The best falafel in Iraq (and holy shit, I can now download photos)

Serious third-world, side-of-the-road goodness at a market in Dora, where Shias and Sunnis have stopped killing each other long enough to make delicious snacks. Not the sort of falafel donut inside, a nice touch and impressive attention to presentation.

There have been a few car and roadside bombs recently, but it's probably people mad that the stand ran out of declious abaa sauce (a slightly tart, salty yellow concoction that makes the sandwich) before they were served.

The indignities of war or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bottle

BAGHDAD - Like a newsroom scanner, a soldiers patrol radio is constantly crackling with official jargon and acronyms laid down in a deadpan voice.

Amid the “rogers,” “wilcos” and “charlies,” this came over the radio the other night in the same dry monotone:

“Red six, red six, we need to pull over, we’ve got a gunner who’s feeling nauseous and is about to shit his pants.”

And shit he did. With his friends flashing away with digital cameras, the poor bastard ran out of the Humvee, yanked down his pants and painted the walls on the side of the street. Five minutes later he did it again.

It was ugly. It was hilarious.

My mom recently asked me if I am doing well and if I am “comfortable.” Doing well, yes, comfortable, well, that’s a relative term out here.

A flush toilet is a roughly once in three days luxury and hot water showers are hit and miss. Beds with real mattresses are heaven.

Mainly, though, as that unfortunate soldier so gruesomely illustrated, you have to watch your intake – liquid and solid – before heading out on an 8-hour patrol. I’ve been fortunate to avoid his fate, so far, but I have found out the hard way a couple times that in Iraq you can’t just pull over to piss (mind the mines on the side of the road!)

A couple good rules:
- If you’re shy, this ain’t the place for you.
- Hold on tight when pissing in the belly of a Stryker on a bumpy Iraqi road (that’s redundant – they run the gamut from rough to cratered).
- When you really have to go, you’ve got anywhere from a half to two thirds of a liter in you. Pick your bottle wisely and don’t overfill.
- Don’t forget to lift your groin guard.

Baghdad Garbage Goats

BAGHDAD - What an awesome name for a band. I call dibs. Their first album will be called "Don't Step in the Shit Water."

Livestock are everywhere in Iraq, even in the middle of Baghdad. I'm embedded in southern Baghdad and I constantly see Iraqis herding goats and sheep through the city. They're almost always near a trash dumping site (which describes about half the area), far away from any grass. The dingy-coated animals just munch on trash all day. I'm sure they make great eating.

Shit water, of course, is the affectionate term soldiers use for the foul black liquid that courses through the streets here (and just about everywhere in Iraq) and sometimes pools into ankle deep poo ponds. Best to watch your step.

Basically I'm on bomb patrol here. It's been relatively quiet for a long time but there's been a series of car bombs in the Dora area here, so I'm basically looking at the security of security gains made here.

I'm amazed at the resilience of Iraqis. I'm nervous enough standing next to Iraqi Police officers as they search cars for bombs at a checkpoint (I'd hate to be there when they actually find one). But a day after a bomb goes off, shop owners sweep up the glass and shoppers are back in the streets.

Giving the Ayatollah a hand

MANDALI, IRAQ - The Iraq-Iran border feels like something between the edge of the Earth and Medieval Europe. The lonely north-south highway in Diyala Province winds through low-slung barren mountains and yawning stretches of flat desert populated only by thousands of minefields left over from the Iran-Iraq War.

Every once in a while you run into a small castle sitting atop a brown hillside. When I say castle I mean high fortified brick walls with a turrett on each corner and a courtyard in the middle. The minefields are kind of like a moat. Every Iraqi and Iranian border post is like that although no one was able to explain why. It looks, to say the least, out of place.

All kinds of stuff comes over the border illegally: drugs, cigarettes, fuel, sheep and, the reason I was there, weapons and fighters. It's a long frontier and there aren't a lot of people to patrol it.

At the one legal border crossing in the area I got to walk right up to the border, where hundreds of Iranians were lined up, or sort of mobbed up, to get through the gate (many Iranian pilgrims visit Shiite holy site in Iraq in addition to the commerce that flows back and forth). At one point while leaning over a jersey barrier to get a picture with a billboard of Ayatollah Khomeini in the background I had one foot in Iraq and one hand in Iran, no visa required.

Under the surface

BAQOUBAH, IRAQ - Not five minutes after I walked into the heavily fortified Diyala Government Building a dull thud shook the building.

It was the unmistakeable thunderclap of a bomb. This time, it was planted in a pile of trash at a nearby market, detonated by some unlucky garbagemen as they went about their jobs. One was killed, four others hurt.

Feeling that mortal moment is both terrifying and numbing. Not seeing the explosion, not being able to see the aftermath (the unit I was with was not the one responding to the bomb), I felt oddly detached from it.

There's not a lot of shooting here these days, but there are plenty of explosions (a woman blew herself up a day later, killing five), which is, in a way, more unsettling. This includes many roadside bombs, as well.

It's one of those threats you can't run away from and that you might never know hit you. I'm at peace with it enough that I go about my job with no problem, but it kind of makes you cringe everytime you hit a large bump in the road or see someone walking with particular determination on the street.

Full pucker

KHALIS, IRAQ - The soldiers and Iraqi police officers combed through palm groves and abandoned cinderblock buildings, dug up trash-filled dirt and let loose an explosives sniffing Belgian malinois but they needn't have bothered - what they were looking for was hiding in plain sight.

They were searching for insurgent weapons and one soldier nearly stepped on a rocket propelled grenade warhead that was laying in a shallow irrigation furrow in plain sight right next to its detonator. For the locals apparently it was such a common sight they didn't think much of it.

A group of drunks playing cards nearby with an empty bottle of ouzo and several cans of whiskey (yes, cans of whiskey) were puzzled as to why the soldiers why they were making such a big deal out of the warhead and one man with a cloudy eye blinded by cataracts laughed histerically when an officer frisked him.

It was the first of three days of patrols I went on in and around this Diyala Province town. The narrow alleys of Khalis, black raw sewage running through them, felt sinister and the townspeople mostly looked at us with suspicion. When we stepped into the street pigeons were flushed from a nearby rooftop, a common sign insurgents use to warn their friends of troops in the area.

Garbage was everywhere and the air was thick with the stench of shit.

The patrols were relatively uneventful, though there was a "full pucker moment," as soldiers call it, when an absent-minded driver came speeding down a street near the patrol. He skidded to a stop when a soldier yelled at him. An improving security situation probably saved the driver's life: the soldier later muttered, "A year ago, we would have shot that guy."

"Wolves will eat your ass"

BALAD AIR BASE, IRAQ - Remember when you were a kid and you thought it would be awesome to stay up all night? Yeah, well kids are dumb. It sucks.

I'm finally back in Iraq after staying up for 40 straight hours getting from Germany to Kuwait to Balad. By the end of the journey I felt a little bit like the delusional insomniac in Fight Club.

I think I'm slipping into borderline narcolepsy with all of this lack of sleep. Sleeping anywhere is not a problem. I've nodded off in my body armor, in metal folding chairs, on Blackhawk helicopters, in armored vehicles bouncing down bomb-plagued roads.

One of the British Royal Marines who taught my how-not-to-die-in-a-war-zone class was right when he said, in talking about what to do if your shackled naked in a dungeon after being kidnapped, "If you're tired enough, no matter what your situation, you will sleep."

But now I'm rested and, with luck, I will be on a helicopter back to Baqouba, where insurgents just blew up a car bomb to greet me.

As if I needed it, I had a strange reminder on my flight to Kuwait that I am, indeed, in the Middle East. My original seat was next to a Muslim woman wearing a hijab. A flight attendant asked if I would switch seats with a woman so that the Muslim woman would not have to sit next to a man. I agreed, but I've got to wonder how well that works when a flight is packed to the gills.

During my recent travels, I felt a twinge of homesickness when I heard the following conversation on a bus in Kuwait. This was from an ill-informed contractor trying to impress his seatmate with stories about what a badass he had been while working in Alaska:

"Wolves will eat your ass. You keep shooting and they will keep coming at you until you run out of bullets." Uh, yeah, you mean like when you were fighting off that snarling pack of wolves on the North Slope? I kept my mouth shut, but it was difficult.

He followed up by summing up how to survive in the scary wilds of the West: "The only thing you got going for you is your brain." Despite that, the contractor is still alive.

Blame it on the rain

CAMP VIRGINIA, KUWAIT - Weather is not my strongsuit. Coming into Iraq, I was delayed several days by sandstorms.
More recently, in three consecutive days here in Diyala my flights have been scrubbed by a sandstorm and torrential rains and spectacular lighting (in a region in the grips of a disastrous drought).

Fortunately we got to sit out on the gravel by the airfield for seven hours before the first cancellation and we were treated to a pretty spectacular artillery display. We did finally get out in the wee hours on the third day and I am now in the sandy first world splendor of Kuwait, where I await my next flight.

There’s hasn't been much to do but wait. The soldiers’ missions are all done, so haven't gone off base and I’ve written all I can about waiting.

Boredom is one peril I was not prepared for in a war zone.

Halloween every night

FOB NORMANDY, IRAQ – You’ve all heard of the American bases in Iraq that have Taco Bell, Burger King, decked out 24-hour gyms, etc. This isn’t one of them.

Forward Operating Base Normandy is a collection of dilapidated concrete buildings where stray dogs roam and the only workout space is a couple of pull-up bars and a 20-year-old stationary bike at the edge of a rocky courtyard.

While soldiers are the biggest part of the population here, their numbers are rivaled by the resident bats that fill the skies each night, flying low amid the floodlights to catch the many insects that also inhabit the base.

Sand is everywhere, most often sent airborne by the sultry desert wind, coating hair, eyes, and throat, and the PX’s main offering is empty shelf space (the only shampoo left the other day was made specifically for women of color).

The chow hall often serves its puzzling take on Chinese food. The drooping General’s Chicken here is more like Generally, Chicken (oh, for some good Chinese).

In other words, it’s probably closer to what war is supposed to be: an uncomfortable situation you’d rather get out of sooner rather than later.

Change of plans

BAQUBAH, Iraq - Looks like I get an all-expense paid trip to Germany. I guess it doesn't count as a trip if you live there. Either way, I still get my first beer to end what will by then have been a month-long drought.

Anyway, I thought I would be spending the next two weeks here in the sunny Sunni Triangle but I'm actually going to be following a group of soldiers finishing up a deployment from here all the way back to Germany, where they are based, then turning around and heading straight back to Iraq. Basically a 'coming home' story.

The good news is, when I get back I return to Baqubah for two weeks of missions with the new group of soldiers that is taking over. One soldier told me reporters who went out with them once never wanted to go out again. Good times.

Photos!

I've had some problems uploading photos onto blogger, so I have resurrected my Flickr site. I know you'll all be devastated to have another site to check while shirking your responsibilities at work. Here's the url: http://www.flickr.com/photos/druz

I didn't mean to put the Iraq photos next to the drag photos from a long-ago Spanish Town Mardi Gras, but there they are.

Non-sequitir for my Idaho friends. I was at the chow hall watching highlights of Boise State's destruction of Hawaii and a soldier behind me asked his friend, "Where's Boise at?"

His friend replied, "I don't know, man."

At least he didn't mention potatoes.

Scientific marvel

I've been down with some sort of bird flu/malaria/mad cow hybrid (self-diagnosed) the past few days, my sore throat not helped by air coated with soot from the oil fires the Iraqis let burn around the clock up.

Being sick on this assignment is especially difficult and annoying but I've been soldiering through, so to speak. A couple days ago I spent a particularly unpleasant hour in the office of the head of local police intelligence.

With my sore throat at full, badger-digging-his-den-in-my-gullet, throttle and snot rolling out of my nose on its own schedule, this dude smoked more than anyone I've ever seen. We were there an hour, I counted seven cigarettes (and his friend kept pace). With the ventilation being what you would imagine in Iraq, it was miserable.

I was actually kind of impressed. He must have some evolutionary mutation of his lungs because I'm not sure he ever breaths oxygen. I think the man runs on pure nicotine.

With luck, I'm heading out of here by chopper tomorrow to the more, er, lively province of Diyala, where I'm going to hook up with some soldiers on the last two weeks of their tour. Recently the area has been the unofficial capital of female suicide bombers, maybe some sort of twisted expression of equal rights.

Day 16, no beer. SOS (save our suds)!

My monkish, solitary existence is stretching into its third week and there’s a clear winner for thing I miss most. It starts with a b and ends with a hangover.

It’s all the more cruel to be at a German brewery one night and the next morning be plunged into the drink desert that is Iraq.

Rolling back from a mission the other day, the unmistakable smell of hops and barley permeated our armored vehicle. In the highway median, a crashed semi had disgorged its payload: thousands of cans of Heineken, strewn about the highway with no one to drink them. I nearly jumped out.

That’s how desperate this is, friends: right now, I would happily drink that Dutch goat piss.

And finally, just to be vindictive, somebody with a sick sense of humor stocks the chow hall coolers with non-alcoholic beer. Coors Cutter, anyone?

“That motherfucker had an RKG!”

In our most recent daily briefing (we have before each venture out of the base) sergeant explained dryly that there had been two roadside bomb attacks the previous day and the assassination of a Iraqi journalist. We are also regularly warned of the dangers of RKGs, Ruchnaya Kumulyativnaya Granatas – a Russian-made anti-tank grenade designed to fuck up the kind of armored vehicles we roll in.

We were off to visit a couple hospitals, not the most secure of places as three doctors have been murdered by insurgents this year. As we were heading back through the narrow streets of Kirkuk after the visits one I heard an unsettling exclamation from one of the soldiers in the armored truck I was riding in.

“That motherfucker had an RKG!”

As we passed an alleyway he had spotted an insurgent running toward us wielding a grenade. When the soldiers in the truck spotted him, he got cold feet, jumped in a car and got away. Had the gunner in the top turret swiveled back towards the alley a half-second later it could have been a bloody scene. The rest of the ride was quiet.

All of the soldiers in the convoy were in disbelief the guy didn’t throw his grenade and all told me how lucky I had been. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that someone was trying to kill me, but I suppose I’ll have to get used to that.

It capped two days that started in one of Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers and ended in a fake hospital.

Yesterday we rolled into the relative peace of semi-autonomous Kurdistan, where attacks against coalition forces are rare. We visited the National Red Museum in Sulayminayah, where the the lucky were beaten with cables and given electric shocks and the less fortunate raped and tortured to death. The dark, concrete cells were sinister and the recordings of actual torture sessions a little too real.

The bullet-pocked buildings were taken over during the first Gulf War and are now a kind of memorial to Saddam’s abuses toward the Kurds.

Having worked up an appetite, we headed to a buffet, Iraqi-style. Cardamom-spiced rice, kebabs, flatbread, garbanzo bean salad. Nice. As we headed back and blood-red sun set over miles of flat, barren desert, exactly as you would imagine dusk in the Middle East.
Today was a whirlwind tour of the ailing Iraqi healthcare system. We made two unannounced visits.

First we went to a jammed pediatric hospital – the only one in the province – where parents cradled babies in teeming hallway as they waited for a doctor. One of the frazzled doctors explained that they have only 120 beds and patients sometimes must wait days for help.
On the other end of the spectrum was a rehabilitation center we went, where the only things crowding the hallways were the echoes. After telling us how overworked they were and how much more money they need, the hospital’s top administrators took us on a tour.

Room after spotless room, there was new equipment, much of it still in plastic wrapping. An entire “children’s ward” was untouched – mattresses untouched, unopened boxes of toys. We found two patients.

“Why are there no patients?” I asked.

“Oh, they come in the morning and then leave,” said an administrator. It was 11:15 a.m.
An American doctor I was with explained that “fake hospitals” are common and a great money drain. Administrators get government money to open a hospital, see a couple of patients, and collect their paychecks.

I don’t know that I would take my kid to the pediatric hospital, but they were at least trying.

Mister, mister, mister!

(I've got some cool photos, but I'm having trouble uploading them. As soon as I figure it out, I'll get you photographic evidence that I am, indeed, in Iraq)

KIRKUK, IRAQ – “If the driver goes down, just push him to the side, pull the throttle and steer with the other hand.”

This was my advice as we headed on the hour and half drive to Irbil, a relatively wealthy enclave in the autonomous Kurdish zone north of Kirkuk.

I’ve been riding around in hulking armored vehicles known as MRAPs (mine resistant ambush protected vehicles) and humvees in full body armor and helmet. It’s not the most comfortable way to roll but I will certainly take it over, you know, death and dismemberment. I had a particularly surreal moment on the way to Irbil: rolling down a trash-strewn desert highway, with sand dunes to the left, run down squatter buildings to the right, a gunner up top looking for people trying to kill us and Tom Petty’s “I won’t back down” playing in our headsets.

I’ve been out in and around Kirkuk for the past three days (without incident, knock on wood) and I’m beginning to get a flavor of everyday life in this part of Iraq.

Kirkuk is a poor, ethnically diverse city of about 800,000 Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and a smattering of Christians and other groups. At night the horizon glows orange with light from flares marking the oil wealth that sidesteps this region.

I went with the team I’m embedded with to walk a Kurdish market for more than an hour, mingling with shoppers and vendors and interviewing them through a local interpreter.

Their wants are pretty simple: better education, jobs, security, a government that pays attention to them.

The outdoor market was buzzing and smells, from simmering fava beans to the raw sewage seeping into the streets were overwhelming and foreign. Some men wore traditional Kurdish headscarves with a pattern similar to a kefiyah, some women wore black head-to-toe abayas, while others wore modern clothes, including some fantastically garish outfits (several awesomely shiny gold and silver button downs) on some of the young, slicked-hair hipsters.

The buildings were in disrepair, the streets were filthy but the atmosphere was vibrant, with vendors selling everything from live chickens, killed on the spot for freshness, to electronics, to shoes, made by a cobbler on demand in a tiny outdoor booth with a pedal powered machine.
“Mister, mister, mister!” It’s the only English word many of the children know and they’re not afraid to use it. Some had also learned, less charmingly, “Give me dollar.” We were mobbed by kids mainly interested in the soldiers’ guns and my digital camera.

I’ve also spent a lot of time at the dilapidated government building downtown, where Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen politicians are trying to work out their differences and go ahead with local elections. Everyone has a long memory here and they will cite abuses going back to the Ottoman Empire to prove why they should get special treatment.

To the north, Irbil presented a stark contrast to Kirkuk. Irbil has thrived in Kurdistan, its wealth seen in modern buildings, sewage system, several colleges and relative peace. The Kurdistan Regional Government building is spotless, with marble and elegant winding staircases, a far cry from the government offices of their neighbors to the south.

I’ve been eating local as much as I can. One of the Turkmen brought a gift to the team I’m covering. It was Turkmen dolma and it was very different from the cold grape leaf wrap I’m used to. It was a hot, spice laden rice dish with rice and chopped meat stuffed into peppers, onions, squash and eggplant, as well as grape leaves. Wrap it all up in flatbread and yum. I’m going to try to get the recipe. Everything has been washed down by paint-stripper strong sweet tea or equally robust, cardamom-dusted coffee.

A less gastronomic account of what I've seen should be in the paper tomorrow. It's a pretty decent profile of an Iraqi man who fled Saddam by foot, bus and chocolate truck.

Mortaritaville

[Editor’s note: This is my first update in a few days because I have been struggling to get across Iraq. Shockingly enough, travel is difficult in a war zone, especially one that has sandstorms.]

BALAD AIR BASE, IRAQ – The bunker-like terminal shuddered. The soldiers laughed.
It was the first of two mortar attacks that day at this base, nicknamed ‘Mortaritaville.’ The rumble got louder and louder, little plaster snowflakes floated down from the ceiling, and no one seemed overly concerned.

“They’re getting closer,” one GI said, chuckling.

I had been in transit for two days and in the same terminal for 24 hours with no shower, no sleep and so far no flight to where I needed to go. Delirium was setting in and the explosions were surreal. We were surrounded by concrete blast walls and sandbags but it was still unnerving.
Hours before the attack the base loudspeakers had fired up, “This is the command post, this is the command post, there has been a full detonation,” a woman said blandly. Apparently a bomb had gone off somewhere in or near the base.

After waiting three days to get a plane out of Taqaddam, in western Iraq, I had finally got to Balad, a hop skip and a jump from Baghdad, where I needed to get my media credentials. Unfortunately, a lot of other people needed to get to Baghdad and I ended up waiting a while. Don’t take your time in the bathroom when waiting for a helicopter at the Catfish terminal. You get about 30 seconds notice without warning and I saw people come back from the can only to realize they just missed their flights. I managed to snatch maybe an hour of sleep on the dingy cots set up in the terminal but I was worried I would sleep through my flight, so stayed awake most of the time I was there.

I eventually did get out of Balad and on to Baghdad by Blackhawk helicopter (a few hours before two Blackhawks crashed in Baghdad, as Lisa informed me later). By the time I got to the Combined Press Information Center in the Green Zone a luke-cold shower and a bed felt like the Ritz. I was treated very well there by ridiculously helpful soldiers .

I also got a quick tour of the Green Zone, the crossed swords, the tomb of the unknown soldier (Iran-Iraq War), which looks a bit like a spaceship ready to take flight, and the well-fortified Iraqi parliament building. Driving is frenzied, trash is strewn about the streets, and you get your ID checked no less than 15 times each mile.

Yesterday I finally hopped on the last leg of the journey, an hour and a half Blackhawk ride over mud huts, herds of goats, waving children and miles of sand and scrub that ended in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, where I will be for the next two weeks.

After I got off the plane and young Airman cheerfully told me I had just barely missed a rocket attack.

“Nobody was killed, thank God,” he added somberly, adding that two soldiers were killed in a similar attack last week.

Right now I’m staying in relative luxury, with my own trailer room with AC, packed to the gills with sandbags outside with concrete blast walls beyond that. I should have lots to tell you about Kirkuk in the coming days as I head out with soldiers and civilian crews.

Stuck in the muck

The air was gritty last night as the wind kicked up and a sandstorm moved in. It blurred the lights, stung the eyes and, more importantly for me, grounded the plane that was going to take me to Baghdad.

So it looks like at least one more day here. I'm just thinking of it as an elaborate exercise in patience.

If you're interested in reading my stuff, assuming I get to Kirkuk eventually, you can go to www.stripes.com. As you can imagine from this post, I probably won't have anything in there for a few days.

"They really like shooting at us."

TAQADDAN MARINE BASE, IRAQ - As the C-17 dipped and rolled toward a concrete-soft landing here in western Iraq, the white lights went out and the cabin was bathed in a seedy red glow. I asked the Air Force crew woman next to me why the red-out and she cheerfully explained that white lights can be seen from up to 25,000 feet and "They really like shooting at us." A comforting start.

So here I am, not only in Iraq but immediately into my first snafu. The flight to Baghdad was full last night and there are no flights today, so I'm spending some quality time in the western desert. Fortunately, trying to work out logistics has taken all of my brain power and I haven't had time to worry about anything.

There are no colors here, only degrees of khaki. The sand and camo landscape is broken only by the occasional silver glint of barbed wire.

It's hot and dusty, of course, but the Ugandan guards are friendly (Some U.S. bases are guarded by Ugandan soldiers. Weird, I know) the American troops have taken good care of me, even when I ask dumb questions, which so far means almost every time I open my mouth (the Air Forcecrew could see I was starving and treated me to my very first MRE - I don't recommend the spaghetti).

Shocking news: the food is tasty. If we had a chow hall at work like this, I would eat there. There's about 15 different things to choose from, everything from egg rolls to pineapple pork to pizza. I can see why some troops who stay on base gain weight.

Well, time to go see if I can finagle my way out of here tonight or if I have to get ready for another cozy night in my barracks bunk bed.

One last weekend of beer

KAISERSLAUTERN, GERMANY - The trees are dappled with yellow and red and the air has a clammy chill here in central Europe. With the dip in temperature, some of the teenagers downtown have taken their schnaps-drinking inside. The sun came out today for the first time in about a week, but mostly it's been overcast and chilly for the past week. I've got just a taste of fall in Germany and that's all I'll get I'm heading to Iraq Monday. Time to get that German beer while I can.

It's a strange feeling, being on the cusp of the biggest assignment of my with none of my friends around, but I suppose that's what this trial by fire (with luck, not literally) is all about.

Body armor, helmet, ballistic glasses, typhoid shot, check. Bitches brew of excitement and fear in my stomach, check.

I'm headed to the northern city of Kirkuk, where the Statesman went in 2004. It sounds like a vastly different landscape now and it's a pivotal city, claimed by Kurds and Arabs alike. Eventually they'll have to vote on who controls it, which could be tricky, and I'll be covering the lead-up to that vote.

Luckily, the weather is balmy in the desert this time of year - the mercury has dropped to about 100 with a chilly 76 at night.

Frenchman down!

MUNICH – After a week of simulations and videos of all the bad things that can happen to me in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to bandage my hemorrhaging wounds, I felt like a few beers, preferably one liter at a time. So I called up your friend and mine, Guilhem, the unofficial French ambassador to the U.S. and southern France’s most eligible bachelor.

Guilhem was on a business trip relatively close by, so he drove over my way and we head to Munich for Oktoberfest. Every hotel, campsite, halfway house and homeless shelter in the city books up six months before the festival so, naturally, we showed up with no reservations and no plans — and kicked Oktoberfest’s ass.

With 100,000 rowdy drunks it’s like MADD’s worst nightmare — the world’s biggest AA meeting, without the treatment. It also means the lines are ridiculous.

You only get served beer if you get seated in one of the tents. People lined up at 5 a.m. to get a seat (they only start serving at noon) — we showed up at noon. We had to wait for an hour but when things were looking their grimmest Guilhem said something so charming or so unintelligible that the security guard let us in.

Inside the smoke-filled tent a brass band played a mix of Bavarian music and puzzling American choices. Lederhosen and traditional Bavarian frocks were the dress of choice. I felt underdressed. Eventually we found to seats at a picnic bench full of hammered teenagers. They were all between 14 and 16, smoking, hammered and still speaking better English than most Americans, despite being five liters deep.

We prosted our way through several liters of delicious Paulaner helles as the crowd disintegrated into drunken chaos. At one point a 250-pound skinhead sitting at an nearby decided he couldn’t be bothered to get up and started pissing under the table with dozens of people around him.

Guilhem, meanwhile, drank more beer that day than he probably has in the past year combined (He likes cider – typical.) As we walked home, Guilhem did not look well. We made a pit stop at a restaurant and he exorcised his demons in the bathroom. He came out looking like he had just added to the growing list of French defeats at the hands of the Germans and he urged me to stop drinking my beer because the site of it made him ill.

Having no reservations we made a go at sleeping in the Frenchman’s car, but his tiny Euro econobox proved a problematic bed. Guilhem went on a scouting mission and found a patch in a city park hidden by a square of hedges, where he pitched a tent and we probably slept better than everyone paying $50 a night to stay in a filthy hostel.

Ali J

HOOK, ENGLAND – I’ve spent the last two days getting kidnapped, shot at, hanging out with Al Jazeera, and drinking plenty of beer. Except for one crucial element, it should be great training for Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’m at a week-long training course that could be named “How not to get killed in a war zone,” though it goes by the more proper “Risk Assessment.” It’s taught by a group of ex-Royal Marines who don’t fuck around and will color their presentation on land mines with sentences that start with, “When I saw someone step on a mine…”

After this class, if one of you should take a fall after a big night in downtown Boise, you’ll be happy to know that I can check to see if your pelvis is broken.

The course takes place at a stately manor in the rolling countryside, a la 28 Days Later, southwest of London. Deer and cottontails prance on the acres of lawn and you can just make out the first of the zombies cresting the hill behind the pond (Kerry, you would die — or at least be really worried about dying).

I’m the only American reporter here and I think I’m looked at as a bit of an oddity, but everyone has been very friendly. At one point I was having pints with Kiwi, Lebanese, Kazahk, German, and British-Pakistani reporters all at the same table.

I’ve spent the most time with the three Al Jazeera journalists in the group, who are some of the most professional, engaged television reporters I’ve run into.

The funniest thing I’ve heard this week: “I’m so excited to be in England. I love the food.”

Cola-Bier

KAISERSLAUTERN, GERMANY - By now you all know about the questionable decision making that has left me days from heading to Iraq. Seems a waste to not record my experience there, so here it is, my latest crack at a blog. In my position as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan I’m going to places arguably less developed than Idaho and more dangerous than Louisiana, my last two stops.

Until then, I’m in the relative safety of Kaiserslautern, Germany, where the only thing I have to fear is the “Cola-Bier,” aka, the worst drink since the Prairie Fire.

I want to hear from everyone but keep in mind, it’s a public blog, so just don’t get me fired – I’m looking at you, Ben. So please drop me line to warm the cockles of my heart on those lonely booze-free Baghdad nights.