meh

I’m quickly losing interest in writing at all, let alone recaps of shit that already happened.

It’s been a while now so details are probably fuzzy. I guess it doesn’t really matter because the people who read this either follow me on twitter and got the play by play updates OR they have no idea what the fuck so even if I were to make up a bunch of shit it wouldn’t matter.

On may 20th I landed in Frankfurt and met up with John, we didn’t know how to get to Bamberg so we found a US Army soldier and asked her what the deal was, she took us to the train station where we bought tickets and away we went. I hadn’t slept in around 30 hours at that point so I just wanted to get to my sister’s place ASAP and sleep. We had to change trains a few times but made it without any problem in a couple hours. My brother in law picked us up at the train station and gave us a ride back to the post, but we had to walk the rest of the way back to their apartment because of some dumb rules about how you can or can’t use army cars. Apparently since he was driving past the train station on official business it was ok to pick us up, but he could not deviate from his route, even once he got on post. John and I walked to Popeyes and got some chicken, my sister came down to meet us and we headed back after buying a 12 pack of 24oz coronas. The first couple days were basically us sitting around drinking corona and getting used to being on the wrong side of the planet.

The following thursday we went out for euro shots night at the irish pub named “Irish Pub” and had some proper drinks. They had strongbow on tap and I managed to introduce my sister to the Irish Car Bomb. We stumbled drunkenly through the streets trying to find a bar that was still open, we found one that would let us use their bathrooms but wouldn’t serve us alcohol. So we had to order our drinks to go (seriously), and away we went to some castle or church or something. I don’t know what the fuck it was supposed to be but it’s famous for something. I really couldn’t give too shits less what it was, I’m not big on classical sightseeing. After finishing all of our cider, we cabbed back to the post only to go on a beer run. Apparently if you have a drunken conversation with complete strangers outside of the shopette on post (the liquor store) for too long, the MP’s get called on you. While they were telling us to be quiet and go home, someone came on the radio and said “Hey tell the guy with the mohawk I like his hair!”, which pleased me greatly because of the amount of time it takes to put my mohawk up when it’s that big.

Then pretty much nothing happened for about a week and a half while we sat around drinking to excess every single night and eating copious amounts of Doner Kebab. Finally we got temporary passes to get on post without having to sign in every single time, as well as permission to use my brother in law’s cars while we were there. We took a tour of the tunnels under the city, then a day or two later ditched my sister and her husband and drove up to denmark. Google maps fails in denmark too. Just sayin’. Plus the road numbering scheme makes no sense, so our trip was failtastic. We finally got there around 11pm, just after sundown. We met up with a friend of John’s named Bent, and talked until 2am with Bent, one of his friends who’s name I don’t remember, and Bent’s wife Tina (I think). They are really big into Americana and muscle cars, it’s kinda surreal. We stayed there for about a week, going to various junkyards and buying parts to ship back to the states. One big thing about denmark, is you have to tell people you’re not polish. Apparently everyone in denmark hates the polish, and the only people who speak english but not danish are the polish. If you’re polish, that means you’re going to lie, cheat, and steal every chance you get. At one point they pointed out that they have polish people living in their town, but they made it very clear “they work for their money, unlike the rest of the polish”. Most people would speak in very broken english until they found out we were from california, then suddenly their english went from a 10 word vocabulary to better than mine. The other group the danish hate are the arabs. They really hate arabs. It’s a little unreal how much they can’t stand arabs. Arabs are just as bad as the polish, but they’ll stab you after they’ve lied, cheated, and stolen from you. I didn’t meet any poles or arabs, so I can’t speak with certainty on this subject but I’d be willing to bet it’s not as bad as they say.

Completely by chance, and nearly in passing, the people we were staying with in denmark said “oh yeah, the race is this weekend, you should go”. Race? What race? Oh yes, that race. The 77th annual 24 hours of le mans just happened to be that weekend. We spent a day or two more there but headed right back to germany as soon as we finished up our business there. Dropped off my brother in laws car and picked up a rental car, heading to france just in time to get there before the race started. Now my brother in law had a gas card that let him buy gas without taxes, so it came out to 67 US cents per liter, versus the 1.35 euro per liter it would normally be. When he got the card for the rental car, they asked how much he wanted to put on the card, up to 100 liters. He said none. Seemed odd to me, since it would be simple to just do it all when you got the card but he swore it wasn’t important. Well fast forward a day when we’re trying to buy gas and he “forgot” that you have to put money on the card before you buy gas. He remembered this AFTER I pumped 50 euro worth of diesel into the rental car, far away from every goddamn army base he could use to put money on the card. Seriously, there were a few times I thought he was being a little daft, but this seems pretty clearly intentional. Instead of getting cheap gas with his gas card, I had to pay about 160 euro when it should have been around 120 USD.

The race itself was pretty rad, we had a drink or two with some awesome british people who brought their order aston martin. Now I really enjoyed their company, but they had their fill of my brother in law pretty quickly. In between telling tall tales and exaggerating quite a bit, he kept pulling his knife out and playing with it in front of everyone. They repeatedly told him that it wasn’t ok and he needed to put that away. He’d put it in his pocket for about a minute, then the process would repeat itself. Towards the end of the evening he kicked back in one of their chairs and passed out. I was off to watch the race some more when one of the british guys grabbed me and said it wasn’t cool for my brother in law to stay there, and he had to leave. I had to pick him up and carry his ass all the way back to the car about a mile and a half away. He kept trying to walk but never really made it work. We got back to the car and he started to vomit a bunch, refusing to drink any water at all. I slept in the driver’s seat quite uncomfortably, getting up around 8am and going back to the race at around 10am. John and I watched the race for a bit, walking around and seeing a bunch of different spots outside the view of the grandstands. The only real reason to get a grandstand seat is it’s a covered area, and it’s super easy to get a sunburn there. At around 1:30pm we went back to the car and woke up my brother in law, we decided to leave early to beat the rush. I drove back, since I wanted to actually get back to germany. On the way to the racetrack my brother in law drove until we got about 50km inside the french border. He averaged 21 miles per gallon while he drove. The reason? “It’s a diesel so it gets better fuel economy the faster you go”. After trying to convince him he was wrong, I just accepted the fact that he was going to drive to france at 4000rpm. On the drive back, I managed to get 46 miles per gallon. Because I’m not a fucking retard.

I was trying to be nice and not call out my brother in law just in case he reads this, but after going over all this shit in my head right now I can’t stand it anymore. He’s literally retarded. I’m amazed the army fucking let him join at all. He never stopped talking the entire time, and was never once right about anything. When he would reach a conclusion, it never really made sense. He often tried to explain how things worked without knowing anything about them, then defended his positions when you corrected him with facts. Listening to him talk reminds me why I hate the midwest. He’s a constant one upper, and often tries to tell me about things I am quite familiar with. I say this with no fear of retribution whatsoever: I really hate him. He’s a nice guy, but I’d be surprised if he was half as smart as I am. I would be a much happier person if I never spoke to him again for the rest of my life.

We got back to germany and sat around for a few days, got drunk a couple more times, then took the train back to the airport. There was no direct train, and the connecting trains included a 4 hour layover in the middle of nowhere. At one point we tried to sleep in the train station only to be woken up by the police. I don’t know much german but I’m pretty sure they said “you can’t sleep here you fucking bums”, I replied with “english?” to which they said “american army?” I said “tourist” and they asked for my passport. I said it was in my luggage and showed them my train ticket and california drivers license which was good enough for them. We finally got all the way to the airport at around 7, my flight wasn’t until 11. It’s a funny thing trying to stay awake at the airport, I was originally going to try to nap but I didn’t want to risk missing my flight. I got to philadelphia around 2:30pm local time, skipped my connecting flight to california and took the bus to new york. I spent about 5 very intoxicating days exploring dive bars in manhattan. I’m going to sum up a few things with a couple words of advice: Beware, when new yorkers say brunch they don’t mean a meal, they mean getting blackout drunk in the middle of the day. When you buy multiple bottles of wine to be consumed in a short period of time, spend the extra dollar and get the $4 wine. It’s much better and doesn’t break you (physically).

I grabbed a virgin america flight home on tuesday, the entire trip to new york was designed to skip going to santa ana where my original flight ended. I hate going south of the 10 to begin with, I wasn’t going to go all the way to fucking orange county. The only thing worth going to orange county is disneyland and I wasn’t going there so I wasn’t going at all. While I was in denmark I got an email from virgin america with a promo code for 20% off any airfare. If anyone at virgin america is reading this, please take note: I got the email with the promo code and bought my airfare within 30 minutes. Direct cause and effect. Sales equal purchase.

In summary: I’m never going to europe without my jeep again.