I was itching to wake up, and did. Sleep had been alright, although on account of possible bed bugs I had gotten a little spooked beforehand, enclosing all my things in the vicinity in my bag, except for my pillow and boxer shorts (and my corporal form). From my position, I could only see mother and brother’s feet, and barely at that because my sleep-drunk eyes refused to come out from under their covers for long. Gently, I dropped my voice down from the top bunk. “Mm-morning?”
“Ah. Morn’,” brother muttered.
“Mom? You awake?”
“…no.”
“Me neither.”
After eventually doing the waking up, I took a quick shower. Two cabins were located directly across the hallway, about a big step away from our room. And that was the only good thing about them.
The cabin I entered was a claustrophobically-cheap plastic one. If I had to name its color, it’d be ‘dirty yellow’. In order to experience a continuous stream of water, the ‘shower-button’ had to be pressed every 12 seconds. The beams were all over the place, like the dart throws of a person that sucks at playing darts playing darts while drunk, and the water was too strong, but that couldn’t be adjusted. When the shower shut itself off after roughly 13 seconds it sounded like a car moving at low velocity crashing into the other side of the cabin wall. It was the first time I experienced something explosively shutting off. I showered with the slippers on again. We left the hotel right after.
(Things like that shower, contrasting so blindingly with my home-back-home, made me glad I had another home to return to. There was a sticky sort of sadness to this hotel, especially after the clean vanilla quality of Switzerland. In one sense, I supposed, we got what we had paid for. The barebones hotel experience. A safe night, warm inside. In another sense, I thought, walking outside with my bag packed and my expectations sacked, maybe what we got was we made of it. I looked around and spotted something potentially awesome just behind the hotel.)
We first went to a restaurant-cafe next to a Cora for our breakfast. Much like Auchan, this store was a massive construction. It would have been visible from kilometers away if there hadn’t been so many other buildings near. As the store was vehemently spacious, it took us a while to cruise around. When we paid for our items, exited and headed for the restaurant, the clock had already gone to lunch time. So had the people. Forty-five minutes later, the clock, along with most people in the café, moved on from lunch time. We finished our breakfast.
Having gotten our morning’s fill and maybe(—probably—)a book or two, we headed back towards the hotel. Not to go to the lodging itself; we rather raced around it like F1 cars. We went to see the best part about the hotel: The fact that it was close to an arcade.
“This looks awesome,!” my brother and I said in parallel, stepping through the double doors. There were lights bouncing around and all kinds of sounds, rising, falling, never giving up.
“It’s very…much,” mom said. She appeared a little dazed—I actually felt the same way. But she acclimated quickly and asked us, “So what do you want to do?”
I looked at the Maplewood lanes beside the entrance and at my brother. “How about that?”
He turned around and saw and thought, briefly, and said, “Sure. Let’s.”
So with the gentle breeze of air conditioning drifting around us, my brother and I immersed ourselves in the game with the thin white things and the unkicka-ball. I started off strong but my scores tapered off, barely managing to generate destructive enough ball-pin collisions to keep up with my rival who scored consistently.
“There we go!” he said, downing two pins for a spare.
“Nicely done!” mom gleamed. She wasn’t playing but by virtue of being our mother would win vicariously through whichever of her spawns managed the higher score.
I said nothing as I threw the ball, split the field, then just managed a nine. I was falling behind. At least, so it seemed—because the last turn, I disclosed this had all been part of my ingenious master plan; to keep my brother feeling like he had been ahead of me, taking it easier without the rampant pressure of a foe closing in, while, really, he’d been behind the whole time! I rolled the ball good and won.
(That last part is true.)
We played some foosball, went to demolish the record for the basketball joint (failed) and concluded by kicking it with the boxing ball. Actually, let’s rewind to the basketball part for a second. Because we didn’t just fail, we failed miserably. We were completely and utterly annihilated by the ghost of basketball games past.
Both me and my brother had played the actual game for some years in the bygone days of our youths, dribbling across the squeaky indoor courts, listening for the swoosh of the net; and both me and my brother partook in this arcade game simultaneously. Some people might call this ‘cheating’, but we would have called it ‘winning’—would have. As one of us took the shot and scored, mostly, the other would grab one of the returning balls from a previous shot and got in position to fire. Our flow was a bit choppy, but we managed a laudable 119 points, averaging roughly two points per basket. (I have no idea where that strange odd point came from.) The top score, however, displayed in blocky neon orange to the left of the timer, never changed. Not for a second. Not for a millimeter.
The number on it was ‘250’.
I was in, and left with, awe, wondering what kind of legendary gamemaster could set literally over twice the score of two former basketball players nearly optimizing this three-ball arcade game, and even set an even score at that.
“Let’s never become that good at the game,” I commented.
“I’m not sure we could in one lifetime,” brother answered.
“Hey how about that? You feel like punching something?”
“You know what? I do.”
In this next area the air conditioning started blowing in our favor. While we took turns punching on the hitting bag, my brother might’ve set the punch-power record for that day. But I’m not fully sure. His Haymaker Destruction Blow™ seemed pretty good, but it was early in the day and I had no statistics of the average weight, strength and punching ability of the people visiting the area this time of year. Nor did I know the time probability distribution of when they might show up; before or after us. One should be careful of making premature conclusions based off of incomplete data. Or something lol.
One of the enjoyable things of cruising across France is the contrasting views you get to witness. Un moment you’re looking out over rural landscapes with mountains and fields and forests, as far as the eye can see. The next moment you’re in a town or in a city, surrounded by what you learn to recognize as French-style houses and buildings. Entering Metz, the city housing our subsequent stay, was just as sudden. The Ibis Budget hotel we’d found essentially had the same style room as the previous hotels: Two beds on the bottom and one bunk bed above them, which I ascended immediately. The difference was that Ibis was a nice hotel. Even if it was a budget-version, it was clean and we had our own private toilet and our own private shower. Which were separate and which were also both clean. (Although the door to the shower was a little too see-through to be truly comfortable.) Perhaps I had become a little more open-minded, expecting less than before. Then again, this room was so noticeably nicer than the one we’d left in the morning that I was extra appreciative, even of simple things.
“Where should we get dinner?” mother asked.
“I’m good with anything,” my brother said, laying down on one of the two ground beds. Mom looked up at me.
“Buh-gaawk!” I clucked.
“KFC?”
I chuckled. The chicken restaurant was close by.
“Is that alright with you?” she asked my brother.
“Hm-hmmm.”
We hoisted on our backpacks and closed the door to our nice room behind us.
The restaurant menu was slightly different from the one I had become used to in Rotterdam. Maybe the chickens were French and tasted extra sassy. I opted for my staple: wings, fries and cola, and KFC stayed true to its advertising. As we walked the 150 or so yards back across empty parking lots, we learned two things. One: I have a superpower, namely talking while breathing in. Two: My brother had forgotten his backpack at KFC. So he ran back, with the chicken in his stomach hot on his heels, while I said, “Furby! Furby! Waaah!”
Half an hour later we were in the car going to the city center of Metz. We’d heard of a light show that was supposed to take place at the cathedral. The car park was a way’s away, so we were forced to enjoy a nice stroll towards it. The square around the cathedral was wide and open, drawing wrinkled platoons and swerves of curious mid-evening crowds.
The talking flattened out when music began emanating. A rhythm of scattered turquoise started convulsing across the colossus that loomed before us. A lively flower bloomed of a rotating line of white; spreading out and contracting, igniting the center of stained glass, which lit up as if from the inside. The window came alive and rippled, like a fabric in the wind, expanding to cover the whole stone façade, rippling it into strange forms. Creeping tides of texture unveiled deep, evil embers, and the church, burnt, crumbled to ash. Swirling crests gave it skin again, only for its shapes to be breathed in from above. What remained bloated and reformed, and faded.
Church bells rang.
From the dark, a dragon stood forth, blinking its glowing eyes, rearing its heavy head. A moving staircase of stone swirled around it like a helix; absorbing the dragon into itself, becoming a moving interior before turning into the revolving façade of the church. Lasers shot swellings into the stones and windows; a pattern of bulbs set in, disturbed by brighter, floating bolts of radiance, fireworks which then surged up in brief trails, dispersing cadres of light before sinking down, stirring up the stone wall in their wake.
Darkness swept down, and a world of undulating geometry coiled in the scintillating noise. One last time, the church façade showed, only for it to fall, and fall, and fall and keep falling; rotating through different worlds of itself, then taking us into the bowels of the church, deeper and farther and further, until the organ, the last of the wash of music, faded, and darkness swallowed everything.
There was silence before applause brought the square to life again. The show had been, like the French might say, vraiment spectaculaire. I‘d thought on multiple occasions that the church had come to life. And I wasn’t even Christian. It was that good. (Search on YouTube for ‘Alter Lux Animae 2018 Metz’ or click the picture below, if you’re curious.)
Back at the hotel I spent some time reading by myself in the lobby. There was an orange cat relaxing around, I petted it. Once upstairs, I showered. In our room. Mother and brother had to stay in bed for this so we were mutually out of sight, but overall it was a nice shower. Not the best this week, not the worst.
On my top bunk I turned some pages of Jack’s story, read a bit in the second book I’d brought, The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common, sleepily eyeballed a couple of episodes of an anime on my Lablet and dozed off.
This was Day #5 of my 2018 vacation called ‘A Place to Get Lost Towards’. To return to the story overview page, click here. To read Day #6, where we ‘infiltrate’ a youth hostel, click here.
