Conclusion

November 2. 6 pm. So here I am, back in Chicago, after a harrowing 19 straight hours of traveling on Halloween a couple of days ago. By the way, every bad thing you've ever heard about international flights is true; it really is its own special little section of hell that threatens to ruin whatever enjoyment you might have had from your trip in the first place. Imagine ten hours of sitting in a space not much bigger than your actual body; no smoking, no room to move or stretch, crammed so close to your random flightmates that by all rights you should be common-law married by the end of the trip, force-fed shitty airline food and watery Coke after watery Coke for hours on end, your only entertainment your own brain or a book you're too exhausted to read or in-flight movies you didn't want to see at the theatre in the first place (Daddy Daycare in my case, and by the way, can someone please tell me why people keep giving Eddie Murphy money to make more movies?).

By the way (part 2), in case you didn't know, it is infinitely tougher to get back into the US than it ever is to leave it. Seriously, when I flew into Frankfurt a month ago, I was greeted by two young policemen who laughed over the fact that I had no visa stamps in my passport, then simply waved me on; even the Customs guy in Frankfurt didn't want to check my ID, much less look into my bag. Meanwhile, between the Frankfurt airport and the Detroit one on the way back, I had my passport examined by no less than six different people, half the time under fluorescent lights to check for signs of tampering, went through four different metal detectors (some of them not even 100 feet from the previous one), had to open and empty my bag three different times, and had everyone from the police to my flight attendant ask me if I was sure I wasn't a terrorist, if I was positive I didn't have any weapons on me or a bomb hidden in my shoes. Jesus - how wrong I was to assume that my own government might actually act pleasant to one of their own citizens returning home. Perpetual war, indeed.

I've been spending the last three days trying to write the last entry of my tour journal, trying to come up with some sort of conclusion, some kind of lessons about what I learned and what I can pass on to others; but I'm finding it impossible to do so, because I saw so many things and the German people are so complex that no easy conclusion is possible. There were many things about Germany that I absolutely loved and other things that drove me batshit. I fell in love several times, fell in lust a lot more, and had some people piss me off in a way no American has ever been able to. Most German people you'll meet are obsessed with rules and order, but they also love the inherent chaos of getting together with friends or having an unstructured night at the bars. Most of them have this deeply ingrained compulsion to obey authority figures without question, yet have driven any sense of nationalism so far out of their brains that they can't even fathom doing something like hanging a flag in public. Every stereotype you've ever heard about Germany is partly true, but also partly false. They can be the friendliest, warmest, most outgoing people you'll ever meet, or the coldest, rudest, most closed-off people, depending on when you meet them and under what circumstances. Any attempt to boil my 23 days there down into a series of simple lessons is ultimately going to be futile - just as it should be, I suppose, or there'd be no reason to visit in the first place.

Much more interesting, I think, is to maybe examine how I myself changed because of the trip, because the simple fact of the matter is that I'm a radically different person today than I was a month ago. This whole subject came about in the first place, actually, because of my last night of the tour, laying in Ricardo and Karin's guest bed in Cochem, when I decided to finally read the secret note my friend Garth had written for me. For those who don't know, Garth is pretty much my best friend in Chicago and the founder of his own non-governmental organization devoted to global education reform. Garth's been traveling internationally for twenty years now and has literally circled the entire planet because of his various jobs over the years, including several trips to the Middle East and far east Asia, several years' worth of work in the Baltic region, lots of trips to Australia, and even a stint of actually living in the middle of Europe, among lots of other adventures. Garth has always been dismayed and tickled that I had never left US soil myself, so one could argue that he was even more excited than me when this opportunity to go to Germany came, and he ended up giving me a ton of advice about the trip and financially contributing to the tour and even collecting all my online donations for me (since he has a credit card and I don't) and converting them into cash.

Two nights before the tour started, Garth and I went out drinking here in Chicago and I asked him to write me a note I could carry with me and read in case of an emotional emergency; you know, in case things were going terribly wrong for some reason, and I was feeling afraid and alone and needed a few words of sage advice from someone who's been doing this for decades. And indeed, I actually had a couple of those moments during my three weeks there, but somehow managed to muddle through them on my own without needing to get out Garth's note. So, as a little victory ritual on the last night of the tour, I decided to finally get out his note and see what advice he had had to give me. And here's what he said:

"LIVE. It only happens once.
TRAVEL. Keep at it.
THINK. Are the details (the little disruptions of life) worth the anxiety?
WEAVE. Where will you be with all this in six months?"

And yeah, I'm man enough to admit that it made me cry a little - not because the advice is particularly profound, because it's not (and even Garth admits it too), but from the realization that a month ago I was someone who desperately needed that advice, and now I'm someone who doesn't. And that was a pretty powerful realization to make, because it made me understand just how much my time in Germany had changed me, sometimes so slowly that I didn't even notice until getting back here to Chicago.

Before the tour, the entire concept of walking up to complete strangers and starting conversations with them was something I often didn't have the courage to contemplate; now the idea doesn't even faze me, especially when it comes to approaching fellow English-speakers. Before the tour, I couldn't begin to imagine how I might be able to communicate with people who spoke a different language than me, or even how I was going to get through regular day-to-day life in such an environment; now I realize just how easy such a thing as communication is, and how I can actually pick up the broad strokes of a new language much faster than I ever thought possible. Before the tour, I was much quicker to offer my own opinions about whatever topic of conversation was being discussed; now I'm much more content with simply sitting back and listening to others' opinions, and to only offer my own when I'm specifically asked for it.

A month ago, I was much more prone to freaking out when in a situation by myself that was going horribly wrong; now I understand much better how to handle such crises, how each situation in life has its own inherent resolutions and the best thing to do is to simply stay calm and weigh the options you have, choosing the one with the highest amount of benefits and least amount of liabilities. A month ago, I couldn't even imagine spending an entire evening talking about art and love and politics with people halfway around the world from me and who had grown up in an entirely different environment (and sometimes even system of government) than mine; now I not only eagerly look forward to such conversations, but can even imagine myself living in such an environment full-time and thriving in it. Even little things have changed about me in the three weeks I was in Germany; I'm much more conscious now of the consumer waste I produce, of the litter I produce, the way I cross the street, the way I recycle, the way I keep my apartment, how much I drink and why I do so, how much I eat and what I eat and why I eat the way that I do.

All this being said, though, I think maybe the most profound change that's occurred in my life this month is a professional one; namely, after nearly a decade of trying to fit my writing into these rigid little predefined genres I was never very good at, I've realized that my true calling is to simply write the way that feels natural to me, even if that means having to invent a brand-new genre to explain to others exactly what I do. (Confessional travelogue? Slacker sociology? Henry Miller for the Palm-Pilot generation? Global naval-gazing? Paul Theroux for people too hip for Paul Theroux? Ah, I guess I don't have to worry about it - I'm sure a bunch of other people will be coming up with strange little labels for me, whether or not I actually want them to.)

The simple fact is that this tour journal has ended up being the best thing I've ever written; easily the best thing I've ever written, after seven novels and 300 poems and dozens of critical essays and several books of short stories and erotica and science-fiction. Looking back over the document I now have, starting the long and excruciating process of editing it all into a palatable book form, I realize with both alarm and pleasure how all the events of my artistic career have led me to this moment; how, now that the tour is over, it's become so obvious that I was born to write these kinds of books. And my audience seems to agree with me; readership, in fact, has gotten close to doubling since the tour started (approximately 30,000 readers a day now, up from the 20,000 or so I had a month ago), and I've already received several hundred dollars' worth of donations for the next tour, even though I haven't even announced what the next tour will be and when it might be happening. (For those who are curious, it most likely will be the United Kingdom, and could happen as soon as a year from now if I can get the money together by then.)

I feel at ease when I'm traveling - whole, content, like the person I always want to be here in Chicago that I can never quite seem to completely pull off. It makes me realize how much traveling needs to be a regular part of my life, and how my biggest financial and professional goal for at least the next ten years or so will be to raise enough money to make that next trip...and the next...and the next. And sure, this comes with drawbacks of its own; maybe this means I prefer a life of transience over one of permanence, or that I feel so comfortable traveling because I'm afraid of the responsibilities that come with a traditional life (although I can't say I necessarily agree - there's nothing that thrills me more, in fact, than the idea of making a trip like the one I just finished but with a wife and child along for the ride).

But no matter; every lifestyle comes with its own assets and liabilities, and our onus as humans is to find the one that most gives us pleasure while eliminating as many of these liabilities as possible. And the fact is that I feel very comfortable when I'm traveling - like all the clutter and bullshit of my everyday life has been stripped away, leaving me with just the pure, distilled essence of my being and an understanding of myself afterwards that I could've never gleaned just staying at home. To be completely frank, I think of lot of people experience the same thing when they travel themselves, which is why you not only see more and more people doing more and more traveling these days, but also more and more people tuning into my journal when I talk about such subjects myself.

Things are still bizarre for me right now, 48 hours after arriving back in Chicago; now that I'm back in a place where I can read all the signs around me and understand all the conversations, my three weeks in Germany are already starting to feel like some surreal dream, like something I made up in my head and not something that actually happened. At the same time, though, it did actually happen, and I did just spend nearly a month in a place that was utterly foreign to me and that forced me to radically redefine the way I look at the world; so in some ways it's now Chicago that seems like the surreal dream, a place that I'm seeing for the first time instead of it being my home for nearly a decade, like I'm now the foreigner and America is now the strange exotic land I'm not used to. But this is to be expected, I suppose; in fact, Ricardo and Karin warned me of this my last night of the tour, of how Chicago was going to seem like this dreamscape for at least the first couple of days after I got back, like everything is slightly out of whack from how I left it, like the entire city had been picked up and moved six inches to the left while I was away. I'm sure things will continue to get better as I slowly adjust to the new time zone and slowly let being in America again sink back into me.

Okay, very tired so I think I'll go home and take a nap. (Fuck you, jetlag! I hate you, I hate you!) My many thanks again to the Friends of Jason who contributed the money to make this trip happen; to the dozens of Germans last month who invited me into their homes, broke bread with me and just generally treated me like the welcome visitor I was hoping to be; and to you, for seeming to like the journal enough to tune in and read each day. This tour, and my entire literary career, wouldn't nearly be possible if it wasn't for you, sitting out there each day and deciding to stop by my website instead of Salon or Nerve or McSweeney's or Slashdot or any of a billion other sites that (to me, anyway) seem infinitely more interesting than anything I have to say. Starting Wednesday, back to real life again - finding a job, finding a girlfriend, and the comical stories about failing at both. Until then, I remain

Your Humble Narrator,

Jason Pettus

November 2, 2003
Chicago