Top 10 of '10 #4.3

4.3) #1 travel partner: Sietske

I was going to a town near Munich to visit Laura, a girl I met on the bike tour in Chicago. We worked out a plan through Facebook to find a time that would work with her schedule. My schedule was pretty flexible (at the beginning of my trip) but got less so as I went, but we managed to find a couple days that worked. At some point just before I arrived (at something like 5pm on a Friday after a long day of carsharing and trainriding) she said I could only stay one night. I was a little annoyed since I didn't have any other plans lined up, but I accepted my fate and made the best of it. She wanted to go to this "film in the square" which happened to be The Blues Brothers, which was a strange mix of foreign and familiar. To make it worse (better?), it was dubbed in German, but, through some glitch in the DVD player, it would randomly switch to English with subtitles. Bizarre. The next day we rode bikes for a couple hours along a river, stopping at the most authentic Biergarten I have ever been to. And really good food. Then, to Munich with no plans for anywhere to stay. Found some wifi at a coffee shop near the station, found no couchsurfing hosts, and, just before I went to wander around to maybe find a cheap hotel, I saw a post from a fellow traveler who was stuck at the train station. She was looking for a host or a travel buddy and ended up finding both. Sietske was from Holland and spoke such good English that I could forget that she was foreign except for subtle cultural differences. We ended up couchsurfing 2 nights in Munich, finding bikes to ride around (mine died just before we left), eating vagabond squatter food, and hitchhiking to the Czech Republic.

On the way to CZ, we had a German guy give us a ride, make slightly inappropriate comments about our physical relationship, and then give us 1000 Czech crowns.* And then a Japanese guy who didn't speak much English or German. And then a Romanian truck driver who spoke better German than English (though broken as hell). And then we were stuck for a long time in Austria near Linz. We finally got a ride to the train station in Linz and took the train to the Czech Republic. But the train didn't actually go all the way; it stopped at Summerau--still in Austria but near the border. It's getting complicated, here's a map. So we got off the train at Summerau and had a half-baked vision of a plan: ask people getting off the train where we could stay, like a hostel or hotel and then see. But there were hardly any people getting off the train. We saw one other backpacker and asked him where his hostel was. His response was totally unexpected: not staying at a hostel, getting picked up to go work at a hotel for the summer. The hotel, it turns out, was somewhere just over the border in the CzRep on the way to Cesky Krumlov (our ultimate destination). The backpacker, it turns out, as well as most of the people who owned the hotel, were Dutch--just like my travel partner. The guys' ride showed up and there was a lot of excited Dutch being spoken that somehow resulted in us going along for the ride and staying at the hotel for something like 20 Euro. It felt like the highest-class resort compared to what I had seen: clean sheets, chickens, goats, a huge breakfast spread, and Budweiser beer--the original. [Looking back on it, this is one of those moments that make you think that you are in the right place at the right time, like the Universe is unfolding as it should; everything in its right place.]

The next day, we continued on and stayed 2 nights in Cesky Krumlov, which, although being a sort of Disnification of a medieval Czech town, was quaint and pleasant. The hoards of tourists were the biggest downfall, but, to be fair, they were nothing like they would be in Bruges or that city in Germany that Russ liked (because they brought in beers from all over Germany, not just one region). After a couple days, I continued on, hitchhiking to Pilsen and then Prague and Sietske went camping and then met up with her friend to go to a Rainbow gathering. It was just a moment, but through the magic of traveling, it seemed like an eternity--in a good way.

* Nothing happened; we each had commitments elsewhere. But now that I think about it, I was aware of some nearly subliminal sexual tension that seemed to start after we left Munich but before we got to the Czech Republic. And it feels like it came from that ride with the German guy, whose suggestion got the ball rolling.

Top 10 of '10 #4

4) #1 Movie: Wristcutters: A Love Story

Netflix was my social life last year when I was living in the cabin in Michigan. I would work all day--fairly productively--and then at 6, 7, or sometimes even 8 or 9, I would sit down with my laptop and watch some foreign movie, documentary, or, well, Lost.

This year, everyone I know has Netflix and I hardly use my account. My roommate has it hooked up to the Wii and there is often a movie streaming in during the evenings--sometimes 2 or 3 in a row. I don't have as much patience for movies and so don't embark on every journey with them; I fortunately missed most of Repo: the Genetic Opera. But sometimes it works out and we all agree on something mind-bending, quirky, rom-com, or doc.

This movie may not actually be the best I saw of 2010, but it was certainly one of the biggest surprises. With a title like that, it seems juvenile, crass, or goth, but it turned out to be endearing, melancholic, and, ultimately, uplifting. It really is a love story.

It begins with a death, self-inflicted, of this guy Zia, distraught over a breakup. He was pretty hung up on this girl, even in the afterlife--a hang up I've been through at least once, probably more...well, once for sure...for real. His afterlife was a bleached out version of some southwestern state: some mountains in the distance, mostly flat desert with highways disappearing into the horizon. And worst of all, in this post-suicide afterlife, you still have to work.

Zia and this other guy drive around in a car looking for stuff: Zia for his ex-girlfriend (who they find out also "offed") and this other guy for other stuff. They keep losing stuff in a very literal vortex into another dimension that exists beneath the passenger seat. They meet this girl who shouldn't be there, for her OD was accidental. And then they meet Tom Waits. And Gob, from Arrested Development. Interestingly, he's a magician of sorts, trying to perform some dimension-bending escape trick: like if Houdini were wrapped in chains at the bottom of a pond, but instead of chains it was reality itself, and instead of a pond, it was the mind of god. I don't know what kind of success he had; seemed like a failed illusion.

It was bleak but comically so. I'm glad I won't be ending up there; I'd rather play the game and lose than forfeit.

I wish I could say that it was still on Netflix streaming, but, as I was just putting my account on hold (saving 10 bucks a month!) I checked: no luck. You should watch Enter the Void instead, which is, so far, my #1 movie of this year.