From a Pacific beach to a farm in Lower Bavaria, via Toronto and Montreal…The Bad News Bears Begins

Last time you found me here I claimed that I never rode the Giant Ferris Wheel though I did eat at the Wendy’s and poured tokens into all the driving games at the Marvel Comics arcade (complete with Incredible Hulk Black Light Mini-Golf, only $10 a round!), all on the sunny slopes of Niagara. But what of Toronto? And shall I say it was hot there? The fans were on overtime, the cats sat in strangely warm places, curled into a chair tucked under a table or perched on the tallest cabinet (they are so cool they can stand the heat). Maximilliam von der Stadt and Gretl von Boondocks only appeared in the apartment for one daily cuddle session, and then back to their hiding places. The mornings were good for cat wrestling. The humidity I could stand, this Californian had made enough trips to western Illinois in the summer to know humidity, but without AC, the great balancer, Toronto heat was rough, rough enough to force us into sleeping positions and places that afforded even the slightest breeze, and sometimes all the breeze was from our collective snoring. There were movies watched, bad TV laughed at, friends seen and stories unearthed, cold good food made (stove is off limits, except for desperation nachos), and lots of conversation between the two of us over wine and beer and water (the first two are pretty expensive in Canadia, but that doesn’t stop you).

Before too long Montreal was our destination, via Union Station. The cottage brought relaxation, and the company, jubilation. (endation) Nothing like sinking into a paddle boat on a quiet lake with friends lazily sitting on the floating dock behind you, to feel the lake beneath your body, nothing to do but pass the copious magazines and books, the suntan lotion, and the next beer, and engage in backgammon wars while shirtless and wondering what time it is may be. There were Wonder Woman flashbacks and various takes on Jenga which involved forgetting about building a stupid tower and just firing your spare blocks at another person’s spare blocks in hopes of breaking up their mess of blocks. And do you know Suger Pie? We do now. Best had with a good Islay whiskey. Poutin? Oh yes. Unibroue beer and “the white wheat beer with the white horsie on it”? Oh my, this is part of Montreal. All that and more, plus a family dog named Early (with the fat splayed-leg gait), as well as that great and growing feeling that you will be coming to this home and this family for a long time – that is Montreal for us, for me. We had been looking forward to meeting our friends there and at their cottage since last summer when we did the same thing for the first time. Isn’t it nice when expectations are totally blown out of the water?

And not long after, too short for this writer, he had to board a plane for the old land once called home, Germany, even though he had left that home to return to his oldest home only to giddily move to a new home, and now had to leave that home for a less-old home. So why leave home for another home only to come home? To work on the set of a great and powerful movie in the middle of the forest among people you don’t know who speak a foreign language and who know what is expected of them, and you don’t! Oh Yes! I can only tell you that we are working on a movie that I will call the Lord of the Flies, or as my friend Aimee suggested, in bad German, “Die Schlecht Nachrichten Bernen” and I am in charge of teaching two of the Lords (or are they flies, or bears) all the subjects they will miss in school as a result of a summer’s worth of starring in this movie in the middle of nowhere, etc…

I can tell you how it began, with the plane ride, beginning at midnight and ending six hours later, noon in Munich. My seat mate, some dude all in red next to me who didn’t know the meaning of shared space, arm rest and leg room included, but the poor guy looked more nervous than rude, so I let him have some of my legroom and while he spaciously dozed I would push him back to his side in his sleep. But opposite the aisle I saw a six-man heavy metal band from Toronto, each with a different version of bad hair, who were totally stoked to be heading to Munich and to France and to be getting the whole thing paid for and yeah-shit-ohmygod-dude yes, like where are we playing again? All night. And they watched all three movies, The Shaggy Dog, The Pink Panther, AND The Jennifer Aniston Latest, and yes I tried to sleep through all of them and couldn’t.

In Munich, I began to see all those memories of living there and my heart began to ache just as my head and body were sore from the night’s adventures. I didn’t have time to hang out and think about it all, I had much to do before sundown, including finding friends, downing a liter of beer and a having a lovely swim. When you leave a place you love via a certain route, and then come back to the place with good memory and the route totally set in reverse, it’s quite an experience for the heart and mind. Except that you are not with the people you were with the first time. The people change, not the place. It’s the people that now make my heart ache. Some are missing from this tableau, and I wish they were here.

The next morning I hauled all my baggage in the sun to a spot to await the driver to take me to the far east side of Germany, where the film crew and sets and children awaited, about a 2 hour drive through small villages, rolling grassy hills and rows of wheat and corn. Then I was tossed with luggage in the smallest of all villages, the car drove away, I was showed my dorm-like room and small television, and I was alone in the German language.

So began the survival skills. First, work. I tried the room phone, it didn’t work and needed someone at the front desk to connect me, so I follow instructions and the line goes dead. Go to front desk and there is no one there, no one in the hotel. Go onto the streets, still no people among the quaint European village surroundings. Grabbing handwritten map of town in the room under the phone, I go in search of Phone and Food. Find phone, call the film company for instructions on what to do, and call back again when money runs out. Then I find from my boss (first time I’ve ever talked to her) that I am free for the day. Second: I call Dot, and I run out of money again. So, now to find change. The town seems to be closed, and as I explore the cobblestone streets that turn around old homes and a church and a few businesses, I discover that the whole town is closed. The map says there is a gas station, which must be open, so I wander out of town and find it, where two small girls are running the front desk. Third: supplies, I buy a phone card because my German is so bad that I am informed that this may help me make phone calls (you need a cell phone first), but buying this useless card gets me the most small change possible. Quickly in the heat I am off into another far little corner of the village and into its closing supermarket to search barren shelves for bread and cheese, my dinner. Finally it’s back across village to the hotel to take a long awaited shower, eat, and to notice that Once Again It’s Only CNN, damn, but I wonder where in the world I am and where everyone else could be… the people I left in Toronto and the people I am to work with in the movie bizz. At this point the sky is darkening, and still no one on the streets, and my loneliness is pretty harsh, and damn I am tired. But I arise to get back to my new routine of walking to the dimly lit pay phone booth, which greedily eats my accumulated pocket change as I count down the time left in another phone call to Dot…hang up sadly, and then… all is dark, the phone is dead, and I am broke. I wander to the hotel, no one is there still. I walk down a different street, and I get out of the town hoping to find SOMETHING open to get more small change to call someone on the pay phone to ease my loneliness and find to my lovely surprise a little restaurant whose outside garden still looks open, illumined by Christmas lights left up all year. I ask the mysterious waitress in German if the kitchen is still open, and she answers in English that I can have only (my old favorite) a brotzeit teller, so I go WHEE! and I get to sit down with beer from the tap in the cool night under dim lights. But still, all alone. Did you see 28 Days Later? And after Toronto, I didn’t want to be alone like this. Anyway, just like me, after my first Bavarian meal, when I had paid up and the colored lights of the open garden had gone off behind me as I was walking the moonlit streets, I checked my pocket and forgot to get small change money for the phone. I could talk to everyone in North America now, but I forgot to get kleine geld. Just so you know, to paint the picture even worse, I couldn’t sleep, and walked the streets for a sign of life and small change. I remember purposely standing under the stars in the center of town, no one around me but large lit buildings, the cobble stones beneath me are foreign beauty but damn them! and I felt as flat as the crushed pidgeon roadkill buzzing with flies a few feet from my feet.