Bad Anthropology

Last Sunday, with less than one week in Germany remaining, I got back on the very same train I had taken the previous day to Dresden, headed back again through Dresden but ultimately on to Prague.

I really like being on trains. My dad tells me that when I was a fussy toddler he'd put me into the baby carrier in our Toyota because, once inserted into a reclining, forward-moving scenario, I always either shut up or passed out immediately. He'd just drive. I'm now a grown-up fussy toddler with a lot of nervous energy, and sometimes nervous energy is fun because it allows you to bolt around and do lots of things. But sometimes I get tired of restlessness, and being stuck in a train for 5 hours can feel really good. There's nowhere to go, and nothing to do.

I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being just out of college and it's the best oxymoronic-philosophic book title I've come across, with the possible exception of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which isn't oxymoronic and is only glibly philosophical, but which has the same cheeky one-too-many-word-iness about it. I haven't read A Heartbreaking Work, but I've always been taken with the title. I tried to tell somebody about it once, but since I can never remember the actual title, only the general idea, I came up instead with The Unbearable Craziness of How Good This Book Is, which sounded even better, and which is what I will call my first book, if I ever write it.

Unlike A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I did read Kundera, and for a long time I couldn't get it out of my head. The genius of Kundera's formulation in the Unbearable Lightness is something like "The harder life gets the better you feel, cause sometimes when life gets really good, you wanna run away and die." I'd like to see a Kundera Daily Platitudes for the Average Guy Calendar. Tuesday, March 25: "Quit while you're ahead." Wednesday, March 26: "You can never get out. Make hay." I like his attitude, and I've always wanted to go to Prague to see the city where the attitude came from.

Prague is indescribably beautiful. But I spent most of my time there taking photos of street signs. Give me a chance to explain. Here's a sign.


Now, if you didn't know any better, you'd think this sign meant something like, "Man Crosses Street" or, "That's a person, he's crossing the street; I'm a person, ergo I cross the street here." And you'd be right! You're in a country that's nowhere near the U.S.A. and you wouldn't expect the same street crossing sign, would you? No, of course not. And yet we here in Germany can still make signs with universally intuitive significance, and everybody gets along just fine.

Ah, but then we cross the street and things start to look a lit-tle more complicated. Here we are by the river. What's that sign, there?


Hmm. I'm feeling very 10% about my German these days, but from what I can make out the sign says something like "People aren't building buildings here; also, don't ride your bike and don't drive your car, either." But what's strange isn't the German, it's the big, red circle with a white middle. This sign could be telling me "Stop now or you are such toast," but to me, I get ... empty set.

But wait. The party is just getting started. Check this out.


I found this sign in Dresden across from a tram stop. Now, here's my thinking: In Prague, the exact same sign except printed UPSIDE DOWN means "Here is a Metro Stop." According to my logic, a metro train is sort of the exact opposite of a tram train since the tram is above ground and the metro is below ground. Therefore, an upside-down metro sign means ... tram. Ha! Problem solved. But then, what's this?


Don't go into the sex shop? And here:


Leave your flugelhorns at home?


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