Don’t hesitate. Sign up for an online German distance learning course and learn to speak German already. Or you can do what I did, and use language learning as your flimsy excuse to live abroad for like ever. Here’s a breakdown of how I improved my German while living in Berlin. Sadly, it’s probably a lot more coherent than my German. Hopefully it will help somebody, someday. Four key steps to success:

1. “Tandem” or “language exchange”
Tandem is what the Germans call a conversational meeting (usually over coffee) in which a German speaker and an English speaker divide the time between two languages. Rather than pay a tutor for an hour of German instruction or conversation practice, I could get a half hour of help in the form of casual chatting, and getting questions answered about how to say certain words or phrases in German. For the second half hour I would help my tandem partner with her English, as she was preparing for a placement test to get back into school.

I wanted to learn German slang. So she taught me that in German the hip-hop version of Wie geht’s? is Was geht? I believe it’s like the difference between “How are you?” and “Whatup?” It may seem trivial, but it actually got me a lot of mileage with the locals. It’s not like anybody mistook me for a thug from the knifecrime district of Berlin, but at least it made people laugh and helped break the ice more than once.

Tandem was the most likely place for me to learn this piece of German slang. I wouldn’t have had the time in the German class I took, where the focus was lesson plans and grammar, nor did I ask any of my German friends teach it to me, as I didn’t want to bore them excessively with minutia about a language they generally take for granted. In Tandem I had the luxury to talk exclusively about the fun aspects of the language. She also hooked me up with an apartment.

You can find Tandem partners in the activities section of Berlin’s Craigslist.

2. Making friends
I knew going into it that the most organic way for me to improve my German would be to speak solely in German with all the new people I met. I assumed all Germans spoke perfect English, so I was prepared for a challenge. But after settling in I was happily surprised: not all Germans speak English!

In fact, a couple very close friendships were conducted entirely in German. But because my German was even worse then, I couldn’t help feeling slightly suspicious of anyone who would tolerate lengthy conversation with a verbal cripple like me.

What were they getting out of it?

That remains an open question, but for me the rewards were crystal clear. I got hours of real-life practice forming sentences, responding to questions, making jokes and even working through misunderstandings caused by my poor language skills. Talk about a steep learning curve. I even picked up some very practical language tips: after asking was? all the time, I was told to change it up occasionally with the more polite phrase: wie, bitte?

Of course, many Germans do speak English extremely well, and inevitably I made friends with folks who spoke only English to me. I didn’t mind the friendship, but it didn’t help my German at all. And here’s where an unbroken pattern revealed itself: the first few moments of meeting somebody would absolutely determine the language used for the life of the relationship. The second I said “Hi, how are you,” to someone, the German language was DOA.

I think the reason is because I am a different person when I speak German. I express visible glee whenever I can formulate a sentence. Time slows down and every object on the street or in the café becomes amazing, something worth inquiring about. In German, I am a child.

Once I put it to a test and tried switching to German with a friend who normally spoke English to me. It was a complete disaster. One could almost hear a grinding sound as I tried to switch gears into that friendly, lobotomized character that worked so well in German-language friendships. I smiled and blinked uncomprehendingly as a torrent of gibberish flowed from his mouth. He was baffled by my precipitous drop in IQ. It took only moments for us to switch back to English. We were both embarrassed.

3. Reading books
“Here, read this,” a local once told me. It was Arabboy, by Güner Balci, about a Lebanese-Palestinian boy who chooses a life of crime in the poor part of Berlin. Despite its humor, darkness and valuable insight into the immigrant experience, the prose would have bored me stiff if translated into English. But in German I am a child. And in German, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I followed it up with Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, and inevitably found some parallels in the criminal heroes of both stories.

Of course, in both cases practically every sentence yielded multiple new vocabulary words. So rather than look each word up as I encountered it, I would simply write it down and move on. Only at the end of each chapter would I look up all the definitions, write them down, memorize them, then re-read the chapter with a whole new level of comprehension.

It’s work, but it works; the primary benefits were reading comprehension amassing vocabulary. But while this is not a direct method of learning grammar rules, reading hundreds of pages in German did make me more comfortable with the way German sentences are thrown together, and I actually think it even helped my spoken German.

But for real help with grammar, there’s nothing like taking a German course:

4. Taking German classes in Berlin
I enrolled in a German course through the Volkshochschule, which is a nationwide adult education program for lower income folk. An expat friend recommended it, but the Germans I knew would disparage it. One was concerned I’d get bored, and another, with decidedly elitist sensibilities, was uncomfortable mentioning the word in public. The course was held in a bright orange high school building from the Soviet era, located in Wedding, a district with zero popular appeal and a large working class population.

I was attracted to it because I’m cheap. A month long course involving around 80 hours of instruction cost something like 100 Euros. There were other young American expats like me in the course, along with older people who came to Germany looking for economic opportunities. Some students hailed from really exotic places like Belarus, Nigeria and the newly-formed nation of Kosova. Our instructor was very friendly but inexperienced. She spoke with a slight Turkish accent, and the course moved at a snail’s pace; per the lesson plan we wasted a lot of time in activities like making posters to pin up to the wall. Nobody liked the text book but her hands were tied, she said.

Despite these criticisms, I really did learn fundamental grammar rules that I wouldn’t have learned outside the classroom environment. No matter how inefficiently the course was run, I feel that by getting up early and putting over four hours in every day, I was bound to learn something, even if I didn’t make it through to the end of the month. If I had to do it again, I might pony up a bit more, for a faster paced and more exciting German course in Berlin.

So there you have it. Since moving back home my German has degraded a lot but I’m trying to keep up by attending a German conversation group in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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There was a time in my younger days when I fantasized about living in a shitty Chinatown SRO where I, completely alienated by my surroundings, would find solace and respite by pounding out brilliant fiction on either an aging Remington or my aging Mac Plus. Chez Daily seemed particularly well suited to this pursuit: One room with a bed, desk and kitchenette and unlike actual tenements in cities across America he even got his own bathroom. The fact that the shower was nothing more than a raised plastic dias with a drain and a hand-held shower-head wasn’t daunting; my travels in Japan had me well versed in this style of bathing. For someone who wants to be utterly focused on their studies, fiction or research of whatever, the apartment in Schoelcher seemed a blessing. The fact that Truman Capote and William Faulkner had decided to use the island for stories (the latter in his re-write of Hemingway’s”To Have and to Have Not“) was icing on the cake.

Chickens in the backyard to either side, crowing and scrabbling around in the dirt. It felt more authentic than residing in the lap of luxury, being catered to by a staff of robed servants pouring tea and cooing “Bonjour” whenever you passed. We had descended into the foreign now and it would be up to us to make it through to the other side. The apartment sat behind a mechanic’s shop: Two corrugated metal walls with enough room in between for two small cars. It was owned by Daily’s landlord who was a strong proponent of “creole economics”– the mechanic shop, Daily’s apartment and a building across the narrow street were all sources of income. My imagination ran wild, expanding the delusions of younger days to incorporate laboring as a skilled “jack-of-all-trades”. Reality reasserted itself when Daily began to regret not having told his landlord that I would be staying there for the next several days. While the mechanic shop was closed the fact that Chez Daily sat above the landlord’s son’s house and across a concrete corridor from the landlord’s sister suggested that my presence would be observed. I thumbed through my trusty phrasebook struggling to figure out how to explain to someone that I was visiting my friend who lives here, I swear.

A more immediate concern was that Aaron had booked himself a room at Le Lafayette, a hotel in downtown Fort-de-France, and that he would have to check in. A couple hours were whiled away to allow the rain showers to pass and the sun to cool before we considered embarking on the half-hour hike down into the city. By the time we began descended the metal stairs of Chez Daily the air was filled with the distant pounding of drums. We were a couple miles away.

Schoelcher

Daily had found as efficient a path as was possible but the layout of Shcoelcher required innumerable twists and turns. Many of his immediate neighbors kept guard dogs who barked, howled and growled as we would pass, running along the fence, lunging and feinting. I was quickly lost but the overwhelming foreignness was more distracting than the fear that I might have to find my way anywhere. Leaving the narrow alleys onto a main road lead to tripping over cracked and sunken sidewalks hugging the walls and fences of houses, some of which continued to be patrolled by angry dogs; to make matters worse the people of Martinique had long abandoned the concept of the pedestrian making each intersection a death-trap. “Don’t challenge cars here” Daily warned us, and the puzzled looks we received from drivers thundering past echoed his instructions. Fortunately traffic was light so we could progress along in the street, ducking in between cars or back onto the sidewalk whenever it became necessary. We juggled Aaron’s bag along the way, ducking down past the Radio Caraibe headquarters and onto an even broader avenue. Occasionally we would pass another defensive walker or someone waiting for the taxico and greet them, “Bonjour”. Everything I’d read about the happy island people of Martinique led me to believe that their old fashioned ways demanded this bygone courtesy. Their almost startled replies led me to believe that they had read the same books.

Descending the hill into the heart of Fort-de-France revealed the impact of European investment. Towering multi-storied hotels had begun to loom over the city bringing with them the stench of recycled air-conditioning, chlorinated pools and fabric softener. The island is a major port-of-call for major Caribbean cruise-lines and the economy survives, second to direct assistance from the French government, from tourism, but visitors seem to require a homogeneous experience when it comes to their accommodations. Despite our recent stay at Cap Est there was little interest in supporting these abominations; Le Lafayette was integrated with the buildings around it, as much a part of Fort-de-France as the houses we passed. We could also see the impact of Carnaval, encountering a long row of cars which had taken residence on the narrow, crumbling sidewalk we were depending on more frequently to safely avoid the passing motorists. The drumming was joined by the indistinct murmur of a thousand conversations.

A hundred thousand conversations, choking the narrow streets of downtown Fort-de-France. People were lining up before police barricades to cross Canal Levassor, vying for entry amongst gangs of teenagers on dirt-bikes and motorcycles. Daily spied a second bridge closer to the bay and guided us through the quickly crowding street, but we found ourselves attempting to enter a staging ground for the parade. Some French was employed, our destination was made known and the barricade parted way to allow our entry. Merci! We were followed by a dozen motorcycles.

There was respite from the speeding cars, but now faced the danger of being run over with the danger of being suffocated by the masses. Daily cut a path along the waterfront where, by virtue of an open expanse opening to the ferry docks, space was less of a premium. We skirted food stands, groups of people wandering aimlessly, motorcycles, hopped traffic barricades and low fences of chain and somehow weaved our way three blocks. Smashed against the roller doors of Aaron’s hotel and a hundred people tried to shuffle through us we read the note: Use Night Entrance. We negotiated passage with security on the corner and hopped over the barricade. The metal gate to Le Lafayette buzzed us in and we stormed up the narrow stairs– this was definitely not Cap Est. While Aaron checked in with the harried clerk Daily and I were attracted to a small balcony colonized by blue-haired tourists gazing out over the crowd below. The clerk coughed and gagged and insisted we couldn’t. We weren’t allowed in the hotel after this, he said. Ah, okay. The greatest appeal (except for Aaron who mostly wanted a bed) of a room at La Lafayette was its prime location during the ensuing craziness; being surrounded by a drunken crowd can only be handled when you have an escape, some safe haven to catch your breath and use the toilet.

The room was nothing more then a bed, wardrobe, TV and air-conditioner. The bathroom was clean but for some reason the toilet seat was propped up against the bowl, not actually attached. I suggested Aaron make mention of this at the desk but he made sure it sat correctly and shrugged his shoulders. There was a list of rules on the back of the door to the hall: Do Not Touch the TV; Do Not Touch the Air Conditioner; No Guests; No Food or Drinks… We ditched the bag and nodded to one another. It was time to face the music banging and roaring outside.

No need to be reckless, tho. As the crowd was restricted to major avenues by barricades the interior streets of downtown were almost empty so we decided to wander through the calm. We walked in the middle of the streets, closed store-fronts to either side– the entire city seemed to have shut-down except for the hotels and, ah, McDonald’s. No surprise there but the KFC a block away was certainly unexpected. Eventually we ran out of quiet streets so we found a less crowded outlet into the throngs and rejoined the meandering progression, but instead of going with the flow we battled back towards the Canal where Daily’s internet cafe, Cyberdeliss, sat.

The keg of Lorraine had been drained and the bottled were all warm so we had a round of this horrible Brazilian swill, some sort of malted-whiskey beer. Plastic cups were required but we could at least sit outside hoping for a rare breeze drifting in off the canal. A couple other tables hosted quiet but lively conversations held by people more dressed for the occasion than us. We let time drift a little, choking down the beer as best we could and ordering a round of the superior which had been given time to cool. A kid came up and asked Daily for a sheet and Daily tried to hand him a zig-zag. No, no, no, hashish. Oh, non merci. My resolve had been dealt a severe blow when we were barred from La Lafayette but the prospect of whiling away Carnaval here was restoring what confidence I could muster. Plus the toilet seat was actually attached.

A parade of sorts had broken out now that the sun had set, troops of people in ramshackle costumes marching and drumming segregated by the occasional truck with a massive sound-system or, better yet, a band. Along the route women sat selling beer and sodas out of coolers, paper funnels of peanuts and candy-bars, shaved ice cones topped with rum. We slowly made our way along the parade, catching the large government buildings, heading to the main thoroughfare of General-De-Gaulle Boulevard. The going was slow but without any sense of urgency or tension– people seemed quite content to mosey along at a slow gait. An ambulance lit up behind us and everyone very quickly made way, including the parade troupe dancing in the middle of the street. Somewhere in the chaos was a strong sense of order and I began to suspect it was made of up everyone’s personal sense of responsibility.

As overwhelming as the evening was you can only walk so many kilometers before you need to eat. Aaron was stricken with a temporary bi-polar disorder, dragging us to the waterfront with its bustling food stands but intimidated by the prospect of attempting to identify and order something with a stick shoved in it. His most confident moment resulted in our finding the one place on the island that seemed to be grilling hamburgers. There was an restaurant open across the street but my memory of reading the internet began to insist we see if the downtown Snack Elize was as well or if McDonald’s had cornered the market on late night fast-food. And by late night I mean ten. Fortunately they were lit up and ready for action, tho of a less intense variety that their contender. As soon Daily explained what tuna was I began babbling at the woman working the register who very patiently asked me a question I couldn’t understand. Daily prompted me and I ended up ordering a combined meal, bumbled through a side of frites instead of rice, and successfully procured a Biere Lorraine. Originally my intention was to buy everyone’s dinner but things quickly became complicated so it was everyone for themselves. However this left me standing in line with my order tag waiting for one of the girls working the serving counter to take it from me. One did and said something in French, then she came back and placed a tray on the counter. She said something else and I nodded, sagely. Another girl came up saying something and looking at my order, to which I smiled and nodded again. This repeated itself a couple of times before Daily was issued his own order form and he explained they were just keeping me aware of how things were going. I’ll be damned. When the meal was finally packaged, the beer finally produced, I thanked them graciously but they all refused to fall in love with me. At least they allowed me to believe I had pulled off the exchange without them catching on I was oblivious to what they were saying.

When I had heard about Snack Elize I remember it being described as fast-food. When we walked up I was a little taken aback with the florescent lighting and plastic furniture and the menu dedicated to hamburgers. Popping the little carton open my mind was absolutely blown– grilled skewers of tuna and onion were dripping goodness on the frites. And it was fucking delicious, I shit you not. And they serve beer. And it was relatively cheap. And it was a place where normal, everyday Martinicans seemed to come and eat, hang out, live their lives and move along. I once tried to explain American culture to a French girl while we waited in line at In-and-Out, citing the ample evidence of worthlessness and filth and degeneration which surrounded us. She probably just wanted me to shut up, but relaxing in Snack Elize, eating surprisingly good tuna-kabobs, quietly enjoying conversation among kids out on the town gave me a pretty positive impression of the scene in Fort-de-France. It was a little irksome that you had to use a code printed on your receipt to access the bathroom but, well, at least they didn’t just hang a sign on the door saying it was broken.

By local standards we were raging party animals and should head to bed. We left the restaurant and walked Aaron back to the night entrance of Le Lafayette. Plans for the morrow were made and as we parted ways the rain began to fall. There was an umbrella sticking out of a trashcan but, wouldn’t you know it, the spines were poking through the cap and we returned it just as quickly. Even so it was warm out and the rain was an almost welcome change. The streets had cleared out almost entirely, all activity now focused along the waterfront where the food stalls were still smoking away. Traffic had begun to flow again, the cars parked on the sidewalk were gone. You would never know that hours before hundreds of thousands of people had filled streets. It was strange, there wasn’t even that much trash strewn about in the gutters. (more…)

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Roses strewn across the bed– they mean business in Cap Est and they have a flock of robed attendants waiting to seat you in the cool, open lobby and serve you a glass of sweet iced-tea. The mint leaf kept getting stuck in my mouth and I gave up trying to surreptitiously get it back in the glass with my tongue, swallowing it instead. This is not the kind of place where you pick at your teeth. This is the kind of place where they carry your bags to your room and serve you iced-tea. We had been led around the grounds by a young man who spoke English but who seemed slightly embarrassed either at his communication abilities or his station. There was a door leading to the spa where massages, soaks and steams took place. There was an open bar quietly being stocked. There was a koi pond, then a restaurant where breakfast would be served in the morning, dinner at night. Along the infinity pool, ringed with deck chairs upon which the most elite of Europe’s elite must lounge in their unwholesome swim-wear must sit, across a grand expanse of grass and under a line of palm trees. The Atlantic shimmers off into the horizon, the water glacial blue like something you’d paint in elementary school with water-colors. There was a detached building off to one side, the lesser restaurant for lighter fare. We were led around the a series of bungalows that sat above the pool, then through a tunnel made of hanging vines and stopped at the edge of a small pier. Another entry to the Atlantic, with a couple floating decks drifting about bearing more lounge chairs. We were led back towards the lobby, past the small fleet of cleaning carts where each worker nodded respectfully or dutifully as we passed. A customer had been locked out of his suite and one of the women would take care of him, take his hand and open his door again. We were led to our own. The tour continued, taking in the front room which led out to the private deck, next to the private plunge pool. There was a couch, a mini-bar, a table and upholstered chairs. The next room had a plasma screen TV with DVD player and, of course, the big gay honeymoon suite bed. With roses all over it. The remainder of the tour, the bath and outdoor shower, remained a blur.

We had unpacked, or at least rifled through our bags wondering if we should bother using the drawers available and examined the quarters. Luxurious was a word that sprang readily to mind, and this caused some minor confusion. What do you do with luxury? We changed into swim trunks and tried not be be embarrassed. Aaron sat in the plunge pool and tried to convince me it wasn’t cold. I stood on the steps leading down and shivered but he claimed once immersion was complete it wasn’t cold at all. I plunged and realized he was lying– my chest hurt it was so cold. But we sat in the plunge pool for a spell until the luxury ran out, then changed into more appropriate clothes and wandered back to the lobby, said bonjour to all the girls in their flowing robes which elicited a uniform choral response, then into the attached library. There was a selection of DVDs to borrow, rows of books in French, and a computer. Aaron discovered wi-fi and took his laptop out into the lobby. It seemed like a lot of trouble to download the new episode of “Lost”.

World Traveler

A consistent theme, tho. The day before Aaron was to fly down from Seattle in the morning, hang out with his parents for several hours, then they would pick me up and we would return to SFO for our flight to LAX. My answering machine had a message, however, relaying that his flight had been delayed and was now being re-routed to Oakland. Not an auspicious start to our vacation, but according to the internet only arriving flights were being delayed because of a low ceiling (fog), unless you were flying out to Chicago. Hours later he was in California, and hours afterwards his parents drove over to pick me up. We checked in at the automatic kiosk which was originally under the impression that my name was 210 Texas, then was concerned that I was using a passport to check in. An attendant came over to verify that I was me, then we shuffled off to security where I was resoundingly guilted for attempting to smuggle hummus onto an airplane. Actually I was ridiculed for trying to smuggle the hummus and then guilted by security because I would take the hummus out into the unsecure portion of the airport to give it away. “We’re going to have to throw it away,” he said to me. “You can have it,” I suggested, but he again insisted I was starving the Africans and Chinese by not unburdening the offending food on hapless strangers. Eventually I walked away from the situation and we made out way to the Admiral’s Club which, despite the name, is a cramped collection of cut-rate motel furniture crammed into a stifling airport room that has its own bar, free snacks and wi-fi. Aaron turned the thermostat down and began to download “Lost” and I began to practice my “je vous drais” a million times. He would laugh periodically.

When they began paging people to the Admiral’s Club desk our curiosity to piqued and since our flight was showing delayed Aaron went to investigate. Through my valium dosage I watched while he kept excitedly turning around to regard me while conversing with the staff, then watched as he hurried back. “We have to go now” and we were grabbing our bags and heading out the door. The flight we were on would land too late to catch our connection so we were being put on the previously delayed flight that was finishing boarding; the people working in the Admiral’s Club were pissed that the boarding gate hadn’t paged us. We were the last ones on, walking through the seated masses, and found whatever was available. Upon take-off I realized that perhaps I should have taken two valium.

After landing in LAX we followed a group of Kiwis off the plane, then turned the corner and walked right into the next gate that had just begun boarding. Since we were flying first class we had every right to step on the pregnant mothers, children and elderly they were trying to squeeze in the door. The passengers collected in the terminal watched with utter disgust as we kicked the needy to the curb and were treated with utter veneration by the flight staff. Back up in the air I ordered a scotch (I’d had one on the previous flight but it had cost me so I was making up for it) and received something that looked and smelled suspiciously like vodka. The stewardess who was serving me insisted that despite the clarity of the liquor and the ice I had specifically asked not to be included it was my drink. “She made a double” she encouraged, and so I drank a double vodka on the rocks. Then I had a beer. Dinner was served in courses and the flight coasted towards Miami. I might have taken another valium, then a tylenol as I realized that when someone had mentioned “air-pressure” and “fillings” I should have paid attention.

Passenger Collapses En Route

The flight was marred by an ugly incident: a woman sitting near the front in coach had gotten up to go to the bathroom and collapsed in the aisle. I suddenly found it very difficult to get more scotch and turned to realize what was going on. Calls for a doctor were made (I don’t actually remember that part but Aaron says so) and one of the stewardesses did get the oxygen tank down at one point. A group of people stood clustered over the woman for quite some time as Aaron and I debated whether this would translate into an emergency landing in Texas. The rest of first class less involved in their self-interest, not even bothering to look up from their magazines. Eventually the woman was coaxed back from the brink of death and seated; Aaron and I drank ourselves into a light slumber for an hour or so, then awoke as we neared Miami.

We located the Admiral’s Club and Aaron began to download more “Lost” while I socialized with a cruise-bound group of blue-hairs and experimented with the two automatic espresso machines and the breakfast snack buffet before taking another valium for the next leg of the journey. Although it was a short flight we were served breakfast before landing in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We checked in at the Admiral’s Club there and were informed that while we didn’t qualify for free entry (there is no first or business class when flying to Martinique) she would allow us to stay because we’d been flying for so long. This was exceptionally sweet because it allowed us to hide our bags for a while and leave the airport, right into a sweltering mid-morning sun. Good thing I had this cool new hat. After a very brief discussion about cabbing into town for food we wandered the grounds of the airport and then returned to the Admiral’s Club to download “Lost” and engage the free snacks. As the last flight loomed I tried out the private bar which, it turns out, is as expensive as the bar available to everyone in the rest of the airport, and took my last valium of the day. Despite the cost it was a wise move– they didn’t serve alcohol on the flight to Martinique.

Still, the hour and a half wasn’t time enough to clear my head before trying to clear customs. I sat on the flight trying to focus my eyes on the page specifically designed to get through customs without a cavity search and kept mumbling the same two phrases over and over again. Walking up to the immigration gate I could barely carry everything because I was clutching the book so tightly. Bonjour! I screamed at the guard. He didn’t look at me, just my passport, which he stamped and returned without a word. Bienvenue!

A ride had been arranged by the luxurious Cap Est Resort and I had been terrified of being greeted at the gate by a white-gloved house-negro bearing a name placard. The fact that this didn’t happen would have been an immediate relief had someone been there, but it was just a small airport lobby with all the signs in the wrong language. We wandered up and down wondering how exactly we should proceed and I tried to extort money from an ATM which spit a receipt at me without any money. Ah, yes. We stepped outside into even more sweltering sun and looked around. Aaron went back to the gate to see if we had someone how missed the driver. I stood outside with our bags trying my best to look like a tourist. Theory one proved to be true and I was introduced to the cab driver who most certainly would never be seen in white gloves pandering to anyone. He had, in fact, spent ten years in the military. He tossed out bags in the back of the minivan serving as our cab and we took off. Aaron told me that the sign had read: “Mr. and Mrs. Tuller”. Where are you from? San Francisco.

The countryside between the airport, which sits towards the center of the island, and Cap Est grew from rolling hills into fairly mountainous terrain. After clearing the populated regions we sped through copses of sugar cane and past old plantations. The houses dotting the hillsides, every building in fact, looked like they had co-starred in any expose on Colombian drug-wars. Everything looked lush, aged and burdened with heat. Meanwhile the cab driver is asking about the Democratic primaries (which were just about to hit California at the time) and I tried to figure out how to explain why I wouldn’t vote for either front-runner were I to vote for any Democrat. In the end I let the conversation drop by staring out the window and young banana groves, the fruit bundled in blue plastic. “To protect the bananas” he said, alluding to the recent hurricane. And then we were pulling through a gate and up into the roundabout, met at the curb by beautiful smiling island people.

I walked back through the lobby, bonjour’d the girls again, and stood out front in the roundabout to smoke a cigarette. Down the driveway the shuttered gate began to trembled, then open. Monsieur Daily forced his way through the portal, cab behind him. Somehow it just made sense, all of a sudden, standing on the expansive grounds of a resort on a tropical island in the middle of the Caribbean; it was really just a trip to see Daily who walked up with his bike messenger bag slung over a shoulder. We walked into the lobby and collected Aaron, taking Daily to the bungalow to unload his shit. Then we cruised around the grounds showing off all the things we had just learned, hanging out on the small pier beyond the hanging vines as the sun sank from the skies.

After the charm of dusk had faded we cruised down through the lobby, bonsoir!, and to the bar where a couple sat secluded in quiet conversation. I insisted, in my sleep-deprived and heavily medicated state, on handling the first order of the evening and strode unsteadily to the counter where my French was immediately repelled by a barrage of English. Alright, I conceded, ordering three ti-punch, but next time this is happening in French. He smiled and agreed, but refused to let me stand there waiting for the drinks to me made. We found a table and waited, surprised when the bartender walked up bearing a plate of pate’ on bread and a glass full of battered cod. Shortly thereafter the three glasses of ti-punch arrived, the drink of Martinique. It turned out to be much less refreshing than a mojito: Ti-punch is a splash of cane-syrup, a measure of white rum and a lime. It burns the throat and spins your head around and sits smoldering in your stomach daring you to argue. We polished off the snacks and chatted as another couple of patrons arrived, including a couple with a toddler in a carriage. It seems a funny place to bring the kids, but then again the three of us must have seemed quite odd to everyone else. At some point, immediately following one of the random heavy downpours that float overhead and disappear within minutes, I went back to the room and discovered a cat keening outside the sliding door. I let the animal inside, wondering if it was a lost pet, and since it was quite accustomed to people I picked it up on my way out and walked to the lobby. The beautiful girl working behind the counter (I insist that she looks like Thandie Newton in “Flirting”) who had the tendency to giggle whenever I attempted French watched as the cat immediately savaged my arm, then began to giggle as I asked the best I could if the cat was okay to be here. The girl didn’t seem at all perturbed by the little bastard’s presence so I let it gently down and it scampered off– I bid au revoir to the both of them and returned to the bar.

Courtesy of Cap Est

The next round was ordered in French but it consisted of two Biere Lorraine and some sort of champagne cocktail Aaron thought sounded good. I’m not sure if the bartender could actually understand what I was saying but the transaction was completed, as was my paying with my card which, thankfully, worked. After the incident with the airport ATM I had my doubts I would have any access to money at all. By now the restaurant down along the water had opened for dinner and we walked across the lawn to inspect. While this may have been the lesser of the two on-site restaurants you would never know by the service or the fare. Aaron and Daily split an entree of Tuna Tartar and a campari a piece, then lamb over roasted vegetables and seared tuna steak over roasted peppers, respectively. I enjoyed a multiple-cheese panini over frites and another Biere Lorraine, feeling a little under-class for all the finery. By the end of the meal they were asking for the dessert menu and I was wondering where the top of my head had gone. I can remember getting the key for the bungalow but not getting back to it, nor do I remember passing out on the couch. After 36 hours awake, four flights over twenty hours, four valium and the contents of your mom’s liquor cabinet was suddenly awakened after Daily had been forced to crawl through some bushes and come through the sliding door leading to the deck. Their knocking could not wake me.

If you just want to see embarrassing pictures we pooled them on flickr. They’re unfortunately not in great order (each chunk is by one of us) but almost all of them have clever little descriptions so we expect you to look at each one. Otherwise, please carry on: (more…)

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This is a well-known clip from the motherland. It has everything one wants from black and white memories; Pre-hooliganism innocence; Blighty’s best musical export; and quirky, overstated analysis by the reporter.

This was The Kop a long time before I was born. I went to Anfield in 1994 to watch the penultimate match before The Kop was replaced by an all-seater stand.

Pre-match, I sat down at the back of the terraces. People looked at me funny. I understood why when (at half-time) the rear section of half the stand used the same spot as an open latrine. Liverpool got beat 2-0 by Newcastle and I saw a man bleed out of his head. A recipe for sad associations? Not a chance. It was The Kop. It was top.

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Everything is just the same. We’re all part of society. Think we’ve got what we want. Think we’ve got variety. We like to watch television, listen to the radio. We like to read the Sunday paper. We believe what we’re shown.

There are those who disagree. They don’t like what they see. Different faces, different cases. Fighting all the apathy.

I call it revolution.

It’s not the usual jaunty number I find myself singing as I step out of the shower but somehow I seemed to be channeling what was going on hundreds of miles away. My old friend Lance Hahn died today.

I knew him before I ever knew him, y’know? When I was just getting started with music one of the first 7″ I bought was by an old band called Cringer, who had broken up before I was even aware of anything other than my sister’s tapes and MTV. The memory is pretty clear– Zen Flesh Zen Bones used at Neurotic Records for about two bucks. It wasn’t their best but the name was all over thanks lists from my favorite bands of the time, Green Day and The Mr T Experience and Crimpshrine, so I picked up the far superior Perversion is Their Destiny for a similar cost from Epicenter Zone and I had the bug. A collection of sharp, impassioned, literate (enough) but immediate and raw political and personal songs. The lines were blurry– it wasn’t exactly hardcore but it wasn’t too poppy. The lyrics were directly political and yet distinctly personal. The character of the band bled through the wax and the cover, dripped in your hands. These were people you could find yourself talking to on the street, at a show or at a party. There was no detachment from life, no separation brought on by the stage. These were people.

If I had your pen I’d write this song again, and let someone else write the next lyric. Every single day we have something to say, or at least have some appearance. I can’t be right all the time. I plagiarized the next line. I can’t say that I feel shame. If everyone did the same there’d be nothing left to blame.

It’s hard to believe– in anything– til everyone– does everything.

And so Cringer became and has persisted over the years as one of my favorite bands. Not because they never released a bad record or wrote a bad song but because the spirit of their existence and the heart and soul of their songs came to exist within me. More than probably any other band Cringer single-handedly is responsible for my drawing lines between my personal existence and the political implications of my life on the world around me. Lance wrote love songs that sounded like political treatises and political songs that were a conversation between two lovers unconscious in their struggle for control. Kit and fucking kaboodle…

When I started working at Epicenter we came to know one another and it was a little incongruous, the man and the records that had taken part in the shaping of the younger me. I never told him just what exactly his songs had meant to me and continued to mean– frankly it was embarrassing and he was a little more dorky then I had expected. Not that I was star-struck, possibly because from the connection of me and that band there had been that underlying understanding that we were on equal terms. Maybe it’s because he was so dorky. It just kinda happened, us knowing one another as people. I would sit behind the counter drinking a 40oz and smoking, spitting on the ground and irritating customers (both of them) by playing country records and he would walk in in his AK Press sweatshirt and maybe some fried tortellini from Mr. Pizza Man. It seemed like neither of us had anywhere else to go so we sat there, sometimes for hours, sometimes with others. We started staying well past closing, Lance and Kate and I most often, watching movies and talking massive amounts of shit. Non-stop shit talking. A never-ending torrent of shit was talked.

I’m watching for signals, they turn every night. It’s making me restless but nothing ignites. Oh, you know that I wanted this to be so much more, but I know we both know I should head for the door.

After a couple years Epicenter became financially and, honestly, culturally un-viable. I was pretending to live in Minneapolis while the collective dissolved itself, but at the same time Lance was seeing doctors and learning that he had a congestive-heart issue that was crushing his lungs against his rib cage. While I crawled the streets along the Mississippi at three in the morning he was getting blood work twice a week and working desperately to save his life. By the time I returned to help lay Epicenter down he was out of the worst but now had a permanent condition which would require constant monitoring and medication. You would never have known by talking with him unless you knew. Because he was so full of life and something like a potentially fatal disease was not going to keep him from hanging out and talking shit all night.

Epicenter was what brought us into orbit and when it was gone things changed dramatically. Kate’s house wasn’t as conducive to hanging out and now Lance and Liberty had started going out so we didn’t see too much of either of them. Eventually Libby decided to go back to school for linguistics and got into a program at the University of Texas in Austin. Lance continued to play in his post-Cringer band, J-Church, and continued to run his record label, Honeybear Records, through two house-fires which not only left them homeless but also destroyed his entire collection of records and priceless artifacts of his personal and punk rock history. We didn’t keep in touch, never having been the closest of friends and no longer having the common bonds we once shared. The last time we spoke was several years ago when J Church was on tour and played Bottom of the Hill. I skipped the show, not yet having attempted to listen to the band (a common feature of knowing Lance shared by everyone seems to be not being able to like whatever band he’s in when you know him– oh shit, except once I saw them play when I loaned them my PA to do an in-store at Howling Bull but I was busy kicking the amp trying to squeeze volume for the mics out of it so I didn’t really notice much except Lance had the guitar slung around his ankles and was bending chords by kneeing the neck), but we hung out afterwards before the van moved on for Portland. I was working a dead end job at a dying video store, the same as when he moved away. “I’m doing the same thing” he said. “Neither of us has changed since I moved” Well, I’m living at home tho, that’s shit. “Fuck, I’d live with your parents if I could. Your parents are cool.”

Okay, once he did spend the night at my parents’ house but they were out of town at the time.

Some months ago I heard through the grapevine that he had begun to experience kidney failure and had been placed on dialysis. There was talk of a waiting list for a transplant. It was bad news but something made me shrug it off, just as I shrugged off countless benefit shows and eventually a benefit compilation CD. I mean, this is Lance we’re talking about. He’ll be fine. He’ll be up and running in no time. J Church will go back on tour (maybe this time he can play Japan and wouldn’t it be funny to actually roadie this one now that I have money and he’s not having to go to the hospital every day) and he’ll release more records on Honeybear, write another newsletter and another historical essay on a long forgotten Peace-Punk band for MRR. He’ll be back and talking shit somewhere in the wee hours eating fried tortellini or telling a story from some Polish tour way back when.

But he went in for dialysis on Friday and collapsed. He slipped into a coma and on Sunday, October 21st, he slipped out of this world. I came home to two messages on my machine telling me and I spent some time on the phone talking about it and other things. Two people who I haven’t been very good about keeping up with but two people who are friends in the truest sense of the word and who deserve a little more effort on my part. And Lance did too, of course, even if it wouldn’t have mattered to him. Once again I have someone who I had stored away in the memory file assuming that we’d meet again and, when the time came, I could just reach back and grab that information, open the folder and begin where we left off. Not so, he’s gone. And despite the distance and the time in between the last time we spoke and now I will miss him.

Trapped in the back of my mind, is the thought too little too late. So when I try to define, I tend to over-complicate. When I’m told, again and again, ‘that’s just the way things go’. It leaves a bitter taste with me, because I think that we should know.

But at this time, I would have guessed
that we could rise above the rest.
But at this time, I guess I know
there are things we still can’t show.

Trapped in the back of our minds is a single ideology. Yet we bicker and we battle about what it means to be free. We never seem to have the courage to live the life we choose. So we lost what we should have won, because our numbers are diffused.

But at this time, I would have guessed
that we could rise above the rest.
But at this time, I guess I know
there are things we still can’t show.

Trapped in the back of my mind, trapped in the back of our minds. Trapped in the back of my mind, trapped in the back of our minds.

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