ALWAYS NEVER buy a used car from Russian gangsters, or maybe it’s the other way around.

If Tiff-Bot 9000 and I are gonna traipse around Europe with our pals AND the mutt in tow we’re gonna need wheels. Time to buy a car, not just any car, it’s gotta be an automatic and it’s gotta be big enough for four people, an Andrew Jackson and all sorts of gear, small enough to fit down the tiny roads and paper-thin parking spots of Europe and it’s gotta be fuel efficient enough that we can afford to drive it. (Fuel ain't cheap over here)




To summarize:

We need a big, small car, a car that is strong like bull, a car that BARELY sips gas, a leader who follows, a hat made out of shoes, we need a mini skirt that you can wear to church, we need the impossible and we need to be able to sleep in it if we’re camping and it starts to rain according to Tiffany. Truth to tell, I have never been camping and then slept in a car when or if it starts to rain, I have always packed up in the middle of the night, miserable and bitching about how much I hate camping or been drunk enough not to care and/or notice that I’m sleeping in 3 inches of water. Call it a sign of the times when being able to live in your vehicle becomes a pre-requisite of your automotive needs.



So we scour the internet for a station wagon. Tippy think wagons are “mom cars” but I know the truth. The truth is a station wagon is the rolling equivalent of diplomatic immunity. No one can touch you. You can drive 120 mph the wrong way down a one way with a fucking crack pipe made out of a human baby skull stuffed in your maw as long as you’re behind the wheel of a station wagon. It's a four-doored, hatch-backed invisible cloak that will make a cop assume you’re just a flustered mom who’s late picking up little Johnny Walker Texas Ranger from biathlon practice. You’re untouchable, you’re a non-threat, even if your blood alcohol level would stun Steven Adler.



We find our wagon, a 96 Passat on some website. A Volkswagen is a good car in the states, on it’s home turf it’s gotta be fantastic right? We send the info to our relocation agent, she calls the dealer, we set up a meeting for a Wednesday morning. Wednesday rolls around and it’s just below freezing. Just below freezing to me means I need to remember my touque. Just below freezing to TB3K* means 3 and a half seconds outside is 4 seconds too effin’ long. Which is fine cause as long as it’s an automatic and I’m cool with it Tippy’s gonna give it thumbs up. An older guy leads us to the car, the first thing I notice is this car has been sitting for awhile. The doors are sound like they've been glued shut, opening each one requires a slow bounce, like pushing a car that’s stuck in the snow…one…two…THREE!! The lot guy starts the car up, like I said she’s been sitting for awhile but she fires right up with no smoke. This is a good sign, I check the fluids, the tires, the switches and all that stuff that makes me kinda look like I know what’s going on. Another guy comes outside to check on us, he’s mid 40’s salt and pepper with a demeanor of a man who has never been rattled, one of those dudes who has never jumped when a friend hides in the dark and yells BOO! The car has a few issues but for the most part seems cool. We retire to the office to work out details.



The car needs smog and inspection tags, tires, an oil change, a cracked lens fixed and a turn signal bulb. We won’t buy the car without all this stuff taken care of. We know this might jack the cost up past what we are prepared to pay. I know how much a set of tires costs, but this is a deal breaker for us if he won’t do it, we need him to stand behind the car. He thinks for a second, and adds $300 to the cost. Tip and I both feel like we should negotiate but it’s already so cheap that it seems greedy, like haggling at a yard sale for Special Olympics. Plus we’re so far inside out budget we’re kind surprised.



“Hey man, can I use the toilet?” I ask. In Germany you don’t ask for a bathroom, you ask for a toilet, which is weird to me too but I’m getting used to it. The older guy takes me outside and points to a shoddy door on a filthy wooden shack near a stack of old tires, exhaust pipes and other assorted car parts. This is gonna be gross I know it. I wade through the rusted metal and old rubber and open the door into a HUGE, SPOTLESS, GLOWING CASINO. There are poker tables, snooker tables, roulette wheels and bangin’ hot chicks speaking Russian to each other. No one pays me any mind, I use the bathroom and get the hell out of there before I become a witness. To what? I don’t wanna know either. I look at the other used cars in this lot on my walk back to the office. BMWs, Benzs, Saabs, Alpha Romeos all newer than 2003 or 2004, our car is by far the oldest and cheapest car on the lot. Back in the office I can’t WAIT to tell Tiff what I saw. We agree on a time to come back and test drive the car with all the changes made and we leave. I almost RUN to the car for the privacy.

“Tiff, you know why that guy is selling that car so cheap?”

“Why?”

“He didn’t pay for it.”

“What do you mean?” she axed.

“Someone put it up for collateral and couldn’t afford to get it back so he sold it for what he was owed plus a couple bucks”

I tell her about the casino, we talk about collateral and how unshakable the guy was.

“He’s a gangster, he said he’d get it through the smog test, I didn’t think much of it then but now…” I said

“I have a friend” he said.

Tiff asked “Do you think we should buy it?”

“Why not? The car is good and he has all the paper work”



I hope we don't find any fingers in the glove box. Who keeps fingers in the glove box anyways? I'll make Tippy look.

After the car thing we went to KFC for lunch, this is something we would NEVER do in the states, as a matter of fact, minus one stop to get some nuggets during a moment of near starvation I have not had KFC since my Step Father and I helped my Aunt Sandy move when I was 13 or 14.



Here is a picture of Tiffany that I took at KFC:



The soda fountain looks like it came out of a Russian Military Cafeteria.
"YOU HAVE SODA?"
"ALLE IST SODA!"
"ALLE IST WATER!!!!"
"LEADER SAY ALLE IST SODA, ALLE IST SODA!!"
"JAH, IST SODA!"


and they serve the food on glass dishes...like a restaurant, not in paper bowls like you would feed a dog out of. Which made us feel a little better about eating at a KFC...home is where you find it dude

*Tiff Bot 3000

Rope Swings

A rope swing will never break alone, someone has to fall with it, a passenger. A rope swing should always be on the brink, but you should never acknowledge this. A rope swing and it's rider are better off not trusting each other. Like a hitchhiker and a lonely driver. Don't nobody nod off. Don't nobody get too comfortable. And when it breaks you just tie it to the next branch up and jump a little higher to get on...That's the best part about a rope swing. It's never over, it just gets a little faster.

BEER

Alright - a short bit about German beer (I'm sure there will be more to come):

Beer is cheaper than water!

True story - I should end my post here...but it gets better...go to any restaurant, bar, grocery store...beer is cheaper than water

Most beer is sold as 20oz (or ,51 liters) and you can get a case of 20 beers for 10 euro...on and on

The German purity law is one of the oldest laws in the world and seems to have done wonders for the beer in Germany today...more info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot

In the short time that we have been here we have found that not only is the beer so cheap, but we have yet to get a hangover (and trust me, Nate and I have tried)...perhaps this is thanks to the German purity law and the tradition that is still used today.

Cheers to good cheap beer you can drink all night long!

you may ask yourself, what is Nate gonna do?

Hey, guess what? I’m basically unemployable in Germany. I don’t have a degree or critical skill, I can’t forge documents and I can’t bring myself to deal drugs to the school kids so I’m kinda effed. In case you didn’t know, to work in Germany as an American you have to be able to do something a German can’t; ie, be a trained accountant who can speak fluent German and English, have 5 years experience following sales trends in Adidas footwear, know how to win a war.(OH, BURN!!!!) Possessing none of this information I've been feeling like a bit of an albatross to the Tiff-Bot 3000 and I’m forced to come to some sort of a creative solution.

The next part is relevant, stay with me kids. If you’re curious Mexican food in Germany sucks, I’d gonna wager donuts to pesos it’s cause there aren’t very many Mexicans and the few that are here aren’t doing a very good job holding it down for their countrymen and women. (Step yer game up, Jose) Tiff-Bot and I went to a local restaurant called Punta’s. Punta is Spanish for “end” as in the tip of a peninsula or ass. (Many Putas think there is an “N” in the word puta, pronouncing it POON-TAH. Puta is slang for a whore. Punta is not, and now you know) Punta’s lived up to it’s name. It was the ass end of “Mexican food". Their attempt and a simple shrimp “burrito” was flavorless, lifeless and worthless. There was cauliflower in mine and broccoli in Tippy’s. Re-read the last sentence. Again…again…again.

So, Imma open a burrito cart.

Tired of listening to me bitch about not having anything to do, coupled with my lack of skills necessary to earn myself gainful employment Tip and I decided I should open a burrito truck. We love burritos, we miss them more than ANYTHING else about the States (except you guys and burritos, wait, I already said burritos) and because we are those “can-do” type people who assume (SCREAMINGLY arrogantly) that it can’t be THAT hard. So I’ve started writing up a business plan for a burrito truck. It’s either gonna be called:

1) Jack Bastard’s West Coast Style Burritos
or
2) USA GI Joe Okay Burrito Number One Food Car

I’m not sure yet, I’ll take a poll. Maybe the second one if I open in Vietnam…

Now that I have 2 totally awesome names all I need is a space to work my magic, I found an unused and seemingly abandoned Asian/Thai imbiss (take away) cart down the hill from our hotel and set off to find the owner. The cart itself looked like it had been there awhile, it had no posted phone number, no license plates, no forwarding address no nothing, my only clue was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a nearby tree. I decided the only thing to do was to ask someone who knows more than me. I went to the cops. They didn’t know anything…nor did they care. They did say to talk to the guy who owns the camping store.
The guy at the camping store was pretty sure the guy who owned the cart also had a jungle motif’ed imbiss somewhere in town. This was either a flat-out lie or the place didn’t exist anymore, I’ve walked all over this half -donkey town and never did see an imbiss matching that description. So I continued asking locals. The employees of the other Asian food place in town spoke exactly zero Engrish but together we figured out how to send me across the road to some nice folks who had my home tongue down a little better. They told me a couple years earlier they had been “all up to hell and back” trying to find the owner with no luck. The cart wasn’t on public ground so it wasn’t abandoned and no one could find or knew the owner.
Dead end.
Shite.

As I walked past the destitute imbiss on the way home I saw a take away stand I hadn’t noticed before and like a fat kid at a school dance figured “what the hell, might as well get shot down by everyone” so I asked (read: I used the translator on my iPhone) the lady there if she knew who owned the deserted cart, lo and behold she did! His name is Nygh, (one name, like Madonna!) he owned an imbiss (take away) called Heaven (I would find out later this was a lie) in Erlangen (a town up the road) near the arcaden (what we would call a mall). The next day Tiff and her co-workers translated a note for me that said I wanted to see and potentially purchase the cart I stuffed the note in my pocket and jumped on a bus to Erlangen. All I had to do was find this dude and see if he wanted to sell me my new restaurant.

I’d like to stop for a minute and remind you that I don’t speak any Germanic or any Asian languages, even if I find Nygh the odds that this dude will have ANY clue as to what I’m talking about are minimal, even if I can find him, even if he can read the note, if I can find him…dear reader, this should be an adventure.

I got off the bus in front of the arcaden in Erlangen and started walking around, I walked the main streets, the side streets, all 3 levels of the mall, I went down roads it COULDN’T be on, roads it HAD to be on and everywhere in between. I could NOT find Heaven imbiss. So again, I just started asking people. I couldn't believe it!! A guy near the mall knew Nygh, he pointed down the street toward the main market or hauptmart.
“Down that way?”
“Ja” he said
“Nygh is that way?”
“Ja” he said again.
I flexed all my German language muscle, said “Danke” and headed down a street I had already been down twice. As I walked back toward the market, reading every sign as carefully as I could all I could think was “at least this guy exists…maybe”. I was almost to the town square looking for a sign, any sign when I spotted two girls cleaning in front of an Asian store, maybe they know Nygh, I thought. Just before I got to them though I crossed an ally, in that ally I saw an imbiss, I figured I’d duck in real quick.

“Hello, mein name ist Nathan, I’m looking for Nygh”
“I am Nygh”
“You’re shitting me” I thought.
His grandson/son/best friend/guy-who-kinda-speaks-Engrish was there and translated the rest of the conversation. I gave him the note and was told he’d sell for 5000 euro, which seemed high for an abandoned cart in a Herzo.
“When can I see inside?”
“Today, in 30 minutes”
The old man motioned for me to follow him outside, the grandson/best friend/guy-who-kinda-speaks-Engrish followed.
“Go with him, he’s going to get a car, he’ll give you a ride”
The old man offered me a smoke, lit one up for himself and then took off on his bike with me jogging and smoking behind him. We went about half a mile and he dropped me at another restaurant with another guy who spoke a little Engrish.
“Wait here, he’s going to get the car, be back in ten minutes”
Ten minutes later I’m in a Volkswagon minivan with a guy owns my restaurant and shares MAYBE 3 common words with me. (I’ll guess Volkswagon, bier and 5000) We drive in silence to Herzogenaurach and check out the imbiss…we’ll see if it’s worth the 5000 euros when I get the business plan written up…PS when you come visit you’re gonna work a shift or two

We'll have to post pics later

Nate: Had to get a Sprinter van this morning from Jay and Lisa's house, we needed the space. We had a HUGE kennel, 4 duffel bags that could have easily held one of us and dog that was staggering like The Big Ush at 2:37 am. We got to the airport a few hours early cause we KNEW there would be trouble and we were not disappointed. The plane to Seattle wasn't big enough for the boy's kennel. Marilyn at the front desk at United took care of all sorts of bumps for us. She got us on a bigger plane to Chicago, exit rows for both big flights and got Andy all hooked up too.

I cried a little as they carted the boy away. Fuck off, it sucked big time.

Tiff: Now we are at the Frankfurt airport waiting out a 3 hour layover. Between the flights and this layover, it's the only real time I feel we have been able to relax in a while.
We picked up a Sneakers magazine - it's all in German but the adidas Star Wars cover hooked me. Some great adidas coverage inside too. The highlight sneaker shops in this issue is Paris...we may need to make some stops.
Can't wait to get Andy and get to the hotel - I'm ready for a shower and a nap...we'll post some pictures soon

Bob and Jo Debevec

Here are some pictures of my Grandparents farm.

This is where my family is from. Holiday meals, hard work and love. I'm going to miss every single thing about this home...and it is my home.

It was a refuge, a meeting place, a vacation, hell and heaven all mixed up. I never met a single person who didn't respect my grandfather and had nothing but praise for his kind nature, his quick wit and his devotion to his family and friends. On the other hand I don't know anyone who WASN'T scared to death of my Grandmother or dumb enough to say an ill word toward her.

He walked softly, she carried a big stick and this is where they raised their family.

I love you Gramps, give Grandma a hug for me.

New Years Week

Nate: Today, we went to breakfast with Darwin and Dana. Gravy is a damn good spot to grub down and I'm gonna miss it when we bounce. I always get the same thing and never remember until I see it. Tiff knows what it is. Anyways Darwin mentioned that today it $2 day at OMSI and since I've done a decade in this town and never gone we decided to eradicate that problem.

Tiff: Yes, yes...spicy bloody marys and cheesy Greco omelet - deeeeelish! Then ran around the museum testing everything we could. The brainteasers are still my favorite.

Nate: I freaked out the kids at the "make your hair stand on end" machine

Nate: We did the How-will-I-look-when-I-get-old machine. I look like me...but grouchy

Tiff: Hahaha...you look crotchety and I just look confused

Nate: NYE I had to work but most of my friends came down to hang out. Here's KRS and Girl Jamie in the kitchen...I wasn't the one who took the pic but it looks like a happy new year to me.

Tiff: Haha...I got this little gem as we were hiding out in the kitchen as everyone else was being rushed out of the bar. Ray Ray in the back trying to clean the kitchen. Us just making it dirtier.

Tiff: Silly NYE bar pics

Nate: It snowed on the Tuesday after Xmas. As soon as I got done with work (and had a few drinks) Pall Maul, Tippy, a bottle of Makers Mark and I went sledding on Mount Tabor at midnight. Pally and I waxed up the skate decks and we FLEW down the hill.

Tiff: The exhausting hike up was definitely worth it - I'm hoping this isn't the last midnight sledding before we leave.

Tiff: On our walk to Mt. Tabor - we found the best snow lady ever!

Tiff: My last day in California turned out to be Noah fun day (after Aunt Tippy drunkenly promised him the night before she would take him to the arcade)...so we did the swap meet, farm, arcade, Balboa fun-zone, and rode the ferry.

Tiff: The day after Christmas my Stooges and some old friends got together for my going away lunch in LA. Well...I like to think it was all for me - but our girl Carla is all grown up and starting her new honky life in Austin. It was the first time us Stooges have been together back in LA for 2 years - crazy! Thank you everyone for coming out - I love you all and will miss you tons!

.

...and that's this week in review