Back in reality, Germany, work with a thud.
Upon leaving Knoxville we drove through Virginia on up to Washington DC. We got to the hostel, droppped off our stuff and proceeded to find the area with young people and pubs. We were having some trouble finding our way so I asked two hip looking dudes where the party was at.
“I don’t know. We are from Germany.”
Hey so are we, sort of. So that is how we met Paul and André. They were also doing a road trip of the East coast but going north to south instead of the other way around like us. They were just as lost and clueless as we were so we all got along just fine. We warned each other about what to expect on the others respective forthcoming leg of the journey; Cops in Georgia and Florida, Cops in Jersey and New York, Girls in NYC, Girls in Miami.
We all got pretty toasty and I remember a bar with a small white guy on piano singing Jim Croce songs with a voice like Louis Armstrong. On the way home I remember Jens yelling obscene things in German trying to see if it gets anyone’s attention. It didn’t. Maybe he was just yelling them for the sake of being able to and not have anyone understand. That is probably a great feeling: In public in front of God and everybody telling the world just exactly what you feel about it and not worrying about people freaking out about what you said. So public, yet so private.
The next day it pissed down rain so we went to see a few things and took some pictures. Saw the Washington Monument, The White House and the Vietnam Memorial. Even though that memorial is out in the park is is very private. It is hard to find unless you were looking for it. It is just this huge swath of black marble cut into a shallow hillside. There are a lot of names on the Vietnam Memorial. Too many. I was born the year after the last troops were pulled out so I missed the whole era and everything that was going on back then. I just can’t see what the whole thing was about. I can’t see what, if anything, was accomplished. Sad.
From DC we drove on to Stamford, CT bringing the road trip part of the journey to an end. We spend the next few days in Stamford and then on monday the 5th went in to the city to stay with my friend Bob for 3 days.
More about the Stamford/NYC adventures coming soon.