and while you sleep we suck your blood

I was in Amsterdam and had no place to sleep. I wasn't worried. Somehow these things tend to work themselves out.

It was my third night in the city and I had already drunk enough good Belgian beer and smoked enough Dutch weed to consider the visit a success. The first two nights, Wednesday and Thursday, I had stayed with couchsurfers--Stefan and Judith. Neither could host me Friday, but I felt like staying a few more days; I put my faith in the universe and set out. There was a party at a squat according to, a website to which my friend Nicole alerted me, having lived in the city herself at one point. On the way, I took another suggestion of hers: Cafe Gollem. I can only assume they got the name from Golem and not Gollum. I can't quite find the answer on their site.

There, I sat at the bar and ordered a Trippel. I noticed some individuals sitting alone, noticeably a girl sitting by the window. I was pretty open to talking to whomever--little did I know that at Cafe Gollem "ledereen praat tegen iedereen." And then the girl at the window came up to order, which she did in a language that sounded strangely familiar. Turns out, she was from Texas. Not that exotic, but strange enough to meet her at a hole-in-the-wall in Amsterdam.

So I heard her order, asked where she was from, and then next thing I knew, she was inviting herself to sit next to me; turns out, this girl Lisa had been in the 'Dam for 5 days and didn't know too many people yet. Starved for conversation, we gorged.

She was a dancer, as in modern dancer, so I got to name-drop all the dancer names and modern dance methods that I knew. Eventually, we both decided to check out this squat party along with former host Stefan.

Found the squat but no people, no party.

Drats. It looked like it was a cool space--some big structure where they formerly repaired tram cars. Industrial but spacious. So we got some food and then I asked Lisa and Stefan who would like to house me for the evening. I ended up on Lisa's floor on a couple of yoga mats, which was not much better than her schlafplatz: a camping mattress on a wooden frame. Her mattress had been destroyed for harboring modern society's old world pest: bedbugs.

She had warned me about the bedbugs but had said the bugman had been by the day before and said they were gone. I trusted the bugman.

The next morning, no bites. I took all my stuff with me, hoping to find a couchsurfing host at the weekly couchsurfing meet-up. Lisa joined me but I could not bring myself to subject myself to yet another home situation--especially one that I would be jumping into late at night. The devil you know won out and I spent another night on Lisa's floor.

Finally, Sunday I left Amsterdam. I was going to hitchhike but was tired so took the train. It was 50€ I would rather not have spent, but I was tired and needed the rest. I found a compartment by myself and started to read the paper, a French newspaper called "La Libération", started by Sartre and friends.

Almost predictably, Murphy's Law?, I was joined by a family that occupied the remaining 5 seats: two parents, 3 rambunctious boys.

Got to Ghent, Gent, or Gand and found my couchsurf host at the train station--a blind guy named Didier. How strange and wonderful that I could enter into his world and see first-hand how easy or difficult things become when you can't see.

There's plenty to be said about my time in Gent, but suffice it to say that I woke up after the first night with 7 or 8 red bites on one foot. To the bedbug expert, this may not sound like a bedbug problem, but to me it sounded alarms. I spent the next few days a hypochondriac, worrying about whether or not I should worry.

This went on for weeks when I ultimately decided I have no need to worry. Lisa has said that there's been no resurgence in bugs; no one else I stayed with reported having them.

All this comes at a time when bedbugs are all over the news. Every couple of days in the Times, there's a new article about bedbugs and how wonderful and terrible they are. [To be fair, the only good thing about bedbugs is that they don't spread disease like other bloodsuckers.]

Now I'm hypersensitive, so whatever bite I find on my body (mosquitos are terrible in Chicago thanks to a lot of summer rain), or whatever small bug I see reawakens the sleeping worry giant. My new sublet, a step up from the co-op in terms of cleanliness, has never had a problem with them, but I saw some small bug, possibly one of those small spiders, and immediately feared the worst. So far, no strange bites, just the lingering sense of impending doom.

retroviseur macht klar

How will time clarify my experiences and put them in context? Only time will tell. I hope to dig deeper into my Europe experience, which, up until now, has been relatively superficial.

The last four days of my 2-month sojourn were in Paris. Or, rather, around Paris. The first 2 nights were in the 92; the last 2 in the 93. For the latter, you can say "quatre-vignt-treize", but the cool way to say it is "neuf trois". It's a rougher part of Paris, "la banlieue chaude", the part that had some really cool fireworks a couple years back--car burning and whatnot.

No riots while I was there. "Riot" in Froggy is "émeute"; "chaud" means dangerous; "beu" means weed.

I was staying out there in the ghetto with a friend I met in Chicago. All my French friends I met in Chicago. Or somewhere else. But few did I meet in France. And rarely without an introduction. Frédérique (Fréd), I met while doing the bike tour. But she wasn't on the tour, just standing around near Buckingham Fountain. I heard her say something in a French accent and started talking to her. I think we only hung out once: right before she left (the city, the country), we met for tea at Argo Tea. I also got to meet some other American she met; good thing she met me too or she'd think we're all crazy.

So I didn't know her all that well but still far better than I knew most of my couchsurf hosts. I certainly feel like I know her--we've been friends on Facebook for a year or more--but I still don't know much about how she functions and what makes her tick.

The first night, I met her at the train station as she got back from Annecy. If that town sounds familiar, it's because I went there with Lisa about a month earlier. Her family either lives there or owns a house; Fréd goes a couple times a summer much like I go to New Buffalo. So she was back from a weekend away, suddenly thrust into hosting duties for some dirty, couchsurfing American.

Her apartment was well outside Paris--halfway to Charles de Gaule--and more rundown than I was expecting. She is only there temporarily, has been living there for a couple of months after getting a surprise job. Soon, she hopes to find a permanent place in Paris. As such, its furnishings are mostly from the landlord, including the mattress on the floor in the kitchen/dining room where I slept. I've slept in worse places.

We didn't have much time to talk when I first arrived, but the second night, she met me at a couchsurfing event and tore me away from some new friends [later when I returned, the bar was overflowing with CSers]. We found a cute place to eat that wasn't too overpriced just north of Les Halles--close to the rue Montorgueil but not on it. [That, by the way, is a bustling ped mall with restaurants packed in like sweaty Parisians on the metro. Don't remember it being that way in 2000; now it seems a little too trendy, well-known, possibly even touristy.]

The conversation was surprisingly deep and broad--good thing: I'd been through a 1001 surface-level conversations and was craving something more substantial. We talked about relationships mostly--my favorite conversation topic. She had just gotten into a relationship after getting royally dumped a year earlier; I was just about on the way out of a relationship with Lisa, with whom I traveled to Annecy with. Fréd was in a 2-year relationship, maybe longer, and got dumped via text on Christmas. Terrible. And, as she said, it took her a year, but she got over it and opened herself up to the possibility of finding someone and then did.

At the time, I found her story of heartbreak to be more calamitous than mine, but now I'm not so sure. Getting dumped after 2 years is certainly negative, but I'm thinking more about negative reinforcement. Say old man Pavlov gave his dogs a shock 2 hours after eating; they won't necessarily associate the eating and the shock. My shock came just at the moment of falling in love--just as the dog was savoring the meet juices running down its throat. As such, I haven't been able to get much past a couple months (weeks) without having a Pavlovian reflex of panic.

When you travel, you think you're meeting people, but really you're meeting yourself.

break down pt deux

This is my best guess of where I've been recently:

• 7/15: Thu: Tübingen one more night with couchsurf host Jessi, found out through facebook that a friend, Dave from South Africa whom I knew from Chicago, had just moved there, met up with him and drank in public square
• 7/16: Fri: rideshare from Stuttgart to Munich, train to Eichsätt, met with friend Laura, watched Blues Brothers in the park, slept on her friend's couch
• 7/17: Sat: great bike ride with Laura, biergarten, but then had to go back to Munich, nowhere to stay in Eichsätt, sitting at train station, randomly met with fellow traveler and couchsurfer Sietske who found us 2 beds to sleep on
• 7/18: Sun: rode around Munich on bikes we found, went to anarcho-hippie dinner party, climbed scaffolding of church and drank up high
• 7/19 Mon: hitchhiked with Sietske from Munich to (almost) the Czech republic, stayed at a hotel in the middle of nowhere
• 7/20 Tu: hitchhiked from hotel to Cesky Krumlov with Sietske, stayed there
• 7/21 Wed: hitchhiked from Cesky Krumlov to Pilsen, stayed in a run-down hostel, broke phone by sleeping on it
• 7/22 Thu: my one day in Prague, took bus from Pilsen in morning, walked around, couchsurfing bar night at night, stayed in a hostel with Belgians I had met the night before
• 7/23 Fri: hitchhiked from Prague to Dresden, went out with folks from the hostel
• 7/24 Sat: hitchhiked from Dresden, met with couchsurf host Christian, went to multilingual party at his ex-girlfriend's, slept there
• 7/25 Sun: woke up at the party apartment, slept on Christian's couch, hung out with Merle
• 7/26 Mon: 2nd couchsurf in Berlin, Paul, who also was hosting 2 Austrian girls
• 7/27 Tu: 2nd night at Paul's, went to squat for Volksküche that didn't exist
• 7/28 Wed: Amsterdam, hitchhiked from Berlin to Amsterdam, couchsurfed with Stefan
• 7/29 Thu: Amsterdam, 2nd couchsurf with Judith, a first time host
• 7/30 Fri: Amsterdam, stuff in train locker, met a girl at a bar (not what it seems), went to a squat for a party that didn't exist, slept on her floor
• 7/31 Sat: Amsterdam, stuff still in train locker, slept on Lisa's floor (girl from bar)
• 8/1 Sun: went from Amsterdam to Gand
• 8/2 Mon: stayed in Gand
• 8/3 Tu: hitchhiked from Gand (Gent) to Caen (pronounced "quand"), couchsurfed
• 8/4 Wed: stayed with Jennifer, old friend from Paris days (10 years ago) and her new husband and baby
• 8/5 Thu: stayed with Jennifer & co., played Go with her husband Laurent
• 8/6 Fri: hitchhiked from Brittany to Paris, arriving around 23h, couchsurfed in the suburbs of Paris (92)
• 8/7 Sat: woke up in the 92, slept there too
• 8/8 Sun: woke up in the 92, went to the 93 the northeast 'burbs of Paris, the more dangerous ones
• 8/9 Mon: stayed in 93, train into Paris to walk around, went to couchsurf bar night, met Frédérique for dinner
• 8/10 Tu: woke up in the Paris suburbs, flew to NYC, walked around Brooklyn, few to Chicago, slept at home--the closest thing to home that I have.

somehow we're all connected

I've been telling the same stories over and over again. It's helpful to have an arsenal for awkard moments in cars with people who picked you up on the side of the road. One theme that keeps coming back is Facebook. For one thing, I've been keeping friends and family abreast of my travels with it; for another, I've been making new friends and adding them to my network; and for yet another, it's helped to facilitate coïncidental meet-ups in the most random of places.

First, Quentin. A friend from grad school, he was actually an undergrad student in my class when I was a TA in grad school. And so we're not exactly the same age. But, opposite of what you think, he is not 10 years younger but 10 years older. He had a regular IT job for a while but decided to quit to finally get his degree--in viola performance. I hadn't seen him for many years--4 or 5--and so had to learn to Facebook that he was getting divorced. His extended family saw oppportunity in crisis and sent him to Europe for 2 months to take his mind off things. Already our stories resemble each other--aside from my noticable lack of divorce.

We stayed in contact through Facebook, following each other's position just as friends back home do, the one difference being the noticable lack of jealousy in our comments. We decided to meet in the middle, which is probably the best and only reason to go to Luxembourg.

Quentin and I tried to meet once after our meet-up in Luxembourg--this time at the top of a mountain to watch the arrival of the Tour de France. Q posted on FB that he was headed to Morzine to continue following the Tour from city to city. I was going to watch that stage too and so left him a note telling him I'd be calling when I got there. But, faute d'internet, a lack of internet, and he didn't get the message until the next day. I hitchhiked from Geneva--boo, hiss--and got made it in 2, really 3, rides. The first guy was French but of Arab extraction and was too excited about the United States and the direction in which Obama is leading it. Direction is good, but it would be nice to advance some in that direction. The second guy was really hard for me to understand but was great: he dropped me off in his town and then decided that he had some time to kill so might as well take me all the way there--about another 30 or 40 km.

Got to the mountain, called Quentin's cell phone(s), which were both off, and wandered around looking for him. Later we found out that we were within a kilometer of each other near the finish. Close but so far. So I had no place to sleep and had to make do, after watching the World Cup final, with sleeping on some newspapers on the side of a road. After it got too cold, in the middle of the night, I had to be resourceful and found an advertising banner to wrap myself up in. Plenty warm but hardly slept. Sun woke me up at 5:30.

Final FB story. After I hitchhiked to Zurich, I did carsharing to Stuttgart and then took the train to Tübingen, a student-flavored town in Swabia. Or Schwabia. I got there, planning to spend 2 days, and posted "Evan is in Tübingen" on FB. My old friend Jay--whom I've known since grade school, and then high school, but really becoming friends with through Ultimate frisbee in college and both living in Hyde Park in Chicago--told me that a mutual friend from Chicago had just moved there to work on some application of math to develop artificial learning. We got connected through Facebook and met up for a drink and then breakfast.

Like I tell people: it's a tool, one that can be used to bring people together. But bring people together too much and you lose privacy and your wallet. Use it wisely--like the internet in general--and reap the benefits while hopefully avoiding the downsides.

in-group, out-group

I've been trying to explain to people, as I try to figure it out myself, what I like about traveling, what I get out of it, and what I don't like. In the process, I've been delineating the difference between being a traveler and being a tourist. I was in the middle of elucidating someone once, when he turned it around and said it better than I could:

When you're a tourist, you go to a place to see the sights; when you're a traveler, you go to discover a place.

It has something to do with preconceptions; a tourist will invariably take a photo of the sights--the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben--despite the 100s of millions of photos just like it. Perhaps this is a perfectly natural impulse but outdated; now that we have google image search and flickr, do we need any more digital copies of Eiffel towers?

That being said, I took some photos of the Eiffel Tower, but it was merely a backdrop to an event that I stumbled upon: a public viewing of a world cup match. With the combination of event and setting, I saw the photo as telling a good story. I prefer to chase after good stories than the usual sights.

Maybe that's another nuance of the above quotation: when a traveler visits a place, they seek to experience it--or, at least, to have experiences with it. When a tourist comes to a place, they go to observe it as if watching a movie.

And, though I have my preferences, I can hardly say that I fully evade being a tourist. Sometimes, or in some cities, it's just the path of least resistence. I went on a bike tour of Berlin, for instance, and though I felt like a total observer, it was a good experience and helped me situate Berlin in both time and space. Fortunately, that experience was balanced by staying in an artist loft, going to an anarchist squat, and having coffee at an East Berlin soup kitchen. And the fact that I had a bike to ride around on my own to go exploring.

What I've decided, is that some cities are really just good for visiting (Paris, Amsterdam), some are good for living (Dresden, Lyon, Antwerp), some aren't good for either (Luxembourg), and some that are so hard to crack, it takes years to infiltrate the community enough to get a sense of it (Munich, Brussels).

All this has something to do with how much I feel accepted by the city. Munich felt like a good old boys club of hard core Bavarians who tolerated tourists but kept them at arm's length. I felt fortunate to be couchsurfing and so had local friends to explore with. Amsterdam, Prague, and Paris, seem to have so many tourists, and so many people staying temporarily that they are loathe to be overly friendly. But at least they are good places to visit. With Paris, a city I know better than the others, I feel like the French clique opens up to me only rarely, and when it does, it slams shut as soon as the moment is over. It's a sisyphean struggle. I feel the same when I'm hitchhiking. I go from outside to insider (quite literally) and then violently back to outsider and have to start all over again.

Berlin felt so unbelievably cosmopolitan--most people were recent transplants and there only temporarily--that I felt almost like a local, especially when I had a bike. It felt the most like Chicago or New York where people are seeing people come and go all the time; better meet them while you have the chance and then be facebook friends for life.

Lyon managed to feel like this somewhat despite the fact that the population is probably more like Munich's: longterm locals. I think it's just a cultural that makes the people in Lyon more open to outsiders. Maybe it's no coincidence that Nazism had its base in Munich. It's funny to me that that's where I met Sietske (a traveling friend for a couplein days), found free bikes to use (on the street...unlocked...felt sorta like stealing), and went to a dinner at a squat--but not a normal squat: the people were living in their trucks and were squatting a parking lot.

That's a pretty broad overview; stay tuned for more specific stories and adventures maybe tomorrow or soon.