The Life and Times of the Machova 12

Note: Wow, it has been a while since I last posted, and again, to all those who enjoy this blog as a means of procrastination, I'm sorry. Tons o' stuff has happened over these three weeks, and I'll fill you in on all if it as soon as I can. In the meantime, enjoy a guest post by Rebecca Smith about how the Machova 12 got from Amsterdam to Copenhagen.

The collective goal of the Machova 12 was to get as fucked up as possible and still make our flights, trains, or buses. On our last day in Amsterdam, I began to worry that this goal was unrealistic. High people miss trains; it happens. When I’m high the only place I can successfully get to is Bohemia Bagel. As the afternoon hours passed I made a to-do list hoping it would make our departure more successful-

1. Finish all the weed incase of dogs on the train
2. Get some edibles
3. Find E
4. DON’T MISS THE FUCKING TRAIN. We took a taxi to Amstel Station to assure that I could put a check next to #4 on my list. We bee-lined it for the Eurolines counter and with a great feeling of success I asked the woman behind the counter where we could find our train.

“Train?” She said, with more humor than confusion.
“Yes, the train to Copenhagen.” I said, showing her my ticket.
“You on a bus.” She said, laughing and pointing to the bus in view outside the window behind me.

FAIL.

5. To-do list addition #5- Survive a 14 hour bus ride to Copenhagen.

In all honesty, the first 8 hours weren’t that bad. We had all had a decent helping on hash cake, and I was optimistic about the entire situation. I think Melody and Natalie PTFOed before we even left the station. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for Robert, who was my bus buddy, hash makes me a little giddy. Therefore I sang every song from Capital Gold Love Legends, rapped in entirety “The Bad Touch”, “The Touch it Remix”, “Blueberry Yum Yum”, and every Missy Eliot song I know. I like to think that this was only audible to Robert and me; however the reality is that it might have been a bit of a show for everyone within a few seats of us. Now Robert must have been really intimidated by my rap skills, because at this point things got competitive. But, obviously, I am better than Robert at everything.

Except the dot game. And rock paper scissors. But you see, I just had to find my element -which turns out to be listing items on the McDonalds menu. Watch out for that salad menu. And don’t you dare forget Chicken Selects. Bitch. After I had redeemed myself- if you can call listing everything on a McDonalds menu redeeming- I decided to make some art. A blatantly hash cake-induced Van Gough recreation to be exact.

Something I forgot to mention was our fellow companions on the torture bus. I couldn’t quite figure them out, but if I had to make a painfully specific guess based on stereotypes and a mediocre knowledge on European immigration, I would say that they were northern African Muslim immigrants trying to make a new start in a Scandinavian welfare state. Now I have to admit, that the sheer number of them was mildly terrifying. It was somewhat like when you accidently get on the A train going express when you want to go to the Museum of Natural History but you end up in Harlem. You don’t need to get to 106^th street to realize you have made a mistake. Take one look around and based on demographics alone, you know you’re the only one going to Harlem on accident.

I have learned that the cheapest mode of travel is often the sketchiest. Take the Chinatown bus for example. I know when I get on that bus that it’s going to be sketchy. It will be full of Chinese people, transporting live chickens and drugs to Boston. That’s fine, because I expect it. But did we unknowingly board the Chinatown bus of Europe? I soon began to wonder –we were on a 14 hour bus on accident, what type of people do this willingly? Refugees from Darfur? I can only assume.

Apparently illegal immigrants have very shady passports –meaning that they had little booklets with pictures gluesticked-in with hand-written information scribbled on the side. Our American passports barely touched the fingers of the border control officers before the handed them back with the utmost satisfaction. I could have shown then a passport saying I was Elian Gonzales and they wouldn’t have cared. Only one man was escorted off the bus by the immigration officers.

We arrived in Hamburg around 11pm. Ironically one of the few things I saw in Hamburg was hamburgers –a McDonalds in fact. At this point I thought my bladder might actually explode, which was also ironic because I had been bragging to Robert that I had the bladder of a trucker –because what’s a bigger turn-on than a girl with a bladder of steel? And although the bus driver had stopped every two hours, which I found pointless, by the time we stopped in Hamburg I was at a point of desperation, but too afraid to run in for the bathroom in case the bus left. At this point I made the grave mistake of wondering how the situation could get any worse.

1:00am. Still in Hamburg. Still about to piss myself. A second bus pulled in and I realized we have been waiting two hours for connecting passengers. A terrifying man who looks like Abu Hamza al-Masri stormed off the bus and started furiously unloading numerous things from the underneath baggage compartments. He put his new-born child, no older than 2 months, in its little carrier on the ground in the middle of the ten foot space between the busses. His wife fussed around with their toddler and he continued to toss things from under the bus toward the space where the newborn is sitting. A diaper bag, small back pack, and blanket go flying towards the little guy, missing him by less than a foot. Dazed, I watched as he grabbed the folded stroller from under the bus and chucked it haphazardly behind him. Almost in slow motion I watched it glide through the air and brutally land –stroller wheel to the face, full impact to the soft infant skull- on his newborn baby.

Now, I hate babies. Newborns specifically. They are terrifyingly fragile, mushy, and high-maintenance. And I don’t have a great track record either. Once while I was babysitting I left a baby, he couldn’t have been more than a few months old, on the couch while I went to get some goldfish crackers. I heard I thud from the kitchen and ran back into the living room only to find the baby face-up on the ground, wailing. Not only that, but he also managed to land directly on top of the remote, just for kicks. He was fine, I think. I can’t guarantee that he’s going to get great SAT scores one day, or even grow into a normal shaped skull, but they never reported me for child abuse, so I figure there wasn’t even a bruise the next day. This summer I was also watching a two year-old when he managed to break his femur. But I wasn’t getting a snack when it happened so I feel far less responsible.

But no human on earth could watch something like that and not feel a little queasy. And unfortunately for this guy, although he didn’t see what he had done, two bus-loads of people had. The bus-driver started screaming at him in German, pointing out that he had almost crippled his own child. And what makes the whole situation worse is that Abu Hamza didn’t even care. He just kept unloading his shit. Then I realized that this terrifying man was getting on our bus. Our driver got into a yelling match with the guy for about 15 minutes, and from what I could understand it was something about having too much luggage. Or no ticket. Or almost killing his child. Whatever it was, I agreed –don’t let that man on our bus. But Abu Hamza got on our bus. Despite all obstacles we made it to Copenhagen and successfully made it to every plane, train, and torture bus of the trip.

It was predicted that one of the Machova 12 would die by the end of fall break, and it was on that bus I thought it was going to be me. As I sat there with a baby-killing terrorist mere seats away from me, I just prayed that from where I was sitting I would survive the blast of his shoe bomb.