The Connoisseur earned his nom de plume in the Rostan Blogoverse because of all my friends in Chicago, he possesses the most consistently extraordinary taste. As a scholar, he understands literature and poetry and can talk about them for hours. Culturally, the same goes for film (especially Pixar/animation), video games (which he brilliantly and correctly defends as an art form), and music (he has introduced me to genres I never would have listened to before and now want to further explore). In the culinary realm, he’s a stunningly terrific amateur chef and a good judge of alcohol. And finally, he’s a superb judge of human character: he’s been dating the Princess, one of the only women who comes close to the S.O.
Right now, he’s out of the country and across the ocean, and I slightly miss him because he always makes the good times even better. But I know he’s enjoying himself in Germany. It’s hard not to.
I made two trips to Germany in the fall of ’04, riding their excellent railroad system and carting the required reading of Jared Diamond back and forth. Each trip was made in the company of one of my really awesome roommates at the Castle. First was a day trip to Cologne, that gorgeous little city which gave the world Kolsch beer, in company of a very personable tennis player one year my senior. I had really wanted to visit the city’s modern art museum, but he was more interested in medieval art…which, by the way, I’m not into…too many grotesques and repetitions. But we did get to marvel at the wonders of the Dom, once the tallest building in Europe, and with a spectacular view at the top, and I enjoyed one of the best meals of the trip, having wienerschnitzel at a riverside café.
We made one more pit stop in Cologne as the hour-long dinner break on the not-that-legendary night train to Milan. Donovan and I, with assorted roommates, ran through a rainy night which made the Dom look even more imposing and extraordinary to have sausages and Kolsch from a hole-in-the-wall. I still remember the contrast between the thundery darkness and the welcoming light, the tastes of pork and lager…
At the end of October, after the World Series, I made an overnight trip to Berlin with my other roommate, a witty Mormon. We pulled into the famous Zoo Station of U2 and Scorpions fame, checked into a hostel located right next to a “sex museum,” and set out a non-stop jaunt along the Tiergarten and didn’t really stop moving, except to sleep, until we strolled through the really urban shopping district the next afternoon. What do I remember about Berlin? The endlessness of the Tiergarten, which struck me even more the following summer watching Live 8 and the crowds thronging within. The Reichstag, going in and realizing that this was where Hitler issued his decrees. The Brandenburg Gate, so different, so mighty in its simple pillars and friezes, suggesting the timelessness of human achievement by its stark, no-frills, we-will-get-the-job-done spirit of victory. Touching the Berlin Wall and thinking of how when my parents were tiny this hunk of concrete nearly caused the destruction of the world. And the little trip-specific things, of course, like the giant poster of Nicolas Cage in National Treasure covering the Zoo Station McDonald’s, and eating at the Hard Rock Café so the Mormon could continue in his quest to get shotglasses from every HRC on the continent, and having a sausage platter and drinking wheat beer with Pepsi—a good combination, as a matter of fact—in the middle of the city.
Wish I’d made it to Munich.
And I hope the Connoisseur is having a blast.
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