"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!", and build me a sidewalk: Nothing Much Happened (XIII) in München Today

Monday will be the 20th anniversay of the fall of the Berlin wall and this news seems to be all all the rage on CNN but hardly a blip on the radar here in Munich. I've had one conversation on this event in nearly two months here and it was at a local cafe here in German suburbia off Schwanseestraße. I had stopped by the shop to pick up a beer to accompany dinner with my partner and the locals sequestered me to have at least one more beer with them and find out what the hell an American was doing in the heart of their little apartment road hamlet. A sixty-something woman named Hanna first discovered me at checkout stumbling through my Euros and trying to count up 78 cents, the price of the single beer and roughly a buck, and began to speak absolutely fluent and impeccable English to me. "I lived in Atlanta for 5 years" she proclaimed, stating that's thats where her son lived and she had gone to live with the family in the 90s and fullfill her grandma duties.

Once outside at the picnic table reserved for the local convenience store drinkers (alcoholics?) I was introduced to two other Germans, one of which accused his friend of being Australian, and wrestled into a reasonably drunken German conversation in which the two men re-assembled their twenty word or so English vocabulary of words consisting of things like 'cool', 'bitch' and 'rock and roll, baby' to carry on a spirited (in their terms) conversation at me, with Hanna, assisting whenever she felt the need, which was about every five words. At one point I mentioned German Unity Day, a holiday we had experienced on 3, October by the conspicuous closing of all shops in the city center.

Whilst downtown earlier and searching for an open mobile phone shop, I had asked my partner, a Vietnamese raised in Germany since her teens (circa 1993), why more than half of the shops were closed on a Saturday and she didn't know. Over my months here with her, I found it astounding how little she really knew about the country. Holidays not remembered, museums visited (like 'zero') - even subways misdirected so that that I would catch them by not understanding stop names that kept coming up. I can't count the number of times I found myself redirecting her on the subway after just a few weeks in town - a stop missed, get off, and go back two stops (the story of our lives here). As brilliant as the Cu Chi tunnels might have been for the Vietnamese during their war with America, it seems they lacked proper maps, instead preferring to not let the Americans quite easily find all their hiding places. The Vietnamese have now globalized this deficiency preferring to almost never know where the fuck they are, or what time of day it might be. Black-opps by the closing of one's intellectual eyes.

I had seen a similar syndrome in Korea before on a weekend trip where our map, after hours of driving around the supposed 'correct route' just tuned out to be flat wrong. "All the maps are wrong", it was explained to me by a Korean later, noting that publishing correct maps would simply allow the North Koreans to purchase a map at a tourist stop and attack some shit. Notice the big grey areas in Google Earth. That's where the Army stuff is - so even a fairly dim terrorist could hit something by just aiming at the grey matter. Duh.

But I digress. Having now lived, quite unintentionally, in four at one time or maybe still, divided countries (The US, Korea, Vietnam and now Germany) I am still fascinated by the concept. In the US, where the division was mended over one hundred and fifty years ago I was called a Yankee when I moved to Texas in the 80s, and later to Korea I was astonished to see a graphically noted emergency button on the public phones there (a drawing of a beady-eyed man with sinister eyebrows and a frown) that meant 'spy-line'. That's the button any citizen could just hit when they thought they saw a 'spy' on a streetcorner - evildoers lurking in shadows, or just plain strange looking people. LOL :-), right under the graphic buttons for , 'ambulance' and 'police'. Go figure. A cross and a cop silhoette comingling with a nefarious criminal graphic. That's the important stuff our citizens need. Socialized Democracy, personified.

But now in Germany the lines are almost drawn in the stone of socio-economic terms. Turks are looked down upon and divisions between former east and west are held in deep discriminatory confines that the average tourist would never see. All this ballyhoo with CNN championing the fall of the wall comes off as high school newspaper reporting. 'Just cover the football game. Don't tell me about the drinking and sex that's going on under the bleachers'.

And then Hanna nailed it for me. 'That's not a very happy day for me', she retorted when I asked why all the shops were closed on 3 Oct. I didn't feel the drunken audience was ready for an intellectual discourse on the subject so I just let it pass until now. Touche.

So let's fix the sidewalk. Denial at street level.

But wait, Is there anything wrong with the sidewalk we've got? I dunno. (Left shot 'old', right shot 'new') I've been on a worldwide sidewalk survey these last couple of years and feel I know the landscape fairly well. I've traversed the sidewalks of the developed and soon to be developed worlds and have a decent handle on the subject. I've done America, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Mali, Paris and now Munich. Oh, did I mix countries and cities together? Fuck it. You figure it out, or Wiki it. In any case, I'm just trying to figure out why we're replacing sidewalks here in Munich when the Malians don't seem to have any at all . So much money we developed countries have. But are we spending it on anything that matters?

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'Bavaria is just rich', it was explained to me by my Vietnamese cohort. And so that explanation would need to be simply accepted - even considering that Ho Ci Minh City in Vietnam is currently replacing sidewalks and doing a much better job of it than the Germans. Oh, But we make Beemers here.

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Take a look and tell me, if anything, what exactly is wrong with the sidewalk I'm standing on - except for my fashion police violation of my Crocs , which RCNevada will certainly nail me on? Well, does it have big holes in it? No. Am I in danger of inciting a failed American insurance company to sue over it because I can not walk properly. No. Is it unsightly? Not really, considering that in Paris, all the sidewalks are just standard poured concrete - but ahh, all the stuff around them is just positively fabulous. Is it not even up to Vietnamese standard? Well, that could be an issue because the sidewalks in Vietnam are currently being replaced with attractive tile mosiac stone and I wish I had a picture, but trust me. It's a whole lot nicer that what the Bavarians are tearing up and then putting down a modest upgrade for. Seriously. So what's the beef? Methinks, Germans simply don't have anything better to do. A story recently relayed to me by a local was laughably refererred to in that the 'big crime story' of the day was some dude holding up a convenience store with a baseball bat. Ha! Imagine that. In America the high school kid behind the counter would just laugh his ass off and fall on the floor whilst texting his friends on his iPhone as to what sort of a moron robber he had in the shop! Surveliance videos would then subsequenty be sent to YouTube whilst the criminal would be sentenced to a life of virtual laughabilty. 'Hey, you're the dude with the bat. Can I get a photo with you?' They would have no idea just how hard it is to get ahold of a baseball bat here in Germany.

But we're busy on sidewalks. Oh yeah. 'Some shit will happen tomorrow. I hear some dude violated the German beer purity law last week with some skunky homebrew.'

None of the photos here are from the actual wall. They are from just common Munich grafitti that I'm sure the city has a budget, schedule and staff to remove. Vive la revolution!

Soldier on. I'll just soldier on.

Leaving Mali: Out of Africa - My next Evil Plan begins in Munich: The Wild Wild East In WWWest Germany I

[The photos here are arranged in comparitive fashion - first with Mali on the right and Paris on the left, and then, with Paris and French things on the left and comparitives George Jetson and Munich, Germany on the right. I hope it gives a reasonable facsimile idea of the diverse worlds we were traversing at the time.]

Leaving Mali was not tough. It was excrutiating. The rain and the cramped, four people in a Mercedes plus luggage, only added to the anxiety of the speed of the trip. In just two days the decision to leave country had been made and we were off - but not before paying the airport tariff that apparently everyone needs to pay before getting out of country - the tariff of having your life flash before your eyes and realizing that if you didn't jump through the right hoops at customs, including a few well pressed Francs into the right hands, you might actually have to stay. The situation at departures at Bamako airport was sheer pandemonium, like the rush to exit country during a military coup. But no coup had been had. This was just another ordinary day in Mali with the only thing for sure - that more people wanted to leave Mali than wanted to come in. Hundreds rushed the ticket counters at check-in and at no fewer than three times were we told that the line we had been standing in was the wrong one and we needed to move to the end of a new line. This took hours.

Once inside the terminal and waiting for our flight (photo above) we were immediately confronted by sellers of all things Malian in an effort to relieve us of whatever remaining CFA Francs (Communaute Financiere Africaine) we might be in possession of as well as the hundreds who would board the plane with us. On the food chain of well connected Malians vs. poor backpacker-looking foreigners, we were on the bottom. An obviously well to do Malian family, dressed like ancient African royalty waited to board, with their twin sons in tow, outfitted with perfectly tailored African suits and matching custom made packpacks & Nikes - I lost my few remaining Francs to the purchase of a CD, a packet of chocolate and a Time magazine in English, with a cover blaring yet another flattering photo of Barack Obama, Africa's new national hero. Nevermind that Obama is not really from Africa. That's wasn't the point. The point was that a black man was now the President of the most powerful country on earth and this fact would not be lost on the still millions of Africans hungering for a better life. From dusty streetside stalls selling plastic chairs and kiddie toilets, to men brandishing cowboy style beltbuckles with photo insets, the image of Barack Obama was everywhere in Mali. When I tried to take a picture of a picture of Obama, propped up beside a streetside stand, the owner stopped me and asked for three Francs (about six dollars). I declined his price and moved along. Obama had become too expensive for me to photograph his photograph.

The flight back to Paris was the polar opposite of the flight in. Packed with flyers and not an empty seat to be had, we had paid an exorbitant fee to have changed tickets to be on this flying sardine can back into the civilized world - and the this time surly Aigle Azur staff made no attemp at concealing their contempt with us, the customers that had them on what was possibly the most unglamorous international flight on the planet. Tray tables did not stow properly, forget about video screens or a movie and whether you wanted the chicken or beef was not to have been a question. You were lucky to have gotten anything at all. It could have been Aeroflot. At one point I remarked to our dominatrix flight attendant that, "She could work a whole lot harder at being nice to people" and she glared back at me in a flood of disbelief that any passenger would even choose to question her crappy attitude. Probably she wasn't getting laid by this pilot on landing in Paris. Not my fault.

Landing at Charles Degaulle from Mali is like being deposited on the moon from earth - only in reverse. The sheer idea that you can take the metro from there to Gare De L'Est train station for a mere 10€ each and not have to pay an insane cabfare is a convenience many travellers might have chosen to have overlooked, but not us. We were now on as tight a budget as we had ever been and were willing to go through the extra bit of luggage handling to save 50€. But what we didn't account for were the turnstyles. While airports are designed to handle travelers with luggage and subways were not, we immediately understood the loss of a conveniently rolled luggage cart and began hauling our gear up and down stairs in a metro system that was designed during the time of Tolouse Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha and not much in the time of George Jetson - going through turnstyles and people passage devices a number of times - until I left a bag behind trying to get through one of them. How does one retrieve a bag after the full body-length two metal door device has closed? Well, waiting for another person to come through and then jumping in, the wrong way mind you, could do it. If you don't get your foot caught in the device mind you. Which I did. And the injury will plague me for the next number of weeks and months. Caught right above the heal and just to the right of my achilles tendon, the metal doors closed on an area that caused me to wince and pull away leaving a quarter-sized piece of skin flapping about and gushing enough blood to be used on the set of any self respecting slasher film. The blood was intense. I grabbed my partner's fine silk scarf and began wrapping the ankle, almost tournequet style so as to stop the bleeding, but to no avail. This sucker was going to bleed like a stuck pig and there was nothing I could do about it. We stood in the hallway just below street level of Gare De L'Est and tried to resolve our situation - all the while attracting the attention of all passing by. A limping bloody American and a fright-ridden Vietnamese trying desperately to do something, but what, nobody could tell.

"Get to the train dammit, get to the train", was all I could think. With my partner crying that we should go to the hostpital immediately (Vietnamese and Koreans have a habit of going to hospitals for things like splinters and the common cold), I played the brave American and vowed to soldier on - a decision I would live (thankfully) to regret later. Our window of opportunity to get the next train to Munich was narrowing and we needed to get a move on - no matter if the team leader looked to be in danger of loosing a limb. Nobody was about to care for an injured American in Paris anymore. WWII is over and now it's just the WWE all on his own.

Closing in on the ticket counter at Gare De L'Est it became immediately apparent that we weren't getting on the next train for sure - throngs of not very happy Parisians would see to that and they were already having their way with the attendants over their troubles. Little would be accomplished by an injured American trying to bully the French to get to Germany. "Sure, we let you yanks do that the last time you were here, because it was in our best interest. But now you have to wait - behind all the EU members, like all the other tourists", they seemed to say. "And nice to see you've finally made peace with the Vietnamese", I imagined them adding. Once at the counter I was informed that the next train to Munich would be a night train - and after a red-eye flight from Mali, that was just what we didn't need. But choices seemed non- existent and after a consultation with my partner it was agreed that that's exactly what we would do, provided we could get a sleeping car, which sounded perversely romantic in a European sort of way - if one had forgotten that I was sporting a legwound the size of Prussia which was becoming more and more in need of attention. So a sleeping car it was, at a small price premium, but well worth avoiding the wrath of an unhappy travel companion who had last voiced her unhappiness by leaving an entire country. Deal done. Except neither of us had ever travelled in a sleeping car and so surprises lay in store. Welcome the six berth couchette. A comfortable little rolling casket equipped with six bunks and plenty of non privacy. I, the luckiest man in car 54, would be sharing this compartment with not one, but five other attractive ladies on our way to Munich. "Orgy girls?", I imagined imagining like Tony Curtis in the film, Some Like It Hot. "Fat chance, schlub. Just pack it in and snooze, bozo - or all five of us will come clock your ass for even thinking about sex in a compartment full of five women", I imagined them not imagining but actually saying in unison. I slept like a baby. A baby in a women's prison.

Good morning, Munich. Munich's main station holds nothing over a French train station in terms of style or romance, save for a fabulous selection of food kiosks, and it was now our duty to get out of there and to the apartment we had reserved - somewhere on the outskirts of the city. But how to do that - a selection of subways, S-Bahn, U-Bahn (pronounced ooo-bahn) and trams awaited. Luckily, my partner speaks German, having been raised and educated here, so she used her impeccable language skills to get us to our intended destination. "Taxi", she bellowed- And off we went, into what, in the movie In Bruge, Colin Farrell would have described as, a fairytale town. Munich. Home of Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwen-Bräu and more famous beers than you can shake a stick at. Our first evening in town finds us at the Augustiner beer house enjoying what cannot be enjoyed outside the city because they simply won't export the stuff. "Why export the good stuff when you can't import better?", my Vietnamese partner explains to me. "Right", I imagined responding. I needed a Vietnamese to explain German beer to me? Well, apparently I did. So many things are left out of an American education. I need to make a note to let Obama's people know about this.

The next few days would be left trying to figure out how we had ended up in German suburbia, far away from the fairytale nature of most of the citycenter, and what exactly we would be doing for the next few months. Munich, is now our new home. And although we had originally planned to travel here first, and end up in Mali later, the exact opposite has happened. But at least we're not in Vietnam. "Life is what happens to you, when you're busy making other plans", John Lennon said. I guess we all could be learning something from that. - My friend, Hugh MacLeod, has had quite a success with his book Ignore Everybody and has just announced the publication of his second book, Evil Plans. This whole trip, I've been working on an Evil Plan of my own - but if I tell you what it is, then it wouldn't be an evil plan, would it? You'll just have to stay tuned and read the installments as the Wild Wild East embarks on his continuing adventures in WWWest Germany. Infinite Wisdom comes at a price. A price I'm willing to pay. Now it's time to get on with the plan. Hugh's chapter 11 in Evil Plans reads like this, "Treat it like an adventure, an adventure worth sharing". So that's what I'm going to keep on doing...