+48° 35' 0.98", +7° 44' 12.21"

I wake up alone on the BierWagen. Which is to say that I wake on an old mattress, surrounded by plywood and beer-tapping equipment, with a picture of a large white rabbit, wearing sunglasses, looking down on me. It's an open question as to just how hungover I am, so I decide to postpone the moment of discovery.

Lying very still, I consider whether this place is indoors or outdoors. There's a plywood roof over my head, and the smell of stale beer and puke, which support the "indoors" argument, but there's a bright ray of light poking around the rabbit's face, and a very cold breeze, both of which suggest that I am in fact "outdoors." Eventually I remember that I'm in Strasbourg, France, and there's a hotel, where I'm supposed to be staying, that has four, maybe five rooms on my credit card, so I decide I'd better get going.

I crawl off the mattress and stand up. The hangover arrives, a wave of unsteadiness and constriction—not quite nausea, not yet anyway. Moving my head was not a good idea—I consider lying down again on that disgusting mattress and remaining perfectly still for the rest of my life, but then I think of those hotel rooms, and my credit card. I find an opening in the plywood and look around.

I'm in some kind of parking structure. Large motor coaches, the kind that transport tourists in style, are parked nearby. What's that? A tractor? A real farm tractor! Do they pull this thing with a tractor? Moving slowly, I climb down from the BierWagen and try to get a good look at it, the whole thing. It's sort of a cross between a carnival float and a a big blue plywood tank, and on the side there's another picture of a white rabbit wearing sunglasses, really big, and another one, in a shield. I vaguely remember arriving at BierWagen from this angle. The Rabbit Warriors were proud and excited, and the Danish girls laughed—I think they were Danish—but I have no idea what happened after that.

I'm still in the same itchy clothes—the clothes I wore on the long jet ride across the Atlantic—how many hours ago would that be now? My brain hurts when I try to think.

I walk down the ramps of the parking structure, and find a security guard who speaks some English. In my best French accent, I tell him I'm looking for the Hotel Mercure Quartier St. Jean, not the Hotel Mercure Gare Central, but he just looks at me blankly. I say it again, this time pronouncing the French names with a horrible American accent, and he nods eagerly and gives me directions. What the fuck. Anyway, I'm supposed to take Boulevard de Metz to Rue Déserte to Rue du Maire Kuss.

Out on the boulevard, people are rushing to work. My head is really hurting now, but I make my way across a big intersection and find my way to Rue Déserte, a narrow little street, barely more than an alley. If I walk with my left eye closed, the headache seems more manageable.

I pass a brightly colored store, with big windows. Jouets d'Occasion. That means Used Toys, doesn't it? There are two little dwarves in the window, I mean dwarf dolls. Did I see this last night?

Yes, I definitely remember this place—the drab narrow street, the brightly colored storefront, the big windows, the toys, even these dwarves. A memory comes rushing back: I see myself stepping through this window, stepping into the shimmering plate glass, entering the world of the dwarves...

But then I decide No, that's not a memory, more like flashback from a movie I saw once, one of the dozen or so movies I've seen like that, they keep repainting the collective dream in brighter and brighter colors. Or maybe I dreamt it last night, on the puke-stained mattress. Or maybe, in my hangover, I just had a microdream, right now.

Anyway, I'm quite certain that it never happened, that I never walked through this plate glass window, never followed those dwarves down into a musty basement. And I most definitely never opened that massive iron door, even if I was the only one tall enough to reach the latch. There's no way would I ever follow those dwarves down that stairway of ten thousand steps. It did not happen. Wasn't me.

Just how drunk was I last night? At least the windows aren't broken, that's a good sign.