Essen to Eindhoven, or, How I Kicked Some German Ass at Kamelot!

Well, Essen, and the Kamelot concert… Hmmm... What to say… Well, let us go to my Journal:

Trained into Essen, and kicked it around the town a bit before the Kamelot concert.

It’s a sweet little/med sized German city… Had a bite to eat, good ‘ol long bratwurst in a tiny bun, and had sam take a picture of me eating it in the same pose as a pic I have from Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany… The last time I was in Europe.

Oh, and I found a 'Wildcat' piercing shop.  Wildcat is one of my preferred body-jewelry suppliers, and it was pretty sweet to see one of their retail/piercing shops...  Hilariously enough, anything I could have bought in that store, I could order from home (from them) for at least half the price (Go Wholesale!!!).


Anyhoo, the Kamelot concert kicked some serious ass! The opening bands weren’t too amazing, so we just drank and chain smoked ‘till Kamelot came on. Oh, and you had to put a deposit down on the plastic drink cups… Like, real cups, and you get your Euro back when you turn them back in… So fucked… However, refills were only 2Euro…


The concert fucking rocked. Like, I’ve been wanting to see them live for at least 7 years… Kamelot had an intense stage presence, the lighting was stellar, and at one point, during the song “on the coldest winter night” flakes of foam started falling from above like snow, and started blanketing the audience. Like, righteously magical! And of course, two encores (totally planned), but sweet nonetheless…

The crowd however, amazed me. THEY DIDN’T MOSH!!! It was the most mellow standing crowd I’ve ever been in. I mean, Ben Harpur would have had a crazier crowd back home. I was utterly blown away. So naturally, Sam and I went fucking nuts, moshing and jumping, hopping, bouncing, thrashing, and all-round rocking out… It was so rad that people around us either moved away or likewise started rocking out. This little girl beside me (who according to Sam, “wouldn’t stop staring at you!”) started rocking and moshing as well, and when she saw me kiss Samantha, started thrash-dancing just like Sam.  Cute.

After the last encore, the drummer threw the drumsticks out into the crowd… Naturally, I dove like a madman and grabbed onto it, along with at least four or five Germans. Well, at that point a lot more were grabbing for it, but I thrashed and bit-out like a rabid dog (I shit you not, even I thought I was being a wee bit psycho), which inevitably drove a few away. When the house lights came on, there were five of us, each clinging for dear life to the stick. Four Germans and I… Let the battle begin! 

We thrashed and jerked, I foamed at the mouth, flailing madly and flicking my forked tongue out at them, but alas, we were all determined… Two German guys and their girlfriends, and there I was saying shit like, “I came from Canada for this stick” or “I’ll kill you for it… I’m not joking” or “I’m not going anywhere... I can wait till July if I have to!” All with a slight drunken German accent for some reason :P (At this point, some dude leaned into Sam, who was standing behind watching all this, and said, “that’s a crazy boy you have there…”)

Then the jeering came.  

One of the German girls said, “Oh come on, there’s FOUR Germans and ONE Canadian!”

And spoketh I, “HAH! It worked for Juno Beach!”

“Huh?” She replied

To which I responded, “You know, D-Day, WWII, Normandy! Oops, shouldn’t go there…”

I swear to God t was the funniest thing I’ve ever said situationally! Either way, as the battle of wills continued, I managed to thrash off one of the German guys and both girls (yeah, I’m a dick).  Down to him and I, and as we had earlier discussed (the German boys and I) about the non-violent possibilities of resolution, such as “stone paper scissor” or breaking it in half (but there were too many parties involved at that point), we decided to have a security guard break it in half for us… You know, to be fair (Lest I grab the whole thing and run off... which I totally would have done…).  So the two of us, still holding the stick, went to a security guard, who broke it in half, and handed me the base-half.  The bigger half with the brand, band name, and signature of the drummer, Casey Grillo.  Score!   And thus was the tale of 4 Germans vs I.

After the concert, Sam and I grabbed our shit from the train station and tried to figure out where we were going to sleep for the night. As hotels and even hostels were too pricey, I had brought a tent. Super-tired, and with a huge blister from thrashing in my new Canadian army combat boots, we walked about four kilometers to what we thought would be a park (it was a green space on the map with little circles). Turns out that those little circles mean that the area was public garden space, and in reality it looks not like a park, but a bloody Gypsy shantie-town. Well, it was now like 2am, so we just pitched the tent on what could have been conceivably a horse-trail beside a playground and tennis court, adjacent to the roadside. Ooh, luxury! Needless to say, with only one sleeping-bag and a tiny blanket (no bed-roll), we got about 4 hours of sleep, then rose to meet the morning, and check out Essen some more.

Fuck. I want to move to Germany. Like, even a smallish city like Essen had a million goth and rock shops. Most notably would have been ‘Bullet’ which was basically like a goth superstore: huge, cheap, and with an awesome head-shop (bought me-self a little 4Euro bong!), and my personal favorite, “The Land of Black and Death” (Perhaps the best retail name EVER!). You know, you just don’t get stores named like that back home…


Oh, and we kept finding little pieces of hardware and machinery laying on the ground. I thought it was funny because Nick, one of Sam’s German friends said that the area that Essen and Dusseldorf are in is referred to as the “Engine of Germany”. I had to take a pic…

Oh and a picture of the “tire-swing” in Essen. Hmm, well, at least the name doesn’t lie….

After a bit of exploration, we trained back into the Netherlands to head to Eindhoven to hopefully find scalpers for the Emilie Autumn concert (as there were complications with the tickets we thought we had bought, but actually hadn’t…). Eindhoven was nice, and even had a carousel in the main square, but as it was evening, not much was open, so we just grabbed a couple beers at one of the open-air cafes, and headed over to the concert hall. As we were both tired and filthy (concert the night before then camping!), and as there was no one who even remotely resembled a scalper, we decided to head back to Enschede (besides, Emilie Autumn is American… We’ll be able to see her at home, unlike the incredibly German Kamelot).

Saturday: Went to the big-ass market in the square here in Enschede… Reminded me a lot of the “floating-market” from Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” but without the esoterics… It was sweet, and I’ll be sure to post a vid of one of them soon… However, as it’s “Queens Week” the market was super-huge, with live music and full of Germans. Anyhoo, the crazy part of Saturday was the evening… For when we went into the square where the church is, there was a huge stage set up, and a massive festival going on for Grolsch! Just because they are changing their bottle-tops! A two week festival, called ‘Welcome to the Green-Light District’ (as Grolsch bottles are green)! The best part however, was that the stage was projecting a massive laser onto the cathedral steeple… A massive laser of beer! Beer on a church! Only in Europe…

Sunday was nice and lazy… Decided I needed a bike ASAP, so I scoured www.marktplaats.nl (basically a Netherlands Craigslist/Ebay), made a call or two, and went into Delden (a neighboring town) to buy myself a bike (as I was getting tired of having to walk or double Sam on her bike if we wanted to go anywhere). Got me-self a bike for 25Euro! Waaay cheaper than from the only used-bike store in town, where the cheapest bike he had was a piece of shit for 195Euro… Interestingly enough, the guy at that bike store dreams of moving to Lethbridge, Alberta. Yeah, I know… What the fuck?! Apparently he goes to Calgary and Medicine Hat for a few weeks of the year to “recharge his batteries”… Hmmm… I’m not even going to comment on that.



On Sunday evening, Sam and I caught a movie at the local theater… Travel-journal time:

When the evening came, Sam and I biked over to the local movie theater (15min bike ride), and caught ‘Doomsday.’ Now, a note on movie theaters here: First off, the Netherlands is the only place in mainland Europe that plays movies in their original English, but with Nederlands subtitles, so we watched it in English! Secondly, they serve booze at the concession… Well, we brought vodka with us, but when it ran out, we bought some Smirnoff Ice! At the theater! Thirdly, the theater has these awesome double seats… Like, every aisle has a couple seats that have no armrest between them, so, like cuddle-seats! And they’re huge plush seats with tons of leg-room (as the freaky-deaky Dutch are all super tall)… Kind of like super-comfortable couches. And finally, there’s a forced intermission at the one hour mark, like, a 10 minute smoke break, with an announcement for when it’s about to start up again! Think about it… A theater with amazing double seats, that serves alcohol, and has smoke breaks! Fucking stellar!

On Monday I didn’t even leave Sam’s (our!) place. We just stayed in, relaxed, smoked some (legal) hash, and drank wine. Oh, and she made the most amazing vegetarian stir-fry… I almost didn’t even mind that it had no meat…


Today (Tuesday) was another chill day… Right now Sam is off at her friend Mhairi’s, and I’m about to join them for that Grolsch festival (the Green Light District)… I bought some tools earlier (as I’m going through tool-withdrawal), fixed my bike up a little, after we went to the smaller Tuesday market and bought uber-cheap food for the week. It’s been one hell of an amazing week…

You know… I’ve always dreamed of coming back to Europe… However, the funny thing is that with everything I had ever pictured or envisioned I think that here, on this trip, with Sam, I’m having a better time than I ever thought I could… 

From Frankfurt To Enschede, Or, How God-Damn Great It Is To Fuck My Girlfriend Again!

Wow, what an amazing week… Time to catch you up. So, Germany, last Tuesday (the 22nd). Hmm, lets go to my travel journal:

04-22-08,
2:30pm: Well, I’m in Germany. Finally got to smoke… Fuck, haven’t had a head-rush like that in a while… Now I have to train into Frankfurt proper, and catch a train into the Netherlands to see my babe! Damn, I can’t wait… Now, how the hell am I going to manage this luggage without a carrier… Hmm..

6:15pm: On the train from Dortmund, Germany, en route to Enchede (pronounced En-skid-day) in the Netherlands. Will be another 2 hours or so… Took the train from Frankfurt to Dortmund, the ICE line, aka the Inter-City-Express; quick, convenient, and smooth. So smooth I fell asleep, and thank God Dortmund was a terminal station for that line. When I awoke, I was the only one on the train… Had just enough time to grab a smoke and get to the other train platform… Fuck, heaving 70kilos of luggage up train station stairs was NOT fun :P Oh well, looks like I’ll have a fair bit of that still to come. Anyhoo, I need food, I need to pee, and I wish I could smoke… (Fuck, since when did Germany go all smoke-free? Last time I was here you could smoke ANYWHERE… Looks like there’s still a touch of the big H kickin’ it round these days).

[If you didn’t get that.. It was a joke about Hitler and his anti-smoking laws.. Yeah... I’m funny.]

Anyway, the German countryside reminds me a lot of the Canadian countryside. Well, with less mountains, and more smokestacks (reminiscent of something, hmmm?). Oh, and a lot more graffiti over everything, surprisingly.

6:40pm: Things I’ve learned since landing:
1) Carry Euro coin: When you really have to pee, and you’re not allowed to bring your luggage down into the train-station W.C. it’s really useful to have coin for the luggage lockers.
2) Pay attention on the train! It’s too easy to get on the wrong train, or stay on a train you need to switch from. (Thank you to random non-English-speaking German guy for saving my bacon there… ugh)
3) Watch the conductor! When he goes out to smoke (and they all do), you can go out to smoke. Just be back on the train before him!

So, then I arrived in Enschede… I had texted Sam previously about when my arrival was set for, however I didn’t see her on the platform when I got there. So, I wandered off the platform over to the nearest grass space by the road, and lit up a smoke… Wondering if I should call her, I saw all the pavilion tents set up for her school’s festival beside the station, and lo and behold, wandering into a building across the street was a purple sweater and a mop of black hair. A bright purple sweater in the Netherlands… There’s only one girl that could possibly be. So I wander over to that building and of course I see her inside. So I call her, see her answer and come outside to talk, a mere 3 feet away, saying to her, “look three feet to your left!” To which she answers, “What? I can’t hear you…” So I hang up. She gets this confused look on her face, and I say it again nice and loud from about three feet behind her. Next thing I know, I’ve dropped all my bags and she’s jumped up on me… I don’t think we stopped kissing for a good 15 minutes, but I’ll spare you the mushy shit.

After the amazing reunion, she introduced me to a few of her friends at the festival, and we hauled all my stuff back to her place; about a 15min walk or so. And of course we didn’t come back out until much later that night. Let’s turn to the journal:

So, we went out later that night and Sam showed me around Enschede, grabbed a donair (oh yeah, some things will never change no matter where you are!), and went and bought some pot legally! Fuck yeah! The quintessential Netherlands experience (well, next to a good smoke and a pancake). So, when you go into a “coffeeshop” (A café is a bar, a coffeshop is for weed-sales, and I still don’t know what you call somewhere that actually sells coffee [as it’s rare to find a coffeeshop selling coffee]), there’s a little window in the back with a menu posted beside it. I bought 2 grams of the K2, ran me 15Euro, which ironically, cost me more than at home! Oh well, everything’s more expensive in Europe.

(My Legal Weed!!!!)

The next day (Wed, 23rd), I spent settling in. I like Enchede, with its amazing quaint small-town Europe charm (though it’s really not that small). I’ll post some video from the town soon.

(The Amazing View From Sam's Balcony)

(And the Rooftop!)

Oh, and the church/small cathedral in the centre of town! Amazing! It has the most beautiful discordant cacophonous harmony of bells I’ve ever heard... on the 15 and the 45 of the hour… Anyways, I failed at finding a cheap bike, so we spent the sunny afternoon drinking with Sam’s friends at the Aki festival (Aki being her school).

(My Baby Mixing Drinks Outside the Library)

(The Aki Festival)

(Sander, Mhairi, and Sam)

In the evening, I doubled Sam on her bike to the old church that serves as the Aki student’s workspace for a little barbeque. 3Euro got ya as much bratwurst and sausage as you could eat. You just can’t say no to an offer like that! This church looks more like just another building in the street, but it had the most amazing little back patio all cobble-stone brick and strung up with pretty little red string lights.

(The old church is where those bikes are)

Oh, and they used to hide Jews in the basement during WWII… Kinda reminds me of a recent South Park episode, oddly enough. Anyhoo, after that we hit the hay… Which brings me to Thursday and a trip back into Germany…

(En Route to Essen)

Europe Bound!

Well, I'm here.  Enschede, that is.  My new home in the Netherlands.  It's been a chaotic couple days for sure.  First off, a thanks goes to Mike for driving me to the airport...

The airport itself became a bit of a gong-show...  Excepts from my travel journal:

April 21, 2:21:

...  So, I just checked my bags... what an ordeal...  Seems that the max weight allowable per bag is 32kilos... My big luggage was 37k...  So, rushed force-and-cram packing got it down to 31.1k, with my backpacking pack now bursting at the seams.  And it cost me an extra $60... Well, beats paying $175 for another piece of checked luggage...  

Of course, I forgot my sunglasses, but I managed to get new ones at the airport for cheap, so no loss there.  Furthermore,  was incredibly surprised to find that my body piercings didn't set off the metal detector!  Yeah, I know!  13 genital piercings, most 10gauge or bigger, and not a beep... makes me wonder if I should try making gun parts into piercing jewelry...

April 21, 3:15pm:

  Sitting at the bar at the Milestones in the boarding area.... Security was a breeze! I took my PA and ampallang and frenums out, left everything else in (including my plugs) and I didn't set anything off at all!  Score one for piercing!  So, I'm now a double-shot of Jack Daniels and a half a rum and coke on my way to boarding...  Which is in 10min... Shit... Drink and run... (Hmmm, I wonder if this is ominous in a good way...)

Boarding itself wasn't too bad...  However, once we boarded, there was a three and a half hour delay, due to mechanical problems with the bathroom... I watched Juno and most of The Golden Compass before we even took off...  And despite what some would say, airplane seats really aren't that comfortable...

The plane ride itself wasn't too bad either... I mean, sitting in one spot for 10hrs has never been a strong-point of me, but I made do, and when I wanted to nap, I just put on National Treasure 2... and Bam! Asleep... If only for a little bit...  So, without any major problems, I made it to Germany.

Now, as I'm running super-behind, I'll have to leave you all with me arriving in Germany, as I have to catch a train back into Germany right now to get to the Kamelot concert in Essen tonight, and then off to Eindhoven tomorrow after camping a night in Essen...  No rest for the wicked...

Papers and Posters.

Ok, one down and one to go. It’s ten-to-two in the morning and I just finished a seven page paper for my Epistemology class. If you don’t know what Epistemology is, and are too lazy to Google/Wikipedia it, it is the philosophical inquest into knowledge; what it means to know something and how we can come to know something. The paper itself was on Robert Nozick’s conditions for knowledge and how they serve to overcome the skeptic’s challenges through the tracking of a reliable belief forming processes and the denial of the closure principle which subsequently results in the denial of Modus Ponens as a means of extending knowledge. But I see that you’ve already lost interest.


Yes, that’s right. I know you. I know that you just basically skipped over that last part, but that’s ok. I know that were I to post a section of my paper, just a paragraph or two, you’d start into it well intentioned enough, but you’ll be flipping back up to the big text all too soon. That’s because when you’re reading or focusing on something that you’re not really interested in, there’s this feeling like someone is sticking their invisible finger into your eyeball and rubbing the back of your retinas causing your vision and subsequently your concentration to blur. Don’t believe me, just go ahead and read this fine selection from my recently finished dissertation:

The original conditions for knowledge are that (1) p is true and (2) S believes that p. However, these somewhat historical conditions allow for the cases that Gettier brought up to show that there were things that someone could know, but be wrong about knowing. Nozick adds two more conditions to help overcome this problem. These two conditions are: (3) If p were not true, S would not believe that p (~p ->~[S believes that p]) and (4) If p is true then S believes that p is true (p -> S believes that p, or, condition 1 -> condition2).



The third condition entails that if the thing in question (p) were not true, then it is not the case that the person claiming to have the knowledge(S) would believe in it (p). This is a claim to help in the justification of (2). It also helps in the Gettier cases where p is justified but false, and where q is true but unjustified. Here, S would still have believed p or q even if q and hence also p or q are false. With the addition of condition (3), we can see that what formerly constituted knowledge now does not. Meaning that in the Gettier cases, the instances described are not actually knowledge, though they may at the time seem like it.



The fourth condition is a subjunctive linking between the first two conditions. This in turn makes it a stronger statement that, “Not only is p true and S believes it, but if it were true he would believe it” (352). That is to say, p being true helps cause the belief in p. Basically, this is to say that were things slightly different but p still true, than S would still believe in p. However, it is still possible to for someone to have contradicting beliefs, so Nozick amends the fourth condition to include the negation of the opposite. Basically, that p -> S believes that p and not that (S believes ~p). This hardly poses a challenge as contradicting truths about the world are hard to come by.

There you go. Hope you enjoyed. Or did you just skim over and jump to this spot? Oh well, I’ll stop being a prick, and spare you from describing the twelve page Philosophy of History paper that I have to write tomorrow on Marxist approaches to historical study and in turn Historical Materialism… But that’s an entire incredibly dry blog-post in and of itself.

On much a much more exciting note, I got a new tattoo yesterday done by the lovely Catra at I-Kandy, where I work most of my days away. The tattoo is of a girl, almost pinup style, from an art nouveau absinthe poster for Absinthe Blanqui, printed sometime between 1898 and 1901. The printer was L.Revon et Cie, and the artist's signature "Nover" is a mystery - no designer by that name is recorded. Since however Nover is a palindrome of Revon, it’s likely that the artist was Revon himself or someone who worked for him.

The position of the girl's head and the design of her hair in sketches for this poster are reminiscent of Privat-Livemont's 1896 poster for Absinthe Robette, and it is possible that this was modified in the final version specifically so that the Blanqui poster did not too closely resemble Privat-Livemont's design. However, the similarities are plain to see.And what’s really sweet is that when I get back from Europe, Cat is going to do the Privat-Livemont girl on the other side of my stomach, mirroring this one. I can’t wait until all the shading, color, and depth are given to her, Cat's done an amazing job. Here’s a pic… It’s only the outline so far, but man is it beautiful…However I do have to say, getting it done really did suck. It was far from the worst tattoo I’ve had, but it was basically like having my side tattoo worked on. Very very sharp tearing sensations working their way around sensitive sensitive skin. Joy. But it’s worth it… That and I have a very low pain threshold so bitching about pain is common for me. Oh, and I suppose I’ll throw a pic of my new brand up as well…

This was the result of me teaching Amus how to brand. It took her a little bit to get the hang of it, but she turned out a wonderful first brand, and I’m pleased with it. Branding. Now there’s a pain that’s just loveable. As soon as the cautery pen hits the skin your limb tries to back away, but there’s nowhere to back away to and you are lost to the sensation of your skin vaporizing away at 2200°F. And the smell, oh how I love the smell… It’s like burnt hair but fleshier… meatier… gamier… Hmm, I probably shouldn’t continue this vein of thought.

Anyways, as I now must make my way to bed, and prepare for another paper, I shall curl up with giddiness as it’s only 13 days ‘till I leave for Europe and can be with my beautiful Samantha again!!! Oh, and here’s a video clip of the branding... Enjoy!