Posting from Deutschland

Hey everyone (except for my parents)

I thought it would be about time for a new post, as I know it's been a while. My trip from Prague to Cologne was rather uneventful, but comfortable. Germany's high-speed InterCity Express train lines (ICE) are by far the nicest trains I have been in so far. They definately beat the French's equivilant, the TGV. Once you board, you are greeted with a comfortable modern interior. The train is carpet floored, and the walls are decorated with nice wood panneling, and everything is lit with those little halogen lamps. Anyone who has ever been on an airplane or greyhound will know the dirty little phone booth sized bathrooms. Well, you won't find them on the ICE. You see a huge, round portion of the wall marked WC (Water Closet - this is used all over Europe), with a little button on the side. When you press it, the whole section slides to the side on tracks, revealing a huge bathroom, equally nicely decorated as the train. Classy! And the whole train is so soundproof, you hardly realise the train has left the station. Pretty cool.

In Cologne I was greeted by my mother and Denise. Not only was it nice to see my family again, but it was great to be picked up at the train station. One of those things that you develop doing a two month train trip is that you really start to hate the end of a train ride. You have to get up and put your bag on, leave your comforatble seat, and orient yourself in a completely foreign town. You have find a map, get directions, figure out subway/bus prices and routes in a foreign language, wander aimlessly for a while... Doing this every four days becomes kind of a pain. It was great to be greeted at the track, let to a car (ahhhh, car. That's nice...), and effortlessly be chaufeured to your destination.

The area in which the Pajonks live (For those that don't know them, they are some friends of ours in Germany. They own that nice summer house right next to our old resort.) is beautiful. It is exactly what the stereotypical images of Germany would have you believe. Little brick houses (many bearing the brown cross beam pattern on the outside) on a hillside overlooking a small town, a BMW in every driveway, narrow windy roads through thick forest, and a patchwork of little farm fields. And the beauty of it is, due to the population density of Germany, you can have this, yet still be in a large city within 20 minutes.

When I got there, they fed me barbeque food untill I couldn't stand comfortably, and I had access to their keg :-) The first day we just kind of relaxed and hung out, since the rest of my family was very jet lagged. In the evening I used this little luxury of free anytime PC access to get reaquainted with an old friend called Counter Strike, and just endlessly browsing the web.

The next morning, Denise took me and Marcel to a little graduation barbeque for her school class. My brother and I were supposed to pretend we didn't speal German, so that we could make all of Denise's friends try to talk to us in English. That backfired though, becasue they just didn't talk to us at all! I gave up on that plan and told them I spoke German, and suddenly they were all talking to us. Very nice people.

Later that day we headed off to do some Cologne sight seeing. It's great to do this kind of thing when you don't have to pay for yourself. It was pretty cool. We went to the Cologne Dome, which is another shockingly huge and amazing cathedral. We checked out the interior, payed the few euros to climb to the top, and checked out the treasure room. The view was quite impressive, though unfortunately, the war has left Cologne not looking so impressive. It's just a bunch of modern buildings. However, you still get a good view, and from the top you see a little authentic corner, which is called Altstadt (oldtown), and is a small neighborhood that survived the bombings.

After the treasuer room (shiny) we went over to Altstadt and took a little walk through it. It is a beautiful riverfront area lined with patio restaurants. Apparantly it is flooded with people on the weekends, but we caught it on a Monday (or was it Tuesday?). After our walk, we headed to a Restaurant called Früh (early) and had the most stereotypical German food. Bratwurst, sour kraut, potatoes, etc, etc. There we met Marcel (not my brother), whom I hadn't seen in probably over five years. The food was good, and so was the beer (Kölsch).

The next day, we went to the Haribo factory. I'm sure some of you will know what I'm talking about. Haribo is the company that makes "German Gummybears," as I always call them when I get others to try them. Just for the record, they are the wold's greatest gummy products. They had them available in bulk, so we could just scoop together huge mix bags. They also sold the final packaged ones at very low prices. We bought a 4kg crate for €7.00! After that, we quickly checked out a castle. It was not the world's greatest castle, but it was pretty cool anyways. After 500 years of wars and such, it had been burned down, torn down, renovated, reconstructed, demolished, and built from scratch so many times, it was hardly in it's original form. It was in a great hilltop location with a view, though! That evening we caught the ICE to Stuttgart, where we will be staying with some close friends of my parents for the next three weeks.

Aside from eating lots and drinking beer and champagne, we have taken a nice walk in another old town area. This had to be one of the most beautiful and stereotypical little town areas I had ever seen. I wish I could have taken pictures, but aside from getting robbed on my last travel day, I managed to forget my extra batteries and my charger for my camera at the hostel in Prague!!! I am in the process of finding one on eBay, but for the moment, my camera is a useless, expensive hunk of plastic, glass and, silicon.

Our plans for the next three weeks are coming together. We are going to get some gokart action in there. Also, the people we want to visit the most (really good friends, close relations, etc.) will probably resuly in an overnight visit, and I'm sure they can show us a good time in their home neighborhood.

As for any leftover time, there are two PC's with broadband here, so I will not be bored. These next three weeks will give my a chance to design my projector! I plan on having the paper design done when I get back, so I can do any woodworking in my two weeks at home before I move out (!!!) and lose access to woodworking tools. Any time after that is spent in Counter Strike land. The PC's at this house are even good enough for HL2/CSS! Woohoo, Source!

As I'm sure you are probably aware, the posts will probably be a little less fequent at this point, and will probably be a tad less interesting (less random people, less partying, etc). All good things must come to an end.

For now, enjoy these pictures.

Later.

PS: On second though, no pics today. I'm having some troubles with the uploader. I will try to get them up tomorrow, along with some videos I took throughout the trip. Have QuickTime installed to view them.

Later.