You're Doing It Wrong

Here I’m standing on the bed and leaning against the window being unhelpful as Bob looks at a map and tries to figure out the plan. At this point I’d learned enough about the controls to make shower pod and toilet pod lighting green.

Before I do my post about our tiny hotel room I need to add something that I meant to put in yesterday’s post.

Yesterday when co-worker returned from the coffee shop he told me that the barista had randomly asked him if he liked Ratt. “You know, the heavy metal band.”

Co-worker indicated that he did not and the barista expressed great enthusiasm for this band.

I’ve been to this coffee shop a number of times and I possibly could have given birth to this barista yet I am impressed at his wide-ranging knowledge of 80’s music.

“I have Ratt’s greatest hits,” I told co-worker. “I can loan it to you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, all grumpy and ungrateful.

“And you know what?” I added. “Last night my pajama shirt was my Ratt New Year’s Eve concert t-shirt from 1985.”

He didn’t even have a response for that.

This is the hotel closet meaning just a rack with two hangers.

This is the toilet pod. You pull those two “doors” around until they meet in the middle and hope your knees don’t bump. Nothing private in here. You can kinda see the sink at the right.

Here I’m standing with my back against the door. You can see the TV above the bed and the tiny shelf on the left wall. The shower was pretty cool. The toilet “doors” are frosted but not the shower. That round thing up in the center is the showerhead. There’s also a handheld sprayer. They provide two kinds of soap: daytime and nighttime. I preferred day. Bob used a blend.

I stupidly didn’t get any photos of the downstairs area with the bar and couches and work areas.

One night I sat downstairs and had a beer and wrote in my travel notebook which I did an overall crap job of keeping up with. There was another man working and he asked to use my pen.

When he returned it he commented on how old fashioned it was to be using a pen and paper.

ARGH! We live in a world where pen and paper is considered old fashioned.

The Hamburg UBahn system map at best station name ever Straßburger Straße

Bob didn’t finish his EMusic downloads so he left me 19. I downloaded the Journey Escape album. I’m going to learn how to burn it to a CD and listen to it in my car and drive around for hours, just like when I was 17. I can’t wait.

I also downloaded Ca Plane Pour Moi. No collection is complete without that song.

Bob is home. My souvenir cough has now moved into its last dastardly phase where I just have endless dry hacks that veer close to gagging. I’ll be happy to be done with this.

This weekend I need to finish Game of Thrones. Only 75 pages left. And I have 6 more Gilmore Girls Season 4. And a story to finish.

That’s it: 1 cough, 1 book, 1 TV series and a story.

Wish me luck.

Amsterdam flower market

Tonight when I drove home I could see all kinds of tulips in the neighborhood. Even my next door neighbor has tulips.

None of my tulips have bloomed yet.

It seems like everything in my yard is always two weeks behind the neighbors. It’s not fair.

We found the Amsterdam flower market by accident and I was completely overcome.

I ran up to a giant bulb display and hugged it and told Bob: I want all of this.

I know, he said.

They had bulbs you could buy that were approved for the US but I was traveling with the world’s smallest bag and I would have had to carry the bulbs around with me for the rest of the day.

It was a tough choice but I passed. It looked like all the same stuff in the local catalog and I think all that stuff comes from Netherlands anyway.

Next year I’m buying a ton more tulips.

Davidwache police station on the Reeperbahn.. It was nice to finally be running around Hamburg on our own so we could look at all the stuff we wanted. My Dad’s family lived in this police station a long time ago.

I should be more organized about the way I’m doing this to avoid repeating myself later but I can’t get it together quite yet.

My Sweetheart has checked in and as far as I can tell he’s averaged about 4 museums a day plus churches, exhibits, government offices and a concert one evening.

I have a picture of him when he was a tiny baby and he’s holding his head up with his eyes wide open looking around. He came out of the womb not wanting to miss anything and he hasn’t changed.

The things that attract you to your partner are the same things that drive you nuts about them. I’m glad he’s getting to see all this stuff and I’m glad I’m not being dragged around with him.

For my ideal vacation I don’t mind a museum or two but then I like to sit around and relax. He thinks sitting around is boring. Even when we were in Reno he managed to find a museum.

He’ll be home on Thursday.

We flew into Amsterdam and took a train to Dusseldorf.

The next day we flew from Dusseldorf to Munich and then took a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

There was a huge snowfall and our flight was delayed so by the time we finally arrived at the Munich train station we were starving. We ran through one of the food shops grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down.

I discovered this ingenious food product. It’s a little cup with a dollop of Nutella in one half and little bread-like sticks on the other.

At first it was too cold and the Nutella too hard so my sticks kept breaking. I put the cup on the heater in the train car and a few minutes later it was melty delicious. And the stick-to-Nutella ratio was perfect.

I wish I could buy this here and take it in my lunch. I guess it wouldn’t be that hard to make myself but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Main Train Station in Hamburg

I’ve been trying to finish a story. This is the same story that I’ve been pulling my hair out over for the last 100 years. I think it’s coming together I’m just impatient.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on photos along with a bunch of stupid administrivia.

I’m back in the real world tomorrow.

We passed this creepy ad when were were on the train. “Did I just see a little blonde children-of-the-corn girl flipping me off?” I asked Bob. Later we saw it again in the train station and I grabbed a photo.

I stayed awake until about 2 minutes past 8pm last night. I got two solicitation phone calls in the evening and I was afraid the phone was going to wake me if I went to bed too early. One call wanted to know if I wanted to send letters to all my neighbors asking them to donate money to some cause that I guess I’ve supported in the past. How many ways can I say No?

Now I’m up and completely overwhelmed by all the photos. I have about 400 of mine plus 300 of Bob’s (from just the first few days). I don’t know where to start.

I’m enjoying my souvenir chest cold which is no doubt thanks to running around wet with cold feet and hours spent in public transportation. I hate getting coughs because they tend to stick around for weeks.

I made sure to cough on all the horrible children running around on the flight yesterday.

There’s a bus from the Portland International terminal to the regular terminal and there were three men who got on and sat by me. One of them said the flight wasn’t so bad and I must have made a face because another one said: You look like you don’t agree. Were you sitting near all the children?

Today’s plan is to drink peppermint tea and continue re-acclimation. Also do some writing and yoga since I just took two weeks off and I need to get my groove back.

Have I explained that Bob is staying in Europe for another week? Here are two posts from Bob’s first day without me. Haarlem Part I and Harrlem Part II.

Berliner Tor Hamburg Subway Station. In case you can’t tell: I’m sitting in the subway car taking a photo out the window of the station name on the wall.

I’m home. I’m tired but happy. I’m going to eat some soup and watch some Gilmore Girls and then stagger off to bed.

Sadly, I haven’t secured a job as a towel girl for one of the Dutch soccer teams so I’m coming home tomorrow.

Another action packed day. I’m so tired I can hardly see straight. The hotel said that the airport shuttle will only take me if I bought the ticket in advance. That’s a stupid system for a hotel shuttle. I’m taking the train instead which is cheaper but I have to haul my bag over to the train station and now that it’s stuffed with candy I’d rather minimize the amount of humping it around.

Almost done.

Today we went to the History Museum. The guidebook didn’t make it sound like much but it turned out to be awesome AND not filled with squirrely teenagers. Every museum has been overflowing with squirrely teenagers and their skinny jeans and loud whispers and obliviousness.

I’m going to run upstairs and charge my iPod and try to stuff the rest of my goodies into my bag.

Many photos when I get home.

There can’t possibly be any tort law in this country.

The entire transportation system is an accident waiting to happen. Cars, pedestrians, bikes, trams, trucks in total anarchy. I get the feeling that anything goes although I did see a guy get busted today after zooming his motorcycle through a pedestrian area.

Today there was a crew tearing up the street which was just one lane. The Dutch don’t pay someone $30 an hour to hold a flag and wave everyone around. The cars just drove up on the sidewalk to get around it. And the people and bikes just got out of their way.

Bob and I both had to watch for a minute to make sure we were understanding what was happening.

Also every restaurant has the bathroom in the basement and the stairway is practically a ladder.

A great day although a tad long and food deprived. It was sunny! And probably hit 45 degrees! All the Dutch people were sitting in the sun smoking cigarettes and smiling.

* * *
More on the hotel. It’s like a design experiment. It’s called citizenM. The first floor is like a giant lounge with all kinds of tables, chairs, couches, TVs, work areas and food/bar. We’ve spent our evenings there before going to bed and it’s nice. I guess it’s not so much a tourist hotel as a business traveler hotel.

The room has it’s own computer thing where you can set up your lighting, music, window shade and so forth.

Last night at midnight the alarm went off. All the lights came on and the sound of stampeding elephants. I’m not making this up. I woke up and was thinking: what the hell? It can’t be morning yet. I waited for Bob to deal with it and finally elbowed him because he was sleeping through it. This morning I figured out how to turn it off so there won’t be a repeat performance tonight.

Also you can pick the color you want for the toilet and shower pods. It is the world’s tiniest room but we like this place.

One more big day tomorrow. More museums and I’m sure lots of wandering around completely lost.