Kaiserslautern, Germany. It's been a pretty long weekend. But I'm here and I even had a chance to Skype Suzanne and the kids earlier. It's weird, just one or two days away and I am already missing them all a ton, especially when I see them on the video. Suzanne looked great and I swear the kids have aged 6 months since I left a day ago.
My hotel room has a ginormous picture window making up most of the wall, where I can look out over the adjacent lake. The lake is frozen solid and there are a few people out there skating around. It's cool because you can see whole regions of the lake that are crystalline ice except for the scratches of one lone ice skater who apparently enjoyed skating on pristine ice. I brought my running shoes with me, and had designs on doing some biking before I had to leave my bike behind when my car broke down, but now I'm thinking that my morning exercise could be some skating around the lake. I did not bring my skates with me, but I'm wondering if I could rent a pair for the week and maybe try to get out a few times for some exercise. It's REALLY cold right now though. I'm not sure I packed for ice skating in this kind of cold.
I had dinner tonight at a Balkan restaraunt in Ktown (Kaiserslautern). Yup, an American eating at a Balkan restaraunt in Germany, with an Italian couple eating in the booth next to me. The gentlemen who served me did not know a word of English, except for when he referred to me as "chef". I ordered an entire meal, including a soup, an entree, and a wine, based on his suggestions. He pointed to a couple of things on the menu and I said Ja, Sehr Gut. It was all really good. I am pretty sure he comp'ed me the first glass of wine because I smiled a lot and was as friendly as I good be with him. I'm pretty sure I ordered a kleine (small) dessert, but it was pretty substantial nonetheless, and then the dude brought me some kind of shooter that must have taken a layer of enamel off my teeth. If I'm not mistaken, there were actual fumes emanating from this shooter, and I quickly moved it away from the candle on the table. You may notice that I preceed everything with "I'm pretty sure", which is to say that I am really not completely sure of anything, and I'm just taking my best guess as to where I am going, what I am doing, and what is happening around me.
After dinner, I go to the bar to pay and start chatting with a younger fellow who had recently arrived and who the other employees seemed to defer to. "I'm pretty sure" that he was the son of the guy who was serving me dinner, and I'm pretty sure he owned the place. His dad, my waiter, had already told me he was from Serbia, which is kind of weird in and of itself considering my experiences going into Bosnia in the 90s, keeping ever vigilant for Serbian minefields and IEDs, seeing the devastation of the Bosnian-Serbian war and all. But tonight, my biggest concern was the loss of tooth enamel from the shooter I just slurped down. The son, the apparent owner, had just gotten back from a soccer match between Kaiserslautern and Cologne. Kaiserslauthern lost in an upset. What I couldn't figure out was whether this dude was "just" an extremely avid fan, or whether he actually played for the team. He was pale-pastey-grey like he was either frozen cold (it's brutally cold up here these days) or if he was stone-drunk. I didn't mean to get into a whole friendly chat with the guy, and his dad, and the other guys, but it just turned out that way. Before you knows it, he is insisting that we all drink shots of some clear'ish looking liquor that I swear should have had a skull and crossbones on its label. It couldn't have been that costly either, because he was spilling this crap all over the joint as he poured us all another round of shots. In his words, it would make us all warm, and it was a drink that men should drink, not like that sweet pretty stuff that women drink! ....Sweet James, I had no business drinking that stuff. But what is worse, offending an entire family of Serbians who have just fed you dinner and comp'ed you wine, or brave the wrath of one little shot of clear liquor? (well,maybe it wasn't so little...) So in the spirit of US Diplomacy, I drank it. And then I paid my tab and got out of there before anything else could be shoved my way. You know when you've had something so strong that you feel an urge to rub your tongue across your teeth? Yeah..... I'm pretty sure if I had stayed any longer, we all would have been locked arm and arm, dancing in a circle, signing some Serbian folk song, lamenting the loss of our favorite soccer team, spilling grain alcohol (or whatever we were drinking) everywhere, while the temperature outside continued to plummet to artic levels.
Enjoy the Super Bowl everybody! Tschuss!
ct
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