Wet cigarette smokers exude a stench that has me wanting to smell a wet dog instead. It’s raining today, and I care nothing about taking hundreds or even dozens of photos to capture the gloom. I must catch up on bringing the blog entries of the past few days together. You see, I’ve written a hair more than 10,000 words over these three days, and that has exceeded my ability to keep pace with editing, selecting photos, and posting.  The goal was clear for this day, but the execution is being intruded upon.

The intruder is the distraction created by those who apparently sequester themselves in cramped quarters and cars while chain-smoking and then feel they must venture out into the rain where their stench is able to erupt into full bloom. I can only guess those who don’t recoil from the wretched nose-fowling, wet smoke stink are actually used to it because nobody else is making exaggerated facial gestures of abhorrence. This is when you might realize that I’m a drama queen.

If my face was an accurate indicator of the barf factor going on within me thanks to those who flaunt their acrid perfume emanating from every pore and every thread of their being, then those indecent, inconsiderate smoking fucksticks would easily clue in on the person in their midst who is having a crisis. Instead, they remain in oblivion.

But why does today’s blog title need to focus on wet dogs and cigarettes while I’m traveling to Bayreuth? Because everywhere I walked in Erfurt today, from my Airbnb abode to the train itself, I was surrounded by the aforementioned foul aroma. I would actually have been happier if people smelled of shit or Surströmming instead of wet cigarette smoke. The former can be explained by inadvertently stepping into it while walking along in one’s own thoughts, and the latter could possibly be interesting simply because I’ve not had the opportunity to smell it yet, but the reek of wet cigarette smoke is not something I have smelled in years. Even as I landed in Bayreuth (where it was still raining), the contemptible odor of these smoking troglodytes is a constant reminder that the distant relatives of Neanderthals are alive and well just 300 miles from the cave they crawled out of in Neandertal. For those that don’t know this, the village of Neandertal is just north of Cologne.

So will this be a theme today? Could be. I’ve certainly been building up my resentment that cigarettes are ever-present everywhere one goes in Germany. The funny thing is that it’s less prevalent today than it was 30 years ago. While some people flaunt the restrictions of no smoking on the train platforms, the tracks next to them no longer sport mounds of orange cigarette butts looking like collections of millions of inch-long lipstick-stained and bent snuffed-out cigarettes that were tossed at the last second by someone boarding the train and exhaling the smoke directly on the train.

Nobody is smoking in restaurants anymore. The first time I asked for the no-smoking section at an upscale steak restaurant in Frankfurt, I was told to go outside. But there was a problem with that as they didn’t serve steaks out there. I should clarify things: smoking is no longer allowed in restaurants. If you choose to sit outside, well, that’s another story, and the person sitting at the table next to you could be a chain smoker. One more thing, and I’ll give this a break. Passing ashcans that are sending off wisps of smoldering old cigarettes can turn the non-smoker in the other direction in a split-second; that’s how wretched they smell. Okay, I hope I’ve exorcised this, and I can move on to other stuff, but I’m leaving the unflattering title.

Update: in my original post, I didn’t identify Oskar Restaurant where I had lunch called Brezenbrett’la or Pretzel Board that included Obatzter (Bavarian cheese), quark, and lard.

Well, well, well, I just looked at the photos I’ve taken so far; it’s 4:00 p.m. already, and I’ve managed to capture a mere three images. I was hoping to find inspiration from them so I could write about something, but with the images’ subject matter being food, I’ve decided that I’m not prepared to go there next. Guess I’ll have to peel out of the cafe and hit the open road on the search for adventures afar away where prairie dogs and the antelope play; ok, maybe not quite that far out, but you get the idea.

I’ve been walking randomly around town and thought I was about to discover the antipodal version of me when I realized I know too many sides of myself and that the true opposing sides are boring diatribe-laden versions where I kvetch about sports, country music, television, or cigarettes. But how are those true opposites when they are just flavors of John wearing one of his grumpy man hats?

Where are all the dogs in Bayreuth? I need to photograph one for my lead photo, but all I find are cigarette butts along the street and mold growing on the statuary. I have the rest of the day to find my photo accompaniments and return to writing, should I accomplish my task, but I do not blog without photos. The Kraftraum coffee shop, with its free wifi, is open till 1:00 in the morning and is less than 120 feet away from where I’m staying, so I have plenty of time to return to a place conducive to writing.

Back to antipodal John, who I don’t know how to approach. There must be something or someone on the other side of intrinsic me, but when I start to go down that wormhole, I find that I cannot find the version of me I’m not all that familiar with. If I had some of my former employees with me, I’m sure they could point out the error of my awareness and nudge me in the direction of the deeper asshole I seem to have mastery over, but digging in that darkness, I still arrive at the only version of me I’ve yet known. I’ll readily admit I’ve explored places of peculiarity while at the same time remaining relatively tame, knowing that depravity could take me into G.G. Allin’s territory, but he’s already done that and been there, so my interpretation would likely be ham-fisted and cheesy. Regarding the photo of the butt of a statue, do you think the sculptor used a model or just freestyled it?

The din of noise is picking up here at the Kraftraum where I’m writing this. It is a youthful hangout as opposed to the traditional German restaurants that attract the ancients that I’ve been frequenting. Like a moth to the light, I’m gravitating more and more to the universe of the elderly. First-class rail travel doesn’t see mothers with children or high school students paying for quiet civility; it’s a bunch of gray-haired codgers with intestines well lubricated with fiber. Those of us who straddle the two worlds are somehow lost between the desire to extend youth by following dimming impulses and the growing realization our voices no longer project strongly enough for our fellow oldies to hear as acutely as they once did.

As for me, I’m practicing being a convenience whore right now: if you have wifi, I’ll suck a doorknob for the password. Sure, I could write without the help of Grammarly or Merriam-Webster, Google Maps, or Wikipedia, but I’m no high-retention genius like my goddess of a wife. I am fully aware of my weaknesses; well, the only one I really know of is my inability to admit to being wrong. If I were to admit that I’m probably infallible, I’d be modest because, at other times, I’d insist on that fact. Not to say I don’t make mistakes, but that’s what experience has shown me. Though, who among you is worthy enough to call me out on that?

Too cold outside, too hot inside. The espresso machine nearly reached Max Q before the mission was aborted, with the grounds well spent. Glasses are clinking, some muffled music plays in the background, and random German words emerge out of the noise. There’s a particular sound to coffee shop doors opening and closing that rings with a familiarity I know deep within my memories. The footsteps on wooden floors with their dull thud and the sound of a jacket coming off are things you won’t hear at McDonald’s. There’s an existential question as it pertains to cafes as dusk begins to settle in on the day; maybe it’s more a Schroedinger’s cat kind of question but can a cafe exist without candles?

Well, I’ve used up my allocation of words for this visit to the coffee shop and must go back out on the street to start the cool-down process and find a photo of a dog for Bloggyville. I’ll be back later for a bottle of water as my ration of coffee has taken me to full tilt on the pinball machine of caffeine. I wonder what other nonsense I’ll find wandering the mindscape of thought streams out in the German world of ideas? Hopefully, it won’t be a study in smeared piles of dogshit with me trying to identify the shoe brand via the collapsing print that might remain in the flattened poop.

Back out on the streets, I first come upon the sound of a piano, but the front door is locked so I figured this is some private affair. In a small courtyard that appeared to be part of a school or shop, I couldn’t tell which; there was an open door, and I let myself in. A woman moves from around the corner to the area I am walking through as though she is checking out the visitor. I explain to the best of my ability that I would like to sit in and listen to the person playing in the next room; she says Gerne meaning “with pleasure.” The guy playing appears to be improvising, but he does so with aplomb.

Not a pile of scat was found in the kingdom of Bayreuth, but this bust of Franz Liszt was. Nary a dog either as I searched high and low until late in the day, my specimen presented itself, followed an hour later by another. On this form of a hunt, I’m realizing that Bayreuth is a small town, or at least it has that feel. I’ve circled the old town twice now, and other than the Liszt and Wagner museums, it appears that Bayreuth is primarily here for the students who study at the local university. But these are details of no consequence for the person who is visiting for a host of reasons I don’t share with many others. Of those who do visit, I’d venture to guess I’m part of a small handful of people per decade who show up in honor of the one-time friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner. Reference my previous comments about the naivety factor that led me to hope something mystical might drop out of history and into my ear.

With the best of intentions earlier, I knew that I would be burning the midnight oil at the Kraftraum. Now that I’m here again, it is only 9:30 and I feel the over-caffeinated confidence of the late afternoon is fading fast. All the same, it is too early to concede defeat and head for a room where I might be tempted to call it quits. I came to write, and that’s what I will do even if it should require struggle.

So how long should I stare blankly at the screen until words start to appear? I’m almost half-prepared to hang on until they start to flow from my fingers to your brain. The other half is laughing in ridicule at this feeble attempt where one word after the other is offered after long pauses between each utterance so that the meaning is almost lost before I find the end of the sentence.

I remember the anguish Nietzsche wrote in, pressing through inscrutable pain with migraine headaches that nearly blinded him, and yet the imperative to write tore through his being, and with compulsion, he wrote until he could write no more. I’ve never come close to reaching that kind of frenetic state in which my mind tortures me to purge the pressure of what has filled my head. This is likely because I’m not a writer but a dabbler in jotting down random words without an overarching thread that could tie it all together.

The candle has a story, right? No, it doesn’t. I refuse to anthropomorphize a jar of burning wax. What’s next, a talking dog poop smoking a cigarette while hanging out on the streets of Prague? Putting it that way, I think I might see some of William S. Burroughs’s motivation in writing Naked Lunch. Then there’s that piece of burned toast I had my photo taken with over in Erfurt. Someone, possibly sitting tired some night in a coffee shop, conjured up a grumpy, talking piece of food that became Bernd das Brot, which likely made the person a nice financial return on what may have initially been dismissed as a dumb idea.

I’ve managed to whittle away another half-hour nursing my glass of sparkling water, and while I’d like to wait until I’m the last customer here because maybe had I waited just fifteen minutes more, the flow of words might have run headlong into my consciousness, and I would have been laying down the foundation of a novel instead of using my bleary eyes to prep some photos in order to stay current with the taskmaster known as Blog.