When I grow up I wanna be Snow White
My mission to have Seven vertically challenged friends.
St Anton, Austria
I have a fascination with midgets, and I don't mean certified little people, I mean borderline: generally hovering around the 150cm mark (to get the piece of paper you need to be 147cm).
I am not sure when it all started, but a while back someone stopped me in a bar as I was on my way to the bathroom (the Jagermeister was not agreeing with me), and wanted to simply have a chat. Due to my level of inebriation I declared that I did not do Midget Porn, and moved along. As this vertically challenged man of Irish extraction was a friend of a friend, I found out that he was somewhat offended, and that apparently Leprechauns have feelings too.
My next encounter was a few years later, when a likeable chap who I swear I had never seen before approached me and told me that I owed him an apology. "What for?" I asked. Apparently I was very rude to him the night before. I informed him that I had been rather drunk and could remember very little and perhaps he could jog my memory. "You called me an angry ginger midget" he said. All I could do was burst out laughing, declare that that was hilarious, I could not apologise for that, and give my drunk self a high five. That was when I realised I had a problem.
From that day forth, I thought it were best that I let the short people make the first joke about their height and take it from there. Or alternatively high five them and watch them try and jump. Understanding these people, and acknowledging that they are just like normal people, only little, has paid dividends, as in the last few years I have made many friends of the vertically challenged variety. Six to be precise.
Of course the first one is the Angry Ginger Midget, and then my second little friend was Gordy. With much willpower, I refrained from patting his head and saying hilarious things such as, "Oops, sorry, I didn't see you there," for at least two weeks. It wasn't easy, especially when I tripped over him, but soon we established a solid friendship fuelled by booze, and such banter came naturally.
On one occasion when he and the Angry Ginger Midget were having a beer together I managed to exercise decorum and restraint by not saying anything (that would just be rude). But they understood, and knew how hard it was for me, so when the Angry Ginger Midget said what I was thinking, "No, it is not a midget convention." I saw it as a reward for working so hard at biting my tongue. It was then that I began dreaming of having seven of them in the same place at the same time.
Number three, Joseph, is the chef at my work. I have always been nice to people in the kitchen as they are more likely to give you scraps. Even though Joseph does not speak English unless he is drunk, we manage to communicate to the extent that I can articulate what I would like for lunch and we can make bets on Ski Racing. He calls me Old Hen and I call him Rumpelstiltskin.
Then there is the Rolling Monkey who has amazing dexterity in the cigarette rolling department. I ask him to roll me a cigarette, he does so and then taxes me a little tobacco. Once he asked if I knew his name, and I said, "Of course I do, it is rolling monkey". He is wonderfully useful, as is his partner in crime, a Danish man who, when wearing a certain hat resembles a Garden Gnome. He spends his day waving a towel for naked Sauna patrons in a ritual called "Aufguss" I don't think he wears the hat anywhere whilst he does it.
But my personal favourite is Craig. I call him Craig because he merrily morphs from a scampering piss head to a podium dancing Oompa Loompa in a matter of minutes, He will do anything for a shot of Jagermeister, and does not even flinch when I make him jump for it. In fact, he often comes back for more. Funnily enough the more Jagermeister I give him, the more willing he is to do tricks. Gyrating Oompa Loompa's are definitely a crowd pleaser.
Then at an end of season BBQ it happened. All five remaining vertically challenged men (Gordy had sadly left the village) were in the same place at the same time, and at the perfect level of drunkenness where they could pose for a photo without puking on my shoes.
Two more and world domination is mine!
- Awesome mugshots created by Marilen Adrover, who nicely allowed me to use it when I explained my cause. More Disney Mugshots are here.
The Germans and English Love Mallorca: But Apparently Not Each Other
For a minute there I thought that I was holidaying in Germany.
“I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.”
The 2013/2014 ski season was not one of the best I had experienced, so when it started snowing in May I decided that, "Better late than never" is not always the case, and the more useful adage under these circumstances would be, "Get out whilst you can."
A friend was on a road trip and told me that she would be arriving on the Spanish island of Mallorca that Friday. I had a quick look at flights at no one's suggestion, and you can only imagine my delight when I found a one way ticket on Skyscanner from Munich to Mallorca that very Thursday for 60 Euros, so I locked it in, then called her to invite myself. You can only imagine her delight!!
I was not phased by the 6am departure time: sitting up all night at an airport to save 20 Euros is always worth it, especially when you have three Ryan Gosling movies to watch. I mean when else are you going to be able to watch them whilst on holiday?
Why would I sit up all night you ask? Well, the last trains arrive at Munich at 1 am, and getting a hotel would defeat the whole purpose of saving that flight money. But didn't I spend more than 20 Euros on snacks and coffee whilst I was waiting, you ask? No, I only spent 18 Euros.
When I did arrive in Mallorca, and wanted to check baggage claim, I noticed that there were a few other arrivals from Germany, but I did not think anything of it, as, funnily enough I was incapable of thinking, perhaps due to frying my brain watching three Ryan Gosling movies. Nor did I think anything of it when the information at my first hotel in Palma Mallorca was in German before it was in Spanish.
My friend picked me up on Friday morning, as she had got the overnight ferry with her car from Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca. (In my hasty enthusiasm I had booked my flight a day too early, meaning that I spent a night in Palma, costing me — you guessed it — more than the flight) and we took the scenic route to Alcudia via Port de Soller. The Port was just what I had imagined Mallorca to be like, small and intimate with the undulating Mediterranean as a backdrop and the promise of tapas.
Alcudia on the other hand was not what I had imagined Mallorca should be like. Had I heeded the warnings, perhaps I would have been prepared for the Bettenburgen "bed mountains" that lay in front of me: 60's style, soulless, multistory blocks overflowing with geriatric Germans reveling in the packaged, pre-organised nature of these resorts.
When I checked in, the receptionist asked me why I couldn't speak German, and I informed her I could, but up until this very moment I was under the obviously misguided impression that I was in Spain. I think that the deal breaker came at dinner where the food was, well, traditional German food, prepared specifically for a demographic that may have digestion problems with spicy food and a preference for soft portions so as not to play havoc with dentures. Really bringing it home was the advertisement for weekly rentals on walkers and wheel chairs.
I do not have anything against Germans or geriatrics. However as George Bernard Shaw said, "I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad." That was where the discomfort lay, for I am not ready for retirement from whatever it is that I do.
My travel companion was in 100% agreement that we were not yet ready to be put out to pasture, and that we required a bit more spice and adventure in our voyages, so we looked into alternatives and decided that Port de Soller was our happy place. We made reservations to stay at Esplendido, a **** hotel (that is four stars, not a four letter profanity) on the beach for eight days, starting Monday, which left a whole weekend ahead of me.
As I had already watched all the Ryan Gosling movies I had downloaded for the holiday, I had some time to do some Nancy Drew type sleuthing to see if Alcudia had more to offer, and I discovered that there was also a shitload (an Australian standardised unit of measurement representing "a lot") of English tourists. We are not talking posh, pinky up whilst drinking a cup of tea English: we are talking talk show English. Not the Oprah type talk show, but that one that you go on so you can tell your brother that you are cheating on him with your father. And here is the best part: the German and English infestation of the island in the summer months is not harmonious.
In fact, a quick search of "Germans and English in Mallorca" came up with about three million hits. From what I can gather, the German's like to get up early and reserve their place on the beach with their towels, and the only way that the English can compete is to stay up all night and then jump off the balcony to get there before them, resulting in "balcony legs" and "vodka breath". These and other ailments are described in a hilarious cartoon (seriously, who said the the Germans were not funny?) published by German paper Bild. The English rebuttal was a cliché-ridden cartoon in response, but not an entirely accurate one. Another was that the English should embrace the stereotype and feel no shame.
My sleuthing (and hunger) took me to the promenade, and then it hit me: in the German/English battle for Mallorcan holiday territory I had found myself on the front line. I could feel the characters depicted in the cartoons above walking towards each other and neither was willing to retreat. All those arrivals at the airport? Troops. And the Easy Rider Mobility Hire? Wheelchairs my ass! High Tech transport logistics I am thinking. The hotel filled with geriatrics? It must be the German command centre. The sky may as well have turned black when I realised Summer still had a long way to go, and this was nothing compared to what was going to ensue in the coming months.
So I left them wielding their artillery of towels and rolled up Daily Mails, went back to the hotel, ate some sausage and sauerkraut from the buffet, and downloaded some more Ryan Gosling movies whilst I wondered what Spain was like.
*I would like to state, that the main picture from this article was by no means taken in Alcudia. It was the drive on the way. And also on the way back. To where you ask? Back to our happy place, Esplendido Hotel in Soller, where we had the most wonderful week of great breakfasts, a comfortable stay and the most central point for exploring. Splurgeworthy? Hell yes!