Two weeks later, we went to Karlsruhe to see D and meet his creation, which I am hereby naming Hal. We took the train, transferred in Cologne, and arrived an hour later than we thought we would. We were supposed to meet D at his place of work, but because of our lateness and the fact that we didn't have a phone number for him, we were worried about whether he'd still be there. As we exited the train station and got our bearings, he and his wife T were walking towards us! This was not the last time that D displayed an uncanny ability to meet up with us. He and Jack must have some kind of special bond, forged in the early days of their youth in the gritty underworld of Steeltown, USA.

As Jack and I hadn't eaten, we visited a small cafe/bakery nearby. For under €10, the four of us ordered the following:
3 Oranginas
1 Coke
2 meat sandwiches on freshly-made rolls with a (perhaps overly) generous schmear of butter
1 slice of fruit tart

We were flabbergasted by the reasonable prices of things. It was a world away from Brussels. In spite of the deliciousness of everything, the best part of the bakery was the bathroom. All the auxiliary stuff had names: Polly Dolly for the toilet bowl brush holder, Jacky Paper for the paper towel dispenser, and Lady Killer for the container for the Lady Bag shown at left. (If you click on the photo you can see that the graphic at the top is a revolver.)

After that, they went with us to check into our hotel, which we had picked out on the strength of the decent prices and the absolutely insane architecture. We arrived and got up to our room, which wasn't in the crazy part as those were much more expensive, but afforded us a great view of it. There were a number of helpful signs around to direct us to the beergarden, and so we headed down in search of some refreshment after our walk through town. Did I mention that despite D's prediction, it was not rainy and cool, but in the 80s and sunny? Probably one of the hottest periods all summer, which has largely been a bust weatherwise.

D and Jack ordered beers randomly off the menu. I queried waiter for suggestions and he picked out a brown beer for me. He asked if I wanted a small and I agreed. He did not ask the men-folk what size beer they wanted. They got half-liter glass steins, whereas I got something I could more easily wrap my delicate hands around. Sexism! The beer, it turns out, was made by the in-house brewery, and was quite good. The more we saw of the hotel, the more we realized it was some kind of massive complex of interconnected businesses, not all of which were in operation at the time (we saw a sign by the parking garage advertising electric cars, for example, and the four trampolines set into the ground (which was the ceiling of the underground garage) were in a state of disuse). D and T had to leave to go get Hal started up for the evening's festivities, but not before D had consumed all of his beer (as well as a taste of Jack's and mine) in about 20 minutes. Not quite as impressive as that time HHH, a known non-drinker, bet me $5 that he could finish a can of beer in 2 minutes and then he swallowed the thing down like water in about 15 seconds, leaving me feeling like a chump, but pretty good nonetheless. Jack and I finished our brews at a more leisurely pace, observing the other denizens of the garden and the architectural oddities.

Later we went to ZKM to visit Hal and meet up with D and T. D met us at the door, and claimed to have seen us approaching from a window one story above. Again, uncanny. The entrance space featured chandeliers that swung in various patterns and a spotlight that would follow patrons around and whisper words that they alone could hear. The piece in the background at left was a spiraling tower of Babel made of books. Hal spent the evening learning from the people who stopped by to see it, making sounds and projecting patterns on a screen based on the input it received. Later that evening, it was speaking Russian and discussing computational fluid dynamics with passersby. The saddest part was when it discovered that it couldn't understand why people cried.

After making sure Hal wasn't going to crash, we went out to dinner. We found a quiet spot nearby with a great waitress--the latter being another rarity in Brussels. The food was cheap enough that I suspected that quality would be sub-par, but we ended up getting good dark beer and delicious wiener schnitzel with heaping portions of spaetzel or fries. There was some discussion about how T can't drink much because she gets very giggly, which is why she mostly stuck to tea except for a few sips of the bubbly stuff. D helped her out with her beer, thankfully.

Back at ZKM, we decided to spend some time touring around. Being a multimedia museum gave it an interesting perspective that made it more "fun" than more traditional museums, where you look at something and perhaps someone more knowledgeable than you provides some interpretation in a writeup. There were many audio-visual displays, some of which you could interact with. One exhibit was entirely made up of video games that people could play using the original consoles. They had that same robot arm from the 1982 World's Fair, and this time it was writing out the entire bible on a long scroll in elaborate Gothic calligraphy. In one exhibit, 2 people (in this case Jack and I) entered a small room with 3 red walls and one made of glass. After a few moments, the lights came up behind the glass to reveal a small stage with furniture on it, and people were projected onto the glass panel in such a way that it looked like they were on the same plane as the furniture. Our images were also reflected on the glass, so we could "interact" with the characters. Which we did, although I don't remember how. Hopefully nothing lewd. Once we exited, we were greeted with applause: a TV monitor was embedded in the exterior wall of the box, and a camera had captured our gestures while a small crowd watched. I took a bow in front of my adoring fans.

There were two other museums attached to ZKM, and the one focusing on modern art was entirely given over to up-and-coming artists from Asia. Some of the works stretched the boundaries of what a large, publicly-funded museum would feature (in my experience): one room had water cascading from the ceiling onto a desk below, upon which a mouldering book sat open. Some of it was gimmicky, but most pieces were thoughtful. I found the whole thing to be an interesting experience, and much more lively than a lot of museums I've been to. We hung around until the guards kicked us out at closing time, 1 a.m.

Before leaving, D had to shut down Hal. It was just in time, too, because it had somehow tapped into the Red Phone and was trying to convince POTUS to push the button and annihilate the USSR (Hal was a few years behind the times in his history, but POTUS didn't notice the error).