be careful with the details of the war

Abenteuer beim Zahnarzt or Meredith Loves the Dentist

When they look at you concernedly, asking you (you think) if you can swallow, you have to nod because yes, technically you can swallow. The problem, however, is not the real-time saliva, rather the store of phlegm residing just past your uvula. And, by the way, if you ever need to look up uvula to make sure it means that dangly thing at the back of your throat, by god please don't use google images to do it. That stuff is horrific.

I am just back from my fourth trip to the dentist. I had a different hygentist this time, so I felt like I needed to apologize for staring blankly at her in response to about half the things she said, but I didn't really get the chance. Its amazing how terrible my dental vocabulary is. I got a broken? filling re-filling-ed, and got to experience once more the subtle nuances of european dentistry. Apart from the initial shock of them not prepping me for the needle-in-the-gum thing (is it just me or don't they normally put some silly little paste on your gums a couple minutes before to make the shot a little less painful?), it went pretty well. I was confused as to why something to the likeness of a purple rubber glove was stuffed in my mouth, but they didn't touch my wallet or tie me to a chair, so I guess I can count myself lucky. The real problem was holding my jaw open for that long, and oh, the sweet noises it made once I finally was able to wrench it out of locked position and close my mouth. The bite plate I got (paid handsomely for, I mean) a couple of weeks ago is fashioned so that my lower jaw is supposed to move up a couple centimeters to actually meet my top row of teeth, but the process is slow. I am not sure if its actually working at all, but the result is my jaw feeling better, if still a little out of whack. But there are already big indents in the plate, which makes one wonder what sort of pent up aggression I have that I only let out when I am unconscious.

I have yet to write my paper, and I have yet to really figure out what I am doing travel-wise in a couple of weeks, but right now I am telling myself its okay to rest a little. I am sick and I have just recently been introduced to The West Wing (the television show), so obviously I have other things to attend to.

I spent most of yesterday/Thursday in bed. I got home at 9:30am and slept from 10-4. I spent 1-5 in Hamburg train station's 24-hour McDonald's. I have to say, it was the nicest McDonald's I think I've ever had the pleasure of being in, but I don't think I ever want to be in one again. The reason for said marathon-sleep deprivation was the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah concert at Tanzhalle, in the St. Pauli area of Hamburg. We spent four hours on a train Thursday afternoon to get to Hamburg, then spent an hour and a half in a Subway (food place) watching truly atrocious MTV programming waiting for it to get late enough to sanction us going over to the venue. At least the shows had subtitles so I could hear the English and read the German and laugh at what they changed, but really, it made me quite glad to not be in high school in Southern California. As it was we were still there frightfully early, and they ended letting people in an hour after was printed, so we were standing out in the cold for another good hour or two, but other than the before and after, the show was one of the easiest concert experiences I've ever had. Even though we had been the first ones there it took us awhile to get in because Germans have absolutely no idea of lines or any sort of order in that sense, but we were able to secure the absolute best spot in the place just because we didn't make a beeline for the bar like everyone else.

The embarassing thing is that we didn't realize the opening band wasn't the band. There wasn't talk anywhere of there being an opener, and so we were shocked when the band played like seven songs and then started packing up. I was like, that was great, but that was ALL? But I turned around, and everyone was still standing there, so we asked the short guy next to Jacky and he cleared it up for us. Ironic that we probably understood what the band was saying between songs (hey guys, thanks for coming out, blah blah) better than anyone else, but we still couldn't figure out they were another band. Anyhow, we didn't have to wait too long before Clap Your Hands came out, and that was awesome. Both bands, the opener (Dr. Dog) and Clap Your Hands were both really fun and I had the pleasure of dancing and obstructing everyone else's view right in front of the singer. Tanzhalle is a really small venue, and the stage is raised only a little bit, so we were standing literally front and center, right in front of both singers. I felt kind of bad with Clap Your Hands, like if I had been the singer I would have felt weird someone standing arm's length away from me looking straight at me while I sang, but I guess they're supposed to be used to that? All the same, I tried not to make him uncomfortable whether he would have been or not, which wasn't too hard since we had generally busy dancing.

Since we had so much time to kill before the next train home, we hung around after the show and ended up talking with the singer and one of the guitarists of Clap Your Hands for awhile. They were both really cool, and I got my CD signed eventhough I felt kind of lame asking. I always like getting the 'are you guys from the States?' questions and explaining the situation, and it was nice to have some American humor appreciated as well. I am always surprised when famous people (and maybe they're not household names, but if you are a touring musician you are famous to somebody, at least) turn out just to be people too. That must be such a strange kind of life.

For some pictures of the show, you can check out this album. I've posted this link before, but I've added pictures since, so its worth your time to check it out. Maybe.

While I'm here I should say something about Amsterdam. I was gone for four days, and it was a lot of fun, though I was glad to be back home when I was. Somebody at the hostel STOLE MY TOWEL, which is weird as it is, but I also had my name blazoned across it... so I hope karma comes to fetch you, jerkface. Amsterdam is a really beautiful city, I don't think I've ever been anywhere that had canals like that (or canals at all, if I remember correctly). It was actually a bit warmer there than here (no snow there!), and my three companions and I had a lot of fun trying our hand at the Dutch language. A lot of the time it seems like the missing link between German and English, and then other times it looks like something somebody with long-term syphillis and a penchant for vowels came up with.

The Dutch architecture was really interesting and cool, and like anyone who has been traveling with me recently can probably attest, when I like a city I'll just walk around talking about how much I like it, and thats what I did in Amsterdam. The whole drug-scene is kind of a weird inlay to the city, its like this classical place with this seedy and yet unobtrusive underbelly. I could talk more about this but its probably unnecessary. I was in the city for four days with Jennifer, Keinst and Kate, all American friends of mine who are studying in Goettingen. For only being there a few days we did a surprising amount of stuff. I'll list off some stuff now: Vincent van Gogh Museum (completely worth it), Rijksmuseum (=National Gallery, saw Rembrandts!), Anne Frank House (really cool to have been able to see), Heineken Factory, Vondelpark (a beautiful park where we killed a few hours feeding birds before our train on Friday), anddd... other stuff. We took a canal boat tour, which was really pretty, and I think I can say that I've seen the North Sea now. Also saw the Red Light District, of course, which is actually just pretty weird. Not morally upsetting so much as just uncomfortable. Oh, AND we had Dim Sum and I found that white bread dumpling filled with barbequed pork that I used to love so much as a child! I have been looking for that for like 14 years.