Amsterdam: Hotel Orfeo

bavaria

Biergarten fever

Bier gardens have their own set of etiquette that isn't straightforward to a North American traveler. At least not to me. Certain things are very bad – like toasting and not looking the person you toast in the eye, and other things – like bringing in your own mustard and cutting boards, is normal as normal can be. In one village, I can't remember its name; they all look the same – cute, but terrifyingly disorientating in their similarity, we went into a restaurant-beer garden called the Rote Okse (Red Ox). Long wooden benches and tables filled the courtyard behind which was a playground and a chicken coop of bunnies (rabbit was a choice on the menu). Medium-sized dogs pooled at the feet of every table like an obligatory rug. Colourful leashes slung around the forearms or ankles of those slicing bratwurst or lifting beer to their chins. It felt like I had entered a petting zoo. Or a former zoo? They had every imaginable kind of meat on the menu. Deer, bison, goose – you name it. I turned around and saw a couple sitting primly at another table, a half-eaten jar of Dijon between them. The woman was fishing individual items out of a picnic basket. Her husband with beachwood coloured hair and a very trim mustache (like a spedometer – a tacho as the Germans call them) was sitting upright at a wooden sandwich board knees together as though this were aiding his concentration while he sliced a single cherry tomato in two. Hardly a word passed between them. It was as if they were at the library and they were cracking the spines of their respective books.

Beer gardens are wonderful, even if waitresses are usually scarce. Finding them however, is not; at least with my family. I'm reminded of our dog Pepper who sometimes gets fussy and first pulls her entire bedding out of her kennel, shakes it out and then spend half an hour rearranging it, lying down, rearranging some more, before finally curling up for good. Or at least a good 15 minutes. My family makes the equivalent of many nests, nests inside nests before it'll settle down to eat. There'll be many false endings – at least two tables must be rejected after we've already sat down. If it's 3 in the afternoon and our first meal of the day we will still make a spiral entrance into the restaurant like a plane waiting for clearance, first wandering myriad drags of project housing, racing up and down the same unshaded street as new map interpretations are announced. Complaining does nothing but incite the others to instruct you morally, as though a little piety is all you need. ''Just be patient! Just trust us! We're trusting the guidebook. How else are we going to find our way?''

Berlin

The Canadian Embassy

A billboard on the street outside announced a museum on Canadian culture. Intrigued, we decided to check it out. When the sliding doors opened and I started walking towards a woman seated at a desk, another woman on a stool hidden to our right jumped in front of me with her hand out like a spice girl. German-speakers have a way of being friendly that makes you feel as though you're doing something wrong. ''First I do a security check! Then! You may enjoy the museum!'' It turned out they didn't like Andrea's bottle-opener even though at the Reichstag (German parliament) they hadn't cared. They scanned us and it beeped at my shoulder-blade. I joked that I never should have gotten that gold shoulder blade. It was caused by the clasp of my bra??!! When did Canada get so paranoid? The museum was stark, metallic, beautiful in a minimalist way. Behind a glass wall was a waterfall. Several computers were devoted to a Marshall McCluhan exhibit and around the circular room were maps with games such as assembling Canada by its provinces. In the center was a circular bench with headphones where you could listen to Margaret Atwood speak her usual martian tongue, or bill bissett (they misspelled his name - should be in small letters, not caps.) We wasted a lot of time there but it convinced me that Canada does have a particular culture.

Trier

In Trier I met my parents and my brother for 3 days in the hilly vineyards of Kasel - a tiny suburb of Trier where our hosts Manfred and Ilse have their three storey house. Despite the constant danger of slamming our heads on the sloping roofs (I figure this is because our eyes are really in the middle of our heads and we don't compensate well for what's above our brow), the view of the vineyards - especially from the bathroom, was incredible. Tiny tractors, towing loads at a 45 degree angle, inched up the hill like tiny elevators. While eating dinner on the patio, spray helicopters coasted seemingly only meters above the potato salad. I covered my wine glass with my hand. In Trier's inner city, the charred-looking Porta Negra stands adjacent to the house where Karl Marx lived for most of his life. His home is now an optical shop (can someone find irony in this? I haven't been able to.) Manfred and Ilse were incredibly accomodating. Manfred was a hunter (Jager) and so his house also accomodates about 200 Reeboks. Someone was clever when naming shoes Reeboks. The hare-sized mammals are fast - but they also have antlers. When I first looked at the wall I thought he had a cruel penchant for killing fawns. But no, in the forested hill behind us, Reeboks scurry about for their lives. The dining room is covered in their tiny hare-sized skulls. It may as well be a wall-paper pattern. As a hunter goes, Manfred seems to have the image down. He enjoys playing French Horn, and in a comic moment for the rest of them, decided to wake up my brother and I with the army morning call. At the breakfast table, if we happened to come down dressed in real clothes he would smile and point his palm at us and announce ''Ready for take-off, ready for take-off!''

Mallorca Spain