RAMBLING An early spring sun is shining in Antwerp. Thank God. It’s the first time I’ve seen sunlight after nearly a week in the rain on the other side of the English Channel around Manchester. Shivering in dank, damp cold. Avoiding hideous English things like blood pudding for breakfast. Hoping that I don’t get sick from long walks in cold rain through the woods and fields on the English trail system. I’m not a walking through the woods, or the fields, kind of guy.

Walks in the forests of Merry Olde England and other countries are the price of being on this trip. A group that wants to build more walking trails in the good old U.S.A. is paying for the trip, and they hope I’ll go home and write nice things about trails. The trails are nice—the countryside is lush and green and the sheep are very picturesque—but they’re not my thing. Since none of this is on my tab, I shouldn’t be whining. But, I am. Loudly. And insistently. Arthur, the gray haired British guy who’s leading the group, has already told me he’s going to have nightmares for years about a tall guy in a black trench coat following him through woods, howling about the mud and the bugs. Demanding that the itinerary be changed to include London for British cultural reasons and, even, downtown Manchester for British musical reasons. And listening to the Sisters of Mercy on his Walkman. Run around in the radiation Run around in the acid rain On a black, black planet Arthur survived the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids and V2 missile attacks on Britain of World War II, but he’s starting to look like he may not make it through a couple of weeks in the woods with me. I’ve just emerged from a dark and atmospheric little café after downing a delicious Westmalle Trappist Trippel beer as a pre-lunch libation intended to put the day ahead in the proper perspective. Now, I’m wandering down the Meir, which is like Antwerp’s Fifth Avenue, on a mission. My long black trench coat is flapping in the wind and I’m wearing the intent look of the hunter as I scout the street for pharmacies. I desperately need a little something to put a decent sheen on the days to come. Perspective is important. And pharmacies offer an abundance of perspective-enhancing possibilities. There are a lot more walks through the woods to come in Germany, Switzerland and France. Still, I’m new to the drug stores of Antwerp. This is a problem. Scoring prescription drugs from pharmacies in Europe is a simple thing, but it helps to know the turf. This is the first time I’ve ever set foot in Antwerp, which is a Flemish port town north of Brussels and south of Holland that’s a center of the international diamond trade. Other than knowing that Antwerp is where Reubens lived, that Reubensque as a descriptive term is derived from Reubens and that the beer kicks ass, this is fresh territory to me. I wander into a pharmacy—an apotheken—that looks like it hasn’t changed since the early part of the Twentieth Century. It’s all done up in dark wood and neat glass cases. There are various containers full of powders and liquids behind the counter. It’s manned by a guy with gray hair who is wearing round wire-rimmed glasses and a white smock. “Do you speak any English?” I say. “Little bit,” he says, pronouncing “bit” like “beet.” “Maybe you can help me,” I say. “I’m American….” I pull out my passport and hold it up. “And I’m here for a few days on a walking tour…” “A walking tur?” the pharmacist says. “I’m with a group,” I say. “Walkers….uh….wandelen? Grande Randonnée? Rambling?” I feel like a dork admitting this, but it’s central to my story. “Ah, yes, I unterstant,” the pharmacist, who is staring at me intently, says. “Dee voh-kink.” “And I have a problem with my knee,” I say, patting my knee. “A pro-blam?” he says. “Pain,” I say. “I have much pain. In the knee. And because I am walking so much it hurts. I need a painkiller.” “Pain key-lair?” he says. “Something to take away pain,” I say. “Like codeine. That’s what my American doctor recommends. You know codeine? Is there a Flemish word for it?” He looks at me blankly. “Maybe you just call it codeine?” I continue. “I need some until I can see my doctor in the United States. Codeine to take pain away so that I can walk.” Even if the story is a contemptible lie, the conclusion isn’t far from the truth. Having codeine in my system will make me a much more cheerful walker. It’s the best antidote I can find for mud, vegetation and mosquitoes. Heavy drinking is too dangerous for marathon walks. I don’t have any weed and I don’t want to try to find any in Antwerp or Stuttgart or Basel, although I’ll be game when I get to Paris in a couple of weeks. Hence, codeine. “You are havink pain?” he says. “Severe pain in the knee,” I say. “Terrible pain.” “Yes,” he says. “I can help whiz pain.” “Dank you,” I say, trying to approximate “thank you” in Flemish. “Thank you so much. What a blessing. I’ve been in agony.” He looks in a drawer and hands me a small box. “You take,” he says. “Good whiz pain.” I pay him for the pills and pretend to limp slightly as I leave. I’m practically in a cold sweat as I stand on the corner. I open the box, take out two of the small capsules and swallow them. Then, I look at the box. Son of a bitch. It says something about homeopathic. Homeopathic? Like natural? I look back at the pharmacy. Shit. One of the signs says homeopathic. Screw homeopathic. I want narcotic. If I want homeopathic, I’ll eat vegetation on one of my walks through the fucking woods. I’m craving something with codeine, but instead I’ve swallowed something that’s probably made from dried lichen from Waterloo, powdered wildflowers from the Ardennes and ground Alpine Marmot claws. Bite me. I slump down at a table at an outdoor café, order another Westmalle, drink it quickly and continue down the Meir. I reenact my story a few minutes later at another apotheken—chosen after a careful look to make sure none of the signs say anything about homeopathic remedies—a block further down the Meir. My reward is two red-and-yellow metal tubes of codeine and acetaminophen tablets. Yeah, baby. Now we’re talking. A few minutes later, I walk out of another apotheken two blocks away with an additional tube. Ten minutes after that comes another tube from another apotheken. Etc. An hour-and-a-half later, there are so many metal tubes of codeine tablets in my coat pockets that they’re clinking as I walk and it’s beginning to look like a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Even if the neighborhood is a mud trail in the Black Forest. I stop at a café, sit down at a table on a quiet cobblestone pedestrian street and order another Westmalle beer. I take another codeine tablet and wash it down with the triple-strength brew made by Belgian monks. By the time I make it back to the hotel at dinnertime, I’m downright jolly. Arthur looks at me and asks me in his aristocratic English accent where I’ve been. “Walking all over Antwerp,” I say. “Quite the city walker, aren’t you?” he says. “I love walking in the city,” I say. “It’s the woods that suck.” He reminds me that we’re going to Stuttgart to walk through more woods—German woods—and that we’ve got a train to catch in an hour. I take another codeine as I’m packing my bags and by the time we board the train at Antwerp’s Central Station, I’m plowed. This would be a problem in straight-laced company, but I’m sharing a compartment with Gary, who runs a huge zoo in the South, and Phil, who runs one of the biggest urban parks departments in America. They don’t like walking in the woods either. Like me, they prefer city walks. With frequent stops for alcohol in atmospheric cafés. I start out more toasted then them, but by the time we change trains in Brussels they’ve had so many beers that they’re more wasted than me. Gary comes back from a trip to the john howling with laughter. “What’s up?” I ask. “The shitter….” he says, unable to finish because he starts laughing again. “The shitter?” says Phil, the park guy, who’s in his fifties and has a big beer gut and a drooping walrus mustache. “What about it?” I say. “The head…(laugh)….opens…(laugh)…on…(hoot)…to…(howl)….the tracks,” Gary says. He slumps into his seat, takes a slug of beer and stomps his feet on the floor. “You’re taking a leak,” he says. “And the tracks are a few feet away down a hole. The head’s a hole in the floor, man. What kinda’ country is this that you can piss right outta’ the train on to the tracks?” “I gotta’ see this,” Phil says. He gets up and heads to the toilet. He, too, comes back roaring with laughter. “Can you imagine sittin’ on that thing?” he says. “It’s like an outhouse goin’ a hundred miles an hour.” He’s laughing. Gary’s laughing. I’m laughing, even though I already know toilets on most European trains open directly on to the tracks and give a whole new meaning to living on the wrong side of the tracks. “We have a lot of bottles,” Gary says. “Why don’t we toss ‘em down the john?” Phil is laughing so hard he’s turning beet red. I laugh even harder. “I’ll go first,” Phil says. He takes two empty beer bottles and disappears down the corridor. Thirty seconds later, you can hear a bottle ricocheting under the train car. A few seconds after that, you can hear the second one. Gary is almost crying from laughing so much. I’m hooting and slapping my leg. “Boy, that’s great!” Phil says when he returns. “Did you hear them?” “They lasted a long time before they broke,” Gary says. “I’m goin’ next.” Gary takes two bottles and leaves. A half-minute later, there are crashing sounds beneath the train. We’re three adults, but we’re very wasted ones. And this is the kind of night it’s going to be on the night train from Brussels to Stuttgart, as we rocket through the Belgian night at eighty miles an hour, leaving a trail of piss and broken glass behind us.