"the surprise club with fun!"

copenhagen.

it's funny that even after spending only a week or two somewhere, it still feels comfortable a year later. not to mention that everyone speaks english, which makes things a lot easier, generally speaking.

we started off the week's festivities by attending the danish dmc. for all of you suckers out there who don't know (i really don't mean that, it's not exactly common knowledge), that's the dj championship. a fun night, complete with a performance by former world dmc title-holder dj noize. good times.

on saturday we caught a bus to aarhus, andy's hometown. the bus ride was great, and by great i mean absolute shit. there was a young kid on the bus who made the noise of 10 grown hyenas. it was ridiculous. and the mother just laughed away the whole time, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that every other person on the bus wanted to throttle them. but that aside, we arrived in aarhus and met up with a brilliant young man named negash ali. if you listen to underground hip-hop, watch for him in a few years, because by then he may very well be one of the best around, period. we chilled at a ghetto but productive basement studio for a few hours, and then headed to andy's parents place. i must say, his parents are about as cool as one could possibly expect. some great conversation, even better food, and still better dessert (meringues, topped with vanilla ice cream, topped with homemade strawberry sorbet) later, and we were off to the town to hang out with andy's friend at a random university party. and i must make this point: the danes, whether they know it or not, share an inexplicable love for ac/dc. and whenever it's played at least one of them in any group seems to play their leg as if it were an air guitar. it's hilarious, and somewhat endearing.

an early morning bus ride further, and we were back at home in copenhagen. and without too much delay, i came down with the flu. i don't remember having had it before, so i spent the week thinking that i was going to het sick, when really, i was sick all along. the tone was set for the week. an average of 12-16 hours of sleep per day, gallons of appelsinjuice (oj), and plenty of television. luckily the world iaaf champ's were on, so i was well taken care of.

but, that aside, there were many more highlights of the week, including, but not limited to:

eating "buggi burgers". the things were something like 8 or 9 inches in diameter. unreal. will managed to choke back a double buggi bacon burger with cheese, but unfortunately had to throw it up a few hours later to prevent death.

the same night, we went to a breakdance battle with breakers coming from all over scandinavia. very impressive, very fun to watch. made me want to learn how to do it.

paradis, the best ice cream ever. all natural, all delicious.

eating doner kebap pretty much every day at amager kebap. love it. wish it were available in canada. will cry because it's not.

walking by a little strip club covered with airbrushed naked women, and a giant heart on the front door that read : "surprise club with fun!" unreal. it doesn't even make sense. needless to say we didn't investigate further, though in retrospect perhaps we should have.

andy's random insults throughout the week. i'd never seen that side of him before, but i must say, i was impressed! they were all well placed, and particularly witty. he would have fit right in with us my friends and i in high school.

hanging out with the coolest yoga girl in denmark again, signe. nothing to say but goodness. copenhagen woudn't be the same without her.

i know i'm forgetting something, but i'm hot enough to pass out and i'm full to the top with delicious, wonderful german ice cream. i'll write more later, and add anything i've forgotten to so far.

peace out, rippers. good lookin' out...
jh..

"who da fyeeeve best mc's of all time?"

why not give you a little something to listen to?

jh on the beat and kope spittin' heat, so take a seat and put up ya feet. oh, and just to repeat, shit's still incomplete.

a psa to all those "born and raised in the great west".

oh, and thanks for reading all of this. i appreciate it.

j to the h..

down time

i have the flu, i'm told. and yes, the telling was necessary, because i don't remember ever having the flu before. stomach flu, yes, but that's just a different ailment entirely. so it's been a week of sleeping and fluid consumption for the most part, but the story of this week will come when the convention of chronology calls for it. good lord, why do i write like that. i sound like a nerd. oh...doh. anyway, the last of our adventures took place still in...

beierfeld. we woke up early the morning after summer christmas and hit the road, our day's destination:

the sachsenring. motogp. the racing itself was awesome. never before have i wanted a sport bike so badly. it's really quite beautiful to watch the riders control the bikes the way they do. it's a combination of speed and grace that isn't matched often elsewhere. our seats were placed well for viewing a number of crashes mere yards away, one of which ended in what appeared to be somewhat serious injury. poor kid. and i mean that. in the 125cc and 250cc classes, the majority of riders were something like 15 or 16 years old. it really makes me feel like i've wasted my life to this point. it's amazing how retrospection reveals so much that you could have done in your life. damn you, hindsight. anyway, will was in heaven walking around and looking at the literal thousands of bikes parked all around the track. i was pretty pumped that there are german hicks and rednecks that, barring the obvious language difference, would easily be confused with those of our lovely home province, alberta. other highlights of the day included will leaving his towel on the roof of the car overnight and us driving away without checking it in the morning (let it go, because man, it's gone), and a gas station aptly named "OIL!", exclamation point included (and trademark pending). the next day we woke up, i was educated by rene on the intricacies of life in the former german democratic republic (east germany), we packed up, played pool with dirk (whom we'd met in the pool hall the previous friday. stellar guy, so cool, so chill.) for a couple of hours, and hit the road, our sights set on...

dresden. which is just as lovely as everyone said it is. the center of the city is a beautiful old town set on an equally lovely river, which we explored the bulk of as soon as we arrived in town. we soon located dirk's friend basti's apartment and set up camp for the night. basti and his friend lars were fully cool guys, and the apartment was located smack in the middle of the city's coolest and most party-geared street. which really isn't to say too much, since everyone was so laid back anyway. it was like a much, much cooler whyte ave., set in a much cooler city. the next two days consisted mainly of eating out, shooting pool in dive bars, watching skate/snow/surf videos on basti's computer, going for walks at night, will drinking beer in the streets as if he had to make up for years of not being allowed to do it in canada, and learning as much about the german youth as we could. our conclusion: that they're some of the most hospitable, laid-back, and fun young people we've met anywhere. a huge thanks to basti for letting us stay, to dirk for the hook, and to lars for being a supa-fly dresden guide. i would have stayed for years, but we had a schedule to keep, and that meant driving for hours in the monsoon-grade rain towards...

berlin. we got there eventually, and thanks to our terribly inadequate internet directions, we were almost immediately lost. so i parked the car in a lidl parking lot and we took a several hour nap. when we awoke, we went in to the lidl and bought dinner. and by dinner, what else could i possibly mean than NOUGAT PILLOWS! this is the absolute king of all sugary cereals. the box advertised no less than "40% nougat!" and i can absolutely assure you that they made good on their claim. this shit was absolutely disgusting. i mean, i like my chocolate cereals, but this was way, way too much. we both choked back a giant bowl of it and swore to each other that we'd never ever eat it again. forever ever? forever ever! but at the same time, how could i possibly pass up the chance to eat a cereal that contained 40% chocolate? you're absolutely right, i couldn't.

anwyay, after the nougat pillows debacle we set out to find our couch for the night. and boy did we not even come close. every turn we were supposed to make according to our directions happened to be at an intersection that was under construction and was inaccessible from any other direction, sidestreets included. so after an hour of driving aimlessly in some degree of disbelief, we headed half an hour back down the autobahn and slept yet again in the car. the next day involved a fruitless search for a coin-operated public telephone (that's one thing that i despise about europe: the phone card operated public phones. go to hell, phone companies.), a frantic and again virtually directionless wild goose chase throughout greater (and road-construction choked) berlin to meet the lovely nora schweppe, who was so kind as to walk around with us and make us a spaghetti dinner at her place, and of course a third and final unnecessarily long and detoured car ride to the airport, where we bid a fond farewell to the meriva and caught our expectedly later-than-expected easyjet flight to...

i think i'll drink some fluids and nap. mmmmmm.

jh..

"hol mir mal ne, flasche bier!"

huh-rro, chief. ret's talk, why not? so i left you last in a rest stop outside of munich, where we awoke to germans sleeping literally on the grass beside the highway. this country kicks ass! anyway, our next stop was...

chemnitz. we didn't know which last names belonged to our hosts, so after trying evey doorbell but the last, we decided to find a phone. and we quickly learned that i) there are virtually no payphones in germany that take coins, and ii) the phones that do take coins are impossible to figure out anyway. so phoneless and nameless, we went back to the apartment and tried the very last doorbell. of course that was the one. after a short drive through some crazy country roads (and by that, i mean beautiful and winding. all will talked about the whole way out was how pissed off he was that he didn't have his motorbike there. i felt his pain. the roads really were perfect.), we arrived at antje and rene's gartenhaus in...

beierfeld. it was a great little plot of land at the top of a town that rolled down a huge foothill into the valley below. we were greeted in the backyard by a sign beside the inflatable pool that read "beginn der nacktbadezone", which reads something like "the nude bathing zone begins here". classic! after dinner we went to shoot pool at the local pool hall in schwartzenberg, which was a nice throwback to 9-ball at the metro in edmonton. while we were playing we saw some lightning outside, and they closed the windows because it was getting a little breezy outside. no big deal, we thought, just a bit of a storm. WRONG. when we left the pool hall we stumbled into what we found out later was the aftermath of a nearby tornado and huge windstorm. trees by the dozen had fallen and were blocking roads, power and phone lines were torn down, cars and houses were crushed, and a few houses locally had their roofs torn off in the melee. it was nuts! the power was out in most places, including half of rene's mom's house, so we made do by sitting in the basement and talking over candlelight until the small hours of the morning. there's something especially nice about finding comfort in the midst of adversity.

after a lovely german breakfast of breads, cheeses, meats, coffee, juice, milk, and anything else german that was in the kitchen, we went to kønig-albert-turm, a 100-foot tall tower built in the days of yore. antje decided to take the elevator up, while the rest of us went up the stairs on foot. the hilariousthing was their friend hitting the elevator button on every floor on our way up, effectively stopping the elevator at every floor as well. poor antje... there's nothing like the sight of a 30-ish german man sprinting up 20 flights of stairs, giggling like a schoolgirl the whole way. great times...

that night was the annual summer christmas party thrown by antje and rene at the gartenhaus. what's summer christmas you ask? well, it's an excuse to have a party in the middle of july, of course! and party they did. it rained almost the whole evening, so we set up huge tarps covering most of the back yard, and the germans drank crazy amounts of beer and played old american pop songs, german covers of old american pop songs, or crazy german beer drinking songs. the best was the one that remixed a quote by the german chancellor, "hol mir mal ne, flasche bier!", the extended version of which translates roughly to, "bring me another beer, or i'm gone!" and the best part? you can find it on the internet! so download stefan raab's "flasche bier" to get an idea of what the night was like. so many crazy germans, so much fun. highlights included one friend pouring camp fuel onto the grill to get it going and subsequently lighting the grill, the ground, and his arm on fire; will drinking not one, but two nikolashkas, which consists of a shot of brandy topped with a lemon slice, a huge spoonful of sugar, and an even bigger spoonful of coffee grinds; the beer song, of course, to which i not only sang along but also choreographed a small dance, to the absolute delight of the germans; seeing germans open beer bottles with everything from other beer bottles to packs of cigarettes; and last but certainly not least, the plastic bagged marinated meat product from the very nearby czech republic that looked like chicken, smelled like pork, was called simply 'steak', and most definitely had something fishy about it. but my goodness it was delicious. a huge thanks to antje and rene for inviting us to share summer christmas with their friends. definitely one of the best parts of the summer!

to be continued...
jh..

the continuing adventures of jh and sheißer wilhelm

the germans seem to absolutely love that joke... will decided to call himself "sheißer wilhelm" (a play on the name "kaiser wilhelm" of wwi fame), and they laugh as if they haven't ever heard it before. it never fails! anyway, we were off to...

heidelberg. we slept in, and then left the apartment and went wandering. we bought some müllermilch from the local handelshof for breakfast and set out for the altstadt, german for "old town". the pedestrian district was really cool, lots of great little shops, and more hot girls than any place i've been short of sweden and possibly denmark (i couldn't not comment on it...people here are just so freaking good looking! like ron burgundy calibre good! like, everybody, come see how good they look!). and man, the record shops here are bumpin'! everything was expensive, but the breaks and other shit they had on vinyl were off the hook. if levin ever gets rich, he'll have to go on a european vinyl hunt. like whoa. we hiked up to heidelberg castle and enjoyed the view of the town and the valley across the river. it's one of the most beautiful places i've been. the scenery is amazing, everything is really old which means that it has at least some character, and the forests and small mountains surrounding the city nestle it away in its own little world. after chilling with gab and nico for a while, and climbing the scaffolding outside their 10 story building to take some pictures, we crashed yet again. other high points of the city: daring will to eat a 1kg tub of plain yogurt, will actually eating said yogurt in about a minute's time, buying 0.8kg of ravioli from handelshof for roughly 90 canadian cents, eating shockomüsli (chocolate muesli) for breakfast every day (25% chocolate, i kid you not. the last few spoonfuls were like chocolate chips in chocolate milk. awesome!), hiking up heilingenberg and playing frisbee in a giant nazi amphitheatre on the mountaintop, waking up at 6am every day because my circadian clock is now even more ass-backwards than when i was at home, and proving the customs officers wrong by surviving on roughly 6 euro per day (they said we'd need 45 euro per day. chumps...). two days of solid walking later, we were on our way to...

dresden. but funny story... the autobahn number 6, on account of some construction, turns into the autobahn number 81, and does so apparently without any signage whatsoever. so instead our story takes us a few hours in the other direction, to...

munich! the drive in was somewhat less than spectacular (we actually thought we'd entered north edmonton), but as soon as we hit the old town centre, we were fully and pleasantly surprised. we parked the car and wandered to a little park where we ate tuna straight from the can (it's the only way to go, really), read, listened to music, and dipped our legs in a fountain surrounding an entirely confusing statue of neptune, the sea god. we took a walk and spotted a car dealership that sold exclusively ferrari, lamborghini, maserati, and bentley. disgusting. and by that i mean that the cars were unreal nice... after that fun we slept in the car in a rest stop, and when we woke up we drive a few km to the nearby...

dachau. as i'd expected, it wasn't anything like i'd expected. dachau was the first nazi concentration camp set up prior to world war ii, and in the end served as a sort of hub for tranporting prisoners (though victims seems a more apt choice of word) between other camps, meaning that utlimately it was overcrowded to the point of health crisis. over 200,000 victims passed through dachau in the 12 years of its operation, and over 40,000 died there. the camp itself is huge, and relatively simple. jails, offices, barracks, watch towers, things like that. it was sobering, certainly, but the impression of what the camp stood for didn't really hit until i stepped from the cremation complex into the gas chamber. almost everything on site looked similar with the exception of that one room. i won't bother trying to describe it, because i won't do it justice, but suffice it to say that my body tried to cry and throw up at the same time. and the thing is that no matter how empathetic we might try to be, there's absolutely no way we can ever have an understanding of the horror those people went through. i experienced moments when i thought i could imagine it, but i don't think there's any way that i could genuinely come anywhere even close. it was disturbing in every sense of the word, but it's such a good thing that the camp still exists and that things have been documented in the depth and breadth that they have been. it's naive to hope so, but maybe the reminder will be enough that something similar will be prevented in the future, though recent decades in africa seem to indicate otherwise. if ever you get the chance, spend a day at one of the concentration camp sites. it won't be nice by any means, but i can promise that it'll be important.

the late afternoon brought humidity, and temperatures in the mid-30s, so we headed for the park. and i must say, the englischer garten in münchen is a park to be reckoned with! the place is absolutely huge, there's nice grass througout, lots of paths, trees, and benches to relax, and the uniquitous naked germans weren't even the best part!! i know, i don't really believe myself either! so what's so cool, you ask? there are a small series of canals that run throughout the park, the fastest of which runs at probably 20-ish km/h. kind of cool, yes. but we were wondering why there were people in wet bathing suits walking from where we parked (like 10 blocks from the park itself). well, naturally it was because you can ride the canals! the place is like a big waterpark! so we stripped down, and 5 or ten minutes later we were a few km away, freezing cold, soaking wet, and more pumped than ralph klein on oil revenues. we both tore the shit out of our feet on the canal's rocky floor, and sucked down more water than i'd ever voluntarily inhale in the "rapids" (they were small, but powerful!), but my goodness... FUN! after that we chilled near the calmer canal and took in the glory of the non-, partially-, and fully-naked germans everywhere. things there were incredibly chill, which was a nice end to what began as quite an intense day. ah, balance. after getting lost and almost running out of gas in a part of the city completely unknown to us, we were off again. the opel set a new landspeed record of 190 kph on a nice little downhill run, and we parked her in a rest stop for some overnight recovery. it's really quite funny how many germans sleep in their cars in rest stops overnight on the autobahn. we thought we were going to be breaking new frontiers, but alas, we're just some wet-behind-the-ears rest-stop amateurs, sleeping in a surprisingly comfortable opel meriva hatchback, thousands of miles from home. and yet somehow, right at home, still...

jh..