Month: June 2005

So Long, Farewell

Amy and I are leaving Saturday for Dublin. We will be visiting that fair Irish city for a day or so, meeting up with my sister and her husband, and then taking a packaged tour of Ireland. We’ll rendezvous back in Dublin after about three days and then fly to Barcelona.

We will spend a couple of days in Spain and then take a train up to Montpellier. We’ll spend a few days traveling the Riviera, and then we head to Tours. This is a city very close to some beautiful Renaissance castles, which we’ll be touring. Then it is several days in Paris, including the French version of July 4th, which is on the 14th and called Bastille Day and celebrates the beginning of the French Revolution.

Sometime around the 17th, we will return to Strasbourg to finish up our packing for our return flight home.

We fly home on July 21. After a few days of recuperation, we are traveling to Gatlinburg, TN for several days’ worth of relaxation and family visitation.

Then we will desperately be trying to settle back into Bloomington, which includes finding a new home.

All of this is to say that I am going to be absent from the blog for a good while. I’ll probably have some time post-vacation, pre-flight home to write about our vacation, but then I’ll be absent again while we visit and settle back into the USA.

So, take care of yourselves, folks. See you soon.

A Night in the Life

Now that my time is growing short, here in France, I have become increasingly busy. For example, yesterday afternoon through the evening I was amazingly active.

I left for my French class at about 4:30. Amy came along because we were returning most of the things that Ann had let us borrow for our home. We also stopped by and bought a little strawberry tart to celebrate my last class.

We didn’t leave Ann’s until about 20 minutes before 7 pm. We were supposed to meet some friends for drinks at 7, so we made our way straight to downtown instead of going home. This being France we arrived about five minutes after the hour and were the second people there. Ten minutes later Damian showed up, fifteen minutes after that somebody else dropped by and so on and so forth until about a quarter after 8 when the entire crew was there. By this time I had long nursed my Coca-Cola into oblivion and patiently waited for everyone else to finish their beverage. Considering the 2.50 Euro price for another class of soda, I set my limit to one.

The reason for the party was to say goodbye to Damian, who headed back to London today.

After everyone finished their drinks we all decided we were hungry and headed toward a restraint at the ripe hour of 9:30. Normal supper hours for the French are about 7 pm, which is about 2 hours past my American eating hour. On occasions like this when we don’t even get to the restaurant until 9:30 I am ready to start eating the tablecloth.

The food, when it arrived was lovely. I had some shrimp with fried zucchini and a plate of sautéed duck with mixed vegetables. We were eating on the terrace which sits right along the street. The downtown streets are a bit odd. They are not really normal streets in which traffic flows. Many of the pathways are blocked by metal poles, keeping automobiles from passing. Certain vehicles, such as the police, taxi cabs, and the local building owners have remote controls which lower the poles and allow driving passage.

Of course, pedestrians may walk up and down the streets at will. Being a relatively cool summer evening there was a good number of folks passing about us. A small group of homeless people decided the area right across the street from us was the perfect spot to sit for the evening.

For some reason, many of the homeless people in France are dog owners. Actually, a lot of people in France, homeless or not, are dog owners. Not that the homeless shouldn’t have a dog, it just always strikes me odd that someone so down on their luck still has the ability to take care of a dog.

Anyways, a small group of homeless folks with their bottles of wine and their dogs start gathering around while we are there trying to eat. They are all carrying on and getting rather rambunxious when I see one guy start kicking his dog and calling it a “pede” which is the shortened version of “pedophile” which is the French version of “faggot.” Now, I don’t know about my readers, but this was the first time I have ever eaten duck while watching a homeless man call his dog a homosexual while kicking the poor Mut.

After the kicking, the gay dog began fighting with another one of the homeless dogs. Then a couple of the homeless men began harassing the walker-bys for a cigarette, or some money. While they did this boombox guy stopped by.

Boombox guy is a young man we have seen before in the streets of Strasbourg. He sports a grungy set of dreads, all-black clothes, and a small 80’s style radio on which he continually cranks out heavy metal riffs.

The gang began to shout and dance and generally annoy us until about 5 minutes before we got up to leave. We said our goodbyes and headed home at around 11 pm.

We took our second shower of the day (and we can now gauge the weather on the number of showers we take in a given day – this day was mild and so we only needed two.) It was too hot to sleep so I stayed up playing on the internet until about 1:30 and then lay in bed sweating until about 3 where I finally managed some sleep.

I dreamed last night…

… that I received a package of marijuana seeds from either my friend Mullins or my brother, Neal, which one I can’t remember. I took the seeds and planted them in small planters and grew them tall.

From the seeds the dream fast-forwarded to when they were large and ripe, do marijuana plants get ripe? Well, whatever you call it they were ready for the harvesting. I clipped them and dried them out.

Fast forward again to where everything is dry and the plants are ready for smoking. For whatever reason I decided to do the cutting/smoke preparation in my parent’s kitchen. I don’t really know all the ends and outs of how to prepare a marijuana plant for a joint, but in this dream version, I put the stalks onto a cutting board and hacked them into little bits.

Tiny, round seeds popped out of the stalks, and this was what I was looking for. I finished my harvesting and began to clean up. The dream is fuzzy on how many plants I actually cut up, but I had thousands of seeds. I filled one bucket up with seeds for my personal use and began thinking of ways to destroy the remaining ones, which I would not need.

While I was cleaning up, trashing the actual leaves (!) my dad walked through the kitchen. I tensed up sensing he would understand what I was doing and kill me on the spot. But, he was distracted by his own search for some unremembered object; all he did was make a comment on my mess looking like a nice salad. He then left the kitchen for the office and left me alone.

I disposed of the leaves, and the dream jumped to me being outside. It must have been right outside my parent’s house, but it was a landscape I have never seen before. Which, in reality, isn’t that far from the mark, since I’ve never actually been to the house my parents are currently living in. Anyway, I walked to the curb, where several old ladies were sitting on a porch swing. I walked a little ways away from them and began dumping my seeds very close to some flowers. There were literally tons of these seeds, at least three large piles filling the ground.

My plan was to burn the seeds and destroy all evidence of my illegal activity. Why I would do this in public, with many pedestrians walking about is beyond me, but never the less it was so. Making things stranger, I believed I must put a for sale sign on the seeds before I burned them. The price was really cheap, but I still hoped no one would want to purchase them before I could burn all the seeds. In fact, I began burning the first pile feeling anxious that someone might walk by and decide to buy the seeds before they were completely destroyed.

I didn’t think anyone wanting to purchase the seeds would actually know what they were, it was more like a garage sale, and someone might think they were sunflower seeds or something. Illogically I also couldn’t start burning the second pile until the first one was destroyed.

About halfway through the first pile’s burning, a middle age man approached the pile and began asking questions.

He seemed to know exactly what the seeds really were, but vocally, he was concerned with the destruction of the flowers that were buried between the seed piles. He complained that he would like to purchase the flowers before they were burned. I tried to stall him while the seeds burned, but he became more manic.

Somewhere in the conversation, he began telling me he knew exactly what the seeds were and that the flowers were the giveaway. He said that the flowers were, in fact, the product of the seeds. And as he said this, it became true. No longer were there marijuana plants, but flowers.

It was at this point that I woke up.

Buy Jerry Garcia’s Mailbox

From the wide world of weird this just in: you can now purchase the late Jerry Garcia’s mailbox here (link no longer exists).

This mailbox sat in front of the late guitarist’s last home, a custom-made mansion in Nicasio, California. When Jerry died the house was sold and the new owner upgraded the box and put Jerry’s in storage. Apparently, now is the time to bring the thing out and make a profit from the deceased.

In a culture where celebrities are the new deities, even old mailboxes are sacred. The starting bid is $2000 so tighten up your budget if you want to have this one-of-a-kind memorabilia.

The only question I have left is that with all the millions Jerry Garcia was making, why didn’t he buy a better-looking mailbox? That thing looks like it would fit better in front of a beat-up trailer, than a million-dollar mansion.

Fête de la Musique

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Yesterday was not only the longest day of the year, but it also marked the date on which Amy and I only have one month left in France. It was a rather busy day for us as well.

Our water, once again, was being shut off at 9 in the AM and so we awoke early, showered, and breakfasted. We then left for the library to return and check out books, CDs, and a DVD. While we were out and about we decided to check in with Air France to see what an extra piece of luggage would cost us.

Amy has about four boxes full of study material here, which she has to have in Indiana when we get back so that she can study for her Ph.D. exams. The German post office (which is cheaper than the French PO) is going to charge us about 60 Euros per box! Air France will charge us 100 Euros for an extra bag. So, we are now looking at cheap, but durable bags in which we can stash at least a couple of boxes worth of books.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon lounging in the shade at the park. It was a very pretty, yet extremely hot day. Without air conditioning, our apartment is rather unbearable, and thus sitting under a tree is preferable to sitting on our couch.

It was also the annual Fete de la Musique in Strasbourg, which is basically a city-wide music festival. At all of the larger city squares, they set up official stages in which the more popular local bands and a few medium-sized names in French music jammed into the wee hours of the morning. Yet at nearly every block in the city unofficial musicians were playing their tunes. This ranged from a 7-piece zydeco/reggae band to one guy playing a flute with another guy playing an old recorder. No matter where we were in the city, we could hear music.

We were meeting with a group from the university around 8:30 but Amy and I decided to wander around a bit first. We caught a fun French group with a terrible Rastafarian sax player in the Place de Zurich. Then we wandered downtown where there was live music playing every 20 yards or so. These street performers were so close together you could hardly hear them apart from each other. Around the cathedral it was madness. An official stage was set up in the Place de Gutenberg as well as nearby, right in front of the cathedral. Non-sanctioned performers were everywhere in between, as well as a throng of people. The poor choir, in front of the cathedral, could barely even be heard even when I was standing but a few feet from them.

strasbourg cathedral Time came and we went to meet the gang. None of us had any idea about where to go, so we began wandering back toward the center of town. The crowds were expanding and it was quite an experience just trying to keep the 12 of us from getting lost. We caught short snippets of several bands before always moving on. As is always the problem with large music festivals, no matter where you are, you always think something better is around the corner.

Eventually we all tired and amazingly found empty seats at a local café. It was a little removed from the live music, but the block was more than making up for this with DJs playing piped-in music. Our café was unlucky enough to be very near two DJs while employing one itself. This created three separate pieces of music blending together into one loud mess. It was so loud we couldn’t really talk to each other and I quickly developed a headache. Our gang seemed content in sitting there drinking beer, but I became discontent and told them we were leaving. It was not only the annoying DJs, but the fact that I was spending my night listening to canned music while live music was literally playing around the next corner, and throughout the city. I guess we might have seemed rude, but I was sick of sitting there.

We caught a punk/metal band in Place Kleber. They covered Nirvana as we were walking by, so we decided to hang out a bit. It has been a long time since I caught a live metal act and I must admit it was fun. The energy was really strong, and the kids were having fun jumping up and down.

Our feet got tired so we wandered away again to another square in which there was grass to sit upon. The band was playing lots of classic American rock and we decided to stay. They played covers of Dire Straights, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Deep Purple, and AC/DC. And let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve been surrounded by a mass of drunken French people screaming “Highway to Hell” at the top of their lungs.

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The music officially ended at 1 AM, but many of the unofficial acts played much later. The street parties didn’t end until much later as well. We returned to our apartment and tried to sleep. Luckily the official places around us had cleared out early which moved the party a few blocks away. I still was awoken a few times by the drunken hordes singing their lungs out as they returned home, but all was well.

Life Is But A Swim

Yesterday we went to the lake for a swim. I am not much of a swimmer. I like the activity well enough, but it is a rare thing for me to actually make the effort to do it. In fact, the last time I took a swim was during my honeymoon three years ago.

A large part of the reason I don’t swim much is my body. I am not what anyone would call fit. I’m not a fat slob, but I’m not too far from it either. I have the white man’s paunch. I have no upper body development. If I have any sort of a tan it is of the farmer’s variety, which makes taking my shirt off less than pleasant for all spectators. The little swimming I’ve done since college has been in private pools with nearly no one actually in the water or poolside.

However, seeing the wide variety of people at the lake (women in bikinis with their large bellies hanging out, old men with their paunches tumbling over their speedos) I decided my unattractiveness would fit right in.

The water was cold. This brought me quickly to the ever-present lake decision: do I make my way into the water slowly, allowing me to adjust to the temperature in minute proportions; or do I just plunge right in, giving me a quick jolt which I absorb more quickly? Never one to prolong things I jumped right in and plunged underneath the water. This also gave me the ability to put all of my body underneath the water and out of the eyes of little boys who may decide to taunt me for either my whiteness or fat boy body.

Arising from the plunge I remembered why swimming in a static body of water isn’t always pleasant. The water was dirty. A hundred little kids had kicked up all the dirt, sludge, weeds, and slime from the bottom. I tried not to think about what particles were now clinging to my body, especially when some of it splashed into my mouth.

We swam for about an hour, at which time the question that always occurs to me when I go swimming occurred to me.

What do I do now?

As an adult, swimming isn’t exactly a fun activity anymore. The water is cool and refreshing from the hot sun. It is a pleasant exercise for a time, but then I get bored. So we got out and returned home. I managed to avoid the scorching sunburn. Perhaps only because I’m in a perpetual sunburned state these days. Amy, however, was not so lucky. She is now several shades of red. She must have moved the straps on her swimsuit at some point because there are two large red stripes down her shoulders. For I forgot to put sunburn under her straps. Elsewhere, there are blotches of red and white, for my general ability of sun screening seems to not be so good.

The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg

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A continuation of last Saturday’s adventures.

After the horrors of the concentration camp, we trekked up a mountain to visit the Chateau du Haut-Koenigsburg. It was originally built in the 12th Century, but was sacked and rebuilt in the 15th century, and then sacked again and left to rot up until the early 1900s when it was declared a national monument and completely restored.

Its purpose was mainly for defense, being one of many castles located in this particular area. Its layout is not particularly pretty or ornate, but rather plain. That is not to say that it wasn’t interesting, or even beautiful, but that its purpose was not for its residents to live in grandeur. It will be interesting to compare this visit with the castles we visit just south of Paris. Those are supposed to be highly ornamental and gaudy enough to put the Biltmore mansion to shame.

On the road to the castle, we saw signs for La Montagne des Singes, which is to say, the mountain of monkeys. Nearby, they have a little zoo in which they keep hundreds of monkeys. Our friend Jill told us about the time they went to Monkey Mountain and brought their own popcorn. Apparently, the zoo gives all visitors a little packet of popcorn to feed the monkeys, but it is never enough to last the entire visit. The popcorn they brought was of the microwave variety and had plenty of salt and better. It must have smelled and tasted great to the monkeys because she said all of them began to follow her around and became rather aggressive toward the popcorn. So much so that the guards had to rush out and protect them from the monkeys!

Alas, we didn’t have time to visit the monkeys.

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We gathered our people at the bottom of the castle, where there is a lookout point. The castle rests upon the top of a mountain, and the view is splendid. After an hour or so of driving through the mountains, we were all ready to use the restroom, and like most public toilets in France, we had to pay 50 cents to actually use it. Although a few unsavory folks snuck into the stall without paying, because the guard was apparently off duty.

I was first surprised and happy to see that a scene out of the French classic movie, La Grande Illusion, was filmed at the castle. Having just watched the film a few nights before, Amy and I were very excited about this fact. For those curious, it is the scene in which the commander distracts the German soldiers so that the two French soldiers may escape out the window.

The interior of the castle looked very much like what a castle always looks like in my mind’s eye. It was all very large. And I’m not talking about the size of the castle in its entirety, but each individual room or hallway. The walls were all made of large stone blocks. The rooms were very open, with high ceilings. There were Alsacian Windows throughout, but shadows crept along many corridors. And there was a draft felt throughout.

It is difficult to imagine what it must have felt like to actually live there. Pre-electricity, it would have had to have been lit using torches and gas lamps. The multiple fireplaces would have raged most of the night and day to keep any semblance of warmth. Even then, it would have been very cold in many of the spaces, with cold drafts sweeping through. The fires would have kept everything hazy with smoke. And then there was always the thought of attack. The castle was sacked at least twice in its history, and it must have sustained more attacks than that. Much of the time, they were surely at peace, but Alsace has a long history of violence and war.

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One side of the castle was a keep, where there were many instruments of war. Cut into the walls were little slivers designed for archers to shoot out of. At our feet were little holes cut into the floor so that boiling oil or whatever could be poured down upon whoever was attacking. I couldn’t help but think of the Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers. In one room were old weapons of battle: suits of armor, axes, and a variety of spears. In an adjacent room were more modern weapons, including cannons and rifles.

Seeing this castle and many of the medieval cathedrals throughout France always makes me think of life during those times. I can’t imagine. The harsh realities of daily life are unfathomable. If it wasn’t war, malnourishment, or the plague killing you, then it was your own king or the church stringing you up to die.

Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist

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 Editors Note: Dr. Katz is now available on DVD (But sadly not Blu-ray) so you may purchase your copy at the movie seller of your choice.  The Midnight Cafe does not condone piracy.

My good friend Jamison recently sent me the entire series of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist on DVD. This has brought much joy to my heart because none of the episodes from this series are yet available on DVD. My friend bought it off of Ebay from someone who essentially put his dubbed off the TV VHS tapes into the DVD format. The quality ranges from really quite excellent to something more akin to rather unwatchable garbage. Most of the episodes have that old VHS tape that’s been sitting in the attic for a bit too long look. But it’s Dr. Katz on DVD and I’ll take what I can get.

The other, quite humorous, but in this collection is that whoever mastered the DVDs didn’t manage to edit out most of the commercials. A few of the episodes are presented commercial-free and look quite professional. The rest retain the commercials, but the creator has done us the favor of fast-forwarding through them. This creates a nice nostalgic effect to the collection, reminding me of my days of recording favorite TV shows and fast-forwarding through the commercials myself. He even does the guesswork on when the commercials will end, and the show will begin. Many times he’ll hit play only to find another commercial coming on. Or he’s a little slow on hitting the play button, fast-forwarding through the first few moments of the show.

The commercials themselves are also quite interesting. Craig Killborn is still hosting the Daily Show, Comedy Central is overhyping their sure-to-be hit show “Bob and Margaret” and Dell computers with 8 megs of RAM and 10 gig hard drives sell for only $2600!

The show itself is classic. It’s one of my all-time favorite television comedies. The set-up for the show has Jonathan Katz playing Dr. Jonathan Katz, a professional therapist (high concept, I know). His patients consist of guest stars who are generally professional comics, whose “problems” are generally bits from their acts. Other characters are Dr. Katz’s perpetually lazy son, Ben (H Jon Benjamin), and his sarcastic secretary Laura (Laura Silverman – how did they come up with these character names?). There is also the bartender and regular customer at a local pub Dr. Katz frequents (Julianne Shapiro and Will LeBow respectively).

Ben: “I’m saying, Dad, that it’s lonely at the top. So if you wanna ride my gravy train, you better hop on, now.”
Dr. Katz: “Why do you think this is the top? I mean, you could be lonely for any number of reasons.”
Ben: “What are you trying to say?”
Dr. Katz: “I’m saying, you’re a lonely guy. … Don’t blame it on being at the top.”

The best part of the show is the interaction between Katz, Ben, and Laura. The three have great chemistry and often feel more like three hilarious friends sitting around trying to one-up each other. I doubt the show ever had much of a script, for it all seems rather improvised on the spot.

Ben: “I bought a, uh, one of those fake fountains. You plug it in, and the water runs constantly.”
Dr. Katz: “A urinal.”

The only problem with the show is when the guests aren’t all that funny. In the early days, the guests consisted solely of stand-up comics. Generally, these guys are spot-on hilarious, doing their best bits. But, sometimes the guest is more annoying than funny (Judy Tenuta anyone?) Since an individual guest’s bits can make up 1/4th of the show, a bad guest could really drag the show down. This is especially true when as the show got a popular, non-comedian to appear. I loved Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld, but here she says nothing funny, and her only gag seems to be that she goes to the toilet a lot while she’s pregnant. Katz makes the most of poor guests, though, and milks the material for all its comedy potential.

Dr. Katz: “Hold on one second, Ben, let me play the Devil’s advocate here, just for one minute.”
Ben: “No Dad, don’t, okay please, I don’t like the Devil’s advocate thing; you’re too good at it.”
Dr. Katz: “What about ‘Duck Duck Goose’?”
Ben: “Okay, you got a deal.”

In the last season, the show did what too many television shows do when running out of steam: it tinkered with its own premise and added characters. While in the previous five seasons, the only people with speaking parts were the main characters and the guest patients. In season 6 suddenly there are miscellaneous extras popping up. Why suddenly is there an exchange between Ben and his dentist? Todd, the video store clerk has become running regularly into this season as well. The actor portraying Todd (Todd Barry) had previously been a patient on the show. While the bits between Todd, the clerk, and Ben are usually funny, it is an additional character to a show flooded already with too many characters, and not enough time.

These are minor complaints in what is one of the funniest series to have ever hit the airwaves.

Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp

I am a little late in getting this up. I am finding I have less and less energy for writing anything these days. I also found after writing my account of the concentration camp, I just didn’t have it in me to talk about the castle. Perhaps some other time.

As our time in France is coming to an end, I have come to realize that we are just not going to be able to see everything that we had hoped to see. Though the border is but minutes away, Amy and I have seen very little of Germany, and thus it shall have to wait until another visit some years in the future. I had truly hoped to visit the many castles that the countryside holds, and also to visit some of the many horrors left over from the Third Reich.

This past weekend, I was able to visit one of each of these types of things, albeit in the Alsatian mountainside and not the mythic country that is Deutschland.

Our first stop was the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof. Though not the traditional death camp for Jews, it was never-the-less a place of absolute horror for many German criminals and members of the French resistance.

To say that I have been looking forward to visiting a concentration camp is to miss the point. Yes, I have wanted to go for a long time and even felt some anticipation before we left, but I can’t say that I was looking forward to it in any real sense of pleasure. Visiting a place of torture and death is not my idea of a good time. Yet, it seems these places are important, not only in a historical sense but in a manner of trying to understand what we are capable of as human beings.

The camp is located high in the mountains. It is a beautiful area, and I often found myself struck by the majesty of the scenery around me and then the horror of the place below my feet.

Most of the barracks were destroyed by Neo-Nazis many years back. In their foundations are little plaques inscribed with the names of the other concentration camps. This is designed to tie this camp with all the others. What remains of the other buildings is a rebuilt barrack, a kitchen, and a prison in which inmates were tortured, experimented on, and murdered.

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In a little ravine beside the camp, little flowers now grow. A placard noted that in this area many inmates were shot dead. It said the inmates were forced to carry large boulders up the hillside and deposit them in the ravine. A soldier would often kick the tired inmate just as he was bending over to drop the boulder. If the inmate fell from this kick, a machine gunner in the watchtower would shoot the inmate pretending it was an escape attempt. For this murder, the gunner would get an extra day of vacation.

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At the top of the camp is a large memorial. It is a tall spire sculpted to look like flame and smoke, engraved with the image of a man. Next to the spire are small crosses, each with the name of a resistance fighter who died for the cause of France.

In the prison building, there were many methods of torture set up. Beside the regular cell rooms, were tiny cells designed as solitary confinement. They were about 4 feet in height, and no larger than a small closet. For the smallest fractures, inmates would be locked into these cells for days at a time, given only bread and water for nourishment. In a nearby room, inmates were experimented on. They were inoculated with various diseases such as Typhoid so that doctors could notate how their bodies reacted to them. When the inmates died their torturous deaths, they were then autopsied.

A small bare room was said to be a place of execution room. Inmates, not condemned to die on the gallows, but never-the-less committing some small infraction that angered a guard enough, would be taken into this room and shot in the back of the head. A small drain in the center of the room would wash away the blood.

The most harrowing site was the oven. Like many of the concentration camps, the Nazis decided the most effective way to get rid of the bodies piling up, was to cremate them. This camp held but one oven, but it was enough. To see a thing in which so many were destroyed senselessly, was a thing of horror. I will never forget it.

As I walked to the exit, I took one last look down the slope of the mountain, taking in the entire camp. Thinking about all I had just seen, I said a small prayer.

Let us remember what we are capable of, so we shall not forget what we have done.