AGH! What the bleep happened to the leadership in our nation?! I won’t be surprised if I come back after my travels in Europe to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Screw global warming. When people find out that their money has no real value, that will be truly destructive.

And for my republican friends, I know it’s not much use to argue with you on the matter, but think about the issues for once, and what your candidate really stands for.  I’m getting sick of hearing racist, small minded arguments against Obama from all of you.  If you don’t know the issues, then go read a blog or watch the news.  You also know who you are.

Blargh. Not much to report on my end. It was warm today, 19 degrees (Celsius my friends. Celsius. 19 degrees C is 66.2 degrees F.)  I actually had to break out the shorts. I think I’m the only person here who thinks that it is still warm. Everyone else looks like they are getting ready for winter already. Kinda funny.

Ooogh. Need a haircut. Starting to get crazy.  Sorry to all of my Kassel buddies in Prague for not showing up this weekend. Wasn’t sure about my finances. We’ll see you in Budapest, though (Just referred to myself as a plural entity. That’s a good sign).

Hmm, I don’t think I’m quite done with my rant quite yet. Aren’t people tired of having dumb people run the most powerful nation on the planet? Or probably the formerly most powerful nation, if we keep it up. While I enjoy seeing the republican party slowly self destruct, it’s still frightening thinking that people will actually vote for McCain after his VP choice. I mean, she’s probably dumber than our current monkey in command. Hmm, I guess that this is bordering on slander. I’m sure that they have their strong suits. Like shooting things, coloring inside the lines (well, not sure about Dubya, he ate all of the crayons), and appealing to our folksy needs. I mean, who doesn’t like folksy metaphors that are used to skip around the actual issue? I love them!

Ergh. Starting to get frustrated. 

Yay, my stipend came though tonight. I can finally afford to eat and get a haircut. Gotta kill it before it reaches pre-mullet stage. Although sadly, I think I would fit in with a lot of people around here. For whatever reason, the stigma against mullets that exists in the states hasn’t quite made it oversees. Lotta kids with mullets.

I have been absolutely worthless this week. After 6 weeks of running around like a chicken without a head, I guess I needed some time to decompress, right? At least that’s my excuse. Well, the lack of money didn’t help, but I probably should have hit the books a bit more seriously. Gotta learn more German. Scares the willies out of me to think that some of my classes have oral exams. Gonna be screwed.

Ah well. I’m in too deep now. Although as one of my roommates pointed out, I could always trash my room, refuse to pay rent, and flee to France with my stipend money. . . Maybe while I’m at it, I’ll grow a mullet and join a Goth-punk band. Fitting. At least in Germany. Damn kids. Anywho, I’m rambling again, which means that I need to vegetate some more. Adios

Anywho, things are going fairly well, although I really need to get a desk soon. Typing and working on my stomach while laying on my bed isn’t too good for my back, methinks. I really like my apartment and the other students living in my flat. They are all mature and friendly, even if we all do keep to ourselves a bit.  It’s ok though.  I can hear the train sometimes going by.  It is a strange, almost musical sound.  My apartment is up on a hill right above the railway, and even though my room isn’t facing the tracks, the sound penetrates everything.  There is also a couple in an apartment near hear that have pretty bad arguments every day.  I can’t understand a single word of what they are saying, but it sounds terrible.  Hopefully they can get along (at least when I need to concentrate or sleep).  Every day, I also hear a mother calling for her child.  Yesterday it was getting out of hand because she was screaming for him/her for a good 2 hours.  Must have come back, because she was screaming again today at the same time.

Last night I decided to treat myself to some home cooking, so I made some Spaghetti Bolognese.  I thought that I had completely forgotten how to cook, seeing that I haven’t really had cooking supplies for a while.  Fortunately, it’s not a tough recipe.  It was quite a lot of fun too, so perhaps I will experiment with some new meals, once I get my stipend.

I have a meeting with one of the AMASE secretaries tomorrow morning.  I wonder what is in store for me?  Pretty sure we’re just going to lay out everything for registering for classes.  Hoo boy.  Only two weeks till classes start.  Starting to get nervous.  Well, nervous is an understatement.  However, I was pleasantly surprised that I understood most of what was going on in my first orientation session, although I might have gotten tricked into volunteering for helping out the AMASE program with a forum on fun things to do for foreign students.  Like I know.  Ah well, perhaps that is the best way to get involved with things and learn the language, right?

Hoo boy, well, mentioning that S’ghetti made me hungry.  Time to raid the kitchen.

Oh yeah, and here’s a picture of the path in the hills of Esslingen that I hiked back home on once.  Fun times.

Woohoo, so now I have more fun European experiences to describe.  The past few days since my last update went very fast, but every day we did something new.   Well, kind of new. 

We ended up going back to the Thermabath one more time, this time at night.  We didn’t stay for too long, but played volleyball in the pool outside.  Also, we went back to Wilhelmshöhe Park, and took a trip up to the statue of Hercules.  There is a pretty amazing set of waterfalls that go from the top of the mountain/hill down a series of steps and finally into a lake in front of the castle.  We took a bus to the top of the hill and followed the water down.  It reminded me a lot of Disneyland, actually.  The water turned on at a certain time of day, and these two statues played music (well, if you can call it that…  It sounded a bit more like a cow was being crushed slowly).  At the bottom of the hill, just above the lake was a pretty spectacular bridge, and we took a bunch of pictures in front of it.  A huge jet of water sprayed into the sky in the middle of the lake, and there must have been at least two hundred people in the park watching it.  We sat on the grass for a bit, but didn’t stay for long because people were starting to pack for their departures. 

The next night was a big party for everyone in the Kassel Language program, so about 31 people met in the school.  There, we had wine, beer, and brownies and danced some Irish dances.  That was really the highlight of the night, because everyone was awake and full of energy.  Afterwards, we headed out to an Irish pub, “The Shamrock” for karaoke, but there were too many people there.  Instead, we wandered a bit until we found a Cuban Club, which was empty except for two or three people.  So, we sat outside on beach chairs and drank fancy cocktails for a while.  We took a lot of pictures, and some people were beginning to depart.  Finally, the last few people went back to the Shamrock, where we finally found a table in the corner.  Only Vilmosh and Sasha sang, but we all lined up in front of the stage with our arms around each other, singing along with them.  It was insanely fun, but by the end everyone was very tired.  We walked back to a park in the hopes of finding something to do, but decided it was getting far too late.  Thus, we took a cab back home at roughly 3am.

Later, I drew a portrait of Vilmosh as a going away present, and my host family wants me to draw something in their guest book as well.  It turned out surprisingly well, even though I haven’t had the chance to do much drawing lately.  I really want to draw some of the architecture here, but the weather has been pretty bad.  It actually reminds me a lot of Oregon, in that sense.  Light rain, cool, and heavily forested.  There are some hills, but not as high as the ones back home.  The stars are roughly the same too, as I discussed with Felicia, the young girl from Portland/Moldavia.  It makes me a little homesick to think about it.  

Once again, on Friday we all went out again to a little pub for some beers to say our final farewells.  It was a nice little Stockholm themed pub, but the service was pretty bad.  That’s actually a theme to most German restaurants and cafes, I think.  Only in the Orangerie have I had good service (it’s a beer garden in an old palace type thing overlooking an amazing park by the river).  Maybe the servers just hate foreigners or something… Anyways, the beer was good.  I had a tall liter of Dunkeles Wiezen, or Hefeweizen Dunkel (dark wheat beer).  It was nice and smooth, unlike many American wiezens that I’ve tried. 

Saturday morning I saw Vilmosh off, and I will be meeting him and some others in Munich for Oktoberfest.  Also, Vilmosh invited me to Sylvester (new years) in Budapest.

Brain hurts.  Today I decided to get some sleep and stay at home.  This week I spoke way too much English, so I will be switching to German.  I’ve done pretty well for myself in Restaurants and getting Taxis.  Since I now know Kassel pretty well at this point, I will probably show my Oregonian classmates around.   There are also two more people from the big group staying until this coming up weekend, Danni from Italy and Yuki from Japan.  I think we will be hanging out a lot.

Jessica’s host family actually knew my German teacher from Oregon, Christian Stehr.   I must do a lot of things this week with him, including open up a Bank account here.  I have also decided that I should really get a mobile phone here.  They aren’t too expensive, but I probably won’t be able to afford one until September when I get my first stipend.

German is going well; I can understand more of what people are saying now, provided that they speak slowly.  I’m still amazed at how many people use “Denglish”, or Deutsch plus English.  Especially on the TV, there is a lot of words people use from English.  I still have to concentrate a lot on what people say, but I am confident that I will be able to learn it quickly.  Starting to gather up vocabulary that I know I will be using a lot.  I had to buy a bigger dictionary, but it is really good.  It comes with little illustrations for certain things to cover common words, like items in the kitchen or body parts.  Oh yeah, and I apologize if I begin capitalizing every noun.  That’s just how they do it here.  

I’m getting homesick, but I’m happy that I’ve been making so many friends.  Now I know people from almost every European nation, and then some.  I hope to see them all again in Munich for Oktoberfest, and perhaps again for New Years in Budapest.  So much to do.   I miss everyone back home, and hopefully I can resolve this stupid internet issue this week. 

Well, I’m going to get back to studying more.  Tchuss!

Woohoo, so it’s been a week since my last journal writing session.  Where to begin… So last week everyone from the one international volunteer organization departed, but I was quickly joined by about 13 other students from OSU.  It was very bizarre suddenly being surrounded by other Oregonians, let alone other citizens of the USA (I can’t get away with just saying “American” now because that technically includes everyone in both continents…). Bah.  So what do people from Oregon like to do?  Drink, of course.  I showed them around the town a bit, but they were for the most part much better off than I was since they came in such a large group and were actually integrated into the program.  I still went with them on their tour of the city though, which wasn’t terribly exciting because I had seen it all already. But it was still pretty funny to get the tour from Reiner, the only male teacher in that language program.  He’s a ridiculously funny older guy who always wore a yellow cardigan sweater and had a cup of coffee at all times.  He was a great teacher because he never really had to break into English to explain things to us. Instead, he would use a combination of sound effects, hand gestures, and simplified expressions in German.  I found this to be the most effective way to learn how to understand what others are talking about.  I have become decent at understanding people as long as they speak clearly and slowly. 

So for the most part, last week was drinking and hanging out and going to class.  Truthfully, two weeks there was not enough to become a confident speaker, but I am thankful for my newfound ability to hear spoken German.  It will take some practice to speak, I guess. 

Anywho, so on Saturday, I had to leave my host family since they were getting a new pair of female students, one from the Czech Republic, and one from Slovakia.  So, I had a day to burn before I had to be in Stuttgart, so I decided to go down and visit my future roommates in Saarbrücken.  So, on the way I encountered some more adventures.  In Frankfurt, I jumped onto the wrong train on accident, but fortunately everything in that area is relatively interconnected.  So I just jumped on the next train from Mainz down to Saarbrücken. 

Saturday night, I stayed at a youth hostel in Saarbrücken, which turned out to be a total ripoff.  It cost me more to stay there than it would have to stay in a hotel.  So, after that, I managed to get to an internet Café that was open on Sunday.  Now let me tell you about how things work over here.  Germans do not like to do anything on Sunday.  Absolutely nothing is open.  The city is totally dead on Sunday, with the exception of petrol stations, public transit, a few cafes, and fortunately, internet cafes.  Otherwise, the town is devoid of pedestrians and cars.  And Saarbrücken is a relatively large city.  Not really any skyscrapers, but it is a big city nonetheless.  So, I got to the internet café and found out that Zach (my one roommate was out), and couldn’t get a hold of my landlady.  Such luck.  However, I went to the apartment still, and met one of my other roommates (well, future roommates).  His name is Mohammed, and he comes from Palestine.  He was really awesome, and showed me around town and told me about the place.  I was able to drop off one of my pieces of luggage there, which is a big relief, since now I just have one roller bag to deal with.  Mohammed told me a bit about the school as well, and it sounds like I could get used to the place.  I have 3 months of lecture period, and then 1-2 months of exams covering the lectures.  There is a three month period between the lectures where I don’t have class, so if I managed to finish my exams in the first month, I would have two months of vacation before the next lecture semester.  Apparently, things aren’t so bad as long as you study and don’t slack off during the lecture periods.  Otherwise, if you party and procrastinate, you get hosed in the exam period.  I will have to get used to things, but I don’t think I will have a problem.

Saarbrücken is right in the middle of everything in Europe, too.  It is a relatively short train ride (two hours) to Paris, three hours to Frankfurt, four hours to Munich, and it lies on the border with France.  In fact, Mohammed told me that it is only an hour long bike ride to the next French town across the border, and he tries to make that ride most weekends.  I will definitely have to get a bike here, because they have a lot of nice paths by the river.

So now I’m on a train on my way to Stuttgart, where I will stay in another youth hostel for a night.  Hopefully this one won’t rip me off.  Then, tomorrow morning I begin work with Daimler, which is making me a little nervous.  I have no idea what they can have me do in only one month.  Plus, they know that I can only stay for one month so I’m not sure if they even expect anything out of me.  Well, at least they didn’t turn me down.

So now I’m going to point out some fun observations I’ve had during my travels so far.  So deodorant doesn’t exist as we know it in the USA here, as far as I can tell.  The closest thing I found was this strange roller ball thing that actually dispenses a liquid cologne thing.  It is not an antiperspirant, but rather just a smelly liquid. Fun.

Trains.  Trains in Germany are really interesting.  They run incredibly efficiently, but aren’t really meant for people carrying more than three bags.  I’m glad that I managed to get rid of one of my roller bags, because you begin to run out of space on the more crowded trains.

Beggers.  There are an incredibly large population of homeless or beggars here.  I was approached by a woman on the train the other day who said she had two kids she needed to feed, and the fact that I didn’t know how to respond in German immediately must have put a big sign over my head saying “American Rich Sucker”.  So immediately another woman came up and they practically cornered me.  God I hate beggars.  Fortunately, I got away with only paying them a few cents, because my station came up.

Food.  So apparently Germans have a fairly unique concept of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  They seem to lump them all into the same category.  Bread. Cheese. Meat. Butter. Mayonnaise. Mustard. Meat. Cheese. Meat. Meat. Meat. Oh yeah, and potatoes. Apples and bananas are the only fruits that I’ve had so far, and vegetables seem to be absent in most popular dishes.  Döner is Turkish food which is very popular here, and it consists mostly of fried breads with various paprika and spices.  I honestly haven’t had any yet, but I hear mixed reports about it.  McDonalds is very popular here, which is a little depressing.  I refuse to set foot in one though.  Pizza is actually one of the best foods I’ve had while I’ve been here.  It is very different from pizza in the states, because it isn’t really big or thick, and it only has a very thin tomato paste on it (almost only for keeping the dough moist).  It is very crunchy, and they usually come in single person servings (like a dinner plate sized pizza). 

Climate.  Just like Oregon. Maybe more humid.  It is just starting to get rainy here, so the weather is very unpredictable.  Last week in Kassel the weather would be overcast and cool in the morning, and extremely warm and muggy in the afternoon.  

Plants and Animals. Most of the trees and plants are recognizeable. Nothing too special there.  Practically the only animals that I’ve seen are dogs, rabbits, pigeons, and the occasional small lizard.  I guess I did see one extremely fat cat in Kassel, but that was the last.  There were a few interesting groups of homeless folks in Kassel that would have a ton of dogs with them, and they would hang out in the City center all the time.

Racism. Ive already seen three fights between “native” German kids and Turkish kids.  There is almost always some tension in the air if a group of young white Germans approach some Turkish guys.  It seems very silly to me, but I do not understand all of the nuances of the German/Turkish relationships here.  One person tried to compare it to immigrants in the USA from Mexico.

Geology.  I don’t know enough specifics to describe everything that I have seen, but I can tell that the Geology is different between the Kassel region and Saarbrücken. I saw a lot of basalt columns in Kassel, and they used it for building walls and decorative things there. On the train between Frankfurt and Saarbrücken, the rocks were much more crumbly and tan.

Architecture. Everything here is a jumbled mix of old and new buildings. Older buildings are almost all stone with ceramic roofs. The very new buildings look like they belong in downtown Tokyo or something. Very futuristic, and perhaps a little industrial.  One thing I have noticed is that there is graffiti on everything in the cities. Churches. Houses. Parks. Everything has something scrawled on it. It just seems strange to me to deface some building that is very old and beautiful.

Education system. Specialization is the strength of Germany. Specialization is the weakness of Germany. One of my teachers in Kassel told us about the education system here, and that was basically what she said. Germany produces people who excel in whatever field they are specialized in, but they have very little knowledge in anything else. Granted, that was just her opinion on the matter, so I have no right to form a judgment on the matter.

Well, I need to chill out of a bit and get ready for my train stop. I hope that everything is going well for everyone back home. I seem to have had a lot of luck in my endeavors so far, so I remain optimistic about the future. Please email me or contact me if you can, because I want to hear from everyone.

Ciao

Will

And I’m back again. This time I’ll keep it relatively short. Wow, German keyboards have already screwed me up. I’m switching my y and z keys around… Ugh. Ah well. I guess I should get used to it.

Well, It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been in the Stuttgart area for a week already. Last week I left off in the train on the way from Saarbrucken.  Well, I arrived here, and things are going well.  The first night here I spent in a youth hostel like the one in Saarbrucken, but a lot nicer (and without the hidden fees). I lucked out too, because one of the guys who was staying in the same room was a nice Polish fellow who showed me around the city center that night. He comes to Stuttgart a lot with his fiancé and his church, so he knew the town pretty well. There was a wine festival going on in all of the city center, so there was no shortage of people and alcohol. Also, the entire city center was lit up and active, which was surprising for a Sunday in Germany.  If I haven’t mentioned it already, German cities are absolutely dead on Sundays… Well, unless they are having a festival, apparently.

Unfortunately, I left my camera back in the hostel, so I don’t have any photographic evidence of this outing, but it was rather breathtaking. Fountains, statues, and a mixture of new and oldish architecture (probably post WWII, since most of the buildings from pre-WWII were destroyed). Still, everything was amazing.

The day after, I went to work for the first day, which was an interesting affair altogether. I should have paid attention to the directions that had been given to me, which told me to take the S-Bahn (kinda like a Train/Tram that goes moderate distances). Instead, I hopped on a U-Bahn (a Streetcar/Bus that goes shorter distances). This dropped me off about 2km from the building I needed to get to, and I was hauling a good 80lbs of luggage. (I left a bag in Saarbrucken, fortunately). This was bad enough though, because I absolutely demolished one of the castors on my big suitcase, so it was dragging and bouncing around like some possessed thing from the abyss.

However, I managed to get to work still, only ten minutes late (albeit drenched with sweat). My coworkers are all really nice and energetic about their work. They enjoy practicing their English with me, I think.  Fortunately, I am forced to use my German on a daily basis, otherwise I would have very little social interaction.  Every morning, people always greet everyone in the office when the come in and shake their hands, saying “Morgen” (a truncated “Guten Morgen”, kinda like if someone said “Mornin” back home). It’s a very casual atmosphere, and there are only about 20 people working on my floor. We are in a separate building from the main Daimler facility, which is like a mini city.  There are about 10,000 people working in the main facility, and they even have their own fire department. I haven’t been able to explore it much, but I really want to go to the museum.

My department is basically the prototype designers for new product concepts for Daimler Semi-trucks in Europe. They also work with Freightliner in Portland on many projects, so several of my colleagues are familiar with Oregon.  This is very bizarre, because I find myself chatting about things from my old internship… It’s almost like I’m back home, in a lot of ways.

Except that everyone is speaking German, and there are hundreds of Smartcars, and I’m surrounded by buildings that are older than the USA.  And everyone smokes.  And you have to pay 50 cents to use public toilets.  And despite being a very ecofriendly country, I find myself thinking “Jeez this place is dirty” a lot. For instance, at the train station tonight, I counted about 30 cigarette butts, 2 bandaids, 4 smashed cups, a bazillion petrified globs of chewing gum, and one broken off fingernail – all in a six foot radius around my bench.  Oh yeah, not to mention the thirty GIGANTIC spiders that were crawling all over the ceiling clock at the train station and the fluorescent lights. God I’m going to have nightmares tonight.  They were HUGE! ALL OF THEM!  I’m never standing underneath that clock again… *shudders*.

Well, I have to get up pretty early for work tomorrow, so I’ll add more to this later. This will at least make for an amusing read once I get the opportunity to post it. Hope that all is well.

Peace,

Will

Hoo boy, this is turning out to be another very very very long blog post. Perhaps I will break it up when I post it with photos. I just finished up my last day of “work” with Mercedes, and find myself once again en route to Stuttgart by train.  Technically, yesterday was my last actual day of work. I finished up my lufteinlassgitter Catia model, went over the fifty pages of formal resignation documents, and turned in my security card. Incidentally, there were two fire alarms yesterday as well.

However, today I went on a trip to Hannover to the largest Commercial Vehicle Expo in Germany, called IAA (something in German). Because it was only commercial vehicles, there were no passenger cars or anything like that. Only LKW’s, or semi trucks and trailers. Over two thousand companies were represented, many of them in the aftermarket product business, selling various gadgets and gizmos to ‘bling’ out and pimp European trucks.  Quite the business, apparently. 

The most interesting thing for me was to see the variety of approaches in trucks between international markets. For example, Mercedes Trucks, Freightliner, and Mitsubishi Fuso all belong to the same company (Daimler), but all approach the commercial vehicle business very differently. On one extreme, you have the Freightliner Cascadia, which features a massive sleeper cab, that one could easily move a small family into. You can stand up and walk around in the cab, and there are many features that focus on driver comfort and space. On the other extreme, there is Mitsubishi Fuso’s SuperGreat (yes, that’s what it is actually called. For some odd reason the first spokesman that comes to mind for this truck is Big Gay Al from Southpark). The SuperGreat has many of the features of the Freightliner on the other side of the room, but it is all compressed into a shoebox. Additionally, when you sit in the driver’s seat and close the door, one cannot help but feel a bit claustrophobic. The “happy medium” is the Mercedes Actros, which is looks basically like a streamlined SuperGreat with more plastic and perhaps a little bigger. However, all of the cosmetic (and superficial) differences aside, each vehicle represents different laws, regulations, needs, and customer requirements. Argh. I just had an urge to make a house of quality *punches self*.

Ah, much better. There were also debuts from every major truck manufacturer for Hybrid, Fuel Cell, Natural Gas, and generally more eco-friendly models. The approach for each model was very similar, although every manufacturer treated their particular model like it was the best thing since sliced bread. Fun Fun. It made me hate marketing departments worldwide.

Well, I’d better go. It’s time to check the train tickets (urge to do a Dogmaesque reenactment of the famous Indiana Jones line… “No Ticket”). Heh, I’m even in Germany. Not on a Blimp, though, Ah well. It would be fun to toss someone from a train like in Dogma. Perhaps that’s why it came to mind… Ah well.

Well, the day we were all waiting for has finally arrived.  I’m sure that my parents are throwing a party in the wake of my departure…  That’s right, I’m in Kassel, Germany right now.  It has been an incredibly long trip, too, so I will probably collapse into a heap soon.  So, I started out (Friday) taking a plane from Portland to Denver, Colorado.  Pretty typical for that kind of flight.  Window seat, nobody next to me.  It was good.  Unfortunately, I only had enough time to call my brother and use the restroom before they started boarding my flight.  I didn’t have to go through customs here though, which was nice.  That flight took me all the way from Denver to Heathrow Airport in London.  The flight was Ok, I suppose.  Really big plane, but the coach section wasn’t too crowded, so I had an aisle seat with nobody on my side, once again.  It was nice to stretch my legs.  Talked to a lady who was going with her son to Geneva for a conference on Cancer treatments.  Pretty interesting bunch.  Turns out that her son wanted to do engineering of some sort originally, but his college only offered physics.  Heathrow makes all of the other airports that I’ve been to look amazing.  This was probably the worst organized airport I have ever been to.  I didn’t even know which gate my connecting flight was at until about 15 minutes before boarding.  Talk about disorganized.  Not to mention they accidentally turned a plane full of people loose into the departure area, so a bunch of security guards were freaking out and interrogating people, trying to figure out who actually belonged in the departure area.  Good job guys.  Anywho, my last flight was pretty good, window seat again, and I sat next to a relatively attractive woman who was probably a teacher or something, because there was about 20 kids on the plane and she kept on checking a list of them.  This flight was actually my first use of German language, because it was with Lufthansa and we were flying into Frankfurt.  I actually asked for “Wasser mit Gas” or basically mineral water (also called “mineralwasser”).  I can’t remember who told me this, but someone did tell me to only drink the water with gas/carbonation.  

“Schwimmweste unter Ihrem Sitz” – “Swimming vest under your seat”

So, on arrival to Frankfurt, things started to get interesting.  I picked up my luggage (1 big bag = 50lbs, 1 small bag = 38lbs, 1 backpack = 37lbs, 1 laptop carrying tote = 28lbs) Needless to say, I probably looked pretty silly carting around a hundred pounds of luggage.  Customs was kinda a joke, if you ask me.  I had my Passport stamped by an officer who was probably younger than me, and then since I’m not selling any goods, I don’t have anything to declare. W00t. 5 minutes, and I’m walking on foreign soil.  Not for long, because I had a train to catch. Fortunately, all of the people working in the airport spoke excellent english, because otherwise I would have been hosed.  I bought a ticket for a high speed train directly to my final destination, Kassel-Wilhelmsöhe… but that train was cancelled. . . Or so I thought.  A train came at the designated time, but it was a different number, and I asked one of the train officials if the train went to Kassel, and he said no.  So, I sat down and waited.  Then the train left. And I waited some more. And waited.  And waited.  Until the next train came… and this one was bound for Munich.  Wrong direction.  Hmm… A half an hour had passed already, so I decided to go back to the ticket booth and ask about the train that was supposedly not headed to Kassel.  As it turns out, that was the train that I wanted, because it connected at the Frankfurt main terminal with another high speed train into Kassel.  So that sucked.  But the guy was cool, he hooked me up with a roundabout ticket on another train that did just about the same thing.

So I boarded the train that he pointed out, and there were so many people on board that I practically had to sit on my luggage in front of the lavatory, with about six other people.  One of the women had a small child with her, who fell over twice when we were decellerating rapidly.  Poor kid.  At least the children still cry for their mothers though.  That was about all that I could understand from the six of them.  So, after bouncing off of the Frankfurt main station, I hopped onto another train bound for Kassel.  This train, fortunately, had plenty of seating.  I actually ended up sitting next to another college student who studied international affairs in Switzerland.  A german native, he had just finished a similar two week language immersion course in France.  He spoke english very well (with an english accent too), so we bs’ed about college and studying abroad until I had to get off at Kassel.  This was probably the most strenuous part of my journey, because I had already been lugging around over a hundred pounds of luggage, and now I had to drag it up a ramp that was a quarter mile long to reach the exit.  Argh.  My back still hurts just thinking about that.

Then I used some spare change to call my Host Family, and Carsten (the father) picked me up.  I still haven’t picked up the mother’s name, but I believe that they also have a child.  There is one other student staying here at their house, and his name is also Will.  He is from Hungary.  I haven’t met him yet, because it was roughly 11pm local time when I rolled into Kassel.

My room is very, very nice.  Much better than my old apartment, that’s for certain.  However, I haven’t yet purchased any electrical adapters.  Everyone here seems relatively nice, once you get past the language thing.  The mother made me some sandwiches and sliced tomatoes from the garden when I told her that I hadn’t eaten yet.  We watched some television too, a crime show/comedy/drama (I was lost, only catching little bits of it), then a show about some Norwegian train tour that looked really cool.  It reminded me a lot of the historic Ghost Train in Ely, Nevada… Just cooler, because it went over 800m waterfalls and over crazy hundred year old stone bridges.  At this point I was catching a little more of the descriptions , since I’m more familiar with train related vocabulary than crimes. The final program was really cool, because I had seen the equivalent program in English before on the National Geographic channel or Discovery Channel back home.  It was about the scientists that study this glacier on some big ass mountain in the Swiss Alps, and they use time-lapse photography to record the motion of it both above and below ground with a pretty kick ass tunnel dug underneath the ice.

Well, there you have it. A compressed version of the last 25 hours of my journey.  Now, I think I will get some sleep, so I can adjust to this whole 9-hours ahead thing.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  I’m insanely tired.  Gute Nacht!

So, I had some strangely prophetic dreams last night, and I figured that I would relate them to you to set the stage for my descriptions of my first full day in Germany (it’s a busy ass day, too).  I dreamt that I met a bunch of the other students from the Kassel Language Immersion program, and we went around town and ended up in a really strange church like place that turned out to be a cannibalism center.  Anyways, that last part is way off, but the other two are actually pretty accurate.  The people in my dream were far less interesting than the people that I met, however.

So, to connect this together, I woke up relatively early.  I could have slept in, but I heard some shuffling around downstairs, and the sunlight was already shining through the windows.  I rolled out of bed at 8am and went downstairs to help the Mother prepare breakfast.  Her name is Katarina (I think).  I set the table, and she set out breads and cheeses and some various meat products.  Some looked scarier than others, but I tried one that was ok.  I wasn’t that hungry though, so I only made myself a little sandwich and drank some Darjeeling tea.  The other Will came downstairs too, so I met him.  He is 20 years old and has been with the Kassel program for three weeks already.  He speaks much better German than I can, but I was somewhat relieved to find out that he speaks English as well.  Interestingly enough, he is also studying Chinese, and wants to get into Chinese Business studies.   His first name is not William, but Willmar (spelling?), but we use the same shortened version, so there were some amusing moments when someone was talking to one of us and we said “Welcher Will” (which Will?).  Kinda funny.  I will only probably refer to him as Will, because it would be a pain to go back to this and convert all of the Willmars into the correct version if I screwed up the spelling.  Anyways, I digress.

So after breakfast, Will wanted to go to meet some of his friends and go to a thermabath (hot springs bath-house), and asked if I wanted to tag along and meet the other Kassel people who are part of the other specialized international program (not just the language course like I am taking).  I said yes, of course, because otherwise I would have been left at home with nothing to do, since everyone else was going to church.  However, instead of taking the bus, we were going to get a ride from the host family after church, so we just went with them to their little church service.  It was very pretty, but in a new building (not in an old cathedral or something).  I barely understood any of the service, but the music was very beautiful.  The host family mother Katarina played the violin in the little group, and Carsten gave a short announcement (I think he was talking about some current events in the community, but I’m not sure).  After this, they drove us to the Capital Building of Kassel, which has a name that sounds like “Rat-House”, so I was very confused at first.

So we waited there for about ten minutes for his friends, and only one showed up, an 18 year old Bulgarian guy named Christian. He is pretty damn hilarious, and likes to goof around a bit.  In fact, both him and Will are extremely funny, and were fun to hang out with.  At first, I wasn’t able to talk much in the group because we were using mostly German, but once we switched to English (because of laziness), it was much better (I know that’s terrible, since I’m supposed to learn German, but this offered me a lot of relief to meet some people here roughly my age).  So, we hung around the Capital Building for a half an hour, and then we decided to just leave for the hot springs since nobody else had showed up yet.  We took the StrassenBahn (street train) to Wilhelmschöhe, which was were the hot springs were at.

Now, this was a fuggin strange experience, because at the top of this hill in the middle of the forest is an Oriental Bathhouse.  IN GERMANY! How strange is that?  Apparently they were mining for something and struck and underground hotspring, so now it bubbles up freely.  For 18 euros, we were allowed to stay in there for 4 hours, with a one hour grace period before they fine you.  Which was good, because we were running pretty late by the end.

Anyways, so this place was absolutely incredible.  I’ve never been to someplace quite like this.  They had three main shallow swimming pool type things  on the main floor than wrapped all through the building and outside as well. You could pass through the wall under a little bridge in one of the swimming pools, so if it was too cool outside you could warm up inside without having to leave the water.  Also, the bar wrapped around the one main pool, and there was a small beer garden and sun tanning lawn with fancy oriental nouveau lawn chairs.  There were also three big hot tubs inside of the building build in this cascading rock garden column, which helped to support the second floor (yes, crazy fucking Germans, they build two storied spas).  Outside, there was also two waterfalls that you could stand under (although these had cold water, so they were kinda painful), and a pretty cool waterslide that deposits you underneath the bigger of the two waterfalls.  Now upstairs is where the true crazy German culture shock begins, because it became clothing optional at this point (actually, in the saunas, no clothing allowed).   So, you basically had forty or so old, wrinkly, fat guys and women walking around in their birthdaysuits, and occasionally a beautiful Fraulien (who was almost always accompanied by a protective boyfriend).  These girls tended to be more modest, and would wrap towels around themselves for the most part.  Granted, there were a few that I had to pick my jaw up off of the floor when they walked by.  So, we tried out the sauna, which was kinda comical, because about five minutes in, some lanky guy with a bucket of water carrying a towel (and fully clothed) walks in and asks how the temperature is, and everyone (well, except me and my companions) answers in unison “garaeoiaoahgglblagghenblaghblagh” I didn’t understand a goddamn word of it, but they said it like it was planned or something, and it was hard to keep from laughing.  The guy then put water on the coals and whipped the towel around to blow the hot steam into our faces.  Then he asked once again how the temperature was, and the same thing. “bolaowjghjglgeblagghen”. More of the same.  It was pretty cheesy, but amusing.

Then we got out after almost dying from the heat, and jumped into an absolutely frigid pool outside on the second floor.  This was most painful.  So after all of this, we were feeling pretty sapped of energy, so for lunch we had beer and candybars (yum).  Do we still sell Mars Bars in the USA? I hadn’t seen them in a while.  Anyways, so we then finally met up with the rest of the group that came late, and it was once again, a good introduction to European life.  There were a bunch of girls and one guy.  So we went from a group of three guys scoping out hot chicks to four guys in the middle of seven or eight cute girls.  I’m terrible with names, but I remembered their nationalities fairly well.  The other guy is from Slovakia (I think), and primarily spoke German to everyone (which everyone but me could follow well).  Then there was a girl from Italy, a girl from the Czech Republic,  a Norwegian girl, two Spanish girls, and a girl from Portland, Oregon (yeah, Portland of all places).  There are two more girls I think, and I cannot recall their nationalities at the moment.

We hung around the bathhouse for a little bit longer, but had to leave at five since our time limit was up.  After getting a quick cup of Cappucino, we headed out for a castle on the top of the mountain nearby.  Apparently, this was the castle that Napoleon’s brother stayed for a while, and it houses the second largest collection of Rembrandt paintings in the world.  However, it was closed, so we just met another person there, also from the Kassel program.  We hung out on the lawn for a while, but some people had to leave.  However, the remaining people (me, Will, Christian, Christina (the Norwegian), and Andrea (the girl from the Czech republic) walked to the top of the mountain (even higher) to another castle, which was built two hundred years ago.  It was much smaller than the other one and looked as though it was being repaired.  Finally, we walked back down the hill to the StrassenBahn and took it to a park where we met with three guys from the program (one is the Slovakian guy from before), and I didn’t catch the nationalities of the other two, and I’m still terrible with names.

So, we sat in the park till it got dark and cold, and went back home.  We arrived at about ten thirty or so, and at some tasty Kartoffel Salad (potato Salad) and basically a big fish stick.  Yum.  All things considered, I’m not very hungry after all of the swimming and walking today.  I’m sunburned and have blisters on my feet, but other than that, all is good. I think I am very fortunate to have already met so many wonderful people.  Everyone in the group was interesting and funny, and even though I started out as the “outsider”, I’ve now been invited along to go with them to an Irish Pub this week for a celebration, since this is their last week here (kinda sad, really).  Oh well.

Anyways, so isn’t it strange how my dream paralleled my day?  I mean, strange churchlike place in the dream turned into an actual church in reality (it even had three crosses, but not quite the same), and then meeting people from the Kassel program.  Strange.  Ah well.  If this mechanical engineering gig falls through, I’ll become a fortune teller.

Anyways, time to sleep. Gotta get up early tomorrow for class.  Ciao!(apparently everyone in Europe uses this, so it’s not just a Californian thing… Or a French thing.)

Well, so much for that sleep thing last night.  Somehow I think I got kicked back to Oregon time, I think.  Then again, I’ve been caught in some sort of cruel catch 22, where I get extremely thirsty, drink a bunch of Mineral Water, and then I have to pee immediately.  The mineralwasser does almost nothing to quench my thirst, either.  Frustrating.  So that’s basically what I did last night while tossing and turning, worrying about shit.  I think part of that was because I wasn’t feeling very well, because of the sunburns I had.  They are surprisingly not bad, and they don’t even hurt today.  Maybe I can actually get a tan here. 

Crap, still no internet.  Maybe there is some upstairs. 

Whew, day three (well, two and a half).  Well, this immersion thing does some interesting things to your mind.  Like a tour-de-force on your gray matter, you find yourself starting to catch bits of conversations and stuff.  Tomorrow, I must bring my camera to Königsplatz, which is the center of the city of Kassel.  I was pretty confused about the layout of this place at first, but the buses and trains make it pretty simple to get around.  Heck, I found my way back home with only a street name.  So today, I finally started classes.  We met a group of the other students at the StraßenBahn station in Königsplatz.  Then, we took a short ride up the hill towards the college.  It is spread out along the main street there (can’t remember the name… Something + Straße, and the ß = ss).  After getting a cup of coffee, we all went to the building.  It’s not much to look at, but the Kassel Language program runs out of a single building.  Most of the people I was hanging out with were from the advanced program (well, I say advanced, but they are kind of pursuing a different goal from the program, an international degree in German).  But eventually, they all had to go to class, and I sat with the other two new students.  One is Yoki (sp?), and she is from Japan, and speaks very little English and about the same amount of German as me.  The other is Victoria (I think), she is Ukranian, and has been studying German for 3 years, so needless to say she can speak it much easier.  She also speaks no English, so we made an amusing group, probably.  The only language we could communicate in is the one we are all trying to learn.  Really, this was good, because it gave us some good practice.

Then, they called us into one of the classrooms, one with a bunch of computers in the desks in a small halfcircle around a central table.  All of the classrooms are very small, and can probably hold a maximum of 10-12 students at once.  Here, we were given our placement tests and one hour to complete it.  It had 120 questions, and it began with the simplest and ended with the most difficult.  I actually did pretty well, because I placed into the same class as the Ukranian girl, which consists of three other advanced students.  There is Mitch, who is from Michigan (finally, someone I could speak English to!), Mary (I couldn’t pronounce her real name, because it is kinda complicated), and she is from France, and Allen, whom I cannot recall his nationality, but his native language is Arabic.  Thus, we had quite a mixed group.

The class was pretty damn tough, too.  I could understand some of it, but had issues with vocabulary (which I expected).  However, so did some of the other students, and I knew some things the others didn’t too.  But the instructor wasted no time in dishing out the pain, with nonstop drills on sentence matching and picture descriptions. We ended that class with a pair of rhymes, which were meant to improve our pronunciation of certain consonants that are widely misspoken.  These were pretty damn funny, especially the one with “Pf” versus “f” versus “p”, which was about something involving a horse eating a priest’s food off of a table.

Then we had a lunch break from 12:30 to 2:00, which I thought was pretty generous.  Once we were out of the classroom, most of the people switched back to English, for the sake of socializing more efficiently.  I joined my group of friends from the previous days, and we made our way to the cafeteria.  It was actually very inexpensive for relatively decent portions of food.  I had a curry dish that was pretty good, even if it wasn’t very spicy. 

When we finished up, we went back to the lawn on the front of the building of our classes and waited, talking about some amusing things.  There is a fellow from Scotland named Ronan (sp?) who was doing a lot of impressions of actors like Tom Hanks.  He is part of the advanced class too, and speaks German, French, and several other languages I think. 

Holy crap, talk about being bombarded with various languages.  In our little group, we have only three repeat nationalities, myself and Mitch from the USA (Felicia from Portland only went to school there, she is really from Moldavia originally), and two girls from Italy, and a girl and a guy from France.

Anyways, at 2:00 we went back to the multimedia lab, where the second half of classes were taught.  This consisted of very simple grammar drills for my group, and some audio drills for others.  I think this must be how I placed into the advanced class, because my written grammar is actually fairly decent.  While I didn’t finish the lessons, it didn’t matter, because it was self moderated.  There are no grades that I am aware of at the moment.  The teacher for the multimedia lab is very kind and helpful (and she is kinda cute, so that helps too).  All of the teachers mostly only speak German to us, which makes it very interesting sometimes.  I think that is one of my weaknesses, is hearing and understanding simultaneously.  My brain just doesn’t work that fast, to listen to what someone says, and to process a response for it.

Wow, rambling.  Anyways, so after class, things got a little more exciting.  So I had fortunately jotted down the street name for the bus stop near my host family, because I lost track of everyone else.  I had to get a book from the office, so when I got outside, everyone had left.  I was determined not to fret, however.  So, instead of taking the StraßenBahn, I set out on foot to explore the region.  This turned out to be an excellent choice, because I accomplished some goals, and saw some cool things. 

First I walked to the Königstraße trainstop, hoping to see some familiar faces.  Seeing none, I went to the Bus Information Center, and purchased a month long pass on the local buses for 41 euros.  This is a better deal than paying for each bus ride, and better than getting two passes that are only good for one week.  I made this transaction in halting, broken up German, but the guy was understanding of my situation (plus it wasn’t actually a difficult question, I just stumbled over the word for Bus-ticket, so it probably sounded like a bizarre automobile thing).  He spoke some English, but I refused to give into the urge to switch, and managed to finish the transaction pretty smoothly (much to his and my own surprise).

From there, I walked to around the Königstraße some more (it’s a big round city center, with little cafés and shops lining it.  There are these cool fountains that ring the entire place.  It is very busy, because the trains have a main stop right in the center of the circle.  I decided to check out the Mall (named “City Point”… Yes, in English.  I had to laugh at a few businesses that use disjointed English words or sentences for their names or advertisements).   I walked downstairs to use the restroom, and bumped into one of the other students from the college.  She told me that most of the other people who we hung out with yesterday didn’t get out of class until 4:30, and she wasn’t sure what their plans were.  This was fine, but I really should have remembered to ask if she had anyone’s cell phone numbers.  Even though I don’t have one that works here, I could easily call from one of the ten bazillion payphones.  Ah well.  I was in a rush to get to the restroom, methinks.

I also briefly saw Mitch, but he was a few levels above me in the mall. I suppose I should describe the building… It is very interesting.  It is almost football shaped on the inside, and it had five levels.  There are a lot of curved glass panels and polished metal bits everywhere.  It was pretty funny though, because I could have easily wanted to shop there just by looking in the stores.  There were many stores just like ones in the USA, and actually there were two grocery stores as well.  Well, German grocery stores.  Hard to explain.  I went to the top, where I found an electronics store.  I walked around until I found some US-European electrical adapters, and then left to check out Königstraße again.  (by the way, for a quick German lesson, König is “King”, and Straße is “Street”.  Fun, isn’t it?) Seeing nobody, I got a drink from a little shop, and checked out the bus maps until I found my one street name.  This took an amazingly long time, because I had written it down sloppily and with a “-“ between what I thought were two words, but really it was all one word.  However, once I did figure it out, the correct bus wasn’t gonna come for another fifteen minutes or so.  I walked around some more, checking out shops and side-streets until I saw my bus. 

This was kind of exciting, because I wasn’t 100% certain that it was really my bus.  I just hopped on one with a familiar number and familiar street name.  Granted, it took a while to get there, but I finally arrived at my stop.  Of course, as soon as I got to my host-family’s house, I remembered a bunch of stuff that I should have bought.  Paper, notebooks, an alarm clock, and probably a surge protector thing.  Then I should be set.  Since I have arrived here, money has flown out of me faster than shit from a Christmas goose,  not to mention anything I spend is really 1.5 times more expensive in US$.  Argh.

Wow, German rap from the early 90’s is funny as hell.  They mix English and German freely, which makes it confusing as hell.   The song I’m hearing on the radio sounds just like that song from Price of Bell air or whatever the hell it is.  Whoo… Now I have to do some homework.  Hopefully I can get the internet password tonight.  Otherwise I’ll go crazy. 

Whoo! Internets. Post. Now.

I will upload some pics later. Must email people now.

Well, I also noticed something kinda bizarre on the way up to C-Town.  Along I-5 on my side of the road, I passed five or six fires along the side of the freeway.  The first few already had fire crews responding, but the others were blazing away.  It was odd that it was only on my side of the freeway, and all of the fires were about at the same stage (burning an area about the size of a basketball court in the grass).  I wonder if these were caused by a truck or something with a weedburner exhaust (one that blasts the exhaust at ground level instead of using stacks).  Or it could have been the dumbass who was mowing the grass on the side of the freeway.  Isn’t there a time restriction on that sort of thing?  Anyways.  Bizarre.

As if the night weren’t memorable enough, I was given a fond farewell by the city of Corvallis with a spectacular sunset.  It might just be that these new glasses allow me to actually SEE the fuggin clouds and hills, but it was probably one of the most amazing sunsets that I’ve seen in a long time.  A ribbon of thin hair-like clouds made sort of a broad S curve, extending up from the horizon in front of the sun and fading out just overhead.  It started out with a bright orange glow, with silver highlights from the whisps of cloud above.  Then, it gradually became an intense violent red glow.  To contrast this, the sky around the cloud was a dull yellowish green (then again, I’m kinda colorblind in that particular hue… so it could have been totally different for all I know). But the contrast that it created with the red was spectacular.  On top of all of this, there was a bright full moon on the other side of the sky.  This all seemed like fitting closure to my stay in Corvallis.  It was a fun 5 years, mostly uneventful… Except for all of the crazy times with the hoseheads, and then doodling in classes to keep myself sane, and nearly burning down the garage with napalm, and rolling Baja cars, and drinking many, many pitchers of Terminator Stout at the Rogers Annex (aka McMenamins), and of course, meeting fun and exciting people.  I guess that sort of sunset thing makes me a little bit sentimental.  Or maybe that is just a symptom of starting a new chapter in my life.  Who knows. 

Mmm… Hungry… Just realized that in all of the excitement all I had to eat today was a snickers bar and coffee.  Time to raid the parent’s fridge.

Perhaps that is a bit too harsh…  I’m sure things will work out, but I have to make sure that I assume the worst. ‘s just the way I roll.

In other news, I have once again realized that Windows Vista is the bane of my existence as well.  At least my new shiny laptop doesn’t have all of the startup issues that my custom built megadesktop had… But I just bought the damn thing, and it’s already got more bugs and crashes than I would really like to deal with at the moment.  For some bizarre reason, Windows Explorer has decided to take a crap on me.  Whenever I need to right click an executable file… say… Bioshock… It pops up an annoying little window telling me that Windows Explorer is not responding, and that it needs to restart.  But not to fear, because Windows will automatically search the web for solutions… Right? … Right?  Well, at least that is what it says that it will do.  Instead, it just wastes more of my time by churning through a loading bar, only to inform me that “Oh noes, we don’t have a solution for your problem.” Well just fuggin’ great.  Thanks Windows.  Thanks for being an enormous POS.  

Well… Not really. I fixed the problem earlier today, but now it’s back after installing Call of Duty 4… DirectX? Video Card drivers? Dunno. I fixed it earlier just by running Spybot, Adaware, and McAffee (just)… Of course McAffee lived up to it’s standards of being worthless, but Spybot seemed to mop up some registry issues.  Then I did a scannow from the command prompt, and it detected six corrupted files somewhere.  Now to figure out how to fix that… Ugh.  This isn’t what I imagined my last week in the USA as…

In other news, my bags are packed with all of the clothing that I feel like keeping.  Now I just have to find the room for all of my other stuff… Oh boy! I hope the bathroom scale is accurate enough… That fifty pound limit on check-in luggage might be a close call.