spazieren-gehen.

So you know how there's always a herd of bite-sized children in their tiny mini parkas parading around the Dark Side of Hamilton? And how they go sledding on that slope right beside Keehn? And when they climb to the top, which is all of 8 feet from the bottom, they shout in complete honest glory, "WE MADE IT!!!" and then they sled away in Victory with a Capital V?

I do that everyday here in Schwaebs. Because, let's face it, in addition to a bad leg from the car wreck of 2005 (which suprisingly hasn't been aching as much as I expected) and my history of inhaling carcinogens, I'm not in the best of shape. Fingers crossed, this half-year hiatus from Diner food and Super Pies will aid my quest to be Topfit, though the Nutella and Hefeweizen consumption may completely counter my epic walks up mountains. Point being - I take epic walks up mountains. Despite what you may think, I've never been one to go marauding around the Glen (I can count the times I've breached those woods) and in Tulsa there's absolutely nowhere to go by foot - but I sure love a good walk around.

Conveniently, in German, there's a verb for that: spazieren-gehen. Every morning, all through class I watch the sky out the window, hoping it will be blue by the time lunch is over, and then I take off into the hills - my own pace, my own two feet in my ugly Chucks, nothing but my own traumatized lungs to stop me. On Tuesday, I asked my roommate Stefania (who is Italian and Chilean and ten years older than me but we still stay up too late giggling and gossiping and it's great) what happened if you went up the mountain behind the dormitories. She said she didn't know, but if I wasn't back by nightfall she'd alert the authorities. I said thanks and off I went.

You Hamilton kids know nothing of hills. Hamilton's hill is a bump on the horizon compared to the behemoths I trekked up that day. But still - I did make it to the top, and not only was there a park (with swings!) and benches (with old people!), there were panoramas galore. Eventually I saw another mountain topped with a field - some random bald patch in the middle of forest - and I thought, man, I bet it'd be nice to go stand in the middle of that.

So I did. I probably shaved a few years off my life in the process, but there's nothing comparable to the feeling of seeing a sudden treeless spot through the woods, of breaking from the denseness into nothingness, pure, Midwestern nothingness - flat and field and nothing but you and the sky. I found Nebraska in Germany.

Today, with hardly an inkling of where I was actually going, I dragged myself up another hill and found a ruin - with dungeons and walls and turrets and I don't know, but it was pretty awesome to go running around alone and look out over the valley and feel like a mountain goat adventurer. Which I did. And then I walked home and ate brie and honey on some bread and realized I've got five and a half more months of this. Unglaublich.

If you've been reading, I apologize if these posts are getting long or dull or whatever - and if not, thanks for keeping up. I'd say 'see you soon' but - well. You know. K TCHUSS.