Monsieur Vuong's

My search for Monsieur Vuong’s is a great reminder of why it’s important to write at every chance I get while I’m traveling.  As I sit in front of my keyboard now, eight months after that night in Berlin, the details of my memory are faint sketches layered with dust.  The only help I get from the notebook I carried in my backpack is, *Write about the search for Monsieur Vuong’s in Berlin.  Just a line of text, surrounded by notes of “stuff to research” (which I haven’t) and a story about Amsterdam.  No other cues; not a single thing to jog my memory.  So I sit and think, trying to picture those darkened streets as they appeared in October. 

It was my tour guide who referred me to Monsieur Vuong’s.  I’d gotten into the habit of taking cheap walking tours to get better acquainted with the cities I visited in Europe.  It was more fun to learn that way than by searching through guidebooks or Wikipedia and then trotting out on my own.  Amsterdam became more fascinating when I learned the history of the Red Light District from the mouth of a guide as we passed coffee shops and lively windows.  Berlin captivated me when I explored the artist squats and walked through the subway tunnel that connected East and West while my guides elaborated on the ways the Cold War affected the people of that city. 

After seeing the Reichstag and the Holocaust memorial one afternoon, I asked my guide to recommend a restaurant.  “Do you like Vietnamese food?” he asked.  “Yeah, of course.”  And he proceeded to point out Monsieur Vuong’s on the cartoony little map I’d picked up at my hostel. 

Berlin's Holocaust memorial.

A few hours later, as night was settling in, I hopped on the train toward downtown.  Halfway there, my travel plan hit a snag.  There was construction on a portion of the subway line, so I had to get off the train sooner than expected and take a bus that would drop me off farther down the line where I could reconnect with the train.  Using my two-day knowledge of German and my 28-year-old knowledge of arrows, I figured out where to catch the bus once I got off the train.  The group waiting for the bus was small when I arrived.  Minutes later, it was a horde.  When the bus arrived, it was packed more tightly than the stones in the walls of Cusco.  You couldn’t slide a credit card between the bodies in there.  I let that first bus pass, then another one.  Finally I started walking.

I had a general idea of where I needed to go to get to Monsieur Vuong’s, or at least the next open subway tunnel, and I knew both were a long way away.  Just when my legs were ready to buckle beneath me, I spotted a functioning subway tunnel.  I boarded the train and rode the short distance that remained.  When I got off, I was lost. 

I walked down empty streets, then busy ones, then more empty ones, growing increasingly frustrated by the minute.  I had already spent more than an hour riding trains and buses, and walking, and was determined to find Monsieur Vuong’s even if it took me another hour.  My stomach was doing its impression of the MGM lion, and begged to be filled with Vietnamese food.  I’d come so far and endured so much to find this place that came so highly recommended by my esteemed 10-euro tour guide.  I couldn’t give up when I was this close to the prize, so I kept looking.  I would eat at Monsieur Vuong’s tonight, damn it! 

Finally I saw the sign, lit up above floor-to-ceiling windows looking into a crowded little dining room.  A bit too crowded, in fact.  The only open tables are outside, on the sidewalk.  I don’t want to sit out there in the cold.  And waiting for a table inside will probably take 30 minutes, judging by the line.  And what’s this?  The prices are higher than I expected.  I’m on a budget.  And quite possibly underdressed.  And now that I see all the happy people inside, talking and laughing with their friends, I’m suddenly very aware of how alone I am and how uncomfortable it would be to eat in there at a table for one. 

I turned back in the direction of the subway station and headed toward the hostel.  I told myself I’d at least accomplished my mission of finding Monsieur Vuong’s, so it was OK.  And that’s where my memories become faded again.  I don’t remember the ride home, and I don’t recall what I had for dinner that night.  But it wasn’t Vietnamese food.  

Street art in Berlin

The Reichstag

Cathedral with TV tower behind

Street art on a smaller scale

A Drive Down to The Bay

Waiting at a stoplight last Saturday on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, the road that runs in front of the piers along the bay, a man on roller skates caught my attention.  It wasn’t so much the skates themselves that were remarkable, but the fact that he was wearing nothing but them.  He pushed off from the curb, bobbing and flapping in the wind as he passed in front of my Honda, and I said, “Well, we must be in San Francisco.”  I couldn’t help but laugh.  I’d been on the road for far too long, and as repulsive as this sight in front of me was, I welcomed it as a bit of comic relief.  

Before our encounter with the nude skater, my friend Nathan and I had spent 11 hours driving from Portland to Berkeley the previous day.  We were in town for a concert – the first tour that Dispatch, one of my favorite bands, had made in nearly a decade.  It was late Friday night when we rolled into town, so we unwound at a quiet little bar in Berkeley, but only after first trying a rowdy college bar and passing scores of homeless people and two men who appeared to be gripped by serious drugs.  On our way back to our hostel, two young men asked if they could have one of Nathan’s cigarettes.  When he refused, they told us exactly what they thought of us, and continued to do so until we were a block away.

Even with the sight of scrotums on wheels, San Francisco was infinitely more appealing than Berkeley.  The concert wasn’t until late Saturday night, so we decided to make the short drive from Berkeley to San Francisco early in the afternoon.  Two hours later, after crawling through a traffic jam at the Oakland Bay Bridge toll booths and getting lost several times in downtown San Francisco, we were walking along Fisherman’s Wharf.  We stopped for lunch at a bakery/café and I ate clam chowder out of one of the tastiest sourdough bread bowls I’ve ever torn apart.  A furious wind dispersed our napkins across the wharf, but the food was almost good enough to keep this from frustrating me. 

We spent the afternoon wandering around Fisherman’s Wharf and then driving over to Haight Street to check out the legendary Amoeba Records.  On the way, I tested out my 5-speed driving skills on some of San Francisco’s famous hills.  I thought Seattle had some killer inclines, but one road near Fisherman’s Wharf was undoubtedly the steepest I’d ever climbed in my trusty Honda.  I felt like I needed chalk and a belay just to drive up this slope.  I managed to avoid drifting into the car behind me at stops, but still felt like I was ready to fall backward into the bay for the entire ride up. 

After a few photos at the Golden Gate Bridge, it was back to Berkeley for the concert.  The show was good enough to warrant the 14-hour drive home I would have the next day.  And seeing the campus –especially the stately Greek Theatre where the concert took place – improved my opinion of Berkeley slightly. 

On the drive home, a thought struck me that soured my opinion of long car trips and plane rides.  I don’t know why this thought hadn’t occurred to me before.  But somewhere between Medford and Portland, where I’d stop to drop Nathan off at his apartment, it hit me why I tend to get sweaty on long trips.  I wasn’t warm in the car, and I’m not usually hot in airplanes, but I typically get sweaty on these journeys.  As we drove through Oregon, I realized what I was feeling probably wasn’t sweat after all.  It was probably water vapor from my breath and the breath of those around me, settling on my skin.  In a closed space like a car or airplane, there aren’t many places for our breath to go.  When I got home and showered that night, I scrubbed deeply.