Sensation Dude

Or, Sensation Lose Your Friends and Walk Around an Arena that Lacks Distinguishing Features Filled with People Dressed Entirely in White

I'll say it, Sensation White was not the time I expected. Though I should have expected a giant white sausage fest (for reasons not limited to the fact that I myself traveled there exclusively with four other dudes), the YouTube promo-videos I watched ad nauseum beforehand gave me the fabricated impression that Sensation White is a slice of electro-heaven teeming with buxom European bitches in undersized tank tops and angel outfits getting in cat fights over sexual access to American guys who blog.

This was not the case.

Instead, Copenhagen's Parken Arena was a whole pie of innumerable groups of dudes, possibly huddled around a hot girl or two, but more likely just huddled around themselves, flexing and peering around for girls that weren't accounted for.

Gentlemen of Europe, YouTube has bamboozled us once again.

Alright it wasn't that bad. The concept of tens of thousands of youths clad in white converging on one city for one night of blue-chip house music is a pretty cool idea, and something I'm proud to have said I did. But if you consider the logistics, it's pretty impossible to execute this concept without the problems that I (and just about everyone else I knew there) encountered.

Namely, a) an abundance of cock, and b) the impossibility of finding anyone you aren't holding hands with.

a) In hindsight, this is pretty fucking obvious. Heading into last weekend I knew of (or tangentially knew of) at least 20 guys that were mad amped for the Sensation White, and exactly 6 girls of the like. There has to be some sort of sociological explanation for this, but I still have my doubts about science so I'm gonna attribute the discrepancy to the fact that everywhere I've been in Europe, notably Oktoberfest and Prague, I feel as if I'm always near a 8+ person herd of greasy, tan, drunk European men, but NEVER do I feel proximate to European women in groups of more than three anywhere. There's an important lesson to be learned here: when in doubt, blame European guys.

But seriously, the guy to girl ratio at Parken Arena was probably 6 to 1, and that's generous.

Granted, it's not as if I went into the night thinking, "tonight, in a massive arena seething with bass, will be the night I find my blonde, smokeshow, Scandinavian soul mate." That's dead-end logic every day of the week for me. Not only because I have the WORST press-your-crotch-up-against-the-hind-of-a-random-girl-in-the-club game, but also because I have without any doubt the WORRRST press-your-crotch-up-against-the-hind-of-a-random-girl-in-the-club game. I am certain that my lifetime batting average against not-fat-girls in situations when I cannot introduce myself first is .000. And I've come to accept that; I'm just not that guy. So instead of trying to fail at being someone I'm not, I tried to find people I knew that were there.

b) Which I also failed at.

For no identifiable reason, I was by myself within 5 minutes of walking into Sensation White with three other people. Maybe it's because I insisted on waiting in line for drinks and a hot dog, maybe it's not. I just don't know.

I do know that I love the way Copenhagen does hot dogs (Wikipedia just dropped a knowledge bomb on my ass; apparently I was not eating the "traditional" Danish hot dog, but rather the French hot dog, which I'll just pretend doesn't come from France): they chop off about 20% of a baguette, hollow it out, squirt a condiment down the hollow (you're limited to one, which is unfortunate but very acceptable considering the taste advantages of a toasty baguette over your run-of-the-mill hot dog bun), and then chase the sauce with a foot-long weiner, which protrudes from the baguette just slightly. And this is getting weird.

The snack bar was also serving Captain & Cola in a can.

Captain & Cola in a can.

Not a chance there was more than 4% alcohol in each one, but they tasted like candy and, in the same vein as the midget principle from my toothpastes post, I'm a sucker for products that are diminutive and/or previously unheard of. These were both, and each sold for the equivalent of 9 US dollars. I really am a sucker.

When I wasn't focused on consuming, I was focused on locating companions, which I tried to do by making lap after lap after lap around that gigantic fucking arena using the advertisements under the box-seat level as landmarks (there was literally no way of accurately describing to someone exactly where you were in that arena because each of the four sides were 97% identical).

During one of my latter laps, my Blackberry up and decided it should dress the part as well.

I wanna send a very special Not Very Tall But Slow shout out to the asshole that danced all over my phone as soon as it fell out of my pocket. Really, thank you for destroying my single effective means of communication while I'm abroad, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to falsify an insurance claim when I finally get back to America in a month (immediately after I penned this dependent clause, I realized I should probably take care of the insurance claim ASAP, which I've now done; but I can still be a badass who blogs about his own insurance fraud right?).

So, I found no one I looked for (namely, Margaret Hollingsworth and Dave Hamilton; congratulations, you guys are famous), which certainly detracted from the experience, but I managed to enjoy myself nonetheless.

My videos and pictures:

 Fedde Le Grand

Note: The video above was taken on the highest level of the very Mayan looking center stage, into which was built a most impressive light show. Needless to say, the four sided, interactive stage was a siren call for dudes of all creeds and colors (mostly white guys, though).

Fedde Le Grand Mixing Something Mayan Sounding

Fedde Le Grand Mixing Dirty South's Phazing

0:07-08 - Look at all those fuckin' dudes!

And to think that I was having a hard time finding people...

Joris Voorn & 2000 and One Mixing Duck Sauce's Barbra Streisand

Best video I've seen since I think Rad Anthem.

Then on Sunday, I ate at a ridiculously overpriced breakfast at a place named "Hollywood Cafe" or something of the like, which meant it was just a shit-ass restaurant disguised by tons of cheaply framed print-outs of famous people. If any readers find themselves in Copenhagen, starved on an early Sunday afternoon, don't go to The Hollywood Cafe, but if you have no other option, don't order the nachos.

After walking out of the restaurant less-satisfied than I was when I walked in, my friends and I bumbled around the city center a little bit. But it was cold and rainy, so we opted to see a movie instead of wet Copenhagen.

It was just our luck that Tony Scott's newest gem Unstoppable was the only movie we could watch in its entirely without missing our flight. I don't think I need to say it, but Unstoppable has Oscar dark-horse written all over it.

.......psych! I'm not here to be the movie snob that lambasts big-budget, high-intensity films about a [insert looming disaster that is ultimately thwarted by an unlikely hero]. These movies will be made, and these movies will make money, for generations to come--at least until humans evolve into machines that receive emotions in binary code via an intravenous USB port. But I will say this:

1) Denzel, isn't there some way you and your perfectly symmetrical body can avoid aging, at least cinematically? You're in your fifties, I get it. But do you have to start playing the flabby, sage old-timer just yet? Your double-chin in Unstoppable was very clearly made up, and it looked like you were wearing at least 6 thick coats the entire time. All I'm saying is you don't have to be fat to be old. Point in case:

Stephen Lang is two years older than Denzel Washington

2) I am so tired of seeing Ethlan Suplee play the fat doofus. He's not even fat anymore, yet he's still always the fat fucking doofus.

Boy Meets World? Fat, mean doofus. American History X? Fat, van-driving, neo-Nazi doofus. Remember the Titans? Really fat, kind-hearted doofus. Blow? His character's name was fucking Tuna, and he was so fat and doofy that his most memorable scene is him lying sideways on the ground next to a bong, laughing at Dooley getting high in his stupid hat (or, arguably, his most memorable scene is the cannonball at the end of the Mexico house montage, which is equally indicative of fat doofusness).

If you read Suplee's IMDB credits, you'll see that over half his characters only have one name, and usually the names are in the same vein as "Tuna" or "Thumper" (The Butterfly Effect). In Unstoppable, Suplee portrays "Dewey," the fat, slow doofus who exits his moving train in order to do some train thing and then trips on route to board his moving train, creating the aforementioned looming disaster that Denzel and Chris Pine ultimately thwart. (Did I ruin it for you? So sorry.)



Train go fast. Me go slow.

Anyway, Hollywood, please find a new fat doofus (and please stop becoming inspirations for subpar brunch buffet restaurants).

After the movie, I took this video.

I do love a good accordionist.

Then I flew back to Prague. Then I wrote that last post, then I wrote most of this post, then I went to Ireland, and now I'm back from Ireland finishing a two-and-a-half-week old post. Slow and steady wins the race.

I Would Live in Copenhagen, but I Would Not Live in Christiania

Alright I'll start by saying that I have been a stone cold turd this past week. Not only did I start this entry last Monday, but I haven't done a single fucking thing besides do poorly on a Czech quiz at the beginning of the week, wake up after 1 pm every day, and eat my meals in bed while I refresh Faceook and Hypem. Paaathetic. Anyway, considering I got back from Copenhagen a full week ago, this thing needs to see the light of day. 

I'll also say that this entry ended up being very long so I've split it up into two parts: Friday and Saturday. The following is Friday.

I'm gonna recap the weekend chronologically, but first allow me to praise those wily Danes.

We all know Copenhagen is clean because of those criteria and blah blah. It's clean; that's good.

What's better is that on every roadway in Copenhagen, there is a small lane designated for bicyclists. That's good because bicyclists (there is a big difference between a person who occasionally rides a bike and a "bicyclist") are douchebags who think that spending $4000 annually on skin-tight outfits and really nice Styrofoam hats entitles them to go 21 MPH in the far right lane, creating what boils down to be a slow-moving double parked car. All the while the fuckers think they don't have to obey traffic lights unless there's a god damn fleet of tanks approaching the intersection at 200 miles per hour and it's a matter of absolute life and death.

Normally, I can't fucking stand bicyclists. But not in Copenhagen. Bicyclists in Copenhagen have a home, and that home is a modest patch of concrete between the cars' home and foots' (pronounced "foot-ziz") home. And even though I made the honest-tourist mistake of bringing my feet into the bicyclists' home unannounced and felt the wrath of their cute little warning bells a few times, not one bone in my body felt compelled to chirp back because I knew I was their equivalent of a slowly moving double-parked car.

Oh, and bicyclists have to obey traffic patterns. Fancy that, you aerodynamic assholes.

Speaking of assholes, I'm pretty sure there weren't any in Copenhagen. Everyone I encountered was super-ass friendly (point in case: I was standing at a metro ticket dispensary and a man walked up to me on his way out of the station and gave me his ticket), AND I could actually converse with them because everyone spoke English.

Including the clerks at 7-11. Yeah, that's right, 7-11. There was one on almost every other corner, and I went into almost every single one I saw. I fucking love 7-11; 3 reasons: Slurpees, microwaveable breakfast sandwiches, and Taquitos. Nuff said (I'll admit that WaWa is superior, but I don't live in a crap ass beach town in the Mid-Atlantic so it's just not practical for me to keep WaWa in my mental rolodex of places to go when I'm stoned).

The only unfavorable thing about Copenhagen was the price level. Much to the benefit of Denmark's economy (I think it's to their benefit, but it's not like I'm an Economics major or anything), the Danes have decided to remain outside the Euro-Zone and continue to use the Danish Krone. About 5.5 Danish Krones is the equivalent of 1 US Dollar; a 24-hour metro pass costs 135 Danish Krones, or $25 (much to my chagrin, the Copenhagen metro system does not operate on the honor system); my shit breakfast buffet on Sunday also cost 135 Danish Krones, or $25. Bottom line, shit was expensive. But I guess that's what happens when you live in a clean place where every friendly citizen speaks English.

So, highlights, chronologically:

We landed at 8:30a Friday and Metro'd to our hotel, where these two chimpy looking guys from Estonia tried to chat us up while we checked in. They meant well, but it was 9:30 in the morning and they were dishin' high fives and foreshadowing a group pregame for Sensation, so we promptly gave them the elevator to stairs fakeout and vowed to avoid them all weekend--a vow we made good on.

Then we got to our room, which was a hands-on lesson in space saving if not the biggest 3-star hotel rip-off in the history of 3-star hotel rip-offs. The good people at the Cabinn Express Copenhagen managed to squeeze FOUR twin beds into a space only slightly larger than a handicapped bathroom stall. The four of us trying to move around our room resembled what I think it would look like if four retarded seals somehow managed to board a submarine. We were bumpin' into each other constantly, knockin' shit over left and right, barking, accidently killing our offspring while trying to maintain alpha dominance, and the like.

Once we dropped our stuff, us four youths decided we wanted to go out and experience a little bit of Copenhagen's culture, so we went to the little known Freetown of Christiania (I'm being facetious; it's very well known).

Simply put, Christiania is an open-air pot market, where, if one were so inclined, one could get high as fuck in public and (probably) not face the long arm of the law. Technically and legally, "The Freetown of Christiania" is currently regarded as a commune regulated by special law. In a nutshell, Christiania is where the good people of Copenhagen have been coming to get high for decades.

A brief history lesson: Christiania was established in 1971. In the late 70s, as happened to many good places in the late 70s, the hippie crowd gave way to the heroin addict crowd, which prompted "the eviction of hard drugs" in 1979.  After the eviction, the open-air pot market in Christiania was controversial, but tolerated. Things changed in 2004 when the Dutch fuzz raided; the raid only served to create a fivefold increase in drug traffic everywhere else in Copenhagen, so after 2004, the mysterious forces of government control and market supply and demand served to restore the open-air pot market in Christiania, though it is still not technically legal.

I've gone to the trouble of paraphrasing Wikipedia for you in order to provide some context for the remorselessly sketchy and poisonous air that now fills the Freetown of Christiania.

Having been to Christiania, I am now an ardent opponent of communes that subsist on the buying and selling of marijuana. It's the kinda thing that sounds really great in theory--buncha people just gettin' high and chillin' all day, free love, free Tibet, etc.--but it's the kinda thing that, once executed, is a shitty place full of pot holes where everyone huddles around a trashcan bonfire and tries not to get jumped.

I was pretty preoccupied with this social paradox last weekend, but it did not take me long to realize why Christiania sucks so much:

1. people who sell pot professionally are degenerates; 2. when you invite an entire city's worth of pot-selling degenerates to sell their pot competitively in a single, consolidated area, that area will inevitably become a place abound with hostile degenerates and their hostile, degenerate friends; 3. not only are these people degenerates, but these people are stoned constantly; 4a. because everyone there is stoned constantly, not much beyond staying stoned gets accomplished; 4b. because everyone there is stoned constantly, everyone is also paranoid as FUCK. So, with the aforementioned as my witnesses, I maintain that Christiania sucks.

If you replace all the ornery black crackheads with ornery Scandinavian stoners, this is close to what I felt like in Christiania.



Now the reason I'm so hell bent on characterizing this place as hostile is mostly because of the Friday morning trip I started to recall about 9 paragraphs ago (those of you still reading this absurdly long entry, and those of you who aren't my father, congratulations, this is probably the longest thing you'll read today). I'll pick up where I left off:

We left the hotel and metro'd to the Christianhavn stop. Once we got our above ground bearings, we started off toward Christiania. We were standing at a stoplight talking about 7-11 when a short guy next to us chuckled, mentioned that he was American too, and asked where we all were from. We had the obligatory Americans-in-Europe-together conversation, and he seemed normal enough, so I invited him to join us on our adventure to the Freetown. Well, boys and girls, this right here is why mom and dad tell you not to talk to strangers:

This guy (no idea what his name is, but I'm gonna call him Chris) took his end of the conversation from "I live in Las Vegas" to "Then, when I was 23, I got a DUI and had to move back to California and live with my mom" in less than 4 minutes. Like as soon as we asked him how he liked Las Vegas, he felt compelled to distill all the bad shit that happened to him in the past 7 years and get it off his chest in 100 words or less. Then he made a half-joke about finding us on Facebook, and at this point we knew we were talking to a pretty lonely guy.

Not long after he ended his abridged autobiography, I noticed Chris was no longer in-step with us. So I turned around, and there was our boy, 15 yards back, polishing off a fifth of vodka. "Oh," I said to myself, "this guy's just drunk;" and then I said to myself, "Oh wait, it's 10 am, and he just helped himself to 4 gulps of vodka straight; this guy is a bona fide alcoholic." Then shit escalated.

Even though Chris was startin' the party before noon, we didn't say anything because he hadn't turned into a violent alcoholic yet, and we didn't want to expedite the process. He walked into Christiania with us and tagged along as we approached the first thing we saw and asked for pot; turns out this particular guy didn't sell pot, but he did sell sunglasses, and I was in need of white sunglasses for the next day's festivities (Sensation White; see next entry). So I plucked a pair of heart-shaped shutter shades and tried them on for shiggles. Well Chris got a big shit and giggle out of this, whipped out his iPhone 4 out (actually, he'd been fucking around with his iPhone 4 the entire time--one of those), took a fucking picture of me, and then said something about tagging me on Facebook.

Which is where Chris crossed the line in the sand (I think we've reached an era in which nearly every notable interaction between humans will somehow have something to do with Facebook).



Across this line you DO NOT...

I immediately took the glasses off, barely laughed at his half-joke, and booked it in the other direction. But Chris stuck with. Then shit escalated again.

Never before in my life have I seriously thought I was going to be murdered. Last Friday, that cherry was popped.

After not a long walk in that other direction, we stepped into a vestibule of what looked like a church, sniffed out the scene to make sure we wouldn't be abducted, and then perused the merchandise. After about 15 seconds, Chris broke out the iPhone 4 again and started snapping pictures of the product.

(There is a very strict no photography policy in Christiania. I love to be able to post pictures of all the graffitied signs that said no photography, but...)

The dudes in the vestibule friggity freaked OUT when they saw the iPhone 4.

"NO PICTURE CHRISTIANIA! NO PICTURE IN CHRISTIANIA!"

Chris: "Sorry; sorry; didn't know; didn't know," spoken in that slow, articles-and-grammar removed, I think you're a caveman tone Americans automatically use when they speak to someone who does not speak english, but who they presume will understand them if they remove all the formalities and just blurt out isolated english words.

"YOU DIE IF YOU TAKE PICTURE IN CHRISTIANIA"

I heard these words verbatim.

More sorry's and didn't know's from Chris. The pot-selling dwarf then motioned to his dwarf associates squatting in the candle-lit hallway, and two guys that were almost as wide as they were tall shoved Chris the Alcoholic and snatched his iPhone 4 out of his clutches.

It was at this very moment that I was 75% sure I would not be alive within 10 minutes.

In this corner, weighing in at a combined weight of half a ton, 6 surly Dutch degenerates who live and sell pot in a commune and who have apprehended another man's iPhone; and in this corner, weighing in at 165 pounds and .5 liters, an American booze-hound who has just been stripped of his iPhone 4, which he clearly really likes; and in between them, 3 average guys just tryin' to smoke a little weed.

Much to my surprise and joy, we were not taken into a back room and executed. Instead, I looked on in half-terror half amusement as the Dutch Neanderthal and his fat fingers struggled to delete all the pictures of Christiania off of Chris' iPhone. And we left the vestibule. And Chris took the hint and left us. For all of the man's shortcomings, at least he wasn't a clinger.

We had another extremely sketchy run in with a band of locals but this thing is entirely too long as it is. The rest of Friday wasn't even that blog worthy anyway.

At this rate, I'll probably finish the Saturday entry by mid-December.

How to Prepare as Poorly as Possible for Studying Abroad - Part 4:

Right before you leave, develop the crack-ass notion that bringing 40 travel-sized tubes of toothpaste and shampoo is a more economical approach to hygiene than bringing one, normal sized container of each.

On August 26, the day before I left, I went to CVS to purchase a semester's worth of toiletries because America is still the preeminent manufacturer of personal hygiene products. This not only means that quality dob kit essentials are considerably cheaper in America, but it also means that, generally speaking, Europeans smell worse than Americans. This is not just a xenophobic stereotype perpetuated during in the freedom-fries administration; the chances of me spending more than 2 hours outside of my room without roasting in someone else's B.O. are negligible, but I guess rampant funk is supposed to be part of the whole European "experience."

Experience be damned, I will not compromise my standards of hygiene, which, admittedly, are fairly particular.

Fine, I'm a slave to the American personal hygiene manufacturing industry. I have my brands, and I stick to them; I don't think I am alone, but I am probably a little crazy.

In all non-hygiene related facets of my consumerism, I'm willing (often eager) to look beyond marketed national brands to the much maligned store-brands (except for in the cases of Oreo's, Sweet Baby Ray's Barbeque Sauce, Heinz ketchup, and Peter Pan Creamy Peanut Butter, but otherwise, I will choose the less expensive alternative).

Mountain Dew isn't on sale? Your finest case of Mountain Breeze, then, my good man. A pitcher of Tide for $13.99? You're might as well put "go buy a $4.99 bottle of Trend at a bodega" on the label. Dorito's? Alright, yeah, I'll pay premium for Dorito's, but if you think I'm gonna compensate for that premium by trimming two dollars off my monthly shampoo budget with generic-ass Dandruff Shampoo instead of Head & Shoulders 2-in-1 Classic Clean, then you can get right out of town. Because I'm not. Not once, not twice, not ever. (Misters Procter or Gamble, if you're reading this and you wanna work out a promo deal in exchange for a lifetime supply of Old Spice, I am all ears; it'd be the least I can do considering the great service you provide to all us dry-scalped, sweaty guys).

Anyway, CVS; August 26, 2010; dusk.

I gazed at the travel miniatures section for 5+ minutes twice in half an hour contemplating whether or not to follow through on my impulse to buy a shitload of travel miniatures because I think things that are the smaller version of what I'm used to seeing are amusing (I assume this same principle applies to midgets).

At the end of my first round of consumer deliberation, I decided to acquire a humble amount of Colgate and Pert minis (they were out of H&S), correctly perceiving that a small collection would facilitate dandruff-free and minty-fresh travel around Europe. Miniatures in-cart, I walked away from the travel section.

10 or 15 minutes later, I stood in the exact same position staring blankly at the bins, mentally computing the price and quality discrepancies between the Crest Extra White Plus Scope and Colgate Total 24 Hour Protection. 

"Each Colgate is 10 cents cheaper, but the Crest has Scope, so maybe I'll save money in the long-run by cutting down on mouthwash expenditures."

"Crest is blue and green; green and blue things come from the ocean; the ocean is good; Crest is good."

"I bought those normal sized tubes of Crest Pro-Health during a buy-2-get-1-free event two years ago and since then I've had to squeeze through a seemingly bottomless supply of turquoise, sandpapery crap that Crest deems beneficial to my health."

"Stick with Colgate. Ehh, a few more to be safe. Ok, fifteen more. Get ten more Pert, too. Ohh, mini Listerine!! I did not see that before; I'll buy five."

The next thing I know I'm dumping a Tonka truckload of dwarfen tubes and bottles on the check-out counter and the clerk wants to light me on fire because he has to scan all 45 items individually. He was also probably very confused as to why I limited my purchase of shampoo, toothpaste, and mouthwash to containers with sub 3 ounce capacities. That's something I'm still trying to figure out for myself.

I've used and disposed of quite a few more than these since I arrived. Only recently did I start packratting empty minature toothpaste tubes for blogging purposes.

Word to the wise, if you're getting ready to study abroad, don't do this.

For a number of reasons; chronologically:

1) You look like a real asshole in the check-out line.

2) In order to save space, you have to sprinkle the miniatures throughout your baggage, which means you have to collect them like change on the ground when you unpack. I'm pretty sure there are still a few insurgent tubes hiding out in the dark corners of my suitcase. 

3) [Number 1 on the importance scale] You have to cycle through a new tube every 4 fucking days. And cycling is not just a matter of out with the old, in with the new. In a good week, I might get 4.5 brushings out of a mini-tube of Colgate, and I have to bust my ass for 2.5 of them. Essentially, you're in the final 5%, squeeze-and-spiral stage of a normal toothpaste tube every week. And you don't even get to enjoy the low-pressure luxury of a fresh tube because it runs out three days later.

4) All of your tubes eventually run out and can't be replaced because this beautiful, dangerous concept has not yet reached the Czech Republic. This means that when you travel you either have to, a) panhandle for toothpaste, b) use an unfamiliar Euro brand, or c) buy into the European experience and abstain from oral hygiene for a weekend.

I leave for Copenhagen in less than 12 hours; I'm still undecided on the toothpaste dilemma, but I know I'm gonna prance around and celebrate life.

3:26 - Super Cool!

Krakow

Like I said, my camera died during the Auschwitz tour, so I'm just gonna have to use my wit and prose, and the few pictures I took on my phone to paint a pretty picture of this extremely gloomy corner of the world.

Now, when I say gloomy, I'm not necessarily shitting on Krakow. I actually liked it -- small and simple enough to navigate, really beautiful main square, great pastries. But I could not shake the feeling that I was walking through a cloud the entire time I was there. And I don't mean that in the heavenly, moonstruck sense; more the murky, fog-rising-over-the-bayou, impending doom sense. Except this particular brand of fog rose above slippery cobblestones at approximately the same latitude as Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, so it was a really cold, stone bayou.

Therefore, I spent a lot of time inside. Here's where:

Primarily, the hotel room watching Modern Family. Can you blame me? It was 25 degrees outside and Modern Family is still the funniest sitcom produced since Seinfeld.

We (Geoff and I) had a mostly nice set-up. I say mostly because the beds were comfortable and the room temperature was consistently pleasant, but our shower head errantly distributed most of its water to its direct right, half of which lept over the shower curtain and pooled on our tile floor, where it remained for the entire weekend. In case you've never experienced getting up in the middle of the night to pee and stepping into a thick film of warm liquid, let me tell you, it's gross.

Because, invariably, your brain thinks the bottom of your foot has been engulfed in urine. And even when you know in your heart it's not urine, you still react as if it's urine because it's 5:30 in the morning and you're still drunk. And then your audible squeemishness wakes your roommate up, you look like a pussy, and afterwards, you spend 5 minutes feverishly rubbing your feet against the faded wall-to-wall carpeting like to a dog scoot-wiping his ass in the grass in order to innoculate yourself against diseases that stem from fake-urine exposure and fall back asleep.

When I wasn't within striking distance of the menacing pool of water on my bathroom floor, I was elsewhere (is that so?).

After a post-arrival nap, Geoff and I ventured to a place called Bagelman where everyone else had eaten while we napped. It was not located even remotely close to our hotel, so I'm not sure how everyone else find this place, but once we found it, it was entirely worth the walk. I thought I took a picture, but I didn't. Sorry. Basically, it was just a really good bagel sandwich, and the beer we had was also exceptionally good.

Before we left, Geoff and I enquired the younger purveyor at Bagelman about Krakow night life, and he recommended a place named CK Bravor.

After showers, a prolonged wait for everyone else to shower, and a futile 21-person attempt to find a restaurant that was 1) relatively inexpensive and 2) willing to serve 21 people (a very oversized group of Americans fumbling around Europe looking for somewhere to eat is an unfortunate hallmark of studying abroad), Geoff, Andy, and I split from the group, found a kabob place, and then tracked down the Bagelgentleman's recommendation.

CK Bravor was a very cool spot. It very clear that nobody else there was American, which was at once satisfying and disturbing. Satisfying because you know you're not being ripped off, and disturbing because you know everyone else in the room is looking at you trying to figure out how the fuck your red, white, and blue fatass found their spot. Actually, that's wishful, American thinking. I highly doubt anyone there gave two shits about my red, white, and blue fatass. But some might have started to care after we asked the maitre d (yes, there was a maitre d) to rearrange the tables around us in order to accomodate the big group of American girls that was totally on its way.

Turns out it was totally not, and we 3 ended up occupying a table for 12 for an hour and a half until we finally acknowledged that we had been deceived and gave up part of our oversized table to some British dudes. But like honorable Americans, we continued to drink.

Out of these:

I think they're called giraffes. Even if they aren't, I was calling them giraffes. In case you can't infer from the pictures, they were giant tubes filled with beer. And they were obviously really awesome. Beer.

In addition to the giraffes, Andy was kind enough to spontaneously purchase himself, Geoff, and I shots of cheap vodka. Andy, if you're reading this, you're a great guy, but don't ever do that again. After that shot, I almost threw up on Geoff.

To everyone else, if you're reading this (doubtful), there's a lesson to be learned here: buying your friends cheap shots of vodka in a casual beer drinking setting is not a commendable act, nor does it require retribution. It's actually charitable of your friends to accept, because tossing a shot of bottom-shelf Polish vodka down the hatch is an imposition above all else. At the very least, splurge for Jager, or cheap whiskey, or even Peppermint fucking Schnappes. ANYTHING but vodka. Christ.

Nothing else remarkable happened that night. I think I got a gyro on the way home.

Day 2:

We had to wake up kind of early to go on a tour of Krakow.

Let me start by saying this: I don't like tours. Call me obtuse, but I have a hard time listening to someone I don't know talk at me about who built what in Krakow in 1357, and then who rebuilt what 600 years later, and how Jews were persecuted along the way. I'm just not interested in that. I would rather walk around, hit a couple pastry shops, maybe buy some postcards, and then take a nap because it's fucking freezing outside. Alright, I am obtuse.

The only thing I remember about anything she said was that Schindler's List was filmed in Krakow and that Stephen Spielberg filmed Schindler's List in Krakow, and that Schindler's List was filmed in Krakow, and so on. The words "Schindler's List" actually came out of this lady's mouth a triple-digit amount of times. On a number of occasions, she tried to recreate scenes from Schindler's List. Well, I'll be honest. I have not seen Schindler's List (it's on my list), so I just tuned out and hung slightly back from the group because I had pretty bad gas.

After the tour, I took a nap.

After my nap, I went to a restaurant near the hotel named Dog in the Fog. The reason I'm specifying its name is because I want anyone and everyone I know to spend some money there if they visit Krakow. Why? Because the food was fantastic:

I even ate the saurkraut, and I generally can't stand cabbage served in any way, shape, or form.

The water had ice in it:

The very first place in Europe I've seen ice.

And Run Around Sue by Dion and the Belmonts came on as soon as I walked in. I twisted a little on the spot.

After my meal, I met Geoff and Andy at the nearby theater and finally saw The Social Network. I liked it. But I'm not here to be a film critic. I don't really know if I can categorize what I'm here to be, but since seeing the movie I've been very confused as to why people who aren't American pay to see a movie whose humor is so steeped in American pop culture. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Geoff, Andy, and I were the only three people in the movie theater who laughed. For 121 minutes, nere a soul I wasn't seated next to uttered a single jovial peep. It's very possible that Polish people are not capable of laughter (I probably wouldn't be in if I lived in an Arctic climate and my country has been invaded more times than Greenland during a game of Risk), but it's more likely that only Americans (and maybe Brits, and maybe Australians) can comprehend Mr. Sorkin's biting social commentary.

Annnnd after the movie we watched more Modern Family, and then we went back to CK Bravor's with the previously absent flock of girls.

Annnd at some point I found this little gem stuck above a urinal:

There's hope for Poland after all.

Not long after this was photographed, I gave up trying to nurse my newly acquired sore throat with rum and cokes and retired fairly early to my bed chamber. Then I woke up to pee 5 hours later and my feet almost drowned in a shallow puddle of fake urine.

I know I really need to wrap this shit up, but I have to mention our tour of the Wieliczka Salt Mine the following day. In a nutshell, the Wieliczka Salt Mine is an extremely old salt mine (mining began in like 1260) that is now an extremely large tourist trap (the last salt was mined in 1996). It was an interesting place, but it was made all the more interesting by our no-nonsense tour guide. This lady was straight business. She cruised through 2 miles of an underground salt gallery in less than an hour. She would stop somewhere, point, maybe make a joke in broken english, and then move the fuck on. It was a beautiful. Below are photos of the only underground cathedral constructed entirely out of salt (can you believe there's only one?!)

Salt lightbulbs. I kid.

Here's to chronicling my life 2 weeks after it happens.

Marty

And we begin this like we begin all good things:

With an early morning tour of Auschwitz.

After 7 sleepless, sweaty hours on the frontmost seat of a bus, under which the bus' radiator was housed, my companions and I toured Auschwitz and Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camps.

Visiting the camps was my primary incentive for signing up for the optional trip to Krakow, Poland. I realize how historically paradoxical (can you tell I read a Chuck Klosterman book this week? I think he uses a form of the word paradox 150 times in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which I recommend, but not as much as I recommend Chuck Klosterman IV--anyway, back to not being a snob who reads) that incentive is, but even so, I'm very glad to have seen both.

And just as an aside, if anyone from CIEE Prague is reading this (God I hope not), consider this my formal recommendation to hire the lady who organized the Krakow trip (her name has since escaped me) to organize everything you ever need organized ever again. She makes traveling to arguably the saddest place on earth a manageable process. You make me want to lock myself in my dorm room and blog about how inefficient you all are.

[What's the opposite/complement to an aside?] So, Auschwitz. Not a whole lot else can be said but that the tour was really profound and really sad. To give you an idea of the experience, here are three specific memories:

1) No one asked a single question. (Technically not true. Approximately 1.5 hours into the tour, soonafter we arrived at Birkenau -- Auschwitz and Bikenau are almost 2 miles apart -- I asked if anything was being restored for preservation. The answer was yes, some of the wood. But that was the lone question, so you get the idea. Whole lotta thinkin', not much talkin'.)

2) Our tourguide told us that prisoners actually preferred the job of manually cleaning out the camp-wide toilets to any other job at the camp because the guards wouldn't come near their feces-covered bodies.

3) Not technically a memory, but a video I took from the dead center of Birkenau -- in roughly the same spot where prisoners deboarded and were selected to either be murdered immediately or worked to death.

My camera battery died shortly after this, which was great timing.

Just in case anyone wants to feel a little worse about the world (or better about its present, depending on how you look at it), below are some more pictures:

Work makes freedom.

What remains of an incineration house at Birkenau

Moving on to some mostly happy stuff,

Marty

Who Missed Me? Be Honest

Alright a couple things:

1) Watching this video reminded me of the 250+ times I watched this same video during the summer before freshman year of high school. This was back in the day when the only sort of motion picture iTunes distributed were music videos (fo' free too). I spent every day of that summer alternating between visually burrowing through their four hundred or so deep music video catalog and playing Mini Putt on Addicting Games.

Two things happened that summer: I inadvertantly developed a really, really, terribly, unforgivably awful taste in music, and I got nasty at Mini Putt. Come Independence day, I'm on my basement couch sitting at 26 under par on green #16 and listening to Green Day while my best friend Henry Albers got an OTPHJ in my backyard hot tub. That actually may not have happened on that particular night in July 2004, but it happened often enough during 8th and 9th grade that the poetic license is justified. Bottom line, I was awesome.

So awesome that I've been inspired to revisit those days by compiling Marty Dolan's My Top 25 Most Regrettably Played playlist right here on Not Very Tall But Slow. But it's gonna be in pre-production until I blog out the past rather eventful two and a half weeks of my life.

These short term memories don't have a very long shelf life, and if I don't set them in internet stone soon I'm gonna be forced to tell mediocre stories with half-assed humor about things that may or may not have happened (see OTPHJ).

2) I wikipedia'd Mase because I was curious to find out what took him out da game before he welcomed himself back (it says a calling from God, which probably means the media didn't find out about how he fucked up).

More importantly, Mase has a great fucking publicist. I was expecting 8 maybe 9 sentences about where he was born and his eventual tenure on Bad Boy Records, but no. Dude has 5 partitions on Wikipedia, each outlining slightly distinct, but mostly indistinguishable stages of his rap career. I mean I wasn't listening to hip hop until 1999 at the very earliest, but there is no way Mase deserves a 500+ word wikipedia page. To be honest, I was surprised my search took me straight to Mase the rapper before a disambiguation directory with links to the medieval club or the tear gas (yes, I realize both are spelled with a C).

I mean, Black Rob doesn't even have 200 words, and he killed it on Bad Boy for Life AND Bad Boy for Life Remix. Speaking of Black Rob, this is actually pretty funny (from Black Rob's wikipedia page):

Arrest history
"[Robert "Black Rob" Ross] has a history of arrests spanning from his childhood to even after his record label signing and album release. This culminated in him recently being sentenced to seven years in prison in 2006 for failing to show up to court for his sentencing (which was to be 2 – 6 years initially) in a grand larceny charge from 2004, in which he was accused of robbing more than $6,000 worth of jewelry from a hotel room. He was released from prison in May 2010 and did an interview with BET two hours later."

You do you, Black Rob.

And I'mma do me. Time to kick off the recap.

[3) Hope the new, non-factory setting look for NVTBS is aesthetically pleasing. It took me like 10 hours to do because I'm fucking awful with computers, but if anyone has any suggestions, or if any web savants want to hop on the NVTBS bandwagon before it becomes wildly famous, I'll gladly promote you to head of the design department. I might even make you business cards.]