Nate in the E.U.

Post 10: All I Have Time For...

2008-08-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

So my sister came to Deutschland! It was a nice going away present to get to travel with her and show her some of the great things I have enjoyed about the country all summer. We traveled to Freiberg, where Brandon studied abroad last summer (made for a great tour guide), and we also spent some time in Köln.

Here are some pictures of us hiking.

Don’t be fooled by my position when taking the picture, I was leading the entire time. Actually to be honest, the mountain was more leading us. The incline was so steep we basically endured a controlled 3-meter fall down the mountain. Good thing we took the tram up and hiked down instead of the other way around!

I think we had gelato everyday that she was here.

My favorite cake in the entire world is Black Forest cake. My mom makes it for me on my birthday and I usually eat 5 pieces by the time I am one day older. Now if you know anything about German geography, you should know that Freiberg is located in The Black Forest. So as you can imagine, I was pretty excited to try some of the Schwartzfeld kuacke where it originated! Needless to say, after searching high and low for three days, we finally found a bakery on the last day that carried the cake (it was also at 9am in the morning). It was good… I mean it was okay… I mean, I think I like my mom’s better. Sorry Deutschland, don’t get your feelings hurt. Hey, you got her beat on brewing beer!

When we got back to Köln, we went to see a musical. Yeah, I know. However, it was the Queen musical, We Will Rock You, so not that lame, right? It has been playing in Köln for a few years now so I figured it would be something my sister would like to go to when she was here. It should be noted that I had absolutely no idea until I bought the tickets that the dialogue was all in German! So needless to say, I can’t comment too much on the storyline. The songs on the other hand were really good. There was a live band playing the music so it sounded great. The singers were probably the best in Deutschland, and definitely some of the best I have heard, and the costumes and sets were phenomenal. It was definitely on par with something I would imagine Broadway or London putting on (since I’ve been very close twice but never actually been to a production in either city). So basically, it was still fun to watch even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I could however tell that they solved the whole plot conflict by playing, “We Will Rock You” on Brian May’s (guitarist from Queen) guitar that busted out of a mountain or something and it just seemed really silly. Silly Germans.

Besides my sister, a few of our friends from our fraternity stopped by when they were in town – Brian Young, Trey Flowers, and Kyle Citrano. I didn’t get in until very late but Brandon treated them to some Kölsch, and then the next day we took them to get Schnitzel. Being with Kyle reminded me of how loud Americans are, but it also reminded me how much I missed the charismatic Texas spirit.

UPDATE: I love Oxford. I love this program. Climate change is bigger than you think. It's different- just different, and its a great business opportunity.....:-)

Post 9: God Bless The Swiss

2008-07-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve put off writing this post because I’m afraid I won’t be able to accurately recreate my weekend in Switzerland. I don’t think I can squeeze all the action, adventure, physical endurance, delicious chocolate, beautiful scenery, interactions with foreigners, and cows with bells on their necks into one easy to digest post. Oh well, can’t blame me for trying.

Save one trip to Colorado, a week in North Carolina, and a few nights in Santiago, I have never been privileged enough to spend a lot of time in the mountains. This became incredibly apparent to me as I was riding the train into Switzerland and just happened to notice some large rock formations out of the corner of my eye. What are those? The Alps. The mighty mighty Alps.

After spending six hours on the train, we decided it would be a good idea to spend our first day getting accommodated with Interlaken…on mountain bikes. I couldn’t tell you the distance we covered – it would be in meters anyway, and they never sound as impressive as they really are – but we rode up for approximately 3 hours and down in about one hour (always easier going back down).

The small town of Lauterbrunnen with its touristy waterfalls was a nice rest, and a place to get a cheap tuna sandwich (the only thing I ate that day). Here are some random pictures of the country side / Swedish homes that I took on the bike ride:

CANYONING GRIMSEL
The next day was when the action started! It’s hard to describe the sport of canyoning to someone. To be quite honest, for me it was putting your trust and money in the hands of a displace New Zealand as they lead you around rocks, off rocks, through rocks, over rocks, under rocks, jumping, climbing, repelling, grabbing, falling, yelling, laughing, smiling, adrenaline, cold glacier water in a canyon! The point of the activity isn’t so much as to pass through the canyon, as it is to do every scary, dangerous, and ridiculously fun thing while in the canyon! This post won’t even begin to illustrate the amount of fun I had- or how fast my adrenaline was pumping!

This was literally the first thing we did once we got to the canyon – repelling down 150 feet! I’m going to be honest, I had never repelled before in my life (much less used a carabineer for any purpose other than to decorate my backpack in middle school). Now that I’ve done it once, I refuse to ever use elevators again.

We did a lot of sliding down natural rockslides. Most of the time you couldn’t see where you were going, and our guide would just tell us to trust them. “Don’t try and look where you’re going or you’ll break your nose against a rock. Lean back and have fun” Haha okay! Every sentence they said ended with “ …and have fun”

I definitely did!

This is me jumping off a 25-foot cliff into a pool of 40-degree water.

Other activities included zip lining across crevasses, scrambling around huge rocks, and one of my favorites- scrunching up into a ball and being thrown down a rockslide into the water. “When we’re not canyon guides we work as baggage handlers- so we need to practice throwing bags. Act like a bag while we throw you in…and have fun”

The last thing we did was a combination rockslide and cliff jump. We basically stood on one rock and jumped about 3 feet across on to a rockslide that dropped us into another canyon pool. The entire day was filled with these types of seemingly impossible things! One girl in our group would always say, “No way am I doing that.” and then after she did it she would have the biggest grin on her face!

I don’t know if these pictures have done the experience justice, but trust me it was exhilarating, exciting, and 100% enjoyable.

WHITE WATER (LITERALLY) RAFTING
Regrettably I don’t have any pictures from my next little adventure in Interlaken, river rafting, but if you stick with me, I will do my best to explain how wicked awesome it was!
So the rate river rapids on a scale from 1-6, with 1 being the weakest and 5 being the limit for commercial rafting. Well, I definitely didn’t know if until after we were done, but the rapids we rafted on that day were all between 3 and 4! This definitely wasn’t a pleasant little float down a lazy river.

If I thought my adrenaline levels were high the day before in the canyon then I had no idea what rafting would be like. The safety instructions were more than “have fun” they were “learn these commands or you will fall out of the boat and have a good chance of drowning!” Haha awesome- I volunteered Brandon and I to sit up front.

Try and imagine the opening scene. There had been a big storm the night before so the clouds had gotten stuck in the mountains, and there was a nice layer of fog rising for about 4 feet off the river. We place our raft into the water and get in. We have about 30 seconds of floating before our kayak guide in front of us turns around and smiles. Immediately we plunge into rapids. “Row left! Lean right! Stop- get down! Row left! Brace yourself!” Our guide would yell commands one after the other and we had to react in a millisecond or we’d get tossed over board. The ice-cold water would mercilessly slap against our raft (and in our faces) as we slammed into rapids. The water was straight from the glacier so it was ice cold, and my hand that hung on to the safety rope was freezing within 5 minutes. I would say for every 30 minutes we had maybe 5 minutes where we weren’t just getting annihilated by rapids! It was so intense and sooooooo fun!

There was one area in particular that I loved. It was called something inappropriate but I will let you use your imagination and only hint – it rhymed with “The Hubble Bucker” and the first word is “double”. It was named this because it started right when you dropped our raft in the second time (had to move around a fish reserve) with a six foot drop (1) then as soon as that was over a giant rock would suck your raft straight to it (2). If you didn’t lean into the rock, it would flip your raft over, and it had many times in the past! This was probably the most intense 2 minutes of my entire life! Between the yelling of my guide, the physical dexterity required to survive the huge drop and quick paddle direction change, and not to mention the panicked glances to make sure no one had fallen from the raft, it was probably the closest I will ever be to serving in the military!

SERENDIPITY
I know that is a title to a horrible horrible chick flick, but it is the best word I can think of to describe this really cool event that happened this weekend. We had met a family from Indiana while rafting and became quick friends with them like most people do in dire situations. Anyway, they were planning on going to Frankfurt that evening, and we told them we were going to stay another night. Well long story short, and thanks to my hang gliding adventure being canceled (low clouds), Brandon’s misdirection’s, and their change in plans we ran into them at the Freiberg train station. The thing is my brothers, when I say run into, I mean we were getting on the same exact train car that they were exiting in a town that 8 hours before, when we had met, neither of us had planned on going to! How cool is that?

Okay, you’re right it would be a lot cooler if it was some hot Swiss chick who was going to marry me and give me citizenship so I could eat delicious chocolate all day and be a river rat on the weekends. Not that I’ve dreamt of that every night since coming back…

EUROPEAN HAIR CUT
This is another thing that would be much better illustrated with a picture, but I’m not (quite) that much of a narcissist.In short, I very recently got paid and so decided to finally cut my hair. Trust me, or Matt Kiesel who saw me a week ago, it really needed it!

I can’t tell you how scared I was to get my hair cut here. Some people walk around with multiple color stripes in their hair, mullets down their necks, or just weird bangs! Needless to say, my hairdresser, who didn’t speak English (good thing I brought in a picture of myself [okay so maybe a little bit of a narcissist]) did a really good job. Although there was one point where she had stopped after only trimming the hair in front and asked, “Das gut?” Fearing that I was going to receive a 15-dollar euro mullet, I quickly said “NEIN! Cutin ze rest of mein hair!”

Other than that misunderstanding, it was the most precise haircut I’ve ever received in my life. She measured every hair she cut against another cut hair probably 3 or 4 times. Either the German attention to detail reaches all industries, or she knew that Americans tend to tip when Europeans don’t!

Cheers to you for reading this far! I love and miss everyone in the United States, and will be home in no more than 33 days. Not that I’m counting…

Post 8: July Foureign

2008-07-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in the personal records of Senator Joseph McCarthy, there is a long list of “Things that are Un-American.”* Although I have not looked at this list in sometime, I think I remember learning that the number twelve offense is getting your hair cut into a Euro-mullet (short bangs cut into a diamond point in the front, very long hair on the back of the head with 3-6 chunks died different shades of pink and blue).

Luckily I did not partake in that un-American activity. However, I am guilty of the number three offense- spending the 4th of July in a foreign country!

Actually, this weekend was a lot of fun! Granted this was the first time in 21 years that I did not see a single firework explode, but there were lots of other elements to this weekend that added up to an…explosive time.

After work on Friday we picked up “The DFW Firecracker” himself, Matthew James Kiesel, who had just flown into Cologne from London that afternoon. Seeing my old roommate, and someone who I had spent a considerable amount of time with for the past year, for the first time in almost two months was certainly a great experience. I felt kind of like the annoying uncle when I got out of the car to get his bags, “Ohhhhh Matthew, I think you’ve gotten taller!”

That night we were invited over to Herr Blasé’s house (the CEO of igus) to experience an American cookout – German style. Although I did not eat as much as I did at the igus volleyball tournament, I certainly helped myself to as many hamburgers, sausages, helpings of kartoffelsalat, and glasses of Kolsch that they would offer me. Just trying to be a good guest! I know that the four of us (me, Brandon, Anthony, and Matt) had a great time being guests in his house (which is awesome!) We had some great conversations about international politics and some TCU talk (neither which I will shy away from). For those of you who don’t know, Herr Blasé went to TCU for his undergrad and MBA in the late 70’s early 80’s. He’s stayed up to date on everything happening in the business school and on campus, so it was great to talk about teachers, but a little sad to have to break the news to him that they tore down the Student Center. Rest in peace, student government offices.

There are two settings for conversation that I enjoy immensely. 1) Sitting outside at a Tex-Mex restaurant with a margarita and queso dip 2) Anywhere that resembles anything close to the beauty of the German countryside, and German food. Clearly the secret to good conversation with me is having food and/or alcohol present!

Saturday we went to The RheinKulture music festival in Bonn (about a 50 minute train ride away). We had known about this music festival since one of our first days of work, but honestly I didn’t know what to expect. One of our co-workers is a DJ for electronic music – his stage name is tüttechips – so that’s how we even found out about it. There was tons of people there- almost 200,000!

Here are some pictures:

This guy wasn't suppose to be in the picture.

PiKapp International Scholars

I think I mentioned this in the last post, but I have been trying to see Ben Folds live since I was a junior in high school. It was great finally getting the chance to see him, but I was really disappointed with the crowd. I was probably 1/7 people (of the 30,000 packed around that stage) who knew the songs he played. He tried to be funny between songs, or do his typical routine of getting the audience to be a back up chorus to his songs, but they all failed. Everyone was there to see the band after him, something called like SchillerSwainRammstein. Sadly he did not play Philosophy, Andrew. Regardless it was awesome to hear him perform live!

This weekend is The Christopher Street Celebration, or gay parade, in Cologne (which is a pretty funny time to have a friend come visit!). The PDA between all couples (gay and straight) seems to be a lot more frequent this weekend – which is a ton! Germans get a rap for being cold or insensitive, but from what I’ve seen here, they aren’t afraid to show their significant other how much the love them (or their neck, ear, etc.) in public. I think being in Cologne this weekend might have tested Kiesel’s catholic school roots! Haha

Short week before an expensive trip coming up.

*I’m completely making that up

Post 7: Median

2008-07-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

These are some pictures from the night Germany beat Turkey to advance to the Euro 2008 Championship. Yes, those are riot police!

For those of you keeping track at home, I have reached the half way point of my exile in Europe. This seems like it would be an appropriate time to sum up all the funny stories, cool experiences, and little tid bits about traveling abroad. Unfortunately for you, bored college student at work, I don't have as much time to write such an update. This will have to do...

Since living in Germany I have:

consumed the best beer in the world - Hofbrauhaus Dunkel
had the best mustard in the world - any mustard anywhere here
ate a lot of gelato (it's a European obsession)
enjoyed a lot of yogurt- or joghurt (Blutorange [blood orange] being my favorite)
drank some disgusting amount of carbonated mineral water
Ironed more clothes than I ever have in my entire life x 2
Gotten use to pushing a button to flush a toilet
made spaghetti approximately 16 times
driven a car only once
not touched anything remotely close to Mexican food
etc. etc.

OTHER THINGS

I went to The Museum Ludwig in Cologne on Saturday. It was a really great modern art museum with a great collection. A couple Picassos, some Salvador Dalis, and a ton of German work. I've started to really appreciate all of the culture in Cologne. I mean, on a normal night running by the river this is what I pass: a chalk artist (every week night) in front of the Dom, a couple people protesting China, some people protesting conflict in Israel, a drum group, and on the weekends there are always street performers like this guy who juggles fire, or those really annoying people who pretend to be statues. There are only a little over one million people here, but it's worlds ahead of DFW as far as appreciating individual expression. I mean yeah the Main Street Arts Festival is cool and all, but c'mon...

Actually, the HR manager at igus who I sometimes have a difficult but always respectful relationship with told me that he stayed very close to The Modern in Fort Worth but figured a museum in Texas wasn't worth going to! Haha- I told him I understood, but thought The Modern was one of Fort Worth's redeeming things. He also said that since I've been to Europe and have already been to Washing D.C., "I can die now". The directness of the translation caught me off guard! Haha

THE FUTURE

Tomorrow will be my first 4th of July not in the United States. The CEO of igus, Herr Blase, which may or may not be reading this (depending on his Google Alerts, right?) has invited us to his house. He has promised hamburgers, and I can stay that although I don't necessarily miss American food, a hamburger sounds great right about now! Matthew Kiesel will hopefully be in attendance, and I am incredibly excited to see him while he is still employed (just kidding). There is a music festival on Friday where a whole bunch of German bands are playing. There's only one artist I know and that is... wait for it...Ben Folds! I've been trying to see him in one form or another since I was a junior in high school, so how crazy is it that I will see him in Germany?

Next weekend we will be taking an extended trip to Interlaken, Switzerland. I'm trying desperately not to get my hopes up, but here is my tentative schedule of events: Friday: canyoning -Saturday: white water rafting -Sunday:hang gliding - all in the Swiss alps.

If I survive, then you can be jealous.

I'm starting to realize I really should use my Americaness more to my advantage. It is a great excuse to be ignorant, naive, and rude! I usually use it only in defensive situations. For example if a big German thinks I cheat at volleyball or a girl's boyfriend at a club is upset about me speaking Spanish to her, I say " Spreche Kein Deutsche!" and it's like everything okay. However, I'm starting to think I should use it on the offense now. What if I just demand free refills, or acted dumb to the exchange rate and paid .63 less for everything? "Uhhh...I'm American. No habla German! ...YEAH! AMERICA!"

Post 6: Are you going somewhere? Or did you get lost in Amsterdam?

2008-06-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

FUNNY ARTICLE: American Embassy warns Americans abroad of danger post football games

I think the word of this post will be “romanticized”. Here is how I would use it in a sentence: “Man, I really romanticized the idea of going to Amsterdam, but in reality, it kind of sucked.”

The life of a backpacker is one that I will not be able to lead, and find difficult to understand. Don’t get me wrong, I love taking trips, and I have especially loved my time in Europe. Everyday I find myself thinking about how I could move over here after I graduated, or the possibilities of jobs abroad. However, I could not spend six months in Europe without set plans. Never. Here’s a quote from a girl I met in this weekend’s hostel, “Yeah, I mean, I’ve been gone for like five months now…[counts on fingers]… I think. I want to you know, like see my mom again. Maybe I will get a job too. I don’t really have any money.”

When I was sixteen I dreamed of being this person. I wanted to be the rogue traveler who doesn’t care about anyone or anything and is just out to experience life in a foreign country. However, when you’re 21 and you’re sitting across from this person and they smell really bad, and look a little sad, and have no direction in their life, and no plans for the rest of the day but to smoke out the hostel, you realize that the person you dreamed of when you were 16 really isn’t that cool and would probably get really strange looks in public places.

Needless to say, if you can’t infer from the previous paragraphs, this past weekend’s travels were a series of ups and downs.

The drive to Noordwijk, the beach city where we stayed in The Netherlands, was awesome. The view from the car was nothing but large green trees, fields of flowers and various crops, and of course windmills (the traditional and wind energy kind [!]). The Netherlands is probably one of the most fertile places in the world. Seriously, you could bury a cigarette butt and with the next rain a tobacco plant would sprout!

The HUGE flower market in the middle of Amsterdam

The highway signs here do not have the cardinal directions on them- just the cities. You’d have to study your geography well to know that Schiermonnikoog was west of Noordpolderzijl. Good thing there is Google Maps.

The Dutch language made reading the signs pretty amusing though. Dutch is like German but without the vowels. How do you pronounce a word with a “j” and a “d” right next to each other? When you hear people speak Dutch, it sounds like they are talking backwards! For example, say this next phrase out loud really fast-

“Yed nick dub stan wurd vey”

That means, “I like wearing wooden shoes when I stroll through my garden.” Good job; now tell all your friends you know Dutch!

On the way in we stopped at a fine American dining establishment…McDonald’s. Although this might not be a big deal for anyone else, I had not consumed a single thing created by McDonald’s in 4 years- but I did it, I broke my fast for some of that greasy goodness! Some things of note: only 1 free ketchup packet, no free refills, unwrapped straws handed to you from some mysterious compartment below the cash register, and only cash accepted (surprise, surprise!).

Speaking of money, my problems with the banking system here continue. I really doesn't make any sense to me that when I withdraw money from my bank on a Thursday that transaction is not on record when I print out my statement from the bank on a Monday. If I made the transaction at Dresdner Bank's ATM then why does it not update my Dresdener bank account?!

This is the only explanation: The ATM is really just a computer that logs all of the transactions and then at the end of the day prints out a 50 meter long piece of paper with a list of all the transactions done by everyone. An employee then takes that 50 meter long piece of paper and fills out by hand an individual withdrawl form for each person that used the ATM. He then puts those slips in the inbox of the secretary who will enter them into the computer the next morning. The computers of course will be down for daily maintence from 8-12, so she might finish 1/4 of the slips. Okay, sorry.

Noordwijk is best described as sleepy beach town. As Brandon and I were exploring the area close to the hostel on the first night, we actually pasted by a senior citizens center where they were having some kind of crazy party. With a beautiful beach, cool Dutch homes, and a relaxed community, it seemed like a perfect place to retire.

Check out that sign - no native americans on horses or teepee allowed!

If Noordwijk were the perfect place to retire, than Amsterdam would be the perfect place…to be damned to hell. Okay, I’m ragging on it too much, it was actually really cool. The architecture was very classical modern (?) and every building was different. The canals running through the city streets were a nice touch, and of course there were lots of trees and plants. However, just like when I was 16 and imagined a backpacker as a cool hero figure, I always put Amsterdam on this pedestal. I thought it was this uber trendy liberal Mecca where yeah, marijuana and prostitution was legal, but it wasn’t a big deal. I thought the people would look like me, and be really friendly and outgoing, want to talk to you about world events, or like be nice or something, I don’t really know. What I found in Amsterdam was just a very dirty, sleazy city that sold itself to tourists looking to get stoned and buy hookers. Every gift shop (which there were thousands) had three main staples: wooden shoes, stuff with pot leaves on it, and stuff with sexual innuendos. The coffee shops did not feature the inviting and “cool” crowd that I always pictured. The usual occupants were either strung out & smoked-stupid locals, or tourists sporting one of the really annoying t-shirts bought from the closest gift shop. The Red Light District made me want to take a shower. Although my only other encounter with a prostitute was in NYC and she was possibly not a she, I wasn’t prepared to encounter good-looking prostitutes. Whenever you see them on COPS you never feel sorry for them because they don’t look like a cute girl that could go to TCU.

Of course I’m not going in to much detail about the fun parts of the weekend or the cool parts of the city, but all that is on my mind presently is how I blew so much money on such a disappointment. Maybe I am just becoming sick because I’m slowly growing more and more conservative the longer I am in Europe (I’m afraid that by the time I get back I might second guess who to vote for in November…just kidding!)

Needless to say, we canceled this weekend’s trip to Belgium. Money must be saved for the big trip to Interlaken, Switzerland where one of us may not come back alive.

The European Championship is heating up and getting incredibly exciting. On Wednesday there is a huge match between Germany and Turkey. There are a lot of Turks in Germany (probably Koln especially) and I would probably be lying if I said that they assimilated gracefully. Let’s just say it will be incredibly interesting Wednesday depending on who wins. Think of Ohio State vs. Michigan, but instead of being a state away, the colleges are in the same exact town! If I go to a public viewing, I will probably wear a bulletproof vest.

Work is going well. My only real complaint is how boring all of my coworkers are! The graphic designer, Patrick, is really the only cool one from the entire Communications department. Surely he must be an icon for all German women, and the envy of all German men!

….thanks for the beer, Patrick.

Since I will be staying in Koln this weekend, I will post a little sooner than I usually do, and hopefully have some more pictures of this fair city, and some more insights on my observations of Deutschland, etc.

Thanks for reading.

Post 5a: Munich Exposed

2008-06-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to write this update for quite some time now. I can blame my tardiness on a few things, but the only legitimate reason is that the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament is starting to heat up. Is it weird that I root for Deutschland and Nederlands, but I picked Portugal to win? Answer: yes.

I have a lot of pictures for this update, and Blogger is a pain when it comes to formatting around pictures so to make it easier on myself and those that hate reading what I write, I’ve broken the post into two sections – pictures, and comments. So all my friends can read the first post, and my relatives who don’t mind my boring gibberish can read the second!

Museum in Munich

"The Tent" hostile where we stayed

Pinakothek der Moderne

BMW Werlt museum

Olympic Park

Englischer Garten

Shloß Nymphenburg

Dachau

And now for your viewing pleasure, the inside of The Hofbrauhaus- the greatest place on earth!

Post 5b: Munich Explained

2008-06-18T04:37:00.000-07:00

München, etc.

It would be pretty difficult for me to describe to you what walking down the streets of Munich is like. There are such a wide variety of people and things going on around you that it’s hard to put your finger on what exactly makes Munich such a cool place. This metaphor will not do the city justice, but I will try to compare it to Austin, TX. If you’ve been to Austin, you know that it is a world of its own within the state of Texas where the people pride themselves on being from Austin, but not necessarily Texas. Munich is the same way in that the people there are first Bavarian and second German. We happened to be there while they were celebrating the city’s 850 year anniversary so we were treated to a lot of street vendors selling pretzels and people wearing traditional lederhosen and other dress.

The youth hostel we stayed in was called The Tent and I highly recommend it to any young person who goes to Munich. It was basically a large tent set up in the botanical gardens about 15 minutes from the heart of town. It was incredibly cheap and incredibly fun because it was pretty much like summer camp- sleeping in a big tent with 150 strangers. We met some girls from Texas (we could tell in a second because they were passing a wine bottle- real classy) who actually knew a couple people we knew from TCU…small world, right?

Pinakothek
My favorite thing in Munich was the Pinakothek der Moderne art museum. As you can probably guess, it was a modern art museum, but it was hands down the best one I have ever been to. The Tate Modern in London was cool because it was free and had a handful of famous works, however, the Pinakothek had almost twice as much stuff! They had the usual modern paintings, sculptures, media exhibits, but they also had car, furniture, jewelry, and interior design. That picture of the large ice thing is a BMW hydrogen car completely incased in ice. Talk about a cool exhibit! The other one is a whole room (with hanging chairs and stuff) made from zip ties! There’s much more I could talk about, but there’s also much more to this blog.

Englischer Garten and Hofbrauhaus
The Englischer Garten was legit even if the pictures don’t make it seem like anything special. If you’re a fan of Central Park then you really need to go to Munich and see this park because you will quickly change your mind. The Englischer Garten is much bigger, still in the heart of the city but without those weird rock things, and with a river running through it!
If the Englischer Garten was one of my favorite outdoor places then The Hofbrauhaus was hands down the best place indoors. If you have seen the movie Beer Fest or have an imagination at all then this place is the stereotypical German restaurant. There’s a life band playing polka music, there are people wearing lederhosen, good looking girls in those beer maiden costumes walk around giving you pretzels, and the beer comes in one liter glasses. It could be heaven.
While I was at The Hofbrauhaus, I actually ran into a KState alumni (and by ran into I mean accosted in the gift shop.) It was really cool to be in Germany talking about Kansas State football, and seeing if he knew my parents. Of course he claimed he knew my mother, but by the look his wife gave him I was guessing it was a beer-influenced joke. I also talked to a nice Englishman who was somewhat sloshed from half a liter and told me all about how his second wife didn’t make top marks at Essex university because she was spending too much time at his flat. Then he told me he knew Tony Blair. Liar!

Dachau
We couldn’t spend an entire summer in Germany and not visit a concentration camp museum so we decided to take a day trip to Dachau- one of the first camps. I think I could probably write five blog posts just about this one experience. It was incredibly interesting/eye-opening/humbling/disgusting. The museum did an excellent job of explaining how Hitler came to power and how the work camps turned from temporary residence for a maximum of 8,000 people to a death trap of 35,000 – much better than my high school history teacher at least. I must give a lot of credit to the Germans who put together this museum because they didn’t gloss over the holocaust at all. They told it like it was with all the horrible stories included- something the U.S. isn’t the best at doing (I think there was one paragraph in my history book about imprisoning Japanese U.S. citizens after Pearl Harbor).

I posted some pictures although obviously they don’t mean anything unless you go there and put yourself in the shoes of the prisoners…or even the guards. As I walked through the museum, I wondered what it would be like to see your family’s name displayed as either a prisoner or as a Nazi general- I mean, WW2 was not that long ago. I feel like too many words would ruin it for me. I don’t want to try and rationalize it in my mind because I don’t want to let go of the emotion I felt while visiting.

Misc.
I want to say a few things about my last entry because I got a lot of responses from it. It’s actually kind of funny because my German co-workers who read the blog (thank you, Google Alerts) thought I might have been a little critical of Germany, whereas my friends and family in America thought that I was being a little critical of the U.S.! I am incredibly proud of myself for finally accomplishing that right amount of critical sarcasm so no one really knows how I feel!
If I could attempt to form some kind of response, however, I would say that being in Germany has made me both appreciate the way of life in the U.S. but also understand that it is not perfect and could definitely be improved.

For example, I find it incredibly ironic that in the United States every politician claims they are a die hard Christian who believes in family and Christian values and the church, etc., however no one seems to want to save our decaying social security and medical care systems, we still have the death penalty, and we aren’t afraid of war. I guess when you compare what we say and what we do it seems a little hypocritical. I don’t know enough about European politicians to pass judgment, but their governments seem to have much more respect for social justice and citizens’ rights but not such an emphasis on religion. I don’t know- kind of interesting.

I was wrong about the taxes. I thought that it was just a base percent, like everyone loses 50%. Nein. It’s much more of a gradual scale, and I think it is better then the U.S. system where we clump people into brackets. Or at least I would think that until I started making enough money to qualify for losing 50%!

Banking here is atrocious, though! The check card that they gave me (called a maestro card) is hardly accepted anywhere. This is hard for me because I never carry cash in the U.S. There are charges attached to everything. Using a generic ATM is automatic 5 euro charge. Transferring money to a U.S. account is like a 40 euro charge (probably somewhat the U.S.’s fault though). If you don’t check your account balance at a terminal (separate from an ATM) once a month then they charge you. You can’t make changes to your account over the phone or at another branch- you must go to your local branch. Internet banking is all in German and requires a separate ID number then the other three they originally give you. sjfhdsjkfhjkadghsjkieru!!! Okay so German engineering is great. Awesome roads and industrial machinerary, etc. but the information technology I’ve seen so far is not too savvy. I feel like an ebusiness major who spoke German could make millions here! Too bad I don’t sprechen…

“Bitte” (pronounced “bit – uh”) is a funny German word. The translation dictionaries define it as “please” but the people in Germany use it for so much more than when asking politely. They say “bitte” after you say “danke” kind of like a you’re welcome, and they also say it as a question like “please tell me what you just said”. So here’s a typical conversation between myself and a German who is translating the word “bitte”

Nate: “Okay, that sounds great! Danke.”
Deutschlander: “Please.”
Nate: “What?”
Deutschlander: “Bitte?”
Nate:“Please what?“
Deutschlander:“Nothing.“
Nate:“Oh, okay... thanks.“
Deutschlander:“Please.“
Nate:“Bitte“

Prost!

Post 4: Wolleyball

2008-06-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I just got paid today. The tax scale in Deutschland is fair. It's still high (comparatively) but I think it's a good system. More on that later. We are going to München this weekend, and if it doesn't rain too much, it will be amazing. Expect a lot of pictures!

My run home from the river tonight was straight out of Joey Parr’s next short film. So I start walking back home down this side street so I can avoid all the well-to-do Germans who dine in the riverside cafes, and this weird bag lady just starts yelling at me. I’m talking like top of her lungs and as shrill as can be. Naturally I like to avoid confrontation with foreigners; much less scary homeless women so I put in my earphones at walk down one of the more populated shopping streets. A great Silver Jews tune comes on my Shuffle so I start running. No more than twenty meters in front of me there are some guys sweeping the street and they start signaling at me. Once again, I have no idea what they are saying so I just keep running down the middle of the path. In about thirty seconds I hear what my earphones have blocked- a city street cleaner barreling towards me. I’m not kidding when I say that this machine was huge and took up the entire road so I literally could not do anything but run from it, and it was going really fast! So as I’m running away from the possessed machine to the closest street intersection, I almost get blind sided by a Mo-Ped, THEN when I make it to the other side of the street like nine pigeons take off 5 meters in front of me and almost clawed out my eyeballs! This all happened within about 2 minutes which was more or less the exact length of the song. When I took my headphones off and decided to walk instead of run the rest of the way, the bizarreness was over.

INDIAN JONES and THE CINEMA of GERMANS
On Friday night, Brandon, Anthony (our third roommate from Rhode Island) and I went to see the new Indian Jones flick at a theater that played movies in English (or Englisch). A typical German movie theater seems to be like our Movie Taverns- they sell really over priced food and alcohol. The previews were pretty interesting though (to say the least). A lot of advertisements. A lot of scandally clad women riding ice sculpture horses in advertisements. Although I don’t want to waste this blog post on movie reviews, I will say that while the new Indian Jones was entertaining, it was not what I would call a “good movie”. It was basically George Lucas and Steven Spielberg trying to cash in by using old ideas from old movies. Also, I couldn’t care less for Shy LaBoof, and if they make him the next Indian Jones I will be more upset than when Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died.

WOLLEYBALL
The real “meat and potatoes” (if you will) of this weekend was the annual volleyball tournament sponsored by igus. I could go into incredible amounts of detail about how the whole event was set up (you can read more on the igus blog) but I think I will leave it at this…free food and free beer.

Here is a catalog of what I consumed in 8 hours:

3 Bratwurst mitt senf (with mustard)
1 heaping plate of sauerkraut, carrots and potatoes
2 pork chops
1 fillet of chicken (if only it were Chic-Fil-A)
5 pieces of bread
1 strawberry cake
2 ice cream cones
2.5 liters of German beer

BEST. DAY. EVER.

Oh yeah, we played volleyball too. We were really good and actually got 4th place out of 40 teams total. I was a stud and stuffed a German above the net. Here are some pictures for your viewing please:

LOOK LOOK! It’s the “I Like Turtles” kid! I tried to interview him and get him to say “I like turtles” in German so I could post a reply on YouTube and get more hits than my presidential videos (if that’s possible) but he was scared of me and vice versa.

I sent this video out to all of my coworkers

That night we went to a club with our coworkers to celebrate our “victory”. ( FYI, Clubs in Germany don’t have air condition. Heck, no one has air conditioning!) I think it is safe to say that we all had a really fun time. Although I did not end up speaking Spanish like I had hoped I did still make a fool of myself. There was this girl there who I thought looked exactly like Kelly Ferguson…so of course I danced with her for a long time!

Needless to say afterwards all of my great friends had a fun time recounting how I danced with some creepy 40 year old woman who really looked nothing like Kelly! Sorry Kelly…and Cohlby.

Sunday Brandon and I wasted the day away at a local beach. These pictures don’t really do it justice unfortunately. I really like that although Cologne is a pretty big city you only have to drive 20 minutes to find a nice beach with people out riding bikes or barbequing, and of course all of the naked German children you could never want to see!

EURO 2008
The UEFA Euro 2008 soccer tournament is going on right now and Cologne is going nuts. There are so many different nationalities here that every night there is always some celebration going on after a victory- always car horns honking until 4 am! It is a huge deal when Deutschland plays and since I have money on them to win most all of their matches, I hope they do really well in this tournament!

Here’s an example of some of the free branded stuff igus loves to make. It’s a USB soccer player. Pull off his head and there’s 512 mb underneath!

UNRELATED SUBJECT
German is ~~communist~~. Okay, not really, but the longer I work here the more I find out about the political and economical climate and it really surprises me. Here are just some random thoughts and facts, etc.

All of the labor rules are made with the worker in mind. Walmart actually got in huge trouble with the German government because they were breaking the law by trying to enforce some kind of new employee rule without the approval of the employees first.
I'm getting 5 days paid vacation this summer
Our coworkers HAVE to take off 3 weeks in a row sometime between middle of June and end of August
It is probably impossible to get a job in Germany without belonging to a union, and the unions are huge. For instance, there is only one union representing everyone working with metal, and if this union decides to call for a strike than a substantial part of the German economy stands still.
It is illegal to work 2 jobs
Their unemployment rate is 12% and their real wages are incredibly low compared to their wages
In Germany, there's a general ban on working on Sundays and holidays.
Workers in the west are still having significant amounts of their paychecks going to help rebuild east Germany

Now, I should make a disclaimer that I can see how this isn’t exactly bad- it just makes for a stagnant career in a stagnant economy. The typical German works at a moderate wage level for his entire career, and doesn’t change jobs nearly as many times as Americans do. Of course, they also have less stuff, better social security and college is really cheap here. Basically while Americans are killing themselves working three jobs to put their kids through college and try to retire with some money, Germans are working the average 37 hour week, traveling to Mederterrian beaches every summer, and just kind of chillin’ with a cigarette in their hand. My ideal would be to take the best of both, but unfortunately the beer is much better in Germany!

This is a really interesting paragraph I found on a blog from a German Living in the US:

"Generally speaking, the average living standard in the US is considerably higher than in Germany. More people own their home, houses are bigger, people own more luxury items and have more disposable income. Two caveats are in order: first, the variation in the US is a lot larger, and the poor in the US are poorer than the poor in Germany. Second, as all Germans will hasten to point out, quality of living is not determined by the number of luxury goods alone: Germans have a lot more vacation time, better mass transit, and much fewer worries about health insurance. "

Anyway...

The site counter I’ve set up at the bottom of this page is off the charts. Mom, stop checking this every hour! But seriously, if you think something is interesting or funny, or inappropriate then please leave a comment…just so I know you care.

Oh yeah, speaking of inappropriate, here’s some dialogue from our trip to The Chocolate Museum which will make you chuckle...

setting: Nate, Brandon and Eva looking at a fancy wrapped chocolate bar
Brandon: Schwarze Herren, I’ve had that before it’s really good.
Eva: It means…black men.
Nate: HA!

Until next time, Prost!

Nate

Post 3: Small Town Deutschland

2008-06-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I wanted to start this blog entry off with a riveting account of how I was mugged at gunpoint while going for a run in the city. Unfortunately there seems to be a very high percentage of my friends and family with undiagnosed anxiety, so I’ll spare you the fictional stories. Plus, when something bad actually does happen to me, I want your full sympathies.

This weekend
So this weekend Brandon and I went on a short trip to some of the surrounding Rhineland. Friday night we went to Frankfurt to meet up with Brandon’s vater who was in town on business.

Frankfurt is not a nice city. It is dirty and scary. This is the only picture I took in Frankfurt. Fortunately for you (depending on the view I guess) I cropped out the prostitutes and drug addicts from the picture.

It’s the Euro sign. The European Central Bank is here or something.

The next morning, we drove to Heidelberg to meet up with some of the Chamberlin’s family friends. Herr Burger and his son were incredible generous and treated us Americans to a great tour of The Heidelberg Schloß, small town Germany, awesome German food, and some German wine tasting. It was a really great day driving through the German country-side (no speed limits) and strolling through small-town Germany (my favorite place in the world).

The Heidelberg Schloß (Castle)

The Lucashof Winery

If the above winery looks like a family’s home, that's because it is. We tasted wine more or less in their kitchen! The mom was serving us samples and the kids were running around in the back room. (Grandma was at the kitchen table getting sloshed!).

The weekend was pretty relaxing.

Dr. Christ, a portrait from The Pharmacy Museum

Boring Stuff (worked related)
Work has been going fairly well. My project has been to help research ways to help mobile browsers view their website. They give me a lot of freedom, and listen to my suggestion, which is awesome to be honest, but sometimes I wish that I had a little more direction. Last year at my internship I at least knew the daily responsibilities that I was ignoring so that I could surf the web.

I work in an atypical German office though. We aren’t very hierarchical, and we don’t keep to ourselves in cubicles. That being said, we’re certainly not as project based as American companies, and you won’t hear any progress reports or updates about the company (no one really knows the status of things except for the owner). We have the annual volleyball (pronounced “wally-ball”) tournament this weekend so I’ll let you know what German company picnics are like- should be interesting. “Oh, I got sand in my lederhosen!”

Boring stuff (opinionated)
There are so many differences between Germany and The United States that I could write a blog entry everyday for a year about them. However, here are a few that I want to bring to your attention.

I’m going to be losing about 48% of my paycheck to taxes and German social security
There are probably 3.5 sex shops within 10 kilometers of my apartment (and I’m in the good part of town)
This includes escort services, “massage parlors” and “same sex gyms”
igus employees are given 2 paid holidays every month, and in July they must take three weeks of vacation at one time

Okay now here are the ones I like:

Mostly every plastic and glass bottle has a “pfand” attached to it. Basically what this is a percentage of the price that you get back when you turn it in for recycling. So say you buy a bottle of Coke for 1.5 euros with a .25 pfand. It’s really a 1.25 euro bottle of Coke. Next time you go to the grocery store you just load all of your bottles into this machine at the front that prints out a receipt with your total refund then you take it to get cash off your groceries, or cash in your hand. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? I truly think that incentives are a great way to get people to start paying attention to their recycling habits.

Of course this also causes the streets to be inhabited by bottle collectors. Because you can drink on the streets of Cologne, a lot of people just go around collecting the bottles to get the pfand. In German with as much beer and as many beer drinkers as they have here, you could really make a job out of collecting the bottles.
Similarly, they have recycling bins like this in the airports and train stations that allow you sort your recycling.

The Smart car is a huge hit here. Although I didn’t take this picture, they park like this a lot, squeezing into spots that normal cars couldn’t fit in. They also get hella good gas mileage. It’s a far cry from the Tahoes that seem to reproduce at TCU.

I guess in short, it’s hard for me to see the United States becoming as nationalized to grant so many federal mandated vacation days and high taxes, or to allow prostitution everywhere- but I also can’t believe how far behind we are in caring for the environment. While American politicians are still trying to argue that global warming is a hoax to increase The Weather Channel’s ratings (thank you, Oklahoma’s James Inhofe), the EU is actually taking proactive measures to help limit our footprint on this world.

If you think that little paragraph was bad, just wait until I get back from studying environmental sustainability at Oxford! Haha

I promise my next post will have better pictures.

Nate

UPDATE
Köln has quite a bit of graffiti on it. The sides of buildings and bus platforms are covered in street art. I wish I had a camera everytime I saw a good one (current 1st place goes to a skull and cross bones that said, "The Beach Boyz" underneath it). However, here is some of my favorite public defacings found at The Dom church- one of the world's most famous!

Haha, this one does not surprise me

Post 2: Four Days in Dresden; One Pair of Socks

2008-05-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

In 1945, Allied bombers wiped out Dresden, Germany. Why? I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that history sets the number of dead at 35,000 in one night of fire. The city that was once home to German royalty was destroyed, and one of Europe’s most beautiful cathedrals was left in ruins. After that, Dresden was left to decay under Soviet control until the wall fell. I’m not trying to draw sympathy for Nazis or communists; rather I’m trying to paint a stark picture between Dresden then, and Dresden now.

As you can see, they’ve put some money back into it.

BLIND BOOKING

Our trip all started when we did a little thing called, “blind booking”. For only 19 Euros (roughly 29 USD) you can get a plane ticket to one of many destinations throughout Europe – Ireland, England, Spain, Italy….and Dresden, Germany. No worries though. Didn’t you know that Dresden is a hopping tourist spot for old German people in tour vans and young Dutch yuppies with strollers? Neither did we!

In all actuality, it was a great trip! There are a ton of cool museums that have everything from 17th century masterpieces (I’m still surprised at how the Italian painters depicted little blonde hair, blue eyed, baby Jesus) to jewels from centuries of German royalty. I obviously couldn’t take any pictures in the museums, but here’s a picture of August the Strong’s statue. He was a pimp (believed to have fathered more than 365 children) and had great taste in jewelry.
Actually, I’m just going to go ahead and post some more random pictures of Dresden right now.
The weather was great so one afternoon we decided to rent bikes from the train station and explore the out skirts of Dresden. The German country/river side is truly beautiful, and might rival some of the things I saw in Scotland.

VONNEGUT

During The Second World War, one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a prisoner of war in Dresden. He was actually in the basement of a meat packing plant the night of the bombings, and his most famous novel, Slaughterhouse Five, is about the event (it’s also about aliens though). I convinced my crew to ride out with me to the site of where the building where he held captive was once stood. There’s no historical marker or gift shop, so here’s me next to the street sign (which translates into “Slaughterhouse” … and he was in the 5th building …get it?)

So it goes…

THE GLASS FACTORY
On Sunday we had a tour of Volkswagen’s glass factory. It’s actually not a place where they make glass, but a glass walled manufacturing plant for their luxury car The Phaeton.

The building is obviously really cool, but that’s not even half of it. The Phaeton is one of the nicest cars that 100k Euros can buy. The plant floors are nice Canadian Oak, the workers all wear white gloves and screw in everything by hand. Jetson like robots bring parts to the workers, and tests after test make sure every car is superior. Yada yada yada…the seats have massagers and other cool stuff. I don’t know the stupid tour was in German…

FUNNY STORY

We were lucky enough to visit this famous rebuilt church (the black stone is from the original building) while they were having a service, and we sat in. I don’t know if you can tell how awesome the organ is from this picture, but it was impressive to hear in person!

Anyway so right before the all-German service begins, I get tapped on the shoulder by an attendant from the church. The service was absolutely packed, and so I’m guessing that she was asking me if I would give my seat to an elderly lady or something noble like that. Unfortunately I don’t know German, so I just kindly smiled and said, “Sprechen keine deutsch”. Her response was very surprising as she made a terrible face and kind of “pwashed” at me. When I turned back around confused, Brandon informed me that I had kindly told the woman...

“You don’t speak German.”

“Sprecha keine deutsch” means “I don’t speak German”.

Oops.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Although mostly everyone does speak English here, it’s not 100% accurate, and we often forget that we are now the foreign exchange students who don’t understand simple things and end up making asses of themselves. Case in point, today we went to look into getting a gym membership. We were about 5 minutes into the initial interview/account set up when we were informed that we were at a ladies only gym. I knew that the row of patrons on the elliptical were way too good to be true! I felt like I was in some teenage romantic comedy. Horribly embarrassing.

Going to the grocery store is also an adventure. After grocery shopping in the US for 18 years or so, you take for granted your brand awareness. How am I suppose to know the good brand of toilet paper, and which kind of mustard is the really delicious kind they give me at the bratwurst stand? Also, why are the German’s obsessed with cheese? At least they do recycling right, but that’s a topic for another post!

Until next time, prost!

Nate

Post 1: This is long...

2008-05-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

“I think I died in the accident because this must be heaven.”
-Kanye West

I don’t know if this quote describes my experience in Koln (Cologne), Germany exactly, but I thought it would be nice to start out with a quote from a rap star. That being said, I did think similar thoughts when I first walked into our flat. Check it out:

Fully furnished with modern furniture and very nice beds. Washer and dryer, private parking garage (with moving floor [more on that later]), and the best part- its located directly across from one of Cologne’s famous breweries!

Maybe I should rewind a little bit. I’ve been here since last Thursday the 15th. That’s 15.05.08 for you keen on the Euro style. I had a very nice flight on Lufthansa, one of Germany’s legacy airlines. Complementary alcohol is always a nice touch (who knew everyone was ordering regular tomato juice and not Bloody Mary’s?), as well as very nice German stewardesses. “Guten Tag!”

Initially, I was very impressed with Cologne. Already I can tell it is a city that appreciates art. The design of the buildings are very modern with a few left over’s from when Rome owned the city. There is very good shopping here, I’ve been told, and I’ve seen a lot of stores that have modern furniture design and other things of the sort. There are also a lot of nice European automobiles, as well as attractive European women. Don’t worry mom- no die ehefrau yet!
Brandon and I went to Dom on the first day we got here- it is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe. Inside the big gold box are the remains of the three wise men. This is the second highest relic in the Catholic Church (I’m not sure of the first, but I have a few “ideas”) so the three wise men are all over the stained glass.

iGUS (e-goose)
We started our job at iGus on Friday. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the building right now, but let me just tell you- it’s awesome! If you are familiar with Kansas City I think the building looks similar to Bartel Hall with the large pillar- bridge-like things. Inside everything is made from gray plastic with bright yellow or orange highlights, and the workers ride around on Segway like scooters. My department is the youngest and (probably) most fun. They work with all the communication- so everything from PR statements to website advertisement.
For those of you who don’t know, iGus makes plastic machine parts like energy cables and barrings (that’s pretty much it actually). A good example is the huge moving TV screens in Victory Park (where the Mavs play in Dallas, TX). All of the cables and such that run to the TVs are housed in one of iGus’ energy chains. It is essentially an enclosure that protects the cables from the elements and allows for easy movement and flexibility. However, iGus parts are in everything from office chairs to robotic hands. They’ve won awards for their advertisement and promotional design too (go to www.igus.de to get a glimpse of the famous orange color scheme).

On Friday we also received our car for the summer. We were afraid it was going to be a small, foreign, manual transmission car like the interns had last year. Lucky for us (and probably the company) we got a midsized, automatic, Volkswagen. I’m sure we will post a picture of it sometime. I drove it home on Friday and it was quite an adventure. In Germany they have signs with a certain speed posted on the highway. However, unlike in the US where you can’t go over the posted speed, in Germany you can’t drive less than the posted speed. It’s nice to be told I must drive 120 kilometers!

CHOCOLATE MUSEUM
Our first weekend in the city was awesome! Koln really comes to life on the weekends, and in some of the shopping areas it seems to be as crowded as New York City! On Saturday, Brandon and I met up with Caroline Nixon’s cousin who has been in Europe studying. With Eva, we went to the Schokoladenmuseum, or Chocolate museum…delicious. The tour books describe this as Willy Wonka come to life, which I guess is a fairly accurate description, but without the OompaLoompas. Here we are in front of the schokoladen foutain.

I also had a four-dollar glass of water at the café. The price I’ll pay for still waser!

FUNNY STORY
So ever since I first got my passport (about a year ago this time) I’ve developed this weird thing- I refer to it as Ugly American syndrome. I hate that I have it, but I can’t help it. Ugly American syndrome can be a great number of things, but it all boils down to me being an unintelligent foreigner trying to impress the natives but making a fool of myself in the process.
The biggest symptom that I’m currently struggling with is my “default foreign language.”

Whenever I’m surrounded by people speaking a foreign language, I tend to speak in a foreign language. Luckily I don’t try to make up German words (yet), however, I don’t think the Germans appreciate me speaking broken Spanish either!

So all that being said, I pulled out my Ugly American Saturday night at one of the student clubs in Koln. This is kind of how it went….

“Hola, Me llamo Natan” -Nate to unsuspecting German girl
“Hallo?” -confused German girl
“Sprechen sie espanol? Me amigo Brandon y yo donde esta Spain” – spirited Nate
“Oh ya, *insert Spanish phrase*” – German girl clearly not buying it
“Lo siento, ich spreche kein deustch” – Ugly American Nate

That’s how I will pretend the conversation ended at least…

Well this has been a really long first entry. I appreciate you actually reading this far (if you actually did). I probably won’t have a lot to talk about in future entries, so don’t worry.

RANDOM

The washing machine takes 2 hours and is 1/3 the size of a normal machine in the states
I turned down a one way street the first time I drove the car

There’s this German band, Toki Hotel, which every German thinks is huge in the states, and whenever they talk to you about music they think that you’ve heard them on American radio. I’ve yet to hear them, but tell everyone I talk to that their music is one of the reasons I came here.

No one drinks tap water. They serve champagne in the clubs. Mineral water is carbonated and that is disgusting.

I’ve spent a lot of money and haven’t even been here 1/8 of my total trip!

Nate