Ein blogging mannschaft!

I first believe it is appropriate for me to explain how I met the two wonderful people who also contribute to this blog. I don’t generally blog but today I suppose I am writing for my friends in Darmstadt as much as for myself. I am not totally sure who reads this other than the three of us but I hope you find this post entertaining if anything. Perhaps at least one person in Hamburg will read. J I also apologize if I get too philosophical. Sometimes it happens haha.

I flew to Deutschland to take a German language course from the DID two week before my internship started. The class was really helpful and I am very gracious. There I met two French Canadians: Mathieu and Nadège. This meeting seems uneventful, sure, but I assure you, that could not be farther from the truth. For the three of us on this blog I will not indulge myself much further on this meeting. I will only just say that our craziness in Berlin could be summed up in 3 words: Bier, Mannschaft, und Kartoffel.

Meeting Valkyrie was slightly more interesting than just going to class on Monday morning. If you will, I would like to relay a pseudo dialogue between myself and Mathieu about this (sans dialogue though) haha.

Mathieu had told me that we were meant to meet his friend from Indiana at the Berlin Hauptbahnof on Friday afternoon because she was visiting for the weekend. To this I was rather astonished. I think I only know 5 people from Indiana and I grew up in Iowa! Though I’ve never spent a great deal of time there. Mathieu explained to me that the two of them were studying in the same lab for their RISE internships this summer and that Valkyrie was also bringing him a new computer. Again I was relatively surprised that this person had bought Mathieu a computer without ever having met him. This was a good amount of trust which was, of course, warranted. I suggest reading Valkyrie’s post on trust. It is well worth it. At this point I asked Mathieu how we were going to know what she looked like at the train station. To which he replied: “she will be wearing a bright pink skirt and rainbow socks”. I lost it completely haha.

 It was at then, when we entered the train station that day, that I remembered why I love traveling. Picture this scenario: I was standing on the platform of the main train station in Berlin with a good friend from Quebec who I had just met the week before. We were waiting for a warrior goddess from Indiana to get off a train wearing a bright pink skirt and giant rainbow socks and possibly a Pokémon hat. Tell me that isn’t a ridiculous situation! Haha. At the time it seemed completely normal. I will refrain from describing the remainder of the weekend’s activities here.

I would like to comment on traveling a bit. I believe the word that best describes how I feel about traveling is: liberating. Forgive my grammar please; I’m writing quickly. I choose to live by the relatively cheesy and over used motto: “you only live once”. I am, however, currently working on a way to live two or three times at least, and if you had been in Berlin with us, you would surely have thought we had died a couple of times. There is too much of the world out there for me to stay in one place very long. It is part of the reason why I chose geology as my field of study. Traveling is addicting. The situations I find myself in are sometimes so far fetched that I scarcely believe I’m actually in them. Yet somehow, at the time, the circumstances make perfect sense. For example: Last spring I was on a train from Prague to Berlin. We were meant to stop at the boarder to change trains. Upon arriving at the boarder of the Czech Republic and Germany we gathered our bags and made to get off the train. Before we were even half way down the corridor the train began moving again. The 3 of us (not wanting to get lost) then leaped off of the moving train, one of us basically doing a dive role, only to find that we had jumped off the train at the wrong station!! Upon pealing ourselves off the pavement we realized that we were across a river from a small Vietnamese market called Schuna. Instead of waiting for another train we decided to take a small boat across the river and visit the market. Interestingly, the only things on sale at this market were brass knuckles, knives, cigarettes, and knock – off lacost shirts. My friend got hustled by an old lady for a t shirt. That was hilarious. We then decided it was in our best interest to climb a small mountain which overlooked the valley. Again I found myself on the top of an escarpment overlooking a river and a small Vietnamese village in the Czech Republic holding a pirated tshirt that just cost my friend 3 times as much as it was worth.

The moral of this story: if you had told me I was going to partake in such an adventure, I would have just laughed. At the time though, it all made sense.

The best part about these stories is they are universally understood by travelers. Every person I meet while traveling has a story of a similar nature and never for a moment would doubt my sincerity when I tell mine. I am truly glad that my friends have asked me to write on this blog now because I fear I would never write about my experiences otherwise.

One more thing I might say about traveling. A small hobby of mine (was ist dine hoby??) is sociology. I am a scientist but for some reason am enamored with meeting people. I enjoy the construction of social scenarios and interpersonal interactions. I also think they are important. In this context, however, I find meeting people while traveling to be the most interesting. Often is the case that I meet people who oddly share the same types of ideas and theories on how the world works (or should work) while traveling. Even just seeing someone wearing a moderately large backpack and walking around a train station predisposes that person to having something in common with me. A corollary to this is in the realm of hospitality. I have met many people who have allowed me to crash at their place or who I would not hesitate to ask for a place to stay if I happened to be in their neighborhood. I would, of course, recapitulate. If anyone who I have met on my travels takes the energy to visit my country, I will ensure they have a place to stay. This is not common nor expected where I come from.

Mathieu has asked me to write about our time in Berlin. I am in the process of doing this. He believes it is good to have the stories written down so we don’t forget. I too agree with this and so I will write. I have spoken with my friends about this, but I will reiterate here. I find that in the end of these crazy travels, even with all the souvenirs and pictures, the only thing I will truly have in the end are the friends and memories. If I can hold onto those two things, or even just one of them, I will be happy forever. Interestingly (and part of the reason why I am writing) is that the memories sometimes fade. Sometimes there are too many things happening to remember all of them. I don’t mean forgetting complete chunks of time. I mean, instead of the total mental clarity one has while an event is transpiring or just after, the occurance becomes somewhat of a blur of actions and people and places (at which point friends are needed to recreate the entire story haha). At a certain point the memory is reduced largely to a feeling: a feeling of “that was fun” or “that was crazy!” or “what the hell is industrial techno?”.  Luckily the feeling is really all that matters.

I went on an “excursion” the other day with two other students and one of the geography professors in the department I am working in. We went to the church where Martin Luther posted his 95 theses and began the reformation. That was pretty cool. The town of Wittenberg is very nice and I believe quaint is the word. It is a medieval town and so has an open waste water drainage system. Somehow, as gross as that sounds, the drainages is actually aesthetically pleasing. We also went to a place north of Wittenberg and visited the terminal moraine from the second to last glaciation in Northern Germany. To me this was very interesting but I realize most people don’t consider a large pile of Scandinavian rocks in north central Germany very interesting.

I believe one of the more fascinating aspects of the trip was our return journey on the Autobahn. This road is the smoothest road I have ever been on, and luckily so. Our average speed on the Autobahn in the land cruiser we were in was about 175km/h. I believe that translates into close to 105mph. The relative normality of these speeds on the autobahn was most astonishing. While I was a “white knuckle” passenger for 45 min, the driver of our car was discussing what he had had for dinner last night while we were going 110 miles per hour in the biggest car in Deutschland! Quite an experience I must say. The next step is, of course, driving myself.

The last thing I will write about today is the BBQ I attended the other day. It was designed for international students to get to know each other. This was great as I had just arrived and didn’t know anyone in Halle except for my supervisor. I met two people from Montana at the BBQ. For those of you who have never been to Montana or don’t know rough estimates on population densities in the USA, there are approximately 900,000 people in the state of Montana. Montana is additionally larger than the entire German republic which has 82 million people in it. There are two people from Montana living in the same building as I am in Halle! Haha I thought that was amusing. 

on tolerance

Get along, little
Doggie, to anyplace you
Please. But not Muslims!

Dogs are everywhere here! I rode home next to a dog on the bus yesterday. They're walking around, mostly leashed but sometimes not, in supermarkets, shopping malls, schools, restaurants, and train stations. It's a wonder that there isn't hair in every crevice of my skin. It's fortunate that I'm not allergic.

As a note for those of you who I can only assume will make the joke, yes, there are an unusually high proportion of German Shepherds.

Germany is really tolerant of different things, actually, contrary to any, um, reputation that they might have. Homosexuality is tolerated, as are differences in religion. I think this latter is partially because Germany is not really a religious country any longer. There are a lot of holidays left over from when it was, but no one even seems to know what they mean. Whitmonday? What the hell is that?

The E.U. in general is moving towards a more tolerant attitude on all fronts, but it isn't quite there yet. As I mentioned from the weekend, those who practise Islam are looked down upon. (Hum, I'm trying to find a slightly less-biased article than the one I posted on Sunday that details what happened, but it's not very trivial to do so. This one is amusingly opinionated.)

Most of the racism in Greece seems to stem from the fact that they get thousands of Muslim immigrants from Turkey passing through on their way to the West. I think that the US can sympathise with this: I can't count the number of derogatory things I've seen or heard against the Mexican immigrants that have been flooding the South. Then again, that tide is being stemmed; it seems that the economic downturn is affecting everyone's plans.

So I'm curious why Germany can treat dogs better than some countries can treat people. It's a perplexing mystery, indeed.

Είναι όλα τα ελληνικά μου

Foundations of the
Ancient world, built upon with
No respect for time.

Athens is... old. In certain places, finding oneself among the columns of the ancient agora or at the entrance to the temple of Hephaestos or gazing over the city from the Acropolis can lead to idle wonderings about what life must have been like for the denizens of the area thousands of years ago. It seems like it was fairly ill-planned: a hike up to the Acropolis in the midday sun fairly melts the skin off one's back, and the ancient Athenians certainly didn't have the luxury of the nearly brand-new subway stations that we have today to ferry them between the Tower of the Winds at the Roman agora and the temple of Olympian Zeus. Athens itself, though, does not seem to have given a thought to what once was. Crowding up around all the ruin sites are obnoxiously touristy (albeit delicious) Greek restaurants, and even simply houses in many places. It felt like the city had simply acknowledged that, yes, these places are important, but, no, we cannot stop progress for them. Still, their marbled magic is strong.

So I guess my narrative should start, as usual, at the beginning: waking up at to catch a bus/train combo to the airport in Frankfurt. I met Jeff Stuart (a former intern buddy from Google) there, and we bought chocolate (what else?) for breakfast and waited to board. The plane, run by Olympic Airlines, had a few awesome quirks: with our lunch (I know, right? lunch, served on a plane!), which was Greek food, we were given individually-sized packets of olive oil and vinegar for flavouring; the two languages spoken by the captain and stewardesses were English and Greek; and the logo was an interestingly modified version of the Olympic Rings. It was a nice flight, and we landed in Athens Airport, which, I think, was built for the Olympics, and so was quite nice and new. Travel between Schengen countries is super simple: there's actually a separate terminal for inter-Schengen flights that allows those passengers to bypass customs, etc., entirely. The sad thing about this was that it left me without a passport stamp from Greece. :(

Jeff and I had told Mathieu that we would wait for him, but due to some confusion about flight numbers and delays in various places, we managed to miss each other. We did, though, manage to find Jeff's friend, Ken, in ATH, and we headed off to eat/explore. We found ourselves, after checking in to our respective hotels (Ken and Jeff's had a rooftop pool with a view of the Acropolis!), in Syntagma Square, home to the Greek Parliament building. There seemed to be some kind of commotion on the steps of the Parliament, which I naturally wanted to check out. Hordes of motorcycle- and scooter-mounted policemen down the street deterred immediate investigation, so we came back about 30 minutes later. Fine, fine, fine... wait, my eyes are burning.

Yup, it was tear gas. We checked the news later, and apparently there had been riots started because a police officer had torn the Qu'ran of a protester in front of the Parliament building. Fascinating. By the way, tear gas burns like crazy. It feels like you've taken spicy pepper extract and smeared it all over your eyes and the insides of your nostrils. And we weren't even in the centre.

Then it was time for dinner, and it was heavenly. I had some amazing authentic Greek gyros, saganaki, and ouzo. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. ^___^

Since the sun had set by this point, it was time to do some exploring. Ken, who had been there a day already, mentioned that "all the sights" were lit up by night, so of course we wanted to see the Acropolis. It's not possible to go up at night, but we did get some great snapshots of the dramatic columns (link, as usual, will be later). We were also trailed incessantly by one of the stray dogs that seem to be (sadly) very common in Athens. I felt bad for him. :(

A mysterious note on my door at the hostel requested, with my name spelled correctly, no less!, my presence at another room, so, my curiosity piqued, I went and knocked. Matheiu opened the door! So we set out as a foursome for Saturday's tour of the sights.

Sidenote: being a student is awesome. An all-day metro pass in Athens is 3€, and a ticket to get in "all the sights" just 6€. A ticket to see the National Archaeological Museum of Athens was 6€: a steal. If you're a student traveling in Europe, definitely make sure to get an International Student Identity Card. It's so worth it.

So, the sights! We started out with... the Olympic Stadium. I'd brought a Frisbee on the trip in hopes of being able to play where the greats had, but it was not to be. Unfortunately, no visitors are allowed on the stadium ground. Only close enough for pictures. :( Next up was the Presidential Palace, where interestingly-attired guards stood watch. It was the same story with these guys as I assume it must be for the guards at Buckingham Palace, though. They did their jobs so nicely and had to deal all day with people trying to get them to laugh, smile, or move.

Across the street from the Presidential Palace was the National Botanical Gardens. Greece is approximately the same latitude as Indiana, but since it's on the Mediterranean there were awesome palm trees and orange trees (with oranges!) to be seen. My dad would've gone crazy for the bamboo, too.

Next was the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which I believe I mentioned before. This site was not so exciting; all that remains of it are a few columns, one of which was knocked over. The guards here were really gripey, too. They actually made us delete some pictures that we took of ourselves doing "inappropriate" things (all we'd done was stand on some marble pedestals and posed as a smiling group, but I guess that we weren't supposed to touch the marble? I'm not sure, and they didn't speak enough English to explain.).

A walk through the centre of the old city (not the oldest city, but the oldest modern part, anyway, which was lined with beautiful old-school balconies and whitewashed, red-roofed houses) led us to the ancient agora and the Roman agora in quick succession. They were interesting sights, but it was the middle of the day and none of us was particularly in the mood to wander around under sweltering heat and look at more ancient stuff.

The next stop, though, was fantastic. The Temple of Hephaestos? Totally rockin'. I would venture to say that I thought it was neater than the Parthenon, mainly due to the fact that since 1983 (according to signs) the Parthenon has been in a constant state of disassembly to fix damage that was done by archaeologists who previously "restored" it. The Temple of Hephaestos, though, was in great condition. I even braved the propriety guards to pull out a flowery bedsheet and wrap myself in it, toga-style, for a photo (that one will definitely go up here as soon as I can get it).

After that, the Theatre of Dionysus was on the path up to the Acropolis. I guess they still use it as a theatre sometimes, too. There's a large festival going on in Athens to celebrate ancient Greek culture (predictably, it starts next weekend), and some performances are going to be held there.

The Acropolis was f'awesome. The panorama of the entire city with the Mediterranean licking its edge was unspeakably impressive, and the Parthenon, despite its scaffolding accessories, seemed to be as proud a symbol as it ever was. The sun was shining, the gods were smiling, and everything seemed to be okay.

Also atop the Acropolis was the Erectheus, which we had to pause to make immature jokes about.

After a day of walking around outside, we decided to spend our early evening walking around inside at the aforementioned National Archaelogical Museum. This seemed to be the place where all the statues rescued from ruins sites were taken, whether to protect them from too-eager tourists or acid rain (Athens is quite known for its smog). There were some good ones there, from every age of Greek creativity.

Then, more delicious Greek food. The local beer in Athens (and maybe Greece, I'm not sure), is called Mythos, so I tried some of that with dinner this time. ...It sort of tasted like cheap, crappy, American beer, but oh well. Worth a go.

Nighttime exploration of the city this time was solely for souvenirs. I managed to pick up a statuette of the Birth of Venus (aka Aphrodite) for, um, Venus, and a pair of gladiator sandals (though mine are less, um, loud than that) for me. Woot for tourism dollars!

An early flight out of ATH necessitated very little sleep, but some time was devoted to gazing at the Acropolis from the rooftop pool. I'd never get tired of that view.

the universal language

The universe, from
Unchanging foundations, all
The world round. Lovely.

No, not English. It's said that mathematics is the universal language. Numbers can describe any detail in any field, and it's one thing that ties our current studies to the efforts of scholars millenia ago.

But math majors are easy to spot. Yesterday I was wandering the park at TUD after work, and I heard the strange call of drei, zwei, eins, JUGGER!! What the..?

So I headed over, and I found a dozen or so people running at each other, yelling and brandishing foam-covered staffs. Math majors.

When they took a break, I asked what on earth they were doing. It was explained to me that they were playing a game based on Mad Max. The next natural question, of course, was could I join. The answer was yes, and now I'm on my way to knowing some more German people. Hahahaha. :D

on trust

Not in your hands, not
Something you control. Believe
In the good we do.

Traveling gives one a perspective on life that is vastly different from anything to be learned any other way. By coming to Germany, this place where I don't speak the language and know next to nothing about the social structure or customs, I am really at the mercy of human kindness. If someone told me to get on a bus that was going to Italy, there's a good chance I wouldn't know any better. But I don't think people are that way.

I've already had to throw myself at the mercies of fate a few times: that woman who happened to be sitting next to me on the train ride back to Darmstadt? If she had been leading me anywhere else, how could I have known? I couldn't even understand the announcement about the train station closing; it was only presented in German. There's a feeling that you learn to trust about people you meet. I felt it with Mathieu, even just through email, which is why I thought it was okay to spend $650 on a computer for him and that it was okay to cross my fingers and head to Berlin in my rainbow socks.

Sometimes the news can make us doubt the basic good of people, but it's there. For every serial killer we read about, just thing about the things we aren't reading about: every little American girl traveling abroad who makes it to her destination through extra efforts of people who don't even know her.

berlin on a whim

Open your mind, relax,
Jump in! Flight by the seat of
One's pants can work out.

Sometime on Thursday, I was at TUD, checking email while I was waiting for a presentation. Mathieu appeared on chat, and I mentioned I had nothing to do this weekend. He was like, "Come to Berlin! It will be fun! Oops, gotta go." I got a message from him later that he still wanted me to come, but because of his class he wouldn't be able to make it to the train station until after 15:30.

Okay, so this is enough to go on, right? I looked at trips from Darmstadt to Berlin, and I found a suitable one that arrived there at 17:30. I sent him an email asking would he be able to meet me there? ...No response. Friday morning there was nothing, either, so I sent another message that I was wearing a bright pink dress and rainbow socks and to please meet me at 17:30. I figured that, even if I couldn't find him, Berlin's a big city, and it wouldn't be hard to find a hostel and figure out a plan on my own.

The train ride was everything that I would expect from a train ride through Europe. There were rolling green hills with white goats throwing speckles across them. The towns were clustered in valleys, and each one had a token cathedral in the centre. A bit closer to Berlin, there were windfarms on some of the hills. I think Germany is #1 in wind power? Maybe it was solar power; I'm not sure.

So I arrived at the train station in Berlin, even more nervous because my train was running 5 minutes late. I looked around the platform, then headed down the escalator. "Valkyrie!" a voice called down to me, "It's Mathieu! I guess I'll meet you at the bottom." So it was a success. :D

He'd also brought friends; one of whom may start writing on this blog at some point. They were Alex and Nadège (I think that's the spelling...), and he'd met them during his language course in Berlin. Alex is doing geology in Bavaria for the summer, and Nadège is doing biology stuff in Hamburg, I think.

So our first adventure was to cross past the EU building, the Reichstag, and the thousands of people in the train station to get on a double-decker bus that took us past a lot of interesting sights. We stopped by Mathieu's apartment to try to figure out where to go, but we couldn't get his internet to work, so we just went.

Eventually, we found ourselves at a pub in Alextanderplatz, where we enjoyed some delicious schwartzbeer. The place offered beer in interesting formats: for instance, you could buy a metre of beer. It was also sold by the 3 or 5 litres, which was served in a tower. Hum.

We wanted to find a club, so we asked a local guy who happened to speak some English ("happened" isn't really the right word... almost everyone here who's less than 30 speaks pretty good English) where to find one, and he pointed us at... well, a local club. We couldn't get in because we couldn't speak German.

There were some French people hanging out outside, and we started talking to them. Mathieu and Nadège are from Quebec, so they speak French, too. Alex and I stood by as they sorted out that we were going to go to a club called "Tresor," which, incidentally, is one of the 3 most famous clubs in Berlin. The other two were the one we'd just been turned away from and a gay club. They got us in with their Frenchery, and it was good.

That club was ridiculous, may I mention that? The music was industrial like I've never heard before, and it was kickin' all night. We danced and danced, then walked outside to be greeted by sunlight. Yup, it was 7am. What next?

Well, we had to meet someone else at the train station. So we wandered on over. We had some time to kill, so we had pizza and chilled out. A guy, probably 40, walked up to us and started talking to me and Alex about how he wants to go to Canada or the US to study forestry. Then he switched topics and started talking about a protest that he was going to be in that day. It's a group, I never caught the name, that wants toilets to be free and people to have more say in what goes on in their governments. Germany's sales tax is 19% for chrissakes. Then he left us, we found the person we were to meet, and we walked right through the protest he was talking about.

A walk past the Reichstag again showed us another protest, this one filled with people who wanted fair treatment for milk cows. They had banners with "faire Milch" printed on them, which I initially interpreted as "milk fair"... it was sadly not so. :)

Then what... oh, everything else. We saw the Brandenburg Tor, the civilisation museum (one of the exhibitions for now is the GATES TO ENTER FECKING BABLYLON), a few random sculptures on the streets, some craft fair things that seemed to be happening, and the zoo. The only zoo in Europe with a panda!

After that, the wall was a necessary thing to see, but we stopped back by Alex's for a moment to grab something we needed. The subway to get to his house was closed, though not by protesters. We did see a shitton of Berlin football fans, though, just out of a game. It was sweet.

I actually wrote my name on the wall. Maybe if you go someday, you'll get to see it. ;) It was covered in graffiti, some of which had been commissioned AFAIK, and it was really interesting. It's hard for someone from the US to believe that something like that could have existed, or needed to exist. I think I will learn a lot on this trip.

A beergarden provided dinner and some entertainment for the evening. We also made a stop at the Radisson, which sounds weird, but it's home to the tallest cylindrical aquarium in the world. Pretty sweet.

The night wrapped up with a long sit and talk, which actually stretched into morning and dawn. I managed to drag my sorry, tired ass to the train station to catch an earlier train than I'd expected to take, which was a good thing. Apparently, protesters (again!) had started rioting at the main train station in Frankfurt, so it was closed by the Police. I needed to make a train change there, which became impossible. So much luck there, though: there was a woman sitting next to me on the train who a) spoke English and b) needed to go to the same place that I did. So we navigated the alternate transportation routes and managed to get back to Darmstadt about 2.5 hours after we had expected to. Thanks to miracles, I had exactly enough money (I found a .05 piece on the floor of the train, actually, that got me up to the exact amount) to get home, and I caught the last bus to my house. Amazing.

What a weekend. I hope I see those guys again soon.

new home, new keyboard

Chase the sun around
The world, find a new place, and
Everything is easy.

IIIIIIIIIIIt's...... Germany! If you had asked me 9 months ago, I probably would never have guessed that I'd be writing a blog post from here. :)

The flight was long... but it was okay. I stayed up for about 2 days before collapsing into bed for 20 hours at 16:00 yesterday, but I think I may have beaten jet lag already! Huzzah! It was nice to have a layover in Toronto for a few hours; it was enough time to meet up with Evan and his friend AMac for lunch, anyway. We went to Kensington Market and had dericious empanadas and red bean cakes. Mmmmm...

Then, of course, I met some wonderful Canadians on both flights (IND->YYZ and YYZ->FRA) who told me about all the fabulous things that I'll have to try to do this summer. On the flight to Europe, all passengers were served complimentary wine/beer/etc. with dinner, and with breakfast we were offered Bailey's to go with our coffee. Hahahaha! This summer is surely going to be something different.

Upon landing, everything, as I mentioned, was easy. The immigration person didn't even ask why I came to Germany. He took my passport, looked at me, and stamped it. I got a phone for €49.95, including €15 of included talk time. I guess calls are pretty expensive on it, but I don't think I'll be using it much, anyway. Buses are simple enough to figure out, and if ever I find myself lost, it isn't difficult to come by someone who speaks English.

Probably the hardest things to get used to here are going to be the keyboards (the z and y are swapped, which has led to my spelling my own name wrong several times, and there are €, µ, ß, ö, ä, and ü scattered where I expect other keys to be, not to mention that the special characters across the number keys are reorganised in an awful sort of way) and the... well, maybe just the keyboards. I can't think of anything else I've had a lot of trouble with yet.

Since Torsten is off to someplace-or-other tomorrow, I don't start work until Monday. So I think I'm going to go pay a visit to Mathieu in Berlin this weekend. Hopefully I'll get set up with some internets in my room, too, soon, since right now I'm "at work." Today there are some kind of presentations for the group; it's their one-year anniversary.

I'll get on that whole posting pictures thing as soon as I can... for the moment, I haven't taken many, since I was practically a zombie yesterday (that sentence was hella hard to type, for the record. thanks, keyboard.). Oh! But I need to update y'all on my address. It isn't quite what I expected:

Valkyrie Savage
Haus 22
Zimmer 004
Max Planck Straße 4
Dieburg 64807
Germany

I like the progression here, though. B-town, C-bus, D-burg. It's pronounced that way, too! :D