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.

Post 5a: Munich Exposed

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

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

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

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