On Friday morning, we head to Prague’s Hlavní Nádraží and board the train to Dresden. The train is cool and we have time to plot out our weekend. It’s Germany. There’s a tour of the old town Friday afternoon and a street festival on Saturday.

The plan: we will do culture and then reward ourselves for being cultural by drinking beer and eating brats on Saturday. In this context, ‘brat’ (pr: women’s foundation garment + T) is short for a particular style of German sausage, not a spoiled child who behaves badly.

There are things one does in Germany. One drinks beer. One treats schnapps like a cologne and sauerkraut like a breath mint. One does not argue with police officers. And one treats brat like a verb.

We bratted yesterday in the old town.

Are we bratting tonight?

We have bratted a few times on our trip.

All of the preceding would make no sense in any other civilized place. But in Germany they make perfect sense. It’s as though the place lives with its own geographic grammar.

We do our tour in heat that could melt a Peruvian pigeon’s knuckle hairs. Our guide (Leo) does his best to steer us into little groves of shade while telling us about famous Saxon royalty. (If you’re ever on a quiz show and have to guess a Saxon royal’s name, just go with August and follow it with a single number and you’ve got a decent shot). The tour is indeed quite brilliant and the guide is funny, and that is something I never thought I’d say about a German tour guide.

Despite the tour’s fascinating aspects, I was a bit distracted while walking and sweating into my sandals. I was thinking to myself: Will I brat?

Periodically, my family will drop in to make sure I haven’t gone too far upriver. Oh, they claim it’s to visit and have fun in Prague, but then they ask me questions like ‘what day is today?’ or ‘do you remember dad’s birthday?’ and I know they’re doing a cognitive screening for my mom. We used to include ‘who is the president’ in these orientation assessments, but we figured if the president himself can’t answer that question then why should we have to?  

This time it’s my sister. We meet Thursday morning and chat easily about our strange family. We then talk about food. By late morning, she slips in the occasional question about our old street address (nailed it) and what our first cat’s name was (there’s debate here) and she sounds it out with one on what condition our great grandmother’s golden retriever had (trick question, she didn’t trust dogs).

Once the questions are over, we can enjoy our most vile attack campaign: the heat. See, not only are Prague, the central Bohemian region, and parts of Saxony being bombarded by two Galeones, they are being bombarded by two Galeones, a heatwave, and two Galeones in a heatwave. This is fair to nobody. My people do not do well in the heat. Though, admittedly, this is a source of some confusion, as a good chunk of our little clan hails from southern Italy and from Sicily, two places not exactly known for their brisk and chilly weather.

Nevertheless, we can’t handle it. Each of our homes is a testament to cooling down overheated people with short legs: fans, air conditioners, open windows, unused heaters, heating radiators that act as bookshelves. Without these, we are irritable and unproductive. It’s no accident that my dad’s uncles were all sent to fight in the European Theater during WWII. Had they been sent to the Pacific there’s no telling what language we’d all be speaking right now.

So it is with some universal irony that we have various plans that include moving around outside and we are doing it in a country that looks upon air conditioning as the third greatest tragedy of the 20^th century.  

We do two days in Dresden, where we find solace in outdoor pubs and big churches that block out the meddling sun. But it’s on our way to the little town of Kutná Hora that the monster within me rears its overheated head. We sit in a cabin across from three people whose combined age would bring us to the Mesozoic Era. It’s a one-hour trip that is consistently interrupted by stoppages and sitting still under the baking sun in a hot metal box with slanted window gaps the width of a slice of New York pizza. My sister closes her and hums lightly as she meditates her way to Kutná Hora. Burke is also calm – she’s off from work and nobody is asking her anything.

It’s me who has the trouble. I grumble and groan. The sweat drips into my shirt and down my face. My hair is splattered against my forehead. I feel the judgmental eyes of the conductor on me. (I mean, all he’s said to me so far was ‘good morning’ and ‘I love your dog’, so what kind of sociopath is this?) I go into the hallway with the other people overheating in the cabin – my dog. She and I stand out in the narrow walkway and she pants for a while before plopping down and resting her belly against the cool floor. She’s soon in heaven and I am slightly cooled. A bunch of young guys in the cabin next to us are hooting and hollering. I suppose this is only natural – they are young, after all, and probably have visible abs and eyes that work without equipment. But still, I wonder, how can you all be so happy in this heat.

My sister and Burke realize my misery and soothe my bespackled feathers with talks of lunch and beer. I run a towel over my head and cool with gratitude. After the train ride, the twenty-minute walk to the first site forces Dr. Jekyll out again. I grumble and I think I might even shake my fist at the sun, because screw that G-type main-sequence star and all his yellow dwarf friends. As much of the rest of the day takes place in a restaurant, the police didn’t have to get called on me.  

While waiting for the train back to Prague, I grumble again. See, this is a local – not express – so while our morning train took over an hour because of delays, this one will take an hour and twenty minutes before any delays can be factored in.

But then some amazing things happen. 1. This train is early. 2. This train is empty. 3. This train has air conditioning. We take the 4-spot group seats and two women and a little girl take the ones on the other side. Cool air is blowing at us from all directions. The conductor is kind and has a kind face. (He says to me ‘give me your tickets. Quickly!’ and ‘don’t think about putting your feet on the seat’ – what a mensch!) I am jolly and happy and making plans for the rest of my life. The woman next to me looks a little sad and I wonder how she can be so unhappy in these glorious conditions. I think I begin humming. This is the best ride of my whole life and I once rode in a Batmobile.

We’re nearly in Prague when my sister leans across the seats.

‘Dame. What was our usual Christmas dinner?’

‘Ravioli and meatballs. Duh? How did you forget that?’ I make a face to Burke.

‘And which town did we usually go to at the Jersey Shore?’

‘Oh, uh…’

I see what’s happening. I answer the next few questions and subdue my mood until we reach home safely and our next air conditioning experience.       

As a writer for kids, I am granted the chance (read: forced) to read things that might be a bit off my radar. This something leads to knowledge – whether I like it or not. Here are some things I learned this week. Acquire this knowledge at your own risk.

The astronauts on the Integrity (Artemis II) have to work out 30 minutes a day. If someone in zero gravity works out 30 minutes a day that sort of undercuts all of my excuses. Astronaut jerks

The fastest ant on earth is the Saharan Silver Ant. Where he lives it’s 130 degrees outside and he eats formerly living things that have been baked by the sun. He takes 40 steps a second. After eating barbecue. I can’t take 40 steps in an hour after eating barbecue. I would be baked.

The quietest place on Earth is a room (anechoic chamber) in Minnesota. Most people freak out after a few second in there. This might be because they literally hear their skin crawling and their blood rushing through their veins.

The quietest place I have ever been was in a restaurant this afternoon having lunch in a room with about 20 Czechs. I think maybe 1 word was shared in that time and it might as well have been in braille. I would rather hear my blood rushing out of my veins than be in that room again.

There are now several animal highways and bridges throughout the world. I advocate this heartily. I have always hated sharing my highways with the slowpoke gophers and aggressive hedgehogs. It’s about time they get their own road. Are we going to give a highway system to people who keep their blinkers on for 16 miles. Cause I would pay extra for that.

And as strange as the world of science and wildlife get, they still can’t get stranger than American politics at this time. The White House was the location of a UFC cage fight event this week. I think Donald misheard America. We didn’t want to see a UFC cage fight at the White House. We wanted to see Donald Trump in a UFC cage fight anywhere. On Netflix. Cause I would pay extra for that.

Oh well. Some things you wish you could just unknow. For example, the better part of the last decade would go real well as a bad dream right about now. And I would pay extra for that.

It was during a quiet, sedate reading session that Burke said the most worrying words: ‘Uh oh.’

As per my training over the last years, my eyes went to the dog sleeping at my feet and my brain went to Donald Trump. With the slightest facial movement I ask Burke what the problem is and if I need to do anything. She answers with words.

“I might have a tick.”

My jaw has found a very comfortable resting position which I am unwilling to disrupt. So I give her the two-muscle facial sign that says ‘ah fucker’.

Indeed, a tick has made home on Burke somewhere I am not at liberty to mention. We call it names while we flush it down the toilet. Within a few minutes, I become one of the apartment building’s leading experts on ticks.  

It was pretty flat and had not been there long because we got him out fast. He had not yet gorged on blood. He had likely not transferred any sickness or illness (knock on wood). But man did that little fucker get to me.

It happened quickly. An hour after Burke found her tick, I found myself scratching and prodding my ass. Then behind my knees. Then under my arms. Then I was in the hallway mirror with a flashlight and a bodily flexibility I haven’t known since my weight started with a 1.

Is there anything better than Memorial Day? The weather’s nice, school’s careening towards a close, and the summer season and all its mosquito-laden, sweat-soaked glory is just getting started. Memorial Day is sort of the Friday afternoon of the summer – all the fun, sunburn, and backyard shindigs are ahead. More importantly, Memorial Day marks the beginning of the outside drinking season.

What would become Memorial Day started out as unofficial gatherings by black southerners to decorate soldiers’ gravesites on Civil War battlefields. After a few such events in the early 1860s, what is considered the first ‘Decoration Day’ took place on May 1 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina. On this day, around 10,000 recently-freed black people held a parade to honor 257 dead Union soldiers, who they buried in proper graves which they decorated with flowers.

Like many holidays, Decoration Day’s original intention was quickly back-seated in lieu of parties and hotdogs. By 1869, complaints were made about the day becoming more about ‘banquets’ and ‘pomp’ than honoring war dead. Any hopes of removing the day’s leisure focus were smashed in 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect. This Act moved Memorial Day to the last Monday in May, perennially tying it to a 3-day weekend. A year later, Time Magazine called it a ‘3-day nationwide hootenanny’, which confirms that whoever wrote that had never in their lives had sexual intercourse with another person in the room. 

Oh, I can understand the complaints, and there’s no doubt that we should remember those who have served and those who have died in conflict. But let’s also keep in mind that America is globally notorious for being stingy with holiday time. So let’s forgive Americans for not fully committing to the rather serious intent of a holiday and instead focusing on the small joy of a free Monday. Besides, do 3 billion people only look forward to December 25 because they get to celebrate Christ’s birthday? No. So let’s chill.

In any event, let’s look at Memorial Day for its role in the year: the onset of the outside drinking season. People have technically been drinking outdoors for eons. After all, when our Neanderthal ancestors Og and Moog ingested some fermented fruit and ended up buzzed and jonesing for a cigarette that wouldn’t exist for 58,000 years, they did so outside. But where did deliberate outside drinking begin?  

Like most things boozy, this tradition kicks off with our lushy ancestors in Ancient Rome. From April to October, barely a week passed when the Romans weren’t hogging down wine in a garden or a villa courtyard and making their servants reenact The Aeneid’s saucy parts.