If at Birth You Don't Succeed (35 page)

The plan was to spend ten days in England with our aunt Naomi and uncle Gareth and then continue on to France. Upon our arrival in London, my dad made sure to clue us in to the little cultural differences, noting the exposed breasts in shampoo commercials and lamenting that due to the discreet and regal design of English toilets, you can't look back to admire your work when you've taken a great dump. But the biggest culture clash didn't come from the loo.

It only took my brother and me a few days to drive my childless, classical-music-playing aunt and uncle to the brink of madness with our incessant fart jokes. One afternoon, our aunt finally broke. Furious that his sister had scolded his sons, my dad had us board a train in the dead of night and by morning we were on the lam, masquerading as Parisians.

Three years later, now a freshman in high school, I was preparing for a quiet spring break at home when, out of the blue, my dad called to let Brad and me know he'd gotten four-hundred-dollar round-trip flights to Rome and we were going next week. Armed with only a
Frommer's
guide, a tiny Italian phrase book, and a video camera, we ventured across the Atlantic again. It was on this trip that I first became a travel host. I shot segments on my little handicam: in front of the Spanish Steps, I demanded to be directed to the Spanish Ramp; at the Accademia Gallery, I admitted to having penis envy when gazing upon the glory of the statue
David
; and, when visiting the Pantheon, I gave a heartfelt impromptu eulogy at the tomb of my favorite ninja turtle, Raphael. This is what happens when you try to expose a fifteen-year-old to history.

My manual wheelchair had been sufficient for our previous trip across the pond, but Italy marked my first attempt to travel in Europe with an electric wheelchair. As I bumped over the ancient cobblestones, it occurred to me that perhaps Rome was not handicap-accessible because back when they built it, Roman soldiers would have taken a baby like me and thrown him off a cliff. While history wouldn't have been kind to me, my disability also presented very modern problems.

My dad had packed an adaptor to fit our American electronics into European outlets, but he forgot to bring a transformer to convert the voltage, so we fried the wheelchair charger the first time we plugged it in. After that, my brother and father had to manually push my two-hundred-and-fifty-pound chair through the streets until my dad was able to jerry rig jumper cables that gave my batteries at least a little bit of juice. The blessing I received when I watched Pope John Paul perform stations of the cross at the Vatican fixed neither my legs nor my chair.

My father and brother worked with all the precision of a pit team changing tires at the Indy 500 every time they had to break down my chair to get it on the very wheelchair-unfriendly Italian trains. When we arrived in Pompeii, we were dismayed to find that an ancient city that had been engulfed in volcanic ash had not made appropriate ADA accommodations for differently abled citizens. We had planned to spend the night but couldn't find a single hotel that was accessible, so we boarded the train again, one wheel at a time, and headed back to Roma.

My tumultuous experiences with
bella Italia
would later become the basis of my Oprah pitch for a travelogue that shows you how to have the “perfect” vacation when things don't go as planned. In the fourteen years between our trek through Italy and my next trip to Europe, I'd hosted two travel shows and learned to be more tasteful with my fart jokes.

Going abroad again had always been a goal, but over the past decade and a half, whenever I started to look overseas, something would get in the way—money, timing, Oprah. All through high school and undergrad, whenever I was overloaded with tests and papers, I would run through my list of dream travel destinations where I would go once I had the money and the time: Norway, Australia, Israel, Japan.… There was one place though that was never on my worldly to-do list—Germany, especially Berlin.

If you were to say “Berlin” in a word association game, my first responses would be as follows: Wall, War, Holocaust, Heroin, and Wurst. My perception of the capital of Deutschland was a cold, rainy, war-torn place populated by drug addicts eating sausages in the middle of a country known for beer, a beverage I equated with carbonated urine. All it took to transform a place I never wanted to visit into the only place I wanted to be was having a girlfriend who lived there. She had an important concert coming up in September 2014 at Berlin's most prestigious jazz club, the A-Trane. I was heartbroken to have missed her debut there nine months earlier. I'd even looked up flights back in January but then decided that, since we weren't even dating at the time, it might be a smidge too creepy to show up in Germany out of the blue as a superfan. Now, as her boyfriend, I had earned the right to be that creepy superfan. So, after fourteen years of dreaming about it, I finally booked another transatlantic flight. This time, I'd be going solo. I was bound for the homeland of Hasselhoff.

Determined not to repeat the mistakes of previous European vacations, I had ordered a special wheelchair charger that I'd been assured was designed specifically for traveling overseas. I'd been practicing my Pimsleur language tapes for weeks and could competently navigate my way through a conversation about how well I didn't speak German. I had gotten my passport renewed, informed my banks I was traveling, and was finally at peace with the idea of spending eight days in an apartment with three girls and one bathroom. Like some average-size, crippled Napoleon, I felt prepared to rule the world.

But before I could conquer Europe, I had to leave the United States, which proved a more fearsome battle than I'd anticipated. I arrived at JFK airport two hours early with my buddy Kevin tagging along to carry my luggage and push my spare manual wheelchair to the gate. We made our way up to the Air Berlin kiosk and handed the attendant my passport. She typed in my name and then paused, perplexed.

“Huh,” she said. “We weren't expecting you to be in a chair.”

I thought this was odd because I distinctly remembered clicking the little wheelchair man when I'd bought the ticket online. Rather than argue, I simply asked, “Is that a problem?”

“Possssibly,” she mumbled. “Let me make a call.” In hushed, concerned tones, she spoke to her superior about the surprise wheelchairs she'd just encountered. When she finally hung up, she let out a long, uncertain sigh and went back to her computer. “I'm gonna have someone come and talk to you.”

Forty minutes went by as I impatiently buzzed back and forth in front of her station, waiting for any news. Had I missed a memo? Were people in wheelchairs no longer allowed on planes? Was I gonna have to call Gillian and have a very awkward conversation?

“Yahp, can't make it. Yeah, it's the chair. Well, what can you do? See ya on Skype.”

Then, finally, a salt-and-pepper-haired, no-bullshit New Yorker in uniform emerged, extended his hand, and said, “Hi, nice to meet cha. I'm Tom, the director of passenger relations with Air Berlin. We had no idea that a wheelchair was comin' tuhday. Yuh gotta let us know forty-eight hours in advance dat cha have a wheelchair so we can ready the plane. Can I ask yuh some questions?”

“Shoot,” I said.

“Are yuh able to walk at all?”

Under normal circumstances, I'd have assumed he was asking if I was able to transfer to my seat independently, without the use of an aisle chair, but in this instance, it seemed more likely that he was asking if we could just ditch my chair at the terminal. I didn't care.

“Well, if someone is stabilizing me, I can take a few steps, yeah.”

“Oh-kay, dat's good,” he said. “Now, yuh gonna be able to make yuh way to the bathroom and all dat?”

The unabbreviated answer to this was that technically, yes, I could get out of my seat and crawl on all fours up the aisle to the diorama-size toilet and quite possibly heave myself onto it, might even be able to close the door. Given that even when NOT flying through the air I can lose my balance at all times for any or no reason, I'd probably fall over a bunch, but, yes, I could get there. I'd never
done
it, but it seemed doable. Rather than bore this obviously busy gentleman with the details, I just said, “Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, dat's good. Finally, in the event of an emergency, would cha be able tuh assist in evacuating duh plane?”

“Uhmmm…,” I said, trying to imagine myself shepherding babies and the elderly through flaming wreckage, our flight crew reduced to sobbing frantic prayers in German. “You mean, like, will I be able to carry other people off the plane and put on oxygen masks and stuff?”

“Well,” he backpedaled, “would you be able to assist yourself?”

Not understanding the question, and hyperaware that the international security line was growing exponentially, I just said, “Yeah.” That lie, which might possibly endanger the lives of all the other passengers on board, got me a comfy, primo seat on the flight and a jolly flight attendant named Fritz who told me to simply call him if I needed anything. As the landing gear went up and the plane left the ground, I sat back, unpacked the nutritious Rice Krispies Treats my mother had made, and turned on the in-flight entertainment.

By the time we landed, I was already steeped in culture, having watched the latest X-Men film,
Maleficent
, and
Mrs. Doubtfire
. As soon as I got off the plane, I realized that I had never been to a place that felt so simultaneously gloomy and friendly. The men who were responsible for carting my wheelchair to the gate welcomed me to Germany by telling me that I had to try the beer as soon as possible. It was 7:45 in the morning, local time.

“Which one should I try?” I asked.

“All of zem are good,
ja
. Drink all ze
bier
. Zat's how you get zis!” He laughed, cradling his considerable belly. “Zis is called a
bierbauch
, and when you drink ze
bier
, you raise your glass and say, ‘
Prost!
' Zat's all of ze German you need to know. Don't bother learning ze rest of it, it's a complicated language.”

Five minutes in Germany and I'd already gotten permission from the natives to be a drunk and obnoxious American who demands everyone speak English. But after not sleeping for almost twenty-four hours, I didn't need to be drunk. Exhausted, I hugged my girlfriend (at least, I think it was her).

Gillian was determined to help me overcome jet lag by forcing me to stay awake until a locally appropriate bedtime. This had the side effect of giving me an approximation of what it might be like to trip on psychotropic drugs without actually having to try them. My first day in Berlin was a blur of markets, pastries, schnitzels, and a singing walrus in a unitard. I don't remember how I got to Gillian's apartment, but I woke up in her bed the next morning refreshed and ready to spend a relaxing two days together before all her free time would be eaten up with rehearsals and preparations for the upcoming gig. Then I looked out the window and saw nothing but gray and drizzly skies.

Gillian loves and thrives in dreary weather, whereas I require sunshine and Popsicles to feel content, and, at least for my first few days in Berlin, the sun never came out. My vacation seemed to take its cues from the clouds. I had just gotten there and desperately needed to recharge my spirit and my wheelchair. But when my girlfriend plugged my specially obtained, ultrasafe, European battery charger into the wall, I got just the spark I didn't need. As it turned out, my charger was not actually equipped to handle European voltage. History was repeating itself and that left both me and my wheelchair fried and depleted. Who could have thought that Germany of all places would turn out to be so depressing?

I was downtrodden in Deutschland, but my faithful fräulein was still determined for me to see the best in Berlin. I knew from experience that fixing a wheelchair charger in a foreign country was not easy. Luckily, everyone in Berlin spoke perfect English. Everyone, that is, except wheelchair repairmen. Gillian had a whole year of German under her belt and had been preparing for such a complicated conversation about complex electrical engineering by reading the German editions of the Harry Potter books. As long as everything wrong with my wheelchair could be described in terms of horcruxes, I'd be up and running in no time. To my amazement, Gilly was able to piece together enough coherent German to communicate our problem to a very patient electrician, who promised to fix what the Dementors had done to my chair.

We left the shop in a manual chair on loan. The setback was an inconvenience, but at least Berlin's public transport system was top-notch and in large part accessible. Unfortunately, when we returned the next day, we discovered that the U-Bahn station's elevator had broken overnight. If we continued the three stops to the next accessible station, we risked missing our chance to retrieve my chair before the shop closed promptly, as most businesses that sell necessary medical equipment do, at 11:00 a.m. So Zach and Gill plunked up the stairs to fetch a working wheelchair.

By the time I was finally mobile again, the two days' respite we'd planned to spend together before Gillian's intense concert prep kicked in had evaporated. For the remainder of the week, while she was busy working, I'd be wandering. But the only thing I'd actually planned to do in Berlin was get there. To the average tourist, it might seem like a waste to be in a vibrant city filled with famous landmarks, museums, and
biergartens
without so much as an inkling of what they wanted to do or see. But for me, this trip was primarily an opportunity to simply exist on my own in the world.

I zoomed around the neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg in my chair, up to the shopping center on Shönehauser Allee, then took the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz. I went to an electronics store and envied their entire floor of espresso machines, and stopped by the H&M to buy two shirts. I got lost and found myself at closed comedy clubs boasting shows in all English, and I happened upon typewriter boutiques and haberdasheries that were just old and quaint enough to ensure there'd be a six-inch stoop out front that would keep me from doing anything other than window-shopping. For the most part, I was cold and unhappy, but still somehow proud because even if I was bored, I was bored in Berlin. I was
in Berlin
. I felt like a man making his way through the world like everyone else. That foreign sensation was more valuable to me than any tourist's top ten list.