Switzerland

 

It was mid-August of 1990.  After a week in Italy it was time for my girlfriend Lona and I to head to the next country:  Switzerland.  Using our Eurail passes we boarded an overnight train from Venice to Zurich.  We tried to sneak into a sleeper car and that lasted all of 10 minutes before we got booted back into the regular seats.  We arrived in Zurich on a bright sunny morning but had not slept that well on the uncomfortable, bumpy train.  We were tired, but nervously excited to be in a new country and looked forward to checking it out.  We exchanged our Italian Lira for Swiss Francs at a bank and then made our way to a youth hostel.

 

As we were unpacking our stuff and settling in at the hostel we ran into another pair of travelers from the United States.  A brother and sister from Ohio who had been in Europe for awhile and were heading back home the next day.  They were extremely friendly and in addition to giving us tips about cool places to go in Europe, they gave us their ‘Let’s Go Europe’ book!  We had religiously used our ‘Let’s Go Greece’ book for the 4 months we were in Greece, but once we left Greece for Italy and then Switzerland we were winging it…not really sure where we were going or what we were doing.  We were ecstatic to be armed with the new friendly book packed with knowledge and tips.  We pored over it for information on Zurich, and then again that night making plans for the rest of the 3 weeks that our Eurail passes were good for.  After spending our first day in Zurich exploring the city’s museums and other attractions, we decided to spend the following day in Lucerne, Switzerland.

 

Lucerne was only about an hour train ride from Zurich so we decided to make a day trip of it.  We would get up early, spend the day and come back that night.  We got to this beautiful city on the shore of Lake Lucerne about mid-morning and set out to explore its sights.  First we checked out the Church of St. Leodegar, a beautiful building with huge twin towers that was built in 1633.  Then we checked out the old rocky walls of ‘Old Town Lucerne’ which is on the hills in the woods above Lucerne.  We climbed along the walls and visited the eight watch-towers along the way.  We eventually found the famous carving of a dying lion carved into a rock wall in a little park.  This carving was made to commemorate hundreds of Swiss Guards who were killed in 1792 during the French Revolution.

 

By mid-afternoon we were hungry and tired so we decided to see our last site before having dinner and getting on the train back to Zurich.  We slowly walked across the famous Chapel Bridge to the other side of the Reuss River.  The Chapel Bridge is a 669 foot long wooden covered bridge that was built in 1333.  Inside the bridge were a bunch of paintings done in the 1600’s showing events from the city’s history.  Exactly three years after we were there most of the bridge and its paintings were burned up in a fire that was started by a cigarette.  How does a kickass wooden bridge withstand 750 years of Swiss winters and wars and god knows what else and get taken down by a cigarette?  Very sad.  It was rebuilt, but I feel fortunate that we got to see the original bridge before some dumbass destroyed it.

 

When we got to the other side we found a cool little café/bar type place right on the banks of the river looking out over the bridge and the city.  Perfect.  We ordered a bunch of food and the beers started flowing.  We had several hours to kill before our train back to Zurich that evening, so we settled in and kept ordering drinks.  We were celebrating our freedom and the fact that we were in freaking Switzerland in this beautiful little city in the middle of nowhere.  We had no idea where we were going to live or what we were going to do when we got back to the United States, but we didn’t care.  We were here and we were happy and for the time being we didn’t have a care in the world.

 

Granted we had no place to sleep that night but we would figure it out.  Our backpacks were stored at a locker in the train station.  Our vague plan was that when we got back to Zurich we would catch an overnight train from there to some other city in Europe...maybe Innsbruck or Vienna.  It was a good plan, but unfortunately the plan did not include getting hammered in Lucerne.  We just kept ordering more and more drinks and after a couple hours we were both completely wasted.

 

To be honest I do not even remember getting on a train.  The next thing I do remember was waking up in complete, total, absolute darkness.  Overwhelming blackness and complete disorientation.  Where am I?  What time is it?  What day is it?  What city am I in?  What country am I in?  I literally had no idea what the f*ck was going on.  I heard soft breathing next to me.  Oh yeah, I’m in Europe with Lona!  Is that her??  Oh god I hope it’s her.  I was slumped over in some sort of worn leather seat.  I reached out into the blackness to touch this person next to me and she grunted and woke up.  Lona!  It’s you!  Where are we?  What’s going on?  Are you still as drunk as I am?  Then slowly the memories of Lucerne came back to us.  The walls, the lion, the bridge, the café…and the beers.  Okay, we remembered where we were, but where were we now?  We sat up and could make out a faint line of light coming through the bottom of a window next to us.  The shade was drawn.  Wait a minute, we are on a train!  But it’s not moving.  “Hello! Hello!” we shouted but quickly realized we were all alone.

 

The shades were drawn, the lights were out and the train was completely abandoned.  I pulled up the shade next to us and we looked out.  We were in a train yard.  It was pitch black out and there were tons of dark, empty trains sitting on various tracks all around us.  This was kind of scary.  Again, where were we?  What city?  Were we locked in this train?  What should we do?  Sleep on the train and figure it out whenever it got light out?  No, we had to figure this sh*t out now.  We could be in Russia for all we knew.  Lucerne felt like it was light-years ago, but we were still pretty buzzed so it must have only been hours ago.  We opened up more shades to get some light in the train and then we felt our way to the end of the car.  We managed to slide the door open and jumped down to the rocky train yard below.  We looked around and it was dark and quiet.  Nobody was around.  What should we do?

 

It was tough to see much of anything being surrounded by all those trains, but off to our left it appeared to be the brightest.  It looked like the downtown of a large city a mile or two away.  Was that Zurich?  Please let it be Zurich with our backpacks safely tucked away in the train station we thought.  We started walking down the tracks towards the light, the city.  It wasn’t easy walking, especially in our condition, but we eventually made it to the train station and our spirits brightened considerably when we saw the big ‘ZURICH’ sign above the tracks on the entrance to the station.  We found some stairs up to the platform and it was pretty much abandoned other than a few stragglers wandering around.  We spotted a clock and found that it was almost 2 am.  What should we do?  It didn’t look like any more trains were running, and we were in no condition to try and catch one if we wanted to.

 

I remembered reading about ‘Needle Park’.  A park where drug use was decriminalized and addicts could exchange their dirty needles for clean ones.  Drugs were still technically illegal in Switzerland, but in this particular park the cops wouldn’t touch you.  We didn’t have or want to do any drugs, but I had read it was right next to the train station.  I figured we could go there and sleep for a few hours and decide our next step in the morning.  The train station was connected to some sort of an indoor mall complex.  As we walked from the station into the windowless mall (were we underground?) we started coming across more and more people shuffling around in a stupor.  They looked like the walking dead.  Zombies.  Emotionless, expressionless faces.  Pale white skin, dirty hair and filthy torn clothes.  Some were nodding off while standing up, some passed out on the ground, and many of them had fresh or dried blood on their arms or necks.

 

We were not underground and when we found an exit I looked out into the park and there were hundreds of them...all over the place.  The park was alive with the walking dead.  No way we are going out there in the middle of the night.  I ushered Lona back in to the relative ‘safety’ of the mall and decided we would sleep in there.  We tried to find an out-of-the-way place, but not too out of the way where we could get mugged.  The heroin addicts were everywhere though.  It was like an indoor-Needle Park.

 

We found the wall of a closed shop to lean on and we slept back-to-back.  We were both drunk, tired, dirty, and my hope was that we would blend in and look like a couple of passed out junkies and the real junkies would leave us alone.  I think that helped, but I didn’t really get any sleep that night as I did not feel like I could safely close my eyes and not pay attention to what was happening around us.

 

Basically what was happening was that while Lona slept leaning on the wall and my back, I kept handing out cigarettes to people who would wander up, stop and ask if I had spare cig.  Luckily I had a couple of packs so I would hand a cigarette to the poor lost soul, maybe light it for him or her, and then they would shuffle off.  It was sad and horrible to see these kids so completely hopelessly lost in this terrible world.  It seemed like they were already dead, and they were just waiting for their bodies to realize it and stop working.  It was one of the saddest things I had seen in my 24 years of life.

 

By 6 am I had almost run out of cigarettes, but the zombies had started to thin out and the real world had started to wake up and move about so I woke up Lona.  We walked back to the train station, got our backpacks, dug out our new ‘Let’s Go Europe’ book and planned our next move.  We decided we’d definitely had enough of Zurich and boarded a train for Innsbruck.  Austria would be our next country and the subject of a future blog…stay tuned.

Karl's Song

Karl Bremer said that he always felt better when he had tickets in hand for the ‘next’ concert, whatever that concert may be.  Well…as of 4:20 pm today Karl has tickets in hand for the greatest concert in the world with Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, George Harrison, Dave Ray…all of his favorites are there and I am sure Karl will be right up front dancing away with his eyes half-closed and that big grin of his plastered on his up-turned face.  Save us a spot on the rail Karl and we will join you when we get there.

 

The following song written by Bruce Springsteen is entitled “Terry’s Song”, but it could just as easily be called “Karl’s Song”:

 

 

Well they built the Titanic to be one of a kind, but many ships have ruled the seas
They built the Eiffel Tower to stand alone, but they could build another if they please
Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt, are unique I suppose
But when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now the world is filled with many wonders under the passing sun
And sometimes something comes along and you know it's for sure the only one
The Mona Lisa, the David, the Sistine Chapel, Jesus, Mary, and Joe
And when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

When they built you, brother, they turned dust into gold
When they built you, brother, they broke the mold

They say you can't take it with you, but I think that they're wrong
'Cause all I know is I woke up this morning, and something big was gone
Gone into that dark ether where you're still young and hard and cold
Just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now your death is upon us and we'll return your ashes to the earth
And I know you'll take comfort in knowing you've been roundly blessed and cursed
But love is a power greater than death, just like the songs and stories told
And when she built you, brother, she broke the mold

That attitude's a power stronger than death, alive and burning her stone cold
When they built you, brother

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-BJcBPA-wQ

Karl Bremer

I am going to visit my friend Karl Bremer tomorrow at his house in Stillwater, MN where he lives with his sweet, beautiful wife Chris.  She is a cancer survivor.  Karl may not be.  This is the saddest thing I have ever written about and may be the saddest visit of my life.  But I love Karl and I am looking forward to seeing him tomorrow and telling him that I love him.

 

Karl Bremer is the most tenacious guy I know who never ever gives up, so in December of 2011 when he told me about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer I was of course horrified, but my first thought was that if there was anybody in the world who can beat this, it is Karl.  I have always said that Karl is like one of those little dogs pulling on your pant leg, shaking his head and growling and never letting go or giving up.  I am sure that Michelle Bachmann can attest to this as Karl has been dogging that nutjob for most of her political career.  His cancer diagnosis phased me, but I wasn't too worried as I just assumed he would beat it.  He said in no uncertain terms that he would beat it and I had no choice but to believe him.

Karl is a fun-loving prankster who takes great joy in seeing justice being done, but if it was done in a funny or mischievous way then all the better.  He once told me the story of a restaurant he visited on vacation where the BLT he ordered had an extremely inadequate supply of bacon on it.  He asked the waitress what the deal was and asked for more bacon and was rudely declined.  Upon leaving he duly noted the address of the establishment.  When he got home from his vacation he proceeded to mail them some raw bacon, taking care to mail it on a Friday so that it would take an extra day to get there and be plenty ripe upon arrival.  I believe he even made this an annual thing, mailing them bacon every year on the anniversary of him being slighted on his BLT.

 

Like myself and most of our friends, music is one of the most important things in the world to us.  It is the beginning and the catalyst of many of our friendships.  For the last two decades that I have known him, Karl and I have seen countless hours of incredible music together.  The first time I met him was at a Radiators concert at a bar in Minneapolis, MN called The Quest.  I had been in awe of him up to that point, not knowing exactly who he was but I had read his many decisive, valid and fascinating posts on an online music chatline called 'Heatgen'.  When I finally figured out who he was I timidly went up to him, introduced myself, and he gave me a big smile and a handshake and I felt like we were instant friends.

 

Since that night we have seen a lot of cool shit together...from the countless great bands we see on our annual trek to the Jazzfest every spring in New Orleans, to all of the incredible music every summer at the Bayfront Blues Festival in Duluth, MN, and of course all of the amazing Radiator concerts in between.  Many of these Radiator concerts as well as other musicians and bands were performed at Karl's house.  Outdoor summer shows and benefit concerts in Karl and Chris's backyard at their beautiful log-cabin in the woods in Stillwater, MN as well as intimate indoor shows in their livingroom.  Some of the best times and best memories of my life have been at this wonderful place, the 'Stoned-Bridge Saloon' he calls it, and I will be forever grateful to have been a part of these incredible parties.

 

Although the Radiators have always been the nucleus of our friendship, over the years we have seen (and not seen) some other great concerts together as well.  One of the best concerts of my life was with Karl at a show in St. Paul, MN on Bruce Springsteen's summer 2006 Seeger Sessions tour.  It absolutely blew us both away and I will always remember Karl dancing and stomping and clapping away throughout most of the show, but especially during the 'Rag Mama Rag' encore.

 

The concert we did NOT see together was at the same venue in the summer of 2009 for an Eric Clapton concert.  I had stupidly tried to buy tickets from what turned out to be a Craigslist scammer for $100.  When we got to the venue, there were no tickets, but Karl graciously offered to split the loss and gave me $50.  It was not at all expected, but Karl insisted.  He was then determined to mail some bacon to the bitch who screwed us, but she ended up getting caught and is now sitting in jail so the bacon was not necessary.

 

I got to pay Karl back in some small measure last summer when the two of us went to see Crosby, Stills & Nash in Minneapolis.  I was able to get a pair of great floor seats from a girl at work who won them on the radio and sold them to me for $100, so I picked Karl up and we had a blast.  As with every great band in the world, Karl has seen them many times and he told me great stories of seeing them back in the 70's.  We enjoyed a couple beers during the terrific show and joked around with the girls next to us...it was a wonderful night that I will always treasure in my memory banks.

 

The last concert I saw with Karl was at the Malone Brothers in Shakopee, MN this past Halloween.  It was the Krewe Of DAD's annual costume ball, a party that the Krewe has been throwing every year since the mid-eighties.  Karl has always been a huge participant in the Krewe's activities, which in addition to the annual Halloween party included numerous other parties throughout the years.  Most of them with the Radiators as the house band, and like I said more than a few of them at Karl's house.  After months and months of chemotherapy Karl's body has been weakened by the treatments, but our stubborn hippie has never lost his long hair or his big smile.  I will always remember a costumed Karl dancing and pumping his fist in the air with his face turned up, eyes half-closed, and that huge smile on his face.  He only stood for a couple songs and had to sit for the rest of the concert, but that memory of him dancing that night will be with me for the rest of my life.

Karl also has a blog, entitled 'Ripple In Stillwater' and can be found at http://www.rippleinstillwater.com/.  My blog is just for fun, whereas Karl's is an important, award-winning journalist blog that like most things he does makes the world a better place.  Out of the blue a month or two ago Karl sent me an email telling me that he liked my blog and enjoyed reading it every time a new story came out.  Coming from someone I respect so much, that meant a lot to me and I saved the email.

As a published and accomplished author, a professional journalist, a terrific cook, a skilled photographer, and a fearless and relentless political rabble-rouser you have influenced me and countless others Karl.  Your writings, your photographs, your words, your sense of humor, your love of live and your friendship will always be a part of me and who I am.  Thank you for everything you have given me and the world.  We are all better off for knowing you and loving you.  See you tomorrow my friend and forever after.

Carlos Santana - 6/30/10

With what has become an annual end-of-year tradition, I just sent a yearly text to my old friend B-Dog about the time we got to go backstage at a Santana concert.  Here is what I wrote this year:  “Another great year buddy.  Lots of good times, but still nothing will ever compare to the 2010 backstage party at Santana!  You know what they say…if you can remember a backstage Santana party then you weren’t there!”

 

Allow me to elaborate.  It was the night of June 30^th, 2010 when Carlos Santana was playing the opening night of his 2010 tour at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, MN.  Over the years I have seen Santana many times in various venues ranging from as small as the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco to as large as the outdoor Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee, but I have never been to a show of his that was that sparsely attended.  The Xcel Center is not as big as the Marcus Amphitheater, but at 18,000 seat capacity it is still pretty large and there was not even close to half that many people at the show.  I was not planning to go that night because tickets were expensive and I had seen him enough times, but about a month earlier they were running a one-day special selling lower-level tickets for $8!  Plus Steve Winwood was opening and I could not pass on that deal so I made a few phone calls to see who was all up for going, bought myself a ticket and made plans to go with B-Dog.

 

Our original seats were in the back corner of the lower level, but for the Steve Winwood opening set there were tons of empty seats so we moved over to the middle of the arena closer to the stage.  Steve put on a great show and I got to hear some of my favorites from his expansive musical history, including ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’ and ‘Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys’ before he closed with ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy’ and ‘Gimme Some Lovin’.  We had stopped our seat upgrading there thinking the seats would fill up for Santana.  But no there were still an unbelievable number of empty seats so for the Santana set we just waltzed right up to the section next to the stage, down to about the 10^th row and we had almost the entire row to ourselves for the rest of the night…it was awesome.

 

My friends Mitch Manson, Thor Ekblom, Ernie Haskell, Karl Rimer and Jenni Benton were all there, but I went with B-Dog and hung out with him for the night.  Mitch and Thor came together and they were a couple rows in front of us, but Thor was super drunk so Mitch came up to our seats a few times to get away from the mighty Thor.  It was a great show though and Carlos was on fire right from the opening song ‘(Da Le) Yaleo’ till he closed with the Chambers Brothers ‘Love, Peace and Happiness’ into ‘Freedom’.  I kind of felt the same way I do whenever I see one of the great icons of rock and roll…I had the feeling that I was seeing history and I had a few goose-bump moments.  That sense of nostalgia was especially strong when the backdrop screen would show images of a young Carlos Santana 40 years earlier in concert.  The current Carlos was onstage playing along with that 22 year old Carlos at Woodstock.  It was a fun show and to top it off B-Dog scored a pair of backstage passes during the show from two hot chicks he knew.  B-Dog is a downtown Minneapolis bartender and is well connected so I was not surprised, but I was ecstatic that I was going to get to party backstage with Carlos-freaking-Santana!  F*ck yeah!

 

I spent the remainder of the concert trying to think of what I would say to Carlos.  I figured I would play it cool, ask him about the upcoming album he had coming out, and I would name drop my friend Brandon Byers who knows Santana because he used to run his merchandise.  So after the show we waited down by the side of the stage for awhile...probably 15 of us with our passes.  Finally most of the arena had cleared out and the big-shot band-manager approached our group and gave us a speech about what to expect.  In addition to self-importance the guy was also obsessed with safety and he kept stressing for us to watch out for roadies loading out heavy equipment and to stick close to him and we would be okay.  Ok dude. 

So when he was finally done with his big speech he led us through a Spinal Tap-like maze of corridors and elevators and passageways until we eventually made it to a small conference room with a few empty tables and chairs.  The guy ushered us in, pointed to a huge floor-to-ceiling refrigerator with big glass doors and said:  "Come on in, relax, have a few drinks (points to the fridge), and the band will be here in a bit."  I greedily look over to the fridge ready to pounce on a nice cold beer, but all that was in there were 3 diet Cokes and a diet Pepsi.  What?  Is this a joke?  I had been to a few backstages in my life and this was nothing like I was used to.  No food, no real beverages, no nothing.  Ah well, at least we would get to meet Santana and his band.

 

We all stood there for about a half hour...staring at each other, making small talk, expectantly looking at the door whenever we heard a noise.  But nothing happened.  A couple of people came and went but no Santana or any band members.  It was starting to get embarrassing.  I told B-Dog we should just get the hell out of there, that I have to work in the morning.  But B-Dog stalled, and then decided to spark up a bowl...the whole place reeked like weed now.  People were leaving, including the two hot chicks who had slipped away unnoticed.  Finally one of the singers walked in.  We said hi and I talked World Cup soccer with him for a minute...bummer about Mexico's loss to Argentina, etc.  I offered him a toke from B-Dog’s pipe but he declined.  Then another singer walked in.  We said hi.  We offered him a toke.  No thanks.  Then some other dude came in who must have been with the band but I didn't recognize him.  He remarked that the sound onstage had sucked that night, further depressing us.

 

Then they quickly left and that was it.  B-Dog still didn't want to leave.  Dude, seriously.  We have been had…duped…made fools of.  Carlos Santana is never ever going to come into this room.  The two chicks that gave us our passes had long since left and were probably hanging out with Santana in the real backstage while we stand around like a couple of chumps in this horrible place.  Let’s just go before the manager guy comes back and throws us out.  I finally convinced him to leave, so then we went back to the bar down the street where we had met before the show.  We hooked up there with another friend who had gotten bored waiting for us and left the arena.  B-Dog ordered us all drinks and I eventually made it home around 1am not looking forward to the 5am wake-up for work.  It was still a great night though…we had perfect seats a few feet from the stage for $8 to see a couple of pioneers of 60’s rock and roll.  But:  worst...backstage...ever.

Parking Ramp Blues

It was the winter of 1985/86.  I was in my very first car, a 1972 Dodge Charger that I had bought the previous summer.  I kept it parked in a student ramp a couple blocks away from the Pioneer Hall dorm that I lived in at the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.  I could not afford the monthly parking fee, so I forged a parking pass out of some sturdy orange construction paper and carefully applied it to the inside of my back left window like all the other cars in the lot.  One cold snowy night me, my roommate Mark Smith and my friend Chris Galanos were going to a party so we walked over to the ramp to get in my car and head out.

I was parked on the very top level and we all piled in.  I started the car and backed out to begin the long winding journey down to street level.  Just as I finished backing up and put it in to ‘drive’, I looked up and saw in my rear-view mirror a cop pulling up behind me.  Cops make me nervous on general principle, but I didn’t think they were there to bust me for the fake parking pass so I just proceeded on.  As we were slowly winding our way down the seemingly never-ending levels of ramps with the cop right on my ass, I happened to notice a speed-limit sign in there that said ‘5 MPH’.  Really?  Isn’t that about the speed of a fast walk?  I joked to Mark and Chris how wouldn’t it be funny if I got a ticket for speeding in a parking ramp?  We laughed, and after awhile we finally made it down to street level.

I put on my left turn signal, started the turn onto Washington Avenue and the instant my car hit the street the cop hits the lights/siren.  What?!  What did I do??  Were they going to get me for the fake pass?  Why wouldn’t they have done that in the ramp?  If not that, were they going to see that it was fake when they approached my car with the flashlight?  I nervously pulled over to the right and awaited my fate.

An angry female cop cautiously approached my car, flashlight in left hand, right hand resting on her gun.  I could tell she was angry because she had this miserable look on her face like she would like nothing better in the world than for me to make a sudden move so she could shoot me.  She got to my rolled down window, shined the light in my eyes, Mark’s eyes, Chris’s eyes, back to my eyes, and then started yelling.  “Do you know how fast you were going?!”  What?  Seriously??  I started laughing because she couldn’t possibly be serious.  That really pissed her off though.  She repeated her question with a pained grimace on her face like she hated me.  I couldn’t figure out why she was so mad at me.  “No.” I said.  “I do not know how fast I was going.  Do you?  Do you have me on radar or something?”

“No!” she said. “But I know it was faster than 5 mph!”  Despite my better judgment I started laughing again and told her that this is ridiculous.  I told her I knew that she was behind me and I was purposely going slow for that reason.  She stared at me, burning holes into my skull with her eyes, and then told me she was going to have me arrested and take me downtown if I gave her any more excuses.  “Do you want that?!” she yelled.  I shook my head in amazement, silently gave her my license and she stalked back to her car in a huff.  After awhile she came back and handed me a $100 speeding ticket.  My jaw dropped and I looked at it in disbelief.  Then for good measure, after the shock of that ticket had set in she triumphantly handed me another $19 ticket for ‘Obstructed View’.  I had a medical IV hanging from my review mirror.  My mom is a nurse and she had an extra IV bag attached to some tubing and I thought it looked cool so I took it and hung it from my mirror.  The bag was low though, not obstructing anything so the only thing that was remotely ‘obstructing’ was the thin little plastic tube.  $119 this bitch was running me up for.  I could not believe it.  She pulled away and the three of us just stared at each other.  Did that really happen?

I decided I was NOT going to pay for those tickets without a fight, so following the instructions on the back of the ticket I called up the Hennepin County Government Center and made a court date.  I was not looking forward to seeing this chick in person again, but I wanted her to have to prove I was speeding.  If anything the judge would get a good laugh out of it and at least lower my fine.  So about a month later I went down to the courthouse for my court date.  I got in line to check in and when I finally got up to the teller she took down my information, frowned, told me to hang on a minute, and then came back about 5 minutes later with a cop.  They informed me that they have a warrant out for my arrest because I had missed my court date and they were going to arrest me.  What?!  I whipped out my pink slip of paper they had mailed me with my court date on it and checked the date to make sure.  I was here on the right date and time.  What are they talking about??  She took the paper and they stared at it for a minute and then the cop walked away.  They had made a mistake and entered the date wrong in the computer.  So she made me a new court date, gave me a new pink slip of paper, and I went home.

About a month later I went down to the courthouse for my new court date.  I got in line to check in and when I finally got up to the teller she took down my information, frowned, told me to hang on a minute, and then came back about 5 minutes later with a cop.  They informed me that they have a warrant out for my arrest because I had missed my court date and they were going to arrest me.  What?  Again?!  I whipped out my pink slip of paper with my court date on it and checked the date to make sure.  I was here on the right date and time.  How could this be happening again??  She took the paper and they stared at it for a minute and then the cop walked away.  They had entered the date wrong in the computer again.  So she made me a new court date, gave me a new pink slip of paper, and I went home.

So about a month later I went back to the courthouse, scared now that I was going to be arrested for god knows what.  I got in line, and lo and behold there was not a warrant out for my arrest this time.  She told me the court room number and I went down the hall to my room and sat down with the 50 or so other people in there.  I did not see the lady cop.  I was told she would have to be there.  Would she come later?  I waited for them to call my name.  And I waited.  And I waited.  I was there for 3 or 4 hours and finally there was just me and one other person left.  The judge called the other person’s name.  Seriously?  I was going to be the last one?  After the judge finished up with that person he got up and started to walk out of the courtroom.  “Wait!” I shouted. “What about me??”  I ran up to him and handed him my pink slip of paper.  He looked at it for a second and then informed me that I was in the wrong courtroom.  “You are in room# 312.  You need to be down the hall in room# 317.”

Oh no!  Shit!  I might actually miss my court date for real this time!  I thanked him, grabbed the piece of paper and ran out of the room and down the hall as fast as I could.  I ran through the new courtroom door, looked around, and it was almost empty.  The judge in this room was just getting up to walk out so I ran up to him, explained that I had been in the wrong room, apologized, and asked if he could do my case now.  He sensed my desperation, looked at his watch and nodded for me to go ahead.  It was just me and him and he seemed like a nice guy so I told him the whole story…everything from the cop busting me for speeding in a parking ramp, the IV bag, the warrants for my arrest…right up to being in the wrong courtroom.  I was encouraged by the fact that he had an amused smile on his face the whole time I was talking.  When I finished my story he took the original ticket from me, told me that it was better to be late than never (noting that at least I had showed up whereas the cop had not)…so I won.  Yes!  All’s well that ends well.  The whole ordeal was a monstrous pain in the ass, but at least I didn’t have to pay the $119 and I got the last laugh.

Smoking In The Girls Room

 

 

A few days ago I was at a pizza parlor with my family plowing through a large, extra-cheesy, thin-crust sausage pizza.  Suddenly my 3 year old daughter Autumn announced that she had to go pottie.  I said I would take her since my wife Nadia was busy trying to get our 1 year old son Jack to eat something…anything.  The kid hates eating and just wants to run around all the time.  So I followed my daughter through the maze of tables back to where the bathrooms were.  I tried the men’s handle.  It was unlocked so we walk in and Autumn runs over to the toilet ready to pounce on it.  “WAIT!” I yelled out in horror.  “Don’t touch anything!”  It was a nasty, disgusting mess.  The seat was up, there was pee all over everything, and it looked like it had not been flushed since the Clinton administration.  Autumn is still oblivious to the notion of what is ‘gross’ or not.  If I had not stopped her she would have run right over and plopped her little bottom down on that wretched and defiled throne of filth.

 

I quickly ushered her out of that hellhole and decided to try the women’s room.  Chicks have to sit down so it just had to be better than the men’s toilet that had been ruined by the pigs next door.  I gingerly tried the handle.  It was open, so I took a quick glance around and jumped in the room with Autumn.  Sure enough the seat was down and dry and I hoisted her up and let her do her thing.  Then came a knock on the door.  “Just a minute!”  I said in a high girly voice, hoping the lady would go away.  After washing Autumn up I cautiously opened the door and peeked out.  Yep, the middle-aged woman was still standing there and she give me a surprised look that turned into a nasty look, which then turned into a somewhat understanding look when she saw Autumn at my feet.  I gave her a raised-eyebrow shrug and squeezed past her in the tiny bathroom/hallway out into the freedom of the pizza parlor.  This brief encounter in the women’s room then got me thinking about all of the other times I have been in a women’s room for one reason or another.

 

Not including all the times as a humiliated young boy when my mom would drag me into public bathrooms with her to keep me safe from the evils of men’s rooms, my earliest trip into the ladies room was at 4H camp in the Wisconsin Dells when I was about 13 years old.  I was just entering the wondrous and confusing world of puberty.  I did not know how to make out with a girl, but I knew I really wanted to.  Luckily for me there was a pretty, and already well endowed girl there named Kelly Waldorf who was my age and seemed like she was into me.  Our first night there all of the grownups were hanging out around the main campfire so me and Kelly and the rest of the kids decided to play ‘Truth Or Dare’.   You know the game…where you go around the circle and take turns asking someone:  “Truth or dare?”.  But where should we play?  We decided the girl’s camp bathroom/shower was large enough to hold all 10 of us and would work just fine.  After getting a few inevitable but informative ‘truths’ out of the way (“Do you think so-and-so is cute?”, etc…), we eventually got around to the much funner ‘dares’ (“I dare you to kiss so-and-so for 15 seconds.”)  This is the greatest game ever in the history of the world I thought!  I got to kiss one girl who was a couple of years younger than me, but what I really wanted was to kiss Kelly.

 

Finally it happened and the two of us were ‘dared’ to kiss for 20 seconds!  We stood up and I leaned in with my lips pursed, clueless, and then a wonderful strange thing happened…she stuck her tongue in my mouth!  Instant pubescent boner.  I stuck my butt out so our middle parts weren’t touching anymore, but it was apparent through my shorts and I was sure she had felt it…but she kept on kissing me!  I struck back with my tongue in earnest.  I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt good and it felt right and I was in heaven.  Right in the middle of a kissing session with Kelly though an older lady walked in.  Total buzz kill.  The first thing she saw was Kelly and I with our tongues down each other’s throats and she let out a gasp and started yelling at us…all of us…telling us to get the hell out of the women’s room.  I started to run out but she grabbed my arm and led me back to where the parents were and promptly reported me to Kelly’s dad and told him exactly what she had seen.  He gave me a stern look, but in the end the parents nervously laughed it off.  Kids making out in the girl’s bathroom…somewhat troubling but not the end of the world.  I was kept away from Kelly though and there was no more kissing to be had on that trip.  Totally sucked, but to this day it was still one of the greatest, most thrilling nights of my life…French kissing a real girl for the first time.

 

Another incident I had in a girl’s bathroom was in the mid-90’s when I was working at WPS Insurance in Madison, WI.  It was a crappy place to work, but it is where I had met many of my lifelong friends including Mitch Manson, Brad & Erin Pronger, Daddy, Bonnie & Clyde, Derrick and Charlotte Goetz, Glenn Kampson, and Lauren Hatch.  One day Charlotte and I were talking in the hallway, heading back to our workspace, and as we passed the women’s room Charlotte interrupted our conversation to announce that she had to step in for a minute.  I wanted to finish what I was saying so I said “Fine” and stepped into the bathroom with her, in plain view of the 20 or 30 people manning the phones in our work station.  She looked at me funny but we continued the conversation for about a minute until one of the VP’s of the company happened to walk in.  She looked at me.  She looked at Charlotte.  She frowned.  I mumbled some unintelligible apology and ran out of there.  From his seat about 20 feet away Mitch was laughing his ass off as I headed for my desk.  About 5 minutes later I was called into the ‘Office’ with the VP and a Union Rep for an interrogation.  In the few years that I had worked at this place I had gotten into so much trouble that this was the very least of my infractions, but they wanted to know why I was in there and if I understood that it was wrong.  I had no idea why I went in there with Charlotte, but yes I understood that it was wrong so I let them scold me for awhile and I promised that I would never ever do it again and they let me go.

 

But it happened again.  About 6 or 7 years ago I went to see a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game with Ernie Hagen at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis.  We both have season tickets.  Ernie’s tickets are kickass courtside seats that cost a fortune whereas my tickets are crappy upper-deck seats that cost next to nothing…they are basically just to get me in the arena.  Ernie’s dad was using Ernie’s tickets that night so we were in the upper deck using my tickets.  Ernie was not impressed with the view.  After about 10 minutes he announced that he needed to get high, so we went out in the hallway to find a place.  The Wolves were not doing very well that year so there was hardly anyone in the upper deck.  We went in to the nearest bathroom and Ernie told me to keep watch while he took a couple of hits off his pinch-hitter.

 

There was no-one in the bathroom.  Ernie selected the end stall farthest away from the door to toke up in.  I don’t smoke weed anymore so I was standing along the row of stalls with nothing to do so I decided to take a leak.  I turned around to pee in a urinal…but…there wasn’t any.  What the f*ck?  It was a large bathroom and I thought maybe they were tucked around a corner or something so I looked left, right…nothing.  No urinals.  This was the stupidest men’s room I have ever been in I thought.  Just then someone walked in so I turned towards Ernie’s stall and gave him the old “cough, cough” signal for him to be cool.  Then I turned to look at the intruder and…it was a chick!  Oops, she must have accidentally came in the wrong bathroom.  I felt sorry for her so I smiled and gave her that unspoken tilted-head nod that says:  “Ah well, mistakes happen.”  But she didn’t blush and turn around and run out.  No.  She just stood there staring at me with this weird look on her face.  She was glued to her spot, unwilling to advance but not retreating.  I stood there, waiting for her to leave, extremely confused by her demeanor.

 

Suddenly the light bulb went on.  This wasn’t the stupidest men’s room in the world.  We were the stupidest men in the world because this was a women’s room!  Duhh.  That’s why there were no urinals and that’s why this lady didn’t leave after seeing me in there.  I quickly ran over to Ernie’s stall and in a hurried hushed voice I said:  “Ernie!  We have to go!  We’re in the women’s room!”  “What?!”  “Yeah, c’mon!  Let’s go!”  Ernie put away his stash in record time, popped his head out, looked around in embarrassment, and then we ran out of there mumbling “Sorry.” as we scooted past the chick.

 

From smoking weed a few years ago at the Target Center to getting my first French kiss way back when I was 13 years old at 4H camp to, I have had some good times in the women’s room.  No lessons to be learned here…just have fun out there and keep your head up.  You never know when you might find yourself in the wrong bathroom at the right time.

Italy

It was August of 1990.  My girlfriend Lona and I had just spent close to 4 months backpacking around the Greek Isles.  Our money was starting to run out and the acid already had run out, so it was time to cash in our one-month Eurail passes and head to our final destination of Dublin, Ireland, with the goal of seeing as much stuff as we could in between.  We would end up visiting 10 different countries on this 6-month trip and I suppose I will get to writing about all of them eventually, but I will just do one or two at a time and not necessarily in order.  So much happened in Greece that plenty of stories will end up coming out of those 4 months, but this entry will be focused on the week we spent in Italy.

It was time to leave Greece and we were a little worried.  We had become extremely comfortable there.  We had made a lot of friends from Greece and other travelers from around the world, we had learned enough of the difficult language to get by even in towns that spoke no English, and it was very difficult leaving this place that we had come to love.  But it was time, so we cashed in our Eurail passes (which also covers boats) and literally fought our way on to a large ship from the Greek port city of Patras over to Italy's port city of Brindisi.  It was an overnight trip and we got there the next day scared shitless.  It was the same way we had felt when our plane from Chicago landed in Athens, Greece back in April.  Fear of the unknown with a new country and a different language and strange money.  But at least when we had landed in Greece it was with our best friend, roommate, and travel companion Claudia Tribbiani who had been to Greece before.  She had long since flown back to the States however and we were on our own, winging it through Europe with nothing but our backpacks and not even a travel guidebook.

There was not much to do in Brindisi so we grabbed some pizza at a local shop and headed to the train station intent on getting to Rome as soon as possible.  When we got there we found a youth hostel and checked in and took a deep breath.  We had done it!  We had left the safety of Greece and we were in Italy.  Time to explore.  Rome is such an incredible dichotomy of modern city intermixed with ruins everywhere.  It is a weird thing to see cars and taxis on a busy street whizzing by the ancient Roman Colosseum.  We toured the Colosseum and were amazed at the stuff that used to happen here all in the name of entertainment.  You think football is a violent game...try dueling it out with a pack of lions.  The Romans imported exotic animals from all over Africa, staged great land battles, lavish sea battles by filling the floor of the Coliseum with water and floating war ships, and had men fight each other to the death.  It was incredible to stand in the middle of it and picture yourself there 2,000 years ago with a massive crowd of patrons cheering your near-certain death.  It was very creepy.

Another beautiful but creepy place we visited was the Vatican.  Incredible untold wealth greet you as you wander around in amazement.  Beautiful paintings, frescoes, stained glass, jewels, crowns...and so much history.  It seemed somewhat hypocritical to me however, the centerpiece of a religion that was supposed to be about peace and love housing enough wealth within those walls to feed a starving nation many times over.  But I love history, good and bad, and it was an amazing place to visit.  We walked out of there that night feeling like we had just come from another world, and that point was driven home when we were confronted by a heroin addict on the street outside.  He was a nice guy and he just wanted a cigarette.  It was sad to listen to his story in broken English.  We went to the nearest bar and had a beer with him and then he wandered off.

After a couple of days of touring many more museums, churches, and big beautiful piazzas (sort of like town squares) throughout modern and ancient Rome it was time to move on to Florence.  This is an amazing city full of gigantic churches and cathedrals that defy the imagination of how they were built.  I can build a bird house, a tree fort, and with the help of my dad a front porch...but Florence's Cathedral, the Duomo is a miracle.  It took two centuries to be deemed finished and it is incredibly beautiful.  It dominates the city's skyline, and you can see panoramic views of Florence when you climb up the 436 steps to the top of the dome.  Another icon we had to see was the Statue of David located in the Accademia Gallery...it was cool to see in person but after a couple of minutes it doesn't seem so great.  The thing I remember most about Florence was losing Lona.

Of course this was before cell phones so in the past 4 months we had always looked for landmarks to meet each other at in case we got separated.  Or the hotel or youth hostel we were staying at...if we got lost, just meet back at the hotel.  Lona has an incredibly bad sense of direction so that is why I was always so adamant about having a plan in case one of us got lost.  But we were so excited when we got to Florence that we just checked into the hotel, threw our bags on the bed and headed out without talking about meeting places.  The first thing we did that first night in Florence was buy a huge bottle of red wine, a loaf of bread, and sat ourselves down in a piazza watching a street band play music.  We laughed and talked and ate and drank and marveled at this beautiful city.  After a couple of hours the bottle was empty and we were hammered.  Lona stood up and announced that she was going to get another bottle at the shop at the far end of the piazza.  Are you sure I said?  I'll get it.  But no, she insisted and said she would be right back.

Off she went with enough Italian Lira for a bottle of wine and I sat there listening to the band, looking around and marveling at the fact that I was in freaking Italy...this was so much better than working.  I waited.  And I waited.  After about 20 minutes I stood up and looked around.  She was nowhere to be seen.  I sat back down and waited another 5 minutes.  This was getting ridiculous.  I jumped back up and decided I had better go to the shop and see what is taking her so long.  I hated to leave in case she came back another way and I wasn't where she had left me.  But what other way?  The shop was just around the corner on the far end of the large square we were in.  I ran over to the shop and she was not there.  I looked around, getting more and more worried by the minute.  Then I ran back to where we had been sitting, expecting her to be sitting there with the wine wondering where I was.  But no...she wasn't there either.  What the f*ck?  What do I do??

I waited another 15 minutes and decided to head to the hotel.  I knew she didn't know where it was though...we had only been there for about 5 minutes...just long enough to check in and head out to explore the city.  But I was hoping maybe she remembered the name, or the address or at least the street it was on so she could ask someone for help finding it.  So I ran there, but no...she was not anywhere to be seen.  I waited there for a half hour and then headed back to the piazza where the band had been.  They were gone by now and there was no sign of Lona.  I was really starting to freak out now.  No way of contacting her, thousands of miles from home in a foreign country with a language we didn't know.  Should I call her parents in the states?  Give them the address of our hotel and if she calls them they can give it to her?  No...a call like that from me would totally freak them out.  That will be my last resort.  I started running up and down the streets...block by block...fanning out from the piazza.  I pictured her alone, drunk, scared, crying...my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to fall out of my chest as I ran frantically up and down the streets of Florence with people staring at me as I was calling out her name.

Suddenly I ran by 2 girls and a guy sitting at the bottom of a doorstep on a dark street.  I got about 20 feet past and stopped.  Wait a minute...was that?  No way...it couldn't have been.  Lona??  I ran back and sure enough...there she was sitting on the steps with an Italian couple, clutching a bottle of wine and laughing her ass off.  Seriously?  She wasn't alone.  She wasn't scared.  She wasn't crying.  She was having a great time partying with this couple who were also drunk and laughing.  From what I could gather they found her lost and were trying to get her to go back and stay at their place for the night.  Are you f*cking kidding me?  Like if I hadn't found her I was just going to go back to the hotel and go to sleep?!  I was relieved to see that she was alive and well, but that relief quickly turned to anger and I flipped out.  I grabbed Lona by the shoulder and started yelling in her face, telling her what my last 3 hours had been like combing the entire city for her while she was hanging out and partying without a care in the world.  She was too far gone though...just wobbly and continuing to laugh, not paying any attention to me which just made me angrier.  The dude stepped in and told me to back off, but I told HIM to back off and I gave him a look like that made him realize I was going to beat the sh*t out of him if he came one step closer to me.  I thanked them for taking care of her and then I walked her back to the hotel.

From then on I made Lona memorize and repeat back to me the name and address of every hotel and hostel that we stayed at for the rest of our time in Europe...I was never going to go through that again.  We stayed in Florence for a couple of days and then took a train up to Venice.  Our third and final stop in Italy before heading to Switzerland.  We still had no guidebooks and were basically winging it, but of course we had to stop in Venice and see this wondrous romantic city with all of its canals and gondolas and history.  We were so excited as we looked out the train window at the city growing larger and larger while we crossed the bridge over the Mediterranean to this incredible water-city.  The hotel was a little more expensive then we wanted to pay, but what the hell.  We got a nice little room overlooking a quaint canal right in the heart of the city.

We spent a couple of days there walking around, wondering at the marvel of this seemingly floating Oz, going to the large piazza on the waterfront and watching the waves lapping at the concrete walkways that are sometimes under water, sometimes not.  We took a lot of pictures on the little bridges over the canals with locals looking on in feigned amusement.  We went to a Van Gogh exhibit/sale at one of the museums and stupidly did not buy anything.  They had relatively cheap plates that he had painted, but I did not want to spend the money and weigh my backpack down with anything more than I had to.  (Little did I know that I would soon be filling my pack with concrete once we got to the Berlin Wall that had recently started to come down).  And in the end we did not spend the $80 or so dollars it cost to go on a gondola ride.  I know...how can you go to Venice and not take a gondola ride...but we decided it was a rip off, plus upon closer inspection the canals were not exactly pristine.  You could see a lot of garbage and what even looked like floating sewage drifting along past the buildings.  Gross.

Overall it was still an amazing city and we had a lot of fun there, but all too soon it was time to cash in our Italian Lira for Swiss Francs as we needed to forge on to our next country.  We realized that it was most economical to take overnight train rides from city to city, sleeping on the train and saving a night's hotel fare.  So we decided to take an overnight from Venice to Zurich, Switzerland.  I will write about Zurich and Lucerne and our scary night in 'Needle Park' in a future blog entry...