option to bring actions you take outside of Facebook back in. Just as Facebook shares your on-site interactions with your friends through News Feed, we now give you an option to let News Feed share your off-site actions with your friends as well.”

That way, all your friends can see just how truly exciting your life is. For example, they can see that you rented “The Notebook” from Blockbuster’s website, snapped up a six-pack of Kleenex with aloe on Drugstore.com, grabbed a big bag of Skittles from DCSnacks.com, then purchased “How to Get a Guy in 10 Days” on Amazon.

Or they can watch as you buy three bottles of cheap wine, Barry White’s Greatest Hits, and a 12-pack of Trojan Lubricated in preparation for that “old friend” who’s visiting from another school – whose visit, by the way, everyone already knows about, because she wrote on your ‘wall’ about it.

Facebook sees all. Facebook knows all. Facebook is watching.

Zombies: Completely Illogical!

During my break in London, (more on that later) my mind turned to zombies.

Now, this might not be as unusual as you might think. Quite a few zombie films of recent days have taken place in England’s capital, from the satirical (Shaun of the Dead) to the revisionist (28 Days Later).

And clearly, the city’s done a great deal of repairing since those nasty zombie plagues hit. I didn’t see a hint of evidence anywhere of the man-eating hordes that once lined the streets.

(Of course, New York has done a wonderful job fixing up all that Godzilla-related damage from ten years ago, so I shouldn’t really be surprised, I guess.)

But as I was thinking about zombies, I started wondering about how they, in fact, work. I know, I know, it seems like a stupid thing to waste brainpower on, but I was curious.

So let’s define the basics of zombies, shall we?

Zombies are dead individuals animated back to some form of life by a certain external force (magic, viral infection, etc.)

The “zombie infection” spreads when a zombie bites a living being, thus causing the infection to overtake the victim and rapidly kill them while almost simultaneously reanimating their remains.

Zombies require the flesh of living organisms to function. Deprived of this food, they cease to function. They are incapable of eating other zombies.

Zombies are almost constantly in need of more food.

So, here’s my question. If zombies require living flesh to exist, yet every living being they bite rapidly transforms into a zombie, where are they getting all this food?

It seems like there’d have to be some sort of “grace period,” if you will, after a zombie bites someone where they would stay dead before their tissues become zombified, if you will. Otherwise, they’d never be able to get more than a bite of two out of their victims before he/she would also become a zombie and thus become inedible.

But you never see that in the movies, do you? It’s always, poof, one bite and instantly poor Mr. Hopper from down the street is transformed into another mindless member of the undead horde.

So, there you go. In the event of “zombiocalypse,” as it’s called, your best defense against zombies lies in convincing them of their own implausibility.

That, or a shotgun.

The Diary Is In Berlin

The four hours of sleep was not my idea.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against starting a trip nice and early – in fact, I prefer it, all other things being equal – but considering my average sleep plan here in Prague puts me in bed somewhere around 2 a.m., getting up for a 6:30 train to Berlin seemed, frankly, like a dumb idea.

I mean, a lot of the people on the trip weren’t feeling very well. It’s important to get plenty of sleep when you’re feeling sickness. Don’t want to strain your immune system, that’s what I told them.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, I rose from the proverbial dead at five a.m. with the usual mental channel-surfing that comes with the combination of little sleep and early awakening. Murray Head in the shower? Sure, why not? In fact, I’m pretty sure I even heard The Governator yell out “Get to deh choppah!” in my head at one point of the morning.

After meeting up with my band of pre-weary travelers, we trudged to the subway station and rode the three stops to Prague’s Central station, a couple hundred yards from Wenceslaus Square. Within twenty minutes, my girlfriend Molly was drifting off on the pillow she’d brought. Her roommate Megan and her next-door neighbor Jess were already KO’ed across the aisle from us; a couple rows up, Molly’s other roommate Maggie and Megan’s good friend Andy were talking quietly.

Secure in the knowledge I wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon – I don’t sleep well on trains, too much going on outside the window – I pulled out my iPod and watched the sun rise to the sound of Sissy Spacek narrating the audiobook version of Carrie.

Well, to say I saw the sun rise is an exagguration. To be correct, I saw the landscape gradually lighten from black to gray as the majority of the sun’s photons falling on the area were sucked up by a thick layer of clouds. Instead, a steady piss of rain drizzled the landscape. Just like being home.

Cruddy Weather

Two hours in, the train crossed over to Germany. Passports were produced, scrutinized, examined. Luckily, no one had forgotten his or hers on this particular trip.

Not that I’m implying that happened to one of the members of our group earlier on in the year.

About an hour after that, the train pulled into Dresden. Final stop.

Wait, what?

Turns out there was a transit strike in Germany that weekend, and because of it train schedules were messed up all along the line that day.

As a result, we were forced to transfer onto a double-decker commuter train, along with approximately half the population of Dresden. Molly and I were forced into a seat across from a scruffy European man who read about advanced physics in German when he wasn’t making eyes at Molly…or me.

Weird shit.

But thankfully, Herr Kreepmeister spoke pretty good English – so when an announcement came over the intercom, he was able to tell us it meant we’d be arriving in Leipzig very soon.

So, yes, we had to transfer again. This time, though, we caught a break – no two-level commuter train to Berlin, but an honest-to-God bullet train. I didn’t even know they had them in Germany, but here was an ebony-skinned rail rocket ready and waiting for us.

Inside, it looked like something from the Jetsons – or at least the 1964 World’s Fair. Rounded surfaces, wood everywhere, and a glass divider up front that let you see straight through the commodious cockpit (calling it anything else would be an insult) and out onto the tracks ahead.

On my very informal tour of the train, I noticed a panel displaying the speed. 199 km/h, it said. Damn.

At that speed, Berlin wasn’t very far at all. Upon arrival, we ascended the several flights through the open-air levels of stores and restaurants (apparently in Germany, train stations double as malls) and up to the top level – where the subway went perpendicular to the train tracks one hundred feet below.

Once we figured out the subway system, it was easy enough to take the S-line to Zoo Station, where we swapped to the U-line for two more stops to get to our hostel. It thrilled me (and me alone) to learn the “U2” train stops at Zoo Station.

“U2! Zoo Station! Now Achtung Baby makes sense!” I exclaimed excitedly to deaf ears. Feh. They were probably just too tired to appreciate it.

You, too?

We swung by our hostel in West Berlin just long enough to check in before heading back to the Dunkin’ Donuts at Zoo Station to meet up with the tour guide for our 4 o’clock appointment – an absolutely free walking tour through the city.

The young man who met us at the donut shop was a twentysomething Australian named Jeremy, wearing a blue tracksuit jacket and several days of stubble. Jeremy led us to the main meeting point – a Starbucks just one hundred yards from the Brandenburg Gate – where we learned he would, in fact, be our tour guide for the afternoon.

At which point he began to deliver an absolutely dynamic tour. Informative without being fact-heavy, Jeremy managed to keep sixty or seventy college-age kids interested during a four hour long walking tour stretching for miles across the city.

Of course, the sites of Berlin probably helped keep people interested, too. Starting at the Brandenburg Gate (where Jeremy explained seven hundred years of Berlin history in seven minutes), we went to the Holocaust Memorial, to the site of Hitler’s bunker (where today many Germans take their dogs to poop), to the former Luftwaffe building, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, through downtown East Berlin, past the home of the National Orchestra and Hitler’s favorite opera house before winding up on Museum Island.

Brandenburg Gate

Holocaust Memorial

Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie

Pretty.

That night, my friends and I went out to dinner – only settling on a place after an hour-long search. (Admittedly, I was one of the major reasons the search took so long. I just don’t like Indian food that much, okay?) Eventually we settled upon a small Asian restaurant that offered a) a six-euro buffet and b) incredibly comfortable swinging basket chairs.

Comfy chairs.

After dinner came a trip to a hookah bar, inspired by my friend Andy, who makes weekly trips to the local hookahs in New York City. Without any room inside, we were forced to sit out in the cold. While my friends dined on miniscule portions of baklava, I dashed down the street to – of all places – a Haagen-Daaz, somewhere I’d never think of frequenting if they hadn’t been the only place to get a milkshake I’d seen in several months.

The next day brought us to an absolutely immense West Berlin department store that made Bloomingdale’s look like something from rural Illinois. Walk inside – and a special edition Porsche 911 Cabriolet greeted us, custom-made just for that department store.

There is no substitute.

Yeah.

While the girls headed for the women’s clothing, I made my way upstairs to the electronics department. Impressed by quality if not scale, I made my wide-eyed way through the Apple displays (new video iPod nanos!) past the Bose area (new QuietComfort 3 headphones!) to the Bang and Olufson exhibit (new revolving television displays for your viewing pleasure!)

I’d just finished resetting my jaw when it clanged to the floor once again, this time at the sight of the store’s model car displays. But it wasn’t just model cars, oh no. Model everything. Tiny operating scale locomotives the size of my pinky finger. Concordes at 1/500th scale. Entire dioramas of miniature beauty.

I was so happy, I almost cried.

And then, I swear to God, a tiny music box a few yards away started playing “Ode to Joy.”

Ohm…

The rest of the day was a blur – the streets of Berlin, walking everywhere, Snackpoint Charlie (in case that dash across the border leaves you hungry), showrooms filled with Ferraris and Bugattis and Bentleys all along the Friedrichstrasse.

Molly and I went to the Museum of Natural History after that. We arrived barely before closing time, but there were only two things I really wanted to see. The first was easy to find: the mounted statue of Brachiosaurus in the middle of the museum. It is, I believe (and I’d confirm if I had an internet connection while writing this), the only mounted specimen in the world, and the only way to appreciate the 46-foot stature of this dinosaur.

Let me just say, wow.

‘Whew…

The second thing we were searching for proved much harder to find: the first skeleton of Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic-era winged theropod that proved the link between dinosaurs and birds. The tiny fossil, no larger than a crow, was found perfectly encased into a block of stone, where it resides to this day.

In the Berlin Museum.

Molly and I tore the building apart searching for it, to no avail.

“Maybe it’s on loan,” I said glumly after noticing a blank spot in the wall with a sigh advertising the sharing of scientific exhibits between EU nations.

Moments later, Molly pointed excitedly towards the back of the museum – to a small, darkened room with something illumated inside it.

“What’s that?” she asked.

We raced over – and found a tiny space solely for the Archaeopteryx. Not only was it still there, they’d set up an altar to it.

Truly epic.

Amazing.

That night, we rejoined our friends for a “pub crawl,” as it was called. Run by the same outfit as our free tour, the crawl promised entry to five select bars in Berlin and free drinks between stops (courtesy of bottles of orange juice-and-vodka the guides/tourist wranglers carried) for an 11 euro fee. I was a bit skeptical at first – we’d seen last night’s group outside our restaurant, rowdy enough to start overturning Volkswagens at the slightest provocation – but I agreed to go along. Maybe it would be fun.

We showed up at the meeting place and plunked down our approximately sixteen dollars (stupid exchange rate), and

- SCENE MISSING –

Come Sunday “morning,” we all split up and went our different ways. Jess and Megan headed off to go shopping and Andy flew off solo, leaving Molly and myself with her roommate Maggie.

We wandered around Berlin a bit more; saw some more pieces of the Berlin Wall, gazed perplexed at a group of black-clad people “walking” a giant puppet down the street, grabbed an “autumn-themed” donut at Dunkin’ Donuts.

Finally, we headed back to the hostel, picked up our things, and made our way to the train station for our trip home. Thankfully, the transit strike was over by then, so our trip back to Prague was uneventful.

I’m glad I went. Sure, any travel is expensive, but Berlin really came off as a magical city – one of the few I’ve ever really liked in the same way as New York. There always seemed to be something to do – a trait that I find some cities lacking. (See Washington, D.C.; Prague.)

The thing that really struck me, though, was the amount of change there’s been since the city (and the country) united less than 20 years ago. My father, who went to Berlin as a young man, described the place as incredibly divided. Heaven and hell, separated by a concrete wall.

But today? Well, until someone told me, I never knew which side was the West and which belonged to the East. That part of town with the modern architecture, glass-and-steel towers beside multi-century old buildings? With a Starbucks every 27 feet and a $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron on display a few blocks from the Ferrari store?

Yeah, that’s East Berlin.

In my opinion, though there’s no better sign of the new order than this:

Remember the Berlin wall? The concrete barrier between two worlds– surrounded by land mines – covered with white sand to highlight any potential wall-hoppers – topped with pipes, sawn in half, to minimize grip – equipped with guard towers where trigger-happy communist guards stood ready to pump lead at several hundred rounds a minute into anyone who dared try for a better life?

Today it’s surrounded by a metal fence. To protect it from people touching it.

Irony, in German.