Day 1..ish in Deutschland
Things I’ve learned:
1) 5 hrs of “sleep” over 48 hours isn’t enough.
2) Flying British Airways at night is a good idea: there were 3-4 seats per person on the flight! Time to stretch!
3) London from 1000m is ‘close enough’ to see stuff
4) There *is* such a thing as too much turbulence (re: heathrow->frankfurt)
5) There are mexicans here too
6) Frankfurt’s FFM bahnhof reminded me of atlanta’s
7) the trip on the bahn from FFM to Frankfurt Hbf was a lot like Cleveland’s train ride from the airport to tower city: lots of trees.
Frankfurt’s hauptbahnhof is movie-esque.
9) Walking out of the Hbf felt kinda like walking out of NYC’s Madison Sq. Garden
10) Germans have better beds/sheets
11) All my google/blogger pages are “automagically” in german. This is good- maybe I’ll learn the language faster!
Stuff I wanna study..
Dunno why or how exactly I came across this, but here’s some of what I hope to study in/for a MA/PhD in Philosophy. And yes, I do understand 90% of it!
And for comic relief..
Europe is the new “ghetto”; Islam is the new gang..
Ok, so now that you’ve already judged me because of the title of this document, you don’t need to read any further, so just go along your merry way ranting & flaming about how racist/judgemental/fundamentalist/american I am.
So a fellow SBTSBlogger posted this dandy article set on Speigel. Since I’m tryin to head over there in a few months, I figure I should have a clue (btw- anyone willing to help that clue-having process is encouraged to comment & let me know anything german!!!).
So while reading this article, it occurs to me that Europe is alot like Chicago. I’ve heard (unconfirmed) that Chicago has the least number of churches for it’s size of any american city. Hmm.. Europe has churches, but no one goes. Chicago churches all up & moved to outside the city limits 30 yrs ago: result: the blatent sinfulness of humanity grew. Honestly, if you have any spiritual “read” on your environment, you can FEEL the darkness set in as you enter into Chicago.
So christians up & burb-ified themselves, leaving the city sick, free to be filled with anti-christianity. Hmm.. christians have ‘given up’ in Europe & are allowing anti-christianity (islam) in.. And muslims are procreating, unlike liberal europeans, and they are taking over. (This is a simple statistical statement– don’t read into this)
The church in Chicago I’ve been going to decided to buck the trend & stay in the city & reach the city. They’ve been rather “successful” (whatever that means). My pastor saw the white-exodus & took it as opportunity. Hmm.. perhaps Deutschland is my chicago..
It’s not talking about me alright!
Some people (like my mom) might claim this comic is loosely based on my (or my dad’s) dietary consumption of our mandatory daily staple food group..

“In other news..” I’ve managed to hunt down contact info for both Campus for Christ & the Navigators in Germany. Now to convince such ppl for me to bum with/shadow/interview ‘em in 8 months… wait.. are ppl at the universities in may?? hmm.. this may be a problem..
a Traveller’s blog..
Seems my random attempts of finding out about Euro/German culture keeps rolling forward despite their well, random qualities.
Today’s find: Matt. I’ve gotta say, I’m really jealous of his ability to ‘go’. I’ve personally came so very close to having such abilities– right now my work is 100% telecommuting from 300 miles away. It’s great, but hard to ‘get work done’ with the lack of an actual office. & since my job is transitioning more towards clients, that means being local is becoming necessary. Drat. No continent-hopping for me.
But Being a web-programmer by trade, Matt’s blog has what we’ll call today’s “geek quote of the day”:
I returned the volley with a more left-brained challenge: give me the highest prime number under 10,000. He opened his laptop, wrote a prime number generator, and gave me the answer in 5 minutes
Good man.
Continental Humor
Learning more about German culture.. this time, humor The article is actually more helpful for understanding Brit-com, which these germans seem to appreciate in their jokes..
taken directly from:http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,1781004,00.html
Some Germans tell us their jokes …
Tabea Rudolph, 26, StuttgartThere are problems in the woods. The animals of the forest are always drunk, so the fox decides to ban alcohol. The following day, the fox spies a rabbit hanging out of a tree, clearly wasted. The fox ticks him off, and carries on his way. But the next day he sees the rabbit drunk again, and gives him a final warning. The next day, the fox does his rounds and there’s no sign of the rabbit, but he notices a straw sticking out of a stream. Wondering what it is, the fox scoops it out, only to find a very drunk rabbit on the other end of it. “How many times do I have to tell you that animals of the forest aren’t allowed alcohol?” says the Fox. “We fishes don’t give a toss what the animals of the forest aren’t allowed to do,” says the rabbit
Gerhard Bischof, Bad Toelz, 57
A man jumps out of a plane for the first time. At 3,000m he tries to undo his parachute, but the cord fails. At 2,000m he tries to open the emergency chute but that doesn’t work either. At 1,000m he bumps into a man wearing blue overalls, carrying a spanner. “Can you repair parachutes?” asks the first man. “‘Fraid not,” says the other. “I only do boilers.”
Wolfgang Voges, 56, from lower Saxon
Three priests hold a meeting to discuss where life begins. The evangelical priest says, “No question about it, life begins when the child is born.” “No, no,” says the Catholic priest, “it all starts when the sperm meets the egg.” “You’re both wrong,” says the Rabbi. “Life begins when the children have left home and the dog is dead.”
& the best for last– actually a Brit joke about Germans:
Our attitude to the Germans and their supposed lack of a sense of humour is best understood through the example of the joke known to comedy professionals such as myself as The German Child. It goes like this. An English couple have a child. After the birth, medical tests reveal that the child is normal, apart from the fact that it is German. This, however, should not be a problem. There is nothing to worry about. As the child grows older, it dresses in lederhosen and has a pudding bowl haircut, but all its basic functions develop normally. It can walk, eat, sleep, read and so on, but for some reason the German child never speaks. The concerned parents take it to the doctor, who reassures them that as the German child is perfectly developed in all other areas, there is nothing to worry about and that he is sure the speech faculty will eventually blossom. Years pass. The German child enters its teens, and still it is not speaking, though in all other respects it is fully functional. The German child’s mother is especially distressed by this, but attempts to conceal her sadness. One day she makes the German child, who is now 17 years old and still silent, a bowl of tomato soup, and takes it through to him in the parlour where he is listening to a wind-up gramophone record player. Soon, the German child appears in the kitchen and suddenly declares, “Mother. This soup is a little tepid.” The German child’s mother is astonished. “All these years,” she exclaims, “we assumed you could not speak. And yet all along it appears you could. Why? Why did you never say anything before?” “Because, mother,” answers the German child, “up until now, everything has been satisfactory.”