As a child the furthest my family would regularly venture from home was a beach spot an hour and a half away. To me, the world further outside of my hour and a half travel bubble existed in a dream world that my teachers, text books, and the weather channel merely claimed to be real. But now I finally found out that the world (at least part of it) actually exists, and the following are journal entries for the first half of my European trip. I’m only posting half because that’s all I wrote. It seems that my crippling laziness follows me everywhere.
May 10 – Flight to Texas
Shit, I’m really high—physically, not physiologically of course. Looking out of this hole in an aluminum tube rocketing through the air at 500 mph feels a little bizarre. It’s unnatural for one, and then there’s all the weird shit speckling the ground. I’m still trying to figure out the identity what seemed to be a massive sheet of metal in the middle of a suburb. It looked like a one-hundred square foot cookie sheet that someone put there solely to befuddle and blind me. I can understand how easy it would be for a person’s thoughts to dissolve into a whirl of philosophical or introspective thoughts as they gazed over America’s vast country-side from the lofty heights of an American Airlines jet. The neighborhoods look like scabs festering amongst uniformly shaped fields, cars travel down the roadways like blood pumping through an artery, and factory pollution blends into the clouds like it was their job to create them. But I think I’ll keep any thoughts that spawn from witnessing these sights to a minimum. The world doesn’t need anymore bong-water speculation and pseudo-philosophy (The human race is like a disease on the planet, man). Nobody wants to hear that. I refuse to let being high confuse me into thinking that I’m actually stoned.
3:17 – Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport
“The stars at night are big and bright...” Ever since I saw Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure as a child I’ve always want to sing that line in Texas and have every cowboy around me stop in their tracks, clap and erupt in a mighty chorus of “Deep in the heart of Texas!” Needless to say if you sing that song in the heart of Texas the plain-dressed people simply respond with saddened, sympathetic eyes. Judging by the airport alone, Texas has an unremarkable amount of Texans. The shops sell plenty of things that I would imagine a Texan would own (oversized bull’s horns, belt-buckles that could crush a dog, Willie Nelson CDs, etc) but not a single Texan is actually in sight. I realize that an airport isn’t exactly a perfect microcosm of the region’s culture, but I least expected to see one person that looks like Yosemite Sam. I would be surprised if any of the people in this airport have seen Dallas outside of the airport. They just look miserable and from Des Moines. Frankly, I’m incredibly disappointed in seeing so many people from Iowa while in Texas.
The Dallas/Ft. Worth airport rivals the size of Manhattan; I know this because a poster featuring a brightly colored appletini boldly claimed it to be so. A tram connects the airport’s five lettered terminals which are about the size of five interconnected shopping malls. Considering I had a seven hour layover in this sea of commerce, travel, and misery I managed to visit all but one. I was most fond of terminal E. It certainly isn’t the oldest terminal, but the seats are comfortable and there are no young businessmen throwing back spirits in a Bennigan’s. The ceilings are low, the carpeted floors dampen the sound, and it’s generally more pleasant than terminal D.
I’m not sure where to begin with terminal D. It’s as if if two normal terminals fused into one super airport monster with teeth made of Ben and Jerry’s kiosks, eyes made of authentic Texas briskit, and skin of shiny, brand new tile flooring. When it opens its mouth all that can be heard are Motorola commercials. Terminal D sucks. It’s most interesting feature is a sculpture that looks like skyscrapers having a giant drug induced orgy. But as interesting as it is, the thoughts on what turns a building on or how skyscrapers would even have sex shake me to the core.
May 12 – Eurostar, Somewhere in France
“Ehy ‘ad ahrms ‘ees bieg!” – A cockney fellow on London’s South Bank.
Despite people constantly telling you that stereotypes are mostly false, the English live up to all of them. They are reserved to the point that they would sooner look at a dead sewer rat than make eye contact with you, they work at a medium pace, and they have fairly horrible teeth. Even the weather holds up to stereotype. It seems like a rain cloud permanently resides over London and stays there year round. It could be a cloudless day in the country and it would be rainy and miserable within the city limits of London. And I’m okay with that. I’ve based my entire perception of the world on stereotypes and it’s nice to be proven right. I just hope the French are different than how I imagine them because as it stands I’m scared shitless of being beaten by some cranky Parisian toting a baguette.
May 13 – Paris
Having spent the better part of a day in Paris now, I’ve decided that it isn’t the French people that scare me so much as their language and the city itself. I feel that if I lose my friends then I would be lost forever and then thrown in the river for being ignorant of some oddball French custom like forgetting to blow on your cheese before you eat it or neglecting to take one shoe off when in the presence of a clergyman. But I made it, and here I am in a one room Parisian apartment watching a French MTV show called “Shake Ton Booty.” Apparently the hot new single here is Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain.”
I’m not sure what to make of this place. Electronic music blasts from every direction, the buildings are older than every building at home combined, and there are people making out on every single street corner. I’ve heard that the rampant displays of public affection in Paris is because the city actually pays couples to go to popular sites and make out for an hour. I hope so. Regardless, it took the sight of a seven-hundred-year-old building and a woman licking her boyfriend’s neck on a bridge for me to experience some semblance of culture shock. This certainly isn’t Portsmouth.
May 14 – Return to London
Despite what you may think, the Eiffel Tower is shorter and fatter than it looks in pictures. It’s as if some sort of magic surrounds the place so that it sheds a couple of pounds for the camera—it’s impressive, really.
After the initial shake up of being surrounded by French people, things became decidedly normal. If anything, the French are more like Americans than the British. They just work less and rely on the government for everything. They’re like a lazy step-brother who cooks better than you and gets more girls. Really, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of rude people. Most strangers actually helped me when I stepped into the role of stupid American tourist. The rudest people I saw the entire time were Americans. One middle-aged couple stepped in front of a car and blamed the French for driving insane in his boisterous Southern accent. “Jesus Christ, you gonna hit me with your fuckin’ car? Goddamn!” Well, I suppose that isn’t quite being rude, but the dude certainly lived up to the fat American dickbag stereotype.
My biggest discovery while wandering about Paris further bridged the cultural gap between Americans and the French, and it also exonerates the American people of the fat slob stereotype. In a French fast-food chain called Quick they have a quadruple stacked burger called The Giant Master. Now I know Americans are behind some fatass innovations like fried Twinkies and the double stuffed Oreo, but a four patty cheeseburger is pretty goddamn tough to trump. But I feel as if the burger was there, in part, as a trap to lure in wayward Americans because I had some odd, uncontrollable urge to stuff the entire thing into my mouth. It was four burgers. How can I turn that down? But for the betterment of the image of my people, I resisted.
