The Columnist Manifesto

If you catch a cab in New York City, you ride in a Ford Taurus or Buick Crown Victoria the color of French's Mustard or American Cheese. In Berlin: a cream-colored Mercedes.







***

At the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, is the site of the former border crossing point between East to West Berlin: the passage through the Berlin Wall in which Soviet bloc and U.S. military checkpoints (and, in a 1961 incident, tanks) faced each other, also known as “Checkpoint Charlie.”

Today, the spot is a tourist attraction, ringed by souvenir stands, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, and a mockup of the checkpoint booth on the Western side.

Either way, “mockup” is the right word. The tourist employees posing in military uniforms of the Western countries that occupied West Berlin after the war – France, Britain and the U.S. – holding flags and posing for photos with tourists gives the scene the air of a wax museum with particularly lifelike live people standing in for wax figures.

The museum was packed and, frankly, looked way to hokey to bother going in.

The site is well worth a visit for the abiding feeling it leaves you with that German reunification was a good thing. And if the Germans want to memorialize this piece of cold war history in a somewhat mocking vein, I say, “it’s your country. Go forth and smile.”


Berlin wall remnant, a couple of blocks away from Checkpoint Charlie. I had no idea how thin the wall was!



Souvenir stands around Checkpoint Charlie selling simulated Cold War memorabilia.



Tourists getting ready for photo op with western “soldiers.”



Get a load of the shoes on that "U.S. military police" gal.



Right, the checkpoint. Left, the inside of the museum, packed with tourists. Hey, there’s Nixon!



The look of reunified Germany: you can drive right through on the Friedrichstrasse toward the chichi shops near Unter den Linden.



A bit more serious on the East Side. Steel crosses memorialize East Germans who were killed under the DDR’s shoot-to-kill order try to cross to the West.



This says it all, doesn’t it?

**

Europe is experiencing a heat wave. In Berlin yesterday, it hit the mid 80s, today the high 80s, and tomorrow it's supposed to reach 90. 90 degrees in Berlin in May!

Check out the article on global warming in the June 2005 issue of Mother Jones. "Think tanks and journalists funded by ExxonMobil are out to convince you that global warming is a hoax."

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*With apologies to James Joyce, Dubliners.

***

UPDATE: Correction -- it was over 94 degrees yesterday. Check out this (Sunday) morning's Berliner Zeitung.



The polar bear at the Berlin Zoo dropped dead from heat prostration. (Just kidding -- but the bear was very hot.)

**

[Monday, May 24]

The Birkenau extermination camp at Auschwitz

My intention of visiting Auschwitz was always a vague notion, like the occasional wish to learn a new language or a new musical instrument. “Oh yes, I’ll go there some day,” I’d think, but without much conviction that the intention would harden into a plan. But when I found myself on my way to Poland, and to Krakow at that – just over an hour away – it was clear that I had to, and would, go.

The visit to Auschwitz – I find I prefer calling it “the Auschwitz Museum” to name the experience of visiting the site of the former concentration and death camp as a tourist – was hanging over my Poland tour like a dark cloud. Trying to enjoy oneself in quaint little Krakow, knowing that Auschwitz had operated just down the road, involves a measure of denial reminiscent of the revelers in Poe’s Masque of the Red Death.

For much of the day before the trip, B and I were snappish and irritable, due no doubt to anxiety about what would on doubt be a painful and disturbing experience. The hour and a half bus ride was incongruous: as we drove through picturesque Polish countryside on the beautiful sunny day, I thought about how well over a million people had ridden through this same countryside as the last trip they would ever have in their lives. The bus ride became a time for brooding contemplation. Even the chatty American kids sitting behind us shut up a half hour into the trip.

Walking to the museum entrance, I was very conscious of being stared at by a long row of people-watchers on park benches lining the path to the entrance: 14 year old blond boys speaking Polish and laughing, men smoking cigarettes and slowly turning their heads to follow us we crossed their field of vision. The mood was all wrong.

Inside the museum, a multilingual throng, signs in at least six languages, tour guides giving instructions to small clusters of people. B told me to go ahead to watch the introductory film while she lined up to buy tickets for the guided tour.

The movie had the newsreel footage of the death camp that you’d expect, but was strikingly unmoving. The crackly-sounding narration in accented English, with its florid text and translated-into-English phrasing, gave the film the quaint, unpersuasive air of a Soviet-style propaganda film. Couldn’t they have put together a more compelling short film to introduce visitors to this monumentally important site?

But my emotions were jolted when B rejoined me and told me that we had just missed the 11:30 tour. We’d have to cool our heels in the waiting area for an hour and a half until the 1:00 p.m. tour started. Couldn’t we just tag along with the 11:30 tour, I wondered aloud?

No. The tour groups were identified by color-coded square stickers, which we were all to attach to our shirt fronts. The people on the 11:30 tour all had orange stickers displayed on their shirts; but we were given green.

Nice touch – color coded stickers for the clothing. The idea of having some authority figure dictate my freedom of movement due to the color of some sticker on my shirt certainly created a heightened sense of experience: it made me sort of sick. I contemplated a scene in which I’d get in the tour guide’s face is she tried to kick us out of the group: “Here of all places! Shame on you!”

In the event, they found another English speaking tour guide (apparently there is something of a shortage) and we were able to get orange stickers after all.

The tour of the camp then began. Auschwitz is actually two camps. The first, Auschwitz proper, was actually a converted Polish Army barracks. And if you look only at the buildings and grounds, without hearing details of what went on the site, it does not look like such a horrible place: I’ve seen American prisons whose physical plant looks more scary and depressing.

The tour quickly devolved into a museum tour distinguished only by its unusually horrific subject matter. You see, hear and read about, the detritus of the horror of the camps – the torture and executions, the huge piles of human hair and luggage – but it is conveyed in the manner of a museum: the tour guide’s lecture, captioned photographs and selections of real artifacts inside glass cases. And not a particularly well-presented museum at that: I’ve seen half a dozen museum exhibitions of the holocaust that moved me more. The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. was a far more powerful experience.

I began thinking, as we trudged around the camp buildings-cum-museum that this Auschwitz Museum was a good introduction for people who knew little or nothing about the Holocaust. I’m no historical expert, but I’ve done some reading and seen several documentaries and Hollywood movies about the holocaust, and felt I was getting nothing new. How strange that the most moving aspects of the experience were the personal logistics of getting into the mus – the bus ride, the walk past the gawkers, the color-coded tags.

That was until we went to the gas chamber.

Auschwitz had one gas chamber – a prototype for the larger ones that would be installed in the later death camps – and it survived the war. The attached crematorium, where the bodies of those killed by the poison gas were incinerated, was destroyed by the Nazis in their coverup effort as they retreated from Poland; but the Museum has realistically restored it using original materials.

We lined up outside, and then filed into the gas chamber, as millions of people had done as the last act of their lives. In that moment, I felt all the layers of thought that protect me from shameful feelings – the evaluative, judgmental, humorous, cynical, angry layers of thought – stepped aside. There was nothing but to feel “I am here, now.”

I’ve not had that many moments of such unfiltered experience. This one took the shape of a single sob.

After that emotional spike, the tour plateaued. We took a break, and boarded a bus for Birkenau. Built by the Germans for the express purpose of exterminating Jews, the huge Birkenau encampment, with a substantial fraction of surviving barracks and its long rail spur ending at the former crematorium site, conveys something semblance of the horrors that occurred there. We walked down the long dusty path to the spot where condemned Jews disembarked for the selection – immediate death in the gas chamber or a small chance of survival as slave labor. Here, you become part of something suggestive of a re-enactment. The people who got off the train between 1942 and 1945 stood there in their ordinary street clothes, just like us.

The phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” has never had much meaning for me, a mere tired metaphor in a religious incantation. That too changed when, back in my hotel room, I wiped the dust of Auschwitz-Birkenau from my shoes.

You should go there.

****

I break my promise to stop blogging about internet access in Europe

Astonishingly, it has been even harder to get online in cosmopolitan, state-of-the-art berlin than in Warsaw and Krakow. I thought I'd have free wireless in our posh Berlin hotel room on Friederichstrasse (so said the online promotional material), but what they meant was T-Mobile Europe for about $10 an hour. I may be addicted to web access, but I'm cheap, so once again I set out exploring the world of Internet cafes.

My "Lonely Planet Guide" blandly asserts that "Surfing the internet and checking your emails is no problem in Berlin. Internet cafes abound." Bullshit. Basically, in three hours of exploring I found none. Following a lead from Lonely Planet itself I arrived at a cheesy video-arcade cum slot machine "casino." This place really did look like a brothel -- too gross even to whip out the digital camera. The building did have two empty rooms that were former internet cafes, judging by their signs that were still on the locked door.

I was relegated to using EasyNet, a pay-as-you-go service provided by the same happy orange-logoed company as EasyJet, of "flight from Poland" fame. They had a pleasant room full of computer terminals, sharing space with a Dunkin Donuts.



Unfortunately, they do not allow you to hook up your own laptop, and the computers are behind locked panels (barring access to CD drives and USB ports), meaning that there is no way to upload photos.

But the real surprise was something that should have been no suprise. The German keyboard! What else should they use in Germany?



Note that, among other things, the z and y keys are inverted, the "&" symbol is over the 6 key, and the @ sign is impossible to make without experimenting with key combinations unknown to us Americans. Plus those German letters...

UPDATE: In answer to Wendy's comment/question, "so how did [I] post these pictures?" I finally bit the bullet and shelled out the T-Mobile $10/hour rate from my hotel room (which you can sign up for in 15 minute increments). Why didn't I think of that before?

***

Is it just me, or is Darth Vader a lot more sinister in German?



**

Not so EasyJet

Don’t get me wrong. I had a wonderful time in Poland, and will gladly recommend such a trip to any American considering traveling to Europe of the paths usually beaten by American tourists. But we had spent eight full days in Poland, and made our emotional farewell with Nina yesterday. What’s more, virtually everything was shut down for the Corpus Christi religious celebration, and after having spent a couple of days – touring the Auschwitz Museum and the Kazimierz neighborhood – contemplating the dark side of Polish-Jewish relations, I was not in the mood to be immersed in Polish Catholicism. It was a good day to leave the country.

At the Krakow airport, people line the observation deck to wish their friends and family bon voyage. Or are they just happy to see the back side of me?

Which is why I had just a teensy bit of anxiety about the boarding policies of our cut-rate air carrier, EasyJet. First come – first served, no guarantee of a seat if they overbook, and only one flight per day to our destination, Berlin. For any European history buff like me, no trip to central Europe is complete unless you have the experience of spending several hours standing in lines at the transport terminal while anxiously wondering whether you’ll be able to get out of the country.

For once, I was on exactly the same page as B, who goes into a kind of refugee survival mode even when flying from Chicago to LA, and we agreed to shoot for reaching the airport three hours before our departure. The airline was recommending checkin two hours prior to departure, and we figured that if we strove to be first in line, we’d have better odds of clawing our way onto the plane.

From my new cosmopolitan vantage point, I now see that U.S. airports, for all their unpleasant post-9/11 hassles, are fairly well organized. Other than the rare experience of being bumped due to overbooking, you know that you will stand on three lines (ticket counter, security and boarding), that you will in fact get on your flight if you arrive at the ticket counter an hour before departure, and that the only chaotic and unruly line behavior occurs at boarding. There, when the flight is called, the departure lounge is activated like an annoyed beehive, with passengers jockeying for position and milling around, often creating the false impression of standing in the boarding line when in fact they are only waiting for their row number to be called.

In the Krakow airport, the entire scene from the moment you walk into the terminal to the moment you board the plane is like that boarding-line chaos.

There were lines and people milling around everywhere. B and I waited, first, on a line to inquire where we should go to line up. We were told that that location would not be disclosed until two hours before flight time.

You see, there are far more airlines flying out of Krakow than there are ticket windows, so airlines do not have their own designated ticket counters marked by their corporate logos, as in U.S. airports. And for reasons that defy my humble understanding, Krakow airport does not tell you what ticket window you must go to until they’re ready to start checking you in. Perhaps it’s because they want to discourage anticipatory lines, and they know that Poles are great line-formers (in the days of communism, they would line up for hard-to-obtain consumer goods and grocery items like some Americans would for Springsteen tickets).

So we waited for an hour, eyes glued to the monitor that would eventually flash the ticket counter number for our flight, and poised strategically to dart in any of several directions. At 1:30 (five minutes before two hours before departure) it came up: counters 1-3. We bolted. We ended up third in line.

For our efforts, we got a boarding card filled with numbers and letters. “Bus number 1" followed by a mysterious “11,” then “section C” but it turned out that the significant symbol was the letter A, written in green highlighter, indicating that we could board the first bus. (In Poland, you are taken between the terminal gate and the plane in a bus.) The first bus did not guarantee us a seat on the plane, it was explained, but it should improve our chances a great deal.

We next lined up for passport control and security baggage check. I must say that the armed Polish soldiers in camo were somewhat nicer than our own TSA workers, and did not make me take off my shoes.

At this point, B and I found ourselves, still about an hour and a half to go, in a vast departure lounge sporting not one but three gates from which about five flights would be taking off before ours. Again, the information about which gate for your flight was withheld until the last minute, and again lines seemed to form in a chaotic, first come– first served manner. Would our letter “A” count for anything in this waiting room jungle?

When our gate was finally called (my own clever series of deductions to predict the correct gate having proven miserably wrong), B instantly sprung from her chair and maneuvered us like a dance instructer through a mosh pit to – again – the third spot in line.

Soon we were on the bus, almost the first to board. But here is a trap for the unwary, and here, my powers of discernment actually functioned well. Surmising that the principle of “LIFO” (“Last-in-first-out”) would apply to a crowded bus, I suggested to B that we eschew the seats in favor of a place standing near the door.

I couldn’t have been more right. After the bus stood at the gate for what must have been 20 minutes, we finally drove toward the plane. B and I leapt from the bus almost as soon as the doors opened and raced for the waiting plane, where, again, we were about the third ones on.

It turned out to be a comfortable, relaxing hour and a half flight into Berlin. We even had an empty seat next to us, because – did I mention? – the plane was only about two-thirds full.

***

So said our tour guide, Magda, rolling her eyes about silly tourist questions. Magda was guiding us through Kazimierz, the artifact of Krakow's once-thriving Jewish quarter.


Kazimierz had become something of a blighted neighborhood, according to Magda, but the filming of Schindler's List put it on the map. Spielberg used the picturesque Kazimierz streets as the setting for the Krakow ghetto, although in reality the Nazis forced the Jews out of Kazimierz and into a nearby neighborhood across the river.

After Schindler's List, everyone wanted to see the movie "set." A mini-tourism boom ensued and the neighborhood is doing much better. Magda says they should erect a statue to Spielberg here in the main square.


More on the Kazimierz tour later. For now, I leave you with this:


This is not, of course, the original sign. As Magda points out, that would have been in German.

**

I've always loved train travel. Although train service is pretty pathetic in the U.S. outside the Northeast Corridor, I take trains whenever I feasibly can. Unlike U.S. air travel, U.S. train travel allows you to buy a ticket ten minutes before the train pulls away, no reservations needed, and you need not even commit to a particular train. If I'm traveling anywhere between Washington D.C. and Boston I will always take a train rather than fly.

At one time, train travel in Europe was even more charming. Those intimate six-seat compartments. Couchettes. When I was 22 traveling with my best friend in Scandinavia, the bunks of the couchette were pulled out at night and the young Swedish woman we'd been chatting up asked us if we'd be offended if she took her clothes off. I think my friend and I both wanted to say casually, "no problem," but instead we may have sort of blurted it out.

All that has changed. In Europe, train travel and air travel are almost exactly the reverse of what they are in the U.S. Europe now offers cheap quick flights. Airline tickets are easy to get.

In contrast, European trains are expensive, more expensive than air travel on many routes. You need to make reservations way in advance, through a cumbersome and confusing process in which you buy the reservation as a separate document from a ticket.

In fact, B and I had booked train tickets: night train with private sleeping compartment, Krakow to Prague. A couple of days in Prague. Then another train from Prague to Berlin. Cost: around $200 per person.

Europe's vanishing six-person compartments, aboard the Warsaw-Krawkow express. Our compartment mates scented our compartment by taking out, in succession, cigarettes, perfume, a flask of vodka, and a cat.
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We got these tickets thinking the trains would be charming. But European trains have lost some of that charm. To begin with, most Western European trains have abandoned the old-style six-person compartments in favor of Amtrak-type airplane-cabin seating -- pairs of seats on either side of the central aisle facing forward.

Then, most west European trains are now high speed, racing through the landscape at such a velocity that objects closer than the horizon appear in a blur.

The last straw for charm-removal, however, began to come into focus when Nina's sister in Warsaw informed us a few days ago that there was a not insubstantial chance that we would be robbed on the Krakow-Prague night train.

She regaled us with stories of travelers whose pockets were slashed open, after they had gone to sleep.

"Well," I said, "we're going to be in our own sleeping compartment. I'm guessing those people were just sleeping in their seats. We can lock our door."

To be sure, she replied, some of them were in second class seats, but in fact there were several incidents of robbers breaking into locked sleeping compartments.

"Well," B said, "we'll just have to take turns and sleep in shifts."

Yes, we could try that, said Nina’s sister, but in fact the robbers spray cloroform through the grating or the keyhold in the door and put people to sleep that way, then break in, then slash pockets, straps etc.

“But it doesn’t happen to everyone, of course,” she added reassuringly. “The percentages are probably in your favor.”

The conversation shifted to why it took the night train over eight hours to make the 300 kilometer journey. Probably lots of stops, we speculated. Probably to let the robbers on and off, I thought.

We were shaken, but not stirred by this. Rallying around our motto (“No fear!”) we decided to stick to the plan, even after we read in our Let’s Go Eastern Europe guidebook that “Let’s Go does not recommend traveling on night trains between Krakow and Prague.”

No, for me the last straw was hearing the young American behind us telling his travel companion about “this girl I know” who was robbed while she slept. “The robbers lifted her shirt and cut off her money belt. I hear they put gas through the door to make sure you’re unconscious.”

Anesthesia or no, the idea of robbers – even well intentioned ones – applying a sharp knife to my clothing on a moving train takes the charm out of the overnight train. Even if the percentages are with us. The idea is good enough for a sleepless night.

This morning, I went online in my internet cafe and in 15 minutes was the proud owner of two one-way tickets, Krakow-Berlin, non-stop. Cost: $80 each. I could have left tomorrow if I'd wanted.

I think I've already explained that lately when I've logged on to Google.com, I get the Google Polska. It's cute and all until you try making online reservations for hotels in Berlin. Try navigating in Polish.

I try Google.us, and it still calls up Google.pl.

Google allows you to set your preferences to choose your own navigation language, right? Try navigating that in Polish. Go ahead, click here and try to switch to English.

Acting on a hunch, I type www.google.fr into my URL line. This successfully calls up Google France. I guess Poland is all pan-Eurocentric now that it's joined the EU.

I know enough French to change the language preference to English. So for right now, I'm Googling through the French portal in English. Sort of an internet language arbitrage thing. Works for me.

**

I'll talk about it later.



***

The bagel was invented by a Jewish baker in Krakow. It was supposed to be bread in the shape of a stirrup, apparently in homage to the king of Poland, a great horseman. The contemporary Polish version is a bready ring-shaped pretzel. -- I guess that sounds like a description of a bagel, but take my word for it, its more like a pretzel.

The original bakery that created the bagel was reopened after WWII by a Polish-American Jew who repatriated to Poland from New York. The shop is still open in Kazimiersz, the remnant of Krakow's Jewish neighborhood. If you were here in Krakow right now, wouldn't you want to get a bagel from the place that started it all? Damn right, you would:



But you'd be out of luck.



**

So here's the story of how I got online today.

Krakow has wired its central square, Rynek Glowny, for wireless internet access. In theory, you can sit at any of the outdoor cafes that ring the square and surf -- and blog.



While my laptop picked up the signal for the Krakow123 wireless network, I couldn't log on. So B and I left our sunny outdoor cafe table and headed into the depths of the Krakow internet cafe scene.



Back in Warsaw, you'll recall, I found Cup of Pleasure to be somewhat risque, but I soon found that the Cup's haze of sexuality surrounding its internet access was nothing compared to Krakow. What better way to make me feel like my lust for internet access is a kind of sex addiction than this -- the most promising internet "hookup" on the main square?



Is it just me, or do you feel like we're going upstairs to hire a prostitute?



And here's the place -- reasonable hourly rates.


Brothel? Opium den?

B and I decide to look away from the main square. Near Jagellonian University, this place looks promising:



Uh-oh.



Kind of a sex-club look:





Se we keep looking .... and find Cafe Golebia.



Nice, ground floor atmosphere. And the best rates!


Internet access: just 2 zlotys (about 65 cents) and "consumption."
I think that means you have to buy something, not have a bad cough.

It turns out the city is full of internet cafes, of all shapes and sizes. Have I been wigging out about this? I'm done now.

***

Other than telling you that I'm now in Krakow (pron: Krah-koof), and that I promise that I will backfill interesting facets of my trip thus far at a reasonably near opportunity, let's all just let go of the idea of my sequentially travel-blogging, at least for the next few days.


Krawkow street, near Jagellonian University

Part of the problem is, as explained, that I am an internet refugee in Poland. But part of the problem, I find, is also the fact that I seem to find the challenges of getting on line in Poland to be so fascinating that I seem to have an undeniable need to talk about it.

First of all, I've become, to my surprise and mixed feelings, something of a technofiliac. Not a technofile -- someone who loves and is adept with technology -- but someone who is neurotically dependent on technology.


Cafe Golebia, Krakow: My technology, with my indulgent partner, B.
Note how the internet accessible table is barely big enough for more than one laptop.

Three years ago when I travelled in Europe, I didn't even own a camera. I just went through a few disposable cameras, and didn't take that many pictures. Now I own a digital camera which I take with me everywhere; I'm enthralled with the idea that there is now no such thing as "wasting film," and I have quickly developed a 200 photo a day habit.

And I want to take my laptop with me everywhere. I don't in practice -- the napsack gets heavy. But I have it with me a heck of a lot: there may be blogging opportunities after all. So it's happening to me: this technology has interposed itself as a medium of my travel experience. It's this blogging thing! which means of course, it's your fault. But I forgive you.

**

It is pronounced (I think--Nina will undoubtedly correct me if I'm wrong): nyeh-gaz-O-vanna. It means mineral water without bubbles.



My mnemonic device for the word is to set it to the tune of Guantanamera. This mnemonic also works for the word for decaffeinated coffee (hard to find in Polish cafes -- phonetically: bez caff-a-eena.)

Enjoy!

***

It has probably become clear to you that I failed to post my regular, albeit new, Blog O'the Week feature at the end of last week. But it's also probably clear that as an internet refugee, I haven't had much time to read blogs. I'll return to featuring a new Blog of The Week (TM) as soon as I can. In the meantime, don't start with me. I mean, continue to check out Don't Let's Start.

**

My first day in Warsaw, we encountered a demonstration by the coals miners, on our way home from the park. Nina explains that the coal miners were a favored class of workers under communism, and now, under capitalism, they are finding their job security under attack.



The riot police waited down the street:



But this is really a post about how cool Nina is. Here she confronts the riot police head on:



I overdramatize, since the police seemed pretty benign (if you ignore their black uniforms and full riot gear), but Nina’s willingness to face down danger to get the shot reminded me of the photographer in The Unbearable Lightness of Being during the Prague Spring. For the photographic fruit of Nina’s effort, click here.

**

I want to blog a travelogue, but I really want you to understand what life is like when high speed internet access is a precious resource. I'm back at "Cup of Pleasure" this morning, the one place I know of in Warsaw where I can count on reasonably priced wireless internet access -- 11 zlotys (about $4) for an hour. (The hotels charge something like $20 an hour.)


Nina and B approach Cup of Pleasure

Unfortunately, they don't open until 10 on Saturday morning. But the proprietor, though he won't let us have coffee a minute early, has allowed us to log on now, at 9 a.m., out on the front patio deck. They're noisily setting up the chairs, and they're doing some design or repair work out front. In fact, this truck is parked two feet away from my table with its engine running:



I can almost touch the exhaust pipe; the cherry picker is moving up and down, and the workman is handing what seem to be farm implements to a guy standing on the awning. The proprietor explains, "They are putting up flowers."

In this picture, the truck has moved a few feet away.



Meanwhile, Nina somehow can't log on, and B can't even boot up her computer. They return to the hotel. Almost an hour has gone by, and I haven't been able to post yet.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. in a cold sweat, positively beside myself with anticipation about getting online at Cup of Pleasure. When internet access is something that can’t be taken for granted it is indeed a cup of pleasure.

Yesterday, we – Nina, Madeline, B and I – visited Nina’s sister Elisa.



There was one computer in the apartment, and we all took turns going on line and checking email.



I loved this moment. It completely resonated with my sterotyped notions of an Eastern European experience, a little throwback to the days of communism. This is one of the delights of travel for me: finding the little differences, and realizing how good I have things back home.

***

At an internet cafe in Warsaw. Time for just a quick post. No time for personal pronouns. Or verbs. B waiting back in hotel room. Obsessive blogging, divorce. You understand.

That's the way it is here in Poland. At home, I can check into the blog several times a day, with home and office computers hooked up to high speed. Beep, beep, you're on. Here, internet minutes are precious. I feel like a radio transmitter in an Alan Furst novel. If I stay online too long, the German radio detection van will pick up my signal and and a couple of SS goons will be crashing into my room within minutes...

Let me just tantalize you with a couple of details and a couple of pics. The internet cafe is called "Cup of Pleasure," a sort of pseudo-Western sex themed cafe bar featuring cocktails named "Orgasm" and "Sex with Jennifer." More on this later. Now the pics:





Really, no time. Will blog again when I can. They're coming for me...

***

Hint: the language in the large billboard picturing a giant pear that resembles a big butt is Polish.

Answer: Warsaw!

That's right, I am in a land far, far away, in a time zone I don't even know. In fact, I will be abroad for about five weeks. I plan to blog at every opportunity, so stay tuned -- you won't want to miss an exciting moment!

Blogging from Poland may be a challenge. Sure, it's a commonplace to say, "hey, the whole world is wired." That may be so, but it's not like you can walk into any coffeehouse or train station or library and just fire up the wireless. You can't even do that in the USA. So far in Warsaw, I'm finding internet access a bit like being an undocumented worker... right now I've snuck into Jeremy's posh hotel room, where I'm hooked up to an ethernet connection. Jeremy has left the country, but Nina wangled a way to keep the room until checkout time.

That's right folks, it's The Blogger Dinner European Tour!

MORE PROOF THAT I'M IN POLAND: When I enter www.google.com into my url window, I get this.

***

All cities have ordinances restricting the posting of handbills, but the first amendment -- and common sense -- require some outlet for posting the free speech acts and cultural announcements that proliferate, especially, in a university town. Our town, for example, employs the common practice of using designated handbill kiosks.

Grass roots organizers and low-cost advertizers are great at sending people out with staple guns and rolls of tape to post handbills. But who takes them down after the date of the advertized event has passed? Today I learned:



The hanbill cleanup guy, who was very friendly and remarkably cheerful considering the job he was assigned, mentioned that the innermost layer of handbills dated back to 1999.

Here is the kiosk across the street, after "cleaning":



An archeological dig of local culture?



***

Remember "freedom fries," our Congress's official "rebuke" to France over its stance on the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

I was just reading a chapter on home-front anti-German hysteria during World War I in Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918, by Byron Farwell. Among other things, classical concert programs featuring German composers like Bach and Beethoven were banned or boycotted, the German-born conductor of the Boston Symphony was jailed for refusing to add the Star Spangled Banner to the concert program, sauerkraut was renamed "liberty cabbage" and -- best of all -- German measles was renamed "liberty measles." No kidding.

***

Moral Turpitude, who designs photo set-ups reminiscent of, but better than, the old Mister Bill routine on Saturday Night Live, recently placed kitty-sized police tape around a "crime scene" where her cat pooped on the apartment floor. Click here for the must-see photo. (Note: click on the photo to enlarge it.)

And click here to see what happens if the cat is apprehended.

If convicted, will the cat be sentenced to exile to the outdoors, where it will be subject to the Wisconsin Kitty Shoot to Kill ordinance?

***

I confess. I love getting comments, and feel lost when one of my posts that I think is clever gets no comments. (I don't ask for much -- sometimes just one comment makes me feel totally validated!)

The best thing about the comments function is that it's like getting mail and links from really interesting bloggers out there. So in case you haven't been systematically reading my comments and clicking through, I submit the following for your consideration:

Jo(e) at Jo(e)'s Page is, among other things, a talented photographer -- though Mother's Day is not celebrated chez elle, her kids "are pretty nice to [her] on a regular basis." ("Every day is a mother's day"? )

Kathy at Freshman 44 hails from "Stepford, California" -- is that a real place, or the place where Stepford Wives are from?

Corndog at Corndoggerel -- his banner logo alone makes his blog worth a visit.

Yankee Transplant (same "Blue" family as Phantom Scribbler?) may be the only commenter in whom I succeeded in arousing envy of my home town's car-towing policy.

Wendy, creator of Wendy's Garage Sale, would be an awesome blogger should she choose to start one, but I know for a fact that she would be hard pressed to find the time.

Jane King somehow makes time for two blogs.

Purple Kangaroo blames it on the wind.

Kathy at Vindauga is apparently making a run at my Google ranking for "big butt" searches.

Finally, is it presumptuous to thank "my regulars" in the comments? You know who you are. I love you guys

*

National poetry month is over. Long live Mr. Bar-B-Q

April was "National Poetry Month." Did you know? Maybe you're sad that it's over. But life has a way of providing compensation. Did you know that May is...

Oh, by the way

I took your steak
out of the fridge
grilled it up
and ate it

I feel guilty
It sizzled and glistened
And when I bit into it
the juice dribbled
down my chin

Don't be sad
Millions have lived without poetry
Not one without protein

--O.M.

****

Nina of The Other Side of the Ocean is now on the other side of the ocean. In I week, B and I will be joining her in Poland. (Do they have cyberspace in Poland? I hope so.)

She's now in Paris, where old ladies carry little dogs under their arms into restaurants. Click here and check out #3. I'm guessing Nina will check that one off before the end of the week.

QUESTION: Do you think if you're web surfing in Paris, and you go to Google, you come up with the Google France page?

**

As of this moment, 14 of my last 20 "referring URLS" on Sitemeter -- the web page used by you folks to click through to my blog -- are Google searches. A bit odd.

Three of those searches use the phrase "big butt." (I may yet live to regret that post.)

But four of them are searches on "Google France," (the search engine's French web page), and they all search for the term "rotthen." I have no idea what a "rotthen" is (though I can tell you that I've decided to pronounce it "rot hen"). But CM comes up third on this search, because an old movie review I posted here had a typo in referring to the website, RottenTomatoes.

French Google helpfully suggests that the "rotthen" searchers (or recherchiers) may have been looking for the term "rothen."

***

Don't Let's Start is Blog Of the Week

She is "Allison" from "suburban Dallas, Texas." She is "a semi-anonymous mother of three who is, at this minute, avoiding the laundry." By doing what? Blogging of course. Right there, in the state that makes it a crime for the Mary K Cosmetics saleslady to try to add sex toys to her product line.

Allison's blog Don't Let's Start, with its catchy banner logo, offers wide-ranging wit, wisdom and a discerning ear for dialogue. Check out her recent post on David Mamet's lame entry into the world of blogging. People laughed at Al Gore, yet even in 2005, it seems that every celeb who puts up a first blog post thinks he's invented the internet.

Dear Moral Turpitude:


Don't use your Dell laptop computer (pictured, under bratwurst and beer) as a food tray. Instead, you should use an ultra-portable model, which is much lighter weight.

Sincerely,

Oscar Madison

P.S. Congrats on finishing your 2L year.

*

What's wrong with this picture?

As recently as two years ago, I would go about my business heavily laden with books or work material in a briefcase or backpack, but with not one single piece of consumer electronics. Today, my backpack is weighted down with cell phone, laptop, laptop acccessories and -- yes -- my new digital camera. I'm a roving media machine.

I love having my digital camera on me, and carry it all the time -- almost all the time. Inexplicably I did not have it with me this morning to photograph the bumper sticker on the vehicle parked outside of my coffee shop, Grandma Moses.

Several hours later, I returned, camera in hand, to the spot where the vehicle was parked to snap a photo. But it was gone. I even drove around the neighborhood briefly, looking for it. Please note that the photos below are a facsimile of both the Jeep Wrangler and the bumper sticker I actually saw on the right corner of the rear bumper.

The vehicle in questions sported this bumper sticker (a facsimile of which I found on line):



The "lives per gallon" slogan is presumably a slam on military policies designed to protect our supply of foreign oil. Fair enough -- I don't disagree with the sentiment of raising strong questions about that.

But the vehicle bearing this bumper sticker was .... wait for the irony .....



The one I saw on the street was dark green, and a much older model, but I think you'll see that the point is pretty much the same. The 2005 Jeep Wrangler is advertized as getting a somewhat gas guzzling 18 mpg city/21 mpg highway; figuring that the real figures are even less, and that the older model gets even worse mileage, you have to ask "WTF is this guy thinking??"

But the irony is even more twisted. Arithmetically speaking, the more gas we consume, the lower the number of lives lost per gallon! Weird huh?

So maybe real patriots do indeed drive Hummers?

"Lives per gallon" is a catchy way to convey the "blood for oil" message, but at some point, doesn't the logic of the English language (and simple math) subvert the message? Maybe these bumper stickers ought to be recalled.

***

In a big city, if your car is parked in a tow-away zone, it gets towed to an impoundment lot. The city subcontracts the impoundment lot operation to shady, underworld types who only accept cash, and after just a couple of days, their outrageous "storage fees" mount to a low three-figure sum. So carrying an improbably large wad of cash, you wander into the remote, desolate, ominous part of town where impoundment lots are invariably located. As you hand over the cash to the shadowy figure behind the cracked plexiglass barrier, you think there's a non-negligible chance that they'll keep the cash and sell off your car and your body for spare parts to appropriate chops shops ...



Yesterday, I took the bus to work, having parked my car here:



I realized that at 4 p.m., this great parking space would morph into a hateful tow away zone, but I planned to return from work well before four. But a little voice said, "Well, no, actually, you're going to forget about the 4 p.m. tow-away thing."

One thing led to another at work. The little voice was right. In a cold sweat, I rushed back (if catching the bus home from work can be called "rushing"), but my car was gone. Towed!

My mind raced with depressed and panicked thoughts. When will I be able to get my car out of hock? It's already after business hours. I'm not going to be able to pick it up until Friday due to various plans and complications. What will the "storage fees" be by then? $200? $300? Will I have to go to city hall to pay off my ticket first? Will I be able to get it before I go away on my long trip? Oh, god...

Wouldn't it be great to live in a city where, instead of towing your car to an impoundment lot, they simply tow it out of the tow away zone, onto a friendly side street just a couple of blocks from your home?

Yes! As it happens, I live in that city. I found my car, parked peacefully on the street, three blocks closer to my house than where I had left it!

Under the circumstances, I felt quite relieved -- indeed, elated, -- to get out of it with only this:



Seems pretty reasonable, no?

***

Garbage pickup day: the aftermath




[Please note: this is not in any way a slam on trash collectors. They have a dirty, difficult job with more than their fair share of risk of occupational injury. Nor is it a knock on my neighbors who may or may not be dilatory in putting their trash cans back after garbage pickup. There are no villains here. Only victims.]

The following photos show the results of garbage pickup day in my neighborhood. As you can see, it was a disaster. Was it a drunken trash can debauch? A massacre? All I know is that hardly a can was left standing.



The sidewalks were lined for miles:




Both sides of the street were hit indiscriminantly:



A family of four:



The horror, the horror.

*

I do not negotiate with terrorists. I do not register with spam blockers.

Have you ever gotten an email from someone, replied to it, and then received a "delivery failed" message stating that your reply will not be sent until you "register" with the intended recipient's spam blocker?

I've gotten this a couple of times now, and for some reason it really pushes my buttons. Where do I begin?

1. This has only happened when I've replied to someone's email. Why can't the spam blocker be programmed to automatically allow replying emails? If it's a reply, then obviously Mr. "Please Register Before Attempting to Contact Me" wants to hear from me, right? Technologically, that seems like such an easy fix, that I'm led to suspect the "registration" thing is a scam so that the spam blocker can sell my email address to spammers!

2. Maybe this is just me, but I've only gotten this registration BS in situations where I don't really want to reply! Taking the most recent example: a practicing lawyer in my state writes me a letter asking me to consult with her about her case for free. She's hoping to make money off the case (it's not pro bono), but somehow because I teach at a public law school she's under the impression that I'm some sort of hotline for private practitioners. Her email begins, "let me briefly describe the case for you." Naturally, she goes on to write one of the ten longest emails I've ever received. The "registration" notice comes only after I've spent an inordinate amount of time crafting a reply email that explains, politely but firmly, that I don't give free legal advice on for-profit cases.

3. Having received the "registration" notice, I would like to explain to Ms. Thing that it's my policy not to register with spam blockers. But I can't! My email would be blocked unless I register!

4. I suppose I could just forget the whole thing, and invest no further time in it. But then I would appear to be "Professor Too -Important -to -Take -Even -a -Couple -of -Minutes -to -Reply -to -Lowly -Practicing -Lawyer," when, in reality, she's the one who is "Attorney Keep -My -Law -Practice -Costs -Down -By- Getting -Free -Legal -Advice- from -Public -University -Law -Professors -while -Making -them -Register -with- my -Spam -Blocker."

5. My only other options are: (a) leave this attorney a voice mail at some late hour when she's unlikely to be there, which seems weird; or (b) print out my explanatory email and send it to her by snail mail, which is absurd.

There's no easy fix here. So let this post be my notice to the world: I do not register with spam blockers!

****

Us guys will get together to ditch that whole breakfast in bed thing next time around.

[News Analysis]

The results are in. Most moms do not want breakfast in bed for Mother's Day. According to a CM poll, 83% of mothers viewed breakfast in bed negatively, while only 8.5% said that they would like breakfast in bed. Another 8.5% had no strong opinion about breakfast in bed per se, but indicated that any pampering effort would be appreciated.

Do You Want Breakfast in Bed for Mother’s Day?
	No, I hate it!	50 %
	Somewhere at home, but not bed	16 %
	Brunch out	8.5 %
	Spa gift certificate, please	8.5 %
	It’s the thought that counts	8.5 %
	Yes!	8.5 %

Experts say that the 8.5% b-in-b support could be soft, however, because respondents say that the breakfast should be supplemented by "armloads of gifts."

The poll, conducted with a sample of 12 mothers who randomly commented on this post, may have a margin of error, but not one that could possibly cast doubt on the overwhelming rejection of breakfast in bed.

The percentage of mothers who are getting breakfast in bed this morning cannot be precisely known, because we haven't done the data collection. [Moms: help me out here -- what did you get for Mother's Day today?]

However, the polling results do tell us that most mothers who are getting some sloppy, crumby meal thrust at their tired faces on a big tray are not getting what they want.

Let's face it: men and children are not that great at figuring out what would be a nice thing to do for mom on a Sunday morning. Breakfast in bed is a national shortcut to that difficult intuitive work. While it may be too much to ask of society to jettison the idea of a generic mother's day gift, clearly breakfast in bed is the wrong one.

What we need is a "massive manversation" nationwide to come up with a better version of the "can't miss" mother's day gift. My suggestion: yup, the spa gift certificate, for a day away from us.

**

Why would any self-respecting Green Bay Packers fans put weed killer on their dandelions?


*

Why is there a Mother's Day and a Father's Day and a V-Day, but not a P-Day?

***

UPDATE: The "recycle the New York Times delivery bags project," May 2005:


**

In which I continue to pay tribute to moms in the run-up to Mothers' Day

I discovered late in life (late for this discovery, that is) that ice hockey may be the best game invented by mankind. I'm not talking about the bone-jarring checking and the lost teeth and broken noses and fights with gloves flung down on the ice. That stuff sucks, and is, in my view, a big bore. It's a crude overlay of mud-wrestling onto a game of pure beauty requiring subtle skill.

Hockey requires many of the skills of soccer or basketball -- the passing, the maneuvering past defenders, the intuitive choreography of reacting to the movements of teammates -- with the added challenge that you have to do all this while moving at 20 miles per hour on ice skates. You have to be really good at skating, then you have to learn all that stuff with the stick and the puck, and then put them together, and then work on your skating even more. Yikes!

I don't know why I decided I had to learn to play hockey now, but I did, and I was extremely fortunate to find a couple of beginner-friendly, co-ed hockey groups that I could play with. Enter the hockey moms.

These scrimmage groups apparently got their genesis in hockey moms who thought that they might enrich their lives by not just chauffering their kids around to youth hockey. "Maybe we could relate to our kids better on this if we took up hockey ourselves," seemed to be the idea. "Heck, who cares about that? It looks like fun!"

The women in my hockey group range in age from the college club-team goalie in her early 20s to some graying-haired hockey moms in their mid fifties. There is a mother-daughter combo, the daughter being a lawyer who graduated from my law school four years ago. These gals are all better than me at hockey, and the older ones are my inspiration. I plan to be playing hockey throughout my 50s.

We play year round. The spring session just ended, and we're about to start our summer hours. Obviously, we're talking indoor rinks here.

Let me just say this: you have not lived until you've had your ass kicked on the ice by a 55 year old hockey mom.

**

I got a substantial extension on a big writing project the other day. I had been feeling a lot of pressure from the impending deadline, so it’s a big relief. Too big. I’m reminded of a series of Peanuts cartoon strips in which Charlie Brown is paralyzed by the pressure of having to write a book report for school. He procrastinates, of course, and for several days agonizes out loud. It’s due Friday, and by Thursday, he’s miserable. He shows up for school on Friday and – lo and behold – the teacher is absent that day. Everyone can turn in their book reports on Monday!

After school, Charlie Brown and Linus have a conversation that goes something like this:

LINUS: Well, now you can work on your book report without feeling all that pressure, right Charlie Brown?

CHARLIE BROWN: Book report? That’s not due til Monday. Let’s go out and play!

****

Blog O' the Week: Phantom Scribbler

With the Mothers Day countdown at less than 72 hours, it seems only fitting that this week's Blog Of the Week honors go to Phantom Scribbler. Though her hands are full with two young children, she manages to free at least one of them to get to her keyboard (maybe she types really fast with one finger) and quote poetry, offer keen insight, and transcribe entertaining dialogue with toddling "L.G." Plus, she has an exceptionally cool blogroll, linking to some really offbeat bloggers, and she gets whacky and entertaining comments.

Phantom Scribbler, pictured with "Baby Blue." Her readers wonder: where does she find the time?

In celebrating Moms who blog, I would be remiss if I did not mention the following:

Allison
KAWyle
Mamawitch
The Other Side of the Ocean
The Tonya Show
and, of course, Althouse.

UPDATE: Nina picks up this thread and asks why the vast majority of blogging moms (Nina and Althouse being two notable exceptions) all have younger still-at-home kids. Could it just be a generational thing -- younger moms more highly correlated with computer-saviness? Or maybe just an misimpression from biased sampling?

***

Two crazy, heady days after the Althouse link, and a dizzying 1,000 hits later, my blog traffic has returned to normal:

VISITS
	Total	11,695
	Average Per Day	235
	Average Visit Length	1:14
	Last Hour	6
	Today	56
	This Week	1,642

This is my blog on Althouse links:



This is my blog:



***

How we recycle New York Times bags chez Oscar:



Don't blame me if there's dog poop on the ground in my neighborhood.

UPDATE: 24 hours later:



**

Welcome, Althouse and Times and Seasons readers!

Make yourselves at home. Since you've come to all the trouble of visiting this blog, don't rush off... Browse around. Take a moment to read about the Secret of Life. Play the googlation game. Check out the "Blogs I Like" in the sidebar. And be sure to click through to the Blog Of the Week!

CM is experiencing a major readership spike due to links from Althouse and Times and Seasons. Data heads may be interested in the following stats. My traffic for the week:



and for the month:



I'm guesstimating that as many as 1 in 10 of Althouse's readership hit CM yesterday. At the same time, you new readers are viewing, on average only one page per visit. C'mon folks, browse!

In any event, it is clear that the whole Mother's Day question strikes a chord -- I guess that's why Hallmark Cards invented it.

***

Mother's Day depresses the heck out of me. And this "Free Shopper Stopper Extra," which arrived in my mail yesterday, doesn't help:



You're not mistaken -- that picture is just what you think it is. Here's a closeup:

What's wrong with this picture?

a) This is actually not "chocolate french toast with salted apples."

b) This is toasted white bread with a bowl of cornflakes. Couldn't they have at least added a damned half a grapefruit?

c) Mom wants you to know that "give mom out of the kitchen" makes no sense. She would like you to work on your proofreading for Mother's Day.

d) Mom doesn't actually like to eat breakfast in bed.

e) All of the above.

I would like some polling data on this. Moms: Is breakfast in bed your idea of a good time on Mother's Day? I happen to know that several moms read this blog. Maybe you could help me out here.

***

I once again fail to create an original idea

It is one of my few unrealistic life ambitions (see above: "setting reasonable goals") to introduce a new term into English slang. In my last couple of posts, I've tried these three:

googlation: to translate and retranslate text from English to a foreign language and back to English

googlish: the English language text that results from googlating; and

eyedar: the innate ability of women to bust men who are scoping other women

After-the-fact Google searches reveal all three terms have appeared on the web, though not using the meanings I suggest. It turns out that "googlate" already has a pretty good meaning, according to Unwords.com:

To enter random words into a search engine out of sheer boredom or curiousity.

Maybe my proposed meaning of "googlation" could become definition #2. Based on past experience, I would guess that none of my slang will catch on, but "Googlate" seems to be the frontrunner, thanks to two posts from Bozzo at Marginal Utility. "It's the latest craze to hit the internets," he says here. The latest craze between me and him, perhaps; he also says here that:

Oscar creats some Googlation art from the words "the Bush Administration" at the Columnist Manifesto, in the latest example of why his blog deserves one hundred times its average daily traffic.

I have always considered Bozzo to be a blogger of great perspicacity as well as taste.

Thanks to Bozzo, my "googlation" thing may have become a "meme." After seeing the word "meme" for the umpteenth time -- it's a frequently used term of art in some blogger circles -- I finally broke down and asked what the hell it means. As Phantom Scribbler kindly explained (care of Dictionary.com), it is:

A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

Okay, so has my version of "Googlation" acquired memedom? Note how my "control" of this particular unit of cultural "information" has already passed out of my hands and into the more general blogosphere, here.

***

Exploring the wonders of "Googlation"

Do you fully appreciate the wonders of Google? Every time you think “Google simply can’t surprise me again,” it does. I would have been content with Google just by virtue of the fact that a search for the term “origami necktie” leads to my blog as the second hit. But recently, I've begun to explore the delights of a Google feature I’d never used before: “language tools.”

By clicking the tiny “language tools” link at the side of the search bar on Google’s home page, you get a text translator function that will translate blocks of text from English to any of several different languages, as well as translating blocks of text from those languages back into English.

For you wordies and linguistics buffs, this is actually a wonderful toy that could be good for hours of fun. All you have to do is take some English text, have Google translate it into another language, and then have Google re-translate it back into English.

Here’s an example. The first sentence I tried was very mundane – not unlike Alexander Graham Bell’s famous first words over his new invention, the telephone, “Watson, come here. I need you.” It was the first thing that popped into my head.

I am delighted to have a new ear piece for my cell phone.

Google-translating this into French and then back into English -- or "googlating," as I propose to call the English -- other language -- English process -- yields the following:

I am magic to have a new piece of ear for my telephone of cells.

I am magic indeed! By this point, I had gone through a linguistic looking glass and am now exploring a new world of infinite twisted potential.

The Bush Administration

Apparently, the phrase “the Bush Administration” is not quite translatable into "Googlish." Here is the googlation of “the Bush Administration” through the medium of selected other languages:

German: The Shrub Line

Portugese: The Administration Of The Shrub

Italian: The Management of the Bush

Japanese: Management

To refer to these as examples of a phrase “lost in translation” is to ignore the delightful nuances that are added by googlation. The Germans and Portugese adopt Molly Ivins’ satirical “shrub” for Bush, to which the Germans add the suggestion that the administration is simply a “line” – a series of rhetorical positions rather than a substantive governing institution, as in, perhaps, “a line of bullshit.”

The Italians’ “the Management of the Bush” seem to suggest a point I have argued, that Bush is not the decisionmaker, but is instead a front man run – managed – by his handlers.

The Japanese version is the most elegant. Like the minimalist form of the Haiku, the Japanese reduce the idea of the Bush Administration to a single character: not worker, not consumer, not citizen, but simply “management.”

*****