Day 7 -- Munich, Germany

Munich, A.K.A. the city that never sleeps.

Okay, I'm making that up…I have no idea what Munich is called, other than the very Germanic-sounding "München."

First off, I will speak on our hotel. We're staying at a place called the "Hotel Uhland." Now…going from the dark, stinky alcoves of the Hotel Horse d'Or (oh, wait, I get it now – Odor of the Horse! I was such a fool!!!) to the wondrous clean of the Hotel Uhland was enough to make a man wrap a sandwich in foil and put it in the fridge for 2 days, then after that 2 days was up, take the sandwich out and eat it, because he was really going to enjoy that sandwich.

Which is another way of saying that the hotel is awesome. Clean. Bright. Full buffet breakfast included. Friendly staff. Spacious bathroom (relatively). German television with German channels (full of grodey childbirths, apparently). A mini-bar with reasonable prices (I don't think that Europe has caught on to the "mini-bars are only there to bilk your guests" craze that's rampant in the US). And Mirrors!

Okay, I'm getting carried away. The point is, if you ever happen to find yourself in Munich, do yourself a favor and stay at the Hotel Uhland. And tell them Tyler sent you. They probably won't know who Tyler is, but I've always wanted someone to say "Tyler sent me." Seems very classy.

Our room at the Hotel Uhland. Small...sure...but everything is small in Europe, apparently.

After our free breakfast (I know it's not really free, since it's included in the cost of the hotel…but I'm going to call it "free"…since our hotel budget and our food budget are two separate columns on the Excel spreadsheet) we did our typical first-day-in-a-new-city tradition. We went on walkabout – Dundee style.

First stop was the Glockenspiel, in the Marienplatz. The Glockenspiel is on a big ol'…I'm gonna' say "building" (even though it looks like a church from the outside) in the middle of the city. One of the towers contains a bunch of little...statues?, that spin in a circle several times a day. That show, which is a marvel in medieval engineering (actually finished in 1908), was attended by, probably, several hundred people...all craning their necks to see the little things turn in a circle. More fun for us than the actual "show," was the reactions of the crowd. When one of the jousting knights was un-horsed, there was a gasp of approval from the crowd, followed by a smattering of applause. It was adorable.

This is what everyone was looking at.

Next to the Marianplatz were two big ol' churches. The first is the Frauenkirche, which is German for "Kirch of the Frow." It's notable because there are two big towers that (Sharla, plug your eyes here) look like two big ol' boobies. Or, at least the tops of them do. Or maybe I'm just imagining things. Or maybe I should just stop talking.

Anyhow, our first stop was the sanctuary itself. Very pretty – it's always interesting, because you feel a bit sacrilegious popping into an active, catholic church and snapping photos of the cool artwork in the different naves (representing the different saints that are prayed to by Catholics…or some-such…I'm not totally sure how it works, being the Protestant scum that I am). Plus, occasionally there will be a mass going on, as tourists rotate around the outskirts of the cathedral…taking pictures…gawking…et cetera. It's very strange.

In the back of the cathedral was something very interesting – photos of the church from 1944 to 1949. See…apparently the Allies pretty much bombed Munich into oblivion. I read that 71 air raids hit Munich during the war…and much of the city was destroyed by allied bombs. Munich was one of the birthplaces of the Nazi party, and the allies seemed interested in blowing it up. The two main churches in the square were no exception – they were pretty massively devastated…and the photos showed the rebuilding efforts, ending in the restoration of the church to its original state. At least, I think that's what happened – my German isn't all that great.

So, underneath the main pulpit (my church terminology is not so great – would that be the sept?) was a little shrine, and I saw the best painting I'd seen since my trip to Europe. It was another retelling of the passion (we've probably seen several dozen at this point…one thing about European artists – they loved painting the Jesus), but it wasn't the expression-less retelling that the Romantics seemed to favor. It was almost done in the style of "The Scream," where the picture was abstract…showing the massive suffering and ugliness of the event. It gave a tragic humanity to Jesus (because he was "made man," as I recall), and to those around him…and it really moved me. This was the kind of art that really reaches me – something shedding the banality of stoic heroism and showing the true gut-twisting fear of real heroism.

But I didn't get a photo…because I was in a church…and some guy was praying…and it just didn't feel right. Maybe if we swing by there later I'll get something…I just really liked the painting. That's all.

After our tour of the sanctuary, we went up in one of the boobs – sorry, towers – to have a look around. Something the Germans don't seem to have figured out are the intricacies of doorways. The French discovered some time ago that you have to let people off of the elevator before you can push yourself on. The Germans? Not so much. The French also discovered that those narrow stairs leading to the towers of cathedrals were not built for "up and down" traffic at the same time. Again…Germany must have missed that lesson. Also, the French know not to stand in doorways…because people use those to enter and exit buildings. Not so the Germans. I could go on…but portals seem to confound the proud German people. At least, that's been my experience.

The view from the top was all right – Munich doesn't have the famous landmarks of Paris, but it's got a pretty skyline. We didn't linger long, because we had a long day ahead of us that was only beginning.

View from the boob.

Our next stop was lunch…and Munich again scores a knockout against the weak Parisians. I had a bratwurst with mustard on a Kaiser roll…Erika had some kind of liver cheese sandwich, which contained neither liver nor cheese. What it does contain is a mouthful of magic in every bite. I would walk 500 miles to eat either one of those sandwiches again – in fact, sitting here in bed, I'm seriously contemplating sneaking out, breaking into the booth where it was sold, starting up the grill, locating cooking instructions, and firing up another one of those bastards. I'm totally serious. It was that good.

Lunch

Bellies full of sweet, sweet German food, we dashed over to the Deutsches Museum, which, I believe, is German for "Rabbit Squirrel Dinner on a Rose Rabbit Sparkplug." It's a huge museum full of technology, and "what-not." I could try to explain the what-not, but instead I'll leave you with an impression.

Erika and I spent a good 45 minutes learning about the history of metallurgy. Yes, the two lily-livered (is that the second time I've used that phrase? Blast!) Theater Arts majors read up on how medieval craftsmen separated gold and silver from raw ore (hint: they used a furnace). I know…it doesn't sound interesting…but durg-labbit, it really, really was.

All you will ever need to know about medieval met

Now, because we were crawling through the museum, reading up on way too much interesting stuff to ingest in a single day, we got about a little less than a third of the way in and realized that we were falling asleep on our feet. Not out of boredom, but out of good old fashioned exhaustion. So Erika sat on a bench as I got my "war history" on, and cruised through the airplane section of the museum. Too much cool stuff to go into, but the point is – if you're in Munich, leave a day to spend here. You'll learn a lot – there's English translations for nearly every exhibit that we saw (except, oddly, for the oil drilling and refining wing). Very cool.

An actual Me-262 -- my favorite WWII airplane. Can you feel my excitement?

We walked back across town, I got us lost (and I blame the map, because an awesome handyman blames his tools) but we found our way eventually, and I forced a nap into our dwindling itinerary.

Our dinner was at the world-famous Hofbrau Haus. Which, apparently, is German for "I'm Tired Of Translating German For You Tyler, Please Go To Bed." We had two one-liter beers each, and some more meat and bread – I'm sure Munich is giggling with Bavarian pleasure about the severe hit our "healthy eating plan" has absorbed. Full of a liter's worth of beer, we staggered around the Marianplatz a bit more, stopped in some restaurant somewhere and ate some Apple Strudel, then staggered back to our hotel and slept in a staggered fashion.

It was an amazing day, for sure. Tomorrow we go to the "Cinderella Castle," which is German for "Neuschwanstein." Should be fun – we'll see if we can actually follow through on our nightly pledge to "get an early start tomorrow." Until then…

Loathing and Loathing in Vegas (days 2 & 3)

(Part 1 is here)

Day 2

I don't know how many of you have experienced a "hang-over," but let me assure you, it is not pleasant. The hangover I had on Saturday was…fairly epic. The three of us agreed that we should all go out and get breakfast of some kind…and about thirty paces from our room, we regretted the decision to leave the safe, darkened confines of our hotel room at the Tropicana.

So, and hour later, bellies filled with cheap Vegas food, we were all back in the room… napping fitfully. Koby and Chad wanted to lay some money on the UFC fight, and with much hemming and hawing (a nasty habit I picked up from somewhere), I decided that, hangover be damned, I was going go with them.

Dripping with malaise, we shuffled past the blinking lights, the musical chirping of the slot machines, and the afternoon-drunken masses. After visiting two hotel Sports Books, Koby and Chad finally found the "good odds," and they laid their money down on some very promising underdogs. Not being up to date since Dan Severn applied a textbook keylock to Dave Beneteau to win UFC 5 (they're up to 86 now) I was in no position to risk my depleted cash funds. But, after their surefire bets were laid, we moped over to the MGM Grand. Koby and Chad thought that "breathing oxygen" and getting their shoulders hooked up to an electrical circuit might help them get their heads correct. I thought that losing more money at blackjack would help me. Turns out the oxygen would have been cheaper, and more helpful. Oops.

We met up again, and sat on a bench, and waited for an hour in a glum, hung-over near-silence until the fight started.

The view from our hang-over hang out.

Finally, it was time for them to depart, leaving me to my own devices. So…taking full advantage of my newfound freedom, in a city full of sin and depravity, I went back to the room, and the full scope of the shittiness of my situation started to affect me. After hrrming and hmming in my room (because hemming is stupid), I decided…dammit…I was going to find myself a poker tournament. And I did just that…over at the Planet Hollywood Casino.


Me...having a shit-load of fun in Vegas.

Now, I just wrote a long, eight-paragraph long description of my game…but I decided that probably only about two people (looking at you Don and Matt) could really appreciate it…so I deleted it. C'est la vie. Anyhow, the long and the short is, from a tournament of 69 people, I finished 9^th place. Now, in the tournament I was in, only the top 8 players got money (8^th gets $123, 1^st gets $945), which meant that I was the last guy to get eliminated without winning any cash. It's called being on "The Bubble," and it really, really, really sucks to be knocked out when you're on "The Bubble." But luckily one of the players there had asked everyone seated at the final table to throw in $10 to "pay the bubble" when the final table was pared down to 9. Since that player was me, I left with a cool $90 (after my $60 buy-in). As one of the players put it, "Hey, it's better than a sharp poke in the eye with a stick." Yes, yes it was.

After that, I met up with Koby and Chad (whose surefire underdog bets had somehow, amazingly, failed to pay off), and we choked down a late dinner at an awful steak house. We walked around a little bit more, not really feeling like drinking or gambling...but too ashamed to admit defeat and call it a night. We wound up at the Hooters Casino (simply because it's next door to the Tropicana). We walked sullenly through the place (which looked suspiciously like any other casino in Vegas…except one of the blackjack dealers was wearing the Hooters outfit – the rest were sporting the standard Vegas dealer vest-and-black-pants combo), and wound up moping about in the bar…choking down a couple of Miller Lights and playing one of those bar-side video poker machines before retreating to the safe, darkened confines of our room at the Tropicana.

Video Poker. Pwned.

Day 3

So my amazing wife (don't know if you've seen her, but she's gorgeous too) had booked a flight home for me the previous day, and I was scheduled to leave early Sunday morning. I'd set my alarm for 9:00 AM, but right around 8:40 AM she called me…I'm assuming to make sure I didn't miss my flight. She apologized for waking me, and asked me how much I was expecting to get paid from my Sprite commercial. "Five hundred dollars…but…after the agent commission, probably about four hundred. Why's that?"

"The check came today."

"Yeah?"

"Yep. It's for two thousand sixty-seven dollars."

Stunned pause.

"Seriously?"

So…that was that. Of course Vegas wasn't going to pay me off – they were the bastards who got me into this mess. Nope, it was up to the good folks of Los Angeles to come through in the clutch, and pay for my automobile repair. Remarkable.

I figured I was on a roll…so after flying down to Phoenix for my connecting flight, the gentleman at the desk informed the group that they were over-booked on the flight, and asked for volunteers to give up their seats for a free flight anywhere in the US. Well…I was in no hurry, and karma demanded that I be paid for my misfortune, so I volunteered. Sure, I had to wait a long-ass time for my next flight, but the price was right.

Finally, after waiting around the awful Phoenix airport for an extra 5 hours, I made it home where my very attractive wife picked me up at the Burbank airport. Not exactly the return that I had planned, but an admittedly still-pleasant one.

Epilogue

Things didn't go too smoothly after that. The repair shop called on Tuesday, asking what time I needed the car. I told them that I was back home, and that I wouldn't be returning until Friday to get the car. "Good," they said, "The part will probably be arriving on Wednesday, so your car should be ready on Thursday."

Only, it wasn't. They called on Wednesday, and told me the car wouldn't be ready until the following Monday. At the earliest. I realized, too late, that I gave them an inch, and they took 6 days. Fine. Whatever. Luckily for me, there was no cost for me to reschedule my flight through United Airlines (a fine, fine corporation), so I did so.

Early Monday morning, a little queasy from drinking too much at Erika's birthday party the night before (family: I promise you I haven't become some creepy drunk since my move to L.A...this was just an unusually high time for booze), I boarded a United Airlines flight, made a connection in San Francisco, and cruised back into the evil city of depravity.

I got $100 out of the airport cash machine, and caught a cab across town driven by a man who (thankfully) spoke not a word the whole drive over. He pulled into the repair shop, and I saw that my car -- instead of being "fully repaired" was still sitting in the garage...being worked on. This...scared me. But it wasn't so bad -- they just needed to test-drive the car, the new transmission had already been dropped in.

The car was tested...and passed. I paid the man. Got in my car, and headed for the gas station down the street to fill up for what would (hopefully) be an uneventful trip back to Los Angeles.

As I was pulling in, I saw a Charles Manson look-a-like rummaging through a dumpster at one corner of the station. It was about 100 degrees that day, and he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans -- his presence made me a little nervous (as happens to me around most homeless people), but I pushed that aside and continued to the pump.

Now, I still had $40 in my wallet, so I decided to prepay with the entire $40 (reminiscing, as everyone does, on how I used to be able to fill up my tank for $10). After I'd prepaid the attendant, I went back to my car and started pumping...and I looked up and noticed that Mr. Manson was making his way over to my car. Dammit. I pretended to make a phone call so I wouldn't have to brush off a money request -- and to his credit, he didn't interrupt my pretend phone call, he just sat on the curb next to my pump. After I finished pumping gas -- still feigning a phone conversation -- I realized that the total was $32.00, and I would have to go inside to get change. Once I'd gotten my money from the attendant, I looked out and saw that, unfortunately, Charlie was still sitting right next to my car. There were plenty of other cars filling up at the other pumps around the station, but he'd staked out my crappy 1990 Prizm as a sure-fire money-maker. Dammit.

I headed out in the blistering heat, back to my ride, and suddenly got really mad at myself: "Listen up, asshole...what's wrong with you? Yes, this was the most trying time I'd had in a long time, but you're healthy...you've got good friends, a radical family, a great wife, a place to live, a semi-steady job, and a functional automobile. The guy sitting out by my car in the blazing heat just finished looking for lunch in a gas station dumpster. At no point was he rude or aggressive to you; he just looked exhausted and dirty, and as bad as your situation is...his was...well...you know."

I'm sure it wasn't that coherent...but you get the idea.

Anyways, I walked up to him, and before he even noticed I'd returned to my car I gave him all of my change. He was young -- probably about my age, if not a few years older. And when I handed him that eight bucks, he looked at me with a strange, confused look. For an instant I thought I was offending him by giving him the money -- maybe he wasn't actually homeless, he just wanted directions or something. But then his face lit up and he said:

"Hey, you knew I was going to ask, didn't you?"

"Don't worry about it. Take care."

"Thanks, man. Thanks."

Then I got in my car, turned south onto North Rancho Drive, and did the only logical thing I could think of -- cried my stinking eyes out. I don't really know why, I guess it just sorta' snuck up on me. It's not like I'm a terribly charitable dude who gets viscerally affected by seeing poverty and the like (I'd only given money to a homeless person one other time) so I'm pretty sure I wasn't crying because of Charlie's situation.

Part of me wanted to believe that I was crying because of the horrible week that I'd endured...but, again, as bad as it was, it wasn't really that bad. I still have plenty of money saved up, and I'm very hire-able should I decide to rejoin the work force at some point.

Maybe I'd just been penning up a lot of bad feelings, and I was a little pissed off that the world had swooped in and relieved me of a couple thousand dollars. So to do something that made me feel genuinely good inside opened a flood gate somewhere, filled with tears. But really, it was only eight bucks...and I knew that it wasn't really going to change the guy's life in any appreciable way...

Then again, maybe I was just crying because I needed to cry. I get like that occasionally. I don't like crying when other people are around, and even now I'm massively uncomfortable blogging about it...but it happened. And damned if I didn't feel a lot better about things once my sissy emotions started pouring down my cheeks.

Luckily, I managed to control myself by the time I merged onto Interstate 15 southbound. The ride back home was uneventful -- I would cringe at every little shudder, gear shift, or shimmy that the car made, but nothing untoward occurred. I pulled up to the apartment around 8:00 PM -- just in time for some "So You Think You Can Dance," and a Coke Zero.