Pat on Deustch

Its been a little quiet here this week. That's because nothing has been going on. I've been doing school work like mad. However, last night was the final party and it was nutty. I don't have time for those stories now and seeing as this is a family blog, they may get axed by the editor.

I finished class today. I got a B. Yeah for Pat. And in other selfagrandizing news, my gpa for my last semester of college was a 3.6. Hell yeah. That may have been enough for the dean's list. But I'm not sure. If the parents happen to know if anything came in the mail about that, letting me know would be stellar. Thanks.

And now, to Munich. Which also includes a side trip to Andech. Home of the best beer in the world, or so I'm told. And yes, I will be getting the 2 liter beer at hofbrauhaus. Yes, I will need both of my hands and maybe a friend's help to lift that giant mug. Yes, it will be amazing.

There will be a big post on monday or tuesday, I still haven't figured out this time zone stuff yet.

Later.

First things first. A big shoutout to my Underwater Hockey peeps. Take club puck to the wall and smack them around for me. I'll be there next year to do it myself. And bring the National championship back to its rightful place. Champaign, IL.

So the German trains haven't gotten any better lately. But the Swiss trains are on time. Maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe the German trains are all ontime but the conductor's watches all suck so the trains just seem late. Yeah, that's it.

Who am I kidding. I curse the name of DeutscheBahn every time I see it. Bastards.

So Switzerland was fucking awesome. I went canyoning and white water rafting. And, suprise suprise, I didn't hurt myself. I'm just as shocked about that as you guys. Canyoning was fun but waaay to short. I got to jump off a waterfall that was 20 ft tall and I got to slide down several rapids. One of them I went down face first. It was amazing. Rafting was even better. I was sitting up front with Grant. Every wave and rapid either soaked me, or soaked me and tossed me around. This river was mean. At one point we were going through some level 4 rapids and I got tossed. I was hanging as far out of the raft as I could because I was trying to get my adrenaline going and the rapids just got too big. It was odd. When I was out of the raft and holding on with one hand, I wasn't nervous at all even though I was going through rapids on my back. It was oddly relaxing. And it was hella fun.

Nothing else been going on here. The weekend was all about extreme sporting. There was a party thing I went to. It had some cool African drumming going on. A little odd and some people were way to into it. But the band rocked.

And now, for yet another beer.

Later.

German efficency.

These is a phrase I no longer believe. If you are supposed to be this amazing efficient culture, why the fuck don't your trains run on time. EH?!? I have taken seven trains in the past two days. Guess how many were on time? none. I spent a total of 105 minutes the past two days, sitting at train stations and picking my ass. F thy DeutsheBahn. Just Fthy. You ain't got shit on METRA. The way to really fly.

And yes, I am taking two or three more trains today to get to Interlaken. The extreme sports capital of the world. Yes, I will be injuring myself there because I know I shouldn't be going there. I know I am going to do something stupid and break my ear or something random like that. C'mon, this is me. I have the body of a ninety year old man. Andy once threatened to put me in a hamster ball so I would stop hurting myself. This Interlaken place looks like a lot of fun, but its just something I shouldn't do.

I'll let y'all know how it went on monday. Or maybe later if I need surgery in Switzerland.

So My friend Mike went out on Wednesday. He got really smashed. He described the bar he went to as,"Around somewhere. I know it was there. I drank there." He could offer no more specifics. Then he tried to go home. The next thing he knows, the cleaning crew for the street car was waking him up at 5.45 am because he was getting in the way of their German swiffer things. So, still being drunk but using that amazing American know-how, he follows the street car tracks back 45 minutes to his stop. He goes home, gets food and goes back to his stop immediately to go to the Rhine river. It was holiday over here on thursday. Yes, its a holiday just about every other day. So his train just wasn't running. There are no cars anywhere. He sees he has 5 minutes to get there and a taxi mysertiously shows up to drive him to the train station. Then he's at the River and he just sits down for some food with Pete. Mike, still drunk, asks how much food costs. The waitress says,"This is a hotel." Mike then says, "I have a room here." Free food for the drunk. This leads us to the secondary quote of the day,

I like my breakfast free,
My women nekid
and My beer cold.

Mike, what a guy.

The quote of the day was actually by me. It is a stunning literary work. Okay, I palmed the idea off of Robert Frost and hoped no one would notice. Or if they did notice, be impressed that I knew who Robert Frost was.

I mac' the road less mac'ed

Beautiful, isn't it? Its in reference to my off beat and unusual style of attempting to pick up women. It fails a lot. But at least when I fail I go down in bright flames that make everybody else feel better. What can I say, I'm looking out for people.

Time to jet, I have a train to hump.

Later.

So this is how hardcore I am. Even though I am sick and should be going straight to bed for another fun afternoon of sweating like crazy and coughing up green stuff every 10 minutes, I'm gonna toss a post at you. Ya'll better be thankin' me.

So I went to Heidleberg on Monday. That place sure does blow. It has a cool castle and an alright bar area. But the place as a whole is a money and a time sink. It was supposed to be this great tourist trap. It was supposed to just make tourists spend money like water. I tried. I fucking tried. I even walked around with my money in my hand with a look that said,"I sure would like to buy that. I wonder if anyone will walk over here and take my money. Oh look. There is someone two feet away. They will take my money and most likely give me that mug." Total number of items I bought in Heidleberg, not including food, one. I bought a postcard. And even then the only reason I was able to buy it was that someone else had just got finished with buying something so I didn't have to hunt the shop keeper down.

And every tourist shop I saw had the exact same selection of crap. Some of it was nice crap, but I am going to call it crap because these people pissed me off. So if I'm running one these little shops, and my merchandise is brought to me by the same people that deliever to the other 20 shopkeepers in my area, anytime a potential sale comes close I'm jumping all over that guy. But maybe this isn't how things are done in Europe. Maybe the stallkeepers don't like selling stuff. Maybe those people were morons.

So we go out as a group in Heidleberg. This was not one of my best ideas. My body is saying to me, "I feel like shit, let me sleep." I say, "Here, have some beer and a tequila. GOGOGOGOGO".

So I down a bunch of beer. Our group leader starts to tell us about his list of guys. See, the man has ranked our group. Yes, he is gay. Sadly, I didn't make the top five. But the best hitting on, was on the ride home. Luke is going after a German girl. She doesn't speak much English and he doesn't speak much German. So I'm sitting on the bus next to Josh and we're behind Luke and this girl. Luke then starts using us as translators. It was amazing. The kid is trying to get his mac on without knowing the correct language. However, the man is good. He did suceed well enough to kiss her.

Yesterday I woke up, went to class. Went home, went to sleep. My family woke me up for dinner. I ate. I took a shower. I went back to sleep. I woke up for today. I intend on doing a similar series of events soon. Hopefully my tactic of sleeping incessantly will drive this virus out of me.

And now, for a taste of things to come:
Switzerland! I will be extreme sporting it this coming weekend. Its gonna be good.

Later.

Alright, there was a wacky trip on monday to Heidelberg. Right now I'm just gonna say that place was lame. What a tourist trap. And the trap wasn't even baited well. Just crap.

And I have my first German illness. My lungs got nailed by the blitzkreig. Land, sea and air. My new least favorite color is whatever I just coughed up. Really, this is fun.

And now this is an official online thing, because I am making excuses for why I don't have an update. It feels to good to be a part of the initiated.

Later.

Addendum the second:
Happy father's day oh old one. Get yourself a breakfast and some welding on the Trimuph. Today is your day.

Later.

Addendum:
Traffic patterns on this continent don't make any sense. I have yet to divine why they have roads. No one pays attention to where they are supposed to drive except the street cars. And that's only because they have tracks. And the shopkeepers aren't helping anything by having their tables going across the whole street.

Oh, and Prague, as a whole, has three stop lights. Everywhere else in the city is run and hope to god that guy has functioning brakes.

Later.

So I'm back like the fly in your oinment. I always turn up as soon as you look away, but before you can get the lid back on. HAHAHAHAHAHA

Berlin was an interesting mix of beer, sleeping, forced death marches and lack of sleep. Allow to explain:
Day the first: Craptacular bus ride. As always. But this time I didn't get a choice if I wanted to take the bus or not. Bastards. Dinner was decent to dear god no I will not put that in my mouth. I hate saurkraut. Luckily my host family hasn't accosted me with it yet, but that may only be because I never eat here. At night we wandered through the lamest part of Berlin and found the lamest bars ever. At about 11pm we found some cool bars. About an hour away from where we were wandering at first.

So I got played. By the Germans of all people. I never figured them for the sneaky, lying type. The people who are nominally responsible for making sure we don't die conned us into believing that we have to be back by 12.15 and a bunch of other stuff. All of it was false, but we didn't know it was false until the second day.

Second day. I spent most of the day sleeping on the bus again as the bus took us around Berlin and we saw a bunch of stuff about divided Berlin and the wall. It was cool, I got to sleep on an airconditioned bus while the other two groups had death marches through Berlin, which is inconviently located in Germany. And Germans, as a whole, don't believe in air conditioning. It just isn't here.

So tueday night was definetly interesting. We headed out that night, looking for a strip club. I've never been to one, and everyone else made it sound like a lot of fun, so off we went. We hit a bar to start the night, of course. The waiter type told us of some places to go. We found one, but decided it was too early to go in, so we hit the tiki bar next door. At this point, I had like 5 Euro, so I went in search of a geldautomat. Known to the rest of the world as an ATM. The ATM was in a little room that was part of a bank. The room had been hotboxed earlier that night. Hotboxing, for those who don't know(parents), is when you smoke a whole bunch of weed in an enclosed area and you get a lot of second hand smoke. I've never done this, but it was the only thing I could imagine when the room reeked of weed.

To the tiki bar I went. Had one cheep, crappy beer. There were a bunch of guys smoking hash behind me. This was odd as hash isn't legal in Germany. At least, I don't think it is. But, some of the people I was with enjoy hash, so they then started to discuss how to go about asking for some hash in German. I personally thought this was a horrible idea and did everything I could to stop it. I even threw down my official "River Boy" veto. (See the entry on Prague for how I got that veto. No it isn't explicity explained. Fill in the blanks.) However, my efforts were in vain because I had to use the bathroom. I come back, ready to hit the strip club, and they are busy rolling a joint. They smoked it quickly, and away we went.

There were two problems with us getting into this joint, one, we were all wearing shorts. You need pants. Two, I was the only person 21 or older, so I was only one who could get in even if pants were engaged. Then we hit another bar, got some directions to someplace else. I believe this other place was a bordello. I was having nothing to do with this. Luckily, for me anyway, one kid had been throwing up and I was going to use that as my ticket outta there. As in," Josh is in bad shape, I'm gonna take him home." Oddly enough, I don't think anyone wanted to go in, as everyone ended up using that excuse. Odd really. There was one more beer in the bar next to the youth hostel, and then bed.

Friday, the third day. Death march through downtown Berlin. And they expected me to speak in German. Instead, my partner and I decided to operate mostly in English and Interpretive dance. We had to give a report on the Alexander Platz. And while one person was talking, the other was dancing. At one point Grant dive bombed me. It was hilarious.

The night. We went clubbing. The music in this country needs to get with it. I honestly felt, and many agreed with me, that we had all fallen into a time warp and it was actually 1993, not 2003. When you hear offspring then green day then quiet riot, something is not right. And having cindy lauper and n'sync is also not cool. But the club was fun. I stayed there until 4.30am. If you are ever in a country where the sun rises butt ass early. like this country does, don't stay out that late. When I was leaving the club, the sun was up. I don't mean, it was rising, or there was a glow on the horizon, I mean full on daystar. Just awful.

Went to sleep at 6, woke up at 9. Begin the fourth, and final, day.

We got busy with some death marching, and then they cut us lose. Somehow, I managed to find a jazz band. I rocked that for about 2 hours. Had some dunkin doughnuts, then remembered I was in Germany, not Chicago, and went and got some curry wurst. Overrated as a meal, but still tasty. Then a bus ride home. Then a shitload of pain in my neck and calves because I am mad sore from dancing.

Today is laundry and homework day. Tomorrow is school. Bleargh.

This is your German Correspondant, signing off.

Later.

To everyone who has made a comment. Sorry about that. They are gone now. However, I am no longer stealing commenting capabilites from my old blog.

Later.

So the first two weeks were, for the most part, uneventful. Here's the megapost I've been meaning to do for awhile.

The rest of the first week was spent sampling beer gardens and stopping the whole jetlag business. That took way longer than it should have. But oh well. These things happen. One interesting note though, is that I am now a regular at a beer garden here. Well, for one waiter type anyway. All he has to do is see me and his face lights up and he just gets me my beer. A half liter of Hell(light) beer. This place brews its own beer. Its called the Rathaus-Ratskellar. Rathaus means city hall, but I have no idea what Ratskeller means. Maybe it means they brew their own amazing type of beer? Works for me.

The first weekend I went on an impromptu beer garden crawl through Darmstadt with Ken and Vinnie. It was a good time except for the one garden that took about four years to get us our beer. I was giving them one minute before I walked out. They cut it awfully close. But everywhere else was awesome. And yes, the beer here is as good as you've heard. Possibly better.

Then on saturday I want to the Irish pub for some live music. I thought I was getting live Irish music, turns out I was getting live 70's rock. They spoke such beautiful english when they were singing, then they kept dropping back into German between songs. The punks. But a good time anyway. Name of the band was "Tuned."

The second week was tricky. I had some actual work to do in school and I didn't really rock that as hard as I should have. But I will get by. And I will take care of business. German language, you are so going down.

Last weekend I went to Prague. If you ever go to Prague, take one day to wake up early, like sevenish, and just stroll around town. It is incredible when its empty. Oh so very beautiful. That is my first piece of travel advice. The second piece of travel advice is stay the freak away from Absinth. Yes it is legal in Prague, yes you will be hurting in the morning. All I have to say to my first night and most of the next day in oh my goodness. And if you really want to know what it tastes like, have some NyQuil and imagine that it isn't so syrupy. Luckily I planned for three days in Prague and I got another day in of just walking around and taking in the sights. Unfortuanetly, I lost my camera on the Absinth night, so I couldn't take anymore pictures, but I had a bunch from the first camera.

Yes, getting stuck in customs blows. Yes the fact that I've been wearing the same clothes for 36 hours and I have at least three more to go in them blows. No, it isn't my fault. Stupid bastards taking an hour to get through customs, but I had to wait, because the bus I was on couldn't just leave them. And no, even if my Eurail pass doesn't cover the whole trip am I ever taking a bus again. Yes, its cheaper, no, its not worth it.

And now for some food, and then stupid Berlin movie night, and then me going to Berlin tomorrow. It's gonna be good. Or horrible. Really, there isn't any middle ground for me. Ugh.

Later.

On my first night here I went to a fest type thing with my host sister. It was fun, we saw some bands, had some german type food and I had my first german beer. Then we attempted to nagivate our sorry asses home. Mind you, I had had one beer, and she hadn't had anything. So we get on the bus. And we sit there. And sit there. Finally, approixmately four years later, we start to go. We get to the train station and of course we missed the train. Would I really have received any better of a welcoming to a foreign land?

So we start to head back to the Luizenplatz Area where we can take alternative public trans back to our town. Of course when we get there, we will have a 2 kilometer walk home. No big deal, I like to walk. Especially when I'm jetlagged out of my mind. So we hop on the bus. My host sister starts to get an odd look on her face like, "where the fuck is this bus going?" Then she starts asking people where is this bus going. Of course I didn't know she was doing this because it was in German. I had to wait for her to tell me. Eventually, after a stimulating tour of Darmstadt through windows that were completely fogged over, we escape from the bus. Then she doesn't know where the hell we are. So she starts calling friends in Darmstadt to see if we can crash there. She finds us some lodging for the night. Then she calls home to see if we can get a ride home. Thankfully her 'rents came and got us.

Oh, and it had started raining during the fest, and my host sister had an umbrella. So the umbrella just funneled all of her water onto me. Hilarous I think. Actually, it was really funny when she would turn the umbrella towards someone else and they would get all pissy and she wouldn't notice. Good times.

So I wake up on Sunday, and I am jetlagged still. It was fun. I was actually incapable of thought or rational motions. Good times.

Interesting note, jetlagged in english translates to Schwierigkeiten durch die Zeitumstellung beim Fleigen. I shit you not. I found this because I was trying to figure out how to say jetlagged in German. Apparently you just say jetlagged.

Yes, this should have been up a week ago. Blame the admins here for not being on the ball.

Later.