"Matt, Take Me To Europe!"

You can afford to go to Europe. As a matter of fact, you can't afford not to.

Try not to choke on your taste of Germany.

Wed, 15 June 2016, 8:06 am: Oh, I will. I just won’t be taking it from this particular store.

We just landed in Dusseldorf a little while ago, so it’s too early to load up on souvenirs. In retrospect, though, I’ll wish I’d purchased one of these.I think those are chocolate bars but I just want the packaging, for the cool rendering of the cityscape.Fresh off an overnight flight— no shower, little sleep, and even less coffee— and I don’t look half bad. That’s not meant to sound boastful; it’s my awareness of how truly bad I COULD look under these circumstances.There’s a surprise, alright, when you’re an American tourist who starts gnawing on one of these chocolate eggs thinking it’s just like one of our typical Cadbury “creme”-filled Easter eggs. Decreed years ago by the US government to be choking hazards and therefore illegal in the States, these are actually plastic toys with a layer of chocolate encasing them.File these death treats along with David Hasselhoff in the “Why is it predominantly Germans who go crazy over this?” cabinet, but this “candy” is actually produced by Italians… the same Italians who manufacture Nutella and those Ferrero Rocher chocolate balls advertised on TV at Christmas time in snobby British accents.

I witness time and again on my European travels how much less uptight German parents are than American parents. We’ve gotten to the point where some moms put out an amber alert if their kids wander to the refrigerator unattended. Whether it’s letting preteens congregate at a tram stop and ride without supervision, parking a stroller outside a bakery with the youngun still in it during a dart inside for bread, or leaving a toddler to dig in a sandbox unattended at a beer garden while they queue up for sausages, Germans don’t feel the need to yank a leash on their offspring the way we do.

This “Kinder Surprise” curiosity seems like another prime example to me. Mutter und Vater trust that Junior has the good sense to chew carefully and not swallow anything whole. Aunt and Uncle Sam fret that little Tommy will suffer a paper cut opening the package, never mind the choking horror of the demon snack itself. (Although if we’re such worrywarts over our kids here, why do we let them get so fat? The US isn’t the most obese nation on earth because parents care TOO much.)

Matt October 5, 2016 at the airport, Germany, Neither Here Nor There No Comments

when a wine is worth it

Wed, 15 June 2016, 8:01 am: My innate civility almost always restrains me from drinking whiskey at eight in the morning, but it does not preclude me from price-checking whiskey at eight in the morning.

Our comfortable layover at the Dusseldorf airport (DUS) allowed me to poke through the aisles of several shops on premises. Of the most interest to me was the one with the large selection of alcohol. (If you were taking a class in streamlining text and were instructed to remove the least necessary sentence in this post, we both know the one you’d chop.)These one litre bottles of Jack and his cinnamon sister are 26,50 E. apiece, $29.72 at press time. (I love how “press time” around here is the exact second I hit “upload.”)

Have you ever found Jack in a one litre bottle here in the States? Generally Jack at US retail is in 750 ml and 1.75 L bottles. Once in awhile you’ll see the 375 ml size, in brown paper bags on park benches or inside the bottom desk drawers of middle school reading teachers.

The American 1.75 L goes for $40.00 – $50.00 at our mass retailers, while the 750 ml comes in at $20.00 – $27.00. My on-the-spot math told me these German airport litre bottles were not a super value.This whole section is wine. Booze occupies the entire interior wall of this store— which is actually its only wall. The rest of its floor plan is open; it’s just about dead center of the terminal, so anybody walking from one gate area to another is probably going to pass through this store.This is a good deal right here: 10,95 E. ($12.28) for a regular size bottle of a Dornfelder wine, a type we greatly enjoyed in Rudesheim last summer. That’s slightly higher than the price of a decent bottle of domestic wine in Florida, and we like it more than many wines easily available back home.

But the cost of a souvenir isn’t just the financial. You’ve got to factor in the physical and the practical.

This is the beginning of our trip. Seriously, Team Matt Take Me just got off the plane. Anything we add to our baggage now is going to stay with us for a long time. If we buy a couple of bottles of this velvet-textured, dark-skinned grape-sourced yumminess, we’ll be lugging them onto our connecting flight to Venice, onto our boats en route to the hotel, and then on to our subsequent locations. They are not lightweight, and they are breakable. That’s an unpleasant combination when you’re traveling.

Despite the value for money, there’s no way buying any of this wine right now makes sense. Sure, we could drink some or all of it at our Venice hotel and not have to carry it around after that, but we want to drink what’s available locally. Venetians are known for their specialized cocktails and sippables. You only need to BYOB if there’s no good hooch on site. And if we really want some of this wine later, we can probably find it back home. If it’s produced in quantity enough to stock an airport shelf, it’s likely also manufactured for export. A chain like Total Wine or ABC can possibly order it.

Now, if these bottles were on markdown for 5 E. each, that’d be different. For a deal that’s merely good instead of great, though, you’ve gotta know when to walk away. (You might recognize that Kenny Rogers line, even though you’d never recognize Rogers’ face anymore.)

Matt October 4, 2016 at the airport, Germany, Neither Here Nor There No Comments

incoming!

Wed, 15 June 2016, 7:20 am: That’s a screenshot of the seatback in front of me as we begin our final approach to Dusseldorf. It looks like a longer flight than it feels when I see it on a live map.

Why in hell do they call it a “final approach?” You’ve technically been approaching your destination ever since you took off. You’re approaching Dusseldorf even if you’re still on the opposite side of the ocean from it. And it’s all one approach. It’s not like you’re approaching it for the seventh time when you finally get close.Those are the present conditions, also viewed on the seatback. We’ve got 120 miles and 24 minutes till tarmac. That’s the best Eric Zoolander pout I can muster on two hours of sleep and a decidedly unsexy neck pillow. Some folks behind me are doing the “YMCA” arm moves in their excitement to be landing. I’m not dancin’ just yet, but I too will be ready to rumble on the ground in Germany.