Post 10: All I Have Time For...

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

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

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

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?

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.