Was it "Eat Me" or "Drink Me" that shrunk Alice?

After tickling Chris incessantly, he thought it might be good to give me a good tongue lashing, even if his best efforts resulted in my uncontrollable laughter at:

Chris: Don’t you know the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolves”?
Josh: Uh, I think you mean ‘wolf’, honey. There is only one wolf in the story.
Chris: Oh. My version of the story is just more dramatic.

I just came back from a 6-day vacation in Wales where I visited a good friend of mine, Maria. Maria is a dramatic soprano that had sung fro a while in the chorus of the Welsh National Opera where her position was somewhat like mine now. She decided that she would break out of it, much like I want to do, in order to try to become a soloist in the Wagner Fach. She is, far and away, the only person in my life that is almost exactly like me in personality and temperament. It is just so strange being with her; it’s like having my female equivalent right next to me.

What can I tell you about England and Wales? Hell, I’m not even finished telling you about my trip with my parents. Well, I took notes in my little spiral notebook. Maybe I should just tell you what it says and maybe elaborate if necessary...

Thursday, 24 August

--Flight to London
--When in London, I luck out as the Europeans have to wait in a super long line while I go straight to the front of the line titled “Non-EU”. Finally, there is an advantage to being American. I was practically waived through.
n Had to check my baggage i Victoria Station so that I wouldn’t have to lug it everywhere for the day. It cost me £6. That’s a lot!
--From the very beginning, the driving on the left thing that England is known for is confusing. On the curb of almost every road in London, is painted the words “Look Left” or “Look Right”. I wonder how many tourists had to die before they did that? It is super confusing (but, I do tend to be directionally impaired.) What I had never realized, were the implications of this on the overall society. People even instinctively walk on the wrong side on the sidewalks, causing great confusion as you wonder why this person is coming straight for you even when you have the right of way. Uh, you don’t, silly. What I couldn’t seem to get over was that the left lane is the slow lane on the highway. That was just weird. Even the escalators go in the wrong direction.
--Got a tour of Parliament. That was very interesting. Although, form my current standpoint, knowing that the entire place was decorated in this Neo Baroque style in the middle 19th Century certainly takes a lot of the Romanticism out of it.


The interior is way over the top and much of the artwork is actually bad. I guess it goes to show that old Victoria didn’t have much taste (what a surprise.) What to expect when you give one person full reign simply because she was born to the right parents. (Remind me to tell you about the song that Henry VIII wrote with the words “Pocks on you. Can I not fart? Can I not belch?”)
--Did you know that Maggie Thatcher sits now in the House of Lords, she was given title of Baroness by the Queen. Got I hate Maggie Thatcher.
--And, because of problems determining what is “constitutional” or not, the Queen has started the ball rolling for the British to have their own Supreme Court (these decisions were previously made by appointed law experts in the House of Lords.) Interesting. So, the throne comes full circle, getting ideas from us?
--Went to s supermarket to buy some stuff for the bus ride to Cardiff, and, it being vacation, decided to buy a package of cigarettes. I asked the lady behind the counter to pick out a good English brand for me, wanting to try something native. Confused, I had to help her a bit more, and said that I wanted something that “the common man smokes”. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing to say. But the word “common” means something completely different in London than it would to us in the US. I inadvertently embarrassed both her and her and me. Ooops.
--The ride to Cardiff takes about 3.5 hours. Sat next to a man who slept most of the way but talked my ear off for the last half hour. “I couldn’t help noticing your accent. Are you from America?” I later learn is not necessarily a question that should be readily answered. He worked or companies all throughout the Middle East, and, thought, mistakenly, later on that I might find it interesting to know that he had once seen a snuff video there. That really freaked me out.
--Maria’s house is a row house, for those of you who know what that is. For those of you that don't, a picture:


It is two stories and is very narrow. I felt like a giant when I came in. Her place is extremely charming and cozy. It is probably perfect for her. But, I felt, both because of my own size and innate, American need for space quiet cramped. Don’t get me wrong. She is a lovely person and made me feel so welcome in her fine home. I just feel like that scene in the Naked Gun where Leslie Nielson is standing next to some giant guy who is so big that his head won’t even fit in the camera shot. He tells him that he has something on his face and a whole banana just falls on the desk in front of them. That was me in this house. The width of her house is basically from chimney to chimney here:

Damn those richies.

A medical study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine says that studies show adults in their 50s who are just slightly overweight have between a 20 and 40 percent chance of dying within the decade. Well, I guess Congress won’t have to “fix” Social Security after all. All of those Baby Boomers who were expected to live till 95 and cripple the U.S.’s social system for the elderly are going to die early, I guess, foregoing the problem they may have created for their younger and fewer working counterparts.

What’s even cooler is that the Democrats will almost certainly take over the Congress in the Fall and hold onto that power for some time, giving them the ability to take credit for overcoming this economic challenge (even when Nature solved the problem for them.)

All of these old people, with all of the money they saved and invested for retirement...now that money will be passed onto their survivors, tax free, thanks to the overturning of the “Death Tax”. That means we’re going to have a lot of Trust Fund Kids on our hands, even more than in the 90s. God, I hate those people.

For more on that see the Documentary by Jamie Johnson (heir to Johnson and Johnson wealth) called “Born Rich”. Very interesting.

La Première Beine

Where have I been?

For the last two weeks, I have been entertaining my parents and showing them the crown heads of Europe. I have waited until now to gain some sort of inspiration to write and tell you "how it all went." But, other than my last entry about Paris, I have had little to say.

What is it about spending two weeks with my parents that left me relatively soulless upon their escape back to the Motherland? And, perhaps more important, after having talked to many other friends, this seems to be the norm after a visit from the parents. So, the question is: what is it about our relationships with our parents as adults that in some way robs us of our identities.

I anticipated that I would need at least a week to recover from their visit. As it turns out, I needed two days just to come back to my senses. You have no idea how much management 'the J.' needs. This is why I think kids might be a bad idea for me. I am too selfish and self-centered to see to everyone else’s needs for any given period of time.

What did I do with my parents?


Thursday 3.8

Mom and Dad Arrive, go to sleep early in the first attempt to cure “the jet lag”.

Friday 4.8

Because we leave tomorrow for Paris, I thought a nice quiet day just walking around my little city of Pforzheim might be nice for them. We meet up with our best friends Amie and Ryan, so that my parents can meet them and see their new baby, Loren. We walk around the park, the city, eat ice cream and then send my parents home early for bed.


Saturday 5.8

We leave for Paris. The trip takes 6 and a half hours. It is my parent's first big trip here and they are excited. My father and I go to the restaurant car for a drink, and, while there, the conductor stamps our tickets.

We arrive in Paris. Paris Est is under heavy construction and there are French policemen everywhere with machine guns, a sight that we will become accustomed to on our 3 day sojourn. We find the Metro, and, with my parents in tow, I attempt my first horrible, broken French (my inability to quickly translate amongst the three languages running around in my brain will be a source of profound embarrassment and disappointment for the duration of our stay. The 'use it or lose it' maxim has become horribly apparent with my French. The whole time, my little, inner judge is screaming 'You have a Masters Degree in this language you idiot!' But, without any opportunity whatsoever to use it for more than 3 years, it is rusty at best.)

The Metro is crowded, way too cramped and fast-paced for my parents. They look as though they may just be scared to the absolute core by the throngs of people getting on and off of the Tube.


They look at me like little children, confused at not being able to understand the gibberish coming out of the notably more-ethnically diverse population than any of us are used to.


I still understand the people; I just can't talk to them without inserting occasional German words as the pneumatic tubes of my brain start to misdirect information. (I can just see those little capsules of information slamming into each other, and going in wrong directions in some kind of freak phenomenon of sound scientific principle. Start me in a conversation in any of those languages and I’m ok. Translation, though, for my interested parents is so not my forte.)

We exit the tube, according to my sources, somewhat in the vicinity of our hotel. I awake to a potential problem of our visit to Paris, but from an unexpected source. My father has to use the bathroom, and he's got to use it now--a theme which will plague us during our stay. What's worse, he refuses to use the French pissoirs, because that would mean he would have to pay to pee. Unthinkable! This makes finding the hotel even more important, and stressful, as the eternal question comes, after coming out of the depths of the labyrinthine snake called the Paris Metro: "Now which way do we go?"

After checking in, having a bit of rest after our trek, we ventured out for sustenance. I thought it might give a nice "exotic" flavor to our first day to eat what we all normally can’t, heading off to a good falafel restaurant. (A tip I found in the giant Fodor's guide that I had with me, a hulking 5 pounder from 2005 that I strapped to my back for hints when needed.) The guide said that there was a fabulous falafel restaurant not far from our hotel, one that was cheap and fun. The Centre de Pompidou, in all its splendor, met us at just about two blocks away, with its fun street vendors, caricaturists and otherwise hippiesque population that is the Marais.

Given that we were hungry and, to my estimation, lost, the journey to find the elusive little restaurant did have its humor (we happened, serendipitously upon several gay bars on the way, its customers, sitting in pairs at tables along the sidewalks, gawking at us as we passed. Who knows if my parents even noticed that some bars only had men at the tables? Who cares, anyway? I thought it was fun and another aspect of what would be our adventure.)

We came upon the little street only to find that the restaurant that was recommended had long been closed. We chose another Jewish Falafel shop near it, and ended up having a wonderful time, eating beautifully, and adequately resting before our journey back to the hotel, via Notre Dame. Do you know that falafel is Jewish and Palestinian? Did you know there’s a difference? Yeah, me either.

My parents were unequivocally unimpressed with Notre Dame. We approached it from behind, noting those flying buttresses of great fame.


The folks just wanted to go back to the hotel, but I persuaded them to at least walk to the front to see the façade, where we got a great glimpse of it in the setting sun. So disinterested were they that they didn't even bother going inside. My parents, the religious fanatics, could not be inspired by one of the most important religious icons on God's green Earth. The sweat and blood that went into this beautiful behemoth, the countless fortunes and lives lost only to show the glory of God Himself did not touch them. I practically wept, as I always do, looking at Notre Dame de Paris, while my parents yawned, failing to see what all the hubbub was about. Someone, please explain this to me.


We didn't see one museum in Paris. They only saw the Louvre from a cab, driving though. They were completely uninterested in anything cultural whatsoever. They were only happy when, on the last day, we put them on a 2 and a half hour bus tour of the city, where they could sit and look, from afar, at the two-dimensional Paris they wanted to see. I just don't get it. I think the “bohemian, real” Paris I tried to show them was only seen as the “inconvenient, dirty” Paris to them.

Sunday 6.8

Today we spent much of the day waiting in lines at the base of the Eiffel Tower. The views we saw from the second and third levels were extraordinary. My father seemed to only be disappointed that he couldn't see the airports from the center of the city.


It is from this height that one can see the extreme nature of Paris: its size. This city is so large and so architecturally beautiful; I almost pay twice the cost of what I pay for everything in Germany with a dumb smile, thankful, first of all, that I can pay it, and, thankful, second of all, that, even at this price, Paris even exists. After seeing only tiny kernels of what Germany once was, I have to agree with Vichy and his Empire somehow. The whole deportation and extermination of French Jews somehow, understandably, clouds this issue. Conundrums.

The buildings are almost all of great beauty and some kind of uniform, Parisian (to the layman) style. They are all made of stone, astonishing my parents on an on-going basis, and most have been built at the fin de siècle of the 19th Century. The richesse of France from about 1870 to 1910 is unfathomable. For more on this, read a brilliantly interesting book "The Banquet Years" by Roger Shattuck.

"We're from France."

My parents came to Germany on Thursday of this last week. They are staying fro two weeks. We just came back from a 3-day trip to Paris.

I don't know why I haven't been to Paris since I came to Germany in the Fall of 2003. I had been there a couple of times before, while I was studying French. I don't remember it being something that really attracted me. But, this time, I was absolutely balled over with excitement at how much I love this city. Chris loves it too, and sitting in almost complete darkness in the courtyard of the Louvre, with those beautiful, illuminated Pyramids in the background, we vowed to one day live there.

The funny thing about living here in Europe...Chris is a graphic designer who speaks almost no French, a very fluent English, and, perfect German, of course. I am an opera singer who is about to start the newest leg of my career which will, within the next few years, hopefully, allow me to do a lot of traveling. This means that, as Chris and I were sitting there, we actually thought 'my God, it is actually possible that we may one day live here.'

The newest line of the TGV, that between Paris and Strasbourg s going to be opening up in 2007, cutting down the traveling time to Paris from 5.5 hours to 3.5. This, tied in with both Chris and my new love for this city means that we're going to be spending a LOT more time there. If anyone out there knows someone in Paris with a guest room to let, please let me know, because I want to spend as much time there as is possible. Chris and I have a new favorite city, and she's called Paree.

Oh. the trip... hmmm Well, I am still fresh from it, but I can give you some first impressions, I guess. After having researched and researched for a good room, I broke down and thought that I would go with the Hotel Bellevue that the Fodor's Guide recommended. Here's what they said:

“Here you have an old Belle Époque time traveler, proud to keep its dingy chandeliers and faded gold trimming as is. Budget groups from France and the Netherlands come for the clean, sans-frills rooms; some units sleep four. Halls are lined with stamped felt that helps muffle sound trickling up from the spacious marble-floor lobby and bar. There may be some quirks, like the hefty old-fashioned room keys and the bathtub/showers without curtains, but you're just a few blocks from hipper addresses in the heart of the Marais. Get here before the fashionista crowd turns it into a shabby-chic hangout.”

I picked the hotel because I enjoyed staying in the little shabby room with only a sink and bathroom in the hall that I stayed in years ago in Paris. That was a different time and I was much younger. But, Paris will always have a Bohemian identity for me. It will always be "shabby-chic" as the description says. The Bellevue definitely lived up to that idea. But, I dare say it was a bit nicer than I had expected. At 68€ per night, it is very centrally located only 3 minutes from the Centre Pompidou. And those clunky keys the talked about have been replaced with electronic cards. Our room was clean and so was my parent's room. They still have no shower curtains, but that is pretty typical.

What is different about Paris?

Practically every restaurant within the tourist haunts (i.e., anywhere within 2 blocks of one of the major monuments) serves their fare accompanied by a big bottle of very cold water and glasses, complimentary. Huh??? How can this be? A glass of water ordered in a paris café was always notoriously expensive especially when every American meant, even when he hadn't asked as such, that the water should come from the tap. We even saw something of complete alien origin floating in our glasses at another café: ice. Ice??? Double huh? These things were the laughing stock of every American tourist as I and my friends would sit at café to watch the tourists. Not far from many of the monuments in Paris is, also, now a little modern fountain--usually some sculpture that has water flowing from an orifice. But, unlike before, there is no "Eau non potable" signs, and they are almost always seen with lines of tourists filling their water bottles.

The real question is, though: did this particular changes occur because, 2 years ago, nearly 15,000 French died because of the country's worst heat wave. Or, through time, did the French waiter finally break down, giving in to the Americanism they had to fend off at every instance, deciding, pint plank, that 'hey, maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all.'? Perhaps even more importantly considered, am I complaining? Is there any thing wrong with this? Or, am I just another intellectual whining that Paris' quirks are slowly being eroded into a society heavily influenced by Globalism and the consumer? No, I would never say that. The 'Globalism' thing smacks of affectation to me. I do find these changes very interesting, though.

For me, this time, after having lived in whitey white, homogenous Germany for so long, it seemed that the streets of Paris were just absolutely teaming with black people. Africans every where of every shape, size, color--that's not true, most Africans are darker than African-Americans, I find, but anyway... I think that their existence surprised me, even when it shouldn't have. And, the over-arching, perhaps over-reaching thing that I noticed about the Africans I encountered was just how much attitude they had. Many of the young men were strutting around like a cock on holiday, head in the air, absolutely convinced that they were cooler than cool. And the young women looked at me with faces of total contempt and revulsion as I smiled at them, insulted at the effrontery of a friendly tourist seeing them as some kind of rude objectification. To the untrained eye, the Africans that live in Paris are all some kind of refugee, someone either n the first or second generation of people form the sub-continent escaping to the West to have a better life. But, the sociology is much more complex than just that. Many of the people, especially, I surmise those of the snooty nature, are parts of the ruling classes of their countries back home, given French passports or special privileges of their native passports, because of their wealth or social status in the ruling tribe, the ruling bureaucracy, their ruling governments. In other words, what, to many, amy seem just another black person, is someone of very high status in their homeland. This does not make them any better than anyone else. But, I am sure that someone who was treated as a king in his home country, who has the money and power to arrive in the French World's greatest city (Paris) and is then treated as another "black" might have some resentment. And, often this fear and consternation that one feels when the reality of being undervalued in a new land sets in is met with a psychological defense: being conceited and feeling that those around you are beneath you. It is, in my mind, a very interesting phenomenon. People have always tried to hide their own personal fears by trying to appear as more than they are. Believe me, I should know. My own conceit has been used for a mask for many years...

Paris is so fascinating and alive. It is so beautiful and immense, inspiring, but unfathomable and, somehow complex and mysterious. There's a lot there under the surface, the kind of "a lot" that one only gets to know by being slowly simmered there for years. This kind of steeping to the brim with Paris is something that I think Chris and I would enjoy. Maybe the wish that I made under Le Pont Marie, just before I kissed Christoph, might actually come true.

Legenda Urbanae Crusti

Did you know that the story we always tell of Kennedy giving a speech in Berlin and accidentally referring to himself as a ‘jelly doughnut’ is an urban legend?

1. There is nothing grammatically incorrect with the statement “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
2. The jelly filled pastry called “Berliners” are not even referred to as such in Berlin.
3. This legend that Kennedy made a fool of himself is almost completely unknown here in Germany.

Kennedy made this statement on June 26, 1963, and it was understood exactly as it was intended, as a statement of fraternity, reminding the Berliners who were, at that time, in a difficult position, that they were not alone. It is still known as an extremely proud moment here, not one of bumbling grammatical errors.

Please do me a favor, and forward this to anyone you know. The “Ich bin ein Berliner” story is one that especially intellectuals love to tell. We should save our brethren from their potential embarrassment. Oder?