Trans-Europe Express

How I spent my 2022 summer vacation.

This is the tale of my family’s eight-day 2022 EF Tour of Central Europe during one of the most brutal heatwaves in the region’s history.

I wrote it upon our return that summer and planned to use it as a summer Walkthrough on Football Outsiders. But FO was already capsizing, and it became clear that non-football features wouldn’t help right the ship, so I shelved it. I’m publishing it now so I can catch my breath and finish a giant two-part giant-sized Walkthrough preseason preview, coming July 21st and 22nd. I edited in spots to clarify when this was written.

My entire family was coping with post-quarantine anxiety throughout this rather grueling “vacation,” and most of the dozen other adults on this 60-teenager tour abdicated nearly all chaperone duties to my wife and I, two facts I feel more comfortable sharing now than I did when I wrote this piece. But I don’t think it is too hard to glean my complicated feelings about this supposedly fun thing I will never do again as you read my attempt to cross Anthony Bourdain with William Least Heat Moon in a travelogue.

Enjoy. NFL coverage returns in just a few days!

I. The Grand Budapest Market Next to the Hotel

The Nagy Vásárcsarnok in downtown Budapest, an erector-set structure that looks like an age-of-steam railway station cosplaying as a Gothic Cathedral, smells on an early Wednesday morning of paprika, coffee, organ meats, smoked sausages, over-ripening fruits and the lingering body odor of an extended heatwave.

It’s 6 AM. We arrived in Budapest well after midnight thanks to two delayed connections, a nine-hour layover in Frankfurt caused by a canceled flight, and a brouhaha at baggage claim which nearly left us stranded at the Budapest airport. Most of the other 70 people on our tour are asleep in the Meininger hotel across the street. But I need real coffee, foot deodorant and verification after 24 hours in sterile, uncomfortable airport/airplane atmospheres that I have, in fact, reached Central Europe.

The cavernous Central Market Hall (Nagy Vásárcsarnok’s English name) is not too different from Philly’s Reading Terminal: rows upon columns upon layers of shops and kiosks selling produce, butchery, liquor, flowers, breakfast, knick-knacks, candies and just about everything except foot deodorant. One cozy nook near an entrance promises iced kave. The counter woman prepares it with lots of milk. She only takes cash.

“Euros?” I ask, and she nods. I hand her a ten Euro note and she gasps as if I just asked her to change out an uncut ruby. The Hungarian forint is worth about 1/4th of a sodapop pull-tab – it’s actually about 400 of them to the dollar – which is why Hungary is reluctant to switch to the Euro just yet. She takes the 10 Euro note and gives me about 20,000 shirt-buttons change.

“Köszönöm,” I say. “Perfect!” she replies with a smile. I spent a week learning some basic Hungarian phrases like “thank you” before the trip, only to lose one of our two days in Budapest to travel hassles.

It is July of 2022. I’m on an EF Educational Tour with roughly 55 South Jersey teenagers, including my soon-to-be-16-year old namesake, plus some teachers, parents and spouses. My wife is an official chaperone. I am a de-facto one. Eldest Son, who toured Europe with his classmates in 2019, is at home cohabitating with his girlfriend minding the dog.

Most folks on the tour, including my family, have never set foot in Continental Europe. Few in the group have traveled further than the Jersey Shore since the onset of COVID, which explains the tour’s sprawling, unwieldy size: our group consists of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 high school tours rolled into one, embarking on an itinerary that would be ambitious for a lean cohort of about 15 travelers.

Europe is in the midst of an almost unprecedented heatwave, with Budapest temperatures hovering near 100 degrees Fahrenheit before and after our arrival. But the morning is misleadingly cool. I stroll the neighborhood, stopping at a Spur market and an apothecary for supplies. The Danube plays peek-a-boo around street corners, as does a handsome university complex just across the river. The city’s historic heart is only a mile or so away.

I’m jet-lagged, sleep-deprived and still airport-crotchety. But I’m also on the adventure of a lifetime in cities I never imagined I would visit, with most of my family with me, and we’re ready, I think, for whatever an eight-day whirlwind through Central Europe in stifling heat with an unruly adolescent horde can throw at us.

What’s more, I’m properly caffeinated and deodorized, köszönöm.

II. Summer’s Cauldron

The water temperature at the Szechenyi thermal baths is 31 degrees Celsius (about 88 degrees Fahrenheit). The air temperature on a Tuesday in late July is nearly 37 degrees (around 99). I lean from the pool like a breadstick from a soup bowl and look out over a 19th-century neo-Baroque courtyard of pools and sunbathing decks; hornet-yellow arches and faux-Corinthian columns; ursine, half-submerged European men puzzling over stone-podium island chess boards and glistening real-life Aphrodites emerging from the foamy water. It appears at times as though the air and water are separated by the same rippling barrier of steam that arises from piping-hot coffee.

There is a much cooler pool next to the world-famous hot one, as well as a lukewarm pool that’s friendly to families with little bathers, with a whirling vortex in the middle. Within a long indoor palisade there are myriad other baths and saunas ranging from the steaming to the frigid. The mineral water smells vaguely sulfuric, with hints of talc and calcium: a little off-putting, but nothing as unpleasant as Atlantic City at low tide. The heat and smell remind me of a glass-blowing furnace.

The cobbles of the walkway between hot pool and the cold burn the bottoms of my feet when I take the few steps to cross between the gutter-like canals that surround the primary pools. Hot, then cold, then hot again, repeat until it’s time for a Hungarian draft beer at the balcony cafe.

The thermal baths, coming on the heels of a bootcamp-worthy march through sizzling streets to admire Budapest’s many landmarks, are everything I could have hoped for, except that I longed for more than three precious hours to luxuriate in them.

There’s a statue of Venus near the center of the hot pool, and a powerful fountain sprays forth from the goddess’ feet. Adventurous bathers take turns backing toward the fountain, water pummeling them across the shoulders and neck, before relenting and allowing the spray and the ripples it creates to propel them forward to the spot where misty evaporating water creates a permanent breezy convection current of cooler air. I perform this ritual several times, the sound of mineral water on flesh thundering in my ears, my sunglasses fogging, to cleanse body/mind/soul as best I could. I try to feel connected to ancient Romans in their communal baths, or the nomadic Magyars who chose to settle in this region of geothermal bounty, or even the early-20th century builders of this faux-ancient paradise. But I connect instead (as we all inevitably do) to my own childhood.

All American children can gauge their families’ social status by what they do to cool off on hot summer days. I grew up in the water sprinkler demographic, a socioeconomic stratum wedged between open fire hydrant austerity and the community pool membership gentry, just below the above-ground backyard-pool patricians. (The in-ground pool and private pool aristocrats might well have lived on another planet.) On scorching days, my grandma rigged up a sprinkler which was rarely used for gardening and had settings ranging from “mist” to “obliterate.” My playmates and I liked to set the sprinkler to roughly the intensity a crooked sheriff would use to disperse a peaceful protest and then subject a semi-consenting pal, face-first, to its point-blank fury. The result was somewhere between a near drowning and a low-grade concussion, a dizzying buzz similar to spinning around until you fell over, but without the nausea.

I felt that same buzz at Szechenyi, brought on by a glass of beer, some heat dehydration, a little sleep deprivation, the percussion of water echoing in my ears, salty minerals drying into my hair, the opulent splendor of the fairytale setting and a sudden rush of memories of carefree sweltering afternoons of childhood.

III. The Empress of All Crushes

When the temperature reaches the mid-90s in Central Europe, the most popular tourist attraction of all is a breeze.

The Old Town of Krakow consists of a hilltop palace and what feels like an infinite jumble of cathedrals, each one an overturned jewelry box of magnificent sculptures, stained-glass windows, frescoes, triptychs, reliquaries and other Medieval-through-Renaissance masterpieces; floor-to-vaulted-ceiling kaleidoscopes of gold, silver, amber (the local semi-precious gem of choice), marble, ebony, mahogany, colored glass and ever-shifting hued light and moody shadow.

But on stifling days when sweat turns boxer briefs into a soggy marsh, when backpacks full of water bottles chafe against shoulders during “walking tours” of the length and speed of a forced evacuation, all of that beauty and majesty becomes little more than a phantasmagoric blur: the blinking lights, oversaturated colors and heady delirium someone might experience just before slipping into shock.

We tour the Wawel Cathedral, which houses the mausoleums of several Polish monarchs and heroes, most notably the monarch Jadwiga, the 14th century unifier of Poland and Lithuania and also my waifu.

As depicted in my beloved Civilization VI video game, Jadwiga is haughty and devout with a temperamental streak, her doe-eyed, regal-chinned animated avatar always looking vulnerable-yet-resolute, dismissive-yet-inviting: Natale Portman without the permanently blank facial expression.

Photos of Jadwiga’s tomb were prohibited, but I pay the respects appropriate of a middle-aged man with a minor crush on a monarch-saint who has been dead roughly 700 years. (Yes, the historic Jadwiga would have been far too young for me, even at her death. I’m only attracted to the video game avatar. I’m not a weirdo.)

Onward, chop-chop-chop at educational-tour velocity, down the hill to the Sukiennice, or Cloth Hall, the 16th-century marketplace that dominates Krakow’s Old Town square. The Sukiennice was a crossroads outlet mall for luxury items from around the world in its heyday. Now it’s a giant souvenir shop hawking images of local (mostly Catholic religious) heroes, from Pope John Paul II to the recently canonized Faustina Kowalska.

It’s a little disappointing to enter the historic heart of Krakow or Budapest and find a Hard Rock Cafe and some cheap souvenir shops in a location where a distinctive little shop which has been in the same family since Archduke Mathias Kiskamunchski bequeathed a corner of his estate to his favorite courtesan should stand. It’s also a trite thing to dwell upon. Old Town Krakow was built by the Hanseatic league, a multinational trading guild dedicated to the business of business. The UNESCO site exists because of late-Medieval globalization and (to a degree) standardization. In its heyday, the central square of Krakow hawked religious keepsakes for pilgrims and taste-of-home food for weary merchants, in addition to the cloth and amber. It’s the local pierogi shops that are out of place here, not the Hard Rocks or gelato stands.

The glory of Krakow’s Old Town demands careful exploration. Alas, our tour-mentors provide us with just a few hours of free time, and the sun bakes the medieval buildings like sandstone desert cliffs. Even the tree-filled park (formerly the moat) circling the Old Town just holds in the ground-level heat like a tea cozy. Walking more than fifty paces in any direction feels like hard labor, and I cannot not bear to disgrace the sacristy of Our Lady Of Ethereal Fragrances Chapel by trudging in wearing socks that can be smelled by telecommunications satellites.

So my wife and I find a shady patch of ground near the corner of the Sukiennice and just sit. The breeze whipping around the building is almost revitalizing. A local municipal vehicle rolls in with some water misters in tow, and soon children frolic in the relative cool while adults reroute their trips across the square in search of a little spritz. A flock of pigeons pecks about the historic hall, and a local wrangler coaxes some of them to perch on children’s arms while prompting others to take sudden wing in little squadrons. Now and then, a sortie flies within inches of my face, so close that I can feel the air rippling from flapping wings.

Old City Krakow, devoutly commercialized, a pious empress with a coquettish anime wink, remains very vibrantly alive.

IV: Beneath a Silent Blue Sky

As we approach Auschwitz by tour bus, I see what appears to be a Modernist purplish-gray sculpture of a shrouded woman covering her face with her hands. A powerful, tasteful representation of inexpressibly primal grief and shame, I think.

But the sculpture does not actually exist: I was looking from a distance at a folded sun umbrella outside the visitor’s center, and my mind made of it what it chose.

The weather briefly breaks that morning, and an invigorating morning breeze brings with it the uncomfortable, dislocated emotions that can only accompany a nice day at Auschwitz. But soon we leave Auschwitz proper – which looks misleadingly like old-fashioned freshman dormitories – to shadeless Birkenau, the adjacent site of the most absolute of human horrors, where there are no interpretive exhibits, just rows of silent wooden barracks in a barren field with the burned-out gas chambers and crematorium on the furthest edge, where there is nothing to do but trudge along a rocky path in the solemn company of terror, torture and death. There, even the gentle breeze respectfully subsides, leaving the visitor to confront the capacity for human cruelty and callous indifference which walks stride-for-stride beside each of us.

Then, behind schedule as we have been for the entire trip, we stop at the McDonalds in the nearby town of Oświęcim, whose name translates from Polish to German as “Auschwitz.” A friendly, lanky teen who looks like the Nutcracker Prince helps English speakers cope with the automated ordering system that stands between us and our Big Macs.

Fun (???) fact: one of the few Jewish travelers on our tour turned 16 on the day we visited Auschwitz. Her friends snuck boldly off to a nearby store while the rest of us were in McDonalds and bought her a cake. We should all have friends like that.

V. City of Dreams and Disappointment

Prague’s Charles Bridge is part open-air museum of religious sculpture and part Medieval masterpiece of its own accord: a monument covered with monuments that a traveler can stroll upon, listen to a street musician atop and/or drink a beer beside.

On one side of the 14th century bridge the so-called Lesser Town climbs winding lanes of taverns and chocolatiers toward the now-familiar-to-the-tour hilltop palace-cathedral complex that crowns many historic European cities. On the other side rests the Old Town, a basin of narrow, labyrinthine streets lined with cafes, knickknack shops and enough cannabis dispensaries to turn even the most tea-totalling tourist into Tommy Chong.

Jorge Lascar, Wikimedia Commons. My photos from Prague turned out poorly.

I’ve dreamt of Prague since the Berlin Wall fell during my college years and several of my daring classmates traipsed off to the former Czechoslovakia, returning with tales of smoky bars in mysterious corners of a fantasy-campaign city, each filled with inexpensive, sophisticated beer and fetching young ladies with Natasha Fatale accents for whom Levis and strummy-mumbly Springsteen covers were the ultimate aphrodisiac.

So it was a slight disappointment to finally arrive in Prague not only at middle age but on another scorching day that made the Charles Bridge sizzle like a pancake griddle. It’s hard to pretend to be a man of international intrigue and romance when you can feel your own fat rendering. Even the dispensaries are less charming now that there’s one a short bike ride away from my home.

It took a frosty beer in a shady grove in the Old Town Square for me to appreciate Prague for what it is – dazzling, ancient, playful, lively, a crucible of a millennium of the best and worst of human history that visitors are invited to enjoy while two-thirds lit – and not for the backdrop of a post-adolescent sexcapade that part of me still imagined it should be.

Our tour took on a numbing sameness, exacerbated by the brutal heat, by the time we reached Prague. Start at some fairytale European city’s hilltop palace. Gasp at statues and buttresses while sweat pools in your shorts. March down to the cafe-and-gift-shop square for lunch and precious free-time exploration. March to some other attraction, then to dinner, then to a tour bus, then to a hotel for a few hours of sleep before bussing to the next fairytale city.

The hotels themselves had strayed far from downtown since Budapest, preventing the adults from sampling the local nightlife; our Prague accommodations stood between a KFC and a sporting-goods shop just off a highway exit in the city’s scrubby outskirts. Prague-sauken, I called it.

Chaperone hotel happy hour in Prague.

Yes, I suffered from once-in-a-lifetime-experience fatigue. Part of it was just heatstroke, but much of it was a fear that I was merely seeing these cities through the window of a moving train, or watching a 23-minute Rick Steves episode, because there was so little time or energy available to wander off the path.

Still, we do our best. Well-fortified with water and beer, my wife and I re-cross Charles Bridge on our own, descend into Little Venice and stumble to the fringe of Vojanovy Sady, a city park that looks like a city park, not an international treasure with every blade of grass under strict surveillance. We are still in a tourist-heavy area, but for the first time since Budapest it feels like we’re in a real city where people can live, work and shop for anything besides keychains and weed.

Given three days to experience Prague instead of four hours, perhaps we might have found the city of my late-20th century dreams, dark and sensual, contemplative-yet-tipsy, Bohemian in every sense, as eager to beguile an American lad as he is to be beguiled.

VI. Cabbage Rolls and Light Armageddon

Beer tourism is dead.

One of my dreams about touring Central Europe – one with more pragmatism and staying power than my undergraduate fantasies about freedom-worshiping Slavic libertines – was that I would drink my way from nation to nation, sampling stern, bitter Teutonic lagers, fragrantly floral Czech pilsners, strange Polish brews that tasted of barley fields and Soviet-era peasant sweat, and so forth.

That dream was dashed in the summer of 2022 by several realities. Our grueling tour schedule required early-morning awakenings, making drinking sessions unappealing. The extreme heat was also a factor; it’s dangerous to drink much alcohol when so dehydrated that your pee has the color and consistency of the drippings from a wrung-out coffee filter. Traveling with 60 teenagers further warrants sober prudence, at least for the adults.

America’s microbrewery explosion, however, was the main reason why I drank very little on the road from Budapest to Berlin.

There are at least five small-town breweries within four miles of my New Jersey home, each churning out personalized spins on IPAs and pale ales, plus sours, saisons, Belgians of various pigments, lambics, seasonal stouts and hit-or-miss sherry-barrel-aged molasses/espresso/cannoli-filling experiments.

Meanwhile, the highway-exit hotels and converted hostels our tour slept in mostly served Sorproni in Budapest (a Heineken product), Zubr in Krakow (now made by a Japanese conglomerate), Kozel (same conglomerate) and Pilsner Urquell (available at my corner liquor store) in Prague, and Krombacher Pils or Weizen in Germany.

All of those brews taste better than ‘Murcan mass-market beers and hit the spot at a sidewalk cafe in a Medieval square or on the sundeck at the thermal baths. And I did enjoy a strangely pickly local weiss at a Krakow hotel. But I lacked the time/energy/daring to slip away from the tour and discover the sort of local craft concoctions that probably lurked just 50 paces off the tourist path.

As for food, I forgave myself for skipping goulash on that 100 degree day in Budapest. My wife and I enjoyed chicken paprikash, a very unadventurous dish, while my namesake discovered a satisfactory Malaysian restaurant in Hungary, like one does.

In Prague I ate smoked ham and rye bread from a street vendor, my wife a tasty potato-bacon-sauerkraut bowl from the kiosk next door. By Dresden I gave up all pretense of sampling local cuisine and enjoyed an icy lunchtime bowl of gazpacho, reasoning that I was closer to Spain than I would ever be again. Also: doner kebab, which is authentic German food because authentic Germans eat tons of it.

But early in the excursion came Krakow, the home of delicacies of my youth that I still regularly serve my family, like kielbasa and pierogies, and some that I had not tasted in nearly 40 years, like galumpki, pronounced ga-WOOMP-key by my Italian grandma with a Polish husband.

After a steamy afternoon in the Old Town of Krakow, our tour guides hustled us to a restaurant in the historic Jewish quarter for a group dinner. Clouds moved in and weather apps pinged worrisome notices as we weaved through the streets. We crowded into an intimate bistro just as the winds became dire. Then the rain fell in sheets, followed by marble-sized hail. Outdoor tables and umbrellas capsized and blew down the sidewalk. The staff shuttered windows and doors, taking away the storm’s lone benefit: relief from days of stifling heat. Somehow, the unflappable wait staff served 35 Americans (half of our group was hiding beneath a nearby pedestrian bridge over the Vistula), mostly teenagers, perfectly-rolled galumpkis as the avenue outside turned into a coursing river.

That hefty burrito-like serving of stuffed cabbage recalled dim memories of winter Sundays at my grandma’s dinner table, cooking as she rarely did for our Polish relations. I was a finicky eater, not even touching red-sauce pasta until my double digits, but I remember happily wolfing down galumpki, which is what I did as the hailstorm slowly subsided on that July evening in Krakow. My namesake, no finicky eater by any stretch (see: Hungarian-Malaysian fusion), also enjoyed his galumpki, despite the fact that most of his classmates were intimidated by the Yoda-colored rollups.

And yes, we were rewarded for our efforts with piping-hot, doughy, slightly-crisped paczki (PUTCH-key, in South Jersey brogue) somehow served by that same waitstaff as they mopped the floor at the entrance and made sure no passers-by had been impaled by flying umbrellas.

VII. Cathedrals and Kings

After touring myriad indescribable Saint Consonant the Unpronounceable Basilicas of Gothic or Renaissance antiquity further east, baroque Dresden Cathedral looked and felt like a wedding cake: fluffy, sugary and ornate, but not all that appealing near the end of an exhilarating physical and emotional roller coaster.

The cathedrals of Krakow and Prague nearly demand worship. Stepping into one as a 21st-century tourist is not all that different from stepping into one as an ancient peasant or pilgrim: even a worldly skeptic cannot help but be awed by an overwhelming sense of something deeper, older and more graceful than anything going on outside. Dresden Cathedral, its interior gleaming in white and polished gold, looks like the work of an aristocrat more interested in trying to one-up his rich buddies than saving his soul. It’s gorgeous, but especially on the back end of a long junket, it tries much too hard.

Dresden was bombed to rubble by the Allies at the end of World War II, then trapped behind the Iron Curtain for decades, and has only been restored to its original splendor over the last 30 years or so. So it has a vague Euro Disney sheen which is noticeable after touring several authentic Old Towns further east.

It’s worth noting that our tour is supposed to be experienced in reverse, with Dresden as an opening act for Prague and beyond, but the order was flipped to accommodate a student exchange program. As an appetizer, Dresden would have been a show-stopper.

An important event took place during our brief side-quest to Dresden, however: the weather broke for-real for-real, with temperatures plunging into the mid-70s. So the whole city could have been a paper mache Six Flags construction for all I cared: bring on the Eiskaffee as my wife and I stroll in honest-to-gott comfort to overlook the Elbe River from Brühlsche Terrasse.

Kora27, Creative Commons Share-Alike. Again: my photos are either terrible or have already vanished.

My Dresden highlight, besides cool weather and sweet coffee, is the Fürstenzug, a football-field long mural depicting a horseback procession of 800 years of Saxon kings, each in something close to historically-correct clothing and armor. At the front of the parade, 12th-century Conrad of Meissen wears a heraldic lion over what looks like chainmail, brandishing a longsword and lance and accompanied by minstrels. At the back, George of Saxony from the early 20th century smiles beneath his handlebar mustache as if he’s posing for the Marshall piece in a Stratego set, accompanied by soldiers carrying rifles with bayonets. In between: wigs, feathers, tricorner hats, Conquistador-esque platemail, halberds, banners, robes, caps and beards of all shapes and sizes; a millennium-spanning arms-and-armor fashion show, or a two-page spread from a Dungeons & Dragons player’s manual blown up to stadium size.

VIII. Windows for Dummies

We arrive at a Berlin Meininger hotel, bedraggled from a bus trip from Prague to Dresden, a whirlwind walking tour and mini-adventure in Dresden, another bus ride to the heart of Berlin, toe-taps at Checkpoint Charlie, the Museum Island and Brandenburg Gate, a spaetzle dinner and one last bus ride, only to be confounded by a dreaded dreh kipp fenster.

It was no laughing party. We had been on the Murder Mile.

German windows both tilt and turn, thanks to an ingenious interlocking hinge mechanism. Also, the air conditioning and electricity in European hotels generally only work when a room key is inserted into a little slot by the door. Furthermore, energy-conserving European hoteliers often rig the air conditioning so it will not work unless the window and doors are sealed, lest ugly Americans do an ugly American thing: open the windows while blasting the air conditioning so we can enjoy the best of both worlds for a few minutes.

And so this weary traveler opens the dreh kipp fenster lengthwise to let some air circulate upon entering the last of the hotels on the tour, then attempts to operate the central air, then realizes he needs to seal the dreh kipp fenster, only to first close it lengthwise but open it tilt-wise, eventually realizing that he has no idea how to properly seal it, resulting in a stuffy room that has not yet cooled off at all from a week-long heatwave.

The fellow at the desk, a lonely combination manager/concierge/bellhop/bartender for a six-story hotel, tells me that a special key is needed to lock the window. That key was not needed to UN-lock the window, which seems like poor design, but never argue design with a German. At any rate, Der Kommissar of Keys is gone for the day. And no other rooms are available.

Reluctantly, when it becomes clear that I was a risk to chuck a television through the window Led Zeppelin-style, the hotel manager retrieves the magic key. Still, I cannot not properly lock the damn thing.

Long story short, the window’s locking mechanism is broken, a fact confirmed by the German teacher running the tour (this wasn’t his first dreh kipp fenster) and a helpful Physics teacher fellow chaperone (who MacGyvers the locking mechanism with a paperclip or something).

It’s Tuesday. Our flight home is scheduled for Thursday. A one-day Lufthansa labor strike is scheduled to ground nearly every flight out of Berlin, including our connection to Frankfurt on through to Philadelphia, on Wednesday.

Tensions are a little high. Our local tour guide, misreading the Lufthansa app, panicked earlier that afternoon while shepherding us down Under den Linden. He prepared to dash off and purchase 70 train tickets to somewhere, anywhere, before his colleague intervened and talked him down. So forgive me for not coping with a broken window with my usual patience and grace.

Also, forgive me for not drinking very deeply of Berlin’s attractions and culture.

We visit the Eastern Gallery of the Berlin Mall, the highlights of Museum Mile, Brandenburg Gate of course, and a solemn, immersive Holocaust memorial. We take in the view from the top of the Humboldt Forum, a restoration of the royal palace. We try to see the Ishtar Gate, as I am a sucker for all things Babylonian, but the wait times for the Pokemon Pergamon Gallery are too long, my wife and I too drained from walking tours in the suffocating heat, long bus rides, teenager-wrangling, late nights, early mornings, mystifying windows and the very legitimate worry that we might be forced to lead dozens of children home to Philly by way of train to Frankfurt, bus to Marseilles, tramp steamer to Hoboken.

And so, in a grassy park in the shadow of Der Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, my wife and I doze off while most of the tour, including the namesake, shuttle off to Potsdam.

We awake to a wedding party bleating its car horns and driving donuts in Ford Mustang convertibles on the Bodenstrade in the heart of the museum district. The groomsmen and a bridesmaid pop out of the cars for pictures, but the bride does not budge. She clearly had not consented to the donuts. Her maid of honor finally drags her out, looking like she just stepped off a Coney Island tilt-a-whirl, and the wedding party disappears. Moments later, the alarm on one of the Mustangs peals. A groomsman arrives to silence it, to no avail. He calls over a fellow groomsman, who manages to turn the alarm off, only for it to begin bleating again the moment he rounds the corner.

This is far more entertaining than anything going on in Potsdam.

We cross the Spree River and round a bend to Hackescher Markt, where we drink Starbucks while a street guitarist sings “Dancin’ in the Dark” and “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Homesickness for New Jersey among the traveling party has grown endemic. As if there is any doubt, when we return to the Meininger, the teenagers raid the adjacent Aldi (not too different from the one in their hometown), and my namesake and some of his pals whip up some pasta.

IX: The Result of All Ambition

There were, mercifully, no flight delays or hiccups. All adults and teenagers safely returned to New Jersey on schedule, except for those on German student exchange, who dispersed to their host families around greater Berlin.

Before I knew it, I was walking to my nearby Wawa for milk, listening to the sound of my neighbor’s lawn sprinkler and processing a rush of sensations and memories which couldn’t quite keep up with the tour’s unrelenting itinerary: the view of the Danube from the Buda Castle; the gas-station restroom in Slovakia which nearly caused a student rebellion; the restaurant lunch menu at a Slovakian ski resort which flummoxed all the adult chaperones; a rainbow over the same Krakow bridge that sheltered half our party during the hailstorm; tipping a Czechya hotel bartender 1000 cronya (about 25 bucks) for the pain and suffering of dealing with our tour’s underaged drinkers and seeing him react as if I offered him my daughter’s virtue; my namesake celebrating his 16th birthday by legally buying a drink (a pina colada, per sources) when my wife and I (mainly her) are out of parenting range in Dresden; the John Lennon Wall in Prague; a Ukranian demonstration in Old City, Krakow; displaced Ukraininan families in the Krakow hotel; hungover teens puking on the final busride to the airport; my wife and I sharing a few sips of Palinka in the quiet corner of a hotel lobby during a moment when we each realized that this was not the vacation we imagined and wondered if we had grown too old, too tired, too homebound, too COVID-timid to warp across Europe in some quasi-leadership capacity after nearly three years of barely keeping our own shit together.

Someone more eloquent than me once said that we travel to gain a greater appreciation of home. I live 8.2 miles from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, a brief commuter train ride from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the toney cafes and regal elegance of Rittenhouse Square. A dozen beach resorts, each with its own vibe — family-friendly Ocean City, glitzy-grungy Atlantic City, shabby-chic Wildwood, stately Cape May, etc. – are little more than an hour away. I can leave my driveway after breakfast and enjoy an early lunch in Central Park or Times Square. The Smithsonian and Capital Mall are a day trip, as is Pennsylvania’s Amish countryside. There are even some 18th-19th century George-Washington-Slept-Here downtowns within bicycle distance. When German teens visit our town in autumn, they’ll get to see the America they see in movies without the all-day bus rides and with few attraction-to-attraction speedruns.

Yet day-to-day I sit, lost in little screens because the weather isn’t beach perfect, the Turnpike is a hassle, the city expensive and the trains slightly inconvenient; with stress or inertia coaxing me to play video games, scroll Twitter, watch Netflix, do little or nothing, grow stagnant and restless instead of resting. If only a European tour-mentor were to schedule my free time, order me to push through the heat or tired feet or anxiety and do a little more, wake a little earlier, stay up a bit later, walk further, eat something more daring, notice something ignored, experience everyday things as if I traveled from half the world away for a one-and-only chance to see them.

I may never get to see Prague or Budapest in quite the way I hoped to. But at least I now realize that home is never something to take for granted.