It feels like we're going in circles

I think a lot about the orbiting of planets; it's a nice representation of time. Whereas a clock can be unplugged, a watch can run out of batteries, a tree can burn down and a heart can stop beating, the planets twirl, weave and dance with one another interminably.

This year we went once round the sun. That, and the Earth did 365 pirouettes. It's beautiful, yet frighteningly inexorable. As 2010 comes to a close, I find myself overwhelmed trying to integrate everything. I could really use a moment without sound to hear my thoughts and a moment without motion to catch my breath, but the globe keeps spinning ignorant to my requests. This year has been pretty important for me, so much so that for the first time in my life I feel like I need to, much like my friend Loaf does for everything, rehash the milestones.

I took the hardest test of my life and survived.

I built my first bike from spokes to saddle.

I graduated from college as a neurobiologist (and a minor league scholar of German language and culture).

I organized a directed a conference to educate and inspire high schoolers about pursuing a career in health care.

I was told on numerous occasions, at said conference, that I was Puerto Rican.

I willingly slept in a car three nights in a row.

I learned how to be single - and that being single can be really complicated.

I went on my first business trip.

I drank a whole beer (alcohol free).

I moved to Europe with little more than a backpack, a bike and a promise of a job.

I became an Emergency Medical Technician.

I rode 400 miles in four days down the sunny California coast with two of my closest friends.

I successfully completed the Cinnamon Challenge. Twice.

There is no doubt that some achievements on this list are more momentous than others - graduating from college is without question of more life-importance than being called Puerto Rican by a 17 year old Puerto Rican girl. But in those pensive moments in which I get lost in my thoughts and try to sort and organize them to achieve some order and sense, these are the things that come to mind. It is in these moments that I try and dig my heels into the Earth in the silly hope that my resistance will make it spin just a little bit slower and give must that fraction of a second longer to understand everything that goes through my head.

In the end, I have to simply own up to the fact that the Earth spins, circles the sun and is just one of a great number of stones that are accelerating away from one another. I suppose that's the beauty of it all, that within the elegant choreography of the universe, we live, love, laugh and thrive. So, let the dance go on, let us keep going in circles and let our next go around the sun be even better than that last magnificent lap that was 2010.

Übersetzung: An open letter to the St. Martin School

Even though you all surely breezed through my letter in German, here's the translation (you know, just so that you can be sure that you understood all those 46 letter words):

To my wonderful coworkers,

It's hard to believe that my time at St. Martins is already at its end; three months couldn't have flown by any faster. My internship at the school wasn't the standard for you guys: I was the American, who was spread out between all the grades, who all of a sudden showed up on crutches, which were all of a sudden decorated, who only stayed until Christmas. As a result, I didn't have the opportunity to get to know a lot of you and I often found myself on the edge of the action without a specific task to fulfill.

However, that was ok for me, because I still learned so many things in the last three months that I can use and integrate into my daily life. I would like to share a short list of these things that I learned at St. Martins, things that are now indispensable to me:

I. When Patricia doesn't eat because she's distracted, when Süsänn asks the same question for the tenth time in the past two minutes, or when Pascal just stands in the bathroom and stares at you despite the fact he's told you four times that he needs to go, then the natural reaction is to get angry. Yet you learn quite quickly that that isn't the proper solution. You have to have patience (even when you think that you're already patient, it's almost always better to be even more patient) and always keep in mind that our students have a completely different perception of the world.

II. I have never worked with children, but in the last three months through the close contact that I've had with them, I've learned to better understand children and to regard them as human beings. Handicapp here or there, children can surprise us and they do everyday. Teaching isn't a one way street, at St. Martins is no exception to this rule - St. Martin children are complex, smart in their own way, full of potential and we can learn a lot from them as our fellow humans.

III. Children help adults to re-recognize the small beautiful things in life that are often lost in the shuffle. I wouldn't say that I had a poor imagination when I came to work at St. Martins, but through the time I spent with the children I saw that the world had in fact lost some of it's magic in my eyes. Now I appreciate again that cloud movements can be spectacular, that a carpet with streets and buildings on it can be a real city, that Tolga in a foam barrel in the gym is the funniest toy in the world. Beauty is truly everywhere, in every child, in every snowflake, natural or handmade.

IV. For me, one of the biggest challenges was that everything happened in German. Just as I thought that my German had gotten strong enough, I realized that there were a lot of people at the school who spoke no German at all. Since then, I've learned a ton of Franconian. Cool, huh?

V. The last thing that I would like to share with you guys is simple: The people who work at St. Martin School are true heroes. I want to eventually become a doctor, but I saw time and time again while working at the school that you don't need a medicine license to heal somebody. Society needs organizations like St. Martins and thereby included are people like you all who give everything for the school. Sometimes the work is exhausting, sometimes the rewards and progresses are hard to see, but be sure that what you do is invaluable and appreciated. I am so happy that I got the chance to work with you all.

I thank you all very much for the opportunity I was given. Mr. Zinsmeister took a risk when he gave me the ok to do an internship at the school. I can only hope that my time here brought you all something too and that I wasn't the only one who came away with something.

I have traveled quite a bit and along the way I have seen and experienced quite a lot. However, I am more that sure that working at the St. Martin School is one of the most important experiences that I've ever had, and that's due to you all and the kids. Again, thank you!

All the best,
Reid Haflich

Ein offener Brief an die St. Martin Schule

Meine lieben Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter,

Ich kann es kaum fassen, dass meine Zeit an der St. Martin Schule schon zu Ende ist; drei Monate könnten nicht schneller vorbei fliegen. Mein Praktikum an der Schule war nicht so was Normales für euch: ich war der Amerikaner, der überall zugeteilt war, der plötzlich mit Krücken gekommen ist, die plötzlich geschmückt waren, der nur bis zu Weihnachten geblieben ist. Aufgrund dessen hatte ich nicht die Gelegenheit viele von Euch kennen zu lernen und oft fand ich mich am Rand ohne eine spezifische Aufgabe.

Aber das war für mich egal, weil ich trotzdem in den letzten drei Monaten so viel gelernt habe, Sachen die ich für den Rest meines Lebens nutzen und im täglichen Leben integrieren kann. Ich will euch kurz einige Dinge mitteilen, die ich an der St. Martin Schule gelernt habe und jetzt für mich unentbehrlich sind:

I. Wenn Patricia nicht isst, weil sie abgelenkt ist, oder wenn Süsänn die gleiche Frage zehn Mal in zwei Minuten stellt, oder wenn Pascal im Bad stehen bleibt und dich anstarrt, obwohl er dir vier Mal gesagt hat, dass er aufs Klo muss, dann ist die natürliche Reaktion sich zu ärgern. Aber man lernt sehr schnell, dass das nicht die richtige Lösung ist. Man muss einfach Geduld haben (auch wenn man denkt, dass man Geduld schon hat, es ist fast immer besser noch geduldiger zu sein) und man muss immer wieder daran denken, dass die Schuler eine komplete andere Wahrnehmung von der Welt haben.

II. Ich habe nie mit Kindern gearbeitet, aber durch die engen Kontakte in den letzen Monaten habe ich gelernt Kinder besser zu verstehen und als Menschen wahrzunehmen. Behinderung hin oder her, Kinder können uns überraschen und sie schaffen es jeden Tag. Unterrichten ist keine Einbahnstraße, und die St. Martin Schule ist keine Ausnahme – St. Martin Kinder sind komplex, klug in ihrer eigenen Art, voller Potenzial und wir können als Mitmenschen viel von ihnen lernen.

III. Kinder helfen Erwachsenen die kleinen, schönen Dinge im Leben, die zu oft übersehen werden, wiederzuerkennen. Ich würde nicht sagen, dass ich fantasielos war, als ich zur St. Martin Schule kam, aber durch die Zeit, die ich mit den Kindern verbracht habe, erkannte ich, dass in meinen Augen die Welt doch schon ein bisschen ihrer Zauberei verloren hatte. Nun schätze ich wieder, dass Wolkenbewegungen großartig sein können, dass ein Autoteppich eine echte Stadt sein kann, dass Tolga in einem Schaumstofffass in der Turnhalle das lustigste Spielzeug der Welt ist. Schönheit ist wirklich überall, in jedem Kind, in jeder gebastelten oder natürlichen Schneeflocke.

IV. Für mich war eine der größten Herausvorderungen, dass alles auf Deutsch ablief. Gerade als ich dachte, dass mein Deutsch stark genug wurde, bemerkte ich, dass viele Leute an der Schule gar kein Deutsch sprechen. Seitdem lernte ich ‘ne Menge Frängisch. Schön, gell?

V. Die letzte Sache, die ich euch mittteilen möchte ist einfach: Die Leute an der St. Martin Schule sind echten Helden. Ich will eventuell Arzt werden, aber ich habe an der Schule immer wieder gesehen, dass man keine Medizinlizenz braucht, um jemanden zu heilen. Die Gesellschaft braucht Organisationen wie die St. Martin Schule und damit verbunden sind Leute wie ihr, die für diese Schule alles geben. Manchmal ist die Arbeit anstrengend und manchmal sind die Belohnungen und Fortschritte schwierig zu sehen, aber seid sicher, dass das, was ihr macht, unbezahlbar und geschätzt ist. Ich freue mich, dass ich die Chance bekommen habe mit euch zu arbeiten.

Ich bedanke mich sehr für die Gelegenheit, die ihr mir gegeben habt. Herr Zinsmeister hat ein Risiko übernommen, als er gesagt hat, dass ich ein Praktikum bei euch machen darf. Ich hoffe nur, dass meine Zeit euch etwas gebracht hat und ich nicht der einzige war, der etwas daraus mitgenommen hat.

Ich bin ziemlich viel gereist und auf dem Weg, habe ich ganz viel gesehen und erfahren. Aber ich bin mir sicher, dass die St. Martin Schule eine von den wichtigsten Erfahrungen ist, die ich je gehabt habe und das liegt an euch und den Kindern. Nochmals vielen Dank!

Mit Besten Grüßen,

Reid Haflich

I cheated on my Doktor in Ochsenfurt

What would you do for first place? If you're competitive like me, you'd probably do a lot. But what would you do for seventh place...of twelve? Probably not all that much. I mean, at that point you have to own up to the fact that you're worse than half of the other competitors. However, while most people ease up on the gas upon seeing that a top finish isn't in the cards, what do I do for seventh place? I break my knee.

In the last minute of the last game at an indoor ultimate frisbee tournament in Leipzig, Germany I jumped to intercept a pass from an offender waiting in the endzone and landed on a locked right leg. I had caught the frisbee, we won the game (thereby securing a smooth seventh place) and I was whisked away in an ambulance to seek medical attention for my rapidly swelling knee. The EMT's in the ambulance were very nice; at least I think they were. I could only understand every third word of their accented east German which holds very little resemblance to the German I learned in college. It got to the point where I just started asking question after question - about German ambulance technology, their personal journies to becoming EMT's, the history of that bridge that we just crossed - so as to keep them rambling until we got to the hospital. Actually, in the past four months I have become an expert in pretending to understand what people say. Smiles, nods, facial expressions indicating surprise/information processing, appropriately timed exclamations (e.g. Wow! No way! Then what happened?!), or, as perfected in Leipzig, simply asking more questions are all ways to create the effect that you're catching everything when really you haven't the foggiest notion what's being said.

My hospital visit was relatively short (it could have been even shorter had the guy in the gurney behind me not pretended to be Herr Haflich when the x-ray technician called my name on the list) and smelled like sweat. It was short because Sunday evenings in the emergency room are almost always calm and it smelled like sweat because I was sweaty. They x-rayed my knee, gave me a brace which was initially advertised as being 20 euros but turned out to be 120, and offered to sell me crutches which I politely turned down given that with my American insurance I have to pay everything out of pocket. I hobbled out the doors of the emergency department to be greeted by my whole frisbee team, two of which accompanied me on the train home.

The next day back in Würzburg I went to a sports specialist, Herr Doktor Zimmer, who drained my knee with a needle the size of a pencil, sent me to get an MRI, gave me crutches and told me not to bear weight on my right leg for six weeks, all of which he managed to accomplish while wearing pants that were easily three sizes too small. Out of the whole thing, I came away with a mostly ripped outer ligament and hairline fractures in the heads of my femur and tibia.

Initially, the though was that no operation would be necessary. However, one of my coworkers sent my MRI photos to a family friend who is a Doktor, and a knee specialist at that. After he first looked at my pictures, he thought that an operation was all but inevitable and wanted to meet with me. After a long week of uncertainty, I met with him in a dark room in the Ochsenfurt Hosital, twenty minutes outside of Würzburg. As I took off my pants so that he could touch me, I couldn't help but think that I was cheating on Doktor Zimmer with another Doktor whose name I didn't even know. But it was worth it; the drive in the snowstorm, the clandestine meeting in an empty examination room, the torquing and pulling of my injured knee were all things that I would gladly go through again just to hear that everything was going heal up just fine on it's own.

Today, five weeks after the injury, I went back to Doktor Zimmer who had completely forgotten who I was. I had thought that he and I had something special, a Doktor-patient relationship that would endure the four weeks between visits. Alas, it did not. At least his sieve-like memory made me feel less guilty about cheating on him in Ochsenfurt.

Hold on a second. There's a word for that?!

How would you describe these? Go ahead, do it. Out loud. If you're like me, the description probably sounded something like "Oh, I know what those are! Those are those little plastic things you stick in the wall before you put a screw in so that it doesn't fall out. You know what I'm talking about?!" You would probably have some idea of what I was talking about, and if you didn't, I could surely ramble on for long enough until you figured it out. But if you asked me to describe these guys using one word, there's no way that I'd be able to do it. In fact, I don't think there is anybody I know who could do it, at least not in English. But Germans, they're different. They all recognize instantly these stick-them-in-the-wall things as "Döbel."

I wasn't too surprised when Hans Hummer, the wood shop teacher at school, knew the word for those plastic thingamabobs. He is, after all, a carpenter - it's only to be expected. I was at the hardware store with the teacher I carpool with when she busted out "Döbel" in reference to the materials I would need to build my own suspension closet (which up to this point has only resulted in a mine field of holes in my ceiling and my clothes are still draped over the back of my armchair). I was a bit taken aback that an occupational therapist would know the work for those screw holder whatchamacallits, but in thinking about it, she told me that she used to be a wood worker before she started giving therapy. It made enough sense. But when my roommate Vicky asked me if I had bought "Döbel" after having looked at my pathetic attempt to fasten hooks to the ceiling for my closet, I just about flipped out. If you're somehow reading this Vicky, don't take offense. In fact, it's probably more of a compliment. How does a 24 year old studying law who almost certainly has no experience with drywall construction know the name for these godforsaken little nubs?! Nobody knows that in English! I then took it upon myself to carry around a Döbel in my pocket for the next week and ask people at random if they knew what it was that I had in my hand. The only person who didn't know what they were called was a co-worker named Elizabeth, but she almost doesn't even count because she's from Poland and she spent 54 years of her life without having tried peanutbutter. Indeed an outlier.

So what is the point of my Döbel anecdote? Is it just a way for me to rant and rave about something that I had a hard time believing to be true? Partially. But also, it is a representation of a phenomenon that happens to me here in Germany quite regularly. Take something which we can't exactly express in English with a concise word or phrase, whether a thing, an idea or a feeling, and you're likely to find a word for it in German. Here a are a couple examples:

Schadenfreude - (n). the sadistic pleasure that you get from somebody else's pain or discomfort; also rarely seen in the verb form schadenfreuden which can be understood in the following context: Ach, Wolfgang, warum schadenfreudest du so gern? {Geez-o Wolfgang, how come you enjoy seeing other people in pain, agony, discomfort or all of the above?}

Fremdschämen - (n). the feeling of being embarrassed for somebody else.

Vorfuhreffekt - (n). when something happens/exists in your presence, but then when you want/need to show somebody else that same thing, it isn't there. For example, you're 1992 Subaru Legacy with the shattered back window is making a rattling noise when you accelerate and turn at the same time, but when you take a mechanic for a ride to show him what you're talking about, what is normally your POS car rides like a dream. Or how about when you make that mental list of movies that you want to watch, but when you walk into the video store, you have no idea what it was that you wanted to see, so you end up walking out with Super Troopers for the sixth time.

Gräbele/Besucherritze - (n). the crack between to twin mattresses pushed together.

Verschlimmbessern - (v). in an attempt to make something better, you unintentionally make it worse.

Montagsauto - (n). a poorly produced product or good. It's translated literally as "Monday car" with the theory behind it behind that a poorly made car was probably on the assembly line on Monday when the workers were still half asleep/hungover from the weekend.

Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellshaftskapitän - (n). Captain of a steam ship in the Donau River Shipping Company. You may not believe it, but I find myself needing this word on a daily basis. ;)

This element of German makes it an exciting, but difficult language. Some estimates put the average daily vocabulary of a German to be about six times that of the average American. There is a word for basically everything, so descriptions become very specific very fast which I find to be exhilarating - it cuts down significantly on blabbering time and people the know exactly what you mean. Besides "jaywalking", I haven't discovered any of these ridiculously specific words in English, and I think that this specificity is going to be something I really miss when I go back to the English speaking world.

Until then, I'm going to enjoying being able to laugh at someone slipping and falling in the snow and having to use only one word to justify the fact that I found it funny, although I don't necessarily like the fact that Andrea may have twisted and hurt her ankle in the cobblestone.

By the way, Döbel does have a one word translation in English: chubs. Seriously?

Wallpaper Apprentice, The Giants & Disco Music in Holland?

I have put up enough wall paper to be considered a professional, The Giants won the world series for the first time since 1954 and I rode in a VW Bus to Holland wearing a mullet wig. The last three weeks of my life have been eclectic to say the least. However, eclecticism is no excuse for falling behind in my attempt for a weekly blog entry, so it's time to play a little catch up. I have the whole week off from work, so we'll see if I can't manage to get back on track in my abundant Freizeit.

As I mentioned before, I helped Ben Walter with the renovation effort of his newly purchased Würzburg apartment, a win-win situation given that I could use the illegally-earned money and he could use the extra hands. I can now say with confidence that wallpaper has to be the worst way to decorate any wall. First you have to spend three years taking the old wallpaper down, which either comes down the whole strip at a time, or in little pinky sized shreds. In this particular apartment, taking down the old wallpaper was like taking a trip through time: embossed fleur-de-lis over a flaky gold paisley over an MC Escher-esque floral print. In a word, hideous. Almost as hideous, in fact, as the light pink coffee grinder/pear tree print we had in our kitchen in college. Once we managed to peel the sopping wet paper off, it was time to cover the crumbling, poorly masoned walls anew with what we considered to be a timeless white, gently embossed pattern. After prepping the walls, cutting the paper to size, drenching the back in paste-like, undoubtedly carcinogenic glue, we slapped them up. The process of making sure that the paper is straight, is exactly lined up with the strip next to it, has no bubbles underneath it and stays clean is excruciatingly tedious, especially when the walls of the apartment seem to be breathing little bubbles under paper that you thought you were done with an hour ago and the knife the you have to cut the paper is so dull it's more like a tiny little saw.

All obstacles overcome, we managed to wallpaper the entire apartment, including the 12 foot long hallway with seven doors, any wallpaperer's nightmare. In addition to being on the Wallpaper Task Force, I got to help out with bathroom demolition and laying the new laminate flooring, both of which were much more gratifying than gluing up paper that in 30 years is just going to make some other illegal immigrant pissed when he has to rip it down. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see the finished project because I was out of town, but in my head it looks really good. Although manual labor isn't something that I would be happy doing for the rest of my life, I very much enjoy doing it from time to time. Much of the work allows you to get lost in your head, but more importantly, it gives you a new found respect for those people who do that kind of work on a day-in, day-out basis. What hand workers do for the world is truly invaluable. Well, actually, it's worth 10 euros an hour, but I really appreciate it, too.

Much of the last three weeks of my life has been absorbed in following the Giants magical trip to the top of the baseball world. For me, it was a mixture of excitement and frustration; excitement, because the Giants finally performed after years of what Loaf Lorenz would call "torture baseball" and frustration, because the games were both impossible to find streaming internationally and impossible to stay awake for (most were at 2am) when I have to get up for work at six in the morning. Nevertheless, I was able to keep track of what was happening through internet articles, video clips and facebook status updates. The whole thing was unbelievably amazing, the only better scenario having been if I could have gone to some of the games. Florian says that I now know what it was like for him when he was in the United States and the World Cup was on: poor coverage in the middle of the night and nobody around you is really that interested. So it goes with soccer in the US and baseball in Europe.

The latest notable note from the past three weeks was this past weekend when I traveled with the Universität Würzburg Ultimate Frisbee team, Disc-o-Fever, to Holland for an indoor tournament. I joined the frisbee team looking for a way to play a sport, make friends and do a bit of traveling, given that tournaments are scattered all over the place. It appears as though the decision to play is going to meet all of my expectations. The trip to Holland was a blast, both from a frisbee and social perspective. Playing indoor makes the game of Ultimate totally different - with fewer players and a smaller field the game moves blindly fast in comparison to the outdoor version. We did pretty well overall, placing 5th out of 16 teams, barely scraping it out in the last point of the last game.

From a social aspect, the tournament was amazing. In frisbee, an important component of the game is spirit, another way of saying that every effort is made to maintain good sportsmanship. In European frisbee, this concept is taken to a whole new level. After the game, whereas Americans just exchange high fives, Europeans make a circle out of both teams and one player from each team makes a speech about how the game went and what he or she appreciated about the other team. Then, without fail, the two teams play some kind of team building or ice breaker game with one another to lighten the mood which works surprisingly well, that is unless you're playing against Belgians, those sourpusses. Another cool aspect of an indoor frisbee tournament is that all the players sleep in the playing hall and that the host team organizes a party for all the players on Saturday night. I was quite excited to find out that my sense of humor meshes very well with the other players on my team as we got prepared for the party, the theme of which was Hockey & Tokkie, a dutch way of saying Snobs & White Trash. Everybody on Disc-o-Fever was eager to outdo each other with the trashiest getup, and, once dressed, we crashed a party where most people were dressed as well-to-do Hockies. It's also comforting to know that I had packed all the necessary accoutrements to make a nasty white trash costume without knowing before hand that I would be attending such a party. Talk about things that speak to your personality.

Deutsche Eimer Liste (The German Bucket List)

I am firmly of the mindset that everyone needs a Bucket List. It's a great way to solidify goals, plus thanks to Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, it's a super trendy thing to do. So in the spirit of solidifying the goals of this chapter of my life, I've spent the last couple days thinking about all the activities that are nonnegotiable before I depart from Deutschland. The list was compiled thoughtfully, earnestly, and progresses in order of priority and importance, starting with number

Eins - Find the electrician responsible for wiring our apartment's bathroom light switch in the hallway.

Every time I stumble into the bathroom at 2:33 am, this guy is somewhere laughing because I invariably forget to flip the switch in the hallway before I go in. Actually, this happens independent of the time of day as there is something about having the light switch outside the room for which it controls the light that doesn't make sense to me. Germans try and convince me that it's logical by saying that this way "You are never having to go into a bassroom zat is daark." I rebut by saying that every time I go into the bathroom it is dark, that is until I turn my brain back on and realize that some jerk wired the switch out in the hallway. To be fair, this is a phenomenon that can be found all over Europe, but my consistent battles with this one specific switch have caused me to focus my discontent on one electrician, when it is likely the European Electrician Guild that is to blame. Either way, when I finally bump into the grinning electrician (in my head his name is something extremely German like Helmut Müller-Schmidt), I'll be sure to lodge with him all my complaints. In the meantime, I've hung a giant exclamation point over the light switch to catch the attention of my half-asleep counterpart before he finds himself alone and scared in a dark bathroom for the 30th night in a row.

Zwei - Translate the German word Hof

I have a dictionary, the Internet and unlimited access to native German speakers, but for some bewildering reason this very frequently used three letter word eludes my linguistic capabilities. Here are just a few of the things that I have found Hof to mean: backyard, garden, courtyard, driveway, foyer, farm, alcove and open-air shed. Let's be real here for a second, a language that has two words for the crack between two twin mattresses shoved together (Gräbele and Besucherritze) should have individual words for all these semi-enclosed spaces. At this point I've just starting calling every area inside, outside, in front of, behind and next to any sort of man-made structure a Hof to see how far the word stretches. When it works, I shake my head and make a mental note to add some other translation like sunroom patio to my ever-growing list. When it doesn't work, I shake my head then proceed in publicly deriding Hof and all its secret meanings.

Drei - Ride my bike in Berlin

To most people taking the trouble to drag my bike on a train to Berlin just to ride it around seems like a colossal waste of time. But I know that my friend Loaf Lorenz agrees that riding a fixed gear in the German Capital would be not short of spectacular. Wide, flat, perfectly paved boulevards; impressive bike infrastructure; parks and promenades to explore. Touring a city by bike is undoubtedly my favorite way to travel (a la Amsterdam) and Berlin is my favorite European city, so it only seems logical to mix the two. Now I just have to wait until the weather is conducive to being outside on my bike all day. As we dip into days with high temperatures in the high 30's, it looks like I'll have to save this one until the other side of winter.

Vier - Sell Glühwein und Bratwurst at the Dingolshausen Christmas booth

I love Christmas and I will most definitely attribute my zeal for the holidays to my mom's family's fanaticism. As soon as Thanksgiving passes, Christmas begins (assuming you manage to hold off from buying into the Xmas specials that begin showing up in stores in late August) and for me here in Germany it will be no exception. I'm a person who likes tradition, so my only request is that Stefan, Flo and I get to work at the Dingolshausen Christmas booth again, last year having been the First Annual. Dingolshausen is the 1000 inhabitant town where the Walter parents live and the Christmas booth is a place for Dingolshäuser to meet in the week before Christmas to enjoy some warm Glühwein, a Bratwurst or the awkward flaming log that Herr Frankenzaubermeister instructed me to lay on the ground and set ablaze. It is, for me, something that captures the essence of Christmas - family and friends together, enjoying themselves together and for some reason they're standing outside in the -15 degree weather.

Fünf - Attend Fasching in Cologne

My current experience with German Fasching or Carnival is quite limited; it is limited, in fact, to Jennifer Stuart wearing a bright purple sequin dress while giving a presentation about Fasching to our German 101a class. Although her presentation and dress were individually amazing, and even more stunning in concert, I think this year I'd like to experience the real thing. From what I've heard, it's the German equivalent to Mardi Gras or Carnival in Rio de Janiero which is to say it's pure madness, in a costume. Unfortunately I left my infamous ManBug costume in California (a polite way of saying that Jeremia Kimelman, a 22 year old with the short term memory of an 86 year old, lost the costume's hat, thereby ruining the outfit...) so I'll have to fashion something new, but equally as ridiculous. Perhaps a bumblebee, or better yet, an Eskimo since the festival is outside in February in Cologne.

Sechs - Run from Würzburg to Koblenz with Stefan and a tricycle baby stroller

This was originally a joke. Well, it's still kind of a joke, but we're going to do it. The 130 mile trek should take us about a week. As I look at the map I know what I'm going to be thinking the whole time: "Give me a bike and I could do this in a day." We'll see if the trip comes to fruition, but now that I've written that it's nonnegotiable, it would be kind of a let down if we didn't manage to complete it.

[I just spent the last two minutes contemplating whether or not I actually want to go through with this and I am extremely ambivalent. Thankfully my blog allows posts to be edited after they are published.]

Sieben - Drive a German Automobile on the Autobahn

I've driven an American, a French and a Czech car on the Autobahn thus far and while each was fun in it's own respect, I need to do it in a German car to make the experience complete. A BMW, Mercedes or Audi would suffice. Pretty simple request, now I just need the friends with the right cars. I should start hanging out in the Econ department of Universtität Würzburg.

Acht - Spend the entirety of my last day wearing Lederhosen, then fly home in them

Yesterday, I helped the eldest Walter son, Benjamin, begin the renovation effort of his newly purchased apartment and during much of the day, we listened to Bavarian Haus Musik. This is very much the classic, polka-esque music that we stereotypically envision Germans listening to, and I have to say, that hearing it made me very happy to be a quasi Bavarian for the next several months. I got to thinking, 'How can I show my excitement for Bavaria?' and the first answer that came to my head was Lederhosen. So as a tribute to my time in Germany and a symbol of it's importance in my life, I swear that on my last day here I will wear the typical Bavarian leather pants, socks, shirt and hat. It's a German must-do, so it will be done.

Small disclaimer: this list is subject to change. :)

With Seconds to Spare

Every traveler has his horror stories. Missing a flight home by two minutes then spending the next 22 hours in Dulles Aiport; lost luggage for two weeks in Costa Rica; that Applebee’s in Salt Lake City with sketchy ground beef; sleeping under a bridge in your miniature sized car in Amsterdam – the list could go on. But for every travel tale from hell, there are umpteen stories of “almost” disaster, those instances when the Gods intervened to save you from all those roads you as a lost traveler never wanted to go down.

There is the time that you almost got knocked off a 400-foot cliff by a garbage truck whipping around a blind curve in Italy. And who can forget about the time that you almost missed that connecting flight in Atlanta, but fortunately Grandpa Time sitting in the back had a medical emergency and the paramedics had to reopen the air-sealed doors allowing you and your chronically late family to board. Of course there was that time when you and your brothers almost got mugged by that shady Vespa rental guy in Cancún, but fortunately, by a stroke of sheer coincidence, your Spanish speaking friend from home happened to walk by and had the time to diffuse your potential beat down. And what list of “almosts” would be complete without that time five minutes ago when you almost missed your train in Germany because you were at home on the couch engrossed in the backstage drama of Veronika’s broken zipper on Germany’s Next Top Model. While I’ll make no comment on all the other aforementioned travel travesties, I must, however, lay claim as the owner of the last on the list. Allow me to elaborate.

I finished all my tasks for the day at around 4:15 this afternoon, leaving me with nothing much to do until my train to go visit Florian left at 6:27. Perfect. I had time to relax, then leisurely make the ten minute walk to the train station where I would be early enough to make sure I wouldn’t get stuck sitting backwards on the three hour ride. I hate sitting facing the rear of the train – it just seems so unnatural. Plus you are then forced to spend the whole ride fighting to keep your back in the seat. Anyway, I wandered around the apartment for a little while, eventually landing on Stefan’s couch. Stefan was doing something on the computer and given that he is the world’s worst multitasker (he literally cannot complete two tasks at once; it’s a miracle that he can breath and walk at the same time) I decided instead of trying wasting my time trying to interact with that statue that just looks like Stefan, that I would waste my time by turning on the TV and seeing if I couldn’t find something interesting to watch.

Those who know me can attest that I rarely watch TV, and those who know me really well can explain why. When the screen turns on, it’s like I fall into some kind of lapse in the space-time continuum. Everything else in the world goes blank and every last drop of attention that I have goes straight into whatever program is on, whether it’s interesting or not. This explains why I can unfortunately say that I’ve spent almost two full hours of my life (in one sitting) watching the Gem Network – you know that channel with the unbelievable price on that gorgeous shining sapphire that’s either spinning on some felt-covered wheel or twisting here and there on the most elegant hand you’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure that nobody else has ever watched that channel. Nobody. That was, in fact, the time that I swore that I would try to stop watching TV all together because it was such a colossal waste of time. My pact with myself worked pretty well, that is, until today. The first thing that came on when the TV clicked to life and shone in it’s mystical, captivating color was the five o’clock episode Germany’s Next Top Model. I set a pillow behind my head, plopped my feet on the other end of the couch, blinked once and Stefan was standing in front of me. “Are you trying to miss your train?” I glanced over at the clock and it was 6:12. Wasn’t it just five? And how the hell is Veronika going to walk down the runway with her busted dress?! “No. I have 15 minutes. Not a problem.” Without any sense of urgency, I got up, sauntered into my room, picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulders. A quick goodbye to Stef and I was out the door, down the 21 stairs to the street and on my way.

Still without feeling any time pressure - due largely to the fact that I carry nothing with me that tells time – I walked around the corner, onto Hauptbahnhofstraße (Main Train Station Street) and realized that I left my wallet in my room. Reid! I chided myself, you’re such a scatterbrained child! A minor panic attack, a discovered wallet in the side pocket of my backpack and two minutes later I was back on my way. About 100 meters in front of the train station, I hit a red light and stopped, not about to get squashed by the rush of Friday evening drivers eager to get home. While waiting what seemed like a lifetime at the crosswalk, I felt the slightest twinge of that “maybe I’m late” feeling, but I wasn’t about break into a sprint across the busy street. The light turned, the roar of cars ceased, and I began trotting toward the station. It was when I saw 6:24 on the large clock on the façade of the Hauptbahnhof that I started sprinting. If there is one stereotype that holds true about Germans, it’s that they are breathtakingly punctual. I could bet my bottom Euro that my train would be pulling out of the station in less than three minutes.

I skidded across the wet stone floor to an abrupt stop in front of the departures board. I made a quick scan for my destination city of Koblenz and saw nothing. Not sure what else to do, I took off toward the platforms. One question about departure platforms, two confused police officers and 30 seconds later, I was no closer to finding my train. Of course while I was absorbed in the not so worthwhile drama of stick-thin German models I hadn’t looked up any information about my train. The only thing that I knew was that it was an Inter City Express (ICE) departing at 18:27. I ran farther, praying that I would see something that would give me a clue. At the staircase leading up to platforms eight and nine I saw that there were two ICE trains leaving at 18:27. I figured that one had to be it, so I bolted up the stairs two at a time. The platform was clogged with people bustling toward the stairwell. I forcefully fought my way against the current and, once free, stood between the two glistening white trains. I saw no Deutsche Bahn employee, so against better judgment, I decided to simply guess and went left.

Of course I was late, of course I hadn’t taken the time to look up my train number, and of course I jumped on the train in the restaurant car. Just as well, the waiter will surely know if the train stops in Koblenz. I burst into the restaurant compartment, approached the waiter and stood uncomfortably close to him so as to catch his attention.

[Time out: Let me just explain a little bit about the Deutsche Bahn: The German rail system is one of the most impressive in the world. It is an extremely extensive network of trains that connects the entire country. There are various types of trains, ranging from smaller, slower,local connections, to big, fast ICE’s. Not only are the trains reliable and extensive (a stark contrast to our pathetic Amtrak), they are quite nice on the inside, with the ICE varieties being the Five Star Edition. The compartments are warmly lit, with rich, dark wood paneling and shiny, seamlessly engineered sliding glass doors. Now picture me, haggard and sweaty, standing in the restaurant of such a train. Time in: ]

It didn’t work. Although I was standing close enough for it to be considered socially unacceptable, he went on taking the order of the older gentleman sitting at the table. “I think I’ll have…a coffee…no! a cappuccino. Aaaaand…” Come on Opa, this isn’t that important. “A chocolate muffin.” Miraculously, after his soliloquy of an order, the train hadn’t started moving and I still had time to correct my potentially false guess, that is, if the waiter ever gave me the time of day. Not until they had exchanged thank you’s, you’re welcome’s, thank you for saying thank you’s and you’re more than welcome’s did the waiter turn to me. Of course, when I needed it most, my German crumbled. Three attempts to ask if the train stopped in Koblenz, one response of “I don’t know, I get off in Frankfurt” and twenty five seconds later I was racing out of the restaurant in search of another train employee. Just as I passed from one car to the next, I was thrown against the accordion-like rubber casing that allows the train to bend. The whistle had blown and the train lurched into motion.

Holy pejorative, I better have guessed right, I thought to myself. I fought against the acceleration of the train and continued forward. I finally found a ticket checker and asked her, this time in more complete German, if I was on the right train. She directed my attention to a large screen just to my left, at eye level that read that we would be arriving in Koblenz at about 9:10pm.

They always say that traveling is stressful, but I would argue that there is a lot the traveler can do to mitigate the pressure. Pack early, research your travel arrangements in advance, keep the TV off as the time for departure approaches (maybe that’s just a rule for me), and take a deep breath because with the exception of that one time you tried to hitchhike at 2:30am in College Park, Maryland, it’s all going to work out. Once I knew that I was in fact hurtling at 170 kph in the correct direction, I was able to relax and begin the search for a seat. After having had so much luck in picking the correct train, it was only logical that just one type of seat remained: those facing backward.

Every Abend is Feierabend

I make two euros and 18 cents per hour. I'm happy to be getting that much. In fact, I might go so far as to say that that's pretty good, given that I have absolutely no work permits or German residency papers. While I am currently content, I imagine that this is the last time that my per-hour breakdown is going to be so meager. Well, maybe this is just going to be the last time such a pay rate will be satisfactory. In any case, it's an interesting perspective to think that hour of my time amounts to exactly enough money to buy two packs of German Haribo assorted flavor gummy bears.

Now that my parents are gone and vacation is over, the process of settling in has begun. I'm still not quite sure what exactly that entails or how to complete it, but I'm almost positive that it starts with getting residency and work permits (number one on every To-Do list scattered throughout my room). American citizens, as well as those from several other countries, are permitted to stay in Germany without any visa or official documentation for three months, so technically I'm still legit. To become a resident, one must apply at City Hall and then simply wait to see if the request is accepted. I have two more months to complete said task, but I think the sooner the better.

The other aspects of becoming a settled German are going much better, namely finding somewhere to live and getting a job. As for living arrangements, they were all but organized for me before I arrived (another shout out to the Walter family for hooking me way up). I am living in downtown Würzburg in a three bedroom apartment with a kitchen, a bathroom, a hallway that connects all five rooms, light switches that aren't in the rooms they turn the lights on in, and no laundry facilities (as you can see in the photo, my room is currently doubling as a dryer). The apartment itself is very new, the location is fantastic and rent is cheaper than any equivalent that you'd find in the US (save a room in Montana or Minnesota). My two roommates are both students at Universität Würzburg, the well-known Stefan who studies physics and Viktoria Killian who is a law student finishing up the last of her exams before she enters the world of German Justice (which I can only imagine is extremely convoluted and littered with all kinds of enormous words). I'm still finishing getting all the last little pieces of my room put in place - a laundry basket for the pile of clothes leaking out from behind my door, a makeshift closet where I can actually hang things instead of draping them over the back of a chair, a rug to dampen the amazing echo produced by every sound wave that travels through my room, and a clock so I don't have to go into the kitchen to see what time it is. It's a work in progress, to say the very least.

Life at work is slightly more organized, but only slightly. I currently have a "paid" internship at St. Martin Schule in Kitzingen, a city about 20 kilometers outside of Würzburg. It's a school for mentally and physically disabled children from kindergarten through high school. I'm working virtually full time and it has taken two weeks for them to figure out where they want me, so I've been bouncing around, spending a lot of time wondering what it is I should be doing, occupying myself by playing a game where I trying to translate the nasty Franconian dialect spoken by the teachers. But after two slightly awkward weeks of figuring out my place at St. Martin, I now feel more adjusted and comfortable.

Working with disabled children is something so wildly different than any other job I've had. Communicating with the kids requires a graceful balance, a balance between patience and firmness, between questions and answers, between holding on and letting go, between using your words and using your hands. I joke a little when I say that I did little more than stand around; actually, I'm surprised at the amount of things that I've done in just two weeks. My first week I was filling in for another intern who wasn't able to come and I got the chance to work with the same group of children for several days in a row and see how you can strike this seemingly impossible balance.

One student in the class is Jonathan, an eight year old with severe Autism that has stripped his ability to speak. His condition is such that he requires a personal aide, a role that I was asked to fill. Jonathan experiences the world through his sensory nerves - touching that which has interesting texture, and listening to things that make exciting, often irritating, sounds. At first he was rather wary of me, given that I was a unfamiliar person and he didn't know what to expect. I gave him his space, helped him clean up when he made a mess, pushed him around in his stroller allowing him to drift his hands through the long, wavy blades of grass and sat by his side during meals to make sure that he had everything he needed. We built a trust and a system of communication that was completely independent of words. Jonathan doesn't recognize me through my voice or my appearance, but through the way I feel. He is absolutely fixed on my beard, for example. When we spend time together, he'll give it a rub every few minutes just to make sure that it's still in fact me that he's with. He's also discovered my hands and how they can be used to apply pressure to his body when he craves touch. I spend a lot of time giving him foot massages and scratching his back; that, coupled with touching my beard, seems to calm him down, even in his moments of more severe distress. I spend a lot of time wondering what it is that he's thinking; is his mind quiet, or is it racing? Are his thoughts simple or complex? The answers may never come, but I'm glad that I can at least contribute something positive to his life, a life that he didn't choose, and to a large degree, he cannot control.

The other students I work with, both in Jonathan's class and throughout all the other groups I help, all require separate communication strategies, the assembly thereof having been an exciting process for me. For those who can speak, we talk and oftentimes I am the one who feels hindered given that everything operates in German. We read together, do math, with the older students we play boardgames, build things in woodshop and discuss the latest German soccer matches (I just spend most of the time in these conversations offering various phrases of agreement with whatever point is brought up because I know next to nothing about the trade deal between Schweinsteiger and Müller.) The whole experience of working everyday with the kids has forced my German to improve very quickly, not only to decipher what it is the students are saying, but so that I can respond promptly and accurately. Another benefit is that I now know the words for all things that you would find in a woodshop, like a Bandsägemaschine or a Kreuzschlitzschraubenzieher. It will be interesting to see what my vocabulary looks like at the end of my internship at St. Martins. My time there is going to be challenging, but I have no doubts that it will be one of the most rewarding endeavors of my life.

I get off work everyday at 3:30pm and come back to Würzburg with one of the teachers who lives about a kilometer away from me, a carpool that saves me a boatload on train tickets (a one way fare costs about three hours of work). This leads me into perhaps my favorite part of life in Deutschland: Feierabend. The German language is amazing in that it has a word for almost everything, including, in this case, the part of the day right when you get off work. It literally translates to "Festival Evening," a translation that took me aback when I first heard it. I was at the grocery store picking up some delicious German bread (something so miraculous that deserves its own post all together) and the cashier bade me farewell by commanding me to enjoy my festival evening. Confused, but excited there was a festival on a Tuesday, I asked Viktoria what the woman had meant. Vicky explained that that is what Germans call the evening after a day of work and that, alas, there was no secret Tuesday festival awaiting me in downtown Würzburg. Nevertheless, I find it to be a wonderful word, one that reminds me that work is a means to live, and that life isn't a means to work. And the best thing about my Feierabends is that I have nothing to do. No homework, no studying for the MCAT, no second job to get ready for (yet...). If I feel like reading, cooking, watching a movie, exercising (well, that's more of a personal obligation than a choice), wandering down to the Main River to people watch, I can. These are just some of the endless possibilities of Feierabend. I am going to enjoy very much for the next two years of my life to leave work and take nothing home - my time is my time. Sunday is no longer a frantic scramble to make up for Saturday when I should have been preparing for Monday. I can literally take it one day at a time and there is nothing wrong with going to bed at 9:15pm if I feel like it. I better enjoy it now because I'm pretty sure that there aren't any Feierabends in medical school, or in life as a physician for that matter.

That's a rather thorough summary of my life up to this point. The only other activity that I can think of that I do with frequency is run, something that has done a lot to get me in good shape and also familiarize myself with my new city. We are training for a half marathon in November, and as part of the regiment, Stefan and I took part in a local 1oK race last weekend and did well [42:06 (19th place) and 42:12 (20th place) respectively]. We have plans to do a three more in the upcoming weeks with the lofty goal being to finish in under 40 minutes. Another training run was a 25 kilometer (15.75ish miles) hill run that paralyzed the both of use for two days and gave us due respect for anybody that runs marathons. Good thing I'm only committed to a half...

Touring to Farewell

It looks like it's time to play a little catch up on the documentation of my life in Europe, but in my defense, we've been all over the place in the last couple of weeks. Excuses aside, here is a recap that I can only hope does justice to the wonderful weeks I've had.

My parents flew in to Munich on the 30th of August and after picking them and their luggage up (half of which was stuff I forgot) we continued heading south toward Austria. We were embarking on our week long tour of some of the major cities of Eastern Europe - Salzburg, Budapest, Vienna and Prague to be exact. It would be impossible to recount all the details of the trip without writing a novel, so I'll give a few highlights from each city.

Salzburg

At the end of our tour we looked back at the cities that we had seen and Salzburg wasn't particularly anybody's favorite. We chalked it up to the fact that we had pretty miserable weather. But in thinking about it more wholly, the city doesn't really stick out in my mind as boasting anything particularly unique other than it's vibrant classical music scene. Their intense love for the classics is most notably tied to Mozart, as the well known 18th century composer was born in Salzburg. Other than the big yellow house downtown which reads in large gold letters "Mozart's Birth House," their pride for Wolfgang manifests itself in little chocolate balls with Mozart's bust printed on the foil. Maybe I missed something, but I don't see the connection. Almost every store, in addition to their main item of sale, sold Mozart Balls - pastries and Mozart Balls, Rolex watches and Mozart Balls, tickets to a classical music show and a complimentary sample taste of Mozart's Chocolate Balls! The number of chocolate balls in that city was almost offensive, but I can't deny that they were pretty good.

We stayed in a hotel in the newer part of the city, the nicest Ramada I've ever set foot in (I can only compare to the Ramada we stayed in two days later in Budapest which felt like a hotel from a 1994 episode of Law & Order SVU). In addition to having an amazing breakfast selection (an important criteria for judging how good a hotel is), the Ramada had a beautiful spa/fitness area which they called their Wellnessoase or Wellness Oasis. When fully open it had a massage room, mani/pedi room, foot soaking baths and two saunas. The three of us young men on the trip (Brant, Stefan and myself) used the saunas to relax after a long day of touring the city in the cold, nasty rain. Change in the locker room, towels on the hook and into the steam bed. The only other person in the room was the 50ish year old woman we had let into the Oasis about 20 minutes earlier because she couldn't find her card. After a few minutes of silence, she took one of the hoses in the room and cooled herself off with some cool water, an apparently customary behavior in a steam bed. But instead of turning off when she's done, she pointed it at Brant and gave him a drilling spray. He was a little taken aback, but we just laughed it off. The ice had been broken and we started talking. She was an Austrian woman visiting Salzburg for a festival that ended the day before. Her German was so strongly accented I didn't catch much of the conversation she was having with Stefan, not to mention the 80 degrees Celcius didn't allow me to concentrate on much of anything anyway. The conversation died and I couldn't last much longer in the sauna, so I exited, followed less than a minute later by Stefan. Brant, however, remained, inciting laughs and the creation of unlikely hypotheticals from Stefan and myself. We decided to go back to our room, justifying our abandonment by assuring one another that Brant could fend for himself, and perhaps it might've even be a road he wanted to go down. Who were we to pass judgment? So we left, chuckles trailing behind us down the stairs.

When I awoke the next morning, I was relieved to see that our sauna companion had not come to our room (I was also a little disappointed, but that was more the disappointment that I couldn't use the story as blackmail). He said that she laid a sob story on him about all the tragedies which had befallen her lately and was looking for a room for the night, hence why she "couldn't find" her card to get into the Oasis in the first place. Brant told us that he politely reminded her that the two other full sized men that were in the sauna previously were his roommates, so she got the idea that there wasn't exactly a lot of extra space. That didn't, however, stop her from standing right next to him as he got dressed, commenting in her broken English "Mmmm,you're such a beautiful boy. Zis is a pikture I'm not forgetting..."

Budapest

We trekked on eastward, crossed the line into the post-communist part of Europe and landed in Budapest. The difference between the violins and chocolate decadence of Salzburg and the dilapidation and urban commercialism of Budapest was striking. Almost as striking, in fact, as the amount of meat and fried cheese we ate for dinner that night. Following the recommendation of the hotel concierge, we went to a traditional Hungarian restaurant specializing in the distillation of schnapps. Our overly-polite waiter handed us each a menu, but in our impatience we simply asked for "three plates of whatever those guys next to us are having." Minutes later we were delivered what can only be described as the most manly, Viking-esque meal I have ever seen, let alone eaten. Imagine a mountain of almost every type of meat (the common stuff here, no horse or dog), wrapped around cheese or bacon or both, then deep fried to a golden crisp. There were fried eggs piled on top of tender legs of duck neighboring cordon-bleu all surrounded by little peppers stuffed with raw garlic or onions. I've been trying to eat with some restraint these days, but that night all deals were off: it was a total free for all. Forks and knives blurred as the food was devoured; it was an exercise in competing for food while simultaneously trying to avoid getting stabbed. Such a heavy, fried meal isn't normally included in my diet and as a result I suffered a couple days of gastroenteritis, but I would gladly go through it again. Well, maybe not gladly, but it was worth the experience once.

One of the unique aspects of Budapest is that it lays on soil containing some of the highest percentage of hot springs in the world, and the Turks, during their occupation of Hungary in the 16th century, capitalized by building bath houses all throughout the city, the largest of which we spent an afternoon in. The water was warm, smelled of pungent sulfur, and was filled with oversized Hungarian and Italian men in undersized bathing attire. The bath had quite the array of different options, ranging from the big warm bath, to the whirlpool bath, to saunas and steam beds. Brant, Stef and I tried everything in the spirit of exploration, with longer visits to the whirlpool and more truncated stays in the 50 degrees Fahrenheit pool. It was a very relaxing afternoon, also one in which we learned that a Hungarian towel is really just a bed sheet. At first when the lady handed it to me I thought she didn't understand what I had asked for, but then when I saw other people carrying them around, I figured it was the norm. Maybe, I thought to myself, I was too quick to judge and that this thing in my hand that looked like a bed sheet had amazing drying properties, kind of like a ShamWow. Wrong. It was just a bed sheet. I was disappointed, and still wet. I used one of the wall-mounted hair dryers to finish what the sheet could not and we headed back to the hotel, warm, tired, and content.

In addition to satisfying our inner hedonism, we did see a lot of the city and learned a lot about the struggles Hungary has endured, especially in the last century. Our tour guide explained that Hungarians have almost always been a subsidiary, so to speak, of a larger power, thus Hungarians carry a follower-mentality and are having a hard time knowing how to handle their freedom. Under the 20th century grip of communism the country was stifled from any personal expression, travel, language acquisition or any of the finer points of culture. When the communist regime fell in 1989, Hungary began to flourish, but without direction; they are so accustomed to someone else holding the reigns. Today their exists a divide between the older generation and the younger generation, a contempt for the difference in lifestyle which has ultimately created a social hurdle. It will be interesting to see how Hungary evolves in the decades to come as the younger generation begins to explore and appreciate globalization and self-rule.

Vienna

Our look at Austria's capital was brief, just a stop through from Budapest to Prague, but very intriguing. The city sports monumentalist architecture: big marble buildings that seem larger than life, gleaming in the morning sun. That is, unless they are covering in infamous European scaffolding. On every trip to Europe, it seems like every other big building is being restored and hence is covered in ugly steel latticework. My dad and Brant dreamed of making it big in the scaffolding business while wandering in through the streets of Vienna and my mind wandered the the regalia of the city, a haven of fine art, fashion and exquisite cuisine. I let my thoughts further drift as I slept on the grass, enjoyed some of the first nice weather we had on the tour and I awoke to what sounding like a British band playing a hybrid between metal and alternative. I found out that they weren't English, but Teutons when they reached the chorus: "Come into the Walley of the gate!" They totally blew their cover by switching 'v' for 'w'. Classic German mistake.

Prague

The area where Austria and the Czech Republic touch is farmland. Beautiful rolling fields as far as the eye can see, either freshly plowed, or teeming with crops like sugar beets, or corn and peppered with clusters of forest. But when you reach the border itself, the scenery changes. You come into what Sigi so endearingly calls "Prostitute's Kilometer." Given the less strict regulations in the Czech Republic, the area right across the border is a place for Austrians feed their vices, whether gambling, strip clubs or underage hookers. It's a sad, depressing place, the clean countryside polluted with flashing neon signs, huge parking lots and withered faces of lives sold for sex. The Czech Republic, also caught in the limbo of post-Soviet communism is a poor country, struggling to stand fully on it's own legs. That is, however, with the exception of it's capital, Prague.

Praha, as it's called in Czech Language (yes, that's what they speak in the Czech Republic; very creative title), is an oasis, even more so than the sauna in the Salzburg Ramada. Surrounding by gray, worn towns, the city's color and vibrant energy stands in striking contrast. Creative architecture, live music in almost every plaza, art, fashion, old cars, beautiful bridges and a gorgeous castle all make Prague a destination for tourists from all over the globe. Well, that and beer that is cheaper than water.

We spent a nice couple of days touring the city, touring that which Rick Steves deemed worthwhile punctuated with coffeebreaks and people watching. After having been there twice, I feel fairly acquainted with the city, familiar with the bends of the streets, the mixing of languages and the sights it offers. The last night of the trip, we had dinner at a gorgeous restaurant Brant found, right on the waters edge with a great view of the famous Charles Bridge. It was good closure to our trip, an affirmation of the bond between our two families, and some damn tasty food to boot. The next morning we took a last stroll through the city, jumped in the cars and tore away on the Autobahn towards Germany.

My family stayed another week in Dingolshausen at the Walter's house. The time was spent relaxing, making small day trips and eating inappropriate amounts of food. As the days toward their depart wore down, it started to become more and more real to me that I wasn't going to see them for a long time, so I tried to make the most out of the remaining hours. I spent a lot of time talking with my dad, having philosophical conversations about friends, the future, his past, catching up before we fall behind again. Although the castles and art are beautiful, it's the moments with people that I treasure most; probing the wisdom and experience of someone who knows you, listens and entertains your questions is a moving, yet grounding endeavor. Building an honest, communicative relationship with my parents has been good for me, a healthy outlet, an advice post, a rally point when the waters in my life are rough. I was happy to have gotten the opportunity to share that time with my dad before we part ways for the next several months. In spending time and sharing myself with my dad, mom and brother it helped me to remember that family is transcendental, that halfway across the world they are still with me, as we are all so much a part of each other that the distinctions become blurred. I am going to miss them very much in this, the next story of my life, but I know that in a blink of an eye I'll be seeing them all again. Until then I will see and experience things that make me grow, make me humble, make me wiser and make me fuller as a person. My life in Germany started when this vacation ended, so enough typing, time to go start living.

Picture Captions (from top to bottom):

A tour of Prague in a 1932 Skoda (Czech car company) with no brakes and a top speed of 30 kph. From left to right: Brant, Reid, Dave Haflich, Sigi Walter, Erich Walter, Eileen Haflich.

Brant and I on one of Prague's many bridges.

My dad and I playing in a fountain in Budapest. There were weight sensitive stones around the inner and outer perimeter or the fountain that, when touched, would stop the flow of water in that area. We had fun playing Poseidon and getting totally soaked.

Stefan and I on a carriage ride through the countryside near Dingolshausen the week following the tour. All nine of the Haflichs and Walters were together in the same place for the first time ever.

My mom (left) and Sigi overlooking Salzburg. They get along like they've known each other their entire lives.

Steamrolling Amsterdam on a Budget

In my daydreams leading up to my arrival in Germany, I envisioned my trips on the famed, mostly speed limit-less Autobahn to be motor revving, high speed, glamorous rides in a beautifully engineered German automobile. I hoped that renting a car and driving to Amsterdam would help me realize these dreams; my fantasies, however, remained as such. While the motor in our fun-sized French hatchback did rev, it did so at shamefully low speeds. The comfortable maximum was 130 kph (about 80 mph), so naturally I spent as much time flirting with 100 mph as possible (Mom, you didn’t just read that.) Nevertheless, driving on the Autobahn is a wonderful experience. The pavement is flawless, traffic is light and drivers understand how to use a two-lane system, making it a safe place to travel.

[Just to dispel some myths about the Autobahn that us Americans often have: it is not one road, it is the name of their interstate system, an extremely extensive network that connects the entire country. And there are speed limits on the Autobahn, mostly when in metropolitan areas, but out in the countryside you are free to drive as fast as you’d like. There is something so exhilarating about passing a policeman at 130 mph, then getting passed by an Audi or BMW driving upwards of 150 and the whole thing is legal.]

Six hours, 550 kilometers and one bizarre shopping trip later, we arrived in Holland’s most popular swamp, welcomed by cool, gray skies. We parked our car in a park and ride just outside the city center, pulled our disassembled fixed-gear bikes out of the trunk (both called ‘Surly Steamrollers,’ their name being eponymous to the title of the post), threw them together and took off. Although our two and a half days in the city were pretty rainy, Brant and I as fanatic cyclists fell in love. Take this as a reference point: Portland has the highest percentage of bicycle commuters of any city in the United States at about 8%. Amsterdam’s commuter percentage is 55%. There are seas of bikes that stretch city blocks and waves of bicyclists so large, their ebbs and flows dictate the flow of traffic and the energy level of the city. It’s really a sight to behold.

The cycling infrastructure in Amsterdam is so extensive and of such amazing quality that it deserves it’s own paragraph entirely. Anybody who has ridden a bike in an American urban setting has undoubtedly been honked at, been on a bike path that abruptly ends or been sucked onto some road, interstate or bridge that causes him or her to yell “#*@& bike riding!!!” These frustrations don't exist in Amsterdam. There are separate, bright red bike lanes on almost every street, both in downtown and in the suburbs around the city, there are special bike drawbridges over many of the city’s Venetian-like canals and when it comes time to dismount, there is almost never a shortage of places to park, including a number of humongous, multi-level bike garages which are entirely covered to keep your seat (and subsequently your hind quarters) nice and dry. When we came up to the first one, Brant and I had to just ride up and down it a couple times to make sure that it was real and not just some figment of our bike-crazy minds.

However, with every sweet there must be a bitter and Amsterdam’s bike scene is no exception. The bike lanes in the city are pedestrian-free zones, which is to say, pedestrians shouldn’t walk in them, lest they get mowed over by a caravan of bikes. However, bikes are not at the top of the food chain in these red lanes as Vespas are granted access as well. Even though they possess the ability to go as fast as a car at city-speeds, scooter drivers feel some need to buzz by, honking their stupid little horns and swerving between bikes and the side view mirrors of parked cars. I moved to the side to make room for the first few, but I quickly became hardened and bitter, much like a New Yorker on the subway. We took to chasing after them, yelling slanderous phrases in English which we can only hope they understood. Other than the inconsiderate scooters, riding in a heavily urban area is a pure adrenaline rush and was absolutely thrilling. Dodging in and out of moving traffic, skidding by masses of picture-snapping tourists, drafting behind supply vans and blasting through intersections on yellow are all ways to get your heart pounding and your lungs burning. In our two and a half days we probably rode just shy of 100 miles in and around Amsterdam, 90% of which I did without any brakes (Mom, you didn’t read that either). When I built up my latest bike, the brake from my old one didn’t fit, so we had to search to find one. In the meantime I wasn’t going to walk my beautiful new bike around, so I just rode it. Don’t’ think that I was going around with no ability to stop – I’m not that dumb. On a fixed gear you can naturally brake by pushing backward or locking up the back wheel in a skid, but neither is as effective as a good old brake. I have no idea how the thousands of stick thin hipsters all across the US on their brakeless fixies haven’t seriously injured themselves yet judging by all the close calls I had in just two days. When I finally found one were all but done riding in the city. Oops. At least my next rides will be safer.

The city of Amsterdam itself is very pretty, a web of canals peppered with private and commercial boats, most of which are still floating and some of which are dilapidating and sinking. Imagine a labyrinth where all the paths look oddly similar and the signs to tell you which canal or street is which are all misspelled. (This is me airing my frustrations with Dutch. As an English/German speaker, Dutch looks like a drunk Englishman and drunk German got together to create a new language. I can almost read it and half understand it when spoken, but I couldn’t help but feel like it it's similar to Pig Latin – you should be able to get it, but for some reason, you just can’t.) The buildings in the city are tall and narrow, often visibly leaning out over the streets, with façades so intensely detailed, it’s almost hard on your eyes to take in a whole row of them at once. The sum effect of the miniaturized buildings, picturesque canals and hundreds of bikers humming all about is a city that is too quaint for words. Also worth noting are all the colors used throughout the city. In a place with gray weather for many days out of the year, Brant and I supposed that brightly colored windows, lights, roofs and architectural accents were an effort to lighten the mood. Oftentimes the bright buildings were of a very modern design with beautiful wall-sized windows, creating an interesting contrast between the modernist new development and the more classic European style of the residential areas. And no trip to Amsterdam is complete without visits to the well known red-light district, which truth-be-told is quite disappointing (go to St. Pauli in Hamburg if you really want an exciting red-light experience…), and the numerous “coffeeshops.” Dutch “coffee” is only drinkable in smoke form and is sold in over 300 shops throughout the city. And once you figure out coffee was Dutch slang for marijuana, you have to figure out which coffeeshops sell more than just java. The special Amsterdamian shops have a green and white sticker discretely placed in the corner of the front window, slyly advertising what you could probably have already smelled as you strolled by. These shops, while not of my personal interest, provided perhaps some of the best people-watching of my life – business men share pipes with backpackers who sit next to groups of paranoid American teenagers who all buy their goods from the Dutch mother behind the counter. A web almost as tangled as the city itself.

Traveling through the city was all good and well, but there did come a time when we had to lock up our bikes and go to sleep. Not much was discussed in the way of nighttime accommodations before we got to the city and once there, the discussion was pretty short. Actually, it was more of a look that Brant and I exchanged with each other and we just knew: the car. We had paid to rent it, we had paid to park it, why not save and sleep in it? The first night when we had gotten sufficiently wet biking around we headed back to the Sloterdijk Park & Ride (which we later found out is pronounced Slooter-dyke – the subsequent source of many puerile jokes) and tried to prepare for bed as discretely as possible. This involved eating dinner out of the trunk, brushing our teeth using bottled mineral water as wash, and voiding ourselves in the bushes, all while people were wandering through the parking lot from the adjacent train station to pick up their cars and actually leave that miserable patch of asphalt we called home for two days. (We coolly wrote the leers off as jealousy for our ingenuity.) We had parked under the elevated train tracks so as to shield bikes from the rain. You see, we couldn’t put the bikes inside our clown car or else we wouldn’t have enough to lay the seats down. The stroke of genius came to Brant that we would lean them against the car and use our chain/U-lock combo to lock them to each other and the car door handle so that a would-be thief would wake us up when jostling the bikes.

All preparations complete, Hotel Sluter-Dick was open for the evening. We climbed in, leaned the seats back and rolled the windows on the bike side down to allow us to hear approaching bike thieves/police coming to kick us out. This led us to the discovery of our next problem: we hadn’t packed a single blanket or pillow. No worries, we’re tough. Our dirty clothes can be pillows and the bath towels can be blankets. We both fell asleep quite quickly, but our rest was anything but restful. I had strange dreams about people glaring at us pathetically huddled in our car and woke up in a couple fits of paranoia that our bikes were gone. Brant had the misfortune of being on the side of the car with the open windows, which permitted rain to blow in on him for several hours. He eventually mustered the energy to close the windows and the car then was nice and warm. One small oversight here, though: the car is tiny and there are two full sized men inside breathing deeply in their slumber. Our expectation was that uncomfortable sleeping arrangements would wake us up early and help us to get an early start to the day. Wrong. We woke up 12 hours after we had layed down to go to sleep, disoriented and heads pounding. My brain felt like it was operating at half speed; I just wanted to fall back to sleep. Brant looked like he had been roused from the dead, hair a mess and mouth agape. It clicked for us at about the same time: the car was hypoxic, another way of saying that the oxygen content of the air was lower than normal. We opened the doors and a rush of cool air blasted us in the face and it felt like coming out of hibernation. I still needed about 15 minutes of just breathing before I could be expected to accomplish anything requiring higher brain function, but we had figured out why we felt so sluggish and then we both felt slightly idiotic (and loopy) for the rest of the day.

Night two would be different, we promised ourselves. We got booted out of the pay area of the parking lot, so we moved 20 meters to the section that was free at night and set up Hotel SD for a second go around. The windows remained cracked the entire night as per an agreement we made with our brain cells, This night was quite a bit colder and for the second straight day we woke up feeling like we hadn’t really gone to sleep, but at least we didn’t fall into hypoxic comas. And who can argue with the nightly rate? We sure couldn’t. The third night was a bit different as our rental contact said we had to return our car in Würzburg by noon the next day. We were nervous that if we slept in Sloterdijk, we might wake up at 11 am and not have enough time to make the six-hour journey (another oversight we made was having brought no working time piece between the two of us, meaning there was no alarm clock to be spoken of) . So we set off at 9 pm with the plan to drive and sleep in cat-naps when we got tired. We made it about 150 kilometers to the first nap spot, and by we I mean I because Brant knocked out as soon as we hit cruising speed on the freeway. I woke up at 1 am, drove another 100 km, and then “fell asleep” at another rest stop to “wake up” at 6 am. We stopped in Cologne for breakfast, but at that point we were so dazed and in need of a shower that our visit lasted no longer than it took us to find a place to grab some coffee (German coffee, that is, which is actually coffee).

We trudged on to Würzburg only to get lost on the way to the rental lot and arrived 10 minutes after they closed, costing us another day’s worth on the car. Good thing we had saved so much by sleeping in the Renault, which probably took more years from our lives than we’d like to admit. Erich (Flo’s dad) showed up to give us a ride back to their house, but we decided to finish our trip the way it ought to be done, on our bikes. We gave him our back packs so that we could ride the 50 km with no weight, a choice that ended up benefitting us when the last 11 kilometers of the ride turned into a dead sprint to escape a thunderstorm which was bearing down on us. Upon arriving, we showered, ate and met our real beds with the most genuine relief you can imagine. It’s no surprise that I went sleep-walking that night after such a raw and aggressive four days, but that story is for another time.

Since Brant and I don’t get the chance to see each other all that often, our trip was a great chance to catch up and share in all the things that we like to do together (less falling into a low-oxygen stupor). We’ll always be able to look back on it as having been only the kind of tour you’d make while in your twenties – at least I hope that in another 20 years were not sleeping in cars and eating tomatoes and raisins for breakfast. :)