1610397339 (N) by Anthony Sadler

Author:Anthony Sadler
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2016-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

“WOW, THAT IS A CRAZY STORY.” Lea seemed impressed by Alek’s lineage, and Alek began to feel proud of it. He felt his own journey echoed Grandpa Nick’s, the military providing the means to finally find his own history, and he was falling into a comfortable rhythm here. Each night he slept at Lea’s house; each day she drove him to another site in southern Germany.

She took him to Phantasialand, a theme park in Cologne for a familiar kind of fun, riding roller coasters and wandering through the huge parts of the park designed as world neighborhoods: Chinatown, Mexico, and the one Alek found the most interesting, Deep in Africa. There they rode the one everyone seemed to be talking about, the Black Mamba, an inverted coaster that passed through towers meant to mimic the mud-brick walls and jutting crossbeams of North African mosques. They banked through near misses, the whole ride designed to make you think you were going to run into some great danger, but then at the last minute, you’d bank hard off your course and be diverted to safety.

He was most taken with how everything in that section of the park all the way down to the bathrooms had the pointed arches he recognized from photographs of mosques. Everything was adjusted for history, for place and time. Walking through that part of the park was like walking through the souks of North Africa. The attention to detail amazed him. Stalls with thatched wood roofs, red dirt paths—he felt like he could be walking through a city in Tunisia, or in Morocco.

Each night he slept at Lea’s house, and each day she showed him something new.

He wanted to get soccer jerseys, so she took him to a huge sporting goods store in Mannheim, where he bought two for his brother Solon, the biggest fan in the family. Solon had been desperate to come on the trip, so Alek figured he’d take a few jerseys back for him. For himself, Alek bought a blue-and-red-striped Bayern Munich jersey, and had Lea ask the store to screen-print his favorite player’s name on the back. He liked it so much he decided to try and wear it every day. He would be wearing it four days later when the entire European press corps descended on him.

He was supposed to be with Lea for just a week, but it felt so good with her family, and they were so kind, and he was saving so much money, he couldn’t think of a good reason to leave. On his eighth day he heard from Spencer that he and Anthony were in Germany too, but up in Munich, and Alek was having too good of a time down south to leave.

On his tenth day, after coming back from a hike with Lea, he had a Facebook message from Spencer:

Headed to Berlin!

Alek still didn’t feel like leaving.

After his eleventh day:

Just met this weird rocker dude at a bar. We’ve changed plans.

We’re going to Amsterdam! Will keep you posted.

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