My friend John X is in Europe.  These are dispatches from him about his trip to visit his girlfriend, B, in Vienna, reprinted by permission.

Chapter One:

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Travelling to Europe is like jumping into a long pipe. You jump in in OKC,
and if everything goes well, you slide out the other end of the pipe in
Vienna. It’s a long slide but worth the time and money.
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I thought I’d reserved a seat in one of the emergency row exits, which
would have meant no seats immediately in front of me and therefore, that
most precious commodity on a long flight: LEG ROOM. But through some sort
of fuckup, I got the row behind that row. I was crammed into the sardine
can with the rest of the fish. Plus I got no sleep, none, zero, even
though I popped a couple of sleeping pills and washed it down with a
couple of shots of brandy.
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My reading for this trip is Eric Hoffer’s THE TRUE BELIEVER. Hoffer was a
sharp guy, and his ideas are sound, but his writing tends toward the
academic, dry side. Interesting ideas, uninteresting writing style. But
I’ll force myself to get through it.
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I thought I was the only SOB on this planet who, instead of putting all
his ID and credit cards in a wallet, bundles them together with a rubber
band and sticks them in his front pocket. But no. A guy on the flight
from Chicago to London bought some wine, and when he whipped his cash out
to pay, I saw he carried his personal ID the same way. However, this guy’s
rubber band broke, so he tied it back together, resulting in an unsightly
knot. Listen, having a motherfucking rubber band instead of wallet is a
trailer park move as it is, but if it breaks, at least have the class to
buy a new rubber band. Or steal one from work, like I do.
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I saw a lot of women travelling with young children. How do they do it,
schlepping these kids through airport after airport? Women must be the
toughest creatures on this planet. They’re miracle workers. All I carry
when I travel is a briefcase and a backpack, and that’s almost more than
my monkey ass can cope with. Just imagine if my briefcase was screaming
at the top of its lungs for a candy bar, and my backpack was shitting
itself every few hours. I’d leap out of the plane at 35,000 feet to end
my suffering. Women of the world, I salute you. Now get in the kitchen
and make my supper.
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Just kidding about that last part—though, as I write this on a rainy
Vienna afternoon, Brigitte is in the kitchen cooking asparagus soup
(fresh asparagus, not that shit from a can.) I wish I could email the
aroma to you.
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In Chicago, I was sitting next to a guy from somewhere in Great Britain. I
say “somewhere,” because I had to ask him three times to repeat a question
he asked me, his accent was so incomprehensible. I finally figured out he
was asking what the ticket agent had announced at the gate. “I can hardly
understand her!” he said (I think.) So we had the strange spectacle of
three native English speakers, none of whom could easily understand both
of the others. WTF!?
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6:30 PM here in Vienna, 11:30 AM Central Time in the US. I bid you a good
day. I’m about to have a good supper. More later.
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