Rasmenia

When Olivier & I woke up in our hotel room in Breda, we couldn’t focus on much except for breakfast.  Here’s the thing about breakfast: each time I leave France, I get all worked up & dizzy about what this new place will be serving for the first meal of the day.

I judge a country based on its breakfast.  Sure, there are other small, less important factors that affect my opinion of a place: the booze, the people, the sights… but, these are all nothing compared to the importance of what food a country starts its day with.

France, I love you, but a croissant & cup of coffee just doesn’t cut it for me.  This is a snack.  Fail.

Holland, on the other hand… they have their shit together in this area.  There was fruit, cereal, plates of meat & cheese… yogurt, juice, coffee, pastries & a variety of bread.  A chubby woman with an absurdly sincere grin brought me a plate the size of Greenland that was covered with runny eggs & bacon.

I was drunk on Dutch cheese & bacon.  Afterward, all I could do was gurgle incoherently with glee.  I didn’t want to move, but I had no choice.  As soon as the feast had ended, we had to stuff ourselves back into our scorching Renault oven to drive ourselves to Germany.

It was going to be a few hours, so we’d have entertain ourselves like the jackasses that we are… singing ridiculous made-up songs is a pretty good way of passing the time during a road trip.

While we were on the road out of the Netherlands, Olivier & I each remarked at the profound lack of tulips & windmills.  We did see a few windmills off in the distance as we sped down the highway, but not once did I see rolling fields of tulips.  It’s a good thing that I was drunk on Dutch breakfast cheese, or else I might have been very riled up about another cliché crashing down to the ground in front of me like this.

Another thing that we had to do besides keeping an eye out for confirmation of cultural stereotypes was to find postcards to send to friends & family.

It seems that the cagey bastard who swiped the tulip fields had also gotten his mitts on the fucking postcards.  We couldn’t find anything, so we had to settle on some free ones that we found hanging on the wall in a gas station.  Now, receiving a postcard with a picture of a gas pump on it & some gibberish written in Dutch may not seem classy to you, but… well, you’d be wrong about that.

Triumphant with our classy free postcards in hand, we were back on the highway & heading toward a campground just outside of Hamburg.

Just after we entered Germany, we made a rather wonderful discovery: Germany has something that France doesn’t.  Something that Olivier & I often lament because no one should ever have to go without it.

Of course, I’m talking about this:

As soon as we saw it, we were speeding into the parking lot, running inside & in the best German that Olivier could spit out in his excitement, he was ordering Whoppers.

Fuck.  Yes.

I also noticed in the Burger King the cleanest bathroom ever to be found in a fast food restaurant.  Likely it had something to do with the dude hanging around outside the shitters charging people 20 cents a pop to clean up after everyone.  We ended up seeing this all over the place in Germany & while we weren’t used to tossing out some change each time we had to see a man about horse, it was actually worth it because… well, you know – public bathrooms can be terrifying.

Anyway… on to the campground.

We stayed at a campground in the town of Großensee, just to the east of Hamburg.  We had picked up a few bottles of German beer somewhere between Burger King & putting up our tent.

We also had plenty of butane & canned ravioli.

We were pretty much set for the entire night.

Well, we were… until around 1:00 in the morning when I awoke in agony.  At some point during the night, it seemed that someone had attempted to remove the tiny bones of my inner ear with a rusty pair of needle nose pliers.

Evidently, I had also swallowed a fucking golf ball that was still lodged in my throat.  I was in pain.  I was outraged.  Naturally, I did what I always do in these situations.

I wept like fucking baby.

In the morning, instead of getting excited about breakfast, I was pouting & choking, sobbing into my scrambled eggs.  I was also barely able to speak, so not being able to bitch endlessly about my suffering was a bit of a bummer.

Obviously, I wasn’t very cheerful about this shit.

Olivier was on the phone, trying to find out what kind of medication to get from the pharmacy.  Words such as “infection”, “antibiotic” & “prescription” were flying around.

We went into the nearest pharmacy & Olivier threw together some words from his rusty German to discuss with the pharmacist all of this business with “antibiotics” & “prescriptions”.  Fortunately, the pharmacist didn’t feel like dicking around with us much & probably figured that if we were pill poppers trying to scam him, we wouldn’t be asking for fucking amoxicillin.

So, antibiotics & aspirin in hand, we were off to Copenhagen, where I would eventually be able to speak again.

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Technocrati Tags: Breda, Holland, Netherlands, breakfast, Germany, Hamburg, Burger King, bathroom, Whopper, Großensee, tulips, windmills, stereotypes, cliché, travel, road, camping, sick, pharmacy, ridiculous, food, postcards

Between Belgium and Germany, Olivier & I decided that it was absolutely necessary that we spend at least one night in the Netherlands.  We ended up spending the night in Breda, between Rotterdam & Antwerp.

When we arrived at our hotel room, it was an oven full of stagnant air, little soaps & disposable plastic cups.  We had spent the first half of the day broiling inside of our car.  We needed a cool place… a comfortable place.

We needed a place that would fully let us appreciate the Netherlands.

We needed a coffee shop.

Within walking distance of our hotel was a place called ‘The Cat‘.  We got inside, went up to the counter & placed an order: 2 cups of hot tea & 5 grams of Super Skunk.

After a few minutes, I realized that I was still sweating & that I had been sweating for the entire day.  I asked Olivier, “Why is it that we ordered fucking hot tea?”

“Uh… I don’t know,” he said.  “What did you want instead?”

“Um… I dunno.  Something cold.  You know… ’cause it’s like… hot outside.”  It was obvious that we were becoming dumber.  I looked around, taking in the atmosphere.  The place was small & dark with only a few people sitting on couches as they smoked & talked quietly.  We were seated between the counter & the front door.  Every couple of minutes, someone would come in, mutter something in Dutch at the counter & would quickly leave.

“This place is dark… & serious,” I said.

“Yeah,” Olivier said, looking around.  “Do you want to go?”

“Well, I don’t feel like whispering any more & I would like to be outside where I can have fresh air & feel free to act retarded.”

So, we walked out into the street… looking a little like this:

As we strolled around on perfectly paved sidewalks, we marveled at the clean streets & well-constructed bicycle lanes.  Everything was so clean, colorful & organized.  I had never seen so many people on bicycles in my life.  As we ambled, the shining green streets suddenly went bad.  They had turned to desert.  We didn’t see anyone, save for a few street toughs & bits of sidewalk litter.

“Are we in a bad neighborhood?”  I asked.

“Nah,” Olivier said.  “It’s just Sunday, so no one is out.”

“This is the scariest Sunday EVER,” I said.

Then we heard the music.  In our excited confusion, we were helpless to do anything except follow it to its source, which we found moments later.  We found a crowd of people, young & old, dancing, drinking & twirling about.  A heavyset woman was on stage, dry humping an enthusiastic & very skinny man as she growled out some dirty jazz tune.

Olivier & I stopped for a moment, taking in all of the revelry that surrounded us.  We were baffled, but entertained.  We kept walking & found yet another stage, with more twirling, festive people.  Now we understood why the streets a few moments ago were such a fucking desert – everyone was here, jazzing & drinking.  It didn’t make any sense.  What was this place?

We looked at one another & proclaimed, “Holland is WEIRD”.

It turned out that we had stopped in Breda on the very weekend that the annual Breda Jazz Festival was taking place.  Yeah, I know… that makes a lot more sense.  How was I to know that there would be a logical explanation?  It all seemed too weird for logic.  I can see now that our condition might have had something to do with that.

A little while later, after we had spent some time exploring the city & the festival, we stopped near a statue in a somewhat quiet place.  Soon after, my ears were attacked by some musical notes that swirled & spun around, sounding as though Mark Twain & riverboats were floating around in them.  I got very excited & grabbed Olivier’s arm.

“Do you hear that?  Do you hear that?”

“Yes, yes… I hear it.  Are you freaking out?”

“Yes!  I’m freaking out!  I’m freaking out!  What is it?”

Then I saw a man with a megaphone, surrounded by people, parasols bobbing up & down, horns playing, people dancing.  I was giddy.

We got closer & later, I learned that we were watching the Blue Marble Silver Cornet Band.

After some time, we moved on to explore more of the city & to enjoy our Super Skunk in the park like vagrants.  As we meandered back to our hotel, we came across various sculptures…

Between the giant puking head & the ’69′ sculpture, we didn’t really know what to think… was this city’s taste in public art truly bizarre, or did we simply get our money’s worth at “The Cat”?

We finally made it back to our hotel room where we celebrated a truly weird day with chips, candy bars & a 2-person conga line, just like one might expect.

Here’s a brief video of the Blue Marble Silver Cornet Band playing at the Breda Jazz Festival.  The peppy old man who makes an entrance at 3:48 makes it all worthwhile – especially since he didn’t die of heart attack before the end of the song.

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Technocrati Tags: Breda, Holland, Netherlands, travel, Jazz, Festival, Blue Marble Silver Cornet Band, coffee shop, The Cat, Europe, vacation, marijuana, sculpture, weird, ridiculous, jackasses

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