That One Time I Went on an Overnight Cruise to Estonia
An homage of sorts to David Lynch
I didn’t know much about Andreas other than he was German, he was married to my sister, and I would be meeting him for the first time over the holidays. The reason I had not met my sister’s husband yet was more mundane, than salacious. It was not an indication of any irreparable tear in our relationship. It was simply the result of having our family scattered all over the world. My parents lived in Stockholm then, where we would be reuniting with the newlyweds for Christmas. Jime, my sister, had met Andreas in our home country of Peru, a place I had pretty much abandoned at age 20. She traveled a few times to Germany to see him, securing a student visa along the way and using the power of that document to move into his home and never leave.
Their elopement a few months later was the worst kept secret in our family circle, given my sister’s allergy to stealth. For months, she had posted a series of horoscopes and memes focused on commitment, with Vaguebooking captions like, “Oh my god, I was just thinking about eternal commitment!” My parents, who had fretted over the unfashionable question of what strapping young man would take care of my sister, gave zero fucks about how their marriage happened as long as it happened. She was married and that was enough for them to rejoice.
Jime had long dreamed of settling down, preferably as far away from Peru as humanly possible. I was very happy that two out of her three dreams had come true. But, I was also curious about this new man that had entered our lives, and I was perplexed when the only descriptions I got from my sister about Andreas was that he was very kind, very caring and very, very, German.
“What does very, very German even mean?” I asked her. It was a different category from a Berliner, she explained. A Berliner was a species comprised of salient traits like ambient techno and avant-garde homoerotic Smurf art. Andreas, helmed from a tiny town in North Rhine-Westphalia, far removed from that reality.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” my sister answered cryptically.
As a caveat, for the Internet has convince me everyone reading this will only interpret it in the worst faith possible, I’m sure (hashtag) not all Germans are a monolith. Its 84 million population cannot, surely, all approach life the same way. But I can also honestly say that I’ve rarely seen the soon-to-be-described interactions I had with him during our trip to Stockholm in citizens of any other country—and I’ve lived in dozens of cities around the world and visited over forty nations. (If you want to crucify me for a statement, let it be for that obnoxious humblebrag.) I have no rigorous studies to prove my suspicions, but here are some of the experiences that made me wonder if I was witnessing ancestral Teutonic rituals, distilled into present day.
When I asked Andreas if he had enjoyed our visit to the National Museum of Art, he answered that he couldn’t give me an honest assessment because he had only visited two out of the four floors and therefore, his opinion, would be based on partial information and could only be inconclusive.
Andreas’s favorite activity was comparing every single sightseeing excursion we partook in to similar sightseeing excursions he had gone to in Riga, the capital of Latvia. Riga always won. He had enjoyed his trip to Riga. As far as I could tell, nothing could ever live up to the magic of Riga, given that he brought up the topic every hour on the hour and usually with a tight smile. Because I too can be an absolute nightmare and because hazing is a rite of passage in my family, I asked him pointedly what his favorite travel destination had been after he uttered the R-word yet again. Inside, I kept chanting “Riga, Riga, Riga, say Riga” but the bastard didn’t even give me the satisfaction. He said all of his trips had been enjoyable though disappointing in their own ways, as if he were the Tolstoy of small talk.
We made the terrible mistake of taking him on a free city walking tours that so many European metropolises offer to broke backpackers and Millennials who didn’t luck out into a STEM career. The guide was informative, energetic, an absolute charmer. The problem was that Andreas, during the Q&A section at the end, wanted to ask why they promoted themselves as a free walking tour only to finish the day asking for tips. Our mortification was only softened by the realization that the guide enjoyed free health care and a host of other social safety nets by virtue of his Swedishness. That didn’t stop Jime from using her death stare to muzzle Andreas, while I generously stuffed the guide’s buckets with every Krona I found in my wallet.
I had no doubt in my mind that Andreas was very kind, very caring, and very, very in love with my sister. He was also impossible rope into an easygoing banter, and it was slowly seeping out all my social enthusiasm. I wouldn’t go as far as saying he had no sense of humor. It popped up every now and then, in what can only be described as Dad Jokes. Germanic, translated into English Dad jokes. I laughed along because my mom raised me with good etiquette and because I hoped he would one day return the favor. But Andreas, integrity intact, was not going to laugh at my jokes as a nicety. Every single one of my attempts died as soon as it reached his literally-inclined brain.
As a festive end to the holiday season, my parents invited us on a weekend trip to Estonia, a destination so intriguing the NY Times published an article about it with the title “In Praise of a Normal, Boring Country.” It was our family’s very own Everest, a journey we were embarking on simply because it was there. The plan was to set sail on an overnight booze cruise across the Baltic Sea, arrive in Tallin in the morning and then spend a day touring the historic capital in search of one local dish my dad would be willing to eat.
Now I am the kind of person who is happy to go anywhere, for any reason, and through any means. But when my mom told me the Swedes loved these travel quickies because duty free alcohol was a benefit their generous government refused to provide, I realized were not about to journey in one of those lavish boats you saw before Downton Abbey aired on PBS. The ship was clean and functioning, with an aesthetic that screamed Iron Curtain meets down-on-its luck Reno gentleman’s club. It had a buffet and a sit-down restaurant, a couple of arcades and a balcony where you could shiver your ass off as you looked at the sky.
The focal point of entertainment though, that night’s Berghain, was the dancefloor at their two-story casino. I could not tell you if there were blackjack tables open or roulettes spinning because my entire family was mesmerized by the scenario unfolding onstage. Before us was a live band, doing their damn best to get the party started by blasting every single Top 40 Latin hit of the past decade, despite us being at least one continent and multiple seas away from the region. The woman singer had a lovely voice, but I was distracted by her male counterpart, a muscular man whose luscious chest hair spilled over the opening of his billowy white blouse. As they both regaled us with “Despacito” in a Kafkian-inflected tone, the man broke out in flamenco dance moves even though reggaeton is a completely separate genre but no matter. We were in international waters, there were no rules!
As we downed one sugary cocktail after the next, my family descended further and further into a terrifying hypnotic state, all the way to the first floor, as close to the stage as they could get without getting a boot in the face, since the male singer punctuated his choreography with erratic kickstand. Children twirled in circles with the energy of feral animals. A Santa brought the cursed gift of a conga line and we made the critical mistake of making eye contact. Soon he was waving his arms maniacally, prowling closer and closer to our group, luring my sister into his trap. She followed his direction to express every single ounce of glee she had through dance, as she floated further and further away from safety and into the ever-growing conga.
My mom—a lady who fears scandal so much she never strays from her off-white sweater collection—clapped her way onto another dance circle, my dad in tow. They were goners. Maracas appeared out of nowhere. The strobe lights invaded my retinas in ways powerful hallucinogenics would envy. The Swedes were too tall, too tall! The shrieks of joy too warbled. I was losing my sense of direction, time, place, and even taste because the paisley carpet was looking pretty chic. It was disorienting, preternatural, a blurring of what I understood to be real or not.
“This is my David Lynch nightmare” I blurted out to Andreas, the only one resistant to its charms.
And then something unprecedented happened. Out of the very bowels of Andreas came a laugh. A rip roaring, belly aching, thunderous laugh. A real laugh. Not a polite laugh, a giggle or a chuckle, but the kind of instinctive expression that rises up when something truly hits your heart. At last, I thought. We have reached a whole new level in our relationship. This can be the foundation upon which our own friendship grows.
And it was.
At least until the next day when he asked me to explain exactly what part of David Lynch’s work was I referring to when I said David Lynch nightmare.
I wrote an initial version of this essay back in 2020 for a virtual edition of Is This A Thing?, the live lit show I co-founded in Chicago. The theme was “Wish You Were Here”. A big thank you to my sister who reminded me that it existed, after I posted about David Lynch’s death on Instagram. This is also an homage of sorts to Andreas. At least, I like to think so.
Further Reading
Kyle MacLachlan’s tribute to his friend is one of the most romantic love letters I’ve ever read.
Jason Diamond wrote about the impulse to memorialize celebrity deaths on social media.
Cruise travelogues are their own literary microgenre. David Foster Wallace, anyone? A more recent one is this laugh-out-loud essay from Gary Shteyngart and this article from Curbed about the travails of nine stranded passengers from a Norwegian cruise line.
Sneak Peak at the Mini Salon “Screw Duality! Harnessing The Practical and The Intuitive In The Creative Process.”
Starting in February, I will be co-hosting a monthly, half-hour mini-salon with my friend and fellow writer, Sarah Kokernot, author of Your Wild and Radiant Mind. I Sarah tends to focus her newsletter on the woo side of writing, but on the back-end she is very practical (she offers coaching to writers, which are filled with actionable tips, and gives excellent feedback). I tend to focus my newsletter on the practical side of writing, but on the back-end I am very woo, which you’ve probably gleaned from my frequent mentions on astrology and tarot. You can read more about Sarah and her work here. Topics for the mini-salon will change every month, and paid subscribers are invited to send us their questions beforehand.
Our first mini-salon topic is on the a false dichotomy between the practical side of writing and the intuitive side of writing. We’re going to talk about how there is a false dichotomy between the practical side of writing and the intuitive side of writing. We can be two things at once! So screw duality!
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Shameless Self-Promotion
I’m sending my extra pennies over to families in the Displaced Latine Families listed in the Wildfire Mutual Aid directory. Join me!
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On Monday, February 10 at 6pm CT I’m teaching the sessions “Freelancing in Challenging Times” and on Thursday, February 27 at 6pm I’m moderating a Behind the Book panel with Rowan Beaird (The Divorcées) at StoryStudio’s virtual online publishing intensive, Pub Crawl. Gillian Flynn as the keynote speaker.
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Great story!
I loved this from star to finish. Your writing is so perceptive and clever and fresh.