Muse

Hey, guys, it's Marissa in Maryland, and this might be a terrible idea, but I'm listening to today's episode, and I cannot continue listening until I leave this message on the voicemail.

Just another manic meatball. I wish it was meatball. That's my treatball. That I don't have to eat ball. Just another manic meatball.

I guess the context for that is that I'm a vegetarian. And so is Luke. And you can call Satan a weak ball. Anyway, I'm done explaining. Happy holidays, guys.

TBTL! Can I blow your mind right now? There's not a single video of Abraham Lincoln. I'm serious. Look it up. Go on YouTube. Okay? Think about that. He's one of the most famous Americans in history. He's the first president. And there's no video.

I'll say, what's up, Joe? Let the fun begin. That's a two-year-old rule. This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

This thing rules. It collates, staples pages. No more stapling by hand.

Yeah, Santa should have wrapped it.

All I know is this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting. Well, all right. Guten Morgen and Velkommen to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Hi there, my name is Luke Burbank. I am your host coming to you today from Frankfurt, Germany. That's right, Frankfurt on the main, a.k.a. Mainhattan. Today is a TBTL first. I think it is the first. Well, that's not true. I think I have done the show, we have had the occasion wherein one of us has been doing the show from a place that is not on the U.S. mainland, although previously I think I was in Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States for various reasons and under certain rules. So this might be certainly the first time that one half of this show has ever originated from beautiful Deutschland, which is where I am. And as you might imagine, I've had lots and lots of experiences that I cannot wait to share with this guy, the longest running cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I would have said ships in German, but I didn't look that up yet. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Hola, Frau Heiser Burbank. I may have gotten, like, one part of that wrong, actually. I'm brushing up on my German as well. But thank you for joining us mid-trip.

Oh, man. I've been looking forward to this all day between, like, two to three-hour random naps that I've been taking. Because let me tell you, the jet lag, it do be hitting when you are 47 years old like I am.

You're also, I mean, just as a reminder, if this is somebody's first, you know, listen to TBTL, that would be amazing. because there's a lot of stuff in that intro that makes absolutely no sense to you.

Even less sense than normal.

But if you don't know the whole deal here, you're just there for, I mean, what is the total hours on the ground that you're there? Even 48? Not even, right?

H-O-T-G, hours on the ground, less than 48. So I landed local time on Tuesday, which was yesterday here, and landed at like maybe three in the afternoon or so and we'll be leaving Thursday at around noon so whatever that whatever that number of hours is not very many and again not very many hours when my sleep pattern has been wildly off since I've been here so I slept on the plane a little bit um but not like a you know full night sleep we're talking you know an hour or two of kind of fitful rest so when i got finally to the hotel and that was not assured at all i'll tell you more about that in a moment but when i did finally make it here to the moxie hotel in downtown

frankfurt oh great all of our german listeners know exactly where you're staying the thought

went through my head today andrew like do i say the moxie hotel and then i thought you know what if a german listener hears this and wants to come over and bother me between now and like 12 hours from now when i'm actually not even like eight hours from now when i'm going to the airport god bless them you know like you've geocached this perfectly and you win a prize i'll give you earned that you know what i'll give you i'll give you a twix bar that i bought at the store that says twix and more and i don't know what the more is andrew but i'm gonna find out tonight because it's a wild wednesday in frankfurt oh no that's like what my

I don't know if I've ever told you this. My dad used to do something when he was, like, fixing food for me and my sister. He'd say, you know, we'd say, hey, Dad, can we have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? He'd say, yeah, and he's making it. Then he'd say, do you want it with or without? And then we'd have to make the decision. What is he talking about, with or without? And, of course, if we said with or without what, he'd say, I don't know, just with or without. We'd be like, with, and it'd be like, ah, boogers or mayonnaise or something gross like that. He'd probably, you know, my dad would not go the booger route. he's a dignified man but he would you know choose some sort of condiment like ketchup like no it was a lose-lose game uh you could never choose what would happen if you said without he'd be like without jelly oh oh without bread okay oh geez you got me foiled again

this sounds like a a fun i mean you know i'm sure there was like every household there were the there were the pros and cons but that sounds like a fun moment in the household no i think you're

misinterpreting this this was bean dad pre bean dad this was awful he would just he would make us don't let bob walsh anywhere near twitter he would make us cup our hands out and he would just pour uh peanut butter and jelly into it no it was it was a very my dad was very charming with things like that i think especially things around well my dad's a charming guy but i think especially around um food stuff he would pack my lunch for a while when i was in high school and he would do goofy things i think i've told you this before he one time gave me a little bag of m&ms like that he filled up like one of those little tiny ziploc bags and he put some m&ms in there with a little note that said none of these hit the floor except for one don't eat that one

this is here we are 4106 episodes into this and i feel like this is the first that i'm getting this insight into your sense of humor which is like you have a very dry sense of humor and you you like little like you know you'll say little things very drolly that I'll be believing right up until I realize that you're actually playing a spoof and that's feels like based on that story that that's kind of a little bit of the vibe of your dad at least in those situations and I'm glad we're

taking this opportunity to talk about my childhood because we don't have much opportunity for well

there's a lot of German sausage involved or at least European sausage which is a topic I'll also

be discussing in the program I will just say this though and I only because it's just hitting me for the first time another kind of not not coincidence but a through line here is it is true that now i'm an adult and i love leaving goofy little notes for genevieve like i make the coffee every night or i prepare the coffee every night so that if i've done everything right all one of us has to do when we wake up is push one button um we don't set the timer and so i'm always leaving a note to let her know if the coffee is ready and so i'm always like i was like you know one point getting pretty ridiculous and printing out images from the internet about whether or not you could press this button or not, or whether the coffee was ready. So it is true. In fact, we had a friend visit from out of town once, and she came into our kitchen and said, boy, you guys leave a lot of notes. So now it's all coming together. That's all Bob Walsh right there. Well, that's, I think,

pretty great. Speaking of food humor, Andrew, or humorous attempts at getting food, I got to tell you how low things got for me last night here in frankfurt so i i land i i get here eventually and then i just like sit down on the bed and it's like i said it's probably about three or four local time which i think would have made it like the middle of the night in in like portland right and i felt like people talk about lucid dreaming or they talk about when you're lying on on the bed and you wake up but you can't move but you're awake i had like the reverse of that in that it felt like there were four to five large human beings standing on top of me like that was the jet lag felt physical in a way like a tiredness that was almost like gravitational so i laid down and was just out and then woke up like three or four hours later and now because it gets dark here at 3 30 this will make you appreciate a good northwest dark winter sunrise 8 30 a.m sunset 3 30 this must be further north of the northwest in terms of latitudes than i realized um but anyway i wake up and now i'm i'm sort of hungry but i don't know anything about this city because i haven't been outside in the light very much i got off of the like train stop and dragged my luggage over to the hotel so i go outside and it's kind of weird everything is pretty much closed down because the day after christmas here um is i think also a holiday generally speaking like it's called day after christmas it's a smart idea we should adopt this in the u.s whatever day christmas falls on you should have the day after off because there's a lot of recovery that needs to happen whether it's from what you ate or drank or just dealing with what your credit card debt is or like just a lot goes on on Christmas.

Christmas, typically. And the idea that the day after Christmas you get as a day also to just like start to rebuild, start to pick up the pieces of your broken life to move forward. I think it's a smart idea that I would vote that we adopt this in the US. But so I'm walking around and everything

is pretty much closed. Can I interrupt for one second? I have a question for you. And this actually not not to keep us here for two hours. But you mentioned that you drag yourself to the hotel. I imagine there's little interaction between you and people in that, you know, in that leg of the journey but you still have to check in and everything give me a sense of what

the language barrier is like well okay i'll come back to the food this is kind of related to the food but actually you've asked a very foundational question um which is like can you get around germany not speaking german and the answer is yes definitely but it's also not as seamless as i guess i was assuming it would be which by the way is the height of narcissism the idea that i just Parachute into a town and that's the weird thing About Condor is they do actually have you Parachute it is a static line So you know you just jump out And then the parachute automatically opens so I paid extra for that But just that I would come into a country And assume that I could walk around Speaking absolutely zilch Of their local language And it would be fine and the truth Is it is mostly fine but I'm noticing That it's What I can't do is walk into any shop or restaurant and just start conversing with the people working there in a kind of way that's natural for me and also helps me get the information that i need there's like essentially there's like the the people that work at the front desk of this hotel again the moxie if anybody wants to come hang they're i mean uber fluent so to speak like flawless english and it completely More than 90% of the way They're meeting me 110% of the way Their English is better than my English But if you go I was trying to find something today And I just stepped into a cafe And I was trying to find the place Where you can actually exchange some US money For euros Because I was realizing that a lot of places Don't take cards So you have to have It's mostly food stuff This is when I tried to get a Frankfurter Which I'll also tell you about it'd be great if this was the show where I just constantly tell you I'm about to tell you about something and then I never tell you about it and someone's listening for the first time and they go I don't get how this has been going on this long you'll know what I'm telling you oh speaking of

by the way not to sharpshoot but the beginning of the show you were talking about doing the shows from other countries we have done a handful of shows from Australia but that was both of us

I was saying like we've never had one of the people in another country and I feel honestly like I'm on a spacewalk and I'm untethered right now. It's very disorienting. If it was you and I sitting in this room, I would feel very oriented, but I feel very disoriented because you're all the way over there in Seattle and I'm all the way over here in Germany. The other thing I realized coming here, by the way, and this gets into the language stuff, is I've never been to a foreign country by myself i've always been with you know uh like you or a wife or girlfriend so there's something about having somebody else in the mix with you that's just kind of calming like you're just like okay between the two of us we'll get through this but for me like okay so we land and then i go through you know customs and everything and i have been reading that it's like 50 to take a cab from the airport to the hotel but that it's also only a 15-minute train ride and because this is not a vacation for me per se this is really an attempt for me to just like get to a level of flying miles that I need to so that for 2024 I have you know kind of decent upgrades and things I'm not really treating it like a vacation I'm just trying to be but I'm staying in a very moderately priced hotel and I figured I'll just take the train so I I'm thinking it's you know I've looked it up online and I think I know what the name of the station I'm trying to get to is. So I've kind of like texted that name to myself and also a screen cap of the map. But as soon as I get out of the airport at Frankfurt and I get down to the train station, the maps I'm looking at in the train station look nothing like the thing that I had taken a picture of online. And I don't even see the stop that I think I'm trying to go to, and it is in German, which would make sense. I'm in Germany. But it is an absolute tangle of train lines. like there's like 1100 different lines going everywhere so i just get on the first train that everyone else is getting on and some people that look maybe like they're tourists i'm thinking if i get to the middle of frankfurt like to the sort of town center everything is pretty close

If I just get there, I'll be able to walk. So that's my plan. I get on. But of course, now I'm starting to get really nervous because I'm trying to look at there's a video screen that's showing the next stops and none of them look familiar to me and none of them are the thing I'm trying to get to. And I just start freaking out and I start thinking, is this an express line? Like if I stay on this, is it just going to like go to the outer, outer outskirts of town or something? like so the next stop coming up is the stadium stop and i'm thinking well it's a stadium like think about getting off at like you know lumen field or or t-mobile park like you're kind of in the middle of stuff you'll kind of figure it out so it's like next stop stadium they they spell it with an n here which is just a fun fun thing they do so it's like next stop foxborough of frankfurt well i mean sort of in that i get off the train i go down through the thing i emerge above ground and andrew i am in soviet russia there is no stadium there's not even a stadium there's nothing there's also no people there's no like toll booth willie there's nobody like with a uniform who's in some kind of thing going here's where you need to go there's one like slightly decrepit pub that's closed either because it's the day after christmas or because it's just not viable and then just a cold wind blowing around i'm the only human being at this train platform now like anywhere and i i'm going wait how is this this desolate when i'm only like three stops from the airport and this is this is written up as stadium so now i'm like i don't even know how to call a cab now i just want to go back to the airport now i just want my mommy and i want to go back to the airport but i don't understand which the and by the way this is not like the new york city subway where there's a train coming every five minutes these are train trains so they're they're not coming every five minutes they're coming more like maybe every 45 minutes More like a commuter rail than like an inner city light rail. Yes, exactly. And so I'm like, I don't even know what side of the station to stand on to get on one of the trains that is going back towards the airport. Because I panic, and at some point my thought is, I'm just going to go back to the airport and then take a cab. Like, I'll just pay 50 euros. I was like, I just, this is, I literally was like kind of freaked out because, I mean, I didn't think I was unsafe, but I was like, this could take me a long time to figure my way out of because I don't even know who to call. I don't even know how to dial a phone number in Germany. Like I have, I'm on the plan, you know, I told Verizon I'm going to be in Europe and so supposedly it should work, but you know, you're dialing extra numbers.

I'm also, I'd like to mention to everyone, I'm a more than middle-aged person. I should be able to figure this stuff out. But I was daunted there for a moment. So I have the bright idea. I'm like, I'll call the hotel, and I'll ask the person at the front desk what train stop it is. Because they must get asked that fairly frequently. So I call her. I call the hotel, and a woman answers. And I said, hey, what train stop do I want to use if I'm coming to the hotel? And she goes, it's the Hoffenhafenhof. And I'm like, okay, great. And she goes, but it has to be that one And I was like, cool She goes, let me spell it for you Side note, I'm now just standing On like a random broken patch of like sidewalk By the decrepit pub I'm not even near like the sign anymore That shows the routes So she's going, it's H-H-H-O-O-T B, umlau, umlau, BB And I'm just like every single stop on the train looks like hoffenhoffen and hoffenhuber like this and this is the point where there's an intersection between my vanity which is like i want to be like oh yeah sure hoffenhoffenhoffer yeah duh and then my fear which is if i don't get useful information from this person i may be standing at this deserted train station for the foreseeable future because again back to your first question about English a lot of people speak English here but it's not a given that you can walk up to any person and just start talking in English and they'll be like oh yeah no you're looking for Hoff and Heffer Hoffer station so there is a there is a language barrier um that was making me feel like this was sort of my lifeline so I'm like hold on hold on hold on so I'm like dragging my suitcase over for like half a block I get back to the printout thing and I'm looking for it and I'm like I can't see it and I'm just about to go okay fine I'm literally going to hang up because I'm embarrassed that it's taking me this long and finally i see it like there it is the hoffen heffer hoffen station and i go i see it uh okay i go s8 or s9 and she goes yeah s8 or s9 should work and so i end up going back around i luckily figured out the side that i should be on and then the train came and i got on it and then it got me off at the station and everything was a-okay um so i made it here uh just fine but as far as speaking English to people it's it's definitely not like you can't it would help if I spoke a little bit of German or if I lowered my expectations about how the

interactions are going to go yeah that would make sense so how long was this whole um this whole diversion because we got to get back and I I just feel I got you really off track there because we got to talk about you leaving the hotel and hunting down a hot dog but um uh how long was this whole they do make you hunt them here that's part of the fun oh yeah that's the country um so like you were this diversion like you weren't this didn't take like an extra hour out of your day or something this was a scary moment that you had with the public transportation but for the most part you got from the airport to your hotel a wrestler sits on your chest um

for a few hours it probably did take me an hour okay um because when i had to wait for the next train was another probably 30 40 minutes the thing is andrew i was on the right train the whole time now that i know where the stop is this the train i was on originally was going to stop at hoffen heifer heifer herfer it just i didn't know that's what i was looking for i was looking for something called like esch something hoffen tour and so the the irony was i was doing fine but i just i panicked and i got off the train so yeah but but it wasn't like it wasn't catastrophic it was just a moment of me feeling like wow how did I it I'll tell you this also just the kind of layout of that particular train stop it I don't want to overstate it but it did not feel unlike some of the scenes from Chernobyl like just a kind of windswept barren thing with a lot of graffiti which wasn't what I was expecting in Frankfurt the fifth largest city in Germany aka Manhattan well I'm trying

very hard not to be the guy who just always says oh that reminds me of that episode of the simpsons but that reminds me of the episode of the simpsons where lisa accidentally takes the bus all the way to the end of the line i don't know if you remember that and she gets off the bus and it's just desolate and windswept and there are two old men playing chess and she asks them like you know where she is and they just answer in the angriest russian you can possibly imagine but then the captions are just sort of like oh hello nice little girl you can just go that way but it sounds like they're angry at her it's a wonderful moment that has really stuck with me as somebody who takes a lot of public transportation and wonders what'll happen if i fall asleep right now and end up at the end of the line but you know you describe this area and you say that like frankfurt you know you expect a certain thing but i mean any city like we that's the thing like you picture the heart of the city or the heart of a neighborhood or a bustling part of a city but i I mean, honestly, you even say like you could get off at the stadiums here in Seattle, but like you get off at the stadiums here in Seattle. You don't know where you're going. You're in like Soto on the train tracks pretty quickly. And you can really have a feeling like you had here, especially if you don't speak English.

Right. And that was it. This was much less about Frankfurt and their infrastructure, which is legendary, actually. I came to learn. But just more about me being jet lagged and getting off the plane and being like, how did I manage to go within 20 minutes from being at the airport and having many ways to get to my hotel to standing on this windswept train platform ready to literally ready to negotiate a piece for some reason? Yeah. Honestly, I was like, is Navalny around here? Am I being transported to wherever they've taken him? That's how I spent much of my flight, by the way, was looking up where Alexander Navalny has been taken by the Russian government. Not good. And I don't mean to make light of that. But, yeah, it had me a little nervous, but everything sort of worked out. I got here. I took an intense, long—it's not even a nap. It was probably just a second to sleep. And then I wake up, and I'm going out to try to find some food. And what I'm realizing is the exact area of Frankfurt that I'm in is—I mean, here's what's cool about it. It's sort of near a lot of stuff, and it's kind of near the river where I was able to go on a jog today, and it was actually lovely. And you know who set me up with all this Is our friend Broadcast Barry Who is, guess what, a runner He was like, oh yeah, that's a good part of town You're really near some good running So that all totally checked out But I was walking around last night And I was trying to figure out what the restaurant situation is Well, I did have as a backup Both a Subway and a Five Guys Which Was a new thing

to me that five guys has made its way over to germany i gotta get out there yeah i was wow this is a very andrew friendly country um uh but i so i uh i went into a restaurant that was called the bull and the bear so this is the financial center of germany i'm told and so of course they have you know like the there's a frankfurt like stock exchange hence the bull and the bear there's a big like statue of a bull and a bear interesting that that has made its way to germany or that we in in the u.s use the same terminology to describe the stock market bull and bear markets yeah that

you know i mean i guess it makes sense i never thought of it as an international thing but i mean who even knows where i mean well somebody does but i don't know where it originated i assumed it was just a wall street invention me too so i go into this i go into this restaurant

called The Bull and the Bear, and I kind of sit down by myself. One of the things they do not seem to be into in Germany, at least this part of Germany, there's no way to sit at the bar by yourself. Nobody sits at the bar. There is not seating there. It's not a thing. So I had to get a whole table to myself, and then I get the menu, and I'm looking at it, and it is not in English and German. It's just in German, and I can kind of figure out S-A-L-A-T-E. that's going to be salad like i'm i'm i'm sort of able to figure it out but it's not i'm looking at some of the pictures it doesn't look promising and i'm just and also it's like everything is like 25 euros which i'm learning by the way we are getting we are getting our butts kicked on the exchange rate over here like it's it's not even close anymore like there was a moment in time where the dollar was was actually beating the euro those days are over so i'm like 25 euros for something that like i don't even kind of know what i'm ordering i sort of have i can see like three of the ingredients so i just panic and i go like i don't want to have like a 60 meal here that i'm gonna that's gonna be not even very appetizing so i take a pretend phone call and walk out which i don't think anyone was clocking me closely enough to even notice that i left i mean i hadn't gotten any water or any there was i hadn't interacted with anyone but the you know like hostess or whatever but i still felt like i needed to like fake a phone call to get out of there and then i just continue to wander this area of frankfurt and the restaurants that are open are like their hookah bars which is not really probably my scene um there's i love a

post-covid hookah bar man i mean the only thing better than a post-covid hookah bar is a is a

mid-covid hookah bar am i right right so i'm like i don't know how the food in hookah bars is and

i'm gonna pass on the hookah so it's like if you have to ask that's how the right so then it's

there's like four mcdonald's for some reason i'm just like uh there's a burger king that's the official burger king of the kansas city chiefs which is really surprising like i took a picture to send to the text chain and i was gonna try to figure out how you say compromised in german like the burger king has been compromised it's they're like the place for football that's that's the that's the sales pitch on Burger King here it's called the place for football but then it just has a huge Kansas City Chiefs logo on it I'm like is this where the Kansas City Chiefs fans come to watch the games in Frankfurt is the local Burger King I mean I doubt that but for real there

is something interesting here about I mean the NFL is making a very big push to get football into Germany and England right and like that and we know it because you know they'll schedule a couple of you know games over there which i think is kind of ridiculous like sending american teams over there and we don't have to get bogged down in that but like we know the long-term plan of the nfl is to expand into europe and like just seeing the the early weird mutant seeds of that

is strange right because they've definitely gotten permission from the nfl to put the kansas city chiefs on their sign like you couldn't even do that in the u.s probably i mean these are the people that make you call it the superb owl yeah right if you haven't paid for it the big game right so like um so anyway i'm just wandering and then i finally go into another restaurant i'm like okay just you got to commit so i go into this other restaurant and it's like um it's almost like it feels like maybe like a coffee shop what i've noticed and maybe it's just the part of frankfurt i'm in because there seems to be a really heavy component of like folks from turkey here and other maybe like countries from the middle east and so what it appears to be is a lot of coffee drinking they're like very few bars i actually haven't even seen a bar since i've been here but like a million coffee shops and a fair amount of hookah lounges so i go into this like sort of coffee shop but it like on the menu it looks like they have you know more than just rolls and like they have some food and I sit down and again I'm trying to read the menu it's just in German and Andrew I panic and I do the fake phone call again and leave you panic just looking at the menu you're not

seeing anything right it's not it's just not the right vibe yeah I couldn't I I don't know what

I don't know what it was I was looking for but nothing was the vibe like I don't know how to explain it part of it was because I'm by myself so I'm not like you know if it's you and me and we're like going to go get something to eat we'll just kind of make the best of it it's weird being being by yourself because you it's not like you and a friend like you and i in australia going somewhere and being like well let's see how this goes it's kind of like you're by yourself and you're just like well if this goes badly it was boring and expensive and only i have a story about this like it just somehow it was just like less up for an adventure than i would be if i was with you or with becca or just like kind of normally the way i would be in another country so and you're

I just on time, too. I don't know if that's part of it. I'm not trying to put thoughts in your head. I'll do that later on more important matters. But I wonder if also part of it is like, well, I'm going to have like, what, six meals here. You know, I don't want to go to the five guys. Like, I want to have something. I want to have something that feels authentic, at least to the moment.

yes that was a huge thought in my head which is why i got a frozen pizza from the lobby of the moxie hotel eventually and some some nachos from my guy vlad from romania which i thought was a little on the nose vlad being from romania i don't trust him oh i pulled an all-timer with vlad andrew this would you would have just left you would have self-deported after you did this what I did last night so finally I'm walking around walking around and I just end up back at the hotel and because I had I had realized that they have some food items there and I was like you know what they probably have some kind of frozen ass pizza which at this point I'll just take a frozen pizza back to my room I'll see what's on TV possibly they're still playing Top Gun Maverick which it turns out you do not need to speak English to get the plot of Top Gun Maverick I watched it in German, and I feel like I get it. I feel like I absolutely know what's going on. Oh, Tom Cruise. First of all, they start the movie exact— Have you seen this movie, by the way?

No, I haven't. I've seen the first one. It came out in the 80s.

Well, you've seen this one, then. It's the same movie. They start with Highway to the Danger Zone. Tom Cruise drives his motorcycle real fast along that road.

Oh, I didn't know that Tom Cruise rides motorcycles. articles it's like the first write something about that the first 10 minutes of the movie

is a shot for shot of top gun i was like am i are they spoofing me did nobody tell them in germany that there's a new version of this movie and then it's like no but tom cruise has to fly like a b2 you know that like that big old like black supersonic plane that we all had i had a poster of it in my room the i think it might have also been called the raven or something you know what the b2 look like that black one that was very kind of had the two sort of bulbous wings but it was

very sleek i will look it up i was talking to genevieve recently about the fruit shoes that i had as a kid we're talking about how like in the 80s we really tricked our parents into letting us eat candy by putting it like the word fruit in front of it like i do you remember just having like fruit snacks or maybe you guys didn't have that and i gushers well they weren't like gushers they weren't candy technically they were basically like oh wow we got away with fruit roll-ups well well, what if we just kind of take the fruit roll up stuff and put in the shape of things and put them in in bags and call them snacks instead of instead of candy? And like I remember having an airplane one. And if you got the stealth bomber, that was a huge deal. I know that's not a fighter, but like the idea of getting the stealth, that was the.

No, I think it was actually the stealth. I think I was wrong about the B-2 because I'm looking this up. I think it was maybe it was the earlier version of the B-2 stealth. But something is Tom Cruise is the only person that's supposed to fly this thing, I guess. and he flies it but then he does it too fast and then it crashes and then they think he's dead and then he walks into a diner and then he orders like a sandwich and then he's getting chewed out by the boss all of this is in German Andrew but I'm completely following I'm completely able to get the nuance of the movie Top Gun Maverick

is there a Skerritt sighting by any chance

I didn't get far enough in for a Skerritt sighting but I will tell you what I did with Vlad though I'm sitting waiting for the pizza to cook and I did also get some nachos which they I don't know if this was just Vlad's preparation or this is a German thing but he put like 11 no not even he put like six tortilla chips into like a what do you call like a pottery vessel that you might make a like a cheese dip in that but you cook the whole.

thing and then you take it out and it's kind of crusty on top oh i know what you're talking about

almost like something that like you would put onion soup in or do i have that yes precisely

yes no no that's exactly what i'm thinking of whatever you call that so it's sort of like it's pottery but you cook the thing in the thing and then you like hand it to the person and you go like watch out it's hot that kind of a deal so vlad is like putting down the tortilla chips and then he puts a layer of cheese and then he puts down more tortilla chips and then a layer of cheese and i thought this is an innovation i can really get behind he's layering the cheese and the tortilla chips but he said uh at some point uh i was like oh where are you from and he goes romania and i go what's your name vlad and i go oh i've been to comaron now here's the thing andrew that's not in romania that's in hungary and i didn't i didn't realize that until i was in the elevator and when i tell you that i've been ducking vlad all day today to not have to show my face like where are you from the U.S. I've been to Alberta what was the reaction he just nodded along because he's probably gotten some version of that idiocy a million times my greatest hope is that he didn't quite hear me that's what I'm that's what I'm that's what I'm banking on

right now the case for mumbling I feel like I could write that book myself um so wait though but this lived in your head like in the moment you you know you're saying the wrong thing or

later you're thinking about in the elevator as i'm stepping into the elevator with my pizza box and my little whatever pottery thing of nachos going upstairs to see if top gun maverick is still on as i'm getting into the elevator i realize comaron is not in romania comaron is in hungry so that was that was embarrassing but the point is so that was the last solid meal that i've had well that's not true i had a frankfurter today well i had two bites of a frankfurter do we want to talk about that or should we thank some donors and then i can tell you what a real frankfurter in frankfurt is like you'll be surprised to hear that i have a lot

of questions about this frankfurter so um yeah let's let's handle this respectfully then okay

let's let's thank some donors and then we'll get into the frankfurter talk hey just a quick reminder about all of the important entertaining and amazing stuff that's happening over at terrible thanks for asking of course that's the podcast hosted by our friend nora mcinerney terrible thanks for asking is such an incredible thing because if you're feeling great there's a lot there for you if you're feeling not so great there's also a lot over there for you to check out of course nora also hosts it's going to be okay she's also in charge of the terrible Reading Club, and she's written all kinds of books, including the national bestseller Bad Vibes Only. We love Nora. You love Nora. We're just reminding you to go hang out in the Terrible Thanks for Asking universe right now, wherever you get your podcasts. all right let's thank some donors today who are making this episode of tbtl possible live and direct from frankfurt germany where andrew there's the first two donors on this list I feel we're providentially assigned to today's list. They are Sarah Reintahler of Brooklyn, New York. Thank you, Sarah. Appreciate you. And then Carrie Deutsch of Bellevue, Washington. A Reintahler and a Deutsch. Somebody hacked our system. We've been hacked. Seriously? That's, I mean, that is, I'm probably reading far too much into this. It's all the glue vine I've been having That's a big thing over here I don't know what that is I feel like that's some kind of cider wine

Ooh, it's hot, it's hot mulled wine Genevieve used to make Well, she had a German roommate Which is maybe why I know this But around the holidays we'd have glue vine parties It was great

There's a lot of glue vine flowing around this city Everybody's offering their glue vine I have not tried it yet But maybe I will Aaron Erkenswick is in Las Vegas, Nevada

Oh, nice.

Yeah. Thanks, Aaron. Checking in from Las Vegas. Appreciate you.

What was that bar? Was it the Double Aces or something?

Something like that.

That dive bar on the outskirts of Vegas. Every now and then I look that up again on Google Maps.

Just to make sure it's still there.

Yeah, exactly. In case I'm ever back in Vegas.

Yeah. Well, yeah, it was the Five Aces or something.

Or maybe it was the Five Aces. I don't know. That would be great. Luke, honestly, and I think you know this, but I just want to reiterate, it's not a bit. that is my Vegas experience. That's not one of my Vegas experiences. That is all I know of Las Vegas is... spending one night there and going to the diviest of dive bars on the outskirts of town

if there's another vegas experience i'm unfamiliar with it and then toddling back to our rv to go to sleep exactly it's the most that is not what they're putting on the billboards all of the what happens in vegas stays in vegas all of the like you know real high and we've brought in the world's greatest chefs and entertainers like we were not on that side of vegas that night and i will tell you having been on both sides of it i'll put that night up against any of the others i've had in las vegas truthfully uh also thanks to lauren realberg of philadelphia pa the realbergs know oh yeah that lauren has been uh supporting tvtl financially thanks lauren and then luke waters is in seattle washington thank you luke um i'm thinking like the having the name luke as i do and then interacting with the name luke as i do sometimes i'm trying to track when it's become more um when it's happening more frequently and i feel like it is now although it's with a lot of adult luke's it's with a lot of luke's who are you know i don't know what luke's luke waters's ages but presumably Luke is over the age of 20 and I feel like there's a whole crop of Luke's that somehow evaded my radar for years for many years I felt like the only Luke I felt like a man without a country Andrew I was just like there weren't a lot of other Luke's and now it seems like there's a lot of them but there a lot of them are like my age or in their 30s

or I mean I was gonna say yeah I mean not to be a bummer but like we're not in our 30s anymore ourselves you know so there might there are there's a greater chance of more and more adult Luke's walking around who are still younger than us.

Right. Like a 27-year-old Luke exists, and they're 20 years younger than me.

And I could sort of see that. Yeah, I know. I'm going to just go

I'm going to go let myself go in the main river here, which, by the way, has breached its banks. There were parts of my jog today where I had to go up and, like, kind of run on this hilly area because the actual river here is overflowing its banks i don't like thinking about 27 year olds being 20 years younger than me but it is what it is thank you luke thanks also to melia matic in everett washington the airplane state that's right that's what they call it the place it's actually called the place where a guy once brought an entire banner out for andrew and that's right and then andrew didn't show up

oh hey while we're talking about places in seattle quick pause on the germany talk for a second and the banner talk for that matter um tonight i am going bowling but i'm not going to my usual bowling place we're trying this place in shoreline that a listener hipped me to called spin alley um i've never heard of that is my you haven't but my it's my understanding that it's kind of like you know what i think of as shoreline is kind of a long aurora right that's my experience yeah this is actually west of that kind of near the water oh this used to be called robin hood lanes so i'm asking you is this part of shoreline culturally edmunds it's definitely culturally edmunds it's

by the it's by the ferry it's i mean give me a bark it is so culturally edmunds it's not even funny and by the way that used to be called robin hood lanes you like it i mean i loved robin hood lanes um and i like that it's still happening um but uh but the idea that that shoreline is that's preposterous yeah that's the addy though yeah well i mean those city planners don't know what they're talking about those those revenuers and whoever's drawing up the taxable district of shoreline doesn't know that's got to be the sheriff of nottingham or something because that makes it no i guess that was in my brain because i said robin hood lanes but anyway uh thanks uh to uh malia there in everett washington thanks to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible all right let's get to the heart of the matter my friend let's talk frankfurters in frankfurt it's not as widespread as i was expecting i was thinking that everywhere that i went was going to be advertising the famous frankfurters of frankfurt and it's just not the case there are some brought places and there are a fair number of like donor kebab places which is is just the way in europe they describe what we would call like a euro place you know the big inverted hunk of lamb and the the usual stuff that would be called donor shawarma sure so over here donor kebab and there are a bunch of those places and they'll do a you know they'll do some kind of broad or frankfurter for you but i didn't see a lot of places that were like ask us about our frankfurters And in fact, I ended up going—today I went to the Frankfurt Historical Museum, where you'll be very relieved to know, Andrew, they are keeping it tight. They are not letting people like me, who paid a mere eight euros for the general pass, they are not letting us accidentally walk in to the Barbara Klim photography exhibit, which you have to have paid more for. i got yelled at by the security guy and he was like saying something i had no idea what he was talking about and then he goes dutch or english and i was kind of flattered he thought maybe i was dutch i was like english he goes you don't have the right pass for that and i was like oh okay sorry i i will say this about the germans that i've encountered in frankfurt that are working the Germans that are not working at the hotel not big on the levity like so I'm I'm I'm buying my pass for the for the museum and the the woman who's who's helping me um you know says it's like it's eight euros I go okay I give her my credit card and she goes she hands me this sticker this red m and she goes this is the sticker you have to wear at all times in the museum I go okay and then she runs my card and it works and i go that's a relief because i didn't tell my credit

card company that i was going to be in germany i really didn't know if that was going to work or not and she just looks at me she goes you have to wear the sticker at all times

that was just just it's just same plan in different worlds absolutely no interest in my

excitement over the fact that my bank of america card cleared in germany she just wanted to make sure and and by the way it would turn out uh to be uh i guess you could say uh prescient on her part because sure enough because i had the red m stuck to my jacket instead of whatever the other one was that i needed the guy knew i wasn't allowed to go in the barbara klim building frankfurt photographic exposition so freeloader um but uh i will tell you this and this is a total sidetrack and also taking on much bigger topics than i'm qualified to and also i don't want to i don't want to get into heavy duty stuff being here in germany and we have some listeners in germany but i was kind of i'll be honest you go into a museum in germany if you're me and you're kind of like how are they handling the whole world wars one and two sitch like how how do we talk about this and at least as it goes for the frankfurt museum it was kind of interesting because a lot of the museum was about the rebuilding of Frankfurt because, oh, my God, this place got bombed out. I mean, the photographs of what this place looked like post-1945 are just shocking. I mean, I've been in other European cities, but I don't think I've been in other European cities that were, like, very aggressively bombed during World War II. And so I don't think I'd seen anything like this. The photographs were really, really shocking, honestly. but it's kind of funny because they don't they just call it the rebuilding they're like in 1945 the rebuilding began i was like why did you need to rebuild anything interesting happen in like 1944 that you know and then um so the architecture piece of it was really interesting and then i kind of keep going around and i'm sure that they're in i mean i'm not i don't want to be i don't want to i don't want to sound like i'm trying to say that germany is low-keying its involvement in world war ii i bet you they're not but this one museum i'm kind of looking around and so the one floor is frankfurt then and then one is like frankfurt today and then one is frankfurt the

future so i go to like yeah does it have like a space needle and little flying cars zipping around

it has a lot of collages by kids about what they want frankfurt to be which i hope that no that's

why i was asking because i submitted one it was a little space needle with flying cars did they

display i don't think that one made it in i'm gonna be i'm sorry to tell you this but um so like i somehow end up on this floor that's kind of like when frankfurt started to become i guess what you consider a modern city because like everything in germany it was basically just a little it was a hamlet you know and and it was like kind of had some finance and banking happening but then eventually germany becomes more of a country as we think of countries now with national borders and yada yada but in this whole museum there's one nazi flag and the the description of the nazi flag is basically and again i'm sure there's a whole other museum in frankfurt i didn't go to that's like really owning this stuff but this one just basically had a writing next to the nazi flag that said frankfurt was known as the seat of democracy in germany which is why the nazis hated it so much and came over here and made us be nazis oh right yeah oh okay and then the one thing

they had that was a representation of, again, extremely dark time for the planet and Germany was a glass case that had some propaganda puppets in it. So puppets that were used presumably by Nazis or Nazi sympathizers to tell a story of basically anti-Semitism, to tell a story of Jews in Germany somehow being nefarious. And you can tell by the puppets what's going on. And you've got somebody who looks very anti-Semitically to probably represent someone who would be considered Jewish and what they're doing. And there's like literally money spread around. And then there's these other like kind of German, you know, citizens that are about to be somehow victimized by this. OK, so that's like a pretty intense thing. And also, I think a good thing for for for to be as part of this museum because it's part of the history. but then it's surrounded by these banners that are in german that are like germans don't like anti-semitism germans don't like homophobia and i'm trying to read the description some of them were in english some of them were in german i'm piecing it together but it's basically like they had an artist do an art piece where they put banners around the bad stuff that said germans don't like this and i was like yeah i'm sure you don't today but also like it's funny that the one the one thing that was very clearly depicting a moment that was extremely regrettable for this country it's also the place where you decide to hang all the banners that go we don't like the

bad stuff like made in 2012 that doesn't sound like the right way of handling it but i understand why it's a sticky wicket like any museum that has to handle something that is is a very dark even if it's like a you know dark because of human behavior um you know period in in history and that of course is very recent history and there's no really there's nothing to really to compare it But there's also this thing of, like, if you just have, like, let's say, a part of the museum where that, you know, that propaganda and that flag and whatever is just sort of in, like, kind of a very somber sort of place. It's like you also have this thing of, like, people who, like, collect Nazi memorabilia in this way where they would say, no, no, no, I'm just a collector. I'm just a historian like this fetish. There's this like and I don't know if this is more of a U.S. thing. I would guess not. But there's like a specific fetishization of it, even by people who would claim not to be anti-Semitic in collecting that kind of paraphernalia. Right. And so, like, how do you like, how do you make the somber acknowledgement without also maybe elevating it to for somebody who's looking at it with maybe different eyes than us?

Absolutely. And I just want to be really glad I weighed in.

No, no, no. No, I'm glad you didn't meet.

Andrew, I'm glad I'm actually glad that you said that because it gives me a chance to reset and say this. i am in no way trying to say you're totally right it's it's there's almost no correct way to play it and i i am not of the opinion that folks in germany are not aware of like how messed up particularly world well world war one and world war two were um so in fact it's i think it's illegal to draw a swastika in this country and why do i know that because it's one of the things kanye west did on some of the adidas yeezys that he didn't like the design of when he was in germany which was a truly shocking moment for the people assembled in the room so like i don't think i don't think that it's um that folks here are trying to pretend like it didn't happen i just was i was just curious about how it would be depicted in the museum and i guess it wasn't the way that i expected but but it's also such a complicated issue and i also know that that you You know, the sites of particular horrific things that happened, whether it's Auschwitz or Treblinka or places like this, I know that those are permanent, you know, installations and museums dedicated to remembering people who were killed and also, you know, reckoning with it. So, like, I'm not trying to say that Germany is sleeping on this. That was my experience in one museum. But when I left it, I knew that what I needed to do was get to the heart of Frankfurt, Germany by eating a Frankfurter. And thankfully, there was a place right next to the museum called, wait for it, Hans and Franz. And they were advertising their world-famous Frankfurter. So I was like, okay, this is a sign.

Bun me today and eat me tomorrow. I was like, is this? God, I haven't made a Hans and Franz.

I don't even know if that means I had to travel halfway across the world to give you that opening

I haven't made a Hans and Franz joke since I had my first far side off the wall

I yeah I was it was interesting that they went with that name I was like was that a joke in Germany there was no by the way there was

no like photo of the hans and franz characters from snl so i that made me wonder was that something in germany like that kevin nealon and and um uh uh what's his name uh harvey yeah

harvey yeah harvey dana carvey i think is well that was his original name

um it was there was no like photos of them so it's like is do people say hans and franz over here and i didn't know that or is it just a funny joke or i don't know but i was like okay

they have frankfurters or is it literally just their name is it just i mean these guys definitely

looked like uh they might have been named hans and franz by how they spoke and and in my interaction with them my sense was that they may have immigrated to germany um which was the case in like every pretty much every food establishment kind of like you know donor kebabs certainly but like every other place uh it definitely seemed to be folks that had maybe come here from somewhere else but the guy also just the behaviors of folks in other countries just the fact that it's not exactly like the u.s i have to constantly check my just like i want everything to be the way that i'm used to so i'm waiting in line to go up and order my frankfurter and there's a group of about four folks in front of me and they're just standing there like three of them are eating like like what we would call a euro or something a donor and then one of them is still waiting for whatever it is she had ordered but nobody's moving they're just all standing there and in a way it makes sense because like the guy's not going to help me until he's brought this last person their food and they've paid so there's really nothing that can happen but that's not the way we do it in the u.s like imagine you me veeves and becca are like standing around at like a a counter somewhere like that like a you know walk-up place and like me and vives and becca have gotten our food don't you think we'd go stand off to the side while you were waiting for your thing and you'd kind of like don't doesn't just seem more the standard in the u.s like you kind of clear out when you've got your part of the situation yeah to wait for your food i'm even i'm trying

to think i'm trying to think of a counter example um but no even like a food truck which would be the most kind of casual sort of yeah exactly like a food truck you would still say here's my money OK. And then you write it down now. But still, in this case, though, the person taking the money is usually different than the person who's actually working the grill. And I don't know if that's the difference here. Is it one person doing all of the work? Because you're right in that case. Well, then I guess there's no point in clearing away. But I know exactly what we're talking about. Like, even if it's just two seconds for a for a hot dog outside the ballpark, you sort of pay and then you just step you instinctively step to the side for a second while you wait for somebody to hand you food.

Yeah, that was not the instinct here. By the way, there's two guys working there, Hans and Franz. I don't know how many times I have to explain this to you.

Right, so one of them is working the grill, then all the more. They kept pumping me up.

But yeah, it was just the smallest thing, but it was, I don't know why it was making me so antsy. I was just like, really? We're all going to just stand here and eat our food so I can't go up and order my Frankfurter, which again, it would have probably taken, I'm on vacation, theoretically. There was no reason I couldn't just stand there, but it was different than what I'm used to, and therefore I found it objectionable. But eventually the last person got their thing, and these folks kind of moved out of the way, and I got up and ordered my Frankfurter, which I had to be very careful because they had a bunch of different brats, but I wanted to get the legit thing. so i ordered the frankfurter and uh and got a coke zero it was 7.95 euros so probably about 10 bucks i tried to pay with my card he said cash only which i was glad that i had i'm trying to pay with my card where i can because i don't really understand exchange rates and i just i bizarrely i trust bank of america also i was high off of the fact that my card worked in the museum so i was like let's flash this around everywhere and the guy was like cash only i was like oh okay Like, what would have happened if I didn't have cash? I guess I wouldn't have gotten the Frankfurter.

The exchange rate isn't quite as bad. So, like, you paid 795 euro. That's $8.83 in the U.S. So they're kind of lapping you by about a buck with that exchange.

That's not so bad, and maybe that's what I should be doing. But I traded in 300 U.S., and I got 240 euros for it at the exchange place.

I see. So whatever the exchange rate was in that particular moment when you exchanged it along with whatever. I think it's that.

I don't I'm honestly, again, see previous comments. I'm a grown person. I should know this stuff, but I just like paying with my card because I feel like, I don't know, the banks will work it out. Like, I like that better. Like, yeah, it's OK. I'm paying seven ninety five, but it's like eight bucks. You know, OK, I can live with that. I don't like giving over like 20 euros and then getting back a bunch of coins and i don't really i don't think anyone's ripping me off but i just feel like i don't know what's going on that's another interesting thing about this place and i guess europe in general the coins are still a big part of the operation like i haven't had a coin be a significant part of my personal economy in a long long time and like embrace it though it's kind of fun because

you know you don't know how long like i don't know man i really like coinage i remember like Even going through the toll booths in New Hampshire, you used to get all these special coins. You'd buy them at the grocery store, keep them in your car, and you'd throw them into a basket. And now it's all seamless with cards and magnetic strips, and now I sound like the guy from Dragnet. But I just sort of feel like I think that's something kind of cool. And you're right. There's going to be a learning curve there, and you're not there for very long to kind of ride that curve, I suppose. But sort of, you know, it's kind of fun, too.

Yeah, I'm going to bring some home and give them to my nieces and nephews. Although my nieces in particular have been to Europe like, I don't know, 10 times in their life. Like it's ridiculous. That was funny because on the Hawk Squad.

They know what the exchange rate is right now.

Call Maddie right now. She'll tell you. Like Hannah texted me or texted me via Hawk Squad, I guess. Any pictures from Frankfurt? And I'm thinking, well, here's what I took a picture of so far. A store called Christ Established in 1859 And I thought that was funny because I believe Heard that guy was older than that And I took a picture of a glass Of a bottle of wine in the like That was for sale at the hotel lobby That said I want to have sex with you And I took a picture of a lot of German Graffiti where there's clearly a language barrier Like somebody Graffitied stay punks Forever and it's like P-U-N-X and then the number four and then ever stay punks forever which might be the least punk thing I've ever seen like those are the photos I have for I don't have like my sister Hannah will be like we're at the Blarney Stone we're at this we're at the Eiffel Tower they all have the right pictures mine are just I took a picture of something called Bavarian Pig Knuckles to make Camaro Kev laugh

you took a picture of Dirk Nowitzki on the television selling mattresses

I did because I love he is the Shaquille O'Neal of Germany Like he is in every ad the way that Shaquille is in every ad in the U.S. We in the U.S. have largely forgotten about the work of one Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks, but they have not over here in Germany, his homeland. They love him and he is pitching everything.

I actually I know that name. But is he a coach now or what? He is a player.

He was a player for the Dallas Mavericks for a long time and a really good player, but a player who is from Germany. And at the time that was a pretty unique thing In fact I think the only other Like one of the only other German players Who was making a big splash Was one Detlef Schrempf Longtime Seattle Supersonic And as I was listening to Band of Horses And the plane was landing Detlef Schrempf came on And I thought well that's a sign I'm landing in Germany And the song Detlef Schrempf is playing

Oh it's a song I was trying to figure that out It's a song on like I think Cease to Begin

No the song called Detlef Schrempf was playing on my on my phone but um okay so i get up there i get the frankfurter i luckily i do have euros i give them to the guy i get some coins back i just assume that he's giving me the right number of coins and i um i sent you a picture of this frankfurter andrew oh oh oh did

you i did yeah oh no i know i i guess i'm not making myself clear yeah i've been staring at it for like 40 minutes i am trying to figure out the technology to eat this thing through my

computer i was really surprised at the whole presentation i didn't realize they were going

to give me two links and also it's an intro right so much to talk about here so it's two hot dog links across a bun i'll take it from here please uh the bun is a little bit like the bun

seems too small for everything going on though right yeah it's interesting though so it looks

like the bun is like is much shorter than two like somewhat skinny um hot dog links but looking good Like, you know, like the casings look perfect. They got the little pinched tips on the ends of them. Are the two links connected, by the way? Are they pulled on the thing? And then it seems like the deal is you hold the bun, but you're going to take some breadless bites of these links. And I kind of like that you dip them in mustard.

By the way, possible show title, Breadless Bites.

Do you know that at the beginning of the show you said, now for some food humor or humorous attempts at getting food. And somehow I want that either to be the name of the show or your book.

Or maybe something that John Sklaroff turns into some kind of web content.

A T-shirt, yeah. How about a cat?

How about my cat saying attempts at food humor? So, yes, it was interesting because even if they would have only given me one link, it would have.

still been comically too big for the bunnage that they were giving me and yet it was two and I also I don't I was nobody else was ordering frankfurters I was trying to see like what the what the sort of typical way that a person in frankfurt consumes a frankfurter is like because they had they did have they had ketchup they had like a big thing of ketchup mustard and mayo off to the side on like a outdoor table But it didn't look like anyone had used them in a long time. And I wanted to I wanted to have the most authentic experience that I could have here. Like I I was thinking, like, if they eat these, if they if they eat these dry, then that's what I want to do. I want to kind of have this in the most Frankfurt way, but I didn't have anyone to guide me or teach me. And so as you can see with that photograph, I just doused it in mustard and then doused it in a little bit less ketchup and then chomped down on it. And I will tell you, Andrew, it was very good. I did not get through the whole thing. It tasted like a very good, you know, that's not accurate. I was going to say it tasted like a very good hot dog in the U.S., but that's not true. It tasted a little better than like a standard hot dog from the U.S. Like there was a little something to it. Honestly, the bun was phenomenal.

It looks pretty like, as long as that's fresh, that looks like a really good bun.

It was like crispy, like crunchy on the outside, but kind of soft. And like, I was very there for the bun. I wouldn't have minded more bun. I wouldn't have minded a bun the size of the Frankfurters, but it was pretty good. The only downside was I got so much mustard on my face and I was a good half mile from the hotel. And you know, Andrew, you and I are both not big food on our face fans. I was walking through like all the Christmas markets and glue vine stands and swatch. there's a swatch store here I thought of you it was going to pop in do you need a swatch from Germany I can get you one I do with nail polish

now are these swatches like more modern swatches they're not like the

I didn't go in the store but I just saw it there's another I saw another store that I took a picture of Andrew that would be without a doubt your least favorite place in the history of the planet and probably mine too it's a store that's called I forget what the name of the store is but their tagline is no ordinary store and guess what they're showing Andrew they have a Banksy exhibit and it's just like Banksy here but then on the exhibit it says unauthorized exhibition the No Ordinary store has an unauthorized Banksy exhibition what are they selling I don't even know it's the worst it's like four people who heard someone say the word Banksy once put together their idea of what that means it's like I don't I mean i can go back in later it's still probably open but like i think they're showing banksy stuff but the idea that it's like they've printed out a million like large professional banners and signs that say unauthorized exhibition like if banksy knew about this he'd be so mad right now like it's just it's uh it's not it wasn't my favorite thing but anyway they do have a swatch store i haven't gone in there either but if they have is there a particular if you want to send me a picture of a particular vintage swatch i can go in and see if they have it i um did track mine

down with the help of reddit um a few months ago the one that i had as a youth but um i think it's out of my price range at this point but i'll send you the the details a couple of other quick things

and then we've got to wrap it up because um my i'm on battery power here in germany and at any moment the device could tell me that my time is up but things that they appear to really love in

germany or at least in frankfurt um stop the show for one second i am now on the instagram uh page of no ordinary store and i asked you what it is it is what is it i don't understand why you didn't just explain this to me in these simple words luke it's a pop-up concept store oh good concept store is one word just so you know of course that could be and now that i really i mean i guess that could be a german phrase i assume that that was something that they were making up so yeah it is just like kind of a lifestyle it's a lifestyle it's a whole thing it looks like various um but mostly fashion it looks like some clutches um and also some um dumplings for some reason so i guess i got us no closer to it and your battery is dying so anyway i was just kind of psyched that i'm actually i'm kind of i'm taking this virtual thank you virtual tour with you when you said that that frankfurt is up north i was like mapping that compared to see is that right by the way Just slightly, but just slightly, but it's an interesting map to look at to see, like, when you do sort of look at the line across the globe, you are slightly north, but not way out of whack with us, but that would totally make sense.

Apparently enough that, yeah, that's, you know, I can't, I don't think we ever got to 330 sunset, but maybe that's.

well no that's because i don't think so either i don't think it ever gets quite that bad and also 8 30 sunrise seems late like i feel like eight might be the latest that we deal with but um the other thing that they really seem to like here at least in frankfurt is uh musical reviews of artists that have passed away or are no longer playing everywhere you look they're just these posters for like uh elvis das musical or there was one that was like das music of tina turner and i'm like well both these people these were like in totally different parts of the city but big you know posters and then all you need is love das beatles musical and then this one was really interesting the australian pink floyd show because if there's anyone who's known for their pink floyd verisimilitude that's not the guys in pink floyd it's the aussies like there are just so many ads for like the music of some kind of famous band most of them passed away done by other people or a band that still sort of exists in some fashion pink floyd but done by the australians

they love that you know that roger waters spins the opposite way down in australia

whichever way good politics is he spins the opposite way oh that's right i forgot

was it you or camaro telling me recently probably camaro he's way more up to speed on this stuff yeah i did i can't that was kind of news to me recently he's well he's all over the map is the

thing like he's yeah i think i uh let's just say he's probably been if he hasn't been on the joe rogan show it'll happen soon he's quite adopted the heterodox like one of the things about roger waters this is of course where everyone hoped the germany show would go um thanks luke no no that's on me that's on me joke in the moment no this is on me like one of the examples you know how like the right in america is going after all of these higher education institutions like your harvard's and your uh university of pennsylvania's and the like because of perceived anti-semitism um uh one of the things that was cited was that roger waters was allowed to play at one of these ivy league schools and that something he had said was considered to be well i mean he's done some stuff that's pretty pretty weird and anti-semitic but he's also weirdly right-wing he's kind of all over the map but he was being used by the right-wingers as an example of a left-wing guy who was being allowed to play at one of these schools without any comment whereas if you were to have you know uh like uh who's the who's the guy who did the shot the people and now is like a little he's a little pet of the right wing i forget that kid's name but like if you basically had some like right wing provocateur on a campus one of these ivy league

campus oh sorry you were breaking up milo or no not milo milo's a better example i was talking

about the the kid who was involved in the shooting and then was acquitted and is now like um some kind of a like he shows up at events but no milo is a better example like if you were to have that Milo Yanupas guy come to your school and it was Harvard there'd be a big protest but if you're gonna have Roger Waters uh then no one gets mad but I was like that's news to me that we're

considering him left wing yeah uh you know it sounds like I mean I'm I'm actually sort of with one eye sort of trying to read up on this and it just seems like a a sort of a gross stew it's like it's somewhere on you know like somewhere on the spectrum between what Billy Corgan no I guess maybe Billy Corgan's on that spectrum as well yes right like just

by the way they do make a really good gross stew here in the hotel

I believe it they put

on a dirndl to bring it out that's the other thing that's kind of funny about me being here is I was just in Leavenworth I was just in a faux Bavarian city and even though we're not in like I don't think we're in the parameters of what you would call Bavaria necessarily like the kind of most touristy part of Frankfurt and the way this whole city used to be is 100% Leavenworth. Like, there's a giant Christmas tree. There's a guy on the accordion. There's all this Bavarian stuff. There's Glühwein. It's like I went from the pretend version of this to, I guess, the real version of this, which is also the pretend version of this.

But I like the idea of you walking around Germany being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. Trust me. I just got out of Leavenworth.

Dude, bro. Also, usually when people say I just got out of Leavenworth, it's a whole other thing.

Yeah, I just sort of realized how that sounded.

Next, I'm going to visit Sing Sing the Netherlands.

But no, I said they sent him up to Leavenworth.

But I seriously like I seriously kind of had that feeling like I'm walking around and I'm like, oh, yeah, I've seen all of this. Or I know about this particular like, you know, this way of finishing a stairway, you know, to make it look have a patina or whatever. Like I feel like because the thing is everything that I'm looking at.

in um frankfurt in that area frankfurt is also redone probably more recently than leavenworth was redone uh the difference is that it's actually original to the culture from around here so um okay i guess so to to to wrap up the frankfurter in frankfurt thing it was pretty good but i also again was the i haven't seen one other person eating one since i've been here so maybe it's not a particularly hot item anymore in frankfurt maybe everybody's moved on to uh burger king the home of the kansas city chiefs well i'm gonna put i'm gonna put both of these

on the blog page for today put it on the blog which one i'll make this show and the show pick but maybe i'll probably make the show pick the the photo of you eating it and you can see the if you look very closely you can see the little sign that says hans and fries in the background that's for the listeners yeah um but i was gonna say i mean not to obsess over this or or to make it seemed like i'm doing a bit like really this this photo of of the the frankfurter looks really good to me um like mouth watering and it looks like this will be my last question about it looks like it has good snap and that's like what yes like really important in this it had good i can

just tell the casing looks so good it had good snap and that you know you got to give it to him that was what i was looking for that's the whole thing that's missing from when i eat you know plant-based hot dog stuff nobody can get the snap down and the snap is really kind of like the whole thing and the snap on this was pretty good so i i particularly if you're somebody who who likes cased meats and enjoys uh you know hot dogs and brats and the like would recommend um you know it was it was it was pretty tasty i had like three bites and then i chucked it because i was saving my appetite for another round of vlad's nachos tonight actually wait let me ask

you about that for a second because um you talk about this on the show a lot you talk about your your kind of voracious appetite and it is true i don't think you mind me saying this i'm not saying this as a dig at all but like when we're traveling together when you get hungry like you get really hungry and you're like kind of because you kind of fast for a while and then you will really plow through a couple of sandwiches or something what was it about this that you stopped um eating was it because you don't eat that much meat and it's just sort of like you were in your head about it a little bit or you just truly just weren't that hungry in this moment the reason I stopped was

because it tasted fine but I felt like I had experienced enough of it to give you a report and I think even in my days of eating a lot more meat I was never a guy who wanted to eat like a significant portion of frankfurter link with no bun like that's just never been my thing so i think i was a i wouldn't say i was put off by it but i was like i'd rather save my hunger for what i got just down the street i went to a donor kebab place and i got a giant thing of french fries and just went to town so like i i it's hard to explain it wasn't like i wasn't revolted by it i sort of enjoyed it but i i wasn't like i want to try to get to the end of this tootsie roll you know what i mean it was like i had had enough it tasted pretty good but i was it wasn't like i can't stop eating this it was like i can stop eating this and also i'm about to run out of bun and then on the other side of that is like four inches of of raw dog so i just kind of i mean

honestly and i'm not just saying this like and that is where we're different and probably is just like my upbringing like that sounds that's the whole that's the best i mean we would you know kind of steam hot dogs or whatever and you'd maybe have one or two in a bun and then like just easily just like just start nibbling on a hot dog without a bun or anything like I mean I think I before I went to bed last night the doctor told me I should eat some summer sausage so I've been trying to do that like literally before I went to bed last night I don't know why I'm admitting this I pulled a summer sausage out of the refrigerator and like just cut some chunks off of it and ate it over the sink so like I feel like you would really fit in here I feel like these are your people exactly um i humorless if i must wear the sticker at all times if i

if i see like whatever the hillshire farms of germany is uh and i see some kind of like you know like a a version of these frankfurters that will travel that i can bring i will definitely bring you some because i'm actually stopping through seattle however briefly by the way uh this is the funny part and again my recording is going to probably die any minute here but i keep getting notifications from alaska airlines travel alerts about travel which is funny because my alaska airlines flight is from seattle to portland like i gotta cross ocean like my flight on condor air is 10 hours i gotta cross oceans of time before i do the rounding error that is seattle to portland and i've gotten like five emails from alaska airlines excuse me just like auto emails going just so you know peak travel season and i'm like yeah yeah yeah i'm fine y'all

Also, wasn't there a potential strike or something? Maybe that's what they were warning you about.

This one says peak travel, peak holiday travel season is here and Seattle International Airport is expecting a high volume of travelers. And then it just tells me basically to try to not check bags and to remind me of when my flight is. But also, let's throw that on. Here's the takeaway from this, Andrew. I may be staying at your and Genevieve's house tomorrow night if I get home. That's the craziest thing about flying. i might have said this on a show before we went to the winter games but you know i lost a day coming here and i think this is coming back to me now i think you did remind me of our friend broadcast barry so like legitimately losing a day but tomorrow my whole flight is two hours of like awake daytime like i don't think it ever gets dark because i'm taking off here at like noon and then i'm landing in seattle at like two or something it's like i'm just gonna be cruising along i guess if you if you just did that indefinitely could you could it be never night

again if you just kept staying you'll never die you'll never is that what it is that's what they don't tell you you can yes i mean that is the trick that sounds wonderful just on an airplane for the rest of your life yes yes a little fart tube um all right well i think that's all that i

needed to update you on i'm sure that by the time i get back and we're off the winter games i'll still i'll have like many more many more thoughts from my time over here in deutschland but for now i think we're gonna call that gut is that how you say good in german yeah no that's definitely how

you say it um well that was a lot of fun thank you sorry for my i feel like i was a little bit off rhythm because i mean no joke we have a little uh you know you're only hearing every

third word that i'm saying i also keep jumping in and out of german so i know this has been

difficult today right exactly but um yeah so if the rhythm was off that's on me but i or on the technology but uh it was really good to have you check in thanks for doing that absolutely

guten luck on your uh home thanks thanks for keeping the home fires burning there in seattle for tbtl so all right everyone have a great wednesday uh we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you in the meantime please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all do you want to say luck to all didn't you do i look like i know what a jpeg is i just want a picture of a god dang hot dog power out