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GRANTS PASS is now available on the Kindle through Amazon.com! So those of you who live in front of a computer can read the anthology – at least, until the lights go out and we gather at Grants Pass.

A reminder to all my friends and readers:

The Suicide Tourist, the film which documents my father Craig Ewert’s brave decision to access assisted suicide after contracting ALS / Lou Gehrig’s Disease, will be shown on PBS Frontline at 9 pm ET on Tuesday, March 2.

This is the first time a United States broadcaster has shown the courage to air the film, and marks an important event.

I hope you all will feel comfortable watching the film and asking me any questions you may have.

Best wishes.
Ivan

We walked into the Weinhaus for our final dinner in Deutschland, moving through the tiny hallway into a wide berth of trencher tables and benches to be greeted by our usual array of polite waitstaff. Sitting down beneath the chalkboard menus, I felt something in the air – something foreign and homey at the same time – and did a double-take.

“Does that say Scottischer Haggis?”

“Ja,” said the waiter, “Our chef is from Scotland, and is homesick.”

Nowhere else in the world, nowhere else in my life, do I expect to hear the words “Our chef is from Scotland.” I know I won’t have schnitzels again for a good long time but this is a chance too good to pass up. Dunkelweiss beer, a dram of Oban, haggis, neeps and tatties.

It was brilliant, absolutely great. The lads each gamely took a bite and admitted that it was much better than they expected, and that it was even vaguely palatable to them; but for me it was the best thing I ate in Germany, all smoke and peat and the iron tang of vital fluids.

*

Returning home was brilliant and has remained so. The most amusing thing so far is the fact that L and several of my other lady-friends seem to have lost several pounds apiece in the three weeks I’ve been gone, stricken with grief at my absence and bereft of my usual tender care and attention (or no longer constantly pushed into the decadent temptations of good food and booze, take your pick).

I’m on my second coffee at Dawn’s this morning, working to get some facetime in and enjoy the bright sunshine. It was Tartarus-grey throughout my travels, the twittering of electronic lemures silenced by wireless roaming charges and leaving me divorced and solitary in a disturbing way.

I didn’t realize how much I needed to touch other human beings until returning from the trip into the arms of my manifold friends, holding onto one another, back-slapping and shoulder-squeezing in a way I can’t duplicate among coworkers and relative strangers. Right now Rob and Janet are treating their boys to homecooked waffles and bacon, Missa and Dawn are hard at work on wedding cakes and Valentines, Leanne’s at her show, Dan and Sharon are working their way northward, I’ve a massage scheduled for this afternoon and the sun is burning bright in the cloudless cerulean sky.

In short, all is right beneath all the stars of the wide old world. There’s good work to be done ahead and all the time I need to do it.

I have had three pieces of good news writing-wise in the past 24 hours. First is the pre-order of Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, referenced earlier.

The second: Grants Pass is now available through amazon.com! You can order the post-apocalyptic anthology, now up for a Stoker award, through the biggest bookseller in the world.

Finally, I’ve been approached to write for a third anthology this year. I’m very excited about the premise and am starting to work on the story tonight, here in the heart of Grimm country. More news as it becomes available on all three fronts.

Close Encounters of the Urban Kind is now available for pre-order through Apex Books with a special pre-order price.

We’ve all heard the stories of what happens to those who go to lovers’ lane and of the folly of flashing your lights at another car at night. We all know someone who knows someone that survived a meeting with Bloody Mary and another who picked up a hitchhiker that then disappeared. And we all know these stories aren’t true. They’re just urban legends. Right?

Wrong.

Sometimes the stories we hear are true. Often they’re more than they seem. These are the urban legends with alien explanations and the alien encounters mistaken for urban legends. The line between one and the other is so blurred in this anthology of stories about Close Encounters of the Urban Kind that you will never look another urban legend the same way again.

The two highlights of my tour so far:

1) I am drinking a beer from a vending machine.

2) My limited German led me to tell a nice old tailor lady “Es ist verrucht in zwei platzen,” which means my pants are twice as wicked.

Sunday was entirely given over to a walking tour of Frankfurt am Main, led by the very capable Dave of Frankfurt on Foot / Insider Tours. I can’t recommend it enough at this point; though it seems like a touristy thing to do the fact is there’s a lot to be said for having someone who really knows the city guide you around.

I’ll also just point out that making a living by walking around a city you love and pointing out cool things to tourists who are paying a lot of attention to you may be my new dream job. Perhaps I could host StumbleTours, in which we carry open containers through the streets of Eurasia’s finest cities until I lose the lot of them and start again.

Going over everything we saw – the Dom, the Romerplatz, the Madonna of Frankfurt – would take most of the day, so I want to focus on the real design-oriented highlight of the tour:

The Jewish graveyard.

I’m not going onto any rant or political statement. As far as I can tell most of the original Nazis are dead in the ground and the new ones would be fucking bastards with or without history to be their guide.

From a design standpoint, though, the holocaust memorial stands out. The walls around the cemetery are studded with iron boxes which thrust forth from the wall, each embossed with the name, date of birth, and (when known) date and place of death of one of the victims of WWII.

I’m told that Jewish tradition places stones instead of flowers on tombstones, as flowers are transitory while stones remain. I’ve always thought that was the point of the flowers for death myself, but I can understand the sentiment. The area around the graveyard is gravel for ten feet all around. This is partly to allow people to pick up stones to place on the memorial markers, but also partly to make those standing at the monument feel off-balance and less than comfortable.

From a design standpoint, I think this is fantastic – implementing the sense of touch in a way you can’t control really adds to the already sobering experience.

The stumblestones are a similar idea, a nationwide art project and the brainchild of one Gunter Demming. They’re four inches by four inches, made of brass and embossed with similar details; only these are set into the streets of cities throughout Germany, outside buildings where victims once lived and laughed. The idea is to trip your memory, to make you realize that everywhere you walk, death walked before you.

Munich’s banned them in the city limits, sometimes neighbors tear the stones from the streets, but he keeps at it, working to ensure you remember what’s come before. Given the amount of dogshit that was strewn purposefully around the Holocaust memorial, I’m glad he is doing it – even if using the plaques to brain supremecists would be a better use of the metal.

It’s not that all we saw related to such things, just that they hit me the hardest. I enjoyed the Romerplatz and the medieval history but of course I already knew a lot of it. The wartime and postwar information is less woven into my personal areas of interest and I’m glad I learned more about them.

We’ve eaten well, of course – anyone who’s keeping track of my diet should be weeping greasy tears by this point. I don’t know how much more schnitzel I can physically consume before my pancreas leaps into my own mouth, and the fact that beer comes in full litres makes evenings considerably more interesting than they might otherwise be.

Speaking of which, it turns out that Thursday – the last day of training, the day before I fly back home – marks the start of German Carnival. As Bacchus is my witness, I don’t know what I should do.

I know what I’m going to do, of course, but not what I should.

Photos of Heidelberg and Frankfurt are now available as well, on Flickr.

That was the worst flight I’ve ever been on in my miserable life. I’m  shocked, because Cathay Pacific has a very good reputation and were directly responsible for my introduction to business class last trip – but a twelve-hour flight in economy on CP was far worse than the 16-hour flight in economy on United.

I thought it was just me, but as we deplaned and I began pulling the party together, Amanda was giving me the thousand-yard stare and Nitin looked more like death than I’ve ever seen. The whole group was intensely miserable until we left the airport.

The drive from Frankfurt to Neu-Isenburg was beautiful, a drive through deep forest denuded of leaves by winter and thick mist roiling at waist-level. Pete handed me the fear and loathing line: “This is werewolf country,” which becomes a watchword throughout the day.

Once at the Mercure Hotel, our spirits lift higher. We can shower, we can eat, we have German coffee, and the young lady at the front desk doesn’t stop smiling once. Her spirit’s infectious and her English is impeccable, and over cold cuts and coffee the group turns to me for directions.

I’ve loved, loved, loved being in charge of the decisions. Everyone trusts me to know where I’m going and what I’m doing, and when a turnaround is necessary we’ve all got a sense of humor about it. They want me to lead them on this mission, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone down. Heidelburg it is, for castles, cathedrals and shopping.

I’ll tell you this: Exhausted and demoralized men who are suddenly given German engineered cars and a speed limit above 100 mph make for a videogame experience as developed by tweakers. I fell asleep out of terror for my life as Norb and Pete raced each other through the mountainous countryside, waking only at the moment we enter Heidelburg along the river.

The city’s modern, of course; most of Germany is out of necessity. The era they rebuilt in is one of clean lines and curves, of bright lights and form following function. To go from that the the altstadt (old town), where we drive over cobblestones and peer at buildings older than our homeland but in impeccable shape, is a special visual experience for anyone who enjoys architecture.

The castle awaits. Heidelburg Castle is a beast of two eras and two minds: We enter up a cobbled slope rimed with ice and slush, knowing how difficult this trip would have been on foot, in armor, under fire and racing to storm the gates. Into the original fortress, built in the 12^th century and made of thick slabs of rust-red stones, looking out over the valley and town to survey what once was some Lord’s domain.

From there we enter the barogue portion of the castle, rebuilt and expanded in the 16^th-17^th century. It’s brilliant, high arches and statuary in every nook, carved poems extolling the geneology of kings, emperors and palatines, wide avenues lined with trees and lit now with lanterns designed to resemble gaslamps. The courtyard area is immense and still lovely: a single tree twisting around the deep temple of the well, a working clock bigger than the sun from our vantage point, stonework that can’t be estimated or extolled highly enough. Nitin nods to me: we’ve left two of his partners in Hong Kong for two extra days which he was aslo supposed to enjoy, with a wink he tells me “This is better than the casinos in Macao would be.”

We descend the steep medieval stairs, past chalets on the hillside in which people clearly live. It must be like being in a fairytale, to come home after a day’s work to cling to the skirts of history, the beloved earth looming above you, protected by the memories of your ancestors and their generations which lie behind you.

In the altsadt we find ourselves in the old Corn Market and church squares, thick with university students and tourists like ourselves. The shops are souvenier quality stuff but the beerhall we duck into for lunch is comfortable and warm, with thick curtains across the door acting as an airlock against the chill. It’s still warmer than it is back home, so none of us are complaining, especially after a pilsner toast to our new travels and new successes.

Returning home, we break for a nap; after which members of the smarter gender admit they’re too exhausted to go anywhere for dinner. The men set out on a twenty-minute hike along the main street to the Frankfurter Haus and are rewarded for it well – the platonic ideal of a weinerschnitzel, breaded to perfection with the mint sauce created at a consistency I’ve never known. We share more beer, of course; as we try to sample the local offerings and color.

After that, it’s O’Ryans and our first law of travel: Wherever you are in the world, some idiot will slap an Irish name across a board and turn it into a bar. Soccer’s on the television and Guinness is in our hands for a good hour or so before a short political … discussion … ensues between myself and my manager.

This leads to our first addendum to the first law: Wherever you are in the world, drunken Americans will argue loudly in your local Irish bar.

In the end, we drop it and head back home, which means an apology nightcap to ensure no hard feelings in the hotel bar before drifting off to my best sleep of the entire trip. I’m writing this at 6:45 AM local time, and though I’m already showered and ready to go it’s still the longest I’ve slept consecutively since leaving Illinois, a full six hours of peaceful, dreamless slumber.

Now all I need to do is plan the day’s itinerary.

Bear with me a minute. I’m misting up.

I’ve escaped my handlers and am sitting in a one-man side booth at the Taiwan Beef Noodle Restaurant in Lantau Airport. The kid who sat me keeps calling me “boss” and the Tsingtao comes in a pull-top can poured into plastic cups. Every booth includes a built-in TV showing a modern Hong Kong soap opera, subtitled in what I’m guessing is Traditional rather than Simplified Chinese.

When I say I’ve escaped my handlers, I’m not exaggerating. The rest of my party is god knows where in Lantau, presumably wondering where the hell I’ve got off to. A bathroom trip wound up separating us about half an hour ago and since then I’ve been making my way to within five feet of Gate 67, right where I belong.

I’d worry more about their reactions if they hadn’t given me explicit directions that for the next week I’m to play the role I love the most. Some of you know Berek, and some of you know Jagger. I’m to waltz between the two for the benefit of our trainees, switching from the usual affable idiot mask to one of breezy confidence. You can’t expect me to put that mask on without giving a little breathing room.

I had to roll down the window on the taxi from the hotel, to feel the air in Tsim Sha Sui one more time. The thickness and warmth isn’t what the drivers are looking for but I’m the man footing the bill, so they can manage as long as I need them to. The mountains rising out of the harbor are black ice steaming in the night air, blocking the lights of the developed world. Once in a lifetime there’s a building jutting out, luxury lofts or dancehalls, I’m never sure just which, but mostly these steep declines are home to nothing more than trees and tiny beasts.

We ate at the 18^th floor above the Symphony of Lights, the world’s only 365-day light and music show. Eight to eight-eighteen every day, the harbor’s building explode in neon, mirrored by the boats which cruise the lanes, all ringing to the music being pumped through every skyline establishment. Dined on samosa and spring roll, Serrano ham and sliced figs, deep fried soft-shell crabs with the pincers on and perhaps a few more beers.

Before that we were in the arts store. I’ve picked up my first piece by Zengli, photos to follow once I’m on European soil. The artists are brothers, sons of a famed pottery artist and makers of pieces that break my heart. There are thunder gods with primitive bellies like stormclouds sweeping forth, compassionate Kwan Yins with clay skin and clay dresses, laughing Buddhas and lords of land. I’m in love with their work and I’m on to my third artist’s collection after Janet Koukol and Jurgita Mekyte. This one’s for the house, for my beloved, and for me; all in one.

She’s got another piece coming, of course; and I’ve grabbed cufflinks and a proper feng shui compass for my own wear and office along with the streetsign magnets I expect to draw me to my own true north, this place, this motion, this burning prayer wheel to which I feel bound.

Classes went well. I bid farewell and had my photo taken with the students: Kazumi, JungEun, Adonis and Laura Chan, Inez, Yani and Esther, Diviya, Kath Au, Natalie, Miu, Millicent and Tara, wonderful ladies all. I’ve eaten more dishes than I can count: Peking duck to dim sum, sukiyaki to udon, all in excess of where I should. I’ve paid my respects to Murphy’s with Guinness, Bushmill’s and Jameson’s in a business scrum with my fellow-travelers.

My waiter’s steered me away from the duck breast soup and calls the vegetables so-so. On his recommendation I’ve got a noodle and dumpling soup coming with the final can of Tsingtao, ready to sleep on the flight to the land of schloss und streusels.

I’ve slept less than four hours a night and I feel fantastic. I’m wound on time and tide and the endless spice of life in a world that doesn’t want to let me go. Hong Kong clings to me in a way no human has, brushing itself against me, pleading, teasing, begging me not to go.

If I didn’t have a home, I swear I wouldn’t leave. There’d be one less artist in Illinois and one more busboy in Sha Tin, one more pacific expatriate to fill the void the royals left. I might not last a month, but by the mountaintops I’d try.

The plane starts boarding in about an hour and I don’t know when I’ll see this world again. I’ve run the numbers: Three grand should last me a week in the style to which I’ve become accustomed, another three for tickets – call it seventy-five and make it a mint. It can’t take that long to save up that money if a bright boy puts his mind to it.

I’m a New Year’s Baby where the Chinese are concerned. Who’s up for a birthday on the nightside of the world?

Walking home later in the evening I’m poleaxed by the unexpected sound of the Ladies from Hell – skirling bagpipes, midway through Scotland the Brave. Snare drums snap time beneath the wails, the sharp commands of a sergeant-major barking out in clipped Chinese. I’m just across from Kowloon Park where the stone wall banyan trees grow thicker than man’s torso and more twisted than man’s desire, sweating from heat and humidity and listening to the unbelievable. I take the steps two at a time and see them; a full pipe and drum corps of ethnic Chinese, marching up and down through the broad square of the park.

I may just start using Hong Kong as a synonym for unbelievable.

Say it with me: Temple Street Night Market.

It’s not a name, it’s an invocation. It’s not a place, it’s a world. It’s the brightest spark of the deepest night shining out in all directions, a compass rose that calls the faithful to prayer with the true north of twelve o’clock midnight. It’s elemental, a bagua of phoenix fire and djinn-soaked air, fish-fluid and scale-slippery yet as earthbound as Prometheus.

You start at the harbor and walk up Nathan Road, running the gauntlet of bright young Indian men hawking watches, purses, hashish and hedonism; past the respectable stores with open fronts and uniformed doormen, past the neverending news stands run by mummified great-grandmothers to a thousand generations, but the moment you hit Temple Street you’ll know you’re not anywhere else.

We’re between Temple Street Spicy Crab and the San Miguel Open Tavern, with uniformed waitresses beckoning us to sit for one beer, one beer, one beer for the gentlemen. Whole families sit over open-flame woks and card tables unfolded into impromptu leaves for the unexpected guests. The smell of sterno and spices fill the air, along with plastic Chinese flags strung between the apartment buildings looming to either side. Laundry hangs out of every habitable window alongside the ubiquitous window-mounted air conditioners, monuments to ancient structural architecture and the warping heat of this tropical island.

We pass our first policemen, serious young men in well-pressed blue shirts, talking in low tones with one of the vendors whose cigarette is ash and filter. We pass the Circle K, Moneygram, Tashafudhi, Ching Mai Records, Temple Beauty, Creation Jewelry, Golden Bauhina Jewelry, Avant Gold Jewelry, Palace Jewelry, Mastery Jewelry.

We detour down a side street in between produce stands. Lettuce, bok choi, whole ear corn, cauliflower, black brocolli, tomatoes and yams. A roadside shrine squats alongside, red and gold and piled with brass bowls of apples and oranges, tucked inconspicuously into the corner of the street, a holy fire hydrant for any passing dogs. The Thailand and Southeast Asia grocery stands full of tamarinds, tofu and spiked fruits. A tea shack sells crockery, loose-leaf tea, pots and porcelain, oddly delicate despite the bustle.

Back down the booths of tourist-bait – bags, waving lucky cats, mounted insects and music from pirate CD stations. There are t-shirts featuring Kurt Cobain, Christ, Mao and Adolf Hitler; something I haven’t seen marketed successfully back home. Axl Rose looking younger than he is on a Chinese Democracy tee which costs about as much as the album cost to record. Lingerie that looks like it came from Milwaukee’s Secret, mobile phone accessories and Mickey Mice, strains of Irish fiddle and tin whistle music coming from a softcore video store tucked behind two watch booths.

A pregnant woman dines on noodles, a police van sits outside Lee Kwong Lee China Wear. Foot Massages are offered for $88 HKD, around $11 American, with hotel outcalls available. A series of neon lights that scream Boystown at an unlabelled establishment, outside of which lounges a wiry bouncer in a Fighting 84^th Division camo jacket. The buildings are covered in cracks and falling to pieces, the first four to eight floors of every one devoted to commerce while they’ve built the booths further into the street and the harpies hover in their one-room apartments overhead.

We’re in threatened by trucks and Maseratis at every corner, blinded by neon and a starless sky, the pregnant moon elbowed aside by air and light pollution. Ying Tea, Fat Sun, Wing Hing, Thai Pat, and Ren Nin Exchange make up a single office block, a bicycle parked alongside an abandoned mattress leans against the railing.

We pass booths hawking homeopathic hematite alongside double-headed dildos. We’re alongside the Temple in Temple Street now, straight into the fortune tellers’ section of the market. Tarot readers, face readers, feng shui consultants alongside Shanghai and Market Streets. Palmistry by Simon Chan, Master Joseph as featured on the media, Madame Tina set up in her tent outside the public toilets. Family fortune telling, accurate astrology by Vienna, numerology and Esther and Mary Ho, Ming the Little Woman Tarot Reader.

We’re warned against taking photos of the street performers by a gentleman wrapped in tattoos, not so much a figure of authority as a figure who might be packing. It’s all right, as the performers are not really anything to write home about, reminding me more than anything of my Aunt Bernice playing Rock Band circa 1958. The fortune tellers now keep tortoise shells on their tables outside the Yao Mi Tai Car Park and Government Offices. Uncle Uncanny offers to read our auras.

There’s Bombay food, Thai food, Tong Tai deep fried rabbit fish and pork intestines, young pao fried rice – a live crab whose eyestalks alone can move from side to side, trapped in bamboo-leaf bondage by the harsh mistress of hunger. Fried snails, raw snails, sea slug and live catfish swimming in styrofoam coolers. Cruelty to animals has never smelled so good, and we’re stopping here for dinner, sitting in the middle of the street next to a party of French women and across the way from a band of Chinese. They’re dining on fried prawns and chili noodles with a two-liter Haizhu beer, big enough for two but strong enough for one. We follow suit by ordering East Wind Blood Snails and a Clay Pot Rice with Short Ribs. Both are fantastic, the snails like escargot without garlic or butter. The sauce is spicy-sweet, tamarind and peanut.

Temple Street slows down when you sit down, no longer pushed and drawn. It’s nearly nine at night, seven A.M. back home and I’m eating street snails and drinking beer. My spare ribs are better than the Peking Duck I had for lunch atop Victoria Peak, crispy and burnt in all the right ways. It may be the best food I’ve had on a trip period.

It’s Monday Night and early. I can’t imagine midnight on a Friday.