H5N1 Avian Influenza

Ok, so here are some pictures from Paris:

Gay (not even in the post modern sense)

life....it can be OK.

You'd think we're talking about something compelling...but I doubt it.

I like seeing sights

To continue Paris, I basically had an hour or two just to hang around before my train left for Stuttgart. I packed up quickly and we ended up goofing around laughing a lot at nothing at all. It was like one of those times when you’re so tired, everything is just funny – except it was like 7pm at night, and I don’t think anyone was really tired except the jetlagged peeps. Anyways, the jollies were interrupted when fucking Jean-Baptiste showed up at the door again. To put you in the know: Jean-Baptiste lives upstairs from the Chez Cambronne. There’s something wrong with him in that he’s mentally not all there, but in addition to that – he’s fucking wasted all the time. I don’t know how old he is, like 35 prolly. Anyway, he lives upstairs but I guess in the last few weeks he’s been coming down all the time giving everyone the creeps, asking the girls if they wanted to drink, and just being a drunk creep. So the door rings and they get all spooked out. So I’m like, fuck this Jean-Baptiste, take my glasses off (just in case) and go to the door. I swing it open all “what it be?” and naturally, its Jean-Baptiste’s stoopit ass. So he starts fucking rambling in the way that he does – I don’t understand French, but I don’t think the girls can understand him either cuz he talks at like 4 words per minute or is too busy trying stay standing and conscious. I keep saying “janoo parl paaahn fronsaay motherfucker” but he just keeps going. I’m standing there as he just keeps saying things and pointing in different directions. (at one point he made a “playing videogames” motion with his hands, I declined the offer). I’m trying to get angry or something so I can just slam the door, but Jean-Baptiste will make you cry cause his glasses are totally lame and he’s wearing shorts in the fucking winter. So I’m nauseous with pity and he keeps fucking talking and talking, so I start talking to him in German just saying stupid things hoping he’ll get bored. But he doesn’t. So like after 1 minute of that I start slowly closing the door and of course he’s like “momentmomentmoment” and then he starts pulling something out of his sad backpack and I’m like “great, I’m gonna get stabbed and miss my fucking train” It’s a bottle of champagne and I’m like “naaaaw, they’re doing homework” Then he asks for eggs or something and I’m like “naaaw, I made them all this morning” The entire time I’m closing the door more and more and he’s putting his fat fingers on the frame so that I can’t (guiltlessly). Then eventually I start to make out that he’s saying that he wants a kiss from poor fucking Agatha later, so then I actually got a little agitated said something cool like “yeah OK guy that’s not gonna happen, that’s not gonna happen Jean-Baptiste” and nudged him out of my life. Check ya later Jean-Baptiste you shit. (In retrospect I realize I shouldn’t be mean about Jean-Baptiste…he needs help and shit, but I think I just wanted to write “sad backpack”) So now we’re hanging out some more talking about what they can do about this fucking guy when I realize, its time to go.

I step out into the hall and call the elevator, then cue up my iPod for some traveling muzik. I gotta make it to Gare de l’Est and I have time to spare. My backpack is strapped, life is good – just as long as Jean-Baptiste doesn’t bludgeon the shit out of me in this dark hallway while I wait for the fucking elevator. Eventually I’m on the street with a pep in my step looking all cool and shit with my monstrous backpack – when it dawns on me that I left my goddamn camera upstairs. Whoops (aka FUUUUUUUUUUCK). A bit dramatic? No. I had JUST deleted the door code from my phone so I couldn’t buzz upstairs, no minutes to call them, and they’re on the sixth floor with the windows closed (can’t yell) So I hoof it down the street to a phone booth but the shits phone card only. Where do we go from here? I figure, I’m pretty charming and bewildered looking – so I fucking just start running up to strangers all panicked and shit and eventually some woman lets me use her phone (but you know how sometimes when someone asks you suddenly for help, you take a bit of pleasure to be able to do some random act of kindness shit – she wasn’t, she was just annoyed) Now its like 15 minutes later – I make it upstairs, find the shit, pack back up, hastily resay goodbye and then am quite literally running to the Metro. (before I started hustling though, I put on a song “My Friend Dario” by Vitalic and it made me run like 40 times faster (as planned), check it out) I make it to the Metro all sweaty and crazy looking. I’m honestly about 70% sure that I’m gonna miss the train entirely, and 100% sure that if I do, I’m gonna JUST make it, thereby not giving me any time to get some eats (im staaaaaaaaaarving) The train took fucking forever to show up, prolly the longest I’ve ever waited for a train in Paris. I’m pacing around on the platform and when the subway finally shows up, I have to change the music to something to get my mind off what’s going to happen when I miss my train. (Now we’re on MF Doom’s Mm…Food) I have one transfer and on both trains I have my head in my hands trying to focus on the lyrics while trying to do transcendental meditation to help me answer my question of why I haven’t been on time for anything including my own fucking birth. The entire time I refuse to look at a watch cause there isn’t shit I can do when I see that I have 2:34 minutes to transverse half the city. I get to Gare de l’Est finally and just start sprinting through the stop towards the platforms. I get to the top…what do I see? I made it with fucking 15 minutes to spare! I start smiling all cocky at the train station and shit, people are like “what’s with this asshole.” (Kon Karne is the song off the album that was playing so it was a tight arrival soundtrack)

I made a friend on the train, some chick from Köln, and kept our fellow passengers awake by talking about regional identities and linguistics (??) Ate breakfast at Stuttgart (the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) there is practically my second home) and rolled into Horb before school started so I hung out waiting for it to get unlocked. When Moy tapped me on the shoulder I was reading a book on a bench with a juice box and a pretzel.

That day there was a Fasching parade which was interesting I guess. I was completely out of it and tired and after like two beers I was ready for bed. The next day there was a planned Fasching party at our school but it turned out to be no-booze allowed with Herr Ost as DJ. He tried to get us to do games and shit on the dance floor but uhhhh…I’m quite literally too cool for school. After I got out in musical chairs, I practically sprinted downstairs to the bar to, as Carie put it ,“ slam a few while they play” That was a low point, although we had one of the better convos I’ve participated in on god and relig. Meanwhile, outside, it started snowing even harder. The party got cancelled (so depressing) and we went to the Witch Prison bar, henceforth called Hexengefängnis and had some laughs. I went to go eat dinner at Kirstin’s (she lives in like an inn with a restaurant at the bottom) and we had to wait fucking forever to get eats. By the time we got back to Hexen, everybody was walking back to the train station to take the night-taxis home. First what happened is that there was apparently not enough night taxis. We had to wait half an hour in what was officially now a blizzard freezing our balls off. Then when our driver finally showed up, he was furious and yelling about how his car is not “a winter car” and that he wasn’t driving us anywhere (we’d find out why this was the case soon enough) Naturally he’d have a riot on his hands because by now there were about 15 people all waiting at the station. When we finally hit the road, left town, and got into the hills I gave myself a 50/50 chance of getting to Talheim alive. You couldn’t see shit in front, we slid on nearly every turn, and at one point when we had to go uphill, the van wouldn’t even go into gear and started going up at about 5 miles per hour. The driver was fucking FURIOUS with everything, including everyone in the taxi, saying today was not a night to stay out, tonight was a night to stay at home with a bottle of wine. I thought he was going to drive all of us off a cliff, but then he radioed in and spent like 10 minutes screaming something in Turkish and after that was vented I guess. We made it to Talheim and trudged through the snow. I went to bed.

On Saturday we went to Konstanz on the Bodensee (or Constance on Lake Constance) This was a poor decision. When we got to Konstanz it was snowing so hard that you could only stare at the ground without getting mad snow in your eyes. We had a walking tour of the standard shit, the cathedral, important buildings, and the town is really gorgeous itself. At one point I stood out on a pier on the lake itself and looked out – it was just incredibly gray with the snow and it was a wall of whiteness as far as 500m out. There was this ominous atmosphere as the Bodensee is one of the new hotspots for H5N1 Avian Influenza and scattered everywhere throughout the water were these ducks floating around – its unsettling knowing somewhere in that whiteness there’s the same ducks but infected with this shit that may or may not take out millions of us if it decides to mutate. We warmed up in this pancakes restaurant where my friend Dario (like the song!) and Martín’s bourgeois asses got fucking steaks. At one point on the trip our feet were all completely soaked from the sleet so a few of us ducked into a Woolworths (yeah I guess they’re still around over here). I kindly and mysteriously asked for two plastic bags, changed into new socks, and then made a protective coating out of the plastic bags as my shoes were wet as shit. When we needed to warm up again we ducked into some bar and managed to catch part of the Bayern – HSV game (Bayern lost on their hometurf, word) When we got on the train back we were ready to get back to a warm bar and have ourselves a nice night like on Saturday…shaw right. Fucking’ the snow gets so bad at this point that a goddamn TRAIN can’t get by on the tracks or something. So they kick off in this tiny village near Rottweil (legend has it, home of the Rottweiler) where we have to wait in the snow for a bus to take us to Rottweil where we can resume with another train. Some douchebag closed the actual train station where the warmth and bathrooms are. Dario, Yoske, and I expressed our displeasure by pissing in the employee parking lot. Finally the (1) bus shows up already loaded with people. I smell a riot. There’s about 50 or more of us (basically an entire train) that’s expected to cram into a single coach bus. So first the bus starts unloading and mad tension starts breaking out as some asshole starts shoving people outside and yelling “we’re unloading with heavy luggage!” So some punks start yelling shit back. I guess he had a point as our trainload had started swarming towards the entrances, but it was fucking freezing and I couldn’t feel shit below my knees anymore. When we managed to push our way inside it was chaos, I loved it. Some guy who I’m almost sure didn’t work for either the trains or this bus was like trying to restore order or some shit and was making announcements. Thanks, guy. (Although he probably did prevent the bus from getting burned like some Paris 2005 type-shit.) When we got back on track in Rottweil we had to stand on a train filled with tons of characters. Dario started talking French with some big black guy in an awesome yellow/plaid blazer who was a professor. The Prof was traveling with this Canadian guy who was like “Antony” from “Antony and the Johnsons” gay. I tried to talk to him because they seemed like an interesting couple but he was like “oh my god I am SO tired sorry I can’t really talk.” Whatever. He just stared at his Diet Pepsi can for most of the train ride. Meanwhile Dario and Prof were taking it away in Francais. I just stood and listened to other people’s conversations. Boring.

Horb was not spared from this fucking storm. We ran to a doner joint as soon as possible to regroup and plan for the night. But it turns out the Night Express wasn’t even making most of its runs to a lot of villages, including homesweethome Talheim. Becky called her guestmother who said she’d try and make it down into town to pick us up but it’d have to be now before shit got really out of control. I was gonna say fuck the bars let me get into my bed, but Janka and another Hungarian showed up too and seeing as there wasn’t enough room I decided to pass up the ride and see where the night took me. Eventually Kirstin, Marina (Brazil), the Mexicans, and I bought a bunch of Beck’s and then hung out back at Marina and Kirstin’s. That was a blast because I got to bathe my feet in hot water and put on fresh socks, plus we told stoopit stories and laughed at Dario (aka Radio Ramiro) Later on we started talking politics with the themes of the Cuban embargo and Hiroshima/Nagasaki…

This was Rafa’s last night in Horb so we said goodbye. He left today I think for an internship in Heilbronn where Stefan is as well. Next week Moy leaves as well…fuck. We have till April until we move to Tübingen so I hope some other interesting fuckers fill up these slots – although filling up the abscesses that are now left in my heart will be more difficult. I spent the night in Horb in a half-delirious state – I had some mean stabbing sensations I’m guessing from walking around in cold feet all day and that shit incorporated itself into weird dreams. Then at like 4 in the morning some fuckers on the street started screaming football chants (FSV Stuttgart I think) and that was pretty unpleasant. I managed to grab a weekend cab relatively early in the morning and got home and passed out. I’ve been sitting here all day in the worth recuperating and trying to organize my life.

I still have no idea what to do after Tübingen but now I’ve got to try and organize it. I looked through some Fulbright shit today and I started shooting off some emails last week. My dream situation would be to find some relevant, PAID, work or research to do in either the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, or Bosnia. (Places where I don’t need a goddamn translator) Those would be ideal. We’ll see. What’s the point either way though, we’ll all be dead of bird flu in the next four months…either that or stationed on the front line 45 clicks west of Tehran.