The Grumps don't win

The Venetians built a church specially-designed for Vivaldi. A pair of 14 year old twins can increase my hope for the future. And the reason cows wear bells is because their horns don’t work. Three of the many things I learned during this year of guiding tours of Europe for Rick Steves.

Not Vivaldi's church. This one's in Paris.

When I look back at the year I feel an overarching gratitude and admiration for the people I got to meet and share a trip with. The feeling glows and warms. And then snags. Because this year had something else too. For the first time in my (admittedly less-than-ancient) guide career, I had a tour member who...I don’t even know how to say it. I would not want them on another of my tours.

Rick Steves offers a tour experience far above the sort of shambling boredom I see on other buses and in clusters of clueless curmudgeons blocking the sidewalks and galleries of Europe. Largely, we just draw a fantastic clientele (thank you, PBS!) but part of the magic is our “No Grumps Policy.” The logic of it always made sense to me; negativity is contagious, and if someone’s not happy, they don’t need to be there bringing everyone else down.

In the Forum you can focus on the sun, or that you're standing in history. Your choice.

But it wasn’t until this year that I witnessed how subtle it can be. No overt tirades, nothing tangible enough to justify removal from the group, but as time went by nothing was ever good enough or worth appreciating, and I never once saw a smile. Several local guides recognized it immediately, but I just chalked it up to botox. But when the evaluations came in, I realized it was much worse than that. People who I know had a fantastic time were complaining about the size of the showers etc. It feels clear to me that if this person hadn’t been in there radiating negativity, those people would have brought home another positive memory instead of gripes about shower stalls.

Negative energy is problematically powerful. I sat with the person for one meal and was considering quitting my job by the time dessert came. At the very least, I was ready to sign off the tour as a loss.

Sure the view, whatever. Ugh, do there have to be so many people?

Then something happened. Perhaps inevitable and undoubtedly wonderful. I talked to other tour members. And was restored. I remember one lady in particular that night, enjoying the unexpected fireworks display the town put on, taking unmitigated pleasure in the light and sound and moment shared with the small beach community. The words are forgotten but I remember the healing power in hearing how much fun she was having, what the tour meant to her, and how grateful she was to be on it. I walked away from that chat ready to sign up for 100 tours on the spot.

It's all about how you....frame it.

Her positivity is reflected in the hundreds of tour members I’ve had, with just the one who bummed me out. That’s magnificent. And beyond that, it’s important. Because in a moment where the worst of us is degrading the Oval Office and contaminating the headlines, it’s good to remember that the vast majority of us are beautiful people. I can expand out to all the innumerable niches of Europe, rock climbing walls of San Francisco, classrooms of the IRC, streets of New Delhi and prayer-soaked hallways of Dharamshala, I can expand to embrace all the environments and moments I found this year and in the cast of thousands I see an incredible panoply of human goodness.

So, though the grumps are out there, the lovers and delighters outnumber them by a degree of magnitude that gives me hope. And I didn’t even tell you about the twins. Humanity is beautiful. And I can’t wait to go back to work.

I think that guy's going to need his own post...

Living the dream

I had a dream when I was a kid. A literal, “I’m asleep” kind of dream, that is. This isn’t an inspirational post. In it, I’m swimming along the bottom of the pool, my favorite place in all of Childhood’s Kingdom, when I realize I can breathe down there. Not fully, not well, but if I calm down and do it just right, modestly, I can breathe. I remember an infusion of calm and an understanding that everything could be fantastic. Could be better than I’d known to hope for. (It wasn’t until later that I suspected I’d just rolled over and was breathing through my pillow.)

Amsterdam welcomed me my first day

This morning I’m coming up for air. After 21 days of Best of Europe tour-guiding, I’m waking up to a day without appointments, no reservations to confirm or information to convey. Not even a city to depart.

The street is polite vespas and well-dressed Parisians, nothing on my plate but baguette crumbs and the promise of more good food to come, perhaps after a stroll by the Seine? And I remember that dream. Its epiphany that I can do something I really enjoy and get the air I need while doing it. And I realize that’s what I’ve been doing for 21 days.

Swiss Alpine calm

I’ve been swimming, diving into Amsterdam’s historic harbor before turning up the Rhine to reach Austrian Alpine passes, waterfalling down Roman roads to muse about Venetian canals before making my way through old Florence to reach older Rome, just to smile and drift up into Swiss glaciers, a liquid core of calm that persists when I slide down through the vineyards of Burgundy to wash up fully rational on Seine shores.

And I’ve been breathing.

Water was an element of my boyhood joy, and travel is essential for my adult satisfaction. Sharks and me, stop moving and we suffocate. But it’s not a compulsion, not addiction, neither distraction nor delusion. It’s adoration. Adulation. Celebration of our worldwide nation and the strokes that pull us all together.

Islam is supposed to be scary? Me and
the little girl don't buy it. You?

For years I traveled. Helpless before my vagabond urges. It was right for a time, but wrong in the end. Insufficient for the long term, serving nothing but my whims. Now there’s a purpose to my travel. In a world of multimedia capitalists who profit from our fear, who compete for the spectacles that widen our eyes and shrink our horizons, I find something more worthy than mere movement when I take others with me, show them these faces of beauty left here by centuries of human struggle and millennia of natural process.

For twenty one days spread across half a dozen countries we delight in the reality of the places, rooms in our global house, and I watch the tension of the first day dissolve into the ease of the last. Day One I see apprehension when I show them the train track that will reliably bring them home, Day Twenty I drop them off in Paris’s elegant metro maze and say “See you tomorrow” and they’re off without a pause.

And in the calm, when they don’t need me at all, I can imagine them going home, feeling merely tired, to be greeted by the anxious homebound with their pinched brows who desperately inquire “You were in Europe? But weren’t you worried? Didn’t you feel unsafe?”

And in my daydream I see their calm smile, perhaps wearing the appropriate regret for the incidents of the moment, but underneath is the deep understanding that the world is something other than the misconception made up by those make-up talking heads. And my traveling companions ease back to a full library of happy moments, warm welcomes, beautiful humanity and they can shrug off the constipated clench of petty terror. Stories they know better than to buy, now.

Think they wish they'd spent more time fearful and divided?

No, they didn’t feel unsafe. They felt free. If I did my job right. And the memory of every one of their smiles resonates within me, and I feel that dream’s sense of delighted astonishment, astonished delight, and can pull in deep lungfuls of fresh air.

Maybe it’s an inspiration post after all. For me, anyway.

Europe's normalcy and hospitality are waiting, on every boulevard and back street.

Feeling fine and Florentine

“The Tuscan Frying Pan,” Florence was earning its title that day, certified in sweat dripping down the backs and sides of tourists squinting in the Piazza della Signoria, and my hair felt, again, like one of those Russian fur hats. Time for a haircut. And wouldn’t you know it, Florence is the home of my favorite barber.

I went straight for the small shop, undistracted by the Basilica di San Lorenzo where one of my favorite Italians holds wishes on his tomb, not stopping at the old friend of a hotel (taken by a different Rick Steves group, the lucky buggers), and swerving around the periodic bulges of visitors whose shoulders relaxed bit by bit with every lick of their slowly melting gelato. Visciola e fragola? Va bene.

Old Town Florence is a tourism city for sure, and the crowds used to irritate me, but working as a guide has helped me see the ways they’re doing it right (improved traffic laws, cleaning the duomo, and coordinating the many marvelous sites) and given me an increased appreciation of the place and its importance in our collective past. So now they’re not the addled brains of people in my way, they’re international minds growing in appreciation and understanding of the birthplace of the Renaissance rebirth.

But yes, at the moment, I wanted them to move. I needed that haircut. Kindly get the inferno out of my way, signore. Before I get Borgia on your ass.

I made it. The slightly cooler confines of a barbieri who’s been cutting hair here since the 1970s and his colleague with a coif like Grace Jones on an ambitious day. They greeted me with their usual dignified and affable buon giorno.

Scissors snipped, buzzer buzzed, and when the razor had scraped the edges clean I felt like a renewed man, renaissance of the scalp. ready to stand on a pedestal if I must, sling in hand, and face the future with concentration and confidence and just a hint of gel.

Back into that Tuscan sun of fame and infamy, punishing and beautiful, try to escape it but don’t forget you traveled here to see it. Down the canyons of Medici streets, past Strozzi home and Brunelleschi dome, a little slower now, a bit more strut, something lyrical in between the paces. Feeling a tad more Italian.

Florence is a pilgrimage, and I wanted to pay homage to the great ones. Architects, poets, and the family of men who led nations, and they’re just the audience for the names we know. Galileo, Ghiberti, Machiavelli, and Dante, men whose deeds echo and dance and scheme and enlighten down through the centuries.

Then over to stand in front of the tomb of perhaps the greatest artist in human history. It was just me, the cooler air, dust motes painted by stained glass light slanting down through basilica space, and the tomb of Michelangelo Buonarotti.

He looked good. I looked good. Florence looked good. Travel, now that is good. Buon viaggio a tutti.

A gift from a fellow traveler

It was another vacation weekend. Sitting on the beach with two of my favorite people, my telephone far away, unchecked, the madness of the modern moment unimportant before the relentless majesty of an ocean.

Then back to this side of reality, the profanities of each day’s presidential manipulations and depredations. Trump standing in front of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, “This plane, as you know, was built right here in the great state of South Carolina. Our goal as a nation must be to rely on less imports and more products made here in the USA.”

Because it doesn’t matter to him that the fuselage comes from Italy. The wings from Japan. Passenger doors from France. That Boeing would suffer bigly under his backward agenda of tariffs and isolationism. He doesn’t understand or care that modern reality is not one of warring city-states but of progress through cooperation. The sad shriveled soul of an insecure narcissist cannot fathom cooperation or trust. They are not in his nature, and I pity the human in him.

But in the meantime he’s trashing the rest of us. And my mind wants to go back and hide on that beach...watching the waves...eating that sandwich...hearing the laughter and words of loved ones…

But what’s going on matters. And it’s bleak, in reality and in the headlines. So it was all the more precious to get an email from a former tour member:

Paris is picnics on the Seine.
Whether you're wearing a hijab or not.

“I thought of you today when I read about Trump’s bashing of Paris. I want you to know that the Paris you showed (my husband), me, and the rest of our wonderful group was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life...the amazing sites, the rich history, the art, the kindness of the people and well, of course, the food and wine. While Trump’s distortion of reality makes me feel quite hopeless at times, I know first-hand that his ‘alternate reality’ is dead wrong--thanks to you.”

And suddenly the sun feels warmer, my heart feels lighter, and I feel connected with the real human spirit, which is welcoming, encompassing, and kind. Which seeks to understand and support, not belittle and blame. Which is exactly the understanding we seek to foster on Rick Steves tours. It's immensely gratifying to know I succeeded at least once.

85% of those Dreamliners are sold overseas, and each one can carry about 300 people like my tour members towards greater understanding of each other, community with each other, peace with ourselves.

It’s still important to take short breaks from the dire headlines. But even more important to remember that they are not the full story.

What to say about 2016?

Hands Around Lake Merritt gave me hope

2016. Whew. What do you say about this year? A year of plotlines that would have made dubious fiction, played out in the newspapers instead. I tried to make a concise list of the most egregious stories but google ran out of memory. And it was downright depressing. Made me want to find Merrick Garland and go get drunk down by the pier together.

So just the most salient point: 2016 is the year democracy failed. The British voted against their own best interests. Colombians rejected peace in the world’s longest running civil war (if you don’t count the murderous chaos in Myanmar). And then, inevitably, Trump.

But I don’t want to focus on that right now. That would be like the man with whom I went to Cuba who could only talk about the toilet seats. (Or maybe what goes through them would be a better metaphor?)

Watching the cows come home in Switzerland did me good

Personally, 2016 was (of course) a mixed bag. I lost the relationship I thought would last the rest of my life. But how wonderful to have had that love! And I have hope that some form of it will continue into the future. Pesky future, being all unknowable.

Professionally, I expanded into a job I feel inexpressibly lucky to have. I had truly incredible groups this year. Let’s be honest, Rick Steves groups are always great, we just draw from good people, who travel for the right reasons and in the right way, but this year was above even our high bar.

Perhaps when the news is preaching fear, those who come into the world anyway are the cream of the crop. People who know that staying home is exactly the wrong response to terrorism. Who refuse to be terrorized. (Or at least who know there is extremely little actual danger involved. Terrorism is still less dangerous than driving to work.) I am grateful for my company, and for the people who travel with us. Best of the best, they are.

Beautiful and bizarre Skopje, Macedonia

And I am grateful for the incredible people at the International Rescue Committee, both the staff and my students. Again I am privileged to meet the best. I wish my students’ confidentiality wasn’t an issue, because their stories and characters would benefit the nation to hear. They’re an antidote to Trumpism.

And finally travel, one of the great joys of my life, was good this year. On a Balkan ramble I enjoyed Bulgaria, was happily surprised by Macedonia, and felt love in Greece. Then this last trip, to Vietnam, where I felt a perspective that might make 2017 a more loving place within me. The articulation is still burbling in my subconscious, but for now I can focus on one truth.

Humans are good. We really are. We are a good species. Too good for our own sake, maybe, since it’s mostly our worst individuals who yearn for power. Anyone who wants to be in control...is exactly who shouldn’t be allowed to.

The Vietnamese people have forgiven a horrible war.
That gives me hope.

That makes for troublesome headlines, but a deeply reassuring foundation. I don’t know exactly how many countries I’ve visited or people I’ve met, but I can happily tell you that in every single one of them I met wonderful people. Almost exclusively. People I would live next to, eat with, and have in my life.

Every country, and every year. 2016 was a beast. No doubt about it. But it had such goodness in there! And 2017 will have that beauty too. Happy new year, my friends!

The Wizard of Oz and I

(This will make much more sense after part one, here.)

Outside Il Mago's shop, in Orvieto

An eruption of sound, light, and motion, as the world below my eyes kicked into life, overlapping music box jangles and blinking lights. I’d come to see the Wizard of Oz, tucked away in a side street of hilltop Orvieto, Italy, and now that same gruff wizard was standing beside me, lights reflected in his glasses and smile.

“This carousel is in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris. The oldest in the city, from 1879.” Looking at his tiny faithful reproduction, I could imagine the generations of children that have sat and shrieked on the original Parisian horses.

“Here is a ride from Coney Island, in your country.” The little roller coaster car rose to the top and slid down the track, tiny wooden figures throwing their arms up in an unaging joyous thrill. His artisan finger worked down the row. “This is the ice skating rink from Toronto. The ferris wheel of London. The tea cups of Disney.” We moved among the world’s remembrances, sharing each one whether we’d ever seen it or not. Each tiny world, handmade by this artisan.

“When I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be.” My assumption was beginning when he filled in the answer. “A cowboy!” He watched my grins over his bifocals for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to so much, that I did it, I ran away! I left my home and started towards Texas." Let that moment linger. "My mother caught me ten seconds down the road, gave me two big slaps, and brought me home. So instead of running away to be a Texas cowboy, I began to make things."

Orvieto is the sort of town where doing
things the old way makes sense.

Together we looked out over the delicate wooden toyscape of figures and memories. On the corner of his desk, beside the antique cash register, I noticed a familiar book. Seeing my glance, he picked it up. “Yes, Rick Steves. I am in his book. He came here and liked my work. Other companies want me in their books too, but they want money. It’s a commercial. Advertising. I am in Rick’s book because he liked what I do, so he put me in. That’s it. But I haven’t seen him in years.”

I told him Rick was my boss, that I was a guide, and that I’d learned of the toy shop in the current edition of the book. There was a hint of melancholy in the Wizard’s voice when he repeated “I haven’t seen him in years.” I assured him that even if Rick doesn’t have time, someone from the company comes around at least once a year to make sure we still believe in our recommendations, so we still appreciate his work. But there was something else.

Rick Steves and the Mago di Oz have something in common. Both are among the rare few who have created exactly the career they wanted. My eyes returned to one of the Wizard’s handpainted signs. Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality. These two men have done that, and I can only imagine they recognized something in each other.

Nothing against minions, but compared
to the 12th century Moor's Tower,
they seem a tad chintsy

I was feeling a peaceful sense of satisfaction and happiness in the presence of this gentle man when the door opened to admit a woman and her son, from one of the bigger bus tours that feed people through Europe’s Express Lane. Her hand held the cheap plastic Pixar balloon he’d wanted for a moment, and neither greeted Il Mago as they entered his space. I watched him monitor them with the same tolerant caution he’d initially shown me, and was thinking how nerve wracking it must be to have unknown entities always lumbering among your treasures, cheap balloons bonking into handmade zeppelins, when the woman took out her phone and lifted its little factory eye.

“No photo!” The Wizard’s snarl was instantaneous and sharp. Blunt force reminder at an Italian volume. “No photo!”

How does one bring the fragile lightness of childhood into the tenacious heaviness of adulthood? Not easily, I thought, as I watched mother and son endure that awkward pause to save face before fleeing the shop. But it’s only appropriate for a wizard to be a little scary. Booming voices and flaring flames of castigation, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, with his gentle love of a gentler life.

No, the Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take photos. But when a reminder of the texture of childhood is on offer, photos are not what you want anyway.

The Wizard did allow me one photo.
(Photo credit: some woman who did not take out her phone.)

Romanticism, revolution, and Riesling, in Bacharach, Germany

Looking up to Stahleck Castle, your new
favorite youth hostel, Bacharach Germany

The most interesting thing about the Hotel Kranenturm is not that a very active German railway line passes a few meters from your room, periodically shaking the building with the thunder of gargantuan freight trains, or whirring with the relatively quiet hurricane whir of the passenger Deutsche Bahn. Because turn and look the other way, across the Rhine village of Bacharach, and see a vision of romanticism made manifest.

Stahleck Castle crowns the ridge, just waiting for Lord Byron, or at least a Bronte. The 12th century fortification belonged to archbishops, kings, and Holy Roman Emperors, and at least one real-life Romeo and Juliet saga when Konrad van Staufen’s daughter, though intended for the King of France, secretly wed Henry the Elder of Brunswick, son of Konrad’s sworn enemy, Duke Henry the Lion. If you made this stuff up it would be overwrought, but in a place like Bacharach, it’s history.

And history has been marching through Bacharach for centuries, as Stahleck Castle switched hands, bloodlines, and nationalities over and over until finally the French, always the French, blew it up in 1689. It lay in gothic ruin until the 20th century, when it was rebuilt as a youth hostel. The Nazis got in there and did their Naziness for awhile, but after the war it was returned to a youth hostel, and still is. Have you ever bunked in a 12th century castle? Get in line, it’s booked out pretty far in advance.

Stahleck Castle on top, the Werner Chapel further down,
and the modern church in town below

But back on March 15, 1689, when the French blew it up, more was destroyed than just the castle. Hunk of debris cascaded down the vineyard mountainsides to smash through the Werner Chapel, the uncompleted facade of which still stands with its empty-windowed sinister architecture. This was not a happy chapel, derived as it was from the death of a 16 year old boy in the 13th century which was disgracefully blamed on local Jews, leading to a wave of murderous pogroms in the area. A plaque now stands alongside the ruins with a prayer from Pope John XXIII for forgiveness of the actions of our misguided ancestors.

So much history in the walls of Bacharach, a town made powerful and wealthy by its position on the Rhine River, just downstream of the quartzite reef (the Binger Loch) that required merchants to use smaller boats to that point, then transfer their goods to larger ships in Bacharach. This trade brought immense wealth and power to the town, aided by the sneaky tactic that all the wine unloaded was then labeled as Bacharacher, spreading the town’s fame even further on waves of Riesling renown.

The view from my window

The heavy casks and crates were loaded and unloaded with a large crane, mounted on a tower of the city’s fortification wall. This tower was therefore known as the Kranenturm, the Cranes Tower, and when Rhine transport moved to the thunderous rails, the tower eventually became a hotel, where I slept the sleep of the blissfully exhausted for two nights in a 12th century room overlooking the Rhine Valley, full to its geographic and historic brim. So no, the cacophonous railway running outside is not the most interesting thing about the Hotel Kranenturm.

On the right bus, in Florence

“The Tuscan Frying Pan” had been in fine frying form all week, but at 8:00 AM the air was the sort of warmthy and goldeny and pillowy that makes so many people write books about this place. And what a place. From our hilltop vantage point, Florence spread out before us in its honey mustard tones and terracotta tiles, just another morning in the city that birthed the Renaissance.

The outside of Florence's iconic Duomo, with its
elaborate angles and characteristic coloration.

The clear focal point of the skyline was Brunelleschi’s Dome, and the attached cathedral that gave it a reason. At the end of the 13th century, wealthy Florence had begun that massive cathedral, along the way deciding to cap it with the largest dome on Earth. The only problem was they had no idea how to do that. They could stand in the Roman Pantheon, breathless in wonder and clueless at how it was done. But they began anyway.

After a century or so of rain and snow falling straight onto where the high altar was supposed to go, a cranky goldsmith with no architectural training, having lost the competition to design the baptistry doors across the street, instead solved the problem of the roof. After a thousand years when fear, brutality, and dogmatic religion had choked off intelligence, creativity, and progress, mankind was emerging into the light again, and you can see it when you look at Brunelleschi’s dome, 80 million pounds of brick and mortar reaching 30 stories up into the virginal heavens, built by men equipped with ropes, oxen, and...I dunno...wine.

Looking down at the Duomo, I could trace the fashionable Via dei Calzaiuoli down to the cathedral’s secular rival, the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, where the Medici family ruled, their arrogance and ability (and daughters) taking them from a local clan to a continental powerhouse. I knew that in the shade of the Palazzo was the Loggia dei Lanzi, the public square converted into a statue museum, where Michelangelo’s David originally stood. Glancing over a fraction I could judge where the Accademia sat, the current home of that seminal masterpiece.

And there was the Ponte Vecchio, with all its history and character, Medici Grand Dukes, Mussolini, and modern lovers all leaving their marks on a bridge so beautiful even the Nazi’s didn’t have the heart to blow it up.

And next to it, the Uffizi Gallery, where one of our excellent local guides had taken us through the centuries when mankind rediscovered beauty. With context, accessible erudition, and a passionate art-lover’s eye, he’d made me understand why The Birth of Venus is so famous, then did the same with a couple of Da Vinci’s precious few paintings and the only finished panel painting by Michelangelo.

I could see up past the Piazza della Repubblica to the neighborhood where we’d eaten a delicious Florentine meal, from the panzanella tomato and bread salad (made with the special Tuscan salt-less bread) to the savory pasta and luxurious meats that inspire so many raving chapters and satisfied belches. Then around the corner to the bar where we’d discovered that Bohemian Rhapsody goes well with chianti.

Just standing alone in front of the tomb of
arguably the greatest artist in the history of
the human species. Basilica di Santa Croce

My eye had barely made it to the Basilica di Santa Croce, where I’d stood alone and in awe before the tombs of genius, when a flurry of sharp elbows and shoving shoulders barged through. Other populous nations are joining the tourism circuit, and space is growing scarce. But my spirit was full of Florence’s beauty, so I ambled back to our bus, which sat beside the pushy people’s ride. That group? They were on a Paris-to-Rome tour too. But where I’d thought our pace was breakneck, they were doing it in half the time, just seven days.

“Seven days?!?” I asked my mentor, who had spoken with their guide. “How is that possible? What do they get to do?”

“Well, their experience of Florence? This is it. They drove here last night, stopped to take a photo, and now are driving to Rome.”

I could only shake my head and take one more glance at the city where we’d taken a fascinating Renaissance walk, toured one of the best museums in the world, eaten Tuscan food in a quintessentially Florentine restaurant, sampled wine from a hole-in-the-wall down a sidestreet, helped our nervous 18 year old get his Italian haircut, shopped for souvenir paintings in the shadow of the Duomo, then taken a break in a backstreet bakery with the best “Torta della nonna” (Tuscan pine nut cake) I’d ever tasted.

Much to my chagrin, I see now that I was so focused on tour guiding that I forgot to take
my own shot of the city. But this blogger did a better job than I would have anyway.

Turns out I like Germany after all, in Munich

Why don't more cities have these?

“Put your hand up, put your damn hands up!

Tonight is my life, because tonight I’m a sinner!

Keep your hands up, keep your damn hands up!

Tonight is my life, it’s an assault on my liver!”

As these remarkably honest rock & roll lyrics launched out into the perfect warm June air above the chattering tables of university students and studiers-abroad, I thought “Maybe I like Germany after all.”

My first big trip, solo backpacking across Europe, began in Frankfurt. I remember rushing currents of people with purpose, reminding me that I had none (amazing how challenging it is to be unemployed) and a jet-lagged nausea at not knowing what to do with myself. I stayed three days, which was two too many, then a fourth, because the guy who sold me my train ticket didn't tell me it left from the other friggin train station. “I'm American! I'm amazed you have ONE giant station. I was not prepared for redundancies!”

Then, months later, I arrived in Berlin with a dirty sweatshirt and two pairs of jeans to find a city locked in ice. That first night it was seventeen degrees below zero, Celsius. “I'm Californian! I was not prepared for Hoth!” Other than that, years later Germany was the place where Belgians went to buy their diapers. Not sure why, but they're WAY cheaper over there.

So when this tour guide job took me to Munich, I expected a good chance to focus on the work, less distracted by the place than I'd been in the beauty of Switzerland or at the tables of France. But Munchen had surprises in store for me.

Like the Marienplatz, with its jovial Germans and Neo-Gothic New Town Hall that convincingly looks like the sort of place some serious medieval shit went down, despite only being a mere century old. And the Viktualienmarkt where stalls were selling cheese, wine, and produce in true European splendor. And the Frauenkirche, consecrated in 1494, one of the few genuinely old buildings in Munich. Why so few old buildings in a city with such an ancient feel? As with most German cities, Munich was pretty much leveled by the end of World War II, but the American bombers had used the church’s spires to navigate their bombing runs, so left them pristine among the rubble. After the war, the broken cities faced the question: “Do we rebuild as it was? Or take this opportunity to modernize?”

Viktualienmarkt produce

Frankfurt chose to modernize, and is now another stack of right angles and capitalist fortresses, the town where I was bored and desperate. Munich went the other way, rebuilding instead of replacing, and preserving substantial portions of urban land for green spaces. This was the city where I marveled at spires and statues, fountains and pedestrian thoroughfares, but it was one of those green spaces that really made me love Munich. Appropriate, since from 2006 the city's motto has been “München mag dich” (“Munich loves you”).

Guten tag, Englischer Garten!

The English Gardens are 910 acres (larger than NY's Central Park) of urban parkland where on a sunny Thursday evening, hundred of Munichites were lounging on towels and grass, listening and making music, eating drinking and laughing with friends. It was gorgeous. And, being Bavaria, there are not one, not two, but three beer gardens in the park.

My mentor/friend and I bicycled through the park and took two of the 7,000 seats in the Chinese Tower beer garden. We didn't think our trays of giant beers, saucy bratwurst, potatoes, green salad, giant pretzel, and kaiserschmarrn (shredded sweet pancakes with powdered sugar and sweet apple sauce on the side) was that unusual, but the German couple next to us ogled it and asked in beautiful Bavarian accents “Really? You are going to eat all of zis?”

Because the only thing better than eating a banana
with a spoon is surfing in the middle of a city.

Yes, yes we did. Then rode back, pausing to watch the surfers. Because yes, there are surfers in the park in landlocked Bavaria. It's München, baby! Then we browsed the streets of the World's Most Livable City, according to Monocle in 2013, and when we heard music thumping out of another beer-gardeny spot on the university campus, why not?

Perfect temperature, belly full of good food, historical and contemporary vibrancy, and friendship everywhere, Munich was a pretty nice place to be. The assault on my liver was just bonus.