Travels 1

So I must apologize for my extended radio silence. I had a busy May with two trips to Europa – one a frenetic work thing, and the other an all expenses paid ten day junket.

The work one was horribly hectic. Up early every day (in a cold sweat at around 5ish), and went to bed late every night (drinking overpriced drinks at the tacky “Rocks Bar” complete with imported American cabaret singer – but we were so isolated I had no choice). Particularly awkward moments included when our the Boss’s Boss referred to one of our Teutonic hosts as “Übergruppenfüher,” which we later discovered was a title reserved only for the SS, and later at another dinner when he compared Auschwitz to a certain current American prison camp. Some of our American friends at the meal looked like someone had taken a dump on their plate (maybe not the most eloquent turn of phrase that I have ever used – but very appropriate, trust me).

Another comical moment that occurs to me was when I was waiting around in the VIP lounge at the airport to greet our guests (I got to play concierge for the entire trip – I cannot tell you how old this trick got). A couple of our guests were sitting around waiting for their bags to be recovered (the service at the airport was extraordinary – not only did they literally meet you off the plane, they then brought you to a private lounge where you waited while someone got your bags, processed your outbound ticket and did all the customs parts that you would normally need to do) and were discussing their respective trips over. The American guest mentioned he had flown through Paris – the European talking to him was intrigued that there were no direct flights between Paris and Washington, and the American responded that he had had to do something in Paris for a few hours (the reason for the stopover was that I was trying to cut costs and put him on an indirect flight. Please see an earlier post on March 14th for more on that charming story). He made a rather pointed glare at me as he said this to the Euro.

[I am actually adding this later, as it occurred to me in the read-through – but the European in this story thought it would be a good idea to bring with him his two year old son and wife (the wife was older before you say anything). The child was not in the least a pain. It added to the serious atmosphere having him crying/bawling/screaming in the corner.]

[As another p.s. (if you will), later on that same day – in fact little after this conversation – Paris Hilton showed up and was hanging around the VIP lounge. I gawked suitably.]

Otherwise, it was an interesting experience. Went down Hitler’s bunker, and saw some pretty extraordinary views of the Bavarian Alps. A disconcerting side point is that all of the staff at the hotel were blonde – kinda creepy after a week and you realize that you have only seen blue eyes, blonde hair, and white skin (the token cabaret singer was the only person that could be described as non-caucasian – a creepy fact I’ll grant you).

The second trip was far more relaxing on my part – in terms that I did not have to organize it at all and simply had to show up. This was a trip organized to try to improve German-American relations that brought together a group of young Germans and Americans to travel around together to discuss transatlantic relations and specifically German-American relations. As a person usually organizing these things, this was a hugely liberating experience, as I could actually ask questions and contribute to the conversation (whether I did or not is a whole other matter). We were dragged from Berlin (where we met with people at the Chancellery, the Bundestag, and the Ministry of Defense), to the Multinational Corps North East base in Szczecin, to Brussels where we had meetings with people from DG External Relations and a dinner with the Hanns Seidel Foundation (for those who care, this is the CSU affiliate foundation, so you can guess as to how reasonable their politics are), then onto Bonn, with a brief stopover for a day to Cologne.

Now that I have given you the breakneck account of where I went, some detail as to what happened there. First, I should clarify that every meal was a protein-fest with sausage, meat, more sausage, and some swine thrown on top for good measure. Not a salad or piece of fresh fruit in site. This was all of course washed down with pints of light but filling German (or Belgian for our brief stop-over there) beer. And of course, it being asparagus season, white asparagus (even to the point of serving us asparagus ice cream at one point, which was surprisingly good).

The Berlin portion was interesting and relatively painless. The people we met were all relatively reasonable, except for a guy who was brought in as a stand in at the last minute, while he is a respected expert (in some people’s minds) he sounded as partisan and dense in person as he had in the past on paper. Still, it was good to have that perspective. It was also interesting to see which of my American colleagues really bought into him. I will go into substantive detail about the whole trip once I decide exactly what I am going to try to write as a result of it.

The culmination of the Berlin visit was a stopover in a military base in Potsdam. The officer who was meant to greet us was called away so we were briefed by a junior officer who had been commanded to carry this order out a few minutes before and a second in command of the base to answer our questions whose grasp of the situation was less than impressive.

Anyway, onto Szczecin (my first trip into Eastern Europe so I was excited). Once there, we were settled into the Radisson (it proved to be the nicest hotel on our trip – an amusing fact given the lack of character in any of the rest of the city which seemed to be a mass of large flavorless cement blocks. Well, I exaggerate, there were some nice places on the waterfront – but my point is really that we were in East Europe and this is where we found our nicest hotel).

After a day at the Multinational HQ, we were given free reign of the town. One of our American guests decided to run with this idea and was apparently lost first by the group he was with, and then by the German who had managed to track him down. Finally, our German friend gave up on trying to find him to take him back to the hotel, and came back to discover the gentleman vomiting out of a cab. He promptly didn’t make it to the bus the next morning and acted rather sheepish for the rest of trip. He was absolutely mortified and kept apologizing to our military hosts who were suitably moody about this. Others developed some theories about what happened to him that I won’t go into here.

At this point, I am going to leave it for today. It grows late, I should go to the gym, and then home. More tomorrow maybe. The Brussels segment in particular is going to be real fun.