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- My Quest For
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- About Bob
Dusseldorf,
Germany--Things started to go wrong the minute my cab
dropped me off, and I caught a first glimpse of my hotel,
floating in the river.
It was a sunny, spring day, and I was still enjoying that blissful period of excitement one feels after landing in Europe-right before the jet lag kicks in. Still, as I watched the waves lapping at the sides of my future home, I had a strong feeling this trip was not going to go entirely as planned.
To be fair, my hotel had every right to be in the river. It was, after all, an old cruise ship. Some entrepreneur had tied it up on the banks of the Rhine to accommodate visitors to the trade show I was about to attend. So many people were coming to town for the event that Dusseldorf's land-based hotels couldn't hold them all.
I had stumbled upon an ad for the "hotelship" back in my office in Philadelphia and been intrigued. It would be relatively close to the site of the trade show, I reasoned-much nearer than the other available rooms. It was also cheaper, so I could save my company some money.
Plus, it had seemed kind of cozy at the time.
But as I dragged my luggage some 
500 feet
along the top of the jetty and then up the metal gangplank
onto the Hotelship Avanti, cozy was not the first word to
spring from my muttering lips.
The trade show was called DRUPA (short for Druck und Papier, German for print and paper). Held every four years, it lured thousands of printers from all over the world for its two-week duration. In fact, it essentially took over the city, with attendees grabbing up every available bed.
Thus the boat.
I had been quite excited when my company approved my plan to attend. I was editor of a magazine for printers, and this was the king of all printing events. Plus, I'd get to see Germany. I pictured myself touring Teutonic castles in my spare time, exploring ancient cobblestone streets and dining on hearty German cuisine-all on my company's dime. But that's not exactly how it went.
My first sign that things weren't going to be very pleasant came when I stepped into the narrow closet that doubled as my room. I fell immediately into the sink, which was placed just inside the door. A tiny toilet and shower were jammed into a small room across from it. Just one step away from the sink hung the fold-down bed. Between the bed and the couch was a mere four inches of space, just enough room to slip through sideways for a peek out the porthole. And what was my view like, I wondered, as I tore aside the curtains? Just inches below the glass, the river rushed past with alarming speed, carrying bugs, grass, sticks and quite possibly a few dead animals. As I gazed out, an empty coke can floated past.
Well, this would certainly be an adventure, I thought, optimistically, as I flopped down on the bed. Lying there I realized I was actually below the surface of the river. It was a rather unsettling thought and put me in mind of Mafia victims wearing concrete shoes and sharing the river floor with me.
Jet lag caught up with me there on my cot, so I let myself drift off for a mid-day nap. That's when I discovered one of the perils of sleeping in a river.
"WHAM!" came the explosion. I sat bolt upright. "WHAM!" It came again, as if someone had
taken a sledgehammer to my door. "WHAM!" I jumped up and lunged for the port hole in time
to see the forth wave slam into the glass. "WHAM!" I realized I was feeling the wake of a passing ship, full force. "WHAM!" came another wave, for good measure.
After that scare I had no chance of falling asleep. I got up and took a walk to the Altstadt, the old section of Dusseldorf, to lose myself on its narrow streets.
Later I joined some coworkers for dinner. They gave me the address of their hotel (which was not in the river) and I jumped in a trolley to find it. But I jumped in the wrong one. I went two stops too far before I realized what had happened. I waited 10 minutes for the next one and rode back two stops, then tried to transfer onto the correct trolley. After a 15-minute wait, a trolley pulled up and I waited patiently for the door to open. Every door but mine slide aside and all the other people on the platform boarded. I raced for an open door just as it slid shut and the trolley whirred away.
I was furious. I screamed and kicked things and had a good old American tantrum, but it did not bring the trolley back, and in the end I had to wait another 15 minutes. This time when it stopped, I noticed another passenger press a button on the side of the car. Swish, the door slid open
I pressed.
Swish.
Oops. I hung my head and hid in the corner.
The trolley dropped me near the street I wanted and I set off, looking for the hotel's address. I walked and walked, and had covered a good mile before I finally found it. Prior to entering I glanced up the street. Half a block away was the trolley stop where I'd had my tantrum. I just shook my head.
Dinner did not go well. One of my comrades grabbed the waiter and blurted out, in English that we required English menus, rather than letting me use my German language skills to establish a rapport with the man. As a result he took a good 20 minutes to return to our table for our orders, and all the while we sweated in the stuffy room.
After we had eaten, they returned to their hotel, and I to my boat. As I removed my brand new soft contact lenses, however, I accidentally tore one of them.
I had not brought spares.
I realized, with horror, that I would have to wear my glasses for the next two weeks. I hadn't worn them regularly in over five years. I was livid.
Exhaustion carried me off to sleep, and I was deep in a dream when the earthquake hit. "WHAM!" Scared and confused, I scrambled to sit up, trying to remember where I was. "WHAM!" The entire room shook. Slowly my wits returned to me and I remembered what I was hearing. I began to curse all things nautical. Little did I know, this would be my quietest night on the ship.
Morning dawned dark and stormy. I slipped down the gangplank and splashed along the jetty to join the small crowd of boat dwellers waiting for a cab to the trade show. But as we were standing at the end of a dead end road, cabs were scarce. After 10 minutes of fruitless lingering, I decided to walk the mile or so to the fairgrounds. The wind whipped my umbrella in every direction, speckling my glasses with drops-a problem I hadn't had to worry about in years. My suit coat was quite damp when I arrived.
The show had 18 different exhibit halls, and over the next week I visited every one of them. Each day I attended press conferences, talked with exhibitors in their booths and took notes. In the evenings I would join acquaintances in the Altstadt for glasses of dark beer and dinner.
And then, with increasing dread, I would return each night to the boat.
As the rooms had filled, the noise level had increased. The floors and walls were so thin I could hear everything. Every footstep in the rooms above me boomed loud and clear to my ears as I settled in to sleep. It seemed people never stopped walking. Boom, boom, boom! All night long they clomped past my door, back and forth, endlessly. Where were they going? A few times I flung open my door right as a particularly loud stomper passed by, only to stare helplessly at the offender's retreating back. What could I say? "Hey you! Stop walking."
Late one night, the guy in the next room decided to make several loud phone calls. I could clearly hear every word through the cardboard walls. I finally told him to shut up, which he did, though I continued to hear him whispering for several more minutes.
Then came the nightly parade of boats, their engines groaning and grinding as they struggled slowly upstream, not 30 feet from my porthole. The whole room vibrated. And, of course, each evening I would be torn from my slumbers by a terrifying "WHAM!" that threw me straight into cardiac arrest. It was excruciating.
On my third day on the boat, I returned to my room after a tough day at the trade show to find it infested with gnats-large, mothlike bugs that I had to chase around and capture one by one. I was baffled, until I realized that the crew must have opened my water-level window during the day for air, and let in the swarms. Actually, they did this several times until I finally put up a sign in German warning them not to.
As the trade show stretched on, each day was colder and rainier than the last, crushing my plans to spend my off hours exploring the city. The exhibit halls were dry and dusty, and not a single one of them had a drinking fountain. I began to dread not only my nights on the boat but my days at the show. My only solace was the thought of having a cold beer in the Altstadt each evening to soothe my dismal mood.
After seven torturous days, my shipboard imprisonment finally ended. With glee I checked out and hopped a train for Cologne, intent on spending my last three days having enough fun to make up for the horrors of the past week. But disappointment was not through with me yet.
I stepped into the
magnificent Cologne cathedral and eagerly prepared to climb
the spiral staircase up one of its towers for an unrivaled
view of the city. But just as I approached the ticket
counter, the clerk shut the door in my face. It seemed
someone had gotten hurt at the top, and emergency crews were
trying to evacuate him. The tower was closed for the day.
Discouraged, I went to visit the Rathaus (town hall) down the street, which was supposed to be quite nice. Just as I approached, fire trucks surrounded the place and black smoke began billowing out from the roof next door.
So much for that.
I ended up strolling down a pedestrian shopping mall, buying junk food and ducking into doorways to escape the rain.
In one of a series of bad calls I'd made while preparing for this trip, I had reserved a room in a hostel for my three nights in Cologne. As a veteran of hostels, I had not been concerned with the thought of sharing a dorm with strangers-especially when it would save me several hundred dollars. This, however, was before I'd known just how bad ship life would be. Now I wanted to splurge on the best hotel in town, just for one night of unbroken sleep. In the end, though, I stayed with the hostel. More fun awaited me there.
As I opened the door to my room, I was greeted by one of my roommates, a muscular man with tattoos up and down each arm. That was not the most arresting thing about him, however.
He was clad in a long, black evening dress.
I asked him, in German, if he was heading to a masquerade party. He responded, in heavily accented English, that this was no party costume.
He was a transvestite.
I stayed remarkably straight-faced as he launched into a sort of defense of transvestites, explaining that he had a girlfriend, a respectable job and was perfectly normal in most ways, but that he preferred to dress this way because it helped him feel more masculine. He was in town, he said, to attend a conference for therapists as part of his master plan to go into business counseling other transvestites.
Then, realizing I was a visitor to Cologne, he launched into a chronicle of the city's past, telling me all about the cathedral's 500-year history. It was difficult to stand there with a straight face, listening to an oration on the history of the cathedral from a man wearing mascara and a sleek, form-fitting black dress. As he lectured, he donned a wig, the long, auburn hair falling over his tattooed shoulders. At one point he tied a bandana around his head, but then tore it off, declaring, "No that looks silly." Apparently he hadn't given too a close look at the rest of his appearance.
That night I endured the snoring of unseen roommates and the screaming of German teenagers, chasing each other around the hallways. But with no wake to wake me, I slept like a log. I woke just in time to see my transvestite historian friend depart, decked out in his finest ladies' ware.
I had planned to rent a bike that day, so I headed for a shop I had seen by the river. All I could get was an old three-speed with a basket on the handlebars and coaster brakes, but I took it gladly. A bike trail traced the shore of the Rhine, and I eagerly followed it out of the city into more rural areas, trying to put the misery of the past week behind me.
I was an hour or so away when the rain started. It quickly drenched me as I struggled to don the poncho the bike rental man had lent me. As there was no shelter anywhere, I had no choice but to keep pedaling as the downpour soaked my shoes, splashed my legs and froze my fingers on the handlebars. It was pure misery.
The next day was my last in Germany. It was also the
first sunny day I had seen since I'd arrived. I had planned
to take a day trip to Koblenz, so I rose early and headed to
the train station. My German skills aren't perfect, but when
the loudspeaker boomed out "Koblenz" and 
the track number, I got the
gist of it and stepped aboard the arriving train. I rode
along quite comfortably for some 45 minutes before the
conductor came through and asked for my ticket. Seconds
later he was yelling at me. I was baffled, but after
listening closely I realized he was telling me, quite
angrily, I was on the wrong train. He offered no compassion
whatsoever, and when the train stopped, he ordered me off.
I was then forced to buy a ticket back to Cologne and wait another 45 minutes for the train to arrive. By the time I boarded the correct train to Koblenz, two hours of my morning had slipped by.
Thankfully, I did eventually arrive in Koblenz, and 
I even
had a rather nice time walking its streets and dining in its
little restaurants. But I was tired. I was sick of Germany.
I wanted to go home.
The next day I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped aboard my plane. It was over. My long-awaited trip to Germany had been a fiasco, but at least the bad times were behind me now, I thought. Nothing to do now but shut my eyes and rest.
That was when the baby in front of me started to shriek. He went on shrieking for several hours, and when at last he stopped, a woman in the next row had a seizure and vomited all over herself. Thanks to the magic of recirculated air, we all got a whiff.
It was one of the longest flights I've ever endured.
(For those of you who feel, after reading this entire story, that I complain too much and I should just deal with problems like those I encountered here, think about how boring this story would have been if I hadn't emphasized all the bad things that happened. Unexpected problems make for good stories. After all, I got you to read the story, didn't I? But thanks for your concern.)