Into the Lion’s Den

Chers amis,

I think we can all agree that it is quite rare, when sleeping in a room with others, to be the last one to retire and the first one to rise. Well, this is precisely what happened to your ol’ buddy Jacques in our hostel dormitory. I had been taught from an early age that “the early bird gets the worm”, and decided it would be a good idea to liken this metaphorical worm to “taking a shower”, particularly considering I was sharing a bathroom with 7 other gentlemen.

Yes, the hostel had tossed all the men on the voyage into the same room. Though this seemed a bit unjust at first, it turned out to be a great bonding experience. We had all bro’d out together for a short time the day before, and thus I had made the acquaintance of some good guys named Lee-Noose, Artiste (pronounced “ahr-TEEST”), P-Diddy, Castor Troy, and Fellow Friscan.

Thankfully, all the fellow bro's (some of whom are pictured above) proved to be very kindly people despite not rallying particularly hard for the first evening's festivities.

Anyway, I accomplished my goal of showering and met the rest of the program downstairs for our trip to l’Institut Superieur Electronique de Paris, a.k.a. l’ISEP. l’ISEP is an engineering school in the heart of Paris that also serves as the headquarters for the Stanford in Paris program.

Soon, we arrived. It was a quaint little place, and they even had thoughtfully put up a welcome message for us Stanfordians, albeit in somewhat broken English. As we meandered around the halls, I was struck by two grim realizations. I first remarked that there were an unbelievable amount of stairs, and knew that I would be climbing these stairs many, many times because the library was on the 6th floor and the classrooms were on the 2nd floor.

If you look just beyond the shrubbery you can see ISEP, a place of wonder, mystery, and...stairs. Lots and lots of stairs

Now, I normally consider myself a rather hardy individual who, and I rarely complain about physical challenges. Hell, the only sport I was ever good at in high school was a sport where you do nothing but run. In fact, in terms of traveling on foot, my philosophy is that walking/running at a brisk pace not only gets you there quicker, but gives you somewhat of a workout. It also let’s gives you the opportunity to pretend that you’re LaDainian Tomlinson as you sidestep rapidly through slow-moving pedestrians, which is always nice. But these stairs… good Lord! It’s difficult enough to speak French to the kindly staff upstairs, but when you’re out of breath on top of it all… Well, let’s just say it makes the task infinitely more difficult.

The second thing that I noticed really shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise considering we were at an engineering school, but ISEP’s gender demographic was the polar opposite of our program’s – nothing but dudes! It was the biggest “fête de saucisse” I had ever seen, save for one birthday party I had when I was about 10 years old. But girls were icky back then. Gimme a break.

Anyway, the situation at ISEP overall seemed to be quite agreeable despite these minor setbacks. Of course, the ladies were understandably more than thrilled with the ratio, and it was at that point that I hypothesized that there is a directly proportional relationship between the thickness of a foreigner’s accent and the speed with which American girls will remove their garments for the aforementioned foreigner’s viewing pleasure. But I will explain this theory (and my irrefutable findings) in more detail at a later date.

Anyone who wants to refute this graph has clearly not spent much time abroad.

After our grand tour of ISEP, we headed to a fancy restaurant called Auberge Nicolas Flamel where we gorged ourselves upon savory salad, delectable duck, and chocolate cake for dessert. This wondrous lunch was courtesy of Peter and Helen Bing, the two founders/masterminds of every existing Stanford overseas program. It was then and there that I decided that in the rare event that I make it in this world, I want to be as generous as the Bing family. Except I want to actually be present for meals like that, dammit.

As we patted our bellies with satisfaction, it dawned on us that it was now the moment of truth – it was time to meet the host families. Sinbad and I headed back to the hostel, grabbed our belongings, and waddled (towards the taxi stand). It was here that we would have our first French “boeuf”, a.k.a. “beef”.

Judging from my rock-solid build and expression of pure anger, you'd think nobody would to fuck with me, right? Don't answer that question.

We stood at that taxi stand for about an hour. We were probably about 5th or 6th in line, and people slowly were getting picked up. Very slowly. Thankfully, we were standing in line with a few other Stanford homies, so it was time well-spent. But soon, it was our turn, and a sizeable cab rolled right up to us. Out stepped an angry looking man with a heavy African accent.

Sinbad and I indicated in piss-poor French that we had a lot of baggage. The guy looked us over and nodded, so we started tossing our stuff into the trunk. When we were about 90% done with throwing our things into the trunk, the man started yelling at us. He began in French, and we could tell he was angry but we were not quite sure exactly what the problem was. Remembering that we had signed a contract not to speak English unless in an emergency, Sinbad and I attempted to communicate with this man in his preferred tongue. Bad idea.

The man became more and more flustered, and began yelling in English. “You have too many bags! You cannot put this many bags in here!” he wailed angrily. Sinbad and I finally understood, but we are men of our word. So we continued speaking our broken French. This set our friend off.

“What the hell is wrong with you?! Speak English! Speak English!” he yelled. It felt like the famous Pulp Fiction breakfast scene all over again, and this cab driver was doing a very convincing Samuel L. Jackson impression.

Finally, we responded in English, and agreed that Sinbad and I would take separate cabs. I climbed into the cab, and looked outside. Sinbad was standing outside with ONE bag – my guitar bag. The rest of the stuff was all piled inside. And there was plenty of room. But the angry, insolent cab man remained outside, and I saw him yelling at Sinbad and throwing his hands every which way.

Amazingly, Sinbad then entered the car. “He thought there were three of us,” explained the ever-calm and always well-spoken Sinbad, and he gestured towards the taxi stand. Standing there was our friend Cristina, who had about 12 bags of her own. This idiotic cab driver thought we were trying to fit 16 bags into his car instead of 6.

Now, if Sinbad and I had just arrived in New Delhi, asking a taxi-on-foot to lug around 30 bags might be presumable. But this cabbie clearly overestimated our stupidity. C'mon, guy. Get with the program.

As he got into the driver’s seat, he was clearly still upset, and kept muttering how foolish we were to have not spoken English in the first place. I was tempted to mention to him that we had never, ever said we were a group of three, but I feared I might meet the same fate as Brett from the earlier Pulp Fiction scene. For those pour souls who have never seen Pulp Fiction, Brett gets lit up like a Christmas tree. Sorry to ruin it for ya.

Anyway, the cab driver took us out to the 17th arrondisement and dropped us off right in front of a towering apartment building. Sinbad and I looked at each other, nodded confidently, and moseyed right on in. Soon, we found ourselves at the correct door, and after a few deep breaths, we knocked on it forcefully. The immediate response to this knocking was the loud, repeated barks of a dog.

Soon, the door flew open, and instead of seeing a middle-aged host or hostess, we found a girl that looked to be around our age. It was Astrid! “Bonjour!” she said cheerily, and welcomed us in. She was a kindly lass with tanned skin and blonde hair, though she looked quite young. We made small-talk for a couple minutes and then got down to business.

“D’accord,” she said, which basically means, “Alright”. “Qui veut la chambre en haut, et qui veut la chambre en bas?” Who wants the upstairs room and who wants the downstairs room? Sinbad and I are both pretty reasonable gentlemen. Neither of us had seen the rooms, so we had no idea which was preferable. Thus, we flipped a coin. It turned out that I got the downstairs room, and I was soon shown to a very charming little room a few feet away from the entrance. Astrid then led Sinbad up to his room. Six stories up to his room. The Beaubois family apparently owned the second floor of the apartment and then a little room at the very top of the building as well. I immediately felt really, really bad for ol’ Sinbad.

Though I knew Sinbad was a very hardy fellow, to think of him going down six flights of stairs to use the bathroom and then back up again made me feel very douchey for winning the coin toss. Particularly when he politely declined my offer to switch half-way through the quarter.

Anyway, the next few hours and days would prove to be quite interesting as we got to know the Beaubois family. But I shall tell you of this next time, my friends!

Warm regards,
Jacques

Headed to the Hexagon

Chers amis,

Our very last morning in the UK was one of sorrow and despondence. We all awoke at roughly the same time, sat up in our beds, and glanced amongst one another with faces of utter despair. The air was filled with utter silence, a silence that could only be evoked by the sad realization of four bro’s going their separate ways. Actually, the silence was a product of us desperately not wanting to wake up our gigantic, tattooed roommate who was still sound asleep. We’ll say it was a combination of factors.

A tremendous sadness overcame the crew as we realized that precious, elegant moments like this would be hard to come by in the coming months.

We took an early flight from Dublin to London, once again using the “wear-as-many-of-your-clothes-as-you-can-so-your-bag-fits-as-a-carry-on-and-they-can’t-hit-you-with-a-30-euro-fee” travel strategy. I sat next to a gigantic, kindly African lady who spoke no English but loved pointing out things of convenience. For example, I was about to put my sandwich wrapper back in my backpack to throw away later when she tapped me on the shoulder, shook her head to communicate that I was doing something foolish, and, with a warm smile, placed the plastic wrappings into the pouch underneath my tray table. A bit of a strange gesture, to be sure, but certainly not lacking in politeness.

Anyway, we landed in London and finally the time came to split up. A gigantic group hug ensued, followed by silent prayer, followed by one of these:

Then, it was time to go. I headed to St. Pancras train station and hopped on the Chunnel, a high-speed train that amazingly travels underwater, beneath the treacherous English Channel. Eventually, I arrived in the City of Lights and headed over to my sister’s apartment to stay the night.

The next morning, our program officially began. I woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM and headed down to the MIJE, a youth hostel that we were using as a meeting place for orientation. Upon arrival, I was very pleased to see many familiar faces. Lacey and Ali from our English excursions were there, as were good homies Big Bird, Khosh, and Oaktown, among others.

Almost instantly, the topic of host families came up. I was absolutely insanely curious about what my host family was like, because I had heard many-a-good-story and many-a-horror-story. Soon, a charming lady named Elizabeth gave me the lowdown. I took a deep breath and braced myself for the news.

I had been placed with the Beaubois (pronounced “boh-BWAH”) family, a clan of five that lives in the northwest part of Paris. They were a family very steeped in French tradition – the children still referred to their parents in the ultra-polite “vous” instead of the casual “tu”, and vice-versa. There’s no real English equivalent, but imagine if calling someone “you” was very casual and familiar and calling them “youuuuuuu” like Soulja Boy was incredibly polite and elegant. Using this analogy, the Beaubois family would “Crank Dat” on the regular.

Soon, the fact that this was a family of five sunk in, and I was curious as to what the kids’ ages were. The oldest daughter, Alix (pronounced “ah-LEEX”), was 21, the middle son, Charles (“Sharl”), was 19, and the youngest daughter, Astrid (“ah-STREED”), was 18. This came as stupendous news – I had definitely been hoping to have some similarly-aged French folk in the house along with me. And, this obviously also presented an interesting ‘chising opportunity. To put it simply, I was stoked.

There were, however, a few drawbacks to my living situation. I was living in the 17th “arrondisement”, meaning the 17th quarter of the city. Though it is a nicer part of town, it is pretty far from the heart of the city, and from l’ISEP, our school. It would be a 40-minute metro ride to and from school every day. Balls!

The other drawback wasn’t particularly horrendous, but was a bit disappointing. There was another guy from our program, Sinbad, who was staying with the same family. I had seen Sinbad around before and had even faced off against him in beer sport freshman year, and he definitely seemed like a good guy. However, I knew that it would be next to impossible to speak French with him, just because it’s mind-bogglingly awkward to try to meet someone in a language that neither of you speak very well.

Though I was at first slightly disappointed by the news because of my desire to really enhance my French, I knew that Sinbad was a good man and that he would not hesitate to serve beer on the metro with me.

Anyway, we had a day full of information sessions after that which weren’t particularly fun, but I was able to meet some more good folks from the program. I also remarked, and this may be a bit strange to say because some of the folks from the program have been reading this blog, that there was an abundance of nice-looking ladies in our crew of Stanfordians. Not only that, but of 43 people on the program, 35 were of the female gender. That equates to 81%.

Clearly I was not too disappointed by the ratio, though the severe lack of fellow bro’s has actually been a bit rough thus far. In fact, this realization sank in that very night during a game of Kings where I was literally the only man present.

You see, there is a troubling aspect about being the only man in a group of females. Contrary to popular female belief, one man amongst a group of girls cannot be classified as a chick magnet. Not in the least. Rather, he often assumes the role of the “Gay Friend”.

You’ve seen the Gay Friend before. He was that guy you saw going shopping with his 10 stunning lady-friends at Neiman Marcus. He was that guy in high school in whom the ladies would confide all their deepest, darkest romantic desires. He was the guy that could playfully grab the teats of those 10 aforementioned ladies without getting in trouble. Why? Well, because he’s the Gay Friend, that’s why.

You thought Obama could get his Gay Friend on from time to time? Well, my friend, you thought right.

This is not to say that all gay people are the Gay Friend. That is just preposterous. But there cannot be any doubt that the role of the Gay Friend certainly exists. Thus, being surrounded only by ladies is, counter-intuitively, quite disadvantageous.

Despite the strange situation, the group of ladies proved to be very pleasant company, and we had a very enjoyable evening wandering around the city after our game of Kings. The next day was move-in day, and everyone was very excited, and, quite understandably, very nervous. Host family situations were known to make or break a trip. But I shall tell you of move-in day in excruciating detail next time, my friends.

Warm regards,
Jacques

The Lost Episodes

Chers amis,

A most peculiar thing has happened since my last post. DoucheGuy, a disgraceful cretin who also happens to be my worst enemy on the face of this Earth, has actually said something of substance for once. “Do you realize how ludicrously far behind you’ve fallen,” he asks while putting his idiocy on full display by forgetting to end his sentence with a question mark. “We are five days away from the mid-way point of our respective programs and you haven’t finished up the first two weeks.”

DoucheGuy rarely has anything intelligent to say, nor does he ever do anything particularly intelligent. The one intelligent thing he has ever done was to frame this very photo with Brook Lopez in the background. Brook dropped 28 and 13 on some team the other day. No big deal.

This criticism is so very legitimate that I cannot help but believe someone else posted it under DoucheGuy’s name. It is true, my friends – I am way behind. I have been living in France for almost 5 weeks and have not even begun to tell you of it. Fortunately, there is still hope: whereas for our two-week trip around the UK required a full description of each day, in France I can focus simply on the highlights.

With this in mind, I was about to begin a blitzkrieg of posts regarding my adventures in France. I soon realized, however, that I still had a bit of video footage from London and Edinburgh that has been left unshared. Below you can find a few motion pictures of the silliness we experienced in London and Edinburgh.

Before continuing along, be sure to watch this video, compare it to the 1:25 mark of the next one after, and vote for who is more intimidating in the “Comments” section.

And onward to Scotland…

Friends, from here on out my humble blog will probably seem a bit more arrogant and may smell a lot worse due to a lack of hygiene. This weekend, mes amis, the French flurry begins.

Warm regards,
Jacques

A Last Day of Debauchery

Chers amis,

The absence of posts in the past week has been nothing short of embarrassing. You, good readers, have visited me through thick and thin, presumably to laugh at the silly things I’ve done overseas, and how I have rewarded your curiosity? I’ve rewarded it with cowardice, irresponsibility, and douchebaggery, and for that I am eternally shamefaced. My sincerest apologies to you all.

Though I am certainly no stranger to embarrassment, as you can see, this treachery is particularly despicable.

Still, I cannot allow such embarrassment to inhibit more retelling of tall tales from abroad. This certainly seems to be the only logical antidote to mend the wounds of readership.

We arose groggily at around 11 that next morning. All of our roommates, even Harold, had taken off for the day. After the enjoyable but taxing pub crawl from the evening before, we felt obligated to do something that resembled a cultural/educational experience, so we vowed to visit a few churches and to experience Dublinia, an exposition about the history of Dublin.

Only in Dublinia can men indulge in their love of knighthood and chivalry without being called nerds.

Our first stop was Christchurch Cathedral in the heart of the city. We ambled down the elegant Dame Street, arm in arm whilst skipping and singing merrily. On our way, however, we were confronted by a most bizarre monument.

The statue of these elf-ish creatures, presumably young Irish children who had been bound and preserved in such intriguing poses, creeped us the fuck out.

It was at this moment that G-Reg added elf-ish statues to his list of most intense fears in the world. Such statues come in at #3 on the list, just underneath crossing the street in countries where they drive on the left side of the road at #2 and hooking up with a transsexual at #1. But really, any of these things would surely strike fear into the heart of any sane man.

Anyway, eventually we made it to Christchurch Cathedral and were pleased to see that you did not have to pay 5 Euros to get in and see the sights. Well, actually the Church was conveniently joined to Dublinia, so the entry fee was officially for both attractions combined. I guess they do that to fool silly Americans like me into thinking they are seeing the church for free and paying regular admission to Dublinia. Dash it all – I’ve been had!

In this photo, we see G-Reg racking his brain for a sneaky way to steal this undoubtedly expensive religious artifact.

Christchurch Cathedral in all its glory.

After taking in the niceties of the church, we headed over to Dublinia. The exhibit was actually far more detailed than we had anticipated – it included the history of Dublin all the way back from when it was founded and when Ireland was overrun by Vikings. An interesting tidbit of knowledge: the Vikings were known as legendarily fearsome fighters, and attributed much of this ferocity to their practice of “berserkergang”, in which they would force themselves into a mindless rage of violence.

Apparently, they were so possessed by this frenzy that they would go so absolutely nuts that they would bite their shields and not even care who they were swinging at in the heat of battle. This tactic certainly earned them quite a reputation amongst warriors back in the day, and it is for this reason that I have decided to make “berserkergang” a requirement for any who seek a roster spot on the KA Intramural Softball team this Spring. Three-peat, baby!

Let us hope that this KA Softball berserking results in more fearsome expressions than this one, for this would probably not even scare the most frightful of children.

We spent many, many hours in Dublinia checking out the different time periods and exhibits, many of which were quite intriguing. Quite peculiarly, the Dublinia staff decided to include one room that explained how residents of Dublin, er, dropped the kids off at the pool (source: Peter Geoghegan) a.k.a. defecated, waaay back in the day. This is what it looked like:

Doug the Hug kindly tagged this gentleman as me on Facebook. Thank you for that, Douglas.

The room was complete with its own soundtrack, which consisted of farting noises, loud groans, and the occasional, “Don’t just stand there! Bring me some more moss!” Yep. Apparently they wiped with moss back in the day. Mankind has come a long way, hasn’t it?

Anyway, after experiencing the wonders of Dublinia (which, despite its silliness, did teach us some pretty cool stuff), we ambled out and headed to Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle, sadly, was a major disappointment. We had spent so much time enjoying Dublinia that we were too late for the tour, and it was really more of a campus than a castle.

This was the coolest building we saw in Dublin Castle. Kinda cool, I guess. But if you slap the "Castle" tag on something, I'm expecting something a bit more legit. Maybe it's just me.

We finished off the day by taking a stroll around the city, taking in a few of the more famous streets such as O’Connell street, where we saw the Dublin Spire. It was at that point that I came to a stunning realization: there were Champions League games on TV that night! For you uncultured folk, the Champions League is the most prestigious soccer league in Europe where the best teams from around the continent face off for ultimate footballing supremacy.

On this evening, it was Manchester United and Besiktas playing on the silver screen, so we took in the game over some traditional pub food at our hostel’s bar, the Oliver St. John Gogarty’s. We had met up with Project Pat and Mr. Theory for dinner, and had all decided to be rather liberal with the amount of pints we ordered, considering it was our last night and thus our last chance to drink delicious Irish nectar.

A priceless bro-ing out moment.

From the pub, we headed to Project Pat and Mr. Theory’s hotel room for some beer sport. G-Reg was feeling a bit under the weather, so he headed back to the room to recover for a bit. He would recover in a big way. But anyway, we soon left the two Theta Delt homies to their own devices and headed back towards our part of town, called the Temple Bar district. It was at this point that something quite peculiar happened.

We were heading down O’Connell Street, just yammering amongst ourselves, when we passed a roving band of similarly-aged folks. “Excuse me,” a young lady asked me in an unmistakably North American accent, “Do you guys know if there are any pubs nearby?”

“Why, not really, but we are in search of a pub ourselves!” I responded merrily. “Care to join us?” This response, which seems so suave in retrospect, was probably just another Barry Badrinath moment.

My words, though probably not particularly smooth, did in fact result in them coming to the pub with us.

They accepted, and we soon found that they were Americans visiting on a program of some sort (my memory, which pales in comparison to that of a pachyderm, cannot recall exactly which one it was). They were all very nice people. Except for Nancy.

My friends, though I can certainly be a bit loud at times, I find that I generally make a good impression on new acquaintances. With this girl Nancy, every single thing I said prompted a roll of the eyes or small bouts of mocking laughter. At one point I was talking to her and her boyfriend (preparing, of course, for the inevitable swoop) and said something that must not have been particularly funny. She looked at her hubby with a look that can only be described as a “can-you-believe-how-much-of-a-tool-this-guy-is” look.

She was the kind of person that thought I was gay for liking Simon and Garfunkel, the greatest musical duo of all time. In my eyes, disliking Simon and Garfunkel is akin to admitting that your ears do not function properly and that you are a mindless tit of a human being. This girl clearly qualified for both, and I took her extreme aversion towards me as a symbol of pride. Well, towards the end of the evening it was clear that I was growing on her, but she had still been a complete bitch from the start.

Anyway, despite Nancy’s best efforts to ruin my evening (and my hope for people from Minnesota, for that matter), we still ended up having a great time. One of the highlights of the night was having a great conversation about fishing with an old Frenchman named Daniel. Daniel was old. Really old. And he was at the bar with his son, who was about 25 years my senior.

An avid, fisherman, Daniel told me all about his fishing exploits back in France, to which I smiled and nodded because I didn't understand half of what he was saying.

Despite the gap of multiple generations between us, we got along swimmingly with Daniel and his son. Soon, however, we were interrupted by a most enjoyable event: the catchy melody of The Proclaimers’ “500 Miles” had begun to blare out of the pub’s sound system.

As if on cue, Doug the Hug, G-Reg, Wild Bill, and myself all congregated in the middle of the bar and belted out the song as loudly and proudly as we could, even uttering many of the words in our poor, poor Scottish accents.

This wonderful musical experience got us all jazzed up, and G-Reg, who had managed to recover admirably from his earlier drowsiness, and I soon commenced ‘chising. By the end of the night, G-Reg had caught the attention of a most interesting lass who we shall call Rosemary, while I found myself canoodling with a kind girl named Kristina.

G-Reg and I decided to walk them back to their hostel, resigned to our fate of having nowhere to go but hopeful of a sneaky invitation in, but we soon lost track of Rosemary somehow. As the three of us wandered back to the hotel, I couldn’t help but think that G-Reg was cockblocking his own good buddy in the most obvious of way, and though I thoroughly was enjoying his company, I must say I wanted him to scram for a short while. Little did I know, G-Reg had this in mind the entire time, and actually went so far as to propose taking a swim in the River Liffey to allow the fireworks to continue.

Always mindful of the unwritten code of bro-laws, G-Reg seriously considered a plunge into the Liffey, and let me assure you that it did not look as glorious then as it does in this picture.

We thanked G-Reg for his noble idea but persuaded him to continue along with us. As we reached their hostel, Rosemary soon reappeared. G-Reg and I each said goodbye to our respective ladies, and I would be lying if I said there were no childish but necessary makeout seshes around the sketchiest corner of the hostel. We soon bade them goodbye and headed off in the direction of our own hostel. I was quite interested in how G-Reg’s conversation with Rosemary went, as any sane fellow would.

“So, G-Reg, what did you say to her?” I asked him curiously. His response was hesitant, but eventually came. “Uhh, a bunch of stuff. But she said some weird stuff back,” he said with a smile. “Weird stuff?” This clearly required elaboration.

G-Reg then told me that Rosemary, supposedly a devout Christian, had whispered many sweet nothings into his ear over the course of the evening. One of these sweet nothings was that she wanted G-Reg to relieve her of the ol’ V-card via a one-way ticket to bonetown. Another was that she wanted your ol’ buddy Jacques on the scene as well. Flattering! But certainly quite bizarre.

Anyway, it was a rather entertaining episode, and certainly a humorous way to end our two week voyage around the UK. We had seen, heard, and experienced much throughout our expedition and had bettered ourselves as human beings in the process. We had also worsened ourselves by drinking beer and not exercising enough. But all in all, the tradeoff was certainly worth it. Another chapter of my personal journey would soon be over, but the third and final leg, actually settling down in France with a host family, was yet to begin! But I shall tell you of this another time, my friends.

Warm regards,
Jacques

Doublin’ Up in Dublin

Chers amis,

Yes, I am a complete tool for giving this post such a title. Okay, let’s move on.

Standing at the top of a brewery with Guinness in hand and a panoramic view of the city at our fingertips, we certainly felt that life could get no better. Our collective naïveté led us to believe that we could stay there for hours on end enjoying the scenery and the nectar. Soon, however, a loud Irish voice announced the closing of the bar. Heartbroken, we descended the staircase and comforted ourselves by buying outrageously expensive gifts in the gift shop.

It was then that we decided to part ways (at this point it was the four original amigos plus Project Pat and Mr. Theory, our new buddies from Theta Delt), but we made a pact to meet up later for a pub crawl. Separated from our new homies, we took the typical American course of action and ate at Subway before purchasing a hefty bottle of rum to get us ready for the evening’s events.

Back at the hostel, we got ready to head out. Pretty soon, we were feeling revved up and ready to go, and we said goodbye to our roommate Harold (who had turned out to be a man indeed) and headed out the door.

The crawlers were supposed to convene just outside the entrance to Trinity College, a reputable Dublinian University that was a mere 5-minute walk from our hostel. We made it there quite easily, and though there were many people outside of it, there were no signs indicating that it was the pub crawl congregation spot. Our Edinburgh crawl, for example, had many folks dressed in red beckoning would-be crawlers in for a night of debauchery. Naturally, this lack of beckoners led us to believe that we were at the wrong entrance, so we headed inside the campus to find another gate.

15 minutes later, after asking many, many people, we decided that we had in fact been at the right place after all. Of course, when we finally returned there, everyone who had once been there was gone. “Dammit, that was a huge pub crawl!” we took turns moaning. “And I’m pretty sure I saw some nice looking ladies too!” Well, that second part was just me. We wandered around trying to find the group, but to no avail. Until Wild Bill had a brilliant idea.

“Maybe we should call them,” he said. And that’s precisely what we did. They told us to wait at a corner where they would come find us. We waited. They came. Well, he came. His name was completely incomprehensible, but it sounded kind of like “Carl” with an H in the middle of it. “Caharl”. Anyway, he was a cool guy and started leading us to the first pub, but then he said something that made us all scratch our heads: “It’s a pretty small lot tonight, lads, and not too many lasses. You’ll all be after the same one.”

Dumbstuck, we followed in silence. Well, not really. We were still quite jovial for having found the crawl, and by this time Project Pat and Mr. Theory had rejoined us so there was plenty of pleasant banter despite the ill news. Upon entering the first pub, we all ordered up a Guinness, said, “Sláinte!” (pronounced “Slahncha”), which is the Irish way of saying “cheers”, and drank up. It was at this point that we actually entered the next room and found our fellow crawlers. And that was when I saw her.

(No, this is not actually her. Remember when we talked about putting up people’s pictures without their permission? It just ain’t right.)

Suddenly, the pub’s soundtrack turned from Akon to the purest, sweetest Gregorian chant, and brilliant beams of golden light shone down from the heavens, creating a chiaroscuro effect seen only in the boldest works of Caravaggio. Her hair had such a mesmerizing golden color that even the folks at Sutter’s Mill would have dropped their mining tools in awe at the sight of them. Her eyes, light blue like the sky on a glorious summer’s day, shone suggestively fromn across the room. Her skin was so soft, so supple, that even a touch of Cris Carter’s waxed mitts would have paled in comparison. Well, actually that is complete horseshit. At this point I hadn’t even introduced myself to her, let alone felt her hands – that would just be mind-bogglingly creepy. In fact, this entire description may be exaggerated ever-so-slightly (she is reading this, after all). But it was a heart-warming moment and she was a very handsome lass, to be sure.

Anyway, after recovering from this moment of pure emotion, we introduced ourselves to our fellow pub crawlers. One was a Californian named Chris, who looked like a homeless man (though a kind homeless man at that), and then there was an Englishman named Ben who was far too wasted considering we were at the first pub. Then we met a few others before meeting the aforementioned lady, who, because she is Canadian, shall go by the name of Alberta, and we also met her traveling buddy, a gentleman named Yukon.

I spent most of the beginning of the evening chatting with a few of the other folks, but soon found myself in the midst of a delightful conversation with the two Canadians. Things began to sour when they began quizzing me on my knowledge of Canada; I correctly guessed (yes, “guessed” is a more appropriate word than “named” in this context) 7 out of the 13 provinces compared to their collective 48 out of 50 states. I was also unable to name the Canadian Prime Minister. Fuckin’ Stephen Harper. American homies, help me out here. Nobody knows that. Do they?

Anyway, despite my inescapable idiocy being revealed early on, I certainly established a great rapport with the two and we spent most of the rest of the crawl drinking, conversing, and having a grand ol’ time. In fact, one of the few times our conversation stopped was when I ran away to seek out Wild Bill because the pub was bumping “Gravel Pit” by the reputable Wu-Tang Clan. Wild Bill and I see eye-to-eye when it comes to rap. And really, who couldn’t like the Wu-Tang when they produce ridiculous videos like this?

Unfortunately, I was unable to find Wild Bill, and I later learned why. Apparently, he had accidentally nicked (British word for “pilfered”) the drink of a lovely German fräulein who had been sitting amongst a group of her lovely fräulein friends. Recognizing his error, Wild Bill kindly returned the drink, apologized…. and then stole it again a few minutes later. Dammit, Wild Bill. We can’t take you ANYWHERE.

As Yukon reported this story back to me, I laughed loudly but figured it was also about time to head out. I walked Alberta back to her hostel and learned that she would be in Paris as well in October. Ecstatic, I bade her “adieu” and headed back to my place with a spring in my step, hoping I had ‘chised enough to sow the seeds for something magnificent later on.

But, when I was only a few blocks from the hostel, I remembered the agreement we had made before the crawl had begun. Well, Wild Bill had proposed it, and we all had happily agreed to it. “Remember,” he had said, “At the end of the night, if you’re lost, the meeting place is McDonald’s.” I did a quick 180 and bee-lined for good ol’ Mickey D’s. What I saw there was absolutely stupefying.

It was three in the morning and McDonald’s was absolutely jam-packed. And not just with anyone. It was jam-packed with people decked out in their finest clubbing attire, all clearly suffering from a case of late-night drunchies after an evening of partying. For you Stanford folk, it was like Lag Latenight on PCP. Despite seeing no sign of the other three lads, I hopped in line to grab some grub of my own.

Moments after jumping in line, I felt a strong tap on my shoulder. It was G-Reg! And he was standing in the other line with the other three amigos about 5 feet away. For the next 10 minutes (the line was friggin’ long), I watched as Wild Bill hilariously tried to befriend the folks in the front of the line so he could sneak in his order (and presumably Doug the Hug’s and G-Reg’s) along with theirs. He actually probably made 15 new buddies through his efforts, but none had the patience to toss his order in along with theirs.

The taste of the Big Mac that night was like a taste of heaven. We all headed back to the hostel swapping stories of ‘chising, swooping, and seshing and entered into the room having found 3 new roommates. One was a gigantic, tattooed man who we desperately did not want to wake up. Wild Bill, thus, ate his extra fries in the bathroom. In complete silence.

Wild Bill. Drunk. Silent. These words probably have never been used in the same sentence outside of this one time. But, as I dozed off to sleep, I realized that I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It had been a sweet night in Dublin, and we were gearing up for a superb last night. Our two-week excursion was nearly over – but we would not let it go without a fight! Or at least not without some quality raging. But I shall tell you of this next time, my friends.

Warm regards,
Jacques

An Unforeseen Audience

Chers amis,

I awoke on this fine French morning to find a curious email sitting in my inbox. Its contents were as follows:

Hi Jacques,
We have been running into parents who know about your blog, the latest being [high school buddy]’s and [other high school buddy]’s parents. What is your blog, we would like to read it, since everyone else is.
Love,
Mom

Let me first say that I am flattered to have attained an audience that spans multiple generations. Quite honestly, I find that awesome, and I am very pleased to have any and all parents following along. However, I cannot help but worry that if my humble blog is passed along from parent to parent, it will inevitably fall under the gaze of someone who is just not, well, “down”.

“Down”. ‘Tis a curious word, ’tisn’t it? But what does it mean to be “down”? Well, it means that you get it.

You get that 20-year olds running willy-nilly around Europe sometimes do things they normally wouldn’t do at home. You get that sometimes they drink too much beer. You get that sometimes they pursue romantic escapades with similarly-aged women. You get that for some, like myself, these escapades are seldom successful. You get that they like to tell their buddies back home about their adventures on a silly image-littered website without leaving out details that could be perceived as over-the-top to an overly sensitive few. You just get it.

If you get these things listed above, you are down, no matter your age or your relation to your ol’ buddy Jacques. And if you are down, I am ecstatic that you have found my blog and I encourage you, nay, I beseech you to continue to follow along. But please be mindful that those who are not down, or “square” as the kids say, are more plentiful than you might imagine. And if one of these squares happens to stumble upon my humble blog, its existence will be put in jeopardy and I will probably be castrated by an angry mob of ex-UHS parents upon my return to America.

So, in closing, please be mindful of who you talk to about this little blog. But, as always, I invite you to continue reading along!

Warm regards,
Jacques

Headin’ Down to Dublin

Chers amis,

Those of you who have been following my misadventures so patiently and courteously will surely have recognized the bizarre, time-traveling nature of my retelling of them. Well, I must ask you once again to buckle up and get ready for another trip back into time, back before I sacrificed any dignity I may once have had at Oktoberfest. Why, you ask? Why, because there are still many tales to be told of our trip down to Dublin, you boob!

After a quick Belfastian breakfast, we took a bus ride down to Dublin. We would have taken the train, but Doug the Hug, through some typically masterful research, had caught wind of a bridge collapse between Dublin and Belfast, making the train ride a certain impossibility. Thankfully, the bus ride wasn’t all that painful, though, and within a few hours we were stepping outside into the crisp Dublin air.

Mere moments after disembarking, I noticed G-Reg’s jaw drop. He pointed across the bus station, and wouldn’t you know it, the ladies who I had mistakenly misled through the streets of Belfast were all there preparing to board a bus to Cork. Finally, I could clear my conscience with a personal apology! As I approached, I was nervous that they might hurl heavy objects and/or hurtful verbal abuse at me on sight, but instead they waved warmly and were quite cordial about the whole ordeal. Nice lasses, those Corkians.

We soon took off from the bus station and wandered in the direction of our hostel, the Oliver St. John Gogarty’s. Doug the Hug had mentioned that it was the only hostel in Dublin that actually had its own bar, so we were quite enthusiastic about getting there.

Unfortunately, our check-in was far from warm and fuzzy. The receptionist, though attractive, had a certain iciness in her tone that even Mr. Freeze, Batman’s arch-nemesis, would have tipped his cap to. Or perhaps he would tip the strange icy barbute covering the top of his ice suit. Though I can’t see how he would actually manage to remove it to actually perform a cap tip. Maybe he would just retract it and then put it right back up as a gesture of apprecia… never mind. This lady was just a total bitch, okay?

We headed up the stairs and entered our room. One of the beds was already claimed, as evidenced by a giant blue rolling bag sitting next to it with a tag that said “Harold”. Our spirits dropped even further when, after a quick iPhone internet consultation, we found that the chances of “Harold” being a female were very, very slim.

Soon our bellies began to rumble in unison, so we headed across the street to a Mongolian Barbecue place. Yes, you may think it quite silly to go to a Mongolian BBQ place in Ireland, but we remembered the delicious Irish burrito of a few days before and assumed the Irish had mastered all forms of foreign cooking. The Mongolian place, though pricey, did not disappoint, and G-Reg and the Hug filled their bowls three separate times to make sure they were getting their money’s worth.

We took it easy that night, partially to recover from our very active few nights in Belfast, but also because we knew the next day would be filled with cultural events that were very alcohol-oriented; we planned on going to both the Jameson Distillery and the Guinness Brewery. And, by golly, we did.

The next morning we decided to use a trip to St. Patrick’s cathedral as a little prelude to our tours of the two alcoholic refineries. Though the outside of the cathedral was pretty cool, I cannot tell you much about the inside. We walked in and found that there was a 5 Euro fee to actually amble around in there. Instead, we awkwardly stretched our necks over the entry ropes to take in as much as we could, looked at each other, nodded as if to say, “Yeah, that was as good as any 5 Euro tour,” and left.

From there, we headed to the Jameson Distillery. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of whisky, but I was excited to go through the factory and see how it’s made. Also, for those of you wondering why I keep spelling “whisky” without the “E”, it is because that’s the way it’s spelled in Ireland, apparently. Maybe someone was just bullshitting me so I look like an idiot, but I’m sticking with it.

We had heard rumors that there was a taste test between Jameson whisky and Jack Daniel’s somewhere on the tour. These rumors were confirmed when we sat down and our tour guide produced scrolls that allowed for a taste test, but sadly there were only eight for the entire tour group. Handing them out to the crowd, she moseyed over to our group and handed the scroll to none other than Wild Bill, who then gave his name as “Wilhelm Kempski”.

Though the tour of the distillery was actually rather unmemorable (it was more of a museum because they no longer actually produced whisky there), the taste test at the end was fun to watch. We had scoffed a bit earlier at a few passages from a gigantic book that reviewed the different types of whiskies in the world using some extraordinarily silly vocabulary. For example, Jack Daniel’s was described as “chewy”. Let us just say that Wilhelm Kempski did not hesitate in borrowing that term to make himself seem like a true whisky connoisseur.

After finishing up at the Distillery, we lunched and headed for the true highlight of the day: the Guinness Brewery. Virtually every person we passed on our way there was wearing some sort of Guinness attire; clearly we were not the only ones with the idea of visiting on this fine Dublinian day.

Once inside, we had the distinct pleasure of running into two of Wild Bill’s Theta Delt buddies from Stanford. They were two classy gentlemen indeed, and we explored the rest of the Brewery’s wonders with them.

Perhaps the best part of the Brewery was the very top, called the Gravity Bar. It was a giant bar serving up free Guinness (though you were limited to one – weak) as well as boasting a giant, panoramic view of Dublin. We each claimed our free pint of Guinness and posed suggestively for the camera together.

Anyway, we prepared to leave the Guinness factory but were soon seduced by the allure of the Guinness gift shop. There, I picked up a pretty excellent looking Guinness tie and some fancy Guinness socks, as well as a few gifts for friends back home (no, $chwime, not you). We then made a communal decision to go to a pub crawl later that night. It would prove to be one of the more bizarre crawls we’d been on on the trip. But I shall tell you of this soon, my friends! I am tired and must hit the hay for now.

Warm regards,
Jacques

Wir Müssen Trinken: Oktoberfest Interlude Part Zwei

Chers amis,

Thankfully, my internet woes have been resolved, and I am now able to recount the second half of our Oktoberfest journey. The solution required no more than a trip to Darty, the French version of Best Buy, to buy a little widget that replaced whatever broke on the inside of my computer. But don’t think you’re off the hook, HP. I will find you. And then I will scribble phallic drawings on you.

Anyway, let us go backwards in time to the morning of September 26th, a Saturday. Already having a significant day of drinking under our belts, we figured it might be a good time to rest easy and head back down to the beer tents at a leisurely hour. But Nicky’s sister’s warning about the arrival of the Italians lingered in the back of our minds, so we figured we’d play it safe. Really safe. We woke up at 6:00 in the morning and were headed out by 6:30.

Needless to say, we were a groggy bunch. Well, all of us except the new arrival in our crew, a man named Turkish Mike. Turkish Mike had gotten in the previous evening, and was most likely quite unimpressed by the fact that we had all passed out so early. This disgust would lead him later in the day to approach his drinking in the manner of Tyson Gay rather than our own Bernard Lagat-ian pace. Despite Mike being the only chipper member of the group, we successfully made it down to the Hofbrauhaus, a somewhat touristy but wildly popular beer tent, where we were greeted by a sizeable line, presumably consisting of about half the population of Italy. After a couple hours of patient foot-tapping, the doors finally opened wide, and in we flooded to fill our empty stomachs (none of us had had any breakfast) with more nectar, though I must confess that beer was the very last thing I wanted to drink at that moment.

Once in the tent, we assembled a gigantic posse of Stanford partygoers including the five of us, She-Wolf, Sancho, Ze Beast, Sir Cheddars, Billy V, British Chris, and a gaggle of others. Unfortunately, we soon realized that we would have to wait about an hour to actually be served any brew; the lovely beermaidens did not start dishing out brew until 9:00! Personally, I was secretly pleased to have been awarded some time to find some food to defend my stomach from the cascade of brew that would soon come crashing down from through my body, but unfortunately all I could find was a sugar donut that I pilfered from DoucheGuy. To use a nerdy Lord of the Rings analogy, my stomach was akin to the well-fortified but weakly defended castle of Helm’s Deep, while the giant steins full of beer represented the legions of fearsome Orcs preparing to ransack my keep. As the clock struck 9:00, my legs quaked much like those of even the most courageous of footmen.

The beermaidens were soon upon us. Steins full of brew were thrown out onto the tables, and Euro notes of every color were tossed back at them as gestures of gratitude. It was just as I took a long swig of my first beer that I started to overcome the dreadful combination of sleep-deprivation and hangover and started to actually feel like tossing a few back. Perhaps it was the Hofbrauhaus atmosphere, which was about twice as electric as Schottenhammel, or perhaps even a sugar-high induced by the donut. Or perhaps I was just trying to gloat in the face of DoucheGuy, who was in by far the worst shape of us all.

Though he had returned earlier than the rest of us and had actually had a bed to sleep upon, DoucheGuy had been an absolute wreck that morning. Long gone was any sense of energy or enthusiasm – the only thing he really said all morning could be heard in the video above. I almost missed his tasteless jokes, his crude comments, his boorish and unbearable demeanor. Almost. The one thing he was able to do that morning was complain, and he complained endlessly about a certain queasiness affecting his stomach. I figured he was just bitching for bitching’s sake, but I soon captured this wonderful footage of him that served as strong evidence of his actually having a problem. Keep an eye on DoucheGuy in the background of this video. You can find him by looking for a tall, gangly, oafish figure in a grey sweatshirt. Or you can just look for the only person who is not having any fun at Oktoberfest.

That was the very moment when DoucheGuy departed for the “toiletten” to spew not one, not two, but three times. He soon returned and, while the other few thousand people in the tent were properly enjoying their beers, ordered a stein full of Coke. The amount of random people who made fun of him for that were so numerous that I could not keep track of them on two hands. Because DoucheGuy’s misery is directly proportional to my happiness and well-being, I was having the time of my life despite still feeling a bit queasy myself.

After being joined by another legion of Stanford homies including BroJack, Meekey, and Big Bird, many more steins of brew were consumed and the next 8 or so hours consisted of nothing more than magnificent beer, splendid song, joyous camaraderie, and the occasional trip to the “toiletten”. Though I cannot remember everything myself, I was able to take a few more videos along the way that summed up the day. I would estimate that around the 3-minute mark is where I completely blacked out – you’ll notice that I am, for absolutely no reason, filming a totally random old man who is in the process filming the rest of Oktoberfest.

A few highlights:
1:10 – I begin singing a drinking song that Captain Nasty himself created on that very day. The song, sung to the tune of “Frere Jacques”, went a little something like this:

Wir müssen trin-ken!
Wir müssen trin-ken!
Vie-le Bier!
Vie-le Bier!
Ich mag trin-ken!
Ich mag trin-ken!
Vie-le Bier!
Vie-le Bier!

The direct translation is:

We must drink!
We must drink!
Ma-ny beers!
Ma-ny beers!
I like to drink!
I like to drink!
Ma-ny beers!
Ma-ny beers!

The creativity required to create such a song is simply mind-boggling. Kudos, Cap’n Nasty!

3:07 – Our random German friend is explaining how most of the people in the tent are not in fact German when we are all splashed by a giant tsunami of beer coming from the stein of none other than the She-Wolf herself. Her explanation was that she had intentionally sloshed the brew in the direction of a Spaniard who had groped her but had misfired rather severely.

Though my memory is understandably quite hazy, there are a few things I am able to recall about the day. For one, I managed to purchase a delightful German hat which sat perched atop my head for most of the day. At one point, however, it was stolen from me, and I soon committed the rest of my afternoon to finding it. As I looked around to see who had it, I saw that one of the Spaniards whose table neighbored ours was sporting a nearly identical had, and had glanced at me with somewhat of a grin. I’m pretty sure I had been talking to him earlier, but am not positive. Anyway, I made a mental note that he was a prime suspect and began wandering around other parts of the tent that I had been in in search of the hat. With each step, I became more and more sure that this fellow had in fact stolen my hat, and once I was about 50 steps away from our table, I was sure of it. But for some strange reason, I was also sure that he would put up an absolutely devilish fight when I went to snatch it back from him.

My friends, I am not a fighter. If I trained a bit I might be able to inflict some damage, but my lack of both hand-eye coordination and killer instinct lead me to believe that I would be rubbish as a fighter. Still, I mentally prepared myself for intense physical combat upon reclaiming my hat. I could picture every moment of the scene in my head. “Hey, punk!” I would shout heroically as I approached him whilst the entire noise of the crowd was reduced to a hush. “I believe you have my hat!” The Spaniard, enraged that I had discovered his robbery of my lid, would narrow his eyes, utter a battle cry, and charge. I would quickly get him in the headlock, a move that my father Bob always taught me to use, and promptly subdue him. Then, I would plant the hat atop my head and, with a cocked fist, ask him sternly, “Which way do you want your nose to go?” after which, of course, the entire tent would erupt into applause. Interestingly, this little imagined scenario was exactly what the aforementioned Bob once did to a particularly belligerent homeless man, but I imagined my situation would go down pretty much the same way. I was terribly, terribly wrong.

As I approached the Spaniard with a forced tough-guy grimace adorning my face, he glanced in my direction. Of course, the very first words out of my mouth did not come out nearly as confidently or menacingly as I had hoped. “Excuse me, I just lost a hat that looked exactly like that one… Are you sure that one is yours?” I braced myself for the attack, but the Spaniard looked at me, hung his head, and said, “Awwwww,” expressing his sheer disappointment that I had caught on to his trick. He gave me the hat back without struggle, and I proceeded to talk to him and his friends for the next half-hour or so, as well as ‘chise on the girl that his Italian friend was trying to seduce. She seemed down.

After this hat experience is where things fade to black for awhile. I dimly recall trying to earn myself some beermaiden karma throughout the afternoon, as I remember doing about 8 laps around the outer perimeter of the tent guiding the maidens through the hordes of drunkards. It was the least I could do – I had spent all day getting in their way, and these ladies are literally quite pushy when it comes to delivering beer to thirsty partygoers. I also remember throwing all that karma out the window when, in an attempt to glide out of the way of one of the maidens, I slipped on some spilled nectar and caught myself from completely eating shit, but not without crashing into one of the kind beer ladies. She chewed me out rather nastily in German, but my feelings remained unhurt because I was somehow able to convince myself that she was yelling at someone else.

Anyway, I eventually made it back to the house around midnight to find all the rest of the lads back there. Once again, they all had some interesting stories to tell. Widukind had attempted to participate in a rousing match of bumper cars against some of the other homies, but in his drunken state, he had been completely unable to start the cars. Germans from all sides wreaked havoc upon his car, sending him careening every which way for many, many minutes, until he finally realized that he needed to put Euro coins into the little slot in the car to rev it up for some payback. Literally 5 seconds after he had deposited his Euros into the little car, it putted to a halt – the game was over.

DoucheGuy had gotten far too hammered for the second day in a row and had apparently been a walking zombie. Many of our Stanford friends from the reputable Kappa Alpha Theta sorority claimed that he had entered a bar of some sort, walked right past them all while ignoring their waves and “Guten Tag”s, ordered a beer, and then passed out on a table before it even came to him.

Our dear friend E-Liss also had a rather funny story to tell, though her tale had more to do with someone else’s belligerence than her own. Her parents had elected to come to Oktoberfest along with her, and had spent a bit of time alongside her in the beer tents. “This guy next to me kept yelling, ‘Show me your titties!’ all night long,” she recounted matter-of-factly. “It was slightly awkward with the parents… Mom had this look on her face. And he was OLD too.” Ah, only in Munich.

Anyway, the rest of the lads didn’t have to leave until later on Sunday, but thanks to my tardy purchase of plane tickets, the only reasonably priced flight was at 8:00 that morning. I dozed off at around 1:00 only to be woken a bit later by some outrageous commotion outside the room. I decided to investigate.

Outside were two drunken Germans and the rest of the crew, who had just gotten back from a clubbing adventure. One of the Germans had apparently developed a fondness for our friend Pyphy, who was staying with us as well, and had politely requested that she take a bath with him. “Dahhhhhling! Come into the bath! Dahhhhhling!” gushed the charming man from Munchen. When she refused, he and his other German buddy comforted themselves instead with a great shampoo battle in the bathroom.

The next morning, despite waking up an hour and a half late (which was still early – 5:30 in the morning to be exact), I tossed on my clothes and my German hat which made me look kind of like a gay Indiana Jones who had just revamped his wardrobe with a bit of Deutsch flair, and headed to the airport. After a connection in Zurich I was home, tired out from an absolutely ridiculous weekend. Munich, you shall be dearly missed.

My dear readers, I apologize for the overly fratty tone of this post, but you must understand that the Oktoberfest culture facilitates, nay, necessitates such behavior. If ever you should come across the chance to visit Munich at this magical time, I encourage you to seize it without hesitation. You will see what I mean, if you haven’t already!

Warm regards,
Jacques

A Vow of Revenge

Chers amis,

I am truly apologetic for not having completed the tales of our adventures in Munich, but I must insist that it is not my fault. Rather, it is the fault of the imbeciles at HP, and their idiocy may well inhibit the progress of this blog for quite some time. Basically, I woke up yesterday morning to find that my computer could no longer detect any wireless networks to connect to. Considering the French are very gauche when it comes to technology, I figured that my host family’s network had just crapped out and it would be back up and running when I returned from school. This turned out not to be the case.

Much to my chagrin, I came home from a long day of class to find that my computer was still completely without internet. But what truly made alarm bells begin to ring in my head was when I saw my housemate Ben using his computer quite happily, experiencing no problems with the internet whatsoever. Something was wrong.

My friends, I am a child of the technological generation. When I am without regular internet access, I become, dare I say, enraged. This uncontrollable anger comes in part from my inability to communicate with you all via this silly blog, if you can believe that.

Anyway, I tried everything I knew to fix this damn computer, but finally succumbed to calling the “toll free” hotline at HP. I first called the US number, where they informed me that it was not in fact toll free if I was calling from overseas. Overestimating my skill in French, I hung up and called the HP France number where I was quickly yelled at in French and, frightened like a little schoolgirl, hung up the phone without saying so much as “bonjour”. It became apparent that I would have to take the financial hit and call the US number again, submitting my phone bill to charges of over a buck a minute.

After wasting about 8 whole dollars on hold, I began speaking to a man named Carl. Carl was probably the single most retarded person I have ever spoken to on the phone, in person, or even through instant messenger. He kept informing me that because I had no warranty, he could not so much as give me advice as to how to fix my computer. After going through this entire speech about how he couldn’t help me (and Carl spoke very slowly, so he wasted another 12 dollars of mine), he then decided to finally mention that this problem I was having was not in fact limited to my own computer. Every single HP Pavilion laptop that HP created had this same hardware defect that causes the internet to fizzle-out after awhile. It was such a severe engineering gaffe that they even had a recall for the laptops, a recall that they obviously neglected to inform me of.

Now that Carl had now rewarded me with one piece of valuable information in 15 minutes, I popped the question that I had deemed necessary to conquering my computer woes: “Carl, how can I fix this?” His answer made me nearly fling the phone out of my window in anger. “You can only fix it by sending it to the US to be repaired. And the last day of the recall is tomorrow.” What does that mean, Carl? “That means, if your laptop does not arrive by tomorrow, you will have to pay $398 for the repairs.”

The bubbling broth of anger in my system had finally boiled over. I went on an absolute rampage of vulgarity cursing HP, cursing David Hewlett, cursing Packard (I didn’t know his last name so I just said Packard), cursing Carl, cursing Carl’s mother, cursing Carl’s family members, cursing Carl’s future children – and then my phone ran out of minutes, meaning I needed to charge it with yet another 40 Euros. Needless to say, I then cursed the phone company for good measure.

In essence, I no longer have wireless internet, and because my host family has no internet jacks, so I will be without regular internet probably for the rest of my trip. And it’s all because of David fucking Hewlett, and _____ fucking Packard. Hopefully I can find a solution to this so I will be able to continue to write you of my adventures on a regular basis, but solution or not, the instant I set foot on American soil I am going straight to the Hewlett and Packard buildings at Stanford and vandalizing them with the largest phallic drawings ever known to man. And I am also going to sign up for a tour of HP and go on a bitch-slapping rampage, leaving no employees un-bitch-slapped. HP is a disgrace to Stanford, to America, and to humanity in general.

The irony of this is that in the time I took to write this, I probably could have cobbled together the second Oktoberfest post. But I simply had to get this off my chest. I’ll try to get the Oktoberfest Part Zwei up tonight if I can find a computer, but in the meantime, if anyone has any ideas for how I can remedy my annoying and enraging situation, holler at your boy.

Warm regards,
Jacques

Wir Müssen Trinken: Oktoberfest Interlude Part Eins

Chers amis,

Though I have deviously attempted to mask my tardiness on the blog, it will probably come as no surprise to you that I have fallen far behind in sharing my adventures with you. This is certainly not because painting pictures with words on the site is a chore; quite conversely, I regard it as a luxury. But it is difficult to find time every day to describe to you the events in what can sometimes become sickeningly detailed fashion.

This tardiness is really not too big of a problem, for I have many, many bullet points in my handy journal which help me trigger vivid memories of my voyage. However, it does become a bit tricky when I simply cannot wait to write about a new occurrence. My excursion to Munich for Oktoberfest this past weekend is just one such instance, and thus I have chosen to skip ahead a few weeks to tell you all about it. But fear not, dear readers, I shall certainly return to the past shortly hereafter, so no detail will be left unshared.

Only a few weeks ago, I thought I was completely screwed with regard to attending Oktoberfest. G-Reg, Doug the Hug, and I had reserved spots in a hostel for this coming weekend well in advance, but I found out that my program was doing a mandatory trip that same weekend. In short, I was up shit creek. However, as if by some divine intervention, I was soon sent a Facebook message offering lodging in Munich by the most unlikely of people, a man who to this day I regard as my mortal enemy, a man who has defiled this blog in the comments section almost as perversely as $chwime has: a man who goes by the name of DoucheGuy.

Though I suspected this seemingly kind offer was nothing more than a cheap assassination attempt, I decided I would accept it and stay on my guard during my time in Munich in case of any foul play. I booked an outrageously expensive plane ticket to Munich for Thursday the 24th. My trip to the airport, however, proved to be an adventure in itself; it took literally four separate wind sprints through the Charles de Gaulle airport to get to the gate on time.

After an eventful plane ride in which I befriended a few outrageously tool-ish Frenchmen and was offered a free sandwich by a fine French filly (sadly, because she showed little interest in me after I tried to initiate conversation post-sandwich, I concluded that she was not in fact ‘chising on me but rather just thought I was fat and hungry), I stepped out of the Munich airport. Probably about 8/10 of the people I passed by clutched frosty brews, and about 1/2 were sporting the traditional German Oktoberfest attire of lederhosen and dirndls. It certainly looked quite promising.

Soon I met up with Widukind, a good buddy from high school whose hilariousness can only be rivaled by the most talented of comedians. We decided to meet up with DoucheGuy and Captain Nasty, another road dogg from Stanford. On the way, we quickly experienced the welcoming nature of the German people when a completely “betrunken” German girl tried to guide us to our destination. The only thing she said or did that we could really understand was sticking out her tongue at us periodically and yelling, “Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” We were perturbed, but quite amused.

In spite of the distraction of our new drunken friend, we eventually met up with DoucheGuy and the Cap’n and headed to our place of residence, the house of a native German named Nicky. We had arranged to sneak through his back door because he wasn’t actually there, but we were arriving at 1:00 in the morning so we had to be quite stealthy. The sound of a guard dog barking ferociously inside the house did little to allay our fears of creeping in unnoticed, but we eventually snuck in successfully. Always true to form, DoucheGuy was his douchey self and tracked feces of the canine variety into the house. Typical.

Anyway, we rested up that night in anticipation of much raucous activity the following day. As if sharing the bed with DoucheGuy wasn’t a horrible enough experience, he cleverly smashed me across the face with a pillow mere seconds after turning off the light in the room. Fortunately I was able to exact my revenge on him in the form of some covert bum-tickling once he had drifted off to sleep.

We were awoken the next morning by Nicky’s younger brother. He gave us some good information about the area and Oktoberfest in general, but the only thing Widukind had on his mind was one question: “Do you think he looked like he would have a hot sister?” Yes, rumor had it that Nicky had a sister who would be in the house with us as well. She entered the room about 5 minutes later. Sadly, she was not particularly trim. She did, however, provide us with some important advice. “Today you can go to ze Oktoberfest a bit later because it is Friday,” she told us earnestly. “But tomorrow…” her eyes narrowed a bit and she furrowed her brow in contempt, “…the Italians are coming.”

After a nice breakfast, we headed out and soon reached the festival. It looked like a giant carnival complete with rollercoasters, games, food stands, and, most importantly, enormous tents filled with tables, benches, steins, and fine German brew. We promptly decided to investigate, and entered a tent called Schottenhammel. It did not disappoint.

The spectacle we saw inside the tent was downright flabbergasting. Never before had we seen such a collection of men and women decked out in full German attire. And never before had we seen so much beer. Thousands upon thousands of steins chock-full of “bier” could be seen clinking against each other and being pounded down upon the tables, that is, when they were not being raised to one’s lips. All the while, a traditional German brass band played its German tunes loudly and proudly atop a tall platform. It was a superb sight, and we soon ran across a crew of other Stanford homies including Sir Cheddars, Ze Beast, Billy V, She-Wolf, the Alley Cat and Sancho, which vastly expanded the size of our crew.

Captain Nasty had warned us about drinking too quickly before the weekend had even begun. “Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he had told us sternly. None of us, including himself, adhered to his advice. The manner in which we sprinted would have made Usain Bolt quake in his track spikes. We had reached the tent at 11:00 AM. By about 2:00 PM, the Cap’n could not formulate a sentence. Neither in German nor in English. The rest of us were similarly schwapped, and it was at that point that I blacked out.

Darkness took me. There is a rather large gap of 4 or 5 hours where the devilish alcohol appears to have pilfered my hippocampus of most of its memories. I do not recall leaving the tent, nor do I recall how many steins of brew I consumed. All I know is that I finally came to at about 7:00 PM and I was all alone. But not just all alone doing nothing. I was all alone in the middle of a self-guided tour of a gigantic tower in the middle of Munich. And somehow I had made it to the top floor and seemed to have fallen asleep leaning against the wall.

I slowly stumbled all the way back down and exited the tower. I could see almost the entirety of Oktoberfest before me. The beer tents illuminated by the bright lights of food stands and other carnival attractions, loomed ominously in the distance. I was mesmerized by the rapid swinging of many of the roller coasters, and soon felt dizzy. The only place to lie down was on the lawn in front of the tower, a slanted pitch of grass upon which many, many people were sitting and conversing excitedly. I promptly muted all other sounds and passed out, right in the midst of thousands upon thousands of party-goers.

I slowly woke up at about 8:30 and decided it was time to go home. For some reason, I had completely neglected to call any of the other lads, probably out of fear of running up my phone bill with expensive international calls. I was not content to make expensive phone calls, but my belly soon began grumbling angrily and it became quite clear that I was content to buy an expensive half-chicken from a nearby food stand.

The kind German man handed me this juicy half-chicken on a flimsy paper plate, and as I was about to begin eating it, I somehow initiated a conversation with a few nice German ladies. The scene must have looked something like the part in Beerfest when Barry Badrinath is completely hammered but thinks he’s the most suave guy in the entire place.

For some reason, I thought I was acting with considerable grace and charm when conversing with these ladies. In reality, they had to warn me on three separate occasions that I had begun spilling the juice from the half-chicken all over myself without even noticing the hot liquid as it cascaded down upon my body. After the third time, it was clear they had seen enough. They hurriedly told me they needed to go to a birthday party and would hopefully run into me later.

As they made their hasty departure, I finally sat down to finish my half-chicken. Widukind would later tell me that I called him as I was eating the chicken and had told him this very story. But apparently, after informing him of the ladies’ birthday party excuse, I had told him with complete sincerity, “I can’t BELIEVE they didn’t invite me.”

Anyway, I eventually made it back to the house and stumbled up to my room. Much to my surprise, all three of the lads were already back and in bed, though they were all awake. They had all gotten completely separated and had their own funny drunken adventures to share. RJ had forgotten almost everything he had done, but his one memory came from taking the Bahn (German train) home and seeing a German infant attempting to put some Legos together. “Hilfe!” the child would cry as he ran into trouble. But the little fella said nothing more. He just kept trying to put it together for a few seconds and then cried, “Hilfe!” The thought of drunken DoucheGuy creepily watching this young child and laughing hysterically by himself on the Bahn made us all smile.

Captain Nasty did not remember much either, though he was able to recall trying to break into a ballet shop we had passed by on our morning trip towards the festival. Apparently, as the alcohol coursed through his veins he had felt an irresistible urge to put his ballet skills on display. Even if it he was doing it in the dark. Alone.

Widukind had learned how to say “Nice to meet you” and “Pretty” in German and had put his newfound knowledge to good use by saying it to every female he came across in our beer tent. “Freut mich, hupsh!” he exclaimed suggestively. He also had almost gotten kicked out for spilling on a “Reserved” sign on our table (our table had been reserved by other people but we used it until they got there) and then promptly pocketing it.

As we all passed out in our beds, the notion of just how early we were waking up the next morning did not quite cross our minds. Fortunately, we were getting in bed at around 10:00, so we were not completely without rest. We would need every second of sleep we would get – the Italians proved to be very feisty that next day. But I shall tell you of this tomorrow, my dear readers.

Before I take leave of you for the evening, I am pleased to report that I brought the video camera for the second day in Munich so you can experience Oktoberfest through my eyes in motion-picture form. Should be legit. Until next time!

Warm regards,
Jacques