Dave Barry - Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need

Blattwurst: Compressed pig parts served in 7-inch units Grosswurst: Compressed pig parts served in 8-inch units Wurstwurst: Compressed pig parts served in 7.5-inch units

The list just goes on and on. There is an old German saying that goes, “By the time you have eaten all of the worsts of Germany, you will have pig parts coming out the Wazzenschnicter.” This certainly proved to be true in our case.

What to Do in Germany

There are a great many spectacularly beautiful villages in Germany, as well as numerous important historic and cultural sites, but you should skip all these because the thing to do is drive really fast. They have these roads in Germany called “autobahns” (meaning, literally, “bahns of the auto”) where you can go as fast as you want because there is no speed limit. Really! You can get out there and drive like an amphetamine-crazed maniac, and the police will do nothing! And if you don’t have a car, you can just steal one, because car theft is also legal on the autobahn! So are vagrancy, tax evasion, mail fraud, gambling, narcotics trafficking, and full-body massage! You are going to love the autobahn.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Unit of Currency: The Doppler

Barometer: Falling

Motto: Vie Guessen Der Coninen Nicht Chompen (“These Dogs Probably Will Not Bite you”)

Greece is where we get a large amount of our Western culture. For example, Zorba the Greek came from there. So did democracy, which is made up of two Greek words, “demo,” meaning “people,” and “cracy,” meaning “wearing stupid hats.” The

Greeks also gave us the Pythagorean theorem, although after we graduated from high school we gave it back.

Getting to Greece

This is a necessary first step.

Attractions to See in Greece

The biggest city that we have heard of in Greece is Athens. According to ancient myth, Athens was created when Poseidon, the God of Adventure, struck the ground with his trident, which upset Ramona, the Goddess of Humidity and Ranch Dressing, who told Dagmar, the God of Variable-Rate Mortgages, who got so mad that he punched Raoul, the God of Those Little Colored Things You Sprinkle on Cupcakes, and as a result Athens was formed. Of course we now realize that this is stupid. Nevertheless many important old monuments remain from this period, including the Metropolis, the Pentathlon, Monticello, the Telethon, and the Tomb of Reebok. All of these contain a great deal of very important architecture that you are welcome to chip off little pieces of for Show and Tell. Outside of Athens is another popular area known to locals as the rest of Greece.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Unit of Currency: The Sheep

Form of Government: Vague

Liquor Bottles with Worms Inside: Yes

Holland, also known as “The Hinterlands” or “Sweden,” is a plucky nation that has created large sectors of new land by pushing back the sea with a sophisticated complex of dikes that have held up extremely well so far thanks to the vigilance of the Dutch people, as dramatized by the story of the Little Dutch Boy. Remember him? He was walking along one day many years ago when he saw a small leak in one of the dikes, so he plugged the hole with his finger, thereby saving the entire nation. Talk about pluck! Of course he’s an old man now, and he has taken to telling passersby that one of these days he’s going to pull his finger back out of the goddamn dike and the hell with everybody, but this is no reason for you, as a visitor, to be alarmed, because as a safety precaution, every item of furniture in Holland is legally required to also be usable as a flotation device. Your smart tourist never goes anywhere in the country without carrying, at minimum, a dinette table.

What to See in Holland

The largest city in Holland is Amsterdam, a cultural center that boasts many beautiful historic churches that you can later claim you were visiting when You were in fact looking at live naked sex shows involving as many as 117 individual humans and the occasional unit of livestock. Also do not miss the Vincent van Gogh Museum, where you can play the popular Whack-an-Ear Game. Out in the countryside you can see windmills, many of which are still used for milling wind, as well as millions and millions and millions of tulips, so you’ll probably just want to stick with the live naked sex shows.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Unit of Currency: The Grunder

Unit of Livestock’s Stage Name: “Bossy”

According to a competing travel guidebook, Iceland offers—this is a direct quote—”boiling mud pools.” We’re on our way!

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Unit of Currency: The Tusk

Biggest Industry: Jumper Cables

Motto: “Skiaorgit Kiooorsklangelt KfvoOOOOO” (“Are There Any Boiling Mud Pools Around HEEEEEE ...”)

Ireland is not a large country. A competing guidebook states that “you could drop its entire area into Lake Superior.” We certainly do not wish to start rumors, but sometimes we wonder whether these competing guidebooks are on some kind of narcotics. A quick glance at the map will show you that Ireland is in fact nowhere near Lake Superior, which is located in Maine. So if your vacation plans include dropping Ireland into a major body of water, a much better choice, in our opinion, would be the Irish Sea, which is far more conveniently located, although during the peak season we do recommend that you have reservations.

Of course there is more to Ireland than water sports. There is also the Irish people, a warm and friendly lot who are constantly saying things like “Begorrah!” (Literally, “Your brother Raoul is a fish!”). Alcohol will do this to people.

The History of Ireland

The history of Ireland dates back a long time to the original inhabitants, the Picts, who were a fun-loving tribe known for their wit. “You sure Pict a winner that time!” is the kind of thing they were always saying, until finally a neighboring tribe called the Celtics got sick and tired of it and came in and, in 432 B.C. on October 8, defeated the Picts in the Battle of Defeating the Picts when John Havlicek sank two free throws in overtime. This led to a long period of time that is virtually incomprehensible if you read about it in the 1966 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is what we are trying to do, and we are getting a real headache because of sentences like this:

A well-known territorial unit was the tricha cet, corresponding, Giraldus Cambrensis says (Topographia Hibernica, III, 5), to the Welsh cantref, 100 households (villae).

Ha ha! We bet that Giraldus Cambrensis was one fun dude to hang around with! But anyway, Irish history continued to occur right up to the present time, which is where, according to our calculations, we stand today.

What to See in Ireland

The main thing to do in Ireland, as Giraldus “Party Animal” Cambrensis states (Topographia Hibernica, IVCXXII, section 3, row d, seat 6), is “sit around and drink.” But no trip to Ireland is complete without a trip to Blarney Castle, where you can kiss the famous Blarney Stone, which, according to ancient legend, bestows upon each person who kisses it a mild but persistent mouth fungus.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Unit of Currency: The Whelk

Households Per Tricha Cet: 100

Shave and a Haircut: Two Bits

We are definitely talking about a warm and friendly nation here. This nation is so friendly that the leading cause of injury is getting passionately embraced by strangers. One time we were at a restaurant near Rome eating a medium-sized Italian lunch consisting of enough pasta to feed Lithuania for six months, and we happened to mention that the wine tasted good. So the restaurant owner insisted that everybody in our party had to go see his wine cellar, which involved climbing down a set of steep rickety stairs into the kind of dark, dank, spider-infested basement that you often see in horror movies, wherein some doomed character goes slowly down the stairs while dramatic music plays in the background and the theater audience is shouting, “DON’T GO DOWN THERE, YOU FOOL!” because they know there’s a lunatic lurking in the darkness with a machete and an industrial staple gun. This basement was like that, only it was occupied by something even more dangerous than a homicidal maniac, namely, numerous barrels of wine, which the restaurant owner insisted that we had to drink many samples from, and quite frankly we wonder how we got out of there. In fact some members of our party may still be down there with the spiders, and we urge you to stop in and see them (the spiders) during normal visiting hours.