Pat on Deustch

So its Friday. My last night here in, currently sunny, Dublin. I expect to get overcast and drizzle any minute now. That's just how its been going. So I never took the tour of Trinity College. It was rather costly and I decided my money could be better spent on other tours. Namely, the Guiness museum and the Jameson Distellery. I went to the Guiness Museum yesterday. It was sevev floors of bars, memorablia and a step by step process of how they make Guiness. Very cool. And I had to run from the Guiness giftshop because I really wanted everything they had. Kinda sad really. If you just slap the Guiness label on something, I will want it.

The Jameson distellery tour was today. Again, a step by step tour of how they make Jameson. I was not aware, but all Irish Whiskeys are distilled three times for extra smoothness. But when I had my free Jameson I still shivered. Whiskey and I don't get along too well.

And I've been going on that pub crawl everynight. I keep wanting to do something else, but I haven't meet anyone because my freaking hostel is full of people who are all like forty years old. Garbage. They should have a sign out front that says,"old people only." It would have made this trip more enjoyable. But I'm still having a great time getting lost here and trying the read the Irish. All the signs are in English and Irish. I have no idea, for the most part, how to pronounce Irish. Its funny in my head as I experiment with different ways to pronounce letters.

So tonight its the last night of the pubcrawl, then I go to London. All in all, this place fucking rocks. I wish I had more time here.

And I still haven't met a park I didn't like.

Later.

I'm in Ireland. One night here and already its awesome. Oh, and a tip of the hat to let's go for being competely wrong. But in a good way. See, the "Let's Go" guide is kinda like an overprotective parent. It always tells you to make reservations and never to hitchhike, after it tells you the best places to hitch, and it also gives you pricing guides to stay on some semblance of a budget. Its like a little parent I can carry around with me and ignore most of its advice and it doesn't get mad at me for it. Thanks Let's Go, you're my new hero.

After mike got back from breaking even in Monte Carlo we hit the beach. It was nice this time. It wasn't pebbly, it was just big honking boulders. We chilled, I listened to some pot heads play guitar. Good times. Then at night we met some dudes who we shared the room with. Cool guys. The four of us went out, and just walked along the beach and bought beer from the beer vendors who have nothing more than a cooler and a bag of ice. Then we went to bed. After a, literaly, 1.5 hour walk.

The next morning, I dump my shit at the station and go wandering. Mike and I run into the dudes from the night before who also didn't stay at that place with the creepy french dude. We went hotel hunting with them, then some beaching. Then I got an awesome sun burn. It really wouldn't be a trip to the beach for me though if I didn't get a burn. Then a night train to paris. Then the super fast bullet train to London then a plane to dublin. And yes, when planning trips at the last minute, that was the cheapest. I think. I think I did all my conversions correctly. I found a place for 21 euros a night, a little pricey and I have to leave on friday because they are already booked for friday, and then I found a pub crawl. I got smashed, went to bed.

After this I'm going over to Trinity College to check out the museum and the book of Kells. More on that when I get back.

And its cloudy. I love it. God love the green.

Later.

So the lqck of proofreading will continue. Sorry, these french keyboards are officially messed.

Yes, all of Italy was 100 degrees and stinky. Florence was beautiful. mike and i hiked all over that crazy town. We saw the big Duomo, declined to pay the 4 euros to climb to the top, although that would have been awesome. Then we went to the museum with the david. the david is amazing. its perfection is rivaled only by the lack of anything else in that museum. Its some acadmy of the arts or something. Go to the uffizi. We didn't go in because we had spent our museum budget for the day, but its supposed to be great. and there is a great replica of the david right in front of the uffizi. which is where the david was originally meant to be. then we went hiking around florence, got lost trying to get a castle after we hiked up a 45 degree incline of a hill to find out the place was like 12000 euros to get in. f that. then as we were trying to get to the train station to get to cinque terra ands its beutiful beaches we got lost on this little windy road and got stuck behind a dumptruck that was almost too big for the road. just silly.

cinque terra and sleeping ont he beach. what a godawfully executed plan. if you ever go to cinque terra don't go to riomajorre like Rick Fucking Steve tells you to. we ran into a couple of guys who said they were going to riomajorre because that is where the younger crowd is. if by younger they meant, less than 80, then they were correct. But hanging out with 40 to 50 year olds doesn't seem like a good plan for guys looking to have a crazy beach adventure. So we go Moterosso like we had planned and the baggage check is closed. So we have to hunp our bags around all night. We go to a bar, get some cheap big bottles of italian beer and proceed to get rocked as we sat there angry. THen we found another hopping bar, drank until 4 in the morn and then went down to this rocky outcrop that wasn't all light up an slept. Mike just passed out on the rocks and I curled up with the bags in what appeared to be a mini ravine.

We woke up? had some food and went to the beach. I nearly melted. It was that hot. I was laying there for about five minutes then some dude comes up to me and says the piece of beach I had staked out, with a lawn chair, was 18 euros. I quickly walked to the tiny free beach, sweated for a bit, went int he water, realized I hate salt water and went back to melting. Then I said fuck it, got changed and found a tree to sit under. We got some food and headed to Nice on the slowest rain known to man. I swear, if I had been siting on a roller skate and only lighting my farts for propulsion, I would have gone faster.

We get to our stop to transfer for the train to Nice. No train. We eventually find out that there is a blocked tunnel and take a complimentary bus. At the train station in Nice, some dude accosts us and tells us he has beds for 20 euros a night. He even says we can shower that night. something we hadn't done since rome. So he says its 45 minutes by foot away. He failded to mention its minutes if you are power walking. Mike and I have our bags, so this forced march, a lot uphill, was just godawful. but it was the best shower ever. And then some pizza and a beer and bed.

Today Mike is in Monte Carlo losing all his money and I have been online for most of the afternoon planning my trip to Eire. This is awesome. I am sick of the heat and the damn pebble beaches of the riviera. I want some fog. Someplace that isn't rocking a two month drought. I want to see GREEN! And I will. I was actually crying with joy earlier today when I got my ticket to france. Crying with joy. This trip has been no fun for a couple of days and I am tired. I want to go somewhere I speak the language. Somewhere I can get a good Guiness, someplace like Ireland.

Can you tell I'm excited about this?

One more night here and then the night train to Paris tomorrow. I'm gonna go parade my great attitude around town for awhile.

Later.

Alright, posts are gonna get sketchy until I can find an internet hookup that isn't four thousand dollars a minute.

After leaving Vienna, we went to Venice. When I attempted to get my ticket to Venice, I asked the guy in Vienna for a ticket to Vienna. He just looked at me crosseyed and pointed at the ground. I felt the fool. But eventually mike corrected me and I got a ticket. The train to Venice was almost all Japanese types. I have no problem with them, it was just odd that on this train car of about 60 people, 50 of them were Japanese. Now, if we were in Japan fine. I expect it there. Not on the overnight from Vienna to Venice.

We got into Venice and promptly got lost. It was good times. We're wandering Venice and we come up to a square. I got some oranges and Mike got an apple. It was some tasty fruit. And then when we turned to look at the whole square, we saw about six people being hazed by family members. One was a girl about 12 years old who was just gulping down this bottle of wine. Nothing was happening to her, but she was still 12 and boozing. Then we saw some dude wearing a thong. And a lot of plastic. And he was covered in shaving cream. And then they made him run around the square. There was a girl who had knee high boots on that were filled with shaving cream. And she had a shaving cream hat. And then there was one poor dude who was being pelted with eggs and being given a beer shower. And and one point, he's trying to read this sheet and the lady with the eggs just nails him in the forehead with an egg. Just hilarious. And they all had these sheets of paper about 3 feet wide by five feet high that they had to read. Mike and think it was some kind of University graduation celebration, but we're not sure. If anyone knows, please toss it in the comments.

Then at about 12.30 we decide to head back to the train station so we can get in line for our bags and make our train at 2.30. We started off the right way, then we got some Italian Ice, just delicous, and we promptly started heading the exact wrong way. Of course we didn't know this because we were too busy eating ice cream. Then we had to truck across the whole city, which we did in 25 minutes. Its a small town, and we know how to navigate by the sun and clear out other tourists.

We get into Rome. The first five places we try to stay at are full. The last one is on the sixth effing floor. I ask the lady if she knows of anywhere that might have a room. She says no. Then as we're leaving, she calls out to us and says,"Hey, try the place one floor down". So we do. And it was good.

The next day, yesterday, we spent running around the ruins. Yipee! Ruins are fun. Especially Roman ones. They are extra ruiny. Or something. Over the four hours we were out clomping around in the Coloseum, the Forum and the Palatine hill I had somewhere around 8-10 bottles of water. I did not even feel a twinge of needing to go to the bathroom. Why is that? Oh yes, its about 100 degrees here. Constantly. At night it cools off to 80. Ugh. At night we hit this power hour thing. It was five euros a cup and all the beer you could drink for an hour. I was weak, I only had 4. Oh well. I didn't want to die.

Today was Vatican CIty and heat stroke. See, guys have to wear pants to get into the Vatican stuff. The only pants I have are jeans. I fried. Literaly. I had to go lay down afterwards for about 2 hours just to stop being all heat strokey. And the Metro here is god awful. I have never seen someplace more packed, stinky and horrible in all my life. Just wretched. Yes, it was worse than freshman in line for a keg at u of i. And the Sistine chapel is no where near as impressive as I hoped it would be. That may have partly been that I had heat stroke or that I had to crane my neck painfully to see anything. But regardless, I was not anywhere near as impressed as I hoped I would be. Poop. And the other Vatican musuems blow. They're all like, sheep, go this way. We don't care if you want to walk through this room. You will go this way. A lot of the fun of musuems is getting lost and seeing everything in your own order. That is not an option here. We gotta be sheep.

Next up, tomorrow, is Florence during the day and LaSpezia or Quinca Terra at night. That's right. It finally beach time. For awhile. Nothing real until I get to Nice in a couple of days. I am going to laze around and try, despretaly try, to get some energy back. I'm not too hopeful, but I'm gonna try. Even if means sleeping on that beach all night. Hehehehehe. I'm prolly gonna do that anyway. It just sounds fun.

And now, a taste of things to come,
"holy fuck, all of Italy isn't 100 degrees and stinky?"

At least I hope that's on deck. Ugh.

ps sorry about the lack of proofreading, this internet place is expensive.

Later.

I'm in Vienna! For a couple more hours. Then on to Venice for a bit, then Rome for awhile.

The Love Parade in Berlin on Saturday was amazing. Steve, Mike and I just wandered around the party/costume show for about 6 hours. Then passed out in the train station for two hours until our trains left. There were so many people in crazy outfits. Just nutty. I don't even know what a lot of the stuff they were wearing is called. I guess they would be booty covering things. As in shoes. But I'm not sure. But I did see a lot of people in fur. Green fur, yellow fur pink fur. Head to toe. Fur. Just nutty.

Vienna is beutiful. I wish I had more time here. And I wish I had brought my camera with me. Stupid me leaving it in my bag. Grr.... Vienesse coffee is amazing. Just great. The whole coffee shop atmosphere was cool. We went to a museum. Lots of paintings. Very pretty. And I had this little audio guide thing. You walk around and certain paintings have numbers next to them. You put in the number and hit play. You then get about 4 days worth of information about the painting. It was really cool. And then when I put in 666 because I was bored, I got information about a painting that depicted Jesus's baptism. Just odd that the sign of the beast would give me info on Jesus.

And then Mike and I went on a three hour death march through Vienna. Just looking at buildings and occasionally going into a church. And parks continue to do me nothing but good. Get free music, a calm atmosphere and a sit down. Very nice.

The general atmosphere of this town is laid back. Which is exactly what we needed after the Love Parade. I like this town.

The next update will be when I'm in Rome, so prolly thursday. I'm gonna see if I can use the few scraps of Latin I remember that don't involve me saying I wish to kill someone from above with a spear. Its amazing that four years later, the main thing I can talk about is death. Just odd.

Later.

So here's the deal, sparky:
I will be here until the 7th of August. YEAH! Its both better than the 22nd, my old departure date, or the 28th, the other date I thought I could get. So I'm pumped about that.

Repeat after me: The sox did not get swept by the '69 Mets. They did not get swept by the '69 Mets. If we say this, together, enough times it will mean that the sox didn't get swept by the fscking Tigers, also known as the '69 Mets. Err.. Or is the the '62 Mets? I'm not sure. All this time spent in a culture without baseball has made my trivia go weak.

So Tommorrow is the Love Parade. Its gonna be crazy. Its gonna be wild. No, Mike, Steve and I aren't getting a room for the night. We're just gonna party all day and night then leave the next morning for a different country. Its gonna be great.

Time for me to pack.

Later.

business first:
This trip may be ending on the 22nd after all. I have been dragging my heals on moving my ticket back because I didn't know when I wanted to leave. Yesterday, mike tried to move his ticket back and the only option he got was the 28th, of August! I'm not down with staying over here until then. This is just a heads up, and yes, dad, this is why I haven't called yet. That phone call should be happening tomorrow.

So last night I went out with a bunch of people. We had some beer, had some potatoes and then after some light teasing of Steve he throws down with this piece of majesty,
"I wish girls liked me as much as gay guys"

Now to me, that isn't so much of a problem, because it means you're sensitive and stuff. Chicks dig that, or so I'm told. I don't really know. The only downside to me going out and getting loaded last night is that I was unavailable to leave my house in the morning to go to Linuxtag. No linux swag for me. Damn. But here is a recipe for distaster:
1 plate of potatoes, all the food for the day
3-5 cups of coffee
3 liters of beer

Danger Will Robinson, danger.

Ugh, its still 4000 degrees over here, and now I'm getting an awesome heat headache. Go me.

Oh, more comics on the right, you may already know of them, you may not. But I just met someone in an online comic forum who had never heard of Megatokyo, so I no longer make any assumptions.

Later.

Arrghh mateys.

Work is mad boring. Apparently, they thought it was going to take me two weeks to write that app I did. They were wrong. Its great. They have nothing for me to do, and my boss doesn't even show up anymore. He got in today at about 3, stayed for five minutes and walked out. I don't get it.

And contrary to what I said, the other site will not be up this week. Yeah, I'm lazy. But it will be up at some point. I'll let you know.

You may have noticed my email link. That's a new email account that won't die when I graduate. Yeah, I'm smart like that. New email account.

This is my last week in Darmstadt area. Yeah. This friday I hope to be going to Linuxtag. That should be fun. And after that its the loveparade in Berlin then running around the continent. It should be lots of fun.

Later.

There are comics on the right hand side. Enjoy them. I spend a lot of time at them.

There will be another site up about my trip to Germany. It will be up this week. It will have pictures. If I say I can fly I just might be able to. I wonder if my boss would even notice that I was working on a webpage if I was just quiet about it? Hmm... this will be explored.

Ken, you've left us here in Germany. So now you will be remembered. He was the first to tell me,
"Ja, Ja, schneller!"
-words you will learn quickly when
making love to a German.

And your other quote of Genius to the conductor who just stalked you to make sure that when you went that one stop out of your zone, you got that bullshit 40 euro ticket,
"Wie sagt Man, 'You're a fucking asshole' auf duetsch."

That one means, "How do I say, 'You're a fucking asshole' in german?" The conductor came up to Ken after giving him the ticket and tried to be friends with him. Ken was not particulalry appreciative. And yes, the smarter of you out there have now noticed that I spelled 'deutsch' wrong when I set up this site. Sorry. The t and s should be transposed.

Amsterdam.

I have never been offered so many drugs in all my life. I was in Amsterdam for less then 10 minutes and I was being offered ecstasy and coke. And not the cola kind. Although the drug is prolly cheaper than the pop over here. The nutters.

Our hotel the first night was on the top of the tallest turret of the high castle. We had a sherpa guide us. And on the really steep parts he just carried us. All right, it wasn't that bad. There was a taller turret but the sherpa said that he needs a sherpa to get to that one. It's me, Steve and Mike. We went out, got food, got beer. Amstel is tasty. I already knew this, but its way tastier when it comes in some freaky soup cup/bowl thing. And yes, it does taste a hell of a lot better when its brewed down the street. After some beer we went and wandered around the red light district for hours. There was no end to the hilarity. Everyone in the district is English and male. Well, except for the people on the other side of the windows. They were mainly grossly overweight. To the point where I thought all of the district was the discount section. As opposed to only parts of it.

Walking around there was amazing for my self confidence. Because every girl I look at gives me that,"oh, I want you so bad" look. Yes, I realize that they only want me for my money. Which is really funny because I didn't have any. After about 3 hours of beer and laughing at the whores, or sometimes just getting really scared when a big one tried to open her door and start negotiating with you. Being drunk and zoning out in the red light district can be hazardous. One lady was so big I thought she was going to eat me. After the distric we wandered around for awhile. Mike and Steve wanted to do something in a bar and me being the cool guy I am, decided to go with. We get there, I go to the bar and they get a table in the back. Originally I was planning on heading back to sit with them after I got a pop but there was the most amazing thing on the tv: Anime. I haven't watched any anime since school ended in may. I didn't realize how much I miss it. There were a couple of problems with it though,
1. There was crazy techno music on so I couldn't hear the sound.
2. It was prolly in Japanese so even if I could hear it, I wouldn't understand it. It was subtitled.
3. It was subtitled in dutch.

I sat at this bar for about a half an hour, reading Dutch subtitles to an Anime with crazy awesome techno on. And yes, I could read them thankyouverymuch. After that it was a short walk to the hostel and bed.

No, I've never taken Dutch, but it is somewhere between German and English. And I know one of those languages quite well. And I know the grammar in the other one better.

Saturday in Amsterdam.

Went to the national museum, ridjkslalfkejgsdlkjgafgmuseum. That may not be how it is spelled, but that's how I always tried to pronounce it. We hit the Van Gogh museum. Very cool, van gogh painted some really cool stuff. Then we rocked the Heineken experience.

Wow. That's all I can say about that place. I was on this ride and I became a bottle of beer. It was so great. I walked out of the ride and I exclaimed to the group of people around me, only one of whom I knew, "My life is complete!" Some people laughed but no one questioned it. I take that as a sign. If anyone needs me I'll be in the retirement castle rocking the viewing window. So then mike and I went back to our other hostel. We moved saturday morning because the place steve found was way to expensive. Oh, and Steve is in Paris, so its only me and mike for the remainder of amsterdam.

We're back at the hostel and we see that there is a happy hour from 8-12. dollar Heineken's. We are so going to be at that. But first, the sex museum and porn from 1870. Holy crap there was some really weird stuff in there. I can't believe some people can physically do that, and at other points I was wondering how much people were getting paid to do that. I mean really, a fucking snake!?!

After that, we went to a bar with 6.50 beers. We were very confused about this until one of the waitresses got up on the table and started dancing. She wasn't wearing much. She was dancing to a prodigy song that I can't remember the name to and it has this high part. For the whole like 45 seocond of the high part she held herself upside down. I was gawking, this lady could kick my ass.

Then the happy hour. We got loaded, Mike had some green and I taught him how to play chess. It was really cool. We also met up with this dude Felix and this dude Jason. Jason took us all to an awesome Jazz bar. It was totally free to boot! After an hour, Felix, Mike and I bolt. We went back to the redlight district and we spent some more time laughing and making fun of the people on the other side of the glass. That place was still weird even when I knew what was coming. And if you're just walking slow they jump out the doors. Its kinda scary.

So I'm demanding to go back to the anime bar because I want more dutch subtitled anime but we can't find it. Finally, Mike just says,"We're drinking here, let's go." So we go in, and its totally the same bar and it was totally lame. Maybe fridays are just anime night, or it was a one shot deal. Whatever it was, I'm glad I was there and I wish there were more bars like that. After a beer it was bedtime. My bed was approximately 4 inches wide so when I hopped up to my bunk, the top one of course, I had to grab on to the side of the bed and pull myself back on. The bed was 4 inches and the sheets were kinda slippery.

They woke us up at 10. Then free breakfast time. I tried to enjoy my tea, eggs and bread, but all I could fucking smell and taste was pot. There were, roughly, 4 kajillion people smoking pot. And they were attempting to fog the room. I so hate the smell of pot now. After food, Mike and I went to a cafe and just chilled, it was time to go to Darmstadt.

Went to Heiner fest sunday night. Nothing special. Still just an oversized fisherfest.

I finished my project at work on Monday and the client was using it two hours after I was done with it. And the first thing my program did was find some errors in their data. I have never seen their data. But apparently I programmed this little app to think and write new code. I wonder if the app thinks in German or English? I mean, I coded and commented it in English, but all the system files and whatnot will be in German. Or maybe its bilingual?

Monday night, back to the Heiner fest because I need to do something. It was fireworks night. They were really lame. Mike wandered off at one point saying,"I'll be back in 5 minutes". We waited about an hour and a half. Good times. I don't know if he's actually alive or not. I suppose I'll find out tonight. But we'll see.

Hell yeah über post.

Later.

I wrote a cool dynamic selection thing today at work. Joe helped, again, because I can't find my coding ass with a map, a flashlight and both hands. Thanks joe. And its finally what my boss wants. Maybe he'll kick me some bones for this. I doubt it, but I can dream.

So I'm totally burned out on Europe right now. It may be because I'm working and I expect what I usually have when I'm working: sox games, drinking beer in ill light bars, talking about baseball. But no one here is a big baseball fan. And almost all the bars are well light or outside. Outside is cool, but sometimes I want that crappy hole in the wall bar with the bad beer and the smoke so thick you could chew it. It just feels like home. At least the weather has finally gone to shit. That also feels like home. Cloudy, windy and rainy. The perfect weather for going to the beach at night and smoking some cigars.

I have one more week of the job, then I'm cutting loose. Taking a flyer, never again will I be seen by the civilized world. Alright, that may not be true. I will be seen again, but I definetly don't know where I'm gonna be on any given night. Or during the day for that matter.

It's Heiner fest time in Darmstadt. Second biggest city festival in Germany. Its still just a fest with the same crappy rides. Same crappy warm beer. Same annoying 14 year olds running into me and jostling my drinking arm. I really don't know what is so great about this thing. Its like Fisher fest, but instead of a parking lot, its about a square mile. Yeah, it sounds cool, but its still a square mile of crap. And no jumping jack.

Ugh, time for some jeterating.

Later.

So I've been rocking the work thing. Its alright, but my boss is still a punk. But today was better than yesterday because the bossman didn't get in until 1ish. Gotta love that.

And yes, I did put the commenting capabilites on here for my health. I sure don't want to hear what anyone thinks of what I'm doing. Nope. I hate feedback.

This weekend is gonna be Amsterdam. Did you know that there is more to do there than smoke weed? Yeah, apparently there was this renassaince thing that happened there. Or something. At least I will have something to do when I go there. C'mon Van Gogh, let's see what you got me. You too Renoir. And now I'll have lots of stuff to do when my friends hit the hash bars.

Nothing else really going on. All I've been doing is work, laundry and sleep. And yes, I still need help with the laundry. There are just way too many buttons. Although at least my host dad has no idea how the thing works either. At least I have some vague concept.

Later.

So its Tuesday. Its tuesday for you too.

Thursday was the final party and my friends and others are musical philistines. They totally snubbed Ken and mine dj stylings. I had fun. F them. I got to hear a bunch of my favorite music on a massive sound system. And then I totally could have gotten with some random German girl, but I decided I was tired and needed to sleep. I had to get ready for Munich.

So, Munich.

Got in on Friday. Went to the hofbrauhaus. There is no 2 Liter mug. I was lied too. However, they only serve beer in 1 liter mugs. Oh is that a great idea. The food was awesome and the beer was great. And the singing was better. Yes, good old fashioned bar room singing. We just sort of sang with this big group of guys until they got booted. I think it was when one guy took off his shirt and attempted to dive into his Liter o' beer. It was funny. So me, Grant and Mike decided we needed to take their place. Unfortuanately we only know two songs. One was an actual drinking song that I will sing for you if you ask me too. The other was taught to me by Dave Ramirez or by one of Dan Shine's friend whose name I can't remember. Maybe Brian will let us all in on this kid's name. The song goes like this:

oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink, hoi!
Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink, hoi!
Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink, hoi!
Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink, hoi!

yes, the last hoi is pronounced in bold. It was a good time. Then we sent Mike in as a Kamikaze wingman. Andy knows what I'm talking about. He was damn good at it. The group of girls in reverse laderhosen didn't know what was coming. So, I'm totally mac'ing on this very pretty german girl for about an hour. I messed up though, I forgot I had already asked her where she worked. She didn't appreciate me asking twice. It went downhill from there. It was just enough to mess up my rather tenous ability to talk to girls.

So we attempted to go to a strip club, again. I still haven't made it to a strip club. However, we did get taken to another whore house. I never knew there were so many whore houses. It seems like the kind of thing that would get shut down pretty quickly. Once again, we didn't go in. I didn't even need to cop an excuse this time.

Woke up early on saturday, saw some sights. Then we all went to the river. Grant and I made some cool stuff with the rocks. I drew a dude on some rocks with a piece of burned wood. He was constructed like a snowman, except horizontal. Grant made part of stonehenge. Then everybody who wasn't going to Andechs went home. We should have gone with them.

Its Grant, me and Mike. We got to the train station at 6.30. Plenty of time, Andechs is only a hour, or so, away. I stood in a five person line for 35 minutes. I wanted to beat the person who was being so difficult. Then we got some food. Then we missed our train by four minutes. No big deal, there's another one in a half an hour. So we're chilling and Grant heads off to the bathroom. We have a half hour, no worries. Well, it gets to us having about 7 minutes and I'm starting to get pissed that Grant isn't back yet and three armed guards come up to me and ask me where I'm going. I don't have a ticket because Grant got a group ticket and we were all on that. I was worried I was going to rail jail. So I tell them and they tell me to go to Passing. The station is closing down. Then we tried to wait for Grant and the dudes got real pissed and seemed to want to beat me severely with their night sticks. Or get some use out of their shinny guns. We decided to grab Grant's bag and go.

Grant had been trying to get down to the stop for 10 minutes. They wouldn't let him down. Fucking construction. Thanks for letting us know ahead of time Munich. He was a little frazzeled. So we start heading to passing. We don't really want to walk the last three miles, so we get off early and try to catch a different train that will take us right to Passing. We get to the station and the last train to Passing left four minutes ago. sonofabitch. So we ask an employee of the train company how to get to passing and he tells us to walk 15 minutes to a different station where a lot of trains go to Passing. He say,"Rechts, denn immer geradaus." This means, "take a right, then always straigt."

So we do this, this takes us to a freaking no man's land of train stations. Then we ask for directions from two people and get four different sets of directions. This was nutty. So we decide to walk in a random direction over a four mile bridge. Maybe not actually four miles, but it felt like it. After the bridge we get to another street and decide to check our maps. We have gotten no closer to any train station. Then we figure out how to get to a train station that will take us to Passing. So we get there and watch a train head to Passing as we are walking up. Then we sit for 15 minutes and finally get to Passing.

When we get there we see that there is no S5 listed anywhere. S5 is the train that will get us close to Andechs. Then we have to figure out how to get from there to Andechs. Finally we find an S5, its leaving in 25 minutes and it doesn't even go all the way. Its 9.45 at this point. We just gave up. We would've gotten there at 11.30-11.45 at the earliest. Since monks aren't known as late night types, we just gave up. So we decide to head back to the hostel and see what we can find to do. We hop on a train. As we're hopping on some girls tell us the train isn't going any further. We don't believe this. We sit down. Mike goes to ask some rail employees what is going on. Then Grant and I realize that the train really isn't going to our stop so we get back off and start heading over to Mike. The girls then tell us the front half of the train will take us where we want to go. Grant and I run to mike. Tell him. He pushes the button to open the doors. The train pulls away. But only the half we didn't sit down in. Half our fucking train left. How the hell does that happen? Who has a train come apart while its running?

So we hop on the next train that gets close to our hostel. We come out of the train station and have two options for which way to walk. We had been this way about 35 minutes ago. Of course we picked the wrong way. We get to a busy street that has a street car we can take pretty close to our hostel. As we are getting there, we see our train pull up. We don't even bother running because we all know it will leave just as we get there. Sure enough, it did. It even stayed longer than they usually do, just so we could almost make it. We decided to just walk from there. It was a 15 minute walk and we got in at 10.45. Yeup, we spent 4 hours and 15 mintues failing to get to Andechs. We only made it three stops from where we started. God was playing silly buggers with us. What crap.

We got some pizza and had a crappy night in the university part of town. Then we took a cab home with a driver from Prague. Just too much.

So on Sunday we decided to take it easy. Head over to the massive park in the middle of Munich that has a nudist part of it. The first pass we make through the nudey part was awful. Almost all men. We ran the last part of it to get away from the damaging input. We chilled by a stream for a while and watched people go swimming and some people water surf on a board tied with a bungee to a tree. The current was really fast so it looked like a lot of fun. We then decided to head over to the hofbrau in the park. We also decided to take another pass through the nudey part. This time it was a lot better and I got a lot better at turning my head quicker when I saw a man. Or at least someone who looked like a man.

There are way too many dudes who wear thongs over here. I would argue that one is too many, but I'm willing to tolerate some weirdness. There were just too many times I saw thong and went,"Yeah, a girl. Oh god. That's a guy. My eyes are burning in my head! How can I stop this damaging burning input? And how can I forget about it?" The answer to the second question is two liters of beer. And good beer at that.

So back to the train station and another very good tour of the nudey park. Then some food, some beer and hopping on the train for more beer and a nap. I tried to meet up with people, but they weren't where I thought the were gonna be so I went to sleep.

Monday brought my first day of work. Pretty cool. I'm writing some database code. A big thankyou to Andy and Joe for bailing me out two summers in a row on how to write code for databases. You guys rock. Nothing interesting monday night.

Tuesday was a day of intense coding. And then at about 4.45 my boss lays a whole shit load of extra stuff on me that he didn't mention. Even though if he had told me at noon I wouldn't have done anything I did in the afternoon. Thanks for wasting my time, asshole. Yeah, you need to leave at five on the dot and lock the door but you aren't worried about me waiting for 30 minutes at a busstop out in the middle of nowhere. You jackass. Yeah, I now have a 17 minute train ride into darmstadt and a 15-20 minute bus ride out of darmstadt every day. That's such crap. I wonder if they could have set that up any worse. Thanks summer school program. Thanks.

On the upside the White Sox beat the twins 10-3 last night. Good times. Five homers for the sox. Good times.

And now I'm gonna go have a lonely beer in the Luisenplatz and go do some laundry. But this weekend is Amsterdam. It should be good times.

Later.