🎅🏻A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #165: F*ck. It’s December. 🎄

Not Spotify Wrapped, but close enough

Dec 10, 2023

Dear Internet,

menu for ribs in Strasbourg, France — You can get “Tex Mex Ribs” in Strasbourg, France.

So, the river cruise. Except for a ½ day of sun in Basel, Switzerland, and the day of sleeting in Kinderdijk, The Netherlands, it rained the rest of the trip. Who doesn’t love gorging out on fermented foods, sausages, and Black Forest Cake and seeing Medieval castles and cathedrals up the ass? I do enjoy it but irritatingly most of this was in the rain. Good thing I packed an umbrella. I also ended up picking up the world’s most expensive beanie in Basel cos fuck, did it get colder than a witches’ tit. (I debated on bringing earmuffs and gloves but the weather prediction was in the 50s. The weather prediction lied.)

We arrived Friday morning in Basel and spent the next few days touring the city. Basel is an amazing place. The hotel is in the downtown core which is super pedestrian friendly. No cars are allowed but there are trams going everywhere which we used to get around but mainly did a lot of walking. I am really charmed by Basel.

One thing we do is find a donner kebab shop when we travel and Basel did not disappoint.

Is Switzerland expensive? Crazily so. I check the prices of Big Macs when I travel, and a burger alone was 11 Swiss francs BEFORE the meal. Rental costs are relatively reasonable, and the apartments are decent sized. Housing prices, however, are insane. Our guide told us 58% of people rent in Switzerland compared to 30% in the US. I want to add Switzerland as a country we can move to when we retire but the pricing is too high to buy and they are not in the European Union.

The Swiss franc is nearly 1:1 with US dollars as well as Euros so conversion was easy when we were shopping. We picked up a few gifts for family and bought fancy chocolate our guide recommended. Spoiler alert: fancy chocolate doesn’t taste that much different than my quasi-fancy chocolate from Tony Chocholonely.

(John Oliver did a piece on the chocolate industry and holy cow, is it exploitative especially with child labor. Tony Chocolonely is 100% exploitation free which is why I bought a few bars when we were in the chocolate museum in Cologne, Germany. I asked Santa for more bars for Xmas and he may have delivered. Not only is it fairly inexpensive, but it is also very delicious.)

We stopped at Kunst Museum on our first day in Basel after dropping our stuff off at the hotel. We needed to make sure we stayed up to set our bodies to European time. I was super pumped because there was an alleged Caravaggio but turns out, it was misattributed! Boo to that. I did get some great ideas for stories to write for The Ekphrastic Review.

Other than the night we pub hopped in Cologne and when Mr Lisa and I listened to a rogue cellist play Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at a medieval church in Basel, the trip was a blur. There is only so much medieval castles and cathedrals one can take. It was lovely to see the Black Forest, watch how the cake is made, check out glass blowers, and drink a gallon of Kolsch beer.

I took over 300 pictures on the trip which I dumped into Google Photos. Be forewarned, mostly shots of old as hell cathedrals and castles if that is your thing. (And a picture of Mr Lisa and I smiling which is beyond rare.)

The one thing I’m sorry we missed are the Christmas Markets. Every port we stopped at was in the process building up the Markets which tend to start near the end of November and run until end of December. We got to shop a lot of Italian and French Christmas Markets last year since our trip was in December. Basel does do a winter festival which is chock full of rides and local foods which was fun.

The best part of the whole trip was pub crawl across Cologne. Melanie, our guide, speaks five languages and asked us what we were doing for Thanksgiving which sent me into laughter. We are in Germany for Christ’s sake. Being asked about an American holiday seemed weird, but nevertheless, we all answered.

Melanie was amazing. She started us out with a typical German meal at Peters Brauhaus which included never ending glasses of Kolsch beer.

Like champagne can only be called champagne if it is made in Champagne, France, Kolsch beer can only be called Kolsch if it’s made in Cologne. I’m not a light beer drinker, I prefer to cut my beer with a knife and fork (aka stouts and especially Guinness), but boy howdy, did I drink a lot of Kolsch on this trip. At Peters, the job of one person is to float around the tables and see if your beer glass is full or empty and if empty, they put a new glass down on front of you until you put a coaster on top of the glass to indicate you’re done. Think of it as a Brazilian steak house except for beer.

After Peters, we pub crawled around Cologne trying out different Kolschs. We also tried a local version of Jägermeister at one of the stops. At one brauhaus, the bar maid wagered Mr Lisa to a chug off. She won. This brauhaus also sold Kolsch by the meter. God, I love Germany.

We did not want to head back to the boat but alas, Melanie had to get us there before the ship left without us. I tipped her heavily.

While we were also in Cologne, I picked up a bottle of Farina, the first bottle of eau de cologne ever created, in Cologne, in 1709. I like the idea I’m wearing a scent that stretches back over 300 years.

While the weather was shit, I would go back to Germany in a heartbeat. I want to see Munich, and specifically Berlin. I got overly excited when I saw a sign with my maternal grandparent’s last name as the name of a furniture store. Melanie the beer connoisseur taught me how to say the last name in the proper German style. I, of course, have forgotten.

I told Mr Lisa that since this was the second year we’ve done a winter vacation, the next one must be during spring or summer. No later than September, maybe early October if it’s the right location.

Next year we know we’re not doing a cruise and we’re scouting out prices in Ireland, Scotland, and Portugal. Too many fucking choices.

Am I depressed?

I honestly have no idea. I don’t feel depressed but this time of year is hard for a lot of people, and I’m one of them. I just want to hole up and drink my hot cocoa (with marshmallows natch) while watching Hallmark holiday movies. (They’ve moved with the times and introduced bi-racial couples, Hannukah movies, as well as lesbian and gay couples. Are there still women with high powered jobs and hunky hometown heroes mixed with the magical Negro? Absolutely but at least Hallmark is trying to be inclusive. Right?)

I have my daily schedule mapped out and I write daily into my accountability journal so that helps. But something seems to be off. Sometimes my anger is out of control, and I feel beyond defensive. He, again over and over, tells me to be present and in the moment. This is fucking hard but if I want to change my well being, these are things I must do no matter how much it annoys me.

My sleep has been jacked since we got back from Europe. No, I don’t think it’s jet lag as this was ongoing before we left but it seems to have gotten worse. I go to bed at a reasonable hour and around 3 – 4 a.m., I’m up. I use the bathroom, get tucked in again, and then I just wait. Wait for sleep. Wait for my brain to quiet down.

I just wait.

Sometimes I’m up an extra 30 minutes and other times, like the other day, I’m up for hours (typically reading) before I fall asleep again and I woke up after noon. Thankfully this happened on a weekend, so I did not fuck my day up too badly. I’ve started taking melatonin again (the prescription night drugs gave me a drug hangover and I’d easily sleep for 12-14 hours) and setting my alarm for a constant wake-up time. Let’s hope this regime works.

Next weekend we’re going to be in Vegas so no Sunday newsletter. I’ve got some projects happening in December so no 51 Stories in 51 Weeks or lisa writes newsletters until January. Next Sunday newsletter will be December 24.

A Most Unreliable Narrator

🎅🏻A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #165: F*ck. It’s December. 🎄

Not Spotify Wrapped, but close enough

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