so a rather interesting week. i have been indisposed (without internet) for the last week, but i have written posts in notepad to save for here, and they follow: (this is going to be a really, really long post, find a comfy place and some time, and enjoy)

Sunday:

I am currently (until tomorrow) staying with Björn's aunt and uncle in their Nürnberg home. a very nice home, nice people too. they have a baby. every time I see this baby, I think of McKenna (not sure if I spelt that right, but I am referring to my cousin Mandy's baby). very cute baby named Niklas, he waves back at me when I wave at him.

yesterday, we went on a tour of a brewery in Nürnberg. it was pretty cool, there was some pretty interesting information and some pretty good beer. we started off with a light, typical yellowish beer, after which we went down to the underground rock cellars where the beer was made, fermented, aged, and stored. during world war 2, they were converted to bomb raid shelters, and saved thousands of lives from the extensive bombings of this city. we then had a red beer, which was my favorite beer so far. after that, we had a typical Bavarian supper, which I rather enjoyed. I like burger. I like hotdogs. but what they have done, is mixed the two. they take a bun and three hotdogs, grilled the hotdogs, and put them inside it. AMAZING!

we walked around Nürnberg for a while, and I am impressed with the majesty of this city. they have a large river in the middle of the city, and across it are a lot of small, quaint bridges. all kinds of bridges, many different sizes. mini suspension bridges, arch bridges, flat bridges...all kinds, all cool. also present in Nürnberg is the largest theater in Germany, but you couldn't tell from the outside. but once you walk in, turn right, and walk down several flights of stairs, and see just how deep into the ground this theater goes, it is easily believable.

today, we woke up late. we woke up at 10:30. if I could, I would put that number into caps. 10:30! damn. but we went to the zoo today, which was rather awesome. we saw a great many animals, but one of the best animals was the polar bears. yes. polar bears outside, in Germany, at 20 degrees. we got there just as they were feeding the bears. oddly enough, they began by throwing in vegetables. heads of lettuce, carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, celery...but then the fun begins. they begin throwing in fish, small animals, and a bird. the child in front of my FLIPPED OUT when he saw the bird fly in. the full on 'OH MY GOD NOOOOOOO!!!' hands on cheeks freakout. twas awesome. we also saw lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), and leopards, and birds, gorillas, monkeys, fish, manatees...good stuff.

after this, we went to a 4D movie, which was pretty cool. it was an animated 3D coal mine ride, during which we were in groups of 2, sitting with a partner in adjacent, attached seats. during the ride, our seat bounces and tipped all over, and it gave a legitimate sense of motion. it was really cool, unlike the last 4D I saw, in which the seat prodded me in the back and sprayed water in my face. 13 minute movie. how long before all films are presented like that?

after supper, for which we had penne pasta and spaghetti sauce, I did something rather odd for me: I stuck around and chatted with the adults and Björn. for almost 2 hours. some German, some English, but I learned many new and important vocabulary words. actually...mostly not important words like 'spargel' (asparagus), specht (woodpecker), klagen (to whine), and empfehlen (to recommend). but we talked for a while, and it was fun. usually after a meal, I might chat for a while since I came to Germany, but not for very long, and with my broken German I don't contribute much. in Canada, I don't contribute much because I usually leave when I’m finished, as is expected of me. twas fun, but I realized something - I enjoy speaking more with adults than my own generation. this lead to many hours of thinking about this.

after some thought (ha...some) I formulated my hypothesis, but some background story is required for it to make sense. several years ago (4 years, I was in Grade 7) I realized that I was not as popular in my new school as I was used to and that people really didn't care about me in school. I went from being really popular (elementary school I was pretty popular) to being a nobody. in my state of general invisibility I took to people watching as a hobby. I observed any different phenomena, but the most stark realizations were (a-) the extent to which others change for others' desire and (b-)how much time and effort went into making oneself presentable for other people. after several (many) inquiries I realized that people spend what I thought (and still think) is an outrageous amount of time preparing themselves for being around others. showers and teeth brushing were obviously important, but spending hours on hair and clothing and makeup (not just girls for any of these...) seemed (and again still does) ridiculous and stupid, so I decided to not do this. I chose the clothing from the top of my drawer, regardless of matching. my hairstyle became bedhead. I decided to not care, and over this time period of 4 years, this has been my general policy. people aren't looking at me or paying attention to me, they aren't my friends, why make myself presentable for them? so I stopped. then gradually, I let myself slip into some bad habits. my toothbrush was used less and less frequently, and the time between showers got longer and longer. eventually my breath reeked like ass and so did my body. but I don't smell my own breath, and I couldn't smell my own stench, so I didn't realize how far I’d slipped. you never really realize until people comment, which of course pissed me off more and made me want even less to do this. they were not my friends, they may as well have been a stranger asking me to change my lifestyle with which I was comfortable and enjoyed, simply for their sake. thus is the story of the emergence of my worst habits. also, for the last couple years, I have had few real friends. people may be friendly, but most would still stab me in the back and use my crumpled form to step up a space in the social hierarchy that is our lives. I had (have) few truly loyal friends and do not socialize with them as much as I should so my social skills faded. I know only how to deal with these friends and my family, other people confuse me. I have little or no experience in dealing with these people, and as such have no idea what to do about them. I have been a castaway by my own will, who is now attempting to return to the refuge of society after a 4 year hiatus. I have few social skills, many bad habits, and few links to high points in the hierarchy. this is the reason for my being friendzoned, this is why I have 170 Facebook friends and 10 friends. in the words of Chris Deburgh, "Ship to shore, can you read me anymore? This line is bad, I’m drowning!" This castaway is searching for his place in the grand tapestry of fate, my point on the four dimensional Cartesian plane that is existence. I seek the ship on the horizon. It is drawing closer with each day, as I am only now realizing that I cannot exist as a sole body in a school of fish. I cannot be self-sufficient with nobody else in my life; I simply cannot be satisfied alone. as introverted as I have convinced myself that I am, I am not satisfied alone, and I am now searching for the line in the water to draw myself in. the main question, however, is who's hand will be held to me when I draw myself onto the ship? will this ship sink as did my last one, leaving me stranded in the water again, or will this ship carry me all the way to the other side? this I don't know, and neither does anyone else. only time can answer this question, but I welcome and encourage my readers to follow me in this and to question yourself. are you a castaway in the guise of a captain, or a captain in the guise of a castaway? sit you on the bridge, the deck, or leagues back in the water? where are you? who are you? ask yourself.

Monday:

problem with the internet, and i have no idea when it will be solved, so i am writing these posts in notepad and will post them when i can. this may be as late as Friday, as the Wifi in our Munich hotel is and has been for the last week down. not sure when it will be back, so here goes.

as i said, Munich today. we woke at 8:30, after me rolling around for about an hour thinking it was 10 already. Björn had the only working clock. Fantastic. but breakfast and out the door, all packed into the car and to the train station. we took the train, of which Germany has many, and it went up to 302KMH! Three hundred and two kilometers per hour. on the train. it was awesome, because we were passing fast lane autobahn cars rapidly and in quick succession. outstanding. i like trains.

we got to Munich, to the behemoth train station, from which emerges 3 different kinds of train: the U-bahn, or the regular subway (Munich has 7 U-bahn lines), the S-bahn, or the fast subway (Munich has 8 of these) and the even faster cross city trains, which are even more numerous. I (with intellectual assistance from Björn and his mom) find that in Canada, or Edmonton at least, we have only one train and lousy buses, because we have enough room for many people to drive their cars. Germany...does not. they have so many people and would not be able to function as a society without their extensive public transportation, as well as the choking fumes from their millions of cars. in other words, in canada, we waste the space that we have and the air we breath because we are too damned lazy to put in some new train lines and clean up our buses. i hate laziness...of which i am also a culprit, thus am i a hypocrit.

we found our hotel, a cozy place with misspelled english on the wall inside. as i said, the internet is currently down. we're on the third floor. not much else to say, pretty nondescript place.

just got back from supper. left for about 45 minutes, and had a ravioli veal thing. it sounded really good on the menu, veal ravioli with sauerkraut and something i didn't know. the Sauerkraut was good, the veal was alright, but the other thing was crunchy and didn't fit the meal very well. and then the beer. every time i've had beer here it's been different, i don't think i've had the same beer twice.

but now back to the story. after we arrived in our hotel, we checked in, and went into downtown Munich. first thing i see, is the massive 'Rathaus' or city hall. as i said, massive, with statuettes on the outside and intricate carvings everywhere, pictures to follow.

(I am not posting pictures for the next week because i left my camera cord in Bad Hersfeld :( )

following this we saw two churches and climbed the tower of another, using the stairs that were far too narrow for anyone to logically climb, and the material used to make them varying from bricks, wood, stone, or a combination of the above. at one point the stairs were only everal inches wide, at another they were tall, and another they were slippery because of the chosen wood. in other words, the stairs were crap and practically designed to send one plunging to their untimely demise. however, nobody met this fate today, to my knowledge. the other church was particularly notable because of the color choice. instead of the usual brown stone or brick, or the slate gray or tan stone, this one was made of white. it was entirely white on the inside, and instead of the normal dimness of a church, this one was very well lit, to the point of aggravation of the eyes. my general assumption is that this is a metaphor for purity or something, as is the general motif of religion.

afterwards, we resumed our stroll through downtown Munich, seeing the street vendors and the market. there was an overabundance of people in the streets, but surprisingly they flowed very well, aalmost as if following a scripted path. i was pleasantly surprised to find little difficulty in navigating the crowd.

we wandered for a while, followed by a trip to the Englishe Garten, AKA city park. it was nice, but it will be much nicer once the trees finally have leaves. as nice as bare trees look, it is always nice to see more green. we stopped in an open courtyardesque area with beer vendors in it (of course... :p ) where Björn and his mother had beer. I had a cola. i didn't feel like a beer. not sure why, just didn't. (oh well, i had one at supper...)

we then went to see the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics. it was pretty cool, we went in a 156m tall tower in an elevator going 7m/s (they measured and displayed this information as your tower climb progressed), where i took many pictures (mostly crap, it is difficult to capture the majesty of a view such as this in a simple camera) and saw many interesting sights. we then returned to the hotel, went for supper, and came to the present.

Tuesday:

very somewhat interesting day today. Started out as a regular day, eating breakfast in the hotel as one normally does. nothing notable here. some slight confusion here in translation and my eyes apparently. turns out the same word is used for 'castle' and 'palace' in German. I did not know this. I thought when I was asked if I wanted to see a 'Schloss' that the word was referring to a castle. I love castles, they are very interesting and have many interesting things to see. this time, however, the word referred to a palace. I should probably make the distinction in my eyes: a castle is built as a defensive structure, generally in a story involving

war, whether real or potential. a palace is a place rich people build to bath in their wealth while others around them starve. don't get me wrong, palaces are very nice, and they're very pretty to look at, but I cannot help but think of the waste. the money that had to go into these palaces...to have 2000 paintings and have on every wall hand painted frescoes depicting gods and battles...to have every surface of every wall and piece of furniture covered by something carved out of something expensive...just

seems a waste to me. there was one part that was rather odd and thus interesting: the makers of this castle apparently designed a part of the palace as a ruin. it was the church. awesome, yet somehow ironic.

after seeing this, we stopped in the cafe and ate lunch. pretty straightforward stuff.

we then returned to the hotel for several hours, in which time I read a large part of a book, following which we went into the city to buy new shoes for Björn.

finally, we went on the train to the theater. there was also a football (soccer) game very close to the theater, thus they shared a train station. we were literally pressed closer than shoulder to shoulder. it was closer to chest to chest. some people, apparently impervious to the rising air temperature, didn't think to open the windows, and with this many chanting people on a bus, it gets hot FAST. as I said, chest to chest for about 10 stops, every time someone left the train, with much difficulty, several more squished in. once we finally got to the train station, our train alone

unloading filled the entire platform, all the way end to end, fully across in a massive swarm of bodies. also present were about a million cops, milling about in groups of 6 or 7. there were cops everywhere I looked. they milled around in their groups, wearing uniforms of varying color (it seemed very unusual and slightly unprofessional for the police force to not have a standard issue uniform, but I digress...) I hazard not a guess towards the sheer numbers of police there, and I will say only one more thing: that

tonight was likely the safest night to commit a crime. every single cop in Munich must have been at that field to mass the numbers present.

but back to the theater. we went to a rather awesome musical about hippies and the Vietnam war. as is usual for a musical, they sang many awesome songs and had a rather (un)compelling and musically rich storyline. regrettably most of today's activities didn't allow pictures, so the immortalization remains in my mind alone. but it was fun.

and now, the present: midnight in Munich. time for bed.

bis morgen!

and now, today:

pretty normal day today.

woke up, shower, dressed. breakfast and checkout of the hotel. walk the luggage to the train station and out it into a locker for later today.

we then went to the German Museum (which sounds pretty weird when translated into English), pretty awesome. a collection of pretty much everything i could ever want to know, from mining and tunnel digging to bridge building, medicine and diseases to the creation of the pill and airplanes. space, rockets, nanotechnology and microbiology. everything was there, and we regrettably didn't have enough time to see it all. it was awesome what we saw though. i am not however allowed by their odd legislation to share in any way any pictures or film taken in the museum, or post anything to the internet, or place any such film or photos on any media disk or hard drive. what the hell. so they pretty much must stay on my camera. not sure why, but them's the rules. during this, we ate lunch in the cafe in the museum, where i had an acceptable bratwurst and kraut.

following the museum, we took the train to visit Björn's cousin. we went to her house/apartment/quarters and then went for ice cream, but i noticed during this time how similar she is to my Canadian sister. She is very close physically, and lives in much the same conditions: small yet cozy with a single roommate near the school where she is studying away from her family. she also has a very similar demeanor and acts very like my sister. feeling a little homesick.

last hour before the train ride, we went to a book store. A canadian with only moderate German speaking abilities walks into a German book store...and finds something to read. awesome. i am in need of new reading material as i am currently on the seventh book in a series of seven, all read here in Germany. good books, but now i have a comedy.

and now the finale draws on this massive post. it is again getting late, and again i must sleep. i apologize for my absence and regret to tell that this may reoccur next week, as i am roadtripping in the north of Germany as opposed to the current south. i cannot forecast the internet conditions ergo i cannot say whether i will be able to post, but i will be posting whenever i can, hopefully avoiding long posts such as this one in the future.

and as always, bis morgen.