Swiss/Alsace Continued
THURSDAY, MAY 29: Pee at 3:15. Up at 4:40 with the vivid dream-memory of a brown-skinned man with an over-large chest sucking the STATUE of a cock, and then a sexy guy who's erect and wants to cum, but can't, and I feel like cuming too, and wake with an erection that just WON'T go away, so I listen to Ken's regular breathing and decide to risk jerking off just to get rid of the sexual feeling, so I do so, really fast, and put it into a wad of toilet paper that goes down with the flush, and I pee again, and wipe my dick clean of the last stickiness, and write on a piece of paper that I want the ADDRESSES for the postcards for which I got the STAMPS at the souvenir shop on Jungfraujoch. Wake at 6:18 and get up at 6:28, answer the phone while Ken is in the john trying to shit and AGAIN not being able to, sew on the button with the hotel's sewing kit, look for my address list through EVERYTHING because early on I confused the "past papers" pile with the "future papers" pile, so Ken leaves for breakfast while I pack my bag after I find it at 7:09 and put the bag out at 7:11 JUST as the guy's collecting them and taking them to the service elevator. Breakfast 7:15-7:35, Ken not able to save me a place, so I have to sit between Bob and Mr. Hong, but Bob actually talks to me, as does Veronica across the way, and get back to room to look at fabulous mountains and light from the balcony, shooting to #5 by 7:50. On bus at 8 and Sue says 106 has a bill: Ken says "Shit, I told you wrong---I DID sign a bill." So David runs out for something TOO. Off at 8:06, Ken complaining (how unusual!) that his credit card took four times to register and IF he has to call the US can I give him my ATM card to call with? Uh-huh. Off at 8:06 to wood-carving at 8:27. #6 Ken and bear at his request at 8:29. I'm out at 9:05, bored with mediocre stuff, and it's HOT and music boxes are noisy, though I get two nice little chocolates, and out for #7 two women on balcony at 9:07. #8 dough crocodile with almond teeth. Through #11 on WONDERFUL lake-views to 9:20. GREAT promenade, empty at first, then everyone else finds it, including the impossibly snotty Cheri. Leave at 9:30, and out at Ballenberg at 9:38. #12 wine press at 10:15. #23 at #751 from 1336, but no great detail left, at 11:35. Lots and hots and at 12 have apple tart and Sprite for 8F and another Sprite for 3.50. Got to see a rehearsal for Jurg Jenatsch, from 1627. We were told to meet to leave Ballenberg at 12:30, and Ken's said I've gone to see almost everything after he mistook the map, almost got to the end, and insisted on going BACK without seeing anything in BETWEEN. Lots and lots of stuff, including bread-making, loom-weaving, wood-carving, chip-box making, lace-making, and a few others I forget. Onto hot bus at 12:28. To Alpnachstad at 1:20 and Sue gets us on an hour-earlier funicular at 1:40, and we start up at 1:41. To the top at 2:10, views on the way up mostly obscured by trees, but I take video anyway. I start walk to TOPmost point at 2:16, and up by 2:23, 7 minutes rather than the stated 10. Start down at 2:34 after some distant peaks clear of mist, look and take lots of pictures, and get down at 2:41, delayed by talking to Sue on her way up. #2 two hikers in lower left and church and cross at 2:53. Finish "dragon circle," which certainly wasn't art, at 2:56. Start "Tomlishan 40 minutes" at 2:57, #4 back at 3:05. Video to 3:07. Dash back at 3:17, get a tuna sandwich for 7.8F lunch, and get on gondola at 3:27-3:42, mostly cloudy, and to the bottom in a two-man gondola to 4:05. Bus RIGHT at exit, along with two sexy guys smoking cigars but waiting for their girls. To Engelberg and Hotel Ramada Treff at 4:54, in incredible valley first drenched in rain, then cleared up as we got to room 607 at 5:05. I unpack some and type 5:20-5:42, then suggest we go out for a walk, around to find a closed Alpenclub Restaurant that Sue recommended for tomorrow, and up to the church whose bells stop ringing JUST as we enter the soiled rococo interior for a service I can't place, which Ken loves for a bit, and I look at jewel-encrusted bones under a reliquary skull, and he looks at the organ pipes and we're out to see that it's a performance of the 6PM daily office! Meet Tony on the walk back, who's leaving tomorrow, and get to the smoky bar for my vodka and grapefruit and cranberry for 10F and Ken's pütsli plum 2cl for 4F, and Sue says we can go into the dining room early, so Ken insists on taking his umbrella up to the room and I refuse to let him take my camera, and I go in and get a prime table against the wall, and we order a 47F-with-tip bottle of Sancerre, pretty good, and then who join us but the LAST couple to arrive: Tony and Noi ("short for noisy"), who turn out to be VERY interesting, and even Ken says in amazement "You never know." We talk of travel, China, Malaysia, the Petronas Towers which they've never been to in their hometown of Kuala Lumpur, their son (who's a father) is in Beijing in some chemical business that pays very well, and HE'S in charge of a chemical company with a partner with whom he shares vacation time. Interesting! OUR watermelon (not theirs) is not ripe and uninteresting, the chicken is, as usual, oversalted, and Ken of course hates the carrots of peas and carrots, and the ice cream over fruit is just ordinary. We dine 6:50 to 9, slow service because the place is JAMMED with two tours, and I pay for the wine and we get upstairs where Ken wants to use two envelopes for tips, $120 to Sue and $80 to Mikhail, $10 extra from Ken. This takes to 9:30, I put on the battery to charge after seeing that I have 24 minutes left on my tape, and at 9:36 start typing to FINALLY catch up at 10:24, getting to bed immediately for our 7AM walkup call and 8:15 departure for the monastery, which might be right here, but the valley looks like a GREAT place (incredibly clear in the evening, though a light mist begins to cover the right-most range of mountains) for a carriage ride. I'm TIRED! Stop at 10:25. Bed at 10:54, comfortable.
FRIDAY, MAY 30: Pee at 2:27, and shit at 5:27. Dream of numbering important statements, either in groups of three or in three different languages, as we've seen so much everywhere in Switzerland, and they're on index cards as a possible aid to memorization in some very important, very scientific subject like cosmology, in which I was an acclaimed expert, working with someone at the absolute top of the field. Doze and count the remaining meals (4) with this group, and start worrying about Ken's luggage and my increasingly sore right arm, shoulder, and forearm. Ken goes to the john about 6:25, and I get up at 6:35 and take a long, wonderful shower, washing my hair with the supplied shampoo in the squeeze bottle, but using the soap for washing, rather than the Dove-like slimy stuff in the squeeze bottle. Out at 6:55AM and he's up already, and when I complain about the fan being slow, he of course responds with "You're not a fan of the fan?" How could anyone be MARRIED to ANYONE and not get tired of what they do ALL the time? Put on all-clean underwear and type this to 7AM, ready to dress in a NEW CLEAN SHIRT and get out the brown trousers to wear on this un-athletic day in a carriage and in Lucerne, which Ken says has a world-class transportation museum, which may be expected in this road- and rail-perfect country. Stop this at 7:02AM, ready for postcards sometime this morning. Breakfast 7:15-7:45, Ken perversely sorry that he's not SOCIALIZING, looking longingly at other conversations. Up and TRY to brush teeth, but he monopolizes the bathroom so I sit at 7:56 and type this with a wet toothbrush dripping onto my postcards waiting for him to let me in to rinse my mouth out! What a pain! And has he NO realization that people might not want to sit next to someone CONSTANTLY and NOISILY inhaling snot, or coughing, or clearing his throat, or brushing his hand back through his hair, or trying vainly to make interersting conversation? Rush to get ready to go down at 8:15, and everyone's looking at the two carriages, but Susan says we can get on and immediately I hop onto the back, raised seat of the first carriage, and Ken has some trouble getting up, but he seems to like it. Leave at 8:16 and for a long time we're just on city streets, which isn't very much fun, but then we turn down a country road, go past fishermen on a bridge, and I take a shot of the carriage behind when we turn around in the low bright sun, #8 at 8:39. We then go back to the monastery we looked at yesterday, and get off at 8:45, just a half-hour ride which I'd hoped would have been longer and in greater countryside. The four below us just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, and I am not amused. Sue knocks and is admitted before 9, and I'm videoing woodburnings when I discover I'd inadvertently put the motor on and it almost discharged the battery. DAMN! VERY sunny and clear out, and we WAIT for "monastic early" monks? Sue: "We're in the book for 9AM, but the woman isn't here yet, maybe she overslept." She had arrived earlier, but starts at 9:10. #9 woodcarved table from 1930 by a monk who practically did every carved surface in three rooms we could see and one, "in private," that we couldn't---and it was interesting that the balcony in the church enabled the monks to go back and forth from their rooms to the choir "in private," without entering a public area. Video the monastery hall when hand-wrap starts playing (a Christmas carol, "O Holy Night") on the piano---too long. #10 decide to TAKE the picture of the erotic crucifixion, if it only comes out in the dark stairway. #11 refectory at 9:43. At 10:07 Sue insists we've got to get to the bus which arrived at 10AM with the others, but when WE get there we find that three OTHERS have wandered off, Ann looking vainly for her husband Bill, and they're FNALLY back at 10:18 and we leave, saying it will be an hour. Off bus at 11:20. #13 Lucerne lion at 11:27, though it said "Art a Thorwaldsen" and "Oper a Someoneelse", so he probably only DESIGNED it and someone else did the trouble of carving it out of the rock. We're due back to the bus at 11:50 and I look at the Alpine 3-D panorama shop with NO ONE inside; I could have taken ANYTHING, though she DID say something from next door when I left. But I saw one of them and a repro of another ice-scene, and it was no big deal. Across to the Bourbaki Panorama and there's no one at the desk THERE, either, and I look through and pick up three or four brochures, one of which shows the WHOLE panorama, and most of it's just SNOW, so I took it and left to later tell Ken, "They should learn not to give away the whole show." Looked at the price-list there and saw there was a three-ticket combination for both panoramas and the Hall of Mirrors Labyrinth in the Glacier Park, and decided to leave all THOSE to next time. Bus off at 11:55 to Bucherer at 11:57, where Ken goes up to inscribe two knives and Sue picks up maps which Ken wants one of. Maps diplomatically wangled for Ken by Sue at 12:06. Ken down at 12:12 while I people-watch. #14 "Death" bridge at 12:25. GOOD meal at Galliki, open though it didn't appear to be, and wonderful Italian waitress prompts Ken to leave 20F tip on a 122F bill for his mushroom small-cup and my veal-turned-out-to-be-sausage small-cup and wonderful rosti again, a bottle of Fershy, or something that we may have had before, but may be from somewhere near Neuchatel, and it's pretty good with the pork cutlets I got and the veal scallopini in a HUGE portion that HE got, which he ate ALL of, and I had too much bread and butter, good, and we had no trouble finishing a liter of sparkling water, and "the man across" attracts our attention by SINGING, which causes his woman (who looks like she wants SOMETHING sexual from SOMEONE) to look at me and we both laugh, and then he SLAMS his hands down on the table and DEMANDS that the trio in front of him be more quiet, and the waitress chides "the Swiss type" who "don't know that people COME to a restaurant to talk, so you can't tell them not to," and Ken didn't even HEAR her and continued to extol her manner and enthusiasm and instant service, while I went to the john for the second time (knowing where it was because we went to the back garden, which would have been cooler, but Ken prefered inside, where she made the GOOD comment, "Well, maybe YOU eat inside and YOU eat outside!" before looking at flashy St. Francis church, videoing it, and decide at 1:52 that the transit museum is just too far and too complicated to try to do in less than two hours, so Ken's knife (they didn't SELL left-handed knives---for Jay---at Bucherer) was picked up and I got my spoon after Ken looked through his bag and couldn't find his certificate, and I tried to get a spoon without it and she REFUSED, so I DEMANDED Ken go through his bag and I found the certificate as part of the envelope flap and the woman smilingly gave me a spoon, which woman Ken said was surly to him throughout HIS transactions with her. This takes to 2:40. Then we look for Ken's Romansch CD to 2:55, and he even bothers to pick up a card to give to Susan who SAID she didn't know where to get a CD, but perhaps she did and simply didn't care to give him the information. #17 Pfister Zunfthaus facade at 2:58, and #19 fountain at 3:22 from the Sommerrestaurant, which I ascended to after wanting to pee and going across the whole Hofbahnhof underground to the WC sign pointing to Mr. Clean who did laundry and charged 1F for pissoir and 2F for WC, which I found intolerable, so I found an elevator which might lead me to some part of the Kunstmuseum next door and it led me to----a free john! Peed and went to the empty space to take videos and photos below and leave and #20 magnified from atop station-entrance at 3:34, then video birds to 3:37, through #26 on bridge to 3:45, #27 swan at 3:50 and meet Ken and onto bus at 3:58. Off at 4 exact and into Engelberg at 4:46, our time taken by fillng out a questionnaire on our presnt trip and our future trips, and #29 in chapel at 4:57 after we were left off, went to the monastery church when I handed Sue the questionnaire AND the envelope with our $120 inside, and #29 in chapel at 4:57, and Alpenclub CLOSED; reserve at Hotel Engelberg for 8PM, and to hotel at 5:15 and COLLAPSE naked onto bed 5:17-5:47 after two wonderful cold glasses of water. Pay $20 and 125F for 100 euro bill downstairs to 6PM and up to video parasails and note to 6:13, then feel too tired to do ANYTHING but puzzles to 7:13, then type from 7:17 to 7:55, when Ken's dressing for the restaurant, even though it's raining. Carry umbrellas, but it's stopped, and I predict 5 in the restaurant, but there are more like 15, including a table of men in the bar area who light up two or three cigars, which neither of us likes. My 35F menu is quite good: cream of carrot soup, zander (pike-perch) wrapped in bacon (tasty) on spinach (mediocre) with boiled potatoes (nothing), while Ken had a salad, chicken breast, and a combination dessert of gingerbread and tirami-su ice cream, while I had what was called a sussmostcreme, which was a wine-flavored cream pudding with schlag. Bill of 121.5 almost identical to lunch, though sadly the dessert was enormously prolonged (had to ask for his menu, for his order, to get it, to get the check, to get the check back), though the goodness of the 44F pinot grigio helped make the meal OK, though we were both pissed by the FLIES that seemed to concentrate on us, though others were swatting them, and there were a few cuties to make it more interesting, and the waitresses really WORKED! Out at 9:55, cool and fresh while the streets were wet, and as I looked out the window (particularly where the very-distant shirtless guy had looked out until we looked at HIM), the water fountain across the street went out, but some TV in an adjoining room must have sent light-flashes across the facade, making a mysterious sky-flash seem quite other-worldly. Ken showers as I type this at 10:12, having taken my pills which I'd forgotten to take, and now have the bed to clear off before climbing into it, having had my duvet-removed double-sheet replaced with a single sheet, though covered with the blanket they took from my desk-chair which I had to put back and am now sitting on. At the top of the current page I'd recorded "10:30 luggage out, 11:30 transfer, but be 15 minutes early, in case." Ken kept pestering me through the puzzles earlier with details about the move tomorrow: the train wasn't at 5PM it was at 3PM, maybe we didn't have to check our luggage at the airport at ALL, he'd have to do his laundry other than on Sunday, we'd just have to walk from the hotel to our first restaurant in Strasbourg, but taxi to the second, that he was worried about time, about where we were going to eat: maybe have a big late breakfast and only a snack before the huge 3-star dinner at 8. Finish this at 10:16, tired, glad THIS part of the trip is OVER! BUT I still have the CARDS to do tomorrow, SOMETIME! Currently on roll 10. Ken to bed 10:40. I sit on toilet and work puzzle in the clammy heat until 11:18, then go to bed, immediately to sleep.
SATURDAY, MAY 31: Pee at 1:40. 4:35 wake and pee and transcribe dream: I'm on a large plot of ground in what seems to be the American middle west, and the ground needs to be broken up into little parcels by means of pieces of paper cut into strips (like the woman was doing with strips of bark around wooden frames in the "chip box" demonstration in Ballenberg the other day) and formed around clods of earth and then fastened with those gummed ring-reinforcers that used to be used on notebook paper that had been pulled from ring binders, breaking the holding rings. These formed little pedestals of soil, or even spheres set on the ground, and I marveled that these little reinforcers (reminding me now of the fragility of stamp hinges) could bind papers holding such large lumps of earth. Then, somehow, it was harvest time and the paper had vanished and the surface of the ground was free of planting but still contained fist-sized clumps of earth outlined on the surface. "Is it because it was so dry last year that the earth stuck together, and the plowing didn't break up these clumps, so the plants didn't get enough moisture---is that why this year's crop was poor?" The answer seemed to be yes, so I tried to help with NEXT year's crop by stamping on the ground with my heels, breaking up the lumps, and everyone thought that was a good idea and started doing it too. Type to 4:46, still quite warm; Ken was MOANING in his sleep when I woke and took out one earplug. 8:43AM: Woke again, thinking it might be 7:30, and it was only 6:50. Doze and think and at 8:15 debate getting Ken up, but he's still snoring. Begin to think outside the trip and take the time to reconstruct my "list of 8" that has lasted since my move, and none of them are REALLY pressing, except possibly "files to Vicki" in case my computer-disk fails after so many years of service. Figure to do two, no three, no FOUR things this morning: 1) postcards, 2) itinerary from Ken for rest of trip, 3) pills, and 4) pack. Slight headache when I wash my face so I take two aspirin. WARM out when I open the door---inadvertently, at first, from the TOP, quite a shock, and put on tee-shirt and figure to wear only jeans and slippers to breakfast. Ken has one of his coughing jags in the bathroom, followed by an extended series of snot-inhales and nose-blows, all FANTASTICALLY loud. Fantasize telling him how to use my videocamera to VIDEOTAPE me snoring: would be interesting! But, not surprisingly for Ken, he refuses. Stop now, up to date, at 8:50AM, ready for start of next phase of trip: over three laptop files left for less than 10 days, five rolls of film for 10 days, not counting the eight shots still in the camera. Feel GOOD!!! Finish pills at 9:13 and down for breakfast with EVERYONE there, lots of jollity, and there's toast and eggs and bacon and sausage and fruit and quark (huh? a cherried yogurt, as far as I could tell) and multi-vitamin juice that was a combination of everything under the sun, and we're up at 10:05 and I pack LABORIOUSLY, taking maybe FOUR minutes to zip the bag shut, getting QUITE wet in person, on teeshirt, and on blue bag, and THEN remember I HADN'T taken out the STRAP, which I would need when I was maneuvering it myself, so I OPENED the bag again, got it out, and closed it again in RECORD time: I guess the SHORT time UNDER COMPRESSION reduced everything in volume by maybe 2%, making it almost EASY to close. Get it to the hallway, other bags still there, at 10:15. Pee and try to dry out and make rudimentary itinerary (3 nights in Strasbourg, single-stops every other night), and finish this at 10:26, ready to do the postcards, put my shoes and sox on, and LEAVE! Finish the itinerary (such as it is) by 10:38 and finish the five postcards by 10:57, ready to go! Totally ready at 11:11. Down and OFF at 11:15, as if THAT were the time SET. BEAUTIFUL clear warm day. To Zurich at 12:40, comfortable with only 9 in the whole bus, to airport at 12:53, into terminal at 1 and pee! David takes us to the door we should enter, Ken doesn't want to use the machine which says 5.40F when Cheri said 8.20F, so he waits with bags while I go to counter and get two tickets for 10.80F. We just miss the 1:13 train and board 1:33 train, which I panic and trip over when I think it's the 1:13 train delayed. Ken complains of heat all the way from 1:33-1:45. Then he's in a rush, not thinking we go to Basel and change. He goes to look for information and returns crying, "I can't find ANYTHING." So I look at the map and go to an information point and find an orange SOS box where I press lever and woman says the Basel-Brussels 1500 train DOES stop in Strasbourg and we DON'T have to change, and says to look at the "blue papers" to see where coach 147 will stop. I direct us to the MIDDLE of the train, lugging Ken's monster up about two flights of stairs---after we both buy chicken sandwiches and sodas, which takes my last Swiss PAPER money, leaving me with about 8F in coins---to find I went in the wrong direction after I go to the FRONT of the track in search of the blue papers and FIND them for each train at this track, and coach 149 is at the start of Sector D, whch is so far back it's out in the sun, so we sit in the shade while a postal train comes in and unloads while we watch them and they watch us, and then it pulls out and I finish this at 2:40 looking at a blank track, making good progress on the Herald Tribune's copy of the Sunday Times puzzle. Finish that at 4PM and start this at 4:02. Train came in about 2:50, we moved down to find coach 147 right where the blue sheet said it would be, and get on, glad we didn't ask the kiosk attendant to lug Ken's bag on as porter, to an almost empty car filled with reservations. It's in the sun, so when girls come on who SHOULD sit next to us and they move around, I move to a FORWARD-moving seat on the other side, looking out and working on the puzzle, enjoying the attendant's Burkina Faso accent talking to Ken in French, and at 4:05 we pull into Basel, Ken noting on the point of Switzerland, France, and Germany. My seat will be taken by someone boarding in Colmar. Stop in Basel once in Switzerland and once in France? Both stops last a long time, car fills with shouting kids, some smokers making comments as they parade through our nonsmoking car. 4:24 and we haven't left Basel yet. What MUST have been a parade of perforrmers from a circus pass: dwarfs, idiots, fatwomen, wrinkled men, Downs syndromes, all on the way BACK to what everyone hopes will be their car. Leave finally at 4:26. Oops, forgot to lock the john door, so the light was till green: but I had the luck that no one walked in on me. 5:12 in Colmar Ken laughs that I had to give up my seat. Only a half-hour to Strasbourg. In at 5:47 with about a dozen BIKES, and there's a run for the stairs until I see a sign for the elevator. Down and I look for a WC that charges 50 cents and won't take Swiss francs. Ken's found a money machine and gets 200E and I get 140E, and we're out to the cab at 5:55. The driver has a bad back and a neighbor helps Ken's monster in. 7F ride past wonderful rivers, riverboats, and right IN to the Cathedral square, where a guy rushes out to get Ken's bag to the foot of the elevator, which unfortunately is up a LONG spiral flight, and then when we GET to the 5th floor where room 67 is, there are two MORE sets of two-steps to the room, which is TINY, but has a working AC and I take #30 and #31 regular and CLOSEUP from our room window, which is lucky if it measures a foot square, at 6:24. Type this and Ken goes to ask questions. Crocodile is only six blocks away for our 8PM reservation, now 6:28. Unpack quickly, ONLY room for four hangers and that's IT! Ready to go out at 6:52. I take only my camera and we're out to the crowded square between our hotel and the main entrance to the cathedral (which turns out to be in the west face), and we go inside to find a CONFIRMATION service going on (how we DO get odd conditions in churches!). The sheer size is greatly impressive, but Ken's sorry they're not using the MAIN organ, so I watch for a while while I video, and then we're out to circle the big block, remarking about the oddness of what looks to be an "outside wall" around some of the church, and we continue around to a pleasant Place du Marche Guyot, filled with people enjoying outdoor restaurants, and continue around to the Chateau Rohan, which contains many two-star museums, Ken says, and another place used for parking, then to the south side with the astronomical clock, which Ken says we have to see, maybe from the inside on a tour, then back inside again where he writes down hours, and out and down Rue Mercier, where I take a photo, which he later says is remarked in the Michelin to be the BEST place to take a picture of it, and I've taken #32 cathedral and clock at 7:28, and through #35 on streets to 7:43, and he goes in ahead of me and we change for Crocodile, out down the Rue des Orfevres, colorful as most central streets are: narrow, flag-covered-on-wires-crossing-the-streets, lined with half-timbered buildings, some of great age, some topped with those tiny pictureque dormers like the two out of which we peer at the Cathedral from our room. Out to find the slightly mislocated restaurant on the Rue de Loutre at 8, and he puts his jacket on and when I see lots of men in shirtsleeves, more than the five I'd predicted, I let my jacket off, which a waiter takes from me, and we're seated in the main room, where all men DO wear jackets until a duo with wives comes in in short shirt-sleeves. We look at the featured Menu Goncourt (which explains the books and pages, but not the doves, suspended from the ceilings) for the centenary of their publishing house, and it doesn't look ineresting to me for the 105F, but the 120 Gourmet menu looks fabulous, which has to be taken by the table, with 9 rather than 7 courses, starting with foie, but Ken infuriates me by reminding me of what FRED does all the time: "Oh, this sounds bad, and I don't like pigeon, and I don't want foie at ALL, and I can't stand fruit for dessert," and I throw down the menu and say "Obviously I don't have any choice, since I only DISLIKE your menu while you make the case you "couldn't possibly" order my menu, so I MUST give in to you." And Ken gets annoyed along the line of "Well, I refuse to let you make me feel GUILTY about this," but I simmer down and we talk of others around us, including the brace of unattractive wait-staff, particularly the caricature of a young upswept-hairdo beauty who's about 70 with a TINY face with too-red too-big lips with fantasies of red-feathered earrings. The meal goes well enough, the chef, Jung, gives Ken a special anniversary booklet of the meal in English which we refer to throughout (and which I have so I don't have to put it here, except the soup was mediocre, the snapper no big deal, the soy sauce best with the eggrolls, and the filet sauce AWFUL with a fishy taste that Ken said was the best thing about the meal, which he even TOLD Jung when we met him OUTSIDE afterwards, just before 11, after we left annoyed with a cigar-smoker at the next table, and Ken went right to the hotel and I sat on a step in the cathedral square and listened to the group-singing-with-circle-of-clasped-hands that began with "We Shall Overcome," and went to something that was all "La-la-la-la-la" and then broke up after a round of applause, and lots of couples passing, lots of groups of tourists, groups of young girls and groups of young men, NO car like the taxi that let us off in front of our hotel, and inept fire-throwers who kept dropping their juggling objects. It quieted down after a while and I got into the room to find Ken still up, protesting "Well, I had to wait up until you got in!"; and I get to bed at 11:55PM. Right to sleep.
SUNDAY, JUNE 1: (File 6, start of last three, started JUST at the beginning of the ninth-last day, perfect for three days/file of 8 files for 24 days.) Dream: 3:08: I'm preparing a radio program with an opera quiz, and there are people who have to be identified, including people whose first name coincided with their character's name, and one gift involves a yellow ribbon, clearly a reference to last night's wrapping of gift packages by the woman I could see in "The Crocodile" office. Pee and type this, and wash face because my EYE is ITCHING again! 8:17AM: Room is quite warm, even though the AC is putting out SOME moderately cool air, but I have no trouble getting back to sleep. Then another dream: I've met someone who looks like an even sexier Bob Dukes, and we've had sex before, and I remember that he's VERY hot and turned on by odd circumstances and surroundings, so we're walking down a narrow street in what may even be Strasbourg, and I tell him in a low voice "I'd love to have sex with you, right here, right now," and he looks back at me with satisfied sexuality as we walk along, and I say "Oh, I'm so hot I'm getting hard already," and he huskily whispers "Let me see it," and I pull aside the blue jacket I'm holding in front of my crotch and can see in a mirror we're passng my semi-erect cock, and hope it's enough for him, and with a gleeful grin he puts down both hands and appears to be pulling out the edges of his foreskin from the tip of his semi-hard penis. We pass an entryway he seems to know and though the light's on we start to kiss, but then in an inner court I see two kids coming out of the building with their parents behind, and we dash out of the entryway for him to immediately enter another office building, but comes out quickly on a cell phone (or a simulated one), saying "Mr. Maloof, you gave me the wrong address for our meeting---" and then runs away laughing. He then goes down what looks to be the street entrance for a traffic tunnel like in the middle of Park Avenue, but it's filled with pedestrians, and I know he's put on a flashlight that momentarily illuminates their silhouettes in a dramatic frieze against the railings lining the defile and the row of buildings on the street-front opposite from me, and for a moment it's a lovely picture, but then the shadows of the people begin running up the defile, and when I reach the end they're all running toward me with their heads turned back, and what appears to be a small tiger or a large ocelot comes loping up the ramp towards me, and though he doesn't look fierce, everyone is in a panic, when another man (who might have been Bob, but he doesn't look like him now, yet he's another sexy conman) runs in front of him, explaining to the crowd "You have to capture their attention by looking straight into their eyes and never looking away," doing so, captivating the animal who continues running, and then he reached down and grabs the animal by the scruff of its neck, and it sort of melts into a harmless, though very large, kitten that holds little menace for the admiring people surrounding him. Then I wake immediately and it's 8:16AM and I go into the john to type away when I hear Ken calling, "Good morning; if you're only typing, can we change places?" and he goes in and farts a lot and then I hear his shaver and he'd put the light on and it's now 8:30, a bell rings this instant from the cathedral opposite, and I guess, as Grizelda would sing, "Another day is dawning." Now at 8:50 he's out of the shower, saying the water on the floor is unavoidable, and I stop to shower myself. #36 and 37 out window at 9:55AM. Roll 11 going in. Breakfast 9:10-9:45, Ken paye 30E for LAUNDRY which will be done by the hotel since the outside service is only self-attended. Leave for museum of L'Ouevre de Cathedral at 10AM. #1 sinned lovers at 10:50 (no flash). FABULOUS museum, and buy a book for 15E, to 11:30, and sign on clock outside says that it's not going to work today. 3E to climb to roof, start at 11:42, Ken waiting below in church. Nothing much to see of Strasbourg, and views of gargoyles and horsemen and sculptured bands are only benefits, except for huge covered man-holes in the middle of each section of roof. Video hotel through hole in netting which prevents pictures from the top. Down at 12:12, videotape nearing end. Meet Ken at 12:17 and go to room to finish video, get a charge on the battery, pee, get the laundry back, drink water, and down at 12:27 to the end of the clock-show IN the church, which Ken said might have had to be paid for, but lots just pushed in. Leave cathedral at 12:53 and to Petite France in heat at 1:10 to busy riverside restaurants to find Hotel Regent Petite France for great lunch and good waiter, Stephane, for Regent salad, their special and not-so-special glasses of wine, and dessert for me and an enormous serving of cheese for 9E for Ken, from which I eat more than he, to 2:31, sort of ruining time for afternoon sightseeing in heat. See their ice-making museum, out to edges of points of formerly-covered bridges before climbing stairs to hot top of Barrage Vaudon at 3:11. Walk back to hotel to pee after sitting resting in Guttenberg Place, and LAY DOWN at 3:40, just feeling good to have the time to do so. Ken sorts laundry and lays down himself, drying still-damp laundry over the room. At 4:10 I rouse myself to read cathedral book, finding out about Doom Column which is closed off when we return to cathedral at 5:25 for organ concert, VERY muddy sound even Ken admits, with growly low register sounding loud, rough, and angry. Over at 6:20, and we're back to dress, look for taxi at 7:15, finally back to hotel to PHONE taxi, which comes about 7:31, and to Buerhiesel 7:45-10:30, we agree on tasting in widely-spaced room, nothing much to talk about, and food's not THAT great, getting menu and two Leading Hotels books to add to my weight, and some dishes great, most rather mediocre, hardly worth the OVER $200 each. Work puzzles unsuccessfully after return to hotel at 10:45 while Ken busily packs, little chatting going on as we're both exhausted, and bed at 11:30.
MONDAY, JUNE 2: Pee at 3:16 and shit at 7. Lay and think, then up at 7:54 to type to now, 8:08, Ken intermttently snoring and awake (and I loved typo: Ken SNORKING). Now he's up, probably to displace me from bathroom typing. I lay awake thinking about trip: car starting, moving to a different hotel EVERY day meaning I pack a THIRD bag to prevent jamming stuff into blue bag exhaustively. Out at 8:10 and record what I was thinking: nothing really PRESSING to do on return from this trip except pay Mildred, pay bills and taxes, and prepare for SECOND trip. After that, liesurely tackle the 8 remaining tasks, obviously proofreading as the next time-consuming chore before the trip to Florida in October. Think idly of treating Sherryl to her birthday dinner, visiting Vicki for various trips, getting restaurants off my list, using my balcony more, recording and watching more TV, and just ENJOYING LIFE AT 101 CLARK. Hope Bob L picks up any PACKAGES, folic acid among them. Resolve to drive in complicated city where Ken would go mad driving ANYWAY, and let him drive in the simple countryside where I can enjoy the scenery without having to give too many driving-directions. Will start packing now at 8:14AM and shower when he gets out of the bathroom, then breakfast and out to get car. ADVENTURES still awaiting! Pack this AWAY at 8:18 to minimize Ken's anger when I take SO LONG to get ready to leave today! Shower and to breakfast at 8:35, eating fast and getting up to pack (leaving a fairly peeved Ken sitting in front of all the uncashed bond certificates---AND for the last three meals (dinner at Buerhiesel, breakfast at Cathedral, lunch at Petite Auberge) he DASHED for the better seat. Tonight I get it---at 9, having the brilliant idea of putting all the PAPERS in one sack that I can carry by itslf or put in my A&K bag, and it makes the blue bag a SNAP to pack and close by 9:20. To Cathedral at 9:23 and take #18 of St. Catherine Chapel, empty, and video the Doom Pillar and a few other things from 9:27-9:38. Into taxi at 9:40, which is waiting for us when we get downstairs, to Europcar at 9:55. Ken does it all. BIG map, about 50 km STRAIGHT to Obernoi. Addresses, passports, drivers' licences, maps, papers, charges to 10:35. I start to drive at 10:45, getting the controls down fast. Start at 3145km. Drive out of Strasbourg, to highway A25 to A352, past Schirmek, and onto nice little roads that wind through woods that rise to Champ du Feu and to Le Hohwald to Petite Auberge at 1PM for interesting flavored wine, a kir, my crudite plate, Ken's vegetable soup, my chicken and Ken's tough duck, and GREAT Fraise in Sabayon de Gewurtztramminer, and his lesser ice-cake with vanilla ice cream. Out at 2:25, having passed most of the rain, and to Mt. St. Odile at 3:20, looking over cloudy valleys, but not seeing as far as Strasbourg. #19 St. Odile at 3:45 from below, and I stop at the Source, where she struck a rock, got water, and cured a blind man. Into Hotel at 4:30 after Ken reserves a room they did NOT have for us, and drive around a block to get into the garage with code 354* after the THIRD try, and wrestle the luggage into the elevator, then out for a walk in my white slippers for #20 windowboxes at 5:37. Take video of bishop' heart. Sit in Place du Marche at 6PM and look at map (oh, saw the church, the tower, and the Town Hall, too) and go to see #22 Fastinger Courtyard with no flash at 6:06, then decide to SEE the stairs to the ramparts the woman in the information office said we missed between Rue de Selestat and the rampart off the parking lot, and I see the SMALL flight of 13 steps, and it's the OUTER, LOWER wall that's the path. Video that and return triumphantly to the hotel THROUGH THE GARAGE to save me walking around the block, up the one flight to the elevator, and got there direct to tell Ken, lying on his bed AWAY from the window at his request since it was the only place in the room to accommodate his baggage, about my adventures, but as I type this at 6:40 it really begins to THUNDER out, and the street is wet and it's still more warm and humid outside than it is in this dubiously air-conditioned room that Ken complained about, to be told that the previous tenant wanted to sleep "naturally" and demanded that his AC be turned OFF. Brilliantly clean, separate john and shower/sink. Finish this to wash face and change at 6:45, Ken not hungry for dinner yet. Puzzle to 7:20 and dress and to restaurant with four women and another couple dining, and Ken gets the fisherman's menu starting with duck foie gras, salmon and sandre (pike-perch, though his dictionary didn't have it), and ending with chocolate/banana mousse in an intense frais coulis, while I started with the terrine de canard with a HUGE salad, then sweetbreads "ala Bouchee de la Reine," so MANY that I just couldn't finish, served with good spinach noodles that soaked up the sauce wonderfully. Finished NEITHER portion to save room for the pre-ordered chocolate with LICORICE sauce, which wasn't QUITE what I thought, but good nonetheless. Ken started with a cremant, I with a muscat, then a DECENT 13E bottle of Sylvaner which Ken SAID he wouldn't drink much of, but he had ALMOST half. Leave at 9:30 and drag him to the ramparts for a few minutes, then back to the hotel by the garage entrance and finish this at 9:40, full and content and tired from the day. Puzzle, then GOOD shit to 10:10, puzzle until getting to bed at 10:40, after Ken has gone to bed and allowed me to leave the light on, putting on his eyeshade.
TUESDAY, JUNE 3: Pee 3:15, then VERY erotic dream: I'm going into a baths, knowing where the action will be, feeling sexy, and someone has a HUGE cock which I try to touch, but he becomes very angry and says "Not the head, not the head" because he's about to cum, so I tweak the shaft, and squeeze the shaft, and lower and raise it, and he seems to trust me, and I get hard, and harder, and thrust to make me cum, and thrust harder, and harder, and wake with a GREAT erection, surprised that it's so early after I'd cum 5 days ago, and debate shitting and jerking off, but just shit, AGAIN a lot, to 7:15, and figure to entertan myself unusually with a sense of sexual frustration. Think about the rest of the trip: 6 days left to travel, kind of at ease, all the bills to be paid (even quarterly IRS payments!) on my week back, and Ken's still asleep, then I turn at 8:14 (bell tolls once for quarter hour, twice for half, three for 45s) and he's up, goes to bathroom for a LONG time: I'm up at 8:20, start typing to 8:30, change shorts (1 left) and socks (TWO left!). Down to breakfast at 8:45, almost-raw egg, lot of packaged cheeses, look at the newspaper "DNA," and up to pack at 9:38, liesurely. To Hotel de Ville, nothing. Basement being swept dry, as I'd predicted, Ken admits. Pack to 10:05. Ass needs wiping even AFTER shower and sitting! Search and find earplugs under bed, Galapagos teeshirt under a blanket, and my brown shirt on the back of a CHAIR! AWFUL! Ken remaps AGAIN at 10:15. #25 entrance to Haut Konigsberg (HK) at 12:43. Km 3280 at start of day. Sit to eat in Restaurant HK at 12:30 for 33F, Ken's choucroute, my quiche and salad, and 1/2 bottle water and 1/2 bottle wine, to 1:11. #26 UP at HK at 1:13. #31 exit at 2PM. I could remmber hardly ANY of it from my previous visit, when?, except the view from the tower, which I videoed. Most of the people LEFT by the time we were leaving. Very colorful, best depicted by the 10.21E Alsace book in English I bought. #32 exit at 2:15. #32 Giesberg Castle above Ribeauville at 2:58. #34 Col de Bagenolles at 3:48, one of many VERY peaceful hillside views during the day of VERY little traffic except us. Through Ste Marie des Mines, Freland, Kaysersberg, Kientzheim, Sigolsheim, Bennwhir, Mittelwihr, and Riquewihr, which we ENTER, see sign, and circle around to 4:45, when Ken WALKS in to find HOW we park. Ken back at 4:50: "Go around AGAIN, drive "through Hotel de Ville" and stop in front of hotel to unload luggage, THEN drive around to "unmarked wooden door, opened with electric key," then decide merely to park and WALK luggage to hotel at 4:53. Ken rassles bag to apartment 8, me onto elevator to again have to separate the beds at 5:15. To walk at 5:30, bigger town than I remember, but then it starts raining and we're back to pick up umbrellas, and I fantasize finding a place to drink OUT of the rain, yet watching the people, and we FIND it at Zeigler at Bistro des Moines, taking through #37 to 6:20, and put in roll 12. Drink, back at 7:15, dress and to dinner at Schoenenberg for Ken to accept the 72E 7-course tasting, and it was GREAT: 0) gazpacho, terrine of ombre, and a pretty pink rose of salmon, 1) foie gras with fabulous port-coulis and honey-coulis and special toasts, 2) lobster in rich sauce with mushrooms and vegetables, 3) turbot on green vegetables on cress sauce, and even with wild asparagus, 4) INCREDIBLE combination of LIGHT-creamed white asparagus soup with THIN slivers of highly salted foie gras that BLENDED perfectly for a rich, salty, creamy, full taste, one of the very best of the trip, 5) sweetbreads unfortunately STILL boiled, with a good sauce, a GREAT long potato chip, and other stuff forgotten, 6) cheeses: tete de moine shaved thin as wood shavings into a white-fungus-like floret, two HOT cheeses that tasted about the same, maybe gruyere, GOOD strong munster, and a few nicely-vinegared leaves in the center. We had a good Schoenenberg Riesling for 29E which they (all women except chef, who's about to take his daughter to San Francisco for a week, and he'd been there for SIX YEARS previously) poured too fast, and we consumed an ENTIRE pitcher and three-quarters of water, last pitcher delightfully iced, and then, 7) at our special request "because usually it's too much food" the THREE souffles, ALL wonderful and FIRSTS: a) cherry, b) green apple, sensational in tart delicacy, and c) yogurt, impossibly better than you'd think. Then the check and I INSIST on walking, but Ken goes to room, and I go "north" out gate and around, seeing once a lightning flash that lit the horizon, dimming the crescent moon and lit-clock on the church-top, and past the museum and just in front of Hotel de Ville to enter Hotel L'Oriel at 10:48PM and JUST then the ugly scowly guy LOCKS the front door so I didn't need the "1968A" code to let myself in. Ken's showering, getting water all over the place, as he said, and I type until 11:20, then take my pills and take a shit, gratefully much, until 11;32, reading "Alsace" about Ricquewihr, and SO glad we're staying only one night: the bathroom is impossibly hot and humid, there's NO air conditioning and the fan Ken managed to wangle has no FRONT, so the curtain has to be kept away from getting entwined in it. Took sheet off duvet, but will probably not even NEED that. Tired enough to sleep now at 11:34, but Ken's still awake, mapping away and talking about how difficult everything is, even though we HARDLY EVER do what he'd planned: mistakes, nonexistent roads, sidetrips, misreadings, we're all OVER the place. Bed 11:50 when he almost INSISTS I turn my light out when he does. So hot, even with the fan, that no covers at all are needed.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4: Pee at 2:55, then wake at 7:30 with a dream that I think to go to the john to record, but suddenly Ken is UP and I lay until 7:53 until he's finished with shaving and I moan when he comes out of the bathroom "It's so EARLY," and he simply responds, "Well, I got up at 7:30 to pee, and thought I might go back to bed for another half hour, but then I thought I might as well get up." So again I had no choice, and took the laptop into the john to type while he coughed and hawked and hacked and grunted and finished dressing afer warning me that my teeshirt would NOT be appropriate for a possible one-star lunch, and I tried to demur, but AGAIN he rather insisted. The dream, or what lttle I remember of it: I was in some kind of camp with children, and I look down at a lake to see one child drop into a deep arm of the lake, and wait breathlessly for bubbles to come to the top, and then her head, and we drag her out and dry her up with relief. Then we're somehow stranded, and kids have been there, without food, for about three days, and one little toddler creeps across a bed with apparent good cheer, and everyone feels grateful that no one's suffering. There were more details for that, and another segment, but it's forgotten now as I shit at about 8AM, aware that breakfast here doesn't even START until 8AM. Finish shower at 8:20, Ken reads of museums: PTT and Diligence and Chateau, and then first down to chintzy breakfast at 8:30, we smell burning toast, there IS none until we sit down and she brings out a tiny glass of orange juice, one croissant and one roll, butter and jam, and brings Ken his pot of coffee and me a bowl of cocoa with a pot of hot milk that Ken shares a lot of. I have cereal to start with, then a slice of thick ham, a bit of cheese like cream cheese, and a yogurt to 9. Pack to 9:15 (having talked about his always taking the best SEATING). #1 at Sorcerer's House at 9:35 on our walk. #2 1566 cerf at 9:42. No one around til place FILLS with German tour from a bus. #3 at museum at 10, when it opens, vehicles right to left: 1835 diligence, 2003 gas tank, 1980 crane, and stay and video SUPER guys and job while Ken shops for his wines and more souvenirs, and back to room at 10:40. Down last time with luggage in tiny elevator that takes an age to start after a severe "drop" when you get in, at 10:52. We lug luggage to carpark where I open door, put stuff in, and get out to find Ken waiting for me to drive him back to hotel, but then he waves his arms and goes himself while I back down the one-way road to wait for him. Leave 11:02, starting at km 3422. Get gas to 11:15, expensive. #5 and 6 from Roche du Diable at 12:30. WAY round lake, to Chalet Fleurie at 1:05PM for 30E menu, tomato start, my rabbit (with great thin-crisp flaky pastry-cuff salad) and Ken's salmon, Ken's cod and eggplant with my VERY dark pork cheeks that REALLY looked and tasted like beef, and are not that tender, either, with celeriac to contrast with his whipped eggplant side. And fabulous citron tart which LOOKED like a work of art, as mignardise, served again BEFORE the great dessert of strawberries and strawberry ice cream that Ken cums over. To 2:35, each peeing twice, and #7 and 8 Lac Blanc at 4:22. #9 long-distance tower at 4:31, Ken shouting that we'll see the same view from the hotel, but we don't. #10 3000 WWI graves and Wettstein monument with crosses representing bodies killed in 1917 and DUG UP in the 1970s and identified where possible and remaining unknown under many of the crosses, at 4:50, and another memorial, after I commented before the FIRST about how peaceful the countryside looked, as if it had been tranquil forever, yet only recently, even TWICE recently, it had been covered with bones and blood and battlefield gore from the choicest young men the country could produce (well, maybe the VERY choicest knew how to get out of it). #13 Le Ligne 1915 cemetery at 5PM, me rapidly tiring of driving after the bottle of not-as-good-as-last-night Schoenenberg Grand Cru for 39E. Arrive at Hohrodberg Hotel Roess at 5:10, squeezing out of car in 2.5E garage, and Ken checks us in to room 28, comes down for his luggage, we put some stuff out and I shit a very farty shit, then he's found we can go to the terrace for a drink, and down about 5:25 to find a cheery Germanic waitress giving us anything we want, Ken a gentian and water, which he finds too astringent, and me a Kronenbourg, a bit expnsive at 3.5E, but as she said it IS an Alsatian beer. Watch the sun go down, the cattle eat, the horses wave their manes, Munster below, the Panorama, where Ken tried to get rooms but it was full, teasingly below, and when I ask for the time it's 6:55 and we go in JUST as she comes out to call us, and we'd ordered before, so there's our clear vegetable soup which Ken has two of while I add pepper to mine, and then my ENORMOUS bouchee a la reine, good enough, and Ken's feuillete of escargot is pretty big, too, and my veal nature is fried nicely, while, of course, panned would be BREADED, with good roesti we don't hardly finish half of, and 75DL of Edelzwicker, which I'd never heard of, for 7:5E, and it's pretty good. We insist on having the three sorbets the lone other diner had, and they're mango, some special peach, and green apple, and she suggests she bring them to the terrace: GREAT! Finish them in a lingering twilight while MANY jets leave chalklines above, and dined to 8:15 and sorbeted to 8:45, at which time I put on shoes, get key to door which she'll lock and go home to take care of "her petite," and I'm out to walk down to Panorama and see it's not THAT great to have missed, and down to ANOTHER memorial for "military and CIVILIAN" casualties, from both wars, and an old man walks down from Panorama and I THINK wants to talk, but I stare down over Munster and ignore him, walking back over the "Riverains only" road to see a likely boarded-up house that I suggest to Ken that we rob, and a mother doing late-night gardening who exchanges greetings with me, and I'm wearily back to room at 9:35, looking out over darkening valley and even videoing some, and then start typing to 10:10, finally moving to File 7, which means I have TWO files to fill in the next FIVE days, no problem at all, though I have to get out my---well, I don't KNOW which roll I have in the camera, since I'm on shot #17 and DO have a spare roll in my bag. Ken finishes his triumphant planning for tomorrow, writing out TWO FULL PAGES of directions to himself, despite my caustic observation that we don't follow even 3/4 of his plans ANYWAY, and he even FINALLY finds us a possible place to have lunch, though he DOES admit we could just lunch at places found on the road or even ask HER to make us picnic sandwiches for the road. But he finishes, and I really DO feel grateful to him though I have to put up with his luggage and his pills and his back and his snorting and blowing and throat-clearing and not-looking-at-what-I-find-interesting frustration, and the night's now ALMOST horizonless, though small lights twinkle just BELOW the deep-blue sky outside the windows, open but, I'm afraid, letting MANY flies and bugs in. He just now, at 10:14, announces "It won't be long before I want to go to sleep." Since I had less than 8 hours last night, I agree. Bed 10:25.
THURSDAY, JUNE 5: Pee at 12:30. Wake about 2 with an almost-gastric-reflux feeling and debate taking Rolaids, but only pee and drink water. 4:02AM wake with dream and transcribe while peeing: Someone is making up a kind of program-guide by noting various operas and ballets on strips of paper which are glued to a brochure-type facsimile of the finished product, and we discuss ways of coding, like AA before operas so that they'll come before Ballets. Something else about a performance, or rehearsing for a performance, or SEEING a performance, occupied some time, but I forget the details now at 4:12AM, counting only FIVE days left of trip. 4:52AM: A sleepless 40 minutes in which my mind fugues over at least six topics: 1) playwriting and producing possibilities with Village Playwrights' now-file of actors and producers for my spending my promised $10,000 for my own productions, enhanced by, say, an added, voluntary $1 per meeting per person for a PRODUCTION fund for VP (or MY) plays. 2) Sexual fantasies of meeting someone for a relationship from that, either for an actor on my "casting couch," or some older "producer" using ME for HIS fantasies. 3) music-writing, as a melody comes to me, and I wonder if there's anything like a "melody-file" on the Internet that would tell me (see written notation A) if my melody has been stolen from somewhere. 4) writing and producing this song/play to bring in LOTS of money and admirers and backers for even BIGGER productions. 5) getting a "meta-journal" website that would be a MODEL for a "better blog" in that it would "scientifically" assign dimensions so that a MASS of material could be "sorted" on 26 dimensions, as I'd tried before: a) chronological, b) sexual, c) intellectual, d) travel, e) plays, f) music, g) people, h) philosophy, i) cuming, j) flights of fancy, k) acid trips, l) pot smokes, m) fantasies, n) trip journals, o) people-iinteracting-with-people play/fantasy/ manipulation dreams, p) etc, q) slides, r) photos, s) hotel-rating lists, t) movie/TV/opera/ballet/performance-rating lists, u) multi-dimensional developments of any or all the above. 6) website in a sense BECOMING a person, open to additions, welcoming modifications, attracting disciples and copiers (all, of course, giving credit to the originator of the idea). 7) I guess adding a new occupation or GOAL for my remaining years---and maybe even getting a more amenable traveling companion that either Ken with his noises or Fred with his "oughts" as pains in my ass while seeing wonderful places like Rome, St. Petersburg, US national parks and vintage hotels, West Africa, more archaeological sites and maybe graduating to terribly expensive dream-hotels that become destinations of their own. Looked outside at dawn-light coming through slats covering windows, and if it doesn't get DARK until after 10PM, and starts getting LIGHT before 5AM, that doesn't leave much room for 8 hours of sleeping in the dark in Europe at the start of June. End now at 5:10AM, hoping to be able to use Actualism to clear my mind (for more stuff?) so I can get some more sleep. 8) adding my good-sex-edited videotapes so that I could find fellow masturbators with similar tastes and maybe expanded (HA!) collections. Also want to note here my dripping nose as maybe-cold-or-allergy, my possibly-constant-level of eye irritation from allergy, and my right-shoulder ache dating from the last days of the guided tour putting Ken's bag onto the shelf, hurt by my struggles over zipping shut my blue bag, getting so bad I had to ask for Ken's help to pour water from a heavy pitcher, hopefully clearing up before the trip with Fred! And NOT needing tedious physical therapy if it DOESN'T clear up on its own. Now 5:16AM and GOT to get more sleep for my "big driving day" today! Up at 8:18 after having gotten almost no added sleep, but remembered a dream during that time in which I was at a bathroom sink with a flip-top ddrain-opening through which an ENORMOUS cockroach with spread wings was trying to get out, and I ran water but it STILL managed to cling with one appendage or another to the lip of the drain, rattling like damp cardboard, and finally I turned on the hot water full and it flushed down, and by leaning forward I could SEE it whirling downward in a strangely-lit drain, until it hit a pile of clogged stuff at the bottom and vanished, much to my relief. Ken is sneezing in the bathroom as he shaves, and the slats just COULDN'T close completely on the blinds last night. GOT to get a pair of clean socks out now at 8:22AM. Shower 8:30-8:43, and demand to brush teeth to 9:36. Leave 9:50 at km 3586. #17 Lake at 10:30. Start walking up Grand Ballon 11:09, Ken disgusted on being left behind. Pix and video to 11:25. #20 top and dandelions at 11:27, but SOMETHING out of focus because I forgot to hit the "landscape" button? #21 cyclist on road below car at 11:30. Back to bottom by taking a smaller rocky path at 11:39 EXACTLY, a half hour which Ken says the book DOES describe as a round trip. Ken DESPERATE for lunch, sayng there's NOTHING available further on, so we're off road for ONE closed place, and then off road almost two kilometers for L'Hotel des Sources at 12:40, for COLD platters, his of fish and mine of cold cuts including smoked duck breast and a bottle of Vouvray 1999 and "Bolero" on the good sound system when Ken goes to the john and I wait for my sabayon des fraises from a VERY amusing waitress who unfortunately, facially, looks like "Barbara the Gambler" of the Games group. No one eating but us, and Ken likes the geese all around. Leave VERY happy at 2:02, and he takes his turn to drive to Giromagny by 3:03, and I drove back and stop to watch unattractive Army men rappel frontwards and backwards down Rocher du Diable, or Rocher du Cerf, or something like that, but not interesting enough to video, while Ken insists he pisses BY the car and not AGAINST the car. #23 Lake D'Alfeld at 3:42. To long line for gas at 5:30, me getting VERY tired, and to hotel at 6:10, into what turns into the "room from hell" as the shutters won't come COMPETELY down to shut out the morning sun because one end of the chain is screwed fast to the sill, nor will the drapes close around the opening, nor rest on the sloping sill, and the JOHN door opens DIRECTLY onto my bed, which I had to move closer to the door as I have to modify EVERY twin-bed-masquerading-as-a-double bed in EVERY room so far! And the bathroom has a pillar through the CENTER of it and a tub under a window that has ONLY a hand-held shower-attachment, so I don't shower THAT evening or morning. Down for his geranium-in-soda which he likes, and my Kronenbourg for 3.5E, a bit much, and he doesn't want to eat outside because it might get cool (which it doesn't) the wind might blow (which it doesn't) and the bugs will attack (who can tell?) so he moves upstairs to change from his blue Costa Rica teeshirt to a short-sleeved shirt, and I STAY in my Galapagos teeshirt and barefoot flipflops, and we have many menus to choose from, and he starts with an ecrivisse salad that I don't want, then we both go to (oh, forgot the rather bland asparagus-soup amuse bouche after the two little eggplant and meat things served with our drinks after they gave me pretzels with my beer and Ken said he DIDN'T want to play miniature golf. Then we have trout "arc en ciel" with some kind of souffle on top, and we can each only eat ONE of the two portions, and the pork is slightly better, though I don't even SEE the roast potatoes on the table until I'm almost done, and I finish all of it while he leaves a lot (though the solitary brocolli head remains uneaten on BOTH plates), and then comes the cheese, which I finish with my expensive Guebwiller wine with Brie de Meaux, Camembert, and Roquefort WONDERFULLY tart. DAZED upstairs at 10PM, sit looking throughl Conde-Nast's Johansen's guide to NOTHING restaurants (8 in Antalya alne) and a 1989 "France" that's just a puff piece for some VERY out of the way places. Bed, saying "I'm crashing" at 10:26.
FRIDAY, JUNE 6: KNEW I should have said something about the bathroom light, because when Ken goes to the bathroom at 2:40AM, the BRIGHT light wakes me up. I pee, try to get back to sleep, but can't, and finally up at 3:20 to root through my bag (which I had to take into the bathroom to SEE) for my eyeshade and my sleeping pills; wear one and take one, leaving a note to Ken to PLEASE find the switch in the john, close the door, THEN put the light on, do whatever, turn the light OFF, THEN exit the room. He said that's what he did the next three times he peed, though he didn't see my note until the morning. NEGATIVE trip-thoughts about Ken (NEVER travel with him DESPITE his great planning and day-to-day organization?) and the room (ALL the negative qualities, plus it's HOT with the shades drawn and the bathroom door kept closed because the light's on in there). But the pill puts me OUT to 8:20, when Ken comes out of the bathroom, and I wash face and take pills and dress and down to breakfast at 8:40-9:20, getting dilute hot chocolate, a good kiwi, cereal in the wrong dish, cheeses, but not much else because my stomach is starting to HURT: either from reflux, ulcer, or just plain overeating and heartburn. Up and recharge battery which I forgot last night and pack to 10:20, making Ken HAVE a porter take his bag from the STAND and put it into the TRUNK. Leave at 10:27 at km 3813, and drive uphill to #27 tomb in Eglise de Morbach, which we look at to 10:50, only the TRANSEPT of a larger church, then up the narrow road uphill to the Loreto Chapel, #26 at 10:54. Then Ken's found a two-star triptych in Buhl "the best triptych still in a church in Alsace," having paid 2E to light it for 10 minutes, and video and photo much of it and JUST going for the last shot of Ken in front of the whole thing, to #31, when it all goes black. Video to 11:33. #32 three-use washstand outside church at 11:37, just after the urinal almost sprayed the front of my pants when it flushed automatically WHILE I was still peeing. Drive out of the mountains and over level ground to get lost a couple times and agonize about getting into Colmar in an identifyable way, and to the Hotel Colombier at 1PM to be told we could unload and take our luggage upstairs and we wouldn't get a ticket, and then down for Ken to see someone leaving from the non-payant side just two cars down, STOPPING someone who wanted it immediately, and drive in and leave for lunch at 1:13-2:08 at Hansi. #33 Maison Pfister at 2:11. Then get lost walking to Unterlinden Museum, cute bunch of guys telling us we're going the wrong way, and in for 7E, me paying for both, and get free phonoguide, new since my last time there. The crazy new basement exhibit has head and arms of Baron someone (blond hair still on head), Marquesan tiki and head-buster, old Haut-Koenigsburg photos, Doré painting, mummy, models of ruined churches and abbeys, the basement taking until 3:15! Then to the alterpiece to listen with the new device, and JUST as I'm leaving and Ken's starting, a TROUPE of sapeur-pompiers (firemen) tromp through, some cute, one woman, and I KEEP running into them: coming down the stairs from the non-tourist-viewable third floor, in the basement when I was searching for the john, in the lobby when we were leaving. MUCHO CUTO. Second floor went quickly: Alsatian rooms and artefacts, some toys and miniature rooms fun, lots of awful contemporary art, and even found the MODERN art room downstairs with mediocre Picassos. Meet Ken to leave at 4:45, since I really don't know how to get back to hotel, and he shops and I buy a book published in 1991 that I HOPE I didn't buy the last time I was here, and we leave at 5---again with firemen---and go to the Dominican Church which has been turned over to the display of Schongaur's "Virgin in the middle of the roses," (smaller version of what they say is only a copy in the Gardner collection in Boston), for 1.3E, put there in 1971 after it was recovered after being stolen from the St. Martin Collegiale: not one of us knows what that is, and find we CAN go into the Collegiale, which turns out to be an ordinary church, videoing some (no picures permitted of the Schongaur), and then we're to a tourist-square table at 6:35 to order peach and grenadine syrup with sparkling soda for 6.5E, some interesting people passing, and at 6 do more sightseeing and back to hotel at 6:30 for me to type until Ken complains that it's five of 7 and we're due for dinner in the Brenner Weinstub at 7PM, so I wash face and dress and we dine 7:03-9:03, luckily reserving tables on the terrace that passersby envy, and accordianist makes loud, and we start with the Boisson Maison of cremant with peach for 10E for both, then Ken orders a Pinot Blanc for 17E with is OK, and he starts with 6 snails and I have good asparagus with morels, good bread for the final sauce licked perfectly clean, and then his rabbit en croute and my veal au creme du thon, which he says is the BEST he ever had, along with my roast potatoes, very good, the BEST (he says) mustard dressing on a salad, and then for dessert he has the chocolate cake, OK, and I have the parfait aux epices, GOOD delicately flavored ice cream with great black cherries, and he has an expresso and I put the whole thing on my credit card for 107.7E. He says it looks like rain, but we're back to the room which has cooled somewhat ever since he found we DID have air conditioning and put it on, and I hassle to close the drapes over the windows AGAIN obstructed with slanting roof supports coming RIGHT into the room, though the shower looks usable for me in the morning, at last. We talk and laugh until 9:27, he agreeing to abide by my light-on-ONLY-when-in-john rule, then clunking his head JUST when I tell him not to clunk his head, and he moves aside, then laughs AND CLUNKS HIS HEAD, which makes him laugh almost hysterically. Stop this at the DOT of 10PM on my watch, bed still loaded with stuff, eyes itching to be face-washed, and night pills to be taken and bed to be denuded of many covers. "SOON I'll want to go to sleep," he says, JUST as I get caught up. Start to bed at 10:02. Bed at 10:12.
SATURDAY, JUNE 7: Up at 2:08 to pee, getting up on the BATHROOM side of the bed so I don't have to worry about the roof-support projecting into the room to bump MY head on, and get back to bed to see a LARGE area of lit window from one side of the far curtain, and grunt and get out of bed to wedge my A&K bag against the wall to shut out THAT offending light-in-the-morning. Then at 5:28 wake with a dream I want to record but Ken's in the toilet, and gather my stuff and he's out, so I ask "Is it sit-in-able?" and he of course says "What?" and I say "Do I need a match for the toilet?" and he says no, so at 5:35, now, I start my record of the dream: I'm living, at something like my current age, in a place whose kitchen, at least, is laid out as at 1221 Dietz, and I'm doing something necessary in the line of work when I realize with a start that I'd put a tuna casserole in the oven quite a bit over an hour ago and haven't turned the oven off yet (or, to be precise, haven't "turned it over" yet, which is what, in the dream, I knew had to be done maybe a half-hour earlier), so I run to the stove and find it COLD. So Mom must have done something to it! I run to a kind of entrance-way where two women are standing about four steps up, about to leave the apartment, or what now seems more like a house, and Mom is talking to a man who may or may not be Dad, not really ready to listen to me, and I demand her attention, but she says she has to talk to the two women first, and I get angry and GRAB her thin wrist and almost DRAG her to the kitchen to demand to know WHERE she put my casserole. "In the cupboard." "In WHAT cupboard, WHERE?" with some asperity. "Where I keep the old peas." I'm not quite sure where this is, so I climb up on a chair and look into the top shelves of the cupboard on the far side of the kitchen table (if there was even a cupboard THERE at 1221, though I guess there WAS) and it's not quite full but has an array of partly used loaves of bread in their wrappers, some canned goods, unknown-contents packages, and stacked piles of bowls and pans and lids and dishes, none of which is my casserole! I look on a HIGHER, TOP, shelf, and it's not dusty, but obviously seldom-used, but with lots of half-eaten loosely-closed packages of cookies, potato chips, and candies, and I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with MOM to hide away such junk food, but my casserole is clearly not there. I'm off the chair and look into other cupboards on the other side of the sink, but they have their usual dishes and supplies of sugar and flour and canned goods, and I look into the pot-and-pan storage at the SIDES of the stove, in the refrigerator again, and just CAN'T find my casserole---could she have thrown it OUT? I'm about to confront her angrily when I wake. Just remembered another fragment in which I'm sitting on a toilet, like now, and become aware of a stream of urine coming from above the lip of the toilet-bowl, below the lip of the toilet-seat, and I sigh and realize I'll need a LOT of toilet paper to sop up the slop before I leave, so Ken won't suspect I've been so stupid (and short-cocked) to MISS the toilet bowl when I peed. Now 5:47 and the toilet-room is beginning to get humid and I'm aching for more sleep. Do Actualism-start, after fussing about the three days, two hotels, nine meals, 56 hours left in trip, and have another dream which seemed easy to remember at the time, but which I've forgotten. Ken gets up to pee about 7:30, and I hold my breath to see if he'll get up, but he doesn't, so I wait until 7:43 and shit the good shit and shower wonderfully with the window open and birds singing in, good shampoo, good shower-spray, good footing, good soap, good light, and out at 8:08 having dried with a good towel, and Ken's up, we open windows and shut off air conditioning that never really got to me yesterday, and type this at 8:11, expecting at any line to be thrown into File 8, the last of the trip for the less-than-three days remainning in the trip. Feel GOOD again, thank goodness, though eyes were RED from rubbing last night, and right shoulder still sore, though MAYBE it's improving. Now to switch to LAST CLEAN underwear, and will wear clean WHITE teeshirt to counteract the funk of the Galapagos which I've been wearing for the last three days. Take last four # pictures from room in Colombier, just to get rid of film and change to new, now at 8:18. Start Roll #13. Down to breakfast at 8:25, fortuitously just AS a couple leaves one of the THREE outdoor breakfast tables, ONE of which is hogged by a young twerp doing some kind of BUSINESS through the entire time, during which I imagned the kindly waitress gave him more than a few dirty looks, but as WE vacated our table the NEXT twosome appeared, just as the next foursome appeared JUST as the previou four left. What inadvertent PLANNING. Up to type this at 9:04, ready for the Ethnographic Museum three doors away, open at 9, and the Bartholdi, open at 10. We CANNOT keep bags in room after noon, and when I ask Ken why he wants to keep the bags after noon, he says "Well, I'll want to use the toilet," and I laugh and say, "Oh, I guess you use YOUR toilet that you carry around in your suitcase." He didn't like it. Will do the Ethnographic in my slippers. NICE to be so close to everything. To museum 9:13, but it opens only at TEN! Go with Ken to his artist's shop to 9:38. #1 Petite Venise at 9:45. #3 10:41: Cameroon: "Un personnage procedant a un lavement avec une poire du meme nom." Museum of Ethnography from 10:05-10:50. #4 from Rue des Marchands at 11:02. #5 Bartholdi's house at 11:04 and "Les Grands Soutain Du Monde": Justice, Patriotism, and Work. #6 Le Petit Vigneron (copy in "Princton, Jumelee avec Colmar.") #8: "Cough." #10 & 11 Le Martyr Modern--Poland's liver eaten by Russia's double-headed eagle, 1864. #12 "Le Genie dans les Griffes de la Misere 1958. #14 BOAT on Petite Venise at 11:39. Dash to hotel at 11:40. Recharge battery. Leave hotel 11:55. To Hostellerie de Marechal, restaurant A L'Echevin along canal at 12, NOT in sun-on-Ken, he has LOBSTER for 36E, ala carte, to my MENU for 25E! LONG lunch (I break glass) to 1:50. I pay 103E and load stuff in trunk 1:53 at km 3857. 37° = 98° Fahrenheit, THEN down to SEVENTEEN degrees, or 62° Fahrenheit, Centigrade CUT IN HALF. Through Five Chateaux, 3 Donjons, and Ribeauville to Illhaursen at 4:02. Park under building, guy comes to guide us to duplex SUITE to 4:20. Walk, take photos to #24, videos, includng stork, and back at 5:30 to change for dinner at 7:30. GRAND place. To bar for drink at 6PM: Pousse-rapiers for 111E, we didn't even SIGN for them. Back after walk and change at 6:50, drink below to 7:30, dine to 10:05, rather disappointing, with a TERRIBLY under-demembraned sweetbreads which I suspect I had BEFORE here, and should have avoided! Video to 10:30 in dark, with moon, and collapse with puzzle at 10:40, GOT to digest some, and bed at 11:10.
SUNDAY, JUNE 8: Pee at 2:15, cold in room, and pee at 5:30, still cold. Up at 7:35, think deprssing thoughts. Up at 8:01, shit, and out to walk. 8:30 record dream: Prince Charles is lying in a bed across from me, who am (COULD that be right?) sitting in a chair in a state of puzzlement until it's clear that it IS Prince Charles, who's fallen on ice, forward, and cut his cheek, which causes the blood on the sheet of his pillowless bed, but it's not serious, so there's no real concern, but WHY am I HERE? Then, without transition, I'm in a "body mass" in which the "chief attractive man" is twiddlng my toe with a delighted smile on his face, and I make a remark about how wonderful it IS to be "in a man pile, where you can't tell who's doing what to whom." There's a lot more play with attractive smiling men (maybe the group of men-waiters at Auberge de L'Ill last night?), but then it changes to a subway station with the typical signs, puzzling, of trains 2 and 3 available on ONE platform, and train 4 and 5 available on a platform above or below, but I don't know which is coming in next or which I'm to take, and all platforms are JAMMED with people waiting for trains, until it becomes more clear that people are waiting patiently to file OUT of the station, because construction has reduced the exits to very narrow, one-person-at-a-time stairways up which people make their way with extreme slowness, at one point applauding a knot of people who unravel and succeed in vacating the platform, making it marginally less crowded. Started typing dream at 8:30 and now at 8:37 totally STUNNED by Ken's spoken intention to "ask someon here (in Illhaursen) where would be the nearest or most convenient gas station when we get into Strausberg either on the limited-access highway or on a smaller road." I merely say, with marvelous restraint, "I cannot imagine anyone HERE knowing anything about locations of gas stations in Strasbourg," and he replies with his typical "Well, either they'll know, or they won't know." I'm in bathrobe and shorts and white slippers, old ones, waiting to go outside for breakfast in the SUN, which seems like a mistake, though the addition of two horses is a lovely touch in the adjoining field (separated by a wire fence, of course). Breakfast 9-9:50, almost idyllic after I insist table be moved into a patch of shade at the edge of the Ill. Shower to 10:25, pack to 10:59, putting books IN blue bag and leaving dop kit, shoes, and various stuff to put in A&K bag. To pay bill, looking at ALL the signatures in the book: Elizabeth R, Picasso, Monet, Hemingway, etc. Ken fusses to 11:20 for bill, then off at 11:30 at km 3939. Leave Ebenmunster Church at 12:15, taking pictures. To level 1, Allee B, at 1:10 under Museum of Modern Art. #35 entry at 1:22; FREE today! Some interestng stuff, like uncharacteristic---WHO?? (the guy who squeezes sponge-blots of color for undersea statues of mythic women). Lunch on terrace, VERY sunny and hot, with shirtless badminton batters for relief and pictures, at 2PM, #37 all Strasboug. Roll 14: #3 cathedral at 2:24. We wait 20 minutes for Arp/Klee salad, and 1 liter of water for 3.9E almost gone. #4 entry to MOMA after lunch at 2:56. Great thunder and clouds, but they dissipated. Leave 3:16, WAY lost out of parking, Ken goes into Gare to pee at 3:33. 3:40 me: "Ken, get a luggage cart." At 3:46 he comes, we put everything on cart, I park WITHOUT getting a ticket, final kilometrage 4004, but it LOOKS OK and woman at the Mercury Hotel seems to agree, so I return to Ken and get 50 cents from him to pee at 4:12. Train is off at 5:21 as scheduled, me doing puzzles. Leave Basel at 6:54, having changed sides in sun and ogled a passenger with a laptop and Ken's "Perfect arms." I almost doze, and it's raining in Switzerland, with a squalling girl in the car that forces me to put in earplugs. Almost empty car. Shit a bit at 7:30 and pack stuffed A&K bag at 7:55 and off train that stops EXACTLY at 8PM in Zurich. To ticket office at 8:10, forced by Ken, and next train is at 8:12, which we miss, and next is 8:40, for which we go down platform and wait, puzzle, to Flughofen 8:52. Ken refuses to try the shortcut---AND NOW, AT 11:16PM, I CAN'T FIND MY HOUSEKEYS IN THE FUTURE BAG!!!---and we're way around to the Hilton bus which has JUST filled, which also serves the Movenpick, so I sit, tired, at 9:04: 23 hours to go! Onto Hilton bus at 9:07, hot and stuffy, out to puzzle, Ken pissed, calling INCESSANTLY for me to return to my hot seat, which I ignore, and bus goes 9:17-9:21. Go into driveway and there's Sharnagel bus and I say "Maybe it's Mikhail," and into lobby and there's SUSAN. We laugh and talk and Ken checks us in, with a free sparkling drink, at 9:33. Up to room 602 "an upgrade," with more room maybe, and Ken's CURSING bag for not fitting where he wants, so it goes in entrance so we have to cross paths incessantly. Down to Movenpick for dinner at 9:40, Ken having a double vodka-orange and me two glasses of rosé wine and a single barbecue-burger patty, not bad, with french fries which Ken tries, and he has a "Carmelita Klein," which we both love the name of, and I a single vanilla-fudge kugel with hot chocolate, and the Indian waiter is charming so I give him an over 10% tip, and we're up at 10:45, start packing and putting things together, should have taken a melitonin at wake-up THIS morning, but put one out for tomorrow and get this out to catch up at 11:21, having written myself a note to find HOUSE KEYS, and Ken's put in a wake-up call for 7AM, though I say I won't get up until 7:30, so I MAY get 8 hours sleep if I really TRY. Collapse in laughter as Ken tries and fails to topologize my normal ID tag onto my blue bag, and then FIND the keys in one of the "hardware" bags, take a SLEEPING PILL, and my night pills, and put a FLOOR LAMP into the bathroom when the bathroom light lights a HALL light! Feel VERY good and hopeful of a blissful sleep and HOME in just TWENTY hours from now, 11:38, when I finish this and put all my junk on the shelf and get to bed by 11:43PM.
MONDAY, JUNE 9: Wake at 5:06 with light shining through both sides of shade I'd fixed and which Ken obviously disturbed, and then get to pee and record dream of me with Bob Rosinek, and he wants to lie on me even AFTER we've had sex, and he wants to try for a second shot, rubbing his cock between my legs, and I reach down to squeeze his nipples and he moans in appreciation. Just as I begin to get hard I wake, go into john to pee and write this to 5:13, still feeling groggy from sleeping pill taken over 5.5 hours ago, and I feel I can sleep more before 7AM wakeup call, unless he changed it to 7:30 because he showered last night, though I doubt it, because he said he "wanted time for breakfast at the airport after checking in." Last day of trip, last sun of trip coming up, about 15 hours to go. GREAT! Thirsty. Drink, and EASILY back to sleep. Hear phone and call "Ken" three or four times, increasingly louder, but the series of rings stops and then starts again, so I shake his BED, which wakes him, and he answers at 7:04 and goes into the bathroom while I lay until 7:15, thinking "thirteen hours left," and then up to finish this at 7:16. Shit again and wash face and finish in bathroom by 7:27, bright and clear outside, nice. All packed at 8M, onto airport bus at 8:06, off at 8:17, to two Hiltons (which driver was later accused on his cell phone of NOT having stopped at). To airport 8:30. Breakfast 8:45-9:10, using Ken's raisin juice to take my pills after he shares my LARGE mushroom omelet for 13F and he has coffee and a roll for a total of 20F. To Duty-Free for Sambuca as a last choice for 19SF, cheap, at 9:23. It JUST fits into my A&K bag, which also contains the lock which even the sweet-faced Swede checking me in said may be clipped off if they decided they wanted to check my bag ON THEIR OWN. To gate B33, VERY crowded, after LONG walk past signs of how good the terminal will be in 2004 with trains, etc., at 9:35. Sign says boarding at 10:25, and I check with woman stamping something on boarding passes, and she says if we HAD that stamp we don't have to go through her. When Ken arrives at the area OUTSIDE the crowded B33 area, he says it was strange that no one x-rayed our carryons, which I thought was strange too, and then he looks ahead to see people going through ANOTHER line into another lounge, and there IS another line, which moves fast, to an x-ray machine at which they say to take cameras, film, and computers out of bags, and then they put THOSE on a tray and put them through ANYWAY. AND then the sweet-faced older woman chooses my carryon to empty completely (thankfully not looking TOO closely at the chocolate-flavored body cream in my shoe in my bag), and then puts my still-closed dop kit through the x-ray separately, handing it all back and saying thank you. Put it all in and get to the REAL lounge, nicely spread out and cool, boarding time now listed at 10:05AM, and I put in my earplugs and sit with my back toward the screaming kids, and get this out and up to date at 10:11, only maybe nine hours left! Ken's reading Monday's Herald Tribune and will give it to me when he's finished. Babies REALLY SCREAM, and cry and run back and forth, and carry on, and let's hope there are none nearby THIS time, either! Shoes warm, ready to be taken off on plane. Back to almost-finished Sunday Times puzzle from yesterday. Board at 10:30, jammed, and pee, and plane backs out at 11:07. Announced as 8:27 flight, or 500 minutes! 57° and rainy in NYC! Off at 11:18, so in at 1:45 NYC time. Alp-tops clear, and huge fellow with awful sun-plaque on his face and hands, who was nice enough to vacate his seat next to me "to give us both more room," comes back over to say "We can see the Matterhorn," but I say "I can't see anything that's that sharp," though we agree on the Mt. Blanc massif. Low clouds over France. Saw the French coast, then bits of southern England, and what may have been a peek at all-green Ireland, and then clouds with a tiny set of bumps. Lunch of salmon, quite good and a relief from chicken, from 1-1:45, quite filling with water and Sprite and orange juice, and it's all clouded from about mid-France. I TRY to doze about 2PM, but it doesn't work, so I finished the Times puzzle and returned to the Times-book puzzles. Clouds clear over calm Atlantic waters, and at 16:50 (keeping watch on 24-hour clock to ease subtracting the 6-hour time-difference) see BOATS (which at first I thought might be white whales!) and then at 16:55 see LAND, surprisingly soon for Newfoundland. Great barren treeless wastes with rivers and rocks intermingled, snow remaining white in places, then farms with roads and trees in Nova Scotia, including some spectacular south-facing fjords with 1000-foot cliffs. Get served a thick hot pizza at 18:40, resetting watch to 6:40PM, and start down at 7:26, going to john for the last time. Land at 7:45, taxi ALL around JFK, off plane at 7:59 after LONG wait for passengers to leave. Passports checked almost instantly and to luggage claim at 8:07, moving from one to another. Bag comes out fairly early, Ken waves goodbye, and I get NEXT taxi and fairly quick down Atlantic for $29 and home at 9:07. NINE phone calls: 1) Laura from Mint with ticket information, 2) Shelley: welcome back, 3), 5), and 7) for "Susan," 4) Sharon Montoya, Shelley's sister, for AC, 6) Schwab investments, 8) DHL delivered Go-Ahead stuff to 167 Hicks, 9) Harriet, call Roberta re Pope. Talk (new time) to Arnold to 3:40, Carolyn to 4:10, get stuff from Bob, check Juno for 47 messages 4:45-5:05 (Jimmy died!), FreeCell to new high at 5:30, sort mail while transferring files, and proof to 6PM, getting TIRED. Proofread page 10-29 to 7:20 and save on disk so I can erase AlphaSmart. Have cheese sandwiches for dinner. Look through magazines but still not started on unpacking at all. J/O 9-9:20, poorly, and get to bed 10:10PM. (RETURN TO JOURNALS 6/16/03).
TUESDAY, JUNE 10: Pee at 3AM, Actualism 3:40-4 and can't sleep, so J/O 4-4:25, try to sleep again, but just get up after 5:50 sleep, slight headache. Look through first New York Times and see that tomorrow's last day for Cremaster Cycle at Guggenheim, so I have breakfast, look through magazines, call Charles, call Bill Petersen, call Mildred, get to Carolyn Anderson 11:40-12:10, get to Beyoglu at 12:45 but they don't serve Iskander Kebab until 4PM, so we walk up to New Unity Restaurant, have bison burgers and lemonade, and see Cremaster exhibit and whole movies 4, 1, and 2 (and I check to see that I'd seen 3 and 5 before), and line at 6:10 is so big I just come home, do some grocery shopping, phone Rita who wants to FIGHT settlement described by Herman in letter, have chicken for dinner, talk to Sherryl, look at lots of mail from last two days, and get to bed at 10:20PM, making notes on what I should do tomorrow.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11: Type dream at 4:44AM: Brief but VIVID, GUSTATORY dream about being home for a day or two after a trip, and PICKING MY NOSE to find that what had been hard-stuffed sides have become filled with soft, easy-to-remove clumps that I can TASTE, and DO taste, and they're "healthy snot" rather than "blood-filled dried scabs", and, as in real life, I ENJOY the actual TASTE of the al dente lumps in the middle and wetter, slimier fringes at the edges. Type this to 4:47 and up to pee at 6:27. Did Actualism 5:15-5:50, and up, having extended sleeping to 7:30. Proofread 6:15-7:40, have breakfast, look through second Sunday Times, doing puzzles, call Spartacus, mail 13 rolls of film, take out laundry, get four videotapes from Spartacus at 1:30. Play some FreeCell and Minesweeper, then phone Mint again to get information to relay to Ken and Charles about our tickets, talk to Mildred about restaurant week's reservations. VERY humid outside. Leave messages with Shelley and Sharon, talked to Vicki this noon, then TIRED of working and watched TV from 6-11:10, caught up with this to 11:37PM, tired, and bed at 11:45PM.
THURSDAY, JUNE 12: Shit at 6:10. do an Actualism session sketchily, and up at 6:55 after 7:10 hours sleep, having extended wakeup time from 4 something on Tuesday to 5 something on Wednesday and to 6 something on Thursday, almost back to normal. Read the last Sunday Times, have breakfast about 8:30, almost normal, and start printing SWISSALS file, changing ribbon, having to fix stuck paper, and now REPRINTING 11-15 because of an odd printing glitch now at 9:30, VERY humid, which may be doing a number on the computer paper. Put on AC for the first time, and of course it's blowing cool on my body and forearms directly, but for now it feels OK. Now to start the photo, dream, and summary pages! Type \tr\slides pages 65 and 66 for slides to 10:30. Print DREAMS 7-11 to 11:05, getting TIRED of this, but only the SUMMARY page left, then the FINANCES!! Bank 2-3, haircut, shower, dinner at L'Alegria, "Daughter-in-Law" at good Mint, home in rain, finish summary page 11:50, Botanic Gardens tomorrow?
FRIDAY, JUNE 13: Bed at 12:01AM, shit at 6:05, up at 6:55. Do and do, finally clear up the papers from the living room and get LOTS thrown away from the stack in the bedroom, watch TV, get a call from Spartacus to see "Pericles," which he thought was "The Persians," which got good reviews, don't realizing he was opting for Shakespeare, but it was VERY GOOD! Trying desperately to eat all the food I have in the fridge, and by eating IN, I just might be able to DO it!
SATURDAY, JUNE 14: Bed at 12:42AM after playing FreeCell (and winning!), really too late! Pee at 5:45, up and shit at 7:44, eat breakfast at 8, watch my videos of the trip, not that great, and finish watching Spartacus's tapes on skating, so I call him after lunch at 1PM and take them to him, depositing checks and getting $200 in cash for the trip, and renewing probably my LAST 100mg bupropion, hoping to reduce dosage with next prescription after meeting with Dr. Jaffe on July 22. NERVOUS and ANXIOUS about trip while watching skating, and don't feel like doing ANYTHING useful, so I play FreeCell/Minesweeper and REPEAT the duet, watching lighting and rain coming closer, then fading away. Took bag of papers down, put AC out for Shelley to pick up tomorrow, and figure to eat dinner NOW at 6:30PM and THEN get the Times, so I'll be ready to go to bed EARLY in order to start with time-change for Spain. Feel BETTER typing now.
SWISSALS SUMMARY PAGE
SAT,MAY 17: Fly out of JFK at 6:10 for 7:07 flight to Zurich.
SUN,MAY 18: Land 7:21, to Movenpick Hotel. Kunstmuseum taxis. Walking tour of Frauenmunster, Grossmunster, Spiegelgas. Hotel Bistro lunch and Dim Sum dinner.
MON,MAY 19: Ken falls! Visit Berne for bear pits and Cathedral and clock, lunch at Pizzeria Taverna in Murten, where we walk walls, Lausanne for Hotel Alpha Palmiere drinks and dinner, get lost walking complicated Lausanne at night.
TUE,MAY 20: Geneva Reformation Monument, Jet D'Eau, rain. La Cote lunch. Lake Geneva Ouchy-Montreux, Chillon Castle, Villars for drinks and dinner at hotel.
WED,MAY 21: Bus Col de la Croix and Col de Pillon to Gstaad. Greyere for castle and Giger Museum, lunch at Ramparts Restaurant. Through Col de Mosses, snowy, and hotel dinner and sit on bench outside and listen to cowbells.
THU,MAY 22: Martigny for amphitheater, Relais St. Bernard stop. Sion Town Hall, Pinte Contheysanne lunch, Tourbillon Chateau, Cathedral. Canyons to Tasch to Alpen-Resort Hotel Zermatt dinner, town-walk, looking for Matterhorn in clouds.
FRI,MAY 23: Trip to Kulmhotel Gornergrat for lunch and views of all mountains. Swim in hotel pool. Dine at Jeraldine Restaurant and look at old-house street.
SAT,MAY 24: Simplon Pass, Stresa, boat to Isola Bella tour: house and gardens. Lugano to drink and dine at wonderful-view Hotel Splendid; then walk streets.
SUN,MAY 25: Ethnographic Museum, funicular up Monte Bre for lunch, Museo Cantonal, San Rocco, wooden San Carlo of Four Fountains, St. Lorenze, San Carlo, Luini Chapel, Shiele at Modern Art. Dinner at Leopoldo up hill by taxi.
MON,MAY 26: Grisons to Misox Valley, San Bernardino tunnel, Julier Pass, Silvaplana, Pontrasena for lunch at Banhof Restaurant, Piz Bernina, to Hotel Monopol in St. Moritz for dinner, long walk through relatively nothing town.
TUE,MAY 27: Glacier Express over Albula Pass, Landwasser Viaduct, Disentis, Andermatt, Gotthard reststop, to Interlaken for drinks on top of Hotel Monopol and dinner there, then walk town with canal & river & back streets & Kursaal.
WED,MAY 28: Via Kleine Scheidegg to Eiger, Jungfrau, and Monk from Jungfraujoch two stops. Lunch in Crystal Restaurant. Trimmelbach and Staubbach Falls from Lauterbrunnen, best stop! Jacketless dinner at La Terrase and walk town again.
THU,MAY 29: Brienz woodcarvings, Ballenberg Open-Air Museum for lunch, Alpnachstad for funicular up Mt. Pilatus, walk all around, and hotel dinner after looking into the Monastery church.
FRI,MAY 30: Carriage ride to Monastery tour, Lucerne walk-tour, wonderful waitress for lunch at Galliki, St. Francis church, walk in heat to train station and Kunstmuseum, to Engelberg and dinner at Hotel Engelberg, not ours.
SAT,MAY 31: Bus to Zurich, train to Strasbourg, taxi to Cathedral Hotel, tour Cathedral, walk streets, dinner at Crocodile, people-watch in Cathedral square.
SUN,JUN 1: Museum de L'Oeuvre de Cathedral, Cathedral roof, clock show, Petite France for lunch in Hotel Regent Petite France, walk streets, organ concert, taxi to Buerhiesel, rather disappointing.
MON,JUN 2: Cathedral, get Europcar, drive to Petite Auberge in Hohwald for lunch, St. Odile, Obernoi walk-tour of town and ramparts, Colombier dinner.
TUE,JUN 3: Haut Konigsberg visit and lunch, Col de Bagenolles, Sigolsheim; to Riquewihr for L'Oriel Hotel, drinks at Bistro des Moines, Schoenenberg dinner.
WED,JUN 4: Sorcerer's House, Transit Museum, Chalet Fleurie lunch, Lac Blanc, WWI graves, to Hohrodberg Hotel Roess for drinks and dinner, walk to Panorama.
THU,JUN 5: Grand Ballon top, L'Hotel des Sources lunch, Giromagny, Lake D'Alfeld, to next stop for hotel and dinner.
FRI,JUN 6:Eglise de Morbach,Loreto Chapel,Buhl triptych,Colmar Hotel Colombier, lunch at Hansi,Unterlinden Museum,Schongaur, St. Martin,Brenner Weinstub dinner
SAT,JUN 7: Ethnographic and Bartholdi Museums, A L'Echevin lunch, chateaux and donjons, Ribeauville to Illhaursen, two drinks, dinner at Auberge de L'Ill.
SUN,JUN 8: Idyllic breakfast on L'Ill, Ebenmunster Church, to Strasbourg Museum of Modern Art lunch, drop off car, train to Zurich Movenpick Hotel dinner.
MON,JUN 9: Zurich airport breakfast. Fly 11:18AM-1:45PM to JFK, bed at 10PM.
EXPENSES AND MISCELLANEOUS
Mileage from Date Km #Km
Strasbourg Mon 6/2 3145
Obernoi Tue 6/3 3280 135
Riquewihr Wed 6/4 3422 142
Hohrodberg Thu 6/5 3586 164
Gerardmer Fri 6/6 3813 227
Colmar Sat 6/7 3857 44
Illhauersern Sun 6/8 3939 82
Strasbourg Final 4004 65
7)859 = 122.5 km/day, or 73.5 miles/day, OK!
EXPENSES 2/15/03 Visa $1,854.00 to Insight Tours
2/19/03 Visa 638.30 to American Airlines
take cash $486.18
back 118.70
spent 367.48
I owe Ken 114.62
5/28/03 Visa 724.56 take ALL, since Ken spent EQUALLY
6/?? Visa
As of 6/15/03, spent $3698.96, or $154.12/day for 24 days.
GOING: blue bag 16.5# A&K bag 14.5# = 31#
RETURN:blue bag 34.0# A&K bag 16.0# = 50#, WHEW!