Berlin or bust

Pieces of me

Emily took the white teapot.

The Sicilian-American lathe enthusiast took the seven-foot bookshelf. My father helped him carry it down to the car-service van.

The car-service-van driver took the lounge chair.

The mailman was leaning against the neighbor's stoop. "Where you been all year?" he said. He took the rotating space heater. Two hours later he returned with a friend and a car. And took the dresser.

The tall getting-divorced man took the pasta pot. The red bowls with the chipped lips. The knives. The forks. The Britta water filter. "Yes, yes!" he said to each item I held up. "I need it all." He also took the super metal fan. "It's loud," I warned. Later he emailed: "I now have some idea what Pan Am's Clipper service to Buenos Aires sounded like, circa 1938."

His daughter was a blaze of light. Tiny for seven. She took the bouncy ball.

My mother took the black-and-white striped jersey.

My father took the heating pad. The Sierra Designs backpack. Mosby's Medical Dictionary.

Strangers took the futon frame. When I wasn't looking.

Katherine took the black brocade coat.

Photographer K. took four pairs of designer jeans. Three skirts. Two jackets. Four brown belts. Two scarves. The purple sparkle sweater. The white thigh-highs. A polka dot dress. Pretty much my entire fifteen-pounds-ago wardrobe. Which made me happy. And her even more so. 

Susan took the silver bracelet. A gift from a Jersey boy long ago.

Connie took the green-stoned ring. And two Ziplock baggies full of porcelain beads, mismatched earrings, dangly thingies. "Oh goodie!" she said. "Stuff to play with." She showed up at my going-away gathering wearing a blue glass pendant. Which I found in Greece.

Rosemary took the electric pencil sharpener. The Glustick. The Sephora shower gel. The lucky bamboo the office sent me when I had surgery. The blue Julius monkey backpack, too.

Jane 1 took the pink Julius monkey backpack.

Jane 2 took the mega-power cord. Proud to be carting it around on a Sunday.

Lynn took the tiny bobble-headed turtles. From Isla Mujeres. 

Two-year-old Charlie played with the live bobble-headed turtles. Swimming in the bathtub, in the cafe's garden.

Josee took the stereo. She is a cantor.

No one took the scissors. "They're rusty," complained Jane 1. No one took the steel-toed boots either.

I was twenty-seven when I bought them, hair dyed black, a rainy day in London. I lugged them in a Sierra Designs backpack, all the way through Europe. Wore them with overalls in Berkeley. On snowy days in Brooklyn.

Salvation Army will sell them. A stranger  will lace them up the calf. Never knowing their story. Or mine.

But that is okay.

Because look! In Bensonhurst. In Williamsburg. On 70th and Broadway. On 83rd and Riverside. In Windsor Terrace. On the F train. Walking down Amsterdam. In a bedroom closet somewhere between Avenues B and C.

I am nowhere near New York. And yet I've never left.

What the hell am I doing in Berlin?

That was my overriding thought for the duration of the taxi trip from Tegel Airport to Ryke Strasse.

So much for knowing that Berlin is "where I belong."

It was a lot less of a stretch to know that when he-who-I-now-hope-is-wracked-with-pain- daily (yeah-not-very-enlightened-of-me-but-I-just-can't-friggin-help-it) was in the picture.

Today, outside baggage claim, I looked around. There was no one the sight of whom quickens my heart, bubbles my joy to the surface.

I wanted that one person. The one you tell everything to. (Oh my god one passenger collapsed over the Atlantic they called for a doctor in Dutch and the stewardesses sprinted past me I thought he might die but he was okay I had the chicken and the man next to me wore sunglasses for the whole six hours...)

I did solo-battle with my three very heavy black bags (framed art, hammer, wrench, knee-high Frye boots, Phillips screwdriver will do that). I fought my way to the taxi stand.

And you know what?

I was MAD.

Fuming.

Not this again! This "no one to meet the single girl at the airport" life!

I thought: God is a bastard.

I had just spent two hours reading the Tao Te Ching. Which seems not to have helped.

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

Also:

If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completely.

Oh, shut up.

Fortunately, Dylan came by later. "Let's have dinner!" she said. Saving me from the sinkhole that is my sofa.

She doesn't know what the hell she is doing in Berlin either.

She said, "It is the first time in five years I haven't had a plan."

I said, "Exactly!"

She said, "There is only one thing to do."

I waited, chopsticks poised.

"Wait," she said. "And pray like crazy." She laughed. "I mean, what I'm asking is, What am I supposed to be doing right now?"

"Yes!" I cried.

The Tao says:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

It is helpful to have friends who are as smart as the Tao. The Tao is a good read, but it can't give big hugs. Or join you for Vietnamese down the street. Just when you need it most.

No Exit

Back in New York. And not a moment too soon.

God bless yellow cabs and air-conditioning. Cat calls and roadside marriage proposals. Men who cry "Yanks and Mets suck!" for no particular reason

Also. God bless any city three thousand miles away from heartbreak.

Too bad it doesn't work that way. Too bad he trails me, uninvited, unwelcome.

Berlin's Tegel Airport. Here is where he met me on New Year's. A surprise. That's where he stood, overcoated, winter-pale. Here is where we arrived together from San Francisco. After he'd won over my family. Here is where he was meant to depart for New York next week. Had he not walked away.

Amsterdam Airport. I glance into my new New Yorker. An article on "The Itch." Oh, I think unbidden, he would like to read that. Then It is his hands I see, cracked and chapped, skin peeled back to raw, my own fingers tracing circles on the hot palms, massaging till I break the burn.

I have an aisle seat. 41D. A young couple smooches. I think: Barcelona. Easyjet. Him beside me, at the window. Banging armrests, flinging his seatbelt, a fit of mock panic. "I am flipping out!" I could not stop laughing. I think: Lisbon, Costa Rica, Milano. All the places we planned on. Never got to.

My cheeks are wet. Mascara's fingerprint. Tears all the way through take-off. For yesterday. For tomorrow.

JFK. I met him here in March. An hour too late. I'd tipped a whole bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper into my purse on the way. We rode in circles on the AirTrain, not realizing our mistake.

State Street. I replace the SIM card in my iPhone. He showed me how. He hacked the damn thing. I wouldn't even have one if it weren't for him. And now, the ring that rang, noon evening night, that rhythm of our days, silenced.

It is not bittersweet. It infuriates.

I want him banished from my brain. Excised from my heart. If he were a limb, I would amputate.

He does not deserve the real estate.

And yet. "Remember everything," said Coley.

That's my job. That's my source. How else: create?

Today I'd trade it in. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, thanks very much. Until the stinging stops.

I Was Not Unhappy

When I arrived at JFK on Monday afternoon.

First, a woman announced the location of our baggage carrousel over the P.A. Such full-blown Brooklynese, I had to smile.

Next, the line for American citizens at customs: Every color, every ethnicity. It made me warm and fuzzy inside. That's the closest I get to patriotism.

But then.

"Take Atlantic Avenue," I told the cabbie. "Not the Brooklyn Queens Express." Nine years in New York and you know these things: The degree of traffic at that hour. The steeply rising digits on the meter.

A ride home on Atlantic is 45 minutes. 35 dollars. At most.

We spent the next hour just trying to get onto Atlantic Avenue. A stall of bumpers, traffic cops blocking every access. "A fatal accident," is all the one of 'em could tell us. We drove in sisyphusian loops in neighborhoods I had never before seen. Finally, we ended up on the BQE. Gridlocked, naturally.

Please bear in mind that I had already been traveling for 15 hours.

It was not all hell. The cabbie insisted on turning off the meter. "It's going to cost you too much," he said. "Pay me what's fair." He introduced himself as John. He stretched a hand across the partition. We shook. Really his name was Rafique. "But you call yourself John!" I said. "Rafique is so much better."

We talked about life in New York. Work work work. How much easier it is in Berlin, and he said, in Pakistan. He wanted to know how I met the man I now love. He needed to know: "What did you fall in love with in him?" I tried to explain. "No, but what is your most favorite thing about him?"

Two hours later we were on State Street. I handed Rafique $60. He seemed disappointed. "That's not fair?" I said. "Not really," he said. I gave him $5 more.

My subletter Asami let me in. In the kitchen she alerted me to a leak that she had only just noticed. The walls and cupboards under the sink were drenched through, the old yellow linoleum was peeling, buckled, stained. Four feet away from the sink, where the carpet meets the linoleum, a wet spot crept, big as a small dog. I could smell the mold.

Also, no internet access.

The next day: rain. The subway system promptly fell into chaos. 

The day after that, a bomb in Times Square.

Happy to be here?

Not so much.

Ta-ta-ta-tapas

We sat on stools without backs. The restaurant was a swell of sound, of bodies. Hot, loud. Catalan.

A blackboard perched before us. The day's specials jotted in chalk. Incomprehensible to any but the most fluent.

A waiter with a warm brown face swept up to our table. His mouth spilled Spanish. Bayreuth Boy perked his ears. I went dumb. My friend Alesia jumped in. "Out-of-towners," she said, indicating her voiceless companions. She grilled the small man about the menu. She placed the orders.

The Boy asked for Cerveza, I for agua, por favor. "They do quite well for themselves," the waiter told Alesia, laughing. Or something like that.

*             *            *

A Monday in September: I barreled (late) into my German language class. Muttering apologies. It was my second week and the class was accustomed to my (loud) entrances. This time four new faces looked on. I blushed. "Let's do introductions again," said my teacher Anja. Around the table, and there she was: Alesia. Yellow hair. Wide blue eyes. No denying it: a woman my age. Oh joy! In this bastion of twenty-somethings. She lived in Barcelona.

If there's anything I learned from nine years in New York: Work your contacts.

"Barcelona!?" I cried out. "I need your e-mail!"

*             *            *

First came the artichoke. Paper-thin slices, heart and leaves. Crisp to the touch. Golden green.

Then slabs of bread. Wet with oil.

Prawns. I would have bit right in. Alicia yelped. Off with the head. Off with the legs. Peel back the shell.

I'm Official! (or, Meme-Cherry Popped)

I have always considered Memes an unnecessary expenditure of words. A clogging of the virtual airwaves. Kind of like chain letters for the blogging set.

However. I got tagged for one today. And I cannot deny that I am flattered. Let me revise: I am downright stoked (yes, I grew up in California in the eighties; yes this entitles me to use that word). I feel as if I've been granted the official stamp of blogger approval. And by none other than DaMomma -- only, oh, the wittiest sharpest most-read blogger I personally know.

Pride be damned. Principles, too. Here are the rules:

1) Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2) Share five random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.

3) Share the five top places on your "want to see or want to see again" list.

4) Tag a minimum of five random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment in their blog.

Whee! Let's do it.

1) I was tagged by Motherhood Is Not for Wimps (aka, DaMomma).

2) Five Random/Weird Facts About Me.

1. I am, inexplicably, a stellar map-reader. Plop me down in a foreign city, thrust a map in my hand, and I will get where I need to go. Rarely a wrong turn. By foot or public transport. Mostly I trump the navigational skills of my companions. Even the males. Which warms the cockles of my (feminist) soul.
2. Cumin makes me gag. It ruins any food I bite into. I cannot inhale the scents of an Indian restaurant without losing my appetite.
3. When I was on Isla Mujeres eight years ago, I sunburned my upper lip. It's been redder than the rest of me ever since.
4. I shop all organic. And I devour aspartame. Like it's going out of style.   
5. I cannot get through a day without swatting silverware off a table, falling on flat sidewalk, or dribbling loose change from my pockets. Most recently, I flooded a hotel bathroom. The water puddled out into the hall, soaking through my boyfriend's Nikes. "It was that crazy showerhead," I protested, "spraying in all directions." Never mind that he had showered two day's running without incident. It took five towels to sop it all up.

3) Five Top Places I Want to See or See Again:

1. Barcelona (specifically, the beach, in the exact same spot I was sitting three short days ago)
2. Cambodia
3. Uruguay (My cousin just spent two weeks there. "We rode horseback for hours at a time," she told me, "and never saw a soul.")
4. India (if only I could overcome #2, above)
5. Lisbon (I have one word for you: Mosaics)

4) Tag Five Friends: I am shaving this down to four. So sue me, I am out of the blogging loop here in Berlin.* 

1. Daring Young Mom
2. The Lovely Ride
3. Notes From the Trenches
4. My Topography

*Wait, does that screw the whole thing up? And bring me nine years' bad luck, plus a curse upon my cat?

Them Barcelona Blues

Monday night I arrived back in Berlin after five days in Barcelona.

I did not want to believe the Boy when he said it would be hard to come back. I did not want to accept his vision of Berlin as gray and cold and closed-up tight. "But it is new to me!" I protested. "Hip and unfurling. My writer's muse."

But oh how I yearn today. For sun so warm I bare my arms. For hills, raking the sky. For cacti, clawing slopes sideways. For houses the color of sand, the color of cantaloupe, the color of sighs.

I want palms. I want Vespas. I want the frothing coffee of Hotel Oriente.

Black-iron balconies, laundry draped like jewels. Gaudi: Shattered porcelain. Blazing castles. Knuckles punching the sky.

Most of all, though, I miss the sea.

I had no more than thirty minutes on Barcelona's beach. It was Sunday afternoon. I had eaten bad paella with the Boy. Rice neon yellow, gobbed and wet. No flavors unfolding -- just a single saffron slam. One could not peel the skin off the prawns. The clams were gummy. The cuttlefish might have been pre-fab.

Strangely, I did not mind so much. It was sitting at an outdoor table in Barceloneta, the fisherman district, our faces sucking up the sun, that had mattered most. And that we had accomplished.

Four Reasons Not to Stay at Hotel Oriente

1. Here's what qualifies a room as "deluxe": The mini-bar. Stocked with two Cokes, one Fanta, and two small waters. You will promptly drink the two waters. The next day you will learn: The mini-bar is not restocked daily. Although you are paying the deluxe price every night.

2. It is located on Las Ramblas. Your tourbook will gush about Las Ramblas. Do NOT be fooled. Globalization has taken a stroll down the famous boulevard. The footprint it left behind is...big. Right across from your hotel, you will find a McDonalds. And a KFC.

2. During breakfast, served on the first floor, you will be privy to the drills and hammers of the construction crew. The Wurst is fatty. The waiter testy. By 11 a.m. a toxic scent seeps into the room.

3. You room will face Las Ramblas. This, one assumes, is the desired location. On the second night, a cadre of middle-aged tourists will sway in the cafe directly outside your window, hollering drinking songs into the night. The next day you will ask be moved to the back. This room, cramped enough to register as claustrophobic. A window onto a wall. You will be awakened Monday morning by the hammers and drills of the hotel workman.

4. It is especially problematic if you arrive at the Hotel Oriente with...romantic expectations. The room is small and tight. The decor is charmless. The double-bed is two single beds on wheels. They are jammed together and prone, under the weight of two bodies, to promptly roll apart. Which makes things...difficult.

'Nuff said.

Love & Rockets (& Lufthansa)

Outside my bedroom window the flakes are falling thick and fast. The roof is quilted white. The first snow to stick since I moved to Berlin.

It is 2 p.m. on January 1 and I am tucked beneath my down comforter, laptop humming on my thighs. Beside me perches a red paper cup. Already drained. Bayreuth Boy braved five flights of stairs and a sky full of flurries to purchase my inaugural caffeine (Americano) of 2008, and his (latte macchiato). Now he sits beside me, Power Book clapped open. Watching YouTube videos on how-to-hack your iPhone. And SKYPing with floppy-limbed Christoph.  

This is today's romance, my friends. Amped up. Plugged in. On line. Side by side.

Floppy-limbed C. wants to know: What are we doing for breakfast today? Do we want to meet up? A rather late breakfast, indeed. Then again, we were celebrating till 5 a.m. And I am jet-lagged. Which makes waking by noon positively heroic.

Somewhere near midnight, I stood on Torstrasse with the Boy and his posse. No Times Square ball-drop. No Dick Clarke countdown.  Nevertheless. We leapt into hugs. "Alles gute!" we cried. And Berlin exploded all around.

For three short days each year, the purchase of fireworks is legal in Germany. For one short night, the lighting of said fireworks is legal, too. The streets are Fourth of July on crack. Actually, Fourth of July on crack before they outlawed all the fun stuff. Fire-spirals spin along gutters. Roman candles blaze rainbows over pavement. Bottle rockets bang skyward, or whiz horizontally, often aimed at cars. Chinese cracker-chains pop like machine gun volley. Clouds of slate-gray sulfur rise. Clogging the throat, burning the eyes. Ambulances howl past. Tending to the already injured.

Twenty minutes of this was exciting. More would have been too much. After all, I did not come to Berlin to choke on street corners. I came here to... Breathe. Of myself. Again. 

I'm Dreaming of a Black Suitcase....

Oh how joyous the return of the missing blogger should have been. And yet. It could not be. For the no-longer-missing blogger's suitcase promptly went missing the minute she was found.

The suitcase did not appear on the SFO baggage carousel. Nor was there any record of it in Lufthansa's computer tracking system.

Multiple phone calls to multiple baggage-claim hotlines at multiple airports on multiple days at multiple times yielded multiple instances of non-information. When grilled about the suitcase's current location and possible date of delivery, Lufthansa agent Hildegard von Bingen grew huffy. "Eight thousand suitcases have been misplaced in the past two days. Flights are overbooked. Cargo holds have not an inch to spare. What do you want from me!?"

Thus:

The blogger wore blue jeans (extra-wide flair) and Frye boots (weather-beaten) to the annual German-American Bastel gathering in Sebastopol on December 23.

The blogger wore blue jeans and Frye boots to the Heiligabend celebration hosted by the incomparable Mom of blogger in Cow Hollow on December 24.

The blogger wore blue jeans and Frye boots on Christmas Day itself.

These happened to be the same blue jeans and Frye boots that the blogger wore sixteen hours straight on her journey from Berlin to Munich to San Francisco December 22. The jeans were in need of washing before the plane took off. They were paired with a JCrew sweater, the scent of whose armpit seams is best left unimagined.

Fortunately, the aforementioned attire did not prevent the missing blogger from bastelling a most charming pink-haired Hampelmann (captured in the much-anticipated "Hampelmann in the Ghetto" short film, due in theaters February 10); nor from participating in a rousing Kling Gloeckchen sing-along to the accompaniment of her brother's Conga drum. Furthermore, the blogger's outfit, though a resounding Christmas Eve fashion faux pas (consider, in contrast, the burgundy silks and black velvets of her cousin A.), proved no hindrance to the blogger's lighting of candles on the incomparable Mom of blogger's tree. Much to the blogger's dismay, her brother was able, with a single match, to light five candles for her every three. This appears to have nothing to do with the blogger's ripe-smelling clothes. Rather, it is her shoddy hand-eye coordination that is to blame. (Just try telling her that.)

The blogger's missing suitcase did, however, preclude her from:

Ex-Pat Drug Moll Panics in Frankfurt

The L. Glutamine was not to blame. This time I packed pills. And not in my carry-on.

Gate A17. Waiting for connecting flight to Berlin. Nursing my first Cola Zero in five days. I stood amidst a swarm of German business commuters. But the faces I saw:

Rosemary. Constance. Silke. Sally. Josee. Beth. Alison. Heather.

It was impossible that next Saturday, at the appointed hour, I would not trade in hugs on 99th and Broadway (at least seven, maybe fifteen).

That I would not wedge myself between elbows at the Metro Diner. Announce to the waiter: "Cobb salad, please. No onions, no bacon, no corn. Lemon slices on the side. And a mug of hot water." That the waiter would not nod, unfazed, for, after all, he hears it every week (and I smile so sweet when I say it).

That Rosemary and I would not stroll languidly down Broadway, end up on her sofa, watch something Netflixed, something DVRed, order sushi in. That I would not number-9 it home, climb the steps at State and 3rd, hear Cleo mewling at the clunk of my Fryes.

That the New York me was no longer mine.

I pictured the apartment I was returning to. So vast. So devoid of my stuff. And entirely cat-less.

My breath caught. Who do I know in Berlin? What in the world do I do there?

Killing Time

It is not recommended to arrive at Berlin's Tegel Airport two hours in advance, as the airport is the size of one's pinkie finger and passing through security is about as stressful as sipping a cappuccino, and there is nothing to do but sit in the lobby and quatsch on one's Handy with Bayreuth Boy, who, stuck in bed with stomach cramps due to the consumption of aging alfalfa sprouts, has no choice but to listen. Poor Boy.

It is also not recommended to schedule a two-hour layover in Frankfurt, as one will be forced to consume a "Roma" sandwich on wheat bread so pale it might as well be Wonder, and while crunching on stale mozzarella, pay 8 Euro for the use of T-com HotSpot wireless just to prove what an up-to-the-minute on-the-go blogger one is.

In addition, it is not recommended to travel with a powdered L. Glutamine-packed plastic baggy. Lesson learned.

Finally, it is not recommended to linger so long over a very short post entitled "Killing Time" that one's T-com HotSpot hour runs out before one hits Publish and one simultaneously realizes one's flight began boarding ten minutes ago -- ack! Running....

Officially Homeless

As of today.

Thursday I spent six hours cleaning the apartment that I do not like. Six. It is painful enough for me to clean an apartment I do like.

Last May, I stayed at the Marriott with BFF Coley. Day 2, she stood surveying our suite. "Lilan," she said. "You are a study in entropy." "What?!" I cast my eyes on the kitchen table: Keys vitamins receipts water bottles takeout menus clumped into some semblance of order. I had been trying so hard. "You spread out," she continued. Not unkindly. "You just can't help it." I protested: "But!" Then laughed.

Some things are best not denied.

Staying in Borsigstrasse, Katrinka took to calling me "Miss Entropy."

"Chaos Theory," offered Adam. As I tripped on flat sidewalk. Swiped my bowl off his sofa. Turned every TV channel to static. I didn't even tell him about the goat yogurt that burst in my backpack. The jar that rolled from the recycling bag, shattering at my feet. The almond butter that clung like Elmer's glue to the kitchen floor.

Regardless, F.'s flat survived. I washed the linens, mopped the Laminat, even re-taped the doggy-style poster to her bedroom door. As for the cooking pot, that stays.

Friday's Plan: Finish packing. Order taxi. Load trunk with belonging. Unload at cousin's flat (Borsigstrasse). Ride S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof. Take train to Bochum (in Ruhrgebiet): Wedding of mother's best friend's son. A brother to me.

Friday's Reality: Finished packing. Ordered taxi. Removed keys from key chain. Dragged two suitcases, one backpack, one messenger bag, one purse, one plastic bag full of food to front door. Waited. Peered down street. Waited. Checked Handy time. Waited. Called for taxi: Busy. Waited. Ate a cucumber (=lunch). Waited. Called for taxi. Told: None available.

Waited.

Dragged two suitcases, one backpack, one messenger bag, one purse, one plastic bag full of food to corner. Peered down street for empty cabs: None. Waited. Called for taxi. Told: Five minutes. Dragged two suitcases, one backpack, one messenger bag, one purse, one plastic bag full of food back back to apartment door. Waited. Called cousin's voicemail: Not coming. Will leave belongings at F.'s. Suddenly remembered: No keys.

Cursed.

Travel Companions Are of the Essence

1. Stella Nicole Patri (1896 - 2001): Bookbinder, Warrior, Grandmother, Provocateur. Traveled to Florence during the great Arno flood, helped salvage thousands of water-logged books. Trekked through Japan well into her nineties. Never swayed from her belief in me as Writer. A good lady to take along.

2. Ernie. Can you ever get enough Sesame Street? I think not.

3. The Madonna.* Glow-in-the-dark and magnetized. A tchotchke from Julie and Gaby to aid in my post-surgical recovery in October. Healing aids are now no less needed. Plus, those girls have known me at my darkest, when I was only just crawling out of the box o' fear I'd built for myself, and learning to be in life again. Julie, forever my inspiration as erstwhile travel writer for The Berkeley Guides. Gaby, my first post-box o' fear road-trip partner — Jacksonhole, Wyoming, remember that?

Recommendations

It is not recommended to wait until two hours before departing for the airport to consult one's flight info. One might just discover that Lufthansa is flying not out of JFK but out of Newark. An entire two-bodies-of-water away.

It is furthermore not recommended to end up jammed into a seat in the very last row of a 6-hour flight to Frankfurt. That's 56K. Lilliputian leg room. Zero seat-recline. Relentless traffic flow to toilets.

Lastly, it is not recommended to share a flight with one Russian and one Pole who stake out the standing room area behind row 56 and spend four hours, yes FOUR, talking smack in an Eastern block language while downing multiple beers. Occasionally a third man joins them to tell rude jokes in loud English with an unidentifiable accent.

NO transatlantic sleep possible, even with narcotic assistance.

Brooklyn Drug Moll Nabbed in Frankfurt

The next time you happen to be flying into the Frankfurt Airport, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, pack powdered L. Glutamine in your carry-on bag.

Oh, you may well be tempted. You may march into your local health-food store the day before your trip and pay $40 for a bucket of the stuff. You may feel quite virtuous, thinking, look at me, even when I'm out of the country, I'll be following the instructions of my nutritionist-cum-holistic-pharmacist and taking 3 scoops of L. Glutamine before every meal so that I might strengthen my gut, which said nutritionist-cum-yadda-yadda claims is the key to boosting my half-ass immune system. You may even feel a twinge of pride (oh, deadliest of sins!) — after all, you have managed to fit this errand into the two hundred thirty-nine other errands that moving to Berlin for two months has required of you.

ALAS. Though you may take all necessary precautions — zip-locking multiple liquids of 3 ounces or less into see-through bags; flashing your passport and boarding pass at every turn; dressing in none of your usual out-sized bling; always laying your laptop in its own bin — you will have screwed yourself. Big. Without your knowing.