Frankfurt...where 5am happens.

So first of all I apologize for the lack of my blogability or something like that over the past few months.  I haven't been a wallflower or anything, just too damn lazy to blog which is disappointing to like the 5 of you who read this.  So sorry my peeps, but I will try to do better, I swear...just yell and badger me and guilt me into posting (Wade Stick excels at this).

So in thinking about what to discuss on this, my glorious return to the blog, I figured giving a little insight into my rambling text messages from the middle of the night may be a good thing...or at least a look into the weird that happens in the early Frankfurt AM.  First let me preface that I was no stranger to closing down bars back in the native land of Cleveland or my adopted home of the hotness that is Atlanta.  However, as all of my fellow friends of the bottle know, the bars close at a somewhat reasonable 2-2:30 AM back in the majority of the USA.  Let me tell you, this is a good thing...seriously.  I know the lot of you who get after it may want the party to go on all night, and some of you who may have experienced NYC or Chicago and the magic of 4am may long to have that ability each and every day of your drinking career.  This is a slippery slope my friends, once you commit yourself to the long haul of a truly dangerous night out where the hallucinations of Jager kick in and the whiskey flows maybe a little too profusely, you may find yourself regretting decisions (the ones you recall at least) for weeks on end.  The loss of motor skill is not uncommon either.  Your legs may just give way to the pavement or you may find yourself wandering the streets in your socks wondering just what the hell is actually happening.  Yes this is the magic of 5am when only the truly hardcore are being removed from a bar and seeking refuge at the 24 hour saloon if only to sober up on beer.

If this is what it looks like when you walk home, you may be drunk

These nights in Frankfurt always seem to start on the same note, usually me stating to one of my fellow revelers that I don't want to make it a long night and will probably take off after the evening's first stop.  Then the rub happens, see in Frankfurt I get everywhere I go via the train system (and a mighty wonderful thing the U-Bahn is).  However, the train system takes a short nap in the early AM from 1 until 4:30, so if you miss that last train you find yourself reasoning with the fact that since you missed that train you might as well continue on until the trains start running again.  Yes Frankfurt has taxi cabs a plenty, but that would ruin the whole point of reasoning with yourself that it is OK to stay out a little while longer, I mean it is only 3 more hours and what is that when you have already been out for 3+ hours.  So then it is decided you have settled in for the long haul and the excitement that awaits for you at then bottom of your next glass of Pils.

The first two hours generally tick by in relatively normal fashion, I mean it is only 3 AM an hour I am accustomed to and at this point, unlike Rob Thomas, I am not lonely.  Nay, I am surrounded by my fellow man.  Hell this is the time when you are making life long connections with people (or so you think).  A 3 AM conversation with your new friends from Ireland (who's names you won't remember in 3 minutes, let alone the next day) regarding tomorrow's rugby match, a perfectly normal thing.  User beware as you may be convinced that you need to now power through the evening and watch rugby with you new friends at 7 AM...(yes this actually happened).  Then you are in, pulling for even the longer haul.  You may still realize that going home is the more acceptable answer at this point, but what fun would that be and you would never wake up in time for this all important rugby match (even if you have never watched the game before).  So there you find yourself, another bar, 4 AM...time ticking down, only 3 more hours to go, but wait where did your new friends go?  You remember something about a 24 hour bar near the train station so in a cab you ride trying to find this dive (and why you don't have them steer you home, it is a lost cause at this point) and by the grace of you cabbies ability to understand slured English you actually find this bar.  5 AM...6 AM...you know a few faces in the bar, but comprehension is not your strongest attribute at this point, you are just buying time and finally, 7 AM.  Luckily the 24 hour bar is around the corner from your rugby spot and somehow the Irish guys are there!  You settle in and watch about 10 minutes of rugby before you realize, you have no idea what is going on in this game and have a snowballs chance in hell of actually figuring it out...so to the cab you go (even though the trains are running...you reason that you just need to get home at this point) and find your way back to your bed to rest up until you can't fight the daylight anymore.

This is just one variation of the story, sometimes you find yourself drinking with a guy in his late 60s from Minnesota named Kurt (ok, so Kurt is probably my favorite person I have met in Frankfurt, he is the dirtiest old man ever).  Maybe you run into someone telling you to trust the alternative media that turns into an argument where you proclaim that the "alternative media" is just some fat kid sitting in his parents basement eating Cheetos.  Other times you are just singing Country Roads at the top of your lungs with the rest of the bar and pouring one out for Jani Lane (people thought I was nuts).  The key to making this all successful at the end of the day is finding people to employ the buddy system of drinking with.  At the end of the day, we all need someone who you can count on to tap you on your shoulder when you really need to go home, or at least is committed enough to see it through to the other side with you.  This is the one unequivocal fact that I have learned in my first 6 months living abroad, and something that is missed from time to time.  It is also a fact that I (along w/ most that I know) take for granted back in the US.  Your friends who are willing to belly up with you and from time to time send you on your way are the most important accessory to a successful night out.

To those of you who have been to this dark side with me I thank you and hope that I have or will return that favor to you in the near future.

See you on the flip.

Authors Note:  I sincerely apologize for quoting Matchbox 20 in this blog post.  I will do better with my pop-culture references next time.

My Introduction to German...Culture?

Ok so I have to start this off by saying that this post is going to be quite graphic in nature...seriously.  What I saw on this trip to the museum was quite possibly some of the most disturbing stuff I have ever seen, but it needs to be described in full to give you the reader the best insight as to what I saw while on this journey.  So with that you have been fairly warned, and if reading about some truly weird/graphic/mind numbing stuff is not your bag, I simply ask that you bypass this post and read some of my other posts that will try to be highly entertaining and somewhat insightful at the same time.  Thanks. JTH.

So the Monday after Easter was a state holiday here in Germany and as I had the day off and was still located in my 10x10 cell of a hotel room I decided that this would be a great day to take in some of the finer points of the 40+ museums located in the Frankfurt area.  So with a quick look on trusty old tripadvisor.com for some reviews I settled on taking in the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt (www.mmk-frankfurt.de), thinking that I would catch a few Warhol's, a Dali or 2, hell maybe even a Jackson Pollack!  So after a quick walk across downtown I was at the foot of the MMK and my journey into the German world of fine art began, well after I paid my EUR 8 entrance fee that is.

So as I started to walk in, it became apparent that the MMK frequently rotates their works and sometimes you experience will be based on the luck of the draw and the day I happened to walk in it was at the tail end of an exhibition that consisted entirely of photography.  No big deal though, I can appreciate some of the aspects of modern photography and it's contribution to art in the 20th century.  I mean one of my favorite exhibits that I took in while I was in Atlanta was on Annie Leibovitz and her exquisite collection of portraits that she has taken over the years.  Well as I walked in I noticed a sign that stated that some of the exhibits may not be appropriate for younger audiences, whatever, I'm no parent and what could possibly be that terrible in an art museum?  So I ascended the staircase into the first exhibition hall and walked into a room that was filled with photos of what I can only describe as Japanese bondage.  Literally, the entire room was filled with photographs of naked Japanese women wound tightly in ropes and the occasional photo after the rope had been removed still showing the impression the rope left on their body.  Interesting, sure.  Shocking, not entirely.  Almost the closest thing to art I felt I saw that day, you betcha.

So after that I ventured into a few more rooms that had nothing spectacular to write about in them and then ascended up to the second floor of the museum.  So the first exhibit I ventured into was more of what I thought I would see when I walked in to the museum that day.  Actually, this was a really cool exhibit of photos taken from Kosovo back in 1995 around the time of the Kosovo war and UN peace keeping operations there, very poignant stuff showing the displacement of people and some of the atrocities that were committed during that time period.  So feeling a little bit better I turned the corner into the next room and wouldn't you know it more nudes!  Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against nude photos and their place in the art world, so let's just set that straight, but these were a little disturbing.  So like I said, slipped into the next room and started taking in these photos and about 2-3 in I started thinking to myself, wow the girls in these photos look really young, REALLY young.  It was about that time that I came across a photo of a girl who looked to be, well at least 18, and after reading the description realized that it was the same girl from a prior photo taken 6 years after the first one.  So basically this confirmed my feeling that this room was filled with naked photos of girls from the ages of say, oh 14-20...with more leaning to that 14 side.  So as I exited the room I grabbed one of the flyers that gave a short biography on the photographer and was flabbergasted that the photographer was an American.  I would like to give more information here but the fear of typing "kiddie porn" into Google and landing on some pedophile list is enough to dissuade me from doing that.  Actually, hell by posting this I am guessing I will end up on some sort of you're fucked list.  Thanks patriot act!

So a making my way to the other side of the floor passed through a few more rooms of more "artsy" photos and to a work I swear I had seen before, and low and behold I had.  Blitzschlag mit Lichtschein auf Hirsch by Joseph Beuys, it appears that he commissioned a few more of these works and one hangs out in Tate Modern in London...which I saw almost a year to the day earlier.  This is the original though, at least according to Wikipedia it is.

So after that I walked into the next exhibit entitled "Teenage Lust" and I remember this solely because this was some of the most fucked up imagery I have ever witnessed.  Seriously, the exhibit basically consisted of the following sequence.  Image 1: Guy and girl preparing to shoot heroin; Image 2: Now naked guy and girl shooting up said heroin; and Image 3: Now high on heroin naked girl giving now high on heroin naked guy a blow job.  Seriously.  Throw in a couple of random pictures of young guys putting handguns into their mouths, maybe a photo of the high people having sex (I assume after the blow job), or a magazine cover of Corey Haim located next to a blow job picture, and a collage of Jon Voight wannabes from Times Square (if you don't get the reference, please refer to the film Midnight Cowboy) and you have yourself one exceedingly odd exhibit.  To make matters more interesting there were copies of pages from the photographers journal also included that graphically described him and his friends gang banging girls in their youth and how this all lead up to his desire to want to do this exhibit.  Interesting, yes on a level.  Extremely fucked up, holyshityes.

Quick side note...so while I was there, their was this rather cute girl going through the exhibit at the same time, she had an arsty/hipster-ish look to her so the nerd in me was totally into it.  Well at any rate I was trying to come up with a witty/intellectual line to drop on her, and wouldn't you know it, that is damn near impossible to do when you are both looking at a blow job photo.  However, it didn't stop "Creepy Art Dude" (you know the type, late 40's/50's, ponytail, probably enjoyed the pedophile exhibit a bit too much) from making his move while cute artsy girl was looking at the Corey Haim-blow job montage.  This at least made me laugh. 

Funny thing is, everything I saw on the first two floors resembled art more so than anything on the third floor of the museum.  This was another special exhibit of one artist and from what I could tell it essentially consisted of people moving giant tubs of candy around and then dumping them on the floor.  Seriously, I was walking and saw a guy with 3 or 4 huge tubs of wrapped hard candy walking through the hall, then I hear this loud thud and as I walk back I see the same 3-4 tubs just dumped in the middle of the floor, and the crazy thing is people were taking photos of this.  I just kept thinking to myself that this is the same thing my two year old nephew Nate would do given a large tub of an inanimate object.  Only he refers to it as "dump" and not art.  Needless to say I walked out of the MMK that day with a new perspective on what can be considered art these days and 8 Euro less in my pocket.

Now I would feel remiss if I didn't provide a few updates on my experience with the MMK.  Last weekend when my good friend Pete came to visit, he requested that we go to the weird museum as he had already heard this story.  So we decided to check it out and 1. it was open house day so entry was free! Score! and 2. the exhibits had rotated.  So on this trip I found basically what I expected with my first adventure, call it MOMA light.  A few Warhol's, a Lichtenstein or 2...you know stuff like these:

Also, as an added bonus the MMK features some extremely good looking room watcher chicks.  Seriously, I am disappointed in myself that I didn't try and snap a sleuthy photo of the one girl who was watching the room next to the Warhol room...maybe next time.  So in finalizing a few points regarding the MMK if you ever happen to be in Frankfurt I would highly suggest that you take a gander at the museum, just get a feel for what the exhibit is like before you go, or at least ask the lady who sells the tickets, they seem like nice people.

See you on the flip.

Housekeeping note: please note that I use parentheticals in lieu of footnoting things.  If footnotes are possible on here and someone knows how to do it, please educate me!  Thanks.

Education on the artists:  Teenage Lust was by an American photographer named Larry Clark who came to prominence with his first book of photography entitled "Tulsa" and appears to be a critically acclaimed guy who has gone on to direct a few films, most notably a 1995 film called Kids, which was pretty controversial at the time of its release if I remember correctly.


After reviewing the MMK's site, the other dude is named Jock Sturges - his wiki page is not as flattering and in 1990 the FBI raided his studio, however charges were eventually dropped against him, I agree with the FBI on this one.

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy...

Seriously, I have to ask myself that question just about every day here.  This Saturday I will be 2 months in on this wild ride that embarked after a crazy week in Cleveland, Orlando and Atlanta when I completely boxed up my life (well the movers did) and I hopped on a flight to a city I had never stepped foot in, knew no one and could really only communicate via the international language of pointing at shit...but what an amazing experience it has been thus far.

From my first night in the city when I ended up partying until 4am with a crazy pack of Norwegians (who loved the fact that I was American) until today this has been a wild ride of getting to know people and re-training my liver for the German lifestyle.  Since it has been some time since I landed and have basically completely forgot about half of the things I wanted to write about, I figured the best way to kick this bad boy off would be to just list out a few things that may be interesting to those of you back state side.

1. Weeknight Partying - This was a trial by fire my first few weeks in good ole Frankfurt when I learned that it is totally common for Germans to head out on weeknights, party until 4am and then go to work at like 8am.  This was a serious rude awakening.  One of my first days in the office a group of people said they were heading out for after work drinks, which didn't start until 9pm even though we left the office at 6.  Well at any rate this basically consisted of hanging out at a nice bar near the Alte Oper for a few hours before heading to what I can only describe as the Frankfurt version of the Warren, but with half naked women dancing on the bar*.  Walked into this place and we had Taio Cruz on the DJ, copious amounts of Maker's Mark flowing, and a crazy dude in a red pimp suit...seemed appropriate.  Well at any rate when I stumbled out of this place at say 2am (I was not primed for a 4am weeknight) I was well on my way to a date with the floor of my hotel room and the 7am alarm came a little too quick...good thing I had nothing to do for work that first week!

*Note to William, look into this!

Alte Oper - its quite nice

2. German Clubs - Now I am not exactly what I would call a "clubber" but when in Rome...so yes I have been to a few of the primo clubs here in Frankfurt, and actually they aren't that terrible.  Surprisingly enough there is generally enough weird stuff going on to make it entertaining.  Still, I generally despise the music (unless they are dropping hot beats from KP or Gaga!), but hey you can make it really weird in these places which is always entertaining.

3. Things that wouldn't fly in the US - I am going to keep a running list of these on this blog, just weird things that are totally cool here but you would never, ever see in the US.

4. Outdoor drinking - Open container everywhere...best law ever!

5. No AC and no clothes dryers - Yeah, so the whole AC thing I totally expected, but no dryer for my clothes has been a bit weird, but I have to admit I have come to enjoy the smell of clothes fresh from the washer hang drying in my apartment.

6. Soccer - I have never watched more soccer in my life, but I actually enjoy it.  It is a great thing to head to a bar on Saturday afternoon, sit outside and watch the matches, especially when you can hear crowds in every bar going nuts over the same games.  It is a really good atmosphere.

Well that is all I have for now, but before I go I have to finish this first post off with a blanket apology and a few quick comments on my closing dates back in the US.  First, I totally meant to make this more of a real time update and promise that I will post as often as work, travel, etc. allow.  I had a ton of good ideas for early posts but without taking the time to write them all down they have been lost in the shuffle of finding an apartment, establishing internet, unpacking the said boxes and attempting to somewhat settle into my new surroundings.  So to the 3 people who may actually read this on an ongoing basis sorry, especially to Mitch who has been bugging me about it.

Next I just wanted to give a truly heartfelt thanks to everyone who made my last week or so in the US memorable.  To all of the Phi Kaps (and Mark) who came out for opening day, I had a fantastic time.  It was great to get one last chance to defile myself with you guys and I hope that you all can make it over here at some point.  To my family especially my sisters Jen and Deb, thank you for the fantastic send off, it really meant a lot to me to get a chance to see everyone before I left and all of the goofy sketches and songs that have become a part of a somewhat weird family tradition were really great. To my fantastic ATL friends thank you for the last 4 years, I honestly never expected to find such a fantastic group of friends when I moved and can't wait to get back to see you all soon.  Finally, a special thanks to Ryan and Mike for helping me with the move, honestly couldn't have got everything taken care of in my last 3 days in Atlanta without you guys, means a lot to me.

See you on the flip.